Shadows That Bleed
by YamiYugiPuzzleshipper
Summary: Pure-Bloods are said to be myths, not even well-known within stories. "A specialized genetic coding of the moon and the dire," their spoken lore proclaims. They are creatures beyond the power of mortality, gifted by the gods themselves. Known as the Eternal Ones, their existence once extinguished, resurrection foretells a powerful omen.
1. The Hybrid

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Edit schedule: Varying due to limited time**

 **Update schedule: Biweekly due to limited time**

 **Chapter warning: COPIOUS amounts of blood and gore, HALLUCINATIONS, NIGHT TERRORS and medication, GRAPHIC depictions of veterinary surgeries**

 **Okay guys! This is the story is the multi-chapter werewolf fic. It took three different drafts, four different outlines, and a BUNCH of cursing.**

 **The story is going to have a VERY complicated plot. It's FULL of plot twists (but hopefully no holes). It has COMPLICATED relationships. It has TWISTED friendships. And...a lot more, actually.**

 **The story dives into ALMOST every genre except poetry, full-on romance or horror, parody, western, spiritual and possibly crime. There are mentions of crime elements in the background, however.**

 **So, chapters will have their own individual warnings (blood, gruesome images, character deaths, experiments, etc). EVERY character is important in one way or another, so pay them attention. Their backstories and the events which push them into varying circumstances will be more complex than up might have originally suspected.** **I am using the ENTIRE YUGIOH FRANCHISE to have enough characters to play with, ranging from Duel Monsters to Arc-V.**

 **Many ships. MANY ships. There are a lot of them. They are going to be one-sided, well-established, budding, suggested, implied, past, and some that are somewhat instructive rather than real.**

 **The biggest one-sided WILL be Puzzle (for a vast majority of the story). But their interactions will change and you'll see hints of things other than a lopsided crush and unbreakable friendship. Have no doubt. It's there. But you'll have to read between the lines more to determine for yourself when things change completely and who fell first. That's one thing I'm not going to hand you.**

 **The biggest budding is Peach. It remains this way from the beginning of this story until it meets its end towards the middle. It has an equal importance to Puzzle, but it's far more obvious. Also, go into this with the knowledge that even though Puzzle is the end result, at no time is Peach presented as less. Even when their feelings change, they remain as important to each other as they were before.**

 **Seeing as these are the two most impacting relationships within this long story, I will let the rest be a surprise.**

 **And the devil of details.**

 **These wolves aren't the same as the ones in _Marrow, Gravestones_ and _Spiral_. They're extremely different in this story and violence ranges from one end of the spectrum to the other in regards to bloodshed and death. Chapters will have warnings for them. Now, as for the wolves and their fur patterns and hair colors you should be able to tell the wolves apart by that and eye colors. I AM debating making a deviantart account to have a concept of size and build for each wolf, but I'm not sure I ever will. If it gets to the point that you all would like it for general visual concepts, then I can see about doing it.**

 **Notes for other things will hopefully be extremely shot. I don't plan to post too much about any of the things I researched for the story. It would be an entire book in and of itself.**

 **This story will be long, complicated, and you will definitely need to pay attention to the the smallest details to get the biggest impact and best understanding. This story IS a rough draft for a manuscript which I plan to publish. The characters are mere placeholders and my style has evolved to the point where I'm comfortable in saying that, while this is being posted here, the manuscript will be full of MORE and VERY different. Prose, styles, interactions, events, dialogue, and more of my research will be applied to the manuscript than here.**

 **I'd LIKE to keep the name _Shadows That Bleed_ as its title for publication. Whether that can happen or not is in the air, but if it's possible, but if it is, I may change the name of this story and leave it up. The final edit will have more plot twists, complex subplots, scenes and everything within the manuscript and mythology will be more tightly tied together. In order to keep from having to take the story down (which I really don't want to), a lot of things will be changed and reserved only for the manuscript rather than this fic.**

 **Character names are decided by where they come from and what works for the plot. So there are LOTS of Japanese names and the American names of other characters throughout the story. It's dependent on where they come from.**

 **This story IS OFFICIALLY COPYRIGHTED. The story has been edited three to four times (hardcopy by hand, typing it up on the computer, starting to edit and put on the site, and tidbits on my phone edited into chapters) but I do not expect it to be perfect. I type very fast and it can mess up spelling.**

 **The night the story was posted was the night of the wolf moon (which was also a super moon) so I figured what BETTER day was there to begin posting?**

 **ALL RIGHT! SO! End of note! Enjoy the chapter~**

Copyright (c) 2018 Shadows That Bleed, YamiYugiPuzzleshipper, all rights reserved worldwide. Reproduction is prohibited without written consent.

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Part I

Chapter I: The Hybrid

 _Work Log Entry I: January, 1990_

 _January 10_

 _All efforts to bring forth the ancient beast have failed. The Canis Lupus Dirus still evades us._

 _January 20_

 _A healthy she-wolf has been chosen to take on the task of giving birth to the Hounds. We shall prep her until we feel she will be strong enough to survive the ordeal._

Yugi noticed there was something strange the moment he set foot inside the clinic. The atmosphere seemed unusually heavy, weighed with somberness. The hairs on the back of his neck rose into a bristle, his skin prickling with growing unease. The more serious note that existed in the building was nothing new, nor was the circumstances of their newest patient.

Animals, both wild and owned, often found themselves injured at that particular junction in Domino City. Cars did not always slow down enough to avoid a collision. When a dog got loose and jumped their yard's fence in the excitement of exploration, more often than not, they wound up at one of the clinics.

So, Yugi had not been the least bit surprised upon having answered his phone to his mom's call about this very thing while he was at school. He had left his friends at the arcade a couple of blocks away, close enough to the school that they often went there when classes were over. He had run that short distance, unsure of what to expect.

His mother had simply told him that an unknown black dog of unrecognizable breed had been hit and she needed a second set of hands, just in case. The dog had apparently come out of the collision without a fatal wound, but the damage on his left side had been rather extensive. And she'd told him the dog had gone into shock from the blood loss. He had been told that the officer at the scene had planned to shoot him, which had spurred her to adamantly argue against his decision.

With that limited information, Yugi had assumed that it would be like any other surgery he stood in on. But his skin was tingling and his mind felt alight with tension. An instinct warned him to turn away, to _run,_ but his curiosity was all-encompassing, and the will to help an animal in need pushed him on.

But it did not prevent him slowing his steps as he headed towards one of the examination rooms. He noted curiously that the technicians were not around and it made him wonder if perhaps they were all busy with the scheduled dental at the main clinic. His mother was the only one in there with the new patient.

The moment he entered the surgical room, the tension in his body spiked. His heart raced and his blood turned cold, adopting a temperature as chilled as ice. His eyes locked on the animal, startled by the seemingly massive size. But it was more alarming that the canine kept his head up, though it nodded drowsily, and blinked at him with bleary yet penetrating golden eyes. It was backed away to the very edge of the examination table, its left back leg quaking as it lay on its stomach.

The shock was clear to the eye, visually easy to assess. The glassiness in its gaze was stunning, the way it stared with clear focus beneath the frosted glaze. The tongue that poked out of the corner of its mouth, beneath the lip of its gums, was bright white. The royal blue nylon of the restraint around its mouth stood out sharply against the black fur of its large muzzle.

The light glimmered on its thick coat and the glossy sheen made Yugi shiver. And the way the dog quivered only gave more appearance to its unique, powerful build.

He watched, relatively surprised by the lack of struggle the dog gave them. His mom moved to place the anesthetic cone over its nose, allowing it to inhale the Isoflurine that would surely knock it out. The canine blinked blearily again, breathing in so roughly its sides quaked with the effort, and Yugi swallowed hard as the impulse to flee came over him again.

Something about this immense animal on the metal table in front of him set off every desire for self-preservation his body possessed. His grandfather, more of a parental figure than he could sometimes claim his own father was due to the gaping absence in his life, had always told him to trust his instincts. In truth, Yugi assumed it was one of the most common things they talked about.

But regardless of his usual urging to never shun his instincts, Yugi knew he would have to do so now. He had never considered doing it before, but now he stared at this dog and his sense of wonderment pushed against his alarm. The war that waged between the two was nothing he could put into words. Yet, it was enough to keep him rooted there.

He didn't understand why he should run. The dog looked like any other black canine with a long coat. It was large, yes, but it had the usual coarse appearance that came with guard hairs and the softer tufts of fur which fanned its face and legs. It had a muscular frame far more powerful than Honda's German shepherd and was possibly even twice Blankey's size. It was robust in build, long-legged with what looked like delicate bones leading to immense black paws. The erect ears were the smallest bit unusual, filled with plush-looking fur where most were rather bare. The shape was somewhat unique as well, with a rounded shape, somewhat smaller and less triangular than Blankey's or those of a Doberman.

Regardless of these small oddities, it was still a dog. It hardly warranted the fission of discomfort and alarm which clawed its way along his spine and made his stomach twist. But his instincts said there was a lot of power—more than he even recognized—in the animal, more than the body even managed to fully boast.

"How old do you think he is?" his mom asked after a moment. She helped to lower the canine onto its side so that the wound was upright in the air. The breathing was long and slow, but its eyes never strayed from Yugi's face. Even as the table shook beneath its weight in gentle vibrations and a slithering, stressed growl left its throat, it was complacent.

Yugi was unable to think straight. His mom worked to pull the dog's long, thin forelimbs forward gently so that its position was hopefully more comfortable. And then she stepped back to take a better look at the damage of the wound that marred its side. But the dog growled again, and the noise seemed almost too heavy and compressed to be a true animalistic cry.

The teenager pushed away some of his initial unease, but was unable to smother it all. He moved past her to sanitize his hands, grabbing the razor where it sat on the tray nearest him. There was no hope of putting in an IV line as long as that thick fur remained.

"I would think one— _possibly_ two, but that seems to be pushing it," he finally answered. He could see the cords in the dog's neck, the shudder of fur along its skin there, and Yugi knew it was trying to watch him again. He shivered, moving to pass the razor to his mother, and grabbed a set of bright blue sterilized gloves. As he began to slip them on, he moved to allow the dog a better visual of him.

Immediately the restlessness in its drowsy frame began to lessen. The golden eyes were heavily glazed and its breathing longer, deeper than ever. But it paid him as much attention as it could muster. The plastic of the gloves felt unusually cold and somehow sticky, seemingly caught on his flesh with glue, refusing to properly cover his fingers. His skin crawled as the dog blinked long and slow and tried its hardest to remain awake, eyes glued to Yugi as if he might be the one reason it did not wake up.

"Hmm…"

The response was distracted, easily overpowered by the steady buzz of the electric razor. But he still managed to catch it over the gentle hum. His fingers picked at the latex material of his gloves, pulling it from his skin with a practiced steadiness which helped to undo his anxiety.

Yugi wanted out of the room as soon as was possible. When the dog was stitched up, he'd take his leave as quickly as he could. But it was going to be hard to help his mother if he could not calm himself somehow.

He got a facemask for himself, but his fingers hesitated and his body seemed to rebel at the very concept of dressing himself with it. Yugi shrugged it away, rolling his eyes at himself, and watched as the razor was put to use. The thick dark fur began to fall away in clumps, as deep in shade as a well of ink, catching and entangling the blades. But his mom expertly cleaned it away again before turning it back on and working once more.

His eyes fell on one of the large clumps of fur and his mouth began to dry out. It had a very clear under and overcoat, set distinctly by a strangely even layer of silver which looked oddly like that of feathered down. The precision of its cut was so flawless that Yugi felt his skin tingle. There was not even the slightest hint of dandruff in the dense coat.

He knew of that kind of distinct coating in several long-furred breeds. The Siberian husky and the Alaskan malamutes both boasted coats of similar builds during winter. But this dog did not have the size or jaw or muscle mass to speak of these bloodlines. He could easily have been confused for a long-haired shepherd, but he recognized that the skull was unlike theirs either. The slope of the skull was narrow, almost unnoticeable, a sharp degree of a slant, and the jaw was broader, with more length and a great power which existed in the immense pouches of its oversized cheeks.

The animal demanded a sense of respect even in its unconscious state. Its deep breaths shook its frame and its ribs were so much larger when they spread to their fullest with each inhale. There was nothing to hide its denser bones, or the muscles which layered its torso.

It was large, rugged, powerful and impressive. Yugi wondered if it was as athletic as its build suggested. He imagined it possessed amazing endurance and agility if it truly was. He bet that it would have a degree of graceful elegance that would put a jungle cat to shame. He imagined that the gloss of its beautiful coat would highlight the pull of fur rolling over each and every powerful muscle like ripples of water in a shallow pool. The sheer power the canine possessed just upon a glance was enough to make him think of the wilderness, of dark nights and forests bathed in moonlight.

Yugi looked away only when she moved again, a different action from the shaving. Now he watched her tape the IV into place. The pigmentation of the dog's shaven skin was so light a shade that it mirrored freshly fallen snow. His veins must have been small for she struggled for what felt like hours, though he knew instinctively only minutes had passed.

The thought almost made him smile wryly. Everything about this canine seemed almost massive. And his veins were apparently tiny in comparison. He still admired the terribly thick, dense bone that made up the entirety of its long, powerful forelimb, the muscular prowess it exuded. He took in the mass of muscle and bone, the way that its entire body ran the length of the metal examination table. Its tail hung over the edge in a straight dip of spine covered by thick, dark glossy black fur.

The rise and fall of its side was steady, the breaths deep and long. The fur along its flanks shuddered as if stirred by drifting wind. And the light of the bulb overhead seemed to glow further where it touched the enormity of the gaping hole that stretched along its side.

Yugi winced as he considered the size of it. A smaller dog would have dropped dead from it. The sheer length of the bright red flesh and the amount of blood loss would have likely killed even a medium breed. He could see that it was soaked, all around the open wound where it clumped together so that it was folded almost completely inwards against the muscle on display. It looked as if the skin were no longer attached. The hair was caught and kept in place by wet, open muscle.

Beside it, the dog's stifle was torn open in the back of its thigh. The hock was bright red with more exposed muscle and fresh blood. The fur was slicked downwards, glistening in the dull light, matted and tied against the flesh. There was no skin to reattach the fur. They would have to stretch the flesh around it and pull it forward in order to stitch it back together.

He watched his mother turn the razor on again. His eyes settled on the way she pulled the hair seemingly caught inside of the immense gash. "Jesus," she whispered quietly. When she pulled the skin back, Yugi felt sick, flinching away at the sight of it. A thousand dead cells showed there, colored black, turning the dog's flesh a similar shade.

The hair was tangled and grotesque, letting out a strange peeling noise accompanied by soft snaps as the strands broke. Yugi was unsure of how he truly caught the noise beneath the buzz of the razor as he moved without instruction to take the flap of skin in his fingers. He held it for her inspection, swallowing hard as he looked towards the dog's face again. Thank the gods its eyes were closed as tightly as they were.

He had already seen the bottom where the fur met tendon. And he knew she would have to cut away the edges, maybe even for inches. It was disgusting to think of how much skin she'd have to peel away just in order to clean properly. The razor was put to the animal's fur again, shaving away the perfectly smooth hairs once more.

Smooth patches of the beautiful fur came away like soft down beneath a bird's plumage. He held away another piece to allow her better access and room to maneuver to shave away the fur that needed clearing away. The pale skin was as white as paper as he looked at it. Sticky, matted, bloodied hair caught the razor in place, tying it there effectively, and he watched her struggle momentarily with the task of pulling it away.

Yugi flinched at the sight of the attached skin. The strip of torn hair gave way a moment later, like paper against the sharp blades of a scissor. The flesh was blackened, nearly the same shade as its fur, and he felt sick as the smell wafted through the mask covering his mouth and nose. It was sour and decaying, with the harshness of sickening sweetness beneath it, and his stomach ached as he tried not to gag. He took the bunch of flesh from her, dropping it away into the bin next to the table. It sounded heavy yet hollow somehow all at once. It was a harsh thud that came upwards, with enough power to make him flinch once more.

" _Jesus_ ," his mother repeated softly, face growing pale as Yugi flinched once more. Her wide blue eyes flickered to his momentarily, clearly startled.

Yugi flinched a second time, feeling his skin prickle and his shoulders rise the slightest bit as if to protect himself. It was extremely odd. He had never seen cells die that quickly before, especially with how young and healthy this dog seemed outside of his initial impact with the car.

Their connection was a simple stare that was broken almost immediately again, her attention lowered to the unconscious canine between them once more.

Yugi grabbed the sterilized scissors that lay on the tray next to him. He passed them wordlessly to her, then grabbed the tweezers and handed them over as well. He had not truly been aware that she had shaved away the fur around his wound so completely before. But as she lifted the torn muscle, the pale flesh was bright like snow and Yugi's skin crawled as he looked at it.

"The car roughed him up pretty well, don't you think?" she commented scornfully, shaking her head faintly. He didn't answer but he assumed the smell and the sight of the wound itself must have been the reasoning for the officer's initial plan to shoot it.

But his mom would never have allowed that to happen.

She had known she could save him and that was exactly what she was doing.

Yugi looked the dog over thoughtfully for a moment. How was it even possible that none of its bones were broken? From what she had told him from an eye witness account, the car had been speeding and the dog had been tossed like a rag doll. Yet, when she had gotten there, the dog had been fine albeit in shock.

His gums had been bright white like his teeth. His golden eyes had been so wide that they might have popped out of his head. The veins had looked brighter than ever, enlarged against the whites of them. But, despite the obvious pain that had come with the collision and the wounds along the hock and coupling of its hind left leg and the pastern of the front, not once had it limped.

But there was so much dead tissue for her to scrape away from the pale flesh. She had just finished skimming the bottom of that flap of skin. A long line of white, sinewy muscle was clumped together like a thick strand of saliva from slavering jaws. Yugi could not stop staring. His mom wiped at the rotten flesh that lay atop the good, reddened muscle but he was still unable to look away.

Tweezers and a small scalpel were used again, scraping at the skin. The darkened purple of decayed flesh gave way to bright pink. Then a vibrant red color came forward. Yugi watched her continue to saw away at the muscle now, scraping first for a test of blood circulation. Then she would clip it away and drop it into the trash near her. A drain tube of floppy, flexible white rubber was placed in the center. She angled it briefly, checking the direction to place it. Then she moved to stretch the skin on both sides of the wound.

Her gloved hands found their way beneath the trimmed skin, tunneling and tugging gently to pull it away from the deep red muscle. She pulled both ends, let out a relieved breath, and a shaky laugh escaped her when the loose skin gave headway beneath her fingers. Blood had begun to pool at both ends of the wound.

Yugi was almost dizzy when he smiled slightly at the beautiful color.

Blood meant viable tissue.

"Good boy," his mom muttered nearly under her breath. Yugi got the needle from the suture kit, grabbing the wire and clamp-like scissors. He watched her expertly sew a bottom and then top layer of skin over the drainage tube. It ran vertically, reddened with fresh blood where it shifted only slightly under her touch. Then the liquid spread further, pooling and trailing over the pale white skin.

She wiped it away with a sanitized wet napkin and the fibers of it were stained a solid pink as if it were colored with a permanent blush. The rubber whined as she tightened the last knot of suture and clipped the end.

The largest wound taken care of, his mother drifted towards his hock. She lifted it, flexing it once. The drugs did well to make the dog remain unconscious. The muscles along its leg flexed beautifully under her touch. And the blood did not well hideously over the edges of its fur. Nor did it drip loudly onto the medical table.

She laughed softly. Yugi leaned forward, then smiled with relief. The wound was perfectly clean and needed nothing more than to be pulled together and sewn. The skin was not too tight to pull naturally. And it looked as simple and small as the one which grazed its hock, the two of them twins of mere spots of bright red healthy muscle and skin.

The paws were well-rounded, arched in an almost delicate manner. And when Yugi flexed them out and pulled the forelimbs into a straighter position to allow her better access, he wanted to shiver. The hard-padded toes were webbed, something he had not expected to find. It was strange to see it, almost like that of a water dog's foot. His mom finished stitching without a glance at him. She worked quickly and accurately, and usually she did not even have a reason to check her work more than once.

But Yugi had always watched her look it over thrice, no matter what surgery it was.

Only his face remained in need of attention. His eyebrow was cut and soaked in blood. The appearance of his face was slimy and all but disgusting. His cheek was split, his nose bruised but not torn open, and his ear was cut at the very bottom of its gentle upwards arc. The hair was stripped and the skin raw along the top but still unbroken. The two on his ears and the one on his cheek needed only to be cleaned. But the brow, he knew, would have to have stitches. Thankfully, however, the skin on either side of the laceration was loose, easily pulled back together again.

He looked the pastern over some. But it was simple and the cut would not require any stitches either. A simple clean and bandaging like the hock would be the answer to that. Yugi nodded in silent approval at the assessment, turning away to watch his mom put the suture wire to work on a wound on the knee that he had overlooked.

He was dumbfounded by the idea.

Usually he could pick up on anything that was different around him and had an excellent sense of sight when it came to unnoticed wounds on an animal. He was used to being her second set of eyes during the more complex surgeries due to this. The thought of missing this wound was unnerving. It made his cheeks heat momentarily, ashamed and embarrassed.

But then his attention flickered back to the canine's face. His body stiffened in confusion. Bright golden eyes peered back at him in a flash. Intense, burning irises stared up at him, seeming almost to look through him. A million flecks of liquefied topaz were trapped beneath a layer of ice, glimmering with the strength of a flame in the deepest darkness, a light beneath a pool of rippling water.

His heart skipped a beat, shaking. And he almost opened his mouth to say that it was awake.

But then he blinked.

And the eyes were closed.

Yugi glanced quickly towards his mom. The strength of the image in his mind burned at him relentlessly, but he knew better than to second guess his new discovery.

His unease grew in waves, however. The very thought, no matter how small it was in that moment, made him feel fallible and incredibly foolish. His cheeks were warm once more, first with shame and then with an undercurrent of frustration at his tiny moment of naivety. His mind was playing with him.

He had not slept well the night before and his day had passed in a monotonous blur. Because of this, his mind had swarmed with his nerves at work beneath his skin. He felt as if there were snakes there, writhing among his muscles. He had succeeded in pushing it away to watch. But it had rendered him nearly useless once more. A furious, constant urge swelled in him, an instinct to flee entirely.

He doubted that he would have been of much use regardless, seeing as his mother had always been one to work quickly and in near silence. She would speak only to ask for necessary equipment. He would have most likely just gotten in the way if he had tried to do much else. But it still made him more nervous than ever.

"I'm going to go get cleaned up and then I'll give him some drugs to wake him," she announced as she cut the last suture along his brow. She sighed softly and the noise was of both relief and consideration. "But, before I do that, let's check and see that I got them all, shall we?"

Yugi hesitated for a moment, trying to think of all the wounds the dog had possessed. It was something of an inventory check mentally, one of which he usually performed effortlessly. But the fact that he had missed the wound on the dog's leg unnerved him. So he looked the canine over slowly, circling the table and taking in every bit of skin and fur that was visible to him. She'd told him ahead of time that the damage was entirely secluded to one side, by some miracle. And, as he stopped at the face and looked at the cleaned brow, nothing seemed to pop out at him.

"I think you got them all," he murmured, nodding in approval once more and hoping that he was correct in this assessment. Yugi didn't want a wound to go unchecked or miss a necessary cleanse. If they became infected, he was not sure what he was going to do. But he also didn't see anything and felt rather confident in his decision now. "Yeah, Mom, I don't see anywhere else where he's banged up. I think you got them all."

Somehow the repetition did wonders for his doubts. They seemed to fall silent within mere milliseconds of speaking.

She nodded. " _Good_." She graced him with a small, beautiful grin. Yugi could see the pride in her eyes and he had to fight the urge to squirm. "Then I'll go get cleaned up and wake him. Then we'll fit him with an e-collar and make sure he's okay when we put him in the kennel for the night."

He nodded at her in response. That was rather standard procedure. They would watch him all afternoon and into the early hours of the night just to make sure he wasn't in pain. Then they would do blood work and see about finding its owner. A dog of that size with such a seemingly clean bill of health could not have been a stray. The very aura of power and pride that the canine projected said it was all but impossible.

He glanced at the blood pressure monitor. Then his eyes flickered over the multiple tubes that ran into the canine's broad jaws. His tongue was bright red, clamped and pulled from his mouth to allow better assessment and administration of his inhalant drugs. The muzzle had been taken off, the cone pulled away, and the antibiotics were being pumped into his veins using an artery in his hock.

He vaguely wondered how it was that he had missed his mom doing this. Had the sight of the dog truly undone him that easily? Yugi had both the impulse to laugh at himself in frustrated disbelief, and to chew his nails to the quick. He had not done so in what seemed like years, but tension made him remember it. And, for the briefest of moments, the idea of shedding blood did him well.

An animal had never put such unease in him before.

So, what about this one dog made it so terribly special? He had been around large dogs before and assisted on the surgeries on the sick animals in the zoo. His mother was young, only twenty years his senior, but she was the single most well-renowned veterinarian in Japan. Often she was contacted when an accident happened or there was a case that another vet didn't know how to approach. She was even called in to lead conferences and classes on veterinary medicine and procedures at times.

Yugi glanced towards the backroom, waiting for his mother's return through the small double-glassed window in the dark red door. Watching for a long minute, he found nothing. He turned his attention back to the dog, growing mystified for only a second. The drape beneath the dog had been spotless before. Blinking slowly, he looked at the cloth beneath the black fur.

There was blood there now.

A blink allowed the fabric to grow darker, with red bleeding into dark blue.

The stain was growing, stretching outwards as if to engulf the warm material.

He tilted his head, his bewilderment growing. There was a soft dripping sound somewhere in the room, steady but becoming somewhat rushed. It was a dull noise, easily swallowed away by the silence. But it was growing steadily louder and stronger. And now Yugi could feel his skin beginning to chill.

His spine was stiff as he watched the sheet beneath the canine take on a much darker hue. He drew his attention to the rubber tube resting in the gently rising and falling abdomen he was looking upon. The white was stained completely. Red blood trailed downward. Single droplets of thick crimson liquid fell into the dark blue material. It was so steady it looked almost like a weak singular waterfall.

Yugi felt his stomach twist. His mouth began to dry out. His eyes widened frantically. The dog had not been bleeding this much. Even when his mom had first brought it in, the blood loss had not been that extreme. It was yet another thing that the text had made note of when he had asked for more details.

Had the surgery gone wrong?

Perhaps she had worked too quickly and the dog was bleeding out in front of him.

The dripping had doubled. A wet, sharp slapping noise echoed. The room seemed to vibrate with the sound. It played a cautious, definitive interlude between each heartbeat.

His eyes trailed downwards. A pool of blood had collected against the linoleum tiles. It was thick, with an almost syrupy quality to it. The circle of red was kept mostly in shape, somehow. Yugi watched it, unable to look away. The curiously deep crater of each droplet made the pool shudder.

They came from the very corner of the examination table, he realized. It was right where the metal made a sharp angle and the bottom folded inwards an inch. Where it trailed downward the drop was highlighted by the lump of it stretched in a formation similar to a frozen icicle.

The sound of the drops was growing far sharper. The impact of the drip each time sounded like a nail clicking against the tile in growing intervals.

Yugi blinked at it again. Then he brought his eyes to the dog once more. Under the lull of its drugs, it had the same steady breaths as it had before. It was the only true sign he required for realization to creep in.

Though his spine tightened further and his stomach bundled with nerves, he refused to act on the need to quell the bleeding. There was no need for him to spring forward and try to apply pressure.

Especially not when he finally noticed it, a scalpel buried in the long fur. The light illuminated the sharp blade and tossed a reflection back towards him. The handle gleamed at him. His eyes burned from the glare, causing them to water briefly.

The light lent the fur a deep gray color, with soft highlights of gentle silver. The fluorescents made the shadows along its body a strange dark blue. The tool was embedded in raw abdominal muscles, glittering and giving off a hideous white reflection.

He could see the drainage tube, a rubbery film which cut off the gleam. For a surreal moment it looked as if the bulb projected a single spotlight to display the wound.

Of course he recognized in the corner of his mind that it was impossible. It was a trick playing before his eyes. He knew that better than anyone. His mind was unconsciously dramatizing the display.

The sharp click of the blood falling continued. Yugi watched the steady rise and fall of the scalpel. A dull throb branched outwards in a violent spike of pain, blinding him momentarily in his right eye; it felt as if someone had stuck a thorn through his temple.

"How's he looking, Yugi?"

For a moment the pain was too intense to think straight. It spiraled through him. It lanced down his nerves. It danced and pulsed and screamed beneath his skin. And his eyes were frozen on the gleaming tool. For a moment it was all he could do not to scream.

Then, voice light, he forced himself to answer.

"I think he's okay. He looks okay."

"So he does," his mom murmured at his side. Yugi watched her pull away the anesthetic oxygen tubes that connected to the pipe in the canine's throat. The cloth tie was unknotted from where it rested on the base of the dog's skull. The tube was eased gently from its throat, brought out to be placed aside on the table nearby.

The syringe she pulled out had to have been prepared earlier. He figured it must have been while she had been waiting for the Isoflurine to take effect and lull the dog to sleep. The soft brush of her scrubs as she moved joined the continuous dripping of blood on the floor tiles.

The pain in his temple grew tenfold. It streaked through his bloodstream with heat that made him dizzy. Then it disappeared as if it had never existed to begin with. Yugi continued watching the canine. The last sting of pain drifted into nothingness and he stepped aside when she pulled away the thermometer. The dog's leg was stretched and pushed inwards again.

The stitches held as she flexed his muscles and moved the limb another time. The lack of hindrance was somewhat amazing to the small teen. The second IV on its foreleg was taken away with the same careful precision only after the reversal drug was administered.

Yugi went about retrieving the e-collar where it rested in a drawer nearby. Then he returned to her side. The dog seemed to draw awareness far faster than Yugi had initially thought possible. His mother pulled its broad head upwards to support it while he looped the cone around the base of its neck. He clicked the leather collar in place, pulling it to tighten the loosened material. The cone's plastic lip popped loudly as he secured it more completely.

But, when he pulled back, almond-shaped golden eyes stared back at him. His breath froze in his lungs and his stomach ached. The dog could have lunged forward at any moment. There was such power and awareness in those eyes that Yugi knew the dog knew it as well.

But he was also more focused on the way his face shone in those dark pupils, as if reflected in the abyss they seemed to present. It could not raise its head once it had been lowered back to rest against the metal tabletop. And its eyes were darker than they had appeared before, deeper and taking on a glassy, seemingly dead gleam like molten sunlight. Again those eyes seemed to be staring both at and through him all at once.

Yugi fought away a shudder at the idea. There was intelligence well beyond the average canine. Those eyes almost seemed strangely human to him. Something about the way it peered at him so calmly behind the haze made him wonder momentarily.

Was it calculating the situation? Was it planning an escape? Or was it simply judging him, accessing him? Was it _wondering_ about _him_ as he did it?

The gleam there was strange, entirely too human. Its dark eyes peered at him with such precision it made him nervous. They were beautiful and terrible all at once, with a hidden and guarded message within them. It came to Yugi that he would never be able to scratch the surface of it, no matter how hard he tried.

There was too much depth, too great a strength, and it was some kind of seemingly ancient secret that only the canine knew.

* * *

The bottle was plucked from the cabinet unit behind the mirror. The capsules rattled loudly as he turned the container around and looked over the various side effects. It must not have been common enough to be listed. But he did think he recalled the doctor herself mentioning them as a possibility. She had said that hallucinations were possible, that they would change the prescription should that happen.

Yugi snorted at the thought. This was the only medication that _did_ manage to hold back some of his responses to the night terrors. None of them had managed to stop them completely. But they kept him from having the usual violent outburst in the middle of the night. And he did not experience the intense frustration that so often came with each of them.

Regardless of the frequency of his night terrors, the capsules did a relatively good job of suppressing his initial reactions during or after. It was the first time in a while that he had suffered a hallucination, but it was not nearly as bad as most became. It was far in the negatives in comparison.

He moved the bottle around in his palms, gathering warmth and shaking his head. As long as he wasn't committed or taken to the hospital yet again, he could deal with a few diluted hallucinations and night terrors. As long as they did not become as they had formerly, he could deal with them by all means. He just had to know when the hallucinations _began_ —and for the most part he could identify them with near effortlessness.

It was in the smallest details of the areas and situations surrounding him. It came to him in small degrees what it was which was impossible to fit with the horrid images which his mind often summoned to torment him with. Those were the very things that allowed his most vicious hallucinations to be steered through without attracting too much attention from others around him. It was a trick he had taught himself when he had turned eight, when the first few trips to the doctors had occurred.

Due to the lack of response to the various medications and their inabilities to put away his nightmares, he had gone numerous times. Hallucinations had begun when he was around six. Back then they had been subtle. Now they came in vivid waves of emotional and visual cues. And they had coaxed the night terrors to grow tenfold.

At six they had been particularly terrible. Many times he had been unable to tell and had terrorized his parents and grandparents without ever meaning to. He had screamed and thrown fits in his blind panic. Many of the times, the images had been so hideous that he had suffered through bouts of vomiting caused by distress and anxiety.

Seven had been a strange year in the fact that his night terrors had remained but had not triggered hallucinations of any kind. At eight he had learned—by some miracle, or perhaps a form of self-preservation—to see the inconsistencies in both situations. From eight to twelve they had been moderate and not too terrible, but at thirteen they had briefly spiked and settled halfway to his birthday. At fourteen, they had begun to slowly draw a steady and consistent buzz of near sleepless nights and anxiety. During the day, he would suffer from bouts of skittishness and seem incredibly weary and weakened, and so he had become the ideal target for bullies.

But now, at sixteen, the night terrors had become constant. The hallucinations tended to be harsher. Many times, more often than not, he was left nearly winded and struggling to find the necessary inconsistencies to ground himself.

Since the day of his sixteenth birthday, Yugi had been caught in some kind of strange loop of energy buzzing beneath his skin like blood in his veins. The hallucinations were consistently worse than they had been when he assisted his mom. The night terrors all tore him to pieces upon falling asleep, but they had thankfully been subdued faintly in the sense of emotional backlash during his nearly nonexistent sleep. He no longer felt the rush of despair or the frustration which constantly crashed through him upon waking.

And, more often than not, he failed to remember as well.

None of the night terrors were anything he truly recognized.

But he knew each of them all the same.

He had never forgotten them. He had never been able to properly push them aside and lock them away in boxes as some people said to. They lingered constantly beneath his thoughts, like water threatening to break the barrier to become his sole focus. And they influenced the hallucinations with power that nothing else could compare to. Yugi had come to know each of them as well as he did his own family. All of it was so much a part of him that he truly found himself nearly anticipating them each day, knowing they were coming and steeling himself for the chaos of it all.

They no longer managed to catch him by surprise. He could—and _would_ —wait for them when he was alone. Even when he was with friends and family, he sometimes watched and studied and bid his time. Regardless of what greatness the day might have brought, Yugi found himself always waiting, because they lurked there with readied claws and teeth to tear into him.

And they were becoming harsher. He had suffered through his father's face looking shredded and torn all day the time that he was with him for a small holiday before returning to the states. He had watched his mother's face turn into raw flesh and exposed muscle while making pasta. During one of the hottest days of summer, he had visualized shocking himself to death when he had plugged in the fan while his grandfather watched the TV mere feet from him.

That hallucination had been so real that every nerve ending in the entirety of his arm had seemed to burn and had rapidly begun to tingle. It had been such a familiar phantom pain that he'd felt his head might explode. Physical hallucinations such as that were the worst to go through—and so unforgiving in familiarity—that his right arm had been all but rendered useless for hours afterward.

The visual of the sensation had painted his flesh white, the edges with purple and yellow like stained teeth. His lungs had even been caught in the grip of it all, aching and burning each time his chest expanded. His heart had grown shaky and faulty, his pulse shattered and burning from the phantom experience.

There had never truly been any auditory to accompany the physical and visual. Beyond what was necessary for one or both phantoms, like the vicious snap of electricity, or the crackle of fire lapping at his skin, he had not heard things that lacked sense.

There were no strange voices. They seemed to be preserved for his terrors. Because, in his sleep, he knew the words and voices well. Every detail of them was heavily engraved in his mind, like fire branded into his skull. He could recite every word said, should he be bothered to grant the idea a moment's worth of effort.

He placed the medication back and listened to the satisfying click of the magnetic locks as the weight of the wood and mirror fell against them. Yugi settled himself comfortably against the supporting walls of the corners, crossing his legs and leaning back on his palms. The mirror cooled his shoulder where he leaned against it, and it helped to slow some of his tired thoughts. He was in no need for further recall of the situation. He had no reason to. He would figure it out.

He listened to the silence of the house, the weighted yet empty air spurring a seemingly long forgotten comfort in his system. He was tired, not exhausted, but weary and uncomfortable with all of the thoughts. And the dog seemed to pop into his mind once more. It was lonely and odd in the strangeness that it brought. Those darkened, shadowed golden eyes peered at him, through him, and again he could see that ancient, powerful secret in its gaze.

Yugi shook his head faintly and jumped off the counter.

He might never find the meaning of the secret—should it truly _be_ a secret, if it were actually _possible_ —and that was fine. What could he do with the secret as it was? What was there to say and think if he even ever managed to scratch the surface of such a thing?

Besides, animals and humans _would_ _not_ and _could_ _not_ truly share secrets. But he imagined animals held secrets as beautiful as nature itself and he thought if there were ever a way for humans to learn such guarded pieces of knowledge, they would kill for them.

He slipped out of the door without much of a thought. He could hear some of the animals in their cages beneath the living apartment. The clinic beneath the house was the emergency hospital. His mother had converted it long before he was even a thought in his parents' heads. She had made it the place where the highest risk patients came, available at truly any hour in case an animal emergency arose.

It was rare that they were woken by phone calls—or rather, his mother was woken from them and thus he woke due to her voice—but it happened sometimes. Occasionally a pet was sick or wounded and needed immediate care and so were brought there as soon as possible. Other times the kennel downstairs was used solely for patients that needed extra care and attention throughout the day. When the situation had grown less dire, the animal was taken to the main clinic for pickup after a single night's watch and surveillance and then finally returned home.

The kennel under the house was by far smaller than the main clinic's. And it currently only housed a handful of animals—a stray kitten with a wound in its side, a male parakeet with a broken wing, and a litter of puppies alongside their mother who had been rescued from a house fire. And he guessed that, most likely, the new stray dog at the clinic would be made a resident there as well.

Yugi hummed softly, padding into the kitchen and wondering about what it was he was doing at the moment. He had the impulse to go downstairs and check on the animals but he already knew he would have no reason. A couple of workers were already looking after them, hired exactly for this reason. There were only two or three of them, veterinary technicians with great credentials and the knowledge to pass whatever final exam his mother concocted. They were there every day from six to ten and the weekends were when he and his grandfather tended to them instead around studies for school and homework.

He was not needed down there. If one of them were to call for him, then he would check, but not otherwise.

He stopped short of trying to pick a snack and froze, listening to the sound of the doorknob turning downstairs. The bell chimed to announce that someone had entered the small clinic and he listened to a familiar deep voice speaking greetings and then the sound of him on the steps. Yugi went back to picking out a pudding cup and a spoon, taking a seat just as his grandfather shut the door in the hallway that connected the two apartments of the building.

"Hey, Grandpa," he murmured, granting him a small grin before undoing the top of the container of pudding.

"Hello," he nearly sang, walking past him with a lightness that always made him seem younger than he actually was. He was like a nineteen-year-old in a seventy-six-year-old body. The thought of the situation was always funny; his grandfather often forgot how old he truly was, overestimated himself and underestimated the strain it would put on him later. He had pulled a muscle multiple times and hurt his back that many more.

Smirking at the thought and his grandfather's various cries of "Ah, my back!" Yugi dug into his chocolate dessert, biting away laughter. The taste was that of chocolate milk but with a stronger, sweeter taste that warmed and spread across his tongue. His lips pulled slightly downwards into a small frown, eyes narrowing faintly. The taste was strangely amplified, with a bit of power that was almost akin the effect vanilla had on him. It was as if, for that small moment, all of his taste buds had opened to greet the unusually somewhat bland flavor that came with chocolate.

"So, your mother mentioned you helped her with a surgery a couple of hours ago," he mentioned, turning to him with a grin.

Yugi blinked, at first studying the pudding in front of him, and then leaned back in his chair. "Yeah, but mostly I just handed her stuff. She knew what she was doing," he replied distractedly. He didn't want to talk about the dog. He may have wanted to check on it before, but he did not want to talk about it.

"So, tell me, what was the dog like?"

He bit the inside of his cheek. " _Strange_ ," was hardly the answer his grandfather would want. So Yugi pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth momentarily, the taste somewhat sour against the ridges behind his teeth. But he wasn't about to drag out his silence, because that gave his grandfather room to think about his hesitance. So instead he turned around to look at him.

"You know, I always thought you liked cats more than dogs, Grandpa?" he commented. "Anyways, Mom is probably bringing him here for the night so you'll see soon enough."

"She said he was a large dog," he prompted, disregarding his comment in an effort to make him open up some more.

Yugi forced away a sigh of annoyed discomfort, skin prickling. "Yeah, he was…uh, massive, actually. He's probably one of the largest dogs I've ever seen. He's well-muscled, has a robust build, and long legs. His tail is long, his body is lean, and he has a large head and jaws. His coat is a little shaggy and he's a long-hair. He looks athletic and like he would be able to pull a sled like a husky." He shrugged and turned back to his pudding to eat another mouthful. "There's not really much else to say."

"Okay, so what happened with him?"

"He got hit by a car."

"The usual intersection?"

"Yeah."

His grandfather nodded and Yugi could feel his stare on his face. "Are you going to tell me anything else about it?"

He put the spoon in his mouth, shaking his head. Settling back against his seat, he twirled the spoon to rest flat against his tongue. "I don't really want to talk about it, no," he mumbled, shrugging and pulling the spoon away with a loud click. "There's not really anything to say about it anyways, Grandpa."

A gray eyebrow peppered with white hair rose slowly and his moustache wiggled faintly with the beginnings of a snicker. "Too much blood?"

Yugi bit back laughter at the irony of the statement.

"Maybe just a little bit."

* * *

The dog limped only slightly as Yugi clipped the leash to his second collar and began to lead him out of the house. The cone around its neck made a soft rustling noise where the two leather collars brushed together gently as it moved to his side. Yugi had yet to shake away the discomfort that came over him whenever he was within close proximity to the dark-furred canine.

The dog itself was not too terribly different, however. Despite the strange glittering quality its eyes possessed that made it look as if it knew and saw things Yugi could only dream of becoming acquainted with, it seemed normal. The only thing outside of those strange, beautiful gem-like eyes that was odd in any way was the reaction the other animals seemed to collectively have towards it. Most of them made for the back of their cages or let out noises of alarm and anxiety.

The mother dog had moved each of her four pups to the back and lay with her back to them outside of nursing. She faced the door and refused to look away for more than a handful of minutes at a time. She, like the kitten, would snarl in warning whenever he pulled this new, unnamed canine out of its cage or brought it back inside. He thought that perhaps the animals would rather flee than truly face the canine, reacting angrily because they knew of no way to express their fear and had no way of getting away from the source of it.

The canine's gait was only shaken slightly as it walked. Its hind leg, hock and stifle cleaned and looking healthy enough, never wavered beneath its weight beyond the initial first few steps forward. The limp was essentially gone immediately afterwards, not even a touch of it left as it continued walking. He still wondered faintly how the massive animal managed such a feat.

The withers of the canine stood level with Yugi's waist, with a broad head topped by perked ears that touched near to the bottom of his ribcage. So the canine's shoulders themselves stood at exactly two and a half feet tall and its head, raised completely as it paused and sniffed the air, gave it a boost of another six inches.

Considering only its great height, the canine looked vicious and formidable. It made the athletic, nimble, and muscular build that much more powerful. It gave more light to those terribly long, well-developed limbs.

Yugi thought briefly that, as a dog, this animal had great power and stamina. He knew without the slightest doubt that the canine could propel itself at great speeds with those immense hind legs. He thought its lean build and long legs would do well to throw itself to speeds beyond that of greyhounds. It would never be as limber as a cheetah for that speed, but he thought for sure that it could push to at least fifty-six to sixty miles in a single bound if it were to throw itself forward. He thought it needed only use the muscles in its back legs to propel itself forward at such speeds without even a momentary pause. It looked like, in an upward spring, the animal could go over ten feet should it try.

The thought was both somewhat terrifying and oddly exciting. The sheer strength of the animal beside him was enough to make a small string of nerves and anxiety creep through him. He had met an American pit bull terrier, bred for dogfights with jaws that clamped into muscles and brute strength to throw an adult to the ground, and yet the respect he had felt towards it was not even a blip on the radar compared to this one. There was just so much strength rolling off the dog at his side that it put even the most dangerous dog breeds to shame.

He wondered at the breed but his mom had said the blood and saliva samples had been inconclusive. He had a feeling that she just didn't really want him to know for whatever reason. It _could_ have been inconclusive for some unknown reason, but he still wondered at the odds of that. For all he knew it would say he was an oversized solid black Siberian husky and the growth had distorted some of its features or something to that effect. Whether that was common or it was so rare that it was unheard of was just as much a mystery to him.

Yugi walked forward a few steps when the dog got to the end of its lead. The canine was sniffing at a few leaves to a small honeysuckle bush that draped downwards in half-dead vines of light brown. The golden-eyed canine continued scenting the little green leaves before finally stepping aside to pee and trot ahead.

The small teen was momentarily impressed with the action, how little his left hind leg even appeared to strain, though his great weight had to have been hard to support with the multiple bruises and aches. He was still unsure of how the canine had been so well off despite the accident. Surely one of its bones should have been bruised or broken in some way.

The dog had the usual grace of a predator, power and finesse and raw strength, with cunning and senses that humans would always be envious of. Yugi watched its pelt roll and the confidence that shone in its simple gait.

The undercoat seemed like downy strands of silver, doing nothing to filter away the darker black guard hairs. There was no softened gray sheen between the dark black guard hairs the length of his fingers. Its pelt was still completely dark almost like midnight with single touches of shine from the full impact of the direct sunlight.

It was just nearing winter now but the sunlight was not too weak to paint his pelt at least slightly lighter. There was nothing to block out the sunlight with not even a touch of shade between them and Yugi was still rather mystified by the darkness in its fur. How was that even possible? His fur should have been more gray or silver or brown in the sun like this. How the hell was that even possible?

He shook his head faintly and glanced around lazily as the dog continued moving around in the grass. They were only a few yards from his house, on a strip of grass and trees with a couple of telephone poles and wires little else else to offer as far as distraction. A gentle breeze stroked at his skin and rustled the leaves softly so that they whispered softly in his ear just as the dog finished and turned back towards the house.

The moment they stepped inside the female dog was on her feet in the cage, snarling as her mottled brown, black and white fur rose along her spine and neck, head lowered and lips drawn back as fully as she could manage. The kitten's back arched like the curve of a harp's bow, each hair on its pelt rising in small spikes of black as thin and sharp as needles, her hiss loud and bordering a furious yowl. The parakeet attempted a failed launch into the air, screeching as loudly as a siren. Its beak clacked together several times, feathers fluffing up along the back of its body, wings spread though the left refused to extend properly. The canine at his side did not even raise its head, instead looking towards its own kennel without even a hint towards acknowledging the other animals. Their distress made Yugi hesitate, unsure of himself, and the dog finally turned its head to look him over.

Yugi could hardly look away from the others. The kitten was backed up to the very edge of the cage she was resting in, refusing to loosen the tension in her arched spine. The female dog had pushed her pups behind her again, with her entire body angled to rush the door in case the larger canine decided to stick its nose near the entrance. The bird's multicolored feathers were puffed outwards to make it appear several times larger than it could ever truly hope to be, its beak still clicking in threat.

Their eyes locked immediately, golden against blue-violet, and Yugi swallowed hard. The secret still lingered there, almost mocking him as it burned brightly in those deep eyes. He could see himself faintly in those dark pupils, almost as if he were staring into a mirror or muddy water or the very surface of a well of black ink. His eyes were still wide, with a touch of purple crescents beneath both dark orbs, and his cheeks slightly flushed. His skin was pale against the blackness of both pupils rimmed by those gorgeous irises like sun-baked sand, deepened with liquid sunlight and molten topaz jewels.

Yugi swallowed reflexively. A small spike of pain made his right temple feel as if it might burst with the force of the impact. The dog still had that uncanny way of seeming to stare at and through him as it always did, but he could see himself in its eyes now. It was odd how deep that blackness appeared even with his image there staring back. The canine tipped its head up slightly and he thought he could hear a faint soft beating noise in his ears, almost like a heartbeat. A soft, wet twisting noise accompanied each of these thumps almost so thick a sound that it gurgled at the end.

Abruptly the dog turned away, its eyes becoming fixated on its cage. It wasn't unusual for him to do this; oftentimes the canine did so every time it was given the opportunity to stretch its limbs. Yugi looked away as well, blinking and then glancing up at the other animals.

The image to greet him made his mouth dry. His lungs squeezed painfully for a moment. His head swam. His throat tightened. His skin prickled and burned. His blood began to pound in his ears.

The cages were all turned inside out. The doors were ripped open. The padding in each was shredded. Bits of bed strung outwards to hang against the door. Stuffing was caught in the corners of the kennel, drenched in blood. Blood covered the metal of the door, dripping downwards in large maroon strands of color against silver. The square twines of each of the cages looked as if they had been struck by something sharp, like knives or scissors. The paint was scraped into nonexistence in areas of some, with large gashes and scratch marks. The usual sliding locks were busted and torn out of place altogether. The bottom hung in a dangling position, clicking gently as if the door had just been opened. Tufts of black fur were scattered everywhere, half tucked away in the white fuzz of the padding and matted with blood both dried and wet.

A single long strand of sinewy muscle dangled downwards from the door. More blood dripped in solid rivulets of bright red. The collar holding the kitten's cone in place was draped down the front. The d-ring gleamed brightly in the light, blood smeared with tangles of black fur as soft as silk. The kitten's skull was lying near its shredded tail. Bright green eyes peered back at him, though the right was crushed in the middle, with a black, spongy clot of blood in its destroyed pupil. Its lips were curled back, jaws opened to show each of its bloodstained teeth where they still remained, though many were missing. Entrails painted bright red against pink tissue rested beneath its severed neck like a stretched snake of naked intestinal flesh. Beyond it the spine was ripped free of dark fur and lean, underdeveloped muscle. The striking white of the vertebrae was severed in several areas, bone split to show the yellow of small columns of marrow.

The ribs were broken and split upwards through shredded fur. A leg was thrown outwards towards the wall, splintered and shattered in a series of hair-thin white spikes of bone. Several paw pads had been crushed and punctured, tossed aside so that toes caught in the shredded material around it. One hind leg was thrown in such a way that a claw was caught in the massive dent of its fractured skull. Bright gray brain matter was caught in the fissure of the collapsed bone as if teeth had struck it in attack. The metal water bowl in the back corner was pink with blood and a skinned pelt from where it had been stripped from the spine.

Yugi did not look to the other cages, stomach flipping violently. He didn't need to in order to know they were just as torn to pieces, destroyed completely and utterly. But he was unable to avoid them and so still caught the mother and pups' blood-soaked fur. He still saw the bright, shed feathers of the parakeet turned a matted red and brown. They were still scissoring through the air to the ground as he glanced at the dog. The motion, caught in the corner of his eye, made his head snap towards it immediately.

The feathers were soaked and matted, littering the ground in bright silver and white with small bands of black. There wasn't truly any blood on the ground for them to swim in. but the image was still distressing all the same. He did not raise his eyes but he thought that it was probably torn apart just as horribly. He pictured its wings ripped out of its back. He imagined the wings' feathers stripped away and the fragile bones shattered into nothingness. The head was probably torn off, the legs ripped away, but oddly he thought the body was eaten. He pictured the feathers spread around, streaked with a pink mixture of foaming saliva and bright red blood from the cat and the other canines.

Yugi turned away from the feathers, listening to soft hisses and snarls that told him immediately that he was seeing things again. It wasn't necessary to hear them to know considering that he had seen them healthy just minutes before, but it did help to keep his head level for the moment.

His eyes fell upon the dog slowly, wondering in amusement at his own thoughts of whether the dog had somehow managed to impress the visual upon him. He already knew it was only his nerves that brought it on. The dog made him nervous. His nerves made him anxious. The anxiety brought on the hallucinations.

He knew how and why they occurred. But he had no idea why it was that he always remained so easily wired, why he became so nervous for seemingly no reason.

He had always been like this, however, but not to such an extent. Usually he had a very keen network of reflexes which made him react skittishly whenever he felt sick or slightly uncomfortable. Moments like these were usually rare. It took a lot for him to feel nervous, something that really only happened when he was taking exams at school or was introduced to someone important among the veterinary community. There was also always the buzz of his anxiety when Yugi was allowed to assist or watch a surgery but this nerves usually changed to small bits of excitement that died away into a calm intensity.

He knew of the ways that he might end up with anxiety pushing at his insides. But he also knew that it never truly lasted for over a few minutes, with twenty being more of his maximum. He couldn't remember a time in which he had suffered through an interval longer than that. Excitement was usually what replaced it and he knew how to shove the anticipation away in a short amount of time. Serenity was easily drawn inwards when he pushed it aside and he knew how to pull it in and hold it in place. Calmness was the only way to pull apart a hallucination.

Yugi shook away the thought of it and watched the dog. The canine was walking forward, sniffing faintly, and began to make its way towards its cage. Yugi ignored the way that the blood burned his nose with a harsh, disgusting edge like being pricked with the tip of a knife's blade. His eyes flickered momentarily towards the puddle of bright red beneath the kitten's cage and noticed immediately that the canine had stepped in it by accident. Its left front paw left a little trail of bloody prints where it had stepped in momentarily but had pulled away almost immediately.

The marks were almost perfectly cut. He could see the contours of the blistered pad, toes and nails all made bright red against white. The smear of hair made the middle of each toe soft and wispy in design. The pads had a sharper arch than the bones of the paws, with a somewhat close range between each toe and heel, and the very tops nearly melted into the print of its thick nails. Another step, as it moved forward sniffing, was smeared gently, with its toes spreading outwards with its full weight.

Yugi leaned forward, moving around the canine to slide the locks out of place, kneeling in front of it and ignoring the blood on his leash or the red liquid threatening to soak into the heel of his sneaker. He pulled the door open completely for him. The e-collar folded just enough for him to slip through and circle in his crate for a few long minutes. He watched the dog plop down and moved to undo the clip of the leash from the second collar lying around the beginning of its shoulder bones.

The dog's fur was soft and warm where his fingers brushed against it. He blinked at the smell that crept forward at the close proximity as he began to pull the leash away to wrap around his hand. Yugi's movements stopped and he swallowed harshly. It was acrid, burning, and the sour tang that lingered in his nose threatened to cut and draw blood. The air seemed suddenly thick and smothering, threatening to suffocate him. His head swam faintly, his eyes stinging and almost tearing up violently where it made his throat feel tight and closed. He looked at the canine, confused by the bitter scent that crept in to double the effect of the sourness.

The ammonia quality made his head hurt and his nose burn more violently. A soft, sweet undertone welcomed him when he held his breath for a long minute and tried again to figure out what the smell could possibly be. Following the sweet tang was a current of salt like sweat, with a strength that made him fight off a vicious recoil. It smelled almost like vomit, with a dense, cloying scent that cloaked the back of his throat to smother him. A hint of staleness and heat like a warm body and fresh blood made his stomach curl and then heave faintly as he gagged.

Yugi pulled away, swallowing hard and looking at the dog for a moment. It smelled of rotting flesh, like it had during the surgery but with a hint of difference in the sweeter freshness it possessed. He looked the dog over, narrowing his eyes as he leaned forward and held his breath. He could not immediately see any stitches that had been pulled but something had to have been infected, some of the cells dead again. His stomach twisted once more and his lungs burned.

He got up after clipping the leash back on and pulled gently on the blue nylon. At first the canine stared in what looked like human surprise and confusion before finally climbing to its feet. Yugi started to walk along towards the back where he would hear his mom moving around. The dog's thick nails clicked loudly in large taps of noise that highlighted the soft touch of its pads to the ground. The unnerving smell of rotting flesh came in small waves with each movement, drifting upwards and outwards to burn his nose and make his head swim, eyes watering.

His eyes flickered to the side to regard the canine and he swallowed weakly. The tube seemed to be dispelling something but he couldn't readily see if it was blood or pus or regular discharge, just that the bottom seemed to be shiny.

Was it possible that the wound had somehow decayed and the discharge of pus smelled of it? He really hoped that it was pus and not blood, though he still felt sick to even truly consider it.

A small shudder passed through him momentarily and the dog glanced at him. The canine's brows had risen, both of them furrowing and pulling upwards like a softly curved triangle. Wide golden eyes peered at him in confused curiosity and its head tilted, ears pricked more noticeably as they angled towards him fully. Its mouth opened faintly to show the bottom row of incisors. In another situation it would have tempted Yugi to give him a treat. Now it made him want to pull his lips back and look his teeth over to check for some kind of oral disease to explain how his wounds could smell so rotten so unexpectedly like this.

But his mom hadn't reported any illness after she had done the blood test, and he thought that she would have if only to ensure that he could give the dog more antibiotics as needed. He knew she would never have forgotten to tell him something like that. So it must not have been a case of illness.

"You reek," he announced, raising a brow and smirking at the curious canine. Its golden eyes widened faintly before its brows folded in pure disdain, its mouth closing and its tilted head straightening. A single huff spilled out as its head swung away and Yugi snickered despite himself.

He was used to seeing such facial expressions on Siberian huskies, and the thought made him smirk widely. He had always loved dogs with such powerful facial expressions, ranging from overjoyed to absolutely annoyed and glaring.

Honda's German shepherd Blankey made those faces constantly. If he visited and didn't have a treat on him, he was always given a disdainful look before she ignored him the rest of the time he was there. When he brought treats, she gave him a bunch of kisses and wore an overjoyed expression, her entire mouth open with her tongue lolling as her eyes grew wide and lit with excitement, ears pricked and her body shaking with the force of her tail wagging.

"Well, you do. You reek."

Yugi swore the dog huffed again before he opened the back door to lead him to one of the examination rooms. He needed to give the dog a pre-med before he did anything else. Then he would text his mom that they needed to take a look at him again and they would see what had happened and make sure there wasn't any repetition.

* * *

The dog blinked dazed, lazy eyes at Yugi as he wrapped an arm around its neck to support its head. His fur was soft and thick, warm against his skin as he swallowed roughly and blinked again. His breathing against his arm was oddly comforting as it grew steadily heavier, deeper and the weight of his chin grew more pronounced. Its eyes were oddly still locked on him from the corner of its gaze, ears flickering towards him momentarily, as if listening to his heart. Its eyes closed rather slowly and Yugi watched his mom put the IV in. He tipped the muscular skull upwards, using his free hand to part its lips, pulling its teeth apart as his mom got the endotrachial tube.

He grimaced at the way its bottom jaw opened limply, stretching almost fully before he caught its chin. The canine's head was a lot heavier than he ever would have expected to find, nearly twice as much as a rottweiler, its muzzle longer and broader. Yugi swallowed as he noticed the way its cheeks seemed to expand, puffing outwards almost like a grizzly bear's lips when it roared or snarled angrily. His mom didn't seem to notice, however, instead working to place the tube and tie the band of gauze around the back of its skull. He kept its head supported as his mom finished the task, moving behind him to help adjust the massive canine.

She placed the foam pillow for its head to rest on and moved to attach the tube to the anesthetic machine. He stood aside as she lifted the lid of its eye to place artificial tears, blinking before moving to attach the heart monitor.

"I am so sorry," Yugi murmured with a sympathetic look as she lubricated the thermometer and lifted its large bushy tail.

His mom rolled her eyes, smiling and shaking her head. "Stop apologizing to them all the time. It's for their health."

"Yeah, well, if I woke up after having a thermometer in my butt, I would think I would want a _series_ of apologies—written and spoken."

"Yes, but you're also a wimp, Yugi. The dogs have more guts than you."

"That's only because they're so out of it that they don't even realize what's been done to them."

"They wouldn't realize it anyways."

Yugi rolled his eyes and instead glanced at the temperature being read and the heart monitor. Now would normally be the time that he would get a bear blanket to preserve its body heat if it was a dental procedure, but they couldn't do that and look over his wound. He didn't think its body temperature was going to drop as it was, however. Oddly Yugi couldn't truly picture it. After surviving that accident and barely even seeming to limp despite its numerous leg wounds, he couldn't even imagine body temperature dropping to be an issue.

"He really does smell, doesn't he?" she murmured after a moment, narrowing her eyes and glancing at him. "He smells like he did the first time…"

"Yeah, I was going to check his drainage tube but I thought maybe you should do it. I didn't want to make some kind of mistake or accidentally pull his stitches if he wasn't ready to let me look at it," he mumbled in reply, ignoring the sharp scent of decay that burned his nose violently. The sickeningly sweet undertone that came with it made his head swim faintly before he managed to push it away enough to look the canine over.

His mom came to his other side, nodding in acknowledgment towards his words as she gripped the dog's hind leg to stretch some. None of the sutures gave with the movement, and he barely suppressed a sigh of relief. He did not want to find that he had torn one, because it was highly likely from the smell alone that his wound would have to be infected.

"I'm going to have to show you how to clean this tube," she announced softly. She had not had much of a reason to show him before then. Most of the times an animal was sent home after they were given their primrose drains and awakened from surgery. They had never quite had an injured animal with a drainage tube in the clinic for Yugi to look after.

"Sure," he murmured, nodding again before reaching out to touch the canine's fur and looking over its long foreleg. Its breaths were deep and easy, comforting to watch until his eyes fell upon its wounded side. The bottom row of stitches beneath the drainage tube was pulled and loose, and when he leaned forward to inspect it some more, the scent made him queasy and his eyes watered fiercely. "He pulled one under his tube. I think it's infected…"

"So that decayed smell is coming from his side then?"

"I think so."

He ignored her soft sigh, eyes narrowed slightly as she looked at the same suture he had pointed out. The end was clearly pulled loose, dangling almost beneath its stomach, and now that Yugi was actually looking he could see just how much of the wound was actually exposed now. It was a wonder that the tube was even still in there or that the top stitches weren't dangling with them. It was a wonder that the dog's skin wasn't fully open and the entire laceration bleeding all over the place.

"How the hell did he manage that?" his mom commented in pure amazement, blue eyes wide and mystified.

"Maybe they just dissolved prematurely," he offered, swallowing hard as his nose burned once more and his eyes watered.

"They _shouldn't_ have…"

Yugi shrugged, unsure of what else to say about it, and then watched as he began to look the wound over once more. She had barely touched the stitches when the dog's breath seemed to somehow completely pull the remaining sutures apart. No blood came from the torn stitches, the skin bright pink and a touch of purple near the center where a small, dark scab was forming in its core. The skin looked healthy beyond that, however, and Yugi nearly smiled at the realization.

But he still had to worry about the smell that persisted to taint the air and his head spun with confusion. The skin would have been black and decayed to warrant such a smell and Yugi could not understand how such a good looking wound with all of the appearance of properly healing flesh could expel that. That scab was a clear sign that the canine was not suffering any ill effects.

There was no infection from what he could see. There was no sign of discomfort or pain that he had witnessed while they were walking.

"It looks like it was pulled recently."

It was all but a mumble. She was clearly focusing on the wound now, all but forgetting that Yugi was there at the moment. But when she reached forward to run her finger over the sutures, her eyes grew huge with shock. When she pulled her hand away, the sutures were stuck to them.

Had they dissolved too quickly?

She had mentioned the possibility to Yugi before but that had been only when they were relatively new. Now, however, as Yugi leaned forward and considered, he did not think that it was sutures that had caused it. It looked, instead, as if the dog's _flesh_ had crumbled away instead. The sutures she had in her fingers were covered in pale skin cells and dark black fur. And, somehow, in place of those discarded sutures, there was a dark red and purple scab in the center of the large wound.

"He's…healing nicely…"

Yugi nodding slightly, brows furrowed. "Should we take out the tube then? Or should we leave it?"

"I don't see why we should keep it. I don't think that he even needs the stitches anymore…"

He stared at her for a long minute before blinking slowly, eyes wide with startled confusion. "He's only been here for a _day_ ," he objected, blinking stupidly. "We _literally_ only had him for a full day and one night before and after. How is that even possible?"

She gave him a mystified that mirrored his fully. "Maybe he heals quickly…?"

"It's only heard of hybrids healing that quickly," he said uncertainly, glancing at the canine nervously. A small voice whispered in the back of his mind that the dog's hair shouldn't have been growing back so quickly either. "Hybrids and mixed breeds, and I _know_ he's not a pure bred but which _is_ he? Both?"

"It doesn't matter," she said briskly, eyes flashing briefly and making Yugi stare for a moment in uncomfortable confusion. She must have known exactly what breed he was and simply didn't care to share—which almost guaranteed he was a hybrid. But unless there was someone who had bred a hybrid and brought it to Japan, then it was unnerving to consider. And if someone had brought a hybrid and abandoned it, then what was the point of having one?

He knew of only one wolf-dog species in all of Japan, a small dog breed that he thought was about the size of an Akita. And this canine was massive and probably the size of a North American gray wolf. Wolves were extinct in Japan and had been for a long time, which begged the question of this dog's being there. There was also the fact that any wolf-dog brought to Japan would have to have certification to come in the first place and odds were the dog would need to be quarantined or possibly even put down…

Yugi swallowed hard.

So that was why his mom had failed to share the results with him.

* * *

He was healing extremely well. The scab on his side was a bit bigger but beyond that it was nearly nonexistent, almost completely hidden by the dark fuzz that was growing in place on his shaved skin. The flesh itself was actually still dark purple, tinged gray with the black fur that was beginning to grow back. The cone around its neck still kept it from pulling the remaining sutures from its legs but it did nothing to stunt its appetite or dozing when it was in its cage.

Yugi had watched it sleep for hours around doing homework and had to admit he was slightly amazed by that fact. Normally he always thought they must have been far more energetic and somewhat unpredictable. Yet this dog barely even did more than eat, drink, sleep and walk with him. That, for him at least, just begged the question as to why someone might have abandoned him—if that was what had happened. Aside from making other animals extremely skittish, he could not understand why. He was so easy to get along with, walked well, and was so behaved it was a small bit mind-boggling.

He shook his head as he put the food bowl back in front of the wolf-dog. The golden eyes regarded him curiously for a moment before the canine jumped to its feet again. Its tail wagged lazily, ears pricked forward a bit more than usual before sniffing at the treats that held his medication. He nosed it aside, sniffing at the peanut butter-coated bread before raising his head to stare curiously. Usually Yugi would make a show of playing with him before he would give him his medicine.

"Sorry, buddy, but I have to go to school. I don't have time to play," he mumbled, shouldering his backpack and pulling on the strap lightly, watching the wolf-dog.

The black hybrid tilted his head slightly before sniffing at his medicine again before snatching it into his mouth. He swallowed both antibiotics moments later, licking his lips and digging into the kibble beneath. The chicken shreds were saved for last where Yugi had stashed them at the bottom and he watched the dog raise its head to study him with curious golden eyes.

"Back in the cage," he murmured, making a playful shooing motion that made the canine wag its tail and bow for a moment with a sloppy pant. He was about to honestly choose to play with the dog instead of go to school just before it spun around and trotted into its cage without a second glance. He circled the length of his kennel before plopping down on his pad and waiting for him to close and lock the door as he always did.

Yugi hesitated briefly, realizing almost immediately that he truly needed to get a move on if he was going to get to school on time. Shouldering his bag again Yugi closed the crate door, sliding the lock into place and heading outside. Usually his friends would meet him at right about this time near the school entrance. But he had already texted them that he might be running late and that he would meet them in their homeroom instead.

He glanced back in through the window and watched the dog momentarily as it blinked and settled its chin on its forelegs, lazy and tired. Yugi turned away again, glancing at the bus stop momentarily; he could easily take it instead of walking but it always smelled so stale. There was always the smell of dried sweat and morning breath, making the space around him suffocating and small and too hot to be comfortable. It always made him wonder how it was possible any of them could actually stand to use it in the first place. He shook his head, turning away, and continued along the sidewalk, moving at a brisk but leisurely pace towards the school quad.

The bus was unloading by the time he got to the entrance. He watched them get out, talking and chattering as always. A small twinge of jealousy pricked his insides briefly at the thought of not having the others to speak to so nonchalantly. It would definitely make the day start off better as it was because, for the moment, it wasn't so great. Pushing the sensation away, he wandered past the entrance gate to start towards the doors, stopping short only when his phone went off in his pocket. He pulled the vibrating device from his pocket, seeing his screen lit with his mother's number.

He furrowed his brows in slight confusion, blinking and shaking his head momentarily. She never called him before school unless something happened with one of the animals, but he didn't think that anything could have in only ten minutes.

"Hey, Mom."

"Where's the dog?"

" _What_?"

"The _dog_ , Yugi. Did you put him back in his cage or not?"

"Well, _yeah_. Where else would—?"

"Then why is he not _here_?"

"What? What do you mean? I gave him his meds and then put him back."

"Well, he's not _here_. Are you _sure_ that you _actually_ put him back?"

"Yes, damn it. How would I have _not_ …?" He fell silent for a long minute and a half, breathing in roughly. "Mom, I put him _back_. I know I did—"

"You know I'm not _trying_ to accuse you, Yugi. It's just that…the bowl is empty and the cage is _locked_. And _none_ of us have forgotten that you—"

"You're right. _None_ of us have," he snapped, spinning on his heel and starting quickly back through the gate. A couple of bystanders paused to glance at him, surprised by how upset he appeared to be. Others watched him simply because of the fact that he was on the phone, hoping to catch a snippet of conversation. One or two simply looked because he was headed the other way and turned back again without a second glance. "But that's not what happened this time, okay? It's _not_!"

"Then where is he, Yugi? Dogs don't just disappear! And the cage is still completely _locked_. The bed is cold, the bowl is empty—"

"I don't know what happened, _okay_? But I didn't lose him anywhere and he's—"

"Fine, _fine_ , Yugi. Just get back over to the house so that we can figure out what the hell happened, all right?"

"Yeah, _fine_ , Mom," he snapped, picking up his pace and sidestepping a small group of students. Stomach twisting with momentary fear and uncertainty, Yugi picked his way along towards the house again. The first thing he saw when he rounded the corner to face the entrance was that the lights were on, bathing the windows in clear white. The second was that his mom and grandpa seemed to be arguing again. The final thing was that the air smelled strangely sour, with an undertone of something almost burning.

Nothing appeared out of place, however, and when he stepped inside, ignoring the other two who turned to face him immediately, he could not see anything different.

The cages were locked and the other few animals had turned towards him to see what was happening. The leash on the hook next to the door was completely still and untouched where it hung there. The bowl was where he had left it on the floor and he could see without much effort that the kennel was still locked as he had left it when he had started off for school. The only difference in those ten minutes that had passed was the dog's presence.

His heart skipped and faltered, eyes widening as his stomach twisted violently. Was it possible that he had repeated his mistake from two years ago? He swallowed hard as he pocketed his phone slowly and refused to take his eyes off the cage. He hadn't been hallucinating when it had happened or even more than that one time with the mutilated pets that he had seen the first time he had walked the dog two days before.

"Are you sure that you—?"

"I—"

"Leave him alone, Kasumi," his grandfather cut in softly, shaking his head sternly when she began to object. A look passed between them, one so terribly common that Yugi did not have to see it in order to know what it was. She wanted to push and make him buckle but his grandpa would fight her until she backed down. He had witnessed that look often growing up and he had never been very keen on having it appear on their faces.

The silent challenges in their eyes and the way they sized each other up always made him nervous but he had never attempted to stop them when they argued. Their spats had always scared him growing up and never once had that changed. Their arguments were theirs, even if most of them circulated around him.

"Fine, _you_ talk to him. I'm going to check to make sure it isn't somewhere loose nearby," she snapped, giving Yugi a sideways glance of pure frustration. He barely managed to keep himself from flinching or bowing his head in shame by backtracking mentally to consider it all.

He had to remind himself that he was right, that the last hallucination he had experienced was before they had removed his stitches. Since then he had been free of them despite his night terrors growing a bit more vivid and numerous. So, no, he had not lost the dog like he had the cat when his hallucinations had been almost hourly two years before.

He stepped away when she passed him for the door and finally glanced at his grandpa, swallowing hard and chewing his bottom lip.

"Relax," the elderly Motou murmured in an effort to comfort him, smiling a small bit as if it might ease some of his growing tension. "You know she's just worried about the dog."

Yugi nodded slightly and looked back at the crate again. How the hell had the dog managed to escape like this? The locks were still held in place and the bed still had a soft imprint where the canine had rested. A few small strands of hair, several seemingly perfectly straight and the others wavy where they would have rested against the skin, lined the surface of the pale cream pad of foam.

"Do you see anything?"

Yugi hesitated briefly, swallowing hard and finally shaking his head. "There's nothing there—a few stray hairs but I don't think there's anything else," he mumbled, a dejected note creeping into his voice.

"Nothing on the floor?"

He blinked, uncertain of himself for a moment before looking at the tiled floor. The light that was reflected there was a bit harsh but he could see a small touch of something almost smeared across the top of the black-specked white linoleum, almost akin the shape of paw pads. There almost seemed to be a touch of something perhaps akin dust, but there was nothing to be seen. And there was definitely nothing to tell him how the dog had gotten loose or where it might have gone.

"And do you smell anything?"

He stopped short, blinking, and then slowly turned to stare at his grandpa in exasperated annoyance. Narrowing his eyes, Yugi shook his head sharply. He had not just said that. He knew he had not just said that. He couldn't have.

"What?"

It was a simple, low warning of a question, demanding that he confirm that Yugi had heard him wrong.

"Do you smell anything?"

He bristled violently, annoyed out of his mind. How _dare_ he even ask that—especially so nonchalantly.

"Grandpa, we _lost_ a dog and you're asking me if I _smell_ anything?" he snapped icily, eyes sharpening with anger.

The elderly Motou didn't blink. "Yes," he replied simply.

"Can't you take _anything_ seriously? The dog is _missing_. Mom thinks that I hallucinated putting it into its cage, and _you're_ over here asking me if I can _smell_ anything! This is serious, damn it! Mom thinks that I fucking _lost_ the dog and right now I almost agree, because the crate is _obviously_ locked and _nothing_ is different from how it was when I left for school fifteen minutes ago! If I actually _did_ lose that dog and it winds up dead somewhere, that's on _me_." He shook his head furiously, scowling at him as his blood seemed to flare with a painful heat. "This isn't the time to start _playing games_. We need to find the dog, not make a game of seeing if I can _smell_ anything."

"Yugi—"

" _No_ ," he spat, a small bite of desperation creeping through him. "I don't have _time_ for you to test me like that. We have to find out what happened to the dog, _okay_?"

His grandfather stared back at him with calm plum-colored eyes, studying him before he nodded silently in response. Yugi was grateful that he knew to heed his anger at the moment. He couldn't stand it if his grandfather had said anything else at the moment, especially if it was meant to calm him down. He was sure he would have lost his temper and snarled at him in his frustration. Yugi shook his head and crouched in front of the cage again, narrowing his eyes and looking at the two locks on the door. He could feel his grandfather's eyes on the back of his head. And he felt his heart racing in his chest as he struggled to comprehend.

He didn't understand, staring at the shiny black metal as if it might hold some kind of answer.

* * *

 **Feel free to ask me anything and everything pertaining to the story. And especially to leave constructive criticism (I LOVE it). If it won't ruin the plot I'll answer. If it will, I'm going to simply say that it would spoil things. I like to respond to each review so if you'd rather not have an answer, just put an asterix (*) in it somewhere and I'll make sure not to reply to it.**

 **Anything medical terms will be explained at the end of each chapter, so that no one ends up too confused. I believe I have all of the terms listed in this chapter. If I missed something, feel free to point it out.**

 **Medical terms:**

 **Isoflurine (Isoflurane) - name of anesthetic drug used in veterinary practices on dogs and horses**

 **Hock - the back of an animal's hind leg where it comes down into the paw**

 **Wither - top of shoulders on animals**

 **Stifle (Stiffle) - the knee**

 **Pastern - between the wrist and the dew claw**

 **I would LOVE to hear who you guys think the hybrid is and who it is that's writing the work log entries as well~ I'm so curious about what everyone thinks of them. Remember the smaller details cause they're actually the more important ones for this story, including where the hybrid is involved, the writer of the work log entries, the creature that IS "Canis Lupus Dirus", etc.**

 **The work log entries have no impact on the date in the story. The year for the story is 2012, but the work log goes farther back than that in record keeping.**


	2. Tests

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Edit schedule: Varying due to limited time**

 **Update schedule: Biweekly due to limited time**

 **Chapter warning: Some blood and gore, mentions of hallucinations and night terrors, mentions of medication, slight description of veterinary surgery**

Chapter II: Tests

 _Work Log Entry II: January, 1991_

 _January 1_

 _The she-wolf has not taken to the devolution of her genetics. All RNA present in her body has failed to succumb to the alterations._

 _Her mate's genetics remained unchanged as well._

 _Again, all efforts have brought forth nothing._

Yugi could not understand it. There was absolutely no way that an animal could have opened the cage from the inside. Even when he had managed to slip his own hand through the gap in the metal, angling his fingers to flick and grasp the handle, there was no easy way to force it open.

And he knew that the canine's nose would have been too large to even push through the metal completely. The muzzle itself was far too broad and thick for such a thing to begin with. It would never have been able to push the handle in order to flip it, let alone slip it out of place. Its paws were far too big to press through the gap between the metal, even if it had only attempted to use a couple of toes and claws.

The wolf-dog _could_ have easily knocked against the cage until it slid on its own from the force. But the noise would have most likely woken his mom or grandpa and it wouldn't have managed this seemingly impossible disappearing act. The two locks were simple sliding handles, and it would not have been hard for the canine to force it open by way of hitting it hard several times. The door would have slid open eventually from there.

Yugi had seen a dog on television open an oven and steal chicken nuggets, open and close cabinets, and part a sliding glass door in order to escape the house. Opening the door's top lock would hardly be a challenge. And the bottom would have most likely slid out of place around the same time.

The question for him was no longer how the cage had been _opened_.

It was now about how it was still _closed_ after the dog had managed to escape.

The canine had been extremely intelligent, yes; there was no room for argument with the assessment. It had always retained that glimmer in its eyes, the one with hidden secrets that burned at Yugi's consciousness whenever he'd looked at it.

More than once, Yugi had witnessed its comprehension of words spoken. So he could hardly question its capability of pushing the door open.

Perhaps he could not even question its ability to close the lock behind it.

But the biggest difficulty Yugi had considering the ordeal was how much energy it would have taken for the wolf-dog to do all of this. Why should it have bothered to go through so much trouble?

Yugi twisted his wrist again, then straightened his hand out completely and pulled his arm out from behind the metal once more. He had been mulling over the issue for more than two hours. And not once had he gotten a better understanding of it. But he had also come to the realization that he was being _disgustingly_ hopeful in trying to understand.

In truth it was rather foolish of him to assume to recreate how the dog had gotten out of the cage in the first place. But the darkest corners of his mind whispered at him the very thing that he did not want to believe—that, quite possibly, it could have somehow been a hallucination.

Yugi did not want to admit it. It hurt him to consider it at all. The very thought of it made him want to vomit.

But, in truth, it was so easily done.

He truly _could_ have just forgotten to close and lock the door with the dog inside.

If the sequence of images to convince him he had put the dog inside again had come upon him without notice, he could have easily been misled. He would have assumed the wolf-dog to have entered its crate, but it could have walked off without a second look and he would never have noticed. He would have left for school without realizing, and not once would he have second guessed it. He would have simply gone through the motions, believing the dog was lying inside the crate.

Yugi bit back an anxious whimper at the thought. His heart was racing and his stomach twisted painfully. He swallowed hard, then crouched back on his heels once more. The movement nearly caused him to fall backwards, the new distribution of his weight nearly knocking him off balance completely.

Yet, he caught himself at the last moment.

His hand came out, catching the kennel, and he moved to cross his legs to sit in front of the crate. The metal beneath his fingers felt as if it had somehow become roughened up, perhaps scraped with a knife or as if sandpaper had been run over the paint. But it seemed almost stained, as if there were clumps of something like solidified mud where it should have been smooth.

And, when he pulled his fingers away, a gray residue rested along them. He stared at it for a moment, reminded of soot or scattered rust painted almost completely black.

Yugi sniffed at it lightly, scrunching his nose up, and tilted his head in puzzlement. His mind was racing, attempting to analyze the scent as fully as he could manage.

It was almost like that of burned fur and heated metal. When he drew in a deeper breath, it almost seemed to take on a sweet undertone of fresh blood. The metallic edge burned his nose briefly with a sharpened, stomach-twisting intensity. The fur scent grew stronger when he held his breath.

Then, a split second later, beneath this, was a bitter and disgusting smell which settled in his senses and coated his tongue. Yugi felt as if his tongue had grown swollen and was cramped painfully behind his teeth. It made him want to vomit.

He looked the crate door over and angled his head to study it again.

It was similar to the rot that the open wound had smelled of. The door was coated in a thin layer of dusting, like scattered gray sand over the bars, and his stomach dropped as his eyes grew owlish with shock.

The gray rust-like substance coated the metal in an extremely distinctive shape.

It was that of the wolf-dog. It was slightly fuzzy along the edges, almost as if the dog's fur had been fluffed outwards and had deserted its usual smoothness. But the shape of it was overall definitive. The tips of the ears were softly rounded. The cheeks were full. The legs were long and thin. The shape was robust but the chest somehow slender all the same. The shoulders were broad and thick.

Yugi swallowed hard, shaking his head slightly.

It was the outline of the dog, facing forward. It was as if it were standing completely still before him, watching something of interest.

It was not hard to imagine those deep golden eyes peering back at him. He could see the keen intelligence glowing within them and it made his head swim. He could imagine that same dark black fur that seemed to reject any hint of light that fell on it.

For the briefest of moments Yugi truly imagined he saw it.

It was as if the dog had never gone missing to begin with. His head spun with excitement, and then his breath left him as reality crashed over him again. Not only was the dog no longer breathing, staring blankly ahead unblinkingly, it was not there. No one else could see it. He did not even need to ask to know this.

Yugi shook his head minutely, getting to his feet. He wiped his fingers on his uniform pants and his stomach dropped further. Long dark gray smudges stretched over the surface of the royal blue material. The sight of it made him want to vomit and he reflexively folded his fingers into his palm, shaky and uncomfortable.

What was he supposed to say to explain that? How was he meant to truly explain to someone else that the door seemed to be covered in ash? Was he supposed to tell them that the ash formed the shape of the dog that had been inside of it formerly? And what of the smell that came with it?

Yugi shook his head again, turning towards the door for only a moment. He chewed his cheek until it ached and throbbed, blood spilling over his tongue.

His mom had left for the main clinic an hour before in order to check on the animals there when she had failed to find any trace of the hybrid in question. His grandpa had decided to go back to sleep, suggesting that Yugi do the same and then saying the obligatory words that the dog was likely fine. The small teen could not blame him for his impatience when Yugi had snapped at him. Nor did he fault him for wanting to go back to sleep instead of spending two hours going over the millions of possibilities that had come to Yugi during the last two hours.

Had his grandpa even tried to stay with him that length of time, Yugi would have fought to have him leave and get some sleep anyways. Regardless of how terrible he felt, he was not going to allow his grandpa to become sick from lack of rest.

He may have been scared of the situation. He may have feared the worst concerning his hallucinations. But he would never push upon his grandpa's health.

Yugi drew in a deep breath.

There was no need to remain there. He would not figure out what had happened with the dog. He knew that. He would not find any sense of understanding. And it was not as if there was any reason to truly attempt to find answers now.

He had no reason to stay.

He had no reason to remain looking.

Yugi was still extremely curious. And it burned at his nerve endings and chased his racing thoughts. But he could not keep wasting his time looking. He would not get anything for his efforts.

But he still could not dismiss the incident completely.

The thoughts plagued him too viciously to push aside fully.

He even had the impulse to see if perhaps he could take a sample of the ash to school and put it under the microscope to study it. He could not truly compare it to anything else, but he had the feeling that he could at least _try_ to find something of an answer. He wanted to smell it again. And then maybe he could list off the chemicals that must have existed in it to make it smell so strange.

He wanted, more than ever—more than _anything_ —to see if he could list off every hint of a scent which came to him then.

* * *

Yugi draped the Bair Hugger over the collie mix's abdomen, helping it to retain its body temperature. Then he covered each of its white paws with socks, keeping away the possibility of losing body heat. His mom finished turning on the anesthetic machine seconds later, glancing at him momentary. He ignored her and moved to grab some of the instruments she'd asked for formerly.

He handed her the antibacterial cleanse as she pulled the dog's lips back to expose the top set of its teeth. She washed the large molars and canines first. The grate beneath its muzzle resounded with the harsh sound of the cleanser dripping through the metal. The ultrasonic scaler came to life with a high-pitched squeal, vibrating against the medium-sized spikes of enamel.

Yugi was uneasy in the silence. But his mother was not. She had no reason to be.

Kasumi had not bothered to explain to him what was happening as she normally would any other procedure. He had shadowed enough of the dentals to know them well enough, however. He could list off the steps of them, so he was not bothered by the cold shoulder in that sense. In truth, he was satisfied to watch her double-check her work on the plaque solution. The dirty areas would soon turn bright red when she rinsed away the light layer she'd administered.

The polishing came next, by far superior to the scaling she'd done. She would do a full examination of the mouth afterwards, then mark away on a chart to keep track of any changes later. From what he understood, not many clinics practiced this any longer, and it was one of the biggest reasons they so often had dental cleanings booked weeks in advance. He would watch her take x-rays of the canine's teeth after and notice which teeth might potentially suffer rotting in the roots.

Yugi made no move to touch the dog again. He was all too aware of how quickly his mom could turn on him.

She still blamed him rather adamantly for the hybrid going missing as it had. It was no secret she was infuriated by it. He had failed to tell her that his hallucinations were back and now the wolf-dog was gone. In her mind that all but confirmed his guilt. She would rather have cut her own hand off than risk something else going wrong due to his inability to tell a hallucination from reality.

He had lost an animal once before, albeit for a limited time. The cat had gone missing for two hours. And he had made a rather dire mistake in the midst of it. He'd stupidly gestured at the cage and said that it was in there. His grandfather had looked horrified, but his mother had become enraged.

And Yugi had been horrified and ashamed of himself the moment he'd realized the falsities of his own reality.

He understood her anger. They were animals. They were pets. His mother was trusted to take care of them when they were wounded or sick.

Yugi felt queasy for a moment.

Usually he could tell the difference between his hallucinations and reality. Usually he could handle them.

But there was still the occasional slip-up.

He needed to be watched sometimes, even if his mother and grandfather and his father did not wish to say so. He wasn't stupid. He knew that they had spoken about it at some time or another. But he also knew his mother was adamantly against it because it encroached on his freedom. And his grandpa was certain that they could keep tabs on it themselves without outside help. And his dad was simply quiet about the subject, though Yugi felt that had to be more with discomfort than anything else.

He suppressed a shiver.

His friends had no idea about it. It was a shallow fear, but he did not think that they would wish to remain friends with him if they knew. They would likely assume him schizophrenic or that he suffered from some other various drastic mental illnesses. And an unstable mental state was an easy reason to ditch someone.

He was not sure how long it might take for them to turn away, but he knew they would. He had spent so much time late at night, when some terrors or hallucinations rattled him enough, that he had begun to imagine it. He had even figured out the order they would turn away from him.

Honda had little patience for nonsense. He would not be comfortable with the fact that Yugi had hidden such a dire thing from them. He would not only be upset, however. He would become intimidated as well. Mental illness was not something you could control. And very few of them could be explained.

Honda was someone who had always built his perception of the world through contemplation and knowledge. He was someone who liked to know how to navigate things. He wouldn't know how to approach an illness. So he would be the first to leave him.

Jonouchi was someone overly superstitious and easily unnerved. If he did not understand something, it tended to scare him. He would attempt to be open-minded about the predicament, but eventually he would have to turn away. He would not be able to deal with it completely. It would scare and intimidate him too much. He would buckle beneath it once Honda turned away.

They had been best friends since childhood.

They had been through everything together. If Honda could not handle it, then it was likely Jonouchi would feel that the ground had been swept out from beneath him. Honda was often the glue that kept the group together. Without him, Jonouchi would likely begin to feel alienated. He would buckle beneath it all rather quickly.

Honda was the one who kept Jonouchi open-minded about things. He was far more levelheaded about things and liked to poke fun at his friend's superstitious nature. So it was only a matter of time.

The last to leave him would be Anzu. Anzu had been his friend since the third grade, when he had let her borrow a video game. She had been the one he had grown up with, though they'd had trouble at first. It was only until some time during seventh grade that they had truly been capable of connecting and understanding each other. She was his best friend, his first crush. He had always been hopeful that she might feel the same, but had always hesitated to ask.

She, like him, held friendship above many other things and would do nearly anything for a friend in need. But there was a downside to this. While she was supportive, she was also highly opinionated. She tended to sometimes try to project her emotions and beliefs without meaning to. She could be selfish in this way, sometimes unable to accept the things that made others different. It was not constant. And usually she could learn to accept things, but it was off-putting.

And, while she was loyal to a fault, Yugi was not foolish.

He knew that she would have to back away if she were to find out. It was simply human nature to distance oneself from and reject things that they could not understand. Anzu would try her hardest but, like Honda, she would not know how to navigate the situation. She would have to back away from it soon after Jonouchi.

If she _did_ truly have feelings for him and it was not just wistful thinking on his behalf, she might try to ignore her uncertainty to stay with him. But Yugi would never be able to forgive himself if it came to that. Both of them would end up miserable if that happened.

Regardless, she would put in the most effort to remain friends with him after finding out. She would try to understand and help him. But it would be impossible for her to keep to a long-term investment of that magnitude.

But maybe that was a good thing. If he would suffer hallucinations so often, then maybe it was better that they turn away from him sooner rather than later. It might be safer for them in the long run, in case he lost his ability to tell fact from fiction.

What was to keep him from making some kind of fatale mistake that might get them all hurt? He had put them in harm's way once before. A run-in with a particularly nasty senior in the cafeteria had nearly gotten them pummeled. He had not been paying attention to his surroundings. He'd pictured bloodied strings of sinewy muscle dangling from scalpel blades in place of spoonfuls of spaghetti.

And he'd bumped straight into the other student. He was one of the nastier students, who often caused fights and caused spats and disrespected students and teachers alike. Rumors had it that he was in a gang and did drugs that no one else would dream of touching. And Yugi had been expecting an attack like no other. But the incident had been diverted when three older students had stepped between them.

His mom shot him a sideways glance and Yugi blinked, turning to her in confusion. She turned away again almost immediately, then flipped through some paperwork she stuffed into a folder. For a moment she failed to acknowledge him. And then she looked at him again. There was a glint in her eyes that made Yugi tense, but her voice was calm when she said, "When you get back to the house, check on the kitten, okay? She pulled her stitches last night."

Yugi pursed his lips, nodding slightly. He could see her attention was still mostly on the dog, however. She hardly seemed to care that he was there to begin with.

But this was her way of saying that it was okay.

It was her way of telling him that he no longer had to worry about the hybrid.

She was working on forgiving him.

It was cold enough to get the point across. She was still upset. But it was also warm enough to say she accepted that it was an accident.

"Sure."

* * *

"Okay, sweet girl, come here," he cooed, smiling and reaching a hand into the cage. She was pressed against the back of the cage, staring. But she sniffed at his fingers in a friendly manner. And her mewl seconds later was of confusion rather than aggression. Wide green-specked yellow eyes blinked back at him. And Yugi waited, counting the seconds, as he kept his hand in her reach. She could claw at him as she had the day before or she might simply meow again in confusion.

A minute passed. Her tongue slowly ran over the pad of his index finger. The muscle was rough and warm, and her nose was soft and slightly wet when it brushed briefly against the same spot. Yugi let her press her forehead against his fingers as she purred nervously. The noise trailed off abruptly, then started up again a few seconds later.

He reached in with his other hand, grasping her gently beneath her ribs to coax her forward. She let out a second confused cry, blinking and purring again immediately when Yugi pulled her out completely. He cradled her hindquarters and wrapped his other arm around her silky underbelly.

Then he lowered her atop the examination table. Her spine arched in a nervous twitch, fur jerking back and forth. Her tail-tip flicked from side to the other in an anxious tic. Then she kneaded her paws lightly, watching him closely.

Finally she settled in a seated position. Her tail wrapped around her paws. She watched him closely, then meowed again. Yugi blinked at her, studying for a moment longer. Then he looked at her paw and the muscles along her legs and shoulders. She was not tensed as if she might lash out.

Not a single hair was fluffed out of place. Her tail was not lashing. She was not about to reach out and claw at him.

The thought was relieving. But he could not focus on it for long.

He had to bite back laughter at the frame of her Elizabethan collar. It was far too large and seemed almost to stretch for miles. It was only about two or three inches in each direction, but it still made him grin. She was adorable, especially with such large eyes.

"Now, let's just take a quick look at that wound, hmm?" Yugi coaxed, smiling and reaching out to rub her underbelly. He lightly scratched her skin and she purred as she arched her back. Her fur was smooth and silky where it parted in slight black spikes.

She was still purring when he rubbed her back and scratched at the base of her tail. She arched her back further and her purr grew louder. Her side was still freshly shaved, the wound small but deep and the skin inflamed and bright red where the sutures had torn a small bit of fuzz from her bed had covered some of the wound in a light gray like velveteen.

He stroked her head and the feline arched beneath his palm. Yugi ignored her attempt to make him pet her more fully, studying her wound again. It did not seem to be causing her any sense of discomfort. It did not look the least bit infected either. All he would need to tell his mom was that she should trim the skin some and disinfect before sewing the wound closed again.

He could not see anything else wrong with it. It was simply open again.

Picking her up a second time proved to be a much more difficult task. She let out a horrid caterwaul and struggled violently. Her claws cut through the air, then snagged his skin as she twisted and squirmed. Yugi nearly dropped her, startled.

Another loud cry left her. He flinched. Her paws sank into his shoulder. She hissed loudly. The light in her eyes was wild, panicked. Her tail was straight in the air. Her fur bristled like porcupine quills.

She sank her nails in further. Yugi struggled to grasp her scruff. She was stuck, however. Her spine arched in his arms. He lost his grip again. Her back legs hooked into his chest. Then she squirmed and tried to pull up along his shoulder. The action caused her to back claws to cut into his abdomen.

" _Ow._ "

What was it that made animals freak out around him like this?

Ever since the hybrid had come into the clinic, each of them had become skittish and anxious. They shied away from him. The stray dog refused to let him check on her pups. She had begun to snarl and chomp her teeth in an effort to scare him. She would throw herself between them.

He could not touch them. He could not even put his hand on the kennel door. She would snap and snarl and bark furiously. She would bristle and quiver and push the pups up against the back wall. She would lunge if he tried to pull the handles to unlock it. And she would snap at his hand when he undid one.

Maybe its scent was still on his clothing. Maybe it was the medical smell from the surgeries. But the latter seemed less likely. The hybrid had somehow seemed to trigger something in each of them. It was almost as if it had pushed them to the point of fight or flight.

They had all known the smell of surgeries.

So it had to be the canine.

Something about the canine had somehow pushed them into this state.

Yugi kept his grip on her. He caught her scruff firmly. And his hand ached when he held her so tightly. He glanced at the other animals. The dog was watching him alertly. The parakeet's frill of feathers had risen in alarm. Its beak was clacking.

The kitten remained attached to him regardless of his grip. She hissed and then strained as he shifted his hand. But when he twisted, she released. Her claws were still unsheathed. But she was frozen in place when he held her away from him. She hissed and her eyes sparked. But she did not lash out again.

Yugi quickly put her in the cage again. And she sprang to her paws and fled to the back of the kennel. Her eyes were huge and her pupils dilated with fear. He sighed as he closed and locked the door. Then he rubbed at his shoulder and glanced at the animals again. All of them were staring, clearly still alarmed.

He turned away with a shake of his head, annoyed. His phone chimed a moment later. He hesitated. It was likely his mom, asking about their patient. And, truthfully, he was not sure he wanted to answer her. But his entire body relaxed upon seeing the name on the screen. His face split into a wide grin.

Jonouchi was always a welcome distraction from things like this.

 _Are you still free for tutoring or should I wait_?

Yugi blinked, confused, and his first instinct was to question him. And then he frowned. Frustration came over him in a wave. The dog's escape had been overlooked for that short while. But now he huffed in annoyance and shook his head rapidly to clear his mind. He had only texted the three of them earlier to say that he was staying home for the day. He had not explained or even considered doing so.

 _Definitely free. Come on over._

Yugi pocketed his phone again then glanced at the animals again briefly.

When they seemed more comfortable for the moment, he headed for the hallway door. The staircase was narrow, with a second door at the top of the stairs that would lead to the living apartment of the house. They would shed their shoes in the entrance of the living room where his mom had a plastic tray for them to rest on.

The hallway's entrance was nearest the kennels, located in the front, and feet beyond it was set of doors that led to the examination rooms. The largest was used for surgeries, located further towards the back, and almost every veterinary tool was set around the room a bizarre but organized manner. Another room beyond it was filled with antibiotics and nearly every medication used in the veterinary practice. Spare gloves and other sanitary tools were kept within all four rooms.

Each of the other workers who assisted with taking care of the animals knew the layout of the bottom floor. But only Yugi, his family and his friends had ever been upstairs. His friends were not allowed into any of the bottom floor's rooms but they could remain in the reception area. The desk was only about ten feet from the entrance, directly in front of the kennels.

His friends would immediately head for the hallway to go upstairs whenever they came over. None of them had even the slightest desire to toe the clearly drawn line that his mother had made. It was well-defined and required no reminder of its presence. It was practically a law in the house, something that went unquestioned and was absolute.

He was grateful for that. He did not have to babysit anyone. There was no breathing down anyone else's neck about boundaries or following rules. He had never had the patience for that kind of thing. His friends simply accepting them was a relief to him. The same went for the technicians, who would greet them around helping the animals, and they kept everything professional in that way.

Yugi hurried to grab his algebra book, moving through the hallway to the kitchen. He placed it on the table and headed for the living room to kick his shoes off. When Jonouchi got there, he would see if there was homework and then do it around chatter and comparing answers.

He had begun tutoring the blond in math due to his mild dyslexia. He had always fumbled with numbers but rarely ever with spelling. The teacher had partnered them up for a project one day and Yugi had had to teach him another way to find the answers to the equations. He had been helping him ever since. It was what had made them more than mere acquaintances, solidifying their companionship into friendship and eventually leading to them being best friends.

Jonouchi learned quickly. But his attention span was horrible. One worksheet could take almost two hours. He lost patience when he was bored. So Yugi had learned to bribe him with chocolate bars and dinner if he was really struggling to pay attention.

Yugi was waiting with a handful of chocolate bars next to this textbook when the blond finally made his way up the stairs and into the kitchen. "Hey, Yug," he greeted loudly, with enough volume to his voice that Yugi nearly cringed and instead shot him a dirty look.

"Hi, Jonouchi," he muttered, watching him put his shoes away and come back. He opened his mouth to say something but the blond beat him to it. He dropped his bag into the chair next to him and plopped down with a huge grin.

"You missed it, man! Anzu and Chono turned on each other today during math. She called her out for asking me if I had texted you yet and Anzu _flipped out_ on her," he snickered, brown eyes bright with mocking amusement. "She was so worried about you that she didn't even care that she was talking to a teacher."

Yugi blinked wide eyes. "She was worried about me?"

The blond snorted. "Don't get lovesick on me just yet," he snickered, raising a brow playfully. But Yugi could see the smallest speck of seriousness in his eyes as well. "Anyways, so she got all upset because you hadn't told us anymore than that one text about not making it to school and she had told me ten times already that I needed to text you and ask for more details—"

"Wait, why didn't _she_ just text me?"

"Dude, do I _look_ like a woman to you?"

Yugi rolled his eyes and shook his head, mouth curving upwards in the corner. "Girls are _not_ that hard to understand."

"Yugi, take it from me. Only _girls_ understand other girls," Jonouchi scoffed, rolling his eyes with an exasperated sigh. "You have so much to learn."

"Jonouchi, I _hate_ to remind you of this _tragic_ fact, but _you_ have absolutely _no_ experience with girls. I'm not sure I should take any advice from you."

"At least I know _something_ about them. You don't even have _that_ much to say."

"But I at least have _friends_ that are _girls_. You know Anzu only tolerates you because I do."

The blond sneered, rolling his eyes again. "I think you might be blowing a little too much smoke up your ass with that one."

Yugi chuckled softly and gave him a wide grin. "Okay, continue with your story. What happened with Anzu and Chono?"

"She interrupted Anzu when she asked if I had texted you yet. She made this _huge_ scene about how she needed to shut her mouth and pay attention. So Anzu turned around and snapped at her about how she lacked even basic human compassion—that's literally the way she put it; no joke, Yugi—so how could she _possibly_ understand being worried about a friend? Chono snapped at her that she should watch her mouth before she wrote her up. And Anzu"—he burst out laughing and then bit his lip, grinning ear to ear—"asked her if she even knew what a friend was. She said it wasn't surprising that she didn't, considering all of her marriage interviews and constant rejection."

His mouth fell open and he let out a low whistle. "You have to be joking."

" _Nope_. She said it _exactly_ like that. It was crazy." He paused and eyed him playfully. Yugi was surprised he didn't reach over and clap him on the back. "And _all_ because she was _worried_ about you."

He blinked and his cheeks heated faintly, taking on a light rosy hue. "At least I _have_ a girl who worries about me," he hissed. "I've still got more experience than you in the girl department. So, really, I still think I might know more about girls than you."

Jonouchi flushed brightly and then rolled his eyes. "Yeah, okay, Casanova, because you're doing _so_ well asking her out."

"Oh, shut up," he whined, blushing furiously and barely refraining from ducking his head. "You can't just _rush_ it. I don't even know if she likes me like that anyways."

"Oh, _bullshit_. She always gets all lovesick when she talks or even _thinks_ about you. Please, if she isn't _waiting_ for you to grow a pair and ask her, then I'm the queen of England, Yugi."

He hummed softly, nodding as he looked him over thoughtfully. "You know, I always _did_ think you had a lot of feminine qualities," he said cheekily. "If you just bat those lovely brown eyes I'm sure you would look like a pretty little princess."

"You annoying smartass."

"It's not my fault. You started it."

"Yeah, well, I was only telling the truth. She's head over heels and you need to just ask."

"I think my definition of head over heels _might_ be a bit different from yours."

"Yeah? Well, mine involves a girl who gets moony-eyed over a guy who—if he actually let his balls drop sometime—would be told yes if he asked her out."

"You have _no_ idea if she would—"

"Yugi, a _blind_ person could see that she would say yes."

His cheeks grew hot again, eyes widening as he swallowed harshly. "Jonouchi—"

"It's not _my_ fault that you have no idea how to ask a girl out."

"It's about timing—"

"Okay, I guess we'll all just have to wait for the next twenty years to see if you finally feel like it's 'the right time'."

"That's…" _Probably true,_ Yugi thought despite himself as his cheeks grew hotter once more. He had always been more cautious about things than necessary. He had never truly tried to leap into something without long and serious—almost _tedious_ —consideration of some kind.

The thought of asking her and possibly ruining their friendship—because what else could come of it? Either he made her feel awkward and out of place by asking or they dated and then broke up and their relationship was forever fragmented—always stopped him.

No matter how long or hard he tried to steel his resolve, he would crack. He had yet to fully give up but he wasn't blind to the fact that his courage and motivation were easily shot. The more he considered, the further he crumbled beneath the weight of the possibilities.

Only rejections came to mind.

And each of them ended with him crushed and Anzu no longer on speaking terms with him.

Yugi was in no hurry to test the likelihood of his numerous fears.

"That's so true," the blond stated, smirking as Yugi rolled his eyes and began to flip through his textbook. "Oh _please_ , Yugi, you know you're hopeless."

"Oh, shut up. I'll ask her out when I'm ready to—"

"So, _never_ , then."

"You have such little faith in me."

"That's because _I_ actually _know_ you. So I can say that because I know for a fact that _you_ will _never_ ask Anzu out." He reached over to pat his back, grinning widely with shining brown eyes. "Don't worry though, Yugi. There are _tons_ of guys who are always going to be alone _just_ like _you_. But, hey, at least the lotion companies will never run out of business."

" _Jonouchi_!" he hissed, cheeks becoming deep red and his eyes stretching wide with mortification.

"What? I'm just telling the truth."

Yugi shook his head, still flushed. His cheeks were burning and his heart was pounding in his chest. His palms had grown disgustingly hot and clammy. His stomach was twisting. Did Jonouchi _really_ have to be so crass? It wasn't like his teasing was even helping him any with the situation.

All it did was make him want to duck his head shamefully and apologize that he hadn't asked her out yet. And if it wasn't for their friendship he would have asked Anzu to be his girlfriend a long time ago.

Or, at least, that was what he told himself—and he could _almost_ trick himself into believing it was true. He knew he would not have the courage to without getting to know her at least somewhat. He had never truly been able to connect with someone right away. More often than not he had turned away from them for reason or another.

Sometimes it was something that they might have said. Other times it was a look in their eyes. For whatever reason it would cause him to feel nervous. And something about just the mere exposure to others made him want to flinch away.

Yugi didn't think he was antisocial. But he had always been shy, maybe even _skittish_ if one were to ask. But he always tried his hardest to be friendly as well. When he met new people he tried his hardest to be as polite and kind as he could. It wasn't a struggle, but he sometimes feared he came off otherwise. But it was this personality trait that seemed to most often trigger offense in other people.

Friends were in short supply. Many of the girls that Jonouchi or Honda pointed to as admirers were hardly interested in him. Their personalities alone made him cringe more often than not. And most of the time the only things he found to be worthy of appreciation were hair colors, skin tones, and eyes that were pretty enough to look twice. He had not been drawn to them in any way. So it became more a game from that point on. He would try his hardest not to lead them on and they would grow disinterested rather quickly.

Superficial qualities had never interested him, which was why he tried to avoid anything to do with rating girls or gossiping about them. Saying they had nice hair or pretty eyes did not cut it for chatting about girls and the various things about potential in bed and their breasts. He had nothing to offer to the common conversation between them and both of them had yet to let him live down the fact that he hadn't asked out Anzu. Since they had found out about his crush on her they had always cracked jokes about how Yugi seemed to have no idea what he would do in bed with her even if they got together.

"Whatever. You came over to study, not to pick on my lack of skills with women, okay?" Yugi huffed, sulking briefly with a pout that made the other teen snicker.

"All right, all right," Jonouchi agreed after a moment. But Yugi watched his eyebrow rise and he felt his cheeks heat the smallest degree again. The blond was trying to wait him out. He was trying to see if he would whine like he usually did when he gave him that look.

Yugi held firm for a long moment, refusing to budge. They stared at each other, and Jonouchi was smirking within seconds. Yugi sighed, rolling his eyes, and fell back further into his chair. Then he let out a long, low noise from the base of his throat. The pitch changed when it grew louder, becoming higher in pitch and more keen for attention.

" _Yes_! I knew you'd do it!"

"I hate you," Yugi mumbled under his breath. He grabbed his pencil and spun it in his fingers lazily, watching him for a moment. Jonouchi looked so ridiculously satisfied and it was hard to stay mad. He turned back to his textbook. "Did we get any homework?"

"Well, that's a stupid question. Anzu goes off on Chono and you really think you have to _ask_ about that?" he scoffed. "She gave us a ten-page assignment and we have to explain how we got each answer—she wants detailed answers, almost like paragraphs. _Lots_ of work to get back at Anzu for embarrassing her."

"That's nothing new."

"Definitely not."

* * *

Yugi woke up to a mouth as dry as sandpaper, stomach twisting. His first instinct was to gag, bile burning a path up the back of his throat. His nose burned. The sour touch of his dreams carried a soft undertone of something sickeningly sweet and he shuddered at the memory. His lungs shook in his chest. He choked briefly, then squeezed his eyes shut tightly. He reached up, rubbing at his forehead with the heel of his palm.

He remembered only the image of freshly shed blood, large pools of deep red highlighted beautifully against white cement and linoleum tiles. It dripped in cascading rivulets of harsh metallic scent that burned his nose like sulfur. He shook his head, the image drifting slowly into nothingness. He was growing far too awake for it to linger any longer.

He opened his eyes and glanced around the room, then pulled himself into an upright position. He rubbed his forehead and forced his stiff shoulders to lose some of their tension. His room was empty aside from the usual chest of drawers, closet unit, bookshelf, nightstand, desk and set of plastic bins. There was nothing out of place within the soft, cold light from the moon where it came in from his large window. But still there was the scent of warm blood and rancid, decaying flesh.

Blinking tiredly, Yugi could already tell he would not be getting anymore rest for the night. His stomach fell at the realization and he vaguely considered getting a refill of water for the cup he'd gotten to take his medication with. When the night terrors had woken him earlier, he'd gone about getting the strongest dose he'd had.

The thought of stretching his legs was a welcome idea, but waking his mom or grandpa hardly seemed fun.

Yugi liked to chew on ice. The fridge liked to make loud grunts and groans when it spat chunks into his cup. Between the two of them, the noise was enough to wake his light sleeper of a mother. Then, after she got up and came to scold him in exasperation, his heavy sleeper of a grandfather would get up.

She would snap at him that he'd scared her, that he could have just grabbed ice from the box like she had so often told him. But the machine was what crushed the ice. And he had an intense hatred of the solid blocks. Some nights he did not give a damn about waking her but others, like this one, he knew he would not be able to deal with her exasperated frustration.  
Yugi took a moment to ease the remaining tension from his shoulders. His collarbones ached with the effort and his neck stung. He swung his legs around and to the floor. His feet tingled painfully, as if bugs were crawling over them, and his toes stung briefly when they touched the ground.

The urge to stretch his legs and wander, to get rid of the smell in his nose, was overpowering. He wanted to drink away the cotton feeling in his mouth. He straightened to his full height, his spine tightening and burning as it popped softly.

His pajama bottoms were scratchy against his skin where it rubbed against it. Yugi stretched his arms over his head so the cold air could drift over his bellybutton as his shirt lifted. Then he tilted his head, listening for any other movement in the house to announce his mom or grandfather waking. A long minute passed before he was satisfied with the silence. The refrigerator hummed outside of his room and the clock ticked in the bathroom. Everything else was silent.

Yugi headed for his door, still listening. He glanced down the hall towards their room, then padded to the kitchen. There was enough light coming through the window that it would be unnecessary to the use the bulbs overhead, but he flipped the switch anyways. The artificial glow had always made him feel oddly safe in comparison to the pale moonlight.

Something about the bright yellow cast around the room helped his stomach settle when he was nervous. He drew in a small breath. His tongue felt as if it were glued to the roof of his mouth. He could taste nothing but blood, cotton-like as it held the muscle to his palate. A shudder was coupled with a gag. Yugi swallowed hard, reaching up to cover his mouth. But the bile did not pass his lips.

The fridge groaned loudly and coughed another ice cube into its tray. The hum was harsh for a moment, then faded again. Yugi flexed his shoulders, a part of himself enjoying the stiff ache, and moved further into the room. His legs were tingling as he got to the cabinets. A flash of deep pools of blood swept through his mind once more, momentary but with a lasting effect. He was almost shaking when he stopped short. But it lasted for only a moment as he pulled out a cup and made his way to the fridge.

His hand was shaking momentarily, his palm sticky with hot sweat. For a moment his heart raced and his lungs shook again. But it passed once more. He slipped the cup under the water dispenser, pushing the lever so that the small stream of cold water poured into it. He chugged it without stopping to breathe, gulping it fast enough that the chill crept down his throat and then trailed upwards to give him brain freeze.

His empty stomach felt as if it had been lined with ice. He pressed his cup into the lever again, leaning forward enough that he could hear it sloshing inside of him. Tiredly he sipped at the cup again. Weariness clung to him like a spider web. All he could think of was that stupid image.

The night terrors were going to drive him insane one day. Exhaustion crept through him slowly, pushing at his mind. It ate away at him. And he could not shake the image in his mind. There had been so much blood but he had been unable to see or smell the source of it.

He supposed the smell of decaying flesh had more to do with the wolf-dog he'd lost than anything else. Perhaps it had been unconsciously festering in his mind all day. Maybe it had just been awaiting the chance to creep up on him again.

It would not have surprised him in the least.

He was used to his mind playing games like that on him.

Yugi chugged the second glass, hoping to rid himself of the image. But he was failing miserably even as he swallowed the last droplet. The blood was center focus in his exhausted mind, almost as if in an effort to imprint itself there.

Bloodshed was not a new thing. And his fuzzy memory of the dreams was a common side effect of his medication. It was often the smell that remained in his senses, rather. But it was different now.

Because it seemed almost to be mocking him now.

Because it smelled so much like the wolf-dog had…

It reminded him far more of the brief timeframe they'd become so much worse. He had been six when they were at his worst. And then when he'd turned fourteen they'd become worse than average for a small period of time.

Yugi leaned back against the counter. He was sipping his third glass when he glanced down the hall and towards the doorway's entrance. The door was locked as it always was at night, with the key dangling on the hook on the wall nearby. The hallway was completely dark. Listening was the only way to know that his grandpa was awake.

He rubbed at his temples, blinking and sipping his water again. The chill was just as welcoming now as it had been the first few times.

Yugi tilted his head after a moment. His fingers tightened around the cup in his hands and his palms itched with perspiration. The picture in his head seemed to be growing more vibrant, impossible to ignore.

He hated his inability to think of other things. He almost despised it more than the night terrors themselves. There was simply no way to push the thoughts away enough to focus on other things. His mind always slipped back to those images. It was like quicksand. The more he struggled the swifter he was pulled back to them.

It was constant.

It was like a broken image projector in his mind.

But it was more frustrating than anything. In truth, he was more afraid of the power his night terrors held over him than what images he saw afterward. He had known them since he was six and so he had grown used to it. It was as common to him as getting up in the mornings.

He thought, oftentimes, that the terrors were almost like genetics. When it came down to it, they were just as uncontrollable and unpredictable. Because of this, it became far more constricting than anything.

Yugi had often wondered if he could have dealt with the night terrors if not for the afterimages that remained. In truth, Yugi was used to the consistency of waking up only hours after falling asleep. And shoveling pills down his throat every night before bed seemed far easier in comparison.

He thought it was a good pay off. He suffered through countless sleepless nights and pills in exchange for a more peaceful mind when he was awake.

Yugi scowled after a moment. He would rather not have to deal with any of it. But with a choice between them, he'd choose the former. Maybe then his sleepless nights wouldn't be so numerous. They might even become nonexistent. If his mind was peaceful, then he would no longer have those images to worry about. And then maybe he could sleep through the night for once.

He would no longer have a reason to stay up all night with his mind circling around the thought of those images if they didn't exist anymore.

He placed his cup in the sink, listening again for any of sign of his mother or grandfather waking. His grandpa was awake, he knew, but he wasn't coming out just yet. The thought was somewhat relieving to him. But he was also desperate for their attention.

It wasn't uncommon for them to wake in the middle of the night, especially if they knew he was awake. His mom was a light sleeper so she often woke up whenever he moved around. His grandpa woke in the middle of the night often enough that he would usually come out the moment he noticed the light on in the kitchen.

But he did not think he could handle it if they both came out to see him.

His mother's frustration towards his medication's numerous failings would only make him want to hang his head in shame. It wasn't his fault, but he still felt stupid and pathetic as if it was he who had done it. And he was not ready to see his grandpa watching him with that familiar look to his eyes, like he had been waiting for something to happen and was disappointed that it hadn't.

He was not sure he could deal with them watching him as they usually did…

Yet, a part of him truly hoped that they might wake up and help him to take his mind off his dream. He drummed a finger against the counter, sighing. At least his mouth was no longer disgustingly dry and his nose no longer smelled like blood and rot.

Yugi narrowed his eyes.

A bed creaked. He tilted his head. The direction was easily pinpointed. And relief flooded through him.

His grandpa was awake, heading towards his bedroom door. Yugi listened as he grabbed the knob, heard the click as it twisted. He did not have to look to know Sugoroku was squinting and rubbing his eyes. He knew that his eyes were faster to adjust than his mother's or grandfather's.

But he also knew that he was looking for him as well.

Yugi stayed propped against the counter. He was thankful it was his grandpa, but his stomach still clenched. Now that he was coming, he wasn't sure he wanted to stay there and see what he might say. He licked his lips, nervously crossing his right foot over the other.

"Yugi?"

"Just getting some water," he answered. He pushed away from the sink and wandered to the table. He could see the elderly Motou in his peripheral as he passed the hallway. His grandpa was far easier to handle than his mom.

The sympathetic expression on his face spoke volumes as well. He wouldn't pester Yugi for answers. He'd let him do as he wanted and try not to overstep. Yugi appreciated that far more than he could put into words. Sugoroku followed him into the kitchen after a few moments, considering him, and then turned away to glance at the clock over the stove.

"Bad dreams?"

Yugi almost scoffed at him. When wasn't there some dream that kept him awake at night? But he wasn't about to say that, so he nodded after a moment and hummed faintly. He leaned forward to fold his arms on the table, blue-violet eyes locked on his frame as he studied him.

His grandfather wouldn't ask him what his mom would. He wouldn't say "Do you think we should strengthen the dosage?" He wasn't as intrusive about the situation. His mom liked the idea that medicine could cure anything if someone was given the right amount. It had helped her with her veterinary skills and made it easier to focus on things, Yugi knew. She was an absolute realist and medicine was a tangible cure. It could be held and influenced. It could be molded to one's various needs and desires. The medical field was constantly growing and expanding and it was often at the core of his mother's personality.

Yugi thought that might have been where he got his own love for biochemistry and science. He loved learning the scientific side of things, especially those which involved animals and their various defense mechanisms.

But the medical side of it all but bored him. Becoming a veterinarian was not what he had always pictured himself doing when he was younger. But he was still curious about it. And sometimes that was all that saved him from looking all the more exhausted when he was being taught about it.

It was hardly his ambition. But he would never say that to his mother. He didn't handle disappointment well. And he was already on point for a scholarship to a veterinary college when he graduated. And what would he do instead of the college that his mother had been so excited about? He'd made it his first of the top five he'd considered because she'd loved it so much.

His life was already mapped out.

He had no plans to change that.

"How long have you been in here?" his grandpa asked after a moment. His expression was a mix of curiosity and sympathy, something that Yugi did not fully recognize.

"Only a few minutes."

Sugoroku nodded and moved around the table to take a seat in front of him. "Well, if you want to talk…"

Yugi smiled at him, shaking his head. His grandpa always offered to listen if he wanted to talk. And Yugi only took this offer seriously because of the fact that he knew his grandpa would not take it away at any point, nor push or judge him. His mother tended to be the opposite in that regard. She pushed and judged—though Yugi was not always sure she _meant_ to—and it made him reluctant to go to her when things were wrong.

Silence passed between them. Yugi laid his head in his arms, chin on his right elbow. He waited for his grandpa to speak again. But instead something light and feathery touched at his senses, much akin the smell of flowers, and it made him stop short. The scent lingered much like the smell of decaying flesh in his dreams, and he blinked wide eyes in bewilderment.

"Is that lavender?"

His grandpa gave him a small smile, winking. "Yes, but I want to know where the peppermint is," he announced. Yugi blinked, tilting his head in surprise at the request. He must have had some kind of oil or lotion or something that he had failed to notice until that moment. He sniffed again, tilting his head once more.

No, it wasn't a oil or lotion or anything like that. His grandfather had pushed the air freshener back into the wall with his chair.

"The peppermint?" he repeated after a moment. He narrowed his eyes and sat up a little straighter. There were no pots turned over with herbs beneath them. And the disgusting lavender smell hid away any other smells that the kitchen had to offer. "You aren't exactly set up for that, Grandpa."

"I set it up yesterday morning, after the dog escaped." Yugi raised a brow at the older male's smug tone. He had set it up then? He tilted his head to the side, bewildered. Why hadn't he noticed before? Had he been so distracted and distraught? "It's around here somewhere but you'll have to find it."

Yugi bit his cheek, glancing around slowly. "Oh, so…this is a treasure hunt then."

"If can call a handful of peppermint leaves treasure, then yes, I suppose so."

Skeptical of the statement, Yugi got to his feet again with a small intake of breath. He ignored the harsh pang of lavender and wrinkled his nose at the way it burned his nose. He blinked lazily towards the cabinets, titling his head after a moment. His grandpa had always been fascinated by his hyperosmia, his heightened sense of smell. He had made a game of testing it to see if it had gotten worse—or better, as his grandpa tended to think—over the years.

He had always enjoyed putting strong-scented herbs in metal pots and pans and asking him where each was. He would point them out quickly in order to try to get it over with. But then he would grow annoyed and flustered, as his grandpa often continued to test him even when his temper was showing. He would keep going until Yugi would snap at him, no longer able to take it.

The problem was that his grandpa was extremely excited about it. And so he would overlook the signs of Yugi's frustration. He would then take it too far and Yugi would become more and more upset as the seconds passed. Yugi would be okay with a few tests, but he lost interest and then patience quickly afterwards. It was only when his eyes flashed or his face morphed into a scowl that his grandpa would stop.

Yugi had never been happy with his acute sense of smell. It was far more a burden than anything else and it, like his constant interruption of sleep, drove him insane. He did not enjoy the way stronger smells burned his nose or seemed to linger forever. He did not like the way that they even caused his head to throb or his mouth to dry out. And so he despised it whenever it was mentioned aloud in any fashion.

When Jonouchi had found out about it, he'd teased him endlessly that he was like a bloodhound. He had laughed and joked with him about it constantly afterwards. And Yugi _hated_ it more than he could express. He hated it with a passion that romance authors wrote two lovers sharing. It burned in his blood. It made him want to scream in frustration.

It was plain weird. It was utterly disgusting.

And it made it even more apparent how much of a freak he was.

Yet, Yugi still found himself sniffing the air and forcing himself to ignore the lavender smell. He had to admit that it had to be one of the best ways to hide a scent. It was apparent enough to make him gag. It was even strong enough to make his head swim for a few moments. It was definitely enough to mask almost any hint of peppermint.

"How did studying with Jonouchi go?"

"It went well, I guess." Yugi opened the bottom right cabinet closest the window, breathing in the smell of clean metal pots. A hint of mint drifted forward. But it was too weak to indicate the leaves were still there. They were not beneath a pot somewhere, but his grandpa had obviously stuck them inside there for a few short minutes. "He tends to drown me out every now and then."

"How many candy bars did you have to give him?"

"Five." Yugi snorted when he remembered the way Jonouchi had wolfed them down as if he had never eaten before. "And I nearly lost a hand when I told him to redo a problem and I would give him the chocolate _after_ he finished."

His grandpa chuckled warmly. He shook his head and smiled widely. "That sounds exactly like him."

"Yeah, I can't say I was surprised aside from when he actually _did_ try to bite my hand." Yugi drew in a deep breath, focusing and holding it in his lungs. It tingled in the back of his throat, pressing on the top of his tongue as he exhaled through his mouth slowly. The mint was cool as it passed through his lips. The lavender overtone made his stomach flip violently. He focused on the icy touch of mind rather than the overbearingly heavy one of lavender. Then he narrowed his eyes, trying again to see if there was any hint of it in the air. No familiar cool touch of the sharply-scented leaf was detectable. "But he did well past that."

"Good. It's always good when you can help him study."

He said it in that all-too-familiar tone Yugi knew. It was the one that said he thought Yugi smarter than almost anyone else, that it was no wonder that he did well tutoring Jonouchi because of it. He had always been unsure of the confidence his grandpa had in him. Perhaps he thought that Yugi was like his mother, always able to get the point across quickly and efficiently. Yugi had always wanted to laugh at that though. If he had even the slightest bit of that ability, he would have been able to say that he didn't want to become a vet.

"Yeah," he agreed lazily, nodding and starting towards the living room intuitively. "Hopefully he'll pass all of his final exams."

"I'm sure he will if you keep helping him."

Yugi resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "Maybe," he disagreed, drawing in another deep breath and sorting slowly through each of the smells easily but effectively. It was automatic after years of his hyperosmia being tested. He had been three with his grandpa had first started it. But it was when he was six that it had become routine and boring. "He could figure it out on his own if he was actually given enough patience. He's smart, just a little…"

He trailed off, his left heel lifted from the floor. His eyes shot to the couch now. His weight was balanced on his toes as he breathed in deeply again. He started towards it slowly, exhaling in a huff.

It was in the seat cushions, he realized as he started forward lazily.

"Did you find it?"

"Yes." He settled on the couch, facing the backrest, and reached into the seam between the cushions to pull out a small handful of peppermint leaves. Only one of them was bent, allowing the scent to come forth, but the others were still perfectly intact. They let out a soft, muted aroma that would never have drawn his attention. It was too easily swallowed away by the lavender incense.

Yugi looked them over. Then he rubbed his fingers over the tops of each leaf, pulling away from the couch. It was comforting to have something to touch for the moment and it calmed him more as he went back to the kitchen. He placed them on the table, pushing them towards his grandfather.

"You're becoming almost perfect at this," Sugoroku praised warmly, smiling and nodding with approval. Yugi nodded in turn, chewing his cheek and watching curiously as he counted them. He smiled wider, then flattened his palms against the tabletop. "That didn't even take a full minute before you found them."

Yugi nodded again, chewing his cheek and licking his lips. "Nice hiding spot, by the way. I almost didn't even consider it." He paused, smirking. ""Mom is going to kill you if the cushions smell like mint, you know."

"Eh, Kasumi never even sits on that couch. She hates it—making it smell all minty fresh won't change anything."

Yugi rolled his eyes, smirk growing. "That's true. She always _does_ try to avoid it if she can," he snickered. He glanced down the hall, listening again for any sign of whether she might wake up. "Either way, the couch is going to smell like mint whenever you sit on it."

"That's okay. I like mint."

Yugi found himself relaxing further, smiling as he rolled his eyes. "Of course you would say something stupid like that," he teased. "You just don't want to admit that you didn't think about that _before_ you did it."

"I never claimed I did." The small teen raised a brow at his grandpa, smiling when Sugoroku smirked and shrugged. He looked oddly childish, seemingly almost to look as if he had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar and knew he wouldn't be punished for it. He looked almost as if he thought he had everyone wrapped around his finger. "Do you want to try to find the cinnamon? Or the basil? Or maybe the rosemary?"

Yugi blinked, eyes widening in momentary surprise. "Oh, you actually set up for a longer one?"

"I figured after what happened, you might need a distraction."

"Good guess," he grumbled, getting up again and looking the mint leaves over. "When you say cinnamon, do you mean ground or sticks?"

"Ground."

 _Interesting_. "Rosemary stems or just leaves?"

"Leaves—stem for the basil."

Yugi raised his brows in surprise, nodding easily and glancing at the plug-in behind his grandpa's chair. He would have asked him to take it out had it not been for the challenge it presented. He had always enjoyed challenges when it came to these tests, especially when they were designed to be particularly trying.

Using ground cinnamon instead of the sticks was an interesting twist; the sticks had a are more concentrated and solid scent to offer. But it would still be near impossible to find it beneath the lavender stench and the ground spice would be three times harder. The smell could be completely smothered by it all. He wondered momentarily about the rosemary and basil, if they might end up the same way, suffocated by the artificial flowery scent.

He sniffed lightly, wondering where it was his grandpa might have hidden them. He had never truly found any of the hidden herbs by emulating his grandpa's thought process before. Instead he had always acted by instinct and olfactory sense. He'd always figured out which direction he should go, as if unconsciously following his mom or grandpa's footsteps, an internal guide that had to be instinct and intuition.

He still needed his nose and eyes to find the herbs and species, but he rarely needed to think it through. He was used to the soft warm spicy scent of cinnamon, the somewhat bitter earthy mint of basil and the sharp aromatic pine-like smell of rosemary. He knew where they were in the house without prompt. He recognized the scents easily enough regardless of their loss of freshness, and so had little to no difficulty finding them during these exercises.

Now the question became whether his grandpa had thought to go downstairs with them as he sometimes did. If he wanted to ensure more a challenge, he would go downstairs. And that would help Yugi with his need to wander around somewhat. When he did these tests, there was not much room to linger on the things that woke him. And his grandpa knew that just as well as he did.

Yugi was beyond grateful for that. He did not want to have to suffer through another stressful night of lingering wisps of his nightmares and terrors.

He caught only the lavender incense that burned his nose when he breathed deeply. He wiped at it with the back of his nose, exhaling roughly. He drew in a deep breath and held it. He could refocus his efforts if he waited a few minutes to find the three herbs. He pulled his shirt up to cover his nose, relieved that the thick fibers blocked away the smell for the most part.

He could take the diluted smell much better than it at its fullest.

He waited a full five minutes, leaning against the counter. He ignored his grandpa's amusement. And he fought away a small grin of his own. He must have looked ridiculous for doing that when the incense was meant to make the house smell better.

Yugi had always had trouble with them. They were always too strong. And he couldn't stay in the same room as them for more than a few minutes. His mom had gotten puked on when she first used one.

Breathing the fumes in made his head spin and his stomach churn. His nose would burn and he would start to feel his mouth dry out. It felt as if the incenses were crawling down the back of his throat, thick and slipper like black ink.

Yugi stepped into the hallway. He'd smelled the cinnamon earlier when Jonouchi had come over for tutoring. He had been preoccupied with the wolf-dog and its escape; it had done well to keep him from noticing his grandpa on the stairs. But he knew that was where he'd caught the woodsy scent.

He pressed a foot into one of the lower stairs, pausing to smell the small trace of cinnamon that billowed up. He turned around again, sniffing again, and counted six steps with cinnamon before heading for the door again. He could hear his grandpa humming softly and the lavender seemed to punch him. His stomach tossed again and he almost gagged.

Where could his grandpa have hidden rosemary leaves and a stem of basil? Yugi focused on this question before he could vomit. There were plenty of places in the house, in all actuality. But the obvious spots were always the last he checked.

For once he wished he had a dog's nose. It would have likely been terrible unless he was using it for tests, but still. Yugi swallowed hard, suppressing another gag. It would be worse than his hyperosmia, however, and that was not something he wanted.

He sniffed deeply, heading for the hallway. The air was almost stuffy and oppressive. Yugi narrowed his eyes momentarily, starting towards his grandpa's room first. He paused, blinking. There was a small but sharp piney scent, he realized. He turned his head, looking around.

The rosemary was somewhere in his room. That much was obvious. It was a nice little twist. Usually bedrooms were off-limits when it came to any of these tests.

Doing so could breed trouble. They'd have to navigate around mother. And she _hated_ these games. She despised it when her father played these games with him. And it didn't help that she was trying to _treat_ his hyperosmia and make it more tolerable for him. But the night terrors were worse. And so she had been forced to focus her efforts there.

Yugi swallowed hard, thinking of the blood again. It came in immense rivers, bright red and as thick as ink, but as eye-catching as water beneath sunlight. It fell in large drops, splattering against the linoleum. It was gorgeous and hypnotizing.

He shook his head violently, trying to dispel the image. But it was impossible. He could feel it against his skin as he opened the door. It was hot and stick, clinging to him as if with claws. He gagged, throat flaring momentarily. He squeezed his eyes shut, steadying his shaking limbs for a moment. The new smell in the air was thick and smothering, with an undertone that was sickeningly sweet, and the cold sourness beneath turned immediately to bitterness.

He gagged again. His nose was burning. His skin was itchy. Every hair on his arm was standing upright. His throat flared again. The disgusting smell of decaying flesh came tenfold. But it was still not as terrible as when he'd first woken. Yugi swallowed convulsively, choking again.

He shook his head sharply.

The feeling faded from his skin almost immediately. The smell of flesh dissipated. The overbearing lavender incense filled his nose once more. His mind was left blissfully empty for a moment. He opened his eyes into slits.

He needed to find the rosemary, he reminded himself. His vision burned, blurring for a moment. But it was gone with a blink. Yugi ran his nails along the wall for a moment. The pine scent drifted upwards slowly.

There weren't a lot of places to hide the herb, unless his grandpa was willing to risk the smell getting into his clothes or furniture. But Yugi doubted that.

He tipped his head downward, sniffing. For a moment he could find nothing. And then his eyes settled on the doorstopper. He glanced over his shoulder, wondering at the thought. But he knew his grandpa would do almost anything to help him with his night terrors. And it helped that he also got to see how quickly Yugi managed to find it.

He turned back and crouched down, kneeling, to look the doorstopper over. He didn't bother checking beneath it. He'd placed them inside of the coils. It wasn't a challenge if he had just put them underneath.

It was easy to do, but he felt his stomach churn for a moment. He thought he saw something smeared across the top, an imprint of the pad of a finger. He shook his head again, annoyed with himself, as it disappeared again. A faint drifting smell spoke of something sweet and metallic. His stomach twisted again.

His night terror was pushing at his subconscious again.

He rolled his eyes at himself, shaking his head. The white rubber stuck to his fingers, as if with something hot and sticky. His fingers tingled, burning for a split second. He pulled it off, glancing at the hallway again. But his grandpa was still at the table. Yugi sighed softy, relieved, and turned back. The leaves were crushed and molded into it. And the scent came sharper than it had initially. He dropped them into his palm, turning away.

The basil would be elsewhere; his grandpa liked to place things in separate rooms to keep him guessing. He had placed them in the staircase and his room. The peppermint was in the living room. He doubted that a room would be repeated. So the basil had to be in his room, the kitchen, the dining room or his grandfather's music room.

Any of the four of them could easily be used for the sake of playing with him. They all had rather nice hiding spots. He could list off several without much thought. But why plant it there when Yugi's own room could be utilized as well?

He had used his room, so why not Yugi's, too?

He straightened again. His palm was itchy where the rosemary touched his sweating skin. Yugi vaguely considered wiping his palms on his pants but shrugged it off. He didn't want to smell like rosemary. It was bad enough that he apparently still smelled like the wolf-dog. The animals acted as if the hybrid's scent were burned into his skin and clothing.

He had already thrown his entire wardrobe into the washer when Jonouchi had left. And he'd taken a shower immediately after they were in the dryer. So he was hoping that it had done away with the scent entirely. He was extremely hopeful.

But he was confused as well. Normally a canine's scent was not so strong. And he wondered if something could have caused it to cling to him so powerfully. He had spent over an hour theorizing, wondering if maybe it had a chemical in it like skunk spray. Maybe it simply clung and refused to fade.

His stomach dropped and his heart skipped a beat.

Water mixing with n-butyl mercaptan only made it far stronger and more pronounced. If the hybrid did somehow have a similar chemical structure in its skin or fur, then it would likely react to water the same way.

It could potentially explain the canine's decaying smell when it was hurt and its wound open. Maybe the discharge had been mixed with it. Or perhaps what they had assumed to be discharge had been an oil like a skunk's perfume.

But then, if he had touched it and it _was_ a similar chemical structure to n-butyl mercaptan, shouldn't it have caused sever discomfort when he had touched it? Skunk spray was said to cause acute pain and temporarily blind a potential predator. But skunks had limited quantities from those sacs and the dog had not seemed to share that.

Its wound had seemed to simply expel it. But then, the cells had seemingly died away as well. And it made no sense, unless the chemical that caused the stench also reacted negatively to air. He wasn't entirely sure that was possible.

Yugi blinked, starting for his doorway. His eyes flickered around.

Where could someone hide a stem of basil in his room?

He sniffed the air. But there was nothing there but for the smell of laundry detergent and fabric softener from his earlier task of folding and putting them away. It drifted lazily, clinging to the air. He could not smell anything else. And for a moment he wondered what might be worse, his room or the kitchen. Both had such heavy scents to them…

Yugi hummed, tilting his head. He cast a wry glance around the room, then moved to the bed. He could have put it under the bed. But that was far too obvious. He bit his lip, glancing over his shoulder. The kitchen light still bathed the room. Yugi turned back and, beneath all of the chemicals that made up his laundry, there was a soft earthy mint smell.

Yugi smirked, rolling his eyes. His grandpa had had ample time to do this between the laundry and Yugi's showering for an hour. It was just a wonder that he had not noticed it when he had lay down.

He crouched down, smelling the sharp scent. He cast a glance at his alarm clock, tilting his head. He had been doing this for over teen minutes, he realized. Yugi turned back to his bed, taking a deep breath and narrowing his eyes. It seemed almost to be coming from the floor.

He would have smelled it immediately earlier when the steam had come out of his bathroom after his shoulder. The heat would have exposed it entirely. But it was muted even now and there had to be something covering it. Or, perhaps it was sandwiched. That could have blocked the shower steam and kept its aroma hidden when he climbed into bed as well.

He knew of somewhere he could have put it. But the lack of air would have done nothing to give off even the smallest hint of smell. If his grandpa had put it between the mattress and spring box, it would have been smothered. And Yugi could smell the herb like fresh air at the moment.

He knew of only one spot on his bed to fit that purpose. There was a single tear in his mattress. It had happened when they had first decided to move into the house. The mattress had snagged on a nail. He hadn't told his mom about it. It had been his fault more than anyone's. He hadn't been paying attention when he'd moved his bed and the mattress had gotten snagged on the wood beneath. It was a small tear, anyways, and nothing he wanted to have to replace the entire mattress for.

Yugi looked over the ear, pulling away slightly to see the gap in the foam padding. The moonlight did just well enough to give him direction. He could see where the stem of basil was pressed against the thin white cover of the mattress, a leaf sticking outward. Yugi hummed, pulling it out and looking it over. The leavers were all still in one piece, he noticed in surprise.

"The cinnamon is sprinkled over the sixth step, the rosemary leaves were in the doorstopper's cap in your room, and the basil was inside the lining of my mattress," he announced.

"Ah, good job." Yugi blinked at the studious expression on his grandpa's face. "Another round?"

Had it not been for the sympathy in his voice, Yugi would have assumed he was ignoring his growing weariness. But it was visible in his eyes now as well. And Yugi watched him for a moment, his own tone quiet and flat when he spoke again.

"No, thanks, Grandpa. I think I'm all tired out."

He nodded. "Do you plan to go back to sleep then?"

"No, but you should probably get some more rest."

For a moment Yugi thought he might argue. But his grandpa got to his feet instead, yawning and stretching his arms over his head. A touch of anxiety began to bloom in the pit of Yugi's stomach and he waited breathlessly for the elderly Motou to say something. But the quiet stretched between them for what felt like a long minute.

And he could see his grandpa studying him now. His plum purple eyes were locked on his face as he searched for any more signs of distress. He was watching for any hint that Yugi might need him, but it was rather clear that he would not find any.

"I'll see you in the morning then." Yugi nodded, scrunching his face up in mocking disapproval when his grandpa's facial hair tickled his skin as he kissed his forehead. He pulled away with a small smile. "Good night, Yugi."

"Good night, Grandpa." He waited until he had closed the door again. Then he hesitantly glanced over his shoulder. A small lazy stream of water droplets were falling from the fridge faucet in seemingly random intervals. He didn't hear it, however, but he was thirsty as he continued watching it.

His tongue felt dry. The lavender still coated the back of his throat. He felt as if he had not had water in days. His stomach twisted with desire. He started forward, grabbing a new cup. He pushed the lever and his lips curled back, shoulders rising.

He let out a low distressed hiss, swallowing hard.

Thick red liquid fell in a steady stream. It settled loudly, splattering. He cringed, stomach knotting. And his grip instinctively tightened. He could see the chorded tendons straining beneath his skin.

The liquid sloshed. A disgusting residue existed along the edges when he jerked his hand. It was too thick to see through. And abruptly the glass seemed infinitely larger. He bared his teeth behind his lips. Hatred swelled in his gut.

Would it taste like blood too? Or would that be too much for his splintered mind to manage?

He nearly laughed cynically, but made no move to drink. He turned, dumping it into the sink. It was dark and oily, leaving a stain there. It looked like red milk against the metal. Yugi shook his head, turning his head away, and started towards the staircase to head down to the first floor.

He couldn't stay upstairs if the fridge was spitting blood instead of water. And, if he was awake now, it was better to try to make himself useful. He could at least check on the animals in the kennels.

And he could see if he still smelled of the hybrid.

It could almost give him an idea of if the canine had somehow developed its own version of skunk spray. It seemed almost impossible to him. But then, dogs climbed trees, so why couldn't they eventually develop a defense mechanism like that?

The problem became that the breed would be perceived as new. No other canine that he knew of had that ability. But then again, he did not know of _any_ animal that could release an odor like that _through their skin_. Platypuses sweated milk, but that was different from smelling of _rotting flesh_. Octopuses jetted ink at potential predators. A species of fish pushed out thick mucus from their skin. Lizards could shoot blood out of their eyes. And he knew of one bird species that was poisonous because of its exclusive diet of toxic beetles.

But none of that compared to this.

Smelling as if they were rotting _only_ when they were wounded was not something he had ever heard of. There were plenty of animals—namely birds—that smelled disgusting, but it was constant. It was not from an exposed wound.

Yugi shut the second door behind him, continuing into the room and using the moonlight to navigate to the counter. The second light switch was on the wall behind the desk, in front of the animals. The bulbs would light slowly over a course of five minutes. It kept the animals from feeling disoriented from sudden brightness. And Yugi had always liked watching them come to life completely. It was something that always made him feel somehow at ease.

He flipped the switch. The bulb situated in the center of the ceiling let dimly. And Yugi felt relieved by its transition. He was not as blind now as he had felt in the kitchen. The lightly slowly crept in intensity, until it was at its brightest and the darkness seemed to fade completely.

Yugi leaned against the counter, unable to stop his racing mind.

A dog shouldn't have been able to excrete a smell like that. And he didn't think any other animal could mimic a skunk like that.

One of the puppies yawned softly in its cage, then burrowed into its mother's stomach again. The white head fell back into position to sleep once more and Yugi glanced upwards. The parakeet had stirred just enough to twist its head around. Now it blinked a beady black eye at him. Then it twisted its head back around to rest in its feathers, eye glued to him.

Yugi blinked slowly and stiffened. Birds had poor senses of smell. The realization clawed at his insides. He'd forgotten all about it. Most of them had amazing eyesight, but not smell. So, it stood to reason that the parakeet reacted to him in such a manner because the other animals did. It fed off of their anxiety and stressed itself out further. It didn't smell the dog on him.

Perhaps it was just unnerved by his physical appearance? But then, nothing had changed since they had done the procedure to fix the fractures in its wing. And he'd had days before that to feed it without issue. But then, unless the parakeet truly sensed something dangerous from him, then it should not have been reacting the same way as the other animals. So it should not now either.

He tilted his head. The small bird turned its face around to stare at him now, black eyes widening faintly. It moved forward along the length of its perch, bringing a foot up as if in a wave. Yugi continued watching the bright blue bird; it hopped down to the newspaper bedding and moved to the door to watch him more closely.

A moment passed. Yugi waited for the tension to spring between them again. He waited for the bird to react as violently as it had formerly. But it was stretching its wings now, lowering itself partially into a bow. It stretched its wings in a long display of feather in a show of affection.

Yugi blinked, smiling in amusement, and raised a brow. That was the parakeet's usual greeting in the mornings when it first woke up.

He spent a moment staring at the small bird. Then something moved in the corner of his vision. His head snapped in the direction of it. His eyes widened as he regarded the source, stomach sinking. The kitten had woken up, her dark head raised and yellow-green eyes wide. She yawned slowly, let out a loud meow, blinked, and got to her feet to stretch her tiny frame. Then she blinked again and stiffened, nose twitching, until her eyes fell on Yugi.

He tilted his head, swallowing hard. She was completely frozen in place now. They stared at one another. Then, slowly, the fur along her spine began to rise in dark jagged spikes. She backed up several steps, pressing against the rear of her cage. Her spine arched higher and she spat at him, a low warning of distress and anger. Yugi blinked at the defensive display, then pressed himself against the counter once more.

If she was reacting that way, then he knew the dog would too.

He sighed at the thought, finding that already the parakeet was taking on the same alarmed posture. That meant that somehow the dog's scent was still in his clothing or maybe on his skin.

Yugi turned away from them, the slightest hint of defeat pricking his insides. He still had two hours before he needed to head out for school. That meant two hours of nothing to do but wonder and worry.

He flipped the lights back off, heading for the stairs again, and trotted into his room with a sigh. He supposed there had to be at least _something_ he could do for school in the meantime. There was that biochemistry study guide, after all. But he'd been hopeful about partnering with Anzu to do it.

It would have given them a reason to be alone for a couple of days after school without interruptions. There wasn't any reason for Jonouchi and Honda to cut into their time together if he did ask. It had seemed like a dream come true.

But now he needed to use it for something else.

He'd have to new plan to spend time with Anzu. Right now, he needed a distraction and that would have to be his biochemistry study guide. It was the only thing that would hold his attention until school started.

Now the only question was if he could make it last two hours.

He supposed if he got the answers, he could use his phone or laptop to do a deeper study. It was a useless habit he had for keeping his mind off of things when he was frustrated or his night terrors would not cease. He might be able to drag the assignment out long enough from there. Or he could possibly just do several study guides at once. With midterms coming up, he had gotten a lot of them, after all. And half of his classes had given them a second one for practice for the finals when they came up afterwards. He could just do one after the other until he felt like his brain was rotting.

He turned on the lamp on the desk, reaching over to grab his backpack from the desk chair. He pulled out a large dark green binder slipping the guide from the front inside pocket. He flipped through it, counting the ten pages and sighing softly with relief at the size of it.

For the next forty minutes he did nothing but the study guide, continuing in a boring methodical pattern until he finished them in the other subjects as well. Then he picked at the schoolwork he had missed the day before.

His mouth grew dry after finishing the last sheet.

He was used to finishing things early in class—it often even impressed his teachers—but he had never gone through so much of it all at once.

His stomach sank.

He didn't have any more work that he could focus on now that they were all done. And now a slow and sinking sense of despair crashed through him.

Unconsciously, he had noticed the link between his intellect and the restless nights.

When one spiked, the other usually came with it. And neither of them ever flourished in small amounts. They grew tenfold or they did not at all. There was never a steady medium. They never faltered. They never failed.

Yugi pushed the worksheets back into his binder pockets. Then he fell back against his headboard with a loud sigh.

* * *

The kitten lashed out with her claws, nearly catching his fingers with them, and Yugi sighed as he pulled back to shut the crate door. He had been hopeful that after another shower they would react better to his presence. Instead, somehow, it still seemed to be there even now. She had drawn her claws when he had initially ignored her and she'd even bitten his thumb when he wasn't prepared for it. Neither had drawn blood, because she was too scared to truly attack him, but the effect had devastated him all the same.

The parakeet was still clicking its beak every few minutes. And it had flared up again, angry and defensive. The only thing to have changed in the last couple of hours was that the kitten had not lashed out immediately. She'd been friendly at first, allowing him a few small strokes on her face. Then she had bristled and lashed out only when he'd moved his fingers past her neck.

He glanced at the mother and puppies. Brown eyes were trained on him, cautious and locked on his form. The puppies were still along her soft underbelly. Yugi did not even bother with the notion of checking on her. Just the look in her eyes said she'd lash out. And Yugi was not a masochist.

His mom would have found a way around it. She was clever and persistent, a trait that Yugi felt he had only inherited by half. He had always been curious, had always been quick to find solutions when problems arose. And he was her son in a lot of ways, but this was not and _never would be_ one of them.

He took warnings from animals seriously. He didn't question them. If the body language matched the warning, he backed off. He instinctively backed off. He did not want to deal with a painful retaliation from a scared animal.

His mother, however, sprang into action regardless. She thrived under that kind of pressure. She had always been fast enough that she wasn't hurt, whereas her staff did not share that same skill. Yugi himself had no desire to be bitten. He didn't need to experience it to know to avoid it.

He backed up, stepping away from the kennels, and started up the stairs again. Maybe if he could find a sample of the canine's smell on his clothes, he could try a scrape. He could check the chemical compounds under a microscope from there.

He grinned at the thought. Microscopes had always been enjoyable for him. In class he loved to use them to look at whatever was in the slides. He liked the idea of seeing cells and microscopic organisms. It made a good distraction, offering a way to lose time when he truly needed it. He had always been interested in something like that; cells always made him curious.

And now he was desperate. He needed to know if this dog really could have left a residue on his skin or clothes. It didn't have to match a skunk's spray, but it was the closest thing he could think to compare it to.

His skin was crawling, his stomach in knots. But excitement and anticipation rushed through him as well. He wondered what people would say if they found out, however. And his mouth grey dry at the prospect.

He didn't want to be the one to find out and lead to its continuous breeding for the sole purpose of studying and experimentation. There were so many animals treated like that as it was. And he didn't want to be the one who mentioned it—to his family or anyone else—and condemned the dog to being hunted as if it carried the plague.

And what happened if it really _did_ get caught and its blood was drawn?

Did that mean they'd run experiments on wolves and whatever breed of dog it was?

He shuddered at the idea, swallowing hard and biting his lip. The skin split and blood welled up to coat his tongue.

Wolves had been hunted to extinction in Japan. Despite the obvious hole and imbalance their disappearance left in the ecosystem, many were still terrified of even the thought of reintroduction. It was _horribly_ needed, however. The serows were overpopulated, their numbers too high to deal with. The deer were overpopulated. The boars were overpopulated. The three of them wreaked havoc on the grains and rice that were meant to be harvested.

The bears were sloppy hunters. They could not do much to hunt the serows and keep their numbers in check. They were not able to cut the numbers of deer. And they could not maintain the population of boar either.

The wolves had been all three's natural predator and they had done well with the task. They had been named Japan's protectors in ancient times for a reason. They had kept the harvest plentiful, and the harvest was their livelihood. It was _still_ one of their main staples.

But what had changed during modernization was that the wolves were no longer seen as beneficial. They'd been hunted to extinction sooner rather than later. And it was not as if they could not have bred wolves selectively, until they were the size of the extinct species. Instead the wolves were kept in zoos, behind large glass enclosures where people could watch them as they trotted around and were fed their daily meals.

As a whole, Yugi did not see the reintroduction going well, however. Japan was extremely superstitious. And the wolf carried a very extreme reputation despite science proving them not to be the big bad killers they were once made to be. They were ostracized from religion to storybooks for little kids…

And Yugi was not sure, but he almost thought that perhaps the reputation they had in Japan superceded those of the wolves in the states.

So this hybrid, from sheer size alone, would likely scare them. There was only one wolf-dog species in Japan. And it was medium-sized, bred to look like the Hokkaido wolf. And it was because of this that it was extremely unpopular as well.

If the hybrid was wild in Japan as Yugi suspected—as the healthy stature and raw muscular power suggested—he thought he might vomit. There were wild dog packs in the woods outside of Domino. And he knew of them where the ironwork grids were used as a way of preventing potential landslides during back weather. But they were not terribly abundant.

And, most often, Yugi wondered if they were nothing but rumors.

He never heard barking. He never heard howling. He never heard anything regarding the canines.

The most he knew was that there were feral dogs. Whether they actually lived in the woods or in the cities was a different story. And, if they hunted the serows, they did not make much of a different.

If people caught wind of this wolf-dog and saw how powerful it was, they would likely see it as a threat. And if it was seen as a threat—and they thought there was more than one—then they would go out with guns and hunt any of them that existed in Japan.

And, should it be an indigenous species only in Japan, then it would be wiped from the planet. And he hated it when amazing animals were driven extinct. Yugi hated anything to do with animals being harmed, which was likely another reason he did not wish to tell anyone else. Most animals were not truly threats, but people were greedy and ignorant when it came to predators.

Yugi shook the thought off, turning away as he pulled his uniform jacket off. The royal blue material folded in his arms and he breathed in deeply, trying to catch any hint of the dog's scent lingering there. The first thing he caught was the disgustingly sweet smell of his detergent, and his nose ached with it. The second was the fresh linen of the fabric softener. The third was the cottony smell with the sour edge that he knew was the dryer sheet.

The fourth, however, was nothing he had ever smelled before. He raised his head, sniffing again, and tossed it aside. Just as he'd expected, the smell was in the _air_ somehow. It was a strange earthy thing, almost like wet dog, with an overtone of pine and charcoal. He had never run into all three smells together and they blended together beautifully, delighting his senses. He almost hummed, but pushed it away again after a moment. He shook his head slightly, considering.

He didn't know it at all. And he didn't know where it would have come from.

The window was shut and locked.

Had something…gotten into his room?

Yugi felt his stomach lurch at the thought. His skin crawled with unease.

Was that possible?

He himself knew how to climb up using the wood beams that supported the porch. He knew how to use the drain pipe as well. He could navigate the sloping roof with little difficulty. But the window only opened from the inside.

And the lock was still turned.

The window was still locked…

He remembered using the window's lock for tests growing up. He had always been good at climbing. He'd liked challenging himself to get to his destination in any way he wanted. So he knew the best ways to do it. He knew the easiest ways to get up there and which of the tiles was weaker than the next. He knew how to climb up there and get _to_ the window.

But getting to the window did not ensure he got _inside_. He had tried every which way to unlock the window formerly. He'd wanted to play and test it out. And he'd found that nothing could dislodge it when it was locked.

No one could have used the window to break into his room.

But what of the scent that cloaked his room like mist?

Yugi narrowed his eyes, shaking his head. When he drew in another deep breath, it did not seem to be coming from any particular direction. Instead, to his amazing, it seemed almost to come from the furniture. If he actually knew the source of it, he might have tried to find it as he had earlier with the basil. But even the general direction was lost to him now.

He breathed in deeply again, holding it in his lungs and trying to sort it out. But the origins were lost to him. And so Yugi decided against a third attempt. He turned away, placing his jacket in the center of the bed. And all he could smell was the mixture of detergent and softener and dryer sheets.

He blinked, turning at the knock on the door. He thought it would be his mom, fully expecting to have to explain that he was just feeling off at the moment, but found his grandpa there instead. His plum-colored eyes were bright, glazed over with grogginess, and Yugi tilted his head in puzzlement.

What time was it?

"Hey, Grandpa."

He watched him rub his eyes, the elderly man staring at him in confusion. "Did you even get any sleep last night?"

Yugi realized only when he blinked that the jacket was still extremely close to his face. He could not even pretend that he had been preparing to pull it on. He resisted the urge to clear his throat awkwardly, shaking his head instead. "No, I went down to check on the animals and then decided to do some homework."

His grandpa nodded, looking him over. "Then get some sleep. You look terrible and I don't think your mother would appreciate it if I let you go to school looking like you might pass out at any moment," he grumbled, rolling his eyes and smiling slightly.

"But—"

"No. Text your friends that you won't be going to school today and get some rest, okay?"

Yugi had the urge to argue but instead shrugged and nodded. "All right—but you're explaining this to Mom. Your idea so _you_ take responsibility for it."

"I take _full_ responsibility," he teased, rolling his eyes, and Yugi nodded in approval, tossing his jacket onto his desk and grabbing his pajamas from the bed where he had dropped them after his shower. "Do you want me to wake you?"

Yugi considered the question and then shrugged, smiling leisurely. "Surprise me."

"Sure I will. Now go to sleep, Yugi."

"All right. Night, Grandpa."

"Night, Yugi."

Yugi was actually pleasantly surprised when he woke almost twelve hours later. His rest had been dreamless aside from one immediately upon closing his eyes. There had only been the brief image of the wolf-dog trotting forward and glancing at him over its shoulder. Yugi remembered vividly the way that its fur rippled and its golden eyes glowed with a brilliance that made his heart pound even in his sleep.

He hadn't dreamed past that, happy to find he felt so much better now than he had before. He was rested, yawning loudly and stretching his jaw so far it popped. He sat up lazily, stretching, and folded an arm behind his head while the other remained skyward. It fell into a mirroring folded position behind his head and Yugi dropped his hands into his lap.

He listened for noise, but he couldn't hear his mom or grandpa. He didn't think they were talking or anything. And so the second idea he had was that he might have been arguing.

A few long minutes passed and he listened for any sound of them but again caught nothing. He got to his feet slowly, moving to get dressed quickly in jeans and a t-shirt. His mom and grandpa continued moving around in the kitchen. He listened a while longer before heading out of his room and towards them both now. His mom and grandpa stopped setting the table, glancing over at him with mirroring looks of surprise.

"I thought you were going to sleep the rest of the day," his mom commented in a somewhat flat tone at the sight of him. Yugi blushed at the slight scorn in her tone, realizing immediately she was only so upset because he was worried he might fall behind. He knew she didn't doubt his ability to catch up if he had to, but he knew that she didn't want him to have to do so.

"You slept well, didn't you?" his grandpa murmured, grinning.

Yugi nodded. _No night terrors_. "Extremely well," he agreed with a smile.

"Good. I told you it would be good for him to take a day off, Kasumi."

"Yes, well, neither of you had better get used to this. It isn't happening often, Yugi." She gave him a warning look to keep from arguing. He nodded, though she hadn't needed to say a word. Yugi wasn't one to skip school anyways, and all of them knew it. He wondered if she reminded him because she felt it was necessary as his mother. "As long as you know that."

"Yes, I know that."

"You had _better_."

He nodded again almost lazily. "Yep."

She continued setting the table and then glanced up with an expectant look. "I'm going to be redoing the sutures on the kitten's wound tomorrow after you get home from school," she said slowly but with no uncertainty as to the meaning of her words.

Yugi felt his stomach twist but he had no support for an argument if he said no. Instead he nodded and mumbled, "Sure, Mom, I'll help you when I get home."

 **The Bair Hugger is a machine used to help maintain the patient's core body temperature. The blanket is a single-use disposable one, which is what Yugi puts on the dog along with socks.**

 **N-Butyl Macaptan is the name for skunk spray.**


	3. The Body

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day (no update on June 2nd)**

 **Chapter warning: Some blood and gore, mentions of hallucinations and night terrors, mentions of medication, mentions and description of dead body**

Chapter III: The Body

 _Work Log Entry III: December, 1992_

 _December 19_

 _Both chosen specimens have fallen ill. Their organs seem to be failing and they are growing much weaker._

 _Perhaps the constant advances towards the devolution of their genetics has caused this sickness?_

There was nothing more Yugi hated about surgeries than the ones that involved cats. The anesthesia had to be perfectly balanced and when they were sleeping they would cry out softly as if still awake. They were just too small to be fully put to sleep for fear they would slip away in the middle of the surgery. The procedures always made him feel sick with tension. So he had always naturally attempted to avoid them whenever he had the chance. His mind always leaped to the thought that they would consciously feel all of what they did. With that constantly on his mind at even the mention of a cat needing to go into surgery, Yugi had kept away from them whenever possible and now this had escalated into avoiding the surgery room altogether. It wasn't for the sake of avoidance or what his mother had come up with to explain his behavior.

"The dog might have gotten loose even if it was me or Dad taking care of it," she said out of the blue two weeks after the surgery on the kitten.

Yugi looked up from checking on his homework answers and stared at her blankly for a moment. He blinked and furrowed his brows in slight confusion. For a moment he had no idea what dog she was talking about or even that one was missing. He blinked again, the statement finally clicking in his confused mind; the word "might" burning through him as he swallowed harshly. She thought he was avoiding helping out in the clinics because of what happened with the hybrid.

"Maybe," he said reluctantly, shrugging and turning back to his homework. "But I don't understand why you're bringing it up."

The sigh she let out was loud and harsh and he barely refrained from rolling his eyes. "Well, you've been avoiding the animals ever since it got loose," she snapped in a slightly cold tone that made him stiffen. "You even refused to help me move the puppies into the main clinic."

"Okay, but you saw me helping Jonouchi with math and you _know_ that the animals haven't exactly been friendly towards me anyways," he hissed, narrowing his eyes as he flipped through his worksheets. The grip on his pencil tightened to the point that it almost snapped and his fingers ached with the force of it. "Besides, there were enough techs to help without me."

"That's _not_ the point. The point is that I asked for _your_ help and you decided that you wouldn't because you didn't want to—"

"Didn't _want_ to? No, Mom, that's _not_ what happened. You know that. I love helping the animals—"

"You sure have a funny way of showing it," she scoffed, giving him a dark look when he opened his mouth to object. Yugi shut it again, scowling at her. "You won't even feed and water them anymore. You ignore me when I ask you to help me with surgeries—"

" _Ignore_ you? I've never ignored you," he interrupted sharply, shaking his head and glaring at her furiously. "I've had schoolwork and tutoring to deal with, too, Mom. My life _doesn't_ revolve around the clinic. I have to make sure I get my scholarship to go to college and _become_ a vet. I don't think you understand how hard it is to juggle all of that and constantly shadow and help out, too. And, besides that, the animals don't even seem to want me _around_ them anymore."

"That's not true, Yugi, and you know it."

"Oh, so you mean I've been _imagining_ it then, Mom? I must have _imagined_ the way the kitten attacked my hand or the parakeet freaks out. How about the way the puppies always cry whenever I go near them and their mom always tries to tear my hand open?"

"That's _ridiculous_ , Yugi—"

They both fell immediately silent as the door opened. A soft metallic jingling of a dog tag shaking with movement and clicking highlighted the entrance of a small canine. Yugi looked down curiously, smiling as he spotted the black and tan Shiba Inu. Even without her well-known owner he would have recognized her immediately because of the unusual white tip to her tightly curled black and tan tail. She was sixteen pounds with slender legs and somewhat large paws with sharp nails like hooked knives. She had the usual sesame patter to her dark short-haired pelt, with tan the shade of tawny on her chest which outlined the curves of her forelimbs. Her belly was white rather than tan and her eyes were an unusual golden-flecked rather than the deep brown Shiba Inus were generally known for. But she had the same small compact body with the slender muzzle and the wide eyes and self-confidence that the breed was so well-known for and often identified by.

"Sesame!"

The two-year-old let out one of her signature yips of excited greeting. Yugi grinned as she trembled with excitement, wagging her curled tail wildly. She was one of the only animals he knew of that liked to be at the clinic. She had to be the friendliest canine Yugi knew aside from Blankey when he bribed her with treats. Usually they all were somewhat wary upon meeting him and especially when they were left in the same room together alone. He had always assumed that it was because he smelled of medicine and the various tools that he helped his mom with in the examination room, as well as the stress of being in an unfamiliar place.

"Hello," Sesame's elderly owner said cheerfully. He flashed Yugi a grin that he mirrored immediately.

"Hello, Mr. Hawkins," Yugi greeted with a polite edge to his voice. "How are you?"

"I'm well. How are you, Yugi?" He leaned over and straightened again with Sesame in his arms. The little dog was panting and Yugi could see that her teeth were still perfectly clean.

"I'm the same as always. How's Rebecca?"

"She's good. She's actually back in America with her parents now that summer is over," he replied with a smile, rubbing Sesame's small ears with a content grin and pulling her a bit closer. The Shiba Inu licked his palm and somewhat stout fingers, panting a little harder as she wagged her tail. "And since Sesame and I were in the neighborhood we decided to come in and say hello. Right, Sesame?"

The Shiba Inu immediately welcomed his mom's show of affection with licks to her hand, trembling harder with excitement as Yugi picked his way around the desk to join him. Sesame was still paying complete attention to his mom, kissing her fingers eagerly. Her body was shaking as if she was a phone put on vibration and Yugi waited until his mom had pulled back some. For a brief second he hesitated, some part of him refusing to reach out, and then he stretched his hand. Sesame was at first still wagging her tail and panting, but as soon as his hand was within an inch of her head the situation changed. A snarl bubbled up in warning, the noise almost like a rusty purr or an engine put on idle.

It was enough to make him stop, hand still stretched out, and Yugi watched as her squirming became an action of anxious discomfort in Mr. Hawkin's arms. The small teen tilted his head and the elderly man looked at her in stunned surprise. "What are you growling at, baby?" he cooed, raising a brow and looking at Yugi curiously. "You know who that is, Sesame. You know Yugi well. Don't be a grumpy little girl today."

Yugi knew without looking that the interaction had caught his mother's attention. She was watching them with surprised, thoughtful blue eyes, taking note of the situation. It occurred to him that this would be the first time she would see for herself that animals no longer liked him.

He had practically helped Mr. Hawkins to _raise_ her, giving Rebecca advice on food the day she had walked in with her in her arms and boasted about having a dog. She'd sneered at him about how he didn't have one even though he had a house with a clinic in it, and Yugi had laughingly teased her that he didn't need one with all of the animals around there. Since then, helping her with the food and items necessary for the small dog, she had been so grateful she'd begun to volunteer at the clinic on days that she got done with her chores early. His grandpa constantly teased him that she was head over heels for him. Yugi always found it awkwardly; they were four years apart in age, and he considered it more of an admiration crush if anything.

Now Kasumi stood watching Sesame treat her son as if he were a stranger. She wondered for the briefest of moments if he'd held her the wrong way at some point. Perhaps he had done as Rebecca had and stepped on her paw or scooped her up rather roughly. But even then the Shiba Inu had been easygoing and loved the attention she got after it all. And the fact that it was a dog he'd known for years made it all the worse.

She had always ignored it whenever the animals acted aggressively towards him. There had never truly been a reason for it before. And Yugi had always stepped back and allowed her to come in behind him to fix whatever issue might have occurred. She had always been watching, and Yugi had always known it, so he would simply glance at him and then step away.

"I'm sorry, Yugi. I don't know what's going on with her today," Mr. Hawkins commented, truly astounded as Sesame continued growling. Her squirming grew tenfold and she started to whimper, a high-pitched noise that seemed to bury itself in his eardrums. She twisted around in his arms, trying desperately to get away from Yugi by way of climbing his arm.

Yugi began to withdraw his hand. It happened in slow motion. Her eyes were wide. The whites of them were showing. She spun on him. Her teeth snapped first at air. Then, as he jerked, she caught his hand. His fingers were coated in blood in mere seconds. His incisors tore through his flesh like razor-sharp thorns.

He yelped. Sesame snarled louder. Yugi blinked. Impulse said to snatch his hand away. Instinct told him to cause her to release before he bled more. He moved before he thought about it. His free hand pressed into her ribs. She released, startled more than in pain. Her eyes were wide, frantic. Yugi drew his hand towards his chest and looked his fingers over. Blood welled from the wound. The cut was rather shallow for the most part. But he must have jerked his hand at some point. Or perhaps she had gotten him twice in the attack. His knuckles were bleeding. His nails were coated. Both halves of his fingers held some kind of punctures.

The way it dripped downwards made it seem almost as if he had dipped them in paint.

" _Fuck,_ " he muttered under his breath, blinking at the wounds. He could hear it when a drop of blood hit the tiles. " _Holy fuck_ …"

His mom blinked in astonishment. Sesame had never so much as growled before. And now she had drawn blood. She had _Yugi's_ blood. And it was dripping in thick droplets. Kasumi was amazed, bewildered and shocked. But she did not think her expression matched Yugi's by any degree.

He looked _fascinated_. It was almost as if he had never seen blood before. It shocked her to see that glazed glimmer to his eyes. He seemed so focused on the way it was falling from his fingers.

Her stomach churned. He was anemic again. The night terror medication must have been thinning his blood again. How much had he taken recently?

But then she glanced at Sesame again as the dog cried and stared at Yugi as if he might attack her at any moment. Had he done anything to provoke the bite?

Kasumi spent a minute considering this question, backtracking and thinking over his body language. Whenever he had pulled away from another animal, none of them had bothered with a full lunge before. As soon as his hand was out of immediate reach, they just watched him until they felt that it was safe to turn away again. The only possible signal he could have sent to Sesame was the confused tension in his shoulders but all of the other animals had only growled rather than attacked in similar situations.

"Oh my god! Yugi, are you all right?"

Kasumi was truly bewildered for a moment. Then Yugi blinked wide eyes as she did the same. His gaze had lost the fascination now. His lips pulled up in the corner and he shrugged with his half-smile in place. He had to be extremely uncomfortable, but he had enough common sense not to allow Mr. Hawkins to see. The old man looked startled and ashamed. A bald panic shone in his eyes, his pupils blow.

Yugi tilted his head. He must have thought that they would report it and have Sesame quarantined. "Yes, I'm fine, Mr. Hawkins," he answered with a small nod and wider smile, attempting to make him feel better. "I'm just a little anemic so I'm bleeding more than someone else would. Besides, it doesn't hurt anymore."

Yugi almost thought that if he just cleaned the two cuts and looked them over he might find that they were healed already. He doubted there was any truth in it but, thankfully, the sharp throbbing pain was completely gone. He still had a phantom sensation of her teeth digging into his skin, tearing through it, but there was nothing else that he could complain about.

"I probably did something to upset her somehow," he said with another shrug. "I probably smell like medicine, anyways. It tends to make some of the animals freak out at times."

Or perhaps he still somehow smelled like that dog. If he still smelled like the hybrid, it explained her ferocity towards him now. But he didn't understand how it was possible. He had found no trace of DNA on his clothing when he had attempted to study the possibility of giving off a chemical like he thought. Unless the animals were the animals were the only ones capable of finding a trace of the scent, he should have been able to find a _source_ of it somehow. He was not ready to dismiss his theory just yet, but he knew it probably held no merit now.

"I…suppose so…" he muttered uncertainly, looking at the Shiba Inu in his arms slowly. He could see the concern clear in his eyes and Yugi felt almost sickened by it. He would never have Sesame thrown into the pound like that. "I just…She's never done that before…God, I'm sorry, Yugi."

"It's fine, Mr. Hawkins. Don't worry about it. It doesn't even hurt anymore."

The elderly man blanched at the word "anymore" and Yugi swallowed hard, wishing he had chosen his words more carefully. But then, what other way was there to put it? He couldn't just say it hadn't hurt. First, he might come off sounding utterly childish and stupid in an attempt to seem brave or they might both think he had nerve damage if he didn't feel that bite. Second, he had cursed when it had happened so he highly doubted it would come off as believable anyways.

Perhaps it was wistful thinking on Mr. Hawkins' behalf to think that it was normally possible for such a wound to not be painful any longer. But then, he was aware that he was feeding his desire for such a thing to be true.

But he was being somewhat honest. It had stopped stinging mere seconds after he had initially turned his full attention to it. He was anemic from taking too much medication for the growing onslaught of terrors and he _knew_ his mom was aware of it. It was disgusting, and the weakness of it made his skin crawl. His growing insomnia, unable to sleep any longer due to it all, his lacking diet, and the stress all made them worse. He already knew that he had crossed that line, the one which made the influence of it grow threefold what it had been before.

The truth was somewhat twisted, but he thought it a good way to put the elderly man at ease. He didn't need to worry about his dog being put into a kennel at a shelter for days. It would break his heart and Yugi would feel that pain as well.

"I would check on your hand, but…"

"It's okay. My mom and I will look at it."

"Will you…tell me about it later?"

"Oh, sure, of course. I'll call you later when we've gotten it cleaned up," he agreed nonchalantly. "But I promise I'm okay."

He nodded shakily and held Sesame a little tighter. Yugi wished he could have told him that they would never have reported the incident. But if word got out that the veterinary clinic was ignoring a wound to its own staff, there would be no reprieve from the surveillance or the police interventions. They would dig through the files and work through everything to see about what was going on. They'd find out about the hybrid and all hell would break loose, he was sure.

Domino had grown to have far stricter rules than the other cities in Japan where animals were concerned. A few months back a rabies epidemic had broken out. A mass amount of wild rabid dogs had been found in the mountains when a few hikers had been killed and eaten with only a few scarce remains left behind. Because of the dog pack any incidents involved misbehaved pets were required to be filed with animal control and the police. The pets were then to be put in a heavily supervised quarantine area of the nearest pound.

Domino City was not the largest place in Japan by any stretch of the imagination. But it held a wide placement of areas within its district with sixteen different cemeteries, one elementary, one middle, and one high school. There were only three malls, one massive shopping complex, four veterinary clinics, three hospitals, two libraries, one museum and one arcade. There were more restaurants and cafes and neighborhoods than there were anything else.

The eastern and southern areas led to the other cities and further into Japan, but the north and west borders were untamed mountain ranges full of forests and rivers. Directly to the north of the clinic, miles beyond, was the Daisetsuzan National Park, where almost every hint of wildlife seemed to exist. There were the giant red flying squirrels and the serows and black bears, the golden eagles and red foxes and bears. The mountains had proved themselves too harsh, the undergrowth too thick and abundant, for them to expand any farther. The mountains were littered with volcanoes as well, and their protected status prevented any potential building or attempts to buy from any investors.

He knew that many people still attempted to hunt there at times, despite its prohibited status and punishments done by law. When money was truly scarce, some were brave enough to attempt it. Not many had tried since the rabies epidemic, however, out of fear of becoming infected as well if an attack should happen.

"Okay, I…I'll wait until you call…" He blinked as if in a daze and then turned away to start towards the door. Yugi and his mother watched him as he glanced over his shoulder uncertainly and then walked hurriedly out of view of them in the window.

"I told you that the animals weren't so happy with me anymore," Yugi commented almost smugly, looking his hand over again. The wounds were still there though they did not hurt, and Yugi was oddly relieved to see that. He was unsure as to why he had even questioned it for the smallest of seconds, but it had crossed his mind regardless. The realization that such a thought existed in the first place made his stomach flip with growing tension. What kind of thought was that? It made him want to vomit to consider it. No wound could heal that quickly.

"Yes, well…" She trailed off completely for a long minute and then caught his wrist with her hand. "Come on, let's get your hand cleaned and then we'll talk about you taking a few days off."

"A few days off?" he echoed, eyes widening drastically. "But I don't—"

"Well, you're going to have to, Yugi. I don't want to see you get hurt any worse," his mom interrupted. Her tone held no room for argument, and Yugi nodded reluctantly, not wanting to argue. Confrontation had never been one of his strong points. "Just focus on your grades for a little while. I'm sure that Jonouchi could use all the extra help he can get with midterms coming up so soon, right?"

He sighed softly and nodded again reluctantly. "Yeah, okay, Mom."

* * *

Yugi woke up late and still exhausted. He blinked tiredly, rubbing at his eyes, and cut a sideways glance at his alarm clock. He already knew he had missed some school but he wanted to know how much. He cringed, eyes widening, and his throat burned as heat flooded his skin and made it bright red with an almost feverish gleam. The school day was half over, he realized, swallowing hard. His mom was going to kill him when she found out—if she wasn't already upset and waiting. She might have been waiting to see if maybe he would attempt to run or come out and admit it to her.

He rubbed his eyes and swallowed against the dry pastiness of his mouth, the most common side effect of his medication. Tiredly he pulled his sheets back, rolling his shoulders and listening. The house was oddly quiet and for a moment he didn't think he even heard the employees moving around to help any animals. Maybe they had all gone to the main clinic, moving animals out or something. He didn't remember any of the animals needing immediate care any longer. None of them had required emergency services or constant watch and hourly doses of medication so he didn't think any of them needed to be there. It was possible his mom had assumed the same and so they had all been moved to the main clinic and maybe that gave him the perfect opportunity to make a break for class without his mom knowing.

The thought was extremely exciting, until he remembered slowly that the school called to report any absences. The voice recording would tell exactly which classes he had missed, and Chono would take delight in reporting his skipping class to his mom. She would love to paint him in a horrible light as a student. She had always loved taking the opportunity to make her students feel bad or making their parents punish them.

So he guessed it was better to just go out and face the music by telling his mom he had overslept rather than letting her find out from the school.

Yugi got dressed after a moment's hesitation, blinking at his reflection from the mirror hanging on the wall near the edge of his bed, and then headed for the kitchen. He cringed slightly when he saw his mom seated in the chair opposite of the hallway entrance. There were pictures spread across the table in front of her, and when he came closer, he could see his grandpa standing a couple of feet away and shaking his bowed head.

For a brief second he almost thought that maybe they were doing something like looking at possible boarding schools to ship him off to. Maybe his mom had finally lost her patience with him, with his grades and his nightmares, or his inability to help with the animals anymore.

He trembled at the thought and his eyes shot to the pictures on the table. Even upside down, he could tell that were of something far different from the various school buildings and brochures his mind had conjured up.

The tremble passed and Yugi tilted his head to the side. Was he seeing things again or was the image in front of him really what it looked like?

What the hell was he _actually_ looking at? His lip curled even as he continued eyeing the photos and a small grunt of discomfort escaped him before he could stop himself. His mom gasped, jumping like a startled cat, and his grandpa looked up with wide eyes. Yugi blinked slowly, looking at them and then at the pictures again. He still wasn't completely sure that what he saw in those shots was real or not but he still found himself staring and his mouth fell open as his mom began to scoop them up to put them away.

"No, wait, what are you—?"

"You don't need to see—"

"Kasumi, let him see—"

" _No_ , he doesn't _need_ to see them, Dad. His night terrors are already bad enough _without_ adding more, damn it!"

"I don't think they _could_ have more added to them," Yugi muttered, reaching out and managing to snatch one of the pictures from her now that she was distracted. Her head snapped towards him and her blue eyes narrowed furiously as he flipped the photo over and his mouth went dry. "Oh my god, what the hell is that?"

His grandpa blinked wide plum eyes and shook his head slightly. "A couple of teenagers on their way to an early study session in the library found the body in the quad this morning. They called the police and took some pictures before they were all escorted from the premises. The police came about an hour ago to see if anyone had any information and asked your mother about any animals that could have done something like that…"

Yugi wanted to scoff that no animal could have done something so gruesome but he knew of grizzly bear attacks. They were always violent and gruesome if they left any remains. But grizzly bears lived in North America and the bears in Japan may have been vicious but they had to be provoked to violence for an attack so terrible to happen. There was no zoo in Domino from which an animal could have escaped from. He had not heard of any animal escapes anyways.

"What did you say?" he asked after a moment, swallowing harshly.

His mom hesitated before sighing and glaring at the pictures in her hands. "I said that a pack of canines might have been able to do something like that but they would have to be a large breed and have rabies or particularly nasty temperaments. There are always bears and maybe wild boars if they were antagonized into attack," she answered quietly, glancing at him and narrowing her eyes in annoyance. She didn't want to talk about this; she knew already that Yugi was really asking about if she had said something about the wolf-dog. "There are also dholes but since they don't live in Japan, it's a bit impossible."

Yugi nodded and looked at the pictures closer. The body had been mauled to the point that it was almost impossible to identify even the gender. Its head was nearly stripped of any hair that had existed on its scalp, skull laid bare. Its throat was torn to a point where it was nearly decapitated, with only a single strip of sinewy skin to hold it together. The bottom jawbone had been torn away completely and only grizzled flesh, half-eaten away and its tongue lying feet away in ribbons. Its eyes had been gouged out and the entire left side of its face was torn open so that loose flesh hung in chunks and the bones were fractured and splintered where teeth or claws had ripped through it. What remained of its stomach had been shredded and the organs cut into strips of pale flesh that had been nearly shoveled out. The ribcage had been crushed and torn open, splinters of bone jutting from what little meat and skin it still possessed. The entire lower half of the body had been stripped of any muscle or flesh, with only pale bone to be seen, the ankles and feet broken while the left wrist had a full hole ripped out of it. The muscles were dangling like shredded clothing from a cracked and half-chewed wrist joint. The other arm had been tugged nearly out of the socket and twisted in a way that should have sent the elbow jutting out of its skin had it not clearly been completely shattered. The flesh was bruised darkly as if the veins had spread to fully encompass the range of the crushed bone.

He shuddered and put the photo back down, pushing it away with unsteady fingers. "Have they found out…?"

"Not yet, but they're closing down the schools for the next week in order to investigate and make sure that no one else is attacked."

"Oh…okay…"

Yugi blinked and his eyes widened as hi mouth grew dry again. His friends; it couldn't have been one of them, could it? He barely suppressed the urge to quake and vomit as adrenaline pumped through him and made his head spin. His stomach twisted violently for a brief second and his heart missed a beat, blood pounding in his ears. For a split second his head felt as if it was throbbing. He thought for a moment that the pounding in his ears had grown threefold. His eyes burned briefly, painfully, and his spine tightened, tingling as if with an uncontrollable itch. His shoulders ached with a brief pinch like a pulled muscle. He could, for a split second, see a twitch in his mother's lip where she was grinding her teeth slightly. He could see the way his grandpa shifted his weight in a faint movement. He saw the tiny sheen of sweat or possibly half-dried tears on his mother's face. He could see a stray black cat hair in the threads of her thick plaid sweater. The sensation of his adrenaline rush and the keener eyesight faded a moment later but still the pounding in his ears remained, quick and vibrant, staying at threefold its original speed.

His stomach twisted momentarily and he cleared his throat awkwardly. His mother and grandfather blinked at the noise. The elderly Motou tilted his head minutely as his grandson's cheeks took on the faintest hint of a blush. He had not wanted their attention like that. He scratched his wrist to get rid of the sensation of nerves he felt coming through him.

"I…I need to go call the others," he mumbled softly, spinning on his heel and racing for his bedroom as if something had bitten him. He could still feel his mother and grandfather's eyes on him before he shut the door behind him. He scrambled for the nightstand again, springing on the bed to grab it. He missed it when the mattress bounced him and had to grab it the second time he lunged for it. He nearly pulled the charger out of the wall but just barely managed to stop himself in time, breathing out in relief at having kept from damaging the delicate wire.

He unplugged it and dialed the second number on his speed dial, chewing his lip until it bled. The phone rang for a moment and Yugi nearly sobbed with relief when it was finally answered after what seemed like an eternity.

"Yugi?"

"Anzu." He breathed out a relieved sigh and reached up to run his hand through his hair. An awkward laugh left him after a moment and he swallowed thickly. "Oh thank the gods. _Fuck_. Did you hear about what happened?"

"Yeah," Anzu said softly, voice somewhat choked as if she had been crying moments before. He couldn't say he was all that surprised, however. The brunette had always been sweet and sympathetic. He remembered her bawling when her parents had accidentally hit a rabbit at the same intersection that the wolf-dog had been. It had taken hours to calm her down and they had had to have a burial service in her backyard. "I actually called earlier to make sure you were okay but your mom answered. She said you were still asleep…?"

"Um, yeah…I actually just woke up a few minutes ago," he admitted, cheeks heating faintly.

"Well, that's good—I mean that you're…actually catching up on your sleep. You're normally so…restless and exhausted."

Yugi scrunched his eyes up. This was so awkward. Why couldn't he ever just speak to her normally anymore? He always got so nervous and he knew just how much it showed. It was like a beacon or a neon sign hanging over his head to expose his crush on her. But…she often sounded just as awkward and fumbled with her words as he did. He wouldn't exactly claim that as proof that she liked him back, but it was somehow just as comforting.

"Yeah."

A moment of silence passed between them and Yugi bit his lip hard again.

"Have you talked to Jonouchi and Honda yet?"

"Uh, no, not yet—I…called you first."

" _Oh_. Well, thanks for thinking of me first," she mumbled and he could just imagine how red her cheeks must have been at the moment. The thought made him grin widely, proud and amazed. He loved it when he made her blush because her rosy cheeks made her bright blue eyes sparkle and her skin glow captivatingly. Her entire face lit up and easily made her the single most beautiful girl in the room. "I called them earlier but they were already talking to each other so I just figured that I would let them talk and then I would check on you again and see if you were awake yet."

"Oh, okay. I see." He nodded and awkwardly scratched the back of his head. What else was there to actually talk about? He didn't want to make her cry again by saying anything about the death so was he just supposed to thank her for her concern and tell her he would call her back later? How was he supposed to make small talk and light conversation with her when all he could think about was how awkward the whole conversation was and the dead body?

He almost wished his cell was a landline with one of those long coiled wires so that he could curl them around his fingers to work off some of his nerves. He thought that might have been one of the best stress and nerve relievers out there when it came down to it. He thought maybe it would have helped him think about something to talk about or give him the courage to ask her out. Maybe that coiled wire around his finger would have lent him distraction and let the words slip out more freely.

He waited for some topic of discussion to pop into mind, thinking only momentarily about autumn and winter. Holidays slipped into his mind—Halloween which he always spent with his friends, Thanksgiving which he only celebrated with Mr. Hawkins and Rebecca in the states, Christmas which they celebrated but not out of religion. But mostly he dwelled on New Year's, because that was always when he tried to work up the nerve to kiss Anzu. He thought that maybe he could use them for conversation but the words died in his throat before they even began to form. September was nearly over and none of them had plans, as he already knew. October would pass as it always did, but this time without celebration on the last day. November would faithfully follow suit, and then Christmas would come around and they would all exchange gifts. On New Year's Jonouchi and Honda would try to give him room to kiss Anzu and then ask her out. He already knew of all those plans; it was what happened between the holidays that mattered.

And, because he had no idea what would happen in those days between, he had no topic of conversation.

He turned away from the idea and chewed his nail. How long had both been silently listening to the other's breathing?

"Hey, Yugi, are you still there…?"

He covered his face with his hand. "Yeah, Anzu, I'm still here."

"Oh, okay, good, but I kind of have to go. My mom wants me to do my chores."

His cheeks heated furiously as he blurted out, "O-oh, okay, Anzu. I, uh, I'll call you later" and ended the call before he could stop to think straight. He stared at his phone stupidly, the length of time spent talking flashing at him as he swallowed hard. By the _gods_ , he had just _hung up on Anzu_.

The thought made his stomach twist with despair. At this rate, even if he did ask Anzu out she was going to turn him down immediately. With how stupid he had just acted, he would agree wholeheartedly. What kind of idiot hung up on the girl they liked like that? Yugi fought the impulse to cover his face and whine pathetically, beyond mortified by his own reaction.

He didn't think he had ever been this embarrassed and ashamed of himself before.

He almost wanted to vomit in distress. This had to be one of the worse mistakes he had ever made in his sixteen-year-long life. It ranked right up there with the tomcat that he had lost due to the hallucination he had been witnessing and the loss of the wolf-dog that might have about by the same means.

Yugi shook his head in jerk sideways movements and then narrowed his eyes and pulled his phone back to his face, blinking stupidly as he sorted through his contacts to dial Jonouchi's number. He swallowed hard, mouth growing dry and pasty once more, and then let out a soft sigh of relief as the blond happily greeted him with a boisterous, "Hey, Yug, did you hear what happened yet?"

He raised a brow. "Hey, Jonouchi. Yeah, I did—and you sound oddly happy about it."

"Eh, no one's happy about it," Honda's voice chimed in, making him blink in surprise. Right; Anzu had said that they were on the phone together when she'd called to check on them. He remembered now. "But we _have_ been trying to figure out who it was through process of elimination."

"How utterly morbid," he snickered, smirking. "I wonder why I never guessed you would be doing that. I shouldn't even be surprised."

"Aw, come on, Yugi, what else were we supposed to do? School is closed for a week because someone died and you _really_ didn't expect us to come up with ideas? No way, man. That's just _not_ possible for us _interesting_ people."

"Well, thanks for calling me boring, Jonouchi."

"Oh, please, I didn't call you boring."

"Uh, yeah, you kind of did," Honda snorted.

"Okay, well, I didn't come outright and say it. You two did. So you two think that Yugi's boring," Jonouchi announced with a triumphant tone to his voice. "I'm just _agreeing fully_ with the statement."

"You are _truly_ the best friend a guy could ever have," Yugi drawled sardonically. He rolled his eyes and wondered briefly if his mom and grandpa were talking and what about if they were. His mom didn't think that the wolf-dog had killed that person, did she? The small teen chewed his lip and swallowed hard at the idea. One wolf-dog—and with such a gentle temperament from what he had observed—could not have done something so disgusting, right? It didn't have such a destructive nature, especially since it was not a pure-bred dog—over-bred canines tended to slowly but surely lose their minds over a time-span of about three to five years but mutts had never had that issue. Wolves never had that issue, either, unless they had been infected with rabies. Maybe if the wolf-dog had contracted rabies and the disease set in like it would for the wild canine rather than the domesticated, it could have done something so terrible. He still highly doubted it, however, as he had the rabies epidemic in the first place. How was it possible for only those canines to be infected and no other animal?

"I know. I'm the perfect best friend."

He rolled his eyes again. "Your support is astounding," he mocked, once again wondering about the body. Was it possible for a _person_ to do that? Human cruelty was not something he had ever underestimated. As far as he was concerned, there were honestly no lengths that a person would avoid if they could kill a person in the first place. But it was clear from the photos that the body had been half-eaten rather than simply mauled. And the lack of maggots in the shots said something rather extreme and strange in itself, as if there were something unnatural about it all. The placement was rather odd as well but he was beginning to think that it was possible the killer would have wanted the body shown off to scare everyone at the school.

But the chest cavity had been emptied out and the organs mostly eaten. He knew that organs and bone marrow were the first things _all_ predatory animals went for. They were the most nutritious parts a carcass had to offer, so the evidence did suggest more animalistic qualities. But if it were canine the kill seemed almost too efficient and he had to wonder why it was that no one had heard the screams.

He shuddered, skin crawling violently, and shook his head jerkily. He didn't really need to be thinking about this. That was what the police were for. They could figure it out on their own and then everyone would know who the victim was and the species of the killer.

"Dude, no way is it one of them!" Honda said, drawing him back to attention and making him blink in surprise. "Those guys are _huge_! I don't think another person could take on one of them and live through it."

"Well, if they were bigger than them—"

"Are we…talking about the same Disciplinary Committee?"

Yugi cringed at the name, shoulders stiffening somewhat as he swallowed. The Disciplinary Committee was still a relatively new concept at their school. The members were all senior students about to move on to college and had formed the committee when they were freshmen. Yugi knew of them not through personal use of their services or interactions with any of the members—outside of them picking on him mildly in gym—but rather rumors and looks. All of them were identifiable by the identical armbands they wore on their upper left biceps and the muscle mass they all seemed to have. A lot of people thought they were all on steroids because they had the typical bodybuilder shape, like an upside down triangle of pure muscle.

He knew of tons of rumors about the committee. They circulated constantly among the other students at school. Most were about steroids and others more serious drugs like amphetamines and cocaine. Some people said that the reason they were so closely knit was because they had made a blood oath to be members—a rumor that was by far one of the most ridiculous he knew of. There was another that the leader—Ushio Tetsu, one of the guys who loved the most to pick on Yugi—had at first simply made the group with his friends but had eventually begun to drug their meals when they weren't looking and made them dependent upon it. Yugi had always found that idea to be somewhat amusing because, while Ushio was pushy and mean on a good day, he was hardly the type to drug someone. He would go with the direct route of intimidation because he was well aware of the effect he had on people. He was cocky and arrogant and he was not afraid to push his will on anyone he saw fit to.

It was probably why he loved to pick on Yugi so much, because he was always so quiet and tried to make himself as small as possible in order to avoid drawing unnecessary or unwanted attention to himself. Ushio liked to steal his uniform from his locker and throw it back and forth with the other three committee members in their class. Yugi wasn't one to truly argue, just to ask for it back and wait until they got bored with his inaction and finally handed it over. He was probably like the mouse to Ushio's cat and so the committee leader liked to force him into play, viewing him as a piece of prey he took delight in messing with.

"Well, yeah, but there are _totally_ people who could kick their asses," Jonouchi said loudly in his ear.

"Oh, yeah, like _who_?" Honda scoffed.

"…Well…Jackie Chan," the blond mumbled uncomfortably, nearly smothering the name.

" _Huh_? _Jackie Chan_?" Yugi and Honda both crowed in unison.

"Don't you _care_ bring my movie hero into this, Katsuya. I'll kick your ass, man."

"Yeah, you can't just bring a _legend_ into this. He's too awesome to want to murder a teenager anyways."

"Wait, has he ever even _been_ to Japan?"

"Ah, so you're finally asking the really questions, huh, Yugi?"

"It's a legitimate question! I want to know."

" _Guys_!" Jonouchi complained, his voice frustrated from having been bulldozed from the conversation. "It doesn't _matter_. I was just _saying_ that he _could_ kill them if he wanted to. Not that he _would_ , but he definitely _could_."

"Well, yeah! He does his own stunts and he's somehow _not_ dead. So, yeah, he definitely _could_ if he needed to."

"Wait a second there, Yugi. Did you _threaten_ to kick my ass before?"

"Err…um…n-no?" he stammered, cheeks flushed.

"And say 'man'?"

" _No_ , I never said…shut up."

Both of the other teens burst into laughter, making his cheeks heat further and his ears begin to take on the same deep hue. Today was just turning out strange and awkward and just plain annoying. The embarrassment of it all was enough to make him want to bury his face in his pillow and groan unhappily. It made him want to vomit with nerves but he held off, instead listening more closely as their laughter began to die away.

"We should make a list of people," Honda said excitedly, his voice making Jonouchi snicker softly. "Then we can mark them off as the victim."

"That's…disgusting," Yugi muttered, rolling his eyes. "Why the hell would we do that? And how are we actually going to cross of the names in the first place? Are we going to visit everyone at their houses and do a head count?"

" _Head count_ ," Jonouchi laughed, his voice making Honda crack up in response. "I can't believe you just _said_ that!"

"Wait, what are you even—?" He smacked his palm against his face, groaning softly. He hadn't meant to make such an awful pun. "That's _not_ funny, guys! Stop laughing at that. It's not even slightly funny!"

"Oh, come on, Yugi. It was a little funny! You didn't even think it through and then that pun came out!"

His face burned and he shook his head with a sigh. " _Seriously_ , guys."

"What? You're the one that said it!" the blond laughed loudly. "And it's even better because you didn't even _mean_ it!"

"That has to be one of the _best_ things that has ever come out of your mouth!" the brunet chimed in. " _Only_ you, Yugi, _only_ you."

"It's not funny!" he protested again, a whine creeping into his undertone. The other two continued cracking up, almost appearing to ignore him, and he huffed, bringing a thumbnail to chew on and swallowing hard with a shake of his head. If he hadn't known them so well that he could tell they were trying to deflect some of their initial fear of the entire situation, he would have thought them completely callous. But he knew how often they had to joke around when it came to things like this.

Jonouchi had always been something of a superstitious person and always distinctly fearful of things like murders and the gruesome details that came with them. He had an iron stomach when it came overeating but could not even stand to see real blood and gore in horror movies never failed to make him pale and break into a cold sweat.

Honda's fear in situations was based more on the need to know that all of his friends and family were safe and well. He had always tried to be the one that could keep them all calm and levelheaded fin bad situations, the one that kept them out of trouble and from getting hurt in some way. He was, in no uncertain terms, the leader of their group. He was a natural-born authority figure, with a drive that would put almost everyone to shame. He was highly protective of them all and keen on keeping them all safe. So a murder on the school campus would have set him on edge.

"It's _hilarious_ , Yugi," Honda continued laughing, making him huff again. "But, anyways, I still say we try to figure out who it is. We can all get together at the arcade and make a list of possible victims by naming who comes to school early a lot of the time and the reading club that always goes there early and the sports clubs. There's also the _staff_ to think about—janitors, principal and assistant, librarians, and the security guards."

"Wait, how the hell do you even _know_ all of that?" Jonouchi asked in a voice that was slightly high-pitched with disbelief. "I mean, you're a nerd but even this is a bit of a stretch to know about, don't you think?"

"Oh, you're so funny, _Jonouchi_. So _terribly_ funny. To answer your _stupid_ question, I help out in the office during my final class, remember? I get to see when they clock in whenever I do the paperwork. They're _really_ strict about making sure each of the teachers get in on time. They all come in at almost the exact same time every day—"

" _Nerd_!"

"Oh, shut the hell up. At least I actually _know_ how to use my brain. I bet you actually _would_ have gone around doing a head count."

"No, I…" He trailed off, grumbling under his breath and making Yugi roll his eyes with a smirk. Jonouchi really did suck at planning things. He knew without having thinking about it that he really would do that if no one pointed out the faults in the idea. " _Whatever_. You're still a nerd, Honda."

"Well, at least I'm not completely _brainless_."

" _Guys,_ come on, no arguing." He paused, biting his lip briefly and swallowing hard as they fell silent, waiting for him to continue. Yugi pursed his lips momentarily, listening to his mom and grandpa moving around in the kitchen beyond his closed door. "I actually _am_ kind of curious about it all, though. We could really meet up at the arcade and make that list. It would be kind of fun, actually…in a morbid kind of way."

"We don't have to invite Anzu, too… _do_ we?" Jonouchi voiced hesitantly after a moment of silence.

His cheeks burned with indignation on the brunette's behalf. "Why wouldn't we?" he demanded, heat creeping into his tone.

"She's just going to lecture us about it with that holier-than-thou attitude she always gets when she doesn't agree with something we're doing."

"Jo, stop whining. Yugi, don't even bother arguing with him about this. It doesn't matter."

The small teen ducked his head in momentary embarrassment and chewed his cheek. Both of them knew exactly how fierce he got at times when Anzu was brought up in a conversation in any way that was unflattering. But they all also knew how sometimes Anzu and Jonouchi just wound up butting heads violently at times. Anzu was always put off by the blond's more blunt words and crass humor and Jonouchi always felt that Anzu was silently judging him and marking him as inadequate and not worth her time.

Honda was always the one to diffuse any growing situations when they began to arise while Yugi watched almost mindlessly, wishing he could stop them but not wanting to be drawn into the argument. He wasn't made for confrontation and it really showed in moments like this.

"Well, it's _true_!" the blond snapped indignantly. "That's all she ever does and you both know it! She just lectures us because she doesn't _agree_ with what we're doing."

"I said _shut up_."

Yugi cringed at the cold tone, biting his lip until it bled again. He realized immediately that Honda was going to give Jonouchi an earful if he didn't stay quiet now. He would snap at him to keep his opinions to himself just because they both knew about his crush on her. He knew for a fact that not only would he make the blond feel miserable for doing so, but then he would let him say it as much as he wanted when they were alone. It was only Yugi hearing it that made them argue now.

"Fine, whatever." The blond sighed irritably into the phone and the small teen bit his lip harder, cringing at the harsh metallic taste that flooded his tongue immediately with the action. "Are we going to the arcade or not?"

"I don't see why not. I'm curious about who we can come up with. What about you, Yugi?"

"Yeah, sure. I want to see, too. It's interesting to think about what we might come up with…"

"Ignore Jonouchi. If you want to ask Anzu to come, then do it."

"I don't think she would want to anyways. It's…kind of morbid and she's usually against that kind of thing. She gets enough of it at home," he mumbled, getting to his feet again and listening to the other two Motou's as they continued moving around. He could hear their voices but not what they were saying, and he had to presume it was about him, because they rarely fought about anything else. It was mostly about his medication, however, so it thankfully didn't always seem to be about _him_ so outright. "I'll meet you guys at the arcade in a few minutes."

"Sure, Yug, see you then."

"Bye."

"Yep, bye guys." He hung up, listening a little closer, and then licked his lips as he wondered if maybe he should ask Anzu if she wanted to come anyways. He didn't really see a reason why not to except that she had chores she was doing. Her parents would probably still let her go with them, though; especially if it was her dad that she asked. He had a soft spot for her and his job as a detective often made him more sentimental about letting her do things that she wanted.

But then, he already knew that she would be absolutely disgusted with the reason behind their get together. She wouldn't want to even know about it. Besides, how was he supposed to call her again after what had happened earlier? He'd hung up on her and he doubted asking her about helping list off names of potential victims was the right way to make it up to her. His cheeks heated and he bit his lip. What was the right way to apologize for that?

Was there even a way to do that? Or were they just supposed to pretend it had never happened in the first place? But what if they started dating and she decided to pull that up during an argument?

He blinked wide eyes, cheeks beginning to burn again. He had to be over-thinking this, right? Or did girls really have memory like elephants? Did they remember everything they said and did and everything said and done to them? He shook his head sharply to turn away from the train of thought he already knew was coming.

He already knew he was thinking far too hard about this. The memory thing had to just be a rumor of some kind—although, then again, it always seemed that way with his mom. She always seemed to retain any bit of knowledge that she was given. Yugi thought that she must have been the personification of that idea.

He really just hoped that Anzu wasn't like that. He hoped she had slightly faulty memory so that she never brought it up again.

Yugi hurried out of the room before he could stupidly make himself panic and obsess over the entire situation all over again. He didn't glance towards the kitchen aside from making his way into the living room to put his shoes on and head for the hallway again. Both of his guardians looked up in surprise and confusion, eyes widening as he stopped short where he was standing and turned to them in response.

"What?" he asked, tilting his head and casting a quick glance down at his sneakers to make sure that the laces were tied. He blinked and raised his eyes to their faces again in absolute confusion. They were tied, even double-knotted. He nearly sighed in relief. He had originally assumed their stares of surprise had to do with the fact that they were untied and he might trip over them at any time. If he did, he'd awkwardly pop back up and tell them that he was okay, then quickly tie them and feel stupid. But he'd never tripped over them. He'd run to school with them completely untied and not noticed until it was pointed out to him.

"Where are you going…?" his mom inquired slowly, blue eyes narrowing slightly.

He blinked. "Oh! Yeah, I guess I forgot to tell you. I was going to meet up with Jonouchi and Honda at the arcade."

The look that came over her face as soon as he spoke made his eyes widen drastically. He could see nothing but frank disapproval that clearly said she did not agree. "When did you decide this?" was said in such a cold tone that he barely suppressed a shiver. It was somewhat disheartening to know that what she truly meant was "Why didn't you think to tell me or ask before you decided this?"

He swallowed hard. "Um…a minute ago, actually. We just wanted to get together and talk a little at the arcade down the street."

His grandpa was watching them both with a somewhat startled expression, plum-colored eyes wide as his attention shot back and forth between them. Yugi could tell immediately that he was not about to play the peacekeeper between them, clearly uncertain himself with what he wanted to say or whose side to take.

"I don't think that you should go," she said with a firm shake of her head. "I don't want you leaving the house."

"What?" He blinked wide eyes and shook his head slightly. "What do you mean?"

"Yugi, someone at your school was murdered earlier today," his mom murmured with a sharp shake of her head. "I don't want you leaving the house today, Yugi."

The teen started to object but fell silent again. She was worried about him and no matter how he tried to argue, she wasn't about to back down. It would not make any difference to her at all that there were two others that would be with him. She was always protective of him and had never been open to willingly let him wander into any dangerous situation if she could prevent it.

Yugi wasn't one who was drawn to anything dangerous at any rate but sometimes even his instincts weren't great enough to allow him to avoid it all. And, if it was a rabid canine or an extremely aggressive bear, then numbers would not even matter. If it was the hybrid, it was most likely that it was more like the wolf than the dog considering its immense power and size, and that meant that the symptoms that domesticated dogs went through.

There would be no staggering and instead it would go straight for the throat of any potential threat—or anything that _moved_. The canine's natural strength would prove itself lethal to anyone without a weapon. Even _with_ a weapon, he doubted them able to defend themselves from the hybrid.

So he nodded at her instead, not wanting to argue. It was always refreshing when his mom showed such concern for his physical well-being; usually all any of them had to worry about was his medication and his grades. She had always trusted him enough to keep himself safe and out of trouble. Seeing such a rare display made him feel good at that moment.

* * *

Yugi picked at his nail with his teeth, ignoring the harsh sting that came when a hangnail was torn, and blood coated his tongue. His finger tingled with the ache he had given himself and when he breathed against it, the hot exhale made the sore pulse painfully. He pulled his finger away, looking it over, and watched as blood began to pool in his wound. It spread out to coat his nail and along the bottom of the bed, the cuticle highlighted in the deep shade. He watched it, slightly mesmerized by the sight of it, and then quickly stuck it back in his mouth to wash away the blood. The taste was sharp and nearly disgusting, somehow a lot stronger than he would have assumed. He could still smell it thickly in the air, sharp and metallic and disturbingly sweet.

The dulling sting of the torn flesh was a welcome sensation in that moment, however. It had to be one of the only things that had felt real in the last five days he had been stuck inside of the house. His mother had prevented him leaving each time he had even thought to mention it. There were continuous pleas and reminders of the murder—which truly he needed no mention of anymore. The police had interviewed each of them and checked the animals in both of their clinics for any signs of aggression or illness such as rabies. They had made it clear that they were to report any wild animals—they were really strays but the officer had referred to them as "wild pests"—that were admitted to the clinics.

Yugi was simply glad that the hybrid had not been sighted anywhere or wounded and brought back to the clinic. He was sure that if the canine came back at a time like this it would screw them all over. His mother would likely be put under constant surveillance due to withholding the fact that she had come across an animal that could potentially be the one that had killed the student. The fact that she had the blood work and DNA results and it was a hybrid would also be used against her.

They still had yet to identify them by any means. They claimed that it was a female and that was the furthest they had gotten. This lack of information gathered was why the police were cracking down in Domino and checking each animal as they were. A couple of animals had been caught in the mountains to check the health of—blood samples were taken for testing, skin was scraped, fur was plucked—the predators that lived there. Feral dogs had been caught but released again as had the bears that were tested.

The blue-violet-eyed teen continued sucking on his finger, momentarily enjoying the heightened taste his blood gave him. The tingling was almost completely gone, soothed away, and Yugi was disappointed by the realization. He hated the fact that it was leaving him, seeing as it had to have been the only thing that was even slightly new in the last few days. Being in the house and unable to leave or even step outside to breathe fresh air because of the police's constant annoying presence, he thought he might have been going insane. The air had grown stuffy and oppressive and it weighed down on his skin like a heavy blanket. His thoughts circulated back almost constantly towards the wolf-dog, the murder—he was honestly beginning to hope that it was some horribly demented person rather than an animal—and who the victim could possibly be.

Jonouchi and Honda had called him after he had texted to tell them he wouldn't be able to meet with them. He had expected them to be extremely unhappy with him but had been pleasantly surprised when he found that they were fine with it. He supposed that it was a testament of how well they knew his mother considering how easily they had taken the decision. They knew as well as he did that if she put her foot down there would be no negotiating.

She had never been one to have her mind changed when she had it set. She was like a pit bull in that way, with tenacity that was unmatched, and all of his friends knew better than to question her. So they didn't attempt to call her and try to make her agree as they would have Honda's and instead had contacted him to tell him who they thought it was.

Well, _actually_ , it was more of who they _hoped_ it was out of the school's three major pests—Insector Haga, Dinosaur Ryuzaki, and Kokurano.

Haga was an extremely annoying bug fanatic who constantly brought insects up whenever he got the chance. He often cut into class time during biochemistry to talk about them. Whenever a school event came up, he would point out any bugs around them. Haga was honestly the bane of a lot of students' existence. Even the very sight of him made most people cringe and grit their teeth.

He wore massive circular glasses that made his eyes look three times as large as they should have been, with a black horned beetle serving as its bridge. His hair was a bright turquoise cut in a bowl fashion, and when he was not in school and in uniform, he dressed in a way that honestly reminded Yugi of that animated child explorer he saw on a baby show. He wore shorts that were too small and a tuxedo shirt with a large red bowtie beneath a bright, disgusting yellow-green collared jacket that made his head look massive.

Ryuzaki was Haga's best friend. He, like Haga, apparently had no idea when to draw the line with conversations about dinosaurs. He blabbered on and on about them continuously even if they had nothing to do with the conversation. During biochemistry, he actually asked if there was a way to make _Jurassic Park_ a real thing and held the entire class an hour longer than necessary just to argue with the teacher about the possibility. Yugi could—much to his own disdain—remember almost each word he had used to make his argument. Ryuzaki was just as disgustingly annoying as Haga but he at least made the conversation somewhat exciting by arguing about _Jurassic_ _Park_ almost without pausing to take a breath while the bug fanatic drawled about little-known facts.

And while Haga dressed almost like the little brat in those baby shows, Ryuzaki at least dressed in a way that was a little bit like what was considered usual for a teenager. Usually Yugi could find him in his signature out-of-school outfit of a dark forest green button-up shirt with a tan vest and brown khakis. Yugi had seen his hair dyed several times, with streaks of red in black shoulder length hair to its natural silver streaks set against dark reddish-brown that bordered on black. He honestly liked Ryuzaki for the most part, because sometimes his conversational skills were actually worth the interest that was put into listening.

Kokurano was the school's self-proclaimed psychic. He was always at school early giving fake fortunes that he knew were simply statements that should have been common sense. He had several group of girls that swooned and worshipped him. He wore a cloak that Yugi was sure held all of his false fortunes taped to it. He had two necklaces of massive plastic beads colored dark blue and royal purple and a bright fuschia star in the center of a faded periwinkle headband. His hair was on odd silver color that sometimes looked purple and fell in greasy clumps to rest at near shoulder length. He always had a black button-up sweater with shiny yellow brass beads and dark blue skinny jeans and no teacher had managed to actually enforce the dress code on him.

He was, to put simply, the one that Yugi would not have minded being the victim. He was nasty all the time as if he thought he were too great to mingle with them, he took money he did not deserve, and he often ogled Anzu when he thought no one saw. Yugi could have easily overlooked that if it were not for how he treated everyone and so blatantly stared at girls as if they were objects for purchase. Many people hated Kokurano for the same reason that some cared to even have him open his mouth.

Yugi honestly hoped that none of them had died. He would rather that no one had been killed in the first place, but what other way was there to truly deal with it? None of them wanted to consider that it could possibly be one of their friends, whether they were close or simply mutual. Joking about it was so much easier than considering the truth of the situation.

He looked his finger over again, wondering at the fact that it did not bleed again even when he pushed on it to produce more. He did not feel more than a brief sting at the sensations and pushed his lips in obvious disappointment. He wished that there was more to the little wound.

Maybe it was the lack of sleep that made him feel that way. Or maybe it was the way that the walls seemed too close together or the air too thick. Perhaps it was the lack of exercise because he was so used to having room to move around, whether at school or home. He had no idea what it was that set him off more but he knew it had to be one of these.

It had to be because he knew of nothing else that would result in the constant almost paranoid uneasiness. Even when his terrors were at his worst, he had never gone and suffered through such a strange sensation or felt his muscles lock beneath his skin and refuse to relax completely. There was always that strain like he had pulled a tendon and his bones ached steadily when he moved a certain way.

He always had to battle the urge to glance over his shoulder when he was alone. The hairs on the nape of his neck were seemingly locked in an eternal bristle that made his skin tingle and tighten almost to the point of pain.

He looked his nails over again, curious about the state of them where he had chewed them each to the nubs. He could still taste blood on his tongue and the lingering scent of it in the air was hardly there but still somehow strong enough to make his head swim briefly. His mouth watered faintly and his stomach churned momentarily as his eyes studied the jagged lines that had once been far better well-kept and almost admirably so. A tendon on the back of his hand twitched beneath his skin almost painfully before settling again and Yugi barely suppressed the urge to flinch at the sensation. It was the familiarity of it that made him react more than the actual brief prick of pain, the way that he had actually grown expectant of its arrival and often enjoyed it in passing.

The lack of movement made his head throb faintly with a stressful twitch of muscle in his temple and his right brow. It came almost in tense waves and always left him with the desire to run around.

He could already feel one coming now and jumped to his feet in an effort to rid himself of it rather than suffering through it. He listened briefly for his mom and grandpa moving around but heard nothing as he headed for the living room to slip his sneakers on. They must have been asleep or something, which made him immediately wonder what it was in the first place.

He hesitated in the staircase, listening again, and then threw the door open with a swift, silent twist of his wrist before heading quickly down the steps to the second door and relaxing noticeably. The animals in the crates—two Shiba Inus and one chihuahua—perked up as he shut the door and Yugi felt his lips tugging into a grin as some of the pressure that had formerly strained his muscles began to alleviate.

Despite the small bit of dim cold blue-white moonlight coming from the window, Yugi could see them clearly in their kennels. The chihuahua was trembling with exuberance as it spotted him, wagging its tail until the metal walls shook like a vibrating phone. The female Shiba Inu yipped once and the male beneath her yawned as he stretched in a leisurely fashion in his cage. He could see the small glint of the light where it hit their groggy, dilated pupils.

Yugi had yet to be around the three of them alone, having stayed far away from any of the animals ever since Sesame had nipped him. Seeing them now, how relaxed and excited they seemed, he almost thought they would begin growling and snarling angrily as he got closer. He waited expectantly for the atmosphere to change and the muscles along the blades of his shoulders tightened in anticipation of it all. A long minute passed before he finally flicked the light switch and waited for the bulb to slowly transition to its brightest. He watched them closely, waiting, but somehow the three small canines remained happy to see him. Each of them was wagging their tails and Yugi could see that the ginger male was trying to pull himself up on two broken forelegs.

He smiled at the sight, the way he simply refused to remain lying down and tried again to jump up and waddle towards him. Yugi moved to its cage door, turning the handles of the locks and pulling them out of place in order to hold a hand out for the Shiba Inu to sniff. He bit his tongue to keep from snickering at the sensation of warm air ghosting over his open palm, still extremely alert and cautious. The incident with Sesame the week before had not been an accident. And he was not looking forward to repeating the experience. But he was also well aware that this was perhaps the opportunity he had been looking for to see if the wolf-dog's scent had finally somehow faded from his clothes.

A rough pink tongue passed over his palm after a moment and Yugi reached inward to grasp his sides and pull him out. He was about eight months old and heavily malnourished after weeks of being on the street. He'd been horrified when his mom had first mentioned it to him and he'd almost impulsively gone downstairs to see. But it was that same day Mr. Hawkins had visited and it had been distressing to think of being bitten a second time.

But who in their right minds could have abused and abandoned such a sweet, beautiful puppy like this? The idea that someone could do that—to any animal—had always made him sick.

He pulled him into his lap, running his hands over both tiny triangular ears, and made a soft kissing noise. The canine squirmed and attempted to run its tongue over his chin and jaw, shaking with excitement. It was something of a funny image, because Shiba Inus had such dignified temperaments, with proud and no-nonsense attitudes, and really only the puppies had such softness to boast.

Usually by a year old they had grown to bear the signature keenness of their popular breed. It was why no breeder could claim that the canines were good for small children to grow up with. To pull on their tail was to get their teeth in retaliation. Yugi personally considered them to be more of a show breed rather than having much of a working purpose. They were best for older companionship than anything else as far as he knew, seeing as they were much more popular with elderly citizens of Japan such as Mr. Hawkins.

"Who's a good boy?" he cooed, making another kissing noise and getting to his feet with the puppy in his arms. He positioned him more comfortably, cradling his bottom and holding him closely to his chest with the forelimbs folded slightly to the side. They were all probably pretty hungry and he could guess that the pup's food was either canned or chicken that had been boiled and pulled from the bones.

He did know for sure, however, that he was eating solids now and taking oral medication instead of having to use an IV solution any longer. And that he was gaining weight a lot faster, which thankfully meant that he was healthy and did not have any deficiencies such as parvo or pancreatitis.

Yugi carried him along to the examination room, checking the time and then the charts for the three of them in the plastic sleeve that rested on the back of the door just beneath the window. His mom always put them there because of the lack of animals in the emergency clinic. He and his grandpa always found their files there before they even entertained the thought of helping.

The puppy was getting his casts off in only a handful of weeks.

Yugi wrinkled his nose as the little pink tongue passed over it again. "It's a good thing I came down here, huh? All three of you need to be fed in a few minutes, don't you?" he teased warmly, making another kissing noise and heading for the storage room for three cans of dog food and some shredded boiled chicken. The female had a small dusting of protein powder that was better absorbed in wet food and the chihuahua was recovering from a dental procedure. His medication was to be put in his water bowl which the wet food helped ensure he drank.

"Was Mommy going to feed you, hmm? Or Grandpa? Who do you like better?"

He snorted to himself in amusement, smiling happily as the puppy squirmed and tried to eagerly lick his face, tail wagging furiously and making his entire hindquarters quake and tremble in his arms. He had always kind of wondered what a puppy thought about, especially as it grew older and learned along the way. He knew that animals didn't think _quite_ like humans—if they could, he was sure that mankind would be _long_ extinct—but he was always curious to wonder how their thoughts changed.

Wild animals would always be tons smarter than their domesticated counterparts, but those canines and felines were still smart in their own rights. They could open their own cages and steal food, hunted and fought if it was needed, and almost every mistake they made outside of adolescence was nearly never repeated. They learned faster than people who had a knack for repetition of mistakes in order to figure it all out.

Was that only instinctual as it was always speculated or was it possible that they actually had some kind of more complex thought process that was equally balanced and ruled by ancestral and genetic laws? Was it possible that humans, in the process of civilizing the species, had lost that ability?

Yugi would not have been surprised. Most people refused to admit that they were animals in the first place.

"I'm going to feed you first," he announced, chuckling as the puppy licked his face more eagerly, "because you're an adorable little handicap."

He would have fed him first simply because he was the youngest and the other two were well away from his senior years, but it also helped that he was so cute.

"This wounded baby gets to be spoiled some, with expensive wet food and chicken. _Damn_ , little boy, you eat better than me." He hummed as he carried him back to the kennel; the puppy would be able to walk when he set him down again. He could walk around stiffly, limping softly because of the casts, now that he was more fully awake. "Spoiled, spoiled, spoiled."

He placed the pup down, still holding the three large cans and small container of chicken. The Shiba Inu made a dull thudding sound as it moved with its casts and a loud clicking as its back nails hit the tile. He couldn't hear the gentle panting as it tried to chase him, but he knew regardless that was what was happening. Despite the weight of the casts, the puppy was probably under his feet already as he grabbed the bowls from the cabinet that made up the bottom of the reception desk. They kept only the clean ones in the front for him to easily access in order to feed them before he went to school. There was a drawer above a small empty cubby that held some forks, spoons, and a handful of can openers for easy access. There was a small bin next to the desk for him to drop the bowls and silverware that his mom would take to clean almost immediately after he started for school.

For fuck's sake, did hyperosmia grow stranger if you were paranoid or inactive or something?

He narrowed his eyes, shaking his head minutely, and marked it as another reason to hate the stupid condition. At this rate he didn't even care if that thought was realistic, just that his nose was burning and he hated it. He would blame anything right about now—paranoia, inactivity, the dog food, the air, the lights, weariness, the dogs themselves; anything at all if it only presented itself.

He listened to it plop into the metal dish forkful after forkful, and flattened it out somewhat with the utensil, opening the small plastic container to drop some of the shredded chicken on top of it. He mixed it, ignoring the sound of his grandpa closing the door behind him, and set it down on the floor next to the malnourished pup.

"I wasn't expecting you to be awake…"

"I couldn't sleep." He sidestepped the small canine and allowed it more room to maneuver and dig in fully. "Were you going to feed them tonight then?"

"That was the plan…"

Yugi dropped the other two cans of food into the metal bowls and pulled out three more dishes to fill with water from the tank resting against the wall, nestled between the desk and kennels. "You could still help me feed and water them," he mumbled, glancing up at him and holding out one of the bowls for him. His grandpa was momentarily still but then moved forward quickly to take it from him.

Yugi wondered curiously at the hesitation but did not question it, instead letting him place the bowls for the other two canines while he mixed the oral medication for the female and checked on the small puppy still happily munching on his food. He was just happy that his mom had left all of the needed material and medication for him to take care of them. He knew it was mostly routine that had made her do this but it was comforting nonetheless.

"You smell like basil," Yugi commented after a moment, narrowing his eyes into slits for a split second before looking at the puppy again. The canine was licking his bowl clean and running his tongue over his lips happily. He put the water down next to the bowl, smiling as he wagged his tail and nearly threw his face straight into the dish.

"Do I?" He glanced up as the elderly Motou sniffed his fingers curiously. "Huh."

"And vanilla." Yugi paused and leaned against the desk for a moment, watching him closely and sniffing deeply once. "There's also cinnamon…and chocolate. And I _believe_ there _might_ be something like lemon and possibly peanut butter…"

"I made lemon tea and had a sandwich before I came down here…"

"So the vanilla, basil, chocolate and cinnamon are…what, hidden around for me to find again?"

His grandpa's moustache twitched with amusement as his lips pulled back into a small grin, eyes twinkling briefly. "You seem to need the distraction, though I was going to save it for tomorrow morning or whenever you woke up," he explained.

He tilted his head. He could definitely use some kind of distraction. He was too wired and his mind too tightly packed with his obsessive thoughts. He was too lost in the way his mind refused to slow and his thoughts shaken. He had no more nails left to bite. There was nothing else he could do to push away some of the tension and the unease in his muscles. But Yugi had to be frustrated with the comment as well, especially since his grandfather had feigned surprise upon seeing him awake. He knew he was restless and unhappy. So he would never have been surprised to see that he was downstairs with the dogs. So why had he even bothered pretending?

"Are the vanilla and chocolate extracts or chips?" he finally mumbled.

"Extracts."

The scent was far stronger and more concentrated to the point that it was overpowering and nearly confusing to try to pinpoint. It was, more or less, like trying to find a spot where a dog or cat had peed. And he had the feeling that he had placed the two extracts close by so that their smells overlapped completely in an effort to confused him more fully.

"Cinnamon sticks or ground?"

"Stick—and the basil is a small leaf."

He tilted his head. "Just one?"

"Just one."

 _Interesting_. He was using one stick of cinnamon and leaf of basil. It was a bit different and definitely made it a tiny bit more strenuous a task when he went hunting for herbs like this. But the challenge was welcomed wholeheartedly.

"All right," he murmured, grabbing the medicated water dish to place in front of the female, smiling as she bounded forward to lick his hand first before happily lapping up as much liquid as she could. "Anything else to search for? No lavender or rosemary or anything like that?"

"Not at all. There are the extracts, the cinnamon stick and the basil leaf," he announced, nodding in approval towards his grandson's thoughtful expression. Yugi was questioning the truth of the statement, not at all taking his words at more than face value. He was intuitive and seemed to know without much thought whenever someone said something that was not entirely true. He had always appreciated that about his grandson.

He was not naïve but he was always willing to give the benefit of the doubt whenever he was given the opportunity. He usually had a great insight into things but other times he tended to ignore it in order to find something worth liking in a person or some kind of truth in a lie. He was too nice in that way, and Yugi was well aware of his own faults but he seemed to be unable to balance them when he needed to.

Yugi was sniffing. It was unconscious and nearly unnoticeable, but he could see it. He was breathing in deeply, slowly, almost as if he were asleep. His eyes had become partially hooded and darkened, analyzing the smell in the air without even truly meaning to. His head very slowly tipped to the side fractionally and then he straightened again abruptly. He knew that the teen was not even aware that he had done so, the action and analysis taking only a split second for him to determine what he wanted to know.

"You did something with the peppermint," he commented, plucking the puppy from the floor and glancing at the leashes on the wall. A walk before he did this test might be a good idea, bordering on great. He could really only smell the slight scent of basil beneath the sharper extracts and the heaviness of the gravy-coated turkey from the cans. And those smells, mixed so completely as to disgust anyone with the misfortune of breathing them in, were just too much to deal with if he did not get clean fresh air between inhales. He wrinkled his nose to shed some of the lingering burn it left in his nostrils.

"I _might_ have," he teased, smiling as Yugi glanced at him before heading for the leashes. "Do you want help walking them?"

"If you could walk them that would be really helpful," he said distractedly. Where had his mom put the plastic sleeves to protect his casts? It was too late in fall for him to risk walking him without them. He wouldn't let the casts get wet with morning dew if he could prevent it. The fastest way to get his legs infected was to do that.

"His covers are in the cabinet above the bowls."

"Oh, okay."

He found it almost amusing to watch him as he cradled the small canine. He looked, for a moment, almost as if he were holding a newborn infant. He had the puppy against his chest, its small head against his ribs to listen to his heart and feel his pulse. His chin rested against its tiny cheeks, and its hindquarters were supported in a way that made it look almost as it might have had its mother been carrying it by the scruff.

When he crouched down to pull the drawer open, his knees were bent in such a way that the puppy rested against his thighs comfortably, cushioning it as he grabbed the sleeves. The entire time he moved, he sat crisscrossed and settled it between his legs to pull the sleeves over its short forelimbs, and he once again looked like a parent dog. He kept it nestled in his lap, refusing to let it pull away and wander from his sight, and was constantly giving it playful glares. He tugged the plastic over to tie the velcro straps at the top of the casts, adjusting them to settle perfectly and hold them each upright. He looked—to his grandpa, at least—as if he were a parent, child held between his arms to be bathed.

"Can you get me his leash and collar please, Grandpa?" he asked, glancing over his shoulder at him briefly before turning back. "Do you want to go for a walk, little boy? You can pee on _all_ the trees and bushes and be the _king_ over here."

He was chuckling at Yugi's cooing when he returned with a red nylon collar and a black leash. His grandson glanced up only to wrinkle his nose at him before taking the two items from him with a soft thanks. The puppy flattened its ears against its skull and its brown eyes grew wider in unhappiness as Yugi pulled the collar closer to its neck. Its tail fell completely and for a moment it looked terrified, completely undone by the sight of it.

Yugi thought that was understandable. Dogs may have been beautifully loyal and willing to do anything for their owners, but strays—especially abused ones that might have come to know a leash or collar in a way that it was not intended to be used for—were always wary of them.

They were always scared and suspicious and the older the canine was, the higher the risk of getting bitten became. Most strays could not even be put in muzzles and attacks could be vicious and nearly deadly if the person handling them was not well-prepared to deal with it. People had the idea that dogs had no sense of memory but traumas such as living on the streets or being abused was not something that they forgot. Nor were the lessons they learned while they were growing older. Most people didn't take such things into consideration or even considered that their memory spanned longer than all of five minutes.

"Who's going to be the little king of Domino?" he cooed again, relieved when the puppy's ears perked momentarily. His tail stayed down, his eyes still extremely wide, and his ears flattened again immediately when the collar snapped to a close around his neck. The Shiba Inu whined softly in discomfort and Yugi thanked every deity he knew of that he didn't let out the signature high-pitched scream his breed was so well-known for. "You're going to pee on _everything_ and all the other doggies are going to bow down to you."

"He's going to pee all over the floor and miss his chance if you don't hurry," his grandpa teased in amusement, smiling widely when Yugi wrinkled his nose at him and turned away again.

"Don't listen to him, little boy. Grandpa's just a jerk who likes to put little puppies like you down because he's jealous of your adorable face and youthful features," he said to the small dog, getting to his feet with the leash around his wrist and the canine balanced in his arms again. He still wasn't happy with the collar around his neck or the leash attached but Yugi at least hoped he would perk up while they were outside. Walking him with such a miserable expression would break his heart even looking at him.

"You really like inflating dogs' egos, huh, Yugi?"

"It's not my fault it's the truth." He turned the lock on the knob and pulled the door open to head outside. He nearly sighed in relief at the beautiful chill of autumn night air that immediately bathed his skin. His cheeks tingled and the cold bit at his fingers lightly as he headed into the grass and slowly allowed the pup to settle on its feet and find its balance. He already knew he wouldn't be able to walk him too far with the weight of the casts that he knew was tugging at his energy. A larger dog would have been able to move a long distance and the strip of trees at the end of the street where it leveled out into a mall parking lot. This puppy wouldn't make it a quarter of the way a dog like Blankey or the hybrid would have.

He swallowed hard at the thought of the wolf-dog. A trickle of self-doubt and wonder crept down his spine like the touch of ice sliding along his skin. Again he was forced to wonder if maybe he had let the canine loose, if he had somehow missed the inconsistencies that warned of a hallucination again. He had to wonder about that gray substance that had appeared on the cage's door in the shape of the hybrid.

The puppy tugged gently on the end of the leash and Yugi stepped along to keep up with the small canine. The sleeves made a soft crinkling sound as it moved along, the plastic brushing together nearly forcefully with its new balance. He wondered briefly if he would have to hold its sides when it used the bathroom or if he would need to help support its weight as it tried to pee. Then again he supposed it might do as a senior would and spread its back legs into a forward crouch so that no limb had to be lifted. Dogs were always innovative like that, adapting nearly endlessly as was the gift of its wild ancestor, the gray wolf.

Wolves were possibly the single most widespread predators in the world before humans came into the picture. They had lived and survived in practically every area of the world on land, an apex predator that was highly adaptable and thrived in places no human ever could. They were highly intelligent and adapted well to new environments with a safe introduction and the smartest dog in existence would only be as keen as a wolf pup. The fact that they came from such a successful ancestor was a testament of how great dogs truly were, how much potential they truly had despite their various shortcomings due to breeding.

The Shiba Inu did exactly as he had guessed, squatting to pee rather than attempting to compromise its balance. Yugi watched him straighten again, shaking himself out briefly before looking at him happily, mouth opening to pant while his ears pricked and his tail wagged briefly.

"You want to go back to bed, little boy?"

But didn't he need to exercise some more? He hadn't even done anything else. Didn't he need to do more? Yugi was used to them using the bathroom several times when he walked them before school because they were almost always given high fiber and protein diets to help them gain and manage weight. They had to monitor their weight whenever they were in the emergency clinic, because most of the accidents treated within it required specific diets and their metabolisms made or broke their recovery. Puppies were more concerning due to how young and small they were and how easily they could get indigestion. They could wind up vomiting or with extreme diarrhea.

Yugi pursed his lips when the dog continued looking up at him happily and then scooped him up again. "You, sweet boy, need to go poop so we're going over to the tree line. And then all the dogs in Domino will recognize you as their little king," he murmured, nuzzling his ear briefly and lengthening his stride to move a bit faster towards the end of the street.

"Don't venture too far, Yugi."

"I'm just going to the trees. We aren't even going to go into it."

He thought it was lucky that his grandpa could hear well and didn't ask him to repeat or make him turn around to speak again. He was not really one for repeating himself or pausing when it came to the animals. Hopefully now that he was putting him near the trees and giving him more room or the more open and less marked area there would ease some nerves.

He was hoping that the canine would find the less heavily marked area to seem unlike he was invading another's territory and feel more open to relieving himself. He placed him down gently as he had the first time, loosening his grip on the leash to allow him more space to wander some. It was only a handful of inches but it was more like a mile for the small puppy.

The Shiba Inu immediately bounded forward, tail wagging wildly, and nearly threw himself off balance before catching his footing again almost effortlessly. Yugi padded along after him nearly silently, listening to an owl hooting in the trees further into the darkness. He watched the puppy as it sniffed the ground closely and waddled forward to satisfy some of it extreme curiosity.

He allowed it to wander further somewhat before it squatted again and glanced over his shoulder to see his grandpa talking softly to one of the dogs. Yugi narrowed his eyes to peer through his lashes and see what he was saying but his moustache managed to practically block out any chance he had of reading his lips, and he was not about to try his hand at listening to what he was saying. There were too many night sounds between bugs and a light rustle as a breeze pushed through the trees, the puppy moving around, and the soft purr of a passing car.

* * *

Petrichor had always had a pleasant smell to Yugi. It was one of the most natural and beautiful odors he knew of. There was the unnatural heaviness of cold asphalt heated by the warm rain that always made his nose wrinkle but beneath it were the tones of wet earth and blades of grass as sweet as when they were cut in the summertime. The light drizzle was refreshing against his skin, cooling his flesh as he tipped his head up towards the dark clouds and reveled in the way his scalp tingled with the sensation.

He kept his legs crisscrossed, leaning against the wall of the house and closing his eyes into the tiniest of slits. A light wind tugged at his clothes and he breathed in deeply, appreciative of the smells that greeted him. He was sure that the smell was far better in the woods beneath the trees, without the heaviness of asphalt and spilled gas or the onslaught of chemicals like car exhaust.

He watched the small strip of trees across the street from him, long lashes cutting a delightful shade in his field of vision. It was almost like looking through a thin film of gray, so light towards the bottom that the streetlight's illumination was still a rather solid yellow cast. The light breeze stirring at the leaves and grass made a soothing movement in his tired mind and the momentary urge to sway in time with the greenery.

Because of how relaxed he was he nearly missed the sight of something moving in the darkness.

He sat upright immediately, straightening and straining his eyes to see it all. The grass stirred, dappled shadows moving like dark-scaled serpents across the ground. Yugi felt his spine tighten, the muscles in the back of his neck twitching and quaking as if in an isolated shiver. His shoulders rose slowly, growing rigid in the way that they tightened and the muscles corded and grew taut beneath his skin, the gesture nearly defensive. He strained his ears, focusing every ounce of attention he had to give on the task of identifying the thing that had caught his eye moments before. He drew in a deep breath, holding it and attempting to sort through any underlying scent that he could catch. He opened his mouth into a narrow gap, exhaling and searching the trees again. All he could catch was the asphalt, the gas and exhaust, the sweetness of the grass. He drew in another breath through his mouth. His palate burned and tingled, briefly feeling packed and weighed down with the scent of the petrichor, the sensation spreading further in a creep towards the back of his throat.

The only difference that came with the new attempt to draw in any underlying scents was that his mouth felt stuffed as if with a wad of cotton. His tongue grew somewhat dry and pasty and his throat felt almost as if it had closed with the heaviness of the rain. He swallowed thickly, trying to flush out the dryness by forcing his mouth to water, and closed it again completely as he narrowed his eyes and peered harder.

He could see and hear nothing and the scent of whatever it was out there was heavily hidden and guarded away from his searching.

But he knew he had to have seen something. He might have suffered a moment of hallucination but he did not recognize but it could have been. He was used to visual hallucinations but they were always so much more elaborate than a simple movement in the dark. It would have been something like the trees becoming skeletons or the rain turning into thick droplets of blood. This had been nothing but an unnatural shadow passing through the darkness. He was unsure of even the shape of the thing that had made the movement and his stomach churned momentarily with uneasy tension.

His shoulders rose slightly once more, straining his senses again as his spine grew tighter to the point of pain, the muscles along his shoulder blades and nape of his neck bunching violently with a heavy twitch. His neck corded, aching beneath his skin dully.

He slowly moved his hand to the wall, pressing his palm against it and sinking his nails into the wood as he pulled himself slowly to his feet. Every part of him was on high alert now, tensed and confused as his instincts told him to run but an ingrained curiosity held him in place. A part of him was rooted to the spot, searching endlessly for anything that was unusual and could possibly be the source of the tension growing tenfold beneath his skin. He didn't step forward or back, staring straight ahead and watching as closely as he could in order to prevent being taken by surprise once more. If there was some kind of feral animal that was hunting and killing people then surely there was no room for him to hesitate or allow the chance to attack, right?

He really hoped that it was not an animal that was doing this. He didn't want it to be a person either but he had to hope that it was not an animal. It made far more sense that it was a person despite how inefficient bears were as killers.

Yugi spun around, every muscle in his body tightened and bunched beneath his skin, his skeleton aching sharply with the sudden movement. His eyes were wide, wild with the adrenaline in his veins, body still tense with a defensive air, and he wondered upon seeing his grandfather's startled face what he must have looked like.

"Are you all right?" the elderly Motou asked with wide, startled eyes. He looked past Yugi and into the tree line as well but his sight was too poor to see anything that could have remotely caught his attention. He could only see the darkness, blurs of deep gray and black where the grass and leaves twitched. Yugi had far superior eyesight, especially with his youth and attention to detail, something that his mother shared.

"Uh…yeah…" Yugi turned away again, eyes still wide as he looked around to see if there was another touch of movement to be found. Nothing was there but his body refused to relax and now he had to wonder if maybe the new higher strung tension in his system was now so abundant in his veins because now his grandfather was in the equation. His heart was pounding, blood pounding in his ears, his entire body was almost locked in place and he could already tell that his hands were shaking with the rush. He didn't think that he would have been so scared and tense if not for his grandfather being there. If he were still alone, he thought he would have remained completely still, searching and drowning in his fight or flight instinct and the need to answer his insatiable curiosity.

A brief, split second thought to explain himself was immediately gone again. He did not even entertain it for more than the fleeting moment that it took to pass.

"Are you looking for something?"

He blinked wide eyes, surprised that he could even hear such soft spoken words with the rapid pounding in his ears. "No," he mumbled, shaking his head and smiling faintly. "Just watching the rain. It's going to become a storm later."

His grandfather raised a brow, smiling at him with an amused twinkle to his eyes. "Do you smell it?" he asked curiously.

Yugi paused for a moment, biting his lip at the realization. When he had come outside it was because he had smelled the dampness of an oncoming autumn shower as Domino City was known for. His room, despite the window being shut, had been overwhelmed with the beautifully familiar smell. The scent had abruptly assaulted him while he was reading and looking over his history study guide and he had known immediately that it was going to be a slow growing thunderstorm of epic proportions. He had always had the ability to gauge storms and nearly the exact moment that they would strike; at first he had assumed that it was just intuition or instinct that had given him that ability but he was somewhat floored with the reality of the situation and the statement.

"Yeah…I guess so," he said quietly, still extremely thrown by the idea. Why had he never realized that himself? Why was it that it had never occurred to him? Were there other things he had assumed to be intuition and instinct that was information actually unconsciously drawn in from something that was so routine to him that he did not even realize it was happening in the first place?

His head snapped around, staring in confusion, stomach twisting momentarily as he blinked stupidly. He could see something there, but with the raindrops outlined with the golden cast of the streetlight it was hard to see anything. The shadows were too dark and the grass swaying too much to allow him to see the source of it. Or perhaps—if it was an animal—its pelt was too dark to see in the first place. Still he looked for any sign of it all, a chill of something almost like ice creeping down his spine with pure unease once more. He forced his shoulders to fall from where they had been raised fully to almost completely shield his throat. If it was an animal it would go for the jugular…but that was only if there really was something there in the first place and he was not just seeing things.

"Are you going to stay out here and watch it or go inside again?"

Yugi only noticed in that moment that his grandfather was in his pajamas. He blinked once, eyes widening momentarily before he bit his lip once more. "I'll go inside. I need sleep anyways." He feigned weariness, rubbing an eye and keeping his focus solely on the elderly Motou so that he would not see him glancing across the street again. He didn't need him to grow curious and look too.

When his grandfather was curious he would be completely focused on the idea of getting answers. He was stubborn and refused to let up when he truly wanted to know things and had multiple ways to find his answers. Yugi knew that he would not even think about it before crossing the street and searching for whatever there was to find. And if it was whatever had killed that girl in the quad, it would maul him before Yugi had the chance to even attempt to stop him or he could turn around to flee it.

Predatory animals were fast and most were efficient and knew multiple ways to make a kill. Felines could go for the throat or sometimes smothering them with their mouth over their prey's nostrils. Some dogs ate their prey alive, went for the throat, or left multiple puncture wounds so that they bled out. Bears tended to crush with their weight and tear into them while they were still alive, often inflicting more damage than necessary to kill and unintentionally prolonging their deaths.

"You didn't happen to set up another test, did you?"

"No." He paused momentarily, blinking and frowning. "Did you want me to?"

Yugi started to say that he wanted nothing more at that point. He needed the distraction, truly _craved_ it, but he realized immediately that he shouldn't say so. If his mother found out, he thought for sure that the first thing she would consider doing would be to have his night terror medication strengthened. And Yugi would avoid that at nearly any cost if he truly had the chance. He also wasn't entirely sure that he would be able to do that as constantly as his mind immediately supplied.

He had taken over an hour trying to figure out where the two drops of extracts had been placed, just barely realizing the vanilla came from the leg of the couch and the chocolate on a napkin discarded in the trash. Then there was the cinnamon stick that had been hidden in a desk drawer in the dining room, the basil in his pillowcase and the peppermint leaf under a pot underneath the sink. And it hadn't helped that he had circled those three rooms almost five times each in absolute confusion, thrown off by it all. The sharpness of the extracts had done well to help confuse him and throw him off balance as he had tried to pick his way along using those much softer scents as guides.

"No. I was just curious." He stretched his arms skyward, eyes focused on his grandfather, but his attention was on his peripheral. "Come on, Grandpa. You'll get sick if you don't go inside."

He scoffed, smirking in amusement and shaking his head when Yugi's face began to fall into a firm scowl. "You worry too much."

"I worry _just_ enough." He narrowed his eyes and made a shooing motion to force him back a step. "You need to change into your pajamas and go to sleep, Grandpa."

"Definitely your mother's child," he chuckled, turning around and starting back inside with Yugi behind him. Immediately the sixteen-year-old glanced over his shoulder, searching fiercely once more for anything in the dark. When nothing stirred he turned back, relieved to see that the elderly Motou had not noticed his hesitation. He fought away a smile at the thought, tucking his hand into his pocket while the other grasped the doorknob to pull it to a close.

A small shiver traveled up his spine and his fingers tingled momentarily as he shut the door. He didn't bother to glance back over his shoulder once more. He was sure that he had not missed anything in his failure to do so despite the strange sensation that had momentarily come over him upon touching the knots. He did, however, bite his lip and feel something of an urge to stop walking and stand still for a moment as if to absorb something around him. And he felt something burning into his shoulders, eyes boring into his skin.

He turned around only to switch the lock, ignoring the urge to once again try to see something that wasn't there. He guessed that maybe it was the darkness that had played tricks on him because it was fur from his typical hallucination. There was nothing in it that made him barely resist the urge to flinch or vomit as his mind always demanded of him. It only left him with this keen, tense uneasiness that he had known upon imagining the animal and his grandpa interacting.

"You wouldn't have lasted this long if I wasn't."

"You underestimate your grandpa."

"Just telling the truth." He pursed his lips momentarily, wondering once more at the identity of what might have been out there. He thought maybe a big cat might have been lethal but if they attacked and their prey kept its footing they were usually scared off by the idea. Dogs like pit bulls sometimes came at someone without warning due to breeding and they were a missile of raw muscular power that clamped into the inner tendons of the victim and tore through them to give them maximum blood loss. Bears were tanks that mowed you down almost immediately.

Wild canines like coyotes used wit versus strength and wolves used numbers, endurance, and the chase to inflict shallow wounds. But he knew a team of two or a loner were nothing to take lightly—they were more efficient and Yugi had seen one stop a buffalo six times its own weight during a hunt on TV. If it was the wolf-dog in question he thought it might be a far bigger threat than any of the wildlife that _did_ exist in Japan.

But then, there were still unverified rumors that the Hokkaido wolf, standing at close to the same size as the Siberian wolves they had descended from, still lived somewhere in the mountains. He sometimes hoped but highly doubted it was since they had been hunted to extinction during the Meiji period.

"You smart mouthed brat."

He grinned lopsidedly at the affectionate insult and stretched his arms out again, folding them behind his head. "Well, with _you_ as my grandpa, I think it's safe to say that we all know where it comes from," he quipped, glancing minutely at the cages before leading the way towards the stairs. He wasn't about to let his grandpa even look out the window again just in case. "Now go get changed and go back to bed, Grandpa."

"Yeah, yeah." He rolled his eyes and started up the stairs when Yugi opened the door for him. The teenager followed immediately after him, shutting it once more and shooing him up the steps as they stepped into the main hallway again. He snorted at the gesture, rolling his eyes a second time and smiling in amusement. "All right, go change your clothes and see if you can get some sleep, Yugi. You haven't gotten any rest besides that two hour nap earlier."

He thought it was unnecessary to tack that statement on in the first place considering he knew since it was something that involved him. But he also knew to consider how concerned his mother and grandfather were. His lack of steady sleep was an unnecessary strain on them despite how hard he always tried to hide it.

"Yeah, okay, Grandpa."

It was a tiny bit disheartening to realize he could not say anything else. He could not promise that he would get some sleep, only that he would genuinely try to do so. There was never any guarantee that he would actually manage to sleep or even settle enough to close his eye and relax as much as he needed to even close properly. He knew his grandfather noticed his inability as well, that his mother was keenly aware and probably thought about it more often than she needed.

"Night, Yugi."

He turned and wandered into his room, rolling his shoulders to ease the knot of locked muscle in the back of his neck. Pain spiked at the moment, trailing along the center of his vertebrae and making his shoulders ache and rise almost as if in defense once more. His left collarbone pulled taut and nearly immobile for a split second before relaxing abruptly, and Yugi bit his tongue with the need to alleviate some tension in his body. He narrowed his eyes faintly, glancing at his bed before kicking his shoes off. His spine loosened with the action, relieved to find that it did not take a million more efforts to do so.

Impulsively he threw himself onto the bed, rubbing his cheek against the rough cover of the comforter. Tiredly he glanced at the clock, relieved to see that it was not too late, and felt the chill of his wet clothes against his skin. He reveled in the sensation, resisting a purr of appreciation, whereas he would have usually been unhappy with the coolness due to the wet fabrics against his skin. Yugi resisted the urge to sigh loudly in approval, instead feeling the hairs on the back of his neck rising with a familiar seasonal anticipation. A crack of thunder made him jump, his muscles twitching and growing wired beneath his skin with pleasure.

Storms always made him happy, tense and pleased out of his mind by it all. The smell was always thick and wet, making his senses fill with it, the sound always immense, the room charged with electricity and his spine tingling with energy. One could taste sparks in the thickened air, bolts of it like the falling rain or heat rushing over the skin. The clouds were always so swollen with water that their underbellies were almost black in color. And the petrichor was always a reward in itself, powerful and enticing, and one could nearly taste the undertone of winter in the wind whenever it stirred. He could hear it whipping now, a low howl rising into the air with the velocity of it. The window shook in its frame and his head turned towards the sound, startled by the unfamiliarity of it.

He was used to harsh winds that whined and howled wildly but he had only ever heard the window quake when he was eight and a tsunami had happened in a neighboring city. Sitting up, he narrowed his eyes faintly and tilted his head as he listened to it more closely. The window shook again, making him pull himself upright on the bed and peer out of it as sharply as he could. His focus grew keener and it occurred to him as he looked it over that the steady shaking was not just the gusts from the growing thunderstorms. Large pellets of ice were barraging the glass with enough force to make it vibrate and rattle violently.

Yugi settled back on his haunches, watching the hail as it pelted the window, and listened to the sharp impacts, ears nearly ringing with the sound of it. Was there another tsunami? He did not think so, at least. That sense of tension was not in his system, tearing through him with enough brutal force to make his muscles quiver beneath his skin.

This storm was loud but it did not make him want to hide under his bed or in his closet like the aftershock of the tsunami. This was just a thunderstorm with hail, nothing more and nothing less.

He tipped his head to the side at the howl he could hear now. He thought for a moment that it was the wind again but there was something else to it. It was unnatural and the low note beneath a shrillness easily hidden away in the wind was almost unholy. It was deep and almost guttural, something that distinctly made him think of a ferocious snarl curling and rising into an ear splitting roar.

He thought immediately of the distant boom of thunder as it rolled harmoniously through the air like the ripple of a disturbed pool of water, loud and vicious until the ripples faded into stillness and the liquid was calm again.

It was nothing that the wind could produce but it also brought to mind the question of what it could be. Unless there actually was a wolf somewhere in Japan or that was the hybrid, then there was no animal that could make that noise. But it was still so deep and unnatural, making his blood feel alight beneath his skin, and he didn't think an animal could let loose such a powerful noise.

Maybe it was just the sound of the wind mixing with a stray dog's howl.

He doubted it, however. The noise was almost too terrible to be considered anything less than ungodly. Especially with the way it resonated in his bones, lighting his blood on fire and making his heart pound in his chest violently. And it seemed momentarily to drown out the sounds of the storm itself before fading into nothingness. They were only background noises set against the intense sound that still seemed to make him drown in heat and power.

Yugi shook the thought off, trying not to focus on the sound any longer, and pulled his attention towards the desk next to his bed instead, wondering what to do. He could read the book lying on top or grab the DS from inside one of the drawers. He could bring his laptop out and play videos until he was too tired to deal with the effort of keeping his eyes open any longer. But he wasn't in the mood to spend a few minutes looking for some terribly boring hour long movie so that he could fall asleep because anything less than monotonous drawling and mediocre acting would keep his attention just enough to stay awake.

There was some kind of ingrained excitement and curiosity that always spiked when something even remotely interesting was playing. It was a constant buzz beneath his skin, lingering like blood, and it just seemed to wait there for the chance to spike without the slightest warning, and Yugi always felt strangely like a tiny, excitable dog in that way.

A book was probably the best bet. He could try something boring and plain or maybe something he had read a million times before. Knowing the story ahead of time could always him to remain calm and lose any bit of interest that would have come later. There would be nothing to surprise him, no plot twist to excite him. But in doing so he would find his boredom growing too immense to be ignored as he would need to. It would demand satiation and he would never sleep if he attempted to refuse it.

He snatched the first book off his desk, tilting his head in surprise at the title. He had pulled _Grimm's Fairytales_ from his mom's bookshelves the day before when he had remembered her telling him that it was the collection of the originals and they were far darker. He had been drawn to them only for the reason of seeing if maybe they could somehow help to lighten his mood after the reminder of the hybrid and the thoughts of his hallucinations.

He glanced over the leather bound book, opening it to look over the table of contents and momentarily wondering about the one he should choose. Maybe the darkest one—perhaps Blue Beard or Little Red—would make him feel better about his own possible blunder just long enough to sleep.

He took on Blue Beard for the sake of avoiding his mind wandering towards the idea of the hybrid or the history of wolves in Japan. He knew a small bit about the tale but hardly anything more than the very basics. He knew something about his former wives' heads being kept in a room but not much else. It was a curious childlike wonder that made him continue towards the end of the story, thought it eventually faded slowly into an exhausted nothingness.

His mind lost any sense of alertness on the last page, his cheek falling to rest against his arm where his other hand held the book's pages upwards to read. His eyes slowly feathered shut, the darkness embracing him immediately. The sound of the rain and hail against the window made him shiver briefly before it began to slip and fade, pulling away from his senses.

Scattered patterns almost like the rippling reflection of sunlit water, bright white and glittering like the ocean, came to the forefront of his mind. It was only momentarily, fleeting by all means, and touches of green almost like smoke followed after a moment. The sound of the wind outside pushed in on his senses, the hail and rain and snarl of booming thunder ripping through the split second of silence as the darkness grew deeper. He had the momentary urge to blink and pull his eyes open once more, to look around the room and turn off the lamp and put the book away. But despite the soft, weary itch of tiredness tickling his eyes, the teen seemed unable to pull together the immense strength it took to do something so seemingly mindless and easy only minutes before. Instead his mind continued to grow weighted with the depth of a dreamless sleep that he could feel crawling over him. The sounds of the outside world faded again, swallowed away into the exhaustion, and it felt like forever had passed when it finally changed.

He was not entirely aware of the time that passed, though his mind was not so far into slumber that he was not aware that it had done so.

Voices were drifting through the immense darkness. They crept forward like weightless shadows but as long as chirping birds when morning came. Even in this state he was aware that he did not recognize these voices or the statements that they gave life to. A thrill of something like adrenaline and terror curled through his belly, his shoulder twitching violently in response to the keen drive of emotions in his groggy state. A tension crept through him, his muscles coiling beneath his skin with the way that his blood seemed to thicken momentarily in his veins.

"Outstanding," a deep voice, sharpened with intense and brutal approval, cooed.

His shoulder jerked, his leg nearly falling down the side of the bed to touch the floor with the force of the spasm.

"His capacity to resist the physical strain of collapsing is amazing," a second voice, somewhat lighter and almost whimsical, purred.

"His endurance is growing in increments of sixteen minutes," a third said in awe, voice slightly raspy and throaty with a deeper edge like that of a constant smoker.

His spine tightened almost to the point of aching, and Yugi's exhausted but somewhat focused mind was aware that no dream was meant to carry a physical pain. But his muscles continued coiling beneath his flesh and the churn of his stomach grew more violent as the moments passed.

"If this is only his physical body, _imagine_ the capabilities of his mind," the first purred slowly, lowering in volume and making Yugi's shoulders rise as if in a vain attempt to protect his vulnerable throat. "Imagine the adaptability and raw intelligence to be tapped into. Do you have _any_ idea the beauty of that potential?"

"The possibilities of what he is capable of are endless. Just his physical strength alone is worthy of praise," the third agreed, a low chuckle making Yugi tremble violently.

"He has gone through a full month of tests and each time his endurance has proved itself and even _grown stronger_ ," the first announced. "Double his scheduled tests. One in the morning and one at night. Perhaps he will grow further…"

"Very well…"

"Take him back to his cage and feed him a bit extra today."

He swallowed a harsh whimper, the noise drowning in his throat. Something ghosted over his head, gossamer at first but growing stronger. A pain began to form in the center of his neck, vicious and bordering on the sensation of fire burning within his marrow. Yugi jerked harshly at the sensation and every muscle in his body twitched and ached as his eyes finally opened once more.

The book hit the ground with a thud loud enough to make his head spin. Momentarily his heart pounded, pulsing in his throat violently. His lungs constricted painfully, his chest aching with the task of expanding to compensate his somewhat panicked breaths. The back of his neck continued aching, the marrow still seeming to sizzle in his bones with the burn spreading quickly through him. He blinked rapidly, eyes burning and itching as if with exhaustion, and glanced own at the fallen book. It had landed in a close, laying with the front cover upright for him to read its title.

The wind seemed to have died and the hail lifted. The rain was still steady, however, and the window's glass gave off a methodical rhythm that was too rapid to ignore. Yugi watched the drops splatter against it, trying not to feel the pain in his system any longer. If he could ignore it then it might just fade. But while ignorance was a hopeful option where the pain was concerned, it was completely impossible in terms of the sensation of the touch that had woken him. It may have been nothing more than some kind of diluted night terror that was halfway a lucid dream, but the pain, the fear, the momentary touch, still remained.

And Yugi could not ignore the fact that he recognized this phantom touch at its fullest.

Fingers. A hand.

Someone had been touching him. And he was not sure if he preferred it to be nothing more than something drawn from his half doze or someone like his grandpa or mom having momentarily combed their fingers through his hair in a comforting gesture.

Because he had never had such a night terror.

 **The next update might be a day late.**


	4. The Attack

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day (no update on June 2nd)**

 **Chapter warning: Blood and gore, Hallucinations, Night terrors, Ambush/Attack, Predator/Prey mentality, Slight mental breakdown, Character deaths, Descriptions of dead bodies**

 **What can I say? Real life got in the way.**

Chapter IV: The Attack

 _Work Log Entry IV: February, 1992_

 _February 16_

 _Neither wolf seems to be taking to the treatments to help stabilize the transition into their ancient ancestors. But the she-wolf is the only specimen that has shown any possibility of surviving the mutations to her genetic makeup. We have no other wolf that can replace her for the moment._

Maybe it was a night terror mixed with a hallucination.

Yugi shuddered at the thought. That was hardly comforting; those two things should never have been able to blend together like that.

The very idea itself was unnerving and frustrating to consider. They were both hard enough to deal with on their own and both of them together was overwhelming. But what else could it have honestly been? The power and strength and the phantom touch that plagued his senses made his stomach twist painfully. Immediately he wondered if it would grow worse and felt the bile creeping up the back of his throat violently like live fire.

He didn't know if he could possibly handle it if it became worse. It was hard enough dealing with them on such a constant basis. Feeling phantom hands, of strange warmth and chill, and the edge of fingernails like sharp blades passing over his skin was _nothing_ he desired. The single fleeting thought of ingesting the entirety of the bottle of pills in his hands passed through his mind momentarily. His eyes drifted over the label almost blindly, the print almost disconnected in his tired mind. He had woken up hours before and his mind was still terribly groggy and disarrayed. He twisted and rolled the bottle in his palm, still watching it curiously as the contents rattled loudly and nearly left his ears ringing. He narrowed his eyes faintly before putting it back into the cabinet unhappily.

With his luck that wouldn't even work. He would still wake up the next day. He would still be miserable. And the only thing different would b that he would be out of his night terror medication while his mom once again questioned—interrogated—him about whether they were still working, if they should raise the dosage, whether or not they should change his prescription. He was not in the mood to deal with that, not after hearing that very thing be the most common thing that had been happening since he was six. Besides, the inconvenience and total waste of time it would have been, he did not want to die anyways. It was just terrifying to consider it all; especially since he thought he would go insane. He was almost certain that if he did lose his mind his mother would have no choice but to have him institutionalized. And that thought scared him impossibly more than the idea of death.

He shook it off with a violent jerk of his head. He didn't want to even consider the truth of that possibility. It was far too realistic to him in that moment and it was terrifying to know. Truly putting the idea into perspective did nothing but make it more apparent to him as to why she would choose that; in her place he knew that he would be considering. He would also have been looking at ways to get and keep him out of the house and considering boarding schools to ship him off to as he had initially worried about upon seeing the pictures laid out on the table.

Yugi shook his head once more to dispel some of the images that immediately came to mind. He pulled away from the counter, jumping back down and heading for the hallway. He was immediately alerted to the fact that someone was awake as he opened his bedroom door and caught the sound of voices. For a split second he thought it was his mother and grandfather speaking but then he recognized that the female voice was too low to ever possibly be considered familiar. It was strange how gravelly her tone was, how almost nasal a quality it possessed. He could not fully hear it all, the words strange and distorted, telling him that the volume on the TV was at its lowest, giving off crackles at the ends of each word she spoke.

He started forward, listening more closely and narrowing his eyes. The words weren't becoming any clearer when he got into the kitchen but when he looked for the living room, it was almost as if he were standing by a large speaker. His somewhat tired mind lost any hint of grogginess left, attention keen on the screen in the center of the room. He didn't recognize the brunette reporter but he did know the area she stood in.

The Junky Scorpion store that he saw behind her was further into town, well past the mall near where Domino City shared streets with the neighboring city, Obihiro. That particular spot was considered a harsh spot to be in due to a few gangs that had control over it. No one truly spoke of it and oftentimes people avoided it simply by instinct. Rumors were still spread around all of Domino, however, and Yugi had always thought to avoid the entire thing altogether if he had the chance. And yet, he had gone there only once with Jonouchi and Honda for a pair of sneakers sold there exclusively.

"Police are offering one hundred and fifty thousand yen for any information that will help to lead to the arrest of the person responsible for the murder of the sixteen-year-old high school student Nosaka Miho of Domino High," the brunette announced just as the image of the familiar blue-haired girl was shown.

Yugi felt his stomach sink and his shoulders sag as if the strength had just left him. He had known Miho and had enjoyed her company for the most part, though it was Honda that she had been closest to. She had been his crush for months and had made quick but strained friends with Anzu. Jonouchi hadn't been very interested in her but for teasing Honda relentlessly when she was not around. Yugi had had two classes with her and so had gotten more time to get to know her without worrying that Honda might mistake their chitchat for flirtation.

She had recently been named the runner up of a beauty pageant they had held two months before, just barely beaten by another girl. Honda had, of course, leaped at the opportunity to play the role of her campaign manager when she asked. He had never even considered that it might be Miho of all people to be the victim. It made no sense whatsoever. Who would possibly want to harm someone like Miho? She had always been friendly and nice and…would have probably not even have thought about it if someone had her alone with the intention to kill.

He swallowed harshly, voice almost too weak to be heard. "W-when did they identify her?"

His mother jumped violently, eyes wide as she spun around. "They finished identifying her at about six this morning," she answered after a long moment of silence. The corners of her mouth tugged down as they looked at each other. Her fingers twitched where her hands sat in her lap and Yugi swallowed hard once more. He thought she looked almost as if she might jump to her feet and pull him into a hug but instead she remained in her seat and he continued staring at her grimly. He didn't know what to say and it was obvious she was just as lost. What was there to truly even say to each other? Yugi was actually becoming more concerned with what he should say to his friend. Honda would be devastated…

"So they've…ruled out it being an animal then?"

"The owner of Junky Scorpion was killed in a similar manner last night during the storm. They found footprints in the blood so they know it's a person who did it…"

He blinked, stomach twisting though he was unsure whether it was relief that it was not the hybrid or dread that there could possibly be a serial killer in Domino.

"A hundred and fifty thousand yen is a lot of money," he commented quietly, blinking once and frowning. The only time anything like this had happened was when he was fourteen a convict had escaped the local prison. A curfew had been placed immediately and the police had worked for a month and a half without breaks to hunt him down only to arrest someone else from another prefecture entirely.

Domino City had cracked down since the feral dog incident and the news in the area had grown much blunter in all reality. There was a channel of twenty-four hour newscasts in which things such as recent murders and arrests were not at all censored. And he recognized the logo in the very right corner of the screen as that very one.

"What if they're not…in Domino anymore?"

"Even if they're not, someone could have seen something."

They both recognized the doubt in her tone, the way that her voice faltered. Neither of them commented, however, reluctant to acknowledge it.

How could anyone have done something like that? They had obviously not seen anything when they had attacked and killed Miho and left her to be eaten by some animals in the time it took for others to get to school as it started. No one had heard her scream. No one had noticed her wander off, and it was enough to make Yugi want to puke. Had no one been around to notice? Had no one been with her? Regardless of Miho's circumstances, the owner of the Junky Scorpion would never have been seen or heard amidst that storm. No one would have been out there to see, not after the hail started and the darkness, around shots of lightning illuminating the area, would have been too thick to peer through. The thunder had been far too loud to hear anything else and his screams would have been nonexistent. Even if someone had used the small canopy of the building as a tiny, hopeful shelter from the storm, even if they had pressed themselves against the glass of the windows and glanced inside on the off chance of checking that it was open, they would have seen nothing. The owner would have moved into the far back room that served as his office. So even if someone had looked in, it would have seemed as if it were empty and closed despite the lights that would have been on.

So, when it came down to it, Yugi honestly thought that a person nearby wouldn't have noticed anything. A witness to the entire thing would not be found despite the money the police were willing to pay for the information.

"What did they do to him?" he finally asked, glancing at the screen and growing pale. They were showing off some of the crime photos. The aisle he was looking at was completely trashed. Items were tossed about the tiling, some glass broken and shattered into the tiniest of pieces. The ground was littered with pools and droplets of blood, some of it smeared where a sneaker had slipped in and their balance had been caught once more. He could see most of the same sneakers' prints, the blood nearly too immense to miss and keeping the attacker's path almost completely constantly visible. The images painted a clear path through the store that the killer would have taken. They went from the very entrance to the back office where the door was hanging halfway off the hinges that connected it to the left wall.

And then, as soon as the door was opened, the new image that greeted him made his stomach drop violently. His mouth grew dry, bile creeping up the back of his throat and burning the constricted muscles, and his head spun momentarily.

The shop owner was hanging halfway off the center of his desk. The merchandise and paperwork had been scattered across the floor. His clothes had been torn away completely, lying in shreds around the scattered, bloodied papers. The way the body was angled gave the clear indication of a backbone snapped into two, with the split straight in the center. His upper half lay flat against the surface of his desk. The bottom looked disgustingly elongated with the angle it rested against the metal, almost like greasy hair. Yugi had always known him to be only a handful of inches shorter than Jonouchi and Honda, but he felt that if the body had been straightened it would have stood eye to eye with them. He could see the blood all over the floor, the bones across its pelvis exposed in jagged slices of shredded skin. One foot was barely kept from touching the ground, held by a single thin strand of sinew and grizzle. Bones were exposed where flesh had been torn and seemingly eaten along the right shin and ankle. The left leg was broken in multiple places, skin turned nearly black from the bruises that came with the impacts, and the foot looked almost as if it were a club, toes and arch curled inwards towards the other leg.

The next photo was closer, an almost aerial shot but with an obvious slant that showed exactly what it was that would make a viewer want to vomit. The ribs were exposed, popping out of the shredded flesh in three directions. The left collarbone was sticking out of the skin like a massive white-skinned tumor. The throat had an odd, thin light red line across the side tracing what Yugi knew had once been the path of its pulse just hours before. The skin was oddly pale and almost puckered with the long scratch mark, the neck still left completely intact. The left side of the chest cavity had been tunneled into, the heart and lung missing completely, the ribcage slightly sunken and collapsed inward. The shoulders and lengths of the arms were completely bruised and looked almost black with the lighting. The skull had very obviously been split across the right temple and Yugi thought it looked almost as if it had had a violent run in with an ax. It seemed oddly precise and straight in design. And it was so deep, almost severing the top of the skull like a hat. Yet, it was long, thin scratch along the former line of the corpse's pulse that made him truly stare and rendered him unable to look away.

Had they bled him? But what purpose could that possibly serve? And what could they do with it?

The images zoomed in more fully on the gaping hole in his chest and he could hear the reporter explaining, informing the anchors and viewers that the shop owner's heart and left lung had been pulled out and there was no hint of where they might have been.

What could you do with a heart and a lung? Unless they were a cannibal or had some kind of wild animal as a secret pet, then Yugi couldn't understand. He trembled at the thought, a brief shiver, and then wondered for a moment at what it was that was more likely before immediately pushing it away. He didn't need or want to know. All he needed or wanted to know was that they eventually got caught.

That was all he needed to know. It was all he wanted to know.

And yet, of course there was that underlying curiosity that came beneath the disgusted horror. He wanted to know more about it all despite himself. He wanted to theorize and speculate and just wonder about it all.

"—school tomorrow."

Yugi blinked once in a long and slow movement, startled and drawn back into the moment. He felt his lips tug downwards. "What?" he asked in confusion even as realization slowly slipped through him. She didn't want him going to school tomorrow. He could see it in the firm line of her mouth, the slight narrowing of her eyes where they were close to her nose. She looked almost pinched in the way that her jaw muscles twitched faintly.

"I said you're not going to school tomorrow."

Except that wasn't what she had said. Yugi knew that without truly considering it. She had said before that she did not want him to go but now she was attempting to squash any protests he could think of by putting her foot down as immediately as she could. She would not allow him to truly argue with her on this. Already he could see the raw determination and willpower burning in her eyes. She was not about to even give him room to think of arguments needed.

He considered momentarily that he should argue. He was usually good at being able to make her calm down enough to see things his way. But those were usually mild things and he thought that she might only bunker down further and refuse him more adamantly. And, depending on how he went about it, he might just wind her up and make her lash out and potentially push him. He didn't want to end up even more fully confined to the house like she might see the need to should he fight her.

He was unsure he could deal with the consequences of the argument if he attempted it. He didn't want to wind up even more restless. That was when they were at their worst in his head and he always felt like he wanted to peel his own skin off with desperation. There was not one way that he knew of to truly get rid of such a sensation. It was always there no matter what it was he did. It burned and lingered, all-consuming, and made his sleep nearly nonexistent.

"All right, but you're going to have to let me go back before ten days or they're going to come check on the house," he mumbled, glancing at the image of a close up of the man's crushed skull where the bone showed bright white and half of his face was scratched.

Yugi shook his head, stomach twisting, and then turned away to head for his room again. He was tired enough to try to sleep again.

* * *

A curfew was placed within two hours of the announcement of the death that had occurred. No one beneath the age of twenty-one was permitted to be on the streets past six o'clock. Had it not been autumn it would have been placed at nine due to the time the sun began to set. Adults were required to be at home with their children before twelve came around. Emergency streetlights would be turned on everywhere they sat on each side of the street.

They were something like a Domino City specialty, Yugi supposed, because after the isolated incident of the escaped convict and the rabid canines they had put up and installed extra streetlamps so that there were less shadows for someone to hide in. All of them were blue lights which showed any trace of shed DNA that would potentially alert someone to drug use or anything that could appear shady to bystanders. He was unsure if this was actually effective or if maybe it was simply a scare tactic. Whichever it was, it seemed to work for the most part. No one ever seemed to act out when they came on, though he had to wonder at that idea as it was. Generally Domino City was one of the safest parts of Japan as a whole.

There were rarely incidents to be spoken of. When it came down to it, the number of things came in the form of those two which was the most abundant.

He found it ironic that Domino City ranked number three as the safest places in Japan. They were not as large or technological as somewhere like Tokyo. Where the capital had vending machines with retina scans to determine age and suggest drinks for potential consumers, his home city really only had the emergency streetlights. Their vending machines were average; they had one video game arcade and scattered movie theaters, and only a handful of clubs in which the bartenders were always sure to check an ID.

But they were rather considerably stricter than surrounding areas when things such as that happened. Curfews were really nothing new to Domino, because any threat to a civilian was nothing to be taken lightly among its inhabitants. The police cracked down immediately and calls put into the station were answered within five minutes. There were six police stations and four fire departments and it was often joked by tourists visiting the national park that they were ridiculously overly cautious about their safety.

He supposed they were right, sitting down on his front porch and narrowing his eyes faintly. The street was empty and silent safe for the hourly police car that slipped by to patrol. He had been watching them for the last two hours, recording their times on his phone. So far, they had gotten there within two minutes of the hour mark, the first one early and the second one later. He was even taking pictures of them to have more of a record that was actually concrete when his word was seen as subjective.

He would stay out there for a handful more minutes so that he could use his pictures to help convince his mom to let him get to school. He could not stand to be in the house any longer. He was restless, to the point that it was exhausting both physically and mentally trying to endure the energy that made his blood hum and his skin tingle. His mind was everywhere with his forced isolation.

* * *

"What are you doing up?" his mom asked with wide eyes, surprised by his placement in front of a bowl of sugary peanut butter cereal. Yugi looked up, momentarily dumbfounded by her genuine confusion, and then bit back an exasperated sigh. Her eyes were dark as they narrowed, tone annoyed as she shook her head. "School?"

He realized not for the first time the potentially explosive argument this could become in only a few words. He remembered only then, however, that she had failed to agree when he had said he needed to go back. He drew in a deep breath to ready and brace himself for the task.

"Mom, I _have_ to go to school," he said slowly, narrowing his eyes and twirling the spoon between his fingers. "My teachers are starting to ask my friends to check on me. Anzu has texted and called me every period because my teachers have pulled her out of class to know what's been going on. Jonouchi texted me just last night to remind me that I've been absent the last eight days. If I miss two more days they're going to send someone to the house."

"I should have the right, as your parent, to keep you home until I feel it's safe for you to go back," she argued, voice sharp and wary. She looked as if she was a mere second or two away from rolling her eyes and the thought made him want to grin. "Surely they would understand that."

Yugi nearly groaned in frustration as he looked at her for a long moment. "Mom, the only way that they would understand an absence longer than ten days would be if I was in the hospital and in critical condition. They're high school teachers, not people with actual sympathy for that kind of thing. Chono _especially_ would not care. She'd probably have me moved to another class and throw a party to have one less brat to teach," he finally said, calculating his response in order to make sure he did not overstep. "And, besides, Mom, they'll fail my midterms if I don't make them up within a couple of weeks of missing them. If that happens, they're really unlikely to let me pass. I don't _want_ to have to deal with flunking my first year and having colleges see that."

She pursed her lips and he nearly sighed in relief. He had her sole attention now, because she had always been the one to give him a push when it came to academics. Her high standards for him were always something of a slight burden but at the same time a gift as well. He wouldn't have maintained such high marks to get to college and find his way into a veterinary university and eventually follow in her footsteps on his own.

"I still want to graduate and go to college and become a vet later," he pressed, voice firm but his method somewhat delicate. He made his lips pull into a frown, nibbling at the bottom and making his expression hesitant, pleading. "You _do_ still want me to have a successful future…right, Mom?"

She was silent for a moment, and Yugi watched her chew her cheek but couldn't be sure whether this was a good sign or not. Sometimes this hesitation was a sign that he had almost won and needed only push gently once more. Others it meant that she was simply taking a moment to reassess her words and come up a new tactic for her argument, but Yugi was not sure that was what this was. She had yet to do much more than mildly disagree whereas, other times, she got snippy and tended to raise her voice in sheer frustration.

"A lot of good your grades will do you if you're dead."

Yugi blinked stupidly at the comment. It was spoken too softly to be meant for his ears, but he caught it all the same. He frowned at the statement, blinking once more, and then shook his head. He understood that mothers were supposed to worry and that his stature of being small put him at something of a disadvantage, especially considering his history of moderate bullying growing up. But he was smart and he was sure he could outwit—or _outrun_ , if it came to that—someone. He understood, however, that the murders were shocking and the level of brutality horrifying and so he knew exactly why she might fear it more than she would have otherwise.

"Mom, nothing is going to happen to me," Yugi reassured her, giving a small smile that he hoped was more stable than the small ball of fear developing in his stomach. "I promise I'll walk to and from school with the others. And I'll have my phone on me at all times and I'll keep it in my pocket just in case I see something even _slightly_ suspicious."

He could see her bending already. And, while he should have been relieved, he was anything but. He had never enjoyed manipulating her into seeing things his way, and it made his stomach hurt seeing the effects of his words on her.

And, he hated to admit it, but her words had managed to scare him and give him more to think about. He knew better than to truly expect something to happen but he was unable to truly and fully shake it off.

"All right. Just…be careful, Yugi. And you had _better_ be ready to answer your phone if I decide to call."

She waggled her finger at him in an effort to lighten the suffocating weight that the conversation had become. He gave her a smile, praying that it was not as grim as he felt, and nodded once before hurrying to his room to finish his routine. He had not bothered to change out of his pajamas in case he couldn't convince her to let him go. He hurried to dress himself, grabbing his backpack and heading for the living room for his shoes. He did not try a second conversation with her or even entertain the thought, fearful that she might change her mind. She was doing his dishes when he called a farewell and passed into the staircase, speeding for the clinic and then the front door.

His exuberance to escape the house was not lost on him as he drew in a deep, cold breath of frigid autumn air. His cheeks tingled with the gelid atmosphere and he could tell already it was bare to the wind that was slowly beginning to move and make his hair stir slightly. He glanced around, happy with the lack of cars passing by and not having to choke on fumes, but he was more relieved now that he was even out of the house. The fresh air swirled in his lungs with a welcome chill that somehow seemed to make every nerve in his body tingle like live electricity.

"Hey, Yugi!"

He grinned as he recognized Jonouchi's voice, turning around and nearly sighing in relief as he spotted the other two as well. He tried his hardest not to focus on only Anzu in that moment. He was relieved to see all three of them, not just her, but it was hard to remain focused on that thought. His crush on her made her all but the center of his attention for the moment.

But when he glanced at her, her beautiful cerulean blue eyes were relieved and friendly and altogether so warm than he thought it brought a blush to his cheeks. He found himself struggling not to frown, however. Was it just his imagination, or did she look as if she might run towards him? He only truly noticed because she stepped more heavily on her right foot with enough force to nearly fall straight on her face with the throw of balance.

It was Jonouchi that ran up to him rather than the brunette. Yugi immediately pulled his eyes away from her in order to try to figure out what it was he was doing. The blond caught him around the neck in a gentle but firm headlock that pulled him tightly into his chest. Knuckles rubbed against his scalp as soon as he was caught and he squirmed at the tugging burn he received from the rapid scrubbing.

"You finally escaped!"

Yugi rolled his eyes despite the pain in his scalp. He relaxed his body until it was nearly limp and the additional weight to his arm made the blond falter. The smaller teen quickly pulled away, slipping from his grip without resistance. He stepped back twice, grinning widely. He had taught himself to do that when he had first been bullied. When they had tried to drag him along or choke him until he passed out, he'd gone limp until they began to move away. It was, whenever he felt threatened or someone just grabbed him around the neck in general, almost virtually impossible for them to keep him in their grip for any longer than he permitted them.

"Hey, guys," he greeted, stepping away again when the blond attempted to get closer.

Anzu graced him with a familiar, small, friendly smile that she usually gave him in greeting. It was always wordless and laced with something of a gentle warmth that Jonouchi always claimed was a sign that she wanted him. He said that she didn't smile at anyone else like that, but Yugi still did not believe that. And this smile seemed different. She looked slightly troubled as they continued looking at each other. Her eyes were usually very open and allowed anyone looking at her to see just what she was thinking and feeling.

Now all he could see were a few small questions, but he could not tell what they were. Thoughtful, he tilted his head slightly, but could think of no way to ask what it was that she was thinking that moment. He did not have a way to phrase his desire to know and thought he would sound extremely rude if he just asked, " _What_?" like anyone else might.

Honda and Jonouchi swapped looks and shared a couple of snickers before looking away again when both Yugi and Anzu glanced at them in confusion.

Their nearly effortless silent communication had always been entertaining to the two spectators. It was often one of their constant jokes about how perfect they were for each other. It was also what had led to their bet on who it was that would ask the other out. Honda had a bet that it would be Anzu who finally plucked up the courage to ask Yugi out. He was almost certain that Yugi would never do it, though he was unsure of whether it was their friendship or his own lack of confidence that would hold him back.

Anzu was more courageous than him in that aspect, and she was not one to let things she wanted escape her. She might hesitate and wait until she thought it would be a good time to ask him, but she would do it. Even if she was not given the exact sign she wanted to know what his answer would be, her patience would eventually run out and she would ask.

Her tendency to attempt to gain what she wanted was, at times, considered to be extremely selfish to some. Honda himself thought of it as such at times. Her drive was admirable but sometimes the means were beyond what he himself might have done. She had thrived for perfect grades at one point and thus knocked others out of their places at the top of their classes. He himself had settled for the bottom rank of the ten in each class and called it quits so as not to ruin anyone's scholarships.

The question that Honda considered truly _worth_ being asked was _when_ Anzu would finally do it. He was trying to truly consider whether it would be second or third year that she would ask. Jonouchi was betting a hundred that it would be second or third but Honda was hoping that it would be that same year. He really didn't want to lose a hundred yen. He had a lot of things—most concerning his dog now that he considered it—that he wanted to do with his money. He was hoping to get her dental treats and maybe a surgery to help correct the early on-set hip dysplacia the breed was known for. He had a feeling that if he asked Yugi and his mom for a discount she would do it—she might even go so far as to do it for free—but it seemed like he would be abusing his friendship to do so.

He barely resisted the urge to shake his head as they all started forward and he turned his attention back to them. Yugi and Anzu had long since stopped looking at each other and now Yugi and Jonouchi were racing off. He glanced at Anzu who rolled her eyes at them and watched as they headed for the quad.

Jonouchi was a few steps ahead of him and Yugi was about to attempt to speed up, but his legs abruptly locked. His right heel had just touched the sidewalk when an alarm went off in his head. He turned his eyes on several students in the quad, blinking in confusion. His skin had begun to tingle with a low, thrumming energy, his nerves growing hot as if exposed to flame.

The hairs on his body took on a bristle and his head felt a bit lighter, almost dizzy. He stared at them, unable to look away. While it took only moments for this to happen, it seemed to Yugi to take hours. The impact of the sole of his sneaker with the concrete was almost enough to send him tumbling forward.

He caught his balance instinctively. His left foot came to a stop exactly next to his right. A low but keen buzzing began in the center of his skull and his insides twisted painfully. It was almost as if, for one small split second, looking at the other students there, there seemed to be a mist that had come over them.

The chill of it was unnatural as his eyes were continuously ignored. The tension was steadily becoming more, however, confusion and terror combining to form an intense dread in the pit of his stomach. His blood was cold and his heart had somehow slowed. For a moment he truly hoped it was only he who felt it.

He was not unused to that kind of thing. He had always had keen senses, knowing and noticing things that were not completely taken into account by other people. He potentially recognized the signs of a coming storm. He knew the sensation of being watched even if it were only for a moment. And he knew the slightest change in the air when someone was confused or angry, even hurting.

Yugi had never needed to tell anyone about this because he did not spend much time with anyone but his friends. And he had not been willing when he'd confessed to them, either. He had unconsciously shown them when he'd been able to determine Jonouchi lying to them about something. And he'd reluctantly admitted that he could usually detect it, though he was unable to fully articulate the sensation to them as well as he'd wished.

He had been worried about being considered more of a freak than he sometimes heard someone whisper about. He didn't think he could deal with that. The thought always led him down the path of a melancholic isolation brought on by his peers and family. He could not deal with the thought of it so fully.

Yugi was _acutely_ aware of his own strangeness.

He knew exactly what set him apart from the rest.

And it was always painful to think about.

But now that he was truly focused on them, he understood what it was that bugged him in that moment. There was a familiar crowd of students in front of him, a bunch of them all sitting together. And he recognized them, but the usual center of their group was not there.

His eyes flickered around and his body was frozen, rooted to the ground.

He was there, standing a few feet away with a couple of others he had never seen him with before. He knew Kujirada as a sweet but incredibly shy, pudgy boy who was surprisingly one of the most popular students at Domino High. He could usually get along with most everyone, _but_ the group he was standing with—Ushio, Sozoji, Kokurano, Goro, Imori, Koji and Nezumi. He blinked a few times, stunned by the sight of them all together.

In all the time he'd known Kujirada, he had never liked any of the seven of them. He'd purposely avoided them on most occasions, in fact. Those eight had _never_ been together before.

And he'd never seen such _nervous_ glances cast at Kujirada, Kokurano, Imori or Nezumi. His stomach was twisting into violent knots, his blood turning to ice in his veins as their eyes fell on him. It happened in unison. All eight sets of eyes were on Yugi's face at once. His body was locked in place, his spine aching with tension, burning beneath his skin. Every nerve ending was alight. The buzzing in his skull had evolved into a violent throbbing pain that screamed for him to flee.

He did not dare even blink for fear that they might interpret it for something else.

He had no idea what to do at that moment. He very abruptly, in that moment, understood the reasons behind those anxious glances that had been cast on the group before. He saw exactly what it was that had brought them on. The eight of them had willingly isolated themselves from everyone else, and it had not gone unnoticed.

Frozen in place, Yugi continued staring back, unsure of what more to do.

Their stances were too tall, too predatory, and they looked, with everyone giving them such a wide space, like sharks amidst a sea of potential prey. The others in the quad were acting as if they were random fish, swimming out of reach of the sharks but keeping them within sight at all times.

He was confused and his muscles were growing even more terribly knotted beneath his skin, more furiously tense.

Yugi's insides tugged with more abundant confusion, which grew tenfold. He fought away the urge to blink and frustration swept through him slowly. His body was wired to the point that he was almost trembling. He could feel the tension like an elastic band pulled too far. His muscles begged for release but instinct held him completely in place, unable to do anything more. He felt like hours had passed, their eyes locked.

"Yugi?"

He made a noncommittal humming noise and stared at them openly, not bothering to turn away. His blood was beginning to heat again rather than growing colder and the significance of that change in temperature made each of his nerves tingle more ferociously. The tension was mounting further, begging for action, and the potential tremor was like a spring beneath his skin. His bones began to ache.

In any other situation Yugi would have blinked and instantly looked away. He would have lowered his head and scurried away to class or anywhere where he was no longer in sight of the eight of them. He was not in any way prepared to stare at them as he was. On another day he would have prayed to every god he knew of that they had not truly noticed him.

But now…

Now there was no impulse to look away, only to protect himself by staring back.

The eight of them turned away to speak amongst themselves once more, another unified action that made his skin crawl. He quickly turned back to his friends, breathing in and out once in a ragged manner. The three of them were watching him with mirroring looks of concern, eyes wide and mouths turned down in the corners, brows slightly pulled together. He wondered minutely if his cheeks were flushed and his eyes wide and dilated. But he was more concerned with how badly his hands were shaking at his sides. He tucked them quickly into his pockets, flashing his friends a falsely casual smile, and then turned away again.

The movement caused one set of eyes to settle on him again, but Yugi was unwilling to look and see who it was.

* * *

He ran into each of them throughout the day. Nezumi picked at his locker when he had just gotten out of class and was headed for it. And then he had stood a few feet away, watching him as a cat might a defenseless mouse. He had only finally left when Yugi stared back at him when his patience had run thin and he'd retrieved his books for class. Imori stole his seat and refused to budge until they had spent a full five minutes glaring at one another. It had taken some posturing, in which Yugi had finally gotten to his feet again and loomed over the desk with his hands on the wood, staring until the redhead scurried away. Ushio and the rest of the Disciplinary Committee—which, oddly enough, looked almost terrified and laden with nerves—beat his team in a game of dodge ball and left him standing. He had wound up with Ushio steadily moving forward to the center line to retrieve another ball before tossing it so hard that it knocked him square in the forehead. The pain had dazed him but had not knocked him backwards as Ushio might have been trying to achieve.

But it told him exactly who it had been to stare at him in the quad while he was walking into the building.

Next, he ran into Kujirada in the bathroom in which he recognized him by the expensive sneakers he wore as he paced outside of his stall slowly. He had put an end to that by throwing the door open and glaring at him until he had finally succumbed to nerves and left Yugi with some privacy. Goro simply bumped his shoulder in the hall. Sozoji merely smirked at him when he entered the room but turned away again. Koji was the last to look at him, doing so when he was passing out papers and hovering by his desk as he handed them to everyone but him. Yugi had been forced to open his mouth and ask for the paper, exasperated and lightheaded with confusion towards their hostility.

Kokurano came last, when Yugi had not been expecting it.

Chono had demanded that he stay after school if he wanted the chance to make up the assignments he had missed in her class. He was stuck in the library, completely alone because Chono had run off for one of what she called a "marriage interview" and the librarian had left early because her child was sick. The only sound in the room was the ticking of the clock on the wall and the occasional frustrated huff Yugi released when he didn't understand his worksheets. He was too wired to truly even attempt to do the assignments correctly. The entire day's events were still fresh in his mind, leaving him tense with confusion. The predominant thought in his head was that of both the curfew and, despite the fact that he had seen him leave earlier, that Ushio was still somehow around there, waiting and lurking.

He groaned and pushed his notebook away in frustration. Chono was not even willing to go over what he had missed in class with him. Instead she seemed to think that he would just know it without being taught. She seemed to think that he was far too smart to need help and he was not allowed to leave the library and get his textbook from his locker in the mean time. He was well aware of just how ill prepared he was for it all. He knew for a fact that even if he dug through the math books on the shelves nearby, he was at a disadvantage regardless. He had his phone turned off now that they were not allowed to be turned on while on the premises and he was not even sure what chapter or material they were going over in the meantime.

And, with his luck, she would be wandering into the library again as he was looking and would completely fail his make up assignments on the basis of cheating. She had, after all, told him he was only allowed to use his textbook even if she had failed to say what pages or chapter or anything to that degree. If she saw him scouring other sources for answers, he could—and most importantly, _would_ —pin him for cheating and get him suspended.

She had never liked Anzu and Anzu was one of Yugi's closest friends so he would not have been surprised if she had come to the conclusion that she should set her sights on him. She would most likely try to get him expelled at one point or another. He thought, in all actuality, that this was most likely one of her plans before the end of the year as it was. Chono lived for making her students miserable and what better way was there than to practically destroy any chance they had of getting into a good college?

Yugi sighed and looked away from his papers and towards the clock on the wall. The constant ticking was both comforting and annoying and he could already tell that his right temple was going to begin to ache. His arm moved unconsciously to push the worksheets away and his right leg twitched so that it brushed against his backpack.

Immediately he thought of simply snatching it from its spot on the ground and leaving. His fingers twitched, hand drifting towards the edge of the table where it rested just beneath. It would be so easy to do, especially if he claimed that he needed to get home before curfew. No one could fault him for such a thing. It was personal safety and the general state of his family's well-being if he was going to be technical about it.

But he thought Chono might just figure out some way to pin it on him simply walking out regardless of anything he had to say. He thought that with the right momentum she would find some way to twist the entire situation around to make him seem like an irresponsible student simply wanting and waiting to be thrown out of school. She would be the one taken seriously in a student-teacher situation and she could easily paint him out to be a cheater or a troublemaker. He didn't see it taking too much effort on her behalf, especially with the headmaster seemingly almost enraptured with her.

Curfew was, however, only an hour away so he might be able to stick to that as his excuse if he decided to bolt. But it took only fifteen minutes to walk home and leaving before then would be considered somewhat—if not _entirely_ —ridiculous. For all he knew, however, no one else was at the school and Chono may very well have just ditched him altogether. He did not consider that out of character in the least. In fact, if he were to be truthful with himself, he would know that he was not the first she would have done this with nor would he be the last.

A sound like a book falling from one of the shelves made him glance up. His spine tensed, tingling beneath his skin. Sitting rigidly straight, Yugi turned his head to glance over his shoulder. Instinctively he reached more completely for his bag, drawing it close with his hand tightly clenched around the strap closest to him. He tipped his head, straining his ears for another sound.

Was someone in there with him? And if there _was_ someone else, why had he not heard them before?

Yugi raised his head a bit more, sitting a bit taller, and kept his right ear angled slightly towards the ground. He listened as intently as he possibly could, focused solely on catching anything that was not the rapid beat that his heart had adopted. Extremely slowly, mindful of any noise he might make, the small teen opened his mouth just enough to breath in slowly through his lips.

A musty quality filled his taste buds instantly. He cringed at the stale body odor and foul breath lingering in the air that threatened to suffocate him for a moment. His head felt light for a split second with the chemicals that were always used to clean the tables after school. Dust scratched at the roof of his mouth and nearly made him choke and cough but he smothered the impulse immediately; he would not make noise. The three initial tastes he acquired upon doing so was enough to nearly mask away what the teen had originally been searching for.

Some small, drifting, almost fruity scent crept into his focus. It was soft enough that the idea of chewed gum still fresh from the day but stuck beneath a table was his initial thought. Then he thought of hard candies that had been dissolved on the tongue minutes before and wondered once more. Was there someone in there with him? Had they knocked a book from the shelf while watching him? Or had the book finally toppled down after having been placed precariously?

Yugi blinked once slowly. How did he even know that was what it was? It had not sounded all that heavy initially but now that he had made the assumption it was the only thing his mind wanted to accept. However, there was also the chance that it was from within the computer room in the back or the office near the front. There was the idea that it was a pen or pencil or a cell phone or something of that nature.

It could have also been something like someone stepping heavily. If they weighed a lot and they were limping it would have been something like that. Or so he guessed anyways. There was not exactly any way that he could know for sure when it came to that.

But the thought immediately brought to mind Ushio. He pictured that predatory stare the massive teen had given him while they were playing dodge ball.

He could not resist a shudder. His teeth clicked lightly with the new movement. It ached dully in his ears, almost as pronounced as his racing heart. He tipped his head a small fraction further. His eyes scanned the aisles in front of him. Five minutes passed, his entire body frozen and each of his senses keen on anything out of the ordinary. But, for all of his effort, he came back with nothing.

Yugi blinked and allowed some of the tension to leave his muscles. His spine unlocked from its stiff position but did not completely lose its rigid stance. He straightened his head and blinked slowly once more. What had that smell been? He hoped it was chewed gum that had been placed beneath one of the tables a little while before. If it had been dissolved hard candy then that meant there truly _was_ someone in there with him.

But if there was, then why did he not feel himself being watched? Why was he not aware of them before such a moment? He should have known, especially with how paranoid and alert he had been all day due to those eight in the quad that morning. He had been on high alert all day, paranoid and unsure of himself, and he should have known if someone was actually there with him. Especially if they had been there that whole time.

Instantly every hair on his body rose in an alarmed bristle and his stomach clenched as his heart skyrocketed. What if they had just gotten there? Had they known he was going to be stuck doing make up assignments with Chono? Did they know she was gone? _How_ did they know that? Had they watched and waited until they were sure she wasn't coming back?

Maybe they just didn't care. Maybe Chono's presence would not have made a difference.

He forced the thought away with a glance towards the clock. He only needed to wait fifteen more minutes and then he could make a run for it.

His hand clenched the strap of his bag violently as he waited. Perhaps if he focused on the clock and the steady tick of the second hand he would be able to smother his wild imagination and growing panic. It should not have been too difficult in theory. He had managed to work himself up so efficiently that calming himself should have been just as easy.

Yugi ignored the impulse to roll his eyes at himself at that very thought. Calmness and panic were on opposite sides of a rather extreme spectrum. Going from a calm state to that of one of fear and anxiety was rather easily done. The reverse, however, was by far more challenging a task.

The visual and auditory confirmation of the idea was enough to make his stomach ease somewhat from its former twisted knot of anxiety. The pulse of his heart did not slow, however, and it continued pounding violently in his ears. His grip on his bag loosened somewhat and a small, momentary ache greeted each finger. The blood was rushing through them once more, painting them bright red to get rid of the ghostly white they had been moments before. He kept his hand posed to snatch the small nylon backpack the second the clock displayed 5:45. He stroked the glossy material with his middle finger impatiently and barely managed not to sigh or hum in annoyance.

He stopped himself from tapping on the table, feeling very abruptly overwhelmed with the idea that he was not alone. He ground his teeth together in annoyance at his returned paranoia. It was growing steadily stronger and much more pronounced. The muscles in his body were tightening beneath his skin and his heart had leaped into his throat. He tasted the blood with each beat, burning his mouth violently. His nerve endings took on a steady, vicious tingle. Alarms went off in his lightening head. His hand jerked almost mechanically and he jumped when his bag fell.

Yugi's head snapped toward it and he breathed out roughly as the clock's ticking grew deafening in his mind. The blood in his mouth began to burn more noticeably. His hand shook as he looked at the clock and then snatched the strap in his hand again. The chair toppled over violently with a loud thud and he jumped at the sound. His body froze up as he realized he would have to turn around to place it upright again.

He could hear them behind him now, and he was not in a hurry to look at whoever it was whose exhales kept making his heart pound even harder.

The zippers on his backpack were shaking when he pulled it off the floor. A shudder ran through him as he stared at the exit. He could bolt. He could race off for his house. But his curiosity was at war with his fight-or-flight instinct. He had no idea if he should look back or run, but he knew standing there immobilized was no longer an option. There was someone behind him…

Unless he was hallucinating again.

The thought made him stop short.

 _Was_ he hallucinating? That could explain why there was no source for the noise that he had heard. It could explain why he had not heard them approach until they were right behind him, rasping like this. He may not have been having auditory hallucinations before but he had also never had ones like the one he had suffered through during that thunderstorm. They were getting worse so perhaps that also involved auditory now.

But what could he use to identify such a thing? The visual had telltale signs and he could name nothing at that moment.

Terror crept through him immediately as he wondered if there might not be one. Everything sounded as it should have safe for the breathing. And now he _knew_ that he could not run without looking back. He had to know if he was experiencing them now as well. He had this chance—something that he did not see presenting itself another time—to see and _not_ risk someone _noticing_.

Yugi drew in a deep breath and turned around. He was unsure of what he had been expecting but what greeted him there had not been in the realm of possibilities.

He blinked stupidly once, unsure of himself, and then choked on an inhale. He let out a soft whimper of a noise. His lungs ached when he breathed again. His head was too light. A buzzing sensation was making his eyes throb in his skull. He blinked again slowly, staring blankly as his mind tried to connect the dots. His spine began to ache as he took the other boy in slowly.

His first impulse was both to flee and then to hide away. The eyes he was staring into could normally be described as dark brown, almost black. One could go as far as to say that they were beady like a rat's, because his irises and pupils were almost too small to match the size of his eyes. Yugi had often said himself that they were pathetically small and he always thought of bugs when he looked at him.

"Kokurano…" He was unsure for a moment whether the boy was truly the arrogant psychic he saw almost every day. He certainly looked like him by all means, dressed in that strange aqua green cloak that bordered on neon in shade. He wore the same gray shirt with the blue and purple-beaded necklace that was rumored to have something to do with voodoo magic. He even had the purple-starred gray band sitting on his forehead where it rested just beneath his light-colored hair that bordered on an ashy white. He had the same rather thick build and chubby face.

The only difference, however, was that those eyes were blue and not muddy brown. A milky sheen covered the pupils as well and the very edges of both glowed a deep midnight blue. The color spread out halfway through his irises and stopped there.

"The shadows…"

Yugi instinctively backed up into the table. Pain slammed through his hip. His bones seemed to rattle beneath his skin at the contact. His teeth ground together. His mind echoed that terrible hissing quality that the other boy's voice possessed. The sound reminded him of voices bleeding and layering with one another. He felt his spine lock slowly. There was some kind of ungodly strength in that voice that made every nerve in his body feel alight. Whether it was two voices or even more or simply one he couldn't be sure. But its message slithered like snakes and burned the air like a struck match as it found its way into his ears.

"The shadows are bleeding…"

He shook his head slowly, unsure of what to say or think. He did not understand the statement, but then who possibly _could_? Shadows were inanimate. They were nothing more than the absence of light when an object blocked the rays from touching the ground. They could not bleed. Was he trying to give him some kind of ridiculous fortune?

Yugi began to open his mouth but stopped short. Something was slowly coming from the other boy's mouth. At first it looked merely like drool. The smaller teen instantly smelled that light and fruity scent and thought for a moment about gum once more. But then he spotted it growing bubbly almost like toothpaste before it was spat into the skin. It was a pure white froth, swelling up slowly but surely from the boy's mouth. It drizzled down both corners of his mouth as if he were choking on something like sea foam. A gurgling noise met his ears after a moment and his stomach clenched. It was an extremely unsteady noise and he thought of bubbles rising from beneath the water. He pictured mouth wash in commercials and trembled violently.

Why couldn't it have been something so simple?

But as he continued watching him almost blindly, he could see small flecks of red. A mass of froth hit the ground, dripping from the right side of his chin. The red flecks were rapidly becoming more abundant, becoming a sea of crimson.

Yugi was frozen in place. That sweet smell was growing stronger but the properties had changed. He now caught the sharp metallic heat that came like a drifting breeze. He had smelled _Kokurano's blood_ that entire time and he had never even realized. For whatever reason, his own instincts had allowed him to misidentify and underestimate the importance of the smell. He had foolishly thoguht it was candy…

His stomach twisted violently and he felt his esophagus twitch as he attempted to suppress his instinct to bolt once more. He was stupidly unable to so much as look away, stuck and staring as if he might learn something from the sight before him.

"The shadows are bleeding…"

The voice had grown lower, guttural and deep like that of an enraged dog's snarl. A shudder passed through the larger teen and Yugi watched blindly, still immobilized and rooted to the spot. Kokurano's eyes rolled back into his skull, the veins a bright glaring red as they seemed to burst and turn the whites a pink like calamine lotion. His body jerked and went through a violent spasm as if he had been electrocuted. His head fell back with a terrible cracking sound. His knees buckled. He fell forward and Yugi realized with a startling clarity that his neck had snapped and he could no longer hear him gurgling.

His hand shook violently as the life seemed to return to his limbs. He snatched his bag, the zippers almost like three new pulses as they jingled, and took off.

He burst through the double doors. He scrambled, trying to turn, and slammed into the wall instead. He yelped as his shoulder and hip absorbed the impact. His legs buckled beneath him. He slid down the painted white brick and crumbled against the floor in a heap. He let out a choked noise. His lungs constricted painfully. His head began to pound. That strangled noise left him once more.

Someone had just died in front of him.

Someone who he, Honda and Jonouchi had joked about being the serial killer's first victim.

He trembled violently. His mouth tasted of blood and stomach acid. He clenched his eyes shut. That choked breath left him once more. He shuddered with the effort to keep his lungs working. His shoulders rose and fell stiffly. His spine began to adopt a low, dull ache. His temple began to pound. He wasn't sure if his eyes were watering or if maybe he was just blind with disbelief.

How was this even possible? How was it possible that Kokurano would seek him out like this? Had he been waiting around for him so that he could scare him? And if that was the case, why would he have waited there for so long?

But even if that had been the case, had he had some idea about what he was going to say to him when he did confront him? Surely "The shadows are bleeding" had not been his first choice. And dying while relaying the fortune was something that Yugi knew would never have been a choice to make in the first place.

And what was it that had just happened? What had killed him?

Had he been poisoned? Had someone somehow put poison in his food or drink during lunch?

Was that even how poison worked? He was far from an expert on something like that but he did wonder and poison seemed logical.

But who would want to poison Kokurano? He had never hurt anyone. He was just a pest—or he _had_ been, Yugi supposed.

He trembled pitifully as a new thought occurred to him. What if he was not dead yet? What if he was still alive, but slowly choking to death on his own bloodied saliva? What if he was still trying to talk?

Was he _still_ saying that same nonsensical phrase?

He pictured it for a moment. He saw Kokurano lying there, choking as more bloodied froth escaped his lips. He heard him choking and gurgling harder.

 _His neck broke_ , Yugi snarled to himself angrily. _When his head fell back his neck_ broke. _It_ snapped. _He is_ dead.

He had to be. That noise had been too loud and violent for him to have survived. And he had dropped immediately after, dead weight. He had been silence after that and another dead body would be found in the morning. And Chono would most likely find a way to blame him. He had been there, he had watched him as he died, and Chono had _placed him there_ because of his make up assignments.

He let out another choked breath and clenched his eyes shut as tightly as possible. That voice was in his head again, hissing and echoing madly. His skull felt entirely too small and his brain too full. He could not focus or understand as he let out a small wail-like noise.

"The shadows are bleeding…"

He shuddered and tossed his head violently to one side. He only resisted the urge to sink his nails into his scalp due to his hands feeling numb. The words were repeating themselves and he jerked his head the other way. Why would that voice not leave him alone? Why would those words not cease? He shook as violently as a plucked bowstring and tossed his head once more. Dear gods, it needed to stop.

A whimper bubbled out of his throat.

Someone had just died in front of him and their voice wouldn't stop echoing in his head.

What did that even mean? Was it just some kind of attempt at scaring him? If it was then it had worked but unless Kokurano had taken acting lessons recently then it could not have simply been a prank. But if he had been poisoned or something along those lines, why had it taken so long for it to kill him? And how was it possible for a person to make his eyes glow or his voice sound like that?

Yugi's thoughts stopped immediately at that idea. _Could_ it have been a hallucination somehow? Was that even possible?

Instantly he thought to get to his feet and check. His curiosity bit at his fear with overwhelming force and he blinked slowly. Was it possible? He didn't truly think that it all matched up, but his hallucinations did somehow seem to be evolving. They almost seemed to be somehow—possibly—adapting. The idea sent his head spinning as his stomach clenched.

Was it possible for something like that—a mental illness, he supposed—to evolve and adapt? He knew of viruses doing that kind of thing, which was why it was always important not to miss a dose of medicine when it was prescribed. The illness would strengthen itself and no longer respond to the medicine. It would change and alter itself as needed in order to survive.

He blinked and then shook his head to scatter his thoughts. If he went in there and it was not just some hallucination, he didn't know what he would do. He had no idea if he could even handle a truth like that. No, if Kokurano had really died and it was not simply his mind playing tricks, then one of the staff and the police could handle the discovery. He wanted nothing to do with it.

Yugi slowly turned his head towards his backpack. He wondered momentarily if perhaps he would find blood or sprays of spittle across it and the idea made him quake violently. His hands shook when he reached out to pull it towards him. How long would it take them to connect him to the death? He had no doubt that they could—and he guessed it would be quickly—but he had to at least hope that it did not happen.

What was he supposed to say? If he told them the truth, they would think he was insane. No one would believe that his eyes had been glowing and he had snapped his neck like that when he had tossed his head back. And should he mention his voice? That would get him thrown into an insane asylum almost immediately.

A laugh bubbled up out of his mouth.

At least that would be better than jail.

He drew his bag closer to him, entire body still shaking, and looking at it blankly. He needed to just take off for his house. He needed to pretend he did not know anything about Kokurano or that anything was out of the ordinary. He needed to get back before curfew. His mother would have the police out searching for him within five minutes of six…

Yugi shook his head at the idea, wondering how worried she might be if she knew the situation. Would she think he had somehow done this, hallucinating and knowingly killing him? He had lost two animals already and, while that didn't merit killing someone, he had to wonder if it was possible. And he thought his mother might have that same idea to be taken into account.

The police would find out that he was the only one there with Kokurano and that would be enough to name him the prime suspect. It didn't matter that he was small and did not have the strength to kill or even _hurt_ him in any way. All that would matter would be where he was and when. And he knew that at least someone must have seen how they had been staring at each other that morning or how all of them safe for the psychic had messed with him at least once throughout the day. He had no alibi whatsoever when it came down to it and Yugi had to admit that he was not even surprised in the least. Things never truly seemed to go his way as it was so he was not even knocked off his feet by this realization.

He shook his head firmly. Now was not the time to become melancholic. Now was the time for him to make a run for his house or somehow attempt to establish an alibi of some kind. Or, really, he guessed, now was the time to just get home so that his mom did not call the police and make them waste their time searching for him. He was still considered a minor according to Domino City's standards, and the police always searched for them whenever it was reported they were missing.

Yugi pulled himself up on shaky legs, using the wall as support to draw himself to a full stand. His bag swung and rattled due to the force of his quaking limbs. He glanced down at them, studying, and his stomach dropped as he continued staring. He expected to find blood or spittle, and the clean beige of his backpack made him want to sob with relief. He shuddered once and then let out another choked noise as he quaked a second time. A soft, bark-like noise left his throat and he was reminded of trying to smother a cough by keeping his mouth shut. The normalcy of such a thought was enough to ease a small bit of tension in his rigid spine.

His legs were weaker than a newborn calf's when he finally took a step away from the wall. His right leg buckled beneath him, bending inwards towards his left. He scrabbled for a firm grip on the wall though the smoothed surface nearly allowed him to fall altogether. He forced himself not to look at the window of the doors he was facing. The moment he did that was the moment that one of his extremely unwanted realities became an absolute truth. He could not handle it.

The bag felt as if it weighed a ton as he took another step, careful to keep his eyes averted in order to avoid any chance of seeing the glass. Instead he focused on the white tiled flooring and tried to remember which way would take him the least time to get home. He doubted—with an extreme certainty—that he would be able to make himself move his legs and run. He also realized that he was not capable of calling, let alone texting.

If he was lucky, she would be caught up in a surgery or taking care of one of the animals. His grandpa was—he could hope—either asleep or too wrapped up in a show on TV for him to even notice he was not home on time.

A small smile threatened to tug at his lips due to the familiar image that sprang to his mind. His grandpa would be on the couch with the TV blaring, either learned forward completely to watch with growing interested and excitement or slouched back, fast asleep. His jaws would be half-opened and he would let out a small whistling snore. Yugi had often walked in on him like that and had covered him with a blanket when he seemed cold. Then he would sit nearby and watch to make sure he was okay and nothing happened because of his age. Those were possibly the only times he was thankful for his insomnia.

He didn't glance over his shoulder as he continued for the door to make his way to the parking lot. If he could make it out there he thought it might be easier to run. Maybe out there it would not feel so terribly suffocating. Maybe his limbs would not feel so terribly heavy. Maybe if he could just make it out the door to the parking lot and towards the quad he would be able to get home before curfew even became an issue.

The moment he drew in a breath of outside air, he was running. He was unsure of how he had even managed it. He was racing as fast as he could. He could hear nothing but his sneakers against the ground. There was only the wind against his face when it stirred. His backpack felt heavy where he was holding it with his right arm as he ran. His mind was becoming light again, like a drifting feather.

He didn't slow as he made it past the parking lot. He didn't pause as the street came into view. He welcomed the sight of the asphalt. He almost swore with happiness. He was running like a dog with its tail between its legs but he couldn't care less. He was nearly mindless with joy. He was outside. He was running. He was— _would_ _be_ —okay.

He could just outrun his thoughts of Kokurano. He could race away from that new reality. He would make it home, see his mom and grandpa, and it would all be okay. Whatever happened after that…well, maybe he could outrun that too.

He let out a hysterical little noise almost like a laugh. Dizziness swept through him. His vision blurred. His feet skipped a step. His legs tangled. He dropped his bag as he fell face first. He was shaking again. He didn't want to try to get up. He did not even want to open his eyes.

Kokurano had just died in front of him. There was no way to outrun that reality. He could put distance between himself and the body but he could escape. That stupid voice in his head would never let him forget. It would drive him insane.

"The shadows are bleeding…"

What the hell did that even mean?

A noise of pure distress crept out of his throat. It sounded, he thought, like one of the animals at the clinic when they had just woken from anesthesia and wanted their owners by their side.

The anguished fear in the noise as it clawed its way up his throat once more made him tremble. His entire body was racked with the shudder and his mouth felt caked with metallic blood. His ears were throbbing with the height of the keen noise as it seemed to surge through him like electricity. His entire body was waking as if it were a phone on vibrate. When he finally moved enough to draw his limbs toward him and pull himself to his hands and knees his fingers felt too numb to be of any use. His spine tightened beneath the skin of his back and he nearly puked.

He should have been calling the police. He should have been checking on him to make sure he was truly dead.

Another animalistic whimper curled through the air. In all actuality, he didn't think it mattered what he did. If it was a hallucination he would have to be put in an asylum. If it was reality then he had just witnessed someone die. And if he hadn't truly died before Yugi had fled then he might as well have killed him himself because he had not checked or thought to call for help.

His vision was blurred and flickering as he stared at the pavement. He couldn't focus on anything but he thought he could see everything. Even with the growing winter darkness he could see ever contour of the asphalt. He caught ever fleck and shard of mixed rock where the colors blended. He saw where some of it was dislodged by the wind. A tiny beetle scuttled along in a mazy of dark blue. Grains of sand shifted with a breeze.

He was stupidly fascinated with the sight of it all. It was almost as if he were looking through a microscope. Everything was in perfect focus like a camera with a zoon lens. He could hear everything around him without straining his ears. There was the gentle, nearly inaudible stir of the wind. There was a mouse scampering across cold dying grass. The crickets were playing symphonies. A car was rumbling to life. A cat was stalking its prey. A dog was pacing the length of its fence, its chain rattling almost like a ghost's.

There was a heavy set of footfalls somewhere behind him.

Yugi tilted his head, angling his right ear toward the ground. The sound was rapidly growing louder and more pronounced. His blood hummed violently in his veins, burning him. His head began to buzz and the small teen was on his feet before he had thought it through. He took off running without a glance back. But he was extremely aware of the fact that he had left his backpack there in his hurry.

What alarmed him more was that he had come to recognize the person behind him through the amount of weight they put into each step. The name came to him without much provocation, drifting into his mind like a fallen leaf. He was unsure and more than a little unnerved that he could recognize a person like that.

Then again, he supposed he had been in class with him long enough to know it. He also knew without a semblance of doubt that he could outrun Ushio. He was much lighter and faster than the other teen with his massive bulk. Yugi had always been able to run quickly with his small frame. It was almost like a gift to make up for his shortness which had always been a point potential bullies latched onto.

He could hear Ushio steadily behind him. He was neither gaining nor falling back. Yugi blinked at the realization. He was keeping pace with him. He was making him run at his leisure and would match his speed with his stamina. Ushio had wanted him to bolt like he had. The small teen had fallen into some kind of cat and mouse game without even realizing it. But he had had no other options. Ushio would have mutilated him even if he had just gotten up and turned around. Running was really the only option he had in the first place. Standing his ground would have been a huge mistake.

Yugi faltered slightly. He was thinking about them in a simplistic, animalistic way. He was proclaiming Ushio a predator and himself his prey. He was looking at it like a dog hunting a serow. He was in such a state of fear that he had almost forgotten himself.

Ushio chased him a quarter of the way to his house before he veered off to the left. Yugi realized immediately that back roads were his only hope. He sprinted for the right towards some of the older apartment complexes. The growing darkness did nothing to slow him down. It seemingly failed to even stunt his acute vision. When he got into the back alleyway he felt that he could see almost everything.

The little bumps in the concrete looked like the black pinpricks of a gray static television screen. The fire escapes to his right were worn down and rust coated much of the metal. One of the dumpsters had been carved into and said that life sucked. A small black beetle rested on one of the railings. Water had pooled into the lids of the dumpsters. The very corner of the building opposite of him had a small gutter sticking out. The area around it was stained and scratched where it had shaken in the wind. The bolts connected it looked ready to give out. A single water droplet had collected at the bottom of the gutter and was swollen enough that he thought it might drop at any moment.

Yugi slowed his pace, trying to listen past the dull roar of his blood pounding in his ears. If Ushio was around and had doubled back to follow hi instead then he needed to know. He could not afford to be caught unaware. He was unsure as to why he was so certain that Ushio had the intent to kill him but it was ingrained in his head. Instinct screamed at him to stay away and out of the other boy's range altogether. Every alarm in his body said that he would not make it out alive if they were to have a true run-in.

So he moved briskly but did not run. Running made his blood pound harder and roar louder. It also meant he had to listen to his own steps when they echoed. Moving like this made it easier to listen. It made it less likely that Ushio might hear him moving around as well. Even if he had to give up some potential distance if he could hear him ahead of time and not have to worry, then speed be damned. He needed to be able to get out of the way if it was necessary. He could not—and _would_ not—allow Ushio to be able to sneak up on him.

Where had Ushio gone as it was? Why had he veered off like that? Had he planned to corner him somehow? Maybe he had thought to herd him into a dead end and then kill him while he struggled to find some way out.

He shuddered. It sounded like a canine's hunting technique. They would chase their prey until it was tired or they had wounded it too much for it to recover. Unlike cats they used the terrain rather than brute force to prevent injuries. They split up herds of prey and went for the weakest.

He was the weakest.

The thought made him stumble and then stop altogether. How had Ushio come up with that idea? Was it his small stature? Was it the slight slouch in his shoulders? Whenever they had interacted before then, Yugi may not have fought back when he teased but Ushio had oddly seemed to respect that. He always seemed to be trying to get a reaction rather than actually trying to hurt him.

Yugi flinched and looked back over his shoulder with a grimace as he gnawed on his bottom lip. He had messed up that morning in the quad when he had turned away and had failed to look back when he felt them watching again. That was why Ushio had pelted him in gym class while he was on his way to sit on the benches on the sidelines. When he had not turned around to look he had sent him a message that he was weaker. When he had first been staring it must have seemed like a challenge of some kind. That must have been why his instinctive response had been to stare back without so much as a blink. They had all looked away first, but now he remembered that they had all looked up at the same time—completely in unison—and Yugi had not when Ushio had stared.

And now Ushio seemed to be hunting him.

The air bit at his lungs. His heartbeat pulsed beneath his skin too noticeably. His mouth began to feel dry. He swallowed and his throat seemed to close. He stood completely still. His eyes darted around wildly. His mind buzzed as it took in his surroundings. He thought of and catalogued each possible escape route. He opened his mouth to draw in a deep breath. He forced himself to move forward slowly.

His vision was still keen. Beneath the roar of the blood in his ears he could catch only his own breathing. He strained his ears but there was nothing to greet his efforts. He did not catch even crickets or cars coming to life. There were no heavy footfalls. There was no distribution of weight to be heard. There were no animals.

And that scared him more than even Ushio. His night terrors had turned the quiet into something to always fear. When silence came into his dreams it almost certainly meant death. He knew that far too well after one in particular. He had always been too terrified to truly even think about that dream. He never even wanted to remember it. But it had refused to leave him, sticking like gum to the bottom of a shoe.

Six soft, rhythmic thumps were playing in his skull now. He tossed his head violently to the side. His nose filled with the bitter-edged sweetness of decaying flesh. A sour, wet smell made his head feel light and stuffy. He trembled, a whimper passing through him once more. Yugi ducked his head, squeezing his eyes shut. He didn't want to relive this night terror. The pain that came with it had never failed to make his knees buckle and his eyes flood with tears. He had woken up each time shaking and choking on sobs.

 _No, no, no_ …

Now was not the time for him to have a relapse. He needed to keep a grip on reality.

But he knew he had already ruined himself. He had closed his eyes. In the night terror he was blind. He heard the six little beats and he felt them. He smelled the rot, just as he had the original sweet warmth before it. It had always made him snuggle into some kind of mass in front of him that he had no name for. And there was the sixth beat that was so much louder when he was there. But it had a shakiness too, one that always made him flinch when he was awake because it would not leave his ears.

That mass would move and something warm and soft would pass over his back. Then it would leave him but he could still hear it. It would run over the back of the other forms around him, comforting them.

Yugi shook. A comforting phantom touch passed over his back slowly. A soft little thumping in his skull came in time with the faltering pulse in his ears. It skipped and stopped for a long minute but very slowly began again. It was like a baby's hiccup with a watery noise following immediately after. It did not become steady again and, as always, only five of the soft heartbeats remained for him to draw comfort from.

There was a soft but very recognizable cracking and popping noise that followed its silence soon enough. Bones were being broken and limbs torn.

There were only five left and the loudest one sounded broken. It echoed with a shattered edge like a soft sob. The sweetened scent was changing with everything else. A new, slight touch of something almost bitter made him flinch once more.

The second failing heart did not begin to pump again. The cracking noise began again only five minutes after it had grown silent. The bitter scent became only the smallest bit more noticeable but even without becoming overbearing it burned his nose.

Yugi tossed his head once more, trying to hear something other than the four remaining pulses. He tried to take a step forward but caught only the sounds echoing in his skull, drawing him into an unshakably frozen position. He could not move and he doubted in that moment that even the presence of Ushio would change that.

The warmth of the body pressed against his left flank was enough to make him want to push further into it in a vain attempt to snuggle. It was so pronounced that he felt it was its life waned. He had no need to listen in order to realize that they would be the next to leave him. The steady warmth it possessed slowly seemed to become nothing more than a blank space between him where no heat was conceivable.

Not even a sliver of warmth came from the small body he knew existed only a few inches away. The heat that had come with the comforting mass that had seemed almost like a pillar in the beginning was distant. The temperature had not changed but Yugi felt as if something had come between them somehow, almost like a slide of glass. The bitter twinge had not grown any stronger but neither had that somewhat watery and broken heartbeat that made his skull pound violently.

It took what felt like forever for Yugi to regain the sensation of touch. The warmth had seemingly left this place altogether. Long, coarse hairs brushed over the top of his nose. The bitter smell had become something entirely different. It stung and burned and fierce sourness seemed to have enveloped his senses. His nose felt as if it might burst with blood due to the harsh sting. A sickeningly sweet and nearly cancerous smell made him shudder.

The sound of bones being crushed did not meet his ears. Instead, as if summoned by his movement, that phantom touch swept over him once more. His back was warmed with it but a chill came as well. Intense fear began to course through him. A low rumbling noise almost akin a purring cat met his ears. There was no heartbeat but the shaky one. He was unsure of when the final small one had passed.

He tensed, praying with everything inside of him that he would not suffer through to the end of this terrible nightmare. The smell had grown so much stronger, unavoidable, and even as blind as he was, he knew that it was not natural. He understood instinctually that all of this was not normal.

He prepared himself for the oncoming horror that would bring about the sight of it all.

But the disgusting reality that awaited him there in that moment was not there to welcome him as he had expected. Something caught him around the neck just as his eyes snapped open. He let out a rough terrified cry almost akin a bark. The meaty palm around the back of his neck tightened. He was yanked off his feet almost effortlessly. He kicked, squirming, but knew he wouldn't get anywhere.

The collar of his shirt burned his throat. His choker pulled roughly. Nails dug into his throat. His body went limp by instinct but the grip did not loosen. Yugi stared blankly ahead of him. His vision blurred slightly at the edges due to the pain.

He didn't have to look to know that it was Ushio doing this. He did not even have to think to recognize it. He felt as if he might be tossed aside at any moment. He thought Ushio might toss him first and then slaughter him when he landed. He fought away a furious tremble, spine rigid beneath his skin.

The nails dug further into his flesh. Yugi bit back a whimper. His eyes burned. His mouth grew dry and uncomfortable, his tongue thick. The sour-edged sweet scent still made his nose ache violently. The grip tightened after a moment, pulling harshly at his clothes. A twist of his wrist made him want to struggle again. He did not kick but he knew he needed to do something that did not involve this instinctive reaction. He was running out of air due to growing panic and his throat was closing from the force of his hold.

He clenched his eyes shut after a few moments. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't shake the idea of staying limp. Ushio was killing him and he had yet to try to save himself. The thought was not appealing in the least. He reached up to try to pull his hand away without even truly considering it. The movement made Ushio let out a noise mixed between an animalistic snarl and a human laugh.

Yugi froze in place, hands still trying to push Ushio's away. He should have stayed still, he realized with sudden clarity. Ushio would have dropped him. He would have done as he always had before and eventually grown bored. For whatever reason, he had not attacked him like he could. He had been waiting like an animal might had its prey been playing dead. He clamped his teeth down on his tongue.

He should have listened to his instincts. He should not have stupidly questioned them.

But now they told him to kick and squirm and struggle until Ushio dropped him. Yugi admitted, however, that he was unsure of whether they were truly his instincts or just blind panic that came with his blunder. Either way, he listened, and his heel pressed hard into Ushio's shin. The taller teen let out a grunt and then another of those snarling laughs of noise. He did not even flinch as he pulled him higher off the ground.

Yugi opened his eyes into slits, staring straight ahead. He was unsure of what he was seeing. His eyes wouldn't focus. But he thought it looked like a dog, only a small bit bigger than a German shepherd. He kicked harder and was rewarded with a lazy flicker of Ushio's wrist. The movement sent his ninety-two-pound frame through the air and across the little alleyway as if he were nothing more than a tennis ball. He thought of frisbees thrown across the yard for Blankey to chase and nearly laughed hysterically at the disjointed image in his terrified head.

His back hit the asphalt so hard that it knocked the air from his lungs. A loud cracking noise came with it. Pain erupted in his spine and shoulders. Spots like shining stars burst behind his eyes. He tasted blood burning on his tongue like spice. It was layered like mud and caked every inch of his mouth. He went to draw in a breath. The ache in his skull was too violent for him to think straight. His vision was still unfocused. Spots were still disappearing in rapid bursts of pain.

He swallowed a whimper and clenched his eyes shut once more. A disgusting, horrifying thought swept through him as the dog growled viciously.

What if this was how those murders had happened? What if Ushio had a dog? He could easily murder someone with his immense build. And then he could feed the dog those missing organs. He didn't think anyone would suspect such a thing, especially when killers were not known for keeping pets. Animals were always the first step, from what he had understood anyways.

The canine let out another furious noise. Yugi slowly peeled an eye open. Small bursts of white like scattered drops of paint burst across his vision. His head ached violently. For a moment everything seemed drowned like water in intense sunlight and then he saw it.

The animal stood a few small feet away from him and Ushio. Its ears were erect and pricked forward. Its lips were pulled back to show off gleaming white teeth and gums darkened by shadows. Its fur was raised in long jagged lines like mountain ridges. He stared stupidly at the sight of it. It was focused completely on Ushio, as if it did not even realize he was there. The massive teen stood frozen and watching. It stepped forward and its tongue flashed like a warning signal as it touched the dog's nose. Its lips pulled back further and, for a moment, the fur around its eyes wrinkled angrily.

They were staring at each other. The dog's tail slowly began to rise, unnaturally straight and long.

The hybrid flitted through his mind momentarily. It had had a similarly long and straight tails, but their builds were too different. The hybrid had been larger but with a robust body and slender legs. This animal was lean and muscular, with a longer muzzle as well. And its fur was light and glimmered with the dim glow of an apartment overhead. The hybrid's had not always seemed to do that.

Another snarl echoed in the air. Yugi froze. Ushio was now baring his teeth as well. His eyes looked momentarily bright and keen. His jaw opened. The skin around his nose and towards his eyes bunched and twitched. The raised folds of pulled flesh seemed to spread up and outwards. The small teen's eyes became completely focused on the image before him, disgusted and horrified. They were expanding, growing outwards to begin tracing his veins like peaks of flesh. They swept downwards to his jaw, bulging and twisting like snakes, and his neck seemed to grow twice as thick with the addition.

The dog lunged forward once, propelling itself a small inch. The hairs along the back of its neck had grown rigid in its bristle. Its teeth chomped together loudly enough that Yugi flinched violently. He scrambled back against the wall and fought away a whimper. Another snarl came from Ushio and the small teen nearly puked upon looking at him.

His back was arched upwards like a cat's, hunched over jaggedly. His mouth was beginning to pull forward. His jaw crunched and popped loudly. His canines glinted and thickened. They pulled outwards almost like gleaming knives. Long strings of saliva began to drip from the edge of his top jaw. His brown eyes had taken on a lighter, almost golden hue. And they seemed to be pulsating with each pop.

His stomach heaved again more violently this time. But his body was still frozen in place. Bile slid its way up his throat in a path like fire. The acidic taste scorched his senses. He was choking on it as he continued staring. It swamped everything else. He could not focus on anything else. His eyes were almost blind with the terrible taste in his mouth and he was unsure of what was happening in front of him.

The hairs on Ushio's arms were growing thick and sprouting. Yugi felt the bile push through his lips. His skin tingled and burned as it crept downwards towards his chin. He blinked stupidly at the sensation and the sight before him. Ushio's fingers were becoming thicker, his nails darkening and taking on an unnatural gloss. They curved downwards in sharp edges like immense talons. The bile in his mouth continued sputtering outwards in thick rivulets of acid. He heard the distinct sloppy impact almost like spilling water and chunks of food hitting the asphalt.

Yugi remained frozen. The popping and grinding noises escalated. The dog chomped its teeth once more. The sound echoed as violently as gunfire. The other, massive teen's spine arched to an unnatural height. His shirt was beginning to strain and tear where his back seemed to be pushing through it all.

Yugi's heart pounded viciously in his chest, loud and overpowering in his skull. His throat burned more violently and his stomach lurched in a way that made his lungs clamp up forcefully.

Ushio's head dropped, making him appear even more fully hunched over. He looked almost as if he might fall to his hands and knees at any moment. His skin began to ripple almost like a mound of maggots. His spine began to jut more harshly upwards. A low, guttural snarl began to tear through the air. The noise sent tremors through the air, soft vibrations that made Yugi's skin itch.

Yugi choked on more vomit. The sound of it hitting the ground was dull beneath the hideous noise Ushio was producing. Vision still disgustingly keen, the small teen found himself unable to look away. The tendons were bulging along Ushio's hands. He could see his fingers beginning to darken, turning red. It appeared almost as if his pores were opening, excreting something long, thin and dark. The hairs on his arms were twitching and dancing, not at all related to the muscle spasms he seemed to be going through. He recognized it after a moment, shaking at the realization. The hairs on his arms were multiplying, growing larger and then receding and growing thicker.

The knobs of his spine were pinching together beneath his skin. They pressed tightly. Then the popped and cackled. They pulled apart again. His shoulder blades shifted beneath his skin like tectonic plates. The muscles became bunched and thick, hunched almost. His shoulders rose like the jagged peaks of mountains. Then they twisted and arched and pulled apart. They were settled parallel to his spine. His jaw was stretching father but the bone was growing thinner, too long to support the teen's immense mouth. His neck was thickening and almost seemed to be growing like his mouth. His brow began receding, his jaws opening wide to show off teeth that looked as sharp as a knife's blade.

His head turned sharply, immediately. The canine had leaped forward with a beauty and grace which defied logic. What it collided with was not Ushio. It was a similarly built canine. It was darker in fur color and looked a small bit larger, but it was a similar dog.

A dog.

Ushio had…turned into…a dog?

Yugi shook his head slowly, struggling to understand. The panic and uncertainty made his ears ring. He could not comprehend what it was that he was seeing.

The two animals were within inches of each other. Tails were raised high. Shoulders were stiffened. Ears were pricked forward. Lips were drawn back. Teeth were gleaming. Eyes were boring into each other. Hackles were squared. Their muscles were braced. Low, deep guttural noises of pure aggression made the air stuffy.

His heart pounded violently and his stomach twisted. Yugi swallowed harshly once more. The acidic taste in his mouth made him salivate and he spat onto the asphalt. The shock was weighing down on his senses and his head pounded. He needed to get out. He needed to run. He needed to get home and—and then what? He would be leading them to his home, his mom and grandpa. But there was not much else he could do.

Maybe the two animals would kill each other. Maybe he should hope for such a thing seeing how well-matched they appeared to be at the moment. The lighter one seemed like the perfect distraction to keep Ushio away and he thanked the gods for its appearance now. Maybe it could wound Ushio to the point that all he would be able to smell afterwards would be blood.

Yugi shivered but held his ground. He wouldn't move until they did. He had to make sure they were distracting each other, locked in combat, and would not even pay him mind when he ran.

As if reading his thoughts, the lighter-furred canine lunged. Its teeth caught Ushio's brow. The larger dog snarled low in its throat and tossed his head. The movement was followed by them both rising up on their hindquarters. Yugi took off immediately afterwards. He turned wildly, the movement somehow graceful and calculated. The two canines snarled angrily behind him.

The small teen's legs pumped faster than he had ever known. The snarls echoed in his head. He heard one of them collide violently with the ground. The blood roared in his ears until it threatened to drown out everything else. His sneakers hitting the pavement sent his head spinning in a harsh downward spiral. He could feel the aching burn of his scorched throat. His stomach lurched and quivered.

A loud, even clicking noise burst through the dull roar in his ears. His eyes widened, lungs constricting. His spine tingled. He pictured Kokurano's head snapping back. He heard five heartbeats fade in his ears. He thought of Miho and the shop owner's broken bodies. His nerve endings began to spark with energy. His blood burned in his veins.

Something softer, almost silent, followed each click. The clicking noise doubled. Yugi trembled when they collided.

Teeth chomped and cut through fur and skin. A snarl of pure rage made Yugi stumble.

His muscles locked immediately. For a split second he was balanced precariously on his right leg. Then he found himself toppling forward. The force of his falter, of his immobilized body, sent his limbs into nothing more than a limp knot of clothed muscle and bone. His palms skidded against the pavement. Blood seeped from torn skin.

His wrists burned, aching violently with the fall. Instinctively he tipped his head upwards. His chin scraped and tingled. When his head beat each ache became something like a pit of lava beneath his skin. He trembled, breathing raggedly.

Hot rivulets of blood seeped from the torn skin of his chin, drizzling around the lodged stones. His neck tingled and itched with the sensation. His collarbone felt as if it had been lit with fire. His chest ached and felt suddenly weighted. He pulled his knees up under him, movements feeling oddly slow and sluggish. He felt as if he had just woken in the middle of the night.

He realized a moment later that getting up and even drawing himself into this position had been rather useless. He felt every bone in his body seemingly harden in an effort to brace itself.

His lower back and right side hit the pavement harshly. For a moment everything seemed to dissolve into darkness. Excruciating pain exploded across his right side. Pinpricks of bright white like bursting stars made his head spin. His eyes opened wide with pain when its full weight immediately pressed him to the ground. The impact sent the breath from his lungs. He cried out in pain as stones ground into the skin on his face. A paw, hot and perspiring, crushed his temple. Another pinned his throbbing spine. Its breath fanned over his neck for a moment. Blinking and trying to focus his vision, Yugi felt his face alleviated of the immense pressure of its weight.

It came back down so suddenly and with such great force that his eyes vibrated in their sockets. His lungs collapsed in on themselves. His heart stuttered, skipping before finally finding its pulse again. His vision exploded with stars. His brain seemed to almost shut down altogether.

The bulking mass was tossed aside and away from him suddenly. He had been deaf to the other canine's approach. But now his sense of hearing seemed to come back with a vengeance. He could hear them locked together, teeth tearing through fur. He caught the sound of droplets of blood hitting the ground.

His mind was screaming with the need to get away. He had to at least try if nothing else.

He dragged his limbs under him. Adrenaline made his head spin. He needed to run. He needed to hide, more than anything. He needed distance and a place where he could find shelter. Maybe one of the apartments would do well enough. But he was unsure of just how far back they were now that he had run.

He shuddered and ignored the impulse to look around. The two canines were still tearing into each other. They snarled angrily and violently. He could hear them throwing each other to the ground. Bones were cracking with the impacts. Yugi continued forward, stumbling and swallowing a whimper at the pain. He forced himself to take a step and then drag the other to match it. The progress was too slow but his back hurt. He could not move any faster.

A bone must have broken in his right side somewhere but he couldn't tell. The adrenaline and panic were doing well to numb everywhere but his back.

The fighting ceased for a moment. Yugi heard him as he came at him once more.

His body locked once more instinctively. He squeezed his eyes shut tightly, waiting.

Yugi hit the wall of the building beside him so hard that his skull cracked upon impact. The weight against his side pushed him further into it. His ribcage felt shattered on his right side as Ushio threw himself at him once more. His left shoulder let out a sickening pop and cracking noise where it was pinned against the wall.

Claws, thick and unnaturally sharp, tore through his clothing. His skin felt as if it were being lit on fire as it was ripped open effortlessly. The long black hooked grooves of keratin carved their way from his shoulder to the very bottom of his wrist. He screamed loudly enough that the dog actually flinched away. He watched Ushio back up a step. The other dog took advantage of the moment. Ushio was thrown with the attack. He saw them go rolling, only existing in his peripheral where his vision was darkening to nothingness.

His body slumped unnaturally, stumbling so that he found himself pressed back against the wall. A streak of bright red tainted the white of the paint in a sloppy smear. His vision swelled and danced, the edges swimming inwards. His head felt weighted and yet oddly light all at once, sagging until his chin was pressed against his chest. His body throbbed violently with pain and his pulse seemed to slow. Shivers began to rack his frame as his body seemed to grow heavier.

There were no dramatic flashes of his life. There was only the darkness which weighed on him with a chill not too unlike the winter air. The blackness was thick and inky, draping itself around him completely. His mind was blank beneath its lull and he was unsure of what it was he felt. It was almost as if he was drifting and yet held in place all at once.

Something about the darkness had changed, however. It was lighter and colder, making his skin tingle, but now he felt a strange and steady undercurrent of slight warmth. An odd sense of serenity crept over him slowly, pushing at the blankness that had made up his being only moments before. He did not understand this new development, nor the slow awareness that seemed to creep through him. Small shards of memory and impulse, of instinct and emotion, came upon him tentatively and his first real thought was to open his eyes.

He did so without hesitation. Then he blinked and slowly tipped his head up to pull his chin from his chest.

Tendrils of silver mist gathered his attention first, and then the sky, a dark blue like sapphire with stars in abundance and a wide full moon of pure silver that made his heart skip a beat. The trees seemed to stretch for miles, branches extended wildly overhead like a net of wood and leaves painted silver and white and green with tints of red as if autumn had blended with winter and summer. The tree over his head was white and silver, thin but with far more branches than he saw on the others scattered around him. The entire landscape was painted with drizzles of gold and cobalt blue around him, the frost of the forest making him feel perfectly content and oddly warm.

The tree branches above his head made him stare, the silver frost at least an inch or two thick. It somehow failed to block out the light of the moon and the stars overhead, making him tip his chin up to stare in surprise.

No matter the way the branches cut into the sky, they did not block out the light of the stars and the moon. Instead they seemed almost to amplify it, the mist making it sparkle more so, causing his eyes to gleam beautifully.

 _Welcome, young one_.

The words were a gentle whisper of a deep baritone voice, drifting through his mind like a benign breeze. He blinked, startled by the idea that he was not alone in this place, and turned his head curiously to see if he could determine the source. Instead he found himself staring at what seemed to be an endlessly large expanse of water, a rippling river of white and silver. The waters were so clear even with the shimmering gleam of color that he could see the multicolored stones beneath its surface. They were smooth and mesmerizing in their beautiful reddish, gold and orange gleams. The ripples were gentle where they should have been roaring and harsh in speed and his fingers itched to reach out and touch the glimmering surface.

 _Beautiful, isn't it_?

It sounded as it had in his head moments before but this time it also seemed to be projected outward, like a spoken thought. He turned as the last word faded, eyes wide and confused. Was there truly someone there with him or was he only imagining it?

At first he found nothing but mist. It was thicker now and unnaturally so. He thought it looked like both something out of a horror more or possibly a silver sheer curtain that was just a little too thick and so not as transparent. He could see them, however, three shapes amidst the silver. They did not appear fully solid as he looked at them, almost as if they were part of the mist itself but with something like shadows that give it clear defined lines. He thought vaguely of reflections in a mirror when it was turned in a way that made the image on its smooth surface break in the middle. He could see through them but he also saw the thin illusion of three bodies, all of them canine. The ears were erect, their limbs were long, their builds were lean and narrow as he faced them, their legs perfectly aligned so that it looked as if they had only two. Their paws were hidden away by an inch, maybe two, so that only the joints of their wrists showed. It was a clear indicator of just how much frost truly existed on the forest floor, how thick the undergrowth could possibly be beneath it.

The eyes were what truly held his attention, however. Three pairs of narrow, almond-shaped eyes stared back at him. The center of the trio of canines had bright green almost the shade of aquamarine but bordering a deep forest color or possibly emerald. To its left was a dark, almost frosty blue with a small hint of something like sky and to its right was a pair of deep golden that was flecked with a shade of color close to cinnamon. All three were focused entirely upon him, glowing in the mist like a car's headlights. They cast a small gleam against the thick fog around them and Yugi found himself almost mesmerized by the strange beauty of it.

 _What's the matter_? _Don't you know how to talk_?

Yugi blinked, eyes on the pair of blue eyes which, even with the unusual glare, seemed to shine with amusement. The voice bordered on a deeper edge than the first, almost with a bass pitch which made his skin tingle momentarily. It echoed in his head strangely, not at all displeasing, but like the first it also seemed as if it had been projected outwards so that all four of them could hear his words.

He opened and closed his mouth once, unsure of how to answer, and felt his nerves grow tangled. His tongue felt as if it had just grown knotted and he bit his lip. "I…" His voice came out strangled and he cut himself off immediately. A small heat entered his cheeks and his eyes widened drastically in surprise as three rich timbres of light chuckles met his ears and echoed melodiously in his head.

There was no mockery in the laughter, only pure amusement and friendliness. A small sense of warm familiarity and security swept through him at the realization and an easy grin tugged at his lips.

 _You need to rest, young one_. Yugi looked towards the shadow-like canine in the middle, blinking at the fondness in the soft-spoken voice. He recognized it from somewhere, he realized, and a small ache tugged at his chest. _Everything will be okay when you awaken_.

He opened and closed his mouth once, unsure of what to say or how to phrase the question. It was a strange concept, and it seemed almost foreign. Why should he rest? And what was it that was not okay? The thought that anything was unsafe while he was in this place of mist and frost and silver moonlight and blue shadows was strange and confusing.

 _It's best you don't bring it to attention_ , a somewhat higher voice said in a clearly concerned tone, which then lowered into something of a snarl. Yugi looked towards the golden-eyed wolf but his gaze looked almost red now. _Doing so will only bring you harm_.

"Bring me…?" Yugi trailed off with a confused shake of his head. What was that supposed to mean? Bring him harm? What could possibly bring him harm in a place like this? He could not fathom such a thing.

 _There is a reason you don't remember_ , the green-eyed canine stated softly in his head. Yugi blinked wide eyes at the statement, confused. He sounded sad and almost wistful as he watched him. He watched it shake its head slowly and for a moment its ears pulled back. _You must keep it that way in order to heal_.

"But…" He fell silent again, pulling his lip between his teeth and watching them with a confused and thoughtful expression. His eyes flickered between each of theirs and he tilted his head slowly as he considered his words. He could think of and imagine nothing harmful in these woods or of anything that he might be forgetting. He also didn't know what it was that needed to heal exactly. But what reason could they possibly have to lie to him?

With such a calm and safe atmosphere, he could not even begin to believe that a lie could ever be spoken in this forest. He wondered about it for only a moment, curiosity pricking at his insides. But if it would bring harm to him, why should he wonder any more? He decided to take their advice. He had no reason not to and they probably knew better than he did anyways. His eyes flickered upwards towards the sapphire-colored sky and then down to the river again.

He had the impulse to reach out and touch it, curious about the temperature. He imagined the rippling water would be as comfortable to the touch as warm, drawn bath water and he was surprised by the thought. Immediately following it was a dull roar in his ears, the water in front of him crashing as it raced forward to chase the course of its banks. His vision flashed with bursts of white and then violent crackles of red like spilled blood. He let out a low, keen whimper that reminded him of an animal coming out of anesthesia.

 _Do not fight it_ , the green-eyed canine whispered in his head, voice gently and oddly wistful once more. _It will take you home, young one_.

His lower back was throbbing painfully in time with a heartbeat he had not noticed was missing. His blood pounding within his veins seemed white-hot and searing, threatening to burn away his skin without effort. His chest ached and flared as his lungs expanded painfully. His head pulsed and danced with hideous pain. He drew his hands up to grasp at his hair and he whimpered again. If he was not already on his knees he would have fallen to them immediately. His heart twisted and gave a shallow stutter of movement as if he had somehow managed to avoid using it for years and had suddenly thought to try utilizing it again.

The right side of his ribcage burned and threatened to make him scream. He whimpered and his entire right arm felt as if claws had been raked through the raw skin of that first wound. His vision danced with darkness and then a furious red and he could see his entire limb slick with blood. He whimpered again, the sound almost loud enough to be considered a scream. His blue-violet eyes snapped open wide, colors exploding violently behind his vision.

 _Relax_. _You must relax_. _If you cannot the entire process will be too much and you won't wake up_.

He felt it more strongly this time, something pulling for his attention as the pain skyrocketed. He clenched his jaw, swallowing a miserable scream, and tasted both blood and acid in his mouth. Images passed through his head at a breakneck speed but his mind understood them without question. He saw Kokurano, the beige dog, Ushio changing physically into another dog, their fight, his blood and his…his crumpled limp body.

His stomach lurched violently. His throat tingled, raw and aching. He could feel his entire body again but it seemed larger, heavier, weighted down. It was empty and vast and he could feel nothing but a horrifying panic creep through him. For that brief, suffocating moment, he realized there was only his consciousness, empty within the smothering silence of his vast corpse. He was nothing but a carcass, somehow newly aware and alive. Then his heart stuttered to a start once more, more powerfully than before, pumping blood through his veins to fill his body.

 _It takes longer for some_. _Let it take you and it will guide you home_ …

Yugi felt as if he were drowning in a sea of inky darkness. His vision flashed a bright, terrifying red once more where the forest had originally been white and silver. Eyes wide open and staring, he saw the colors swirl and bleed together, appearing to him almost like water going down the sink. A phantom tug pulled at his consciousness but he was not drawn back into the hollowness of his corpse once more.

Instead the red abruptly split away from its lighter counterparts and gave the illusion of the mist dancing through the air before him. It dissipated for a single split second and then darkened and grew thicker like the smoke of a campfire. It swept over him, taking away all hints of vision he owned, and Yugi knew instinctively that he would not open his eyes to that forest once more.

Everything was weaving in and out of focus around him. The sounds were wrong in his ears. The low rumble of a passing car or the movement of an animal was drifting from an intense loudness to dullness and then nonexistence. The latter was his favorite by far, because he did not want those noises to take residence in his light head.

Everything ached as he drew in a small breath. He could not differentiate between any of them as he had moments before. He was unsure whether it was a blessing or a sign that he wouldn't recover. But he could not bring himself to care either as he slowly drew himself together long enough to open his eyes into narrow, gleaming slits of blown pupils and slender rings of blue-speckled violet.

He was not surprised to see that tranquil forest missing, instead rather despaired by its peaceful disappearance. The pavement was harsh but cold beneath his hands where his palms were pressed lightly against it. His clothing had adopted the temperature rather readily, as if he had had no body heat to offer. He twitched a finger at the reminder and then looked down at his hand. Every ounce of his skin was bright red and shiny with blood. His arm flared briefly with a pain that seemed oddly dulled as he looked it over. The appendage trembled almost as if in reaction to caffeine and he watched with momentary bewilderment.

Very slowly he looked over his shoulder, eyes widening drastically. A familiar maroon colored door greeted him like a gift and he nearly sobbed in relief. He was home, propped up against the wood of the entrance to the house. He trembled and the movement made him flinch. The action made him lose what little air existed in the lungs. He held as still as possible, trying his hardest not to make his ribs ache anymore. There wasn't enough air, every indrawn breath making him fight off more tremors of pain. He ached viciously and it felt almost like a knife had been lodged between his bones. Every attempt at an inhale made his head spin and his vision darken.

His next breath made brilliant patterns of vivid red and nauseating, endless black explode behind his eyes. He clenched his eyes shut, gritting his teeth, and drew in an excruciatingly slow and steady breath. Frozen in place to attempt getting used to the pain associated with the task of breathing, he tried to remember something nagging gently at the back of his mind. He tried to pull it forward, clutching at it in the darkness, but it slipped through his fingers without pause.

New thoughts raced forward to make up for its absence. They trickled in like a running stream and his head raced with them for a moment.

Had his mom called the police?

How had he wound up at home?

What had happened with those two wolves?

What would happen when Kokurano's body was found?

What was he going to do with his ruined school uniform?

 _How was he still alive_?

He swallowed thickly and winced at the pain it brought but easily licked his lips, tasting blood. If his mom or grandpa had called the police, he wouldn't have been dumped at his front door like a half-dead offering, right? And surely he would see their telltale lights, wouldn't he? He thought he might hear them inside as well but he was unsure. He didn't even know that he was hearing anything as it was. But, if they were there, then there was no way that someone might have dragged him all the way to prop him up against the front door. There would have been questions and especially if they were involved and had been harmed. So perhaps he had somehow blacked out during the pain but had gotten himself to the house? But he thought if that had happened the police would have been called and an ambulance as well. No one would have allowed him to just wander home like that—especially not with the curfew in place.

He opened his eyes slowly. He would never have been able to just get up and walk like he was thinking anyways. He remembered his collision with the wall vividly and a cracked skull was nothing that someone could just walk away with. And he had to take into consideration the two wolves that had been tearing into each other as well. He shivered as the new name that had crossed his mind to describe them but that was what they had been. They were _wolves_. Ushio had turned into a _w olf_. Ushio was—or, _had been_ , if he was dead—either a werewolf or a hallucination gone horribly wrong.

A small bubble of hysterical laughter burst through his lips and his ribs choked under his skin. The lighter-furred one must have been a werewolf too. It must have had some issue with Ushio beforehand to go after him, because Yugi didn't believe in guardian angles. Maybe it was a classmate and that was why it had gone after him. He had been nothing but an inconvenience for it and a piece of prey for Ushio.

A bloody hiccup left his mouth, a bright red bubble bursting in front of his face. He watched it almost blindly, smiling for a moment. Another laugh escaped him and then another hiccup and Yugi felt tears stinging the back of his eyes briefly. Ushio had bitten him. There was no way that only his claws had severed his skin like this. He had to have bitten and torn the flesh open and his canines had trailed down his arms and…

No. Why would he have merely torn his skin when all he had to do was clamp his jaws? He could have very well ripped his arm entirely out of its socket. He could have eaten him. If he had used his teeth, then he _would_ have. No, he must have used his claws then. But what did it matter? He was sure even without a bite he could have easily infected him. There could have been spittle from his jaws, maybe blood. It could have been the other wolf as well now that he thought about it. Maybe it had challenged Ushio because it had been hungry and that was why they had fought.

He let out another laugh and then choked on a cough. He had almost been very literally eaten just earlier that day. He had gotten bones broken and skin shredded. He had yet to see police cars or hear his mom or grandpa moving around looking for him. Those facts were just enough to make him draw in a deep breath. He winced at the pain in his right side and then moved to draw his legs towards him. He stared ahead of him for a moment, expecting to see the streetlight on.

Instead only darkness greeted him. When he blinked and turned his head enough to look, he could see the faint outline of a medium-sized rock beneath it. His perception of distance was momentarily scattered as he looked at it. With his vision so undone he had thought at first that it had been directly beneath it. It took a moment for his mind to slowly work this sight into something more comprehendible. The rock was lying several feet away and large shards of glass were all around it, in front and behind.

So either the person who had brought him home had broken the streetlight with a rock or…someone was planning to finish what Ushio had begun. The thought made him tremble once before he reached out for the doorknob to pull himself onto shaky legs. They immediately buckled but, by some miracle, straightened and held his weight before he could collapse. He glanced downwards at his hand and nearly puked. He would have to clean it before his mom or grandpa noticed all the blood he was smearing across it.

* * *

"This could have been _you_!" his mother shrieked angrily. Yugi barely had time to look up from his cereal. The newspaper smacked into the wooden table loudly enough to make him cringe and lose his breath altogether. His side seared but he did not reach over to rub it, too stunned to even truly consider it. His eyes settled on the article, wide and shocked as he took in the sight of it.

Yes, that truly could have been him. If something hadn't seemingly scared the two canines off. If someone hadn't known to bring him home. If he hadn't finally dragged himself into the house and immediately forced himself to take a shower.

That also could have been him on the front page as a surviving victim instead had they seen him before. He had managed to clean himself completely despite the pain, ignoring the way the water ran red. He had hidden the bloodied and torn uniform behind his chest of drawers where he would be able to reach in and pull it out from where it was pressed against the wall. He had changed into clothes with a loser fit, layering them so that he looked lazy and cold. He would have to pull the uniform out to look it over and determine if it was wearable. If it was he knew perfectly well enough how to get the blood out and he'd figure out how to sew it back. If not he would be down to two uniforms in his closet instead of three.

He had to find out where his bag was and if it was still at the school. Then he would have access to his phone again. After that he would be able to use it to look up as much as possible about further wound care without his mom finding out. She used his laptop frequently, because she thought it would be a waste to buy another for herself when all she had to do was look up any newer veterinary methods that had developed.

Staring at the paper now made him sick. In black and white before him was the photo of his classmate, Hanasaki Tomoya. He recognized the innocently shy smile the other boy always wore on photo days. He knew the wide circular cut of his glasses. He was familiar with the wavy blond hair that he always had pushed back with gel. He recognized the kind brown eyes painted black in the photo. His eyes slowly drifted to the caption which only told of his name, age and the grade he had been in.

Yugi blinked stupidly at himself. He was already thinking of him in past tense, mindlessly reacting to the article in front of him. A small pain gnawed at his insides and he almost wanted to let out a sob at the reality of the situation. He had hung out with Tomoya on several occasions and he may not have been best friends with him but he had always like to think they were good ones. He could spend countless hours talking to him about figurines and games of any kind and Tomoya always had a new comic book from America because his dad—like Yugi's—worked overseas. Tomoya had clicked with his friends as well and, for a while, Yugi remembered they had all gone to his house after school.

He felt his mouth slowly open, eyes widening drastically in horror and despair. He had not hung out with the other boy in months and yet somehow Tomoya had seen him as a good enough friend to fight Ushio. He had gone up against him despite the obvious disadvantage. And he had died in that alleyway trying to save him.

He choked on the noise and bile that threatened to travel up his throat. His grip on his spoon began to tighten, fingers nearly shaking as he stared at it. Tomoya had been killed in the same terrible fashion as Miho and the shop owner. His heart, like the others', had been ripped out, limbs pulled and quartered. His neck had been nearly ripped straight through. His face had been horribly disfigured and his entrails had been half-eaten. The wound that had killed him had been an extremely clean one, however; the article claimed it was actually benign and merciful compared to what came afterwards.

The neck would have been the original death blow. It had been a bite to the throat that had almost completely severed his head, so vicious that the tips of their teeth had left harsh indentations of scrapes in his spine.

He knew without thought that they had ruled it as an animal kill. He had no doubt that they would try to use the fractured bone to attempt to make a cast. They would find that it was canine but he doubted they would believe in their findings. Wolves were extinct in Japan—or at least the natural ones were. And werewolves did not exist as far as everyone else would be concerned. It would fall on rabid dogs until they found the rabies strand was absent. Then they would turn their attention to dogs like the German shepherd or rottwielers, anything that could kill efficiently with training, could knock a person over.

Yugi turned away finally, awkwardly shifting his soggy cereal around before narrowing his eyes.

All three of them had died ruthlessly horrible deaths.

But why would Ushio want to kill the Junky Scorpion's owner?

 **Updates should be back on schedule from this point on.**


	5. Ushio

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day (no update on June 2nd)**

 **Chapter warning: Copious amounts of blood and gore, Infected wounds, DETAILED description of infected wounds, DETAILED description of (improper) wound care, Aftermath of Ushio's attack, Confrontations, Fear, Slight panic, Character death, Dead body**

 **What can I say? My job sucks and long hours mess up update schedules. Goal still remains the same, though. Hopefully updates every other day.**

Chapter V: Ushio

 _Work Log Entry V: August, 1993_

 _August 15_

 _The she-wolf seems to be overcoming her illness but her mate has not taken to the same change in his genetics. We have not been permitted to change her partner for another male as of yet._

Yugi blinked his eyes open into slits, his vision swimming between his lashes. Disoriented and exhausted, he tried to focus on the ceiling over his head. His body was weighted, so heavy and groggy that his lungs almost felt as if they could not draw in a breath. His mouth felt disgustingly pasty and hot, caked like dried blood. His mind sluggishly tried to pull in his surroundings to determine where he was and what had dragged him from his dreamless sleep. He rasped a breath out slowly and then dragged an equally painful one back into his lungs.

A low, drawn out scraping noise immediately caught his attention and he froze in place. His head slowly tilted to the side after a long moment and his neck instantly stung with the simple action. His vision dipped and turned to darkness for a split second. His ribs burned and he failed to draw in another shallow breath until the muted color returned to his eyes.

Yugi took a few minutes to truly attempt to calm down. The noise had not returned but it did nothing to stop him from feeling a rising onslaught of growing fear. He continued breathing shortly, with quick little intakes that made him want to faint. He worried momentarily about cyanosis as he had beforehand when he had been cleaning the wounds in the shower. How he had avoided going into shock with his shallow breaths and panic was far beyond him. Breathing so rapid and shallow now, he would not have been surprised to find his lips and nails beginning to grow blue. He felt so heavy and weak, viciously disoriented, that he doubted he would even be able to recognize the chill that would come with it all.

The sound came back in a longer and harsher curl of noise than it had the first time he had noticed it. His eyes widened drastically, blinking stupidly at the familiarity of it. It was like nails against wood or metal and instantly he thought of the animals just beneath his room. Maybe one of them had gotten loose and was wandering around. Maybe it needed to get out to use the bathroom and so it was scratching the door.

He blinked in the shadows of the room, wincing and reaching up to rub at his eyes. His stomach twisted as colors exploded behind his eyelids. He stared into the darkness for a moment before bracing himself to get out of bed. He drew in the deepest breath he could without wanting to puke from the violent pain. Squinting once more, he curled up on his side enough to attempt making the transition to standing upright somewhat easier. His shoulders rose defensively to shield his neck as if it were an external force attacking him rather than internal.

He winced and moved his legs to hang over the side of the mattress. His socks touched the carpet after a moment and he blinked at the pain that slammed through his lower back and raced upwards. His spinal column ached as if his marrow were being incinerated within his bones. Weakly he looked out the window towards the broken streetlight. He thought someone might have reported it already but he could not be sure.

Yugi shook the idea off without hesitation. He hardly needed to wonder about this. He hardly needed a reminder of what had happened. He didn't even want to know who it was that had brought him back to his house. He thought that perhaps it might have been Tomoya before Ushio had put an end to him but he was not completely sure. It seemed almost implausible but he was hopeful all the same. Because otherwise he thought there might have been something or someone else to scare _Ushio_ away.

He listened to another scratch at the door, hesitant as he headed for it. Something crept through him slowly, like a thin drizzle of raindrops trailing down his skin or sweat dripping down his forehead. He hesitated once more, frozen in place, watching the door with an unnatural wave of dizziness sweeping through him. His disoriented mind scrambled to find the force, fighting for some kind of sense of balance. The scratching noise met his ears once more and his stomach lurched violently, his head tilting again. Scrambling for his footing mentally, he felt his mouth water with nervousness, the taste disgusting and overwhelming. He swallowed thickly and his throat ached with the former burn of the bile that had trailed up the back of it earlier.

He stood frozen in the room for a few long seconds. His head was beginning to pound lightly. The scratching noise made his skull echo violently. Dread continued to trail down his spine and he choked on saliva. His tongue felt thick and nearly glued to the roof of his mouth, tingling with the bitter taste that plagued it.

What if it was Ushio, come to finish what he had started? When they had all been forced to attend the memorial for Tomoya, he had been anything but oblivious to the other male's stare. He had looked hungry and nearly desperate to hunt him down and sink his teeth into his flesh. But he had also seen the way that Ushio had flinched and favored his right side over his left. In gym he had seen the massive teen's wound, raw and sore and dark red with furious pink edges, a massive bite that looked as if it had left his skin in chunks of pulverized meat.

Vaguely he thought of the newest night terror to be added to his memory. It was as violent as the rest of them, but more terrifying because he truly knew what was happening at all times. He had been back in the alleyway but Ushio was not help up by Tomoya in the slightest. The light-furred wolf had been slaughtered before him easily, without even a chance to slow him down. Ushio would go straight for his throat, ripping it open without inhibition. When he would fall back against the asphalt he would feel the blood bubbling up from the wound with loud gurgles. Then the wolf would tear into his chest, forelegs digging into his stomach. His clothes would rip easily with his long, terrible claws and his skin would split with the curves of black keratin. His voice would be choked violently by the blood and the scream did nothing but cause his blood to leave him faster. He would feel it just as he would wake up, his consciousness slipping outwards like flowing water.

His eyes snapped to the door once more, the scratching noise making his skin tingle. It was more persistent now, as if whatever was downstairs was attempting to dig its way out or was well aware of his movement above it. If it was an animal from within the clinic then it would make sense that it was attempting to get out. But, if it was something outside that was trying to gain his attention, then he wondered immediately whether it could hear him. He fearfully considered if it was Ushio once more. What if he was merely waiting for him to come down the stairs so that he could make him number four on his list of victims?

He grasped the doorknob with his left hand, swallowing harshly and biting the inside of his cheek. His blood was tingling with warmth in his veins and his head felt momentarily light. Even if it was Ushio on the other side of that door, who better to answer it than him? He would never allow his mom or grandpa to be caught by that bastard. And, if he truly was infected like in stories through saliva or blood seeping into one of his wounds, then wasn't it better for him to be the one he went after again?

Yugi nearly laughed at the idea, a cold chill creeping through him. How was the disease spread? Was it like something like Ebola or was it only transferred through saliva like rabies? If it was like Ebola, the simplest things could lead to an infection—merging of a blood cell, saliva in an open wound, inhaling someone's germs when they coughed, kissing, sex. It seemed almost unlimited in the ways it could be spread. He had only ever heard of rabies being spread through a bite but he was not entirely sure. And even if this disease was unlike the latter, did he really want to risk it? What happened if it was uncontrollable and he wound up becoming like Ushio, killing and eating people and leaving remains all around for others to find?

He paused at the thought, chewing his lip and swallowing hard. Tomoya had been infected and he had protected him. He had not gone around murdering for no apparent reason other than to scare and horrify. He had very clearly had control when he had chosen to fight him off as he had. He had not ever harmed him, only keeping Ushio away as much as he could. He may not have been able to do much but stall him and buy Yugi some time but he had still tried. And Yugi could not ignore that. Tomoya had not killed senselessly as Ushio was doing and if he was infected as well, then perhaps he would be able to control it too.

But that wasn't even taking into consideration their personalities, even if they had been truly connected by such a disease. If it was like rabies it would be useless to take them into consideration, but there had to be a reason why they weren't the same, right? Ushio had always been a bully, preying on the weak with lies and debt. Tomoya had always been shy and timid and had a small but clearly defined line of some innate justice. He had shakily stood up to Ushio on occasion when he'd picked on Yugi.

The scratching noise made him hesitate, glancing over his shoulder with a sickening feeling. He had been unaware that he had even wandered out of his room and towards the bottom storey of the house. He was halfway down the hallway, a hand pressed against the wall. The wound in the back of his head and his torn arm were seemingly numb as he continued downwards towards the clinic. His chest pulsed where his rib was broken and his lung felt as if it were throbbing. Heat burst through his marrow in violent currents, tingling with vibrant energy. His heart seemed to strain and skip and his body was drawn with a heat that made his head spin momentarily. He drew in a deep breath, swallowing thickly, and he narrowed his eyes as something stirred in the back of his mind.

Something almost like cotton seemed to dull his thoughts and a warm, drifting breeze seemed to sweep through his skull. Something calming and secure was rising in his senses. For a single, almost nonexistent moment he thought he saw the very front of the door. He thought he saw the maroon paint on the wood. He thought he saw the glint of the outside windows where a small sliver of moonlight made his eyes hurt minutely.

He blinked, unsure of himself, and chewed his lip until the skin split. He winced at the harsh taste of blood in his mouth, swallowing thickly. His mouth tingled and seemed to burn where the new abrasion existed. That soft, winding breeze in his thoughts made him tilt his head as a small sense of comforting reassurance moved through him. The tension seemed to almost leave his body completely and his head felt lighter as he blinked stupidly. The sensation of heat and energy pulsing through him in time with his heartbeat became more pronounced.

He was dazed, mindless and frozen, as he stood in front of the hallway entrance. An almost euphoric pleasure seemed to come with each twist of the muscle inside his chest.

But it seemed to pass just as quickly as it had come. The sensation of lightheadedness and security slipped away slowly like a single drifting tendril of fog. He blinked and all but the warmth of newfound energy with each pulse was gone again.

His hand was gripping the knob before he had thought it through. His hand ached and his wrist seemed to burn as his arm flared. The new scratch that had somehow stirred him into movement was cut off abruptly. Instead he heard something like a low, keen whimper that stretched for what seemed like hours. Then, a loud and harsh snort welcomed his ears and he tilted his head even as he twisted the knob. The click of metal that accompanied it seemed far too loud and heavy in his ears, echoing in his skull like gunfire.

The animal at the door sniffed quickly, drawing in such deep breaths that Yugi shuddered. It was silent for a long moment and then he heard nails clicking. The movements were swift and calculated, amplified so that it seemed that both limbs on one side of the body touched the ground at once. It lasted for all of ten seconds and Yugi was frozen in place, torn with the instinct to flee and yet curious all the same. Why should it wish to lead Yugi out there? It could easily kill him by leaping when he opened the door.

He realized only after he had gotten over his initial confusion and moved to the door that he was no longer referring to Ushio. The animal was something—some _one_ —entirely different. It was more powerful and thus more dangerous.

But now he realized something much different as he started towards the door. If it had not been Ushio, what and who _had_ it been? He wondered if maybe, when he opened the door, he would still catch a distant glimpse of this new animal. The idea was more exciting where his mind tried to warn him of terror. His curiosity sprang like a cat, pushing away all hesitation and worry. A small bit of excitement swept through him.

He pulled the door open, already set on looking towards the trees.

Something heavy fell inwards through the gap of opened wood and Yugi frozen. His eyes had immediately snapped downwards to take in the sight of it.

And now he felt as if he had never regretted doing so more than he did right then.

A scream ripped through him before he could think straight. The noise rushed out even though the pain in his ribs made his head spin. His lungs constricted and collapsed in on themselves. His senses choked on a bitter yet disgustingly sweet metallic smell. His throat burned with acid. His head swam, his stomach twisting violently. He realized only as he was looking at a tan face turned ashen from blood loss that it was touching his foot. He jerked backwards hard enough that he nearly fell onto his butt and his scream grew tenfold in volume.

He heard them stirring upstairs, their mattresses squeaking and the clicks of the lamps as they turned on the lights. He heard them as they began to hurry towards the doors of their rooms and Yugi was unsure how he even heard them over his screams. His ears felt almost as if they were going to burst and bleed. He thought maybe the blood would drown out the noise almost like his gargled screams from his nightmare. For a split second he had the impulse to laugh hysterically at the thought. Ushio would never be even so much as a minor inconvenience in his day. He was, after all, right in front of him.

His head snapped around towards where he could hear them coming down the stairs as quickly as they could. He listened to them as they came and he immediately found himself looking at Ushio once more. The blood was humming in his veins and he felt his head buzz with something almost like a pulse of confusion and fear. So the other werewolf must have dragged him to the door and left him there. But how could another wolf have killed him? And how could they have managed with such violence? Ushio was so large and powerful and _dangerous_. How was it that they had managed to kill him?

This new wolf must have been almost twice as large as he was. It must have been three times as powerful. They must have been about large enough to be an apex predator in comparison to him. So what did that mean for Yugi exactly? Was it hunting him in Ushio's place? Was it planning to maul him to death now that Ushio was out of the picture? Maybe it was going to kill him as soon as it found it possible. And he wondered if he would be killed just as violently as Ushio had been.

Looking at him now he almost could not recognize him any longer. His skull looked as if it had been caught between two hammers and the teeth had punctured the sensitive flesh of both temples. A long line of puncture wounds followed each massive cut with one directly beneath the other. Yugi shuddered at the immediate thought in his head. Ushio was fully clothed and Yugi knew without a dealt that no murderer would have gone through the trouble of dressing him again. So it had killed him _while he was human_.

And somehow the canine had managed to leap up and clamp its jaws around Ushio's skull and crush it violently. The attack must have come from the side as well, because he could see with the way his head seemed to have flopped that the impact had snapped his neck. Yugi imagined it must have been an extremely high leap and well planned out to bring such an accurate result. He wondered if it was the blood loss or the angle and force in which his neck had snapped that had truly killed him. Either way, it was a rather neat kill and so quick as well, almost like Tomoya's horrible kill wound. He had had his neck ripped out. Ushio had had his skull crushed through his temples being punctured so violently.

The bite force must have been amazing. They looked almost completely untouched and the thought made his head hammer and throb briefly. If this werewolf could actually execute a kill so cleanly that only the kill wound was the thing to be noticed, how easy would it be for it to go completely undetected? It obviously had some powerful understanding of being both stealthy and staying under the radar. It must have killed so efficiently that Ushio had never even had a chance to make a noise against it. And, if it was going to hunt him now, then Yugi had no doubt it would be so clean that it would be untraceable.

Yugi shuddered violently at the idea of it and his mind immediately sprang forth with pictures. Would his be just as clean as or even more violent than Miho's? His stomach dropped at the idea and then slowly he raised his head towards the stairs. Both his mother and grandfather were frozen there, wide-eyed and horrified. His mother's face a step above her father's was an absolute mirror. Both of them were incredibly pale, almost as white as a piece of copy paper. Their mouths were wide open and their eyes locked on the immense shape in front of him. Slowly Yugi turned away to glance back at Ushio's corpse.

His mom was the one to finally call the police when she seemed to jerk back into action rather slowly. Behind her, his grandpa had been slow to react and had only moved when Yugi had. The police had arrived within ten minutes of being called. Two strenuous hours had passed with consistent and constant interrogation. Yugi had fallen into a rather numb state mentally to follow his physical one. He had answered questions from three officers, one investigator, and two detectives. Between the task of giving answers, being sure not to show how physically wounded he was, and struggling to keep from mentioning a mythological animal or panicking about said creature, Yugi was beyond exhausted. He felt almost as if he might fall from his chair at any moment.

Most everything outside of his own mind was moving in a listless buzz of inexplicable energy. There were hums of noise that occasionally morphed into words. At such times he would find his mouth moving and his voice coming out. What he was saying was another matter altogether. His eyes were still terribly keen and he always caught the small looks they would all share. He would immediately lock on them, only focused for all of five seconds, and then turn away again without hesitation.

He imagined that they thought he was in shock. He could tell from some of the sympathetic and nervous glances. The harsher the questions and the more frequent his daze seemed, the less suspicion he seemed in their eyes. They were so caught up in his state of mind and the connection between him and Ushio that they had misread his stiffened spine. They misunderstood his lowered gaze and shaking fingers. While it was true he was horrified and the shock had yet to truly leave his system, their assumptions were wrong. His shoulders were so high, his spine so tight, due to the numb but still terribly vibrant pain that came in steady, rapid pulses. He wondered if they might see where his thoughts had turned upon truly considering it all once more.

How far were they into Kokurano's investigation? Had they done an autopsy? Had they connected him with the other boy's death? Would they assume that his being there—if they had been able to determine it as such—and Ushio's corpse at his door be enough to brand him as a murderer?

When Kokurano's body had been found in the library the day before and the service had been held in the school, there had been no news. The most they had gotten was that he had seemed to have gone through an unusual death that had not been painful. They had said they did not have any leads and most likely that it had come from something to do with his obesity. The rumor that he had had something akin a heart attack had become something near an absolute truth amongst the students.

Whether that would still hold true later was something that Yugi felt might make him puke.

If they didn't come up with his presence at Kokurano's death, did he ever dare tell them? How was he meant to live with the constant fear that they might finally one day stumble upon the realization?

Yugi blinked and swallowed harshly as he looked up towards his mom slowly. The police were still there but their questioning had slowed drastically. The tension in the room seemed to be slowly dissipating as if a fog were lifting. His fingers trembled as he looked towards his grandpa as well. Both of them were watching him but not so closely that it was noticeable. His mom was facing an officer but he could feel her heavy stare even from the corner of her gaze. His grandpa was looking towards the microwave to check the time but his stare, too, was weighted upon his shoulders as he turned his head away. Yugi glanced at the officers still in the small kitchen with them and nearly shivered. They were not even looking at him now. For that split second he almost thought he had become nothing more than something of a background element within his own home.

His mind circled back instantly towards Kokurano and he swallowed harshly. Had he been sick or something? He had never really considered that an ancient, mythological creature like a werewolf might be able to become sick. And according to stories and things of that nature, there was no possible way due to their genetic make up. Beyond that, what was it that could possibly make someone's eyes glow or their head snap so swiftly back that their neck broke? Maybe a poison could explain the movement, as if he might have gone through a violent sporadic seizure, but he doubted it could have done such a thing. Maybe he had been trying to change and had somehow made the poison more potent. Or perhaps there had never been poison in the first place. Maybe it was something to do with his infection altogether.

Maybe something in his body had reacted horribly to the disease and so it had all curled in on itself. Had it all attacked itself? Had it all been some kind of backwards attack on his insides? Perhaps his body had been unable to control or coexist with such a disease and so had become the death of him.

And if Kokurano had not been able to handle it, then who was to say Yugi could?

But then, Tomoya had been able to do so. And besides the obvious size differences between the two of them—assuming that Kokurano could have chosen to be like Tomoya rather than Ushio—and personality there seemed to be almost nothing else. Unless there had been an underlying health issue due to his size, then he didn't understand why it might have turned around and done so to him.

Again he wondered what it was that meant for him. Was it going to do to him what he imagined it had done to Kokurano?

How was he meant to navigate and combat such a thing? It was a mystery in and of itself. He doubted they had chemotherapy for werewolves in case that was anything like what he might experience. Regardless, if it had been like cancer and killed Kokurano he did not see himself having much of a chance. And even if he wound up like Tomoya with full control of it, what did that even mean for him exactly?

Leaving the house on a full moon in an effort to hide himself and keep his family and friends safe? Abiding by such a law for the rest of his life—would it be immortal or simply just longer than his loved ones'?—would be nothing short of exhausting and torturous. What if, by some miracle, he and Anzu began dating? What was he meant to tell her, that once every month he would have to be completely alone? What if, down the road, he got married and wanted kids? Would it spread to them? Would it be spread if they had sex? What was he meant to do? Claim to have an erectile dysfunction of some kind? Wear condoms every time they had sex even with the risk that it might tear and he could still wind up infecting her?

What about kissing? Would that be thrown away in life as well? What was he meant to do? Was he meant to lock himself away from the rest of society?

Yugi did not think he could have done anything even remotely like that. He was social by nature and absolutely hated being alone. Isolating himself so permanently made him want to be sick. He could see himself growing insane from it all. He could see himself deteriorating slowly but surely in his head. He pictured himself starving for attention and slowly losing his mind in a desperate need for affection.

Was there a chance to somehow stop it all, to either rid himself of his infection or maybe even kill himself? He was desperate to know. If there was a chance to get rid of it, he would take it—especially if it did not involve suicide.

He turned his head when he saw his grandpa move from the corner of his eye. The elderly Motou looked incredibly exhausted and Yugi thought he could already see the beginnings of the bags that would look like deep purple bruises beneath his eyes. Yugi grimaced faintly and then glanced at his hand where it was trembling minutely against his knee. He wished the questions were over. He wanted nothing more in that moment than to curl up in his bed and put his thoughts to rest. He wanted to shut away the rest of the world, desperate for the relief. It was a pathetic idea, full of self-pity, and yet Yugi could not bother himself with the idea that he needed to stop those thoughts.

He didn't want them all watching or looking at him. He didn't want to have to hear the same questions or listen to himself giving the same answers. He did not want to have to struggle with the task of staying in his seat for their continued speculations. He did not want to have to see his mom and grandpa growing even more tired with every second. He could see his mom itching to snap that he could never have done such a thing and that his grandpa needed his rest.

He wondered if she might say that same thing if she knew about the wolves, if she knew his suspicions. Maybe she would turn right around and question just as adamantly. Or maybe she wouldn't bother. Perhaps she would simply turn away from him, never once viewing him as her son again or even going so far as to never mention his existence to another soul.

The thought made him swallow harshly and his eyes sting momentarily. What would he do if that ever happened? What would become of him? And what about her? What about his grandpa?

It would kill the elderly Motou to witness such a thing. It would destroy their relationship completely. And Yugi knew he would have to turn his back on him as well. He wouldn't risk his grandpa getting hurt—directly or otherwise. He imagined the pain, however, might become the end of the old man. Even if he left for his protection, he thought it might kill him regardless.

How pathetic a choice his life seemed to have become at that moment. It all seemed rather plainly to amount to nothing but obvious pain. He had always strived to avoid it in all its various forms—emotional, physical, mental—as he had grown older. But now it seemed rather inevitable and Yugi thought momentarily that he might give just about anything to change it.

Again he wondered briefly if there was any chance that he might have somehow managed to avoid becoming infected. But he doubted it immensely. There were too many unknown variables to be taken into account. He didn't even know how the disease was spread. But he highly doubted it was something that was easily contained or passed along only through genetics. It seemed far too powerful, even if he had only witnessed it once, to be something only passed through a bloodline.

He thought it was more likely highly contagious and could be spread in multiple ways when it came down to it. He was willing to take a bet that it was more alike Ebola than it was anything else. He doubted it was anything like sickle cell or anemia. And with the destructive force it must have possessed in order to change someone's body so completely, he could easily see it being just as dangerous and life-threatening as the former. Then he wondered if it was possible that—as more science-oriented arguments went—perhaps the ability to turn into a wolf might possibly handicap the brain. Maybe it deteriorated it slowly but surely and Kokurano had gone through such a death—sputtering nonsense about bleeding shadows and having such a violent spasm—because of it.

And a change like that had to put an immense pressure on the brain to the point of all but leaving a person in a vegetative state. If it was painful and terrible as it had seemed then it would be no wonder that it would cause such a death or possibly trigger some primordial, ancient killer instinct even as a human. Maybe it was all brought about because of the constant presence of the life-altering disease.

He narrowed his eyes faintly. Was he meant to call it a disease or an infection? Maybe he should consider it a virus instead?

Yugi blinked and pushed away the thought. He was becoming too fearful and stressed to fully make note of the differences. And his thoughts had become far too morbid and laced with growing hysteria to continue down this path. He felt that he might puke or burst into tears at any moment. What would the police think then? Yugi almost wanted to laugh at himself and a hysterical bubble burst within his skull. If they only had an idea of what he was thinking.

"A police car will be sent to circle the house every half hour, just in case whoever has done this is still around and may be waiting for their chance to break in," one of the officers stated loudly, as if in an attempt to push away the immense silence that had fallen over each of them. When Yugi finally turned his head in acknowledgment, the older man seemed almost shocked and the small teen thought that he saw him suppress a flinch.

Yugi fought off the impulse to laugh out loud. What the hell would a werewolf need to wait to break into a house for? They could easily kill them and run off and the police would never have any idea. He thought that held especially true for this one since it had killed Ushio so easily.

He flattened his palms against his thighs, fingernails momentarily digging into his jeans. Yugi pulled his hands away after a moment, watching the police officers for a few seconds. His mind was running once more and his head spun. Ushio had been arrested and reported for his tendency to physically abuse and blackmail smaller students. No names had been mentioned but he recognized that they were hinting at himself and Tomoya. The only reason his charges had been dropped was because his parents had paid the other students' off and each lawsuit had been dropped rather immediately.

Was this new werewolf one of Ushio's victims? Was it possible that the killing was meant to be something else entirely?

He couldn't resist a shiver a new idea occurred to him.

Was it possible that rather than being a warning, Ushio's body was something of an offering? What if this new wolf was attempting to make peace with him through providing him the corpse? Was it seen as a refusal of their offering and a terrible misstep on his behalf? Or was it a test to see if Yugi might be valuable?

Did werewolves even run in packs like natural wolves or something else entirely?

He snorted out a breath, a low and disgruntled noise, and then narrowed his eyes as the door closed. His mom and grandpa were focused on him instantly once more. Yugi glanced at them and then away again, shaking his head slightly. He got to his feet immediately, heading for his room again before either of them could open their mouths. He stumbled the first step but caught his balance quickly and mumbled that his leg had fallen asleep. The walk to the door was slow and painful, his hip and backbone flaring. He was breathing heavily, he realized as he shut the door and braced himself against the cool wood.

A whimper bubbled up in the back of his throat. He swallowed thickly. It felt as if every bone in his body was screaming. The pain left him feeling lightheaded. He stumbled forward once more, finally pulling away from the door. Exhausted and quiet, the blue-violet-eyed teen winced and strained his ears for his mom and grandpa. He could hear the low tones of their voices as they whispered to each other but he could not make out their words.

He collapsed against the bed and immediately regretted it. The air rushed from his lungs. His ribs seemed to crack upon impact. He let out a low miserable whimper and slowly moved to lie on his left side. The deep breath he drew in made his eyelids bright with bursts of color. His head swam and his stomach dropped as his body pulsed with pain. His heart skyrocketed with the intensity of the ache and Yugi fought of the urge to pull his knees up and curl into a ball. It felt almost as if his chest were full of boiling blood.

He wondered vaguely if he was dying. Then he questioned the possibility of such a thing. How fast did the disease spread? Were werewolves immortal or only partially? Was he still mostly human or more werewolf? How long would it be before he found himself turning into a large furry canine? What happened if his mind started warping and became more wolf-like? Would he end up craving blood and hunting people because he liked meat? Or was he simply going to witness it like a bystander almost as his mind slowly deteriorated and he became something of the hideous beast the werewolf was known as?

But Tomoya and Ushio had turned into wolves. They had become four-legged masses of slim muscle beneath thick pelts of fur.

So, did that mean they had shared the mentality of one as well? Or was it simply that they were humans in a wolf's body?

Yugi groaned in annoyance at his incomprehension. With the rate at which his questions were growing, he felt that the answers would do nothing more than hinder him further but he needed to at least find some way to prepare for it all. Maybe he could start with the full moon and work his way through it all from there.

Or maybe the idea of nearly instantaneous healing was where he needed to begin. He didn't exactly feel much better than he had when Ushio had first attacked him but even with his consistent pain he thought that perhaps it should have been far worse.

He was not sure if that was from Ushio infecting him or, rather, that he had gotten some range of permanent nerve damage due to the impact with the wall. Having some mild brain damage or a concussion that was blocking his ability to perceive pain was not something he would have doubted.

Hand shaking with exhaustion, Yugi reached down to grab the very top of his comforter where he had thrown it back in order to get up. The fabric let out a scratching hiss where his nails ran over it. Its temperature had dropped to an icy chill and his stomach dropped once more for a moment. He grasped the material tightly and tugged it over himself. The pain that came with the action was immediate and sent him reeling mentally. He swallowed a whimper. His arm throbbed violently. His shoulder quaked. He ground his teeth together. His breaths came in short, shallow pants.

He stayed as still as he could, trying to regulate his breathing. He was not about to allow himself to go into shock. He would not slip into cyanosis either. If he could truly manage to keep it away he would do so.

The warmth that came over him with the addition of his sheets and comfort was almost enough to distract him completely. Focusing more on it than he did anything else, his breathing seemed to slowly but surely grow deeper. Brief images like shadows at nighttime picked at his attention. The darkness began to take on attributes like those of discolored clouds and drifting smoke. Small splotches of silver began to appear. They began to spread like rivulets of water falling down a pain of glass. Tendrils of white began to speckle and glisten in front of his eyes. Slowly shapes began to form, more solid and noticeable than the former images had been.

They were a simple shade of medium gray as they grew more definitive. Yugi glanced at them each as his vision began to clear. Long, bare tree branches had risen and taken shape far over his head. When he took a step, a crunching noise met his ears. His glance down provided with him with the sight of frozen grass that shimmered a beautiful silver-white and sapphire blue. Another softer and familiar roaring noise made him blink in surprise. There was rippling water somewhere nearby.

The sound was enough to make him wander forward. He was unsure whether he was searching for it or simply wanted to keep moving but he was racing soon enough. The speed with which he moved were amazing and his energy seemed almost constant. The full moon was beaming through the branches overhead and seemed to encircle him, covering him and shining almost like a spotlight. No matter the speed or direction he took, it was in his view. It painted the grass in a glistening sheen like starlit dew that gleamed against his vision and left him feeling as if he might drown with joy.

* * *

The canine slunk forward with a pelt as dark as the shadows surrounding it. The dim moonlight glistened beautifully against its long guard hairs, rippling like water as it trotted forward. The air was so thin as it drew in a breath that for a moment it imagined the sky might crack around it. The trees were slim, the trunks nearly bare and each of them looked almost like tall sentries standing vigil in the deep darkness. Stray fallen branches littered the straw-laden forest floor and small sprigs of ice-hardened grass rose just above the fallen pine. A single shimmering image before it made it pause minutely. A cricket played a soft melody and others responded quickly as the canine flicked an ear in its direction and raised its nose to draw in a deeper breath. It blew the inhale outwards using the slits on the side of its wet nose, the white mist glistening brilliantly on either side of its muzzle. Its nose tingled with the cold air and the nasal passage grew almost bitterly frosty, sending a rush through its entire system. Its lungs swelled and its mouth grew full of saliva with the anticipation that crashed through its powerful frame.

The pool of water had something of a marshy bank, with small plants and stems of grass that sprung from the shallowest depths. Small bits of moss had fallen within it and a large branch lay on the other shore, so immense that the branches acted as a thick web-like network that could easily block an animal looking to drink. A few coarse-surfaced rocks with open pores littered each side and their exterior had been the sole cause of many cuts to passing animals. The canine looked upon the surface cautiously, eyes sharp as they glowed a shadowed mixture of amber in the darkness. The moonlight on its surface moved only in gentle ripples that looked as soft as the caress of wind when it stirred the trees. A small mouse scrambled amongst the roots of a tree and the large predator watched it as it darted amidst the tangles of wood.

Its ears flickered, listening to it as its tiny paws scraped the hard-packed earth. For a moment it thought to chase but the prize would not be worth the energy spent. Instead it watched the small animal disappear into its den a few yards away and turned back to the water. It was too shallow to support fish but the surface still twitched with the movement of a small fly which was snatched away into the thin white threads of a cobweb across the thin pool. It thrashed and its wings looked almost rainbow with the glints of silver moonlight and the canine thought of gasoline spilled upon the asphalt. Its attention was immediately upon the eight-legged arachnid that came running from the very top of a single blade of grass, each limb long and beautifully graceful as it remained balanced.

The canine's sharp eyes remained locked on the display even as its head was lowered towards the water, its vision as keen as it was during the day. Even as it moved slowly towards the pool of water, it could see each and every hair on both of the bugs' bodies. It could see the tiny eyes on the spider as it wove its webbing to cocoon the insect and it caught every small glittering vein within its wings. The large animal stepped into the water, the rough pads of its paws prickling with cold as it was slowly engulfed. The mud moved and shifted beneath its weight and a rock pressed against its outer right toe. The fly was thrashing uselessly as the canine continued watching in its peripheral. The air was growing colder even now and the dense fur along its body parted gently with a small breeze that passed through the trees.

Every nerve in its body was alight with energy as the water touched its tongue and the wind drifted away like ribbons of smoke. With a single inhale the animal caught the smell of a wounded serow, its blood a sweet metallic undertone that was enough to make its head turn. The gelid air was still enough that the canine did not have to inhale rapidly to catch the scent once more. Like the spider, it turned towards the task of filling its belly. With wounded prey only a few miles ahead, the task would be no challenge.

The spider in its peripheral was lazing about as the animal pulled its paw from the water and its surface shimmered with the movement. The droplets sounded almost like rain as they fell now that the predator was focused on the task of finding its meal. Ears pricked forward, the canine lowered its head so that it ran parallel to its spine. The movements were swift and graceful as its pelt rippled with the steady roll of its muscles beneath. Once again the darkness seemed to swallow it and the moonlight glittered against long, straight guard hairs all along its spine and scruff.

The fallen pine shifted beneath its feet effortlessly and a soft, almost inaudible squelching sound made its ears flicker faintly. The trees passed in a steady rush of motion, a constant stream of muted browns and soft gray with scattered touches of white and cobalt blue. The leaves were a silvery, veined sheen of shadow due to the cold, easy light from the moon where clouds were slowly drifting across its surface. The smell in the air was still only that of the serow's blood, the sole thing that stood out amongst the hard-packed earth, wet pine, and shattered bark. Its belly rumbled as it drew in a deep breath and sped up further, its brisk walk turning into a trot that would easily carry it up to eight miles per hour.

A new scent made it pause, a small hint of alarm passing through it as its movements slowed. It drifted forward lightly, almost like a newly bloomed flower, but it was intense in its concentration, with a strength like spilled gasoline. This new smell was of earth and rotting wood and fallen pine needles soaked in rain with the slightest touch of charcoal. Its intensity put the natural scents to near shame and the canine faltered momentarily as it connected in its mind the source of such a smell.

Another werewolf was hunting this same serow.

It hurried forward as a loud crash met its ears and a few small twigs broke from a bush the goat-antelope collided with. The serow let out a whistling noise, a clear call of alarm and distress, and the canine broke into a full sprint. Immediately a pair of gleaming golden eyes of another werewolf rose from the current kill it was making in order to regard the interloper, ears pricking forward in surprise. Both of the canines watched each other and the serow sprung up to bolt. Its original bunter lashed out quickly. Its teeth chomped onto the underside of the goat-antelope's throat. The vein burst. Blood welled outwards and splattered across the straw. The golden-eyed wolf dropped it again.

Both of them resumed staring. They could either fight or share the meal. The newcomer was too hungry at the moment to bother with much of a fight. The golden-eyed one wasn't truly willing to risk a wound. Especially when it took in the other's sheer size.

The amber-eyed lupine flopped onto its stomach and lowered its head to its paws. If this resulted in a fight, it was almost certain to win, but the other hardly appeared aggressive. There had not been even a growl. No tail had been raised to signal a fight. No fur had risen into a bristle. No lips had been drawn back. No teeth had been shown. Its ears hadn't pricked forward. It had not even raised its head all the way to stake a claim on the serow. Instead, as they looked at each other, it almost appeared as if it were not so keen as to so much as be in the other's presence.

A long minute passed and the golden-eyed werewolf slowly raised its tail. The other wolf began to rise immediately, ready to either fight if it was demanded or simply turn and take its leave. The original hunter waited for a long moment until the interloper was on its feet entirely. Then it wagged its tail and that slight tension was gone once more. A small whine came a moment later, its ears flattened against its skull, and then it turned and trotted off. The amber-eyed canine stood there for a moment, completely still safe for breathing, and strained its ears for any hint that it might be a trick. Surely the werewolf had not just simply abandoned a meal.

Keeping its ears keen for any movement or sign of possible threats, the wolf finally went to the serow's side. A small snap made it snarl but a twig simply fell from one of the branches as the wind stirred. Deciding to take advantage of the free meal, the wolf leaned forward to sink its teeth into the goat-antelope's flank.

The animal's blood was sweet on his tongue, flooding his mouth with flavor. The scent in his nose was sickening with how overpowering it was as it seemed to grow thicker and almost musky in an effort to suffocate him. His head was reeling with something pleasurable. His entire mouth was filled with thick liquid which aided in the task of overwhelming him. It was almost like cotton candy cough medicine, but it had the texture of biting into a tender but stringy piece of chicken. He swallowed thickly and the taste remained on his tongue even without another bite being taken.

A soft trickling sound met his ears and he remembered the river only a few yards away. His head turned toward it, curious for a split second, but his stomach was growling again. He turned away from the water almost without thought. His teeth dug into the meal in front of him once more. He had not been chasing this massive serow without reason. He had not just spent what felt like hours running through this seemingly endless forest, just to be distracted away from his hard earned meal.

He pulled himself closer to the animal, digging his teeth into its side and pulling at the soft yet stringy flesh. The taste burst forth on his tongue once more. His mouth flooded with saliva again. The scent made his head swim and his pulse jump. Drool fell from both sides of his mouth. The grass around him had become a mass of dark brown, almost black splatters from the spilled blood. His tongue tingled faintly. His stomach growled again and his right shoulder sparked with energy as if his nerves had been set on fire.

The sensation grew to the point that his arm jerked as if in a spasm. His arm fell forward and seemingly through the serow. The taste in his mouth grew tenfold. His heart started to beat faster. His arm burned violently. His senses reeled. Another violent spasm sent him nearly falling forward.

Yugi flinched as his arm popped violently and his eyes opened slowly. He was groggy and dazed as he tried to figure out what it was that had made the noise. It came again in what sounded like homemade pop rock fireworks. His eyes flickered around quickly but his senses were too groggy to fully understand what it was he was seeing. At first he only saw the sky blue of the paint on the walls and the white of the door. His mom and grandpa were nowhere around within the room with him. There was no explanation for the noise when it came again, just as there had been none the first time. He blinked again groggily and a dull, almost nonexistent ache centered in his shoulder pulled at his attention. He yawned softly, prepared to look at the wound again and redo the entire set of gauze he had done formerly.

Instead he found his eyes widening drastically and his mouth nearly falling open. Horror made his mouth extremely dry and his stomach twist violently. His shirt sleeve was moving along the shoulder and it had been pulled back sometime in the night. He got a clear view of what was happening there. The skin was pulsing and twitching and it looked as if it had lumped together into a golf ball and was rolling around beneath it. But the popping sound was that of bones. And he recognized the ridge of his collarbone as it poked upwards beneath his skin.

It looked like a small peak beneath his flesh which had pulled tight and was beginning to look purplish and almost bruised at the top. And it was moving as well. As the popping noise grew louder the bone began to rise and fall. It began to shift once more into place, but the sound was splintering and he could see it when it shattered and rearranged. The dull ache was growing a small bit more pronounced but the pain he knew should have been there was nowhere to be found.

His heart was pounding violently and with each beat his head seemed to hammer faintly. He could feel any hint of wariness leaving his system almost immediately. His blood was tingling beneath his skin and his veins felt like a network of flames in his body. Each of his nerve endings was beginning to pulse in time with his heart. He was still watching his collarbone as it seemed to almost slither beneath his skin.

The only thing that kept him from screaming was the shock. He was almost unable to truly recognize what it was that he was seeing. It wasn't possible. Yugi was rather sure he had to be imagining it, especially when he felt none of the pain he should have. His shoulder should have been painful enough that his screams could almost wake the dead. His mom and grandpa should have been racing in to check on him and screaming with him when they saw it as well. Maybe it was a simple hallucination that was meant to mirror the scarabs in that scene from that movie _The Mummy_. That scene had been the one to freak him out far more than any of the others and so he had always been terrified of scarab beetles. The others had always teased him about it but Yugi was almost thankful that he knew that scene so well because if it was simply a hallucination he at least knew its origin.

His ribs took on a dull ache that mirrored his shoulder as he drew in a small breath. He blinked and the movement stopped, his room falling silent for a long moment. Yugi swallowed thickly, unsure of his conclusion as yet another noise destroyed the silence. There was a slight and soft grinding sound that was unavoidable as it began to drill its way into his eardrums. A small but sharp pain made him lose the breath in his lungs. It felt as if a knife had dug itself into his ribcage and the pain was seeping further through him. The marrow within his bones flared and pulsated violently within his heart. His first instinct was to cry out. His second was to curl up tightly as if to protect himself. His third was to stay as still as he possibly could.

Yugi settled for the latter, refusing to so much as draw air into his lungs once more. He did not think the pain would be worth it. A hollow, numb sensation was creeping over his ribs like ants crawling across his skin. His blood rushed like burning liquid through his veins, then seemed to vanish altogether. He shuddered and the skin, bruised and somewhat raw, began to tingle and dance with pinpricks of energy. He drew in a low, quick breath in order to stop the lightheadedness that was creeping over him. His ribs flared violently for only a second. A cold sensation was traveling through his skin and into his bones.

It was almost as if the blood had left the right side of his chest. There was not a single touch of heat to be found within his body there. The tingling was completely gone but the hollowness had returned. It felt as if ice had somehow lodged itself in his bones where the marrow should have been. The sensation was cool and refreshing, almost like that of drinking icy water or breathing through the mouth after chewing mint gum. When he finally risked drawing in another breath, the pain eluded him completely. Instead the iciness seemed to momentarily mix with his lightheadedness and seemed to push away any thoughts he might have had.

The chilly sensation remained for several long minutes as Yugi took advantage to draw in as many breaths as he could. He was halfway through an inhale when it first began to lessen its hold. It was almost disturbing how the warmth seemed to slowly creep back through him, claiming mere centimeters whereas the iciness had come in rather suddenly. But Yugi was more concerned about the pain that would come back with the heat. It had been hard enough hiding it away from his mom originally. With this hopeful reprieve, he was sure it would be twice as hard. He thought he would always be hopeful that it would return and the pain would seem tenfold when he began breathing regularly again.

He braced himself as the last of it began to dissipate, breathing as slow and even as if he were asleep. A small tremor ran through him as the heat returned completely. His body tingled briefly and then settled. Yugi swallowed heavily and scrunched his eyes shut once more. His lungs felt as if they were quivering beneath his ribs, desperate to replenish themselves. He fought away the impulse as much as he could but gave in when his head seemed to be swimming once more. It was a slow and miniscule breath, nothing to be especially alarmed or careful about, but he was waiting for it.

The pain never came. Instead, a slow and light almost whisper of a noise met his ears. The grinding from before was gone, replaced by this gentle sound as he exhaled and then gulped air in once more. His mind struggled with comprehending what had just occurred and the almost nonsensical reality of the situation bit at his attention. When he slowed his breathing to experiment with this new idea in his head, the pain was still nonexistent. Again that easy and rather soft whisper met his ears. The idea immediately became an almost unavoidable realization that nearly sent him reeling.

His shoulder and his ribs had just mended themselves.

The breaks in both sets of bone had been fixed.

Yugi didn't have to think about it to know such a thing. The pain from both spots was nearly gone, as impossible a realization as that truly was.

It must have been the infection that had caused it. There was no other explanation. And a hallucination was not a likely enough culprit for him to truly consider.

He knew his dream had to have been brought on by the illness as well. It had seemed far too lucid and the taste in his mouth far too real. He swallowed thickly as his tongue seemed to swell in acknowledgment. It was caked with an almost pasty layer of something thick and sweet.

He shuddered, instinct telling him to run and try to leave it behind. Reality bit at his attention with an alarming question of what he was meant to do now. How was he truly meant to deal with all of this? When it came down to it, was he meant to hide away all his life? From what he knew of werewolves—which he knew was hardly credible considering they were Hollywood movies and authors' imaginations—they either aged extremely slowly or were just completely immortal. Then there was the tie to the full moon and the insanity that came with it. There were the nightmares and insomnia and the constant desire to eat red meat. Those were just a few of the more common ones, and the _less_ common ones involved things much different. They were considered Gabriel's Hounds or they shifted into wolves in an enjoyable and overall _painless_ way. They were always the bitches when a vampire became involved and they had two different forms, one animal and the other beast.

From what he had seen he knew of only thing for absolute sure. Werewolves turned into wolves, lupines rather than monsters.

From what he speculated he knew of several outcome for his life. If he was right and Kokurano had somehow reacted in a way that had killed him physically as well as mentally, then he could very easily wind up following in his footsteps. If the disease was enough to slowly drive him mad or alter his personality and make him violent, then he might end up like Ushio. If he could control it and it failed to change him too drastically, then he could be as kind-hearted and normal as Tomoya had been.

But what came after that? Should the full moon idea actually somehow be true—maybe it was like an allergic reaction to the light like some people had to the sun—then he would have to plan his life around something that had formerly seemed so meaningless. Then, what about silver? His mother had a ton of silver antiques that she had always been planning to pass long to him in her will. And then he had to wonder what he would do with his life if perhaps the disease did something with animals. Was it possible that the hybrid had not merely been a wolf-dog but a werewolf as well? His exposure to it had sent the animals into an aggressive frenzy before, so did they maybe sense just how unnatural a creature it might have been? Would they sense it in him too? And if they did, was he going to have to change his whole life around in order to accommodate this new affliction? Becoming a veterinarian would most certainly be off the table if this were a truth rather than a simple theory.

And then what would he do with his life?

He knew he was young and still had choices, that his path was hardly set in stone, but the idea of branching off was hardly anything that he wished to consider. With a path laid out before him things were a lot easier. He imagined that most people felt the same way while others might scoff that he had the grades and the years to follow through with whatever else it was that he planned to do. It was, more or less, the idea that he might disappoint his mother and grandfather that truly hindered his attempts at such changes being made.

Yugi went to sit up, banishing the thoughts, and yelped when his hip flared violently with pain. His lower back followed with a furious ache that left him breathless. His hip was still bruised and possibly fractured, his back still tender and the bone still sporting what he assumed was a dislodged disc. He trembled, startled by the idea that somehow he had only selectively healed himself, with the worst of it mended, but somehow positively elated all the same. He could live with a fractured hip and tailbone but broken ribs and a shattered collarbone—he was assuming as much because of what he had seen when he had woken up—were much harder to conceal.

He had always slouched when he walked so the posture he had taken in an attempt to alleviate some of the pain seemed the same for the most part. He had learned to shift his weight and balance himself more manageably by applying more pressure onto his left leg when he went to set his right foot down. It managed to balance him in such a way that a limp was almost nonexistent safe for the slight hindrance of putting his weight on his right leg as well. Thankfully it was so slight that no one seemed to notice. Even his mother's medically sharpened, trained eyes failed to catch it.

But he had always been waiting for her to notice it when he struggled to breathe properly. He felt almost sure that she had her suspicions even if she never voiced them. And he was almost certain that his grandfather saw it too, even if he never said a word about it.

He shook his head, kicking his legs over the side of his bed. He hissed a breath in pain but did not focus on it as he went towards the mirror. The reflective glass was hanging on the wall high enough to show off his upper body but not low enough to catch beneath his pelvic bone. He thought at that moment that the positioning was perfect for looking at his wounds as he knew was necessary. He needed to check on them and possibly change the bandaging on his arm if only because it required air.

Yugi looked his immediate reflection over only for a second. His facial features were regular enough. His eyes drifted to his neck where his choker looked almost like a thick leather band with a large metal buckle across the center. He had opted for a larger one when he had first seen the scratches after his shoulder the night the attack had happened. They had been disgustingly red and raw, the skin raised in long, nasty, almost mountainous peaks. His pulse had been outlined by a single, long drawn out line that had stopped at his collarbone while the other four slash marks had run diagonally across his flesh. The choker was hardly thick enough to hide all of it away and so he had put on shirts with collars that rested slightly higher to block what little skin it couldn't. When he had been asked, it had been almost common sense to blame it on the cold weather.

Now Yugi meticulously worked to unbuckle the strip of leather. He was still well aware of the possibility of pain. He had not felt that frostiness around his throat at any point. It was likely that his neck was just as wounded as it had been formerly. He wasn't willing to risk the pain that was guaranteed to follow if he tugged it off too quickly or reopened the wounds. The very idea of it was almost enough to make him want to puke.

His hands were shaking lightly as he moved to flip the metal buckle and pull the tongue from where it had kept it firmly in place. The gauze he had used the choker to keep in place scratched lightly against his throat uncomfortably. The tape pulled at his skin lightly and he hesitated. It did not feel so terribly painful at the moment but he worried all the same. Fingers still shaking and eyes glued to his reflection, Yugi swallowed thickly as the buckle folded back and he was able to undo the strip of leather he had pushed through the loop. He pulled the choker away to look the bandage over and nearly puked as his eyes wandered over it. The white gauze was stained a brilliant, violent dark red in the center and the outsides painted dark, milky yellow almost like a urine stain. The tape was off-white in color, with an almost greasy appearance like what came with a clear discharge or a slice of pizza in the microwave.

He swallowed thickly and slowly picked at the bandage, ignoring how heavy and weighted the material felt. The tap tugged gently at his skin and the noise of it peeling from the flesh surrounding the wound made his ears ring. It was almost as if it were roaring viciously in his ears like a truck coming to life. He swallowed harshly once more and felt his shoulder lock momentarily, a soft but sharp ache cutting through his skin. His shoulder must not have been as healed as he had originally assumed, or at least not his arm beneath it. He ignored the thought, instead pulling at the medical tape again.

Despite the slow and careful effort he put into the task, he couldn't help but make his skin burn with each attempt. He recognized his skin was growing bright red. The air stung as the tape pulled more adamantly. In the mirror Yugi found himself swallowing hard. The wound was pulled and some clear discharge was slowly oozing outwards. Small touches of bright red like a glittering gem were beginning to follow. He could see where he would need to clean the skin in order to see just how much more he would need to do with it and to simply check all of what might have healed and what had failed to. Maybe he would need to clean and then disinfect once more. Or possibly he would find that the wound had healed itself as it had seemed to do with his shoulder and ribs.

He dropped both the bloodied gauze and the choker away to the floor. His neck was a light white and pink line across his pulse which was smeared with blood turned brown in its dried out state. The tape had left mass amounts of residue across his skin and the area around it was bright and furious in its pink hue.

His arm was beginning to throb now, demanding his attention, and Yugi felt his stomach flip and somersault violently. He swallowed thickly as he continued looking his reflection over. He could not see anything in the mirror that hinted at how progressed his wound had become. Yugi looked at his arm next, reminding himself momentarily that he had bandaged it entirely to his wrist. The top of his shoulder and collarbone had been given a layer of gauze and tape as his neck had. He turned his eyes on the long-sleeved shirt he was wearing and then towards the knob's reflection. He turned towards it fully in order to walk over and turn the lock.

When he turned back to the mirror he found himself hesitating momentarily. His stomach twisted and burned faintly, his throat aching as his head rang with alarm. What if he found something far from desirable when he looked over each of his wounds once more? He almost didn't want to risk finding out anymore. If he found something he could not handle, then what was he meant to do with himself?

He pushed the thought away immediately, hands shaking for a split second. He would not allow himself to be scared away from it all. He had to check on them and make sure that none of his fears became anything worse than they had already once been. He pulled the hem of his shirt before he could think it through more fully, swallowing harshly before finally tugging it over his head as quickly as possible. The pain shot through him instantly, his head swimming momentarily as he drew in a sharp breath. The cotton brushed against the tape and caught for only a moment but it made him flinch nonetheless. His mind was spinning violently as he dropped it to the floor. He would have to try to look at his head wound later, when he had a handheld mirror to use it to angle the reflection into the large bathroom glass.

The tape had been wrapped around his bicep and just above the joint of his wrist. The gauze had been layered five times in order to stop any chance of it bleeding again, ensuring that his clothes would not be ruined if it discharged. His arm was throbbing far more noticeably. His heart was beginning to quicken and the pain was becoming more intense. He drew in a deep breath, swallowing hard and exhaling sharply once.

He flinched harshly as he began to dig his nails beneath the tape against his skin. He hissed out a breath as it pulled at his skin violently. Yugi swallowed thickly as his eyes burned and his arm began to feel almost as if it were being pushed into an open flame. As he was beginning to pull at the gauze he could feel his skin peeling and pulling upwards with the soiled medical bandaging. His head was spinning again, his senses rushing with a disoriented confusion. He staggered lightly to the side but held his balance by some miracle. His breath came out in a sharp exhale, his stomach flipping violently as a smell swarmed his senses, threatening to suffocate him as he saw blood beginning to ooze down his arm.

The muscles were moving beneath his skin in sharp tics and shuddering jerks. The spasms were brief but he could feel something hot beginning to frail down his skin. He didn't have to look to recognize the sensation of blood having his wound once more. He was expecting to see the bright red when he began to pull the bandage away completely. What he was not prepared for was the additional discharge that immediately met his eyes. Something pale yellowish white was amidst the darker rivulets of color which were quickly vacating the serrated and risen, raw and pink, skin of the wound. He blinked in horror at the sight of it as his head began to feel light and dizzy.

By the gods, he was discharging pus.

It was coming in more than just a rather liquid discharge. It came in clumps almost as if it were large cotton balls soaked in alcohol and their shape deformed. Thankfully the skin surrounding the wound was not darkened or discolored. Yugi drew in a deep breath and swallowed thickly as he looked the wound over. All four massive gouge marks were discharging now. The skin was more fully raised in the middle two than the outer. A bubble of yellow-white with mars of red and pink made the pus more vibrant and disgusting to his vision. His stomach tossed violently. His head swam, vision dancing, and he swallowed hard again. Almost all of the wound was covered in blood and touches of pus now.

He ground his teeth together violently and narrowed his eyes into slits. He was disgusted by the sight of his arm, how horrifyingly dark pink it had become in color. He hadn't pulled the bandaging away completely but he could see even with the shadows that each inch of his skin was uniform in shade. Something hard made his throat ache horrendously. It threatened to close up from the strain and shock of the entire situation.

He gagged at the new, sour and bitter stench that crept into his nose. His eyes watered with the slow burn that accompanied it. His throat ached once more and he fought off the impulse to puke as he drew in another breath. It was disgustingly infected. He could actually, truly _smell_ how bad it was. He could gauge the very severity of it all by the rotting smell and the bitter, sour edge that came with it. The undercurrent of sweetness was enough to make his head spin. From the smell alone he could tell immediately that there was lots of pus beneath his skin and the exposed muscles were dying.

Instead he found himself thinking of the wolf-dog, that disgusting smell that had followed it. The stench had been terrible even though the muscle had not seemed to be decayed. Yet there was still that terrible wonder that came with the realization. Was the smell something to do with the werewolf trait? Maybe the wound appeared and smelled worse than it actually was. Or, maybe, as he had thought before, it was some kind of defense mechanism like a skunk.

Yet he truly doubted that now. He was bleeding and pus was oozing from his wound. That hardly seemed like a natural defense now.

And from what he remembered the last time a wounded limb had smelled so terrible they had been forced to amputate. With a wound so hideous they would have attempted antibiotics and constant monitoring. Then they would finally resent to the last thing they would ever want to do. Many of the amputated limbs looked as his arm did.

Yugi shook his head in a violent jerk of a movement. He was not about to lose his arm. He refused to allow such a thing to happen.

He had yet to hear of a werewolf with a missing limb. And Hollywood had always come up with stupid shit at times. A three-limbed werewolf was not one of those things. He could name many stupid things where werewolves were involved, because he was and had always been for more into the "beasts" than he ever had vampires. He knew of all of the popular literature, movies, comics and shows that existed of the mythological animal. A werewolf with only one arm had never been so much as _mentioned_. Curiously the small teen wondered with a morbid fascination and small bit of excitement if werewolves could truly regenerate a lost limb.

The excitement turned into an almost disgusted shame as he swallowed harshly. An insidious sickness seemed to creep through him violently as he looked at the wound once more. He did not want to lose a limb—ever. Whether regeneration was possible or not, the idea of a lost limb disgusted and terrified him more than anything.

He shook his head sharply once more. Hollywood werewolves didn't even seem much like the ones he was probably going to become.

Yugi pushed the thought away with new determination and pulled the rest of the bandage away again. The sound of the gauze pulling from his skin was that of a thunderclap. His flesh was caught in the hideously stained bandaging. The dried blood had sewn his wound to it, the exposed tissue caught and binding.

He swallowed back the scream that threatened to tear through him. Blood welled from the wound viciously like a fountain. The wound was by far more aggravated than it had originally been. The marks looked twice thick and tenfold as red as they had been. Pus bubbled out once more in thick trails of milky white and soft pink. Horror made his stomach drop and his heart sink. The wound was just as deep as it had been. There had been nothing to help heal it in the least. But, with that realization, he had to wonder how it was that his broken ribs and collarbone now seemed okay. And was it possible that the scratches had somehow managed to get worse in the two days since the attack?

He hissed softly in irritation as he ground his teeth together again. He shook his head at the decayed smell again. He thought briefly to pull his shirt over his nose to stop its assault on his ability to smell but his senses were so keen that he doubted it would help at any rate. He attempted smaller, shallower and quicker breaths but the scent was burned into his nose and his throat ached with the stench that still swamped his lungs.

He swallowed back some bile at the sight of it and the intense amount of blood that was still rapidly flowing from the torn skin. Yugi exhaled roughly through his nose to expel some of the disgusting scent. Immediately he wished he had grabbed a towel before he had begun to do this. He needed something to soak the blood up with, and the gauze was all but ruined on one side rather than the other. Some of the off-white yellowish discharge had gotten to the other side, however, and he wondered if it would be capable of drinking up the bright red blood.

Then again, all he needed to do with that was hold it to the wound until he could get the disinfectant baby wipes and the first-aid kit and black towels from beneath the bed. Then, when he had all of that, he could simply wash away some of the dried blood and search the contents in the kit after wiping away all of the blood and pus. He may not have had the tools he needed to perform a surgery to possibly remove the dead tissue but he felt he wouldn't have time to do it without getting caught in the meantime. It was early—he could tell that much by the sound of his mom and grandpa's even breathing—but if they woke up and thought to check on him after what had happened before, he was sure he wouldn't have an explanation. With the door locked they would rightfully assume something was wrong. And he would never have an explanation because it was always extremely rare for him to lock his door like this.

He slipped the soiled bandaging off his wrist and quivered when he saw the mess of blood and pus. Swallowing harshly, Yugi moved to twist the soiled gauze dressing and press it into the wound. He choked on a loud whimper as the material pressed onto the gaping cuts. The pus came more violently with the motion, almost as if he had pressed into some zit by accent and it had popped immediately due to the immense pressure. He screwed his eyes shut and shook his head sharply as he tried to push the image away.

He glanced over minutely at his reflection before quickly stepping towards the bed again, eyes already singled towards where he knew the kit was hidden. He was happy that he had put it in such a way that he could easily pull it out with his left hand. He would have to make it quick because he was almost completely sure the dressing was going to fall out at any moment. He crouched quickly, snatching under the bed without looking, and clutched the kit and the towel that he knew lay on top of it. He tugged and nearly cursed when his right arm touched the bright yellow comforter. A smear of blood and an almost static-like noise met his ears as he pulled away with a cringe. The metal kit let out a soft whisper of noise as it slid across the floor easily, the carpet fibers a gentle rustle in the back of his mind.

His stomach clenched as he pulled his arm to himself again once more and watched as the bandaging dropped to the floor. Ignoring the new sting he had acquired and the intensity that had bloomed with the hit to the blanket, he snatched the towel and pressed it firmly against the wound. Again the pain made him flinch violently and his head swam momentarily. He gagged at the smell in his nose and his head felt light and charred as if it had been seared too fiercely to recover. He didn't doubt that the fibers would be soaked through in only a few moments but he ignored the idea and the horror it represented in order to latch onto the kit. He dug his nails beneath the lid and pulled upwards, flipping it open and taking inventory of the items inside.

He recognized the two absorbent compress dressing, twenty-five adhesive bandages, the set of adhesive cloth tape, five antibiotic ointment packets, five antiseptic wipe packets, two bottles of aspirin, the sterile gauze pads, and the instant cold compress. The other handful of items inside made him blink before he ignored them to grab the antiseptic wipes with a small coil of relief in his stomach.

An antiseptic wipe was said to be a lot gentler and cleaner than alcohol wipes—and certainly baby wipes. When he used them he was hopeful that he would be far less likely to start screaming. But he was almost certain that five antiseptics would be too little to do much for his task. He was hopeful that it would work out well enough that he would not hurt himself worse than he already was.

It took him twenty minutes to even truly put a dent into it. He was listening for any sign that his mom or grandpa was waking up. He immediately regretted the idea that he did not have scissors to clip away the rotted flesh. The edges of each of the wounds were yellowed, the insides rather blackened. He thought it would have been beneficial if he snipped the ends of the torn flesh. A cleaner liquid was now slipping out of the wound but it was quickly being overcome by yet another wave of yellow pus and bright red blood. He cleaned with a baby wipe and ignored the harsh sting that came with it, already far too used to it to notice it for more than a second. He would have to get more antiseptic wipes at some point.

He pushed them down into the exposed muscle as they would have done had it been an animal. It would have been gauze soaked in honey rather than a baby wipe but he had no other way of cleaning it. They came back red and slightly blackened as well as creamy in color and he swallowed hard, bile rising in the back of his throat once more. The smell that came with their removal was enough to push his stomach into overdrive, tossing violently.

When he finished, the gouge marks were hardly clean by any means. He was both oddly relieved and thoroughly disgusted by this realization. He wiped it down once more time and then began to pull some gauze from its container, folding several of them and pushing them inside. He wrapped another thin layer around and followed with the tape. The newer layering was a small bit tighter around his skin and cut into his mobility somewhat but he had already suspected that would be the case.

Only after cleaning the ruined material away did Yugi realize that the infected smell was now gone.

* * *

"He has some serious nerve damage," his mom commented, holding the small brown and white puppy up for his scrutiny. His eyes immediately fell upon the strange angle the mangled paw was held at. The entire joint was covered in bright green bandage up to the elbow but the mobility was far from stunted. Yugi watched her momentarily, unsure of whether or not he should get any closer. "He has this bandage on him because of the way he drags his leg across the floor when he walks. He's actually worn a massive amount of sores on the limb and even popped quite a few blisters because he can't feel it."

Yugi blinked at the explanation and both pity and sympathy made up the grimace on his face as she looked the joyous puppy over. "So how far are you planning to amputate? The whole limb or only halfway?" he asked uncomfortably as he swallowed thickly.

"I'm not sure yet. We're going to have to undo the bandage and look it over before we can make any decisions," she said with a small, almost nonchalant shrug. The small canine squirmed in her grip and scrambled to twit around and kiss her face. Her eyes were sharp and studious as they bore into Yugi's, almost as if she could see the discomfort and fear that was slowly growing inside of him. It was almost as if she knew about the burned school uniform and soiled bandages and the wound on his arm which he still worried might eventually come to require amputation. That was, of course, impossible and the idea nearly made him roll his eyes. "I'm thinking we're most likely going to have to remove the whole limb. The way he drags his leg now makes me think there isn't much else we can do."

He nodded once in response and resisted the urge to swallow hard. Did wolves survive in the wild with a missing limb? Was that possible for them with their constant travels and hunting? He highly doubted it. The thought almost made him laugh bitterly. Dogs had it that much easier in life. And he really didn't think his mom would like taking care of a werewolf with three legs. He couldn't imagine anyone would. Even if canines were one of the most adaptable species in the world—if not _the_ , in all actuality—he thought a werewolf was hardly something that could take into consideration being so easily subdued as a common dog.

A month ago he would have been laughing at himself for thinking something so stupid. Four years ago he would have been ecstatic with the idea of turning into a werewolf. Who hadn't wanted to be a vampire or a werewolf when they were younger? He had outgrown the idea when he fourteen and generally ignored them safe for the idea of horror movies which, on rare occasions, proved to be worth a watch. The occasional book with them as a subject proved to be enjoyable. He mostly read books and watched movies about them because Anzu seemed to like them whenever they had romance in them. He then had an idea of what she was talking about when she brought them up in conversation with him. If not for her idea about how hot werewolves were in media like that he would have long since left them behind completely.

He supposed now that it was actually a good thing that he knew the Hollywood werewolf too.

"When did you want to do this?"

She didn't even blink. "I have appointments until eight. We'll do him around ten."

Yugi nodded again, watching the puppy with a somewhat distant focus, mind already racing with the idea of what he might do with himself if it was ever necessary to have his arm taken off. He could not even wrap his head around it all. If he was superstitious he would have assumed that it was some kind of sign meant to warn him that he would have to do the same. He could have easily been suspicious that it was all leading to that decision. But his logical mind merely sneered that he was worrying about nothing. His arm would heal. It would be as good as new, just as his ribs and hip had mended themselves.

Maybe his arm would be hideously disfigured but he knew it would heal, just like the puppy's when they had sewn the cut together after his limb was removed.

In ten hours the puppy would have three legs instead of four. Maybe in ten hours his arm would be fine again. He could always hope.

Those ten hours passed in something of a daze for him. His mind was still on the idea of what it was that becoming a werewolf might mean for him when he was barely even beginning high school as it was. And then, what about a career or whatever afterwards? Then he had begun thinking about witch trials and eventually the French _Werewolf_ -Witch Trials and more fantastical things after that.

With his mind in every direction as it had been, he had missed it when ten had initially come around. It was not until ten minutes after that he finally glanced at the clock next to the bed he had been seated on all day. He scrambled downstairs to change into long-sleeved scrubs and hurried to the surgical room. The puppy was already shaved and anesthetized and one of her technicians was helping with the tools. She glanced up as he entered but didn't speak as Yugi came over to see what in all was happening at the moment.

The leg that had been bandaged made him want to cringe. It wasn't nearly as bad as his arm but it was clear more than just the paw needed amputation. The pads had been stripped down and looked raw and pink, the dew claw completely ground to the quick. The carpal joint was showing through the skin, all of it bright reddish pink with an almost tail-like dash of skin visible through the white fur. The nails were all ground down and the top of his paw was completely pink. None of it was rotten, however, and Yugi couldn't help the relief that coursed through him at the realization. His owners must have been cleaning the wound and changing the bandage often because it hardly looked as bad as it could have been.

The procedure was a silent affair. The lack of communication and noise—outside of the monitors and the giggly wire his mom used to saw the bone off—made him want to puke. He was at least used to mild conversation around instructions. His mom was usually keen on that because the beeping tended to drive her insane. He couldn't tell if she was upset with him or something else entirely as she began to stitch the incision back together.

It took twenty minutes after the puppy was awake and whimpering in his cage for her to finally speak again.

"Who the hell was Ushio?"

He stopped abruptly where he had been about to lock the crate and swallowed harshly. His eyes flickered around minutely and his stomach dropped. She must have been planning to use the surgery as a way of talking to him about it. Maybe the tech had gotten too invested in the pup to be deterred from the amputation and so had shadowed despite his mother's unspoken frustration. No one was around anymore considering the time and without his grandpa around to diffuse the situation, she was going to abuse that window of opportunity.

"Ushio…?"

What was there to really say about him?

"Yeah, the boy whose _body_ was _left on our doorstep_ ," she snarled, patience snapped.

"They figured out who it was already?" He blinked stupidly as he turned his head towards her, shocked out of his mind. Had they already found out? He didn't truly think that it made much of a difference when it came down to it but he did have to wonder if the connections had been made. Did they know about his presence with Kokurano too or was that yet for those to discover?

Her eyes narrowed, a skeptical and somewhat disapproving expression crossing her face as her gaze burned into his. Yugi backpedaled rapidly, unsure of himself, and then swallowed thickly with realization. The time spent in the kitchen with the investigation crashed through his mind violently like a scared horse escaping its pasture.

"I…I _think_ this was once Ushio," he had initially stammered when asked if he recognized the other male. He had been chewing his thumbnail and shaking his head in a cold shock. "It's…the same shirt he was wearing when I saw him after school…But…I…His _skull_ was crushed!"

"Ushio?" one of the officers had asked in confusion

"Tetsu Ushio…He g— _went_ to my school…"

"Yes, well, I would say the wound was probably caused by some kind of wild animal or…perhaps a group of them. Some kind of…coordinated attack. He…seemed to have been nearly disemboweled and left on your doorstep. We have no way of knowing at this moment whether he was killed elsewhere and dragged here as if he might have possibly been here for whatever reason."

Yugi squeezed his eyes shut in an effort to push the memory away but it refused to leave him, his voice cracked as it whispered, "Oh gods…"

"And you all heard _nothing_?" the second detective asked almost skeptically.

"No…I woke up to a weird scratching noise. I thought maybe one of the animals downstairs had gotten loose. I went to check on it and…"

"Our bedrooms are all up here," his mom was saying in his empty mind, the words echoing strangely in the darkness behind his eyelids. "We were both fast asleep until we heard Yugi screaming like he was…"

"And you have no idea who might want to kill Tetsu Ushio and dump his body on your doorstep?"

"N-no…I…"

"Well, I don't think any of you could do it—"

 _Not yet_ , Yugi thought, focusing on the sound of the puppy whimpering pathetically as he drugs began to slowly fade from its system. The noise was enough to pull him back into the present as he opened his eyes to face his mother once more. "I…I guess I didn't get enough sleep. I…" He shook his head after a moment, unsure of how to finish such a statement.

She ignored the comment. "Who was he?" she demanded.

"He was…something of a bully. He liked to pick on people smaller than him. He was the leader of the Disciplinary Committee at school—"

" _No_ , Yugi. In relation to _you_ , who _was_ he?"

He blinked and then frowned. "He was the Disciplinary Committee's leader at school. We had gym class together and he liked to poke fun at me," he replied dismissively, shrugging after a moment when he saw her eyes narrow further. "I didn't know him very well. I only ever interacted with him in class."

"So then _why_ did his body end up _here_? Why on _our_ front steps?"

Yugi stared at her stupidly for a moment. Was he merely paranoid or was she actually _accusing_ him? "How the _fuck_ would I know, Mom? I'm not a fucking animal!"

"No, but you've been acting strangely lately. Ever since that damn hybrid showed up—"

"Are you _honestly_ blaming a _dog_ right now?" he asked incredulously, staring at her and shaking his head slowly. "You can't be—"

"No, I'm not blaming a _dog_. I'm merely stating the fact that _you_ have been acting _strangely_ ever since the hybrid showed up." She bulldozed him when he began to open his mouth to make a rebuttal. "And you've been getting worse ever since it got loose."

He stared at her again, silent and growing furious. When she spoke the last two words they were coated in disbelief, a mounting frustration. He didn't even have to bother with her tone because her eyes were hard with a glaringly obvious distrust of the statement. He had always known she didn't believe him when he'd insisted that was what happened. She still believed it was his fault because his hallucinations had screwed everything up.

"So what exactly is it that you're saying?" he finally hissed, steeling himself for the moment she finally said it.

Kasumi rolled her eyes in response to the way his shoulders were unconsciously rising. "Yugi, I just want to know how he was connected to you. I want to know why he was placed _here_ , on _our doorstep_ , of _all_ places," she said slowly, voice even and almost eerily calm as her son narrowed his eyes and his shoulders rose further. She knew there was something he was failing to tell her. Normally Yugi was levelheaded, even when he was accused of something or other. He never got so outright offended, not unless he was guilt of keeping secrets. His tell had always been in his eyes and his affronted behavior, how rapidly it developed. "Was there something going on between the two of you?"

Yugi gave her a thoroughly disgusted look, barely resisted the urge to curl his lip back. "I already _told_ you," he snapped in annoyance, sighing loudly a second later. "I didn't _know him very well_. He and I didn't even have the same circle of _friends_. Why he wound up here is _nothing_ I have an answer to—"

"You're lying."

He stopped short, unable to fully comprehend the statement she had just made. She wasn't accusing him anymore. She was stating a fact. She was sure of it, so certain that Yugi nearly quaked as they looked at one another. His mom merely watched him and then slowly shrugged with a shake of her head. He was still frozen in place and fighting away the urge to shiver when she walked off.

"Well, I don't think any of you could do it." The officer's voice was followed by something of an annoyed sigh. "Tetsu Ushio was torn apart by some kind of wild animal. We know he often ran around late at night, _long_ past the curfew placed when Miss Miho's body was discovered. What we have yet to figure out is _who_ found his body and put it on _your_ doorstep."

* * *

A soft clicking and something of a gentle scratching made him sit up straight. His mouth was pasty and dry as his eyes widened drastically. His stomach dropped violently and a tremble passed through him. He swallowed harshly and nearly flinched when he caught a small thud nearby. At first he feared the wolf had returned and found its way into his room and nearly puked in horror. But then he realized immediately, his head snapping around and hands pressing against the cool surface of his metal desk, when his fingers brushed the plastic that it was only his pencil that had fallen. He wanted to vomit again when the clicking noise met his ears once more. He pressed his back fully into the small wooden chair, the cool surface making his spine tighten further as he barely resisted the urge to shiver.

The wolf wouldn't have come back in brought daylight, would it? There was no way they were foolish enough to show up as a canine, right? Surely even they realized that a dog reported to the police for pick up due to the absence of a collar was going to most likely be tested extensively and then possible euthanized?

It had not even been a full twenty-four hours since Ushio's body had been left on his doorstep so how could they possibly even consider that it might be safe to do such a stupid and reckless thing? If it still had a human mind beneath a wolf's pelt then it was obvious they would never do such a thing. Risking their life in order to hunt him? That hardly seemed even slightly plausible.

Regardless, he remained where he was, listening closely and straining his ears to catch the sound once more. It took several minutes for it to finally come again and Yugi felt his spine loosen almost in satisfaction. The Shiba Inu pup must have gotten out of his cage again. He had been managing that for a little while now, sneaking out and running as quickly as he could around the small room. His new parents were supposed to be picking him up later now that Yugi actually considered it.

He listened a little more, focusing on catching any bit of conversation. Nothing came to him and he finally forced himself to his feet. The soft scuffle of the cast against the tile and the click of the nails made him smile in amusement. He was definitely one of Yugi's favorite patients.

When he got down there, he expected the small canine to be at the door waiting for him. He was excited to see that curly tail wagging so quickly it would give him whiplash. What he got was an empty room. When he stepped inside and looked around, there was nothing to be seen. The animals were actually asleep, both puppies pressed into the walls of the crates that divided them almost as if they were trying to touch each other through the bars. The mother and her babies had been moved back to the emergency clinic when they had seemingly caught a respiratory infection while at the main. And now she was curled up with them; Yugi was well aware that his mother would soon end up calling some of her various connections among the foster system and have them all placed together.

The scene and that thought to accompany it was peaceful enough, but his stomach was flipping violently. What had been the source of the noise if not one of the animals? It had come from inside the house; there was not a single doubt in his mind. He would not have caught it so clearly and assumed it was the puppy if not for that fact. If it was not one of the animals inside of their cages, then what could it have possibly been?

He swallowed and cleared his throat out of nervous habit. He glanced at the door, relieved to see that it was still locked. If it really was the wolf, coming to kill him as its next meal, why would the door have been locked again? And why would it be hiding? There was not as much room as it might have seemed from the outside and the space was open as it was so that any animals they allowed to exercise could be seen and found easily if needed to be put back in a hurry. So a wolf would have been very quickly noticed had it been there. If it was there with him he would have known it, not only by sight he realized after a moment. He might have even been able to catch its scent or maybe hear its breathing while it watched him.

He looked around only once more and then hurried back up the stairs.

* * *

"So, uh…if you don't mind my asking"— _I'm almost certain I will now_ , Yugi thought as he glanced over at Jonouchi with a raised brow—"what happened the other night?"

"The…other night?" he repeated in confusion, blinking at him.

The blond gave him a somewhat quizzical look. Did Yugi really not understand what he was asking him? Surely he hadn't thought those stares he had gotten all day and those whispers whenever he was close by had been for nothing? He furrowed his brows when his smaller friend blinked at him again, just as mystified as he had been moments before.

"With Ushio? His _body_? You know, _showing up at your house_?"

"Well, aren't you the _king_ of tact?" he snapped dryly, rolling his eyes in avid annoyance. He sat back more forcefully against his chair's backrest. When he had invited him over for tutoring as well, he had not even considered he might ask about that. He had hoped that his friends would at least think before they even attempted the subject—which, thankfully, only Jonouchi seemed willing to do. "Thanks for the subtlety. I _really_ appreciate it, Jonouchi."

He cringed slightly at the statement, swallowing hard and giving him a sheepish smile. "Sorry about that, buddy. I wasn't really thinking when I asked."

Yugi had the impulse to sneer at him that he never did, his entire mood thrown out the window where gusts made the glass rattle. Instead he shook his head and looked at the workbook in front of him. He was supposed to show the blond just where he went wrong with his test in math while doing his own twelve pages as an example in the meantime. His pages would be turned in and Chono would accept that as his make up assignment instead. She had not wanted to be implemented by the school board as negligible as a teacher since she had not bothered to show up before curfew that day after school. Because of this she had this deal with him and Yugi had readily leaped at it.

He guessed he did at least have one thing to be thankful for as far as Kokurano's death went.

"Let's just go ahead and start on—"

"What? No way! You can't just dodge—"

"Katsuya, I asked if you wanted to come over so that I could tutor you, not to sit around and gossip," he spat, ignoring the stunned expression on the other teen's face. He didn't want to talk about Ushio. He was dead. They were getting him ready for his burial. Yugi honestly just didn't care about it all anymore. The media had messed up in telling where the body had been found and by whom. He had been anything but oblivious to all the attention he had received in school. That could happen there but he wasn't about to endure it in his own home. "We're not talking about that."

"But—"

" _No_. We're not. End of discussion."

Jonouchi rolled his brown eyes. "Yes, mother," he murmured, an almost spiteful edge creeping into his tone. The sound of it was enough to make Yugi stiffen and narrow his eyes in displeasure. If he didn't like it, then he could get the fuck out. He wanted Ushio and this new wolf as far from his thoughts as conceivably possible. He had spent far too much time scared of it all to bother with it again. If the wolf came, then it came. Otherwise there was no reason for him to spend every waking hour terrified of such a morbid possibility. There were enough terrifying things in his head without that lingering there too.

He focused on the workbook instead of the blond, glancing at the yellow sticky note Chono had written his assignment on. Yugi was nothing if not well aware of the way Jonouchi was put off beside him. The entire air around him seemed almost like static, pulsating in clear frustration towards Yugi's reluctance. His shoulders were raised slightly, his arms crossed, and he was leaning back against the chair with an annoyed expression. If not for the way he could clear see how pissed he was even from the corner of his eyes, Yugi would have initially assumed he was sulking.

"Okay, so do you have the sheet she gave us for homework?"

A long minute of silence passed and Yugi furrowed his brows before slowly turning his head in question. The moment their eyes locked he felt as if he had never regretted anything nearly as much.

"You're seriously not going to tell me?"

"What?"

"I'm your _best friend_ , Yugi!"

"Oh my fucking gods—" He drew in a deep breath and reached up to cover his forehead with his palm. He was right. He was his best friend. And he had no plans to tell him. It wasn't anything like when Jonouchi had pestered him into admitting he had a crush on Anzu. Ushio was dead and his body was found in the middle of the night at his house. He still had yet to figure out who this new wolf was and why they might do such a thing. Was it a message? A warning? A truce?

"You're right, Jonouchi. You are my best friend."

The blond nodded happily in agreement with the statement. " _Exactly_! So you should tell your best friend all about it!"

"No, that's even more reason _not_ to tell you."

" _What_?"

"For your safety." _And possibly mine_.

"No fucking way! You can't just—"

"Oh, but I can just," he snarled, voice hardening and bordering something almost akin hatred. "And if you don't _like_ it, then you can _fuck off_."

Jonouchi's mouth fell open as Yugi glared back at him. In another circumstance the small teen would have blushed, embarrassed by his crudeness, and the blond would have been laughing. But the other boy was completely serious and he could see it in his eyes that he was not about to tell him anytime soon. Yet, even with this knowledge keen in his mind, he could not help but push one more time.

" _Seriously_? You won't even give me a hint?" he whined, watching him closely for any sign of his resolve slipping.

He blinked once in a slow, drawn out movement, and then narrowed his gaze into slits of blue-violet. " _Fuck. Off._ "

Jonouchi barely had time to blink before Yugi had dropped his pencil with a loud thump, slammed the paperback shut, and stood up. His eyes were cold and far from amused when he turned away and headed off into his room without a glance back. Gawking after him, the blond listened to the lock click into place and awkwardly reached down to grab his backpack and pull it into the chair next to him. So he was definitely never going to get this story out of him anytime soon.

* * *

"You did _what_?" Anzu demanded harshly, blue eyes narrowing furiously. Her hands rested on her hips, entire body angled to show her displeasure. Beside her Honda was shaking his head with disapproval.

"What?" he complained, throwing his hands up and rolling his eyes. "I was just curious."

" _Idiot_ ," the hazel-eyed brunet murmured, rolling his eyes in response. "Why the hell would you _ever_ think that it was okay to do something like that? You can't just go around pestering someone about something like that. Of course he told you to go fuck yourself. I would have too."

"Actually all he said was _fuck off_ , not to go fuck myself."

"Well, in _that_ case, I guess I'm telling you for him."

At another time the blond would have risen for the bait and wound up arguing loudly with him all morning in the middle of the hallway just before class. But now he was well aware of the fact that Honda was completely right. There was no way to actually talk about something like that and, if there was, it definitely wasn't the way he had handled it. Yugi had every right to be upset—he probably would have been too if he were in his shoes. So, instead of his usual response, Jonouchi lowered his eyes to the floor, a small bit of shame coursing through him. But he had always been loud and boisterous when he was curious so the emotion was more like a drifting wind rather than anything else. Because they all knew that and they all accepted it. That hardly made it right, of course, but, like with all self-depredation, came such common knowledge which, in turn, made him momentarily irritable.

Yugi _knew_ how he got when he was excited and curious. He also knew that all he really had to do rather than snap at him like that was simply redirect his attention each time he brought it up. He had not needed to tell him off like that.

Irritated now, Jonouchi glanced over his shoulder where he knew Yugi's class was. He would come walking out in a minute or two. His stomach twisted further and his mood darkened a small but steady amount more. The last thing he really wanted to do was have to deal with him when he came to see them like he always did. He didn't want to walk with him in their group as they went to their next classes.

"Yugi!"

The blond rolled his eyes, immediately turning away. Anzu sounded like some girl who was seeing her idol for the first time. She was even waving an arm as if she thought Yugi might somehow miss the fact that they were standing there waiting for him. As if they didn't do that same thing every single day as it was.

"Hey, guys." He sounded somewhat flustered and maybe a small bit out of breath. "What's up?"

"Just waiting on you like we always do," the blond stated, turning to look at him and surprising himself with how casual his voice managed to sound. Yugi blinked at him and something flashed briefly in his wide eyes. "And then we were all thinking about going to Burger World when school is over."

"Burger World?" the small teen echoed, eyes widening further. He blinked several times, mouth watering, but the usual delicious-looking meal that always sprang to mind when the restaurant was mentioned seemed suddenly almost strange and somehow foreign. It was a curious idea, something that made him tilt his head in wonder. This old, immediate image looked new and redefined, with more detail than he had ever truly taken account of. He could count every sesame seed on top of the lightly-browned whole wheat bun top and see the soft reflection of light from the peel of the single slice of tomato just beneath. There was a soft red under it, peaking outwards in that soft and shiny way that ketchup always did, disappearing where the onion lay with its soft white ringlets. The pickles were directly underneath, a handful of them hidden away from wandering eyes and cushioned into the melted gold of the cheese. The meat was a beautiful, solid brown with a glistening sheen that met the bun in a deliciously almost sinful manner. This new image made his mouth salivate more and his stomach twisted once in a hopeful shudder.

"Yeah, we were hoping that you would be able to come this time," Honda put in, hazel eyes turned to him with a tilt of his head. Yugi's expression was changing quickly as the words connected fully and for a moment he looked nearly sick. He blinked and the emotion was gone again as if it had never been. The brunet was watching him hesitantly think it over, his teeth working at the inside of his right cheek. "We could always do it some other—"

"I don't see why my mom would say no," Yugi cut in, though he could name at least three without even trying. But he would pretend to get her permission and then later tell her that his phone had died at school and he hadn't had the charger. She would be annoyed but not enough to reprimand. There would most likely be a single lecture that would drift away almost instantly when she realized that he already knew all of what she was saying.

Besides that, he doubted anything would happen at a popular fast food restaurant of all places. He doubted that this new wolf, which had obviously worked hard to kill Ushio without even a hint of their existence, would risk being found so easily. What would have been the point if it was going to expose itself only a few days afterwards? This wolf seemed—though he had not been exposed to it for long—far too crafty and cautious to do such a thing.

Perhaps that was only his perception because he was desperate to rationalize it all and to calm some of the fear he knew could easily wipe away all traces of logic if it was only given the chance. But he was not about to question it. He had no actual clue as to what it could all mean for him when it came down to it. There was no way to know anything about this new wolf that either wanted to eat him or scare him until he was unable to function any longer. He was already on high alert no matter how hard he tried to remain calm. He thought constantly of it behind him, silent and watching but mostly waiting. He recognized every noise in his house as claws clicking on tile and when the leaves shifted in the wind he was always caught in place with the horrifying idea that it was nearby, panting loudly so that he could hear and panic.

"Awesome, then let's all go after school." When Jonouchi glanced at him, Honda was watching him with a somewhat curious and slightly disbelieving expression. The blond barely resisted the urge to roll his eyes at the other boy. He was still upset, of course, but he wasn't about to make a big deal over it. There wasn't reason to. He would let it blow over because there wasn't much else to do with it.

The brunet was still giving him small glances, almost as if he was unable to understand it all, when they all met up to head to the restaurant. Jonouchi was ignoring him as well as he could, making mild conversation with Yugi instead. Anzu was a step behind the small teen but when he glanced over at her to give her a small smirk of amusement he could actually see that their steps were in sync.

He snickered at the realization. Hadn't he read somewhere that that meant _true love_?

He opened his mouth to tease them but halted when he saw Yugi completely freeze. Mid-step with his right heel about to touch the ground, he was caught in place. His eyes had grown wide and his pupils appeared partially blown. His mouth had opened the smallest bit and his breathing seemed somehow labored. His head turned suddenly and his right foot flattened against the ground. His left ear was tipped downwards the smallest fraction and Jonouchi couldn't help but wonder if he was listening for something.

The moment passed as quickly as it had come. Yugi was facing forward again and his eyes were clearer, more focused, and he thought they looked sharp and almost angry as well. He didn't lag even once as he continued along with them, moving as if he had never stopped. His eyes were flicking every which way, however, and Jonouchi noticed slowly that his shoulders had risen slightly and there was a steady tension growing in his frame. But, when he glanced towards the blond, his expression turned into something of an uncomfortable grimace before it slipped away instantaneously when his eyes were off his face once more.

Even without having known him for so long or studying him, Jonouchi thought anyone who so much as glanced at Yugi would be able to determine that something was off. His stride was long and quick but far too stiff as he continued walking. He looked—to Jonouchi anyways—like the tin man in the older _Wizard of Oz_ movie adaptations. He shook the idea off almost as immediately as it had come. This was going to be another thing he would not be allowed to ask him about. He knew that without even thinking about it.

The alarm was getting louder in Yugi's head as they got closer to the restaurant. An instinct was telling him to be cautious. Another said to fall into his fight or flight. And the last told him to face it head on. When it came to the core of the situation, that final instinct was the loudest and by far the clearest. And even if it had been small and nearly smothered beneath the others it was the only one that made sense to him. The others were with him and he had been excited about it all day and there was no way to casually say that he was no longer in the mood like that. They would have assumed he was bipolar or that he was hiding something. Whatever little peace he had been granted beforehand with the Ushio incident would be immediately shattered.

Burger World was the most well-known restaurant in Domino City. It was the only fast food place in the city, with the next about a half an hour's drive. It was more of a hangout for teenagers after school than it was for adults. Most cuisine in Japan was healthy and so parents tended to be there rather than a fast food joint that bordered American with how hideous the nutritional values were. So Yugi was unsurprised to see just how busy it was without even entering the building. He could see the faint outlines of people through the windows and beyond that he could see cars taking up space in the parking lot.

The closer he got to the building the more violently his stomach twisted. His mouth was burning with blood where it came from the cut he had delivered his cheek. Insistently the instinct was growing louder, telling him to remain there. The fight or flight response was dying away without much resistance though it still warned him to bolt in an effort to preserve his life.

He held the door open for them when he reached it first. It was as reflexive as blinking but his mind immediately leaped forward with the reaction. He inhaled deeply first, drawing in the scent of car exhaust and then grease and beef. Onions, sweet but with a stinging edge, made his head spin momentarily. What followed after was the scent of the tomatoes. Then he caught the mint of Jonouchi's breath as he chewed his gum, the gentle musk and sea-like quality of Honda's deodorant as he passed, a small but soft earthy smell following to remind him of Blankey. Anzu's scent was of cherry blossoms warmed beneath the sun and a softer baby powder undertone, familiar as it had always been and yet somehow different all at once.

His eyesight had grown sharp once more and his vision granted him that of the rough exterior of the asphalt and every tiny shadow that fell across its bumpy surface. The blades of grass in the parking lot were tinged with slight yellow, the stems growing paler. A small fly was moving in his peripheral where it had landed on the other door. He saw the tiny hairs and fractures where they resided on the glass. He even saw where the parking lot was darkened minutely from so many cars taking places between the white lines.

When he turned his head the smallest degree, he heard knives colliding with metal counters, the sizzle of meat, the boiling oil that the fries were dunked in, the slight shift of shoes on the linoleum and the constant stream of mindless chatter. Opening his mouth the smallest degree to catch anything he might have missed, the taste that plastered itself across his tongue was almost enough to cringe. Sweat and the harder scents of deodorants made him swallow reflexively.

He turned away from his attempt to identify whatever it was that had been upsetting him. Instead he followed his friends further inside and tried his hardest to ignore everything around him. But his eyes still caught the small silver hairs on one of the uniforms as the man began to pass them. He straightened when the man's nostrils flared as if breathing in deeply. The exhale that followed was brief and extremely concentrated and Yugi felt his body grow stiff with tension, eyes narrowing faintly. The man was tall, with a somewhat lanky appearance, but it was highly noticeable the muscle mass he possessed. Very slowly, as if struggling with the need to display control, the man turned his head and Yugi's shoulders rose instinctively to shield his neck.

The small teen felt something pulsing within his stomach, an angry wave like jostled water. It was growing steadily, his insides twisting as if to accommodate it. He breathed in roughly once and the sound that followed his exhale was almost like the purr of an engine. It did not grow louder, instead falling away again almost immediately, but it was enough to make his friends stop short and horror wash through him.

He was _growling_ , he realized as his stomach coiled tightly.

The other male came forward as if summoned by the noise. His eyes were wild, pupils blow. His jaw was clenched. His head was tilted slightly to the side. When he got within a foot of them, Yugi could feel it. He could feel each wave of power that pulsated towards them like rippling water. The intensity it bore made his bones flare with a heat that threatened to incriminate them. Yet he was still standing there, tense and somehow furious as the two of them stared at each other.

"You're in my territory." His voice was low and raspy like a smoker's. It curled its way into his ears like a snake lulled by a charmer. " _Boy_."

The sneer was enough to make him step back twice. It was more discomfort and caution than fear, but he could tell that such a reality was lost on the other male. His pupils had grown a small bit bigger and his lips had tugged back into a wide smirk.

Jonouchi and Honda were frozen in place, unsure of what to do. In another situation they would have jumped in to defend the smaller teen. But even they too could feel the immensity of his presence and so did not move. Out of the three of them, only Anzu moved, and that was simply to step back and unconsciously press herself into the neighboring wall. All three of them were watching almost mindlessly, tense and unable to look away.

The reality of the situation was crashing through him. He was unable to suppress the quiver that came from deep within his spine. Horrified, Yugi was both standing his ground by some strange miracle and giving off a distinctive fear scent. He smelled it just as well as the other male did. It was almost like an intense burst of heat and sourness that he thought seemed almost like rusted metal or stale mold.

The snicker that left the Burger World employee made every nerve in his body flare with anger. Self-preservation made him square his shoulders and brace himself even as he thought to flee. His heart began to speed up and his body flashed with a vivid, vibrant heat that threatened to knock him off his feet. Mouth growing dry and his jaw clamping, that soft purring rumble of a growl left him instinctively. His stomach tossed and the vomit was disgustingly tangible beneath his skin. His bones ached and surged with heated pain like touching a lit stovetop. The employee was reaching outwards for his throat, fingers spread to grab at his flesh. His head sped until it felt it might leap through his chest and onto the tile in front of him. With each twist of the muscle came that painful throb of something almost foreign in his system. He wanted to curl his lips back and snarl; every instinct within him screamed at him to do such a thing.

The man's knuckles had fine white and silver-tinged hairs. Each finger sported them in something of a furious bristle. His hand looked unnaturally large as it got closer. The fingers were long, the nails thicker than usual, almost talon-like in appearance. He could see burger meat and grease beneath, staining them a light brown that bordered orange. When he focused he saw the pulse of his veins along his knuckles. It occurred to him, staring blankly at such an obvious threat, that those nails could possibly cut through his skin without any effort to speak of.

The rumbling made a satisfying tingle of a sensation in the back of his throat. His tongue was vibrating with the sensation and his ears felt as if they might explode. His head had taken on a light, almost distant quality. The man paused, hand halfway to his throat, his expression abruptly unclear. Slowly his eyes lowered to his ribcage, honing in on where Yugi's heart was still racing threefold in his chest.

His pupils were dilating further, almost swallowing away any hint of veins or whites in his eyes. They were vibrating, terrified, and the small teen fell silent in confusion. His heart was pounding enough to sound like a racehorse on a track. There were four others accompanying it in his ears, and he knew the shakiest, crashing with the rapid surges of adrenaline, were the man's before him. The other three were too far out of sync and inconsequential for him to care to attempt identifying.

He recoiled violently as if Yugi had struck him. Silent and staring, the small teen remained completely motionless. His breaths were slow and long, pointedly made so by some instinct Yugi had no name for. Both of them froze in place and then startled. Yugi's head whipped around while the employee's rose and his mouth fell into a gape.

The noise passed through him like a drifting wind. Fire curled through his system instantaneously. The notes rose and fell in a haunting bay of a melody, somehow beautifully lyrical. He thought of running footsteps. The rapid rises and falls of the mind numbing harmony reminded him of his own heavy breathing. He swallowed a mouthful of saliva. It was rising violently, full of fury and dipping so low that he almost thought it touched the earth.

A small whimper bubbled up into the air. Yugi turned his head only a fraction. The Burger World employee was quaking.

The outside song's pitch had grown high enough to echo a loud whistle, doubling almost as if another voice had joined it. The man was panting. The noise dipped low enough that it sounded vaguely as if someone were speaking in a dangerously soft tone. Yugi watched him twitch violently, almost drooling as he choked on spit in his peripheral. It drowned away into nothingness after several rises and falls. It sounded almost as if the animal were snarling.

When Yugi blinked the employee was long gone.

"What the fuck was _that_?" Jonouch finally demanded after several long minutes. He was staring at Yugi but the small teen was still listening to the echo of the bouncing rise in volume that the noise had taken on before disappearing so abruptly.

 _He ran off_. Yugi blinked slowly, his mind racing with the reality of such a statement. He glanced at the blond without much thought, finding that his brown eyes were narrowed and partially suspicious. He didn't blink again, his mind hurrying to reassure him of what he already knew. The man had stopped first because of his heartbeat. But he had fled because of that howl, which had sounded right when he needed it to. It was almost as if this new wolf were trying to protect him.

"I don't…" He swallowed thickly. His heart was slowing but his stomach was still pulsing. His hands were shaking. His throat constricted painfully and he made a low, choking noise that sounded faintly like a hiccup. Honda snapped into action as if jarred by the noise. Yugi barely had the chance to blink before a trashcan was pushed in front of him.

Blinking stupidly, another hiccup left him and he blindly reached out to grasp the can with shaking hands. He hurled violently and the pulsing in his stomach grew noticeable by threefold. He drew in a deep breath through his nose which made a sniffling noise as his eyes watered faintly. His throat burned with the acidic aftertaste and his mouth flooded with saliva.

"Thanks," he mumbled weakly, pulling his eyes away from the black bag and across the restaurant. He watched a few faces give him sympathetic grimaces. He saw a couple of disgusted employees. A manager flinched when they looked at him and realized he was watching. But that original employee, the werewolf, was nowhere to be found as he continued looking. Full of something akin a dreadful satisfaction, Yugi turned back to them and pushed the can back up against the wall.

"Does anyone else just want to call it a day?" Anzu asked in a somewhat shaky voice.

Yugi blinked and frowned at the door, shaking his head. "Not really," he mumbled, swallowing a mouthful of saliva that burned his throat on its way down. Jonouchi and Honda both gave him unnerved glances that made his stomach twist again faintly. "I don't want to go home yet. We haven't even hung out—"

"You're sick, Yugi," the brunette said quietly, shaking her head. "We can all hang out some other—"

" _No_. That guy just made me nervous," he protested, feeling his stomach toss more violently. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and made a mental note to wash his face in the bathroom. "I'm okay though. I'll just get a water or something while you guys eat."

"Yugi, it's not that big a deal," Honda put in, watching him with a somewhat bewildered expression. "Burger World isn't going anywhere. We can come here again some other time."

"But we're already here," he tried, blinking and hoping that his desperation wasn't visible. Honda was right; the restaurant wasn't going anywhere. But they might be. After today he couldn't picture them wanting to be around him much longer. There was no way he could deny anything seeing as they had all witnessed it and they had heard him growling. He had no doubt that they knew it had come from him, though what they were telling themselves in the meantime he wasn't sure. Maybe they were in shock and had not entirely pieced together what they had seen just yet. When it came down to it, Yugi honestly didn't care. He just wasn't going to let what might be the last time they ever hung out together slip through his fingers like this. "And I'm not sick, guys. It was just nerves."

Besides, he had no idea if the werewolf was still there. If he was, then Yugi wasn't willing to risk them going their separate ways like this. He was unsure how much use he would truly be, but something about his pounding heart had initially made the man pause. And maybe just being a werewolf himself would be enough to make him hesitate. He nearly laughed at himself at the thought.

They were there for twenty minutes. Yugi washed his face and mouth out after they got a seat, relieved when they had not disappeared during his absence. Jonouchi and Honda both inhaled the basket of cheese fries and their burgers. Anzu haltingly ate a salad and lectured them about actually _chewing_ their food instead of swallowing it whole. Yugi sipped at his water and tried his hardest to ignore that their waitress had told her friend that she really hoped he wouldn't puke on her.

He made a point of not talking much in order to plan. He was unsure whether the employee may have left them alone or even exited the building. But he did know that it was far from over. He was nearby, Yugi knew.

He almost wished that they had stayed longer. His planning had become nothing more than reminding himself that he was infected. The reality of such a statement had finally come in full force and he felt almost dizzy as he walked with them. But he also knew that this new wolf that had murdered Ushio seemed to be on his side. If that howl was any indication, anyways. But where was it and how had it known he was in trouble?

"Guys, wait a second," he hissed as they began to turn the corner to start towards the clinic. They all stopped, blinking and turning to him as if they were expecting something strange to happen again. The thought made him bristle faintly but a faraway sense of sorrow swept through him. If they were already expecting it, what other things had crossed their minds? Was tonight really going to be the last they were all together?

"What's up?" Jonouchi finally asked, frowning at him momentarily.

He shook his head faintly. He had been trailing behind by a step or two, and now he wondered if that alienation was his own doing or if they were even aware of it in the first place. Trying not to let the fear show on his face, he quickly hurried to take the lead, listening. He prayed to every god he knew of that his newest theory about Ushio's killer was true. If that wolf didn't come to his rescue as it had seemed to earlier, then there was no telling what could happen.

Feeling sick to his stomach and putting his faith into something he had yet to see beyond its destructive nature, Yugi listened harder. There was another soft scuffling noise, like something brushing against metal, and his eyes narrowed. It was directly behind the dumpster a few yards into the alleyway. It was watching and waiting, staring at him from beneath the metal bin, he was sure. Yugi ignored the impulse to tell them they needed to head another direction. Doing so only gave the werewolf a chance to strike from behind. If this one had half the jaw and brain power that the other had then he thought he might end up just as Ushio had. The heightened senses had to be due to the infection, right? And if Ushio had not heard it before it attacked, then what hope did he honestly have?

The canine came out in a flash of shaded white limbs and silver and a darker color he had no way of identifying. It looked almost black but lighter by a shade or two and neither brown nor gray seemed to find his mind's eye. As Yugi looked at it, hoping once more that Ushio's killer might—for whatever reason—be his ally, he noticed the thickened saliva that was pooling from its powerful jaws. He wondered vaguely if perhaps it happened when they changed due to physical stress on the body. But, had Tomoya been foaming at the mouth when he had saved him from Ushio? He could not remember and trying to picture the sweet platinum blond in such a state made him queasy.

 _Maybe_ , he thought wryly, a grin begging to pull at his lips, _it's because they're hungry_. _Maybe they salivate to make up for the food they have yet to eat_. _Or it could be the anticipation of a good meal, the promised sensation of meat filling their guts and their teeth effortlessly breaking through bone. Maybe the saliva makes it easier for them to eat prey that isn't part of their natural diet…_

He had the instant urge to narrow his eyes at himself in irritation. His mind had backtracked without conscious decision. _They_ had become _we_ and the new pronoun did nothing to make him feel any better. Frustrated, he found himself focusing more fully on the wolf before him.

The wolf lowered its head and its lips pulled back as it immense shoulders rose. Ears pricked forward slowly. Its tail began to rise. A snarl bubbled up, a low and hypnotizing noise. Yugi stiffened. His wide blue-violet eyes fell onto the animal's. The lips pulled back further and upwards. It seemed to be smirking, sneering. Its teeth looked as sharp as knives. Thick tendrils of saliva dropped from the canines. Its eyes crinkled in the corner with this new expression. Its breath came out in a rough, ragged huff. The air was misted with white. Yugi watched its pupils expand in the growing darkness. They glinted a strange gold-tinted gray. They were vibrating as they had at the restaurant. Their focus was bouncing but somehow fully on him.

It threw itself with a keen, disgusting grace. Yugi was unable to move. He was caught in its savage stare. Paws slammed into his stomach. His body tipped backwards instantly. The onyx pupils had lost whatever discolored film they had before. The slathering jaws opened. Hot liquid spilled onto his collarbone. Something in his mind stirred. It felt—for a single moment—as if a second pair of eyes had opened and another mind merged with his.

He lashed out. His right knee slammed into the slope of its ribs. The wolf cried out and lurched. Teeth chomped just centimeters from his face. Hot air gusted over his skin. He pulled his knee up again. The canine snarled and backed up a step. The violent rise and fall of the noise made his skin crawl.

He prepared himself to kick out. He could aim for the jaws or the chest. If not for its positioning and speed, he might have even tried for the neck. But the wolf was no longer focused on him. Its head was tipped upwards and its eyes were on the other three teens. His stomach clenched and his mouth grew dry with horror. What was he meant to do if it went after them? Did he try to get in the middle despite already being there? His heart skipped a beat and then raced violently. His ears were pounding as if he were listening to music too loud.

The wolf shot towards them. Yugi impulsively tried to look. For a horrible moment he was gleeful. There were four of them against one animal. If it bit one of them they would be forced to keep ties with them. He would be the only one to understand. He hated himself for the thought but his momentary blunder had done its work.

The animal collided with a shaken Jonouchi. The blond cried out as he and Honda were both knocked flat on their backs.

The canine whined and scrambled for its paws. Its pelt was twitching sporadically. Its ears were flicking every which way. Its sides shook with tremors. Its tail curled around the underside of its white belly. Another high-pitched cry left the animal as it staggered away several steps.

Yugi thought the collision had caused it to somehow limp. But its spine was arched too high. Its head was too low. It was quaking too harshly. He realized that its muscles were locked. It was quaking from the tension.

Yugi had not noticed it before then. His heart had been too loud and fast. His nerves had been too twisted. But now he heard it. It was drowning him with the intense hold it slipped over him. His mouth watered, eyes widening. The howl was sharp and vicious, rising and falling in billowing waves of power and authority. His spine tingled and his stomach twisted furiously.

The wolf lowered itself to the ground. Its ears were pressed back against its skull. Its pupils were wide and blown. Its jaws opened and its tongue lolled as it panted harshly. Every hair on its pelt quivered and danced. Its body shook violently. Its voice lifted in a distressed whimper.

The canine crawled forward a step. Then its jaws opened in an exaggerated yawn. The movement caused another reaction. A choking gasp of a wheeze was coughed out. Its throat contorted and its mouth flexed fully. Its tongue flickered outwards in a spasm. A large substance burst forth with a heaving gasp. A sickening splattering noise accompanied the collision. Yugi blinked and the canine fled.

He sat up slowly, blinking. The howling had faded into the usual nighttime noises. It was both disappointing and exhilarating to realize. Ushio's killer had to be the one doing this, right? They must have been the one protecting him. There was no other explanation. How it knew he was in danger was something else entirely. But maybe bringing the corpse really _had_ been some attempt at establishing an alliance with him?

His stomach flipped with a disgusted yet giddy satisfaction. He spun around to face the others fully but his joy died away as quickly as it had come.

"What the _fuck_?" Jonouchi spat out, brown eyes narrowed and furious as they bore into his. "What _was_ that?"

Yugi remained silent, unsure of what he could possibly say. Anything he thought to offer made him sound idiotic and insane. But his silence could be just as condemning, he realized as the blond's jaw set furiously and his eyes flashed. He looked as if he wanted to knock him out. He looked as if he might want to beat him bloody.

Because he _rightfully_ blamed him for the situation.

His eyes flickered towards Honda who appeared hyperaware, as if he knew everything around him and would be able to handle it if he only thought to try. When his eyes fell on Anzu he felt his stomach sink violently and his mouth grew dry. He swallowed harshly and his throat constricted painfully as he took in her terrified expression. There was such horrible fear there, and he did not know whether it was directed towards him or not.

He would never blame her if such emotion was directed towards him. In her place or Jonouchi's he would easily have felt the same. It was the only reason he did not grow offended with their stares. He didn't have the right to feel such a way when he knew exactly what it was that was going on. He wondered if maybe it was visible on his face, in his eyes. Maybe they knew and saw it in his expression somehow.

"Does it matter?" Honda bit out, voice somewhat harsh and bordering hysterical despite his apparent calmness. He was staring at Yugi with slightly narrowed eyes, expression keen and sharp as if he were trying to see inside of him. Did he realize he knew? "I don't really _care to know_ what the fuck that was."

The small teen impulsively nodded but the movement seemed lost in the darkness. He bit his cheek until it bled and then narrowed his eyes faintly. His mouth flooded and he swallowed at the harsh metallic taste which burned his tongue. He breathed in roughly, almost as if he were panting, and then swallowed hard once more. Tongue pressed against the roof of his mouth, Yugi kept his eyes lowered now. He didn't want them to see his sudden hope, his growing desperation. Was it possible that maybe—by some miracle—they might still stay with him, remain his friends? The thought made him swallow hard again and he smothered the urge to drown himself in this new, rather implausible, possibility. If he could truly somehow keep them all from turning away from him, however…

"C-can we stop talking about this— _please_?"

Anzu had her head down and her attention on the asphalt. Her voice was choked and small. Her hands were shaking finely, barely noticeable in the dark.

Yugi's first instinct was to try to comfort her. He wanted nothing more than to find the words to reassure her that it would all be okay. But he could think of nothing to say and his lungs felt constricted and tight. His entire chest felt as if it had been hollowed out and the organs replaced with stones. With a somehow uneasy jerk of his insides, the small teen shifted in his place to put his palm on the ground and brace himself. He pushed himself upwards, ignoring the jolt that pulsed through his shoulder and arm, and drew himself to his feet.

His legs felt unnatural numb, almost as if he were unsteady and about to collapse. A distant, drifting tingle swept through him. Cold prickled at his senses like pin needles. For a moment he thought maybe he had been on the ground for far longer than he had originally assumed. He shifted his weight somehow shakily. Jonouchi was watching him with a somewhat distressed expression, as if he wanted to ask if he was okay but was at war with himself because of his mounting anger.

Abruptly the blond turned his head away as if just looking at him was somehow disgusting. "Let's get out of here," he snapped, glancing around once and then hurrying towards where he could see a streetlamp not too far down the street. Honda and Anzu did not hesitate to follow and Yugi felt his stomach twist fearfully. With Jonouchi playing the leader right now and the other two being so willing to follow him without pause, how easily could the blond turn them against him if he only thought to do so?

He glanced backwards, unsure of whether he wished to run off when they weren't looking and find his own way home or if he was looking for the wolf that seemed to be watching out for him at the moment?

But there was nothing there to greet him. There were only shadows which seemed endless in depth. He swallowed thickly, searching the darkness almost dutifully. His stomach clenched and his mouth felt dry as he wondered at what it was he was hoping to find.

The walk home was a silent incident. Yugi kept to the back, occasionally glancing over his shoulder. He felt as if the more he tried to find the animal, the more likely the odds. There was a scene of disgusting and horrifying excitement that made his body tingle with each new step forward. It was pitched away with a sensation of brutal heat the moment they neared his house. He breathed in roughly only once, his stomach sinking. Had they gone this way because of what had happened in the alleyway? Were they trying to protect him? Or were they trying to get rid of him?

He didn't open his mouth to question such choices. It was either stupidly foolish or one of the smartest ideas any of them had ever had.

When they stopped, he did too. He stood as close as he dared, unable to make himself move any nearer. They were watching each other, almost suspiciously, and Yugi felt himself growing more crestfallen than he had originally been. He forced himself to refrain from blurting out a pathetic blunder of an apology. He was not willing to explain it all. And he was altogether too scared to even think the words and mold them into the sentences he needed.

Now was the moment. Jonouchi and Anzu were going to turn away from him. He forced his mind to draw itself to a blank. He wanted absolute clarity for such a moment, despite the terrible pain it would bring him.

When he looked to the blond, awaiting his anger and suspicion, he found himself preparing for a blow that failed to deliver. Jonouchi sighed loudly, the noise rough and harsh as he watched Yugi for a single moment. "Look, I don't know about you guys, but I would rather pretend that this _didn't_ happen," he announced. His hands were shaking as he curled them into fists and discreetly shoved them into his pockets. He let out another deep exhale and then forced his shoulders to relax from their tense position. "I don't want to talk about this— _ever_."

Honda's eyes flashed. His jaw set. He looked ready to argue and both of the other two boys prepared themselves. But the words that left his mouth were far from it. "I'd rather not either," he murmured, glancing at Yugi and away just as quickly.

"What?" Anzu whispered, eyes wide and face pale as her expression folded into one of horror. "We can't just pretend nothing happened back there! Yugi almost got hurt—"

"No, that's fine."  
Yugi had not realized it was his voice that spoke the words until all of them were staring at him in open shock. He blinked, steeling himself against the way that the brunette was staring at him with such horror. He blinked and then shook his head, ignoring the twist of his gut as he chewed his cheek.

"I don't want to think about it, either."

Jonuchi sprang at the new opening, but Honda looked mildly upset with the statement. Yugi almost wanted to apologize for his words because now he understood the brunet's change of expression. For whatever reason Honda had been hopeful that Yugi would be the one to side with Anzu and argue where his own fear made it impossible for him to do so. Feeling cowardly and disgusted, he glanced at Anzu from his peripheral and nearly vomited. She was growing angry, watching him closely and appearing almost as if she might snap at any moment.

"Great. Then it's settled—"

"That thing could have _killed_ you!" the brunette spat furiously, shaking her head wildly. "It could have killed _any_ of us!"

 _It could have killed_ all _of us_ , he corrected her silently. His eyes flickered towards the door of his house and he thought to run then and there. He could leave Anzu to her astonished anger. It would not have been hard. Curfew was coming as it was, a drawing darkness that demanded attention. He could say his mom needed his help. It would be so easy to turn and flee away from it all.

"I don't want to talk about this."

He didn't want to talk about anything. Everything in his life seemed to weigh so much, threatening to suffocate him as it tried to face him down.

"I just…I agree with Jonouchi and Honda." He turned back to face her, eyes pleading. "So can we just…drop it?"

He felt like sobbing, both hideously relieved and disgusted with himself. He was a coward, wishing nothing more than to lie down and somehow sleep away what he felt was choking him. Staring into her eyes, he really wished she would understand. He wanted her to somehow realize his terror and desperation. He could never stand it if they turned away from him and he was willing to do almost anything within his power to prevent it. The loneliness he already felt welling within him at the thought of their absence made him feel as if his knees might fold beneath him.

She didn't understand his silent pleas. He knew when she hesitated and chewed her bottom lip. Anzu had no true concept of what he was asking of her. She knew only that he needed her to agree despite how much she hated the very idea. She was torn between loyalty and concern, and slowly her expression began to change. Her brows drew together. Her teeth pulled on her bottom lip noticeably. Her hands began to fidget and pull at her jacket sleeves.

Finally, ducking her head, she sighed. "Okay."

 **I should be able to get the next chapter out on time in the very least. But I am working on getting ahead. Work is just super draining and there aren't enough hours in the day. Chapters are going to get longer, which might also cause me to miss an update. If I do, I'm going to take the extra day between updates to edit and type up the next.**

 **Anyways, thanks for reading!**

 **Any guesses on who the wolf is that killed Ushio? Or the one that went hunting for the serow? Also, in case you're confused, yes, Yugi fell asleep and dreamed of something similar to what was happening with the wolf in the woods. You have the entire franchise to pick someone out if you wanna take a guess lol**


	6. Healing

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day (no update on June 2nd)**

 **Chapter warning: Slight blood, Slight gore, Pus, Wound care, SLIGHT POSSIBLE TRIGGER (?) [Yugi cuts his hand on purpose], Thoughts of death, Thoughts of experiments**

Chapter VI: Healing

 _Work Log Entry VI: May, 1994_

 _May 11_

 _The she-wolf has finally found her feet again. She has grown stable once more, but her mate has passed._

 _We have placed a new male within her cage in the hopes of copulation but they do not seem to get along well as of yet._

 _But he is strong and perhaps with her cells so devolved and having taken to the change so well, we can finally bring back the one immortal beast this world has to offer._

He flipped the pencil around a couple of times, fingers unsteady as his eyes remained glued to his worksheet. His mind was still racing even after several hours of reading and trying to push it all away to sleep some. But his thoughts had refused to slow and his body had grown tense and heated to the point that rest was an impossibility. He had been forced to throw his covers off and then sit up and fan himself with the collar of his shirt. When that had not worked, he had pulled his window open so that he could sit with the cold air curling over his body. Yugi had almost expected to see steam rising from his skin into the dark air. It had not happened—by some miracle—but he would never have questioned it if it had. Thinking about it now as he flicked his pencil against his forefinger, he thought it had seemed almost anticlimactic considering everything else that seemed to be going on.

His pencil made a soft rattling noise as the lead hit each side. Yugi narrowed his eyes faintly and swallowed thickly. His skin felt somehow heavier than it had all day. There was a prickle of heat in his blood, demanding his attention, but all it did was make him want to puke. Acknowledgment always seemed to make it spread, as if it needed his attention in order to spread. His palm was growing lightly sweaty and his thumb had taken on an uncomfortable tingle. A small, dull heated ache was beginning to center itself there and his wrist seemed to sting as if he had somehow cut it.

Yugi lowered his eyes to his sleeves, feeling sick to his stomach. His right wrist was still bandaged beneath his school uniform. He had not checked on any of the wounds since two days before. Since his discovery of just how infected his arm really was, he had not bothered to touch it again. It was too terrifying an idea for him to do such a thing and every time he even considered it briefly, those images would spring into his head. He had yet to even clear away all the blood on his neck due to the fear of finding that it had grown worse as well. If his neck was infected, he had no idea what he was supposed to do. There were so many veins and arteries that could easily wind up being hit if he picked at any scab there.

He flexed his fingers and folded his wrist. A small but noticeable sting and pull came with the motion. The tape hissed lightly as it became slightly rearranged and tugged. His bandage remained firmly in place and he supposed it was because of the dried blood and pus turned cement beneath it. When he did pull it off again to clean, he would end up tearing all of the new cells just as he had before.

He shuddered at the thought and relaxed his wrist, letting it fall limp against the table again. His stomach twitched and ached minutely and his head felt almost dizzy and light. That small pinprick of heat had grown and when his heart beat, it traveled his pulse to make his entire body burn. His scalp tingled, almost as if it itched, and his fingers twitched as if with the need to scratch it away. A restlessness was beginning to settle over him as the seconds passed by, almost akin his usual insomnia.

Yugi jumped from his seat and paced for a moment, reaching up to run a hand through his hair. Another wave of heat pulsed through him and his head swam momentarily. His vision blurred faintly in the corners and he squeezed his eyes shut tightly. Bursts of color exploded behind his eyelids and he swallowed to keep from whining with self-pity. His stomach twisted and tossed violently and his head burned with a new tingle that made him want to snarl in frustration.

Groaning in displeasure, he turned on his heel once more and began a brisk walk to the other side of the kitchen. He thought vaguely about turning on the air so that it would cool his skin but wondered if maybe that might somehow make it worse. He was unsure of whether that was possible or not, considering, but he was at least somewhat optimistic that this was not the worst this disease had to offer. Hot flashes were probably in the negatives when each symptom was ranked from one to ten.

The thought made him grin faintly. The actual physical Change itself was probably the worst when it came down to it. The curve of his lips growing sardonic, an uneasy and yet somehow amusing thing occurred to him. When he thought of that physical process, he was unable to address it without it being capitalized. It was almost like the Black Death, requiring an instantaneous and direct title that anyone would recognize. It was not _just_ something that everyone dreaded as change so often was, but rather it was name of something so powerful and immense that it demanded a title. It demanded a respect that most would indirectly grant it were it ever to be brought into conversation. It was a highly demanding and viciously intriguing thing that seemed to somehow automatically make one think of it in an unconscious yet powerful sentence.

He turned again and his walk grew faster, as if he were trying to outpace his thought. He wished it was as simple as pushing away his thoughts to make something like his disease become nonexistent. He truly wished, more than anything, that that was a possibility. Then things would be able to go back to normal again—with a few explanations, of course. Then maybe he would actually find the courage to ask Anzu out like he was always teased about.

Yugi fought away the urge to laugh at himself, because he knew at the same time, without thought, that he still could not picture doing such a thing. He would always still cherish their relationship too much to take such a risk. Maybe, somehow, now that he was thinking about it, he felt that perhaps it was that he could not see a future between them than it was anything else. Whether that was caution or preference that somehow made him think this way he was unsure. Normally he had some kind of idea when such emotions and thoughts crossed his mind.

He turned away again and paced several feet towards the living room and then back restlessly but somehow languidly all the same. His eyes narrowed and focused in on the television in something akin frustration. His insides immediately flared with annoyance at the idea that such a thing as being cautious could be so hindering. It was almost somehow disturbingly disgusting. There had to be some way that he could balance this infection with his normal life. There had to have been. Otherwise there would have been more caught and known of. It would have been impossible to keep contained. And none of them would exist because of the people that would hunt them down relentlessly.

Maybe that also meant there was a cure. Or else millions of them would be running around, right?

But how many were there— _truly_? How many existed right under their noses? How many were infected and somehow managed to blend in?

And how was he going to be able to become like them if there was no care to be found?

How was he going to emulate someone like Tomoya? He wasn't sure what this disease entailed.

His phone vibrating made him startle, jumping several feet into the air as he spun to face it. A small, almost nonexistent tremble crept through him and he swallowed thickly as his eyes widened in confusion. The screen was lit, the backdrop that of himself and the group, and a text alert showed that it was from Jonouchi. He was asking if they were still on for tutoring but Yugi could not remember planning with him for that afternoon. Maybe the blond had assumed that was what they were doing after school?

Brows furrowed, he hesitantly pulled his phone to him. Eyes narrowed into slits, he read the text a second time.

 _Are we still doing tutoring at your place_?

The message hadn't changed but even while he stared at it and tried his hardest to think of a worthwhile reply, his stomach had begun churning. It was a warning and fear and a deliberately horrifying idea all the same. An instinct told him to say no. Another said yes. And the last told him to be wary it said that if Jonouchi had not formerly gotten over his avoidance of Ushio as a subject of conversation, then why would he have done so with the Burger World employee?

But had it not been the blond's idea to ignore what had happened? Was it not his idea to pretend it had never occurred?

Yugi shook his head, annoyed and somehow disgusted with himself. He was so sick of being cautious like this. He did not truly have any justification for being suspicious of his friend like this. Such an idea was pathetic when he truly considered.

Frustrated, he snatched the phone from the table and sent a quick _Sure_ before dropping it there once more. He had no reason to doubt the blond. He knew sometimes that he didn't know when to let something die, but he had never held it against him. It was not as if Jonouchi did on purpose, either. He just tended to run with something without even realizing. It was actually one of the reasons Yugi liked him so much. And he was not afraid to push and prod and be himself, whether it offended someone else or not. Yugi had always seen that as incredibly admirable because he himself sometimes tended to apologize impulsively if he so much as showed an unhappy expression. That reaction only went away with the longer he spent around them but classmates he rarely spoke to got the former experience whenever he spoke to them.

Jonouchi's ability to speak his mind had always made him grin. He had always, though he would only admit it if it was necessary, aspired to be able to do something of the same himself. He doubted it would ever happen for him, but the thought still sometimes made its way into his head.

He forced himself to halt his resumed pacing and pursed his lips in near annoyance as he caught the sound of the animals downstairs. He was unsure of what was going on down there, but they were barking and the noise was far from happy. They sounded vicious and angry, ready to attack at a moment's notice. For a moment he simply rolled his eyes but something in his blood seemed to grow hot, burning with the need for acknowledgment. His head turned towards the staircase and his eyes widened faintly as realization dawned on him. The animals were going _nuts_ , as they had with the hybrid. Was it possible that the werewolf that had prevented that worker from mauling him and the others was nearby?

Had they even…entered the clinic?

He shot for the door before he could think it through. The barks had grown more rapid and frequent. He snatched the door open. His blood was burning more furiously. His ears rang with the dogs' furious cries. He could barely hear his feet on the steps. He grabbed the bottom door's knob. He twisted and pushed.

"Holy _shit_!"

Yugi nearly tripped over himself trying to get through the door. He nearly barreled straight into the blond who had been trying to go upstairs. The smaller teen was on his tiptoes on the very edge of that bottom step. The brass knob was cold against his palm. He blinked stupidly at the blond in front of him. That heat in his veins was leaving him. The dogs were becoming quieter. His heart was slowing in his ears.

For a moment he could understand nothing of what had happened. Stupefied by it all, he blinked up at the blond. He almost could not even place him for a split second. Confused by it all, the small teen stared blankly. His mind was void of any thoughts. He almost couldn't remember if he was breathing or not. Then, slowly but surely, everything seemed to leap forward once more.

Jonouchi was standing in front of him. The werewolf—if that had truly been what had upset the dogs—was long gone.

The reality of such a thought was horrifying with just how devastatingly crushing it was.

His stomach dropped and he swore his heart stalled for a single moment. Swallowing harshly as his mind became wrapped stupidly around the concept, his hand trembled minutely against the knob. He blinked and then forced himself to focus on the blond before him. Brown eyes were wide, startled and concerned, but Yugi caught the underlying suspicion that shown there as well. Yugi forced himself to give him a small grin that he knew would never reach his eyes.

"Hey, Jonouchi." His mind was racing to make up for time lost staring at him so stupidly. "Ready to start on math?"

His expression was pure skepticism as he looked at him. His eyes were narrowed and his mouth drawn into a tight line. When he spoke, there was something of a gruff, almost unfriendly edge that made Yugi bristle.

"Yeah, let's do that."

Feeling somehow put out, the small teen barely stopped himself from snarling at him not to stare at him. But logic also reminded him that he was standing there motionlessly and blocking the way up the stairs. He turned quickly, hoping that maybe the blond had failed to notice his frustration. He also really wished that he would be able to move fast enough that his momentary hesitation would fail to be noticed.

He led the way almost trotting in order to put some distance between them and clear his head. He blinked slightly and then glanced over his shoulder at the blond when he got to the top step. Either he had moved a lot faster than he had thought or Jonouchi had lagged behind rather drastically. He was barely even halfway up the stairs and the thought occurred to him as he looked at the other teen that he was actually _watching_ him. He hadn't remembered being asked about tutoring because it had not happened. Jonouchi had just wanted to come and watch him. Because, as his eyes flickered down his frame, Yugi realized the blond was trying to inconspicuously find out what it was that had caused the incident in the alley.

"Doesn't that hurt?"

Blinking in confusion, he wondered if maybe he had somehow wound up speaking out loud.

"Walking like that," the blond reiterated, narrowing his eyes. "Doesn't that hurt?"

Yugi blinked and then looked down, eyes widening. He hadn't realized he'd been on his tiptoes the entire time. His head felt slightly lighter at such a realization and he wanted to laugh out loud as he continued looking. He really was turning into a dog. He had always hated the idea of having to get on his toes for the very fact that it felt awkward to the point that it was almost painful.

Now that sensation was absent but a small tingle in his bones. His stomach twisted faintly as he flattened his heels on the carpet.

"It's uncomfortable but it doesn't hurt." He paused and then shrugged. "I was just trying to see if I could walk like that for a while."

"Uh…okay?"

Yugi ignored the heavy skepticism and slight frustration in the other teen's voice and instead wandered into the kitchen again. Jonouchi followed him a moment later and the smaller teen pulled his pencil towards him. His skin was beginning to feel slightly itchy and a bit tighter with a small lance of body heat creeping through him along his veins. His stomach tossed again and the lightness in his head grew more pronounced.

He spent a moment shifting along his homework around on the table and then finally—when he realized it was inevitable that he would end up looking at and talking to the other boy—selected his math text and note books. When he looked up, he was honestly surprised to see that the blond was standing a couple of steps away, facing him with a slightly uncertain expression. He blinked at him and went to shrug but then turned away towards his books again.

"What questions did you need help with?"

It was the only opening he would give him and he was relieved when Jonouchi took it. The blond sat down next to him, pointing at a handful of them as they both looked the page over. They worked in an uncomfortable near-silence that made Yugi want to puke in distress. He was well aware that the other teen was watching him each time he moved to write or flip the page. He was even more aware of how he seemed to sometimes flinch—only the tiniest been, almost inconceivably—whenever he turned to him. He was waiting for him to do something. The thought was both sickening and somehow comforting. At least he had some instinct of self-preservation, even if it was probably stupid of him to stick around him—even now, when they were only studying.

Yugi narrowed his eyes faintly as he looked towards the blood from the corner of his eye. He _was_ admittedly relieved by the very fact that he wanted to hang out with him in the first place considering what had happened just the night before. That fact alone made him want to smile, a small affectionate warmth coiled in his stomach. But he also knew that the reality of the situation—no matter how much he had hoped otherwise—was that he was there watching him out of suspicion. He wasn't there because of their friendship, or at least not truly, and Yugi wanted nothing more than to have him _gone_.

He sat up straighter and narrowed his eyes, shaking his head at him. "Are you going to _keep staring_ at me like _that_?" he snapped in a somewhat brittle tone, eyes glinting.

 _Because I can't fucking take it anymore if you are._

Jonouchi blinked and shrugged in a jerky, almost pissed off movement. "Depends," he bit out.

"On _what_?" What the hell could something like _staring_ depend on?

"Whether you come out and tell me what happened last night or—"

Yugi shook his head sharply, voice dripping with venom. "How would _I_ know what was going on last night?" he growled out.

"How would you _not_? He was talking to _you_ last night. He even fucking _sicced his dog_ on you."

"What the hell are you…?" He trailed off as his stomach clenched and twisted violently. The employee had made a point of saying that he was in his territory. He had been abundantly clear in his declaration and if anyone had been confused, it was even more magnified in the way that he had reached for his throat. Yugi didn't blink, instead watching Jonouchi with sharp and intensely curious eyes. What was he meant to say to something like that? They had all seen it, heard his statement, and he had no way to truly refute it when he had been witness to such a situation.

The blond was watching him closely, waiting for him to lie and deny it. And they were both aware that he had no true way of doing that.

"The dog could have just been a stray. It was—"

" _Bullshit_ , Yugi!"

The smaller teen ground his teeth together in frustration. "The alley was probably its home—"

"Oh, yeah, _okay_. So what about how you stopped us and went first? Because it seems to _me_ that you _knew_ that stupid thing was there."

"That makes _so_ much sense, Katsuya. I _must_ have known it was there. Even though that is fucking _impossible_."

The blond burst out laughing, the sound loud and somehow dark with a bitter edge. "Isn't _that_ a lie? First _Ushio_ winds up on your doorstep in the middle of the night—the day _after_ Tomoya was found—and now some guy fucking sicced his dog on you and nearly attacked you in a _restaurant_. You're full of shit. You know what's going on. I _know_ you do. _All_ of them do."

Yugi fought off a tremor of fear and nearly emptied his stomach. There was a pulse of heat spreading through him and his lightheadedness was growing once more. He swallowed and his throat constricted, stomach twisting harshly. Something in the back of his mind was telling him to run for it, distressed and terrified. Another said to try to talk him in circles until he got fed up, cunning and perhaps amused. The most prominent said to argue and fight him down, proud and angry. The three of them burned at his mind continuously, demanding his attention and making his stomach toss.

The sensation of such a war and the consequences that would follow were almost enough to make his legs tremble. He drew in a deep breath, holding it within lungs that felt too tight, and narrowed his eyes faintly. A cold shiver crept upwards along his spine and a slow but intense pain followed where it touched the heat that had been in his veins formerly. His heart raced painfully as he looked at the other male.

" _All_ of them"? Did that mean that the three of them had all been together to talk about this? Oh, how useful their agreement seemed to be. Had they not all agreed never to speak of what had occurred? But with the way the blond had phrased it, it sounded suspiciously as if they might have just hung around doing that very thing. If they had, it would be no wonder that Jonouchi was down his throat about it like this. Insatiable curiosity aside, he would have been the first to insist on keeping the topic completely snuffed out. He would never have tried to make him admit to something like this otherwise.

Or…maybe he still would have. Jonouchi was always one to confront things that scared him when something such as his friends was involved. His first instinct had always been to protect his friends—be it physically or vocally—even when it was unnecessary. He tended to jump into things fists first and never truly consider it might not be needed. But how was he meant to protect them when he didn't understand?

Yugi nearly cringed at the idea. Jonouchi had been trying to protect them when he had led them all to make that deal. When he had been unable to figure it all out himself, he had chosen to question him. Whether he had meant to imply that they had all been discussing it or not was another thing entirely. Whether they truly had done so in the first place was yet another in a long line of new questions.

Shaking his head, Yugi finally chose the lesser of the evils each option seemed to carry.

"I don't know anything about what happened," he stated slowly and firmly, watching as the blond's jaw clenched in frustration, "but I _do_ know that it was _your_ idea that we wouldn't talk about it again."

Jonouchi let out a bark of a laugh that seemed to echo within the smaller teen's skull. "Oh, yeah, _okay_ , Yug"—he flinched at the use of the affectionate nickname cloaked in such bitterness—"but let's also remember that _I'm_ not the one that guy was after."

The blond was on his feet before Yugi could even think to say anything. He was already out the door when the small teen blinked and ran a finger over the smooth paper of his textbook.

* * *

"Yugi."

He glanced almost blindly, the action nearly mindless. He hadn't changed his position much within the two hours that Jonouchi had left. He had shut his textbook and put it away with the others after finishing his homework, but he was still seated there. He had recently gotten a cup of water and had played a game on his phone, but his position was constant. And his state of mind had yet to be graced with a change. His thoughts were still abundantly absent.

"Hi, Grandpa."

The elderly Motou tilted his head the smallest fraction of a degree. His grandson wasn't smiling but he wasn't frowning either. There was something in his eyes, however, almost like a silent plea, that made him hesitate. Yugi was holding his glass in both hands, fingers lightly stroking over the sides as if he was puzzled and struggling to find a solution. His eyes were focused and yet far away all at once, and, for a single moment, the elderly man thought he could see nothing but himself in those wide eyes. There was no iris or pupil or whites, only his reflection cast in strange colors over an opaque, glassy surface.

He drew in a breath, nearly cursing himself, but was unable to look away. It was amazing and yet somehow utterly horrifying to see such a thing. He was so accustomed to being able to see _Yugi—_ his emotions, his usual lightheartedness—within his gaze that now he was unsure of himself. He did not know if he truly liked or appreciated what he saw of himself, merely on his face or in his eyes, in that moment. There almost seemed to be something wickedly cunning and devastatingly ebullient within eyes aged with wisdom. His heart felt almost weak as it pounded harshly within his chest and he felt a slight impulse to apologize.

But the moment passed away as if it had never properly existed when Yugi finally blinked. His reflection was immediately forgotten, replaced by twin pools of gleaming obsidian and large rings of a dark, vibrant violent flecked and framed with sapphire blue, all surrounded by blank whiteness. His long lashes cast tall shadows across his gaze but it did nothing to hide the momentary confusion and growing concern blooming there.

"Grandpa?"

 _Dear gods, I'm sorry, Yugi,_ he thought mindlessly, forcing himself not to speak the words by swallowing harshly. Forcing himself to blink as well, he drew in an easy breath to help calm his nerves, and then smiled at him. "I was just caught in my head for a second there," he said calmly, watching him. His grandson was staring at him almost blankly, as if testing the likeliness of the statement. For a moment they simply looked at each other and then the teenager turned away towards his cup.

There was something in his voice that made Yugi doubt him. It was something that made his stomach twist faintly, an odd almost alarming note, but when he attempted a focus on it, it seemed to drift away as if riding a gentle breeze.

"Oh."

It was hardly more than a sound, a small exhaled breath, but it was all he could think to offer.

He started to ask if he was okay, but the way that the teenager seemed to be watching him from the corner of his eye told him not to. He didn't want to force him to lie, knowing Yugi was not in the least as happy as he normally was. He wouldn't explain what was troubling him, however, and he didn't want him to feel the need to come up with anything just to make him feel better.

"You smell…like lemon," Yugi murmured, turning his head suddenly towards him. His eyes were wide, hope sweeping through his senses. He wanted something— _any_ thing—to distract him. And, what better way was there than testing his senses? Besides that, he wanted to know and _possibly_ document how this infection might have changed them. If he could maybe find a way to stash a notebook and make entries on experimentations such as this one, then perhaps he could find some way to deal with it all. Maybe he could find a pattern or something of that nature and plot around it.

He could skip out on trying to find out about werewolves by simply cataloguing such things on _himself_. And, when it came down to it, what did he care for other wolves? He had no reason to. He was not one of them. Their lives did not dictate his, nor did his even mix with theirs. Until something of that nature happened—and he hoped it never did—he had no reason to bother worrying about such a thing.

But he also knew that wolf from the murder would show itself eventually. He didn't fully understand why but he knew it would. It was a tacit fact, and one Yugi truly found himself dreading.

"And maybe…" He trailed off, drawing in another breath. The sourness met him first, curling in his nose and tracing his thoughts for a moment. Slowly, he attempted to pull away, and sort through to the second smell he knew lingered on his grandpa's skin and clothing. It was something simple and not especially strong and he knew it well enough but now it was easily avoiding him. His mind struggled to grasp it as he drew in yet another, deeper breath which made his nose tingle faintly with interest. "Flowers…?"

He chuckled as he looked at the small boy's confused and somewhat startled expression. His wide blue-specked eyes were staring at him in pure puzzlement. "Which flower?" he asked lightly, watching as he drew in another deep breath and then furrowed his brows in concentration. The thoughts were working rapidly behind his eyes and he was still breathing in deeply every other minute that passed. Finally, hesitantly, the teen shook his head and watched his face as if for some kind of clue.

"I don't recognize it," he relented reluctantly. He tilted his head, struggling to focus and grasp at the scent and name it easily. His mind was abuzz with the need to do such a thing, his curiosity stringing him along like a dog on a leash. He frowned at his grandpa, mystified by the almost nonexistent airy smell which possessed a gentle sweetness almost bordered upon banana. But he knew that wasn't it even with such a recognition.

"You will when you find it."

Yugi blinked at him, for a moment wondering if perhaps maybe he should say no. but he needed something to make his head stop when it continued circling around his conversation with Jonouchi. He had no reason to truly hesitate so much considering the benefits—a distraction and maybe even a way to catalogue the changes to his senses that were already apparent. It was, for all intents and purposes, the perfect way to divert those immense worries that plagued him.

He chewed his cheek and then loosened his grip on his cup with narrowed eyes. "I guess so," he replied almost without thought as he got up and stretched his arms out. The movement made the collar of his shirt scrape against his neck and Yugi nearly flinched. His choker was still wrapped firmly around his throat but he felt sick at even the thought of drawing attention to it. He had yet to bother looking at it, but if it was anything like his arm and shoulder then he wanted nothing to do with it.

He pushed away the vivid images that burst forth in his mind, of pus painted red and pink when it oozed from the deep gouges in his skin. He turned his mind's eyes away from where he already knew them to be hidden within his blood, awaiting the chance to spring forward. He smothered them and instead looked at his grandpa with a curious, "Was it lemon juice or extract?"

"Juice."

 _Interesting_.

He watched his grandson as he drew in another breath and considered his next move. He could see the calculations which made the deep blue of his eyes swirl and dance as if to music. His mouth quirked at the corner as he considered, and then he was gone to retrace the steps he had made downstairs. There was no doubt that Yugi had caught the undercurrent of metal and medicine from when he had given one of the puppies his pills.

He listened for the younger male but either his ears had grown too old to hear or Yugi was using his stealth. The boy had always been able to wander around silently, whether he had a destination in mind or not. He had scared people on more than one occasion without meaning to and he knew it was used in order for him to listen in on things. He knew Yugi worried more about things that he needn't than he ever let anyone see. He knew he often caught snippets of their conversations about him, his attention caught by the use of his name or the emotional state they seemed to be in.

He was always far too curious or concerned about them when such conversations occurred. And he never seemed to miss out on one that involved him. Despite himself, the elderly Motou had always found himself thinking and picturing his grandson as something of a silent, wandering ghost.

The thought had always made him frown where as it should have been light and playful because, when he looked at him, sometimes that simple phrase seemed far too real for him. His grandson sometimes simply seemed to be a wind, stirring and passing through without much of a pause, there for a moment but gone the next. He was never content with staying still and he moved so constantly that how he managed to remain in place long enough to hear them was almost a mystery to his grandfather.

He looked at the cup Yugi had been holding moments ago and his mouth tugged downwards in a small grimace. The glass was coated in perspiration and the steam that fogged it seemed far heavier than it should have been. Maybe he had a fever, even though it was normally next to impossible for him to get sick. Yugi was always healthy, failing to even catch a cold while he was growing up. Teachers and doctors had always commented on it simply because of how unusual it was. Besides his horrifying night terrors and insomnia, he was as healthy as they came which was something his daughter questioned constantly.

How was it possible that her son was so haunted by hallucinations and restlessness and terrors if there was nothing wrong with him? Why hadn't he outgrown them if it was nothing that required medical attention?

He was still staring at the cup when his grandson entered the room. Yugi made no sound to indicate his presence. He did nothing to draw his attention. But his presence was almost somehow suffocating and tangible in the way it seemed to cloak the small kitchen. He knew his grandson well enough to realize that he was only so quiet in order to keep from scaring him but now it felt almost as if he were observing him like a predator watched its prey.

He drew in a slightly strained breath and hoped to the gods that Yugi failed to notice the tension. He turned to him with a small grin but, to his surprise, the teen was watching the glass as well. Every bit of his attention was centered upon the cup on the table. His body was angled in its direction, eyes dark and somehow distinctly sharpened, and he could see that each sense was angled in upon it.

"What was so interesting about my cup of water?" Yugi attempted to sound casual but he thought he might have heard the tension there. Whether his grandpa caught it or not was another question altogether.

He blinked, surprise obvious in his older features, and the teen watched him for a long moment. Had he seen them too or was it only the condensation where his palms had touched it that caught his attention? Was it even possible for someone to see it without being infected like he was?

"Hmm? Nothing, my boy." He paused but his grandson seemed to have turned his attention away again. "So you found it then?"

"Lemon juice on the door handle and a red rose behind the desk," he murmured almost monotonously, pulling the little bud and its nearly nonexistent stem from his jacket pocket. He blinked as the scent crossed his senses again. It was one of the lightest smells he had ever come across, with only the faintest trace of something close to banana. He looked it over in his palm and his stomach twisted and turned harshly as the color seemed to make his head pulse and ache violently. The petals were so dark and vibrant and all he could think about was his blood as it had trailed down his arm. He held it out to his grandpa who plucked it from his hand with care.

Yugi turned away from it as if it might burn to keep looking. His mind was already alight with colorful and disturbing red images, of pale skin marred with large gashes. Pus, a creamy white with touches of yellow, bubbled up and trailed with it. A decaying smell seared in his mind like fire and he turned away immediately from it all.

"You know that roses change their smells every hour depending on the weather?"

He turned his head curiously. "Really?"

"Yep. So one day you might smell something like honey or banana and then nothing later on. That's why so many people say they smell so amazing."

Yugi tilted his head in surprise at the thought and he wondered what it was that allowed them to do so.

* * *

Resistance had to be the most futile thing in such a moment. He was seated in class, tired and somehow disgustingly restless all at once. He had been unable to remain still and his skin had grown itchy and tight, burning violently and making him wonder in amazement at how it was even possible he was not drenched in sweat. Yugi swallowed reflexively but kept his eyes on the front with a fractured determination. He shifted to lean forward, eyes narrowed into slits, and drew in a deep breath to squash his frustration.

Jonouchi had yet to look away aside from copying notes. He wanted him to tell him all about what had happened, unable to leave it alone. Yugi ground his teeth together in annoyance and pain flashed through his spine. He had to be hopeful, however, that the blond would let it go.

Was he _too_ hopeful? Yugi knew without much thought that it was his blind, naïve belief in their friendship that made him this way. He did not want to lose the blond but he also wasn't willing to be put in an asylum with padded walls and monitored meal times. His self-preservation and paranoia had raised themselves with harsh realities to follow, snapping at him to protect himself at all costs whether that cost him his friends or not. He had found himself truly uncaring towards the subject when he had been laying in the darkness of his room late that night. He would miss them, of course, but he was not willing to be locked way as a lunatic as he knew he would be teased and eventually led to in absolution when he continued to take it seriously and they didn't.

He curled his lip back uncomfortably, swallowing hard at the animalistic reaction. He nearly laughed out loud, smirking at himself mentally. Had he not growled at another werewolf only the day before last? Where had his immense shock been then? He couldn't even remember if he had been anymore. It seemed so inconsequential and small in the weight of it all. Whether he had been surprised or not, it did nothing to stop his friends from turning on him. It did not keep him from growing more animalistic or make him second guess this new more brutal and primal urge to protect himself at all costs to his social life.

He finally turned to him and his eyes flashed as they locked with Jonouchi's. The air seemed to grow charged, thickened with an immense tension that made the other boy shift awkwardly in his seat. Yugi didn't blink as they looked at each other, too infuriated to consider just how strange his reaction must have seemed.

" _What_?" he snapped softly, making sure that his voice was too low to gather attention.

His best friend—or was it _former_?—blinked at the vicious tone but then glared in pure frustration. Someone awkwardly moved away from them, their desk making a subtle scuffling noise rather than a screech against the linoleum. Yugi had the impulse to turn and snap at them as well, feeling irrevocably closed in and surrounded.

A low, distant rumbling made his stomach twist and gurgle and the hairs on the back of his neck rose into a bristle of alarm. He was about to begin growling, he realized belatedly as his mouth seemed to grow dry and pasty. The noise died away as if the acknowledgment and lack of moisture in his mouth had somehow quelled it.

He turned away quickly, the movement nothing short of abrupt, and the heat continued to burn beneath his skin. He swallowed thickly, a sense of shameful guilt passing over him as he considered what he had been about to do only moments before. That hardly seemed fitting for someone he considered a friend. Dogs growled at their owners sometimes but their loyalty normally kept them from biting. And Yugi honestly wanted nothing more than to make Jonouchi stop looking at him.

Dogs growled when they were uncomfortable and nervous. Maybe wolves did that too. They had to get that instinct from somewhere, right?

Yugi swallowed again and the skin along his spine seemed to twitch violently. A painful tic of movement made the muscles in his neck flare. He blinked but his vision felt fuzzy and strange almost blurry. With all the heat in his body making his flesh prickle and jerk, it was no wonder Jonouchi's constant glances were beginning to make him feel so anxious.

His shame seemed to wash away with such a justification. He didn't think he might want to growl again, but if he did, he thought he might at least have a good idea of why he would. It was somehow oddly comforting to know what might cause it and that he would most likely be able to smother it again.

There was almost something akin pride in such knowledge and he had the impulse to raise his chin. He also wanted to smirk at his friend when he refused to look away again. There was a primal need to show his own strength in a moment of being looked upon in such a way but he was almost certain that was simply his ego when it came down to it. Who didn't get offended when someone refused to believe them and continued pushing at a sensitive issue?

"All you have to do is tell me what the hell is going on. It's simple enough."

Yugi slowly turned his head and leveled him with a frosty glare. "No, all I need to do is tell you to _knock it off_ ," he bit out furiously. _And newsflash, but it's_ not _that simple_. "I don't have anything to tell you anyways! Now stop annoying me already!"

"Mister Motou, Mister Jonouchi," the teacher cut in sharply. Yugi's head snapped around, eyes wide as his face drained of color and he wondered in horror if he had gotten loud. The blond next to him was still watching him with narrowed eyes, but he turned away quickly so that his name went unrepeated. Satisfied that they were both watching him, their teacher glanced between them and his voice softened the smallest degree. "Is there anything you two had questions on?"

"No, sir," they both said in unison, tones full of politeness and respect.

"Then please refrain from speaking in my class."

"Yes, sir."

"Thank you."

Yugi lowered his eyes only when the professor had turned away. His vision focused in on his pencil for a moment and he listened to the lead rattle when he lightly shook it in his fingers. His stomach still felt twisted and knotted together and his mouth was dry once more. Jonouchi was no longer even so much as glancing at him, and they both knew it was because he didn't want to get called out again.

Their biology teacher had a single strike policy. When they were called out the first time, it was the only warning they got. He was polite enough that even when he put his foot down the second time, no one wanted to argue. Because this was one of the earlier classes and set before lunch, he would have them eat and help grade papers or clean. Later classes had a full hour of detention with him in which they would be used as guinea pigs to work on new tests and quizzes.

And, while it was not the worst punishments ever given at the school, no one wanted that kind of thing on top of their usual school day. With the varying levels of the building it was hard for someone to race from the top floor to the bottom or even the middle. There were too many students moving about and way too many teachers to call someone out for running. Domino High was different from neighboring school systems for that very reason. In most Japanese schools the students remained seated in a single class all day, safe for lunch, while the teachers moved about. At Domino High the opposite happened. The teachers stayed in their rooms and the students moved.

Yugi wasn't truly sure as to why the school ran in such a way. Someone had told him once that the principal was actually American and so they had decided to run the school like this instead. They had said that he hated the educational system in America, thinking it inferior, and so had wanted to come to a place where the value of student's education would never be questioned. Then, for whatever reason, he had changed the procedure of things just enough that Domino High students were the ones to wander the halls rather than their teachers.

Yugi did not honestly care enough to consider it too much on a regular day. The fact was that he was immensely grateful that this change had been made to their system. He thought he might lose his mind had he been stuck in the same room all day with hourly changes to his teachers. He was too energetic and his skin had always itched violently whenever he was in one place for too long. In middle school he had often dug his nail into his thighs until he was afraid he had split skin when the stings became unbearable. Being stuck in one place as was required had nearly made him insane.

He had to struggle with himself in order to keep from squirming in his seat. Swallowing hard against such an urge, the small teen carefully began to pick at his notes. There wasn't much that he hadn't already known but his teacher was always one to want to know his students were paying attention through taking notes. He thought mostly that it was a relatively smart idea to make sure they were doing so. As with every other educational system, some students knew more about a subject than others did.

Yugi himself was relatively well-rounded in his classes but biology and history had always been his strong points where the others remained average in their steadiness. Jonouchi floundered at math but he flourished in music and physical education, and even had history as a close-running third. Anzu excelled in math and music, which he knew must have helped extensively with her drive to become a dancer. Honda was the one all of them went to when it came to health or contemporary society.

He was watching their teacher from the corner of his eye as he continued with his lecture and pointing out their newest vocabulary. He was looking at each of them equally, with approval towards each pen that moved. But his eyes would grow curious and almost childishly so as they fell upon the two of them. Yugi knew he must have seen how angry they both were and was wondering at the reason.

He would have in his place too. Yugi and Jonouchi were both two of his best students and they never even really argued, let alone had an actual spat, especially when it came to his class. They had, more than once, gotten a little loud while they were laughing at one another, but beyond that they were usually well-behaved. Seeing them in such a new way must have made him beyond curious.

He almost wanted to grin at him, feeling somehow unnatural within his own tightened, burning skin. Maybe if his teacher didn't flinch or look away immediately, he might still be the same Yugi he had been before he had had his run in with Ushio. The thought was somehow disgusting and logical to him all at once and his stomach twisted anxiously with such a realization. Was it possible he had truly changed so much? He felt as if it was, but he also knew he could have easily been blowing it out of proportion due to his mounting fear and paranoia.

He wondered, somehow almost excited, what might happen if they all came to know what it was that had happened. He would be put in an insane asylum and later maybe they would pull him out when he changed into a wolf and run tests on him. Maybe he would be all over the news or he might go berserk and kill all of those which had thought to torture him or make part of a freak show. Perhaps he would die during the poking and prodding or maybe simply because of his inability to escape his padded cell.

The small teen lowered his eyes again to pretend to scribble some notes. What if, when he took that chance to smile at him, he simply returned the gesture? That would mean that he didn't seem so estranged to others as he did to himself, right?

Yugi narrowed his eyes, frustrated with himself. His skin was flashing and a small, almost nonexistent throb was beginning to form in his right temple. All sense of self-discovery had been swept away in a matter of mere moments. A fear had begun to claw itself upwards through his system, making his throat tighten drastically. Something seemed to have swapped within his mind, letting loose a reality that he was unable to fully face.

His eyes, wide and terrified, found themselves on Jonouchi's face as the blond took some more not. How could the blond honestly _ever_ expect him to explain such a phenomena when he himself was at a loss in regards as to even admit such a situation existed? Wondering if it was somehow possible that others would see a change in him that he himself couldn't have brought the reality of such a situation barreling before his mind's eye. Where he had formerly been upset, now he only knew of a blind, torrential panic.

How was he truly meant to survive like this? He already had such difficulty even considering cutting himself off from everyone else so completely. He already felt as if he was losing his mind and something foreign was within his blood and moving within his veins. His paranoia had spiked so drastically and his nightmares had just grown that much worse.

The hairs on the back of his neck were standing on end once more and the skin burned more furiously at the sensation. Shame was washing through him now, violent and tearing through him mindlessly, and his head swam. Ushio or Tomoya—one of them had bitten him. One of them had infected him. Both of them were dead now, and so had been rendered useless to him. He wanted to sob aloud at such a thought. Hadn't Tomoya been a great friend to him while he was still alive? Hadn't he tried to _protect_ him? He had probably bitten him—if it hadn't been Ushio—in order to _save_ him.

Yugi felt something quake within his chest. The dull throb in his head was growing tenfold. His skin was far too hot. His nerve endings were buzzing with a violent energy. His throat felt thick, threatening to close.

He was quickly becoming aware of his breathing falling open a rapid incline towards hyperventilation. Small, bubbling whimpers begged to pass through his lips. When the blond turned his head to look at him, the small teen felt his eyes burn. His right shoulder was burning and his hand was quaking.

" _Yug_?" Jonouchi hissed, eyes wide as he tried to keep his voice level. The last thing either of them needed was to get called out again. Especially because he knew if everyone else in the room was paying attention to him, the smaller teen would only end up even more distressed. Cursing under his breath when Yugi failed to react, he reached over to at least try to put his hand beneath his desk. The trembling limb in broad view was hardly going to be invisible to anyone who so much as glanced in their direction.

The moment he touched him, however, the quivering stopped. His pencil hit the desk loudly. His eyes seemed to suddenly focus on him again. Confusion swept over his features for a single moment. He blinked and then surprise registered on his face. A low, drawn out exhale of breath made a being twitch. Abruptly, with an expression akin shame and frustration, the small teen's head snapped towards the front once more. He didn't look at him again until class was finally over.

"What the hell was _that_?"

Yugi cringed and swallowed hard as the ball continued to ring. "I…I…" He shook his head slowly, feeling helpless as to how to lie or give him a half-truth. What was there for him to truly say? He was relatively sure he had just had a panic attack and he wasn't one hundred percent sure but he thought that normally didn't happen seemingly randomly. And without an explanation he was pretty sure it would seem that way exactly.

"Dude, Yugi—"

He shook his head again, flustered as he mumbled, "I don't know."

The blond caught him by the shoulder, grip tight enough that Yugi felt fear and then anger swell through him. His movement was somewhat stunted by the firm grip but he still managed to turn just enough to face him. His skin was pulled too tight again and his spine ached violently. His blood was burning, his head still spinning, and his shoulder ached as if he had stabbed him there rather than simply laid his hand there.

There were equal degrees of frustration and concern as he stared the smaller boy down. Yugi wanted to whimper at the realization that crossed his mind. He had registered his drenched jaw and tensed shoulders as anger before he had seen the worry in his eyes. Usually the opposite had always held true. On any given day he would have looked for clues through eye contact rather than body language.

Wasn't body language how dogs and cats and other animals read into a situation?

He nearly puked at the knowledge. Was he… _becoming_ an animal _that_ quickly?

"Seriously, Yugi? You just had a _panic attack_ in the _middle of class_ and you aren't going to tell me _why_?" he asked incredulously, shaking his head sharply and glaring for a moment. He was far more worried and confused than he was angry now, however, and Yugi could already see his expression softening. "Look, just…You freaked me out, okay?"

"I…I'm sorry, Jonouchi," he said weakly, barely resisting the urge to duck his head in shame. "I…I'm just… _really_ stressed out right now."

"But you're still not going to tell me, are you?"

Yugi blinked at him, fearful and yet curious all the same. What would he do if he did tell him? And what did he think was happening? He had to have come up with his own explanation for his behavior, right? He must have had some kind of explanation for it all. He probably thought it all had to do with drugs, that he was hooked on something that was making him act strange. The thought was almost enough to make him smile but it made his stomach crawl all at once.

"I can't…"

He looked about ready to argue with him, push until something snapped. Yugi thought it would be him to crack beneath the pressure. He was unsure of what might leave his mouth, whether it might be the truth or just him snarling for him to leave it alone as he had been doing formerly. Or maybe he would say something entirely different that might make him worry even more than he already was. He wondered momentarily, if that was even possible.

"All right…fine," the blond finally relented, annoyed. He looked him over for a long moment, watching as he blinked owlishly in obvious relief. "But…if you're in trouble, then you can talk to me, all right? We'll figure _something_ out."

 _I wish we could_ , he thought with a small frown. "Yeah…Thank you, Jonouchi."

* * *

The skin was raised in ugly pink lines, marred with brown and red scabs so dark they bordered on black. Tiny bristles of white hair, almost so small they were unnoticeable at first glance, lay within each jagged mark. The healing skin beneath the scabs was a disgusting off-yellow that looked extremely like pus built up beneath it. Each strand of hair poking upwards beneath the strips of dried blood had a smooth and fluffy exterior when he had touched it. The entire set of white strands had the physical consistency of a cotton ball and Yugi almost laughed at himself hysterically at such a thought.

He looked the wound over once more, swallowing against the bubbling laughter building up in the pit of his stomach. Blood, muscle and sinewy flesh had all somehow begun to come back together in an effort to heal itself. He thought distantly that soon enough these impressive marks would be mere scars of raised flesh. The gruesome holes in the shape of claws lining his arm would begin to disappear when the flesh beneath clumped together enough to support such a need within his body.

The decayed smell had left his senses for the most part, but it lingered beneath something almost sweet and yet bitter at the same time. Blinking and narrowing his eyes, he tried to pull at these three intertwined scents, to separate and then weave them back together again. Mind at a blank, the teen remained breathing in deeply and holding it, trying desperately to identify it. Blinking in a daze, his stomach twisted and coiled violently as it slowly came to him in fragments that made his head spin.

Beneath the thin layer of scabbed tissue, the sweetened smell was that of his flesh where it had begun to heal and was pushing the pus upwards to his scabs. The decay smell was the dead and rotten cells that must have been pushed away and riding somewhere within the creamy expel. The lumps he had seen in his blood which he had mistaken for hardened pus clumped together so disgustingly must have truly been deceased muscle. It seemed to make so much more sense than his original assumption. What else would have happened with the muscle that could not be regenerated or healed? It had to be dispelled somehow, did it not?

The realization made him want to puke but also stroked at his curiosity. For a split second he wanted nothing more than to test his strange theory. He wanted to pick each scab off and drain the fluid so that he could attempt to collect a sample of it. Then he would take it to his school and use the biology lab equipment after school to determine the merit of this idea. Maybe he would even discover what it was that made such a wound stink so horrifically without the rapid decay necessary to sustain it.

He blinked slowly at the thought and his stomach twisted violently. The hybrid's wounds had smelled so tremendously and yet its wound had been healed. He swallowed thickly. Had the hybrid been a human stuck in its wolf form? Was that even what they were called? "Forms"? Or was it shapes? Skins? _Pelts_?

Yugi tossed the thought aside. He was sure it was probably a matter of preference rather than anything else. And it was not as if it actually mattered.

What he wanted to know right then was why exactly that werewolf had been a _hybrid_. And why its DNA had been so pure as to test so cleanly and without a hitch as it had. Surely there had to have been various mutations within the blood that would make it appear different compared to other samples when beneath a microscope, right? He was sure his own blood must have been doing the same, mutating and taking on different qualities to allow the Change.

How could such a thing have gone undetected? The DNA test had been to point out its breed, yes, but shouldn't it have at least come back inconclusive? Perhaps it had and so his mom had taken it upon herself to list him as a wolf-dog hybrid rather than anything else. Most likely wolf would have been the only traceable hint of genetic coding simply because of what he assumed it to actually be.

If it had actually been a werewolf that also explained its grand escape. That was, of course, assuming that he was correct and had not hallucinated putting it back inside of its cage. If he had truly done so, all it would have taken would have been for the canine to change into a human again. Then they could easily undo the lock and slip out as needed. But was it possible to change that quickly and avoid drawing attention? He thought the animals might have gone nuts if they had witnessed such a thing, or even that the Change itself would have been loud enough to hear.

But then, what was that dusty gray substance that had been left on the door of its cage? Or the fact that it had all left a perfect outline of the canine when he had examined it fully? If it was a werewolf and had changed to escape like he was theorizing, then what about that? It had no place in such a scenario and it had been the only hint of an actual article of evidence to be found at all.

Yugi shook his head to push the thought away. He would think more about that another time. Between the hybrid and his own disease, he was unsure of how to balance it all in his head. There were so many unknown variables and each of them made him want to be sick. He would have to push the wolf-dog aside for the moment and focus on what it was that that his infection truly meant for him. It was going to alter his life significantly—he knew that much—but what happened beyond that? He had no true idea about how he was meant to prepare for it all. Speculation was nice but when it came to finding results, it was nothing short of useless.

He narrowed his eyes at such a thought. When it came down to it, at this moment, what wasn't useless?

He was used to finding quick, if not _immediate_ , results. He liked experimentations when he was looking for answers about anything related to biology or genetics. It wasn't hard for him to stay in one place long enough to look at the cellular samples he wanted. It was and always had been one of the few times he was able to sit still and not feel such restlessness in his bones. Cells and things of the like had always interested him, though he was often unsure as to why. The subjects themselves weren't boring but somehow they still did not seem to retain his attention for long outside of class. He was always interested and knew how to apply the practice outside of school but such situations were few and far between and it always seemed to go to waste.

Maybe, if he ever ran into the hybrid again, he would compare their DNA and see if he was far from changing. The thought was almost enough to make him laugh out loud. By the time that wolf-dog—werewolf or not—crossed his path he would be donning a full pelt and a muzzle.

Inhaling slowly, Yugi allowed his head to turn towards his pillow. His eyelids felt heavy and his limbs weighted as a slow and painful dread pushed away any hint of amusement in him. His stomach churned and his mouth felt as if it was growing dry yet again. A small but intense tremor swept through him and his skin pulled tight and itchy once more. His spine tingled and the heat returned to his body rapidly once more.

Tired and yet desperate for a way to alleviate the restlessness inside him, the small teen found himself falling backwards against his mattress. His mind was moving sluggishly, almost drawing to a complete halt, and the blackness behind his eyelids embraced him gently as it lolled him into a dreamless state.

He woke to a noise that made his body light with sudden awareness and nerves. His stomach twisted and burned, gargling with the new tension in his system. His eyes shot around his room, scanning for any hint of the noise's source, and his stomach twisted once more. He could not catch much noise at the moment but he knew something had woken him so uneasily. His eyes narrowed into slits and he swallowed hard as he glanced around once more.

The gentle hum of the refrigerator was all he could hear, an inconsequential constant that somehow soothed his frayed senses. Perhaps someone had called his name or one of the animals was moving around downstairs. Maybe his mom or grandpa or one of the technicians was moving them around to let them go outside. Or maybe he had mistaken a movement on his own behalf for a noise…if that was even possible.

He sat up more fully, drawing his shoulders forward to put his arms in his lap. He jumped and hissed, whimpering when he felt the immense pain that came with such a movement. He turned his head towards his shoulder and swallowed thickly. The hairs were slicked and pressed against his skin almost painfully. Small rivulets of white and red were seeping from a small, almost invisible tear in one of the scabs.

The air made the small opening sting violently and Yugi swallowed thickly as he considered picking at the other three. He had planned to drain them anyways, and, now that he considered it, he thought that might have been why it had popped in the first place. He hadn't cleaned them in a couple of days and he had never considered draining them regularly. The buildup had probably grown so immense that it had forced a rupture to his healing skin. That was, after all, why they had drainage tubes for the animals. They didn't want the liquid to build up on top of the wound and halt its recovery.

The only difference now was that—if he was right—the wound was mending itself without outside help. It was pushing the disgusting, unneeded excess to the surface. The constant healing was forcing it to the surface where the scab was so thin it had broken easily. His body was forcing it all out of him without assistance. It was exactly as he would have imagined such an animal so geared towards survival to make it from the worst of battles.

Healing so constantly had to have been balanced out in a way that was both beneficial in the defense and the offense as well as something that would not stunt their efforts if they had to flee. It wasn't as instantaneous as he would have assumed but it was definitely fast. He thought that perhaps if he was fighting and the adrenaline was crashing through him it might have been faster. Blood pumping faster would mean that it spread to the wounds more quickly and if that was the case then the platelets would cause it to clot. When it clotted, the wound would be easier for the body to heal. It was like stitches closing skin and cut muscle. He thought that was probably the best—if not the only—analogy he could come up with.

He licked his lips, bracing himself, and then reached over to push downwards on the scab. He hissed softly, a reflex towards what he was watching, and swallowed harshly. There was no pain as he continued pushing on the thin layer of dried blood but there was plenty of disgust welling up in his stomach. If he wasn't so sure that draining it would help he would have stopped immediately. Small pockets of air were escaping the wound in the form of clear bubbles outlined in white with touches of deep red that made his stomach clench violently once more. He swallowed harshly once more, frowning as he watched the wound with narrowed eyes. The discharge was mostly that disgusting pale milky color, off setting and enough to make him want to puke.

The smell came with it in such intensity that his head swam with each breath he took. For thirty minutes he drew in long, heavy breaths and held them until he could no longer. His head swam and his eyes burned every passing moment but the small teen refused to stop. All four of them were drained and soiled gauze replaced anew when he finally got to his feet again. Staying still for so long and being unable to look away had done nothing for his insides. And the smell in his room was suffocating as he wiped his arm down with a towel to get rid of any residual pus on his skin before bandaging it once more.

He paused only to listen for his mom or grandpa and then moved into the living room to snatch his sneakers and slip them on. There was no one in the house but him and the animals in their crates. They weren't doing much but sleeping in the late afternoon. His grandpa was most likely off to the library or at the café for something to drink. His mom was obviously still at the main clinic seeing as she was always in one place or the other. She was far too devoted to her work as a vet to have much of a social life anymore, which Yugi understood had been a completely different story when she was younger. Throughout high school she had maintained dating and high marks in each and every class. He thought that if his dad was home on break from his business his mom would be juggling work and dates.

Yugi shook his head sharply in one violent jerk. He was actually thankful for his dad's absence at the moment. He didn't think he would have been able to handle hiding all of this from him as well. When his dad came home again he would stay there almost without break. He tended to overcompensate for his absence by staying around for as long as he could. He had, on more than one occasion, wound up almost physically dragged from the house to go on a date because he had wanted as much information as possible on what had transpired while he was gone. He enjoyed when he was alone with his dad like that for that very reason. Despite how uncomfortable he was with being the sole focus of someone's attention he liked how his dad wanted to know anything and everything. It was satisfying in an odd way and he wouldn't trade it for anything.

But he was infinitely grateful for his absence at the moment. He was thankful that Kaiba Corporation had him overseas so often for business meetings.

It made things a lot easier right then.

The cold air made his skin prickle. Whatever residual pulse of heat that remained lurking under his skin was wiped clean from his system. When he breathed out, the white puff of air made him shiver. It was almost enough to make him want to turn around and head back into his room but something else inside of him seemed delighted with the gelid weather. The wind that came knifed its way through his jacket so viciously that he shuddered. Yet there was a new, strange sense of excitement that crept through him. His blood was warmed with it and his bones felt alight. His skin no longer felt tight over his muscles, instead relaxed and comfortable as it usually was. The growing goose flesh along his arms made him shudder but his body was hot enough that he was no longer daunted by the chill of the coming winter.

Still, reflexively, the small teen hunched his shoulders to shield his neck as he hurried along the sidewalk. It had to be at least an hour before curfew came into effect and Yugi wanted to spend as much time outside as possible. He wanted to walk until he was either too exhausted to go any further or to at least burn away some of his energy just enough to be able to go home and not want to leave again. An hour should have been just enough time to achieve the latter goal, though he knew he would make it that way if he felt it wasn't.

The streets were mostly unoccupied safe the occasional car passing along. A couple of students were walking around, most likely returning home from the arcade or café further down the street. Yugi recognized most of them from his school seeing as it was the closest in the area. Most students lived within walking distance of their school in Japan. They either walked or rode their bikes depending on the distance. If they went to an upper secondary school they could live farther away and may need to use a car to get to and from the building. He knew of only two people who went to Domino High that needed to use a vehicle. The two of them lived about an hour away and walking would have put them in needing of waking up three hours earlier.

He was not surprised when none of them said anything to him in passing. He had never strived for popularity and while he knew most of the school by name or class or rumor it was different from actually having made friends with them.

What he had not expected, however, was the way they seemed to unconsciously move away from him, giving him an unnaturally large berth. They didn't so much as glance at him as they moved but he still knew it was him all the same. The thought that occurred to him was that of prey animals naturally detecting a predator. The idea was somehow terribly ironic to him. Humans were the most arrogant creatures on the planet, with no sense of true boundaries or any real idea of what the balance of predator and prey was. Yet, somehow, despite themselves, they unconsciously bowed to that same law and moved quickly away from the stronger species.

Yugi almost wanted to laugh at himself. The unconscious respect and distance they gave him made his stomach toss. If there was ever a testament of how much he had already changed then this was it. It was almost enough to make him want to puke or possibly scream in frustration and jumbled nerves, but that warmth in his veins was almost prickling beneath his skin. A rush of something akin adrenaline or possibly a primal stream of powerful energy made his limbs tingle violently. His head felt light with the pulse of energy and his frustration seemed to drift as if it had never existed. The thought passed through his mind that perhaps he could learn to enjoy such a thing, especially if it made him seem stronger at school.

That was most likely not the best way to look at the situation. Yet he thought there was no other way he could possibly find something good in it. Turning into a large canine was hardly his idea of fun. He had outgrown that silly notion just as everyone else had. He had grown past that stage that everyone seemed to go through.

This time a small, partially hysterical and angry laugh pushed its way out of his lips. He glanced at the old woman who looked at him curiously. His mouth pulled into the tiniest of smiles though he felt it would do nothing to make her stop her thoughts of just how crazy he might be. He turned away abruptly and moved faster until his brisk walk became nothing short of a jog. He was unsure of where the need to begin running came but something his head now spoke urgently of doing so. It told him to hurry in whatever direction, though he was not sure where he was going. He wanted to snicker at the thought; he didn't know a lot of things now.

He didn't know how to deal with it all. He didn't know how to plan his life out anymore. He didn't know how he was going to hide away on the full moon. He did not know what his mom and grandpa might do if they found out. He did not know if there was a way to control it. He did not know if he might end up like Kokurano or Ushio or Tomoya. He didn't know if the Burger World employee would kill him. He didn't know whether this new wolf was truly protecting him or not. He did not even know if he would be able to _survive_ the Change.

He laughed loudly and stumbled over his feet when he found himself unable to run any longer. His sides ached as he doubled over. His head was spinning, gleefully hysterical. His lungs expanded and caved in. His eyes clenched shut tightly. A wave of adrenaline swept through him again. The pain of laughing so hard became a brief passing graze of fingers through his insides. The small teen collapsed into a heap, laughing harder. His blood was pumping furiously. Every nerve in his body was alight with immense pleasure.

Oh, wouldn't that be the _rub_? Here he was worrying about _after_ the Change when he should have been worrying about the event itself. He was unsure but he thought the Change could easily kill him. If he was going to physically change into a _canine_ he thought it was safe to say he could die in the process. The physical duress he had witnessed in watching Ushio said enough, did it not? But the endorphins that had blocked his pain from laughing so hard must have made it easier, right? Or perhaps it made it worse. What if the endorphins blocked his nerves away completely and did nothing more than shield away the pain _while_ he was dying? A painless death or not, it still meant he would no longer exist. His hands were shaking s he pressed one into the cement. He could feel the cold ground but it brought no comfort and lacked the answers he needed. Dissatisfied, the small teen stretched his arm out further, pressing his weight into the limb, and dragged it across the uneven surface. Small bursts of pain bloomed but he still suspected it was dulled. It felt more like he was giving himself a rug burn than he was actually splitting the skin on his palm.

He laughed again, bitter and frustrated, as he pulled his hand away. There were small stones lodged in his skin and his palm was smeared with two small streaks of bright red that left his head spinning. No, he realized distractedly, it wasn't the blood that made him this way. It was the source of those two streaks. The skin between his pinky and ring finger and index and middle was no longer bleeding. In fact, as he looked at it, he realized they had closed. They were no longer existent and his skin looked as if he had never split it.

He stared at it blankly, reaching with his other hand to scrape away the small stones that remained pressed into his skin. Shallow wounds must have healed instantaneously while deeper ones required more time. Or perhaps it was just that he had not changed yet.

He grinned wryly at the thought, licking his lips. That was a beautiful idea. While his healing ability—rate?—was slow, he would change for the first time and still possibly wind up dead from the physical stress of it all. He laughed at the thought, shaking his head at himself, and rubbed his hand over his pants leg.

His shoulder was not hurting anymore and the realization made him laugh all over again. Maybe it was completely healed and without any fluid to drain again. The thought made him giggle harder, thrown by it all, and he shook his head at himself slowly. He didn't think the reality of the situation could get much worse when it came down to it. He had to wonder what the odds were of surviving the Change. There had to be a reason why the werewolves had gone unnoticed and there weren't tons of them running around in plain sight. Perhaps the Change managed the numbers and killed off the weaker ones like diseases normally did. Maybe if the infected body didn't grow ready quickly enough then they would be killed when the Change happened.

Yugi didn't want to die but he also didn't want to become a dog. And what dictated the Change? What brought it on? What possibly stunted it? How much time passed in between Changes? Would he be able to control himself like Tomoya had or would he wind up wanting to kill and wreak havoc? What if—assuming that Ushio and Tomoya were both born with the disease—bitten werewolves turned out to be like the Hollywood monsters? He didn't want to become one of those. He thought he would rather die than go through such a thing. He was a good person so why would the gods want to be so cruel?

He rolled his eyes, realizing he was being melodramatic, but it did nothing to calm him. If he survived the Change he would have to mold his entire life around it. There was no way that he could think of that would allow him to juggle both in harmony. When it came down to it he thought he would either wind up like Wishbone or Cujo. He would either be in control and able to make decisions and be peaceful or he would wind up hunting people down like the Beast of Gevaudan.

A new series of laughter left his mouth and he swallowed hard as he reached up to cover it with the back of his hand. He remembered doing a small project on the Beast last year in middle school. He had found tons of sites, documentaries and books. Most of them had made the point of saying it had been—and still was by some—considered a real werewolf. Others said rabid wolf but the killings had gone on for years and a rabid animal only survived about three days when infected.

Yugi hadn't studied up on it nearly enough to make his own theory about the beast. He had barely managed to finish the project on time because he had wound up far too enamored with a newly released video game to care. When he had raced through it and gathered his resources enough to put the report together, he had been more eager to get back to his game than he was researching more.

But now he wondered if maybe it was a good idea to go back and do so now. Maybe he would find some kind of answer somewhere as far as the "real life werewolf" came into play. Even if it was nothing for him to take seriously, perhaps just knowing that he would not turn into _that_ would be something of a comfort to him.

He rolled his eyes at himself. Optimism would either get him hurt or be warranted and he was unsure of which he truly wanted at this point.

He guessed when it came down to it all he was able to do was hope that things got easier. Whether that was by kicking the bucket—because who didn't honestly think death was easier than life?—or figuring out how to navigate this new situation, he had no idea.

Yugi didn't want to die but he was well aware of just how easily the wolf could kill him. He still had no idea what it was playing at—an allegiance? A kill? Make him its partner or something? And what did that mean exactly—a travel companion or a mate? He shuddered at the thought, eyes widening drastically. Oh gods, what if that was it? What if they had saved him in order to make him their mate?

His cheeks heated at such an idea and he bit his lip until his tongue was caked in blood. He swallowed hard and then pulled himself to his feet. So what if the wolf had saved him for that? He was relatively sure there were worse things in life…right? Swallowing hard once more, he could not think of any. He knew there were some but the idea was still so startling to him that he couldn't wrap his mind around it entirely. It was nothing if not concerning and distracting and he felt as if his head was buzzing with a new disjointed train of thought. By the gods, what was he going to do if that really was the case?

It would have to be some crazy female looking for some male, right? Maybe she was insane enough that she had seen him and wanted to make him her fertilizer, for lack of a better word. Surely having sex—or mating?—wasn't some kind of instant-love-and-attraction kind of thing, right? It wasn't like with ducklings when they hatched and imprinted—was that the word?—on the first thing they saw…right?

His stomach twisted violently and his mouth felt dry as he glanced around once and then turned away again. He needed to push that thought away. It was nothing he was meant to be focusing on—he would worry about it some other time, if he decided to truly bother with it again at all.

Something new was pulling for his attention, begging for his acknowledgment as his nose burned. He turned his head curiously, nose twitching rapidly as his eyes narrowed slightly. The smell that trapped his senses was familiar. His mind raced to identify it even as his eyes slowly fell upon his wounded shoulder once more. The scent was of sweet and decaying muscle and he thought immediately of the scabs tearing again beneath the gauze. The idea was frustrating considering how much time he had spent worrying over it already.

He wasn't going to examine it in the middle of the street but the least he could do was pull his jacket sleeve off and look it over. If the new bandaging was soiled then he had his answer. He hoped—if it was oozing again—that it wouldn't look as grotesque as it had before. Then again, with the bandages in place he doubted it would show up as more than yellow where it should have been white. Maybe there would be spots of dark red blood but he did not think that it would be too terrible.

He blinked slowly in puzzlement as his eyes burned with the smell. He had not been able to smell it before when he had opened it—or at least not this powerfully. It had the barest of scents before now. His eyes grew wide, spine stiffening as he swallowed hard. That wasn't him. It was either another of the werewolves or the hybrid or a rotting dead body in the alley nearest him.

His heart kicked up a notch and his stomach twisted violently. He swallowed thickly and his next breath came through as a strangled noise. He wasn't willing to find out what it really was. He wasn't about to face another werewolf or approach the hybrid if it was wounded again. And he had no intentions of going near another dead body. The police were still investigating the body of Kokurano and from what he knew were at a standstill. Maybe he would ask Anzu if her dad had found out anything. Or maybe he would ask someone else and claim that he had still at least _tried_ when they said they were unable to give him any information.

It wasn't as if he was unbelievably hot and would be able to flirt with them until he got his information. And he was sure no one would take him seriously at this point. No one would suspect that he had done something and even if he had lied and said he was involved he thought they might laugh in his face.

Yugi was not even sure he wanted the answers in the first place. What if it turned out to be so much worse than it had been that day? Was that even possible? He shuddered and shook his head after a moment, swallowing hard.

"The shadows are bleeding," that voice hissed in his skull again. It sounded somehow different now, clearer, and for a moment he thought he understood it as different timbres and pitches all merged together. They blended harmoniously now, the eeriness seemingly swept away, but he was unable to pull the voices apart. He could not fully count how many or which was female or male, what the majority gender was. He hardly cared but curiosity still picked at his senses. He still found himself wondering and unable to fully push it away. There just seemed to be so many voices, all relaying the same message.

But what did that even mean?

Yugi jumped and spun around with enough speed to knock the air from his lungs. The smell was getting stronger and he had no desire to see what it was expelling it. Without a backwards glance the small teen ran off.

* * *

"So…how long was that ace of spades in your sleeve, Grandpa?" he asked dryly, not bothering to look up from his own cards. The elderly Motou paused in front of him, fingers posed to pull two cards out and lay them on the table between them. For a moment he merely looked at the pieces of cardboard and then he gazed at his grandson with an unreadable expression. Yugi refused to look up, realizing belatedly how unusual and seemingly accusatory such a question was considering his tone of voice. Being unable to read his expression at that moment could easily have been a blessing as far as that was concerned. He didn't want the shock and hurt that he knew most probably claimed his facial features.

A small flicker of guilt in the pit of his stomach made him want to duck his head but he did not give in to such an impulse. Bowing his head would have given him the idea to apologize and jump up to leave and hide away in his room. It was a stupid thing to hold onto but he had been right. His grandpa had cheated. So what if his voice had come out like it had? He wanted to roll his eyes at himself. It wasn't worth even worrying over like this. His grandpa was most likely over it anyways.

But why was he staring at him like that? Why had he not said anything yet? He should have been denying it until Yugi huffed at him and let it slip by. But he wasn't doing that and the small teen had the idea that he wanted him to look at him.

He hesitated for a moment, unsure of whether it was stubbornness that kept his eyes downwards or that brief bite of guilt. Either way, very slowly, his eyes went from his king, queen, jack and ace to his grandpa's face. His stomach twisted and his mouth grew dry with displeasure.

"How did you know about that? You weren't even looking at me."

Yugi watched him through his lashes even as he shifted away from the table enough to rest against his chair uncomfortably. His hands rested on the table for a moment and his stomach coiled even more as his eyes narrowed faintly. His right hand sat atop the smooth surface of the cards and his skin felt suddenly tight and sweaty. The hairs on the back of his neck were rising and he had no idea why but something like suspicion was slowly washing over him. Eyeing him warily for a moment, his voice came out in a soft mumble.

"I saw you out of the corner of my eye when you decided to pull it up."

His expression grew tenfold and Yugi felt his spine stiffen violently once more.

"You saw me do it?"

"Yes, you tried to use your cards held in between your ring and pinky finger to hide it and then used your index and middle to slowly pull it out."

His expression was growing astonished and Yugi felt a scowl begin to overtake his features.

"That's not exactly how you taught me to play a game," he hissed, voice bordering on scathing. "What happened to never cheating because it was bad sportsmanship? Is that going to just become 'Don't cheat unless you know you won't get caught'?"

"No, you should never cheat, my boy." His expression had yet to change and already Yugi felt something burning angrily inside of him. "I was merely seeing if you would notice."

"When I asked if you wanted to play poker, I was _not_ inviting you to _test_ me."

He didn't even have the decency to look ashamed. Instead his face split further with the widened grin of meritorious delight, all of it aimed unabashedly at his grandson's original statement. Why his words provoked such a strong response was beyond him. Calling him out on cheating and practically sneering at his morals of never cheating didn't exactly warrant being praised. His frustration was not something to bring about such pride in those old, wise plum-colored eyes.

Yugi shook his head, almost ashamed that he did not feel his grandfather's emanating exuberance. He did not share that same seemingly shrewd pride. He was unable to connect with these powerful emotions and the thought was both saddening and enraging. Why was he so unable to understand these feelings? Shouldn't he have been able to share them with him like a normal person?

Maybe it was stress. But how could it be? He had not been stressed his entire life. Yet he had always been unable to understand his grandfather during moments such as these. He had always been shaken by his inability though he had never entertained the thought of admitting such a thing. He had always been told he was most like the elderly man before him and yet there had seemingly been a wall between them. It was a barrier that had seemed thin at first, almost a sliver or a thin plate of glass but it had fluctuated over the years and had grown so immense that Yugi had begun to picture it as a chasm instead. He had known somewhere in the back of his mind what it was, how rapid its growth was becoming, and there had never been a hint towards stopping it.

He was unable to recognize who it came from—his grandpa or himself or both. He could not determine when and where it had begun. He had no concept of how or why it had even come into existence. Despite his numerous attempts at bridging the gap it had merely cracked and crumbled beneath him, all of them falling flat and dissolving into a premature nothingness that made him cringe.

Being unable to understand and connect with him over whatever triumph he seemed to have brought only made him more irate. He bit back the urge to curl his lip, suddenly and irrevocably feeling disgust sweep through him. It had no direction yet he was unable to shake it and ferocity made his blood burn. He swallowed thickly, needing to stop the noise he knew was attempting to escape his lips. He smothered it with another harsh swallow.

"Why…?"

"I just wanted to see if you would notice," the elderly Motou stated, almost appearing as if he might shrug as he studied his grandson. Yugi's lips were pursed and pulled into a thin, tight line. His eyes were narrowed minutely. His shoulders were raised partially. A small, low rough breath escaped him each exhale and his throat seemed to have a small tic as he stared back at him. His eyes were sharp and shrewd as they burned into his, an unidentifiable source of knowledge gleaming in them. For a moment he almost seemed to look through him and at him all at once as he had before. He almost expected to see only himself in his eyes again but he realized then that his grandson's eyes were focused upon him entirely. He was upset and he was watching him darkly.

"Really? You thought that I wouldn't notice?"

He blinked, eyes widening as the pride and satisfaction left him rapidly, hollowing out his stomach so that it was cold as it twisted nervously.

"Don't lie to me, Grandpa," Yugi snapped, shaking his head sharply as if in disgust. "You knew exactly what you were doing. You wanted to get a rise out of me—like you _always_ do."

Maybe that was why the gap had existed between them. Maybe his constant manipulation of his senses and all the tests were why he could not deal with him often. Maybe it was what kept them so far apart and stopped Yugi's ability to understand him as he had always desired growing up. He didn't want to believe such a thing but he was unable to shake such an idea. He knew very well how easily he could do such a thing as far as his distaste and frustration went.

"If you had wanted to do that, you could have set it up. You didn't have to cheat so that you could see if I would say anything!"

"I wanted to try something new."

"No. You wanted to _piss me off_." He gripped the cards harder, fingernails leaving small crescents in the smooth material as he slowly drew them forward, never looking away. His grandfather was shaking his head, opening his mouth to object, but the small teen merely got up, flipping his cards over. "It's not like it would have made a difference anyways, Grandpa. I won."

It took him an hour to settle again in his room to read and lay on the bed lazily. His frustration and annoyance had driven him too far up the wall for him to consider sitting down or doing anything similar. He had wanted nothing more than to take a walk as he might have a week ago. Doing so would have been incredibly stupid in light of everything, however, and he was in no rush to tempt fate again.

He chewed his cheek uncomfortably, narrowing his eyes as he rested back against his pillow thoughtfully. How long had Ushio and Tomoya been fighting that night? He felt now, looking back on it, as if it had lasted hours or even a lifetime, but he knew it had to have been short and quick. It had to have been a minute at the least, ten at the most. He had no true concept of the time that had passed between the inflictions of pain.

How long had it taken for Ushio to finally kill and eventually mutilate Tomoya like that? Had it taken long or had it been quick? Without him posing as a distraction when Ushio turned his sights back on his prey, he imagined it would not have been too terribly long. How could it have been?

Yugi shook his head at himself. The guilt that passed through him with such a thought was acerbic. He swallowed and glanced almost blindly at the book in his hands. It was one of the many paranormal books he had gotten in order to have more of a conversation with Anzu. Of course, like with all the others, it was not anything more than a romance subgenre but it would be distracting enough. He did not want or see the point in allowing his thoughts to occupy his brain any longer. The time didn't matter. The devastation it had brought about afterwards did.

He read only about ten pages in and then awkwardly shifted the book away from him. Werewolf porn had not been what he had been expecting to find. His stomach twisted uncomfortably as he felt his cheeks heat with shock. Anzu was the one who had recommended it—because she loved it. Which meant that Anzu read erotica—paranormal, werewolf erotica. That was both hilarious and immensely horrifying.

It wasn't as if he had assumed she was innocent. Sometimes she made innuendos that could make even Jonouchi—whom she had named "the king of perverts"—blush bright red. Besides, he knew she had doujinshi in her room on her bookcase, hidden almost perfectly among her other manga. He—like every other guy he knew of—watched porn when the house was his. Jonouchi often handed him magazines and videos and some of them had made his entire face burn while others had made him crinkle his nose in avid disgust. Anzu obviously enjoyed seeing it in books, be it print or graphic novels. That was normal, nothing that made him even blink.

It was somehow utterly horrifying that it was a werewolf erotica she had been raving to him about for two weeks before all the mayhem had started. It was the werewolf part of the equation that got to him and he recognized it. He thought he might have been okay—or at least somehow felt mildly better if it were vampires or possibly even zombies. He laughed at the thought, somehow mortified. He would have felt better somehow if the main character had had sex with the two most popular forms of reanimated corpses. Yet, somehow the living and breathing werewolf was what disturbed him.

It wasn't as if it were the bestiality factor that he had once brought up while talking about them. Both of these characters were wolves, alphas that were forced into marriage to form a truce. It wasn't as if it was the plot line of how they had just met for the first time and had sex that threw him. It wasn't even the fact that he had apparently been inadequate in prepping her for the entire thing or the way she hurt throughout the entire act.

He wasn't able to fully isolate the thing that upset him so much. It was there, in the back of his mind, demanding his attention and yet hiding away all at once.

Yugi pushed the thought away after a moment and then put the book on the nightstand beside him. He didn't think he really needed to know. The book had, after all, done as he had been hoping it would. Being unable to connect with the character had made the words mere print and black and white enough that it made his eyes ache and itch. Those two sensations were always enough to make his lids feel weighted enough to edge him towards mental weariness.

He had already changed into clothes more suited for sleepwear sometime in the first hour of being in his room. His decision now was whether or not he wanted to bother with slipping under the covers. He had to wonder if the soft weight of them would be a comforting presence or if perhaps it might be smothering and unwanted as it had turned into various times in the last couple of years. Often he had wound up tangled in them and painting fearfully at the way they always cocooned him after a night of violent tossing and turning. But it was somehow reassuring too when he woke up peacefully on those more usual nights. It was almost like a security blanket, he supposed, and he wanted it even when he was given the opposite at times.

He didn't think he would have any night terrors again at the moment seeing as his initial dream about hunting and eating that serow seemed to have been the last…for a while at least. He drew the covers up, eyelids feeling too heavy to keep raised, and settled against the pillow comfortably. Yugi could already feel the darkness tugging at his senses, desperate to drag him deeper. He pressed his shoulder further into the mattress, pulling the covers up a small bit to rest more comfortably. The pillow was cool enough that his skin tingled with the touch of his new temperature.

He breathed in deeply twice, forcing his mind to become as clear as he saw potentially possible. Small, momentary drifts of incoherent ideas ticked through his skull. He thought momentarily of Anzu and then of the werewolf book, of Tomoya and Ushio and what this new wolf could possibly look like. Then the Beast of Gevaudan, so vicious and disgusting, a monster put in history books to be mocked or revered by the people of France.

He found his mind, making a small definitive clutch towards this thought, enough to pull him abruptly into awareness in the growing darkness. He didn't open his eyes but his mind was wide awake and demanded his attention be directed to this subject.

The wolf that had saved him— _if_ he could consider its slaying of Ushio in such a light—had crushed its victim's head in with its teeth. And, if Yugi remembered right—his mind was struggling but moving full force and digging up forgotten information as quickly as possible—the Beast of Gevaudan had done the same. It had possessed an unusual strategy for hunting in that way. Most predators went for the throat or bloodletting to bring its prey down. This creature had crushed its victims' heads violently.

His eyes snapped open in the darkness and Yugi felt his head pound with cold uncertainty. The Beast of Gevaudan… If it had been a werewolf then was it possible that this wolf that had saved him—or simply killed Ushio for whatever reason—was the same creature? Surely no other animal was going to have that same kill pattern, right?

What was the lifespan for a werewolf anyways? Was it full immortality or only semi? He couldn't remember and he didn't trust his memories from his old obsession with them either. He had gotten a lot of things wrong back then and made up aspects to them so that they seemed cooler to anyone listening. He had probably said that they were fully immortal or that they were invincible during the full moon, the common tropes that came with mythology.

The small teen shook his head unhappily at the thought. He had been more of an expert on his own idea of what they were—what he wanted if he ever became one—rather than whatever mythology surrounded them. But that was not a big deal when it came down to it. If this wolf was truly the Beast of Gevaudan then it had to be an immortal lifespan, right?

He didn't want to see everyone around him pass on and leave him behind.

Yugi swallowed back a whimper. How could _anyone_ want such a thing? It defied logic to want to leave friends and family behind and live in isolation so as not to be discovered and killed.

But then… Wolves were pack animals so did that mean werewolves were too? He blinked and then frowned as he tilted his head. Humans were pack animals as well. So, if the werewolf was able to turn between forms, didn't that mean the drive to be around others would be that much more intense? Didn't it make isolation something of a near impossibility? Or maybe the infection changed the genetic makeup so much that it reversed such a drive and made them loners instead.

Yugi blinked and groaned under his breath. Sleep was rapidly becoming something of a far off desire rather than a reality. Sleep almost seemed like a joke that Jonouchi had made up to see him get flustered and cranky.

That small thought brought on another concern.

What if something happened to make Jonouchi turn on him again? He had said he would help him if he needed it, that he was always there for him if he asked. But what if Yugi did something wrong or this new wolf decided to show itself? Would he be so willing to give him the support he had offered just that day or would he turn away from it?

The heat was creeping along his spine again. A pocket of blistering warmth made his skin ache for a single split second. His neck was growing cold and clammy, the hairs lying there seemingly incredibly weighted and heavy against his skin.

The shadows of the room were somehow comforting. The lack of streetlight, which had scared him before, was more something of a blessing. With this darkness his room seemed larger and somehow more accommodating. It was as if maybe it could somehow give way to answers and truths that hid away in sunlight.

His mind was sluggish as he continued wondering at such a sensation but it was beautiful enough that he would not question it fully. The odd, pale streak of moonlight that drifted through the window was comforting and yet cold all at once. The easy beams made his mind feel more sluggish but the heat blooming beneath his skin tampered with such a sensation. It was growing harsher, vibrant, demanding his attention and making him want to snarl. His spine tensed and ached. His stomach twisted. His mouth watered with saliva which thickened against his tongue, growing pasty.

His eyes itched and burned for a long moment. When he blinked they felt heavy and the movement was slow, his senses seeming to acknowledge it as a task that was far from as basic as it should have been. The darkness seemed to be pressing down on him suddenly and his blanket felt as if it were a live flame where it touched his skin.

A low, almost inaudible drifting noise seemed to be whistling within his ears. It rose and dipped gracefully like a dancer in a ballroom. Its lull was soothing and somehow gentle but he recognized it and his thoughts kept such a sensation from being fully realized.

This new wolf was howling again. But the noise was so distant that he almost feared it was all within his head and it somehow echoed inside of one of the many shadows of his mind. Did anyone else hear it? Did anyone else lie awake this night listening to the noise? And if they did, what was it that they heard? Was it anything like the shrewd power that Yugi thought he heard within the gentle song? Or did they simply hear something of a drifting wind hitting the window and rattling the glass to make them glance upon it?

His heart was beginning to beat faster, gradually speeding in time with the howl's crescendo.


	7. Collisions

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day (no update on June 2nd)**

 **Chapter warning: Slight blood, Animal-car collision, Yugi being cynical**

 **So Yugi being cynical mostly entails his attitude towards the possibility of being enlisted in a mental hospital (insane asylum, because he's extreme). He's extremely negative towards it because he's scared. But I figured I would put a warning in because it's kind of offensive.**

Chapter VII: Collisions

 _Work Log Entry VII: July, 1994_

 _July 16_

 _The female still does not seem to display any signs of a heat cycle. Multiple tests have been run and she seems capable of bearing pups._

 _Regardless, the she-wolf and her newest mate seem to be getting along better now._

He shifted his grip to balance the math worksheet in his lap, his backpack rest against his hip comfortably. The park bench was cold as it dug into his skin through his clothing. The air bit at his flesh and his hand felt cramped and almost numb as it bore down on him. He was humming a nearly inaudible tune under his breath which misted nicely in front of his face where weak sunlight touched the crystalline exhale. He bit his lip, looking his work over, and reached over to dig into his bag for his calculator. It was always more challenging to work on a problem without the calculator and then check it afterwards.

And Yugi needed a challenge.

A movement caught his eye as he began to type the numbers in. His head turned almost before he fully thought it through. For a moment the source of his distraction was nothing he could detect. His mind was slowly but surely scrambling to a focus.

Yugi froze in place, eyes widening drastically as he finally noticed it there. The canine was barrel-chested, with a broad, almost box-shaped muzzle akin a rottweiler or mastiff. Its eyes were a pale almost incandescent green that bordered on both aquamarine and teal. Its pelt was long and almost shaggy but the strength it possessed was obvious. Its ears were softly rounded as the hybrid's had been but its tail was slightly curled upwards like a common housedog's rather than having that same perfectly straight one. The legs were long and lithe but, as Yugi truly looked at the canine, the glossy coat was more of a solid dark gray that was close to but not quite black.

Yugi blinked curiously at the sight of the animal. The dog had turned its head to look at him. The pale green stare that met his eyes seemed almost transparent in how light the shade was. The pupils looked bottomless and so dark that someone could get lost upon staring into them. He opened his mouth though he was unsure of what he might say or even if he could get a word out.

The canine blinked and bristled, head snapping around as someone whistled loudly. Its tail was rising in warning as they whistled again. The ears pricked forward and its lips pulled back to expose healthy pink gums. White teeth flashed in the sunlight and its breath came in a rugged puff of white in front of its large jaws. A child around ten years old was running towards the dog. She had obviously missed the aggression it displayed and the canine would have none of it. Yugi felt his heart race as he watched her quickly clearing the distance between them. Its shoulders were square and rising.

" _Shit_!"

The noise was enough to make the dog stop shot and turn towards him. The hair along its spine fell back into place. Its ears flattened against its skull. It whined loudly and its tail fell immediately. Its pupils seemed to have swallowed its irises completely but it was not shaking and Yugi considered that a small mercy.

"Go, get out of here," he hissed in a voice that was nearly inaudible. The dog heard him clearly even as the little girl began to close in on it. Abruptly Yugi thought of will-o-wisps and lightning bugs in the dark. And for a moment his mouth was dry as he stared into the massive animal's eyes. They flickered and burned with an intensity that made Yugi's stomach twist. The small teen was held rigid as the iridescence of the canine's eyes seemed to blaze through him. The mist around it, coming from its sharp breaths, glowed faintly with the eerie green shade. Its pupils looked nonexistent when it turned its head sharply.

The girl was no longer running towards it and Yugi thought momentarily that the dog's snarling might have stopped her. But the idea left his head immediately as he watched the canine. Its head was angled towards the ground. Its ears were pricked forward. Its fur was flat. Its tail was curled upwards, hanging at its hocks. Its eyes still possessed that gleam like glowing Christmas lights in the dark. But its fur looked straight, lighter still in shade, and something about it made the small teen's entire body tense.

It was only when it moved that Yugi recognized what it was. When the dog began a brisk walk forward, its swinging stride was enough to make him look at where its pelt should have been rippling over its well-defined muscle. Rather, what he saw was something like a shadow passing over the grass. The cropped blades were completely white due to the cold and the unspoken promise of snow. It did not crackle or break when the dog stepped on it. Instead there seemed to be a whisper like wind stirring leaves but it was secluded to one small area and the nose appeared nearly nonexistent.

He could see the fur like light brushstrokes over the stems of white. He could see the immense shape like a soft shade of gray film gliding noiselessly over the grass. But, as he looked, he saw those paws touch the grass and the blades retain their shape from underfoot. The girl was letting out a confused call of "Doggy?" that made Yugi's breath rush outwards in a weak whimper. The canine's ears flickered and its head turned. Bright green eyes glowed like lanterns, peering at him as if they saw straight through him as he realized he could it.

It was nothing more than a mere transparent shadow passing over the ground. It was almost like a simple mirage.

Yugi felt his stomach clench violently. The dog had to be something like a ghost or poltergeist. But why an animal shape? And how would it have been solid mere moments before that? Was it corporeal and then became noncorporeal at will? Was that even possible?

What kind of species was it? There was no way that it was a werewolf when it could do that of all things.

Unless all werewolves could somehow do that, though he failed to see how. He also couldn't understand how a dog could do that as it was. How or why they managed such a feat was something that he could not fully consider. An animal becoming a specter? That sounded like a horror movie or something stupid along those lines. He could just imagine trying to put such things into words or attempting to explain. He would be in a mental asylum before he even managed to tell the whole story.

Yugi nibbled his lip until it bled. The canine was still watching him, standing where the park became a narrow strip of dead grass next to the sidewalk. No one else seemed to notice it as they walked by and his stomach twisted once more. If no one else could see it, was it only the infection that allowed him to? And if that was what had caused him to see it in the first place, what else was he going to see?

Ghosts? Banshees? Fairies? Demons? Angels? Brownies? Sprites?

He nearly burst into laughter as he continued looking at the canine. Next he would find unicorns and wardrobes that led to magical dimensions. A small giggle left him then and Yugi swallowed the next as a new and sudden realization swept over him. Every hair on his skin was rising in a bristle and his stomach had dropped violently. When he finally drew his eyes away, his lips twitched though he was unsure of whether it was towards a smile or a frown.

Just as his senses had warned him they were all watching him. All of them were staring with a range of expressions. His lips twitched again in that unfamiliar way. Yugi swallowed almost painfully. Some of them were curious, watching with wide eyes, but others had hard stares that made him think immediately that they assumed he was crazy. He probably would have wondered the same but he would have at least attempted to keep his face neutral. It would have been his eyes that would have given him away. But these faces were twisted in obvious, pointed ways that made him bristle slightly. It was more suspicion than it was curiosity in their faces, he realized. Maybe they thought he was on drugs.

Yugi glanced down at his homework unhappily, blue-violet eyes widening. He really wished the medication he took was the answer. That would have been the easiest excuse he had ever been able to offer. He wished he could have said he had hallucinated it all, right down to Tomoya and Ushio's fight in the alley or Kokurano's spasm in the school library. That would have been so much easier, better even.

Maybe he would have been able to put away his healing that same way as well.

His hands were shaking as he shoved his calculator back into his bag and slipped the worksheet into the seam of the textbook, slamming it shut. They were still watching him closely, curious or almost ashamed to breathed the same air as him.

 _Imagine if they actually_ knew, he thought wryly, lips pulling back into a wide smirk.

Werewolves—and not even the regular mental disorder they had pegged them as. He wasn't violent and bloodthirsty. He didn't look into a mirror and see a wolf where his reflection was meant to be. There was no idea that he was more animal than human. Unless the clinical condition involved seeing _others_ turn into wolves and being killing by other wolves then he was relatively sure he wasn't suffering from it.

Yugi slipped the book into his bag, putting it behind his chemistry which he had already finished. He zipped it, hands still shaking as a giggle burst forth, and quickly got to his feet. The straps felt weak when he snatched one to toss over his shoulder. It hung haphazardly on his back, lopsided and seemingly weighted, as he scrambled towards the sidewalk. The dog watched him curiously, ears flattening against its skull as it tipped its head to the side. He stared at it for a moment and it slowly turned away to trot off in the opposite direction.

It took the small teen a moment to truly recognize the expression with which it had stared at him was shock. Yugi knew he was not meant to be able to see it and so it must have surprised it just as much as it had him. Maybe it knew and recognized the meaning behind it to be his infection. Maybe that was what had scared it off like that. That fear was probably the only reason it had listened to him in the first place and so left the girl alone despite the obvious fact that he had been nothing more than a noisy nuisance otherwise.

But what about being bitten had scared away an animal that could turn noncorporeal at will? With that much raw power and power naturally on display and just its size, it should have been impossible to scare it away. Surely it had no natural predator of any kind with all of that taken into account, so why should _he_ have been the one thing to scare it away?

He was relatively sure it would have been turned around and attacked that girl without pause. It would have fled immediately after, but he had no doubt it would have happily spilled her blood.

Yugi shook his head violently at his own thoughts. Why should he have been wasting time wondering? He thought for sure that with the rate at which his life seemed to be changing that he would find out without truly searching.

He must have looked increasingly unhappy and crazy, he knew, and his stomach ached violently with the idea. If his mother saw him such a state he thought for sure that he would be trapped within an asylum before he could blink. He rushed forward another step, mouth growing dry as his mind pictured padded walls or even being forced to speak in front of a circle of other mental cases. He blinked and his mouth let out a loud laugh before he could quell the urge. His lips pulled into a stupid, cynical smile.

Gathering in a circle to share stories was a rehabilitation exercise, not something that mental patients indulged in. they would all probably wind up killing each other before anyone fully finished their story. There was always at least one murderer in every group, two if you were truly lucky enough.

He ground his teeth together and rolled his eyes in annoyance. Now was hardly the time for his inner cynic to raise his head and make jokes. He needed to get home and maybe he would be able to come up with some way to distract himself. That might be enough to eventually calm his nerves and allow him to begin finishing his homework once more. Then perhaps he could lie down and go to sleep because he suddenly felt inexplicably drained and exhausted.

Yugi narrowed his eyes as he hurried down the sidewalk towards the intersection that was notorious for its animal-car collisions. As disgusting and spiteful as it was, he almost wished he could witness something so regular and familiar. His stomach immediately twisted with guilt and he swallowed hard. No animal deserved to get hit by a car. Especially not for someone's cheap entertainment to ensure that their life was still theirs.

That was such a startling idea that he actually stopped short in the middle of the sidewalk, mouth growing dry with shock. What was he going to do if it turned out that his life was no longer his? What if he found that the wolf took over gradually and would eventually consume his life? Was that possible or was that simply something out of a horror story?

A small tremor ran down his spine, chilling him to his very marrow. His nerves were shot as he tried in vain to make his mind work again. His stomach ached and his vision seemed to blur for a split second, a throbbing beginning to form behind his temple.

He was standing there frozen and yet he had no way to shake off any of the ideas that were forming. He hardly wanted to look any worse than he already did and have someone brand him as insane more than they already had. It was bad enough just to be considered a nut in life, but the murders made him want to vomit. What happened when they finally figured out he was with Kokurano or that it was _his_ blood in the alleyway with Tomoya's broken body?

Then again, they _had_ declared it an animal attack, just as they had Ushio. But Kokurano's was far from the same and Yugi thought it would have had to have either been poison in his meals or the infection having somehow turned his immune system in on itself. But why had he not appeared in the papers? Why did no one mention him or anything about it? Were they still running an autopsy or was it something else entirely?

He needed to talk to Anzu and find out what it was that the police knew about it all. He wanted to know what had killed him, if they had placed him at the scene as of yet. But how was he truly meant to ask such a thing of her without looking suspicious or as if he were using her just for the sake of his own curiosity? Was there such a way for him to do that or was he going to be incapable of handling such seemingly fragile truths? Would he even be able to handle them when it came down to it?

And how was he meant to be able to contain his excitement or anxiety with such possibilities? Yugi shuddered and tossed his head so that his eyes focused on the street once more. What was that soft, rapid clicking and wheezing noise in his ears? Was someone using a skateboard and panting?

He wanted to smile at the thought. Jonouchi had been desperate to show off his skateboarding skills when he had first gotten one. He had insisted on riding it _everywhere_ he had gone that day. To mess with him and because the wheels grating against the pavement had annoyed him, Honda had convinced them to go a way that the blond couldn't follow without ditching his latest toy. He had led them to cut through a path that involved climbing a fence and halving the time needed to get to the mall. Jonouchi had caught up with them twenty minutes later, wheezing and hunched over while the wheels continued to click sloppily over the asphalt.

The noise was oddly familiar as he looked for the source, eyes widening as he considered the direction. But it almost seemed to be coming from every side of him, though generally angled towards the area towards his front.

He struggled to place it, an alarm seeming to slowly gain volume within his skull. He stiffened, pushing at his mind to hurry, a growing confusion and tension rising into his system. His bones felt as if they were on fire and his lungs strained and ached within his chest.

The wheezing noise became more concentrated. He recognized the tightness that came with the draw of breath those lungs were struggling with and the way they slid from the person's mouth in anxious pants. They came in harsh and quick succession, winded but refusing to quit entirely. The clicking was amplifying and he realized there was a softer, almost inaudible edge of a thud that came with each. He thought immediately of bare feet running on hardwood flooring and his mouth grew dry as his stomach flipped violently.

That was not a person, he realized with sudden and intense clarity. His head turned sharply. Pain surged through his neck with the movement. His eyes focused effortlessly now.

A small black and white dog was running forward. It was headed straight into the incoming traffic of a green light. The short legs were moving with such speed Yugi thought momentarily of cheetahs. But this dog was not chasing after prey. Rather, he recognized that it _was_ the prey. Its tail was between its legs. It was trembling as it pushed itself. It was beyond its own physical limitations.

His eyes flickered towards the animal chasing it. He expected it to be one of the feral cats. He even expected a wild boar that sometimes drifted in from the forest border. But rather, a large shape followed it. He was startled and horrified. His mouth dried out. His tongue was glued to his palate. His eyes grew wide. His stomach tossed sideways.

Long, lithe legs propelled a massive form after this tiny dog. It was steps behind. But it was rapidly closing distance. The speed it displayed was nothing Yugi had ever thought a large breed canine capable of.

Even as the two animals came close to traffic, neither slowed. If anything they seemed to go faster. The small teen was frozen, staring blankly. His mind was racing for information.

The smaller dog was ragged looking. Its side was caked with mud. Bones were visible in their entirety beneath its short fur. It was limping. Its left back leg was bloodied. A wound wrapped around the entire limb, almost as if it had been hamstrung. Its hock was entirely slicked with bright red. Its paws were caked with dirt.

The larger dog was immense in shape. Its pelt glimmered with a glossy sheen. The sun hit the pitch black strands and came off almost blue. Its muscles were smooth and rippled like water beneath its fur. All four legs were stretching to their fullest. It held its weight in a way that almost made its speed seem as if it were flying. Its tail was parallel to its spine. A light bristle was faintly visible as Yugi continued to process the sight before him.

The smaller dog's ears were floppy and turned outwards so that the muscles were exposed. The larger canine's were pricked forward and curled softly at the top. The slope of them was gentle rather than sudden. The smaller dog's ribcage made a harsh upwards curve that made its back legs look almost as if they were no longer attached. The larger had a frame that supported an upwards sloping ascend, which moved almost perfectly with its quick movements.

" _Hey_!" he found himself crying out in horror. He ran forward quickly, calling out again, but the driver paid him no attention. Yugi knew he wouldn't be able to catch up to warn them. The vehicle hadn't slowed in the slightest. The driver wasn't even paying attention to the road. Yugi tried once more, cupping his hands around his mouth. He was screaming for them to stop now.

But all it seemed to do was startle them.

Yugi felt dizzy. The driver jerked to attention. But they did not hit the brake. The car shot forward faster. Yugi raced. The dogs were getting closer.

The dark gray car missed the smaller by a mere inch. It struck the large one.

His heart was in his ears. Yugi nearly screamed in despair at himself. His shoes were the only things he could hear. The driver spat out a horrified curse. The car swerved drastically, spinning. It was almost as if they had hit another car instead of a dog. He stopped, breathing raggedly. His stomach churned. His arm was aching. His ribs hurt. Yugi nearly stumbled over his own two feet.

A scream reached his ears.

It rose and fell in a swift, terrible abruptness that made him choke. Oh gods…

Oh gods…the car had killed it—

The car sped forward again. His head was spinning as he watched. Had they been too afraid to get out and check on the animal? Perhaps they were too afraid of the broken body they might find. But maybe they didn't care to check either…

"Oh _gods_ ," he managed to choke out, blinking. Disgust and horror and growing hatred formed a ball of ice within his stomach. Bile burned a path up the back of his throat. His eyes ached, prickling, as he started shakily forward.

He had not been the one to hit the dog. And yet he felt he might as well have been. He should never have followed that impulse to shout. He should never have spitefully thought about wanting to see one of the infamous accidents. Oh gods, the poor thing was probably the most mangled piece of roadkill in all of Japan because of him. Yugi whimpered low in his throat. His head was spinning again, faster than ever.

He had the impulse to call his mom. There could have been the _smallest_ of chances… But there was also fear that crept through him. Maybe it was the same dog from the clinic. Then there came a realization that he might have just witnessed a murder if it was really a werewolf. Finally, he realized, heart seeming to climb in his throat, that he could hear something tickling at his ears. It got through all of the painful throbbing that had overcome his senses.

His blood burned. His bones took on a vibrating ache. His stomach knotted. His mouth felt pasty. His mind was racing.

A small, faint twitch of a noise seemed to push through his ears. It rattled and echoed in his skull. A watery, sloshing edge defined it. It danced at the beginning and shattered towards the end. A weak twisting pump came next. The twitch became immense louder. It was more vibrant than ever in his ears. A low, strained wheeze crept into existence. It was followed immediately by a longer, louder one quickly after. The twisting noise became a shuddering and let wet sound that reminded him of water droplets.

Yugi blinked stupidly as his mind tried to truly grasp at this new development. Nothing about this situation made sense. He struggled to comprehend the noise he was hearing. He recognized it from his night terrors and the hallucination in the alley when Ushio had chased him. It had been in reverse from this. But it was still the same haunting sound that he had always dreaded upon closing his eyes.

He raised his head slowly, tilting his right ear slowly towards the ground and straining his senses. There had to be a mistake. His mind had to be playing tricks on him. His fear and guilt must have been drawing it out of him. It must have been trying to make him feel worse.

Breathing slowly and straining his ears to catch the sound again, Yugi found that he almost could not hear himself. He imagined for a moment that the air had seeped through his skin and into his bones and frozen the marrow there. His nerves were tingling with some kind of horrifying mixture of exhilarations and terror.

The impact had sent the canine's body straight through the air at least twenty feet away. It had to be dead, the impact probably breaking its neck if not every bone in its massive body. He had seen when it had been tossed forward, the car speeding faster and swerving to the side to avoid hitting it again. Its entire body had become one massive lump of black fur in the middle of the asphalt, the road rapidly becoming stained with a shower of bright red blood.

He didn't know how it had landed but he imagined it was likely a hit to the skull. The momentum had been devastating to send that animal flying as it had. And with the way that he now noticed that most cars were pulled over and some of the drivers were freaking out and cursing he knew it had been far from unnoticed. He wondered where the dog had even landed at that point. Others seemed to be searching for it—and he could not understand _why_.

Surely none of them expected it to be alive, right?

Vaguely, almost unaware that he had even moved, Yugi came forward in short shuffling movements along the sidewalk. Head spinning and senses seemingly locked upon the simple but somehow empowering pulse that burned in his ears, Yugi found himself picking his way mindlessly through a thick throng of people. They were all panicked as he moved along, some of them even beginning to pray that its end had not been painful. A couple of teenagers from a neighboring café were looking with horrified expressions while others held their phones up, having clearly recorded the collision.

He ignored them steadily, unwilling to let his mind wander for even a moment. The organ in his ears was growing stronger, the pulse of blood becoming rapid and echoing harshly in his skull. The shaky breaths were gaining consistency, becoming deeper and regulated.

Unsure of what more to do, the boy continued forward. A pain settled weakly in his chest and made his bones burn. He swallowed and ignored the impulse to curse at someone else for the lifeless and dazed giggle of shock that left their mouth. He kept his head tilted the smallest fraction of a degree, listening to see if the animal had finally moved.

Oddly, as if the thought had crossed into its mind as well, he caught a smooth shifting rustle of noise. A faint but well-defined scraping made his skin tingle and his nerves burn. The breath that left it was weak but harsh in its determination as another rustling noise met his ears. A loud cracking pop split the air and another followed in rapid succession, so profuse that Yugi feared for a moment that it was someone putting the animal out of its misery. Or perhaps, in a less melodramatic thought, that it would be heard by others and he would not be the only one to find it.

He heard the dog's heart grow firm in its pace, seemingly infinitely faster than his own, and the breaths leaving it grew deeper and softer once more. The scraping noise grew more noticeable, followed by a hard click that was immediately trailed by the softness of its calloused toes on the pavement. A gentle hissing noise made his head swim as the popping became nothing more than a whisper.

Yugi got within sight of the dead-ended alleyway just in time to see it stagger forward. Its massive head was angled too far downwards to see its eyes, but it gave a vivid sight to the torn flesh of its large forehead. Bone was visible in a small speck but he could already see the exposed flesh pulling together rapidly before his eyes. Its left ear was torn and bleeding profusely but when it tossed its head to the side, the gash seemed to become nothing more than a simple bald spot painted bright red. The skin along its nose was scraped raw, blood evident along the soft muscle but it merely looked sore and painful.

Its jaws opened briefly and he could see the healthy bright pink of its tongue and gums where its lips folded back just enough to spot them. Each tooth glittered with saliva but none were specked with blood or even seemed injured or loosened. When it shook its coat back and forth as if it were wet, chunks of black fur slicked with blood were flung through the air. He could see where the shoulder had been split and broken, a hairline fracture all that remained of a once gruesome wound. With another shake of its immense body, the muscle was slowly binding and forming weak layers of thin skin over it.

It sniffed once, a low drawn out breath, and a bristle rose along its spine for a split second before its ears flicked. It turned away suddenly, not even glancing at him, and its spine seemed to twitch and coil beneath its skin like a snake before it hurried forward.

Yugi remained frozen, watching it with a horrified expression. The healing had been so rapid that it did not even sport a limp as it trotted forward. The only sign that it had even been wounded was the tufts of fur missing and the wound that he could see on its back leg. He could see a narrow red crack of split skin in the calloused pad, bright blood coming forth.

It was not a serious wound, almost like a simple scrape of skin that needed nothing but a single inspection to heal properly. The wound looked so superficial that the small teen wanted both to laugh and to puke. Canines bled horribly when their paws, ears or nose were hurt, just like a human tended to lose mass amounts when they hit their heads.

It had healed so quickly, however. Did it take the infection being within the body for long amounts of time for such a rapid pace to become a normal occurrence? He wouldn't have minded that ability the first night that he had been attacked. He also couldn't find himself minding it later, especially if something similar decided to occur.

But _how_ had it _survived_? Its heart had even _stopped_ and that head wound _had_ to have killed it. Yet it was right in front of him, trotting swiftly down the street without a glance around, either uncaring or too determined to find a meal to waste time on basic safety. It was moving so quickly that it seemed almost as if it might round the corner in only a moment where it took about ten minutes even in a car.

Obviously the werewolf was fine. But that still did not make sense to him. Its _heart_ had _stopped_. Unless it was a false and usual falter in the muscle then it should not have occurred. Yet they had not even stopped to look at their own wounds, as if they were so mild that none of them mattered.

Did that make werewolves _immortal_ then? Or was it simply that this one was more durable than the rest? Or…perhaps _this_ was the Beast of Gevaudan, the very same that had attacked and killed through head wounds rather than regular hunting techniques like bloodletting or suffocation. Maybe this was the same wolf that had killed Ushio and left his corpse as a present.

Yugi found himself giggling stupidly at the idea, mouth dry as bile trailed a path of fire along the back of his throat. His blood burned and his former wounds pulsed, tingling as if struck by lightning. He bit back a vicious hysterical burst of laughter and blood soaked his tongue as his lip was split wide open by his canines.

* * *

The small teen was frozen in his seat as he picked through another article, feeling sick to his stomach. He was unsure whether it was the internet failing to translate the page properly or if it was really written that way to begin with. A small dog or wolf would not have survived a twenty-foot hurl through the air let alone gotten up so easily. All in all, that had not truly mattered to him. What had mattered was that, three hours after the collision, he had not been able to fully shake the lingering fear in his system that the stupid infection truly would make him immortal. Then, gradually, he had found his mind focused more fully on the fact that he needed to pull together as many resources as he possibly could and find out about the Beast of Gevaudan.

Thankfully, despite the kill patterns sharing such similarities, each website said that it had been hunted down. But they also spoke of silver bullets and a second killing spree. He had yet to go fully in depth with the numerous theories they had come up with to explain its unnatural existence, but he was not sure he cared that much. He was more concerned with whether it was possible it could still exist, if it was truly immortal.

But each story ended with its carcass being taken to the king for a reward only to have the hunter dismissed and the only evidence buried somewhere.

The wolf's heart had stopped and then began again. Was it possible of the animal in the legend as well? But they had all claimed the hunter had brought a rotting corpse to the king and the smell had been so terrible that he had dismissed them. Unless the Beast had been like the wolf-dog it would not have smelled that way—and he still had yet to figure out if that was like a skunk perfume or not. He did know that it had taken little time for its wounds to heal as efficiently as it had and unless the Beast had somehow maintained that mortal wound until it was buried and then somehow dug itself out, then this wolf and it were _not_ the same.

Besides, the Beast of Gevaudan had been some terrible predator, never mentioned as a human in any way. The only connection it had with the werewolf was silver bullets, and he was almost certain that was a Hollywood addition to a terror that had seemed extremely real to people in Europe during medieval times.

Yugi shook his head at himself. Maybe he was wrong and his mind had simply fabricated the whole thing—Kokurano, Ushio, _Tomoya_ , _this_ wolf. No one was even saying anything about Kokurano—not the news, not the police—and while Ushio and Tomoya were still dead, no one had put up a video of the wolf being hit by that car. Maybe Kokurano had gone on vacation and no one was talking about him because they didn't need to.

Maybe the fight between Ushio and Tomoya had been a simple beating gone too far when Tomoya refused to back down. Maybe those snarls had been their voices but maybe they had lowered their voices or he had run so far that he hadn't caught the words and so they sounded dull and almost listless. Maybe Tomoya had been killed by an animal while Ushio had chased him. And maybe that animal had killed Ushio—

 _But why wait_? He flinched as his own thoughts betrayed him. He tried for a moment to come up with something but there were still several obvious, hideous, gaping black holes that stunted each budding explanation, squashing any bit of hope he had. Who—or _what_ —had dragged him home that night? How had they known where he lived? Why save him if they were going to kill Tomoya and Ushio like that?

Yugi sighed and fell back against the mattress. He remembered that night more vividly than he did most things. The images still sometimes played behind his eyelids when he closed them at night. But a disturbingly large amount of time drew at a massive blank whenever he tried to think of _all_ that night. He supposed he must have blacked out, but wouldn't he have still managed to _hear_ the fighting as it was happening?

Hearing was supposed to be the last sense to leave the body, sight the first.

So how was it that he had not even heard the snarls and screaming that he knew would have occurred? Had he been revived somehow? Had the wolf maybe somehow seen something in him to make it save him? But he would have been dead too long for a revival to be possible, wouldn't he have? He might have been unsure of the amount of time he would have technically been dead, but he did know that the alleyway was at least twenty minutes from his house. And the wolf did not seem to have _dragged_ him to the front door like that. So, was it possible that it had become human again and _carried_ him?

But why such effort put into saving him? Unless it had a hero complex and so had killed Ushio in retaliation on his behalf, he couldn't understand. He did realize that it had to have been human at some point or other, in order to toss that rock and break the streetlight so that it could get him to his house without getting caught.

Yugi shook his head again in frustration. He had no answers when it came down to it. He didn't even have any idea why the wolf would kill in the first place if it had such a complex. Was that not something that completely defeated the purpose of what they thought they should be doing?

He shook his head once more and then turned towards the door. His mom was home and he could hear her swapping her shoes out on the top step of the little staircase. If he asked her about the likelihood of a dog getting up after an impact like that, maybe he could try to gauge how strong and resilient the wolves were. Maybe he could find out what it was that had saved the one in the alley, why it had seemingly protected him when he should have been buried in a casket by now. Then perhaps he could find a time frame of when he had been bitten, if it had been Ushio or Tomoya to do it.

The small teen wandered out of his room only when his mom had been seated at the table for about ten minutes. He needed to think of a way to phrase it before he attempted to put it into a conversation between them. Especially because he couldn't risk having her suspicion raised that he was not doing well on his medication, or that he was building up a tolerance for it.

She would either want to raise the dosage or put him on something else entirely and Yugi thought he would rather have Ushio return and rip his throat out like he had originally tried to do. He wondered vaguely if maybe Ushio would have simply dropped him if he had just remained limp as he had originally planned. If he had not moved, maybe Tomoya would still be alive.

Or maybe he wouldn't. Why had he been in the alleyway in the first place? Had he been waiting there for Ushio or something? Had he been protecting some kind of kill he had made before Ushio had caught him?

;Yugi shuddered. He couldn't picture someone as sweet as Tomoya being capable of killing, human or otherwise. He remembered once he had seen him pick a spider out of its web to place out of range of the faucet's spray when its head had been misplaced. He couldn't equate a wolf, a predator, with that shy blond like his mind was attempting to make him. He couldn't put those together and not want to shake his head in denial at the very idea.

Then again…hadn't he been bitten? Hadn't he always been much of the same way as Tomoya growing up? He might not have saved spiders as he had, but that was not too immense a difference. Their personalities had been a lot alike, one of the reasons Yugi had enjoyed his company so much. Yet, as he thought and considered it all, he may have been scared—terrified, even—of turning into a werewolf, but he had no true difficulty comparing himself with a wolf. The idea didn't even manage to startle him as he drifted through his mind.

Perhaps it was all the fear he had been drowning beneath or the fact that he had always liked werewolves more but he wasn't exactly unable to compare the two. And still his mind halted when he compared Tomoya to the large canines. He guessed he had always seen him as something small but steady and strong. The image that came to mind immediately was a squirrel, able to defend itself but more likely to flee when confronted.

When he thought of an animal to equate with himself it was normally, more often than not, either a cat or a small dog. Never had he pictured himself as a piece of prey or a large and powerful predator. Before it was simply that he thought his personalities matched them better, although now he found himself feeling weak and small, almost like a bunny. His guilt on top of that only managed to make him feel so much worse, so weak that it was a wonder he could still stand anymore. The assessment nearly made him laugh, because he most certainly thought of himself as a prey animal now.

 _And so had Ushio_.

The thought was sobering but not enough to make his snickering quiet. Maybe Jonouchi and Honda had, too, and that was why they had picked on him before. Maybe he had always been a scared little rabbit and nothing else. He wouldn't have truly been surprised. After all, he had taken things for granted and found that a lot of them were wrong in only a matter of days.

"Yugi?"

He blinked, the harsh sardonic amusement leaving his system immediately as he looked at his mom. She was twisted around in her seat, blue eyes wide as she tilted her head and watched him. He had the split second impulse to simply smile at her and say he had just seen something funny before ducking away to grab some food from the fridge while making mild conversation when she started talking.

"Oh, hi, Mom," he announced cheerily though his stomach coiled uncomfortably at the thought of lying.

"What was so funny?"

She was simply curious but he felt suddenly sick with nerves, as if he might be on stage for the whole world to see. He managed a small, almost schoolboy-like grin and then shrugged nonchalantly. "I was just thinking about something Jonouchi was telling me at school," he murmured, not at all surprised when she nodded but did not press for details. The blond was notorious for making crude remarks and jokes and his mom had learned quickly that she never wanted to ask what would make him laugh whenever Jonouchi was mentioned.

"Hey, so, um…has there been any news about another dog getting hit?"

She blinked, curiosity turning quickly into puzzlement. "Accidents? No, I haven't heard of anything recently. The last time someone called one in was when that black one got hit," she replied quietly, frowning momentarily. "Since then I haven't heard anything…why?"

Yugi fought off a cringe when he saw how her eyes flashed briefly. He could see her mind working furiously to come up with a time and place where one might have occurred based on where she knew he had been all day. For a split second he almost considered telling her that they might find the dog if they went right then, before curfew. But doing so meant potentially having this new wolf set its eyes on her too or mark her the target of others. It was possible to walk straight into another's territory without realizing and without being able to change. Unless that wolf was about howling then he was very clearly screwed.

"I was just wondering…" He chewed his lip for a moment, picking his words carefully to avoid phrasing it all stupidly. She would become suspicious of his medication's effectiveness if he failed to seem casual and borderline curious. "Do you have any idea how fast the car that hit him was going?"

She paused for a moment, considering what the officer at the scene had said. "I was _told_ ," she said softly, reluctantly, "that the officer's gun read fifty miles per hours. But he _also_ told me that it had been acting strangely recently in the area anyways. He said something about all the electricity used over there causing its circuits to short. He mentioned that the rate of power outages were high there too and said that it was most likely the gun misreading so it's entirely possible it simply said twenty-five or thirty."

Yugi nodded, mind racing. The crash he had witnessed earlier had been rather harsh due to the speed. The wolf would not have been catapulted so high or far as it had otherwise. It had to have been flung over the roof of the small bakery next to the alley, which meant it had gone about twelve feet in the air and twenty across in order to clear the building entirely as it had. He knew it hadn't landed anywhere on the road around the alley because the bystanders would have seen it immediately.

No, it had landed at the very end of the alley, out of sight enough that no one would have spotted it. There had been no blood on the asphalt where Yugi had approached from, indicating that it had not landed anywhere near the entrance.

But the car had swerved in order to keep from hitting it a second time, hadn't it? Perhaps the driver had been so horrified that they had been unable to drive straight for a moment. But hadn't he seen a dog there as well, right in front of it?

The small teen narrowed his eyes faintly, searching his mind frantically and barely resisting the urge to nod at himself. It had been large and black, with a smooth and glossy winter coat with a long, barely-curled tail. He had not seen its eyes but he was willing to bet that they had been that same strange, glowing teal. It had to have been that dog from the park. But why had it been there, of all places?

"Which one was he more likely to survive?"

The wolf must have been hit with at least forty, maybe even fifty. And it had gotten up so easily. Who was to say the hybrid hadn't had such endurance?

"Well, no dog could survive a collision at fifty miles per hour," she murmured, sounding slightly frustrated, almost as if she could read the thoughts behind his eyes. "Thankfully he was a large dog and he didn't end up dead like a small one would have. Considering he only had lacerations and no broken bones I'd have to say he was extremely lucky the car was only going twenty-five to thirty."

Yugi chewed his cheek thoughtfully, considering her words in comparison to the questions forming on his tongue. "Is it possible for a car to just _graze_ a dog and not kill it…even if it was going at a high speed?"

"Yes, but it would depend on where it got struck. If it got hit in the face its skull would break and its head might even come off. If it was in the rear area it would definitely break bones, possibly any in the car's path. Internal bleeding would be another concern and hardly something that they would heal from without medical attention." His mom fell silent for a long minute and then shook her head slowly. "You know these things, Yugi."

He didn't bother to so much as blink. She was right, of course. He did know these things. She had quizzed him on them long ago the first time that he had ever been allowed to witness her working on a dog that had gotten hit. Still, even with that surface knowledge, he didn't think he knew enough to assess the differences between a normal dog and the hybrid and the werewolf in question.

The hybrid had healed quickly but they had still had to give it medical attention. The werewolf, however, had begun to heal only moments after, even being revived as it had. And it had even just gotten up and trotted away without a limp. He had heard it healing, of course, but it had not even been slightly stalled or mildly dazed.

They had both had rather similar builds but the hybrid had to have been an inch smaller at the shoulders, if not less. The hybrid had had a slight, almost unnoticeably smaller build. Yugi chewed his cheek for a moment, narrowing his eyes faintly as he pictured the two of them side by side. In his mind's eye the slope of the hybrid's belly was very nearly nonexistent but there was a gentle tuck upwards towards the back legs. The wolf's was far less obvious, with a ribcage and slope that fell in almost entirely straight line; only when it moved did there seem to be anything more. Both had long, skinny legs and broad jaws, large heads, softly rounded ears instead of sharp triangular like a shepherd's.

He glanced at his mom's slightly puzzled expression. "Well, yeah, but let's say that dog got hit and was _flung_ through the air but _still_ managed to get up."

"They wouldn't. Being 'flung through the air' would kill it. Even if they somehow survived at _first_ , even managed to drag themselves a few feet, they would not live through it," she said with a firm shake of her head. "Large or not, their organs would most likely be crushed and every bone broken from the impact, not even considering the landing. Even if it was soft and cushioned by grass or loose sand or something like that, the internal damage would be too great for a recovery. I don't even know if veterinary assistance would be able to stop it or slow it at any rate."

She sounded so certain that Yugi almost wished it were that simple. For a split second he almost wanted to believe in her logic. Life would have been so much easier if he really could.

Being blind was always something he wished he shared with his mom.

But he had always been open-minded, even if he did wish for most things to be rooted in science. Some things could not be explained away, however, and so Yugi did not bother to try. But the disease was based in biology, just like every virus that had ever come into existence. He doubted he would ever be capable of reversing it, but he did want to learn about its infectious makeup.

It wouldn't truly change anything but maybe it would help to calm him. Maybe if he could understand it he might be able to calm himself. He might be able to see it as something other than an inconvenience that could very well rule his life.

"What about shock?" he asked curiously, watching with studious eyes, every nerve in his body burning. That hauntingly healthy, bright pink shade of its tongue and gums made his head swim. He thought of how powerful the wolf was, how it had simply gotten up. How strong and unnatural did one's mind and body truly need to be in order to avoid even shock? With that immense head wound he should never have avoided such a basic response.

"That would most likely be instantaneous. And he would probably die due to that as well."

She was becoming dismissive now, unconsciously projecting to him how little she wished to speak of this. Yugi nodded, not surprised but still somehow wishing he might be able to explain and know she would believe him. He turned and headed for the fridge as if it would make an adequate excuse for his reason to be there. But he knew from the way her eyes narrowed in his peripheral that she did not believe for even a moment that his reasoning was so simple. But she didn't question him and he avoided his potential answers as if they might suffocate him.

* * *

He picked at his bento distractedly, his hand trembling briefly with the task of keeping the chopsticks from dropping his next bite. He felt as if he might be sick as he tried to raise his food to his mouth and his skin seemed to burn. The hairs on the back of his neck were rising to an intense, tingling bristle. His nerves were on the highest of alerts. Despite how he tried to turn his mind away from the sensation, even imagining what Anzu might look like naked, nothing had the necessary capability to distract from the ache that seemed to be making itself the very structure of his bones. His skin was burning and tightening, his stomach twisting and sending bile upwards to scorch his throat. The heat within his muscles was growing and he wished that he had not decided to wear his uniform. He wished he had chosen something lighter and less weight as he wanted to do nothing more in that moment than tear the jackeet off in sheer exasperation.

Yugi swallowed and narrowed his eyes faintly as his mouth grew disgustingly dry. He had thought maybe getting out of the house and meeting with his friends would be enjoyable and help clear his head. He had decided to grab lunch before they all got together again but the tension in his bones made him reluctant to even consider being around them. They would ask him if something was wrong and he would have to lie. He _hated_ lying—especially to them.

Abandoning his meal in frustration, the small teen made his way onto the sidewalk without a second glance. He had paid for his food ahead of time, deciding quickly upon arrival that staying there long enough for his bill might not be within his capabilities. His scalp itched and burned as he started walking again and his eyes widened as he glanced over his shoulder in confusion.

Was the wolf hunting him now? Was it creeping after him in the darkness somewhere? Maybe it blamed him for the impact with the car. Or maybe it knew he had seen it.

He fought off a tremble and then swallowed thickly before hurrying forward, pulse jumping violently. His tongue felt plastered to his palate and his mouth tingled as if he had sampled a food he was allergic to. His teeth ground together as he started walking faster but when he turned back, Yugi found himself abruptly stopping. His mind was racing for answers, so startled by the sight before him that he was unable to properly process it all. Blinking stupidly and staring in open confusion and something akin wondering bewilderment, he watched as the figure approached him slowly.

He tilted his head to the side, studying him, and straightened his back some. The footsteps were off and nearly nonexistent as the older male approached him, but he thought his heart mimicked them in the way it beat with each step he took. His eyes were focused on the glare of the light reflected form his glasses and the way the rims of them were too large to sit properly. His mouth was drawn into a tight but noticeably pained frown and his appearance looked slovenly in comparison to his usual state of dress.

Yugi watched him silently, his mind working quickly to give him details on the other's appearance without his own effort put into looking him over. He was wearing brown suit pants with pockets and black dress shoes topped by a beige v-cut sweater and a white collared shirt beneath it. When he focused on him completely, he thought he saw frayed threads at the end of the right sleeve, as if he had picked at it desperately for whatever reason.

Yugi cringed. He knew the reason.

"I've been looking for you everywhere." His voice was soft and small, but somehow smooth all the same, and Yugi's mouth dried further at the sound of it. He had never known this man to be anything but gentle and kind, his voice friendly even when he'd been so worried about his son that he'd begged them to remain friends with him.

"Me?" Yugi commented quietly, biting his lip at the stupidity of his inquiry. He swallowed and a lump formed like hard ice in his stomach, taunting him with the need to puke. He pressed his weight more fully into his right foot, moving to attempt to push himself onto his tiptoes. He felt dizzy and small as those light brown eyes bore into his so desperately.

Had he come just to blame him? Was that why he was standing before him with such a terrible heartbroken expression?

Yugi closed his eyes briefly. Was he the one that had saved him in the alley? Had he finished what his son had tried to himself? Had he come, _finally_ tired of this game of hunting him, to kill him? Was he there to avenge him?

There was so much sorrow and intelligence in those light brown eyes. He saw the one who had passed the gene to Tomoya. He must have. It was so terribly apparent in his eyes.

"I know you know what happened to him, Yugi."

His eyes snapped open, wide in shock as he fell immediately silent, merely staring as his response seemed to shake his resolve. He didn't know? But then…why had he come to speak to him otherwise? He'd thought…

"I just want to know."

He sounded utterly broken, completely shattered, and Yugi flinched back a step, choking on a breath. His head pounded, dizzy as it spun and danced, his thoughts knotted jumbles that pricked him like thorns.

"I don't know. I'm sorry…"

He shook his head sharply and the platinum blond hair seemed to burn briefly with sunlight. "You do," he pressed desperately, eyes large as they glittered shakily behind his glasses. "Yugi, please…I need to know—I could smell your blood in the alleyway when his…"

He choked and Yugi flinched, lowering his eyes to the ground. His throat felt too tight to speak for a moment and the lump in his stomach twisted and ground against him violently.

"You were there when he…I just…I need to know what happened…"

"I don't know," he croaked, bowing his head fully as pain made every part of his body ache and his chest tight. "I'm so sorry."

"Please, Yugi, I've been trying to find you since that day!" He could hear the tears in his voice and his ears pounded as he gulped to fight them away again. "I just wanted to know. I don't understand…"

"I don't know. And I don't understand why it happened any more than you do," he pleaded pitifully, wanting to sob in despair before raising his eyes to the other's. The least he could do was speak to his face and not his own feet. "You're asking the wrong person. I don't know what happened or why. I was knocked out. The blood loss…"

He trailed off. He sounded as if he were talking about someone else, his sense of reality becoming jumbled. His voice sounded so weak and almost cold in how it spoke such a powerful, crushing statement.

"Try to remember then," he pressed urgently, voice bordering on anger as he ground his teeth together and shook his head sharply in response. "Yugi—"

"I don't want to!" he spat, unable to stop himself. Despite his grief and sympathy for the man in front of him, he was not ready to attempt that. He was well aware of the fact that he needed to. He knew it more than he did anything else, it seemed, and he could not stand to as of yet. He would rather die. There was just so much of a gaping black hole, such immense darkness in the night and everything it represented and he could not find it in him to truly face it as of yet. "I don't want to remember. I'm so sorry about Tomoya, Mr. Hanasaki! I'm so sorry that this had to happen but I—"

"Place yourself in my shoes, Yugi."

His head swam with the words and his own came out in a choked breath, breaking and cracking like splintering ice. "I won't," he whispered pathetically. "I can't! I know that you're hurting but I—I can't help you, okay? I really can't, okay? I just…please, no. I'm so sorry…"

His head pounded, drowning his thoughts. There were violent snarls echoing in his skull, burning him, and there was that terrible clicking of their nails on the asphalt. There were teeth that chomped and made the air vibrate. There was his own cry of pain—

" _No_!"

The onslaught of noise was growing louder as he whimpered and stepped back quickly. Tomoya's father watched him with a somewhat detached expression that still managed to show his remorse and growing confusion. The air felt too thick as it tried to force its way into his lungs when he gasped. Everything was spinning again and the noises were becoming a steady, horrifying roar in his skull. He was screaming again, the sound making each nerve in his body tease and burn violently. Had he truly cried out so loudly and for so terribly long or was his mind simply torturing him?

Maybe he had subconsciously blocked it but the presence of Tomoya's father had brought it to the surface and—

He shuddered and shook his head as the muscles coiled beneath his skin. His mind was splintering and fracturing and he thought of the crackling of ice as it broke. He wasn't aware he was moving until the scream of his name made him run faster. People around them had turned to see what it was that was happening. He heard them rather than saw them—the rustle of clothing, the twitch of muscles beneath the skin, the grating of their bones. His name was called again and it sounded so far aware that he almost wanted to turn his head and see the distance put between them.

But he wasn't willing to be put through the danger of not paying attention to the things in front of him. He could end up getting hit by a car himself or run into someone else. If he collided with one of the werewolves he thought he might have his throat torn out.

He slipped on a puddle, the water spraying the air as he skidded. The movement sent him straight into the wall of the bakery in front of him. Yugi hissed as his head seemed to burst with pain. He scrambled for his footing again. He tried to listen for anyone following him. But his blood pounding in his ears was deafening. His body had grown immensely hot, boiling to the point that his blood burned like fire beneath his skin. He was shaking. He was unable to hear over the war drums echoing in his skull. Peeling himself from the wall with reluctance, the small teen took off in a run again.

A new noise had begun in his head. He could feel bile rising in the back of his throat. The clicking was rushed, like someone pushing on the end of their pen impatiently. Snarls sounded like the trickle of muddy water, growing into the steady volume of a car's engine as it roared to life. There was a uniform softness that accompanied each click, the sound of their paw pads touching the ground. A violent collision like blades slamming into each other made up the sound of their teeth chomping. Whimpers gurgled upwards like the drifting notes of a howl. A swift but terrible tearing sound reminded him of the threads in his uniform being torn.

He let out a whimper of his own, almost as animalistic as the others resounding in his ears, and swallowed thickly. His arm and throat burned with a phantom sensation. He hissed and jerked so violently that he lost balance.

He crashed into the animal before he could think straight. An entire array of glittering white teeth aimed for his throat. He jerked instinctively backwards. A harsh chomping noise echoed in the dead winter air. The teeth were a mere inch from his jugular, bared and clamped together. Hot, burning exhales left its jaws and his throat tingled as they bathed his skin.

Yugi swallowed hard, eyes wide as he started at the massive canine. Its eyes seemed to glow, a harsh burning gold that seemed to see through him. For a moment it stared blankly, furious about their collision. Then its gaze grew wide. Its ears pressed back against its head. It recoiled.

The small teen was already pressed completely against the wall. But he would have done the same if he could. He realized slowly that he could feel his heart as it hammered violently in his chest. It was shifting and pulsing. It threatened to leap into his throat. He could feel panic rising with his adrenaline rush. He could taste the sharp iron of his blood in his mouth. It was like bile and burned his tongue.

Those black ears flicked in every direction for a moment. Then his head tipped to the side as if in thought. Its long, glossy fur moved in a twitching ripple over its muscles. Its mouth opened to show its teeth. Yugi flinched, trying unsuccessfully to flatten further against the wall. But the canine did not once make another move to attack again. Instead it remained completely still and watched him.

Inquiry gleamed in those keen golden eyes but Yugi had no answers. It watched him for a moment longer, as if peering inside of him and searching but finding nothing. It seemed to understand his inability to answer and even accept it. It raised its head after a moment, its eyes still locked with his, and its mouth opened more fully. He could see each tooth that made up its bottom jaw and realized as its tongue lolled over its incisors that it was grinning at him playfully. A long black tail flicked slowly back and forth from one side to the other. A soft breath left its mouth in a bright white puff with a soft snort that seemed almost like laughter.

Yugi blinked in curiosity as he regarded the canine before him. Its jaw was so large but a little narrower than that of the wolf that had been hit the day before. The teeth were bigger than what he remembered of Tomoya and Ushio and the Burger World employee. The chest was larger, a small bit rounder. Its build was extremely muscular, long and robust. The head was in good proportion with the body and moderately wide between the eyes with a slightly rounded forehead and cheeks that didn't look too full as they curved slightly when its lowered its head to regard him more pointedly. Yugi blinked and glanced at the feathered design of its long tail, the way it hung almost perfectly straight at its hocks. Its paws were large and rounded with a well-closed arch, with long and sharp thick black nails. The dewclaws were longer than he recognized on most breeds, curved beautifully like crescent moons.

When he raised his gaze again, the almond-shaped eyes were curious but his own fell suddenly on the ears. When they flicked to the side the fur protecting the cartilage made it seem thick and firm in their medium size, moderately wide at the base but slightly rounded at the top in a way that made them appear more wolf-like. The dog wagged its tail a bit more and then bowed in front of him, panting happily in front of him.

Yugi was still too unsure and alarmed to do much more than focus on breathing and watching it closely and carefully. His mouth still tasted of his blood, strong and burning, and he found it hard to even swallow as the canine remained standing in front of him. That long tail continued waving back and forth before it straightened to its full height and huffed once more. The sound was of something like extreme disappointment. Its ears flattened for a moment and its mouth closed as it turned away abruptly.

There was not a glance spared in his direction as it began to trot away. Yugi watched its tail bounce lightly with each swift step. Sitting up a little more and unable to look away, he watched the large body as the canine continued briskly. Its pelt looked like the gentle shadow of water stirred by the wind, unnaturally beautiful and gentle. Yet, it was possibly the most unnerving thing Yugi had thought of in what seemed like years.

It took what seemed like hours for the residual fear to leave him and allow his spine to release its stored tension. Every inch of his body was cold and numb where the air touched it and his lungs felt shaky as he drew in a breath. The wall felt jagged like broken glass as his right hand reached back to grip it for support. Weakly he straightened his legs out, the nerves tingling from their former disuse. He pressed his palm firmly against the concrete, the edges digging into his skin harshly. His breaths came out in ragged white puffs as he straightened his legs and pushed himself unsteadily to his feet.

His skin felt raw and almost blistered as he stumbled forward twice and looked around once more. His stomach flipped lightly, his mind dizzy as he considered the way to go home. He did not want to risk running into Tomoya's father again. He didn't want to see his friends either when they tried to meet up with him as they had all planned. And he had no desire to run into any more of the wolves—hybrids or otherwise.

Going back routes would most likely ensure no potential of running into the three of them. However, he was well aware that it left far more room for one of the wolves to find him. He recognized the case with which such an event could happen considering. He wasn't stupid enough to consider that it wouldn't happen even without his horrible luck at the moment.

Dismissing that altogether, when he considered it all, he had no idea how to tell a werewolf from an average person. And he had no idea how many existed in Japan, let alone Domino. How many of his schoolmates were infected like he was now? Kokurano and Tomoya had shown no signs of being different, nor had Ushio for that matter. Kokurano had been an average, attention-starved pervert, Tomoya a shy and friendly boy, and Ushio the usual everyday bully. There had been no true signs of such a disease in any of them—or at least Yugi could not think of any.

Then again…was Yugi himself showing any obvious signs? Was he acting unusual and different?

He considered it for a moment, wondering and curious. Besides being more fearful and a bit more restless he did not think so. But he had never been one for self-analysis and trying to think back to before the attack seemed almost impossible. The weight with which the infection pressed upon his life made an almost impenetrable wall in which it all seemed to become a jumbled, knotted mess with a clear line drawn between then and now. He did not even fathom that he might be able to scratch the surface of such an obstacle. With such a foreboding thought, Yugi was not even willing to attempt it. Just as he would not think back to that night either.

There had to be a limit, he realized, as he began to move forward and turn on his heel to take the longer way home, to just how much one could learn and deal with later, whatever that truly entitled anyways. He wasn't entirely sure what there was that he _could_ deal with and not end up having something like a mental breakdown. He had never had a full one before but he thought—as he had several times growing up—that he had had a handful of smaller ones. He thought parts of him had broken away, weathered like rock when buffeted by wind and water. It was almost like watching ice splintered by water or a glass cup shattering on the floor. He thought sometimes that he could physically feel where they were missing, almost like he imagined a phantom limb might.

The thought brought to mind his wounds and his stomach twisted. With all of these recent scares and his awkward fumbling to deal with it all, would his wounds be better or worse? Had any of the adrenaline rushes amassed enough endorphins to help ease the process or had it made them considerably worse?

He needed to check when he was home again. If they needed to be dressed again he would have to find a time when his family wasn't home. If he could do that, he imagined the whole thing would be much easier. Maybe then even his paranoia would calm enough that he wouldn't have to constantly look over his shoulder with the idea that his mom or grandpa would suddenly appear. Then perhaps he could even heal it enough that this would be the last.

He wished he had been clever enough to try to breathe in Tomoya's father's scent. He knew it, of course, from the short intervals of exposure to him while at his home. His mind would recognize and identify it immediately if it passed though the air near him, but he could not actively recall it to use for something like tracking. He also wouldn't have been able to use it as a way of scoping out his location so that he could flee if he approached again.

Yugi groaned under his breath at the thought but still made his way home.

* * *

He almost hoped it was all a simple trick of the light as he looked down at his skin. His head was spinning as he licked his lips and swallowed back the impulse to whimper under his breath. His mouth was steadily growing dry, his saliva thick and pasty as it glued his tongue to his palate. Someone else would have been relieved to see what he was looking at but all he could grasp at was another cold fear licking at his insides.

Contrary to what one might think, Yugi had no true problem with believing it all. He had found himself trusting his senses over his mind when he had first realized what Ushio and Tomoya had been. He had not really been narrow-minded while growing up and so he had had no reason to ignore what his told him he had seen. He could wrap his mind around it despite his initial reluctance to do so. Truly and completely accepting all of these things and where they impacted him was something else entirely.

He had hoped, however, that maybe his idea that he'd been infected was wrong. But now, looking at his former wounds, he knew there was no chance by any means. The punctures had become nothing more than closed skin. There was not even the light, pinkish scar tissue flesh that should have been there. When he bent and stretched his arm and fully over his head, there was not even a tiny sting of pain. Before he had been unable to extend it fully and especially angle it over his head but now he had regained full mobility.

When he undid the clasp of his choker and pulled it off to look his neck over, he was both relieved and horrified. There was not even a trace of blue or yellow bruising. The hideous-looking wound that he had thought of so many times fleetingly as a chunk of his flesh missing had healed perfectly. When he angled his chin and watched his reflection, there was not even the slightest pull of skin and muscle and it was all the same uniform pale creamy tone as the rest. There was no evidence that spoke of his arm nearly torn from its socket or his crushed collarbone or broken ribs.

He flinched as he recalled the violent popping and the pain when his bones had mended themselves after that dream.

Yugi blinked and chewed his lip, wondering at the idea for a moment. What had he been dreaming of when he had woken up? All he really remembered beyond the noise was his tongue tasting of bright red blood. He had been unable to forget that by any means as he had spent over an hour checking his mouth for the source of it. He still had no explanation of where it had come from but he no longer wanted to dwell on it. He was praying that it was not linked into his night terrors and he wasn't stupidly sleepwalking. With this infection and how little he truly knew about it, he had no idea what might happen.

He could bite someone—maybe even kill them. That was hardly something he wanted to happen.

The thought made his skin crawl and his mouth feel dry again, but the accompanying one that chased it immediately made him tilt his head. A childish sensation of wonder and curiosity mixed with a scientific desire to find the answer. For a moment he fathomed it was somehow something like a string tugging at him, like a puppet made to dance by its master. The infection was somehow growing even more consuming and he thought for a brief moment how easily it could. All it would take, it seemed to him, was his curiosity pulling ahead of him and his inability to accept possible flukes in any answers he gathered. He could become so easily obsessed and consumed with it, just as he was with his video games.

He reached up to run his fingers over his throat. Maybe it had lost its wounded appearance but there would still be a small hinting reminder there regardless. He touched it hesitantly at first, thinking for a split fleeting second that maybe he was hallucinating and the tissue would be open and sore and bleeding when he did touch it. He exhaled sharply, deeply, when the skin quivered but remained smooth and warm beneath his fingertips. He cupped his hand, moving them to rest his palm over his pulse. The heat on his neck was constant and he realized it must have been a while ago that it healed and he had failed to notice.

His hand fell away to rest on his shoulder, running the length of his right arm where the gashes were formerly. It was all the same temperature. His entire body was the same in temperature and that meant the process had to have happened hours or so ago. But how had he failed to notice? His body healing itself would have produced an immense amount of heat.

Energy produced heat rather than disappearing altogether. It would have cooled down again, of course, but how could it be possible in any way that he had not known it was happening? Had it been while he was sleeping? Had he simply tossed his sheets off without waking?

He did not think it was possible that it had happened within the brief ten minutes he had been unconsciously reacting to Tomoya's father's presence. His wounds might not have been as bad as they were originally but it still would have been noticeable. It would have been focused in those two spots and it would have been impossible to ignore.

He also figured it might be better for the process to go unnoticed during sleep when it was deep enough that one wouldn't stir awake from it. That way maybe it would release the endorphins through the nerves already giving one dreams, almost like a second wave of pleasure.

It also made sense that it would not stress the host and cause it to reverse as he imagined it partially had while he was awake and watching his collarbone fix itself. And, perhaps more importantly, it did nothing to delay immediate healing later, as he had witnessed with the wolf before. Did it work both ways somehow? Or was he reading too far into it?

He would hardly have been surprised if it was the latter. He felt that it was probably entirely too accurate an idea to discount.

Yugi shook his head slightly and moved to gather the rest of the bandages he'd pulled away. With a dismissive glance at the mirror he hurried to drop the gauze and tape in the trashcan. He'd empty it out later that week but for now he had to stash it beneath the numerous crumpled up balls of paper. And then he would have to find a way to stash the notebook he had been thinking about most of the walk home.

He had needed something to distract him from the idea of Tomoya's dad finding him and so he had chosen a less than pleasant idea to focus on. He had made up plans to grab a new spiral notebook and list the results of his bleeding time tests. He would do one every hour, as closely in time as possible, and then worry about the rest later. He needed to find a hiding place for it, however, and be careful about anyone finding it. And he wasn't sure if he could take it from the house because, if he lost it, someone would be looking at a list of dates, bleeding time numbers, notes, times inflicted, times healed, and any other small things he put. It would not take a rocket scientist to recognize that there was something severely wrong with such contents. They would assume he was doing something either illegal or unsafe and maybe even call the police on him.

And he highly doubted it would be hard for them to match his handwriting. He had been complimented on its neatness too many times to assume it was entirely generic. So he had no idea when and how he would begin or even if it was truly safe to do so. And he knew he wouldn't be able to keep track of it all in his head. His thoughts were always too scattered about and the numbers would all eventually become one big mess.

He almost wanted to smile at that thought but focused instead on the idea he had been fussing over while on his way home. He didn't have a blood pressure cuff to maintain the venous pressure as opposed to an official hospital test. And he had always been rather bad with lengths which made him hesitant. The whole point of a bleeding time test was to have a cut of standardized length and depth while the pressure remained constant. The incision was made by an automatic device in a hospital, yet another drawback.

He wasn't beyond what his initial idea had been, however. In place of the cuff, he _could_ use a belt with just enough pressure that it made his veins show. He might feel like a drug addict while doing it but there wasn't much more of an option. He didn't want to risk using one of the cuffs in the clinic downstairs and spending money on one was hardly something he cared for. And how was he meant to explain it to his mom if he came home with one seemingly without reason like that?

But then, if he did not do as medically as he had originally imagined, the duke method was easy enough while at home. The only issue with that was an inability to judge longer and deeper wounds. The duke method was limited and only used a pricked finger rather than a real cut. And he had to wonder if the healing properties for a werewolf changed or varied depending on the wound that was inflicted. Smaller cuts were probably a lot easier to heal than something like the hybrid or wolf had been given. And, on that train of thought, was it not better to have an idea of what emotional states might do for a clotting factor as well? Surely being in a state of relaxation each time would give the same results and nothing would truly change within that.

Yugi pursed his lips and sighed in an uneasy frustration. He didn't trust himself to accurately follow instructions when he was anything _but_ levelheaded. He could very easily hurt himself more than he meant to or just miss the thirty second intervals altogether by way of distracted thoughts and the lack of a clear head. He slid his canines against one another, listening to the grinding to help calm his irritation.

A bleeding time test—unless he could manipulate his mood completely or find another way to work the duke method—was going to have to wait.

* * *

The selection of books on wolves at the library was an extremely poor amount of only three references. One of them was all about Domino City and its connection with the wolves before their extinction. When he flipped through the pages to check all of the information for something useful, he found that much of it was legends and only one of them even partially alluded to the existence of werewolves. The other two books were focused around their extinction and how a couple of teams of researchers believed that they were still there, hiding in the mountains and would maybe one day show themselves again.

Yugi found himself biting his lip at such a thought. It was no secret that many people believed that about the Honshu wolves. There were still sightings and pictures taken that were claimed to be of the small wolves. There was seemingly no such support for their larger brethren who so closely resembled the North American gray wolf, the Ezo wolf. The size difference between the two was rather amazing from what he had seen of them in the museum, and the werewolves were definitely like those of the Ezo bloodline. But he fathomed still that they were a bit larger than the Japanese wolf and he had the impulse to groan in irritation.

He was running on estimations rather than having the ability to truly compare and, while his mind was photogenic and he had an almost perfect recall for such things, he had been six when he had last gone to the exhibit. He didn't trust the accuracy of a ten-year-old memory.

The small teen pushed the book back into place on the shelf, chewing his lip. There was nothing in any of them about the physiology of wolves or anything similar. And werewolves were not terribly popular in Japan but then, neither were vampires. Kitsune, ancient fox spirits with otherworldly powers, were. And with their extinction now, there was no research to be conducted on the wolves. But he thought if he looked, he might find a million and one things about the kitsune.

It didn't truly matter, however, because fables about werewolves and things of that nature were not going to help him. He knew of Hollywood werewolves from books and movies and TV shows. He didn't need to know more about them. He needed to know more about the wolves themselves. The werewolves he had been exposed to were nothing like the man-wolves and beasts people so often seemed to love. They were, more or less, natural wolves safe for their human personalities if they actually did dictate anything concerning them.

He tapped a finger against the pages with narrowed eyes. Maybe he could order some books or download videos or something of that nature. He'd place a couple of holds on any books from neighboring libraries. They were bound to have more selection, seeing as the Domino City Public Library was admittedly rather tiny. But his best bet was an American book, because they still _had_ wolves, no matter how limited their range. They were always battling politically to show their positive impact on the ecosystem and keep them from being hunted to extinction.

He could easily order them. He could read English, after all, due to his dad's job and his own private classes when he was younger and he'd asked to be taught. He could only speak a few admittedly messy sentences, but he had no difficulty reading it.

Or maybe he would just go to Tokyo. It did, after all, have the largest library in Japan known as the National Diet Library. It had a massive collection of 41.88 million books, and maybe one of them would actually help him.

He let out a small sigh and pulled his hand away, turning towards the computers. Unlike the larger libraries, there were only two in use for catalogue searches and a large room of over thirty for students working on exams. The one nearest to him sat in between two shelves, on a tiny desk in the way that a store would set up sale items at the end of each aisle to get more attention. When he glanced aside to see if anyone else was headed the way so he could allow them to go before him, there was not a person in sight.

The realization was somehow incredibly depressing. He felt inexplicably lonely as he cast one last glance and made his way to the computer.

He placed about fifteen books on hold and debated once more whether to order some online. His dad always put money every month in his bank account and he could easily order them using his debit card. His dad had several online accounts just for these kinds of things so that his mom could order new tools and the expedited shipping would more or less be free.

He cast one more small glance around, once again finding his insides twisting as he realized no one had come around. Regardless, he straightened to his full height and turned on his heel to start for the door again. A few small kids were messing with the picture books in the corner and the computers were all in use. A couple of elderly citizens were reading the newspapers and the staff was having a small conversation behind their desks.

He went unnoticed as he left the building and his mouth felt mildly dry. He'd have to use his laptop to find out more information and lists of books. He would look up a few things but he was well aware that sometimes books had more information than websites and vice versa. But researching online was not really one of his favorite options, if only because his mom would use it and find what he was looking up. She would be far from happy with his choice to read about them when it would taken time from his studies and helping her in the clinic. The fact that they were not an immediate thing in life would make it seem rather useless to her.

She was all about utilizing time and making sure his future was bright. Reading up on an animal that no longer existed in Japan and had no bearing on his life would merely frustrate her. And she would never believe him if he mentioned werewolves. If she didn't consider him insane and have him carted off, she would blame her father for telling him stories growing up. She would even blame Anzu for her paranormal romance stories because of their fictional existence. She had never been big on such things and she would rather keep it from him as well.

Using his phone would only get him so far. Some sites wouldn't open properly and, if they did, they would work for only a minute and then try to convince him his phone was infected with an annoying pop-up window. For his own sanity he did not truly consider it an option.

She could find out about it later when she used it to look up new techniques and order tools. He had decided he didn't care halfway home and that feeling had not changed whatsoever. He had to at least have a _miniscule_ speck of understanding of the animal he would soon be changing into. It didn't matter that the whole thing would be different and no internet article would prepare him. It only mattered that he at least knew _something_ about the wolf even with how limited it might be.

His mom and grandpa were gone, most likely at the main clinic, when he came inside. He listened for only a moment, catching the hum of the fridge and the tick of the clock on the bathroom wall. He wasn't entirely sure when but the animals had been moved out at some point and he techs had gone with them. He guessed that was even better for him when it came down to it. Maybe he wouldn't jump every thirty seconds with the idea that they were behind him.

He spent an hour reading an article on the gray wolf, _canis lupus_ , and had found himself more focused on the images for the majority of it. When he studied them, none of them looked much like the black one but _entirely_ like Tomoya and Ushio had. Scrolling further down again, he'd found a list of subspecies and the hybrid had immediately come to mind when he'd come across a family tree and clicked on it. He picked his way to the list of dog breeds. He had to scroll near the end of the list of pure breeds that led to a massive chart of over four hundred.

He considered the hybrid to have shepherd qualities and so had chosen it as the way of finding what the hybrid might have been mixed with. He was not disappointed when he found a list of breeds that originated from it. The first, the Czechoslovakian wolf-dog, was a far cry from what he had been looking for. It was _far_ too lean, the weight too small, and the coat type was miles from a match.

The second, however, was a perfect match.

It was called a king shepherd. It was a cross between a German shepherd, Newfoundland, and a Shiloh. It was robust and solid, with a long tail, almond-shaped eyes, and longer fur. And its weight seemed to fall into the right category of seventy to one hundred and ten pounds. He knew that wolves were relatively large weight and it could have easily influenced its build but after looking at all of those pictures, he thought it looked much more dog than wolf.

It seemed ironic to think such a thing when both breeds were considered wolf-dogs.

Yugi ran a hand through his hair and fell back against his seat with a sigh. The Newfoundland genes explained the wideness of the cheeks. Larger breeds had massive jaws and they could gather a lot more in their mouths that way. No wonder Ushio's killer had been able to crush his skull with that bite. No wonder it had been able to drag his entire body there using that same killing wound. From what he knew its cheeks had expanded enough for it to comfortably grip him there and pull him along without much issue.

Yugi burst out laughing at the realization.

He was turning into one of those.

 **Next couple of chapters will probably be late. My work schedule is a lot of days without break.**


	8. Wolves

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day (no update on June 2nd)**

 **Chapter warning: None really (There is a misuse of information regarding lunar phases and the Wiccan practices regarding them, but that shouldn't be offensive)**

 **So! Work killed me. I had to cover for a friend and it gave me overtime (yay~!) but it SERIOUSLY cut me off from doing edits or writing anything. So this is being posted on the wrong day since I was HOPING to do it yesterday and that didn't pan out. TRYING to get back on schedule for the 31st and past that. So expect the next update to be on the 31st and then to HOPEFULLY get back on schedule with it again.**

 **Yugi might seem slightly OOC in this chapter, especially when he talks about the wolves. The reason being is he's caught up in his own thoughts and things of that nature. He's also slightly depressed because of all that is going on and he's desperate not to believe in what he realizes/finds out afterwards.**

Chapter VIII: Wolves

 _Work Log Entry VIII: September, 1994_

 _September 20_

 _The pair has finally copulated for the first time. There is no indication that the female went into heat at any time prior to this. We are still watching to see if perhaps we have overlooked her cycle._

His skin was beginning to itch along his fingers. It was one that spread down into the muscle, refusing alleviation as he tried to scratch it away. The flesh had turned bright red with irritation, burning from the abuse, and Yugi absently turned back to the laptop in front of him as he brought his left index finger to his mouth. He gnawed on the offending digit, his saliva seeming to soothe and irritate it all at once. His right palm was itching as well now, sweaty where it rested against the mouse he had hooked up. He scrubbed it against the material of his jeans, still struggling with the task of chewing away this annoyance on his left hand. He thought briefly of reaching into the desk to pull out a pen and use the engraved logo on the side to scratch it but he didn't want to waste the energy.

The denim just wasn't working, however, and it almost seemed to be making it worse. Distractedly he pulled his hand away from his mouth again to scratching rigorously at his palm. Heat burst upwards at the action but gave no relief. Yugi let out a furious rumbling noise from somewhere deep in his chest and scraped his hand against the underside of the desk.

"For _fuck's sake_!" he spat out, realizing rather abruptly what the sound he had made was.

He straightened, forgetting even the tingling that had demanded his attention only moments before. The realization was a sobering one and the intensity with which it barreled through him made his spine ache violently. He was growling again, like a disgruntled dog. Yugi nearly groaned at the idea but sighed loudly instead and drummed his nails against his thigh. He supposed the noises came with the territory or something like that. But, then, he didn't really think that mattered all that much when it came down to it. What actually mattered in that moment was that he suddenly felt hyperaware of just what time it was.

He glanced towards the window and his stomach turned. The sun had just set but he couldn't see the moon due to the amount of clouds in the sky. What phase was it in? It wasn't a new thought that maybe the Change corresponded with the moon, but it seemed to have more truth to it now. When had he been bitten? When the moon was waxing or waning? He thought it must have been the former, that the full moon had been on its way to appearing beforehand. But then, how close was it?

He would have to check one of the lunar calendars later, though with how his body seemed to be reacting he imagined the moon could not be far from being full. And it was still October, the Month of the Gods, which meant there would be a festival in honor of them. Domino, however, was known for worshipping the okami more than most of the others, and the irony of this was not lost on him. Unlike most of Japan, it had not lost its worship of the Oguchi No Magami, the Large-Mouthed Pure God, otherwise known as the wolf deity.

He rolled his eyes towards the ceiling with a wry smirk, and pushed the soles of his sneakers against the wall behind the desk. He had forgotten to leave them in the living room in his haste but he doubted anyone would mind when it came down to it. His mom was not as strict as she could have been where this rule was concerned. He thought it was more that she was tired after work and so didn't think much of it despite their culture. At a friend's house, however, he would never have done such a thing and would have put them away for house slippers immediately.

He squinted, eyes cast out the window, straining for a sight of just how full the waxing moon was. He couldn't tell by the light reflected by the clouds around it and he did not want estimations but an actual answer. But he could smell the rain even through the tiny gap in the window and he knew just by the heaviness of its scent that it would be lost for several hours in the very least.

He turned back to the laptop, pursing his lips and chewing the inside of his cheek. The browser was still up and waiting and Yugi felt his stomach twist uncomfortably as his mind drew itself at a blank. What was he supposed to search exactly? And how was he meant to phrase it? His fingers hovered over the keyboard as if it might help him find the words, and he found himself somehow soothed by the clicking of his nails when he tapped them against the silver keys. He took a moment to consider simply putting in the full moon for October that year but it occurred to him to try to plan ahead with it all. He could write each of the dates down and prepare to the leave the house those nights.

When he put in a search for lunar cycle, links appeared for similar things, one of which read "lunar cycles and magic". It was not the exact thing he had been searching for, but he did realize that the concept was of the same general reality. Werewolves weren't natural, so they had to be classified as _somewhat_ magical, right? Or maybe that was too large a leap to make.

Yugi hesitated for a few minutes and then slowly clicked on it, stomach twisting violently. The first link that appeared said something about Wiccans and he tilted his head at the thought, but it also mentioned "the true phases of the moon". Despite his initial skepticism that the moon was the same everywhere and so its phases and cycles were no different, he clicked on it. In the few seconds he had spared for brief debate he had come across the very disturbing thought that he needed to be absolutely sure. He didn't want to underestimate it all and find himself harming someone because he had dismissed information outright.

A visual display of the moon going through its cycles was the first thing to appear on the screen in front of him. The small teen pursed his lips as he used the mouse's scroll button to read beneath it. The display moved with it for a split second before minimizing and taking place of his cursor. Yugi eyed it uncomfortably for a long moment, the constant movement catching his attention continuously. He turned away again to look at the words on the page but it still made him hiss with displeasure as he exhaled softly. He hated the stupid icon as it pulled at his attention with such demand. His eyes easily glanced over the information—the moon was perceived as a female goddess, the moon had a profound impact on everyone, the highest energy occurred when it was at its fullest and so that was when it was the most powerful for magic working.

Yugi skipped past that and froze, eyes wide. Beneath the last handful of words, was a divider, made of eleven wolves crossing the screen. Under this was a list of the moon's phases and then below it was a list of the phases' correspondences for magical working. He couldn't stop glancing at the eleven silver wolves on the screen in between words and his heart stopped as he looked at the passage again. Beneath the listing of the full moon and its influence was yet another list of days that read from one to seven and he realized with dread that each phase was written the same way. Each of them read that there were three days before, the day it was at its most powerful, and three after.

He nearly puked as he stared at the screen blankly. It read that each cycle lasted seven days.

Yugi whimpered softly, clicking the back button even as his eyes shot once more to the wolves. He swallowed thickly and the cursor seemed to be vibrating before he realized his hand was shaking. The next site mentioned a ten-day use of the full moon and the third said only three, one day before and one after. Each heavily implied that the influence in question became apparent the moment the sun began to set.

He groaned softly, annoyed, as he quickly closed the browser and ran his hands through his hair. He was somehow exhausted now as he leaned back completely in his seat and struggled to keep his breathing steady. Panic was setting in, a slow and harsh chill slamming through him violently.

Which did he go by, the ten-day idea? The seven? The three? Or was it just the one?

But he didn't think someone's body could possibly be forced into an entirely different shape so often without dire repercussions.

Wouldn't someone's brain become immensely stressed from the constant pressure each Change must have placed on it?

Wouldn't it reduce its capabilities somewhat, if not _drastically_?

Wouldn't it become all _but_ dead after a few times?

If not, then something had to make it immensely more powerful in that either it was somehow cushioned or it protected itself. How that was even manageable was another question altogether. He didn't want to fully think on such a thing at the moment, however, and so he pushed it away with another.

He had not figured out how close the full moon was, considering that had been the only reason he had run across the last few sites. He almost reached for the mouse again but instead scrambled to remember the date for the festival he was going to be attending later that month. The whole thing was focused around the full moon, after all, and he knew the date was not too far away.

He narrowed his eyes, closing them tightly and pressing his shoes more fully against the wall as he made the chair stand lightly on two legs. He had memorized the date in order to be sure his time would be free to hang out with the others as he had wanted. He ignored the thought of just how impossible that might be and instead dug further. It eluded him for several minutes before slowly coming forward as his stomach jumped and somersaulted.

He only had ten days—including that day—before the full moon came.

That debunked the ten-day idea that the magic was meant to abide by according to that second site, but that did nothing to assure him of the seven-day. There were only going to be three days before the start of it and then he supposed by sunset he would have to be out of Domino and far enough away that if it happened he wouldn't hurt anyone.

With such a rather nonexistent understanding of this disease, Yugi thought it was easily best to assume the worst and prepare accordingly.

* * *

Yugi was only partially surprised when he found a new voicemail while he was playing on his phone looking for some information on wolves to help calm his nerves after breakfast. He had not recognized the number and so had simply ignored it, not expecting a message at all. It was still extremely early and school had been canceled for the day because a teacher's workday was in order. The rest of the week would be the same in honor of the festival as it was one of the largest in Domino. With most of his days freed up, as he knew they would be, he had decided there was no better time to research. Apparently the library agreed with him because the books had come in and all but one of them was waiting for him.

He hummed softly, relieved by the arrival of these new resources to use. The internet was giving him recycled information like that they looked a lot like large German shepherds with pretty silver pelts. It also said wolves were one of—if not _the_ —most hated animals on earth. There were always small bits about them having forty-two teeth and usually dying when they were around seven. There was, of course, the constant note that dogs were descended from them. Everything was extremely limited and increasingly frustrating to read under so many different links.

Yugi welcomed the arrival of the books with an intense excitement and curiosity he had never truly thought himself capable of concerning learning about wolves of all things. He made his way there quickly, hoping to learn as much as he could about the animals before he went to possibly turn into one later that day.

Due to the early hour, the building was nearly deserted. He recognized two of his schoolmates sitting at one of the tables, but he could not recall their names. They had their seats pressed close together, however, and he thought they might have been holding hands under the table. He thought they looked cute but not in a way that was memorable. He dismissed his immediate thought that maybe he and Anzu would have been just as easily overlooked in the grand scheme of things. It was disconcerting to realize the weight of such an idea. Maybe they would have been a simple background noise in everyone else's lives as a couple if not for the very reason he was there. Looking at them, with that thought in mind, he doubted he would ever have that simplicity again.

It had been lost in only a matter of days.

He wanted to laugh at himself. What _hadn't_ changed recently? What wasn't able to be snatched away in mere seconds in life? At least he was still alive, which was more than he could say for others. Whatever the reason, the wolf had chosen to save him just as Tomoya had seemed to do when he and Ushio had fought. Whatever this new wolf wanted—with him, with their own life—was another thing entirely but he knew it was there. It had howled when the Burger World employee had gone after him and he highly doubted that it was by mere coincidence. It seemed to be watching out for him for whatever reason and he could not deny that he was thankful for it, no matter what its motivation was. It could have easily killed him at any moment if it so wished.

It knew where he lived. It had demonstrated well its capability to kill and go undetected. He was sure it would easily be able to eat him alive if it only wanted. He could have wound up the next Miho or Tomoya or Ushio any time. And now, maybe, with this bite and the infection—if it wasn't a curse—he might be able to even go as far as to protect himself and even heal from wounds quickly. They could have—Tomoya or Ushio or this wolf—inadvertently given him the very gift of survival despite it all.

Yugi at least counted that as a blessing as he went to the hold bookcase and pulled the fourteen reference books with his name written on the slip of paper wrapped around their spines with a heavy rubber band. He didn't bother with the main desk, heading for the self-checkout machine. A small metal cup with a note taped across the front was filled almost to the brim with rubber bands. He pulled his own off, listening to the sharp thudding noises it made against the lamination of each cover, and dropped it into the cup.

His actions were automatic, almost mechanic, as he pulled his library card from his jacket pocket. When he scanned it, he thought the beep was deafening in the silence and he glanced around awkwardly. No one seemed to notice, however, or at least no one looked up. He glanced around at them all for a long moment and then turned away to see his account highlighted on the screen. He scanned each book, surprised to find that one was actually a magazine that he knew would not be solely about the canines. He printed a receipt though there was no due date for them unlike at the high school. No public library in Japan had due dates on their books when they were checked out, but he did know that Domino High was the only school library system that did that as well.

He headed for the door without a backwards glance, wishing momentarily that he had brought his bag. But it was early and he had not thought to with the need to get the books. It had seemed like a waste to grab it, as if he thought this wealth of information—as limited a he knew it might have been—would disappear if he did not gather it quickly.

It seemed foolish now but he hardly cared any longer. The walk was only about ten minutes if he moved fast enough. He'd be home with plenty of time to read up and maybe take notes about whatever it was that caught his attention. He questioned what in all he might find, especially now that he realized only one looked like it might have more than mostly just colorful pictures and small passages. Most likely he would have to order some American books as he had originally assumed.

But, in the meantime, he could learn whatever these books had to offer.

He was paranoid when he walked inside. His ears were strained immediately with the intent to catch any movement. He had decided he would put the books in his bag whenever he wasn't reading he wouldn't have to worry about his mom finding them that way. But the harder he listened the less he seemed to truly hear. He could only catch the sound of the clock ticking and the hum of the refrigerator. He faintly recognized the tapping of water dripping from the faucet in the bathroom sink but there was nothing else as he struggled harder for any hint of life there. There were no heartbeats or steady breaths, however long he listened, and so he made an immediate beeline for his room.

He dropped the books on the bed, glancing at his laptop distractedly, and then quickly grabbed the magazine to skim through. As he had expected, it was not all about the wolves, and really all he could find were four articles. The rest were about their prey and how humans had exterminated them like rats in several areas because of livestock. He read some of the information rather sparingly on their reintroduction to certain areas, and all it did was anger him. It had become a well-known and proven fact that wolves did not care to be around people. They wanted nothing to do with the areas in which humans lived and so thought it was rather sufficient to say that cattle was not truly in danger. He thought it was an excuse to kill them because people were greedy and stupid. And he was rather sure there had to be another, more _peaceful_ way, to protect livestock.

Yugi finished having only learning that red wolves and coyotes had crossbred to make a species called the coywolf and the obvious statement that they came in various colors.

The second reference he grabbed heralded the unusual information that some dogs—possibly wolf-dogs—could climb trees due to rougher pads on their paws. There was another bit that they never matured with blue eyes. He also learned that wolves did not have dewclaws on their hind legs and that it was a sign of it being a hybrid should such a trait be seen.

He stopped reading after the fourth, too frustrated to go on. It was all repeating itself again and he had no real need to know the differences between wolves and dogs. Sure, it might help him to identify the hybrid species should he ever need it, but he wanted something completely about the wild canines. He needed something that had more to it than the fact that they howled and the leader was called the alpha and the weakest the omega.

Something had occurred to him, however. Since each book had mentioned the howling so often, how was it that no one had noticed the wolves in the first place? He realized, of course, that there were packs of wild dogs out in the woods, but surely their howls would sound different, right? He was sure wolves had a rather unique howl, barring that each of them had their own personal voice. He knew that dogs could howl and some people tried to make their pet imitate wolves using videos, but he felt that there would be a difference regardless. He thought for sure that the hybrid would sound different than the wolf that always seemed to howl when he was threatened. Or perhaps it was so subtle a thing that no one would be able to tell the difference.

Yugi blinked at the thought and then narrowed his eyes. Some people believed that the wolves still existed there regardless so maybe the howls had become nothing more than a reassurance to them that their guardians had not abandoned them. It was a strange thought but it made sense to him, especially where the older cities were concerned. Everyone had their own beliefs, no matter how small or large or practical or nonsensical. He did not think that it was as confusing and humorous as it had been before he had werewolves slip into his life like this.

Maybe someone had seen them at some point and that was how the rumor had remained alive. But then, most of those stories resolved around the Honshu wolf and never the Ezo which the werewolves' sizes were more similar to. Yugi shook his head, exhausted by the way his mind circulated so pointedly over that fact and left it spinning. He closed his eyes and rubbed at his temples, shaking his head slightly and sighing loudly.

He had not gotten enough sleep to stay awake and focused on all of it. When he glanced at his reflection in the corner of his eye he almost wanted to snarl in frustration. The entire situation was dragging at him now with such incredible force that he wanted to lie down and not bother with anything for years.

Grinding his teeth forcefully, he moved to scoop his books together and place them in his bag before dropping it beside his desk and humming softly as he fell back against the mattress without a second tired thought. He yawned softly and squeezed his eyes shut as his mind began to sluggishly slow to a slight halt. The sunlight burned behind his eyelids, coloring them bright pink, and Yugi felt it lull at the edges of his consciousness. It felt like warm water caressing his skin and lapping gently at his senses.

Small touches of something like a gentle breeze seemed to travel over his skin for the briefest of moments. He startled violently, awake instantly, at the sound of the hallway door opening. He sat up, listening, and then made his way towards the door as well. The moment he stepped out, his eyes fell on his grandpa in the doorway. The elderly man was carrying a small bag of groceries and he could smell a hint of olive oil, immediately claiming his interest. Was he going to lay out another scent test for him or was it actually going to be used for cooking?

He never did know when it came to oils. He never knew the amount through smell alone because the scent was too thick and laden or thin and overpowering. There was never an in between with them and that was always enough to have him unable to identify its amount.

"Grandpa, hi," he greeted warmly, smiling faintly and watching as he looked up with a somewhat startled expression.

"Ah, Yugi!" he stated happily, grinning and gesturing with a sweep of his arm towards the kitchen. Yugi watched the bag as it swayed with the movement, and hurried in to take a seat at the table. There was a cloth on it, he noticed with interest, a white cotton or polyester with knitted, entangled flower-like designs about an inch long on the edges. He stroked it for a moment but quickly looked up again as his grandpa spoke.

"So, it's the Month of the Gods," he announced with a lazy smile, making Yugi tilt his head to the side.

"The Month of the Gods," he echoed, voice light and curious, the undertone of interest making his ears burn. The olive oil smell burned at his senses and his head was beginning to feel lighter. But something almost ionized and warm, light to touch with gossamer affection, seemed to stroke at his senses. "Yeah."

"Do you know who Oguchi no Magami is, Yugi?"

Yugi stayed quiet for a moment, staring even as he tilted his head to the other side in clear question. He pressed his foot against the ground heavily, leaning forward with curious eyes. "The Large-Mouthed Pure God," he said with an odd sense of awe and excitement mixing as he smiled widely. "He's a wolf."

"So you do remember him then." Yugi watched him place a small jar of olive oil on the table like it was a center piece. The small teen stared at it momentarily and then lifted his eyes to his grandpa's once more. An intense sting of curiosity made him lean forward further, eyes wide as he watched him pull out what looked like a dark red candle. He couldn't smell around the oil, however, and pursed his lips at the realization. It was frustrating to be unable to tell if it was scented or not ahead of time because he knew that would be the question asked soon enough.

"Yeah." He had never been able to forget him. He had always imagined a bright white wolf with fur that glowed like sunlight and eyes that had no true colors. He was massive, with jaws the size of a house, which opened and closed like a crocodile's. His shoulders rose like mountains and his paws were the size of lakes. "I remember him."

His grandpa nodded and set the candle next to the small jar. His eyes were burning with something like amusement. "Can you smell it?"

"No," he admitted with a firm frown. "It is scented?"

"That's for you to tell me."

He fell silent, staring at the wax and chewing his cheek as he narrowed his eyes. The candle sat in a low glass bowl with a gray lid that had been pulled off and set beneath it. Yugi leaned back in his seat, biting his lip. The tag had been pulled away and he could see only the white of the thin paper and glue aged lightly yellow. He recognized the brand but he could not match the color with any certain scent. The colors were all similar shades when it came to red due to the pigmentation it possessed. Candle wax didn't ever seem to hold its various shades and hues as it so easily did others.

He tried his hardest to smell it, leaning forward again and breathing deeply. He opened his mouth a small centimeter, drawing in a breath and nearly choking. The olive oil was heavy, swamping his senses and making his throat feel swollen. His mouth watered, trying to push the smell out, and he blinked hard to prevent the urge to gag as his stomach somersaulted once. His nose ached and burned as he tried again. He took a moment to breathe slowly and fully to rid himself of the sensations as quickly as he possibly could.

His grandpa chuckled in amusement at the sight and his mustache wiggled with the movement. Yugi ignored him and shifted his teeth against each other awkwardly to keep from gagging. The motion helped to calm his frustration somewhat, the noise clearing his head minutely. He waited a moment after his nose seemed to lose its burn and then drew in a slow, steady breath that seemed to take minutes to fill his lungs. He could only catch the olive oil and he wiped his nose unhappily as it tingled.

"It's unscented," he scoffed, glaring at him angrily. "It's unscented but you spilled some oil on the top of it."

He chuckled a little louder, shaking his head with bright eyes. "It's scented," he replied, "but you're right. I did spill some oil on it. You would know what it was otherwise."

Yugi scowled. "I don't see why you keep doing this anyways," he snapped in annoyance. "It's not like it does anything for me."

"Don't you like learning about your own capabilities?"

"No." _Yes_. "It's stupid." _It's_ amazing.

"You think that now, but one day you'll be thankful for it," the elderly Motou teased, smiling widely and shaking his head.

"I highly doubt that, Grandpa."

"Oh, but you'll see some day, Yugi."

He rolled his eyes but smiled despite himself. His gaze flickered briefly towards the candle again. If he could get it closer he knew he would have been able to identify it immediately but he also knew the point of it was to figure it out without taking an easier route. He was testing his sense of smell and cheating would do him no good. But focusing on it only made the pungent olive oil nearly drown him and that was not something that he could stand.

"You'll like it after you figure it out."

"I'd like it more if you would just tell me."

He chuckled again and shook his head, smiling at him and looking over his two items on the table. "You'll feel more accomplished when you find out yourself, Yugi."

"Whatever."

It was true, however. He knew that. It was undeniable and his draw to using his senses to find out was quickly becoming a necessity in mere seconds. He would end up furious and malcontent if he were to be told now. The idea of the easiest route possible was upsetting now and so he settled back against his seat again.

"Are you looking forward to the festival?"

Yugi hesitated and then chewed his cheek. "Yes."

"But?"

He narrowed his eyes, trying to find the words, and ground his teeth together to soothe at his jumbling thoughts. It all seemed to be racing in, like when a TV show used the black and white technique and then sprang into color again. He thought of wheels spinning and water crashing into land, of thunderstorms and dancing flames when the lights were turned off.

"Grandpa, why do we still celebrate the wolves if there aren't any left?"

It was something of a childish question and he felt almost as if he were six again, asking about things he didn't understand and had no grasp on. He felt small, undeniably so, and his mind seemed to flare with a curious intensity that made him want to flinch.

His grandpa tilted his head, leaning against the table and watching him with bright eyes. "What do you mean, Yugi?" he asked. "There are wolves all around us."

Something clawed at the surface of his mind, struggling for his attention but he was unable to focus as they looked at one another. The olive oil was making his head lighter than ever and his mind was scattered with jumbled, twisted thoughts. The wolves were all around them? Yugi watched him with an expression that he was sure showed his dazed confusion.

"Then why hasn't anyone said anything about them?"

He chuckled again, full of amusement and affection. "Because only the open-minded and smartest people can identify them. And most people won't accept what they can't explain. The wolves are intelligent creatures, Yugi, and they know how to hide and wait. They won't let anyone see them without their permission." He paused for a long moment, plum eyes sparkling with a keen intelligent mirth that made Yugi tilt his head. "They have to _want_ to let you see them or you'll spend your whole life wishing."

"Why would someone want to see them so badly?"

"Because, Yugi, they are a blessing and should be cherished. Many people will never know that, but those that do will never tell."

"Why not? Why wouldn't someone tell about the wolves if they're a blessing?"

"Because you should never share a blessing lest you can deal with the consequences, Yugi."

"What kind of consequences?"

"Many people would _kill_ to gain the blessing that the wolves are."

Yugi stayed silent, pondering, and then looked at the candle again. He caught the knit edges of the tablecloth between his fingers and twisted them back and forth. Something was still trying to come to the surface, clawed and drawing blood as it scrambled and tore through the mess of thoughts in his head. He scraped his nails over the threads for a moment, peering at the candle again.

"If they're a blessing, then why are they extinct here?" He shook his head. A million thoughts flashed through his head, of stories about wolves guiding lost souls through woods without exits. He thought of the stories about the wolves giving humans guidance and helping them to sort out their problems. "Or why did they try to hunt them to that state?"

"Because people are always afraid of what they don't understand."

"Why should they be afraid?"

He was silent for a moment and then watched him curiously. "The wolves are as much a curse as a blessing, Yugi, and people fear them by nature. And the wolves were too smart to stay openly around people. They are still here, but not to be coveted or abused like some would do."

"Why would someone want to abuse them?"

"People want things that they are not allowed and their blessing is something that they would murder for, Yugi."

"You said that," he mumbled almost inaudibly. He watched him with wide eyes for a moment, settling into the backrest of his chair once more. His mouth was growing dry again, eyes narrowing into slits as he watched his grandpa's face. He swallowed hard and then turned his attention towards the table for a moment. He closed his eyes after a second, shaking his head briefly. What was that thing clawing at his mind like this?

"So, the wolves…moved away then?"

"Some did."

There was a pause.

"But some are still here."

"Have you seen them?"

"No. I haven't been blessed enough to see them."

"Then…how do you know?"

His grandpa was chuckling again as he opened his eyes. Both of them were watching each other now, and Yugi felt himself leaning forward as if compelled to do so. His eyes shot to the table again, the small teenager feeling somehow unable to look at his grandpa any longer. That sensation of being small, almost tiny, made his head ache as he tried to concentrate again there was some kind of weight, a severity to the situation, and his throat seemed to close as he tried to push away the nagging in his head.

"I know more than you think, Yugi. The wolves are just one of many."

"And you're sure? That there are still wolves? How do you know they aren't dogs?"

"Trust me, Yugi, you know a wolf from a dog immediately."

He was dazed when his voice came out in a weak mumble of "Cinnamon. The candle is cinnamon-scented." Yugi shook his head slowly and got to his feet, unsure of what more to do or say. He made his way to his room again, head feeling oddly light and dizzy as the teen took a seat and squeezed his eyes shut tightly. He felt almost exhausted again as he fell backwards onto the mattress once more. He remained still, feeling as if the air had been sucked from his lungs rather suddenly.

His mind was still blank and the thought attempting to breach his focus refused to leave him as he tried to relax. His body was becoming wound tightly, burning him violently, and each muscle screamed painfully. His mind felt as if it were bleeding now, aching and burning as he struggled to lose the festering thought. He pushed at it, prodding desperately for information and ignorance all at once.

 _He_ knows, he realized abruptly, sitting up so swiftly that his head seemed to explode. His eyes shot open in horror, mouth dry and pasty, and his stomach churned as bile burned a path up his throat. His grandpa knew. He knew about the infection and the wolves, their entire existence. He had assumed that he had been telling him such things growing up had been because of Domino having such a rich history of it all. He had never thought much of it before because of where they lived but he recognized it now as he stared at the door and wondered if he had shut it when he'd come back into his room.

He scrambled, disoriented, and wondered in horror if he had somehow missed the signs of his knowledge. Did he know he was infected and that was why such a conversation had come up? But, then, he had always tested him. He was six the first time and he had just been told about the festivals and the wolves. He'd insisted on telling him and testing him further each time, saying multiple times that he just wanted to see if he could do whatever it was he asked. Usually it was focused on his sense of smell and Yugi felt his head spin as he considered this new thought.

Was the sense of smell not the most powerful on a canine? Was that not why they always used them to track down missing people and hunt in the woods? To detect bombs and drugs?

He shook his head slowly once. Why would he test him so early? He had no reason to. Unless, somehow… Yugi swallowed harshly. There was no way. His grandpa would never do that.

But he was unable to shake the sudden, irrational fear in his system.

 _Was_ it possible that the tests had been a way of signaling to the werewolves to bite him? Maybe Ushio had gone to bite him and so had Tomoya and so they had fought. It could explain Ushio staring at him so angrily and Tomoya appearing there to fight him off. Maybe it even explained Kokurano who could have been warning him away but had been unable to. But his words didn't match such a role and he felt that, if anything, he would have attacked him had he had the chance. If not for that sudden seizure he was sure that Kokurano would have tried to kill him. He had no delusions about that, despite his initial idea.

Yugi shook his head sharply and narrowed his eyes slightly as he swallowed thickly against the burn in his throat. He could not hear anyone in the house with him now. There was something of a painful, seemingly knowledgeable silence that seemed to sweep through the house like wind. The small teen clenched his jaw momentarily as he tugged on the comforter distractedly as tension made his muscles ache.

There was a weight to the air again, suffocating and draining as he struggled not to cry out. How was it possible that his grandpa had known for so long and kept it hidden from him so completely? How could he do such a thing to him like this? Why had he not told him? How could he just keep quiet when Yugi was sure that he knew? He must have seen the symptoms and _known_ what was happening and yet, somehow, he had kept his mouth shut.

 _How could he do such a thing_?

He growled low in his throat, the noise growing louder as the seconds passed.

How _could_ he? What kind of sick _fuck_ would do that?

He spat violently as he got to his feet and headed first for the door and then back to the bed once more, pacing swiftly. He swore under his breath almost inaudibly and spun on his heel again. How could anyone do something like that to someone—their own family? He could not understand how it was possible something like this could have happened. He was supposed to be his grandpa. He was supposed to love him. He was supposed to guide and protect him in life. He wasn't supposed to go behind his back with knowledge like that and pretend that nothing was wrong with it all. He was supposed to _care_.

The thought made him tremble. Had he cared? Had he _ever_ cared?

He trembled harder. He'd lied to him like that so easily that it was driving him insane. He had barely even seemed to blink at anything that would have shocked someone else. And he'd seemed to know that it would happen eventually. Maybe he had even convinced his mom that nothing had changed and pulled the wool over her eyes by turning her attention away so that she had not questioned it when he was still limping about.

Did his mom know too? Was it possible that she did and just wasn't saying anything either?

Yugi paused momentarily, blinking at the thought before scoffing loudly. His mom was not one to believe something like this. She was and always _had_ been someone who relied strictly on science and medicine. She had never believed in fairytales, even from childhood. From what he knew, she had always been interested in logic and never magic or miracles. She had been logical to the core and he had always thought that she must have gotten it from his grandmother because his grandfather was far from shunning towards tall tales and fables. He loved having and using his imagination and even sharing it with Yugi. He wanted him to think and explore, a contrast that was undeniable when compared to his mom's idea of the set path of graduating and becoming a vet.

She would never have hidden something like that from him had she ever known. It would have taken a lot for her to believe it in the first place. She would have had to see it and even then he thought she might deny it. If she could not explain it with copious amounts of evidence then she would never let it become anything else. And he knew for a fact that if she believed it and knew it all, Yugi would as well. She would never have left him in the dark about it.

So his grandfather was the one who had lied to him and hidden everything away.

He had been testing him for _years_ —his _whole_ life—to find out if he was one. Yugi chewed his cheek and shook his head after a long moment. Why would he do that? Disregarding his apparent knowledge of the whole situation, why would he have thought to do that? Was it genetic? But, then, that made no sense either. Neither his mom nor grandfather were growing fur and sprouting fangs. So why would he want to test him? Unless it was on his dad's side, in which case he doubted he would have told his father-in-law and completely bypassed his wife.

He shook his head again and drew in a deep breath, hissing when he finally exhaled.

* * *

His stomach growled viciously as he picked at the lamination on his book for a moment. He had skipped out on breakfast, pretending to sleep in, so that he could avoid running into his grandfather and being forced into conversation. The moment his mom had slipped from the house he had not hesitated to take off for the library to drop off the books after having spent the whole night reading each cover to cover. He'd learned enough to be satisfied for the moment, thankfully, and he supposed it would be easy to order some books and read them later if needed.

He tore off a small sliver of the plastic encasement and then slid it beneath the scanner moments later. His stomach let out a low, harsh gurgling almost as deep and angry as a dog growling. Yugi heard someone pause behind him, watching curiously. He didn't bother glancing up, instead scanning the next book and ignoring his stomach. It ached violently and twisted once more with a new loud, demanding snarl of hunger. And then a flash of ice and tension made his spine tighten and his muscles flare. He froze, listening first and then turning his head with wide eyes. His skin burned and pulsed, every hair standing at a bristle as he quickly scanned the area.

"You okay there, Yugi?"

He spun, furious with his mounting terror, and a tremor ran through his nerve endings like electricity. The books on the counter slid from the surface with a loud echo like rocks falling as they hit the linoleum. His heart was pounding and his ears were roaring with the pulse. His breathing came in short, shallow hisses. The other was only a few inches away from him, having snuck to his side silently moments before.

Standing with that mediocre amount of space between them was a brunet with spiky hair and glowing golden eyes. He stood a handful of inches taller than him. His shoulders were broader, but his build was somehow leaner where his own was compact.

His immediate thought was that he, like Ushio, was about to attack him. He was sizing him up without thinking it completely through but he was sure if the other wanted to, he could maim him without having to truly break a sweat. He was clearly a werewolf too with how his body was sent on such high alert by his mere presence. And Yugi lacked experience with fighting, much less with a werewolf.

There was something glimmering around his pupils, making the rest of those vibrant irises appear almost lifeless.

"You look a little ill."

"I'm fine," he snapped sharply before he could even think it through. His voice came out rough and angry, startling him, but the other boy failed to so much as blink. Impulsively Yugi felt an apology clawing at the back of his throat but his mouth refused to open. His muscles were bunching up harshly beneath his skin as if in preparation for the oncoming attack.

"Hmm," the other snorted, the left side of his mouth quirking up. Yugi took a step back when the other moved, startled. There was a soft, almost inaudible chuckle that left his mouth as his hand reached out. The smaller teen backed up again, hissing sharply. The other failed to look up even as he pulled the fallen books into a pile and scanned them over momentarily. He straightened without pause, putting them down again and smirking more fully at him. "Wolves, huh, Yugi?"

He was frozen in place, staring blankly as he struggled to grasp at a name.

"It's smarter to look at them instead," he commented, eyes dancing more completely. They glittered like gems and glowed a liquid topaz. "You never know what misleading things you'll find in mythology."

He opened and closed his mouth once before narrowing his eyes into slits. His eyes were so familiar, as was his appearance in general. Yet he couldn't recall a name.

The other teen flashed him a crooked grin as he leaned against the counter and watched him with vibrant amusement. His posture was anything but imposing or unfriendly, so relaxed that it almost seemed as if they had known each other their whole lives. It was almost enough to disarm him as he stared back and scrambled to place him, but his body was far too wired and he could not make it loosen in any way.

" _Valon_."

It was spoken so softly that he could barely hear it himself, but the brunet's eyes lit brighter and his smirk grew a bit wider. Valon raised a brow, narrowing his amused gaze so that it appeared very clearly to be playful to Yugi himself and anyone else looking over at them. It was only as his eyes shone more vividly beneath the shadows of his lashes that he recognized what it was that had thrown him off upon their gazes locking.

Yugi had gone through middle school with Valon in each of his classes. All three years Yugi had seen Valon somewhere amongst his classmates. He had only spoken to him a handful of times and so neither of them had become even remote friends. They got along well—Valon could hold up his end of a conversation without thinking about it and he was good at games. So he liked him, but their friends tended to butt heads and so no true friendship had come about between them.

However, back then, his eyes had been an incandescent blue the color of the sky rather than this startling shade of gold like baked sand. Rather, this new color reminded him uncannily of the hybrid and the thought made his head spin. So it was true then, that the canine had been a werewolf as well. The only thing that startled him now was that it was _Valon_ that it had become at the end of the night.

There was a rush of something like spice and pomegranate and heat like charcoal which filled his nostrils after a moment when he finally drew in a breath. He stopped short, startled, but a hint of iron, sharp and salty and metallic in smell, made his head feel light and dazed. He blinked at him, eyes widening drastically, and then shook his head slightly. Another sharp smell hit him, almost like bleach or vinegar but with the thickness of olive oil or honey.

"What…?" He stared at him as Valon curled his lip slightly, the smirk long gone.

"Hormonal imbalance," he snapped, his voice rough and gravelly and bordering a snarl. "It happens sometimes with werewolves."

Yugi felt his entire neck begin to burn, flaring bright red like a flag. He opened and closed his mouth once and then shook his head slightly. "H-how did you…?" he choked out, horrified by the idea that it was noticeable. If another wolf could tell, how long would it take before regular people could too?

"It's in your eyes. They're different, deeper, more vibrant," he replied, glancing dismissively towards the books beside his hand. A nail clicked as it tapped the polished wood as he leaned more heavily on his right arm and narrowed his eyes. "And there's a new gleam to them, an intelligence that wasn't there before. If you look into your reflection you will see it too. It's unfamiliar and completely animalistic. Humans will disregard it as nothing more than a reflection of light, but it's there."

"My eyes?" Yugi commented dryly, taking a book and scanning it before doing the same with another. "Something tells me there is a _lot_ more to it than just that."

Valon chuckled and reached past him to pluck out a rubber band. The smaller teen looked at him curiously as he stretched it with his index and thumb. "Well, Yugi, we _are_ technically the same species now, so it should not be surprising." He paused and turned on his heel abruptly, heading off for the nonfiction section. The small teen watched him with wide eyes before quickly scanning in the last book and rushing for the return cart. He scrambled after the other werewolf, feeling flushed as he caught that imbalanced scent once more. Valon did not even glance up as he joined him. "You will need to get used to recognition. There's a unique scent pattern that comes off you now, and it's nothing if not strong. A wolf could probably smell you from one end of Japan to the next."

 _Great, so I'm like one gigantic fart_ , he thought with a scowl, shaking his head. The other boy reached up to tap a finger against the spine of a book, reading over the title again before pulling it down. "You were the king shepherd in the alley," he finally said, watching him closely. The other boy's eyes flickered towards him and his lips pulled into a slight smirk before he rummaged through the index of the book in his hand.

"I'm surprised you waited so long to mention that." Yugi watched him slide his fingernail along the print for a moment before flipping through to one of the articles he wanted to see. "Most people would have blurted that out the moment they realized."

"I feel like a loon," he admitted, chewing his bottom lip and swallowing hard. Valon turned his head to look at him for a long moment, seeming almost to see through him, before turning back to his book. He offered no sympathetic words, instead fully concentrating on the text. Yugi didn't know whether to be relieved or disappointed by that. "But…you're not _just_ a dog. You're half wolf. Which… _kind of_ makes you something _other_ than a werewolf. So…what _are_ you exactly?"

"I am a werewolf," Valon stated easily, turning to him again and giving him a wide smirk full of perfect white teeth. A secret glinted in his eyes, surrounded by open laughter and amusement. "I'm just another _kind_."

"…What does that mean?" He furrowed his brows, perplexed, and followed him quickly when he began to head for another second of the shelves. "That makes no sense."

"It makes perfect sense, Yugi. You are simply too new to this world to understand what I am telling you." He snatched another book and then quickly plucked a third. "You learn more as you mature in it. You will never get answers handed to you on a silver platter, but you can get help. In fact, I am sure someone will come to see you soon enough."

" _Who_?" he demanded desperately. He needed answers. He needed guidance more than anything.

"The one who bit you, for starters," Valon mumbled before frowning at him. He drew in a deep breath and narrowed his eyes, concentrating on the assault to his senses in an effort to sort them all out. Yugi had an intense and highly concentrated scent like that of warm sunlight and leaves turned bright red by the autumn season with only the faintest hint of cinnamon and mint. The second smell was entirely different and distinct, but it also somehow _lacked_. He could only detect it faintly, as Yugi's was becoming much harsher now as his heart pounded with excitement. It was drifting away again quickly but Valon could not recognize the smell. He had made sure upon his first Change to memorize each and every other werewolf in Domino in order to recognize any boundaries to avoid encroaching on another's territory. Packs were weakening and falling apart, however. They were dropping drastically in numbers. Weaker wolves were breaking off into parts or acting as loners, and none of them seemed to stay around for too long. But that smell was fading from Yugi's spoke of _strength_ , similar to that of the smaller wolf's. So why should it flee from Domino if that were the case?

"He's dead," Yugi said with a small shake of his head.

" _What_?"

Such disbelief colored his tone that Yugi almost questioned himself. But Tomoya was dead. Everyone in Domino—and possibly Japan in general—knew that. And Yugi thought that he had to have been the one that had bitten him. The only other wolf there that night when he had thought he was dying was Ushio and even if it had been him, he was dead too. He didn't think this third wolf would have done it. Tomoya was the most likely, considering Yugi was almost certain he had been protecting him and had lost his life trying.

Valon was silent but staring at him. His golden eyes were partially glazed, and the smaller boy could see ice around the pupils. His expression had grown somewhat twisted, thoughtfully concentrated but slightly annoyed as well. He was breathing deep and slow and Yugi could see his nostrils flaring faintly as he exhaled each time.

Valon could no longer smell even the faintest hint of that other scent that had covered Yugi before. But he could tell where they were rapidly mixing together, blending almost seamlessly. His heart was a war drum in his ears, hammering away at all thoughts he tried to form and throwing them away immediately.

His scent, mixed like this, made his earlier statement a complete impossibility. There was no way that his blood could smell so equally of the other wolf if it were deceased. There was an intense power, a form of blind strength, an unquestionable authority, that spoke of life and death and survival even in this miniscule trace. That alone was proof that the one who had bitten him existed still. And, if the chemical mixture in Yugi's blood was anything to go by, they were _extremely_ healthy and strong, though there was a light and almost nonexistent sourness that touched it as well which spoke of recent healing.

"Tomoya, he's the one who bit me," Yugi said quietly, frowning. Valon stared at him blankly with a highly skeptical expression. "He and Ushio got into a fight in the alleyway. I was…collateral damage. He's dead. That means that I don't _have_ a source for answers."

The brunet shook his head again and narrowed his eyes into slits. "Get something to read, Yugi, and then meet me in the back corner over there," he stated, jerking his head to indicate where before turning and starting off for another aisle of books. He watched him, hesitating for a brief second before glancing around quickly. He would have had a list of books with the reference numbers and everything else if he had any other books he needed. There was nothing there he had thought of as having more information as most were still more or less only about the fables and legends. He instead pretended to browse several small historical fictions in passing and grabbed one without looking as he scrambled to join up with Valon again.

He met the other boy quickly, carrying only that historical fiction book, and pushed it only the smooth wooden surface without a second thought. Valon did not bother to so much as glance at him sideways. Instead his golden eyes remained entirely focused on the book in front of him.

"I do not know how you came up with the idea that Tomoya of all people bit you, but it's false. The scent your pulse is emitting says otherwise. Your alpha is alive and strong, and not the least bit _dead_ ," the other boy stated, voice bordering a growl with the gravelly undertone it seemed to suddenly adopt. Yugi watched him shake his head slowly, still scenting the air, and felt his stomach twist.

"My…alpha?" he echoed in obvious confusion.

He almost felt, in that moment, as if maybe he had stumbled into something almost akin sexual roleplay. He almost burst into snickers at the idea. Instead of a dom and a sub, there was alpha and omega. A smile threatened to lift the corners of his lips but the reality of the situation was also immensely draining, to the point that it smothered the impulse instantly. Something inside of him seemed to curl in on itself and swell with a swift and merciless ache like fire in his belly.

"The one who bit you," the brunet explained calmly, looking at the print in front of him once more with such focus that it almost seemed as if he were merely reading a few words off to him. "They are known as alphas because they are the ones that infected the other. They are considered the top of the hierarchy in a pair because they are the original source. Because of the infection stemming from them there is a chemical that reacts within the brain and allows them to enforce a type of…law in the other wolf. They can then command them _just enough_ so that if they are a risk towards exposure or becoming too much of a problem they will be able to stop them. There is said to be something of a connection between the two that causes both blood streams to react. I've heard it's like blood pressure rising or a fever occurring beneath the skin. I'm not sure. I've never bitten anyone and I don't care to."

Yugi nodded distractedly but it occurred to him slowly that he had once read an article several years back about something like that. He had been doing a project on veterans and had run across the article by accident. It had said that a study had been done in which several veterans around the world who had known and fought together had reacted similarly in brain waves with the same stimuli. It had, more or less, turned out that the authoress of the essay had been attempting to prove magic was real. Regardless, the ideas were extremely similar. While the veterans responded to each other's stimuli through brain waves even while halfway across the world in completely different situations and atmospheres, the werewolves' alphas managed to trigger the same effects through exposure.

"You should be able to feel them when they are nearby." Valon paused, staying silent momentarily, and then drew in another small breath that he knew was an attempt at smelling the air around him. He seemed frustrated and puzzled; the brunet's voice took on a lower, calmer edge once more. "That would be the feverish sensation or possibly an adrenaline rush or the rising blood pressure. However, you're likely to get a similar reaction to _any_ werewolves nearby, so I'm not sure that's something you can truly rely on if you ever decide to try your hand at finding them. Then again, if your first Change is coming up then _they_ are likely to find _you_."

Yugi stiffened. "Why?"

"It's more for your mental stability than anything else. They'll want to keep you calm throughout the Change so that you won't hurt yourself."

" _Throughout_? _Hurt myself_?"

Valon slowly turned his head, eyes cold and glittering like ice. His lips curled back to show his left canine and Yugi stiffened once more. Unbidden, the idea crossed his mind that the other wolf might kill him then and there.

"W-what?" he croaked, flinching away from the harsh disgust in his eyes. "What's wrong?"

"You shouldn't exist," he snarled low in his throat, shoulders rising slowly as his book was pressed flat against the table. The tendons in his fingers were drawn tight and his knuckles were bleached white.

" _What_?"

"Your species. It shouldn't _be_ here," he spat, baring his teeth and narrowing his eyes into slits. "It should not be here anymore. It was only needed once and never again. And _yet_ …here you are."

He was shaking, he realized, eyes wide in horror. "W-what are you talking about? What…?"

The wolf beside him remained perfectly still for what felt like an eternity but must have lasted all of a split second. Then, slowly, his fingers curled and latched onto the book in front of him. "You shouldn't exist. _At all_ , Yugi." He ignored the smaller boy's sputter of the same question and instead got to his feet. His nails tapped the table in a hurried, faltering rhythm. "If you're here all that means is death for the rest of us. Bloodshed… _War_."

Yugi blinked stupidly at the intense hatred in his voice, stomach twisting and clenching. There was not much—if anything—that he could say in response. He was frozen in place, horrified, but did not try to change it. The taller teen was watching him with that same hateful glacial expression in his eyes and the smaller could not manage to so much as lower his gaze despite the knowledge of such a thing being a direct challenge.

Valon hesitated just long enough to hiss, "Yugi…you weren't bitten."

* * *

Yugi's hands were still trembling hours later when he had settled in his room again. The sun was setting and a small burn had taken residence in his bones. It was itchy rather than painful, and almost tickled. He had come to realize its new existence ten minutes before, when the sunset was approaching. His body had been reacting to the approach of the nighttime and thus the moon. He thought this had to be a new development, if only because he couldn't recall ever having happened before. It was probably the full moon fast approaching as it was. And that had done nothing but make his hands shake harder.

Valon must have been wrong. He had to have been bitten. Why else would the infection only show itself now? How was it that it had remained dormant for so long? Was it _possible_ for a disease to remain in that kind of state?

He blinked. Yes, there were diseases that could hide in the immune system for years on end. There was leprosy, prion disease, chagas disease, and, of course, the most famous dormant disease to ever exist—HIV. From what he remembered, even tuberculosis did that when it was seemingly cured.

So, did the werewolf stream do that too then?

He paused and ran a hand through his hair. What was that disease's name again? It might be nice to actually refer to it by its name instead of constantly calling it an "infection" or "disease". He thought that might actually even be more comforting when he focused on it again. He liked science and he knew for a fact that there was a name for such a disease. There were clinical trials on this kind of thing, right?

But didn't its symptoms vary? Didn't some people think their minds turned into that of a wolf's? And didn't _that_ come complete with snarling and seeing a wolf in the mirror instead of their own reflection? But wasn't another just facial hair practically _everywhere_? Were those the same thing, or was he jumbling two different diseases together by mistake?

Yugi shook his head slightly and pulled his phone from its charger, looking it over. His eyes flickered curiously as he tried to think of some way to narrow his search. He knew the condition started with the word "clinical" in it, but he highly doubted adding "werewolf" would work too well with it. Then again, others had to forget the condition as well. He could hardly be the only to one to do something like that. So maybe that search would not be a bad one to check.

The words appeared in the engine only seconds after he got the first half of the second in.

It was called clinical lycanthropy, and when the first half of the condition was taken out, all the folklore and fables came to light.

He smiled wryly. And how much of that was actually true enough for him to consider reading? So much of it often contradicted each other. How much of it was simply copied and pasted from another site? If books could simply paraphrase to have almost all the same information, websites were more than likely to just have it all without even an attempt at citation. He supposed it did not matter, however, as he knew he would have to learn more from trial and error over books and fables and things of that nature. As scary as that reality truly was, he did not have to consider it something of a long shot. Blurring reality with fantasy in such a way was not something he was willing to have happen. And it was not something he was too afraid to believe; like his general acceptance of the infection, it was not something so far-fetched that it made him turn his nose up.

He put his phone back on the nightstand, plugging it back in as he took a seat on the bed again. He was tired now, his mind beginning to slow to something of a sloppy, sluggish tread. He squeezed his eyes shut tightly for a moment, reaching up to run a hand through his hair again. A low, dull mindless throbbing echoed in his temples as he shook his head slowly. His own personal trial and error was not something he truly wanted to have to fumble through.

Valon had, after all, offered him an extra outside source to help him. It may not have been him personally, but he had to have some form of hope. He had to at least try to believe that his alpha was still alive as he had said. Whether or not he had been bitten by Tomoya was nothing more than a question that provided only an inconvenience if he was wrong. He would have to find out who had bitten him, however, especially if it were true that they would wish to help him learn. Valon had made it sound as if it his alpha would _have_ to help him, as if it were some kind of law among the werewolves.

If that was the case, that meant he needed to prepare for that as well, didn't he? He couldn't just have a werewolf show up randomly to help him, could he? He could hope that they might find him when the Change was actually happening. Valon had hinted at that as well, and it was by far his best option when it came down to it. He thought briefly that maybe it would come to kill him at his most vulnerable. Maybe it had meant to eat him and he'd survived somehow. Maybe it had planned to drag him off somewhere in the woods and had somehow wound up getting chased off and so had ditched him.

Yugi rolled his eyes at himself. The wolf would hardly have ditched him at his very own front door, not if he was meant to be food.

The wolf had clearly meant to save him, yet another mystery in and of itself. Maybe it was better for him not to know what had compelled it and Tomoya to do what they had. There were some things in the world that no one really needed to know. Too much knowledge was hardly a good thing.

And, once more, he had to face the fact that he had yet to gather _any_ answers. He was merely piling questions on top of more questions and that was hardly constructive. He would not gain any answers until the full moon—if even then. And, if the answers did not come then, he would still learn some of the various things that plagued his thoughts so relentlessly. He would even have a small taste of what had changed in his life and what hadn't.

He probably wouldn't like the results but he would still have some more of an idea about it all. And that, if nothing else, was at least something—even the smallest thing—he could be grateful for when everything seemed so terrible.

The small teen got to his feet again, stomach gurgling with an empty hunger. He was not sure he truly cared to eat at the moment but there was already a lightness growing in his head and his balance seemed somewhat shaken. He wasn't stumbling by any means but his right leg seemed almost heavier than his left. Yugi cast a glance down the hall and into the kitchen but found nothing out of place. His mom and grandfather, the technicians, were all gone and out of the house. There was no one in the house but him.

He picked at the leftovers he'd heated and hummed quietly in time with the ticking of the second hand of the clock on the bathroom wall. Yugi had not recognized the short and steady intervals until he had scolded his tongue with food. The initial sting made his shoulders rise but the usual swollenness that was always so immediate failed to follow as it should have. Instead a soft almost unnoticeable tingling swept across the pink muscle. He almost bristled at such a sensation, somehow disgusted by the reality of it, and the flavor that should have been there was as thick and grimy as wet beach sand.

He pushed another forkful into his mouth. How long until that seventh day? How long until he had to run and hide beneath the full moon? And _would_ it somehow be the full week or only the three or just the one?

By the gods, he hoped there was only one cursed day to have his life circulate around. Maybe, when he was older and more used to it as a whole, he might think of it as some kind of unwanted anniversary. Maybe he'd think of it like a family member's death—his _own_ death? He wanted momentarily to laugh. What kind of thought was that? This disease was not something crippling, but rather mediocre in comparison. He was not dying. His limbs and organs worked. It was not as if he had been hit by a car and paralyzed somewhere. In retrospect, turning into a wolf was nothing short of an inconvenience when compared to that. Some people never recovered from physical disabilities like that. They became depressed and only spiraled further.

He, on the other hand, may have been more of a realist and despaired many of the drawbacks, but he was not one to wallow. The magnitude of the newest complication in his life was something that would have been unfathomable only a year ago, but it was all the same. He would learn to adapt and endure. He would find a solution as he always had and implement it.

And he already had several plans, working to layer it all and catch any small hint of a break in the numerous webs his mind spun.

"Yugi?"

He blinked, at first unable to identify the noise that had caught his ear. He furrowed his brows faintly, unsure of what the meaning might be. It was mindless and blank, curling like mist in his head, and then it cleared. He turned, face smooth again, and his stomach dropped at the sight of his grandfather.

He had not heard him open the door, let alone come up the stairs. The small teen stiffened slightly, drawing in a tight breath and feeling sick as he looked at him. He had been trying so hard to avoid him. He had not wanted to say anything bad to him if they spoke. And all that popped into his head was accusations and the urge to snap and snarl was burning violently in the back of his throat. He'd avoided him as much as possible around conversation at mealtimes. He had not even made an attempt to be alone with him at any point and he was afraid it would come spilling out when there was no mediator to ensure that he would hold his tongue.

A lack of conversation seemed like the most logical of choices he had even considered within the last week or so. Staying quiet hardly seemed like a true obstacle as it was. He did not want to talk about anything. There was no desire anywhere inside of him to so much as form words in his mouth. His tongue seemed to swell for a moment, as if with the need to imitate the sensation of the burn the food should have delivered.

But still no words formed and he wanted to laugh at such an idea. His grandpa had come in with a very specific intention and yet, even if he spoke, Yugi thought whatever responses he might come up with would stick in his throat. They would fail to claw their way upwards and he was not at all disappointed with that.

What was there— _truly_ —to discuss?

His grandpa had lied to him. He had hidden the truth from him. He had been testing him all those years—

"You weren't bitten, Yugi."

The ironic laughter in his mind stopped in a soundless halt. His mouth grew dry. Valon was wrong, right? He had to be wrong. He had to have been mistaken.

But then…why would he lie? Why would he say it with such certainty if he did not mean it? And his grandpa's behavior was explainable now, in ways that it hardly seemed to be only days before. Days ago he had simply thought he wanted to test his somewhat heightened sense of smell—and sometimes sight—but that obviously had not been the case. It had _never_ been the case.

Yugi pressed his lips together in a thin line. This wasn't as funny as he had first hoped.

He sat up a little taller, feeling sick as he looked at the elderly Motou. There was a small, almost unnoticeable buzz of energy beneath his skin. A numbness was creeping pitifully through his marrow. Indignation lapped at the inside of his belly. His throat tickled as if the words he wished he might say were trying to come up. It was strange how normal they seemed. He had expected they would burn and taste like bile.

His grandpa's mustache twitched, the skin beneath the gray hairs pulling in a nervous tic. Yugi could almost smell the sweat his grandpa might break into. He did smell something, however, harsher and heavier, and the rapid thumping which roared in his ear drums made him blink. His grandpa's heart had skyrocketed and his blood pressure had followed immediately with it. That heavier scent that burned his nose was his body temperature rising. A coppery edge filled it and the small teen thought he might hurl.

Was that his _blood_ that he smelled? Was that the heated metal scent?

He swallowed harshly and put his plate aside. Was that a true possibility? Or was he simply scaring himself?

"Yugi…"

It was a bit firmer, far from questioning as it had been before, and he wanted to snap at him angrily. What gave him the right to so much as stand in front of him—let alone _speak_ to him? The thought made him want to flinch, surprised by his own anger, but he had to admit was it not an illogical one. He had been lying to him and playing tricks, _testing_ him, and now he wanted to talk to him as if nothing had ever happened?

He was both disgusted and horrified by the thought. Was he worth so little to him that he would ignore his own betrayal like that? If he cared so little for him, then why was it that he had even bothered to take care of him all those years? Had he merely meant to test him, gauge his senses? Was he worth nothing to him but entertainment as he sated his undying curiosity?

A tremor ran through his fingers but not along his spine. His head swam dizzily for a moment. He swallowed hard. He had to have been twisting it, right? No one could be so cruel.

"I don't understand," he finally managed to breathe out, looking up at him with another hard swallow. The words were bitter against his tongue but calm in the air between them. It was strange to him how terribly disconnected his voice was from his emotions. It seemed almost nonsensical. "I don't understand why or how you could do this. You knew what was going on and you didn't even _consider_ telling me!"

He shook his head slowly, appearing almost stunned by the clarity Yugi had granted the situation. His eyes were rueful but there was something else that the teenager was not sure he recognized. He swallowed hard again, trying to read it, but the more he studied the harder it seemed to even look up at it.

"I was never sure you had been bitten until just recently."

But that made no sense. How could he have not been sure when he had not even been looking for that in the first place?

"You weren't bitten, Yugi."

But he _had_ been. He _knew_ that. There was not a single doubt about it. Valon was not wrong, however. Maybe it had been in his blood all along but had not become active until then. Had it taken the saliva being pushed into his bloodstream to make it come out dormancy?  
Yugi shook his head silently and felt his jaw beginning to press upwards in a clenched position. "Try again," he wanted to spit, though the words stuck in his throat. "Try another lie. Try to comfort me again."

"I would have said something if I had known earlier. I wasn't sure before recently and I thought that maybe…" His grandpa's cheeks were beginning to flush as he shook his head again slowly. There was nothing more he could do and an ache was forming in his face. His teeth were pressing too firmly together. "There was always a chance that I was wrong. I was not going to tell you if you weren't going…"

His jaw burned and ached. A cracking noise seemed to echo in his ears. He was aware it was nothing more than a mental trick but it seemed real enough. The pain accompanying it made his blood rush intensely. His nerves burned and ached with that new buzz accompanying it.

"Please believe me when I say I planned to tell you—"

"I don't." He blinked at him, surprised by his own voice and the simplicity of the statement. "I _don't_."

And why _should_ he? There was no reason to. Everything seemed double-handed and geared towards personal satisfaction now as he thought their relationship over. When had that barrier become so large and impenetrable?

"I understand."

 _Do you_? _Because I still don't_. I don't understand anything, Yugi thought, staring at him blankly. And was he not owed an explanation? Was there no one willing to give him the answers he needed? Why was he still lying, even then? Was there anything left to hide? Unless he turned around and said that _he_ had been the one to bite him, then the hole he had dug himself could not get any deeper.

He shook his head again. "You wouldn't have told me," he muttered, getting up.

"I _would_ —"

He should have just ignored him, he realized in frustration. This was even worse than if he had never learned about it in the first place.

* * *

It was still early when he found the other werewolf. Yugi spotted him halfway across the street with another person. A warning signal went off in a snarl in his head but he did not pause or slow down. The other was a werewolf as well, he realized, though he hardly cared. Maybe having another there might help the situation. Then he might not dodge questions or Yugi himself would fail to make a scene. Having another wolf there to help him might keep him in check if things started to get out of hand.

He quickened his pace but did not call out. His heart was pounding now and his stomach twisting. His shoes slapped against the concrete harshly and he knew they heard him. Neither of them looked up but he knew they were well aware of him. He wondered briefly what it sounded like to them but did not dwell. It was not worth the effort to try to imagine it. He realized, rather abruptly, that he recognized Yugi's footsteps, just as he himself had Ushio's.

The thought was both surprising and somehow terrifying. Was Valon hunting him as well? Had he simply been oblivious to it before? But then why would Valon have spoken to him such a carefree manner if that was the case? Why hadn't he led him outside and killed him? Why just tell him that his species should not exist and then let him off the hook? And, considering the time they had been alone on walks before, why had he not attacked then?

He knew without a doubt that the hybrid and the teenager he was rapidly approaching were one in the same. He'd had the chance—several of them, in fact. Between his time alone with Yugi and the fact that his muscle mass was so immense, had he turned his mind to it, he would have been able to kill him without much thought. There was not much he could do against a massive dog.

Valon's eyes narrowed and a glint of iridescent gold flickered beneath his lashes. The boy next to him blinked as if he had been touched somewhere and turned his head abruptly. His eyes were a paler, glimmering yellow that reminded Yugi of leaves changing in autumn. He blinked again, curious, and his head tilted the smallest fraction to the side. Valon narrowed his gaze into slivers of topaz, outlined by heavy black like kohl. His friend beside him seemed to sense either his tension or perhaps something in Yugi because his entire body grew rigid. His eyes flashed once more and he seemed to be scenting the air with heavy breaths now.

He picked up his pace again, almost running towards the two werewolves. Neither turned tail and fled and Yugi was rather surprised. But he would not say anything or even slightly question this. He would be extremely happy to not have to chase them. Running around in order to gain answers had not been something he had wanted to be forced to do. Within a foot of them he slowed and his mouth began to taste like a cotton ball had been stuffed into it.

This new wolf was staring at him, but not with any malice. There was a small spark of fear in his gaze, but it did nothing to liven the flat color. Why were his eyes so dull? He didn't remember ever having run across such strange eyes before. The boy's nose was still working as Yugi got closer and he could see Valon's jaw clenching tightly.

Could he smell it just as easily as Valon had? What was it that they smelled? Was it like the chemical imbalance he had caught the scent of at the library? Was it so simple as that?

"Do you smell it?"

He had not thought properly of what he might say but these had hardly been his first idea of conversation. They were said so low he almost expected them to be lost even within the still air around them. When had his drive for answers dissolved into a shaky, unnerving breathless whisper?

He blinked again, cast a small glance at the other werewolf, and then turned back. The simplicity of the action would not have struck him as odd had he not seen Valon's small, almost unnoticeable odd. Was he answering his question or giving this other boy permission?

"What _are_ you?"

Yugi blinked, startled, and then narrowed his eyes faintly. He sounded like a smoker, but with a huskiness that soothed the somewhat gravelly undertone. He realized, staring at him, that the split in his voice was recognizable despite everything going through his head at the moment. It sounded like his voice had just cracked, as if it were only beginning to slowly deepen. He thought immediately of puberty but this boy was too old for that. He almost felt insulted on the other's behalf.

"He's a werewolf too," Valon's smoother voice interrupted, making both turn towards him. Yugi's eyes were wide, and the blue around his pupils seemed to glow almost feverishly, a stunning cerulean with depths of sapphire. His pupils had constricted some, boring into his, and the ring of color made them look like mere pinpricks of black. His own companion's pupils had dilated with intense curiosity and wonder, a small bit of excitement. The yellow of his irises had become a mere band of color, so dull that it seemed almost to bleed into the white of his eyes. "He simply doesn't smell the same."

He watched them for a moment and something occurred to him slowly as he looked at them both. Valon had said that an alpha would seek out its beta to help them through their initial Change. Was that why the two of them were there at the moment? Was that why he had looked to Valon before answering him? Had he bitten the other boy and so now was helping him? And, if that was the case, how could he be sure that other alphas did the same? Had Valon gone through this same process himself and knew from experience?

"He's a born werewolf."

Yugi blinked and furrowed his brows. The other was looking at him so clearly but he almost thought he was staring through him. Valon's eyes had such a distance to them that he knew he would never see it. It reminded him of that secret that had burned in his eyes while he was recovering. But, despite his efforts, he could not tell who Valon had spoken of. He still remembered him saying he had not been bitten but he could have just as well been giving him an answer he had not asked for.

"Why does he smell like that?"

If it was possible, Yugi thought the distance had grown in the brunet's eyes. He blinked and his head turned, his senses all focused on his companion now. His expression had cleared and he looked faintly amused but somewhat unnerved as well. "He's not the same species," he said mildly, the faintest of smiles curling his lips.

What did he mean they weren't the same species? He was a werewolf, wasn't he? He had been bitten and infected, hadn't he? He thought that made him a werewolf, considering. He was about to point that out when something else entirely noted itself in his mind. Valon had simply said they weren't the same species. He had not said that Yugi was entirely unnatural and should not exist. But, if he had been speaking of him when he said he was born a werewolf, wasn't he still just as wrong? It still made no sense to him as to why he might say something like that. He had been bitten. He hadn't been born with it.

"Oh," the other teen commented, surprised but not the least bit confused. He nodded a little, giving something of a respectful nod towards Yugi. "Okay then."

The amusement dissipated as his eyes locked with Yugi's. "I don't recall if you've ever met Amelda or not," he said smoothly, golden eyes glinting for a brief movement before settling once more. He tilted his head slightly to the side as the smallest teen blinked and glanced at him in confusion.

He thought he might have heard his name before, as he was in one of his classes even if he never really talked. But more so, Valon thought he might know the name as one of his closest friends. Then again, what did Yugi know about him anyways? He doubted it was much.

"I don't think I have," Yugi admitted after a moment. "I'm Yugi."

Amelda's dull eyes seemed to spark for a split second as he gave him a lopsided smirk. "All three of us are in Chono's class together," he commented almost dismissively.

"Oh." Yugi turned back to Valon almost immediately and ignored the small bit of guilt that nipped his insides uncomfortably in rebuttal of his impoliteness. "I wanted to ask you a couple of things."

"I'm not your alpha," Valon dismissed with a wave of his hand. "I don't have any answers for you."

He flinched and swallowed hard. Amelda watched them with immense interest, narrowing his eyes curiously. Both wolves' body temperatures had spiked, however only Yugi's heart was racing so quickly within his chest. The distinct twisting of the organ was fast, almost like water falling over the face of a rock wall. He could hear the gentle rush of his blood through his veins and it was almost comforting to listen to. Had it not been for the sudden rush of iron that hit his nose he might not have thought anything of it. It was overpowering and burned his nose as if it might sear his skin or engrave itself in his nasal cavity. There was some strange undercurrent of scent that seemed to grow more and more immense as his heart continued to pound.

It was obvious, looking towards Valon, that he knew and recognized this new scent. He was unfazed by it though it was clear he sensed it as well. Amelda's interest peaked further and he watched his friend closely just as he made a clear point to ignore him as much as he could. He knew from the way his shoulders rose almost unnoticeably that he was excruciatingly aware of what he was doing.

"I'm not your alpha," he repeated, voice dismissive but with the slightest hint of sympathy. "And I don't have any answers for you, Yugi. Just wait until your Change. You'll be fine, Yugi."

He opened his mouth to object but stopped when Amelda cleared his throat to silence him. Both he and Valon glanced to the side to see someone coming down the street. He recognized the small elderly woman that was approaching and felt his stomach twist as he stepped back and swallowed hard. The small woman was the owner of the small café they were standing in front of and his mouth tasted dry once more. He had always loved the little café and he was not willing to jeopardize his permission to be there by continuing the conversation. Valon did not make it clear how uncomfortable he was but he knew better than to overstep.

"I'll see you later," he offered after a moment, putting on a small smile that he hoped seemed easy. His eyes shot to the small owner as he nodded in greeting. He had a brilliant, sweet smile that reminded him momentarily of Anzu. He turned on his heel, heading off down the sidewalk again, and ignored the sound of a car passing by. His mind drifted miserably towards the idea of his alpha failing to find him. If they had been so adamant to save him then why had they not found him already? Why would they wait until he changed to find him?

It seemed like one large waste of time to him. What was the real reason to wait like that? How was he even sure they would come to guide him through it? Because Valon had said so? How much faith was he really meant to put in Valon? He did not truly know him in any way. They were classmates and apparently inflicted by the same disease but beyond that there was not much he could say he knew about him.

He seemed trustworthy but he was not about to simply ignore his own instincts because someone said otherwise. He might not have had a true sense of what everything entailed and n attempt at preparation was nothing to dismiss. Telling him to simply relax and wait was nothing he would be able to heed to. It was disgusting advice as far as he was concerned. He could not think of anything else as frustrating to be told at a time like that. It somehow bordered on insulting.

Yugi shook his head as he continued down the street. He didn't think it mattered at the moment. He needed to get home and go from there. How many days until the first night of the Wiccan full moon cycle? One? Two? Was it that night?

He needed to check again. Then he would find somewhere to hide while it happened. Then he would change, _maybe_ find out who had really bitten him, and wander home again when it was all over. That was, of course, the best case scenario. The worst was that he would wind up a body in the woods, killed by the Change or another wolf or from attacking the wrong person. The middle ground was simply surviving the Change altogether. He was still skeptical that he could do that. His mind was already fractured somehow and that was how the hallucinations came about. The medication still failed to fix the damage and did not lessen his terrors.

If there was already a mental defect in question with that, then he had no doubt it would be easy for the lycanthropy to trigger something fatal. He might have a seizure or an aneurysm or something of that nature but he did not assume it impossible by any means. In fact he considered it the most likely, and with that, came a rather uncomfortable acceptance/ Yugi did not want to die but it was still something that he was unable to avoid.

He imagined it was similar with cancer patients that knew they might die, from the disease itself or the treatment. They had to learn to accept—maybe even _expect_ —that, because the reality of it was nothing anyone wanted to consider. It wasn't pretty or satisfactory. It was nothing more than a disgusting reality that no one truly wanted to think about or face themselves.

The Change could kill him. Or it might alter his life forever.

Yugi pushed the thought away easily as he pulled the door open and walked inside. The crates were still shut and vacant but his eyes were drawn to the bottom right. He swore he could see that dark gray residue, almost an exact silhouette, in the shape of the hybrid still. How had Valon even managed it? How had he turned human and gotten himself out before turning back and running off? Had he run home or somewhere else?

And why had no one noticed he was gone? He might not have been gone for too long, but shouldn't his parents have put out the word that he was missing? Shouldn't their teachers have said something in class? Valon was rarely ever absent; he thought that might have been his first since middle school.

Yugi may not have had many classes with him before high school but he did remember that he'd had perfect attendance from sixth to seventh grade. That had been something that he had found relief in after enduring bullying over his own low rate of absences. Ushio had been particularly harsh about his attendance for whatever reason, and Jonouchi and Honda had always made snide remarks about his need to grow up and do fun things like skipping.

They _still_ teased him about it sometimes.

He sighed unhappily as he continued looking at the kennel with a frown. If no one had noticed he was missing, did that mean they knew what might have happened? Did they realize that he was a werewolf? Or had Miho's death overshadowed it all? Had they somehow realized what he was and maybe even thought that he might have been the one to do it? Maybe everyone else had known and suspected that the werewolves were still among them. Perhaps he was the only one who had not known and suspected it all.

Because, how many werewolves did exist? How many lived in Domino City as it was? Were there packs of them or mass amounts of loners spread all about Japan? Outside of Japan, how many might exist? Were the states—like Wisconsin or Minnesota or _Alaska_ —overrun with them? Or what about _Russia_? They were all rather untamed and uncharted and so much of the area might have been completely open for massive packs of werewolves to move about.

Humans might not have been able to live in all those places enough to fully habituate each place they went, but wolves did. The canines had once been the single most widespread animal in the world. They still lived in the north where humans could never survive. They lived in harsh desert climates. They lived in rainforests even. If a werewolf ran away from civilization and decided to live solely in the wilderness, he did not doubt for even a moment that they would be able to survive and prosper. Both humans and wolves were extremely intelligent animals and adaptive enough that they would make it almost effortlessly.

He wanted to touch the cage door again but brushed it aside to move towards the staircase to get to his room again. He would need to check on the date of the full moon. Then maybe he would go about researching some more. Preparing himself would be much better than going into it blindly. At the moment he did not think he was even mildly close to being ready for it all.

He was waiting for the Change or wolves to kill him. Or for him to survive and continue with his drastically altered life.

Yugi turned and took a seat on his mattress and narrowed his eyes as he kicked his sneakers off. It was strange to sit there, swinging his legs as he was, and he felt childish and curiously wondering. He had not done anything like this in almost ten years. He remembered it had been something he had done unconsciously in which he had grown to hate it with a passion. It had been the day his grandmother had died and he had just gone to the funeral and had still failed to understand what it all meant that he had witnessed. He had not swung his legs like that since, as the guilt had eaten his insides when he had grown to realize what it was that he had lost that day. Swinging his legs happily from his seat on the bed while one of his favorite people was six feet under the ground and probably not yet cold had always infuriated him afterwards.

Now he looked at his socked feet and even wiggled his toes at himself. He did not feel that same loathing at the moment, though he suspected he might later on. For the moment, however, he needed something to do to relieve the tension in his muscles. He did not want to walk around or pace as he thought he might end up doing. Instead he simply looked down and kicked his limbs lazily. His eyes were caught on the seams of his socks and he was almost tired as he considered it all.

It all seemed to press inwards on him, weighted like misty wind draping over his skin. He was aware of what he was doing, watching blankly as he studied his own movements, but it was working as he watched. The tension was leaving, his legs aching briefly but not with pain. They were stiff, rigid, as his mind continued racing with all the new ideas that had sprung forth so abruptly.

There was some small part of him that had burst forth and now held his attention in a vice grip.

If he survived the Change and found a way to live his life around it, what was he meant to do with his own aspirations? Was his original idea of _possibly_ getting married to Anzu and not particularly having a large family with a small dog or possibly a single kid still a possibility? Were veterinary studies still a true thing to be pursued any longer? Was it worth it to even graduate at this rate? Was it worth paying attention and doing things as he had always planned? How was he meant to completely change his path upon surviving this?

Yugi shook his head and continued watching his legs. He wiggled his toes again and blinked lazily as he continued to consider it.

He had only imagined his life in the future a handful of times. It had—whether by only lack of imagination or some unconscious hope—always involved Anzu somewhere within its center. The rest varied from a single kid to twins to pets instead. Children had never truly interested him and he still wondered whether Anzu wanted them. He was not so unrealistic as to what it was that might have brought on this train of thought. Anzu was the only girl he'd ever had a crush on and, for the most part, the only one he spent time with. He knew it was probably extremely unrealistic to place her in such scenarios. Time would pass, maybe he would no longer think of her as more than the average friend, and he still had no idea if she liked him that same way.

He ignored the hint of irritation which heated his blood. Instead he turned away from his thoughts and once again focused on the seam of his left sock. It was oddly bluish in color on the edge where it rested on his big toe. He remembered vaguely that his school sneakers had a dark blue inside that must have rubbed off on the white cotton somewhat. Yugi hummed softly, distractedly, and turned away again after a moment.

The sky blue color of his walls was usually comforting at a time like this. However, now, it seemed to be mocking him. There was no relaxation or comfort to be given now. It frustrated him, made him bristle in annoyance, and all of it made his insides burn furiously. The comforter beneath his palms was itchy and cold against his skin and the color was intensely strange and off-setting in its bright yellow golden color. He scraped a nail over it and the hiss made him smile at its familiarity.

Everything within his room seemed displaced and strange now as he finally glanced at the lunar calendar resting on the wall.

 **Who managed to guess the hybrid was Valon?**


	9. Pains

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day (no update on June 2nd)**

 **Chapter warning: Mentions of Blood, Blood Lust, Predatory Instincts, Personal Fears**

Chapter IX: Pains

 _Work Log Entry IX: March, 1995_

 _March 29_

 _Despite multiple copulations, the she-wolf remains infertile._

 _We have performed surgery on her human form to implant the embryos to ensure success. Yet none have taken._

 _Perhaps the alterations we have made to her genetics have rendered her utterly barren?_

There was something eerie about the silence that greeted him upon opening his eyes. A cold chill had claimed the air at some point, suffocating and immense as he drew in a breath and felt it weigh upon his flesh like a well-worn jacket. His skin itched and tingled as he reached up to rub his temple briefly where a small but growing pain had disturbed his dream and drawn him into consciousness. It was a small, dull throbbing ache, with a light touch of abrasive familiarity that made his stomach twitch in painful recollection. His belly felt cold and hollow, almost as if a layer of ice coated the inside. A low, distant gurgling rose upwards and a sloshing made him hiss in pain as he rolled over to face the wall. The dull throb grew tenfold until it crashed within his skull with enough pain to make him want to cry out.

Eyes fixed on the wall for a moment, he rallied himself to stretch his legs to their fullest and twist to swing them over the side of the bed. He wondered if maybe this was what a hangover felt like but a violent chill swept over his spine as if he had been doused in water. His blood retaliated by flaring furiously and without warning. The clash of sensation was enough to make him sway on his feet and he staggered sideways just as toes touched the carpet. His other hand clenched against the edge of the mattress, catching him before he could take a topple to the ground.

He braced his weight there, pushing against the furniture and squeezing his eyes shut. Even behind his lids the world seemed to dip and sway, dancing like trickling water among stones. A small buzzing noise seemed to ring and echo within his brain, in time with the roaring burn of his blood where it passed through his veins. Mindlessly he pressed his palm more forcefully against his temple, feeling it twitch against his skin with his aching pulse.

Yugi swallowed back a whimper and moved to drag his feet along the carpet. The fibers itched painfully, tickling him, but the sensation seemed to dissolve moments later, never fully connecting in his brain. His movements were weak and slow, threatening to drive him insane. The gurgle of his stomach grew the smallest bit and then seemed to pull away without warning.

He paused in the doorway to his room, thinking to reach for the knob but stopping himself. The pain twitched and slithered as if slinking along his body and the chill of the room bore down upon him once more. Yugi blinked stupidly at the sensation, unnerved as the entirety of his affliction seemed to pass away with only an aching churn of his stomach and violent jerk of a shiver down his spine.

He stood completely still, aware now that he had been panting the entire time. His breathing grew mild and relaxed once more, evened out as if in slumber, and the chill it brought to his lungs made him want to sob with pleasure. It was horrifically beautiful a sensation, something he was shocked to realize. Standing there frozen mere inches from the door, he found himself almost trembling with the relief of this mundane ability. He wanted almost to sob and laugh pathetically all at once.

It took him several minutes to finally pull himself together enough to grasp the knob in front of him. The metal was so cold he felt every nerve on his palm erupt in an electric shock of ice. He thought briefly of broken glass cutting his skin and he almost laughed at himself again. He sounded pitiful, even to himself, and the most prominent thought beyond that was actually that should he laugh he might sound like a hyena.

He wondered only minutely, slipping through the open doorway and pausing to listen for any sign of his family being awake, if hyenas were related to wolves. He remembered, a vague passing article drifting through his mind like leaves moving in the wind, having once read that they were actually more closely related to felines. He even recalled at the moment, laughing when he saw Anzu's horrified expression when he had told her. She had been disgusted by the idea after having told Honda how much better felines were than canines and Yugi and Honda and Jonouchi had been ecstatic with this information. None of them had really cared much for hyenas, but the conversation had changed from an argument of cats versus dogs when Anzu had commented that hyenas were dogs and foxes were more like cats. She'd used the example as a reason to love cats over dogs when it had been proven instead that the opposite was true. It wasn't entirely true, as hyenas had their own family of classification, but they were believed to be more feliform than caniform.

Yugi tilted his head slightly, listening again, so distracted by his thoughts that he had forgotten his purpose for not going into the kitchen before then. He hardly wanted to run into his mom or grandpa at the moment. He was still waiting for another wave of pain to come on just as it had when he'd awoken. He doubted he would have the ability to pretend he was not in pain should it return and, as such, he was unwilling to go in there without knowing whether he would be alone or not.

" _Kasumi_ …"

He stiffened at the exasperated tone. It was rare to hear his grandfather's voice carrying it and more often than not it was related to only three subjects of conversation. And _all of them_ had to do with him.

"Shoving pills down his throat is _not_ going to help him."

He flinched and glanced at the door that opened to the stairs. He could slip down them and out of the house before they ever even considered the possibility that he might be awake. He was still dressed from earlier that day, after all. He'd been too tired to care about how uncomfortable it would be to sleep in his gray skinny jeans or his socks. The only thing he might need to do was go back and grab the hoodie he had tossed onto his computer chair.

"What else am I supposed to do? He's not eating or sleeping properly. He wanders around restlessly now! His night terrors are _back_ ," his mom snapped with a frustrated sigh. Yugi risked a small, swift glance over his shoulder and wondered if grabbing a jacket was truly worth hearing more of the conversation. He knew where it was going, how quickly it might get there. And he hated its path almost more than he did anything else. "If they aren't effective anymore, then they need to be adjusted."

"Do you really want him to go through this again? The medication never works. He's always had those night terrors and they've never exactly stopped them." His grandfather paused and Yugi chewed his lip as he waited for his next statement. "The last time we gave him a raised dosage of his anxiety medication, he was given panic attacks, remember?"

Was he really using that as a backhanded argument to stop her from raising the dosage? That was far from the truth, and all three of them knew it. The panic attacks might have become more frequent when one of his medications was altered, but that had nothing to do with actually causing them.

He watched the doorway unhappily, feeling sick to his stomach as he imagined them sitting at the table together. He pictured them across from each other as they always seemed to be upon beginning this argument. So frequent was it that this was no longer even slightly surprising to hear, even with the combination of the late hour it was commencing in. The lighting was dim where it touched the walls and it made it clear that they had not been awake long. The lights in the kitchen came on dim and grew gradually lighter, just like the ones downstairs in the clinic did.

"They've been helping him," his mom pressed, vice sharp enough to make Yugi flinch. "And they always helped him before he turned twelve, Dad. Sure, there were days where it sometimes did not, but overall it did what it was supposed to. And these last ones have worked the best."

"Or he might have simply pretended they worked so that he would not have to go through this entire process all over again, Kasumi." Yugi swallowed hard, reaching up to bite and chew on his thumbnail. It cracked and broke with a harsh popping noise in his own ears as he blinked and blood filled his mouth where it tore his cuticle. He swallowed hard and shook his head slightly as he tasted the harsh iron of his own blood soaking his tongue. "He knows well enough that _all_ you would have done was drag him to the hospital again and have more pills shoved down his throat. I certainly would never have told you about it if I were him either."

There was a pregnant pause, stretching for a full minute in which he found himself feeling sick to his stomach. When she spoke again, her voice was full of a conviction so fierce that he flinched.

"I _know_ when they do not work. He looks like _death_ when they don't—"

"Maybe he just got tired of pretending that they did. Honestly, I don't think they could have worked at any point. You know how strange the effects medications can have on him are. Perhaps he just decided it wasn't worth hiding it anymore. Or maybe he simply couldn't keep up with the idea of pretending anymore. I don't know. But I don't think they ever worked in the first place, Kasumi."

"So what do you suggest then?" she spat, very clearly losing whatever semblance of patience she had left with the subject at hand. Yugi shook his head slightly and reached up to pull on his bangs unhappily. "What is it that you think _I_ should do for _my_ son? Since you apparently have all the answers, why don't you tell me?"

"I think we should just let him keep going as he is—"

"Did you not just listen to me, Sugoroku?" Yugi flinched and the blood in his mouth seemed to burn and tingle on his tongue like fire. She was using his first name, and he had grown aware of just how bad it was when she did that. "I just said that he isn't sleeping or eating _properly_ , damn it. And you think it's fine to just let him keep going like that? He's not sleeping at all and he's not eating as much as he should be! You're an idiot if you think I'm going to let him—"

"He'll recover on his own. He always does! You've seen him do this before—"

"No, I know that _you've_ watched him do it!" she snarled, and the small teen winced as her palm collided with the table loudly. "I know that you've told me that he has done this before, gotten worse and then come back from it. And then you wonder why I don't let you watch him on your own anymore! You let him get to the point that his teachers called me to ask what happened to him and made me come back early from vacation with my _husband_!"

Yugi cringed and looked down the hall again, head snapping around and then jerking back to his room once more. He could easily turn and flee inside, grab his jacket and make a run for it before either of them would ever notice. He knew how to sneak out even if it was not something he practiced often.

"So, really, Dad? That's going to be your brilliant answer? That's just great. That's the best answer you could ever give. You want me to continue to let him suffer these horrifying night terrors he has and when they get to the point that he got last time when he was fourteen, then _what_?"

"How do you even know that they'll get worse? When I let him go through it without all the medication, he seemed to get _better_!"

Yugi found himself sighing in unison with the harsh one that escaped his mother and shook his head slightly at the idea, closing his eyes. He had almost forgotten about when he was fourteen and his mom had left for a few days with his dad. The two of them had been spending his holiday together because they wanted to celebrate his promotion. Yugi had been unable to go with them due to school but had not wanted to encroach on their time together regardless. So the whole thing had not been much of a problem for him. He had always wanted them to have more time to spend together and so never spent too much time with them on the rare occasion that his dad was home.

However, that time, his medication had run out and he had not wanted to go to his grandfather about it. Rather than say anything, he had ignored it and thus deteriorated. And he knew that his grandfather had been watching him, waiting for him—he had thought back then—to come to him about it. Instead, he realized as he was listening to them, enlightened by the knowledge he'd learned recently, he had been watching and waiting. He had wanted to see the effects of his night terrors when he was out of medication.

The teachers had called his mom when he had nearly had a breakdown in the middle of the hallway on the way to the nurse's office when he had been dismissed because he could not focus and looked sickly. When she had come back, she had always watched her father closely and never allowed him to get too close to him for long handfuls of time. He had rarely been left alone with him, and she had never gone about spending time out of the house for longer than necessary. She called every night if she had to leave the house for any amount of time overnight, especially if he was alone with Sugoroku. She checked his medication, refilled it for him every time that she saw that he was low on any of them.

He realized, however, that she did so because of her fear for him. She had never thought to so much as grumble unhappily about it. She just wanted him safe. She just wanted him healthy. She didn't want him to suffer through unnecessary fear and pain like her father had allowed him to.

"I don't know of any kind of illnesses that can be treated by ignorance."

" _Illness_?" her father cried incredulously. "Yugi is not _ill_!"

"Night terrors are considered—"

"No, they are not and you know that! Do not try justifying yourself like that. Night terrors are just that—nightmares, bad dreams. I don't see you taking any medication for nightmares—"

"This is not about me! This is about my son— _your grandson_ —who has been having nightmares since he was five, damn it. This is not. _Normal_!"

"Well, he is perfectly healthy according to the doctors," his grandfather shot back in annoyance. "So, forgive me for not understanding why you keep freaking out like this. Every time he runs out of medication doesn't mean he needs the dosage raised, Kasumi! All the medication has ever done is make him drowsy and disoriented. And you've left happy because you're under some illusion that it's helping him and you know it's not! All they have _ever_ done is make him unhappy and nervous!"

Yugi turned away and spun on his heel, narrowing his eyes into slits as he headed for his bedroom once more. He ignored them intently as he grabbed his jacket and pulled it over his shirt quickly. He was happy that he had not bothered to change his clothes for that nap he had wound up taking. Even sleeping through dinner could not dampen his gratitude towards this. He pushed his feet into his sneakers immediately and then turned, heading for the stairs again and glancing back only once.

He pulled the knob until it clicked almost silently, easing it open slowly and keeping it twisted completely. He pulled it until it was open halfway, so as not to raise suspicion should one or the other see it, and slipped down the first and second steps. His eyes darted only momentarily where their accusatory tones were growing harsher as he gripped the knob harder. His fingers ached with the force and his palm itched painfully where the smooth brass chafed his skin slightly. He swapped hands, careful that it was still turned, and pulled the door shut again. He released the knob slowly, listening to it slide into place again, and counted off the steps.

He had memorized them long ago and was able to reach the bottom door without issue, without the need to feel along the wall or seek out the small banister. He pushed the door open with the same care he had taken upstairs, and hurried for the entrance. The moment he stepped outside, his lungs welcomed the contrast of the cool air swirling in them like mist, and smiled faintly at the touch.

He was not sure where it was he was headed. He had no plans or sense of direction. He did not have a certain way he wanted to go. He did not question himself as he let his feet lead him down the sidewalk. His eyes unconsciously flickered and settled on the trees running along the other side of the street, the shadows making his mouth feel dry. What was among them, lurking back there, listening and stalking him? Were the wolves hunting him now? Were they there to hunt him like cattle? When would they leap out and attempt to tear his throat out? Would it be on this same sidewalk? Would they kill him in a similar alleyway where Ushio had attempted? Would his alpha opt to save him now or merely turn away? Or perhaps it would be them to kill him.

He glanced at the streetlight for a moment, somehow surprised by the sight of the new bulb. How long had that been there? When had they replaced it? How had he never noticed that it was happening? It was almost directly across from his window; the tree next to the glass did almost nothing to obscure his sight of it. He should have been able to see them as they were doing this. There was no reason he should have missed it, especially with the inevitable amount of noise they would have made, but he supposed he might have been at school or out of the house at the time.

Yugi's eyes wandered slowly further upwards as if drawn by another brilliant white and silver light. It was not dim but it seemed weaker than usual to him and he had to strain his eyes to catch it fully amidst the shadows surrounding it. The waxing moon was overcast by thick clouds, illuminating so little that he was somehow shocked to have even noticed it. A moment passed and his skin seemed to tingle as he continued looking at it. He felt that his mind might as well have been a set of stadium lights as his sight focused on it completely and drew in the details he would have usually missed. When he looked away again, he thought he could make out everything within the darkness around him.

The streets were completely empty due to the late hour and so he was not worried about running into another person. He knew, still, that he could not discount the possibility of wolves around him, lurking and waiting with the simple goal of ripping his throat open. But, as he continued walking, he felt his sense of caution waning for some reason he could not name or even understand. His mind seemed to slow for a minute, doubting now that he might even run into any others. Any wolves in question were not going to come to see him, no longer even slightly fathomable, a thought that he would never doubt or question as suddenly as it had come. There was no negotiation or even a small touch of leeway in its firmness, with so much power to it that he was both stunned and pleased.

However the moment passed quickly, the soothing edge of that thought turning immediately sour. It was not as refreshing as it could have been as he glanced about himself slowly. His hands buried themselves into his jacket pockets and he tipped his head forward again, taking in his surroundings once more. His senses were oddly demure in their offer to seek out threats around him. He was unsure of whether something might have been wrong with his instincts or whether to take it as a clear sign that there was no danger around him.

Not a thing drew his attention safe a cat that yowled and fled when he took a step too close to where it was hiding among some rocks beneath the thin trees across the street from the entrance of the park. He watched, attention undivided, as it loped off running in an awkward, uneven pattern that told him the feline was limping badly.

It did not fully connect in his head that there was such an immense number of stray cats running around Domino like this. He felt that perhaps it should have as he had always known of how little kids like to throw rocks at them and some of them would turn and attack if they had the chance. He had always had the task of catching them with his mom in order to get them spayed or neutered and then put in shelters or amongst rescue groups. Yugi blinked and shook his head slightly with a small smile. He supposed his lycanthropy would be the end of that.

He realized easily that if animals went crazy when Valon was around, then it would only prove a hindrance in terms of helping the felines. He had gotten teeth through his palms and scratches to his face and along his wrists more than he cared to count. He had not cared about it then but he would not mind missing out on that ordeal again. He also wouldn't miss the surgeries on them at any point.

They were so fragile—ironic for their often nasty temperaments—that they needed light anesthetics. In surgery, they mewled with almost every breath. It sounded so painful that Yugi often thought they were still wide awake and could _feel it all_. The idea had always scared and horrified him to the point that he wanted to flee the moment it was merely suggested he might help out with anything concerning them.

He shook the thought off, watching as the cat disappeared as if swallowed by the darkness. It looked like a small white mist or maybe even the special effects for a ghost on film. It was strange to think of such a thing but its white coat was impossible to miss. Yugi glanced around momentarily, curious as he looked at the part at nighttime. He had never truly been there after the sun had set, but he did memorize it in daytime hours enough to navigate even without the large lampposts set about the edges of it. He recognized the layout without a second thought, walking forward again. He ignored the soft but highly noticeable crackling of the grass flattening beneath his shoes. He wished momentarily that there was night life to greet his ears. The silence safe for the hum of the lights within their glass casings seemed suffocating.

His stomach ached as he continued walking, nearing one of the benches. A small tingle bit at his skin, the hairs on the back of his neck beginning to rise. The air seemed colder for a split second and his mouth felt weak as if it might fall open at any moment. His skull felt as if it were being stabbed, temples throbbing painfully. Yugi screwed his eyes shut as he took a seat. His pants were intensely cold the moment his butt touched the metal of the bench. A small sigh left his lips before he fully considered, and a small but blaring cry echoed in his head.

He wanted to snap his eyes open and look around. But he felt weak and exhausted now, unable to do anything more. He breathed in roughly, lungs aching but soothed with the chill the night offered him. Yugi let out a soft, content breath despite the alarms that seemed to make his blood burn furiously within his veins. He kept his eyes closed and a sensation of furthering his thoughts seemed to seep over him. There was a hint of disembodiment that swept over him, almost as if the wind might have passed through and over him.

He could not think of words to describe the foreign sensation, but he did find himself blinking at a new realization. Staring across the park, he swore the grass looked even paler than the coming winter invoked, he heard them in the darkness. There was a single drifting breeze which tugged his hair as if ruffling it affectionately. It brought to him first the sound of the grass and then a scent seemingly coated in medicine and even something akin smoke. It was gone in an instant but it burned itself within his mind as if by a metal branding. Every nerve ending cracking with such force he almost expected to hear it.

It may not have been something he was entirely used to but he knew the sensation and its absolute meaning immediately. A balance had very clearly shifted within his mind. Where his attention may have been split before, it now seemed to pull and focus entirely with the refusal to dismiss any words or shift of weight that might be offered him.

He did not turn his head, however, feeling somehow frozen and exhausted but hyperaware as well.

A soft, raspy breath pushed through the air. He bristled only slightly in response, some small body that seemed to have amazingly avoided the chill that made him so statuesque. A deliberately loud snap of noise burst forth from the same direction. Impulse spoke of a flinch. Instinct spoke of his frozen state. Somehow, despite his surprise at such a noise, his body remained completely still. Frozen and watching his breaths come out in gentle white puffs, Yugi found that they had not changed in even the slightest. Every second a new cloud crept past his nose in clear defiance of the darkness.

Yugi resisted a shudder at his own infallible calm state.

"That's not him."

It was so simple a statement that he almost turned his head in question.

"He would have heard us and turned his head." There was a small pause, as if the speaker were questioning the statement himself, and then the words seemed to taste just right enough to continue. "He was always skittish and couldn't fight to save his life. He would have jumped up and fled by now—"

"I don't recall giving you _permission_ to speak."

It was only as he listened to this second statement, an irate sneer, that he became aware of just how unnatural the first voice sounded. It was strained but still pulsated with power and cunning arrogance. Its undertone was rough and scratchy, and its overtone was gruff and gravelly. He thought briefly of smoker lungs and the boxes put in their throats when throat cancer damaged their vocal chords. But this second voice was as thick as honey, with a deep and harmonious edge that made his words all the more scornful. And, as his mind picked at these small differences, Yugi recognized something else.

The raw strength in that damaged voice was that of a werewolf. The second was that of a human, a familiar one but still a human's all the same.

"Oh? And what do you think you are going to do about it? Do you really think that little gun of yours will protect you forever? Give me one shot to tear that pale throat of yours out, and it is _all_ over. Just _one_ chance."

"It's almost comical that you truly believe that you could actually kill me."

"I could have that first time. If it were not for all those unfortunate interferences."

"All of that voltage in your system was enough to kill an African elephant. You dropped like a rock." The voice paused, sounding at first wistful and then terribly amused. Yugi fought back the urge to cringe and flee, his curiosity and a mounting fear keeping him rooted to the spot. "It's really rather a shame that it did not kill you that day."

He frowned slightly, his lips tugging down just enough that it would hopefully be unnoticeable to whomever it was observing him. He was glad that his fingers were splayed across his cheeks, cutting off any direct sight of his facial expression. He had no idea how well they might be at reading body language but he did not think he was truly showing any of his distinct unease. But he could almost use the placement of his fingers to understand and identify which direction it was they were watching him from, though it still seemed questionable in every sense as he struggled to pinpoint them exactly.

He blinked slowly, doing faithfully as his instincts bid him. His eyes flickered slowly in lazy movements, trailing from one side of the park to the other. The position of his fingers gave him two new blind spots, blocking away his very peripheral, but it didn't bother him. Had they been within his range of sight, who was to say he wouldn't stare at them despite how furiously his mind rebelled such a thought? It was hardly a good idea to let them know he was aware of them.

The human had a gun—whether it was only an electric taser or not, he was unsure—and the werewolf was another issue entirely. A human and a wolf would have dropped dead long before a voltage got to the point of killing an elephant. The werewolf, however, was very much alive considering his ability to speak despite the obvious damage done to his vocals. With the certainty of which he spoke with such open threat of killing the human, he did not think the damage was more extensive than that. Maybe he had a small limp or his thoughts were sometimes somewhat sluggish, but he doubted it was too life-altering.

And _that_ had to be one of the most horrifying things he had ever thought in his lifetime.

African elephants stood at ten to thirteen feet tall and weighed up to fifteen thousand four hundred pounds. Wolves only weighed up to one hundred and eighty pounds, standing at thirty-two inches at the shoulder. Humans, with seven feet at their tallest, only weighed two hundred and seventy-five at the most.

Even if the werewolf were seven feet tall, he should not have been able to survive that. The combined weight of the human and wolf was nowhere near even _half_ of the immense body mass that made up the African elephant. He should have been long dead unless something in his blood had saved him somehow. Yugi had felt those powerful endorphins when his own body was healing but he did not think it was possible that they might save him from a blast of electricity. Was it possible that the wolf's heart had started again _after_ the initial hit? Or had they maybe revived him for some reason? Or…were they truly immortal then?

He wanted to shudder, but his body remained forebodingly still as if controlled by a foreign entity.

"Nothing to say?"

"You are not worth wasting my breath."

There was a long, pregnant silence, and Yugi shifted just enough to press his weight more fully into his elbows where they touched his knees. He tilted his head a small bit more, narrowing his eyes faintly as he concentrated a little harder. The movement and strain of his senses was just enough to catch the whisper of noise that pronounced the action of one of them releasing a small huff of displeasure.

"He's a Pure-Blood," the second voice said slowly, as if sampling the words. They paused, and small teen swore he could hear the uncertainty and growing hesitance in his smooth tone as he continued. "He knows how to make himself appear more human. That is what all werewolves were born to do. They can adapt like no other creature, just like natural wolves. It is the way of the wolf. You adapt to survive or you will die. There is nothing between."

The werewolf's voice rose in a hideously and sharpened gravelly laugh that made him swallow hard to avoid flinching. Its tone was bitter and vicious; with such an edge it put a knife to shame. "Or that could simply be a human," it snarled mockingly. "You waste my time with this game. He does not even smell as if he might change. And the Pure-Bloods are _forced_ to change on the full moon. It is approaching quickly enough that the signs would show now—"

"No one said that you could speak."

"Tell me, do you like having one eye? Would you like to go blind, human?"

"I think your wolf is right," said a third voice, easily cutting away any rebuttal the other may have been preparing. Yugi felt the marrow in his bones grow ice cold, his spine aching as it began to tighten and his mind screamed at him with the impulse to flee. This new voice seemed to slip into his very core, turning his blood to ice as the deep timbre reverberated harshly within his ears. It seemed to come from the belly, full with a passion built of life and amusement. Every nerve within his body burst with fire as alarm made his head pound as if counting down to explosion. "He should be anxious and restless, should he not? If he were to change…"

"Who is to say that he _isn't_?" the second voice cut in so angrily that Yugi thought he might be frothing at the mouth. "What _other_ explanation could there possibly be for his being here? It's almost two in the morning and no regular human would want to be out in an abandoned park of all places."

"It's called _walking_ ," the wolf scoffed in loud dismissal. The sarcastic edge of his voice made Yugi's lips quirk only at the very corners, though he held himself as completely still as he could. "I hear that humans tend to that on occasion. I know that you and your fat ass friend might not do it often, but it happens sometimes. Or maybe he's seeing the sights. I hear they like to do that too…if they have _two_ good eyes."

The small teen wanted instantly to laugh at the mocking undertone of the dismissive statement. It was both horrifying and relieving in the most horrendous of ways to hear something being said of that nature. The threat beneath it all was nothing he would have liked to hear again, but the simplicity of his tone was so ironic that he could ignore his natural instinct to flee.

Yugi squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed at his temples for a moment, sighing in harsh frustration. He shouldn't have been amused in the slightest. He was being watched by three people, one of which was a wolf with no hesitation towards spilling blood. He imagined that, had it the chance, it would rip his throat out without a hint of trepidation considering the casualness with which it threatened the human's eye. He would not have been surprised if he bore witness to the man's screams if it turned on him suddenly.

But, as he considered it, the wolf also seemed to be trying to defend him. Why else would it say that he did not smell as if he might change? The wolf had even alluded to an inability to as an average human. And Yugi did not doubt for even a second that he could tell. Valon and Amelda had seemed to without even truly trying, just as he had smelled the chemical imbalance in the former only days before. Was it a true possibility that he wasn't going to change?

There was something in that very thought that made an inexplicable wave of emotion come over him. But Yugi recognized it almost immediately as well and the reality of it made it all seem even more irrefutable than it had been only moments before. The shame was crushing and forceful, causing him almost to choke on the sharp air he was breathing in. It was unfathomable to consider just how beyond hope and out of reach it all seemed.

A clarity came over him abruptly as he blinked his eyes open enough to look between his lashes across the cut grass. The trees cast low, dark shadows across the yellowed stalks where it looked dead rather than light and unusually vibrant as some areas appeared. The virus was there in his veins, controlling his senses and manipulating his instincts. It held him there like a shackled prisoner, forcing him to listen and hear what he did not want to. Its hold on his thoughts was loose but vicious, deepening with the circulation towards its own disgusting existence.

He could not understand why it was that they sat there, watching and waiting. If they wanted to observe him, weren't there more inconspicuous ways to go about it? Was there not some way for them to watch and even abduct him without so much warning? But what was the point? Why should they watch him, someone so small and all but meaningless in the world? Did they have a reason? Did it have to do with being called a "Pure-Blood" as they'd mentioned? And did that name or phrase—title, perhaps—have to do with what Valon was so terribly hateful of?

He abruptly shot to his feet. His stomach tensed, twisting painfully, and his heart raced disgustingly. A sense of dizziness threatened to knock him off his feet and his mouth felt dry as he swallowed thickly. He thought he might drop, his body seemingly weighted as he attempted to take a step. A gust of wind tugged at his clothes, cutting through the threads with the efficiency of a knife. He shivered before he could think to stop himself, and his shoulders rose to shield his neck from the next blast of wintry wind.

"There's your proof," the werewolf growled, voice disgusted. "He's nothing but your average pathetic human. No wolf would have shivered—not when they're so close to the Change. He'd be so hot he wouldn't even feel it. He's just human. And you two are morons."

* * *

He checked his bag a second time. The tan and brown sack looked incredibly small and yet somehow too large in size. He recognized it despite himself, his cowardice and mounting fear which refused to release him. The reality of this disease was far too vast to be contained and, yet, he still was attempting to come to terms with it. It had, slowly but surely, been a concept that was becoming reality. He had essentially been coming to terms with that despite the fear it brought him.

Yugi stared at the boy for only a moment longer and then dropped it to the recesses of his mind, desperate to smother its very existence. The morning had seemingly drawn itself out and several times he had almost thought dawn would last forever. The time had passed somehow, despite how slowly and warped his perception of keeping it. He got up again, satisfied with his preparations at last. His mother and grandfather had left the house a while back, hours before, and though he had lingered Yugi was anxious to leave before they returned and explanation was needed.

There was no true explanation he might be able to spin with enough realism to merit their belief. He had sent them both messages that he would be with Jonouchi all day. He had even texted the blond to play his alibi should either of them ask him. He'd agreed easily enough, though he argued that he wanted to know when they were at the festival.

Spinning his house key on his index finger, the small teen snatched the backpack by its strap and pulled it up. His eyes flickered briefly to the window's glass where the slight glare of sun against its surface made his head spin minutely. The sky was bright, with such intensity it made him flinch, the blue as light as the clouds.

He spun on his heel, tossing a strap over his right shoulder, and hurried for the stairs. He had been awake since an hour before dawn had even begun to touch the sky and since then he had been unable to sleep. His eyes had ached since the very moment they had opened completely and he had watched the room grow from royal blue to the familiar gentle sky of his painted walls.

As he made his way through the house, the intensity of the colors made his head pulse faintly. The hallway was a deep and lively red-violet of which looked faintly like vibrant flames within the corners of his aching vision. The white door he opened in order to slip down the stairs was as blinding as headlights at night. The staircase was an odd but beautiful orange that seemed only a shade away from gold, the carpet lining the steps something akin that of red clay or the sand from Australia. He'd only ever seen it in movies but the color always reminded him strictly of that imagery. He'd always considered the multiple colors in the house to be soothing before but now he wished they were all muted and dull, maybe simply gray.

Pain bloomed behind his eyes and he barely resisted the urge to press his fingers into his temples pathetically. Exhaustion still pulled on his limbs and dragged at his senses, heightened by the intensity of the colors pushing on his eyes. They seemed to smother him, killing away all of his awareness but his vision where it caused the muscles behind his eyes to throb violently. His hearing seemed impossibly nonexistent, as if stuffed with cotton balls. His sense of taste had become nothing more than a flat and disgusting odorous heat which burned his tongue.

His nerves felt numb, tingling and displaced as his fingertips lost all hints of feeling. And his nose felt as if it had been stuffed completely, aching at the top as if his sinuses were blocked, leaving no room to breathe in anything that might have lingered about the house.

He squinted against the sunlight that touched the tile in front of him as he hurried to make it through the door. It would be seven days before the full moon came about, but the conversation he'd overhead buzzed within his ears.

It echoed within the confines of his seemingly swollen skull. Was this sudden restlessness and disorientation of his usually keen senses a sign of the Change coming?

His dizziness only grew as he continued forward, throwing the door open. The fresh air, cold and icy, swept through him, past even the horrible pain of his nose. For a split second it seemed to clear it all away rather effectively and then it was instantly gone again. The painful clogs came back and his head began to feel even more smothered and claustrophobic.

When he blinked he felt as if his eyes might burn away entirely. The light against the pavement seemed to glow as if the asphalt were nothing more than the painted hoods of cars. He squinted, judging his odds of being able to move about within the streets to find his hiding spot. It was a little faster if he used the road and alley to pick his way to the little cavern. It wasn't as far from the city limits as he had originally wanted, and he could surely follow his own scent back if he suddenly chose to. He still did not know what this experience might be like, whether he would have control or not. He had eaten heavily, hoping that his hunger would not return so that he might find his way back to the city for easy prey. But the small cavern had seemed like the best place for him to go.

Looking at the road again and then the buildings in the background, looming upwards on either side, he knew immediately that he would not be able to do it. The very sight of that once potential path was too blinding and it made his head pulse as his vision spun violently. Even squinting he could not shield himself from its hideous impact. As he turned towards the trees, the shadows from the canopy of leaves offered a strange and beautiful shelter from it all. The greens were harsh, sharpened to the point of a blade's edge, especially where the light touched the bright leaves. The bark seemed to glint like shards of ice, painted paler than dull brown. A rock on the floor of the forest seemed to glitter, refracting the light like a pool's surface.

Yugi only glanced back once before heading across the street hurriedly. His movements seemed still to be too slow. Unable to hear even his own sneakers against the pavement with such muddled senses, he almost felt he was not even moving. It was only the way that the trees seemed to be coming closer that assured him of his progress, the way that the light from the asphalt appeared to be vanishing from the immense strip it had once been. It did not help that he almost could not feel it when his shoes touched the ground, his balance uniform despite the lack of sensation. His fingers tingled more as he traced the material of his bag's strap where it hung over his shoulder.

The shade gave him instant relief, the extra chill from the shadows cast making him want to smile. The light green of the leaves overhead cast beautiful dappled patterns and he momentarily thought he recognized three different shades of color. He could see many of the veins from the leaves, like tiny threads of a spider's web. The trees' bark was still pale, almost as if the color had been stripped away by the winter. He lowered his eyes towards the floor, looking over the browned leaves and brittle pine which had been shed. Small twigs and rocks looked oddly defined despite the darkness which painted them tan and gray. The usually immense undergrowth was weak and brittle, yellowed and browned as if they might shatter at any moment.

Yugi turned his attention away, hoping that his sense of direction would not be rendered useless to this new intensity his sight had adapted. He hoped his senses would not ruin his navigation. Becoming lost in the woods was not something he really cared to do. A wolf would surely find and kill him if that was ever a true possibility. And then his body might not even be discovered for weeks or months on end. Or, considering how small he really was, maybe they would simply eat him in all his entirety.

The pine needles seemed like pillows as he continued walking. The lack of touching the earth as fully as he would have otherwise made him want to curl up on his side uncomfortably, attempt to sleep the day away like he might a simple everyday headache. It was so unnatural that he almost thought the temperature had dropped and he had become hypothermic, tempted to test his own dexterity. He considered it briefly and then immediately dismissed it. When he had checked the weather it had been nowhere near such temperature and had only truly had the wind chill to consider.

He calculated that it would take about an hour to find his way there, with fifteen minutes trimmed by way of using the alley shortcut to find his way there. It was a small spot that he knew of and had never shown the others despite the years that he had been known of and sometimes visited it. It was deep in the woods and within the base of the mountain, almost within the very center of the slope. It was overrun with lichen and the cavern itself was almost filled completely with a strange upturned rock, giving room only to the very back and sides of the small area. Around the granite stone the earth was smooth and painted a deep earthy reddish-brown like clay but as soft as sand to the touch.

Someone walking by would have easily overlooked it. It simply looked like a rock jutting up and the small cavern was hardly noticeable when someone went to inspect it a little closer. He himself had never thought to look at it until he had been following a wounded dog through the woods by its blood trail. It had been shot and made its way there in a full sprint, long dead before he had even caught up to it. He'd been twelve and had found it laying there in a way that suggested it had slipped and fallen at the rock's side. Its tail had been the only thing that he had seen that day. That was the only reason Yugi had even noticed the small cavern, which he thought sometimes looked like a bear's den.

He did not think that anyone else knew of it beyond wild animals. And he was sure, had a wolf been following him, it would not have taken long to find its entrance and thus him as well. Wolves were known for trekking their territories at eight miles an hour. The thought of that was enough to make him wonder just how much faster the werewolves were. What if, when the wolf took over, it treaded into the woods and outwards back to the city where he would kill someone? And what if the Wiccan beliefs were true and he was condemned to the same thing every week of the full moon?

Yugi shook his head slowly and the pain seemed to burst behind his eyes with the movement. When he swallowed hard in an attempt to smother the whimper creeping into his lungs, it felt as if he were attempting to consume rusted nails. An acrid burn touched the back of his tongue but the disgusting taste still did not leave his mouth.

He wished pathetically that it was closer to sunset. He wished for a moment that there was only enough light to find his way there and nothing more. It took only that thought to give him the smallest of the silver lining he had been searching for that entire morning around his headache. The lycanthropy would only be triggered by a full moon, by the moon itself, and never the sun.

He would never have to worry he might turn into a wolf in the middle of the day. He would never have to plan for it to happen before he was able to lay his eyes on the source of his Changes. It was as if is new disease had come with a strange but peaceful security blanket.

His lips threatened to tug at the irony but something seemed to move within his periphery. He froze in place now, entire body still as he drew in a sharp breath. He had not heard anything coming up behind him or smelled another within the area. His internal alarm had not gone off as it should have. But he immediately recognized that it was another wolf.

He had failed to recognize the color that had caught his eye, whether it was anything like clothing or rough fur. For a moment he was unable to convince himself it was worth the risk of looking over, but the decision was abruptly made for him. Another movement within his periphery made his head turn so sharply that he and this newcomer both clearly heard the snap of his vertebrae.

His eyes caught a clothing material, the fibers so bright he had to squint in order to avoid being blinded. His sight was so caught on the strands that he could see a small frayed end brought by constant wear. He had even caught a single, small thread pulled just beneath that spot. And then it was immediately gone once more.

For a moment he was frozen, mind struggling to catch up with the information it had gathered. For a split second he did nothing, unable to do anything more than stare after the spot that the color had faded into the forest. Then a new idea sprang into his thoughts, forcing everything else away, and he raced after the small bit of color. The spot of teal burned within his mind, vibrant and bursting forth, and his head throbbed painfully with the movement.

He had expected the chase to take longer. Rather, as he rounded the large tree trunk, he found the other stopped a couple of steps ahead of him. For a moment he was confused, blinking against the urge to double over and vomit. His nerves were shot, exploding with pain. His eyes hurt so much that he had to squeeze them shut and press his fingers into his temples.

The throbbing had returned to his head. His sense of taste came with a tingling sensation, and he faintly remembered his breakfast of sandwiches and bento. His ears popped and ached, and he could hear a squirrel in the treetops, racing about, birds singling lonely songs, and the harshness of his own breathing. He swallowed hard, forcing away the bile creeping up his throat.

He could hear something else now, however. It was solid, with the softest of echoes, and it sounded wet and powerful. It was twisting, and for a second it seemed almost hollow. It was steady, however, and the softer wisps of noise that met him were almost in sync. They came in such small, almost unnoticeable edges like a gentle breeze, but with such frequency that it made his skin crawl briefly.

His eyes shot open when clothing rustled. For a moment he thought the other would make a run for it. But, immediately, Yugi's gaze fell on them again. They had not moved but a gentle twist of their neck.

Their head had turned just enough to look at him. Their eyes were dark, framed by long lashes so thick they blocked the color of their gaze. Their head tipped towards him. Their jaw was strong, pronounced. The collar of their jacket blocked away the sight of their neck.

Yugi recognized the scent that drifted towards him slowly. It was that of summer winds and autumn leaves attached to a cedar tree. And it burned at his subconscious as he tilted his head in wonder. A small lightheadedness, brought by his growing confusion, began to sweep through his skull, almost pushing away all sense of the pain from its former throbbing.

The other suddenly spun around to face him. The small teen gained his presence in fragments. First he saw the long legs and slim hips. There was the waistband of black skinny jeans. There were the tongues of some flat-soled shoes. Then there was a narrow wrist and a torso clothed in gray cotton. There was a neck covered in smears of blood. The skin was a warm complexion, a mix between a tan and cream. The nails were long and overgrown, thick and full. There were no nicks or cracks. But something covered the wrists…

Yugi blinked and stared blankly as his mind tried to concentrate on what he was seeing. It was white and wrapped securely, showing off prominently the shape of their narrow bones. The fibers were thick, laced together expertly. The edges were cut, pressed into their skin. There was a layer on top of the first.

It took him a moment to understand that he was looking at medical tape. It was oddly pristine despite the blood on their fingers. Not a single bit was smeared or soaked. And the edges of the jacket they wore were pressed by constant wear but neither supported even a hint of the bright red liquid.

He blinked again and his attention shot upward. Their neck was still covered and smeared, but the wound was completely gone. When he looked up, he found that their jaw was sharper and narrower than his own. The cheekbones were higher set, almost just beneath the eyes.

The other werewolf spun around again. A small inhale alerted him that it was scenting the air. Two long exhales left it and then the wolf started forward without a second glance.

"W-wait," he managed to choke out. The concept of being alone was suddenly and inexplicably horrifying and terrible. He could not grasp what had changed but he felt it. He didn't think he truly cared, however, so shaken by the idea that he couldn't wrap his mind around it fully.

The other paused with the heel of its right shoe against the ground, posed to continue walking. They stayed silent, not turning their head to look again, but they didn't walk either. Yugi realized they were listening for his voice, waiting, but that they would not turn around again. For whatever reason, this caught Yugi's attention more than even his sudden appearance.

And that was the only realize he realized another reason he had not noticed the other's eyes. They had their jacket hood pulled over their head completely as if they were attempting to block out whatever bit of sunlight reached them through the trees. But it was not something that held his attention anymore than if he was merely looking at Jonouchi during class.

"Are you hurt? I saw your wrists…" He trailed off, unsure of what else there was to say. A small wave of confusion crept along his bones as he watched the other. They were completely still in front of him, frozen, but then began walking again. The small teen sprang forward, immediately hurrying after him, but froze in incredulousness as the other broke into a full spring at the sound of his approach.

Why was he running? Yugi huffed softly, frustrated but also forcing away some of the fear in his gut. And then he took off after them. Pain ricocheted from each part of his body. His heart pulsed with it instead of blood, pushing it through every cell. His head throbbed and burned, and it steadily pushed through to his shoulder, his chest, along his arm, and to the very center of his collarbones. He whimpered at the sensation, nearly stumbling, and his legs threatened to buckle beneath him.

It occurred to him, as he almost went sprawling across the forest floor, that he would not catch up with him. It took almost two of his strides to make up for the other's one with the speed they ran. It was almost as if their feet did not even touch the ground when they ran, and for a moment Yugi hated them for the speed they possessed. He stared after them, no longer running, and his ears rang faintly. He had struggled to keep his hearing trained on the other, and, despite his fest efforts, he could almost not even catch their racing feet.

The wind had grown so still that unless he put his nose to the ground, he would no longer be able to smell this newcomer. He turned his head to look around, expecting the sharp light to make him cower. However, now he saw it with such average human senses that it made him feel sick and yet happy all at once. For a moment he thought to chase the other, but with the speed they ran, he doubted he would ever gain ground on them. So, instead, he spun on his heel, looking about him slowly.

How long had they been running? How far had he gone from his own path? Would it be easier for him to find his way back if he did lower his nose to the ground and try to track himself?

He had only ever wandered these woods in order to reach that small cavern. When it came down to it, it was easy enough for him to get lost, and much harder for him to find his way again. He had never been extraordinary with his direction, but he had always managed when it was needed. Had he not strayed far from his path? His mind scrambled for a landmark, but none was offered.

It took him several minutes to find his way back, his mind abruptly but surely supplying him with the fact that he was back on track. He felt like he had been moving for hours. The throb in his arm and collarbone had disappeared completely. His tongue felt as if it had been coated in stomach acid once more, the taste bitter and hideous. His sense of touch had returned to that numbness, without tingles or heat to spark his nerve endings.

His nose burned with the scent of autumn leaves and summer winds even as the ache returned and his nasal passages seemed to shut harshly again his hearing was last to go, and the final thing that met his ears was that of a squirrel lunging into a branch overhead, chattering loudly as the twig snapped where its paw landed. His sight took in harsher colors again, and the brightness made his head spin once more as he continued forward.

Several times he glanced over his shoulder. At first he thought it was curiosity that made him do so. He thought maybe he suspected the other wolf would reappear. But, it was as he got towards the cavern that it occurred to him. Someone was watching him, with such intensity that it made his mind flare with paranoia just enough to make his instincts come to life. He looked twice about himself before approaching the large stone.

Yet, the wolf was there, lingering and watching him with an intense stare as the small teen dropped into the small dip of earth behind the stone. They sat on a long, thin branch, right leg dangling over the side as it kicked the air lazily with the other bent so that the sole of their shoe pressed firmly into the bark there.

The air stirred lazily, the temperature slowly dropping, but the boy had yet to come forth. Another hour passed and the wolf shifted only to alleviate some of the stiffness in his bent knee. A squirrel scampered by, a bird let out a low chirp, and the sound of a heavier animal—which he assumed to be a bear—made its way through his keen senses. Most notable, however, was the gentle breaths the other let out from beneath the dirt. With the cavern so small and enclosed, his heart was even loud enough that it was much alike thunder rolling through the sky on dark clouds.

The wolf leaned back against the trunk, blinking lazily. A fly drifted through the air a few inches from his nose, miniscule and black. A growl built up in his chest, disinterested but annoyed as well, and it was swatted harshly from the air with a flick of the wrist. The bark dug into the pads of his fingers, small bits of wood splitting the skin when the nails tugged upwards in gentle impatience.

The edges of nighttime tugged at his awareness long before the boy poked his head back out. The sky was darkening slowly, the air changing. A shift seemed to come over the small bit of forest around them. A small but meticulous humming began to come from the bark overhead and the familiarity of its presence was easily sourced to a black beetle by memory. The rougher touch of the bark, formerly heated, began to grow softer and easier beneath their fingers which gently stroked at the surface. The shadows tilted and lurched, stretching across the ground and growing darker as the light overhead began to turn purple and dark blue.

Small patches of black were visible where the trees' density was lessened somewhat. Sparks of glittering white illuminated the darkness with such power even the moon seemed put to shame. A twist of the head brought to sight the nearly fallen orb, the leaves painted bluish-green with the veins highlighted in thick, fractured lines. A single drop of water pooled at the end of a twig, dancing with surface light which glistened beautifully. The reflection of it made the wolf's eyes ache momentarily before the pain was pushed away instantly.

Movement in his periphery made his head turn. The boy had finally stirred, head poking out as a deep frown made the expression of his youthful face. The wolf twisted in his spot on the branch, drawing himself into a fully upright position. His head tilted, studying, and his eyes narrowed curiously as the bark pressed into his palms where they wrapped firmly around the branch. Nails dug into the bottom once more as the right leg was swung outwards and a puff of breath became crystallized and glistened in front of his face upon releasing a soft sigh.

The boy's head swung towards the other. Wide blue-violet eyes glowed faintly, not yet possessing the full capability of night vision that others of their kind did. The small body had grown tense, and a deep sweet scent seemed to heat the air, rippling through the area as fear might.

The leg kicked again but the boy could not focus on it. In the growing darkness, those mostly human eyes saw only shadows and leaves, blocking his line of sight. The wolf smiled faintly, watching him as he continued to stare and strain his eyes, struggling as his shoulders rose minutely in paranoid confusion. Finally, relenting, his shoulders fell and his eyes turned away to mark the path that he would be walking once more.

The wolf twisted around to watch him go, alert with new energy. The night air seemed fresher, cool and crisp, and the boy's worry still tainted the atmosphere, but he did not look up again. Instead he faded away into the shadows as the other werewolf pushed his right leg against the trunk of the tree and threw his upper body over the side. Nails scraped bark, which tore and fell easily beneath it, palms pressing firmly into the wood even as his lower body swung gently in the air.

He landed hard on the cold earth, crouching for only a moment as he drew in a deeper breath to scent the air. The boy's scent was smothered by the chill of the air, brushed away like leaves on the forest floor. The wolf turned away again, stretching his limbs out and starting forward as a tingle traveled up his stiff legs. Sniffing tentatively at the entrance of the cave, a rush of lost body heat and tugs of rainwater and summer sunlight and stronger traces of soap, deodorant and shampoo met his senses. It lingered all over within the little cavern, tempting the thought that perhaps the boy would use it as a little safe haven until the full moon came.

The wolf pulled away just enough to glance about, considering the question with new curiosity. If the boy had come this far into the forest, he had to have reason. It was going to be his first Change, after all, and he must have wanted to be cautious and keep everyone else safe as well. He had no experience due to being bitten and his precautions were understandable.

Another sniff drew in chilled air that held no hints of another predator or any potential threats to be sensed. Nothing stirred in the darkness safe for the gentle buzz of a bug as it flew past, the shifting of pine needles as a scavenger dug through, and the rough breaths of a bear as it hunted. There was nothing in the direction of the little cavern, either safe for a small strand of chemicals that made up the odor of the boy's perspiration.

Abruptly his attention turned towards the rock when a beetle scampered across its surface, barely detectable in color against the shadows of it. The surface was mottled with gentle moonlight, making it glitter, and the shift of the leaves made it look like the surface of a shimmering pool. Something inside of the wolf stirred, causing him to climb to his feet slowly and take several steps back to look at it slowly. It was nondescript, ambiguous in its shape, but something caused the wolf's nerves to spike with fire, senses flaring with confusion.

Something about the way the shadows hit the surface made it look disturbingly familiar and far too large. It seemed to rise upwards as the leaves shifted and moved overhead, rustling gently, and loom over the wolf with such force it almost knocked the air from his lungs. A distinct image was slowly weaseling its way forward, something with rounded ears and a muzzle, and moss speckled within the shadows as if fur were shifting with the touch of wind.

Lips pulled back, he tossed his head away sharply once more. A pain clenched tightly around his heart. The moonlight hit the rock in such a way that the moss looked almost bright blue-green. The smaller shadows cast by the little plant almost looked like a large and slanted pupil. The werewolf turned abruptly and raced for the trees before his stomach clenched and heaved.

It looked like a wolf with bright green eyes.

* * *

His vision tweaked and pinched. Yugi clenched his eyes shut tightly, turning his head to bury it into the pillow. His stomach twisted painfully even as he opened his left eye into a narrow slit of dark violet and blue. His vision swam but righted itself once more, though now there was such blurriness that the wall looked almost like a smear of bright pain. The numbers on the clock only inches from his bed were fuzzy, nearly showing doubles though he could not fully read them properly. The slant of the wall seemed to tower and lurch towards him as he raised his eyes. The sunlight was dull and weak, a drastic change to the blinding intensity it had possessed formerly. The edges of the glass lilted and seemed to angle towards the floor as if the window had grown lopsided overnight.

He swallowed a whimper and moved his hand to press his palm against his eye. An instant heat curled through him, mixing with his blood, and every part of his body grew flushed to the point of sharp pain. He could feel the fever like a layer of clothing, escaping through his pores and lingering just above his skin. He groaned and his free hand moved to grasp at his stomach.

A tremor shattered through his left side, vibrating in his right arm as gnawing pain tunneled its way into his chest. It came again ten more times before it simply remained in an exact trace of his former wounds. His body throbbed with the dull remnants of an aftershock. He pushed his shoulder into the pillow as fully as he could and breathed out roughly, head taking on the same familiar throbbing as the day before.

He moved to blink his eyes open again and when he groaned this time, it felt as if thunder were crashing through his skull. The sound reverberated through the air and it was _everywhere_. He flinched but the scraping of his skin against the pillowcase, the blankets, and the shift of the mattress made him want to wail pitifully. And this new sound hit the walls, the glass, the headboard, ricocheted, and tore through his eardrums again. There was no escaping the noise, though his body instinctively jerked away and upright. The sheets rustling and his own eyelids clapping together made him whimper once more. The noise was low and curdling with pain, but a dam seemed to break within his head.

His cry echoed, there were voices, fabric brushing against skin, cars driving in the distance, children squealing, the wind hissing, gavel crunching under tires, feet pounding on the sidewalk. Birds sang, a lone cricket chirped, a cat pounced, a mouse squeaked. Yugi moved his hands to his ears, clamping them there. He wished he were deaf, that he could hear nothing as he had been rendered before. He wanted to be blind and deaf.

"Yugi?"

The voice pierced the cacophony of the clashing noises which resonated in his head, coming to him like a pair of knitting needles stabbed through his ears and into his brain. Unable to help himself, he groaned, blinking and trying to see, wishing he could smother the noise, but he couldn't even fully understand it all.

He wanted, more than anything, to move away from all the sound, and the moment he thought it, his body shot forward and his side crashed into a hard surface. He swallowed the cry of pain in his lungs and clawed at the air in reflex as if attempting to regain his balance. He landed hard on his ass and his tailbone flared momentarily with pain.

He barely resisted the urge to scream, tempted to let out this growing panic which washed his insides like icy water. Something in his mind seemed to cave and splinter, shattering like glass. It ached within him as well but it gave way to something that he had not realized before then. There was no erratic thumping which rushed through him violently, pushing at the edges of the noises already swallowing his thoughts.

It echoed and twisted, with a liquid slosh that came at the end. The throbbing in his head came forward full force.

He blinked, his vision dull and distorted, but it did not stunt his realization.

That hideous, thundering ache in his head was not that of a simple budding migraine as his medications sometimes gave him.

It was his heartbeat.

"Yugi!"

He swallowed and the pull of muscles was as loud as a river rushing by. But even that did not kill away all of the outside noise. And he recognized the softness of a hand grasping a doorknob with such clarity that he almost imagined it was a gun being cocked next to his head.

"Yeah?"

He cringed. Had he yelled the response? Everyday control of his volume said he was simply speaking, however. But his voice was so loud, horrific in the way it caused his head to mimic the sensation of bursting painfully. And he swore it sounded far too foreign and cracked in pitch to be his. He hardly recognized the breath as it left his mouth, a new horror sweeping through his mind.

What if his entire body became nothing but a foreign, alien _prison_? What if his mind became trapped in this single, sensory overloaded body and he couldn't navigate it by any will of his own? And what if his reflexes were too much to control or his senses too powerful to survive with? What if he went insane due to an inability to deal with it all?

"Are you okay?"

Had her voice always sounded like that? Yugi was unable to shake the shock from his system at such a thought. His mind was thinking of wind chimes and glass tinkling against linoleum. Her voice was just as soft but not musical as he had sometimes considered it. Mostly all he could hear was the apparent concern which soaked the words as if honey had been drizzled over them.

No doubt if he had not answered she would have walked in there to check on him. He wondered if perhaps she thought he was ill, if he'd had a reaction to the medication. But it was a short-lived thought as he blinked and chewed his lip. What would she see if she came in there and saw him? Would she see the alien body he swore he was caught in, or just her son scared and alone on the floor with panic which still threatened to swallow him?

"Yeah. Just…I…fell out of bed," he called back, falling silent after a moment and feeling sick. He supposed, if nothing else, that explained the thud she must have heard. It also probably explained away his whimper. But what explained his need to let out such an animalistic noise to voice his discomfort? Hitting his side and crashing to the floor hardly seemed a reason. Then again, had she even heard him? With the way he could hear his heart and hers now that his mind was running like this, who was to say that she had not simply heard a grunt?

There was a moment of silence as far as her voice was concerned. But the world around him was a massive blister of noise. Their hearts filled any ounce of quiet the outside might have possessed, alternating between each other so that one's end was the other's beginning. Yugi shifted his weight and the rustle where his clothing brushed the floor and the fibers of the carpet being pressed down was almost as powerful as an engine coming to life right next to his ear. He clamped his teeth into his hand to prevent a small cry leaving his lips.

"How did you sleep?"

Was she hesitating?

"Okay." Yugi was about to elaborate when it occurred to him that he didn't remember it. There were no dreams that sprang to mind. He didn't remember tossing and turning or waking up in the middle of the night. It was all one large black hole in his mind, something that wasn't too uncommon but seen as a beautiful relief at the moment.

"No nightmares?"

He stiffened and blinked his eyes towards the door, nearly screaming when he heard them rolling within their sockets. He choked and swore his hand was bleeding but he couldn't do any more than swallow back a sob. How was he meant to live like this? What if he was all but blind due to this blurry vision? What was he meant to do then? What if his hearing remained like this? Was it even _possible_ to function with such extremities? Who could possibly wish for such a horrible burden?

"No."

He felt as if it had come out in a pitiful, wailing moan, but her reaction suggested otherwise.

"Okay, well, when you're hungry, breakfast is on the table."

He heard her moving away more than the words that had left her mouth. In actuality, however, it was her heartbeat growing somewhat muffled with distance that truly told him she had moved. Yugi remained slumped on the floor, mind racing with the task of figuring out what each noise was and spiraling with the idea of getting up and going out there. There would be no happy morning conversation or compliments about a homemade breakfast. He doubted he could taste anything around that disgusting odor on his tongue or his aching nose either. But the thought of being confined to the small kitchen where _the noise would bounce around and ricochet from one spot to the next_ was far too much. Even with the door between them he had thought the sound of their pulses might kill him.

And he certainly didn't want to see his grandfather. He thought he might do something to test him and with all this pain and seemingly no way to release it, he might wind up screaming until his vocals broke and he drowned in his own blood.

Yugi spent the entire day in his room. He was far too scared to leave the small sky blue walls and pretended to be asleep whenever a mealtime came around. He knew his mom well enough to know that she wouldn't wake him when it was obvious that he had not been sleeping well. She might assume it was a side effect or something along those lines but he hardly cared. Let her think he needed the dosage increased. He was already too afraid to leave his room despite his gurgling stomach and he would rather waste away than deal with all the noise.

Nighttime was almost no quieter than day, and, as his stomach growled pitifully for the twentieth time that day, Yugi wanted nothing more than to smother himself. He had been so naïve to think he could possibly survive the Change. It was too terrible a burden. This foreign vessel his body had become was too much to wish to live with. Everything was just so terribly wrong.

He couldn't survive listening to his heart beat so madly in his chest. He couldn't survive hearing his eyes rattle whenever he turned his head. He couldn't survive hearing it when his ribcage flexed with small, almost inaudible pops as his lungs expanded dutifully to draw in air. Even his jaw clicked when he shifted it slightly to grow more comfortable and the collision of his teeth made him swallow sobs. And swallowing made his teeth crunch and his muscles slide and jerk beneath his skin so that it sounded as if his bones were rattling painfully.

His room was hardly a safe haven. The wall's tilt still made the entire room seem to fall off balance, caving inwards. The carpet was one dark mass of indigo purple. When he moved, it was all amplified to the point that he might grow deaf from exposure. When the air conditioner clicked on, the unit above his head rattled so violently he swore the ceiling would cave in. He couldn't remain in the same position and rolling over made him dizzy and his ears ache even more.

But it was better for him to lie there, staring at the walls and wishing he were dead than moving about and alerting his mom to just how bad it all really was.

* * *

He was unsure of when he had fallen asleep but when he woke again his head felt stuffy and his eyes were still blurry. He was frozen by his own memory, unable to make himself move, and for a moment he was too afraid to do anything more than stare. He drew in a small breath, dreading the sound of his ribs expanding, but heard nothing. Like his blurred eyesight, his hearing had once again grown to be smothered away by that immense cotton ball sensation residing in his skull. The headache was not completely gone but it had lessened some, relieved somewhat by the opening of his nasal passages.

Yugi moved to sit up, wondering if perhaps this was the calm of the Change, sure to return once it was all over. But something occurred to him even then. His room smelled of soft body odor, of soap and bleach and lemon. There was a hint of rosemary and blood, of antiseptic wipes and the freshness of glue from pulled tape. He recognized the sea salt and lime of his windowsill where he had cleaned it. A heavy orange candy-like smell burned at his senses as well and he crinkled his nose at this new onslaught. There was the smallest of hints of laundry detergent from several different directions.

He blinked and looked around slowly, lazily, feeling exhausted even more as relief flooded him. The small teen was so tempted to just lie back down again and ignore the word round him. He almost wanted to simply lie on his side and sleep for as long as he could, whether or not the Change was what he woke to next. But his belly growled hungrily and he was not willing to ignore it as he had the day before. And he knew the food would not taste as brilliant as it might have before but his mouth was still heavily pasted with that foul flavor which coated his palate.

That, however, was hardly a setback.

He felt ready to puke from hunger the moment he stood. The room dipped and swayed as he completely righted himself. From the carpet came the smell of musty fibers and dirt which swelled only as he pressed his weight fully into the floor. With each step a new burst of the smell came upwards but it did nothing to deter him. Hunger was a powerful enough motivator that he could more or less ignore what it was that made itself so undeniable now.

When he opened the door the hallway smelled of old, chipping paint. There was a subtle hint of baked fish and peppers which had been sautéed. There was a harsher lemon scent which made his nose sting and cut lime which had spilled some juice on the tablecloth. He could catch hints of paprika and pepper and salt as well as olive oil. Beneath these was the shallow smell of roasted breadcrumbs which immediately gave way to the undercurrent of a lean protein he knew was either salmon or mackerel. He even caught the tiniest hint of asparagus.

The food was what he had gone in there looking for so it was no surprise to him that it was what came to him first. Afterwards was another onslaught of chipped paint though it was more pronounced as they had recently redone a small area behind the stove. There was, as he'd expected, the smoky scent of burned bread which had seeped into the foundation of the wall despite the new paint job.

Then there was the soft rust of the pipes beneath the sink and rotten wood at the base. There was the dish soap on the sink which smelled of orange. There was the bottle of bleach beneath the sink and old worn edges of paper where the glue no longer held. There was the scent of something like vanilla and maybe grapefruit, but the harsher chemicals made it harder to tell.

He smelled the woven material of the tablecloth and the various spills of food and beverages over the years. Yugi was so enamored with the long ago scents of orange and pineapple juices that he almost missed the lavender and burned candle wax. It took a moment for him to recognize his mom's cherry blossom shampoo and pomegranate body wash. There was his grandpa's cologne and deodorant. The last smell he caught beneath it all was the wavering, nearly faded touch of his dad's aftershave which he had gotten him the last time he had visited several months ago.

* * *

The fourth day Yugi found himself with those same blurred and dulled senses. His nose ached and hurt, his eyesight was severely limited in distance, and his hearing was muffled again. The taste in his mouth had changed only slightly, though it was due to the fact that the paste had grown thicker, as if he had fallen asleep with his mouth open and the air had grown stale against his tongue. The sensation was nothing short of having his tongue glued to the roof of his mouth, something that he hated more than anything.

He got up somewhat reluctantly this time. The dizziness had grown more pronounced and his pathway to the bathroom seemed long and stressful even as he only looked across his carpet. He groaned softly under his breath, feeling sick to his stomach as he forced himself to shuffle forward. His limbs felt so heavy he was amazed that they moved at all. He could not feel the ground where he walked on the carpet but he did know he was getting closer simply because the door was mere inches away. His legs tingled but there was no other true sensation to them, as even his bare feet touching the tile did nothing but send him a dully chilled touch to his skin.

He hesitated for a moment, suddenly afraid of what might greet him in the mirror. When he'd brushed his teeth that night he had not exactly been thrilled with his reflection. But, he supposed, there was no reason for him to truly fear until it was at its absolute worst. And he wasn't sure but he thought that included when he sprouted fur, grew a tail, and possibly killed everyone around him.

By the gods, he really prayed no one was around when it happened. He didn't want to hurt anyone. He certainly couldn't fathom killing anyone. The very idea made him want to puke and his stomach churned with the simple thought as it drifted through his mind.

He paused, turning enough to look at his reflection. The light was limited where it came through the window and his frame was nothing more than a short shadow with several small dimensions. The edges of his hair were bright purple like a flame, burning as if it were a black star with bursts of vibrant violet. His skin along his thin neck and his cheeks was almost white in its pale creamy complexion.

Yugi hesitated for a long moment, swallowing hard as he thought weakly what it might be he would see there. His lips twitched, pulling downwards in a grimace. Was the task of brushing his teeth and using mouthwash really worth all of what he might find there? He was frozen, staring at the darkness of his shadow in the glass. What else would he do? Maybe he would need to turn the lights off again immediately from shock and fear of it all?

Would he even recognize himself there? Or would he be so changed by his new disease that even his reflection would not be familiar any longer? He had not felt as if he was still inside his own body only two days before so who was to say that he wouldn't become lost even looking at himself?

He swallowed again and slowly raised his hand up to flick the light switch. He was exhausted again and the very thought of being unable to see himself inside a foreign body only scared him even more. He could not think through all of what such a horrifying concept could be, what meaning it might all possess. His vision continued to lilt and shift with its blurred edges, as if his mind were pinching in its effort to straighten and sort itself out. He felt as if his mouth was glued shut by all of the dried saliva which still smothered his sense of taste. Yet he still found his fingers touching the cold plaster of the wall before the switch snapped upwards. The sound of it made Yugi flinch slightly as it ricocheted violently within the small room.

He blinked and squeezed his eyes shut against the impulse to look at himself completely. Breathing in deeply, the small teen hesitated before very slowly opening his right eye weakly in a narrow slit. His stomach dropped again and his eyes nearly popped open in shock. The skin on his face looked almost as if perhaps the blood had drained from it, pale and nearly sweaty with the unhealthy shine of heat which burned his gut. His hair looked sloppy and weighted almost as if with gallons of grease, his bangs plastered to his shiny forehead. He looked smaller, almost thinner, and his collarbones appeared skeletal in their taut design. But his eyes looked more horrible than anything else and the entire image before him made him want to puke.

The color had drained from his irises. His usually beautiful sapphire ringlets of blue had become only shades of periwinkle, blurred with a tantalizing silver-gray. The dark violet alongside these dulled blue layers made his stomach drop. They looked ghostly, almost like frosty silver and blue where they touched, blending beautifully. But they were not the eyes he knew so well, the ones he had known all his life. There were not any flecks of blue amidst purple or spirals of the two intense colors which bordered so often on hypnotizing. They were not what Anzu had once called akin lapis-lazuli gems.

And the drained colors only made his flesh look even paler and lifeless. Because of this it all made him look as if he were dying, as if the life were falling away from his body.

Yugi almost pushed the switch back down again, the exhaustion weighing his features in bags beneath his eyes and feverish skin he was sure would erupt with acne. Instead, feeling cold as if water were splashing his insides, he turned away and glanced at his toothbrush and the paste which sat beside it along the rim of the sink. Whether his reflection scared him or not, he could not stand the idea of this taste remaining in his mouth any longer. He would simply avoid the mirror and the horrid reflection it offered him. There was no reason to look at it any longer.

He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. The scrape of the muscle along his palate was slow and nearly sticky. The disgusting hints of the hideous taste in his mouth seemed to double and even triple with each movement. He swallowed hard again, feeling sick to his stomach as he felt the taste continue to grow with a smothering edge once more.

He kept his eyes on his brush, reaching out lazily to pull it upwards from the counter. He was still inexplicably exhausted as he moved his fingers along the length of the handle. His fingertips felt shaky and the true sensation of holding the plastic did not feel even remotely familiar. It was almost as if he had been holding his fingers against the counter, flat and resistant where it touched his skin.

Even as his other hand flipped the lid of the tube of paste and he grasped it tightly, the sensation was not one he seemed to fully experience. It, like holding his brush, was muted and detached as if he were merely watching another do it in his place. It was both horrifying and yet hilarious to think of and the idea seemed almost childish within his own head. The small teen moved to press the end of the tube against the brush, narrowing his eyes faintly as he thought to squeeze the paste on the bristles.

He swallowed again and turned on the faucet with the impulse to flinch away from the noise. He had expected momentarily that his ears might roar with the noise and make his brain rattle within his skull. He shivered, nearly trembling at the idea, and felt sick to his stomach with the idea. He was frozen in place seconds later, gripped by the immediate panic that it all might come rushing back. But the moments passed, slipping away just as simply as the water might through his fingers. He wanted momentarily to laugh before he swept it away as easily as he could.

He was sure everything else would wind up just as harsh as his hearing. It appeared, he supposed, that the werewolf's senses were undeniably another curse that came with the first and most famous of its effects on the body. Becoming a prisoner within an altered body and suffering through an eventual complete change of one's shape and maybe even more of a stranger within something else altogether, that made everything much worse. If one truly lost their mind during the Change, and it never fully recovered, he could not think of a single thing that might hold more horror in its reality

And, if immortality was not a myth, then that was yet another burden to be added to the multilayered curse. There were so many reasons to hate it, but he also supposed that maybe that could also be merit to love it. If someone hated themselves enough, it could all be seen as something of a blessing. Should someone think their lives so terrible they might think it was something to love and savor.

They could lose themselves within the curse, within both the physical and mental sense. They could run away with almost no trace to be found should they wish it. If the Change caused the mind to deteriorate then perhaps they would slip away from notice. They could even experience and enjoy the sensation of the disconnection that came with the impact of their heightened senses.

Yugi shook his head to toss the thought aside, abruptly startled from this disturbing line of ideas. He shoved the brush into his mouth quickly, fighting away his initial impulse to continue with his train of thought. The bristles struck his gums harshly but it was not until he dragged the brush along the length of his teeth that he knew what this new pull of his senses meant.

The paste grew frothy immediately and the spittle of it as it touched his tongue made his body grow stiff with shock. The nerves on his tongue burst and crackled as if he had stuck it into an electrical socket. The mind, usually so soft and familiar, was now akin the strength of needles and live flames pressing against his taste buds.

He recoiled, barely managing to keep his grip on the brush even as his hand shook. He had not realized until he looked at his trembling fingers that his hand was coated in his spit. His chin was even soaked in it, turned a light blue with white edges, dribbling almost lazily down his face and towards the counter.

His tongue felt as if it had been dunked within boiling hot water, like he was drinking coffee or hot chocolate too soon for it to cool some. He thought it might swell, become more than twice its normal size from the pain, but then the logic seemed to coil within his mind. He had not truly burned his tongue, though it felt like it and his mind was preoccupied with the confusion of such realization.

He had not burned himself but he did see that his gums were bleeding as he opened his mouth to inspect and make sure. It was a harsh arch which wavered downwards along the front of his teeth, bubbly with the foam of his toothpaste. He lacked sensation where the small cuts were, and not even the tiniest sting greeted their exposure to the air.

Yugi was almost mesmerized by the fact and his fingers almost rose to touch it, curious as the lack of sensation came further to light. He didn't feel the nicks but he also could not feel where the spit had landed on his hand. And he still wasn't exactly sure how much pressure he was exerting in gripping his brush.

He swallowed hard, spitting into the sink after a moment, and turned the faucet on so that he could rinse his hand. His mind raced for a moment and he ran his tongue over his teeth. His blood tasted almost entirely metallic like copper and iron, but there was an odd sweetness that came immediately as an aftertaste with such strength that it seemed to both soothe the pain from the foam in his mouth and threaten it with painful sizzling. His taste buds again seemed to burst and tingle but now the sensation was cooler, gentler, and the reality of this was one of absolute horror.

The toothbrush fell out of his hand and his body shook with new tremors.

If blood tasted so good to him and even offered an edge of relief to some of the pain his senses brought him, what was there to keep him from killing someone? What was there to keep him from desiring the need to kill just to taste the blood in his mouth? Maybe that was what had driven Ushio to attempt to kill him and even influenced the Burger World employee. And maybe Kokurano had killed someone and his body had reacted to something inside of the blood?

He supposed the circumstances didn't truly matter. What did was how he planned to control it now that it affected _him_ so fully.

But he would have to wait to see what the rest of the day brought, maybe plan while exploring this new height in his sense of taste. He had to find out if there was anything he could eat or drink without the same horrible sensation. And then he would try to see if there was another way to filter through it all and manipulate in ways that he could learn to manage it. He hoped more than anything that blood was not the only thing that soothed him.

* * *

The next day found him awakening to a small pain in his side where his hand was positioned under his flank. He'd fallen asleep awkwardly, having been so overthrown by his new sense of taste that he had struggled to keep things down. He wanted to curl up again but his face was itchy where his cheek was pressed against the pillow. His ear was hot, pulsing with his heartbeat as it would had he scratched it moments before. He shifted to pull his face down slightly but now the position of his legs seemed too pressured where they were bent beneath the blankets.

Yugi drew in a breath and shuffled his legs to separate them but his skin itched and burned. He grunted in annoyance but he could feel his pulse within both legs and a new weight which pressed his muscle hard against his bones until he thought they might snap. The comforter had grown too heavy and the weight of it made heat dance in his spine. Yugi let out a small grumble and kicked the blanket away but immediately regretted it. The air that greeted him was viciously cold, biting at his skin like needles. He shuddered and the sharpness of the movement made his bare feet feel as if they had come into contact with jagged glass.

Sleep that had formerly tugged at his senses was now immediately gone, fleeing away as if chased. He jerked and sat up and every vein in his body seemed to burn for a split second, alerting him without words to just where exactly they all resided. He moved away from the comforter, kicking it further towards the baseboard of the bed, and then groaned at the newest sensation to greet him. His socks had bunched up and where they now rested against his skin made his heels pulse with pain and his toes seemed unusually hot in temperature. The sheets beneath his tailbone, still sore from its impact with the floor days prior, were bunched in ways that made them feel as if they were beds of stone against his skin.

His palm itched where it touched the sheet's surface. He thought without provocation that the fine threads were all pressing into his skin with such force they might imprint within his very nerve endings. He shifted his position but his pajama bottoms bunched up now and this new touch of material seemed to drive him insane. The cotton along his skin shoulders seemed to weigh down on him, the heat blooming along the narrow bones. The tag scratched his skin like needles and even as he reached back to move it flat against his skin once more, he realized too late that it was a bad idea.

He almost screamed. The touch of his nail to his skin was like a cold knife's blade threatening to break through. When his skin brushed against it as well, it felt as if a flame were licking his flesh. He flinched but the movement only made him bite his cheek to swallow back the immensity of each terrible pain. His skin shuddered and twitched beneath his clothing, his flesh crawling upwards along his spine. Another painful phantom burn burst through the marrow of his bones.

Impulse made him twist as if the heat beneath his skin might be quelled by the hideous movements. He fell back against the mattress, body burning and twitching as his skin jerked and rolled over his bones. Shaken by spasms, the small teen found himself once more swallowing back a new scream of pain.

His back arched against the sheets, breath coming out in frantic gasps for air, and he could feel the shaking growing tenfold as he reached out to clench the material. Some part of him tried to thrust itself wildly, but the only areas that managed such a feat were his middle back and head. Sound died in his throat, though he was unsure if he had screamed or not. His skin continued to shoot pain throughout his nerve endings and he scrambled to push himself off the bed. His hand throbbed even as he made an attempt to get on the floor.

When he touched the carpet the coolness of the thin fibers reminded him suddenly of ice cold water. The surface was soothing despite its scratchiness, and the very fact that it seemed to alleviate his discomfort some made him want to rub his cheek along the carpet. He was almost tempted to strip himself of his clothes and roll along the floor until the unbearable heat and sensitivity left him.

He wished momentarily that he might shed his human skin right then if it would only make things normal again. Then he was reminded vaguely of his mother and grandfather and wished his body might go into shock. But, being a werewolf and seeing both Valon and that other wolf recover their footing as they had, he doubted it was entirely plausible.

There was no comfortable position, he found moments later. Despite the soothing touch the carpet the carpet granted, it did nothing to rid him of it entirely. His front side had begun to ache, as had his back, and he found himself wanting to curl into a ball in order to wash away some of the misery.

It took him an hour to pull himself from the floor and another twenty minutes to find clothes that would not irritate his skin. He felt as if it had been an eternity to pass before he managed to make his way into the kitchen without limping. The sensation of walking and the burden of weight touching his bones with each step, made him want to whimper. It felt as if the fibers of the socks he was wearing—ironically, the only seamless pair he owned—pressed so furiously into his skin that they mirrored glass shards. He felt disgusting and strange, forced to squint as the air conditioning turned on and the current made his eyes burn.

His mom and grandpa, waiting for him at the table, gave him confused looks as their eyes fell on him. Yugi wanted to blink at them and joke childishly but could only squint harder before reaching up to rub at an eye. His immediate reaction was to cry out as his hand touched his eyelid. The heat was so harsh that he thought his skin must have split and blood was welling from each severed vein. And when his knuckle brushed a piece of sleep sand as he forced himself to continue he thought the coarse surface was that of a rock as it scraped his skin.

"Why, um…why are you wearing your uniform, Yugi?" his mom questioned curiously, tilting her head and frowning in puzzlement. It was true that her son liked to wear it outside of school and oftentimes he would not bother with anything else, but he had not worn it in days. In fact, she remembered he had even thrown it into the laundry so that it would be ready for school within the next week, which, of course, indicated he would leave it there in his closet until school began again.

And, as she looked at the small teenager, she found herself feeling uneasy and almost nauseas. He was rubbing his right eye as if he had just woken up and squinting from his left with such a blank facial expression that it set her nerves on end. His clothing was rumpled, the royal blue of the jacket pulled lopsidedly along his thin shoulders. The sleeves were haphazard, the right crumpled so that the cuffs were folded along the middle of his forearm, sliding downwards as if too big. The left was pulled all the way down to cover his wrist and part of his thumb. His uniform shirt actually seemed to drain the color from his skin, rendering him almost ashen in shade. His pants were unusually baggy and seemed to fold downwards at the waist, crumpled in a way that gave them the appearance of sliding off.

His hair looked unusually greasy, as if he had not showered in days, but his hair had always been baby fine and prone to becoming extremely oily overnight. His forehead had the smallest of sheens to it, but the overall effect was not alarming as he had sometimes appeared this same way whenever he woke from a night terror.

"It's comfortable," Yugi mumbled, moving to take the seat across from her. He closed his eyes tightly as the wood seemed to press through his pants and into his skin as if not a single barrier existed. Then the sensation of his pants and boxers pressed so far into his skin caused him to feel the blood within his veins beneath his weight. He forced himself not to grunt and squirm until he was more comfortable and instead opened his eyes into thin slits once more.

"And your other clothes…aren't?"

Yugi blinked and looked at her, ignoring the stinging in his eyes and fighting away a grimace. He had become so consumed in his discomfort that for a moment he hardly understood what it was that she was saying. He almost glanced at his grandpa for an explanation but caught himself at the last moment. "These are the most comfortable," he amended with what he hoped was a sheepish smile.

What actually made the curl of his lips was something of a strained pull of his mouth that bordered a grimace. But neither family member commented as they looked at him. Sugoroku was more curious about the way he slouched forward a bit further than usual, the curve of his spine showing something much more the likes of physical defeat rather than mere exhaustion. Kasumi was caught by the unease with which her stomach twisted. Yugi was still squinting, as if the light hurt his eyes or his balance was off. Both of these characteristics were undeniably new, something that neither had seen applied to him beforehand. And both were equally concerning though they went unmentioned.

Yugi made no attempt to question their curious and suspicious stares, as the energy it would have taken to pretend to care would not have been worth the effort put into his surprised portrayal. Rather, he ignored them and focused on the rare American-style meal in front of him. The plate of pancakes made his mouth water despite his knowledge that the taste would be all but lost on him.

It was during his second plate that he fully recognized something that had formerly been nothing more than a curious touch to his left hand where it sat on the table despite his discomfort. Two sources of warmth seemed to brush against his skin softly, like wind or maybe even fingertips from the most gossamer of hands. It was a gentle pull at his awareness, telling him to pay attention, and the two directions it begged him to turn made him blink as his eyes flickered.

The conversation was nonexistent this morning, the three of them caught in their own thoughts, so when Yugi suddenly turned to him, he was not expecting it. The small boy was still squinting, though now it was to keep the lack of color in his irises from being noticed, but his gaze burned holes into his skin. He was frozen beside him, head tilted slightly, and he could see his nose twitching faintly as he drew in a deep breath. Syrup was caught on his bottom lip, glinting in the light almost like water, but whereas Yugi would usually happily lick it away, now he merely stared at the elderly Motou as if he were a stranger.

Yugi opened his mouth but the heat bathed his tongue like sunlight and with it came such a sudden rush of metallic smell that he almost choked. It coated his tongue like water and suddenly there was something deeper within that iron, coppery scent which he could only think to describe as fatty. It was almost like butter, soft but somewhat salty, and maybe even a little sweet.

He swallowed, shutting his mouth immediately, but the smell flavored his mouth with such delicacy that it made his head light and airy. He almost moaned, his entire body spiking intensely with shots of energy to every part of him. His mouth filled a second time and he swallowed it away once more even as he rushed to turn away and dig into his breakfast again.

But now the hairs had risen on both arms and his sense of smell would not leave him now. His new, growing sensitivity to this sensation of heat against his skin in both directions was nothing he could ignore. His mouth grew fuller as the seconds passed and his heart began to race as a new sense of profound horror and curiosity began to lap at his insides. He could not name that buttery smell for the life of him, but just the day before it had been the answer, now too was blood the name of that metallic scent which made him want to open his mouth and allow it to settle on his tongue.

 **Not sure I'll manage to get chapter ten up on time. I have to work the next few days and the chapter is pretty long. I hadn't realized how long until just yesterday. Anyways, so it might be posted late. Sorry!**

 **So! Any guesses who the wolf in the woods was?**


	10. Red

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day (no update on June 2nd)**

 **Chapter Warnings: COPIOUS Amounts of BLOOD AND VIOLENCE, Wolves Fighting, Character Deaths, AWKWARD Teenagers (Yugi and Anzu are idiots, just saying), Potentially Confusing Dream Sequences**

 **Okay, so I got seriously distracted by real life. And let me tell you, FUCK real life. I really hate real life right now. Anyways, so I'm super late with my update but here it is. I have no idea when I'll get eleven up either. It's a long chapter and I'm short on time more often than not. So I can't make any promises. But I SHOULD be able to get it done either Tuesday or Wednesday.**

 **This is the first fight you're going to see in the story. I'm not sure that it's all clear what's going on at all times. For me it is because I'm the author but for readers I don't know if you'll picture it as easily. So tell me if you do or don't. Please~ It'll help me out a lot to get better at writing them later on (and since there are going to be a LOT I could definitely use the help. Please and thank you~). Apologies to anyone in advance if it is confusing.**

 **I'm so tired I can't tell the difference between confusing and straightforward at this point. Which is why, if you think the ending kind of falls flat, I won't be offended because I kind of stopped editing at one point because I'd already gone over that part a day or two ago and never got back to it in time to actually try posting or anything like that before now. So, yeah, my bad.**

Chapter X: Red

 _Work Log Entry X: April, 1996_

 _April 26_

 _The she-wolf, assumed barren formerly, has officially become impregnated but is no longer able to change to take on her human skin anymore._

 _According to the ultrasounds we have managed to complete, she has all of six wolf cubs in her womb now._

 _Now all we must do is make sure that she remains healthy throughout the gestation period and those six cubs will be born perfectly._

 _We will finally have our Pure-Bloods._

He groaned, rolling over and bunching his limbs together in a vain attempt to make the pounding in his head cease. The pain spiked and throbbed with the movement and he ground his teeth together, clenching his jaw tightly to prevent himself from crying out. He moved to rub at his face, palms slick and sweaty. They itched, tingling, and burned as they made his cheeks respond similarly. His flesh felt as if it was burning but only his hands had broken into perspiration. His initial impulse was to pull his hands away immediately, but another instinct made itself known with the caution of moving too swiftly.

Yugi had no doubt that it was possible to feel worse than he did at that moment, though he truly wished it wasn't. He had no desire to test such a theory, however, and instead kept his eyes clenched tightly. He drew in deep breaths, his ribs aching for a moment as they flared with heat, and finally opened his gaze into thin slits. The light almost burned his retinas, causing a groan to rip out of his throat as his head throbbed harder. The noise made his ears ache as if sizzling and it echoed within his skull like wind in a tunnel, causing him to bite his tongue harshly. A disgustingly bitter, sour taste had come over his tongue, as if the muscle had grown swollen and thick where it was pressed against the roof of his mouth. His teeth hurt with the force of which he clamped them together. The shadows cast by his eyelashes did nothing to stop the burn of the sunlight that came through his skylight.

His fingers twitched and the need to start moving around, despite the ache in his muscles, made him prop himself onto his right elbow. His head spun momentarily when he twisted his upper body so that his stomach was almost parallel with mattress. He scrunched his eyes up further but the light burned them and his teeth ground together as he angled himself.

The noise ricocheted and bounced within his ears, stunning him for a moment, and he nearly whimpered but swallowed it at the last second. He breathed out roughly, his skin beginning to itch and burn as it had the day before, and pushed himself onto his knees, twisting to gather his legs beneath him. Each new movement brought a deafening roar of noise to his ears and pain across his skin, as if he were being poked by needles or cut with knives.

He would have rearranged his limbs had it not been for the pain in his skull and the way everything in his bloodstream seemed to rebel against him. He shifted slowly only in order to move his arms beneath his chest, a painful task as they rubbed against the fabric of the sheets. It took him what felt like days just to pull himself above the mattress with his arms propped by the elbows again, but it was beneficial to the torture of his heightened senses.

He pressed his forehead against the sheets, shoulders raised and back arched almost unnaturally. He almost groaned in discomfort as he realized the sheets were soaked in sweat, as if he had poured cold water across the bed the night before. He bunched his muscles together further, feeling them roll beneath his skin as his nerve endings pulsed with a miserable throb.

His abdomen stung and his insides twisted as he drew in a long, deep breath that made his head spin further. Yugi pressed his jaw together until his teeth began to ache from the tension. His head spun from the pressure and he realized with startling clarity that he was close to the edge of the bed. One small movement would send him over the side and crashing to the floor.

He opened his eyes, raising his head slowly as the muscles in his neck took on a steady ache which felt like flares of heat beneath his skin. He strained the muscles with the effort of movement and his arms dragged themselves forward so that he could grasp the sheets in tight fists.

Blue-violet eyes squeezed shut immediately again. A ragged breath left his mouth as he moved his tongue to slip between his teeth. He struggled not to cry out, hissing unhappily. For a moment the world spun and he could not tell which direction was which. The room swayed gently and the air seemed to bring back a small bite of pain to the bridge of his nose. The smell of sweat, strong but so absorbed by the cotton and polyester blend that it came out somehow weaker, greeted him as he raised his head.

He did not open his eyes again as he reached up to rub at his throbbing temples now. Rather, he shifted down and attempted to ignore the new rush through his skin, his veins pulsing with heat once more, and moved to drape his legs over the side of the bed. The muscles protested, sending pinpricks of electricity through his limbs, his bones somehow so pressured by his slight weight that they almost seemed to snap.

He did not think it had ever taken him so long to get out of bed or walk a mere ten feet in his life. Most mornings he did not bother to turn on the bathroom light because of the sunbeam that filtered through the glass of the window which managed to fill the room enough that it was unnecessary. But this time, he paused in the doorway and thought briefly of what his eyes had looked like the day before.

Though, as he looked at the shadow his reflection cast on the mirror, he remembered that his grandfather knew and thus there was no reason to hide it from him. But his mother would sooner think he was not taking his medicine and was now suffering than believe in something that was considered myth.

He reached his hand out to the side, the cold touch of the plastic making his head spin for a moment. It was as harsh as dumping his hand into the depths of a bowl of icy water. He nearly recoiled but instead flipped the light. He had learned to deal with it—though only slightly—the day before as the hours had passed by and he had been unable to rid of the new sensation.

The bulbs flashed once as his fingers lingered too long, but he didn't think to do much more than squeeze his eyes shut once more. The light burned his lids in bright red, with small touches of darker, almost black forks of color which highlighted his veins. A small but harsh buzzing made its way into his skull without effort. His teeth ground harder together and the sound of them gliding over each other was enough to make him cringe in mounting pain. The muscles bunched with such force that it sounded almost as if the bones were breaking in his jaw, his ears ringing violently. His head was pounding now.

He decided that he did not want to look at himself again when he finally drew his eyes open. He squinted for what felt like an eternity, struggling with the way the light seemed to grow to the same blinding intensity it had days before. A pressure formed behind his eyes, as if the muscles were bunching there and refused to unknot themselves. He furrowed his brows, squinting further, and his jaw clicked as he tried to pull it from its clenched position.

The smell of mint brushed against his nose and he frowned at the harshness that began to burn at his skin there. It felt like daggers digging into his flesh, drawing lines across the vessels, and he fought the urge to groan in dismay at the sensation. In the small room he could almost hear nothing, as if the stale air had dulled the space of the area altogether. There was a soft, repetitive thumping with the complementary wet twisting that followed it, and the steadiness of it was alarming but somehow beautiful and relaxing all the same. There was a metallic, savory smell radiating from his own skin as he lowered his eyes to the faucet, and another, smaller hint of the buttery undercurrent came with it almost immediately.

He blinked and then drew in another deep breath. There was a faint hint of something like sea salt and it grew as he attempted to focus on it solely. Then there was a single touch of what he realized curiously was that of his own body wash. It was a woodsy, earthen scent, a mixture of citrus and cypress with a small trace of mint which heightened its appeal even further.

The amount of adjustment he was still suffering through did not allow him much room to do more than blink and open his eyes to splinters of color again. The air was still heavy with the smell of his toiletries, but the light that splashed across the mirror's surface in single beams of bright white was blinding. They glinted as if daggers in design, splintering and hitting his eyes with enough force to make him hiss in displeasure.

The curl of the noise as it left his mouth was far from as simple as it should have been. He could hear it even as the small bits of spittle were expelled from his mouth. He heard the wave of noise as it grew louder and faltered in quick intervals, fading away immediately as he fell silent.

He turned the knob after a moment, leaning forward against the counter. The metal grated and screeched so loudly that it made him flinch. The jerk of action made the pain behind his eyes heighten. He yelped and blood splashed across his teeth as his tongue was punctured. He blinked and kept his eyes on the knobs in front of him, the water from the faucet dribbling slightly from the bottom of the metal mouth. A small groan made its way up the back of his throat but disappeared again as he looked away. The gathering of water within the pipes gained his sole attention so abruptly that it nearly took his breath in surprise.

His pupils were enlarged as he slowly turned his sight on the glass, unable to fight away his curiosity. His stomach twisted as he took note of just how much of the blue of his irises had been eaten away by the black. But the sensation did not last long as he leaned forward to take them in a small bit further. Were his eyes darker than they should have been or was it simply that his pupils expanded to give it that illusion?

He stretched his eyes as wide as he could. He went as far as to reach up and pull his lids away to expose the red of the flesh beneath. He peered at them and felt his insides twist and grate against each other with the realization. They were darker, yes, but the specks immediately around his pupils were drained even more then they had been before. It was an off-silver tint where it should have been dark blue rather than the periwinkle shade they had been before.

He dragged in a harsh swallow and closed his eyes tightly. He opened them in a flash, focused on his reflection completely, and found himself disappointed. The size of his pupils was consistent, regardless of the addition of darkness or light as he had just attempted to test.

Yugi forced himself to slowly shuffle back to the bed, taking a seat with his head down and his eyes closed. He drew in a few small, even breaths and felt the headache lift only infinitesimally, but even _that_ brought him strong relief. It felt as if there were a haze, a blanket, some kind of fog that clouded his mind. His focus was splintered, making his thoughts feel as if they were coming from miles away and thus drifting as if carried by mist.

He was not unaware of the ringing in his ears but it seemed dulled now. The pain flared every time he shifted and brought movement to his head in time with the new spikes that drifted through his arm. His collarbone ached, burning, and pulsated as if his marrow had been set alight. It resonated there, growing rhythmic in its rate, and the small teen struggled to keep from whining pitifully at the sensation. He recognized his wounds from the attack, and the pain of it almost caused him to shudder.

His ribcage felt as if it were breaking and splintering as the pain spread downwards from his collarbones. The arches of his bones there throbbed and his head seemed full now, as if stuffed once more with a ball of cotton, but his hearing still caught his heartbeat and his other senses were not clouded. When he opened his eye only slightly the light seemed to incinerate it, and he swore the beams must have passed all the way into the very back of his retinas.

It was only about ten minutes later that the fever got the point that he could not bear to remain within his room any longer. Exercising his sore muscles did nothing to calm it, however, making him feel dizzier even as he tried to make his way to the kitchen. The heat caused his skin to feel as if it might begin to peel away, blistering and flaking, and his forehead grew soaked. Sweat came in large droplets, stinking of salt and heat, and he felt them trail down his skin as if he had decided to take a shower and the water were falling directly on his head. His eyes had grown glassy, something he had noticed upon looking at his reflection in his phone's screen.

His movements were painstakingly slow, to the point that he almost wondered if he was even making his way to the kitchen. He wanted water, cold with ice cubes, but it did not stop him from feeling sick to his stomach even as he got close enough to get it.

The cabinets squeaked when he opened them and the flinch that he couldn't hold back sent him reeling. He reached his left hand up to press his index and middle fingers into his temple, the touch only making him want to flinch once more. His arm burned as if his blood had been replaced with lava threatening to ooze out of his skin at any moment.

He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, licking his chapped lips with a dry tongue. He reached up and felt for the glass as opening his eyes seemed to take too much energy. His fingers touched the cup's rounded surface, the cold icy touch of it making his skin burst with sparks of lightning across his nerve endings. The small teen plucked it, ignoring the way all of it seemed to multiply drastically as his hand encircled the cup entirely.

Yugi thought momentarily of using a cold compress to help break the fever but his hesitation was heavily influenced by this disease, which he still knew so little about. He did not know if a simple compress might send him into his shock or even what his temperature was.

He had no idea if possibly his usual temperature range was changing and that was why this heat was smoldering him like this. Wasn't raised body heat something that the wolf had hinted towards at the park? He blinked at the memory and he swore a drop of sweat hurried along the trail of his eyelid, desperate to wet his right eye like medicated droplets.

As he reached the fridge door, the plastic-lined metal was intensely cold beneath his touch, like ice water, and it burst along his nerves with such power he nearly moaned. It was a sense that was oddly like that of ecstasy, a rapture that he had never truly experienced before. Yugi blinked against the wonderment of the sensation, curious and almost wishing to experience more of the same thing. It contrasted so sharply with his own body temperature moments before that he had actually assumed it to be acute pain before it had settled somewhat.

He pulled it open and the sound of the springs, of the heavy door moving, of the plastic releasing its hold, made his head spin for a split second. The noise echoed and rattled within his head, threatening to burst through his temples and carve its way through his skull. The air bathed his face, biting at his skin with playful nips like a small puppy might.

Yugi moved forward and pressed himself onto his tiptoes despite not needing to, and angled his head further inside to lay his chin across the smooth plastic of the freezer.

The sensation of the cold air was almost painful as it touched his skin with such intensity that he thought momentarily of fingers ghosting over his flesh. It fanned over him, pushing lightly in an almost playful fashion, never quite stopping and leaving small pins and needles of pleasure bleeding through his focus.

His eyes slid shut. He breathed calmly, the noise soothing his own ears. His arms reached upward to fold in front of his chin. The cup slipped through his fingers easily. The noise of it crashing to the floor and shattering made his ears ring. But it could not take his attention away. He pushed his chin a little further inside, breathing in deeply and comfortably.

The hum of the fridge was gentle, so soft that he almost missed it. He felt it rather than heard it, and the soft vibrations of it made his lips curve into the slightest of smiles. Pleasure coiled in his veins and his voice threatened to break into a satisfied purr but the noise died in his throat. He did not even shift his weight for a split second, unwilling to leave the beautiful chill whatsoever.

He kept his face pressed there for what he thought was days. The minutes seemed to bleed into years. The pleasure in his system made him almost doze away into nothingness. But he only recognized the amount of time passing by the arrival of his mother returning for lunch. He used her return as a marker for the two-hour interval he knew had passed. He heard her start into the house by the jingle of her keys. He heard her twist the knob, her wedding ring hitting the bronze and scraping gently.

But it was not enough to make him move. He merely kept his eyes closed and his face pressed firmly into the freezer as far as he could go. He heard her on the stairs, soft steps due to her light weight, but did not bother to greet her as the door opened. She froze, no doubt startled by the scene in front of her, but Yugi did not care. He could not find it in himself to give it much thought, the cool air so inviting that he wanted to sob with pleasure.

He felt it was more pleasurable than anything else he had ever experienced in his sixteen-year-old life. He debated for a moment declaring it even better than sex could ever be—a disillusioned thought probably—but he could not find it in himself to care. For a virgin and someone who felt his skin might melt from his bones, the bliss of the freezer's air was more than enough to make him want to say those words despite the lack of evidence.

"Yugi…"

He struggled not to whine at the sound of his name. It was spoken so quietly and full of concern that it made his spine twitch beneath his skin for a moment. His eyelids fluttered but did not open.

He did not want to open them again.

He did not want to face his mother.

He did not even want to bother with the glass at his feet.

He did not even care to think about the idea of having to pull away.

His hearing took in her movements, and the sound of her slippers against the tile was almost swallowed away by the hum of the fridge. He caught her opening a cabinet, the squeak searing through his skull with enough force to make his head ring again. Her fingers touching the glass made him want to cringe but he fought the impulse away and pressed his chin further against the plastic in desperation to make it stop. The pills rattled in the bottle when she pulled them out and the echo they left made his hands clench into fists.

He wanted to jerk away from her immediately when he felt that gentle warmth against his cheek. His entire left side began to burn and tingle, her body heat ghosting over his skin. He did not turn but he could imagine her standing next to him, watching him with a concerned expression. He stepped aside only when she got close enough to brush against him. The sound of the ice cubes being moved when she went to grab some made him fight away a flinch. He still refused to open his eyes, or turn his head, to look at her. The sound of ice colliding as she picked out some and dropped them into the glass made him wince painfully.

"Here, maybe this will help," she muttered softly, next to his ear, voice sounding uncomfortable and clearly concerned. Yugi hesitated opening his eyes as he knew she was holding out a bottle of Advil around pushing the lever on the fridge door to get ice water into the cup.

For a moment he pretended not to hear but thought better of it. Maybe the painkillers would actually help him. Maybe it would break the fever and his headache might begin to go away as well. He doubted the second half of it, but he was hopeful for the first. His mind raced with desperation to stay where he was, but his eyes provided him the detail that his mother was not about to let him keep his head in the freezer all day.

Painfully he wished he could argue with the thought. He fought back the impulse to pitifully whine and beg her to let him stay as he was, collecting the bottle and cup from her. For a moment his fingers flared with a gentle, icy pain that shot through each of his nerves, but then it passed just as abruptly.

He listened to the door close and almost whined in dismay at the reality of it. The cold air was gone from his reach now and something in the back of his mind seemed to wail at the very thought of such a thing. It seemed hideous and wrong to have it taken from him so easily. His own relief was so effortlessly snatched away and he was reminded of the very fact that it had come about so simply from a bite.

He heard her shuffling about even as he began to start towards the living room to grab a seat on the couch. The cushions seemed to expel a faint, artificial current of lavender from the air freshener that had been sprayed the day before. The soft addition of his weight sent a gentle rustling noise through his ears, almost inaudible as it whispered through his senses. The broom's bristles when he brushed against it made soft scratching noises which pushed through the ball of cotton like claws running over his skin.

He moved slowly, tipping his head back and raising the glass to his mouth. The water was so cold it seemed to numb his taste buds. His empty stomach swelled with the rush of ice that met it. The water seemed to make the muscles in his throat grow cold and nearly numb, so chilled that it pushed towards a gentle ache as if his nerves were smothered.

His head continued throbbing even as he pulled the blanket from the back of the couch and leaned back into the cushions to lie on his back. He twisted, pulling his legs into a bent position as he drew his arms closer to himself to get comfortable. The throbbing intensified to the point that he wanted to wail again. The sweat was falling in sheets of water once more and thought of faucets and rivers, of downpours and monsoons. His stomach seemed to coil and grow emptier as the seconds passed.

He thought, as his heart echoed in his skull and his breaths came out in gentle wisps, that he could not understand how he had managed to survive this long. It had only been hours since he had first woken up and only days since his senses had changed, and yet, he could not help but wonder. The pain was too intense in his system to give him relief and the heat was returning to his throat with such harsh streams of fire that it made his mind shriek.

His arms began to take on a more constant pulse of pain now rather than being in time with his heart and head. It became a violent sting, from the very tips of his fingers to his collarbones where it seemed to pool and circulate as if by a pump. When he looked at his fingers, they shook violently with the pain, so harsh he nearly screamed.

The emptiness of his belly gurgled with need and he thought vaguely of eating but the task seemed too demanding. It would take so long to pick himself from the couch's cushions. It would be a struggle to make his way into the kitchen for a snack. And it would be far too much work to deal with the presence of his mother there. He didn't want to try to speak to her. But he doubted even if he could manage to talk to her long enough to get food, he would end up having to actually eat it. And he didn't think he could force himself to chew and then swallow it and let his stomach work on digesting it comfortably.

He wanted to rub his temples for a moment but feared the way his skin might feel beneath his fingers. He didn't want to experience that anymore and he thought that the flesh might be more tender than usual. He was not willing to test that theory by any means. He would wait it out and see if the fever broke or the headache finally managed to leave him as he begged so desperately.

* * *

"How do you feel now?"

It was the first time Yugi had moved in a handful of hours. He had fallen asleep on the couch, Kasumi knew, as she had checked on him several times and found him so still that she had almost assumed he'd died somehow. But she had watched his chest as he breathed, frowning as she took in the sight of the blanket pulled over his shoulders. She had thought to take it off him, considering how much he had been sweating before, but she'd also feared it would wake him. It was obvious that he needed his sleep.

The bags beneath his eyes were oddly emphasized, deep and dark. And it had not gone unnoticed the new patterns of behavior he'd begun to exhibit.

He was sitting there with his shoulders hunched and back slouched forward. His head was down as if it was too heavy for his neck, and sweat had gathered on his forehead. His bangs were drenched and plastered to his skin with perspiration. His cheek was reddened where he had kept it pressed against the cushion for so long. Knots were visible in the base of his disheveled hair, the thin strands caught and held together. When he moved a certain way it looked as if his skin were trembling and Kasumi could see small hints of gooseflesh perking upon his arms.

He had been awake for several minutes and had not moved from this spot. She had listened to him breathing, a shallow and harsh noise, and the reality of this seemingly desperate scene in front of her made her feel sick. She had no idea if there was a chance of easing the pain that was so blatantly painted upon his body, the tremors that forced his shoulders to rise and fall as if he were sobbing.

The only difference within the living room that had come about at any time now was that of the television playing. The volume was extremely low, almost to the point that it was mute, but she could hear the program faintly. They were but mere whispers and the music came in soft hints. He was immobile beyond it, and did not so much as look interested in whatever was playing on the screen in front of him.

Yugi, listening to her voice and the gentle noises of the television, felt sick to his stomach. He wanted to lean forward, to press his face into the table. He wanted to fold his arms and push his cheeks into it until the chill crept through his face all the way to his bloodstream and outwards with each pump of his heart. His muscles ached and twisted in knots beneath his skin, focused especially along the back of his shoulder blades. His head was throbbing, his skin still alight with fire. Nothing seemed to have changed within the time of his nap safe for his strange new tolerance for background noise that had somehow developed. The television dialogue was oddly comforting, lulling him towards a blissful unawareness, but it did nothing to stop the rest of his pain.

"My head still hurts," he murmured, just loud enough for his mom to hear. He shifted slightly, drawing his right leg closer to his chest while his left remained folded beneath him. His muscles bunched hideously again, striking him painfully as they formed a hard knot along his shoulder blades once more. Pulses of pain came forward, shifting through his system violently, and his right arm began to throb again.

"Do you want to go to the doctor?" she asked, frowning at him as she thought to attempt persuasion. Yugi raised his head only enough for her to see his eyes, which looked so pale at the moment that she thought they were turning pale almost as if he had developed cataracts. He shifted forward, pressing his chin to his kneecaps, and watched her for a moment as he forced a small smile to his face.

"No, I'm okay, Mom," he mumbled, "I don't think I need to go to the doctor."

Immediately Kasumi thought to argue with him, opening her mouth to press the issue, but stopped short. He had such a concentrated look upon his face that it halted the words where they lingered in her throat. His eyes, pale and nearly lifeless, were filled with an intensity that made her mouth grow dry. He seemed to be staring at her and through her all at once. But the determination within them made them look almost lively, as if it might be so powerful as to fill them with color once more. He would fight her, tooth and nail, and would not give in until she forced him to go there.

"All right." She wouldn't force him, if only for the pain Kasumi knew it would cause him. His headache was painted so clearly upon his face that it was impossible to miss the etchings of emotion there. He seemed almost to wince as they looked at each other, and abruptly his attention turned towards the screen behind her. The quaking did not stop and she wanted to try again but she feared hurting him rather than helping should she argue. "I'm going to get some more Advil from the store. Is there anything else you might want?"

Yugi blinked and then shook his head slowly. "No, thank you."

He only moved to get more comfortable after she went back downstairs. He stretched himself out on his side again, wincing as pain shot through him like a rush of adrenaline. His muscles knotted harshly once more, drawing a long line across the vertebrae of his spine. He could not move, ceasing anything further than breathing, and closed his eyes as he rested his head against the cushions. His breaths steadied into a soft rhythm of noise, gentle and light, and its tranquility managed quickly to put him to sleep once more.

The soft rhythm of his breaths grew quicker, his heart becoming louder. His lungs swept air in calmly but so sufficiently that it pushed such energy through him that it made him lightheaded for a split second.

The whisper of the noise in his ears was as light as the wind as he moved. He was running faster than he had ever before assumed possible, legs pumping and ears pricked. The wind passed over his skin in slithers like knife blades, pulsing through his nerves with such power he felt he was flying. The sensation which pushed him forward and danced within him gave the illusion of something beautiful and wondrous, terrible and great in its brilliance.

Muscles coiled and released beneath his skin like working springs. His leaps came with such strength he felt he would never again have need to touch the ground. He propelled himself faster, angling his ears to take in all the noises around him. His muscles bunched and his shoulders rolled as he challenged this speed.

A low, beautiful song of harmonious melody swept through the air he slowed slightly, ears pricking, and tilted his head only a faction at the new curling of its rolling call. He fell into a brisk trot, eyes widening as his tail began to wag in rapid succession at the wondrous song. His body moved with such a swift determination that he nearly shook with surprise, the sensation coming in the gentle touch of the wind which came through his fur.

He found his tail wagging harder as the air stilled and grew silent for a moment before throwing his head back. The immensity of the noise with which his breath burst forward, vibrant and beautiful and terribly foreign, brought him to rear back on his hind legs. He leaped as the noise faded, his lungs seemingly collapsing upon themselves with the force of his enthusiasm, landing so lightly he felt as if he might be suspended in the air.

Soft, friendly calls traveled the air with beautiful and wondrous strength and clarity. They whipped through the wind as his ears flicked about him once, tail wagging. A few of the shadows surrounding him lit with specks of color, glowing like fireflies and drawing his attention to his surroundings for the first time.

Trees were thick, reaching high into the sky with branches which threatened to block out the moon but only succeeded in allowing the silver light passage as if translucent. The top of each branch glittered and shone like crystals within sunlight, as if rippling upon the surface of water. Small ribbons of mist glowed bright silver like webs with sparks of gold and blue with the keenness of stars against the night sky. Some of the tree trunks, he noticed, gave off a bluish glow rather than glistening silver, and seemed to illuminate around the edges with such brightness as to rival the sun.

The leaves which clung to the branches glittered with a brighter hue, giving the mist soft touches of color like the galaxies within the sky overhead. The frost which weighed upon the ferns and ground beneath his paws was bathed a brilliant white with undertones of gray and just the tiniest hints of the beautiful shade the trees bore. Small, glistening dots of white glittered and flickered at the base of each tree, with golden cores which seemed brilliant enough to give the large plants life.

As his eyes rose further upwards he found the sky a brilliant and deep purple with the richest of hues he had ever seen. Hints of blue swirled within the royal color, thick ribbons of bright red-violet mist tinting the sky with soft touches of silver starlight which danced like birds within the air.

The full moon was shaded upon the right side, with crevices as deep as mountain valleys, glowing purple, surrounded by a ring of bright red-violet which spilled into silver and white. Behind it, the stars glittered and shifted as if stirred by the wind, sparkling like jewels with such strength it hurt his eyes.

To his left came forth the softest of gurgles and, as he looked at it, the river was painted blue, with ribbons of silver and white from the moon. The reflective surface danced as it continued its journey downwards, giving off a beautiful and strange glow where the light touched it. Smooth stones gave the appearance of natural roughness and jagged form, littering the shore where he saw smoother, softer pebbles which breached the surface. Painted bright silver and cobalt, the outer surfaces were almost black where the water touched them and the smaller stones peeked from beneath them. Soft sand glittered with a similar glow, the color of basking silver with gentle touches of gold which looked like glossy brushstrokes of sunlight.

The forest shared one internal glow, though it seemed to branch off into multitudes of color so brilliant they brought wonder and beauty like nothing else. The sand shifted beneath his paws as he stepped forward, with such gentle warmth that it was almost like the swift comfort that came with affection. He leaned forward to peer at the water, the way the surface flickered and moved with such softness that it appeared almost still with mere whispers to its travel. Its trickle was almost nonexistent, the roar of it almost entirely abandoned somewhere within the darkness. The stones which littered the inside of the river, he realized, were large and smooth enough that he could jump from one to the next and cross at any moment should he wish it.

A swift howl, followed by one loud bark, claimed the air with such authority it jolted his attention. He turned his head, pricking his ears as his tail wagged slowly from side to side. He tilted his head, eyes widening faintly, and he imagined the forest's beautiful natural glow was reflected there like firelight. The tranquility of the glowing woodland was enough to make him feel warm, with such soft joy that it seemed to replace his blood.

He wagged his tail again, tilting his head back, raising both front feet in rapid succession for a moment in a dance of impatience. For a moment he did nothing but look at the sky where there seemed to be no clouds to block the brilliance of the night overhead. Then he reared back again, standing on his hind legs once more, and let out a howl to release some of the glorious tension growing in his body.

He dropped back again, landing with a thud that made the sand crunch under his paws. His tail wagged furiously once more, almost like a flag dancing in the wind, and he looked about him as the specks of color seemed to grow more immense. There were newcomers, he realized, some of teal and dark blue, others of amber and ice, another pair of bright golden. He recognized them as eyes as he looked upon them more fully, so excited by this newfound knowledge that his body went through a gentle quiver of anxious and tense exhilaration.

He wished to pounce forward but a noise, loud and foreign but familiar all the same, caught his attention. His head snapped around, eyes startled, just as his body jerked in its former restful state, thrown into a tense and mounting confusion. He scrambled to attention, sitting up so quickly that he felt his eyes might pop out of his skull with the pain that burst forth behind them. He panted for breath, lungs demanding compensation, and his chest seemed to ache and creak beneath his skin with each touch of air.

The sound of the wolves echoed within his head for a moment died away slowly, the reminiscence of excitement in his being cut away like shredded paper. He weakly shook his head, trying his hardest to calm his breathing some. His throat was sore and raw, as if he had been screaming in his sleep, and his muscles had grown weary and exhausted.

He did not get up to move even as the door opened and closed on the bottom floor. He moved only to sit further upright, bracing his shoulders against the soft backrest of the couch. His mother had returned, and the crinkling of the paper bag she carried told him she had gotten more than just Advil. Yugi closed his eyes tightly, feeling anxious as he struggled to steady his breathing. Her steps were light and soft on the stairs and the small teen tilted his head further back against the cushions.

When she entered the kitchen she made no move towards him. He listened to her as her house slippers touched the tiles. His sense of hearing perked further as she seemed to move towards the fridge or possibility the counters. He pictured her, momentarily debating grabbing him a new cup of water, but did not look towards her. He could smell her, however, the blood in her veins heated further and traced with a light hint of something spicy and earthen, like cinnamon. It made the softer buttery smell beneath it slightly stronger and the blend of them was a beautiful perfume that made his head spin for a split second. But, despite the assault on his nose, he found himself unnerved as his mind tried desperately to decipher the new undercurrent to her blood.

For a moment he was lost and then it occurred to him. Her heart was beating a little faster, racing as if with desperation. He tipped his head to the side minimally, breathing in roughly once more, and then dug the fingers of his right hand into his thigh. Exhausted, his mind drifted and pushed at his senses, drawing to a conclusion that made him feel sick for a split second. He could smell her anxiety towards his condition, brought on by the rise of body temperature from her quickened heart, the hint of cinnamon coming forth from the new heat.

* * *

'Yugi groaned as the phone rang next to his ear. The bell-like jingle curled at the end and he thought it echoed violently even within the recording, regardless of his own intensified sense of hearing. The dull throbbing came tenfold and he felt his shoulders strain and ache as he forced himself to reach outwards and pluck it from the table. Where it vibrated against the wood it sounded so painful it made his skull pound heavily. He wanted to turn it off and lie back down, or smother his hearing with the pillow beneath his head, but obligation pushed at his senses as well. As his fingers touched it, a chill ran through him, his bones cold from the touch of air conditioning, and the table seemed to vibrate and roll.

He hesitated briefly, palm aching as it came into contact, but slowly pulled it towards him. His mouth was dry and his tongue heavy in his mouth from the dream he'd had moments before, though he no longer remembered it. His fingers trembled even as he began to sit up somewhat and look at the screen where the light seemed to burn his eyes. He thought momentarily that he needed to dull the brightness there, though he was frustrated by the very idea of it. Yugi tossed his head slightly, swallowing, and blinked several times as he took the name in.

"Hey, Jonouchi," he greeted, forcing his voice to come out stronger and more even, casual in demeanor. For a moment he heard only soft rustling and then he thought he caught Honda's voice saying something to Anzu who giggled in response. The small teen shook his head, stomach twisting as a realization came over him slowly, and he wanted nothing more than to hang up and lay back down again.

"Hey, Yug!" His best friend sounded jovial and eager, making guilt flare in his insides immediately as he swallowed hard and refused to speak again. "We decided that we were going to hang out at the arcade today—"

"I can't."

For a second he thought Jonouchi might begin talking again, maybe ignore his statement and start on something else. Yugi reached up to rub at his eyes with a lazy swipe of his right hand, hoping he wouldn't press too hard at the issue. He was exhausted and every part of his body thrummed with that hideous pain.

"Oh, come on, Yugi. We haven't hung out in _days_!" he wheedled, and Yugi flinched but could hear Honda and Anzu growing quiet now. Gaming music drifted forward, though it was muffled and static, and he flinched again as he shook his head and tried his hardest to ignore the sound of it. "The festival is still a day away! We figured we would all hang out before then."

Yugi felt terrible for his attitude towards the invitation but he would not change his stance on this. "Jonouchi, I really can't," he replied, voice coming out somewhat tired as he reached up to rub at his forehead for a moment. He shook his head, frustrated, and swallowed away a whimper that threatened to bubble upwards.

"But—"

"No…I have to help my mom with a surgery," he bit out, voice somewhat harsh and his mouth feeling dry and pasty. He thought it sounded almost like a snarl or maybe a hiss, perhaps even a weak growl of confusion. His mouth tasted metallic, as if he had touched his tongue to a penny or some other change from his pocket. The small teen swallowed, choking on the taste, and cleared his throat awkwardly, feeling sick. "There's an amputation for this dog we need to do. Its foot is practically rotting off…"

He rubbed his forehead again and his shoulders bunched up. The muscles rolled along the blades of bone and his arm jerked faintly as if someone had struck it with their hand in an attempt to knock away his phone. His fingers locked and shook, his hand aching, and his mouth grew even further metallic in taste. He shook his head sloppily, the pain pulsing through it violently, and blinked at the heaviness his limbs seemed to have accumulated so suddenly.

"Oh…well…can't you bail?" Jonouchi tried, a last ditch effort that they both recognized as only halfhearted. The blond had already given up, he knew, and he felt bad for it, but it did nothing to make him stop from speaking once more as he shook his head as if he might see through the screen. "I mean…you always help out with them. She could ask one of her techs…"

"I can't just _not_ help out," he argued, forcing it to come out in something of a soft laugh, but his exhaustion was nipping at his insides and he felt sick to his stomach again. The room seemed to lurch the more he stared at the room's corner nearest the television. He tilted his head only slightly to the side, blinking at the junction blankly as he thought to lie back down again. But he felt had he done so he would start to fall asleep swiftly, if not immediately. "You know I can't say no to an animal."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," the blond grumbled, at first with a sigh and then with a cheerier response. "But there's always the festival. You're not going to get out of that one with a surgery."

He blinked at the statement and frowned minutely. "No way. I wouldn't miss the festival for the world," he responded a little too quickly. It came out miserable in his own ears but with that music playing over the line he realized Jonouchi probably did not catch such an emotion in it. He cleared his throat and forced his voice to come out chipper as his mind began to turn in a new direction. "I'll be there. Don't worry. Mom even knows not to ask me for help when it comes around."

"Great!"

Yugi wanted to cringe at the very thought of the festival. He was changing on that day, there was no mistake. It was only one day before and already his body was so foreign he thought it alien and unnatural to any creature known. He could not do much more than simply stare at the calendar he had on his wall and feel sickness creeping through him with every second he had been within his room. Now, lying on the couch in the living room and staring at the television blankly, he had no reason to count the seconds but rather found himself wishing it was over already.

If he killed everyone at the festival, he would not care. He needed to get rid of this terrible pain. If the pain went away, he would _allow_ himself to lose his mind and do _whatever_ was necessary to cut it out of him completely. He would care only afterwards, he supposed, when the reality of it set in completely. He did not think he would waste a breath for their families or friends when their blood seemed to quell the pain that threatened to swallow him so absolutely. He thought he might bathe in their blood and dance in a field of severed flesh should he kill that night.

If he had no control, that made it even better. If he had control and that put the pain away, he doubted he would find it as terrible in that moment. It was not even a true question of morals or compassion, just survival which seemed to be in its simplest of forms.

"Well, I guess I'll see you then," the blond commented.

"Absolutely," Yugi agreed, blinking and scrunching his eyes up as the television's light flashed and flared in several neon colors. "I'll meet up with you guys ahead of time and we'll all go together. There's still the plan, right?"

"Hell yeah it is."

"Okay." He drew in a deep breath, nearly swallowing to push away some of the ache in his stomach. "I'll see you there."

"See you."

He let the blond hang up but looked at his phone for a long moment as his skin jerked along his bones once more. He decided, staring down at it with worried eyes, that if he would be given that strange, wondrous effect his dream had allowed him, then he would not question his skin splitting. He would not question even the roll of his muscles beneath his skin or the ache with which his body burned at that moment.

That euphoric sensation, he thought faintly, was worth this hideous pain. He didn't know how long either would last or if it was worth it to question, but he did know that his dream was something to cherish. That beautiful speed and the sensation of never touching the ground, the joy with which it came, was a gift that he wished to have forever. He lowered his phone to the table again, watching the tendons in his fingers bulge and then seemingly pulse. Then he lay back against the cushions a third time, looking at the television again with a lazy blink.

He hoped desperately for his dreams to take him back to that, though they had not formerly and he knew somewhere in the back of his mind that they would fail now as well. Rather than the euphoria he had been granted hours before, several hours later, Yugi found himself sweating violently but without the heat in his veins. When he sat up, the world tilted and seemed to swirl like flakes of snow pushed by the wind, but the small teen was unsurprised. The rest of him seemed mildly okay, though his skull throbbed and his body felt colder than it ever had before.

It was as if ice had replaced his blood and his bones felt hollow and frozen beneath his skin. It was as if frostbite had set into his body under his muscles and it was oddly both painful and rejuvenating in sensation. He reveled in it even as they felt as if they might fall from his palms at any moment. The small teen looked his hands over, watching them shake in harsh jerks of pain.

He blinked slowly, feeling something curling inside of his blood, and his lips pulled downwards into a grimace of frustration. His stomach twisted painfully and his mouth tasted even more harshly of metal and iron, his tongue growing warmer and heating that disgusting odorous flavor. Yugi raised his eyes to the screen in front of him and then back down to his hands where he thought perhaps he should attempt to quell the shaking.

The heat came with such intensity that he nearly snarled in discomfort. The collision of the two drastic temperatures was that of sweltering summer sunshine and frostbitten winter snow. He felt them sweeping through his insides in such a rush that he thought it akin the river he head often seen within the woods upon going up into the foothills of the mountains.

He flinched and gripped his head, groaning softly as his eyes clenched tightly. He tossed his head slowly back and forth, the groan becoming louder, and tipped his chin downwards to press it against the center of his collarbones. It was a slightly uncomfortable position but it helped to make him feel better, if only mildly. It was if the new touch of gravity somehow managed to make his head's violent pounding lessen.

White hot pain came forth with each heartbeat and the frozen sensation was now growing furiously undone, thawing and pulsating. It spread through him in place of his blood and his muscles contracted to lock in place. Sweat began to pour down his forehead once more, spine growing rigid as his body jerked and trembled violently. He could not move himself from the ball of limbs he curled into a moment later.

* * *

Her hand skated over his forehead, painful but not hideously so. The sweat from her palm did him wonders to bring down some of the heat boiling beneath his skin. He wondered if she thought he was as hot as he felt, if she thought it akin putting her hand in the middle of a flame.

He blinked several times, opening his eyes into mere slits. The air smelled salty and somehow still hotter than his own body. Little hints of that metallic scent were coming forth now and he wrinkled his nose faintly at the way it carried his senses. He blinked, attempting to focus on her. But his eyes burned and his mouth felt dry and pasty.

"Are you sure you don't want to go to the doctor?"

Yugi closed his eyes again tightly for a split second and shook his head slowly. The doctor was the last thing he had any desire to deal with. They'd take his temperature and then put him on so many drugs he wouldn't wake up for the next week. He would never make it out of there before the Change happened. And then what would he do? They'd put him on television and make him into an attraction for a freak show and people would never leave him alone—if he survived for long. Or he would be contained by the Japanese government and experimented on.

And then, of course, one of the wolves would probably put an end to him completely. They would get him when finally no one was around to see it happen and he'd only be able to blink before they killed him _violently_. He imagined his larynx torn out and the room bathed in blood. It would not have surprised him for it to all happen before anyone so much as though to truly consider it. If he had been able to blend in so well, then more experienced wolves most certainly could. He thought they might even kill a crowd within the room if they were brave enough. No one would have the means to stop them because no one would expect them to do it.

It occurred to him immediately as that thought crossed his mind that he would never see his friends again. It was horrifying enough to make his head spin and his heart pound. Unless he saw them in the massive crowd that would swarm his room, he would never see them again. But, even without the hospital involved, something else might prevent it. He felt his stomach grow cold and empty.

Should he bail out on the festival, would they still want to ever speak to him again?

The reality of the situation was that he, like the others, recognized the strain that was coming over their small group. It had grown more pronounced over that phone call hours before but it had been there the entire time, festering like a hideous wound, and he feared the worst. There was no way they would forgive him so easily for that—especially not Jonouchi.

He felt sick to his stomach at that realization.

The blond was far too loyal to allow him to slip between the cracks with such an incident. He would do as he did with the Burger World employee and Ushio's death, attempting to force him into a corner. He was more likely now than ever to push him too far. And there was no telling what might leave their mouths if they started arguing. They could end up saying things they could never take back and who would ever want to risk that?

"Yes, I'm sure," he managed to say, though his voice came out scratchy and weak and he thought for a moment that it sounded as if he were croaking on his death bed. He was unsure how she might take it when his voice normally seemed so lively. He thought perhaps she might grow even unhappier with this whole situation and that made his stomach twist even harder. The few times he had been sick she had forced him to go to the hospital or their usual doctor for a regular checkup. He could, however, argue and refuse treatment if she forced him to go.

He was sixteen. At twenty-one, living with parents, she still had the ability to fight him on that decision. She could try to persuade the doctors regardless. But Yugi was considered an adult at sixteen due to the legal age within Domino City as a prefecture. Because of that he was able to veto any and every decision she attempted to make where it came in regards to his own physical body.

He was still under her roof, and she was still his mom.

But, at the end of the day, his word became law in regards to himself.

The thought was incredibly comforting.

The second to come was not.

If she thought he was unable to make the proper decision, couldn't she force the doctors to rule otherwise? And then, what would he do after that?

But he felt bad for even considering the argument of telling her no and refusing her alleviation towards her growing worries. He would feel terrible for not listening and she, like any mother, knew exactly how to manipulate his guilt.

"But your fever hasn't broken—"

"It did earlier," he argued weakly, reaching up to move her hand away and nearly cringing. Every muscle in his body rebelled against him even more with the simplicity of the reflexive movement. Heat and pain flared through his entire nervous system and his stomach ached violently as it heaved faintly and twisted viciously moments later.

"But it's worse now, Yugi. It came back worse. You need to—"

"I'm _not_ going to the doctor, Mom," he huffed, opening his eyes and struggling to focus on her. He imagined he looked much too small, too tired, ashen and completely shaken. He thought he might have looked like a soaked rat, his entire body perspiring in buckets. His stomach twisted, his mouth growing drier somehow. "It's going to pass. I'll be fine by tomorrow."

"And if you're _not_?"

"Then I'll go to the doctor," he snapped, his tone surprising them both, "but not until I've tried sleeping it off."

Kasumi frowned at him, annoyed and undone by his stubbornness. It was distressing the state he was in, the way that he had appeared almost lifeless and long dead before she had managed to wake him. She had the impulse to reach forward and feel his forehead again, but she did not think it would be appreciated. She also knew he would grow even further agitated if she suggested he use a thermometer. So her hand remained at her side and her tongue pressed against the roof of her mouth. But it was impossible to look away from him and she almost feared that if she so much as blinked she might open her eyes to her son's corpse.

" _Yugi_ ," she stressed softly before her eyes finally seemed able to pull away despite that hideous fear. "I am taking you to the doctor _first thing in the morning_ if you aren't better tomorrow, _understand_?"

"Yes," Yugi agreed, voice growing steadily annoyed and bordering hateful. He didn't want to hear anymore about it. There was no need to rehash her concern or his reluctance. She knew he hated being dragged around as he had as a child. And they both knew pressing it was hardly necessary after they had both aired out their grievances of the situation. "First thing in the morning."

But agreeing to it seemed unnecessary now. He would sleep it off. He knew that somehow with absolute certainty. It could have been the belief that the disease would not kill him for risk of destroying itself. But he knew it one way or another. This fever would not last until the morning.

He watched her go as she nodded again but ignored her as she added, "I really wish you would listen to me and go now instead, but fine. It's your choice."

Was it? Somehow he found that to be highly doubtful. It seemed more that she was consenting in order to simply have relief of mind. But there was nothing left to say and he had no reason to question her easy agreement any longer.

He turned to look over his shoulder as she walked out of the living room and through the kitchen, most likely headed for her room. His body ached and pulsed with pain but he had no power to do anything more than stare after her. Yugi settled back into the couch immediately after, clothes sticking to his body and far too heavy for him to attempt pulling off his skin. The air seemed too thick, his hair almost weighing his head down, and as he pressed his cheek into the pillow he thought himself exhausted and sick to his stomach.

The pain drifted in gentle waves as the darkness became more pronounced, and it was long gone when he opened his eyes again. When he looked around the room it was brightened by the sunlight to the point that it was hard not to recoil. He was amazed once more by the fact alone that he was not rendered blind. He thought it a miracle that his eyes adjusted even faintly. The intensity of the sunbeams made him squint for only a long minute.

He blinked a couple of times, relieved that he no longer heard the strange clap of his lids closing together. His stomach did not even twist as he looked at the carpet where the deep red strands of the fibers glittered momentarily before it dulled once more. The television's gentle glare was cast a bright white but eventually became nothing more than a touch of yellow and gray. Dust particles drifting through the air became invisible once more. The heavy, roaring pulse of the air conditioning as it trailed through the vents was reduced to a gentle, rattling buzz of white noise. He could no longer hear the ticking form the clock on the bathroom wall. His heart no longer pounded in his ears and his head did not pulse violently with pain. Instead everything seemed to be muffled, swallowed away gently. It was so relieving to him that he nearly sobbed with happiness.

Yugi realized as well that, though his senses were still the smallest degree keener, it was not so hideous as it could have been. All of what had happened formerly with his senses had prepared him for so much _worse_. This mild, almost unnoticeable addition to his being was almost beautiful in its simplicity. It seemed almost sensual in how light and gorgeous it was, like a small hand resting on his back to guide him. He could almost equate it to the euphoria from his dreams in only the lightest degree.

He got up, kicking the heavy blanket away and staggering forward a step. Exhaustion continued to tug at his muscles and his legs responded with heavy stiffness. His limbs ached but with a lighter prickling rather than the intense burn he'd suffered throughout the week. He stumbled but regained his balance easily, relieved with this recovery and the very fact that it was possible to. The lycanthropy had inflicted it and then allowed him the ability to fight it off as if it were nothing more than the most common of headaches. It was somehow wondrous the fact that the virus could fall back into an almost dormant state after such a vicious attack in the first place

He blinked at the thought and a new idea came to focus in his mind. How much of his DNA structure had changed? Was it all of it? Had all of his cells become alien? Were none of them the same? If he looked at his blood under a microscope would it be a strange combination of disease, wolf and human? Would _everything_ be tainted?

And…did that mean that perhaps whatever DNA they might have found around Kokurano's body would no longer match? Was that possible? If they tested his DNA in a spit swab or a hair follicle, would it still match? Or had it changed completely to the point that nothing was recognizable? The possibility was almost horrifying but somehow also hilarious and disgusting in its satisfying reality. If no one matched the profile for the last person around him before he died, did that mean he was off the hook?

But then how could anyone match his DNA in the first place? No one had ever even asked to take his blood before. Because of his medication simply being for night terrors and his lack of injuries growing up, he'd never truly had any application of DNA applied to him. Or, if he had and he did not remember it, perhaps it wouldn't match anymore and he'd be free to go…

Yugi blinked at the realization. Why had he never thought of all that before? It would have saved him a lot of stress.

"Yugi?"

He looked up, surprised, and his head turned before he could truly think it through. "Hi, Mom," he greeted with a small grin, watching her as she came towards the kitchen. He tilted his head at her curious and shocked expression before smiling a small degree wider. He paused, almost questioning himself, and then murmured, "I slept it off."

Her eyes widened briefly, lighting with obvious relief, and her mouth curved into the softest of smiles. Yugi waggled his brows playfully as her nose wrinkled in amusement. "It only took twenty-four hours, not counting the other five days you acted so strange," she said sardonically, though it did nothing to smother her amusement and relief. In all actuality it managed somehow to lighten the atmosphere further.

"My body works miracles," he announced lazily, winking at her even as she did her usual to scrutinize him with keen eyes to make sure he truly _was_ okay. But it was as if the sickness had been wiped away completely. The color had returned to his face, with even the smallest amount of red to dust his cheeks. His hair was ruffled, completely disheveled, and greasy and plastered to his forehead where his bangs pressed against his skin, but he looked happier than the day before. He tilted his head, smiled a little more, and she almost cried out with the absolute joy that came through her system at the sight. His eyes, just yesterday drained to silver and periwinkle, were back to their gorgeous vibrancy, deep violet and vivid, glowing sapphire blue. The light glittered where it touched them and they looked like lapis-lazuli gems as they always had, bursting with life and affection.

Kasumi had the impulse to reach up and cover her mouth, gasping, and then hug him tightly. It was so far out of her comfort zone with such a display, so terribly emotional that it was almost overwhelming. She had never been one for such displays, as it always seemed to push at the very edges of her constraints. And she hated not having control where it concerned herself. It made her feel weak, without composure, and that was something that she had never wanted.

Going into the veterinary field had been exhausting by all means of the word. So many coworkers had thought her inferior due to her gender. She had been forced to work so much harder than the rest and fantasy and emotions had never had a place there. Being looked down on for crying had hardened her to the point that she could take a great many things in stride without letting many of her emotions show on her face.

And, despite herself, she could not manage to grow past her impulse and need to shield herself even around her own family. After only crying in front of her father during college she had not done so again. She had not allowed herself to cry in front of him or Yugi even once when he was born. The only one she had ever cried in front of more than once had been his father, at the college, when Yugi was conceived, when he was born, when the night terrors had scared him so much he couldn't sleep without screaming, and perhaps twice on the phone. He had comforted her, made her feel safe enough to show him her more human side, and yet, despite her knowledge that her son and father would never judge her for it, she could not bear to show them the same.

So now Kasumi merely smiled more, eyes soft, watching him as the joy threatened to overwhelm her, and knew that he would not judge her for this either. He simply raised his head a little higher and winked before heading for the fridge, hungry as he always was upon waking.

"So…what do you think it was?" She asked it as gently as she could, in order to keep him from growing annoyed with the direction of their conversation. She hardly wanted to upset him, especially when something so wonderful had just happened. He'd recovered and looked healthy again, almost as if he had never been sick in the first place, and looking such a gift horse in the mouth was a hideous thing, but she had to know. If it was something that might spring up on him again, she needed to know. She had to have some kind of plan to prevent it getting somehow worse.

"Honestly? I think it was just stress," Yugi replied easily, though he seemed partially distracted by the idea of breakfast. He gave her a small shrug and for a moment she thought his eyes flickered with a self-conscious light, but it was gone just as fast and so she did not think about it further. "I have midterms coming up after the festival. And then there's…everything going on…"

Kasumi blinked at him, at first confused by the vague statement. "Everything going on" seemed to hint more towards something consisting of his group of friends more than anything else. She almost asked, but then fell quiet again.

Yugi was looking at her now, his brows furrowed. His eyes seemed a little darker, almost as if his lashes had cast immense black shadows, and his head tilted to the side. His lips tugged downwards slightly and she realized immediately he was already taking on his shoulders the burden of distracting her from his recent sickness.

"I…I meant with Ushio and Kokurano," he admitted softly, reaching up to rub at the back of his neck uncomfortably as if the very mention of their names made him want to flinch.

She blinked and then cringed. Right, Kokurano had been mentioned only the week before by Anzu's father, the detective in charge. Thankfully Ushio's death had been ruled as a rabid animal attack, which some insisted was canine while others argued ursidae. She didn't think it was a dog or a bear, especially considering the killing so close to their house, but she had not bothered to say anything.

"Do you…?"

She frowned at him in puzzlement, sole attention on him once more. "Do I what?"

He opened and closed his mouth twice and then ducked and shook his head uncomfortably. "Never mind."

"Go ahead and ask," she urged, watching him with curious but intense eyes. "It's clearly bothering you, Yugi. You can ask me whatever it is on your mind."

He hesitated, frowning, and then swallowed hard before looking up at her through his lashes. "Did you hear anything about Kokurano?" he finally asked softly, blinking at her and swallowing hard once more. "I mean…"

She stayed quiet for a moment, frowning, and then sighed softly. "Anzu's father called a couple of days after his body was found," she admitted reluctantly, feeling somehow small as his eyes widened and glittered with something akin desperation for answers. "He wanted to know if I knew of a drug that might…have extremely potent side effects…"

"A drug? They think it was a drug?" Yugi whispered, blinking at her slowly and frowning deeply. "What kind of side effects?"

Kasumi opened and closed her mouth and then sighed softly, looking away for a moment with a deep grimace. She reached up, running a hand through her brownish-red hair and shaking her head. "We met up for coffee a few days ago to look at it again, see if maybe there was some way we could match it all with a drug with deadly side effects," she explaining, sighing again and shaking her head once more as disgust began to paint her features. "When he showed me the x-rays they were _horrifying_ , Yugi. There was _nothing_ but withered bones and _chewed_ away muscles."

"W-what?"

"There was a big gaping hole where his heart was meant to be. Many of the organs, arteries, and almost _all_ of his blood had been stripped away with it. He was left with slight bone structure and very little muscles."

"Oh my gods…"

Yugi shook his head slowly several times, horrified, and blinked stupidly in shock. How was that possible? He had watched him die. He'd been foaming at the mouth and gurgling blood but how did that become the equivalent of being disemboweled? Was it possible that the Change had somehow forced his body to begin deteriorating? Or was it really a drug of some kind that the lycanthropy had attacked and the side effects had been dire because of it?

Or…had another wolf come along after his death and eaten most of his carcass? Wild animals went for the organs because they were the healthiest, besides the bone marrow. Was it a possibility that he had just barely escaped only to run into Ushio in the alley and nearly get killed? Was it possible that _Ushio_ had done both? But then, how could he have gotten all the blood off his face and clothes before attacking him? There was a possibility that he had, _somehow_ , but he doubted the massive teen had the intelligence to do it or would have cared to.

And, why do that when he would use the blood as an intimidation tactic to instill _more_ fear?

Yugi blinked and shook his head again slowly. "Are they still…looking for a suspect?"

"Not really. They're all more convinced it's drugs over someone killing him," she replied with a shake of her head. "Everyone is relatively sure it's nothing to do with foul play and more with drug use. And it's apparently not a stretch to think that about him. He's been getting drugs for years—since he was about fourteen actually. They wouldn't be surprised if the side effects of this one were what did it."

"He was doing drugs?"

"And apparently vandalizing property. He was thought to be the one who set that hospital on fire a few months ago," she mumbled, looking at him closely for a moment. "They didn't prove it yet but he was the number one suspect. He was supposedly seen there the night it happened. And you mentioned he said it was going to happen beforehand and that's how he became 'psychic' at the school, right?"

"Yeah," he answered distractedly, mind racing. They weren't looking for a suspect anymore. They were convinced it was drugs that had done it. He'd been disemboweled and left with merely a hollow body shape. "He started asking for payment to have fortunes told."

Probably to pay for the drugs, Yugi realized now.

It was hideously relieving, however, and he almost wanted to laugh hysterically at the thought. How much time had he spent worrying about him being the number one suspect and eventually getting arrested? How many times had he been scared he'd come home to the police waiting, his mom and grandpa watching as he was cuffed and put in the back of a cruiser?

It was wasted time, but what else would he have done with it otherwise? All he had been able to focus on in the first place was more things to worry about. The Change first and foremost, the lycanthropy itself a close second, the idea of what and who his alpha might be third, and so many other things that needed closure as well. He had no other thing that his time could be spent on ever since the disease had truly begun to flare up.

"And Ushio was, of course, ruled an animal attack," his mom continued, watching him for a moment and then shrugging when he frowned at her. "They say canine or ursidae."

"You disagree," he assumed. He would have too, considering the attack pattern, if not for the fact that he knew what it was that had killed him. Lone wolves' attack patterns caused trauma to the head and neck areas and then hands and arms. Ushio had had his entire skull crushed inward by teeth and terrible bite pressure. And a wolf wouldn't have been able to drag a carcass that size alone. That was also an impossibility considering the only wolf with even the _slightest_ chance of survival was the smaller one. And, beyond that, wolves had a healthy hatred for people and would hardly come out in the open like that.

A bear could do it, but the attack pattern didn't match. It would have crushed his entire body, as it was an inefficient hunter. They tried to kill through sheer force, unlike canines which used cunning cooperation and cats which utilized stealth. For that reason really no natural animal fit the profile. He knew that, his mom knew that, anyone with knowledge of animals would know that if they thought it through. But most people didn't care for the facts, just that someone or something was put to blame. In this case it was the animals, because no one wanted to believe another person would do it.

"It doesn't matter," Kasumi announced with a small shrug and shake of her head. The sooner they got past this conversation, the better. She hardly wanted to think on the subject any longer. She'd racked her brain plenty in an attempt to understand it all and it was still too far out of her reach, even after long, sleepless nights. Why Ushio was left at their doorstep for Yugi to find was something that she might never get the answer to, nor what had inflicted such tremendous damage. "It's over and done with. People will think what they want."

Yugi wanted to argue but then nodded faintly and turned back to the fridge instead. There wasn't a reason to talk about it anymore. The most she needed to worry about as far as that went was if it had scared people away. But his mom's reputation had exceeded most of the fear that had been instilled, though not completely. Several families had turned away, even pulling out their pets from the boarding in the back of the main clinic and taking them elsewhere.

"So, what are your plans for the day? Are you going to be with the others before the festival or are you meeting there?" his mom murmured, voice somewhat distracted and her eyes slightly distant. She blinked and then focused on him again, frowning, and he wondered for a moment if the idea of leaving the house after his fever the day before was what made her so visibly upset about this.

"We're meeting up early," he replied, watching her closely for any sign of argument so that he could get it out of the way immediately if necessary. "I was _going_ to tutor Jonouchi some, but, of course, he decided not to because it's the day of the festival. But Honda texted me last night to ask if I could check on Blankey for him before we all meet up. Apparently she's limping a little and he wanted to make sure it isn't anything bad."

She nodded almost dismissively, but he could see the faintest hint of pride in her eyes at the idea of him examining Blankey. It often went unsaid but Yugi knew she was aware of how grateful he truly was to have her teaching him, even if she sometimes pushed him so hard he feared he might crack under the pressure.

"And I'm guessing you'll meet Anzu and Jonouchi at the festival then?"

"Probably, unless they have plans to meet up early too," he said with a shrug, though he didn't miss the slight hint of frost in her eyes at the mention of the brunette's name. She liked her well enough, but there had always been something that set her on alert and seemed to annoy her about the girl as well. Yugi had never been able to figure it out, but he hadn't tried very hard either. In all reality he had merely been curious once upon a time but never fully brought it up again. "I don't think we will though, to be honest."

"Why do you say that?"

"Just because. Anzu will probably spend time with her parents until then, celebrate a little with them, and then Jonouchi will probably just be lazy and sleep until we have to meet up."

" _Ah_."

"Yeah, it's going to be just me and Honda, probably."

"That's not bad."

"No, of course not."

"Are you and Sugoroku going to celebrate before you go to see Honda?"

Yugi paused at the use of his grandpa's name but did not comment. "No," he said almost sharply, surprising them both with the firmness of his voice. But he didn't want to spend more time than necessary with him. All that time with him did was make him remember that he had known and not told him despite realizing what was happening. And he couldn't seem to forgive him that yet.

His mom did not celebrate the festivals often. When he was younger, he remembered her showing him proper offerings for different gods by means of lighting candles of certain colors and burning a plant or two. She had taught him because she did not want him to think that he shouldn't worship simply because she didn't and so often scoffed when her father made mention of them. She had wanted him to grow up with an open mind despite her own growing closed over time.

"Okay."

He almost wanted to laugh. Her voice had come out an odd combination of surprise and smugness. He knew she was still bitter about their argument before, when she'd accused him of allowing Yugi to waste away while she was with his dad.

"I think I'm actually going to text Honda early and tell him I'm coming over after I eat," he continued, watching her face for any disagreement once more. "Then we can look at Blankey." _And I can avoid Grandpa, because I know he'll want to ask if I'm going to change today_. _He'll probably even want to watch…_

"That's fine. Text me when you two leave his house, okay?"

"Of course. What are you going to do today then?"

"Clean, maybe nap, enjoy my day off, and be ready for the overflow tomorrow."

"Do you want some help before I go?"

"No, you're fine, go ahead and eat and see Honda." She gave him a knowing look with a tilt of her head and Yugi wished for only a split second that he could argue that he wasn't trying to avoid his grandfather. "Text me if you decide to spend the night or anything."

"Of course." He paused for only a moment and then turned back to the fridge, grabbing some left over dinner and looking it over. He loved salmon and vegetables, especially when they were glazed over with marinade. And salmon seemed to be something that he was able to enjoy despite his disease and how strange his taste buds had seemingly grown. That might or might not have had to do with the fact that salmon was part of a wolf's diet in the wild, he realized after a moment. "I'll text you if anything changes or goes wrong or something. Don't worry. I remember the rules."

Kasumi rolled her eyes at his sarcastic tone but smiled all the same before heading into the living room. He glanced at her curiously as she stripped the cushions of the blanket he'd slept under and headed for the laundry room. He tilted his head but didn't question her and instead dug around for the tools to eat his chosen breakfast.

He finished before his grandfather woke up, even taking a shower and managing to get dressed and ready before he even heard a sound from his room. He slipped into the kitchen just long enough to kiss his mom's cheek, murmuring, "I love you, see you later, maybe tomorrow". She nodded, giving him a similar farewell, but both of them paused as the doorknob twisted down the hall. Yugi blinked at the sight and then bolted down the stairs, not wanting to explain himself or have to see his hurt expression. But it was so hard to get over the fact that he had pretended so plainly not to know what was happening and ignoring his need for answers. Every time he so much as crossed Yugi's mind all he could think was of the sting such hideous knowledge brought him. His insides ached, quaking, each time he even considered him. And it was so powerful that Yugi was too wounded and somehow _terrified_ to be able to force himself to stay within close proximity of him. His very scent in the house made him want to sob in despair.

He didn't glance back as he threw the front door open, though he could hear even through the blocked staircase just how surprised his grandfather was. He shut the door behind him, breathing out roughly as guilt bit harshly at his insides. He did not want to think about it, but he forced himself to believe that surprise was all he would feel. There would be no hurt at his clear rejection.

He hurried down the sidewalk, careful to keep off of the street, eyes sharp and alert. He really hoped there were no other wolves around at the moment, that they wouldn't come after him. He didn't want to unwittingly lead them to his friends, though he doubted he would even notice their presence until it was far too late.

Honda met him at the door, sitting on the porch while Blankey retrieved a tennis ball and quickly trotted back to him. Her legs were long, tan, and her saddle lighter rather than heavier, with a beautiful tawny undercoat that shone interspersed with the black guard hairs. Her brown eyes were unusually outlined with black fur, making them appear almost as if they were drawn with kohl. She strode swiftly, tag jingling against her collar with the movements, and her waist was clear in its elegant curve.

Her dark brown ears flicked towards him as he approached but he realized she recognized his footsteps and so did not pay him any attention. He doubted it would be as simple when she actually smelled him, especially because he thought he could almost taste the Change on his tongue each time he had breathed in before leaving the house. He smelled a lot like Valon, with an obvious chemical imbalance, and he thought if Blankey just sniffed a little she would catch it as well.

"Hey, Yugi," Honda greeted immediately, giving him that familiar lopsided grin he always did. He got up as the German shepherd dropped the ball in his hand and the small teen held his hands out in response.

What better way to gauge her reaction to him than to have one of her toys in his possession? She was already proving herself not to be a highly aggressive, territorial dog, but neither had that mother in the kennel when he had first gotten bitten. So he expected her to react in a similar way to his unnatural scent, his disturbing presence.

"Is she still limping?" he asked, catching the ball and watching Blankey start towards him. The shepherd panted, moving swiftly, and got within a foot of him before the caution made her fur twitch along her spine. She stopped, staring up at him keenly, and her head tilted to the side in wonder. She recognized his scent beneath the strange new quality. She knew his face as well. But she did not seem to know how to react.

"She was earlier," the brunet replied, coming over after a moment of watching his dog in concern. Why had she stopped? Why was she just staring at him like that? Was it a small breeze he had just seen or had she begun to bristle just a second ago?

"Which leg?"

"I'm actually not sure. I thought it was the back left a couple of days ago but it looks like the front right today."

Yugi hummed, still watching Blankey curiously. She didn't appear ready to attack over the tennis ball. Her eyes were nothing more than inquisitive and confused. Her ears were pricked but not angled back, she was not bristling, and her lips were not pulled to show her teeth. She was not even wagging her tail. She was just staring.

"She's only eight months," the smaller boy commented, watching the German shepherd and smiling briefly at her as she tilted her head to the other side. "I'm thinking panosteitis, honestly. It's called long bone disease, pretty common in large breed dogs when they're puppies. There's a predisposition for males because they're heavier set. The lameness shifts from leg to leg, toe to toe, kneecap to kneecap; really to any bone. It's sometimes accompanied by a fever, other times not so much. They last about one to three weeks typically but recur, often changing legs. But puppies outgrow the condition eventually. It's an extremely limited disease, honestly."

"That simple? I could have googled that," the brunet grumbled, rolling his eyes.

"Don't self-diagnose," Yugi snorted, tossing the ball up into the air and watching Blankey begin to move from foot to foot as if dancing with excitement, never taking her eyes from her toy. "But, anyways, if you want, I can ask my mom to get a radiograph to make sure. It usually comes up with cloudiness in the marrow cavities. She'd be the one to find it even if the lesions aren't really all that visible."

"Your mom is a fucking medical goddess, dude," Honda snickered, smiling widely. He had always said that and still stuck by his opinion. She was amazing and knew what seemed like _every_ trick in the book for diagnosis and treatments. "I'm definitely asking her to do that."

"It's expensive."

"Doesn't matter. My mom just got her inheritance after my grandma passed. She can definitely afford it even _without_ a discount."

"Oh," Yugi muttered, faltering visibly as he looked at him with a frown. "I'm sorry about your grandmother…"

"It happens." He shrugged dismissively and the smaller teen realized with startling clarity that Honda had most likely never known her. His hazel eyes were still caught on Blankey as she raced forward to jump up and snatch the ball out of the air when Yugi tossed it forward some. She landed easily enough, wagging her tail happily, and turned to Honda to toss it again.

"She's going to probably recommend that you don't exercise her as much so that it isn't painful and passes easier."

"Oh." He rolled his eyes. "Well, she hasn't been outside for more than an hour at a time anyways. I mean, I thought it might be a sprained muscle so I've kept her in her kennel most of the time. Then I bring her out every day for an hour in the morning and then at night. She's not getting _nearly_ as much exercise as usual."

Yugi nodded, humming again. "Blankey, come here little girl," he called softly, smiling when she turned to him and wagged her tail the smallest degree slower. She lowered her head somewhat, moving forward slowly, but deposited the ball in his hand after a moment of staring up at him.

"Should I take her in or—?"

He had drifted too close, and Yugi realized too late. The moment Honda got to his side, Blankey lunged. Her eyes were wide, the whites showing. Her entire body was bristling. Her teeth clamped into his arm. But the technique was sloppy. Her grip was too loose to be of a damaging caliber. Her tail was tucked between her legs. She nearly fell over herself, she was trembling so hard.

"Holy shit! Blankey, release! Bad girl!" Honda burst out, so shocked by the display that he made no move to grab her.

"Relax, she hasn't even broken skin," Yugi murmured, watching her. She shifted her balance on her back legs awkwardly. Her tail stayed tucked. Her ears were pressed firmly against her head. "She just reacted like she should have. She thought I was a threat when you got closer. She's fine."

"Why would she think that? She's never done this before," the brunet stressed, eyes widening drastically. "She's _met_ you! She knows you're not going to do anything!"

"I smell a lot like chemicals right now," he said with a shrug. He refused to laugh at the irony of the statement and then focused more fully on the puppy again. "I spilled some rubbing alcohol and medication on my sleeve earlier. She's probably just confused by the new smell."

He frowned, blinking, but regained his wits enough to reach over and grab her collar. She whined but released when he tugged slightly. She fell back on all fours and stared at him again. She was still for a moment. Then she let out an immense, booming bark of warning. She reared up just slightly. The barking was louder. Then she dropped back again. Yugi waited. But the shepherd did not lunge again.

"Are you sure she didn't break skin?" Honda demanded, frowning at him with an expression that seemed both suspicious and concerned but also as if he were somehow seeing him for the first time.

Yugi nodded again but rolled up the sleeve of his jacket to show off his arm. There were punctures where her teeth had pressed, looking a nasty, bruised gray and purple, but the skin was not torn. There was no blood to be seen. He gave him a small grin. "She's got good instincts but she was more scared than anything else. If she really thought I was a threat, she would have done much worse."

"I guess," he muttered uneasily, shaking his head in puzzlement. "I'll go ahead and put her inside and then we can hang out."

He nodded distractedly, watching him leave with the shepherd puppy. Her tail began wagging again several feet away, though it still seemed rather nervous in expression. He looked at his arm again, running his fingers over the little indents, and smiled faintly. Blankey would make a good security dog if they taught her properly. She just needed training and more commands, and she'd be able to chase and subdue burglars like a champ. The crime rate in Japan was, in all actuality, almost nonexistent, but it was always nice to think that his friend would have protection either way. She would definitely keep other wolves out of the way when she got old enough and was given training.

She would eat up training without an issue. She was already smart enough to understand and perform several complicated tricks as it was. And she often stole food when no one was looking. She was almost _too_ intelligent, knowing exactly when and how to manipulate and learn and even make games of it all.

He smoothed his sleeve back down, blinking at the odd tingling that accompanied the movement. He had the impulse to check on it again but realized it would look bad after telling Honda it was nothing to be worried about. Instead he shot his friend a smile when he returned, though the brunet still looked somewhat puzzled and suspicious.

"Seriously, Yugi, I'm sorry about that. Like I said, she's never—"

"I promise, it's fine. She was just trying to protect you because I smelled strange," he said dismissively. "She's a good dog. She did what she should have."

His expression did not change, his lips still pulled somewhat downwards, his brows slightly furrowed, his hazel eyes glittering for a moment with something almost akin annoyance. "I guess," he grumbled, sighing. "Is she going to be okay to go to the clinic then? I mean, if she bit you…"

"She'll be fine. You won't be in the room with her when Mom does it and she might get scared but she won't bite. She only did it because she thought I might hurt you."

Honda frowned further but eventually shrugged. "You're the dog expert, so I guess I'll just have to believe you."

"Yep, I'm like the miniature version of Caesar Milan."

"Oh, _please_."

"What? I totally am. I'm an expert."

"You're full of shit, more like it."

He flashed him a wide grin. "I get it from Jonouchi."

"Yeah, he corrupts everyone eventually," Honda agreed. "So what did you want to do? The festival isn't for another few hours—"

"Well, we definitely can't go back to my house. My mom is cleaning and Grandpa is probably still asleep," he replied with a glance down the street. "We could go to the park and rate girls until we all have to meet up."

The brunet burst out laughing. "Jonouchi really _did_ get to you, didn't he?"

"Oh, please, don't lie. We _all_ know it was _you_ who came up with it."

He smirked widely, eyes smug as he raised a brow. "I'm not even going to deny it," he announced, snickering when Yugi shook his head with a roll of his eyes. "Let's go."

* * *

"Yugi, hey, can I talk to you for a second?"

The small teen took a moment, mind scrambling to recognize the words she had spoken even as his thoughts splintered with the urge to run for the forest. How easy it would be… "Sure, Anzu," he stated softly, turning to her with a gentle smile even as the words tasted of absolute bitterness.

He could not ignore the fact that he had felt well all day, even to the point of strange elation, but he also could not turn his back on the reason his body was so energized and comfortable. He felt it beneath his skin, begging to come forth, but it lacked the strength to do so at the moment and its tugs were soft, with such gentleness that had it not been forefront in his mind he would have never noticed it.

Warm red and orange with the faintest traces of purple and blue had begun to decorate the sky as the sun began to descend. The moon was still too pale an outline in the sky, nearly blocked away by the clouds, for him to truly see, but it did not halt his mounting apprehension. He was not sure what it was truly dictated a full moon, if it meant the moment it was highest in the sky or if it was the moment the sunlight was completely drained away. He did not know if this little bit of light would stop him from changing or if it might spur it or what might happen.

His stomach twisted, heat pulsing against the sides of it, and he fought away a wince. He had not considered that his sense of touch might be compromised inside of him now as well. It was horrifying to put to mind, to the point of insidious disgust, but it was testament to what power this disease truly possessed. He had filled his stomach to the point of near retching, shoveling food until he felt he might explode, and it had seemingly held him at bay until now.

He realized, however, that he could feel it as the fullness began to recede in his stomach, and the attempt to perhaps keep himself stuffed, so as not to grow hungry when he did change, was a clear failure. It held no ground in this moment, and his stomach tossed its contents sloppily, the heat pooling and sloshing, lapping at his insides until his blood felt too hot beneath his skin.

He swallowed hard, mouth tasting dry and his tongue heavier than ever. He wanted to whimper and curl up on the ground, growing fearful but also feeling as if his body were going to incinerate.

"What's up?" He was startled by how casual he sounded, though he supposed the fact that he was walking helped to keep his newly developing panic from his tone. His mind was caught, slipping away from the thought of the restlessness growing beneath his skin to that of the possibility of desertion chatting with his friend.

"I…just wanted to ask how you were," she finally replied after a moment. Yugi turned his head, surprised by the statement, and almost wanted to ask what kind of question that was in the first place. But she didn't know and she was just a worried spectator without the slightest clue. "We haven't had much time to hang out, you know?"

He frowned faintly. "I know. I'm sorry. I guess I've just gotten busy and been stressed out lately," he answered, favoring her with a half-truth and feeling almost sick with satisfaction at the idea of not truly lying. "I'm sorry."

"It's fine."

If it was fine, why did she look so sad? He wanted to question the way her eyes had crinkled in the very corners or why they looked a little darker, maybe shinier, as if she might cry. He shifted his weight, the idea of her emotions explained to him seeming suddenly burdensome and frustrating. It was too much, he realized belatedly, to worry about someone else when all of this seemed to weigh upon him like a boulder. No wonder he head not found himself tempted to spend time with the others, wishing to recede into himself.

"Are you okay?"

The smaller teen wondered for a moment if his irritation was visible. He blinked, widening his eyes, and whatever of his expression that might have hinted at his displeasure slipped away immediately. "Of course. Why wouldn't I be?" he asked with a tilted head.

"Because you just looked over your shoulder like you were planning to run."

 _Had_ he?

Yugi blinked again and felt his lips draw downwards in puzzlement. He had not even noticed it. "I'm not going anywhere," he attempted to reassure her, his frown deepening as his insides twisted painfully.

How long would he be able to remain there and keep up this charade of pleasant conversation? He wanted to vomit more than he wanted to stand there. He wanted to run off for the woods more than he desired to celebrate. He did not want to waste time with conversation when he needed to get as far away from the festival when the Change came. There was no better time to gather information on the matter than while it was happening if his mind didn't break and splinter as he had worried had happened with Kokurano.

He still had no idea if any of the death he had witnessed was truly caused by the possibility of some terrible drugs or his lycanthropy. Had the drugs made the disease react violently? He had never herd of such extreme side effects, and hadn't he been told it looked as if something had chewed—?

"Okay." She was muttering, making him strain his hearing, but her voice, so calm yet unhappy, focused his racing mind once more. The doubtful undertone seemed to fester beneath his skin for a moment, bubbling upwards like a disease, and he fought away another deep frown. "So how do you think you did on that test last week?"

Tests? She wanted to talk about tests? Yugi bit back a sigh of disappointment, realizing his initial enthusiasm to talk was not anywhere near her reasoning.

"I don't know," he admitted, fighting to keep his voice from showing his disdain towards the subject, "but I don't think I did well."

"You always do well on tests," she stated, teasing. He blinked at her and wondered for a moment, if perhaps that would change soon. What if the Change was taxing upon his brain to the point that it began to destroy his memory or personality? If this was the only conversation he remembered afterwards, he hoped this teasing tone would be the one forever in his mind. "I'm sure you passed."

He didn't bother to comment that he was sure he had too. It was hard to focus on his former academic triumphs at a moment like this. His mind had grown a little distant, as if distractedly, eyes flickering away towards the sky where the ribbons of sunset were disappearing altogether. He could faintly see the stars, pinpricks of white with little halos of gold that made his stomach quiver and skin spike with nervousness.

Abruptly his attention shot to her once more, watching her closely. There was a shadow in her eyes that unnerved him, as if she almost did not recognize him in that moment, and his spine tensed violently at the thought. Did she know who he was anymore? She seemed as if she had no idea how to approach him, her blue eyes almost sad, as if she were looking at a stranger demanding sympathy on the streets. But it had only been a week since they had all hung out together at school, right? It had not been too terribly long. Surely a week was too soon for someone to make such drastic changes?

But…hadn't he wondered if he even knew himself more than once before?

Yugi almost spat out a curse but felt panic curling through him more vibrantly than his frustration. What if they were already sure that he was not their friend anymore? His stomach twisted and his heart hurt. How was he going to survive if that was true?

The bite of panic came in a throbbing pain in the center of his chest, pulsating in his chest like waves of fire that nearly made his knees buckle. It came for three heartbeats but faded again as he forced himself to calm down, to not show his intense fear as he truly wished to.

"Are you okay? You look like you're in pain," Anzu demanded worriedly, eyes wide as her frown grew more pronounced. She looked almost as if she might stretch her arms out to touch him, to check and make sure he would not collapse, but the moment passed immediately.

"My head," he lied simply, forcing a small smile onto his face as his stomach twisted so violently he nearly stumbled with the impact. He took a step back, however, to discourage her reaching out for him if something did happen. "It just hurts a little."

The dubious undertone to her voice now stained her eyes like ink and his skin crawled painfully. His heart was pounding now, resounding painfully in his ears, and he swore his entire body had grown to ache in hideous throbs. Was it the panic growing in his system or something else? He could no longer tell the difference, but the fog that he felt had been invading his thoughts was slowly pushing forward.

"If you're sure…"

"I am. I'm fine. I promise."

She stared at him blankly, frowning, but nodded slowly as if there were reason to believe his words. He remembered she disliked direct confrontation with him, however, and it was the only thing saving him from a flurry of questions. Anzu would not push him, though that was more because of their friendship and growing up together than it was anything else. She knew he would tell her what he wanted to later, if ever at all. Had he been Jonouchi or Honda, she would not have held back, demanding answers and snapping at them until he gave in.

"Okay."

"I'm sorry. I know I've been…acting a little weird lately," he muttered, swallowing hard. His eyes shot back to the sky, where the stars had become fuller and their cores glowed almost brilliantly though they would pale like a droplet exposed to the sea when the moon came forward completely. "I just…I've been stressed lately. I'm sorry. I know I…kind of shut you guys out by accident, but I wouldn't have if I wasn't…"

"Stressed," she supplied simply, though her undertone of dryness made his eyes fall on her again. He blinked and narrowed his gaze minutely as they looked at each other, the heat flaring in his body with such suddenness he nearly gasped. "It's okay. I can understand that."

Could she?

"It doesn't mean I was mad at you or anything," he blurted out without thought, feeling a deepening desperation crawl through him. He wanted her to feel better but he also realized somewhere beneath the fog filtering through his mind that he did not have to work so hard for it, if at all. Anzu would have already forgiven him, though her tone suggested differently due to her inability to gather answers. But he had always been one to give more than necessary, especially where she and the others were concerned, and now he had no actual words to explain what he wished to. "I just…I don't know. I guess I just let the stress get to me."

"Yugi, it's okay," she replied softly, smiling at him in a manner that suggested he simply accept any words she had to say to him. He forced himself to return the gesture, hoping fervently that his eyes might light up, but everything inside of him recoiled at the very idea. Why was he wasting his time with attempting to reassure someone else when there was so much going on already? He felt his stomach heave, forcing itself upwards with such pain he nearly doubled over. It was mere shock of the painful blow that kept him from falling to his knees. "I just wanted to know if you were okay."

He nearly ground his teeth together. Had they not just gone over this?

"Yeah, I am. I'm okay." He breathed in heavily but doubted she could see the effort he put into it with the distance between them and the lanterns. How had they gotten so far away in the first place? His eyes flickered to the trees. They were so close now. He could make a break for it— "I'm sorry for worrying you."

"You're my best friend. It's kind of my job to worry about you."

She waited for him to tease her but his eyes grew widened, intensified. His pupils quivered as if they might roll upwards within his head. His breath came out sharply in such a large puff of white air and harsh noise that she flinched. His mouth opened, and a strange and almost primal noise that bordered on guttural in design leaving his lungs. His eyes grew dilated, the pupils swallowing away all of the purple of his eyes and leaving only the outer ring of deep blue. His body grew tight, to the point he looked almost statuesque, and, if not for the ragged breaths that left him, she might have thought him nothing more than intricately carved stone.

"Yugi?"

His head tossed violently from side to side. He backed up a step, jaw clenching shut harshly. His eyelids squeezed together tightly. He let out a ragged breath. His legs trembled under his weight. "Anzu, I…I have to…I have to go…"

"But you're—"

He shook his head again. His skin quivered. His mouth opened in a breathless scream. The muscles in the back of his hand coiled. His nails curved inwards, fingers clenching. His shoulders rose to block away his neck. His jaw ticked and his brows scrunched together. His lips curled back faintly, pulling upwards. The pulse on his neck throbbed visibly. When his eyes snapped open, they flashed like fire. The festival lights looked dull and lifeless in comparison to such brilliant pain.  
Yugi backed up again. A tremor shot through him. He looked as if he had been shocked by electricity. He let out a hoarse noise almost akin a whimper. His chest heaved. His lungs buckled for a split second. He opened his mouth. Then he doubled over. She watched him, terrified. His stomach spat forward large chunks of food.

Yugi swallowed so hard he threatened to consume his own tongue. For a split second he was frozen. His stomach was still heaving. Then his attention turned away. Instinct pushed at his insides. His mind focused on only one thing. He needed to get to the woods—as quickly as possible. He breathed in roughly. His body felt weak and laden now. For a moment he could not make himself move. Pain caused his spine to quiver. The heat pulsed through him again. With the temperature can a furious energy he could not ignore. It sent another spasm through his muscles. But it also allowed him to make a run for it.

"Yugi!" she cried out in horror, the small teen disappearing from her sight almost immediately. Bystanders looked over, confused by her stricken state, but did not offer help. It could have easily just been best friends fighting or a lovers' quarrel before it might be anything else. Maybe they had left her there and she was still fighting to make them stay. The emotion in her voice was clear and powerful to anyone listening, and it was easily mistaken for either scenario.

"Anzu, what's wrong?" Jonouchi demanded, breaking through a small gap in the crowd to get to her side. She was still staring off into the vast expanse of the woods, eyes wide and clearly concerned. He slowed, Honda only a step behind him. Both of them glanced around and then the brunet nudged him, tilting his head towards the vomit in the grass.

"I don't know." She spun to face them, expression growing more distressed by the second. "He just…he ran off."

"Huh? Who ran off?"

He was so surprised by the sight of the throw up that he had not considered the reason he had reacted up to his best friend's name being shouted in such tangible panic. He looked at her in confusion, furrowing his brows, but his attention was still caught stupidly on the pile of vomit and just how out of place it seemed.

"Yugi," Honda answered for her, rolling his eyes at his friend. Momentarily he had the urge to remind him that there was a fourth member of their group before shaking his head to himself. It wasn't worth the effort. "Any idea why?"

"Who the hell threw up?"

"That was Yugi," Anzu stated, rolling her eyes as well when Jonouchi looked at her slowly in puzzlement. She was tempted to snarl at him whether or not he was high but then huffed angrily instead, fighting the urge away. Her hands were wringing themselves together, Honda noticed despite himself as he glanced over towards the trees. Had Yugi run off that way? She had been watching him run off, hadn't she? "He started to look sick and then he puked and ran off. I don't know where he—"

"He's been looking really sick and miserable since about an hour or two after he came to see Blankey," the brunet admitted reluctantly, frowning. He had been unable to wipe the expression from his mind no matter how hard he'd tried. He'd looked ready to keel over so much of the time; it had been horrifying and impossible to stay around him without constant sideways glances to make sure he was okay. He blinked hard several times to make the image disappear. "He was acting kind of…off when he was checking on her limp earlier. I don't think he's been feeling okay at all."

"You think he didn't want to come?" Jonouchi asked incredulously, raising a brow and frowning. "But he's the one who said we should all meet up early so that we could be some of the first to get here."

"Yeah, but maybe something came up?" Honda tried, though he and the blond swapped a single glance that clearly said otherwise. The two of them had been certain the reason he had wanted to meet up with them so early was because he'd been planning to ask Anzu out. "I mean, he's…he _has_ been acting pretty strange for a while now…"

"You don't think he planned to ditch us earlier, do you? I mean…he was constantly looking over his shoulder. And when he lagged behind so much, I honestly thought we would turn around and find he had snuck off," the brunette whispered, biting her lip and looking at the two boys with a distressed expression once more. Her eyes shot towards the direction Yugi had fled and her stomach twisted with nerves. Would he be okay?

The curfew had only been lifted for the festival and, even with so many people there, he could still wind up like Ushio. If he had been planning to run off all day, it would have been safer for him to do so while it was light out.

Guilt was almost enough to make her cringe. If he had been attempting that, she had ruined his chances repeatedly by checking on him so often, and especially when she had asked to speak to him. And now she could understand those clear inflictions of frustration which bordered so precariously on momentary resentment.

But how could she be sure she had not simply misread his expression? Maybe he had simply been flustered and felt ill and had not wanted to talk in the first place and had merely followed her lead out of obligation…

Yugi had always been one to do the polite thing rather than what he felt he wanted the most at any given moment. If he was feeling upset but someone wanted something from him, he would try to give them what it was they asked for. Mild conversation with his best friend was the least surprising thing that he would do for someone else when it was asked of him.

"I don't know," Honda sighed finally, looking away and reaching up to run a hand through his hair. When both Jonouchi and Anzu turned to look at him incredulously, he scratched the back of his neck nervously and shrugged his shoulders.

He didn't want to make Yugi seem like the bad guy, trying to avoid them and running off when he got the first real chance. He knew his blond best friend would jump to such a conclusion in light of his train of thought, but there was not much else to explain his strange behavior the entire week.

He had remained locked up in his house each day, claiming something or other the reason for his solitude. He had cancelled plans numerous times, even when it was Anzu to ask for his company. It seemed almost impossible to ignore the possibility that he might have been planning this same thing though the festival had been his idea to begin with.

"He could have been."

"I don't believe that," Anzu said firmly, shaking her head and glaring at him. "I don't think he would have run off without a reason. Or without even _trying_ to explain. That's not like Yugi at all!"

None of them thought it to be like him, but he had never been someone to decline plans all the time either. He had said he was busy all that week, that he wouldn't have to hang out. He had said he was tired, he was helping out with surgeries. He had claimed he was running errands with his mom or grandpa. He had claimed once that he just wanted to relax and stay at home all day. He had been almost unable to speak at one point, practically choking out the words to say he didn't want to hang out before ending the call immediately after. Something had obviously been going on to make him decline so many times, especially to the point that he had run off from _Anzu_ of all people.

But hadn't Jonouchi been worried beforehand that something was going on? Hadn't he been concerned when Ushio's body had wound up on his doorstep? Wasn't that why he had asked him about the Burger World employee? Hadn't they looked up both incidents several times to see what might have made Yugi the prime connection between the two of them? Hadn't they even gone so far as to try to find the dog in the alleyway to find out more somehow?

Had things truly been in such clear disarray since before the festival? Honda cringed faintly, desperate not to let the other two see the growing realization in his eyes, and turned quickly back to the woods.

"We need to go after him—"

"No, we _don't_ ," he cut in firmly, glancing at Jonouchi and narrowing his hazel eyes. "Yugi isn't two years old. He puked and ran off. It's not like he's dying. He'll find his way back here later, Anzu. We don't need to go after him."

"Dude, those are the mountains—" the blond started.

"And Yugi _likes_ the mountains, remember? He said he used to run around in the woods when he was younger, that he liked hiking sometimes. He's fine. He'll figure out what he's doing and where he's going."

The real question was whether he would bother to come up to the festival or not. And all three of them highly doubted it even as they shot each other glares of frustration and then made their way back into the crowd to find some new attraction to take their mind off of their friend.

Yugi had not made it too far from the festival grounds. He had been forced to stop within a handful of miles of the area. His skin had become too itchy, beginning to feel stretched out. And he wondered if he was going to burst out of it at any moment. His temperature had spiked and his breathing was ragged. He'd pressed his forehead against the chilled bark of a tree as his body shook with painful jerks and tremors. His shoulders shook, heat surging through them, and his organs burned. His throat was beginning to feel swollen. A dryness had come through it and the center of it burned and seemed itchy.

A gentle breeze brushed through the trees, cooling his skin with gossamer affection before tracing its way seemingly _through_ him.

His body was racked with pain again. He stumbled forward a step, then forced himself to move a little more. If he could make it a little further, then maybe—

He nearly hit the ground when his left arm jerked. Sporadically, the muscles twitched and burst beneath his skin. And he panted as he pressed himself firmly into another tree trunk. He struggled to peel his jacket off. His teeth ground together and he panted harder. His skin prickled and itched. The fabric was almost torturous against his flesh.

He slipped his arm out after a long struggle, then did the same with his right. The jacket touched the forest floor with a whispering rustle of noise. Yugi nearly panted with relief, a smile threatening only momentarily to come over his face. It felt almost amazing to finally have his burning skin free of it.

Now if only he could get his shirt and—

A low noise made him stop short. A trickle of sweat trailed down his spine. His skin crawled. The heat dissipated only minutely. Yugi blinked slowly. His hands ached where he clenched his fingers. His nails dug into the tree. His shoulders rose to shield his neck, fearful of what made the air vibrate like this. Then, slowly, Yugi forced himself to turn his head.

His eyes were burning. But he caught the two shapes regardless. At first there were two pairs of glinting color that met his sight. Then there was movement. It was jerky, fast and harsh. His mind rapidly translated the bobbing of the lights in his vision—it was a trot. Something was _trotting_ towards him.

He blinked. His eyes narrowed. He bore his teeth behind his lips. He strained his vision, but it did not take much time for it to adjust. The fur rolled over a pair of twin bodies like water. A flash of white pronounced two sets of white incisors. Black noses came a second later. They were wrinkled back and the lips pulled hideously away from their gums. Tongues came out one after the other. They flashed over the brilliance of their white teeth. They splayed over the black calloused skin of their noses.

And then the two wolves passed into the moonlight. The speed beguiled their heavily built bodies.

Yugi swallowed hard. But he could not force himself to back up. His spine had pulled taut. He was exhausted by the hideous ache there. He could not move at all. The very concept was too foreign to contemplate. The air seemed to weigh his muscles. His nerves burst with pain. His bones felt cold. His blood was pounding. His veins burned. His stomach tossed. He nearly retched again.

The snarling was twice as loud now. There was a watery bubbling at the edge of both of their hideous warning cries. His spine ached. His skin tingled. His head began to pound and rattle. The sound echoed in his ears. His pulse roared dully in the back of his skull.

A violent shiver made his body jerk. Bile surged up the back of his throat. His tongue burned. His fingers grasped harder at the bark. Pain shot through his right ring finger. His mind processed the pain. The nail had broken past the quick. His stomach heaved again. His breathing strained. He nearly stumbled backward. He opened his mouth. A slimy trail of bile and saliva fell in a sloppy thud against the grass. Billowing waves of white steam seeped upwards. It burned his tingling cheeks.

He jerked back a step, startled. His feet tangled pathetically. He almost fell backwards again. He grasped the tree harder. He stumbled but his balance remained. His eyes were on them still. He had been unable to look away from them altogether.

The snarls were so much louder now. He wanted to stuff plugs in his ears. He wanted to curl up into a tight ball on the ground. A spasm racked his body violently. His mind raced. The wolves weren't as big as Valon or the one that had been struck by the car. But their teeth still glimmered like razors.

And he thought the canines had to be the length of half of his index finger. The incisors had to be the size of his nail beds. The surface of each shone like shards of ice. Tendrils of froth fell like drool from both corners of their mouths. The lips pulled somehow further back. The wrinkles pushed at the edges of their eyes. The brows came forward. The ears were angled similarly.

Their pace quickened. The fur along their spines lifted. Their tails rose straight like swords. Their steps left harsh thuds in his ears. The grass crackled and shattered in the cold beneath their weight. Their gums were slimy, like black splotches of oil. Their tongues ran over their noses again,

A smell like acid met his nose now. He flinched at the bitter sting of it. His legs wobbled. But his fingers refused to release. His back remained too rigid to curve. His body trembled and ached. The sweat was blooming on his back now. Currents of perspiration flowed down his skin. He hacked. His breath was smothered by the intense smell. He could not tear his eyes away.

Terror lodged itself so fully within his system that he could do no more than stare. The two wolves' eyes had glossed over. They looked as if they were blinded by cataracts. The foam splattered. It fell in waves. It dripped onto their chest. But neither canine noticed. Their legs shot forward unnaturally. The toes of each pad were splayed too far apart. The nails were broken, blood oozing from each.

Their limbs were too straight. When they bent there was a loud snapping noise. Something harsh and metallic glinted in the center of both throats. A strand of something shiny but woven caught his eye. The fur parted unnaturally as they continued forward. It was flattened at the base of their necks close to the shoulders.

But the smell which came from them was overpowering, all-consuming. It was hideous and terrible. It burned at his insides. It made his body jerk. Pain lanced through him. It was sour. It was sweet. It had a strange undercurrent of metal and butter. He struggled to recognize it. His mind spiraled and danced.

He couldn't focus on anything. The pain was pressing hard upon him. His heart hammered and shook. His mouth grew drier. He tried to swallow. But his throat merely constricted.

Were they rabid? Yugi felt a new drop of cold fear cross his senses.

Rabid wolves were one of the most dangerous creatures to run across. They went for the throat and never anything else. If they got their teeth into the skin, it was almost impossible to cure. They aimed too close to the brain.

But that didn't make sense. Rabid wolves did not suffer through disorientation. And these two seemed to be going through such a step. The canines usually fell into almost immediate rages.

A loud chomping noise made him flinch. His head snapped around. His body grew impossibly tense. His legs quaked. His fingers pulsed with pain. He pressed backwards into the bark again. It scratched at him. It clawed at him. The fabric of his shirt was laden with soft broken pieces.

The third wolf was a great deal bigger than the other two. It was so large that it had to be at least a couple of inches taller than even Valon. It had to be taller, with greater muscle and even longer fur and a broader jaw, a somewhat lengthier muzzle. He was panting but the wolf did not glance at him. His fear at the sight of it spiked further but the creature showed him no interest. Instead its head rose, sleek and black, with such fluid power it was like watching shadows lengthen during the day. Its ears pricked forward. Its fur glittered, glossy and beautiful beneath the spare beams of moonlight.

Its eyes glimmered. But the glow cast by them was something of intense amber. The wolf came forward in a swift bound. Yugi thought it looked like a cannonball, brilliant muscle and terrible blackness. But it possessed a healthy, lazy lope. Its long legs propelled it forwards without burden. There was no cracking sound to meet its movements.

Its back paws fell to rest in the place of its front. He watched the fur ripple and twitch. The silver moonlight touched the strands, turning them almost bluish. Its head rose further and its ears pricked a little more. The brows pulled forward. The lips peeled back. Its tail rose slowly and the fur along its entire back rose. Its shoulders squared. Muscles bunched along its haunches. The snarl that left it made the air quake.

Yugi's insides quivered.

The two wolves flinched back for a split second. They whined. Their tails and heads dropped. The fur fell along their bodies. Their legs trembled for a moment. Then, as if possessed, they straightened abruptly once more. Their tails came up instantly. Their ears pricked forward. Their teeth flashed in the moonlight. Their eyes glowed furiously, appearing almost filmy in their pupils.

One looked milky in complexion, creamy and pale in the moonlight. The second was darker, a tan shadow like sand. Yugi blinked as their eyes glowed. The paler one had brown eyes. The darker had bright blue. The sight of them made his stomach coil with tension.

This newcomer, inky black and solid, did not blink. In mere seconds its tail moved side to side. Its teeth were showing bright white in the dark, like brilliant stars. Its head lowered only faintly. The glare in its eyes was hideous, vicious. Yugi could not decide the bigger threat between the three of them.

But the small teen wished the earth could open and swallow him whole. The snarl that left this huge wolf made his heart quiver. His insides trembled. His heart skipped beats. His tongue dried out. His lungs collapsed and spiked with hideous pain. He gasped and struggled. His legs shook. His entire body nearly fell back. He couldn't think straight. His focus shattered. The intensity of the noise was like thunder rolling.

It was a great and terrible—hideous—force of nature.

It reverberated deep, _deep_ within him somewhere.

And Yugi felt it as if he had known it forever. He could not name its significance, but it swelled inside of him and threatened to burst. Then it fell away. And the two lighter-furred wolves seemed to react similarly. They flinched again. Their eyes seemed to roll backwards, the whites showing brilliantly. Their heads snapped down and they whimpered collectively.

A sharp buzzing noise made Yugi blink. The wolves snarled. Then the creamy-furred one sprang forward. The force of its leap kicked earth away with all four paws. Its eyes were dark and milky now. And they looked both blind and coherent all at once.

The black wolf did not flinch. It did not blink. It simply waited. When the other got close enough, it reared back onto its hind legs. The two clashed with their teeth bared, tails held to their highest. Their legs were braced harshly in the dirt. The straw littered about the forest floor slicked their weight if only slightly. But the black wolf did not give ground. And they held firm. The darker wolf's height allowed it to wrap its front limbs around the other in a pseudo hug. Claws dug into skin beneath the fur. Teeth aimed for its throat.

The second wolf came from the side. Its teeth snapped into the black wolf's shoulder. The sudden puncture made the newcomer lose focus. Immediately it spun to face the other wolf. Its jaws opened wider, fully, closing in on its head. The brown wolf was faster, however, and recoiled back. The tan wolf twisted away. And the black canine snarled as its balance was lost. Its teeth chomped upon cold night air a millimeter away.

But, despite its lack of speed seconds before, the dark wolf managed to make up for it.

In a split second, the canine turned its head. Its mouth opened again. The muscular neck turned. Its head tilted. And its jaws snapped forcefully shut. Teeth missed its throat by a mere millimeter. The lighter wolf screamed and struggled. The movement pulled both almost off balance.

Yugi could barely think straight, heart in his throat. It was two against one. His head was too light to move. The snarling was so loud it made his body ache. And spots began to form in his eyes. He panted. His vision cleared again.

The tan wolf came at the black one. Teeth caught the black fur there. It tugged. Yugi watched with horror. He'd expected blood and the wolf to release. Instead the black wolf seemed almost confused. The tan wolf looked equally shocked. A huge tuft of fur had come off. It clung to its mouth. The tan wolf struggled to shake it, tossing its head.

In another moment the small teen might have burst out laughing. Instead he struggled to steady himself. His fingers braced the tree more purposefully. Maybe if he kept his head on straight enough, he could help out. Or he might be able to fight off the Change somehow. By the gods, he hoped the Change was something he could prevent…

The tan wolf clawed at its face. Then it snapped its teeth. The fur was almost as persistent as its owner. The black wolf jerked backwards. The tan wolf flailed and was thrown sideways. In a single second, the darker canine let go. Its teeth opened wider. Its muzzle aimed for its skull.

The scream split the air. The tan wolf flailed harder. The brown wolf lunged forward. A swift bite was delivered to the black lycanthrope's left leg. The attack ceased. In a rage, the wolf spun on it as well. It snarled and chomped its teeth. The air seemed to crack with the furious noise. The brown wolf danced out of reach, tail between its legs.

Immediately the tan wolf sprang to its feet again. Yugi blinked, horrified. The black wolf turned its head and bore its teeth. The two of them collided as they had before, on their back legs. The snarling was hideous. The small teen cringed at the sheer magnitude of the volume it possessed.

Teeth tore at fur. Tufts of it flew. Then blood sprayed the air. They were writhing, twisting and snarling. The black wolf was forcing it backwards. The brown wolf was hesitantly looking for an opening. But the tan wolf was not screaming as of yet. And the black wolf seemed to be holding its own well enough.

Yugi took the opportunity to squeeze his eyes shut for a moment. The noise was hideous. And his mind rapidly translated for him. The black wolf had caught the tan by the cheek. It was pushing forward, forcing the lighter-furred canine backwards. It was only when the third wolf moved that the small teen opened his eyes again. The pressure in his eyes had alleviated slightly, his head no longer pounding. The bursts of color were not as heavy, nor as frequent now.

The brown wolf hit it from the side. But the black wolf shifted its weight. And the movement threw the two lighter lycanthropes into each other. The force of it seemed to cause the ground to shake for a moment. He swore he felt it in his bones. But it passed immediately again. The tan wolf landed on the ground, scrabbling and spitting. The foam clung to its cheeks. It dripped from its jaws. It was smeared across it face. It slicked its chest. The ground was soaked in it, it seemed for a moment. But he realized that it was blood which made the straw squelch beneath their weight.

Both wolves could not force the black one down. The larger merely shifted its weight. And it twisted its neck. It rose further onto its back legs. It braced its shoulders. It shrugged the brown wolf off twice. And then, finally, it slipped.

Yugi let out a strangled noise, heart in his throat. The straw was too slick. The black wolf had moved too far. It realized it a second too late as well. Its eyes grew wide, horrified. The grip on the brown wolf released with the collision of its chin with the ground. The breath left its lungs in a bright white puff. It quivered and trembled. Then the two leaped upon it.

"No…"

The wolf struggled to throw them off. Its teeth snapped and caught at fur. Blood dripped from a gash to the shoulder. Both wolves grabbed at its legs. They tugged. The black canine kicked and clawed at the nearest belly. Teeth dug into its muzzle. The other mouth caught his foreleg, tugging harshly.

Yugi flinched. The black wolf was struggling for breath. Its panic was visible now. The two lighter-furred wolves were circling now. They traced a circle around it. Then they leaped again. The brown wolf caught it by the throat. The amber of the black wolf's eyes glowed a hideous red in the shadows. It panted and kicked harder, scrambling to get to its feet again.

The tan wolf moved too close. The black wolf twisted. Its right forelimb caught its eye. The shriek was hideous. It jerked to the side. The two wolves clashed into each other. The brown wolf let go and snarled. Teeth snapped at the other's muzzle. The black wolf scrambled for its feet. But the two were not distracted long enough. They barreled into the side.

He yelped. The noise twisted hideously in Yugi's ears. The two sprang upon it again. Their teeth snapped and bore down. And the black wolf let out a cry so loud it could only be a scream. The noise was so agonized that he trembled. The other two canines seemed to take pleasure in it, however. They tossed their heads back and forth, eliciting a second one.

Something had splintered, popping. A bone had broken. Yugi felt his eyes widen. Terror and sympathy swelled in the pit of his stomach. And he grasped at the tree tighter, until his fingers began to bleed from the force. He made his legs move. His body ached and pulsed. The snarls sent shivers down his spine. And yet, he could not find it in himself to care.

His fear didn't exist for them.

Blood oozed in a set of large gashes. Creamy fur rose and fell in bristles. He watched. The tan wolf had pulled away, but its entire muzzle was bleeding, soaked. And the nose seemed almost nonexistent. The entirety of its shape was concaved along the sides. The black wolf had to have shattered the bone completely. And the brown wolf was panting around its grip on the larger canine's leg.

The black wolf twisted its neck. And its neck stretched. The teeth caught its chest, puncturing it. Blood sprayed across the straw. The brown wolf screamed. Yugi could see the red flare in those amber eyes now. It was not wavering in the slightest, instead glowing all the more intensely.

The black jaws opened wider. Blood splattered its teeth. Its tongue curled upwards and wrinkled. The nose was smeared with moonlight and crimson. Yugi shivered at the sight. Pain shot through his heart. His body shook hideously. His mouth grew dry. White-hot heat pulsed through him once more.

He had fallen to his knees from the force moments before. His spine was jutting from beneath his skin. Yet, despite the sudden desire to hide away, he could not tear his eyes from the fight. The black wolf was attempting to regain its footing. It had forced the brown wolf back. But it was lying there, trying to tip its weight to the side enough to roll over. The movements were shaky at best, awkward and hideous.

But then the tan wolf came again. The hit threw the black wolf backwards. It rolled a good handful of inches. But it landed on its side, winded again. But the lighter-furred canines did not move fast enough. The tan had paused to lick at its muzzle again. The brown one was panting and struggling for breath.

The black wolf managed to get to its feet. But its limbs shook. Its right back leg was held gingerly for a moment. Then it pressed its weight fully into the limb. A cracking noise echoed and popped in the air. And the right left leg shook beneath its weight. Both limbs were slicked with blood, soaked and glistening. In the dark it looked as if he had gotten from a pool of water with black oil slipping from its fur.

They collided again. This time the black wolf caught and held its weight completely as it had the first. They skidded only slightly with the collision. Then the dark canine pushed harder. The brown one's legs buckled. A hideous popping noise ending in splintering. Yugi gaped, horror swelling through him. He recognized the sound, the way it seemed to rapidly swell to a crescendo and disappear into the darkness. The brown lycanthrope screamed so loudly he thought the entire mountain heard it. Its body flailed. The black wolf dropped to all fours again.

It landed hard on its side. The darker wolf stared. Then it blinked slowly. It took the moment for a reprieve, licking its lips. The canine on the ground could not get to its feet. Its spine had broken. The vertebrae had split in half from the pressure. The wolf had survived as it'd intended, moving to brace itself for the impact. But it had not been saved the full momentum of the black wolf's attack.

The black wolf was panting now. The white puffs of mist were short and quick. Its body quivered. Its right leg shook. It remained still, sides heaving as it tried to catch its breath. And then the tan wolf sprang forward. The darker-furred canine realized a second too late. Its head snapped around but it could not react fast enough. The realization was clear in its gaze, a hideous crystalline fear of bright red.

The smaller animal launched itself. It caught it by the shoulder. Blood burst into the air, onto the ground. The larger kicked and flailed but could not dislodge it. The canines caught its limb and tugged. When the black wolf hit the ground, it went immediately for the throat.

The scream was guttural and low. Yugi had never heard such a noise before in his life. It was both loud and low and somehow high and quivering as well. His ears rang. His body burned with the call. His head turned, heart pounding harder. The other's muzzle had caught its skull. And he could see that the wolf was struggling more so than ever. It was panicked and he realized, horrified, that the teeth were mere centimeters from its eye.

It kicked and scrambled. The toss of its weight sent the tan wolf back a step. It was enough to shake them. The black wolf got to its feet. A long, angry ring of dark red and vibrant pink circled the canine's eye. Yugi flinched and swallowed hard. His mouth dropped a second later. His stomach heaved.

The wolf stumbled. Its right leg quivered. The left buckled for a brief second. Then it straightened. It opened its mouth by an inch. The noise was furious, hateful, and so deep that it made the air quiver.

He could see the other wounds now. The black canine's muzzle was bleeding, its nose split. A long, hideous line of stringy sinew and muscle dangled from the left side. The entire wound was colored bright pink, the blood seemingly clotted. But the wound was clearly painful as the other kept licking at it, running its tongue over it constantly. Where it exposed only muscle, the tan wolf's shone bright bone. Both of them stared at one another, panting viciously.

Its tail rose again, a dark flag as it stared down at the other. The fur rose in a hideous bristle as well. The tan wolf mirrored the aggressive stance and backed away a step. Then it snarled fiercely and lunged violently. The snarling grew to the point it seemed impossible no one else heard. The brown wolf was crawling forward, its hindquarters rendered completely useless. It panted loudly around its snarls, sides quaking with the force of it. Its mouth foamed more profusely than ever before.

They collided in a tangle of limbs. They snarled, tearing into each other's faces. They reared back, attempting to push the other over. The brown wolf dragged itself closer. And, though it could not leap, its aim was impeccable. As the immense canine's leg buckled and it stumbled, the brown wolf attacked. Its teeth punctured the dark wolf's throat. The impact threw them both, and all three of them flailed as they hit the ground. A scream tore through the air once more. It was as unnatural as the first, and it resonated so deeply within him that he nearly quaked.

He was not sure when he had gotten up again. But his legs shook and attempted to buckle beneath him. His head told him to simply lie back down. He wanted to curl up into a ball. His eyes burned. He didn't know what he could use to help out. He sought out a weapon but the forest was surprisingly free of them at first. Then his hand reached out. His arms burned and tingled. His palms itched.

He shook. His mouth was too dry. His skin quivered. He trembled again his spine tensed and arched beneath his skin. His vertebrae pulled outwards and then pushed in. His muscles bunched and convulsed beneath his flesh.

His fingers grasped for something blindly. The three wolves were all struggling now. The black one kicked, flailing. The tan snarled and tossed its head about. The brown refused to relinquish its hold on the huge canine's throat. The black wolf did not relent in its movements. Yugi breathed in roughly, panting almost pathetically. His fingers enclosed around the item awaiting him. It was thick, somewhat heavy—water-logged, he realized belatedly. He pulled it towards him, panting, and squeezed his eyes shut for a brief moment.

He looked over the large branch, breathing hard, and swallowed thickly once more. He could do damage with it. He could possibly even kill if he could put enough strength into it. He stared for a moment, wanting to laugh bitterly, and then struggled to his feet. His legs quaked and his knees almost folded in on themselves. He breathed in hard, panting, and swallowed thickly again.

He could do it, because he had to. The wolf was getting mauled, he knew. It was trapped, caught between the two, and they were clearly winning. Yugi couldn't just stand there and watch. He could not just ignore it or its pained cries. It had come there to protect him. It must have. And now they were gaining the upper hand purely because there were two of them and only one of the black wolf.

He stumbled a step, then braced himself for the pain. He did not fall, but held his weight precariously somehow. He breathed in roughly, swallowing. Then, hefting the branch upwards, he tested it for a moment. The wolves were so caught in their own fight that none noticed him. The kicking and flailing, the hideous snarls and cries, drowned out his approach. The branch felt a little awkward, shaking within his palm. The sweat from his palms made it harder to grasp than it already was. His palm itched and tingled harder. He hesitated only a moment, blocking away the reality of his actions, and closed his eyes. His grip tightened, and he secured his grasp so firmly he thought perhaps the wood had dug itself completely into his skin.

The swing had enough force to make the air whip loudly. He hit the brown wolf hard enough to send its half-broken body into its companion. The branch clipped and broke against the tan wolf's skull. Both of them screamed as they went tumbling in a haphazard fashion. In a heap, the two trembled and panted. The tan wolf moved to throw the other off without trying. The brown wolf snarled in pain, shaking like a leaf. Its jaws foamed like rivulets of forth and blood. The black wolf was on its paws immediately as the tan struggled to gain its footing. The dark tail rose instantaneously, but its eyes were wide with shock upon its sudden rescue.

The tan wolf came from its stupor quickly. Its teeth flashed in the moonlight. A snarl bubbled up and out. The air vibrated with it. Yugi breathed hard and braced for a better grip on the branch. He went to swing again but a horrible pain struck him. He dropped it, crying out. The noise distracted the darker canine, and its head snapped towards him in clear shock. The tan wolf did not pause and so hit him immediately. Paws slammed into his chest. Claws pressed harshly into his skin. He toppled backwards, too weak to even scream. He hit the ground so hard he thought he felt his heart leap into his throat. In his peripheral the black wolf came forward, racing to rescue him. His pulse pounded in his throat with such force he nearly shook.

Teeth dug into his throat and tore upwards. Skin ripped as easily as paper, strips of it flying into the air like strings of confetti. Blood sprayed upwards like mist, burning the air with a sweet scent. The sickeningly familiar aroma of his own blood made his head spin. The lightheadedness grew tenfold, racing and swirling within his mind like wind painted red. His hands weakly raised upwards, he found them far too heavy and weighted to hold. He did not think he had even managed to touch the wolf. But he heard a soft whining breath gush forth from behind his own teeth. Incisors dug further into him, bones cracking beneath his throat. His collarbone split, he realized even as he felt his body growing heavier, weaker.

The black wolf slammed into it. The force sent it rolling onto the ground with a cry. The canine leaped over the fallen boy. It landed in front of the other lycanthrope. Its jaws opened and then slammed shut. The tan wolf screamed and struggled, flailing weakly. A toss of its head caused its neck to pop and crackle. A piercing splintering noise came through the air and its body fell immediately limp. Yugi could not see too well, but he recognized the sight before him. The black canine spent only a moment looking at the fallen animal before spinning around to face him.

When its eyes fell on him, Yugi found his failing heart pounding impossibly faster. There was no amber in its gaze. The moonlight had fooled him somehow. The immense black wolf's eyes were a brilliant red. He thought of the blood dripping from its fangs and crushed rubies as the darkness swept away his consciousness.

 **Kudos to anyone who can properly guess who the two wolves are that got killed in this chapter. Any guesses at who the wolf is that came to save Yugi?**


	11. The Aftermath

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day (no update on June 2nd)**

 **Chapter Warnings: COPIOUS Amounts of Blood and Death, Mentions of Dead Bodies, GRAPHIC depiction of Change, Mentions of Vomit and Gore, Animalistic Instincts, Fear, Pain**

 **Okay, so! Holy shit, I did NOT realize it had been so long since the last update. I got COMPLETELY blindsided because of work and it completely destroyed me and my motivation for a little while. I apologize so much for it. But, yeah, there's my excuse. I was also EXTREMELY hopeful that I would get this finished and edited and posted before now, but then I got distracted writing a three-shot about dragons (? I don't know how, don't ask). Anyways, I'm going to TRY to get the next chapter up (it's not as long as this one so let's hope) up on or right after Sunday since that's my day off.**

 **Anyways, happy reading~**

Chapter XI: The Aftermath

 _Work Log Entry XI: June, 1996_

 _June 4_

 _The expected due date is approaching quickly._

 _She appears to have grown far healthier since the last ultrasound we performed to check on the cubs._

 _The Pure-Bloods inside of her appear to be just as healthy, if not more._

 _The event of her pregnancy seems to have brought about more life in her mate as well._

When Yugi's eyes opened again he was backwards, or maybe forward. Perhaps he was somehow sideways. All he could see were the trees, long lines of dark gray with shadows that painted them black with only the lightest touch of moonlight. A panic rose within his system, cold and all-consuming, as if to replace his blood. His body twisted in a nervous spasm of muscle, a useless flex of his fight-or-flight instinct. The movement brought with it such pain that he could not swallow his screams. He shook, and his body bounced hideously with the immense force of his tremors. His heart, seemingly so weak before, now pounded with such strength as to make his entire body pulse painfully. The taste of his blood came upon his tongue with the density of thick mud, bubbling upwards into his mouth and cutting off his scream with deafening gurgling.

He jerked again, and his muscles fell still for only a moment as the gurgling grew abruptly louder. Pain tore upwards from the very core of his body, trailing through him as if following the design of his bones. He could not taste it around the blood, but he knew they were not the same. It filled his mouth and spilled over his lips, so hot he felt it might scorch his skin. He could not breathe as it continued to overflow and he wanted to move his body but everything was too heavy. His head swam, unable to truly process that the trees were blurring and dancing within his weak vision.

Something nudged him faintly. It gripped his shoulder firmly but gently. He choked and sputtered, pulled forward into an upright position. His lungs screamed and he coughed several times in horror, body shuddering painfully once more. He spewed something from his mouth in rivulets, the heat burning his skin like fire as he nearly fell face first into the dirt again. It splattered onto his hand, then onto his clothing, coating them in what felt almost like hot pudding.

It came to him in a disconnected spurt of knowledge that he knew nothing of what to do with. The sensation of the thing which grasped his shoulder slowly began to take form in his exhausted mind. Reality seemed to bend before his eyes as if by his choice. Very slowly he found his eyes pulling themselves from the sight of the trees. The creature drifted within his vision like the smallest of clouds passing over the sun. Staring at it so openly did nothing to convince himself of the truth of such a situation, however. Rather, it was the fact that he felt its grip on his shoulder so prominently as he tried to focus and concentrate on his breathing.

There were so many of them touching his skin through his clothing. There was such a startling but pleasant heat basking over his skin like water. Yugi wanted first to laugh and then to sob. His eyes took in the sight with a feeling of dreadful joy. Before him the canine stood, teeth gripping tightly upon his shoulder, holding him upright, allowing him not to choke on whatever this new fluid might be he expelled. Its dark fur was flat, its muzzle creaseless, not a sing hit of the former ferocity it'd displayed. But its eyes were not on him, instead peering off into the trees, standing guard and watching the shadows for any new threat.

Yugi shuddered, his left leg twitching as if in an isolated spasm. He lurched forward but the action was held fast and only part of his body folded as the rest willed he do. His throat burned and that new fluid, he realized, was a disgusting off-white color and, momentarily, his mind trickled forth with the idea of frothy spit. His body pulsed violently, heat slamming through him with such immensity he almost screamed again.

It dribbled from his mouth slowly, or perhaps it was the sluggishness of his straining mind which pushed it back to such manageable speed. The wolf did not release him and though the absolution of its presence should have been comforting, it was anything but.

That small splinter of panic inside of him before then was growing immensely powerful, nearly sweeping his precariously balanced mind right over the edge. A new and terrible horror had come over him. The edge he balanced on, as jagged as the carved earth before a pit fall trap, seemed to fester and swoop within his mind.

Was the wolf here to help him or was it there to gain an easy meal?

Such suspicion was hardly helpful, but natural instinct borne such fear in him. He had watched—or heard—this wolf kill the other two. Who was he to think he was special enough it might save him somehow, for _whatever_ reason? The reality of it all was that he _wasn't_. He did not have a single advantage over the other two that might make it wish to do such a thing for him.

But why should he be fearful when he had no chance or means of escape? In a pivotal moment, the wolf could snap him up like a bone and he wouldn't be able to fight back. He was too tired and his body too heavily weighted. His mind was so weak that he honestly could not think of much more than the presence of the animal next to him.

Yugi shuddered and his entire body shook, nearly folding into a ball. The canine tightened its grip almost immediately, keeping his right shoulder somehow still despite his spasm. His body pulsated with pain, so violent he nearly screamed again. Another bout of that liquid splattered from his jaws and he trembled harder, quaking, his entire body burning. His clothes were soaked in it, that frothy foam-like substance which left him so noisily.

He felt his fingers ache and hissed as he attempted to pull them away from where it rested on his leg. A long trail of slime followed his hand, making his head spin, and his stomach sloshed at the sight of it. Bare skin greeted his eyes, pale and creamy, almost white from the cold, and showing him a sharp contract from the liquid that covered his skin.

Yugi stared at his hand, wondering at the sight of it. The fingers were coated, almost caked, in a dark sticky substance which was soaked with whatever it was he had expelled moments before. Cautiously, unable to look away, he watched his hand shake as if it were no longer connected to his body. He watched it drip, large wads falling, just like that of the foam from the wolves' mouths. He blinked and something slithered to the forefront of his mind like a snake traveling through desert sand.

Why was he looking at his own skin? He could have sworn he had seen the darkness of his own jeans moments before. But, looking at his skin slowly, forcefully peeling his attention away from his quivering hand, the darkness was still there, splattered across his skin. But now, his mind slowly working its way forth from the panicked state it had been cowering within, realized what in fact it truly was.

He groaned, a pathetic, airy noise that had no more impact than a leaf in the breeze. He was naked, and soaked completely in dried and fresh blood. His stomach twitched and his heart pounded for a moment, making his entire throat throb with the sensation. Yugi recognized it now as well, the sticky, frothy substance gaining a true name inside of his head.

He was covered in blood and vomit, all his own, but horrifying and disgusting despite what little comfort that should have brought.

The groan that left his mouth now was still far too weak to be considered more than a simple exhale, but the spasm that wracked him immediately afterwards was enough to make the wolf release him. Its leg trembled and collapsed beneath it, buckling like a broken stick. Yugi heard it whine but it didn't fall over as he did. He landed on his side with a yelp that pushed every hint of air from his lungs with such power he forgot himself. His head pounded and his heart lurched. His stomach heaved but his mind drew to a hideous blank. Something burned inside of his chest, so deep within him he almost thought he was being incinerated somehow.

And then his brain scrambled. The burning grew tenfold, and then eased slowly, somehow, with such violent sensation that he shook for a moment once more. He realized, blinking with such a vague reality of his own reactions, that he had drawn air into his lungs again. His body was, slowly but surely, fighting to stabilize its collapsed position. His lungs were swiftly inhaling and exhaling, bursting with the pain of such actions and nearly making his head spin.

A shifting noise made his eyes flicker, straining themselves, peering first at winter-hardened grass. Then, slowly, they focused on the blackness of the sky, the night so dark everything seemed to blend together in a monotonous abyss of black and gray. Then, as if reluctant, small spots of white seemed to come forward, with tiny halos of gold and silver. The leaves, still so drained of color, began to take form, layers upon layers of dark gray, deepening to a black that reminded him of his own unconsciousness. And then, as if summoned, a new shape took form before him, blocking away the shades of color with such strength it seemed almost to warp reality.

Amidst the blackness that threatened to swallow his senses there, he found himself lost. A stunning glow of twin orbs, so spectacular in their reflections of light, seemed to blind him for a moment. His mind, so laden with the effort to take in the things surrounding him, almost did not recognize it. The bursts of color, so vibrant and terrible, glowed like lanterns, almost seeming to cast light through the darkness. And Yugi could not help but quiver as his mind finally differentiated the reality of them from his growing fear.

The wolf was standing over him, its entire body one mass of black so deep it seemed almost to splinter reality into nothing but the most hideous of abysses. There was no beginning or end to its intensity, only the vibrancy of its eyes, which glowed like red headlights. Its head lowered, he only realized when its breath, hot and steady, ghosted over his skin like rippling water. A single bit of fur twitched along its side, stirred by the movement and exposing yet another wound which glistened, slick and thick, in the moonlight in pronouncement of fresh blood.

A rattling groan came forth, still pathetically weak, and he shook once more but his eyes would not look away. A disgusting pop and splintering noise made the air crackle like lit kindle. Pain scorched through his back, his spine trembling beneath his skin in ragged jerks and arches. He sputtered, choking, unable to do much more than stare blankly as the pain seized his mind with infinite control, effective in its cold grasp upon his senses.

An extremely hot, burning liquid began to come over the skin of his neck. Painful and disgusting, it sloped downwards in rivulets of what he could only imagine as shining black.

A gust of air tickled his senses, sweeping over him, and his heart pounded. It caressed his skin like mist, gentle and somehow comforting. The exposed muscle twitched and quivered in the midst of such a touch, and Yugi felt his lungs expand and contrast in a rapid pant as the pain coursed through him violently.

Something warm, strong, and rough ran along his skin. His spine writhed beneath his flesh, a snake of vertebrae that refused to still. The movement on his throat was soft and gentle despite the roughness of the exterior's touch, continuing in rapid but shallow and, yet, somehow deep strokes. Pain in the sensation was easily outdone by the steadiness, so much so that it became a strict comfort for which he might dwell upon as his spine continued its hideous dance beneath his skin.

He loosed yet another small, weak and altogether pitiful groan, so low that he almost could not hear it himself. The wolf growled softly in response, but the gentle caresses of its tongue did not falter. Gently, slowly, the wet muscle continued to work at the wound. Its breath touched his skin in quick and startling bursts, short and rapid, so much so that even in his disoriented state Yugi could tell it was growing very clearly stressed.

The muscles in his arm bunched, knotting painfully, and clenched so tightly that they might lock there. The gleam of the wolf's eyes sent his head into a violent tumble, spiraling with such efficiency it made his heart pound violently enough to pull itself past the immensity of the pain of his spine for a split second.

The earth seemed to shift and split beneath his head, breaking in ragged lines of dirt and stone, of dead grass and splintering roots. His alignment shifted, his body shaking, and his mouth expelled spittle of harsh yellow bile and dark red blood. The black canine growled once more, with such an edge that it was not hard to imagine it was impatient with his limited capabilities as well.

The muscles in his legs had begun to knot and coil, following his arms. He felt the air rush from his lungs once more, shutting tightly as if they had collapsed upon themselves. He choked, unable to do anything more than fear they might not open again. But his mind, as blank as it was, did not suppress his instincts enough to cause his lungs to remain prone as they were formerly. They expanded and contracted swiftly, efficient and powerful as he gulped in air as quickly as possible.

The wolf's tongue grew more persistent; as did the heat which came with the gushing of his blood which dripped from the hideous wound he knew marred his neck. The pain laced through him with such power it reminded him momentarily of the wall with which his head had cracked upon from his collision with Ushio in the alleyway.

The scents of the forest around them swelled up, surging towards him like open floodwaters, crashing through him violently. The sickeningly sweet and sour and disgusting smell, which came to him immediately, threatening to swamp his ability to breathe altogether, punched a hole through his mind's capability to focus on the rapid licks the wolf applied to his neck. Pain shot through him more fully than ever before, and the stench of his own bile made his nose ache and burn, almost sizzling with the intensity. Though it pressed heavily on his own nasal passages, it did not block away the powerful impact of the frozen earth, the thick scent of rain so heavy in the air, moss and mold and bark, the trees and the lighter aroma of the leaves, the decay of the water-logged branches, his own blood, and the wolves' bodies. All of it crashed into him, scent upon scent, first a wave, and then a slow parade in which his mind differentiated the sweet from the sour, the living from the dead, the old from the new, the soft from the hard.

It was terrible, overwhelming, and for a moment he wanted to wail in distress, but slowly it faded as if carried by nothing more than a passing wind. In his mind's eye something shifted and eased itself, first forward and then into a background thought as if growing dormant or perhaps settling into a gentle existence. Still his senses worked rapidly without his coaxing, and the feeling of alienation began to come forth with the reality of such a situation.

They all knew the truth of what the scraping noise was which accompanied each touch of his exposed muscles as his skin quivered. They all recognized the potential of the gentle rasping and bubbling of which accompanied each breath like fire in his veins. They all accepted the pain of which came with the hideous snapping and popping of his spine where it seemed to split at the discs. They all had the foreknowledge of the meaning behind his intestines and stomach shaking and sliding as if attempting to rearrange inside of him. They all took in stride the soft breathy pants of the wolf which tickled his skin and made his ears ring gently with shock.

He could feel every grain of dirt and sand against his pores, the moss which pressed into his body and cushioned him gently. Every breath which came over his skin beat against nerves he had never before known himself to possess. The wolf radiated such strong body warmth that it bordered the heat of a glorious bonfire against the winter air. It was merciful and gentle in comparison to the molten lava which began and ended in his bone marrow.

His mouth was caked with blood and bile, hideously vibrant as it lingered and danced across his taste buds. His snacks from the festival, all of them eaten in an attempt to keep away his own potential to attack someone, was now a suffocating and immense pressure of which he could only detect bitterness in all its strength. The metallic of his blood was like that of heated copper, burning him with such intensity his heart raced and ached.

When he stared at the wolf now, no longer able to deny himself the sight of it and growing dizzy from the sight which greeted him as the leaves began to sharpen and the colors grew more muted, he wanted once more to vomit. Though it seemed to have recovered rather well for the most part, its healing seemed rather stunted.

The circle of flesh around its eye was caked with blood, clumps of it dried in a ring of deep black almost sharp enough to blend in with its fur. The mangled flesh of its muzzle hung in a long string of sinew, but the pink of which he had seen the exposed muscle was no longer as vibrant. In fact, when he focused on it, it looked almost as if it tiny strands of dark fur were beginning to grow there once more, covering the baldness.

The wound he had seen the fur quiver around moments before had grown black as well. But he knew with absolution that the hairs were truly growing back. He could see the very edges of the new strands of its undercoat emerging against the small hint of light cast by the moon above.

Its nose, glinting faintly in the darkness, formerly split and bleeding profusely, now looked as if it had never been wounded safe the dried crusting of scabbing which had accumulated beneath its former cut. Its right foreleg no longer seemed shaky and, though his sight was stunted with his inability to truly move by his own free will, he did not catch sight of that flash of white he had seen before during the fight.

In the brief seconds of its movements to withdraw and return immediately, the wolf gave him the slightest glances of its immense body and not a hint of it available to his eyes was white, nor shiny with spilled blood.

But it was the eyes which drew his attention the most, so powerfully so that they shook his very core with their intensity. The vibrant color was laced with only the faintest gleam of black, its pupils nearly nonexistent in their depth, an inkiness that was simply a set of twin pools surrounded by iridescent red. It seemed to blur, blending together, bleeding into one another, red and black swirling together with such efficiency it was almost as if the shadows were being illuminated around the black cores. The strength of which the rings of color surged forth were immense and bright, glittering as if pale with the light of the moon behind the wolf's head, almost impossible to see. A halo of bright red like hellfire with the vibrancy of lightning surrounded each dark ring, spreading outwards to a single circle of black which disappeared completely into the mask of its almond-shaped gaze.

Staring up at it, the intensity of such a sight was enough to knock the air from his lungs as if the wolf had tackled him forcefully to the ground. Such violence in a trivial moment was horrifying to him, the idea of such power overwhelming his senses. How was it possible fur such a powerful impact to come from something that, barring the circumstances, was usually so mindless and everyday?

It was such a painful realization of destruction that he almost missed the way the pain began to fade away slowly from his worn system. His head seemed to have cleared somehow, though its focus remained heavily on the immense canine looming over him, thoughts clear and startling with their clarity. The pounding of his heart, bursting through him with such terrible pain, had faded into nothing more than a slightly thumping within his chest, so calm and soft it was almost overlooked.

The convulsions of his spine and the molten heat of his marrow had even changed to a manageable warmth that had stilled his body completely. The only motion now was that of his own breathing, soft and calm, in which his chest moved in simple rises and falls with each expansion of his lungs.

Yugi swallowed hard and watched the canine staring back at him closely, studying intently and refusing to look away. Very slowly, as if balanced by some outward source, its body lowered to the forest floor. A shaky, stressed breath left its muzzle as its hindquarters touched the earth and its fur quivered, rippling, with the movement.

Yugi wet his lips, at first in response to his own stress from moments before, and then quickly in surprise. Something wet, hot and yet cold all at once, had met his taste buds slowly but surely, and the sensation was enough to truly startle him. He froze, remaining that way for several long moments, and then blinked slowly as he tried to process the strange occurrence. His mind did not have an answer, though it felt more than faintly foreign and prominently alien as he struggled to think of what it could be. His body twitched as a new panic began to rise within him.

Had something gone wrong? Even _more so_ than before? Was it possible his own mind could not identify it because he was perhaps trapped in a place between the wolf and himself? Maybe his mind had splintered too far to grasp the reality of what might be happening to him and so he could not recognize the new situation.

He felt another spasm rock him, so forceful that his legs jerked as if in preparation to flee. The violence of the terrified movement sent a reaction through his upper body and he flailed as his axis became tilted and nonexistent. A scream threatened to tear through him but he felt his weakness before he recognized it. The newly formed muscle, coaxed forward by the saliva of the other wolf and his body preparing itself for the Change, came apart with such a terrible scream itself that it reverberated in the air like the roar of a waterfall.

The wolf was on its feet immediately once more. Yugi shook and trembled, a spasm coursing through him once more, and his legs jerked again. He craned his neck, panicking, and scrabbled, wanting nothing more than to pull himself up again. But a weight pressed down upon him suddenly. His shoulder protested the intensity of its impact, the way it tore through his muscles with such fire it made him tremble again. Blood gushed from his neck, surging forward like an ocean wave, the harsh stench of it making his heart pound and the sticky liquid spill somehow faster.

The wolf's claws pressed harshly into his shoulder, flattening and pinning his upper body effectively against the ground. It snarled furiously, the noise enough to make his quivering stop for a split second as terror seized him. The moment passed, however, almost as swiftly as it had come. His body shook though it was unable to push the wolf away. But a strange sense of calm came forward, weak and underwhelming, crawling through his senses without any urgency.

The wolf's tongue ran over his neck's exposed muscles again, gentle and persistent. He blinked, a slow and unsure movement, and his eyes turned on the other wolf once more. But the position had changed in some way his mind could not grasp. A pathetic hope rose in him, immediately squashed away as he watched the wolf at work again. Whereas he had been able to see it more fully before, now all he could see was his head was tilted sideways, its left ear almost completely hidden away beneath a blanket of white.

He thought it was his flesh for a moment, until it stirred faintly with a breath that the other lycanthrope let out. His skin did not fully feel the impact of its exhale either, instead passing over it with a gentle twitch that beguiled his panicked senses for a moment. For a brief second nothing made sense to him. And then a new clarity passed over him, swift and powerful.

He had changed. The white which moved before his eye, which blocked the touch of the animal's breath over his skin, was his own fur. It was a dirty color, slathered with blood from his wound and the canine's tongue smearing it gently with each soft stroke. Bewilderment, harsh and cold, settled into his bones with such intensity, he thought his marrow might freeze. He licked his lips again, unsurprised when it passed over his sweating nose again. But what he did notice this time instead was the new sensation of sharp, smooth incisors gliding beneath and above the flat muscle, the way his canines encased it completely.

His nose and tongue tickled with this new touch. Briefly his first instinct was to laugh, but in such a form he doubted his ability to. He closed his eyes again, breathing in deeply, and the forest's powerful scents swirled through him before he exhaled slowly. His limbs were exhausted, weighed down so immensely he almost could not even feel them fully. He felt as if his spine had pulled itself, stretching painfully, but now was seemingly limp as if it too had been broken as the brown wolf's had been forced to. His muscles were still bunched under his skin, coiled like snakes preparing to strike.

He tested his control weakly, stretching his limbs faintly, so gently that he almost missed it despite himself. He wanted to move more but a snarl, swift and loud, cut his exploration short. The noise was menacing and low, and even his easing panic buckled beneath its clear meaning. He felt the tongue pass over his skin again, gentle and soft as it took on its former rhythm, and closed his eyes for a moment.

Yugi concentrated, trying to think of a way to question its persistence, hoping to maybe tell it its movements could be ceased. For a moment nothing left him and no movement could encompass his ability to comprehend a way to communicate with the darker animal which kept his shoulder braced against the forest floor.

The noise which left him was a soft and strangled high-pitched whine so small he almost missed it himself. He was not surprised by the tone itself, simply that it had left him, and he swallowed hard at the idea of it. He knew enough of canine communication to realize that he was playing submissive rather than aggressive.

He watched, almost bewildered, as the softly-rounded black ears pricked towards him, flicking almost distractedly. The canine raised its head slowly, tilted to the side, and Yugi found himself staring at a pair of bright red eyes once more. The sight of them chilled the blood in his veins and his heart sped up dramatically.

A clear malicious gleam made them sharp, imposing and dangerous, so powerful he felt his spine tighten somehow despite his initial numbness. The wolf's lips drew back just enough to bare its teeth but no noise accompanied it and so he took that as a blessing in itself.

He followed the pull of an instinct which told him to lower his gaze and the tension passed through the air almost immediately. Its head lowered again to his throat, tongue lapping insistently at the wound once again.

Yugi felt a small chill pass through him, crushing any protest he might have formerly had. He did not feel the pain that he should have and the gushing of his blood was nothing he felt any longer, but he realized the wound must still have been open. He must have still been bleeding and profusely at that.

The horror of such a thought made him whine again, sharp and panicked. The noise that answered him was a terrible and hideous snarl which made his insides quiver violently. He trembled and a new instinct came forward, crawling on its belly for his attention. He moved without prompt or command, twisting his shoulders to brace themselves fully across the top of the roots of the tree flanking him. His mouth opened, his tongue falling against the roof of his mouth, and his tail tucked against his belly so tightly he almost thought they were one and the same.

His panic became nothing more than the smallest hint of concern towards himself and his condition. He stretched his neck out, nearly flattening his entire skull against the ground. He waited, tensed and taut as a bowstring, but relaxed immediately. The other canine snorted and its tongue passed over the wound again, gentle and fast as it had been before. He hesitated, opening his eyes and peering at the world in its new positioning around him.

The grass blades looked like icicles, gray at the top where the little hints of color remained and silver at the bases where it was stripped. The dirt shifted faintly when he breathed, small gusts of air making it swirl in bright glittering clouds almost akin the white of his own breaths when they danced in the darkness in puffs. The moonlight which touched it painted it silver and white, with the faintest touches of cobalt blue. He blinked, feeling his tongue pressing against the roof of his muzzle, and scraped it slowly along the grooves of it. The blood there was almost nonexistent, but the taste remained, sharp and disgusting against the flat muscle.

The soothing laps of the other wolf's tongue trailed further downwards, towards his chest. Where his collarbone should have been, the tongue pressed more firmly, trailing over it in swift strokes. He kept his forelegs folded, the sensation making his paws quiver faintly. It was a strange new touch, somewhat bewildering, and he wanted almost to melt into it as if it were physically possible.

A spasm swept through him once more, his muscles and bones shaking. His lungs seemed to burst with the effort to breathe again, his chest aching as it seemed to flatten, the narrow cavities of marrow within his ribcage burning. He yelped, a loud and painful cry, and his limbs each kicked in the wake of another spasm. His spine tightened and pushed inwards, his bones beginning to rapidly pop and shift beneath his skin. It sounded like gunfire, rapid and painful, and each burst of noise brought with it such keen pain he let out a scream that changed from guttural and animalistic to a hoarse, strained human cry.

His throat ached and burned. The muscles screamed and split once more. His limbs kicked. His scream grew somewhat louder, voice cracking. It died almost instantly, silenced as the pain crushed his lungs into near nonexistence. His shoulders flexed and shifted, his arms bursting with pain throughout each nerve ending.

He was staring up at the stars rather than the grass now, and the position made his heart pound and twist painfully. He trembled one time more, painting, and found his breath almost catching in a sob. His blue-violet eyes, straining themselves to truly see around him, caught the gaze of the black canine which watched him with a more curious expression than he had ever seen a dog wear. Its head was tilted, its mouth opened faintly to show the tiniest hint of its bottom incisors. Its ears were pricked forward, its brows were minutely furrowed, and its eyes glittered with such iridescence that it made his head spin for a moment.

The wolf shifted forward, leaning over him more fully, and lowered its mouth to his face. Hot breath fanned over his cheeks gently, intense and laden with the smell of his own blood as well as that of the wolves'. It sniffed first his forehead and then, with a slight strain of its powerful neck, drew in his scent deeply within its large lungs. Its nose was cool and wet where it briefly touched his skin, trailing from his own down the left side of his cheek and then crossing a path to the other side of his mouth, lingering for a long moment.

They remained frozen, staring at each other for what felt like an eternity before finally Yugi attempted to move.

He struggled, trying to pull himself into a sitting position. The black wolf leaned forward, its face close to his once again, and snarled furiously. His hands shot out to push at the canine's chest, terrified as his instincts begged he defend himself. The downy undercoat teased his palms with deceptive softness, the raw muscle beneath it harsh and taut. His eyes widened drastically, fear slamming through him mercilessly as the wolf curled its lips back to show its white incisors.

The canine was so close that he could see each ridge of enamel, the edges of the gums where the roots formed, but mostly he could see where its fangs protruded from the healthy pink flesh. It did not slobber nor foam, but its expression scared him more than the two wolves ever could have. Its ears were angled for him, its brows scrunched up, muzzle wrinkled just enough to show its teeth, and its eyes blazing with ferocity.

They were bright, full of human frustration, glaring at him dangerously. The sight of it and the soft growl that came again made him shove, but the animal did not budge. It remained looming over him, watching with a cold intensity that made his insides ache with fear. His throat burned when he swallowed, threatening to split the skin there again.

He thought to expose his neck and lie back down but instead opened and closed his mouth as he struggled to think. He had an idea to cry out in pain and fear but wondered if it would trigger an attack instinct. Some predators reacted that way and he found himself at a loss as to whether canines did the same. Regardless, whether it applied to them or not, he did not know the same was true of lycanthropes.

"I just want to get up for a second," he whispered weakly, watching as the wolf's lips fell back to lie over its sharp teeth, its stance still aggressive as its fur began to slowly flatten once more. Its eyes flickered every direction for a moment and it sniffed deeply, then finally moved back several steps. He hesitated, unsure of what more to do, and then waited as the wolf continued staring at him fiercely. The canine moved another step back and then remained there, refusing to budge whatsoever. The red eyes remained locked firmly on his, burning and furious.

Yugi pushed himself into a slightly upright position, only enough to lean back on his palms and watch the black animal closely. The wolf kneaded its paws faintly, shifting its weight back and forth in an almost nervous expression. The small teen studied it for a moment and then reached up to rub his neck but halted at the guttural snarl that broke forth. He shivered, watching as the canine glared, teeth showing, fur bristling, tail beginning to come up. He lowered his arm immediately, pressing his palm into the cold earth and curling his nails into the dirt. The silence that came over him was almost smothering as they looked at each other.

"Okay, whine twice if it's bad and once if it's terrible."

The wolf hesitated for a brief moment. Its ears angled towards him and it raised its tail to wag slowly. A spark filtered into its eyes, making them glitter, and Yugi recognized a wealth of amusement there. A long, low whine came forth with what sounded akin a soft growl as an undertone. Then its head tilted fractionally, tail wagging again only once in what seemed like the most sheepish expression he had ever seen.

Yugi tilted his head slightly, exhaustion tugging at his senses, his body aching with the new touch. The wolf growled again, staring, and the small teen opened his mouth only to have the canine lunge forward angrily. Its tongue flicked out and Yugi reached out to prevent its teeth coming for his throat.

But its head merely cocked to the side in order to run its tongue over the wounded flesh. But the action did nothing to quell the fear with which he found his insides aching. His muscles clenched up tightly and the panic slammed through him violently. His hands shot out to shove the canine away, palms hitting it hard enough to send it stumbling sideways. A snarl immediately ripped through the air and Yugi nearly cried out in shock at the impact of it. His ears rang with pain and he nearly screamed as his hands moved immediately to grasp at his hair tightly. He curled up into a ball, panting and feeling sick to his stomach as he cried out in pain and tried to ignore the newest pain which surged through him.

The wolf bared its teeth and the long fangs chomped together violently only an inch from his face. He flinched and tried to shuffle backwards but his spine was pressed against the tree trunk behind him. Bile dribbled from his lips before he could think straight, burning his insides viciously, and he sputtered, practically choking on it. Blood was beginning to move up to his throat in a disgusting flare of harsh metallic taste, muddy liquid which scorched his tongue and made him vomit harder. He trembled again, muscles locking as they had formerly, and he cried out in pain, spittle flying from his jaws.

His spine arched painfully, jutting hard enough to make his entire body completely fold inwards. His nose burned, the smell of his stomach acid and blood making him dizzy. His head swam, skin beginning to feel heated and stretched, itchy and burning. He hissed in pain, the exhale coming through a nose running with blood. His eyes clenched shut, his muscles twitching and writhing beneath his skin as if they were a horde of insects. Tendons bulged as his fingers sunk into the earth, digging desperately to keep himself balanced. His heart pounded and jumped, ricocheting within his skull with such power he nearly wailed. It rattled within his ears, leaping first and then dropping towards his stomach, threatening to come out when he breathed raggedly, blood dripping from the wound which he again heard reopening in swift tearing.

It came in rivers of deep red, flooding his mouth and then spilling to the earth in rapid gurgles as he breathed deeply. His face was caked in the sticky liquid within moments, dirt mixing in sharply enough that he thought he might tear his skin open as he jerked violently. Eyes opened in mere slits, Yugi found his attention locked on the lycanthrope once again.

The wolf stood before him with its fur quivering, mouth opening narrowly, eyes stretched wide in what could only be described as the most open of horror. Its body was frozen, staring with such blank fear that he felt vomit well up inside of him again, a seizure sweeping through him so that his head shook violently in wild, hideous jerking movements.

He could feel it as it began to tear further, ripping like threads of fabric between the blades of a pair of scissors. The noise echoed in his head, fierce and violent, and his entire body shook with the rattling echo which claimed his thoughts so effortlessly. His spine arched and popped as if it were breaking and stretching again. His heart pounded painfully with such spurts of heat he nearly felt he was alight.

His mouth opened to its fullest, a scream of noise threatening to come from his lungs though it had no breath to travel on, his jaw stretching outwards with such pain he felt his body was bursting at the seams. His teeth lengthened, curving and sharpening even as his tongue grew thicker and flattened out. His fingers began retracting, his thumb pushing itself upwards with such cracking noises as to mirror ice breaking, sliding upwards until it rested at his wrist.

His nails darkened, curving and sharpening as they stretched outwards, curling until they had lengthened to an inch beyond his fingers. The tendons in his hands bunched up until the backs grew stronger and bunched together, his palms growing rapidly calloused and rough. His ears started to rise up towards the top of his head. His eyes began to grow narrower, a film seemingly developing over his retinas to give them a sharp and intelligent gleam.

Fur slowly began to push out of his skin, coarse and thick, soft strands of a downy undercoat slowly parting and expanding in place for the long guard hairs growing to take residence. His knees popped and bunched together, his heel bones forcing themselves upwards, splintering loudly and forming the hocks of his hind legs. His pelvic bone began to press inwards, hips gyrating until the skeleton began to crunch as if compressing, snapping horrendously in the cold air. His organs slithered noisily as they began to rearrange themselves and expand in size, growing bloated at almost three times their size.

His spine tightened and then contracted, splintering and jutting beneath his skin like the scales on an alligator. The pelt beginning to cover his shoulders and neck bristled and shook, and his skin rippled as it spread quickly towards a quiver. His tail drooped pathetically in fear and acute pain. His head remained pressed hard against the ground, teeth clicking as he tried to contain the scream that threatened to come out. The black wolf growled, a fearful and anxious noise, and he opened his eye only enough to peer at him with a near and growing blindness.

A terrible pain came through him, making his body shiver as he struggled with a new, unbidden concept which crept into the forefront of his mind. Fear made his pelt ripple and roll over his body with such power his skin shook pitifully. A new, seemingly long forgotten instinct began to warm his blood. His paws scrabbled, each movement laden with such effort he panted at the mere thought of being able to claim his footing again.

His claws caught on the roots of the tree beneath him but did not render him unable to get up. He pulled himself onto his stomach, hindquarters seemingly knotting together as they threatened to buckle under his weight. He pressed his chin against the dirt, weakened muscles aching, and his legs shook under the strain of his weight as he struggled to pick himself up.

The wolf did not move, standing so still it was almost statuesque. Yugi raised his head, tossing it abruptly in the direction of the darker canine, and stumbled back a step. The other wolf merely tilted its head, red eyes wide in shock and that open horror once again. He, on the other hand, did the opposite. His lips pulled back, tongue running over his teeth, and his fur lifted in a panicked bristle. His tail trembled and his ears flattened against his skull.

The black wolf's ears flicked and Yugi snarled fearfully as it took a step forward. It paused only momentarily and then growled angrily, chomping its teeth as its tail came up in a show of pure aggression and dominance. It wagged once, like a flag drifting in the wind, and it seemed to loom over his petrified cowering body. A few long seconds passed, the two of them staring at one another in frozen stances.

Yugi's head seemed suddenly to open, colors exploding behind his eyes with such power it made his legs buckle. His lungs ached violently, unable to draw in and expel air with the stress of such a task. Images passed into his mind with such strength it made his heart hammer.

First came the moon, a bright and startling orb of vibrant white and silver which drenched the world in cold light, illuminating the clouds around it in an iridescent cobalt shade. Then came the stars, brilliant and sparkling like sunlight cast upon the surface of a deep black pool, beautiful and glistening like gems in the sky. An eclipse danced through his mind, the sun colliding with the moon, blocking away the light and leaving only a ring which looked faintly like a curl of bright red fire.

A speckled belly, brown and white flecks of color, painted multiple hues b the layers of feathers which stretched outwards in flight, clashed against bright blue and gentle brushstrokes of white. The sound of claws breaking the bark of a tree, splintering the trunk's cover in harsh strokes, made his head spin for a moment.

Then came the softest of touches to the earth, light but powerful, announcing the smallest of steps as a wolf traveled. Leaves passed from their glorious summer green into first yellow and then orange and finally red, curling upwards and dancing in a wind which shook them. Bursts of heat came over him, the forest bright around him, the leaves dappling the grass beneath their paws, the light an intense and beautiful golden shade like liquid topaz. A wind passed over them, separating their fur with gossamer fingers, stroking his skin with such a chill it made him shiver and nearly cry out with surprise.

He stumbled backwards as if in search of following the gentle touch. His balance was precarious and his body nearly fell with the action of raising his right foreleg and passing his paw over his muzzle in mounting distress. Yugi felt his legs weaken, threatening to buckle beneath him, and panted sharply at the effort to hold himself up. His entire body shook and pain made his head spin.

He did not know these images. He had never come across them before. The reality was that he had not encountered them beyond images in books or online or with only his weaker human sight. He had never heard the dirt shift beneath a canine's paws or the bark breaking beneath a wolf's thick claws. And yet, somehow, they had begun to sear themselves into his head like a permanent branding.

A snarl, low and reverberating through the air, brought with a new and horrifying concept. His paw quickly pulled from his face, legs trembling even as he attempting to distribute his weight evenly again. His eyes widened, locked in on the other wolf, a sinking feeling of despair and terror made his insides heave painfully. The darker canine's tail came up straight and its ears pricked further forward, lips curling back to show off several teeth.

Yugi felt as if the earth were spinning beneath his feet. He thought the world was tilting around him in a slow and unsteady spiral. He did not know if the lightness of his head now, the way things danced in front of his eyes, was from the loss of blood or the images which had invaded his mind. They had to have been the black wolf's memories, hadn't they? Somehow the other lycanthrope had implanted images and sounds in his head. They were like tricks, played between them like some kind of card game.

He wondered vaguely if perhaps he might be able to do the same but his exhausted mind could not truly process such a concept. Part of his body insisted he make a run for it. The very idea made his legs want to buckle and his fur shudder along his spine. A more prominent instinct came forward, however, and he found himself lowering the front of his sluggish body into a weak bow, chin scraping the ground. His tail became tucked beneath him, his back legs shaking in an effort to nearly send himself falling. He twisted first his jaw and then his neck, forcing himself to roll over onto his side. A whine bubbled out of him as he attempted to make himself smaller and more docile.

For a long moment he thought his effort all but worthless. The other animal's tail remained up as it moved towards him, and its teeth still glinted in the moonlight, as scarce as it was with the trees to block it. Yugi let loose another whimper, his throat aching and his lungs feeling as if they were not able to do more than fold in on themselves due to the stress. The other canine blinked and its tail lowered abruptly, head tilting to the side. The white wolf's eyes were growing paler, almost lifeless, glazing over. Its chest was rising and falling too swiftly to be anything more than a hideous struggling pant for breath. It was wracked by one small shiver and seemingly went limp but for the tiniest of wheezes that left its mouth.

The frost was everywhere around him. As he ran forward, the snow fluttered into the air like powdery mist. A yip left his mouth, gentle and excited, stroking the air with gossamer fingers. The soft white crystals rose into the air with such grace it looked almost like birds taking flight. He sprang and as his paws touched the snow again, he threw himself to the side. The movement caused him to roll, his paws flying into the air, his entire body trembling with exuberance. He could feel the multitude of eyes which scorched holes in his pelt, watching his display as if with a sense of duty.

He crawled forward on his belly, a lithe body of long white legs and dark black claws. As his eyes flickered briefly around, he found them all stumbling nearby, tails low behind muscular, almost rigid bodies. Their fur was glossy, almost glimmering, and for the briefest of seconds he thought perhaps they dappled and glowed like stars. Each pair of glowing eyes was caught on him, but they looked oddly lifeless, far from portraying emotions as he looked at them slowly, scanning each of their faces.

He crawled forward further, wagging his tail, and his pelt quivered as the snow scraped his underbelly. He stretched his limbs, the bones popping, his heart pulsing with warmth, his body tingling with power. The stillness of the forest, with its beautiful draping branches crested with the lushest of leaves, made him feel even more joyful. In the darkness, where the moon touched the earth, he felt a gentle and soft caress along his fur, as if touched by nimble fingers. Every part of his body welcomed the touch and he had the faintest desire to arch beneath it as if he were a cat starved of affection.

A shadow seemed to pass over him for a moment. His fur quivered. His delight vanished. He bristled, springing to his paws. His fur rose in a bristle. He almost growled. Then he abruptly felt it pass. That gentle stroke of fingers on his body returned. He blinked slowly, lazily, and his tail wagged happily once more. Before him, the snow came up in a puff of bright white, glittering with shades of blue and gold, the softest hints of gray and silver. It danced like glittering water and he found himself overjoyed at the sight of it. For a moment he wondered at the shape before him, dark fuzzy shadows of deep gray which confused him considerably as the snow began to slowly settle once more.

He blinked, wagging his tail, but did not move. Instead the newcomer leaned towards him. A light gust of white came with a warm exhale close to his own nose. He blinked again, confused further, but his tail remained parallel to his spine. A soft and delicate smell like autumn-warmed leaves bathed his senses. And then a cold, wet, soft nose wiggled in front of him, sniffling deeply. Their breaths mingled, bright white mist in front of both of their eyes.

A bright pink, warm tongue stretched forward, making his nose wiggle as it passed over the calloused skin. He wagged his tail faster, opening his mouth in a pant. But the other wolf, larger and beautiful before him, did not reciprocate. The most noticeable of expression he gained was a simple toss of its tail from one side to the other in a singular movement.

The stars made its eyes shine, from the center of its pupils and outwards in vibrant color. He thought of light beneath water and the glitter in the bright green and blue-flecked gaze made his body quiver with excitement. Each strand of hair on his body shivered, a gentle but powerful touch.

He dropped to a bow, front legs stretched out and his tail wagging desperate for attention. He wanted nothing more than to take off running, snow flying, and to be able to see someone beside him as well. He wanted them to chase and then maybe the game would even grow to more than just two players. He didn't think he wanted anything more.

The other wolf merely tilted its head and in the moment it took for them to do so, something flickered in his joyful mind. It was somehow condescending, as if leering at him, a simple tint of darker fur and glowing red eyes, ears pricked forward, a small touch of white from the teeth in its open maw. For the briefest of moments his heart seemed as if it might pound out of his chest and a small bite of pain claimed his throat. It was the slightest of tickles, almost nonexistent, and in the light of his minute acknowledgment it seemed to flare.

 _Do not think about it_ , a new voice coaxed, and for a moment he thought it was himself. But for some reason no true thoughts would form for him beyond the smallest of images, of gentle nudges in different areas of his brain. It was not foggy but that attempt to pay attention fully was not within his capabilities. And there was no voice to accompany those small images, fragmented as they were.

He raised his head and straightened, on edge as an instinct within him buried so deeply seemed to crawl upwards to occupy his mind as if demanding his focus. It was, somehow, as if the wolf had stuck its muzzle into the soft flesh of his ear and whispered there so that they might reverberate. It was strange and wonderful a sensation and the tickle of it was almost affectionate. But, as he flicked his ears every which way, attempting somehow to trace the noise, there was nothing safe the reality that it was not his own thoughts within his head or spoken outwardly.

The realization brought to him a hideous pain along his neck and so he jerked violently at the burn that greeted him there. His fur rose into a bristle and he bit at the air, desperate to shake the irritation which claimed his skin. He snarled, tossing his head in agony, and stepped back once on shaking limbs. Another, more curious, touch came with the pain, so soft and small that it was almost unnoticeable.

 _He means to wake you_.

His head turned, eyes wide, even as that soothing touch seemed to burn away rapidly. For a moment he could not understand anything but that flaring pain. Had the wolf spoken again? Had he himself thought something? And the acute ache began to ease, if only slightly, and with its mild withdrawal, he found himself comprehending somehow.

He attempted to force the images, the sensations, into a form of communication. He hoped to speak, to whisper to them, to plead, maybe even beg, for a salvation from the terrible fire. But the most he could do was waver on his paws, nearly falling over, and found himself breathing so roughly it seemed like the ragged roar of rushing water in his ears.

 _It will become easier with time_ , came the startling but soft, stern voice. With it came a movement this time. He bristled again, fearful it might anger his skin further, and was startled when the brown and gray face came closer. The gleam of its eyes was so gentle it made his body relax faintly, just enough to let the other lick his forehead once. _Things shall come to you as you grow familiar with it all_.

Yugi stepped forward, shaky but holding his balance, and he wished for a long time that felt like an eternity that he might be able to share his own thoughts with the other as well. He wished that contact might give him way to the other, that they might communicate somehow, so that he could ask and receive answers. But the movement seemed only to wind him and cause the other to step away.

A small, all but inaudible whisper of buzzing in his ear began to make the downy hair in the canal there quiver. At first he listened, alarmed that perhaps the overall distant welcome of the others around them had turned cautious, but it came to him slowly that the atmosphere had not changed. And, though he strained his ears, the others did not so much as seem to be breathing. The only sound of such an action seemed to come solely from him, soft and almost raspy around the edges.

Despite his initial fear he found himself listening to and admiring the noise. It was growing softer, almost dull, but only the deaf could mistake the emotion behind it. There was such relief it seemed to blanket him, and it was startling to realize it was not he himself who possessed this vivid and beautiful emotion. There was, however, an underlying urgency which seared him and there was no rush for which he could set off with to attempt welcoming such a powerful expression.

Slowly his mind began to take from his surroundings a sense of familiarity that bordered horrifying. The calm washed away as if by mere nonexistence, and a dubious sense of something like mounting confusion came to the forefront.

Had he been there before? The trees, with their gleaming trunks which glowed as if lit inside by a star within their cores, seemed so tall and foreboding somehow. The leaves were almost transparent, with veins as delicately woven as spider webs colored cobalt and silver. The branches seemed almost like a massive canopy with their branches so tightly intertwined that they almost made a staircase into the starry heavens. Layers of snow glittered like the surface of still water and shimmered with such prowess as to enchant those looking upon them. The moon shone in a scarred face of glowing silver with traces of blue and deep purple, with a glorious halo of vibrant gold like sunlight. And the stars were beautiful diamonds of shining silver with white cores touched by a similar ring of color…

Where was this place? He craned his neck, peering up towards the cloudless night sky, where the galaxy was woven in the most beautiful ribbons that it could ever hope to possess. He could not produce to himself a name but his mind seemed to know and thus accept it all the same.

The tickle in his throat grew to infuriating heights, burning so fiercely he wished to scream if only it might quell it. He stumbled and almost fell, heart pounding and head seeming to flip the world every which way. He whined softly, so startled by his own release of noise that he nearly fell backwards in terror. His ears rang so hideously that he nearly cried out again, and his stomach dropped painfully as he flattened his ears against his skull. There was a strange and disgusting new touch that came over him, making his fur quiver, and an undeniable weakness began to pull at the muscles there.

He felt it ooze slowly, dripping down in splatters almost akin drops of paint. The burn came tenfold but eased faintly with the soothing rhythm of that warm touch which brought with it only momentary relief. His throat ached but the whine with which he might have expressed himself was immediately swallowed away. It faded on its way, scratching only halfway to his mouth and dissipating as if its existence was nothing but speculation.

 _He truly desires your return, young one_ , the wolf before him whispered in a voice that mixed immense sorrow and living joy into a melody of pure longing. Yugi, staring blankly, was overwhelmed by the gleam in those eyes, holding his attention so fully it nearly numbed his own crippling pain. It was almost as if he were staring into a deep sea of vibrant blue-green somewhere between teal and ocean and the only emotions there were those portrayed in its own voice. _You should return to him, young one_. _He shouldn't be forced to mourn another friend_.

Friend? The words seemed to trigger something in his mind, a snake which propelled itself forward from its formerly coiled position. Images came forward, with such intensity that almost knocked him off his feet. It came in a flash of deep blue, bleeding into an earthen shade as deep and thick as flowing honey and slowly into a familiar mixture of muddy brown and mossy green hazel. With the colors came small spikes of pain, of vivid and overwhelming heat which made him jump and growl his anxiety. A flash of lights came through his mind, candles and lanterns of paper symbols across the front, strung up and glowing in the dark night. Acrid smells burned their way through his nose and a terrible taste lingered on his tongue, the lights danced into darkness and starlight unlike the beauty of the forest surrounding him. Splinters of red, a shade of which he had never seen before, engulfed him as if trying to become his only focus.

He twitched and fell sideways, crashing with a sharp cry of pain. His legs flailed and kicked and he bit at the snow in distress. His throat let out a furious ripping noise like clothes stretched too far to their limit, splitting at the seams. The muscles ached and burst with explosions which made spots form behind his eyes like stars dying in the night sky. He bared his teeth, squeezing his eyes shut and panting desperately as his claws scraped against the snow and his body shuddered. In his mind's eye he still saw that shattered but beautiful longing in the other wolf's blue-green eyes and it made his body shake somehow harder.

 _You are going back_ …

The words, though spoken in encouragement, did nothing but feed a deep and growing personal rage that he'd never recognized within himself before. He snapped his teeth, eyes open, and wished only for a moment that he might inflict a similar pain upon the other. His forelimbs spread and stretched, to lengths that seemed far too vast to be natural, and he let out another scream before buckling inwards, spine arched and jutting outwards as if it might burst from beneath his fur.

His head snapped back and up, as if to mirror a howl, but the noise that gurgled out of his sore throat was a bubbling wail of despair and terror. The forest around him seemed to flicker like fireflies, his heart pounding and stomach dropping. He panted, unable to make sense of this new assault to his already weary senses. A sense of disconnection came slowly over him, and he squirmed pathetically against it like a fish caught on a line. His eyes, tired and seemingly so painful they might burst from their sockets, flickered upwards at a source of movement.

The wolf was pressing its brown muzzle into his fur on his cheek, a symbolic farewell, but with the movement his sense of connection came to him more fully, until for a moment it felt the other were bestowing it to someone else altogether that they had lost and mourned for far too long.

There was a gentle sunlight like the slow rise of the immense star, with such dappling to its soft rays that it was no question that it was just becoming dawn around them. Dazed and foggy like frosted glass, blue-violet eyes opened into slits, peering almost lazily into the trees around them. The lapping at his neck seemed somehow different, a puzzle his groggy mind could not fit together, and he swallowed hard. There was no growl to warn him away from doing so and he nearly laughed in surprised delight. Despite his abundant confusion and near disability to think clearly, he could differentiate the smallest of details between the wolf's efforts now and the ones before.

The tongue was not as broad, it seemed, with a smaller and more concentrated shape. He closed his eyes again, dizziness swelling up and claiming his shaken insides. He shifted, drawing himself closer together, and in doing so became aware of the reality that his limbs were no longer as narrow and had abandoned their strict bilateral symmetry of the canine skeleton. A breeze came forward, alerting his still rather estranged mind that he was clearly naked rather than dressed as his body trembled at its cold touch.

Yugi opened his eyes into narrow slits once again, peering downwards to catch a glimpse of the wolf as if to cement it in his memory. But what greeted him there was much more than he had originally suspected to find. There was a mane of hair as unruly as his own, spiked and even crested with a vibrant red akin the eyes he remembered. Long, goldenrod bangs so alike his own framed a matured teenage jaw with such a sharp angular structure he thought of its teeth. A slender-fingered palm had been raised towards it and a small, pink tongue ran over it as if it were sampling the blood still there. When the other moved to lower their hand to the ground, the action made the golden lightning bolt streaks of their hair noticeable as they glinted briefly where the light touched them.

He turned his attention to the other's eyes, drawing in a deep breath to steel himself for what he might find there. They were sharp, angular, slanted as if to match the strength of his jaw, and framed by such long lashes he almost mistook it for lines of kohl drawn there. For a brief moment he could not catch the color of them as the other male's head was still lowered and watching his palm. Then, abruptly, he looked up, and the intensity of his gaze made Yugi nearly tremble with shock at the sight.

They were as red as freshly spilled blood and crushed rubies with a fire that spoke of such cunning and strategy it nearly swept him into a mindless spiral of shock.

His heart pounded, dancing within his chest so harshly it might jump through his ribcage. The dangerous ferocity of its gaze was not aimed at him in any way, simply the expression of which his eyes naturally possessed. And, amidst that depth of color and emotion, the surface of the gleaming orbs was almost glass which showed his own reflection there as if he were the only thing in their line of sight. There was the faintest of shadows to pronounce the presence the trees around them but his own reflection was the only one vibrant and seemingly given life there.

Yugi shivered and barely restrained from blinking, sure that should he do so the mirage in the other's eyes might fade. Did his own eyes hold that quality now as well?

The other male slowly sat further upright, but where he expected tension there was only a nonchalant blink. Yugi, as tired as he was, could not stop himself from nearly scrambling to sit up as well. There was something all-encompassing and powerful, secretive and lively, about those eyes, and he was desperate not to lose contact with them. But how was it possible for a teenager to seemingly hold the answers that dwelled there? Or was he older? Had he existed so long that he had managed to fight to discover the depth of that knowledge within his eyes? Was it merely the disease in their veins, passing through them both as unnaturally as black oil, which made the other retain his juvenile appearance?

So caught up in his own thoughts was he that he almost did not notice the main difference between them. He was so enamored with the beautiful and powerful gaze of the other lycanthrope that it was impossible for him to look anywhere else or even fathom the idea of doing so. But, it occurred to him as the other reached up and scratched at his neck, that the gleam which met his eyes was that of a metallic plate. It looked flat and engraved, almost like a dog tag, but it was clear there was no ring and there had been something behind it, as the black leather of the band that held it around his neck looked stretched. It dipped towards his collarbones, glittering with the coming sunlight, and looked curiously almost like a collar.

Yugi frowned, puzzled, and tilted his head as he stared at it. The other male seemed not to care about the blatant interest, instead almost relieved somehow. The band looked as if the buckle had been placed beneath the belt so as if to give the appearance of being completely bound to its wearer. There were no adjustable loops to change its size so he guessed he might have gotten it custom fit for whatever reason. And, when it scratched against a deep black fabric, it finally came to him exactly what it was he had noticed between them before the collar had become his main focus.

The other was fully clothed. And Yugi was not.

When the other's eyes drifted downwards, it occurred to him only vaguely that he was checking his wound rather than trying to get a look at him, but he reacted all the same. He let out an almost guttural noise, springing forward to shove him, and the other was caught off guard enough that he nearly fell with the impact. But he was faster in recovering himself and, so, instead of falling, he caught his wrists and batted them away with a much more powerful noise than Yugi could have ever hoped to produce.

It again seemed to reverberate in his bones and his muscles locked briefly, his heart pounding violently and making his ears roar dully. The adrenaline that coursed through him did not cease, however, and the moment the control of that snarl seemed to ease he shoved again, unable to help himself.

The grip on his wrists tightened. The bones threatened to snap under the force. The skin ached and pulsed. The red eyes flashed again. His own reflection in his eyes quivered. He breathed out weakly. The other shifted his weight. Yugi swallowed a groan.

His insides tossed. His lungs collapsed. He trembled again. Was he changing? He felt himself go limp. The wolf's weight eased slightly. Teeth chomped mere inches from his face. He winced, closing his eyes. The submission wasn't working. He nearly groaned again.

Panic seized his belly and writhed like a snake. He breathed hard, bracing himself. Let him do what he wanted as long as Yugi got to see another day. He didn't care anymore. As long as he wasn't killed, he wouldn't fight him again.

The grip on his wrists loosened. Yugi didn't move. As long as he was limp, he wouldn't fight back. He needed to stay limp. Opening his eyes would ruin that. He'd try to push him away again. And then he'd be killed. There was no chance of outrunning the wolf, nor the smallest possibility of outsmarting it.

Something touched his cheek. It took him a moment to recognize it. The small gust of an exhale made him falter. The trail of exhales drifted slowly downwards. First it was the edge of his mouth. Then it went to his neck. And finally it stopped at the dip of his collarbones. He shuddered violently. The hands on his wrists pulled away completely.

He froze, unsure of what to do. When he exhaled again, his blood heated. His skin prickled pleasantly. The heat and then coolness which followed thrilled his senses. A tongue traced a path from his ribs to his collarbones. Yugi trembled, though with what he was unsure. It was not something he wanted but it was still so terribly pleasant. He swallowed away a growing whimper of anxiety. He could never win if it came to a fight…

Abruptly, as if spooked, the other jumped up. Yugi remained statuesque for a long moment. Then the sound of earth shifting met his ears. He couldn't help but blink. His eyes shot towards the other wolf. It stood several steps away, nose wrinkled and eyes distant. He almost seemed not to realize Yugi was there any longer.

The smaller boy scrambled for something to cover himself with. His cheeks heated, somehow ashamed of his body's reaction. The slight arousal was horrifying to him. He swallowed hard, pointedly ignoring the other lycanthrope. He breathed in roughly and then glanced over.

The red eyes were completely focused on him again. And they were aimed at where his hands were covering himself. His lips quirked upwards somewhat and his eyes were dancing. If he openly smirked and waggled his brows, he swore he'd call him Jonouchi.

"Jackass," Yugi hissed, unable to stop himself. The shame rolled off him in waves for a brief moment before he steeled himself. So what? Someone had just licked his chest. Anyone else would have been aroused too. In fact, he thought that was probably the whole point of doing it. But, as he went to glare at him, he found the other's amusement had been replaced by the most innocent of confusions. His head was even tipped to the side, as if his wide eyes were not enough. He looked younger, somehow childish and small. "You…don't know what I'm saying…do you?"

Were werewolves supposed to be American maybe? He frowned and chewed his lip. If they appeared more like North American gray wolves did that make them more likely to understand English? That was a small issue, considering he only knew the tiniest of phrases from his friend Rebecca and her grandfather Arthur. He had never even bothered to ask his dad how to speak English and so he was stunningly lacking in his knowledge of the language beyond reading it.

He clicked his tongue, furrowing his brows as he considered his limitations. But the wolf's reaction made him stop short. His eyes had grown narrow and his lips were twitching with what looked to be the beginning of an irritated snarl. Yugi faltered at the expression but found himself relaxing again when the other blinked and the look cleared from his features.

Drawing on what little experience he had handling that language, he attempted it. The words made his tongue feel swollen and heavy with unfamiliarity. His voice caught on several syllables. "Do you understand me?"

The tone was raspy and small, disconnected. In response, the other male blinked slowly and tipped his head to the side. His brows furrowed. His eyes flickered as if concentrating hard. But the words were considered slowly and with fragmented desire to understand. His focus was still, at its core, aimed at the wound on the other's neck. The words took longer than average for his muddied focus to translate and came in streams of noise and then brought tone and meaning. He nodded at him slowly, but his gaze was heavily shadowed with questioning.

Yugi groaned. What did werewolves speak?

"Probably not Japanese," he grumbled under his breath.

The wolf's eyes narrowed into slits but the sixteen-year-old missed it. His mind was already several steps past paying attention to the other wolf, staring as he considered multiple things. What was probably not Japanese? The wolf frowned minutely. Him? That was probably true, but he still understood the language through exposure to it, so why was he attempting to speak to him in such a heavy and halting tongue? Did he not realize he understood?

His lips pulled upwards into a miniscule smirk of pure amusement. If the boy thought him stupid, then why shouldn't he string him along some? There was no reason not to have some fun with such ignorance.

Yugi looked up, voice coming out in clumsy streams of words that sounded so jumbled it was almost impossible to decipher. He knew this language sparingly by the way of his grandpa's textbooks, and the Arabic words were so faltering he almost cringed.

"Do you understand me?"

The red eyes narrowed into gleaming slits of something almost menacing. His lips pulled back to show off a single canine and the disgust was apparent when he blinked at him slowly. He knew that language, recognized it well enough, but it was nothing he wished to hear. He chomped his teeth when the other opened his mouth again. The smaller boy jumped, visibly startled by his sudden ferocity, and then nodded immediately.

"Okay, so, Japanese then. Do you know it?" Yugi asked, voice coming out momentarily sharp. The tone surprised them both and the other lycanthrope shot him a furious look before turning away abruptly. His nose twitched, working at something in the air, and the smaller boy bristled at the dismissal.

"Do. You. Know. Japanese?" he ground out from between his teeth. His tone gained him attention for all of the time it took him to give him a withering glance. Yugi found himself chewing his lip anxiously, horrified by the idea that he might not be able to fully communicate with this boy.

If there was a barrier and all he could do was speak to him through animalistic body language, he thought himself screwed. He might have loved canines, but the fact was he didn't know much about wolves and how they communicated safe the fact that a raised tail meant aggression and a tucked surrender. He knew they had facial expressions which bordered human capability in their wide ranges, but he had no way to figure out the way they worked.

The wolf shot him a dismissive glance and it was clear enough to tell him that he understood the words he was saying. He was listening, and very intently at that, despite his lack of visual attention.

Yugi started weakly to his feet, legs as shaky as those of a newborn fawn's as they nearly buckled. A hand caught his wrist, steadying him almost effortlessly. He blinked wide eyes, somewhat shocked, at how tight his grip was upon the limb. His palm was warm, comfortably so, but it somehow seemed to burn his skin at the contact. The moment passed almost immediately, however, as his own skin flared hot and then cooled itself as if countering it before stabilizing itself.

"Thanks."

The wolf did not respond but only released him when he was sure he was steady. His hand fell to his side again and he glanced lazily over his shoulder. Yugi stretched his shoulders in a small shrugging motion and a bone popped.

Those red eyes were on him immediately once more, burning and altogether pressing on his consciousness. That unnatural gleam was back, more so now than seemingly ever, and all he could see for a moment was his own reflection there, caught in an abyss of gleaming red.

He felt his skin crawl. Ushio, Kokurano, Tomoya's father, the Burger World employee, and even Valon had failed to project his reflection back at him through their eyes. There had been that brutal, all powerful, keen intelligence that no human could ever hope to match, but there had never been something as startling as that. Was it a natural defense mechanism for older werewolves? Was it something that they learned as they grew older? Was it taught themselves so as to shield one's emotions and confuse an opponent by reflection of their own state of mind?

"I've never seen eyes do that," he breathed out weakly, tone somewhat horrified and yet somehow awed all the same. But neither of them missed the brutal hardness that underlined each word as if they might sharpen and become weapons at his will.

The other teen stiffened faintly in response, his lips pulling upwards faintly, but then slowly fell back. The gleam of outright ferocity that had immediately swept Yugi's breath away was gone now. He snorted dismissively and turned away before the smaller teen could even blink fully. He was several steps past him before Yugi recovered himself enough to spin around.

"Wait a second! Where do you think you're going? I want my clothes back, you fucking pervert," he snapped, eyes wide as the other spun around to face him abruptly. The movement was so fast Yugi nearly flinched but held himself evenly despite his momentary fear.

"Clothes."

The lycanthrope gave him an unimpressed look, red eyes bored, and as Yugi watched him, he clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth in clear mockery. The smaller boy blinked stupidly at the sight of his nonchalance and nearly groaned out loud in annoyance.

"Where are my clothes?" he demanded, crossing his arms and scowling at him. The other blinked and then mirrored him, even mouthing words but clicking his tongue repeatedly instead of speaking. "You're so mature."

He repeated his mockery but poked his tongue at him.

"Seriously. I need my clothes. This isn't funny."

An arched brow spoke of the contrary and the lycanthrope gave him a lazy and amused smirk which somehow made his features seem so much younger. He looked, in that moment, as if he could pass for a small child, if not for the sharpness of his eyes.

"Clothes!"

He mimicked him silently, clicked his tongue, and then stuck it out at him again.

"Oh my gods…" The smaller boy grasped at his hair in annoyance and then scowled fully. He puffed his cheeks out unhappily as the other wolf looked over his shoulder again. He had to find some way to make him stop this game and give him his clothes back or else he was screwed.

The day after the festival people were normally up and about early in the morning and, considering dawn seemed to be just barely creeping past them, walking home naked was not in his best interests. Besides that, he thought he would rather die than have to do that in the first place. He didn't think he could manage that on his _best_ day.

"Hey," he muttered when the other seemed as if he might walk away. His head turned, his eyes widened, and he blinked in curious confusion. Yugi drew in a deep breath and then squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. He mimed it, pulling on first the underwear—because the gods knew he had to be accurate about it—and then the socks, right then left. He pulled up phantom pants and buttoned and buckled them, then threw the shirt over his head before hesitating. He had been wearing his jacket, right? He didn't suppose it mattered in all actuality, considering it was probably ruined after the attack. He shook his head to banish the thought—he'd deal with it later—and mimed pulling it on as well. He considered his shoes but decided against it and instead looked up again.

The other boy was gaping at him. His red eyes were wide with shock. His mouth worked once and then twice and then his shoulders shook as he clapped his hands slowly. Yugi blinked and nearly screamed in frustration. He still wasn't going to give him his clothes back? He'd made such a massive fool of himself for nothing?

"Please, I'm sorry for pissing you off earlier, okay? But I need my clothes back. I seriously need to get home before my mom and grandpa start freaking out…"  
He frowned at him openly and for a moment Yugi wanted to flinch away from him. His expression had fallen and shattered into absolute nothingness, a desperate and disgusting hollowness claiming his features. He blinked and tossed his head once before beginning to walk past him, expression blank and nearly lifeless now.

Yugi stumbled after him and caught his arm, making him spin on him with teeth aimed for his face. He stopped the moment he recognized him again, however, and instead merely granted him a small ghost of a smile before turning away again. He pointed but Yugi hesitated, uncertain if he trusted him not to disappear on him at some point, and then finally looked as well.

They were neatly folded, placed on top of a couple of roots. He had obviously been too concerned with Yugi's wound to go far from where they had fallen, but he'd somehow forced his own Change in order to strip him down and put them aside. The compassion that had come through in that single act made Yugi tremble briefly; he was somehow overwhelmed by the sight.

The wolf stared at him with an unnerved intensity that made his insides quake when he glanced at him sideways. His eyes were windows instead of mirrors this time, showing him his own emotions rather than his reflection. Between the two of them Yugi wondered who might be worse off with their growing confusion.

"Thanks…" He cleared his throat weakly and the moment passed. The other turned away from him as if he did not exist any longer, and Yugi released him in order to brace himself shakily. His legs strained beneath him as he stepped forward, and he nearly buckled with the pain that shot through him with each movement. He felt the wolf watching him, probably ready to help him again with his balance if he needed it, but it did nothing to quell the sudden bitterness that swept over him.

The Change had been so much of a toll. It was so far too taxing to even consider another time it would happen. It would be all too easy to kill himself in the middle of it. The blood loss was a contributor, yes, but it was not so amazing as to pull him away from his initial thought. He had been worried long before and it was only growing. Who was to say that his next would not be the last thing he ever did?

He almost glanced over his shoulder to see if he could find a similar weakness in the other wolf, but the effort he would have had to put in would not be worth the small prize he might or might not have gained in response. Instead he fell harshly on his ass when he moved a little too fast, and huffed as he looked over his shoulder now. The red-eyed male didn't so much as blink, arms crossed as he leaned against another tree trunk nearby and watched him lazily.

But his eyes were on his legs, the point of his weakness, and Yugi found himself flustered as he scowled at him in frustration. He didn't like that his eyes seemed almost to predict which might buckle first, to dictate the odds of his fall.

The least he could do was help him up. But he wolf did nothing but watch and so Yugi shot him an annoyed glare before struggling to his feet. His muscles almost screamed in protest and he clenched his jaw to keep from crying out himself. He nearly fell but caught himself, swaying unsteadily for several moments, and somehow managed to draw himself forward a step. The pain sent fire through his veins, nearly tossing him to the ground again, but persistence had always been a strong trait in him, something that he had never truly thought to be a gift before then.

He licked his lips and took a second step, glancing at the wolf and smirking smugly. But the other's expression was anything but leering as he had expected. Instead the left side of his mouth was pulling into a small encouraging smile as he nodded at him to keep going. He would not help him should he fall over but he was still there, watching silently.

There was a moment where he almost wanted to ask for help but another part of him was oddly too proud to do so, something almost against his immediate nature. There had been enough humiliation on his behalf and now he refused to go to the other for help. Besides, he imagined he would only receive a shake of his head in response as it was. He knew he was watching the way his muscles bunched and trembled and he would continue his study should he fall again, and it was somehow liberating to have such knowledge.

It seemed almost as if he too were watching to see if he could make it, through this and then until the next full moon and after. Maybe he was seeing if he would survive them, as this was only his first, and there was so much experience that the other seemed to have for himself. Surely he wouldn't have wasted so much time trying to save him if he thought he might die from it all, right? He was likely waiting for Yugi to prove himself worth such effort.

The red-eyed lycanthrope kept his gaze unwavering upon the smaller teen. If he could gather up enough strength to keep moving after this whole ordeal, he'd be able to survive the next Change and further until he was competently accustomed to them and could do it by his own will. The first few were always the worst as the body was unused to bearing a second form, of having its every muscle and sinew and tissue change so that the bones could push and mold themselves into those of a wolf's.

For the time being, it would leave him weak and disoriented and far from willing to move around, but it was better in the long run to have him do so now. Or it could easily make him a target for a more experienced wolf looking for a fight.

Yugi collapsed into a bundle of limbs next to his clothing and spun around with a loud "Ha!" as if they had placed bets on the task. The wolf did not so much as blink but instead nodded briskly, not the least bit amused or surprised by this turn of events. For a moment he thought he might have offended the other boy but found himself unable to focus on that as his mind circulated to the idea of getting home.

His mom had probably already called the police. There was most likely even a search going on. With the recent mutilations, they would never allow a missing teenager to slide through the cracks. They had probably spent the better half of the night doing so, especially if Anzu had told them her half of his disappearance. How they had failed to find him already was another question altogether. But he didn't think he cared for the answer regardless.

He angled his hips, wincing painfully, and slid his boxers on before he could rethink the action. His tailbone ached and pulsated with its own isolated pain, as if it possessed a poison which dwelled only there. He felt a sting behind his eyes as he sat back again, grabbing his socks and wincing once more. He pulled them on a moment later, then worked on his jeans, hands nearly trembling with the force of exertion.

He panted, already exhausted, and figured this was a well enough place to stop for the moment. "Thanks for—" He made the mistake of looking up, unaware that the intensity that had come with the other's eyes had long since left him. Immediately his stomach dropped and his heart seemed to falter. Despite himself, he had grown hopeful that the other was the "alpha" that Valon had spoken of before, but the fact that he had left him so easily made the idea an incredibly dubious one.

He looked away, frowning, and felt a cold, bleak hollowness claiming his insides.

He hated it when he was all alone like this.

Yugi tried to follow him the moment he spotted a flash of red from the very crown of his long hair. But his limbs were so weak that the moment he rose he fell again. In a heap of bunched limbs and clothing, the small boy groaned softly and struggled to push himself up from the ground. Pain shot through his limbs and burned at the bottom of his chin where he had scraped it. His tongue was bleeding where his teeth clipped the surface of it. It swelled in his mouth, to the point that he thought it impossible to remain behind his teeth with his jaw shut as it was. He let out a soft groan of a noise and looked up slowly as he saw the other teen continue along without a backwards glance. He struggled, scrambling to his feet and wincing at the pain that came over him, so encompassing that he nearly collapsed onto his side.

He whimpered softly under his breath, swallowing hard, and then forced himself to take a seat with his back against the trunk behind him. Breathing slowly and deeply, his heart pounding, he tipped his head back further into the bark, trembling briefly once. Bright flares of pain shot through his exhausted system as he drew his legs to him, wincing and trembling harder. He clenched his eyes shut, his entire body aching and trembling further, and his mouth opened just enough to breathe from between his teeth.

His fingers sought out the worst of the damaged muscles, the tips pressing into his nerves. He whimpered again, unable to stop himself, but continued his investigation of which patch of skin was most sore and what might be worst than the next. Every part of his body seemed to pulsate with ache, tearing at his insides, and his frame shook once more. His teeth clicked softly, chattering despite his swollen tongue, and his ears throbbed with the sound.

He moved his fingers in soothing tugs and pushes, hoping to lessen some of the pain where his muscles had pulled tight and his skin felt worn and weak. It was not as gentle as it should have been, but he was trembling too hard to be able to lessen the force of his own touch. He listened for anything around him that might pose a threat, but all that greeting him was the birds chirping overhead and a breeze rustling the leaves and tree branches. There was the harsh clicking of his own teeth, echoing like drum beats in his eras, the force enough to make his head spin. He sought for the sound of the wolf moving about the dying undergrowth but found nothing, unable to take in any further noises.

He glanced over his shoulder and flinched violently at the way his neck protested the action. His shoulders bunched up, the back of his arms so cold that it felt as if they were pressed against ice or soaked in water. His tongue tasted earthy and metallic, nearly smothering the undercurrent of autumn leaves that he knew was the other wolf his strained eyes caught nothing but the stirring of grass, of a couple of ants moving near his hip, and the sight of a single squirrel in the branches. There was nothing he could catch with sight, hearing, smell or taste, and though he knew his own vulnerability, he decided to take that as his answer towards danger being nearby. There was no reason to stress his already taxed body with scanning his surroundings any more deeply.

Though his body was still too wound up to bother with relaxation, he moved his hand from his leg to his flank. The strained muscles ached and pulled beneath his touch even as he began to try once more to massage some of the pain away. Exhausted and growing somewhat hungry, the small teen cast a brief glance around before getting to his feet again.

It was an agonizing test, the effort it took him to draw his legs to his stomach and grip at the bark of the trunk behind him for leverage. It took what felt like hours of long and arduous work just to simply draw his aching tailbone from the ground. The shaking of his body did nothing to help him as he nearly fell forward into the dirt again. It seemed to take another hour just to fully find his balance.

He could move for only several minutes and the seconds seemed to pass so slowly forward that he thought himself wading through water or drying cement. His legs buckled faintly and he settled for another few minutes, biting his lip and chastising his slow progress. There was no way he would escape any other wolves that might come for him at any point with such a lousy inability to walk properly. He listened again, straining his ears, and his stomach clenched as he tried to locate the other male who was still steadily walking away from him.

For a long minute he rested and then slowly got to his feet again. It was the slowest progress he had thought he had made in his life. It seemed even harder than the time he had woken from his attack from Ushio and made his way up the stairs to take a shower that night. It was impossible to put into thought just how hard it seemed to him now to consider such a terrible wound had been inflicted yet again.

The constant cycle of movement and rest left him irritable and exhausted. It seemed as if he would never gain any relief or stamina to make the task easier. But he knew there was more ground gained the longer he moved. There was a small, almost unnoticeable gain of stamina, he knew despite his distressed frustration.

His attention towards walking was diverted abruptly. A movement to the left in his peripheral made his head snap around. A tail was twitching, a long fluffy red shape which moved like a reed in the wind. The squirrel was drinking from a small pool of water, fur fluffed and body tense. He wondered if it sensed him or if the other teen might have been around. The sight of the water made his pain fall second to his thirst. His throat ached and burned and his body pulsated briefly as he watched the surface of the pond ripple faintly.

He wondered briefly about the bacteria he might swallow but it would not be worse than what he was already forced to deal with now. He doubted there was a strand of anything that might win against the lycanthropy and hurled himself forward. His sudden appearance made the squirrel cry out and race away, bristling, fearfully. He ignored it, palms scratching themselves against the small rough stones littering the bank.

Excitement coursed through him for a brief second, so relieved was he at the sight of some ease to his pain. But it was dashed abruptly as a new thought occurred to him briefly.

When he was younger he had tried to drink water from a cup with his tongue. It had been extremely unsuccessful—but that was mostly because his mom had put an end to it before he had even begun it. For the briefest of moments he considered trying it here and then shook his head hard.

A shifting image within his head turned abruptly cold and disgusting. His reflection had become a hideous twist of blood and a thrashing body turned pale white beneath the moon. Writhing and shaking fingers digging into the earth, bile flooding from an open mouth, he almost did not recognize it. But, as if the other wolf had placed it within his skull as he had earlier, he saw himself there. He was writhing, shaking, vomiting and struggling to remain coherent or even to breathe properly.

Yugi shivered, eyes flashing open, and stared at his own reflection once more. It was weak, drifting, and seemed darker than it seemed to normally appear. He stared blankly at his own image there, eyes flickering slowly downwards to the wound he knew lay there.

The smallest part of it was open, barely showing the harsh red of its torn flesh, but it was no longer bleeding. The cells had all stitched themselves together in violent splashes of deep crimson and harsh streaks of black where the excess had dried in large clumps. The skin was hideously swollen all around the wound, bright pink that spread in long lines where the tan wolf's teeth had scraped through his flesh with an attack intent on killing. When he pulled on the shirt's collar, the sight of it nearly made him scream.

The wolf had not only torn open his throat but his chest as well. He had known this, of course, but now he was looking upon it whereas before it had been nothing more than a thought in the back of his mind. He had been so blissfully unaware of the damage done that he had been hopeful it would be nothing but a few claw marks at the most. But he had been unprepared for the magnitude of it as he stared at his bloodied skin.

The flesh from the sides of his neck in the dip of his collarbones had been torn viciously. The bone beneath was probably just as likely harmed by the attack, suffering scrapes as Tomoya's own had. He pulled further on the cotton material, peering at his chest and ignoring the pain from his chin folding against his neck. He remembered the other wolf's tongue burning his skin for long minutes at a time touching his skin there. The center of his ribcage was invisible to him until he pulled the hem of his shirt up enough to expose the skin there, flinching at the sight that greeted him there as well.

There were long streaks of dark black crusted blood there, lines of pink that said his flesh was still torn open and visibly healing. His stomach ached as he looked the wound over before dropping his shirt back into place.

He settled back slightly, watching the water for a moment. Despite himself, he was able to sit back on his haunches comfortably. His focus was caught, diverted from his pain to a new and burning realization. The very fact that he was even healing right now had to have been because of the saliva that had coated his skin while the wolf had been licking at his wounds. The DNA and RNA had to have been laden with natural chemicals to promote a more rapid rate of healing. He knew of animals licking their own wounds to find infection and promote healing but obviously this had been just as powerfully altered as the rest of the disease's properties.

He knew, staring at himself in the pool of water, that his head should have come clean off with all of the vomiting and writhing which had incapacitated him during the Change. His head honestly should have rolled off and his ribs pounded to a powder. The persistence of the other wolf had to be the only thing to save him in all reality. It had to be the very thing that had managed to keep him from dying again just that night.

He glanced over his shoulder briefly. He could not help the wave of gratification that swept over him immediately at the thought but another occurred to him just as fast. Was the other boy the one that they had been after in all actuality? Had he simply crossed paths with them by accident and so been punished for it? Had that been why their efforts had been turned to the other canine so fully that they barely paid him any mind? Or, if he had not been there, would the fight have broken out regardless and the wolf been killed in the meantime? Had he been the reason he had managed to survive the ordeal?

He had clubbed that wolf upside the head with a fallen branch and saved him by some miracle. It seemed impossible to discount the fact that if he had not done that, perhaps the wolf would be dead now but he would never have gotten hurt himself. But then, was it not a good learning experience about the properties of the disease growing in his veins?

He frowned at his thoughts and glanced over his shoulder once more. His hands burned and he looked at the cut palms for a fraction of a second. He could use his hands, cup the water, drink, get up and leave again. But his hands looked disgusting and it seemed gross to even consider. He didn't even want to contaminate the water with the layers of blood, dirt, and dried vomit he knew caked them.

Reluctantly he pushed the thought of water away, ignoring his parched state. His throat itched, his tongue feeling even more swollen. He blinked, swallowing hard, and looked about him more fully.

The forest was not too thick around him, though he knew it was more because of the pond than anything else. The soil was gritty under his fingers when he shifted the dirt away. It was a shade darker than the sand, softened by touches of water but not completely soaked. The rock beneath him was a smooth slab of dark gray, cold and weathered. There was a small slope to the earth around him but not enough to be considered a hill. The trees were thicker beyond the few that strayed closer to the water.

He got up, pausing only to dust his legs off and look his hands over. His skin was scraped and sore but it seemed clean aside from a small spray of pieces of wet, dark sand. The skin was somewhat irritated, pinking at points, but for the most part he thought it was fine.

Actually, as he looked at it more closely, the thought occurred to him that they almost seemed to be healing before his eyes. The pink tint seemed to be fading, the red of his open wounds seemed to be becoming smaller in size, as if the skin were mending itself. There was the smallest, faintest tingling of sensations to accompany the slow draw of skin towards the centers of each cut, but he hardly felt it as he continued his inspection.

For a small moment the feeling of this tingling crept downwards, throughout the very ending of each nerve. It swept back and forth, through him, trailing through his legs and arms as if to repair itself despite the pain. Then, slowly but surely, it began to ease away the ache in his muscles to a lower, almost burning sensation. With the new addition of relief, the small teen took a more comfortable seat, legs crossed at the ankles, and began to gently pull and push on his tender flesh again.

A drifting scent made his head snap up, eyes widening momentarily, and then he shook his head with a small smile. The wolf was nearby, quite possibly watching him for all he knew, and the realization was both relieving and somehow frustrating to consider. Why would he hide away after all this time? He had clearly been watching him and now he sat aside and did nothing but stare?

Yugi couldn't figure out the reasoning behind it—or at least not fully, because he certainly had a few ideas—and he wasn't sure he truly cared. It was just the fact he was still around, that he had not fled away so completely, that quelled some of his nerves.

He didn't know where exactly the wolf was, nor if there was anything looking around waiting to sink their teeth into him again. After the couple of weeks that he had suffered through, he found himself almost expecting it more than anything else. The somber note of the idea made him sit up more fully, done with the task of humoring himself of easing the ache in his bones.

He needed to get home, though now he wondered if his mom really had called the police to search for him. The idea made him tremble minutely before he got to his feet and stretched his legs out completely.

The small teen sighed and walked a few short steps. The movement took longer than he had expected despite the slight ease he had bestowed himself. Now he pulled his right leg from the ground and bent it completely, following it up immediately with his left before stumbling forward again. Tiredly, with a glance around, he frowned and looked throughout the undergrowth for a moment so he put his hands in his pockets.

It was twenty minutes after Yugi had started to make his way home that the wolf found his way back to the small clearing. Nose to the ground, licking his lips to smear some of the blood away from his jowls, ears flicking about, the canine did not so much as spare a glance in the direction he had taken. A small, gentle pull of muscle and light warmth told him more than his senses ever could. But he did not follow it, instead lowering his muzzle to the pool and taking a small drink.

He ran his tongue over his mouth again, the dried blood warming and seemingly melting beneath his touch. He blinked leisurely, opening his eyes into mere slits as his toes pressed a little more firmly into the earth. The softened soil, wet and slick beneath the calloused skin, molded to his paws, a cooling sensation like water brushing over the pale skin under his coat. His claws sank further into the earth, giving a soft but full gritting noise as the grains of sand were forced to shift under his weight, separating into thick, somewhat grooved indentations. His reflection rolled as if the wind were touching it in only one place, black fur glittering where the weak morning light touched the surface. Each individual hair came with the detail of absolute precision, each the same shade of glossy black even where the light crept over them through the gap of tree branches. He watched the way his eyes minutely rolled and rippled, dancing with movement, and his brows twitched in the smallest of movements as he peered into his own gaze almost expectantly.

With a blink, he turned his head, dismissing himself as his ears flicked. A chattering noise made his tongue run over his mouth again, taking with it the excess of water and remaining blood on his whiskers. Fur momentarily rising to a bristle with growing tension, his tail moved slowly from side to side no further than the outside of either hock, the wolf inhaled shortly to scent the air.

A low, rumbling groan crept through the air akin a snarl growing in his lungs. A dull, lingering pain came with the noise, rolling through the center of his being with enough force to make his body quake once. The ache grew to a sharp, intense tickling sensation, sweeping over him purposefully, and he curled his lip in dissatisfaction before turning around to look into the trees.

The chattering had long since grown quiet and the single bout of chirping he heard further along did nothing for him. His hunger demanded satiation, but his energy from the strain of helping this other boy put away all instinct to travel in pursuit of prey. He would have to wait until something was closer to him, so near that he would not use too much energy or time hunting it. The noises which drew his attention, made his head snap around so that he could stare, or tilt his chin upwards, were far away, so estranged in distance that he snarled in disdain.

He tossed his head, shaking himself out as if he were soaked with water. The measly rabbit he had eaten moments before seemed to do nothing for him now. Living off of what little prey still wandered in the forests as winter drew closer was not something that would fully support his survival. Hunger followed him beneath the trees like a constant and overbearing scent, lingering beneath his skin and burning at his insides to make him quake unhappily.

The serow had moved north, out of his range, and he dare not follow them. The prey animals may not have known nor cared for the scent marks they had passed so carelessly through but he did. It halted him within a mile of its reach, his entire body freezing in response. Had the pack been smaller he might have braved it in his determination to quell his hunger. But all of their scents blended so powerfully together in a perfect weave of smell as to persuade a weaker wolf of only one residing there, a lone wolf with a large territory.

But he was not a fool. The scent was so unnatural and strong that he knew there were more. He was unsure of how many but he felt confident in his assumption that there were over twenty. And no wolf with their fullest wits would ever make the mistake of encroaching on such a massive pack's territory.

He heard a branch snap and his head turned abruptly. Ears pricked, eyes widening faintly, he blinked and inhaled deeply once. With the breath came the rolling touch of branches and cut leaves where ants dug into the sides in their last harvesting of food. There was a drifting hint of blood he had spilled moments before as well as the slight twist of bark which had been scraped when he had misjudged his own leap. The earth came in the singular scent of wet dirt and falling foliage. And then, slowly, he caught the smell of what he had been attempting to find and single in on.

The boy was bleeding faintly. The knowledge came in a small flicker of iron across his senses. It was heavily metallic that he was forced to wrinkle his nose to avoid flinching, his lip curling back. It was a punch where it rolled through his nostrils, harsh and terrible, with the same intensity as that of an open flame. An otherwise healthy curl of smell came forward, like drifting wind touched by the softest hint of rosemary and mint and maybe even lemon. They came before the undercurrent, which the boy was wholly more easily recognized by.

He came to him as something like summer sunlight, intense and warm, with an airiness of that of the wind drifting through the trees. There was also the harsh stab of something highly chemical, making his nose hurt and his head pulse weakly as his fur bristled further, then the softer tone of sweat and salt. There was only one other hint beneath these, so soft it was almost unnoticeable. He could not entirely describe it, as he did not think he had ever been exposed to it formerly, but it was easily the most powerful thing he had ever come across.

His tail twitched as he lowered his head and looked through the trees. He didn't have to follow his scent to know where he was. Even without this seemingly powerful tie between them, he could simply rely on his sense of hearing. He made plenty noise as he moved around. The wolf was not sure if it was because he thought it would keep away other predators or if it was simply because he was too exhausted to exercise caution.

He turned his head, looking around once, and then crept forward. His own ears caught the sound of his paws as gentle and brief touches, like whispers of silk ghosting over someone's skin, but another animal would have missed it entirely. He was, as most lycanthropes were, almost as silent as a shadow whenever he moved about. A dying fern scraped against his paw, touching his dewclaw, but the fringes of the leaves felt like ants cutting into his skin with their teeth. He blinked once slowly, lazily, but did not pick up his pace. He did not have to worry about the boy escaping him.

He was moving so slowly that it would be impossible to overlook him unless he overtook his pace. But the movement, as slow as it was, was a good thing. The boy would not be as weak during the next Change and so they would not have to cross paths often afterwards. If the boy remained healthy there would be no reason for them to share the same space any longer.

A small, glittering dewdrop of water swelled to its peak atop a fern leaf caught his attention, noticeable only to his peripheral. His head turned, eyes widening momentarily, and he looked it over for the fraction of a second it took him to pace towards it. His jaws opened and his tongue ran over it so swiftly it was almost a blur of movement. His teeth clicked as he pulled away, keeping his slow progress towards finding the other male.

His tail swung from side to side lazily, his gait easy but strong all the same. His back paws landed in the same place as his front, easy and leisurely. The forest was alive around him, awakening sooner than the sun's slow ascent, and he found himself nearly whining at the pang that came over his stomach once more almost immediately.

The new noises within his ears made his belly rumble desperately for more food. He licked his jowls again, more as a distraction from the familiar pangs than the idea of a hunt, and felt almost as if he were being mocked when he tasted the dried blood that still remained there. The effect it had on him was an unceremonious quiver, pelt rippling over his muscles as his body tingled briefly. He did not scent the air again, however, as if there was prey to be found nearby, he would do so easily.

His ears flicked again. The boy had stumbled and nearly fallen over. He could hear his blunt nails scrabbling for purchase on the bark of the tree nearest him. His shoes were grinding against the soil and the grains made a harsh protest in his ears. He curled his lip back, mind vaguely pulling itself away from this knowledge. For the smallest fraction of a second, his mind recalled upon itself the pleasure of his larger meal from what felt like months before.

The serow had filled his belly for a day and a half, despite what had been an unusually immense size and vibrant health. He had stalked it for hours, using the natural stamina of his canine body to conquer it. Willpower alone had granted him the strength to hunt it so effortlessly for what seemed to be hundreds of miles. He had bled it mercilessly, taking chunks from its wooly fur and snapping its right foreleg with his powerful jaws.

From there it had to have been one of the easiest hunts he had ever partaken in. It had limped and tripped, stumbled pathetically several times, and when he had caught it, it had had been attempting to pull itself up from the ground. The tree roots had given it enough purchase but the broken limb had ensured him victory.

Now, listening to the boy, he felt his stomach snarl furiously. His blood seemed to heat fiercely beneath his skin. His eyes grew narrow, his lips curling back. His fur rippled over his body, like water running over his body. His movements sped up. His vision sharpened. The trees ripped past him in excruciating detail, sharpened hideous blurs of gray bark and curls of browning moss. Branches looked like daggers, split in numerous spikes of wood. The leaves were highlighted by each vein, dancing in the limited sunlight. He pounced over a large fallen log and snarled with desire. The sound of the boy falling again made him tremble. He snapped his jaws. His tongue swept over his lips.

He angled his ears and sped faster. His muscles burned with energy. His stomach rolled and his body tingled. His mouth opened further. His tongue slapped against his right cheek. His eyes narrowed further. He snarled, licking his jaws again. His paws came in soft thuds as they crashed against the earth. A branch snapped where the boy was moving. He growled and chomped his teeth again.

A loud, wet and pulsing clap of noise boomed within his ears. It rolled and burst forward vibrantly. He growled again, launching himself faster. The woods grew thicker around him. The undergrowth seemed to strain forward to touch his paws. His claws dug into the earth, forceful and dangerous. His ears flicked once more. His muscles rolled. His body turned as the boy moved again. The pounding became the only noise within his ears. It burst through him in time with his own heart. He snarled and lunged.

The boy was only a foot away.

Yugi spun around, entire body tingling with warning. The wolf was hurtling towards him. Its brows were pulled downwards. Its teeth were showing, glittering like dagger points. The thick, curved fangs flashed. Its chest quivered with the force of its body as it was propelled forward. Its legs stretched outwards. Its toes were spread as far as possible. The claws scraped through the air with the sound of a whistle. He opened and closed his mouth stupidly. His body shook once in shock. A realization dawned on him. It was headed straight for him.

The trembling became a full movement. His body twisted and dropped abruptly. The air shot from his lungs with the force. He gasped and his head snapped around. The wolf was past him in what his mind perceived as a large black blur. He blinked, startled, and then looked up again. The canine was still moving at top speed. But its paws were no longer on the ground. There was a hideous scraping noise, furious in his ears. The animal was kicking loose debris to the forest floor.

He gaped, craning his head nearly all the way back to keep up. The squirrel screeched and attempted to race off. The wolf shot from the trunk to the end of the thick branch in one moment. Then it hurled forward. The squirrel screamed loudly. Teeth closed down on its windpipe. The noise cut off abruptly. Yugi blinked up at the sight above him. The wolf settled almost like a cat, its slender frame lending it almost perfect balance. Its teeth cut furiously through the small piece of prey. The bones cracked and burst beneath its molars.

Then the noise was gone and the wolf was sniffing pathetically. His jaws were opened faintly. His nose continued twitching latently. His ears pricked forward and then around. His body quivered. His tail bristled minutely where it hung over the side. He pulled his paws apart and peered into the spot between them. The bristle traveled up his spine. His tongue ran over his mouth. He shivered and then turned his head.

The boy was still staring up at him, gaping mindlessly. His blood was the most noticeable thing in the air, but there was only the slightest of scrapes on his skin which bled red. He did not see the point of cleaning them for him. Instead, his stomach growling even more furiously, he turned his head and whined pathetically. He was so hungry and the only thing he knew of that would be easy to catch was the very person he had spent the entire night attempting to save.

He shivered and then felt the bark more forcefully under his paws. His claws scraped its surface, forcing it to splinter. His mouth opened and closed once. He glanced at the boy and then to the trunk. Hungry and tired and growing near spiteful, the canine took a small step towards the end of the branch. There was no reason to remain up there. The noise of the squirrel when it had screamed would have easily scared away any and all prey left to be seen.

Yugi watched it as it picked its way carefully down. Unlike a feline, the action was not as fluid. Rather, at first the wolf began little jumps from one branch to the next, and then seemed to measure its distance from the ground. As it hesitated, the black claws on each foot sank visibly into the wood. The efforts were somehow graceful even as it remained frozen, eyes scanning once more. Then, as swiftly as he had paused, the great canine threw himself forward. His landing was precise and powerful, muscles coiling and relaxing beneath his beautiful pelt.

The movement had been so easy that Yugi found himself questioning his own eyes. He had seen a dog on the internet climbing a tree but it had been under twenty pounds and the tree far wider, with a sloping trunk. This one was almost completely vertical safe the tiniest curve at its base.

The muscles bunched up in the canine's hindquarters as the large wolf took a seat a few feet away. He blinked lazily towards the boy when he noticed his stare. The red eyes glittered as he regarded him for a small moment before just as swiftly turning away again. His tail moved slowly to his side, almost as if he might curl it around his large paws. His nose twitched, his mouth opened only the smallest bit, and his eyes closed after a moment.

Yugi flinched when he heard the noise that came to his ears. It was low, gurgling, and at first he thought it was a snarl. But then it grew and the wolf trembled momentarily. It came like rolling storm clouds and then slowly began to die away into nothingness. It took him only a moment to recognize it, as he himself began to echo it as if spurred on by the sound. They looked at each other after a moment, the wolf tilting his head before flicking an ear to the side as he turned away again.

He was uncertain whether the look in his eyes had been friendly or not but it did not make him pause. He got to his feet slowly, unsure of his own weight and balance, and straightened to his full height clumsily. The wolf turned immediately to him once more, blinking dark red eyes curiously, and his paws shifted as he kneaded them lazily. The sting of his weight pushing on his bones made him nearly crash again, but he breathed in through his teeth and managed to keep from buckling.

He took a couple of steps forward, making the wolf blink and tilt his head in surprise. They peered at each other and Yugi stopped a little away from him, lips lifting up briefly into a tiny smile.

"Change back and I'll get you something to eat."

The wolf hesitated for only a moment, staring at him. His tail wagged once, a slow and deliberately cautious action. His eyes danced with embers and he thought the gaze was almost hopeful. For a moment he looked as if he might leap to his paws immediately. Then it passed as swiftly as it had come. The wolf's expression was that of pure, unbridled skepticism.

"Change back and I'll get you something to eat," he repeated, amused as the wolf's expression grew thoughtful. The mocking edge of his expression began to grow confused. His brows furrowed further, pulling together. His ears pricked forward more. His eyes grew enlarged and with a curious confusion. He shifted his weight, pulling his paws up momentarily before lowering his head and craning his neck to examine him more thoroughly. He sniffed, clearly attempting to smell if he might be lying as animals were said to have the ability to do.

Taking the chance, the wolf opened his mouth with a soft line that showed his bottom incisors and then breathed out a small exhale that crystallized as a large white puff of air. Yugi found himself unconsciously mirroring him, surprised when his mouth opened and a sharp, cold gust of air made his lips and tongue tingle pleasantly. He blinked, startled, and both of them watched each other curiously. The seconds passed, blue-violet clashing with a fathomless red. Then the wolf's mouth opened fully and his tongue lolled out in a small, almost friendly pant. His head tilting to the side, the canine audibly shifted his weight forward as his long tail wagged slowly again.

Yugi blinked, smiling in amusement as he thought unconsciously of a well-trained dog waiting to go on a walk. He nodded lazily, watching the way the other perceived his movement with another small shift of his balance. "I'll wait right here," he assured him. The canine was on its feet and trotting away before he could even blink, disappearing from sight within mere seconds. He watched the direction the red-eyed animal had wandered off in, surprised that he was still smiling and feeling somewhat self-conscious about it now.

He supposed making friends with the other male was not such a bad thing in light of it all. The entire situation meant that having someone else in his corner could hardly be a bad thing. Being alone in all of it seemed as if it might be the worst it all had to offer. And maybe this wolf was not his "alpha" but having help with the entire situation regardless could not be a thing to regret.

He tossed his head to banish the oncoming melancholy that he knew would flood him. His mouth twitched downwards as he realized that the other had not returned. He narrowed and strained his eyes to catch sight of him. He hoped with everything inside of him that it was not his immediate thought of something going wrong with the Change that was keeping him. He shook his head and bit his lip hard enough to cause it to nearly split, swallowing his thought to call out to him. But what was there for him to truly say? What was he meant to call? "Here, little werewolf, over here"?

Somehow he did not think that was the best thing to do. Besides the fact that the other was taller, he wasn't altogether certain no one else was nearby. If there was somehow a search party in the woods which had eluded his ears, what would they think or say about it? How quickly would he be locked in a mental asylum for saying there was a werewolf in the woods? And, besides that, what would he do if it alerted their location to another lycanthrope? If there was more than a simple spat between those other two and this black one, then he would be risking another hideous attack.

Unsettled by his new train of thought, he began to turn around and take a few steps in every direction. Taking himself in a full circle, the small teen felt blood in his mouth more than he tasted it. He narrowed his eyes, disgusted by the heat bathing his tongue, and struggled to suppress an uncomfortable shiver. He ran a hand through his hair, closing his eyes tightly and breathing in roughly.

There was no way he could have been hindered by the Change. He had done it so fluidly mere minutes before, without so much as a second thought. What could have possibly been an issue when he was so clearly in control of it all?

Yugi shook his head sharply and started off towards where he knew the pond to be. A sound made his eyes widen, snapping open, and his spine grew rigid as he tensed in confusion. His head turned quickly, his mind nearly spinning off its mental axis, but the noise was steady in its direction and so he hesitated.

For a long moment, heart pounding fearfully from his former thoughts, he was unable to do anything more than quake. There was nothing that could assure him that there was nothing in the forest to hunt him.

He trembled once, opening and closing his mouth. He blinked, horrified, as his mind immediately sprang forth with the idea that there was honestly no telling what might be waiting to greet him. He thought to turn and flee but he felt immobilized, frozen and cold in fear. He nearly fell back as he drew in several large breaths, reaching up bite his hand. He yelped, disgusted and terrified by the taste that greeted him there, earthy and metallic and acidic to the point that it caused his empty stomach to roll hideously.

His eyes flickered and peered upwards. His mouth opened and closed. He trembled. He had just given away his location. The noise ahead of him had silenced. He breathed out roughly once.

The noise resumed abruptly. He blinked and his eyes widened drastically. His heart pounding in his ears settled into a dull roar. His eyes sharpened and his mind seemed to pulsate painfully. A ragged, intense burn came over his senses. He blinked again. His mouth opened and closed again. He trembled harder and his tongue seemed to swell. His vision swam for what seemed like a lifetime but his mind had opened.

From the darkness of his thoughts came a single and notable image which sprang forward just as the wolf had before barreling up the tree trunk. He shivered, horrified by the sensation but also somehow warmed by it. In his mind's eye came the very clear and powerful surging image of water. It rippled and dripped, splashing violently, and as it moved about, the sun was blocked away by something immense above it. Something kicked within the depths, rising out, and then slapped into the water once more. Claws and fur clinging to pale skin made the fear melt away.

The image drifted immediately away again as he recognized it all. The wolf was playing around in the water, splashing about happily. As Yugi approached, the canine ducked his head beneath the surface. It almost looked as if he was trying to fish, but the small teen realized he was simply cleaning his face with the still water. The water was too shallow to encompass him and force him to swim, but it was still deep enough to just cover where his wrists would have been. The wolf turned to him, dripping wet along the face, and his tail wagged as he snapped his jaws at him in pleasure. The click of his teeth echoed in the still, open air even as he panted, peering at him, and then abruptly raced off into the trees again.

Yugi let out a single small laugh born of both momentary embarrassment and genuine amusement. As soon as the canine was out of sight the small teen made his way back to the rock he had been perched on and took a seat. His skin was tingling, his entire body overwhelmed with exhaustion as he glanced about him. When nothing seemed to come barreling towards him, he relaxed enough to lessen the tightness in his spine. He leaned forward, tucking his elbows onto the surface of his knees, and peered in the direction the wolf had vanished.

The lycanthrope emerged a minute or so later. His expression was somewhat puzzled and yet frustrated all at once. His mouth was turned downward at the edges, his red eyes framed so deeply by his long lashes that they almost looked black. His gaze was locked on his wrist, however, where he was rotating his hand somewhat lazily. For a moment Yugi thought that perhaps he appeared fascinated, swept in by the color of his own flesh.

The idea made the smaller teen frown. He was so pale in comparison, he noticed, and that fact alone was somehow enough to make him feel tiny despite the distance between them. As the other approached he was unable to look away from his face, the light tan he sported, and his stomach twisted. His skin was some kind of rich shade that lingered with the best of both a bronze and creamy complexion, with a gentle warmth that made one's eyes lock with envy and aesthetic pleasure.

But, as he tore his eyes away, breathing raggedly in frustration, his gaze instead locked on the thing that caught his attention more than anything else. The jacket he wore was a beautiful and deep shade of teal, the color with the richness of seawater, as gorgeous as a gem. It was stunning, but the effect that it gave his eyes was something of a puzzling one. Rather than giving them a brilliant boost of luster and mesmerizing incandescence, it seemed more to highlight just how exotic and unnatural the boy truly was.

It made them burn like lava, heated like the very core of a flame, and lent them the depth of the ocean, but made apparent the keen intelligence and predatory shadow that lingered within them. The unnatural shades put together so closely and set against his skin made them spark as if he dared one to point it out, and so terrible was the effect that Yugi nearly backed up fearfully.

He turned away again, furious with his momentary hesitation. He did not need to make a fool of himself, nor anger the other teen. There was no reason to do such a thing by any means. And, as he considered this, he could not help but look at him once more. How long had this boy been stuck like this, living in the woods as an animal? Did he know what actual food tasted like?

The closer he got the more he had to consider it had been a long time. He must have been stuck like that for far longer than a day or two. It could have been months or years for all he knew. The thought made his insides twist, sorrow taking residence in his veins more prominently. He could not imagine having to live in the wild and hunt for food, unable to do more than the most basic of animalistic behavior. It was so much easier to simply pay to have something he wanted, eating without all the effort it must have taken to hunt down even the smallest of meals.

"You ready?"

The taller boy ignored him for a long moment before raising his eyes from his wrist and tiling his head to the side. His eyes sparkled with amusement and his lips pulled into the smallest of grins as he walked past him.

Yugi huffed and then smirked, rolling his eyes as he shook his head. He had been expecting more of a response after the initial reaction he had gotten when he had first offered him a meal. But the oddly dismissive acknowledgment he bestowed upon him now was amusing to its own end so it did not even occur to him to complain about it.

He spun on his heel to follow, practically jogging to get to his side when he saw he was taking much larger strides than himself. The suddenness of his arrival made the other tilt his head towards him, eyes quizzical and gleaming like embers and sunlight. Yugi graced him with a slightly sheepish smile but turned away immediately, though careful not to lose track of him from his peripheral. He would not so much as allow more than an inch to come between them.

In all reality, the boy was probably his only means of protection as well as direction should he lose his way. He'd been to the city a couple of times, he knew that much, and he remembered the direction he had come from when the other two wolves had rushed him had been only a little ways from the festival. He'd cut around it completely, using the woods and waiting, though for what Yugi was still unsure.

They continued their pace in a leisurely stroll, as if they were nothing but old friends walking through the woods. If he had been with Jonouchi or Honda, there would have been jokes all around. With Anzu he probably would have been trying to gain her attention elsewhere. She was a nature lover and had, on multiple occasions, paid more atteintion to greenery than him whenever they had been alone in the woods. But, now, with the lycanthrope, who would not so much as open his mouth and only gave him small sideways glances that burned his skin, there was only a companionable silence.

He thought he should have been fearful or cautious, intensely aware of everything, but something about the other boy was oddly disarming. Either it was the fact that his own body language was so relaxed and nonchalant or it was that he had saved him earlier. He wasn't sure which it was but he hardly thought he cared either.

He was grateful not to feel as if he needed to dodge away from him at every moment or hide completely. He didn't give off the same air as Ushio, who Yugi had avoided at all costs.

He glanced at the trees, took in the small shadows that stretched downwards to make the sun dapple their skin, but could not find it in himself to think much of it. He was tired, hungry, and, as if beckoned by his thoughts, he felt as if he needed to watch the boy beside him. Something was burning intensely into the flesh of his neck, along the line of the wound that still marred it. His lips pulled downwards, tugging into a complete grimace, and his eyes flickered quickly to the side.

The wolf blinked but did not raise his eyes from the curve of skin. Yugi halted, eyes widening drastically, his spine tensing with the thought that he might spring at him suddenly. Maybe he was luring him further into the woods so that he could kill him or maybe he planned to eviscerate him and leave his body at his own front door…

He trembled and the movement made the other lift his eyes. His expression was one of curiosity, mild and confused, and the red of his gaze flashed like blood spilled in sunlight. Yugi shuddered for a fraction of a second, blinking, and the other tilted his head to the side before narrowing his eyes. His brows pulled together, his eyes scrunching up in the corners, and his lips twisted faintly on the right side. For a moment the smaller boy nearly flinched back, but then recognized something that he had not thought to see before.

The new expression was a mirror image of his newest emotion. He was just as suspicious of him at that moment as he had been of him when he had turned so fully. Staring at each other, Yugi found himself blinking stupidly, stunned that he might even consider he might be doing something of a suspicious nature. But then, cheeks feeling flushed for a moment, he realized he had no basis to suspect him of anything either.

Pursing his lips, he turned away again, sucking on his teeth before shoving his hands into his pockets. The fresher cuts lining his palms itched and his skin stung momentarily at the new touch of fabric, and then sighed softly as he continued walking. The other hesitated only for a second and then hurried to his side, keeping pace with him as easily as he had moments before. In his peripheral, Yugi was somehow surprised by the grace and speed with which the other boy moved. His gait was a swift and swinging one, somehow surprising in the way he managed so easily to look canine-like in his human skin. His arms swung in time with his longer legs, both ending and beginning with the other in perfect sync.

Yugi shivered and looked at himself, wondering if perhaps one day he might adopt that same attribute. Was it a werewolf thing? He knew wolves did it when they trotted around, or even when they simply walked, legs moving quickly and efficiently to carry them wherever they desired but then. How was it possible that lycanthropes were able to hide themselves when they might have such a telling sign?

He swallowed hard, stomach twisting lightly as he glanced sideways at the other boy again for the smallest of seconds. It was so much easier for him to be able to say that the other was a werewolf but not apply it to himself. The very idea of labeling himself as such made his skin crawl. He frowned, feeling small and weak, and insidious illness sweeping over him immediately. It was so disturbing to even take such a title and apply it to the boy beside him.

Werewolves were supposed to be a myth, not fucking _reality_.

He let out a rough sigh, feeling further sickened as his stomach churned and his skin began to grow feverish. How was it even possible that someone might be able to say that they were a werewolf and keep a straight face? If someone had ever said anything of that nature to him at any point, he would have done the typical thing and thought they were a loon.

And yet, he'd seen Ushio change, he'd seen Tomoya's broken body in place of the second canine's, and _he himself had gone through the Change_. Just hours ago, he had been lying on his side, ragged and bleeding and vomiting his guts out, a wolf with white fur slicked back with grime.

There was no questioning it. He felt his head spin for a moment. Whereas finding them a reality seemed somewhat plausible in his mind, the acceptance of it was heavily overshadowed. Why was it that he, of all people, was the one who had been infected like this?

Melodramatic as it was, he found himself feeling oddly betrayed and disgusted by the idea in and of itself. But wasn't it the most logical feeling he had had in _days_? He felt as if he hardly knew himself anymore, his perception twisted so completely that there was no true knowledge of how he processed his own emotions on the immensity of the subject.

He wanted almost to ask the other how it was that he seemed to be so used to the idea. He seemed so immensely comfortable in his skin and Yugi was almost furious with the fact. But, even as he thought this, another idea sprang into his mind.

The wolf had not turned his head to look at him when he had sighed. But, when Yugi looked at him, he was staring at him. He'd been watching him the entire time, staring at him silently. And his eyes were once again frozen on his neck, burning his skin like an open flame.

The smaller boy nearly cursed himself, stopping abruptly. The halt of movement made the other follow suit, both of them staring at each other once more. Bristling, the smaller teen let out a harsh breath, unsure of what more to do with himself. The other's eyes flashed and flickered, the leaves drifting with a small stir of wind, the light hitting them to make them look like a deep, speckled sea of red wine. The depth of them scared him for a moment and he nearly tensed further at the way his pupils seemed to glitter with the reflection of sunbeams. The emotion reflected in those eyes was lost behind some kind of sheet of ice, as if the surface of his gaze were nothing more than chips of frozen water bathed red.

His expression was void of any tell and his shoulders remained lowered, the tension lost in them as they blinked at each other. But the wolf did nothing to hide the fact that he had been watching him, studying intensely. He pursed his lips again, flushing faintly, and sighed softly.

The other had been watching his neck again, as if he expected the healing skin to simply split in half before his eyes. He supposed it made sense, as he himself would have done the same had it not been he who had been the wounded one. He would be just as blatant with disregard towards shielding the other from his inspection as well. There was no reason to shield him in any respect. There was no reason to shield him in any respect. There was not even cause to consider it in the first place.

He looked away again immediately, however, unable to witness that intense stare any longer. He tilted his head to the side, swallowing hard, and narrowed his gaze into slits as he felt a small sting in the column of his neck. It did not travel elsewhere, and, as he considered it, melted into nothing more than a gentle tingle. The movement brought the other's attention to him once more, staring at his neck again, though it did nothing to frustrate him. Rather, he was almost grateful for the attention he put into watching over his recovery, something that he was almost flattered by as he glanced at him from the corner of his eye. He hesitated a step, but the other failed to so much as blink beside him. He stepped right past him, not even pausing to glance back at him as he continued.

"W-wait! Wait up!" the smaller teen cried, eyes widening as he hurried to his side. He stumbled once, his right leg nearly buckling, and bit back a groan of desperation as his muscles throbbed. Somehow he managed to hold his balance, limping a step and then another to race to the other's side.

His haste was unnecessary, he realized a moment later. The wolf had stopped and was watching him over his shoulder, head only partially turned. He was tracking him with his other senses more than his side, motionless as he scrambled to his side. Panting from the pain and feeling his head swim momentarily, he realized he did not even have the other's full attention. Instead his eyes had been tracking movement from the branches overhead, most likely a squirrel or a stray bird. But, as he got fully to his side, within inches of brushing against him, his keen gaze was locked once more on his neck.

For the smallest fraction of a second he wanted nothing more than to thank him for his concern while snapping that he didn't need him to stare at him like this any longer. The words had almost crept into this throat when they smothered themselves abruptly. He almost swallowed his tongue as he was caught staring wide-eyed into that powerful gaze. His attention had finally fallen upon his face again, startling him so violently that he nearly cringed back and moved aside a few steps.

He swallowed hard and then turned away, staring straight ahead as he ignored his pain to quicken his pace. The other did not even hesitate to keep at his side, eyes still locked solely on his neck. He again had the impulse to snap but instead smothered it forcefully, shaken by the idea of eye contact once more.

There was something just so unnatural and keen that it scared him to even imagine his gaze as it was. The idea of it was somehow pitiful to himself but he could not help it as he again sped up but failed to lose the other or his intense eyes. Outrunning him seemed impossible—even more so than thinking he could have survived Ushio's attack without the intervention Tomoya had provided.

It occurred to him that the wolf matched him perfectly in speed and stamina, though his strength and energy far surpassed his own. If he snapped at him, what was to keep him from lashing out and all but finishing what Ushio had begun?

There was no guarantee that he had even saved him from those two wolves for more reason than taking momentary mercy on someone weaker than him. Just because he had spared him didn't mean he would not turn on him suddenly and kill him if he saw it necessary.

He shivered and looked at him again as quickly as he could, afraid of eye contact. The wolf was faster than him again, however, and the moment he looked over he was unable to turn away from what seemed like crushed rubies cast in a pool of fresh blood. He hesitated, unable to do more than stare in response, shaken and rooted to the ground, and then snapped his head away again. The other was noticeably undeterred and his eyes merely lowered to his neck.

It was a pattern of Yugi glancing at him, locking eyes, and then violently looking away again, for the entirety it took them to get out of the woods. Yugi was irritable that he nearly snapped at him more than once, locked eyes again, and grew so fearful he might provoke him that he immediately turned away again. He didn't know what to do with himself so he continued to hurriedly pace himself for the direction of the house.

He was never more thankful than that moment that the clinic was so close to the forest. The relief that bloomed in his system as they neared the break in the trees was almost enough to make him burst forth in a sprint. It was almost as if he had found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow as his insides quivered and his heart pounded faster, his body reacting with such fervor it almost brought him to tears.

He thought for a moment that he could almost relate to those survivors in movies that escaped whatever horrors were chasing and killing them all. He almost laughed at himself but then halted mentally, his legs even slowing as his thoughts began to flicker backwards.

Dear gods, what had happened to the two wolves in the woods? Had they changed back after dying? Or was it that that was just a thing in the movies?

He blinked, eyes wide, and then frowned as he glanced over his shoulder.

Had he seen the bodies back there? He could not recall in that moment. He wracked his brain, chewing his lip, but came up with nothing.

Pausing at the line of trees that would lead to the streets, he found himself looking first at the path they had taken and then at the wolf. He hadn't… _eaten_ them…had he? He grimaced, feeling sick to his stomach as his head spun, but then he paused immediately after.

He had not had time. He had been caught up in helping him, cleaning his wounds and making sure he survived the night, and there was no true window in that timeframe in which he could have done it. He would have had to have left him at some point and Yugi might not have been an expert on lycanthropy, but he did know from his medical studies that he would have bled out if he had so much as wandered off for a small window of opportunity.

No, he had not eaten them. He hadn't had time.

Yugi frowned, unable to keep from looking back through the trees again. Would they even find their bodies before they were picked apart? And would they be human corpses or canine?

What would they say if they found them as wolves? Would they conduct tests, try to figure out what it was that had killed him? Would they find out about the lycanthropy in their veins?

And then what would happen afterwards?

He shuddered, but could not find it in himself to truly consider going back there. There was nothing for him there, just his own vomit and blood long since dried which would be washed away when the rain they'd been predicting came later. There might not even be a link left to tie him to the entire thing by the end of the day if he was lucky.

Yugi turned away, glancing at the other wolf and granting him a wry smile of amusement, and then started ahead again. It was really only as he stepped onto the asphalt that he realized the severity of his own appearance. The blood might have been washed from his skin and his body more or less intact, but his clothes were still covered in dirt and bile as well. He thought if he looked in the mirror he would be disgusted with his own appearance and anyone who might spot him would think he had dug his way out of a grave.

He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and then shook his head sharply once to dispel the thought. It didn't matter. He would make sure his mom and grandpa weren't awake when he slipped inside, grab some food for his guest, and then hurry to take a shower and keep from sight for a little while until he was sure he was once again presentable. There was no reason to scare his family more than his disappearance might have already.

He blinked, suddenly freezing in front of his own doorway. Had he been worried without reason? Had his mom and grandpa failed to call the police? No one was there and he didn't think he could smell any engine exhaust or heated rubber where tires would have touched the road.

He frowned, glancing around with a feeling of intense unease, and then looked towards the other boy who was following his tense movements as well. His nose was working furiously, his mouth curling into something like a silent snarl, and his eyes flashed briefly as he continued to work away at his surroundings with his senses.

Despite himself, frustrated, the smaller teen found he was somehow unable to look away as the wolf continued his observations. It was abruptly a question of his own irritation now, something that crawled forward and claimed his attention with such power that it nearly blinded him. It was as if his mind had shut itself but for this one idea and now he found himself spinning around to face the wolf completely.

In a fit of desperation the other boy nearly snapped at him again, confused and unable to focus further than this one all-encompassing thought. What was his reasoning for saving him? Why had he bothered with the task when he seemed to gain so little from it?

They were not having a discussion, the other was following him for food, and there were two bodies left in the woods for people to find. Yugi had never understood how someone could do something without even the _slightest_ intention of gain, though he himself had offered this very thing more often than not.

It was stunning to find himself pushing away the very concept of altruism as it applied to someone else, unable to even truly consider it. The wolf had followed him for a meal, but saving his life could not have been something driven by so simple a necessity. There was much more to it—there had to be, no matter what anyone else might say or think on such a matter.

There was no way that the wolf had chosen to save him for no other reason to have make itself feel good.

Ego hardly seemed like a large enough motivator, as saving one's life did nothing but make them seem the hero, and wouldn't they have rejected the offered food if that was the reason? The wolf had all the means necessary to kill whatever piece of prey it chose. It could stalk silently through the streets and attack and feast on a person should it choose. It could just as easily head off into the woods and hunt until its energy was worn and its body too tired to function any longer. As he looked at it, he thought its power unlimited and terrible in comparison to his own.

Its teeth and claws and narrow build and strong jaws were built for the hunt. It could kill as easily as yawn, and it could outrun any animal it set its mind on. There was no need to follow him home as it was.

The only other reason he could think of was that perhaps it was lonely. But then, why march off in search of food and make him play charades instead of watching and helping him if that was the case? Why would he have stood around and watched while he tried to move around again? There was no rhyme or reason to its behavior and Yugi was unable to stop himself growing infuriated as the seconds passed.

He seemed like one of those people that chose to be alone rather than was forced by circumstance. The reality of it was that he doubted it so wholly made his skin crawl and his jaw clench with frustration and his blood heat with a flash of hatred so intense it made his legs feel weak.

Tomoya had been that same kind of person. Unlike Yugi, he had often been comfortable when eh was alone. He had never been especially keen on getting and retaining others' attention. He had preferred his own company with a few close friends whom he shared his time with. At school he was mostly alone unless he chose to sit with someone else. It was his own desire to be on his own or sit with another person, never anyone else's. There were no circumstances that caused it.

The idea of his deceased friend made him bristle further. If he had not bitten him then none of this would have been happening. He might have been dead but he wouldn't have to struggle to navigate his life because of some disgusting disease forcing him to change most everything that made him Yugi. He wouldn't have a wolf standing near him in a human skin, scenting the air around his home and growing more erratic in the way his tension was growing. He wouldn't have such pain in his body or a neck wound so hideous. He wouldn't even have to deal with things that had seemed so fictional beforehand.

His gut coiled violently and he breathed in harshly. It was not the fact that Tomoya had saved his life, nor even truly the means that infuriated him at the moment. It was the very fact that it had been forced to happen in the first place. There should never have been a reason for him to be bitten, nor for him to cross paths with the wolf in front of him.

And yet, he realized that if he had not made eye contact with Ushio those days before, he would not have been bitten. He would not have provoked him into attacking. He would not have had to run away or play dead or get himself all but murdered alongside Tomoya. He wouldn't have gotten his friend killed in the first place.

He clenched his jaw again, narrowing his eyes, and breathed roughly once more. His body shook for a brief moment and then the anger passed, a sudden and intense clarity washing over him with enough power to nearly knock him off his feet as he closed his eyes.

He didn't know that. He had no idea if Ushio had been planning to attack him before then or not. It would have been so easy to blame everything on circumstances and the lycanthropy but he couldn't do that without making himself feel ashamed and foolish.

He shook his head, sighing, and looked at the other teen again. His lips were still curled, his nose still working, and his eyes flashed dangerously in the light. But, as he continued watching him, Yugi realized he was not even slightly focused on him.

His surroundings were pushing on him somehow, making him strain and grow further tensed. His eyes shot to his finally, at first cold and furious, and then he blinked. Keen curiosity and interest mingled with a soft confusion that made him smile faintly as he tilted his head and stared at him in response.

There was no elaborate plan to kill and eat him. He knew it as plainly as he knew his own reflection.

There was nothing malicious in his gaze, despite the terrible color and the strange gleams that decorated it, the endless shades of red lingering there, the wild and almost ominous glow that seemed to surround his pupils. In fact, the exact opposite was what greeted him as he faced him fully.

That keen gaze was glittering, innocent and childish in expression, with a glowing confusion that made his lips twitch further in amusement. Even a small hint of frustration could not take away the immensity of the simple emotions there.

He shook his head briefly and then began to turn away. But, as if startled by his actions in such a painful way as to force several words out, his mouth opened and Yugi froze in place, eyes widening in shock at the very idea. He had not considered that he might speak to him, though he knew from his body language that he was not completely cutting him off in any way. But then, as quickly as it had started, his mouth shut again and instead he tilted his head curiously to the side and studied him further.

The small teen bit his lip and shrugged, feeling as if he was unable to even attempt coaxing him into conversation. Instead, blinking, he found that the other's angle of attention had returned to his neck. However, his nose was still working to scent the air furiously and his mouth, formerly relaxed, now curled at the corner again. His lip drew up to show off his right canine momentarily in clear distaste.

The teen drew in a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment, frowning. "You can talk, right?" he muttered, turning his head to look at him over his shoulder and watch him closely.

The other boy did not respond to his words for what felt like hours, instead smelling the air and raising his shoulders minutely as if in defense of himself, before abruptly nodding. The movement was so reluctant that for a moment Yugi felt bad for even having the audacity to ask, the look of hesitancy crossing his features making his stomach twist.

"But you don't."

Those red eyes stretched extremely wide, glimmering with something that he did not truly recognize. He was surprised by the way he looked at him with such a stunned expression, peering as if he had not expected him to come up with such a simple explanation, nor accept it so easily. He wondered if perhaps he had thought he would fight him over his silence for whatever reason.

Yugi nodded slightly, feeling the tiniest inkling of frustration course through him for a moment. He pursed his lips, flustered, and sighed softly in annoyance at it all. Of course the wolf helping him would be a mute by choice.

Could his life get any harder?

"Okay."  
The wolf tilted his head and stared at him in surprise. Silence was hardly something that most people accepted so easily. He had expected arguments and maybe even something like a verbal lashing of some kind. Most times it was seen as condescending and disrespectful.

"Don't worry, it's fine," Yugi murmured, glancing over his shoulder again to stare at him curiously. The genuine gentleness in his voice made the other blink and then frown at him as if in confusion. "I didn't mean it in a bad way. I just…I was curious, but it's okay. You don't have to talk if you don't want to. Don't worry about it."

The taller boy was silent for what felt like an eternity. His eyes flickered and his mouth pulled downwards for a moment. He frowned a little more fully. He tilted his head and stared at him, red eyes glowing faintly. He seemed to fully consider the entire idea of his acceptance as nothing more than a falsity. He was not really sure the reason but his doubt sent him into a spiral of unnerved sympathy and wonder about what had happened to him.

He felt strange as they made their way towards the clinic again. He could hear the other boy behind him, his breaths growing rougher and deeper. He paused, glancing over his shoulder again, and frowned as he took in the sight of the other boy. He looked sick to his stomach now, with cold red eyes that glittered like glowing embers for the briefest of seconds.

He dug his hands further into his pockets, clenching his fists as he swallowed hard and felt as if his tongue might swell in his mouth. He frowned as the other boy continued to search out his surroundings with such tension that he found himself frozen in place. Yugi almost thought he expected more wolves to appear out of the shadows.

His eyes had grown a shade darker, suspicious and harsh, a deep color like that of blood. They exercised such vicious caution that his skin crawled. The surface of his gaze was hard like sheets of ice painted red once more. It had clearly become more of a uniform color now, something that he had not seen but once in the woods. When the sun hit them they looked like concentrated spikes of frosted glass, perfectly clear yet holding a dense fog of some kind all the same. His pupils had become slightly dilated, bleeding into the inner edges of his dark irises and when he turned his head to regard him in return. The reflective surface had come forth once more tenfold, to the point that Yugi nearly cringed at his own emotional instability staring back at him.

There was such fear and a touch of hatred in those dark eyes that made his body feel tight and cold all at once. He was filled with an instant and hideous dread which swept him nearly off his feet as he stared at the other boy. He opened and closed his mouth and his reflection followed suit faithfully where it played upon the dark surface of the other's enlarged pupils.

He heard it when he turned his head, the way that his neck actually snapped forcefully at the action. His eyes shot to the sky for a second, staring up at the clouds which seemed as scattered as his own thoughts. His lungs expanded with a deep inhale, drawn to their maximum capacity with the force of it. When he slowly lowered his eyes back to the other boy, he found that his gaze was darting around faster, all but terrified.

"Are you okay?" he finally asked, swallowing hard as he struggled to completely absorb this new sight before him. He looked as if he might run at any moment and, as Yugi truly took him in, he could see that he was holding himself on his left foot and his right was partially raised so that the sole was off the ground.

The wolf looked at him for only the tiniest of fractions of a second, eyes flashing, and then nodded at him curtly. Yugi blinked and he was already looking away again without a single hesitation. The smaller teen was not sure whether to be relieved or annoyed by such a blatant dismissal. On one hand, it meant that he no longer had to stare at himself in those red eyes, but, on the other, it felt like he was making a point of showing him just how little he actually mattered to him.

And again, Yugi found his thoughts circling back to why he would have bothered to fight off those two wolves and later lick his wound shut. What was the point of it all if he was simply going to do something like this of all things? The smaller boy ground his teeth together unhappily and narrowed his eyes into slits. Was the wolf really not going to say anything? Was he really not going to tell him what it was he expected of him or what had upset him so much? Surely he didn't expect more then what he was already offering for his help?

He might have saved his life, but if he planned to continue treating him like crap like this, he did not see the point in bothering with him more than necessary. Why should he even bother to think to remain nearby if this was what he planned to do?

"Come on, this way," he grumbled, ignoring his initial idea to snap at him in frustration, there was no reason to risk this wolf's ire should he turn on him like Yugi was unable to stop fearing he might. Hr swallowed hard and then ignored the way that the other merely stared at him as if he could not comprehend his words. "You're going to have to stay quiet and follow me because I'm _almost_ one hundred percent sure my mom is home with my grandpa right now. I don't want to have to explain to them that I spent the night in the woods going through my first official Change as a werewolf while this other wolf was licking my neck until the skin healed."

He could stop himself from feeling sick to his stomach as the words left his mouth. He really _should_ have died. His head should have rolled off his shoulders during the time that he was having such violent spasms.

The other wolf snorted and Yugi's head snapped around in surprise. The lycanthrope was smirking widely at the statement, red eyes gleaming with pure amusement. When he shook his head slowly and watched him, Yugi snickered with a small laughing smile. He was unable to swallow away the rush of satisfaction that crept through him at the thought of having made the other smile.

It had seemed so impossible moments before that now he was filled with a strange sense of pride at having accomplished such a feat. If he was not so exhausted and relieved, he might have wondered at how strange it was to feel such elation over something so simple. It seemed so common and everyday that it was foolish to even consider it to be more than fractionally humorous.

Yet, Yugi barely noticed it as he neared the dark red door that marked the house's entrance. But he heard it before he felt something almost like an intense sting make its way through the core of his spine and spread outwards violently. The boy was panting behind him, so loudly that it made Yugi's entire body freeze in place. With the noise came a startling rush of confusion and mounting fear that made him spin around, body once again growing rigid with horror.

The red eyes were so wide they almost seemed to swallow his face with the way that his body seemed to have grown abruptly smaller and weaker. It was as if the life had been drained from his body, swallowing him away as his frame seemed to curl inwards and crumple upon itself. He looked moments away from shaking as if he were nothing more than a leaf stirred in the wind by a violent storm.

His spine was entirely too tightly wound, straightened to the point that Yugi feared it might break if he so much as looked at him the wrong way. The red eyes glittered fiercely, though the color was now a single band of vividness against two large spheres of perfect black. They were glazed over and almost muddy in expression the two colors almost seeming to blend into each other in swirls of chaotic foggy brushstrokes.

His jaw was opened so that he could pant and his entire body trembled with the force of each breath he took. He was frozen in place and the color had drained so completely from his face that he looked almost ghost-like in complexion.

"What?" Yugi asked, eyes widening drastically in horror at his expression. He looked around frantically for a moment, frozen in place and unable to do anything more. The other was still completely statuesque safe those frame-wracking pants he continued to exhale. His head snapped around again, breathing roughly in response to the other's acute fear, and found his jaw clenching tightly as he struggled to comprehend. "W-what's wrong?"

The lycanthrope turned his gaze on him fully, staring in a disconnected way that made his skin crawl and his heart pound harder than ever. His lips pulled back, twisting upwards, and a snarl bubbled out of his throat and mixed in with something like a hideous whine of pain and terror. It curled upwards into something akin a scream, heaving his lungs with enough force to cause them both to flinch at the sound of it. Yugi was immediately frozen again, ice claiming his skeleton as he swallowed roughly and bit his tongue until it nearly bled.

Oh gods, was he hurt? He nearly bit his tongue in half in growing terror.

Why had he not checked before while they were still in the woods?

Why had he not considered doing it when he had had the chance to check him over completely?

He could have looked at each inch of flesh if he needed to. In that fight his face had been mangled and torn open, muzzle bleeding with strings of tendons hanging from his skin. He'd been covered in blood, his forelimbs' muscles and bones exposed in combat. His back leg had been ripped open as well if he remembered correctly, though he was not completely sure.

"Are you okay? Are you hurt?" he demanded sharply, voice lacing itself with panic. The red-eyed teen stared blankly, jaw still slack as he panted heavily and his body quivered with each breath. Something dark crept across his eyes, like a shadow drifting over his gaze, and then they began to grow clearer as if some kind of clarity had come to him. "Are you—?"

A hideous, long, low snarl split the air. Yugi flinched at the sound of its undertone, shaking his head as he backed up a step involuntarily. His stomach twisted violently and curled inwards as if it were attempting to collapse on itself. His mind scrambled, struggling to find the words to calm him some, and his mouth grew drier as he stared at the other's immense fear and failed to think of a single thing. He did not look as if he were dying and there was nothing to meet the eye that might suggest he needed help.

"If you calm down, I can look at your wounds and—"

The words seemed to have the opposite effect of what he wanted to achieve. Slowly the red-eyed teen narrowed his gaze, expression frosting over with ice, but the ominous glow was now three times as strong. The dangerous gleam burned into him as if searing through him and lighting his very core on fire, growing more hideous as his lips curled back further. A snarl was loosed before he could blink and he flinched as the other chomped his teeth violently in front of him.

Did he suddenly consider him a threat?

Yugi was no match for him if that was the newest idea he had come across. Being in front of his house did nothing for him, as the home field advantage seemed to be but a mere myth at the moment. The wolf could simply tear him to pieces before he so much as blinked. He would not even be able to open his mouth before the other eviscerated him and completely devoured his organs without a second thought.

There would, of course, be no witnesses. He realized now, as he noticed the light was still weak where it hit the other's eyes, that the winter was the lycanthrope's camouflage. The days were so much shorter and the nights longer, the sun too weak to offer true solace. No one was home anymore, having already left for work, and no one would bear witness to his murder.

The snarl rumbled and then lowered, growing increasingly deep as the seconds passed. His mouth opened and then closed again violently, making him tremble. He stepped back, horrified by the way the other snarled and snapped. His entire body was wired to spring forward, nearly lunging at him even in his frozen state. Yugi backed away again as the wolf snapped his teeth once more.

He lunged forward. The smaller teen fell backwards. The other turned on his heel. Yugi barely blinked before he was gone. He gawked after him. His mind stumbled to think of words. He opened and closed his mouth. Then he fell backwards against the cement again. He exhaled harshly and watched the white cloud that came with it.

He squeezed his eyes shut and sighed heavily. He had just fled and Yugi had no idea how to find him again. And if it wasn't for the fact that he suspected the other of having knowledge of this new lifestyle he would let it die. But he needed help and he would not let such an opportunity pass him by.

The wolf seemed like the only one willing to help him now that Valon seemed completely out of the realm of possibilities. Groaning in frustration, the small teen opened his eyes into slits and stared upwards. The blue of the sky, formerly blinding to him due to the rising sun, was now growing gray with gathering storm clouds. He nearly shivered with satisfaction at the sight of it.

For a moment he thought to lay there until the rain started. Then he would get up and go inside but anxiety pressed hard at his spine. He had no idea when his mom or grandpa might get up. And he needed to be prepared and far from disgusting in disappearance when they crossed paths.

Feeling sick to his stomach and lightheaded, he drew himself into a sitting position and groaned at the effort with which his back popped loudly. He groaned and bit his tongue until it nearly bled before blinking lazily and finally pulling himself to his feet.

The moment he unlocked the door and stepped into the house, he leaned against the wooden frame. Exhaustion weighted most of his body, his senses aching with the fatigue which plagued him so heavily. He tipped his head up, his scalp pressing against the glass and cooling his skin lightly for a moment. He strained his ears, trying to hear around his own breathing and the dim roar of his pulse. His stomach twitched and his mouth grew dry as he blinked slowly and frowned.

The beat of his own heart made his head pound slowly and his ears ached with the force of it. He blinked stupidly once and then narrowed his eyes faintly as he continued listening as keenly as he could. But his own body produced so much noise that he could not seem to get past it to catch any others in the house. The muscles ached and stung in the left side of his throat.

Slowly, his ears nearly ringing with the effort, he finally caught the sound of outside beats and thumps. There were slow, weak, and soft, but with such a steadiness that for a moment he feared they were failing. And then he found his thoughts circling around the fact that they must have still been asleep. He settled back more firmly, opening his eyes into narrow slits and staring into the dimly lit room of the registration area.

He frowned faintly, swallowing hard, and then sighed softly. He had been sure that they would be awake and waiting for him. He had expected them to have called the police. He had expected to have to wade through them to simply get to his own front door. He had, after all, failed to call them before the end of the festival.

He hadn't made plans with one of his friends to call them and say he was going to spend the night. He had no idea what it was that made them fall asleep when normally they would have still been freaking out. They would have easily been wide awake and waiting, maybe even coordinating teams for a search.

He shook his head and then tipped his head further up, running a hand through his hair even as he stared at the ceiling. One of his friends had to have covered for him. He breathed out roughly and nearly laughed at himself. Oh, thank the gods he had such good friends.

As he got to his feet again the idea was almost enough to make him sink to his knees on the stairs. He wanted almost to curl up there and close his eyes and sleep for hours. The relief made him warm all over, but it also chilled him to the bone somehow. Yugi had treated them so badly recently and they were proving to him just how gray they truly were in all actuality.

He closed his eyes again and then forced himself to shut the door behind him and start towards the upper staircase door. He stepped as lightly as he possibly could, applying his weight in small increments to keep the noise down. Several of the steps tended to creak loudly in certain areas, and navigation could take large amounts of concentration to allow someone to sneak around undetected.

His stomach growled as he stepped onto the final stair and started towards the kitchen. Immediately he paused, eyes widening drastically, and his mouth opened in shock as he looked over his shoulder towards the rooms behind him. He swallowed hard, watching the door and clenching his jaw for a brief moment before sighing softly and hoping the tension would leave his body.

His stomach gurgled, bubbling with hunger, and his mouth grew drier as he swallowed roughly and began to make his way into the kitchen finally. Small pangs rose from the bottom, sloshing towards the top in violent bubbles that burst with enough pain to make him flinch backwards. They pushed upwards and then back, alternating with enough force that he nearly stumbled.

Was this how the other had felt the entire time?

He had to have been staring just as much as Yugi was now—maybe even more so, at any rate. He frowned uncomfortably, narrowing his eyes into slits, and chewed his lip until blood filled his mouth.

Did lycanthropy make someone this hungry? He could never recall ever having had such a large appetite before. Or was it possible that his metabolism was simply acting up after the stress of the entire situation? Panic, he knew, took up a lot of energy, so he was not oblivious that it could be the cause of his sudden ravenousness.

Despite this thought, he was not so oblivious that he was deterred from the idea that either of them could walk out of their room at any moment and spot him. He halted in front of the fridge, swallowing hard before spinning on his heel and making a run for his room once more.

He did not so much as pause to shut the door as he began to hurry about stripping out of his clothes. The gray shirt he had been wearing was completely soaked down the front in a mass amount of blood. He shuddered, staring blankly at the blood-soaked fibers and feeling his head ring faintly as he blinked slowly.

He would end up either getting rid of it or washing it himself and trying to spend some time getting the blood out of it. He dropped his jeans quickly, hissing in pain as he breathed in roughly at the sensation of the fabrics scraping at his skin. There were no cuts, but it still made his flesh feel as if it were on fire as he blinked and looked at the two articles of clothing on the floor.

He snatched them up immediately, fear making his spine tighten for a moment, and then headed over to the hamper. He dug his way to the bottom of the pile he had accumulated, trembling with relief that he could cover them nicely without throwing in clean clothes.

He dropped the lid back and leaned against the wall for a moment, closing his eyes tightly as he relished in the beautiful chill the plaster offered him. He settled minutes later into an entirely different outfit, falling back against his mattress with a relieved sigh. His mom and grandpa were still fast asleep even as he blinked lazily up towards the ceiling and sighed softly again.

He sat up minutes later, looking over his new outfit of dark royal blue jeans and a black sweater with a small gray vest over it. Exhausted, the small teen leaned forward, contemplating his reflection in the body-length mirror, and narrowed his eyes as he took in his appearance. He definitely needed a shower—and he would do it before his mom or grandpa got the chance to see him—but it was relieving to be able to say to himself _truthfully_ that he did not look like something that had been dragged through the mud for days on end.

But he made the mistake of tilting his head and looking towards his neck.

The wound was hideous enough that he nearly flinched back at the sight of it. It was not bleeding, thank the gods, but the severity of it was not shielded by the new growth of skin that had already mended together once more.

If he was ever squeamish he would have puked the moment he had looked upon it. He didn't even know if it was really the sight of it that was so terrible or the fact that it should have killed him that made it so horrible to see.

How had the other boy even managed to draw enough nerve to keep looking at it, let alone _licking_ it in order to stimulate healing? He thought he might have fled rather than attempting to stay around so long.

He let his eyes slip over to the corner of his mirror and then looked into the further part of the reflective glass to take in the end of the closet. He hardly went in there unless it was absolutely necessary. His most often worn outfit was the school uniform, because he was there six days out of the week and because normally after school they went to the arcade.

On those days there was no reason for him to change clothes, as going home would take too long. If he helped with a surgery he was put in the medical scrubs and normally just threw on a pair of clothes he didn't really care for beneath them. The closet was really just used for the rare outfit he used to impress someone when his mom deemed it necessary for whatever reason.

And, hanging there in plain sight, as he had hoped, was the small, thin-looking scarf it was the only one he wore, deep black with a material almost like yarn but fuzzier. He wore it in the winter on colder days because it retained much more body heat than most would assume it could.

He snatched it, nearly taking the hunger with it, and wrapped it several times around his neck. The image in the mirror made his skin crawl for a moment but he shrugged it aside in order to make sure that none of his neck was visible beneath it. He would need to find a choker later instead, so that it didn't look as suspicious as it might if he walked around with it on at all times.

His mom would eventually turn on the heat and he'd have to take it off to avoid sweating buckets later. With that fact aside, however, it looked ridiculous either way. He had to wrap it around his neck more than four times to keep every bit of skin covered. He realized he could see a thin choker and cover the majority of the wound later, but for the moment, this would have to do.

Twenty minutes after the shower he took followed by digging through his drawers in search of a thinner choker that he might wear that wouldn't seem foolish in comparison to his outfit, the scarf was caught in a forkful of salad. It tugged and slid from where it had once been firm around his neck. He groaned and reached up, undoing it and listening hard for any sign that they were waking up, and then grit his teeth in frustration. As he went about tugging it out of the teeth of the fork and making his way to his room once more to make sure he still covered it, something caught his attention.

Dread crept through him with an icy touch like a snake slithering through his veins. His bones caught and held the tension that sprang within them. The skin along his neck tingled and burned, itching as the fabric rubbed against it. He tugged it away, horrified, and dropped it to the ground as he took a few tentative steps towards the mirror. He was frozen before the glass, eyes wide and mouth falling open into a small circle as he breathed in deeply.

The skin was shifting and molding. The flesh had grown bright red, irritated and flashing as if in protest, and his body froze in place once more. He shuddered, reaching up to touch the surface there, and heat surged through his fingers with such intensity he yelped and sprang backwards.

He dropped his hand away, hissing and shaking it out as he stared stupidly at his reflection. The heat swallowed the very nerve endings of his neck, tingling with such intensity that made him feel as if he had burned himself. He bit back a loud whimper, reaching up to bite his hand as violently as he dared, feeling dizzy and small as he continued looking.

The flesh, as red as it was, was slowly but steadily mending itself. A small stripe of white where the initial cut had been made was fading into a creamier color, almost the shade of his tone of skin. His head swam, staring at it blankly, and the harsh line of the wound seemed to be shrinking in its very size, even with the wound sealed as it was.

Watching this happen before his own eyes, he wished he could hide beneath a rock somewhere. He wanted nothing more than to have the earth swallow him whole so that he could hide away altogether. The reality of the entire situation bit at him so harshly that he felt he might rather die than have to deal with it all.

As the heat faded from his skin, he realized with horror that the entire thing seemed to have healed completely. He reached up, clawed at his skin, leaving long lines of bright pink that bordered a furious red, and looked for any outline he might find there. But, as the seconds passed and his diameter of inspection changed and increased to the whole of his neck, he realized it was gone.

The tissue when should have scarred, which should have been so hideous as to make one looking upon it sob in despair, was absolutely gone. Any hint of its existence had been wiped clean.

He laughed, a watery noise in his rising hysteria, and for a moment his eyes stung violently.

* * *

It was while he sat in the living room, watching a drama about hospitals, that he realized what it was that had altered his healing in the woods. The doctor had mentioned something about health, how it would kill the man if he continued eating cheeseburgers as he wanted. He had said something about cardiac arrest and clogged arteries and, as if summoned forth by the words, his mind had supplied the answer.

He had vomited before the Change had begun. And what he had been eating had been nothing that would have helped his health in the grand scheme of things. He took into account the fact that he had grown so stressed beforehand that he had not been eating enough as it was. When the festival had come about, the lack of substance had already begun to take its toll on him.

Within moments of the Change coming around, his body had been forced to buckle beneath the weight of it all. If not for the wolf, he would have unwittingly signed his own death wish. He would have bled out instead of having his skin pull itself together to reverse the wound as it lost its jagged edges of torn, serrated flesh.

The persistence the other wolf had bestowed upon healing him had been the only thing to save him. If he had slackened even slightly in his determination to heal his wound for him, he would have been the third body to be found in the woods.

 **Okay, so now that we all know it's Yami (which I'm like nine hundred percent everyone already knew that), the reason he's not being named at any point or introducing himself to Yugi at the moment is actually a huge plot point later in the story. So there's a reason for him not being called by name as of yet.**

 **I'm hoping not to have anyone too confused playing the pronoun game later, but if it does get confusing, tell me and I'll go back and edit and work on it again to clear it up some more.**


	12. Theories

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day (no update on June 2nd)**

 **Chapter Warnings: Mentions of Blood, Blood Clotting Test, Mentions of Death, the boys being pervs**

 **I know I said Sunday and that obviously didn't happen. The reason for that is I decided instead of just getting one chapter done and having it posted, I would go ahead and try to get a jump on the others and get back on schedule (cause that's been driving me NUTS). I managed to get thirteen typed up and I'm working on fourteen and hopefully I'll get the next few out on time as well. I should be able to get a good amount of them typed up since I've got another two days off in a row on Tuesday and Wednesday too. So, wish me luck.**

 **Anyways, so next chapter is going to be considerably smaller than this one. There is going to be a little bit of a uncomfortable subject in the thirteen. I'm warning now cause I don't want anyone to be surprised by it.**

 **There is a reference to the show _Friends_. I don't own that either.**

Chapter XII: Theories

 _Work Log Entry XII: July, 1996_

 _[Date Unidentified]_

 _She has given birth to six healthy pups. Each of them has shown amounts of muscle mass undocumented formerly amongst wolves. All of their vital systems are level and stable with no signs of sickness or transgression._

 _Her health has remained stable but we shall monitor each of them persistently to ensure that none of our prizes are for naught._

 _[Date Unidentified]_

 _The show of health was nothing but a false start. She has declined rapidly in the days following her pups' births._

 _And now three of her pups have grown ill and passed through the night._

 _We believe that, due to her genes being altered so significantly to produce these pups, that giving birth may be the last thing she shall ever do._

 _[Date unidentified]_

 _Only one of the pups has survived. The others have all perished._

 _Efforts to restore the she-wolf's health have failed dramatically. There is no foreseeable solution to the illness that has overcome her._

"Hello?"

"Anzu," he breathed, unable to fight back the relief that flooded his voice as he blinked and gripped the phone a little tighter. His fingers were trembling, weakened with his gratitude that she had even bothered to answer his call. He would never have blamed her if she'd decided she would rather not speak to him.

"Yugi! Are you okay? What happened to you last night?"

He hesitated for a moment and, just as great as it had been, the relief fled him with a new sense of speed that made him dizzy. He stepped forward, rocking back and forth on his feet for a split second, and breathed out so quietly he could not even hear it himself. He should have prepared himself before he had chosen to call her like this. He rolled his eyes towards the sky, rocking back and forth once more before biting his lip as he struggled to think of something he could say.

"Yugi?"

"Hmm? Yeah, I'm here," he muttered, voice sounding somewhat small before he cleared his throat and took a seat on the bench. He'd been sure to leave the house before he made the call, unwilling to let his family hear it in the meantime. "And I'm okay. I just didn't feel well. I…I shouldn't have gone in the first place, Anzu. I felt like I was going to throw up the whole time. I…I'm sorry for running off like that."

"Why didn't you just tell us you weren't feeling well?"

"Because I didn't want you guys to be disappointed," the small teen murmured, wincing at the clear desperation that colored his tone. He reached up to run a hand through his hair, bringing his fingers to his mouth immediately after and nibbling on a nail in an effort to collect his thoughts further. "And I'd been acting so weird lately. I just…I didn't want you guys to think I didn't want to hang out or something…"

"You know we would have understood if you said you didn't feel well."

Would _you have_? Yugi thought, the words making their way up his throat but folding on his tongue as he pressed it against the roof of his mouth. He would not ask that. Beyond how rude it would be to put into words, he also knew that she would grow defensive. And, if she did, then he would have no true chance of smoothing things over. As manipulative as it was, he knew the dynamics of the group well enough to recognize that she was his key supporter. If she was infuriated with him and mentioned it to the other two, that would give them _all_ reason to ignore his efforts to rejoin them. Beyond that, she did not deserve to be snapped at as if she had done something wrong and, no matter how he phrased it, it would come out nasty and condescending and he wouldn't allow that to happen. "I know. I do. I just…I don't know. I just felt bad for all the crap that's been going on and—"

"That's not your fault," she cut in immediately.

No? He wanted to laugh suddenly, feeling sick to his stomach once again as his head spun. It sounded so nice to hear but the words were so hollow as they processed in his mind that he could not fully understand them. He shook his head and again ran his hand through his hair, desperate to think of something— _anything_ —else.

But Valon's voice was already replaying in his ears. He was infuriated, as if Yugi's very existence was a betrayal of such magnitude it shook him to his very core.

"If you're here all it means is death for the rest of us. Bloodshed. War."

He stayed silent, narrowing his eyes and slowly pulling his mouth into a grimace, teeth digging into his lip. His lungs felt tight, constricted, and he swallowed hard as he wondered if his voice might crack should he try to give it life. He blinked, looking up at the sky and the blankness of the gray clouds that were still scattered about. For a long minute he refused to speak, his mouth curling further downwards as he bit into his lip with enough force to break skin. "Yeah, I know," he muttered softly, blinking at the glare the sky cast and reaching up to run a hand through his hair again.

It took him a moment to realize that he had left her an opening for argument. He knew and recognized it in the way that she hesitated for a moment. Immediately, bristling, he felt blood fill his mouth as he rushed to interrupt her thoughts. "Thanks for covering for me yesterday. I know I really freaked you out and I doubt it was an easy thing to do considering it all."

"No, it definitely wasn't, but you're my best friend. Of course I was going to cover for you if you needed it," she replied with a tone he thought sounded condescending and stern all at once. The change of direction in the conversation was certainly nothing that pleased her, as she made clear with clipped words, and a burst of pure anger shot through him. The small teen bit back a furious snarl, mindless in his mounting frustration, and barely resisted the urge to leap to his feet and pace about the small park. He drew in a deep breath, clenching his eyes shut, and ran his hand through his hair once more. Somewhere in the back of his mind was a clear and almost visible disconnection, as if there was somehow a piece of him drifting, his concentration foggy and beginning to pull away completely.

"What happened to you, Yugi?" she asked quietly, voice so soft that he did not catch the words. For a split second his mind continued to drift, as if set upon dismissing the conversation altogether, and then it slowly began to interpret what had formerly been a mere loosely-strung formation of words in his ears.

"I fainted in the woods."

It was not too much of a lie that he felt so immensely guilt as to want to blurt out the truth regardless of his personal need to fib. He knew that he had fainted during the Change, pushed to his limits and beyond so that the fatigue swept him away like a blistering wind. The edges of his memory were still tainted black, where his body had turned into that of the canine's form as well as the moment the other had begun to nurse his wounds.

"Oh my god," Anzu gasped sharply on the other end. He blinked, sitting up a little straighter in surprise at the alarm that colored her tone. "I _knew_ we should have gone after you—"

"No!" Yugi blurted out violently, voice taking on such a hideous bark of an edge that he flinched and could almost hear it as she recoiled in shock. He hesitated, taking a deep breath, and tugged harshly on his bangs in his mounting frustration. "I…No, it was better that you didn't. I…I wouldn't have wanted you all so freaked out like that. I mean—you didn't need that much more stress. It wasn't…"

He cringed and shook his head after a moment. He might as well have put a question mark at the end of his words for all the power they held. He rubbed at his left temple, biting back a harsh sigh of discontentment. For the briefest of seconds he thought perhaps the other wolf might show himself there.

His body felt small and weak, his mind burning with intense pain. If the other showed himself, even with his suffocating silence, Yugi found himself happy beyond belief. He needed someone who knew this new reality of his, and who would never say that he was not meant to exist.

"Yugi…"

"I'm okay though. I just…I fainted but I'm okay now." He shook his head at himself once more, rolling his eyes upwards again and licking his swelling bottom lip to soothe some of the ache there. Why had he phrased it so pathetically? He could not fight away the jumpiness which plagued him, desperation making his tongue feel as swollen as his lip. He shook his head again, more slowly than ever, and tipped his head slowly towards the sky. "Besides, there wasn't anything any of you could have done, Anzu. I was out cold the entire night. I don't even know how I managed to get so far into the woods before I lost consciousness."

He almost smacked the heel of his palm against his forehead. Saying that to a concerned friend was hardly the right choice. He frowned and returned his fingers to his mouth, chewing on his nails uncomfortably. The conversation was almost like nothing more than a drifting background thought as he swallowed roughly.

There was a growing desperation beneath his skin, demanding satiation by the presence of the other wolf, eager for the next time they crossed paths. He needed to see him again, have him as some kind of support, no matter how small.

"Yugi…"

The way she sighed his name so softly made him flinch back for a brief moment. He curled his lip, pressing his tongue against the blood that coated the throbbing skin painfully. It was obvious that she did not believe him in any way, that no matter how colorfully he twisted his words it would not truly bridge the gap that was already rapidly forming between them. There was no means for which he could defend himself against her apparent suspicion and frustration. But he realized, somewhere in the back of his mind, that it was better to strike out then, at that moment, rather than later.

"I have to go," she muttered in a voice that made him feel sick to his stomach. Her words seemed to catch in his ears and he bit his finger hard enough that he almost thought the nail might shatter between his teeth.

She sounded almost as if he she had been defeated somehow, as if maybe she were losing her will to fight with him. The idea made him reel, as if she were pulling away from him completely and swiftly, making it clear that he had no chance to fix the problem.

"Okay," he breathed out, voice quivering at the edge of the words as he bit his lip again. "We'll talk later?"

Yugi did not think that he could sound anymore desperate if she was dying in his arms and he was begging her not to. He rolled his eyes up again, almost disgusted with himself, and nearly swallowed his tongue in an effort to keep from snarling angrily.

"Yeah, we'll talk later."

He knew the soft tone was meant to be a gentle reassurance, but, as it rattled within his eardrums, he was wrapped with intense dread. They would not be talking again later, and that very idea was nothing more than a mere mockery to the brunette. He flinched as if bitten by a bug and swallowed roughly as it began to fade quickly.

Despite himself, the smaller teen was amazed as he put the phone away into his jacket pocket and looked around for a moment. The blood on his tongue seemed to glue it to the roof of his mouth, making it almost impossible to think past the very strong realization that made up the focal point of his thoughts.

His friends were the best that could ever be offered someone. They still supported him with what seemed like so little reason. He doubted in their place that he would have done the same. It seemed so weak and plain the relationships that existed between them each, as if held together by such a small thread it might break any moment. There was not a single thought of which he could pull forth concerning them all that could bear testament to their loyalty at that moment.

He closed his eyes, discomforted by the fact, and bit into his fingernail harder. There was not a single recollection he came across that gave him the idea that he deserved them by any means.

* * *

The lights were still on in the upper corner of the small building. In the darkness they looked like bright beacons, beckoning forward any unfortunate enough to gaze upon it. The glimpse of it through the trees as the large canine continued a restless pace forward caused it to halt, head turning and muzzle tipping upwards as it regarded it momentarily. The branches overhead did nothing to shelter its sharp eyes from the sight of the window's uneven array of light where it stretched outwards amongst the shadows. None of the jagged, skeletal branches blocked the beams and his fur bristled slightly in distress at the way the yellow seemed to dance and then flicker for a brief moment.

Beyond the room, the entire building was thrust into blackness, almost with an accompanying silence to make one's ears ring uncomfortably. The walls were discolored and painted a shade brighter than usual, touched by the replaced streetlight that sat on the corner nearby. The ragged and chipped layer of paint gave an appearance akin something darker and jagged, like hideous claw marks against the contours of the grooved wood. Even with the distance of the wood and the tree line and the darkness to falter another's vision, there was no pause or need for analysis in its keen eyes.

Its ears flickered back and then forth, listening with such acuteness as to drown away everything around them, but the noise they attempted to focus on. Sure enough, slowly and rather hesitantly, as if the boy were trying to be silent, came the soft sound it desired. The boy's weight was slighter than average, the canine had come to realize, but in no such way as to be claimed unhealthy.

Though he had struggled to heal on his own, his body failing to mend its hideous wound or allow him room to breathe, the boy was not wholly unhealthy and, from what it could hear, he had recovered rather well. There was no strain on the lungs as he breathed in and then exhaled softly or the way his heart continued its strong, gentle steady pulse.

The wolf blinked once, focus kept on the window and thus the boy who had appeared in the frame of glass. He tilted its head to the left, peripheral locked on the door. Its fur rose and then fell again but the jerk of movement did nothing to make it pause as it continued its silent study. If the boy was fully recovered by the time of the next full moon, when he changed, there would be no reason for any further worry.

He seemed as if he might survive the toll of it, even with such a terrible start, but an extra precaution was nothing that should have been overlooked at any point. The law of survival for the lycanthrope was to take advantage of as many things as possible, to make the world its own when necessary, to mold things into its own making. Kills were stolen, battles chosen with care, and secrecy was used as the ultimate means of camouflage.

A small sound in the trees, the stirring of something amongst the dying undergrowth, made its head turn. The movement was so sharp and out of character that it visibly caught the attention of the boy in the window, it realized without taking full notice of such an instance. Fur rising into a bristle once more, head raised, lips drawn back, ears pricked forward, its tail came up and shoulders rose in preparation. If it was a threat, it would not be for long.

The hunger sated, the canine was easily far more powerful and dangerous than any other animal it might run across, and as it waited, it sensed the sudden hesitance and fear the other possessed. The animal moving the darkness halted altogether and then, as if listening for the lycanthrope and failing to hear it but unable to calm its nerves, it took off swiftly.

The wolf lowered its tail immediately, fur falling flat, and eased the tension from its immense muscles as it blinked and peered into the dark. On another night, it might have cared enough to scent the air and find out what it was that it had startled, but now it merely turned away. The first step it took was halted immediately and its head snapped back towards the small building, startled but fully aware of what was happening in the moment.

The lights had turned on in the narrow doorway, and the sound of soft footsteps echoed in his ears again. A soft scraping and tapping noise announced that the boy had missed the doorknob on his first attempt. A gentle swear word left his mouth, so soft the wolf nearly missed it.

In the shadows and beneath the trees, the wolf was comfortable enough to lower its haunches to the hardened ground and watch. The light flickered for a brief second and then the door cracked and the beam of its yellowed touch made the wolf's ear flick in acknowledgment.

"You still out here?"

For a moment the canine thought to turn and trot off into the dark but, as if held in place by some spell, merely leaned forward and let out a loud huff. The noise made the boy startle but the light from the streetlamp illuminating his face made his relief apparent, bathed in soft gossamer incandescence. The boy's bangs flashed briefly with the touch of light and the way the shadows played on his face due to them as he started a slow walk forward had something of an effect like moonlight against the surface of water. He looked smaller than before, but it could have been the baggier clothing he now wore upon his pale skin that made him seem as such.

"I wasn't expecting to see you again today."

The wolf snorted and shifted its body just enough to give him more of a visual direction. The movement made his head snap around and the moment his eyes locked on the canine, he found himself frozen and nearly breathless. Against the trees, the massive canine seemed to blend seamlessly, and if not for the light from his own house, he knew he would have easily missed it.

The trees cast a deeper pitch black array of color that made it trace the immense frame there. But, as it leaned forward, the skin of its nose, calloused and twitching, was bathed in something of a golden and silver light. It almost looked as if it resided in both the cold moonbeams and the harshness the man-made illumination. Its long, broad muzzle was deeper in angle than he had noticed before, with the bridge of it fading into the stops of its sharp eyes. The orbs danced and glittered with the reflection of light but with their own gleam of bright and beautiful yet hideous red like sunbeams through a stained glass rose.

"What are you doing out here?" he finally mumbled, unsure of what else to say, nor if there was anything he truly could without sounding entirely childish and stupid. He swallowed hard, wondering why it was the lycanthrope might have come so far towards the edge of the trees when, just hours before, it had fled so angrily.

Yugi blinked and glanced over his shoulders before crouching down, unwilling to go all the way to the other side of the street. If nothing else, the expression of disdain from that morning had taught him to exercise caution as he should have always been doing.

It was funny how having one's life saved could blur the lines of reasonable caution and suspicion to nothing more than something like drifting instinct and reminders and a rather large willingness to trust another.

The wolf did not look even slightly surprised by this new development and, if he was truthful with himself, he thought maybe he even seemed relieved. The mouth opened faintly and the bottom incisors glittered like dewdrops beneath sunlight as it breathed out gently, a gust of crystallized air coming forward. He watched for a moment until they faded, as the lights illuminated it and bathed it like silken gold spun within the center of a flame. Each flicker of yellow was edged with a sparkle of white, glittering abundantly and blurring into the next touch of color it could find.

Staring at each other, the canine tilted his head and his ears flicked to the side, a move so pointed that Yugi could never have confused its meaning. He was giving him a very clear indication that he was walking through and heading back towards the mountains, though the small teen still wondered why he might have been there in the first place.

Why show up in the city like this again if he was merely going to flee into the woods once more? Had he hunted something down from the trees into the city limits and thus eaten and planned to travel back? Or was it something else entirely?

Disgusted with himself, the first idea that came to mind was that of Ushio. He shuddered, horrified once more by the image as it filled his brain, and shook his head slightly as he looked at the other. The lycanthrope shifted forward only slightly, but the way it seemed so effortless and its body blended with the darkness, Yugi flinched back and immediately grimaced. His movement startled the canine into jumping to its paws, almost as if it was recoiling from his reaction, and then its head turned again towards the trees.

Its eyes flickered and glowed even though its movements had blocked away any hint of the light from behind him flooding the doorway. They shimmered almost like mist, glossy and beautiful like melted gold rimmed bright and terrific red, the pupils nearly all but nonexistent. When its head turned briefly towards him as if in consideration, the color splashed with something like glittering silver, turning flat and reflective like a cat's when light was displayed within its depths.

They gave off an orange-rimmed flicker like embers, Yugi realized, almost tempted to lean forward in surprise, but the effect was lost again almost immediately as they seemed to turn bright red instead. He opened and closed his mouth once before smiling faintly, curious and unable to stop himself from feeling almost hypnotized by the way the color danced there.

Then, slowly, head turning off towards his door for a moment, the canine took a small and somehow graceful step back. Beneath the branches, he blended so well it was almost as if he were one of the trees' many shadows, seamlessly fitted amongst them even with the glow of its powerful eyes. He could no longer make out the frame of its profile, flustered by the way it seemed to have no need for him and so turned abruptly away. It took him a moment of staring at the animal as it began to trot away to realize that he, in a way, had just been given an answer and a gift all wrapped in one.

The wolf had chosen to travel in its fur, but it had not been forced to change.

Yugi had barely noticed that the sun had gone down, let alone that the night had claimed the sky. When he raised his head, straightening to his full height, the moon still appeared full, lending the clouds a beautiful gloss, but the right side had the smallest of slivers which unbalanced it. The fact that it was not completely full had to have been the reason he was not forced to his knees, puking and listening involuntarily to his bones breaking and his body changing shape.

He blinked after a moment, glancing over his shoulder, and thanked the gods that the full moon was only one night a month and not three or seven. A hand ran through his hair, shaky and weak, and he breathed out a sigh of relief as he began to make his way back to the door. A single look over his shoulder granted him the sight of red eyes peering back at him further down the road, nearly invisible, and he was tempted to call out again.

Yugi was not sure what he might say, maybe ask him to change back, or if he was hungry, where he was going, if he was often in the city, but all of the words died in his lungs. It wasn't worth bothering the large canine a second time. And it was so far along, about to bound away, he knew, and he didn't care to try another attempt at a one-sided conversation.

* * *

"Yugi!"

He spun, jerking in response to his name, and for a moment he thought his body seemed unnaturally spry with such an action. It was so sudden and swift that he was almost surprised that he could move so quickly and the sensation made his stomach twist for a brief second. He blinked, watching as the familiar brunette made her way quickly towards him, moving between the students with all the grace of a dancer. For a moment he wanted to watch her, almost tempted to tip his head to the side and study her legs, but found himself nearly blushing at this new train of thought.

"Hi, what's up?"

Yugi was thankful that his voice didn't squeak and nearly rolled his eyes upwards in frustration at himself. He wasn't entirely sure where it was this direction of thought had come from. In all reality, aside from the occasional thought of how her legs might look wrapped around his hips or her lips swollen and her hair in disarray, he had never truly considered much more.

He had never even once thought to watch her unless her back was to him and he could make a quick getaway while staring at her hips or the sway of her skirt as she walked away. Otherwise it just seemed wrong and strange, though wholly natural, as he didn't want her to become just a body to think about and picture himself with.

That was what those stupid videos were for. He nearly reached up to sweep his hand through his hair, flustered with his new thoughts. It made his skin crawl briefly, but he shook it off as swiftly as possible, pausing only momentarily.

"I…" Anzu reached up to play with her hair, tucking a strand behind her ear, and the smaller boy blinked at her curiously. He was still a head shorter than her, something that sometimes irritated him, but, seeing as it had been two years like this, he hardly thought of it anymore.

Now, however, his height was something cold and sharp which punctured his thoughts. There was something odd in the fact that she was so much taller than him, in the idea that maybe she was sprier and more powerful as well. He was somehow ashamed to think of this as they stood in front of each other but there was nothing else that seemed to occupy his mind.

It took him a moment to recognize another thing that slowly trickled through these thoughts. Her voice, though she had only said a single word, had come out oddly strained and awkward, tense with nerves. He blinked, surprised as it crossed his mind fully, and wondered if perhaps she was responding to his own disgruntled state.

He knew he looked rather normal, much better than he had the last couple of days—and especially at the festival—but he also knew he appeared exhausted as well. While the color had returned to his face and blue-violet gaze with vivid brushstrokes, the bags had grown deep, almost purple and black as if married by bruises.

For a moment he thought of his reflection that morning, the way he had seemed the picture of health despite the incident the day before. In the pale morning light the color had returned, and his eyes seemed almost to sparkle and dance. But the way the sunbeams bounced on them made his head spin, and, immediately, he had thought of those brilliant, sharp red eyes. He had pictured the large black wolf, the stunning red gaze from the night before, the way the teenage boy watched him keenly and with a lazy smile of amusement.

"What's up?" he coaxed, blinking to shed the image of his sharp eyes and the long lashes that framed them. For a moment his mind was caught on the glint they'd possessed, the way that, when he had laughed at him silently, his canines had been sharp and prominent.

Nothing about him had seemed dangerous, only somehow mesmerizing, to the point that it was troubling. Would he turn out that way as well? Unnaturally beautiful, with intelligence that made one's heart pound and their bodies quiver as prey animal would before its predator?

"I, uh, I was actually wondering if, um…maybe you would like to go with me to the…the arcade later?" Anzu asked, and he watched her tongue flicker outwards to wet her lips and his heart skipped a beat. For a moment, he thought of what it might feel like to have that same muscle in his mouth and bit his tongue harshly to keep from speaking. Her voice was so nervous, however, with a little tremor to its undertone, that it managed effectively to knock away any hint of desire he retained after she spoke.

He hesitated, unsure for a moment, as to whether or not his interpretation of the words was correct. He blinked, staring at her, and that brief moment of silence between them was enough to effectively rattle her. She began to play with the ends of her hair, which—he noticed as an afterthought—had been curled slightly inwards, and her eyes lowered. For a moment he thought she was looking at her hair and then realized that she was purposefully staring at the wall over his shoulder.

 _Fuck_ …

"Sure!" he answered quickly, blinking and then cringing at the desperation and volume of his own voice. Of course he would sound overeager when her tone had come across mostly casual. "I…I'd love to—I—when do you want to meet up?"

She let out a low, soft nervous giggle that made him blink in surprise. "How about after school?" she asked quietly, voice a tremor away from shaking with apparent relief. "Maybe an hour after?"

"An hour after school sounds great!" _That gives me just enough time to get home, jump in the shower, check the paper and see if there's any news about the two wolves and then meet up with her_ , he thought with a small grin. "You want to meet there?"

"Actually, I wanted to talk to your mom about Peaches' stomachache so I could meet you at the clinic instead…?"

For a moment the name meant nothing to him. He blinked, mystified by the development of another person in their conversation, and then abruptly remembered. Peaches was her bunny, who had apparently become bloated the other day. She had asked him for help, though he had been unable to do anything seeing as he was mostly interested in canines and felines. He had managed to get hold of his mom while she was at the other clinic, but he'd been lacking some details and no appointment had been made.

"Oh, yeah, okay, let's do that then," he agreed immediately, growing somewhat fearful that should he not agree quickly enough she might withdraw the invitation. She leaned forward suddenly, kissing him swiftly on the cheek before making her way down the hall. He blinked, startled, and his cheeks grew hot with satisfaction towards such a tiny display of affection.

"Dude, _congratulations_!" Jonouchi crowed, clapping him on the back so hard that he stumbled forward a step and nearly tumbled over. Somehow, his feet righted themselves, however, so abruptly that he nearly questioned if he had even almost fallen. The sensation had lasted but a fraction of a second but it seemed to pass in hours for him. He spun around, startled but grinning, but stared up at his best friend in amusement. "About time you finally asked her!"

He opened his mouth to reply, but Honda beat him to it, snickering, "You don't listen very well, _do_ you, Jonouchi? _She_ just asked _him_. Nice try, though. You owe me fifty bucks."

The blond cringed and shot him a dirty look before wrapping his arm around Yugi's shoulders and drawing him into his side. His other hand quickly ruffled his hair, rapidly moving it back and forth as he smirked widely. "We don't mention that in front of our best buddy! He is _finally_ going to become a man!" he announced, dragging his friend forward several steps. "He'll finally know what it's like to be able to—"

"I don't think Anzu is _quite_ that easy," the brunet snorted, smirking. Yugi flushed harder, unaware that he had been doing so beforehand, and pursed his lips faintly. He blinked stupidly, feeling his cheeks tingle and burn, and ignored the way they both burst into laughter at the sight of his face. "Poor Yugi, he's going to have to wait another two years before she'll give it up."

"Or until marriage—she's all about that girly romance stuff."

" _Guys_!"

"Dude, don't discourage him! He'll begin to lose faith in women altogether!"

"He's had a crush on the same girl for the last two years—there's no way he'll 'lose faith'. If he didn't lose faith when she was oozing over that guy in middle school, he won't now either."

Honda gave him an annoyed look on Yugi's behalf, shaking his head when he saw the smallest of their trio frown at the mention of those _long_ months. "You _do_ realize you're not supposed to mention that kind of crap on the day your best friend gets his first girlfriend—and with his lifelong crush, right?"

"Um… _Lifelong?_ " Yugi objected, blushing when they both arched thin brows at him. He shook his head and frowned faintly. "No, that's actually Jennifer Aniston— _she's_ my lifelong crush."

" _Dude_ I knew you were just a little too happy watching that show!" the blond guffawed. "Now we know why!"

"Oh shit, I thought you had the hots for the brunette but you were into blondes the whole time!"

"She's gorgeous—and looks _fine as fuck_."

"Anzu's got competition!"

"Hell yeah, she does!"

"You'll have to forget about Jennifer when you're with Anzu though."

"No, because we'll have _the list_. The one where we can sleep with those ten people and not get reprimanded for it because they're famous and it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," he declared, smirking and raising his chin a little higher. "And she'll have Johnny Depp as her first one."

"Wait, Johnny Depp, seriously?"

"Wait, how do you know?"

"Because she has a thing for his accent and every single one of the characters he's played in those movies. She's totally head over heels for him."

"It's…so weird that you know that."

"Not really. You forget that she tells me almost _everything_."

Honda rolled his eyes and started walking, the other two quickly following suit. "Who else is on your list then, Yugi?"

"Megan Fox," he grumbled with a shrug. "And Alison Hannigan. I would _pay money_ for Eliza Dushku. Her voice is fucking _sexy_. Imagine her saying something around moaning and—"

" _Fuck_ , stop," Jonouchi begged, practically panting with pleasure at the idea as Yugi snickered and smirked at Honda. The brunet rolled his eyes upwards and shook his head. "You can't talk like that _in public_! That's something you save for at home…while watching videos…and imagining other people and—"

"You've just made it so much worse for yourself!" he guffawed, slipping out of his grip and racing into his homeroom as the other two hurried after him. Both taller teens huffed, snickering at him as he quickly claimed his seat and hooked his backpack on the narrow hook on the back of the chair.

"I'm going to get you back for that later," Jonouhi hissed at him as he took his seat beside him, scowling and narrowing his eyes. He shook his head when Yugi grinned at him playfully and raised a brow in open amusement. Honda rolled his eyes from where he took his seat on the other side of the brunette. "You mark my words, Yugi."

"I'm _quivering_ ," he snorted, smirking as he looked back towards his bag to pull his notebook and a pencil from the pockets. "I'll be sure to watch my back all day and night, Jonouchi, just for that special moment when you decide to 'make me pay'."

"Someone's being a smartass," Honda sang, snickering when the blond shot him a nasty look and the smaller teen merely winked at him. There wasn't much that the blond could actually do, he realized, with his heightened senses in play. If he wanted to, he would hear him before he could even think to come up with a better strategy and he would turn it around on him immediately. The idea made him grin but the reason behind it caused it to fall away.

Yugi tilted his head towards them for a moment, thinking for a second whether or not he could possibly say something of that magnitude. It didn't matter that it was in a public place, just that they actually believed him. But he had no proof unless they waited until the full moon to watch him change, and _that_ seemed like such a disgusting thing that he would never allow them to behold it. All of the puking and the blood spill was nothing he would ever want to expose them or anyone else to.

And what more was there to do?

Say he was a werewolf and hope they didn't think he was insane?

He lowered his head, grabbing the pencil firmly between his fingers and flipping it several times. There was only so much he could let them in on with this as a new denominator in his life. There would be no more festivals on the full moon or running around on those nights of the months. He wouldn't have an explanation as to why he couldn't be around them then, and someone was bound to notice and take note of the frequency of every full moon. So, how was it that he was supposed to hide it?

He could only think fully of isolation, cutting himself off from them completely at some point. He would have to start out slowly and then work it up to more frequent absences, until it was eventually no longer a question. And that thought disgusted him more than he considered even the Change did.

Here he was, sitting here, thinking about how he should ditch his friends instead of tell them a secret like this. But, in the question of his sanity or his lifestyle, he had no choice when it came down to it. He swallowed hard, focusing fully on the pencil in his hand, and wished for a moment that there was a way to erase mistakes in life. If only there was so that he could simply draw upon it as needed when things got rough…

He could erase the entire disease and never have had a reason to have that run-in with Ushio, because the former student wouldn't be waiting for him. Because he wouldn't have locked eyes with him and looked away. He would never have been looked at that group. Maybe Kokurano would still be alive as well. And then Tomoya, too…

* * *

"You know, not all deaths appear in obituaries," Kasumi commented suddenly, startling Yugi so violently that he jumped and nearly fell out of his chair. The only thing that saved him from completely collapsing backwards was the sudden instinctive tilt of his body and the way his right hand grasped the top of the table. He drew in a deep breath, nearly swallowing his tongue, and shook his head faintly, frowning at her in feigned puzzlement.

"What are you talking about?"

An elegant eyebrow rose and he felt his cheeks flush with humiliation. "Considering you've been combing through the obituary pages and watching _that_ news program, I think it's a safe guess to say you're looking at that kind of thing," she commented wryly. "Now, the only question is _why_."

Yugi opened and closed his mouth and then shook his head with a frown, glancing at the paper and back slowly. "I don't know…I just…I got kind of curious. I mean, I guess I was just wondering if there's a serial killer or what's going on. I mean…Kokurano with his drugs, then Tomoya in the alleyway and Ushio left on our front door. I don't…I'm just a little freaked, I guess."

Kasumi stared at him for a long moment, blinking slowly and shaking her head with a frown. She had watched him closely ever since Ushio's death and, though he had been unmistakably rattled, he had not been traumatized. He had not wound up obsessed with it nor interested in finding out more about it. He had not done much more than find that there was something of a small connection to link the two cases of Tomoya and Ushio. He had not even paid much attention to Kokurano's death when it had happened, though that may have been just because the articles were so little on him.

Now, looking at him, Yugi appeared almost feverish with confusion and perhaps some concern, as if he were afraid of something or other. If she had not raised him for the entirety of his sixteen year lifespan, Kasumi might have considered his expression to be one of guilt. But that gleam in his gaze could have just as easily been because of the deep bags set beneath his vibrant eyes, lending them an emotion that did not truly exist there.

"Maybe," she consented, not sure what more to do. Yugi would not open up to her unless he felt safe to do so. If he didn't feel that he had reason to, then she had no need to bug him. As long as he was fine at the end of the day, she supposed it didn't truly matter that he decided he suddenly wanted to read the few obituaries Domino City had to offer. "You might have to read online if you're really looking for something though."

"I'm not looking for anything," Yugi said, raising a brow at her, but there was something in his voice that they both heard and recognized as his tell. It was clear, in an instant, that he was lying and maybe even the smallest hint nervous and guilty about it. But neither commented on it, and she instead brushed a hair from his forehead to play with his bangs and kiss his temple.

Yugi watched her go seconds later, listening to her footsteps as she headed into her bedroom, and closed his eyes with a soft sigh. She had chosen the day to be off, something that he was both relieved and flustered about. If she caught wind of Anzu having asked him out, she would lecture him on safe sex _yet again_. And that was _nothing_ he needed.

After she had accidentally walked in on him watching one of Jonouchi's videos she had given him _several_ talks about the entire thing. Most of it had even made their health classes pale in comparison—and Japan's health classes were regarded as some of the best in the world, if not _the_ best.

An hour after their conversation the doorbell rang. He paused, momentarily confused by the way the chime echoed in his ears, and frowned in puzzlement as to who it was. It was gone instantly, however, and he moved down the stairs, only pausing at the bottom step to make sure he did not seem too eager as he opened the door.

When he padded over to the entrance, Anzu was waiting for him, rocking back and forth on the heels of her shoes, smiling shyly with cheeks that were slightly flushed from the chilled air. The sunlight bounced off of her hair like it was silk and for a moment, when the breeze stirred it, he thought of leaves and warm weather, of the sun touching the earth. He thought briefly of the way the branches had stirred in the trees and then, as if summoned by his refusal to openly confront it, he found himself picturing those two wolves with the darker and lighter shades of brown fur.

Both wolves had had pelts that were extremely ragged in comparison to the black wolf's. Was it a part of their disease? Would the black wolf appear the same? Would he suffer the same, with tufts of fur missing and a pelt caked and layered as if with blood and mud?

He tried to shake away the thought but already he saw the brown wolf with the icy blue eyes that seemed to peer at him through the darkness.

There was a small flash of amber, unmistakable in the moonlight, outlined with a glint of silver, and his stomach tossed violently. For a brief moment he heard the snarls again, violent and reverberating in his ears, making him stiffen and feel sick. He blinked and teeth were glistening with saliva, fur was rising into a bristle. There was the shift of dirt and the crunch of fallen leaves and dying undergrowth crushed by their weight.

"My mom is upstairs if you still wanted to talk to her about Peaches," he mumbled, unable to do more than step aside for her and feeling as if he might puke. There was an unsettling dizziness that was creeping over him, the efforts slow and minimal, but with enough malice to make his head ring for the tiniest of seconds. He watched her curiously, took in the way that he hesitated as if unsure of how to respond, and then gave him a small "Thanks" before making her way up the stairs. He closed the door carefully, breathing in roughly, and narrowed his eyes into slits.

He didn't need to think anymore about those wolves than he already had. Even with how dangerous the night before had been and how draining the entire experience was after having to get back up on his feet and pretend nothing had happened, he found himself disinclined to spend so much time caught on them like this. It was a hideous idea, but he wanted nothing more than to bury his head under his blankets and sleep it all away, to let it be something outside of his normal life and let it die there. It would be on the outskirts, far from his mind and inquisitive nature, and he would never worry about it.

Except that the wolves had been there. He had been there. They had died. He had nearly been killed.

He shook his head sharply, tempted almost to twist the lock into place with the anxiety growing within his muscles. He glanced over his shoulder towards the doorway and was tempted almost to see if he could pick up on their conversation, but the distraction was nothing he desired. He didn't want to hear about another sick animal because it would lead, inevitably, back to the wolves. Nothing seemed to keep his attention away from them, from the idea of them.

Had their bodies been found? On the internet he had been unable to find even a trace of them. On the news they had merely mentioned the festival and its large turnabout. In the newspaper there had only been a mention of Miho, Kokurano, Tomoya and Ushio and how no leads had come about. There was to be a reward placed soon, if there was no information to be found solely by the police.

He frowned and tipped his head up, sure he had heard the stairs squeak, but there was nothing else to accompany it. There was no soft touch of the carpet fibers springing beneath someone's weight and the lack of disturbance was both relieving and yet unnerving all at once. He wished for a distraction, but he hardly wanted anyone to see him in such a state. If Anzu walked down the stairs and spotted him, he would have no means of denying just how uncomfortable he was or how badly he was unfocused.

And what kind of date would this be if he could not even think to stay focused on her? She had asked him out, he'd agreed, and now he was regretting it so fully that it nearly made him sick with nerves. Maybe a reschedule would have been better, but then would she even listen to him if he tried to do so? He didn't even think he would listen if someone tried that with him.

He bit his lip, frowning, and glancing towards the empty kennels behind the reception desk. For a moment his eyes lingered on the bottom right one, where he knew they had housed Valon, and his gut twisted that much harder. How _had_ he managed to escape? How had no one noticed him? And what had that residue been that was still left on the metal like a stain of ink? It was shaped like the hybrid, almost as if it were a permanent shadow or replica of his fur. He shuddered and thought for a moment to go over, to maybe see if he could find something now that he had not then.

Was there a secret to the lycanthropy that he still did not know? Could the answer maybe somehow be in that stupid residue?

He doubted it, but, with the abrupt tilt of his axis like this, he was unable to shake the possibility. If it was possible that Valon held so many answers, why would he not share them with him? What was his reasoning behind telling him he was not meant to exist? That all he would bring to the world was war and bloodshed?

Yugi turned his head, startled mentally but body reacting on autopilot as he heard Anzu begin to descend the stairs again. How long had she been up then? How long had he been musing about this? He wondered if he looked as lost as he felt and quickly shook the thought off.

Now wasn't the time for this.

He would enjoy his time with Anzu and then maybe he would deal with it further without being _forced_ to. No wolf would have to track him down now to thrust him further into this struggle of a new lifestyle. He would figure things out as necessary without all of the outside help to cripple him.

A new and steady noise began to form in his ears, catching his attention. It was wet, small, a twisting motion that came in slow beats. His head tilted, confused, but then his eyes widened. His pulse was jumping in response. His fingers had begun to twist where he had pressed them unconsciously into his jacket pockets. Against the fabric his palms had grown warmer than natural, clammy with perspiration. The idea made his stomach twist and his mouth feel dry with confusion. His skin crawled for the smallest of moments, the hairs on his arms bristling with discomfort.

He bit back a small groan at the realization that came over him. He was perspiring nervously and that second thumping noise within his ears was his best friend's heartbeat. She was something of the mirror of his emotions, though less noticeably. The brunette was not sweating but her heart had sped up.

The sounds of both of their pulses in his ears made his head spin faintly. He could smell something, warm and mellow, laced with something like vanilla, and the scent made his thoughts flicker to a halt. A salty, buttery hint of a breeze came through to his senses, burning at his attention, and his stomach clenched more painfully.

In a jerking movement, forgetting himself and the idea to remain calm, Yugi wiped his palms on his jeans in order to rid himself of the excess perspiration. The action made the brunette smile faintly, amused by his discomfort, but he ignored it. If only she knew _why_ it was that he was suddenly so terrified of it all. If she knew he was listening to her heartbeat and smelling much more than just her perfume at the moment, she would probably never think to smile like that. Nor would she probably ever speak to him.

The thought nearly made him giggle hysterically, stunned by the boldness of the accusation, and he bit the inside of his cheek to smother the impulsive noise. Instead he hurriedly returned his left hand to his pocket and flexed his fingers faintly before giving her a small smile.

"You ready?" he asked, sure that maybe his voice would give way to the tightness in his throat and amazed when it failed to. When she nodded voicelessly, ducking her head slightly and again pushing a hair behind her ear, he was relieved to have an excuse to turn away and twist the doorknob open.

He glanced at her from the corner of his eye as they started out of the door, holding it open for her and allowing her to get a step ahead. It occurred to him that she looked beautiful even with the basic combination of a t-shirt beneath a jacket and a pair of jeans. The fact that it was winter made it impossible for her to enjoy wearing skirts and shorter jackets as she always did in the warmer seasons.

During the warmer months he admittedly liked to hold a door open for her and watch her, just as anyone else would have. He would let her stray ahead and then hurry to her side seconds later before she could notice he had fallen behind somewhat. He would use the longest strides he possibly could, anxious not to let her catch him and label him a pig as she had so often Jonouchi.

The thought of being clumped with him like that made him cringe every time he considered it. It wasn't that he thought it demeaning in all actuality—because Jounouchi was most definitely not shy about his antics with porn and fantasies—but that he didn't want her to think of him that way. He could have anyone else consider him that way but if she ever did, he thought it might kill him.

Her opinion of him mattered far too much to him sometimes, to the point that it scared him every now and then. And the thought of it being lowered made him feel worse than maybe even the idea of telling the others about his new disease.

Yugi glanced between them once, quick and certain. They were almost matching in the basic structure of their outfits. She was wearing a bright blue shirt and a pink leather jacket over it with a pair of navy jeans. Her sneakers were a basic pink with white laces, flat-soled with a brighter design on the very bottom. He could hear rather than see the bangle bracelets she wore, the constant clicking making him smile faintly. She had always told him that the bracelets were something of a good luck charm for her.

He had chosen to wear his royal blue uniform jacket and a dark gray tank top beneath it. A studded belt hung around his waist to hold up a pair of black skinny jeans and his feet were covered by black Converse. On his left wrist was a black band of soft material, and on his right a studded bracelet to match the belt. It was not completely dressed up, but it seemed more or less better than his average outfit. He looked as if he had least tried some, even if he might have failed.

Anzu's heart skipped slightly when Yugi locked eyes with her and gave a small smile. The momentary falter was almost enough to make him stop short. His immediate thought was that she was sick and then he reminded himself that she was nervous. Somehow the lycanthropy seemed to have drawn out the more mindless part of him, replacing something of his common sense. He nearly rolled his eyes upwards, frustrated with the thought, and then looked away again with a faint frown.

"So, how is Peaches?" he muttered, voice distinctly distracted but somehow forming the words with enough conviction to sound interested. The smaller teen kicked a pebble aside, watching it skid and listening with a deft attention to the way that it scraped the asphalt. It distracted him from the weight of his newest keenness of sense and he wanted almost to cry out in victory. Another kick made it jump and the silence that should have been there was filled with a heartbeat, though he could not tell whose now.

"She's fine," she replied, watching him as he casually sped up to get to the small rock again, kicking it forward once more. She thought of a cat leaping at a mouse, tossing it forward and then pouncing again. It was unnerving to see how focused he seemed on this task, as if he were so nervous that he could not face her or bear hold up better conversation. "We think it was probably just that she ate too much. There's nothing else wrong with her, she's just bloated."

Yugi nodded and pictured the small bright orange and white pink-nosed bunny. She was long-haired, with floppy ears, and the image of her in his head was just enough to keep him from feeling sickened by the sound of their hearts in his ears again. He paused, looking at his rock for a moment, and was just about to kick it when Anuz's elbow brushed against his.

The movement was electrifying, making his spine tighten with elation before it dissolved almost immediately. She wanted to hold hands; his hands were noticeably sweaty. He almost cringed at the idea. He flashed her a small, unnerved smile, something that she graced with a sympathetic look. They were both nervous, he knew, and she was showing him that more fully with the depths of emotion in her eyes.

He continued to kick the rock, not bothering to look at her again as they continued. The conversation was nonsensical and unimportant, to the point that he drowned it out with no effort on his own behalf. Their voices were mild buzzes in his ears, scattered by the scraping of his newest entertainment, and then the smallest hint of their pulses though they were nearly nonexistent.

A new sound caught his attention, however, making him stop short, and he stopped abruptly at the way it curled in his ears above the rest of the noise around them. For a moment he thought it was a car oncoming, maybe veering off the asphalt and towards the sidewalk where they were. Then, as his eyes scanned rapidly, he realized he had merely caught the noise of a dog.

It was small and black and cream in color, darting forward at the end of its leash. A small five-year-old boy was walking it, though it merely tugged him along as if he were nothing more than a toy. The parents were several steps behind, laughing and chatting softly over the display in front of them.

The small canine abruptly stopped short, nose twitching, and its head turned to stare at him. The brown eyes were wide, almost amber in the way that the sun hit them directly, and the wagging tail halted. The head tilted, floppy ears pricking very faintly, and the fur lifted slightly along the shoulders but not into a full bristle. The tail very slowly dropped completely, then began to curl between its legs fearfully.

"He's a beautiful dog," Yugi commented casually as the boy's parents passed by, trying to pretend not to notice the effect his presence had on the other canine. His stomach rolled for a moment; had he just considered himself a canine? He nearly choked at the realization but swallowed away the impulse, instead narrowing his eyes slightly to keep from saying or doing anything stupid.

"Yeah, he's pretty great," the father commented, the mother instead muttering about the puppy's sudden fear as the boy shook his head with an extremely confused look. Yugi was almost tempted to apologize, seeing the way that the family had turned their attention so solely to the animal with displays of such obvious concern. "Would you like to pet him? He won't bite."

The smaller teen shook his head with a smile and pressed the toe of his right sneaker against the rock on the sidewalk in front of him. A curl of disgust seeped through him for a moment, but did nothing to stop him from pulling the stone closer to him and then pushing it back again. The crunching noise was soft enough that the others did not hear but it burned his ears, soothing and somehow rich.

Yugi watched them from the corner of his eye, wondering if they might understand and make the connection. With the way that the puppy licked Anzu's hand and wagged its tail happily, he would have assumed they would say something. But nothing happened as the seconds passed, and the only thing that seemed to hint even remotely towards this predicament was that the canine kept looking between the two of them nervously. Every few seconds the wide brown eyes were on him, burning his skin, desperate and unsure, as if he expected Yugi to leap forward and attack him.

"He's never acted like this before," the mother commented after a long moment, her voice so low and soft that it made Yugi blink in confusion before turning his head toward her. He had not even realized she might think to speak, and the realization that she was staring at him so calmly made his insides twist painfully. Her eyes were sharp, specks of blue ice, boring into his face as he studied her perplexed and slightly challenging expression. "Normally, he's really excited to meet new people. I've never seen him so timid before…"

"The bottom level of my house is an emergency clinic," he said as smoothly as possible, though he was unnerved when her expression sharpened. For a moment he felt stupefied, and then realized she thought he was telling her there was something wrong with her dog. Startled by the idea of a confrontation, he rushed to explain, "He probably just smells all the chemicals and the other animals on me."

A moment passed between them and her expression grew a small bit more relaxed, but only showed a growing dubiousness that made his skin crawl. "Oh, well, yeah, maybe." She smiled at him only halfheartedly, a forced curve of her lips made frustration bubble up in the young teenager's stomach. How dare she look at him like that. "He's only ever been to the vet once."

"He got fixed," the father snorted, smirking at him in that way that said they were sharing an inside joke when he glanced over. The expression was goofy and somewhat cynical, as if he had not completely agreed to have him neutered for whatever reason. "He probably remembers it just because of that."

Anzu was giggling around cooing at the dog as Yugi glanced at the boy. He was bragging proudly about his small canine companion, nodding vigorously as if he planned to prove each of his words. The mother laughed softly, the noise somewhat shaky in his ears, and the small teen wondered if his lycanthropy were inflicting nerves upon each of them unconsciously.

Her eyes were still fully on him, he knew, and he nearly curled his lip back in discomfort, instinct momentarily telling him to growl in warning. He didn't want a confrontation and her eyes on him began to unnerve him further. Instead of following this instinct, however, Yugi turned his attention towards the second that crept over him.

His head turned and he locked eyes with her again, the two gazes boring into each other almost angrily. For a moment he looked almost startled and then, as if he had somehow hypnotized her, the pupils of her eyes began to dilate slowly but surely, pushing away the blue ring of color. There was no fear, but he could not detect anything else in her eyes either, and for a moment, he wondered if perhaps she saw something in his eyes that she should not have.

His mind was unable to place where he had seen such an expression before. As he watched her, her pupils began to dilate further, and the sight of it set him on edge but did not give him an answer of any kind. It was only as he ground the rock a little harder beneath his shoe, listening to the scraping noise and feeling some of the tension drop from his frame, that he recognized it.

He had seen his own face twisted into this particular expression about twenty hours prior, when he had seen the wolf that morning. He had not fully paid attention to it all, too stunned by the whiplash of his emotions, but he recognized the awe and confusion as well as he knew his own face. The emotions had utterly blindsided him and left him shocked, and so it begged the question of what it was that she saw there now.

What was it that any of them saw?  
He knew that Valon had said that he could see the lycanthropy in his eyes. That was how he had figured it out at the library, was it not? But he was also a werewolf, so Yugi was not sure that the statement held true for a regular person.

But he would have had to be blind and senseless not to notice the way she stared at him.

Yugi stared at her, unable to do anything more. He prayed she would not speak, that nothing would come out of her mouth to condemn him at this moment. He didn't need them all to know about how unnatural he was. The longer he watched, the more he felt ensured that she would not speak. Later, she would probably mention to her husband that she thought he was strange. Beyond that, he did not think she would have an explanation for it.

He ignored the urge to tip his head to the side as he caught a new sound in the back of his skull. It pounded and resonated like a pulsing drum, like the skin had been drawn tight, hit heavily, and the echo was centered behind his eyes. It threatened to drive him insane the way that it pulsed at such a rapid and powerful pace, dancing as if it were part of his thoughts.

He wanted, for a small moment, to snap at Anzu that they needed to leave, that there was no reason for them to stay. There were plenty of dogs elsewhere to pet. And preferably he would not be there for it.

Finally, unnerved and unable to hold his gaze any longer, the mother turned away. In a low and nearly inaudible voice she managed to say that they needed to get back to the house. Her husband frowned faintly at her, drawn out of a conversation with Anzu and their son, and finally nodded his response.

The blue eyes flickered quickly back to him, boring into his skin, and for a moment he wondered if she thought he was a sociopath. And, really, what this situation came down to for him, was the strange and drifting thought of whether she worried for herself or her family, which weighed more heavily on her mind.

He shook it off as they walked away and continued kicking the rock around as they began to make idle chitchat again. It seemed forced, however, as if maybe she had noticed the strain of their encounter with the family as well. Tiredly, the blue-violet-eyed teen kept his focus centered more proficiently on the small stone, and ignored the urge to flinch away when Anzu brushed against him by accident.

The arcade was packed when they walked in and the fact that there were so many packed within the four walls made him abruptly stiffen. His body grew rigid, his spine aching with intensity, and chewed his lip violently at the sight of so many bodies there. His skin began to crawl, the perspiration beading on his forehead and sliding down his skin as if the temperature had grown fiercely hotter than ever before. The atmosphere seemed to cram inwards, pushing on them all, and it burned him as if he were being lit on fire.

There was a hideous clicking and bouncing noise in his ears as buttons were jammed down violently. Sweat made soft squeaking noises on the surface of the plastic as thumbs slipped briefly. Clothes were rustling heavily, bunching up beneath clammy palms. Soft curses were let loose, followed by whispers and annoyed groans. The music beat his ears with enough force to make his head pound. A few people laughed and cheered. Someone mentioned high scores set by _YM_ on each game.

Ice shifted in sodas, bubbles of carbonation bursting to the surface. Someone opened another can. A cup was placed down against the wood next to the machines. Beads of perspiration rolled down the side of the plastic. It pooled against the bottom. Someone clapped their friend on the back when he became frustrated with his loss.

The timers on some of the games chirped. The characters grunted as they were knocked around. The clock in the corner on the back wall ticked heavily. The soft leather of the seat covers squeaked with shifts of weight. The metal rungs were touched gently by softened rubber. Coins made hideous metal thudding noises as they were released inside of the slots. Levers were pulled hard enough to make the metal snap and buckle, vibrating.

But, over it all, was the assault of war drums in his ears. They were played out of tune. His heart was pounding in his ears, echoing and yet leading them all at once. A dull roaring centered itself in the center of his skull. His eyes stung and burned. Frustration and annoyance pushed at his insides. His veins ached as if caught on fire individually. The perspiration on his forehead grew more abundant. His back felt as if it were soaked. His clothes were clinging to his skin.

He shifted both forward and somehow backwards on his feet. The air was laden with the harsh odor of bodies drenched in sweat. There was the undercurrent of sugar and stale gum, of snacks like pizza, and a couple of meals like fries and chicken fingers. There was mingling and disgusting swirls of perfumes and colognes so strong as they mixed together that it made him feel sick. Above this, however, was the strong and overpowering metallic smell which burned his nostrils and made him nearly sway. His legs almost buckled, trembling beneath him, as he caught the warmer, buttery scent that still lacked definition in his mind.

The laughter made him cringe back. A whine was bubbling up in his throat. The pain was pulsing in his head. His eyes were becoming spotted with the infliction. The buttons jumping against their springs made his jaw clench. His lungs grew constricted as the toggles moved back and forth rapidly.

Hands clapping against someone else's flesh made him dizzy. He swayed only for a moment, eyes clenching shut. He could hear the ribs of each person in the room as they expanded, creaking gently under their skin. Sweat made a dripping sound as it hit the ground.

And, as he struggled to push away such intense strikes towards his senses, he _felt_ it. It was like someone was touching him with invisible fingers. They probed and traced his skin with gossamer affection. They tried to seep within him like mist in his lungs. There was a chill of loss, the bitterness of defeat, the frustration of being leered at.

He felt the annoyance pricking his skin like needles. The humor poked at him as if beckoning for laughter. He trembled as they pushed further against him. It was almost as if water were beginning to push first at his skin and then through his veins. The emotions swirled within the depths of his stomach and curled upwards. His body trembled painfully.

His skin felt stretched, aching. It seemed to crawl and trail upwards. The hairs on his arms began to rise to a stand. An image appeared in the forefront of his mind. The trees were stretched out before him. The branches touched the sky. The wind trailed through the dying undergrowth. The animals chattered softly. A leaf fluttered downwards.

He trembled again, clenching his eyes shut as tightly as possible. A noise was bubbling in his lungs. It crawled up his throat. Then it slowly began to dissipate. It pressed on his tongue and then fell into nonexistence. It built up continuously, then faded just as often. His diaphragm ached, heaving briefly, and his stomach twisted. He gagged reflexively.

"Yugi?" Anzu asked immediately, eyes wide as she took him in. He was statuesque beside her. His jaw was clamped together so tightly she thought it had locked. His body was wracked with a tremor every few seconds. His face had become screwed up, skin bunching together around his nose and beneath his eyes.

His expression was one of pure pain, almost powerful enough to be described as agony. For a moment he did not respond to her, then the repetition of his name made his eyes open. They were mere slits at first, his skin scrunched so far upwards that it seemed he would be blinded by it. Then they opened slowly into a size almost thrice their normalcy.

The blue-violet irises were sharp, the pupils blown hideously.

He had to get out of there. He had to escape before something stupid happened beyond the noise that kept bubbling up and dying and rising again.

He took in a deep breath, stepping back once with wild eyes. They glittered with an almost artificial design to their depths. The pupils glimmered with an almost silver light, the depth lost like a shard of mirror. Anzu watched him, mesmerized and horrified. She was frozen next to him, unable to do anything more than stare.

For a moment he stared blankly forward. Then, as she managed to breathe out his name again, his head turned. The way his eyes glowed at the edges, the blue lighting as if with flames, was so unnatural that she nearly flinched away. She stumbled back a step but kept her footing, opening and closing her mouth in horror. Her heart leaped into her throat, stomach dropping as she stared back at him.

His pupils had become nothing more than mere pinpricks. The color had dashed from his irises altogether. They were nothing more than dull glittering plates of purple and blue. The edges of the small dots of black bled straight into his irises as if they were becoming a droplet of ink to be absorbed by paper.

Slowly the two colors of what was usually a vibrant sapphire blue and warm violet merged together. A uniform blanket of color came over his irises, making them flat and almost lifeless. But there seemed almost to be a layer of reflective glass there now, almost as if his eyes had been replaced by mirrors.

All she could see was herself. In the center of his irises, where his pupils should have been, all she could find was her reflection. She was a discolored and almost pale figure there, surrounded by white. The fluorescent lights made gleams of cold slices like ice, bringing her shape to the forefront in his gaze. She flinched backwards, away from him, horrified. Everything in his eyes was just so clear, defined and sharp, reflecting _everything_ around him like glass.

His mind fearfully wondered if he might be forced to change somehow. His skin twitched and grew itchier. The blood in his veins had reached a boiling point. His mind was feverish, confused and dazed. He thought momentarily of the heat he had felt during the Change the night before. He felt his teeth grind minutely as he tried to open his mouth.

A fog of disdain and desperation seeped through his mind, leaving him sick and disgusted as his body trembled once more. His spine was pulled taut like his muscles. His heart was beating faster than ever. The noises had all blended together, becoming dull roars of energy. Abruptly, his feet moved. He backed up two steps, then blinked.

Then he jerked violently. He spun on his heel, running out the door.

He was panting as he tore through the streets without a second glance.

* * *

The minutes seemed to pass in the blink of an eye. Winded by his own fear more than exhaustion, the blue-violet-eyed teen pulled himself to a halt at the edge of the woods he knew would eventually lead him back towards his house. He glanced over his shoulder, wondering if he looked suspicious, but could not find it in himself to care as he turned and headed through the trees.

His mind slowed almost immediately, the air making his skin feel lighter than ever. The heat in his body was brought to a halt by the cold chill around him. He closed his eyes, breathing in deeply, and exhaled as he opened his gaze into slits. He watched the small puff of white that came with the motion, and closed his eyes for a brief second. There was a hint of sickness that still lingered in his belly but he did not puke as he continued to walk slowly towards the trees.

He had not truly expected to find himself there, halting on the sidewalk in front of the grass and trees. The sound of his footsteps was echoing in his ears, crunching like little symphonies of noise. He breathed out deeply again, frowning faintly, and glanced over his shoulder at the street again before shaking his head. He had assumed he would make his way back to his house or even to the park.

But something in his gut had guided him there, and he realized going home would have been the worst of ideas. His family was there, and they would probably ask what had happened. They would want to know if he was okay, why Anzu wasn't there with him. And he could not think of something worthy to say.

Yugi let out a soft sigh and glanced around curiously, a scent almost like cedar trees making his nose tingle. He paused, blinking, and sniffed at the scent until it uncurled into a more blanketing breeze to identify its source. It unfurled like the new growth of leaves in spring, making his stomach warm with comfort at the sensation. His mind sorted it as autumn leaves bathed in sunlight, touched by the chill of coming winter air. He closed his eyes tightly and let the smell comfort him for a brief moment.

The wolf must have wandered that way that night. He must have taken the path through the trees there on the way to whatever his destination had been. He smiled faintly at the thought, looking around him slowly, and sighed when he realized that he could follow and hope to find it and maybe gain answers or remain where he was. He supposed it didn't truly _matter_ if he were to find him. He did not speak. He would not open his mouth just for him. The thought made him frown faintly and he almost chastised himself for the stupidity of the idea.

For a moment he thought of only the red-eyed wolf, of how he had made him play charades after saving him. And that stunned expression that had crossed his face when he had said it was okay if he didn't talk still made his stomach twist. He thought briefly of the way the other teen had seemed so horrified by the idea of getting too close to him. And as that idea passed through his mind, he found himself unable to fight away Valon's words in his head, echoing so violently that he cringed.

He reached up, sinking his teeth into his nail hard enough to make it bleed, and frowned at himself in frustration. The words were like arrows, pricking at his insides painfully, and he swallowed hard as he shook his head sharply and looked around once. His eyes lowered to the ground, his mind trying unsuccessfully to draw into itself and form a tiny ball without enough air to breathe and circulate ideas through his head.

Was that why he had fled like that?

Because he, too, considered Yugi some kind of creature that meant death and war?

Did he consider him so unnatural that it warranted fleeing after saving his life?

But, if he was so terrible, why would he have wasted so much time doing so much to save his life like that?

He shook his head again and ran a hand through his hair. His thoughts didn't make sense. But, if that was how the wolf viewed things, then his _actions_ didn't make any sense either.

A stronger breeze of the scent brushed through his senses and he flinched but grew more alert all at once. Was the wolf nearby? Was it watching him, sitting and studying him?

He tried to tell the direction the wind was coming from, whether the animal was downwind or flanking him, but his thoughts were too disheartening to put much effort into the task. The way the scent enveloped him for a brief moment, swirling as if tugging at his clothes and kissing his senses, made him frown faintly. It was as if something were seeping into his blood, a fire set in his veins again, and his conscious circulated with the strength of it until he was attempting to grasp it halfheartedly.

He turned his head, breathing in where he felt it brushing against him more prominently. He sniffed once, then drew the scent as deep into his lungs as he possibly could. For a moment he thought to drown himself in it, enamored with the scent and feeling wondrous with the sensation. It was a relieving distraction from the intense loss he felt he was being swallowed by. By, even as he did this, searching with his senses, he knew unconsciously that the wolf was not there. He would not show himself. He would not come forth from one of the trees to check on him.

The red-eyed lycanthrope was nowhere around when he decided to keep walking.

* * *

No one was home when he got there, opening the door and straining his ears to listen for even the tiniest scratch of noise. The only things to greet him was the hum as the air vents rattled softly, the buzz of the fridge as it began to cool the food again, and the tick of the second hand of the clock in his bathroom. The noises were comforting, cloaking him in a sense of familiarity that made his tensed muscles relax slightly.

The power of the calm of which the noise granted him made Yugi falter slightly, breathing in roughly and looking upwards for a moment. His status of being alone within the house made his stomach twist briefly, warmed uncomfortably, and he leaned against the glass pane of the windows. He closed his eyes, letting out a soft laugh of amusement, and reached up to run a hand through his hair.

He had barely decided to come home. For what had felt like hours, he had remained debating whether or not he should wander back or find somewhere else to hide away. The noises in his ears made him smile faintly as he kicked himself forward and began to make his way towards the staircase. He licked his lips, wondering how long they might have been gone, and for a moment wondered if he could sniff the air and find out, but decided against it. He was not sure it was worth it.

And an instinct whispered somewhere in the back of his mind that it would be a while. It might have been intuition for all he knew but he had the idea that it might be hours before they arrived. Yugi grinned faintly, still listening to those three noises, and pulled the door open to trot up the stairs two at a time.

He would have worried about stumbling on another day, but considering all the strange reflexive saves that that his body seemed to have given him earlier, now he didn't care. If he fell, that meant a small bit of carpet burn if he was lucky and some normalcy and familiarity to combat his disease and changing circumstances.

The sound of his weight catching on each of the carpeted wooden plants was too loud for him. His head spun with the pain of it for a moment, as if tempting him to stumble and fall, but he ignored it. He threw the second door open, stepping immediately onto the carpet floor and heading for his room. His mother would be upset with him later if she found his sneakers in there but he had done it so often as of late that he doubted she would say something to him again about it.

He kicked his shoes off almost immediately after stepping into his room, humming as he padded towards his bed and took a seat. A glance around the room showed him that nothing had changed since he had left it last and the idea was somehow so relieving that he almost wanted to cry. The consistency made him smile faintly as he bunched his body together to draw his knees almost up to his face and settle comfortably against the mattress with a soft sigh.

Where had he put the notebook he had put the tests in? He would need to see about how fast his blood clotted, maybe write down theories about the disease. He had considered it before but now he knew he had to. The immensity of the condition was enough to make it clear that ignoring the opportunity to do so would only be foolish. He had never thought of himself as a fool and didn't plan to have to consider himself as such now. The lycanthropy could alter a lot of things, but it could not make him stupid or ignorant as others might have taken the chance to become.

He thought about it for a while and then sprang to his feet, making his way towards first his hamper and then the cabinet storage system in his closet. The doors opened in a little compartment space, drawing outwards and to the side, and though he had convinced his mom that it was only used for clothes and studies, most of the videos he borrowed from Jonouchi were there as well. There were also the few failed tests and early progress reports that he refused to show her because his grades had plummeted too far, and the occasional video game that he knew she would disapprove of.

He gripped at the back of the metal knob, tugging to dislodge it partially, and then twisted it downwards hard enough to make the metal rattle. The latch that kept it shut tight, practically gluing the door to the adjacent wall, clicked and fell away with the harsh movement. He pulled the door open, frowning faintly at the sight of the filing cabinet he knew so well. He pulled the top drawer outwards, glancing about the contents. They were arranged easily for instant access, so that if he were in a hurry he could grab one without pause.

The notebooks were in the back, the writing utensils in the front, with a few stray note card packets and things of a similar nature strew about. The second drawer held unused binders, the third a few used notebooks he studied from, and the fourth was locked and held most of the porn and the things he refused to let his mom see. He had claimed to have lost the key long ago, but he kept it hidden beneath the filing cabinet itself, where there was the tiniest slit where he could use a pencil tip to pull it back without too much effort.

Now Yugi grabbed a notebook and snatched a pen, ignoring everything else, and closed the door back in place. He slammed the door, the impact making the swinging latch click back into place with a soft noise. He narrowed his eyes, heading for the bed, and took a seat with a small kick of his legs before frowning faintly.

What was it that he could record exactly? That he thought that his senses heightened at times or that the amount of food and its nutrition level dictated his healing? And then, did he start the bloodletting tests in another notebook or just flip it to the back and work from both ends?

He huffed, frowning, and drummed his fingers over the paper for a moment. Abruptly he flung it open again, rolling his eyes, and began to write the heading of the date, time according to his phone, and _Incision One_. It took only a moment to dig through his drawers and relocate the instruments he had pulled out before. He snatched the needle and paper, humming as he pricked his index just enough to draw blood.

The droplet that came forward between the folds of torn flesh was a hideous and deep red, glistening with a touch of the sunlight from the window, and he shivered faintly before pressing his finger against the paper. Every two seconds he repeated the gesture, keeping his mind focused completely on the task, and frowned when the third press came all but nonexistent. The fourth attempt to press some of his blood on the sheet came back empty.

He looked at his finger, pulled at where he knew the wound to be with his other thumb and forefinger, and found himself staring blankly. There was no wound to be found. It was completely healed, nonexistent by any means, and he swallowed hard as he looked at it thoughtfully with a shake of his head. He was healing quickly and efficiently now, after having had several healthy meals his mom had decided to make, and the idea made his skin quiver.

He flipped to the end of the notebook, quickly jotting down the last few meals he'd had since the full moon, the amount he'd eaten those two days, and how much it might have affected his senses. It took him less than a minute to recall all of it, from snacks to the salmon meal she'd made, and how many servings he'd had. He even remembered the rough estimate of the time each meal had been eaten, how quickly, and how hungry he'd been each time.

An hour was spent repeating tests, jotting down the times, and eventually making his own small notes and ideas and theories about the disease. The last he wrote was about the diet of wolves and wondering if he might be more intensely drawn to fresh and raw meat than anything else. The idea horrified him enough to make him shudder and he shook his head as he got to his feet.

He heard the car doors before he glanced out the window, relaxing when he saw it really was just the two of them. He was not truly sure what he had been expecting but he had been worried all the same. But, just as sudden as his relief, so came his frustration.

What if he felt their emotions as he had everyone at the arcade? What if he found himself drowning in some kind of emotions that he had nothing to do with nor needed to even acknowledge? What if they were feuding and somehow it caused him to change like he had wondered the arcade might force him to? Or, what if, while he was with them, their emotions influenced him enough to end up as irritable?

Yugi cringed. Why was he even assuming that they were fighting in the first place? He shook his head sharply and started for his doorway as they began to come inside. It took him a moment to run into them, as his mom was laughing softly but halted at the sight of him, nearly jumping as her eyes fell on him.

"God, Yugi, don't do that!" she grumbled, shaking her head and then offering him a small smile that quickly melted away into a frown. Her eyes grew narrow, confused, and he realized with a small twinge that she was wondering at his presence there. She had assumed he would still be out with Anzu, as a date was normally longer than just a couple of hours. He should have known that she would catch onto the fact that it was just he and Anzu going and come to the most obvious conclusion.

"Curfew, remember?" he murmured, smiling at her faintly and moving around her. The gesture of facial expression made his mouth feel funny, the skin pulled almost taut at the sensation, and he shrugged at her when she raised a brow. "Anzu's parents wanted her home before curfew so we split up early."

"So, what did you two do then?" she asked, following him into the kitchen and placing several bags onto the table. He immediately moved towards them, at first confused by the amount of groceries and then remembering the new recipe that she had mentioned and wanting to try out. He began pulling out several items, humming as he took them in, and raised a brow when she continued staring at him. At his perplexed expression, she smiled slightly but shook her head. "Are you going to tell us how it went or not?"

"Oh!" he laughed, feeling stupid for his immediate fear that she might have somehow noticed something unusual and unnatural about him, but refused to speak. He relaxed a little further, turning back to the bags and grabbing another item. "We went to the arcade for a little bit and then split up. There wasn't much to it, really."

"What? _Really_?" his grandfather sighed, shaking his head as he placed several more bags on the table and began to empty them. Both of them glanced at him curiously at his exasperate tone. "You know, Yugi, when I was your age, I had _lots_ of girls flocking to me."

He opened his mouth to reply, maybe to snap at him; he wasn't sure, but wound up grinning instead when his mom snorted, "Um, no, Dad, you didn't. You _wish_ those girls were flocking to you instead of Arthur."

"They were _all_ there for me," his grandpa argued, smirking as his voice grew light and playful. He winked over at Yugi as the small teen smiled and shook his head in amusement. "It just _looked_ like they were all there for Arthur. There's a big difference."

"Ah, yes, obviously," his daughter returned, "because you dated all of two girls in high school."

"I was committed to my relationships!"

"Uh-huh."

"Don't believe your mother, Yugi. I was a stud when I was your age."

"You better not be encouraging him to be a womanizer."

"What? No, of course not!" Sugoroku cried indignantly, scoffing at her before quickly wrapping his arm around his grandson's shoulder and pulling him into him. He lowered his mouth to his ear, snickering, "No matter what your mother says, it's always good to sample as much as you can _before_ you settle for something. Maybe even _while_ you're settled."

" _Dad_!" his mom snapped, giving him an annoyed look. "If you turn him into a player, I am going to make you _regret_ it."

"Oh, I'm quaking," he snorted in Yugi's ears.

The small teen shrugged out of his grip, pushing him away with a faint smile of amusement. "No worries, Mom, I'm not going to be a player." He snorted, for a moment thinking of how nearly impossible it seemed to even consider the idea when he could barely get one girl to pay attention to him, let alone more, and shook his head. He didn't need to say something like that. Besides, the only girl he liked was Anzu and she was— _hopefully_ —still attracted to him. "Do you need some help?"

"Not really, but if you could put this in the fridge, I would appreciate it," she replied, handing him some butter and couple of butter-flied chicken breasts. He took them easily, ignoring the small tingling chill that greeted his fingers, and opened the door to place them inside. He had just barely raised his head from doing so when his mom continued. "And then men _wonder_ why women seemed so bat-shit crazy to them all the time. With comments like that, it's amazing you made it through marriage like you did."

Yugi paused, smirking and shaking his head, and then closed the doors. The fridge let out the same gentle buzzing noise that always accompanied its existence, and he blinked slowly as his lips pulled downwards. His mom and grandpa had gone back to bickering, laughing every now and then, but he could not find it in himself to join them. He felt the laughter and warm amusement, the usual familial emotions that cloaked the air when the two of them were together and talking, but nothing was pulsating or bombarding him.

And, as he blinked long and slow and listened harder, he realized he could not hear their heartbeats.

He could not even hear his own.

Two hours later, Yugi considered it a reaction to the nerves he had already surmounted because of his date. The fact that one of them had finally gotten up the courage to ask the other out after years of having a crush on the other had to weigh in there as well. He had never even considered how many other people would be around or how nervous he might become. Whether it was caused by his lycanthropy or her in general didn't matter. He had still simply failed to take that into account and now he was being reminded never to ignore or disregard something seemingly so trivial.

He had not considered his anxiety when it came to what it would be like when he considered dating her, but it made sense to him now. Anzu was his first friend, his first crush, the only girl he had ever been _truly_ interested in, and it only made it harder. There was a delicate line between having a relationship and ruining a perfectly great friendship with carelessness. He could potentially fuck up the entire dynamics of their group when it came down to it.

The entire balancing act could be entirely too stressful with the new disease to navigate. Was it possible for mental and physical stress to draw the wolf out? What if they were doing something together and all of the sudden he changed? What would happen then? He could potentially end up killing her if he wasn't careful.

Yugi speared a piece of chicken, making a mental note to put something in his notebook so he might be able to prepare better if he was put in a situation like that again. It was a pretty big _if_ considering he did not think Anzu would be all that interested in going out with him again. He bit back a groan, nibbling on the end of his piece of meat and ignoring the way the tender strands separated in his mouth and caught behind his bottom right canine.

He carefully poked at it with his tongue, then made a movement of sticking the head of the fork into his mouth in order to press the teeth harshly against the enamel and gums. It did nothing to dislodge it, but he tried it anyways, unamused and somewhat disappointed that it failed.

It would have been really nice if maybe the stupid lycanthropy came with a way to get food out of the teeth faster. He wondered if the wolves even did get food caught like that. He couldn't imagine it. Their teeth were a lot different in design, with spaces between each of them, to allow fiercer bites and easier passage. Or so he remembered reading anyways. He couldn't remember what his own jaws had felt like during the Change. He didn't even remember the way the black wolf's teeth looked the night before while sitting in the dark watching him.

He was ignoring the idle dinner conversation his mom and grandpa were making, though subconsciously his mind was picking and sorting through some of the statements being made. He knew they were talking about the chicken dish, about the new seasoning she had tried out. The meat had been tender but not as juicy as usual, and his grandpa was pointedly trying unsuccessfully to say this in the nicest way possible. He would have simply said that it wasn't her fault, just that the other store had better meat but the rest of the meal was good. His grandpa was spinning something more complex, trying to talk her in circles, and failing badly.

She had never been one to be led around the bush and had made it clear multiple times. The fact that her dad was even attempting to do so was mildly insulting to even Yugi as a bystander.

He picked at the meat caught in his teeth again, spearing another piece and dutifully eating it without much thought. The flavor that exploded on his tongue was hardly registered by his taste buds. It seemed more like a drifting afterthought than anything else, something impossible to focus on.

This werewolf thing seemed to rapidly be turning into a massive bust.

What kind of supernatural creature was supposed to be so startled by emotions like this?

He nearly scoffed at himself but fell short. A thought occurred to him immediately after and he swallowed hard as he ignored the impulse to pull on his bangs in frustration. Animals sensed emotions. Wolves were no different. They sensed emotions just like cats and dogs and everything else besides humans.

He shifted his fork to scrape against the back of his teeth, biting down on the metal prongs uncomfortably, and then looked at his dish for a moment. Of course the wolf would be that strong, wouldn't it? The wolf would feel their emotions in a room full of people, listening to heartbeats and everything else happening within the area.

But then, he supposed, that was no different to kitsune, from what he knew. Weren't they supposed to have heightened senses and everything too? Considering they were fox spirits, did that mean they felt similarly or not so much?

He frowned and fought off a sigh, running his tongue over the fronts of his teeth in an effort to keep from making noise, taking another bite of chicken. Werewolves in those stories were described as mindless beasts that ran out in a rage during the full moon and killed relentlessly, without remorse. Some stories said that they felt guilt afterwards but would never remember actually doing it.

So, taking Ushio into consideration, he had to wonder if maybe it was still possible that that was not so much a myth. Maybe Ushio had been so enraged as a person and a wolf and so bloodthirsty that it became one and the same between his personalities. Was it possible that he might still end up like that somehow? Those two wolves in the woods had hardly seemed to have much conscious thought. Had they maybe been controlled by some kind of anger that the lycanthropy brought upon its host?

Would that mean he might spontaneously burst out of his skin into a pelt and a wolf body when he was furious? Was he going to maybe have a split personality where the wolf half of him _spoke_ to him like a mental illness festering in his mind? Would the voice of his disease eventually drive him insane?

He knew of only about three things about werewolves at the moment. One was that it took a strong body that was nourished and well-maintained to heal properly as stress and lack of food made it impossible to bind wounds together like they needed to be. The second was that the full moon dictated the Change but it could also be controlled as the black wolf, Ushio _and_ Tomoya had all displayed for him. The last was that they read and sensed others' emotions when in the same room as them.

"Maybe," his voice replied as if possessed by something other than himself. He blinked but did not give them the confused look that he knew would cling to his features if he glanced over. Instead he picked at another piece of chicken, using the need to chew to hide it as he glanced back between his grandfather and mother.

"Not before I get to see your grades, you won't."

He blinked, swallowing his mouthful, and wondered what it was they were supposed to be talking about exactly.

"Oh, please, Kasumi, let the boy play some games without worrying about his grades," the elderly Motou replied, rolling his eyes. The small teen's mind jumped into a million different directions at once, spreading outwards before slowly settling on something completely and irrevocably calming. They were talking about the new game coming out, the one that his grandpa knew he had been planning to buy for the last month and a half. His mom was simply saying that he was not going to be able to play it unless he supplied her with his report card. It was one of the most usual things that happened between them.

He bit back a startled laugh of nervousness and ache; finally there was something normal again.

"You aren't getting that game until you show me your report card, remember?" Kasumi pressed, raising a brow at him and frowning. Yugi nodded automatically, not bothering to point out that he was still in the highest percentile of his classes. Then again, more than once, he and Jonouchi had gotten their grades altered when he and the group got together and realized how bad their grades really were in comparison to everyone else's.

He had yet to be caught but he wasn't entirely proud of having to do it. And, every time he had been forced to do it, he had made sure to bring up each of his grades to the exact percentage he had forged. He had never really questioned his ability to pull his plummet into a higher percentage before the semester ended or tests started out now he wondered.

 _Maybe it's the wolf_ , he thought rather reluctantly, swallowing hard. His own voice in his head made the statement nearly inaudible, a ghost of words that made his heart skip a small beat and then triple in pace. He nearly choked as he took another bite, horrified by the idea but unwilling to allow his family to notice.

Was it? Could it be the wolf?

He swallowed hard again, desperately chewing on the newest piece of chicken on his tongue. He knew from documentaries and books that wolves were extremely intelligent and adaptive, to the point that he honestly had to wonder if maybe the Honshu wolf really did still exist. He wondered, biting into his cheek by accident and nearly yelping, if it counted as having two brains in his skull.

Was it possible that the wolf brain only reacted where they worked when given the right stimulus and the human was so often in control that it did not feel any different when they worked together? Or, was it just some kind of personality altercation?

Was it like a borderline personality, where one side could be extremely violent and the other completely controlled?

Then again, what else did he get from being one of them? If the legends were true and he got enhanced strength, that might be kind of cool—or speed. He wouldn't want _ridiculous_ amounts of the two, but just enough that it was noticeable to him and he could use it to defend himself if he needed to. That seemed like a nice touch to a curse that seemed so grotesque when it was studied under a microscope.

If it simply made him smarter than most and allowed him to change into a wolf at will, he would not argue with that either. He wasn't sure that he liked the idea of much more to be added to the new experiences he had already had. His senses had scared him enough as it was. There was no need for something further than that.

He almost wanted to ask someone. And the one he thought of was the wolf in the woods. He would have answers, maybe been so many that he could give him everything he needed. But the wolf was a mute, he remembered abruptly, the hope inside of him dying immediately. He did not talk so he could not _give_ that answers Yugi so desperately wanted. He would have to phrase them as closed questions, in ways that he could answer yes or no. Then he could easily nod or shake his head in response to them.

There was Valon, who he knew could tell him if he asked, but he did not think that was an offer he could try to take advantage of. His words still echoed in his head too often for him to consider differently. And had he not told him he didn't have the answers for him; that his alpha would?

But the idea of just suffering through it was terrifying. How was one supposed to survive something as drastic as this _without_ issue? He wanted almost to cry out in pain at the mere thought but bit his tongue to suppress the urge. He didn't have the words to explain to his mother or grandfather what it was that made him so weak. And, besides that, if he truly tried, he was sure he could find the other wolf.

He would find the red-eyed teen and speak to him. He might answer him or he might not. If he didn't, then at least he could say he tried. If he did, then maybe he would have a better chance at understanding it all. But, before he attempted any of that, he would have to make a list of questions. He would need to find a way to communicate his needs with the other and have him answer in the most basic of ways. Maybe if he got the simplest answers to the most basic of questions he could figure everything out from there.

Yugi almost nodded to himself but suppressed the impulse instead. He looked towards the other two family members and wondered vaguely if they had even noticed just how awkward he had been acting recently. Had they been too caught up in other arguments—possibly about him or his medication—to notice? For the smallest of seconds he almost wanted to snarl at them, demand to know why they didn't notice, why they didn't ask, why no one seemed to care anymore. He desired nothing more than to just scream at them how scared he really was with all that was going on.

He wrote another theory down in his notebook after dinner. It was possible, he supposed, that maybe he had not noticed his family's heartbeats because they were so familiar to him that his mind no longer recognized them as noises. Maybe his brain had categorized them with such consistency that it was no longer deemed necessary to notice them.

He left the house promptly after he knew his mom and grandpa had fallen asleep. It wasn't too late, but his mom was doing an early morning surgery, his grandpa was just tired. He had been worried about his health, but he never told him if he was feeling ill in the first place. For all he knew, he could be ill and dying and neither he nor his mom would have a heads up about it. But, from what he knew of the blood test from the month before, his grandpa was healthy as a horse; he just needed to eat better.

His phone was at his ear as he paced along the sidewalk. Since the sun had gone down, the streets were mostly empty. He barely saw anyone but the occasional person hurrying home. The curfew was nothing that anyone would refuse to take seriously. After the rabies incident years before and the murders going on now, none of them were willing to risk anything. A serial killer in Domino City may have been a rare occurrence, but it was still a possibility and so he was not surprised by how quick and dutifully they all walked.

The ringing echoed in his head as he debated what he should say, pursing his lips and straining his ears. He could hear several people's hearts as they passed by, but none of them were even faintly as loud as they had been before. And all of them seemed almost serene in tempo, nothing to alarm and scare him so badly.

He narrowed his eyes and tried harder, struggling against the faint chirp of crickets on the other side of the road and a couple of cars passing by. He could barely hear the ones just within his range of senses, and their emotions were nothing he could taste or even take into consideration at the moment.

Maybe the space was too open.

The arcade had been crowded and stuffy like it always was. Maybe with all the people pressed together as they were and all the noise that had made his ears ring, it had been impossible to miss it all. Maybe with all of the dead space between him and others now, it was just much easier for it all to come lost in the air between them.

Or maybe it was just the night air, so light with the touch of chill that should have been more proficient. Maybe it was too comforting to pronounce the presence of a predator amongst these few people and the comforting edge gave them, too, the feeling of a security blanket. He may have been lost and confused and desperate for answers, but he was still a predator nonetheless.

His adrenaline spiked.

"Hey."

"Yugi?" She paused for a moment, hesitating but nonjudgmental. "Hi. What's up?"

"I, uh, I really wanted to apologize for what happened earlier, Anzu," he admitted, guilt lacing his words and his heart abruptly skipping a beat before tripling in speed. His head turned, startled by the sudden touch of something running over his skin as if by fingers gliding there.

His skin crawled briefly and he blinked stupidly as he tried to find the source. It was something strange and almost eerie, and Yugi realized without thought that he had never truly felt such a thing before in his life. "It wasn't very…nice of me to do that. I didn't mean to—"

"It's okay."

He went to argue and say that it was not okay and he would understand if she hated him for it, but then slowly took in her words and the tone that she had given them. He held them there in his head for a long moment, as if cradling something fragile and precious, and realized with a twisting stomach that she had already forgiven him. She had already moved past it, come to peace with it somehow and he was only wasting his breath if he insisted on going past the initial point of apology.

"But, can I ask what happened exactly? You just…seemed to lose it for a second there. I don't understand what…Did I do something…?"

"W-what?" Yugi cried, stumbling for words and feeling stupid as he nearly gaped at the phone in disbelief. "No! Of course not! I—I just—I don't even really _know_ what happened to me, to be honest. I just…I started feeling really sick. I…it was almost like at the festival. I just…I really needed out of there before it got worse. And I…I'm so sorry, Anzu."

"It's okay, Yugi. I was just worried."

When he strained his ears and really listened, all of his attention put forth into the task, he swore he could hear her turning the page of a magazine. The sound made his stomach drop in despair. Anzu was not a girly girl, more somewhere between that and a tomboy for the most part, and she didn't really go shopping constantly and so wasn't one for magazines. She only bothered to flip through a catalogue when she was truly worried or sad about something, stressed and emotional, and that had always been a way for him to find out if she was hurting.

To hear her doing it now was not a surprise seeing as she had put herself out there with him and he'd abandoned her. The guilt that pooled in his stomach made Yugi feel hollow and nearly alien as he took a step forward and then stopped on the sidewalk. He had been aware that he had hurt her—how he could not be?—but some part of him had hoped that she would be okay, a stupid wish by all means but one all the same.

"You ran like a bat out of hell."

He wanted almost to make the pitiful plea for her to understand. He wanted to blur out that problem, what had happened, and why he had run like that. But the words refused to form in his mouth and his lungs would not draw in air at the thought. He frowned and shook his head, looking down and away with a lick of his lips. There were no words he could say…

His head snapped up and around, eyes searching the growing darkness. His spine had grown tense and rigid, alarmed now. His senses were picking nothing up, but a faint touch of that ghost-like tickle of something against his arm. He bristled, stiffening, and shook his head as he glanced around himself. What was that?

"I know. I'm—never mind," he muttered, eyes still flickering about rapidly. She didn't want to hear another apology and he felt he was more likely to give another one than do anything else. He wanted almost to beg again, desperate and feeling sick to his stomach.

But there was another sensation warring with his guilt now, pushing at him sharply with cold ice to crawl up his skin. He bristled again, shivering briefly, and turned his head sharply towards where he thought the source might be.

"I really don't know what happened. I just…I startled feeling sick and I had to run for it," Yugi finally breathed out, feeling selfish and sick with the sensation. He knew exactly when he had called and what he had wanted to say, but none of that seemed possible anymore. Actually opening his mouth and giving his curse a name to his crush was nothing that he seemed to have the strength to do.

He swallowed against the bitter taste that cloaked his tongue at the lie, shaking his head and glancing away towards the alley again. The touch had grown hideously demanding sharp and grating against his skin like a knife cutting through butter.

Something licked at his skin like warmth from a fire in a cozy room. It blindsided him, pushing him until he nearly stumbled. His belly twisted heavily and gurgled painfully, reminding him of what hunger really meant. His muscles ached, his nerve endings spiking with pain and burning viciously.

He shivered, glancing around him once more, and vaguely his mind provided him an answer that he did not welcome. His skull seemed empty, becoming a vast cavern of nothingness, the resources of his power and thought thrown aside as if by nonexistence.

It scared him but also relieved him to the point that he nearly trembled, both startled and slightly amused. He swallowed hard and took in another long breath, his lungs expanding to their fullest. His spine trembled with the force of it and his stomach twisted sloppily as his mouth grew somewhat dry. Something called to a foreign entity inside of him, tugging and flickering touches of something with no name.

"Hey, uh, Anzu…I have to go."

He realized belatedly that perhaps she had spoken in the space between them, if perhaps he had missed a part of their conversation. He frowned faintly, blinking, but he doubted that he had been paying too much attention to this strange new sensation to dismiss her like that. He had not missed something she might have said, had he?

"Okay. It's time for dinner anyways…"

"Uh, okay," he muttered distractedly, blinking once before clearing his throat. "Anzu, I really am sorry about earlier. You know I would never do that to you if it hadn't been something really bad."

"I know."

It was a sigh, soft and breathy, telling him that he was forgiven. But it was also an indicator that she no longer wanted to talk about it. It was over as far as he was concerned, not something that was too unusual; she usually got over things pretty quickly. It was he and Jonouchi who tended to unconsciously linger. She and Honda managed to brush things aside with relative ease and move on as if it had never happened.

"I'll talk to you later, okay?" He paused. "After you're done with dinner?"

"Sure."

Maybe it was wistful thinking but he heard her sound a little hopeful. Maybe it was even a small bit relieved by the possibility that he would call back after she was done with dinner. He ignored that train of thought, however, frowning and shaking his head. "Goodbye," he returned when she offered a farewell of her own, and his phone lit up as the call ended and he quickly locked it before slipping it into his pocket.

There was something nibbling at his insides. He thought something was digging around inside of him, beneath his skin. It was curling around his bones, inside of the marrow. It was trying to replace his blood. He tilted his head in confusion before narrowing his eyes.

What the hell was that?

He had never felt it before, but he recognized the other two emotions that came with it. The hunger was sharp like teeth, gnawing at his flesh. The other burned at his body as if an undercurrent of pain were swelling through him. He thought of it like a flesh wound and internal bleeding, drawing at his attention so much it was impossible to ignore.

What was that noise?

Yugi swung his head around, ears tuned in to the sound that had cut into his thoughts. Paper crinkled and danced, scraping against the asphalt. He furrowed his brows, nose twitching as he caught the scent of something familiar. He blinked, eyes widening drastically as he tipped his head to the side and breathed in heavily.

It smelled of aging leaves and the bark of a cedar tree, stroked by sunlight as the very edges curled up and inwards. He blinked, drawing in a deep breath once more, and wondered at the possibility of its source being a threat. His mind shied away momentarily, and it occurred to him that he could very easily turn back on his heel and make his way to his home again, before he might be sighed.

But the more curious half of his mind made his head turn swiftly in the direction it came from. His sense of self-preservation and curiosity burned against each other, cutting and warring within his skull, and he bit his tongue to keep himself from making any rash movements. It took him a moment, and his tongue slipped between his lips to move along his jowls in almost unnaturally, predatory motions that made him cringe briefly. He shook his head sharply once more.

The noise came again a moment later. This time, more noticeably, was a touch of metal grating. The screech was low and soft but he still cringed before making his way slowly forward. There was a thudding noise, echoing loudly, and a sharp screeching that tore through the air once more.

He assumed it must have been a dog that was digging through the trash for a meal, sniffing for some kind of scraps that it was desperate enough to dive into the can for. The idea made him relax as well as grow reluctant to investigate any further. If it was so simple, then why should he disturb it? But he could not help it when his feet kept moving, carrying him close to the source despite the way that he found his mind growing somewhat bored with the idea.

He froze in place.

That wasn't a dog.

Leaning over the side of the metal object was a small and slender form just taller than himself. The shoulders were hunched downwards, the back arched only faintly. In the dark with such dim light, the color of its skin was an almost stunning shade of brown and gold that looked desert sand beneath the night sky. The clothes were somewhat baggy, with a more form-fitting touch to the shoulders and hips down to the knees. The sneakers on its feet were pressed at the toes, pushed against the very side of the dumpster, giving it more leverage to either jump down and flee or pivot more fully into the trashcan. Their elbows were arched like jagged swords at their sides, making the shape look almost unnatural and anything but human at first glance. And, when they tipped their weight forward just enough, he could see the way the shoulder blades even from beneath the jacket and shirt on its back.

"Hey."

He was not sure why his voice came out so soft, nor why he did not make it an exclamation instead of a simple greeting. Surely he should have said it in a way to make the other boy stop what he was doing, right? But it was just enough to get him the reaction he had awaiting. The boy turned his head, blinking, and his posture changed to a more relaxed one as he leaned back somewhat.

His toes remained pressed against the metal bin, spine straightened and elbows no longer so unnaturally bent to support him. His hands were loose enough in their grip that he could not see the tendons beneath his skin as his long fingers kept a hold, but it was firm enough to support his weight. Yugi blinked a couple of times, watching him, surprised by the very fact that his mind could even catalog such things without his acknowledgment or conscious effort, and then let out a small breath.

The puff of air that greeted him made him stiffen for a brief second. The way the light bounced off the crystallized exhale made his stomach twist briefly. It looked almost like a light and drifting mist, glittering silver and white and faint gold as if laced with a fairytale touch. He shook his head faintly at himself, lowering his eyes quickly when he saw the other boy's shoulders rise and fall in a rolling motion.

"If you're hungry, we can go inside and I'll buy you a burger."

The lycanthrope before him blinked slowly when he raised his gaze back to Yugi's. With the gleam of faint gold from the streetlamp a little further down the alley, Yugi found his stomach twisting furiously in tight knots. There was a glassy gleam to the glittering gaze before him, with such vibrancy and hideous reflection that it made his breath catch in his throat briefly. His bright red eyes looked marred with the little splash of gold, rendering such touch a toxic and hideous rustic orange that made him shiver.

But the intelligence in those bright eyes was enough to make Yugi feel sick. He was considering him, taking note of his words and tossing them back and forth within his mind. He was watching him, studying, attempting to pull the sincerity from his words and maybe hold them in his own thoughts.

However, very quickly, the moment of such acknowledgment passed. His head snapped away, looking to the metal before it, and when he drew a hand away to shift his grip, the metal screeched as if it were being torn and punctured. His nose lowered, sniffing once more, and the way his shoulders rose into a bristle made it clear that what greeted him was not satisfactory.

"Do you want one?" Yugi offered, frowning when the other did not immediately turn back to him. The dismissal made his heart lurch violently for several moments, stomach twisting painfully. It cut too deeply for his liking; was it the end of their interaction altogether simply because he had done him the favor of saving his life? Had he meant to ignore him and act as if his existence was nothing due to this simple fact?

The small teen began to snap at him in frustration at the very thought but those bright red eyes flickered over to him abruptly with a new emotion to burden him with. The glimmer of orange shone like amber, harsh and violent, like a splash of fire to offer deception to his formerly relaxed stance. His eyes grew narrow and his lashes blocked away the light to make his gaze nearly black, but his expression had not grown any further undone in its serenity.

Not a muscle moved in his jaws, not a shift of weight came to his balance, and not once did the other boy so much as blink at him. Yet he could feel the defensive aggression that threatened to come over him, as if it were his own, and it seemed for a moment to thicken the air and make it harder to draw a breath into his lungs.

"I'm sorry," Yugi said quickly, quietly, head snapping away and his eyes lowered to the ground. He had read somewhere that eye contact made wolves more likely to fight; he knew common dogs shied away from it with people because of this instinct as well. But he also realized that whatever tension tugged at the other was caused by his own brief flash of anger.

Yugi turned back, sure that the moment had passed and he might be more relaxed, and reached up to scratch at the back of his left ear in an almost sheepish expression. The movement caused the lycanthrope to stiffen faintly, eyes boring into him now and snapping towards his other hand where he had subconsciously moved it to cover his stomach.

He opened his palms, tugging them away from his skin immediately, and showed them off to the other as if he might take such a display as a reason to consider him harmless. The other boy huffed so loudly that he nearly cringed, then turned away and glanced back towards the dumpster before facing him once more.

"You're just…a little frustrating, I guess."

The laugh that came out was slightly strained but light all the same, a choking noise, and with such contradictory a sound that the other tilted his head in surprise. Abruptly, he pushed off the dumpster. The movement was so fast that Yugi almost missed it even while watching him. He landed on his toes, then flattened the soles of his sneakers again, eyes sharpened like twin blades as he considered the smaller boy.

"Uh…anyways," Yugi mumbled, clearing his throat awkwardly. He reached up to run his fingers over his neck, scratching gently before frowning faintly. The other boy jerked his head in a clear indication, eyes glued to where Yugi knew his pulse rested beneath his skin, and he frowned faintly with a subconscious urge to turn away in embarrassment. It seemed almost too unnatural and confusion, almost shameful, as he considered the way in which he watched him so keenly. "It's a lot better. Thank you."

The other boy did not do more than blink at his gratitude, refusing to so much as nod or even raise his chin as if his attention might make him more uncomfortable. Gracefully, as if the backstreets were his home, the shadows his most loyal friends, he moved back several steps to lean against the brick behind him. The red eyes were lazy, flickering over his form, but the sharpness in them had not left.

His arms moved, crossing themselves over his chest, and his legs stretched outwards as he bent his right to press his foot firmly against the brick. The position was somehow intimidating despite his fluid and easy grace, and the action made Yugi's stomach twist painfully but there was no malice to be seen in his position, no anger or aggression to be found against the leisurely body language.

"Listen, if you're hungry, I'll go and buy you a burger. You don't…it's not necessary for you to dig through the trash like this. It's hardly healthy and I don't know if we can technically _get_ sick but I don't think you would like it if you did…right?" he murmured, attempting at first to make a joke and then wondering about it all even as his stomach twisted painfully. His lips twitched and formed an uncomfortably frown despite his attempt to give him a small smile, but the red-eyed teen barely seemed to notice it at all.

He watched him for a moment, narrowing his eyes, and then turned away. He pushed off the wall, stepping forward once, and then spun away from him. The teen sprang away with such efficiency that he cleared the open lid of the dumpster and landed easily on the second. He watched, stunned, as the other boy failed to so much as crouch to recover his balance, as if the leap had been nothing more than a simple step. The thud that should have come with the action was only the softest of sighs from the metal creaking where it lightly pushed against the wall with the sudden disturbance.

Long legs pushed forward in two strides, almost as if attempting to propel himself with the simplest of movements. Lazily he moved towards the chain-link fence a few inches away and pressed his weight into his legs. Yugi watched, mystified and stunned, as the boy bent his legs only slightly and then threw himself over the fence without a second glance.

The impact with the ground was so light that he barely heard it and his mouth opened and closed pathetically in confusion. Though his mind had somehow managed to catalog each second of his departure, in his head Yugi was well aware that it had taken all of nanoseconds to do as he had.

That fact alone made him feel sick. Were his eyes changing and adapting? Were they working to make up for what his usual senses lacked? He shuddered faintly, and realized there would be no chance to keep up or even find the other wolf. It was a weak blow to his system, but with enough force that he cringed as he bit his lip hard enough to tear the soft tissue. Yugi shook his head, feeling small and weak, and pressed his tongue firmly against the backs of his teeth.

He looked around him, wondering what it was that might have held the lycanthrope's attention for so long. Had he not known it was he who was approaching him, he would have easily been caught. And what would have possibly kept his attention so fully that he might risk exposure? The Burger World hamburgers were good, and Yugi's absolute favorite, yes, but they were not so amazing that they could take away one's sense of self-preservation and instinct. He knew for a fact that the wolf would not have risked discovery just for that.

 _He_ would not have risked discovery for that in his shoes. And if Yugi could say that with such absolute certainty, then there was no question that the other boy would never once consider the idea of doing such a thing like that.

He frowned, mildly confused by the very idea, and then shook his head as he drew in yet another deep breath. All he could catch was the smell of the decaying remnants of the fast food, of meat rotting within plastic bags. It was sickening, both sweet to the point of making his head spin, and sour with such power it made his nose burn faintly, and he shuddered as he attempted to sort through it all.

There was the very faint but persistent remaining residue of burning tobacco which he knew would have been snuffed against the metal of the bins and the concrete beneath his feet. There was the tone of molding bread, sour and bitter and causing and ache to form behind his eyes for a brief moment, but there was something else that was far out of place.

It came slow and light to his nostrils. The sensation was enough to make his stomach lurch faintly. He recognized it, though it came slowly to his mind. The scent was sweet with a strong and harsh coppery undertone that made him shake his head sharply. He wrinkled his nose, skin itching furiously where all these smells burned at his nasal passages and made his head spin a little harder. It felt as if the skin might peel away in ribbons and the tissues split to shed blood as he blinked and struggled to put a name to the familiar scent.

It took him a long moment for the identity of this misplaced smell to come to him. And when he finally pulled this thought to the forefront of his mind he wondered, chastising himself, but he had not noticed beforehand. But it was so light and airy in his senses that he was almost unable to fully understand its implications. It burned in his skull like a branding even as he struggled. And his senses ached with the ferocity of its infliction.

The air around it made his heart pound and his stomach drop. At first he could not have sorted it from another scent within the alleyway and then he wondered if the blood came from the werewolf himself. He blinked, frowning and wondered if perhaps the lycanthrope had been harmed.

Yugi's eyes snapped towards the spot the taller teen had been standing before, swallowing hard, but could not find even the smallest of specks that littered the concrete. He grimaced, leaning forward, and breathed in heavily to draw in a massive lungful of the rancid scents that burned at his attention.

He almost gagged from the force of the smells, clenching his jaw and nearly trembling with disgust at the very touch of it. He recoiled violently, swallowing away his curses, and trembled as he breathed in weakly and realized immediately that the smell had not come from him.


	13. Hunger

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day (no update on June 2nd)**

 **Chapter Warnings: Mentions of Blood, Mentions of Death, Animal Cruelty/Death**

 **So! Last chapter I mentioned that there might be disturbing content in this chapter. There is. I don't want anyone to be surprised by this so here we go: Animal Cruelty/Death. Yugi finds out what was hiding under the dumpster. It's a DOG. Yami is HUNTING A DOG. Why? Because, as Yugi points out, Yami is STARVING. And Yugi JUSTIFIES this as the scene happens. The reason is this: Wolves and coyotes and foxes WILL eat small prey when they are hungry and have to navigate an area heavily populated by people. Foxes will eat cats, coyotes will go for small dogs and cats, and wolves will eat dogs when they are forced to. If their natural prey is unavailable to them (for Yami it's the serows, the deer, the boar and the rabbits) or they cannot catch them without wasting too much energy, they WILL do it.**

 **It's a natural survival mechanism. The dog IS the weakest and easiest piece of prey close to him. He's starving. He hunts and eats it. That's your warning. It's not graphic, and Yugi only encounters the dog for a few minutes. The meal happens off-screen. But, yeah, I didn't want anyone to be shocked or alarmed by the event happening in the chapter. I wouldn't have done it if it wasn't a VERY IMPORTANT scene (which you'll see why in the scene immediately after Yami gets the dog).**

 **But, PLEASE be aware, Yugi sympathizes with Yami and so justifies the entire thing** **, which is potentially upsetting for readers. I'm sorry, but it is a VERY IMPORTANT scene, because it makes something pivotal happen for the two of them.**

Chapter XIII: Hunger

 _Work Log Entry XIII: August, 1996_

 _August 11_

 _We have reason to believe that both the she-wolf and her single pup will die within a week's time._

 _We are scouring for more wolves to take her place should our efforts go to waste._

 _August 18_

 _The wolf cub has survived the week but his mother has not. She passed two nights before but no one has been able to remove her body from her cage as of yet. The cub is starving even as we work to perfect a formula to keep him alive._

"What are you doing up?"

Yugi glanced over his shoulder around the piece of toast he had been munching on, the only thing in the house that had gathered his attention long enough to bother with consumption. In the doorway, she was rubbing tiredly at one eye, looking as if he she had stumbled from her bed with no true intention of coming into the kitchen until she'd seen the light on. He wondered if she had thought he'd left it on by accident or if she was simply coming to check on who was awake and what might be going on. For the first time in what felt like years, he noticed her eyes, the dark ringlets that made up a natural shadow beneath her gaze.

He felt almost pathetic at this realization, wondering for a long moment how he could be so selfish as not to notice his own mother growing tired before his very eyes. He swallowed, for a moment sickened by the thought, and bit into his piece of toast to give him a moment to think of something to say.

"I thought I would get an early start on the day," he mumbled around another bite, the toast scraping against his throat as he swallowed and felt almost sickened once more. "I couldn't sleep so I figured I would take a walk and then head to school."

Yugi only realized after his words the fact that she could take the statement and wonder if he was suffering his usual night terrors once more. He remembered too late that she would worry more, that not only was he forcing her to lose sleep with his reluctance to help in the clinic but now he added to her burden with his own inabilities. He wanted, for a moment, to cover his face with his palm in shame and disgust for his own choice of words.

He had to be one of the most selfish and disgusting teenagers in existence at this rate.

He looked at her when the silence became overbearing, feeling sick to his stomach with nerves now. Kasumi was watching him with a somewhat cool expression, bordering frustration and frostiness, and he felt sick as he blinked at her stupidly in response. He didn't want him to leave the house. She didn't want him to put himself in danger with the curfew still in place…

"I'll be careful," he promised, giving her a small, weak smile and glancing away after a moment. And he would, because he had no intention of becoming a statistic of death rates in Domino. And he didn't know if the wolves would be up and about at the moment but he was hoping not and, even if they were, perhaps he could outsmart them somehow. He had never been stupid or completely, unrealistically optimistic, and he understood the odds were most likely against him, but he had to find out what was going on at that dumpster.

He had been unable to stop himself from fleeing that night, appearing at the house shaking and trembling and exhausted, and it had taken him an hour to calm down. But his level-headedness had returned a few minutes before he'd truly relaxed again. And with it had come a determination, late that night, to find out what it was that was at the dumpster.

"I'll have my phone on me at all times. And I still know how to hit people really hard with my backpack."

It was a lame attempt at a joke and she did not offer him a smile at the weakness he portrayed it with. Rather, she watched him, eyes still bordering that frostiness that made him feel small and weak, and then murmured, "If anything seems even slightly out of place, you come back, all right?"

Yugi blinked at her, almost startled by how easily she had given up, and then nodded immediately. "Of course," he promised, taking the last bite of his toast and shoving it almost painfully in his mouth. He did not want to say anything stupid that would make her change her mind and even the idea of opening his mouth was scary to him for a brief second. What might she say if he told her what he had planned to do?  
But he could see that frost in her eyes as clear as day. She didn't approve, she was annoyed with him, but she also would not stop him. She would let him do it, if only because she worried about his own restlessness and most likely suspicious due to how early he had come home from his date with Anzu. If nothing else that was one reason she might narrow her eyes and watch him closely, grow irritable with his lies or anything of that nature.

"I'll head off to school right afterwards," he promised when she merely nodded at him and looked as if she might turn around and walk off to her room again. She paused, glancing at him over her shoulder, and her gaze was almost turbulent with frustration as she watched him for a moment. Yugi had the urge to tell her he was sorry for his reluctance to reveal to her everything, that he regretted their relationship had never quite been the strongest, but instead swallowed it away.

Kasumi was gone when he blinked and looked down at his plate with a crestfallen expression. He had always hoped at some point that perhaps they might find a more common ground, that they would eventually be better at this disjointed relationship they'd always had. But he found himself lacking the comprehension of how he might change it and had become fearful that even if he could find that knowledge, she might just as well shun it. He had always been aware that her pregnancy had never been a planned event and he had, without a doubt, pushed on her abilities and time and restrained her from what she'd had the potential to do. A young mother was not as well off as one without responsibilities such as that, and he'd threatened her career more than once.

He shook his head as he got to his feet, banishing the thoughts and squeezing his eyes shut tightly for a moment. There were many reasons he had found himself distanced from her, and his grandfather was not simply a minor obstacle between them. If anything, he was a full-fledged roadblock that tended to stunt any chance they had at such bonding. Reluctantly Yugi shook his head again before making his way to the sink to dump his plate and head into his room.

His backpack was seated in his desk chair, as he had placed it there that night when he'd come to the decision that he had to do this. It was somehow disgusting to the point of being near shameful that he had considered doing such a thing, and the reality of it made him feel sick for a brief moment. But he had to know, because nothing else could have ever made the red-eyed lycanthrope falter in his sense of elusiveness.

When he went downstairs, he hesitated for several minutes, swallowing hard and closing his eyes. The silence was foreboding and weighted, pushing at his skin violently, and he bit his lip to keep from feeling sick to his stomach any further than he already was. Yugi crept into the backroom, the area of the clinic where he knew the medication was stored. If whatever it was that was bleeding was still there, it would probably be long dead, but in case it wasn't, he needed to be prepared.

The wolf had to have been hunting something or other, had to have pushed him into being so unaware of his surroundings. Yugi shook his head and frowned again as he bit his lip before looking for the syringes and needles. He had drawn blood from animals many times and several of them he'd drawn from the throat rather than the legs. If the animal was still alive and aggressive, it would be easy for him to inject into the jugular with the pentobarbital.

He pulled the needle from its sleeve, looking it over, and then closed his eyes again. This was hardly going to be a fun trip to Burger World.

It took him thirty minutes to fully make his way to the dumpster. Several times he had turned back around to start home or maybe to trot to the school and wait for them to open the gates. He felt weaker than ever before, head spinning and eyes aching as he swallowed thickly and followed the familiar path he had made that night to the dumpsters once more. It was disturbing to have to wonder about it all and consider the fact that he would be putting something to sleep.

And, what if it turned out this was a wolf, wounded and sick, and unable to move? Could he really put them to sleep when it meant that it was a person who was slipping away instead of a common pet? He nearly groaned even as he turned the corner, and froze in place in surprise at the sight to greet him there.

Yugi had never seen the wolf at its full height like this. The realization of its size made him gape, heart leaping into his throat, and his hands shook where they were tucked in his uniform jacket. He opened and closed his mouth pathetically, almost as useless as a fish out of water, head spinning with the raw strength he knew that massive body possessed. He almost fell, his knees nearly buckling beneath him, and sucked in a breath between his teeth.

The black canine stood taller than him on its power hind legs. At its fullest height he thought it could easily lean over the dumpster almost as if partially human like the beasts in Hollywood with the hunched backs and massive upper bodies. But the animal before him was nothing but a canine, slightly irregular in size and with an aura too strange to challenge, with such power it made him shiver.

Its nose was wrinkled as it sniffed deeply several times, tilting its head so that its left ear was angled towards the bags in the metal bin. It dug through again a moment later, drawing in massive gulps of the rotting smell that made Yugi's eyes water even as he crept closer. He reached up and covered his nose, shaking his head violently once, and cringed several times as he took several small steps back. As he had done yesterday, the wolf did not acknowledge him until a full minute had passed and then finally the canine's head turned to stare at him.

The muzzle was massive, almost double the size of Yugi's fists, with eyes that glittered with a deep and terrible sharpness. It stood taller than he had initially assumed in the woods, so large at the shoulders that it was several inches taller than that of a Great Dane's stance. Even the jaws were wider, lengthier, and the fur shuddered along its spine and over its powerful muscles as it shifted forward faintly and lowered its head.

The paws were about the same size as his hand when fully splayed, the toes about twice the width of his fingers. The skull was several inches larger than he had even gauged Valon's. There was a smooth, almost unnoticeable dip between the ears, the fur so smoothly splayed that it was nearly impossible to see it.

With its head raised as it regarded him, tipped to the side, it stood at the same height of the very middle of his ribcage. The ears were beautifully and softly rounded, with tufts of fur that tugged gently at its cheeks. His fur was so smooth and elegant that the cheeks were puffed outwards and almost looked as if the usual downward fall of it sloped upwards around the ears as if to form the base of them. And, as he had before, Yugi wondered if perhaps he could ball his hand into a fist and measure the width of one with it.

For a moment they stared at each other, Yugi frozen in place by his shock, and then the seconds passed. The wolf opened his mouth faintly and a long, slender pink tongue slipped out to run over the massive jowls. He blinked, startled and feeling almost tiny and unusually forlorn as it regarded him with those deep red eyes. When it breathed out roughly, the wide barrel shape of its chest seemed to fold inwards as if collapsing, and then expand slowly but efficiently

"Were you here…all night?"

The canine flicked an ear and then pushed away from the metal dumpster. There was a harsh grating noise where the wheels moved but pressed into the other bin which was bolted into the cement. He realized that the wolf possessed the strength to push the dumpster on its wheels but the second was impossible to move. Perhaps throughout the night the wolf had been attempting more to get this obstacle solved, to be able to get at whatever it was that had captured his attention.

He realized that this meant as well that it was not inside of the dumpster, but rather beneath it. The wolf must have been attempting to use its weight to scare its prey by pushing against the metal to make it rattle loudly. When he could not make it move he must have tried harder at this intimidation by throwing himself against it forcefully. Whatever it was had failed to come out, however.

He watched the wolf as he approached the narrow strip of shadows between the metal and concrete. It was stunning how fully the metallic scent hit him, nearly making his legs buckle, and he swallowed roughly to keep his hands from shaking. In the corner of his eye the wolf had backed away several steps and was staring at him, head tilted and tail lowered.

He looked perturbed and somehow cautiously upset as well, as if the very idea that he might steal his meal was stunning to him. As Yugi knelt down, he saw the black canine pull his lips back at the edges into something acutely like a human grimace before turning away and moving past him.

When it leaped, Yugi threw himself backwards. The dumpster rolled heavily, vibrating loudly, and he wanted to groan at the blast of noise which reverberated in his ears. He turned his head, startled to find the wolf watching him with a hungry but somehow dismissive expression all at once. The red eyes bore into his skin for a moment before the canine turned away and leaped from the lid over the chain link fence as it had the night before.

He frowned to himself, surprised, and wondered at the idea of being able to hear its body weight as it touched the ground again. The lycanthrope had sounded much lighter on his feet the night before, as if he had not possessed nearly as much weight.

Yugi tilted his head at the thought but the scent of blood made him turn away to face the small gap beneath the dumpster once more. He bit his lip, moving to balance himself on his knees again, and felt a fearful tremor creep through his spine. He desperately hoped that it would be a rabbit or maybe a serow or a deer calf, even a piglet. They were all natural prey for a wolf, though he was not sure they actually ate the latter. He shook his head and pressed his palms into the cold concrete, swallowing hard, as he tipped his head to the side and looked beneath the metal bin.

His heart froze in his chest and his mouth fell in horrified disgust.

It was a small black and white dog. There was a blood all around it, though he realized that it was more from awkward inflictions than a true death wolf. The wolf had not managed to hit the jugular, though there was blood smeared across the pale fur of it. He could see that tufts of fur had been stripped from its pale skin, the puncture wounds deep but not fatal. Several small lines of deep red were scrapes were the incisors had snapped together too soon for the mortality to be dealt.

"Oh gods…"

The snarl that greeted him was so weak that he almost could not take it for more than a gurgle of noise. The way the blood bubbled from its throat with the sound was horrifying, but he realized most likely something had caused it to be able to escape without as much harm as the wolf had meant to deal. That could have meant a car crash or fall, anything really. And its saving grace could easily have caused a hideous and apparent internal wound somehow.

Yugi watched the small dog for a moment, took in the long and narrow shape of its muzzle, and bit his lip. He would have to try reaching using the scruff of the neck and distract with the other arm. He hardly needed to explain dog bites and blood soaking his uniform jacket. The teen hesitated for a moment, then rolled up both sleeves and watched the canine for a second.

It blinked dreary, half-blind eyes at him, as if exhausted, and he shook his head faintly. It had to have been half-dead. It had been there all night, he knew, stuck because the wolf refused to leave it to a peaceful passing.

He frowned to himself, rolling his sleeves further up his arms until they were nearly caught on his biceps, and spread his legs enough to keep only his knees and toes of his sneakers on the concrete. His eyes narrowed, his mouth grew a little drier, and he swallowed hard as he reached forward. The boy blinked and snapped its jaw at one hand, barely missing his wrist, just as he caught the blood-soaked scruff with the other.

The dog wailed, the sound making him flinch, but he did not release the sticky, loose grip he had on the wound. The canine attempted to press its weight down and sink the nails into the concrete but failed. Yugi took a moment to breathe in deeply and then swiftly pulled the dog forward.

His free hand dug into his pocket as his other held the dog's scruff forcefully towards the ground. The canine squirmed weakly but with just enough strength to nearly make him release. He gripped harder, tightening his fingers on the loosened skin, feeling sick to his stomach at the sensation, and pulled the cap off of the needle in his hand with his teeth.

He didn't spit it away, unsure of what more to do with himself at the moment, and then quickly scanned the dog's throat for a moment. It would have been easier if the fur had not been stripped in such rough patches, but he recognized the smaller dog's anatomy just enough.

He spread his index and middle fingers, pulling the loose skin somewhat out of place once more, and then smeared some of the blood away. For a moment he struggled to fully comprehend what he was doing, but the dog's desperation would only cause it to suffer if he didn't.

Yugi shook his head then aligned and pressed the needle into the skin. The dose he had grabbed was for larger dogs, and the speed that it allowed the animals to slip from between an owner's fingers was within five seconds of injection. Considering how weak this stray was, how bloodied and winded it already seemed, he doubted even five seconds would pass.

When he released it, the skin shuddered and the fur shifted as he stroked it once, unable to do anything more as it let out a harsh breath and then coughed out and went still.

"I'm so sorry," he whispered weakly, struggling to keep his voice from cracking. He was still stroking its fur long after it had passed, shaken and unable to do anything more as he waited, knowing it would not take long.

"Were you hunting him?" the smaller teen breathed.

The lycanthrope did not answer, as he had known would happen. But, as he raised his head and looked at him, the dark eyes drifted to Yugi's face slowly. Those estranged irises were empty but for a burning and incapacitating hunger that made his knees feel weak as the intensity and hollow flare of his famine proved itself powerful enough to make him tremble pathetically. And gods, if that sensation, that concentrated projection of hunger, did not make his stomach twist and his heart hurt more than it already did.

Yugi did not know which he ached for more, however, the dog or the wolf. The wolf was starving to have come this far and wait so long throughout the night to get at this dog. But the dog had done nothing wrong, had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. It had been a simple stray that had come across a predator too powerful for it to hold back and had, thus, been killed for its inabilities. But it could just as easily have been someone's pet, a loving and happy white and black canine with bright brown eyes and a wagging tail and lolling tongue.

"You have _woods_ ," he spat, unable to contain his rage as he stood up and glared at the other boy. He was trembling faintly, muscles pulled so tightly together that he could not suppress the tremors racking his frame. "You have rabbits, squirrels…serows, _boar_. There are even _deer_. And fucking _rivers_ , with _fish_!"

But wild boars were dangerous and the deer had all begun to move along. And serows may have been easy to pursue in the woods but they also lived farther up on the mountain range than the wolf ever could. The steep slopes of rock and hardened earth were not suitable for any kind of canine. And the water had become so cold that it was a mere matter of days before the rivers began to freeze and the fish that swam in them had moved again.

Yugi was somehow almost proud that he might find a way to justify the lycanthrope, even if it was only to himself, to ease his own burden of knowledge. But the frustration was far more abundant, making his skin burn and his body weak. His mind had broken into a sprint and his knees felt like weathered boards as the other male's head slowly tilted to the side.

For a brief moment he looked as if he might open his mouth and then it passed just as abruptly, the idea of conversation or the possibility of it gone immediately. But as Yugi looked at him, he realized that the red eyes did not care for his lecture or even the slightest idea of it. He was starving and his eyes were hollow with the pain of his empty stomach and with that ache came a rather blatant disregard. In his famished state, he did not care to fight Yugi or anyone else, but he also did not possess the instinct to attempt avoiding the possibility of injury.

Yet, despite knowing these things, Yugi could not shake the disgust. "But you went after and decided to hunt a dog. You _cannot_ be serious," Yugi spat loudly, with such anger that the borders of the words came out in an animalistic tone. He was startled by his own voice, the way it echoed so harshly in his ears, but it was far more jarring to see the other werewolf's reaction.

Yugi had visibly jolted him to attention and so his eyes had grown wide and startled just before his shoulders rose. His lips were twitching faintly, threatening to curl upwards, and his breath came out in a sharp, rough noise that bordered a deep snarl. His red eyes had grown harsh and vicious, with a murderous glint that told him to step back and rethink his aggression.

"He could have wound up as someone's _pet_ and you just _did this_. You just fucking _killed_ it."

Yugi swallowed the next mouthful of words, horrified by the way the stare ground so heavily into his nerves. He had the overwhelming urge to vomit to back away and flee. His stomach churned and ached. His heart pounded weakly in his chest.

But the taller teen did not move. His lips did not curl. His eyes did not narrow. He did not tilt his head or even move closer. He simply stood there and stared. He watched and studied him. Yugi's spine tightened painfully under the scrutiny. The gleam in his eyes was growing more vibrant. The murderous intent could not become any clearer. His hunger would push him into slaughtering him if Yugi was not careful.

For the smallest of seconds the smaller teen craved that reaction. He wished the red-eyed boy _would_ lunge at him. He _wanted_ to provoke him. He _wanted_ this wolf to sink his teeth into Yugi's skin. It was disturbing to realize just how overwhelmingly _desirable_ that suddenly was to him. There was some sick sense of excitement and wondrous curiosity that made him crave it.

But he did not welcome death. He did not want to be killed. Yugi felt as if a switch had been flipped somewhere in his brain. That sick excitement still pushed on his thoughts, desperate for attention, but common sense made him bite his tongue. The taller boy before him was still tense, ready to lash out, and he swallowed hard to keep from saying anything for a long moment.

His eyes shot away, staring at the metal of the dumpster for a moment. There was a coat of rust and a dark streak of brown and red that covered the side near the bottom. He swallowed again.

"I'm sorry. I don't know why I just started…snarling at you. You were just doing what you need so you don't go hungry." Yugi hesitated, then glanced at him from the corner of his long lashes, drawing in a deep breath. "Wolves eat so much and you're a werewolf and…you probably eat a lot more than any wolf. I've already started eating a lot more and I haven't been one _nearly_ as long as you must have…"

There was an ache in his arms from the weight of the small canine, pushing down on his muscles and making him feel queasy for a brief moment. When he shifted his small body more solely into his left arm, he was stunned. Yugi had not even thought to do it, yet his hand had reached out. The other wolf was frozen in place, startled by the action. His cheek was a comfortable warmth against his fingertips. The skin was smooth and soft.

Yugi blinked stupidly, unsure of what to do or why he had done this. What purpose had there been for him to reach out like this? It was somehow shocking to him that he would do something so impulsive. The fact that the wolf had wanted to kill him only seconds ago and was now in front of him barely drew at his attention. It was not even the idea that it was a male whose cheek he was touching.

It was that fact that he had even done it. He had somehow assumed that perhaps impulses would be more easily cast aside and guarded away now that he was infected. Humans were impulsive animals, but he had not thought wolves to be. But where had that excitement come from? And why would he have done this if not for that?

His mind jumped, trying to rationalize what he had thought to be unnatural. He thought of hallucinations, of wolves being social, of wanting to connect with someone in the same boat as him. Yet, somehow, none of it seemed to make sense.

He pulled his hand away, just centimeters of cold air between them. But his fingers were still warm. The air was sated by a gentle heat. The pads of his fingers ached and burned. Yugi fought off the urge to tremble.

They stared at one another, the red gaze boring into his and making him both self-conscious and yet somehow agonizingly empowered as well.

"I'm sorry. That was really stupid. I…and you're starving, aren't you? I shouldn't make you…I…"

He laughed dryly once at the irony of the statement that lay on the tip of his tongue and then shook his head slowly. For a long moment Yugi wanted nothing more than to scold himself. He knew the other wolf's reluctance to take him up on the offer of the restaurant food. He himself had grown unable to eat it more than necessary. The tastes were never the same anymore. And the smell was bad enough to make his stomach heave.

Yet here he stood, pathetically offering a boy who seemed _far_ more wolf than human a cheeseburger.

"Here."

The lycanthrope did not move even after Yugi pulled his hand back completely. He sorely missed the soft, addictive touch of heat that had stroked his fingers at the close proximity. His skin was tingling now where the cold air coated them and he swallowed hard as he shifted the canine once more. He felt sick to his stomach with the blood that he realized covered his arm, his fingers, when he attempted to balance the animal's weight more comfortably.

He could feel the blood rushing from his face, leaving his skin cold and pale. Yugi had helped out on surgeries, knew how to remove blood from his skin and clothes properly. But he had _never_ gotten himself soaked like this. Every pore on his right arm seemed to be coated in bright red up to his elbow. He trembled briefly then jerked his head away.

But his eyes fell on the other wolf again. And his eyes just as vibrant as the red he had been trying to escape.

Yugi shivered and held the canine out a little more insistently. He was desperate for him to take it from him. He needed it away from him so that he could run home, wash the blood away, and somehow make his way to school. But the seconds kept passing and the wolf merely watched him. Those red eyes were burning into his as if unable to understand what he was doing.

And the idea came to him that perhaps it was not his confusion, but rather the fact that he had touched it at all. Had he taken to the same idea as Valon somehow? Could he tell he was unnatural as the other boy had claimed? Did this red-eyed lycanthrope in front of him think of him as some kind of symbol of death too?

Did he think his touch was a death wish? That it was an omen, a curse, that he had done so?

Yugi was trembling harder than ever at the thought. Why would he have saved his life he shared the same thoughts? Why would he have tried so hard to keep him alive? Why would he have started to follow him home like that before?

He felt as if his head might spin into a nonexistent mess of blood and brain matter. He felt dizzy, legs weak and nearly buckling beneath him. He felt a groan crawling up the back of his throat. His arms were wobbly. His pulse was beginning to stutter.

He expected the red eyes to dilate. He thought they would burn. Then his mouth would open. His long, sharp canines would gleam. He would tremble again. And the wolf would be upon him.

Instead the lycanthrope lowered his eyes, lashes cutting into the brilliant red of them. They looked almost toxic in their color, with the jagged strips of black shadows like tiger stripes falling across them. Yugi immediately dropped it into his arms when he moved to accept it. His body was still quaking and his breath was coming in rattled gasps there was an impulse in the back of his mind to curl up into a ball and rock back and forth.

He had been on the verge of _begging_ him to show mercy and take it.

It took him several long minutes to gather some kind of strength back into his limbs. Yugi's heart was still hammering even as he looked at the other boy, who was staring at the bundle in his arms. His bare arms, too, had become soaked, smears of bright red against golden-bronze skin. He had not recognized he had forgone his jacket and was instead wearing what looked to be a black tank top.

Yugi focused on that for a moment, breathing in deeply and watching the other boy's chest expand in such a soothing movement. It had such an achingly smooth rhythm, never once hitching, that it made his heart slow and his breath come easier. His lungs loosened and his fingers lost some of the ache they had harbored before. He shivered but now it was from the cold rather than the immensity of the judgment passed before.

"I…I could understand why you would want that more than a hamburger," Yugi muttered, swallowing hard to keep from choking on his words. His eyes lowered for a moment towards the concrete and then flickered back immediately. His jaw felt loose, almost disconnected, and it was only then that he realized he must have been clenching it before. He closed his eyes tightly for a moment, breathing out again, and watched the other teen once more for what felt like hours. "I'm really sorry for…all of that. I mean…making you…starve longer than necessary. I don't really…know what's…going on with me. R-right now…"

The statement made his insides feel queasy. What did he know anymore? It seemed impossible that he could gather up any kind of knowledge about anything anymore. What Yugi had once thought he knew had been uprooted and tossed away, with such strength that it made his mind tremble. The most he could do now was sit and wait and hope and experiment with things he had no true understanding of. And what kind of life was that?

The other boy raised his eyes slowly, their gazes locking and boring into each other once more, the burning of bright fire and sad chill of cooled water, and he saw it immediately.

Disgust.

Hatred.

Shame.

Guilt.

Yugi swallowed hard and let out a stuttering breath before turning on his heel and fleeing from his own reflection.

* * *

"What were you doing at the park last night?"

Yugi blinked stupidly at the question, drawn out of his own halting thoughts and turning his head in confusion. He frowned at him, tilting his head, and furrowed his brows. "What do you mean?" he muttered, unsure of what more he could say.

"I mean, you were in the park last night," Jonouchi replied, giving him a small, quizzical smile that made him feel lightheaded for a brief second. He'd been out late at night, but the park had not been the spot. "A few hours after curfew, I saw you at the park. You looked like you were either going to vomit or you were digging or something. It was fucking weird. What the hell _were_ you doing?"

"The park?" he whispered slowly, blinking and struggling as his mind scrambled for answers. The confusion was clear on his face as he fought for control of his thoughts and which direction they might take, but for a long moment he still could not come up with anything. "I…"

 _Wasn't at the park_.

He hesitated for a moment, cutting his own voice off. His lips pulled into a tight, grim line. His eyes grew a little dull with realization. Jonouchi had run across the lycanthrope. The wolf must have gone that way after he had scared him away from his meal the first time. He must have wandered into the park for whatever reason, though digging implied he'd found another meal, possibly a rodent. He must not have realized there was someone else there. Or maybe he had but he'd been too hungry to care, just as he had at the dumpster.

"You…?" Jonouchi pressed slowly, trying to coax an answer out of him that he did not have. The thought occurred to the smaller teen, staring at his best friend, that he should tell the truth, that it wasn't him. The response sat on the tip of his tongue, ready to spring out at any moment, but there it also died.

He would have to explain the other boy's existence. And what happened if Jonouchi went to talk to him for whatever reason? Sometimes the blond was not so tactical when it came to speaking to people. He might go up to him attempting to make a joke that he looked like his friend and the lycanthrope might turn around and attack him, worse yet, he could end up killing him. Or, in the best case scenario, he would simply turn tail. But the blond might follow. And what would happen if he got lost in the woods? What about the various _other_ wolves lurking in the dark, waiting to sink their teeth into fresh meat?

Besides that, he stilled owed the canine, didn't he? He could not simply throw him under the bus after he had saved his life—twice. Turning his back on him by telling his best friend things he had no right to was nothing he could ever fully consider.

"I went for a walk and I dropped my phone. It was kind of dead so I couldn't find it without feeling around for it," he lied after a moment, opting for simple over detailed. Whether or not they all believed him was another matter, but at least the lie wouldn't be spun too far out of control from its simplicity.

Jonouchi was quiet for a long moment. "Then why did you run off like that?"

Yugi frowned, wondering for a moment if that lycanthrope had a single violent bone in his body. Why not attack someone if they came running at you? Why not attack them if they threatened your meal? He had seemed ready to attack him in the alleyway but he had not wanted to if Yugi hadn't first.

"Curfew," he muttered, shrugging, a little surprised to hear an edge to his own voice. "I snuck out and I needed to get home before my mom realized I was gone."

It was not hard to recognize the disbelief that lingered on the blond's face. Nor was it hard to see the way Honda quirked an eyebrow faintly in question. And he knew that Anzu was nibbling her bottom lip without looking at her. They all knew he was lying, but they couldn't tell why. And rather than question him, they would simply let the subject die like that.

He turned away as they began to chat idly, muttering lazily about whatever it was that was on their minds. The conversation drifted in entirely different directions for the hour that their lunch lasted, and he knew they noticed his lack of participation but did not comment. They were watching him with something of wariness in their eyes, as if they saw something in him that they couldn't explain, and it made him feel sick to his stomach.

Yugi did not bother to speak, however, or to pay too much attention to it all. Rather, he looked away and ignored the way the food made him feel queasy. His head was aching and his stomach burned as he closed his eyes and looked at the boards in front of the room. The teacher had left them all to eat and socialize, the average lunch for a mediocre day.

Yet, all his mind could come up with was that they too might turn on him. Would they suddenly spin around one day and accuse him of the same Valon had? Or would they hesitate like the wolf had in the alley, as if his very touch were poisonous? He wanted to swallow his tongue or cry out at the thought, but squelched the impulse. Surely the wolf would not have saved him if that was the case, right? Or had he not known then and something about their interactions recently had told him such a thing? Was that possible? Or was he just scaring himself without reason?

He looked towards the board again and swallowed roughly. The wolf had saved him for whatever reason. And he'd gone as far as to give him something of a cautionary glare when he'd found his meal. A hungry predator in the wild would snarl and give warning and then going for the jugular if they were not wise enough to leave them. And he might have hesitated, but it seemed it might have only come from the fact that Yugi was actually handing him his food. And that must have been unusual and confusing for him, right?

Yugi cringed faintly, watching the others closely in his peripheral to make sure they didn't see him. None of them responded to the movement and he relaxed some of the growing pain in his spine by biting his tongue.

The wolf had only killed the dog because he was hungry. There had not been another readily available food source for it to go to at the time. The dog had been there and he had been hunger enough to chase it down. Wolves did not kill for the thrill of it, and that lycanthrope was more animal than he was human, wasn't he? In that sense he had to be more conscious of the fact that he was hunting solely for his hunger and not for the adrenaline rush he knew wolves got when they gave chase.

And wolves did not have the right to be picky when it came to meals. Their lives were too harsh and strained, survival such an ingrained instinct that it dictated everything as it did with each animal. He remembered reading that in places like Alaska wolves were supposedly known for leading dogs astray through pretending to play and stealing food away at night time. It was what made them such formidable and adaptive predators.

Unlike others, they had the ability to use their intelligence to make their lives easier for themselves and generations afterwards. They had learned throughout the Ice Age to hunt both large and small. That alone proved their capabilities as well as the natural instinct and drive for survival that guided them. The harshness of the wilderness demanded adaptation and so the canines had gone about doing just that.

And the lycanthrope had the human body at its disposal as well. Though, he realized, perhaps it was better that they stuck to the canine diet instead of the human one. The food caught in the wild was more or less untouched as far as chemicals that might make an animal sick.

He swallowed hard. No wonder he himself was having difficulty even considering eating fast food any longer. It was hardly something that a wolf would choose before its own diet. And if he was half wolf, didn't that mean that it weighed just as heavily towards his sense of hunger?

He shuddered and shook his head at himself before looking at his meal and feeling his mouth tug downwards into a slight grimace. There was an ache in his stomach, though he was unsure what it was from, and he was not amused by the hollowness accompanying it. But his thoughts were already circulating back to what Jonouchi had said before.

The wolf had been in the park. And maybe if he staked it out, Yugi might _find_ the wolf again. Though what he might do when he found him was another question altogether. There didn't seem to be much he could talk about, considering the other didn't speak. And there wasn't a reason for him to corner him or anything.

He tried to convince himself otherwise, but hours later, mere minutes from curfew, he found himself at the park. He'd gone with the others to the arcade, playing mindlessly despite the way his head rattled, though nothing like his sensory overload had come about again, and then gone to the park when they had each chosen their separate ways home. He had awkwardly waited until each of them were out of range after ducking around the corners as if he was walking home and then bolted in order to make it there before cufew.

He was panting faintly, unused to the sprint he'd broken into in order to make it there, and the time on his phone said it had only taken him a few minutes. But the park was wholly deserted, without a single person be seen anywhere, and his stomach clenched as he looked around himself several times.

He drew in a deep breath, tasting the air, but found nothing to even allude to the lycanthrope's presence there. For what felt like hours he remained scenting the air, trying to sort out even the faintest hint, and found nothing fresh. There was the staler smell of autumn leaves from the night before, but nothing to pronounce his presence any more current than that.

 _Another waste of time_ , he thought, breathing out harshly in frustration and watching the way the puff of white sparkled faintly once more. He distractedly breathed out again, watching it with something akin childish fascination. It'd been so long since he'd paid full attention to it before and now he was finding it fun to witness the way it drifted into the air like coiling smoke.

But it was not enough to dampen the hollowness that came over him at the aspect of the wolf failing to be there. It was not as if they had planned it by any means, just that he had been hopeful and it had not paid off. The reality of it was frustrating, though he was somewhat ashamed of himself for even thinking it a possibility. He should have known that it would not happen in such a way. The wolf was elusive and obviously keen if it was not easily found by others.

He shook his head at himself and turned on his heel to make his way home. A police car passed by him, with an officer who did not take even a moment to roll down the window and reprimand him for the late hour, and Yugi frowned. They didn't pull over to make sure that he wasn't the murderer himself, as if he were too small and docile to do such a thing.

He nearly laughed at the thought.

If only they knew about the disease he was carrying now.

They would never give him a mindless declaration of being too small to do anything.

No one would think he was too innocent to even lie.

But thankfully none of them did. And he had no reason to point it out. No one would believe him anyways, unless he suddenly shed his skin for a fur coat. And he had no idea how he would do it and doubted he would ever desire it. This whole thing seemed such a burden as to weigh on his shoulders with enough power to make his back break.

He shook his head, scattering the thoughts, and then froze in place. Someone was seated on the walkway in front of his door. Yugi blinked, straining his eyes, wondering if it was a cadaver just placed there in that position, if perhaps it was just another example of Ushio. But there was no blood to be found anywhere and the sight of just gray cement made him feel almost weak to his knees.

He wondered for a moment if maybe it was Jonouchi waiting for him. His dad sometimes got drunk and, though he wasn't physical in his abuse, the emotional aspect of it really tended to wear on the tall blond. On those days Yugi would let him spend the night while his mom and grandpa simply went to bed and didn't worry beyond the occasional thought that they might play video games all night. It was an unconscious but completely noticeable aspect between the four of them; when those nights occurred, they all pretended that wasn't why he showed up. They all pretended that it was simply because Jonouchi wanted to and Yugi had offered without asking.

Another small spark of hope lit up inside him, that perhaps that was the explanation. But then it was dashed again. This person in front of him was not tall enough, though their legs appeared thin and long. And the way they hunched over in the darkness said that there was an uncomfortable tension in them that he had never seen in his friend. Yugi couldn't see much of their head from the position, legs drawn up and face possibly pressed against them. But he could see their wrist, which looked as if it had been burned into a mess of black charcoal.

Yugi hesitated, for a moment thinking to call the police, but then paused. The air was too still to be able to scent them, so he was at a loss as to what to do. Yet, somehow, despite himself, his feet had begun to move again. There was a small but burning intensity in his stomach, a threat that he felt his body might be able to make into truth. He moved slowly but surely, with some kind of confidence he knew he didn't normally possess. He came to the end of his yard, breathing in deeply, and then started across the grass.

The crackling noise made the other person sit up straighter. Abruptly the head snapped up and their limbs grew a little straighter, though somehow more relaxed. Against the shadows, Yugi could not make out their features despite straining his eyes multiple times, and he felt a small bit of read pool in his stomach. What if this person was planning to kill him? But then why should they wait on his doorstep like this? He swallowed thickly, biting his lip, and, as he got within several steps of the other he froze in place again.

There was a thick, noticeably slapping noise in gentle droplets of sound. Yugi blinked and his eyes shot from where they had been trying to take in the details of the other's face to the concrete. There was a splotch of black, like oil, in a splatter on the ground mere inches from his hip. He blinked, his eyes straining to grow more accustomed to the dark, and then turned his head in surprise when their leg moved to stretch out lazily in front of him.

He opened and shut his mouth twice, unable to do anything more as he gaped at the other person seated before him.


	14. Protein Shakes

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day (no update on June 2nd)**

 **Chapter Warnings: COPIOUS Amounts of Blood, Proper/Slightly Improper Cleaning of Wounds, Night Terrors, Self-Inflicted Pains, Improper Use of Medication**

 **Okay, guys! So I might fall back out of schedule again. I'm not sure but I might. Things got a little out of hand as far as work and a couple of other things went so I started losing some time with writing again. Sorry about that but I should be able to fix it again and get back on schedule at some point.**

Chapter XIV: Protein Shakes

 _Work Log Entry XIV: September, 1996_

 _September 16_

 _The wolf cub has grown healthier after constant hourly feedings and the mixture we give him as formula. We have given him a name, dubbed him with the title of the project that he is living proof of._

 _His name is A.T.E.M._

 _September 20_

 _His health has declined rapidly and no amount of formula or drugs has been able to keep his organs from shutting down._

 _He may not make it through the night._

They were staring at Yugi, sharp eyes framed by long, spidery lashes, irises glinting faintly with an ethereal glow that made his heart hammer. But their tongue was pressed against the flesh of their wrist, where blood was still dripping slowly down in little rivulets of black. He felt small and cold, sickened by the sight. His stomach twisted painfully back and forth, flopping with such immensity as to make his head spin.

Though they were watching him, waiting, Yugi could do nothing more than continue to gape, stunned and unsure of what more to do. The heavy dripping in his ears made him shiver before he shook his head sharply and closing his mouth, staring blankly.

The other raised their head after a moment, tipping it slightly to the side. The shadow of their lashes grew to mere pinpricks and that glow was full force within those powerful eyes. The pupils were blown in the darkness, stretched almost to encompass much of their gaze, but the ringlets of color were still somehow wide where they seemed to swallow the whites of their eyes.

When Yugi looked down, the boy's clothes were wrinkled and his jeans torn only slightly at the knees. Overall he looked untouched, however, though he could not erase the image of his bleeding wrist from his mind. A jacket lay next to him, nearer to the door than the rest of him, and looked immaculate in comparison to the rest of his slender frame. His long lashes flickered upwards as he raised his eyes more pointedly towards him, and Yugi was somehow surprised by his gaze showing such an unmistakably relieved gleam.

He blinked stupidly, then frowned faintly. So he had been looking for him too…

"Um…hi?" Yugi murmured, feeling perplexed and weak for a moment. The relaxation in the other's frame made him fight a tremble. What was it that he had been looking for him for?

But his insides also felt warm and there was another sense of calmness that crept through his bones as if he might welcome the other as a long known friend. It was almost as if Yugi knew this boy as well as he did the back of his own hand, though he had no way of knowing what more to do with himself.

He blinked once, unable to do more, the movement long and slow, and the wolf's lips quirked up on the right side, a lopsided smile that made Yugi want to grin childishly. His eyes had grown a little brighter, as if he welcomed his awkward greeting with all the friendliness he could muster. But it was not enough to make the smaller boy forget the other's bloodied wrist and the pain that he knew he must have been feeling from the wound.

"Still not talking, huh?" he muttered, swallowing hard as he looked down at his wrist again. His stomach grew cold, hollow once more, and his mouth opened in a thin line as he bit his lip and shook his head faintly.

Yugi could see the bone under the other's skin, a spot of white among furious red and torn tendons. Sinewy muscles gaped up at him, causing his stomach to clench and twist painfully, and his head spun faintly as he fought off the urge to heave acid. As if Yugi had drawn attention to it, the lycanthrope turned to look down at it as well. His lips pursed faintly and his tongue flicked out again to press against the wound again. The movement was swift and simple, but he looked incredibly self-conscious, as if he were unnerved by his appearance despite his relief moments before.

"Here, come inside and I'll go ahead and bandage up your wrist, okay?"

Yugi paused when the lycanthrope moved as if to get to his feet. The movement was enough to make him startle, eyes widening briefly. His body was rigid for a moment, frozen in place as he swallowed hard. The last time they had been so close to his home like this, he had lunged and then fled. But then, he had not even gotten this close to the door beforehand, and now he was seated there watching him with those keen red eyes.

Yugi blinked, startled again by something in the way the other moved. His brows furrowed together as he looked at the other boy and his eyes widened in surprise as his thoughts began to slow drastically. There was something unnaturally pale, almost white in color, so much so that he thought of his slender wrist. But it was a much larger breach of color, encompassing most of his arm, making him look as if he were wearing something of a white cuff along his shin. Yugi felt himself swallow back a small sob of a noise in the back of his throat as his tongue began to grow heavy in his mouth.

His head felt as if it might spin, his balance swaying briefly with the force of his newest realization. The boy in front of him remained motionless safe slow passages of his tongue along his injured skin. And Yugi was given the perfect angle of which to view the damage of his left wrist.

The other glanced at it as well, frowning faintly, and then turned swiftly away from it once more. The small teen cringed, recognizing the length of the wound with such familiarity that it made him groan softly between his teeth. The entirety of his arm to his elbow was bright red and sore in appearance, with split tendons visible even with such limited light to take it in. The wound was open and gaping, with white segments of bones and small shards which were littered across the bloodied mess of serrated flesh.

Yugi swallowed hard again, shaking his head briefly, and then frowned faintly. "Wrists," he amended softly, frown deepening as he studied the slightly uneasy distressed glimmer that claimed his bright red eyes. "Come inside and I'll bandage both of them, okay?"

Yugi felt almost foolish for speaking so softly, the words coming from his mouth so slowly, almost as if he were treating the other as stupid. He blinked, knowing that just mere exposure to the other male disproved such a suggestion tenfold. Very slowly, deliberately, the taller teen tilted his head to the side and debated the sensation, sharp red eyes glittering faintly with something almost akin wonder.

The caution was clearly written upon his features, his intelligence only outdone by his open consideration. For a long minute he did not respond, instead twisting around to look at the door as if truly unnerved by it. He pulled himself to his feet, pressing his palms fully against the concrete, peering purposefully at the dark red of the wood of his door. The movement caused the muscles to bunch and ripple beneath his skin like snakes twisting under soft flesh, the sight of it making Yugi almost dizzy.

Finally, as if his decision was summoned by the eternity that seemed to have passed, the newcomer turned back. The expression on his face was nothing short of melancholic with a faint but terribly noticeable desperation in the corners of his dark irises. Yugi nearly flinched, but instead lowered his eyes as if burned, startled by the immensity of such emotions in the other's gaze.

He was all but begging him for help, and had no way of expressing such need but with a crestfallen appearance. But he needed it, and he did not seem to know where else to go to get it. So the smaller teen drew in a deep breath, nodded at him slightly, and then raised his eyes to glance at his still somewhat undone expression, and gave him the smallest of smiles before moving past him.

The wolf rose to his feet as he stepped around him. He watched him in the reflection of the glass, somewhat startled by the sharp detail with which his eyes gave him their images. Normally in this darkness he would see only his shadow there, if he was lucky enough to catch even that. But now he could see such detail of their faces, the way the hair looked disheveled and driven in different directions along the other's head, obviously moved by his long fingers in distress. Something crushed seemed to cling to his long bang where it fell aside his sharp jaw, a smudge of dark black against the pale shade of gold it possessed. There were lines of it along his face, smothering his lightly tanned skin, coating the small pores lying there, as if he had dragged his hands along his face in distress at some point. He could see the way his eyes glittered with obvious discomfort and a mounting tension made his jaw clench faintly, a cord in his throat showing as he waited for him to keep moving.

Yugi twisted the knob, only remembering a moment after opening the door that he was not sure if his mom and grandpa were there. He froze, startled by the sudden realization, and his hand clenched tightly as he started to turn around to look at the other male with wide eyes.

But then he saw his reflection, how hard it was for him to simply stand there behind him, waiting for him, and it made him unable to so much as think further on such an idea. This other teen needed help and he had come to _Yugi_ for it. And, possibly, this was the only way he could repay his debt to him for saving his life.

The thought made his head spin but he did not speak. Rather, he twisted the knob sharply enough that his wrist ached violently with the brutality of the movement. He breathed in hard to keep from hissing at the pain, and then continued forward.

When he stepped inside, the first smell that caught his attention was that of a cleaning fluid. It had been used recently, to wipe down the counters, judging by the direction it came. There was a harsher, stinging smell which drifted from the floor. A moment later came the smell of something gentler, like fingers moving before his face in a casual waving motion. It was that of stored medicines, he realized vaguely, breathing in deeply and grinding his teeth to keep from turning and bolting. There was the airy touch of metal that cloaked his thoughts momentarily, and then he noticed the softest hint of something.

He could not tell them apart from the rest of the smells that hit his senses, however, and so he settled for no longer paying attention to it. There was no reason for him to try an attempt sorting them out at that moment. He was tired, hungry, and the wounds would not heal themselves without proper assistance which he lacked the knowledge of.

He shook his head and the smaller boy did not pause in opening what seemed to be a door leading up into a narrow hallway. In the pitch blackness of the staircase he could not make out much. For a moment his eyes strained, and then his vision sharpened and drew together shapes and forms. The perception of the narrow passage was deceptive, with a lack of depth that made his head hurt momentarily. It would take a few moments for his eyes to make up a true map of depth and distance to coordinate himself enough to truly make his way up the stairs.

But the smaller teen had no problem with his own navigation. He stepped up several of the stairs, at ease with the many times he had traversed them in such a blind state. For the briefest of moments, he did not even seem to consider that his companion had not done the same, making his way up to the second door without so much a glance back.

The taller boy faltered at the unconscious dismissal, then frowned faintly as he looked over his shoulder. The door was shut behind him but it would have been so easy for him to sneak out and disappear into the darkness again. But his arms stung and he nearly groaned in pain at the sensation before shaking his head faintly. He wanted almost for a moment to take the chance to lick at his wounds again and see if perhaps they might still heal without permanent damage somehow.

But the moment of his possible departure fled in a single breath. He exhaled and his feet were already moving forward. In his mind's eye the darkness had separated just enough to make up the distance of one step to the next, the height of each block of carpeted material that awaited his sneakers. The boy was already pushing the door open when he crept over to his side, silent as a ghost and breathing as if he might never draw enough air into his lungs.

The small teen startled when he turned, jumping so hard backwards that the door slammed into the wall beside it. Yugi cringed, biting his lip, and then shook his head as he rolled his eyes at himself. The other boy simply watched him with a gaze narrowed in concentration and the strained effort to remain where he was.

"Fuck, you scared me," he grumbled, rolling his eyes again and sighing loudly before shaking his head once more. The door was still rattling from its collision with the wall and he thought momentarily that it might have punctured the plaster. It made him bite back a disgruntled noise before sighing softly once more and wandering forward a step. A sudden and distinct uneasiness swept over his insides as he turned towards his companion and then back away towards the two closed bedrooms.

How was he meant to explain his sudden appearance here? Yugi shook his head, then glanced at the wall as if it might hold some kind of answer. He reached a hand out to touch the plaster, checking for the dent he knew must exist there, but found nothing and instead folded his fingers against the smooth material for a moment.

There was only the faintest touch of moonlight coming for the window of the kitchen, his stomach aching at the sight of the silver against the tiles, as if he might never see it again. He swallowed hard, narrowing his eyes faintly, and then started forward, glancing at his companion over his shoulder briefly.

"I'll go ahead and get the first-aid kit from the bathroom. If you want to sit down I'll go get it and meet you back here, okay?"

The lycanthrope regarded him and, for a moment, his eyes looked like something celestial, as if the galaxies had been bound and retained there amongst the red of his sharp irises. There was a blindness to his gaze, as if he did not fully see him, nor care to, but then he turned away again and started towards the table.

In the darkness, Yugi immediately turned to his own room, breathing roughly as the tension began to pull at his brows and his heart hammered within his chest. His stomach ached as he glanced towards the other two rooms, once more before tossing his head sharply and making his way quickly towards his own door.

Yugi hesitated, reaching for the knob, his fingers grasping at the cold metal, and then froze in place. A part of him, stronger than he had initially assumed, had been dueling for him to hide away inside of his room and avoid his problems for the night. He had been considering that very thing the moment he had crept through the staircase, and his first thought had been to hide away before the other boy became a reality. But then he had crept up on him without any effort, with such speed as to make Yugi jump and startle so violently, and such a reality could not be pushed aside.

For a moment, he still considered it. He could not hear the other boy moving around. And he could not hear his mother or grandfather anywhere within the walls of the house. So he fell silent as his teeth dug into his lips and he forced his feet into a new direction.

He twisted the bathroom door open after what felt like hours of hesitation, then pushed it inwards to step inside. His fingers immediately flicked the light back on, his eyes adjusting almost instantly to the sudden burst of yellow color that splashed into his gaze. Yugi blinked stupidly then crept towards the mirror, pulling the cabinet open and snatching at the red metal box that greeted him there.

The items inside rattled and jerked at his hasty movement, breathing in roughly in order to keep from flinching and dropping it altogether. But there was still an overwhelming silence that greeted him when he struggled to hear into the kitchen. There was not even a hint of noise to be heard from the other, not breathing or the rustling of clothing. He wondered for a moment, anxiety creeping through him, if perhaps he had done exactly what he had wanted moments before and fled.

If he had, Yugi wondered if he might rejoice or grow more uncomfortable and uneasy with it all. What reason did he have for running off when it was obvious he needed his help? And why should he do so unless he truly did believe the same thing as Valon did?

Yugi breathed in so roughly that he nearly flinched away and ground at the way his balance seemed to sway. He ground his teeth together, shaking his head sharply, and clenched his tongue between his incisors painfully. Had he vanished, what could Yugi do? He couldn't chase him down, nor could he find it in himself to think there was a reason to when it was obvious he could evade him just as easily as kill him.

He swallowed a painful whine and made his way on shaky legs towards the kitchen once more. Yugi truly expected him to be gone, considering the silence with which he greeted him, but now he caught the smallest hint of something. There was a soft, almost inaudible lilt of breath being drawn in that made him pause, eyes wide and horrified. He was still there?

He opened and closed his mouth twice, startled by the sight that greeted him as he glanced around. At first he could not find him. In the dark, it was hard to take in his form even with the drizzle of cold light from the window. He reached over to touch along the wall, hitting first the landline that was so rarely used, and then the switch. The moment he touched it, the cold yellow light of the bulb burst outwards and cloaked the small kitchen in color.

In the darkest corner of the room, the other boy was seated in a slumped position at the edge of the able. His shoulders were hunched forward, his wrists were flipped to expose the hideous wounds that encompassed the golden-bronze flesh there. Yugi was stupefied by his appearance, startled and horrified, unable to do more than gape at him as if he had never seen another person before in his life.

His hair was stuck in odd angles, unlike before when he had seen it so much neater, as if it were a dark flame topped with a brilliant red blaze. Now the crest of color was jagged, tangled and twisted as if the entire purpose of its existence was to be knotted painfully. The streaks that had reminded him so much of lightning bolts before now looked like several shards of static yellow spikes of jagged discoloration. The bangs were streaked more fully with crusted blood then he had initially assumed, several strands strung together by black and deep brown. There were smudges around his eyes, along his cheeks, and a single rivulet of dried blood made its way from his left nostril to his upper lip.

His arms were pressed harshly against the tabletop, with such force it made his skin pale. His hands were clenched against the fabric of the cover there, with such power it made his fingers completely white. His nails were unnaturally colored, with such a bloodied shade it made him nearly flinch at the sight of them, the beds were more almond-shaped than circular, the cuticles torn and scabbed. His fingers were thinner than Yugi had ever seen anyone's. They were skeletal and sharp, with grooves like knuckles ground together too tightly. The muscles were corded beneath them, stretched and full of power despite his apparent weakness.

It was only then that Yugi raised his eyes to look towards the boy's face. He had not noticed the hollowness of his face beforehand, the way his cheeks had pulled inwards and his skin stretched taut. Every ounce of his face was paler than it had been before, as if he had failed to see food or sunlight for days. But his head was down, turned away from him, refusing to look in his direction, and yet, Yugi knew he had the wolf's full attention.

Yugi took a small step towards the table and the other boy gave a full body flinch. The small teen froze again. His mouth opened and closed. He flinched at his own hesitance a moment later. He swallowed hard. His mouth grew dry. He flinched again.

"I'm…I'm really sorry. I don't…I…" Yugi opened and closed his mouth again, because his voice sounded choked and almost nonexistent. The other boy's head jerked towards him, eyes full of a stark terror that made him feel sick, and he would not think of anything more than to flinch and hide away. But he had promised to help him with his wounds, to clean and stitch his wrists. "Stay still…I'll help you out with them…"

Seeing as the clinic was beneath the living apartment, the first-aid kit aside from one had been giving completely different materials. The one he was holding at the moment had the standard items in singles, but several others that had been used downstairs had them in doubles or triples. Yugi had been notorious for getting hurt when he was younger, so his mom had packed this first-aid kit with everything ranging from peroxide to sutures and steri-strips, to disposable surgical gloves, to syringes, to a fine needle, to save-a-tooth systems, and oral electrolyte solutions. Yugi had always considered them a little too much to be necessary but he was rapidly changing his opinion at the moment considering the wolf sitting in front of him.

He put the kit on the table between them, watching with slight fascination as the other boy flipped it open and looked it over curiously. There was a strange wonder in his eyes that made Yugi frown faintly, startled by its sudden appearance, and he bit his tongue to keep from speaking. The tension was still clear in his face even as he looked it over, the way his eyes flickered back and forth between the instruments in front of him. He thought he saw his nose twitch several times, breathing in and out slowly and evenly so not as to draw his attention.

He settled back a minute later after he was satisfied with his inquiry and Yugi was slow in moving to pull out the materials he needed. He could list them off in his head with how often his mother had told him about the things inside of the first-aid kit whenever he had gotten hurt. For the sutures he would need clean water, betadine, a needle driver, irrigating syringe, suture material, and gloves. Suture thread size four or five for the arms, and if there was anything on his face that he had somehow overlooked then he needed two or three.

The small teen shook his head slightly, grabbing a cup from the cabinet and snatching a bottle of water from the pantry. It was easier to use bottled water than it was something from the sink, considering tap water was chlorinated and bottled was not. Besides that, he didn't need all that much, just enough for dilute the betadine he knew he would be using to sterilize. As long as the other boy held still he wouldn't have much of an issue. Using only water would have been the easier thing to do but, considering when and where he had last seen the wolf, he doubted it was strong enough to clean it properly.

He shook his head again, twisting the cap off and pouring a full cup of the water before putting a few small droplets of betadine in it as well. He snatched the irrigated syringe off the table a moment later, watching the wolf as he tilted his head but did not object to the sudden movement in any way.

"Hold your wrists out and raise them a little above your head," Yugi mumbled, ignoring the surprised expression on the other's face even as he did so. The smaller teen grabbed the suture next, then the needles. The other was staring at him so intently that he almost backed off at the last second, unnerved by the way his eyes bore into his skin so powerfully.

But he ignored it as he instructed him to lower his arms and then syringed the open wounds, wondering for a moment if he might need to do something similar to want had been done with Valon. Was it possible to pull his skin until it would meet in the middle as they had done with him? Then again, Valon had been something entirely different, with cells that had deceased at rapid rates, healing almost instantaneously when the wound was closed. This wolf had healed _rapidly_ while still fighting the other two in the woods, and had even been completely void of any wounds by the time they had left the trees. He had not been hurt in any way after that, and not once had he smelled of decaying flesh as Valon had.

Yugi shook his head, ignoring the way the other failed to so much as flinch as he continued, and bit his lip to keep his concentration. He threaded the curved needle, pulling his skin and feeling surprised that it even managed to meet in the middle. It seemed odd to see this gaping wound fold beneath his fingers as it was. Unlike Valon's, he was not forced to dig under his skin to separate muscle from flesh and pull it together in such a way.

He kept the sutures an eighth of an inch apart, carefully maintaining the distance consistently enough to keep from tangling as he worked his way up the length of the wound. The stitching was covered minutes later by gauze and tape, then he turned to his left arm and nearly vomited. There was a bit of debris—straw and pine and dirt and possibly rust—caught in the lower parts and the flesh looked far from as flexible as his right had been.

Yugi swallowed a groan, blinking at himself, and then shook his head as he began to syringe it as well. The wolf was watching him with a somewhat impatient but compliant expression, seemingly frustrated by the thought of having to deal with this a second time. But Yugi ignored it, despite the way his face seemed to burn with those sharp eyes focused so keenly on it, and began to work his way through the task in a similar manner. Still, despite the numerous grips he administered to pull the skin together or the way he syringed him a little more forcefully than before, or the fact that his stitching had to pause and restart numerous times, the wolf did not cry out. Not once did he jerk away or hiss or bare his teeth. His lip never curled, his eyes never narrowed, and his expression never wavered.

He pulled away only after he was sure he had done the most he could, the best effort he had to give, and then watched him for a moment. He was still staring at him, but his expression had changed into something for more important or remotely irritable. He seemed, if nothing else, wondrous and fascinated, as if…perhaps…he was waiting for something from him. The small teen stared at him, confused and mystified, but then shook it off, head jerking away when the other boy wrinkled his nose faintly as if in question.

"You can sleep on the couch, okay? I would offer my room but I…"

 _I need to be able to lock the door and hide_.

Yugi nearly flinched at the thought but instead offered him a weak smile, glancing at him from the corner of his eye. "The couch is past the fridge. You'll know it when you see it. If you…had anything…I, um…I'll be in my room. It's the first door across the hall."

He paused, frowning faintly as he dug his teeth into his bottom lip. Did he even need to say that? Wasn't it possible that the other boy could just sense him if he needed to find him for whatever reason? He doubted there was a reason for him to say such a thing when he was clearly capable of fending for himself as well as finding him if it was necessary. He shook his head faintly and started for his room with a backwards glance.

He would have to do the laundry the next day and get the blood out of the tablecloth. And he'd have to clean the blood from the doorstep, the doorknobs, but the carpet in the staircase was a dark maroon color, which the liquid might easily camouflage.

But first he would have to find out where his mom and grandpa were, considering they were obviously not there. Yugi frowned at the thought, truly puzzled, and then murmured, "Night" before heading quickly into his room when no reply came. He closed the door behind him almost immediately, breathing hard, rattled by his lack of noise while he was stitching his wrists, as well as nervous by his very presence there as well. He had not considered that leading a werewolf into his home was hardly any good news, nor could it lead to anything good.

He shook his head and pulled his phone out of his pocket. Had it vibrated earlier? He frowned as the screen lit up, showing him several texts from the two mentioned family members.

He skimmed them, lumping them together into a reasonable summary in his head as he nodded briefly to himself. His mother had taken his grandfather with her for an emergency accident just on the outskirts of Domino. The dog was severely wounded and needed overnight care, but the ride back to their home would have killed it. So they had taken up residence at a nearby hotel and would be helping to treat the dog at the nearest clinic for the next few days.

* * *

The curl of noise which came through his dreams made him jerk. The impact of the noise as it burrowed its way into his skull made his entire body fall over the edge of his mattress. He yelped, then froze in place. He could not move for a long minute, unable to do more than breathe in roughly twice. Then a harsh repetition of the noise made him jerk and stumbled to his feet unsteadily.

For a moment he thought to grab something from his nightstand as a weapon to be used should something be there in the living room awaiting him, and then stopped. All that he could hear was the screeching, horrifying, terrified, whimper of noise that had first awoken him. There was no sound of a struggle, nor snarls from another wolf set upon attacking their victim.

He'd grab a knife from the block when he got into the kitchen, he decided when the noise grew louder. He scrambled forward, startled, and nearly tripped over himself in fear. The sight which greeted him there made him freeze in place, however.

The lycanthrope was writhing on the couch in what appeared to be acute agony. His nails were ripping through the cloth of his shirt where he had gripped at it in his violent movements, and blood was beginning to spray upwards in an arch over the couch as he torn through his own flesh.

The small teen was instantly at his side, grabbing his wrists to restrain them and breathing harshly from fear.

The wolf was immediately frozen. All of the hair on Yugi's body stood on end. Those red eyes snapped open, peering at him emptily. His wide-awake stare was powerful enough to make him stiffen. The small teen instantly released his wrists, gaping as he scrambled back a step. The wolf jerked upright into a seated position, hissing, and then backed up into the corner of the couch. They stared at each other, red eyes wild for a moment before growing cold and distant, blue-violet eyes horrified to the point of near lifelessness.

Yugi looked down at the blood on his hands, then scrambled to his feet again. He was trembling, gaping at the other boy who merely blinked at him slowly in clear shock. Yugi closed his mouth with exhausting effort, then trembled as he stared off towards the bathroom once more.

On unsteady legs, the small teen brought the first-aid kit back to the couch. With each step he took, he could see the way the other began to stiffen more and more. The other wolf finally pressed so far into the cushions that Yugi had to stop before he risked having to watch the couch flip. He froze, helpless, and then sighed weakly as he whispered, "I just want to help you. And those wounds aren't…I just…If there's anything I can…I'm sorry."

The wolf gave him an intensely puzzled look, tilting his head to the side and frowning faintly. He looked for a moment as if he might open his mouth but instead merely tilted his chin up as if to ask what it was he planned to do with the kit in his hands. He hesitated, startled by the way those red eyes had grown fixated on it and then placed it on the coffee table in front of him.

"I need to stitch them again…"

There was a long minute in which the other boy seemed almost as if he might shake his head sharply or perhaps even snarl at him angrily. But the seconds passed and abruptly the wolf nodded and held his wounded arms out for him. The blood dripping from his paled skin made Yugi flinch, but he quickly pulled his resolve back into place, breathing in deeply before reaching out to begin digging through the kit once more.

He spent the better part of an hour fixing the wounds up this time around. The flesh had been torn open _drastically_ due to his nails cutting so sharply and the stitches had been completely ripped from his skin. He had been thinking of the damage done by rings being pulled from one's ears or lips or nose the entire time, struggling to keep from puking at the wounds he was mending. Even as he put strips of gauze inside of the gouges, he could not shake the images that made him heart skip and ache in his chest.

When he had left the wolf to lie back down and had wandered to his room once more, sleep was a long time in coming.

* * *

It was late afternoon when he finally got up from his bed. It was a strange reality to come to the conclusion that he had slept in so long. But school was off for a couple of weeks now that the festival had passed. Winter holiday was given a little longer than the rest of them to have more fun and freedom to do as they wanted. So he wasn't too surprised by the fact that there were no phone calls to the house to tell on him, though he had initially forgotten in all the…excitement from the night before.

He sat up a little straighter, eyes widening in surprise. Was the wolf still there? The thought of its continued presence made his stomach twist briefly, eyes wide and heart pounding. Was it possible that he was still there? Or was he long gone? He wouldn't have been surprised if it was the latter. He hardly seemed the type to just remain in one place for longer than necessary. And considering his wrists were mended as well as Yugi could manage, he did not think he would stay any longer.

There was a small hollow feeling in his gut at the thought, but not enough to make him hesitate in finding out. If the wolf was gone then he could say that at least he had tried. If he was still there, well that just meant that he perhaps had an extra bit of security for a little while. He shook his head at himself as he crept into the hallway, padding as silently as possible, but did not slow his fast movements.

Yugi hesitated only when he got to the entrance of the living room. For a moment he was unable to do more than contemplate the odds that he might truly exist there as he had that night. His breaths come out short and swift, as if he were running a marathon. A sickly insidious sense of dread came over his skin, surging through his veins, and he felt his head spin as a small wave of dizziness came over his senses. What if he was still there? What if he wasn't? He could pretend that he had not been there that night, or that he had never so much as had to cross paths with him. Maybe he could even pretend that perhaps the lycanthropy was a joke in the first place and its existence was still nothing more than their mundane reality.

But then his eyes flickered to the couch.

And there the other boy sat.

He was blinking groggily, woken he was sure by his footsteps, peering almost blindly between his long lashes. His position was slouched, shoulders pushed forwards, eyes hooded, body completely relaxed. But he seemed to notice him just as he did. Their eyes caught and the wolf was instead alert.

His head snapped up, his gaze growing wide. His shoulders rose faintly. His spine grew ramrod straight. He blinked at him once, then tilted his head to the side.

Yugi was frozen, unable to do more than blink stupidly. His mouth had fallen open. His eyes were wider than before. He opened and closed his jaw and then blinked again. There was nothing more that he could do.

The fact that the other was simply seated before him, watching him, made his stomach ache. There was a chill which crept through him as he stared at the other boy. His lean frame and shallow cheeks made his skin crawl briefly. But with it also came a small, weak sense of relief as well. He was still there, alive and unharmed, with the bandages intact.

But that assured him of nothing in all reality, except that he had not somehow been hallucinating for all that time. That also meant that his mother would not have a reason to throw him into an asylum for the clinically insane because of his overactive thoughts.

Yugi swallowed a small groan. Maybe it would have been better if he might have had such a thing be his existence rather than the disease a reality. If he was insane then it could be cured with medicine and practice at stabilizing his thoughts, right? But there was nothing that cured an infection like lycanthropy, was there?

"Hi."

It was weak and scratchy, with such a gravelly quality that the other boy blinked in surprise and looked almost as if he had snarled at him. He cringed inwardly at such a thought, then shook his head faintly.

"I…" Yugi trailed off, then turned away to glance over his shoulder. He breathed in deeply, swallowing harshly to alleviate some of the tension that made his tongue feel numb and weighted. "Are you hungry?"

He did not get an answer, though he had known there would be no change in his state of silence. Yugi took a moment, biting his lip, then turned back to him as the other tilted his head to watch him curiously. The small teen pressed his canine further into his lip, until it seemed nearly to puncture his soft flesh. He felt as if a bead of blood might press into his tongue at any moment.

It took him only a moment for the wolf to think this question over. With enthusiasm he had never seen before, the lycanthrope leaned forward with a rigorous nod. His red eyes were glowing brightened excitement but shaded with hunger. The way his lashes framed his sharp gaze made his stomach twist briefly, startled by the strength with which it locked on his frame.

He looked almost as he had that split second he had seen him before he had thrown himself along the trunk of the tree to hunt that squirrel in the forest. There was such intense focus and power in his eyes that it made them look sharper, far more dangerous, as if he might launch himself at his throat any moment.

"What do you want for breakfast?" He paused, then pursed his lips faintly, chewing his cheek for a brief moment. "Any ideas?"

Yugi turned on his heel, breathing in roughly once, and gave a deep exhale. He could hear the soft sound of the springs as they were coiled and bunched together under the taller teen's lean frame. The way the cushions gave a gentle rustling as they brushed together made his skin prickle with familiarity, his body feeling almost at ease with such recognition. He heard him moving about behind him with such lightness that it was a mere whisper of noise as he crept along the bare tile floor.

"So, we have…enough to make pancakes, or eggs and bacon, or cereal," he announced minutes later as he dug through the cabinets and the fridge before ducking into the pantry. In his ears he could hear the other boy shifting his weight as if to lean forward and peer over his shoulder. But when he turned his head the other was several feet away from him, eyes narrowed and arms crossed tightly over his chest.

The smaller boy bit his tongue for a moment before looking at him more fully. "I'm in the mood for pancakes," he announced, opening and closing his mouth once as the other boy did not look away from studying his face as if he could not determine his motives. "Is that okay with you? I haven't had pancakes in a while. So I think I want them more than anything else…"

The other boy watched him, studying intently, and then nodded before looking away briefly. His red eyes shot towards the table, then back to him as if asking permission for a seat in one of the chairs. He blinked, startled by the almost sheepish and submissive posture, the way he held himself a little tighter with his thin arms and watched him once more.

Yugi blinked, nodding as if he might need to give him such permission, and then turned away again to look at the pantry. He raked his eyes over the box of mix, the bottle of syrup that he might need to open, and then the other times that littered the shelves. Anything that could distract him for more than a second was considered a blessing. He made a point of staring and reading the labels of several cans of soups and vegetables. There were bottles of sauces that his mother stored, with marinades that he knew she used for dinners when she was too tired to make her own.

He drew in a small breath, then snatched the box in his hand, clenching it so tightly that a pain shot through his arm and towards his shoulder. The pain there made him hesitate, eyes widening faintly as he blinked stupidly at the sensation. He hesitated, glancing at the other in the corner of his eye, startled to find him staring back at him with a cautious expression. He was seated without much tension to mar his frame, but the keenness that glittered within his gaze made his stomach twist briefly.

It was clear he had no idea what that look held, as evident by the way his gaze would narrow minutely and then flicker between his face and the small package. But he was waiting, knowing that whatever it was, it might sate his hunger as Yugi had promised. So he did not do more than watch, frowning and tilting his head, contemplating him and his proposal thoroughly.

However, it occurred to him, as he averted his eyes to keep him from growing further tensed, that there was something else in the pantry that might benefit the other boy far more. In the corner of his eye, he watched the way the other boy frowned in puzzlement at his sudden movement to snatch something else from the shelves in front of him. Had he been facing him fully, he would have seen that his hands had drifted from their tight position around his flans towards his bandages.

A soft but aching itch had grown within both of his wounds. The sutures were burning faintly along the top of his skin. A dull but noticeable hurt tickled his nerve endings where each thread marred his flesh. And he could feel the gauze beneath his flesh as if it were visible. It felt like touches of embers, an entire hot stone pressed in between his serrated skin as if to offer healing. He narrowed his eyes, his fingers itching to scratch, nails curved inwards despite the distance of his arms.

As the smaller boy pulled out a container, white with a blue and green and tan seal across its belly, the lycanthrope blinked in surprise. The manner with which Yugi drew the container towards his own chest seemed as if he were witnessing some unknown prayer being answered. He seemed as if to almost cradle it in his thin arms, as if it held some kind of secret out of his own reach.

Such intense satisfaction made him lean forward, confused and curious of his reaction. What existed instead of that squat cylinder that might give him such strength?

Abruptly Yugi turned to him, at first with a worried expression, and then with something of a set line to his mouth. He looked unnerved for a brief moment, but determined all the same, and for a moment the lycanthrope thought to frown at him. But the space of such an action seemed to pass as quickly as the idea had formed within his mind. Those bright blue-violet eyes which had dulled with something of resignation upon seeing him earlier now shone with determination and strength. The affect with which it coursed through his system and made his spine straighten made him look almost otherworldly, as if the gods themselves might have bowed before him.

He tilted his head to the side, curious but unable to push any words from his throat. His voice was dead, nonexistent, but he leaned forward somewhat, watching him as intently as he could, questioning with his body as his lungs refused such burden.

"Protein powder," he announced as if the words might take meaning in the other boy's mind. The red-eyed boy tilted his head further, puzzled by such exhilaration in his tone, and felt as if his lips might tug into a permanent frown at his exuberance. In his weakened state, his normal amount of knowledge and the way his mind cycled information to fill in gaps and acknowledge weakness of thoughts no longer existed. His body was so focused upon his wounds, upon the terrible jagged scratches of red and shed blood that it could not offer him the answers he sought.

He supposed himself lucky as the other boy took mercy on his state of alienation.

"It's used to help build up body and muscle mass. But they're also kind of dehydrating but if you drink some water I doubt it'll be an issue. Anyways, you put the powder into a smoothie and drink it. It fills you up and helps with gaining weight and things like that," he explained, taking refuge in looking the container over as a distraction from his eyes.

They seemed to burn his skin as if Yugi were touching a live flame and the sensation was nothing he wished to welcome any longer. He ran his fingers over the ridges that made up the lid, then twisted it briefly to test the grip of it for a moment. It gave after a second, spinning when he flicked it hard with his fingers to see if it might. Never once did the wolf's eyes lift from his face, the immensity of his attention make his head spin briefly.

"I remember Mom gave this to me when I was underweight one summer. It didn't really work for me all that well. I didn't like them so I would dump them in the sink when she wasn't looking, but then again, I didn't think it was all that serious anyways."

Yugi turned his head and when their eyes locked, he knew the other caught the meaning in his statement. It had not been serious then, but it clearly was now. There would be no dumping smoothies down the sink in order to pretend he had drunk them. He would watch them until he was sure he was at the bottom of the cup if he had to, because the state the other boy was in was not one that either wanted to see.

He nodded faintly, looking at the pattern on the tablecloth, but glanced up as the boy's fingertips made a slight drumming noise where his nails clicked against the plastic. He strained his ears to catch his mumbling, raising a brow when he found he could not fully understand his words.

"Twenty-two grams protein, five grams fiber, ten grams amino acids, milkshake taste and texture…" He clicked his tongue and then nodded to himself after a long moment, humming under his breath before muttering once more. "Promotes muscle protein synthesis and recovery support. Take one scoop with a four or five ounce cup of cold water or drink of choice…"

He had always had it with skim milk. Apparently the calories in skim milk had been preferable to anything else they had had in the house. If that was the case, he needed to get more as they were completely out of milk in general. He'd need to get something to help curve the other's appetite as well, as he remembered he himself had not been terribly full after bothering with the meager sips he would take.

"All right, so apparently it mixes really well with water," he announced, turning to the other boy and biting his lip to keep from flinching at the hard exterior that had come over his game over sometime during which he had been reading. Yugi swallowed hard but did not allow himself to buckle as he initially felt the need to do. Rather he let out a deep breath and drummed his nails more noticeably against the plastic. "I'll make you a glass—it should taste it like a milkshake apparently. It's French vanilla flavored, so I hope you like it. But whatever, it's all we have at the moment. I'll grab something else later when I do some shopping."

The lycanthrope merely nodded at him but there was a puzzlement that belied his intelligence. It was clear that he was not sure what he meant, nor did he have the capabilities to express such confusion without opening his mouth. And for whatever reason he still refused to speak, and Yugi might have wondered what his voice sounded like but he was not willing to push him.

He turned on his heel before the other boy could argue, heading for the cabinet to grab a tall glass cup, glancing at the wolf over his shoulder, and considered his next move. If his own metabolism had jumped so drastically, then surely the other's must have been just as high or even somehow worse, right? And if that was the case, should be double the standard recipe of two scoops per five to six ounces in an eight ounce cup? He could not find a reason why he shouldn't. If the protein was too much at one time, he would simply gain weight in a new form like fat, right?

"Considering how thin you look and how much blood you lost just yesterday, I think we need to double the recipe," he said slowly, wondering if the other teen even cared for such an explanation. "Even if it's too much protein at one time, I don't think it'll hurt you. You're a werewolf and besides that, I remember being told in class once that it just gets stored as fat if it's not absorbed properly. So I figure it won't hurt us to try, right?"

Yugi turned away before he could lock eyes with him, breathing in deeply and hurrying to the fridge. It was no surprise for him to find himself cowering once more, as if he might somehow damage him violently with his mere stare. He ducked his head faintly, frustrated, but did not move to speak further as he grabbed a bottle from the fridge to fill the cup with cold water. He spun the lid off of the protein powder, grabbing the scoop inside and filling it with the four of them before huffing out a breath. His hands were shaking, he realized, as he grabbed a spoon to mix the powder into a drinkable solution for the other boy.

His head was beginning to pound as the tension bit at his insides. The wolf was not oblivious to it, he knew, but he feigned such innocence to the predicament as well. As he placed the cup on the table and pushed it towards him, the other boy did not so much as blink nor give him a surprised look. Rather he took the cup between his hands, spinning it back and forth between his long fingers, and abruptly settled back into his seat. The cup was tipped to his mouth and the contents swallowed within mere seconds, as if he had not had food or water in years.

And, had Yugi not witnessed him hunting dogs before or seen him drinking from that pool in the forest, he would have assumed such a thing by the very sight. But the wolf was merely doing as he bid, drinking without argument as he knew no harm would come of it to try to mind by his plan. So the two of them had slipped into some kind of silent truce that neither had fully noticed until the moment the glass was placed aside and they were both caught staring at each other.

His red eyes were glittering with something like discomfort at his stare but Yugi could not help but gape partially at the taller boy. He was breathing through the thin gap between his lips, startled by the chill of his own inhales as he looked at Yugi with wide eyes. But his eyes were glittering with interest and surprise, with such immensity to their expression that the taller boy nearly glanced away.

But there was something in his bright eyes that made him hesitate, as if he were trying to hold his gaze there but unsure of why. And the tension in the air was growing tangible, weighing on them both as the seconds passed. His bones had pulled tight beneath his skin but he did not grow offensive in structure. There was no need to bristle or chomp his teeth. The boy was a safe distance from him, and regardless, he did not seem malicious by any means.

Finally, as if weighed down on, the red eyes flickered to the cup. The drink had not been particularly tasty, far too sweet because of the amount of powder in the water, but he did not complain. It was simple enough, and if that was truly all it took to regain some of his strength then he did not see a reason to object.

He ran his fingers over his left wrist, curling his nails towards the wound where it itched and burned. But he did not scratch, though every instinct in his body begged for just that to be done. He looked up when he heard something being rearranged, and found himself greeted by the scent of a low but steady heat from further in the kitchen.

The boy had moved aside, a little away from him, nearer to the sink, back to him, uneasy in his actions as he began to shift something in front of him. He caught small hints of scent over noise, an airy and yet choking one that made him wrinkle his nose, over the sound of sliding metal against wood and the clicking of the spoon as it stirred the contents within the bowl in front of him.

He crossed his arms, fingers still tracing soothing patterns over his torn flesh, lining the sutures as if to relieve the painful itch, and then lowered his chin to the table. The skin was irritated, prickled and pushed upwards by the wound, the stitches decorating his flesh making a heavy black mark like a child's graphite drawing. He gazed out of hooded eyes, tired mentally but awareness making it impossible to claim such necessary rest. He could do nothing more than frown faintly and watch the boy from his peripheral even as he wished for a blissful slumber to claim him.

How long had it been since he had truly rested?

He flinched at the thought that immediately came to him and sat up straight. The suddenness of the movement made the other boy's head snap around to regard him. His blue-violet eyes flickered up and down his frame, as if to ask without words what might have happened, but he did not gesture for him to look away. It was almost comforting to realize that the other boy was seeing him, that he was in front of someone who saw him by his own choice.

He had been hiding away and drifting along the outskirts of the city for so long that actually having someone within his own sight and allowing them to see him was mystifying to him somehow. It was as if reality had flipped on its side to allow such a transgression to transpire and his insides quaked at the realization.

The boy truly saw him. He had seen him more than once. He was looking at him as if he was more than just a means to an end. He was checking on him as if they were long best friends. He treated him as more than something to cringe away from. It was confusing to see but also extremely refreshing. Despite himself the wolf wanted almost to howl in satisfaction. But to urge died away very simply.

He could not do something like that.

And he doubted that he ever would find it in himself to do such a thing ever again.

He frowned at his own musings as the other boy satisfied with his visual inspection turned away again. Whatever it was that he put on the heated metal sizzled and then perfumed the air in much lighter and fluffier, almost sweetened smell that made him sniff in surprise. The powdery scent that had threatened to suffocate him minutes before was long gone.

It took him several minutes to return to the table and on a plate were several rounded pieces of what looked like flat bread. The wolf narrowed his eyes in contemplation, considering the sight before him. Thin streams of white mist rose from the little flat cakes, and there was a light and earthy scent which crept through his senses. He was drawn to the warmth that radiated from this small stack of food, to the scent which claimed his attention so fully. He leaned forward, wishing for nothing more than the ability to lose himself in its presence somehow.

"I forgot the syrup," he smaller teen muttered, jumping to his feet where he had been sitting for only mere seconds. He made his way to the fridge first, finding exactly what he had hoped would be there. His mother had more expensive maple syrup that she loved to buy and use for holiday breakfasts. Considering she was not there and his winter "vacation"—as Jonouchi so often called it—had begun he saw no need to bother with discretion towards his desire of it.

But when he got to his seat again, something was amiss. Taking the spot in front of the wolf once more made him blink several times. The steam was rising from the cake in harsh rivers of white, as if it had been smothered and only now gotten the air to release some of its heat. He blinked again, then frowned and looked at the other boy, lips instantly pulled into a wide grin as his right brow rose.

"You stole a pancake," he accused.

The other boy shook his head rapidly but Yugi merely raised his brow higher. His cheeks were puffed outwards with the food in his mouth. He was struggling to chew it from the large size and his reaction of stuffing it in his jaws. His eyes were wide, feigning innocence, but everything about his posture said he was caught.

"You actually stole a pancake."

For a moment the wolf shook his head again. Then he pursed his lips and his jaws worked to chew as his shoulder rose and fell in a brier shrug. His eyes narrowed with concentration. He ran a nail along the top of the tablecloth and both of them listened to the soft scratching of it. Then he sat back in his seat fully and blinked lazily, content with his catch of such defenseless food.

Yugi rolled his eyes and smiled in amusement. "I go to get syrup and you steal my food."

He held up a finger and scowled at him.

"One pancake is still stolen goods. I'll have you know that that _one_ pancake could be the very reason that I _don't_ go hungry all day. But we'll never know now, will we? Because you ate it."

He clicked his tongue in clear dismissal and the smaller boy snorted as he shook his head again. The red-eyed teen crossed his arms and settled his chin on the tablecloth behind them, watching him lazily. He looked almost like a content canine preparing to snap its teeth on an unsuspecting family member's meal when they turned away.

Yugi considered for a moment whether the protein shake might have even put a dent in his hunger. The thought made him frown. Was it even possible that he might have such hunger satiated by something so slight? He did not think it was possibly by any means. And the thought made him frown deeper as he leaned back in his seat and looked at him for a moment longer.

He looked so thin and frail, though his eyes said otherwise. There was such power and stubborn ferocity to give them such brilliance in color that it made his insides twist to even question it. But he did not bother to show his discomfort further as he pushed the plate forward.

"Here, go ahead and eat the rest. I'll make some more."

He gave him such a startled look that for a moment Yugi thought he might have given him something more than just food. They blinked at each other and the smaller boy immediately looked away to avoid his curious expression.

"You've got to still be hungry. I'll just make some more and then we'll see if it helped out later, okay?" Yugi paused to consider his words, what he might do to make them lunch or dinner in order to gather as much weight as the other boy could manage. Protein shakes would have been used at both meals as well, in order to make sure he benefited from them more than a simple morning cup.

The wolf gave a curious glance towards the syrup he had brought to the table, clearly questioning its importance. Why had he left the table to grab it, leaving his meal behind for him to snatch away so easily, was a clear inquiry which made his eyes dark with confusion.

He smiled faintly, then grabbed the lid on the syrup, twisting it off. The edges were nearly glued to the glass from where the syrup had dripped into the grooves. He smirked when it popped softly from the pressure where it had crystallized and threatened to hold them together like super glue.

"It's sweet and it makes the pancakes more filling." He wanted to think of something more to say but instead found himself unable to think of further words. He scooted the bottle to the other boy who hesitantly looked it over and then sniffed at the rim of it. The red eyes grew wider, startled by the sweetness that greeted his nose, and then looked the bottle over for a moment longer. "Just tip it to the side and drizzle it over the pancakes. They're a lot better that way."

Yugi left him to his own devices as he went about making more pancakes for himself. He could hear him moving about behind him, the soft clatter of the plate where the fork touched it. He even caught the soft thud where the syrup touched the food on his plate and grew unnerved by the realization as he poured more batter into the skillet. The soft sizzling seemed almost life altering in its familiarity within such an abnormal and almost terrifying new reality for him to reluctantly grasp at.

He kept his head down, looking at the way the batter bubbled gently around the edges and one seemed to burst from the middle. He watched it as it seemed to grow larger for a moment, then slowly deflate into nothingness as if poked by an invisible pin. In the back of his mind he could still hear him, clothes rustling, the sound of his fork working against his plate, the softness of the syrup touching his food.

He clenched his eyes shut, reaching upwards a moment later to run a hand through his hair slowly. The softness was deceptive somehow, as if he might move his fingers a certain way and feel something harsh and sharp sink into his skin. For a moment he thought perhaps such a thing could happen, that maybe it was the wolf under his skin begging to tear into his flesh. But he doubted it was possible unless the disease should work like double identity disorder and he might somehow see and speak to the creature that now shared his flesh.

The thought was horrifying enough to make him drop his last pancake into the burner, flinching back and then quickly turning it off. He frowned, looking at the charred mess that had formerly been as close to a pancake as he had ever assumed he might get. His lips pulled further downwards and then abruptly upwards as a twinge of hatred filled his gut. The pancake getting burned was ironically like his own life and the decisions that were thrust into it now.

He spun around with his plate, leaving the blackened mess on the burner when he felt the heat in his belly growing wider in range and mounting briskly. He nearly slammed the piece of china onto the table the way his hands were gripping it so tightly and the suddenness of his movements. The impact made a hideous thudding and clicking noise that caused the piece of furniture to rattle weakly.

The other boy glanced at him slowly, more curious than even cautious. Yugi frowned, slightly puzzled, as he considered how clean his sharper facial features appeared. Despite the clear fatigue and physical exhaustion which held so tightly to his thin frame, making his cheeks so sunken, he could not find a single speck of syrup among the smears of dried blood on his golden-bronze skin. There was no stickiness there to make him assume he'd missed his mouth or gotten too generous with the syrup.

Instead his face looked as clean as possible around the thin marks of dark reddish-brown. He looked as if he had always eaten with such swiftness and his accuracy might never fail him, his cleanliness always apparent. And he was stunned by his fact, stupefied even. He looked childish and normal for a moment, as if he had enjoyed himself and wanted nothing more than to do it again.

And for a moment Yugi despised him for it.

How dare he find such simplicity and relaxation in a situation that so clearly made him want to flee. How dare he manage to ward such a serene expression, without caution or fear to be shown, when he was struggling with the very idea of his presence there.

And, despite himself, he was even angered by the fact that he, the lycanthrope who seemed more wolf than human, managed to eat without making a mess. Because he usually wound up with something on his face while he was eating, no matter what the meal. He could eat peanuts and find salt all over his face from the corners of his mouth to the bottom of his nose.

And yet, this boy who he thought seemed so animalistic, had the capability to eat without making a mess.

He should have had worse table manners than a caveman…

Yugi nearly cringed at his own pettiness, sighing softly as he lowered his eyes to his plate. Why he was so upset about something so simple was beyond him, but he would have to let it go. It wasn't a reason to be so undone and angry as he was.

"Did you like them?"

He looked at him from the bottom of his long lashes, surprised to see him nodding almost enthusiastically. But there was something in the way he held his jaw and looked at him closely, as if he might vanish from his sight, that made him falter. He raised his head, sitting up a little straighter, and shifted uncomfortably in his spot.

The other boy gave him something of a small, miniscule smile, a ghostly tug of his lips, and then looked away quickly. Yugi watching him, surprised, but his stomach was beginning to ache, feeling hollow and empty, and so he turned to his plate a moment later. With his head down, he watched him in the very corners of his vision. The wolf was unnaturally still for the most part, with only his breaths to make him resemble a living creature.

He did not look at him again, as if trying for a moment to blend into the background of the medium-sized kitchen. He was somehow startled by the idea that he might not raise his eyes to him. He wondered at the idea, curious about how immediately he had turned away when he had looked up. Was it a wolf thing?

He frowned faintly as he took another bite of his breakfast and felt almost burned by the hot butter as his tongue seemed to dwell for a moment. Wolves rarely made eye contact in the wild to avoid fights being unnecessarily brought to the surface within their pack. Was that what was happening here?

He watched him for a long minute, eating what felt like scolding pieces of sweltering metal as he studied him fiercely. And then it occurred to him slowly but surely. The wolf had failed to make eye contact not out of fear of raising his ire, but because he was not focused on him. Like Yugi, he was watching him from the corner of his gaze, studying him intently only where he entered his line of vision.

His eyes were lowered considerably in comparison to him, as at first glance one would assume he was looking at the table. But he was studying, staring, giving him a blatant look that resembled something akin disregard towards his returned attention. He seemed almost be studying the pattern of the woven cloth in front of them. But he was staring at him in a way that made it seem impossible to tell. Because his main objective was the food on his plate which caught and held his attention more fully than even his own eyes burning into his skin.

Yugi frowned, shifting his weight uncomfortably. "You're still hungry," he muttered, almost dumbfounded by his own discovery. But the moment passed swiftly. Of course he was still hungry. Had Yugi not rationalized his need to hunt that poor dog only the day before? Had he not come to realize that not only did he turn his nose up at his former favorite meals but that the very smells seemed to repulse him now? And was it not he who had sworn only hours before during the night while bandaging his wrists? Hadn't he mentally cursed those wounds with fear that his exhausted and famished state would never allow him to heal properly?

He bit his lip, feeling blood well up to coat his tongue. Of course he would not heal from something as simple as one nourishing meal—if one could consider pancakes that much. And the protein shake might have helped, but he had drunk it in one gulp and even with four scoops of powder, he doubted it could hold his hunger. His metabolism was too high, far too fast, and it would devour anything that he put into his stomach within minutes, he suspected.

He hesitated, drumming his fingers against the table. He could drug him. There were drugs in the clinic that he knew the effects of which might help to keep him stable for long enough amounts of time for his body to claim some kind of nourishment. There were some that would put him to sleep and some that wouldn't. Although, with his obvious fatigue, he would not have been surprised to find him asleep even if he picked something that was meant to be non-drowsy. He looked almost as if he might drop where he sat in front of him, though the hunger in his gaze made it clear that he was more focused on food than he was the prospect of rest.

Yugi gnawed his bottom lip for what felt like an eternity, trying to think clearly of what he might be able to use to make him sleep. What could possibly slow his metabolism and give him more room for rest as well? But would slowing his metabolism halt his healing? He still had such limited knowledge of how this disease worked, whether or not this idea might even benefit the weakened lycanthrope.

But what kind of option did he have beyond that? He didn't have time for further investigation, especially upon knowing that his mother and grandfather would not stay away for much longer. Or perhaps they would and he and this lycanthrope might be safe in the meantime. But there was no telling how long the dog might need their help and so he could not truly waste his time.

He rolled his eyes upwards, glancing at the chandelier and taking note of two burned out bulbs that rested across from each other. His lips tugged downwards and he pushed unhappily at the reminder of his breakfast with a distracted movement of his fork. The wolf in front of him did nothing. He swallowed thickly, turning to him again. He could give him the rest—considering he was no longer hungry due to such a harsh realization of his apparent famine—and then look around for something.

But would the wolf see it as a possible threat? Did he know anything about drugs? Did he know what to do with them, how they might affect him? Surely if he was careful and calm when he presented them to him, he would have no reason to lash out or act angrily, right?

He gnawed his lip until the skin tore and the blood that touched his tongue made him flinch. The movement startled the lycanthrope enough to make him raise his head but did nothing to leap his attention. He merely glanced at the blood, then at his food once more. It was as if the pancakes were across him and Yugi himself just a possible object that added to the décor of the room.

He rolled his eyes. In his state of mind, he might very well be the same.

Yugi pushed the plate forward. "Here, you can have the rest." He got to his feet, then flinched. The wolf had lunged forward, snatching his plate so harshly that it rattled where it hit the table hard. The way it was dragged back to the other boy made the table squeak with the force. He cringed, frowning as the wolf dug into the diminished pile with such hunger as to make him feel sick once more.

"I'll be right back. Just…stay where you are until I come back, okay?"

It was the last thing he said to him until he returned about twenty minutes later. As he had instructed, the wolf was in the exact same spot. He had even pushed the plate towards the other end of the table and laid his arms out to rest his chin on. He looked tired but the inner circle of his irises sparked with that apparent hunger as it had minutes before. In this position it was clearly visible how much elasticity his skin had lost. His flesh had pulled tight along his collarbones, and the harshness of his skeletal structure beneath it made him cringe. And then, as if to add to the despairing image, he could make out his veins like rivers beneath the paled pigmentation.

He swallowed hard, nearly choking a she looked at him with wide eyes. His hands were shaking again when he lowered several bottles to the table. The contents rattled in his trembling fingers. The wolf blinked dulled red eyes, then sat up as if he had not noticed him before. The movement made his shoulders jut painfully beneath his tank top and Yugi thought they looked like sharpened knives.

He squeezed his eyes shut, counting the seconds before he could open them again, and blinked to focus his gaze on him after he got to twenty. His mouth was dry, pasty, his tongue pressed firmly against the palate there. His head was spinning for a moment, as if he might heave with desperation and then he ran a hand through his hair in distress.

What if nothing worked? What if he did not heal? What if he had another nightmare and tore his stitches all over again? What if the wounds became infected? What if he developed gangrene? What would he do then? What if he _died_?

He opened, then closed his mouth immediately.

The wolf blinked up at him.

The seconds seemed to pass with the slowness of thickened honey dripping from the end of a spoon. The clock from the bathroom ticked away without the tension to weigh upon its hands. The fridge hummed without the suffocation that cloaked the room and passed upon the two occupants' throats. The heater clicked on loudly as if to fill the air with a new madness.

He blinked. The wolf frowned minutely.

The seconds passed.

Yugi opened his mouth to try again, then halted once more. It seemed impossible to draw a breath in to speak any longer. He hesitated, then slowly pushed the bottles towards the other boy. It was all he could do, head snapping away to look at the woven white strands of cotton that made up the tablecloth.

There was a distinct but soft rattle that reached his ears. There was a twisting. Then there was a deep and long breath. Another rattle came to him. Then another twisting accompanied it. A sharper breath was drawn. The process was repeated twice. Finally, when he felt his knees might buckle beneath his weight with the strain of such tension, the wolf seemed to take pity on him.

He flinched at the way the pills began to shake violently in their container. But the movement made him raise his head. He blinked, startled, then frowned as he reached forward for what was in the other's hand. The long thin fingers grasped at what he had thought to be the lesser of three evils.

He frowned and took it from him. His strongest night terror medication had some ingredients to put one to sleep. They were meant to knock them out for hours, to allow them restful nights. When he had taken it on those nights he was unable to so much as close his eyes without feeling immediately sickened by the sights to greet him behind his lids, he would be knocked out. But it would not be for the whole night and the dreamless quality it was meant to give him was always filled with images that scared him more than anything.

"Okay," he whispered, shaken as he looked the bottle over again momentarily. He put it aside, looking at the other boy beneath his lashes for a moment, and then twisted the cap off. What was he meant to give him the pills with? He could hand him a glass of water or possibly another protein shake. Perhaps the latter was the best option, but did it not involve him possibly making him sick? What if sugar intake had to be limited for werewolves?

He shook his head, frowning at himself, then looked at the other boy. "Do you want water?" he muttered, unable to raise his voice from its previous volume. But it did not sound as weak as it had before, with a former edge that made him frown faintly. The other boy tilted his head curiously to the side, watching him with knowledge that seemed so far from the capabilities of a normal teenager. Of course, he was not normal, but such a depth of intelligence seemed so surreal in such a moment that he nearly had to swallow a groan. "Or do you want another…protein shake?"

It wasn't technically a smoothie if it wasn't blended with fruit or ice, was it?

He furrowed his brows at the thought but blinked in surprise, expression morphing into curious wonder when the other boy sat up straighter and held up two fingers. He tilted his head, interested in such a movement, before blinking as the wolf frowned faintly and then pointed past him towards the counter. He turned, frowning in puzzlement, and then blushed at his own obliviousness.

He had been answering his question in the only way he knew how. He had meant the protein shake, as he was directing his attention to with his finger pointing. Flushed with embarrassment, Yugi scrambled for the container of powder, ignoring the way he swore he thought the wolf was laughing at him.

But when he turned around the boy was merely watching, eyes hooded with apparent exhaustion. Yugi frowned, then hurried to grab his cup from before and rinse it before assembling a second shake for him. The lycanthrope took the two pills he handed him, looking them over and even momentarily breathing in deeply to take in their scent, and then popped them into his mouth. It was somehow fascinating to watch the way his throat arched and bobbed with the task of swallowing his cup, the way his pulse seemed to jump and the cords in his neck pulled taut beneath his skin.

Then the moment passed. The cup was pushed away. The wolf furrowed his brows and licked at his wet lips. Then he got to his feet and wandered for the living room.

Yugi saw him settle on the cushions in a slightly pensive expression that mellowed minutes later when he began to nod off.

It was with groggy red eyes that he regarded him again as he moved towards the doorframe. The long lashes made cutting shadows from the light's touch and his gaze seemed dilated with the medication. But still he managed to raise his head, to tilt his chin upwards in something mirroring a clear display of defiance. There was a glitter in those dark red orbs that made his skin prickle for a brief moment. Even as his head dipped and swayed as if to some kind of supersonic music only he could hear, his gaze was harsh and full of caution. It spoke of a warning so deep that his bones felt hollowed with the ice that seemed to claim the marrow within them so swiftly. He was placing just enough trust in him to allow this to happen. He would rest. But should Yugi move even an inkling closer the wolf would not fail to protect himself.

The small teen looked away immediately.

"You're safe."

* * *

There was something raw and bright that flashed through. White-hot fire raced through his blood. His nerves tingled and twitched. The reflection swept through his entire being. Then it fell towards his palm and wrist. The ache dulled somewhat, but flared and flashed upon his nerve endings. His mind twitched and pulled in on itself, twisting inwards. Weakly, as if touching with the only the barest of intentions towards his consciousness, an image passed through his mind.

The edge of it seemed frayed with the way it moved so lazily within his mind. It was if mist had drifted through his skull, weak and small and gossamer. The tendrils were of silver and then of color. They trickled together, swirling as if blown in a circle by wind, and then formed into a sliver of a picture.

There was a shallow but noticeable dip to be seen in the mixture of sun and bulb light. There was a glitter of white, reflected harshly towards his eyes. The dip was wide, rounded out almost perfectly, with smooth rings to make up inch-high sides all around. The white reflection that so burned his eyes was given only the smallest inch of space to exist, and as that area got closer to him, it was swallowed away. Ridges rose like noticeably grooves within a small net of dark gray.

Yugi could not understand it at first. For the longest of seconds his mind circulated this image. Even as sleep attempted to sink its claws within his flesh, he could not shake the picture. It was like viewing the world and his own thoughts in a haze. And it seemed to drag for hours.

It only lasted a handful of moments, he knew, yet it seemed a lifetime.

It cleared within his mind almost immediately after his full focus was allowed its clarity.

The stinging in his wrist and palm pulsated for a moment. He blinked his eyes open stupidly. His mouth was slightly dry. His palms itched and tingled. A soothing, weak, yet hypnotizing touch chilled his skin. It came to him that his body was healing itself. It was a stunning thought. He had not been burned on the stove as the other had. Yet this phantom pain was given the same treatment as his body would have granted should he have.

He slowly got to his feet, distracted by this soft but intense chilling tingle which he had first been greeted during his recovery from Ushio's attack. It was amazing the strange connection that seemed to have come into existence overnight. He had helped him with his wounds and other such things and now he himself was experiencing a flesh wound the other had accidentally inflicted upon himself. His lips quirked in curiosity and slight amusement, shocked by the very thought and the intensity of such a strange concept, and then stumbled forward.

His feet felt unsteady for a moment. But he did not argue as he wandered forward. He was tired, exhausted even, as he continued forward towards the red-eyed teen's place in the kitchen. He was leaning against the counter, frowning thoughtfully, with narrowed eyes and crossed arms. His right hand was gingerly held further beneath the fold of his elbow, fingers stretched out. He looked almost offended by the very existence of his wound as well as the fact that something could do such a thing to him. And, even though he glanced at Yugi sideways, it was clear that he was not amused by the burner that he'd turned on.

"You can't touch the metal when the oven is on," Yugi muttered, shrugging when the other turned to face him more fully with a tilted his head. "You can feel the heat for several inches past the rings of metal, so you need to remember if you can feel it you shouldn't get too close to it. And never reach for it, obviously."

When he gave him a small smile of something like fondness and amusement, eyebrow very slowly rising into a curious expression, the quirk of his lips to the right side of his mouth was extremely noticeable. His fingers were still tingling as he flipped his palm over to show him that he was not holding anything. The red-eyed teen blinked then frowned faintly as he looked his short fingers over and then the pale flesh of his palm. For a moment his gaze seemed to grow faraway, darkened and drifting as if his consciousness was not held in one place. Then a small fleeting light crept through his gaze, dangerous in intent, with a faint sense of familiarity that made his lips pull up into a slightly more surprised expression. His brows rose minutely, his eyes narrowed faintly, and his lips parted the slightest bit.

However the red-eyed teen did not respond further. His expression grew more neutral. The darker shade came to his eyes once more, the distraction which had claimed his thoughts so fully fleeting now. His head tilted towards him after a moment and his vision locked upon Yugi's. The eye contact made them both frown faintly at each other before he abruptly stepped back.

Both of their right wrists flashed with pain as acute as lightning the moment he flipped it to gesture for him to take the lead. The smaller teen was frozen for a moment, startled by the gesture, and then frowned as he glanced at the skillet and the box of pancake mix on the counter next to the spatula lying there. He was not sure the wolf was giving him leadership because he was wounded or because he realized that the advantage was in Yugi's favor. The fact that he knew the house as his own living space and thus could use all of the facilities that was offered there meant that he knew more than the other.

"Are you okay?"

The wolf blinked at him, studying him for a long moment that felt as if hours might have passed, and then finally turned away. The movement was abrupt and sharp, and his chin jerked down in such an angle as to make it clear that he was unsure of his concern but was attempting a nod all the same.

He was frozen for a moment, startled by what seemed to be something akin ferocity in the other's actions. "Do you want pancakes and a protein shake or do you want the protein shake first like yesterday?" he asked, looking at him closely.

It took a moment for the other boy to answer. His head tilted, his eyes narrowed faintly, and he debated. Finally, a little while later, he held up two fingers, watching him as if to see if this time he might understand the meaning behind his response.

Yugi wanted almost to laugh wryly at him but swallowed the response. This was not Jonouchi or Honda. This was, without a doubt, a werewolf who could grow offended and easily decide to destroy him should he wish it. So he did not think to respond verbally and instead started for the cupboard to grab a glass as he had before. In the moment it took him to do this, the wolf was gone.

When he turned around, at first he was shocked. Then he felt a small spark of indignation light his insides. His eyes narrowed and his jaw clenched for a moment. So the wolf had just given him a direction and then wandered off? He opened his mouth to snap that he should make the protein shake himself when something caught his attention. In the corner of his eye a flash of color made him freeze.

It looked as if blood red gems were pressed hard into the shape of four almonds.

His head turned, startled, and he nearly dropped the cup.

The wolf was seated at the table. And while his shoulders were not raised, nor his body rigid, his eyes were blazing. It was clear that he had sensed Yugi's change of attitude, that he had felt it, and so grown irritable in response. His lips did not curl back nor did his jaw clench. But he was leaned forward just the slightest bit and where his nails pressed into the fabric of the cover, he swore he saw the threads breaking. It was a trick of his mind, he knew, but it did not stop him from thinking such a thing.

He froze for a moment, then blinked and looked quickly towards the table with a slight frown marring his features. It was surprising to Yugi that the other might look at him with such ferocity one moment and see it wiped away so efficiently from his face the next. He merely watched him again, lazily turning his head to face his stinging skin. Yugi expected for a moment that he might snarl but rather a second passed before the red-eyed teen slowly pressed his tongue against his stricken flesh. It was so awkward and animalistic that it made him halt for what felt like an eternity, watching with a startled and almost dazed expression.

The other boy did not so much as raise his eyes to him, intently focused on his wound and soothing the pain even as the smaller went about pushing the protein shake across the table towards him. His tongue continued lapping at his reddened skin even as he caught the perspiring cup by the tips of his fingers, halting it with no effort.

Yugi shuddered, somehow shaken by the display of his incredible reflexes, and swallowed hard as he continued watching him with wide eyes. The reality that he himself might move that quickly, with such efficiency and power in even the simplest of actions, made his heart pound even as hi mouth grew dry. An exhilarating sense of fear coursed through his jumbled senses, forceful enough that his stomach dropped painfully and his head pounded faintly along his right temple.

Only days ago, he would have been awed by the idea of being presented such ability. The thought of hearing such easily controlled and perfect reflexes was something that would have made him practically jump for joy. But since then he had seen someone die in front of him, watched someone else turn into a wolf, and he himself has struggled bodily thorough his own unnaturally change into one. He spent more of his time wondering about what horrors he might be capable of rather than the ones that he normally feared from others.

He had not fully spent time with his friends in a while, nor had he completely wondered at such an absence. But that, like many other things, had become something that he could not fully bring himself to care about. He did not think he had the energy to truly care about it all. The circumstances surrounding his very existence had changed so irreparably, with such intense speed, that he felt almost as if he could not fully remember what it was like before then.

He closed his eyes tightly for a brief moment, exhaling deeply, and then turned on his heel to return to the newest task that he had decided to busy himself with. Turning his back on the other teen should have made his nervous and he was almost thrown by his own lack of caution as he grabbed the mix. The fact that the other boy's presence did not make him question his own safety made him wonder as he adjusted the temperature on the burner.

The art of making the pancakes themselves was mindless. Yugi had done it so often that now that to use the stove and proper measurement tools was practically without thought. And so, as he flipped the first one and let his mind wander, he found himself wondering at the idea of Valon's words before.

What exactly was an "alpha"? Had he ever truly explained the concept to him? He did not think he had but he could have easily forgotten it sometime with the stress of the whole situation. Obviously thoughts of the Change and trying to hunt down this red-eyed creature behind him could have easily distracted him by all means. And that was to go without even taking into consideration this new idea of testing his healing through bloodletting.

He could hear him as he moved around behind him, gentle shifts of balance rather than getting to his feet or walking elsewhere. The chair let out a soft rustling as his weight pressed more fully into the bottom. He was slight but they were old, had been in the family for years.

Yugi reached up to rub at his temple, pursing his lips faintly as he shook his head slightly. He could not remember if the other werewolf had mentioned an explanation. If he had, it must have gone completely over his head as it was. He had a habit of letting things slip right past his understanding due to too much tension at times. It was no question that it might have been with distraction that he was given his answer.

But he mostly just remembered what he had said about the bloodshed, how he wasn't supposed to exist. How was one supposed to shake a comment like that? Yugi shook his head with a small frown and bit his lip as he glanced over his shoulder with every intention to ask what it was that he meant.

It occurred to him immediately after his head turned that perhaps this wolf was not the one to ask. If he had any idea what Valon meant, he might turn on him. And Yugi wasn't entirely sure, but he thought with relative certainty that he would not survive that. This wolf knew how to survive, had knowledge of fighting, could kill him easily if he only tried. It was clear in his mind's eye just how easily he had overpowered both of the wolves multiple times before he'd inevitably been overcome.

Yugi put the pancake on the plate and went to the next, furrowing his brows faintly. What if the wolf attempted to kill him later? When he was healed and healthy again, would he turn his teeth on him? The thought seemed almost impossible but with all the things that had happened only recently he did not think there was much to truly be considered as such any longer.

"Here," he muttered a few minutes later, turning around with the plate in his hands and the bottle of syrup held tight by his pinkie where it was braced against the china. The other boy sat up and his eyes lit up as if someone had just given him the best gift in the world. Yugi faltered for a brief second, then placed the dish down and pushed it towards him. A small tremor ran through the other boy's frame and he could see him gripping at the tablecloth with excitement. He looked almost as if he might drool at any moment as Yugi blinked at him stupidly and then smirked in amusement and shook his head slightly.

The red-eyed lycanthrope ignored his existence the moment the plate was fully in front of him. The smaller blinked and tilted his head, brow rising and a warm feeling of amusement creeping through his insides. His visitor launched himself at the plate, snatching the fork and easily cutting through his breakfast. He practically shoveled them into his mouth, not once even pausing as if to give him a glance. Instead the teenager watched him with an amused, childish wonder as he continuously dug into his food and got syrup across his mouth but did not once pause or even choke.

It seemed as if only a second had passed before the wolf was staring at his plate with a slightly bemused expression. A thin ring of bright brown traced the corner of the china, a little mote of syrup that he had failed to mop up with his pancakes. Little soaked crumbs were like mountains where he spotted them sticking out of the sticky river. The scent made his nose wrinkle faintly, a sweetness that made him blink, but there was nothing that his mind picked up as unnatural. The pancakes themselves were another matter altogether, but he was hungry and then sated it if only faintly. They made the pain bearable enough to relax and sleep later.

He glanced up at the other boy. At the other end of the table, the smaller boy had propped his chin in his hand. His lips were pulled back into the widest of grins, eyes sparkling with laughter. His fingers were positioned across his lips as if to shield his expression from him, but they were too small and the curve of his mouth too great. His eyebrow was still raised, his head faintly tilted to the right, and he could hear the way he struggled to smother the laughter that he knew lingered in his lungs.

He pulled his brows together and pursed his lips, unimpressed with his amusement. The other boy's shoulders moved once and his breath came in a full snort of laughter. His blue-violet eyes flickered towards the tablecloth almost immediately after, snorting again as he shook his head faintly. He'd never seen someone so excited to eat food and then so mystified by how quickly it was gone when they'd practically wolfed it down without chewing.

* * *

The wolf stretched and curled up tighter on the couch nearby, the sole attraction in his peripheral. His hair was tangled further, darkened by the blood that he still had yet to clean from the long strands. His bangs were frazzled, greasy, and Yugi pursed his lips as he tried to keep his attention fully on the television in front of him. His frame was small when he pulled his legs to his torso and seemed to collapse within the cushions. His breaths came out slow and even, a gorgeous and mesmerizing melody in his ears, with the gentlest of whistles to accompany each exhale.

The pillow beneath his head was wrinkled against his skin, marking half of it red with the force of which he had burrowed into it. A moment passed and then his arms stretched outwards and his legs pressed into the armrest at the end of the couch. His breath came out long and slow, a hissing quality replacing that of the whistling that had once served as its undertone. It curled into a gentle sigh then became momentarily silent as his eyes blinked open.

Yugi did not look at him for a long moment, instead staring at the screen where the reporters were, again, stating that the police seemed to have no leads as to what had happened regarding the deaths of Miho, Kokurano, Ushio or Tomoya. He swallowed hard, remembering for a second the way that his mother had explained Kokurano's death, that his entire body had been incinerated from the inside. The thought made him want to puke but his head turned instead and he gave the other boy a small smile in greeting, forcing away his nerves for the moment.

"Sleep well?"

There was only silence to meet his question but the other boy nodded at him as if to make up for his lack of communication otherwise. The taller teen moved to drape his legs over the edge of the cushions and then pushed his arms towards his lap. His elbows touched his hips with the position and his eyes were somewhat groggy as he began to sit up fully. His long lashes made them look narrow, and unnaturally so, as if he had but only half the size of the average human's. They looked almost more…wolf-like in expression, narrow and perhaps even almond-shaped.

His gaze was that of a deep and burning ember, so bright red that it seemed almost as if it were made of fire. When he looked through his lashes at him, the shadows of them long and dangerous like jagged black peaks that made them nearly invisible, he felt his stomach twist faintly. It was not an uncomfortable sensation, more just a curious and confused one which made him bite the inside of his cheek.

"Are you hungry again?"

The wolf blinked at him slowly, then tipped his chin up just enough to look at him more fully. The smaller teen blinked in confusion at the more direct nature of the glance, tilting his head curiously at the expression. It was something important that lingered in those red eyes, which he thought now glittered like rubies in direct sunlight or blood against snow. He blinked at the image in his mind and then frowned pointedly as he watched other boy calmly.

His head shook after a moment and turned to the television as if the scene which played across the screen was truly worthy of his attention. Yugi was unable to look away for a moment, somewhat fascinated by the way the lights played across his gaze in jagged discoloration from the length of his lashes and the dark shadows that they cast. He shivered faintly, turning away again as he thought once more of blood and wondered at the news report that they had gone towards instead.

Had any of them come to realize that there were wolves involved in the kills? Or was that still something that non one had put together with each murder? And, if they were still concerned about the drug use that they had initially assumed Kokurano's death to be involved in, did they have any leads towards it? Yugi would have loved to hear that his own disease had nothing to do with the entire incident, that the other boy's eyes had rolled in the back of his head and he'd choked on his blood and his insides destroyed so completely because of less than that. He would have loved to know that he would stay alive and healthy throughout it all instead of seemingly destroying him slowly but purposefully as the days progressed.

It was ten minutes later that the other boy shifted his position again. His entire body tensed slightly, his shoulders rising faintly, and his elbows moved from his hips to his kneecaps. He hunched forward, his long, thin legs moving faintly forward along the wooden floor. His eyes were still on the screen, head still turned towards it, but his attention, he knew, was on something else entirely. He shifted again moments later, this time a little louder than before.

"You okay?" Yugi asked, turning his head in confusion and frowning faintly. The other boy blinked at the screen and then looked towards him after a moment. His head tilted to the side and he fidgeted again under the smaller boy's gaze.

It occurred to him, watching him as his nails began to drum against his knees and shook his head, that he had not used the bathroom since he had gotten there. Yugi blinked stupidly at the realization, stomach flipping as he wondered at the idea that he had not eaten or drank enough to have to use the bathroom, but they also complained loudly to their parents that they needed to. The fact was that this boy was neither extremely young nor did he speak. Those two ideas made it more similar to the idea of a dog whining at the door to him than anything else.

He got up, dusting himself off to get rid of some crumbs from the sandwich he had eaten before and not bothered to clean up after, and turned to him. "Come on, I'll show you where the bathroom is," he muttered, gesturing towards him with a flick of his wrist. The other boy scrambled to his feet immediately, steps behind him as he looked at the blue-violet-eyed teen eagerly.

He led him along the hallway and then towards the bathroom outside of his room, somewhat unnerved but the idea of allowing him entrance into his own safe haven. He cast a glance towards it, however, feeling almost sick to his stomach as if the red-eyed teen knowing his nervousness would then ensure use against him later. Yugi shook his head sharply, then grabbed the knob tightly as he twisted his wrist and pushed the door in for him.

The other boy came to his side, stepping in when he gestured around turning the light on, and both of them raised a brow at each other. The smaller teen blinked at him, gesturing again, and mumbled, "Okay, so this is the bathroom."

The lycanthrope tilted his head to the side and his brow arched higher.

Yugi blinked at him, confused, and shook his head. "What?" he muttered, frowning curiously as the other boy continued to simply stare at him. Both of them stared at each other, almost mocking him with a question in his eyes that he did not fully understand until then. Yugi reached up to run a hand through his hair, groaning softly and shaking his head again faintly as he bit his cheek hard.

"You don't know how to use the bathroom…?"

Where had he grown up? Where was it that he had come from in the first place? Wherever he had come from, had it not had plumbing?

A thought occurred to him and it almost awed him as he looked at the other boy again with widened eyes, a sense of despair and sympathy curling his way through his insides. Had he been _born in the woods_? Was it possible for werewolves to be born as canines instead of human? Was it possible that they might be born in the wilderness and raised there as well? Or was it possible that perhaps he had been lost on his own but learned to survive one way or another?

Hadn't he read a book at one point where a boy had survived in the desert eating bugs and cacti and eventually relearning the way to speak to people again?

It was possible, however, that he had been found by an animal at some point that had adopted him as their own. That would explain why he didn't talk, though he probably knew how to—or at least he seemed to. No, he did; he remembered. He had asked him, hadn't he? He had asked him if he knew how but did not like to. And, if he was raised in the woods, that might explain why he was unfamiliar with the house's plumbing. It might also explain why he had reacted so strangely when he had first tried to bring him inside.

"Um, it's…" Yugi paused, biting his lip, then gestured vaguely towards the toilet again before shaking his head and chewing his cheek. He wondered if homeless people had to be reacquainted with things like this for a moment and then shook his head sharply at himself. He looked at the toilet, then raised the seat of it and bit his lip. "Okay, so…this shouldn't be too hard. Wolves pee standing up—or at least the males do. So, I mean, maybe you'll be a little familiar with this…"

The other boy was watching him such rapt attention that Yugi felt his cheeks heat with embarrassment as he tried to consider another way to teach him. His mouth pulled at the corners into another, more pronounced grimace, and he reached a hand up to run through his hands again. "Well, o-obviously you're not going to…lift your leg—you just…"

His entire face had grown engulfed by flame, every hint of his skin burning with sheepishness. Oh gods, how was he really meant to explain this…?

He opened his mouth again to speak to the other boy, but his mouth found itself shutting abruptly. The lycanthrope had pulled his right upper canine to puncture his bottom lip, red eyes lowered towards the floor and his head tipped slightly away from him. But Yugi could see the edges of his mouth curving the slightest bit, stretching only minutely, and when he glanced sideways at him from the corner of his eye the smaller boy nearly groaned in frustration. His red gaze had grown bright with mirth, but darker with smugness, and his eyebrows had pulled faintly together, his bottom lip bleeding from the force of his canine pressed so firmly against it.

"You little shit," he whispered, almost awed by the very fact that he looked so playful at the moment. If he had been Jonouchi or Honda he might have slugged him in the shoulder, but the other was so far removed from such a friendship that Yugi did not even fully consider it. Instead he gave him a sharp look and shrugged his shoulder in amusement, watching the smug expression on his face grow much stronger in appearance. He chuckled after a moment, then snickered, and finally burst out laughing. "Use the bathroom, you jackass."

He wandered back into the living room, still laughing in amusement, and took a seat in his grandfather's recliner once more. He snuggled into the softened, worn leather material, and closed his eyes as he settled against the headrest comfortably. It was a lazy and familiar position, even though his throat ached gently as he continued to snicker softly in amusement.

He tilted his head when he caught the sound of something heavier moving about in the bathroom. The toiled had flushed seconds before, he realized as he turned his head and listened harder, and now there was a heavy barrage of noise to make him frown in puzzlement. It occurred to him that the uneven but powerful pattering of noise was that of the shower being turned on. He stepped short, surprised by the sudden action, and newly gaped as he continued listening.

It became a slow, steady droll of noise after several minutes and Yugi found himself eventually pushing it away into near nonexistence as he stared at the television in front of him. It took another few minutes for him to realize that the water had even been turned off. And by the time he turned around the other had already come back to take his place on the couch.

His hair looked shaggy with the weight of the water, but he seemed much happier with himself as he ran a hand through the soaked strands and fluffed up his long bangs. When he shook his head, droplets glittered and fell like heavily discolored with the weight of the former flakes of near black dried blood. However he noticed that his nails were still that deep, bloodied red, thick and almond-shaped, with the tips long and curved as if inwards in design like then talons.

His face was the same beautiful golden-bronze of the rest of his skin, glorious and almost like sun-baked sand beneath the heat of the desert. And, as it began to rapidly dry, the base of black hair looked as beautiful and striking as the plumage of a raven, the crest of it dark red and almost rustic in shade.

His long, slender fingers moved to reach up and touch his chin as he propped it in his palm and ran a few digits over his right cheek with an expression that spoke nearly of boredom. The nail beds caught his attention again, however, striking in shade and making his stomach twist faintly as he looked them over uncomfortably.

He had not noticed before, but his left thumbnail was twisted, almost mutated in shape. The thick almond shape was notably absent, the color still as deep and terrifying as it had been upon first glance. The cuticle had grown inwards and upwards, a faint and almost unnoticeable formation. It was a gentle, nearly nonexistent curve, the pale skin discoloring it only faintly, and the shape of it was almost like that of a full moon with only the edges curled away as if it were waning.

Yugi looked down at his own nails, curious and somewhat mystified by the shape of it. But his own still looked softly rounded, nowhere near as sharp in definition and shape as the other teenager's, and the color was a little darker than he had noticed before but it still lacked the blood red shade.

His nails were thin, nearly nonexistent lines of white against the pale, pink base, and his lips quirked to the side at the realization. If the color was already growing darker, did that mean that he would soon have the same shade of blood red as the other boy? And, if he did, what was there he could do to hide it all away? Would his cuticle push upwards as well, to make his left thumbnail look similar?

He looked back towards the screen, then glanced sideways at the boy again, feeling sick to his stomach for a brief second. He had not taken notice of his scrutiny, at least visibly, though he was sure that he was paying attention without turning to look at him as well. The small teen took another moment to scrutinize his expression, to see the relaxed position he sat in, the way he so obviously kept tabs on him from the corner of his eye.

His clothes looked a little better-fitted on his body now, as if his frame had somehow filled in his sleep. But his shoulders were still sharp and his collarbones remained painfully visible. His stomach lurched at the way his arms seemed unusually thin even from beneath his teal jacket which hung limply along the limbs but it was obvious in the way that it hung there that his form was still far too skinny and he looked almost sickly when he tilted his chin and his neck corded.

Altogether, however, he looked better than he had seen him before. His wolf form was far healthier in expression, he knew, but his human one lacked such consistency. The smaller boy leaned back against the chair again, visibly relieved that the protein shakes and pancakes seemed to do well with the combination of sedatives. It was gaining him some weight—in fact, it was more than he had expected considering it had only been a couple of days. That fact alone was good enough for him.

He was sleeping through the night. And, in the daytime, his eyes were bright with life and emotion. He looked healthier, somewhat stronger, and he was visibly more relaxed after eating all of that food and medication. He had woken up fine, even taken a shower and used the bathroom. As far as Yugi was concerned, that was nothing to complain about.


	15. Obligations

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day (no update on June 2nd)**

 **Chapter Warnings: Improper Use of Medication**

 **Okay, so I didn't know how to put this in a warning, so here we go. You (kind of) see hints of Puzzleshipping this chapter, though it's not quite that at the same time? I guess it depends on how you want to see it? Yami starts sleeping in Yugi's room, but they're NOT sharing his bed. And Yugi kind of hints at an attraction to Yami but it's not quite sexual or emotional?** **I feel that it's more loneliness that makes Yugi feel okay with the actions that happen and dictates Yami's choices to do so,** **but if you decide to see it another way, then you're free to do so.**

Chapter XV: Obligations

 _Work Log Entry XV: October, 1996_

 _October 16_

 _It has been order to leave the cub alone throughout the next three weeks. It has been deduced that if he is truly blessed with the classification of being a Pure-Blood, he shall find a way on his own to survive._

 _Scheduled feeding patterns shall be followed as usual but no one is to call him by his project name any longer._

"So, when do you think the second date is going to be?"

Yugi was only half-listening to the conversation on the other end of the phone as he watched the other boy who was still beginning to settle on the couch more comfortably. He had been uncomfortable for what had seemed liked hours and Yugi'd only just managed to redo the bandages on his wrists minutes before. The other had not been keen on him doing so, even growling low in his throat when he was pulling the gauze out of his wounds once more. So Yugi was at the table, leaned backwards in his chair, tipped for that he was surprised he had not fallen yet, with his eyes locked on the other teen who was simply struggling to get comfortable enough to fall asleep.

"The second date?" he echoed, eyes still caught on this other boy, head tilted to the side, curious and wondering. What was it that made him so uncomfortable? Yugi had changed his bandages before, though this time they had been water-logged from his shower earlier, and now he looked incredibly irritable.

But then he supposed, it could have been the fact that the phone had gone off. He'd reacted pretty badly to the ringing, jumping several feet into the air and snarling so loudly that Yugi had thought something had gotten into the house. It could have also been the fact that he knew he was watching him so closely and maybe that unnerved him somehow.

"With Anzu, remember?" his mom snorted in his ear, making him blink and frown as he turned his head away. Had he and Anzu gone on a date…? His brows furrowed for a moment. He would have remembered if— _oh no_.

"Y-yeah," he said weakly, swallowing a groan of despair.

He'd forgotten all about her.

He had been so caught up in his own needs to help this wolf, in his desire to keep him safe, make him healthy again. He had forgotten about their rescheduled date for the day before, and he did not blame her for not even bothering to call and remind him or text and ask where he was. He'd stood her up in favor of helping this red-eyed stranger who shared his disease…

"Are you all right? You sound a little sick…"

"No, I'm fine. I just…I forgot that we didn't schedule a second one yet," he lied between his teeth, rolling his eyes upwards towards the ceiling and feeling sick. "We were going to do that soon, but she was busy with dance rehearsals and I didn't want to interrupt. I'll talk to her tonight though. I mean…we have this entire month to go out and do things…"

Except he knew that was not what would happen.

"Oh good. I'm sure the two of you will find plenty to do over the break. And then, when you're official, we can celebrate."

 _Official_? Yugi liked the ring of that but he also doubted its certainty.

His body ached and his heart hurt for a moment, but he could do nothing more than bite his tongue for a moment to think of a response. Slowly he turned his head back towards the werewolf who was still moving around to get more comfortable. He had circled around and paced twice before plopping down for what seemed like the tenth time within the hour.

"Celebrate?" he questioned after a moment, though his voice came out strained with discomfort and a feeling of sickness which touched his insides painfully. He did not want to talk anymore.

"Of course! It's not every day that your childhood sweetheart becomes your girlfriend, Yugi! It's cause for a celebration."

Cause for a celebration? He nearly barked out a laugh, infuriated for a brief second. The idea of dating Anzu was a case for celebration—in the midst of _all the crap_ his life had become? There was _nothing worthy of celebration_ in his life right now.

It did not matter that he and Anzu might become official. What mattered was the fact that he had no idea what was going on around him anymore. What was one meant to do when their life was practically thrown from its axis and cast into such disarray that no one could ever hope to fix it?

He bit his lip. He'd adapt. He had to adapt…

"I guess so," Yugi said without commitment. The wolf got up again, dusting himself off as if he were even uncomfortable with the invisible crumbs that might cover his skin, and then paced back and forth once more. He plopped down on the opposite end of the couch. His eyes flickered towards him, locking with his for the smallest of seconds, and then turned to the screen once more. There was nothing playing that either of them seemed to care for, though Yugi's only reference was the fact that the other wolf would curl his lip when he wished to dismiss a certain program.

"We definitely should celebrate, Yugi."

"We'll do it eventually."

"Good."

 _If we even last that long, anyways,_ he thought with a dismissive roll of his eyes towards the ceiling. It would not surprise him if she called it quits before a second date ever even happened. Yugi himself might have done the same in her place. It seemed insane to ask his best friend to go to such measures just for him.

"You should call her."

"I planned on it." Yugi paused, frowning faintly, and reached up to run a hand through his hair as he watched the other boy for a long minute. "When do you guys plan on coming back?"

"We're extending time here," she sighed quietly, and he could tell she was frowning and that she wanted more than anything to be back with him. It was clear that she did not want to have to be far from him, even if she was helping out so tremendously with the wounded dog. "I don't have a date for when we'll be back. We're helping out with the physical therapy now too."

"Underwater treadmill?"

"There's a possibility that he'll need it, yes. But for now we're starting him out with some basic swimming. We'll raise him up to that point if it becomes necessary."

"Okay."

"Listen, you know where the money is and you can get whatever it is you need from the store. You know how to cook and clean up after yourself…" She trailed off for a long moment and Yugi watched again as the wolf got to his feet, paced several times, and then took a seat in the center of the couch.

Yes, he knew how to buy groceries, how to cook for himself, but he would rather not have a repeat of that morning. He didn't want the other to hurt himself again. Frozen dinners would be how he would do things for a little while—at least until Yugi was sure the other would not attempt something like that again. "

It shouldn't go on for too much longer."

"It's fine. He needs help, so take care of him. I can survive without supervision for a few more days."

"You're still taking your medication, right?"

Yugi flinched and the wolf jerked. His head snapped and his lips curled. His eyes flashed and his shoulders rose. Yugi shook his head faintly at him, mouthing an apology, but the other merely stared. His shoulders gradually fell away and his face became expressionless. But his eyes were still burning with aggression borne of tension even as he tilted his head in silent curiosity.

"Yeah," Yugi mumbled as he tore his eyes open from the other's expression and bit his lip uncomfortably. "I'm still taking it. No reason to worry about it, Mom. I promise I won't end up as bad as I did that time before."

Yugi saw him perk up now, at attention and curious. He sat up with his head tilted, his eyes sharp and blazing. He was questioning him, begging for attention almost, and Yugi shrugged faintly as they looked at each other. Yugi shook his head again. Maybe he would explain to him later, or perhaps he wouldn't.

He probably wouldn't. He would definitely prefer not to.

"Good." There was a soft rustling on the other end and he wondered if she was putting some paperwork away or looking through some research of some kind. Maybe she was looking over the schedule for this wounded canine. Either way, he knew it was paper of some kind she was moving around. "Okay, we're about to start therapy with him again. I'll have to call you back tonight."

"Okay. I'll talk to you then." He hung up before she could say she loved him. The thought of repeating those words made him feel sick to his stomach at the moment. He squeezed his eyes shut, pressing his phone screen against his forehead and breathing out a deep, uneven sigh. "Damn it."

He did not want to have to call Anzu with the news that he knew lay on his tongue already. He knew already that the words were nothing that he wished to say. There were so many things that he wanted to say to her. There were so many things that he wanted to, and that was hardly one of them…

Still, he pulled his phone away, then unlocked it and scrolled through it to find Anzu's number. Yugi hesitated for a moment, ignoring the way the lycanthrope sitting on his couch was studying him so intently, and then pressed the dial button. It took a moment for the phone to ring, something that made him shiver, and he got to his feet to walk around the kitchen table.

He considered slipping outside to talk to her, but what would have been the purpose? The lycanthrope had no idea what he was talking about nor doing. In reality he was unsure when he understood to be doing, but he knew that it was probably something of a mystery to him at the moment.

And why would he care for the conversation he was having? Really, when it came down to it, he thought that he was worrying for no other reason than a distraction. And besides that, even if he had walked outside, who was to say that the wolf would not _still_ hear him? It was possible that his senses were heightened to such a point, was it not?

If his own eyes could take in details of cracks in the asphalt at night then Yugi thought the wolf might be able to hear him even with the distance. The windows were drafty in the living room. He might not even have to move to be able to hear him speaking to him.

"Anzu…"

"Oh, hi, Yugi."

He cringed. She sounded upset, not the least bit happy hearing his voice. He didn't blame her. He looked at his nails, biting his lip, and then drew his middle finger to his mouth. His eyes flickered towards the ceiling.

"I'm _so_ sorry about yesterday. I…T-things got…so out of hand recently…" He breathed out weakly. "I should have called you, but I…"

"Yugi, what's going on? Are you okay?"

"I'm…yeah, I'm…fine." He nearly rolled his eyes at himself. He was anything but fine. Yugi's eyes shot to the werewolf on the couch who was now lying down and blinking at the program on the television in front of him. He looked almost exhausted, as if he might drop to sleep at any moment. And Yugi almost wished he could do the same. "I just…I'm so sorry, Anzu."

"What happened, Yugi?"

"I…I lost track of him. And I got busy. I was…there's something that has come up." He narrowed his eyes, then shook his head faintly. "I shouldn't beat around the bush. So I won't. Anzu, I can't date you right now. Right now things are just too hard and it…it won't work out. I have obligations that I can't put aside…"

Obligations…

Was that what the wolf was?

Yugi glanced at him sideways, tilting his head, and wondered at his choice of words. Was he an obligation? He considered it, wondered about it, and for a moment he truly did feel that the word was right. He was taking care of him, helping to heal him, and he felt that his needs were more important than his personal life.

But it was only going to be for a short time, wouldn't it? Yugi doubted he would need it much longer. He considered that it might be faster than his own recovery, if he was in the same situation.

There was a long silence, one that made him move his phone away and look at the screen as it lit up for his acknowledgment. No, she had not hung up.

"Anzu…?"

"I'm just…" She sighed quietly and he could hear her shaking her head. "I'm just trying to understand this some."

There wasn't much to understand. There was just a load of trust that she had to place in him that he would figure it out.

"You know I would never do this to you if it wasn't important. I would have shown up yesterday, or called you if it wasn't so…if it wasn't such a big thing. I'm sorry, Anzu. I just…" Yugi frowned and nibbled his lip, watching the red-eyed lycanthrope who tilted his head to the side and stared curiously. Had he sensed the change of power within this kitchen? Did he know of the tension he had just created for himself? The one that was centered so fully around him? "I don't…I don't know how to explain it and it's not something that I can just ignore…"

"It's okay. I just…" She trailed off and he ran a hand through his hair. The silence was going to kill him. "It's okay. Just, when you figure all of this out, then we can try again?"

Yugi nearly stumbled and fell over the back of the chair he'd been sitting in before. His mouth fell open, eyes nearly bugging out of his head. The wolf on the couch stiffened. His lips drew back and his eyes grew nervous, darting around the room.

"I—I—y-yeah," he managed, nearly choking on the words. He thought for a moment to tell her that he did not want to have to put it out there that she could do so much better than him. "O-okay."

From the couch the wolf watching him as he breathed out a weak farewell after an excuse was made to get off the phone. He was not truly listening, but rather picking up on the tones in the room. And something like an overjoyed relief was creeping over the blue-violet-eyed teen. Yugi looked almost as if he might collapse with his happiness, his knees weak and unstable, and the thought made him stiffen. What could be so relieving as to make one weak with satisfaction? He had never truly known such a sensation beyond changing and traveling in his wolf pelt, and so the concept of this happening now threw him.

He was not going to change, he knew. The moon was not near and his body seemed far too relaxed for it. Besides, he could smell the regular levels of perspiration and calmness that came with the human's more neutral stance. And that was what he held now.

So he watched Yugi as he took a seat, laughing softly, but did not bother to do more. Instead, when the other boy ran his hands through his hair and put his phone down, he turned to the scene playing in front of him. He tucked his hands in his lap, uncomfortable yet again, and then got to his feet a minute later to pace and then sit again.

"You just keep pacing all the time," Yugi grumbled after a moment, blinking before looking up at him. The wolf turned his head to stare at him with a slight frown of confusion. "Do you want me to give you more medication? Do you want to sleep?"

He hesitated, at first thrown by the statement, and was surprised that it did not sound harsh or even slightly annoyed. But he seemed far more curious and somehow childishly fascinated. The wolf pressed the soles of his feet into the floor for a moment, then nodded and waited. Yugi gave him a miniscule smile, nodding in response, and got to his feet to head into the other room to retrieve the medication. He heard the pills rattling long before he detected the other boy making his way back to him and wondered curiously what it was that he had done with them.

But when he came back over, he recognized that the sound was not the same. These pills were heavier, let out a sharper and louder thud than the ones that he had heard before. He realized, moments later, that the blue-violet-eyed teen had taken something from another bottle, a different set of pills. And when he spoke again, handing it over with the statement, "Here, I'll make you another shake" he realized that he could smell it faintly on Yugi's breath. It was not surprising to him, but it did make him frown minutely.

He had not seen Yugi take pills before, though he supposed it made sense that he might be taking some due to the sheer abundance of them in the house.

Yugi blinked at him, then licked his lips and turned away after a moment.

He wondered what the medication Yugi had taken was for. It did not smell like the ones he had been allowing him to take, so he knew they were not for sleep. Or, at least, he supposed that they were not for the dreamless sleep that he was always granted. He still did not know what it was that made the other boy require the medication but he also guessed that it did not truly matter.

* * *

That night, the small teen found himself wide awake. He blinked drearily, confused, hesitant, and listened as hard as he could to be able to pick up on whatever noise it was that had woken him. But he realized as well, that despite himself, he was not awake because of a sound.

He listened harder, straining his eyes now as well to catch the source of it from where the light touched the bottom of his door. He blinked stupidly, peering through his lashes, and struggled to think straight. There was a movement in the crack of his door, like feet shuffling across the floor in front of it. He heard the weak rustling of clothing, the soft touch of quiet and gentle breathing.

He frowned faintly, tilting his head, and then blinked again. The gap beneath the door grew completely dark, as if something were in front of it, blocking it. He waited a few minutes, wondering if perhaps the sight might change. But not once did anything move or a streak of light greet him in any way. He frowned more noticeably, biting his lip, and then narrowed his eyes as he got slowly to his feet.

He was disoriented as he crept forward, nearly stumbling over his own two feet in his groggy state. He thought to call out, but it occurred to him that he did not have a name for the other inhabitant of his house.

He gripped the doorknob as tightly as possible, turning it slowly and gently to pull the door open gently. He blinked at the darkness that greeted him, the faint trickle of white and silver light that came from the waning moon in the window. He blinked slowly, frowning, and then trailed his eyes towards the thing that had been blocking it from his door frame.

Resting there, curled up on the floor in front of him, facing the other way, was the red-eyed lycanthrope. He was fast asleep, breathing in and out evenly, his frame relaxed where he lay on the carpet floor. Yugi blinked at him stupidly, nibbling his bottom lip, and then exhaled deeply.

He did not know what to say about this nor what to make of it. But it was a kind of progress, wasn't it? He knew it had to be considered that kind of thing. It was something.

But when he woke up again and got ready for the day, the other wolf had found his way back to the couch. But for the first time since Yugi had seen, he looked extremely young and happy, docile and friendly, he was completely relaxed.

But, somehow, it seemed to break Yugi's heart all the same. Something about it all made his heart hurt.

But he supposed what he did not know about the wolf was truly a blessing.

There was so much he could theorize about that might never even scratch the surface of his problems. And that alone was enough to make him stay quiet and not push him for any answers.

"Here," he announced twenty minutes later, laying the plate in front of him at the end of the living room's coffee table when he saw that he had woken. He was just barely sitting up, scrubbing a hand through his long hair, when Yugi placed the protein shake beside the plate and plopped down to sit in his grandfather's recliner again. Beside the mug was the bottle of pills he had been allowing him to take for the last two days.

The wolf blinked at him stupidly for a moment, then launched himself into his meal as Yugi had thought he might. He was already growing more familiar with the way that he wolfed down his food as he did, scarcely seeming to even take the time to properly chew it. He watched him lazily, as he did for the next week and a half. For the duration of that time, Yugi had spent the nights with his bedroom door open for the other in case he wanted inside of it. He had come to the conclusion that he was not a threat, that he hardly seemed likely to harm him for whatever reason, and so had decided the door could remain open.

Yugi had gotten used to seeing him asleep on the floor in the front of his room, almost as if he were guarding him. He never went inside, but he would lie there, feet away from the end of his bed, and never once would he so much as seem as if he might move away or creep into his room.

So when Yugi woke in the middle of the night to pee and returned to find the doorway empty, he nearly panicked. It was an immediate thought that something had attacked him and Yugi had not known. But then he realized he would have heard it. He did not live on the set of a horror movie, even if most of his life seemed here taken such drastic turns in a mirror direction.

Besides that, he was recovering well. If there had been a threat in the house, Yugi was sure the werewolf would have been able to get out of it without too much trouble. He was sure he would have seen blood everywhere, would have heard their struggles. So, Yugi realized, as he crept forward a few steps listening with strained ears, that there was no such thing that could have happened. But where had the other boy gone?

Yugi made his way slowly into the living room, at first checking for him to see if he was perhaps lying on the couch, and then froze in place. A soft, gentle thudding came from the opposite direction. He spun around, bristling with fear. His eyes were wide, terrified, his stomach twisting. He opened and closed his mouth once. He trembled weakly. And his eyes sought through the darkness almost blindly.

Yugi was panting with confusion, desperation, fearful of it all. He crept forward again, slow and inching in his movements, and the sound occurred once more. He blinked, stupefied, and frowned as he continued. It was painstakingly hard for him to keep moving forward. His fear made him almost desire nothing more than to turn tail and slip inside of his room with the door locked again.

But what greeted him in the kitchen was nothing he ever would have imagined.

Standing in the middle of the room, near the table, using one of the chairs to prop himself up by the elbow, was the other boy. In his right hand was a spoon, and in the left was a small jar.

Yugi strained his eyes, struggling for the ability to read the label in such low light. If not for the streetlamp he would have been almost completely blind. The moon was almost completely gone from the sky again. He shook his head at the thought, for a moment wondering about the Change which he knew would come soon enough.

There was no amount of time he could be given that would truly prepare him for the disgusting ordeal. There was nothing that could see him properly prepared for all of the pain or the puking. There was nothing that could save him from the entire thing. And he was sure he would hate the full moon for the rest of his life because of it.

"What are you doing?" Yugi snorted, finally able to read the jar's label and laughing out loud when he saw the shocked look on the other's face. He was eating a spoonful of peanut butter, red eyes wide and glittering, the utensil sticking from his mouth as his brows pulled together slightly in momentary confusion. "How much of it's left?"

The other boy blinked and looked into the jar, then frowned faintly and tipped the contents towards Yugi for his observation. He strained his eyes, the muscles of them aching as he struggled to see the insides of the plastic container. It took him a moment to see the smooth grooves where the spoon back scraped numerously throughout the inside to gather his midnight snack. He was struggling for what felt like hours before his eyes and adjusted themselves slowly but surely and the darkness began to grow bearable. There was almost nothing there but the very bottom, where the small design of grooves was the only thing with spread to scoop from.

Yugi smiled in amusement, then shook his head and rolled his eyes. "I could have sworn that jar was full not three days ago," he snarled, raising a brow at him in challenge of his words. The other boy gave him a sheepish look, blinking wide eyes with his lips drawn into a brief smile that made Yugi snicker softly. "Well, go ahead and finish it off. Then lay back down. I'll get more tomorrow."

He would have to get it sometime in the afternoon. He doubted he would be able to skip his morning schedule with the other boy. He didn't want to let him get hurt by playing with the stove again or somehow upset his routine by failing to give him his protein shake in the morning. Or somehow throw his immune system off by the effect of giving him his medication later. He had no idea what the medication might do to him if that happened at some point.

Withdrawal symptoms were always bad, regardless of what it was. He still remembered his mother freaking out so avidly after coming home when he had neglected to take it with his grandfather's encouragement. He reached up to rub at his eyes, shaking his head slightly, and turned on his heel. If this wolf never met his family, he might be the luckiest person alive.

He was smiling, snickering softly still, as he made his way back to his bed. The wolf remained in the kitchen for what felt like hours. Yugi kept himself completely beneath the blankets, blinking at the wall in boredom, his breathing even and soft. It took him a minute to realize, upon thinking to roll over in his slight impatience, that the other had already returned. In fact, he could hear the soft lull of his even breathing and the steady thumping of his heart in his ears, both noises musical as he sat up and blinked in surprise.

How had he managed to creep up on him like that? Yugi hadn't even sensed him. And what was the use of being a werewolf if you could not even sense when someone else was coming up behind or around you? What kind of stupid senses were these? First he got practically immobilized from it all then he barely seemed able to pick up even the usual noises from the house. He shook his head, flustered, but then blinked.

The lycanthrope was lying on his side, facing away from him. His side rose and fell easily. His arms and legs were folded into something like his own sleeping position. Yugi could hear him easily now. His breaths were like little wisps of noise, not even a full whistle, and his heart sounded in what seemed like longer twists of the muscle. The sound seemed to echo where the edges met with the next heartbeat, as if there were a chorus like that of a song.

Yugi blinked in surprise at this, but decided now was not the time to think too hard about it. He needed to figure out things for himself before he did anything that even remotely involved the other. And, even then, Yugi did not think he had the courage to ask if he could help him with his tests. There would be no bloodletting for the other in front of him.

Yugi shook his head, then shifted position. The movement was enough to make the sheets scrape in his ears. He cringed and the wolf at the door seemed to stop breathing for a moment. His heart seemed to speed for only a moment. It was as if he were on the border of waking, swift and efficient, but had yet to do so. For a split second Yugi felt almost sick to his stomach. What would he do if he did awaken? Would he tell him to go back to sleep? And if he did, _would_ he? The wolf seemed already to have a stubborn side that the smaller boy was fining nearly _impossible_ to shake.

He frowned, biting his lip, but shrugged it off. The wolf's breathing came back in its soothing lull of gentle noise and his heart twisted in its louder booms of sound. Yugi licked his lips after a moment, moving more slowly. It felt like hours for his feet to touch the ground. The mattress creaked softly. The wolf ceased movement for a moment. He could see his sides frozen in place, and his heart had kicked up a notch. Then, slowly, he drew in a breath, one that was too deep to be sleepy.

The smaller boy remained frozen in place, feet on the ground, leaning away from the bed's frame. In a painstaking manner his guest exhaled a deep breath, moved to bunch his shoulders up slightly, and snorted loudly. It came to Yugi, watching his form as he began to fall back asleep, that he had scented the air. He had been testing for anything he did not recognize in the house. And that was the only thing that kept him from jumping up or spinning on him or heading back to the couch.

Yugi shook his head, holding his own breath, and swallowed hard. This was going to be increasingly hard to do, he realized. The wolf clearly had much better senses and reflexes than he did himself. It was obvious in everything he did. Yugi bit his lip, flustered, and shook his head faintly.

As he pulled the sheets away and crept forward a step towards his dresser, he kept his eyes on the canine. He did not move safe for his breathing, and his heart sounded regular again, but he could not help but watch. It was a wonder that he could remain where he was, sleeping, when it was obvious he could hear his each and every movement.

He shook it off again, then continued to drag his feet towards his dresser. It took Yugi what felt like an eternity to reach it. The chair that sat in front of him had a blanket nestled into it, seated in the cent of the cushion. He had put it there in case the wolf began to make a habit of sleeping at his door. The room got drafty at times, especially with one of the vents placed directly over his head. If it came on, it would be no surprise that he might wander off for the couch again.

Yugi grabbed it as quickly as he could, watching him still. It was a soft fleece, light but warm, and he doubted that the other boy might even notice if he covered him with it. Then again, if his sense of touch was as good as his others, then Yugi had no doubt that he would. But he was also covered in clothing, so maybe not? But a layer of blanket covering clothes—wouldn't he still feel that?

Yugi nearly groaned at himself in frustration. If he woke up, he woke up. If he didn't, then he didn't. There was no reason for him to play this game of cat-and-mouse with his own thoughts. He shook his head faintly, then nibbled his lip and crept forward again. The wolf remained asleep, though Yugi considered this a lighter doze than what he had woken from formerly. It was obvious from the way that he continuously seemed on the verge of waking that he was not resting as deeply as he might normally.

But the wolf did not wake as he came to his side. Or, at least, his heart did not seem to speed up and his breathing remained even. In the darkness Yugi barely caught it, but he realized his spine had tightened slightly. It was in his shoulders between the blades, and it made his jacket fold in a strange downward line. He frowned slightly, narrowing his eyes. Was he still awake then? Maybe he had been feigning his attempt at sleep to calm him down? But shouldn't his heart have picked up when he got closer?

A twitch made his lashes flicker faintly. But that was not what caught Yugi's attention. He remained as he was, wondering if he might be able to see it again. He fiddled with the blanket in his fingers, scraping a nail over the comfortable material, and stared curiously. His heart was beginning to pound with a growing excitement. He licked his lips to keep from shivering with anticipation. Something about it all was so exhilarating that he could not think to look away nor pull back.

Then, very slowly, Yugi caught sight of it again. The lashes had parted, if only faintly. But it looked as if the eye were still closed, the slit was so minimal. For a moment he thought he was still looking at his lashes. And then he noticed a thin sliver of red. It was so dark as to appear brown in the dim light. But the black he had been staring into gave off a reflective sheen of gentle silver. He blinked and realization came to him.

The wolf was watching him.

He blinked, then blushed faintly. He had been awake the entire time. He must have been listening to him as he moved across the floor. Yugi frowned, biting his lip, and then gave him a weak smile. "I just wanted to give this to you," he muttered, showing him the blanket and for a moment feeling mesmerized by the way the threads caught the silver moonlight and glistened like dewdrops. The wolf beneath him blinked his eyes open, angling his head to look at it completely. And, as Yugi looked at the display of light the fleece gave off, the wolf sniffed softly at the thin material and slowly reached a hand up to touch it.

Yugi almost missed the action, so entranced by the blanket was he. He tilted his head for a moment, blinking, and his eyes drifted to where he saw a faint gleam at the bottom of the blanket. The wolf's nail, even in this form, possessed the smooth keratin layer that the canines did, and it reflected the light harshly. He watched, startled, as the wolf ran his fingers more noticeably along the bottom, then drifted his palm along the knot of fabric that rested in his hands. When he seemed satisfied with it, Yugi found himself gaping.

The fabric had been snatched out of his hands. And the wolf had pulled it completely over himself, snuggling with it. Yugi blinked stupidly twice, then snorted in amusement when he found he was still watching him from the corner of his eye.

* * *

"You're so weird," Yugi announced, smirking when the wolf snorted and ignored him. He watched him as he settled more comfortably, but the tension in his shoulders was still apparent even beneath the blanket. He thought for a moment that maybe it was the floor. But then he realized, with a flustered edge of emotion, that it was his presence instead. The wolf was not going to object to it, seeing as this was Yugi's territory, but he was nervous because of it. It occurred to him that they had not been this close aside form a couple of bandage changes. The wolf was unused to his close proximity. He was trying not to let it show but he could not unwind his muscles and so he remained almost frozen beneath him.

Yugi gave him a strained smile, frowning immediately afterwards when he realized the other would not respond, and spun on his heel to make his way towards the bed once more. When he glanced over his shoulder the wolf had grown relaxed again, his breathing soft and even though not as wispy as it had not been before. He was not asleep, was simply waiting for him to begin resting before he himself did.

As he settled himself to stare at the wall and the light flickered gently where the clouds drifted over the moon in a shallow pool of mist, Yugi's eyes began to feel heavy, itchy. His lids blinked once, softening them of their persistent and growing ache, and then closed them completely. The light was playing faintly behind his eyes, stretching and growing in the form of first blue undertones and then light yellow like miniscule forks of lightning. Each pattern began to fade and disperse, as if reality itself were fragmenting, and the heaviness of his body began to escape him.

New shadows and dark patches began to form about him, with the smallest patches of color to light the area around him in a distorted manner. For a long moment nothing seemed to exist but for the faint touches of light, then things began to materialize around him. It seemed agonizing how drifting the place around him seemed to be, as if he might tug himself from this dream's grasp at any moment rather than melt into its soft cradling touch.

A gentle wind began to tug at the air around him, whispering something of a lullaby in his ears even as it carried the smell of sickly wood rot and new earthly growth. A leaf fluttered and fell in the edges of his vision and Yugi turned his head, startled by its existence, eyes wide as he watched it twirl and spiral in a lonely dance to the ground. The grass was small, the blades short but thick, and they seemed almost swallow his feet where he glanced down at them.

He drew in a small breath, scenting the woods for a moment, and the softest gurgle of noise met his ears. He tilted his head, curious, and the areas around him, formerly like a dark blanket to encompass his senses in the most gossamer of ways, began to twitch and take form. The shadows split into tall silhouettes, stately pines with long and thin branches that stretched into the most splendorous of white-speckled stars that glittered a million hues before his raised eyes. The soft starlight spread throughout each gap between them, painting the bark a glistening shade of white with what seemed like golden edges where the pieces were beginning to peel.

The turn of Yugi's head allowed him to spot the river now. It was a slim trickle of water, expanding curiously into a more rapid flow only inches form where he stood facing it. The surface was dancing with light, silver and white, and the gurgle was so soft as to be almost nonexistent. He tilted his head again, glancing briefly at the tree branches once more, and then looked back to the water. His ears flicked, drawing in what seemed like nothing more than a gentle but unearthly whistle where the wind began to stroke the trees again. Curiously he crept forward, though not in the least bit thirsty, and stood a little taller as he approached the water. Where it should have been impossible to find a clear image safe his shadow, this river gave him a picture almost as vivid as his own mirror might have. The water seemed almost not to move at all, with only the slimmest of shadows there announce that this assumption was incorrect. Where the moon and stars touched its surface, it seemed to glitter with something almost enchanting but where his face merged and took shape amongst it all, he felt his heart pounding.

This was not the face that he had expected to greet him. His mouth was pulled outwards and forwards. His ears were angled awkwardly. His cheeks were fully. His eyes were narrower. His neck was thicker. His shoulders were broader. His expression was one of wondrous shock.

He blinked, then tilted his head. The eyes peering back at him glittered, but appeared almost uniform in color. Only tentative strokes of something like dusky royal blue graced the violet glow there. His pupils were nonexistent. His nose twitched and bead of sweat fell from it. The contours of it glistened with perspiration. His lips pulled back and his teeth glittered fiercely, though painted silver and cobalt beneath his own shadow. His cheeks pressed outwards and the shape of them was so stretched that they seemed enormous for a moment. His gums were a dark pink, like the flesh of a ripe plum. When he shifted, his reflection wavered only briefly, then grew absolute in its definition once more.

Yugi flattened his ears against his skull, reaching a leg out to disturb the image. The water splashed and a chill crept painfully through his limbs. He jerked his paw away, then glanced up when he thought he heard the soft noise of another nearby.

He sprang backwards, fur bristling in momentary confusion and shock. From the shadows a shape seemed to melt into form, shifting forward as if made of the darkness itself. He blinked and a glittering sheen of dull, rustic red stared back at him, pinpricks of color in the shadow of a large face and black fur. The nose wrinkled as it drew in a breath, and the contours of it were slicked with perspiration as well, dripping along the part of its immense jaws. The mouth opened minutely, showing off glittering enamel that made his heart pound. Their ears flicked back and forth, and the other wolf stopped feet away from him at the other bank of the river. They stared at one another, eyes glittering with the dulled shade of color, and for a moment neither moved. There was no tension to make his in the darker-furred newcomer, and it took him what felt like hours to recognize the face before him.

But such a rationalization passed. And with it the dream swept from beneath him as well. His senses began to return to him, a weight greeting his limbs as if he were somehow coming to his own body rather than merely reawakening. His eyelids were so heavy that he had to struggle to remember that he could part them. His head was spinning faintly. His eyes burned. He drew in a weak breath.

Then he twitched a finger as if to make sure it was still attached. The light from the window was pale and golden, warm and thick where it came in through the glass. Yugi frowned as a think pasty taste made his tongue stick to the roof of his mouth, then blinked slowly. The color his walls made his corneas burn for a brief moment. The way they sunlight hit the surface made his stomach ache minutely. Then he blinked, rolling over to face away from the window. The movement caused his head to spin.

He reached up to press his palms into his temples but fell short. He had jerked into an upright position. And his eyes were squeezed into slits. The floor looked fuzzy and strange. But the image that lay in the center of the doorway was not.

The wolf was crouched there. The blanket was pulled tightly around his shoulders. He was cross-legged. He was yawning tiredly. His eyelids were drooping. His eyes seemed dull, almost lifeless for a moment. His wrists flashed pale white with the gauze wrapped there. He remembered vaguely that he would have to change them. But what caught his attention was the fact that he was facing him. He was watching him through his long lashes. And he seemed not the least bit tense now that he was awake as well. He did not seem to be even slightly put off by the fact that he was staring at him so openly in response. And he did not seem as if he might turn away at any point.

Yugi tilted his head to the side but the wolf did not respond to the silent inquiry. Rather, he tipped his head a little further and opened his jaws wider. The yawn that came out was loud and seemed to last forever before abruptly ending with a resounding click. The small teen frowned first, then smiled faintly as he muttered, "Have you been up long?"

The shake of his head was immediate. The wolf shrugged his shoulders a second later, then rolled them as he settled down comfortably once more. The sight struck him as strange enough to make his mouth open in a small "o" shape. Yugi sat up a little further, surprised when the other did not so much as blink. The thought was startling that he could possibly have gained such rest overnight. Surely giving him a blanket could not have bestowed such a secure feeling. It seemed so amazing to him that it was impossible. He couldn't see himself being uncomfortable upon waking after someone gave him a blanket for the night that he might sit in plain sight and not flee for another room.

But then…Yugi was the one who had led a wolf into his home after only running into him twice before. He was the one that had tried to lead him there once before and only succeeded when the other had shown up on his doorstep. And was he not the one who had irresponsibly placed himself at his mercy several times simply because he did not know enough about his new disease?

Wasn't he the one who had always prided himself in having a level head about this kind of thing? Yugi had always said he would never allow himself to even give someone dangerous the _slightest_ clue as to where he lived, in case they might get the idea to attack him or his family. And he was, doing the exact opposite of everything he had always pledged himself to.

Yugi shuddered and the movement caused the other's head to tilt. His red eyes had grown wide in surprise of the reaction and the sleepiness was completely gone from his posture. He was alert, blinking at him and inquiring silently what was wrong.

Yugi blinked, then frowned faintly and shook his head. How was he meant to explain to the wolf that he was merely upset with himself for the fact that he had no idea how it was that he could possibly have turned his back on his own ideals as far as dangerous situations went? If he had not, however, the wolf could have been far from there, possibly hiding in the woods nursing his wounds. He might have even died from infection some way or another because of them. Or maybe not. Did werewolves get infections?

Maybe that was another thing he would have to look into soon.

* * *

He jerked violently, eyes snapping open. The covers tangled more effectively around his skin. The moonlight that was drizzling through the window was blinding like a bright flash of lightning. His heart was racing. His lungs were tight, constrictive. His mouth was dry. His jaw ached. His stomach pulsed with pain. He blinked in a daze. His ears were pounding.

A wet thud and swish of blood made his skull feel thick and cottony. He reached up to cover his face. His stomach lulled as he struggled to sit up. The sheets were tangled around him like manacles. His heart continued to pound. His ribs ached as they stretched with his breath. His tongue was plastered to the roof of his mouth again. His belly ached. His throat burned. Dizziness swept at the edges of his senses.

He paused. His breath was quick and shallow.

But he could not hear it any longer. Something else had edges its way into his senses. He swallowed a breath, holding it in his lungs. His ribs ached with the commitment, but he did not exhale. A single, soft wisp of noise crept into his ears again. He blinked, head turning every which way in his confusion.

A panic shot through his veins. His blood was lit on fire.

The wolf was not there in the doorway.

The doorway was empty.

Yugi let out his breath in a weak whimper-like noise. His hand came up for his teeth to bite into his thumb. His body was wracked with tremors for a moment. He pressed his tongue harder against his palate. A harsh shiver of fear made his blood slow. He clenched his eyes shut.

There was something horrifying in the acknowledgment of his absence. Where had he gone? What had happened? Was he okay? Was he dying?

That soft whispering tone came to his ears again. He blinked his eyes open. He was frozen in place beneath his blankets. His frame quaked violently. He choked on a breath. He bit into his hand a little harder.

His head tilted to the side.

Yugi listened furiously for another hint of noise. It crept through the darkness again to his ears. It tickled his senses. He swallowed thickly, then blinked slowly. The night terror was still clinging to his skin like a sheen of sweat, but the other noise was quickly becoming almost like a song. It was nothing more than a gentle hum at the ends, so subtle that it was almost inaudible. It was almost ironic in its simplicity, almost nonexistent.

But the time which passed around him made it clear. The silence beyond the gentle buzz of the fridge and the tick of the clock in the bathroom gave it a deafening edge. There was a soft rhythm to the noise, an ebb and flow that he compared almost to the cadence of a tide at the beach. At times it felt as if it might draw upon him to encompass his being, somehow almost magic. But others it seemed almost to disappear completely.

When it drew to a higher note, it made it impossible for his jumbled thoughts to move further. The night terror could not sink its claws back into his self-control if he could not remember it. And the little noise made it impossible to.

Everything fell into pieces, fragments, beneath it.

It took Yugi what felt like hours to pinpoint what must have been its source. A curiosity had finally overcome him to find it swiftly. As he crept across the cover of the bed and leaned over the footboard, his mouth nearly fell open.

The form on the floor was tucked comfortably into a ball. The jacket was bunched beneath its head. The blanket was pulled over its lithe frame. In the darkness as the clouds drifted in a thick fog to cover the moon, he could barely make out his profile. But he knew from the way that his sides rose so evenly and slowly that he was not awake. But he also realized that his reaction could not have gone unnoticed. He knew the wolf had to have woken in something of a soft daze.

Yugi smiled softly in relief, in comfort. His breathing was enough to shatter the remnants of any fear in his body. He drifted somewhat closer, leaning forward and tipping his head to the side. His soft breath came in short puffs, warm and gentle, and he smiled wider. He was satisfied with the way the noise made his ribs feel warm and almost molten with pleasure.

But then Yugi froze. His eyes widened. He jerked backwards, stunned. He blinked, then peered at the other boy again. Oh gods, what was going on? Was he truly leaning over and listening to his visitor's breathing with his ears angled towards him like this? Was that something of a wolf instinct? Did they draw comfort from each other's breathing in the wild?

Or was it something to do with his night terrors?

Perhaps it had been an inkling within his own nightmares that had allowed him to draw such comfort?

Or maybe it was just the fact that he had needed something and that was what he had heard first.

Maybe it was simplicity at its finest that had drawn this into reality.

He shook his head but watched the taller form on the floor at the foot of the bed for a moment, and then turned away again to settle back against his pillows. The sheets were sticky with sweat when he lay there comfortably once more but he could not find it in him to change them. Rather than bother to try to force himself to his feet and find his way into the linen closet to pick out a new set of sheets, he closed his eyes tightly.

The other boy's heartbeat was soft and gentle in his ears. And his breath filled whatever vacancy of noise his room might have possessed.

* * *

Yugi kept his face tucked neatly against the pillow. His eyes were closed into the thinnest of slits. In the dark the room looked incredibly small, dwarfed even. He blinked, fighting back a yawn. A wariness was targeting his limbs. His body was beginning to feel heavy. He moved his shoulders to draw upwards. His blinked again, then narrowed his eyes.

A noise, soft and gentle, crept into his hearing. He blinked tiredly once more, then quickly narrowed them into slits. A small sense of excitement burst into his limbs. His heart began to pound faintly. He fought away a smile, a grin of absolute satisfactory pleasure.

As if beckoned by his thoughts, the other teen had begun to make his way towards his room. He paused in the doorway glanced at him, clearly sensing his excitement rather than his usual restfulness. For a moment he did not move and seemed as if he might make himself settle for the doorway once more. He shifted his foot uncomfortably back and forth across the strip of carpet there. Then he glanced at Yugi with a hesitant frown before making his way uncertainly towards the foot of the bed again.

For a moment he hesitated a little longer. Then he made up his mind and lay down. He rolled onto his side, bunching his limbs, and pulled the blanket over his body. He lay there comfortably, yawning softly, and then ignored the way that the smaller boy gave him a wide grin and settled back again.

For the next two nights he kept up this routine. The days were of the usual meals—pancakes for him and the combination of that and a protein shake for the other—and mundane television after. The routine was of the most simplistic nature. Neither one of them thought much of it either way.

It was the night that seemed more complex for the newcomer than it did him.

Yugi had found rather quickly that if he waited up, the other knew about it. He made it clear because he'd hesitate, look at him for a moment, and then finally take his newest spot in his room. Once it had felt as if it had lasted for what felt like minutes on end. Then the next he merely glanced at him and settled back again. Between the two times not once had the small teen allowed him to crept into his room without being awake to see it.

Since the first night, Yugi had found that focusing on his heartbeat kept any night terrors to come in to come in the back of his mind. He had found that if he listened to his breathing in the darkness, it soothed any frayed nerves he might have, his simplicity and the reality that it represented did well to calm him. It encompassed him in the gentlest of security blankets. He wanted nothing more than to thank him.

But how did you explain to someone that their presence was the most comforting aspect of your life at the time?

And how did you do that to someone who you barely knew and had virtually no knowledge of in the first place?

Regardless of that, he did not think he knew how to say that even to one of his friends.

He didn't even think he could ever manage to say such a thing to Anzu if it ever came to it.

Yugi blinked wide eyes as he watched the other came into the room again. Unlike the previous two nights he did not pause. Instead he merely glanced at him, tilting his head, and offered something of a tight smile before moving to lie down in front of the bed again. He did not yawn or circle as he might have before, simply plopped down. His head looked almost too large for his neck when it tipped unceremoniously as he crossed his legs in his seated position.

Yugi took a moment to remember that the other had not taken his usual nap after breakfast. He'd taken his medication, had watched the television with him, but he had not passed out as he usually did. It occurred to Yugi that maybe he was beginning to metabolize it all more slowly. Maybe he had built up a tolerance to it. Or he had simply been able to remain awake all day and only now cared to sleep. It would not have surprised him if his body was adapting so quickly and his sleep patterns were changing with this new development.

But he looked exhausted. So was it possible that he had stayed up despite the medication and decided now was when he might sleep? But Yugi could not understand why he would choose to do that. It made no sense. He knew it was safe for him to rest as he needed to. And if he felt threatened he could easily change into a wolf and attack Yugi if he felt it necessary. So he did not understand why he would ever hesitate to do so if he felt tired.

Had he stayed up all day to be able to come into his room without feeling so nervous? Because he had strode in there and given him that weak smile as if he were making the room partially his now. Which meant… _what_ exactly? Yugi didn't know whether to consider that a good thing or a bad one. There were millions of different ways that could be interpreted, ranging form wolf to human or some odd combination in the werewolf section. He had no idea what he might do with it all.

But then again, maybe there wasn't anything that Yugi needed to do. When it came down to it, maybe he should just let it happen as it was. Maybe the other was just getting used to everything. Or maybe he was using him as his safety net as he was at times. Perhaps at night he was haunted by the same dream that had caused him to claw his arms open the first time and he had found that Yugi helped counteract that somehow.

He blinked as the wolf drifted off into his rest. His breathing was slow, even, and the jacket under his head seemed barely to have been occupied before he had fallen to sleep. It was obvious that he was exhausted even in his resting state, but the small teen did nothing more than watch him.

What else was there to do?

Wake him and ask if he was okay?

Yugi was fairly certain that should he do that his companion might never be comfortable enough to sleep around him again. He might frighten him from such a possibility and never see the end of a new skittishness to claim his mindset. And if he never settled back down again, then how would this all turn out? Would he turn his teeth on him in an act of desperation? Or would he simply cower from him and eventually turn to flee during the night at some point?

Neither thought was even remotely appealing to him.

The werewolf in front of him was too mild in mannerisms and harbored too gentle a disposition to even be looked at as a threat. Or…at least Yugi thought he would—if he were not a lycanthrope. If he were simply a person, it would never come to mind to think of him as more of a threat than a small child whose innocence was always on blatant display.

Yugi looked towards the window for a split second, then turned back. He was still fast asleep, his heartbeat lulling at his senses to follow him into a similar slumber. Yugi shook his head slightly, then closed his eyes and pulled the sheets up to his neck to become more comfortable.

* * *

"So, do you guys have a certain date you expect to be back? You never did say," he muttered into the phone the next day. He was leaning back in his chair again, listening to his mom grumble to his grandpa about something or other stupid enough to get her attention. He knew from experience that he was trying to distract her to keep her from saying something to him that might upset him. But Yugi hardly cared as he reached up to run a hand through his hair. If he was able to, he would tell him to shut up so that he could speak to her without her attention being so divided.

But his own was caught similarly between two different things.

The wolf was seated across the table from him. His elbows were propped against the table. His chin was in his palms. He looked both interested in his conversation and clearly bored all at once. He did not even seem to be truly listening in. He was simply watching him, taking note of his voice. Yugi felt that he knew such a tactic rather well. When his mother and grandfather fought, that was one of the things he would do.

He'd drown out their words for the most part, but listen to their tones so that he could act as a peacemaker the moment things began to get out of hand. He rolled his eyes at the phone as his grandpa grumbled something and his mom snapped at him in annoyance. The wolf in front of him quirked a brow when he focused on him again and he gave him a small, lopsided smile.

"They're crazy," Yugi mouthed, winking at the other boy who blinked and then sat up a little with a clearly surprised expression marring his features. He grinned a little wider, more than a little relieved to see such attentive focus in his dark eyes. He was definitely growing stronger, his eyes a true indicator of such a statement. Within the last few days he had been there, though his weight gain seemed almost unnoticeable, it was obvious that there was a gleam to his gaze that had not been there the first night. Now they sparkled like rubies in sunlight and had such depths s to put the ocean to shame.

"We don't really have a date in mind. It's not going to be much longer, though, I promise."

Yugi frowned at the statement, blinking and narrowing his eyes. The wolf in front of him shifted awkwardly in his seat, tilting his head to the side curiously. "You can take as much time as you need," he murmured, trying to make his voice sound even though a small bit of frustration bubbled up inside of him for a moment. He did not need her to watch him like a helpless child. He knew she had not meant it that way, but he could not help but feel reproachful towards her phrasing. "I don't mind it. Nothing is wrong over here. Besides, the dog needs you."

There was a long moment of silence, then Kasumi sighed and he could already picture the frustration that would make her lips thin. "Did you go shopping yet?" she asked and he knew she was trying to keep her voice from growing tight and affecting her tone.

"Not yet. I'm going in an hour," Yugi stated, rolling his eyes to the side. They'd run out of pancake mix. He would have to stock up on that—and get some more protein powders. "I didn't want to go yesterday because I just didn't want to leave the house."

He could almost see the words "You shouldn't just lounge around the house when there are other things you could be doing" forming on her tongue. He rolled his eyes upwards, hoping for the sake of his own sanity that she would not say it as she had so many times before when he didn't want to do his homework growing up.

"All right."

He raised a brow. Had she actually just relented to him?

That was a surprise.

The wolf was staring at him from across the table, brows furrowed, eyes narrowed faintly. His relaxed pose had grown the smallest bit tenser, shoulders a millimeter higher than they had been before. He looked uneasy, as if he had grown to realize something that Yugi himself might be oblivious to.

Had he heard something in their voices?

Was he upset with his dismissal of presence in front of him?

"Anyways, I think I'll let you go. The dog probably needs your help by now, right?" he murmured, tilting his head at the other boy and furrowing his brows in confusion. The lycanthrope blinked, pursing his lips, and then shook his head minutely. "I'll call you later, before I go to bed."

There was a moment of silence. Then, with a somewhat frosty edge to her voice, she muttered, "All right. I'll talk to you then."

She hung up without another word. Yugi rolled his eyes and placed his phone on the table. Of course she would get offended over him dismissing her like that. He had known that before he'd even said it. But it was worth it if it got him off the phone before she would start talking about if he was taking his medication or what he might get for dinner. He didn't think she would really approve of the fact that they had gone through three boxes of pancake mix in just as many days. She would not be impressed and then he'd have to listen to a health lecture—which, on top of all the things going on with him, he thought he needed the _least_.

Yugi looked at the boy in front of him, curious for a moment as the other studied him silently in response. "Do you ever get the feeling that sometimes things around you are just…really messed up?"

The other boy took only a moment, watching him, and then gave him something of a ghost of a smile. It seemed almost timid, maybe a little relaxed, but also incredibly strained. His head dipped only slightly but the message was clear enough to Yugi.

"All right, I'm going to get some things from the market," he announced, getting to his feet and giving him a small smile. The other boy blinked, eyes widening faintly, but frowned as his head tilted to the side. If Yugi had not known any better, he would have thought he was silently asking him to make sure he did no forget the pancakes. "I won't be gone too long. And you could come with me if you want?"

Yugi had already offered him that same thing an hour before when they had first woken up. He had barely managed to scrape together enough dough for two pancakes for the other boy who had been sorely disappointed with the results of his struggles. He had explained, the other wolf had frowned a little more, and then both of them had fallen silent until Yugi had answered his phone to talk to his mom.

So he was not at all surprised when the werewolf shook his head slowly again in response to his question. Yugi gave him another small smile, nodding, and turned away to look at the phone for a moment.

"I'll be right back."

It took him about ten minutes to get to the market. On the average day it would have taken a couple of minutes longer. But Yugi had been walking faster than usual, with something of a desire to run or at least jog instead. He had wanted to get there and grab his groceries and then hurry back to the house. He had not even given the other boy his protein shake or even managed to do much more than give him those measly pancakes and try to tell him that he didn't have to look so upset that he had to leave.

He was kind of worried about that. It didn't make sense in the first place that he would have grown so upset with him for leaving. He was okay to be on his own, wasn't he?

After they had cleaned his bandages and redone his sutures, he had seemed fine. He had not even hesitated when Yugi had brought the first-aid kit out for him to see. He'd held his arms out for him to inspect, ready and waiting, and had not even blinked when he'd started to snip the stitches and work through the task of cleaning the wound.

Yugi frowned as he scanned the dairy section for skim milk. The chill of the small area made his stomach twist faintly, cooling his heated skin. The air outside had been similar in its light touch. But it was the rest of the store that was heated too warmly for him. It set his skin aflame and his veins burned under his skin. And his forehead seemed as if it might burst forth with perspiration at any moment. He shook his head faintly and then grabbed the jug nearest him.

He skimmed the label, nearly groaning in frustration. All of the bottles seemed to be mixed and misplaced. And some of them seemed to even be completely empty on the shelves. Normally they were much better at stocking than this. Yugi pursed his lips wondering if maybe water would do just as well. It seemed okay, even if it didn't help him to gain weight. He could simply bypass milk altogether. And his mom wouldn't become suspicious considering he really tended to dislike the taste of it.

Slightly flustered, the small teen placed the jug back where he had gotten it, sighing softly and shaking his head as he started to turn away. But a tingling had begun in the center of his spine. And something sharp was biting at the marrow in his bones. He blinked, frowning, and then narrowed his eyes. His heart was beating wildly in his ears, as if the adrenaline had just been waiting beneath the surface of his skin the entire time. His mouth was growing dry with the sudden intensity of his instinct of fight-or-flight.

His head snapped around when a woman moved near him. She paused, startled, and then scowled at him in apparent frustration. He wanted for a moment to apologize, but instead bristled further. Something wasn't right…

When he turned his head the other way, at first he saw nothing. There was an empty aisle behind him, and the one past it looked flooded with people. The one to his right beyond that looked almost as crowded. It seemed almost ominous that they were not in the aisle behind him as well. But he also remembered that mostly teens were the ones to grab the sugary beverages that lined the shelves there. The teas were on either aisle. He wondered if soda might do the trick to help him gain weight—but there seemed to be nothing beneficial in that kind of drink. And the wolf would probably turn his nose up at it if he offered him such a thing.

So lost in his thoughts was he that he nearly missed it when someone came up to his side. He bristled, head turning, and nearly snarled for them to back up. It was primal and instinctive that it nearly made his head swim. But it was far from something he would have wanted to do. Rather, his mouth had opened faintly, but clamped shut immediately.

Standing a couple of feet away, hands in his pockets, shoulders slouched, was Valon. His school uniform had been swapped for a jacket bare of a hood, with the collar of it unzipped and the crease of it unmarred. His arms looked longer in the dark gray material, and the button up shirt beneath it was a reflective black. His jeans were a faded black, with ends that disappeared into a pair of dark gray shoes. His golden eyes were sharper than usual, with a feral quality that made his skin itch. His hair was disheveled, as if he had run his fingers through it multiple times, but the usual spikiness of it had not changed in any way.

"I thought I smelled you," Yugi muttered, voice a mixture of a sneer and nonchalance. His nose wrinkled faintly, but it was not in a mocking way. He seemed genuinely not to like the smell which had greeted it. But his eyes were glittering, dark and yet bright all the same, like the surface of water being touched by moonlight. His stomach tossed as he looked at him. When he spoke again, he swore his canines had gotten a little longer. "You smell…stronger than you used to."

Yugi frowned at him visibly, then glanced around himself slowly. There was no one to watch their interaction. And the redhead that he had seen Valon with previously was nowhere in sight. He turned back, tilting his head, and muttered, "Are you okay?"

"It's the weather," he responded with a bite of frustration but also vivid amusement. "I insult you and you ask if I am okay. You're something else, Yugi."

"I thought you meant I didn't smell as weak…" He shrugged briefly, frowning at the brunet more fully. "You know, like I had grown a little stronger or something. What about the weather?"

"Don't worry about it." He rolled his golden eyes and his jaw jumped with a spasm as he breathed out roughly between his lips. Immediately his head snapped back to look at him again, as if he had forgotten he were there somehow. His gaze was almost glowing, miniscule specks of incandescence that made Yugi freeze in surprise. And, when he stared, he thought he saw within his gaze that horrifying intelligence which had frayed his nerves so many times upon first seeing him as a canine. He seemed, as before, to be looking into his soul and yet through him, harboring a secret of such vastness as to make the world crumble before him. "Are there two of you?"

"Two of me?" Yugi echoed, confused. "What do you mean, two of me? Valon, are you sure you're okay?"

"It's the weather," he repeated without pause, rolling his eyes again. His jaw twitched and clamped again, then the smaller boy flinched when he heard his teeth grounding so heavily. "It doesn't matter. Listen, are there two of you?"

"Two of me?"

"No, not of you. Are there two?"

"Two of what?"

The other boy drew his lips back to bare his teeth and the low growl that came out made him stiffen in surprise. "There's a second wolf. Just like you—another one. Isn't there?" Valon demanded quietly, growling a little louder and narrowing his eyes into slits. Beneath his lashes, the gold of them still shimmered and danced as if with life. "I smell a heavier scent on you—something stronger than your natural one. A second…"

Yugi blinked at him in confusion, then shook his head sharply. "What the hell are you talking about, Valon?" he snapped, feeling his own shoulders rising in frustration. "I don't know what the hell you mean."

"You _do_!" he accused angrily. "You know exactly what I am asking you. You're simply playing stupid."

"Why would I feign ignorance about something like this? That makes no sense! You said something about finding my alpha—that he was still alive. And now you're not making any sense. What are you talking about with the weather and a second one?"

The werewolf bared his teeth for a moment, then abruptly tossed his head. A hand came up to touch his right temple, his fingers pressing so hard into the skin that he might try to split it. But he shook his head again and his face grew pinched with frustration. "Yugi, it's…" Valon paused and narrowed his eyes into slits, peering at him from beneath his lashes, and then shook his head again. "Listen to me, Yugi, I simply meant to ask…if there was another one. Do you know of another one?"

"Another one of what?"

" _Us_. Another one of _us_."

"I…oh…" Yugi paused, opening and closing his mouth twice, and then felt a small sense of guilt bubble up in his stomach. He shook his head slowly, flustered with his own indecision, but pushed forth with a frown. "No, there's no other."

The boy watched him for what felt like hours. His golden eyes darkened. His jaw clenched. And his voice came out furiously as he whispered, "Then I suppose you are simply becoming stronger then. Well, I hope the carnage you bring with you satisfies Lupa. I am sure she will come to love her little angel of death—just as she does _the others_."

His teeth clicked when he shut his jaw and Yugi flinched, eyes wide and horrified. They stared at each other and Valon scowled at him for a moment longer before turning his head violently away. His eyes flickered back and forth along the doors of the entrance, then shook his head again.

"W-what are you talking about?"

The golden-eyed teen gave him a predatory smile, his canines looking more prominent than he had ever seen them before. "You'll find out. When death follows your every step, Yugi."

"Valon—?"

He shook his head again and stalked past him without a second glance. Yugi watched him go, breath coming out weakly, and shuddered. The other boy nodded once at the register clerk when she glanced at him. Then he vanished out of the sliding doors and hurried down the street.

Yugi nearly groaned under his breath, looking away and swallowing hard. Hearing such a statement was hardly something he had needed. But what had happened? Why had Valon reacted so strangely? What about the weather had he been alluding to?

He shook his head, glancing around. No one else seemed to have noticed their interaction. His stiffened shoulders began to relax. He drew in a deep breath to stabilize himself. It was okay. No one would have any idea that he had been branded as "the angel of death", whatever that truly meant. He closed his eyes tightly for a moment, then tried to flex his lips into a smile that turned into nothing more than an irritable grimace.

" _Fuck_ ," he grumbled, spinning on his heel to make his way into another aisle. Where were the pancake mixes again? He rolled his eyes upwards and hoped that at least his houseguest was having more of what he was doing than he seemed to at the moment.

The other boy was, in fact, doing better than him at the moment. He had figured out how to turn the television on, though that was much more from watching Yugi do so than the seemingly incomprehensible depths of his mind that had brought forth such knowledge. And he was staring at the screen as things flickered across its surface. Laces of voices were shouting about something or other, a protest maybe? But no, their expressions were much happier than that. Perhaps they were cheering?

But what was there to cheer for? All he saw was another person getting up onto the platform that they were all facing. A stage? He tilted his head. Where had that word come from? It seemed strange to him that his mind was working at such speeds to catch him. Usually it was instantly that he was given the answers that he so desired. It came to him, however, that his weakened state must have altered this. Without enough weight and a balanced health to support himself, he was unable to do something so instinctive as to happen without his voluntary recognition of need.

Regardless, he settled back onto the cushions comfortably. His mind raced with explanations and thoughts, trying to catch him up, and for a few minutes he thought his head might burst from such effort. So, after only sparingly glancing at the television but listening more intently to the noise, he grabbed the remote and pressed the button he had formerly to give it life

He shook his head, resting against the pillows there, and waited. When footsteps from the concrete outside made his attention slither away, he sat up. His head tipped to the side. He drew in a deep breath, holding it to heighten his sense of hearing. Then he breathed a sigh of relief. Although he had only been there for such a limited amount of time, he knew the sound of the boy as he walked about.

His footsteps were soft, lighter than most humans'. He had a slighter, but still healthy weight to him. And his balance was almost always perfect. The materials of his sneakers were worn down. He could tell by the way they pressed into the ground. But he also knew them because of the fact that his stride was different. It was unique to him, faster than average, with such slightness that it made it almost inaudible.

Most wolves stepped heavier to the ground until the moment that they needed to hunt or stalk their prey. They each had their own special sound to accompany their walks, but they still moved rather heavily most times. But Yugi kept himself had a light and almost drifting sense of movement, padding with sure footing as slight as to make it seem as if they were not truly there in the first place.

So he sat and almost got to his feet, curious as to the slight heaviness that graced Yugi's steps as he got closer. He swore he heard him pause, though it was so momentary that he might have missed it, before the door began to push open. The hinges creaked and the air seemed to rush inwards for a moment, then the noise dissipated as if it had never existed. He moved slowly, as if laden with his own thoughts, and then began to pull the staircase's door open to make his way up the steps. His movements were just as quick as usual, but seemed somewhat heavier, and he could hear a gentle rustling which crept through the air like whimpers.

He tilted his head to the side, listening a little closer, and got to his feet to make his way towards the kitchen as the other grasped the knob to push the door open. Yugi was breathing with a rougher edge to his lungs, as if stressed. He sounded somewhat shaken, distressed in some way, and the wolf frowned as he furrowed his brow faintly. The boy threw the door open, then froze when he saw him staring at the spot he was standing. For a moment they stared at each other. Then Yugi's mouth drew into a strained line of a smile, weak as his eyes glittered faintly with frustration.

 _Two of us, huh_? _Does that mean you're just as cursed as I am_? _Are you an "angel of death" too, or something worse_?

But _was_ there anything worse?

Yugi shook his head, the bitterness at bay as it began to bite at his insides. Feeling flustered and annoyed, the small teen gripped tightly at the brown bag in his hands and began to walk past him without a second glance. He could smell something odd about the smaller teen the moment that he passed and a snarl unexpectedly surged from his throat. The other startled, spinning on him.

His lips drew back. His eyes flashed furiously. His brows furrowed. His eyes wrinkled at the corners. His nose crinkled. His teeth glinted softly with the faux golden of the kitchen light. His shoulders rose drastically. His jaw twitched. His teeth ground together. The column of his throat began to cord. He breathed in roughly, snarling softly now.

Yugi remained frozen for a moment. He could do no more than stare blankly, shocked. The expression that marred the other's features made his stomach clench. His heart began to race in his chest. What could have set him off? He had never reacted in such a way before. He drew in a deep breath, for a moment thinking to try to calm him. And then he exhaled just as quickly. His snarl had lessened. His face had grown more relaxed. But there was a cautious tension that made his eyes glimmer. He looked confused. His head tilted to the side. His brows furrowed furiously. He breathed in again, then leaned a little closer.

Yugi jumped back, nearly dropping the groceries. The jerk of movement made the other bristle further. He chomped his teeth, startled. The smaller boy nearly groaned in frustration. His heart was racing faster. He nearly rolled his eyes. He swallowed hard. The wolf did nothing more than snarl and stare at him in confusion. They blinked at each other.

"Fucking stop doing that," Yugi finally grumbled, huffing in distress. The other boy frowned further, lips twitching in his confusion. His teeth looked shinier than ever. His eyes were wild for a brief moment. Then he blinked and his features became purely concerned and puzzled. He tipped his head to the side and Yugi rolled his eyes. "Don't snarl at me like that, damn it. You make me think I'll suddenly look down and find a knife in my hand. For fuck's sake."

But the words seemed to fall on deaf ears. For a moment the wolf stared at him blankly. Then his nose twitched again. He leaned closer, but Yugi did not jump this time. The smaller teen allowed him to drift closer, until there were only inches between them, and watched him sniff deeply several times. The gleam in his red eyes did not change from their puzzled exasperation at first. Then he jerked back. His nose wrinkled up. He was frozen with a snarl on his face.

Then a loud huff left his mouth. He raised the back of his hand to his nose. A second booming noise left him. Then he grunted in displeasure and looked at him accusingly.

"Hey, I didn't tell you to smell me. That was all your idea. It's not my fault you started sneezing," Yugi teased in amusement, raising a brow and heading for the table. The other boy gave him an annoyed huff and then followed him towards the piece of furniture. As he placed the bag on the table, the boy began to move about to the other side to sit opposite of him.

He raised a brow but did not question him, instead reaching into the bag to begin pulling his groceries out to place on the table. In the corner of his eye he saw the other put his right elbow on the table and prop his chin there as he had earlier. But his other hand was lying almost limply in his lap. His eyes, however, were sharp, confused and concerned, burning into his skin as if he had a million questions but no voice to breathe them with.

Yugi glanced up at him. "You do…I mean, you can…talk, right?" he muttered, frowning and worrying his bottom lip. "I know I asked you that before, but…"

The other boy blinked, tilting his head to the side in confusion. For a moment he seemed almost oblivious to the meaning behind his words. But then he nodded slowly, frowning at him noticeably. His brows furrowed again, questioning him as he narrowed his eyes faintly.

"I just…you're so quiet. I guess I just…got a little worried."

He frowned at him more noticeably, but after a moment he wrinkled his nose, then turned away. There was something sad and disappointed in his eyes, shadowed to the point that his mind might have conjured it up but there was still something almost haunted in his gaze as he looked at him. His nonchalance seemed as if it had been thrown aside briskly in favor of his displeased expression.

"So, I couldn't find skim milk. I guess we'll have to stick with water then, right?" Yugi flashed him a small smile, then turned and started off for the fridge to retrieve a bottle. "And then we'll have some pancakes for breakfast and then I'll give you some more medicine and then you take a nap—just like every other day, yeah?"

He looked as if Yugi had stopped speaking Japanese and instead was somehow channeling a demon. His brows furrowed, his expression twisted with discomfort, and he gave him a bleak smile that made Yugi's stomach clenched with disappointment. Had he made him remember something that he had been determined to forget when he had asked him about his voice?

Maybe there was something in his past connected to it that he simply did not care to dig up ever again. The idea that he might have somehow suffered where his voice was concerned was something that made Yugi's spine tingle but he could not make himself do more than glance at him and then away again just as quickly.

Yugi didn't need to let his thoughts dwell on such ideas that his mind might come up with. Some things were better left alone than dragging out into focus. He could leave them in the shadows and would not mind it one bit.

It was later, as Yugi was seated in his grandfather's lounger and his houseguest was beginning to nod off that something occurred to him. The other boy had never snarled at him so angrily before. Not even when he had been struggling to lick his wound to promote his healing had he grown so furious. As he sat there, blinking at the flashing lights of the screen in front of him, only then did his head turn to the other boy.

He was resting on his side, blanket drawn tightly over his thin frame, head angrily comfortably against the pillow. His eyes were already beginning to droop drastically, nearly shutting away the world around him once more, but his attention was still keen. And he knew it had fallen on him from the way that he blinked slowly but did not raise his eyes from the screen in front of them.

"The murder of Tetsu Ushio is still being investigated. No leads have been found at this time. Police are now officially beginning to turn their attention to the possibility of an animal attack."

Yugi blinked at the words, frowning, but did not look away from the other boy. He did not respond to his staring, however, before opening his mouth in a small yawn and bunching his shoulders up more comfortably. It was unspoken between them, like a mutual law that had somehow come into being despite their differences, that he had no reason to worry. He did not have to feign sleep to avoid his attention. And the small boy did not have to stop short of everything he was doing to check on him as he would have a wounded animal in his care.

And so, studying him, Yugi wondered a little more about what it was that had set the wolf off earlier. It was startling to have seen his anger so vibrant and sharp, aimed directly at him even if it was not so terribly bared. He could have attacked at any moment, lashed out and split his skin or spilled blood. He could have harmed him violently and watched him as he struggled to heal. But he had not done more than chomp his teeth and growl. And he…had he been scared of was it something else entirely?

Had he been startled by whatever scent he had caught on his skin? Or had it been something else? Maybe he had simply been startled when he had moved past him. But he had done that so many times that such an explanation did not make sense.

Yugi frowned, tilting his head. But the other boy offered no answers. Instead his eyes had finally closed for the last time. And he breathed in deeply before beginning to drift into another heavy slumber.

Yugi shuddered as the reporter on the news said something else. And his thoughts circled suddenly to the boy in the market.

Valon— _Valon_ was the only part of the equation that could have disrupted their everyday interactions. It must have been his scent that had caused the other boy to react so terribly. Because nothing else made sense. There was no reason otherwise for him to snarl and snap at him as he had.

The smaller boy shuddered again. But like before, the other did not react. He simply breathed in softly, exhaling gently, and fell further into his sleep as the seconds passed.

 **Lupa is the goddess, represented by the moon, and considered the mother of the werewolves. Lycanthropes tend to pray to her over her mate, Fenrir. Lupa is the name of the she-wolf in Roman mythology who nursed Remus and Romulus when they were found in a basket in the Tiber River. She is also known as Luperca, which you might see later in the story as well.**


	16. Silence

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day (no update on June 2nd)**

 **Chapter Warnings: Jonouchi Being a Perv, Improper Use of Medication, Slight Mentions/Descriptions of Blood, Wound Cleaning**

 **I don't think I missed anything in the warnings but tell me if you feel otherwise. So, again, same as last time. I didn't know how to phrase it in the warnings above, so here we go. There are small hints of Puzzleshipping this chapter if you really squint. It still really depends on how you want to see it. Yami starts sharing the bed with Yugi, but no more than laying on the covers while Yugi is beneath them. I still consider it more loneliness than anything to make them both okay with this, but if you choose to see it otherwise, then feel free to.**

Chapter XVI: Silence

 _Work Log Entry XVI: November, 1996_

 _November 24_

 _A.T.E.M. has been teetering between life and death for what feels like forever, but not once has he succumbed to death like his deceased siblings._

 _Nor has he grown in size at any rate and he has not changed in any way._

 _He is still to be monitored constantly. His feeding patterns are to be followed as originally determined. No one is to call him by his project name._

 _In place of A.T.E.M. he is to be called by his specimen, genetic coding number, PB-A 26._

He had just finished his protein shake when his head abruptly snapped around. His lips curled, startled, and his eyes grew wide. His gaze flickered about. His spine had grown ramrod straight. His teeth were showing faintly. He looked terrified. When his head turned towards him, Yugi froze in place. His entire body became still with confusion. He could not hear anything, but he had also not been listening for disturbances. Unlike the wolf, he did not constantly have such keen senses. His seemed to trickle in and out of his body like the smallest trail of water in a stream.

He strained his eyes, but could hear nothing beyond the pounding of his heart. Adrenaline had pushed so swiftly through his body that he nearly swayed. His mouth grew dry. His stomach twisted. The wolf in front of him was on his feet so quickly he could not so much as blink. He was gone from his sight in an instant. Yugi vaguely recognized the direction of the living room as his destination. But he was not completely sure.

If he was fleeing, then it must not have been a threat—right?

Yugi shook his head, breathing in roughly with his growing panic. He wouldn't have simply fled and left him to find for himself if it was, right? Or maybe that was the way werewolf worked…Maybe it was all for one's survival and nothing for another's. He shivered, glancing about the small house, and then got to his feet slowly.

There was a soft, but insistent knocking coming from down below the staircase. He groaned in his mounting panic, terrified for a moment as he thought of the door falling to their will. He trembled, then froze in place. Was that…a _voice_? He tilted his head, straining his ears to hear beyond his pounding blood. It took several long seconds, which seemed to stretch into hours, for a certain group of reality to find its way upon him.

Someone was at the door—and they were calling his name.

He blinked and frowned. His head turned towards the living room. He did not recognize the voice at the moment. But he knew his name at least. Shaking his head, he began to make his way towards the steps. The door opened, he paused, and then nearly burst into laughter with relief.

" _Jonouchi_ ," he grumbled in relief, throwing the door shut behind him and then creeping down the stairs quickly. In the living room above his head, he could hear nothing. Not a single movement greeted his ears. Yugi frowned in puzzlement, worried for a moment that the other might have taken refuge somewhere and would fail to come back out. But he did not speak as he got to the bottom step, twisting the knob there, and paced his way to the front door.

It only occurred to him as he got to the glass that he had not done more than crawl out of bed. Thankfully, he had fallen asleep in his jeans the night before, having been so conflicted about his own thoughts of what the boy's reaction to Valon meant that he had been too exhausted to change. They were wrinkled horribly, something that he had never really shown himself in before, regardless of the company he kept, and he frowned faintly as he glanced at them.

But his friend's voice drew him closer and eventually he slowly drew the knob of the clinic door to the side, left hand working at the locks that lined the entrance. Then, with only one chain intact, Yugi pulled it halfway open, tilting his head as he leaned heavily against the door. He blinked, frowning when he realized it was not just Jonouchi but Honda and Anzu there as well. His stomach twisted, feeling sick as he nearly bit his tongue in distress.

Oh gods, they had all come? Were they expected to be let inside? If they were and he decided to _let_ them…then…how would the boy react? Would it be violent? Subdued? Perhaps he might sneak out of the living room when no one was looking, drifting around the corner, and find his way out into the day and never back into his house.

Yugi nearly shivered at the thought, shaken by the very concept. He blinked, frowning at the others.

"You look pale," Honda announced, ignoring common courtesies and greetings to frown at Yugi in puzzlement. His head was tilted to the side in concern, but his eyes were somewhat suspicious as they bore into his. "You look really rough."

"Honda," Anzu muttered, nudging him in the ribs with her elbow and rolling her deep blue eyes with a small smile at the other boy. "Hi, Yugi."

"Hi, Anzu." He paused. "What's up, guys?"

"Dude, you've been locked up in your house since school let out and that's all you've got to say?" the blond scoffed, giving him a lewd grin and reaching over to ruffle his hair when he blinked at him in confusion at the new expression. "Who's the girl you've been shacking up with?"

" _What_?" he sputtered, eyes growing owlish and his cheeks red with mortification. "What the hell, Jonouchi?"

"What? You don't have to hide it. We all know it's the only explanation!" Jonouchi grinned, then tried to poke his head into the doorway. Yugi shoved at him, surprising them both with the strength behind the movement. The blond stumbled back a couple of steps, eyes wide as he regarded him in shock.

 _He doesn't need to hear you_ , the small boy thought desperately. _The wolf doesn't need to hear your voice or know your words. He doesn't have to hear what you have to say. And I don't want him to know that you even exist. What he needs to know is that he's safe and that you aren't going to disturb him…_

But how was Yugi supposed to explain that?

The wolf had already heard Jonouchi. That was why he had fled and taken cover. Was he even still in the living room? Had he wandered out? Maybe he had taken a turn into his room and jumped from the window. At two stories it would not be a terrible fall. One could survive with minimal damage. And a werewolf…well, he doubted there would be more than a faint sting to grace the bones before he could take off running into the woods if he so desire.

Oh gods, please let him still be up there…

"What the hell was that about?" Jonouchi demanded, eyes narrowing into slits and his voice incredulous and frustrated.

"Grandpa is sick!" Yugi blurted out before he could stop himself, eyes growing startled at his own lie. Why did have to bring his family into this? But what else was there to truly say? None of them had even the smallest idea that the wolf existed and he needed to keep it that way. Flustered, he continued in a lower voice. "He's been puking recently. I just got him to lie down and fall asleep."

All of their faces changed from suspicious to immediately startled. The blond gave him a sheepish look quickly afterwards, reaching up to rub the back of his head awkwardly. Honda looked to the ground rather than at his face. And Anzu swallowed hard, whispering, "Oh, I'm so sorry, Yugi."

It was not the worst thing she could have said. At one point, before school had started, he'd said something about wanting a momentum from his grandfather and she had mistakenly assumed that he had passed. She'd been stunned when she'd come face to face with him again and he'd joked rather crudely with his grandson right in front of her.

"It's okay. He's just a little…I don't know. I guess he's just nauseas most of the time." Yugi paused, hesitating, and strained his ears in hope of the other wolf moving about upstairs. Nothing came to him and he nearly cringed. "I think he'll get better. He does this every now and then."

He needed to knock on wood at some point. Lies like this were just opening suggestions for the gods to punish him and his grandfather's health to plummet. He nearly squeezed his eyes shut and prayed for a brief second, but shook the urge off.

"But for right now he's not looking so hot," he muttered, worrying his lip until it began to bleed and the warmth of it made his skin tingle against the bite of cold air from the outside. The clinic was deceptively warm behind him, as if it had never known death or anything of a nature beyond satisfaction and calm. "It's just going to take him a little while to get back on his feet again."

He realized, as he looked at the brunette, that he had just given her two lies that somehow served to multiply the intensity of the other. He had told her that things had come up, that it was important for him to use his time more wisely than dating. And now he was saying that his grandfather was sick. It seemed, in a strange way, that the two statements cushioned each other, despite how unrealistic the latter truly was. His grandfather was one of the healthiest people alive. But none of them had to know that.

And Yugi did not need to go back on his own words to the brunette and alienate himself from his friends. And not one of them needed to know of the wolf's existence or his place within his home. So he kept his mouth shut for the most part, though he was tempted terribly to apologize abruptly for such statements.

"Shit, you should have…" Jonouchi was stumbling for words, grasping blindly, and after a long moment of failure, he shook his head with a deep frown. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize…"

"It's okay." His voice sounded stricken, tight to the point that it was almost suffocated with his constricted lungs. Oh gods, the guilt that welled up within his belly was like falling snow piling into wounds inside him. It welled up like the crashing wave of an ocean, burning him at the same time as it chilled him, and his heart began to stutter in his chest. He was a terrible person—and he was going to suffer for his indiscretion. "I just…I want to be there for him now in case it gets worse somehow."

If he squinted slightly, he could almost twist the words around to match his need to help the wolf who he hoped was still upstairs. If he really tried, he thought he could just as easily replace the thoughts of his grandfather with those of the red-eyed lycanthrope. It was oddly exhilarating to think that his lies were only half and the truth of such solid statements was not completely lost.

"We…" The blond gestured awkwardly back and forth between the three of them, nearly cringing when Yugi blinked in confusion. "We just wanted to know if you could come to the arcade. But I…guess not."

Yugi blinked and frowned at him in puzzlement, glancing over his shoulder as he struggled to listen for the wolf once more. There was nothing there to announce that he had remained, nor that he had left. Surely he would have _heard_ it if he had turned tail and taken off out of his window, right? There would have been a thud or something to say that he had landed on the ground or something…

But then, there hadn't been the first time he had seem him leap at the dumpsters. There had barely been a cringe of metal against the concrete or the slap of plastic under his shoes. He had landed with the grace of a feline and the silence of one as well. Even his weight had seemed nonexistent in that moment.

"I…can I get a rain check on that? He's just beginning to recover. I don't want to be away him from in case something else happens."

The pain in his voice, the slight desperation which lingered there, was true to all of their ears. But the words seemed almost flat, somehow displaced in the air between them. His friends seemed to momentarily think over his statement and wonder. And he felt his stomach twist painfully as if with confusion about the whole situation.

"Sure," Honda said when it became clear that Jonouchi would not speak. The blond was studying their smaller friend as if he had never seen him before. And Anzu was giving him a stare that bordered on keen suspicion yet sympathy all at once. In front of him, Yugi seemed to catch onto their reactions, and his shoulders were beginning to slowly inch uncharacteristically upwards in a nervous stance. "You take care of your gramps. Tell him we wish him well, okay? And we can hang out again later in the week. It's not that big a deal. We were just coming this way anyways so we figured we would ask."

Yugi blinked and the gratitude that bloomed in his eyes seemed to make them glow. He gave them a small smile, though he could feel the way it threatened to become a full-blown grin, and murmured, "Thanks, guys."

They barely had the chance to nod before the door shut in their faces.

"He's hiding something," the blond announced immediately. Yugi was still visible in the glass windows, barely a step away. He paused, almost as if he had heard him, but did not glance back. Instead he headed for the staircase without turning around again. "Something's up. Did you see the way he kept looking over his shoulder like that?"

"And he didn't seem all that distressed," Honda put in, narrowing his hazel eyes and then glancing at Anzu sideways. "The last time something happened to his grandpa, he'd wound up shaky and nearly in tears before the end of the day. And it had only been a fall of a stool when he had tried to get something out of the attic, remember?"

The brunette gave them a flustered look. "If he's hiding something, then there has to be a good reason, okay? Yugi isn't someone who would just avoid his friends and ignore them unless something was gong on. Maybe it's not his grandfather, but it has to be something else then, right?"

"I guess," the blond relented. "But I don't get why he would lie to us about something if it was serious."

"Maybe he wasn't sure how we would take it. I mean, here you are, accusing him of lying and just wanting to stay away from us," Anzu bit out, rolling her eyes as both of them considered her for a moment.

The blond reached up to rub the back of his neck with a sheepish expression. "No one's accusing him of that," he grumbled, but the protest was halfhearted. Even he realized that he'd been suggesting it. "I'm just saying that he was lying. There's no way something is wrong with his grandpa if he's still that relaxed."

"Well, I don't think he was completely lying. You've seen him when he lies. His cheeks tend to get a little red and his eyes widen," Honda murmured, cutting the brunette off quickly. He squinted, leaning forward, and strained his eyes to see if the door of the staircase was shut and Yugi had disappeared upstairs. But the shadows were too dark. He couldn't tell. "And it was too…fluid to be something he just pulled out of thin air. Someone is sick. It just might not be his grandpa."

"Then who would it be? His mom?" Jonouch asked, raising a brow. "She's _never_ sick."

"Maybe it's just a stomach bug," Anzu offered uneasily. Had Yugi truly lied to them? Had he truly turned around and said something simply to make them leave him alone? "I mean, this is Yugi we're talking about. He doesn't just try to avoid everyone, remember?"

"Okay, but you're forgetting about Ushio. He was found right here, _remember_ , Anzu? On Yugi's doorstep, in the middle of the night, with _Yugi_ as the one to find him. I don't know about you, but I find it pretty suspicious that someone would target him and drop the body here at his door if he wasn't involved in something." Jonouchi tilted his head and his eyes flickered up towards the window of his best friend's room, frowning thoughtfully as a small bit of indignation flared in his stomach. "And then, what about Kokurano? The day Yugi was supposed to be stuck doing his make up test with Chono, his body was found in the library. Doesn't that all sound really weird to you?"

"It sounds like a series of unconnected coincidences to me," Anzu snarled, startling him as he turned his head and nearly gaped in surprise. "Yugi is the sweetest, most selfless person any of us has ever known and _that's_ what you want to say about him? That he's involved in two of our classmates' murders? Are you really _that_ eager to point fingers at someone, Jonouchi? By Kami, I'm glad he's not out here to hear you say that! You selfish jackass! He forgave you even when you picked on him when we first started middle school! And he lets you stay at his house when things get too rough at yours! And this is how you thank him? By accusing him of such unforgivable acts?"

"Anzu, that's not what he's saying—"

"Yeah? Well it sure sounds like it!"

It did sound a lot like that. Yugi reached up to cover his forehead with a hand, nearly groaning in despair at the very thought. What was he going to do if he lost his friends' support? If they turned on him, what was he supposed to do? Could he even survive it?

He drew in a deep breath, then listened a little more. The others had fallen silent and finally Honda announced that they should get a move on. He could not hear them moving away but he knew that they had by the time he finally moved his hand to close the door completely. His stomach was in knots, his heart in his throat, as he began to make his way up the stairs. His feet felt heavier than ever before, his lungs constricting painfully, and he felt sick as he began his ascent. At the second door, he paused, straining his ears first for the sound of the other boy, then because he felt almost weak from the idea of his friends' reactions.

But when he opened the door, Yugi found himself frozen in place. There was not a sound to greet him, as if the wolf had vanished into nothingness. Painfully, feeling dizzy with confusion, the small boy made his way further into the house.

Not a single noise welcomed him but the buzz of the fridge and the drifting lick of the heater as it began to warm the house. The air vents rattled gently with the gust of air that passed through them and Yugi frowned as he tilted his head curiously for a moment. As he made his way towards the living room once more his skin tingled faintly.

It took him a moment to truly consider where it was that the other might have gone. But it occurred to him all the same. With a small frown, Yugi made his way towards the couch. When he was within inches of it, a head popped up from behind it. Hands were gripping at the backrest just beneath the sharpened chin. The long digits were resting comfortably, not the least bit tense. Bright red eyes glittered with confused anxiety. And his lips were tugged downwards in discomfort.

"Are you all right?"

He knew that really, in all reality, there was not much reason to ask him that. When it came down to it, the wolf was probably the safest of the two of them. He had hidden behind the couch. He had borne witness to what had seemed the growing destruction of his friendship with the others. He had not been forced to hear the words that they had spoken about him. He had not breathed the same air as them in their states of frustration and disbelief.

The wolf frowned at him, then tipped his head to the side. For a moment both of them regarded each other. Then he leaned over the edge of the couch. His eyes were still rimmed with anxiety and his lips were still pulled downwards. But he nodded after a moment, then threw himself onto the cushions once more. He was frowning at Yugi, peering uncomfortably, and he blinked lazily after a moment.

"The drugs must be kicking in, huh?" he teased, smiling in amusement as the other boy blinked and yawned softly. But the action was still tense, his shoulders somewhat raised, and his teeth clicked as his jaw closed. His body looked pained by the weight of his new position. "You're probably already exhausted, right?"

The wolf yawned again, softer this time, but his eyes did not close. He looked uncomfortable, unhappy, and his stomach twisted painfully at the sight.

"It's okay. They left."

His expression grew further troubled.

Yugi frowned, his smile washed away as if with bleach. "I'm okay," he muttered. "I'm just…I guess it's been a long couple of days. Here, go ahead and relax. Take your nap and don't worry about it, okay?"

Something had changed that night. As he lay down, waiting for the other to follow him there, he realized suddenly that some kind of dynamic in their companionship had flipped. It was not even when the lycanthrope made his way to the foot of the bed. Even when he took a seat there, then hesitated and reached up to press a palm into his mattress, it did not come to him.

Yugi blinked, looking at him, startled, and the other boy watched him with an intense expression. His jaw was set, his eyes were pleading and his head was tilted to the side curiously. He was hesitating, hovering there, leaning his weight into his hand and swallowing anxiously. But the only tension in his body lingered in his slender fingers. They gripped at the comforter firmly, scraping the soft material, then flexed in an almost kneading motion.

Yugi only considered it for a moment, then reached forward and patted the bed as he folded his legs. "Come on up," he murmured softly, smiling gently. The wolf hesitated for only a second longer, then reached forward with both hands and drew himself onto the foot of the bed. The blanket moved like a cape, swift and colorful, glittering in the moonlight with strands that looked like a million miniature rainbows beneath its silver touch.

Yugi watched him, smiling a little wider, and was surprised when the other boy began to circle only twice on his hands and knees. Then he plopped down at the arches of his feet, lying on his side facing away from him. The curve of his shoulders tickled his toes, but he did not comment.

"Good night."

The wolf raised his head, blinking at him, and then opened his mouth into a loud yawn. Yugi snorted in amusement, then dropped his hand as the other did similarly. He waited a few minutes, smiling warmly when he heard the soft and even whistle of the other's breath. It tickled his ears, spoiling his senses, and he closed his eyes to the sound of it as it began to lull him slowly to sleep.

It was as he began to slip away into his own dreamscape, that he even noticed it.

Something about the way he had handled his friends had cemented the other's trust in him.

When he woke up several hours later, in the middle of the night, with the other still fast asleep, he found himself smiling in relief. He was still curled there, albeit facing away, fast asleep without seemingly a single care in the world.

* * *

"Come up here."

The wolf blinked at him from where he had been shifting his position to work his way to the bend of his knees. Yugi gave him a small, gentle smile, and patted the sheets again. His red eyes narrowed from their previously widened expression. In the dark they glowed faintly like the candle cores of jack-o-lanterns, like the burst of lit embers. He lowered himself to the comforter more noticeably on his elbows, tucking his arms beneath him for a moment as if he might crawl forward. But he did not move beyond watching him with those dark red eyes.

"You don't have to sleep at my feet—or my knees," Yugi murmured, blinking at him and then patting the sheets once more. The wolf did not blink at him, instead frowning notably. His expression morphed into one of skepticism, confused by his statement. "Come on, it's fine."

He did not respond beyond staring again.

"I promise I'm not going to hurt you."

The words did nothing to allow him to coax him to him. It was actually more the fact that, in thought, he needed to justify himself to the other that made him sit up again. The very idea that he was trying to elevate him in such states so much sooner made his stomach tingle but he did not hesitate for much longer. It took him what felt like minutes to make his limbs move to carry him forward, but eventually he found himself at the boy's side, near where his hand rested. There was a sliver of cold moonlight that made the smaler teen's features more inviting than ever before.

Yugi's eyes danced with their touch of cobalt and brushstrokes of brilliant violet made his gaze shimmer as if with the most ethereal glow of the night's brightest stars. He faltered for a moment, narrowing his eyes, and took in the softer contours of his gentle face, the small shadows which his expression caused to linger on his soft skin. His rounded cheeks were cherubic, tugged upwards into a wide grin, and the corners of his lips were folded sharply with something like dimples. His teeth were glittering white, pale from the silver glint of the moonlight from the window, and he smiled a little wider in welcome of the other boy.

Very slowly, agonizingly so, the wolf lowered himself to his stomach beside him. It was a posture that could have been seen as both submissive and challenging. It was more protection in his own mind, a position in which he could shield his neck and belly should he lash out. His shoulders were more capable of taking the brunt of an attack and his back was stronger than his belly. When he settled there, unwilling to move any further, Yugi blinked at him, tilting his head, but did not comment. He pulled his hand away, tucking it under his sheets, and pulled them closer to his face. He was still facing him, though his peripheral was all that he filled at the moment, until he finally raised his eyes to look at him.

That red gaze was sharp, burning into his. It glittered like gems beneath the sun, the depth of it like the ocean and as vibrant as a painting, and Yugi nearly shivered with the power that made his features so much greater. He watched him, motionless, eyes unblinking, with an unnatural calm to his face that made the smaller teen blink in confusion. He thought it was the drugs that weighed on him so heavily, because his expression should have been more suspicious than wondrous as it was. His pupils were reflective, like rustic orange, from the hint of moonlight which touched them, mere spheres of color that were completely off-shade.

"I won't hurt you." Yugi was not even sure why he said that again. It did not seem to relax the other boy. But it made him feel a little better as they looked at each other. Maybe that was why he had bothered to speak the words a second time. Regardless, the wolf did not blink. If not for the breathing he could hear or the way his irises seemed to flicker with draws of color and then fade just as quickly he would have assumed him a statue. But he was breathing evenly, though with a slightly jerky edge to pronounce his faint tension, and his heart was not as steady as usual. He could hear it at a little faster than its average rate, with a sloppier echo to its resounding twist within his chest, the noise bubbling away and resurfacing as the next began. "It'll be okay."

It was the drugs that began to claim his senses that made him relax further. Yugi could not even pretend to believe otherwise. He knew for a fact that any other assumption was wrong. The wolf would have remained awake, watching him, for longer than those couple of hours that he had managed to keep his eyes open, had it not been for that. But he drifted off to sleep from the weight of medication, lids fluttering, breath coming out slower, in longer strokes, and his heart slowed to a much calmer pace. It was only slight, but Yugi had the urge—and overwhelmingly so—to reach out and brush away one of the bangs on his forehead. He wanted to touch his hair, to see if it would feel as much like satin and silken moonlight as it always appeared.

But he did not. Rather he closed his eyes, pulling the blanket higher onto his shoulders, and settled for sleep as well. The boy's breathing was soft, melodious, with a whistling edge, and his heart was like the heat of the gentlest of dreams as his consciousness began to slip slowly away.

When he began to regain his senses, it was only because something had touched his chin. It was a tickling sensation, brushing his skin and making him smother laughter. But it was not the touch which made Yugi falter. It was the very fact that he knew he was within his own bed that made him pause. Sleeping within his own bed, the knowledge that someone else was with him was something that he could not fully fathom for a long minute. In the pale light streaming from the window the blue-violet-eyed boy looked about him in confusion.

Long strands of fire-tipped hair with the gloss of a raven's plumage made him wrinkle his nose. A streak of bright goldenrod yellow slashed through the base towards the crest. His nose was buried in hairs of bright fold and darkness like the slickest of oils he blinked, smothering a yawn, and the smell of something strong like crushed mint leaves and frigid like fallen snow, with the freshness of winter lingering in its depths, made his heart pound. He swallowed, blinking once more, and then tilted his head downwards. His skin tickled with the sensation but his chin brushed the other's scalp and the boy twitched in his sleep. His shoulders were rising and falling faintly in his dreams, his breathing a little faster than before, but his heart rate was still at its slowest and he smiled a little more.

He was still asleep, though not as deeply as he had been throughout the night. Yugi watched him for a moment, took in the way the muscles along his shoulders twitched and shuddered, and then froze. The wolf jerked in his position, shuddering once, and then blinked and slowly tilted his head up to look at him. His bangs were rugged, knotted slightly along the edges. His eyes were sleepy, half-lidded, the red of them vibrant but shaded with grogginess. His cheek was smeared with a reddened mark from the imprint of the blankets beneath it. His lashes were awkwardly disarrayed. And his brows were elegant in the curve of them as they traced faintly the long arch of his narrow eyes.

"Morning," Yugi greeted lazily, deciding now more than ever before that it was important to pretend nothing had happened differently than usual. But the wolf did not take to this concept for a moment. He yawned quietly, then blinked, then stiffened, and finally he jerked, snarling as he sprang backwards. Yugi snorted, laughing softly, and then shook his head with a small smile. "You were the one who wanted to sleep closer to me—and you snuggled up to me, not the other way around. Relax, okay? I'm going to go make breakfast. I'm starving. Then we'll give you your protein shake and medicine and you can sleep some more."

The wolf continued to growl, put out by his dismissal, but fell immediately silent as well. The sight of his nonchalance was somehow promising to him. It was not as if anything had happened in the middle of the night. But having moved so close to him was not something that he had planned himself and that made his stomach curl briefly with confusion. Had the other moved closer to him at some point? Maybe he had responded to his body heat and moved closer? It was winter, after all. Although, usually, he would be waiting for the promise of snow and curled up with his tail over his nose, hoping for sleep. The fact that he wasn't was something strange and almost discomforting.

But the other boy merely peeled himself from the bed, yawning and stretching his arms out. And he watched as he pressed his weight into the carpet and yawned again. With a lazy and inaudible grumble the small teen turned and made his way towards the hallway. Yugi did not glance back, instead ruffling his own hair tiredly and vanishing from his sight moments later.

He was listening to him moving around long before he was comfortable enough to follow him into the kitchen. It was actually the smell of something now that made him take a few steps out into the hallway, sniffing deeply and tilting his head to the side in wonder. It smelled a little heavier than the pancakes, but with a similar fluffiness to be boasted. But he could hear whatever it was sizzling softly at the burner and it made his stomach growl curiously. As he crept into the room, a small hint of butter made his mouth water and a single touch of warmth curled within his insides, making his hesitance melt away swiftly.

He blinked wide eyes as the other boy kept his back to him. He judged the time between their waking up together to that moment to be somewhere between several to ten minutes. So the fact that there were two plates of pancakes and he was finishing with whatever he was making did not surprise him. Still he sniffed, trying to identify the smell, but he did not know it and so his brain could not supply him an answer by smell alone. It would be later, when he was more familiar with it, that his mind would not fail to recognize it.

"Your shake is on the table, and the medication is next to it, and you can pick the plate you want," Yugi murmured without turning around, once again folding the eggs to make them heat all the way through. He blinked, glancing over when he saw the other boy enter his peripheral, and was surprised when he found he did not give the pancakes even the smallest of looks. Rather his red eyes were wide and glued to the eggs in the pan in front of him, seemingly mystified by the sight of the new addition of food. Yugi raised a brow, watching him, and gave him a small, lopsided grin. "What, have you never had eggs before? I'll put these over there in a minute."

He hesitated, curiosity enough to make him remain a moment longer, and then blinked at the familiar name of the breakfast food. His head turned, tipping to the side, and he studied the two plates of pancakes. Neither looked particularly larger than the other. The pancakes were all pretty similar in shake and size. They both had size to a stack. He pursed his lips, sniffing for which was hotter, and then grabbed the colder before making his way to the table.

He downed the cup first, blinking lazily, and then considered the pills for a moment. He could take them without liquid. All he had to do was swallow them down. But the thought of doing so was uncomfortable enough with the beverage involved. He simply did not like to swallow something that was not chewed in this form. As a wolf he gulped down food as was natural to them, but as a human his reflex was to chew rather than to swallow. And his second was to spit it out more than even attempt to take the medicine.

So he blinked again, watching the pills with that same studious expression, and then tilted his head to the side curiously. Yugi came to the table a few moments later, surprised that he had chosen the colder pancakes which he had already put a considerable dent in, and placed a smaller plate with scrambled eggs near the china. The wolf blinked, pausing with food halfway to his mouth, and then tilted his head to the side and drew in a deep breath. The smaller boy smiled faintly, lips drawing further to the right than the left, and raised a brow so he watched him.

He leaned forward, putting his fork down on his plate again, and breathed in deeply with his palms flat against the tablecloth. For a long minute he simply went through the motions of scenting the contents lying on the plate. Then, very slowly, he tilted his head, red eyes curious, and reached out to draw the plate closer. With a brief glance at him, concerned perhaps that he was taking a plate meant for both of them, he paused and only resumed his actions when Yugi nodded to him.

"That's all yours. Mine are already on my plate."

He nodded, thought it was clear he was not completely paying attention to him, and stuffed the mouthful of pastry into his mouth before chewing vigorously and swallowing just as fast. He sniffed a couple more times, then poked at the eggs with his fork when the steam rose up, his eyes grew wide and curious, and when he poked a hole in the part of the food, he realized that he was testing whether the entire thing was hot. With a cautious glance at Yugi, he cut off a small bit, then lifted it on the edge of the teeth of the silverware, and looked it over with extreme curiosity.

"Go ahead and try some. They're not bad."

He frowned at him faintly, but waited until the steam began to lessen to near nonexistence, and then placed it in his mouth. The smaller boy realized only after witnessing him study the heat which radiated from the food that he had simply been concerned about burning himself. He had clearly learned from his previous lesson of what heat could do to him.

The thought was both amusing and somehow heartbreaking all at once.

He paused and his entire face lit up. His red eyes grew as bright as flames. His lips pulled into a wide grin. His face seemed to glow for a moment. His head tilted slightly to the side. And then his eyes shot to Yugi's with an expression of such gratitude that he felt almost shaken by it. He nodded at him, then wolfed down his eggs before quickly following the action up with the remainder of his pancakes.

"Well, I guess we just found a new favorite food for you, huh?"

His smile was weak enough that the other boy paused upon glancing at him to give a nod of affirmation. The smaller boy seemed so uncomfortable, his expression folded into something of intense sympathy and heartache as well, that it made his eyes grow wide and then narrow. His stomach twisted and his breathing came out a little tighter than before. Very slowly he lowered his hands to his lap and bit his lip uncomfortably as he settled into his seat and frowned at him noticeably.

"I've got a lot going on in my head," Yugi mumbled, smile falling immediately and his eyes lowering to the table after a moment. "Don't worry about it though. I'm glad you like the eggs. There isn't much protein to them to help you gain weight though…Oh. You didn't take your medicine."

He awkwardly gestured to his cup, unsure of what more to do in explanation. But the smaller boy seemed to know what he meant, abandoning his food to grasp his cup and make his way towards the counter behind his seat. On another day he might have lunged forward and snatched his food at the first opportunity. But his stomach was not so terribly empty as it had been formerly. And that crestfallen expression gave him desire of nothing more than to make himself smaller and become one with the background paint.

When Yugi returned, his brow rose incredulously and a small smirk formed on his lips. "You decided not to steal anything this time, huh?" he teased, making him grin playfully in response to his tone. He put the cup down towards the middle of the table and watched as Yugi reached for it. "You must not be as hungry as usual, huh?"

The wolf paused, surprised by his words, but considered the truth of the statement. Was he as hungry as usual? Sure, he was able to put a lot in his belly and not falter, but any werewolf was capable of such a feat. As he licked his lips and thought such words over, he did realize that perhaps he had some truth there. Perhaps he was fuller than usual. Maybe his metabolism was slowly. Possibly his wounds were beginning to heal more properly and he would not have to worry so much about eating what seemed to be twice as much as the other boy.

Very slowly he nodded at him. Yugi blinked and then his eyes grew owlish. He straightened a little, excitement radiating from his spot in front of him. His lips pulled back into the widest of grins.

"That's great! Shit, that's awesome!"

He gave him a small smile, then faltered slightly. His eyes flickered to his hands for a moment, then he flipped his arms to show him his wrists. At first Yugi peered at him in open confusion. Then his eyes widened a little further and he blinked before giving him a smaller grin.

"We'll check on them after breakfast is done. Go ahead and take your medicine. I'll finish up eating and then we'll redo the bandages before you take your nap."

The wolf nodded at him slightly and put his hands back in his lap lazily, watching him. A slow but steady weariness was beginning to tug at his limbs. It was weak and could barely hold even the smallest increment of his attention, but it was still there. Within the ten minutes it took Yugi to eat and grab the supplies to change the dressings, he was still rather awake. The drowsiness had failed to creep any further into his mind.

As he sat across from him at the living room table, the smaller teen was visibly excited by the idea that the medication was working with the desired effects. He himself, however, was beginning to have a small touch of that perceived drowsiness growing stronger in his mind. It came forward in small sweeps, pulsing and then withdrawing like pain or water when the rain made the rivers flood. It was a distracting, distant quality, and somehow it was almost friendly in the way it drew at his limbs and soothed his mind.

Yugi pulled at the tape's edges, peeling back the very corners, and then began to roll it backwards gently. The other boy did not respond to the ministrations, as he had failed to so many other times. It was unnatural to see how easily he seemed to take the process. With his anxious nature formerly and the way he still seemed skittish, it seemed that he would have objected somehow. It could have been a growl or simply pulling his arms away, yet he did not do it. He remained perfectly still, his arms stretched outwards for Yugi to look the entirety of the two bandaged wounds over.

The first layer of tape came off easily and the second was quick to follow. The gauze itself was another story. When Yugi began to peel it away, the skin stuck. He grimaced, looking at the other boy, but he hardly seemed worried. Yugi swallowed hard, feeling almost sick to his stomach at the thought of reopening the wound he was so focused on, but found himself gently peeling regardless. The red-eyed teen still failed to blink, watching his inspection of the wound with a lazy expression to his face.

He shuddered faintly, shaking his head slightly, and wondered if maybe he couldn't feel pain in his nerve endings while they were still healing. Yugi didn't feel them as he had the burn from days before, so did that mean that perhaps he was unable to as well? Was that possible? Or had the incident in the kitchen been a fake? Perhaps it had just happened somehow and it was not meant to in the first place. He didn't know which it was he preferred more at the moment.

As he pulled the dressing completely away, the wolf still failed to flinch. But his eyes flickered briefly with discomfort at the sensation. There was no apparent pain there, however, and his expression did not change in the slightest. He actually seemed, for a moment, as he looked at him, more curious than anything else.

The bottom of the gauze was covered in red, but not terribly so as it would have been had they begun to bleed again. Rather the center was pink and slightly yellowed, the edges red and a little black where it had dried out. Yugi smiled a little in relief, and looked at the wound before stopping short in surprise. The sutures had busted completely, the inner dressing pushed outwards from his skin. He raised a brow, looking at the other boy, curious and more than a little confused by the sight of it.

But the other still did not so much as blink. Instead he cast him something of a small nod, eyes growing a little hooded as the medicine began to take more of an effect on him. Yugi snickered, realizing belatedly that his thoughts that he could not feel it had been partially true. It was the medicine that made the wolf's demeanor so calm. But then, hadn't he held completely still and watched him curiously the entire time the first night he had been there?

Maybe pain was just something that he did not always respond to. Maybe he was used to it or cared so little for it that he was able to ignore it as he saw necessary.

He shivered but began to reach out with his nails to grip the edge of the ruined suture nearest him. They had split down the middle, as if his body had completely expelled them. Yugi blinked at the thought, furrowing his brows, and then began to pull them away from his skin. Each of them seemed to fall like flakes when he tilted his arm back and forth to get a better look at the wound. The dressing, when he pulled, came out easily with no resistance. The color of it was a dark brown, with traces of red and faint yellow splotches. But it was clearly unnecessary now as he looked again.

All of his skin had begun to reform, pushing upwards and inwards, squeezing the foreign gauze from its nestled position. The sight of each growth was a pale pink, with the smallest edges of red. Not a trace of black or purple from dead flesh was to be found. It was as if the gentle scrapings Yugi had initially done to peel the rotting cells and saline spraying had been enough to help them regenerate somehow. He pulled the last of the sutures had remained in his wrist, dropping it to the table with the rest of the soiled material, and smiled faintly.

He grabbed the kit once more, pulling out the sutures and scissors necessary to bind the wound again, and then wondered if the second had gone through a similar transformation. As he began to tie the stitches together in a zigzag formation, the other boy eyed the former wound and yawned softly. Pancakes were not the most nutritious meal in the world, so Yugi was somewhat surprised that it and a handful of protein shakes had managed to give him such ability to heal. He supposed it was probably the latter that had done the most work as he pulled the top dressing from his left wrist and found the same regeneration awaiting him there.

He picked the stitches out, dropping the soiled gauze aside, and then began to close the flesh there as well. The other boy did not so much as blink beyond momentarily closing his eyes and yawning softly. Yugi clipped the last of the sutures, smirking, and teased, "Tired much?"

The wolf blinked in surprise and then yawned a little louder. He snapped his teeth as if to punctuate the noise, and raised a brow in amusement at him. Yugi snorted, then got to his feet with the bag he'd laid out to drop the soiled dressings in. It hung from his wrist comfortably as he began to move towards the kitchen again to toss it in the trash. He would have to take that out soon, so that his mom and grandpa would not find something that hinted even remotely towards the red-eyed teen's existence within the house.

* * *

When the other boy woke again, Yugi was sitting at the lounger once more, lazily flicking through a book. The television was still on, the noise almost muted, but he was not paying it even the slightest bit of attention. Instead he was looking at pictures of something that one of the captions labeled a cell membrane. He sat up a little, yawning softly, and the other startled, nearly dropping the book as his head snapped around and a small blush sprang to his cheeks.

"You scared me!" he mumbled, laughing awkwardly and shaking his head slightly. "Did you just get up or were you watching the program?"

The wolf held up a finger, then shook his head in a lazy movement that made Yugi think of a dog shedding water from its fur. Then he sat up and pressed himself backwards into the couch, eyes locked on the book in his hands.

"It's my mom's old textbook from college," he explained with a shrug, frowning at the pages and drumming his fingers along the hardcover. "I figured I would read up a little bit more, see if there's more we can do to get you better healed up."

He tilted his head, curious and slightly surprised by the announcement, but then leaned forward further. From his side of the room there was not much to see of the book and its pages. Pictures were more obvious, but the words appeared more as blots of black ink that he could not read at the moment. He made an impatient clicking noise with his tongue and Yugi paused his quick inspection of the words to look at him curiously.

"Do you want to see it?"

He nodded at him, relieved that he had not taken the noise to be discouraging towards his efforts.

Yugi blinked, nodding, and passed it over to him. The wolf stared at it, then blinked a few times, and his brows furrowed as his eyes grew slightly unfocused. "Can you even read Japanese?" he asked, an afterthought that passed too quickly for him to think to filter it.

The other boy raised his head and frowned, brows pulling together, lips growing pursed, eyes narrowing in disdain. The smaller boy blushed, then laughed as he raised a brow.

"Are you _pouting_?"

He huffed indignantly.

Yugi burst out laughing. "That's the greatest expression ever."

The wolf scowled at him, then rolled his eyes and passed the book back to him.

"So if you can understand Japanese—like what I'm saying and what's in this book, can you write in it too?" Yugi asked, a small bit of excitement creeping into his voice and making his lips pull back into a wide grin. The wolf blinked, then his scowl deepened and that disdainful gleam in his eyes turned into full annoyance. "What? You can't blame me for being curious! You don't talk! How am I supposed to know if you can read and write? For all I know, you could have grown up in the mountains with a pack or something!"

The mention of the mountains and a pack made his shoulders rise briefly before they fell as if in an exaggerated shrug. But it was obvious that something in his frame had tightened at the very concept and he looked incredibly unnerved by it for the briefest of seconds. Yugi wanted to ask—he was _dying_ to—but instead he grinned lopsidedly and sprang to his feet.

"If you can write then that's easier than pointing, isn't it?"

The red eyes grew wide, startled by the idea, but Yugi was already gone down the hall before he could think to shake or nod his head. The wolf blinked again, then glanced at the book in his hands. The concept of cell regeneration was too wide a subject for his mind to completely wrap around. It was too all-encompassing and made him feel somewhat small. All he had ever considered where this concept was taken into account was that his body repaired itself when it needed to. Beyond that it was just something foreign and neglected to him.

Yugi returned with a pad of paper and pencil, practically bouncing on his toes with excitement as he handed it over. He took that more comfortably than he did the notebook and tilted his head to the side as he looked the two tools over. In his peripheral he saw the smaller boy immediately take a seat on the table, biting his lips anxiously and watching him with bright eyes. For a long minute neither of them did more than watch the other, the excitement growing more abundant as the red-eyed boy glanced at him from beneath his lashes and then slowly put the tip of the pencil to paper.

For a moment longer the wolf did nothing. Then, with a somewhat shaky grip, he began to form symbols on the paper. For several moments Yugi felt he might tremble with relief at the sight, completely enamored with the concept and then grinned widely. The words which littered the page were a wimple, written without elegance, question of _Does this answer your question, Yugi_?

"Yes, it does," Yugi laughed, snatching it from his hands and nearly guffawing in his excitement. "Holy shit, you can really write and read in Japanese. Are you from here?"

The wolf blinked, and Yugi noticed a small burst of relief bloom in his eyes of the concept of a simple question. He shook his head and the smaller boy tilted his head to the side, considering the answer.

"Did you come here from somewhere else?"

He blinked, then nodded slowly. His spine was growing tight beneath his skin, and a small anxiety made his muscles taut along his shoulder blades. His stomach twisted and clenched. His mouth was beginning to grow dry. He swallowed roughly, then bit his lip to keep from showing his discomfort. He didn't want to think about any more of that.

Yugi was so caught up in his own excitement that he nearly missed it. Had it not been for the way his own body responded in the way of his skin twitching as if something were crawling along the surface, he would never have noticed. But a strange sense of clarity came to him as he blinked at the gossamer touch of his nerves and his eyes caught the other boy's. And a new thought occurred to him. Maybe this subject would be the one that would push him over the edge maybe this would be the one—should he continue—to make him lash out.

So he fell quiet, though the excitement did not fully leave him. The questions that swam in his mind began to drift as he drew in a deep breath to steady himself and push them away. "Well, this is good to know," he announced, nodding in approval. "If I have to ask you a question that can't be answered as easily, you can write the answer and give it to me that way."

The wolf blinked, surprised by the suggestion, but did not object. He nodded after a moment, looking the small pad and pencil as they were offered to him again, and then very slowly took them into his lap once more. The smaller boy was clearly relieved, but he could not find any reason to be as he glanced at him. What was so great about this new arrangement? Simply answering and pointing to things when he did not understand his silent communication had seemed so easy to him.

Forming words on a piece of paper was a foreign art to him. Despite himself, he had not done well to manage it without his hands shaking and his stomach clenching. He could not possibly fully form sentences and ask questions like that. His brain was slowly at grasping such a means of communication than even the impulse to speak. And when he looked at the paper it reminded him so much of all the things he wanted so desperately to forget.

It was after the other boy had placed the pencil and notepad aside that Yugi noticed he had used his name in the question. He blinked a few times, looking at the wolf with wide eyes, and wondered curiously if he had ever told him it. But he didn't remember ever doing so and the thought made his stomach twist briefly. Maybe he had read his name on one of his homework assignments or had he'd overheard it from his conversations with his mom or Anzu before them.

But all those times he had seemed not to be listening. Rather he'd seemed to be in his own little world across the table. He had not given him questioning looks or tilted his head at their words. He had simply either watched his expression or seemingly drawn patterns across the wall with his eyes. He'd blocked him out multiple times, something that Yugi had come to realize because his eyes would look unfocused and his expression would become something contemplative. On more than one occasion while he had been talking to him about breakfast or something else, the wolf had gotten that same look on his face.

So it was unlikely that he could have overheard the name, recognized it when Yugi responded, and thus used it. It was also equally unlikely that he had seen it written somewhere and applied it to him. Maybe, however, he had seen it on the mail from college applications that he was considering ahead of time to really be able to put his foot in the door. But then, did he know what a college was? Sure, he had not looked confused when he had shown him the textbook, but did that really mean anything? Perhaps…was it possible…that he had just _known_?

Yugi blinked stupidly at the idea and his head snapped around to regard the red-eyed lycanthrope. His head was buried into his pillow. His arm was folded next to his face. His gaze was caught on the television. Then it flickered slowly to him. His body remained relaxed. But his eyes were sharp and keen. He was wondering, and not unjustly, what it was that hard startled him like this.

He gave him a weak smile and then turned away.

He had already proven himself to be extremely smart. He had kept him alive in the woods when the Change should have killed him. He had used the stream to clean his face of that squirrel's blood. He had found his way back to his home when he was hurt. He had known what drug would help him rest. And he had known how to turn on the stove and mix his own batter for pancakes. Even if he had burned himself, he had still known how to do it. And he had only been exposed to it once.

So he had to have a keen ability to be able to pick up on things, right?

He was able to completely mimic his behavior after only briefly seeing Yugi do things. He could turn the television off and on even without being shown how. He knew how to flip through the channels and adjust the volume. He had no problems with seemingly anything when it came down to it. He seemed capable of learning and applying more than most in his position.

Was that the lycanthropy or was he simply that intelligent?

Yugi thought it a combination of them both. It had to be, right? The lycanthropy hadn't made him insanely smart when he'd been bitten. He'd been intelligent his entire life, even if it was more so now that he felt some of his more difficult subjects folding to him. The day before when he had gone over a worksheet that his teacher had made a point of showing his inability to understand, he had found himself slowly but surely solving each problem. Before, he had not even been able to apply the formula currently, even after being shown three times how to do it during class when he had asked for help.

So the lycanthropy had definitely influenced that somehow, but it was not so complete as to make him understand everything. How it had made the formula an easier concept for him, however, he was not sure. But it had somehow made the concept of learning such equations simpler and so he guessed he had that to be thankful for.

Yugi raised a brow at is own train of thought, then glanced at the other boy. Well, there was one way to test that theory out.

"I'm going to brush my teeth."

The wolf blinked at him, a curious spark immediately lighting his eyes. He tilted his head and started to sit up. Yugi nearly grinned in delight at the idea of so easily getting his attention like this. He raised a brow, watching him, and then got to his feet as the smaller boy did. He was given a small smile, somewhat indulgent but mostly amused, and he trailed after him as he made his way to the bathroom in his room. The wolf paused at the doorway for a moment, but did not hesitate further.

When they got to the bathroom Yugi raised a brow at him, watching him curiously. If he really did follow by example, he thought he would be both elated and a little concerned. Because if he was choosing him as the one to mimic, did that mean somehow? Or was it simple convenience? And then, how much of regular human life did he lack if he had to look to him for direction like this?

The thought was sobering and his amusement disappeared immediately. Feeling somewhat flustered, he grabbed his brush from the holder, put on a glob of toothpaste that looked unnecessarily messy, and quickly wet it. While the wolf was watching him, Yugi felt a momentary flicker of embarrassment come through his insides. It seemed impossible to him that he would have an audience while doing something so mundane. And yet the other boy's eyes had grown sharper and his head had tilted curiously.

Flustered for a moment, the smaller boy ignored him in order to begin running his brush over his teeth. It was harder to ignore him than he had initially assumed. As soon as the mint smell of his paste came into the air the lycanthrope wrinkled his nose back. It was not of disdain or disgust but it seemed immediately to grow into it. His lips pulled back at the corner, his eyes narrowed, and his brows furrowed for a moment.

"It helps clean them," Yugi grumbled around the brush, not the least bit sure that the words came out as anything but a growl in such a low tone with the utensil in his mouth as it was. The wolf blinked, attention snapping to his face rather than the mirror, and raised a brow as if dubious of the statement. Or perhaps he just had not understood the words. Maybe he was just looking at him to see if he could guess what they might actually mean.

He spat out a mouthful of frothy foam and turned to him with a slight frown. "Did you want to try it or something?" he asked, briefly running his tongue over his teeth and feeling a bit better at the smooth touch of them. The other boy blinked at him, tilting his head towards his brush and then to the sink, and for a moment appeared to genuinely debate the idea. When he turned back to him he gave him a small smile that made the other blink again before finally nodding slightly.

Yugi had first the impulse to snort and snicker but then blinked and tilted his head. Was he truly interested in trying to brush his teeth? It seemed a foreign idea to him, because somehow his teeth were still bright white and perfectly formed. In fact, when he had first snarled at him that day down the street, had they not been perfectly straight in formation as well? Regular people would have been jealous of that kind of thing. They would have spent thousands at a dentist's office trying to get a similar perfection. Yet, here was a boy who spent most of his time in a canine form, eating seemingly anything in the world, with teeth that put supermodels to shame.

Yugi's own teeth were crooked in the back, with the molars pushed inwards and his secondary outwards. The edges brushed hard against each other and he always imagined that if he used them as an example of crooked teeth at a dentist's office, they would have a good laugh over them. The top molars went the opposite direction and the right side of his mouth was straighter than his left. His incisors were crowded together painfully and his right was crooked, his left straight. He would have formerly killed for that kind of straightness.

"Okay, here," he announced, digging into one of the drawers for a spare before handing him a bright red one. The wolf blinked, startled, as if he did not think he would actually give him the means to do so. Yugi flashed him a small grin, which the other frowned briefly at before beginning to peel the plastic wrapper away. He did not pause, instead doing exactly as the smaller boy expected him to.

He grabbed the tube of paste, popped the lid, put some on the brush, and wet it. Then he hesitated, looking it over for a moment, and finally shrugged and shoved it into his mouth. His lips twitched and curled up in disdain on the right side. He glanced only briefly at Yugi before beginning to run the bristled along his teeth. The smaller teen was so stricken by the idea that he was trusting him enough to have his mouth—really only one line of defense though the most powerful in canines—occupied that he could not stop watching.

The sound of the past foaming was like rapid gunfire, enhanced to the point that it was painful to listen to. His heart was beginning to pound within his chest, unnerved by the idea of such confidence in him. His soft breathing was like a small but gentle whisper of noise, mostly outdone by the froth forming in his mouth. The grip on the toothbrush was beginning to make his palms itch and tingle with pain, the nerve endings aching. The smell of the mint made his nose burn and he nearly groaned at the way it made his skin crawl briefly. The taste in his mouth had changed into a dull, lasting burst of something like mold.

He spat out into the sink again, then turned the faucet on and sipped at handfuls of water to be able to gurgle and rinse the hideous taste from his mouth. The boy next to him paused in brushing the left side of his mouth. When Yugi glanced up in the mirror, about to look his teeth over, he found himself nearly laughing. The other boy was so puzzled that he was almost statuesque beside him, eyes wide and lingering, with such interest etched across his face that he nearly guffawed. But when Yugi looked at him, the other boy quickly went back to brushing, as if that had never happened, ignoring him as he looked around as if the small room were the most interesting then to be seen.

Yugi rolled his eyes, snickering, but pulled his lips back to look at his teeth, not the least bit amused by the sight of them. He really shouldn't have gone on that coffee being when he was younger. They were only somewhat stained, but they were still yellowed and it irritated him to no end. When he pulled back, the other boy suddenly spat into the sink, growling in annoyance at the taste, and quickly rinsed his mouth as Yugi had.

"And now you know why should do that, huh?" he snorted, smirking in amusement, and raised a brow slyly. The wolf shot him a slightly disgruntled glare, but quickly found his way back to the task of rinsing his mouth once more. "You want to learn to floss?"

He gave him such a mystified look that Yugi burst out laughing. The wolf's mouth was slightly open, his eyes widened to the size of twin moons, his brows raised faintly. He did not tip his head to the side nor blink at him, but rather straightened with that same curious expression to his face, the smaller boy smothered his guffaws after what felt like hours, reaching over for his toothbrush and throwing it into the holder with his, and snorted as he grabbed the container.

For a brief second, in Yugi's mind's eye, as he flipped the lid, there was a gigantic black wolf and people gathered around it. Its paws were bound by a thin ribbon of thread the width of the floss in his hand. Its jaws were clamped with it and its long fur stood rigid with hatred. The golden eyes were glowing, hideous and pulsating, and its lips wrinkled back in fury. Yugi looked at the small box and then at the other boy and wondered at the image for a long moment.

Fenrir, from Norse mythology, he remembered, was a gigantic wolf that had been bound by a chain or a ribbon or something of that matter. And his hatred and bitterness after the event had allowed him to swallow Odin during the battle of Ragnarok.

The small teen frowned faintly at the thought, that image seared into his skull, but could not shake the impulse to wonder where it was that had come from. In all reality, he had not thought of Fenrir in so many ears, since he was mentioned in middle school during a lecture. Now why that had come to mind exactly was another thing altogether. He did not fully understand what it was that had made him pass through his thoughts. He was relatively sure it was a chain that had bound him. Although, when he thought back, the chain was supposed to have been so thin that the gods doubted it, right?

Yugi shook his head and snapped a piece of the floss for himself before doing the same for the other. When he opened his mouth and maneuvered the piece in his hand back and forth rapidly, the red eyes were locked on his face, as if he could not fathom that he had truly just stuck a thing in his mouth. As Yugi continued, those widened eyes nearly bugged out of his head, startled and uncertain, and he couldn't help but laugh quietly.

"Stop looking at me like that," he snickered softly, rolling his eyes in amusement. "You're distracting me!"

The wolf wrinkled his nose at his complaint, but did not stop watching. Yugi snorted, more amused than ever, and laughed harder when he tilted his head and leaned a little closer. He was sniffing at the thread, curious, and the smaller boy nearly choked when he saw the quizzical expression on his face.

The small boy watched him as he began to mimic him, pulling the floss back and forth, just before he let out a furious snarl and jerked back violently. Yugi froze next to him, startled by the angry noise, and then stopped short as he looked at him curiously. The wolf had removed the floss and the strand was a bright and hideous red.

"Let me see it," he demanded immediately, startling the other who snarled quietly before frowning at him in confusion. "Open your mouth."

He frowned at Yugi more visibly but then bared his teeth at him. For a moment he could see nothing. And then the tiniest splotch of red next to his bottom right canine came up. Within seconds, he could see that his mouth was salivating heavily to repair the damage. And when he spat into the sink again, there was only the slightest of twinges of pink to grace it. Yugi blinked a few times, somehow surprised that he might heal so quickly. It should have taken at least a little longer for the knick to heal, right? And yet it was already closed and when he looked at his teeth again, there was not the faintest touch of red to be found whatsoever. And his mouth was no longer salivating as heavily.

He frowned, tilting his head, and examined his teeth for a brief moment. They were perfectly straight, the canines a little sharper at the edges. His incisors were perfectly flat and each had the same length. But his center incisors did not lower as a human's did. Where Yugi himself had the small dip of his top center two, this wolf's were flat, all four level. It was all four of his canines which proved themselves to be a little longer than average, with the sharper edges that made them almost like that of an American vampire.

"Well, it looks like it's stopped bleeding," he mumbled after what felt like a long minute as he shook his head. The wolf flicked his tongue over the small former knick and then looked at him as if for more direction. Yugi hesitated for a long time before giving him a lopsided grin. "Have you ever used mouthwash before?"

The expression that came over his face was extremely quizzical. His brows furrowed, eyes widening faintly, and he tilted his head in confusion at his question. He blinked at him, red eyes specked several shades that made the depths of them appear like fresh blood and the inner rings of his irises crushed rubies beneath burning sunlight. His long lashes made them look like dark shadows, beautiful highlights of deep dark black to frame the brilliant orbs. Yugi was flustered by the way they bore into his eyes and he felt almost weak with the way his gaze seemed to burrow itself deep inside of him and make his nerve endings burn. They remained frozen for a moment and then small teen breathed in shakily, feeling as if something within the depths of his body was beginning to stir.

Yugi managed only barely to exhale, then blinked and turned his head away harshly. His breath came out strangled a moment later, eyes wide as they briefly took in his frazzled appearance in the mirror before them. Then he blinked again, swallowing hard, and tried his best not to allow the other boy to see the slight red which he knew dusted his cheeks in a fine powder of color.

It took him a moment to steady his thoughts. Swallowing again, he blinked before shaking his head slowly. His stomach twisted. His mouth grew dry. His heart was still racing, but it seemed just as quickly to slow itself once more. When he looked at the other boy, from the corner of his eye, his expression still had not changed.

But there was a gleam to his eyes that was not at all what he had been expecting. Rather than amusement or confusion his gaze was alight with something almost sheepish, as if he were terribly embarrassed. He reached a hand up to run his fingers through his bangs, then looked at the taller boy more fully.

It was somehow amazing to Yugi, the sight of the other boy's somewhat flustered expression. He seemed almost as if he might become sick if he paid him too much attention and the idea of something of fascination to him for a moment. Then, abruptly, his thoughts careened towards the many times he himself had been embarrassed. He had always hated it the moment his cheeks lit up or his eyes grew wide, or his mouth opened and closed in shock. Each of those times he hated it far too much to care to do it to someone else. Flustered, but hoping his voice would come out even and easy, he said, "Here."

When he reached over and fumbled to put it in front of him, the red-eyed teen raised a brow curiously. Yugi swallowed back a slight groan of embarrassment at his own awkward reaction and eventually looked over, eyes glued completely to the bottle of mouthwash.

"You twist off the cap, pour the mouthwash into it, then tip it back into your mouth." Yugi felt as if his hands might shake with his embarrassment as he tried to keep from showing him. But the werewolf was smart, and there was no reason he would have to. The intelligence in his gaze was keen, with strength that made his stomach twist faintly. He knew what he was going to do, how to do it, and did not once think it over. "Then you swish it around in your mouth for a few seconds—a minute if you can manage it—and spit it out in the sink."

He paused and his lips twitched faintly as he looked over and raised a brow slowly. "You know what you can do, though? I mean, since the whole flossing thing didn't work out, you could gargle the mouthwash," Yugi announced, fighting away a smirk of amusement. The wolf blinked at him curiously. "I know that you don't know why flossing is important and all, but it is. And the mouthwash right after is always a good thing to do. You can easily make up for the lack of flossing, though, if you decide to gargle it instead."

The wolf blinked at him, and for a moment his eyes grew distracted and faintly distrustful. Yugi realized only belatedly that he had twisted off the cap and the smell was making his nose twitch. His expression was nothing short of disdainful as he drew in another breath. It was stronger than even the toothpaste when it had been wet down and he was definitely undone by it. For a long moment he did not respond to any of these thoughts before frowning faintly and tilting his head to the side.

When he looked up again, his companion was watching him. His eyes were predominantly purple at the moment, but the flecks of them were a deep and almost mesmerizing blue. It seemed almost a shade of gorgeous, lustrous sapphire like a pair of glittering gems. Where the light from the mirror hit Yugi's irises, they shimmered and danced like sunbeams atop the surface of a pool of water. His lashes did nothing to fully shelter the coloring of his beautiful gaze, and where the shadows touched them, they appeared almost fully to become a uniform shade. It was stunning, almost startlingly so, and he blinked stupidly for a moment before looking back towards the bottle that he held in his hands.

He tapped his nails along the bright blue of the container, tilting his head only faintly to the side with his growing curiosity. When he flipped the bottle to pour some of the liquid into the lid, he found himself startled faintly by the slightly foggy appearance. It reminded him, for the smallest of moments, of steam rising from the pancakes they had eaten earlier and his stomach almost growled with the briefest of hungers. But it was gone immediately after. And he tipped the cup back into his mouth.

Immediately he flinched. The taste which touched his tongue made each bud burn. The muscle itched and flared. His heart began to race impatiently. His blood was pounding in his ears. His heart had leaped within his throat. His skin was pulsating achingly. His sight blurred for a moment as if with tears. When he blinked, the edges of his vision were black. His nose felt as if it might bleed. It seemed hotter along the nasal passages, as if they might burst into flames.

"Shit, are you okay?" Yugi demanded, startled by the realization the other boy had frozen in place. When he blinked again, his red eyes seemed displaced, as if he could not see properly. His cheeks had grown flushed. And he was breathing raggedly. His hands were slightly shaky, though not trembling. The smaller boy flinched slightly, then reached out to take the container from him. The other jerked but allowed him to remove the object from between his fingertips. He looked as if he might throw up at any moment, however. He seemed almost as if he were struggling not to gag, nor to swallow the liquid in his mouth.

It took him a long minute to even properly steady himself. His heart was still racing. His mouth had steadied somewhat, his tongue no longer burning but simply aching where it was pressed behind his teeth. He blinked and his red eyes sharpened again. He carefully, deliberately, drew in a deep breath through his nose. It itched, then ached so violently that he almost flinched.

Another long minute passed. Then he moved the liquid very slowly to the left, his cheek puffing outwards. His teeth burned and tingled with the new touch. His heart was beginning to slow itself. The sharpness of the pain came back again. His nose continued to ache, violently so, however. The red-eyed teen frowned, then shook his head, and slowly moved it to the right as well. Then he sputtered and the liquid pushed so harshly that he nearly cried out in pain.

Yugi watched him as he struggled to breathe properly. But the seconds passed. And eventually he simply opened his mouth. The movement caused him to jerk. Then he choked and sputtered again. The liquid sprayed straight into the mirror. The wolf grunted and choked. The entire frame of glass was completely coated. The frothy spray was bubbling into the corners. The smell of it made his nose nearly bleed as the other's own ached and wrinkled in distress.

The back of his hand reached up to cover his nose. The mouthwash had shot through there as well. He whined softly, pathetically, and his chin was coated in the froth. His eyes were wide, horrified, and his gaze was caught on Yugi's. At first he did not recognize it around his own shock. He was gaping at the glass, moments from laughing out loud in amusement, and his lungs were growing tight with the task of restraining himself. But then Yugi realized, very abruptly, that nothing was funny.

There werewolf's face was absolutely stricken. His brows had pulled upwards and closer together. His eyes were wide and dilated. His lips had twisted into a grimace. His hand was still pressed against his nose, fingers trying to stem the pain. His eyes were focused entirely on the small boy now. He blinked at him, his eyes growing further dilated.

Yugi flinched violently at the sight.

"Oh gods…" Yugi had the impulse to reach out and pull his hand away, to make sure his nose wasn't bleeding. He was almost scared that if he looked at the spot behind his fingers, there would be maps of bright red. The thought made him breathe heavily and his heart hammered in his chest as he looked at him with a horrified expression. "Oh my gods—I—I—Are you okay?"

The wolf continued to stare at him, his expression still stricken, and Yugi winced once more. His red eyes were glittering with something almost akin hurt, as if he had very purposefully wounded him. The smaller teen opened his mouth to deny such a thing, then felt his cheeks heat with embarrassment. He hadn't meant to hurt him, but he hadn't really considered it either. If he had even managed to fully gurgle the mixture, he would have been in just as much pain—if not worse.

"I—I'm sorry."

Yugi winced at his own stuttering. The wolf merely blinked, then glanced over his shoulder. And he was gone a second later, before he could even think to object. So he stood there, startled and watching, as he disappeared from his sight completely.

It took Yugi what felt like hours to finally make his way into the living room after him. His stomach still lurched to one side and his mouth was dry. His hands were shaky and his palms were sweaty. But where his immediate worry had been that the other might have fled, he found himself immensely relieved that he was sitting on the couch again. He was, without so much as a small blink, watching the screen with the volume nearly muted. He did not look at him but to see if it was truly him, then he settled back into the cushion he was using as a pillow.

His mouth had been dried off, his skin scrubbed with water to get rid of the wash, and his face was relaxed. It was his eyes that looked cautious when they flickered to Yugi to discourage his continued staring. The darker flecks of them were hideously wary, with such depths as to look almost black in appearance. Yugi thought that, had it not been for the fact that he was within _his_ territory—as he was sure the werewolf perceived it—he would have snarled and chased him off.

"Are you okay?" Yugi finally breathed out, hesitating for a moment as he blinked at the other boy. His head turned, eyes somewhat surprised by the question, and then he nodded briefly. His eyes flickered to the screen again and they seemed almost to reflect every color which played across them. "I didn't mean to upset you or anything. I was just…"

 _Being an idiot_ , his brain filled in somewhat angrily. Yugi shook his head at himself and sighed in avid frustration. How was it that he had not considered how the other boy might take such a joke? It seemed stupid in hindsight as he shook his head violently a second time. It was annoying that he could even miscalculate such odds. He narrowed his eyes and clenched his jaw for a brief moment. His fingers ran through the length of his blue-violet-tipped black hair.

His lips twitched, his mouth tugged downwards, his eyes sharpened. Yugi took a deep breath as he considered the dark eyes that look at him from the couch adjacent him. He swallowed hard, biting his lip, and then ran his hand through his hair again.

"I was just messing around." Yugi paused, his voice coming out haltingly as he considered his words a second time. "I thought it might be fun…to get you back…for pretending that you didn't know how to use the bathroom."

The taller boy blinked at him for a long moment, then narrowed his eyes. His expression was nothing short of suspicious as he considered the statement. His lips tugged into a brief growl before falling away again. Then his brow rose slowly, as if a clear defiance of his words. It took a long moment for him to truly digest his choice of statement. And then, very abruptly, his lips pulled back.

They tugged into the widest of smirks, as if he were the cat who had caught the canary. The very concept was not unlike something that he thought the wolf capable of. He could catch squirrels when they were in tree branches high over their heads. Having the grace of a feline to spring on a bird, in flight or otherwise, was something that seemed natural to him. It seemed like the easiest, most natural thing that the other boy might ever possess.

"You suck," he announced, flustered as his cheeks heated faintly once more. "You had me worried."

The wolf wrinkled his nose at him, then looked at him more fully. For a moment he studied him, seemed to consider if Yugi was truly upset with him or not, and then smirked a little wider. The smaller teen rolled his eyes, unable to do more than grace him with his own lopsided grin of amusement.

* * *

Yugi was watching him curiously as they sat at the able and considered what flavor drink he might make for the other teen. The wolf was contemplating the choice of chocolate banana or strawberry vanilla. Both flavors had made him turn his nose up. But the other boy seemed to be a bit more adventurous than him with his sense of taste. He had sniffed both jars—which Yugi had chosen from the supermarket those hours before in a rush to get home—and even briefly scooped some out with a nail on either hand to sample them. Now he was sitting across from him, studying the two, and seemed curious as to what they might taste like with liquid added to their powdery form.

Yugi blinked, somewhat dismayed that he had unconsciously grabbed the two flavors by accident as he had. The conversation with Valon had rattled him so violently that he had not even briefly considered the flavors he had snatched from the shelf. It was no wonder the cashier had given him such an awkward look while she had bagged his groceries. He had grabbed what had to be two of the most ridiculous flavor combinations available. He rolled his eyes after a moment, discomforted by the very sight of the two labels.

He imagined they were disgusting. But the wolf seemed to think otherwise.

The lycanthrope looked up at him from beneath his lashes. Then, lazily, he gestured to the chocolate. Yugi paused for a moment, studying his leisurely movement. It seemed strange that he was watching him gesture rather than speak. Even after a full week of being around him, he was still somehow unused to it. The wolf was so intelligent, had admitted that he could speak, and yet his lips were tight and his voice mute.

Yugi paused, blinking stupidly, and froze from where he had been reaching for the container in front of him. What if it was not the truth that he had told him formerly? What if he had been, by some strange occurrence, born an absolute mute? He knew it was possible for the occasional person to be born with nonfunctional vocal cords. It was the fact that he was a werewolf that might have such an affliction that made him stop short. Was it possible? Could werewolves be born without vocal cords?

Wouldn't the Change, when it destroyed and repaired, have pulled such a thing from existence? Wouldn't it have given someone a voice when they least expected it? Whether or not they would be capable of using it was another idea altogether…

But wasn't that the course of what should have happened? He could not truly grasp such a concept of silence when one's body was constantly pushed and tugged and stretched into completely new forms. The vocal cords would be mended and stressed just as violently as the bones in the body, wouldn't they?

But the wolf in front of him was still so silent. If he _truly_ did it by his own will, Yugi would not have thought twice about it. But it came to him that he could not fully understand the infliction of vocal damage otherwise. What kind of damage could have possibly rendered him completely voiceless? With healing capabilities like their disease lent them, how was it possible that one could never find their voice again?

He shuddered to think of what would be able to cause such an issue. Unless the wolf was very violently, very purposefully, attacked and the aim of it was to destroy his vocal cords, then it made no sense. But then, why would they truly have to aim for that? If they had attacked and nearly killed him, if he'd been hit hard enough in the throat, was it possible that the wound would simply have failed to heal properly? It seemed easy enough that the wolf would still have healed.

Yugi blinked and then looked at the wolf for a long minute. His fingers were hovering above the chocolate mix. But his hands were shaking now. There was a keen confusion glittering within the other's eyes, making it clear that he did not understand his reaction. So the small teen blinked, swallowing hard, and narrowed his eyes faintly. It was terrifying, he realized, to consider that perhaps a wound could permanently scar.

The vocal cords were said to be delicate—or so he remembered reading one time—so perhaps they could not be healed. Maybe their frailty had rendered them completely unsuitable for healing when Changes happened or a terrible wound was inflicted.

Because, he remembered, the wolf had said that he could talk. But he didn't. And he was not a mute, he realized, because he could snarl. If one could snarl, no matter the volume, then muteness was not a possibility. So the wolf was not mute. And he seemed able to communicate perfectly well. But still, was it possible? Could he have been attacked, his vocal cords somehow violently ripped or damaged, and then healed again to his dissatisfaction? Maybe his voice had been so terribly altered that he could not bear to hear it anymore—

Yugi was on his feet and in the bathroom within seconds. In his mind's eyes, a throat was shown bare. Fur was lying in a patch of hideous red. Blood leaked and pulsed as spasms overtook it. The claws flexed violently. A noise bubbled out with every breath.

He puked so violently that his head spun. He squeezed his eyes shut. His throat ached hideously. A pounding started in his right temple. The porcelain was harsh in his tightened grip. His body trembled. His mouth opened and closed, bile flooding out. His shoulders were wracked with pain. His lungs burned. His heart jumped into his throat. His knees hurt where they touched the linoleum.

He could have screamed for all the help his puking seemed to do him. His body ached as his shoulders bunched and jerked up and down. His breathing was labored, his throat clenching as he took a moment to attempt to steady himself briefly. He had just laid his cheek against the seat of the toilet when he heard something over his pounding heart.

It was a weak, croaking exhale, but it came to him with all the power of a car collision.

"Y…u…gi…"

Yugi jerked his head, startled, and gaped over his shoulder. The wolf was poking his head around the corner. His eyes were wide, worried, his expression concerned. He looked as if he might be sick. He seemed almost as if he might flee and hide away. His voice had been so hoarse and terrible to his own ears that it had caused him to cringe. He wanted nothing more than to hide, to press himself back and dissolve into the carpet. And Yugi's response, his jaw opened wide, his eyes owlish, and his face pale as if the blood had drained away, did nothing to make him feel any better.

They looked at each other, until the other could not take it any longer. He spun on his heel, breathing raggedly, and headed off to find a place in which to shield himself in the living room again. He could not stand to have Yugi return and look at him with that same horrified expression on his face.

He would sooner die.

* * *

Yugi was well aware that he had messed up. He was not entirely sure what it was that made the wolf hide away from him as he was, but he did not bother to try to coax him out either. He had come out of the bathroom hours before, looking around, calling for him, trying his hardest to make him think it was okay, but he had failed to so much as breathe out loud enough for Yugi to hear. He had not left, however, and the smaller boy knew this only because the doors were still shut and he had not heard him. He had, by all means, come into the living room. Where he was hiding, however, was an entirely different story.

The small teen shuddered, feeling sick to his stomach. As he sat at the table and looked over a study guide, glancing every few seconds into the other room, he wondered if he had fallen asleep. He had taken his medication, drank a protein shake before then, and could very easily have fallen fast asleep somewhere.

Yugi had not been able to track any sounds or movement, however, but he did not think it impossible. Perhaps he had conditioned himself somehow to near silence when he thought it necessary. It had to be useful when he slept in the woods. There was likely no better survival technique in all actuality.

He flipped his pencil several times in his fingers, closing his eyes tightly, and craned his head back. It was already late. He had been, as usual, attempting to stay awake longer than the other boy. But this time it seemed almost impossible. He was exhausted, whether from his studying since the other had disappeared or his guilt he had no clue, and his first thought was to lie in his bed and curl up. But his second was to wait, to see if the other would come out, to apologize and make sure that he fell asleep in his room.

His personal exhaustion won in the end. A six-hour long struggle faded into nonexistence as he made his way into this room. He dropped his notebook on his dresser, then threw back the covers. Sleeping in his jeans and a t-shoulder would not do him any harm. He yawned, stretching, and glanced over his shoulder, only to be disappointed when the other failed to appear in the doorway. There was not a single movement, nor the slightest noise to stir the air. Yugi frowned deeply as he took his spot on the bed and drew the blankets over his shoulders to his neck. The room was a little colder than usual. He could almost predict the first day of snowfall to come. It would be a little earlier than usual.

Although, at times, rather than November, snow would come in rapid falls the final weak of October or even as early as the twelfth. Domino City was nestled in the area just beneath the mountains and the mountains got snow aplenty. The city would be covered in ice for weeks, with people walking to work or the occasional brave driver attempting to make their car move along the roads. But many times people would huddle up in their homes, a state of emergency called to all but close each business as was seen necessary.

He paused. Was that a noise? His heart began to pound in excitement.

A small, gentle gust of a breath came from behind him. He twisted around immediately. The wolf halted. At the edge of his bed, he stood with the blanket around his shoulders. He looked extremely uncertain at the moment. His eyes were flickering back and forth between him and the foot of the mattress. He looked as if he might flee and hide away again if he so much as made a sudden movement. Yugi licked his lips.

"Come on up here."

He patted the spot next to him. The wolf gave him a disgruntled look.

"You can come up here. Feel free to. I wasn't upset with you earlier. I—I'm sorry for scaring you," Yugi muttered, swallowing hard and then patting the spot again. His red eyes had grown wide and further unhappy. The uncertainty was pronounced more prominently when he shifted his weight uncomfortably. He gave him a weak smile, pleading. "I promise I'm not upset. I didn't—I was just surprised. I wasn't expecting you to speak."

He cringed so visibly that Yugi sat up in surprise. The movement made him jump, snarling in distressed warning. He held his hands up immediately, startled by his ferocity. For a moment neither of them moved. Then, very slowly, the smaller teen patted the sheets once more.

"Please, come on. I don't want you to sleep on the floor. And you don't need to sleep down there. You can sleep with me up here."

The wolf watched him for a long minute. His eyes flickered back and forth. He even turned his head all the way to look over his shoulder. His expression twisted, gaze lingering on the doorway. He looked as if he might be sick at any moment. Very slowly he turned his head to look back at Yugi.

He did not appear threatening in any way. He did not seem uncomfortable with him now. He seemed, if anything, desperate for him to take the spot next to him. He looked as if he wanted nothing more than to have him lie beside him. He hesitated, then looked at the floor of the bed. It was not always the most comfortable spot to lay, nor was the position in which he used to take that space, but it seemed safer. He did not entirely wish to be so close to Yugi. After having woken in that position earlier and then having the _audacity_ to so abruptly force his lungs into vocalization, he could not be sure of himself.

What if it happened again?

What if he had the desire to speak again?

The thought terrified him. As his head snapped back towards the doorway, he felt sick to his stomach. He did not think that he would ever wish to talk again. But he had already broken his vow hours before. It was a damaging and horrifying concept to him. And it made his head spin so harshly that his balance seemed to spiral beneath him.

By Lupa, what if he did not decide to speak again?

His head turned back to face Yugi. The smaller boy was still watching him. And his fingers were patting the spot to his left side. He seemed childishly small in that moment, like a toddler asking for a gift they were highly uncertain they would ever get. The red-eyed lycanthrope watched him for as long as he could before his eyes began to burn with the need to blink. Then he let out a deep breath.

He would not speak again.

But he _could_ sleep beside him again for the night, couldn't he?

He had done so and not spoken. It had been Yugi's sudden illness and the way that he had fled that had even caused him to fathom such an idea. He had not attempted it before then. He could sleep beside him and not feel the need to when he awoke. And if he did feel he had to—by some unfathomable means—he remembered the notepad and the pencil. If, for some unspeakable reason, he thought it necessary to speak again, he could use that.

He very slowly, deliberately, made his way to the either side of the bed. The excitement and relief which bloomed in Yugi's eyes made him bristle but he ignored the impulse to snarl. Rather, reluctantly, he pressed his knee into the mattress. Then he leaned forward. He pressed his palms into the mattress. Very slowly, he pushed his entire body's weight against it. Then he shuffled forward.

Yugi thought to tell him to relax, but then fell immediately silent. He smothered the impulse and shook his head at him. The other boy did not pause, instead very abruptly throwing himself on his side. His eyes were wide open for several long minutes. Then, lazily, with a flash of burning defiance that nearly made his mouth fall open again, the boy rolled over with his back to him. The sound that left his mouth was a hideous huff, almost akin a growl or a barking noise, a boom of air that made him snicker softly.

Yugi smiled faintly, amused, and then rolled to face the opposite wall. He would not make him any more uncomfortable than necessary. Facing the other wall seemed the least he could do for him.

 **Let me know if any of the pronouns were confusing. I tried to put Yugi's name wherever I could to minimize confusion but it might have slipped past me as the author. But Yami DOES begin to allow Yugi to call him by name in the next chapter.**

 **And that having been SAID! The beginning of Part II (chapter seventeen) will be posted on the sixteenth. I'm going to take the time between then and now to keep trying to get ahead with typing up the chapters AND to get some edits done for a couple of other stories.**


	17. Names

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day (no update on June 2nd)**

 **Chapter Warnings: Improper Use of Medication, Blood, Werewolf Hunting/Ambush**

 **Okay, guys, so the names in the story have a VERY important meaning. They actually foreshadow QUITE a few things, just not as directly as you might think. Although, if you want to take a couple of guesses at what exactly each of them might lead to, I'm open to any theories~ I'd love to hear them. And, yes, each of these names are directly translated in the text via Yugi or Yami's mono or dialogues.**

 **Now, as for Yami's name, if you pay VERY close attention as the story goes along, you'll understand WHY he chose this name. Because it's NOT simply his fur color like Yugi thinks it is. It's a red heron of a kind of thing, but I'm telling you because it's not as simple as that and Yugi doesn't understand that until much later when it becomes more constant how Yami uses his own name.**

 **I should honestly be able to say with confidence that I'll be on top of the next chunk of chapters. If I'm not, it's because something came up and it was unavoidable and I had to put the update aside to deal with it. Let's hope nothing comes up.**

Part II

Chapter XVII: Names

 _Work Log Entry XVII: December, 1996_

 _December 18_

 _The status of PB-A 26 remains unchanged and the boss is growing impatient._

 _December 19_

 _He has managed to survive and has once again grown stable._

 _He cannot move around as much as others his age might, but he does manage to stretch his limbs and walk every now and then._

 _We have still not been permitted to call PB-A 26 by his project name as of yet._

"So, we need to figure out a name for you," Yugi announced as he took a seat in front of him and put his elbow on the table, chin in his hand. He was still tired, Yugi could tell, as his red eyes were partially hooded and he looked sleep-deprived. Yugi supposed after his reaction to the wolf's voice the day before, the other teen had not been nearly as relaxed upon lying beside him.

He had woken tense as well, growling when he had moved a little too much. The wolf had sprung onto his hands and knees, eyes flashing like lit embers, teeth bared and shoulders raised. He had looked, for a moment, ready to bite into his throat. But then the moment had passed. Abruptly a small sense of clarity had cleared his eyes enough to make him blink and tilt his head in mystification towards his own reaction.

Now the wolf sat across from him with an expression that seemed mostly like apparent boredom as far as Yugi was concerned.

"How about…um…Kono?" Yugi asked, raising a brow and watching him with something of a distracted smile. The smaller boy waggled his brows after a moment but the look of bewilderment did not leave the other's face. Rather, his elegant-looking brow slowly rose and his lips pulled into a grimace that was blocked partially by his long fingers. "No? You don't want to be known for your dexterity and skill as a fighter?"

The wolf shook his head immediately. Lazily, he looked at the small list Yugi had compiled, but he was unable to read it upside down. And the other teen made it visibly clear that he would not allow him to simply read them himself in the way that he snatched it up and looked it over with pursed lips.

"Michiya?"

 _Pathway_? The wolf wrinkled his nose, then snorted loudly. Yugi blinked at him, peering from beneath his long lashes, and grinned at him widely.

"No to that too then. How about…Daichi?"

The lycanthrope doubted very much that any part of him constituted as wise. He shook his head again.

"Ronin?"

The name intrigued him for all of a second. Then it occurred to his scrambling brain what meaning it possessed and he frowned at Yugi fully, removing his hand to lay his arms on the table in a pseudo-folded position. He shook his head. He was without a master, but he was far from any kind of samurai.

"Ryo?"

He cringed at the very name, growling softly as he shook his head sharply.

"So, no excellence for you," he snorted, shaking his head slightly and looking down at the sheet again. "Satoshi?"

The wolf shook his head again. He was clear-minded, yes, but that was hardly a name that suited him.

"Shome?"

He frowned more visibly. What truth was there to reach for?

"My gods, you're a difficult one. Hmm…how about…Takeo?"

He grimaced.

"Apparently someone doesn't want anything to do with being a warrior." Yugi pursed his lips, drumming his fingers. "At this rate, I don't think you'll like any of these names. So, how about…you just pick something and we'll go from there? Do you know anything that you could maybe write down or something and then we can go with that?"

The red-eyed lycanthrope stared at him for a long time. His head tilted to the side, his mouth pulled into a slight line. He furrowed his brows the smallest bit. He looked at him almost as if he could not entirely consider the aspect of speaking again. Then, very slowly, he settled back into his chair.

Yugi frowned slightly, pushing the paper and pencil towards him. The wolf watched him, eyes lowered to the table, and his gaze seemed to make his fingers burn. Yugi snatched his hand away almost immediately, and the other boy merely stared at the two utensils he had meant to give him. For what felt like hours he remained as he was. Then, very slowly, with a tremor that shook his face, the wolf made a sound.

It was rough, gravelly, and at first incomprehensible. It came in rough crests of sound for the briefest of moments. Then it slowly leveled itself out.

"Ya…mi."

He startled visibly but the other did not bother to raise his eyes from the table. He traced a pattern along the surface of the tablecloth, nail sharp enough to make the ends fray where he dug it in momentarily. That hideous noise came from his throat again, then leveled as it had before. But it was so guttural that it made his insides quiver.

"Ya-mi. Yami."

He paused, shoulders rising briefly, as if he needed to prepare himself completely. His eyes narrowed into slits, his lips curled back briefly, and his voice came in another hideous gurgle of noise. Then, as if some strange harmony had swept to the edges of the word, it curled upwards and floated on a mesmerizing note that sounded almost baritone in pitch.

"Yami."

Yugi blinked wide eyes, startled by the very idea that he would speak. But he was so excited as well that the delight was hard to quell. He trembled briefly with the exuberance that flooded in his veins, then nodded as his mouth curled into the widest of smiles.

"Yeah, okay! Yami works!"

Yugi's own excitement was not shared by the other wolf. His eyes narrowed as he glanced at him from beneath his lashes. He did not make another noise, simply turned away. His nails drummed on the surface of the table once more. He looked exhausted from the very effort he had put in to make himself use his voice. Yugi wanted for a moment to thank him for doing it, then for the fact that he had not stretched the entire event out longer than necessary. But his voice died in his throat. And his happiness began to dissipate rather rapidly.

The wolf seemed miserable as he slumped his shoulders and stared at the tablecloth as if it might hold answers for him. He appeared almost as if he might want to do nothing more than lay down somewhere and curl up into a ball. He seemed almost to have died before his eyes for a brief moment. But then he let out a loud sigh, turned his head, and began picking at his nails as if he had never thought to speak in the first place.

The moment did not go unnoticed but the smaller boy had enough grace and manners to leave it as it was. "Okay, Yami," Yugi murmured, trying the name out. The wolf did not respond for a few seconds, then blinked and looked at him as if he had already forgotten. Yugi burst out laughing at the puzzled look and then shook his head. "That's going to take us both a little while to get used to, huh?"

The other boy shrugged slightly, but turned his attention back to his nails. His eyes seemed unusually dark for a moment as he looked at the long beds of keratin and eventually snapped his head around to look at the smaller teen again. The expression on his face was clearly displeased with Yugi's attention, as if he thought it better to snarl at him than to let him continue watching him.

Yugi held his hands up, slightly surprised by the aggression that made his eyes look like pools of spilled blood. He shook his head, grumbling, "I was just going to ask if you wanted anything else to eat."

The wolf watched him for a long moment. His expression was almost murderous, but it faded with a blink, and he slowly shook his head in response to Yugi's statement. He turned back around, picking at a nail, and then got to his feet. He pointed past him at the living room—which Yugi was thinking of dubbing _his_ room at this rate—and moved towards the couch.

"Okay, well, you know how to use the remote. I'm going to go grab something from the market. I'll be back in a little while."

Yami was still seated on the couch cushions when an intense and furious wave of restlessness began to eat at his insides with such power as to make him sway. His balance twisted and flipped on its side for a moment, dancing like a leaf within the grasp of a heavy wind. His temples began to pound, with such pain as to make his legs feel weak for a moment. He sat up more fully, reaching up to press his fingers into his temples to help ease his pain.

It was almost amazing to him that now would be the time that his body lashed out at him. Pancakes and protein shakes were great for a human, but not for a wolf. His temples throbbed and pushed back on his fingers harshly. He kept his eyes squeezed shut to make the dizziness leave him somewhat. He would have to hunt for food, make his body begin to balance itself out again. Otherwise, he worried that his body might trigger the Change somehow against his will.

He ground his teeth together, then got to his feet. He knew that Yugi kept something for pain in the bathroom cabinet behind the mirror. He had seen him pull the bottle out more than once. Though he had not taken any, he remembered reading the label in the split second that it was exposed to him.

He weakly shuffled his way to the bathroom, ignoring the way his own footsteps sounded incredibly loud within his ears. The pulsing began to grow worse, the very embodiment of a physical warning. He opened his eyes only when he realized that the door was shut.

The doorknob was incredibly cold, like a physical form of winter air. His skin tingled, tickled by the touch. The metal grew warmer almost instantly as he twisted his wrist. His long fingers tapped the wood. It grated painfully in his ears. He growled softly, the low rumble soothing some of the ache in his head. The carpet gave way to the tiled flooring almost immediately and he nearly groaned with approval. It was so cold against his feet and he was so strangely feverish at the moment.

His body was trying to force some of the more unnatural parts of his meal out. He needed to go hunting sooner rather than later. He nodded slightly to himself, hand snatching open the cabinet. It nearly collided with the wall before he caught it by the tips of his fingers. He shook his head again, the pain beginning to leave him with his slower movements. He looked the bottles over rapidly, mind sorting through them swiftly and without hesitation. He snatched the white bottle furthest to the right, looking it over for a moment.

Then he unscrewed the cap and threw the aspirin tablets into his mouth. He thought to crack them between his teeth for a split second. But instead, nearly gagging with his involuntary reflex to cough them up, forced himself to swallow them down. It was so much harder to do such a thing as a human. As a wolf, chewing was something that was almost nonexistent. With humans, they could puke up anything that wasn't completely pulverized between their molars.

He looked the label over, wondering if two more would do anything to him, then placed the cap on and twisted it shut. There was no reason for him to speculate or worry. Besides the fact that his body would probably simply sweat the pills out if he overdosed, taking only the necessary parts to help alleviate pain, he did not have to wonder about it. It was hard enough swallowing the pills with a cup of water. And even then it was almost impossible for him.

By Lupa, everything seemed so much simpler as a canine than as a human. He rolled his eyes upwards and then groaned, covering them with his fingers. The lights were seared into his corneas as he hissed in pain. He could have cursed himself for his own stupidity. He should have known better. Everything would continue to hurt, then fade, then come back as soon as the medication had been metabolized.

Yami shook his head again, then crept along to the kitchen once more, and made his way into the living room again. He curled up, a blanket tossed over his head, and waited for the medication to truly begin to set in as he kept his eyes shut. He was so far gone in hoping that the medication might become useful that he failed to hear it when the other came around.

Yugi was humming when he put the food on the table ten minutes later, though he had changed his shopping plans at the last second. Rather than frozen food, he had found himself grabbing salmon, a couple of chicken breasts and some vegetables. It had been a drastic redirection from his initial idea of grabbing junk food instead for their dinner. But his gut had churned with hunger and the first thing that had come to mind was the vending machine pastries, then a pink-fleshed fish with glistening gray and silver scales. It was a good thing that his mother had always required his help for cooking salmon on those occasions she had decided to make it. It also helped that his grandfather was not a slacker in teaching him how to prepare various meals whenever she was away and he wanted to cook.

Between the two of them he knew how to make a few restaurant course meals and he was sure the other boy would not turn his nose up at it. He continued humming as he put the chicken and vegetables away. He was in the mood more for salmon than anything else, even though it was really only lunch time. Lazily, he made his way towards the stove to turn on the burner, pausing for a brief moment. His head turned, eyes widening in confusion and then called out, "Yami?"

When there was no response after the third time, he figured it was because the wolf was still not used to his name, despite choosing it himself. He blinked, frowning, and moved the handle away to make sure he would not send the skillet flying with his movement towards the living room.

Yami?" he muttered, raising a brow and frowning in confusion as he made his way to the couch. Yami was inhaling too shortly and sharply to be asleep. And he was obviously still there because Yugi was staring at him. So what exactly was wrong with him?

"Are you okay?" he asked, reaching out.

The blanket was tossed back. Teeth chomped shut a mere millimeter from Yugi'ss fingers. Wild red eyes peered at him. A snarl made the air static. Yugi could not help the startled, horrified yelp that left him. He was frozen in place, however. Transfixed, he could only breathe raggedly and stare blankly. The wolf blinked up at him, snarling a little lower in his throat. Then he blinked again and his eyes narrowed into slits. Awkwardly, fumbling, the wolf moved to sit back. His shoulders fell. His mouth relaxed. His snarls ceased. His head tilted to the side.

The smaller boy struggled to breathe properly. His body was wracked with tremors. His heart lurched and pounded. His mouth seemed to dry out. He choked on his breath. His pulse made his throat constrict. For a moment, he remained completely frozen.

Then Yugi felt his panic leave him. It was like a wave receding from the shore. His blood heated with frustration. He scowled at Yami, brows pulling downward, eyes flashing faintly. He glared at him, voice coming out irritable but not too sharp.

"Crap, don't do that again," he snapped firmly, reaching a hand up to run through his bangs in his shaken frustration. He rolled his eyes, shaking his head. "You don't need to do that. I wasn't going to hurt you."

Yami frowned at him visibly, then looked down at the table in front of him. His shoulders slumped faintly and he looked visibly ashamed of himself and his reaction. He shook his head slightly to look at Yugi from beneath his lashes. His eyes were wide, full of apology, and the shade of them was a deep and striking maroon color that made his insides twist minutely. Yugi's breath escaped his lungs for a brief moment but he shook his surprise aside and swallowed thickly.

"Let's just…you know, make a deal or something not to let that happen again, okay?" he announced, feeling almost uncomfortable for even suggesting it. He did not think the wolf had meant to react so harshly. And he doubted that Yami had any control of such a reaction if he was scared.

He felt stupid for even speaking now, but he could not shake the idea that the other was just as ashamed he was. If he pretended that they could control it, then didn't that do something for them both? Wasn't it comforting for them both if they assumed that they had some kind of say in their reactions to each other? But the lycanthrope was not responding to him beyond watching him with that same crestfallen expression that made his entire body seem so much smaller.

"Understand, Yami?"

The wolf blinked in surprise at his words, as if he had not expected him to simply leave it at that. But something in his eyes seemed almost hesitant, and for the briefest of seconds Yugi thought maybe he looked as if he might lash out at him. He guessed that made sense, considering it was his home—his _territory_ —and the only other interloper in it had nearly attacked him. As a werewolf Yugi guessed he could understand Yami being fearful that he might take some kind of action against him.

Very slowly his houseguest lowered his head and nodded again. There was something small, lingering, in his eyes, that Yugi could not name and feared for a moment to even attempt to fathom. He was almost terrified to consider it as more than some kind of passing shadow that made his gaze a little darker than usual. He swallowed hard, feeling sick for the briefest of moments, and then looked away from him immediately.

"So, I was thinking that—even though it's early—since I'm _starving_ , it might be fun to make salmon."

Yami's head snapped up, eyes widening in surprise, and then his entire face lit up with something akin absolute relief. His gaze was alight with exuberance, his lips pulled into one of the most beautiful wide smiles he had ever seen. He looked as if, quite abruptly, his entire life had become great and luminous.

"Well, it's good to know that you like salmon."  
Yami nodded eagerly and licked his lips.

Yugi could not help but smile in response to the happiness that made Yami's face so bright. And a thought came to him from somewhere in the back of his mind. He tilted his head, expression falling only slightly, and looked him over for a moment.

Why had he chosen Yami as his name? Yami meant "darkness" in Japanese. And the other boy had made it obvious that he knew the language. So why was it that he had chosen a name that seemed so opposite of him at this moment?

Was it his fur color? He supposed it could have been. He could have very simply named himself because he knew that his coat was dark. If he had been going for physical appearance rather than personality, then it made even more sense as to why he had rejected those other suggestions. He could have been any of those names he had suggested before, but not even once had he shown even the smallest hint of satisfaction towards them.

"Okay, so I'm going to start on lunch and then I guess you can choose what we have for dinner tonight, okay?"

Yugi glanced over at the couch for a moment, almost surprised to find that Yami was sitting up rather than lying down. Instead of falling asleep as he normally would, the red-eyed lycanthrope had slowed his progression of eating as well as the amount of food, and his naps were longer in coming. For the last three hours he had watched him as he blinked and studied the screen, turning only once or twice to glance at him before focusing once more on the television. The actions had been lazy rather than lethargic as they had been before. He did not care enough to make a show of being awake, however. Rather, he would let Yugi figure it out and then silently glance at him as if to say he was kind of surprised too.

"Do you want to take another look at your wrists?" he asked quietly, raising a brow and tilting his head. The other boy paused, blinking widened red eyes, and his lips quirked faintly at the corner in confusion. The smaller teen opened his mouth to speak again, but Yami reached over to grab the pen and pad on the table, jotting something down before handing it over to him.

 _I do not think it is necessary_.

Yugi tilted his head. Yami was oddly formal whenever he wrote down an answer. It was almost as if he were revering to him, or placing himself at a lower rank somewhere beneath him. He supposed maybe it was for the best in his mind, seeing as the wolf pack dynamic did seem to oddly rule this lycanthrope's behavior at times. But it still unnerved him a little.

"Okay."

Was it him or did the wolf look extremely relieved that he had said that? It looked almost as if the tension had drifted through his muscles and dissipated altogether with that single word. It seemed almost unnatural that that might be the truth of the situation, as Yugi remembered just how hard it had been just to reach this point with the wolf as it was. The fact that Yami had woken up ready to bite him was enough of a reminder of that as well. He was relaxed now, but he was not always, and sometimes he could not retain that posture for long.

At times Yami would give him little glances, pleading with him to give him just the smallest inkling of reassurance that he was fine to do so. Other times he would react harshly to something or other and then look at him with a keen expression asking for explanation or just to gauge his reaction. That always seemed enough to make Yami relax when Yugi was not alarmed himself.

His own calm state always seemed to make him comfortable enough to withdraw his fear or confusion. It was just enough to make Yami settle back, though slightly uncomfortable, and rest against the cushions until his body was all but slack with relaxation. Yugi smiled faintly when he looked at the boy now as he tilted his head in consideration. Yami was not completely paying attention to him, but he knew those red eyes were still somehow focused on him in his peripheral. "Are you sure?"

The werewolf blinked, then looked over and nodded at him. His red eyes were curious, glinting with something like confusion at his inquiry, and he saw the smallest flicker of suspicion based there as well. Very slowly he began to write on the pad, watching him from beneath his lashes, and then passed it back over to him.

 _Why do you ask_?

Yugi felt his cheeks heat faintly and his lips pulled slightly into a frown. "I just…I worry sometimes," he murmured, ducking his head slightly to hide the small hint of a blush that dusted his cheeks. "I mean, it's not like you will _tell_ me if you're in pain or something."

The wolf stared at him, then reached forward and took the pad again, the sound of the cardboard scraping against the table making Yugi's ears ache for a brief moment. He blinked, frowning, and then began to scribble once more.

There was no elegance in his response, as if he had failed to care after the second time he had written, and his red eyes were narrowed faintly with displeasure. He handed it over to Yugi again, holding the pen in his fingers and then hesitantly lowering it to the table's surface awkwardly.

He had no idea what he was meant to do with it each time he finished writing. It seemed a burden to put it on the table only to have to lift it again should Yugi decide to truly question him or draw him into a long discussion of some sort. But it felt uncomfortable in between his fingers.

"You cheeky bastard," Yugi teased, looking at him and raising a brow. "How do you know that you'll actually start bleeding again just because you're hurt?"

Yami didn't. But he figured it was better than saying that he did not plan to ever truly expose to Yugi that he was hurting. Pain was a weakness amongst wolves, and it was met by opportunistic hunters who would kill mercilessly. When werewolves brandished their fangs against each other, it was usually a very definite struggle to the death. Usually the only time was during border skirmishes and those were almost always extremely deadly.

So to say that he would bother with actually putting into words—written or otherwise—his pain was a thing that would never come to pass. He would not bother to speak a single word of protest or discomfort. Not around another wolf. Preferably he would not do it around any creature— _ever_.

So he simply shook his head, shrugging. It was well-practiced and so smooth that Yugi actually chuckled in amusement. He tilted his head, watching him, and raised his brow further in laughter.

"You're a dork."

Yami tilted his head, curious at such a statement, but smiled nonetheless at the teasing apparent in his tone and manner. Should it have been an insult, he knew that such laughter would not have been painted upon his features. And the air would have been tense, angry. His own senses would have flickered with ferocity, his body tensing with growing strength. So he remained relaxed, smiling at him easily, and simply watched him.

It only occurred to Yugi when he saw that small light in his eyes and the way his smile was not at its fullest—or at least the brightest he had ever gained from him; he was sure he could grin much better than he normally did—that Yami did not understand. It was in the crinkle around the edge of his drawn lips, to the right, where it seemed to falter. It was in the smallest hint of brighter red near his pupils, flickering where the rest was darker from the lingering touches of black. And the tilt of his head was small, but it was noticeable, especially when he was paying Yugi such rapt attention.

"It's just another way of saying that you're silly," Yugi said after a moment, fighting away the hint of hesitation that crept through him. He knew well enough the other ways the word was used but telling him what he meant it to be was more important than mentioning the others, right?

Yami blinked, then nodded at him, smiling a little wider, more easily. He reached for the pad, began to write a symbol across it that was just as sloppy as the third, and then handed it back.

"So, I'm a dork, too, huh, Yami?" he snorted, smiling and rolling his eyes. "I guess that works out well enough. Two dorks instead of just one, right?"

It was amusing when the other shrugged leisurely and turned to the television again, but there was still a small edge of disappointment that crept over Yugi. In his growing excitement of holding conversation with him, he had hoped against himself that Yami might speak again.

It had been startling to hear him do so two days in a row, and his silence seemed to cut through him faintly. It was somehow smothering to know that he would not open his mouth again, though he could should he have thought to. The fact that Yami did not truly consider it was something that made him feel slightly disheartened.

But he supposed his own reactions of looking as if he were a mystical creature granting him wishes probably did nothing to make Yami desire to do so again. He knew he had to have looked at him with all of the awe he had felt in his gut before when he had first spoken because that had not changed in the least. It hit him with the same punch both times, curling his stomach in knots and leaving him excited for a continuation of conversations.

But Yami did not speak. He did not open his mouth. He merely shrugged or nodded or wrote an answer. And he would look at him, considering, watching, studying him, before he would do any of them. He would not give his voice, as it was something that the wolf seemed clearly uncomfortable with sharing.

So he would nudge but he would not push.

And Yami would give him a little indulging smile before he would answer a question, but his voice would still remain his little secret.

* * *

"Yami, can I talk to you about something?" Yugi asked slowly, swallowing hard and taking the seat in front of the other with a small frown of discomfort. The other boy paused from picking at his nails, the tension in his shoulders growing as his head turned and his eyes widened in confusion. Yami looked as if he thought Yugi might spring over the table and demand answers from him. And his expression was one of extreme caution but such avid confusion that it made his heart rattle in his chest for a moment.

"It's nothing bad…"

His voice was meant to be reassuring but it sounded small, more like a question. It sounded more shaken than anything else. The tone made the wolf pause, blinking, and his red eyes grew wider. The tension grew a little more pronounced as he sat up straighter and turned to face him completely. Yami looked exhausted, however, watching him, and Yugi frowned as they stared at each other.

"I promise," he tried again.

Yami frowned at him more noticeably and then nodded slowly, hesitating before very cautiously leaning forward to put his arms on the table and look at him more clearly. It was obvious that Yami seemed ready to flee, to leap to his feet and make a run for it at any moment. Yet he held himself there, unnerved but not so much as to be unable to remain.

Yugi drew in a deep breath, then frowned a little as he settled a bit more into his seat. His teeth tugged at his bottom lip for a moment and closed his eyes. "I wanted to ask you something about being a werewolf."

The wolf froze. Yugi felt it in the air. There was rigidity that cloaked the room. It pressed on him like a weight. His eyes snapped open. Yami was completely tense. His eyes were flashing. There was a whirlwind crossing his gaze. Bursts of red in different shades painted his irises. His fingers clenched at the cloth beneath. His nails tore at the threads. His knuckles had grown white. His chest failed to expand with a breath. He stared at him, blank in expression. It was if the simple request had broken him somehow. He was a statue, immobilized. He seemed almost as if he had been paralyzed.

Yugi hated it.

But he hated it more that it was he who had caused it.

He opened and closed his mouth twice, then looked away quickly, horrified by the effort of his words. "I…You don't have to answer. I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable," he muttered, a pleading tone creeping into his words. "I would never make you…Yami, I…Never mind. I'll ask…if I can find…Valon…I'll ask Valon…"

Yami remained frozen. His eyes bore into his almost blindly. Then his fingers twitched. His nails clicked against the table. The muscles in his jaw jumped. His eyelids jerked and then blinked. He frowned a little. Very slowly he got to his feet. Yugi watched him, taking in the slightly shaky look of his stance. And then the wolf turned and headed into the living room. Yugi watched him, then turned away. His heart was in his throat.

What had made Yami so upset? What had made him react so badly? He had thought that since they were both infected, he could ask him. He had considered it a terrain that wasn't out of boundaries for them. He reached a hand up to pull at his hair, unnerved. His bangs tugged and for a moment he could not understand why they seemed to jerk. But then he saw his arm was shaking. His entire body was wracked with a small tremor.

He jumped a foot in the air. Something had dropped in front of him. His head snapped around. His entire body shook a little harder.

Yami was standing beside him. His wrist was tilted. His fingers were outstretched. There was a tension in his bones that made him appear colder than usual. He looked unnerved and suspicious. His eyes were narrowed. His jaw ticked again. But he did not look aggressive. It was the angle of which he tilted his head to take Yugi in that made him appear so. But the moment passed.

The taller boy slowly, with hesitant movements, blinked, and then made his way to the other side of the table. He sat down, frowning at him, blinking red eyes that looked distinctly confused, utterly concerned. His shoulders rose slightly the more he stared at him. Very slowly the taller boy frowned, tilting his head, and gestured. His finger pointed and his nail clicked against the table once more a moment later when it fell to the cloth. He looked away after a moment, pulling his arms towards himself almost immediately.

Yugi blinked, then lowered his eyes as well. On the table in front of him sat the notepad. On the paper, written in a shaky text, was the message, _What did you want to know_?

He frowned more noticeably, almost shaky, and then swallowed hard in discomfort. The red-eyed teen in front of him kept his head down, almost to the point that his bangs shadowed his face completely. His eyes were on the table, he knew, and he was oddly comforted by that fact. It was almost terrifying to consider that he might look at him.

Because now that Yami was truly opening himself up to conversation, it seemed almost impossible to draw his thoughts together enough to speak to him again. So he hesitated, blinking slowly, and looked at the characters on the paper. What _did_ he want to know?

How many questions did he have? And how was he meant to speak of them?

But, more importantly, how many of them could Yami _take_?

He didn't want to risk this tentative friendship they had formed together just for the sake of his curiosity being sated. So he held his tongue for a moment, struggling to think of the words to say.

Not once did Yami look up.

For the entire five minutes they remained in silence, Yami did not raise his head.

Yugi let out a small whisper of a breath, then sat up a little straighter. "Yami, I…I just wanted to know if…" _Do you know what Valon meant when he called me an Angel of Death_? But he could not bring himself to say the words. And when the boy raised his head at his name, he nearly trembled with discomfort at the very thought of saying such a thing.

"Do you like it here?"

Yugi found himself blurting the question out and his cheeks burned viciously with embarrassment. His mouth opened and closed and his heart hammered where it had lodged itself in his throat with horror at his own outburst. Had he truly just asked that? He sounded pathetic, his tone terrified and pleading. He nearly sobbed at his own dismay towards asking such a thing.

Yami was frozen in front of him, stunned. Very slowly he blinked, staring at him with a slightly puzzled expression. He opened and closed his mouth, mimicking Yugi in his shock, but no noise left him. His head tipped to the side. His eyes grew owlish. His mouth opened and closed once more. Then he hesitantly reached forward for the notepad.

Yugi ducked his head, stunned and feeling his cheeks burn even more harshly, and stared at the table pathetically. He had just thrown him on the spot. He had just horrified him equally as much as he had himself. Yami was just as stunned as he was. There were no words to describe the utter horror that made his stomach feel as if it were doused in ice. Dear gods, Yugi had probably just made the other wolf think him the most pathetic creature in existence. He had probably pushed Yami to hate his desperation for approval.

Very slowly, though in his shock he had failed to notice it had been withdrawn in the first place, the notepad was placed in front of his eyes. The chair scooted faintly, a slick shuffling noise against the linoleum almost like mice on an exercise disc. He breathed out roughly, terrified, and hoped for a moment that he could simply flip the page and hand it back to him, tell Yami that he didn't mean to ask. But his eyes drifted immediately. He could not shake the impulse to look.

And the words that greeted him there shocked him for a moment.

 _Do you enjoy my being here_?

Yugi stared, gaping for a moment, and then felt his cheeks heat further. "Yes, of course I…" He hesitated, his eyes flickering up to peer at the other from beneath his lashes. He could not fathom him asking such a question. But then, he supposed, neither could Yami ever have guessed he might have blurted out such a statement before. So he blinked, startled, and opened and closed his mouth again. "I do, Yami…I…I enjoy you being here—a lot. It's…kind of lonely…o-otherwise. Um…"

Yami blinked at him slowly. His red eyes were considerate. His head was tilted to the side. His bangs outlined his face beautifully. His lips were twitching, though Yugi could not tell which direction they might fall. It could be a grimace or a smile. It could be a sloppy schoolboy grin of laughter or a perturbed frown for all he knew. Very slowly, Yami reached out again, his long fingers steady as he pulled the pad away from him.

The smaller teen twitched in shi seat. He shuffled his weight awkwardly. His heart was still racing. His stomach was twisting painfully. He could not fathom what he might say. If he said he despised it here, what was he meant to do? There was no solution that he knew to come up with. So he stared, frozen, horrified that he had even brought this conversation to light, and blinked stupidly.

The other boy very slowly began to write on the paper, pausing to consider his words, then erased and rewrote. He looked puzzled, confused, and his eyes were narrow as he worked on his articulation. It was slow, unusual, with faint distress and awkwardness, that he began to form the words on the paper.

Yami was not fast with his reply, instead taking his time, erasing a few more times. But the characters that formed on the paper were visibly neater where he could see them from their upside down position. Yugi stared, watching him, and his heart hammered impossible harder.

Yami pushed the paper back to him, lowering his eyes to the table. He sat back in his chair, tucking his hands in his lap. He was tired, exhausted almost, and seemed even smaller than ever as he allowed Yugi to begin to read his words.

 _I enjoy your company as well. Thank you for allowing me to stay here with you._

The smaller teen was frozen, stunned, staring at the words without the knowledge of how to respond. It was gratifying to know that his efforts were appreciated. It was almost stunning to see the length of which they were. Yami had paused and rewritten, thought it out, struggled with his response. He had lowered his head in the same submissive embarrassment that Yugi himself had moments before.

Awkwardly, licking his lips, the blue-violet-eyed boy blinked and looked down for a moment. His heart was still in his throat. But the words were registering in his head a little more. And his face split into a wide grin as he read them and reread a third time. He nearly trembled with elation.

"Good!" Yugi spat out, voice a croak with his excitement. He opened and closed his mouth once, a tremor coursing though him. It was stunning to him. It was gratifying. It was…a little terrifying, actually. He laughed awkwardly. His eyes flickered up from beneath his lashes.

Yami was staring at him. His eyes were wide. His expression was mystified. He looked confused by his tone. But his excitement had forced his lips to pull into a soft smile. He nodded a little and Yugi felt his cheeks grow slightly warmed with his blush.

He hesitated, then looked down. He supposed it was good to know that he did truly approve of it all. The fact that he was happy said a lot.

He lowered his eyes, licking his lips again, and pushed the paper towards him. For a moment he could not draw enough air into his lungs nor completely think clearly enough to form a question. There were a lot more things that he knew he needed to truly ask him. And none of them had been that one.

"That…wasn't the question I meant to ask…"

Yami snorted, a noise that was somewhere between laughter and dismissal. His brows rose, his eyes shining with amusement, and Yugi couldn't help the snicker that escaped him. He tipped his head to the side, smirking, and rolled his eyes.

"Shut up," he grumbled, smirk falling only a moment later when he looked at him again. The other boy's expression grew sober again in reaction to his. Yami's smaller stature grew a little larger as he sat up straighter. His eyes narrowed, his head still tilted. He frowned at him minutely.

For a moment he still could not find the words he needed. Then, hesitantly, he swallowed and forced the air out of his lungs.

"I wanted to ask you if you knew how you became infected actually."

The wolf blinked. His expression folded into something like disappointment. Yugi frowned, eyes widening as his brows furrowed. What was there to be disappointed about? It was just a question…

He pushed the pad back to him, a very simple word written there.

 _No_.

"You don't know?"

Yami tapped the pad with his nail.

Yugi frowned. "No idea?"

He tapped again. But this time there was enough force to puncture the paper in the form of his nail. The intention made Yugi's eyes widen. For a moment he could not understand the sight of it. Why had he pressed so hard?

Then he realized, looking at him, exactly why.

Yami's eyes had grown sharper. His jaw had clenched. His shoulders had risen. But they were the only forms of tension in his body. Everything else was relaxed. His wrists were slack. His fingers were lax. His arms were loose.

He didn't want to talk about it.

He _refused_ to talk about it.

"Okay," he murmured, nodding. For a moment Yugi remained still. Then he exhaled and looked at the notepad for a moment. "Will you tell me anything about you?"

Yami hesitated, staring at him blankly. His eyes narrowed faintly his fingers tapped against the tablecloth. For a moment he remained seated there without a single ounce of tension in his bones. Then he finally reached over, took the notepad, and wrote a couple of things on there that Yugi took with trepidation as he flipped the paper right-side up to read it.

 _I am not sure I want to talk about this_.

Yugi blinked. "Okay. Then we won't talk about it."

Yami frowned at him for a moment. There was something in his gaze that made the smaller boy feel almost sick. There was an abrupt but powerful emotion there that he did not recognize on his face. It was not natural in his expression. He had never seen it before. But he could remember it on his mother's face several times.

It was a weariness that made him tremble briefly.

Yami was haunted. His gaze was darker than usual. The pupils looked almost as if they had dilated. His irises were glassy. He was staring at him, frozen in place. He was, despite the strength he showed so often, _dead_.

He was perfectly, utterly, dead.

* * *

Yugi was startled when he walked out of the bathroom. The towel against his hair was knotting the strands where he rubbed forcefully. He was a little tired as he looked about his room slowly. When he had seen that look to the other's eyes he had fled as soon as he possibly could. There had not been a single second in which he had remained there, staring at that glazed expression that had shaken him so terribly. He had gone to the shower, used all the hot water for an hour, and forced himself to attempt to expel the image that was burned so forcefully behind his corneas.

Yet, as Yugi walked out, he was a little stunned at the sight to greet him there. Yami was sitting at the foot of his bed. His eyes were wide, confused, a little surprised and curious. His head tilted to the side as they looked at each other. His lips twitched, at first with discomfort, and then with a definitive shape. But he did not force words from his lungs.

Yugi paused in the doorway, concerned. Yami looked almost, illogically, ill. The smaller teen scrubbed at his hair a little more, trying to distract himself somehow. The towel tore and tugged upon the strands. They snapped faintly with the force. He could feel the knot forming there. It made his stomach twist. His heart ached a little as he looked at him. Yami was struggling with something. Whatever it was, it seemed to be forcing a lot of effort out of him. He swallowed thickly, watching him.

"Are you okay?" he asked softly. There was a small tremor in his tone. He swallowed again. The wolf blinked at him. His red eyes flickered to the window for a moment and then shock back to him. Yugi frowned, tilting his head, and paused his efforts to forcefully dry his hair. He dropped his arm to his side, feeling the dampened corner of the towel more heavily than the rest for a moment. "What's wrong?"

Yami licked his lips and then shuffled with such self-consciousness that Yugi nearly flinched. At first he barely seemed to even move. Then he grew agitated. His fingers twitched. His jaw ticked. His red eyes grew narrow. He clenched one of his hands for a moment, his nails digging into the skin. He blinked slowly.

"It's all right, Yami," he murmured, smiling at him gently. "If it's not coming, don't force it."

Yami shook his head, then got to his feet. The movement seemed almost to make his body sway for a brief second. His eyes narrowed once more. "Ah…" His voice was a croaking, hoarse noise like an exhale that made Yugi pause in surprise. He inhaled deeply, frowning, and then forced himself to concentrate as the movements of his hands grew further agitated. "Yu…g…i…"

He faltered, eyes widening. Why was he saying his name? What had caused him to think to say that of all things…? He looked as if he might puke with the stress of forcing the word out of his mouth.

"What did you say, Yami?"

He wrinkled his nose, then frowned as his eyes narrowed and shot to the window.

"Yami…" Yugi didn't want to stress him out. Undue pressure was nothing that the other boy deserved. There was no reason for him to feel the need to speak to him in the first place. So what had caused him to attempt to open his mouth like this? "It's okay if you don't want to talk—"

Yami tossed his head sharply and the look on his face was one of pure disdain. His voice came in a coil that was underlined by a snarl, low and hideous, as if he might lash out. "Yugi," he growled, fingers twitching. Abruptly his head swung around and he jerked his chin at the window again. His nails made a clicking noise as he drummed them against the foot of the bed uncomfortably. "Yugi."

Yugi's lungs were winded, constricting painfully, as he looked at him with wide blue-violet eyes. He swallowed, blinking, and then stared. Yami was so distressed that it made his heart hammer painfully in his chest. He opened and closed his mouth twice. Then, as Yami glanced at him and shot a more urgent look towards the window, he moved to see what had captured his attention so fully.

It was clear, the moment that Yugi got there, that it was not agitation towards his misunderstanding that made Yami so angry. It was the fact that he could not fully comprehend the sight before him that brought such ferocity to his eyes. His head snapped towards him, the lycanthrope growling low in his throat, and the tension in his body was clear as Yugi frowned at the sight in front of him.

A familiar jet black sedan had parked in the walkway. Two figures were getting out, one with red-brown hair and the other with silver and dark gray.

He recognized them.

Yami did not.

"It's okay," he murmured, turning to him. The snarling lowered into a harsh hum. His red eyes were confused, but angry all the same. Yugi smiled a little, faltering with his ability to truly consider his words, and then reached out to touch his shoulder. The other boy was practically vibrating, he was so tense, his body strung like the quiver of a bow. He breathed out harshly, the humming still low and dangerous. But he did not shrug Yugi off. "That's my mom and grandpa, Yami. They live here."

Yami blinked and his eyes widened. His head snapped back to the window. He leaned forward, curious, and pressed his face against the glass. His fingers drummed against the windowsill. He tilted his head. His snarling died away. His eyes flickered back to Yugi curiously.

"I know. They don't look like me," Yugi said with a small grin. "I'm the better looking one in the family."

Yami snorted so loudly that Yugi could not help but laugh in surprise.

"Thanks a lot, jackass," he teased, rolling his eyes. He turned away again with a shake of his head. "They must have finished helping out with the dog."

He almost went to hurry towards the door of his bedroom, but then stopped. He paused, halting altogether there, and then turned around with wide eyes to look at Yami who was staring at him in surprise. He brushed his fingers against the doorjamb, the paint cold like ice for a moment, and then frowned at him thoughtfully.

"I don't want to say this, but…as long as they're here, you can't really leave my room," Yugi muttered, swallowing hard when he saw the shock that crossed Yami's face at such a declaration. "I don't…I mean…I wouldn't make you stay here if I thought my mom would be okay with you being here. But she doesn't know. And I can't just introduce you when you've already been living here like this. I…Yami, don't worry about it. I'll figure something out. I _swear_ that I am _not_ going to make you stay a prisoner here when you're so used to being able to move around freely. I'll figure something out and you'll be free to wander around again as you want, okay?"

Yami stared at him, visibly shaken for a moment. It was clear that the very concept of being locked in one place was not something that he welcomed. The fact that he had remained on the top floor and never ventured downstairs had to be something that Yugi considered a blessing. It was clear now that the very concept of remaining there agitated him. He seemed ready, for a moment, to throw the window open and leap out instead. But he remained still. And then he very slowly lowered his eyes to look at the carpet as if it might hold the answers. Then he nodded.

"It won't be long." _Or at least I hope it won't_. "I promise I'll get it figured out as soon as I can, okay? This is _not_ permanent."

 _That_ Yugi could sure of. He would never have made someone a prisoner in his home, regardless of whether they were a lycanthrope or not. There was no way he would have ever allowed someone to rot in his home without a second glance. Yet Yami was acting as if he might forget he existed, as if he might completely abandon him should he not be in his sight at all times.

The door was opening. Yugi blinked and his head turned towards the hallway. For a moment he was surprised. It was irrational, illogical, that he would blink in confusion and hear them moving about and feeling that tiny thread of puzzlement that came with it. He blinked and tilted his head, a little flustered by his own reaction, and then turned to look over his shoulder again.

Yugi wanted to say something more but Yami was watching him. His expression was keen, boring into his skin, but it also spoke volumes. It was clear on his face that he accepted the instructions, would follow them, but he could not promise he would be happy with them. And that solid look that he angled towards him, with such power behind it, made him merely nod and turn away again.

"I'm sorry."

There was a noise behind him, a brisk and deep one like a growl. It startled him, making him spin around in surprise. Yami shook his head at him, clearly dismissing his apology. He blinked, flustered, and his cheeks heated faintly with the sight of his leisurely response. He was not stressed out, even if his initial reaction had been less than pleased. He would not be happy but he would listen to him.

Yugi still had the impulse to repeat himself. There was a moment where he thought to apologize and all but fall to his knees to ask his forgiveness. But the other wolf hardly seemed as if he might accept such a gesture. Rather he nodded at him, expression calm and easy, and walked towards the bed to take a seat again. He appeared hesitant but he did it all the same. And the gesture was enough to let Yugi know that he was fine, that he would adapt and work with it.

He paused, watching him, and then turned and made his way out of the room. He shut the door gently behind him, wondering for a moment if he should tell him to lock the door. But instead he put on a bright smile as his two family members began to make their way up the stairs.

"I told you he would be _fine_ ," his grandpa grumbled the moment that the door opened and his mom paused on the top step. He blinked, eyes wide in surprise, and then the blue-violet-eyed teen gave them both the same grin he had previously attempted. But he could not have held it moments before, as their bickering had surprised him too much to keep it there. It was not truly important, he realized, however, as he doubted they might notice it in all actuality.

"Hi guys," he announced, glancing at their hands to make sure neither was carrying anything, and then made his way to lead them into the kitchen. "You're back a little earlier than I expected."

"Kasumi worried that you might need us back home."

Yugi almost halted, tempted for a moment to tell his mom he was not a small child anymore, but instead cut the impulse off. He did not need her to feel any more suspicious of him than he already knew she might be later. It would not be pretty to see if she turned her attention on him completely and began to manage every small thing he did. It would be a small matter of days before she would figure out about Yami if that were the case. There was no truly pushing her back if she thought to do it.

"In my defense, _Sugoroku_ over here thought it might be fun to say that you weren't taking your meds and had probably burned the house down by now," Kasumi spat at her father who snickered in response while Yugi awkwardly rubbed the back of his head. "And besides that, you know that I worry about you."

"That's a mother's job," the teenager said with a small nod. It was distracted, his attention already bolting elsewhere. Would Yami get sick with the lack of exercise he would get in his room? What if all of this growth and better health that he had gained turned around and became stunted because of his inability to move about? There was only so much room in there. There were only so many feet he could move about in. Although, as he considered it, the living room and the kitchen and his room did not have that much more space to exercise, either. So maybe it would not harm him. But then…maybe it would.

Yugi looked at them for a moment. How much exercise did Yami actually need? He did not seem to move about much unless it was to follow him around the house when he went from one room to the next. So perhaps it was not the most important thing to his health. But he knew that Yami would get antsy. And he knew that he would eventually want more. It was obvious in the way that he had seemingly stumbled the moment Yugi had told him that he would have to remain in there.

"Yeah, and one of these days, when you have kids, you'll realize it's also a father's job," Kasumi quipped, glancing at her father and rolling her eyes when he raised a brow at her statement. "You're going to worry either way, about basically everything, though, so I guess it doesn't really matter who you are exactly."

Yugi raised a brow, tilting his head, and then glanced at Sugoroku. "I don't know. I think I might have that gene that Grandpa does. You know, that one where you don't seem to really care all that much about anything."

It came out a little harsher than he meant it to, and his mother paused in surprise from where she had been heading for the fridge. Her father in turn blinked at him before his brows furrowed and his eyes crinkled in the corner. He was trying to figure out what it was that he had done to upset Yugi again, but there were a number of them, and he knew the elderly Motou would never really guess. "Anyways, how was the dog?"

"He was great when we left him," Kasumi announced, a sense of pride coloring her tone. She gave him a look that said he should have expected nothing less, but it was tempered with some kind of humility that said she was grateful that it had turned out well in the first place. "He was doing well with his rehabilitation, working with the other animals in the clinic. I think he'll have a pretty smooth recovery. He'll probably be limping for the rest of his life, but I think he'll learn to adapt well to it."

The teenager nodded, wishing for a moment that he should he have something in his hands he might be more comfortable with the ability to fidget without them finding it too terribly odd. If Yugi had paper or a pencil, he could simply play around with it, make his tension seem a lot less noticeable. But his mom was watching him now, even if she was pretending not to.

He knew exactly what she was doing. But to point it out was to basically condemn himself.

"So how is Anzu? Your mother wouldn't tell me much about it," Sugoroku announced, throwing the conversation in a new direction to avoid his daughter the opportunity of asking Yugi to help her in the clinic at some point. "Spare no details."

Yugi blinked and then furrowed his brows for a moment before his eyes grew wide in surprise. "You think Anzu and I had sex?" he cried in shock, voice cracking as his cheeks heated with embarrassment at the way his mom's head snapped around and her eyes grew narrow. " _Grandpa_!"

"What? We're both men here, Yugi."

"First of all, Anzu isn't _like_ that. Second, even if we had, I wouldn't tell you!"

"Why? I could give you pointers! I have pleased many a ladies in my day."

" _Grandpa_!"

" _Dad_!"

He snorted, waving a hand dismissively at their horrified expressions. They looked so much alike in that moment that he imagined if one came into the house, they would almost be fooled into thinking they were seeing doubles. "What? I am just pointing it out there, Yugi." He paused, looking between them, and grunted, "Prudes."

It was somehow extremely uncomfortable for Yugi to sneak into his room with a plate of food, even when he had gotten permission minutes before. His mom had not been all that impressed with his suggestion but he had coerced her into allowing him to do so. When he had thought to bring up the subject of a couple of study guides, he knew he had done well. She had mellowed almost immediately, surprised by his statement, and finally, with the smallest hint of disapproval, told him to go ahead.

So Yugi was not sure why he should feel so strange about taking a plate into his room, except for the fact that the other boy jerked in his seat from where he had on the bed and stared at him with a confused expression. For a moment, he hesitated, shutting the door with his free hand while his other rested on the knob, and then he smiled at Yami weakly and looked away as quickly as possible.

It was somehow heartbreaking that the other's eyes could peer at him with such confusion. Had Yugi not told him that he was not going to be a prisoner in his home? Yami had looked, beyond that surprise and perplexity, as if he were so relieved to see him that he might cry out with joy.

Yugi shivered at the thought, shaking his head a little, and then cleared his throat.

"Here, Yami. I figured we would split it. I can't do much more than bring in a plate at a time and go back for seconds." He paused, then fumbled as he realized he had not brought any utensils for the other. Yugi blinked, flustered at his negligence, and then looked at Yami who peered at him curiously with his head tilted to the side.

Could they use the same utensils? Yugi didn't see going out there to grab new ones as a good idea. If he said he dropped them, his mom would expect him to bring them back in exchange. And going out there at all was a little unnerving a thought to him at the moment.

It was simple enough to consider that, if there was any reason to avoid doing so, such as saliva or illness, the lycanthropy would eliminate it. Right? He nibbled his bottom lip. It was still a little gross to think that he would be sharing utensils with someone, who he barely knew. He had shared once with Jonouchi, but it had been on accident. The blond had drunk from his straw when he'd grabbed the wrong soda at the arcade and both of them had awkwardly muttered about it before quickly dismissing it. Yugi had simply bought a new soda and given Jonouchi the remainder of his.

But, in the grand scheme of things, there was a lot worse that could happen.

So Yugi shrugged and wandered to his side, pausing only for a moment before taking a seat on the bed. He considered whether he might have locked the door or not, glancing over his shoulder momentarily. He knew his mom and grandpa would not enter the room without knocking, but still, it was better to be safe than sorry.

He put the plate on the bed and the red-eyed lycanthrope straightened a little more comfortably at the headboard. Yugi got to his feet again, heading for the door, but paused when he heard the Yami make a small noise. It was almost like a whine, but not quite as high-pitched, nor as desperate. It sounded much more curious than it did anything else. But it was enough to make Yugi stop short, turning his head in confusion.

Yami was perched there, staring at him, head tilted, his eyes wide, expression somewhat unhappy with the idea that he might be leaving him as he seemed to be. Yugi paused, studying him for a moment, and then searched his eyes for the briefest of seconds. The small teen gave him the smallest of smiles, clearing his throat.

"I'm not going anywhere," Yugi muttered, gesturing to the door. "I'm just locking it."

Yami nodded after a moment, then settled more comfortably again, slouching only slightly against the headboard as Yugi turned to twist the lock. When he turned back around the lycanthrope had failed to even glance at the plate, instead looking towards the wall with an expression that Yugi could not read.

"What? Aren't you hungry?"

Yami blinked at him, then shrugged lazily.

Yugi glanced at the plate and pursed his lips. "You liked the salmon I made for you before."

The other boy regarded him with eyes as sharp as knives, staring at him for a moment. There was a small bit of tension in his frame. But he forced his shoulders into a shrugging motion once more.

Yami hesitated, frowning and glancing at the plate once more. Then he looked at the lycanthrope as he continued watching him with that same keen expression. He paused, swallowing hard, and then moved forward a step towards the bed. "Are you okay?"

Yami nodded after a moment, still watching him silently.

There was a moment where Yugi could not fully shake the nerves that burned at his skin as he began to make his way closer. He pressed his palms into the mattress for a moment, feeling it sink comfortably beneath his skin, and then licked his lips nervously. The other boy stared. It was not judgmental or threatening, but there was a tension so furious in Yami's gaze that the small teen nearly shivered.

"I…I know this isn't ideal," Yugi murmured, uncomfortable as the other's full attention fell upon his face with a sharper focus. "But it…it won't last forever. And I think it'll turn out okay eventually. I mean…my mom and grandpa aren't always here so I…look, Yami, I'm sorry."

The other boy shook his head. His red eyes narrowed faintly. He turned his head away. Yugi could see his jaw ticking faintly. He wondered for a moment if Yami would write something if he handed him the means to do so. But he found himself unable to move enough to bother. And so Yugi merely scooted back until his shoulders touched the headboard and his eyes grew lidded. He felt nervous for a moment. His stomach ached briefly.

"Yami, are you…?" He hesitated. "I mean…"

Yugi watched him from his peripheral. Yami stared at him, waiting patiently for him to speak.

"Are you really not hungry? You haven't eaten all day…"

For a moment Yami did not respond. Then, very slowly, he shook his head and turned away again. His fingers were twitching. His eyes were narrowed again. He looked more upset than he had in a while. Yugi swallowed back an apology, a plea for him to have enough patience to help him work this out. But he remained silent instead. And he closed his eyes as he looked at the comforter.

It was a hideous yellow color. It was deep, almost like mustard, but the sheen of the fabric reminded him of urine. It was an awkward thought as he looked at it. In the last few years, he had not even truly paid it much attention. And yet, now, sitting next to this other boy, it was the only think he could focus on.

A gentle touch to his shoulder made his head turn. Startled, Yami nearly jumped in surprise. But the other boy was simply watching him. His red eyes were curious. And there was a small bit of apology to color the gleam of them. He tilted his head, gesturing very vaguely towards the food in question.

"Go ahead and eat it," he murmured, frowning at him. "You can eat as much of it as you want. I can just get seconds and it'll be fine."

Yami frowned at him, a noticeable twist of his lips. He shook his head faintly, staring at him unhappily.

"What? You haven't eaten all day. You need to eat something, Yami."

Yami seemed upset with the statement. He frowned at him. He shook his head a little bit.

"Seriously, Yami, go ahead and try it."

When he saw that Yugi seemed as if he might plead with him, the red-eyed teen finally turned his attention to the plate again. Yami was not sure of himself as he glanced at the pink fish that stared back at him. It smelled delicious, with the softest hint of sour and bitter lemon and the spicy tinge of black pepper, and the fish itself was sweet and hot with such warmth as to make his mouth water.

But he still hesitated. The glance at the other boy told him that Yugi was waiting. He looked sick to his stomach as the seconds passed. He was anxious, Yami could see, and his fingers twitched uncomfortably. He was seconds away from fidgeting and Yami had the idea that he thought he would reject the food. He frowned and looked down again, turning to the plate.

He was hungry, yes, but it did not push away his basic instincts. Yugi was the one providing food. He was the alpha for the time being. And there was not enough food for Yami to truly eat with him. The fish on the plate seemed small, like something he could simply stick in his mouth without much effort. It would not—if he were honest with himself—puff his cheeks completely, nor push heavily on his palate. And his own instincts demanded that he respect the hierarchy.

Yugi should have taken the first bite. But he merely watched him, relieved, when Yami finally cut a sliver off and put it in his mouth. He was so distressed by the idea of breaking this rule—such an important rule, Yami knew—that the salmon tasted like mud on his tongue. He swallowed roughly, feeling as if it were burning the back of his throat as it went down, and nearly choked on his next breath.

"Is it good?"

Yami hesitated. His first impulse was to open his mouth and regurgitate it. This whole display seemed entirely wrong to him. His fingers shook for a moment. But he nodded brusquely, struggling to make it seem real. His relief had burned away altogether. His thought of eating food had dissipated immediately.

He nodded again when Yugi furrowed his brows. The smaller boy tilted his head. "Maybe she put too much seasoning," he muttered, grabbing the chop sticks Yami was still holding and spearing off a more generous bite than the other had taken. He popped it in his mouth, chewing it, and the red-eyed teen watched him with such relief in his gaze that he nearly swallowed harshly.

"Hmm…" Yugi pursed his lips, brows still furrowed. There was not too much seasoning. There was just enough of a bite from the pepper. And the lemon was soothing where it snagged his senses too roughly. "I think it's good…"

Yami nodded again, this time with enough enthusiasm that Yugi hesitated. Had he seen his expression wrong? He furrowed his brows but decided not to question it. Instead he smiled a little and gestured for Yami to continue eating.

He stopped only when he was halfway through the plate, then pushed it back towards Yugi insistently. The smaller boy arched a brow, confused, and then frowned faintly. He pushed more insistently. Yugi needed to eat. Yami wouldn't eat it all. That wasn't how this whole thing worked.

The smaller teen seemed to understand that just enough. He began to pick at the salmon, taking enough bites to nearly demolish it, but he watched Yami from the corner of his eye. He could see that Yami was still hungry. His eyes were not glued to the food but he could see the way his jaw sometimes twitched and his gaze would sharpen that he was still rather starved. The thought made Yugi's stomach twist with frustration.

"Are you still hungry?"

He hesitated, then nodded only minutely. Yugi blinked, spearing the last bit of his meal, and got to his feet after a moment. "I'll go get some more then," he announced, heading for the door once more. His blue-violet eyes flickered to the lycanthrope still seated on his bed, and then away again as he walked off again.

It took him a minute to come back, a larger piece of fish resting there. Yami blinked at him, somewhat surprised, but did not question it. Yugi locked the door again, plopped down beside him, and passed over the plate for him to take the first bite once more. Yami had a moment where he could not fully deal with the intensity of the frustration that came with his unconscious denial of his role as the alpha. But he forced it aside, hungry enough not to care too much about it, and began to take small bites at the salmon as he had before.

The other teen sat next to him, staring lazily at the wall in the back of the room. The window made his eyes hurt where the light burst through it from the streetlamp outside. The harsh bronze of it made his fingers twitch. His eyes narrowed faintly, his long lashes cutting jagged shadows through the glaze of it.

Yami was clearly ravenous, and yet he kept merely poking at the food, as if displeased by the sight and taste of it. But he did not appear to feel anything less than satisfaction as he continued to shovel it down his throat, even with how small the bites were.

He pushed the plate back over to him and Yugi frowned as he looked it over. He'd eaten almost exactly half of it.

"You can have the rest of it if you want," Yugi murmured, glancing at him sideways. "I can always get something else when my mom and grandpa go to sleep. I'm prone to late night snacking anyways. They wouldn't be the least bit surprised…"

Yami looked at him for a moment, then shook his head firmly.

"Are you sure?"

He nodded.

"All right…"

It frustrated Yugi, somehow, even as he began to take a bite, that the other had done this. He was so used to making him a plate of food and watching him eat it rapidly that the fact that Yami was splitting his food with him made him feel almost sick. Usually the red-eyed boy would eat almost all of it before he could even blink.

Yet, now he was eating slowly, as if unnerved by how close he was to him, despite showing a lack of discomfort beyond soft tension in his muscles. And he was giving him half of the food, which Yugi realized with no small bit of uncertainty, was actually a small bit more than what he had eaten in the first place.

Yugi frowned, shaking his head slightly, and began to pick at his own food uncomfortably. The other teen was clearly hungry still, and very noticeably distressed as he turned his head to look at him. Not once did Yami look amused with himself as he tilted his head and watched the smaller teen pick at his nails uncomfortably.

"I—I know I said this before, but it's not going to be forever," Yugi muttered, biting his lip so hard that the skin threatened to break as he blinked wide eyes. He had not even truly planned to speak as his eyes shot nervously towards the other boy, glancing at him from the corner of his gaze. "You won't have to stay back here for too long. And I'll figure out something so that you don't have to stay back here all the time. Then it'll be easer and…I'm sorry."

Yami stared at him. For a moment he wanted nothing more than to reassure him that it was okay. But instead he nodded a little, turning away just as quickly. He did not truly wish to open his mouth and speak. The words that would have existed in his lungs had died long before. He felt almost sick with the impulse to instead make himself seem smaller so as to make sure that Yugi's attention was no longer on him.

The smaller boy wrung his fingers together, scraping the nails gently against the backs of his hands. The skin tingled and split faintly, small slivers of red against bright pink. He felt sick to his stomach. "I'll be back in a second," Yugi muttered, jumping to his feet to make his way to the door and out into the kitchen with the dirty plate. He was almost sickened as he turned the faucet on and began to run it down with the sponge before tossing it into the dishwasher.

When he returned Yami was still lazily seated there. He was not as uncomfortable as he had seemed before but his eyes were somewhat disconnected. His gaze looked as if it were staring far past his walls. Yugi imagined he was thinking of the woods, of hunting and being able to race under the trees. His stomach tossed and he looked quickly away towards the carpet. His room had nothing to offer as far as freedom went.

Sure, the bright blue was comforting and offered what little freedom one might experience while within four walls, and the window opened if he only bothered to, but it was nothing like the expanse of a forest. It did not share the crispness of mountain air, nor the sounds of birds in the trees or animals traipsing about the forest. There were so many limitations to the area around them that he could not fathom blaming him for his reluctance to be there. Even if Yami did not show it fully, he knew he was antsy and he wanted out of the room. He wanted away from the confining space of the four walls.

Yugi reached out to scratch at his left wrist, then looked down for a moment, narrowing his eyes. And how long would it be before Yami began to feel the effects of being locked up within such a tiny space? How long until he finally began to grow unhappy enough to either lash out or flee?

He shivered.

It couldn't be much longer.

And what about how long it would take before he grew sick or weakened? There had to be a timeframe to the point of which he would end up feeling sick. And what effects would there be? Would he end up puking? Would he end up growing wasted as far as his muscles were concerned? Would he weaken until he could almost not leave the bed? Would he become immobilized?

Yugi narrowed his eyes and shook his head faintly. What hope was there?

He could not look at the red-eyed lycanthrope. It hurt far too much as he began to move to take the spot beside him. He could not fathom the pain and anxiety that he knew would soon grace his senses. He could not truly imagine the way his sense of reality and comfort might be pushed away and his freedom stripped from beneath his feet. His heart ached at the very concept.

* * *

Yugi still could not imagine that chocolate banana was a good flavor, but he made it regardless. The protein shake looked just as unappetizing as it always had, however, so he could not do more than wonder. He himself had no reason to taste it, and the sweet smell that tickled his nose made him feel slightly sick. The only appealing thing about it was the shade it had come out to be, like a regular glass of chocolate milk, but with a bit more bubbling at the top.

He shook his head, glancing at his phone to check the time, and then hurried to make his way to his room. Since he had left his room to study for the last couple of hours—he couldn't do it with Yami there; he kept watching him like a hawk and he was getting so restless it hurt to see—Yugi had not gone back yet. He had busied himself with the task of finishing more of his study guides' questions, even texting Jonouchi to see how he was doing on his own.

Of course, the blond had not truly bothered to start on his beyond the first pages, but that was not unexpected in the slightest. He always had trouble focusing on schoolwork. It was too boring for him to handle most times.

Yugi shook the thought off, slipping his phone back into his pocket and then twisting the knob with his freed hand. "Okay, so I couldn't think of anything else to do so I…" He faltered, voice dying, and cast a small glance around.

Oh gods…

"Fuck."

He put the cup aside on his nightstand, then looked about the room.

There were only so many places the other could hide away in and not be noticed immediately. There was the bathroom, his closet, perhaps under the bed. But Yugi couldn't hear his breathing, nor sense his heartbeat. His stomach clenched and his own heart skipped a beat.

Yami had escaped.

He cringed at the thought. There wasn't anywhere to escape if it wasn't meant to be a prison, right? Yugi turned his head, straining his hearing, praying for a moment that he might hear that soft whistling noise, but nothing came to him. His hands were shaking when he headed into the bathroom to take a glance around. His breathing had grown erratic when he checked in the closet. And he was all but trembling when he dropped to his hands and knees and checked under the bed.

Yami was completely gone.

He nearly groaned at the thought, swallowing back panic.

Where was it that Yami could have gone? How had he gotten out? Had his mom or grandpa noticed? Was it possible that he had gotten out undetected? Yugi knew he was smart and fast, so maybe it was okay to think that he had. But then, what did he know? When it came down to it, Yami was still a black spot on his mind, completely opaque to him more often than not. He didn't truly give him little glimpses into himself, nor did he seem to care to. So what was to stop him from having attacked them and made it outside?

Yugi cringed again and shook his head.

No, Yami wasn't that violent. He wouldn't have attacked them unless they had threatened him. And he would have heard his mom and grandpa talking if he had crossed paths with them.

But then again, perhaps he wouldn't have. Yugi had not heard him when he had vanished. And he had failed to hear him that day when he had fled at the sound of his friends arriving to knock on the door. So maybe saying that he would have heard them was an assumption that Yugi could not make.

But surely he would have heard his mom and grandpa. He could hear them each time they moved about. Then again, this afternoon, he had not been listening for them. So maybe he could have missed it.

He shuddered, then tossed his head again in a firmer dismissal. No, there was no way. Yami would not have done anything of that magnitude. Not without reason. He was so timid as it was, viewing the house as Yugi's territory and being careful not to overstep any boundaries.

So why should he turn around and sink his teeth into two random strangers? Yugi had explained the situation to him, told him that they were family, that he didn't need to be upset or nervous over their presence.

Still, Yugi remembered the way his red eyes had flashed, anxious but fierce as well. He had been willing to attack them should they have been seen as true threats. But he had also quickly abided by his statement that they would not hurt them and he needed to stay out of their sight.

And then he remembered that crestfallen expression, though it was laced with understanding. And his heart hurt as he pictured Yami's face and the way his eyes had darkened briefly with discontent before brightening as if the prospect of shelter was more important than space.

Yugi shivered and his fingers were quaking, his heart still racing in his chest, as he turned to the window. A small gap remained open, a sliver of cold air coming through. How had he not noticed the temperature of the room before? How had he not considered the window?

He had never opened it in front of Yami before, but it did not take a genius to figure out such a simple maneuver. And the lycanthrope was probably only a brain cell short of being one in all actuality. He was too smart for his own good, harbored a capacity to learn that put most to shame, and could adapt at the blink of an eye.

Yami was intelligent. He was fast. He was powerful.

So…if he truly wanted them dead, he would manage it.

And Yugi would perhaps never be the wiser.

Still, somehow, he could not picture it. Yami had the potential. He had the skills. He had seen him kill those two wolves in the woods. He had seen him climb that tree and attack the squirrel. He had seen him wolf down pancakes and drink protein shakes within seconds. He was capable of things that Yugi probably could not even truly fathom.

Yet, he still could not picture it. Yami had been rather gentle, easygoing, and even the decrease of space had done nothing more than momentarily grate on his nerves. He was friendly. He was kind. He didn't make a huge fuss concerning most things. He liked to sleep under his blanket rather than the covers, though he always wound up practically breathing in his exhales by the middle of the night. He curled up with him like a dog would. He slept easily. He ate what he was given. He didn't fuss over things. He was laidback.

So why should he have any reason to believe that he would attack his family or do anything that would not be beneficial to himself or Yugi?

He paced a few steps, then spun around and stared at the window again. So he had slipped out. He didn't know why. He didn't know what had triggered it. But at least he knew he had simply used the window. Because Yugi had always kept it completely locked during winter. It kept the drafts from coming in.

So Yami had used the window.

And he was fine.

His mom and grandpa were fine.

Yugi paced again, however, biting his lip.

But, what reason did he have for leaving? Was it to stretch his legs? Was he not getting enough food? Maybe it was the lack of medication? Yugi couldn't bring them into his room without looking somewhat suspicious. His mom would have searched his room by now to check and see if he was truly taking it or hiding the pills about.

Yugi looked at the cup uncomfortably and his fingers twitched again. Did Yami even need the medication anymore? What if he was overdoing it? What if he was potentially poisoning him?

He groaned, reaching his hands up to pull at his hair, and then tossed his head about angrily. No, he didn't need to do this right now. He needed to relax. He needed to calm down. He did not need to spend his time worrying about this.

If Yami came back, then he would ask.

And if he didn't…

Yugi shivered. He really hoped he came back.

But it hardly seemed that way when he began to turn in for the night. He lay there, facing the window, watching for the other lycanthrope. He didn't blink until his eyes were burning each time and his lungs still felt constricted from his earlier panic. But it did not alleviate itself. Rather, he stared at the window, where the moonlight drizzled in, and felt sick to his stomach as the hours passed. When, at last, he could no longer keep his eyes open, he had spared a glance at the clock to see it read three in the morning, and fell into a restless slumber.

What Yugi woke to was the sound of something popping and crunching. His entire body ached and burned. He had been in the same position for far too long. Not once had he rolled over in the middle of the night, he realized. He felt his stomach turn as the popping grew louder. But there was no reason he could think of this coming into the picture logically. There was no possibility of such noise coming from his empty room.

The only noise that he should have heard was his alarm going off. But that would happen in a few minutes. His clock would vibrate and chime hideously and he would jump, surprised as he always was.

But for the moment that was not what had caught his attention.

Yugi stiffened, considering what odds there were that something was there. Was it possible that something had gotten in through the window or—?

 _Yami_!

He sat upright immediately, turning his head, and his eyes strained. The light was gorgeous, painting the room in glistening silver, and the threads of the carpet seemed to glitter faintly. There were small particles of dust that came through the air, disturbed by his sudden movement. He blinked, stupefied, as the light made his eyes hurt faintly, and his spine protested his actions.

Sure enough, there was a shape in the corner of his room, near the bathroom door. It was slouched, legs lay out before it. The arms were bunched, the elbows bent inwards. The head was tilted downwards, the popping noise halted altogether.

Yugi strained his eyes for a moment. There was something in the other's hands. It looked ragged, with patches missing. Strands of what seemed like hair were glittering silver in the moonlight. And his nails looked shinier than usual, the tips of his fingers darker than Yugi had ever seen them before. They looked uniform in color for a moment, as if his nails had grown longer, and morphed to fold inwards like claws.

"Yami?"

The snapping noise became abruptly loud, punctuating the air violently. Then the other raised his head, looking up at the sound of his name.

Yugi froze in place. His eyes grew to the size of twin moons. His heart picked up and raced. His stomach clenched. His mouth opened and closed twice. He shivered. His hands shook for a moment. His lungs constricted achingly.

There was something smeared across his mouth. It made his lips and chin and cheeks look black like oil. But they were only smudges. They did not glisten as if they were fresh. His eyes were glowing, the pupils pinpricks. There were tints of bright silver lacing his irises. They made his eyes look like shallow pools. His lashes were long, glittering. And when he tilted his head in question, his bangs were painted gray.

But it was not his face that Yugi was focusing on. His eyes had lowered towards Yami's hands. That black smear was not confined to only his fingers. It smothered the skin along his wrists. It drenched his knuckles.

But even that was not what he focused on.

In his grip was a little white form, colored gray by his shadow. It was limp in his grip. The fur had been stripped in small pinpricks. Smears of black crossed along the strands. It was so small and the body so torn apart that he almost could not fathom what it had once been.

Yugi blinked stupidly. Yami frowned in puzzlement. Both of them eyed each other for a moment. Then the smaller boy let out a small choked noise. His eyes grew wider in horror. Something occurred to him in the back of his mind. He opened and closed his mouth, then reached over to turn on the light.

Yami flinched but did not move beyond that. His eyes grew further dilated. His expression grew uncomfortable. His head tilted further to the side. There was a tension in his shoulders that made Yugi want to flinch.

Only with the lights on could he see what the animal was. The shape was limp, half-eaten, the body more or less skin and bones, the muscles stripped away. The fur had been picked off in small areas. Other parts were smeared with bright red. One back leg dangled, intact, and the other had been ravaged into nonexistence. It was only the tail that told him exactly what it was.

"A rabbit?" he breathed out, lungs constricting so painfully he almost could not find it in himself to inhale again. He blinked, horrified, and stared blankly at the decrepit animal that rested there in the other's grip. His long fingers had a loose grip, but he could see the obvious strain in his knuckles due to his scrutiny. Yugi opened and closed his mouth, then raised his eyes to the other wolf's.

And then his alarm went off.

Yami sprang as if a gun had gone off. He was on his feet, eyes nearly popping out of his head. His breathing came in rushes. His lips curled back into a snarl. His pupils, formerly contracted, became dilated, immense black pools like bottomless abysses of darkness. His hands were shaking. His fingers had curled faintly. His teeth were bright when he flashed them. A low and furious snarl began to creep forth from his throat. His shoulders seemed to vibrate with the noise. His head snapped towards the offensive device. He chomped his teeth.

Yugi blinked stupidly. His entire body was frozen in place. He could not fathom turning the alarm off. The blood on Yami's face made his stomach ache. The fear made his body so tense and his heart hurt. And he looked further upset by it all. But again, the smaller teen's eyes had lowered. In his sight was that decrepit body, half-eaten and torn to pieces.

The rabbit had been dropped unceremoniously. The stomach had been gutted. The spine was so small, scattered in noticeable chunks. The bones had been splintered along the back. And his back leg, which he had assumed was mostly gone, now was visible in bright white bone and a small touch of cartilage. It had survived only to the joint of its knee. Pale skin and bright red meat peered back. But it too had been mostly devoured. The other leg was the only thing he thought was truly there any longer.

Fuck, even the head was gone…

"Jesus…"

Yami snarled and chomped his teeth. The noise was so sharp that Yugi jumped. His head snapped up. His mouth opened. The wolf was still visibly stunned by the interruption. He still looked as if he thought the clock might attack him. The smaller boy blinked, then hurried to reach over. It took a moment to hit the right button. His fingers scraped over the smooth tops of each button. He struggled to press one down. His limbs felt weak. His arms were shaky.

The click that resounded through the air made Yami jump once more. Yugi blinked stupidly. He could not fathom taking his eyes off the taller werewolf now. He was still staring at the clock, bristling. But his muscles began to unclench. And his snarl became nonexistent. He paused, hesitating, and then looked to the other boy again. They stared for a moment.

Yugi blinked stupidly. He could not understand it all for a moment…

"You went hunting…"

Yami glanced at the rabbit, then turned back with a small nod.

Yugi stared at him, unable to truly process the thoughts in his head.

The taller boy looked down at his meal again, but he hardly seemed as if he were hungry enough to eat anymore. Instead he stared at it as if he could not fathom it being there, and then finally looked back at him uncomfortably.

A few long minutes passed. Neither looked at each other.

"I…I'm sorry." Yugi opened and closed his mouth. He glanced at him and Yami raised his head to regard him curiously. "I wasn't…I just…I was surprised. I never considered that you would come here with a rabbit. I…didn't mean to scare you."

The wolf blinked at him, then shook his head.

"Well, I guess I didn't really…I just…" He frowned, because for that brief moment that Yami looked at him, he thought he seemed almost ashamed. "I was just surprised. I wasn't expecting it."

He nodded at him faintly. The seconds stretched between them. The heater clicked on. Yugi glanced at the window but the locks were in place. Yami had shut it tightly, redone the locks. Then he had taken his seat and eaten. The smaller teen blinked again. The clock in the bathroom ticked.

"That was my alarm clock, by the way," he muttered, clearing his throat. The wolf turned his head and stared at him curiously. "That noise—it was meant to wake me up for school. I have to go today since my break is over."

The red-eyed lycanthrope blinked and then nodded slightly. He smiled faintly but his eyes were still slightly troubled. And he looked almost as if he might be sick for a moment.

"Um…g-go ahead and finish eating. I…I need to start getting ready for school." He hesitated. "Do you know what…what school is or…?"

Yami very slowly regarded him, then shook his head with narrowed eyes.

"It's a place that people go to learn things—and it takes up about eight hours of the day. I…I have to go there for that long and then I'll be back home later, okay? So, I…" He flinched, feeling flustered and small for a moment, and then bit his lip until the skin split and he thought he tasted fresh blood. The spike of pain there made him want to flinch away again. "I guess it's pretty obvious that you can…go into the woods if you want to. Um…but it's the same rules as before."

The werewolf blinked at him. His head tilted to the side, puzzled for the briefest of seconds. He looked almost as if he could not understand what he was hinting at. But then he nodded. And his frown deepened as he glanced at the dead rabbit. It was clear that he was uncomfortable. It was evident that he was somewhat frustrated. But Yugi did not think it was with the task of hiding again.

"I…I'll see you when I get out, okay?"

Yami nodded at him, glancing at him over his shoulder as he started for the bathroom.

* * *

He supposed that it was a very good thing that Yami still knew how to hunt. It seemed like a good thing to know that he could still do things for himself should he need to. He knew how uneasy it would have made him in his situation, so it was relieving to see that Yami was still capable of doing as he needed to. If he could sneak out and hunt as needed, then Yugi would not have to worry all of the time about whether he would be able to sneak enough food into his room for him to eat comfortably.

Yugi watched his character on the screen go flying with a roundhouse kick. He wondered, curious for only that brief moment, whether he might one day be able to do that same thing. But the thought drifted immediately as he began to rapidly hit the buttons to make his own character bounce back into play. In his peripheral he could see Jonouchi and Honda doing something similarly. Then he spotted Anzu, sipping a soda and watching him from the corner of her own eye. He knew that she was watching him.

It had been obvious from the very beginning of the day. He knew that she had been meaning to speak to him all day. There was something that was very clearly on her mind that required his full attention. And he was not sure that he could truly give that to her. Since that morning, Yami had been the layer of thoughts on his mind that pushed away all the rest. He was the thing that kept him from focusing for the most part, the one that had dragged his focus violently out of place.

Every other thought had become a wondrous little burn, singeing him and making him falter. Every other moment the sight of Yami, blood smeared across his face, with that little rabbit carcass in his hands, with the popping noise in his ears, came to him. When Yugi blinked, he thought he would never be able to push such images away. It was constant, never faltering, and he felt dizzy for a moment as his character was hit once more across the screen.

This time it was a knockout, something that he did not think to focus on. But the colors made his head spin and the volume in his ears began to make them ache. Very slowly he pushed his stool back and got to his feet again. He blinked, frowning faintly, and the noise thrummed heavily until it felt as if he were vibrating with the force of it. He blinked and his eyes burned for the briefest of moments.

His legs felt slightly shaky but he moved forward regardless.

He turned his head when he spotted Anzu moving towards him and his lips pulled back slightly into a thin smile. He hoped it didn't look as bad as it felt on his mouth, but there was no way he could truly tell and so he instead hoped that his eyes were softer than his expression.

She hesitated and for a moment he feared that his expression was nothing more than a hideous grimace. But she seemed more nervous than put off and so he hoped that it seemed easygoing enough as to put her slightly at ease. He cast a small glance around, as his skin felt a little hot and his spine ached briefly. There was something making his nerves tingle and his breathing felt slightly strained.

"Here, let's go take a seat and then we can talk," he muttered, eyes shifting cautiously towards the windows for a moment. Should they get a booth or try for one of the other seats? He could not understand what it was that set him so furiously on edge, but he also had no idea what direction it came from. For all he knew it could have been a wolf drifting by. It could be Valon for all he knew, walking along without the purpose of finding him.

He let her choose the booth seat. It was closest to the door and farther from the others so that they would not have to worry themselves with eavesdropping neighbors. And it gave Yugi a clear vision from either side of the street. He could not see anything that truly should have alarmed him so much, but regardless it forced him to keep his attention divided between the beautiful brunette and the possible threat.

"So, what's on your mind?" he asked, turning his head to regard her. In his peripheral he could see all of the passersby, walking lazily. Some cars drifted by slowly. A couple of families walked their dogs together down the same sidewalk. All of these helped to set him somewhat at ease. But his stomach was tossing. And the tension in his spine made his entire body ache painfully.

She hesitated for a moment, then blew out a breath and nibbled on her bottom lip. The movement was enough to make his eyes almost flicker down. But he made sure not to. It was nothing that he would have wanted her to see before they were truly together. As it was, watching her bite or lick her lips was enough to make him want to shift his weight uncomfortably. He had always imagined her lips against his, how soft the plump flesh might feel.

He shook the thought off quickly. He had always respected her too much to make her feel uncomfortable with his presence. And he had been raised to be polite towards others around him, especially women. Unlike his grandfather, he had always strived for less crass behavior.

"I, um…I was wondering about what has been going on. I mean…is…is your grandpa doing better?" Anzu asked quietly, hesitating again. She shifted awkwardly in her seat and moved her elbows to rest on the tabletop.

He was tempted, for the briefest of seconds, to reach out and touch her hands. They were always so soft and warm and he had always enjoyed it when they had held hands when they were younger, before either had developed feelings for each other. His train of thought was so far on other things that he had to reconsider his words—which, in all reality, would have been a very confused, " _What_?"

Yugi frowned at her as he pieced together the words she had spoken, working on the statement for a moment. He kept his mouth shut tightly for a moment, then sighed quietly and reached up to run his fingers through his hair.

"He's…getting better," he decided to say, keeping his tone rather vague as his own thoughts began to drift again. His eyes flickered towards the window for the smallest fraction of a second as he struggled to pluck a new set of words into existence.

When he turned back, Yugi knew that Anzu had seen him, taken note of his struggles, and it made his stomach ache as he looked at her. She would not press, but she was worried. And thank the gods for the fact that she did question his behavior, as he could not choose between the task of protecting Yami or being the friend that he thought she deserved at the moment.

"He's…just a little more tired than usual. And he still needs some help with things. But he's recovering pretty well. I think he's almost over it."

He nearly flinched at the hopeful light that bloomed in her eyes. Because now he would have to crush that. His eyes flickered to the table and he traced a small pattern across the wood.

"But I…I don't think I'm comfortable with leaving him alone by himself for long."

Anzu blinked at him, surprised, and then frowned faintly at the statement. "That's understandable," she said quietly, nodding slightly. "I just…I guess I just miss hanging out with you, is all. You haven't been around to just spend time with us in a little while and…"

"I know. And I'm sorry." Yugi paused, hesitating only for a moment longer, and then reached out to touch her hand. He had barely registered the action, even as he leaned forward and smiled faintly. "But it will work out. When he's back on his feet and there's more time, then we can do what we want together. How about, when this all clears up, we go to dinner?"

The smile he gave her was bright but she only gave him a shadow of that. Her eyes looked a little glassy at the moment, as if he had rejected her harshly, but there was a sense of hope and happiness in her gaze that made his stomach twist faintly. They fell silent for a long minute. Anzu shifted a little bit in her seat. Yugi blinked, still feeling the touch of her hand in his, and realized belatedly that he had begun to trace circles on hers with his thumb.

Yugi wanted to say something more, to make her feel better, because it was nice to have plans and hope to make his life work around them as well. But his spine began to tighten furiously beneath his skin. And his flesh was beginning to seemingly vibrate over his bones.

The marrow had begun to grow heated. The sounds surrounding him had grown furious in tempo. The hammering of his heart made his head pound. He could smell and taste a million things on his tongue, sweat and stale food, with carbonated beverages too high in sugar. Someone cursed from across the room and it sounded as if it were right by his burning ear.

He froze, head snapping towards the window. The alarms were ringing in his head. His entire body was throbbing with tension. The muscles in his body had clenched. The marrow in his bones was molten but froze just as rapidly. He wanted to puke. He wanted to run. Instead he was stuck, staring blindly. There was such disturbance. There was too much going on.

He couldn't concentrate.

His fingers shook. His nails tapped into the table as he lurched slightly. Instinctively he withdrew from her. Her hand seemed to burn rather than soothe. She was staring at him. And her eyes on his face felt almost like fresh poison.

"I—I—I have to go."

He was choking, fighting to get the words out. He stumbled in an attempt to get up. But the booth seat held him prisoner. Yugi lurched forward when the table hit his stomach. He was winded for the smallest of seconds. Then he pushed quickly away from the cushioned seats and to his feet. He was unsteady. The world tilted around him. The pounding had grown tenfold.

He could hear Honda and Jonouchi nearby. They were about to head closer. He could sense them. But it did nothing to stop him.

He spun on his heel, head snapping back and forth for a moment, and then took off out the door. His name, he knew, was being called. He heard them as they tried to follow. But he was already bolting.

He did his best to hold back the wave of dread that pulsated in his blood. His ears were roaring. He could barely hear his own shoes on the asphalt. He struggled to hear past it all. If he could hear over his footsteps and the pounding, he would be able to determine the direction. He would be able to know where they came from. He would be able to know where they were versus his own placement. But now he could not tell if they were close. He could not sense if they were rapidly approaching or not. The thought occurred to him that perhaps they were dragging things out for their own pleasure. It made him sick.

There about two more small streets before he would reach the house. It would be shorter if he cut down one of the side alleys. But that would leave him vulnerable. His pace quickened somehow. He thought he was full out sprinting by now.

"Slow down, little Pure-Blood."

He nearly flinched backwards. The voice was so close. But when he glanced about himself, there was no one to be seen. He wondered for a moment. Was it possible that someone had been waiting ahead of him? Was it a tactic to throw him off course? Was it an attempt to make him panic?

Well, it was too late for that. He was already fully sprinting and he was too afraid to think straight. He was terrified. He was thoroughly panicked. There was no way to avoid such a truth.

His stomach was churning harder. He thought he might be sick at any moment. He forced himself to push such a thought aside. He could not lose his focus now. His footsteps seemed to be the only thing in the air. They seemed to be swallowing even his roaring heartbeat in his ears. He struggled to stay focused, to keep his thoughts on the place he needed to get to. But he turned suddenly, veering to the side.

He could feel them somehow. They were burning him. Their presence was making his knees feel weaker than ever. They were too close. He knew they were. He could only dimly recognize such a thing, however. His fear made it impossible to recognize such a thing.

The walls around him made him falter. Fuck, he had drifted into an alley. He spun, feet never touching the ground as he propelled himself backwards. The entranceway was clear. There was no one there. But there was still no guarantee that he would make it out of there without them catching him. His head snapped around again. He looked back and forth behind him. There were two exits. One of them led to the woods. The other led further into the city.

Rationally, he thought that perhaps going into the city was smarter. More people meant more witnesses. That meant that they were less likely to do anything, right? But his body had already begun to move. He was racing towards the trees before he could even think it all through completely. He was within the line of the foliage before he could pause and reconsider.

And it was possibly one of the dumbest decisions he had ever made.

He was tackled a few feet from the street. The momentum alone sent him flying. The ground blurred beneath him. His back ached as he landed hard. He hit the tree near the center of his spine. Then he dropped as the wind rushed from his lungs. He landed hard on his side. His back ached and pulsed furiously. The earth was hard packed. The straw scratched his skin.

Yugi couldn't see straight. There were splotches of white and black and stars with bright red that burst in his vision. He sputtered for a breath, desperate, and his frame wracked with the effort. He ached so fiercely he wanted nothing more than to roll up into a ball. But his body was frozen. He felt sick to his stomach. His eyes opened into thin slits. He panted for a breath.

His fingers twitched as he tried to regain a sense of balance. Something moved within his eardrums. His eyes opened further. He tipped his head up. A great gray beast was moving towards him. It was a mass of muscle and dark fur. There were hideous marks along the muzzle. And its paws were more immense than he had ever seen on a canine before.

"Finally, you've done something useful!"

Yugi wanted to burrow into the dirt at the hideous ring the voice left in his ears. The accent was so thick, the voice so light and flowery, that it made him flinch. But he could not move further than a twitch. And his heart was hammering. The gray beast in front of him paused. Its lips curled back to reveal canines so long and sharp as to look like knife blades shone before him.

The growl that left it was low and guttural, furious. It was enough to cause the blood in his veins to rush faster. He watched the wolf's head lower, ears pricking, the fur along its body rising into a furious bristle. It tossed its head forcefully as it shook, the hair bouncing and showing off more hideous scars where it had not grown back fully.

But it moved with such grace that it was terrifying. He flinched as the animal came closer. The teeth were bared. The gums were bright red. The nose was wrinkled angrily. The muzzle was pushed back. The eyes were a dark, hideous brown. A jagged scar traced the entirety of its right, pushing downwards and sideways to make a hideous formation almost like a sword drawn into the skin.

Its jaws opened, slavering. The eyes were burning. The pupils were dilated. When it came closer, his breath smelled of iron. He pressed back into the tree trunk. The wolf chomped its teeth. The teeth nearly plunged into his cheekbone.

"Do not harm him!" the voice snapped in a cold tone. Yugi's eyes shot upwards, staring from beneath his lashes. There was a man, tall and lanky, with silver hair, standing feet away. He looked as pale as a ghost, with an eye patch to cover the right side of his face. The clothes he wore were a dark fuchsia color. His shoes were immaculate and dressy. "The Pure-Blood must be taken in alive."

The wolf snarled and snapped its teeth. It bristled and its hackles rose angrily.

"I will have you skinned for your insolence. You know as well as I that Code Name Atem _must_ be brought back alive, damn it."

Yugi froze in place. The wolf snarled louder. His eyes grew somehow more furious. His lips wrinkled back further. His teeth glistened. He turned back to the small human. He moved forward, his paws nearly touching his skin. The nails grazed his throat but did not push down. When its head lowered again, there was something in those eyes. It was a dark and hideous thing, the line of his irises fierce with expression.

The breath that rushed over his face was harsh. He shivered. His fingers twitched again. Yugi blinked up at it once more. The wolf lowered its snarling mouth closer to his nose. The air it exhaled was burning. The scent of blood on its breath made his insides quake. But the look in its eyes was something he could not fathom.

 **All right, so! Code Name Atem! The name of the game is guessing who he actually IS! There are technically three of them throughout the story (not including the ones that are considered to BE Atem when they clearly aren't). One masquerades as Atem, one IS Atem, and the other thinks themselves to BE Atem. If you can name all three of them, I'll give you a one-shot of your choice (rating, genre, etc) as long as it pertains to the ships that I can stomach (which I'll give you a list of if you're interested). You'll have until chapter twenty-three when things start to get further wrapped around Atem and he gets mentioned more often than not.**

 **And, a helpful hint is this: All three of them are from the original series. None of them are from GX or 5D or Arc-V.**


	18. Bakura

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day (no update on June 2nd)**

 **Chapter Warnings:** **TORTURE (physical, not mental), Hallucinations, Bloodshed, Fighting, Character Death**

 **All right, so before you begin the chapter, let me explain the transmitter/chip/tracker that is used in the scene. It's a form of a microchip that would usually be implanted in a pet. This one, however, is a form of GPS as well; it's what would usually be used by the US Fish and Wildlife Services for animals such as grizzly bears, wild bison, elk, white-tailed deer and others. The mechanics of it and its features are somewhat changed, however. So, for this chip, the end of it blinks bright yellow and the life of the GPS signal would have lasted about 120 hours. That would have been the time they would have had to capture Yami. Also, I FULLY admit to not doing all that much research on this aspect. I've decided I'm going to do more in-depth research later, but not while I'm still trying to post and keep up with updates.**

 **And, no, that doesn't mean Yami is Atem. It just means that they're looking to catch some wolves.**

 **Also, Bakura doesn't know WHICH of them is Atem, just that one of them is the Pure-Blood that they're looking for.**

 **Seeing as Yugi was incapacitated, he was considered not to be a threat and so Yami was the only one aimed at with the intention of chipping if Bakura could not hold him still long enough to get allow him to be sedated with the same mixture of wolfsbane and silver that was used on Yugi.**

Chapter XVIII: Bakura

 _Work Log Entry XVIII: January, 1997_

 _January 11_

 _PB-A 26 is to be called Atem once more, after the acronym of which brought about his existence. The boss is pleased with his survival._

 _But no one is sure of how long he will remain._

 _He may lapse again._

 _So we shall remain monitoring every second he continues breathing._

The wolf withdrew only when the human got closer. It paced back a couple of steps. But it was furious. Its eyes were still hideously dark. Its muzzle was still wrinkled back. It looked as if it might lunge at the human at any moment. But Yugi could see the wariness there as well. He could see the hatred and the caution.

This wolf would have killed the human long ago if he had the chance.

But something held him back.

The wolf remained close, however. It looked immensely angered. It was agitated as it moved about. The movements were sharp and vicious. The sound of its paws was rapid against the ground. The spring of the straw beneath did nothing to cushion the hardness of the earth beneath. The wolf paced several steps back and forth in either direction.

"So help me, move the wrong way," the human spat, spinning on the canine. The wolf chomped its teeth, slavering again. "Do it, brat, and I will end you."

The wolf pricked its ears further. Its hackles rose. Its tail rose into the air. The teeth glistened with saliva. The ferocity should have made the human back away. But he seemed to simply be prepared for it all. He seemed to know exactly what Yugi had realized only moments before. He would not attack him. He knew he would not kill him. There was something disgusting between the two of them that said the wolf could not disobey.

The male turned away and from his pocket a small black case was drawn. Yugi blinked at him. The wolf shuddered visibly and paced more angrily. It twitched and snarled and moved further away as if afraid of the very contents themselves. The case looked almost like something he would have seen to carry glasses. But he knew better than to assume something so innocent lay inside.

He struggled, hoping to get to his feet somehow, to make a run for it. But the wolf was there. And Yugi knew it would attack him. It might draw blood. It might not stop at that. And the human was so tall. He imagined he could kick hard enough to subdue him should it come to that. So Yugi remained still, contemplating and feeling sick to his stomach.

"But I have a gift for you first," the man purred. The case opened and Yugi recognized more noticeably the shape of it. It was longer, narrower, than he had seen at first glance. And so the teenager was not surprised to see the needle that was drawn from inside of it. But the liquid was a hideous purple, with traces of something metallic in it. The scent of it, as he flicked the needle, was intoxicating.

It was harsh and cold. It burned his nose and made his blood dance. There was something hideous and unearthly in it. It was light and woodsy. The touch of it made his body tingle. But there was something wet as well, like rain in the air. A tickling trace of something like pepper came as a light bite with each inhale.

He shivered. It was almost like humid pine needles that had been baked by the sun. Yugi's eyes burned as he looked at the man standing over him. An instinct in his body told him to run. But rationality told him to remain in place. He could not outrun them. They could easily kill him should they see fit.

For a moment, his mind told him to beg for mercy. It told him to plea and deny anything and everything they might say. But the needle pricked his skin. His wrist seized in pain. His entire body became rigid. The wolf cast him a nervous, furious glance. It shuddered, then backed up further.

The infliction came in pulsing waves. First, there was a terrible heat. Then, there was a crash of ice. His marrow felt molten. His spine tightened further. His heart began to race faster. His skin itched and crawled. Wave after wave of fire and ice crashed through him. His body began to burst with pain. His lungs grew tight. His stomach clenched furiously. His skin pulsed and twisted, knotting. Each nerve ending lit on fire. His thoughts flickered away and melted into darkness.

His vision was swimming. His eyes seemed to vibrate in their sockets. He twitched harder. His body jerked. A spasm rocked his frame. He scrabbled for a grip on the ground. The straw cut his palm. His nails scraped uselessly at the earth. He trembled. His body went through another spasm.

Yugi drew in a breath that felt like it might break his chest. His shoulder ground into the earth when he twisted. His spine arched and jerked violently. His legs kicked. His arms pulsed with muscle spasms once more. He opened his mouth and the breath that left him became a furious gurgle. Something trailed like fire up the back of his throat. His lungs pulled and spat with desperation to breathe again.

His eyes were wide open, staring blankly. The pupils had constricted. His eyes continued to vibrate in their sockets. He panted and bile rushed forth. His lungs ached and pulsed. His vision was dancing with black. The edges burst with darkness. Bursts of bright white and blood red filled his vision. His thoughts burned further. He thrashed, puking again. His eyes rolled up in the back of his head for a moment.

"Hmm…perhaps I didn't put a high enough dose of wolfsbane," the man said curiously, raising a brow. The wolf snarled, pacing furiously. The teenager jerked and puked again. He convulsed so heavily his frame shook once more. The wolf raced forward then back, continuous in movement. A low, keen snarl trailed each step. It could not fathom the task of simply watching this happen. Subjection to such torment lent an undeniable sympathy to such terrible pain.

It snapped its jaws and paced back again. Yugi could barely see it. It was traced by shadows. It was pushed by red. The white made its eyes look like stars bursting. The claws seemed to vanish into the straw. The legs seemed to ripple and burst with shadows. The small teen let out a gurgle of a scream. His heart was racing harder, somehow trying to push back. And his skin was pulsating. His organs were shifting and melding and pushing. His bones were burning and shattering. He trembled. He puked again.

Yet, somehow, he felt a strange sensation of calm rushing through him. Even as his body went through a hideous spasm and his fingers flexed uselessly, it came to him. He puked and gurgled again, and his bones snapped rapidly. Bursts and flares of pain swamped him. His vision clouded further. The darkness leaped at him from all sides. The wolf disappeared from his sight. He throbbed and trembled. He thrashed and convulsed again. Each bone in his body shuddered and pulsated. And then they splintered and pushed.

At first, he could not fathom further pain. But it came in waves. It came in bursts. It came in currents. It tore through him. It ravaged him. It destroyed him.

His lungs stopped sputtering. His heart came to a stop. His body twitched then fell still.

But somehow he could hear. The wolf was still moving. His bones were still breaking and pushing. They were still rearranging. His skin was splitting. The man had begun chuckling. Yugi shuddered and his heart began to beat again. His breath came in a desperate gasp. His fingers curled and thickened. Every bone in his body molded further. He was wracked with trembles and yet, somehow, his body continued its efforts.

He puked and blood flooded his senses. He shuddered and his skin split further. His bones jutted and pulsed. The marrow ached and splintered. His nerves danced with fire. He let out another strangled noise. And then something else entered his mind.

It was a light but somehow heavy footfall. The impact of it seemed to make the earth shake. He shuddered. His heart raced. He could barely hear. He found it almost impossible to feel anymore. Yugi gasped and sputtered. The blood oozed from his open jaws. The darkness was receding faintly. The forest came to him in rushes and tugs of scent. His body trembled and convulsed. His nose burned and itched. His head pounded.

He focused on the wolf. Its massive shape moved briskly before him. It paced and hesitated. It snarled and spun. It watched him, fearful and anxious. It studied the man with anger and hatred. It moved faster.

And then it stopped.

Yugi felt as if the entirety of the wolf had shifted beneath him. His own trembling failed for a moment. His heart ached and jerked in his chest. His lungs convulsed painfully. But the axis of pain shifted. And the world seemed to follow its lead.

Something had come to them. Something had crept forward from the trees. He, like the wolf, sensed it. They both stopped. The man froze and then straightened, stunned. The teenager watched stupidly.

The wolf shuddered, then snarled. But it did not move. The man breathed out, "What is that?" Yugi convulsed and tipped his head back. But for a moment he could not see. And then something massive, brutal, the shade of darkness of likes he had never seen before, hurled itself forward.

The man reacted faster, however. Whereas Yugi was confused, he was not. The man spun to face it. And from seemingly nowhere, he had drawn something. It was nothing but a black box-shape to the small teenager. But it very abruptly became clear what it was. As the entity began to close on him, something launched forward from that small box.

The newcomer fell to the ground in a heap. The body went through a rapid convulsion for the briefest of seconds. Then it rolled and twisted, climbing to its feet. Teeth snapped at thin air in front of it, and something sparked and sizzled.

He tried to focus, but the image was blurry before him.

But he still knew, deep inside of him, that it was Yami.

"Don't you know better, you stupid wolf?" the man laughed loudly. "I swear, all of you beasts have to be the dumbest creatures to walk the earth. I knew you were coming. You all come to protect your little Pure-Bloods, isn't that right?"

The gray wolf tilted its head towards this newcomer. A small snarl escaped it but the larger canine did not turn to look. His lips drew back furiously instead. His eyes, cast dark and furious red with the lack of light, glittered with bloodshed. His teeth were longer, sharper, and the saliva there made them look like bloodied weapons. He bore his teeth at the human, tail raised. His back leg flared with pain, aching from the jolt of electricity.

But it did not stop him from preparing himself for the leap. Instead he raised his hackles. His claws scraped at the earth in long, thick lines. He braced his weight and snarled loudly. His ears quivered, taking in Yugi's state more than the wolf nearby.

"Well, little wolf, let me introduce you to someone." His fingers snapped. The gray wolf beside him came forward. It spun to face him. Yami flattened his ears against his head. His head snapped towards the other canine. "Bakura, show him why you're our most ruthless and efficient killer."

The gray wolf barreled towards him. Yami stiffened his body to take the blow. He reared up on his back legs as they collided. Bakura's body pressed roughly into his. Their forelegs locked and his claws scraped his shoulder. Teeth snapped next to his cheek. The darker canine twisted just enough to avoid the attack. His right leg buckled beneath him. His jaw snapped a second too soon. His teeth caught the pouch of his cheek.

The pain made the gray wolf snarl. He jerked, rising onto his back legs again. The movement pulled Yami with him. His feet scrabbled for purchase. The straw slid beneath his paws. He struggled. He could not find it. He collapsed. Bakura lurched forward with the sudden movement. He almost fell onto all four legs again. Yami used the momentum to pull back and rear up to claw at his throat. The gray wolf jerked his head and he was forced to release. His cheek stung furiously from the bite. His left leg pushed at his shoulders, trying to force him back a step.

But he was nothing if not persistent. He redirected the new blow to his face. His teeth caught a tuft of fur, tugging it out. Bakura used the distraction to sink his own fangs into his cheek. He threw his weight, attempting to knock Yami off his feet. If he could push him into the snow, he could pin him. But the black wolf pushed harder forward. He threw them both off balance for a brief second. His momentum sent him into Bakura's shoulder, teeth digging in furiously. The bone popped painfully.

The gray wolf snarled furiously, the pain too much to be contained. He kept his grip on his cheek, however. He held him there. The two of them were frozen for a moment. They both snarled, then tugged fiercely. The skin split on his cheek. Blood came into his mouth. Bakura snarled louder. Yami tossed his muscular neck. The movement threw him off balance, knocking him to and fro. He struggled, biting away a yelp, and reared up to try to push him away with his restrained limb.

He did not have to do anything more than tighten his grip. Bakura was rendered immobile in this forelimb. He could not lower it to the ground again. He would have to balance on three legs as opposed to his regular four. He hopped a few small steps awkwardly. He tried again to toss his weight. Yami held as tightly as steel jaws. He held himself for a moment, restrained and struggling. Losing a limb in battle was nothing that could truly be recovered. But if he could just get him in the snow…

He screamed as Yami threw them both down. It was a simple, hideous jerk of his head. His paws slid from beneath him. He cried out angrily. He bucked, jerking and scrambling. But the black wolf did not release him. They jerked at each other, tearing at their skin and failing to dislodge the other. Snarls of frustration and growing pain made them both pause for a brief moment. A new tactic was needed.

He blinked and released. His forelimb dropped shakily. Yami threw himself onto his back legs. Bakura was pulled into a standing position. The movement tugged too painfully upon his jaw to keep his grip. And Yami took the chance to pull himself forward and clamp his onto his face. The gray canine panted, raising his head some. The teeth narrowly missed his right eye. They dug instead into his cheek just beneath.

Bakura reared up, paws grasping at darker, broader shoulders. His limbs pushed hard but Yami did not let go. He dropped to all fours again. The gray wolf fell with him. His right leg was still around his throat. His mouth was open in a furious snarl. He tried to push out of his grip in vain. He struggled, tossing his head, but Yami simply centered his weight. He could not move further than to try to knock him off balance with his left paw against his leg.

The black wolf ignored the tactic. He rose to his feet again. The other scrabbled at the air in a desperate maneuver. His claws missed his eye. The change of strategy was not unnoticed. He tossed his head. Bakura snarled furiously, panting for breath. Yami pressed his paws back onto the straw. He pushed on either side of Bakura's legs.

The gray wolf was infuriated. With a sudden and desperate movement, he threw himself to his back legs again. The violent twist of his body made Yami stumble, his jaws releasing. He stared at him, mouth bloodied, eyes stunned. Had he held on, such action would have broken his neck.

Bakura came at him full force. His teeth angled for his throat. Yami ducked, then turned his head. His teeth grasped for his cheek. He pressed into him furiously. The other wolf scrabbled as his head was pushed into the snow. He did not surrender, however. His teeth clicked and locked onto his muzzle. Yami recoiled, his vissibrae pulsating with pain. The gray canine was on his feet again immediately.

His back leg was growing weaker. He chomped his teeth towards his face again. Bakura allowed him to catch his cheek this time. Survival instinct said to allow anything but the eye. If he was rendered blind, he could not win. His paws flailed as Yami jerked him upright again.

But he tilted his head and pulled hard enough to escape his grip. He could not feel the pain in his jaw. The tactic was just useful enough to cause the black wolf to struggle with the fur in his mouth. He drew in a deep breath as the other spat the tuft away and bore his teeth at him again.

He flung himself for his throat once more. Yami dodged just fast enough to avoid such a strike. His teeth clamped into his shoulder. The wolf shook his head, trying to pull him off balance angrily. The black wolf struggled for footing, bracing himself.

Yami pulled him with him when he got onto his hind legs again. Their forelimbs locked again for a brief second. Teeth dug into his cheek once more. He missed, snarling, and both of them circled for the briefest of seconds.

Yami held himself still as Bakura came forward. He angled his head, then snapped his jaw. He caught his jaw, just at the corner of his cheek. Then he forced his entire body into another attack. It sent Bakura's head down and into the snow for a second. The black wolf went for his forehead, aiming for his skull. The gray canine backed up.

Yami snapped his jaws just inches from the straw. He panted, tongue curling against his nose as he bore his fangs again. Both of them stared for a moment. The brown eyes were more panicked than fierce now. He looked more terrified than Yami had ever seen an opponent. It was clear that this wolf was lucid. He was not as the other two had been in the woods. He was not drugged but he would still fight him. And he would do everything in his power to survive it all.

His eyes flickered towards the form on the ground a few feet away. Their fight had moved them further back than he had thought. But it did nothing to make him feel worse. Yugi was lying there, almost perfectly still but for small touches of his breathing. A gradual innate horror began to swell in his blood. What if, while he was distracted fighting Bakura, the other boy might die?

What would he do then?

Yami shivered but then sprang at the other wolf. He moved to claw his shoulder. On his hind legs again, he went to overpower him using a bite to his head. But it was Yami's raised head, mouth agape, that caught purchase. His right leg was within his teeth immediately, and he pulled him hard again.

It took a moment for the other to react. He was caught by the need to retain his balance more than to fight for the briefest of moments. It passed, however. Teeth caught and held his scruff, shaking his neck violently. Yami was tugged forward. His jaw was pressed into the ground with the force of it.

The black wolf pulled on his paw, then tossed his head. Bakura was thrown off balance enough to shake him off. The black wolf's teeth caught his shoulder once more. His forelimb was tossed hard, rendering him all but unable to get up. Then he went for the throat.

Bakura's right leg buckled as he lunged. He missed. Teeth sank into his cheek once more. Yami tossed his head hard enough to dislodge the gray wolf. He bore his teeth and snarled, Bakura mimicking him furiously. They stared at one another, eyes fierce. Then they shot forward again, trying once more for the other's throat.

He caught his shoulder again and put more of his weight into the attack. He forced him down further. Bakura caught his neck and tugged. The black wolf shifted his balance. He stumbled as the gray wolf jerked his head. His footing slipped but somehow held all the same. He focused his weight more forcefully into his back legs. Then he pushed forward. His left paw rested next to the other's head. His right was raised but ready to catch himself at any moment should he need to.

The action made Bakura stumble, struggling. Yami caught himself as the other tried to roll from his grip. He let go of his shoulder, watching him. His leg buckled again, pain coursing through him. His weight faltered, his limb trembling. Bakura came for his flank. He stumbled, unable to catch himself. He was caught on his side, thrown there forcefully. He struggled to kick his legs and get to his feet again. He scrambled to try to get up again. But the other canine held strong onto the bleeding muscle. His teeth had serrated his skin. And the red liquid was soaking through his fur, pouring into his mouth.

Yami tried to push him off with his limbs. His back legs kicked and flailed. But Bakura held fast. His lower body was pressed into his lighter-furred frame. His left leg was pushed into the dirt. His right was practically useless with the pain that still pulsed through it. He was desperate as he tried to angle his neck to grasp at the brown-eyed wolf.

Bakura held him there like that for several minutes. He was breathing too hard to keep his grip, however. His tongue lolled as he panted heavily for breath. Yami kicked him hard with his hind legs again. The gray wolf stumbled back, snarling in frustration.

Yami leaped to his feet, blood flowing freely from the wound. He took off before Bakura could think to attempt to stop him. He was limping painfully, his steps jerky and awkward. But he managed easily to get yards between them.

Bakura caught him in the right back leg. Yami tumbled to his stomach first. Then he rolled to try to dislodge him. His back arched as he struggled to pull Bakura closer to get at his skull. The gray wolf released him, then went for his face again. He hurled himself closely enough to shield his body for a moment.

Yami heard a curse. His eyes flickered about but his focus remained on the gray wolf. Bakura had his jaws opened wide. His eyes had grown ferocious, the panic long gone but replaced with a smaller fear.

But Yami could feel something of that emotion coursing through him now. He had not planned to die in the woods. Not like this, anyways. And what would then happen to Yugi?

As they stared at each other, the ferocity in the other's eyes shook him to his core.

Both of them were frozen again, rendered immobile by the pressure seizing their bodies.

The black wolf shot forward. His teeth angled for his throat. The gray wolf sidestepped him. Yami caught his shoulder again. Teeth dug into his skull.

They were both frozen again, exhausted by the emotional trauma that held them there. The panting was harsh, heavy, and they both struggled for breath even as they refused to release each other. The fear kept them frozen, immobile. If the other got the advantage, there was no chance that they might survive.

"Hold him there."

Bakura blinked, eyes flickering. His gaze was on the human's immediately. His fur bristled. His stomach tossed. He bore his teeth, then threw them both sideways. Yami scrabbled for his footing. Then he kicked at him and struggled to roll to his feet. Bakura let him, then lunged at him angrily.

They rolled with the impact. Yami snarled, angered but fearful all the same. The human cursed loudly this time. The gray wolf held him there for a moment, pinned and exhausted. But his entire body covered his for a moment. And where his teeth dug into his cheek, the effort was minimal at best. It was not a harsh grip, but so light that the red-eyed wolf could almost ignore it.

Yugi could only faintly make out their presence from his spot. It was not so much the angle but more his very position which rendered him incapable. He was so tired, his vision so strained and weak, that they came in shades rather than shapes. They had no definition but for splotches of color. And they seemed rapidly to dissolve into nothingness but beautiful drizzles of white and silver, with the faintest of touches of gold and blue.

The trees, littered with the shed pine beneath, began to flicker. Colors of dull brown and hardened red clay began to shift. The trees, so opaque and sturdy in their harsher brown and gray, began to slowly lose color. Rather than the fallen straw and faint sunlight coming from the setting sun, there was an expanse of white. The ribbons of orange and pink, where the clouds looked almost sore where they were touched by purple shadows, had dissolved into blackness.

Spots of bright white like gems shone in the sky, scattered about beautifully, traced and outlined with silver brushstrokes to pronounce the galaxy. Curls of bright blue and dark violet were spread about the dark sky. Trails of dark red almost like blood were touched with light slivers of purple, coaxing them to blend further. A bright moon was glowing silver, though the shadows appeared dark cobalt in shade and the light that was given off seemed softer, more white than anything else.

The trees had become outlined in silver and white, with hints of gold and touches of bright blue. Their edges glowed as if ethereal, with branches that stretched high into the sky with ends that disappeared into the darkness but for their slender designs. There was a small hint of warmth despite the snow that littered the earth. He could see inches of it, so thick that he almost seemed it might cover his muzzle should he push it aside with his nose.

But there was also straw, somehow. And there were dashes of red like dirt. There were glimpses of bright orange and slivers of pink. And the sun glowing gold. The clouds were traced with purple to outline the depths of them. And the air felt colder than he remembered moments before.

Yugi's body was limp where it lay sprawled as it was. He could not fathom the ability to move. It all hurt. It all pulsed and ached. But sometimes it drifted. It seemed to slither away in the air like a snake. It would move aside, then come back. It came with the way the area around him changed so rapidly. For all of the hints of snow also was the alleviation of the pain. Only then was he able to think straight.

But the pain also brought a heavy and double-edged focus that he could not shake. For, in the back of his mind, an urgency began to reawaken. He shifted his weight and struggled to grip the earth with a claw. It did nothing for him, but he tried regardless. That urgency which had woken inside of him grew tenfold as the seconds passed. Something was happening. Something important—and it needed his attention. It was disarming to him that he could not truly focus on it. But it was so terribly important too.

His eyes were unfocused, glazed, and the pain made it nearly impossible to see straight. Jagged lines made up the foliage above his head. And the straw looked like skeletal bones that had been shed by the trees. He panted and his lungs felt as if they might burst. He moved his head and his neck felt as though it might snap. Every moment was another second of pain which made him weaker.

But it also made his vision sharper. It made the sightlessness slither away in brief bursts. And he could see for those short seconds. As his paws struggled for purchase and his heart felt as if it might stutter and fold to pieces within his chest, it let him see.

The smudges of color became sharp, defined. The black spot, so unusual against the rotting earth, became a shape. That gray splotch of color, took on a definition. They materialized before him, took on weight and shape, forms that he could not at first identify.

Then a flash of red made his head spin. A flicker of black amidst it, with glimmers of the sun setting overhead, made his heart pick up in pace. Recognition burst forth in his head. The other boy—the one who spent his time in his room, the one who drank protein shakes and took his medication. Yugi blinked, for at first no name would come to him. And then a realization dawned on him, bright as the sun and as painful as the burn that had once singed his skin.

The name came to him, small and almost invisible in his mind. It was so new, so foreign, that it took him a moment to collect it.

Yami.

It was Yami.

Yugi bore his teeth as his claws struggled to sink into the earth. The straw was spongy. The earth was too hard. His body was bleeding. His pores were expelling something. His jaws smelled of bile and blood. When he blinked, he saw only clumps of what looked like mud, trailed with splotches of yellow and foaming saliva.

His mouth was swollen. His tongue was too large for his jaws. He closed his eyes. Exhaustion was tugging at his senses. The darkness was so welcoming. But when he opened them again, the forest was spread before him. Snow was packed against the ground. The trees were vibrant, colorful, outlined in blue and silver, with touches of white and gold like the stars themselves. It was stunning. It was beautiful.

But it was also wrong.

Yugi tried to force his mouth shut and his tongue felt so terribly pressed that he opened it again. There was something along his jaws, flecking them. He blinked, dazed, confused. The pain radiated across his skin. The trees became solid in color. The scent of blood of vomit was heavy. His head felt too big. His tongue was too swollen.

His legs were weak. He could not move his toes. His skin twitched beneath his long coat. He shivered. His body was wracked with a seizure for a brief moment. Bubbles came along his lips. They foamed outwards, pushed until they hit the forest floor. He blinked.

His saliva, it came to him moments later. He was foaming at the mouth.

He could not take his eyes off of the display in front of him. Yami and the gray wolf. They were panting, struggling to hold the other at bay. He looked ready to collapse. The other did too. Blood kept dripping from a flank wound. The other's shoulder was bleeding profusely. Clumps of fur littered the straw. He could see blood falling from a couple of cheek wounds. Yami's back right leg…it looked so weak, so flimsy. It was shaking, even as he stood still and they stared at each other.

The other's white forelimb looked ready to collapse. His front left one, it looked ready to buckle at any moment. Yugi could see it, as he could see the blood dripping from the shoulder. He shivered. The wolves were frozen. They stared at each other again.

He tried again to find purchase on the ground. There was something being said. He could hear it, but he could not understand it. The tone was frustrated. The words were a jumble. He did not understand.

But the wolves did.

The gray one stiffened. Its head turned slightly. Its teeth drew back. Yami stood staring at Bakura, but his head, too, turned. His eyes flashed. His lips curled. They did not look at one another for a moment. All of their focus was on the human and his words.

"Hold him still, damn it."

Bakura tilted his head. His eyes flickered to Yami. The black wolf was frozen. His fur was quivering. His breathing was ragged. Their fight had stretched out so long that it was wearing on them both. The minutes had seemed to become hours. The hours had become days.

He was exhausted.

He was bleeding and fatigued.

He had not eaten in days.

Yami was well fed, heavier in body weight than him. He also had a stronger jaw. He was more dangerous than him, in all actuality. But it did nothing to favor him. He was weakened somehow.

He did not seem as strong as he should have been.

And the jolt of electricity had not been the only thing to force him into such a standstill.

There was something off balance inside of him.

Bakura detected it. But he could not pinpoint it.

But he himself was so exhausted as to want to simply lie down. It was mere loyalty that kept him there. It was mere survival that kept him on his feet. It was mere love that made him able to position himself to fight Yami back a step. He had long ago forgotten to care for the thought of saving himself. His loyalties were as they should have been, as they needed to be, and death seemed more like a welcome friend than it did an enemy.

But still he stood there, waiting, watching Yami. And Yami panted and snarled, watching him and the human. He looked shaken, but not to the point of desperation. And he was not willing to die. He was too young to. He could see it in his body. He could see it in his eyes.

It was as if the black wolf's soul had crept to the forefront. There was not an ounce of him that was willing to take this fight as a permanent dismissal of his life. And it was clearer than ever, as those red eyes flickered away briefly, that it was not only himself who he fought for.

The white wolf, who breathed so raggedly and shook so violently. That was who Yami was fighting for besides himself. Bakura could see that. He did not know that the human could, however.

But he knew the black wolf saw it too. There was a glazed nature about the other's eyes. That gaze, so sharply set as to be terribly dark against the black of his lids, was glassy. It was distorted. It was unfocused. It was _blind_. He could not see. Or at least not clearly. He was struggling. And Bakura was not sure how much longer he could hold back without clearly giving up his own game of prolonging this fight.

But the weariness in his bones did nothing to prevent this. He would hold out as long as was necessary. Or until he could no longer. He did not expect to fight a Pure-Blood and survive. It was against the laws of nature to expect such a thing. The human was a fool.

Yami moved forward. Bakura turned to meet him.

They were blobs again in Yugi's eyes. They danced and wove together, made a thicker splatter of color, but they were not defined. Yugi could not truly focus on them. Nor could he keep them apart. There were droplets of red, coloring the air, littering the straw. It all began to look the same. It was an indeterminable mesh of shades.

He twitched again. His breathing came ragged and deep. But it was his first true inhale. It held in his lungs and did not shake his body as the others had. His organs did not expel nor did he choke on his tongue or the foam that billowed from his jaws. The gurgling had stopped. His aching had grown tenfold but the throbbing felt more healing than deadly. So he welcomed it.

He welcomed the sharpness of the straw, the way the trees flickered and then became solid again. He welcomed the way the ground was first littered with straw and then blanketed with snow. He drew in deep breaths, smelled his vomit and blood more than he did anything else. He twitched a toe and relished in the sensation of movement. He reveled in the actuality of being in possession of his own body once more. He panted and stretched. He watched his breath come in puffs of bright white.

And the air seemed to clear for brief seconds. The knowledge of Yami and this gray wolf became more apparent. It became the focus of his mind. It was the forefront of his thoughts. It was the very thing that made Yugi find the ability to shift once more.

He was so weak that at first his attempt failed him. He could not grasp the earth. Nor could he find it in his muscles to attempt to push himself onto his belly. He shuddered and for a moment he wanted nothing more than to wait it out.

But Yami had come here to help him.

And the least he could do was return the favor.

So Yugi pushed himself. The sensation was foreign. It caused his limbs to burn. His marrow felt cold, glacial, within his bones. He panted, huffing and gasping. His ears twitched and quivered. His claws scraped the earth. The straw slid beneath his moving limbs. He bore his teeth. He dragged out another intense breath. Then he pulled. His leg quaked and burned.

Yugi nearly whimpered but swallowed it down. His paw twisted and curled, the claws digging into the hard ground. He quivered. His body shook violently. He panted again. Then he tugged harder. It was barely a centimeter but it was progress. The realization that his body had not failed him, that he could in fact move forward and maybe make his way towards Yami was a powerful one. It was just enough to fuel him forward.

"Damn it. Para and Dox could have done better."

He looked up at the other two wolves. Yami and the gray canine were on their back legs, biting and tearing at the other's face. Small tufts of white and black fur were falling, blood dripping on the ground again. Both of them untangled a moment later, snarling and panting once more. They glared at each other, teeth bared, but neither seemed to be stepping down or going to attack for the moment.

It occurred to him that the two wolves were almost the same size. The gray was obviously more slender, but their height was equal. Their shoulder width seemed the same as well. It was the chest and the tuck of the belly that were different. The gray wolf was slighter, his chest smaller. Yami was a bit heavier, with a somewhat broader chest.

But they were both fast, vicious, and they had an instinct to survive that pushed them towards fighting again. So Yugi was not surprised to see them in a stalemate as he struggled to his belly and laid there for a moment to catch his breath. It was not at all surprising to see them both frozen, eyes dilated, snarling but not moving forward. Both their legs looked as if they might buckle at any moment.

Yugi wondered if his own would hold his weight long enough to travel there. It was a good few feet. He was not sure that he would manage it. He shivered, then glanced over his shoulder briefly.

The man was so focused on the two of them—no, on _Yami_ —that he had not noticed him. He thought for a moment, with a bloodlust he had never before known, to turn his teeth on him. He thought to snarl and snap and tear his skin and spill his blood and rip his head from his body.

But Yugi instead remained crouched there. He blinked at him, then turned his head away.

The two wolves circled once, then lunged at each other. It was becoming apparent, with this new, keener focus in his mind, that the gray wolf was leading this dance. Yami had gone on the defensive, merely dodging and attacking only when challenged first. He had backed down from the lead, panting and tired, with a leg that quaked every few seconds.

He was amazed that it did not collapse beneath him.

Yugi dragged himself forward. His chest was sticky with the vomit that scraped against it as he moved. His coat would be covered in blood and yellow bile. But he could not find it in himself to care. There was no force on the face of the earth that would make him think to care about such a thing.

He crawled forward, belly low to the ground, watching and waiting. His limbs were tired and punished him at every step. He was exhausted and his legs flared with fire. But it did not stop him. With the decline of foam in his jaws and the lack of vomit terrorizing his body, so his pain had become steady and constant. It did not flare horrifically or tear into him like teeth. He was healing. He could feel that.

It was terrible. And it was slow. But it was happening.

So Yugi held himself as still as he could manage. And he hoped to the gods that it might alleviate enough to intervene in this fight. Because he realized that Yami could not do this for much longer.

And the way the other stopped so often and circled and charged him said he was trying to run him out of energy. And he was also gauging his strength. He was trying to wear him down, would kill him when he got to that point of exhaustion.

Yugi would not let that happen.

He waited, watching them. The wolf favored his right side more than his left. He circled that way more often. Yami fell in line naturally. But he also used both sides to throw the gray wolf away from him when he could.

Yugi shivered. The human still had not noticed him. He crept forward, crawling almost mindlessly. He could help him. He could save him. He _would_ save him.

With this thought he pushed himself to move a little faster. They seemed, every time he took a step, to get further from him. But he wondered if it was simply his mind playing such a trick on him. Because he did not think either had the energy to move too far away as it was.

Yami spotted him. As he crept forward again, the black wolf's head snapped to attention. His eyes grew wide, startled. And it was just enough to send the gray wolf straight into him. Yami cried out, snarling and then scrambling. The wolf had him by the throat, though he was not sure that the grip was deadly.

Regardless, Yugi threw himself forward. The ache in his limbs faded into nothing. The speed with which he propelled himself was stunning. It felt almost as if his feet did not touch the ground. He hit Bakura hard enough to throw him.

Yami struggled, gasping and panting. His eyes were dilated, horrified. His head snapped around. The white wolf had gotten the other canine by the throat. But the momentum had sent them both flying.

When Yami got to his feet, panting, his concern dissipated. Yugi was heaving with breath, but his teeth were bright red. His face was stained up to his eyes. His ears were colored brightly with blood. Saliva dripped from his mouth. A frothy foam expelled from his jaws. But his eyes were clear and his body was shaking with pure ferocity.

It was, as Yami came forward a step, terrifying to behold. The usually gentle teenager had attacked him with such power as to sever his head from his body. Bakura's head lay feet away, tossed from the impact. His body was completely still, decapitated. The black and gray and white of his body was soaked in bright red.

Yami panted, startled. Yugi spun on him, growling for a moment before his expression cleared. They stared at each other and the white wolf peered at him with a certain terror to his expression that Yami was not sure how to appease. He thought to nuzzle him, perhaps whine and lick his cheek, but the moment passed. In his hesitation to move, the other wolf had reacted to something else entirely.

With a hideous snarl, his entire face wrinkled with the effort of it, he sprang forward. Yami turned his head, startled. The human screamed as they collided. Yugi had thrown him backwards, slammed him into the ground. The impact was enough in itself to knock the man unconscious. The blow to the head was all but enough to concuss him.

Yami turned his head, panting. Yugi raised his head from where he was laying on the man's chest. He was too exhausted to move, his limbs haphazardly thrown about him. He whined, a pathetic noise that made Yami shiver. The black wolf hazarded a glance around, fur bristling briefly with tension. He did not sense anyone, but where there was one, there were sure to be others.

He looked to the other white wolf for a moment. Then he hurried forward. Yugi blinked at him, raising his head a little more. Yami hesitated for a moment, then leaned forward and snatched his scruff in his jaws. It was not a gentle action. He was too afraid to make it such a thing. He grabbed too hard. The skin split. Yugi yelped. But he did not fight him. And Yami strained his neck as his leg quaked and he struggled to pull him forward with him.

Yugi's limbs scrabbled for purchase, trying to use the black wolf as a way to get his bearings, but it failed. He fell again, panting, and whined low in his throat. Yami ignored him, disregarded his efforts, and tugged harder. The straw did the favor of sliding beneath them. It slipped and pulled forward, bunching together in front of the white wolf. And it did well to keep their movements consistent. Had it been pure dirt, Yami was sure he would not have managed it.

As it was, his back leg buckled beneath him and he nearly collapsed. Yugi yelped again, but held still for him to find his balance once more. Minutes stretched into what felt like hours. They got only a yard away when the white wolf convulsed, shaking and panting. Yami was forced to release him, gasping for breath and sniffing at his cheek to check his breathing.

Yugi looked at him, blue-violet eyes solemn and tired. But he pressed his weight into his paws, focusing it there, and struggled to push himself to his feet. The first attempt resulted in him nearly landing on his chin. Yami caught him just barely by the scruff, more gently than the first time. Then he helped him, tugging and nearly wrenching his own neck with the effort.

On shaky legs, tired and coughing from his oncoming convulsion, Yugi cast him a grateful look. The two of them blinked at each other. Yami leaned forward, touched his nose to his shoulder, and breathed gently against his skin. It was meant to be reassuring more than anything, but there was an intimacy that seemed to linger in it that made Yugi quake for a brief moment.

He shivered. It seemed almost like something a lover would share with their partner. But Yugi did nothing to dissuade his gentle action. And he reveled in it, in fact, for the seconds that it lasted. They looked at each other for a single moment after that, and then the white wolf stumbled forward a step. He wanted, as Yami hovered and looked ready to help him at any moment, for nothing more than the ability to reassure him.

He would be okay. He would have to be okay. It would work out. He would make himself walk. It was just the fact that his limbs were so stiff. And his body ached so much. It was not that his limbs were too weak to carry him.

He was able.

He _would_ be okay.

But there was nothing he could do to say such a thing, so instead he tried to wag his tail and take another step forward.

Yami followed him, a step behind, casting anxious glances around them. Yugi picked up his speed from halting steps to a heavy limping trot. They made it through the foliage, stopping several long yards away. The black wolf circled him anxiously once, but did not rush him to his regain his feet again. He panted, gasping and huffing, and finally, Yami took a minute to relax as well. They sat together, both hunched and sharing desperate breaths.

Yugi watched him. He was shaky from his ragged breathing, but he seemed okay. His leg no longer seemed to be straining itself. The wounds on his cheek were no longer bleeding. He seemed almost healed. But he could tell that when they began to run again, he would limp. And his back leg would hurt him more than he let him know. He was sure that a bolt of electricity was not something to be shaken off so lightly. He would not be surprised if even after they changed back, he was still unsteady on his legs.

Yugi turned his head away, looking over his shoulder. He could not hear anything. There was no sign that the human had woken up. And Yami did not seem tense but for the anxiety that made him flick his ears every which way. When Yugi turned back, he was ready to roll over and lay down, to simply wait until he had caught his breath and was comfortable enough to try to make it home again. But something small and vibrating made his ears perk. He blinked and his head thrummed briefly in mimicry of the noise.

It was low and keen, a buzzing that made his body ache. He blinked, tilting his head, and looked to Yami slowly. It seemed, if he was not mistaken, to be coming from him. He tilted his head further, angling his ears until it ached with the effort. Exhausted, he leaned forward, and his breath came in sharp tugs as he breathed in several times. The black wolf regarded him curiously, tilting his head and blinking at him with wide eyes.

Was that…was it coming from him? Yugi leaned forward, sniffing harder, and smelled blood more than he did anything. There was an open wound still on his shoulder, he realized, and when he leaned forward to regard it, the buzzing came louder. He stared at the spot, blinking, and looked at Yami with his ears flattened against his skull. He was desperately hoping that he was wrong.

But he could not fathom that he was. As he looked at the wound and then at Yami himself, he could see that the other could hear it as well. But he had not reacted to it. And Yugi felt sick as he realized too that the other could not reach it in the first place. It would be easy for Yami to lick the spot, but not to dig his teeth in.

Yugi didn't want to hurt him though. A small whine bubbled up in his throat. He laid his ears flat against his skull again. Yami tilted his head, then shifted to turn his shoulder towards him. He blinked at him when he did not react, tilting his head a little further. Yugi hesitated, then shifted closer. He was tired, Yami had to be exhausted, and he was almost a hundred percent sure that the noise he was hearing was, in fact, a GPS transmitter. And what would happen if he didn't get it out now? He did not think that Yami's body would expel it as it had the gauze from his wounds.

Yugi leaned forward, licking at his wound once, and then hesitated again. Yami watched him for a moment, tilting his head again, and for a moment Yugi could not fathom truly sinking his teeth into his flesh.

But the black wolf wrinkled his lips back, showing his teeth, and his tongue darted out to touch his cheek. He shivered, then shifted closer again. For a moment he could do nothing else before very slowly opening his jaws.

Yami did not flinch even when Yugi sank his teeth as far as they would go. He was amazed that his canines did not hit his spine with the position he was in. But somehow he bypassed it. The skin seemed to vibrate against his teeth for a moment. He shivered again, then pulled. Yami shifted to accommodate him, though the movement nearly sent him to the ground. He did not protest, however, instead allowing Yugi to tear at the tendons and sinews, the muscles that met him there.

It took several minutes to pull the little device from his shoulder. The wolf did not stray from his position, allowing Yugi to tug the blinking red dart from his shoulder. He shuddered as he dropped it, the hunk of muscle it was resting in bleeding profusely, and whimpered low in his throat once more.

Yami looked at him, then glanced at the tracker, and shook himself out as if it had simply been a case of pulling some dirt from his fur. Then he wandered forward a few feet, trotting off towards the roots of one of the trees, and returned with a small bag in his mouth. Yugi blinked stupidly, surprised by the sight, and wanted to laugh at his own panicked relief. The other boy had brought a change of clothes.

When he dropped it in front of him, Yugi nearly faltered. They smelled distinctly like himself, as if Yami had known this might happen. But when he sniffed and moved the clothes about with his nose, pushing on the bag with a paw, he realized that he had brought his usual outfit as well.

He shivered, then glanced at him, but Yami was facing the other way and he could hear the bones cracking in his body. He heaved but did not puke. His body shuddered, the muscles rolling, and the bones began to crackle more heavily.

Yugi shivered again, turning away, and flattened his ears against his head. A thought occurred to him as he stared at the clothes. He had no idea how Yami had come to know about this situation. He also could not figure out what it was that had clued him in to it all. But he was not sure he wished to ask either. And he flinched when the other came about to grab the bag and pick out his clothes.

Yami did nothing to hint that his shoulder hurt, nor that it was still bleeding. Yugi glanced at him sideways, just to make sure, but the other was pulling clothes on without so much as a blink. When he finally seemed to notice, he pulled his t-shirt's collar to show off the former wound. But the skin had pulled together. The wound had healed perfectly. There was nothing to even suggest that he had been hurt in the first place.

Yami took a seat, waiting but not rushing, and stretched his legs out in front of him. The hunk of flesh that had once belonged to his shoulder blinked at him where the smallest chip of bright yellow and silver was lodged. He frowned, reached towards it. The muscle was still hot, burning against his fingers. He pulled it towards him, keeping it in front of him in a lazy movement. The blood had stopped dripping but it was disgusting to behold.

He looked it over, smearing bright red across his fingers that looked black like oil. It was strange to see his own flesh like this. He had never seen anything like this, nor even close to this magnitude. It was surreal, entirely shocking to him. And the warmth that it still gave off made him shiver. The cold air felt better to him. But he did not drop it.

Instead he looked at the tracker. The light blinking irritated his eyes. He might as well have been staring into the headlights of a car. But still it did nothing to make him stop looking. He closed his eyes for a moment. Then he tilted his head. Yugi had begun to change back, a much slower process than his own had been.

But he had only ever changed twice, and this was the first time he had done it consciously. Yami would give him congratulations if he were not so shaken by the mass of blood in his hands.

When he finally turned his head, Yugi blinked at him curiously from where he had begun to pull his shirt on. His fingers were a little shaky, holding the grizzled muscle in his hands, and he wanted for a moment to speak, but faltered pathetically. The smaller boy frowned at him, then looked at the transmitter.

"You should pull it out, bury it somewhere. We can…bury that somewhere else too."

His voice was cracking, raspy, and Yami supposed that was from the stress of his body trying to expel all of the toxins in it. He looked at the chunk again, his long fingers plucking at the little device. It seemed strange to him to bury it, or a part of himself, but it was perhaps the most logical solution they had as well.

"Are…are you okay?"

Yami blinked at him, startled by the raw concern and hesitance in his tone. Yugi scratched at the back of his hand, biting his lip. He nodded, opening his mouth for a moment before clearing his throat and getting to his feet.

"I just…it seems…strange."

The smaller teen visibly startled, eyes wide. Yami faltered, lowering his eyes to the muscle in his hands, and cleared his throat again. It was strange to him, the reaction he always got when he spoke. He had assumed that it was one of the things that Yugi would have wanted him to do, and yet he always stared at him like that.

Yami shivered. The discomfort of using his voice was raw, burning at his insides, but he did not have a pen or paper. And he needed to say something. He needed to reassure Yugi somehow. He didn't want to him to think that he had done anything wrong. He had no reason to place such guilt on his shoulders.

Yugi paused for a moment. "Do you want some help getting rid of that?" he finally asked, clearing his throat awkwardly.

Yami blinked, turning his head in confusion. The smaller boy gestured vaguely towards the transmitter in his hand. He frowned, glancing at it, and then shook his head. "No, I can dispose of it." He chewed the inside of his cheek. His voice was still scratchy, hoarse, and so many words at once made his throat ache. But the other boy seemed so happy to hear it, for whatever reason, and he found it hard not to want to please him at the moment.

"Okay." He hesitated, because the red-eyed teen looked so awkward. He looked mildly upset, almost flustered, and Yugi couldn't figure out why he might. But he would not press and so he simply looked away. "Um…do you want to get rid of that first? And then we can…you know…h-head back?"

He blinked at him, red eyes bright and startled, and then nodded. He had turned and was wandering off before Yugi could even think to object. He watched him, frowning, as he disappeared from his line of sight. He paced, waiting, and for a few long minutes Yami did not come back. When he did, his hands were clean, he looked tired, and he frowned at him noticeably upon seeing his expression.

"I thought maybe you would have gone back…"

Yugi blinked at him, stupefied for a moment. "Without you?" he asked, shaking his head slowly. "Why would I do that?"

Yami frowned and then glanced over his shoulder. "It's safer that way."

Yugi shook his head slightly, frowning more noticeably. "I wouldn't leave you just like that, Yami. Are you kidding me? Just because it's safer for me wouldn't mean it's safer for you. I couldn't do that to you."

The other boy frowned and shook his head faintly, moving to tuck his hands into his pockets. Yami glanced over his shoulder only once, and then started forward again. Yugi realized, belatedly, that he had set a rather uncomfortable mood between the two of them. So he took the place at his side, biting his lip, and mumbled, "Besides, Yami, it's going to be a serious bitch trying to get back into the house this late."

Yami blinked, startled, and then snorted so loudly that Yugi paused. His eyes grew wide, his mouth opening slightly, as Yami smirked and let out a soft noise. It was smaller, gentler around the edges, and boasted of a somewhat baritone pitch, though it was as soft as a suppressed cough. He shook his head, the noise escaping him a second time, and then walked a little faster.

"Hey, you actually laughed!" he announced, grinning so widely he felt that his face might split in two with his pleasure. Yami glanced at him, his smirk growing lopsided, and then turned away again. It was surprising to him, as he stood there, looking at him, just how beautiful he thought that expression to be. It suited his face, it matched his eyes, and it made him look almost devilish.

He was startled by the thought, blinking wide eyes; he had never considered looking at a guy that way. Sure, he admitted that most of them were a lot better-looking than him, and that was what made them much more confident at times, but he had never thought them beautiful. Or devilish.

But Yami looked striking with that little lopsided smirk on his face.

It was…actually, rather gorgeous.

He tilted his head.

"Hmm…"

Yami glanced at him but did not respond. Instead, he turned away again when he looked at him. His lips had fallen into their usual expression, that soft line that conveyed no emotion. But the half-smirk was still clear in his mind. When Yugi closed his eyes, Yami's lips curled lopsidedly. And his eyes shone with brilliant, stunning amusement. And his ears tingled with the soft chuckle he knew had to be just as beautiful at its fullest.

He frowned faintly. For the smallest of seconds he wanted nothing more than to make him laugh again. He wanted him to chuckle as he had moments before. And he wanted, for a brief second, to know exactly what other expressions he allowed to grace his face.

There was a moment of uncertainty that crept into his body at such a thought. His eyes flickered to the boy next to him and his stomach curled momentarily. Was it normal to think someone's laugh beautiful? Or their face gorgeous? He had never really questioned it before, giving passing little compliments in his head towards different things.

But those had been mostly towards girls and those few times with guys, it had been more envious than anything else. He would wish for their laugh or their athletic ability. It was not to admire their eyes or the tilt of their lips, the sound of their laughter even if it was choked.

He shivered, looking at Yami again. But the other was completely unmoved. He did not glance at him. He did not pause walking. He did not even seem to notice that anything had changed. Although, now that Yugi considered it, nothing had changed in the first place. He was over thinking it, as he always tended to do. Thinking someone had a nice laugh or a beautiful smirk was not a life changing event.

He shook his head at himself. The movement made Yami glance at him from the corner of his eye. Yugi felt his stare even if he did not visibly turn to him. He had the impulse to shake his head again, but fought it off. It was not like he needed to explain. Yami wasn't going to speak. He had made that pretty clear as it was.

* * *

"So…how exactly did you know that I needed help?"

Yami blinked from where he was coming through the window. His eyes grew a little wide, as if the subject had never crossed his mind. But Yugi could not help it. He had bitten his tongue until they had gotten there. It was nerve wracking, to say the least, to think that the other male had just _known_ to find him there. It seemed so unnatural that it was horrifying and he could not bear the thought any longer.

Yugi busied himself with pulling the window back into place, reaching up and switching the locks. The boy at his side remained quiet for a moment, then looked at him for a long moment. He hesitated, keeping his hands on the sill, and then turned to him, lip between his teeth, studying nervously.

"All betas can send their alphas images," the taller teen finally said, frowning at him and tilting his head.

Yugi froze in place. The breath rushed from his lungs. His eyes grew thrice their size. His heart pounded. His fingers trembled. His mouth opened and closed. He choked. "I though…I thought Tomoya was the one who…" he breathed out, voice below a whisper.

Yami blinked. "No, I…Tomoya was there. I was following a hellhound when I…" He paused for a moment, frown deepening as he studied his pale complexion. Was Yugi horrified that it had been him rather than the blond? Was that what made him stare at him with such an ashen face and wide eyes?

He bit his lip and then shook his head, looking down. It was easier studying the sill of the window than Yugi's face any longer. "I happened upon it. The massive human…he had thrown you into the wall, nearly killed you. Tomoya had just barely fought him off. I didn't realize that he had…not been the one to…harm you. I…turned on him. He…he was there."

Yugi trembled, stunned. His entire body tensed with shock. His mouth opened, then closed again. His head was spinning. His stomach dropped. He stared at him blankly, for a moment too stunned to process the statement.

Yami…had killed Tomoya?

Yami had been the one to disembowel him?

He had…eaten his heart?

He opened and closed his mouth again. His breath came out in a sharp hiss of desperation and confusion. Yami's eyes rose, startled, confused, and more pained and guilty than he had ever seen them. He looked as if he might apologize, but something held his tongue. There was a perverse pride, Yugi saw too, that made his eyes sharp and keen. He would not apologize. He had thought he had done the right thing.

But Yugi did not think he would have asked him to apologize. It was done. It was over with. He had killed a friend. And Yugi had helped his murderer. They were just as deeply engrossed in it as the other when it came down to it. There was no blame to be laid on each other without forcing the call for equality.

So Yugi blinked at him, waiting until that stubborn light in his eyes began to fade. He patiently waited for the challenge to die from his eyes. And then the other boy looked away again quickly.

Yami seemed ashamed for the briefest of moments, but it died again. Instead he cleared his throat, and though his voice broke on every other word, dying completely at the end, he murmured, "I only did it because you would have died otherwise. I…you didn't deserve that…"

Yugi blinked at him stupidly, then shook his head. "How do you know that?" he breathed out, searching his face when he raised his eyes to his again. "I mean, you didn't know me. You had no idea what kind of person I was…"

Yami tilted his head, watching him for a moment. "You're right," he finally said, voice dying at the end. He cleared his throat and his words were a weak rasp as he continued. "But I took a chance. And I was right."

Yugi stared at him, swallowing hard. Was he right? Was he worth saving? He still could not fathom Tomoya's decision to turn and fight Ushio for him. And he could not imagine the reasoning behind Yami's choice to bite him. He said he did not deserve to die, but he couldn't be sure. What if he had deserved it? What if Yami had made a mistake? What if…?

He shook his head slowly. "Okay," he finally muttered, nodding after a long moment. Maybe Yami was just the type to think that one did not deserve something until they proved themselves to. Maybe he gave them a second chance that most did not offer. "But what about…? Why did you…? Tomoya's…I mean…his…his heart was…"

The other boy blinked at him, then grew flushed with something like rage. His eyes flashed and his jaw clenched for a moment. Yami tossed his head angrily and opened his mouth. But when he tried to speak, all that came out was a breath. He scowled, then gestured with an unsteady hand, that he needed a pencil and paper.

Yugi hesitated for only a split second. There was something in Yami's furious gestures that made him blink stupidly. For a moment he could not fathom giving him the power to explain himself. It seemed, for the smallest of seconds, as incomprehensible as the very thought that he had helped the murderer of a friend of his. But he could not push away his desire to know. And so he turned on his heel and headed for the kitchen.

Thankfully, no one seemed to be home. Or, if they were, they had decided to remain within their own rooms. He crept out into the hallway, made his way into the kitchen, and picked up the notepad and pencil from where he had stripped it of its writing and thrown it into a drawer.

He came back to an extremely agitated Yami. The wolf was pacing rapidly. His eyes were sharp. He was visibly shaking. He seemed to vibrate, almost growling but for the lack of voice he suffered from.

He looked as if he wanted nothing more than to attack him for a brief second.

And Yugi nearly cowered back.

But then the other boy snatched the notepad and pencil from him, scribbling something down, and glared at him as he turned the pad around and tapped on the words angrily.

 _I didn't eat his fucking heart_! _It was a hellhound, you idiot_.

Yugi tilted his head. What the hell was a hellhound? A small rush of indignation coated his features, however. He scowled at him. "I'm not an idiot. Stop being such a jackass," he snapped, bristling faintly. "I asked a question, okay? That doesn't warrant you getting so pissed off."

Yami snapped his teeth at him. Yugi flinched back. The two of them stared, blue-violet eyes stunned, red eyes blazing. They watched each other for a moment. Then Yami turned away and started to jot something down again.

 _Then stop accusing me of such things_.

"When have I ever accused you of something before?" he ground out. "And I wasn't accusing you! I just…I said…it came out the wrong way!"

Yami scowled at him, eyes disbelieving. Yugi bit his lip. He wouldn't believe his words himself either. He sounded weak, his explanation stupid and borderline callous. He looked away, feeling as if his cheeks might burn with shame for a moment.

"Okay, so I…" He paused. "I didn't mean to…it just kind of happened to pop into my head like that. I'm sorry, Yami."

The other boy blinked at him, then nodded slowly. He did not seem amused by any stretch of the imagination. Rather he looked away and then began to write on the notepad again. When he showed it to Yugi again, his handwriting was neater, calmer, and his expression had cleared.

Yugi almost envied him that. How one could go from angry and then drop it immediately upon apology was something that he had never truly mastered. He could pretend and he could work to make his offenders feel better, but he never truly got over it. And most often he remained angry for a few hours. It seemed normal to be furious like that, if only for a small inkling of time.

 _It was a hellhound. I think it was probably the same one I was following_.

Yugi tilted his head, frustration forgotten. He blinked at the page, truly staring at it, and then looked up at him thoughtfully. "What is a hellhound, Yami?" he finally asked, biting his lip as the other blinked in surprise at the question.

He took the notepad from him, hesitating for a long moment, then flipped the page on the pad, and began to write again. He could tell the message was more cramped than he had ever seen it before. He wrote small characters, worked them out to fit the page, though the message seemed much longer than he could contain. So when he wound up frowning and flipping the page, the smaller teen could not help but smile the smallest bit.

 _Hellhounds are another type of werewolf. They are the second subspecies. There are lycanthropes and then there are hellhounds. Lycanthropes can really only change back and forth between human and wolf. We're a lot stronger than them physically, and we have a nicer temperament. But hellhounds are nastier, they're more likely to pick fights, and they have their own little strengths and gifts. They have to have a certain chemical in their body—which is only found in fresher human corpses—to turn incorporeal. They are part dog, not fully wolf. They also tend to be more chaotic. Some of them can change shape. They can turn into other animals or people. But they have to eat the heart of the one they want to change into._

He blinked stupidly at the words. There were two types of werewolves? And one of them turned incorporeal? They also ate fresh carcasses and changed shape? He felt his heart plummet, mouth drying.

"Fuck, I hope I never run into one of those."

Yami tilted his head, writing something else on the paper.

"What do you mean I probably already have?" he sputtered, eyes nearly popping out of his head. "You mean I could have run across one at some point and had it aching to eat my heart and take on my shape at any point?"

The other werewolf blinked. His lips twitched and that soft snorting noise came out. His mouth opened only faintly, a cough of a breath coming out, so weak that the pitch of it was almost dead. But Yugi knew what it was and his mouth curled up into the widest of grins at this realization. He had made Yami laugh again!

The taller boy scribbled something else onto the paper, handing it back to him and smirking lopsidedly as he had before. But this time only half of his face took up the expression and Yugi felt almost stunned by how much beauty that one gesture possessed.

 _They're all around. Just like lycanthropes—but most of the time we all interact without issue. It's not like we're trying to draw attention to ourselves._

Yami hesitated, then took it back to write something else, flipping the page, and then briefly shifted his weight before handing it back to him. He cleared his throat awkwardly, looking at the ground now instead of him. His expression had grown solemn, uncomfortable.

 _They probably ate your friend's heart, so that they could take on his shape at some point_. _I'm sorry, Yugi_.

Yugi wanted nothing more at that moment than to say that it was okay. He wanted to say that nothing was his fault, but the thought made him pause. As he looked at the other male, he wondered. What if it was Yami's chasing the hellhound that had caused it to come upon Tomoya's body? If that was the truth of the situation, didn't that put him partially at fault by mere coincidence?

But he knew he had not meant for such a hideous thing to happen. And Yami himself would never have done such a thing. He might have killed him, but he had thought that Tomoya had been the one to attack him. He had seen him nearly die, and so had turned tried to save him. Perhaps he had assumed Tomoya had been a threat to him should he have attempted to help him beforehand.

Yugi frowned, nibbling his lip, and then nodded slightly as he lowered his eyes to the carpet again. "It'll be okay, Yami," he muttered, chewing the inside of his cheek. "I just…never expected it. It's a lot to take in at once. It's a little…overwhelming…"

The other boy ducked his head, expression somewhere between violently ashamed and uncomfortably sheepish. He did not look up, even as Yugi turned away and started to head for the door. When he turned the knob, he heard the slight shift of his clothing that said he had raised his head and was looking after him. When he twisted the knob, Yami heard him shuffle towards him, a weak and small noise that made Yugi frown faintly.

He turned around, blinking at him, and frowned as he muttered, "It's okay, Yami. I promise. It wasn't your fault."

Yami gave him an unhappy look, shaking his head, and when he looked ready to scribble on his notepad, the smaller teen reached over to stop him. His fingers flattened against the paper and he shook his head slightly at him. The other boy stared at him, a stubbornness in his eyes making Yugi almost cringe for the briefest of seconds. But the red-eyed teen merely narrowed his eyes, frowning, and then watched him.

"I promise it's okay."

The wolf shook his head, then looked away, pulling the notepad away from his hand, and gestured with a vague movement that he should move forward. It was only when Yugi turned and started to walk again, that he heard it.

His head snapped around, startled, and his mouth opened in shock.

Yami blinked at him, his jaw moving, his eyes darkened with something like stress and further discomfort.

Yugi shook his head, at first unable to form words, and then infuriated as he stared at him. His lip curled back as he spat, "You're sorry for _overwhelming_ me? Is that really what you feel the need to apologize for? I told you that you had not done anything wrong! It wasn't your fault that that hellhound ate his heart or that I got overwhelmed, okay? Nothing. Was. Your. Fault."

The red-eyed wolf bristled at him but did not growl and instead turned and walked past him. Yugi wanted to grab him for a moment, but to touch him would most likely cause Yami to lash out at him. So he let him walk past him, further into the darkness of the little house, and frowned as he hit the light switch and the other paused only minutely before moving forward again.

"Yami…"

He turned to him, eyes unreadable, but head tilted, and it occurred to Yugi as he looked at him that Yami was mad, but he would not ignore him. If Yugi were to call his name a million times, Yami would turn his head and look, give him acknowledgment that he had heard, and not once would he see his irritation. He would see that indifference that coated his features, see the way his eyes looked darker but expressionless, and Yugi would know he was mad but not ignoring him.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to snap."

Yami blinked at him and then turned away again.

"Are you hungry?"

It seemed to make the other wolf defrost slightly. His head turned, eyes widening faintly, and Yugi gave him a weak smile. They looked at each other for a moment and the smaller teen turned away to look at the freezer. His mom was probably working late and his grandpa was probably at Professor Hawkins' house. It was the only place he went unless he was helping his daughter at the clinic. Either way, it would be a little while longer before either of them came back.

He watched Yami from the corner of his eye for a moment and then opened the freezer. The dinners he had bought a little while back sat dutifully, arranged in the corner, and he looked them over for what felt like hours.

"Chicken Alfredo, mesquite chicken, orange chicken, and pizza…"

Why had he chosen these exactly? They were family size, yes, but he had the feeling that Yami could clear away one of them in a heartbeat if he was truly hungry. It felt stupid in hindsight. Even while Yami was recovering, he would have eaten them in a blink. And Yugi was sure he was famished after the fight and especially since he had torn off that chunk of flesh just hours earlier. His body still had to be recovering from that, even if it visibly appeared fine.

Yugi shook his head, sighing softly, and reached for the Alfredo dish with a flustered feeling in his stomach. His fingers felt frozen upon making contact, and the tips of each tingled and burned with the sensation. He blinked stupidly, swallowing hard, and fought the urge to retract them immediately. It hurt somehow. He frowned, feeling all but weak, and furrowed his brows for a moment.

Was the sensitivity because of what had happened before? Was it because of his injuries earlier? Was that what had caused it? Yugi swallowed hard. If that was the reason, he felt sick for the smallest of moments. What if, every time he was hurt, he resorted to this? What if it became as it had before he had changed the first time? What if everything became amplified, his sense of touch, smell, hearing, taste, and sight?

He did not know that he could deal with that again. It was horrifying and tiring by all means to think that such a thing could be what he was to be subjected to at all times he was injured. What was he meant to do then? He could not actively protect himself as if with a layer of bubble wrap.

There was no way that he could prevent every little thing that might happen to him. It was pathetic to ever assume such a thing. He frowned, biting his lip, and drew the box out from the bottom of the pile, then looked the instructions over distractedly. The cold chill of the freezer air made his skin tingle, then burn. It felt almost as if it were being split gently by a knife, the soft layers folding away beneath it all.

He shivered.

When he shut the door, he saw Yami watching him. His shoulders were relaxed but there was something strained about his expression. He could see something like a nervous tic gracing his features. And he was unsure what it was from but he did not bother to question it as he turned to the oven.

Yugi was not sure how long it would take for his mom or grandpa to get home, but he was sure it would be a little longer. Hopefully it would be long enough for him to cook the frozen dinner. And then he might be able to shovel the food out on a plate and escape with it if he needed to when they came up the stairs.

He turned the dial on the oven, then turned to Yami slowly.

"Does your shoulder bother you?"

The other wolf blinked, glanced at where he knew he had torn the skin out, and then shook his head slowly. He would not tell him that the skin was itching, twitching, and it pulsated achingly as he stood around. His healing had stunted from the electricity but it had not completely fallen away. So he was not truly concerned with it, though it was uncomfortable and all but impossible to ignore.

"Okay. Good."

Yami watched him slip the plastic container onto a metal sheet and place it inside. The red-eyed wolf furrowed his brows but did not question this action. He smiled faintly when Yugi looked at him again. As long as he did not know his wound was irritating, Yami thought things would be fine.

"Can I ask you a couple of things…?"

His smile fell away, a ghost of an expression. He tilted his head, eyes narrowing, but nodded after a long moment.

"You can shake your head at any questions you don't want to answer. I won't blame you if you just decide to ignore a couple of things." He paused. "I would do it too if I were you."

Yami stiffened considerably at these words. His eyes grew further narrow. His mouth ticked with a nervous anxiety that made Yugi blinked. He shook his head slightly, frowning at him noticeably.

The smaller teen could not truly identify which he was shaking his head at. Would he simply answer even if he was not comfortable? Or was he trying to warn him not to ask such questions? Was there something else that he was saying no to? Yugi frowned but did not question him for a moment. He supposed he would figure it out when he truly asked and got a reaction from him.

"Okay, so you said that every bitten wolf has a connection with their alpha, right?"

The other wolf blinked and then nodded, tilting his head curiously.

"So…what does that mean exactly? I mean, that still doesn't tell me how you figured out where I was…"

Yami hesitated for a long moment, the light in his eyes growing darker, then seeming to shift with color for a few split seconds. Then he blinked, frowning, and, as Yugi was about to say that he could ignore him and tell him to go to the next question, he began to write something on the sheet of paper again. For a few long moments he did nothing but write, then he held the little pad out for him to take.

Yugi blinked at him, then took it in his fingers. His grip was a little shaky, if only because Yami would not fully look at him. His eyes were lowered to look at the bottom of his irises rather than his pupils. The idea that he was so unnerved as to not want to lock eyes with him was something that made him feel sick for a brief second.

He looked at the paper, nibbling his bottom lip as he read the words, _It's a mental connection. Because you were in pain, it amplified your emotions. And with your emotions amplified, it made it easier for you to send me the image. You focused on me for a moment, when you were attacked, so I got the image in my head._

His skin felt cold for a moment. "Does it…happen all the time? I mean…"

Yami furrowed his brows, then shook his head and reached for the pad again. The smaller boy was frozen with the thought, horrified by the concept that Yami might know the inside of his mind, and for a moment could not fathom allowing him to answer. The fear that clawed at his insides, the insecurity that made his hands quiver faintly, caused his stomach to drop and burn.

But his hands very slowly moved, his arm stretching out, and the other boy hesitantly took the pad from him. For a moment the little stack of paper hovered between their fingers. Both of them stared at each other for the smallest of seconds, then the moment passed. Yami pulled the pad away and Yugi turned his eyes to the timer on the oven. His stomach growled softly and his eyes narrowed faintly.

What was he supposed to do if the other wolf knew all of the things in his head? He'd have to censor so much of it. And how was that even possible? He was not sure that he could do such a thing. It seemed impossible and incredibly strange to even suggest such a thing. Yugi blinked and narrowed his eyes. His stomach dropped further.

Would Yami know about how he had thought his lopsided smirk somehow infatuating? Or how he sometimes wondered what Anzu might look like in his bed? Did he know how freaked out he had become while Yami had been eating his rabbit? Did he know how disgusted he had been when he had first seen Yami that night? Oh gods, how many things did he already know that Yugi had yet to even wonder about?

The thought made his stomach burn and his skin itch. His head turned when he saw movement in the corner of his eye. Yami had finished his response and was looking at him now, with the pencil drawn into his lap and his right hand stretched out for him. He nearly flinched at the thought of his response, but took the paper from him, looking at it with an increasingly insidious ache in his body.

 _No. It's only during the Change. When an alpha and beta are in their natural forms, it helps them to communicate easier because wolves don't talk like humans._

He breathed out a soft sigh of relief. The other wolf quirked his head to the side curiously at the sound but Yugi did not explain. He smiled faintly, then handed the notepad back, licking his lips to sate some of his nerves. "So, is it just between alphas and betas?"

He considered, then jotted down, _I suppose so, but I do not fully know. It might be for wolves in a pack. But I do not have experience with such a thing._

The smaller teen held this answer in his head for what felt like hours. It was a power in his body that made his blood burn for the smallest of moments. The reality of the words made his lips twitch. The thought made him falter for the briefest of moments. Yami had just told him something he had been wondering about formerly. And he had done it without provocation or argument. It seemed strange that he might gift him with something like that after what seemed like years of wondering.

Yugi held the notebook a little too tightly for a moment, nearly bending the sheets and cardboard back. It was strange how wondrous this sensation of new knowledge came about to him. He wanted to smile. But he also wanted to apologize. And, more than anything, he felt the need to tell Yami that he was sorry for wondering and not thinking to simply ask him. It seemed foolish and childish now as he considered it.

What had held him back? The fact that he had not known Yami well enough? The idea that Yami was still recovering and might not want to tell him something like that? Maybe the concept that he did not want to uncover wounds that might still be raw and fresh?

Yugi shook his head after a moment. He uncurled his fingers, passed the book back to him. He did not bother to tell him the power of what that answer had given him. But he gave him a small smile and nodded faintly.

"Okay." Yugi had the impulse to nod harder, to grin at him wider, but fought it off. Instead he nodded again, only once, and turned away to glance at the depleting numbers on the oven. And then, a new thought occurred to him as he blinked and watched the red light for a moment longer. "Yami, what…what did that guy inject me with?"

The other wolf was frozen for a moment, red eyes growing wide and horrified. He looked sickened by the very concept of the words leaving his mouth. His eyes grew a little wider still and his skin grew increasingly pale as the moments passed. He blinked at him, his lips opening only faintly, into the gentlest curl of flesh. His fingers grew rigid and his jaw clenched for the smallest of seconds.

Then Yami blinked at him again. And his eyes grew darker. His fingers clenched. His jaw twitched and moved with a faint tick. His gaze lowered to the pad. He failed to move for a long minute. Then he, very slowly, began to write three words on the paper.

Yugi shivered, then flinched at the words that stared back at him.

 _Wolfsbane and silver_.

He stared at the words until they blurred and doubled, crossing paths and burning in his head. It made his stomach ache and his skin pulse with cold tingles. The marrow in his bones had grown harder, hotter, burning.

He wanted, for the briefest of seconds, to argue with him. There was no way. Wolfsbane was a poison. It was part of the same family as monkshood and it killed with just a touch. Hell, Yugi remembered reading about a gardener brushing against it and dropping dead within hours. It was just as terrible as nightshade.

So how was it that he had survived it?

Yugi shook his head, too shocked to process the action, but Yami's face was as solemn as he had ever seen it. He looked weakened by the admission, as if he could not fathom further explanation. The pale gleam to his skin had only grown as the seconds passed. He seemed as if he might puke at any second. Yugi opened and closed his mouth stupidly.

It was one of the most toxic plants known to exist. And it was only called wolfsbane because people had thought it would only poison wolves and werewolves in the medieval times. But it had killed anything that came into contact with it. Mere touch could kill. How was that even…?

And silver…? Was that a true thing? Was Yami really telling him that silver was something that wolves reacted to?

The notepad was taken from his hands, the pencil working again as Yugi's hands began to shake as if they were a separate entity from his frozen body altogether. His eyes looked as if they might pop from his head. And his face had broken into a cold sweat. His mouth had opened faintly. His teeth were still showing along the bottom of his jaw. His heart had quickened in pace. His breathing had escalated.

Yami took note of it all. But he did not pause upon beginning to write a new response for him. The other boy was frozen beyond trembling arms. He was in shock, so shaken by it all that he was not responding to Yami's presence in the room at all. But he did not need him to truly react to him. In fact, maybe this was the best response he could have gained from him in the first place.

As Yami began to draw the symbols of the words he needed now, he could see him, still frozen and all but gaping. The sweat on his skin had grown to rivers of salty exhales. But it did nothing to deter him, and that sharp, sweet scent of his fear made his own mouth water for the briefest of moments.

He blinked, the thought making him frown faintly, and then tossed his head to shake the idea away. It was his mind, his body, telling him to react, as he needed food and nourishment to heal further. When that had passed, Yami would not have the idea that his fear was as delicious as rabbit meat.

He passed the notebook to him again. Then he paused when he saw that Yugi could not process the attempt to take it back from him. He stared at him for a moment, slightly confused by this idea. But he had always known their species' weaknesses, and this small teenager in front of him, who he had bitten a mere month and a half ago, had no idea. He had thrust him into a world of which he had no concept.

Yami cleared his throat, then furrowed his brows, pulling them together. His nose wrinkled and his lips drew back. The snarl that left him made the air quiver. That sound, so low and powerful, caused Yugi to jerk. His neck popped painfully as his chin rose slightly. His spine, so tight and terrible under his skin, achingly jerked and straightened. His shaking stopped. He blinked, eyes growing wide and his pupils dilating drastically.

Yami watched him for a moment. Then he blinked, the noise fading. The reaction was as instantaneous as it had been the first time. Yugi opened and closed his mouth, stupefied, and tilted his head at him. The taller teen thrust the notepad into his hand.

Yugi stared at him for a moment longer. Then his eyes flickered to the yellowed paper. Written in neat characters, was the statement, _It triggers the Change but it also kills a werewolf_.

"Then why am I still alive?"

The taller teen watched him for a long time, then very slowly shook his head. He shrugged after a long moment when Yugi stared at him blankly, and then looked away again.

"Oh…"


	19. Hellhounds

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day (no update on June 2nd)**

 **Chapter Warnings: Night Terrors About Experiments, Experiments, Blood, Hunting**

 **Okay, so! Before you start, I will say that there is a VERY BIG reason that I only wrote the discussion between the scientists and sponsors of the experiments. Here's why: Their lab is a very big subplot. I'm also still doing a pretty big amount of research on the way of how to make it work. But, regardless of this, the information in the conversation IS very much real.**

 **Atem WAS born in the circumstances of what they wrote in the log entries and the information passed in the conversation (black eyes, being hairless). There's a reason Atem was born hairless, by the way. And there's also a reason why his eyes stayed black throughout his time within the labs. It's a genetic problem, a deficiency that came from the experiments. With that in mind, he obviously no longer suffers from it. It's hinted at quite often in the work logs that he's got a LOT of issues. And he still does, but they're not as obvious or as clear cut as they were back then now that he's running free.**

 **Also, the rabbit's having direct blind spots like that in their vision is true. I did enough research on that one to say with certainty. They can't see straight in front of them. Most prey animals can't. It's the predators that can, because they have to lock onto their prey to hunt them.**

 **Now, if you're squeamish, stop reading after Yami spots the rabbit. Then skip to the next section. The dog is also mentioned, by the way.**

 **Anon: Thank you! I'm glad to hear it~! I always tend to worry about that kind of thing haha**

Chapter XIX: Hellhounds

 _Work Log Entry XIX: February, 1997_

 _February 20_

 _The pup has opened his eyes for the first time. He seems to be blind from malnutrition or perhaps the stressed from the entire process of his birth._

 _His eyes are the most unnatural things I have ever seen._

 _There is no color to them._

 _They are completely black._

 _He almost seems to have no irises._

 _The whites of his eyes are completely dark gray and the veins are the only things to mark them._

 _It is unnatural._

He _is unnatural._

The water pushed down on him from all sides.

The more he struggled, the more his disorientation prospered.

Up, down, left, right—none of it made sense anymore.

He pushed with his arms and legs.

He could not find leverage.

He might have been pushing further down.

His lungs burned for more air.

He choked as his mouth opened.

Cold water filled his lungs.

Blood pounded in his ears.

The darkness swept up from either side.

He flailed.

Then his body burned.

His mouth opened.

The water fled his lungs.

A scream ripped through his throat.

He flailed and his legs rocked with a spasm.

His head pounded harder.

His heart leaped into his throat.

Claws glinted bright with reflected sunlight.

The ground tasted sour, bile torching his throat.

Blood welled from his throat.

The gurgling grew louder, the scream dying beneath it.

His body trembled, quaking.

He felt his skin pulse and twitch.

The muscles bunched and rippled along his bones.

The marrow burned and froze.

He gasped, then jerked violently.

The darkness expanded, then burst forward.

It faded away.

Soft white light, drizzled with strands of silver and faux gold, crept into his senses.

Small specks of dust drifted through the air.

He gasped, heart hammering, fingers trembling. He panted, his lungs quivering. His body ached. His skin pulled tight. He nearly groaned. Then he nearly wailed. For a moment he could not draw in enough breath. He panted harder. He flinched at the sensation of being covered. He jerked upright, breathing harder.

There were lines around him, perfectly straight. There were corners. There was a small splatter of dark, skeletal fingers. There was a splash of gold and white and silver. There were large blocks set about him. The spot beneath him was burning hot.

He blinked and the area became oriented around him. He breathed in so roughly that his ribs cracked. Then he turned his head. The dresser materialized, the nightstand, the skylight, the tilt of his windowed wall, the corners that looked so sharp and dignified. He grunted at the touch of the heated blankets. He swallowed thickly.

Then he turned his head.

The face that peered at him remained nameless for the briefest of seconds. He struggled for a grasp of reality towards the sight. And then it began to take shape. And then further form. And his mind began to remember. He let out a shaky breath, somewhere between laughter and gasping.

"Yami."

The wolf looked at him, unblinking. His eyes were dark, glittering like rubies drenched in blood. He watched him, expression sharp even in the darkness. They looked at each other. For a moment the other boy continued to stare. Then he slowly blinked. And finally he sat up and stared.

Yugi had the impulse to apologize for waking him. He opened his mouth, eyes wide, and then froze.

Yami did not look upset. Nor did he seem disgruntled. He was, rather, staring at him with a knowing look to his sharp eyes. And Yugi felt his blood chill with confusion. Had he seen inside his mind? Had he read into his dreams? He gulped, nearly choking, and then blinked stupidly.

The other wolf seemed not at all surprised by his erratic behavior. Instead he got to his feet, moving towards the doorway, and disappeared before Yugi could think to object.

The action brought an entirely new thought to his mind.

As he turned his head, watching him, he felt his breath crumble in his lungs.

Had Yami…somehow influenced his dreams?

Was it possible that he had brought him to that nightmare?

Was it _Yami's_ nightmare instead of his?

But something occurred to him as well, seconds later. His stomach dropped and he stared at the empty door. He blinked, stupefied, and shifted to sit up further, breathing hard. No, he did not think that it had been Yami to cause this dream to come about.

Well—that was if he could even bear to call it a dream. It seemed more a night terror than anything else. It seemed like all the many things that had plagued him for years before, even with the burden of medication.

Yugi did not think that he could fathom calling it a simple dream in light of that thought—and the way that Yami had seemed to flee from his side as he had.

He shivered. It did not appear as if it could have been conjured by the red-eyed boy either. It seemed far more likely that he himself had brought it forth.

Because, now, as Yugi considered it, he realized that it was as if he had been injected with that concoction of wolfsbane and silver once more.

And he hoped to _every god in existence_ that Yami had never experienced anything of that magnitude in his lifetime.

Yugi thought to ask—if only for a moment—but declined. He could not force the words from his throat. And he felt too weak to get up and follow Yami. He supposed he had gone about settling on the couch for the night after what had happened. But he could not be sure. And so, instead, he closed his eyes and lay back.

But sleep did not come and he refused to welcome it as he normally would.

It was around dawn that the other wolf returned to his room. He could hear, just as well as he could, the sound of his mother stirring from down the hallway. He could tell that she would wake and begin to make breakfast soon enough. She must have had early appointments at the clinic or she was planning to go to see if the animals needed any further assistance.

He was thankful that none of them had needed critical attention so far. The fact that no animals resided in the apartment below was a gift from the gods. He shivered at the thought of their reaction to both himself and Yami. Yugi thought for sure that they would go insane, horrified and stressed out, and probably bloody themselves in their attempts to escape their presence.

"Did you fall back asleep?" he muttered, voice purposefully low and eyes narrowed faintly as the other returned to the other side of the bed. Yugi blinked up at him, squinting because his eyes hurt, and the wolf frowned before tilting his head to the side. He hesitated for a moment, thinking to turn away, but smiled faintly at the taller boy, and the other weakly nodded in response. Yami did not raise his eyes as he took the spot next to him, laying down and facing him with an uncomfortable expression.

"Good, I'm glad." _At least one of us did_.

Yugi was somewhat envious, and there was a hint of bitterness that rested on his tongue at the taste of such a thought. It seemed impossible to him that he might consider Yami's movement to the couch as more than he could do himself. But he realized his body had been too heavy, laden with his horror, and he had been unable to do more than watch him go. But he still envied him.

Yami shook his head slightly at him, then closed his eyes tightly. Yugi thought for a moment that maybe he should say something, but fell silent. He hesitated for a minute or two longer, then rolled over to face the opposite wall. The bed shifted when the other boy did the same and they both settled uncomfortably to sleep again.

When he woke again, it was because his alarm had gone off. Yami was frozen beside him, sitting up with his body tensed once more. But he did not seem as horrified by the noise as he had first been. Now he was merely annoyed with it as Yugi leaned over to hit the button to turn it off.

The red-eyed wolf settled into the pillow again, yawning, and looked at him with a tilted head. Yugi gave him a small smile, so strained that he felt his face might break with the pain of it. "I'm going to make us some pancakes real fast, after I get ready. Then I'll get you another protein shake and a couple of pills and I'll head off to school and be back before you notice, okay?"

He winked at him but Yami frowned noticeably. He looked somehow undone by the suggestion but nodded at him faintly once more, as if he could not fathom what he was meant to say in response. But neither had even the slightest idea and so Yugi got to his feet and wandered for the bathroom before he could rethink his decision.

Yami watched him go, sitting up and frowning as he looked around slowly. The walls seemed increasingly small today, as if they had shifted forward to close in around him. He closed his eyes, feeling somehow smaller than ever, and his stomach burned with anxiety as he raised his palms to rub at his face. He was exhausted and his body still itched and tingled where he had allowed Yugi to tear the tracker from his skin. The muscle was still recovering, the nerve endings still forming again. It was a tiring, almost exhausting, process.

As he rubbed harder, spots appeared behind his lids. He curled his lips back, tired and weighted by the task, and bit back a snarl. The muscles pulled along his shoulder. The pain made his skin flare. He hissed with displeasure. But he did nothing more as he listened to the sound of the water turning on.

Perhaps a shower with hot water would ease some of the ache. Or perhaps if he alternated with the temperatures it would further alleviate it. He shook his head slightly, closing his eyes, and then tilted his head. As his hands fell into his lap again, Yami wondered for a moment.

The pancakes would not do to sate his hunger completely. Nor would it truly accelerate his healing. And the medication might not be something he would need today. Perhaps he should decline the offer to take them and instead go hunting.

His shoulder trembled faintly. He blinked his eyes open, turning his head. His gaze locked on it. The muscles were pulsing beneath his skin. The nerve endings were bursting with pain. And his bone was jumping. The tremor shook the limb. It popped up and down rapidly, in movements that almost made him shiver. But he did not follow its lead. Instead Yami stared at it, wondering if it might fade, and the tingling that jerked through it made him hiss in pain.

He turned away again after a moment, hoping against the gods that the tremors would fade before Yugi got back. He did not want him to worry any more than he already did. It was unhealthy for the other boy. He would grow stressed and Yami did not think himself worth such pain and anxiety.

When the smaller teen returned, he was dressed as he usually was. Yami had not seen him in much else but this outfit since school had begun again the day before. Given that it was only a day, however, it seemed strange to think such a thing. But he had rarely seen him in anything else aside from pajamas and the clothes he had brought him that night.

Now he stood in that familiar royal blue jacket, with the white dress shirt beneath that was buttoned all the way up, with the matching blue pants and worn-down white sneakers. There was the choker around his neck, like a thin, classic belt of black leather, with a large buckle that glimmered in the touch of sunlight from the window. He looked slightly dwarfed in this outfit, as if the legs were too long, because they bunched terribly at the ends and seemed to encompass the backs of his sneakers.

It was only as Yugi stepped forward and continued to rub at his hair with a towel that the drape of them moved to a more flattering slope of the heel that Yami realized they were not too long. The ends were meant to cover most of the sneakers and he realized it was most likely the purpose of the cut they harbored. He also supposed that they did the same with his black boots should he wear them with them.

Yugi had the impulse to snicker at him, say something like, "Like what you see?" but it made him feel sick for a moment. He felt as if he would be leering at Yami if he bothered to open his mouth. And the thought caused him to lower his eyes to the carpet even as his hair knotted with the force of his rubbing. The skin tingled and itched, burning faintly, along his scalp, and he swallowed hard.

Besides, who was he to think to say such a thing when he himself thought Yami's smirk made his face bright and gorgeous when it was lopsided? Who was he to say something like that when he was captivated by his eyes at times? Or the way he felt almost obsessed with the gentle swell of laughter that dipped beneath his coughing breath when he tried to chuckle?

So he threw the towel aside, glancing at him, and smiled as he murmured, "I'll have a plate of pancakes for you in a few minutes."

Yami nodded slightly, seemingly distracted in the action, but then turned away again. There was a moment where neither of them seemed to breathe, and then they settled somehow once more. With a weak, distracted glance around the room, the taller teen got to his feet and headed for the bathroom. And Yugi watched him for a moment before heading out the door, shutting it gently behind him.

He grabbed the mix, the metal bowl, and set up the pan to make the breakfast pastry with a small sense of anxiety creeping into his bones. Yami seemed so tired, nearly exhausted, as if he were far more bothered by the events of the night before than Yugi had noticed at first. Yugi realized, belatedly, as he looked at the pan and sprayed the surface of it, that he had been limping when he had gone to the bathroom. He had been limping when he had walked away that night.

He had to have been. Perhaps it had not been as present last night as it was a few minutes ago, but he knew it must have been there. He closed his eyes, frowning, and then shook his head and began to listen to the pan crackle faintly.

Yugi had finished the first plate of pancakes and was about to start the second when a noise reached his ears. A door was opening, a gentle creak and the sound of the knob twisting making him turn his head in confusion. He blinked, listening, and then paused, eyes widening slightly.

His grandpa was awake?

He nearly flinched. His eyes flickered to the microwave. He didn't have time to make a new batch of pancakes. And he couldn't exactly say no if his grandpa wanted some as well. The thought made his stomach clench. He himself was hungry. And Yami would have to be starving. He knew that.

And yet…

He glanced at the plate and then away.

"Yugi, my boy!"

He wanted to flinch at the greeting but flashed him a wide grin. "Morning, Grandpa!" he said with a forcefully light voice. Yugi smiled at him, forcing himself to turn around and face him for a moment, then quickly went back to his pastry.

"Are you making those all for yourself?"

Yugi had a moment where he almost wanted to snap that he was. Then he frowned, faltering, and shook his head as he looked over his shoulder and put on a blinding smile that he hoped reached his eyes. "Of course not. I thought I would make us breakfast, Grandpa."

It sounded disgustingly fake and terribly rehearsed, but his grandpa barely seemed to notice. Yugi thought it was more that the elder Motou was hungry than anything else, because he knew he wasn't that convincing. But he didn't comment and Sugoroku took a seat at the table with the plate that was ready next to him.

Yugi turned away immediately so that he would not see his frustrated expression. He was getting hungrier as the seconds passed. The smell of pancakes was making his mouth water. And the thought of syrup made him want to sit down with a pile of the breakfast pastry and drench them with the maple concoction.

But he wasn't the one who seemed to need more healing. Yami was limping and exhausted. He, on the other hand, seemed to have recovered rather well even despite the poison that he had apparently expelled the night before.

Yugi stilled slightly at the thought. Was Yami sure that it was wolfsbane and silver that they had injected him with? It seemed impossible that he could expel that and survive through the night. How could that possibly be what had been pushed through his veins? Sure, he had convulsed and felt as if he were fading away completely, but still it seemed so illogical to him.

Wolfsbane was so dangerous and it killed so easily…

And then, obviously, silver had been used for some other reason that he was sure was relatively the same. It was poisonous to a werewolf, wasn't it? It had to be. Because there would not have been a reason for its inclusion otherwise…

Yugi shook his head, sliding the last of his pancakes onto his own plate, and turned around for a moment. "I'm going to go eat in my room. I have a little bit of homework to finish up before I leave."

Sugoroku looked at him, visibly startled by the statement. He halted with the fork halfway to his mouth and furrowed his brows in surprise. "You normally finish your homework the night before," he commented with a frown.

Yugi wanted, for the smallest of moments, to snarl at him that he used to do a lot of things that he wasn't now. He didn't hang out with his friends as much, he couldn't help out in the clinic, he wasn't playing video games as often, and then, he barely wanted to spend time with anyone.

But, mostly, he had failed to forget that his grandpa had known that werewolves existed. And he had failed to forget the fact that he had forgotten to tell him long before. He had not forgotten that he tested him so often by way of scent.

And he especially had not forgotten that he had asked him if he could smell Valon when he had escaped his cage that day.

So, for that split second, he wanted nothing more than to lash out at him. But he silenced the impulse. There was no reason to do such a thing. Instead, frowning, he shook his head, and muttered, "I forgot about it last night. Anzu and I were texting and I guess it just slipped my mind."

His grandpa was watching him with a slightly uncertain look, almost as if he wanted to apologize, but the moment passed. He nodded at him, saying, "Have a good day at school, Yugi," as the boy headed back for his room. The small teen glanced over his shoulder but didn't bother with much more, opening the door and handing the plate over to Yami when he saw he had returned to the bed. Yami hesitated for a moment, then took it from the smaller teen, and he bit his lip as he watched him.

"I forgot about the protein shake," he admitted, grimacing and feeling sick to his stomach for a moment.

He should have made sure to make that before anything else. But his grandpa would have commented and he had nothing that he could think to say that would explain it. He had always hated protein powders. To say that he liked them now would have been foolish. But they would have helped Yami a lot more than just simple pancakes.

He fidgeting, biting his bottom lip hard for a moment. "I'm sorry."

Yami shook his head after a split second. "It's fine."

Yugi nearly faltered at the flat note in his voice. But then he remembered that Yami had been unable to speak last night as it was. His voice had died completely. His body was working on his former wound as well. It would have made sense that the split healing did nothing to give his tone much life. And Yami still looked so terribly exhausted and bone-weary as it was.

He shook his head slightly, frowning. His stomach twisted faintly. "It's really not. It would have helped you…" he muttered, looking at him as his teeth worked at his bottom lip.

Yami blinked at him, eyes stretching slightly wide, and then looked away again. He shook his head after another small pause, then poked at his pancakes for a moment. "It's fine," he repeated in that same, small, nearly inaudible voice, tone as dead as rotted wood. He shrugged after a moment and began to poke more insistently at his food. "It's fine."

Yugi was unsure whether he meant to reassure him or possibly himself. It seemed impossible to him that Yami could truly consider it to all be fine. The very idea seemed illogical to him.

But he forced the thought away. He would have to deal with it all later. When he got home he would hand him a protein shake and make sure to give him the medication to slow his metabolism. He would help him get better again.

"I need to get to school," Yugi announced, barely suppressing his impulse to grimace. "I'll see you when I get back, okay? Stay in here if Mom or Grandpa is home, okay?"

Yami nodded at him, not saying a word in response, and he turned to make his way out the door and down the stairs as quickly as possible. As he got to the bottom step and threw the door open, he nearly groaned.

He was _so hungry_.

But his hunger paled in comparison to Yami's. In the small square of his charge's room, he had begun to pace. The plate had been emptied in a matter of moments when Yugi had left the house and now Yami paced about swiftly from one wall to the next. His turns were as sharp at the corners next to him. His feet were rapid in their movements. His eyes began to dart about himself, his surroundings, flickering and dancing in their frustrations. He was so restless as to twitch every nerve ending.

His skin was pulsing. His body was aching. And a restless, burning confusion made him further infuriated. He wanted to crash forward, then to spin around again. His stomach convulsed and growled. Perhaps the protein shake would have helped. But it would not have sated him. Nor would his metabolism be stilled by those pills. Yami knew at that moment that nothing would have faltered any of it.

As he moved forward and picked paths across the room that made the carpet almost seem worn beneath his feet, he glanced at the window. Yugi would not fault him for doing such a thing, would he? He would not have asked him pause in his decision to hunt, would he? Yami doubted it, but still he hesitated. The hunger made his stomach toss and twist about painfully.

He groaned in the back of his throat and the noise curled up like a snarl. He shook his head slightly, then paced to the pane of glass. He flicked the locks, pulled the window open, and stepped onto the roof. As he crouched there, his balance smooth and perfected as only a wolf's could be, he pulled the window down almost all the way, and then moved about to jump from the slates.

The two-story fall was nothing that made him even slightly pause. Only a slight tingling met his ankles, moving in weak pulses upwards towards his knees. But the pain was absent beyond his shoulder. The jump would not have harmed a human further than aches in their bones and skin, though he was not sure that many realized such things. He glanced back behind him, thankful that Yugi's room was not directly in front or behind the house. It gave him a clearer image of which direction to go and where.

Yami glanced at the street, both sides, then took off for the trees. Thankfully no one seemed to be going about the area as it was. No one came forward on the roads or passed along the woods or sidewalks or anything of that nature. As he looked about the shade of the trees and paced about the long, draping shadows, not once did he look back.

Nor did he pause.

His stomach gurgled in protest to his slower movements. He nearly growled in the back of his throat with displeasure at the sensation. But he did not rush himself. If he wasted his energy at the moment, nothing would help him to regain it. So Yami moved as slowly as he could with his mounting impatience, and sniffed lightly at the air to catch even the smallest hint of a forest animal.

It took what felt like hours for a trail to come to his senses. It was light, almost flowery, with an earthy edge that made him shiver with delight. He licked his lips, glancing about himself, and crouched lower to the ground.

The rabbit would hear him before he would catch it. It might even feel his footsteps before he came forward if he walked too heavily. He would have to be careful, move slowly, and stay as low to the ground and light on his feet as he could. That was not a hard task, but his impatience might make it tedious at a moment like this. So he crouched there, eyes dark, gaze moving about each way, his nose still working to catch more of a trail of this breeze that had originally greeted him.

His stomach growled again but this time it seemed more tempered. It was as if the liberation of knowing that the rabbit was there made his hunger become mildly sated. It was a powerful sensation to come across, the promise of a meal to push away his mounting restlessness. It was somehow wondrous, yet so instinctive that it made Yami shiver with pleasure for the faintest of moments.

But he did not lose himself to it. As he looked about, he failed to consider more than the task of hunting as was necessary. And he needed to sate the hunger that made his stomach ache so brilliantly. It was frustrating to strain his ears and keep his head tilted towards the ground, eyes sharp and focusing every which way to catch sight of the small animal. It was annoying as well, to see that most of the animals had recognized how unnatural his presence was and so had taken to cover.

But the rabbit must have been far from one of its burrows, because it seemed to be the only thing that had failed to run for cover. The straw was scrunching together somewhere that he estimated had to be at least about a mile to his east. But the sponginess of it as it was pushed against the ground made his stomach gargle. The sound of the rabbit moving about was so light that he almost failed to recognize it.

It had to be a smaller one, he realized with a small sense of dissatisfaction. But it was easily pushed aside as he listened further. Food was food. He could not be picky. He only had such small amounts of opportunities to eat when it was not provided by Yugi. He shivered slightly at the idea. He was not used to depending on someone else for such necessities. The concept of relying so heavily on another person made him feel restless. It caused his body to tense and his stomach to toss. It seemed impossible to him that he would lean upon someone else as he was now.

Werewolves were meant to be self-reliant. They lived in packs at times, but the solitary wolf was not uncommon. It was not necessary beyond filling the desire for sociality. So the fact that he was relying on his beta made him feel almost sickly.

He shook his head, struggling to dispel the thought, but it seemed almost impossible to him. The roles had been reversed. The alpha was supposed to take care of their beta. The fact that Yami was the one being taken care of made him feel slightly sick. When a werewolf bit another, it was meant to form a pact between them, a small bond that helped them to guide the beta through the necessary steps until they were able to control the Change.

Yami had been prepared to do just that. He had followed Yugi to and from the festival. He had tried to help him through the Change then, even if he had been unable to. He had followed him home with the intention of helping him to get used to it all. The fact was, however, that he was the weaker one at the moment.

The thought was a little daunting to him. The red-eyed lycanthrope had never been in a position to be forced to rely on another person like this. And the concept of doing so made him nervous. It was almost shameful, the idea that their roles were so heavily reversed. But, if nothing else, he could still hunt. And he knew how to heal himself should things get worse.

It was troubling that the wolf had gone after Yugi like that. As he narrowed his eyes and searched hard for any movement, he could not shake the slight fear that came into his system. Three times he had seen Yugi nearly killed.

Disregarding the fact that he had killed the wrong wolf in the first attack, seeing him slumped against the wall, bleeding so profusely and barely managing to gurgle for breath, was still a black stain in the back of his mind. The two wolves in the woods, who had come for Yugi during his first Change—had the man called them something? Hadn't he said two names?—had nearly taken his head off when he had interfered in the fight. And then the wolf and the human—Bakura, that was the wolf, right? He strained his memory but the name did not come to him beyond that.

So he went with it. His memory was almost never wrong. Once or twice he had forgotten details, then recalled them with clarity that knocked him nearly from his feet, but he was almost never wrong. So he would think the wolf's name to be Bakura, because that was the only name he recalled. And the gray-haired man—had he not said it several times? During the fight, had he not told him to keep Yami in one place?

He shivered again, slightly unnerved. His head turned, musings forgotten. His stomach pulsed with hunger. He pushed himself up slightly. His legs were tensed, crouching halfway. He thought to move to brace himself with his right palm to the ground, but paused. The rabbit was only a few feet away.

Staying so still had somehow brought him a gift.

He tensed his shoulders, bunching the muscles there. He did not have to change to catch it. But he hesitated as it did the same. Its eyes had not fully taken him in yet. Rabbits were blind when their heads were turned towards something. Yami had learned that several times during hunting. They only had this single blind spot, directly in front of their face. And, should it tilt its head to the side, appearing to give a sidelong glance, it was staring straight at whatever had caught its focus. The nostrils and the large ears were what helped it compensate, however.

And they were far sighted. As far as he could tell, being only yards away from him, it could not fully tell what he was. He did not know if they saw in color, nor whether they could see in the dark well. But they were not nocturnal so he felt there was a reason for that. Regardless, crouched there and staring, the werewolf did not move forward yet. He needed it to see him. It would kick in his instinct to chase. And when that happened, it would be easier for him to hunt it. Wolves were built for endurance. Outrunning and outdistancing their prey until they were nearly worn down was one of their best abilities. So he waited, sniffing the air and swallowing harshly.

Then the rabbit came forward a step, scenting the air in twitches of its large nose. Yami braced himself, nearly growling in the back of his throat. He was starving and the sight of it made him want to forget his plan altogether. But if he ran too soon, the weariness that already gripped him would remain. He needed his wolf instincts to become triggered. The human was not made for endurance as far as running was involved, nor did they travel very quickly. It was walking that provided them stamina.

And the rabbit would be long gone before he could catch it if he went after it as he was.

So he waited.

A second passed. And then, finally, the rabbit's head turned. The wide eyes, brown with dilated pupils, focused on him. Or, at least, one of them did. And the ears quivered. The muscles in its body bunched together. Then, it breathed in roughly, turned and bolted.

Yami took off after it. There was an abundance of energy that came to him. It swept over each muscle in his body. It warmed the marrow in his bones. It made him shiver. But it also pushed on his senses to run faster. It was mere seconds before he overtook it.

He pounced. He hit it, rolled a step. Then he sat up. The brown and gray rabbit struggled. He gripped the short hairs in between his fingers. He blinked lazily. He smirked lopsidedly. The rabbit kicked and squirmed harder. He growled softly. As a human, the thought of killing it made his stomach toss. But there was a more primal instinct to overpower it. Still, he did not rip into it. Rather, he shifted his grip. Its struggles intensified. He moved his palm along its cheek. Then he grasped the base of its shoulder. With a jerk of his wrist, the neck snapped.

The body fell limp. He crossed his legs, settling more comfortably. The growing sunlight made his skin tingle faintly. He licked his lips, looking the rabbit over for a moment longer. This small meal would not do much more than sate him for a few minutes. So he realized, with a small sense of frustration, that he would have to move further. He would have to find more prey. And he would have to make it back to the house sooner than he had before.

He didn't want to worry Yugi beyond what was necessary, after all.

* * *

Yugi was grateful that his friends had not asked him to stick with them when they went to the arcade. He had purposefully spun a little tale that he needed to help his mom with a surgery again. It was so common that none of them had bothered to question it, as he knew they wouldn't.

But it still somehow upset him that he had to lie to them. He felt almost as if he should have been used to it. After all the times he had said such stupid things to conceal Yami, how was it that he still felt guilty?

Yugi shook his head as he opened the door. "Hi, Grandpa," he called over his shoulder, glancing back to make sure he was not coming out of the living room yet. He knew his grandpa had been nearby, watching the television, but he hadn't initially thought to consider he might get up yet. So he glanced back, relieved that he hadn't, and drew in a deep breath of relief. He blinked, then turned back and froze in surprise.

Yami was halfway through the window. He wasn't looking at him but rather at the carpet. And when he straightened again, Yugi could make the faintest hint of dirt on his shirt. His fingernails were black with soil and dark brown with dried blood. When he closed the window, he left a small bit of dirt on it. But the blood had been pasted to his fingers for so long that it did not streak.

Yugi shivered slightly. The attention made his red eyes flicker to his. When they locked, the smaller teen felt almost winded. The other boy looked more predatory than he had seen in a while. Standing taller, with a sharper gleam to his eyes, Yami looked larger, stronger. It seemed almost impossible that he had been the same one to come with bleeding wrists and sleeping on his couch because of the medication kicking in so soon. And it seemed impossible to put together the idea that Yami was the same one who he shared his bed with at night.

But the demeanor was the same. Despite the aura of power he exuded, he did not change his attitude. But there was still a dark glimmer to his gaze. And there was something in it that made Yugi feel a little cold. It seemed almost like a warning. Or it could have been something more.

"Did you just…get back…?"

Yugi cringed at his own question. Of course he had. He had just snuck in through the window, after all. He nearly groaned under his breath at his stupidity. But Yami did not so much as blink. The wolf watched him for a moment, as if waiting for him to say something more, and then turned away.

"Yes."

Yugi nearly leaped forth with satisfaction upon hearing his voice. It was almost intoxicating to hear it after so long away from him. He blinked wide eyes, his nerves tingling with happiness, and bit his lip to keep from reacting stupidly. Instead, his lips twitching and threatening to break into a grin, he tucked his hands into his uniform jacket's pockets and pulled them forward. He tilted his head, looking at him happily, and felt the straps of his backpack push on his shoulders slightly.

"Did it…go well?"

Yami blinked in surprise at the question, turning his head. It was with a slightly bewildered expression that he studied him for a moment. Then he smiled and nodded, though his eyes seemed slightly distracted. "Yes."

Yugi nodded and reached up to pull his bag off but faltered. His jacket didn't reach that high. He nearly groaned at himself. And Yami smirked at him in amusement at his forgetfulness. He tossed the bag aside, then stiffened as a new thought occurred to him. He spun around, looking towards the kitchen, listening for movement. But his grandpa had not bothered to get up yet.

He sighed in relief, then turned and closed the door. He thought to flip the lock but stopped short. There wasn't any need. His mother and grandfather both knew how to knock. They had drilled it into his head, after all, and they followed that same rule.

So he simply turned away and grinned. "Good."

Yami blinked again. He nodded after a moment. Then he hesitated. Yugi could see him looking from the bed to the bathroom. For a moment he had the impulse to say that he needed to clean his hands. But he realized that the thought had occurred to him already. It was why he had stopped so suddenly. The red eyes flickered towards his. Then he turned and trotted towards the bathroom.

For the smallest of seconds Yugi wanted to ask him some more about how it had gone. Maybe he would ask what he had eaten. But then he shivered. He didn't think he could take the idea of asking that question. The thought of someone actually eating something raw like that made him grimace. It just seemed utterly disgusting to him. But Yami obviously did not mind it. He would eat anything and everything he could get his teeth in.

He had eaten that dog, after all.

Yugi shuddered and his mind recoiled at the thought. It was disgusting to remember that. How had he even thought to let him have the canine again?

The thought made him flinch.

Because Yami had been starving.

He had let him have the dog's body because he had known Yami was starving.

Yugi shook his head slightly. There was no faulting him for being hungry. And there was no true laying blame on him for his inability to find something else. If all animals reacted the way the ones he had been helping in the clinic had, then he was not surprised that Yami might have settled for something easier. Teeth tearing fur and causing wounds was easier than a deer thrusting its antlers or a hoof possibly breaking a bone with impact.

So he tossed the thought aside. Then he faltered as Yami came out of the bathroom again. He blinked at his companion, lowering his eyes. Where they fell was his almond-shaped nails, the beds of them that same vibrant dark red color. The tips were bright white, almost stunning in shade, and he wondered again if his might ever become that color as well. The thought made his eyes shoot down to his own fingers. So far the nails were still pink, a pale color that border on something almost peachy like his own complexion.

But that didn't mean that they wouldn't change, did it? Because, as he looked towards his thumbnails, he could swear the cuticles had shifted. They had stretched, dragged themselves upwards. He frowned in puzzlement, then looked up at the other boy.

"Are my nails going to look like that eventually too?"

Yami looked at his and then Yugi's. A wry expression crossed his face for a moment. Then he smirked lopsidedly and the sight of it made the smaller boy pause. "They will," he replied, watching the other with something slightly satisfied. "When you have gone through the Change enough times, it will alter their color and shape further."

Yugi blinked wide eyes. "Why?"

The wolf paused and then looked down at his nails. "The nail bed grows thicker and the blood vessels move a little closer to the surface. It helps with healing. And it makes it harder for them to chip or break later." He glanced at him. "Human nails break easily."

Yugi nodded, fighting away a wider grin. Was this the most he had gotten him to speak? His voice wasn't cracking as terribly. And it was almost smooth, though its tone wavered drastically. He wanted to laugh, so satisfied that it made his stomach quiver for the briefest of seconds.

Yugi wondered if he could feel his excitement. Was it easier for Yugi since he seemed more wolf than human half the time as it was? Was it like having a second skin of some kind? Did he ever wonder about those emotions that came from him? Yugi wondered if he could better identify them than he himself could at times.

"So…what about the thumbnails? Why do they look like crescent moons?"

"Why?" Yami blinked, looking at his nail for a moment, and then frowned faintly. "It makes it easier for the transition of them becoming a dewclaw. The cuticle being so far upwards helps hold them together and shift the claws more easily to the side."

Yugi blinked at the thought, puzzling it over, and then nodded slightly. From what he recalled, the dewclaw was attached by both bone and tendon. It would shift only slightly, but it would still have to move and rotate as the human thumb was sideways and the canine's dewclaw was forward facing like the rest of the toes.

"But doesn't it make it more obvious that we're werewolves?"

Yami tipped his head to the side and frowned at him. "Every species comes with a warning signal as a predator." He paused, tilting his head. "The wolf comes with a larger body and sharper teeth. The fox has a bright red coat and narrow snout. The tiger has stripes and a long tail. The bear has long claws and huge paws. The bird has talons and wings. What it comes down to it is how quickly they learn to adapt. The wolves avoid the humans and adapt to their surroundings. The fox is smaller so it hides easily and stays low to the ground. The tiger uses the shade for camouflage and kills when threatened. The bear charges its enemies. The bird flies or attacks with its beak."

Yugi blinked in surprise at the thought. Yami was right. Each of them was recognizable. Anyone who saw a canine knew it was a dog. Anyone who saw a bright red pelt thought it was a fox. Anyone who saw stripes and orange fur knew a tiger. A bear could be identified by its enormous weight and long claws. And the only animal that had wings to fly and talons for hunting was the bird.

In retrospect, darker nails and curved cuticles seemed to be the most minor adaptation he had ever seen given to a predator. And, now that he thought of it, humans rarely looked at each other's nails unless they were blatantly on display. And then someone might think it was more nail polish than anything. And he remembered something about cuticle remover being something that he could use.

It seemed simple enough to him. If he really thought there was a need to hide it at some point, he could say it was nail polish and use cuticle remover to fix his thumbnails.

Yugi ran a hand through his hair. "Makes sense," he muttered, then paused with wide eyes. "Do hellhounds have red nails too?"

Yami nodded. "Yes. Every werewolf does."

He bit his lip. "So, how do you know the difference between them when you see them?" he asked slowly, frowning and tilting his head. "I mean, there has to be a difference, right? There are two different subspecies, after all, right?"

The red-eyed teen nodded again, turning his head to look at him. "Yes, there is a difference," he muttered, then paused after a long moment. "Hellhounds have three colors to their eyes and never anything else—red, gold, or aqua green. They also…well, their auras are different. It feels a little more alarming when they are around than when another lycanthrope is."

"What was Bakura?"

Yami blinked at him, startled by the use of the wolf's name, and then frowned noticeably. "He was a lycanthrope. Hellhounds are all solid color." He hesitated. "And his eyes were brown."

Yugi could tell his voice was going to die any moment. It was cracking profusely. It was faltering around the edges. It had failed at the last word. And he looked uncomfortably tired as well now. Yugi thought for the smallest of seconds to offer to grab him a cup of water.

But then he saw how unnerved Yami truly seemed. His eyes had glazed and his expression more closed off. He looked as if he might turn away any moment. And he seemed as if he might fall silent should he ask anything else.

So instead he smiled at him. "Well, I guess you ate already. So I think I'm going to go make a sandwich. Are you still hungry?"

Yami blinked at him, startled, and then shook his head.

"Do you want any medicine? Do you want some help falling asleep?"

He shook his head again. But this time Yugi could see the thinnest curve of a smile on his lips.

He nearly grinned as he turned around to head to the kitchen again.

* * *

"There is another Pure-Blood."

There was a long pause, then an eruption of noise. Laughter fluttered out, harsh and dangerous, and previous objections fell away in the stale air.

"Another Pure-Blood? That is impossible. You know as well as I that their bite only makes a Full-Blood wolf."

"Bakura's head was taken off by a wolf that should have been _long dead_ from _mere exposure_ to the serum. I never drew his blood to slow it down or give him an antidote."

"Perhaps you simply got the two wolves confused."

"I've been tracking a wolf that you described—exotic eyes and spiky hair."

"And the second wolf that appeared?"

"I do not know. I only saw him after he had changed."

"What did he look like?"

"He was black—and bigger than Bakura. He was inches bigger than the other one…"

"Than the other wolf…whom you had been tracking?"

"Yes. He was bigger than him."

There was a long moment of silence.

"A beta? Full-Bloods are just as hard to kill as the others."

"Which one is the original Pure-Blood, however?"

"No one took note of what the original looked like."

"He was hairless when he was born. Do you all not recall? He was too small and he was hairless! We all thought he would die!"

"And yet he was the only one to survive."

"Does anyone know what color his eyes were? Does no one have notes of it?"

"His eyes were black, remember? The tests and the sickness rendered his eyes black."

"And now that he is outside of this facility?"

"The boy's eyes were dark blue. And the other's were an orange color."

There was another pause, this one much shorter than the other.

"His mother's eyes were violet, remember? And the father's were brown. They were a hideous dark brown, like mud. The testing turned them dark gray. And so I would think that bright orange might be the color we are looking for."

"But if the other's were dark blue, wouldn't that make just as much sense?"

Noise burst forth, protests and laughter mixing in. A signal was giving, a sharp and clear cut sound like an angry snarl. Silence fell over the area once more.

"Either wolf could be ours. Code Name Atem could have adapted easily. And perhaps the tests changed his eyes further. Were their coats solid colors?"

"Yes, from what I could tell…but I was not close. And Bakura blocked the sight of him more often than not. They were fighting too often for me to take note—"

"But you failed to look at the one you had poisoned?"

"He was incapacitated. It seemed more logical to see about the other. He was larger as well—and aren't the Pure-Bloods supposed to be _larger than regular werewolves_?"

"Do not get snide with me, Pegasus. It is not by any fault of mine that you have failed your task." There was a long pause. "Of course, it could be possible that Code Name Atem has found a way to transfer the entirety of his own disease into another. Perhaps this newcomer—this possible beta—has the gift of immortality as he does."

"That's impossible!" a lower, angrier voice snarled. "There is no way that the werewolf could do such a thing! It goes against everything we have ever learned of them! When a Pure-Blood bites a human, a Full-Blood is born, from there it goes to the Half-Blood and eventually the Quarter-Blood. You are asking us to believe that a creature _we_ created turned and created a _replica of himself_? He is not _naturally_ born! I doubt that he even has the ability to infect another human! He should be as unable as the common hellhound."

Someone snickered softly, and the air within the room seemed to become suffocating. For a long moment there were glares at each other, vicious and angry, but it began to slowly but surely drift away. The tension eased, if only slightly, though everyone remained still and frozen within their seats.

"Perhaps he is able, by some divine gift." It came out sarcastic but somehow full of wonder all the same. "Or, rather, perhaps his beta is simply a Full-Blood. Perhaps there was not enough wolfsbane or silver within the vial to truly kill him."

Pegasus let out a hiss of dissatisfaction. "You gave me the amount." He was baring his teeth, talking through them. "You told me exactly how to do it. I followed the _exact_ instructions. I did not even mix them until minutes before Bakura and I cornered him in the woods!"

"I would suggest you reign in your anger."

He trembled, not with fear, but with rage. He shook his head sharply, but lowered his eye in frustration.

"So what do we do now? If there are two wolves that could possibly be Code Name Atem, what is it that we should do?" a new voice demanded. "Two Pure-Bloods running around Hokkaido Japan is dangerous, is it not? Should we triple our efforts, try harder to take him back?"

The head of the table stayed silent for a long moment. No one spoke, staring at him in contemplation instead. For what seemed like hours they remained in this unnerving quiet. No one seemed even to blink for several minutes.

"If he is creating a pack, then let us allow him to gather his numbers. I do not know if you all share my joy of this announcement, but the idea that he could create more might mean better results for each of us. Is that not what we made him for in the first place? For _results_?"

Another moment passed, though this one much smaller.

"I suppose it cannot hurt to let him infect others." They paused again, then cleared their throat. "But, what if he cannot infect any others? What if it was some kind of mistake that he turned this human? Or, perhaps…what if the only reason he did this, was because of loneliness? Surely even the Pure-Blood must long for a mate, yes?"

"They are both _boys_!" Pegasus snapped, scowling at this new speaker. "Why should he waste his time with another male?"

"You forget that gender does not bind the werewolf," the head of the table chuckled in amusement. "Werewolves desire who they wish and will mate with the person they feel they have the most connection with. They are much more powerfully drawn to their mates than humans are their partners. And they fail to take reproduction into consideration. It is not necessary for them, as you well know. They can come in litters, not in ones or twos as humans do."

There was a brief silence, then he burst into laughter.

"And, if you wish to think it unnatural, remember what he _is_. He is something that I _created_. He is the long-awaited answer of an experiment that has gone on for years. He is the single success after what feels like centuries of failure."

The silence grew deeper, thicker, and each of them swapped looks for a brief moment.

"His desire to have a male human as his partner should not come as a surprise. Each of you forget at this moment that his genetic makeup could have changed to such a point as to disregard gender altogether. And we do not know that he would ever be able to breed, so a female is unnecessary as it is."

* * *

The impact left him winded. He staggered back a step, nearly gasping for breath. He shook his head sharply. Then his eyes snapped upwards. And his mouth opened and closed as his gaze grew thrice its regular size. Yugi blinked stupidly, horrified, and nearly backed away again. His breathing grew tighter, his heart racing. His stomach tossed. His fingers twitched. He grasped at his jacket sleeve in order to steady himself.

Sozoji stood at what he remembered Ushio to. He was a mammoth, several feet taller than himself. And his eyes were sharp, beady, dark brown and gleaming dangerously. His shoulders were broad enough to nearly encompass Yugi's and add three inches on either side. His jaw was sharp, chiseled, and his hair was almost like Honda's, in the formation of a large spike though his went several inches past his forehead. His sideburns were angled to follow the line of his jaw, positioned a few inches above the bone. He was one of the least friendly, most aggressive students that walked Domino High halls.

So the fact that they had run into each other did nothing to calm him. Yugi felt as if his eyes might pop out of his head. And the fact that he was a lycanthrope did nothing to help him. It was horrifying to see him there. And he had to crane his head back to fully take him in. The height difference was so immense. And he wanted to puke as he gaped at him.

Honda and Jonouchi made small, strangled noises in the back of their throats. He knew that after the incident with Ushio neither of them wanted to have to face off with him as well. It was stunning, horrifying even, and each of them stared stupidly at the massive student. But he realized, anxiety making his stomach drop further, that something was off.

As his eyes bore into his skin, frozen in place, Yugi could do nothing more than open and close his mouth again. But the panic was drifting. And a sense of bewildering confusion swept through him. He blinked stupidly.

Sozoji would not raise his eyes to look at him. He was staring fixatedly at the tiled floor beneath their feet. He refused to raise his gaze. And he had angled his body slightly away from Yugi. His shoulders were hunched. He had his back curved partially. His feet were moved to face another direction. And he looked…meek.

Yugi blinked again, stupefied. Then his head snapped towards the other three beside him. Jonouchi and Honda had not noticed his change of posture, but Anzu had. There was a clear and uncomfortable fear in her eyes. But there was also bewilderment and a child's wonder as she looked between the two of them. It seemed impossible to see this hulking figure in front of them looking so submissive before the smallest kid in their school. The sight of it made her blink and do several different takes, her mouth nearly falling open with shock.

But the moment passed. Yugi found himself looking away from her. And then he stepped back again. And Sozoji took it as a sign to walk past him. He gave him a wide breadth of space. Several inches of dead air existed between them. The smaller teen blinked, turning his head, and stared stupidly after him. It seemed unnatural to him to see all of this. It seemed…impossible and surreal.

He shivered. But Sozoji never looked back.

He closed his eyes tightly for a moment. What had that been about? He shivered again. Was it possible? Was it his lycanthropy that allowed this to happen? Was it his disease that had forced Sozoji to become submissive? It seemed so strange, so surreal. And he couldn't fully understand it all as he blinked stupidly. But he could not stop himself. So he remained silent and continued to stare.

"That was…one of the strangest things I have ever seen."

Yugi blinked and turned his head. "That was…awkward," he admitted weakly, trying to smile at the tall blond. He wanted, for the smallest of seconds, to lean over and puke on the floor. But he held it back, watching him and smiling weakly. "But…at least it didn't turn into a massive fight, right? At least it wasn't like when…Ushio and Sozoji used to bump into each other…"

Jonouchi blinked, brown eyes growing startled, and then cringed. "You mean, the weekly bloodbath?" he muttered, then wrinkled his nose before awkwardly glancing at the other two of their group. "I can't say I miss that, honestly."

Yugi lowered his eyes, almost for a moment wondering if there might be pee there. But the tiles were spotless, as if Sozoji had never been there. And so he glanced over his shoulder again. The mammoth of a student was long gone. He breathed out a sigh of relief, then turned back with what he hoped was one of his signature, bright-eyed smiles. "Let's go to lunch, okay?"

All three of them hesitated, staring at Yugi as if they did not recognize him for a moment, and then nodded in unison. They swapped small glances, seemingly unsure of themselves, and Yugi almost cringed. There had been the Burger World employee snapping at them in the restaurant, then the wolf in the alleyway who had fled, his lie about his grandpa being sick, and now there was Sozoji on top of it all. The thought that they too were keeping tabs on all of the weird things going on around them scared him.

If they were, surely they recognized how terribly out of place it all was. And the only connection between each event was him. He shivered, nearly disgusted with himself, but turned away again quickly. Yugi followed as they began to awkwardly make their way towards the quad to eat lunch. He had the impulse to duck his head, to hide away in the boys' bathroom, and not bother to come out again. But he remained several small steps behind them, unsure of himself and feeling sick to his stomach.

Jonouchi already thought it was suspicious that Ushio had wound up dead on his doorstep without explanation. The fact that he had kept quiet about that for so long made him nervous. When did he turn around and snap at him angrily over what had happened, bring it to the surface again and snarl in frustration? Because he knew, if things kept up the way they were, one of them would question it. And what would he say then? He had no true answers…

And then…

Yugi's head snapped up and his eyes widened drastically. Oh, dear _gods_ , what had happened with that? Did Yami know about Ushio's body being dumped there? It seemed suddenly, after his admission that he had killed Tomoya and bitten him, that perhaps he did. Was it possible that it had been _him_ to kill and place him there?

The thought was horrifying. And so disturbing that he nearly puked.

Why would he have done that? He had assumed it had been someone involved in the attack at the alleyway, but with Ushio and Tomoya dead, he had not known what to do or say about it all. So what would he do if it was proven that he had? What if Yami admitted it at some point?

Yugi didn't know if he could bear to look at him if he had. And then what? He was his alpha, wasn't he? And he was willing to answer his questions. He was willing to tell him things that he asked him about.

What would he do then?

Yami was helping him at the moment. He was helping to teach him what he needed to know. Could he really turn his back on something like that?

He shivered. He didn't know if knowledge was worth allowing a killer to remain in his house like that…

But Yami had never threatened him. And he had backed down when he had told him not to worry about his mom or grandpa. Didn't that qualify for something?

Maybe it counted for something, but he doubted it justified keeping quiet about a murder…

He opened and closed his mouth, staring ahead of him at the grass and the small sakura tree that they always trimmed during winter. But he could not fathom turning Yami away—not truly—and the guilt made his stomach flare painfully. He opened and closed his mouth. Then he turned away and stared blankly back at the door they had just walked through. He was happy that he had foregone lunch that day, because he was sure he would have dropped it by now, that train of thought so horrifying as to throw him off completely.

"Yugi?"

He flinched at the concern in her voice. His head snapped towards her. Her blue eyes, so bright and beautiful, bore into his painfully. He wanted, for the smallest of moments, to puke once more. And then his stomach quelled in its angry tosses.

"Sorry, I was just thinking about something…" Yugi hesitated for a moment, then looked at the other two who were staring at him just as blankly. They stared at each other for a moment, the three of them more concerned than he was himself. They were worried he looked sick, but if they had known his thoughts they would have never once considered asking. "I got caught up in my head again, I guess."

Yugi flashed them his best smile, as forced as it was, but could not do any better. And, for the second time, he wanted to duck and hide in the bathroom. But he blinked at them, forced himself to smile wider, and then turned away slightly.

He had the sudden impulse to turn and pull his phone out of his pocket. He wanted to call his house for a moment, to speak to Yami, to possibly see if perhaps he might get his answer right then. But he could not fully fathom the other werewolf answering the phone, however. And his plan failed his mind completely.

Yugi turned to glance over his shoulder again. How many others would react like Sozoji had? Was it a natural instinct in people? Or was it…?

He faltered.

Was Sozoji a werewolf too? Was he a lycanthrope? His brown eyes weren't golden or green or red like Yami had claimed hellhounds always had. So was it possible that he was a lycanthrope too? Was that what had caused him to react in such a way? Perhaps he had been too afraid to look into his eyes because of it.

Maybe it was a werewolf thing too? Was that possible?

Yugi faltered. No, because he and Ushio had faced off several times. And he could not help but think that it was more territorial than it was human disgust towards each other. The very idea that it was not human seemed almost a relief. And yet it horrified him all the same. Had they been werewolves for that long? The fact that they had fought for three years in middle school and continued it until Ushio's death made it a terrifying idea.

"Dude, Yug, are you okay?"

A hand touched his forehead and he nearly flinched. His eyes flickered to the golden-brown orbs that gazed back at him and he wanted to recoil. Jonouchi was visibly concerned, his brows furrowed and his mouth set in a frown, but there was also that glimmer of suspicion there. It made his eyes seem a little darker than usual. The thought made Yugi suppress a nervous shiver.

"Y-yeah," he muttered, though now he did not bother to smile. "I just…got distracted again. Let's go sit down."

It was somehow distressing to look at them altogether. And the idea to sit down with them seemed somehow daunting. But he forced his fear away, shaking his head, and led the way towards their usual seating arrangement. It was somewhat disgusting that the quad was open again after a month's worth of investigation into Miho's murder, but it did nothing to make him pause.

And the others barely seemed to consider it either. All four of them took a seat, Yugi against the wall, Anzu across from him, Honda and Jonouchi to either side of him. They always sat in this little formation, though it rotated depending on who took the seat against the wall. Jonouchi claimed it was the best and always tried to take it before anyone else could. The fact that he didn't argue now was a testament that he was still considerably unnerved by it all.

* * *

"A bizarre string of incidents has been occurring in the Domino City Memorial Cemetery," a woman's voice announced as Yugi closed the hallway door behind him and reached up to run a hand through his hair. He was exhausted after all of the crap that had happened at school, the way it had weighed so heavily on his tired mind. But the statement still made his head turn and his eyes widen with confusion. "For the last couple of days, graves have been dug up and bodies half-eaten. Remains have been scattered about among the headstones and people claim that a large black canine-like creature has been seen each time. No one has gathered an exact description of this animal, only that it appears to have been there each time."

Yugi faltered, head turning, and wandered towards the living room. He could not fully see the screen as he stopped behind the fridge, not wanting to draw anyone's attention, but felt sick to his stomach.

"Witnesses say that it seems to disappear right before their eyes, almost as if it was never there. But biologists do claim that the work seems rather dog-like. They say that the coffins must not have been secure enough to keep the hungry animals out, but cannot explain why no one seems to know where they go. There are no visible tracks beyond the clawed up graves and there are no leads as to what kind of dog it might be to cause these events."

Yugi frowned, turning his head to look over his shoulder.

"Some of the bodies have their organs eaten away while others only have limbs missing. None of the biologists have any answers about this phenomenon."

He shook his head, then turned and made his way towards the door. He shrugged the words out of his mind, shivering, and turned the knob on his bedroom door. He blinked, looking around himself, eyes peering into the darkened room, and then paused. For a moment he could not tell where Yami was, but the red-eyed wolf saved him the task of finding him. The bathroom door opened and he wandered out a step, looking at him in obvious confusion.

"I thought you would be out longer."

His voice was so scratchy and hoarse that Yugi nearly flinched. But then he shook his head as he considered his words, and wandered forward a step towards the bed. He was almost exhausted as he took a seat on the mattress and looked at him more clearly.

"Can I ask you something?"

Yami blinked at him but nodded nonetheless.

"I…" Yugi halted for a moment, unsure of what more to say, and then tilted his head to the side as he looked at him slowly. "Do werewolves dig up corpses?"

The red-eyed teen blinked, tipping his head to the side as well, and then reached a hand up to run his fingers through his hair. For a moment he was quiet, then he slowly narrowed his eyes and forced his voice out in a weak timbre. "Hellhounds do, occasionally."

He frowned at him, shaking his head as he sat up a little further. "I read that regular lycanthropes did it too."

Yami shook his head. "Hellhounds eat corpses. Lycanthropes do not."

"Then why do people say they do?"

"Do any humans know that hellhounds are werewolves?"

Yugi halted, opening and closing his mouth, and then reached up to scratch lightly at his wrist. "I…I don't know," he admitted after a moment. But he doubted it. The idea that someone knew that there were two subspecies of werewolves seemed unlikely. He had never seen it in any of the books he had read. And he had not known any sites to say that either. There seemed to be no one to know that they existed side by side like this.

Yami snorted at him, smirking faintly, and then crossed his arms with a pointedly smug look. Yugi smirked in response, laughing softly, and shook his head as the other boy glanced over his shoulder briefly. "Hellhounds dig up fresher corpses because they need a chemical in them. It gives them a bodily reaction that allows them to become incorporeal at will." He hesitated, then cleared his throat again and shook his head slightly. "Why are you asking me about this?"

Yugi kicked his legs uncomfortably. "I was about to come in here and heard the news report that something was digging up corpses and the biologists think it is canine-like." He paused, swallowing. "But they also say that witnesses have seen a massive dog-like creature there and that when they look again the animal is gone."

"Yes, so then that would be a hellhound."

Yugi nodded awkwardly, swallowing hard again. "That's…disturbing."

Yami turned away from him, starting towards the other side of the bed to sit down and look at the window for a moment. When he felt the smaller teen still staring at him, he tilted his head and shot him a sideways look.

"Lycanthropes need fresh blood—of any kind—to trigger the Change sometimes. Or they can have a near-death experience that will trigger it. Sometimes, depending on how much they know about their lineage and how well they keep up with their health, puberty can cause it to come about as well." Yami paused, thinking for a long moment, and then frowned curiously. "Otherwise the wolf does not interfere but for the influence of intelligence and sometimes athletic ability. But beyond that they remain dormant. Hellhounds just need the coldest day during winter at some point during which they have hit puberty. Then they'll change and, if they know enough about becoming incorporeal, they will dig up corpses."

"What is the chemical that they need?"

"I don't…know the name of it." He paused, opening and closing his mouth once, and then shrugged slowly. "I only know that it comes from the preservatives and things that are put in human food. It's an unnatural thing that only comes because of the food that humans eat. That's why lycanthropes rarely eat human food and hellhounds will sometimes turn their noses up at it too."

Yugi blinked, frowning, and then shook his head slowly. "You sound…a little upset talking about this right now," he commented, frown deepening as Yami grew rigid and his eyes became wider in surprise at the statement. He sat up a little at the way the taller werewolf failed to speak for a moment, worried as he looked at him uncomfortably. "I'm sorry—I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable. I was just…"

The other boy shook his head uncomfortably, unnerved and frustrated. He opened and then closed his mouth again. The movement was so harsh that his teeth clicked violently and Yugi swore he could hear his muscles twitching and his spine grinding together with the action. He stiffened in confusion, startled by his reaction, and swallowed thickly as he shook his head in response.

He thought to open and close his mouth and then fell silent again. There was nothing that he could think to say as they looked at each other. The red in his eyes was oddly dark, almost so deep in shade that it looked nearly bruised with deep gray.

Was there something Yami didn't like about being a lycanthrope?

Had his family been killed because of a werewolf or something?

Or had he simply had a bad experience since becoming one?

Was he annoyed with it all?

Or was he just uncomfortable with talking about it?

Did he think that Yugi would take the conversation elsewhere?

He halted, opening and closing his mouth again, and then lowered his eyes. "I…Y-Yami, thank you for saving me," he choked out awkwardly. His eyes flickered towards him from beneath his lashes. The other boy blinked stupidly at him, looking at with him something like a stunned horror. "I…I know that I reacted a little badly. But thank you, Yami. I…I'm really glad that you did."

Yami opened and closed his mouth, then something like a distressed noise left him. He blinked at him again, stupefied, and seemed for a moment to almost recoil from his response. For a second he shook his head slowly, then he awkwardly nodded at Yugi with that same mixture of horror and shock on his face. But there was a hint of fascination that came with it, and there was so much to color his expression that Yugi almost flinched upon truly taking it in.

But then Yami mumbled, "Of course" as if it were the simplest thing in the world, as if Yugi had simply given thanks for letting him copy his homework, and it made him shiver.

* * *

Blood fell to the ground in layers of bright red and dark brown. The green of the grass around him was stained. The shed pine that he had seen on the ground was plastered together with it. The ground seemed to ooze with it for a moment. And, as his claws dug into the earth, it seemed to expel it in fits. Glowing blue-violet eyes rose from a carcass of bright pink and dripping red. Soft brown fur the color of cinnamon burned in his line of sight. He licked his jaws, tilting his head, and the blood dripped from his teeth.

He lapped at his nose, lowering his mouth again. He had torn the stomach open cleanly. The entrails were bright and shiny. He licked at his lips again. Then he dug his teeth into the chunk of rib that was exposed to him.

A current of electricity pulsed through him. It began at his teeth. His incisors shook in his gums. His skin split and bled. His jaws clenched. His nose wrinkled. He choked. The current spread to his throat. His diaphragm shuddered. He choked, coughing. His throat opened and closed. His legs shook. His ears quivered. His paws slid from beneath him.

He shuddered again. He collapsed. Something touched him. It grabbed his legs. It grabbed his scruff. It tugged. He wanted to flail but could not move. He gasped and sputtered. His sides shook. His body trembled. He gasped and ached. Then he felt his body lift. His spine folded, swaying. He ached and his toes twitched. He nearly choked again.

Something stroked his side. A bright glimmer flashed within his eye. He stared blankly ahead. Darkness swirled inwards. He gasped again. He sputtered. He choked. He shuddered. Pain erupted in his side. He burned. He twitched. He cried out.

"Six seconds," a voice cooed. "Good job, Specimen Atem."

He gasped and choked. He sputtered. He twitched. His claws flexed. He panted harder. His side burned and twitched. Another sharp twinge greeted him. Along his spine he felt a desperate heat. The marrow in his bones burst painfully. He trembled, jerking.

"Wounds along the spine heal at the rate of milliseconds."

"Go deeper."

He jerked and shuddered harder. He gasped. He choked. He kicked and twitched. The burning pushed further. He cried out harder. His spine tightened. It ached. The pulsing heat grew harsher. He jerked again.

"It is instantaneous. His bones are healing around the knife."

"As is the power of the Pure-Blood." There was a small pause. "Beautiful. This is the true gift of our little project. Code Name Atem is a _success_."

He choked and gasped again. The pain splintered and traveled further down. He jerked again. A ferocious ache made him scream. It was strangled but it surged outwards. He gasped and sputtered again.

Then he jerked.

His eyes snapped open again.

The darkness faded.

His eyes flickered about.

The moonlight was cold and pale.

The streetlamp was fake and golden.

And the stare was a shimmering red.

It glowed faintly in the dark.

It drew in what little light existed in front of him.

It pulled it together and harbored it beneath long lashes.

It stared back at him.

It was brilliant.

It was living.

And it made him quake.

He shivered.

"Yami…"

The other wolf shook his head. Then he sat up. As he had before, he left the room. Yugi sat up, watching him. Then he wondered…as he had before. Was it something that Yami had projected onto him? Or was it a night terror of his own again?

Yugi realized it had to be the latter. It had to be something of his own mind. It was horrifying to consider but he knew it to be true. It had to be. He could not fathom it being anything else.

And hoped to every god in religion—any and every one—that it was not something from within the other's mind. By the gods, he hoped these were not things he knew himself…

He sat there, looking at the doorway after him. The thought was too terrible to trail for much longer. But it remained there, unshakable and burning in his mind. He shivered and shook his head slightly. And then it occurred to him slowly.

The little spring of carpet fibers he had heard moments before made his head tip up again.

Yami had returned to his room, so different from the first time he had woken like this. He came in a few feet, looking at him in surprise. His hands were strangely full. In the darkness Yugi almost could not make out what it was in his hand. His lips pulled back and he smiled faintly.

There was a spoon in his left hand.

And in his right was the jar of peanut butter.

Yugi snickered, shaking his head slightly. "You weirdo," he teased, watching him shrug and come to his side of the bed again. He paused momentarily at that line of thought, blinking wide eyes.

His side of the bed…

Had he really just called it that?

Yugi tilted his head but Yami did not pause in sitting down again. The smell of peanut butter was strong against his nose and he snorted softly. The other wolf wrinkled his nose at him in response. But he smiled at him from around the eating utensil. They looked at each other for a moment.

Then the taller wolf pulled the spoon away and bore his teeth into the widest of smiles. The sight of it made Yugi snort, laughing a little harder, and then he returned the gesture. It was amazing to him, at this moment, that Yami was back on the mattress with him. It was even more stunning that he was smiling at him despite his own nervousness. He wanted, for a moment, to laugh and bump their shoulders against each other.

But he worried about scaring him. So instead he smiled a little wider, sure that his face might split with the gesture, and wrinkled his nose again at the smell of the peanut butter as Yami went back to eating.

 **So, to sum this up real fast... The lycanthrope hierarchy goes like this: Pure-Bloods are the strongest. When they bite a human, it is meant to give them a good portion of their lycanthropy because they're the most powerful. What happens is they cannot spread the most powerful portion of their disease, but they CAN give a human the abilities of a Full-Blood. The Full-Blood is the second rung of the bloodline's hierarchy, with much stronger bones and jaws and better ability at adaptation and healing almost instantaneously in certain areas of infliction. If they bite a human, they create a Half-Blood. Half-Bloods are the most basic lycanthrope. They have the ability to change, have the werewolf senses and smarts, and heal faster than regular humans. Their lifespans are extremely long, but they are not immortal unless they change almost CONSTANTLY to keep their cells from growing older. When they bite someone, they create another Half-Blood, because the virus is at its most basic and can mutate the newest host to the same degree as the alpha to bite them. As for Quarter-Blood wolves, they are the lowest rung, with the weakest of abilities. They don't change but do sometimes dream of running as a wolf, heal a little faster, age a little slower, and are smarter and sometimes stronger than the average person.**

 **The lycanthrope bloodline goes by the amount of the disease in their veins. Quarter-Blood is nearly undetectable, Half-Bloods have the lycanthropy showing equally among normal blood cells, Full-Bloods have almost one hundred percent lycanthropy showing in their veins, and Pure-Bloods have a VERY unique combination of DNA and RNA that makes their blood unlike anything else in existence. This isn't entirely something that you will HAVE to know for the rest of the story (it'll be brought up a couple of times), but I wanted to go ahead and explain so that no one wound up confused by the terms used.**

 **And, also, only certain hellhounds can spread their disease. It's spread almost solely by genetics. You'll see and understand this better as the story goes on and the hellhounds are explained in more depth. Until then, that's all I have to say.**


	20. Adapting

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day (no update on June 2nd)**

 **Chapter Warnings: Discussion of Night Terrors, Changes, Hunting, Slight Blood**

 **MY APOLOGIES GUYS! I COMPLETELY MESSED UP! I THOUGHT I HAD LOST MY ORIGINAL FILE FOR THIS CHAPTER AND I FOUND IT SO I'VE BEEN FIXING THIS ONE CAUSE IT HAS THE INFORMATION I HAD LOST AND I DIDN'T KNOW HOW TO REPLACE! HOLY CRAP! (SO lucky I have three copies of this damn story on three different apps, OH MY GODS) And it should definitely help to fill in some of the blanks.**

 **Okay, so I wanted to say that I know beforehand Yugi mentioned in a different chapter that his mom never believed in anything mythological. I didn't make a mistake when I put the explanation in this chapter; it's more of why Yugi never considered mentioning/asking her about it. Because he doesn't think she knows that he knows about it.**

 **Anyways, that aside, so I DID legitimately have two teachers at one point who told ME that if I didn't write LARGER and I didn't draw things that weren't wolves (because their body shapes were one of the easiest things for me to draw when I was younger due to having dogs and drawing them) I would be failed in art and French class. I was not the most impressed with that threat and I honestly wrote all of my French even smaller just to spite her. She didn't fail me because I stopped going to the class like a week later anyways. So I figured I would put it in the story that she had a similar experience even if it wouldn't actually apply in Japan when she was only twelve.**

 **Back to the point though, I didn't get MUCH research done ahead of time regarding the school rules and regulations in Japan. I haven't had NEARLY enough time to go back and focus more on the smaller details regarding some of the things in the story. But I DID find that only school until the end of middle school was mandatory and that high schools required entrance exams just like the colleges do. And, in having middle school be mandatory, they actually won't fail any of their students and will pass them even if they're absent most of the school year and things of that nature. That changes in high school and basically every absence is immediately reported or parents must call in for their child's absence in order to keep them from getting in trouble. Or at least that's what I read.**

 **Matt: I figure since you reviewed here, I'll go ahead and respond on ff (although chances being you'll probably read the update on AO3 lol). You honestly made my day lol I'm sorry about the migraine, by the way. Hopefully you feel a lot better. Haha Yeah the buildup is pretty slow, but I make no apologies for it. I'm glad you loved/hated it though~ (I did kind of semi-aim for that) And you're right, there are a LOT of red herrings and false trails. And part of the reason why is because Yugi himself is very much in the dark with almost everything in this story until he starts to get more used to things. BUT! All things DO get confronted/figured out at some point or another. Okay, so, parts of what irritate you ARE explained here in this chapter, if only slightly (Sugoroku and the bite) but the story IS designed to keep you more in the dark with Yugi because Yugi is just learning and so is the reader. And while Yami might have more information on certain things, he's also very unreliable because he tends to be as likely to ignore things as he is confront them. Hahaha Yugi's nightmares and being Atem…hmm, you'll have to wait to find out. Valon~ Yep, there's also him in the mix. Oh, so yeah, the truck incident! That comes up later (I'm not sure which chapter, but it's probably late twenties or early thirties) and it's explained a little bit more. I'm glad you love the story so much though! I'm honestly super honored that someone loves it this much. That's honestly amazing to me! Thank you so much! And that's totally fine, by the way. I'm honestly super shy about reviewing or commenting on anything (because I either get so excited I forget details or I feel like I can't put anything into words properly enough) so I normally just give kudos or PM the author when I like their story or just fave and disappear into the background again, so I can definitely relate to that. But you actually can comment on AO3 as a guest and not have to log in if you're more comfortable on that site. You would just put in your email and your guest name and post the comment you wanted and it would still notify you when someone responds.**

Chapter XX: Adapting

 _Work Log Entry XX: April, 1997_

 _April 16_

 _An unauthorized visit was paid to A.T.E.M. today. The worker succumbed to panic upon seeing him. He was soon fired for his reaction to the boss's favorite "pet". But he has declared him an omen of death, so unnatural that it will perhaps kill anyone unfortunate enough to look upon the pup._

 _We have all fallen prey to fear of this possibility._

 _Were I not the main veterinarian within this laboratory, I myself would not approach A.T.E.M. either._

Yugi pushed the bowl into the cage, almost flinching back at the growl that greeted him. The dog was pushed against the back wall, almost completely merged with the metal wire and cream-colored plaster behind it. The long tan leg was encased in white plaster, the dog hunched forward with the weight of it. He paused, staring at it for a moment, and nearly cringed. Its large floppy ears folded back and its mouth wrinkled with another snarl. The brown eyes darted back and forth between his quickly.

He grimaced, swallowing hard, and looked away from the wariness plaguing the exhausted animal. It was hunched and pressed backwards and it looked incredibly pathetic in comparison to what he knew it might otherwise. It was so large but gangly as well, and the thought of it appearing so tiny in front of him now made him want to be sick.

He pushed the door shut, locking it, and wondered for a moment if it would even bother to touch the food he had set in there. He was not sure if hunger would win out on such precise instincts of self-preservation as what it was exposing to him now. So he backed up a few steps, pushing the thought away, and went to the next bowl of food.

The cat arched, hissing, and he could see that it was prepared to pounce on him at any moment. It didn't matter to the feline that it lacked claws in the front. All that mattered was that a potential threat stood in front of it and had even gone as far as to open its cage. Yugi wondered if he had the reflexes to snatch his hand away before it hit him. Weren't cats believed to be one of the fastest animals? He shivered slightly. Cheetahs were the fastest land animals. He didn't think werewolves topped that exactly…

Although, Yami had moved so quickly as to nearly disappear from his sight that night at the dumpsters…

And he'd found his way to him quickly when he'd been injected with the wolfsbane and silver mixture. The idea made him shiver again.

Were werewolves faster? Did it have something to do with them being unnatural? Was it something that the lycanthropy gave them?

Either way, the cat was a stray, had survived that way for what he assumed was its whole life. The idea of testing out that theory was nothing he cared for in even the slightest. Besides, most cats that were unhealthy would cause infections when they bit or clawed someone.

Yugi was not sure that he would see that in himself with the disease as it was—it had pushed _poison_ out of his system; what was an infection compared to that?—but he wasn't willing to take chances. It seemed childish to ever consider going against such a thing in all reality. To bank on the idea that he would not get an infection because of his lycanthropy seemed incredibly foolish and pathetic to him.

So Yugi snatched the bowl out as quickly as he could manage, surprised that the cat did not take the opportunity to lunge forth. Instead it continued hissing, tail lashing, ears flattened back, eyes sharp as they bore into his skin, and remained pressed as far back as possible.

He gritted his teeth for a moment as he locked the door. He had already come to the conclusion that being a veterinarian was not going to be a possibility any longer. But the slap in the face of them reacting as they were once more made him falter slightly. It came to him with a fresh new wave of reality and that made him bristle as he scooped more food into the bowl from the containers they kept.

The thought of such isolation from the animals he was meant to help out with made him shake his head slightly. And it brought back the question that had been haunting him for quite a while now—when would his friends do the same? When would they shy away from him because of this affliction? When would they turn on him and refuse to be anywhere near him? How long until that time came?

Yugi shivered. He was not sure he could live with himself should that happen. He would be left with only Yami. And Yami was the one who had bitten him.

He cringed, a flare of shame making his stomach twist painfully. Yami had bitten him only because he had not wanted him to die. He had not meant to condemn him as he so often felt. Yami had wanted to save him rather than let him die when there was a chance he could alter such a fate.

But what he had done to Tomoya…? What was he meant to call that? Yami had gone after him because he had assumed him to have been the one to put Yugi in such a predicament. So was that considered revenge or was it him protecting him?

And then…what was he meant to do if he _did_ find out that it _was_ Yami who had killed Ushio and planted his body there at his door? What explanation could he have possibly given him that would make such a thing less than horrifying?

He swallowed hard at the thought and popped the lid back onto the container forcefully. He pushed it away with his foot and then undid the lock of the cage once more in order to put the bowl back inside. The cat snarled and hissed and the cage rattled where its tail struck the metal harshly.

Yugi ran a hand through his hair before locking it back again. The feline hissed louder, then began to sit, the effort of its protests seemingly taking most of its energy. He shivered as he looked at the scrawny animal, how badly it looked with all that fur clumped in various places and patches of it missing altogether.

The ribs were visible and its shoulder blades look like sharp knives as it paced about the small space that confined it. He shivered and his mind briefly wandered back towards the moment Yami had shown up at his house. He had been so scrawny as well, though he now suspected that it was not only the wound that had caused this, but an irregular feeding pattern that he had been unable to keep up with.

It was obvious that he healed much better when he had the chance to eat regularly and without issue. Yugi had seen such an effect on himself as well. The concept, in all reality, was not hard for him to grasp. A malnourished animal was likely to die from a simple scratch. A healthy, well-fed one was likely to recover from one.

The fact that Yami still suffered somewhat now was another question altogether. He wondered again, if perhaps it was the electrical currents that had plagued him that caused his healing to become so stunted.

It was confusing to him however, that Yami had been able to regenerate the flesh that he had pulled out to get at the microchip. If he was unable to recover from an electrical shock that had obviously put him at odds with Bakura during that fight, why should he have been capable of regeneration at such a rapid rate?

Yugi shivered and ran his hands through his hair again. Would Yami know if he were to ask? Or could he find out himself if he tried to work with something of a similar wound elsewhere on his body? If he healed just a quickly, perhaps he could see what the new tissue was made of or...

He pushed the thought aside. He would think of that another time. If he let the idea linger much longer he might get the idea to do it sooner rather than later and that wasn't something he was sure he could afford to do at the moment. He would have to sit on the idea for a little while.

But then again, maybe Yami would have an answer for it. Maybe it was as simple as the Change causing it or something? Maybe there was nothing scientific or logical about it?

But then…Yugi glanced at this nails.

Yami had explained that the nails got thicker to make up the wolf's claws. And the cuticle on the thumbnail helped to pull the dewclaw into position during the Change. That was scientific, wasn't it? He blinked stupidly. So…obviously there was more of an answer than just that, right?

He bit his lip hard. His stomach tossed violently. Did he really want to know what it was that caused him to heal as he had? Maybe it was better it remained a mystery of some kind?

He swallowed thickly. But…didn't he have the right to know what it was that caused all of these new things within his body? It seemed relatively easy to shy away from the knowledge, but wasn't his right to know something that required more attention than the instinct to hide from it?

He could not fathom having this disease and allowing it to be all but a distant thought in the back of his mind. It was going to dictate a lot of things, he already knew, so why would he ever consider the idea of turning away from answers that he so obviously needed and wanted? The thought made him grimace.

If Yugi did not find out on his own he would be disappointed with his inability to do such a thing. If he turned around and refused to take the chance he would then grow further upset with himself over it. The entire thing was a frustrating game of confusion and turns of truth or dare that could easily shake him. The thought made him nearly quiver but he pushed it aside for a moment.

Yugi would figure out what he would do later. He would do it around the time that he got the courage to even explain to his mom that veterinary school was not in the future for him.

He cringed at the idea. His mom would be disappointed, though he was not sure if it might be with him or simply the idea itself. She had always been so proud of him as he followed the path that she had laid out for him. He did not want to think of how much of a punch it would feel for her to have him turn around seemingly out of nowhere, without explanation, to tell her that he could no longer do it. He felt like he would be playing a game of how quickly he could break her heart when he finally did tell her.

He shivered. He didn't want to hurt anyone. He especially didn't want to break her heart.

But what other choice was there, truly?

He did not think there was one in all reality.

Kasumi would find out one way or another and he thought it better to tell her himself than have her lost and wondering. It seemed stupid to think otherwise. He refused to let her wonder and come across the entire issue with wide eyes and a heartbroken shock.

Yugi tilted his head and listened for a moment. One of the animals was eating, he realized, and he was relieved that his smell and presence did nothing to scare them from their necessary meals. He wanted to smile, but the edges of his mouth didn't seem to curl and pull upwards so he turned away from such a thought.

He wondered, for all of a moment, if his mom might even notice it. He wished she was the type who would fade into the background, allow him to do anything he wanted, and ignore anything that she deemed wrong with him. But she knew most things, was well aware of the events in his life, and kept track of him. It seemed almost neglectful the way she went back and forth within his life, wandering about to only truly focus on him when she noticed something wrong. He had resented her for it a few times before. But he also realized that their strained relationship had put them both in that place.

Yugi himself only truly paid attention to her when he thought something was wrong. And he only really thought of her when he feared disappointing her or finding himself in trouble. In all actuality, he sometimes wondered if it was his own decision growing up that had put her at arm's length most of the time. Perhaps when he had chosen video games and friends and stories from his grandpa he had begun to first alienate her.

It was not truly surprising to him should that be the case. The fact was that he had chosen multiple things that she had supported but clearly would not have wanted herself. She had been far more of a loner than Yugi ever had. He couldn't stand nor _fathom_ the concept of willingly being alone when there was a chance someone at his side.

Kasumi had always been willing to support him, but had also had the desire to guide him in any way she thought possible. Veterinary school had been the biggest aspect of leading him along, but it had also been more of a gift as well. He had never complained about it, because it had always made sense to him.

Veterinary school had been one of the only things to fully encompass his attention to the point of pursuit. The only other had been a month-long idea that perhaps he would become a doctor. His mom had helped him with that as well, until—as they had both known would happen—he wanted to drop the idea.

Yugi frowned and nibbled his lip, turning away and feeling almost sick to his stomach. What was he meant to tell her? They would both know the lie if he said he had simply lost the drive for it. He'd been learning for so long that such a statement would most likely make her worry he was sick. Kasumi would wonder if he was ill and try to nurse away an imaginary illness. And then the disappointment would set in. And she would worry about him even more. And he didn't want that.

But to ignore the issue just meant further stress for everyone involved. The animals could grow even further ill because of it all if he did not think to tell her sooner rather than later. And it would weigh upon him further, which he did not want to have happen any longer. Nor did he care to think to worry his mother any more than necessary.

He ran a hand through his hair, frustrated, and shook his head slightly. He would have to deal with it as he did everything else. He needed to think it over until he came to a conclusion that was not too terrible for any of the others involved. There was too much at stake otherwise.

Yami looked up when he entered the room. He seemed almost expectant as they stared at each other for a minute, but then it faded. He sat up after a moment, rolling his shoulders so that the skin bunched and jerked in a painful motion on his left, and then tilted his head at him. Yugi opened and closed his mouth, frustrated, but could not find the words as he looked at the silent offer to listen to anything he had to say.

Yugi lowered his gaze to the floor, narrowing his eyes, and bit his lip hard once more. "I have no idea how I'm supposed to tell my mom about the fact that I'm not going to be able to become a vet anymore. I mean…the only way I can think to do that would to be to explain that I'm a fucking _werewolf_ , and she's not going to believe that." He hesitated because, though he said nothing, he knew the other boy was clearly listening. "Even if I changed right in front of her, I think she would be more likely to claim that it was some kind of trick than anything else."

Yami remained quiet for a moment, then asked, puzzled, "Is your mom truly so ignorant?"

Yugi flinched. "No," he muttered, sighing. "She's not. She'd believe it—if I changed right in front of her. But I…"

"She doesn't have to know such a thing, though, does she?"

"I don't know." He licked his lips but did not look up, instead running a hand through his hair once more and biting his cheek harshly. "I think I might…I think I'm probably just over-thinking it all. I'm…it's just not something I want to tell her. It seems so…out there."

"Then simply tell her that perhaps you have changed your mind."

Yugi shook his head sharply. "She wouldn't believe me. And I wouldn't either."

Yami stayed quiet for a long time. "Then what do you think is the best course of action, Yugi?"

"I don't know. That's why I'm asking _you_."

"And you expect me to have the answers?"

"No." Yugi sighed and finally looked up at him. "I just kind of wished you would."

The other boy stayed silent again, then shifted his weight. His shoulder twitched again. But he ignored it as he looked at him for a long minute longer. "What can you tell her that she might listen to?"

"Anything _but_ the truth."

Yami snorted at the response, lips pulling into a half-smirk that made Yugi freeze in surprise upon seeing. His mouth grew incredibly dry, shocked by the sight of the way his eyes grew warm and darker with amusement.

"Tell her that the animals are reacting badly to your presence."

Yugi halted, head spinning for a moment, and opened and closed his mouth in surprise. "Huh?"

"That is what has upset you so much, yes?"

Yugi nodded stupidly after a moment, mystified. "How...?"

"You just came back from the clinic. You said you want to tell your mom why you can't be a vet any longer but can't think of any logical way to do it without changing. The only reason I could think that you might return here in such sour spirits and frustrated as you are would be the way that the animals have reacted to your presence there."

Yugi opened and closed his mouth again, then felt his cheeks grow slightly heated, flustered. He frowned at him openly for a moment. "Were you always this smart or is it the lycanthropy?"

Yami blinked at him and his half-smirk became a pained grimace. "I don't know."

Yugi cringed at his own insensitivity, feeling all the more stupid as the other boy looked away from him completely and began to pick at his nails. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to…" But he had. He'd insulted him, whether or not he had meant to. The thought made him feel stupid beyond comprehension and he wanted to bow his head in shame. "I tend to put my foot in my mouth too much…"

"Your feet remain on the ground," the other said in something of a clipped tone. "Get past this apology and ask the question I know you've been wondering about since I bit you."

He stared at him, unsure of what more to do than gape for a split second. The small teen swallowed, feeling almost breathless with confusion and pain that swelled on his lungs. Yami was not going to make a big deal of this event. He was not going to make him feel bad about it. He was simply ignoring it altogether. For a reason Yugi could not explain, it broke his heart that he had chosen to do so.

"I…" Yugi trailed off, because again his instinct told him to apologize, to make Yami believe his sincerity. But he clearly did not want to hear it and Yugi would not further alienate him for his own benefit. So he swallowed hard, lowering his eyes to the comforter where it was bunched at Yami's hip, and muttered, "Why do they all react like that?"

The werewolf stayed quiet for a moment. "They smell the wolf even beneath the human skin. It's not pleasant to them and it seems unnatural—as it should—so they lash out at the source of it." He paused. "They also sense the power in our bodies, which is unnatural and strange to them. We share many of the aspects of the wolf in this form and that causes any animal within our presence to react to it. Even if the animal could not see or smell us, it would sense us. And it would flee. But when a scared animal is cornered, they lash out. It is a natural reaction, and one of the smartest instincts any of the other animals possess."

"Do…Do people sense it too?"

"No. Humans are more likely to ignore their first instinct to flee. Their self-preservation is often overruled by what the consider common sense. And common sense often rules that they should not fear what looks to be a normal person standing near them."

Yugi nodded slightly.

"It also helps that we tend to simply look better than most humans. Due to that, they would be more drawn to the idea of satisfying themselves than worrying about that first warning their bodies give them."

He curled his lip slightly. "You say that like everyone is drawn to someone else because of sex."

"Are they not?" he asked, narrowing his eyes.

"No! Sometimes they're around people just because they like their personalities and they want to have a companion!"

Yami studied him for a long minute. "And yet, most times, those interactions come because they assume themselves able to satisfy themselves with another person sexually. Whether that is rejected by the second in the party is another thing entirely. Humans are attracted to the thing that most catches their eyes. And why should they be attracted to it but to have sex?"

Yugi opened and closed his mouth, eyes wide and cheeks growing hot with frustration. "And what about when I helped you when you showed up here? Or when you killed Tomoya because you thought that he had been the one to attack me?"

The other wolf tilted his head slowly and narrowed his eyes into slits of gleaming bright red. "You helped me because I showed up at your house and was in need. It is natural for a werewolf—born or bitten—to react to another of their species being wounded. As for why I killed Tomoya and bit you, I did so because I did not think you should have to die for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And I did not assume to wish for more of you than to help me heal my wrists. The fact that you allow me to stay here baffles me. There is no true reason to keep me here, is there?"

Yugi froze in place, stunned by the statement. Did Yami want to leave? Did he really hate it here so much? Or was he simply pointing it out to him like this? He opened and closed his mouth again, choking on the words he expelled so weakly, "Do you want to leave?"

Yami chopped his teeth, patience shot. "No, I did not say that. I said simply that I do not understand your reasoning upon inviting me to remain here as long as I should wish it. If I wished to leave, I would have done so long ago. You would still be searching for even a discarded scent upon which to track to me!" he spat, sitting up and scowling at his stunned expression. He looked as if he planned to say something further but fell silent after a moment, turning away and narrowing his eyes into slits once more. "I simply don't understand your motivation. And I… You offend me to have planted in my head the thought that I should come here for the reason of bedding you. I…"

"I…I never meant to insinuate that I…" Yugi felt his cheeks growing a little hotter as he shook his head and watched him for a long moment. "I'm sorry. I just…you said that people—"

"People, yes, as in _humans_. Werewolves stick together for reasons beyond simply wanting satisfaction. We remain together because it helps us as well as gives us companionship, something which humans seem to know _nothing_ of." Yami faltered and frowned at him as he tilted his head. "And…I have just come to realize that I'm upsetting you unjustly. You were raised among people and think the most of them rather than know them for the worst of their faults. You don't deserve my anger simply because we view things differently. I am sorry."

Yugi opened and closed his mouth, then cleared his throat painfully. "You weren't raised with people?"

Yami stared at him for a long time, then curled his lips back into a sneer of a smirk, baring his teeth at him. "They were the wrong kind of people."

Yugi was haunted by that statement for hours after their initial conversation. Yami had not acted the least bit undone by his own confession nor did he seem to care that Yugi had grown somewhat tense beside him while they sat around and all but waited the day away.

Yugi could not understand how Yami did not see the importance of the admission. There were so many things that could have been done in the span of those words. There was physical, emotional, mental abuse, manipulation to do things he never would have otherwise, and a million more things he was too afraid to put fully in his mind.

So he was somewhat relieved to have an escape when his grandfather called for him a few hours later. He jumped up, glancing at Yami who blinked in surprise at his haste, and turned away once more to make his way towards the door. "I'll be right back," he stated, though he was too afraid to glance back towards the other boy. Yugi was practically fleeing through the door, all but bounding into the kitchen to see the elderly Motou.

Sugoroku glanced up, startled, and then grinned at him in a seemingly playful manner. "You look like the hounds of hell just chased you here," he teased, his tone making Yugi almost bristle with frustration. That wasn't nearly as funny a joke as he seemed to think it. The betrayal was still an open wound to him.

Yugi ignored the statement so as not to lose his temper or startle Yami in the other room. "I just figured it might be important," he mumbled, fighting away the biting edge that his words were so desperate to be spoken in. "Did you need something or…?"

His grandfather watched him for a long moment. "You look unusually tense today…" He paused for a second and then smiled slightly. "Is something wrong between you and Anzu?"

Yugi felt as if something had just struck him in the gut. Oh gods, he hadn't even considered Anzu or anything to do with her in a while now. Since he had initially brushed her off before the attack, he had failed to follow up with anything concerning the possibility of their relationship. He fought away the guilt that crashed through him at the realization, frowning.

"No, why would you assume that?"

He hoped that he had not waited too long to speak for his words to be something of a reliable statement.

He blinked as his grandfather nodded slightly. Something shifted in the corner of his eye. It folded and trailed along the wall beside him effortlessly. He turned towards it, startled, unable to suppress his instinct to find the source of his distraction. But it was gone, despite how swiftly he had moved. He blinked again, then turned away.

"I just thought that might be the source of such tension. It's not every day that you look so keyed up."

Wasn't it though? Yugi wondered if he had simply failed to notice beforehand. It seemed impossible to him that being the buffer between his family and his alpha had left him with anything less. Being tense because of the constant pressure seemed only logical. He frowned at the thought, however. It was his own decision to make this happen. He could have told Yami to leave. Or he could have figured something else out that was just as simple.

"No, there's nothing wrong between us. I'm just a little…frustrated," he muttered after a long minute before tilting his head slightly. He didn't know if his grandfather was simply gauging his reaction or if he truly did not know about Yami. He had known about the lycanthropy, teasing his senses with those little tests. It was not much of a stretch to him that perhaps he knew this as well. But why hide knowledge of Yami's presence there? The lycanthropy had been far more understandable.

He considered for a moment that perhaps, should he not know, it might do Yugi well to tell. It might make it an easier secret to hide if he had an ally.

And yet, as he looked at him, part of him snarled in denial of such a thought. He could not subject him to that. Yami would surely become further unnerved by his constant questions. And he had no idea how he might react to the sensory tests should Sugoroku attempt them.

A potential ally wasn't worth the inevitable discomfort.

He turned his head only slightly.

Something crept along the wall again.

Yugi's head snapped in its direction. This time he caught the telltale end of it. It was brighter than the plaster and disappeared as quickly as it had come. He blinked as he turned away from its vacant spot.

"So, is there a reason you called me out here?"

Sugorku raised a brow. "Do I need a reason to see my grandson?"

There was a small but powerful wave of heat that crashed through him. His stomach burned for the briefest of moments. His eyes narrowed faintly. The marrow in his bones had become ice. His face threatened to fall into a scowl. He let out a small, almost rough breath.

No, apparently there was no time that his grandpa wanted to see him that did not involve something extra.

Yugi snatched at his hand. The quarter he had been using to reflect the light on the wall clattered to the floor.

"Apparently not," he snapped icily.

The elderly Motou did not bother to look sheepish in the least. His face split into a wide, pleased grin. Yugi stared at him for a moment. There was a small urge inside of him to physically lash out. How dare he look at him in such a way! He was grinning almost as if he were the first successful experiment in a long string of them.

It was infuriating.

He bore his teeth and his breath was a raspy snarl.

The noise seemed to startle his grandfather into the realization that he was neither as amazed nor excited as him. He narrowed his eyes at the elderly man but did not wait for him to speak.

Yami startled and sat up straighter as the door was thrown open. Yugi blinked at him, still enraged but rapidly losing his anger. He blinked and his cheeks grew flushed, slightly horrified and ashamed of his reaction. He ducked his head, unable to look at him any longer.

"How…how much of that did you hear?"

Yami blinked, frowning in puzzlement. He tilted his head in silent question but the other would not lift his gaze. The taller lycanthrope rolled his eyes and huffed loudly. Still Yugi did not look up.

"None."

Yugi hesitated, unsure that he had heard correctly. He kept his head down but his eyes raised themselves slightly from the floor to look up from beneath his long lashes. He peered at him for a moment, unsure what more to do, and waited as the other boy regarded him with a bland expression to his face.

It was clear he had heard something of his statement. What parts of it he had truly taken in was another thing to be decided altogether. Yugi furrowed his brows but Yami remained rather expressionless. For several long seconds neither of them spoke, staring silently and regarding each other with mirrored growing curiosity.

"None."

Yugi pursed his lips and tilted his head as he stared at him. His voice sounded no better than it had originally. But the word was something of a great relief as he studied him for a moment. He hadn't heard any of it?

"None of it?"

Yami tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. "I could hear voices but the words were unclear. It was more mumbling tones." He furrowed his brows. "Why? Should I have been listening?"

The smaller boy's cheeks grew slightly flushed with shameful frustration. "No," he grumbled in response, nearly rolling his eyes at the way the other lycanthrope seemed to hardly care for his answers. "I just…I mean…with your senses…"

Yami peered at him as if he had just spoken several different languages that he had no understanding of. He blinked at him, then narrowed his eyes and tilted his head further. His expression was nothing short of mildly cynical and amused all the same.

"I was not raised to listen in on the conversations of others," he drawled lazily. "I tend to ignore the things said that do not involve myself directly. And you…would have told me had you spoken to your family about me…"

He sounded abruptly unsure of himself, voice somewhat lower than usual and tone dropping with something like confused interest. They looked at each other for a moment, Yugi's expression becoming one of both sincerity and pained acceptance of his slight hesitation towards such a statement.

"Of course I would have."

Yami still looked somehow cynical of his response, though there was a faint hint of mild satisfaction towards his words. He looked pleased but somewhat disheartened as well, as if his slight shock of the statement had rendered it somewhat uncertain to him. But he did not object to the words, instead giving him something that resembled a ghost of a smile. It was stunning to him, to see the red-eyed teen look so seemingly haunted for that brief moment.

Yugi shivered. "I won't tell them unless you're comfortable with the idea," he murmured, swallowing hard and biting his lip. He felt sick for a moment as they looked at each other. His expression did not change for a minute and even as it did, it was not all-compassing or complete. It was in his eyes, the trepidation of it all. Yugi felt queasy to see that. Yami seemed so strong and confident and yet he could not remove such emotion from his face.

Yugi swallowed tightly, tilting his head, and then bit his lip slightly. "Do you think you would ever want them to know about you?"

He didn't know if he sounded as strange as he felt at the moment. The words seemed to stick in his throat as they looked at each other. He could not fully fathom the thought of his family knowing about him. What would they do if they found out Yugi had kept him there all that time, right under their noses without the slightest hint of remorse? And what would they do when or _if_ they ever found out _why_?

Yami didn't look at him for a moment, then narrowed his eyes faintly. "The circumstances might eventually push for you to tell them," he stated dismissively.

The nonchalance of the statement unnerved him. Yami truly seemed to care for nothing of their conversation. He wondered if that was a testament to his adaptability or if he truly refused to be concerned with future events. It almost served to give him the impression that life happened _around_ him rather than with his participation.

The thought was somehow incredibly alarming to him. Yami seemed—to him, at least—like someone who cared for their life for the most part. Whether or not such an observation was truthful was something he did not know.

Perhaps he enjoyed things more as a wolf than he did as a human?

Perhaps the enthusiasm he had thought him to possess was only noticeable when he was a wolf.

Perhaps it was the adaptability that he could see in both.

But then, there was no question of that. Yami adapted before his eyes as if there were nothing easier to him.

But how could he desire to be a canine more than a human? Yugi couldn't fathom such a thing. As a human you were smarter, could talk and make eye contact, could smile to show happiness or frown to show disagreement. You didn't have to snarl or snap your teeth or bristle or wag a tail to get a message across. You didn't have to worry if eye contact for too long might get you hurt. And best of all, your food was _cooked_ and you didn't have to _hunt_ it.

Although…Yugi guessed he could see a few benefits to having four legs instead of two. They were a hell of a lot faster. The wind whistling in someone's ear or shifting through their fur would be an amazing sensation, he was sure. And the endurance could mean hours upon hours of just running around, at really any speed he thought to go…

He shook his head. But that still did nothing to put them ahead of humans. As a person, you also had a conscience and knew right from wrong.

Then again, as a werewolf, that sense stuck with you. It was just—

He stiffened abruptly. Yami tilted his head from his spot on the bed, shoulders rising slightly. He was bracing himself for an attack, Yugi realized somewhere in the back of his mind; he was protecting his neck. But he had no thought towards attacking him. It was something else entirely, in fact.

He swallowed hard, nearly choking on the sensation. His mouth had grown dry and his heart had leaped into his throat. His lungs ached as he struggled for a moment to comprehend the thought that had come over his mind.

At the consideration of a conscience his mind had seemingly rebelled against him.

He had killed that wolf in the woods.

 _Bakura_ , he thought, mind growing disjointed with shame. His name had been Bakura. That was what the man had called him. That was what he had responded to. He opened and closed his mouth but no noise came out.

He had killed someone.

He had killed another werewolf.

He had completely torn their head off.

He had done it to protect Yami but he had _killed_ someone all the same.

It was a horrifying and sickening thought in the back of his mind.

He had physically ended someone else's life.

It had been for someone else but it had still happened.

And that was not something he had ever considered himself capable of before.

Had he even been aiming to kill him?

He couldn't remember. Everything was becoming a jumble in his head. He'd killed someone and had not even considered it until this moment when he had been wondering about his alpha's ability to like his wolf form more than his human one.

Yugi felt a little dizzy with the realization. Yami had killed those two wolves in the woods and he seemed _okay_. If he could shake that off as easily as an argument, what exactly did that mean for him? Did Yami kill often? Was that why the entire thing was so nonchalant to him? He had barely seemed to even blink.

Yugi shuddered as he looked at the other boy. He hardly seemed murderous—by any stretch of the imagination. And yet…he had seen him kill those two wolves and watched him hunt and eat that squirrel. And he had brought that rabbit into his room, had been covered in blood and—

"Fuck."

Yami did nothing more than stare after him when he immediately escaped to the kitchen again. His head was spinning when his palms pressed against the table and he nearly groaned. It was so cold to his hands and he thought he might faint if he did not lower his face to the surface as well. It was horrifying to him, that Yami might kill without thought for no other reason than his ability to. And that...

It seemed so unusual to him but at the same time, he was not sure. He knew almost nothing about Yami in all reality. It seemed pathetic of him to assume that he knew something about him and could make such a judgment.

He shivered. Then his head snapped up as a noise caught in his ear. He spun on his heel immediately, startled. For the briefest of seconds he expected to find himself followed by Yami, that confused and somewhat unnerved expression marring his face. Yet part of him expected as well to see a furious snarl there, as if he might be able to sense his thoughts. His teeth would be exposed, his eyes sharp and fierce, and his expression of pure hatred.

What greeted him, however, was a confused expression upon a face of high cheekbones, dark gray hair, and bright plum purple eyes. He blinked, almost dazed upon seeing his face rather than Yami's, and then glanced quickly over his shoulder for a brief second. His earlier anger forgotten, a small sense of fear crept through him. What if Yami _did_ decide to follow him out? What if he could do nothing more than stare as Yami both blew his secret and possibly attacked his grandfather?

Yugi knew without much thought that he was not as strong as the other lycanthrope. It was obvious in no small sense of the word. Yami could possibly rip him to pieces in seconds if he only wished to. The very idea shook him but he knew the other to be capable of such a thing.

He had been injured when he had gone up against Bakura but he had not when he had fought those two wolves in the woods. The fact that he had managed to keep them both at bay and eventually kill them both—his distraction aside—was enough of a warning to him.

Yami was built for the kill. He was sure that even if he remained human he could manage to utterly destroy him or his grandfather or his mother in only a handful of seconds. Yugi was sure he could barely blink and it would happen.

He shivered, then opened and closed his mouth as he turned to his grandfather again. Impulse said to flee. Another said to get him out of there.

The one which won was the latter.

In a seemingly exuberant tone, his voice burst out of his lungs to say, "We should do a scent test!"

His grandfather halted on his way to the table. The concern in his eyes grew to a more immense height. He frowned at him, shaking his head as he mumbled, "Yugi, what are you...?"

"Well, I mean, I didn't want to do anything with the coin reflection but I could do a scent test right about now. Why not?"

Sugoroku stared at him as if he had never come upon such a strange creature before in his long life. Then he shook his head slightly as he and Yugi watched each other with wide eyes. His grandson looked almost ready to leap up and tear off down the stairs in a panic at any moment.

The thought made him frown further; he might be a little jumpy every once in a while but to look at him with such obvious fear was beyond him on an average day. Yugi usually hid his emotions when he was so scared, a practice he knew he had implemented against his bullies in order to get them to leave him alone after he had had enough.

But now his eyes were dilated and he looked as if he might tremble and perspire at any moment. The thought was stunning to him. His grandson usually had much better composure than this. He looked almost sick at the moment, however.

He frowned deeply, his brows knitting together as he regarded Yugi more fully. For a moment he wanted to reach out and embrace him, thinking to perhaps draw him close and say that things would be okay. But the concept was archaic and so deeply removed between the two of them as it was. Yugi had never truly needed to be comforted in such obvious ways, not since he was about ten. Since then he had found his own feet, had managed to adapt and work with the things dealt him.

Sugoroku knew about the bullying. He had seen it even when Yugi thought himself well at hiding it. He had cleaned blood from his uniforms more than once, hiding it without so much as a pause. Physical pain had been something he had learned to adapt with. Even emotional he did not cow beneath.

But everyone succumbed at some point and every now and then, he wondered if perhaps it was overwhelming the small teen. Sugoroku thought sometimes that Yugi would crumble beneath it, that he might show it at the most terrible of times. And he thought that, should that happen, his mother would swoop in as only she could, determined to find and somehow cure the affliction she thought him assaulted with.

"Yugi…"

"Come on, Grandpa, it'll be fun!"

Yugi nearly cringed at his own voice. He sounded stupid, fake, and utterly pathetic that it made his insides twist. Part of him thought to flee into his room once more. The other half told him to remain as he was.

If he went into his room again, Yami was there. If he made his grandpa anymore suspicious, he might tell his mom and ask her to raise the dosage on his medication himself. If he just stood there much longer, he risked Yami coming out of his room for whatever reason.

He didn't want to think he would truly harm them.

But he had killed those two in the woods...

And somehow Yugi himself had wound up killing Bakura to save him...

What if it was something to do with their connection as alpha and beta?

What if Yami had some kind of influence over him because of it? He had said that he had somehow passed the image of his attack to him in the woods so was it possible that they could affect each other further? Could it have been something about Yami that had pushed him to kill like that?

Yugi nearly hit himself in growing panic and oncoming coils of exasperation. He wanted to shake his head at himself. The thought was too easy. And if he could influence him with such little effort, then why had he not done so before?

All he had felt when he had attacked Bakura was a need to protect someone who had done the same for him several times and that intense adrenaline rush.

He faltered. Adrenaline in common people was known for giving superhuman strength and making them act in ways they normally wouldn't. Who was to say it wasn't similar to a werewolf?

He shook his head sharply at himself. He would drive himself nuts thinking about this if he continued…

"I really want to try," he announced, swallowing hard when his grandpa blinked at him with something like incredulousness and suspicion. A deep concern was beginning to show in his old gaze, the plum purple of his eyes a shade darker with worry. Yugi nearly winced. He was such an idiot. Of course he was worrying him. He would be worried if he was watching himself in that moment too. "I'm sorry…I just…I'm really tired. I'm kind of…I was helping Jonouchi study earlier and I don't think I recovered from the headache…"

He nearly flinched. Had he just insinuated his best friend was stupid? Fuck, what kind of friend _was_ he? He lied to them, he kept Anzu's hopes up, he had used his grandpa's health as an alibi, and he was pathetically over the top with taking care of a werewolf whom seconds ago he had considered a possible threat to each of them.

His grandpa chuckled softly. "I'm going to guess that studying did not go well?"

"It…" He hesitated, wondering if his words were serving any purpose anymore. "It was okay. But I… It wasn't what… It wasn't exactly as easy as it usually is… He was more distracted and it was harder to make him pay attention to the math problems…"

Sugoroku snorted. "I'll be amazed if he truly graduates. He's more street smart than he is book."

Yugi felt his cheeks heat slightly, flustered by the idea. Yeah, Jonouchi was far more street smart but it wasn't his fault his attention span was so short and…well…really pathetic. He tended to have issues when it came to studies or class. And it was one of the numerous issues his teachers had with him...

"I think he'll be fine," he mumbled in an effort to save his friend somewhat. "I think, honestly, that he won't have to work nearly as hard to graduate as you're alluding to. He just…tends to be scattered when we do exercises for class studies."

He raised a brow. "And that has nothing to do with him talking to you about magazines and tapes instead, maybe?"

Yugi felt his face turn bright red, horrified by the statement before he looked away quickly. "I'm not going to answer that," he announced, clearing his throat. "I'm not going to answer that at all."

His grandpa guffawed, shaking his head in amusement and smirking. "Your secret is safe with me," he teased, smirking wider when the teenager coughed softly and frowned at him.

"Oh yeah, thanks," Yugi snapped dryly. He rolled his eyes and his gaze flickered towards his bedroom door curiously for a brief second. Had Yami noticed his fear or tension? Was he paying attention to his conversation now?

If he could have seen through the door he would have known that Yami was sitting up, head tilted to the side and listening. But the words were nonsensical to him. He did not know Jonouchi or what the tapes or magazines meant, just that Yugi had grown uncomfortable at their mention. With such gaps in his mind, the conversation was nothing of importance to him. But Yugi's voice sounded strained and tense and that was somewhat unnerving to him.

He had run off upon glancing at him. Yami had no idea what it was that he had done to gain such a reaction but he could not fathom what had shaken the other boy so immensely. He had never known him to be so scared or easily shocked away as he had been.

He blinked and tilted his head further. The elderly Motou—he knew the sound of his footsteps now, they were heavier than both Yugi's and his mother's—was wandering down the stairs. He could hear that the other teenager had not moved from his place. The lack of footsteps or shift of weight said as much. And he could not imagine that Yugi would have followed him so easily.

Yami thought to make his way into the hallway, to check on him and at least see with his own eyes that he was okay, but it had been him to scare him, had it not? Had that not been the reason he had run off as he had? He shook the thought off. He would wait.

Yugi would eventually find his way back. It was his room, after all. There was no reason for him to fear his own safe haven. And, if there was, he was sure he would be told to leave. It was only natural that Yugi lash out if he found his own place to be threatened somehow. Humans did that, wolves did that, and werewolves were _notorious_ for it. So he would react, even if he initially did not mean to.

So Yami sat and waited. He listened to the way the elderly man came back up the stairs and strained his ears to hear him tell Yugi to see if he could list each object he had picked up and which rooms he had gone into twice. He listened to Yugi hum an answer, something like an okay though he was not sure, and then wander off down the stairs after a few seconds. He could feel the hesitation but was also something extremely calm when he left as well.

And so the red-eyed boy remained quiet, closing his eyes and listening as Yugi moved on nearly silent feet. He did not care much to track his every movement; such a thing seemed heavily tedious. He ignored his impulse to get up, however, and perhaps to follow in an effort to sate his boredom. He was ready to leap to his feet and give chase, if only because he was restless.

But he kept his head down and picked at his nails with his teeth, eyes still closed and his mind wandering elsewhere for the smallest of seconds. Whatever had frightened Yugi away had not completely forced him to cower now. He was moving about without the slightest hindrance. And he could hear him picking up objects, metal, small, nothing more than half an ounce in weight.

Had it passed? Or was he simply distracting himself? Was it something more?

Surely if Yugi were to have a problem with him now, it could not be something to have suddenly arisen. If he had an issue with his presence or anything he had done, it would be a growing issue, would it not? Yami could not help but think that the other boy would not be the best to manage a conflict of such magnitude if it had been building up over time.

He supposed that could account for his awkward response to the simple inquiry of how his day had been at school and the way he had fled from him so easily.

But then, he could also simply be over-thinking it all and investing his energy where it was not necessary. It would not be a surprise to him should that be the issue. He had often done that. How many times had he been called out on that formerly?

He nearly cringed at the very thought. It made his stomach clench and his mouth grow dry.

Yami turned his head, glancing at the window. He could go and hunt and perhaps that would force the thoughts out of his head. When he was running he did not think of his troubles. His paws always carried him so swiftly that it was almost as if he could outrun any issue with which life presented him.

But his desire to race off was short-lived if it existed at all.

There was something about the idea of sneaking out of the window into the woods again that made him hesitate. It was somewhat disgusting to think that an issue of such minor magnitude could possibly keep him from doing as he so often wished to. The thought that he might run into the humans again or another wolf that turned their teeth on him was somehow daunting. To deal with that after such a close encounter seemed illogical and easily disdainful. He could not fathom doing such a thing with so short a recovery period in the first place.

He blinked as a noise was welcomed into his ears.

He turned his head towards the door.

Yugi was standing in the entrance of the kitchen and his grandfather was a few feet away, seated at the table, he was sure. Yami could hear his charge as he spoke softly, voice calm and easy as he listed off the things that his grandfather had apparently asked of him.

"You stood at the bottom of the steps for a few seconds, opened the door, then went into the examination room. There you picked up the thermometer, touched one of the paintings on the wall, ran your fingers over the scale, and grabbed a pair of gloves. With the gloves you grabbed a stethoscope, messed with the laptop keys, and played around with a couple of the flea medications." Yugi paused for a moment and Yami leaned forward, listening with his head tilted towards the door, curious and unsure of what more to do with himself. "Then, after that, you went back and circled around the second examination room twice before going towards the kennels. You touched the one that the hybrid was in before, then went back to the desk, circled around it twice, and played with the phone to the right of the computer. Then you adjusted the monitor using the light and contrast buttons. After that you moved the mouse around in several circles, plopped down in the computer chair, discarded the first set of gloves to get new ones, and touched the picture frame, the cookie jar, the phone again, and got back up and dumped the gloves. And then you messed with the kennels again, touched the same cage, and finally made your way back up here."

The red-eyed wolf remained silent, tilting his head in bewilderment. What was the purpose of telling him all of this? Was it a test? He remembered something vaguely like that being said earlier. Yugi had requested a test, had he not? Yami frowned slightly, then shook his head with a baffled sensation in his gut. Why was it important to him to be able to track his grandfather? It was not as if it were an important event to behold.

"Your senses are just getting better and better, aren't they?"

Yami knew very well that Yugi heard the satisfaction and laughter in his voice. It grated instantly on the taller boy's nerves and his shoulders rose briefly into a faint bristle. His eyes narrowed and his lips curled back. He bore his teeth for a moment but did not snarl. Instead he tilted his head, shifted his weight, and settled back more firmly on his haunches on the mattress. He closed his eyes to keep some of his growing frustration at bay. The tone irritated him beyond his own understanding.

And yet, half of him rebelled the thought. He knew why the tone caused such hatred to flare in his bones. But he could not truly bring himself to consider it. So he shook the thought off and listened as Yugi unceremoniously shrugged the comment off with a lazy "I guess so".

The conversation was strained and nonexistent. Yami waited, rewarded only seconds later when the other boy headed for his bedroom again. His elderly grandfather did not say anything in response to his less enthusiastic statement. The small teen slipped into his room nearly silently, frowning slightly and pausing only briefly as he glanced at him.

The taller boy did not open his mouth to say a word. He did not so much as blink up at him. They stared at each other for a moment. Then the other teen offered him a weak smile and closed the door behind him. The telltale click of the lock falling in place made Yami blink. Then his eyes flickered away to the carpet and he rolled his shoulders. The other boy was cautious and yet reckless all the same as he padded towards the bed in lazy strides. When Yugi plopped down beside him, the red-eyed lycanthrope hardly noticed.

They sat in silence for a long minute. Yugi could not think of the words for which he was meant to apologize with. Yami could not think of a subject. Nor could he will himself to speak for what felt like hours. The thought of pushing his voice into the air and forming words made him feel exhausted already. The effort felt momentous. And yet the quiet, as much as he always craved and held it desperately, was nothing more than a stranger which imposed too heavily on his tired frame.

Yami felt his eyes become hooded, lids drooping as he considered this strange tension which existed between them. He still did not know what had caused Yugi to react with such fear and adrenaline. And his musings were doing nothing to help him discover the reason behind it. The air was too icy, biting at his skin, and the lack of a draft of fresh wind from the window made him feel subconscious and somehow smaller than usual. He hesitated, then clenched his right cheek with his teeth, puzzling over it.

When had things become so oppressive and somehow destructive like this?

He narrowed his eyes slightly, then licked his lips. But Yugi beat him to the punch.

"I'm sorry for running off like that."

Yami blinked, startled, then looked at him curiously. If he said it was not a problem, he would be lying. And if he said it had not disturbed him, he was sure Yugi would pick up on his deceit. He blinked, frowning, and then shook his head, deciding with abrupt clarity to push the apology away. It was too sincere for his tastes.

"What were you two doing out there?" he asked slowly, tilting his head and frowning. "You went downstairs and retraced his steps?"

Yugi frowned at the dismissal but the idea of making him further uncomfortable was nothing he cared about. He shook his head slightly, then sat up from where he had fallen backwards to rest on the pillows. His blue-speckled purple eyes bore into his, curious for a moment as he studied his face. He gave him something of a small smile, then murmured, "Grandpa and I like to test my senses every now and then. So, when we do the scent tests, he likes to have me retrace his steps wherever he goes downstairs, tell him where he might have circled around, and what he would have touched or grabbed."

The red eyes peered at him thoughtfully, curiously, and for a moment Yugi could not tell what it was that seemed to make him appear somehow upset. "How is it that your mother does not know that you are infected when your grandfather clearly seems to have some kind of idea of it?" Yami asked slowly, narrowing his eyes.

There was something in his eyes that said he was clearly suspicious and feeling somehow cheated of information. It was not a mystery, however, as Yugi considered it. He did not remember if he had told Yami or not that his mother would never believe he was infected in the first place, but he might have simply picked up on it. It was not hard to tell that, unlike his grandpa, his illnesses to her were something that had to be cured instead of tested and played with. The small boy sighed as he continued with a slightly disdainful tone to trace his words.

"You say that you test them, which is obviously not an uncommon occurrence. And you said it with such normality that it cannot be something new to have begun only recently. So how is that possible?"

Yugi cringed and let out a loud breath, his features falling from friendly into disappointed and smothered with frustration. His voice came out low, crestfallen, but further irate as he ran a hand through his hair and shook his head with an unhappy huff. "I didn't realize before I was infected, but apparently lycanthropy runs in the family? And it seems to come from my mom's side of the family. So Grandpa has been telling me all about wolves growing up and teasing me that they still exist here in Hokkaido. He used to tell me all about the Large-Mouthed God, one of our only real wolf deities when I was growing up. And he was instantly enamored when he realized I had more acute senses than himself or Mom. I never thought much about it until after the first Change."

Yami blinked at him, somewhat baffled, and then with keen interest as he tilted his head and studied him more closely. "Do you believe that you would have changed even without being bitten?" he asked slowly.

Yugi shook his head immediately, with such firmness to the movement that it made the other boy falter slightly. "No," he snapped, voice growing flustered as his eyes flashed with anger, "I don't. I don't think I would have changed at all. Why would I have? My mom and grandpa didn't and it's apparently been dormant for years. Grandpa tells me that he was taught all about wolves when he was growing up, as the rest of his family was for generations. So why would I be the first one in such a _long time_ to end up changing? There's nothing special about it all."

The other teen blinked wide eyes, startled by his ferocity, and then shook his head slightly in shock at the words. Something sharp glinted in his gaze and the shadows of his lashes did nothing to block it from his sight. He curled his lip back, lowering his voice into a purring rumble of a snarl. "You do not think that there is anything special about yourself?"

"I didn't say that." Yugi rolled his eyes and then faltered. Was there anything special about him? He did not think so in the least when it came down to it.

He was not super tall, he was not athletic. He was smart, yes, but anyone could prove themselves to be. He was polite, but that was something that was taught to him. He did not possess more than much of a desire to win at games and show kindness and optimism more than anger and pessimism as others did. When it came down to it, Yugi Motou was simply a sixteen-year-old boy who lived in Domino City.

That made it all simple and useless. Individuality did not appear to him to be something that he possessed in all actuality. Anyone could turn out as he had in life. It was not as if something special had happened to him or he had some intense and powerful gift all to himself.

"I…didn't say that. I just…meant that…the lycanthropy has been dormant for _so long_ that it suddenly becoming active in me for some reason doesn't make any sense, Yami."

The other wolf stared at him. His eyes were glittering and his teeth were still bared. Yet, he did not speak for a moment. Instead he tilted his head, watching Yugi. His expression at first was leering, then became nothing more than a curious and cautious confusion. A thoughtful light entered his gaze, burning into his as well. And then, the smallest touch of skepticism and frustration brushed at the surface. His lids became hooded again and he blinked lazily as his mouth relaxed once more.

"I suppose you could be correct." Yami hummed softly, then smirked faintly, the right side of his mouth tugging smoothly upwards in growing amusement. "Tell me, though, Yugi, is your father infected too?"

He faltered, then shook his head immediately, nearly laughing out loud at the thought. "My dad? Definitely not." He sobered when he saw the way the other peered at him with an incredulous expression. He rolled his eyes. "No, Yami, he's definitely not infected too. He's complacent when mythology is mentioned and discussed, but he doesn't believe in it in any manner."

Yugi smirked in amusement when he saw the way Yami pursed his lips in an effort to keep from interrupting him. He could just imagine that his rebuttal would be that of belief lacking any foundation where lycanthropy was involved. He watched him as he shook his head slightly and raised a brow for him to continue.

"Besides that, his family is far stricter and uptight. I don't tend to see any of them because of the way they sometimes treat my mom and grandpa and act as if they're both lunatics. And all of them refuse to believe anything that is not scientifically logical." Yugi paused, watching him and shaking his head slightly with a frown. "There's no way that someone could completely block out something like their disease and Changes through mere disbelief. Their bodies would be far too taxed and if I can remember even _around_ nearly dying, then there's no way they wouldn't. They would all probably be drunk or doing drugs in order to get the entire events out of their heads all the time. And they hardly touch alcohol aside from business meetings. So, no, I know for a fact that none of them have ever been infected."

Yami frowned at him thoughtfully. "And your mom never wondered why her parents and family lineage was so keen upon telling her and yourself about wolves like they did?"

Yugi faltered, then bit his lip and sighed as he reached up to run a hand through his hair again.

"If this is upsetting to you—"

"No, no, Yami, it's not," he assured him quickly, shaking his head and pulling his hand away. He stared at him for a moment, entire body tense for the briefest of seconds, as if he suspected Yami might flee from his tone. But the other boy merely raised a brow, frowning at him in confusion. His tone was so alarmed and his expression growing with something like shame at his words. The picture before him did not truly match any idea he had to explain the behavior.

Then, abruptly, Yugi relaxed and let out a nervous noise that was almost a snort mixed with laughter. He reached up and rubbed the back of his head, cheeks tinted bright pink beneath his eyes for the smallest of seconds.

"I just…Mom doesn't realize I know, but when she was younger she…apparently really wanted the wolves to still be here. And she wanted to believe in all those fairytales that my grandpa was telling her. She wanted to think that the wolves were helpers and still existed and that kitsune were mischievous guardians. She…she wanted to believe in it, but when she did, it was considered a hindrance. Her teachers would sometimes call my grandparents and tell them that she had her head too high in the clouds and that she seemed obsessed with it."

Yami tilted his head. "Why should that be a problem? From what little I know of humans, you are meant to encourage imagination, is that not true?"

Yugi hesitated, then looked away. "Yes, but most of the time that's just to make you think outside of the box for learning solutions when it comes to problems later in life. See, the way it goes, is that, while they encourage imagination, it's more because it makes you think. And that's what they want from you. But when you truly _believe_ in fairytales and those little daydreams you have, it's considered something of a problem." He paused. "Especially when you are no longer in grade school. When you are in middle school, if you still follow your imagination more than logic, it's considered a pretty big issue. Oftentimes, it is cause for worry and every now and then people think to send their children to psychologists because of it."

Yami blinked, unsure of what he meant to tell him. What was a psychologist? His brain was working in rapid succession to supply him the answer, sorting through a wealth of phrases and knowledge that was not truly his. But he came up short and it was noticeable, he knew, as Yugi looked up at him and paused, a hint of confusion and then soft sympathy lighting his eyes.

"They're meant to help deal with mental illness or disorders in children. Or help them with problems they might have in their lives. See, most of the time, if you would desire to live in a fairytale rather than reality, it's considered that you are either childish or trying to project something into your life in order to suppress a memory of something that would block your development." He drew in a deep breath, sighing and then shaking his head slightly. "My mom was around twelve when she finally gave up on the idea that anything spectacular might happen to her in life. She got tired of waiting and imagining. She got tired of all the stories they told her and began to even resent them for their simplicity. Because, when she kept writing short stories about wolves from mythology or kitsune, they thought that maybe she was not growing up. And then came the suspicion that something was going wrong at home. Outside sources got involved, life got harder, and I guess she just kind of…shed any notion she ever considered childish."

Yami frowned at him in puzzlement, disturbed by the very idea. How could one be faulted for being able to think of things beyond their hideous daily lives? He himself lacked the fundamentals of his imagination for the most part, simply living in the moment and doing as was necessary. It was the way he had adapted to his life as a wolf. It was much easier not to carry human notions into a canine body, while retaining his sense of morals and ability, even with how small it might have been.

"So, she was pulled aside during class at one point, told that she needed to knock off all of her fantastical ideas about life, and move on. Her teachers were worried, her parents considered their concern foolish and wasted, and she was forced to deal with some of her professors even saying that if she would not write about other things, she would fail courses." He paused, tilting his head. "The threat doesn't truly have any leeway but for outside of middle school, where universities are concerned. Everyone passes despite bad grades here in Japan, no matter how many absences they have or how poorly they treat someone. In middle school, we won't let others be left behind, or fail and stay in schools like they do in the states. So, it only truly counts when high schools and colleges are brought into consideration. They both look at absences and grades. And they both require you pass an entrance exam."

Yami nodded at him. He understood most of the statement. Parts of it blurred somewhere in the back of his mind, twisted and jumbled, but then smoothed out again. His thoughts were rapidly filling in blanks again, his attention caught and focus applied wholly. He did not have to think too hard for his mind to fill in every blank which presented itself. School was a subject that he knew for the most part.

He had been told about it before, after all.

"So, eventually, she began to turn her focus on sciences. She would snap and grow scornful when her parents mentioned her short stories or anything of the sort. She would ignore their mentions of mythology. She focused solely on chemistry and biology and worked her way through to become a vet. She loves animals more than she does people, because people are oppressive and animals are not." He shrugged, looking down at the comforter with narrowed eyes. "And she…when I was growing up, she used to try to warn my grandparents away from telling me _anything_ about wolves or kitsune or myths or lore of any kind. She threatened once to take me away and never let them see me again."

Yami frowned. "Why didn't she?"

Yugi blinked, then looked up at him, surprised by the question. It baffled him for a moment that Yami might think the statement serious by any means. But then he remembered, with a faint smile, that the red-eyed boy had never met his mom. So he knew nothing of her.

"She would never do that. She loves her parents and she loves me far too much to do that. It would have broken their hearts if she were to do that. And she knew I would be unhappy if that happened." He shook his head, smiling a little wider. "She just said it because she was upset. And it managed to make them quiet down for a couple of months. Of course, that was more out of respect than seriously considering her capable of doing it."

The other boy nodded slightly, understanding blooming in his eyes.

"Anyways, so, she constantly fought with them over what they were telling me growing up. I…I grew up with night terrors and I would sometimes wake up screaming. Mom would take me to the doctors to get medication to help me sleep and keep the nightmares away. But she thought that perhaps the stories they were telling me were influencing them too. And that scared her a lot more than she would ever admit."

"Did they?"

Yugi shook his head. "No. Not at all." He frowned and furrowed his brows. "My night terrors were mostly about drowning. Or heartbeats that would suddenly begin to stop. They were about death and destruction more than anything else. Once or twice I dreamed of massive wolves, who tore people to pieces. But that was…that was basically it."

Yami stared at him and when the other boy blinked and looked at him, his expression was heavily troubled. His features had grown drawn together, his lips pulled into a slight frown. His brows were drawn together. His eyes were crinkled faintly in the corners, gaze darkened with some kind of jumbled thought process. He frowned at him more fully, then shook his head slightly.

"I am sorry."

He shook his head and rolled his eyes. "Everyone has nightmares at some point. It's not like _anyone's_ mind is completely free of worries and fears and just general discomfort at times. So, I mean, I don't mind them. It makes me feel healthier sometimes when I have them. It's more the way that I react _afterwards_ that scares me," he admitted with a deep frown, blinking and looking away from him entirely. "And the medication helps, but she thinks I should take them every day. But I don't. And I don't think they're necessary for the smaller ones."

"You seem to have grown…almost attached to them."

"No, not really _attached_. I'm more indifferent to it now. I mean, they freak me out when I wake up and everything is still in my head, bursting at the surface and struggling for my attention, but if that happens, then I'll take it. Besides that, it's not always necessary." Yugi continued peering at the comforter for a long time before shaking his head and sighing softly. "It's kind of complicated, I guess. But whatever, it's not that big a deal. Honestly, they're just kind of there. And I'm here. So…"

Yami tilted his head and then frowned thoughtfully. "You adapted."

"Yeah, I guess so." He shrugged and then looked at him from beneath his lashes with something of a small smile. "It doesn't really matter, though, does it? The point is that I don't see why I would have suddenly been the one person in my family after _generations of dormancy_ to suddenly change."

Yami frowned at him in puzzlement, at first lost as to this direction of conversation and then recalling his former words. He nodded after a moment, studying his face, and offered a phantom-like imitation of a smile as well.

"Yes, it seems almost unbelievable," he said slowly, before reconsidering and sitting up a little straighter. "Unless you consider the night terrors. If your adrenaline was consistently spiked when you awoke, and your body reacted to the fear in your system, then perhaps it could have caused the lycanthropy to stir towards the surface."

"Maybe. But why wouldn't I have changed before now if that was the case?"

"Most natural Changes come with puberty and the full moon. It's usually the full moon right after one is struck by puberty. The body's hormonal changes cause the chemical reactions and the cells begin to mutate and rebuild themselves in other forms. So then, with that process, when the full moon's pull is felt on the body, it triggers it."

Yugi felt his cheeks heat with frustration. "I already hit puberty!" he cried in annoyance, blushing harder when Yami blinked in obvious surprise. "God, it's been two years! Quit looking at me like that!"

He considered him for a moment, then frowned and shook his head with a shrug. "Maybe it was so far in your bloodstream that it just couldn't react fully until you were bitten?" he asked with a confused note to his voice. "Or maybe the experience of coming close to death is what might have spurred it on?"

He shrugged. "I guess it doesn't matter. The whole point is, that's what the tests are. You were wondering so that's what it was."

"So, then, did he tell you that you were infected before you changed or…?"

Yugi halted, the color draining from his face entirely. For a moment he looked at him, with a sensation of calm that was swiftly swept away by acute frustration and hatred. He shook his head sharply, face twisting into a hideous scowl. "No," he snapped, "he didn't. And he constantly tested me and then he acted as if he had no idea. And then, to make it even _better_ , he claimed that he 'didn't want to tell me in case I really wasn't going to change'. He hid it completely! I thought I was going insane and he just…"

Yami shook his head slightly and then glanced away. "I don't know if I am meant to express sympathies or offer condolences," he admitted with a frown. "But I do know what it feels like to be abandoned in a similar sense of the word."

He faltered, looking at him with wide eyes. Abandoned? Yugi blinked. He had never considered the word, mostly because he had not thought much of it beyond a vivid betrayal, but it fit. A sense of clarity came over him.

Yes, it had felt like his grandpa had abandoned him to fumble in the dark. He had known and failed to even hint at the knowledge. And then, he had seemingly teased him with that knowledge that he refused to share with him at the time.

The wound opened further, anew with bitter pulsating pain. He grew flustered, unable to think further than his growing anger, and then looked away again. All new, the raw edges of the wound bled and festered. He had not considered that his own family would leave him in the dark as his grandfather had. Not once had he thought that magnitude of betrayal a capability within their household.

"Yugi?"

He blinked and his head snapped up in response to his name. But his features were still twisted and his eyes were darker, a hideous shade of blue-violet that appeared entirely uniform with the emotional distress which beat at his insides.

Yami studied him for a moment, then hesitantly reached forward to touch his arm. The movement made Yugi blink, then turn his head and stare at the long fingers which gripped his bicep so lightly. "I did not mean to upset you," he murmured softly. "If you wish, I won't talk anymore."

He blinked, the words startling him. He raised his head, immediately focused on him again. Yami looked tired but patient, with an extra wariness which made his eyes a little icy in expression. But he was not closed off from him. His body was angled towards him, his gaze searching his, and his face was softer than usual.

"No, no," he muttered, struggling for words for a moment before running a hand through his hair again.

Yugi could feel the other's light touch on his arm and it was somehow invigorating and distressful at the same time. He blinked, swallowing hard, and then allowed his eyes to trace the path of Yami's arm to his small wrist and slender fingers. The nails were that intense dark red shade, glittering with the reflection of the light bulb overhead. His hand was such a warm color, with a gentle heat to be offered, and the combination was somehow irritating and soothing to his frayed mind.

"I was just…I realized that I was trying not to think about it before because it hurt so much but when you mentioned it, I realized how true it was and it's just kind of pathetic that he didn't tell me until afterwards. He knew what was happening to me, even when I was so lost and freaked out, and then he waited despite having all the knowledge necessary to help me."

"I do not think he had all the knowledge necessary."

Yugi blinked and looked up at him as his voice began to falter and taper slightly. It cracked, brittle around the edges, and he could tell soon his voice would fall away completely. If he grabbed the notepad and a pencil, would Yami write for him instead? Or was this conversation coming to an end with his inability to speak any longer?

"He is not a werewolf who can change. And he is not the one who bit you."

Yugi startled slightly at the statement, tilting his head to the side. "What does that have to do with anything? I thought Tomoya had bitten me until you just recently told me. And that's not even your fault that I did," he said with a shake of his head, confused. "He still could have told me that he even suspected it. It—he might not have had any advice to offer me, but it would have helped me all the same! I wouldn't have felt so lost or alone…"

Yami frowned at him for a moment, then shook his head and looked away, eyes darkening with something he could not read. "I am your alpha. I am meant to guide you through this. I did not do so formerly. And so I apologize for that."

Yugi blinked stupidly at the words, then frowned deeply. "Yami, that's not even your fault," he objected, feeling almost sick to his stomach with distress at the very idea. "You didn't need to be here for me before, anyways. I was figuring it out. I…"

 _Was just as lost then as I was when Grandpa didn't tell me_.

So was there really a difference?

"Look, I wish you could have been there earlier, but the point is that you're here _now_. And _that_ counts more than then."

Yami gave him something of a dubious look but did not argue, instead shrugging and turning away again. He glanced at him sideways when Yugi frowned at him unhappily, his expression somewhat troubled by his lack of response. Impulsively, the taller teen turned to him again, frowning slightly before tilting his head and saying, "I think I might need to go for a run."

He blinked at him, startled by the change of conversation, then looked at him with wide eyes. "A run?"

"I have energy I need to burn off." His voice broke off completely and he shrugged when the other boy studied him with wide eyes once more. His rasping tone trailed away the moment Yami went to breathe another word in further explanation.

"Do you think I could tag along?"

Yugi said it with such eagerness that both of them faltered for a moment in surprise. The small teen felt his cheeks heat with embarrassment, eyes widening with dismay at the tone of his voice. The taller boy raised a brow, surprised more than put off by the idea, and then shrugged at him slowly.

If Yugi wanted to come, why should he deny him the chance? Besides, it might give him a better chance to learn to Change on his own without outside influence such as the moon or wolfsbane. He shuddered at the thought but not even that could put away his necessity. He was growing further restless. The conversation had only heightened such a sense. Betrayal and abandonment were things that he did not wish to dwell on.

The chance to shed his human skin and fall back into his canine form as he so often desired was nothing he was willing to turn away from now. He watched as the smaller boy hesitated, then jumped to his feet as he got up and headed for the window. Yugi paused as he reached the sill, glancing over his shoulder at the door and then turning back to pat his pockets for a moment. Yami could hear the way his fingers tapped something smooth and plastic and he blinked at the sound of it.

"I was just checking to make sure I had my phone. Just in case something goes wrong." He checked the battery life, let out a breath of relief at the sight of the seventy-five percent that greeted him, and then followed as Yami pulled the window open and stepped outside. Yugi faltered slightly, eyes wide, but the other boy was balanced perfectly on the tilted shingles, padding across without a single glance. He turned, twisted to face the ground, and then dropped without a backwards look. Yugi hesitated, glancing over his shoulder and back again. The grass looked so dry and cold, the strands formerly green a hollow milky yellow in color now. He faltered, swallowing hard, and the distance between it and the roof seemed to grow immense as he stared.

Yami came into his line of vision, confusion and concern making itself clear upon his face. He stared up at him, frowning in puzzlement, and tilted his head. The other boy stared down at him, watching the way his red eyes bore into him, and swallowed hard.

What was he supposed to say? That he had forgotten he had a fear of heights before?

Yugi nearly cringed. How foolish and childish would he sound then?

"I, uh…s-sorry." He braced himself, mind circulating with the fact that he was both embarrassing himself needlessly and wasting Yami's time altogether. _I've done this before, remember_? _I've done this before_. _I did it to sneak out and meet Jonouchi and Honda at that party in eighth grade_.

Yugi nearly rolled his eyes at himself. And then, on the way back in, using the drain to climb up the side of the house, he had sprained his wrist and his ankle when he'd lost his grip and tumbled all the way back down. He shook his head at himself, then moved forward and forced his body to spring forward and throw himself off the roof.

Yugi landed beside him, still somewhat shaky even as the world seemed to burst with color before his eyes for a brief moment. The adrenaline, so swift and immediate, swept away just as quickly as it had come. He let out a small breath, relieved. His ankles tingled slightly but not enough to cause more than a slight discomfort. And then the sensation was immediately gone again.

He went to turn to Yami, possibly to speak to him and say something to excuse his behavior, but stopped short. The other boy was leaning forward slightly. His nose was twitching. He was breathing in slow and deeply, drawing in long inhales and holding them.

It occurred to Yugi, with wide eyes, that the way Yami was staring at him in confusion, that he was sniffing him. He was, perhaps, looking for a wound that might have caused him to hesitate. The thought made his cheeks heat once more. He shivered, flustered, and shook his head, grumbling, "Stop sniffing me."

Yami gave him a disdainful look, snorting out loud, and then wrinkled his nose at him.

"What? Don't get mad because I called you out on it," Yugi teased, raising a brow at his indignant expression. A slight blush colored his cheeks as he shot him a dirty look. "Well, I didn't ask you to."

Yami rolled his eyes and shook his head, turning away and starting for the trees without a second glance.

"Thank you for checking on me, though."

Yami paused a step, then glanced at him over his shoulder. The look on his face was a fleeting smile before he turned away again immediately and began to walk faster. Yugi smiled in amusement at the gesture, then followed him just as quickly.

It occurred to him only as Yami picked a small clearing to begin to strip himself of his clothes that he should have brought a change of them. Yugi glanced back over his shoulder, but they were already about a mile into the woods and he didn't really think that it was worth walking back for. But it was awkward to see how little the other boy seemed to care that he had turned back to him. Yami simply threw his jeans off and tossed his boxers down with them without even the slightest hesitation.

Yugi felt his cheeks heat up, embarrassed that he could not seem to pull his eyes away. He was caught in that visual trap that came with not wanting to see something and yet being unable to look away. And so he kept watching, even as Yami got on his hands and knees and braced himself on the ground.

The skin on his back was a glistening golden-bronze, the curve of his spine gentle as he leaned forward, his shoulders sharp and narrow as he gripped at the earth with his long fingers. The other boy did not glance back at him, but his skin rippled gently and his spine jutted for a moment beneath his skin before pushing forward and then stretching outwards.

Yugi could see the knobs shifting and stretching themselves, though not jutting outwards, and they did not burst from beneath his smooth skin. The muscles bunched and rippled, twitching gently, and he could see the pores opening almost effortlessly, so that long black hairs began to push outwards, arching in the air like spikes.

Bones popped and crunched and pushed together before pulling back again and Yugi still could not look away. Yami's skin was beginning to take on a small sheen of sweat, glistening in the weakening sunlight, and the beads of perspiration looked like dewdrops beneath the bright orb.

There was something about seeing the Change that was somehow both calming and terribly invigorating. But even this was not the reason he could not force his eyes away. Something about the entire thing was ensnaring. The way Yami arched his back, coughed, and spat on the ground, the way the bones began to elongate and his legs twisted to take on a new form, all held him there. Something about it all seemed to wish to sweep him away completely. And yet, Yugi's most prominent thought, was that somehow the other wolf was not put off by his staring. And he, as awkward as he felt doing so, found himself relieved to realize such a thing.

Somehow it was all so…beautiful.

It was twisted, in a sense. Yami's body was contorting and shivering and his skin bursting with sweat now, his muscles quivering and shaking. The air had grown stale with the smell of vomit. Large patches of steam, heavy and shimmering in the light, came from his lean body. His bones continue to shift, popping violently and loudly in the stale air so that it sounded like gunfire. He shifted his weight and the air shimmered briefly, painfully, with a shuddering roll of heat, before the other boy was encompassed in the dark black fur of his wolf form.

He shook himself out. Small strands of fur fell away, shed as if he had been brushed vigorously but the hair had not been pulled out completely. Yami looked back at him over his shoulder and tilted his head as he stepped forward several paces and turned around.

The wolf tilted his head and angled his ears. Then he took a seat. Beside him, the air was beginning to cool, the vomit losing its heat rapidly. Red eyes peered at him curiously, then with slight concern.

It had only occurred to Yugi, around watching the other boy, that he had no idea how he was meant to change himself. He had not tried it by his own hand. The full moon had caused it the first time. The second had been the mixture of wolfsbane and silver in his veins. And yet, even this embarrassment of admission did not compel him to hesitate or think before speaking again.

"I don't know how to do that."

Yami blinked wide eyes, then tilted his chin up, startled. His fur shuddered for a moment, his nose twitching. _I had forgotten_ , he admitted. His voice was low, booming in his head, but it sounded smooth, beautiful, with a baritone pitch that possessed such power and passion that it made his mouth fall open. It rolled at the edges of his words, curled beneath each stroke of his breaths taken, and seemed to wrap itself around him with gentle fingers. It was gossamer, gentle, and beautiful.

Yugi could not help but stare at him, wondering at the strength of such a powerful voice which seemed, oddly, to mirror his own in a way. He blinked at the thought, but could not stop himself long enough to focus on it all.

In a gale of wonder and bewilderment and keen excitement, the small teen could do nothing more than stare at him. Encompassed with his confusion, blanketed by his shock, he stumbled for words. He peered at him, mouth still wide open, body wound up tightly with wonder, and felt his heart begin to race in his chest. He took in a deep breath, stared at him some more, and then struggled to come up with anything he could possibly say.

"H-how are you…?"

The wolf blinked at him, ears flickering, as the question trailed off. He opened his jaws, his bottom incisors showing, his lips pulled forward slightly in something of a frown. His eyes glittered and bore into his thoughtfully as he considered the unfinished inquiry, and then shook his neck out slightly.

 _This is the link between an alpha and beta_ , Yami explained quietly, voice a soft curl almost like a purr within his skull. It warmed him faintly and made him smile slightly as he looked at him curiously. _It allows us to communicate in either form_. _Since I bit you, I can speak to you like this_. _Although…from what I remember…most often one can only communicate in pictures_ …

Yugi licked his lips and then tilted his head in response, curious as they looked at each other. "Only in pictures, huh?"

Yami blinked and moved forward, ears pricking forward. _I sent something to you during the first Change_ , he thought, nodding slightly to them both. _When you panicked and almost bled out_.

He blinked and startled, then grinned faintly. "Something like the moon or the forest or something, right? The sensation of wind in my fur?" he asked, raising a brow.

 _It was soothing_ , the other said indignantly before turning away and glancing around them slowly. Yami tilted his head and looked at him with another curious yet innocent expression which made his eyes bright and beautiful as they peered up at him. They sparkled like rubies, glistening around the edges like pools of fresh blood with the smallest hints of gorgeous yellow and orange splattered upon his pupils. _I will talk you through it_. _But unless you wish to ruin your clothes and walk home naked, you must strip_.

Yugi raised a brow, at first with the intention of teasing him, and then stopped short. No, he had been the one to like the sight of the Change as Yami had gone through it. Whether that was because of his curiosity pertaining to almost anything biological or because he was just wondering about the intensity and the pain which would come of it, he did not know. But he _had_ enjoyed watching it. Somehow, in some twisted way, he had liked watching the other boy shed his skin and become a large canine.

And Yugi could not even pretend that he had not watched him as he had removed his clothes and settled to begin the Change. So the joke would have been far too hypocritical for his tastes. He blushed, then looked away and glanced at the tanktop and black jeans he had put on earlier that day.

"Uh, yeah, okay," he muttered, blushing harder before shivering and beginning to pull the shirt up by the hem. He blushed harder when the other did not remove his gaze and then gave him a flustered look. "Could you _please_ maybe turn away?"

Yami snorted so loudly that he jumped in response. The canine peered at him with amused red eyes and flicked an ear as a brow rose in an almost human expression of laughter. _Don't even pretend that you did not watch me as well_ , he scoffed playfully before turning around and stretching himself out on his belly. The massive wolf placed his jaw on his paws, stretching himself out. _Just tell me when you are done and then I will instruct you throughout_.

"Okay…" He hesitated, licking his lips, and then began to pull his shirt off and undo the buckle of his belt. "Thank you."

Yami ignored him.

Yugi felt the heat in his cheeks increase for a moment. He glanced over but the wolf had not turned back to glance at him. He had not shown any interest beyond a flick of his ear in acknowledgment. And yet, somehow, the entire thing was still so embarrassing that he could not truly fathom it all. He licked his lips, swallowing hard, and pulled at the hem of his jeans to slide them down his legs.

"Um…"

The wolf blinked, tilting his head, and looked over his broad shoulder at him. He pursed his lips, still blushing, and the embarrassment made his insides warmer than usual. But it was obvious that Yami was not going to look below his face and the relief of his realization was somehow liberating to him. The power of such an emotion burst forth and nearly made him tremble.

"So…what now?"

 _Now,_ the wolf announced, getting to his feet and shaking himself out, _you get on your hands and knees_. _It helps to keep your spine more level and that makes the elongation process less painful_.

Yugi blinked at him and then moved to brace himself on the ground, watching him from the corner of his eye as he shifted away from his clothes and settled comfortably. "Okay, and now what?" he requested softly, biting his lip and watching as the canine moved forward a step.

 _Now you are going to brace yourself_. _The first Change when you originally try it yourself is going to be painful_. _So, you want to make sure that you aren't tense before you begin_. Yami paced forward, turned away, then spun back around and took a seat again, watching him. He looked suddenly free, as if the weight of his human skin had been by far too monumental for him to bear any longer. _So you will have to make yourself somewhat comfortable_.

"I don't honestly think I'm going to get much more comfortable than this," he admitted awkwardly, looking at him sideways and feeling sick for a moment at the obvious frown on the other's face. But the wolf shook it off and merely studied him, eyes taking in his posture and eventually growing complacent with it.

 _Very well, now what you must do is focus on the sensation you have already had upon changing_. _You will have to focus entirely on that and immerse yourself in it_. _Your body will do the rest_.

"I couldn't just focus on the damn wolf?"

He didn't want to experience all that pain and terror again…

 _No, it tends not to work that way_. Yami tilted his head in confusion at the question and then frowned at him noticeably once more. _If you do not want to change, you do not have to_. _You can simply follow me_. _You should be able to keep up with me even in your human form_.

Yugi nearly laughed out loud. Humans ran at about five to seven miles per hour. Wolves walked at eight when they were simply patrolling. If he truly thought he could keep up with him like that, he was insane.

And yet…wasn't superhuman speed or something like that supposed to be part of the package?

Hadn't he run unusually fast the moment that he had fled from the arcade not too long ago?

Yugi frowned but then shook his head. "I need to go ahead and learn this." He did. If he didn't learn to do it on his own, what good was the ability? And what if he _needed_ it later? What if he was attacked? He would need to defend himself. And how was he meant to do that in any way if he could not figure out how to control his own disease enough to change?

Yami studied him for a moment, then flicked an ear to the side. _All right, so then brace yourself and remember the sensation of the Changes you've already experienced_. _Your body will go through the Change naturally once it knows what is needed of it_.

"Okay." Yugi bit his lip for a moment, then sighed softly and moved his fingers. He stretched the digits outwards to claw at the ground, nails sinking into the hard soil with more strength than he had known them to possess. But his body was growing tense with anticipation and he felt almost weak with dizziness at the very idea. Was he truly meant to conjure up all of that pain and panic he had felt both times he had changed? Neither of them had been pleasant experiences by any means.

He was horrified by the very thought of experiencing that again. But another part of him was bracing itself. It seemed, in some faraway part of his mind, to know what it was that it needed to do. It began to draw inwards, curling in on itself, and from there it began to nestle further into the depths of his mind. It was as if the darkness were nurturing it, pushing inwards and cushioning the very fabric of its existence. The fear that had welled up at the thought began to dissipate slightly.

He swallowed hard, then braced himself further as his nails dug into the packed earth harder. He closed his eyes tightly for a moment, then thought back to the last Change. It had been terrible, painful, and so disgusting as to nearly make him tremble. But, for a moment, the thoughts would not come to him. The part of his mind bracing itself seemed to grow further encompassed with the darkness. Yugi faltered and pushed harder at his thoughts for a moment. His mind twisted and jerked instinctively, shying away from it as he would have naturally. It was suppressed somewhere, pushed far away in the back of his mind.

The thoughts that met him there came in pulsating waves. His body tensed and ached for a moment. Then, a great heat surged through him. A flash of icy waters surged through him next. His marrow burned and tingled, then began to melt within his bones.

His spine began to twitch beneath his skin, muscles bulging faintly as they writhed. His heart began to race, rocketing in his chest. His skin itched, then seared with pain as if it had split. Pain and heat made his body perspire. His lungs began to grow tight, constricting, and the air was sucked away completely. Wave after wave of the sensation crashed through him now.

He twitched. His arms strained with the burden of his weight. His fingers grew white, painful and aching. He gasped out, then struggled to draw in a breath again. Fire and ice swarmed his bones and then pushed through his organs. His body twitched and convulsed for a moment. His spine arched. His body folded for a moment.

He gasped, choking, and then acid coursed up his throat. Heat and pain slashed through him. He opened his jaws, sputtering. Hot bile slapped against the earth. He arched his back and gasped, feeling as if his bones might splinter with panic.

His stomach clenched painfully. He gasped again, then sputtered, the blood rushing through him. Each nerve ending pulsated and burst with pain. Bright shots of color splashed through his mind. His eyes ached. His spine pulsed and ground together. Bones popped like firecrackers. They must have been splintering and breaking beneath the skin. His thoughts flickered and melted, then crashed forward again. He spat out bile upon the ground once more.

Yugi's vision swam and contorted violently. His eyes began to shake and tremble. He twitched again. His body jerked harder. He spat bile forth, arching and convulsing. Tremors racked his frame. The pain pushed forward and outwards again. His skeleton splintered further, then ached. A spasm caused him to nearly fall forward into the straw. He scrabbled for a grip to keep from collapsing. The straw cut his palms and tore the flesh away. His nails twisted and splintered, snapping in the cold earth.

Where Yami sat feet away, his first instinct was to leap forward and help him further. But he was not bleeding out. There was no visible wound. And thus, there was no reason for his interference. Yugi needed to learn. He had to learn to change for himself and not have it struck upon him by circumstance. So he squeezed his eyes shut and listened, flinching and breathing out deeply in distress several times.

His own emotion was no match for the other's. He knew well enough from the effect of his first few Changes. They were always the most painful. They always caused one to wish for nothing more than death. So he did not pretend otherwise. Instead he kept his eyes shut and his head tilted, listening.

Yugi drew in a breath that threatened to break his ribs. His shoulders arched, then shifted and pulled inwards. The tendons in his hands grew and doubled in size. His fingers broke and splintered. It all shifted and pulled inwards, cutting and breaking through the wounded flesh. He arched, jerking violently, and his legs kicked as they threatened to fall beneath him. The muscles in his thighs quivered. His arms ached and shook beneath him. He opened his mouth and choked harder with pain. A furious gurgle of pain and distress flashed through him even as acid splashed from his jaws once more.

His eyes were wide open as he stared blankly. He could see Yami in his peripheral. Panicked, he turned his head. The black wolf stared back at him, red eyes calm and encouraging. He flicked his ears, then leaned forward and Yugi could only faintly see his tail as it moved in a gentle wag.

Yugi panted, gasping, sputtering vomit from his jaws. He twisted and contorted once more, arching and sputtering. His lungs contracted and expanded in something that was nearly impossible to call a breath by any means. His vision began to blur, the black wolf becoming almost nothing more than a large splash of shadow.

Spirals and stars of bright white and blood red filled his vision. His body burned and ached. He thrashed, puking once more. His eyes vibrated, his heart racing in his chest. His bones were still splintering and bursting beneath his skin. He arched, then puked and panted pathetically. His skin split, every single pore opening as flares of bright fire pushed forward. It felt as if something were cutting through each, thin blades of bright white.

He shuddered and his heart raced harder. His breath came in a desperate gasp. He puked again, then his skin twitched and sputtered. His thumbs shifted inwards, pushed upwards. His wrists lengthened, then grew elongated.

Yugi's bones jutted, then pulsed with pain. The molten sensation came back, then solidified. His nerves were dancing with pain. Every split in his senses coursed with ice. He opened and closed his mouth. Acid pooled inside of his jaws. It sputtered and fell out in a single wave like blood. He coughed and choked. He panted, and the pain began to recede faintly. A boring, tingling numbness, harsh and terrible, began to push through him. He breathed in roughly, then exhaled.

His limbs gave out under him. He hit the ground with a thud. The vomit was harsh and warm under his chin. He gasped and sputtered. He wheezed, eyes closed tightly. The air felt too cold and foreign for him to draw into his lungs. He panted again, skin twitching beneath his pelt. He opened his eyes only moments later. His gaze flickered to the other canine.

Yami stood before him, paws next to his elbow and wrist. The red eyes were kind and gentle as they looked at each other. The large canine leaned forward. His tongue ran over his face gently. It was friendly, concerned, and Yugi shivered. He turned his head slightly, pulling his chin up. The other wolf wagged his tail, then pressed his nose into his cheek and huffed.

 _Good job_.

Yugi shivered. The tone of his voice, intoned with such satisfaction and pride, made his bones feel warm and his body tingle. He peered up at him, his own tail twitching into a wag of happiness. It felt foreign and strange, weighted for a moment, but it passed almost immediately. With satisfaction he stretched his toes, clawing the earth for a moment. Then he attempted to pull himself to his full height on weak limbs. His body quivered, his bones almost breaking beneath his weight. He panted.

Yami licked his shoulder softly. Then he leaned forward to grab at his scruff. Yugi panted harder but allowed him to pull him to his feet. He steadied himself, balancing, and then panted once more. The black wolf backed up a step, watching him with wide, bright red eyes. He licked at his jaw a moment later, just flicking the tip of his nose. The white wolf wrinkled his nose, then turned away.

The dark-furred animal moved forward and paced a few steps. The other wolf followed him, mere inches behind. The natural stride of the wolf was for the back legs to fall into the place of their front with each movement. Yami accomplished this, steady on his feet, used to it. Yugi did not, stumbling to the side on shaky legs like a newborn calf.

 _Is it always going to leave me this unsteady_?

The other wolf turned his head to look at him over his shoulder. _No, eventually you will be fine_. _You just have to learn to adapt to it all later_ , he stated calmly, nodding gently. _It will be fine when you grow used to it_.

Yugi nodded slightly, opening and closing his jaws once. Acid still burned his tongue but the taste was growing distant. His throat was tingling, the raw edge of it becoming lessened. He blinked, blue-violet eyes flashing into the red gaze before him for the briefest of seconds. Then they both turned to face other directions. The white wolf blinked and then turned his head to face him for a moment.

It had not occurred to him prior that Yami might be taller than him even in this form. But, as he stepped back and looked at him, realization dawned on him as well. He was not only just taller than him. He was much _larger_ than him. His shoulders, when he turned to face him, were broader than his. His chest was a cross between slender and barrel in design. His paws were larger, his legs long and nimble. His claws were thicker, longer.

His neck was thicker, broader, with immense muscle and longer hair. His cheeks were larger, drooping slightly at the edges. His eyes were the same narrow almond shape, with the black outline which made it look almost like kohl. The nose was about the same size, the jaws only slightly wider and larger than his own. His ears were about the same size, softly rounded at the top of its triangular shape.

Yugi tilted his head. Did he look similar or was he smaller? Was he slimmer than him? He was only pounds smaller than him as a human. Did that count in the wolf form as well?

 _You're bigger than me_ , he accused unhappily.

 _I had not noticed until you pointed this out to me_. Yami tilted his head, studying him for a moment. It was only slight, however. And Yugi looked reasonably the same size if he only raised his head more and squared his shoulders somewhat. But his paws were about the same size, his legs thinner and nearly just as long.

His chest was the same build, his ears the same height. His jaw was not as big, but his nose was, and his cheeks looked somehow looser than his. If his cheeks were looser, he could hold more prey than he could himself. The pouches of his jaws made him more capable of holding and devouring more than Yami's own.

But his slimmer build, he was sure, meant he was faster. His weight would do well for a fight, but not for the speed that he was sure Yugi possessed over him. So he tilted his head slightly, studying him, and then turned away again.

 _You're probably faster_ , he announced, trotting forward.

The other wolf blinked, then hurried to catch up with him. _You think so_?

 _Yes_. He paused, licking his lips, and then glanced at him sideways. _I wonder if you will manage to catch more food than me_.

The smaller wolf hesitated, confused. _You were planning on hunting_?

He blinked, turning his head, and his red eyes flickered with confusion. _Why would you have thought otherwise_?

Yugi gave him a somewhat flustered look, bright blue-violet eyes flashing with discomfort. He had only wanted to come because Yami had only mentioned they were going to be running. He had said nothing about hunting. The thought of actually eating wildlife made him sick.

He snorted and looked away but Yami did not falter in the slightest beside him. The red-eyed lycanthrope did not so much as glance at him as he paced forward and began to scent the air in large breaths.

The white wolf hesitated beside him, flattening his ears against his head for a moment. The thought of Yami's face, human, covered in blood that looked like oil spills, made him feel even further uncomfortable. He wanted to puke. The image was terrifying to behold in his memories. His face had been so dark, smeared, his fingers coated in shiny black, his nails long and sharp. His eyes had looked so unnatural, glimmering with shards so intense and dangerous as to make his insides ache.

He shivered. He did not remember being so scared when he had turned the light on. Was it just his discomfort amplifying his dislike of the idea? Was it twisting the image to make it seem worse than it truly had been? Or was his brain noticing details he had not formerly?

Yugi tilted his head, then shook the idea off. It was not a good idea to keep thinking about this. It was hardly worth all of the anxiety he felt at the moment. And he knew Yami detected it—though he was not sure he knew the reason _behind_ it—by the way the hairs on the back of his shoulders began to rise faintly. But his speed did not begin to falter in the slightest as he padded further forward. His pace was consistent and his strides long, his slender legs carrying him with strength that their small frame seemed to belie.

Yugi hurried to match him, his body responding to the desire rather than his conscious mind. He was still racing with his anxiety, confused and frustrated with the image that still burned in his skull behind his eyes. It was singed there, great and terrible to consider. He shivered again, swallowing thickly and wondering at such a thought.

He knew that Yami would get blood on his face again, but perhaps with the dark fur he would not notice it? Yugi shook his head again to scatter the idea but still he could not shake the image.

He imagined his jaws snapping shut violently on the rabbit and his stomach dropped further. Would it scream? He remembered reading one time that every animal screamed when it died. What if it screamed and he reacted or something? It would be like challenging Yami to his kill and he suspected Yami would very quickly put him in his place.

And what if his place was the same as Bakura's, a clearing in the woods where scavengers would feast on his rotting carcass?

Yugi shuddered finely and the other wolf paused as he noticed the movement from the corner of his eye. His head turned and his ears flickered as he blinked at him curiously. But Yugi could not make himself face him and so he looked down at the ground where a fine layer of frost coated strands of pine needle and made the hardened sand beneath his paws look incredibly shiny, as if shimmering like starlight. He concentrated on this even as his paws continued to carry him along, his body still shaken by the consideration of such an idea. Death was nothing he wanted to acquaint himself with again so soon.

The straw was dark red and brown from all the days wasted away in the shade of the trees and the weakened sunlight. The shadows were minimal amongst the immense clumps if undisturbed sheds, and the frost made them appear almost silver and gray, tiny slivers of color against the earthy hues. As he moved, his eyesight gave him finer definition, allowing him sight of each of them with clarity he had never assumed them capable of. They did not allow the mounds of pine to become mere blurs of color, but gave him the entirety of each thin blade, the stems well-defined and the softer silken gray which kept them bundled appearing like downy feathers. The splashes of sunlight made them appear like rivers of mud, thick and deep against the hard-packed earth beneath it.

When he looked up again Yami had long since turned away. In fact, he was far ahead of him now, racing with such power to his muscles that Yugi nearly cringed to think that any other wolf might think to challenge him. He was so immense, and his shoulders rolled beneath his pelt with such fluidity that it looked like water rippling. His long legs were rapidly gaining on the small form of a white rabbit feet ahead of him and the lighter-furred wolf slowed his movements drastically. He did not want to see him end another creature's life like he was so clearly intent upon doing.

But yet, still, he could not look away. It seemed impossible, unfathomable, and his eyes took in his speed and power with the same intense clarity it had the earth under their paws. He watched a couple of strands of straw go flailing in the air, spiraling and dipping to the ground once more, and the way his claws glittered like chips of ice in the direct sunlight.

His pelt looked silky and soft, but the coarseness was pronounced in its uneven design along his back and muscular neck. Even so, his body threw itself forward with such speed Yugi felt that had he not been infected, he would surely have missed it. The paws came to either side of the small animal fleeing him, then his large jaws came down.

The squeal was so sharp but short that it made Yugi quake. He faltered and his body pressed into the ground in despair. It was almost as if the embodiment of pain had burst forth with this single cry. He shivered and looked to bury his nose into the straw in order to rid himself of the queasiness which played upon his insides.

Yami glanced at him sideways, with something of a scornful expression, as if he sensed his disgust and reluctance. But the large wolf did not speak up in recognition or acknowledgment of the emotion. And Yugi did not think that he could ever manage to open his mouth and put such a topic into conversation whatsoever. He felt he could live his entire life without once having such a thing become something two of them might converse about. He felt ill and eerie at even such a thought.

The smaller wolf looked away again, staring at the straw as if it might rise up and swallow him in answer to his unnerved plea to no longer be around such a thing. The other canine gave him no form of attention, merely gulping down large mouthfuls of his catch. Had the other failed to turn his nose up, Yami would have offered him a bite as well. But he would instead allow Yugi to feel exhausted afterwards when he changed back into his natural form. It was not meant to be a punishment, simply a lesson the other would have to learn.

 _Come_ , the darker wolf announced moments later, on his feet and starting off further into the trees. Yugi glanced up with uncertainty, not quite sure of whether the other might stop to snatched up another meal. Should he do so the small boy thought himself unable to cope. But Yami merely glanced over his shoulder, licking his large jaws, and flicked an ear with an expectant expression to his darkened eyes. He hesitated for only a moment longer, then sprang to his feet as well.

Yugi was not sure what he saw in the other's gaze as he hurried forward, but he thought it seemed oddly relieved or perhaps cautious. The pressure of it made him glance away and his eyes strayed of their own volition towards where the other had even previously lying in the straw eating. He faltered, nearly gaping in very human disbelief. The entirety of the carcass had been devoured. Somehow Yami had swallowed the entire rabbit in only a handful of what he thought to be seconds.

A shudder ran through him. How had he failed to hear the sound of its small bones snapping?

He swallowed hard. Perhaps he had simply drowned him out somehow?

Yami watched him with that same unreadable quality to his darkened gaze. His eyes were still darker than he had usually seen them, with shadows of which drowned out what he had always considered to be something of his liveliness. The extinguishment of this made his stomach toss painfully and his mouth dry with oncoming confusion of which he had no name to describe. He had not always been able to read the other boy before now but it seemed further announced this very moment.

It was upsetting to him, somehow, that he could not read him any better now. What good was this amazing eyesight when he could not even use it in such a way as to read another's expression? How much good did it do him to simply see the things around him and not what it was that really struck his interest in such a moment?

Yugi shivered again. His paws brought him to the other's side. A sharp metallic scent came to him through the other's rolling exhale, so strong and powerful that he nearly flinched. Yet some part of him, perhaps an instinct formerly buried, thought the smell to be sweetened to perfection, faint along the edges, but with enough strength to make his mouth water.

He wanted to flinch away from this realization, but at once his body reacted to it and he leaned forward the smallest bit, his nose working anxiously to draw more of the beautiful scent into his lungs. All at once he felt as if his feet had been pushed from beneath him, the shift of instinct and desire making his empty stomach jerk.

It was a terrible truth, that he suddenly craved the taste of blood in his mouth. He wanted meat to fill his grumbling belly. He desired bones to snap between his teeth. He wished for nothing more than marrow to splinter and split in his jaws.

He shivered finely again, then jerked his head away. He was not a wild animal! He was a human. He didn't sat raw flesh and chew on bones like a dog. He was sophisticated enough to cook his food and make sure that he would not end up diseased at the end of the day because of the meal he chose. He repeated this declaration, _I'm a human, not a dog_ , in his head like a mantra. It was a sacred whisper of noise in his mind, almost overwhelming.

Because, with it, came an all too familiar questions which wormed its way through these words.

How long had Yami been a wolf instead of a human? How often had he shed his skin in order to race around on four legs? He imagined that hunting animals as he did so often was nothing that developed overnight. And he did it with such ease. He did everything with such ease. As a wolf, there was no trial and error for him, nor any clumsiness.

Which, of course, hinted at the possibility that perhaps Yami was not human any majority of the time.

If he was a canine so much more often, however, then why was it that he even bothered for the guise of human flesh? It occurred to him, watching as the other merely stared back at him patiently, awaiting his placement at his side once more, that it could very easily be because of him.

Was it his own constant position as a human that caused Yami to do the same? He supposed Yami saw the ease that came with communication if they were both in the same form. But perhaps he also saw how nervous Yugi was around him when he appeared like this. He could have taken note of it the moment that he had seen him in the alleyway at the dumpsters behind Burger World.

Yugi was not shy in admitting that seeing another person was much better to him than facing a large canine. With a human there was not an immense jaw covered by fur and long whiskers with a mouth full of sharp and long teeth with the force to snap his bones between them. There was more warning with a human.

If one studied, they tell the exact moment that someone was about to lash out. But with canines, he was not sure there was as much. Sure, sometimes there was growling, but a select few dogs just attacked without any kind of warning.

 _Where are we going_?

Yami did not falter in his steady stare. _I promised you a run, did I not_?

The smaller wolf hesitated for a brief moment, then moved to get to his side. As long as Yami did not start hunting again, he thought they would be fine.

Yugi yawned as he and Yami climbed through the window a few hours later. The entire run in the woods had exhausted him, destroying any sense of frustration or disgust he might have felt beforehand. It had been a long trek from one end of the forest to the other. He had been several feet behind Yami more often than not, but the black wolf had never allowed himself to truly slip out of his sight. Each time he had turned around, waiting and tilting his head before racing along.

"Thank the gods I don't have school tomorrow," Yugi groaned, grinning at the other boy as the red-eyed teen began to slip his shoes off. He glanced at him sideways, pulling his lips back to give him something of a small, exhausted smile. Yugi grinned at him a little wider and the other boy blinked before offering a larger curve of his lips as well.

"Yes, I suppose it is much better to enjoy a run if you are not expected to wake up earlier than you should," Yami commented in that same rasp, voice no longer thick and full of reverberating power and baritone richness. The sound of it was low and scratchy, cracking under the thin weight of even these words. "Perhaps you will sleep better from it."

Yugi felt his smile falter slightly. The reminder of his erratic sleep patterns was almost enough to make him cringe away from the other boy. But he realized Yami meant nothing by the statement, was just genuinely hopeful that he might sleep well now that his body was so exhausted. He probably had not even truly meant his nightmares, just that werewolves did not always rest properly. But his mouth was still dry as they looked at each other.

"Maybe," he managed to breathe out, though it sounded somehow choked and made his throat flare with pain.

Yami considered him for a moment, then their earlier conversations, and frowned as he tilted his head. "I did not mean to bring that up again."

"I know." _But can we stop talking about it_? If they kept going he thought he might puke. "Come on, let's go to bed, okay?"

He studied him for a moment, obviously unimpressed with the idea of dismissing such a topic when it clearly upset him so much, and then looked at the mattress. "Yes."

Yugi fell asleep minutes later, rushing off to brush his teeth while Yami merely grabbed his blanket from the seat of the desk chair. When he had returned the other boy had been curled up against the pillows, back to him, cover pulled up to his neck, fast asleep. He had not stirred in the slightest when he crawled under the covers next to him. He was focused on his breathing and the warm, wet rhythmic pulse of his heart when he began to slip into the embrace of a gentle slumber.

But it was a lack of those two noises which caused him to wake. Instead, replacing them, was the sound of a soft and soothing voice saying his name in the moonlit darkness. The other noise was that of clothing rustling. And the loss of body heat was replaced by a hand on his shoulder, thin with long fingers.

Obviously she had woken him with her ascent of the stairs and he had fled and hidden himself away, but where was another question altogether.

He glanced at the window from the corner of his eye but his lashes prevented the full sight of it. And he did not dare glance over at it with her right there to see and wonder at his behavior. Instead he tried to concentrate on whether he thought he felt a breeze from outside or if the room was much colder. But his tired body was too exhausted to truly tell the difference and so he decided against anything beyond clearing his throat and forcing his voice out in another croak.

" _Mom_?"

She gave him something of a small smile but in it he could see energy which his own fatigued body never thought itself to formerly possess. It was just so abundant and the very concept made his stomach twist as they faced each other for a moment.

"Come downstairs. I need your help with something."

Yugi stared at her, blank in expression as his lungs constricted painfully. A small, aching realization came over him and he swallowed hard. He could not smell it on her, but he knew she meant to have him assist her on an operation that excited her. But the animal in question was something that bothered him.

He closed his eyes tightly for a moment, voice coming out more casual as he muttered, "Dog or cat?"

Kasumi was so excited that she almost left the room without answering but then she spun around. Her first impression upon seeing him lying back as he was, head sunk in the pillows, eyes squeezed shut tightly again, was that he was suffering a headache. It would not have been uncommon. He had often gotten them due to his lack of sleep from his insomnia growing up.

"A German shepherd," she announced with something of a jovial tone. She hoped it would stir him some but her sixteen-year-old merely blinked his eyes into slits and then began to sit up slowly. She was not sure she was seeing things or the light simply hit his eyes in a strange way, but for the briefest of moments, his gaze had seemed almost to glow. It was like seeing headlights in the middle of a rainstorm, a flatter color, and it had seemed the color of a dark blue-violet blur of a shade.

She froze in shock at the sight but her son hardly seemed to notice. He looked exhausted, as if the last few nights had left him haggard or something particularly stressful had happened earlier during the day.

She wondered at this for a small moment but it passed just as quickly. Before her eyes, Yugi seemed to shake the sleep off of himself and the weariness appeared to vacate his smaller frame for a few moments. He yawned, starting off in the direction of his bathroom with a backwards toss of words.

"I'll be out in a minute," he muttered.

He closed and locked the door behind him, turning the lights on and squinting. But his eyes adjusted without any true sense of hesitation. Where he usually would have groaned and the sensitivity would have made him want to bang his head into the counter, he was able to simply glance at himself in the mirror. He looked perfectly fine, just tired, with slightly more pronounced bags beneath his eyes.

Good; he could live with that. And his mother would never be the wiser.

He rubbed his eyes again, then picked at some of the sand that had formed in the corners of his lashes. Yugi paced forward away from the door, just in case Kasumi had wandered there in order to make sure he was okay. Turning back towards the lock he had twisted to keep her out, he bit his lip and whispered as softly as he could, in a breath that he himself could hardly hear.

"Yami?"

He wondered if the other could hear him more effectively than he could himself. So low was his voice that he almost thought it was nonexistent. And yet, as he strained his ears and listened as fervently as he could, Yugi caught the faintest touch of a noise.

It was low, steady, and so leisurely that he almost suspected he might be hearing things. But it was not something that he would have usually considered. It was a soft, melodious growling breath in response to his inquiry. And as soon as it hit his ears, it dissipated quickly once more.

He let out a small breath of relief, flushed the toilet to distract and convince his mother, and then turned on the faucet to wash his hands and wipe them clean on a towel. "I'll be back in a little while, okay?" he whispered in that same nearly inaudible volume. As long as Yami was able to hear him, he would not complain. Yugi flicked the lock and pulled the door open again before closing it behind him.

His mom was waiting in the doorway, frowning at him in a near puzzlement. He wondered for a moment what it was that she saw. But Yugi did not think he truly cared to know in all reality beyond his initial brief idea to question it.

It was not fully worth his attention.

"So, what's going on with the shepherd?" he asked, moving past her and towards the staircase. He heard her pause as if he had somehow shocked her into immobility and silence. He turned his head when he still did not hear her footfalls and frowned curiously at her over his shoulder. "What? What's wrong?"

For a moment his mom did not respond, instead looking into his room with a somewhat troubled expression. He wondered, as she stared at the bed, if maybe she could somehow sense Yami within the darkness there. Yugi felt dizzy at the very thought. Perhaps it was something from within her suppressed lycanthropy, some kind of unspoken set of instincts as he'd had whenever he remembered his adrenaline spiking. Or perhaps Yugi was simply thinking too much into something much simpler than that. It was entirely possible that nothing of the sort was going on.

She turned towards him for a moment, frowning a bit deeper, and then shook his head. "Nothing," Kasumi muttered, starting to his side and down the stairs beyond him. "I was just wondering why there was an extra blanket on the bed."

Yugi paused, glancing over his shoulder for a split second. Yami was somewhere in the dark, hidden away, and there would be no issue as long as he remained that way. And he knew well enough that Yami would as he took off after his mother. "I got cold earlier," he lied awkwardly, blinking and straining his eyes. "And I guess I forgot about it when I fell asleep."

"Earlier?"

It felt like a trap when it was said in that tone. His eyes narrowed and he wondered for a moment if the tension he felt within his shoulders was singular, exclusive only to him. It was a strange though, to see her upset physically over something other than his grades or his grandfather telling him stories. But he could not detect any frustration from her in any manner.

"I was studying in my room until around six, so sometime before then," he muttered in response, feeling slightly sick at the lie. Yugi had been running by then, watching Yami eat his rabbit and deer calf and feeling sick as his own mouth watered with desire for meat and blood on his tongue. He shivered, glad that she was ahead of him and could not see him doing so. "I was just a little cold and didn't want to turn the heat up. So I grabbed a blanket instead."

He was almost rambling, he realized, shutting his mouth immediately again before he could say anything further. If he said something stupid, gave away too many details, she would become suspicious at some pint. And Yugi did not need her to become suspicious of him in any manner.

"Okay," Kasumi said in a voice that sounded clearly distracted. "The shepherd is extremely malnourished, has some bruising and internal bleeding, and needs his leg put into a cast."

Yugi nodded, his own mind running miles ahead as he wondered if Yami was going to go back to sleep or remain awake until he returned. He hoped he got more sleep. He really hoped that he had decided to rest again. He had been just as exhausted as Yugi had when they had come back, after all.

The entire procedure took much longer than he had initially thought it might. He was half-asleep on his feet and struggling to keep his eyes open when they managed to stop the bleeding. He was trying his hardest not to fall to the floor as they began on his cast. And Yugi was sure his body had turned to jelly by the time she told him that they were going to put him in the kennel until he woke up.

When the door was locked in place and the dog was steadily waking, he paused for a moment to study the canine. He was small, scrawny even, with fur that seemed fuller than his frail bones, and his face was decorated with long scratches. His ears seemed to be half-torn, the blood crusted around his nose, but for the most part Yugi thought the biggest damage would be simple scarring.

Still, looking at the dog made him remember clearly the conversation Yugi knew he was meant to have with her now. It was nothing he truly wanted to say and yet he knew he still had to.

Yugi drew in a deep breath and then backed away from the cage. "I can't help out in the clinic anymore, Mom," he said softly, plainly, keeping his voice clear and level. He glanced at her as she paused cleaning the scalpel, her eyes beginning to narrow as she stopped short. Yugi did not know what more to say as he allowed his eyes to drift back to the kennel door once more.

The dog was still just starting to wake up.

Maybe if he went upstairs before it woke things would be fine.

But then, his mom would never believe him without proof.

She would simply think that something was going on with him. And he feared the repercussions of her thoughts if that were to happen. She could very easily ruin him in a sense, should she see it necessary to once again raise his medication doses and monitor his intake.

"Why not?"

Kasumi was speaking in a calm tone to mirror his own, but he knew her well enough to recognize the anger in her voice as well. It was minimal, all but nonexistent, and if he had not been her son, he would have never truly recognized it.

"Animals tend to…not like me so much anymore."

This was the easiest way to phrase it.

"What?"

"They tend to react badly to me being around them."

The dog had begun to shift its weight.

Yugi watched it.

"What does that mean?"

"That they get really aggressive towards me."

Kasumi looked up sharply at his words now. The shepherd whined and its eyelids flickered.

"Aggressive towards you? Yugi, you have been helping me with patients _since you were ten_. What are you even talking about? The animals have never once reacted aggressively towards you."

"They didn't then, but they do now."

The dog whimpered softly, then shifted to move into a more comfortable position. Its lids fluttered, almost parting.

"That's nonsense, Yugi. Why would that change after six _years_?"

"I don't know. But it did. They have started to become aggressive around me."

"That's not even slightly—"

The dog threw itself against the cage despite the injuries and drugs in its system. Glazed dark brown eyes, pupils blown to nearly swallow away its irises, peered at him furiously. The jaws snapped and the dog collapsed, teeth bared. Despite the pain and glaze of drugs, the canine was almost rabid.

Had he been foaming at the mouth Yugi was sure the idea would have been the exact reason.

His mom was staring blankly. "He shouldn't even be able to stand."

"He's angry because I'm here."

The words made her blink, turning her heard with something bewildered, incredulous and yet entirely horrified in her eyes. Her gaze flickered back and forth. The dog was focused entirely on her son. It was snarling hideously, lips pulled back as far as possible, body trembling in anxiety. It barked angrily but the noise was only a gasp from the stress of the breathing tube formerly in its throat.

"I need to go back upstairs," Yugi muttered. He looked back at the dog with an expression that was both pitying and somewhat flustered. "I'm going back to bed. Give him another dose of medicine. His adrenaline is spiking because of me being here. I'll see you in the morning."

" _Yugi_ …"

"It's okay, Mom. I don't know what happened, but this is the reaction I get all of the time now," he said dismissively, giving her a small smile and then heading out the door. "Good night. I'll see you in the morning."

Yugi waited until he heard her moving around to grab a syringe and then moved up the stairs again. Fatigued, the small teen groaned with each movement. He sighed, at first frustrated, and then relieved as he reached the top of the stairs. He felt himself nearly as liberated as a person finding a body of water within the endless sand of a desert. He paused, drawing in a long and deep breath, and then forced himself to go to his door, open it and close it behind him once more. He was almost so tired that he might use the door as a bed at this rate.

The Change was so painful it was impossible not to be winded by it even hours later.

Yami looked up at him from the mattress. His blanket was pulled over shoulders and encompassed much of his face as well; his red eyes flickered about his form restlessly for a moment. "You smell of blood," he announced quietly, in that same raspy whisper that made his spine feel colder than usual.

Yugi wished desperately that Yami's voice would heal, that he could hear that same rolling tone which had encompassed his senses hours before. "I helped her operate on a dog with internal bleeding. We had to soak up the blood and it's still on my clothes. The smell, not the actual…"

"I can see that. You are exhausted, not wounded." Yami turned away from him to face the window, yawning and pulling the blanket down to rest more comfortably on his shoulders. "I simply did not know."

Yugi smiled faintly but made his way back towards the bed. The other boy's body heat was a delicious sensation against his skin when he fell atop the surface of the comforter. The red-eyed lycanthrope turned his head to glance at him from the corner of his eye but made no comment and instead settled once more for sleep.

Yugi fell asleep to Yami's breathing as he had before. He faced the window as Yami did, curling up as the other had. He woke alone the second time, tired and blinking in the low dawn light. Seated on his windowsill, head angled upwards, eyes wide with innocent and childish wonder, was Yami.

The small teen groaned softly, desiring more than ever to fall back asleep as he closed his eyes tightly. The idea of resting was somehow comforting and yet distracting all at once. He squinted an eye open and peered at the taller boy as Yami continued to watch the window with that same fascination which made his expression childish and simple with his innocence.

"What's up?" he mumbled, tilting his head as he sat up slightly and yawned softly. The other boy glanced at him from the corner of his eye, a sly flicker of his attention, but it was gone again quickly.

"This," Yami stated, flicking his wrist towards the window again and frowning faintly. "I…forget the name for it."

Yugi yawned again, thinking to burrow beneath the comforter and bury himself under it all. But it did nothing more than influence him to close his eyes again tightly and huff out a small breath. "What's it look like, Yami?"

There was a long, pregnant silence.

"…Water crystals," Yugi finally heard him reply, his voice rough and ragged with tired excitement. There was a dubious hint to his tone, something which made it obvious that his own words sounded awkward in his ears.

Yugi opened his eyes again now, sitting up fully. Water crystals? What did he mean by "water crystals" exactly? The phrasing was awkward and unusual and he frowned in puzzlement, moving to lean forward and strain his eyes for a moment. Everything looked perfectly white outside of the window, as if the world had been washed of color and given a clean slate. It looked pristine, like…

"Snow," Yugi muttered, taking in the fine form of several clumps of falling flakes. His eyes widened now, head tilting to the side in growing bewilderment. It was earlier than usual for snow, even for Hokkaido. Winters usually came around the middle of November, not the beginning. Sure, in reality, it was merely a difference of days, but it still rattled him somewhat. He blinked in confusion, then ran a hand through his long goldenrod bangs.

That explained why they had not run into any bears the day before.

"It's snow," he said a bit louder, though he knew that Yami had caught the statement that first time. But the other boy nodded in acknowledgment this time, a silent plea that he not repeat himself yet again. Yami was watching him from the corner of his eye, however, the smaller boy realized thoughtfully. But his expression had turned from wondrous to overjoyed.

His red eyes were bright, shining, and his mouth had parted faintly with his excitement. When he breathed, despite the heat, Yugi was sure that he saw a crystalline mist in front of his lips.


	21. Home

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day (no update on June 2nd)**

 **Chapter Warnings: Some Profanity, Boys Being Pervs**

 **Okay, so the way the middle school system in Japan works (from what I've read of it), the grades are sixth to ninth. So the first year of high school would be when they would turn sixteen. Thus, they would be fifteen at the end of middle school. Which totally threw me off so many times writing this chapter LOL**

 **So, recent research done, I found out that some schools in Japan DO have students move about to get to different classes but it's very uncommon. So, for that reason, Yugi calls Domino High "westernized" as a way of pointing this out. Also, after school, most of them have after-school activities that they all participate in; in Japan they're all BUT mandatory from what I read, but in America it's optional, so because of Domino High being "westernized" it also shares this in common with American high schools. After-school activities happen at the discretion of the students in this story for this school. Otherwise they tend to do their own thing and run off to the arcade or cafes to hang out together or wherever else they want to go.**

 **By the way, feel absolutely FREE to tell me if I missed anything that anyone might want a warning for. I was editing four chapters straight over the last couple of days so things kind of began to blur into one huge sequence in my head and I totally forgot some of the things I would need to put warnings in for.**

Chapter XXI: Home

 _Work Log Entry XXI: June, 1997_

 _June 4_

 _The boss has proclaimed this his first birthday for reasons unknown. Though we cannot recover the date that he was born due to the blood smudged on the pages of the report written that day, we all know that it was not this month but July._

 _Everyone is confused by this procedure but the wolf pup hardly seems to care._

 _He is growing just enough to be satisfactory for our boss._

 _But his eyes have not changed._

 _And looking into them for a long period of time could drive anyone mad._

The small blue-violet-eyed teen looked up from his bento after a moment, just in time to see Jonouchi punch Honda's shoulder playfully. They had been joking back and forth for the last several hours, in between classes and now as they were sitting at the arcade getting food around video games. He had only been listening vaguely to the noise they made and so he had no idea what it was that they had been arguing and kidding about. There was basically no sense to listen to anything they were saying in all reality.

His sense of companionship had dwindled as the hours had gone by. Being at their sides for so long had left him less than keen on remaining with them. It was so loud and tiresome and his irritation was spiking simply because of the glances he had been given by Sozoji earlier that day. Like earlier, he had failed to do more than give him a backwards look upon realizing he was nearby. Because of that, Jonouchi had declared him the official bully repellent of the group.

His declaration had made Honda snicker but Anzu had gotten frustrated on his behalf and Yugi had felt his stomach turning. That had not been less than true in all actuality. He had been somehow scaring his bullies off with simple glances at them. Something about his lycanthropy seemed to make them nervous enough to practically flee away from him immediately. None of them even looked at him for more than half a second. And if they did, it was never with eye contact to be made. They looked at his face, near his eyes, and usually below them instead of above.

In fact, now that he considered it, _none_ of them had dared to look higher than his eyes. Not once had any of them thought to look at his brows or his forehead. It was his cheekbones and his bottom lashes that were in their sights. If they bothered to look at his face, which most of them didn't anymore…

Yugi bit his lip and wondered. When had he last made eye contact with anyone who had bullied him formerly? He could not recall any beyond his being bitten and before then it had been in passing and never taken too seriously aside from Ushio.

He fought away that train of thought. If he continued down it, he was sure that nothing good would come of it. And he'd wasted enough time thinking about it and worrying and considering.

For the briefest of moments he saw Tomoya in the forefront of his mind. His insides shuddered painfully at the reminder but he did not allow it to show. Instead he drew in a deep breath and looked away towards his food again.

"Even Yug agrees with me! Right, man?"

He glanced up and tried to backtrack to the very source of the conversation. But he had ceased to pay attention then and it showed now. He looked up at the blond with an apologetic, distracted expression lighting his eyes.

" _Dude_!" he wheedled, shaking his head and giving him a sharp glare with honey brown eyes. "What the hell, man? You're supposed to just back me up!"

Yugi obliged, turning to Honda with a small smirk of amusement. "It's true."

"Well, that's funny coming from you," the brunet replied, raising an eyebrow in pure amusement, "considering he was just saying you like rolling around in dog piss."

The small teen blinked, then spun on his blond best friend who was howling with laughter. "What? Jonouchi, you ass!" he spat out in mock anger, grabbing a chopstick and throwing it at his forehead. "What the hell?"

Anzu was smiling, trying her hardest not to laugh. "To be fair, he said it three times and waited for you to notice," she snickered, blue eyes shining with laughter.

He felt his cheeks grow flushed. "W-what? Seriously?"

"You had every chance to defend yourself," Honda agreed with a wide grin. " _Every_ chance, Yugi."

The small teen reached up to scratch the back of his head. "Oh..." He laughed awkwardly. "Just to clarify though, I do not roll around in dog pee. Or pee of any kind for that matter. Just pointing that out."

"Don't worry, your dirty secret is safe with us," Jonouchi snorted playfully.

He rolled his eyes and tossed his other chopstick at him before turning away again. "You're an ass," he grumbled again, balling up his napkin and tossing it as well.

"You're the one who wasn't paying attention!"

"That doesn't mean you start talking jabs at me! I mean, _honestly_ , there wasn't even a warning for that!"

"People who don't pay attention don't get warnings."

"That's messed up."

"But also true."

Yugi rolled his eyes again and looked away to pick at his nails with disinterest. But the color there shocked him. It was not that they had turned bloody like Yami's were. It was the fact that they were thicker and the color near the base of his cuticles a shade darker. His stomach tossed.

The color must have drained from his cheeks because his friends immediately grew tense. Each of them looked at him with the most rapt attention he had ever truly known them to possess. He looked up with his teeth clenched on his right cheek.

"What?" he asked in what he hoped was a mild tone.

They stayed quiet for a moment, collective in their brief silence, then glanced at each other somewhat uneasily.

"You just looked a little upset," Anzu finally said, frowning at him cautiously.

"I did?" Yugi asked, frowning faintly in faux puzzlement. "Oh, well I'm not. I'm just kind of tired. My mom woke me up yesterday night at like three in the morning and had me help her with a shepherd for a few hours. I didn't entire sleep it off last night."

Beside him, Honda raised a brow and narrowed his eyes faintly. His tone was off, too flippant and basic and altogether unconcerned. Yugi usually got slightly concerned when his friends were and he knew his voice to sometimes become apologetic and guilty because of it all. He hated to worry them. And he often showed it in the act of trying to take their minds off things by steering conversation elsewhere.

But he was not doing so now. And there was something strange within his gaze that unnerved the tall brunet. The smaller teen looked, for a moment, almost as if he wanted nothing more than to ignore them altogether. But there also seemed to be something almost blank and reserved and cold within his dark eyes. It was unfamiliar, entirely foreign, and that was the only reason he recognized its alien presence.

Yugi looked distinctly disturbed and angered to such a point as to appear nearly hateful. Whatever had caught his attention now held it even as he reassured Jonouchi and Anzu that there was nothing wrong and he was simply tired.

It was shocking to see such expression in his gaze, whether or not he meant to portray it. He had never once seen him seemingly so furious despite his relaxed features. And Honda wondered, staring at Yugi and then glancing at his other two friends, if they saw it too.

The concern was still evident on their faces, but he was unsure that it was not residual rather than current. They could very easily have misread his eyes, seen them in a light which did not truly exist. Or perhaps that was his own perception. Maybe he was the one who saw something amiss where there was none.

But that alien emotion was unmistakable, especially where it warred so powerfully against the small teen's very nature. It was disconcerting to recognize the emotion he had so often seen when his grandparents had fought hideously over his upbringing with his parents. It was horrifying to see that emotion he knew from his families clashing and butting heads so terribly. The smaller teen had seemed incapable of such a sensation before.

Yugi was so kind and gentle, with such optimism, that it made his insides twist and his stomach drop with discomfort. Sure, Honda knew him to hate violence, but that was not what it was directed towards now. He was not sure of where it was meant to be displayed, but it was not violence by any means.

There was no altercation anywhere around them. Their day, in all actuality, had been relaxed and simple from the moment they had all crossed paths. Not even numerous run-ins with former bullies had changed that.

He didn't draw attention to it, however, and instead played the levelheaded one of the three concerned friends as he always had.

"So, what happened with the dog?"

Yugi blinked and looked at him. That little light in his eyes had deepened slightly, growing just the smallest bit. "He was hit by a car, like most of them are when they cross that road." He appeared almost to have the instinct to shrug, but fought it off at the last second with a tiny twitch of his shoulders. "He had lacerations along the face, his ears were torn open and ragged, he had a _lot_ of internal bleeding, his ribs were fractured, and his back right leg was completely broken. It took about three or four hours to fix it all."

"I can't believe that people would hit an animal and just leave it like that," Anzu huffed in frustration, shaking her head with something of a small glare. "That's disgusting."

"Well, they're not people," Jonouchi pointed out as always, rolling his eyes when she spun on him angrily. "If they were, there wouldn't be laws for people to hunt them."

"Jonouchi, you insensitive asshole," she breathed in an acidic voice, "those are most often people's _pets_ that end up over on that road!"

"Okay, but that doesn't change anything. It's still an _animal_ —"

"You're forgetting that little kids often traverse that street as well," Yugi stated as he pushed his food towards Honda when he noticed his eyes had fallen on it. Beef bento was one of the brunet's favorites, and the food was just making the small teen's stomach twist. The scent made his nose feel as if it were bleeding. "Sure, it's earlier in the day, but there have been a _lot_ of close calls with them too. There have also been daylight collisions where someone runs the light and slams into someone else. It's really just a miracle no one has been _killed_ there during one."

The blond rolled his eyes again. "Yeah, okay, Yugi, but you're missing the point," he argued. "If it was a kid or a person who had been hit—"

"People get hit by cars all the time other places, including parts of Japan. Sometimes it's when someone is walking home from school or riding a bike from the market or whatever mundane thing they were doing. Jonouchi, they _get_ _hit_. And sometimes they _don't_ get help. Lots of drunk teens get too freaked out to check on them and just call in anonymously so that they can't be held responsible. But in the meantime that person they just hit could be dead."

"Yugi—"

"What? It's true. Just because it's a person who got hit doesn't mean that everyone rushes to save them."

"Okay, but that's still not the point."

"Fine, then tell me what the point _is_ because from where I was sitting, I'm pretty sure we were just at the part where you were telling us that people care more about people than they do animals." When his friend stared at him with a somewhat frustrated expression and Anzu looked between them awkwardly as Honda watched their faces keenly, Yugi simply watched with a blank expression. "Was that or wasn't that the point of your argument?"

Jonouchi waved his hand in annoyance, scoffing, "We need a subject change."

The smaller teen gladly turned away from the topic, satisfied that he had proven something of his point. "So, what was this game you wanted to see me play?"

The tension which had been accumulating within their small group dissipated almost immediately. The change of topic made Jonouchi jump at the opportunity of showing the small teen the game he had been telling him about earlier that day. Both of them wandered off towards it, Yugi all but ignoring him as he explained the rules.

The hour passed with Yugi defeating the former high score and both of them returning back to the other two. He wasn't sure what it had been they had been speaking about but his approach towards their table immediately made them both fall quiet. Of course, he was sure he wasn't meant to notice that. But he didn't bring attention to it and Jonouchi seemed rather happily oblivious towards it.

He wanted for a moment to challenge them, frustrated with this development, but confrontation had never been very big in his nature. So he took his seat and twisted the soda can he had bought minutes before around in his palms. But the liquid didn't taste as good anymore and the bubbling felt soothing yet somehow harsh upon his tongue, bursting violently against his taste buds.

"Hey, I'm going to make a soda run," Honda announced, glancing at Jonouchi with something of a pointed expression. The blond looked at him in confusion for a moment, then glanced between Yugi and Anzu, and sprang to his feet.

"Yeah, why don't I help you?"

Yugi snorted loudly as they both began to walk off, Anzu rolling her eyes. "They're just so subtle, aren't they?" she muttered.

The smaller teen shot her a wide, amused grin. "The most subtle ever," he agreed, glancing back towards where he knew they were standing around the soda machines watching them. Jonouchi immediately looked away again and Honda covered his face with his hand at his friend's awkwardness. "I guess that gives us room to talk though, right?"

She sat up a little more, with that same hopeful expression he had seen the moment he had said his grandpa was getting better formerly. "Yeah, I guess it does," she agreed quietly.

Yugi looked at her for a moment, mind racing in a direction far opposite of what he had initially meant it to travel. The memory of his lie now made his stomach toss. What would she do if she discovered the truth, that he was housing a boy who had killed _two_ of their classmates in cold blood?

A boy who had subsequently saved his life by infecting him with an incurable disease?

A boy who had killed two other people in the woods and possibly _more_?

What would she do when she found out that he himself had killed someone?

And what would she do when she realized the reasoning behind it, that he had killed Bakura in order to save Yami?

He nearly trembled at the thought. She'd probably think him just as disgusting and loathsome as he did himself. He swallowed hard, biting the inside of his left cheek.

"I think I need to get home," he announced, his words detached and strained. "If I'm not home by curfew, my mom is going to freak out."

Anzu blinked at him as if he were telling her a joke that she did not understand. She shook her head slightly, frowning at him in bewilderment, and the two missing members of their group hurried to intervene. When his head snapped towards them, it was only when Honda had hissed something about their plan crashing and burning. And Anzu swore she saw something distinctly like alarm within his darkened blue-violet eyes just before it faded. Then his eyes brightened faintly, with something so much like relief that it made her stomach clench.

Something was very wrong with the small teen.

Anzu had never seen him react with such precision and speed before. Even when he played video games and always managed to win, his eyes had never seemed so sharp and focused, his expression so keen and almost dangerous. He had looked almost...feral, in fact, as if their approach was enough to make him flee.

She wanted to ask about this, because the expression of fight-or-flight was so misplaced on her childhood best friend that it nearly made her sick, but to bring it up in front of the others seemed like a betrayal of some kind. She would ask Yugi when she had the chance when they were alone. If not, she feared he would become defensive or perhaps offended, and that was something she did not want to have on her conscience.

"Dude, you look a little sick," Jonouchi commented, frowning at him. He almost reached out to touch his forehead with the back of his hand but Yugi flinched away at the movement and each of them froze in place.

"I just…I don't know. Maybe I am sick?" he muttered uncomfortably, words unsure and somehow flat all at once. "I…I just need to get home. My mom will freak out if I'm not back before curfew."

"Curfew isn't for a couple more hours."

Something flashed in his eyes at this statement, as if he had not expected any of them to notice this inconsistency. Yugi blinked at them in a manner that seemed almost dazed, and then looked away as if attempting to fold inwards upon himself.

"You guys can come over. I mean, maybe I'm just more tired because from playing those games after not sleeping well?" He was fumbling, desperate and small, as they looked at him with such concerned expressions. None of them should have been so worried, not after all of the things he had done behind their backs. "I'm just…getting a small headache."

None of them believed him, Yugi knew, but they also did not bother to call him out on his obvious lie. Each of them swapped looks, frowned at him, and then shrugged it off.

"Sure, let's get out of here," Jonouchi announced. "You've already beaten all of the games anyways. At least at your house there's hot chocolate!"

Yugi glanced at him, all too thankful for the save he gave him at that moment. "Yeah, we can have hot chocolate," he said with clear gratitude in his tone. "Mom taught me how to make it just like she does."

The walk back was laden with awkward tension, pressing harder on his thin frame than even the weight of his jacket over his uniform and undershirt. The others were mostly quiet, though on occasion one of them would say something or other that was enough to spur momentary conversation. Yugi himself was struggling with the task of not backing out of the alley shortcut they took or glancing into the woods where he had been injected with the wolfsbane and silver mixture.

He felt he would panic and flee should he look into the trees, the thought of his own murder in cold blood making his body tight with anxiety. And yet, somehow, he had been able to escape such thoughts days before upon sneaking out into the woods with Yami. He had not thought of it around the Change or the run through the woods but for that brief spat between the two of them.

And why _hadn't_ he?

Was it because Yami was there?

Or was it simply that he had been too focused otherwise to consider it?

Yugi shuddered and the others passed him for a moment before he hurried his steps. If he kept closer to them, anyone considering to capture or chase him or something would second guess, right? In groups there was safety, wasn't there?

He glanced over his shoulder regardless, stomach clenching and his fingers shaking where they grasped tightly at his sleeves in panic. What the fuck was a "Pure-Blood" and why had they called him that? Why had Valon put the words "angel of death" in his mind as well? What the hell was going on?

He nearly stumbled when he saw a flash of something amongst the white of fallen snow. His head snapped towards it forcefully, eyes wide and alarmed. A blur of black was moving in the ice. He froze, eyes widening further, heart racing.

Was it coming towards him?

Was it another wolf sent after him?

But there was no alarm in the form of tension along his spine but that of which he had already pressed upon himself. His heart was still racing and his eyes had sharpened drastically, his sight answering his unspoken panic.

He let out a breath of relief.

It was Yami.

The other boy was rolling around in the snow. His paws were up, his tongue lolling against the roof of his mouth. His head was tilted sideways and his shoulders were slithering downwards, dragging his large body down a small incline of earth. He was literally sliding playfully down the gentle dip of the hill.

Yugi smiled faintly, tilting his head in wonder at the sight. The large wolf looked no more dangerous than a puppy exploring the world around them. When he got to the bottom of the hill, he rolled onto his paws, panting with exuberance. The gusts of air he exhaled came in rapid rivulets of bright white frost. His shoulders were finely shaking with his excitement. His eyes were bright, nearly glowing with happiness, and his ears were twitching back and forth every which way in search of danger. His tail was wagging like a flag behind him, held parallel to his spine, though he halted momentarily.

It took Yugi a moment to realize. He remembered reading that wolves had limited vision. He could not imagine it, however, as he considered his own eyes growing so sharp and powerful.

Yet Yami seemed for a moment not to recognize him. His tail dropped, ears folding back, and his lips curled faintly in a soft snarl of warning. He did not approach and the hairs on his spine began to grow tense. They rose in a ragged bristle for a moment, then dropped just as quickly. As abruptly as his alarm had come, so it was gone. His tail rose, wagging lazily, jaws parted to show his enamel in a goofy grin as his ears pricked and he trembled faintly again with his excitement. He nodded slightly at him, then turned and raced off into the trees.

It took Yugi only a second to realize why he had fled. And why he had come to stare at him in such a way. It occurred to him only as he turned his head, but it came to him regardless.

"That was one _huge_ ass dog," Jonouchi breathed in awe.

Yami had seen Jonouchi, had reacted to him rather than Yugi. But he had relaxed simply because he had seen the small boy there as well. He had not reacted in anger or alarm towards the small teen himself, but to his unknown best friend.

"Yeah, it was pretty big," he agreed, glancing towards the trees again. Yami was obviously hiding, waiting for them to pass before he would come out again. He could not find a single flicker of movement from the black wolf anywhere.

"Almost like that one in the alley behind Burger World." It was said with enough wonder and confusion that it did not sound suspicious but, when Yugi looked at him again, he knew the blond was trying to connect dots there. And he could not blame him. Surely he would have been doing the same.

"Yeah, I guess so," he said in a reluctant voice. "But I don't think it's the same dog."

"No, the other one had a lot of white to it. It looked like a big husky."

"A Malamute?"

"Maybe." Jonouchi shrugged lazily, then turned back to where Anzu and Honda were waiting. "Let's go. I want some of your mom"s famous hot chocolate!"

Yugi rolled his eyes. "It's not famous. It's just amazing and out of this world."

The blond nodded in rigorous agreement. "Yes," he agreed readily. "Yes, it definitely is!"

Honda glanced at them curiously at the statement, eyes wide and open in growing confusion. "What?"

"My mom's hot chocolate is amazing."

"Was there ever any debate about that?"

"No, we were just reiterating it."

"Good, because we would have to fight if someone said it wasn't the best hot chocolate ever."

Yugi rolled his eyes. "You guys are insane. I don't even know why I hang out with you at this rate."

"Because we're awesome and helped you with your bullying issues."

"And now you repel bullies all on your own!"

Yugi swatted at his blond friend, rolling his eyes once more. "I always repelled them, with or without your help. It was just a matter of how quickly the blood loss scared them away," he muttered, flushing when Anzu shot him something of a worried look.

"Well, that's true," Jonouchi said thoughtfully, giving him a wide grin seconds later. "No one can quite bleed as well as you do."

"Or scream quite as loud," Honda threw in, smirking.

"Or curl up in a ball as tightly."

"Or groan as loudly."

"Or piss themselves at will like you can."

"Or—"

" _What_?" Yugi sputtered, flustered and scowling at Jonouchi. "I never pissed myself, you ass!"

The blond ducked away from him when he went to punch his arm. The thought occurred to Yugi the moment that he missed that perhaps it was for the best that he had. What if he was too strong physically and somehow harmed him? What if he wound up seriously hurting him somehow? And what if he could never control his strength later if that was the case?

"I never pissed myself," he snapped around his two male friends' chortling. "Not even when Ushio beat the crap out of me."

The words made his body stiffen and freeze altogether. A sense of alarm and confusion crept through him. Had he just alluded to what he thought he had? That was nothing he had meant to—

"That time he beat the crap out of you," Honda grumbled, "shouldn't even be counted. He came after Jonouchi and me, not you. You just got caught in the middle."

Yugi felt almost as if he should have dropped to his knees with relief, gratitude surging through him at the thought that he had not given away his own secret of being there in the alley where Tomoya had died. They couldn't trace Ushio back to that incident regardless, but it was still horrifying to consider. If he rambled about the former student, then what was to keep him from blurting out such a truth? He swallowed harshly and nearly choked with distress.

"But he also screamed a lot and curled up in a ball and bled like crazy then too, you know," Jonouchi pointed out, nudging Yugi playfully with an elbow to the ribs. "That wasn't funny, but it proves my point."

"True enough," Yugi conceded in a nearly breathless tone, "but there was no peeing. On myself or otherwise."

Both of them burst out laughing but Anzu remained somewhat upset by the conversation. Her eyes were wide, her mouth set in a thin line, and he could see sympathy for what he had gone through that, as well as regret that she had not somehow been able to prevent it. Yugi flashed her a small smile, trying to show it no longer upset him by any means, but it seemed only to make her look troubled. He found his own mouth falling into a slight, puzzled frown, but did not question her.

"Just throwing that out there. No peeing of any kind went on that night," he continued in a factual tone. Yugi wondered, slightly sickened by the idea, if perhaps he had done so when Yami had saved him. The thought made him feel slightly dizzy but he could not recall.

All he knew that had covered him that night upon dragging himself home was blood, dried and crusted, and perhaps what he assumed to be vomit from when he had puked upon waking up. But most of it was a blur and he could not think further than this initial discovery.

But then again, he didn't even know if he had puked on himself. He couldn't really remember it completely. But he remembered the blood caking his clothes and weighing him down heavily. And he recalled the way the water had run red down the drain. He knew this with absolute certainty.

It was other details which defied him.

Yugi closed his eyes for a moment. His stomach twisted. When he opened them again, he forced himself to remain calm. It was, in all reality, rather horrifying to realize that, like many other nights upon being infected, this too seemed like a large gaping black hole in the center of his mind. He nearly groaned in distress. How often had he suffered these seemingly empty pockets of time? He thought he had seen their existence during his childhood, small patches in which his memory had turned dark and almost nonexistent.

He forced himself to start moving again, walking and giving them each a false grin. "Let's go get some hot chocolate," he announced, hurrying towards where he could see his house. He wanted to glance back and see if perhaps Yami were back there, watching within the tree line, but he did not want to draw attention to him. Nor did he want Jonouchi to bring up the incident at Burger World. There was just already so much _wrong_ with what had happened there and their casual avoidance of it that he did not care to have such knowledge dug up again.

He paused only to glance around and see if his mom was home or any of the clinic staff there. But if she was, she happened to be in the back, and so Yugi found it more of a hindrance to ask her attention at that moment than he would have otherwise. So he led them upstairs where each of them removed their shoes and quickly went to sit around the table.

Yugi ignored them in favor of gathering a pot and milk and cocoa powder and sugar. The small teen listened to them talking about classes and homework but did not bother to contribute beyond small comments. He stirred the milk, measured out the cocoa powder, poured in some sugar, and then divided it into four cups.

"You _do_ remember that this just came off the stove, right?" he chastised, rolling his eyes when Jonouchi nearly lunged for the mug he set in front of him. The blond instantly halted, pursing his lips, and Yugi lazily pulled his jacket off, dropping it onto the back of the chair.

When he sat down again, he wondered at the sensation of his body seemingly flaring with heat and then slowly losing all sense of fever in exchange of steady warmth. He blinked, startled, and then recalled the morning upon layering himself up in which he had felt this same sensation.

There was a single burst of heat and then he was comfortable again. And despite wearing layers that should have made him feel overheated, his body had been completely comfortable. Was temperature regulation another part of being infected as he was?

He didn't honestly think he could complain about that one if that was the case. Not feeling too hot or too cold all the time was a nice bonus.

The first sip burned his tongue but the taste made him shiver with pleasure. Yugi could have moaned with satisfaction, but instead he grinned as Jonouchi did it for him and subsequently began to down his drink despite its temperature.

"She really _did_ teach you how to make it!"

Yugi rolled his eyes. "Um, yeah, did you did think I was lying?"

"No, but…it tastes just like hers!"

"What did you think her teaching me the recipe meant exactly?"

Honda snorted. "Yugi, he doesn't think, remember? That's a trick question."

"Wow," the small teen snickered, smirking, "You're just going to take that, Jonouchi?"

"If it gets me another cup of hot chocolate, I'll take anything any of you've got," the blond declared, licking his lips. The movement made Yugi stiffen, body suddenly rigid for a moment. Something about the image was eerie, even if for that moment he could not put his finger on it. "Anything for the Motou cocoa."

The small teen rolled his eyes but his unnerved feeling did not change. Something about the way he had licked his lips still seemed decidedly ominous. He looked back at his chocolate for a moment, then swallowed hard. Now he remembered.

Yami had licked his lips with that same ravenous quality when he had swallowed that rabbit in what had seemed to be mere seconds. He had cleaned the blood off his muzzle in swift strokes of the long muscle, and all the while his eyes had shone with predatory desire.

Jonouchi lacked the predatory element, but it had been a mirroring action regardless.

Yugi took another sip, but didn't bother to look up for a moment. "If I make you another cup, you have to agree that we get to put you down like a dog," he announced, smirking widely. When he glanced at him, the blond was wide-eyed and Honda was howling with laughter. Even Anzu was snickering now, glancing between the three of them curiously.

"Fine. _Anything_ for a cup of Motou cocoa."

"I want the first shot," Honda declared immediately.

"I'm making him the cocoa, I'm getting the first shot."

"What happened to ladies first?"

"Anzu, you're a teenager. That's hardly a lady."

" _Damn_ ," Jonouchi snorted, snickering, "he just insulted your woman, Yugi. What are you going to do about it?"

"His woman?" Anzu scoffed, turning on the blond. "I'm not some kind of possession."

"It's a figure of speech."

"Can we not get started on this one?" the small teen grumbled, rolling his eyes. "We'll be here all day."

"He just said you talk too much."

"Actually, Jonouchi, I was talking about your loose, flapping jaws. Stop barking."

" _Damn_ , Yugi is in it to win!" Honda crowed, laughing when the blond shot his two best friends annoyed glances.

"Hey, don't scowl like that. It makes you look like a Saint Bernard. Come on, show us that golden retriever smile!"

"You know what? Take all the shots you want, Yug. I'll get you back for them later." Jonouchi rolled his eyes and glanced at Honda sideways. "And you, Buck-tooth Bill, better shut up."

Yugi snorted out loud and choked on his beverage, covering his mouth with the back of his hand and feeling slight tears in the corners of his eyes. "Buck-tooth Bill?"

"I'm guessing Honda never told you he had buck teeth until he was twelve." The blond smirked when the other gave him a somewhat flustered scowl, cheeks slightly red. "Too bad. You should see his pictures. When he smiled, he looked like a beaver."

"You're not supposed to tell people that!"

"Yeah, well, you're supposed to back me up when Yugi starts kicking my ass."

"Jonouchi, he can't even _reach_ your ass."

"Anzu!" the small teen sputtered. "You're supposed to be on my side!"

The other two were chortling and giving her high-fives. He rolled his eyes and looked at his half-downed beverage, wondering for a moment if his lycanthropy might make it toxic to him. But he had grown up drinking it. And it didn't feel as the wolfsbane and silver had upon entering his system. And drinks were absorbed almost as quickly as injections, weren't they? So he should have felt it before now, right?

"All is fair in love and war."

"I wasn't aware this was a war," the small teen snorted, glancing at Jonouchi with a small grin. "You want that second cup of hot chocolate?"

"Well, yeah!"

Yugi nodded, threw his head back, and drank all but a mouthful of the cocoa before pushing the mug towards him. "Here you go."

"What? Oh, dude, that's dirty!"

"You didn't even keep up your half of the deal. I barely got in an insult and then you turned on Honda. So, honestly, that little mouthful is more than you deserve."

"But that's gross."

"My mouth is probably cleaner than yours anyways."

"No one's mouth is cleaner than a dog's," Honda shot back, laughing when the blond turned on him with a scowl once more. "What? It's true!"

"They also lick their own genitals," Anzu scoffed, "so I'm not sure clean is the word to describe them."

"Okay, but if we could give ourselves blow jobs, we wouldn't have to put up with all the bullshit girls bring into our lives," Jonouchi scoffed.

"Oh, by the gods," Yugi grumbled, pressing his hand into his forehead. " _Why_ would you even _go_ there?"

"What? It's true!"

"It'd also make us completely unable to reproduce whatsoever," Honda grumbled. "We need to put up with all that bullshit or else our children would be entirely too stupid to function. If we could even get past giving ourselves blow jobs long enough to have sex with girls in the first place."

"Why do you guys keep going with this? Stop it!"

"Oh, come on, Yug! We've all imagined it at some point or another."

Yugi rolled his eyes, but his cheeks turned red as he peered at the table. "Shut up, guys."

"Oh, it's because Anzu is here, isn't it?"

"Okay, no, knock it off. This discussion is _closed_!"

The two boys were laughing and Anzu was blushing but Yugi had his head lowered so that his bangs shielded his face and no one could see that he had grown the brightest of reds.

* * *

"You seemed pretty happy earlier," Yugi commented without preamble, tilting his head towards the other wolf curiously. Yami stood a few feet from the window, stretching his arms above his head and yawning softly as he watched him through heavily lidded eyes. It was clear he had run himself nearly ragged with his own excitement. He grinned lightly at the taller boy. "You wore yourself out, huh?"

The other boy yawned again and his teeth chomped forcefully together. "I would not have missed such an experience for anything else," he said in that same thin, scratchy tone, though now he could hear a beautiful and deep, almost enticing hint of passion within its depths. "It was…invigorating."

Yugi felt for a moment that there was more Yami meant to say but the other boy did not bother. Instead he blinked lazily and his spine popped gently as he stretched backwards. "You'll be out like a light in a minute, won't you?"

"Yes."

Yugi snorted at his lack of hesitation. "Good, I guess."

"Yes, it is always good to spend one's energy and find rest during the time of the wolf."

"The time of the wolf?"

"Winter," Yami mumbled groggily, grabbing his blanket from the desk chair and falling upon the mattress once more. Yugi knew him so well in his slumbers that he realized immediately that the other was asleep before his head hit the pillow. The thought made him smile faintly but also brought with it a touch of discomfort and frustration.

Despite himself Yugi thought he would have enjoyed rubbing alongside him a second time. He was sure he would be as exhausted and aching just as hard the moment he forced himself through the Change and came home again, but it would have been enjoyable all the same. Unlike Yami, he would not kill and eat a small animal in the woods. It just seemed entirely too disgusting to think to do. It would wear him out just as much as it had the first time, but it was still a better alternative to him.

Yugi took a seat at the other side of the bed, watching him curiously for a moment. Yami had fallen asleep facing him. The realization was somehow amazing and jarring to him. He had never seen him do such a thing before. He had always slept with his back to him and he had done the same. It made their sharing the bed a little less awkward to him. He was sure Yami's own reasons were much less self-centered.

But when he looked at him now, the taller teen looked much more relaxed, gentler, with a tangible softness that made him want to reach out and touch him for a moment. His body was curled up comfortably beneath the blanket, his fingers loose and grasping the sheets beneath him lightly. His nose twitched faintly with each inhale and exhale and his mouth tugged at the corner as if his initial enthusiasm now invaded his dreams.

There was no crease between his brows or even the smallest touch of distress or lack of pleasure to be found on his more mature face. His cheeks looked soft and warm to the touch, his closed lids twitching only finely with his deepening sleep. His lashes draped along the fine curve of his cheeks, touching his cheekbones faintly, and the shadows they cast looked almost like the forest if it were stretched upon the surface of a lake. There was a small bit of frost in his hair, fresh from the new fall of snow while he was running, and it glittered beautifully in the darkness and streams of moonlight.

The smaller boy impulsively thought to reach out and touch him, possibly to push his bangs back or to see if his cheek was truly as soft as it appeared. But then he drew his hand back, unsure of when he had even reached forward to touch him, and placed it in his lap once more. His cheeks flushed faintly and he swallowed hard as he looked at him a moment longer.

Was it personal curiosity or something derived from his disease which made him so easily stretch his hand towards this other boy? He had done it so long ago, in the alley behind Burger World, even if he had simply hovered there with his fingers outstretched and his palm heated by the warmth his body projected in the darkness.

He shuddered, then shook his head at himself to push away his impulse once more. It was a horrifying thought to him that he might touch the other boy, that something might compel him to such an action outside of his usual behavior. To touch someone without their permission was something that he could not fathom. He had never wanted to reach out and touch someone as he seemed to the boy in front of him.

Yugi sat there, watching him for a moment longer, then turned quickly away as his stomach twisted faintly and he swallowed hard. There were so many things that seemed to have gone wrong upon being infected, and this sudden desire to touch Yami was yet another one.

It was not that he was not curious about what his hair might feel like or his skin, whether it was as soft as it looked. It was the fact that this came on top of the animals hating him. It came on top of his grandfather lying to him and allowing him to struggle through with no support. It brought on his mom's disappointment that he could no longer be a vet.

It brought on his inability to truly relax anymore. It brought on his fears of being unable to ever date as he should have been with Anzu instead of holding her hostage with what he considered was most likely a dead end and complete impossibility.

It brought on his night terrors more often. It came with the attack from those wolves and Bakura and that man in the woods. It came with Valon calling him the "angel of death" and that man calling him a "Pure-Blood".

But it also came with Yami.

And, despite himself and more of his growing fears, he thought Yami to be worth it.

He was kind enough, was willing to lead him along as he needed him to, was more than capable of adapting as necessary. He didn't complain a lot, he rarely ever argued with him, he was compassionate enough. Yet, he had also killed several people which Yugi knew of. What if he had killed more than that? And had there been similar circumstances or was it simply just something that he had done?

Yugi could not see him being a ruthless killer by any means. Yami just seemed incapable of it. He seemed like the one who would only harm someone when there was no other way to avoid conflict. He seemed like someone to be pushed over a couple of times and then come back when he had learned his lesson.

But then, could Yugi even judge him? That wasn't his place or even slightly his right to do, and he himself had torn Bakura's head off in the woods. He had not meant to and yet it had happened. He had only wanted him away from Yami and yet...

Perhaps it was something uncontrollable for werewolves.

He shuddered and wondered if he should hope that was the answer or fear it.

* * *

"Why do you think he hid it from me?" Yugi asked in a small voice, not bothering to fully open his eyes though he knew the other had rolled over and was wide awake. Yami was silent for a long minute and a half and he felt the bed tip as he shifted his balance and stretched himself out with a long yawn. When he settled again, the smaller boy feared that perhaps he still wouldn't answer but then he could feel his eyes on him, burning a hole in his skin.

"Perhaps he did not know how to tell you."

He shook his head, still not opening his eyes. "No, it has to be something else," he muttered uncomfortably. "He would have known how to tell me."

"Perhaps he feared your reaction."

The smaller boy hesitated. "What, you mean like he thought maybe I would get mad?"

"Or subsequently became irritated that he was bringing up stories without factual evidence," the other wolf said in a calm tone, his eyes still locked upon his face, "or maybe even that you might grow depressed."

Yugi grunted. "What's there to become depressed about? It's a disease. I can't change it—"

"Yes, but humans are prone to sorrow when parts of their lives are rendered impossible for them to reach." Yami fell silent for what felt like hours, then shifted away from him somewhat, his eyes finally leaving his skin to peer towards the window. "And if you are depressed as a human, then it becomes amplified as a wolf. If you had been infected while you were under mental duress such as suicidal thoughts or depression, you would most likely be dead. We feel much more than humans do naturally. And it becomes worse when we are around others and can feed off their energy, regardless of what they feel in relation to you."

Yugi finally opened his eyes and looked over. The other boy was facing away completely, peering at the window with sharp but somewhat darkened eyes. The shadow that crept upon them seemed to be the purest embodiment of sorrow he had ever come to know in his short life. It made Yami look older, haunted, as if phantoms swam before his eyes even as they spoke. He looked hollow, as if someone had scooped his insides out and left the husk for him to look at.

"Well, I wouldn't have become depressed over it—"

"But how was he supposed to know that?"

Yugi faltered, then huffed. "Okay, well, even if he didn't know that, he should have told me _after_ he realized I was showing symptoms! He let me go through that alone!"

Yami tilted his head towards him, then turned to face him completely. The barest hint of the baritone came in a small rolling descent through his soft words. "Are you more upset with him for not telling you or at me for not being there?"

"What? Yami, you weren't even part of—"

"I bit you. _He_ did not. If you must blame someone for withholding information and doing you wrong, perhaps it should be me rather than your grandfather. You forget that I was the one who bit you and I should have been there to help you through it all rather than waiting until you first changed."

"Okay, but you didn't really lie to me—"

"Did he truly lie to you or did he simply not say anything?"

"He sat around and let me struggle! He _watched_ me struggle! And then he never said a single thing to make it easier. Instead all he did was ignore my needs and try to see how much my senses had improved!" he spat bitterly, nearly trembling with growing rage. "At least when _you_ came around, you actually _did_ help me! That's the difference! He wouldn't have told me if I had never figured it out that day! He would never have said a single word about it."

Yami frowned at him deeply now, looking away after a moment. "Then I do not have answers for you, Yugi. I am sorry."

Yugi felt his jaw snap shut at the hushed response. His heart twisted in his chest and he stared at him with a somewhat horrified expression as shame made his insides cold. "It's not up to you to have answers," he muttered, swallowing hard and looking away, "I just…I don't get it. And I hate him sometimes for not telling me. And I just…I couldn't stop thinking about it last night. And I'm so sorry for making you think this is your responsibility. But it's not and I…Shit, I'm sorry, Yami."

The other boy stared at him for a long minute, then turned away again. "It doesn't matter," he stated quietly, calmly. "As long as we are both well at the end of the day, that is the most important thing, right? But as for answers, I do not have any. What your grandfather chooses to do is something I have no control or consequence in."

The small teen shook his head again. "I'm just still upset. I shouldn't have even asked you."

"You have every right to be upset. It is what you do in the meantime and whether it affects your judgment that will be of consequence later," Yami murmured dismissively. "When all is said and done, he is still your family. And he still loves you. He just made a bad decision because he didn't know how to tell you something that might have hurt you. That's all it is, Yugi. Forgive him that when you find yourself able to."

He blinked at him, almost stunned by the idea of the words and the intensity with which his low voice carried them. The small boy thought to say something but his tongue felt swollen in his mouth and his throat had begun to ache as if a ball were forming there.

He was so used to forgiving and forgetting that the fact that he was unable to now was somewhat jarring to him. He had not thought that he still held a grudge until Yami mentioned it. But he knew he had; simply talking to his grandpa again had not been the step he had been looking for formerly. It had helped somewhat but it had not mended anything beyond the surface.

"Yeah, I guess," he muttered reluctantly, looking away again. He cleared his throat and made to sit up, the movement immediately causing the other boy's head to turn in surprise. Yugi nearly shivered at the dark red stare the other peered at him with. "I'm going to go make breakfast. Do you want a shake?"

He was not entirely sure why he bothered to offer. Yami had not needed them for a while now. Asking him that almost seemed like tempting fate to give him reason to need one again soon.

Yami shook his head, eyes looking at him when something of bewilderment in their depths. "No, but thank you," he replied, moving now to sit up as well. He rolled his shoulders and the bones popped lightly as he settled back in his spot on the bed again. "Are you going to make pancakes again?"

Yugi snorted, smirking at him playfully and poking him in the shoulder. "I wasn't before but I will now," he laughed, surprised by how warm the smile that bloomed across Yami's face made his insides. He nearly shivered, his spine feeling tight with tension that he did not truly know how to name. He looked away again quickly, undone by the way those red eyes peered at him with growing confusion. His heart was pounding heavily in his chest for some reason as he looked at the comforter. "Anything else? Eggs?"

The taller wolf blinked at him several times, then furrowed his brows and tilted his head in bewilderment. "Eggs?" he echoed, his tongue curling over the word as he thought back to the time that he had sampled them. It took him only a moment to recall their fluffy warmth and the buttery taste with which they had rested on his tongue. "Yes, eggs would be a good addition. They were delicious before."

Yugi smiled, unable to stop himself, and turned to him with a roll of his eyes. "Someone is a little demanding," he teased.

The other boy frowned immediately, eyes narrowing faintly. His lips twitched further and he swallowed slightly. "What was it that you had planned to make originally then? I do not mind eating something else—"

"Yami, I was joking." His lips fell into a deep frown to mirror the other's. It was discomforting to him that Yami would take him seriously over something so beyond his personality. Yugi had never considered him demanding before and yet, mentioning it had made the other boy unbearably uncomfortable. "I was going to make leftovers. But dinner last night wasn't all that great anyways. Pancakes and eggs it is."

"Yugi," he grumbled, his voice stressed as it rolled from behind his teeth and trailed in a low rumble of growing anxiety, "I can go hunt instead. It's not—"

"Why should you have to go hunting? It's perfectly fine to me if I make breakfast. I mean, it's not even that much work. Besides, you have to be starving after all the running you did last night, right?"

Yami hesitated, but his momentary silence alone was enough to answer the question. Of course he was still hungry. He was probably still somewhat exhausted as well. Whether or not he would admit to that was another question altogether, and one Yugi was sure that would be answered in a firm negative.

"You don't have to constantly try to make things easier for me, especially if you have to suffer in exchange," Yugi muttered, shaking his head and looking at him unhappily. "You shouldn't try to make me feel better than you do yourself, Yami. That's not fair to you or me. Learn to ask for help sometimes, okay? It's not going to hurt you."

The taller boy shuddered and it was clear that he thought otherwise. It took his smaller companion a moment to realize what exactly he had been told just two days prior. Yami had been around people before, but they had not been good, whatever that meant—Yugi tried desperately to push away his worries regarding this—and so perhaps asking for help was something that put him in too vulnerable a position to allow him any comfort.

" _I_ won't hurt you," he stressed after a moment. "If you need help, ask and I'll do it. I don't know what happened before, but if you ask me I'll try my hardest to help you, Yami."

Yami flinched away from him at the statement, a harsh and long shudder running down his spine. He let out a ragged breath that sounded almost like a sob, then growled low in his throat with distress. His head snapped away when Yugi gaped at him in shock, horror pooling into his stomach, and did not look up even once upon the minutes it took the smaller boy to finally get to his feet and wander to kitchen to start on their breakfast.

The red-eyed teen remained seated on the bed, finely trembling as his teeth ground too harshly together, and his fingers kept clenched against the comforter beneath him. It took him a long minute to even relax the tendons which had pulled taut beneath his skin along his long fingers. And the savage jerks of his body took what seemed hours to quell and settle.

He finally loosed the tension in his broad shoulders, his stomach aching as he forced his mind from the direction of painful reminders it had so tediously pivoted upon for that time. He breathed in roughly, nearly croaking with his exhale, and hissed softly a moment later as he uncoiled his muscles and forced himself to relax enough to climb to his feet and make his way to the kitchen.

It was arduous to make his way there as the smaller boy finished the last of the breakfast and placed it on the table with a small sideways glance at him. He gave him a miniscule smile, somewhere between thoughtful and concerned. The taller boy nearly flinched at the sight of his soft expression and narrowed his eyes into slits as he looked away quickly. A small tremor raced up his fingers, making his hand quake for a single moment.

Yugi stayed quiet but Yami knew he saw him. He knew he was wondering at his silence, at his reaction to what should have been a comforting statement. He knew he worried despite the fact that he appeared physically fine. But he also knew that he would not ask.

And because he did not ask Yami felt comfortable in knowing that this incident would die between them here and now.

"My mom and grandpa are obviously already at the main clinic, probably for that shepherd from the other day," Yugi announced, taking a seat and grabbing his fork without a glance at him. "I've got school in about an hour. That means about forty minutes before I have to make a run for it."

Yami hesitated for only a moment before taking the spot across him and grabbing his fork as well. The trembles had left his hand but he still felt as if a residual shake might occur and it made him feel slightly sick.

"Why do your friends not come to walk with you to school?" he asked with narrowed eyes, peering at the two fluffy foods in front of him. "I recall that they walk home with you but not to school?"

Yugi paused with egg in his mouth, startled by the question. He did not sound even remotely upset, but his voice was a little deeper. And his gaze was sharper than usual. The small teen swallowed the mouthful of warm food and frowned at him thoughtfully.

"We do sometimes," he said with a small smile that the other missed due to his head remaining down, "but Jonouchi wakes up late, Anzu likes to get there early, and Honda just goes whenever he wants. And I normally leave as soon as I've eaten, so our morning routines don't really correspond all that well."

The other boy considered this, poking at his food with dark eyes. "So it's not that you all desire to walk alone before school, but that you all leave at different times," Yami muttered, though his tone said clearly that he only partially cared for this subject. "I suppose that makes sense."

The small teen watched him for a long moment, then shoveled a mouthful of food and chewed thoughtfully, studying the lycanthrope in front of him curiously. "Yeah, we're all just really set in our ways so it doesn't always occur to us tat maybe we should wait for each other in the mornings. Besides, less things are likely to happen in the mornings than the afternoons."

Yami raised his head, a brow arching upwards curiously. "What do you mean?"

Yugi hesitated, then frowned as he tipped his head to the side. "Well, I mean, more people are gone and rushing off to work in the mornings and that means that it's less likely for something to happen. At nighttime sometimes you hear about someone being abducted or something like that and that's rare in the afternoon but almost impossible in the mornings."

"Or it happens and no one is there to notice," the other replied cynically. "I know fully well that sunlight does not mean absolute protection. It might be harder for an abduction to truly happen should someone be around, but it is not impossible."

Yugi was quiet for a moment. "You're pretty petulant today, aren't you?"

Yami cringed. "I do not mean to be," he started, frowning deeply. "I—"

"I'm not saying that as a bad thing, Yami. I'm actually really glad that you're getting this way. It makes me feel better right now." He paused, hesitating, and then looked away at his food, poking at the pile of pancakes. "I'm still upset. So it…makes me feel a little justified to see that you can get that way too."

Yami faltered, visibly startled.

"But I don't know what I did to make you react this way," he admitted, furrowing his brows and watching him for a moment. "It's kind of odd that you're doing this now…I mean, there are so many things I've said and done around you that could have easily caused this and yet…"

Yami's cheeks grew bright red. "I'm just…I'm upset. It's nothing to do with…" He shrugged awkwardly. "I am just tired, I suppose. I do not know truly what has made me this way. I apologize."

Yugi rolled his eyes. "I didn't mention it to make you feel guilty. I'm saying it because it's just kind of funny to me." He shrugged and begun to shovel food into his mouth as quickly as he could manage.

Yami watched him, contemplating the statement, and then looked away with narrowed eyes once more. "Well, regardless, you do not deserve my ire."

"No, probably not. Or maybe I do. I don't know that either." He speared his pancake and pushed the entire pastry into his mouth. The other boy looked at him with wide eyes, tilting his head to the side in wonder. The smaller boy worked on the food rapidly, jaws moving intently as he swallowed it moments later and worked to do the same with the next. "I just figure we learn as we go along. It's the only thing I know to do."

The red-eyed teen nodded slowly, then tilted his head again. "How do you not choke?"

Yugi paused with the speared pancake close to his mouth. "I used to wonder that about you whenever you ate. You used to scarf it down. You've slowed down now." He grinned at him playfully. "I used to be late to breakfast some mornings and so I would have to stuff whatever was on the plate into my mouth as quickly as possible. Most of the time it was toast or waffles."

Yami blinked and nodded slowly. The smaller boy snorted and went back to pushing the pancake into his mouth again. He chewed and swallowed just as quickly as he had the first time. The third pancake followed in the same manner and Yami poked at his eggs before beginning to fork them into his mouth. Moments later his fork clanked against the china and Yugi got to his feet with a sense of grace which usually evaded him.

"I'm going to hurry up and grab a shower and then rush off to school. I'm not sure when Mom and Grandpa will be back so just hide out in my room when they do come home, okay?"

He looked at him for a long moment. "Yes."

Yugi paused for a second, then sheepishly rubbed the back of his head. "I say that like I have any control over what you do," he snorted, nearly laughing. But the idea occurred to him that perhaps it was the lack of space which made Yami so uncomfortable and annoyed now. Maybe it was growing restlessness which caused his petulant. "But, anyways, be careful, okay? I know that you probably won't have any reason to come out of the room, but I always kind of worry so…"

The other wolf nodded and looked away again. "Yes, I am aware."

* * *

Yugi flipped the page on the calendar, studying the days until he found the circle which he knew to symbolize the full moon. He ran a hand through his long bangs, curious as he marked the date in his phone. It was no wonder he no longer felt anywhere near as antsy as he had formerly. The moon's full phase was two weeks away, which gave him plenty of time to prepare and not to worry about it all.

He settled back comfortably at his desk and crossed his legs with a sideways glance towards the other boy. Yami was lying stretched out on his bed, reading a book he had borrowed from the library. He couldn't tell if he was actually reading it or feigning doing so in order to avoid conversation. But the smaller boy was not so inclined toward speaking either. A comfortable silence between them was something that he could do well with.

He pushed his homework sheets away, stretching his arms over his head, and yawned softly. The movement drew the other's attention and Yami blinked at him with eyes that spoke clearly of boredom.

"Not interesting?"

"They write as if their life depends on the costly amount of description they place in it." He paused, then sighed. "It does not help that the vampire is boring enough to make my eyes roll up in the back of my head and the girl has no originality in any way. And the wolf is just there. He does not even truly belong."

Yugi raised a brow. "What did you pick up?"

Yami flipped the book closed and then tossed it to the edge of the bed for him to see. The smaller boy snorted out loud upon seeing it. "It's a vampire-worshipping book, Yami; of course the werewolf doesn't really have any reason to be there. And the girl is an idiot because apparently vampires have 'thrall'."

The taller boy blinked at him with a confused expression. "They have what?"

The other boy snickered and gave him a lopsided smile. "Thrall," he repeated. "It's like persuasion over weak human minds and all that. So basically they can control their minds."

The other barked out a laugh. "How humorous!" he declared, sitting up with dark, cynical eyes. "A creature which can control the minds of a weaker species!"

Yugi raised a brow. "What?"

"Well, it is not as if humans have not tamed animals or that they do not manipulate their own into doing things that they know they should not," he said dismissively, waving a hand and shaking his head. "The fact that humans think they must have supernatural powers in order to do so is a beautiful joke."

The smaller boy frowned. "Well, you also have to remember that many people think themselves to great to ever fall for such a thing and that they wish for crazy things like vampires and were…"

Yami quirked a brow. "Oh, we exist. As, I am sure, vampires do as well. But humans are foolish. They think too much of themselves when it comes to such reality. If they truly think that a vampire will fall in love with them, then they are stupid beyond reason, Yugi. And who should wish to be cursed with an immortal lie?"

"Immortal lie?"

"Immortality in the sense of invulnerability is a lie which greedy people came to desire. No creature is beyond death but the gods. And even they wither away within memory and hide behind forgotten beliefs." He shook his head scornfully, red eyes flashing with hatred. "Immortality is something that is subjective. The werewolves know it in the form of eight gods, four for either subspecies. And their body is immortal rather than their souls. See, they can beaten to death and yet they will come back. They can be shot and skinned and mutilated beyond repair and yet somehow their body will mend. It is impossible to destroy them, yes, but with each death comes a violent resurrection which none is free of. They become bloodthirsty and angry and they will kill beyond reason, without the ability to think or do more than tear apart their queries."

Yugi blinked horrified eyes at him.

"I do not know about vampires. They are beyond my knowledge. What I do know of them is that their physical body may last forever, but that is only without wearing its welcome to nothingness." Yami shook his head again sharply, his eyes falling towards the comforter and the book resting there. "Humans imagine immortality to mean invulnerability and perfection. But time does not allow one to learn what they are never to need to know and their existence will grow worthless before their eyes soon enough."

He shivered as Yami fell completely silent once more. He studied him, swallowing hard, and then weakly mumbled, "Yami, how old are you?"

The question puzzled him. His head snapped up and his brows furrowed. "I am sixteen, the same as you," he muttered, frowning. "Why?"

"I thought…I mean, after you said…"

He blinked and understanding dawned within his dark eyes. "No, I am only sixteen. I say such things because I speculate that should I be exposed to such a thing, I would surely become that way." He looked away with a shrug. "But I do not know what I speak of at the moment, Yugi. I say things that are foolish beyond reason and never bother to grasp reality more firmly in my hands."

Yami fell silent, then looked at the book for several long minutes. Finally, drawn by his inability to speak anymore, he plucked the novel back into his long fingers and flipped it back open to begin reading again. Had his words not upset him somehow, Yugi would have thought to fill this new awkward quiet but now he simply looked away again.

It was an hour of silence which had gone from tense to reasonably mellow that passed before either of them looked away from their current preoccupations. Yugi frowned as his eyes flickered to the window, drawn by the movement, and then his lips pulled up into a small smile.

"It's snowing again," he announced.

Yami looked up immediately. "Is it?" His red eyes grew round with excitement as he got to his feet and moved to the window in slow strides. His hands gripped the sill tightly as he leaned forward, his breath that of a wreath of frost as he exhaled against the glass.

He smirked playfully. "You act like you've never seen it before," he teased.

The other boy had turned his head slightly to face him when he had begun to speak but now his body was tense and his fingers curled. The muscles in his neck jumped faintly, cording briefly. His eyes flashed, something cold and forlorn drifting through them, and then he turned quickly away again.

Yugi wanted almost to slap himself. "Damn it," he muttered under his breath. He really needed to figure out a way to converse with the taller boy that did not cause him such discontent. He let out a small breath. "I thought you mentioned living in Japan before."

"Yes."

He waited but the other boy offered nothing more. He faltered, looking away and licking his lips with his eyes closed tightly for a moment.

"But not in Hokkaido," he guessed.

Yami blinked and looked at him sideways. "Hokkaido?" he repeated slowly.

His eyes opened again, confused as he peered at him. "Yeah, the island. There's Honshu and then Hokkaido and a few smaller ones… This is Hokkaido. It snows here every winter and for months on end. Honshu rarely gets snowfall but I think they get more rain than us." He faltered at the other boy's confused expression. "So…I-if you were in Japan and it never snowed before, then you must have been in Honshu."

Yami searched his face for a long minute. He was not sure if he was searching for a lie or if it was something important which he sought there. But the moment passed just as quickly. He turned quickly away from him again to face the frosted window.

"Maybe we should…just stop talking about certain things," the smaller boy muttered in a small voice. "I just…I don't mean to keep upsetting you and…"

"You didn't upset me," Yami objected with little care. "I simply am considering. I believe you when you say that Honshu does not gather snowfall as this island does. But I must wonder. Because if I am sure of nothing else, it is that I have never been beyond this island. I have lived here, in Hokkaido, all my life. Yet, somehow the name evades me and the fact that Japan has two islands is news to me."

"You said you never went to school, right?"

Yami nodded slightly, leaning further against the glass until the chill touched his skin despite not pressing against the pane. "Yes."

"Then…what about your parents?"

He stiffened violently for a moment. "They…died…when I was a child," he said through his teeth after a moment. "I was left to fend for myself."

Yugi gaped at him. "W-what? Yami—"

The other boy held a hand up to stop the inevitable apology. "It happened so long ago I hardly remember. And it does not matter anymore." He faltered, then looked over his shoulder at him. "I must not have known the snow because of the underground tunnel system I made my home. There were fish that came through. I never had to venture outside for food."

The smaller boy could not remember how to close his mouth, staring at him in horrified bewilderment. "Yami, I…shit…" He struggled for a moment, then looked away immediately. "I didn't realize…"

"You weren't meant to." He turned away again.

For a long minute and a half Yugi could think of nothing more to do than gaze at the floor, feeling almost distinctly breathless. When he glanced up again, Yami had not looked away from the window. He drew in a deep breath, then licked his lips uncomfortably. "Do you want to go outside? We can have a snowball fight if you want."

The other boy hummed in the back of his throat, then looked over his shoulder. "Yes, let's do that," he agreed readily, eyes shining at the aspect of being able to go out into the powdery white of the falling snow. Yami grinned at him lazily, much like a tired dog might, with his teeth just slightly showing and his eyes brighter than he'd seen them all day.

"Okay, let me just grab some gloves and then I'll meet you out there," Yugi murmured, glancing at the other boy's hands for a brief seconds. His fingers were longer but he was sure their palms were the same size at least. He didn't think the gloves would fit exactly, however, but it would be a close enough one.

Yami blinked at him, frowning and tilting his head in puzzlement. "Gloves?" he repeated uncertainly, eyes flickering outside and back. "Why would we need gloves?"

"Um, because it's cold and, if we're going to play in the snow, we need covering for our hands so that we don't end with frostbite from the cold weather?" He shook his head in mounting confusion. "Why wouldn't we use gloves?"

His brows furrowed. "We don't need them," he said in a confused tone. "Our bodies adapt to protect themselves against something as small as the weather. Haven't you noticed that the heat has turned on multiple times and yet not once has either of us noticed a change in temperature?"

"Okay, but that's artificial, Yami. If we're playing in the snow, then we need to keep our hands protected. The skin on your palms is sensitive and your fingers could start to freeze."

The other boy shook his head insistently. "I dove into a river that was almost frosted over and swam for an hour," he said with a frown. "If I were ever to get frostbite it would have been then."

Yugi stared at him for a long time, then shivered and shook his head. "Look, Yami, I won't make you wear a second jacket, but at least put on gloves. Even if they're unnecessary, it keeps us from being noticed. If someone just goes out and plays in the snow without even gloves, then someone is going to think they're either they're mental or something is extremely different about them."

Yami frowned, then pursed his lips. "Very well. You'll bring them out?"

The smaller boy rolled his eyes. "Fine, go on."

Yami shot him a grateful smile, then turned and quickly undid the latch of the window in order to quickly step out onto the roof. Yugi realized only after the tall teen had gotten outside how strange it would later to have for sets of footprints on the roof if the snow did not pick up and cover their tracks. He could only imagine what his mom might say or what jokes his grandpa would make about him sneaking off to see Anzu. The thought might have made him snicker before but now it only made his stomach twist.

Yugi pursed his lips for a moment, then headed off to his closet to grab a couple pairs of gloves. All of them were black, so at least the color wouldn't be anything to make Yami wrinkle his nose further than he initially had upon hearing the idea in the first place. Yugi rolled his eyes after a moment.

Even if Yami got annoyed, if he didn't want to get noticed, he would put them on and the smaller boy knew without question that the red-eyed lycanthrope thought more about self-preservation than he did discomfort. He could adapt and ignore it if he had to.

But when he got to the edge of the roof and dropped next to him, Yami merely looked up and then tossed something in his hand. The snow hit him right in the center of his forehead. Yugi yelped more from surprise than the frigid bite of the ice against his skin. He opened and closed his mouth, momentarily blinded by the sensation, and then blinked stupidly. The ice slipped from his smooth skin slowly though some of it clung to his lashes and he could see it at the top of his vision.

Yami smiled at him lopsidedly, eyes bright with laughter, and Yugi shook his head to get the ice from his face. The look on his face was enough to make him smile in return, his face growing warm as a hint of heat began to push through his insides. He tilted his head sideways for a moment, the heat in his cheeks growing tenfold. The other boy looked childish and young, beyond his grasp with a sense of innocence which made him nearly quiver upon seeing it.

He looked so young, his more mature features small and soft and almost so beautiful as to be otherworldly. He could not help but feel his heart race slightly in his chest, skipping a few small beats and making his lungs constrict painfully behind his ribs. Yugi swallowed hard, his fingers tingling with heat as he looked at him, and his mouth seemed to dry out with his churning stomach.

His eyelashes were so long, the light in his eyes so deep and bright that it nearly knocked the breath from his lungs altogether. His skin seemed almost to glow against the white of the snow, a soft and beautiful golden and bronze. The curl of his lips gave the perfect hint of an oncoming smirk while his long bangs framed a perfectly sculpted face. His eyebrows had risen slightly in challenge, daring him to get him back, and the tilt of his head made his hair look more vibrant somehow against the snow.

It made the crests of bright red glimmer as if with starlight and the bolts of golden as vibrant as the sun buried behind the clouds. But it was the black base of it, so much like the night sky, with scattered specks of snow and crystal which glittered as they melt, that made him unable to look away.

All of it made him look every bit a mythological creature, but also lent an edge of innocence that would come with that of a fairytale come true. It made his heart hammer to see, breath catching and eye widening as they scanned his features and tried so desperately to catalog them away in his mind.

"Oh, you're gong to pay for that," he declared after a moment, tossing the pair of gloves to him before he could think to make another snowball. Yami immediately caught it with his right hand, giving Yugi the instinctive realization that Yami was in fact right-handed like he was.

The thought made him smirk but didn't stop him from taking a handful of snow and molding it into a hall to toss at the other boy. Yami ducked lithely, smirking at him return, and slipped the gloves on over his fingers.

"You need to throw faster than that if you really want to hit me," Yami snorted, smiling at him widely. "I might not be as fast as you, but I can still hold my own when it comes to dodging."

"Oh, please, how would you know how fast I am?" Yugi scoffed, shaking his head and forming another ball with snow next to his foot. "You've never even seen me run before."

The other boy wrinkled his nose. "We ran in the woods together, did we not? Besides, your body is built more for speed than it is power," he said dismissively, grabbing a handful of snow himself and watching him closely. The smaller boy looked at him with a startled, confused expression. "I saw it in the woods that day. If you were to grow used to using your wolf form and racing in it, you would be much faster than me."

Yugi tilted his head, confused and undone by the idea. "If I became used to using it? I don't want to use it," he said bluntly, shaking his head as Yami considered his words. "I mean, I'm not a wolf. I'm just Yugi Motou, and that doesn't really involve me changing into a canine more often than completely necessary."

The red-eyed lycanthrope furrowed his brows slightly before nodding. "That is understandable, I suppose," he said easily, despite the fact that Yugi had been sure he would grow upset with such a statement. The other boy had saved his life, after all, and the only reason he had survived until then was because he had infected him. His disease had been the only thing to save his life. "Many humans would feel that way, I am sure. Having your reality turned on its head cannot be easy to deal with."

The smaller boy huffed. "No, it's definitely not," he grumbled, shaking his head sharply, "it's not the slightest bit easy to deal with. It's messed up and totally and completely fucked."

The other boy tossed the ball in his hand, hitting him square in the shoulder. "Truly?"

He paused, undone by the quiet tone. "Well, I, well…no, but…Yami, you don't get how this feels, okay? I mean, just a month ago I was perfectly human and happy, even if I had night terrors and my grandpa liked to test my senses all the time and my mom worried I didn't take my medication often enough. And _now_ , I've got to avoid the full moon, being around others on said day, I can't date the girl I've wanted to ask out for the last year and a half, I have to be careful not to get too upset, and I… Someone fucking tried to kill me with their pet wolf. I just… You probably grew up knowing what you were, happily running around and eating, racing off from one place to the next, with a family who loved and cared for you."

Yami watched him for a long minute. "My mother tried to kill me," he said quietly. "She was cornered by a hunter outside of the den and they were about to shoot and skin her. She realized that they could potentially destroy me, either by doing the same or raising me to do unimaginable things. So she would rather she be the one to kill me than them. She turned her teeth on me and it was only by a miracle that my father managed to kill the hunters and stop her before she ended my life."

Yugi blinked stupidly, taken aback.

The wolf glanced away, looking at the snow as it began to fall in large, thick clumps of bright white ice before his darkened eyes. "You must come to realize, that perhaps your life is not ideal, but there are always struggles shared within another's life, regardless of whether you are told. I was so scared of hunters that, for years after my parents were truly killed, I remained in those tunnels. I grew emaciated and refused to leave even when the prey became scarce enough to be all but extinct within that small river. I don't know how long I remained in the dark like that, only that it's been more than a couple of years, and I still watch my back constantly and refuse to allow others to come too near me."

"Yami, I—"

"I did not say this to make you feel bad. I shared this with you because I might not have been bitten as I did you, but just because I grew up with knowledge of what I was did not make anything easier. I was not _allowed_ to forget what I was, what my existence meant to others."

Yugi opened his mouth with the intent to apology, to agree that maybe he was right and he shouldn't complain considering, but that it sucked all the same, but merely fell quiet. Yami watched him only for a moment, opening his mouth in a similar manner before turning away altogether.

He started to say something a second time, then dropped the half-formed snowball in his hand and headed towards the tree line. He did not glance back and the small boy failed to call after him.

* * *

He supposed it was for the best that Yami had wandered off as he had the day before. It had not been a great conversation between them, nor had he wished to continue it when the other had come in through the window late into the night. Yugi had only woken long enough to ask if he was okay before falling back asleep as the other settled beside him. But he had woken to Yami watching him with something of a disturbed and troubled expression, though he had quickly looked away him realizing he had been caught.

The red-eyed lycanthrope had promptly ignored him upon asking what was wrong and then settled for further sleep as Yugi turned the alarm off. The entire event had been strange in relation to the other boy that it had taken up most of his morning and afternoon afterwards. But the strangeness had simply come to mind now because he was watching Jonouchi now.

And the blond was acting so strangely that it made Yugi feel sick to his stomach with confusion. The small teen watched his taller friend look about himself urgently, then move away to slip around the corner.

If he were a wolf, Yugi might understand this strange behavior. He would have _possibly_ boiled it down to simple restlessness and frustration due to being cooped up as he was.

But Jonouchi was not a wolf in any sense. And his actions now did not truly mirror those of Yami's when he was about to run off.

He had seen the signs of his growing anxiety now. He knew how he would curl his bottom lip slightly, with just enough space to press the tip of his top canine to it. Yugi recognized when he twitched his nails uncomfortably and narrowed his eyes only faintly. He knew the way his legs would cross at the knees when he would lie on his back. He recognized how he would pick at his teeth with his nails, not in the manner of pulling food from their crevices but in the way of rubbing as if to gather friction of some kind. He knew Yami sometimes pressed his nails into his palms when he read, holding the pages open just enough to shield the action from his eyes.

He did not physically harm himself but it was apparent that his stress of being in one place had begun to make him grow far more irritable.

And that was not what he saw of Jonouchi now.

The blond simply appeared to act suspiciously as he took off down the hall in a much faster pace. The blue-violet-eyed boy looked at him with curiosity and bewilderment. They had been talking only minutes before, though his phone had begun to vibrate and the tall teen had immediately run off with the statement that he had to do something important.

It was against Yugi's moral code to follow him, but his own wonder at a display that seemed so wrong and out of character for him made the small teen start forward. He had never considered following someone, especially a friend, even when the blond had put it in his head that Anzu was sleeping with people for money when she had gotten a part time job at the supermarket during the summer. He rolled his eyes at the memory but it did not make his feet stop.

The thought occurred to Yugi that perhaps the wolf was so curious a creature that it influenced his actions now. He tilted his head. He knew it had caused a spike, rapid and furious, in his own restless nature as well. Yami was not the only one who got anxious and upset upon being cooped up for too long. He just tended to hide it better after so long to practice and he was sure Yami had never had a reason to do such a thing.

But the thought of becoming a canine as fully as Yami had was daunting in every sense of the word. His stomach dropped as he continued his leisurely pace behind him.

The other boy managed to see his infliction as a blessing of some kind. It was as if he would be beyond himself with discomfort if he had ever managed to make so much as a scornful remark about his lycanthropy. He seemed to see it as something almost to be worshipped and praised. And that was, despite everything, disgusting and overwhelming to the small teen.

Yugi's own infliction had not made his life easier in any way. He was always frustrated, annoyed, and he felt sick more often than not with the overwhelming feeling of suffocation which came to him each time. He let out a deep breath, swallowing thickly, and then heard movement somewhere behind him.

He spun, unsure why he thought for a moment that it might somehow be Yami there, and listened harder as he peered at the hall he knew the footsteps to be coming from. His heart was hammering too hard in his ears to allow him knowledge of who it might be there, and so his body had become tense and frustrated. His spine was rigid, ramrod straight, and his muscles had clenched along bones whose marrow had become molten.

Part of him said that nothing would happen in such a public space. But another warned him to simply take off running as quickly as his feet could carry him. Yugi could not truly figure out which instinct was the more powerful one, simply that he was stuck there and his feet rooted to the ground.

What good were these instincts if Yugi couldn't figure out ahead of time if the thing approaching him was dangerous? Sure, his body could warn him all he needed, but the reaction was always the same and incredibly constant.

His spine tightened, his muscles tensed, and his heart pounded. It was the equivalent of an adrenaline rush, but with a stable mind. But, still, that did not help him determine whether whoever was approaching was a threat to him.

Yugi stiffened a little more, bracing himself.

They were just about to walk around the corner and see him.

If it was a situation like that guy from the woods, however, what was he truly meant to do? He did not know if he could outrun them outright…

But, around the corner, came Anzu and Honda and his legs nearly collapsed beneath him with relief.

"Where were you running off to so quickly?" the brunet asked with a raised brow. His hazel eyes searched his face for a moment, concerned and curious. "It feels like we were following you forever."

Yugi glanced over his shoulder towards where Jonouchi had vanished. "I was just trying to catch up with Katsuya," he admitted after a moment, turning back and offering a small smile. "We were talking and he said he had to run, but I wanted to ask if we still had plans for studying."

He shrugged lazily when the other two frowned faintly.

"I'm guessing not."

Honda snorted. "You mentioning schoolwork after school made him run off," he snickered. "You should have known better."

"Probably," he agreed with a slight smirk. "But, whatever."

The other boy was at his side again immediately, wrapping an arm around his shoulder lazily. "Well, come on, let's get to the arcade for a little while. I want to see if I can best you even _once_ at that karate game."

Anzu rolled her eyes. "Not a chance in hell, Honda. Not a chance in hell."

Yugi snorted when the other boy shot her an offended look. "No one asked for your input," he snapped, glancing at the smaller teen who snickered and then looked away immediately again. "Stay quiet over there, peanut gallery. Your girl and I are about to fight."

"Please do that elsewhere then," he chuckled, shaking his head. "I don't want to have to pick sides."

"He'll choose mine," Anzu announced, smirking.

"Actually I'm obligated to choose his because he's got me in a position that could easily turn into a noogie and those are uncomfortable so…"

"You're supposed to side with me!"

"You told Jonouchi I couldn't even reach his ass," the short teen scoffed. "And how all is fair in love and war and all that. So, nah, I'm thinking sides are subjective."

Honda burst out laughing, nearly doubling over and pulling Yugi down with him at the moment. "Holy crap!" he crowed happily. "This is why we all love you. That's the best."

Anzu pursed her lips. "Okay, well, if you think about it, Jonouchi _is_ tall enough that it would take you a really hard kick to reach that high."

Yugi felt his cheeks heat and his mouth twisted into a playful scowl. "I am _not_ that small! I'm not!"

"You're deluded," the brunet snorted, "just like every other short person in the world."

Yugi went to object, then closed his mouth again and huffed. "You try being five feet and two inches, jackass. You're like fucking five-eleven and you want to tease the vertically challenged? There's a special place in hell for you."

Honda and Anzu both burst out laughing and Yugi rolled his eyes but snickered despite himself. As much as he wished he could be upset, there wasn't much that the other two had said that wasn't true. He was incredibly short. And he did always like to pretend that his height was almost the same as anyone else's around him. The concept was entirely too stupid but he would admit he wished himself about the same height as the others.

The walk to the arcade and back towards the house began to grow monotonous almost as soon as they finished their games. It was when Yugi was walking with Anzu beside him after Honda announced he was going to go ahead and split because his dad wanted his help with fixing a car, that the small teen even noticed that there was a subtle difference in the air. He blinked, at first bewildered as to its source, but then shook himself at the thought.

The brunette beside him bit her lip softly for a moment and then looked at him with a shy expression on her face. "How is your grandpa?"

If Yugi hadn't known that he had used him as his lie, he might have wondered if her tastes ran for older males. He rolled his eyes at himself mentally, but found himself unable to keep from sighing softly.

"Oh…"

Yugi shook his head immediately. "It's not that he isn't getting better. He is! He's getting a _lot_ better, actually. It's just that…" He hesitated. "With everything just finally beginning to settle down, I don't want to commit prematurely. I mean, it's possible that I'll say yes now and he'll suddenly have a relapse in health or—"

"Yugi, it's okay. I get it," she said gently, frowning at him faintly in bewilderment. "I understand. If you don't feel able to commit because you're worried about jinxing it, I can totally understand and agree. I wouldn't want your grandfather to get hurt because you couldn't help him because you were spending all of your time with me."

Yugi shivered. The brunette was watching him with such sympathy that it was almost overwhelming. His stomach tossed sideways for a moment but he ignored it steadily, sighing softly after a long second.

"I just…it sucks. I don't want to do that to you again."

"You're not 'doing' anything to me, Yugi. It's not like you demanded that I wait around for you. I said I would. I offered. And, besides, it'll be worth it when everything settles, right?"

Would it?

He swallowed harshly. "Yeah," he murmured in a voice that seemed strangled. He was not sure if she heard it as well or if it was simply him, but either way she smiled at him, a gentle and warm expression upon her soft features.

"I'm going to go ahead and head home," she announced after a moment. She shrugged when Yugi blinked in surprise. "My parents wanted to go out for dinner before curfew."

He nodded slightly. "Oh, okay."

Anzu leaned forward, then pulled back at the last second. He thought for a moment that he might cringe at the missed opportunity. He had not moved, he had been so undone by the suddenness of the action. He had not even considered moving in any way. He shivered as she turned and started away from him, turning back only to wave with a small smile that he knew was hurt around the edges.

Yugi closed his eyes tightly for a moment, then hurried towards his house. He needed to get a move on, to go inside and lie down or maybe just start on some homework to distract himself. His mom glanced up and called a greeting around organizing her paperwork.

He looked at her, smiled faintly, mumbled a quick hello, and fled up the stairs. He knew she would not continue the conversation simply because she was busy with the papers. And he himself sought no sense of discussion from her.

Yugi passed into his room without looking into the kitchen, though he heard the discovery channel playing and knew his grandfather would be seated in his recliner in front of the television. He froze, however, upon seeing the sight to greet him there.

Yami was curled up on his side, fast asleep. His sides were rising in gentle folds of breath. His eyelids were twitching faintly. His blanket was wrapped tightly around himself. His right cheek was pressed completely into the pillow. His hair was ruffled and his bangs gently knotted against the sheets. He looked as young and innocent as he had before, pressed into that gentle fetal position he always slept in.

Yugi immediately stilled any movements he had been contemplating making. His tongue flicked along his lips with unease. He knew for certain that should he have opened the door again to make his way out of the room, Yami would wake up. It was honestly nothing short of a miracle that he remained resting now. He would have expected him to be wide awake, yawning and watching him.

Yami looked so peaceful and the thought of causing him to abandon his dreams seemed a crime. But Yugi knew he could not bother to stand around for hours just to allow him more rest. That was beyond even his capabilities. He thought to go to the desk, maybe to place his backpack down and take a seat near the piece of furniture. He could not sit in the frame of metal itself, however. It always creaked noisily when someone put their weight in it, no matter how slight it was.

He moved to place his bag down gently on the carpet, relieved when the other boy still did not react. Yami continued to breathe in evenly, eyes closed, lids flickering, his blanket pulled to his neck, his body curled snugly beneath it. He smiled faintly at the sight, then caught the edges of his uniform jacket, pulling one sleeve so that he could stretch his arm and remove it from inside. He slipped out of it, the material feeling heavy and harsh for a moment, and put it down next to the bag.

Yugi glanced up and his eyes grew thrice their regular size. A pair of bright red gems peered back at him. Framed by long black lashes, they looked like deep and beautiful rubies, with the faintest hints of frosted gray edges along the edges. The boy peered at him lazily, with a weariness that made him nearly tremble, then stretched his body out to its fullest and yawned with a snap of his jaws. There he curled up the once more, staring at him through his long lashes for a moment.

"Sorry," Yugi whispered in a tone he could only equate with pitiful. He opened and closed his mouth, then ducked his head and blew out a breath of air. "I didn't mean to wake you. I thought I was being quiet."

"You were," the red-eyed boy replied in that same lazy tone, closing his eyes again and stretching once more. "It was simply the rustling of clothes which woke me. That is, of course, nothing you could have prevented no matter how slowly you might have moved."

The small teen sighed softly. "I figured it would work. I didn't want to wake you. You rarely ever seem to actually sleep without being drugged."

The word made Yami pause for a brief moment. Then he pulled the blanket a little further up along his neck before closing his eyes tightly and pressing his face more forcefully into the pillow. "Yes, well, it does not truly matter," he muttered with a soft edge of amusement. "I would have woken soon either way. My dream was coming to an end."

"How do you know?"

The taller boy smirked slightly. "Because I could feel my thoughts beginning to change and they had nothing to do with the dream."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I was dreaming about running in the woods. Then I started thinking you would be coming home from school soon," he admitted with a shrug. "Which is not something that I normally think when I am asleep."

Yugi smiled faintly, rolling his eyes, and turned away slightly. "Oh, well, yeah, that makes sense. I would realize I was waking up too then."

"Yes…" He fell silent for a long minute and the smaller boy looked up to see if perhaps he had fallen asleep again. But those red eyes were open, peering at him curiously for a single moment. "How was school?"

He paused, tilting his head in confusion. Yami had never bothered to ask him that before. He raised a brow slightly. "It was fine, I guess. Jonouchi was acting a little weird. He ran off in the middle of talking to me." He shrugged. "My teachers asked me if I was okay because I spaced out a couple of times. I have a bunch of homework that I don't want to do. A couple of people literally ran off when they saw me so I thought maybe I looked hideous but no, I'm beginning to think otherwise. There wasn't much else that happened. How was your day?"

Yami looked at him silently for a moment, considering his words, and then muttered, "Uneventful. I slept and snuck out to hunt and then I came back and slept again."

The small boy raised a brow, a slight sense of relief and amusement as well as awe creeping into his tone. "You slept that much?"

He stretched again. "Yes." For a moment he stayed quiet. Then he finally moved to sit up, putting his hands in his lap and peering at him. "Tell me more about your day."

It was a simple request, yet it stumped the small teen. He blinked at him, startled and more than a little confused. The idea of relaying his day in further detail seemed somehow beyond his capabilities. Yugi frowned slightly, nibbling his lip, and hurried to speak when he saw the way Yami began to offer him the opportunity to say no.

"I just forgot for a second…that you don't know what school is like," he explained as his small frown began to slowly deepen. "I just… It's always a little weird to me. Sorry. So…let's see. What can I say about school?"

Yami blinked at him, and for a moment his eyes were sharper than usual, but they grew vivid with wonder as well now. He did not lean forward, but Yugi knew and understood the anticipation which made his gaze grow a little rounder and his shoulders pull a little closer together.

He smiled lightly at the taller boy. "Well, school is basically a really large building that people send their kids off to in order to have them receive an education. It goes by age and then dictates where you are placed among your peers by your birthday," he began, moving to take a seat on the edge of the bed now. The mattress dipped comfortably beneath him. "So, say your birthday is—"

"July 26th," Yami interrupted, looking at Yugi as he stiffened slightly in surprise and then stared for a long moment. His blue-violet eyes were wide, flickering as they searched his, and something shocked and almost horrified claimed his gaze. "What?"

"Nothing. I just…" Yugi shrugged it off, first mentally and then physically with a small jerk of his shoulder. He cleared his throat. "Don't worry about it. Anyways, if you were in school, you would be in the same grade as me. Schools get divided into age groups. So from six to eleven you are placed in elementary, then from eleven to fifteen you're in middle school, and from fifteen to eighteen you're in high school. After that you basically decide what you plan to do with your life and pick a school that will get you to that point."

Yami nodded slightly to show he understood, the light in his eyes brightening somewhat. Yugi could see his thoughts flickering, blank spaces and unknowns beginning to fill themselves in.

"Anyways, so you go there for eight hours a day or sometimes more. When you do that, you get to be around your friends. The only difference between Domino High and a couple of neighboring schools is that Domino is slightly westernized. So, at other schools, when they go to their first room for the day, their homeroom, they stay there and the teachers start to go back and forth to their next classes. At Domino, we go back and forth and the teachers stay in their rooms all day."

Yami nodded again.

"Anyways, so one teacher gives us instruction and guidance on one subject. They teach us what the school thinks is necessary that we learn. Then they quiz us and decide whether we are really learning through testing our memory on that stuff." Yugi paused, frowning faintly, and then crossed his legs as he looked at the other boy more completely. "Honestly, Yami, you aren't missing much in staying home. I promise."

The way he said the word "home" made his heart ache. The taller teen looked away, nodding slightly, and licked his lips after a moment.

"I am just curious. I do not wish to go there myself, but I do wonder."

Yugi nearly cringed at the statement, then bit his lip harshly for a moment. "During lunch everyone either picks a spot outside or they settle somewhere around the school. The teachers all go to their lounges while we just sit and talk and enjoy time together for a little while." Yugi rubbed the back of his head as the other boy looked up again with that same intense wonder and slight excitement. "Then, eventually, we come home. There are five main classes and then there are two that we're free to choose for ourselves. Besides that, there isn't much to say about it. Occasionally teachers give us work to do at home and bring in the next day and sometimes we have massive tests that require more studying than usual so we get home with packets to finish and turn in for extra credit on our tests. It's basically just extra points in case we really need them."

"Do you ever really need them?"

The small boy frowned thoughtfully. "Well, no, I…normally just do them, but I know that I could pass with or without it."

Yami nodded and looked away. "Thank you." He stretched, then pulled his blanket up to wrap around his shoulders. "I think I will rest some more now."

Yugi stiffened slightly. "Are you okay? I'm not used to you sleeping this much."

He nodded with a slight shrug. "I am. I am fine. I am simply tired, I suppose." He paused as he began to settle against the pillow again. "I did take some medication earlier. I could not sleep otherwise so I took some."

He furrowed his brows but nodded and relaxed some. "Okay."


	22. Hunters

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day (no update on June 2nd)**

 **Chapter Warnings: Slight Bullying, Slight Blood, Gun Shots, Mentions of Torture Techniques (Forced Breeding, Wolfsbane Injection, Skinning Pelts)**

 **Okay, so, I didn't know how to make a warning for this one either, but, there is some misconstrued Puzzleshipping in this chapter. Someone literally sees them and thinks that it's more than it is. And Yugi does have a slightly bad reaction to it, though not really?**

 **Okay, guys, so I've never played chess before. And I didn't have time to research the game before I began editing. But if I remember right from what I DID research a while back, the king's gambit is an opening move and you can basically win within about eight or so moves. So, if that's true, in this instance, Yami wins and Yugi recognizes the play AFTER it's been done. Considering this actually does come up again later, I'm definitely going to have to go back and research more in depth at some point. Any chess players reading this, feel FREE to tell me if I'm right or wrong, please.**

 **By the way, guys. Credit cards are basically unused in Japan. Cash is still king there. Some places won't even process cards at all. In fact, I'm pretty sure only a few stores in even the mall will take them, if any. I can't remember exactly but I do know that most often people will go to the 7-11 and get cash instead. For the sake of the story, Yugi mostly uses a card.**

Chapter XXII: Hunters

 _Work Log Entry XXII: March, 1998_

 _March 20_

 _The cub has changed into his human form for the first time. He looks almost like every two-year-old human would. But there is something about his eyes that makes him unable to be considered human by any means. There is a darkness there and yet it seems like you are looking into a slide of glass. They are…reflective._

Yugi tilted his head to the side, frowning faintly and raising a brow. Jonouchi had just taken off down the hall again, not even sparing time to say goodbye before dashing away. The small teen had meant to ask him again about studying, but the other was gone before he even got to his side. He huffed quietly, glancing over his shoulder.

This time he could hear the gentle hum of Honda's voice and the click of Anzu's shoes against the linoleum. They were coming towards the corner but not around it yet. He looked back to where Jonouchi had vanished.

He could follow him.

But it wouldn't be today.

He had already wasted too much time standing there. If he ran off now, Honda and Anzu would see him doing it. And he didn't think that Jonouchi would appreciate it if he had three people following him instead of just one.

So Yugi waited for them to come around the corner, mind made to chase the blond the next time he ran off. He gave them a small grin when they came over and wondered for a split second if he should say something.

"I've got plans to take Blankey to the park today," Honda announced before he could think to say a word.

"And my mom wants to go shopping," Anzu murmured, blue eyes apologetic. "I'd much rather spend the day with you guys but mother-daughter time is a thing too."

"Well, you're only going to be with them for a little while longer," Yugi said with friendly dismissal, "so they want to spend as much time with you as possible now."

"It's still two years! They can spend time with me later too."

"Two years pass pretty quickly," he said with a small shrug. _I wonder…if Yami will still be around then too_. "Anyways, so I guess I'll see you guys tomorrow then?"

"Well, we can still walk together," the brunette pointed out with a slight frown.

"Well, yeah, duh, but I meant tomorrow we'll hang out after school."

"And maybe our elusive fourth member can come too," Honda snorted with a roll of his eyes. "Seriously, what's going on with Katsuya anyways? He's always running off before we even get to talk to him. What's up with that?"

Yugi shrugged as they began to make their way down the hall. "I don't know. I figured you would."

"He hasn't told me about anything exciting going on recently. I figured he would have told you then."

"Apparently not."

"Well, whatever it is, it's probably important to him. He's never left you guys in the dark before, remember?" Anzu murmured, frowning at them when they both blinked at each other curiously. Yugi and Honda both shook their heads a moment later, turning back to her curiously. "So then it's obviously something really important to him that he probably doesn't know how to tell you guys about."

"Girl logic is so simple," the brunet huffed, rolling his eyes. "As long as the sky is blue, everything is basically okay for you guys."

"It's not my fault that guys are stupid and like to over-complicate things."

"Over-complicate things?" Yugi snorted, shaking his head. "Anzu, girls are _much_ more complicated than guys are. You guys don't even roll as easily with the punches as we do."

"Really? Because I recall on several occasions that there have been male fights in the school and no female ones." She smirked at his slightly bewildered look. "What? You can't say that's not true. It is. Guys get into fights and girls talk things out reasonably."

"Reasonably?" Honda scoffed. "You can't say that when you almost got into it with Chono!"

She flushed, eyes growing sharp with anger. "It's not my fault that she's a rude, unbelievable bitch!"

Yugi felt as if his eyes might pop out of his sockets. "How about we _don't_ insult our teachers while we're still in the building, okay? She's probably listening to us right this second."

"If she is, she's welcome to come out and bite me," the brunette huffed with a scowl. "She's so low! I can't believe she tried to get Miho suspended like that!"

"Don't forget that she almost got _you_ expelled," Honda said with a frown, glancing around them nervously for a moment. When he did not see a flash of bright red hair he tried to relax his shoulders some. "She had the principal wrapped around her finger for two years, remember? You're just lucky he was moving to another school that week and the new principal turned out to be a lot better."

"Luck had nothing to do with it."

"Oh, luck definitely had a _lot_ to do with it," Yugi muttered, shaking his head at her. "You have no idea what she would have done to humiliate you more if the principal had agreed to you being as big a problem as she tried to make you."

"No, it was your quick thinking to film her when she threatened me that kept me from being expelled."

He gave her a wry look. "We're just lucky she didn't try to get her hands on my phone and erase it. I didn't have a backup plan. She could have easily gotten us suspended or expelled after that, Anzu."

She gave him an annoyed look. "Whatever. It's over with now."

He rolled his eyes and turned to Honda thoughtfully. "Maybe it's about his parents or something? I mean, he did mention a _while_ back that he thought they were seeing each other again, remember?"

"You think so?" the brunet asked incredulously, frowning. "I remember him mentioning that, yeah, but I don't think he ever actually said anything about it again after that, right? And I don't remember him seeing his mom in a while. He mentioned something about his dad doing something with her once but I don't remember past that."

"Maybe he didn't want to tell us in case it didn't work out?"

Anzu shook her head. "I don't think it has anything to do with his parents. He's always talking about his dad at some point or another," she said with a frown, worrying her bottom lip and looking between them uncomfortably. "I mean, think about it. He doesn't really keep his parents' business out of the loop. Most of the time he just ends up talking about it without even meaning to."

Yugi frowned and tilted his head. "That's true. But what else would it be? He never really keeps secrets. He's terrible at it."

"True. He always blabs," Honda snickered.

"But maybe he just…never really had a reason before? Or it wasn't important enough to him before and now it is so he's not telling us about whatever it is?"

Yugi shot her a contemplative look, then sighed loudly. "There's no use in us just standing around talking about it. He'll tell us himself soon enough," he muttered, shrugging unhappily. "He always comes around and tells us everything."

Honda shrugged. "True. He'll tell us when he's ready."

The small teen felt sick to his stomach at the words, blinking at the tall brunet and then quickly looking away. How often had one of them said that very thing about him just recently? How often had they been forced to defend him in this same feeble way he was attempting now?

Yugi fought away a shiver. At some point, the excuses would stop and they would no longer care to say that in his defense. They would eventually leave him to the hole he had dug himself in. And that would be the end of it, he supposed. Then he would have his own little secrets and Yami to bear them with.

The thought made him feel even worse. He couldn't entirely blame it on Yami that his life had become so complicated. In all reality, it was not his fault. He had meant to save him. And he had. What he did with his life afterwards was his own decision.

But, still, he wondered.

How often had they used that excuse for his behavior?

How often had they hoped that he might do just that?

When he considered it, however, he knew for a fact that there was no true possibility that he might tell then of his own volition. It seemed too much like a betrayal and to do that to Yami left him sickened. So he shook the idea away as constantly as it came.

Yugi still thought of this as he walked into his room upon their separation thirty minutes later. As he put his bag down and took sight of the red-eyed wolf seated on his bed scratching the back of his neck, he considered the words. And he considered perhaps one day mentioning him to them. But he failed to justify it. And the thought was nothing he cared to fully wonder about any longer.

He watched him as the other rolled his head on his neck and glanced at him with something almost faintly dismissive. The red eyes bore into his skin thoughtfully for a moment, then flickered away immediately again. He did not open his mouth and Yugi did not bother to fill the silence.

Instead he slunk to the bed and lay on his back with his legs crossed, almost groaning with mounting frustration. Then he considered, for only the smallest of seconds, asking if maybe he might have a clue as to what it was that Jonouchi might have been hiding.

But Yami had never _met_ Jonouchi and to ask him seemed entirely wasteful of their time.

So he stared at the ceiling for a moment, wondering at the idea of something else to do. Beside him, the taller boy never once bothered to open his mouth. His breathing was even and soft, his heartbeat soothing and rhythmic. He did not glance over. He did not try to speak. He simply sat there.

Yugi fidgeted for a moment, then sighed and sat up. He had never _once_ even mentioned his friends to the other boy beyond answering his questions. And Yami was so content to just have somewhere to be and help him with his new disease that not once had he ever bothered to ask.

He could not tell if it was his agitation at the sudden idea which made Yami remain silent or if he simply did not care to ask if something was wrong. Either way, his mouth still failed to open. Yugi nearly groaned with displeasure. Then he put his hands in his lap and looked at him with a small frown.

"Have you ever played chess?"

Yami glanced up with dark eyes which sparkled like vibrant gemstones. His lashes made them look sharper, the color far more powerful, and he blinked at him slowly as he considered the question.

Finally, a moment later, the boy shook his head.

Yugi bit his lip for a second. "Would you like to learn?"

Yami studied him for a moment, eyes sharpening further with curiosity, and then nodded slowly, blinking lazily. It would not hurt to learn something new, he supposed. The small boy blinked as if he could not believe that he had agreed and then leaped to his feet and hurried out of the room.

The taller boy truly hoped he meant to get the board and had not somehow grown undone by his easy acceptance of the idea. He tilted his head slightly, somewhat bewildered, and blinked lazily as he waited for him to return or wander down the stairs and out the door.

Yami barely had even a moment to consider this before the small teen burst into the room again. In his hands was a large box and he could hear the soft rattle of plastic pieces hitting each other and rolling inside of it. He looked slightly winded, as if he had run full speed in order to get the board game. His blue-violet eyes were wide, his cheeks slightly flushed, and his mouth opened and closed twice. The gentle touch of pink to his skin rapidly turned bright red, encompassing his face completely.

"Sorry," he muttered, taking in the bewildered expression which marred the other's face, "I just got kind of excited. I've never really played chess against anyone besides my grandpa."

He was quiet for a moment. Then his voice came out, low and broken with a rumbling undertone that reminded him of shoes pressing glass into concrete. "Your friends do not play it?"

Yugi startled at his voice, visibly freezing and blinking wide eyes. He looked slightly pale, as if his cracked timbre might have somehow caused his blood to drain. He frowned, tilting his head, and muttered, "Are you okay? Did something happen to your voice?"

Yami blinked at him, unnerved for a moment. Then he looked at the box, focusing on it in order to keep from growing further uncomfortable. "I spoke too much yesterday," he managed to bite out, voice rapidly breaking and faltering. He frowned slightly, then shrugged at Yugi's stunned expression.

"Oh…" He swallowed hard, then offered him a small smile. "Okay. I just didn't know if something was wrong or not."

He raised his head, staring at him for a moment, and then quickly turned back to the box. "Teach me," he requested softly instead, falling immediately silent afterwards.

The smaller teen nodded and made his way quickly to the bed, taking a seat and balancing the box on his lap. "So, I'll explain the rules to you and we'll see where it goes from there, okay?" he announced, grinning when Yami merely nodded at his excited tone. Yugi launched into the most detailed but concise explanation he could, showing him quickly which pieces could be moved where. All the while the taller boy nodded, eyes sharp and full of focus as they peered at the board closely.

When he set the board up, Yami took the desk seat and he sat at the edge of the bed, leaning forward to move his pieces. The strategy he implemented was sloppy, Yugi noticed, but for a first try it held him off for much longer than he had ever assumed him able to. When Yugi finally declared, "Checkmate!" his face was split with a wild grin and his eyes were practically glowing with happiness.

Yami nodded and began to place the pieces back in their original orders. The smaller boy blinked when he abruptly moved a piece and waited for his response, glancing at him from beneath his lashes when he failed to react.

He faltered slightly, eyes growing wide and smile becoming a small frown. "You want to play again?" he asked in a slightly stunned tone.

Yami nodded without hesitation.

"Uh…o-okay," he stammered, blinking and then immediately looking his pieces over. "I'm not used to playing anyone more than once anymore. Normally I don't lose any games so people tend to get upset with the outcome and I never get a rematch."

The red-eyed boy looked up slightly. "You did not truly think that you would teach me and win and not expect me to play again?" he drawled, eyes sharp and glittering with amusement.

Yugi felt his cheeks flush faintly. "Well, no, but I wouldn't have really been surprised either. Most of the time that's how that kind of thing goes."

He shook his head, smirking now. "You do not know me well enough." He moved his next piece as soon as the smaller boy made his play.

Blue-violet eyes blinked curiously. "You already have a strategy planned out?"

"Yes."

He grinned, watching him for a moment with great pleasure. "You know, when I used to play this game, it was only against Grandpa. So when we played, he made it into another test. Each time, he would have me blindfolded and the pieces would each be given a certain smell. He liked to see if I knew what piece was which without being able to see. Since you can only move them a certain way I had to rely more on that than the actual smells. But eventually I figured out which was what and could win like that."

Yami hesitated for a moment. His fingers hovered momentarily over his bishop. "Why?"

Yugi tilted his head, somewhat unnerved by the discomfort in his tone. "He just liked to see how much I could do without seeing what was in front of me," he said dismissively. "It was like every other test he's always done."

Both of them caught the hint of bitterness in his voice.

He studied the next move Yami made and then mirrored it curiously. "Are our senses really supposed to be this powerful?"

He picked at his next piece, nails ticking against the sides for a moment, then moved it swiftly. "Yes. Some of us have better ones than others. It depends on how much of their lineage is wolf and how much is human." His fingers twitched as Yugi maneuvered a piece to block him. "It also depends on whether one uses them constantly or only as necessary."

"Constantly or only as necessary? You mean we can _control_ it?" he sputtered, eyes widening drastically. He stumbled through his play, hands nearly shaking with such news.

"Well, yes. Werewolves have the ability to use any sense at its most only sometimes or always. They are tactile. It is only when one experiences a rush of adrenaline that it is not truly under their control." He pushed his next piece into position, eyes considering and tracking a play Yugi had not yet made. "But then, near nothing is under control during an adrenaline rush. We kill without meaning to, or turn on any around us. Our bodies become weapons that work so far with instinct that our ability to differentiate between threats goes away and anything that is not oneself or a close pack mate are liable to be seriously wounded or killed."

Yugi's fingers shook as he moved the piece. A sense of relief bloomed through him. Yami had explained his murder of Bakura without even truly meaning to. He had supplied him with information he had never thought he would truly be given. He nearly trembled, heart racing.

Thank the gods!

He had not unknowingly become a mindless killer like he had previously feared. He shivered, glancing at the other wolf, but Yami seemed hardly to notice and quickly moved his piece.

"Checkmate," he declared simply, knocking the white king flat on its back before Yugi's widened eyes. His smirk made his heart rattle and skip, his mouth falling open as the taller boy merely tilted his head.

"King's gambit?" the smaller teen grumbled, flustered. "How did you even…?"

"I studied your movements and devised a plan. Whatever the play is named, I have performed it." He turned away, placing the pieces back in their original spots, and then looked about them with a lazy expression, eyes half-lidded. "I told you, you do not know me well enough."

Yugi blinked at him, startled, and then smirked slightly. "I guess I should have figured that you would try again."

"Yes. I am never satisfied until I win at something that was once lost to me." He shrugged at him dismissively, then looked away. "The nature of the wolf is to learn from failure and find the key to their success. It is what has allowed them to adapt and survive."

"Yeah, but more than half of the wolves in the world are endangered. Their numbers are too low and humans kill them constantly," he pointed out with a frown.

The taller teen looked at him for only a moment, then got to his feet with a clear restlessness which set his nerves on end. "Humans do not know their natural limitations. They do not know much beyond destruction and greed. It will be their undoing one day but I do not believe it is to come soon." He shrugged again, a harsh jerk of his shoulders. "What else is there to do?"

Yugi nearly flinched. He was practically barking in his growing frustration. The turn the conversation had taken was clearly something that distressed the other teen. He wanted to reach out, to touch his arm and apologize, and his stomach knotted furiously with despair and disappointment that he had ended up upsetting him once more.

Quickly he got to his feet as well. "How about TV?"

The taller boy raised a brow. "Your grandfather is in the living room."

The statement made Yugi blink in confusion, thrown by the idea that Yami would want to watch TV with his grandpa. He furrowed his brows and then shook his head as a realization quickly came upon him. "Uh, no, I have a TV in here," he replied, cheeks heating at his own momentary foolishness. The other boy blinked wide eyes, watching him keenly now. "I just don't always use it that often. It distracts me from homework—or at least that's what my mom thinks—so when I use it, it's normally after I've gotten everything done for the day. And then I'll put it on or start playing video games."

Yami frowned faintly, tilting his head with a glance at the window. The snow was beginning to dust the air outside again. He was too anxious and yet exhausted to wish to return to its cold embrace, however, so he turned back almost immediately. "Where do you keep it if it is not out here?"

Yugi gave him a small grin, then headed for his closet door, opening it and then swinging the latch on the cabinet system. The door clicked as the lock sprang and he twisted the metal handle, pulling it back so that it opened into its much wider expanse of space. Yami looked at this new hidden compartment of his room, tilting his head as he came closer.

He shivered and the movement made the smaller teen glance at him with a troubled curiosity, but the red-eyed teen did nothing more than look about them both. With a vague gesture, Yugi pointed towards the small television seated at the bottom of the filing cabinet that held more and more theories and information about this disease which plagued him now.

"My mom knows that this is here. She even knows how to get into it most of the time. But she doesn't like to mess with it because it's just mostly things I don't bother with unless it's necessary. The filing cabinets are basically all filled with unused school supplies and a couple of video games." He shrugged after a moment, curiously glancing towards the taller teen who looked about them with something like stark disdain and displeasure. "I think one drawer has clothing in it but that's basically it. Anyways, so I'll pull this out and set it up and we can watch a couple of movies or something, okay?"

Yami nodded slightly, though his eyes never strayed from their rapid survey of the small area of space. Yugi frowned faintly, wondering at Yami's clear discontent, but the other boy did nothing more than step back and watch him as he made his way towards the small screen resting on the floor in front of them.

Yugi couldn't help but think that he looked a little unnerved even as he passed him to get to the bed again. As he locked the latch once more, he could feel his red eyes, sharp and burning, on his back.

He swore every part of his body lit on fire under his dark gaze and it made him slightly dizzy as he moved to put the small television on the floor near the desk. Still, his eyes were unwavering, burning into his skin so harshly as to make him flinch. But when Yugi looked at him, Yami was not upset. He was simply studying him.

"You okay?" he asked after a long moment.

"Yes," Yami replied without hesitation, looking away and towards the screen. He had not meant to stare so blatantly. But the metal unit he had just wandered inside of moments ago made his insides twist and his skin itch with growing discomfort. "What do you think is playing?"

Yugi shrugged lazily, opening the drawer of his desk and drawing out his remote to turn the screen on and browse the channels. "Did you want to choose?"

"No, I will watch whatever you think worth our attention."

They settled on a comedy that made the small teen cringe more than it did laugh. He sat on one side of the bed and Yami on the other, both of them with their eyes glued to the screen. He hissed his clear displeasure during a scene that hit too close to home and then scratched the back of his head.

"It's not that great a movie."

Yugi waited for what felt like an eternity. He fidgeted when the silence of his companion still did not lessen. He was used to Yami pausing and thinking before he spoke, truly considering his words, but this seemed unnaturally long.

When he finally could not take it any longer, he turned his head. His immediate reaction to repeat the statement died immediately on his lips. Beside him, Yami had moved at some point, and now he lay curled up on his side with his legs draped over the edge and his arms folded in front of him. He looked peaceful, smaller than usual, with that same innocence which always came across his sleeping form.

Yugi sighed quietly, then changed the channel to a countdown on animal facts of some kind. He wanted to see if wolves were in it but it seemed mostly like it was all going to be insects so instead he turned away and went about grabbing his homework to start on it.

* * *

He wondered if whiskers were used for weather as well as the immediate area around the animal. If they were used for weather, he was sure if he'd had any they would be twitching heavily in harsh jerks. Across the room from him Yami was sitting lazily on the couch, shaking his head as he too sensed that small crackle of electricity that meant the oncoming thunderstorm. He waited, listening, and the buzzing in his head continued harshly. The noise had to have been electrical currents of some kind. There was no other explanation.

Yugi let his hands fall into his lap from their position shifting the channels with the remote. "I don't think I want to go to school today," he announced in a tone that was almost childish, his cheeks heating faintly when bright red eyes flickered and caught on him. He furrowed his brows, puzzled, and Yugi rubbed the back of his head. "I think that maybe I'll stay home. I don't want to have to walk to school in the rain…or home in it, since it's going to be a large storm. And besides that, even if my mom drove me, the rain is going to be crazy…"

The other boy frowned deeply. "Are you attempting to justify yourself to me?"

Yugi's cheeks grew deeper red. "No!" he sputtered, eyes wide and mouth opening and closing once. Yami was staring at him in bewilderment now. "I just…I was talking out loud…"

He tipped his head to the side. "Oh…" Yami did not look convinced but he did not say anything further. Instead his eyes fell on the television screen in front of them again. He still thought that perhaps the small teen had been attempting to justify his decision for some reason or other. Though why to him, when he had no such responsibilities and could not fathom half of which went on in this small teen's life, was a mystery. He had no reason to expect explanation of any kind.

Yugi rubbed the back of his head again, giving him a small sheepish grin. "Want to play another game?" he asked in a voice that nearly bordered desperation now as well.

Yami quirked a brow at him. "Chess?"

"No, actually, but something somewhat similar," he said with a wider grin, watching him with something like fascination and delight in his bright eyes. "The game is called checkers. It's easier in theory than chess is. Basically you just use certain squares to get around the board and then jump over the opponent's pieces in order to get rid of them. Then you try to be the one with the last piece on the board."

The taller boy regarded him for a long minute, curious as he studied his expression. It was somehow wondrous to Yami that the small boy was so keen on asking him to play such mindless games with him. When he had told him of his grandfather's constant tests through games, he had initially assumed Yugi to desire to do the same. Yet, the small boy hardly seemed to so much as care for anything but the joy of the game. But he also seemed to enjoy the occasional show of his intelligence when the taller teen mimicked and improved upon plays Yugi himself had made.

"Very well."

The small boy jumped up and ran off again. He smirked as he glanced back at the television, waiting for him to reappear with the board game. When he did, he had that same faint blush upon his cheeks that he'd had the day before upon asking him to play chess. Yami smirked a little more, lopsided and childish in display, and tilted his head slightly as he looked at him playfully but did not comment.

Yugi was somewhat amazed and yet altogether unsurprised to see that he studied him the first game more than he tried to win. The second time, Yami won within a few turns, showing no mercy or consideration beyond his victory. He flashed him a wide grin upon his win, eyes sparkling, and then turned away again to look elsewhere.

The television had become nothing but a low drawl of noise which made Yugi blink upon glancing at it once more. The images in the corner of his eye were nothing to draw his attention away from the other boy whatsoever.

The crackle of thunder and burst of lightning made Yami blink but the red-eyed lycanthrope responded in no other way. With barely a glance away from the TV, he did not so much as turn towards the smaller boy. He seemed perfectly at ease with the noise and the flashes of bright white, the way the sound echoed deafeningly throughout the room around them. When the rain pelted the window mere seconds later, Yami did not even blink again. He glanced at it, his lips curled into a small smile, and he looked back to the television without a shred of discomfort to be shown.

Despite the heaviness of the noise the thunderstorm brought with it, Yugi found himself somewhat amazed that the other boy often seemed to fail to even notice.

"This is one nice storm," he commented quietly as another bolt of lightning made the room bright white. The roar of thunder was enough to make him shiver with excitement.

Yami raised his head, attention falling on him completely. "Yes, it is a great one," he agreed, though he did not fully understand what it was that Yugi wanted from him regarding such mild and short conversation topic.

Surely if he desired a true conversation he would say something other than that, right? So he watched him, studying the other boy until Yugi looked as if he might flee from his unwavering stare, and then turned away again.

For a long minute they were silent. The seconds seemed to drag too far beyond the smaller teen's grasp and it made him nearly bristle faintly with discomfort. But then he pushed it aside, breathing in roughly as he licked his lips and watched the mindless entertainment in the corner of the large room.

It was only as he did this that he noticed Yami's leg twitch. His right foot was pressed completely into the carpet and would rapidly rise and fall with jumpy jerks of the slim limb. He did not speak, but as the storm began to fade, so too did his patience. For a moment he sat there completely still but for his moving leg and then he was shifting his weight as if to grow more comfortable on the couch.

Yugi turned his head, watching the red-eyed lycanthrope for a moment. "You know, if you want to go do something, we can get out of here," he offered with a raise of his brow. Yami immediately ceased movement, head tilting as he looked at him curiously. "I don't really want to go running, but we could do something else if you want?"

The other boy watched him more keenly. The offer to escape this small home and explore the scents which the rain had brought out seemed almost beyond his reach for a small second. It was as if the other had read his mind. But he could not understand what it was that made Yugi assume he would only run if it was with him.

As much as he liked the small teen, his choice of racing against the wind was nothing that he could ever dictate. Yami would do as he pleased if he wanted exercise. Yugi was always welcome to join him, but to assume with such normalcy that he depended on his idea to run was utterly foolish to him.

But to comment on it seemed just as childish in every sense of being. So he fell silent, instead smiling faintly.

"What did you have in mind?"

Yugi hesitated for only a moment, then flashed him a bright grin that made his eyes look like they were lit with a million stars and harbored just as many galaxies.

"You'll see."

He came to see it twenty minutes later, still intoxicated by the brilliant smells of the asphalt baking in the sun, of wet leaves and dampened earth. He was still reveling in the way the air was somewhat misty and the humidity clung to his skin lightly, smelling heavy woodsy scents and the rotting of bark and dying undergrowth. And the drastic change to motor oil and gas exhaust, rotting and fresh food, of heavy sweets and sugary beverages, made him pause in confusion. A buzz of noise had long since entered his ears, harsh and much like a mosquito within his skull.

He frowned, turning to the other boy. "Where…?"

They had not gone far. He knew that much. They were still clearly within walking distance of his house and the school. He understood this was the path that Yugi followed to get there. It smelled faintly of him even beneath the cover of soggy earth and harsher human chemicals.

"I thought going to the mall would be a nice change of pace," he admitted, shooting him a small, quirky grin, untroubled by the way Yami so rapidly searched his eyes. "Besides, my clothes aren't going to fit you very well so I figured I might as well try and see about getting you some."

He blinked widened red eyes. "Clothes?" he repeated quietly.

He glanced down at his own for a moment. He'd taken good care of them as far as he knew. They were not exactly the cleanest but they also were not hideously stained. He had often put them in the water and then laid them out to dry in tree branches before dashing off to eat.

And then he would clean himself with excruciating care so as not to stain the fabrics. The only garment that never got such treatment was that of the jacket he so often wore. But that was for numerous reasons which he was not inclined to share with the smaller teen.

He supposed new sneakers were not out of the question. At first glance they appeared almost brand new. He'd taken well enough care of them, cleaning with water but not quite soaking them, and had been careful to avoid wearing them down too horribly. Yet he had not been able to completely combat the inevitable destruction and wear of the material. The rubber soles were coming apart at the heel; he had often stepped on the material, folded harshly beneath his weight.

Yami glanced at the other boy. Yugi was watching him with a somewhat bemused expression that quickly became friendlier upon his inspection.

"I didn't mean to say you look bad or anything. It's just…you only have one outfit. So I thought maybe I would get you some more."

"And how much will it cost?" he asked quietly, frowning.

The smaller boy slipped a card out of his pocket, the colors bright sky blue with white silken clouds and a dark mountainside in the horizon. His name was printed on the bottom, the card's numbers pressed outwards in a rigid stance beside it.

"This doesn't cost you a thing. And it'll probably only put a tiny dent in my savings." He paused for a moment, tilting his head and giving him another smaller smile. "My dad sends me money on a debit card every month. Sometimes he does it every couple of weeks. But most of his money goes to our rent payments so it's not always that much, but whatever. He doesn't want me to not have money so he gives it to me directly."

Yami nodded, but his understanding only encompassed half of what he meant to relay to him. The rest of his thoughts struggled with the task of filling in such immense blanks. Regardless, he did not assume it to hold too great an importance for Yugi simply waved his misunderstanding away. Should it have been vital for him to know, he had no doubt the small boy would have elaborated further.

"Anyways, let's see…Do you know what size you are?"

He stared at him for a moment, almost mindless as he peered with those dark red eyes. Then he looked at himself again. He was not even entirely sure how much height or weight he had gained recently. He did not know that or the size of the clothing he was so constantly clad in. He had gotten rid of the tags as they itched too terribly when he first changed and stole the new fabrics. He couldn't have wandered the streets in what he had been wearing at the time and to do so without garments was entirely beyond even his sense of ability.

Yami finally glanced up. "No," he muttered, feeling almost small and weak from the admittance. He lowered his eyes immediately. The tiles were so colorful it was almost painful and he wrinkled his nose. "I do not know what size I am."

Yugi frowned faintly but then shrugged. Whatever was upsetting the taller teen was something he did not want to bring further to the surface for scrutiny.

"All right. Well you're not much taller than me. And then we're about the same weight, right?"

Yugi was not expecting an answer but the other boy looked up with glittering red eyes, lashes making his pupils look oddly dilated. But then he blinked again and the darkness stirred out of them as he murmured, "The last time I came to weigh myself I was one hundred and six pounds. I feel no heavier or lighter now than I did then. So I will say that if I am not that weight now, I am very close and whatever I have gained or am lacking has not hindered me in any sense."

The smaller boy blinked, startled, blue-violet eyes widening faintly. "Oh, okay," he replied, grinning childishly, "well that's pretty detailed."

Yami frowned at him, tilting his head. "I assumed you wanted as truthful and descriptive an answer as possible," he commented. "Should I not have—?"

"No, _no_! That was perfect! I'm just…not used to anyone speaking so certainly like that, I guess…" He wasn't used to Yami speaking so much either, especially in response to one question, and he had thought the other boy would surely fall quiet in public rather than say anything.

It was just…somehow amazing to him. The other teen clearly trusted him a lot if he was willing to put such effort into the act of doing so.

He flashed him a brilliant smile. "Anyways, we'll look at things in my size, I guess? I'm not really used to shopping for other people anymore. And I know my size so… Well, we'll just have to see how it goes, okay?"

Yami nodded slightly. "Yes," he agreed softly.

He was well aware of everyone around him as they began to make their way into the building. He listened to snippets of their conversations without care, their words sneaking into deaf ears. His eyes were burning faintly, straining to rapidly adjust themselves from the bright lighting of the overheads. Constantly he blinked to clear his gaze of the ache, his eyes immediately beginning to grow pained mere moments later.

The smells which bombarded him made his stomach clench. Never before had he come across such concentrated scents of deeply fried foods, spilled soda, molded trash, human sweat, and the staler undercurrent of chemical and fabric dyes. This barrage to his senses was alarming at first, but quickly fell into a nonchalant burst of inadequate stresses beyond his control.

It slipped into a manageable but hideous intake of his surroundings which made his back more rigid and his hands ache where his nails cut into his palms. But he did not protest.

Even as he and Yugi browsed pants, looking at jeans that were not too constricting but would be easy to run or fight in, he found himself unable to fully relax. But it was a soft tension in his bones. And his muscles molded against it but did not react further. Thankfully not many people seemed to notice his presence. Nor did any of them seem to care for the sight of them, feigning ignorance of the idea that perhaps they were skipping school. And no one even appeared to notice and ask upon their similarities in looks.

But he heard some small whispers. Every now and then someone would say he was a "yummy snack" though Yami only knew it to be directed towards him by the simple sense that he could feel their eyes. A small group of girls about his own age were staring at him from a shop across from where they were standing.

He never glanced up but to regard Yugi. He hesitated, taking a pair of jeans from him that he held out, and cleared his throat softly.

Immediately the smaller boy responded. His head snapped up, eyes wide and instantly locked with his. The sight of them made Yami press his lips into a thin line. Yugi's eyes were extremely dilated, his breathing was coming in small but rapid gasps, his face was slightly shiny with a gentle sheen of perspiration. He was clearly unfocused but for his attention on him and the clothing rack.

Yami blinked and tilted his head, frowning at him. One of the girls cooed that Yugi was adorable. He searched his face for a moment longer.

"Are you all right?"

The smaller teen blinked once, then rapidly thrice more, and lowered his eyes immediately to the clothing again. His hands were gripping a pair of jeans so harshly his knuckles had turned white and the other was shaking slightly, finely shivering.

"I…" He hesitated, eyes flicking back to his for only a moment. "How the hell do you not feel suffocated? It's… Fuck, this is harder than I thought it would be…"

Yami frowned more deeply. The girls were giggling now, placing bets on who had better eyes if they glanced over. He was highly tempted. Most people flinched upon first glance, the color unique; yet bringing only to mind pools of blood.

"It becomes easier the longer you allow yourself to be exposed to such things," he said uncomfortably, searching his face. How was it that Yami had failed to notice the smaller boy's growing unease all this time? Had he been so caught up in the idea of the conversations and voices regarding them that he had somehow disregarded it? "But it's also easier if you embrace the sensation at first and then push it away. It's…like being angry and forcing yourself to count to a certain number in order to calm yourself…"

Yugi eyed him for a long moment, contemplating his words. He looked so distressed Yami was truly amazed that he did not assume the task of fleeing. What held him there?

"How would you know that?" he muttered, voice uncertain and small. He kept his eyes caught on the taller boy, refusing to look elsewhere. Should he glance away, he could very easily become overwhelmed. "You aren't around people that often."

Yami blinked. "What does that matter?"

He faltered for a moment, then huffed softly. "Well, I don't…I mean, no offense, Yami, but you're…seriously kind of dysfunctional… It's honestly almost crippling. So I mean…you obviously haven't been around people that often, right?"

Yami studied him for a long time, then looked at the clothing, voice rough enough to nearly border a snarl. "I have been around people before you. The fact that I hold disdain for them should be an indicator of such… Regardless, I have been around many people. I mentioned before that they were not the best of people and, as such, I do not like to associate myself too closely with people in general. I _do_ wish to remain as far away from them as possible, but it is not always a possibility."

Yugi cringed. He'd forgotten that conversation. "Yami, I really didn't mean to—"

"It doesn't matter," he said with a shake of his head. "I am not offended. I _am_ quite dysfunctional and closed off from others. I would question you if you never jumped to such conclusions. I am…simply listening…"

The small teen furrowed his brows. "To what?" Around the hideous roar of noise within his ears, he was not entirely sure himself how he even managed to hear Yami before him.

Yami hesitated, then looked at the tags of the pants in his arms, then snagged the ones he had been peering at seconds before. "The girls in the clothing store across from here. They are obnoxiously loud. And their words are…" He paused, considering his words. His initial thought was the only one which came to mind however, so he simply spoke it, unable to find another to replace it. "Infuriating."

Yugi tilted his head, then allowed his eyes to flicker towards the girls across them. His stomach dropped immediately. He knew two of them from school competitions, from a rival school. One of them dated a boy who had threatened to slit his throat if he so much as ever looked at her again. And if she was there, then he would be around just as well. They must have been skipping just like he was.

"Fuck," he muttered, instantly looking to Yami again. "We need to get to the changing rooms and—"

Yami silenced him with a single glance. His eyes were harsh, glittering with ice, the red of them dangerously jagged with a mounting anger and sense of pride that Yugi had never seen before in his expression. His breath caught, his lungs constricting painfully, and he swallowed thickly as he studied him for a moment.

"We will go to them in a moment."

They were the only words he was given before Yami turned away from him abruptly. He straightened drastically, eyes sharpening further, and then tilted his chin up as if in challenge. Yugi flinched and looked over with a flicker of his eyes only to feel sickened.

He had spotted him. And he was headed towards them.

"Yo, Motou, long time no see."

He nearly flinched. He was well aware that the boy wasn't stupid. He would not attack him in public, but Yugi was sure he would still bully him and eventually stalk him from the mall. He wouldn't even be surprised.

"Hirotani," he breathed uncomfortably, looking up at him only fleetingly. "Yeah, it's been a while, huh?"

Yami went steadily unnoticed. It was the smallest yet somehow greatest mercy Yugi thought the world capable of at that moment.

"So, my girl just told me something interesting."

Yugi glanced at Yami, hoping beyond himself that if he focused on only him, Hirotani might leave him alone. Then he and the other lycanthrope could make an escape.

"Oh yeah?"

"See, she went to the school's math competition a couple of weeks ago. She told me that she saw you watching her from the bleachers."

Yugi looked up now, startled and confused. Who in their right minds would let him anywhere _near_ a math competition? He was horrid at it when it came to explanation or crowds…

He only realized his mistake after the other boy caught his eye.

"Good. I was beginning to think you were blind." Hirotani snickered, leaning forward to loom over him more forcefully. "Now, what was it that I told you about looking at my girl?"

"Your girl has been watching me for the entirety of the time I have been standing here," Yami's voice said with such calmness that Yugi could not help but immediately turn towards him. His breath caught. The other boy was going to get himself either seriously hurt or get them banned from the mall altogether. "I believe she's called me a 'yummy snack' about twenty times now."

Hirotani ignored him at first, focus still entirely on Yugi. But the smaller boy was so caught in the other's words that he had forgotten him altogether. With a rough sigh Hirotani turned to tell the other brat to shut up, but then froze.

Red eyes were peering at him hideously from beneath a long spidery web of thick black lashes. They were narrowed, the shadows making their pupils thicker, and the emotion in them was that of disdain and challenge. Yami tilted his head a fraction, a cold and calculated movement which made the larger boy tense somehow further.

"Now, regardless, I don't care. But the fact of the matter is, if anyone has been staring, it is her. Yugi has not even glanced at them until now."

"Who the fuck is this kid? You two related?"

"No, he's just a friend—"

Hirotani turned to him completely, lips pulling back into a furious smile of amusement. "A friend you're shopping with, whose carrying all of your clothes," he said in a low voice twisted with laughter. "Wow, Yugi. I would never have thought you would bat for the opposite team."

Yami did not understand the analogy, but he was not oblivious to how upset the words made Yugi. The small teen grimaced, eyes full of annoyance.

"When did you get yourself a boyfriend, Motou?"

He bristled. "I didn't," he snapped in an uncharacteristically harsh voice. "Yami is a friend—"

"Who carries your clothes on shopping trips and clearly makes you take it up the—"

The tap on his shoulder made him turn, mouth closing immediately in confusion at the gossamer touch. He thought for sure it would be his girlfriend, but the sight which greeted him was far from it.

The red eyes were as sharp as daggers. His jaw was set. His bangs fell to frame his face in keen lines. His brows were relaxed. His face was free of any tension. But as their eyes held for a moment longer, Yami's head tilted. It was so miniscule a movement Hirotani almost missed it. But the intent behind it was clear, the silence holding his tongue pushing it forth with such clarity it nearly threw him backwards.

He would not let him talk any longer. Should Hirotani open his mouth any further, he would pay for it. There was no more sound to come from his mouth. He would—with no effort, some innate instinct hissed in the back of his mind—utterly destroy him should this continue.

He gulped, backing up a step. Then he turned and fled as swiftly as possible. He didn't stop where the girls were, instead grabbing his girlfriend's hand and pulling her after him.

Yugi could not breathe for a moment. He had been expecting a fight. He had assumed they were going to beat each other down. He had even feared briefly that Yami might not retain his temper and kill him. Or worse, that he might hold his temper and let the other attack him in order to keep from drawing attention to them.

But…

Yugi looked at him. The other boy blinked, then gave him a smile that held nothing of the former coldness he had displayed. It was not warm by any means, but it also was not false. It was nothing but a ghostly curve of his lips. And his eyes were simply blank, the emotions bled from them.

"Where am I meant to change into these?"

Yugi stared at him, still somehow momentarily undone. "Uh, h-here, I'll show you," he muttered in a weak voice. He still could not do more than blink and look at him for several moments longer. "We need to look at shirts after this too…"

Yami nodded without a single hesitation. "Very well."

He blinked stupidly, then nodded slightly in response, unsure of what more to do, and finally began to lead the way towards the fitting rooms. He took a spot at the end of the small hall, listening with a dull quiver in his throat as Yami went about undoing his pants and slipping into others. He couldn't ignore the hissing of the zippers' teeth as they slipped apart or came together again and it echoed in his head painfully.

Yugi ran a hand through his hair and tugged on a bang until he thought it might tear from his scalp. He felt sick to his stomach. Hirotani had assumed that they were screwing around, that he and Yami were in a relationship. Was that what someone else would have seen upon looking at them?

But he'd also asked if they were related. Surely that would be the first thought, right? If someone were to just randomly glance at them, they would assume first that they were merely siblings, that he was Yami's kid brother, right?

But then…

He shivered. He knew their body language had been intense moments before Hirotani had come into the picture. He knew damn well that it might have appeared as if they were having either a heated discussion or an emotional argument like a lover's quarrel.

The thought made his face burn fiercely. He'd never really thought of how it might appear to bystanders the way he had naturally been so close to the other boy. Not once had he considered the way that Yami so easily placed himself at his side but failed to pay much attention to anyone else might be perceived. He had never even thought that it would be considered that he was with the other lycanthrope in more than a companionable sense.

The shock of his words sent him reeling but it did nothing to fully throw him off balance. Hirotani was one person. He was someone who simply loved to pick on the people around him, especially if they appeared weaker than him. So he could easily have just been sneering at him…

But somehow that thought failed him.

He considered it now.

Much of their body language and the way they had focused entirely on the other for more than just those few seconds very clearly painted a picture of intimacy he was unfamiliar with. He had not even thought of it before. But now he understood. When he had looked up at him, the way they whispered so quietly...

Yugi tugged on his bangs again. Another hiss of the zipper came from the stall. He shivered.

It was not the idea of being gay or even the concept of Yami being his boyfriend which shook him so harshly.

He could live with that. He believed that love came in any shape and form. Gender had no bearing whatsoever. And he could do far worse than Yami.

It was his own blindness to the idea of such a wide misconception. It was how easily Hirotani had come to that decision. It was this new, painful, crushing realization that he had acted so much closer to the lycanthrope than he ever had with Anzu in such a public setting.

He blinked and bit his lip. Yami was trying on another pair. He ran a hand through his hair. His fingers were trembling.

With Anzu he was always fumbling, painfully awkward in most of his actions, and more often than not Jonouchi and Honda had teased him for it. Yet, somehow, with such terrible ease, he had managed to appear as if he were partners with Yami. He had no interest in the other boy in that sense, yet somehow his own body had displayed such ease and calmness with the very notion of it.

He shivered. The stall door lock clicked. Yami stepped out. He stretched his legs out, pressing first his right shoe against the stall across from him, then his left. He yawned, as if the entire event had drained him. But when he turned his head, he looked more bored than anything.

"They fit," he announced, failing to elaborate further.

Yugi got to his feet, licking his lips to keep from swallowing his tongue. What kind of statement was that? He almost rolled his eyes at the other boy. But Yami did not seem to notice his dissatisfaction. Instead he reached back to pull out the pairs of jeans and their hangers, looking them over with deft attention.

"The black and dark gray are much more comfortable. The dark blue tend to make my legs look a little thinner. The lighter blue flare at the bottom. It is not a comfortable sensation."

Yugi tilted his head, startled. "Black is supposed to make you look skinnier. That's why everyone likes wearing it. It makes you look slimmer…" He furrowed his brows, frowning faintly.

Yami quirked a brow, glancing up at him. "They make me appear taller. I suppose that is because they make my legs seem slimmer?" he questioned curiously, though the smaller boy only blinked. He grinned at him playfully after a moment, wrinkling his nose. "The dark blue make me look thinner but also shorter."

He snorted out loud. "That's ridiculous," he replied with a roll of his eyes. "If we were any shorter, we'd be considered midgets, Yami."

"Midgets?" He tasted this word on his tongue, mind working tenfold its average speed. He snorted a moment later, turning away with a scoff. "They are leagues beneath my height."

Yugi raised a brow, narrowing his eyes. _"Our_ height," he grumbled.

"You are closer to the ground than me. That makes you more alike their size."

Yugi flushed, then scowled. " _You_ have short jokes too? That's not even fair. You're barely an inch taller than me!" he scoffed. "And, I bet, if I actually bothered to stand up straight, we'd be the same height."

Yami looked at him, eyes raking over his form with a keen attention before smiling mischievously. "I would still be a few centimeters above you. Your eyes would not fully meet mine," he announced matter-of-factly, smirking at the shocked and slightly horrified expression on the other's face. "As such, I am able to make any kind of short jokes I wish. You will still be the midget before I ever will."

With that, he turned with flourish, stalking quickly beyond the changing stalls. He looked questioningly towards the rack of clothing in front of the small hallway, turning to him a moment later.

"You put the pairs you don't want on it," he explained. "That way someone will come back and put it back out later."

Yami nodded, sorted through the pairs in his arms, and placed them without so much as a pause to rearrange the bundle of jeans in his hands completely. He turned away again, heading out onto the floor with Yugi only a step behind him.

The t-shirts were far less of a hassle. Yami picked out plain tank tops. He did not even fully bother to look at graphic designs on the cotton tops. He seemed to know exactly what it was he needed when he got to the section. He chose only the darkest colors he could find—black, dark gray, one with both shades. He did not even fully bother with looking at the other displays around them.

Yugi couldn't fathom his desire for only the dark hues, nor the singularity in choice of design. He himself liked tank tops and jeans and a comfortable jacket and pair of sneakers any day. But he also enjoyed accessories. He liked the security of the choker around his neck and the bracelets encircling his wrists. He liked the idea of his arms being covered by the jacket, his skin hardly showing. He liked to have belts wrapped around his waist, to give him a firmer sense of self there as well.

But his closet also held different types of clothing. It had graphic tees, tank tops, hoodies, sweaters, sweatshirts and button ups. It had chokers and necklaces. It had bracelets, wrist bands, arm bands, and sleeves for his arms. It had jeans of every kind and color, leather pants and shorts of varying lengths. It had belts that were studded and plain. It had ankle high and crew cut socks of different colors. It had variety.

Yami had dark colors. He had skinny jeans. He had tank tops.

He frowned. "Is that all you planned on getting?"

The taller boy paused upon hearing his voice, at first not even fully interpreting his words, and then tilted his head with a puzzled expression. "Yes," he admitted, "but I must also find some new shoes. The bottoms of these are wearing away."

Yugi studied him for a moment, then peered at him with slight discomfort. "You don't want accessories or belts or anything?"

He blinked as if he had grown a second head and it was foaming at the mouth. "No," he replied after a moment, furrowing his brows. "Why should I?"

"Well, it's just…I mean, it's just kind of plain. I figured you would want to at least look?"

He shook his head slowly, that puzzled look still marring his features.

"If you're worried about how much it will cost, then it's not a problem. I promise I wouldn't be offering to get you stuff if I couldn't afford it…"

Yami shook his head again, more and more confused. "No, it is not cost. I am simply uninterested." He frowned. "But if you want to look yourself, I will go with you…?"

Yugi felt his cheeks heat faintly. "No, that's not…" He shook his head slightly. "Never mind. What kind of shoes did you think you were going to look at?"

"I will have to look at them before I decide." He looked at his sneakers and wrinkled his nose slightly. They were not the best in terrain and they had not been too terribly comfortable to wear while running. "But I need something that I can run in."

Yugi felt his stomach clench for a moment. Was Yami planning to race off at some point? Then what was the point of allowing him to do this with him? He didn't understand the idea behind such a thing. His actions didn't fully make sense if he was going to simply take off at some point.

"We'll look when we get back out of the fitting rooms," he muttered, his voice a near gasp of air with the despair which so abruptly slammed through him. Yami looked startled by the strained tone of his words, but he did not question him. Instead he tilted his head, studying him keenly, and then nodded slightly before glancing around.

Yugi followed him to the fitting rooms, feeling hollow inside. Was Yami truly going to go running off when he wasn't looking? He had not contemplated it beyond passing wonder. But now his words made his heart ache and his stomach clench painfully.

How long had he been planning to do this?

Yami glanced at him as he closed and locked the door behind him. Immediately he shrugged off the shirt he was wearing, tossing it to the bench beside his new pile of clothes. He snapped the clips off and drew the first of the pile away from the hanger, bunching the material and sliding it over his head.

It fit nicely, with a comfortable material which he knew instinctively would allow easy breathing and movement. The dark color made his eyes look sharper as well, far more vibrant than usual. It was an unintended effect but it worked well in his favor regardless.

He pulled it off again and started on another. This one was far too restrictive. It clung uncomfortably to his body. He was sure if he was to fight in it, the material could easily cut off his circulation. He tossed it aside with the hanger, grabbing the next. He went through the pile of them, finding that only about five of them actually fit comfortably while the other twelve were far too restricting.

Yami clipped each of them, draping those he wished to keep on his right arm while the rest sat on his left. When he stepped out again, Yugi looked somewhat distressed, maybe slightly nauseated. The taller boy studied him for a moment before frowning as he muttered, "Is the pressure still bothering you?"

The smaller boy startled like a cat. He jumped up, flushed, and awkwardly rubbed the back of his head. "No, I, uh, actually hadn't noticed it for a while. It…pretty much became background noise…"

Yami nodded slightly but did not offer a smile to match his. "Okay, good." He tilted his head. "So then what has upset you?"

"I…" Yugi wanted to say immediately that he wasn't upset at all. But instead he pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth and scratched the back of his head again. Yami wasn't stupid. He knew damn well that if he said otherwise he was lying. "I just…I was thinking about something. It's nothing important though."

He rolled his eyes. "If it was not important you would not be so unhappy, so what is it?"

Yugi cringed, starting towards him. He bit his lip for a moment, then looked down. "You just…I'm worrying about something stupid. It's—"

"If it's to do with me, I have a right to know."

He flinched, then sighed and looked at him from beneath his lashes. He swallowed thickly and Yami stared at him blankly in response.

"I just… You said that you needed the shoes for running."

He blinked. Yugi had fallen silent. Yami stared at him. He didn't understand what it was that he was implying. He furrowed his brows. The smaller teen blushed faintly. The quiet was disturbed only by the music coming from the overhead speakers on the floor.

A long second passed.

Yami blinked again. "You think I plan to run off," he finally stated. The idea had not fully resonated with him at first. It had seemed so beyond his thoughts that it was not even completely considered. Yet, as the words left his mouth, Yugi flinched and looked away again. He bowed his head almost as if he were ashamed he had ever thought it.

But, he had to admit, the idea of running off was not something that he had never considered. He was so trapped in that tiny house, had so much restless energy to burn, and he had no idea what it was he was meant to do to rid himself of it. Sometimes the idea of racing off into the woods and just not coming back crossed his mind. It was all in order to retain a freedom he was rather sure he did not have.

He shook his head. "I'm not going anywhere," he reassured him. "I just want to be prepared for anything."

Yugi looked up at him from beneath his lashes, confused. "Prepared for anything?"

Yami hesitated, then nodded. "Fighting, fleeing, anything. We do not wish for another incident like what happened in the woods with the wolf Bakura…right?"

Yugi froze in place at the deceased wolf's name. He looked at him, eyes wide and horrified, and a sensation of guilt and disgust filled his gut. His eyes snapped to the floor, face twisting into a scowl which quickly morphed into a grimace. He let out a weak breath which shuddered within his lungs and then swallowed thickly. The immensity of the situation came back in waves, pounding against his small frame with avid self-hatred. He choked, then shook his head weakly.

"No…"

The taller teen hesitated for a moment. He thought to offer him comfort, to reassure him that it was not his fault. But he had already relayed to him that the adrenaline rush often distorted their perceptions in battle. And he could not rightfully say that Yugi had not killed him.

Bakura's head had come off. The smaller wolf had bitten through his neck with the panic he'd felt that moment. So he could not think of any words with which he could say he was not guilty. And he knew any comfort he offered now was late and possibly inconsequential. Yugi would have to figure it out on his own.

And then he would either come to live with it.

Or he would drown in it.

Yami hoped with everything in him that Yugi had the strength to do the former.

But he could not help him more than he already attempted.

It would shorten the importance of his former words and thus enable Yugi to either pretend otherwise or lay blame where it was impossible. Self-denial was an easy defense mechanism to grasp at when scared. And he knew the smaller boy would hold it as a lifeline if he was given more reason to.

It was a hard lesson, to learn where the disease ended and one began. But it was something that _had_ to be learned. If it was not, one could surely drown. They could surely be swept away beneath the current of all of the disease. Madness would sweep in, sure and fast. And if the madness came in, the destruction wrought would cause others to act.

It would not make any difference what wolves would come to put the threat down. It would simply be done. According to each subspecies was their own code amongst themselves and their surroundings. Each changed as necessary to maintain survival. And, if a wolf was seen as a threat to their existence and that of their pack's, they would be eliminated.

Immediately.

"It would be a terrible idea to turn our backs and dismiss such an event. Which is why I'm preparing for it. I don't think that he will be the last."

Yugi shuddered, pushing away the thought of Bakura's blood in his mouth, the way he had ignored it for days afterwards and only come to accept it after Yami reminded him so unconsciously of it.

He lifted his eyes, watching the other wolf who was studying him sharply. He felt as if his tongue had grown swollen and was pressing instantly against the roof of his mouth to rid itself of the taste once more. He trembled finely, only once, then let out a breath.

"What do you mean?"

Yami watched him, then looked away again. "You forget the two wolves who first came upon you when I came to help you through your first Change," he reminded him gently. "They were not a random encounter. They too must have been planned as simply and easily as Bakura and whoever the other was. I am to assume that they are hunters, perhaps?"

Yugi frowned at him and shook his head slightly. "Well…if they are, they're looking for something really particular," he muttered softly.

Yami looked to him again. His red eyes were glinting and his lip looked as if it were about to curl back. His face looked somewhat flushed, paler than before, and he shook his head slightly as he glanced away again.

"Let's get some shoes and then head back."

Yugi could only nod in agreement.

"Okay."

* * *

He had settled on a pair of sneakers that Yugi thought looked incredibly comfortable and Yami seemed rather pleased with. He had not completely cared all too much as he had put them on and wandered about in them, but he had seemed satisfied enough. They were rather lightweight, with good traction for running in the woods.

The color had been the only thing to make him pause. They came in dark gray with striped laces and a dark blue shade with the same. The black ones had been sold out. So he'd settled for the dark gray, though the emblem on the side was a bright white streak.

Yugi had cringed upon seeing it as the taller had made it rather clear he wanted something almost completely black if he had the chance. But the only completely black ones they had found were skid resistant work shoes and steel-toed boots that had proved to be rather heavy when Yami had tried them on.

He doubted the heaviness would have been an issue for him in all reality. He was sure Yami would have been able to wield them well enough, but to race around with them in the woods would have clearly been disastrous. The second pair he had attempted was that of combat boots with laces which ran about the length of his shin. But the soles had been too uncomfortable and the heel of them had a small inch worth of height that he had been extremely unhappy with.

The third had been basic tennis shoes, Converse that Yugi convinced him to give a try. But the white toe boxes had annoyed him and the flat sole had made him scrunch his face up. Thankfully the red-eyed teen had not been too terribly inclined to argue with brand names.

He had not completely rendered him bankrupt by showing interest in the Nike shoes or the other pair of combat boots which had been around nine thousand yen and others breaching ten. He'd nearly swallowed his tongue when Yami had glanced at them curiously before snorting and wandering off again.

They had just gotten home an hour before. They were seated again in his room, Yami picking at his nails while Yugi was looking at his phone. It had occurred to him only minutes before that he should perhaps try to talk to Anzu again about another date. The idea that he had looked so intimate with Yami still burned in the back of his mind constantly.

Was it unusual for people to stand as they had? And had their body language truly been so intense and incriminating? It was not as if they had been caught kissing or trying to experiment with dry sex. But he knew hushed tones and eye contact and leaning towards one another, bodies completely facing each other, was a very clear way to see a couple going through a spat.

He knew it. If he were to ask his friends they would say so too.

Yugi shivered slightly. He honestly was not entirely sure what about it upset him so much. Was it because he couldn't emulate that same thing with Anzu? Or was it the idea that Hirotani of all people had assumed it? It could very well have been the messenger which made it all annoying and frustrating to him. Or, perhaps, it was the idea that it was Yami?

After having seen him kill twice before, he supposed it could have been that. He had also watched him eat a rabbit from his seat on the bedroom floor. He had witnessed him covered in blood and snapping bones. He had seen him Change and take off after his prey. He had watched and heard him eat a rabbit in barely a minute.

But, if he had not known these things, would he have been less inclined now to wonder so desperately about it?

He glanced at the other boy from the corner of his eye. Yami was not bad looking. His face was defined with sharp, mature lines and the gentlest curve of flesh beneath his eyes showed higher cheekbones. The curve of his face was definitely a heart shape, similar to Anzu's but with obvious masculinity she lacked. His eyes were sharp, a cross between hooded and almond in shape, his lashes long and feathering outwards as if drawn by kohl on both lids.

When he blinked, they touched the very tip of the gentle curve of his cheekbones in a gossamer caress. His eyes themselves had to be the most intense of colors he had ever seen before in his life, with shades of red he had never even imagined. They sparked and shimmered with light and appeared almost bruised around his pupils and the very edges of his irises were a deep black pool to match.

His nose had a higher bridge, the tip slightly pointed. His lips were thinner, his mouth rather firm in design. And his skin was one of the most admittedly beautiful shades of tone he had ever come across. The golden-bronze was blended so perfectly together that he could not tell which was the undertone as it was. And it only brought more color and elegance to the crown of hair on his head where it rested in jagged spikes and bursts of bright goldenrod yellow in piercing bolts of lightning and the black was tipped with dark red.

So, no, Yami was not bad looking. In fact, if he were to be truthful, he was sure he was one of the single most handsome people he had ever come to see or know. In all reality, there was a spark of envy to be shared there, though it was far too small for him to care to acknowledge.

And, in truth, if not for the lycanthropy and his desire to be with Anzu, had he not met him the way he had, he was sure he might have been interested in him at some point. He wasn't homosexual, nor was he bisexual, but he knew that he was attracted far more to personality than he was anything else. And so far, from what he had witnessed of it, he thought Yami's personality to be one of which he could most certainly find himself attracted to.

He was well balanced. He was levelheaded. He might have been slightly short tempered, but he was able to control his anger as well. He was willing to let one learn without his constant approval. He knew very well that Yami supported him and his decisions, even if he did not always understand them or really know the reasoning behind them.

He would probably make the ideal partner for someone at some point. If he ever got past the barrier of telling them that he was a werewolf, he was _sure_ Yami would make an _amazing_ partner to whoever he decided worthy of his attention.

Yugi thought for sure, if circumstances were different if he wasn't already attracted to Anzu, if he hadn't witnessed so much bloodshed around Yami, he would have been interested in him. Of course it would have begun as nothing more than friendship and slowly grown from there and he'd probably truthfully miss his chance, but it was true. He would have been interested in him. Their personalities fit well and he knew Yami would be just as good in another scenario as he was in this one.

He rolled his eyes at himself, looking down at his phone again. He had been peering at his text screen for several long minutes now. But he hadn't been able to come up with a single thing to type out. He'd wanted to tell her that he was free to go out later, when she got out of school. But if he did, he was sure his mother would no longer be as mild and supportive of the relationship as she had formerly. She'd see his skipping as a way to impress her and that wasn't something he wanted in any way.

Besides that, however, he still had no idea how it was that he was supposed to tell her he'd skipped school but wasn't sick and just wanted to see her. It seemed like Anzu would be just as disappointed as his mother would be. She'd hide it better, but he knew she would be.

"Do you want to go for a run?" Yugi asked with a large sigh, unable to keep from feeling somewhat flustered and small. He looked at Yami immediately after the words left his mouth, the small teen biting his lip as the red-eyed boy turned away from his long nails. He was visibly confused by the strange outburst and the ragged depth of his long sigh. But, thankfully, as he always did, the red-eyed lycanthrope simply took the words in stride.

He nodded. A run sounded amazing at the moment. He was wired after the storm had passed and the trip to the mall had been so long and rather uneventful. Diverting a fight and scaring a human away from a pack member hardly qualified as anything more than a sideways glance to him in all reality. Humans naturally cowered before werewolves when confronted with their anger, though Yugi's softer, weaker demeanor had done well to shield him from them all those years around them.

Yami assumed he would grow into the position of the werewolf later when he had come to completely accept that he had been bitten in the first place. Because he knew that he hadn't yet. He was still waiting for something to either save him or perhaps reverse it all and allow his former life to sweep in and embrace him as it had before.

"Awesome," Yugi announced with a grin, tossing his phone onto the bed and jumping to his feet. Yami watched him as he went into his closet, opened the larger metal containment center, and dug into one of his drawers to pull out a bag. He tossed it behind him lazily, then looked over his shoulder. "Okay, get some new clothes. We'll put them in here and I'll get another bag for the ones we're wearing now."

The taller boy nodded slightly, expression slightly surprised. But he did not speak and instead moved towards the chest of drawers where Yugi had cleared out a few for him to stash his clothes. They still sat in the plastic bag they had gotten upon purchasing them. He grabbed a black tank top and black jeans before snatching up his older sneakers to put on again.

Yugi hummed, grabbing his own pair before slipping his accessories off into the backpack as well. He fingered the smooth buckle of the choker he was wearing. He had not taken it off but for showers and sleeping since the immense wound across it had finally healed that day. The idea of taking it off now made his stomach clench faintly as he looked at Yami curiously for a few moments.

He knew the other wolf would notice his lack of removal but would not comment on it. He had not commented on the fact that he wore it so constantly after his first Change, nor did he make mention of the way his wrists were always covered. He did not even poke at the idea of how he covered almost every expanse of skin he could.

He knew that had not changed since before he had come to know the wolf beforehand. Yugi had always been self-conscious and wore as much as he could to cover his skin. It was more because he was able to blend in and hide himself in a group easily of there was really nothing too distinguishing about him. His hair always messed that plan up, and his short stature did nothing to help him, but he was always able to duck and weave himself away in a group. He could blend in with anyone nearby at school, allowing him to raise off the moment that his bullies could no longer fully see him.

He did know, however, that Yami was with him this time. He would help him should something happen. He knew that. He had seen him step up to scare Hirotani from where he had been attempting to intimidate him.

Still, his fingers merely hovered as he watched the other stuff his clothes into the hollow pack at his feet. He bit his lip, watching the tall teen as he packed them inside and then grabbed the bag that had formerly housed his new purchases. Yugi's nails clicked against the buckle as he finally began to pull it away and slip it off his neck.

He knew there was no scar tissue or even the slightest bit of a reminder of such a wound but for his own memories. But he still could not fully bring himself to glance at the pale flesh in the mirror or flick his eyes towards it even slightly. He could not drift his fingers over his neck and his fingers even trembled whenever they brushed against the smooth expanse. He swallowed thickly.

Thinking about this now, as he dropped the small belt of leather and nylon into the bag, was not helping anything at the moment.

Yami offered him only a small smile of acknowledgment of the decision but still did not speak of it. Instead he merely tilted his head, grabbing the bag from where it rested at the smaller teen's feet, and slung it over his shoulder lazily.

"Are we ready?"

Yugi hesitated for only a moment, then nodded with a thin smile. "Yeah, Yami, we're ready."

The Change was no less painful than it had been the first time. He had collapsed into his own bile, legs splayed and sides heaving pathetically, while Yami again sat a few feet away and watched. He had given him instructions once more, had allowed him to take solace in his presence there as he had the first time.

Yugi stumbled to his feet, as clumsy now as he was before, and shook himself out with shaky limbs, paws twitching and tail jerking painfully. He stretched his toes, sinking his claws into the earth, and then staggered forward several steps.

Yami welcomed his limited progress with several small wags of his tail, ears perked, head tipped slightly towards the ground. His eyes were sharp, burning, and they bore into him with such strength that they almost allowed him to feel empowered by the warmth in them.

 _It took less time than last. You're already learning. Your body is adapting very well._

The black wolf wagged his tail a bit more with the words, eyes bright as he tilted his head and opened his mouth into the smallest sliver. His white incisors were gorgeous, sharp and powerful even as they looked curiously friendly in the way he peered at him. His breaths came in rugged wreaths of bright white and tantalizing silver.

 _You think so_? he grunted with a shake of his head. It certainly didn't seem as if it had gone any smoother than the first time. And the first time had been excruciating. He flicked his ears and looked away. _I don't see how it did_.

 _That's because you are the one who experienced it. As a bystander, simply watching, I know how much easier it truly was on you._

Yugi shook his head again but did not argue. His baritone voice made his insides feel warm as he stepped forward again and staggered past his side. He dipped his chin into the snow, where it was still heavily clumped but had melted and froze again twice in the past couple of days. He pulled away to find small smears of red and yellow bile and his stomach clenched painfully as he rubbed the other side of his jaw now as well.

Yami watched him for a moment, then reached out to press his paw to the other wolf's leg near his hindquarters. The smaller teen paused, peering at him in confusion, and then tilted his head. The larger canine dropped onto his forelimbs, tail wagging more enthusiastically, ears pricked forward and maw parted only enough to show more of his teeth. He had seen that expression on several dogs before, a simple smiling look, teeth showing and eyes bright and big as they stared up at him.

Yugi struggled for a moment, unsure of what it was that Yami meant to do with this new position. He tilted his head further and pricked his ears. The black wolf let out a whine and wiggled his rump in the air, eyes peering at him. It was harder to read the emotions in his gaze while he looked at him now, because there was such keenness and power and cunning that it left little room for anything else to show there. He knew he saw a light there, warm and generous, and it made his eyes that much more mesmerizing, but he still could not read it.

Yugi tried to wag his tail in response now as well. But the movement was so foreign to him that he immediately halted. He wrinkled his nose in disdain at his own actions, unable to do more than flick his ears and feel immensely stupid for his inabilities. But Yami did not try to project any thoughts to him, nor instruct him towards understanding. So he puzzled over this sight before him.

He had seen it with dogs at times—puppies especially—but he was not sure that such a thing was what Yami was initiating. Surely the other wolf was not attempting to engage him in play, right?

Yet, as the thought passed through his head, Yami lunged forward. He was a sharp comet of dark black fur, shooting forward with long limbs and sharp claws. He pawed his side gently, then dropped to his forelimbs again and panted before jumping beyond him when he blinked in surprise.

Was he truly…?

Yugi found himself unable to stop from his surprised gaping. His jaw fell wide open, cold air bathing his long muzzle immediately. His eyes grew wider than ever, his ears falling back in confusion. His tail remained dropped behind his legs. He blinked stupidly. He quivered, confused beyond his own reasoning.

He was! He _had_ to have been.

He blinked again. Yami surged forward, touching his side again. Then he ducked away and leaped aside once more. His eyes sparkled but that unearthly intelligence still rendered them beyond his capability of definition. Yugi hesitated for only a moment. Then he slowly closed his mouth and attempted to spring towards the other wolf.

He landed in an awkward tangle of limbs. His eyes grew wide and stunned. The momentum barely hurled him a few feet. Yet, he landed with such impact as to have gone flying yards beyond his initial calculations. He let out a shuddering gasp, panting pathetically. He shivered, then whined softly in the back of his throat. He did not know what more to do. So he peered quizzically at his companion.

Yami snorted a laugh that was almost horrified. He plopped down before him, a large expanse of muscle and long, limber legs. He wagged his tail again, amused beyond reason, and leaned forward to where their noses almost pressed together.

 _You've never tried jumping in this form before. Your body knows the momentum but your muscles don't know the movement. Until you've practiced, you're going to find yourself in this exact same situation endlessly._

Yugi whined and pulled his legs back from beneath the folds of his chest. He pressed his weight into his hindquarters and drew himself to his feet again awkwardly. _This is so much easier in the damn movies_ , he grumbled unhappily.

Yami tilted his head. _I'm not surprised_.

He would have rolled his eyes if he had thought himself capable of it. But instead he narrowed his gaze, flattening his ears against his skull. His brows flattened, pulling forward slightly, and his lips tugged on the left side of his mouth.

 _Okay, so if I practice it_ …?

 _It won't take long to master. Your body is instinctively driven to match any capability the natural wolf possesses. But you must grow used to utilizing your muscles in such a way before your body can fully mimic it._ Yami dropped onto his side, the cold ice beneath him doing well to comfort his heated skin. He tipped his head towards him, smiling widely with his jaws parted and his tongue against the surface of snow. His breaths came in excited bunches of crystalline puffs of air. _It's like a dog learning a new trick._

 _I shouldn't have to learn new tricks_ , Yugi snapped, fur rising into a bristle with his frustration. _What good is this if I have to basically relearn everything I already know in life_?

He stared at him, then got to his feet. His fur began to rise in shuddering spasms of disdain as his lip curled faintly. _Do you think that a disease should come with gifts_? _Is it not enough that you are by far more intelligent than the rest of the humans you so often spend time with_? _Or that your body reacts with its own strength and senses in order to save you should you be unable to by your own natural imposition_? _Should you not be grateful for the fact that your own body will mend itself endlessly should you be wounded_? _What about the heights of power which you are given_? _And, yet, learning for the sake of controlling your disease and the immensity it bestows you angers you_? _You foolish brat_ , he snarled, pressing forward a step.

Yugi reacted instinctively. His teeth were bared, his shoulders squared. His eyes flashed. His ears fell against his skull once more.

 _You will_ die _should you not come to learn these things_! Yami spat furiously. _Do you understand what a gift it is to be able to survive so many things that would otherwise_ destroy _you_? _Your body needs muscle memory and when it is keen upon such intelligence, it will never_ once _require you relearn it_. _But until then, you are as inexperienced and weak as a newborn child. And_ that _is something that will never be taken lightly by possible threats to us, be it human or other wolves._

Yugi flicked his tongue over his nose. It was not by choice that he did this, but his body reacted to the other's rage with such intensity he could not help it. His head began to lower towards the snow, his body twisting with submission. His back bent in a delicate arch as his tail tugged between his legs. He did not growl, but his teeth remained bared.

Yami watched him for a moment. Then he wrinkled his nose. His fur fell back again. His tail dropped from its more aggressive raised stance. His ears flicked away. His eyes fell on the snow. His squared shoulders lost their tension.

 _It would be so easy to kill you, Yugi._

The statement made the smaller wolf freeze in place. His heart leaped into his throat. He felt as if his tongue would fold backwards to be swallowed. He looked at him, unable to glance away.

The black canine sighed loudly. The huff of breath was a hideous fog before his face. His ears flickered. He looked back at him with a tilt of his head. His expression was unreadable still, but the light in his eyes had dimmed. His face looked older, more worn down. And the dark expanse of his fur made him look almost haunted. It was almost as if he had come across a terrible burden in speaking such words.

 _I hope you live long enough to grow up_ , he whispered into his mind, a gentle and sorrowful plea. _I truly do. I would like nothing more. I hope you learn from experience rather than deny it. Maybe then you will see what gifts you have that others don_ ' _t. To take things for granted as you do_ … _It will hinder you. And it will kill you, Yugi._

He froze, eyes wide, gaze boring into his.

The black wolf turned away, ears pricked, eyes sharp. Something dark and sinister passed over his expression. _Come, we must run_.

Yugi looked at him, unable to think of anything beyond the scathing and yet desperate plea which he had bestowed upon him moments before. He blinked, then bristled, then shuddered, and his body felt small and weak as he looked at him. He never wanted to hear such defeat in Yami's voice again.

The black wolf spun on him, then looked about them sharply. He moved forward, nose working, then pressed his shoulder into his side. _Let's go. We have to run. Something is_ …

He halted, then snarled.

 _A hunter_.

Yugi froze in place. A hunter? Like the human who had come with Bakura? Like the human which had most likely sent those two wolves after him in the first place? His belly clenched.

 _Yami…_

 _You can run_ , he promised without a glance at him. _Your body knows how to. You ran with me before. Remember that._

 _Yami…is it the same one who sent Bakura after me_?

The larger canine stopped short. His head turned to regard him. His eyes were glowing with an intense rage which he could read around the keen glint of his gaze. He bore his teeth and snarled low in his throat.

 _Now is_ not _the time to relive such a moment, Yugi_. His voice was scathing and furious. _Now is the time that you follow me and we run._

Yugi trembled pathetically. Bakura's face flashed through his mind. Dark gray eyes with distorted pupils peered with a glassy shine. Blood dribbled from parted lips. Teeth glinted red and white, with an unearthly shine. Red covered a cheek, fur missing from a patch near the edge of the pocket of skin. Rivulets of blood fell from a hideous wound near the eye…

He snarled. His teeth chomped an inch from his nose. Yugi quaked. Yami towered over him.

 _Gods damn you_ , run! He bit at the air in front of him again. The smaller wolf quivered, the muscles in his body responding to something all too powerful and great to ignore. It swelled inside of him, pushing and breaking at his ability to think. Then it pushed so forcefully that his mind fell into only this thought.

He took off.

He had breached the trees and found himself within the clearing nearest the cliffs before Yami could snarl. The speed alone was daunting to match. But the black wolf rapidly propelled himself forward. He was still about twenty yards behind him when he heard the first of them. A sharp, hideous booming bark met his ears.

He flicked an ear and listened, slowing instinctively. They were coming from the side. But there was a snapping noise much closer…

Yami realized a moment too late. He was frozen, standing there. _Yugi, stop_! he called desperately.

It happened too quickly.

Yami snarled, spinning. His head snapped around. His teeth were bared.

The loud echoing snap of the trigger roared in his ears.

The boom of the gunshot made the air shatter and vibrate.

There was a loud and distressed scream. The black wolf hesitated, unable to look for a moment. But then his head snapped around. The snow was coated in a thick streak of blood.

Yugi had fallen within the clearing, blending in almost perfectly with the snow but for his shoulder. The fur there was bright with a hideous patch of red.

And he was not moving at the moment.

But that did not mean much.

He could hear his heart still beating. And he still felt a low but pleasant humming in his core. He had come to know it as a tangible connection he felt with the other boy.

So he did not worry about his life.

The wound would ache but it would not kill. The human had hit hard muscle rather than the bone. They had missed the spine. They had missed his throat.

Yami was not sure what to do now, however. He could not see the human. But he knew it to be close. As he drew in harsh breaths to catch its scent, all he could find was disgusting excretion. The human had covered itself with some kind of animal droppings. And it was not near enough to come racing from the brush to get them.

He shook the thought off. He pushed himself forward towards his charge again upon scanning his surroundings once more. Yugi had regained himself enough to look at him over his shoulder when he approached. He was steps away when he thought he heard the human moving again. He did not think they knew there was a second wolf.

If they did not know there was a second, then they assumed the initial shot would have been enough to keep them down. If that was the case, Yami could easily manipulate such factors. He was nothing if not adaptive, after all. Whatever the direction the shot had come from, it was obvious the human was hiding and biding time for the moment. It was perhaps a game at tormenting the younger wolf.

Or, more likely, it was meant to incapacitate long enough for the dogs to come upon them.

He bore his teeth, then dipped his muzzle to lick at the sore spot on Yugi's shoulder. The wound was not as terrible as it could have been. It was a grazing wound, one that had shot upon the surface of his shoulder a clear diagonal line of bright red. The bullet must have gone over Yugi's shoulders and into the ground. They had to be one of the cliffs a little further beyond them.

But Yugi had screamed and gone down. And perhaps that was the only thing to keep the human from firing another shot. He sniffed at his wound and the smell of marrow was not in the least bit more powerful than usual; they had missed the bone entirely. It was truly just a shot of hard muscle and skin. He craned his neck and looked about them but he did not see a human and he did not think for even a moment that they could see him.

They had been on the cliff, and from the angle Yami could measure with his racing mind, the clearing was the only reason they had been capable of aiming for them. When they had still been more amongst the trees, they had been all but invisible. They would never have gotten a clear shot.

He had reacted too soon.

Yami felt his heart clench in his chest. He had not bothered to listen for the direction of the dogs. And, in his anger towards Yugi, he had not thought to see if there was perhaps a human within range to begin with.

He had sent him straight into the target area.

And, now, as Yami had not gotten to his side immediately, the hunter had left his spot to aim at him.

 _You will have to run again. I will hold them off._

 _Run again_? Yugi spat in despair, shaking. _My shoulder hurts too much. I can't put weight on it_ —

 _You can_ , Yami snapped, baring his teeth. _And you will. You will stumble and stagger, but it will help you. If you fall, you will climb immediately to your feet again. And you will run as you have to. It will make your body work to heal itself. And, when you are healed, they will not be able to track you._

The white wolf curled his lips back. _That's not true_! _He'll find me easily, Yami_! _There's no snow to cover my tracks_!

The other wolf snorted harshly into his ear. _And that is why I will cover you_ , he growled. _Trust me and do as I tell you, Yugi_.

The white wolf quivered and stared at him. His shoulder pulsed with pain and his eyes peered at him uncomfortably. _How do you know that you'll be okay_?

Yami tilted his head. For a moment, one single, ruthless second, he thought to snap at him that he didn't. But the truth of the matter was that he did. He knew exactly what it was that he could do.

He was not the small inexperienced wolf that Yugi himself was.

But his concern warmed him faintly. He pressed his nose into his ear, running his tongue over his forehead in an effort to make Yugi feel more at ease. The other boy seemed to press closer to him at the gentle touch. He almost appeared as if he wished he could burrow within him for protection.

 _I will be fine_ , he said simply, pulling away and listening before growling low in his throat. The dogs were coming faster. The human was still somewhere beyond them, laying low. Perhaps they _did_ realize he was there and the dogs were for _him_ rather than Yugi. _I will find my way back to you when I am done. Find shelter, okay_?

Yugi shivered again. It wasn't a promise or truly even reassuring in any sense of the word. But he knew that Yami meant what he said. He believed himself capable of returning when it was all over. So he nodded, glancing uselessly around them, and then stumbled to his feet.

Yami grasped his scruff, pulling him to his feet and helping to distribute his weight, and Yugi struggled for balance. The pressure on his shoulder made him nearly collapse for a brief moment. But he shoved it aside. He closed his eyes, drawing in a deep breath. The sound of two dogs launching themselves through the undergrowth made his stomach ache.

 _Yami…_

 _I give you my word. I will be back_. He pressed his nose into his hip, gently pushing him forward. _Now run_.

Yugi nodded only after locking eyes with him again. His gaze was full of a power which the smaller boy thought impossible to touch or fully imagine. He was ready. His body was hard wired. And the way he peered at him said he was certain he would be back the moment he was given the chance.

And he would be alone.

And safe.

Yugi turned away, glancing about them, and then took off in a limping trot towards the trees. The rockier wall of the mountainside was home to enough cubbies that he was sure he would be able to hide within one. When he glanced back over his shoulder, Yami was watching him. But he was listening to the dogs approaching instead.

He found a small cavern in the very tuck of a rock wall, a cliff face he had not truly noticed upon first inspection. He wondered if his clothes would be nearby. But he did not dare wander off. Instead he listened, waiting for what felt like an eternity.

There was a harsh snapping noise. And several loud scraping sounds entered his ears. When he sat up, alarmed as his shoulder ached dully, he bore his teeth. His ears fell back against his head but he could not tell what it was that he was listening to.

Until he saw what he assumed to be a branch fallen in front of the lip of the small den he was hidden in. The scratchy needles of pine were bore towards him, threatening to poke him. He realized immediately, huddled there, that it was Yami on the other side there.

The harsh sounds of barking made him stiffen. Yami had led the dogs towards him. He cowered, a sensation of betrayal and horror sweeping through him. By the gods, no, Yami wouldn't do that, right? He would not leave him to fend for himself like he had just assumed, right? He wouldn't…

He wouldn't…

Yugi trembled. But the dogs snarled outside. And there was an answering noise of pure hatred. Then a scrabbling sound burst within his ear drums. A flash of pressure came in a soft thudding noise. The air became tighter, laden with a stronger earthen scent. Then he heard a shrill and pitiful scream. Ice breaking made him quiver. He panted.

He remained cowered there for what felt like hours. He kept his eyes closed, paws pressed over them. His ears were flat against his skull. He quivered and shook and panted. The time seemed only to continue to stretch and stretch. He whimpered under his breath.

A harsh noise, scraping and snapping, made him leap to his feet. He panted harder, shaking finely, then bore his teeth. He let out a low, curling snarl, unable to do anything more. His shoulder was cold as if he had struck with numbness across the broken skin and wounded muscle.

He pressed his weight roughly to the cavern floor with his long claws sinking into the harsh stone. His shoulders squared, his eyes sharp and dangerous within the darkness.

The pine needles moved, tugged away ruthlessly. He bristled fearfully. The snarl rose in his throat. He quivered harder.

The scrabbling noise became harsher. Ice snapped and broke. The stones shuddered faintly where something touched them. Then a large black nose breathed roughly into the entrance. Large gusts of bright white air burst forth. Then two large paws pressed into the entrance. Eight black claws were thick, curled harshly, and dug into the stone. With a single haul of his body, the entrance was swallowed away into darkness.

Yami threw himself forward, stepping inside with ease. He shook himself out, a small splattering of blood flashing against the wall of the stone cavern. The wolf licked his lips and panted softly. His ears flickered about once.

The relief Yugi felt in his system made him collapse. He fell as if his legs were broken beneath him. He stared up at him, blue-violet eyes gleaming with shock. His body broke into violent tremors. His voice came in a high, hideous pitch of a shrill whine.

The black wolf paused, then tilted his head and crept towards him. _I told you I would return to you_ , he stated calmly. He took a seat in front of him, then licked at his own shoulder. Yugi could faintly smell blood from the movement. _We must get a move on soon, however. Where there is one hunter, there is often guarantee of another_.

Yugi stared with glassy eyes, his shock and relief at war with the other boy's clear words. _Yami…_

He was pleading, his voice pathetic as it shook upon the syllables of his names. The wolf turned his head, startled, then peered at him curiously. For a moment neither of them moved and no words had the strength to break the silence. A sense of understanding came upon them both as Yami finally rose to his feet and found his newest place at his side.

He lowered his mouth, tongue stroking at the wound. It had long since healed, but the bare skin was still crusted with blood. He lapped at it, the cold edge of it making his head spin for a moment. Yugi pressed into his side, a desperate and childish plea that he comfort him. But he lacked the words and Yami's intentions were to get them to safety rather than mollify the other boy.

 _Come, let's go find your bag and return to your home_ , he announced, eyes narrow and glittering as Yugi looked up at him in surprise. _We have wasted enough time. If we are here when someone comes upon this cave_ …

 _How would they know to, Yami_? _You're not hurt, are you_?

He shook his head. _No, but I did not cover my tracks. I would have wasted my time if I had done so_. He was on his feet immediately again, turning towards the entrance without a second glance. The smaller boy slowly, shaking and feeling sick to his stomach, got to his feet to follow.

It took Yami only a few moments to find their bag and change back, urging him to do so with only a firm glance. Yugi was shaken, feeling further nauseated, but still followed his silent instruction. He pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth. A foul taste had come across the pale muscle. He narrowed his eyes as he pushed himself through the Change.

In his shock and fear, he did not truly feel the pain that had accompanied such action before. Instead he found himself so cold and numb that it was impossible to him that he had even managed to do it. As he stood there, shaken by the cold and the very edge of panic which still courted his tired mind, Yami passed him his clothes over. Not a single word passed from his lips.

Even as they crawled in through the window and Yugi struggled to truly think straight, he did not say a word.

Someone had shot at him.

They had _shot_ him _in the shoulder_.

Someone had tried to _kill_ him.

Someone had been _waiting around to kill him_.

And Yami seemed not to care.

He turned his head and peered at him. The taller boy was expressionless. His grip on the fabric of his backpack was easy and light. When he dropped it aside, he looked nonchalant. When he bothered to look at him, his red eyes appeared almost dismissive.

Yugi's stomach clenched. "You're mad at me," he hissed, his voice undertones with a vicious snarl. "You're actually fucking mad at me."

Yami halted from where he had been about to reclaim a spot on the bed. His head was slightly bowed, his fingers touching the fabric of his comforter lightly. His eyes flickered but he could not see them beneath the shadow of his face. But his body was tense now and the restlessness of it made Yugi further angry.

"You think you have the right to be upset with me?" the small teen snarled, trembling furiously. "You fucking blame this on me?"

His fingers drummed on the rough surface of the downy comforter. His eyes flickered again. His lashes were long, cutting across his pupils when his attention slid to him. He did not raise his head.

"I'm the one who got fucking _shot_ , Yami, not you!" he barked out, baring his teeth. He knew his voice should have been lowered. He knew for a fact that his mom and grandpa were home. He knew they could hear him if they tried to. "And you're going to blame this on me?"

His nails drummed again. His eyes flashed and danced, hideously burning. He raised his chin, then turned his head. His gaze burst with anger.

"I do not blame you," he hissed, spitting at him. "I am pissed, but it is not with you."

"You won't even look at me!"

"I nearly got you killed and you wish for me to look at you, Yugi? Truly, is that what you wish for? I was foolish and my temper distracted me from an oncoming threat. You? You were and always have been an innocent bystander swept up into things that never should have concerned you." He bore his teeth, growling low in his throat. "I put you in danger the moment I decided I should rather argue than pay attention to our surroundings."

"You what…?" Yugi tossed his head back and forth with a roll of his eyes. "You didn't have anything to do with it. You didn't exactly lead them to us."

"Is that what matters to you? That I was next to you when it happened? You foolish child! That is the most inconsequential thing to cling to within the entire event. Do you not understand? I am the alpha. I am meant to make sure that you are safe."

"And you _did_!" the smaller boy pleaded desperately, eyes wide and horrified. Why had he begun this argument? Why had he been so stupid as to bring this up? "Yami, you _did_ protect me!"

"After I very nearly got you killed. I was foolish and I was angry. I lost my temper. And I did not pay attention. And so _you_ very nearly paid for my mistake—"

"But I didn't—"

"But you could have! Damn it, Yugi, you have no idea what you came so close to. You have no idea what fate could have swallowed you!" He chomped his teeth, voice lowered into a hideous sneer. "Wolves that are caught by hunters are often used as fighting _pets_. If they're injected with the right amount of wolfsbane, one can be kept in their form for so long that they can basically lose the ability to change altogether. And when they are unable to fight anymore, they often try to use them as a breeding tool. Many hunters will catch and hold a wolf for as long as it takes to get a very certain coat pattern. Then they allow the offspring to grow to a certain age, as healthy as they can be, before skinning them."

Yugi stared at him with the most horrified expression he had ever showed him before.

Yami shook his head sharply. "And that is only if you survive. Many times, when a wolf is shot, they are mercilessly tortured to death, and the Change is forced in a way which will kill them. Then they are skinned. Werewolf pelts are advertised as regular wolf pelts but the colors are so much glossier and more vibrant that they fetch a much bigger sum than others can boast."


	23. Blood

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day (no update on June 2nd)**

 **Chapter Warnings: DETAILED Night Terrors (Mutilated Corpses, Blood, Dead Bodies)**

 **Just a head's up, guys, but the next couple of chapters might be late. Something popped up. So, if I miss an update, don't be alarmed. I'll AT THE VERY LEAST manage to get one chapter out a week until it gets cleared up. Let's hope that's sooner rather than later.**

Chapter XXIII: Blood

 _Work Log Entry XXIII: April, 1998_

 _April 11_

 _His eyes are still completely black but for the whites of them. He looks almost as if he is in a constant state of alarm and full of adrenaline because of this._

 _But the reflective quality has only grown._

 _And it has become obvious that he can see but his hearing and sense of smell are far superior._

 _We think there may have been permanent damage due to our neglect in his earlier days._

Yugi was still shaking pathetically when the first hour had passed. He'd woken sweating, face red with the amount of energy he'd spent trying to wake himself from that hideous nightmare. But at least he had not been bleeding.

Yami, on the other hand, had completely gouged his arms open. His wrists had been drenched, his skin torn to almost to his elbows. He'd been writhing and panicked even in his sleep. The bed had been soaked from it, the yellow comforter bright and hideous red.

It had taken him ten minutes to fully wake him. He'd shaken him, said his name until he thought his voice might fail him, and then finally covered his mouth with his hand and pinched his nose. As he had expected, Yami had very abruptly woken due to the strangulation.

But what he had done after that had nearly knocked Yugi off his feet.

The red-eyed teen hadn't recognized him in the least. His eyes had been dilated hideously, his expression so overtaken with terror, and he was deathly still. Yugi had at first thought to ask if he was okay. But then the other had reacted. He'd been thrown on his back with the other boy straddling him. His hands were around his neck, his teeth bared. He was squeezing tightly but the entire situation had left Yugi merely looking up at him.

And then Yami had somehow reached the conclusion in his own mind that the small teen was not a threat. His hands slippery and heated from the blood on them, he had drawn his grip from his neck. He'd stared at him, at first glance confused but with an unsteady terror that seemed to very quickly rise up and swallow him whole.

Yugi had managed only to get him to remain near him long enough to bandage the hideous cuts he'd inflicted on himself. But then the other boy had seemingly vanished. He had looked away for only a moment, and then turned back to find not a trace of him. Had it not been for the blood on his comforter and the terror which had come upon his face in his mind, he would have assumed it was part of his dream.

Yugi shivered violently as he turned his head to glance over his shoulder towards the hallway. He had not gone back into the room since. But he knew he had to change the comforter and replace it with another one or at the very least throw it into the wash before his mom and grandpa woke up. If they were to see the mess of bright red and the way it had dripped all the way down seemingly to the floor in such thick rivulets…

He shuddered and turned away again immediately. Now that Yami was not there, his head felt sickeningly unbalanced. It was lighter than usual, with a painful throbbing in the front. It was not as if he was going to have a migraine, and he recognized it for its obvious fear-induced existence. But it still made him grimace and the way it seemed to travel back to the far corner of his skull made him shiver. It was like something living and writhing there, worming itself into his thoughts with persistence.

But if he focused on it, he was sure his mind would fall on his nightmare. And to have that happen made him want to sob.

Yugi raised a hand, brushing it through his long bangs, and chewed the inside of his cheek until it bled hideously against his tongue. The taste made him shiver and his heart seemed to burst within his chest as it raced harder. His hands were shaking again, harder than before, as he lowered them to the table in front of him. He traced patterns across the tablecloth, feeling sickened by his inability to do anything further.

He waited until some of the more persistent tremors had faded slightly. It seemed to take days before his body began to calm itself. It was not further than resisting the quake of his shoulders and the twist of his gut coiling so violently. But it still allowed him enough peace to settle back against his chair more comfortably.

He was not sure where Yami had run off to.

But he almost wished he could join him.

Or that Yami would stay there for a long time.

The thought made him feel disloyal and childish, but the terror he'd seen on his face, the way his eyes had been so hideously wide and dilated, how he had looked at his fingers so soaked in blood with a horrified and exhausted expression, made him reluctant to wish otherwise. He felt sick with disgust, beyond himself with the vividness of the images which coursed behind his closed eyelids.

He had failed to tell Yami about the first occurrence of the dream, so similar and hideous that he had felt too sick to speak of it. But the other boy had woken from his panicked panting, had watched him as if he thought he was going to flee at any moment.

Flashes of white and the thick smell of copper assaulted his eyes and nose as if summoned. He flinched. His eyes shot around. He hadn't even seen the bones clearly. He hadn't seen…

The entrails were more apparent than—

He nearly sobbed again, shaking his head harshly. His head was throbbing now.

Maybe if he took some medication, he could simply turn it all off. Maybe if he ignored his terror long enough to function in the effort to regain some calm, he could take his medication and not have these foggy images every time he blinked.

Yet, he could not make himself move towards the bathroom. He was too shaken to put his weight on his legs again.

He lowered his eyes to the table, narrowing them.

They'd been calling his name.

Those hideous, disgusting writhing forms of exposed muscle and sinew and flowing blood and dripping entrails had _been calling his name_.

Yugi shuddered and glanced at the time on the microwave. He had about five minutes before his mom got up. He had about ten before she would come check on him.

He jumped to his feet. His balance was undone and his knees felt as if they might buckle beneath his weight, but he still made his way towards his bedroom.

* * *

Yami kept his nose to the ground. In an attempt to calm his nerves, he'd gone about taking on the task of hunting. But he was not hungry, and the residual fear of the dream made him feel sickened.

So he stalked instead, chased and turned away again when they got far enough ahead of him. He gave chase for only a few minutes, padding briskly and powerfully. He did not sprint fully. He would need his energy later. He knew it instinctively.

So he padded on softened snow, the ice having turned to delicate slush, and scented the air to find the hint of frost and water which announced new snowfall approaching. Lazily he twitched his nose and pressed it to the ground again, scenting and shivering. His insides were still like liquid from the fear which still held him so tightly.

They'd been calling for Yugi first. They'd been—

They had been carcasses.

They'd been strung up by their spines.

They had been screaming.

They'd been calling and calling and—

He missed his step and fell face first to the floor.

Terror made his limbs quake.

Blood began to ooze from the newly inflicted wounds.

He shuddered.

When he breathed, he was wheezing.

Yami pressed his chin into the ground, then twisted his face to push his cheek into the snow. His body trembled and burst with pain. His heart raced in his chest. His lungs twisted harshly. He breathed out roughly. He gasped and wheezed. His claws twitched. His fur shuddered and rippled.

He almost whimpered for all the pain in his body.

But it was not truly bodily. It was mental duress. It was pain and ache brought on by broken thoughts and bleeding memories. And it was fear and his own blood draining on the earth which made him unable to think past it.

He shivered and tugged a paw towards his face. The pad of it was harsh and calloused and cold. But it dripped with his blood as well. It heated briefly then seemed to grow crystalline. He shivered and closed his eyes tightly.

They had been calling his name.

They had called Yugi first.

But they had called him as well.

They had danced under a darkened, bleeding red and orange rustic sky where ravens circled and cawed. They had twisted and writhed and growled and chomped their teeth. They had belted out the most terrible of melodies in order to make them tremble. Their blood had fallen in thick droplets, their cries hideous and morphed.

They had called his name.

But they had called Yugi first.

He trembled and opened his eyes again. The forest looked almost gray, blackened with his despair and desperation. He wanted to bury away the horror of that nightmare. He wanted to outrun it and leave it far behind.

But his mind was always caught on things. And racing never did more than wind him. And his stomach dropped with hatred. And his legs ached from their incisions.

He allowed his breath to come in a shudder. It was weak and hideous, a rasping quality underlining it. But it reminded him again of something more vital than even that nightmare.

He was alive.

The air was stirred with his exhales.

He could see the proof of his own breaths even if he could not feel it.

He could watch it.

He could hear it.

He could not feel it.

But his sense of touch had been warped for a while, he felt. It had been on the precipice of disappearance and overload for so long he had all but forced himself to forget it. Smell was far superior, and sight was necessary. Hearing was his most important. But taste and touch seemed simply to be there.

He raised his head again, then drew in a new breath, and climbed to his feet. Lying about would do him no good. If anything he suspected it would get him killed.

He forced his thoughts away. He could not focus on the way the muscle had dropped in velvety chunks of decay. He could not think of how the blood had fallen in rivers. He could not be caught in the image of their lifeless eyes. Or the ones that had already decayed so far that the organs were maggot-ridden in their dark sockets.

He pushed himself forward, at first shakily, and then trotting as swiftly as he could. He would not sprint. Running would do him no good. He could not outrun such horror in his mind. So he kept his pace and pushed through the trees with a shaky sincerity which made him quiver.

Yami was halfway through the forest when the first stone popped up. He slowed, at first suspicious. Was it a trap? And what kind of trap could it be? He padded on much softer, lighter, unsure feet. He took small steps, sniffing heavily each time. But all he could smell was recently disturbed earth. It was harsh, rancid in his nose, and his stomach quivered pathetically.

He did not like the more pristine smell which touched his senses. He did not like the way the air seemed to grow somehow heavier. It was burdensome to come into the area which this stone rested.

Yet, he found his curiosity insatiable and his heart quivering behind his ribs did nothing to stop it.

He slowed further.

It was agonizing. The movements were too heavy. They were too soft. They were too infrequent. He was moving too slowly. He was moving too quickly. He shivered. He twitched. He turned his head. He looked back.

Something about this stone was surreal to him. Nothing leaped out to attack as he got to the side of it. There was no shock of electricity. No net was flung forward. Not a single thing came to him. As he looked about himself once, there was no hint of foreboding any longer. His tension eased slightly. But he did not allow his guard to lower any further.

He would not allow himself to be _caught_ off guard.

Yami looked at the stone. It was oddly obtrusive. It was smoothed at the top into an arch, but covered so firmly in ice that it looked like a mere dune of snow. Had he not been paying such attention, so incredibly tense, he would assume it to be so. But as he sniffed it and tilted his head, he knew better. It was not a simple stone.

It was carved. It had been formed unto such perfect proportion.

He narrowed his eyes, flicking his ears. He could not hear anything at the moment. He could not smell more than that smoldering displaced earth scent. He scanned this slab of stone, eyes flickering about the smooth surface.

As expected, letters and characters had been drawn into it, etched with delicate detail. It was a name, a series of dates. It was, as he looked at it, only a span of thirteen years. And, studying it further, his mind began to rapidly provide him the name of such a stone.

It was a grave marker. It held the name of the person buried beneath it. They were six feet beneath that slab. They were—

Rotting, decaying, their flesh unidentifiable, their bones polished from years—

He flinched away. He backed up several steps.

A noise made him stop short. He bristled, freezing in place. His heart raced. His eyes grew owlish with horror.

Was it a trap?

Had he somehow sprung something?

Were there hunters, waiting in the bushes?

Were they going to kill him?

Or attempt to breed him endlessly or—?

It was a rough, scraping, tearing noise.

He stiffened, then blinked and turned his head. He pricked his ears. His eyes strained but he could not focus. There were rows of them, he noticed now. There were rows of gravestones, all precise measurements apart from each other. They were all dispersed about the trees and their narrow trunks. The undergrowth was thicker here than elsewhere he had seen, with the trees far less and thinner than he had noticed. He supposed it made sense. The area was only becoming reclaimed by the forest. This made it harder for the trees to grow back in place as they would have otherwise.

He crept forward, drawn by this noise. It sounded like what he knew to be earth struck by long nails. It sounded like he thought to be the ground splitting beneath the force of someone's touch. So he kept himself as quiet as he could, his movements small and slow.

He did not want a fight in his position now.

He was sure if one were to begin, he would lose.

His mind was still so scattered, trying so terribly hard to reach for the nightmare again. And he could not risk a fight if he was unable to defend himself. So he watched his exhales, breathing long and slow, and took small and almost unnoticeable steps. He shuffled and pressed soft weight into each limb, the noise of his crunching movements so soft it was but a whisper.

Yami paused as the earthen smell became more poignant. He flicked his ears, training them for any noise. He steeled his muscles, then crept forward again.

At first he saw nothing.

As he glanced about himself in the low light, he could detect nothing.

The scraping noise continued.

It was accompanied by a snapping noise.

Something cracked and splintered.

He tilted his head, listening harder. He could not pinpoint it exactly.

Then he turned his head and froze in place. The earth was disturbed there. Clumps of hard, frozen dirt had been strewn about. It was around a rather spindly tree which looked easily overthrown by the wind. It was covered in snow, weighted pathetically. He calculated it would either grow stronger in spring or die away during this winter. Its roots were untouched. But before it, about a foot away, was another marker.

And in front of that, was the dirt.

Yami tilted his head further. The scraping of claws and the crackling noise were fresh in his ears. It burned and singed his skin. He shivered beneath his large pelt. Then he looked about himself again.

There was another, heavier crunching noise. He shifted forward only an inch, then crouched low to the ground. Instinct told him that cover was needed. He did not want to investigate at the risk of he himself being discovered. If a fight happened, he was as good as dead.

Yet he could not manage to pull himself forward again. Instead he remained there, pressing his belly to the ground. The snow made his body ache for a split second. He closed his eyes tiredly. Then he pressed his jaw against his paws.

The crunching noise persisted. He searched his memory. It was a familiar noise…

Yet he could not place it for a moment. The snapping noise grew louder. Then he heard a softer but still distinct crunch. His body quivered faintly. He kept his eyes closed.

What would one do in the graveyard?

Yami could not understand in that moment why it was that he did not scent the air and think to find out for himself. It would be so easy. But he failed to do so. Something about it all made him feel exhausted, forced him to lay his head down and rest. He did not sleep, but he remained there for a good while.

The clouds had just begun to dust the world with new snow when he opened his eyes again. He scented the air, surprised when a flake melted in his nose, then stopped short. There was a low and distinct humming noise. As he raised his head, a large black form had leaped out of the uneven dip within the earth before his eyes. It was almost his size, with floppy ears and a coat that looked far too shaggy to ever be considered glossy or soft. And its tail was so long it almost scraped the earth.

He tilted his head, then looked towards the gravestone. A sense of clarity that had somehow eluded him before came to him now.

It was a hellhound. And it had chosen to eat a fresher grave in what almost seemed to be a forgotten yard. It had chosen not to hunt for live prey, but to feast on the dead. It had dug up the grave. The noise he'd heard…

The humming grew louder. The hellhound was a few long yards from him. He drew himself into a crouch. Something was wrong. He was so tense his body shivered with it. In fine jerks and trembles, Yami peered forward into the dim lighting of a morning still in the embrace of dawn and overshadowed with dustings of snow. And what he saw made him freeze in place.

Had he felt any kinship with the creature before him, he might have risked his own safety.

But he knew nothing of it.

And he had no ties to hellhounds as a whole.

Lycanthropes and hellhounds were animals that did not particularly interact unless forced. But they also were peaceful with one another for the most part. As subspecies it was more a basis of acknowledging each other and going about their own ways.

But Yami knew, in that single moment, that cowardice and bravery were far from the same.

And while he could have helped, his forte seemed to lie with the former.

So he backed up as the taser was sprung.

When the hound dropped, so did he race away.

* * *

Yugi was not sure what he had expected to find when Yami had returned. He did not know whether he thought he would be as shaken as he himself had remained or calmer. He did not know if he thought he would be upset or still clearly terrified.

But, whatever he had expected, it was not for Yami to be trying to bandage his own arms and shaking so hard that the tape kept catching on itself. He was trembling pathetically, his form wracked with them. He was breathing heavily, almost panting, and his eyes were dilated with a fear that Yugi could never truly hope to grasp.

He hesitated for a moment, glancing about them slowly. Yami had snatched one of the darker towels to put on his lap. He must have been using it to soak up the blood. The wounds were bleeding so heavily it was as if they were fresh again.

Yugi shivered. "Here, let me," he muttered softly, taking a small step forward. Yami startled but did not object. He did not raise his eyes, either, as the smaller boy approached him, instead breathing in harder. It almost sounded as if he were sobbing and choking on the noise.

Yugi forced himself to ignore the urge to demand that he was okay. Instead he licked his lips to keep from letting out a noise of his own, and took a seat next to him on the edge of the bed. Yami did not flinch away from him as he took the tape. Yugi was not sure Yami saw the shakiness in his fingers or noticed his hesitance in even glancing at him fully. But should he have, there was never a comment.

He wiped the wounds clean, cursing under his breath at the state of them, and sighed softly. "You need stitches again," he stated in a small voice, looking up at him for the first time. Yami had been watching him before, but when his eyes came up, his head snapped away. He did not speak, but the small boy knew he was not going to.

Whatever had happened had rattled him further. He shook his head and picked through the kit he had laid a few inches away from him. He dug out the needles and sutures, frowning and working in threading it for a moment. He wanted to ask. It was a heavy temptation.

But the words that came out instead were "I'll make you a shake and get you some medicine, okay?"

Yami jerked, a sloppy nod. He was quivering. The fine trembles made Yugi's heart ache. He had to choke back the sob that threatened to leave him.

"Good," he murmured softly. He stilled his hands long enough to thread the wound together on his left arm, tying and snipping it. By the gods, it looked like Yami had killed someone and attempted to do the same to himself. Yugi felt sick just looking at it.

Hadn't he seen enough blood just from that dream alone?

There had been that river and—

He stopped that thought in its tracks. Immediately he began to thread a needle again, hissing his displeasure in an uneven breath. Yami remained perfectly verbally silent beside him, trembling finely and breathing in those ragged gasping noises as if he were choking on the air itself.

Yugi focused as he would on a surgery with his mom. His only thoughts circulated around blood loss, sealing the wound, and disinfectant. When he wrapped his arms up and looked them over, checking that no blood stained the outside, he finally let himself relax slightly.

"I'll go get your shake and some medicine, okay?"

Yami nodded as unevenly as he had before. Yugi watched him for a long minute and a half, studying his face. Even with his head turned away as it was, he could see that blank, dead look in his eyes. His lashes did nothing to block it and the glazed expression only worked to make his skin seem paler than ever. Yugi tried not to see the way his eyes lent to a more aged expression, a shadow there which made him appear far older.

He shivered, then got to his feet. "Be right back," he mumbled unnecessarily. He knew instinctively that Yami would not leave now. But he feared for a moment that if he was not looking at him, he'd find that he had never been back to the house in the first place.

When he got to the door he had to glance back. His fingers were touching the knob, his breathing was somewhat uneven, and his eyes were wide. The other boy, however, was merely looking at his wrists, am expression of keen despair coloring his face. Yugi couldn't figure out what it was that had caused him to look so downtrodden but it shook him to his core to see it so vividly.

When Yami flexed his fingers, staring at where they were still darkened by dried blood, the small teen shivered and turned away. Something had scared the taller teen to the point of terror and absolute horror. Something had happened in the woods and now he was suffering for it.

Because he knew it had not been merely the dream to do such a thing. Yami had been scared and terrified but he'd also been able to stop his shaking long enough to let him bandage him. And his wounds had not been as bad. He'd not needed sutures before, just gauze and tape and wrapping. He'd been perfectly fine beyond that.

And Yugi knew he must have changed at some point. His clothes were soaked from lying in the snow but they were void of most of the blood. A few splotches colored his knees and his right thigh but somehow he had managed to keep it from his jeans until he'd gotten inside. But, knowing he'd changed, why was it that he hadn't healed? He'd most likely gone hunting so why had he failed to heal properly? It made no sense.

He shivered, mixing the powder and milk together with a glance over his shoulder. His mom had gone to the main clinic and his grandpa was at the supermarket getting some food. He and Yami were completely alone, as they normally were. But it still jarred him slightly. His stomach tossed and twisted. His hands were still shaking finely. He tossed the spoon in the sink, then made his way back towards the room.

Yami was in the exact same place as when he had left. He was staring, eyes darkened with that same horror and despair, and that glazed expression had not changed. He was completely unfocused, his eyes giving away an amount of stress that Yugi himself thought he had most likely never experienced before. It was terrifying to see him in such a way now, shaken and disturbed and undone by it all.

"Here," he whispered, unable to raise his voice. It scratched itself out of its throat and blistered his tongue. There was a bitter, almost acidic tinge that came with the word and he shivered at the taste.

Yami blinked, turning and raising his head. He looked unnaturally confused by his presence there, but forced it away in order to take the glass from him. He was lucky he had not filled it completely as he would have before, because the way the liquid was jostled made it clear he would have soaked the comforter.

Yugi looked away again quickly.

"I'm going to go get you some medicine."

He should have grabbed that first. Or at least before he came into the room again. He felt stupid and irreparably small for such a mistake. Here Yami was, trembling and distressed, and he was prolonging everything he could think of that might help to make him feel better.

Yugi hurried off to get something for him. He wanted to puke and the toilet looked bright and shiny and inviting, but he didn't want to waste anymore time. He ignored his rolling stomach, the way his heart was beginning to pound too quickly, and rushed to take the lid off and shake a pill out into his hand. He was back in his room beside Yami before he could even fully think it through.

When he turned this time, his red eyes were darker and his pupils blown. But the glaze was gone though the abundance of fear and sorrow were not. He was still displaced somewhere in the back of his mind, but it was apparent that he was somewhat more focused. When he took the pill from him, Yugi moved to make his way towards the bathroom. The bile was scorching a path up his throat.

But the other boy moved suddenly. His fingers, shaking and weak, grasped at his wrist. It was a light, almost gossamer sensation, and it was not truly a grip to be held but a simple brush of his fingers along his pulse. Yami was staring at where he'd touched him. His eyes were haunted and shadowed, but his focus was entirely on his skin rather than the things that so hideously twisted in his mind.

He did not open his mouth nor did he even blink. But his fingers ghosted over his pulse a second time. Then he shifted forward, tilting his head. Yugi was shaken when he realized that he was so close, with such a fractional shift, in order to hear his heart in his chest. He did not move to press his ear to it, but he could hear it from the small distance he sat from him.

Yugi was trembling finely with the shock of such discovery. His heart was racing faster and his stomach was tossing more violently. Yet the nauseous sensation had spilled away into mere tension. Yami was not looking at his face, so he did not see the heartbroken and terrified expression on his face. But he wondered if he could sense it.

The seconds passed, stretching into a handful of minutes, and then Yami shifted away.

He took the pill Yugi had been holding out, brushing the tips of his fingers against his palm, and turned back to his cup. He took a few sips, tasting it, and then popped it into his mouth and downed the rest of the beverage. He placed it on top of the metal desk and then moved away from the bed as if it might burn him.

He did not open his mouth nor did he even blink. But his fingers ghosted over his pulse a second time. Then he shifted forward, tilting his head. Yugi was shaken when he realized that he was so close, with such a fractional shift, in order to hear his heart in his chest. He did not move to press his ear to it, but he could hear it from the small distance he sat from him.

Yugi was trembling finely with the shock of such discovery. His heart was racing faster and his stomach was tossing more violently. Yet the nauseous sensation had spilled away into mere tension. Yami was not looking at his face, so he did not see the heartbroken and terrified expression on his face. But he wondered if he could sense it.

The seconds passed, stretching into a handful of minutes, and then Yami shifted away.

He took the pill Yugi had been holding out, brushing the tips of his fingers against his palm, and turned back to his cup. He took a few sips, tasting it, and then popped it into his mouth and downed the rest of the beverage. He placed it on top of the metal desk and then moved away from the bed as if it might burn him.

The position had to be a miserable one but he dare not move him.

Yami had reacted so badly to him when he had woken him before. And he had still been so visibly tense. He had remained shaky until the moment he had fallen asleep. He was visibly undone by the way he looked even in his restful state. There was a hideous and disturbing tension in his shoulders which made them taut. His fingers were sunk into the carpet, gripping the fibers with sharp nails. His bowed head blocked the sight of his neck but he was sure it was corded.

Yugi shivered, then looked away. He wasn't having a nightmare. If he was, he would have been digging at his wrists again.

He looked at his own hands for a moment. His nails had grown a little darker, had become more resistant to breaks. He had caught one in his desk drawer the night before and the keratin had bent but had not broken. He'd been amazed and disconcerted. Now he saw them and he found himself wondering if his own nails could slice so easily into his flesh as Yami's did.

Yami had torn through flesh and sinew all the way to the bone again as he had once before. He was sure now that it had not been an attack or an accident which had caused the other's hideous wounds the first time he had come to the clinic that night.

He shivered.

How long ago had he done so? How long had it been since he had been seated on his doorstep, licking his bleeding wrists in an effort to stem them? How much time had passed since he had first bandaged them and woken in the night to Yami clawing them again?

It felt like an eternity. But he knew it had only been a handful of days, weeks at the most. Had a month even passed yet? He could not remember, but he did not think so.

Yugi looked away from himself and glanced at Yami again. That nightmare—was that why he had woken those couple of nights to him wide awake and watching him? Was that what had caused him to stare at him in the darkness and then leave his side as if he might scald him?

Had he somehow had a nightmare so similar to his that he had been watching for it?

He nearly laughed at himself. No, it wasn't just _similar_ ; it was the exact _same_ nightmare. Yami had been in his dream somehow. They'd shared this nightmare. The wolves had been calling to them both…

The first time the dream occurred the day before, he had assumed it was because of the things which Yami had mentioned hunters doing to captured werewolves. He had been entirely sure that this was the reasoning behind his horrifying and darkened dreamscape. He had assumed the ravens to be the scavengers meant to feast on a caught wolf's decrepit flesh. He had thought the voice to be a hunter sneering his name.

Now he knew differently. The ravens which shed their feathers like drops of blood had not been his imagination. And the writhing forms of the wolves as they rose in waves were nothing fear had borne in his mind. The way the skeletons snarled and snapped at him as he stood there trembling had not been dogs morphed in his mind's eye.

They had been something he could not fully fathom. Were they warnings? Were they dead wolves?

His brown-specked gray muzzle had been drenched with foaming saliva, blood drizzling from the crevices. The white beneath the bridge of his nose had been soaked with the discoloration, bright red and almost black against the shadows. The dark gray of the fur surrounding his eyes, following the stops of them in jagged downward currents, had been almost glued together, stringy from the liquid soaking them there.

His dark gray eyes had glinted like ice, frozen and scornful, his lighter tawny and silver brows pulling together. His black ears had pricked forward, the hairs of them beginning to rapidly shed away. When he had stepped forward, his throat was open in a gaping wound, blood and sinew falling away. The ringlet of black and dark brown above the tawny undercoat had shuddered and begun to drop, soft tufts of fur that glistened. Yugi had been amazed by the blood and the way his throat had shown bright red beneath the falling fur, the entirety of muscle broken and fading before his eyes.

His head had lowered, a snarl forming on his lips. And the fur along his back, naturally raised in a jagged line along the dorsal cape, had looked like a glacier of silver tipped with black. All along his body the fur had been formerly beautiful was stripped away to leave pale or bleeding flesh in its wake. Where the patch of black had shown on his shoulders, blood welled in a river. The black guard hairs that held away sight of his tawny undercoat fell like jagged needles and his back legs, a mixture of white and gold, had been simply red…

When Yugi had turned his head to look in the direction the gray wolf was staring, he'd found him there. He was only a few feet away, crouched low to the ground with his fur in a bristle. His ears were laid back, his eyes dilated hideously, and he was shaking so violently he looked like he was being jostled by the unearthly, disgusting wind which occasionally whipped forth. That acrid scent still burned Yugi's nose as he thought of it now.

The chanting of his own name from voices which he had never known nor would ever come to do so, had changed immediately to Yami's own. And from the masses of decaying bodies had come seven wolves, each of them in pairs but for the last whom Yami had cowed before with such terror that Yugi had been heartbroken around his own fear.

There had been a large, chocolate brown one with small streaks of black along the paws and shoulders and eyes of ice. There was a smaller, mottled gray with an almost bluish tint where it was touched with black and its gangly white forelimbs, eyes a disturbing shade of gray with spots of brown.

From behind them was a she-wolf with similar eyes and a coat so pale white it seemed to shimmer with streaks of silver and something almost like soft blue to match her eyes. Then came a she-wolf that was predominantly golden, with patches of bright silver like moonlight and long legs of both colors with eyes that were speckled with something reddish around deep brown.

Then was a taller male with darker gray fur that bordered on black, with slivers of silver and brown along the muzzle and eyes of deep gray and splashes of gold and blue. The final was a large and beautiful, handsome, dark gray male with longer white legs and a face of sharp and square features and long jaw, with the most mesmerizing of sea green with halos of teal color.

The first six had been emaciated beyond belief, with skeletal frames that were still in tact unlike the creatures which surrounded them. The last was well-built, with strong muscle sharpened with youth, and had looked healthy enough that Yugi almost assumed him to be living.

And then it had spoken, in a voice very much like that of rolling thunder with an undertone of crackling lightning, the timbre of it beautifully baritone. It was somewhat familiar to Yugi, as if he had heard it but once before, and he had nearly drowned in the tone of it.

But then it had moved closer. And the most heart-wrenching noise Yugi had ever heard burst within his ears. It was a shattered and hollow noise, so pained as to be in response to a mortal wound, and the smaller white wolf spun around with a horrified expression.

Yami had been pressed further to the ground, gaping up at this new form. He had let out that unearthly noise of despair again, a scream which made the world shake and shatter around them. Beneath their feet the earth had shifted and the mass of dead wolves had snarled and chomped their teeth in response to his fear.

The world separated and changed under them. As they stood, it shattered and fell in chunks like smooth, broken glass. Yugi yelped. Yami gaped at the large green-eyed gray male and let out that shattered noise again. Then they plummeted.

When they fell, the earth seemed to surge and shift. Ripples of something almost like power and hatred curled upwards and pushed outwards all at once. The world beneath looked like a writhing mass of fur that had been shed by millions of bodies. And beneath its fluffy plumage, they dropped into a river. The depth of it was surreal, encompassing them at first before both pushed their ways upwards once more.

It was only when their noses were above the surface, muzzles drenched, both choking for air, that Yugi saw that it was not water. The expanse of it was a dark, hideous color, the surface shiny enough to make his fur stand on end. But the scent was thick, drenching his insides and coating his senses so that he choked on air. His fur was stained, his paw covered in that oily liquid.

Blood. They had landed in a pool of blood...

Yugi squeezed his eyes shut tightly. Then he opened them into mere slits. He peered towards him from beneath his lashes. Yami was still fast asleep. He was still resting in that same unnatural position. His arms were still completely encased in gauze and tape. His legs were still splayed out before him.

He had panicked when the corpses had grabbed them. Like Yami, he had flailed and snarled and snapped. He'd sunk his teeth in and wailed in hideous disgust at the taste which greeted him. He'd thrashed and screamed and tried to tear away from them. Teeth had caught in his fur and claws had hooked his skin. The blood had welled up, swallowing them and drowning them.

He had woken first. It was when a large black raven dove for his face, talons stretched and eyes a horrid blazing red, that he had jerked awake. He'd been choking and panting. He had thrashed and flailed pathetically. He had squirmed and writhed and choked harder on the lack of air.

And then he'd realized Yami was still asleep. And waking him had proven difficult to do. It had proven beyond his ability at first. He swallowed thickly now, watching the other boy, and closed his eyes tightly as he shook such a thought away again.

Thinking about it would make it worse. And to make it worse would cause Yami to suffer more than he already seemed to be. He knew the other would figure out what was on his mind.

And if he knew that he suspected that he'd had that dream many times before, what might he do? Would he make a run for it? In his panicked state and the way he had come home as well…Yugi wasn't sure. But he definitely thought it a possibility.

He crossed his legs and settled more comfortably against the headboard. The black towel was bundled on the desk a foot away. The first aid kit had been stuffed under the bed. He wondered if Yami would wake up more comfortable or even further distressed. He was not sure which he thought would be more likely.

Yami tended to surprise him at times.

He closed his eyes, heaviness weighing his limbs and making his lids too laden to lift again. For a while Yugi lost himself somewhere in the darkness, then his eyes snapped open again at the hint of a hissing noise. He blinked and quickly scanned the room around him before stopping short. His reaction had caused Yami to freeze in place from where he had been shifting into a more comfortable position.

They looked at each other, the frustration and disdain on the taller teen's face visible and clear. He must have scared him when he opened his eyes so suddenly. No doubt Yami had been watching him in the hope of not waking him.

He shifted to sit forward, licking his lips because his mouth felt too dry. He bit the inside of his cheek for a moment. "How are your arms?" he asked quietly.

Yami glanced at them dismissively, then looked up and shrugged in a sharp movement. The irritable disdain had not left his expression, lending it a more keen focus.

Yugi tilted his head, staring at him. "Wow, you're extraordinarily agitated now, aren't you?" he muttered, rolling his eyes.

The other boy blinked and then shifted his weight. His eyes remained shaded with slight irritation but his formerly hardened expression grew somewhat softer. His brows furrowed slightly and he frowned at him with something almost crestfallen to match his frustration.

Yugi sighed. "I didn't say that to make you feel guilty." He shifted his weight on the mattress, pursing his lips slightly, and tilted his head as he watched him a moment longer. "Go back to sleep, Yami."

Yami blinked wide eyes, so startled that all of his irritation left him immediately. He tilted his head, unable to stop himself, and peered at him stupidly in confusion. Then he pressed himself more pointedly against the wall.

First he pointed out that he was upset, then he told him to go to sleep?

What kind of sense did that make to him?

He frowned deeply at him, tilting his head further.

Yugi shook his head and offered him a small smile. "Go back to sleep, Yami. I'll wake you up before I go to school tomorrow."

He hadn't slept that long though. He knew that much. He furrowed his brows.

"I planned on letting you sleep through dinner. I'll make you a shake in the morning before I leave. I'll see what I can make you for breakfast."

He blinked, then nodded slowly.

The smaller teen smiled a little more, giving him a more reassuring look that made his insides twist guiltily. How long was it before he got Yugi killed? He was foolish and he was young and all of his own choices so far had only amplified Yugi's own lack of understanding and vulnerability. He'd nearly gotten him killed in the woods. He was sure he had led the humans to him that last time. Something he had done…or failed to, it had nearly cost Yugi his life.

He was only sixteen. His life being so short should never have been a possibility in the first place. Sixteen was hardly anything. And to a werewolf? It was a tiny, miniscule, almost nonexistent blink. With such long lifespans and advanced immune systems, sixteen was nothing.

Sixteen was barely even long enough for a wolf to mourn their offspring.

He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. Yugi was still watching him when he managed to fall into a blank darkness that encompassed his senses completely.

* * *

Yugi shifted under the covers for what felt like the millionth time. He'd been attempting for hours to sleep but all he had managed to do was irritate himself further. As he rolled over and peered at the window and then dragged his eyes towards the corner as he had several times already, he found the situation to now have changed. Formerly, Yami had been collapsed in that same limp heap of limbs he had first fallen asleep within.

But now, looking at him, his head was raised. His eyes were glittering in the darkness. His face was shadowed too much to take note of expression. But he was watching him. He was wide awake and his eyes were boring into his frame.

The small teen swallowed hard, then looked him over for a moment. "Yami?" he muttered, at first with some kind of hope that he might be feeling better and then with the sinking knowledge that he was far from it.

The silence stretched for a moment. The room ached with a long residing tension he had no idea how to ease. Then he caught the smallest of voices, weak and almost senseless, hissing as it slid through the air.

"Yugi."

His name did not sound as if it were a welcome addition to his voice. The hoarse rasp of the tone made his stomach drop, his heart pounding. Was he more upset now than before? What was he meant to say or do now?

Yugi shifted enough to see him more clearly. His eyes strained in the dark, but he could make him out now. His gaze adjusted and his vision sharpened as it bore into his skin with slight desperation. The other boy's face was far from irritated, but looked more crestfallen and tired than he had seen even earlier. The sight of the draw of his mouth, the set of his lips in a tight and firm line, the way his brows had pulled slightly forward, made him shiver. Yami looked as if the very task of acknowledgment had cost him what little energy he possessed.

He looked utterly exhausted.

Yugi felt his heart ache with despair.

"Are you okay?"

The words left his mouth before he could think them through. He immediately lowered his eyes to where Yami had drawn his hands into his lap. His long fingers were caught on the legs of his jeans. His palms were curled slightly to encompass the shape of them. And his legs were still splayed out before him.

He could not fathom hearing someone ask him such a question with the knowledge that nothing was truly okay to him. He shivered. He felt like an idiot.

Yami felt slightly guilty when he saw the startled and confused expression which crossed the other boy's face. But if he were to join him there, he thought he might puke. And he did not want that. He had no desire for such physical weakness. And the additional strain of newfound guilt would kill him.

He looked away again quickly, pulling his legs up to push his knees into his chest. He laid his chin on them, eyes locked on the fibers of the carpet, and ignored the way Yugi stared at him so pointedly.

Yugi sighed softly. "Okay," he muttered in a tone that too easily conveyed his slight frustration at such a response. He looked away again, towards the window for a moment, then shifted to stretch his arms over his legs and fight away a soft yawn. "If you change your mind, though, you're more than welcome to."

Yami shivered. "Thank you."

They fell into silence. The bed was lonely. The floor was desolate.

* * *

"So…the full moon is going to be here in a few days," he commented, feeling immediately young and stupid for bringing up such a topic. He knew Yami was well aware of the way the moon went about its phases, though he was unsure how. But he did know.

Yugi himself was becoming used to the sleeplessness that came with its approach. He found it entirely too frustrating to deal with in all actuality. Shouldn't he have been sleeping more? His body should be worn out by the Change itself, so why not allow it to rest instead?

Yami didn't look up from his nails. "I know."

His voice was gruff, almost irritable. Yugi hesitated even glancing at him at the sound of such an unfamiliar tone. The other boy was so often more polite and kind in manner. Whatever had shaken him so terribly the day before still remained with him. He could sense it, just he could see it in the hollow expression of his eyes whenever they'd locked earlier.

Yugi laid his head back on the pillow again. He hadn't bothered to truly get up today. He'd feigned illness to make his mother feel okay to allow him to stay home. Then he'd ignored the phone calls his friends had made to check on him. He'd disregarded the hunger that picked at his insides and the slight pain which throbbed in the back of his head due to such a decision. He'd even ignored the residual pain from his shoulder from the gunshot two days prior. He had remained lying in his bed, which felt unusually cold and oddly dissatisfying now, and not bothered even once to do anything more than stare at the window for the most part.

His attempts to nap had been hideously skewered by the bright flashes of blood in his vision and clumps of fur. He saw teeth and jaws stained red, soft ears split and ravens crying as fathers fell in immense droplets. He had failed even once to close his eyes more than for a few minutes at a time.

"You'll figure out how to tell when the moon is beginning its cycles too," he added quietly. Yugi jerked his attention to him now. Yami was not looking at him, however. He had pulled his legs to his chest again and was staring at the snow where it touched the panel and slowly began to melt. "All lycanthropes do."

He shivered. It felt so odd to somehow be clumped into such a vast majority by someone who had formerly been treating him as an individual.

Yugi supposed he should not blame that on Yami, however. It was most likely his own displeasure and discontent which made this seem so terrible and great, like an immense wall rising between them.

He licked his lips. "How long did it take you to figure it out?"

Yami blinked and then slowly turned his attention to his. His eyes glazed slightly but then sharpened, his voice almost a sneer of disdain. "I was always aware," he stated simply. Yet, the way his tone seemed to flicker made him appear almost brittle in noise. Yugi shivered, staring at him with what seemed more terrified an expression than he had ever truly worn before. "I was made sure of it."

He bit his lip until it bled, then looked away quickly again. He made a mental note to no longer bring up anything that could possibly allude to the past that Yami so clearly wished to ignore. If he even thought it hinted towards such knowledge, he would save his breath and bite his tongue.

Ever since Yami had said he'd been around the wrong people, not only had Yugi often wondered what they might have done to make him say such a thing, but he'd also tried his hardest to avoid the topic. His curiosity being sated was not worth the potential alienation he knew would come between them should he press too hard to know. And Yami was allowed to have some secrets. It was within anyone's right to do so.

Yugi tried his hardest not to think of that in the first place. By the gods, he would have been the largest hypocrite to exist should he have demanded answers. He still lacked the ability to find the words to tell his friends about what was going on and why he'd lied to Anzu about his inability to date at the moment.

He shivered at the thought, pulling the blankets further up towards his throat. He had not considered his own relationship with her put so heavily on hold in what felt like a lifetime. He curled a hand around the blanket, glancing at Yami again and feeling somewhat sickened. When did he deem him well enough that he would no longer feel the need to baby him as he did so now?

He did not think it would be anytime soon. After all, Yami had seemingly relapsed and curled in on himself more than anything now. His words had only further upset him. It was as if every little breath would trigger a landmine and he was not fully prepared to deal with the backlash of it all. He knew well how badly Yami would continue to react and to put him through that and leave him to deal with it alone was something that Yugi was not willing to do.

Yugi turned and rolled away so that he could no longer face him or the window any longer. It made his stomach ache too hard to wish for something of that magnitude any longer.

He shivered again, staring at the wall, and then glanced at his phone where it rested beside the lamp there. He considered picking it up and pulling it towards him, possibly to check the time or maybe listen to the voicemails his friends had left him.

But instead he pushed the thought aside and lay there for as long as he could. It seemed like hours had passed when he finally rolled back over, hungry and slightly flustered, and sat upright. When he stretched his arms out in front of him and narrowed his eyes around a soft yawn, not once did Yami bother to look up again.

But Yugi saw him and took note of the new appearance that greeted him there. His eyes widened and his brows rose in confusion. Yami sat in his corner, a bundle of teal green material in his lap, the fabric fondled by his long fingers. He stroked it as if it were a living creature, a small animal in need of affection. It was a strange sight for Yugi to take in, and his gut churned with confusion.

What was it about that teal jacket? It had no buttons, no zipper. It had two large pockets on either side, comfortably set for one to rest their hands inside. It was a uniform color, with a shinier material that glittered slightly in the sunlight from the window. The entire design was much like his school uniform jacket but for its singularity in shade and the material. His own was fleece on the inside and well insulated for Hokkaido considering the low temperature which draped over the island even in the summer months.

Yugi would have assumed it to possess the same purpose had it not been for the fact that Yami had told him on numerous occasions he had never been to school before. And he was not sure of any school within Hokkaido which used that shade of color for their uniform.

He had never seen that exact shade or design before in Japan as it was. So maybe it was…from a friend who was from the states? Perhaps he had come across it or was given it when he asked? If Yami had desired the color, he was sure he would have simply inquired about asking for it.

The small teen pressed his lips together. Was it a former lover's?

If it was, how was that possible? Yami had said he'd lived underground within a tunnel system in the mountains. Was it possible that someone had stumbled across him at some point?

Maybe he had been wounded and forced to change and the other had helped him heal and some kind of epic love story had blossomed from it. He rolled his eyes at himself but he had to wonder. Was it possible that Yami had had a lover before?

Perhaps that was why he had been so aggressive after the incident in the woods with the hunter. It made sense to him. If they had been caught and killed at some point, then that would explain Yami's panic and ferocity when he had gone up against the human and his dogs. He still had no idea what he had truly done to them, however, but he had no problem assuming that he had killed them each.

There was no reason to think otherwise. Yami had come back safe and sound. How else could he have achieved such a feat if not for killing the ones that posed a threat to him? Yugi imagined Yami's self-preservation had not allowed for him to simply give them the chance to come after them both again when he was wounded and they were clearly capable of killing them. He had not assumed to know how nor did he often think about it, but he knew somehow Yami had gotten rid of them. And he was sure if something of that magnitude happened again and it was within his power, he would do it as he had before.

Maybe that was why he had saved him. Maybe he had felt regret for not being able to save the other wolf and now strove to do so with him.

He almost wanted to ask. He even thought to form the words in his lungs and shape them with his lips. But then he saw the other boy. He noticed the rise of his shoulders. He took in the way his fingers had tightened around the lapels of the jacket. He was cautious of how the collar was pressed in a smooth grip within his right palm.

Yami had noticed his staring. He would not call him out on it, but his body spoke volumes of self-consciousness. Yugi looked away again, licking his lips.

"I'm going to go get some food." He glanced at him sideways. The taller boy had bowed his head slightly, not embarrassed but seemingly somehow ashamed. "Do you want something?"

He shook his head slowly.

"Okay. When I get back, let's watch a movie, okay?"

He wasn't leaving much room for him to argue, instead getting up to wander off for the kitchen. When he returned, Yami was up and about, moving to settle at the foot of the bed to get comfortable. Yugi smiled faintly.

It was a far step from bridging the numerous issues that had sprung between them due to his prying or Yami's own reluctance, but it soothed the slightest of the ache that had formed under his skin. Yami was willing to meet him halfway for the smaller things. Maybe eventually he would try again with the larger as well.

 **Okay, guys, so last minute nominations for Code Name Atem? They're all in DM, remember? And all three of them have a certain role (the real Atem, masquerading as Atem, and thinking themselves to be Atem). Three names, three different roles. As for when I'll reveal who might have gotten it, I'm going to wait until the end of the story, in which case all of it is going to be figured out and revealed for you guys. It will also give me more time to simply focus on the one-shot without spoiling the plot by saying who might have guessed it.**

 **After this point Code Name Atem becomes too big a plot point to be guessed at because the plot moves rapidly where he is concerned. And before you know it, his identity is going to be revealed. So no guesses after I post chapter twenty-four...**


	24. ATEM

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day (no update on June 2nd)**

 **Chapter Warnings: Mentions of Kidnapping, Mentions of Torture, Mentions of Experiments, COPIOUS Amounts of Blood, Character Death, Description of Wound Cleaning**

 **Okay, guys, so the death in this chapter is really kind of brutal. I apologize, but it was necessary. It comes up several more times throughout the story, because it's actually got a rather large impact later.**

 **Also, one of the experiments mentioned is that they have been attempting to see if male wolves could support an implanted uterus in an attempt to see if the body could possibly somehow allow the pups to be born. The shortest answer is this: NOPE. The lycanthropy attacks the foreign presence as it would a virus of some kind, and viciously destroys it.**

 **As for the females who are pregnant and malnourished, the lycanthropy will fully support the health of the pups over the mother's in an effort to ensure they have a chance of survival. It can very often destroy the mother upon birth due to stress. When the mom is completely healthy, however, the entire event would go almost painlessly.**

 **One thing I will admit to? I could not find anything in my research (which I admit could be because I didn't use the right phrases) to say that there would be another classification beneath subspecies. So that's why Yugi calls the bloodlines (Pure-Blood, Full-Blood, Half-Blood, Quarter-Blood) another set of subspecies beneath the lycanthropes. And you will find out later what the hellhounds' lower subspecies are.**

Chapter XXIV: A.T.E.M.

 _Work Log Entry XXIV: May, 1998_

 _May 1_

 _PB-A 26's body has given no signs of changing into his wolf form again. None of his internal systems have changed and there are no symptoms that it will come about any time soon._

 _The boss wants him to be tested constantly for the next two months._

 _But that is only if he can remain stable for that period of time._

Anzu had dance practice and Honda had gotten detention for falling asleep in class. Between their absence and Jonouchi's unusual behavior, Yugi could find no reason to not follow him. He was, for the most part, lazy about the action. He came upon the decision at the last moment as the blond began to leave, then chose to remain several steps behind him. He kept him more in his peripheral than he did straight ahead of him. His eyes were not glued to his form. He felt like Jonouchi would most definitely notice if he had chosen to do such a thing. And for him to catch him doing that, following and staring blatantly, Yugi was not sure he would ever be able to mend their friendship.

He didn't suppose following him now as he was would help any either, but it seemed preferable for some reason. He kept his head down for fear of reprimand, his stomach churning as he continued to shadow him. It seemed stupid of him to do as he was now. Something was incredibly wrong about the act of following a friend as if he was a stranger.

Yugi shivered as the thought continued in his head. His stomach jerked and twitched. His fingers clenched within his pockets as he bunched the material in his palms. The warmth it offered him was slightly comforting, but he did not fully understand it for the smallest of moments. He shivered again, pulling his shoulders up to shield his neck somewhat as they continued down the street.

There seemed to be a clear line between the sections of the city, as if the buildings themselves were painted and equally left forsaken of repairs in order to pronounce the difference. It was definitive, one house clearly well taken care of and the one right beside it almost appearing abandoned with the destruction of paint and the weathered expressions they all wore. He looked at them with a small frown, but they had been standing there for longer than he had ever been alive so his own impression was the mimicry of a thousand others. And no one paid them any attention, as they would fail to do so in their place.

He supposed in all reality that it did not matter. It was simply that the difference was rather scathing. He shrugged it off, however, stepping forward again and nearly missing the alarm that went off in his head. His eyes snapped forward, his arm rising to block what he knew to be a punch coming for his temple.

It was pure reflex.

Yugi's forearm blocked the blow away. Then his other flexed. In an instant his fist snapped against flesh. The sound made his ears ring. He backed up a step. His breath came out in confused pants. His eyes were wide, dilated. He blinked stupidly, then panted harder.

It took him several moments for the puzzlement to wash away.

His mind struggled to comprehend.

He'd never truly been one for violence and his small stature made the mode of flight much easier. He was used to ducking, cowering, and fleeing the moment he found the opening. And the moment he found it, he was gone before his bullies could truly blink. To lash out with a counter strike had seemed meaningless each time he'd been picked on.

Yet, this time, somehow, a new instinct had overridden his former impulses. Somehow he had wound up lashing out. He'd landed the blow. And they were still recovering from it.

He could have laughed out loud with excitement. He hadn't even considered fighting back and yet his body had.

If his lycanthropy bestowed him this new ability of swift and powerful retaliation then he was thankful. The thought of self-defense was a riveting one.

The only issue staring him in the face now was just _who_ he had clocked in the nose.

He cringed. "Shit, Jonouchi!"

He was sniffling behind his cupped hands, at first absorbed in the bloody mess he'd made of his face. Then he reacted to his name, blinking in confusion and then practically gaping at him with his widened eyes.

"Yug?" he sputtered.

Yugi scratched the back of his head. "Uh, yeah…" He let out a small, sheepish laugh and offered a schoolboy grin that he hoped would alleviate some of the tension he knew was to blossom. "You okay? I didn't mean to actually hurt you…"

He hadn't meant to hit him at all.

Yet he had.

It was exhilarating.

A curse of such terrible magnitude had brought him a clear and precise power to defend and attack as he might need. He felt that small bubble of laughter in his lungs again, a cushion of joy that he felt slightly guilty for experiencing.

"Holy shit, when did you learn to do that?" Jonouchi demanded, all frustration wiped from his tone but his eyes shining with it and a similar sense of excitement. "Did Honda teach you that or something? Cause I've never seen anyone react that fast before!"

Yugi felt his cheeks flush, but it was not the compliment. It was the startling realization, instead, that while his body had reacted so swiftly, it had probably seemed far from human capability in all respect.

Jonouchi threw punches too fast to block. It was one of the reasons he had made it for so long on the streets as it was. He'd been okay to kick butt and take names and never truly be concerned with it all. He opened and closed his mouth, then pursed his lips. What was there to say?

He truly had no means to explain it away. He sighed quietly.

"I guess my reflexes just got better," he said in a tone that sounded greatly pathetic to both of them. Jonouchi studied him for a moment, with such excruciatingly blatant disbelief that it made his stomach twist even harder. Yugi flattened his tongue against the roof of his mouth for a moment, then wondered at what more words he could put in the air between them. And then, how much damage would they reap? "I honestly don't know. I just reacted."

The blond studied him a minute longer. A while back Jonouchi had assumed he was seeing things. He had thought himself to be naming emotions in his eyes that were just there by the trick of his own mind. But there was something there.

It held the smaller boy's entire frame with a new and more noticeable strength. It was not the mere straightening of his back and shoulders which caused this manifestation of power. But even that could not explain the shadows which made his eyes appear darker or the keenness which existed there as well, with great strokes of unimaginable intelligence. The very way his head was tilted to the side as he asked if he was okay was not natural for the smaller boy.

Jonouchi would not push, however. Instead, he muttered, "Yeah, I'm fine. The bleeding will stop in a minute. So, what exactly are you doing following me anyways, Yugi?"

He had cut the chitchat in half. Yugi could talk him in circles that way. The smaller teen realized it as well, because his eyes grew slightly troubled and the curl of a moue appeared on his cherubic features.

For a moment Yugi didn't speak. The taller boy watched the gears churning behind his eyes. The small teen would rather lie than admit he'd been too nosy to think better of the action. Jonouchi didn't blame him, in all honesty, because he would be doing the same in his place, but it still made him want to roll his eyes and call him out on it.

But, again, he bit his tongue. It wouldn't do any good. And he would possibly risk alienating Yugi because of it.

Yugi scratched the back of his head, that pouting grimace still firmly in place, and then sighed loudly. "I was worried about you. You've been acting weird the last few days and I thought this time, since Honda and Anzu aren't around, I would try following you." His blue-violet eyes were ashamed as he looked at him from beneath his lashes, ducking his head in embarrassment.

Jonouchi raised a brow. "And you didn't think to just ask?"

"Would you have told me?"

"Probably not."

They fell into a few seconds of uncomfortable silence. A person wandered by, starting to go between them, but ducked aside to give them a wide berth on the sidewalk. Jonouchi glanced at her as she walked away from them without a single look back or even a momentary hesitation. They must have appeared intense.

Or, perhaps, the blood on his face had scared her.

He almost grinned at the thought. But then he took notice of the long, soft brown hair, and his breath grew harsh with embitterment. He could have screamed with all of the rage which unexpectedly crashed through his chest at the moment.

He turned his head away again immediately. But he could not face Yugi, either. Because he knew he had noticed his sudden attention directed towards her, and his sharp frustration as well. So Jonouchi settled for looking at the patch of brick which was completely chipped away on the corner of the building behind the smaller teen.

"If it's…I mean, if you don't want me to know about it, I can turn back around and go home instead."

The words startled him for a moment. He blinked, then looked at him. As ashamed as he was to admit it, he was thinking about the brunette who had disappeared around the corner.

He hesitated. Yugi was peering at him with that gentle, patient, reassuring expression he always seemed to wear when he offered someone an out. He was too quiet and small and kind with people who didn't deserve it and never could.

And Jonouchi couldn't help but think that, despite his best efforts, he did not deserve it.

He frowned and bit his tongue so hard that it began to bleed. He swallowed roughly and the taste flooded the tip so that he almost could not think straight but for the hideous sharpness of copper there. He reached up, wiping at the warm liquid which was quickly cooling against his lip in preparation to freeze in flakes. He peered at him for a moment. If he told him, he didn't have to tell the others.

And Yugi could keep a secret.

He knew that. He was good at keeping his mouth shut about things.

He hadn't even known about Ushio attacking him almost every Friday for two months until it was already done with, after all. By the time he had even caught wind of it, the mammoth boy had found someone else to try to strangle the life out of. He'd chosen a new victim and gotten around to letting Yugi slip completely under the radar.

Whatever had happened to make his house the last place Ushio's body was ever seen beyond the morgue was another question entirely. He had kept so tightly lipped about that, not even allowing Anzu to ask a question as Jonouchi had thought he would. Yugi had crumbled in on himself, giving them something of a horrified look, and then quickly glanced away again.

But, maybe, if he opened up some about his secret Yugi wouldn't feel as if he were still only prying for his own sake if he brought it up again. And besides, maybe if he shared about it, the burden of it might lessen some, right?

Wasn't that why people shared things in the first place?

"Here, come with me. I'll tell you about it when we get there."

Yugi blinked wide eyes, his expression both delighted and extremely confused. "When we get there?" he muttered in a soft tone, furrowing his brows with discomfort. "Jonouchi, we're in the bad part of Domino. How much further do you think we need to go?"

"It's another block," he stated matter-of-factly, ignoring the owlish expression which awoke on his best friend's face. He shook his head slightly. "And nothing is going to happen. Especially with reflexes like those."

The smaller boy almost cringed. "You thought I was some kind of homeless person looking to take your money or something, didn't you?" he demanded indignantly. "That's why you swung at me!"

He shrugged. "You can never be too careful around here."

"But you could have looked at my hair! I mean, no one has…" His voice trailed off. Yami had hair like his. It wasn't exactly like his by any means, but at first glance he was sure it could be mistaken as such. "No one has hair like me."

Jonouchi raised a brow, cocking his head slightly to the side. "Well, yeah, but it was in the moment," he decided to say instead of ask about his all-too-obvious hesitation. "I wasn't going to check someone's hair when I think I'm being followed. That's kind of suicidal, Yug."

He rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah. You didn't even think about it," he scoffed. They fell into step together the moment they began walking again. The sound of their footsteps as they wandered through the shadows of the rundown buildings was slightly comforting. "You can definitely notice someone's hair before you take a swing at them. Especially when it looks like _mine_. I mean, who else has gravity-defying hair?"

Yami did.

He nearly cringed at himself.

So Yugi had chosen to follow Jonouchi today instead of show up to the house on time. What was the big deal? He shouldn't feel guilty about it just because of Yami. Sure, the other boy would need his bandages changed again, but that could easily happen when he got home.

And maybe…maybe he was selfish for thinking he even needed his help to do it. He was sure if Yami were to try, he could figure out very easily what he needed to do. He was home, he was able to sneak out and hunt if needed, and when Yugi got home, he'd give him half of his food and a protein shake and some meds again. It wasn't that big a deal.

But it was somehow a very important thing to acknowledge that he'd chosen a friend over the lycanthrope. That meant, perhaps, that maybe, by some miracle, should he be able to heal Yami again and the other taught him what he thought he needed to know to survive, he could find his way to Anzu.

Then, perhaps, he could figure out how to deal with the full moon and all of which happened when it arrived, and work around it. Then, maybe they would have fun together and be as a couple should. They could be self-involved together as much as they wanted, go out at any time they wanted but _for_ that single day, and be the couple that he really wished they could. He was so tired of putting his own desires aside…

He frowned.

Yami had never asked him to do that for him. He'd probably even point out that he wasn't stupid and say that he could very easily take care of himself. And Yugi would be forced to see this again, acknowledge it fully, and feel the liberation of no longer putting aside his own wants and focusing on another altogether.

"Where are we headed?"

Jonouchi pointed casually ahead of them. Yugi almost fell over his own feet for a moment, blinking wide eyes in confusion.

"The _hospital_?"

"Yep."

His eyes immediately snapped to his face. "Shit, is your dad okay? Did he get hurt on the job? Did he fall over again while he was drunk—?"

The blond snickered, shaking his head. "Dude, Yug, relax. Nothing happened to him."

"What about your mom? Is she sick? Is—?"

" _Dude_! I appreciate the concern, but I'll explain _everything_ when we get there, okay? It's something that I have to show you before I tell you anything about it."

Yugi frowned, tilting his head to the side in clear confusion. His teeth worried his bottom lip for a brief moment. Then he looked at the tall building, the red symbol on the side flaking and the white a stained yellowish shade from all of the outside exposure. He shivered slightly.

This hospital seemed so much worse than the one within the better part of the city. It was like a gigantic yellowed building with a gaudy red plus sign on the side which had peeled halfway into nonexistence on the bottom, its former design of white and red like an enlarged first aid kit.

The one he had been emitted to those many times his mother had demanded a refill or a higher dose of his medication was much better. The outside condition was marvelously maintained, with fresh paint coats every other season. The windows were always shiny, without any streaks. The staff was always sweet, though he was sure they stood around and gossiped endlessly.

The walls were a soft cream color that faded into white only within the rooms themselves, as was mandatory. The tiles were bright white and blue and red and yellow and green. There were pictures on some of the walls, though not many. The canopy on the outside was a gorgeous blue-green that bordered turquoise and teal in some manners. The door handles were basically the only thing he thought he could name that were not well-maintained.

Yugi frowned as he licked his lips and looked towards the hospital, following Jonouchi across the street towards it. Even the air seemed almost foreign to him for a moment. It was only a mere heartbeat that he got such a sensation, but still it was there. He shivered and glanced over his shoulder for a split second.

This part of the city, unlike the one they both lived in, would definitely be where a hunter would come without fear or second thought to snatched him off his feet. He didn't think anyone would even respond if he were to yell for help.

They were hardened here. They would most likely turn tail and hurry on their own way to avoid confrontation.

The inside of the building was almost colder than the air out there. It was funny, but the inside was pristine, cleaner than even the hospital he had gone to for his refills and new prescriptions. The walls were perfectly white but for the fresh stripes of blue or red paint along the bottoms. It was, in all reality, somewhat surprising to see such standards in a building that outwardly appeared abused and all but cast away from attention and repair.

The nurse took one look at Jonouchi and offered him a wide smile. "She woke up earlier asking for you again."

Yugi tilted his head curiously. Was Jonouchi seeing a patient? Was it some kind of clandestine live affair between them? He supposed it would make sense why he would keep that to himself if it was. Honda would tease him relentlessly and by his own shock and confusion, he didn't think he'd give the most supportive of impressions had he told him that. He frowned slightly, studying him sideways.

"Really?"

The hope that shone on his face made him nearly cringe.

Who was it that Jonouchi could have possibly met who would cause such childish glee to come across him? The girl would have had to be a miracle worker. The blond had told him so many times that he planned to never settle down. Then again, he didn't know how he managed to make such a bold statement when he had never been with anyone in the first place, but he supposed he could overlook that.

"Yes. She's awake now. I checked on her a minute ago. She's exhausted, though, so try not to excite her too much."

The way she said it was nothing like an innuendo. She said it so simply, with such tenderness that Yugi was slapped with abrupt clarity that there was, by no means, a relationship to be pursued between this girl and his best friend. He frowned, nibbling his bottom lip.

What was it that he was meant to be shown, however? It seemed so odd to walk to this particular hospital for days on end like this if he was not going to be rewarded in some way. Jonouchi may have been a great many admirable things, but altruistic was not one of them.

He normally knew and planned around goals. It kept him driven and motivated and, oftentimes, it also gave him enough patience to deal with people he hated. Good grades, project scores, things of those natures, were planned studiously in his mind to allow him to get ahead. They were his end goal. And, if there was a girl involved, his reasoning was the most obvious.

So, then, what was he doing in visiting the hospital as he was? It'd been several days he'd been doing this. There had to be some kind of amazing reason for him to do this. This girl had to be someone spectacular for him to do so, especially without the idea of having her feel somewhat slightly indebted to him…

Jonouchi was not altruistic. But Yugi didn't know of anyone who was. He had been described as such several times, but he knew better. He knew himself well enough to recognize that even he himself had moments that he thought of such things as well. His first thought was often what it might get him at the end of it all. Even when he had helped Yami, he had figured he would get answers at some point.

And he had, for the most part.

He had gotten several answers, though not as many as he had initially assumed he would.

He shook his head slightly, following Jonouchi down the hall once he had come up with just answering the woman as he needed to. He was now also going to get his curiosity sated. And that was more selfish than even hiding the fact that Yami was the reason that he was sidestepping Anzu completely as far as dating went.

"You smell of them."

He stiffened, frozen in place. His eyes widened, his attention snapping to the form laying on the bed there. The white sheets made them appear paler, although their skin was already lifeless, nearly pallid. The hair fell in long strands of stringy dark brown, greasy where they fell along her cheeks. Her face was heart-shaped, her small frame withered as if the lack of color washed her out completely. Her shoulders were narrow, scrawny, and her body clearly too thin to be healthy. But her voice was small, ragged and frailer than even her small skeletal form.

He looked at her, then at Jonouchi. She had spoken too softly for him to hear…

"Shizuka, this is my best friend, Yugi. Yugi, this is my baby sister Shizuka."

He stiffened somehow further. His mouth opened and closed. His voice sputtered out a confused, "Baby sister?" that sounded as if he were choking on his own tongue.

Jonouchi raised a brow. "Yep, she's a couple of years younger than me," he said easily, but there was something of a brotherly warning there. It was a clear and well-delivered threat even in its unspoken status.

He would kick his ass if he so much as looked at her a certain way.

Yugi couldn't remember even once hearing that he had a sister. He furrowed his brows, then turned to her again. "Nice to meet you, Shizuka."

It was only as she raised her head a little bit further and their eyes locked that he realized she could not see him. Her gaze was glazed with a filmy white, so pale her pupils looked as if they were made of porcelain glass. He shivered. She looked like an elderly dog with advanced cataracts.

"It's good to meet you as well, Yugi."

He peered at her, slightly unnerved. It was not the blindness. It was her statement. She had said he smelled of someone. She had said it so softly that her brother could not hear. But she had known he would. He wouldn't have been surprised by the idea that her senses were powerful enough to somehow catch him, as they would be attempting to make up for her loss of sight. It was the way she spoke so softly, in that brittle tone, that made him feel sick.

"He's the one who works at the veterinary clinic with his mom and grandpa. They have the main one and then the emergency one under the house." The blond frowned slightly as he looked between them slowly. Both of them seemed a little tense. Had he somehow missed something?

"It's the bottom level of the house. It's not exactly beneath. That would suggest a basement or something." Yugi wasn't truly sure why that was important and, judging by the look Jonouchi shot him, neither was the blond. He reached up and scratched the back of his head awkwardly. "Anyways, I didn't know you…"

The taller boy looked oddly disgruntled as he turned and pulled a stool from its resting place against the wall. He immediately took a seat, folding his long legs and bracing the heels of his shoes against the metal. His eyes narrowed slightly and his lips pulled into a grimace.

"She, um…"

"It's okay, I don't need an explanation." He hesitated. He kind of wanted one, but he had no right to demand one by any means. "I mean—"

The brunette leaned forward and his head turned immediately to her again. Alarm made his back rigid and his breath halt in his lungs the smallest of moments. He opened and closed his mouth again slowly. But she could not see him. And he realized with a sickening feeling that she was truly scenting him.

She did it exactly as a dog would, short breaths and all. Then she sat back more firmly against the pillow behind her shoulders.

Yugi wondered if puking in a hospital room was considered indecent. Did Jonouchi realize that she was a werewolf? Surely he didn't assume that smelling things was normal for a human, blind or not. He stared at her hard for a moment, struggling briefly. Was it hereditary like Yami claimed his own was in part? Or was she bitten like he was?

He wondered which he classified more as, however. Yami had said he was born with a strain of it somewhere in his lineage. He had also bitten him in the alley to save his life…

Yugi wanted so desperately to ask if he knew. But he turned such impulse away. Jonouchi would probably freak out. Well, no, he would _definitely_ freak out. He had a pretty healthy fear of most things unnatural. He hated ghosts and mummies and flipped out sometimes when someone mentioned zombies and vampires. Reanimation and the dark and clowns scared him for the most part. He would definitely freak out if he found out his sister turned into something large and fluffy every month.

But, at the very least, this explained his sudden need to visit the hospital so often. His malnourished, blind little sister was a patient. That explained a lot.

"How long have you been here?"

There was a brief moment of silence and her head tilted as she stared at him with those sightless eyes. He thought it must have been her other senses which allowed her to face him with such unwavering clarity. Not once did she appear to be confused as to which direction he was or anything of the matter.

"The last couple of weeks," she said calmly, but he swore she shivered just slightly, as if she were horrified by even this admittance. "Two weeks ago on Wednesday?"

Jonouchi looked away and scuffed his sneaker on the floor for a moment. He had initially assumed the call he had gotten was a prank. He'd hung up on her. He'd done so six times before she'd managed to say his childhood nickname. And even then he'd been skeptical. Upon seeing her again, he'd initially tried his hardest to deny that the skeletal creature lying on the bed had anything to do with his sweet, innocent little sister.

Yugi glanced at him sideways but turned back to her quickly. He wondered if she could sense him as he could others, his body reacting with rigidity and the harsh flare of energy throughout his bones. He tilted his head and stared at her more pointedly for a split second. Would she call him an angel of death as well? Would she follow in Valon's footsteps?

He furrowed his brows. But then…what was she, exactly? She was a wolf, clearly, but what kind? A lycanthrope or a hellhound?

"Big brother," she suddenly murmured; Jonouchi jerked to attention as if he had been scalded, head snapping up and eyes locked on her, "can you get me something to eat? I'm very hungry."

He was on his feet immediately. But his eyes cut towards Yugi with a sense of anxiety that made his heart clench. He offered him a weak smile. "I'll stay here with her. Don't worry."

The relief in his eyes made his heart shudder.

"I'll be right back. Anything in particular you want?"

"Anything that isn't chicken parmesan or the pizza. The red sauce makes me puke." She said it with such flourish one would have initially thought her to be healthy had they not seen her clearly. She flipped her wrist and Yugi swore the cartilage had to have worn away completely for it sounded like rocks grinding together. He clenched his teeth together, jaw aching with the force of it.

"Okay, got it. No red sauce."

He was gone a second later and Yugi felt himself beginning to bristle with clear distress. The loneliness of the room seemed abruptly to surge forth and slam within his small body, attempting to push him until he folded in two. He swallowed thickly. There was something acrid in the air, burning and strong in scent, and it made his head spin for a moment. He pressed his lips together.

"Would you be opposed to coming to my side? I'd like to learn your features…"

Yugi shivered. He had nearly forgotten that blind people liked to map one's face out to imagine them in their head. He hesitated, but it was more his own embarrassment and anxiety than anything else. He licked his lips, then moved towards the bed.

Shizuka reached her hands up towards him, long brittle fingers and skin pulled too tightly. He blinked stupidly down at her, eyes studying the brutal calluses which covered her palms. Yet he leaned forward, allowed her to press her palms against his cheeks and cup his face.

Yugi resisted the urge to flinch away. "What happened to your hands?" he whispered, voice weak and desperate for reassurance of some kind.

She moved her hands along the frame of his face and he closed his eyes to allow her to touch the lids and ghost her fingers over his long lashes. Her skin was harsh, bumpy in the centers, and he shivered slightly. Had she been burned? Or was it a side-effect of some kind? Because her palms felt like the very surface of a dog's pad.

"For lack of a better explanation, I was burned until my skin would struggle to repair itself." Shizuka was quiet for a moment, then leaned forward slightly, breathing in more deeply. "They wanted to know how long it would take to heal. When the skin would shed, they would be the first to know…"

"Who?" he demanded, eyes wide and horrified.

Who would do that to someone else? It didn't matter if they turned into a wolf once a month; a human being should never be treated that way. The thought made him want to be sick. He reached up to touch her wrists lightly, skimming his thumbs over her pulse gently.

He didn't want to scare her with any sudden movements, but he had the overwhelming impulse to pull her into his arms, to hug her tightly. He wished he could protect her, that he could say something to help her somehow.

"Who did this?"

She was silent for a moment, then she pulled her hands away from his face. But she did not remove herself from him completely. Instead she allowed him to keep his fingers on her thin wrists. She settled more comfortably in the bed, eyes narrowing for a moment almost as if she could see him. The movement was eerie but her blindness was far too apparent to be ignored.

"You are lucky, Yugi, to never have crossed paths with them. I am sure they would have captured you the moment you ran across them."

"Captured me?"

"As they have countless others." Shizuka blinked and her eyes became hooded. Yugi could not tell what she was thinking about, but the sorrow that shone so greatly in her gaze made his belly feel hollow. "What color are your eyes?"

He hesitated for a moment. "Around the pupils, the color is called royal sapphire. It's a darker shade but definitely not the darkest. Beyond that, it mixes up with a purple called African amethyst and the rest is regular blue-violet."

She smiled. She imagined they were breathtaking, like a galaxy without the darkness. "And you just happened to memorize that?" she teased softly.

"A lot of people ask," Yugi murmured quietly, peering at her curiously for a moment. "And, I like knowing what colors they are when I look in the mirror. It's…kind of nice to know that they don't change and it's basically absolute."

Shizuka fell silent for a long moment, then, in a small voice, she whispered, "What color are my eyes, Yugi?"

His stomach knotted. Her voice was quivering. He bit his lip until it bled. The coppery scent made his stomach roll angrily. "They're…gray, almost silver." He hesitated. "And your pupils are milky white."

She nodded almost as if she had expected it. "They used to be hazel, bright brown like Katsuya's around the pupils and emerald green as the second color." She sounded more pained about this than even the thought of her palms being burned so terribly. "I'm not surprised that my eyes changed color. What they did to me and the others… Their eyes were already shades away from what they were originally."

Yugi looked at her with his heart aching in his chest. "What do you mean? What did they do?"

There was an excruciatingly long minute of silence in which the air seemed too thick and the smell of chemicals made their noses burn. He shuffled his feet, swallowing thickly. His eyes flickered towards the sheets, the threads worn bare at the edges. She pulled her hands away from him for the most part, but caught his fingers and pulled them towards her stomach with hers. He shivered, confused and unsure now. It felt almost horrifying to be this close. Why was she keeping him there?

"I was walking home from school a few minutes late during the summer. I was twelve at the time." She moved a nail to trace along the back of his palm. She had lowered her head but her tone held enough urgency to trail to his ears without straining them. "A car was parked at the entrance of that little garden that I walked by every day. I was so used to seeing people get out of their cars in order to walk the trails in the flower beds. I didn't think anything of it."

Yugi felt sick to his stomach. This sounded oddly like what that man and Bakura would have done had he not taken the wrong turn and headed for the woods. Was it the same person?

"I was walking by them when I noticed the door slide open. Again, it was an attraction. I didn't think anything of it. Until, in a blink, there was a massive animal in front of me. It was a large, dark gray canine. I'd thought it was a dog. It would have been the largest dog I had ever seen."

He shivered. "It was a wolf."

"Yes. Who I later came to know the name of as Bakura."

He flinched and trembled. "He cornered you?"

"No, he tried to scare me off. He kept snarling and snapping and he lunged between me and the car. He tried a few times to push me out of the way." She hesitated. "He kept trying to make me run. But I was taught not to run from dogs and that's what I thought he was. When he kept lunging and scaring me, I tried to run too late. The human who was in charge of him caught me and used his shock collar to throw him into a seizure so he wouldn't interfere anymore."

Yugi blinked stupidly. A shock collar? He hadn't noticed one in the woods. But then, why else would a werewolf bother to listen to a human? He'd obviously been shocked so many times that he could not withstand it any longer. Had his snarling been a warning to him as well? Had he been trying to tell him to run?

He knew the man had been cursing and screaming when he had been fighting with Yami. He'd messed up his shot several times. He remembered that. Bakura had constantly thrown himself at Yami, had constantly kept them loving…

"The man… What was his name?"

She was quiet, recalling for a moment how the ground had rushed up to her and Bakura had choked on his own vomit and convulsed so violently as to make the earth quake. For a moment she was lost in the agony of that dark brown gaze, the way he sputtered and choked and hacked so hard his tongue splayed across the asphalt.

"Pegasus. His name was Pegasus." She traced another comforting trail along his skin. Her fingers were trembling and Yugi felt like he was going to be sick. "They took me…to a place. It's somewhere…underground. It's…along the sewage line but further into the mountains as well. It's a long trail of tunnels with cells for wolves that they torture and run experiments on."

He quivered. "Run experiments…?"

Shizuka lowered her head a little more. A low, noiseless sob escaped her throat for a moment. Her body heaved with the immensity of it, quaking pitifully. He wanted both to hug her and to flinch away.

"They were testing the limitations of lycanthropy." She trembled harder and his heart lurched. "They wanted to know how well it healed certain wounds. We were burned, cut open. They experimented on our eyes, spliced them and surgically impaired vision. They wanted to know if it would reverse and how often the body was able to do so. They tried gutting wolves to see if the body was capable of withstanding the torture and even mend it later. They did neurological experiments. They drowned them. They tried to see how long one could swim before giving up. Then they tested how long it took to revive them."

He shivered, moving to wipe his mouth against his shoulder. He tried to force the queasiness away by squeezing his eyes shut. He trembled. His stomach rolled and clenched.

How could anyone do that?

"They tried to breed, pushed at the boundaries of genetics to see if a male wolf could conceive pups through implanting the uterus. They constantly attempted to push the existence of another subspecies of lycanthrope."

He narrowed his eyes. "Subspecies of lycanthrope?" he whispered. There were subspecies beyond the lycanthrope and hellhound? He felt pathetic for a moment, stomach coiled with disgust. He knew nothing. When it came down to it, whatever he had managed to yank from Yami was almost meaningless. He gave him answers, but not enough. The big picture was fragmented and he offered him only the tiniest of pieces to fit the puzzle.

"The Pure-Blood… They're trying to bring back the Pure-Blood." Her voice had grown raspy. He wasn't sure if it was stress or the strain of saying so much for so long. His heart quivered and his stomach heaved slightly in a painful dance. It was only as he looked at her that he remembered that man—Pegasus, she had said his name was—calling him that. He had said it when he had chased him. "They're…chasing myths and legends and something that just… It _can't_ exist, Yugi. It just can't!"

The power of her tone, as brittle as it was, made him look at her more closely. She was clearly distressed, to the point that she was shaking finely, and her eyes looked as if they might fill with tears at any moment.

"Why…? Why can't it exist?"

"Because it's…" She fell silent for a moment. Then, with such swiftness it startled him, her head snapped to him. Her eyes, though she couldn't see him, bore into his skin and made him flinch. She was agonized, yet enraged all at once. "Because an immortality like that could only be a curse!"

He stared at her, horrified and somehow fascinated. "Immortality?" he whispered.

The very thought made his head spin. Were the werewolves immortal?

"You kill them. And they come back. They are reborn again," she spat in distress, shaking her head sharply back and forth. Her eyes were still somehow focused on him. He wondered if perhaps her senses did this or it was just innate knowledge of some kind, an ability that he too probably possessed but did not need. "And they are more and more volatile than ever the moment they died before. They are _weapons_. The Pure-Blood is a weapon, Yugi. It's an immortal force of nature! As long as the head and the heart stay intact, it will come back!"

Yugi barely resisted the urge to jerk his hands away. Immortal? Weapons? He could have puked again. Was that what Pegasus had assumed him to be? A force of nature which came back to life when it was killed? His breath caught. Had he…?

No, there had been close calls. But he had never truly died.

He thought he would know if he had.

"And they heal so quickly. When the weaker areas of its body are penetrated, it heals instantaneously. It heals without delay. So you can never truly decapitate them or stab them to death or…or… They're just…they're the only _truly_ immortal creatures in the world, Yugi."

He shook his head, voice cracked. "Then why don't people know more about this? Shizuka, humans crave this kind of stuff. It's in stories everywhere—vampires are considered the most immortal because they came back from the dead and—"

" _Vampires_? Yugi, vampires are _nothing_ compared to a Pure-Blood. And there _is_ a mention of them. It's in the movie myths and lore. It's just misconstrued." She shook her head again. Her hands clenched around his. "In the movies, the wolves only change on the full moon. The _Pure_ - _Blood_ is the only lycanthrope _truly_ forced to change on the full moon. And the size of wolves in movies—the ridiculously large sizes? That's them. They're larger than regular wolves, thicker in build. Oh, Yugi, they're creatures of unimaginable strength and healing. Their _only_ known legend says that their DNA is laced with moonlight and that of the dire wolf."

Yugi froze in place. The _dire wolf_? They were long extinct. And there was no living relative of them. So how could one make a Pure-Blood without an essential part of their genetics?

"How could they possibly breed them? Shizuka, that's impossible." Her head shook sharply, her face contorting with pure rage. "That doesn't make any sense whatsoever."

"The lycanthropes begin with the Pure-Blood. Every lycanthrope in existence has some of its DNA in them. That's what allows them to change. It's what allows them to heal." Shizuka fell silent for another long moment. "It's in them, buried deep inside of their genetics."

His eyes widened. His stomach twisted. "They de-evolved them."

"And many of them didn't survive. They were constantly shoveling bodies into an incinerator." She stayed quiet for another long minute. "But…there was one. They managed to mate two wolves who had survived it. They…they recreated a Pure-Blood, Yugi."

Yugi shook his head slowly. "There's no way. Shizuka, that's impossible. The strain all of that would have put on them and the kids would have been stillborn from the stress—"

"No. The lycanthrope body is amazing. When a woman is pregnant, the body tends to work overtime. It attempts to nurture the growing pups even without the mother's cooperation. It will cushion the womb, oxygenate the blood further by preserving it inside the cells and cycling it where it's most needed. It will supply more blood and energy to the growing pups than it will the mother…" She shook her head. "The disease will heal and rejuvenate the most vulnerable parts of the body before it will anything else. When a wolf is pregnant, it's the pups that matter…"

Yugi shivered. "That's…"

"Amazing. And disgusting." Shizuka shook her head again and this time when she clenched her hands he mirrored the movement. Her lips twitched faintly. "Regardless, the project's code name is A.T.E.M., the Apex Timeless Evolutionary Mutation. And the subject which survived was the only of five pups. He was named after the project, called Code Name Atem."

He nearly choked. "Code Name Atem?" he mumbled. He shivered. "Why would they…?"

"Because they bred him into existence. And if he was proven as smart as they theorized, he would be able to learn and figure things out. He would be able to form more of a standing free will if he was not degraded enough. They had to stunt him somehow. Because the incisions and the experiments did not truly harm him. They did nothing to slow him down. So they did one of the easiest things they could. They forced him to respond to the name of his project rather than give him one of his own."

He felt as his tongue had dried and shriveled in his mouth. How could anyone be so cruel as to want to take another's identity away so fully?

"That's disgusting," Yugi spat, eyes wide and mouth twisting into something almost like a snarl. "That's the most disgusting thing I've ever heard!"

"Yes…" She hesitated for a moment, then lowered her eyes. "And, if he truly exists, he is not in the lab anymore."

 _If_ he existed? Yugi blinked in confusion. She had been speaking to him as if the wolf were the most solid existence the world had to offer? She had seemed for a moment to believe in him even more than she did her own life. To hear her say if now was something that made him feel sick.

"If?"

"He…I never saw him. _Many_ of us never saw him. There were stories that Bakura had crossed paths with him several times. And there were mentions of his cell mate who was constantly being experimented on and often attacked anyone who came close to him. But so many of us only heard rumors. And that's all he might be, Yugi. He could just be a rumor, a story to keep hope that our existence was worth something." Shizuka fell quiet for a moment, then curled her lip. "But, if he _isn't_ real, then those hundred wolves died for no reason. The ones who turned on the humans and allowed the rest of us to escape with the promise that Code Name Atem _had_ to survive… They would have all made sacrifices in vain."

Yugi stiffened. "Why would they all be so concerned with just one wolf? Isn't their survival greater than just his?"

She looked up at him with those blind eyes again. "No. To a lycanthrope, the Pure-Blood is an entity they all must bow to and ensure the survival of. If he should truly be real, as so many of them said and so clearly believed until their dying breath, then any wolf would do the same for them now. Should he ask it, every lycanthrope in existence would lay their lives down for him."

He shook, eyes wide, heart pounding. "But why? That doesn't make any sense!"

She fell silent, then tilted her head. "You were bitten…weren't you?" she whispered quietly. "That's why you don't understand. Because it's not ingrained in you like it is the ones born with it."

He shook his head. "What do you mean? How is someone born with the idea that they need to sacrifice themselves like that?"

"It's because… It's the loyalty of the werewolves. If the original hellhounds, the Harbingers, were ever to be reborn, the hellhounds would follow them as well." She hesitated and then reached up to scratch at the IV drip in her arm. "It's just something in them that responds to them. It might be the idea that they came from them or maybe it's some innate strength they possess that they can't resist the call of. But, with Code Name Atem, a thousand others escaped and fled. And they've been up here somewhere, hiding, possibly waiting for the beginning of a war that they all whispered about when they were still underground."

Yugi glanced over his shoulder at the sound of Jonouchi's voice down the hall. "A war?"

"When the Pure-blood returns, the Harbingers will too. And with them, a war will be fought. That's the story that's been passed down each generation through the werewolves. The purpose of it is lost to anyone living, but it's said to mirror the Lunar Ascension."

"Lunar Ascension?"

Shizuka fell silent, instead turning her head toward the door and giving a brilliant smile. "What did you end up getting?" she asked in a voice that was oddly childish for the weight it had held mere moments before. "I hope it's chocolate!"

"Chocolate, peanuts and caramel." Jonouchi trotted into the room with a massive grin on his face. Yugi pulled his hands away from the girl lying in the bed. He felt sick again, beyond what he had felt anytime before. His throat was choked and his mouth dry. The blond noticed the action, how close they had been moments before, and his eyes narrowed at the shorter boy, but he did not comment. "And, the best news? You should be able to leave within a couple of days, Shizuka! You can come home."

Yugi's heart ached. Jonouchi was so happy and the moment so private. He looked down, then glanced at the brunette and away again. The girl herself looked far from happy with this response, but the smile had not left her face. It looked more plastic than ever, however. He lifted his own head, smiling at Jonouchi gently, and headed for the door.

"Are you going?"

He could have puked for the way his body seized up with tension. "Yeah," he said quietly, eyes widening as he looked towards her. "I need to get home. And you guys have things to talk about."

"Oh."

"You could stay if you wanted," Jonouchi offered, but it was obligatory and his eyes were harder than before.

"You could say that with less enthusiasm," he teased, shaking his head slightly, and frowned with a small tilt of his head towards his sister. "Besides, my mom is expecting me."

Jonouchi gave him a grateful look. "Okay, I'll see you later then, yeah?"

"Yeah. Bye, Katsuya, Shizuka."

He had turned to go into the hallway when he heard her voice again, a distant echoing whisper of raspy breath.

"If Code Name Atem is real, he is the only one who is capable of stopping them."

* * *

He looked up when the door began to open. He had drifted downstairs out of boredom, because the little clinic was closed. Yugi's mom and grandpa were long gone as well, for whatever reason. And Yugi was still somewhere that wasn't his house, so he assumed it was the arcade that had captured his attention this time. He thought now, that perhaps it was the other boy, but instead a head of spiky brown hair appeared as the door closed behind the newcomer.

Yami stiffened visibly, stomach flipping harshly. His mouth was dry, his body rigid with a wave of confusion and horror. Oh gods, he should have ducked and hid before someone noticed—

Yet, as he breathed in, a new thought occurred to him.

He had smelled this person before.

He blinked.

He had smelled him on Yugi.

He frowned, staring at the boy in front of him. They stood at nearly the same height, Yami staring with wide eyes as the other watched him with an amused look. His shoulders were a little broader than his own, but his frame was just as lean and compact, with muscle taut and hidden from display. His face was more of a heart shape than even Yami's own, with finer definition as if to fall in the perfect medium of his and Yugi's features.

His hair fell to cover his forehead with long bangs, the first lying towards his nose, the other two curling outwards like wings. It rose in spikes that looked almost limp because of the color, though he noted that should his own or Yugi's been a uniform shade, it too might look like that.

He didn't like the look in his eyes. Or maybe he didn't like the look _of_ them. The golden color made them far too piercing. But they were familiar as well, as he looked into them.

He flashed him a smile, something smooth and friendly, but the predatory edge did not leave his face. "Hello."

Yami hesitated for a moment. He wondered how badly his voice might crack. So instead he nodded curtly, unwilling to speak and potentially show any weakness. He was not willing to have a fight in the middle of Yugi's own home with a stranger like this. He was already alarmed and he was only lucky to have grabbed his jacket and thrown it on before he'd left the room. At least his arms were covered…

He tilted his head. "I wanted to thank Yugi for something he did for me a little while back," he commented, studying his face. His eyes were sharp, a vivid and powerful red which captivated and terrorized all at once. He searched his eyes, unnerved by the sharpness and seemingly eternal energy which pulsated there. He gazed at him with equal intensity, and then he abruptly lowered his eyes to the floor. Meeting this wolf's eyes in what seemed to be shared territory was a terrible idea. Who knew if he might lash out?

Yami chewed his lip, then glanced through the glass window. He should never have come downstairs. But what could he do now? He was caught. He narrowed his gaze, studying the submission in this boy's frame. "He's not here," he stated calmly. His voice was oddly strong with tension but the fractures were still there and it made him snarl low in his throat with distress. An unknown wolf was standing in front of him and his voice continued to break like this? He could have bit through his own hand with frustration.

The wolf glanced up, eyes flickering with wonder. "Hmm… For some reason I thought he was." He glanced over his shoulder, then turned back. "Do you mind if I wait here? Or should I leave?"

The other boy stared at him silently, red eyes boring into his skin, and then looked away for a moment to study him in his peripheral. Would Yugi be upset if he sent him away? Had they been planning something? He drew in a breath, turning to him.

"What was it you had to thank him for?"

His eyes were a striking and vivid golden. It made him nauseous. He swallowed hard, resisting the urge to growl and raise his shoulders in a bristle.

"He helped me out with something. And I wanted to thank him for it."

Yami tilted his head, more than a little unnerved by the idea. What had Yugi helped him with? Was it important? Was it a secret he wasn't meant to know? Fuck, did Yugi have any idea that he was here? What would he do if he found Yami standing there talking to him like this if he was actually a threat?

"Who…?"

He blinked, frowning faintly. "Valon," he stated, at first with the human impulse to shake his hand and then the werewolf instinct to step away. Instead he blinked a few times, then cautiously, his tone gentle, he spoke again.

"I ask of you Lupa's Blessing."

Yami froze in place, eyes widening for a moment. Lupa's Blessing was a way of wishing for safe passage through another wolf's territory, which always pertained to the lycanthrope and never the hellhound. Should the situation have been reversed, Yami would have asked Fenrir's. It was a greatly respectful notion to use the blessing of the other subspecies.

He blinked, watching him for a moment longer. Then he looked away. "I am not permitted to give you such rights. This is not my territory. It is Yugi's."

Valon studied him. "But it smells of you as well. You have been here for quite a while, haven't you?" he murmured in a soft and no less respectful tone. "The house is almost as much yours as it is the Motou family's."

He looked as him with wide, startled eyes. His home? No. This was not his home. It never would be. The house was and always _would_ be Yugi's home, regardless of who was in it for any amount of time. He was nothing more than his alpha in truth, a companion who had bitten and infected him. He glanced away, then towards the window over his shoulder.

"I've been here. But this isn't my home."

Valon watched him with a brilliant stare, eyes wide and startled. He seemed almost feverish as they looked about each other for a long minute and a half. Both of them were frozen in place for the moment, watching with mirroring expressions of curiosity and bewilderment.

"Are you a loner?"

Yami blinked wide eyes. His cheeks felt hot then seemed to grow cold with confusion. He tilted his head, feeling sicker than even before. He narrowed his eyes slightly.

"A loner?"

They looked at each other.

"Perhaps."

Valon blinked.

"I am."

Yami tilted his head.

"Why?"

He studied him and tilted his head further to the side in wonder. "When are hellhounds ever known to run in a pack?" he asked softly, giving him a small grin. "Only lycanthropes really do that. Hellhounds are loners by trade, remember?"

Yami frowned slightly. Yes, he remembered. The lycanthrope and hellhound were different from each other in more than just terms of strength. Their physical forms and their own mentalities were more than slightly varied. Lycanthropes were extremely pack-oriented like wolves and the hellhounds ran more on their own like stray dogs would.

He stayed quiet for a moment, eyes flickering towards the window and back. Someone was approaching again, though this time his heart pounded as he noticed it. He tilted his head up, eyes wide, and Valon himself spun around in confusion. The door opened in front of them and they both watched with wide eyes.

"Hey, Yami," the newcomer said with a yawn before stopping short, smile dropping from his face. His blue-violet eyes shot to the golden-eyed teen next to him. "Valon?"

Yami blinked as the brunet glanced at him sideways. "So _that's_ your name? Yami?" he murmured softly, giving him something of a small smirk before turning to Yugi quickly. "I came over because I wanted to tell you thanks for helping me before. When your mom—"

His eyes widened drastically. "Valon, there's nothing to thank me for. Or my mom." His eyes flickered to Yami quickly for a moment, then back to the other boy. They looked back and forth between each other for a moment. "We thought you were a stray. We operated like we would have any other time. But I'm really glad that you're okay. And that everything turned out so well afterwards. No one had ever considered you were a hellhound."

Yami tilted his head, then looked at Yugi slowly. "You and your mother operated on him?"

He felt his cheeks heat. The taller teen frowned faintly. "We thought he was just a stray. He got hit by a car so we stitched him up. He would have died otherwise," he muttered, glancing at Valon and giving him a small grin of amusement.

Yami nodded only slightly, looking away. Yugi had a habit of saving people, it seemed. He touched at his arms lightly with his hands, shaken by the thought. By the gods, he'd never needed so much assistance before in his life. At least, not when he had come to be on his own.

"I see."

Yugi awkwardly scratched his cheek, face heating slightly once more. He frowned faintly, staring at Valon now. "So, what else is up?" he muttered, tilting his head. "Coming over to thank me can't be the only reason you're here."

The brunet blinked, then frowned at him slightly in return. His eyes flickered towards Yami, but the lycanthrope seemed to have forgotten either of their existences. His gaze had grown distant, focused on the fabric which lay across his wrists.

"Well, I also came to determine if you had ever found your alpha." Valon again spared a sideways glance at the red-eyed wolf. "And you have."

"Yeah, well…actually, he found me, but yes. He's helping me learn more about all of it…helping me adjust some," Yugi stated, nodding slightly. He went to grin at Yami but found himself only feeling sick. The taller teen was almost stroking his own wounded arms as a lover might, with gossamer fingers which lightly danced upon the bandages beneath. The look in his eyes was too far away for Yugi to ever hope to follow. "Why? Did something happen?"

The brunet was not truly willing to admit that the third reason for this visit was something he had been attempting to avoid. But, as he looked at Yugi, he knew the smaller boy had grown physically stronger, even if his mind was still weaker and more innocent than ever before. He frowned slightly as he studied his small frame.

"No," he said in a tone that was almost cautious. It roused Yami from his musings, the darkness leaving his eyes as they shot to his form. They looked at each other for a moment. Then Valon quickly glanced away. The other wolf had sensed something and it had caused him to bristle… "I just…I meant to check in around saying thank you—"

"You're not as shaky as you were last time," Yugi interrupted with a tilt of his head, "and you look a lot better. What happened? You said something about the weather."

Valon blinked, then looked at him curiously. "Hellhounds are spurred into the Change on the coldest day of winter when the gene is triggered. The cold snap was coming."

Yami looked at the floor for a moment, studying the immaculate tiles. He was sure Yugi's mother often swept and mopped it when she was bored and had no patients.

"Oh." Yugi looked at him with wide eyes. "The coldest day of the year has already passed?"

Valon pulled his lips back into a smile, shaking his head. "No, actually, it hasn't." He paused, his eyes flickering uncertainly towards Yami who glanced at him sideways from the corner of his eye. "This year, the winter is going to be much longer and far more brutal than any other. There are…several events which have set this in motion."

His red eyes flashed and his teeth clicked loudly when he chomped them at him. The hellhound backed up a step, but did not move further. He watched him with a cautious look and the two of them stared for a moment. Yugi glanced between them uncertainly.

"What do you mean? How would you know what the weather is going to be?" he muttered, frowning faintly and tilting his head. "Does it have to do with being a hellhound or…?"

Valon blinked, then glanced at him, but his peripheral was locked on the other lycanthrope. He did not think Yami would truly lash out, but his aggression set him on edge regardless.

"I sense the weather patterns when it comes to winter, yes, but I can't tell how long they will last or if the snow will stay and fall," he commented, shifting his weight. "I meant only to say that I have suspicion that it will be unlike any of the others you two have ever experienced. Almost…like ancient times."

Yami was bristling now. "You dare bring up the Lunar Ascension like this?" he spat. "You attempt to scare him by way of using that old legend?"

"It's not an old legend. You know that as well as I." He paused. "Otherwise you two wouldn't exist."

Yugi recoiled, eyes wide. "What?" His head snapped towards Yami. "What is he talking about?"

The red-eyed wolf studied him for a moment, then looked to his beta with slight uncertainty. "I am not sure. And I do not suppose it truly matters."

Valon gave them both a withering look. "Do you not understand that neither of you are meant to exist?" he snapped. " _Fuck_. I was trying not to say it again, but I think I need to reiterate. Death walks at your heels and no amount of good you ever do will change that. You _both_ are death."

Yugi froze, startled, and his eyes shot immediately to Yami in fear. What was Yami going to say to that? Would he lose his temper? Or was he going to turn on Yugi in response? What was he truly meant to say if he did? He had no idea what he would do or how he would deal with it if he did.

But the red-eyed teen hardly seemed to care much for the statement or Yugi's reaction.

Instead he stared readily back at Valon with a look of dismissal.

"Aren't we all? Capable of killing as we are, it would not be surprising to me to find death stalking all of us," he stated with a slight sneer. "Besides, what does it matter? Death is as death always has been. It comes and goes, whether by natural causes or not."

Valon bristled more visibly. "Is that such a true statement?" he sneered with darkened eyes. "Most people consider when someone causes another's death to be murder."

Yami rolled his eyes. "That is not what a murder is considered. It is when one truly decides to _kill_ a person by their own hand that they are considered to have murdered someone." He scoffed softly, baring his teeth in open disdain. "Is there more you wished to say or are you simply just here now?"

Yugi looked between the two of them, feeling almost sickened. His stomach twisted and his heart felt as if it might burst. Awkwardly, with a faltering tone, he asked, "Why do you keep saying that? That we shouldn't be here or exist?"

The golden-eyed boy looked at him for a long minute and a half. His gaze narrowed faintly. His head tilted to the side. He watched him, then bore his teeth in disgust. "Yugi, you both are unnatural. There's something…innately wrong with you both. And the fact that you exist is a question of which I have no answer. I don't know why any god would allow you to be born."

He gaped, mouth open and eyes wide with terror. Beside him, Yami looked at first unimpressed, and then pissed. But it was only after his eyes fell on Yugi that he reacted.

"You say such words as if they do not apply to you as well," he said in a calm tone, leaning forward with darkened eyes. "Yet, if I should recognize your scent correctly—"

"I am _well aware_. None of us should exist. Yet I have existed longer than either of you have." He bore his teeth in disgust, then looked to Yugi for a moment. "Listen to me, Yugi. As much as I might wish to disagree, the fact is that neither you nor Yami nor I are meant to exist. The three of us are unnatural, beyond the stretches of supernatural order. Regardless, here we all are. The point, however, is that it is what it is. And I apologize for the fact that I am the one to tell you."

* * *

He had called him unnatural.

He had called Yami unnatural.

He had even called _himself_ unnatural.

Yugi sat on his bed, looking at the sheet of homework in front of him, and felt sick but somehow more focused than he had been in a while. The math work, despite his usual hatred of it, was oddly comforting, grounding him there in his room. His mind could not wander if he was anchored there with a task of some kind. His stomach tossed, even as his thoughts continued other directions that he did not fully concentrate on.

His lips curled faintly, a sneer of frustration crossing his mouth, and his eyes narrowed slightly as he flipped the page of his textbook. It was with boredom that he studied the numbers, answering as he knew he needed, and that kept him somehow further grounded. Yet, as Yugi wrote another answer, the drifting musings in the back of his mind amplified.

He licked his lips. He needed to speak to Shizuka again. He had to. She might have answers to the millions of questions in his head. He had never done anything of the nature of which she said Code Name Atem was said to mean to the wolves.

And, besides that, he was already sure it could not be him. He had grown up with his mom and dad and grandpa. His night terrors may have been abundant, a constant phantom upon his growth, but they did not allude to such horror as the experiments Jonouchi's sister had so hatefully spoken of.

And he did not think that Yami, with his more submissive, calmer, temperament could match a creature by the definition of the story she'd told him. He tilted his head and cut the other boy a sideways look. Then again, he _had_ killed Ushio. He had crushed his skull in with his very teeth. He had also torn Tomoya's throat out. When one took those into account, he wondered if there was a possibility. But he'd clearly said on several occasions that he had watched his parents die from a hunter.

He had said his mom had even turned her teeth on him in the vain effort to save him from the humans. Yugi grimaced, watching him with that same sideways glance, and then looked away again. He had said she'd tried to save him by killing him.

Yami glanced at him. "Are you upset?"

He startled. "What?"

"By what he said."

Yugi felt his mouth draw into a deeper grimace. His eyes shot down to the text in front of him. "Not really," he admitted uncomfortably. "I was just…thinking about something else…"

He raised a brow, dubious of the idea, and then shook his head slowly. "What is it then?" he asked softly, voice breaking again around the edges. But this was the first time the smaller teen had noticed it since the time that Valon had left. The idea made his stomach turn. Had he upset him somehow?

Yugi focused on scribbling an answer in order to avoid giving a response of any kind. He licked his lips again, flicking his tongue over his teeth. With a somewhat frustrated expression he pressed his pencil more fully against the paper with dark eyes.

"I just…I was told something today that I don't know what to do with," he admitted, flipping the pencil around in his hand a few times before narrowing his eyes slightly. "Someone told me that there's a werewolf called the Pure-Blood… That they're truly immortal and that humans managed to recreate one…"

Yami was silent for a moment. Then he raised his head to study him more pointedly, eyes sharp and face irritable. "Humans recreate a Pure-Blood? Yugi, that's not possible. By any means. They are and _have been_ extinct for years now. For generations, even." He furrowed his brows. "Which, in itself, proves that the Pure-Blood is but a myth as well. An immortal creature by their definition cannot go extinct as they have."

Yugi looked up at him. "But you know what they are, then?"

The other boy raised a brow. "Was I not meant to? Yugi, I was born a lycanthrope. Lycanthropes born with the disease are always told those stories even when they're pups." He frowned, hesitating. "What would humans be doing recreating a beast of that magnitude anyways?"

He bit his lip. "My guess would be to harness the immortality. Or maybe they want nothing more than to change into a wolf. Or maybe it's the healing capabilities which make them want to breed them back." He frowned, looking at the red-eyed boy more closely, eyes sharpening faintly. "But then…regular werewolves… We can heal quickly and everything as it is, right?"

Yami nodded. "Yes, so if they wanted to experience the wolf or the quick healing, they could have simply found anyone infected. Then, when they themselves were infected, why should they have to attempt to raise a beast long gone like that?"

He shivered, tilting his head further. "I can't answer that. But my closest guess would be the promise of that kind of immortality." Yugi looked away again quickly. "I mean, lots of people wish they could be immortal, that life would never pass them by because it would be easy for them to adapt and experience everything as it happened. There wouldn't be any pause for them. And I think that probably attracts a lot of people."

He blinked, watching him calmly. "I agree with you that immortality of such proportion is what must drive a human crazy enough to think to reverse nature and laws older than their own kind. To do so for the other reasons listed would be beyond even basic human foolishness."

Yugi frowned at him faintly, then looked away again. "Yami, do you know anything about a project called A.T.E.M.?"

The other boy stiffened faintly, then looked at him with an expression of extreme distaste. "I've heard whispers every now and then. In the woods, when the others do not think that there are people around to eavesdrop, they tend to do speak of it. But it's a story. And nothing more. No human engineering could _ever_ bring them back into existence."

His frown deepened. "So, then do you think they ever could come back? And, if so, then by what means?"

His lip curled. "Yugi, if they were to be brought back into existence, it would be as they were once created. And, according to our legends, that was divine intervention from the goddess Lupa. She gave them the ability to heal from any wound." Yami paused, falling silent for a long moment, and then looked at the smaller teen once more, thoughtful and curious. "She allowed them to recover from any mortal injury, giving them breath the moment their body could heal itself. And it was only her intervention that allowed them to exist. So, unless the humans could somehow draw upon her favor, never will they be able to bring back the Pure-Blood."

Yugi closed his eyes for a moment. He felt almost winded with the idea. He'd been generally very accepting of any religion in the world, any divine figures which were worshipped. He was keen to do so, in order to avoid offense of any kind. And because he thought it far more respectful than otherwise.

So the idea of there being gods among werewolves was something that he could accept. But the idea that one of them interacted with the species long enough to create a creature like that? To give them immortality and power of such magnitude? He could have rolled his eyes.

There was no possible way.

He shivered.

The entire idea was preposterous to him. A supernatural animal created by a goddess of some kind? He almost laughed. It was a sharp barb to have such desire, but he could not ignore it. Impulse died hard, but he still forced it away without further issue.

He opened his eyes again. But he could not look at Yami. His sincere voice as he spoke of it had made it impossible to look at him and not want to laugh again.

It was the same as when Jonouchi had told him one time he was being stalked by some kind of ghost. And he'd been unable to keep from guffawing, mouth covered and heart pounding. His sides had ached and burned by the time that he finally stopped his laughter. And Jonouchi had been offended, but Yugi had made it up to him by pretending to help him with an exorcism of some kind. They never really spoke of it again, but it still gave him giggles when he thought of it.

But he doubted Yami would get past it as simply as Jonouchi had. Yami was a werewolf. And if that was the story passed down from generation to generation, then he would be mocking an entire species. He would be mocking his _own_ species.

The thought sobered him, if only slightly. He laid his hand on the page in front of him. "Then I guess that would have to be impossible then."

Yami studied him. There was something wrong with the statement, but he decided not to press.

* * *

There was so much blood splattered across the walls, drenching the bed, and spots of it lined the ceiling, arcs of bright and gleaming red. The kill was fresher than he had ever thought imaginable, a hideous and heart pounding realization which made his stomach burn violently.

His body was frozen, his blood cold in his veins even as it roared through his body. His limbs felt numb and his fingers frozen. He could not breathe properly for a moment.

The waves of blood which had splattered upon the white paint were beyond any amount he had ever seen before in his life. Even animals bleeding out had never seemed to produce so much. He felt dizzy, sick, and he nearly collapsed for how shaky his legs had become.

But he held himself somehow, on his feet, shaky and soon trembling. So much blood…

He looked at her and his heart shattered for Jonouchi. Dear gods, what might he do when he found out? He had just found his sister. He had just been able to come to know her somewhat. Yet, now she was gone, forever stolen from him. He would never be able to make amends with her in any fashion.

There was so much blood…

He shivered, heart stuttering in his chest.

Her body laid there lifelessly, entire torso drenched. The sheets were shiny with the new color. The pillow was soaked. The metal bars on either side were slick. The smears of red were that of handprints. Sinew and muscle and spikes of white bone poked upwards. The thin frame of her shoulders held nothing. Her collarbones were bare of weight.

Her head was lying several feet away, against the wall. The window was smeared, the glass scarred bright red. The world beyond it was blocked away by crimson. It had violent rivulets beneath, dripping towards the sill. There it pooled together in a puddle large enough to encompass the entire right side of the window.

He trembled. And then he froze again.

The nurses were coming, he realized, shaking. By the gods, they were going to come in there. And they were going to see him. And then they would see her body. They would see the blood. And his figure standing there. And they would think—

They would assume that he had…

Yugi scrambled, mind racing. His body sought the window by instinct. His own mind sought comfort in that moment, a refusal that it was real. He didn't think he could deal with the truth of such harsh reality.

He moved, hands at first reaching for both sides of the window. His sneakers were probably slick with blood. But he ignored it. His heart pounding, body numb, he snatched the metal frame. His hands had moved of their own accord. The small berth of space from the rivers and pools of blood was only large enough that his hands were pressed completely together.

He shivered, then tossed his arms upwards. It creaked and groaned. Then it jumped with his chaotic movement. He was panting. The blood sloshed and dripped off the end beside his fingers. He hissed. The panting grew.

He threw himself forward. His heart was racing faster. His stomach tossed. He landed on the small ledge, mere inches of brick. Then he threw himself forward. He launched himself forward and landed on the asphalt.

At first his legs felt weak. Then he stiffened and straightened. His stomach dropped. He made to move across the street quickly, but it did not stop him from hearing. The nurse was screaming. The others were racing down the hall.

He panted, racing forward. He thought he was going to puke. His stomach twisted and coiled. He doubled over. He could have fallen on his face for all the terrible pain he felt within his legs. He groaned, hissing, then panted harshly. Oh gods, she'd been killed…

Her head had been cut off.

Why though? What had she done? What had she ever managed to do to offend someone so heavily that they would seek revenge of such proportions? Was it their conversation? Was it because she had spoken about the Project A.T.E.M.? If they had killed her, would they come for him next?

But who would have heard them? He had not known of anyone being there to hear. And even if he himself had not managed to hear them, her senses were keener than his own. So why would she have not managed such a feat? The compensation of her senses to make up for her eyes should have done her much better.

Yugi slowed somewhat, but he was shaking violently. And, as he looked about himself, he found his feet moving towards the forest of trees nearest him. He was running again the moment he spotted them.

He doubled over beneath the foliage, gasping for breath. She was dead. She was truly dead. She'd been decapitated. She'd been left with her head across the room, her blood across almost every inch of the room. He gasped and hissed, trembling. He'd stumbled across her carcass.

And he'd most likely been the one to cause it. He was the one she had spoken to. And he was sure it had to do with Code Name Atem that she was dead. It had to be something to do with him. There was no other explanation to him. It didn't make sense that someone would attack and kill someone as defenseless as she unless they had stumbled upon their conversation.

Because, she herself, had not been a threat. She had been emaciated. She had been blind. She was gentle in spirit, even if it was somewhat soured by bitterness. She was not a threat by any means. No definition of the word would ever point towards her.

So it was their discussion. It had to be.

He panted, pain coursing through him, and felt as if his entire body were vibrating with his grief. He shuddered, gasping, and closed his eyes tightly. It was scary to him, how powerful such a feeling was despite their mere minutes of conversation. He was not sure if it was because she'd held answers, she was Jonouchi's sister, or something to do with his disease. But it was there and he supposed to question it was not truly worth it.

The fact remained that he was grieved by the sudden loss. That was all that mattered in the end, that it was happening and he would have to go through the course of it as he needed.

Who was he to deny what his mind declared was necessary of him?

Yugi forced himself to start moving again. It was more fear than anything else which made him start walking. It was irrational and he felt sick to his stomach but he could not stay there. It was selfish that he felt the need to run for it when he knew somewhere in the back of his mind that no one would be following him.

They had no reason to. They had no connection to him. Even if someone were suspicious, they had no leads.

He shivered and shook his head. His feet felt heavy as he continued forward. His stomach felt disgustingly harsh now. His heart stuttered behind his chest again. He felt like he was going to vomit now more than ever before.

He remembered the heat from the river he and Yami had fallen into in their dream. The smell had been just as terrible then as it was in his best friend sister's hospital room. He remembered how sticky it'd felt. Thank the gods he hadn't touched it when he'd opened the window. He remembered drowning in it, swept beneath a wave of red which clogged his nose and filled his lungs when he breathed. He felt just as choked now as he had then.

Yugi glanced about himself once, then hurried forward again. The coppery smell was fading somewhat, though he still felt as if he had drenched himself in her blood. The whole room had been practically assaulted with bright red. The image behind his eyes made them water. But it did not stop him. He was relieved, at least, that he had not looked into her eyes when he had fled.

At least that would be one less thing to haunt him.

Yugi paced through the trees but his anxiety did not leave him. And he couldn't completely push away the harsh scent of blood in his nose again. Even the hard-packed earth and the chill of snow as it began to slowly fall in shallow swoops of bright white did nothing to stop it. His stomach dropped even as his heart began to pound further. He licked his lips, then drew his teeth across his tongue for a moment.

But there was something repulsively sweet and yet decayed now as well. It was a harsher scent, making him stop short, though his mind flashed again with her mangled corpse. He didn't think he would ever see it away.

But it tore through his senses again, drawing him forward further. His eyes flashed with bewilderment, his mouth opening and then closing again. Something about the scent was alluring yet repulsive all the same.

He padded forward another step. Then he halted and breathed in deeply again. His heart was hurting when he looked about himself once more. The trees were somewhat denser, the undergrowth more abundant, and his stomach ached. Some of the leaves knotted against the fabric of his jeans and he felt even more harshly the urge to heave. He glanced around once more, then began to move again.

His senses hadn't alerted him to a threat. His eyes narrowed slightly, scanning the trees. Despite his experience of reacting instinctively and hitting Jonouchi in the face after an effortless block, he could not stop himself from checking again. He had not fully sensed Valon when he'd walked in on him and Yami the day before. So why should he not be keen about it now?

Yugi slowed his steps to minimize his noise, though in his ears the snow crunched too loudly and the blanket of white on the leaves around his sneakers did nothing to shield it. He shivered but did not fail to follow his plan of investigation. Curious and frustrated, the small teen drew in another deep breath to sort through the scents in the air. The dead frost did well to preserve much of it. He wondered if the lack of wind and the new snow had allowed him to smell things further off.

The flakes were but a mere dusting at the moment, a light flurry of white against the air. He frowned slightly, tilting his head. Valon had said the winter would be longer and harsher than he'd ever experienced before. He had…

He shook his head sharply. So it was snowing. But it always snowed in winter in Hokkaido. Especially in Domino. They were so close to the mountain range that it made it impossible for the snow to miss their city.

Yugi had seen a couple of bad winters as it was. The idea of it being so much worse than them was chilling. He remembered his mom one time telling him that the year he was born, the entire city was shut down for a month. The snow had fallen in such abundance that it was impossible to clear the streets for cars. The electricity had gone out for the entire duration. And the snow had piled up beyond a foot high.

He wondered if they might be more prepared for such an event now. It had been sixteen years. And the certainty which Valon had spoken with still put him on edge. How was he meant to ignore it if he could almost feel such a thing in the air now as well? He had even said the coldest day of the season had not come yet…

He shivered, but his slow movements had not ceased. Something soft, like a trace of cologne almost wispy like the scent of a candle, came to his nose. He halted, eyes widening. It was definitely a cologne of some kind. The scent was something spicy with a kinder edge like burning wood. He bit his lip, eyes flickering about rapidly as he turned his attention toward the trees surrounding him once more.

That smell was disturbingly familiar. He knew it somehow. But still he could not fully grasp what it was that he was meant to do with such knowledge. Where had he smelled it before? Who had worn it? He narrowed his eyes and drew the scent deep into his lungs, holding it for several minutes.

Yugi knew it. He recognized it from somewhere.

He shook his head slightly. He turned and started forward as the scent became clearer to him in his mind. The cold air preserved the smell well. He shook his head as it burned his nasal passages for a long moment.

Yugi paused at the edge of the trees. There was displaced dirt, a pile thrown about within the virgin snow. It had been flung about, the ice colored with dark brown and red. He shivered, swallowing hard. Someone had been digging.

He stepped forward again. Why would someone be digging in the woods? It made no sense to him. Why do such a thing in a seemingly random place such as this? It was one miniscule-looking clearing, with a clear ring of trees.

He halted at this thought, head snapping around once. No, the trees towards the middle were lower to the ground. Some were still growing, but others were but several years old, only half the height of the older. He glanced at the branches for a moment, then stiffened further.

He pressed forward one more step.

His mind ached with a sudden pulsing violence. His stomach dropped harshly and his heart began to race with bewilderment. He knew this place. He had made a point of avoiding it for years. Since he was twelve, he had never set foot in it. Yet, somehow, for whatever reason, his nose had led him here.

He shivered, a disdainful snarl forming in his mind. How fitting that he should find his way there. Shizuka had just died and he had come into the abandoned area of the most memorialized graveyard in Domino City. There were, of course, only two cemeteries in the first place, but he knew this to be the one too heavily populated to hold anymore. They would have been cutting into the national park had they failed to stop using it and so they had made another, closer to the border of the neighboring city.

Yugi hesitated, eyes flickering about once more, and then grimaced. His head was still pulsating with pain but it was second to the declaration which shot into his mind.

Ryuzaki Dinosaur was the one who wore that cologne. He was the only one Yugi had ever encountered with that particular scent.

The thought made him somewhat anxious.

He had never considered that someone he knew might be digging through the graveyard. The idea of someone he knew digging up a grave made him want to be sick. Why would anyone think that was something they needed to do? It seemed idiotic to him, unless it was truly somehow necessary for them. And he couldn't think of why it ever could be. Yami had mentioned something about hellhounds needing to eat the brain and heart in order to gain the ability to change into them. But…why change into someone long dead? And did it even work like that?

Yugi felt as if his insides were withering. A new smell, deep and woodsy, like dampened leaves and soaked moss, had come to reach his nose now. He stiffened, shivering, and his heart felt as if it were going to dissipate altogether. He backed up, a harsh tremble coursing through him now.

Oh gods, wolfsbane…

There was someone with wolfsbane nearby.

He was shaking so hard the trees had become feverish blurs. His mouth opened and closed and he swallowed back a choked noise. In front of him, several yards away, was Ryuzaki, crouched beside the scar of a desolate grave.

Yugi felt as if his hands might fall off at any moment, his fingers shaking rapidly. He backed up another step and nearly fell backwards on his own feet. He clamped his jaws, pressing his tongue into the roof of his mouth tightly. He couldn't breathe…

His body felt like it was burning and stretching and—

He turned tail and fled.

* * *

He looked over as Yami stretched and shrugged his shoulders lazily. He had just woken from a nap; that much was clear without even thinking twice. His eyes were glazed, his expression sloppy with disheveled hair, his bangs wild, a few wrinkles of hideous red across his cheeks where he'd laid his head against his arms. He was still in the corner, but he'd moved to bring a blanket at some point, that same deep red one that Yugi had grabbed him that night. The small teen tilted his head as they took each other in, and wondered vaguely how terrible he looked as Yami immediately sat up with wide eyes.

"What's wrong?" the taller boy asked instantly, eyes sharp and sleep erased from his features. If not for the slight knotting in his hair and the grease which made his bangs stringy and his reddened cheeks, he would have looked as if he had never been asleep. Yugi almost wanted to smile but the sensation felt foreign to him.

He felt shaky, and the idea of sharing with him the newest fear which had come upon him was a relief, but he faltered. He could not think of anything to truly say. Instead he blinked and stared at him, his heart leaping to his throat. After all of the trauma he felt too exhausted to explain. And he thought Yami might become too alarmed to relax.

And he had only just begun to make him relax again in the first place. He shivered, then looked away again quickly, voice slightly dismissive as he whispered, "Nothing is wrong, Yami. Nothing at all."

The other boy almost opened his mouth to snap at him in disdain. But then he stopped. Something about the way Yugi seemed almost crushed and too terribly small made him hesitant. He bit his tongue, staring at him intensely for a moment, and then looked away as well with dark eyes.

Fine; if Yugi would not tell him, then that was his own decision.

"So, did I wake you?" The question was spoken with something like acute pain towards such a thought. Yami blinked wide eyes, then looked up again. The smaller boy was watching him, head slightly bowed, peering at him through his long lashes.

"Not entirely. I was already waking. You just gave me reason to truly do so," he stated after a moment, studying his face further. Yugi looked crestfallen even with this gentle lie, as if he knew too well to listen to such words, and the very thought made him sad. But Yami had no idea how to comfort him, if he should ever truly wish for that, so he glanced away instead. "I was sleeping off some medication I took earlier."

The statement made Yugi pause, eyes growing wide. "What about your arms? How do they feel? Do you think we should clean and redo the dressings?" he asked, voice almost somehow hopeful. His tone made the taller boy blink and raise his head again, attention immediately caught on him once more. His eyes flickered about once or twice, then narrowed faintly.

"We can, I suppose, but I do not know them to be truly necessary," he admitted after a moment, lowering his gaze to them slowly. He was not sure how well they'd healed, or whether it would be a wise idea to mess with them now. He was not sure he had put enough food in his belly to help them along. The past two days had been so stressful that sometimes he was amazed he had not succumbed to fear and hidden himself away. Sometimes he wondered how it was that his body even continued to function.

He lightly trailed a finger over the layers of fabric wrapped around his skin. He wondered if his flesh would be wrinkled and shriveled… "Yes, let's go ahead and do that. I wish to see how far they have progressed in recovery."

Yugi wondered if that would even slightly hint towards his mental recovery as well. If his body was healing well, did that mean the stress was leaving him yet or would it simply be a singular form of some kind? He could not fully comprehend the way the disease worked, however, so he vowed to himself that moment to take note of his words, his tone, the way he moved when he had him join him on the bed. That way, he could maybe gauge it somewhat.

He was not sure Yami would allow him to if he got an idea of what he was doing, but he still thought to do it. He had to. If Yami wasn't recovering from the horror of that dream, he did not know what he would do. He did not know what he would do to fix it. He did not know if he would become sick from it all. What if the burden of it weighed him down until he nearly snapped beneath the pressure?

And then, what happened if he truly _did_ snap beneath it all?

He thought he was going to puke again. His head was swimming with terror. What would happen to him? Would he lash out at all of them? Yugi did not know that he could fight him off. He did not know if he would manage to get away from it all…

Yami joined him on the bed when he pulled the kit back from beneath the bed. Both of them ignored that blood was smeared across both sides, their fingertips formerly drenched in the bright red liquid. The smaller boy could have flinched before then. But now he merely flipped the lid open and looked at the tools inside with studious attention. His focus was unrivaled, beautifully so, and the taller boy appreciated it more than he thought himself capable of putting into words.

He bit his lip and kept his teeth pressed against his tongue as he watched Yugi draw the scissors from the kit. Neatly he ran his nails over the blades, an unspoken attempt to clean dried blood away, and slid the tip beneath the tape of his bandage on his left arm. Yami kept still but his stomach tossed brilliantly at the display, the measured and methodical light which entered the other boy's eyes. He had the beautiful determination needed for a steady hand in surgery and Yami felt sick to have stolen that possibility from him.

Yugi snipped away the tape along his arm, down to his elbow. He was amazed to see that it had hardly risen upwards from where he had bent his arm and folded it as many times as he had. In fact, he was almost unable to recall a point in the last two days in which Yami had not had his arms crossed.

He frowned faintly at the idea, but began to gently pull the tape away. He slid his fingers along the sticky adhesive, tugging it softly away from his skin. The red-eyed teen did not even fully pay the action attention.

It was a relief to him at the moment. But still it made him queasy. Despite hiding it away from his features, he could not shake the feeling of intense disbelief and growing sickness. The hot smell of coppery blood from where he tore the edges of the other's skin open along his arms made his head spin and the stench of glue made him want to puke. He suppressed a shiver, focusing entirely on the wound as he needed. There was no puss, but the stench made him nearly flinch away in confusion.

It smelled as if all of his cells had died where they were exposed to the air, as they had before. And he saw that the edges were lined with black almost like stripes of kohl, though half of it seemed also to appear like used glue that had been stripped and flattened there. He shivered, looking into the kit for a moment before pulling out the scalpel he had stuffed inside a while back.

He stared at the sharp blade, the smooth silver surface of it, and felt vaguely unnerved and discontent with the idea of using it again. But he knew as well that Yami would never mind it. He would put up with whatever it took in order to survive an ordeal, no matter how large or small it was.

Yugi wished he himself could do the same. But his first instinct was to run to someone else with a problem when he could not understand it or face it head on. His first thought had been to tell Yami exactly what had upset him so much on his walk back. He wanted to tell him why he had doubled back several times, repeatedly changing directions each time, scared that there really was someone watching him. He had been so terrified that someone was following, that they meant to do what Bakura and Pegasus had seemingly failed to.

His heart felt sick as he reached over to touch his arm. It occurred to him only then that he had not sanitized his hands. The thought made him falter. His heart raced for a moment, his hands halting halfway towards the bare flesh. He blinked, looking up when Yami very quietly, asked, "Is it bad?" in a calm voice underlined with confusion.

Yugi shivered. "No, I just…I just realized that I hadn't washed my hands or anything before I started," he admitted with a small sigh. "I'm thinking I might need to go back and do that before I do it again."

The taller boy watched him, eyes sharp and calculating, and then shook his head. "It does not matter," he stated simply. "You cannot infect me with anything. The lycanthropy will burn away any illness I might gain from lack of proper preparation. Although, I doubt that you would have anything that could do that as it is."

He hesitated only a moment longer, tilting his head before leaning forward to look at the wound more closely. The smell came in waves, the stench of decay and dead cells which needed to be scraped away for new growth. He licked his lips and moved his hand to grasp his palm, flattening it further and tilting his arm slightly. The other boy blinked at him, but Yugi hardly noticed as he shifted the scalpel closer to his skin.

"You sure you don't want me to go wash my hands first? I haven't touched the wound yet," he reminded him gently. "I can always just do that and come back after—"

He shook his head sharply. "No, I do not see a point in wasting any further time in this. Please, just begin as you must. I want to see how well it is healing."

Yugi wished he could say that he could just look at it then and there and consider that to be it. But it was clear that was far from the case. The cells would have to be scraped and he'd have to wash the wound and let him see from there. It was obvious, however, that, unlike last time, Yami was not healing enough to push the gauze outwards and nearly completely away from the wound altogether. Unlike then, Yugi would have to pull it out himself, then discard them and eventually repeat the action so that it could mend itself properly.

He nearly sighed but bit back the reaction. It would be stupid to grow irritable with such a task. He couldn't ask for someone more patient and willing than Yami as it was. He couldn't fault him for anything because he was so willing to let him do as he needed because it ensured his survival.

"Okay," he mumbled softly, ignoring his initial response to say that he was really far more inclined to do that than anything else. But there was no argument he could come up with to make it seem more urgent. And he was sure Yami would fight him if he had to. He was not going to let Yugi waste more time than necessary. "Then, I guess I'll just start scraping and then we'll bandage you right back up again."

Yami let out a small hum in response.

Yugi worked on the task of using the scalpel blade to sheer away gently at his dead cells, eyes sharp with wonder for a moment. The layer was larger than he'd initially thought and the moment he scraped away the decayed cells, the blood began to swell upwards in rivulets and beads. He blinked thoughtfully at the concept, but his mind was also traveling elsewhere.

Had someone truly been following, wouldn't they have tried to catch him?

Wouldn't they have attempted to cut him off and attack him?

He thought of the wolfsbane and nearly puked again. He didn't know what they had done with it, but he was sure it had to have been used on Ryuzaki if it was. And he felt sick knowing that he had left him to his fate, whatever it might be, but the thought of rescuing him was far from anything he ever could have done. There was no way he could have gone in there—not with that smell.

Yugi was not sure he would have gone to help Yami with such a situation, either. And, if she were infected as well, he did not think he would have even been able to save Anzu. The thought made him nearly quiver, but he suppressed it in order to keep from alarming the boy in front of him. Instead he drew in a deep breath, holding it within the pit of his lungs, and kept his gaze on the wound in front of him.

How sickening.

How pathetic.

He kept his eyes there. The wound had to be the most truthful thing in his bedroom at the moment. Because his reluctance to explain felt like a betrayal. And Yami's silence was suffocating. The blood, however, bright red and swelling, could not lie. It spoke of health beneath this dried death of black skin atop it. It whispered of healing.

He closed his eyes for a moment, relieved, then went about using the tips of his nails to dig into the serrated flesh and pull away the soiled dressing. Yami, as always, failed to flinch.

Yugi could not imagine what one must have gone through in order to lack the ability to react to pain of such magnitude. And he knew it had to be something powerful to have caused a wound to oneself and then ignore it when it throbbed and ached and grew inflamed with heat.

He let out a breath, then turned to grasp the needle set, pulling out the necessary ones and the sutures with it, eyes sharp with familiarity. He knew this well enough not to even think much about it anymore.

It was a powerful and well-ingrained skill to be able to shut away the rest of the world to figure out what had to be done. His mother had taught him that ability well. He wondered how he would ever thank her for that when his original goal in life was no more.

Yami watched him for a moment, eyes sharp and dark, and then looked away as the needle entered his skin. Yugi kept it there for a moment, then pulled his hand away to grasp at the spray bottle to soak through the fissure of flesh. The taller teen watched him dab it with a cloth, a soft sting greeting him which he easily ignored, and stared with wide eyes as Yugi gently wiped at the blood he'd so easily gathered from the scalpel. With easy and sure flicks of his wrists and caresses of his fingers he'd managed to wipe away whatever little bit of debris rested in there.

Yugi licked his lips again as he began to sew the wound shut again. A few layers had healed, so no more bone showed bright white in between the pale pink of muscle and the red of fresh blood. He closed his eyes for a moment, then turned towards the bandage tape. "Thankfully, you don't need to have the gauze put back in there again. You're healing too fast. It'd just end up being a burden like it was the last time."

Yami tilted his head. "I do not recall it being burdensome."

Yugi smiled faintly and worked to cut at the tape which confined his right arm. "I just meant the way that your arms had healed so well that it began to push them out, remember?" he said softly, glancing at him in amusement from beneath his lashes. "Anyways, we'll get this one sorted out too and call it a night, okay? I'm pretty tired."

Yami studied him for a moment, frowning deeply. "Yes," he stated calmly, "you look exhausted. Are you sure you are all right?"

He nodded almost lazily, reflexive in action. "Yeah, Yami, I'm fine. But thanks for asking. It's all okay though." He paused, giving him a bigger smile that was both friendly and slightly distracted. "Let's just go ahead and put on a movie and see who falls asleep first, okay?"

He studied him only a moment longer. Then he nodded his consent towards such a plan. "Yes," he answered in that same tone. He kept his right arm angled for him to continue his work, but lowered his left towards his lap. He barely noticed that Yugi had not had to put as much tape or wrapping around as he had before. The wound had even receded an inch from his elbow, and he could see no damage or even a scratch remaining there on his arm.

Yugi picked at the gauze between his skin, dropping it away on the bed as he had the other. He narrowed his eyes slightly but did not bother any further with a display of discomfort. His mind was elsewhere again.

It would not leave the grave alone. That one grave that Ryuzaki had dug up…

Did it hold some kind of importance?

Or was it just something that defined him as a hellhound?

Yami said that hellhounds would eat corpses sometimes. Did that mean that a starving lycanthrope would not resort to the same or was it something else? He couldn't tell.

He snipped away the last suture, then got to his feet as he began to put everything away again. "Here, you go ahead and pick out a movie, okay? I'm going to put this up. I'll be back in a minute."

Yami watched him with an expression that bordered somewhere between cynical and confused. Then he wandered off before Yugi could say a word, headed for his closet as he had asked of him.

Yugi packed away the items in a more organized manner, then picked out a bottle of pills for the other wolf. He pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth and swallowed thickly as he wandered back towards the bed. He ignored the smears of blood on the canister as he dropped it to the floor gently and pushed it away lightly with his foot.

If hellhounds ate dead bodies, then was that a staple of their diet? Was that something that they relied on steadily? Did that allow them to change and take on their incorporeal form regardless of how long they had been dead? Or was it something else entirely? Did they truly eat the corpses in order to gain their forms? And, if so, was there not a time frame for which to do it before the ability was nonexistent?

He remembered that Yami had said otherwise, however. He had written on that note that the chemical the hellhounds needed to become incorporeal was only there in fresh corpses. And he'd said that they would need to eat the heart of a corpse to gain that form. But the graves within the forest were not fresh. He _knew_ that.

Yugi didn't understand what it was that made them want to dig them up from this certain graveyard.

But then, he also didn't know if Ryuzaki was a hellhound in the first place. And the thought of hellhounds all eating human bodies at some point disgusted him. Did Valon eat them too? Did the same boy who had helped him when he had yet to find Yami…did Valon _truly_ eat them too?

And, did that mean, at some point, that lycanthropes did it as well?

Was he doomed to eventually end up devouring a corpse too?

Yami was seated on the bed when he went around the other side to plop down. He had, for a small moment, the overwhelming urge to reach out and touch his arm. He had the urge to touch him and make sure he was there, to maybe see if the thought made him unrecognizable to him somehow.

But Yugi failed to do so, and as he looked at Yami again, he realized somewhere in the back of his mind, that despite it all, he knew and recognized nothing of the other boy.

Yami was not his friend. Or, at least not in a way that implied knowledge of each other.

There was only the emotional loyalty which tied them together.

There was only a matter of survival between them.

And there was nothing for him to recognize in Yami because he lacked the knowledge of what it was that _made_ him Yami.

 **As mentioned in the chapter, Lupa's Blessing is a term used predominantly by the lycanthrope to ask safe passage through another's territory. The hellhounds use this phrase to show proper respect to a lycanthrope and, in turn, the lycanthropes will ask a hellhound for Fenrir's Blessing.**

 **So, for this case, Valon asks Yami for Lupa's Blessing in order to seem less opposing so as not to provoke a challenge from him. And, if the situation were ever to be reversed, Yami would then ask Valon for Fenrir's Blessing to show proper respect and seem less threatening.**

 **As for the Lunar Ascension, you'll find out what that event pertains to later on in the story. It gets discussed several various times, with different characters, and all of them have certain thoughts on the event. You'll understand later why it is that small details were changed in this manner later as the story goes on.**

 **I should be back on track with updates, but in case I'm not, don't worry. I'll try to update again the next posting date on my schedule.**


	25. Comforts

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day (no update on June 2nd)**

 **Chapter Warnings: Mentions of Death, Blood, DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF DEAD BODIES (the girl was pregnant), Character Deaths, Wolves Fighting, Yugi and Yami Fighting, Innuendos, Mention of Foursome**

 **I'm pretty sure I forgot to put this in the last couple of chapters, but if there are any really odd misplaced or misspelled words, it's because I've typed the last few chapters on my phone (chapter twenty and further) and my autocorrect is a butt. Like, last chapter several times "in" was "on" and once or twice "Yugi" became "Yugo" or "Yami" was "Yumi" or anything of that nature. So, if it's really bad, feel free to point it out if you want. If you don't care to, don't bother. There's no obligation. I just wanted you guys to know in case it's something that's glaringly obvious and kind of terrible.**

 **Anyways, so there are four characters who die this chapter. The first is the pregnant girl. It doesn't go too far into description about it, honestly. I say it's detailed but it's not too terrible? Anyways, if you want to skip the description of it, read to "** **What if it was a stranger he didn't know?** **" and then use Ctrl + F to find the phrase "** **Who could possibly…?" Past that point you should actually be safe to keep reading. It gets mentioned a few times afterwards but not in detail.**

 **As for the three wolves, you find out more about them later in the story. Why they were there, why they killed her, who did what and how and why. Every death has a reason in this story, by the way. They come up more frequently as the story goes along and often end up explained later than they take place (and for good reason).**

Chapter XXV: Comforts

 _Work Log Entry XXV: June, 1998_

 _June 11_

 _So far, he has been healthy and none of his systems have declined. His state of being is as consistent as it would have had he gone through the process of a normal birthing. He has not changed back as of yet._

 _We are still hopeful that all of our efforts were not in vain and he will survive._

 _That Project A.T.E.M. will be and_ _remain a success._

 _June 20_

 _The boss has lost all patience._

 _"Atem" is to be tested upon immediately._

 _June 26_

 _He is the perfect prototype of a Pure-Blood werewolf. His vitals are stronger than even those of a healthy Full-Blood. And his mind is far more advanced than the two years he has been alive._

 _His behavior has grown adaptive and he reacts to both stimulants of that of a human boy and a wolf pup. His DNA and RNA are solely that of a wild, unclassified species of wolf despite his human shell._

 _Even when we bled him this morning, it came out as the blood of an extinct supernatural wolf._

"That's where persistence comes in," Yugi said easily, casting him a lazy grin. The blond rolled his eyes, but there was a ghost of a smile on his lips. The amusement was nearly nonexistent, however, because of the weight of the death which still held his shoulders bare. The small teen looked away again quickly. It was too painful to see Jonouchi's usually lively face and kind eyes filled with such immense ache. "That's why you double check and sometimes triple check if you feel like you need to."

Jonuchi was hardly paying attention and they both knew it. But it still made Yugi's stomach drop and his heart ache further. He knew in his situation he would have skipped school, ducked out for a week at the very least. But Jonouchi didn't have that luxury.

If he went home, he was basically alone. His dad could be there with him, but he was almost always drunk. They both knew it held away some of the guilt from his job as a cop, the weight of his own self-imposed thoughts of "I could have saved them" no matter the circumstances.

And, if he was home with him, more likely than not it would never feel that way to Jonouchi. Because, when he was drunk, he was mostly quiet. Although, on especially bad cases, he lashed out and beat the blond until he was all but unable to get up again, curled up on the floor in a fetal position.

He thought the silence would kill him more than the beatings this time around.

Yugi couldn't imagine what he would have done in that situation. Visiting made him sick at times, because he knew what happened on those worse nights. And his dad was always so keen on showing himself to be much more than he was or ever could be.

"I… Fuck, I'm so sorry, Katsuya," he blurted out before he could think any better of it. His eyes snapped to his again, the other boy stiffening in his seat. For a moment neither of them moved and Yugi tasted blood in his mouth as his heart leaped in his throat. He shivered and the brown eyes he knew so well, flecked with hazel around the pupils and the tiniest specks of gold around the middle, met his with deadly frustration.

For a moment they remained as they were. No one moved. Yugi wondered if they were even breathing anymore. Jonouchi stared at him, unblinking and sharp in gaze. Both of them studied each other until Yugi quickly looked away, breath stuttering in his lungs.

Jonouchi didn't have to say the words. The smaller boy was on his feet immediately. He snatched the bag off the floor and tossed it over his right shoulder, hesitating for only a moment. His eyes flickered towards him only momentarily once more as he started to walk towards the door.

Yugi turned around again to face him fully. "I didn't know her all that well. And I…I get the feeling that you truly didn't either. And I'm so sorry about that, Katsuya," he whispered softly. "And I have no idea what you're going through."

He started to get up, but Yugi had already thrown the apartment door open and trotted out. Jonouchi considered for only a moment to take off and follow him, to at least walk him back to his house. But the thought died away again almost immediately.

After that surprising combo he had done just two days before, he had no doubt he could handle anything that came his way.

Yugi felt sick as he started through the doors of the apartment building. Unlike Jonouchi, he was not sure that he could make it home without some kind of confrontation happening. He was not certain that his walk home would be a safe thing.

And it was only further highlighted by the resounding sensation that someone was watching him. As he strode across the sidewalk down the street towards the end of the streak of buildings, he felt it. It was as if his skin were tingling, the hairs on the back of his neck rising. It was the way his fingers twitched and his spine began to ache with its rigidity. His throat ached and his heart pounded within it. His breath came out in slight gasps and he felt almost sickened further by the idea.

Yes, there had to be someone.

But he couldn't sense them.

Even when he had turned around earlier that day before school and pretended to be facing that direction while on the phone, there had been no clue. There had not been a single whiff of scent. Nor a noise to indicate breathing or walking. He had no idea where this sensation came from when he couldn't pinpoint the source, but it alarmed him all the same. And he knew better than to ignore that.

So he did not understand. He was confused and disoriented by it all. The paranoia ate at him every step of the way. And it had begun long since to irritate him. It was frustrating and it pissed him off. It sent him further on edge than ever before. He did not know what to do with himself in the case that he _was_ being followed either. The thought terrified him beyond his own understanding.

What happened if he was being stalked? And what was the meaning behind it then? Would it be with the intention to put him through all that Shizuka had been?

Or might it somehow be worse?

He did not think even what Yami had warned him of hunters doing could be worse than what she had been faced with. Being experimented on bested being used as half of a puppy mill.

Or, at least he considered it to.

But then, even if he was used as the second half of a mill, he wasn't the one who would go through the worst effects of it.

Would they attack and chase and kidnap him as he had assumed them readily capable of? Would they mutilate him and destroy him and all sense of identity he had?

His thoughts flashed for a moment.

Was Code Name Atem a true identity? Was there really a wolf out there who had been birthed under such horrid circumstances with the pain of being struck with constant experiments? Yugi could not fathom much of an existence above the underground with the treatment she had told him he must have gone through. With that in mind, he did not assume to think that she truly had the fullest idea of what he'd been through, but it still made sense to him. He understood.

And he highly doubted that any person put through such hateful treatment could ever react and spend time as easily as another person. When it came to regular Domino dwellers, they would stick out terribly. No one would have been able to mistake them for anything but a horribly abused person, with measures of toxicity that they could not deny upon first glance.

Yet, the only person Yugi had come to know like that—for those brief few minutes before Yami had come—was now dead. Bakura had been vicious and dangerous, willing to kill and maim as he needed to, even as he displayed mercy in small amounts. So to think that he had truly killed him at that moment, that another wolf would come along with a similar ruthlessness, made him dizzy. He almost swayed but then shoved the idea aside.

Since then he had not seen a single wolf he thought as capable of being the one Shizuka had spoken of. No, he did not assume Code Name Atem to be some kind of legendary wolf by any means. But he thought his personality would have to coincidence much more with that of a vicious killer.

The experiments had to have left him more violent, more likely to kill, than ever.

It would have skewed his views on life…

He wondered at his night terrors for a moment, thoughtful as he tilted his head in consideration. He had had those dreams all his life. Yet, his mom and grandpa and dad had helped him through them. It would be impossible for him to be Code Name Atem by any means.

He cut through the woods after a moment, towards the cemetery. In the trees he was more likely to lose the person following him. But he was also more likely to run into his other fear, the idea that the corpses might make his mouth water as the rabbit seemingly so long ago had. He blinked and swallowed hard, but ignored the effort his mind made to push him towards the image of the rabbit in the woods. He pushed away the smell, so sickeningly sweet and mouthwatering, with such power as to make him nearly tremble. He almost wished to lick his lips for that small second.

But Yugi ignored such a discouraging urge and hurried to carry himself forward faster. His feet were all but bursting in the snow, the ice cracking and popping beneath his feet. Frozen limbs from shorter plants snapped against his sneakers and the buds of several plants dropped and crackled beneath his weight. He couldn't hear a single animal and his mind struggled to coax for him yet another answer that he had not been expecting.

He had failed to hear any animals the day before either.

He halted and his stomach clenched.

Yesterday he had run across a werewolf, as was cleared of doubt by the smell of wolfsbane. He did not know what had happened to Ryuzaki, whether he was bitten or born with the disease or if he had asked to be bitten or was infected against his will. He did not know if he had been snatched up and dragged away somewhere. And he still lacked the knowledge of if he was a lycanthrope or a hellhound.

But he recognized the silence now.

It was that of animals acknowledging the more unnatural presence of a predatory animal beyond their imagination. They had fallen silent so that they would not be noticed.

But did that also mean that they were responding to _him_ that way? Yugi cringed. If they were, then how was he meant to know of another being close?

He sighed softly, glancing around slowly. Something was off, however. Something was terribly, irreparably wrong. In his head he could not fathom what it might be, but there was something and it made his marrow cold.

Even as he continued forward he could not shake the fear which came over him now. His stomach twisted harder and he tilted his head uncomfortably as the air grew thick enough around him that he felt he was wading through shallow water. He narrowed his eyes and glanced about himself again. Something was unnaturally wrong at the moment; it went beyond his presence or even that of Ryuzaki before him.

He could not place it, but he knew it was there somewhere. But the direction it came from, the fear which it wrought, was something else entirely. He paced and then turned, spinning on his heel.

But to go back meant he might be followed more noticeably and what if the attempt to double back as he had the day before did not work a second time?

Someone must have seen him leave the hospital or something and so they had begun to trail him.

Or maybe it was because they sought to kidnap him and—

He pushed the thought away. No, he wouldn't consider that train of thought any further.

Even if Yami was right and hunters did those kinds of things, surely he wouldn't be the first on their list, right?

Yugi was hardly even slightly the best wolf. If they wanted to breed, then obviously going for a more experienced wolf would be the best route. Although, the fact that he was considering this was beyond him.

He shook his head and rolled his eyes, not bothering to look around again.

He needed to relax. Maybe someone wasn't even following him. And, even if they were, they had to know that he knew they were there. And if that was true, then what would they do to rectify that idea? Because they had to also realize he was smart enough to avoid them as he had before, that he knew to double back and flee as necessary.

So, would they take that as a reason to send another wolf in what he assumed had to be their third attempt? The two wolves during his first Change and Bakura… There had to be some kind of connection between them. There was no doubt in his mind that no such coincidence existed. Even if Yami had not said the same beforehand, he would have assumed such a reality.

He stepped forward, then slipped. His foot tangled in the dead remains of a fern. His body jerked and he crashed face first into the earth. The snow cushioned much of the force he would have originally felt. The white crystals were far more forgiving than the earth beneath.

Yugi huffed, blinking his eyes open and drawing in a deep breath. He could scent nothing but ice, too cold and frosted for him to truly describe. He pushed his arms outwards, tugging them to his sides, and pulled himself gracelessly to a sitting position. He didn't have to bother with appearances here. He was in the middle of the woods, alone.

He dusted his pants off, glancing at his shoe. The thin tendrils of browned plant were still latched to his sneaker. He sighed, settling back on his weight, and grabbed at the remains of withered fern. He tugged it away, the stems so frozen that they snapped like toothpicks between his fingers. He frowned, dropping them aside, and then pulled himself to a standing position.

At first he failed to notice it. He was so annoyed by his own lack of attention and being thrown onto his stomach that it occupied his mind too fully. But then he blinked. A thought occurred to him that something smelled harshly. And the scent curled in his lungs enough to make him blink and then stiffen. He smelled blood.

It was older than Shizuka's had been when he'd stepped into the hospital room, but it was there all the same. And it quickly knotted within his nose and threatened once again to suffocate him as if he were somehow a great and terrible threat to it.

Yugi looked about himself now, his body instinctively recoiling at the thought of another death to be seen in front of him. He breathed in deeply, groaning deep in his chest, and turned back the way he had come. He could go back. Or, if he continued forward…

It was a primal curiosity which made him choose. Without much further thought, he turned away again. He could see no blood there. As he came forward a few more steps, the smell clenched upon his senses. His heart began to pound, his own blood roaring in his ears.

Was it an animal?

Or a person?

He blinked, then faltered. A splattering of blood sprayed the snow in front of him. He supposed it was the lack of dusting earlier that day that allowed it to remain visible. The new flakes falling in front of him at the moment would completely cover it soon enough.

He felt his stomach clench further but could not fight away the instinct to investigate. He did not know if his wonder and disgust were human or canine. Both of them were extremely curious by nature, though he was not used to such a powerful pull despite the dread in his body.

Yugi looked forward in the snow. There was a large gash in the dune, a dip so wide and abrupt that it made him falter. He glanced around once, then turned back. He knew it could only correspond to a body being dragged, even if the blood was not so visible here. The wound must have been opposite the position it was pulled in. Or so shallow that it had not bled enough at that moment.

He walked alongside it, unable to bring himself to disturb it by moving across it. His eyes flickered about and his body felt dizzy as he considered turning back again. Would it truly be so bad to avoid sating his curiosity for once? So often he gave in to the urge to see and explore things, even when he had no true right to…

He still could not make his feet stop moving. With a blink, head still spinning, he made his way further down the slope. It was a strange sensation to be led more fully by his instincts than this. It was nothing he truly understood at the moment, which made him feel even worse than before. He narrowed his eyes and crept forward, slow and cautious, and his stomach dropped as he faltered once more.

There was a clump of bright red that bordered orange in shade and he felt as if he needed to turn tail again. Oh gods, there were only two people he knew of with that color hair.

What if it was a stranger he didn't know?

Would that make things better or so much worse?

He stepped forward again. It was either going to be Chono, his math teacher, or the recent winner of the beauty pageant, Kaoruko Himekoji. If it was someone he knew, it would have to be one of them. If it was someone he did not, it could easily be _anyone_. He almost laughed at the thought.

He shook his head slightly. Domino City was not the largest city ever. In fact, it was smaller than most. The odds of him not knowing who it was were all but nonexistent.

Yet, as he came towards the body and stopped short, he felt it impossible that he could possibly have known this girl. With her body so heavily defiled, her belly torn and gutted, her ribs opened and her organs further exposed, he almost could not recognize her. He could almost pretend she was a stranger to him. But even the bruises along her thighs and wrists, the cuts along her throat and the splashes of bright red across the white, did not stop him from recognition. Her broken limbs, the way her shoulders had both been pulled out of place, her arms shattered and the bone showing, did not pause his anxious mind.

Yugi hissed and his heart ached as he looked further along. Her stomach had been gutted, her insides completely dragged out. And, lying several feet away, entangled in frozen intestines, frozen blue in the cold, were four small forms. They were covered in black, with purplish cores and hints of bright red along the edges.

He doubled over, his breakfast spilling from his throat. The acid burned so harshly it caused him to fall to his knees. He was shaking when the second wave came over him. He choked and sputtered and his body jerked. For a moment he feared he might change, gasping and hissing, as the spasms grew sharper and he puked once more. But the accompanying rush of heat and the horrid sense of pain did not come. Nothing elongated beneath his skin and his body did not shake so violently that he collapsed further.

But there were tears streaming down his face and he swore they burned even as they froze against his skin. He turned to look at her again, choked, and then burst into more violent tears.

Who…?

Who could possibly…?

He gasped and choked again. He raised a hand to rub at his mouth and his teeth caught the fabric of his jacket. He gasped, shuddering, and drew in such a small breath he thought he was suffocating. He drew another portion of fabric forward between his teeth. His tongue felt swollen. His mouth was too dry. He choked and cried harder. He was shaking more than ever before.

Oh gods, who in their right mind would ever think it was okay to do that?

He shivered and turned away again quickly. He didn't need to look at her again. If he saw _them_ again he would break down further. And he didn't know that he had such a liberty at the moment. He was in the open, sobbing so loudly he was sure he could be heard for miles, and if he was not careful, whatever had done this to her might find its way to him.

But it didn't seem like _something_ had done this.

It was too graceful, the way they had displayed the bodies.

No, _someone_ had thought it would be fun to do.

No animal was capable of this but a human.

Yugi shuddered and spat into the snow, then moved to grasp at the earth. The smell of his vomit burned his nose so harshly he could not detect the blood. He shivered again, then dragged his legs to brace his weight. He pressed into the toes of his sneakers, bracing himself, and used his arms to push himself into a standing position.

Immediately his eyes shot towards the trees further in front of him. If he kept his focus on them, he wouldn't take another look. And his body had nothing more to expel. He couldn't stand about and allow himself to puke and further exhaust himself. If he did that, he was sure he would lose his mind by all means.

He bit back a pathetic and insincere apology to the poor girl. His horror and panic would render it nothing but an attempt to save himself from the mounting guilt. His mind spiraled.

How long had she been there?

Had anyone else seen her?

Who would have done this?

Was this connected to _Shizuka_?

Yugi took a shaky step forward, legs wobbling beneath his weight. He nearly collapsed. But somehow he held himself upright. His balance tottered but he stayed standing. He gasped and his throat burned. He couldn't smell for his nose ached too much. He could do nothing but sputter again. When he blinked, his vision blurred.

Who…?

He shook his head and stumbled another step. His movements were stiff. He felt as if he had been frozen at some point. He was dizzy. His head spun. His eyes burned harshly. He could not breathe properly. His shoulders were still wracked with sobs. He was shaking too hard to see straight. He thought he was going to puke again, but there was nothing left. He sobbed quietly, but it too was beginning to die inside of him.

Were they still nearby? Was there anyway that they could be? What if they turned around and attacked him now?

Self-preservation was rapidly pushing away his grief. The sorrow he felt hammered in his chest, but it did not falter his instinct to save himself now. He could not meet a similar ending to her. He would not allow it.

His body pushed forward, a sense of power coursing through it. Energy he had not truly known himself to possess began to make his blood push faster. It quivered in each of his veins and invigorated his worn muscles. He was too hot to feel the numbness that had formerly crept over him. His feet were moving again, faster than before. He felt as if he were almost running now.

The sensation of his spine tightening was all the warning he received. He immediately froze, then spun around in a jerk. A flash of silver fur streaked in his vision. Bright eyes burning opalescent teal peered at him.

White teeth chomped at his leg. He lashed out immediately. The blow momentarily stunned the wolf. As before, he did not think about it. His left leg caught it in another kick. The blow sent it staggering.

It tossed its head back and forth. A sickly smell like vomit came to him. Its jaws were frothing. The earthy stench came from far away. He backed up a step, eyes widening. The wolf's maw was coated in vile yellow and bright red. Saliva fell in chunks of foaming white.

Yugi stared blankly, the adrenaline spiking further. His fight or flight made his muscles seize. Logic said to race for it. Instinct said to beat it into submission. His more human mind, beyond this primal touch, pleaded to run. His animalistic side said never to turn his back. He was caught and staring.

The wolf launched itself. He reacted a second too late. Teeth caught his shoulder. He hissed. They tumbled into the snow. He ground his teeth together. The wolf jerked its head. His shoulder wrenched. He struggled to move his arm and catch its throat. He bent the limb, then pushed outwards. His forearm forced it back slightly.

The muscles in his shoulder protested. But he did not release his defense. He narrowed his eyes. His heart raced faster. His stomach dropped. His head was pounding. The roaring in his ears grew more abundant. He punched upwards with his free hand.

The wolf yelped, releasing him. It staggered back again. Yugi kicked upwards. The wolf hit the snow on its side. He struggled to stand. The beast was up again. He cursed. The animal flung itself at him. He tried to sidestep. But the wolf was prepared.

His muscles must have given him away. The teeth snapped deep into his flank. He yelped. His body jerked with pain. But another part of him lashed out. His knee caught its chest.

It snarled, then choked. It jerked away at the second blow. A bone had snapped. He blinked stupidly. The wolf puked. He took off running immediately.

He heard it begin to give chase. But then it gagged and puked again. He panted, side burning and throbbing. His head was dizzy again. He wanted to puke but could not. He did not glance back and instead ran faster.

He knew the woods well enough. He also knew the graveyard. There were sewer entrances. If he dropped into one, it would cover his scent and he could find the one that led to his house.

He hoped his lycanthropy would aid in that some way. Because he had no idea how he was meant to use the passages.

Yugi found one of the mausoleums, recognizing the stained glass design of an owl. He skidded, the snow spraying the air. He gasped and hissed again. His side was coated in blood. The shirt and jacket was drenched along the bottoms. His jeans were becoming sticky. He bore his teeth, eyes flickering first to the cut and then to his surroundings.

A shape came at him. He ducked. The only thing to tell him it wasn't the one back there was the direction. He could still hear it hacking. The broken rib and its infliction had slowed it down further. His instincts told him to run now. But where was a mystery. With the cold, the mausoleum was frozen shut, the lock too icy to pick. He'd need something to heat it with, to use to pry it open.

And he had nothing.

He ground his teeth together further. His stomach burned. The newcomer was mostly solid brown, like chocolate. The fur came in soft tufts of gray where it was shedding. Its eyes were blown, completely black, pupils swallowing any former color there. Along its forehead was a hideous, wondrous streak of bright silver-white.

The color tugged at his senses. He'd seen it before. The wolf snarled. Teeth gleamed at him. The ears pricked forward. Its tail rose, wagging. The eyes flashed with hatred. He shivered. It was mocking him. Of course it was.

Yugi drew in a breath, more than slightly annoyed.

Now what?

The terrain wasn't something he knew all too well. The snow covered a lot of potential pitfalls. If he was not careful, between the two wolves, he would end up like Kaoroku. He braced himself.

It was the most he could do. The adrenaline was still roaring in his ears. He wasn't prepared to lash out, however. His balance was too precarious. He hadn't noticed the position before. But he was standing on a jagged stone and the sides were too steep.

He'd end up on his ass if he went about kicking. And if he did not kick, his reach would be too limited. If he could make it leap, he could dive or sidestep. But every plan was risky.

Yugi could have screamed for all the panic which welled up inside of him. The other wolf was coming.

He could hear it as well now.

The smell of wolfsbane, too, made it obvious.

He shuddered. The two wolves stood to his front and side, snarling. Their teeth chomped. Saliva fell from the newcomer's maw in stringy chunks. Blood and bile burned the air.

He shifted his weight to keep his footing. If he ducked again, he could brace—

He froze. He did not turn his head. But he heard it now as well. Something else—another wolf—was coming towards them. He felt his stomach drop. They had cornered him.

They were using the mausoleum to keep him pinned. The newcomer would come from his free flank. It was a classic strategy among hunting wolves.

When they tried to kill or chase away bears, they did something similar…

He bore his teeth. He was so screwed.

A screaming noise curled through the air. All three forgot their positions. Their heads snapped towards the noise. Teeth chomped. The scream grew louder. A snarl bit at the air. There was a scrambling noise. The two wolves tore off towards the sound.

Yugi was not sure what to do for a moment. He stood, staring into the distance. But he could not tell where they had gone. And the noise only escalated. He took the distraction with care. Immediately he turned and surveyed the lock on the door behind him. As expected, he would need some kind of source of heat to get past the ice.

He looked into the trees, glancing once away from himself, and then took off. The noise was that of snarls and yelps now. He could not hear anything coming after him. He continued running. He crashed into the undergrowth with such noise he almost panicked. It crackled and snapped, the air so still it seemed to come from all around him.

He stopped, trying to think straight. Maybe if he moved slower... Or perhaps he could use the trees. He was not sure that they would follow him. He turned his head, angling it upward. He could try to stick it out until they grew tired.

But how did he know that they ever truly would?

Yugi screamed. Teeth tore into his shoulder and tossed him backwards. He lashed out, kicking and punching. The wolf snarled and tossed its head. The movement made his entire body swing in the ice. He nearly cried out again. He bore his teeth. The wolf snarled louder. He turned his head towards it. He punched again.

The brown wolf released his shoulder. The teeth caught his wrist, tearing through the skin. He cried out, furious. Who the hell was this wolf? And why had they come after him? Was he the one that had killed her?

"You piece of shit," he spat, unable to stop himself. He went to smack it but the wolf tugged hard. The momentum threw him onto his stomach. He hissed through his teeth. This one, eyes burning into his, was not the least bit weakened. Unlike its companion, its health was at its fullest.

Yugi was not sure what he could do against a healthy wolf. He still tried to pull himself into a sitting position, however. But with another tug, he fell back again. He ground his teeth together. His fingers sought around him for any kind of weapon in the snow. Maybe he could lash out fast enough and catch it on the side of the head with _something_.

The silver wolf was coming now. Its mouth was lined with blood. Its eyes were terribly unfocused. It heaved and gasped, then staggered. It fell muzzle-first into the snow, then struggled to its feet again. The wolf holding him snarled. It snapped its teeth in response, silver fur rising. Its eyes flashed hideously. It licked its jaws at him.

Yugi snarled low in his throat. His body jerked with tension. His muscles clenched and ached beneath his skin. His side burned and tingled. His shoulder was throbbing painfully. He almost could not move his arm any more. It hurt so much it made stars appear behind his eyes.

The third of their pack came forward. It was dark black, a fur color so deep it looked blue. Where the snow melted against the coarse strands it had turned almost royal in shade. The long limbs were a deep, chocolate brown shade. He shivered. Dark blue eyes bore into his, glittering with something like laughter. But he could see that it was bleeding from a cut in its shoulder. The blood splattered in the snow.

Why was it wounded? Had the humans it was with attacked it before it had come across him? Was that what the screaming had been? Maybe they had injected it with wolfsbane as well?

He stared at the three of them.

The looks on their faces, the way they all bore their teeth in leers, gave him recognition. He nearly shook with disgust and horror.

The silver was Haga, the bug fanatic. Those eyes were the same he'd been annoyed by more than once when they had butted heads at one point or another. How many times had they argued upon crossing paths in biochemistry because of Haga's fascination with bugs and Yugi's desire to get through class rather than have that same two-hour-long conversation that Ryuzaki had managed upon talking about _Jurassic Park_? Beside him, the brown wolf was, in fact, Ryuzaki, that same boy who so often had argued about dinosaurs and given them fun facts about the movies and fossils. Something had begun to snap in him around the beginning of the year, however, and Yugi wondered now if perhaps this was it. The black wolf with the dark chocolate brown legs and bluish coat, he realized, was Kajiki Ryota. He was an ocean enthusiast, going so far as to once give a twenty-four minute presentation on just jellyfish and the electric eel. Yugi and his friends had interacted with him on scarce occasions.

Yugi bore his teeth. "How nice," he grumbled, the undertone of his words a sneer. "My classmates are all killing each other."

He gripped at the snow. His shoulder was shot with pain. He swallowed away a pathetic whimper. The ache was agonizing. He wanted to puke again.

An image flashed in his head. He blinked, eyes widening. Haga was looking beyond him. And the shape in the image which sprang in his head was a great black wolf. The pupils were too dilated to see the color of the irises. But the muzzle was too large to be mistaken for a regular wolf.

Yugi laughed, sputtering and choking on the noise.

Haga turned on him. Bloody froth dripped from his jaws. His own form, mangled and left in the straw, blood smeared about in an ocean of red, came to him. He could almost taste the bile and blood. He could almost picture that brilliant white-coated forest. His vision was splattered briefly with three sets of eyes.

The wolf chomped his teeth, shattering the image, and Yugi laughed a little harder.

"What are you waiting for then?" he sneered. "Go ahead and kill me!"

Ryota ignored him, baring his teeth at Haga. Kaoroku flashed in his mind and Yugi shuddered. So Haga had killed her. The silver wolf snapped his teeth and licked his lips. Ryuzaki growled softly and tugged on his arm. His eyes bore into his angrily. The large black wolf flashed in his mind again. Yugi sneered at him, lips pulling into a wide smirk.

The three of them startled. They each unconsciously jerked back several steps. Yugi immediately pushed himself into an upright position. His stomach clenched. The three of them looked to spring at him but faltered. They swapped anxious looks, snarling and snapping. Images flashed in blurs, streaks of black and red and white. He could not see them clearly but he didn't truly care to either.

"Yami," he whispered.

The wolves turned their heads in unison to look at him again. He smirked at them and struggled to his feet. His side was burning too harshly to keep his weight. He staggered and nearly collapsed. The canines growled and wagged their tails.

Yugi snarled low in his throat in response, baring his teeth. Their only reaction was to wag their tails faster, snarling loudly. He wondered if this was what it felt like to truly be prey in the face of hungry wolves.

He braced himself and wondered at the idea of a weapon once more. There had to be something, right? Because, as much as he knew he was there, Yami was not within sight. And he had no idea how close or far he was.

Where had he gone? And why? Had he decided to leave him? Maybe he thought to let him learn a lesson from them somehow?

He bore his teeth. He didn't think Yami would do that. Even as Ryota leaped for his face, he did not truly believe it. He prepared himself to throw them backwards and try to kick him beyond them. But the opportunity never came.

Ryota was hit so hard he went flying into Haga. They both cried out and rolled several feet. They landed in a tangle of limbs. And, infuriated, they then turned on each other. Both of them bared their teeth at each other. They snarled and snapped and cried out in clear distress.

Yugi blinked and let out a breath. "Yami," he said again, relieved enough to almost reach out and hug him. The black wolf shot him a look of bright red eyes, then turned on Ryuzaki.

The brown canine was staring at them, an almost contemplative expression on his face. But then his lips wrinkled and his mouth opened to show his teeth. His ears were pricked, his fur in a bristle, his tail raised. He snarled low and long, then licked his jaws and stepped forward.

Yami did not waste his time with posturing. His threat was known. He had declared it before. He simply threw himself forward. His opponent yelped and dodged his teeth. But his shoulder slammed into his ribs. And Ryuzaki fell back with a huff.

Yugi looked at Ryota and Haga but the two were still attacking each other. Their disgust and distrust of each other made it impossible for them to look away from the tasks of punishing each other.

Yugi turned to his shoulder and then the ground. He still needed a weapon, whether his shoulder was screwed or not. He needed at least _something_. He needed protection of _some_ kind.

His shoulder was a mess of torn fabric and bright red blood where it welled from a very clear wound. The cuts were deep and long, almost a mirror of the one that Ushio had left there. But it was cleaner and his head was clear. Unlike then, he wasn't panicked and shaking.

And he hadn't fled so that his head could be crushed against the brick wall of an alleyway. He bore his teeth again. Pain rippled along his flank. But he didn't have time to look at that one too.

Instead he turned away completely to the snow and dug about the white ice. He shoveled at it as the snarling grew desperate and then peaked at a high pitch burdened with pain. He jerked and his head snapped around.

Ryuzaki was pinned, kicking at Yami. The black wolf simply tossed his head and sent him flailing. He cried again but the dark canine ignored the sound.

Ryota and Haga, however, stopped short. They scrambled to their feet. Haga was staggering and he looked physically overwhelmed with exhaustion. But, somehow, he still came forward with Ryota. Yami bore his teeth at them and bristled faintly. But beyond that he did not move. He did not attempt to shield himself as they sprang at him.

Yugi froze, then trembled, and spun back to his task. He had to find something. He had to get a rock or a thick branch _—anything._ Yami was strong but not invulnerable and to let him go against three wolves at once was nothing he could allow to happen. His stomach clenched and he hurried his movements to dig through for the earth underneath.

He had never realized how thick the snowfall had been until that moment. He trembled and the snarling grew to a symphony so hateful it made his insides feel molten. He gasped and hissed and struggled not to look over his shoulder again.

If they were hurting Yami and he had risked his life for him yet again, Yugi needed to be _useful_ rather than the hindrance he had before.

He grasped finally at a stone. It was wide and long but not too thick. Yet it was frozen into the earth and his nails chipped and broke as he struggled to grasp at its edges. He dug again, searching for a way to properly grip it. The sound of the dirt grinding and separating made his skin crawl.

He ignored the noise and pulled harder. His shoulder ached and bled more freely. He could feel it, hot and coiling with his faltering energy. And it dripped and dragged itself downwards towards the blade beneath. It trailed in immense rivulets, burning him as it began to spread towards the gaping wound on his side. He pulled harder and the muscles wrenched.

He panted and tugged again. The muscles in his arms corded and throbbed. The wolves were still snarling and snapping. One of them screamed. Yugi nearly looked back again. But he had to convince himself not to, that it could not have been Yami. He pushed the thought into his head that it did not sound like him. He focused on that even as his body jerked with a painful spasm for his efforts.

Finally, the stone gave way. The dirt flung into the air. Yugi fell backwards and lay there for a moment. He couldn't breathe properly for a moment. The weight of exhaustion pushed on his senses too fully.

He wondered, somewhere in the back of his mind, if this was what they had all felt like.

Was this what death felt like?

Mere exhaustion and the oncoming blanket of darkness?

He jerked and threw himself onto his side. The movement wrenched his wound. He scrambled to sit up, ignoring the flare of pain. His heart rushed within his ears. He panted and hissed with pain. His vision was fuzzy around the edges again. He felt as if his lungs were too knotted to draw any substantial air in.

Yet, he scrambled for his feet again. His legs gave out beneath him for a moment. Then, miraculously, they straightened to hold his weight.

Yugi looked at the wolves. Ryota and Yami were blurs of dark shadows, splattered and flecked with blood. Their teeth were stained red and their jaws wide open. Their tongues were coated with the metallic liquid. A clump of bluish fur fell from Yami's mouth as he snarled and chomped his teeth.

Yugi trembled, then looked at Haga and Ryuzaki. Both were down for the moment. They were panting, struggling around wheezing breaths. Yami had done a considerable amount of damage to them both. He'd torn their cheeks open and slathered their faces in wounds. Blood fell into their eyes and Haga's left ear was completely missing. Their sides were both clipped visibly, blood leaking from deep wounds.

Yet somehow Ryota was holding his own. Even as Yami charged and knocked him about. He seemed to heal almost instantly. Barely a blink of time seemed to pass. And the larger wolf was growing tired now.

His movements had slowed and his snarl was more infuriated than challenging. He no longer seemed as sure of the win he must have secured in his head.

Yugi watched them for a moment, then moved forward again. The stone wasn't heavy now that he was no longer trying to pull it from the ground. He still did not know how long he could manage it with the wounds, however. Yami had failed to notice him. Ryota was too distracted by the larger male.

He shifted his grip, squaring his fingers along the expanse of it. His palms cupped the harsh edges along the bottom. He waited a moment. Then he snuck a step closer.

Now Yami noticed him. His red eyes flickered to him, then back. He snarled and snapped. Ryota lunged for him. Yugi waited until the last second. Then he swung.

He almost expected to miss. They had been moving so fast he had assumed himself unable to contribute to this fight. But the rock seemed to explode with the impact. Shards of frozen sand and clumps of dirt and snow scattered in clouds of dark red and gray.

Yugi staggered, the collision winding him. His hands trembled. His grip fell from the stone for a moment. But then his fingers clenched. They caught the stone again before it could fall into the snow.

Ryota had hit the ground a few feet away. His eyes were rolling, his body jerking. But then he rolled onto his feet. Yami tilted his head and shot forward. But the wolf was focused elsewhere. The speed Yami himself used came second to the brown-legged wolf. He propelled himself straight at Yugi.

The small teen yelped as they fell back into the snow. He felt his teeth cut through his tongue. He swallowed a mouthful of blood. The canine snapped his teeth at his throat. Yugi pivoted his weight slightly, just enough to knee the wolf.

The sharp snap of his limb in the other's gut made Ryota snarl. His teeth clipped the air. His incisors nipped the skin of his throat. But Yugi only needed a moment.

When he kicked again, the wolf jerked. Yugi flipped the rock in his hand, the edges cutting his fingers. Then he thrust with the stone between his fingers.

The bones cracked and broke. Ryota snarled and snapped but his teeth clicked. His eyes grew wide, the whites swallowing away the blacks. The pupils began to constrict, then recede to pinpricks. His body convulsed. His blood was hot and sticky as it splattered onto Yugi's body. His paws scrabbled. His skin twitched and his claws stretched and gripped at nothing. He gasped and choked.

He shuddered, then slumped. His weight, despite his thin frame, was heavy enough to immobilize the small teen. Yugi gasped, angling his head back, and the world blurred in white and then spikes of jutting black shadows. He could not bring himself to shrug the body off.

Yami did it for him. A handful of seconds passed. Then the weight shifted. It was brought away with a single jerk of the larger canine's head. Yugi sputtered, drawing in a deep breath. His eyes flickered immediately to the other boy.

"Yami," he whispered again, blinking at him. The wolf paused, face streaked with liquid. His eyes were curious but also sympathetic, as if he understood the horror Yugi felt at the moment. He did not wag his tail nor regard him for much longer, however.

Instead the black wolf allowed the carcass to drop from his jaws before taking off. He leaped over Yugi's frozen form before he could even blink again.

A scream came up. Yugi jerked and his head snapped to the side. Yami had captured Haga by the flank. When he tossed his head, the smaller wolf fell into the snow. His eyes were wide, dilated and fearful. The whites were rolling. Yet, the black wolf simply struck for his throat.

The attack made Ryuzaki, a few feet away, run faster with his tail between his legs. Haga cried out again, only for it to end in gurgling. Yami had tossed his head again. Blood sprayed in heavy rivulets across the snow. The black wolf did not pause.

Immediately he took off after the fleeing canine.

"Yami, no!" Yugi cried in a loud voice, horrified. He had torn Haga's throat out. He was going to kill Ryuzaki. "Yami, please, stop!"

But, if anything, the protests made him all the more violent.

Yami sprang upon Ryuzaki with the precision of a predator too graceful and keen to truly exist. He knocked him aside with a blow to the shoulder. The brown wolf was sent rolling, crying out. Immediately his paws shot out to push his attacker away. But Yami closed in on him.

His teeth caught his face, above and below his eye. He snarled and jerked his head. Ryuzaki kicked out. Yami twisted his head. The smaller wolf was thrown onto his side. He was still pinned, but he tried to pull himself to his feet regardless.

It took maneuvering, but he managed to place his feet beneath him. He pushed upwards, a struggle to gain his footing.

Miraculously, Yami allowed this. But Yugi, as he struggled to his own feet and tried again to protest, knew why it was. He stumbled forward a step, hand braced against his side, and screamed, "Yami, _stop_! _Please_!"

The wolf ignored him as he had before. But, instead of catching Ryuzaki by the throat as he thought Yami would, his teeth came for his spine. The cracking noise was like gunfire. Ryuzaki screamed so loudly that it made Yugi quake. His mouth opened and closed. The chocolate wolf flailed his front legs but his back would not respond. He cried again, eyes wide with fear.

Yami released him, then circled. He put his face towards the other's, the two of them glaring. The pain in the downed wolf's eyes did nothing to produce sympathy for his predicament. Instead, it infuriated him further. But he did not react for a moment. Rather, he lowered his jaw further, blood dripping from his jaws.

Yugi was screaming again. But he could not find it in himself to care for his pleas. In this bleak world of white, sprinkled so heavily with red, the wolf did not care to think of mercy.

His tongue was stained with blood. And the taste of wolfsbane and hatred made his vision speck with a haze of black anger. He bore his teeth and snarled softly.

Though Yami did not care to make him suffer, the intensity of his hatred did not release him to do with him as he had Haga.

So he allowed the saliva to drip from his jaws and he snarled lower in his throat. Ryuzaki glared up at him, but he could do nothing more. The weight of his head was too much or a strain for his neck. He growled but did not bother to wrinkle his muzzle even.

A sense of clarity swam upon his senses. Ryuzaki stank of the humans. He, like Haga and Ryota, must have been experimented on. No doubt he had suffered just as hideously as they.

The scars were just barely visible along his muzzle, a bright line of hideous pink tearing upon the calloused tissue of his nose.

Yami peered at him and wondered; for what could the humans have wanted with them? Why would they have released them?

He did not attempt to ask, however. Yugi was slow in his journey to them, but he was still coming. Yami opened his jaws, snapped them shut on his scruff, and tossed his head. Ryuzaki whimpered, but the noise cut short. His neck snapped loudly. His body fell limp. But Yami did not trust this. Werewolves played dead so well they sometimes forgot they were alive.

He caught his jaw, tilting his head back, and then tore through the expanse of his neck. The blood came in drizzles, the lack of circulation leaving it to puddle in the snow rather than spew as Haga's had.

Yami watched him for a long minute. He could detect nothing but his and Yugi's heartbeats in the frozen forest. He could not, however, tear his eyes away from the form in front of him. His dead, glassy gaze bore into him. It was with clarity and disgust that he recognized the accusations rolling within his dead glare.

He turned away, fur shuddering. Then he raised his head. Yugi had collapsed in the snow a few feet away. He sat with his arms behind his back, his head lowered. He could see the faint rise and fall of his thin shoulders.

Yami cautiously took a step towards him, lowering his chin towards the snow. He slunk forward, knowing the other would release his wrath on him. But maybe if he appeared smaller, gentler, it might take the edge off.

He doubted it and the cynical hatred which flared in him made him pause. Stubborn frustration made him straighten his posture. Very clearly, with a set path, he came forward.

Yugi could be as angry as he wished. But he was still his alpha, not a slobbering, desperate omega. Or a beta looking for approval. He was the strength between them, the very core of power to be possessed, and he hated Yugi for making him feel smaller and weaker than ever.

He stopped a few steps away from him. He did not bother to announce himself, and Yugi trembled as he knew him to be there as well. The silence grew taut between them. The seconds stretched like a withered rubber band. Yami moved about himself to stretch into a position lying down.

His shoulder flared and his side ached. His ear burned where the skin had been split. His back leg tingled. Yet, he did not bother to respond to the silence. Instead he laid his chin on his legs and relaxed there. His body ached but drew familiarity from the cold air. And the chill cushioned his pain. The seconds passed. A thin, but beautiful trill of energy, buzzing and warming him, crept along his wounds. He closed his eyes.

It was a good ten minutes before Yugi finally responded to his presence there. Yami opened his eyes when he heard the rustle of fabric which announced he had come to raise his head and look at him. He, too, raised his head.

Their eyes caught and the intensity of anger which wracked them both shook them for the smallest of seconds. To look each other in the eyes so directly was a challenge which neither could fully ignore.

So neither lowered their gaze. And soon, both were trembling with mounting aggression. Yami was the first to sit up, to pull his weight away. But he was too angry to look away. And he felt the tension causing the healing to halt along his face. The cuts began to burn.

"You just had to kill them, didn't you?" Yugi spat in a low voice full of distress. "They were _fleeing_! You could have let them go! But you must have wanted to kill them!"

Yami flicked an ear. The silence was deafening but for the shaky tempo of Yugi's heart speeding up. His own was like a war drum as he bore his teeth. _I did what I had to_ , he snapped without a second thought. _They were going to kill you_.

"Once Ryota was gone, they were _running_ _away_ , Yami!"

 _Yes, and have you any idea where they might have gone_? _Do you think it was coincidence that the silver one smelled of wolfsbane_? _Foolish boy, there's no way that he would not have been able to lead the humans back. And then_ what? he fired back.

"We could have run just like they were doing! We didn't have to kill them!"

 _They knew you_. _That's why their names came so naturally to you. And do you think it would have taken them a second thought to turn the humans on you_? _If you were captured, do you truly think yourself capable of escape_?

" _Fuck you_ , Yami!" he snarled. "You didn't have to do that! We don't know that they would have done that! _We_ could have caught them ourselves! We could have taken them somewhere, restrained them. The clinic—"

 _The clinic_? _So you would have your mother and grandfather endangered simply because you do not wish to kill_? he snarled, baring his teeth. _You fool_! _You would rather have them die and me as well than color your hands red_!

Yugi gaped at him, mouth snapping shut twice but falling open once more. He trembled, then lashed out with his hand. He caught Yami upside the head and the wolf snarled, backing up slightly. "I would never wish that! Fuck you! You have no idea what you're even talking about!"

 _I do not know_? _I, the one who fought them off for_ you, _I do not know_? _Let me explain something to you, for I believe you may be confused_ , he sneered, shifting forward to put his muzzle inches from Yugi's face. The small teen stiffened but did not pull away, the two of them still glaring furiously. _Just because you would rather pretend yourself free of killing, that is what must be done at times_! _Our survival was not painted in friendship and peace treaties. Humans have persecuted and hunted us for centuries. And war between packs break out at times when things are too rough and strained. Death follows the paws of_ every _werewolf in existence_. _Because our species_ came from it! _And you, you did not hesitate when it came to killing Bakura. And you did not when you stabbed_ _Ryota minutes ago. You are a fool if you think otherwise_ —

This time the impact was pronounced with a heavy thud. Yami swayed, eyes widening, and then his lips drew back. Yugi lashed out again, but teeth caught his wrist. The skin shredded as if brandished against a knife.

He yelped, then punched him in the nose. Yami wrinkled the muscle back, released his hand, and shot forward. They hit the ground, Yugi gripping at the fur along his throat. The wolf brandished his teeth against his forehead. The teen hissed and blood dripped in a red film upon his eyes.

He spat at him. The wolf latched his teeth in his cheek, beneath his right eye. Infuriated, Yugi kicked at him. Yami's paw came up. His claws pressed into the hollow of his clavicle. He kicked again. Yami pressed his weight into the attack.

Yugi gasped and blinked wide eyes. Above him, head angled towards his so closely, he could see Yami blinking his right eye furiously. It was as if he, too, were hindered by blood. And, when he breathed, a hideous wheezing met his ears. His eyes were wide, distressed as if something had just occurred to him, and his mouth opened.

He pulled abruptly away from him, circling with his head lowered. His fur was bristling, his eyes blazing. He tossed his head slightly and pawed at his forehead as if it were bleeding as Yugi's was.

Yugi hesitated, then began to sit up. They looked at each other again. Yami bore his teeth and the human tilted his head. He let out a small growl, then turned and paced the opposite direction.

He did not leave the vicinity of him, mere feet away as if he expected another to appear and threaten his life. The black wolf hissed through his teeth, the wheezing long gone. He tossed his head again, then pawed at his forehead. His blinking grew more intense for a moment, then faded.

It took Yugi only a second to realize the wound had stopped bleeding. He faltered. _His_ wound had stopped bleeding. _Yami_ had never been inflicted on the forehead.

He stayed there, frozen and confused. His voice cracked and his body trembled as he whispered, "Yami…"

The wolf swung his head to look at him. Alarm drenched every inch of his body as he looked about them with wide eyes. His ears pricked, fur bristling. His shoulders grew rigid and his tail rose for a brief second. But he did not smell or see anything and the tension made his body ache too much. So he forced it away and turned back to him in confusion.

Yugi shivered, but could not put to words the sudden certainty that slammed through his bones. When Yami had attacked him, he'd hurt himself as well.

Somehow, in some way, he had felt the pain Yugi had. And the testament was more truthful than ever in the way his weight was carefully balanced on three legs rather than four.

He drew in a deep breath, then lowered his eyes. He was not inclined to apologize at the moment, feeling shaken and small. But he did the best thing he could think to. He reached a hand out, holding it palm up so that Yami knew there was nothing there, and muttered, "Let me see your legs. I want to see if they've healed anymore."

Yami hesitated for what felt like a lifetime. He had the impulse to deny him this, as surely it would alert him to just how much worse they were getting and the fact that both had reopened. But Yugi looked up, and his soft features were cloaked with apology and his eyes shone with desperation.

The way he peered at him made the wolf uneasy, and he hesitated a moment more before slowly moving forward. It was with the single greatest sense of trepidation he had ever come to know that he placed a paw in his palm.

Yami could not bring himself to look as Yugi held his paw in a tender grip. Instead, his eyes lowered to the snow and his attention drifted elsewhere. They would heal. He just hadn't been eating well enough or even getting enough food to bother to speed up the process.

Still, they would heal.

He simply had to wait.

Yugi ran his fingers over the length of his leg, startled when Yami jerked gently, head turning back to him in distress. The sensation must have been too painful for him to continue, because the small teen knew now that it was open again.

The blood was all over his fingers.

And he had a feeling that no matter how gentle he had just been, he'd opened it further.

"I'm sorry."

Yami merely blinked at him, then angled his face to lick at the cut on his forehead. He turned away again immediately, pulling his paw out of his slackened grip. Yugi's forehead tingled gently, a combination of the smoothness of his tongue and the chill where the frost met his blood.

He wished more than anything that he had something to make him feel better.

He wanted any way to be able to help him and soothe some of the ache in his weary body.

But, instead, what came out of his mouth was a soft, "Did you see Kaokuro?" in a weak voice as he looked at him with wide eyes.

Yami blinked and turned to him slowly. His ears flickered about them for a moment. Then he focused intently on him. _The girl_ , he said with certainty, _with the pups_.

Yugi trembled. "Yeah," he breathed out shakily. He looked at him, both desperate for answers and to hide away from them. "Do you…? I mean, was it…?"

Yami flicked an ear. His expression bordered one of vivid disdain. _The silver one. His scent was all over her. But the brown one was covered in her blood at one point as well. But then, they all did something beyond killing her. They were involved in the final state_ …

He bit his lip. "How can someone do that though, Yami? I don't understand…"

Yami looked at him for a long time. There were a million things which came to mind to tell him in response. He could tell him the fact that it was probably experimentation, or just the more psychotic nature which dwelled in most everyone's personalities. He could say that perhaps it was pack mentality, that one got it into his head and the other two followed. He could say it was more because of human influence, the way they had inflicted Haga with wolfsbane. The effects of such exposure were things that he could not feasibly tell him in one sitting.

But the more he looked at him, the further away his words dropped and his potential answers slid from his grasp. Instead, he paced towards him, moving to press his face into his chest. Yugi immediately grabbed him, pulling him impossibly closer, fingers sinking into the coarse guard hairs of his pelt. He stroked at the softer downy layer beneath, tucking his chin against the fur along his neck.

The black wolf remained there for a few long minutes, allowing himself to be embraced in what felt like the most natural and yet unnatural thing he had ever come upon in his life. He kept his eyes closed, every instinct in his body rebelling such an action, and then finally pulled back to look at him. Yugi ruffled his hair along his shoulders, eyes still glassy but his tears subsided. Yami tilted his head, then ran his tongue along his cheek before backing up a few steps.

His pelt shuddered along his body for a moment. He had never known the ability to give or seek comfort with such certainty as that moment. It hurt to take and give as he had. But he did not turn away from him, nor truly pull beyond easy reach. The large canine turned his head, looking about them slowly.

"They… Jonouchi had a little sister."

Yami turned back, mind jogging to catch up with this new statement. Jonouchi was his blond best friend, the one he had seen in the snow. Yes, he remembered him. He had said that Yami looked like a dog from that restaurant, the one that he had met Yugi at that night. He fought for the name for a moment, then flicked an ear. Yes, Burger World; that was the name.

Yugi sighed, drawing his knees to his chest and wrapping his arms around them. "She was… She had been experimented on by those people—the ones who wanted to bring the Pure-Blood back. They had done a lot of things to her, but she was blind from it all." He paused, watching as he processed this information and studied him with something of a blank expression. "I went to visit her recently. And she… Someone had killed her. They'd ripped her head from her shoulders. There was blood everywhere…"

Yami tilted his head. Her head had been ripped from her shoulders?

"They'd hit her head into the glass, fractured it slightly. There was blood everywhere, Yami. The entire room looked like…" _That river from our dream, it looked like the river from our dream_. He swallowed thickly. "It was terrible. And… Then Haga and Ryota and Ryuzaki, they did something so similar with Kaoruko. They… Neither of them deserved that."

He frowned at him, ears flicking about them for a moment. _It is not about what one deserves, Yugi. Werewolves and humans_ … _Sometimes, it is more about how well one can defend themselves against the abuse another wishes to inflict upon them_ , he said softly, shaking his head. _Sometimes it is because one wants to do it and will not stop until they have_.

Yugi shuddered. "But they were both… Yami, I heard the nurses talking about Shizuka when I left when I first met her. They said she was pregnant, that somehow the baby was surviving despite how emaciated and weak she was." He opened and closed his mouth, shaking head and trembling. "How can someone just… Just do that?"

Yami studied him for a moment longer, then looked away. _I do not know_ , he admitted. _But it_ … _it has happened. And I am sorry for it._ _But…there is nothing we can do to change it_.

Yugi stayed quiet, feeling sick to his stomach for a moment. He wanted to snap at him, but the idea was so draining. And it was not as if he wasn't right. He couldn't go back and reverse her death somehow. Besides, he himself had to worry about being caught and killed at this rate. He still had to worry about the cameras at the hospital. Why had no one come to find him yet?

Why had no one pulled him in for questioning?

Why had no one demanded his head on a stick?

Had the cameras gone down before he had gotten there?

Had someone intentionally tampered with the equipment?

Was it all just to hunt him down and use him for breeding or skin him for a pretty penny?

Was it more than that?

Was it because he was…?

He shivered again.

"I just… Do you think it might have to do with Code Name Atem?" he finally asked, licking his lips and then stiffening. Yami froze in place, then turned his head slowly and stared at him with wide, confused eyes. "Do you think there's any way…?"

He looked at him intently for several long minutes. _No,_ he finally replied, his voice hollow and ringing with a cold edge, _I do not. The only similarity between these two deaths is that they were brutal. But many deaths are harsh enough to make one wake in the middle of the night with screams in their lungs. You forget, no one is sure that Code Name Atem ever truly existed. Jonouchi's sister told you as much. As far as if it might have to do with her captors and their attempts to_ resurrect _the Pure-Bloods, I will not rule such a thing out_.

Yugi could not help but feel winded as he looked at him. There was so much conflict and disdain and discomfort in his eyes. And his body was rigid, as if he thought he might need to flee at any moment. The look in his eyes had grown blank as he watched him, his expression dropping with exhausted wariness. They looked at each other for a minute longer.

He searched his face for a moment, dizzy and sickened.

"Okay," he said quietly. "You're probably right…"

Yami nodded so keenly that the bones in his neck ground loudly together. He was too tense. Yugi wondered if he expected someone else to come there for them.

He sighed softly, offering him a weak smile. "Let's go home, okay?" he muttered, looking at the wolf as he visibly startled at the words. "I'll redo your bandages too."

* * *

Yugi paused, stomach clenching. He'd never smelled something so intoxicating and rich. It was not quite unnatural, but it certainly bordered it. It was a mixture of things, like what he sometimes thought Yami to be whenever he woke up and the other had moved away and only his smell remained. He was of snow and moonlight, of fresh pine needles and something almost like the chill in the air. Sometimes his smell mixed with that of aspen trees and fresh leaves touched gently by autumn, with traces of sunlight and the warmest breeze. But Yugi had come to notice that it only really seemed to be on rare occasions and he still had yet to figure out why his scent was not always constant.

This smell, however, was like that of blooming cherry blossoms, crisping leaves, fresh water, and dappled sunlight. It was so soft and yet it rushed into his lungs and desperately swirled there, dancing and drawing at his attention. It was impossible, now that he considered it, focusing on it for only a moment, to think of anything else. He could not push it entirely from his mind and the effects of it made his belly feel oddly warm as he walked forward again.

He hesitated, only because of what had happened the day before. After he and Yami had gone home, the red-eyed wolf had lay beside him for the better part of the day, fell asleep there, and only moved away when he had needed to get up for school. Since breakfast, Yugi had honestly been looking forward to getting the chance to talk to him some more. Because, despite his hesitations, Yami had a lot of knowledge he could share with him.

And the smaller teen was growing somewhat desperate to consider that he might need that. After what he had seen of Shizuka and Kaokuro, and dreamed about the fight with Ryota, of how he had stabbed him with the stone, he was shaken.

And he needed answers.

He needed them more than anything.

But this scent drew at his attention and he could not stop himself from following. Despite the fact that it set him several feet off the sidewalk he was traversing, he could not turn away. He kept his nose to the air, sniffing deeply and fighting the urge to lick his lips and move faster.

He walked around a small fence, chain links that housed a small dog which sat rigid inside its doghouse. It was too terrified to move at the touch of his very presence and he frowned slightly as he looked at it. Animals normally turned and tried to attack him. The silence and the way it quaked unnerved him violently.

Yet, he could not help but keep moving. Whatever it was that held such a smell made him shiver. It was beyond anything he had initially stumbled upon before. The combination made his head spin. He swallowed thickly, mouth watering, and then hesitated.

The clearing in front of him was a small garden. It was a community one, where everyone basically planted whatever they wanted when the warm seasons came. Due to the snow, the plants were withered and buried.

But the area was wide enough that someone could easily spot him if they wanted to.

And that was nerve-wracking.

Was it a trap?

Yugi sniffed harder. But he could not fully scent anything beyond that heady smell. He shivered and looked around.

"Well, aren't you a young one?"

He spun, snarling low in his throat. Fear bloomed in his gut and his heart began to pound. His side and shoulder throbbed with a sense of phantom pain for a split second. The wounds had healed overnight, as had much of Yami's, and Yugi found himself so tense that now his body jerked and twitched where he had been formerly wounded. The voice was soft, raspy around the edges, but more husky than anything else. Yet, it was soothing, alluring, and the way it curled was beautiful as it rolled with energy. He shivered. The effect of it was almost as heady as the scent itself.

"No need to snarl," the voice cooed. Yugi stiffened, head snapping back and forth in order to catch the source of her voice. He didn't see anyone near him, but when he angled his head up, eyes sharpened with power, the small teen caught sight of the girl. Or, he supposed he should call her a woman, because she was definitely not a teenager anymore.

She was a bombshell, blonde with long hair that fell in waves around her flawless heart-shaped face. She was perhaps a good foot taller than him, reaching towards six feet in height. Her eyes were sharp in design, almond but wide with long lashes that framed a dark violet gaze that reminded him of African amethysts like his own. She had curves for miles, long legs and wide hips with a large chest and thin swan-like neck.

Had he not been so alarmed, he might have been mesmerized. But, standing in front of her, with those violet eyes burning into his, he felt only defensive. He stepped back, lips curling back further when she came forward. He snarled low in his throat, then louder when she failed to heed his warning.

At the more aggressive note she wrinkled her nose and stopped a few feet away. There, she cocked her right hip, crossed her arms, and raised a brow in slight challenge and amusement.

"A pretty thing like you shouldn't be growling like that," she snorted, her lush mouth curling into a smirk on the right side. She tipped her head to the left, grinning at him a bit more as she studied him. When she looked him up and down, he almost felt sick yet so incredibly excited by her attention that it made him dizzy. He felt his face flush from the attention; he had never gotten so aroused so easily before in his life. "Put your teeth away. You came to me, not the other way around, cutie."

Yugi stiffened a little, then shook his head. His voice came out somewhat small, more amazed and winded than anything else. "You, uh…w-werewolf, right?" he breathed out, eyes widening faintly at the stupidity in his own tone. He nearly cringed.

She winked at him playfully, voice coming out salacious as she purred, "What other creature would be this beautiful?"

He barely suppressed the shiver coming through him. His lungs were tight and his heart still pounding. He bit his tongue and snarled again instinctively when she stepped forward.

She rolled her eyes, lips still quirked with amusement. "You're a mean little thing," she teased, putting her hand on her cocked hip and raising a finger to her lips in puzzlement. "Oh, a high school student, huh? Well, I know for sure that you can't be a hellhound. You're much too cute."

Yugi flushed and then frowned at her. "Do hellhounds not…? I mean, are they unattractive or…?" he muttered, feeling his cheeks grow hotter as she eyed him for a moment. His mind scrabbled for footing and some soft-spoken thought chimed in with, _Valon is handsome_ … _Girls used to almost worship the ground he walked on in middle school_ …

"Not quite," she stated easily, purring softly, "but lycanthropes are much more stable so, naturally, why go for the hellhound when your own subspecies knows how to act? Besides, no werewolf that I've ever known of has been ugly."

He stared at her for a moment. He could easily imagine that she'd seen and experienced a lot with other wolves. The thought made him flush harder. He felt like he was strangling himself now.

"You blush so easily! And, amazingly, you're _not_ mated yet," she laughed, clasping her hands and leaning forward to look at him more closely. He was so startled by his own thoughts, his cheeks so inflamed, that he missed it when her hand moved. Her fingers pinched gently at his skin and he startled, eyes wide with shock. "What's your name, beautiful?"

He shivered, then growled low in his throat. "Y-Yugi," he managed to breathe out with darkened eyes. "And you are?"

She pursed her lips, smiling almost as if she were thinking to press a kiss to his lips at any moment. But then she stopped, pulling away, and crossed her arms with a wider smile than ever. "You can call me Mai," she said easily, watching him through hooded eyes. She examined him again, violet gaze lit with laughter and warmth. "Yugi, hmm? Cute name for a little button like you."

He bristled, but it was more embarrassment than alarm by any means. He flushed again, backing up a step. She raised a brow, then smirked wider. She seemed to realize, but she had enough grace not to bother to mention it.

He stared at her for a long moment. "What, um… What kind of wolf are you? You smell…really…funny," he muttered, feeling almost sickened by his own words. She burst out laughing and, like her voice, it was both rough around the edges and gorgeous as it flowed out of her smiling mouth. He shivered. "I mean…"

"No, I know what you mean, cutie. I smell more wolf than I do human. It's normal for a wolf of my type," she said with sparkling eyes. She leaned forward again, pinching his cheek before he could even think to stop her. He flushed and swatted at her arm but missed as she pulled back. "I'm probably the most ancient breed of wolf remaining."

Yugi felt his eyes stretch wide. "Ancient?" he asked, blinking stupidly.

"Well, since the Pure-Bloods are gone, my species is the strongest now."

He furrowed his brows. "What do you mean?"

"You truly are a precious, naive little thing, aren't you, Yugi?" She stared at him, her eyes boring into his, and the tilt of her head became somewhat predatory as her mouth curled into a wider smirk. "I'm a Full-Blood."

He felt too stupid, embarrassed beyond his own belief, to ask what that was. Somehow her pointing out of his lack of knowledge pertaining to such things made him feel weaker than ever.

"That's crap and you know it, Mai," a new voice snorted. Yugi spun around with a startled snarl, but the newcomer approaching them heeded him no notice. "You know as well as I do that Code Name Atem has been created. And he's somewhere nearby. You sense him too."

Mai pursed her lips and rolled her eyes upwards but smirked after a moment. "I know no such thing," she snickered. "All I know is that I'm a Full-Blood and _you_ are not. So, actually, what I say tends to hold more weight than you."

The newcomer pretended to flinch, then rubbed his chest and flicked his tongue at her. "Not most of the time," he snickered.

Yugi felt his eyes grow wide and his face heat further than ever. His skin burned and his heart began to pound harder. His head was throbbing and light, dizzy with shock. Oh gods, they were bed mates. His cheeks began to burn somehow more. He backed up a step, neither of them noticing his movement.

"Oh, please, Otogi, when we're in bed, you still refer to me as top dog," she purred with a smirk, reaching over to tap his cheek with her long fingers. "As it _should_ be, don't you think?"

Yugi nearly covered his face with shame. The images that burst in his head were going to be the death of him. At any moment, the heat would make his entire body catch on fire and they'd wonder why he had spontaneously combusted. He needed to stop looking at those magazines and especially the tapes Jonouchi allowed him to borrow.

"As long as you remember who's on top," Otogi shot back in a silky tone.

Yugi backed up again, lowering his head. How the hell had he wound up in this situation? Yet, somehow, shamefully, a sense of awkward arousal spiked through his blood. The words made his mouth dry and his skin entirely too hot. The blood was too divided, giving him a rush. He breathed in once, but his excitement made it hard to keep from wheezing. A small whimper bit at the back of his mind but he refused it.

He shifted his legs to get rid of some of the friction, wondering if he could tug the front of his jacket down to cover his tightened pants.

But he couldn't get rid of the smell in his nose and the way she purred. And his mind had immediately pounced upon the idea of her body writhing and the little noises she probably made. Or maybe she screamed and the way her voice shattered afterwards could bring her partner to their knees. Maybe she panted and clawed at their back and split skin and they got to lick the salty sweat from the deep indent of her collarbone—

 _Shit_!

Yugi shoved his hands into his pockets but froze as a new sound entered his ears. Footsteps, small and soft and nearly inaudible. But there was such light weight to press them into the gravel and the icy grass that he almost could not tell they were even there. The direction they came from was the same Otogi had come. He turned his head, eyes wide, and wondered for a moment if it was a trap.

Could it be one?

Was he going to have a hunter capture him and Mai? Maybe it would be a bargaining chip for his own life?

Any sense of amusement and perverse thoughts swept away. The reality of such a possibility made his skin crawl. He wouldn't have done something so stupid in such plain sight, right? He wouldn't have led some stupid hunters there in order to keep his own skin, right?

Yami had said lycanthropes acted more like a pack. Surely messing around and sleeping with Mai constituted Otogi considering her as part of his pack, right? Yugi's stomach coiled. His heart began to leap into his throat. His eyes were too wide, his face too stricken to be ignored.

They did not notice him exactly, looking at each other as they continued to bicker softly. He watched from his peripheral as Otogi kissed the edge of her mouth. It was genuine affection, almost like wolves in the wild, their courting rituals, but he could not tell if perhaps it was a game between the two of them.

He felt dizzy for a moment.

"You okay, cutie?" Mai asked, voice sincere in its worry. He looked at her, eyes wild and confused, and tossed his head slightly back and forth. She furrowed her brows and the raven-haired boy beside her frowned.

"Are you going to puke?" he asked with his head tilted. The very thought made him frown. If the boy was going to be sick over just banter and a kiss, there was a lot wrong with his disease. He raised a brow. Normally wolves embraced their sexuality without a second thought.

Yugi shook his head. His eyes snapped to the spot he had come into the garden. He stiffened, eyes sharpening, and felt sicker than before as he looked at the street. But there was something far more comfortable and beautiful, like a second skin or a well-worn shirt. He blinked wide eyes, tilting his head further. That sensation…

His face lit up with a grin. He knew who it was coming now. He felt his entire body fall into a more relaxed state and his eyes lit with relief.

Otogi turned his head, confused, and then froze. There was something stirring at the edge of his consciousness. There was a ripple, almost like something brushing against his skin. It reached through his layers of clothing and stroked with long, soft fingers. He blinked stupidly, eyes on Mai for a moment. Her bewildered expression mirrored his own.

The sensation which came upon them was an immense and docile power. It was like being approached by a hellhound when it came in its ghostly form, shimmering shapes and glowing eyes. But it was more solid and the strength came in a deeper brushstroke than their own.

"How do you know Code Name Atem is near here?" Yugi asked quietly, furrowing his brows as he turned to them.

Otogi shot him a strange look. "Any wolf can sense a stronger one. It's in their scents and the way they feel when they approach." He glanced at him more fully but his eyes were still searching for this newcomer Yugi seemed to know so well. "Any lycanthrope can sense him. We're all connected to him."

He frowned. "Do you have an idea who it is?"

The raven-haired teen paused for a moment. Mai blinked and looked at the small boy as well. "No," he admitted, glancing at her sideways. The joke had left her eyes long ago and she looked almost frustrated by the idea. "No, I don't. But I do know he's somewhere here. And if he's not in Domino City now, then he was very recently."

Yugi frowned more noticeably. "Oh." He paused, studying them for a moment. Neither failed to notice how upset he seemed to have heard such words. He looked almost distressed by the idea of their lack of knowledge. But his eyes lit up again and the curve of his mouth became a wide, schoolboy grin. "Hey."

They both stopped short. Otogi nearly cursed. He'd become so caught in the conversation he'd forgotten to keep his eyes out for the other wolf approaching. He, like Mai beside him, spun to face this newcomer. The movements did nothing to make the werewolf halt. His eyes bore into them, steady, predatory, with such strength that they both nearly cowered back. His expression was blank, his eyes sharp and keen, observing them. He nodded only faintly to Yugi, gaze caught on them.

"Did I interrupt?"

Mai nearly squirmed. His voice was damaged but the pitch of it was strong enough to make her insides curl and her heart pound. She fought the urge to lick her lips and tilt her head to expose her neck. She could almost feel him, somewhere deep inside of her, as if he were stroking her very core with his slender fingers.

Yugi smiled faintly. "No," he said calmly, a statement that lingered partially between the truth and a lie. He watched him as he continued studying them, then gently touched his shoulder with his fingers. The reaction was instantaneous; Yami's head turned to him before he even caught the fibers of the black hoodie he was wearing. "What are you doing out here?"

Yami tilted his head. "Am I not meant to be out here?" he asked with narrowed eyes. He glanced at the other two lycanthropes, eyes wary and expression blank. "You were taking a while to get home. I didn't know if something had happened like it had yesterday or not."

Yugi blinked, at first startled, and then openly grateful. He had not expected Yami to come out to check on him and ensure nothing was wrong. But it made him smile nonetheless as he looked at him. "Nope, nothing like that. I just wound up running into a couple of other wolves."

His red eyes flickered over them again. Otogi and Mai both tilted their heads curiously at his arrival. "I see," he muttered, drawing the words out for a moment. His nose was working and his chin had tipped slightly upwards. His eyes flickered and caught on the two wolves more fully.

"That's Mai and that's Otogi," Yugi announced, gesturing to them each as he looked at Yami and felt his lips quirk further. The taller teen was acting even more territorial now than he had with Valon in the clinic. The idea made him blink, lips tugging into what would be an insolent grin if he was not careful. He tilted his head. He had no idea what it was that a Full-Blood was, but he figured he might. "Mai is a Full-Blood."

Yami spared him a sideways glance. "And Otogi is a Half-Blood," he stated easily. He searched Mai's face for a moment. Something about her scent, the strength of it, made him somewhat tense. "But you seem rather strong, a bit more powerful than the average Full-Blood."

She raised a brow at him, then frowned. "It's not from the experiments, if that's what you're thinking. I come from a long line of Full-Blood wolves," she replied, narrowing her eyes faintly. "But, what are you? I've never experienced anything like you before."

Yami bristled. Yugi turned his head and looked between them closely. Otogi gave them all a curious glance, his lips beginning to pull slightly upwards into a grin of amusement. "A Full-Blood, same as you, though my lineage is perhaps purer than even yours," the red-eyed teen snapped in a cold tone. "Now, Mai, Otogi, what is it that you found so necessary to say that has kept Yugi here so long?"

The smallest teen furrowed his brows. "Yami, they didn't keep me here. I was just talking to them," he muttered, frowning deeply at the other boy who did not bother to so much as glance in his direction. He hesitated, because something about the way Yami held himself set his marrow ablaze.

The way Yami looked at them, the way he studied them, made Yugi uncomfortable, and that made him turn to them with an expression which he did not think they could read. He himself was unsure if he was bewildered by the frost in the other boy's tone or if it was a new and abrupt flood of suspicion. He looked between them slowly.

"The mountains," the taller boy stated with his head tilted, red eyes boring into Mai's with such power and certainty that she faltered in surprise for the briefest of moments. When she shook her head in bewilderment, he narrowed his eyes and studied her more pointedly. "You are part of the pack in the mountains."

She blinked, startled, and then gave him a wide grin full of mischief. "Honey, if you were so eager to get to know me, you didn't have to hide and spy on me," she teased. Yugi flushed but Yami merely curled his lip as if the very idea offended him somehow in a way that he could not ignore. "I would have taken you for a spin anytime."

He did not respond, lip still curled, eyes caught on hers.

"I would have to be crazy to deny myself something as tasty and beautiful as you," she continued, that grin stretching wider. "Of course, with the way you're looking at me, I can tell you would need a few minutes to catch up. Mm, I could teach you everything you ever needed to know."

Otogi was snickering, licking his lips at the prospect. His teal eyes glimmered, a deep and meaningful light entering them for the smallest of seconds. He smirked and Yami bore his teeth more noticeably now. His bristle had caused his shoulders to rise in a slight defensive position.

Both of the wolves looked at him with mirroring leers. The lust was apparent to Yugi and his face twisted into a slight scowl before he could stop himself.

"Oh please, Yugi, don't look at me like that," the blonde teased, licking her lips as she turned her dark violet eyes on him. Her lashes were long, spidery, curling at the ends and highlighting the color in the way that would have made his breath catch earlier. "I can teach you too. We could all do it. You, me, Yami, and maybe even Otogi if he could behave himself."

Yami bristled at the sound of his name coming to him in her voice. It made his skin crawl and he almost imagined that his flesh might grow to harbor welts. The thought made his eyes grow wide, the pupils dilating with abrupt horror.

She laughed and clasped her hands together, smirking widely. "Oh, you beautiful boys," she purred, "the things I could teach you."

Otogi smirked. "Oh, I'll definitely behave myself for this."

Yugi stiffened and then looked at Yami with something of a horrified expression. Something occurred to him, a wild and disconcerting thought. Oh gods, they were… A foursome…? And three males with one female? And not once did they even pause…?

"No reason to be nervous, Yami," Mai continued, nearly laughing at the way he stared back at her. "I'll take great care of you."

"No," he spat, in a voice that curled upwards and pushed forward with a strength and energy like that of rolling thunder, "you will not. In fact, you will leave such conversation alone as it has nothing to _do with you_."

The power in his tone made them all freeze. Yugi felt his muscles lock in place completely, eyes widening drastically as they shot to Yami. Mai startled and her eyes grew dilated, her body flinching back. Otogi lowered his head, turning his body slightly away from him as if he were invoking some sense of challenge in even facing them completely. Both of them lowered their eyes, keeping them far from either boy in front of them. But Yugi could hardly take his eyes off the furious tremble which gripped his red-eyed companion.

Yami's head turned to him abruptly, eyes sharp and gleaming with disdain. "I do not know about you, but I grow tired of this conversation," he growled, voice low and lacking room for argument. "I am going back to your house."

Yugi blinked, startled by the ferocity as he stared blankly for a moment. He could not fathom the way Yami stared at him, with such anger that it nearly bordered hatred.

"Now, if you wish to join me, do so now. Otherwise, you shall find your way back on your own."

Yugi blinked stupidly again, then swallowed thickly as he glanced at the other two wolves. Both seemed to have recovered for the most part, eyes wide as they looked between them.

"Yeah, okay, let's go home," he muttered, nodding slightly as he turned to Yami once more. He would have offered a smile to help him calm some of the frustration but the warning was clear in his eyes. He wanted away from them. And he _would_ abandon him there to find his own way back if he had to. He would not be mollified as long as they were within the same area as him.

He gave the other two a small smile in passing. "Bye, Mai, Otogi," he murmured softly, turning back to Yami quickly. "See you around."

Mai and Otogi swapped looks, mirroring questioning looks crossing their faces. "Yeah, we'll see you," the raven-haired teen stated calmly, eyes cutting to Yami as he bowed his head slightly. It was almost instinctive, or perhaps respectful, and Yugi saw Yami nod in response before turning away completely.

Yugi was on his tail immediately, both of them heading for the street and the intersection without a glance back. Had either of them turned, however, they would have seen both werewolves watching them with mirroring stunned expressions. They might have even heard it when Mai whispered, "What the hell was that? I've never felt anything like it."

Otogi shot her a look of pure bafflement. "Neither have I." He paused for a split second. "It was…so strong."

The she-wolf bit her lip. "And did you notice the connection between them? Yami bit him. You can tell. He has too similar an energy to him for it to be anything else."

He nodded. "Yeah, but I don't think he could do _that_." For a moment they looked at each other and Otogi rubbed the back of his head. Both of them frowned and looked away again awkwardly; neither of them was sure that Yami couldn't. And, if they were truthful with themselves, they felt Yugi might have that same strength inside of him somewhere.

"So, what do we do?"

Mai narrowed her eyes. Yami and Yugi were smears of color long gone down the street. The two of them were running, and she thought maybe she heard a hint of laughter on the wind.

"We can't tell the pack." She tilted her head towards him. "I think we need to watch them, maybe make sure nothing happens to them. But we can't tell the others. Mother will lose her mind if she hears of a potential wolf, let alone _two_. And you know the uproar that will be caused from it."

Otogi nodded and looked at her for a moment. "As far as the pack is concerned, neither Yami nor Yugi exist. And we'll keep it that way until something changes."

She nodded. "Exactly."

They both waited until they could no longer see either form in the distance. The smears of color were gone around the corner as they watched for their disappearance. They both looked sideways at each other, then away again. Otogi was smirking but Mai was troubled by it all.

 **Okay, so what they're talking about at the end of the chapter, when they're watching Yugi and Yami run off, is that Yami biting Yugi should not have made Yugi so strong a lycanthrope. They mention that Yugi could have the same power as Yami, which you'll find out more about later. But, to sum it up, it's more in the way the two use their wolves, how often they trust their senses, and the way they hold themselves.**

 **Yami is much more wolf than Yugi, holds himself in a more dangerous way than Yugi does, and when his temper flares, it comes to the surface. Yugi, on the other hand, is quieter, is somewhat skittish when he's startled (which sometimes causes him to act out instinctively as he did with Jonouchi last chapter, which means the lycanthropy comes to the surface), and doesn't like to use his second form.**

 **So, because of this, they can tell Yami bit Yugi, but they think that Yugi could be potentially as strong as Yami (because Yugi only snarled and didn't lash out, they didn't truly get a read on him) and do not understand how that could have happened due to the lycanthrope hierarchy (Pure-Blood, Full-Blood, Half-Blood, Quarter-Blood). The fact that Yami says he is a Full-Blood and bit Yugi who seems just as powerful is a cause for alarm and bewilderment.**

 **Oh! And the term "mother" is what they all call the pack leader, who you'll meet in a little while. It's not because she's the mother of both Otogi and Mai. I realized at like one in the morning before I fell asleep that that could be taken the wrong way.**


	26. Canis Lupus Dirus

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day (no update on June 2nd)**

 **Chapter Warnings: Graphic Night Terrors (Blood, Rotting Corpses), Mentions of Mates/Partners, Mentions of Faith/Loyalty, Sacrifices/Deaths**

 **Okay, so one of the symptoms of physical shock for a dog is white gums. It's more a physical pain that causes it, because their internal or external bleeding is so copious that it drains the blood from their mouths and other areas of the body. Now, as for the werewolves, you're told later why the lycanthropes produce this same symptom without physical shock but, rather, emotional stress. It's an evolutionary defense mechanism for them, so you can probably take a guess at what it might be if you're curious enough~**

 **As for the faith/loyalty mention in the warnings, I don't want to offend anyone. Yugi is atheist, as are many of the wolves beyond their own religion (which centers really only on Lupa and Fenrir). Yugi accepts any religion out there to be something that someone else believes and follows, but he cannot identify with them completely. So he struggles with the concept, as you'll see a few more times throughout the story. It does not list any religion in particular, but I wanted to make sure you guys were aware of it. Yugi will remain absolutely respectful of any religion in question or theory, but some of the other wolves are somewhat scornful of them. So, be aware that, as an atheist myself, I handle a lot of conversations and situation as Yugi does. I question it in the way of "how" and "why", but I won't say in conversation that "hey, I'm atheist, stop talking to me about anything to do with religion".**

 **Some of the wolves are that way for a more realistic representation of personalities later in the story (because there are definitely some people who will snap at you about when you mention your religion just because they can; I honestly can't list how many times I saw and heard that in school alone). But, for now, it's only Yugi introduced to this concept. And he constantly questions the faith that the wolves have towards their own deities and Atem. So, I'll put warnings about it in each chapter it's brought up, but it should always be brief (being as I am not religious, I don't want to misrepresent anything in faiths that people have, so I'm not at all willing to go in depth with it beyond occasional arguments between the characters in which they WILL be shut down VERY quickly). That said, that's your warning for the overall thing about religions mentioned in the story. But, as I said, I will mark individual chapters later with this same tag or something similar.**

 **Now, beyond that! The scientific name for the gray wolf is _Canis Lupus_. The scientific name for the dire wolf is _Canis Dirus_. The Pure-Blood is a hybrid of these two amazing species. There's no proof of them ever having interbred, but their territories did overlap much of the time and it's (from what I've been reading) actually possible. I could be entirely wrong with that, but from research, the _Canis_ family as a whole IS able to breed as long as they have 78 chromosomes that could potentially match genetically. And the _Canis Dirus_ comes from _Canis Armbrusteri,_ which is derived from the same lineage as _Canis Lupus._**

 **Either way, there's no proof of them interbreeding, but I did recently discover a wolf species that seems basically like the bridging point between the two of them if it were possible. It's genetically the closest thing to exist between the two, classified as _Canis Lupus_ but with distinct differences from any living wolf subspecies now and looks almost more _Canis Dirus_ to some degree. The Beringian wolf is perhaps the closest thing I've found so far to the Pure-Blood's body shape and possibly the skull indentation as well though the Pure-Blood isn't quite as robust as the Beringian or the dire. Just to be clear, however, the Pure-Blood isn't modeled after them and their body shapes and individual adaptations are more varied.**

 **Anyways!** **So, the Pure-Blood's scientific name for the story is _Canis Lupus Dirus_. Not very original, I know, but hey, whatever lol **

**The blood disorder/disease that Yugi hints at in this chapter is that of the Kell antigen. From some reading I did a while back (and just went back and checked again), apparently King Henry VIII tested positive for it. The father being Kell-positive would allow the conception of a baby the first time but the Kell-negative mother would develop antibodies during the pregnancy and the chance of a second pregnancy coming to term would be drastically low. Most of the children would die due to miscarriage, stillbirth, or rapid neonatal death due to the antibodies attacking the fetus or the placenta and thus killing the baby.**

Chapter XXVI: Canis Lupus Dirus

 _Work Log Entry XXVI: July, 1998_

 _July 18_

 _Tests have shown that his teeth are much larger and sharper than the captive cubs we hold in cells near him._

 _Tests have shown that his health is far superior to that of any of the other test subjects'._

 _Tests have shown that his brain capacity is far higher than that of any of the other werewolves around him._

 _Tests have shown that despite this keen intelligence, his temperament is that of a puppy's._

 _Tests have shown that his senses are far superior to that of our own as well as that of any of the other test subjects'._

 _Arrangements have been made to test his rate of healing._

 _July 19_

 _Rate of healing is almost instantaneous when shallow wounds are made on his skin, taking approximately a minute for deeper flesh wounds, and when his bones were broken it was shown that they healed instantaneously but give the appearance of still being wounded._

 _We believe that this may be a way for the creature to camouflage itself in terms of its divinity._

 _July 26_

 _The boss is pleased with our progress._

"Are you still awake?"

For a moment the room was silent but for the hum of the heater turning on. The air vibrating in the vents made him blink in the darkness. The low light from the streetlamp and the moon cast through the window was small, weak. The darkness seemed almost powerful enough to make it dissipate completely. A small drifting speck of dust swirled and dropped in the air, his eyes acute from his strained vision as he looked about himself.

Then, finally, as he was about to snuggle into the blanket and let loose his withheld breath, the boy beside him moved. The teen rolled onto his other side, eyes flickering about the room for the smallest of seconds. Then his eyes fell on him again, gaze warm and burning into the darkness, peering at him in the dimness. His pupils flickered a dark, rustic color, but his irises glowed faintly, as if absorbing what little light touched them.

"Yes," he said quietly, blinking at him. Yugi was startled for a moment, eyes widening slightly. It was somehow amazing to him that Yami had turned to face him like this. He'd never truly been one to do such a thing. Normally he would face the wall, converse with him in such a way that often made Yugi roll over to face his wall as well with a feeling of something almost like rejection. Then they would drift into silence and eventually fall asleep again.

The movement startled Yugi so violently that he almost could not fathom speaking any more. He blinked and then swallowed thickly before licking his lips and looking at him more closely in the dark. "I know what you said before about it, but I…I need to ask again," he muttered softly, feeling sick to his stomach.

Yami blinked, then nodded in silent encouragement. In front of him, Yugi peered at him with a troubled expression. His eyes were a uniform sapphire blue, with his pupils a deep purple like violet in the dark.

"Do you really think that Code Name Atem couldn't exist?" he asked into the quiet. The humming grew somewhat louder for a moment, the vents seemingly rattling. He drew in a deep breath, awaiting his response, and for the long minute it took for him to answer, Yugi felt as if he might puke with desperation.

"I suppose he could be real," he finally answered, voice low and somewhat cold, disconnected from the conversation altogether somehow. He looked at him again in the darkness and Yugi felt his eyes widen drastically. The taller teen was staring at him intently, cold and yet curious all the same. "Should he be, however, he will not be as the Pure-Bloods were before. I imagine he'd be much more unstable, harder to contain. He'd most likely bring a lot more suffering than anything else. And anyone would be right in the idea that their existence is wrong and death will stalk their paws."

He looked at him for a long moment, then sighed softly. "Shizuka said she thought he was the only one able to save the wolves back in the lab she escaped," he admitted in a low voice. "Do you think that's true?"

Yami stayed quiet again, his eyes flashing like embers in the dark. He shook his head slightly as he settled against the pillow more noticeably. "I don't know if I would truly believe that, no. I don't know that anything would stop those humans should they truly be attempting something more." He paused. "That's not to say that perhaps at some point he might turn around and attempt it. And maybe he'll succeed. I don't know."

Yugi bit his lip harshly, eyes wide and teeth glittering faintly in the darkness where the light touched them. He licked his lips a moment later, then sighed softly and shook his head slightly. "Do you honestly think that or are you humoring me?"

"I don't know. It's a combination of both, I suppose. No one knows if he exists so no one has any idea of what he might do."

He sighed quietly. "But, I get the feeling that you lean towards the idea that he wouldn't help them…"

"Not entirely, but a small part of me, yes. I have to wonder. I mean, would they have not run more terrible experiments on him than all the others? Wouldn't that make it harder for him to ever approach going back there? Regardless of whether they saved him formerly, I would imagine it would be too painful an experience to want to go back. Wouldn't you?"

Yugi stared at him quietly for a moment, then narrowed his gaze and closed his eyes for the briefest of seconds. "I guess it would be terrible for him. But what kind of person would he be if he didn't? I get the personal trauma that he would experience at just the idea, but…"

Yami shrugged. His eyes were closed as he breathed in softly and deeply, the noise slipping away to be eaten by the buzzing of the air vent. "I don't know. Hypothetically, I suppose he could turn around and try to help. But one wolf versus the amount of humans that _have_ to be involved in that whole thing? And the wolves trapped there who might turn on him? I do not think he would be so inclined then."

Yugi sighed into the pillow and closed his eyes again. When he shifted a little closer, the body heat luring him toward Yami beneath the covers, the taller boy stiffened briefly, then relaxed abruptly. He didn't miss the way it happened but he did not comment, instead licking his lips again and closing his eyes as well.

"Goodnight, Yami."

He hummed a little, the sleepy quality making his voice sound like a pleasant drifting breeze encompassed by gentle words.

"Goodnight, Yugi."

Yugi felt that his eyes had only been closed for a handful of seconds before the blackness began to shift and change. Along the edges of his vision it began to turn dark red, lightening and then pulsing with violent jagged scars of color. It was just like the veins in his eyes, an exact replica of it, and it made his stomach twist even as he settled more fitfully towards rest.

His name was soft, a drifting wind, and the effect of it was harsh and hot where it burned into his skin and lashed at his senses. It was rancid, blasting into his nose, and his eyes watered as the air grew hotter. His body jerked and shifted and his bones snapped and crackled softly. It was not the terrible pain which usually accompanied the Change, but instead a wave of heat that tugged at his consciousness.

The world became a blanket of dark orange that looked rustic and fire-like. A harsh cry and clack of noise made him flinch, eyes widening, and his heart began to skip with shock. His body tensed with recognition. He was having the night terror again, the same one that Yami had reacted so terribly to before.

He could see the shadows cast along the ground writhing and changing shape, the way they curled upwards and small spikes of them jutted out and separated, splintering. They rose in jumbled, disconnected forms that he could not easily recognize, then flickered together and pushed apart.

Ragged drops of deep hideous red sludge, darkened by the shadows and the lack of light, fell to a dirty cavernous floor. Tufts of fur, long and clumped, fell like shards of glass, shed away like sheets of snow during a spring thaw.

Yugi growled, a low and disdainful noise. The shapes writhed and more fur fell away, melting against the floor. The sludge fell in immense clumps, dropping and coating the earth, so thick that it began to swallow each of their paws. He bristled and lowered his head as his legs began to quiver and his heart pound harder.

His lungs felt constricted, burning with the stench of decaying flesh and fresh blood too heavy to ignore. He chomped his teeth as the wolves began to take more definite shapes, skulls and teeth and bones that shone beneath green with molded flesh. Blackened cells were shiny, stripped of fur and glittering in the low light.

The clacking noise came again and his legs shook as his eyes flickered upwards. The ravens were screaming overhead, flying and shedding feathers that fell in drops of sludge colored black and red.

He hissed a deep breath, then snarled lower in his throat. The noise vibrated deep within his chest and sounded almost like a roar when he chomped his teeth in growing distress. The wolves kept moving, forming in masses of decaying flesh and slimy fur slick with blood, teeth falling out of white bone jaws. Some of them threw their heads back, howling, and the noise made his very core vibrate and dance with terror. It was a roar, rough and guttural and so powerful that it made him quiver.

Yugi pressed himself to a floor that was rapidly swelling with blood, the thick smell suffocating him for the briefest of moments. He snapped his jaws again when the noise reached a crescendo, baring his teeth in disgust as it seemed to echo around the dead place surrounding them. The ravens even seemed to take on the terrible noise, blaring the cry outwards and clacking their beaks in time with his heartbeat.

For a long minute Yugi could not hear anything but the noise. It bubbled in his own throat, deafening and suffocating and overpowering, and he pressed his teeth together tightly. But then, somehow, despite his stress, his mind surged forward with the task of translation and a name began to rise in the symphony.

"Atem."

He bristled.

Code Name Atem?

The wolf?

He turned his head, eyes wide and confused. They surrounded him, howling, and his own lungs squeezed out a whimper. The ravens cawed again, deep croaking noises that made him tremble harder.

"Atem."

"Atem."

"Atem."

He pressed lower into the ground, bristling and baring his teeth. The cries were growing louder and louder. The air was too thick to breathe. He shook and snarled, eyes wide. His gaze grew wider, his lips drawing back until his gums showed bright white. He stared, eyes on them as they began howling louder than ever.

The name rose one last time. Then the earth shattered. Shards and splatters of red flew upwards. The air made it sluggish. He heard and saw the organs which slammed into some of the wolves. They snarled and snapped and the white canine screamed. His legs kicked and flailed, his heart racing. His mouth opened and closed. He cried out again, high-pitched and desperate.

The river embraced him once more. The red swelled and tore upon his fur. It tugged at the strands and tossed about his flanks. He gasped and snapped his jaws again, struggling against the harsh current. The howling was only growing. A raven swooped towards him, talons tugging at his head. He snapped at it and struggled harder.

The blood would not release him. It pulled him down further and further. He snarled and kicked but the air was leaving him. And the smell choked him until he felt he had become blind. He was staring at the feathers of a raven which rained to the river in rivulets.

Then the animal seemed to change, the shape of it enlarging, bulging with energy and strength. Bones snapped and crackled, pushing away even the deathly howling which had swallowed his conscience moments before.

And, as he watched, the bird changed to a form entirely different. His neck ached, his eyes burning, as the great feathered shape became something more. Black feathers dropped into torrents of red sludge. The beak snapped and fell away, collapsing into the river. The wings shed in a great scythe of bone.

In its place was an immense black wolf with a slighter ribcage than even his own, eyes of hellfire and glowing embers. The ears were softer, the muzzle narrower but the cheeks larger, the shoulders broad and the tail long, curled slightly to the right.

Yugi snarled in desperation, pleading pitifully that she might help him. He did not understand how he knew she was female, just that she was. He stared at her, flailing and panicked, but she did nothing but pull her lips back and open her jaws.

"Atem."

The way her voice curled through his ears and into his brain was a mirror of the sensation of mist creeping over his skin. The touch of it was soft where it surged through his thoughts and pushed away his panic. The force of it was too great and powerful, so far in his core that he trembled even as the river swallowed him whole.

Something touched his arm. It was light, gossamer, and so gentle that it tore at his consciousness even beyond the grip of death drowning him. He focused on it as it grew firmer, encompassing his upper arm with a grip that made him tremble.

"Yugi."

His name.

He recognized it, eyes snapping open wide in shock.

The wolves had called him Atem, but this voice called him Yugi.

When he focused on the lure of this voice as it curled further into his mind than even the she-wolf's, he felt his heart slow. A sense of familiarity came upon him. He felt the world shifting, his balance drifting. He was weighted on his left side, a curious sensation, and the darkness had become black behind his lids.

"Yugi."

Yugi blinked his eyes open, the lack of light momentarily making him flail mentally with growing confusion. Then he blinked again and the way the comforter pressed in his right side and encompassed his shoulders while the mattress sank beneath his weight allowed him to focus somewhat more.

His eyes flickered upwards, confused. At first he could not even recognize the figure in front of him. The sight of the crouched form before him made his heart skip beats. They were hunched over him and the way their hair was marked in shadow made him falter. It almost looked as like the jagged bristle of a wolf, ears set straight, shoulders hunched to make a broader frame of muscle.

He nearly yelped, until he remembered the voice.

It was still in his ears, circling his brain, even though the person had long since fallen silent.

He blinked, eyes sharpening in the darkness, and then smiled faintly when recognition finally came to him.

"Hey." He reached up, running a hand through his hair for a moment, and cast a grin at the other boy. "Sorry. Did I wake you?"

Yami raised a brow only slightly, but the elegance of the movement was lost in the narrow light. "I won't argue that perhaps the thrashing didn't wake me," he snorted with a small smirk of amusement. "Although, it also helped that I never fell asleep as it was."

The smaller teen frowned visibly even in the dark, then moved to sit up as well. "Why not?" he asked with his head tilted, voice coming out almost demanding in tone. Yugi frowned deeper at the tone and Yami blinked at him with a small hint of surprise in his dark eyes.

"Just… I could not stop thinking." He grimaced and they both looked away from each other briefly. Yugi knew just as well as he what he meant to say. "So I have been awake and unable to sleep since we spoke. In which case I have been lying here thinking and realized I should probably wake you."

Yugi blinked, blushing slightly, and nodded. "Yeah, thank you for that. I needed someone to wake me up."

Yami nodded minutely, watching him for a moment longer. "Was it a nightmare?" he said softly, in a tone that almost bordered wistful and made the small teen stiffen in surprise.

Yugi blinked at him a few times, straining his eyes, but he could not read his gaze with the luminescent glow it had acquired due to his night vision. Curiosity pricked at his insides but he could do nothing more than stare blankly. He could not read Yami's body language and his tone made no sense to him, the way the edges curled and crept together. And the darkness seemed to blur his features, though the small teen knew that the other boy was controlling the emotions displayed there as well.

"Yeah," he mumbled reluctantly, blue-violet eyes flickering away towards the window.

The sky was a soft gray, pronouncing oncoming snow again, though the flakes had yet to fall and the streetlamp put a harsh, off-gold color about the area. He shivered because the color had always disturbed him, but he was more undone by the idea that, for a split second, he had almost expected it to be deep red.

His eyes shot back to Yami's in the dark and for a moment he wondered why he was not unnerved by them. They were almost as red as fresh blood and he had never even truly flinched away from them. He tried to recall if he'd ever actually had such a moment before, but his mind was drawing at a blank and all he could really think was that the color now looked like fresh rust. He wanted more than ever to see Yami's regular eye color.

"Nothing serious though. I wouldn't even call it a night terror."

It took Yugi a moment to realize that he was not even trembling. The thought amazed him and he lowered his eyes to his hands to see if maybe he had simply failed to notice. But when he saw them, small and pale at the moment, there was nothing to show even the slightest hint of movement.

"That's good." He glanced up as Yami mumbled the statement and his eyes glittered in the dark as they bore into the taller boy's. He did not respond to the gentle show of light there, instead calculating the stunning relief which appeared on his face even in the shadows. He tilted his head, studying the smaller boy for a moment.

Normally when he had nightmares, Yami would watch him. He had been unable to bring himself to tear Yugi from the grasps of his dreams, simply because he did not know what it might be he was seeing. And lying there, watching him, made him unbearably uneasy when he remembered how Yugi had saved him from his own terrors when he had first joined him inside the house.

The guilt had always eaten at Yami's insides when he considered such events, but he could no longer find it in himself to give it much thought. He sometimes closed his eyes and thought it to be more a residual reaction than anything else.

He'd woken him now because he had grown fearful of the events that might be going on in his charge's head and it had made him react without much consideration. He had not truly considered what he was doing until he'd already done it.

"Do you think it will come back?"

Yugi blinked at him, startled by his words. He tilted his head, curious and lost at such a thought. He furrowed his brows slightly, wondering at it all. The idea that the wolves and the ravens might reappear, the cacophony of noise blaring in his ears and the roar of "Atem" had not truly occurred to him. He frowned, biting his lip.

For a moment they were both silent and Yami found himself almost alarmed by the way the smaller boy simply looked at him, judging the possibility. He thought it lucky for the small boy that he could escape his nightmares, that awakening did him such justices.

His own bad dreams haunted him constantly, tearing too hard at his insides to make him comfortable. But he often could push them away, even if they swiftly rejoined him at a second's notice. It took only an opportunity for them to reappear.

"Maybe," he finally answered. He sounded oddly surprised by his own statement, but he also appeared further troubled. The taller boy, looking at him now, wondered if there was something lingering there in his head that he did not tell him. It would have been a secret of some kind which Yugi refused to speak out loud. The thought made Yami both anxious and somehow further relieved. If the smaller boy kept things to himself, perhaps he might not rot any further than Yami always felt he already had. "But I kind of doubt it."

"You don't dream about it too often?"

Yugi blinked at him. The way his eyes flickered made the sapphire blue color glitter again. He nearly bore his teeth in a sense of sudden confusion and wonder. Why did they shine like that? The light was so limited in the room. Granted, Yugi's face was posed towards the window, but Yami himself was blocking a large majority of the possible light to spill from the window onto his countenance.

"I've only had the dream twice."

Despite how innocent the words should have been, they set alarms off in his head. Yami barely resisted the urge to bare his teeth and snarl quietly. Something about the statement was too ambiguous and yet harsh for him to accept.

"Ah," Yami muttered, because it was just enough to break the silence and too little to encourage further words. His beta smiled slightly, understanding and gentle in demeanor, then looked away again. His head turned towards his hands again and he looked tired as he ran his fingers through his hair for a moment.

"Yeah."

The room fell silent after a loud click resounded within the small space. Both of them listened to the way the other's heart continued noisily in their chest, soft and warm and wet and sloppy. But neither could think of any other words to say. And Yami watched as Yugi tugged the blankets up to his shoulders again and burrowed further into his pillow with a yawn.

The taller wolf watched him a moment longer, the fleece of his own blanket warm and inviting, but his head would not allow him the opportunity to settle for rest. So he sat there, wide awake and welcoming the darkness to sink beneath his skin, and jumped as violently as he always did when Yugi's alarm went off for school.

"Do you think wolves repress memories like humans do?"

He had asked Yami that question an hour before he had left for school. His companion had stopped from picking at his red nails and then looking at the small collection of books on the shelves to turn and stare at him. His eyes had been remarkably wide, startled by the question, and his shock was palpable when he'd trailed his finger along the spine of a book without looking and stared blankly.

He had been so caught off guard that Yugi had nearly apologized. But something about the way Yami had stared at him, the way he had stood so completely still and then seemed to abruptly grow angered, eyes flashing and jaw clenching, had stopped him. His gaze had shot away and he'd picked at the book he had been playing with moments before.

"Maybe," he'd said in a low, calm voice that bordered anger. "But I do not know of one."

Yugi had not bothered to push further. He'd given him some of his breakfast when his mom made it for him, told him he'd see him after school, and left without a second glance. He'd seen how stoic Yami had become after his question and it had made him feel far worse than he had wanted to admit.

So he had fled before he could make it worse, determined to keep from further angering the taller teen.

But Yami's response had made him feel a little unstable and dizzy. It had, in a way, inflicted a similar sense of frustration and anger. And that had made him unhappy and miserable for the better part of the day as he had gone about his classes.

If it wasn't possible for a wolf to repress, then why had he had those dreams and not remembered anything that could have hinted at his being Code Name Atem?

The idea made him queasy.

Was it possible?

Was it possible that the wolves had been calling him that for a reason?

But they'd chanted both his and Yami's name before.

So why had they called him Atem now?

He shivered as he glanced around slightly and tugged on the strap of his backpack. He was walking alone now because Jonouchi had grown too upset to be around him after his apology the day before. He still had not recovered from the shock and despair, and that was something Yugi could never fault him for. He himself was still overcome by the fact that Koaruko and Shizuka had died, that they were murdered so violently and seemingly without reason.

The fact that Shizuka was even dead still shook him to the core. He was not related to her and it still devastated him. He could only imagine vaguely what Katsuya himself felt.

Yugi had only experienced one death before in his life when his grandmother had passed. He'd been twelve and had watched her lowered into the earth. And he'd never been able to go to cemeteries or watch movies with funeral scenes since.

He had avoided anything that even vaguely touched on the subject of death. There was absolutely no way he could watch movie scenes or visit a place that housed the dead.

He glanced about himself again. The streets were more or less bare. When he turned and looked over his shoulder, no one seemed to even be near enough to see him properly. Yet, he still had the smallest sense that someone was following him. And he felt sick with the idea, but he could do nothing more than clench his jaw and look at the ice ahead of him.

Snow flurries had been coming on and off for the last few hours. Every other time he had looked out the window he'd thought he'd seen a new rush of them. Now they fell in such light and delicate design that he wondered if they could even reach the ground.

Yugi pressed his thumb hard against the material of the strap on his left shoulder. The air was cold enough to make someone run for their houses, as Anzu and Honda had both decided to do. They had been too cold to even remain outside for more than a few minutes and then had taken off racing.

He, himself, however, felt only the lightest tug of a frosty bite against his skin. He felt the way the blood had pooled beneath his cheeks for a few seconds. His heart had even raced, beating at almost three times its usual rate. And then, his body had grown warm enough that it fell into a more constant temperature and he was no longer flushed.

The ability to maintain his body heat was amazing.

But it was always very telling.

No human could do such a thing. If someone saw Yugi now, without the slightest hint of a blush to prove his cold, they would question his ability. They would wonder at it all. He could not find it in himself to ignore the way that he felt sick and stupid with the thought. While he would never have to worry about frostbite, he also could not be outside for long where people could see him.

He narrowed his eyes slightly, peering at the ice beneath his sneakers. The sidewalk was slick and the melt beneath it had frozen in a steady darkened layer where it shone in a thin covering over the concrete. He paced forward several steps, scenting the air and keeping his head lowered slightly. If someone passing in a car looked, he hoped they would not notice the lack of red in his cheeks.

It made no sense to him, however. What was it that made those ghosts in his dream think he was anything other than a sixteen-year-old who had just recently been bitten? If a wolf was unable to repress memories then surely he could not be Atem. Because that would mean that he had not grown up with his mother and grandfather and father. He would not even truly have the memories of his grandmother passing either.

Yugi shook his head. There was no way that he could have simply somehow covered his memories with those. The emotions were too real and the vividness was too great. There was simply no way his own mind could perform such a trick.

He faltered.

But then, _why_ couldn't it? He'd had night terrors and hallucinations for a good amount of his life. He'd had auditory and visual and sensations of being touched or prodded, poked or bitten. So why couldn't his own mind have twisted such truth in order to somehow protect him?

He found himself halting, standing in the middle of the sidewalk with darkened eyes and a glassy faraway appearance to his features. The medication had fought back some of the terrors, the hallucinations, the immensity of the strain of them.

Was it possible that the medication was used to suppress his memories as Atem as well? Maybe they had been able to tell him the things he needed in order to pass for normal growing up. Perhaps they had rescued him and…

Yugi glanced around again, heart in his throat. There was no way, right? His parents and grandparents would never have done such a thing, right? The very thought made his heart ache and bleed in his chest. He swallowed harshly and looked down at the ground with widened eyes.

How did it explain his similar features to his grandfather, however?

Their appearances as teens were too similar to be discounted.

However, as he felt a sense of relief creep over him, it fell away just as quickly. The thought broke like a delicate web of glass.

Yami looked a lot like him.

And they were not related in any sense of the word.

There was no way they could be.

His family tree was extremely straightforward. Most times, when a person in his family had a child, they were the only one. On the rare occasions that there were two, they had seemingly always died around the age of two or three.

It had been a phenomenon that he'd never figured out before. More often than not, he'd supposed it was a blood disease of some kind, something like what he'd read one of the English monarchs had at one point. He had never looked more into it, however, because it just seemed far too painful to.

Now, however, he wondered. Was it possible that whatever gods Valon had mentioned allowing himself and Yami to be born had somehow come upon the collective decision that there was never to be more than one?

What if it was a way of keeping their lycanthropy pure somehow?

Yami had said he was infected even before he had bitten him; that the bite had merely acted as a trigger to make it leave its dormant state.

Yugi felt sick as he started walking again. That didn't explain how or why he and Yami looked so much alike, however. That didn't help him at all to come to a conclusion for such a reality. They were too much alike, though somehow completely different as well. But a single glance would make someone take a second and, in that time, they might still think themselves to see doubles.

He hissed under his breath and the exhale was so pale it seemed to make the snow look black. He shook his head and glanced around one more time. He could smell a trace of Mai somewhere beyond him. The intoxicating scent was somewhat more delicate now, but it was there. He did not think it was not fresh.

She was nearby. He turned to look over his shoulder but saw nothing. No one was close. No one was even slightly interested in him as they drove by. He turned back and forced his feet forward. She might not believe in Code Name Atem as much as Otogi had seemed to, but he felt that she might know _something_ at least.

And, even if she didn't, perhaps she could tell him more about the wolves as a whole. Because he knew Yami would, but he was so easily angered and Yugi hated to distress him regardless. And he was not stupid enough to fail to recognize his anger came from his anxiety.

He reacted violently to the sensation because he viewed it as a weakness and Yugi had come to realize that wolves could sense it as such. He would never be surprised if one attacked another for sensing such a thing. Dogs did it when their owners were in such a state and cats were much more likely to lash out at someone nervous than someone who did not seem to care. He knew animals well enough to think that perhaps the most important thing in interacting with one was to keep calm.

And so Yami lashed out. It protected him and also scared a potential opponent. It was spontaneous and did not truly allow them time to see his emotions beforehand. He would make them cower before they could pose a threat. He would defend himself no matter the cost later.

Yugi shook his head and smelled the air, drawing it deep into his lungs to sort the scents hidden deep within it. Mai was the most prominent, though he caught a softer, more airy sense of something like wet mud and crushed pine needles. He assumed it had to be Otogi, because he had not bothered to take in and memorize his. The thought made his cheeks heat faintly.

He wondered for a moment what might have happened had Yami not shown up as he had. The thought only made him blush harder and he cursed under his breath as he shook his head in frustration. The only girl he should have been having those thoughts about was Anzu.

They weren't even truly dating because of all that was going on, but it still felt unfaithful somehow. He swallowed hard, ignoring the way his gut began to burn with shame and guilt.

"What are you doing walking all alone? Don't you know how dangerous that is?" a scornful voice scoffed at him. He jumped and spun around, a snarl immediately forming on his lips. His lungs seemed to burst with the effort of containing such a noise. "I mean, honestly, Yugi, don't you know any better? Your classmates are getting picked off left and right and you don't have enough sense to avoid being on your own like this?"

He flushed at the reprimand, the snarl dying away again as he sighed softly and looked at her. "I normally wouldn't," he admitted, his blush growing tenfold. He frowned at the way her lips quirks upwards with growing laughter. He wanted for a moment, so brief and frustrating, to lash out at her. "But one of my friends is mad at me. And, in case you haven't noticed, it's too cold for anyone with a brain to really walk around chatting with friends."

Mai quirked an elegant brow, smirking widely. "Was that a jab at me? Wow, you have a pair on you, don't you?" she teased, cocking a hip and crossing her arms as her eyes shone with laughter.

Yugi tried to ignore the way his body immediately reacted with the urge to look her up and down and focus on her lips. He struggled to keep their eyes locked. But he was honestly surprised when he saw that she was not even truly looking at him any longer.

Her eyes had flickered away to stare at something beyond his shoulder. "And your red-eyed beauty isn't here with you?"

He flushed. Red-eyed beauty? Had she really just called Yami that? He flushed harder when she looked at him with that wide smirk, a predatory glimmer in her gaze. Well, of course she was curious, and of course she thought he was beautiful. Yugi himself had admitted as much at one point, had he not?

"He doesn't go to school with me," he grumbled. In another situation he might have been jealous that her attention was elsewhere, but now it was a great relief. "He's at home."

"You both live together but he doesn't school with you?" she inquired, raising a brow as her smirk fell slightly. The way she bit her lip instantly afterwards made his heart quicken and his struggle that much harder.

"We're not related," he murmured as explanation, unsure of what more to say. He did not know what else there was that he could mention without giving away things about Yami that he did not have the right to. He looked away from her, just enough that she was caught in his peripheral.

"Ah, so you're housing your partner. How nice of you."

Yugi blinked, confused by the statement, and then felt his jaw fall open as his eyes grew thrice their regular size. He gaped at her, feeling dizzy for a brief second, and then sputtered, "Yami and I are _not_ dating!"

Mai gave him a critical look, then softened her expression as she gave him a glance over and tilted her head slightly to the side. "You're adorable when you're flustered," she said easily before shaking her head. "But, no, I would be able to smell him more noticeably on you if you were. Although, obviously you two must be close. He's almost like a second layer of scent on you."

Yugi blushed but then tilted his head, looking at her curiously. "What do you mean you'd smell him on me more noticeably? I mean, if he's like a second layer of scent already…?"

She smiled and her blonde hair seemed to glow for a moment despite the lack of light. "I'd smell him on your breath," she said smugly, "and I'd see him in your eyes. Werewolves who mate are always obvious, no matter how hard they try not to be. It shows no matter what. You don't have the right look to your eyes."

He frowned. "I already have a girlfriend."

Mai gave him the most scornful look he had ever seen before in his life, eyes sharper than blades and her lips pressed into a thin line. "Don't lie to me," she snapped in a cold tone. "I know you don't. I would know from your scent. Yami is, whether you like it or not, or agree in the slightest, the closest thing you've got to a partner right now. _He_ is the scent that clings to you, not the pheromones of some human girl."

Yugi felt his face turn bright red again, shocked and mortified by the statement. He cringed as they looked at each other and then abruptly turned his face away.

"Besides, Yugi, if you did have a girlfriend, you wouldn't react to me _nearly_ as strongly as you do." His entire face was burning and he ground his teeth together in an effort to push it away. He scowled at her from the corner of his eye but her smirk only grew and he felt sick to his stomach at the sight of it. For the briefest of seconds, he truly hated her. "Wolves are _never_ disloyal."

He gave her an annoyed look, standing taller and tipping his chin slightly. "I wouldn't be disloyal even if I wasn't a wolf! Just because I had a passing thought doesn't mean I would act on it! Everyone thinks something that they don't entirely care for later."

"Oh please, Yugi, a passing thought? That's not at all what you're having right now." She narrowed her eyes and leaned forward towards him. The angle gave him a clear look at her cleavage and his cheeks heated brilliantly once more. Mai snickered in amusement and his stomach coiled with annoyance. "Sweetheart, I go far beyond a passing thought."

"Screw you, Mai."

She smirked. "Wouldn't you like to?"

Yugi thought he would like nothing more than to have her turn into a boy so that he could punch her. He had never had such a desire to hurt a girl before. He shook his head sharply and turned away, scowling. "And, by the way," he snapped, turning on her again with his teeth bared, "if I was ever to decide to date Anzu _or_ Yami, you would never compare to either of them."

Mai raised a brow, caught between amusement and sharp irritation at his words. "I don't know about Yami, seeing how intense he is, but I can assure you some little human girl would never compare to me. Not in your wildest dreams or hers."

He blinked at her, startled by the words that had left her mouth. He furrowed his brows. "Intense?" he asked quietly, frowning thoughtfully. "What do you mean 'intense'?"

"That boy has the definition of freedom and wilderness written in his soul somewhere. It's deep in him. He's more wolf than human, I promise you that. And, I bet he'd make one of _the_ most passionate lovers," she stated with a look to her eyes that was both faintly wistful and faraway with frustration. Her face was set with an almost sad expression before she shook her head again. "Oh well. I'm sure he's got someone waiting for him somewhere. And if he doesn't yet, he'll find his mate without too much difficulty."

Yugi frowned at her, troubled by the thought. Was there only one person for a wolf? The thought sounded so _lonely_. He shook the idea away, however.

That wasn't what he had come to talk to her about. He'd store that for later questions. Maybe he'd ask Yami for answers instead. He was highly unlikely to tease him and make him feel stupid like she did.

"Mai, I wanted to talk to you about something else entirely," he said in what he hoped was a steady and friendly tone, despite the fact that his anger still had yet to dissipate. The blonde turned her head immediately, eyes widening in surprise at the request, and furrowed her brows in response. He cleared his throat awkwardly, the idea of her laughing making his stomach clench. "I wanted to ask you about Code Name Atem." _  
_

"Code Name Atem?" she repeated in surprise, frowning. Her lips pressed tightly together for a moment, expression hardening even as her eyes became thoughtful and she seemed decidedly unhappy. "What about him?"

Yugi frowned and tried desperately to ignore the fact that his eyes kept threatening to lower to her mouth despite his frustrated embarrassment. "You don't really believe in him, do you?" he asked cautiously. "If not, this is going to be a hypothetical conversation…"

Mai tilted her head, smiling again, but this time with a cynical look to her expression. No humor shone in her eyes and there was a bitterness in her voice as she murmured, "Yugi, I was raised to believe in him. It's just, after years of waiting for the possibility of his appearance, I am not too sure that he truly _does_ exist. I don't entirely think he's myth, but I do have to wonder if he's anything more than a regular wolf."

Yugi felt his frown deepen further. "You mean less than a Pure-Blood," he stated quietly. She nodded even though he spoke with certainty and both of them watched each other with a sense of companionable weariness. "Before I ask you about him, do you think…that there's any way that a wolf can repress their memories like a person does? Like, is it possible for them to deal with something like PTSD in a similar manner to a regular person?"

Mai blinked, visibly surprised. Her eyes were wide, her glossy lips parted slightly, and she found herself tipping her head to the side in wonder at the question. Her gaze darkened, thoughtful and working to provide an answer she considered to be suitable for him.

Finally, when Yugi felt that he should never have bothered to ask, she whispered, "If he can forget, he's a lucky bastard. The rest of them have never gotten a chance." She paused. "Something would have to be influencing him pretty heavily in order for him to be able to forget anything. Wolves have the perfect recollection of anything that happens in their lives, Yugi."

He felt as if he was going to throw up.

Oh gods, perfect recollection? He faltered, feeling somehow displaced by these words.

He didn't have perfect recollection. A lot of the time, certain moments in his life were literally shrouded in blackness, a haze of blindness he could not defend himself from. They were not in complete darkness, though, but it was always hard and agonizing in the manner of having to scrape mentally for the ability to recall.

"The other wolves who came from that lab, they all remember. I can say that with certainty. Unless Atem was drugged beyond the ability to even think straight or he was nursing a wound in his head that he could not heal, he should be able to do the same, Yugi."

He bit his lip. "Medication? Fear? Do you think a combination?"

She frowned at him, eyes puzzled but sharpening with suspicion. "I don't know if you know this about animals, but most all of them remember everything. Elephants, wolves, horses, birds. They remember how to hunt after being shown once, they learn and don't forget how to fly, they control their trunks and wield them as weapons, they gallop and canter and kick violently when a threat is closing in on them. Animals don't forget. It is ingrained in their survival that they keep their memories, that they manage what is necessary. If a wolf were to forget that humans were dangerous, they'd die. If a horse forgot how to kick, a predator would destroy it. If a bird forgot the ability to fly, they would be easy prey. If an elephant couldn't remember to find the way to the old watering hole from their youngest, they'd most likely die of dehydration. Every animal keeps information that they do not always necessarily need."

He swallowed hard and she studied him a bit more pointedly. The suspicion grew to more abundance, her eyes flashing with it.

"And humans assume themselves the masters of memory. So, tell me, Yugi, if a wolf can remember the ability to kill an elk the first time they are taught, and humans have the gift of muscle memory, what room is there for a werewolf to forget unless by heavy outside circumstances and influence? I don't think drugs, unless they were so consistent throughout their life or combined with some kind of psychological manipulation, would ever work."

Yugi watched her for a long minute, mind spinning with the words. He frowned, then shook his head. "You said you've been waiting for him your entire life," he muttered, eyes flickering away towards the empty street behind her and back again. "What did you mean by that, Mai?"

Mai frowned, tipping her head to the side. "Yugi, Code Name Atem is not a new creature. He's a truth now if someone believes in him, but he's been an omen for a long time for the lycanthropes. Or, at least… He has for some of us. He's called the 'Lupus Dirus' because that's what he's made of, the gray and the dire. All Pure-Bloods are called the Lupus Dirus. That's what they were." She bit her lip for a moment, then sighed softly, the noise sharp and irritable. "In myths he is not called by name. In fact, they refer to him as a female. And they simply say that she's meant to come and walk among us. She's meant to fight away the possibility of destruction of both subspecies. She, with the aid of the rest of the lycanthropes, is meant to save us from destruction."

"Destruction?" he asked with wide eyes, heart leaping into his throat for a moment. He swore he tasted blood and bile as he struggled to breathe again. "What destruction?"

"It's supposed to come in three. One is that the Pure-Blood will be resurrected, as will the Harbingers. Two is that the gods will awaken and come to walk the earth at their beckon. Three is that the hellhounds and the lycanthropes will fight and pick each other off. And finally, a war will begin between them."

"But why would the werewolves turn on each other?"

"Because there are going to be circumstances which will force them to." The blonde stayed quiet for a moment. "There used to be an ancient verse that foretold it. It was taught when the first of both subspecies walked the earth. But I have no idea if anyone knows it any longer. It's possible that it's been lost to time now."

Yugi stared at her, stomach tossing. "And how do we know that Atem is the one who's supposed to lead the lycanthropes?"

Mai narrowed her eyes into slits, staring at him for a long time. Her voice came out cold when she snapped, "Because they will be the first Pure-Blood to exist in this world since the end of the Ice Age. And they will be the only truly immortal creature to exist in a world where they have all but been forgotten. Yugi, if Atem truly _was_ recreated in that damn lab, it's for the cause of saving the werewolves. And they are the only one capable of it."

"But how is one wolf meant to win a war? It would be different if it was that there was someone to guide them, but—"

"The gods will guide him," she interrupted, voice dropping to a whisper as her eyes grew sorrowful. "The gods will guide him. And the wolves of long before will help him through dreams. And the lycanthropes will lay their lives down for him. The lycanthropes will sacrifice themselves for his cause. It is in all of us. It is so far buried inside of each of us that it is almost forgotten, but if ever there were to be a Pure-Blood among us, we would all do as was necessary to save them. We are bound by the loyalty of the wolf, as the hellhounds will do the same for the Harbingers."

"What are the Harbingers?"

"The reason the Pure-Blood was created." Mai shook her head sharply, the sorrow in her gaze growing. "Every wolf has a bond to the ones before them. For the lycanthrope, it's the Pure-Blood. For the hellhound, it's the Harbinger. We will all bow to them and do anything we must to save and help them."

Yugi shook his head, mouth falling open. "But that's… Mai, that's insane!"

She bore her teeth. "And yet dogs are trained to save the lives of their owners at the cost of their own. And mothers will offer their lives for their offspring. To place one's life for the sake of a great cause is not like sacrificing themselves in vain or committing suicide, you foolish boy!"

Yugi flinched, eyes wide with shock. He felt chastised beyond his own understanding and the idea made the hairs on the back of his neck rise with distaste and acute embarrassment. He felt the overwhelming impulse to bow his head, but a new voice startled him from such thought.

"Go easy on him, Mai. It's obvious he's bitten, and wasn't born with the disease," Otogi scoffed at her, shaking his head and coming to their sides. "He doesn't understand because he had the freedom of growing up without the idea that there might ever be a time such a thing would come to happen."

He opened and closed his mouth and Otogi winked at him. Mai relaxed, though her eyes remained hard even as she apologized and they fell into an unsteady silence. Yugi looked away towards the ground and the blonde crossed her arms as she glared at the brick wall of the small bakery at her side.

"It's harder to understand when you're bitten," the raven-haired boy offered gently, making Yugi look up again with wide eyes. "And that's okay. It takes time. But it's not as if any of us wouldn't put our lives on the line for our friends and family if we were asked to. We'd do it because we need to. If it meant it saved them, why would we deny them the chance of survival? It's no different."

"But no one knows Atem. No one even knows if he's real…"

"We don't have to know him to recognize him. We sense him by his strength, by the power he holds over us. We know him by the bond we all share with him. We'll know him just as we will the gods when they awaken to assist him. Yugi, werewolves don't _have_ to know someone personally to recognize them in their heart. It's like someone's faith." He hesitated, then searched his blue-violet eyes for a long minute. "Do you know faith, Yugi?"

He stared at him for what felt like a lifetime, then shook his head sharply. "I don't. And I don't understand how you can equate giving your life for someone they don't know as a connection with a god, Otogi."

"They place their faith in a figure they've never met and pray to them and worship and prepare to place their lives in their hands. Yugi, it's the most similar thing you could ever compare this to."

Yugi shook his head again, disgusted but overwhelmed as well. "And just how many deaths will it take? What will help him save himself and the rest of the werewolves, Otogi? Because I don't know about you, but all I imagine when I think of war is bloodshed and dead bodies. And hopelessness and lost family members. Tell me, how many would have to die for him in order to save the werewolves like you claim his existence is meant to?"

They both looked at him, eyes burning into his with such strength that he felt as if he were staring into the gaze of a predator far beyond him, ready to destroy and feast on him.

"As many as is necessary."

"And what if he's not _worth_ that? What if he proves to be useless in saving them?" Both of them frowned at him openly, then shook their heads. Yugi watched them, waiting for the answer, but it was his own voice that spoke the words, "Then it's all for nothing. And those are the odds that you have to gamble with."

No one spoke for a long time, for such an immense measure that Yugi was almost amazed that curfew had not come and gone. He pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth and the other two wolves studied him for as long as any of them could bear to look at each other.

"Do you believe in him, Otogi?"

"I believe in him sometimes. But other times I think he's all but a myth."

"Do you think he could have been created in that lab? That humans could have brought a Pure-Blood to life?"

His voice was trembling and his heart was racing. They all heard it and the weariness was pronounced in the sag of each of their shoulders. Yugi's struggle to comprehend their willingness wore at them effortlessly.

"I don't know. Sometimes I believe it's possible, but then I have to wonder why a god would ever allow such terrible things to befall their gift to the world. I have to wonder why they would put their own kin in such suffering." He paused. "But something made those wolves rally together. Something allowed them to put aside their differences and aid each other to escape from that lab, Yugi. You cannot tell me otherwise. There were too many wolves who appeared after that day, too many who were scarred and traumatized and too terrified to recognize themselves from the monsters in their childhood."

He felt his stomach curl with disgust and growing sorrow. "Yami said that they would have to have been blessed by a god in order to be born. So why…?"

"For the greater good, to prevent self-destruction."

"Do you really think…?"

"I think the wolves are too numerous and cocky and sometimes too wild for their own good. I think that soon enough, with or without the experiments, regardless of the Pure-Blood or the Harbinger, they're going to declare war. And I think it'll be an even greater devastation to deal with than even what Code Name Atem brings with him."

Yugi lowered his eyes, feeling further sickened. His head was spinning as he stared at the sidewalk with a darkened gaze. "How long ago did those wolves get loose?" he asked softly. "How long ago did Code Name Atem and the rest of them escape?"

"About six months ago," Otogi answered, speaking for the first time in what felt like hours. His teal eyes shot towards Mai. "But Atem was being whispered about for several years before then. He was actually already on everyone's lips sixteen years ago. A wolf got word out that the humans had succeeded."

He felt dizzier than ever. "Sixteen…?"

Mai nodded, eyes flashing with discomfort. "Yes, he was born sometime in the summer."

Yugi couldn't breathe for a moment.

His lungs were too tight.

His throat was closing.

He looked at them, desperate for Otogi to argue.

"He escaped with the others six months ago, but he was known about long before then." The black-haired teen paused and frowned at him thoughtfully but did not comment. "Or so they say anyways. For all anyone truly knows he could have gotten loose long before then."

"Otogi, what do you think of the idea that he could suppress his memory?" Mai asked suddenly, turning to him. "I think it's impossible, but what are your thoughts?"

The boy looked at her and then blinked at Yugi slowly, eyes narrowing into teal slits, wondrous and suspicious all at once. "I think, if he needed to, he would do it. You forget, Mai, a werewolf will do anything necessary in order to survive. If suppressing is it, then that's what he would do. That's the _smallest_ thing a werewolf could do in order to survive."

He wanted to puke as he looked at them again.

"Especially with the hunters that have been hired to capture him and the other wolves. There are so many of them. If he had to simply suppress his memories it'd be the _easiest_ thing he could possibly do."

Otogi was silent again for a minute.

Then he finally asked the one question that Yugi had been dreading answering.

"Why are you so curious about Code Name Atem anyways?"

Yugi drew in a deep breath, then closed his eyes tightly. His voice was low and choked.

"I think I have an idea…who he might be."

* * *

He looked up as he always did when Yugi entered the room. The small teen hesitated when their eyes locked for a brief moment, then lowered his gaze and tossed his backpack into the room. He didn't bother to acknowledge his grandpa calling his name in greeting from somewhere in the living room. Instead he closed the door and moved to take the spot next to the red-eyed wolf on the bed. For a moment they were both silent and then the smaller boy turned his head with a small, almost shy smile, and murmured, "Hey."

Yami blinked at him. "Hello."

Yugi hesitated for a second, then fell back against the pillow and closed his eyes tightly. The taller boy reached out to touch his wrist, tracing along his pulse point with the barest tips of his fingers. The smaller teen looked at him with wide eyes, startled by the action, and tilted his head in bewilderment. Yami ignored him for a moment, then narrowed his eyes and looked at him more closely.

"You smell of Mai and Otogi. And your heart is racing."

He flushed, eyes wide, and then gently shifted his hand away from him. The other boy responded to the lack of contact with the smallest of blinks, his dismissal of this action abundantly clear. Yami had touched him only for the sake of his undivided attention.

"I ran into them on the way home."

There was only a hint of disbelief and cynicism in his tone. "And stayed with them for an hour longer than necessary."

He looked at him for a moment. There was no hint of anger to truly be found, just a small speck of relief and the tiniest touch of worry. Yugi sighed and shifted to sit up, putting them level as he muttered, "I lost track of time. I wanted to know more about Code Name Atem."

Yami stiffened, the emotion leaving his face as his lip curled briefly. "I should have known. You do not seem to know when to stop chasing phantoms," he sighed softly, shaking his head slightly. "Yugi, if you keep this up, you're going to end up attracting the wrong kind of attention. Not every wolf will take kindly to you searching for answers about Code Name Atem."

He shook his head. "Just because you don't care doesn't mean I shouldn't," he snapped.

"Yes, and _why_ do you care? Have you asked yourself that question yet?" Yami spat in exasperation, baring his teeth. "Because Shizuka said that he could help the wolves being experimented on. And now you think you should help him achieve such a feat! Because you think it will somehow avenge her. But, Yugi, she is _dead_. And trying now, to help those wolves still there, it won't change that."

He flinched and felt almost as if he should flee the room for the briefest of seconds. The air seemed to have grown abruptly heavier, rippling with the anger that he exerted now. Yugi shook his head a second later, huffing, "I know that. But I… Even without her in the picture, if I had found out about what's going on, I would still want to help stop it. What they're doing is insane!"

Yami stared at him silently for a long minute and then looked away again. "So you should risk your life to save wolves you do not know just to stop something like that which is happening?"

He stiffened, then weakly croaked, "No, not… Not quite. I…I said I would help. I didn't…"

"But surely you realize that if you were ever to be caught you would be killed."

Yugi cringed, feeling dizzy and disjointed for a moment. He would definitely be used in experiments and killed if he was caught. And Mai and Otogi both said that they had hired hunters…

"Look, Yugi, I do not mean to say that it's the wrong thing to do, but if you have plans to help out, you need to at least embrace the idea that you might die from it. And then you need to remember that it might not be worth the cause. Just because you stop them here, does not mean you stop them everywhere. Remember that."

He felt as if his cheeks were burning, slightly humiliated by the words but somehow fueled as well. "I know that. I just…"

"Want to help out. I know." Yami paused, studying him for a long moment, and then shifted a little closer to him.

His knee was touching very slightly against his hip and Yugi nearly shivered at the sensation. His body heat was everywhere for a moment, all-encompassing and consuming him. He drew in a breath and all he could smell was snow and moonlight and pine trees.

"It's admirable, but I think you're too healthily afraid of death. You have too keen a respect for it to try to throw your life away like that might demand."

Yugi shivered. "You say that so easily."

He smirked, shrugging slightly. "As Valon said, I am surrounded by death," he said simply, his voice almost lifting into a purr at the statement. "And my life? It's pretty inconsequential."

"What? Don't say that! Your life is important too!"

"You value it more than me."

Yugi shook his head, grimacing, but could not think of any words to say and found himself unable to do more than stare at him with a somewhat horrified expression. Yami watched him for what felt like a lifetime, then turned away with a more solemn look to his features.

"Don't think wrong of me for saying such a thing. It is the truth. I do not know if you expected me to say otherwise, but that is how it is."

He shook his head and looked away. "I don't… I just… I think that's really kind of sad. I thought maybe you thought more of yourself than that," he admitted. "You always fight to survive, so I thought…"

Yami looked at him curiously for a moment. Yugi appeared sad as well, but he did not seem as if he thought any less of him. The idea made his spine tighten slightly with confusion. Had someone told him those words, he would have most likely snapped at them to end it then.

Yami did not think he had enough patience to deal with a person who thought themselves worthless and so would rather kill themselves than exist.

That was not to say that he wished to die. He had had far too many close calls to wish to welcome it permanently. He just would have assumed their words to mean that entirely. And it made his stomach ache to realize that Yugi did not see it the same way. He saw it as some kind of mixture of depression and self-hatred.

Yami could see it in his eyes, the way Yugi peered at him with that sorrow but made it obvious he also pitied him somewhere in the back of his mind. He nearly bore his teeth, because pity was nothing he could ever find in himself to accept. His pride was misguided but it still made him furious. He didn't even know what he was truly pitying him for.

He didn't know the truth of it.

It was with arrogance that Yami snapped, "And I will make a wager with you that many people feel that way more than anything else. Your precious Shizuka was probably the poster child for it."

Yugi faltered visibly, mouth opening and closing before he pressed his lips tightly together and bit the inside of his cheek. "You're probably right," he muttered, feeling sick to his stomach again as he looked away from the taller teen. "I wouldn't be surprised."

"Then why act as such when I tell you that?"

He couldn't help it when he looked up at him again and bit his lip. "Because I never considered it before. And I don't think anyone like you should feel like that."

"Like me?" he asked with wide eyes, startled by the thought. Did Yugi see something in him that he didn't himself? The idea made his skin crawl and his wrists ached, the pain trailing up and down his arms where the wounds were still bandaged. "What do you mean?"

Yugi looked self-conscious as he shrugged his shoulders slightly and lowered his eyes to the comforter. Yami watched him trace a pattern across the fabric for a moment before he finally spoke again.

"I just… You always seem content or at least vaguely happy. And that normally makes you more relaxed. And, when you're not constantly waiting for something to happen, you put a lot of energy into everything you do. And that… It makes you seem more passionate." He paused. "And you… I could see you being a really passionate person. If you tried to, I think you could get anything you wanted done, and you'd apply everything you had in order to do it. When you played chess and checkers against me, you showed that well enough. So I…I don't understand how you could be so miserable and so alive all at once."

Yami stared at him for a long moment, then shifted away from him. When he bunched his limbs together in front of him and lay his arms in his lap, the smaller teen glanced at him sideways. They stayed silent for a few long heartbeats and Yugi wondered briefly if what he had said could be taken in the wrong context. He hoped he didn't think that he was trying to solicit him in some way emotionally. The thought made his cheeks heat faintly and he nearly covered his face with a groan.

"Being miserable only works with the lively ones." Yami fell silent again, then glanced at him sideways, expression thoughtful as he searched his face. "I am not so much miserable and I don't suppose that I wish to die, but if it were to happen, I am not sure I would attempt to prevent it."

Yugi shook his head slightly. "You don't hate life though, then?" he asked quietly, a weak and small question that made the taller teen blink in surprise.

"No, I do not hate my life. I just…do not always value it." He shrugged as his eyes flickered away. "I suppose having lycanthropy can do that to a person. The ability to heal from almost anything and everything… It probably makes one feel that they are immortal even when it's clear they could die at any time."

Yugi nodded slightly, a small sense of understanding coiling in his belly. That made sense. He could see how the idea of near instantaneous healing could make someone feel immortal and grow cocky from it all. He could see how someone might take advantage of such an idea and potentially lose themselves in the thought that nothing could ever beat them.

"I am not stupid, however. I do not run into a fight unless I think I can win, regardless of how it might look to someone else. If I do not think I can win, I will not interfere." He paused. "I am aware that I am not immortal. But sometimes I like to think I am. And it makes it easy for me to fail to see the importance of my own life here."

Yugi nodded, feeling a lump form in his throat. "Do you think I'll ever turn out like that?" he whispered in a voice that nearly cracked with desperation.

Yami was silent for a moment, then shook his head. "No, I do not believe for even a moment that you ever will. You have a healthy dislike of death and that will help you."

"That's… I mean, do you ever really wonder about it? Death, I mean? Do you ever wonder…?"

Yami scoffed. "To wonder about it is for the dead themselves. I am alive. I think only about the things that might happen later for me." He paused and then smirked slightly. "Besides, why should I wonder when every werewolf ends up in Paradise anyways?"

"Paradise?"

He looked at him for a long minute and then quickly away again, eyes sharp and darkened with a shadow that Yugi could not read. "I do not think this conversation should go any further. I do not wish to speak anymore…"

The way his voice came out was a mixture of breathless and decidedly uncomfortable, as if Yami were choking on a memory long forgotten. His eyes had grown glazed over but his awareness had not left him in the slightest. He knew exactly what he was doing, what was happening around him. He was lucid and dangerous with knowledge and intuition. When he looked at Yugi from beneath his lashes, his eyes were dark, glassy, but altogether so alight with keenness they almost appeared to glow.

Yugi shivered, unnerved by the way he seemed to stare both at and through him all at once. He bit the inside of his cheek, caught with confusion at the very idea. His gaze was so far away from him, boring into him and somehow into the distance at the same time. He shivered again.

"Okay."

* * *

He really shouldn't have bothered to follow the smell. He was beginning to regret ever using his nose in the first place. He honestly thought that eventually he would need to chop it off. All it did was lead him to trouble. It had brought him to Yami at the dumpster, to Mai in the courtyard, and now it had brought him here.

And here was nowhere he would ever wish to go.

Before him, in the limited trees, was a small clearing barely the size needed to support the immense circle of wolves held within it. The canines were all roughly the same height, with broad shoulders and long limber legs. Their pelts were a million different shades and colors, some covered lightly in snow while others were shed of ice.

Each of them was facing each other, the clearing wide like a chasm between them. Their eyes sparkled and danced in the dimming light and the film of colors, blurs of their irises in shade, looked almost murky in appearance. Each had their muzzle raised, ears pricked forward, eyes cast on the ones standing before them.

And in the center of the clearing, was a she-wolf, with broad shoulders and a pelt of cinnamon red which shimmered with droplets of water from melted snow. Her eyes were a deep and mesmerizing amber, glowing as she looked about them and snarled softly.

At first, Yugi could not hear the words.

He strained his ears and struggled to catch her message, for he was sure it was not just a statement leaving her mouth. It had to be a message, long and clear, with an intent the others knew but he did not. Even as he crouched in the base of the tree, leaning forward on his hands and knees, straining his ears, he could not catch her words.

He leaned forward only slightly further. Her voice was but a rasping whisper, a current of noise swallowed by the cold air. It came to him slowly but surely, soft and gentle as it began to form in his head. It was only then that he truly realized she was not talking out loud. Instead she was doing as Yami had, speaking into his mind as he supposed she was doing the others as well.

 _Canis Lupus Dirus_!

Their mouths opened, heads thrown back. They mimicked howling but somehow remained silent even as they swayed and seemed to silently echo her words. It was an excruciatingly loud boom of noise as she began to snarl in a higher pitch, a thunderous crackle of voice.

 _Canis Lupus Dirus, our genesis_! _Come forth, Canis Lupus Dirus_!

He stiffened.

The Pure-Blood?

They were trying to summon a Pure-Blood?

 _Hear us, Code Name Atem_! _Look upon our offerings_! _Receive our sacrifice_!

Yugi found himself unable to breathe, eyes wide as his stomach tossed violently. His lungs constricted and his heart pulsed in his throat. He tasted blood on his tongue as his legs threatened to give out beneath him.

 _Bring to us the promise of survival, Lord of Violence, of Suffering, of Power and Glory_! the she-wolf continued, her voice practically screaming the words now. Yugi was frozen, eyes locked on the display as two wolves moved forward. The rest on either end of the circle began to back away, giving them a wide berth of space. _Come to us, Code Name Atem, and enlighten us_! _Fulfill for us your oath_! _In blood we give you power, in life we give you strength, in death we give you form_! _Take from us what you need_!

She and the other wolves ceased their swaying movements. Her head lowered, eyes glowing in the dim light with such power Yugi thought her ethereal for a moment. He stiffened, for she almost seemed to see him there, watching them. But then she launched herself forward, catching first the wolf to her right and then to her left. Blood splattered to the ground, harsh shadows of deep red against the snow, staining the bottom of her muzzle as they looked at each other.

 _From the alpha is your first gift. From these two wolves comes your rebirth_! _Rejoice in your new strength and glory_!

Yugi barely had time to blink before the two wolves, bleeding profusely from wounds he assumed to be only short of mortal, sprang for each other. They tangled in limbs of bright white and dark tawny, snarling and snapping for each other's face. They snatched at fur and tried to tear through the ears or the eyes. They rolled and struggled to their feet. The snow had become a river of red, so much like his own dream that he nearly collapsed.

He watched them until they both tore at each other's throats, with such a perfect grip and angle that it seemed rehearsed. He supposed it had to be, considering the speech with which the she-wolf had released them to destroy each other. But the grips were in harmony, snatched in what he easily assumed to be the same place on either side.

And when they jerked their heads back, they both faltered and gasped, gurgling as blood dripped in rivulets. He shuddered and his stomach pushed upwards in a heaving movement but he swallowed back the overwhelming current of bile in his mouth.

He was choking but he did not fight away the desperation and horror which coated his insides. He could not push it aside as the two wolves seemed only to collapse an eternity later. Their legs buckled and dropped beneath them and their eyes rolled upwards. The snow steamed with the blood which melted it, ghostly gusts of white mist curling upwards at its touch.

Yugi raised a hand to his throat, feeling as if he were choking with the urge to puke and then to flee. But his brain was racing elsewhere. If he puked, he would give away his position. If he ran, he would most likely crash. His legs were too unstable. He was barely aware of the sensation of his feet moving slowly but surely backwards.

The clearing was but a blur upon the hill when he turned on his heel finally and ran for the city again. There was a loud growl but no other noises amongst the trees. The wolves were not following him. He gasped and doubled over at the entrance of the street which would eventually lead to his house.

He was shaking and sweat had bloomed across his brow at some point.

He could not remember when, or if he had ever noticed it in the first place.

But it made him quake and he felt sickened as he gasped and sputtered for breath once more. He could not fully see the concrete beneath him, he was so dizzy with disgust. The wolves had been attempting to summon Code Name Atem with _sacrifices_. They had been preaching and praying and offering themselves like lambs at the slaughter.

Yugi swayed and his belly curled painfully but still he did not vomit. Somehow the bile remained in the back of his throat, pooled at the bottom, a deep pond of burning acid. He ground his teeth together and closed his eyes tightly.

They had tried to summon him. They had tried to bring him to life through…

It made no sense to him. How could they know his name as Atem and not realize that the sacrifices would not— _could not_ —bring him to them? How could they fail to understand the fact that they were killing themselves for no other reason than false worship? Yet, the entire pack there—for he assumed that was what they were—had fallen to such lengths. They had all thrown themselves into this bloody display without a single pause.

His head was roaring with noise. He straightened only after his racing heart began to falter in its charge. Then he forced his feet to move, slow and painful, in an agonizingly long effort to continue forward and start on the path to the house. He was trembling as he breathed in roughly and struggled not to stop and collapse to the ground.

But what if the wolves simply changed into their human forms and chased him that way? Yugi shivered, glancing over his shoulder, but he did not detect any movement in the slightest. He did not even truly smell anything beyond the disgusting swell of blood and melting snow. His heart ached and threatened to burst in his chest as he lowered his eyes to the concrete again.

When he got into the room again, his hands were shaking and his breathing was erratic. Yami looked up with wide, alarmed red eyes, immediately jumping to his feet. Yugi only vaguely noticed that he had been messing with the small television in the corner when the taller teen stepped towards him. His presence was somehow overwhelming to the smaller teen, a current of calm and gentle air which made his heart ache harder. His mouth opened and closed and his vision blurred faintly around the edges as he stumbled forward a step. He dropped the bag away onto the floor, blinking rapidly for a moment.

He did not think he would cry. He was too numb for that. But his erratic breathing and the way the room seemed to sway did him no favors. As Yami blurred and became an almost inky blob with two bright incandescent cores of red, he thought his legs might falter beneath him again. But somehow he held his weight, merely staring at this other lycanthrope, unable to do anything but peer at him blankly.

The other wolf had no words of comfort to offer him, instead furrowing his brows and tilting his head. Speaking had never been his strong point as it was and so he frowned as he considered what it was he might have the ability to do to extend some kind of help.

But he could come up with nothing.

It made his skin crawl to face the smaller wolf. Yugi looked as if he had seen something haunting, his blue-violet eyes hollow and staring at him almost blindly. He was shaking finely, eyes burning into his despite the lost quality which encompassed them.

For a minute they stood across the room from each other, one frozen and the other shaking. They stared with deadly steadiness, eyes burning as they held gazes. And then, a decision made that he was almost ashamed of, Yami very slowly moved forward.

He expected him to flinch back but Yugi merely blinked and seemed to grow a bit more focused with the reaction. His steadiness made the taller boy's stomach toss but his own nerves were nothing to compare to the other's obvious distress. The very thought might have even made him laugh had Yugi not looked so terrible.

Yami slowly reached out, hand hovering, fingers stretched out. He was unsure what more to do for the briefest of moments, because he did not think he had ever truly assumed the position of attempting to comfort someone. He himself had oftentimes snarled when such a thing was offered him, shouldering instead his anger and baring it back to drive off his discomfort.

This situation before him now made him queasy for a moment, but he did not hesitate any longer. Very slowly his hand touched Yugi's arm, then grasped lightly at the very edge of his sleeve. His nails caught the material, scratching gently, and he wondered if Yugi heard it as vibrantly as he did. He thought of bones, teeth snapping against them, grinding and splitting inwards towards the marrow. It made his heart pound and his stomach ache furiously.

He tried to calm his own racing instincts to shove away this attempt. His thoughts spiraled towards their moment in the woods, when he'd closed his eyes and allowed Yugi to hold him. It'd been dangerous. It'd been harmful for him. It'd made him quake late during the night afterwards, when Yugi himself suffered his nightmare. It had caused his lungs to constrict harshly and his body to clench with tension. He had been wound up when Yugi had escaped into his own dreams.

But it was early.

And he doubted the small teen would be able to slip away into a state of rest so soon.

Still, he caught the edge of his sleeve, gripping it tightly between his fingers for a moment. They were staring at each other again and his heart was threatening to burst. His stomach was burning. His mouth ached and his tongue felt swollen. He couldn't breathe properly. His spine was too tight beneath his skin. He wanted to puke. He wanted to lash out. He drew in a deep breath. His fingers tugged gently at his uniform jacket.

Yami wanted to lower his eyes but the weight of the other boy's stare held them there. When he tugged a bit more firmly and Yugi shuffled closer, his stomach was rolling so forcefully it made his lungs quake. He hissed, then bore his teeth behind his lips.

It was okay.

It would be okay.

Touching someone was just new, especially if it was not to inflict pain or capture their fullest attention.

Yami could feel it, however, that his knuckles had grown bone white with the grip he exerted. His stomach hurt again. He looked at Yugi for a long moment. He wanted to speak but felt it might ruin him. It might break the moment and he might lose himself. He might end up attacking him.

But the silence was so suffocating as well.

He hesitated, then very slowly drew his arm closer. He forced his body to pivot, turning just enough that he was still in his peripheral, and then tugged him gently again. Yugi obediently followed him, silent as a ghost, until they reached the bed. Yami blinked a few times, unsure of his own stability for the moment, then exhaled softly.

Yami was not sure Yugi heard it, as he showed no acknowledgment, and he hoped to the gods that he was not so transparent. He did not need him to see his fear, his reluctance, the way his heart rattled like chains in his chest. He gently touched his shoulder with his free hand, moving him to take a seat.

This time the smaller teen reacted and moved on his own. With a nearly blind and disjointed fashion about his movements, Yugi shifted forward onto his hands and knees. Yami immediately let his eyes shoot to the television instead, drawing in a deep breath that was meant to be soothing but merely burned him all over again. He stared at the light as the scene changed and altered, fading into commercial. Then he turned back, sure that Yugi was more comfortably situated.

He wished with stunning clarity that he had not. His head was spinning when he turned back. Yugi was watching him, and when his attention was caught he raised his own hand. Yami stood there, hesitant and feeling almost trapped, cornered with such prominence that it made his blood roar in his ears. Neither of them spoke, and the gentle invitation did not leave the smaller boy's kind eyes even as he merely stared. Yami's lips threatened to pull into a grimace. The tension in his spine threatened to loose itself in a violent shiver.

But, somehow, despite himself, Yami found himself brushing his fingers against his palm. It was not an accepting gesture, but so unsure that he nearly shivered when Yugi did not react to it impatiently. They looked at each other, until his red eyes lowered to his open hand. He could trace the creases in his skin and it made him feel sick. He hesitated again, biting at the inside of his cheek.

If Yugi had been foolish enough to speak, Yami would have lunged at him.

But the smaller teen did nothing beyond await his decision. The taller hesitated again, then moved slowly to trace his palm again and take the spot on the bed beside him. But the leisurely position which he normally took was lost to him. He sat on the very edge of the bed, the mattress dipping harshly beneath him, and nearly quaked.

The seconds passed, turning into what felt like hours. He knew Yugi was no longer watching him now that he'd taken the spot beside him. But he also feared glancing back, in case it made him look at him once more. And so Yami kept his arms in his lap, his legs folded over each other, eyes glued to the screen. It took him what felt like hours to relax. And by then he only just realized that Yugi had fallen asleep when he felt the smaller teen brush against him by accident.

He spun, a soundless snarl forming on his lips. But Yugi had simply drifted closer at some point, perhaps drawn by his body heat. His head was turned from him, but the curve of his back was just slightly touching his hip. He was curled up, fast asleep, not the least bit worried about what Yami would or wouldn't do while he rested.

His stomach heaved with the reality of the situation. The small teen trusted him somehow enough to lie so close, to fall asleep when Yami knew he himself would not. He had chosen to curl up facing away from him for his own convenience, so that Yami would not feel crowded.

* * *

"I think…that someone might be following me."

They were the first words he had spoken since the moment he had opened his eyes to turn the alarm off. The red-eyed lycanthrope had almost expected that he would not speak to him this morning. So the words, quiet and dull, made him blink in confusion and turn his head with furrowed brows. His stomach tossed again, for Yugi was already watching him. His eyes were glued to his taller frame, sharp and calculating. He looked both amused by his surprise and frustrated by his own words.

"Why?"

He stayed quiet. "I've been feeling like it for a while. I just didn't really notice it completely until recently. And I honestly can't even seem to walk down the street anymore without feeling someone is behind me." Yugi paused, studying him for a moment, and then tilted his head. "Mai and Otogi mentioned that the people who…created Code Name Atem have hired hunters to bring him back. And they've even begun catching the other wolves that escaped…"

He stared at him, unable to do more than blink for a long minute. His lip curled back in frustration. "That should not be such a surprise to you," he said softly, and for once the timbre of it was smooth but scornful. "You forget, if someone were to mention that they were kidnapped and someone was doing that even six months ago, it would cause an issue. And, even if they should mention the wolf aspect of it, it takes only one person to believe such a tale to cause an outburst. The uproar would continue from there. Police would become involved. Others would become involved. The efforts they have taken to remain hidden would be undone."

Yugi raised a brow at him. "Despite what you might think, I'm not stupid, Yami," he bit out with similar disapproval. The other wolf blinked, startled by the statement, and then frowned at him. "I know how big an issue it could become for them. I just…I think one of the hunters might be trailing me. That's all I meant."

He did not think he was stupid, but now was most likely the wrong time to bring such a thing up. Yami swallowed back a long and frustrated sigh, shaking his head slowly. "You are probably right. I do not know why anyone else might be following you unless they were a human obsessed," he commented, eyes growing thoughtful. "That is not too uncommon, but I _do_ doubt it in this case. It seems unlikely to me that that would have happened when you have clearly been a wolf for the better part of two months."

Two months?

Had it really been so long?

Or maybe he should have considered it so little a time?

But the days had seemed haunted by this fact, so the amount of time had been stretched in his mind more than anything. The thought made him sick to his stomach for a moment.

"So… What do you think I should do about it?"

Yami looked at him for a long minute and a half. "Yugi, honestly, if you were to turn around and try to attack a hunter, they'd most likely kill you. But, if you were to wait it out, to allow them to think they are still undetected and have a chance, perhaps…"

Yugi raised a brow. "Okay, so in other words, I should just wait it out and let them nearly kill me," he huffed in annoyance.

Yami frowned at him noticeably, sitting up straighter. "If you were more in tune with your wolf senses and instincts, I would say otherwise. Most every wolf can dispatch a common hunter. And I'm sure those humans are probably desperate enough to send both experienced and lacking hunters to catch the wolves that escaped. Seeing as we have no idea what kind of experience this person might have, we cannot know if you going up against them would end in your demise or theirs." He stayed quiet for a long minute, narrowing his eyes into slits, and then shook his head slowly. "And, honestly, when it comes down to that, I do not know that you would be able to choose yourself over someone else even in a situation calling for death."

Yugi stiffened. They looked at each other evenly, his stomach coiling and dropping as they held gazes. He was right. He was not even sure himself. He had never truly wanted to kill someone.

Bakura had been a lapse in judgment, a surge of adrenaline which had propelled him into action which he did not think through. And Ryota, he had been desperate and reacted on pure instinct and reflex. Perhaps, if he had not been driven by such powerful capabilities, he would never have gone through with it.

Yugi was not a killer. He wasn't even truly a fighter. He still would rather run than face a possible threat. He'd rather turn tail and leave them in the dust. The thought made him want to puke to consider truly fighting and attacking someone.

He liked to be able to fight by instinct and reflex, but it was not something he was okay with if he could avoid it. If he could have avoided killing Ryota as Yami could have Ryuzaki, he would not have done it. He would have allowed him to go, though he could not claim that he had not realized it was either him or Ryota. He had known it the moment the wolf had turned on him the first time.

He shivered. "Do you think I could win?"

Yami blinked, furrowing his brows and shaking his head with a slightly bewildered expression. "Why should you ask me? I am not always the best judge of ability."

Yugi frowned and then sighed softly, admitting in a small voice, "Because, sometimes, I think that maybe you know me better than I do myself."

The reality of the statement made them both fall still. Yami blinked shocked eyes up at him, startled and undone by the words, and then swiftly looked away again. The silence seemed to choke them both for a long minute before he finally raised his head and tipped his chin towards him.

"Truthfully? I do not know. You have managed on occasion to surprise me. And I do not always know that you will be predictable," he said quietly, his voice a gentle rolling purr of baritone pitch which made Yugi's heart skip a beat. It sounded almost as powerful as it had in the woods, when he'd spoken in his mind. It was almost healed. It made Yugi almost laugh with shock and blooming happiness. "Perhaps you could. But perhaps you would allow your enemy to survive when you should not. I see a lot of mercy in you, which is something that could possibly cost you your life at some time. You must learn to read people better, to trust the new instincts you possess as well. You still tend to think too hard, even when you react."

The smaller teen reached a hand up to run his fingers through his hair and watch him closely. "Sometimes mercy is a good thing."

"Yes. But it is not always, Yugi."

Yugi wanted for only a moment to argue. He liked to believe everyone deserved a second chance. He liked to think that there was no one that did not deserve a chance at redeeming themselves. He had always been open to seeing more than just the first layer of a person. Everyone was more than just their first impression, no matter who said otherwise. But he could see how that might be a hindrance as well.

He looked way again and scuffed his shoe on the carpet for a moment. He would need to think about all of this more at another time. But now was hardly the time he wanted to face it. His stomach turned as he looked to Yami again slowly.

"I think school can survive without me attending," he said quietly, licking his lips and shoving away the image of those two wolves fighting to the death in the snow. Yami immediately looked at him, attention caught and eyes sharp as they considered him with something almost hopeful. He barely resisted the urge to grin at the red-eyed boy. "Want to go for a run instead?"

Yami got up almost before the words even fully left his mouth. Yugi smirked, unable to help but snicker in amusement. The taller boy pursed his lips for a split second, then smiled at him and shrugged his shoulders.

They grinned childishly at each other before Yugi led the way to the window. A run would do them both well. Despite how much he resented the disease itself, he had to admit that the ability to run and dance amongst the snow or scent a million things in the breeze was freeing. It had to be the most powerful and beautiful sensation he had ever come to know himself.


	27. Code Name Atem

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day (no update on June 2nd)**

 **Chapter Warnings: Wolf Hunting, Violence, Blood, Deaths, Electrocution, Guns, Misuse of Generators, Misuse of Greenhouse, Dog Bites, Guns**

 **Okay, so here we go! The generator in question is a mobile one. These are, from the research I did a while back, more likely to cause carbon monoxide poisoning than one that is fixated and unmovable. For the story purposes, the greenhouse has been changed out and redone into a rather elaborate trap by use of a generator. The rest you'll have to read for yourself.**

 **Okay, so I made a reference to _Dragonball Z_. I one-hundred-percent do not own that either. But I figured Yugi would be someone who might blurt something out stupidly when he's stressed.**

 **Apologies for the late posting. I had to rewrite a couple of scenes to make more sense. I still don't think they turned out all that great but I can't keep rewriting them without butchering the story and smaller plot points. So here we are, enjoy the chapter~**

Chapter XXVII: Code Name Atem

 _Work Log Entry XXVII: August, 1998_

 _August 18_

 _He is far stronger than we could have ever expected. He has broken through the wall of his cage in order to get food due to his hourly feeding being delayed._

 _At first no one knew whose blood it was on his skin. We assumed it was the murder of one of our guards._

 _But it was all his._

 _August 28_

 _The walls have been mended, even laced with small traces of silver between each brick and wolfsbane has been spread along the bottoms to ensure he will not attempt to break through it again._

 _August 30_

 _He broke through one of the walls again. In his hunger, he has again broken loose. His nails were broken and his fingers bleeding. One of the bones in his wrist snapped from the pressure of clawing through stone the second time. He is not healing from the wounds, however, but he is being fed more to ensure they do mend themselves._

Yami led the way through the trees. It felt oddly natural to keep pace behind him, the black wolf mere feet away, their paws falling in sync. His own paws fell into each of the other's prints, the snow soft and sinking comfortably beneath them. They were doing nothing more than trotting around, testing speed for the most part. He had found his natural stride was truly a little faster than Yami's own longer one. He tended to swallow the distance perhaps a second faster than the other. He found he did so by instinct, practically racing with each of his steps, lazy and comfortable with his speed.

He remembered Yami's comment about his frame being smaller, how it would allow him a bit more speed than others. Yami was made for strength and Yugi could only imagine that his jaw strength alone was an impressive measurement, even without his immense body weight. He was probably a tank if he were ever to charge an opponent. Maybe that was why he always made so sure to go running at breakneck speed towards his query.

Yugi forced the thought away and then moved to his side, breaking a formation that neither had paid much attention to. Yami turned his head in acknowledgment but remained silent and they both considered each other for a moment. He opened his mouth slightly, parting his jaws in something of a gentle smile. The sight of it made Yami flick an ear to the side, curious and feeling slightly estranged. Even with a muzzle and narrow almond-shaped eyes, white fur and a black nose, the expression was unmistakably Yugi. It was a strange thought to behold. Because, if Yugi retained some of his human features in this skin, did he himself too?

And, if he did, what were they?

The thought was actually rather troubling to him. He did not assume to know of any good qualities that he might show in both forms. Yugi's friendliness, his kindness, showed brilliantly in either shape. His own… He wasn't kind _or_ friendly.

 _So, where are we going anyways_?

His ear flicked again, because now that he had thought about it, it would not leave him alone. Was there anything good to be seen in both of his skins? Was there even slightly something that they both might share in common that would be desirable to see?

 _I did not have a destination in mind. Was I meant to_?

Yugi turned away and fell back a step before pacing himself at his side more comfortably. The black wolf wondered if it was truly so hard for him to keep pace without growing impatient. He could not blame him if he did find it difficult. He himself never truly waited when it came to someone keeping up. If they could not match him, then they should not have been there.

 _No, I was just wondering. I figured maybe you would go hunting or something. And then you'd eat and we'd run around some more_.

He faltered a step but hurried to cover for his misstep as Yugi looked at him in surprise. He bore his teeth in warning, then looked away. _No, I am not hungry._ And why should he eat if the other would not? _But we can run._

Yugi almost quivered with anticipation at the thought. His eyes shot quickly to his, fur shuddering and legs moving a little faster. _Race you to the end of the woods_?

The black wolf furrowed his brows. _The end of the woods_? _Yugi, the forests stretch over the mountain,_ he reminded him dismissively, shaking his head.

 _Yeah, but there's also a river running through it. When people come this way, they normally consider that the end of the forest. Otherwise they would get lost in the mountains. And that's a stupid thing to do in_ _Hokkaido_ _. The temperature drops too often. They're more likely to freeze to death overnight than anything else._

Yami blinked, tilting his head. _Oh. Well then, yes, to the end of the woods. Why not_?

He picked up his own pace but Yugi shot off like a rocket. The more competitive side of him told him to race after him, but his more rational side snorted at the idea. He was truly in no hurry. The longer they spent in the woods, the better the day was for him. He was in no mood to do anything beyond move about the trees. Why should he?

Yugi spun around at the top of the incline and huffed at him in annoyance. His tail wagged slightly as he raised his head and kneaded gently with his right paw. His eyes were glued to him, his ears flattening for against his skull. _Seriously_? _Do you not know what a race is_? he scoffed. _I mean, honestly, Yami_.

Yami snorted in response, then shook his fur out to rid himself of some of the snow that was building along his back. His jaws opened in a wide yawn and he wagged his tail lazily as he came towards the top as well. _I said we would go there. If you didn't notice, I never truly implied that I might race you there_ , he teased before wagging his tail again. Yugi shot him a flustered look, then curled the back of his lips into something that looked much like a human grimace. _It's not my fault you mistook my answer_.

 _Oh, whatever._

The darker canine waited until Yugi turned away to face the trees and start inside again. Then he pounced on him. The other wolf yelped, falling sideways into the snow, his legs automatically braced to push him away and fend him off. He was so startled that his eyes almost appeared to have grown thrice their size and his jaw was open in surprise. When he realized it was just the black canine his eyes grew slightly flustered again.

Yami wagged his tail, parallel to his spine, his jaws open so that his tongue lolled. He reached a paw over, tapping him in the center of his belly playfully. He was tempted to speak, but all the words had left his head, so instead he backed up again. When he dropped into a crouch this time, his tail was wagging wildly and his lips were drawn back into a playful growl. The rumbling noise was drawn out and deep, and Yugi blinked a few times at how it seemed to make his blood hum with energy.

Yugi rolled onto his belly quickly, then dropped into a bow of his own. His tail wagged, an awkward movement as he was still rather undone by the idea that Yami would initiate play with him. Why not just run around and all but ignore his existence?

He could do that without any problem.

If he was Yami, he would do that.

Why not?

He watched Yami wiggle his rump again before moving to paw at his head. He ducked away from his claws, tail wagging a little more easily. The larger wolf sprang on him, hitting his shoulder just enough to knock him over. He huffed and the black canine growled as he licked and nipped at his face. Yugi reacted automatically, using his front and back paws to try to shift him away enough to get up again. Yami snorted against his fur, then nipped at his nose and glanced about them for a moment.

Instead of the normal trickle of alarm that would have come with the idea of his sudden alert state, Yugi simply pushed at his belly with his paw. The other wolf blinked, then growled softly and backed up to let him get to his feet. The moment he stood up, Yami raced past him, then spun around growling and wagging his tail.

Yugi wasn't entirely sure how wolves played. He knew dogs tended to be a bit rougher and house cats looked almost like they were trying to eviscerate each other. But surely, a misstep could easily be fixed, right?

He wasn't used to this form, so Yami would be lenient with him, right?

Even if he made a mistake?

He nearly whined in the back of his throat at the thought. What if he didn't? What if he took something to be a threat to him and it turned into a true war of some kind between them? He stiffened for a moment, but his body reacted instinctively to Yami when he came towards him again.

Yami's jaws were open, stretching to touch his neck lightly and grip softly at his scruff. Yugi ducked a little, twisting his body to paw gently at his right foreleg. The growling was soft, melodious, and it hummed in the cold air between them. He moved to grab at his neck as well, the two of them quivering masses of wagging tails, frosty exhales and dark fur against light. Yugi attempted to push him down with his back leg when they brushed flanks. But he overdid it, raising it too high, and ended up slipping it awkwardly over the other's back.

Yami startled, blinking at him, and the smaller wolf kicked to try to pull the limb away. The darker canine ducked and pulled away, Yugi nearly losing his balance before righting himself quickly. His mouth was back on his neck, tugging gently, wide open, teeth barely grazing his skin. He panted, licking his lips as he pulled away again and growled softly and warmly.

The larger wolf backed up, then raced towards him with his long limbs, rearing up on his back legs before pawing at his shoulders. His forelimbs wrapped lightly around his neck for a moment, then dropped as he paused momentarily with his ears pricked. The movement now made Yugi pause, eyes widening. Was something wrong?

 _Yami_?

The other lycanthrope paused, ears flicking back and forth a moment longer. Then he looked at him curiously. _I keep thinking I hear something further into the woods_.

Yugi tilted his head and flicked his ears first backwards and then sideways, twisting them into every direction he could manage or think of. But all he caught was faint rustling and the softest thud of snow where the branches whispered with enough force to shed the snow from their tops. Still, he kept his attention locked on this new search.

The wolves, killing each other and bleeding out in the snow, flashed through his mind. The sound of that she-wolf's booming voice made his belly ache. Had they heard them somehow? Had they come charging through the trees to deal with them? Would they force them to fight, make them bloody themselves to death? He trembled, straining his ears further.

And then he caught it.

It was a soft but rushed noise, coming in the sound of footfalls. The snow cushioned much of it but the undergrowth was carelessly plowed through and the sound of it as it crackled and the stems broke did nothing to hide the sound. He tilted his head, listening harder, and then turned to Yami.

 _It sounds like something is coming this way. Is that what you meant_?

Yami nodded, tail falling and eyes growing sharper. _It sounds like dogs_ , he growled softly, pricking his ears further and raising his head to scent the air. _And they seem to be coming from the flanks. I suggest we run._

Yugi pricked his ears again, then looked at him with his head tilted. _They're coming from behind us too_ , he muttered softly, _but I don't know how many_.

Yami began to trot forward, leading him with his tail raised slightly, the tip of it bent to the side before it fell flat again. Yugi hurried to his side, eyes wide as he looked at him. They picked up speed, practically bounding forward, and the black wolf looked about them rapidly for a possible hiding spot or a way back towards the river. If they used the water, they might be able to move upstream and lose the dogs altogether.

 _Two from both sides, three from behind_ , he reported dutifully, matching Yugi's pace as he began to move faster. They were sprinting before long, bodies stretching to their fullest to cover more ground. Yugi was a few inches ahead of him, though he kept close enough that he could still see him in his peripheral when he turned his head slightly.

 _You can tell from the noise they_ ' _re making_?

 _It helps when you_ ' _re hunting_ , he grunted, flicking an ear again and growling low in his throat. _It also helps when you're_ being _hunted_.

He shivered but did not lose his rapid pace at his side. Both of them raced in long strides, eyes sharp as they sought paths through the snow in the dim light from the rising sun. The snowfall had paused at some point and Yugi wished for a moment that it would start up again. It might help them with the task of escaping them. He did not think that dogs had the same ability to see through snow that wolves did. Their eyes were designed differently so he was not sure how well they saw in this weather.

 _Two more are coming from the left_ , Yami snarled, eyes sharper than before as he bore his teeth. _The human is herding us some place_.

Yugi almost questioned such a statement but border collies and cattle dog popped into his mind. He pictured them, thought of their use to humans, how they corralled the sheep or cows or whatever they were in charge of. It would not be too hard to figure out a way to train a different breed to do the same. He was sure that the police probably did it with German shepherds as well.

 _So what do we do_?

Yami had to admire how levelheaded Yugi was at the moment. The last time something like this had happened, he'd been too scared to move until he'd tried to drag him. Then again, he had been shot then and now he was perfectly healthy. He was even running as if he'd never been human in the first place, with speed like the wind and a stride that put greyhounds to shame.

If only he could figure out a way to make Yugi run at his fullest capability. But, without the pace being familiar to him, he would not be able to move so fast. Until he was running much more often as a wolf, he would be unable to reach the speeds that Yami so often could.

His eyes shot towards the trees. A large gray, shaggy form was coming through the narrow trunks. The body was taller than the average wolf, but the build was different and the coat too straight and displeasing to the eye. It looked as if it only had an inch over the regular gray wolf, and from the side its flank was broad and sharply tucked upwards. Somehow it did not have a tight shape, but a somewhat slanted incline. Its head was raised even as it ran, its neck long. The legs were almost dainty in appearance, the tail but a thin line that looked almost like a mossy vine. The jaw was large, the ears floppy and slightly long.

 _We don't have much of a choice_ , he spat, snarling low in his throat. The dog was fast, and its companion which came up to its side was even quicker. Yet, they could not close the distance between them. _Unless you want to try taking on two wolfhounds and then dealing with the other seven coming up behind them_.

Yugi shot him a flustered look from the corner of his eye, pulling his lips back into a slight snarl of frustration. Yami growled softly but did not respond any other way, eyes flickering back towards the towering dogs. They were still shorter than himself, and even Yugi, but not by much. He would give them an inch, two at the most in difference.

I _t's a house_ — _or a shed_ , the smaller wolf said when he turned away. A large towering building, a glass structure, rose like a castle before them. Iron wrought doors were framed with frosted panes, the hinges well-oiled, the top of it given an intricate later of metal which seemed to hum as they approached. The doors were opened, the layers of glass two storeys higher shining dimly, with sides which arched like delicate domes for miles. A few small panes had been knocked out on the right, further up the sloping roof, and the very core of the building held rusted metal in thick sheets. A walkway towards the top made itself more apparent, the railing all but worn away.

Yugi bristled. _A greenhouse—they're moving us towards an old greenhouse_ , he murmured, heart racing and lungs constricting for a moment. Why a greenhouse? Was it lined with plants of wolfsbane? Were they going to simply poison them in order to keep their pelts clean enough to gain a higher profit? He supposed they would find out soon enough, as there was no way they could turn away now.

 _Brace yourself. In a minute, you're going to have run faster than you are even now_ , Yami instructed, voice low and commanding in his head. _They're gaining on us. We're going to have to move faster_.

Yugi glanced at him, eyes widening. _I'm already moving as fast as I can_ , he protested.

 _You have not run in this form often. But you're going to have to listen to me. This is far from the fastest. We've barely even gotten to speeds of forty miles. All werewolves move faster than this,_ the other wolf snapped, bunching his muscles in preparation. _Brace yourself and push as hard as you can. It won't be too much faster than this, but it'll still be enough to get us ahead._

He looked at him from the corner of his eye. It would be so easy for him to just call it quits and hope that perhaps his instincts could at least allow him to hold his own for a few minutes. But he, as Yami had said, was afraid of death. It was not just a healthy respect and hatred of it. He was terrified of it. Death was nothing he wished to welcome before it was forced upon him.

So he looked at the hard certainty in the other wolf's eyes and nodded.

 _Then that's what I'm going to have to do_ , Yugi stated simply, steeling his muscles even as he continued to race. He found it hard to believe that he could possibly go any faster, but he did not fight the other's words. Yami knew more than him. He probably did not have a nugget of the knowledge that he did. _When_?

Their hearts were in their ears for a long moment. Then Yami snarled and chomped his teeth, the command so loud it swallowed any noise in his head.

 _Now_.

The effort made Yugi's legs quake and his body stretched with a defining ache. His muscles burst with spikes of pain. He felt his lungs expanding somehow further. His sides quivered and his legs carried him in harsher, faster movements. He could feel his heart straining, beating harder than ever. Beside him, he saw Yami holding his exact pace. Their legs were mirroring in their efforts to propel them both forward.

Yugi was panting and gasping by the time they reached the entrance. _I don't know how much longer I can keep this up_ , he whispered, a pathetic plea to his own ears. Yami glanced at him, a hard cutting flicker of his eyes. Then he sprang at him, his teeth closing around his scruff. Yugi yelped, a scream nearly tearing through his throat. He expected to collapse to the ground, for blood to well from the wound and Yami to take off for safety regardless.

But then he was jerked. The movement tossed him forward, a harsh and violently action. His limbs tangled and he yelped again. His body collided with a metal. The impact let out a harsh rattling noise beneath his weight.

Yugi's paws caught on something rough and grinding, wrenching the muscle along one of his toes in his left paw. But his tumble, so bodily and powerful, prevented anything further. He rolled, gasping and feeling his body react. The stark pain brought about a pulsating lurch of strength. He panted and got to his feet just as his paw began to thrum with the gentlest of tingles.

Yami landed on the floor more gracefully than he had, snarling low in his throat. The glass and iron doors behind him slammed to a shut. They snapped as if a metal bolt had fallen into place. A light and hideous humming noise crept through the air. The dogs were closing in. A high-pitched scream made them both look back. Yugi quivered as the mass bulk of one of the wolfhounds dropped to the ground. The canine lay there, a twitching form of coarse hair.

The black wolf pressed back a step, startled. The noise was ringing in his ears, pushing away even the war drum of his racing heart. The panic flared in his belly. He could feel the stress pooling in his veins, thickening his blood. His eyes grew wide and dilated, his mouth parting. His tongue flickered out beyond his incisors, his breathing ragged pants.

When Yugi got to his feet, looking to him, his heart rattled in his chest. The whites of his eyes were rolling in his vision, his irises seemingly vibrating with his mounting fear. His fur was quivering and dancing, bristling in rippling waves. His muscles were jerking beneath his skin, sliding and jolting. And, when his mouth opened further, his gums were bleached as white as his teeth.

For a moment he thought to call out to him, to perhaps draw him away from whatever insidious memory claimed him. But, as he looked at him, stomach dropping and bile rising in his throat, he realized Yami was lucid. He was panicking, but he was lucid. He was well aware of everything going on. Even as his body quivered and his breathing became ragged, hoarse gasps, he knew. He just could not stop the fear that was swallowing him now.

Yugi quivered now as well, not for himself but for Yami and his lack of instruction. Because, regardless of how often he might argue with him or make a fool of himself, his lack of guidance was devastating to Yugi. The smaller wolf turned his head sharply away, for fear that he might react and nurture such sensation in the other. He did not need a repeat of what had happened at the arcade or the mall. If he was to lose his head, they would not make it out of there.

His breathing was so haggard it made him shake. But Yugi forced it away, straining his focus to place it elsewhere.

He couldn't allow Yami's distress to influence him.

They would both be destroyed if he did.

They would both be butchered and their pelts sold or their bodies enslaved and their existences reduced to nothing more than a puppy mill.

He shuddered, baring his teeth. In the low light he could see almost nothing. But his eyes were adjusting rapidly. And the shadows began to take on shapes and forms which he had never known before. There was a broad walkway made of metal steps, a netted design of rust which stretched the length of the greenhouse. There, in the center, looking down at them, was a tall form. When they tipped their head back, they almost seemed to loom towards the ceiling. But it was merely the shadows and Yugi snarled softly in challenge.

As if beckoned by his rumble, the lights poured into existence. Yugi bristled violently, and behind him Yami raised his head. His eyes were rimmed with bright red as if the veins had burst within the white, giving him a deadened appearance. His lips curled back and he snarled softly as if to echo Yugi's former protest. The noise made the smaller wolf turn immediately, startled. But Yami did not look to him. His head was tipped upwards and his mouth slavering with saliva.

And he realized that it was not fear which made him drool. It was rage, pure and hateful. He was engaged, snarling and peering up at this human with a strength which belied his former state. The black wolf was ready to sink his teeth in and rip the man to shreds.

Yugi looked at Yami but the sight of such intense anger was somehow painful. So he turned away again, to the human who looked down at them with the most hideous of sneers on his face. The man had darker skin, tanned to a somewhat olive tone, dressed in clothing that truly made him look like a stereotypical thug. He was in baggy sweat pants and a gray hoodie, black flip-flops with socks, and a green baseball cap on his head. His face was sharp, a cross between rectangular and oval, longer than average. He looked skinny, malnourished, with slim shoulders. But mostly what caught his attention was the small, perfectly triangular shape of the patch of dark hair he had just beneath his thin lips.

Yugi craned his head back slightly more. Thank the gods wolves did such things naturally or he was sure he would have developed a very painful crick later on. Still, however, the only thing worth noticing upon the man's form beyond his physical appearance was that of the shotgun in his hand and a small, barely conceivable silver device which he thought to be a remote of some kind.

"Well, how rare. Not a spot of gray or black on you, is there? A pure pelt is a rarity among werewolves." His teeth were stained, one chipped in the front, and Yugi bristled with disgust. Yami snarled lower in his throat behind him. "I wonder how much money I could get from the two of you."

He flicked an ear. _Now what_?

The disdain was clear in his tone. _I don't know. Now I suppose he shoots us_.

 _Well, then…was it worth saving me before_?

There was a small pause. _Why would you bring that up_?

 _Because you just did it again, so if this is how it ends_ … He paused. _Was it worth it_?

Yami hesitated, then growled softly. _I would not have done it if I did not believe you to be worth it_. The admission was spoken coldly but the volume of it, so soft and gentle in his head, was immense. The white wolf turned to him slowly but Yami did not lower his eyes to his. _I would have left you otherwise_.

 _Why did you save me from Ushio_?

 _I…I think I saw something in you_. He growled and chomped his teeth at the human who still did not move from where he was leaning over the platform to stare at them. _And I felt that I needed to save it_.

Yugi would have pressed for more but the fact that the hunter had not moved to kill them yet made him nervous. So he too raised his eyes to the human again. His belly ached as he backed up a step and nearly brushed against Yami. He could feel his body heat like a flashing beacon beside his tail and hip.

"Are you planning an escape, wolves?" he sneered. Both of them stared up at him silently, the snarl falling from Yami's face. The admission, such heavy words, had made his anger subside. Now he was merely hateful and yet somehow tired all the same. "What do you plan to do? Try for the back doors? They're electric too. You'll drop just like that stupid hound did."

Yugi felt his skin twitch. There had to be a source of the energy. There had to be something which allowed the greenhouse to be lit with electricity as it was. His eyes flickered away and caught along the bare walls of the building. Where there should have been rotting wooden tables and shelves to hold the plants, there was bare metal grate. And along the walls were several large boxes, compact and bright gray or silver. His stomach sank. That was a lot of generators.

Yet, he remembered using a generator when the lights went out at the clinic. They'd used two of them, actually, now that he recalled. The humming which burst within the stale air here suggested only one. It was not the consistent droning hum of two.

The others were mere replicas to confuse them.

"Well, aren't you a smart dog?"

Yugi looked up but Yami glanced towards where the small teen had been staring. And, had he known of the memory Yugi possessed, he might have understood his need to look at the fixtures there. But as he stood there, staring at the boxes, the electrical hum coming from the doors, he lacked such comprehension. All he saw was a large wheel, a cage of black metal outlining the large unit, and a bright silver with hooked wires in a dangling formation to the left opening. And all of it was humming. The ones beside it seemed almost still but for the soft tremors it pushed against them.

"Seeing as you seem to know what's going on, let me give you a prize."

The generator kicked with movement, the hum becoming a deadly buzz. Both wolves sprang apart, the grid beneath them sparking and sizzling. When they stepped back again, another burst of electricity shot forward. Yugi yelped, twisting in confusion in the air. The bursts looked like small firecrackers going off. Yami snarled low in his throat, jumping away from another current. The metal was growing hot beneath his paws but it was a distant sensation. The calloused pads did well to cushion the expected pain.

The man was cranking on the dial on the side of the remote and the humming intensified further. It was like an engine roaring to life and it made both wolves' fur bristle. Yami bore his teeth and Yugi trembled faintly. They both sprang away again, the electricity sparking and spewing beneath them along the edge of the grid.

"See, there's a game we're going to play. I am going to take _exactly_ ten minutes to load these silver bullets into this gun. In the meantime, you have that time to figure out how to turn the generator off." He chuckled, waving the pistol and the case at them. He leered as they both jumped and Yami snapped his teeth angrily.

His red eyes were on him but his head lowered, his teeth bared and his fur bristling. His tail was still down, but he calculated it would only be moments before he was raising it and using it to retain his balance. The white one was already beginning to do it unconsciously, tail parallel to its spine, wide eyes glued to the floor, paws skidding. He thought this wolf would be the first to foolishly lose balance.

"Now, should you be able to turn the generators off, then the dogs come in. Either way, I _will_ be able to skin you."

Yugi almost wished the walls were lined with wolfsbane instead. He jumped and his paws skidded. He was not used to this form. Somehow the texture of his pads kept him balanced and from falling flat. But it did not save him from slipping slightly. His own heart was pumping too quickly and his breathing was ragged with fear.

Yami glanced at him sideways, teeth bared and fur quivering. He almost hoped that one of them _did_ figure out how to turn the generator off, because then he could fight the dogs. He could take some of them with him before he was riddled with bullets. He pricked his ears and jumped away again, leaving a good foot of space between himself and Yugi now. The smaller wolf gave him a desperate glance but could not catch his eye as he too jumped sideways and tried to escape the burst of electricity beneath him.

"Nine minutes."

They both heard the gun open, a bullet being placed inside. Yugi felt a whisper of panic billow through him. His eyes shot to Yami again. What were they meant to do now?

 _A bullet a minute_ , Yami thought vaguely, snapping his jaws as he leaped and threw himself sideways. He was close to the wall. The thought made his pelt stand on end. His muscles quivered and the humming was harsh, vicious enough it made his sides ache. He jumped again, but the electrical current came with him. And this time where it struck his leg, the smell of scorched fur greeted the air.

"Eight minutes."

 _A bullet a minute, an increase of voltage a minute,_ he thought as he heard Yugi yelp and land hard on unsteady legs. He whined low in his throat even as he jumped away again, eyes wide and terrified. Yami glanced at him but he was a blur of snow in his peripheral as he leapt aside.

It occurred to him immediately that he had moved the wrong way. He was cornering himself by accident. His movements had thrown him backwards. He had pushed himself too closely to the wall. _Yugi…_

Yugi would have responded by looking up had he not jumped aside again, eyes wide. _Yes_? His voice was trembling, choked, and he was shaking as he jumped higher and twisted to avoid the sparks. He landed heavily, panting, and then jerked once more.

"Seven minutes."

The snapping noise and the turn of the dial nearly drowned Yami's voice out in his head.

 _Tell me about the generator._

He looked up now, the smell of scorched fur making his eyes burn faintly. He shuddered and jumped when the sparks shot towards him. He barely missed being hit by the spray as it crept higher into the air. The currents were getting stronger. A full blast would probably stun them…

Yami was so close to the wall he was almost touching it. He was almost touching the generators. But Yugi did not know which was in use. The rattling was growing to much more intense heights. The air was quivering and burning. The small quarters stank of hair and flesh. He bore his teeth.

 _It's a portable one_ — _all of them are. Even if we turn it off and his dogs didn't get in or he fails to shoot, we're likely to be killed by the carbon_. Yugi faltered as he jumped and twisted to avoid the spark. His body was tingling, his legs beginning to feel numb. His heart ached as he bore his teeth again. His concentration was so divided he was amazed he could still move. _But if we were to be able to turn it off, you would need to either destroy the wires or puncture the fuel tank itself. But the second would cause a fire and the first would most likely kill you_.

Yami did not bother to look at him. The hunter laughed, "Six minutes" and the room lit bright white with the new voltage which streaked into the air. Yugi yelped, barely avoiding it, but his leg was struck on the underside. The fur curled inwards, flashing black as if touched by charcoal. He landed heavily once more, almost toppling over.

Yami hit the generator by accident. The impact made it shake. It sparked and gurgled with noise. He snarled, spinning on it. The action was instantaneous. He did not think it through. His teeth snapped into the metal. It sparked and burned. He snarled, lashing out again. It gurgled, then sputtered. The wires snapped and curled.

The shock made his teeth clamp tighter. His body jerked and his legs fell beneath him. He shuddered. The grid creaked and groaned, then vibrated as the electricity failed. Yugi could only gape as the black wolf began to thrash. He was a blur of dark black, body twitching and jerking. Spasms wracked his huge frame. His fur was scorched, burning, and every part of him was quivering.

Yugi went to check, but the human's laughter and a latch flipping halted him. He stopped, snarling as the sound of baying met his ears. He spun on the doors. They swung open, crashing into the glassy exterior. Shards rained down, tinkling and dropping beneath the metal under his paws. He bore his teeth. The dogs came in an immense cloud of dark fur. He shivered, baring his teeth and raising his tail.

Yami had turned off the grid. But he had also let the dogs in. And, as he had initially feared, he did not think the black wolf had survived. He was still twitching but he knew electrical currents did that to a body. It caused muscles to twitch, though he had forgotten how or why. He summed it up as energy not being destroyed but merely redirected, like heat when a fire was burning.

The dogs came for him. He glanced at the human as he continued in his delighted laughter, watching as he crowed a minute less. Yugi bore his teeth as he spun once more to face them. They charged at him and his instinct was first to rise and snap at the one to reach him. But then a buried, stronger one, gripped him. He would stay on four feet. He would brace his muscles. And he'd have to maneuver with tension focused in clenched muscle and attempt to keep his balance while fighting back.

Yugi squared his shoulders, baring his teeth again, then snarled louder than before. The first was a smooth coat which came to his side, teeth gripping at his shoulder. He snapped at it, catching it by the ear. The next came along his other side. He snarled, spinning on it. Teeth ripped into his back leg. He grabbed at the smooth coated dog clinging to his side. His teeth were as sharp as the blades of knives, cutting into soft flesh. Blood welled in his mouth. The dog yelped and jerked back, crying as it tried to shake him. He kept his grip.

When the dog backed up a step, pulling him, the other two lunged forward. He released it, mouth bloodied as he snapped at the wolfhound. The canines caught a mouthful of his fur and tugged, twisting and tossing their heads. Yet his muscles kept him on his feet. Even as he snapped and bit at another, it was replaced again.

The man was laughing, counting almost to one. Yugi imagined if he was a smaller wolf, if he was not a lycanthrope, he'd be dead. He thought his neck would have snapped. And his eyes would be glazed over completely. He thought they'd be tearing apart his carcass. He tore the ear of one of the dogs clear off its head.

Then he turned to the next and caught their jaw with his. Teeth clamped, he forced them somewhat downward. But none of them had gone for his throat. None of them were trying to kill instinctively. They were merely tearing. They were simply snarling and biting. None of them had truly killed a werewolf before.

None of the wolves before had managed to turn the generator off.

Yugi tossed his head. The hound on his side crashed into another. They flailed, releasing him. Then their teeth turned on each other. They frothed at the mouth and tore skin. Blood was slicking the metal beneath them. Yugi struggled to keep his footing. His fur was clammy with blood.

The weight on his shoulders suddenly lightened. As the man yelled, "Time is up!" his voice cut off abruptly. A gurgling noise lifted from his direction. Yugi gasped and nearly collapsed. His head turned for one of the large dogs cutting at his back leg. A tug nearly sent him down.

He hoped, for a split second, that it was Yami.

He wished it was him helping.

Because, if he was on his feet, he was alive.

That meant he had survived the shock somehow.

But the eyes of the wolf which had joined him were green. And their body was smaller, slenderer, and their jaws sharper in design. As they cut through the throat of the wolfhound, dropping it to the earth, their teeth were even shorter. Yugi felt that he might collapse, eyes wide and mind struggling to comprehend.

Was Yami truly…?

He turned on a dog, teeth cutting into its head, pushing at the bone of its skull. It screamed and recoiled. Yugi tossed his head. Something popped in his mouth. Blood swelled against his tongue. It was gooey, sticking his tongue to the roof of his mouth. Still, he tossed his head. The dog slid across the grates due to the blood. The screaming kept coming. He opened his jaws wider, slamming them shut again. The dog squirmed and shook, then began to grow still.

Yugi snapped at another, then what seemed to be the last. His teeth cut into its throat, driving towards the jugular. The vein was throbbing beneath his fang. Then it punctured. The liquid was so hot it made his tooth burn as if lit on fire. He pushed deeper. His tongue was coated, the metallic taste making his head spin. The dog thrashed but began to grow limp. Still he did not release.

He tossed his head and the body skidded and flailed. Yugi snarled and clenched his jaws again. He dug further, towards the bone.

A whining noise startled him. He dropped his query, eyes wide. What was…? It wasn't completely dog. It was deeper, more guttural.

A wolf?

He raised his eyes, looking about him.

Five feet away was the slender wolf. Its fur was dark black, almost bluish, but the ears were tipped white. And its eyes were bright, dazzling green. It was a mix between aqua and emerald, blending into a deep teal. It stood with blood on its jaws, head tilted, gaze lowered respectfully. Its left leg was shiny, the fur matted.

Yugi stared at it, mouth open, tongue lolling. His breath was harsh, panicked and pained. This wolf wasn't…

He turned his head.

Yami was still lying there, motionless…

Yugi jumped easily over the bodies which lay at his paws. Eyes wide, heart in his throat, he hurried forward. Despite the pain which greeted him, he pushed as quickly as he could. His breath was coming in gasps. He stopped beside him, whining low in his throat. He nudged gently at his neck. The fur shuddered and shifted when he breathed against it. He growled and tried again.

"Yugi," a familiar voice muttered. He heard a harsh thud, the metal ringing and vibrating beneath his paws. He blinked, then raised his head. Approaching him, with slow cautious steps, was Mai. The blonde was soaked in blood along the right hand, from fingers to wrist. But she did not seem harmed. And the blood did not truly smell of her. It was harsher, with a deeper scent much like dirt. "Is that…?"

The white wolf whined and looked away from her. He pressed his nose into his neck, searching for a pulse. He smelled a lot like fresh blood. As if his vessels had opened and pushed outwards to coat his skin. Had the electricity caused it somehow? He looked at Mai again, then back at the generator. He snapped his teeth at her confused look. Then he clenched them tightly and tugged.

She looked to the white-eared wolf thoughtfully. He tilted his head at her, an image forming in her mind. It was that of the generator, of Yami's teeth. The muscles were pronounced around the jaws. Blood flecked along the entirety of the wire base beneath the large muzzle. She blinked at him, then turned back slowly with wide eyes.

Yugi repeated the action. It was more desperate now, however. His fur was quivering. His ears were lying flat against his head. He whined and clawed at the grate. She and the wolf swapped looks and Yugi cried louder, distressed as he bit the air in a frantic motion. Mai sighed, then moved to the prone form's side.

The white wolf immediately paced a step, whining louder, then turned and did the same. He watched her, frantic and trembling, as she slipped her fingers between Yami's large teeth, pulling his lips aside. She shifted her fingers upward and down, then twisted her wrist. The wire snapped and fell from his jaws. She shifted her grip, pulling her fingers away, and then grasped the fur beneath his throat.

Yugi whined, then wagged his tail. She grunted as she pulled the dark wolf away from the generator completely. Then she tugged him with effort towards her chest and pulled herself to her feet. He was leaned backwards, an immense black form against her chest. He stood about her height, even with his head tipped forward and slack in front of her.

The white wolf trembled, then snarled low in his throat. The white-eared wolf tilted his head, then whined again. Mai huffed, "You make me lift him and now you want him down again?"

The white wolf was frantic when he growled and snapped at her, trembling as he dipped his head in a pronounced movement. He pawed at the metal again, claws grating against it. The wolf dipped his head again, ears pricked and tail wagging slightly. She sighed, then moved to shift Yami to the ground again. He was so large she swore she was going to drown in his fur. She put him on the ground again, then stepped back.

Yugi turned to her suddenly, ears pricked and head tilted in confusion. The slender white-eared wolf was smaller than him, he realized with wide eyes, turning to him now as well. He whined and both of the newcomers furrowed their brows in response. The black wolf turned to the blonde and flicked a white-tipped ear before turning and running outside. She sighed and the white wolf gave her a distressed look.

"He'll be right back. He has to go grab something."

The white wolf huffed, incredibly put off, but then turned on Yami's prone form once more. He pressed his nose into his cheek. The muscles were swollen and still incredibly bunched. He remembered scientists doing similarly to measure jaw pressure in dogs. They would tranquilize them, then shock them until their jaws clamped shut.

Yugi waited for a minute, then a second. Then he finally moved and caught the other wolf by the scruff. If Yami could throw him into the greenhouse as he had, then he could certainly drag him as he needed. He growled low in his throat when Mai offered help, giving her something of a sharp look. He did not want anyone else touching him if he was dead. He was the one who had gotten him in this situation. If he was truly…gone…then he'd be the one to bury him…

He prayed that he truly wasn't, then dragged him more painfully back towards the entrance. The muscles and cords in his throat ached and throbbed. His pulse pounded against the frenzied skin. His fur twitched and pulled unsuccessfully. He pulled him harder, tugging painfully, his mouth momentarily sore with his aching neck. He pulled until he almost fell backwards, panting when he reached the snow. The movements were agonizing and his left back leg threatened to buckle beneath him.

Still he dragged him, growling and straining. It took him what felt hours to reach the trees. He finally stopped there, sniffing at his skin beneath his pelt. It smelled different. There was a fresh and blooming hint of snow and pine, of moonlight and drizzles of rain water. But the scorched scent marred his skin the most. And the way his skin failed to even twitch made him shiver.

 _Yami, please… I'm so sorry…_

Yugi took a seat, licking his lips, and turned to Mai. The tall woman looked back at him, frowning and thoughtful, and then turned her head. He too caught the sound and sprang to his paws. At first he thought it to be a stranger. And then he noticed Otogi picking his way through the trees towards them.

"Is he…?"

Mai glanced at him sideways. "I think so. But you never know. Sometimes it just takes a few minutes. Electricity isn't really the best way to kill us, remember?"

He shrugged and then moved to drop a shape in front of Yugi. The white wolf blinked, then tilted his head, eyes wide. He looked at them, confused as his ears flicked about.

"We were tracking the hunter," Mai stated with a shrug. "We noticed him close to the territory and went after him. Somehow he found you and became fixated, however. We were looking to stop him before he got to you, but he lost us a while back. It took a good hour to figure out where he had gone. It was just coincidence that he had been hunting you at the exact time we tracked him down again."

Yugi was only half paying attention to them now, however. He had drifted closer to Yami again, sniffing at his cheek. The gland there was surprisingly perfumed, as if the pores beneath had just opened wide and expelled his scent. The intensity of it made him smell distinctly of sharp, wintry moonlight and pine. He pressed his nose closer to the skin, then exhaled harshly.

 _Yami…_? He sounded like a hopeful child, like he was begging his mother for a treat after dinner. The wolf did not respond to the tone. He remained agonizingly still. Yugi shuddered and whined. _Yami, come on, please_ …?

His deathly state remained for a moment. Then the body shuddered. His paws twitched, eyes snapping open. A hideous, gasping noise expelled from his lungs. His sides quivered, rising and falling rapidly. He bore his teeth, then clawed at the ground for a split second. Yugi leaned forward, heart racing.

"Yugi, be careful! He just got revived. He might attack you."

Yugi ignored her, leaning forward again. He breathed against his cheek, then looked at Yami more closely. He was trembling when he saw the way the black wolf growled low in his throat. For a moment neither reacted, and then Yami slowly lifted his head. At first he had his jaws open, snapping them towards his face. But, as the smaller wolf prepared to flinch back, the other merely chomped his teeth shut a few centimeters from his face. His tongue came out a fraction of a second later, touching the tip of his nose gently.

Yugi trembled, then wagged his tail enthusiastically.

He was okay.

Yami was alive.

He was breathing again, lying in front of him. He wagged his tail harder and, though it was still an unfamiliar sensation to him, he almost wished to throw his head back and howl.

Yugi pressed his nose into his cheek instead, shaking a little harder. Yami shuddered, laying his head back down again. His eyes were glassy, staring blankly towards the other two lycanthropes. The human shapes were far too sharp and noticeable in his gaze. The black wolf tipped his head up somewhat, looking at them more fully.

The woman had a tight hourglass figure, like a model. Her clothing was a deep violet color almost like her eyes. A white corset was laced across her torso, covering only her breasts and a few inches of skin so that her navel showed. The jacket she wore was just long enough to fall down to cover the top inch of her mini-skirt of matching purple. A small belt hung at the top, lacing through the material. And he could see the slits which ran an inch upwards on either outer thigh.

The tone of her skin was a pale, soft tan, which looked easily appealing against the dark purple. Where her right hand rested a couple of inches away, held in the air in a limp position, blood coated her pores. Her nails were long, the edges of them soaked beneath by the color so that it was a harsh blackish line. The surfaces were smeared but the color was deep red and the blood was a muddy brown from its dried status.

But it was the male beside her which caught his attention more. He realized he knew him by scent. But the sight of him made him squirm to roll onto his belly. It was a pathetic effort, paws scrabbling for purchase they couldn't get in the position he was lying.

He rolled the muscles in his shoulders, jerking them forward in a rippling movement to help distribute his weight better. It helped him to lean forward and right himself along the front of his body. But his hindquarters were hurting and the dead weight of them was exhausting.

Yugi nudged his shoulder with his nose. _Do you need help_? he asked innocently, eyes wide as they bore into his skin. The other wolf growled in annoyance, ignoring him, and laid his head on his paws as he looked at the tall human boy in front of him.

He was about an inch taller than Mai herself, with bright green eyes that bordered teal and seaweed in shade. The shape of them was narrower, sharper, almost almond in design like his own, but his lashes were long and thin, lacking the fullness the rest of them had. A black tattoo came across his left cheek, caressing the curve of his cheekbone for an inch or two. His weight was slight, his shoulders narrow and broad, and his face gave the impression of youthful maturity. His hair jutted out in three spikes upwards and outwards, falling forward into bangs on the right side of his face. A single forelock fell in the center of his forehead while several on either side of his face appeared straggly in design. The rest of his hair, he assumed, was pulled into a ponytail, and when he ran a hand through his bangs for a moment, Yami saw long, sharp nails that appeared almost manicured.

The wolf growled when he moved a little closer. His eyes were on his throat even if the threat was miniscule. He couldn't possibly get to his feet and snap his teeth at his neck, but he could give the appearance of being a liable threat. And it was that which kept both lycanthropes those few feet away from him.

Yami's eyes flickered back and forth between the two of them, gaze sharp and calculating.

His clothing was a simple dark maroon sleeveless jacket which hung over a dark gray shirt with black jeans and a single dark gray belt to hold them around his slim waist. The pockets were empty, void of any possible threat to be held there, and it made him bare his teeth. He was more likely to kill through his own strength than a weapon. It was admirable but it was also somewhat lacking at the moment, which made his mind circle.

If he had planned to kill him, he would have to have a weapon of some kind. He flicked an ear as Yugi sniffed at his shoulder, sorting through the fur towards his skin. And then what about him? The two of them would have to go through Yugi as well, would they not?

He lowered his head to his paws and closed his eyes. Let them do as they wanted. If they moved too close, then he would sink his teeth in. Until then, there was no use in him wasting his time worrying about such things. The threat had not been them initially, so perhaps it would not be now either.

The white wolf moved away from him. His eyes snapped open and his head turned. His body was precariously weighted but he struggled to try to get his back legs beneath him. The other canine stopped short, eyes wide and head turning. He immediately came back over to him, looking at him for a moment.

 _What's wrong_?

Yami blinked at him, then pushed himself into a seated position. The bones in his spine popped loudly and the noise made him nearly flinch. The white wolf was at his side when he almost stumbled, using his own injured shoulder to catch him. Yugi braced his weight but stared at him with a thoroughly confused expression.

 _I was just going to change and get dressed. Then I figured you could do the same_ , Yugi explained slowly, tilting his head and eyeing him more pointedly. If Yami had been human, he might have felt a modicum of embarrassment, but the wolf didn't suffer such emotions. So he merely shook himself out, stumbled so violently that his chin nearly hit the snow, and then forced himself into a seated position. He ignored Yugi again when he circled his shoulder to face him again. _Just stay here, okay_? _I'll just be a few feet away and I'll come right back_ …

Yami flicked an ear in acknowledgment but his body was too bruised and his mind bleeding too harshly to answer him. He listened to Yugi sniff at his shoulder again before he turned and started away from him once more. He heard his teeth grip at the material of his backpack, snatching it into his mouth as he trotted aside towards the trees.

Yami would have watched him go but his body had begun to throb with pain. An unsteady sensation of pulsing, livid, ache had come upon him and it refused release. So he merely flicked his ears, drew his teeth back, and licked at his jaws. The flesh was scabbed, painful and sore, and when he scraped his tongue against the roof of his mouth, a blister popped.

He growled at the taste, opening his jaws wide and flexing his tongue to free himself of it. The cold air tasted faintly of blood but mostly of frozen leaves and rotting pine, of peeling bark which popped and shook and shed itself beneath the pressures of such cold temperature.

Yami tasted all of this, then slowly closed his mouth again. He had not noticed it before, but the entirety of his mouth was swollen. His jaws were aching, his tongue scorched and blistered, his gums bloodied. His cheeks were raw and scathed, and he imagined that perhaps they looked blackened and red. He wondered if they would bleed further, if his saliva would run metallic with it.

He knew they would grow infected, however, and swell again with pus. It would not be instantaneous, however, but it would happen. The idea made his stomach curl and he huffed out a deep breath.

Yugi returned a minute later, humming as he put the bag on the ground next to Yami and asked, "How long were you guys tailing the hunter?"

His black ears flicked but his eyes were on the bag. A change of clothes? He considered it. If he changed, he could get dressed. But he'd also prove to be more helpless than even now. He was weak, tired, and his human body was still something he would rather shed than take the shape of.

But he was also equally used to it.

It was the issue of retaining his balance long enough to change and dress that worried him now. And how was he truly meant to walk? Four legs meant he had more of a chance at catching himself. Two was a wobbly descent by any means.

Yet, the prospect of shedding his fur, and perhaps pushing his body more forcefully towards healing, made him shiver with desire. Yami stumbled to his feet, his back popping again, his joints cracking with distress, and took a shaky step towards the bag. He stumbled but caught himself, weight braced precariously on his hind and right forelimb. He could already taste blood in his mouth as he snatched the backpack up.

All three of the lycanthropes standing towards his side were watching. A sense of confused wonder had come upon both Mai and Otogi as they saw the black wolf stumble. Even as he snatched the bag in his jaws, throwing his head up to keep his eyes on the trees ahead of him, he caught his next faltering step. He did not fall into the snow, though his gait was weak and slow. He could not trot, but his agonizing pace was almost somehow as fluid.

Yugi watched him with a sense of overwhelming relief and then a sore spot of anxious pity. Yami had saved them, but his body had taken twice the beating his own had even with the maws of the dogs that had torn into him. He could still feel them, soft and aching, but it did nothing to make him falter. Yet, somehow, despite the limp and the constant threat of falling, Yami seemed to carry himself with a sense of dignity and grace. When he managed to slip from their sight into the darkness by the trees, Yugi felt his stomach turning.

What if he _did_ fall over?

Was he okay to change on his own?

Would he end up hurting himself further?

Yugi forced himself to push away the impulse to go after him, instead turning to them. Mai and Otogi were both swapping looks, bewildered by the sight. Yugi had a small and strange suspicion that perhaps Yami should not have been able to move about on his own.

"We were tracking him before we met," the blonde stated cautiously. Her eyes were keen with something he could not read and the sight of it made him anxious. He stared back at her, desperate for an answer of some kind, but nothing came and Yugi could do no more than watch her more pointedly. "In fact, the day we met you, he had managed to lose us a second time. Thankfully, he didn't think you would notice him because he was not very stealthy when it came to you. So, it was incredibly easy for us to follow him. Otogi was tracking you guys before he sent the dogs."

Yugi bit his lip and looked towards the taller boy for a moment. "I'm going to guess he waited until we were distracted to send them after us?"

He shrugged. "I would think so. He'd never truly seen Yami, I don't think. Or at least, if he did when you two left that day, I don't think he was planning to go for him."

"He wasn't novice but he wasn't exactly the best hunter in the world either," Mai stated casually, "so even if he had come across Yami before then, he certainly wouldn't have attempted to get to him before then."

"Why?"

Was it that obvious that he was the stronger one between them?

They both swapped looks, then frowned at him for a moment. They did not try for words for what felt like hours before the blonde finally sighed, "Yugi, to anyone with an experience with werewolves, your inexperience being one shows like neon lights. You're just not used to it. And it's obvious."

He rolled his eyes. "How?" he demanded, scoffing. "And how do you know that my inexperienced look isn't simply a way for me to keep from having my cover blown?"

They both gave him indulgent smiles, mirroring twists of the lips as their brows came up in perfect unison.

"What cover?"

He was about to open his mouth but stopped short. He turned his head to the lean figure coming out of the woods. His walk on two legs was slower and far unsteadier than the one on four. His eyes were darkened, drained of color for a moment, and when he rolled his shoulders again, he looked agonized. He dropped first the bag, and then himself into the snow near them. But he did not bother to speak to them, instead staring at the trees surrounding them again.

Yugi tilted his head, then smiled faintly. "Are you okay?"

Yami tipped his head towards him, eyes sharp and piercing his skin. There was a shallow pool of disdain and frustration in his expression but the frostier touch of indifference shielded it. He nodded, because his jaw ached too violently and the sores in his mouth seemed to scrape and burst against his tongue whenever it moved.

He turned back to them. "So, do you think he was after Code Name Atem?"

Yami blinked and curled his lip. The blisters there popped and bled into his mouth. He could feel it, burning and harsh, against his gums and the entirety of his teeth. The touch of it made him want to snarl. But the raw edge of it was also somehow soothing to his growing frustration. Still, he wiped the back of his head across his mouth, parting his lips enough to get at the metallic liquid. It burned his nerve endings.

Mai could not truly take her eyes off the display. It made her feel strange to watch another wolf so intently as she did him. But there was something strange and awkward about the black wolf. It was, perhaps, not truly unnatural, but it seemed it.

And the pull which he seemed to exude over her was nothing she had ever encountered before. Though, as she glanced at Yugi in her peripheral, she wondered. Why had she and Otogi both been willing to risk their lives for them? They knew virtually nothing about them in any way.

Yet, for whatever reason, there had not even been a hint of discussion when such a thing had come to light. When Otogi relayed the picture in his head, calling for her attention, she had taken off with the single thought to help them…

Her head snapped towards Yugi, eyes sharp and lips curled into a snarl. "Do you honestly know who the hell Code Name Atem is?" she spat, cutting off the hint of meager conversation which had begun between her packmate and the white wolf.

Yugi faltered, not from her rage but from the sudden change of topic. He blinked at her, though, beside him, Yami stiffened and raised his head. They both looked at her with such different expressions that it made her shiver. Yami was alert, confused, and more than slightly alarmed and angry. Yugi was calm, slightly surprised, but mostly a bit amused.

"You answer my question first, and then I'll answer yours," the small teen teased, though there was no longer any hint of humor in his eyes. "Do you think that the hunter was one of the hired ones?"

"He was talking about getting money from your pelts," she snarled, "and he used electricity to wound you. If he was going to hunt down Code Name Atem, he'd know how dangerous it is to do that. When a wolf is revived, they're feral. So why risk that? Besides, they want Atem back _alive_."

Yugi studied her for a moment, then glanced at Yami sideways. "When you say revived—"

"She means when a wolf dies for a set amount of minutes from electrical shock. Since it's energy the body can't expel it, so it often travels back towards the heart and restarts it. Which, in turn, normally causes the rest of the organs to react."

Otogi eyed them both carefully for a moment. That hadn't seemed to be what had happened with Yami, however. He had seemed genuinely dead, lost to Paradise. The idea that he had come back in such a state as to be almost relaxed was beyond him. Every wolf he had ever seen to have such an occurrence had woken wild, disoriented, and incredibly vicious until their memories returned. It would vary from minutes to hours to possibly days.

"There's your answer," Mai snarled. "Now who's Atem?"

Yugi tilted his head, pulling his gaze from the other boy who was now staring at him from the corner of his eye.

"I am."

Yami was frozen in place. Otogi went wide-eyed, mouth opening and closing twice. Mai blinked stupidly and then gaped at him. Very slowly, the red-eyed wolf raised his head. His movement was a weak and sloppy motion. The smaller boy responded to the action in the corner of his eye. He turned his head to look at him as well.

It was eerie, the wave of understanding which passed through them. It was as if the world shifted into nothingness around them. Mai felt almost as if she herself did not exist at such a moment. The way the blue-violet clashed with red, the way they both stilled, then began to breathe strangely in sync together, made her heart ache and race behind her ribs.

There was something powerful, intuitively primal perhaps, which came between them. It was brief, but so strong that it knocked the air from her lungs. When they looked away from each other, their expressions were singular. They were both solemn, grave, and not the tiniest hint of light glittered in either's eyes.

"I am Code Name Atem."

The statement seemed to suck the lightness from the air. It cloaked them, a blanket of immense strength which strained their muscles. Mai could simply stare and feel as if the world were dropping away beneath her feet. Otogi was nearly panting with sudden shock and the unexpected bout of confused excitement which came over him. But Yami and Yugi both stared ahead of them, solemn and somehow small with such a statement. They had seemingly withdrawn, though Yugi's voice was calm and assertive.

He turned to the taller boy abruptly, eyes lingering on that distant look to his gaze. His lashes cut such long shadows across them that his pupils seemed to bleed and devour his irises. "Yami, I think it's about time we got back," Yugi announced, glancing at Mai sharply when she opened her mouth to object. The blonde froze in place, eyes wide at the deep ferocity situated in his glittering gaze. Very slowly he drew his eyes from her, turning back to the other wolf. "I'm tired. And you must be worse off than me. Let's go back."

Yami raised his head and turned to him with an expression that was oddly infuriated. But, mixed within it, was an underlying fear which made the smaller boy suppress a shiver. They looked at each other, and the anger began to dissipate as he shifted to draw his knees towards himself. The exhaustion was clear in his movements, eyes flashing brightly before he braced his arms against the snow behind him and tried to pull himself to his feet.

The snow had numbed them considerably and his weight added to it made his body buzz. Yami shifted, stumbling, and stood there for what felt like a lifetime. His stomach growled and churned and he could already feel the pain of his mouth opening with more sores, aching and creaking as his bones popped and burned. He swallowed hard and his tongue pressed against the roof of his mouth. The tender flesh swelled with pain and he ground his teeth together.

It was instinctual when Yugi moved to his side, pressing into his flank. Yami spun on him, the movement so shaky yet somehow fluid that it nearly sent him toppling backwards. He bore his teeth, a raspy noise leaving his throat, but the ache of it, the way his throat rebelled and his lungs clenched tightly, made him fall silent. But his eyes were still livid and his face still twisted into a vicious flicker of disdain. The smaller boy ignored it, instead moving to grip his arm and wrap it around his own shoulder.

Otogi was somewhat amazed that the smaller teen even possessed enough strength to support the other wolf. Yugi's side had opened up again, at some point, because his clothes were wet and sticky. And he could smell the blood, a dense and heated source of copper and the slightest touch of something almost like butter. Otogi looked at him for a long moment, and wondered if he even felt it.

They had done so many things during those experiments, some of which he was sure still had not come to light in the woods. They had not fully spoken of everything. The survivors were too wary, too scared. The idea that they might have hidden some truths of the experiments from them was not a new one.

The fact was that they could have done a lot of things to his nerves. They could have easily severed some of the sensors so that he did not understand pain. Or perhaps he had conditioned himself somehow to not care. Maybe that was the only way he could survive the gruesome ordeal…

He tilted his head. But, perhaps, more than that, it helped that Yugi truly had repressed the memories. Maybe he had somehow come upon the reality before he had even stumbled across them that day. Maybe that was why he kept asking, so sure that he was in fact Atem but unable to do more than beg for someone to argue with him that he wasn't.

Yet, he held himself with such grace and pride after telling them. Even when he had turned his face away from Yami, it had lingered there, behind the rather solemn expression which had claimed it. And he seemed not to care how irritable Yami was even as he glared at him furiously for helping him in his weakened state.

"Are you going to need help…getting him back there?" he finally asked, swallowing hard as Yugi turned his head and narrowed his eyes faintly in confusion. Otogi shuffled his weight for a moment as the red-eyed teen glared at him, lips drawn back and blood smeared across his teeth.

If he had been in his canine form, it would have seemed more natural to Otogi. But the way Yami's human face peered at him, murderous and frustrated, teeth reddened and incisors bared, made him feel queasy. It was strange, oddly more threatening, though he'd seen teeth bared in their human mouths. But Yami was threatening him, even if it meant that he would fail and get himself hurt further or killed, he was willing to push his anger towards him.

"We could at least make sure that you guys are okay when you get back?"

Mai looked at him from the corner of her eye, but her gaze was mostly on Yugi. "It wouldn't hurt to have a couple of extra pairs of eyes to see that you're safe, right?" she muttered softly. But it wasn't so much their safety which made them offer. It was bewilderment and a sense of opportunity, of curiosity, of sudden empowerment, that made her further the deal Otogi had put forth. She was desperate, incredibly so, to see something that made Yugi's claim more truthful. There had to be something that could make his words the truth, that could explain her will to believe him. "I mean, you guys were both torn up pretty badly."

Yami snarled at her, openly pissed. The noise was guttural, vibrating, and Yugi had to grit his teeth to keep from cowing. The push of his ribcage against his side made his body feel as if it were vibrating unevenly. But, despite his distrust and anxiety, the taller wolf did not speak. And so, with a small glance at him sideways, Yugi forced words out of his own throat.

"Stay a few yards behind us."

It was the easiest way to keep his eye on Yami without the threat of him reacting to them more violently. It was the best way that they could keep their eyes off of them completely and have their senses put to use to track down any other potential threats to cross their paths.

"Got it."

Yami gave him an exasperated, withering look. Yugi grinned at him, but it felt more like baring his teeth, so he dropped the pretense. Instead he pulled on his jacket sleeve and reached up to rub at Yami's mouth. The taller lycanthrope stilled drastically, red eyes wide and startled, and then leaned away. But his arm was a cage that kept him caught there as Yugi gently pressed his sleeve against his lips and wiped away the excess blood there.

"Sorry."

But he didn't bother to stop from dabbing at the very corners where it had been smeared earlier. He cast him a small smile again but Yami merely stared at him, a mixture of bewilderment and frustration. But then he turned his head away again, and his voice was nearly inaudible when he mumbled, "Thank you."

Yugi nodded slightly, because he felt words would do him damage instead of good. So he merely shifted closer, wrapping his arm around his shoulders, beneath his. Yami shifted as if to draw away slightly, but the smaller teen merely tightened his grip. He was snug against his side and the taller teen shot him a furious look, eyes hard and annoyed. Yugi grinned at him, this time keenly aware that he was simply baring his teeth, and Yami turned away again.

Mai and Otogi had slipped somewhere off behind them into the trees, but he could sense them nearby. Even as he held Yami's weight and matched his slower pace, restraining him physically from moving away from him, he could feel them. They were yards back, but he knew they could see them, just as he had assumed would be necessary to them. He kept his eyes on the snow in front of them instead of the trees. Something about looking at the trunks made him feel sick and weary.

It took them an hour to make it back to the house. And Yami was so tired that when he let go of him, he plopped back into the snow and looked at him. His side was burning and aching, stretched to the point that it made him hiss with displeasure. He nearly groaned as he stretched his arms to grip at the drain vent and felt along the coils of metal which held it in place.

The red-eyed teen watched him. Not a word left his lips. He did not bother to argue that perhaps they should use the front door. It was an impossibility this time. Yugi's mother was home, and she was teaching a technician and a new receptionist about their jobs. She was showing the way to order the appointments properly. Yami could hear her, a soft and gentle tone which made his insides quiver. He had never truly known a voice as soft and warm.

His own mother had been seemingly mute. Or perhaps she had simply thought it unimportant to speak to him. He could not fully recall anymore. But perhaps that was not such a big deal in the first place. He lacked many spots in his memories simply because he did not care to think of them anymore. Perhaps the same had come about with memories of his mother.

Yugi tested the bolts which held them in place. They'd only ever used it one at a time in order to make sure it wouldn't pull out. But he knew instinctively that Yami could not go up there without his being right behind him. If he began to slip and fall, he wasn't sure he'd recover with the state he was in.

So he pulled and tested his weight on it several times before turning back. "Okay, Yami, I'll be right behind you," he announced, nodding slightly when the taller boy raised a brow. The unspoken reality of how painful it might be if he did slip and crash into him was apparent on both of their faces.

Yet, the smaller teen merely nodded again and Yami tipped his head slightly as he looked at the drain. Maybe taking on his human form again had been a mistake. Maybe as a wolf Yugi could have snuck him in under the pretense of sickness.

The smaller teen watched as he struggled to his feet. He took small, shuffling steps, moving forward slowly and with care. His eyes were already on the bolts they had both used formerly as grips. His hands were reddened by the cold air, though he was not shaking and he thought the skin looked more aggravated than chilled. He lowered his eyes to his own hands, swallowing hard. Yami had gotten shocked there as well then.

Yugi swallowed hard again, then looked up once more. Yami was testing his grip, hands clenched around the rain gutter's bolts tightly. He glanced at him over his shoulder, eyes unsure. He nodded again and the taller teen turned slowly away to look at the pipe. The seconds passed. Then the wolf gripped harder, reaching higher with his free hand.

When he got one leg up against the wall, his other pressed forcefully into the snow for a moment. He pulled roughly, teeth ground together and eyes closing halfway. His muscles pulled taut and he struggled to draw in another breath. He felt his shoulders arching and pulling roughly beneath his shirt. His spine felt rough and cold beneath his skin.

"You're doing well," the smaller teen said, struggling to sound both approving and enthusiastic. But the taller boy ignored him and pulled his other leg up instead. His feet were balanced practically next to each other, his shoes pushed to grip the bolts with the soles of his toe boxes. He struggled to drag his right arm up first, higher than the left, and then to repeat the action with his other. Yugi muttered another soft, "Okay, one foot after the other. You know what to do."

He did know. And it was frustrating to know he was being watched as he tried. Yami ignored him again, panting through his teeth and closing his eyes tightly. He had started out able to keep his face away from the cold metal, but now his forehead was pressed against it. He was struggling, chest practically heaving, and his eyes opened into mere slits as he tried to pull a little harder. The snow looked so comfortable, so inviting.

Yugi shook his head, frowning, and then moved towards the pipe. Yami was frozen, hunched and holding the metal in a vice grip. His eyes were clenched tightly shut again. The small teen trembled, then shook his head sharply to clear it away.

"Yami, you can do this, okay?" he tried, nearly pleading now. His stomach was churning and his heart was beginning to race. His fingers twitched at his sides. "I know it's hard, but just remember that you get to rest right after. You can sleep all you want and recover and… Then you'll be twice as strong as you were before!"

Yami ignored him, his voice making his muscles clench harder. He was so tired and the task of pulling himself up was exhausting.

"You know, when a werewolf has a near death experience, they become twice as strong!" he blurted out, face growing flushed as he smacked his heel against his face. That was _DragonBall Z_. He was talking about Sayians. He could have killed himself. He shook his head again, then looked up more pointedly. "Ignore that last part. Just…I promise, when we get into my room, you can rest, okay? You can rest for as long as you need…"

Or he could just lay in the snow and rest now.

His muscles were almost jelly. He could feel them weakening by the second. Desperate, breath coming out in a jagged growl, he grunted, "Yugi, I can't… Hold on…"

The small teen leaped at the opportunity to race forward, reaching up to press his hands into his legs and hold his balance some. Yami pressed his face more pointedly against the metal, the cold making his body tingle. He panted, because it hurt and his hands were all but burning. The nerves were aching, throbbing. They were shot. The electricity had all but destroyed him there.

Yugi hesitated, biting his lip. "Can you keep that grip for a moment longer?" he asked, looking up at him. He could just barely make out the line of his jaw from where his body had grown so limp.

Yami shifted his face, then let out a hissing breath. "Yes," he muttered, voice split with pain. "But not…longer."

He nodded. He needed only five seconds at the most. He released his legs slowly, watching as Yami began to take to the task of steadying his weight there as well. The small teen immediately braced himself, then began to move beneath him. He gripped the cold pipe so hard that he felt he might freeze from mere exposure.

Yugi climbed just enough to bring himself level with the bottom of the red-eyed teen's sneakers. The movement caused the taller teen to jerk faintly. His eyes snapped open, confused and unsure. He blinked once, then allowed his gaze to flicker towards him. The way Yami peered at him with such open disbelief made Yugi grin hesitantly.

The smaller teen might have even offered to carry him himself if he had not known he would have failed in such a task. But Yami was so completely dumbfounded by it all that he did not bother to even move at first.

"You're going to have to start climbing again soon, okay?" he pleaded, looking up at him. "I mean, I could keep you held up like this, but it wouldn't do us any good. We wouldn't get up the window like this, remember?"

Yami still stared at him, bewildered. Then, very slowly, he looked away and towards the house. The paint was chipping where he touched it with his fingers. He felt as if his skin were burning. His muscles were straining harshly. The harm of it seemed to stretch outwards towards his bones, clutching with cold fingers. He nearly closed his eyes and groaned.

He was not above begging Yugi to simply allow him the peace of lying there motionlessly.

Yet, as the thought occurred to him, it also made his stomach hiss with pain.

He had never known himself to be so cowardly, nor so weak. He ground his teeth together, then stretched an arm up to grip higher overhead. When he shifted his weight and tried to press his shoe upon the bolt above, his body slammed into the wall. The metal was frozen, burning his skin and bones.

He let out a hissing whimper. Yugi cursed under his breath beneath him, then shifted to grip his leg with his left hand. He balanced awkwardly there, the action almost precarious, and bent the taller teen's knee gently. The action made him instinctively move his thigh higher.

Yami snarled furiously. His jaws snapped shut, his teeth chomping at the sensation. It was both ticklish and somehow incredibly sensual. The implications of it made his skin crawl, caused his body feel ill. He heard the smaller teen scoff beneath him. And, as if encouraged by his initial reaction to move his leg, Yugi reached forward to tap on the other. Immediately he hissed, struggling to shift his hand again.

The action of dragging his leg up was agonizing. Yami could feel his stomach dropping. Fear gripped and clawed at his insides. He was losing the sensation of feeling in his left leg. He had not even realized he'd shifted his position, that his knee was pressed almost completely into the wall. The sight of it made his mouth grow dry and his heart felt shattered within his chest at the very implications.

He could sense it coming. The complete loss of strength and muscle there would destroy him. It would come from the lack of rest, from testing it so stupidly.

Yugi pressed up behind him. He positioned his hands completely beneath the shoe nearest him. He held the pipe in a vice grip. The way he grasped the metal caused his fingers to all but cramp. "Can you keep moving?" he asked as, suddenly, he was very aware of moving too closely. And he was very keen upon the fact that perhaps he should have rethought this idea. He very easily risked Yami falling butt-first into him.

The thought made his heart race that much faster.

"I…I don't know."

The small teen looked up despite how flushed his face was beginning to feel. "Why not?" he asked, both demanding and gentle in tone. He watched as Yami lowered his face slightly. The action made his bangs look oddly greasy, stringy. His breathing was erratic and his face flushed, but to look at Yugi more closely, his chin was tucked painfully into his collarbone.

"I don't think I can move my leg," he admitted weakly.

Yugi felt his stomach grow cold. He stared up at him, startled and horrified. "Why not?" he repeated stupidly, eyes wide and skin crawling.

Yami stared back expressionlessly. "Beyond my utter exhaustion, the muscles are beginning to lose feeling there," he answered, monotonous with his frustration. He blinked, then looked up towards the roof. It was still a few feet higher. And then he would have to reach up and outwards, grasp at outer layer of tiles, and pull himself upwards. The mere thought overwhelmed him. "I am losing feeling in my left leg…"

The small teen cursed violently, then tossed his head in an angry shake. "No, no," he snapped, "that's _not_ going to happen, okay? You just need to focus on getting to the window."

Yami shook his head. How was that meant to be his focus when he could not even think straight? The pain in his hands had grown tenfold. His grip was becoming infinitely too harsh to maintain. His body was burning with fever. His stomach ached and boiled. His leg was growing further numb to him. He shook his head.

"I can't carry you," he pleaded, desperate. "I can't do it, Yami. This is the best I can manage. But I can't do it for you. I need your help, okay? I need you to try to stay focused, to keep moving."

Yami looked down at him again, feeling small and weak and tired enough to simply give up. He felt that perhaps he should have been able to gain strength through Yugi's determination but it only made him ache harder.

Again, Yugi was helping him. Again, he was cheating and lying in order to keep him safe. He was going against his own family in order to help him. He was, perhaps, even risking his right to be a part of it due to him.

Yami ground his teeth together, raising his head somewhat. His heart was an immovable lump within his chest. His stomach tossed and ached. He looked up towards the ledge of the roof. His belly ached and curled with pain. He stared at it, so much higher above him. He shivered, then reached up to grip at the next spot he could find.

Yugi couldn't help the small sense of relief and pride which came over him. Yami was trying again. Even as he struggled and his movements were meager at best, he was _trying again_. He smiled faintly, then moved to immediately take the place beneath him.

"You okay?"

Yami almost snapped at him that he was far from such a state. But he was also too exhausted to bother with it. He shook his head slightly. His stomach tossed. He shifted his grip, pulling himself up with such strain in his fingers that it made him bristle. His knuckles were bleached. His skin was crawling. His grip was seemingly growing further from strong with each moment.

He nearly panicked but the idea of rushing made him freeze in place. He banged his left knee against the pipe. Then he cursed. The sensation was so bare and small that he nearly snarled. He could barely feel it. His entire leg was seconds away from becoming completely limp.

The urgency in the thought made him struggle for his next hold and step. But it seemed to do nothing to gain closer proximity to the slant of the roof. It was almost, in fact, as if the tiles were getting further away. He snarled low in his throat, a faint whispering of distress. Yugi pushed up beneath him, shoulders braced, hands gripping just beneath his shoe.

"If I brace my shoulder just beneath your shoe, do you think you can get up there with just your arms and your right leg?"

The taller teen stopped short, then immediately looked down at him. His eyes flashed, dark and hideous, and he ground his teeth together once more. The thought of losing the sensation in one limb was horrifying. He'd never been in such a predicament before. The idea that he could function without it was nothing he questioned. He knew he could.

But the question was how long it would take before it traveled further up his spine. How long would it be before his right leg was swept in such sensation? How long before his arms followed suit?

His heart was in his throat. His mouth was bleeding where his tongue scraped the roof of it. His jaw was becoming sticky and hot with it. He turned his head, running the edges of his mouth across the material of the jacket. He hissed and closed his eyes.

"Yes," he finally admitted. "I can…"

 _I can…_ He pressed his forehead against the cold metal again. _I can…_

Yugi let out a relieved breath. "Okay, so then that's what we'll do. It'll be slower but it's the only thing I can think to do," he said in a tone that conveyed he was certain it would work. He smiled faintly, but it was strained as he shuffled upwards.

The new position he was about to take was undeniably perverse in his head and it already caused his cheeks to heat further. He'd have to make sure Yami's knee was bent, that his shoulder was directly beneath it. And that meant his head was directly beneath his ass. Or perhaps it was his crotch which his head might lie underneath.

He ducked his head, flushing harder. But it was the only way he could manage anything. It was the single simplest way to help him. So he pressed his lips together, then moved up again. As Yami pressed and hissed when his left leg failed to respond, a reverberating feverish snarl leaving his lips, Yugi moved to shuffle his shoulders completely beneath his knees.

Had this been Jonouchi or Honda he would have told them, very seriously despite how much of a joke it would seem, not to fart. But seeing how dire the situation was, how exhausted Yami was, he could not find it in himself to attempt at such juvenile humor.

Instead he pressed into the limb until it bent completely, folding so that his knee was against the hollow of his neck. He breathed in deeply, then glanced up. Yami was staring at him, eyes wide and expression troubled, confused, uncertain, before Yugi shook his head slightly. The taller teen turned away again immediately, trying for a new grip.

Yugi kept just beneath him, sure to push his knee slowly and gently. The task was long, agonizingly so, and he wanted to scream. But then, abruptly, Yami seemed to disappear altogether. He yelped, head snapping up, eyes wide and panicked.

What the hell was…?

Had he somehow fallen and Yugi had failed to notice?

Was that even possible?

Yami looked over the edge of the roof down at him. His eyes were confused again, bewildered by the noise, and he looked incredibly shaky and young. He was almost childish, a mere shadow of what he had been in the woods hours before. Yugi let out a relieved breath, then quickly pulled himself up with him. His side was bleeding heavily now, and the bag he'd left on the ground seemed amazingly important. But he could not be bothered to so much as glance at it.

"Good job."

The taller teen stared at him for a long minute. "It was mostly you," he muttered, huffing out a breath and shaking his head. "If you had not been beneath me I would have fallen."

Yugi gave him a wide, friendly grin. "What good am I as a friend if I'm not willing to try everything I can to help when you need it?"

Yami blinked, startled, and then flushed faintly beneath his eyes. He was staring at him, bewildered and with childish wonder, as he struggled for breath. There was something dark and cold which crept through his eyes like smoke, then faded just as swiftly. The shadow was gone from his expression immediately. Yugi shook his head slightly.

"I would have done it for anyone else," he said, his voice low and pained for a moment, confused by the lack of reaction he had gained from the other boy. Yami blinked, then frowned and shook his head slightly.

"You would not. You did it for me. And you would do it for your friends. But for anyone? No. No one has such kindness in them." Yugi felt his eyes stretch wide and his mouth open and close twice. He wanted to argue, but the coldness in the other's eyes made him nearly flinch. But then the taller teen softened, mouth pulling into a gentle half-smile so lopsided he almost thought it a frown. Very quietly, the red-eyed lycanthrope leaned forward and murmured, "But you possess the closest thing to such altruism."

Yugi's cheeks grew bright red, eyes somehow enlarging further. He opened and closed his mouth a third time, but Yami ignored him now. He shifted, dragging his legs beneath him, towards the window. Yugi could only gape, so startled was he still by the compliment. And he had to hurry to his side when Yami picked at the bottom of the window and struggled to pull the frame open.

"Let me. You might lose your balance."

He huffed. "What a pity it would be," he scoffed. "To lose something I do not have."

"Stop being so petulant."

Yami rolled his eyes. "Please, just open the window."

Yugi strained for a moment, then snapped it upwards. The groan of the metal made him shiver. The taller boy blinked at him, then moved to throw himself through the gap. When he tried to move his right leg over the edge, his left tangled it. He snarled loudly, gasping, as he hit the ground with a heavy thud and lay there motionless for a moment.

Yugi would have laughed at any other time. But now he hurried to peer through the window at him. His heart was racing again. His mouth was dry. "Yami?" he demanded quietly. The other boy huffed again, eyes exhausted as he looked up at him. Then he rolled onto his side and shuffled onto his hands and knees. He forced himself to his feet and dragged his left leg behind him as he plopped onto the bed.

He smiled, stepping inside and hissing at the ache in his side. "I told you, you could do it," he teased, relieved to even be able to do it. Yami glanced over his shoulder at him, scoffing loudly. But Yugi could see the small grin there and it made him smile wider. "I was right!"

He snickered, but it was a soft, choked, lonely noise. The taller teen's face still held a slight smile. But he had closed his eyes and he didn't appear as if he were going to open them at any moment. Yugi moved towards the bed, then stiffened.

His mom was coming upstairs, no doubt alarmed by the thud from Yami's fall.

 _Fuck_.

He dashed for the door, locking it immediately, and then moved quickly towards the hamper to toss his clothes inside. He'd arrange them later, try to cover them so that she wouldn't see the blood if she glanced in it at any point. He looked towards the bed as he tossed his clothes aside and then hurried to snatch a new shirt and jacket from his dresser. The color theme was black, the easiest way to hide the sight of the blood that he knew would soon soak them both.

Yami winced as he shifted to get up. His legs were drawn beneath him. He hissed softly, eyes flickering towards the door, and then he stumbled to his feet. From there he unceremoniously lowered himself to the floor. Yugi flinched when he saw the way his leg twitched and went through a spasm for his effort. The taller teen rubbed at the muscles, eyes darkened to a dull brick shade with exhaustion.

He didn't have time to ask if Yami was okay. His mouth started to open but a knocking on the door made him rush forward. Yugi could feel the blood already making his clothes sticky. He undid the lock, then opened the door and looked at her curiously. "Hi, Mom," he murmured, giving her a confused frown, "what's up?"

Her eyes were moving along his body rapidly, looking for any signs of injury. He just prayed that she did not notice the way his shirt was clinging so heavily to his side. Of course, she seemed to catalogue it for a moment, eyes sharpening briefly. But then she also glanced at his face and pursed her lips. It was only then that he realized he had broken into a sweat at some point.

"I heard a crashing noise." Kasumi searched his face, frowning as his eyes widened for a moment. "I didn't know what happened."

Yugi gestured towards his desk dismissively. "I dropped a textbook," he said with surprising strength for all the weariness tugging at his insides.

"It sounded heavier."

He gave her a childish grin. "I was holding it."

Yami covered his mouth to keep from snickering. Yugi said it like it was the most natural thing in the world. He had tripped with a textbook. He couldn't even picture it.

And neither could his mom. Her eyebrow arched and she frowned at him pointedly. "You fell over holding a textbook," Kasumi echoed the story back at him, shaking her head. "Yeah, okay."

He rolled his eyes. "I'm not allowed to trip every now and then?"

Yami nearly burst out laughing. This was definitely worth having climbed in through the window for.

"Yugi, we both know you didn't trip—why is your window open?"

"Because I was trying to get fresh air, and I went to the desk but I tripped over the chair and my hand knocked against my textbook when I fell," Yugi lamented effortlessly, rolling his eyes again when she looked at him. "You know I'm talented at tripping over air."

"You haven't had that talent since you were nine," she replied in a biting tone, scowling at him for a moment. "Now, what actually happened?"

Yugi sighed loudly. "I went to open the window for fresh air. I did that. Then I turned back around to get to the desk. When I did, I tripped and knocked the book off when I tried to grab something to stop my fall."

Her scowl hardened further. "Yugi, I'm not stupid. What would you have even tripped over?"

"The edge of the desk when I went back to it," he replied in a harsher tone, mimicking her twisted features. They stared at each other for a long moment, until finally Yugi sighed loudly once more. "Mom, that's all that happened, okay? That's it. I tripped. I knocked a book off the desk. And I'm fine."

She stared at him, hard and calculating, before her eyes drifted to his side again. He could feel the fabric sticking there and it made his stomach ache as he looked at her. She wasn't stupid. Both of them knew that. If she even left before investigating his wound it would be a mercy on her behalf.

Finally, after what felt like hours, the woman stepped back, narrowing her eyes. "I have to go to the main clinic," she announced in a clipped tone. "I'll be back in a couple of hours."

He bit the inside of his cheek. "Okay."

Kasumi gave him a smile that reminded him of a shark, one that she used only when she caught him in a lie. "By the way, Yugi, it's not that hot in the house." She turned and hurried down the stairs. He cursed under his breath.

Yami only poked his head around the end of the bed when he heard her footsteps fading in his ears. He could no longer even catch her heartbeat by the time he said, "That had to be the lamest excuse I have ever heard."

The smaller teen rolled his eyes as he twisted the lock and turned back to him, crossing his arms. "And what would you have said, smart ass?" he demanded with a poke of his tongue. Yami graced him with a slight smirk. "Cause I'm _all_ open for suggestions."

"Well, my weight is as slight as yours—possibly more, I suppose—but I would have used something more plausible and heavier in weight than a mere textbook. I would have said I was moving the television, because it might be small and not weigh too heavily, but it would make a lot of noise if it were to fall from the desk when I was trying to start on homework and it was too close."

He huffed. "That's… Shut up. That wouldn't have worked either."

The taller boy smirked before his face twisted into a grimace and he flinched. His shoulders rose and fell, his mouth opening and closing twice. He hunched slightly, wrapping an arm around his belly. It lurched and snarled with desperation, hungry as he looked at him.

Yugi felt his skin crawl. "I'll go ahead and make something for us, okay?" he muttered, biting his lip and looking at him with wide eyes. "Uh, but first I'll put you on the bed again."

Yami gave him a furious look, snapping, "I can get back up there myself!"

He startled, then scowled at him. "You're too stubborn," he spat before shaking his head and sighing. "Whatever."

The taller boy hesitated. "You should see to your side first," he muttered softly, eyes lowered to the floor. "You can't keep moving around with it bleeding like that."

Yugi blinked, confused, and then looked down at his side where his blood caked his shirt to his skin. It felt slimy, sticky, and almost like dried mud when he began to pull it away from the open wound. He shivered, a spike of pain clawing its way through him and rippling across his muscles. He grasped the end of his sleeve, then tugged it away from his wrist, pulling until it slipped entirely from his limb. He tugged it off his other arm, then dropped it to the floor. Hesitantly, he reached for the hem and began to roll it up.

"Let me." Yugi looked up with wide, startled eyes, then froze. Yami stood mere inches away, hands outstretched. His long fingers grazed his own, soft and warm. The two of them looked at each other for a moment. His fingers hovered, then lightly pulled at the fabric, away from his own grip. Yugi let their fingers become laced, allowing him to slip the shirt slowly over his head. The small teen raised his arms for him so that he could roll it off him completely. The red-eyed teen looked at him, something hovering in the back of his gaze. It was small, bordering warmth. But it was also something that Yugi had never seen before.

The spell broke. His eyes had lowered to his wound. Yugi felt something inside of him coil and grow cold. He had not even noticed the existence of it until Yami had turned away. Now he felt it, cold and sore, almost aching with need to be restored. He wondered what it was, if it was something beyond himself.

"I can dress it for you," he murmured, soft and quiet. He was nearly inaudible as the smaller boy watched him. He looked surprisingly relaxed, even staring at a hole in his side.

Yugi risked a glance down towards it, encouraged by the lack of distress on the other's face. But his own eyes grew wide and startled. The skin was shredded in a wide arc, as if the dogs had been trying to feast on him rather than harm him. The flesh around the red, bleeding muscle was swollen, irritated, with bits of both white and puffy pink. The muscle was raw, inflamed, and it hurt to look at it for more than a moment. Strands of hair and lint stuck to the surface of it in a black web across one side.

"That looks disgusting."

"You're lucky it wasn't deeper."

He was also lucky that it truly wasn't bleeding as badly as it had been. He could feel the faintest of tingles around the edges, pronouncing its attempts to heal. He licked his lips and then pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

"Do you really think you can dress it?"

"I've watched you do mine."

Yugi felt his stomach clench. They would have to look at his wrists again. They would probably have to clean and disinfect again.

"I know what to do."

He bit his lip and then nodded. He hadn't really assumed Yami didn't, but it had felt better to ask. Something about hearing him confirm it had settled some of his smaller nerves. "Okay." He paused, hesitating for a moment, then narrowed his eyes and shook his head slightly. "Then I'll do yours and get us something to eat."

Yami looked at him for a moment, an argument brewing in his eyes briefly, and then nodded slightly with a stiff motion. "Very well."

 **So, the electricity thing. I don't remember all of my research on this one, but I remember reading a bunch on the experiment about the frog legs twitching when the dead frog was shocked with electricity. For the wolves, they take it a bit farther. The lycanthropy makes them harder to kill, as well as organ failure to fully develop. Because of this, when shocked with electricity, it tends to circulate throughout the body until it eventually winds up restarting the organs.**

 **It's also linked in with bioelectricity, which is the concept that every muscle contraction or movement produces electricity in any animal in the world. The animals that can detect the bioelectricity have an ability called electroreception. That's what sharks and eels and other underwater animals possess. The only two mammals to possess the ability are called monotremes, and they're going to be the platypus and the echidna.**

 **Anyways, so, the concept for the wolves is this. When they are shocked by electricity, their bodies can potentially store it within muscles. It causes the wolves to basically enter a comatose state in which the electricity becomes stored in the nervous system through a set of disc-shaped, electricity-producing cells. After a certain amount of time, this series of cells (over a thousand) will begin to react and force the organs to restart themselves. For the sake of not going too far into details and being an even BIGGER nerd, the concept is based a lot on the way an electric eel produces its charge. Just to be clear, though, this is based off the way it happens, but it's not one hundred percent accurate.**

 **Anyways, in the state of being revived through this method, the wolves are extremely feral due to being unable to recognize their surroundings and their senses slowly but surely returning to them. In that state they're very likely to kill anything that moves.**

 **As for why Yami did not react that way to Yugi, it's explained in the next chapter. But he reacted negatively to Otogi and Mai being present there and WAS prepared to lash out if they got close to him.**

 **As for the greenhouse, from what I can find of it, greenhouses in Hokkaido seem to be relatively new (I could be wrong, so don't quote me). Anyways, so, point being, a lot of the greenhouses are more or less centered around the natural hot springs. The thermal energy is being harnessed to grow things such as mangoes, tomatoes and they're beginning to run tests as to whether they can grow asparagus.**

 **The most I could find of one was in Furano. And the other was the University of Hokkaido. Anyways, so the back story of the greenhouse in this area (still within the mountain range, further east than anything) is that it simply did not work. It was too much work for the citizens of Domino and so they eventually left it to become rundown and abandoned. The hunter took this, stripped it down to a metal grid kind of flooring and used the generators as a way of confusing the wolves into a panic in which he could then manage to shoot them before the electricity had to get higher in voltage. He'd been doing it for years, by the way. Yugi just never knew because he was still considered more or less completely human. When he showed symptoms (which was his inability to blend in with others due to his lack of blush in the cold and his paranoia which developed so rapidly that he kept running and looking over his shoulder), the hunter turned his sights on him.** **Now…as for whether the hunter knew of Yami or was involved in retrieving Atem? You'll find out later~**

 **And, on a side note, Yugi has a standard rain gutter, by the way, not a rain chain as other homes in Japan do.**


	28. Exhibits

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day (no update on June 2nd)**

 **Chapter Warnings: Misuse of Medication, Implied/Suspected Pedophilia, Character Death**

 **Okay, so! The protein powder Yugi is referring to is one I ran across a while ago. I don't really care to put the name up, just that what Yugi says about it is what I've found online. It's claimed to taste a lot like pancake batter, that it doesn't mix all that well sometimes, and is said to have been the best weight gain supplement from 2009-2011.**

 **So, Yami kind of hinted earlier in the story that he basically has issues gaining and keeping weight or losing his hunger while consuming human food. Here's why: the chemicals in the food; preservatives, things of that nature, get completely cycled out, so in that way the body loses energy working it out of the system. Yami's body, when wounded or harmed in any manner (though especially through the forceful rate of Change he pushed himself through in the chapter prior), tends to metabolize food at a much faster rate. Due to this, he could probably eat as much food as Yugi would have stocked in the house and STILL remain in a state of starvation. He could potentially starve to death due to the food not being enough to fill him and being unable to hunt if he were too weak to change and maintain his energy.**

 **If you've noticed, however, Yugi has only ever really made him lighter meals (pancakes, light and fluffy, eggs, lean protein, protein shakes, quickly metabolized). In doing so, had he failed to drug him, Yami would have been left hungrier than could be maintained between the two of them. In the absence of the drugs to put him to sleep, Yami could potentially metabolize a four course meal of any kind in under about ten minutes. At that rate, Yami could feel full for only about twenty seconds to five minutes, try to find food again, and begin to waste away more due to loss of energy and no steady dietary staple to subdue it.**

 **Now, for this chapter, Yugi brings up the densest foods I could find while looking up the UNHEALTHIEST, FATTIEST Japanese meals. Tonkatsu is double-fried pork cutlet, tempura shrimp rolls are sushi, the gyoza (potstickers) are deep-fried and full of vegetables and pork. The three of them are the UNHEALTHIEST, FATTIEST foods I could find online and if I remember right, they also had some of the highest calorie counts (tonkatsu- 313, tempura rolls- 508, fried potstickers- 214). Anyways, Yugi brings up denser takeout food in order to combat Yami's body potentially metabolizing too quickly for him to keep up. The grease and fat does well to fill him up and slow him down even before he gives him the medicine and protein shake. The grease slows the progression of digestion drastically, stretching it out for hours.**

 **By the way, the pedophilia NEVER HAPPENED. It's a misconstrued thought/perception of a somewhat rather possibly…questionable relationship between a family friend and Yugi himself. Again, it NEVER HAPPENED. But it was suspected.**

 **Okay, so, research says this. The age of consent in Japan IS technically thirteen. But it's misconstrued in a way. See, as far as I can find, on top of this law is one to protect minors (obscenity statutes). That law is stretched to allow each prefecture a certain age of which THEY decree the child capable of having consensual sex. Some areas of Japan it's sixteen, others seventeen or eighteen. It's explained in more detail in this chapter and a later chapter in the story, both of which it is Yugi and Yami conversing about it. Both of these discussions also involve mentions/implications of pedophilia, but again, seeing as it never happened, both conversations drift more towards the age of consent.**

 **Beyond that, again, research leads me to think that the age of twenty-one is when they are considered adults, especially if they should still be living under the same roof as their parents. As far as that goes, though, I skimmed research in order to get more writing done. So, if I'm wrong, I'm sorry and totally apologize for misrepresenting the information.**

 **Okay, so, onto another topic altogether. The Honshu and Hokkaido wolves are SAID to be extinct, but people still claim that they've seen them running around in certain areas (more so the Honshu area than Hokkaido but I DID see a couple of sites that claimed the Ezo wolf had been sighted somewhere north of Sapporo). Regardless, anyways, the point is that, for the sake of the story, the wolves are still considered somewhat sacred within Domino, even if they were eradicated from the area. Because of this, the exhibit is opened to explain why or why not they could still possibly exist within Japan.**

Chapter XXVIII: Exhibits

 _Work Log Entry XXVIII: September, 1998_

 _September 11_

 _His personality has developed a bit more. Exposure to the other wolves for the first time has ensured that he knows the basic functions and hierarchy of a wolf pack._

 _The odd thing is that he chose the three loners in the pack to acquaint himself with rather than the "alpha" pair who so often bully the others._

 _One of these loners is his father. We are investigating the possibility that the Pure-Blood recognizes his scent or knows him in any way._

Yugi pressed his lips into a thin line. The argument with his mother had not gone well. She'd gone from his issue of lying straight to the fact that he had skipped school. She had not, however, pointed her finger at the idea of his friends influencing him wrongly—because she knew how great they were—or even said that he was going along the path of a delinquent.

He was too smart to do that. And she knew him too well. She trusted him. But she had let the conversation die, then told him to leave, a tactic that still never failed to make him cringe. She'd been doing it since he was six and it still held the same power now as it had then.

He sighed and shook his head, starting up the stairs. He felt like he had been standing there at the bottom step for hours. But he had abandoned his usual enthusiasm for a much shallower sense of frustration. The argument was still ringing in his ears, especially since he had snapped that he was staying home then too. She had gone quiet, staring at him, and then finally told him to leave.

So he made his way up the stairs now, somewhat exhausted, and pushed the door of his room open. Instantly his eyes sought out the form lying on top of the comforter. The other wolf had still refused to lie under the sheets with him, which he was perfectly fine with. But it would have been easier for him to stem any bleeding if his arms opened again. Since they'd been charred apart violently by the electricity, his skin had both swollen and become incredibly infected. He had been forced to open them again, draining the pus, and then clean them several times to get rid of what he hoped would be the last of the infected tissue.

He had lied awake longer than he thought possible after they had both taken medication. He'd stared at the other boy, watched his arms, imagining more often than not that the blood was seeping through. He'd nearly panicked twice, then relaxed when he realized it was simply his imagination or the beginning of a hallucination that never truly formed.

He relaxed again. "You look a little better," he announced, giving him a small grin. It was a struggle to stay reassuring, especially when the other boy hardly seemed to notice. His red eyes flickered towards him, then to his arms, then his left leg. Very dismissively, the taller teen shrugged. Yugi rolled his eyes. "Nothing? Not a single thing to say?"

The other boy shook his head. At first it seemed he was truly going to remain silent, the thought making Yugi's breath come in narrow groans. He had been fearful that Yami might adopt the silence again as he had when they had first met. He had wondered and grown incredibly terrified of it. His mouth was so heavily blistered and wounded, however, that Yugi could not blame him if he did so around waiting for it to heal.

Then, with a sideways glance at him, Yami muttered, "I feel better."

Yugi frowned, tilting his head. "Do you really?" he inquired quietly, shaking his head when Yami looked towards him more completely. His eyes had grown slightly sharp once more beneath his long lashes.

He lowered his lids halfway. "I am still exhausted. And my legs ache, my mouth is still bloodied, but I am okay." He paused for a moment, watching him, and then closed his eyes completely, tilting head slightly to the side. "But it is just from the events from yesterday. I will heal."

Yugi remembered, unconsciously, despite his better efforts not to, the way that Yami's face had been lined with blood, the shine of red against his white teeth. He remembered wiping the blood from his mouth as gently as he could. He watched him for a moment, then smiled slightly.

"That's great." He hesitated, for a moment thinking to reach out, to perhaps see if he could make Yami open his mouth so that he could see how they might heal. He wanted, for the smallest of seconds, to perhaps touch his jaw and see if he might recoil as he had the day before. "I'm glad you're going to be doing better. Is there anything else…?"

The taller wolf turned to face him slowly, filling in the blanks of his incomplete question. "You really are very kind, aren't you?" he muttered, shaking his head slightly. "Are you truly so desperate to see me healed?"

Yugi pursed his lips. "I don't like seeing anyone in pain, especially a friend," he admitted. But he would have also tried to assist a random person on the streets if ever something happened to them in front of him. He had helped someone on several occasions when such things popped up.

The wolf studied him for a long time, then turned away with a small nod. "Loyalty is always a good thing to possess."

When he did not speak further, the smaller teen frowned and tilted his head in question. Was he upset somehow? Then again, Yami wasn't truly very talkative. Half the time mild conversation was like trying to pull teeth from his companion's mouth. The silence stretched and Yugi shifted his weight. Slowly the red eyes flickered towards him again. For a moment he regarded him silently, and then he smiled faintly, a ghostly tug of his lips.

"Did I say something wrong?"

Yugi immediately shook his head, but the slight sense of frustration did not leave him. "No, I just…I guess I was expecting you to talk a little more," he admitted, all but huffing the words out. He frowned at him when his lips pulled from a smile to a widening smirk. "What?"

"I just find it funny. You never ask anything of me but my attention and sometimes mild conversation. I find it somewhat strange that someone as small and…somewhat lonely has such kindness in them."

Yugi's eyes widened.

Lonely?

He blinked, then swallowed thickly. Yami merely studied him for a moment longer. Then his red eyes drifted towards the window. He looked almost as if he might get up and go towards it, but pushed away such thought as he turned away again.

"I do not mean that negatively. I simply… Loneliness tends to make humans bitter. And yet, despite your abundance of it, you seem relatively content to show people the opposite of what they expect of you." Yami paused, then slowly turned his head. His eyes were sharper than knives, with a force stronger than even his jaws. They glittered with such frostiness it made his heart hammer for a moment. His lips tugged into something of a smirk, bitter and harsh. "It's rather surprising to see someone so lost as to their own identity as you to be so gentle and open in heart, Code Name Atem."

He felt almost dizzy when the name passed his lips. His eyes stretched wide and his mouth opened and closed twice. They looked at each other, silent as a stare of pure coldness bore into one of startled disarray.

"I'm…sorry." They looked at each other, that sharpened, almost hostile stare making his spine tighten. The small teen choked on a breath, then bit his lip until it began to bleed. "I…I should have told you."

Yami narrowed his gaze, then shook his head slightly. "I suppose it does not matter," he stated quietly, "because, if that is who you wish to identify yourself as to others, then that is your right."

He opened his mouth.

"But I like Yugi better."

The admission was so soft he nearly missed it. Then he pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth as Yami tipped his head to the side and offered him a small smile.

"So, don't lose sight of that if you decide to help them. Please, don't lose sight of it."

Yugi was too stunned to speak, but nodded mutely moments later, eyes wide. The taller teen nodded slightly in response, then lowered his eyes and looked at the carpet. The heat turned on, clicking so that the vents vibrated gently. The small boy hated how inevitable it was that he notice it each time, unlike before he'd come to be infected so fully.

Before, he could have ignored it altogether.

Now it was as heavy in his mind as Yami's words.

"Will you…?" Yugi trailed off, then faltered completely when the other's head tipped towards him but his eyes did not rise from the floor. For a moment the smaller boy tried falteringly to find new words, but they stuck in his throat as the red-eyed lycanthrope finally looked at him again. He was waiting, gaze curious but patient though a lingering shadow of hurried urging colored his irises. He still struggled for the words, then opened and closed his mouth twice more. Finally, with what felt like colossal effort, he whispered, "Will you help me if I do lose sight of that?"

Yami was silent for a moment, studying him. His eyes peered both at him and through him, the distance in them miles ahead of anything Yugi had ever known. The red gaze shifted, then burned, and flickered with great strength as he looked at him more pointedly. He sat up a bit taller for a moment, then shifted his legs as if to brace himself to get up. But be did not bother to rise and instead his eyes seemed to focus and grip his with a powerful and irrational surge of strength.

"I doubt you will ever need it."

Yugi would have been proud to have Yami say such a thing if it was not for the way he continued to stare, red eyes sharpening further. He seemed abruptly restless, as if the very idea upset him to the desire of pacing about himself. But he did not move and instead stared at him intently.

"But, should you have reason for it, I will help you, Yugi."

His stomach tossed and he smiled faintly. He was using his name very pointedly now, as if to reassure him that he was not simply Code Name Atem. The thought was both relieving and overwhelming as they looked at each other.

"Thank you."

Yami nodded, at first appearing as if he might open his mouth and say something further, but then turned away again. He nodded a second time, then looked at his nails, picking at the flecks beneath them. The bandages felt oddly restraining and the flesh along his wrists was pale and then bright red, throbbing, as he glanced at it. He had never seen that happen before, even when they were healing…

"Don't bend your wrists that far," Yugi blurted out, eyes wide. "You'll cut off the circulation in your arms!"

He blinked and then very slowly moved his hands away from each other, relaxing their posture with a frown. He rested them haphazardly on his legs, drumming his fingers against his knees. His left leg was riddled with pain when he repeated the gesture. It was like the skin was freshly bruised and each touch made it further bloodied. He allowed his lids to become hooded again, eyes flickering towards the window again.

"I'm so sorry. I thought I had told you," he muttered, biting his lip. "I mean, I thought I had warned you. I didn't realize. Shit, I'm sorry Yami…"

Yami raised his head and turned to him fully. "Why should you apologize? I am the one who did it. And I believe you did warn me. I think I was medicated at the time, however." The memory—or thought, the figment of his imagination, maybe—was but a blur in the back of his head. He could not completely understand his words, a mere babble of noise. But the tone was gentle, though it almost always was, and he supposed that perhaps those were the words his mind found so incomprehensible. "It does not truly matter regardless. I would have eventually lost my care for such sensation and moved my hands."

Yugi bit his lip harder, watching him closely, and then lowered his eyes with a small frown. "I should have warned you again. I mean, when you took the medicine you were already almost asleep on your feet. I wasn't even sure you'd be awake when I came back with it," he admitted. He tugged on his pajama sleeve and closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, they were focused on the carpet fibers. "But I guess that's…"

He shrugged, unable to think of anything else to say. He pursed his lips, then looked at him from beneath his lashes. Yami was visibly restless, eyes flickering about the room for a moment before shooting to his. The red gaze widened slightly before he frowned and tipped his head to the side in question.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Yes."

The certainty in his tone made the smaller boy feel better, but the tension did not fully desert him. He drew in a deep breath, then pulled his sleeves over both of his hands and licked his lips. "Why did he choose to electrocute us?" he finally muttered.

Yami did not seem to breathe for a moment, staring at him blankly before finally looking away again. "It's one of the easiest ways to kill us and make sure we _stay_ dead. It normally only lasts for a few minutes. But it's long enough that they can start skinning. And if the wolf comes back during that, then the pain will normally kill them. Especially because the electricity can kill the nerves and sometimes the rest of the cells cannot regenerate and heal." He shook his head, turning to peer at Yugi now. The intensity of his gaze was like hellfire as it seared into his. "But, being as you are immortal, the attack would simply be enough to knock you unconscious after forcing your heart to a stop. Then, when you would recover, you would be feral. You'd most likely attack anything and everything around you until you were in a peaceful enough setting to calm down."

Yugi frowned, nibbling his bottom lip. "Mai said the same thing about you. She said you would be feral and thought you'd attack me…" He hesitated. "Why didn't you?"

The taller teen blinked. "You were talking to me when I was still trying to recover. Your voice was something I recognized. It helped me remember who you were, that you weren't there to harm me." He shifted his legs again, this time gripping his knees with nails so sharp that they seemed to shred the fibers of his jeans. "If you had not been doing such a thing, I would have probably torn your throat out for being so close."

The brutal truth of the statement gave Yugi pause. But it also made his insides feel both warm and surprisingly knotted. He looked at him, somewhat bewildered and curious, and then shook his head slightly. He could see Yami doing such a thing. Even in his weakened state, he could see him being powerful enough to raise his head and tear into an opponent. He shivered but the thought was somehow relieving as well.

Yami could take care of himself.

Yugi had always known he could.

But the reminder did him well.

"Okay."

The other boy watched him for a moment, expression somewhat cynical. "Wow, you seem more at ease with death than even me now," he scoffed, rolling his eyes; Yugi's gaze grew wide and a bright blush began to color his cheeks. "What happened? You came to realize you are Code Name Atem and life is suddenly very hard and uncomfortable for you? You wish for death now?"

Yugi flinched at his hostile tone, shaking his head rapidly. But there was something in Yami's eyes which made his stomach hurt and his mouth grow dry, the marrow in his bones freeze and the breath in his lungs catch.

"No," he managed to breathe out, flustered further by the way his eyes flashed and seemed to burrow straight into his soul. "Of course not! I…I just…"

Yami searched his eyes rapidly, narrowing his gaze as he waited expectantly. Coldly the other boy regarded him, voice a snarl when he spat, "Being Code Name Atem does not make anything harder or easier. It's merely a name, damn it! And immortality is not a reason to risk your life senselessly!"

He blanched, eyes widening drastically. "I wasn't—I just meant… Yami, it… I asked what they did when they electrocuted a werewolf. I wasn't… And you said… I just meant… It…" He trailed off, struggling for a moment. "I meant that I understood what you were…"

The other wolf stared at him, face twisted with a bitter and cynical expression before he looked swiftly away again. He had turned his entire face towards the other wall, hands clenched on his knees. "I know. I am sorry. I shouldn't be…snapping at you like this. I…I simply… I was not thinking."

Yugi stared at him, fixated by the way his shoulders seemed too thin, his arms too lanky. Had the muscle he'd previously seen been wasted away by the Change the day before?

"You're thinner than yesterday," he muttered without thinking, flinching when Yami jerked, head snapping around and eyes wide. But when he did not object, nor open his mouth to interrupt, the smaller teen skimmed his hand lightly over his own wounded side.

The touch was barely noticeable and he did not feel it too terribly, but it still made his stomach twist. His flank shuddered lightly. Had he been harmed more, would his body have done the same to him? Would he look so unnerving and small, like he had not eaten well in days? The muscles were almost completely gone, yet it did nothing to push away the predatory aura he possessed…

"You look really small. Are you hungry? Fuck, I forgot about breakfast…"

Yami gave him a startled look. "You're cursing a lot more…"

"I'm upset. It happens sometimes," he snapped before blushing at the bewildered gleam which entered the other's shocked gaze. Yami did nothing more than stare, unblinking and wide-eyed. Yugi shivered and touched his side more forcefully. The pain brought a hideous focus to his mind. "Is this from the shock you got? Is that what happens when you get revived?"

Yami frowned at him, then curled his lip back distastefully. Blood again coated the front of his incisors. The red of them made the smaller boy queasy. He had forgotten to even look for something to numb the pain in his mouth for him.

"I changed prematurely. It was my own fault. I should have waited until my body no longer felt as badly as it did. I should have laid there until my temperature had regulated itself at the very least. And then I should have rested before I bothered to try it. But I was not willing to stay there. And I chose to do it."

"But…what happened exactly? I don't…"

"My metabolism was too high. It began to burn away at what muscle and fat I had. The Change spurred it further in order to sustain itself. My body was forced to sacrifice some of itself to keep my organs from rotting." He turned away, picking at the edges of the bandage on his right wrist. "As you mentioned, Shizuka told you that the body would sacrifice itself for the womb, for the baby inside, yes? It is the same case when it is weakened and must be forced through the Change. It is quick and instantaneous that the body chooses."

He shivered. "Your organs from rotting…" Yugi closed his eyes tightly, then shook his head sharply. "It's… Damn it, every time I make progress with getting you better, something fucks it up again!"

Yami turned to look at him for a long minute, but the words on his tongue were something he could never bring himself to say and he forcefully shunned them from his mind as well.

"I will be okay," he promised instead. "I will heal. I have had several encounters like this before I ever even came across you. It's not too big a deal."

He shook his head, eyes on him now, blazing and frustrated. "It shouldn't have happened!" he snapped, flustered. "It shouldn't have had to happen, Yami."

He shrugged dismissively. "I will not argue with you further on this matter. The fact is that I chose to do such a thing. I chose the moment I realized that your home was the safest place we could go. Now, as far as I am concerned, this discussion is over. You may continue to say whatever you wish to about it, but know that I will not answer you."

Yugi gaped at him. " _What_? A conversation isn't over just because someone says so!"

"It is when one ignores you. I will not speak more on this subject." Yami turned his head and gave him a long, cold warning look. "So you will, by all means, be speaking to only yourself and the dead air."

They stared at each other for a moment. Then Yugi shook his head sharply. He glared at him but Yami did not budge in even the slightest. Their eyes were locked and the tension was becoming stifling. The air seemed to grow heavier. Yami curled his lips back, blood on his teeth, and snarled low in his throat. The smaller teen did not mirror the movement, but did not lower his eyes either.

The red-eyed lycanthrope's patience wore thin.

He was on his feet, snarling lower until it was but a hiss of noise. His eyes were flashing with abundant warning, his teeth bared and blood covering them more as the raw skin tore and shredded further. His balance was caught on his right leg more than his left but it was his fingers which were twitching. His fingers were folded slightly, the lycanthrope preparing to lash out with his sharp nails.

Yugi backed up a step when it seemed the taller teen might advance. Then he slowly took another. Yami did not come forward. Instead, he looked at him, snarling, and very slowly stepped back as well. The smaller teen paced another step back, then forced his jaw together into a tight clench. The pain was the only way he could make himself lower his eyes.

He knew he couldn't take Yami on, even with his wounds. He was too small, too inexperienced, and he acknowledged Yami knew some way to counteract his weakness. He would never have survived for so long if he did not.

"I'm going to go make breakfast," he spat out, teeth still clenched forcefully. He was glaring furiously at the floor, his teeth bared when he turned towards the door.

Yami could do nothing more than watch him go. Should Yugi have come within range of him, he was not sure he could have stopped himself. In his weakened state, every word was a threat. Every breath was a painful promise. Every glance in his direction was a search for further ailment.

His rational mind told him that it was Yugi he was lashing out at. But it did nothing to stop him. Common sense was not what the wolf thrived in while in pain. It was brute strength and cunning, then the task of fleeing. That was what kept them alive.

He still felt guilt gnaw at his insides, however. If he could have stopped himself, found the strength to fight such instincts, he would have. It was only for Yugi, in exchange for his kindness, but he would have attempted it. Yet, he could not bear to do so, instead lowering his eyes to the floor as the exhaustion bore down on him.

How long had he even come to know Yugi?

He could not quite recall. The thought made him feel sick.

How long ago had he first come across him?

How long was it before he had come to his house?

How long had he been there?

Wasn't it time to heal and flee as he always did?

He had never bothered to stay in one place for longer than necessary.

Yugi was right. Every time he healed, something else happened. He got further hurt. He reopened wounds. He got infections. He…

Yami was doing it to himself, he realized belatedly, eyes widening. He was hurting himself on purpose. He was struggling to make himself unable to leave. Because the loneliness was bitter and ate away at what was left of him. It was _well_ deserved, but he still could not find it in himself to fully accept it. And his reprieve from it was amazing to him.

He felt the shame crash through him in a tidal wave. He was a fool. He was an absolute idiot. He shivered, refusing to look up as he heard the smaller boy work at making them something to eat. He would have puked his distress if he had anything inside of him to do so.

He looked away when Yugi came back in with the plates. His stomach gargled desperately but he could barely bring himself to smell it. The unearthly combination of shame and guilt made the very idea of eating disgust him. He pressed his teeth into his cheek forcefully. When Yugi paused and then shuffled closer to him, he had to very visibly resist the urge to flinch away from him altogether.

"Hey, what's wrong?"

"Nothing." _Everything_. "I just…" _I don't know_.

"I'm not mad at you, if you're worried about that. I wasn't… I was just upset. I don't want to fight you…" Yugi paused, then exhaled loudly. "Look, I promise it's okay. There's nothing wrong, okay? I just… Come on, let's eat and then we can sit around and talk or something."

He shook his head slightly, unnerved by his apology. He forced himself not to flinch away when Yugi came to his side and extended the plate. The smell was that of eggs, light and fluffy, and some toast. He shrugged, mumbling, "I was too tired to make pancakes. But hey, we can order out tonight. If we get something unhealthy enough, your weight will be back in a couple weeks' time."

Yami finally raised and turned his head towards him. With a robotic sense of touch, he reached out and took the plate from him. "Thank you."

The smaller teen nearly scowled with frustration. The other boy was clearly unhappy, more so than even when he had left him, but now it was different and much too powerful to allow him to remain comfortable. "I also did some research a while back, when I was still looking at the protein powders," he continued quietly, licking his lips and watching him closely. "I found one that seems good enough. The ones who have bothered to review it gave it high marks. And I'm hoping it will work better than trying to get pills… Until I can get it in the mail, though, we're stuck doing what we were before. So, when I'm not feeling like my limbs will fall off, I'll start making pancakes again and then we'll binge on fatty food and you'll drink protein shakes with medicine."

Yami gripped the plate tightly, fingers straining. His nails made a sharp clicking noise but both of them ignored it. The relapse into their old routine made his skin quiver slightly. He nodded after a moment, looking down. "How long do you think it will take to get here?"

"Two days at the most. I was planning to pay the fee for whatever one proved the fastest," he said with a shrug. "There's another one that I was looking at too. It didn't have the same number of reviews, but they were both high-end. The first one was named the best weight gain supplement for three years in a row, though, so I figured that one would be best."

Yami looked at him for a few seconds, then to his food again. His eyes narrowed and he pursed his lips. "You did all of that the first time you had go out and get some protein mix?" he asked quietly.

Yugi nodded. "Yeah. But at the time I wasn't really sure that you would stay after you were okay to leave again," he admitted quietly, looking way almost shamefully. "And it might not have been expensive, but the stuff I got was a lot cheaper either way."

His lips pulled into a slight grin. So the smaller teen had thought to cheapen his expenses and hold reserve should he have taken off in the middle of the night. Yami's grin pulled wider, into a sly smirk of amusement. He would have done the same in a heartbeat.

"A bunch of reviews described it as tasting like pancake batter, and said it doesn't always mix all that well," he continued, taking a seat on the desk and kicking his legs lightly. "But, it won't be forever, and I figure if it tastes bad, we load it down with a _bunch_ of other things—coffee, chocolate, strawberry, banana, you name it."

He looked up at him again, shifting the eggs on his plate with his fork. "Okay." He paused after a long moment, then shook his head slightly. "Is your mother not going to be upset that you are not at school?"

Yugi hummed and reached over for his own plate which he had set at his hip. He took a bite of toast, looking at him pointedly as if he expected him to follow his lead, and then chewed and swallowed. His eyes were boring into his, increasingly frustrated. "We argued a little and then she told me to go away," he replied simply, then narrowed his eyes, "but you aren't the only one who got their ass kicked yesterday. I think that means I should rest a little too."

Yami might have cringed if he could not see the slight amusement in his eyes. He smiled faintly, then tilted his head. "You just got a chunk torn out of you. I literally died."

"Yeah, for all of five minutes!"

"Doesn't matter how long, just that it happened!"

"You're such a dork."

Yami snickered. "The pot calling the kettle black."

Yugi swiped at him playfully, then turned back to his food. "Shut up," he grumbled teasingly, picking at his eggs.

* * *

He picked at the pork and vegetable potstickers on his plate. He'd always loved them as a kid and he had not had them in a long while, at least a handful of years. But Yami's loss of weight had done well to give him an excuse. The oily fried batter and the heaviness of it had done well to fill his stomach. But Yami had eaten nearly both servings he'd ordered, most of the tonkatsu and shrimp tempura rolls. Yugi had expected that when it came down to it, but it still somehow managed to surprise him. He'd told him to skip out on trying to eat it with chopsticks, in order for him to be able to eat more before he realized he'd become full again.

Yugi smiled faintly and Yami finally put his plate away on the desk next to him. Unlike the smaller teen, he had refused to put the china on the bed. It was almost as if he were afraid to put it there in case it tipped. But the plate he'd put there had not moved even once so he found it slightly more amusing than he probably should have.

"So, you're finally full?"

Yami glanced at him, but his eyes had to drag themselves first from the television and then from his plate. He blinked, then shrugged, instead murmuring, "That was good. Thank you."

The reply made his lips purse. And it was not as if he was oblivious to the way his eyes had strayed formerly. He stretched the plate out to him, though they were only inches apart. "Here, I'm full," he said with a shrug as the taller boy frowned at him. "I don't want to eat anymore. I think that newscast ruined my appetite."

He took the plate from him, but did not bother to take a bite, instead moving the fork about in a small circle. He frowned again, watching him, and they both glanced back at the screen for a moment. Yami had all but forgotten about the announcement. It had been Yugi to pay the most attention to it, because Yami had been too busy eating and ignoring much else.

He'd more or less drowned it out.

And he'd only realized it was important because of the way Yugi stiffened beside him.

The smaller teen picked slightly at the edge of his shirt sleeve, a thermal pajama top which almost looked like a regular sweater. "Sorry," he muttered, frowning when he bumped his elbow against Yami's arm.

"What was the announcement about?"

He faltered, eyes widening. "You didn't hear it?"

"I was preoccupied with shoveling food down my throat. And I was not interested in the channel flipping. I tend to ignore things when I am uninterested."

Yugi blinked, then frowned and tilted his head. "There were coffins dug up and bodies half-eaten from that cemetery we were in when I ran across…" He shook his head slightly, forcing the image out of his head as quickly as he could manage.

He continued to push the food around for a moment, eyes darkening thoughtfully. "Where you asked me if I thought she and Shizuka were related in terms of ties to Code Name Atem, before you realized you were Code Name Atem. Yes, I remember." He narrowed his gaze and his lashes cast dark gray shadows which looked like the reflection of mountains against the surface of a pool, jagged and immense. "More graves have been dug up?"

Yugi could not remember if he had mentioned it to him beforehand or not, but he nodded. Even if he hadn't, Yami must have noticed the grave the other three lycanthropes had seemed to be uncovering. He watched him for a moment, frowning more pointedly. "Yeah, they said that they're all…older graves too. No one can seem to find any connection aside from the fact that it looks like dogs did it."

Yami nodded slightly, eyes sharp. "I do not know what a hellhound would want with older corpses," he admitted quietly, "nor why any lycanthropes might either."

Yugi frowned. "Do they get anything from the older ones? Or just the freshest?" he asked uncomfortably. Maybe if they could figure out what it was that made them go there, they could find a way to make them stop. They hadn't gotten too close to it, but it was only a matter of time before one of them dug up his grandmother. And that was something that he had to prevent.

He shook his head. "I do not presume to know much about them, Yugi. Hellhounds are not my subspecies. As such they are not my most knowledgeable of subjects," he admitted, frowning. "But I do know that there is a chemical compound which forms in the human body hours after someone has passed. It comes from many of the preservatives and additives and hormones which are put in their food. A healthier person would have much less. A person to binge on fast food would have considerably more. Every human will always have it, however."

"But, do you know what it does for them?"

He felt sick. "Beyond allowing them to become incorporeal? No. I am sorry."

"That's okay. I don't expect you to know _everything_. But at least tell me if you know whether the compound would have dissolved when the bodies have been buried for years. Because that graveyard hasn't been used for a while. And now it's suddenly being dug up and they're all eating the corpses. And I can't understand why if they don't have it anymore…"

Yami shook his head. "I would think with decomposition, it would certainly mean that the chemical would deteriorate. I do not know how it would be that a body would retain it in any way. It seems unlikely by any means." He paused. "Their hunt for older bodies is beyond me. I do not pretend to understand such notions."

He signed quietly. "Most of the bodies dug up had to have been within the last few years, right? I mean…why else would they…?"

He shook his head again, frowning. "Yugi, I do not know." He hesitated, then put into the air the only option he could think to consider. "Why do you not ask Valon? He is a hellhound, remember?"

Yugi blinked, eyes stretching wide at the concept. He _could_ ask Valon. But would he truly bother to answer him? He had been rather frustrated and put off when he had come by to see him. He had no idea if it was a reaction to Yami for whatever reason, or if it was something far beyond that. And the thought of asking or confronting him again made his stomach twist.

He shook his head, turning away from the other boy. The fork scraped against the plate lightly when he moved a dumpling again. "No, I don't really think I want to hear more about how I'm not meant to exist," he said bitterly, ignoring the way Yami stiffened briefly beside him. "I'd rather not have to be reminded of that fact again. I think I've heard it enough times already."

He hesitated, then put the plate in his lap, frowning. "I'm sorry. I didn't—"

"No, it's not your fault. You only met him once and he told you that neither of us—or even he—are meant to exist. So, I mean, it's not like you could know he's told me that before."

"He shouldn't have said it in the first place."

"Why not? Code Name Atem _shouldn't_ exist," Yugi said, raising his gaze to his, facing him with such strength in his eyes that Yami stiffened considerably once more. "He shouldn't. He was brought around by experiments on innocent people and wolves. The fact that they even managed it is beyond me. His name is one large acronym for how unnatural he is… His existence is something that is…actually insanely difficult to wrap my head around."

Yami studied him for a moment. "I'm sorry…"

He shook his head again, this time smiling gently. "It's not your fault. And maybe if I had known before, I wouldn't have found him saying that so…damaging," he murmured, shrugging. "But I think because I didn't know, it freaked me out a lot more than it should have."

He nodded. "I can understand."

Yugi turned away again, looking at the screen. "Now hurry up and finish the dumplings already. The scraping noise is starting to give me a headache," he complained playfully. "Do you think you'll still have room for a protein shake in a couple of hours?"

"Yes, in a couple of hours."

"Okay, good."

He listened to him finish the last of what was on his plate, then put the plate on the desk next to his. They sat there until the movie ended and the next began. The romantic comedy made Yugi wrinkle his nose and the snickers beside him only came whenever he did so. He grinned slightly, then got to his feet.

"I'm going to go start on a shake. I'll be back with it in a few minutes, okay?" he murmured, raising a brow when Yami blinked at him in surprise for a moment. "What? Did you not want one anymore?"

"No, I…I just forgot you were going to make one."

In all actuality, it was not that Yami had forgotten he would but that that he had assumed that maybe the small teen would decide otherwise. After all the food he'd eaten and settling down for the last two hours, he had thought maybe he would think it enough that a shake would be unnecessary. It wouldn't be; he knew that, but he hadn't been sure Yugi would.

He smiled, tilting his head to the side. "Of course not! How could I forget that you need a protein shake?" he snorted. "Besides, the weight gain mixture is going to be coming in soon. It should actually be here tomorrow morning before either of us get up."

He nodded a little, though he was not entirely sure of what to say, if anything at all. So he watched as the smaller teen turned and trotted off towards the kitchen without a backwards glance.

* * *

The graveyard was lonely where the trees were bare. He kicked his feet as he took the path in front of him, lightly pushing away and scuffing the snow-laden pine needles beneath his feet. His eyes flickered about the ground, the path in front of him long and silver, glittering with an undertone of bright blue. He shivered, shaking his head, and continued walking forward into the clearing. The stones were scattered around, with their light inscriptions of the words marking their lifespans. He hovered at the edge of the area for a moment, then forced himself to start walking again.

He walked around the headstone, stomach churning. For a moment he wanted to turn tail, but his eyes were already reading the gentle engraving he had memorized so long ago. He had not once visited the grave, but the words had been ingrained in his mind through the years. Yugi tilted his head slightly as he stood there. He was far from satisfied to see it. His body felt too small, too weak, as if the cold and the dark, with the light of the waxing moon were bearing down on him heavily.

He startled when a twig snapped. His teeth bared, his head snapped in the direction of the noise. He snarled low in his throat but it did nothing to stop the figure coming towards him. He was practically roaring with the noise as the other came into the clearing as well.

He froze in place, mouth closing and eyes widening as he saw the skinnier form and the handsome face which was stroked my moonlight. The other wolf tilted his head lazily, blinking at him, and then glanced at the stone next to him. "So this is what you wanted to run off on your own to do?" he asked with a raised brow, turning back to him in confusion.

Yugi winced visibly, then pressed the toe of his sneaker into the snow and shifted it to scrape away some of the pine and rotten leaves. He bit his lip as he looked at the taller boy, at the red eyes peering at him with puzzlement, and then ran a hand through his hair. He rocked back and forth on the heels on his sneakers.

"How did you…? I mean, that I had…?"

"I smelled it," he said bluntly, shrugging. When Yugi cringed visibly, he frowned and tilted his head before glancing at the stone in front of him. ' _Michiko Motou, 1928-2011_ '. _Oh_ … He glanced back and forth between this grave and the next, then drew in a deep breath, holding it for several moments before exhaling softly. He'd been near the grave and never even noticed it beforehand. He'd seen that hellhound snatched up the day he'd had that nightmare, where he'd…

Yami shook his head roughly and turned to start away from the grave and towards a neighboring one. Yugi could mourn in peace, should that be what he was doing. He was quiet with his movements, carefully distributing his weight so as not to make too much noise. The thought that other wolves could be close by was not something he planned to overlook. He was halfway to the recently uncovered grave when he heard him.

"…I just didn't know how to explain."

Yami paused and turned to glance at him over his shoulder with a flicker of confusion on his countenance. He blinked, then frowned, and faced him more completely. But the smaller teen was still scraping his shoe against the earth with his head down.

"Explain what? You're visiting a grave. It is not some terrible crime, Yugi."

Yugi shook his head slightly, raising his hands to run them through his hair in apparent distress. "That's not…I mean, I am, but…" He seemed frantic to find the right words, clawing at his hair with his fingers for a moment, and then looked at him desperately. His mouth opened and closed twice and then he shook his head sharply back and forth in frustration. The taller teen frowned, tilting his head, and made his way over to him. His hands caught his wrists, then pulled them down and away from where they had been tugging too harshly.

Very calmly, Yami pressed his hands to the sides of his hips, leaving them to dangle there a moment later, when he was sure the tension was gone from Yugi's arms. "What's wrong? I don't see that anyone has tampered with her grave," he muttered, glancing about himself to make sure. There were not even prints in the snow along the diameter of her grave, the new snow a perfect blanket but for their own footprints. In fact, it looked as if they were the only ones to be there that entire night since the newest case of flurries some hours back.

"It's not…that." Yugi faltered, because he didn't know what else to say, and then swallowed harshly as he looked at the grave again. "I just… Yami, I haven't…"

He tilted his head. "Haven't what?"

"I haven't visited her since…" He opened and closed his mouth, then reached up again, but Yami caught his wrists once more. He stared at him, brow raised, and the smaller teen flushed as he struggled for words. Very bleakly, voice cracking, he muttered, "She died four years ago, when I was twelve."

He grimaced, mind filling in the blanks. "So this is the first time you've come to visit her since the funeral," he murmured, nodding, and then looked towards the trees for a moment. If he remembered right…

His heart began to race for a moment. There it was. He exhaled, long and slow, and then turned back to him. Yugi was far more curious than he was distressed now, though his face was still lined with confusion and uncertainty and clear discomfort.

"What?" the smaller teen asked, turning to look over his shoulder curiously. His eyes flickered about but all he could see was a single large, draping willow several yards back, the only one with its leaves still intact. The draping branches looked like a ledge of sloping snow, bushy in design and layers. He furrowed his brows, then turned back. "You okay?"

"Yes," Yami said quietly, turning his eyes away and instead glancing towards the grave beside them. "Am I right in assuming that it is one of the reasons you fear death so much?"

Yugi blinked, then swallowed hard. "I found her when she'd had the stroke. She was completely still on the floor and I…" He shook his head. "And then when they lowered her into the ground…I just…I couldn't come back here."

"So why are you back here now?"

"Because this is the anniversary and I…I stumbled across it when I was being chased by Haga." Yugi tugged on his hoodie sleeves, licking his lips, and then looked at him for a moment. The red eyes had flickered back towards the willow tree. He glanced back at it as well but turned back again just as quickly. He did not know what captivated Yami so completely as to keep looking at it. "I figured I would…try to see her this time."

Yami tilted his head, eyes sharp and curious for a moment. "I am sorry for following you," he muttered finally. "I wouldn't have had I known this was what you planned to do…"

Yugi blinked, then frowned. " I know you said you didn't want any pills, but…how did you follow me anyways? I thought you'd be out cold…"

The taller teen tore his eyes from the tree, the draping branches, that large trunk and the enormous grooves of the roots which protruded beneath the snow like silvery dunes. His gaze caught his, boring into Yugi's for a moment, and then he narrowed his gaze and offered him a small smile. "I smelled the pills. They had dissolved but I could smell it whenever I went to drink. And it took me a while to sort it out, but I caught the taste of it. So, I waited until you had assumed I was asleep and had left through your window to get up and puke it up." He frowned. "Which was incredibly gross, by the way. It was actually a very hard struggle. I'm not used to trying to do that in this form. I've only ever done it as a wolf, when I needed to run faster and didn't have the energy to do it without…"

Yugi shivered. He'd remembered reading something about vultures doing that in order to fly faster when they were in danger. The thought made his nose wrinkle and his lip curl. "Gross," he grumbled before giving him an awkward smile when he raised a brow in question at the comment. "Sorry. That was my fault anyways. I shouldn't have tried to drug you like that. I just… I wasn't sure I could actually do it and it seemed so important that I just figured it was best that you weren't here. I thought maybe I'd break down or something…"

The other boy shook his head. "It's not a big deal. I would have followed you regardless. It's late, dark, past the curfew, and with everything going on, I would have been worried that you would have gotten hurt in the meantime."

Yami shrugged and glanced towards the willow tree. Something glowed in his gaze, keen against the low light. It burned in the air, harsh and dark, and it made his brows pull slightly together into something mournful. The lines at the edge of his mouth were pulled slightly downwards. He had narrowed his eyes faintly now as well, a brief tuck there, making his irises that much more vibrant.

"Although, I probably would have waited further in the trees if I had known…"

And Yugi realized he meant he would have been tucked up comfortably within those enormous roots which anchored that immense willow. He glanced at it now again, unsure of what more to do, and then turned back. "Do you want to wait somewhere else?"

The taller teen shot him a knowing look, curling his lips back into a slight smile of amusement. "Do you truly have a plan for what you will do here?" he teased.

Face flushed, the smaller boy shook his head slowly. "Not at all."

"Then no, I will stay here with you."

Yugi didn't argue. That made the entire time spent there much less lonely. If Yami was there then it would be easier to simply relax somewhat, because the other knew boundaries and would not press. And he would be easily persuaded to leave him if he truly asked, though the words were far from his tongue.

"I would, um, offer to make you another shake, but my mom would definitely be suspicious of me still being awake. I made a pretty big point of telling her during our argument that I was still taking my medication." He frowned, biting his lip hard. "So she'll think I'm knocked out for the night. I've never really woken in the middle of the night after taking it unless it's from the terrors."

"I wouldn't have asked. It was really disgusting forcing it back up. If I drank it again so soon I think I'd have a repeat."

He wrinkled his nose again, smiling at him slightly. It was nice to see that Yami had so easily forgiven him for drugging him without his consent as he had. The other boy acted as if it were one of the simplest things in the world to brush off, as if it did not bother him in the slightest, and apologizing to him again seemed almost as if it might be offensive. "Gross," he muttered instead, grinning a little wider when Yami rolled his eyes dramatically. "What? It is!"

"And your face disgusts me, but I don't go around constantly saying that, now do I?"

"Um, _ouch_?"

He chuckled and the noise made Yugi's insides warm. It was strange to hear that sound and have his heart beat a lot faster. But it, like his voice, had strengthened, and the roll of his gentle laughter was hypnotic and beautiful. It sounded regal and powerful, and the edges of it rumbled like a purr, gentle and inviting.

He blinked at him, then grinned wider as the sound continued for a moment longer. Then Yami fell silent, smirking slightly, and turned his head towards the forest beyond them.

It was a good thirty minutes in which Yugi crouched in front of the grave, careful not to get any snow on his knees or fall back into a seated position. On the off chance that one of his family was awake and wanted his attention, he would have to keep his clothes from showing any evidence he had been elsewhere but his bed. So he simply crouched, reaching out and tracing the words on her grave, and listened to the winter stillness the forest had to offer. Mostly it was the wet, resounding thud of Yami's heartbeat which he kept in his head, warming his ear drums and helping him relax.

"You ready to go?"

There was a faraway expression on the taller boy's face and for a moment Yugi thought he had not heard him. But then the red-eyed teen blinked and turned towards him. His face became blank for a split second, then softened as he nodded and waited for him to start to take the lead. He was just relieved that Yugi did not bother to ask him about his apparent staring problem.

"You think you'll be okay to climb the drain?" he asked, tilting his head and looking at him sideways as Yami took the spot beside him. "You're still limping pretty badly."

"I'll be fine. It's just a limp."

He frowned and searched his face for a moment. "Okay, if you say so." Yami ignored the doubt in his voice and instead flanked him until they got back to the house. The small teen stepped towards the pipe, glancing around slowly, and then turned to him. "I'd feel better if you went first."

Yami raised a brow but did not argue. He stepped over to it, finding the highest grip he could, and started to climb as if he'd never been hurt in the first place. He had scaled the wall and was on the roof in a handful of seconds, leaning over the edge to look at him with a somewhat confused expression. "Someone is knocking on your door…"

Yugi blinked wide eyes, then cursed under his breath. "Do you think you know who it is? Can you smell them and tell me?" he requested quietly, biting his lip and looking up at him with a somewhat desperate expression. "O-or is there a slight wheezing when they breathe?"

Yami blinked down at him, then turned to open the window and poke his head inside. He tilted his ear toward the ground, drawing in as much noise as he thought possible. Whoever had been on the other side of the door had been there for a while. He could tell by how much louder the knocks had become. He hesitated, listening beyond the noise of knuckles against wood, and then turned to Yugi as the smaller teen came to his side.

"Your grandfather," he said in so low a voice that he was nearly inaudible. He nodded slightly, then slipped inside. Quickly Yugi shed his shoes, throwing them into the entrance of the bathroom. They rattled where they hit a cabinet inside and he smacked the heel of his palm against his forehead.

"Are you okay? What was that?"

He forced his voice to its lowest tone, giving it a gravelly pitch. "I bumped into the cabinet in the bathroom. I've got to pee," he managed to throw out, gesturing to Yami to shut the window and settle beside the bed just in case. The red-eyed teen remained frozen for a moment, however, as if something about the situation made him feel beyond himself with confused anxiety. Yugi frowned at him, then gestured again, furrowing his brows. But the other wolf blinked at him stupidly for a moment, as if he could not comprehend. Something was terribly wrong in his eyes.

"Yami?"

The wolf blinked again, then turned quickly to do as he bid, though that startled expression was quickly changing into something almost akin dread. Something had clearly greatly alarmed the other boy, a thought which unnerved Yugi drastically. He heard the slightest static of a phone, a conversation being ended. He could not hear the words beyond his grandfather pleading that perhaps he could wait just a second longer.

The other possibly said no, but under the rush of his own heart and the flare of adrenaline which coursed through him, he could not fully hear them. All he heard was a soft sigh from his grandfather as Yugi hurried to change into his pajamas and then rushed into the bathroom to flush the toilet and run the water. He wet his hands, rubbed them on the bottoms he was wearing, and then headed to the door.

"What's going on?" he mumbled, squinting, voice pitched low and gravelly once more. Yugi wondered if perhaps he should have ruffled his hair, tried to make it appear more like he'd been asleep. But he also remembered he had done that very thing in the graveyard by accident, that he'd been stopped twice by Yami because he kept doing it. "Everything okay?"

"Are _you_ okay? You didn't answer the door for a pretty long time…"

"I took some meds," he grumbled, running a hand through his hair and yawning softly. He pressed a socked foot into the carpet to get rid of a soft itch which burned there for a moment. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong. In fact, I've got some really good news." He seemed to almost vibrate with energy as he and Yugi looked at each other. The small teen furrowed his brows, confused. "Yoshimori is coming back to Domino. He's going to be opening the exhibit about the wolves in Japan. They're going to talk about the rumor that they still survive in Honshu and Hokkaido."

Yugi blinked. He had only met Yoshimori a few times. But each had been a rather pleasant experience. Not once had he felt alienated by him, even if he had seemed rather interested in him at times. He'd told him that his medication was probably the best thing for him, helped his mom to get the dosage right, and sat around watching movies with him a couple of nights when he was babysitting him.

All in all, Yugi had thought he was pretty nice, even if sometimes he had grown to wonder, when he got older, what some of those more persistent stares had been about. They had only ever truly happened when he had sensed things that he shouldn't have—burning popcorn before the smell could reach Yoshimori, hearing the car door close before his parents even arrived inside. He'd never acted differently beyond those few times, studying Yugi, eyes sharp and curious as they bore into his.

Yugi was unnerved now but he had not been then. Back then he'd just been happy to have someone to talk to when his parents and grandparents were not around. It had made him much happier to have someone there. Years later he had seen a movie where an actor had given his victim, a six-year-old girl, a similar look and had wondered if that intensity had been far from what he'd assumed it to be. A couple of years later he had come to realize that, had Yoshimori wanted to molest him as that character had, he would have. It didn't matter whether he was his grandfather's friend or not.

So he had come to realize later that it was his senses which made him so keen towards him. Even when Yoshimori watched to make sure he took his medicine, he had been avidly staring, eyes boring into him. He had been waiting, though for what Yugi had never fully understood.

Now he thought he did.

He had been waiting for him to show symptoms, to prove to him that he was infected. Though he still did not know _why_.

"Really? Yoshimori is coming back to Domino? But I thought he liked it there in the states?"

"He misses Japan."

He tilted his head. Somehow he found that a little hard to believe. He missed his home? If he had, why had he never bothered to come back in all the time that he had been away? The statement truly made no sense to him. Yugi shook his head slightly.

There had to be something else going on. He didn't know that he had changed somehow, right? His grandpa would never have told him that, would he have? He could not picture it coming up in conversation. Who would bring up if the boy they thought had lycanthropy had finally changed?

"Oh." He struggled for another response, then reached up to rub at his eyes. He had to keep up the facade. If he didn't, he had no idea if Sugoroku might tell his daughter about it. And if his mother came down on his head… Yugi nearly groaned at the thought. "Well, are you two going to spend some time together or…?"

"Well, actually, he invited us both to the exhibit's opening and to dinner afterwards. He's excited to see us again after all the time he's been gone."

He tilted his head. "And Mom too?"

"She's invited, but we both know she won't come. She doesn't like him, remember?" he asked with a frown. He had forgotten the hostility between the two of them until he had had him on the phone trying to get Yugi up from his drug-induced sleep. He had been about to tell Kasumi the news when it had struck him that the hatred she felt for Yoshimori was truly far from undeserved.

He had tried, more than once, to fracture her relationship with Yugi's father, even resorting to trying to get her drunk. Thankfully his daughter had turned down any chance of enjoying a drink in his company, going as far as to legally threaten him for it. Yugi was, as far as he knew, oblivious to it. But it wasn't hard to guess why. When Yoshimori was around Yugi, the boy was the center of his attention, which was something else that made Kasumi bristle when he was around.

Yugi nodded a little. "Right. I forgot."

Sugoroku studied him for a moment, slightly unnerved by the thoughts going on in his head. Yoshimori had been a great friend to him throughout the years. But if Yugi was uncomfortable around him, then he would neglect to spend any time with him. He had often been slightly unnerved by the way he'd focus so completely on Yugi, though many times he had considered it was just his imagination. Yoshimori had never acted on anything he had feared, after all.

And Yugi had never complained about having to be left alone with him.

He let out a small sigh. "Yugi, I want to ask you something. And I need you to tell me the truth, okay?"

The small teen blinked and the feigned grogginess was overshadowed immediately by alarm as they looked at each other. Yugi could not hear Yami behind him but he knew the boy was listening, that he was taking note of any words said.

"What is it, Grandpa?"

"Yoshimori… He never did anything to hurt you, right?"

It was the only way Sugoroku could possibly think to phrase it. And, as he looked at the confused expression on his grandson's face, he saw the puzzlement rapidly fade into shock.

"No," he stated with wide eyes, the realization clear in his gaze. "No, never once."

The elderly Motou nodded slightly, relieved but still slightly anxious. "And the stares… That's all it was, right?"

Yugi blinked at him, blue-violet eyes flashing for a moment, and then shook his head very slowly. "There isn't anything else that ever happened. He just stared. A lot." He paused, his eyes sharp and gouging into him intensely. "He always got this weird look on his face whenever I noticed something he didn't. It was never anything past that. Why are you suddenly…?"

"I had to ask. I… Your mother hates him. And I know he may be a good man but he does some very stupid and selfish things. I…I was worried."

He shook his head again. "He didn't. And I would have gone to Mom if he had. I don't know why she hates him, besides that he gives her the creeps, but beyond that, I'm in the dark." Of course, now, with the disease, he could see in the darkness. He could remember the smaller details of things which he had never truly considered before. And he saw them with such clarity that it made him feel something bordering amazement. "But, no, nothing like that ever happened. He liked to…study me, I guess. There was nothing else."

Sugoroku nodded, relieved. "Good."

Yugi searched his face. "Since I've told you the truth, will you do the same for me?" he asked quietly, narrowing his eyes when his grandfather blinked in surprise and nodded. "Does he know about the disease? Is that why he was so keen about watching me?"

Yami sat up slightly from his crouched position behind the bed. His back had grown ramrod straight, his breath catching. His eyes narrowed and a low growl threatened to rumble upwards through his chest. Had he truly just asked such a question?

There was a beat of silence.

"If he did, he never spoke to me about it."

"So you never mentioned it to him?"

"I wasn't even sure you were going to be able to do anything with it. Why would I have told him about it? I didn't even tell you…"

Yugi was silent for a long moment, then reached back for the doorknob, gripping it tightly between his fingers. "I didn't really think you had," he admitted in a quiet tone. "But he always seemed to watch me the same way you did sometimes before all of this started. So I had to ask. But do you think he was suspicious of it?"

He frowned visibly. "I'm not entirely sure it was lycanthropy he was suspicious of. I always assumed he just thought you were hypersensitive to things around you and it interested him."

Yugi cast a small glance towards his mother's room, drumming his fingers for a moment against the smooth metal. "Okay." He was tempted to glance over his shoulder, to see where Yami had chosen to hide away. But there was no way to do so without making it obvious that he was not the only one in the room. He closed his eyes for a moment, then nodded again. "I think I'm going back to bed now."

Sugoroku stared at him for a moment, unsure as to what more to do. He opened and closed his mouth once, then twice, and finally settled for a discontent nod. "Okay."

The small teen was not oblivious to the way he had faltered, but he did not call attention to it either. Instead he simply cast him a small smile, saying, "Good night, Grandpa," before backing up and closing the door behind him. He turned his head immediately to see Yami crouched at the edge of the bed. He frowned, looking him over. "What?"

He had not bothered to even move to the mattress, knees braced for a spring as if he might leap to his full height. The red eyes burned into his, flickering, and they looked at each other curiously for a few moments.

"Do you truly believe that this Yoshimori does not know about your infection?" he asked slowly, moving his hands to touch the carpet for a moment. His right hand was splayed open wide, the tips of his fingers curled inwards to dig into the fibers. But his left barely touched, held like a paw that he was unsure of putting weight on. "Or do you think that perhaps he knows well enough?"

Yugi faltered for a moment, startled by the abrupt, straightforward inquiry. He blinked, then frowned as he furrowed his brows. He supposed it would not truly be Yami if he was not being to the point with him. He paused, thinking for only a second or two, and then sighed softly. "I don't honestly know, Yami. But I feel like he had some kind of idea of it when he was still here."

His red eyes flashed dangerously for a moment. "Why should your grandfather wish to expose you to someone he fears could have harmed you in the past?" he asked slowly, tilting his head. His fingers were kneading at the carpet and the fibers were crunching and scraping beneath the sharp tips of his nails. He blinked wide eyes at the boy again, but Yami merely curled his hand again, relaxed it, and then repeated the gesture aggressively. "He thinks to ask you if he had done you harm as a child and yet he wishes to expose him to you again?"

He ran a hand through his hair. "Well, it wasn't really… I mean…" Yugi shrugged halfheartedly, then moved towards the other teen who still flexed his fingers in a tense kneading movement. The small teen bit his lip until it bled, sighing again softly. "He just used to stare, okay? And when he did, it was only around the time that I accidentally made the error of showing him that my senses were more advanced than his. Beyond that, he would just sit around and watch TV with me or…or whatever it was we were doing. We all thought at some point or another that maybe he had some kind of sick fantasy about the two or us, but it wasn't… I mean, unless he was imagining me biting him as a wolf, I don't think he ever had any idea about what we thought of him."

"But to even consider it—does that not make it alarming to you to go and share the same space as him? What if he was simply waiting for you to grow up a little?"

He furrowed his brows, then shook his head slowly as he looked at him closely. "I don't think he's a pedophile, Yami," he said softly, though he fell silent a moment later and let out a deep breath, "and even if he is…sixteen is three years past the age of consent."

Yami blinked and then curled his lips back. "And twenty-one is the age in which you are considered an adult should you still be living with your parents," he spat. "So what is your point?"

"That the lines blur there. See, a certain age gap is considered rape, but another isn't. Seeing as I'm still living with them, yes, they could charge. But if he were to bring up the argument that I almost completely take care of myself and that I'm beyond the age of consent—"

"You say that like you _want_ something to happen!" he snarled. This time he was on his feet, chomping his teeth at Yugi's startled expression which quickly morphed into pure disgust. "You say that like you wish he was—"

"Fuck you, Yami," he snapped, voice breaking slightly with irritation. "I don't want something like that to happen—ever. Not to me, not to anyone else. I just meant, that if this were to be the truth, by technicality he might actually be able to get away with it. But he's also more suspicious of knowing about the lycanthropy than anything else!"

He frowned at him, at first with clear distaste and disapproval, and then with frustration. "I didn't—"

"No, you just thought that I wanted to get in the sack with someone almost five times my own age. Thanks a lot for that. That's amazing to know."

The red eyes widened, then narrowed in disbelief. "You cannot truly assume that I meant that of all things! I was just… I want to understand! I don't get how you could go back near someone who you suspected at one time of wanting to defile you when you were younger!"

Yugi went to snap at him, then fell silent. The look on his face was now one of pure puzzled confusion, of desperation for an answer he could not truly grasp. Yugi furrowed his brows and then shook his head slightly as he sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Because it never happened. And I know it didn't."

"How can you be so sure anyways? What if—?"

"It didn't. Because what we were just talking about? The glances, the babysitting, the possibility of it happening? It's impossible." He grinned when Yami shook his head long and slow, bewildered. "I was still in the lab then."

Yami's eyes grew wide, confused and disgusted, but with something like an undercurrent of disappointment. "The lab…" His eyes grew almost mournful, the red of them seeming to glow with pain, and then he looked down and away from him. "Then why do they all remember it if it is impossible?"

Yugi wanted for a moment to reach out and touch his shoulder, to give him a small smile and offer some kind of miniscule comfort. But then he found himself biting his lip until it bled as he instead shook his head and sighed quietly again. "Because, Yami, it seems more real to someone if there are others to attest to the fact that it happened. If they were to contradict my memory, they would risk me remembering. And I don't know what they expect from me should I have my memory."

Yami raised his eyes slowly, gaze burning into his, and then narrowed them into mere slits. "And yet, should that be true, you have already come to remember. So why have they not figured it out?" he snapped. "Why would they still be in the dark about your knowledge?"

"Because, as long as I don't let them realize it, I keep them just as far in the dark as they think they do me. It's reverse psychology. Or…something to that effect, at least." He paused, then shook his head and offered him a small grin. "Didn't you notice how easily he accepted the idea of me being knocked out by the medication? He just rolled with it. Because that's what I am supposed to be doing."

Yami shook his head sharply, frustrated. "Or perhaps you are simply insane and think yourself to be someone you are not," he spat in a low voice, snarling deep in his throat. The noise seemed to make the air quiver. Their eyes locked, Yugi had the very abrupt impulse to step back. But the more predominant half of him, the human which he had been acquainted with for so long, wanted nothing more than to reach out to him. He wanted to touch his shoulder, to rub gently at the clothing-covered muscle there, to give him a soft smile to calm his irritation. But there was a wariness there as well, for he had seen how easily Yami had managed to rip through the sinew and muscle cords of the wolves in the woods that first full moon. "Perhaps you are simply delusional."

"And how would you explain the fact that I was infected, that it was inherited, but couldn't change until you bit me? I don't see how that's normal. Unless the experiments stunted it, I don't understand it in the slightest."

His stomach tossed as they looked at each other closely for a moment. "And your mother and grandfather? What is it that makes them drug you so that you do not remember?"

Yugi very slowly shrugged. "Fear? Family? The idea that I'll slip away from them at the last moment? The way that I toss and turn and sometimes cry out in my sleep at night? Maybe they're afraid that if I remember I'll turn on them with the idea that they were involved? Or maybe it's because they're scared that I'll lose my mind?"

He bore his teeth. "And you never plan to tell them?"

"Never."

* * *

"It's going to be good to see him again."

Yugi blinked and turned his head to look at his grandpa with a small smile. He'd been listening to his chatter about the wolves for a good hour, then an apology about his behavior toward his lycanthropy and knowledge thereof, and finally the elderly man was beginning to slow his constant flow of words. The small teen, however, had barely spoken as they had gone about moving around Domino towards the grand opening.

He had been constantly thinking about, struggling with, the way that Yami had looked at him upon his waking him. He'd handed him his shake, studying him, and apologized again for the night before, but the red-eyed wolf had ignored him, downing the cup and then staying in his seated position. His eyes had been exhausted, his face drawn with his mounting fatigue, and the way his gaze had been so distant from him, like the floor had opened into a deep abyss between them, had made Yugi tremble.

"Yeah, it'll be nice to see him again," he agreed with something of a small smile that seemed strained and foreign upon his lips. Yugi turned away again, tilting his head, and then kicked at a pebble in front of him. When they got inside of the museum, he would feel a lot better, safer. But in the open, his cheeks still failed to heat as they should have and the lack of red coloring was obvious. Anyone who passed by him seemed to take a second look, with expressions somewhere between envy and confusion upon seeing him. He had been forced to duck his head far too many times to count.

"You don't sound too happy…"

"It doesn't have anything to do with him. I'm just kind of…tired, I guess? I don't think I really managed to sleep that medicine off." He would have feigned a yawn if it wouldn't have cheapened the statement. He shook his head slightly, then narrowed his eyes as he kicked the pebble forward again. "I wonder what the exhibit will look like, though. Any idea?"

"None at all." He sounded giddy and it made Yugi smile faintly. He continued to kick the small stone with the toes of his sneaker, fighting away the urge to hum. "But I'm thinking it'll be taxidermy or maybe sculptures or something?"

Yugi turned his head, startled. "Taxidermy? But there aren't any more wolves in Japan. He'd be stuffing other wolves…?"

And if he had done that…

Was it possible that they were not simply wolves? What if they were lycanthropes or hellhounds? What if he had known them at some point, but they'd left his life and he'd never truly considered them afterwards?

Oh gods…

"And there isn't one alive that looks like them…"

"The Hokkaido wolf looks a lot like the average gray wolf, remember? But it was smaller."

"And the Honshu? It looks like no other wolf species."

"I said that maybe he would have models instead."

Yugi stared at him, silent and frustrated.

His grandpa didn't understand. He didn't realize just how wrong this all was. If they were truly taxidermy, he was not sure they had not been werewolves. And if they were, he would never know. Because their eyes—oh gods, their _eyes_ —would be long replaced by glass orbs. And he'd never know if they had been among the wolves to escape or if they were sacrificed by the pack to summon him or…

The thought of the pack made him halt for a brief second. He quickly feigned rubbing his shoe on the sidewalk to rid himself of a chunk of ice. But the loss of it felt as if he had abandoned any sense of comfort and cushioning he had come to know upon walking. He risked a small sigh through his nose.

"Yugi?"

"Yes, Grandpa?"

They were quiet for a moment. Then Sugoroku sighed softly and led the way towards the entrance. His cheeks, unlike Yugi's, were bright red from the blistering cold. His eyes were somewhat shiny from the blasts of chilled air when the wind stirred. His fingers were shaking slightly from the icy touch of the atmosphere. Yet, Yugi, for all his pretenses, simply looked small, uncomfortable, with a darkness in his eyes that seemed unfathomable for someone so young an age. For all his effort, his skin remained unchapped. His eyes were as wet as they had always been, lacking the abuse the wind cast to dry them. And he did not even slightly tremble. There was only the faintest hint of his shoulders bunched about his neck, but it held only tension rather than an urge to relieve himself from the cold.

"I don't know what's going on in your head, but I don't think he knows about…"

Sugoroku trailed off and the small teen shook his head slowly, eyes sharpening faintly with disdain. They both knew how unlikely it was that Yoshimori was left in the dark. They had both spent part of the night analyzing the way he'd looked at Yugi, the way he'd studied him and often teased him to prove his senses better than his. They were both very aware that, if not a pedophile, the only explanation was that he had been taking note and studying Yugi for signs of lycanthropy.

There was nothing else.

"I don't even know what's going through my head," he bit out quietly, curling his lip slightly as the elderly Motou opened the door. His hand was freezing even through the thick gloves. It reminded him too much of the winter the small teen in front of him had been born in. "But I'm pretty sure that's not true."

He grimaced but did not answer. Yugi stalked past him, head raised and eyes sharp as they shot about. He was barely paying attention again when they got to the front, his grandfather mentioning Yoshimori's name, receiving the free tickets he had apparently acquired for them. The small teen still did not have much focus to spare even moments after when they began to walk again.

It was only when he looked about the displays of stuffed animals, stomach clenched, that his attention became riveted. A sense of familiarity had come over him, despite the tension along his spine. Yugi blinked, eyes widening, and then turned his head slowly towards the source of it. At first the crowd was so immense, the squabbling voices so loud, that he could not find it.

And then it seemed abruptly to shift and clear slightly for him to see. His eyes grew owlish, the size of saucers, and his mouth opened and closed with shock. Standing a few yards away was a figure, hidden with barely the smallest hint of definition to tell him apart, a low slung hat hiding away his hair beneath a gray hood. The more he stared the more apparent it became to him. Very slowly their eyes flickered and caught with his, a hideous and dangerous emotion gleaming there. A clear message of caution was written on the flare of bright red. The lips curled into something of a snarl but Yugi could do nothing more than stare blankly.

The other lycanthrope barely looked at him for more than an instant. But it was enough to make Yugi's legs somehow weak. He blinked and the other was almost gone from the exhibit before he could even breathe properly. He hurried to move after him, confused and unnerved, but could do nothing to break through the crowd around him.

Oh gods, what was Yami doing there?

Was he planning something?

Had he simply followed them with the intention of meeting up?

Or…was it something else entirely?

He had looked visibly upset, more than a little irked. He had appeared mad, vicious, almost bitter. Yugi blinked as he recalled that expression. But he could do nothing more than shake his head slowly and frown in growing confusion.

What was it that Yami had been looking for in coming there?

And the hat?

Had it been necessary?

What was the reason behind it?

He frowned. Now that he thought about it, his clothes had been baggy. He'd been wearing something like a loose-fitting gray winter jogging suit of sweatpants and a thick hoodie, the same that Yugi had put in his closet and never really looked at again. He'd worn it only once during winter because the fleece insides were comfortable. And, like Yami now, he'd looked completely unlike himself.

What the hell was going on?

Yami wasn't truly planning something, was he? He was not going to do something stupid, was he? The thought made his stomach clench. He felt sick and dizzy for a moment before he managed to squeeze his way between some of the people and flee for the direction he had assumed him to go. In his rush he had to circle back as Yami had simply moved to the edges of the crowd. Yugi spun immediately around.

"What are you…?"

The red eyes flickered away from him, towards the door behind him, and then they settled back on him abruptly. "The exhibit," he said so quietly that Yugi could barely hear him over the gentle rumble of chatter coming from the people surrounding them. It was nothing more, truly, than a rather hoarse whisper, as if Yami were not willing to speak any louder.

"What?"

Yami tilted his head, blinking at him long and slow with an expression of something akin disdain. He shook his head slowly, eyes flickering away, and then glanced towards a high up corner. Yugi did not need to look to realize he was glancing at a security camera.

"I came for the exhibit."

"Dressed like that?"

"Don't you think if you had a twin, it'd be much more noticeable?"

Yugi didn't care for the cheeky grin. He shook his head sharply. "You stick out like a sore thumb even without looking like me, Yami." He was flustered. "And security is going to end up watching you like a hawk!"

Yami shook his head. "No, they won't. Because they have nothing to worry about."

"Except for the fact that you _look_ like a potential delinquent."

He snickered and pointed to someone else in the museum. Yugi turned his head and nearly groaned in the back of his throat. There were a group of people, standing in the next room, that were wearing something entirely too similar to Yami.

"Well, aren't you lucky?" he grumbled, turning back. "Although, they're in a group, and you're not. You're still the oddball out."

Yami raised a brow. "They'll be watching them. Because one of them keeps trying to touch the displays and the guard is getting frustrated with him," he stated simply. "The whole group is arguing with the man as we speak."

Yugi cast a weary glance over his shoulder. "Fine, Yami, but—"

He turned back to face him and fell instantly quiet. The other lycanthrope had used his moment of divided attention to disappear into the crowd again. Flustered, he started forward, only to halt as a familiar voice called loudly for his grandpa. The greeting was enough to make him pause, startled, but when he turned his head he had difficulty seeing Yoshimori through the crowd.

He listened to his grandpa for a moment, straining his ears, then began to pick his way through the crowd towards them. He stopped short when he spotted him, though he was unsure why his spine tightened and his skin felt abruptly hot, as if he might break into a sweat.

Yoshimori looked different than he had last seen him. His hair had receded the slightest bit, and it fell sloppily to either side in seven-inch-long strands. The clear part of his hair fell evenly in the center of his head. His eyes were shadowed by the presence of his bangs, his brows thick, his eyes narrow in design, with the slightest squint along the edges. His large nose was straight, and the bottom was the exact length of his mustache, almost making it appear as if he simply had a large expanse of nose hair. Under his bottom lip was the cut of his beard, trailing to his jaw and trailing a couple of inches outwards on either side.

Yugi frowned faintly. How hair was still that dark brown it had always been. He couldn't even spot a gray strand. Not a single hair was out of place despite his older age. The thought was unsettling. He could have easily been dyeing it, but to risk his eyesight for the sake of his brows matching? He could easily lose sight from the fumes. Beyond that, he still looked as if he was barely over thirty, when he was already reaching the point of twice that age.

He bristled. How was that possible? Was he a wolf? Was _that_ what had alarmed him? Maybe that was why he had watched Yugi so sharply for all that time when he was younger. Maybe he'd been hoping that he would bite him should he ask. But he didn't sense anything to hint at the infection. And he couldn't smell anything truly different from what he remembered of him. Maybe he had always been infected and had been curious whether Yugi would change?

But somehow that seemed entirely too dubious to him and it made his stomach ache as they looked at each other. He narrowed his eyes almost imperceptibly and shook his head slightly as the older man considered him for a moment. When his lips pulled into the widest of grins Yugi found himself almost sickened.

"Yugi! You're all grown up," Yoshimori crowed, looking him over once. No doubt he saw the keenness in his eyes because his own gaze grew a miniscule wider and then his lips tugged back a bit further. It unnerved him but Yugi refused to let it show. "It's been, what? Almost nine years since I last saw you?"

He offered him a smile but it felt cold and unusual on his lips. "Yeah," he agreed quietly, unable to say anything more. It was only when his grandpa shot him a curious look that Yugi blinked and then forced his smile to widen slightly. "How were the states?"

Yoshimori gave him something of a more complacent smile, but his eyes were practically glowing with something Yugi was not quite sure how to read. It was similar to how he had looked at him when he was younger, but there was also something to it that made it appear a bit more unwelcome. "The states were…as you would expect them to be, I suppose. They were lovely to stay in for a few days, but they quickly lost their charm."

 _Lost their charm_? Yugi vaguely remembered going to the states a few times. When he had, though, it had been to meet with his father and most often they had gone on rather extravagant little trips to keep him occupied. He had never really thought too much about them until now. The realization made him tilt his head slightly. Shouldn't he have minded more that he had not seen his dad for over two years now?

"Really? Where did you stay?"

"New York."

He remembered being there for a little while too. It had been a briefer visit, though, and Yugi could only really remember the heat and the way everyone seemed to honk at each other whenever they were driving. California hadn't been much better. But he'd liked the trip to Florida even though it was mostly the thunderstorms he'd enjoyed because the heat had made his skin too sticky. The mountains in North Carolina had been a lot more fun, but they hadn't had wolves like he'd been hoping when they'd gone.

"New York is…pleasant," he muttered, though he could not find anything else to say about it—except that it truly wasn't. It was the furthest thing from pleasant he'd ever really thought of. The state was more miserable than anything else. The heat made people cranky and their accents made him bristle. They were all much louder too.

"New York is definitely not pleasant," Yoshimori snickered, shaking his head. "You're a terrible liar."

"Then it's a good thing I don't make a habit of it."

Sugoroku was unnerved by the way his grandson peered at the other man. It had been a surprise to him as well that he looked so young, that the muscles had not worn away as they should have. And perhaps he was still unsure of it, how such a thing was possible, but the aggression Yugi was displaying, even without attempting to, made him swallow thickly.

Was there truly something threatening about his old colleague?

Was there truly something that warranted the way the teenager was bristling so fiercely?

Was it something that he could detect as a werewolf that he himself could not?

And, if that was so, what was it?

Was he a threat to Yugi?

He wasn't sure what he could do himself to help his grandson if Yoshimori truly was a threat. And he did not know if Yugi would be okay to defend himself. He was still new to his lycanthropy, wasn't he? He didn't know what that meant for the small teen. If he was a threat, could Yugi handle it himself?

He was not sure how much help he could possibly be. He wasn't young anymore, even if he was not completely hindered by his old age. He was very capable of doing things despite pushing at the edges of eighty-seven. But his height was so limited and he was nowhere near as lean or spry as he had been when he was younger. If there was a fight, he would be utterly useless.

"I was thinking that we could go to a restaurant in Sapporo after the exhibit has closed." His dark brown eyes flickered to the elderly Motou and his grin grew a bit more confident. "That amazing sushi restaurant we both used to love. I think I remember Yugi enjoying it too."

Yugi blinked, then furrowed his brows. "Sapporo?" he echoed quietly, looking between them slowly and then towards his grandpa. "Didn't they open another of those Bonnokaze restaurants here in Domino? They opened it last spring."

Yoshimori nearly rolled his eyes. "You can't trust an expansion. The original is always the best."

The small teen eyed him coldly for a moment, though the sense of disbelief was more apparent. Why Sapporo? Why was he so keen on taking them? The snow festival wasn't even going to happen until later in the year. And he was certain that the food he was so intent on getting would be the same in Domino as it was there. He chewed at the inside of his cheek, studying him.

Was it a trap of some kind?

His eyes flickered towards Sugoroku for a moment. Was Yoshimori really so intent on whatever it was he desired so much that he would risk his colleague like that? He glanced back to the tall man, eyes burning into his for a long minute.

"We were going to wait to go to Sapporo," the elderly Motou said suddenly, making both of them turn to him in slight surprise. "We always make it a family trip to see the snow festival. It's basically our family bonding."

"You don't have to wait until then, Sugoroku."

"We don't have the funds to get there and back," Yugi put in, eyes sharp, daring him to argue. "Between all of the rescues Mom has done without pay and the recent hospital bills, we don't have anything to spend on going there tonight."

"No one said anything about you paying. I invited you. I would pay for the fare and back."

Had Yoshimori rehearsed all of the answers to the obstacles he would put between them?

Had he truly come up with a solution to any problem he thought they might come across?

He had something planned. He had to. He wasn't even pretending to pause and think of the things he needed to say to throw his excuses off balance. He was throwing them out rapid-fire. He was forcing Yugi back even further and further by the seconds. He was going to run out of excuses before he could even process the fact that he was still arguing…

And Yoshimori made no point of even pretending otherwise. His eyes were smug, burning into his, and the small teen felt a small bit of panic in his belly at the thought.

"I don't know if Grandpa told you, but I recently got hurt. The wound kept reopening for the last few days," Yugi said through grit teeth. He was desperate already, flailing for any sense of ground he could regain. "I've finally gotten the infection to disappear. But it's not healing right. I was supposed to get a checkup later tonight—"

"We can eat after."

 _What is it about Sapporo_? _What is it over there that you want us at the restaurant for_? _What is it that you have set up_?

He ground his teeth for a moment, then shook his head.

"They wanted to do a scraping and drain it and everything—"

"You look fine."

He felt sick to his stomach. "It's not my face," he snapped in an icy tone, startling his grandpa who blinked wide plum purple eyes and immediately looked between them. "It's my _side_."

"I don't see why that would take too long to go to Sapporo, eat, and come back, Yugi. I'm sure the staff at the hospital knows well enough what they're doing. After all, you _are_ right next to the Kaiba Corp Hospital, are you not?"

He could have punched him for his smooth his voice had become. He breathed in roughly, then clenched his jaw for a moment. "They wanted to run some blood tests—"

"It takes all of a minute to get a vial of blood, Yugi."

"I bleed a lot," he growled out, struggling. "They'll have to stop that before they can let me go. And my side is going to be much worse when they do the scraping—"

"The restaurant is open until three in the morning. It's barely even three in the afternoon now." He quirked a brow. "Unless you think the entire thing will take over twelve hours. I find that kind of impossible."

He bristled further but fought to keep it down. "My mother expects me home. I have to help with a surgery—"

"She has technicians."

"Who don't know what they're doing and aren't as skilled as I am."

"She can teach them."

"It's a corrective surgery. The cat was hit by a car, its organs got rearranged. There's no teaching someone how to do a procedure like that while in the midst of it."

"What about that girl you both started training a couple of years ago? The one who absolutely loves your mom and would follow her anywhere if she left Japan?"

Immediately he scrambled for her name, then nearly cursed under his breath. "Rebecca Hawkins? She went back to the states for winter. She's all about warm weather."

Yugi felt sick to his stomach. He was used to the blonde being around, big blue eyes and laughing voice. It surprised him how much it scared him that she might be around now. But he had to remind himself that she was in the states.

And she was.

She was in the states with her parents at the moment.

And she would remain there until the next summer.

But now, for the moment, his mind was racing. With the careless nonchalance Yoshimori had brought her up, Yugi felt almost dizzy. The fact that he even remembered her sent alarms off in his head. What if she had wound up like Shizuka herself had? And what if no one were to ever find her again?

What if the experiments had already _destroyed_ her?

It had been around almost the exact moment of those six months prior that Atem had been released. No doubt they had been searching for and hunting down wolves to replace them, right? What if someone like Yoshimori had gotten their hands on her? Maybe they had snatched her up when they saw her there and—

He forced the thoughts away.

But he couldn't help remembering the way she had pledged that one day they would end up getting married one day. It had been a joke, but Yugi had found it hilarious and flattering all the same. But he'd also feared that perhaps she had been somewhat serious.

And he hoped to the gods that she would not be hurt in any manner, that the people in the labs would never come to get their hands on her. He was breathing hard at the mere thought, a current of hatred pushing its way through him now. He wouldn't be able to live with himself if he were ever to find out that she had been captured and experimented on.

He blinked.

"She's not coming back until summer," Yugi stated in a firmer tone, trying again to force away the thoughts. He forced himself to remember those words, to consider them more truthful than the lie he felt he was reciting. She would be back, and eventually she'd take his place at the clinic where he was unable to help his mom any longer. She'd been so interested and Yugi had shown and told her a lot of the things she would need to know. If there was anyone his mother would truly allow to replace him in the clinic, it was her by all means. "And she's the only one my mom would trust to help her with the procedure besides me."

Yoshimori gave him a look that bordered pure frustration but when he blinked it was gone again. "And there's no one else that could possibly cover the surgery for you? Really, Yugi, with a staff of over twenty people?"

Yugi ground his teeth together. His grandpa was wisely staying silent, unsure which lie he might spew next, uncertain that he wouldn't step on his toes at some point. Sugoroku was merely watching them, eyes flickering back and forth between them. The small teen stared at the man in front of him for so long it felt as if his eyes were going to burst forth from their sockets.

"Most of them are just training to have job experience before they go to college and open their own practices," he growled, "and none of them are actually helping with surgeries. They're just shadowing."

"What a shame." He turned to Sugoroku, smile firm on his face and so predatory that it made both Motou's stiffen faintly. "Well, I suppose it could just be the two of us then."

The elderly Motou hesitated, for a moment desperate to look to Yugi for help. His tongue was knotted and his lungs felt tight. The way he looked at him, with some kind of savage cunning, made him think of murderers in movies. He opened his mouth to respond but it was Yugi to speak.

"Maybe if we did it early enough, we wouldn't have to worry about it," Yugi said slowly, narrowing his eyes as he stared at Yoshimori who turned with a widened gaze full of false delight. "I mean, if it's early enough, maybe I can still make it to the hospital on time…"

"When is the appointment?"

How long did it take to get from Domino to Sapporo? His mind raced rapidly for a moment. An hour and a half by train, then at least thirty minutes to eat, and another hour and a half to get back—that was three and a half hours. He pulled his phone out, checking the time. It wasn't fully three yet.

"Seven-thirty," he replied after a long moment. _That gives us just enough time to get there, eat, and come back_ , _right_?

Yoshimori gave him the smile of a shark with uneven rows of teeth and eyes with power and intelligence far surpassing his own. Yugi bristled faintly at the manner he looked at him, the way his mouth reminded him of the jagged teeth of a jack-o-lantern in the darkness. "Excellent," he announced, reaching out and touching his shoulder. The small teen ignored the urge to shudder as Yoshimori patted him there twice before turning and starting away, pausing only to say, "Enjoy the exhibit. I have a phone call I must make."

His vision was dizzy, swirling. A phone call?

As he faded into the crowd, Yugi turned to his bewildered and alarmed grandpa. "I…I need a second to get some fresh air," he mumbled, shaking his head. In the corner of his eye one of the kids in their jogging suit had passed by him. Had he looked back he might have noticed the golden-bronze skin tone that they boasted. But Yugi was headed for the door and the other in the opposite direction, moving further towards the second floor.

It was several floors above that he caught up to the businessman. He did nothing to disguise his approach, lazy and assertive as he strode behind them. He slipped into the space needed to catch the door with the heel of his foot to keep it propped open when the other headed towards the desk. His head was lowered, his body crouched, so that he could not look through the narrow window of glass above him and see him there. He kept his eyes locked on the slit in the door, pressing his ear towards the small gap to hear his words.

"Kanekura."

The name made him tilt his head thoughtfully. Had he heard that name before? He could not remember. Yami shifted his sneaker just enough to push the door open a bit more, though he did not move inward yet. His eyes flickered about himself. He'd broken each of the cameras earlier, before his run in with Yugi on the first floor.

He had originally assumed it strange that there were even offices for the workers there, until he had realized those teenagers dressed in their track suits were holding a class there. It was a study seminar, on some kind of history lesson, but he hadn't paid it any attention. He had simply seen it, realized their placement, and then gone back to borrow Yugi's own suit, which was a bit too large for him, he knew without question. Yugi wasn't even a person to embrace physical exercise, so why had anyone bothered to buy him those?

He shrugged it off. It didn't really matter, did it? The point was that he was there and he had to wait for the right moment.

"I was right, Kanekura! The lycanthropes have come to Japan. They're all flocking here, summoned by what they think is the incarnation of those stupid legends. They are all _ripe_ for the picking, the perfect prey," he drawled, snickering. Something about his voice had a slurred undertone, almost as if he was drunk, or like he was speaking with an accent too thick.

A deep-bellied laugh came up from his throat and Yami bristled as he shifted his weight. How did he know about Code Name Atem? Was he part of the human group who had tried to resurrect him?

"And all that it would take to make _all_ of them come running? Just the tiniest little threat to their precious Pure-Blood. All of them would come _racing_. They would lay their lives down for them senselessly. Do you know how powerful we could be if we could _harness_ that thing? If we could make it call out for help when it was wounded?"

The other person was quiet for a moment. Then, slightly timid, the voice came saying softly, "And risk war with Gozaburo Kaiba? You imbecile, he'd rip us to pieces before we could even blink. That is _his_ creature—"

"No, it's whoever his boss is—that _anorexic_ guy. Gozaburo is a businessman, however. He would easily pay billions to have this wolf returned to him. If we were to find it, we could make a trade with them and we'd never have to skin another wolf or set traps or anything of the like. And, once it's caught again, the wolves will keep coming. They'll practically beg to be captured with it."

"That is far from how that works, Yoshimori. You and I both know that not only would Gozaburo turn his nose up at an offer, he'd also very easily kill you and I both. He loves money more than he does anything else. That's why he sacrificed his children to be experimented on! Do you not remember that?"

"And both of them are long dead." Yami cringed at the steel edge of his words, shifting his shoe further inside to push the door open a small fraction. He remained crouched, listening, and bore his teeth as he waited. He had to hear the noise of the chair turning, swiveling, and then he would be able to push the door back all the way. Then he could sneak in. "Regardless of Noah, the other two are dead. The only two who could have qualified as a Pure-Blood between the three of them are dead. Seto and Mokuba have been dead for _years_ now. And Noah's mother had already infected him. Gozaburo was lucky."

Yami strained his ears. When would the chair swivel? When would he turn all the way around? When would he turn his back on him so that he could sneak in? Then again, he supposed he did not truly need to sneak into the office. But he did have to be wary. The gun on his hip said as much.

"Gozaburo is not a man to play games with, Yoshimori. He _will_ kill you. I am having no part of anything to do with the Pure-Blood. I don't want to die yet. You do as you want where it's concerned—"

"You say that as if there's such a thing! Pure-Bloods are _fairytale monsters_! They don't _exist_! They're every werewolf-loving, role playing freak's _wet dream_ because they're supposed to be immortal. No creature is immortal!"

"Just because you fail to believe in something means _nothing_! The fact is that they created a creature beyond your imagination and so you're lashing out. The Pure-Blood is a monster that kills with efficiency, can sneak as silently as a cat, and has the speed of a Ferrari! You refuse to believe in anything that defies your logic."

Finally the chair swiveled. Yami pushed the door open enough to squeeze himself through. His fingers caught the edge of the wood, holding it, and he sank his nails into the firm pine. Easing it gently, he allowed it to fall back only when the red-eyed wolf was sure it would simply click when it slid into place. He was already halfway across the room by then, low to the ground, moving towards the desk.

"There is no animal that can run a hundred and forty miles an hour! None!" Yoshimori spat, freezing when the soft click echoed throughout the room. He turned around immediately, phone cord tangled around his wrist in his growing anger. He blinked and furrowed his brows. Was that the door? Or perhaps the air conditioning? But he could not hear a gentle humming to accompany the noise…

"The cheetah runs at over seventy. The Pure-Blood is twice as fast. It's got the speed of three different animals tied within it. It's the gray wolf, the dire, and the human! They clocked him at twelve years old. He was already running that in his human form."

"You superstitious coward. No wonder they fired you."

There was a long minute of silence. Yami nearly snickered. Then a long, exasperated sigh came from the other end of the phone.

"But all of that is far beyond the point, is it not? They've resurrected the Pure-Blood and when they do it with the Harbingers too, it's going to be amazing, don't you think? Wolves of both species will come racing in to help them, because they've all got that pathetic mentality. They all think they have to lay their lives down for them!" Yoshimori paused. "And then, whatever they're truly trying to make happen in that lab will be expanded on. There will be no end to the specimens."

"You and I both know that if you go against them, you will die. I don't understand how you feel the need to ignore something like that, but your naivety will catch up with you. Let's hope you aren't dead from it."

"I don't know about you, but I am _tired_ of constantly catching and killing those damn wolves. I don't want to be stuck doing this forever. I want to be able to sit back and relax. I have a right to!"

"You won't have anything to sit back and relax on when you're _dead_ , you idiot! You expect to mess with them, with Pegasus and Gozaburo, two of the richest people in the world, and get away with it? And the wolves? Do you honestly think that they will not come for you? That they won't destroy you? That Pure-Blood will kill you all, mark my words."

"Oh please, save your stupid prattling for someone who cares to hear it," Yoshimori snapped.

"When it kills you, I swear I'll laugh and dance atop your grave."

"Stick to your pathetic fears if you so wish but do not try to force them onto me."

Yoshimori reached over to hang up but the dial tone was already in his ears. Had his partner finally decided to grow up and show his backbone? Well, in that case, perhaps his brain would show up late too.

The opportunity to retire early was something that no one should ever turn their nose up at. And he was sick of the killing, of having to skin them and wasting his money on weapons and traps, betting his life on the off chance that they would not be experienced enough to handle him.

He sighed softly, content for the moment. He would have to try to figure out a more suitable trap for Yugi. The boy was far too intelligent, had seen through him as if he were not even there. He had been able to detect the lies just as easily as he could his. The small teen was never good at fibbing. It seemed to have only gotten worse with age.

He chuckled, then turned around.

Fingers were splayed across the phone's base, the cord dropped to the floor. Long, red nails were curved against the metal top of his desk. The white tips of keratin were long, unusually so, and the beds were a perfect almond shape. The digits were long, reaching outwards like claws.

Yoshimori blinked, then slowly raised his eyes. His face drained of color.

How had anyone managed to get so close to him? How had he failed to notice? The blood had given him advanced senses, had allowed his maturity to begin to drop and resist, his body still younger than it should have been. Yet, somehow, it had failed to pick up this presence.

The boy stared up at him, a face of sharp features, with glowing red eyes. He looked regal, like a true predator, with a grace he had never seen before. He opened and closed his mouth, eyes wide. The boy merely stared, unblinking, cruel. His gaze was savage, deadly, and the power which showed in the muscles of his jaw as he flexed it slightly before him made him quiver.

"Who…?"

Yami hummed softly, then reached slowly for the phone receiver in his hand. They looked at each other, the werewolf lazy in his movements, slow and graceful, willing to bide time before going for the kill. He took the phone from his shaking palm.

"Who are you?" he managed to breathe out now.

Again the red-eyed boy did not even so much as truly look at him. His gaze flickered towards the phone, where he placed it in its cradle. He did not raise his head for a moment, but he could see his lips, twitching with pure amusement.

"Well?" Yoshimori spat when the seconds passed by with agonizing slowness. He ground his teeth together but the lycanthrope ignored him as he had before. "What is your name?"

Yami very slowly turned his eyes to him, the dark hues burning with distaste. His gaze was hardened, his pupils flaring with darkness, brimming his irises like shrouds of smoke. The man began to quiver.

"My name is of no importance. The thing that you must truly be worried about is, _what_ am I?" he drawled, voice an alluring constrictor, colorful as it weaved itself around him, stroking at his insides, warming his blood. The wolf chuckled, then tilted his head. "Take a guess."

"A hellhound," Yoshimori snapped. His hand was inching towards the gun. Yami ignored it for the moment. "You're a hellhound. Probably that brat Noah, sent by your father."

"My father is long dead. And Noah is not my name." He allowed him to slide his hand further towards the holster. "Nor is my species a hellhound. Try again."

"Lycanthropes don't have eyes like that."

"Hmm. So then what would you think I am?" When his fingers nearly touched the black leather, Yami snatched at the phone. The air seemed to ripple with the movement. Yoshimori screamed. His face was burning. His eyes were watering. Blood fell from his mouth in rivulets. The wolf calmly set the reddened receiver back down. "I know that you know I am going to kill you. But let's not make it more painful than it has to be, yes? I rather enjoy killing quickly. Brute force is more efficient when it comes only once."

Yoshimori whined, cradling his mouth. The teeth in front of his tongue had fallen away. He spat them into his palms, then looked up. He should have been able to sense him. He should have known that he was coming up behind him. Why hadn't he known?

"I know I knocked a few teeth out, but I'm hoping you can still speak." Yami hummed again, lower than before, then narrowed his eyes slightly. "What do you think I am?"

"A hybrid of some kind. No lycanthrope has eyes like that. Only hellhounds."

"If one were to mix our genetic coding, we'd die. Lycanthropes and hellhounds cannot breed. Genetic modification would destroy the host completely. Try again."

"I don't know."

"Pity." Yami shrugged and then turned back to him fully. "All right then. Tell me something, what do you know about the Pure-Blood? Code Name Atem, was it?"

"Only what I was told by my partner."

"Kanekura, yes?"

He blinked wide, glazed over dark brown eyes, a sense of horror lingering in them. "H-how did you…?"

Yami tilted his head. "Can you hear through walls with that blood you've been ingesting, Yoshimori? Does your lengthened lifespan offer you heightened senses or is it only your age it affects?"

He gaped at him, moving his hands away from his face. His lips were quivering and his mouth looked like a slick chasm of bright red. His chin was coated in it and it had been smeared unconsciously upon his cheeks.

Yami hummed again. "I can smell it on you. You drink it so that it will not change you. You don't want to be infected, you just want to live longer and be able to help outwit the wolves you hunt. But you cannot even heal faster than your weak human frame."

Yoshimori stared at him, eyes a bottomless pit of confusion, heart beginning to hammer in his chest. This wolf could smell it on him? He had last ingested it a month ago. How was that even…?

"The mouth retains trace chemicals of food and drink it invests for a month at a time. Or at least, I believe that's how it goes. It doesn't matter either way, however. What matters is that I know what you do. And I want to know more about what you know of Code Name Atem."

"You're a lycanthrope…"

"Yes."

His head was swimming. The pain in his jaw made it hard to speak. He shook his head slightly in shock but Yami merely stared, unblinking, unamused, head tilting to the side with dismissal.

"I don't…know much of anything. He—he said he was helping them to create it. But he was let go only a year after Code Name Atem was conceived. He said…that Atem got loose recently. And Gozaburo and Pegasus were offering two million each in order to get him back _alive_." Yoshimori paused, then smirked, sneering, "Your precious Pure-Blood has a bounty on his head."

Yami struck out again. Blood welled up on the surface of the desk. A tooth was caught in the tangled mess of bright red. The teen hummed again, dropping the receiver back. "Speak to me when you are spoken to. Do not forget who the true predator is here. It is a mistake you will regret."

He groaned, covering his face again. His eyes were squeezed shut, tears leaking from them. His nose was a bloody, dangling clump of flesh above his mustache. His entire face was all but invisible beneath the mass of red.

"Kill me already."

"We're barely ten minutes into our fun time together. I know your face hurts but get over it. You have things I need to know." He turned away from him, yawning. "Tell me, four million dollars on the head of Code Name Atem. Are there any leads?"

"All anyone knows is that he's clearly here in Japan. And wolves from the states are here searching."

Yami froze in place, then turned his head slowly. "Wolves from the states have come to Japan to find Atem?" he asked softly.

"They're all here because of that bullshit that they're needed for whatever reason."

He blinked slowly, then nodded slightly. "Before I kill you, would you like to know what I am?"

Yoshimori stared at him, startled. "You're a lycanthrope," he spat, blood flecking the desk. Yami moved a hand away before he could be touched by it.

He smiled, wry and small, edged with bitterness and disgust. "But what kind am I? Are you no longer curious?"

"Fuck you."

He hummed. "I do not wish to."

He spat at him but missed by inches. Yami raised a brow, looking at it sideways, and then eyed him with disapproval. "I don't care what you are anymore," he snapped. "All I know is that I'll see you in hell when you're dead."

Yami laughed softly, a hysterical noise, then burst out with the noise, the sound pushing up from deep inside his belly. He was looking at him, red eyes wide and keen, glittering, and then shook his head slowly. "The immortal don't die," he barked.

The look of hatred turned into blind panic, then crushing realization and abundant horror. "The Pure-Blood," he rasped out, throat closing with pain.

He shook his head. " _A_ Pure-Blood. Not _the_ Pure-Blood," he corrected. His hand moved with the swiftness of a striking snake. His nails cut through him like butter. Blood welled up and outwards, a bright and hideous shade to announce its altered state. Yoshimori's eyes were still wide, though now they were lifeless as well. His chin dropped to his collarbone.

Yami did not waste a second glance back. He did not even check himself over for blood. He had been entirely too conscious of it all. The only blood he would have to deal with was that which was under the long nails of his right hand. He shut the door behind him, then trotted back towards the staircase.

He was two floors down when a realization crept over him.

Someone was coming up towards him. He faltered, hesitant, because he was not a killer by nature. He had never wanted to murder someone in cold blood as he had moments before. And he could easily slip past this person if he pulled the baseball cap further down and did not answer them if they spoke.

They would most likely link him, but he would be out of the museum long before anyone thought to give chase. But the moment of opportunity passed. His heart in his throat, he flinched as a very familiar face appeared in front of him.

He swallowed thickly, the urge to duck and hide away from the approaching boy overwhelming him for a split second. But the other had already caught his eye and the way he stared at him made his stomach flip. Yami lowered his head when Yugi came to the bottom step of the flight he was on.

"Hey, what are you…?"

Yami couldn't stand to see the shame and disgust he knew would soon cover Yugi's face. He furrowed his brows and tucked his head towards his shoulders for a brief moment in something that almost looked like a simple shrug. He sighed quietly, "I had to deal with something."

"Deal with something?" Yugi blinked and then looked him over for a moment. He seemed okay. He looked as healthy as he could with the wounds on his arms and the slight limp still plaguing him. He reached over to touch his hand, lifting his fingers and looking them over. They seemed perfectly fine. There was only something slightly brownish red beneath the fingernails of his right hand.

Yami pulled his hand away after a long moment. "Yes. There was something that needed to be done…" He fell silent when he could not think of anything more to say.

The smaller boy frowned, reaching out slowly to touch his hand in confusion. Was he okay? Was he sick? Maybe he just hadn't noticed because of his head being down. Yugi shook his head as he flipped his palm over and studied his hand for a long moment. Nothing seemed wrong. But what was there really that he hoped to find from staring at his hand like he was? It seemed rather stupid that he was doing that.

"But you're okay, right?"

There was a moment of silence. The taller teen struggled to understand his misplaced concern. Then he nodded slightly, feeling small and flustered for the briefest of seconds. "Yes, I'm okay."

"Good." He paused. "So then, what happened? What did you need to—?"

They both heard footsteps and fell immediately quiet. Yami moved quickly to wrap his hand around his wrist and hurry towards the door. Yugi stumbled slightly but kept his balance and hurried forward to match his pace. The footsteps had halted and a high-pitched scream trailed through the air towards them. The smaller boy halted, dragging Yami to a stop as well. The doors were right in front of the taller teen.

"What's going on?" He turned his head to Yami immediately. "Can you hear her?"

He wished that he couldn't. With a fine sense of disgrace coating his insides, he nodded slowly. "Yes." He hesitated, refusing to speak, but the pointed look on Yugi's face made him falter further. "She's screaming for security. She's yelling at one of the guards that Yoshimori has been murdered."

His breath left his lungs in a rush. "W-what? H-how is he…?" He trailed off, stunned, but his mind was already racing a mile beyond his focus. And something very slowly slipped within the forefront of his thoughts. He tilted his head, leaning forward, teeth bared behind his lips, eyes sharp and fierce. His hand moved to tip Yami's chin up and the taller boy merely stared at him in response. "You killed him, didn't you?"

The defiance in his gaze turned them into glowing gems of bright red. Though somewhat flustered by Yugi's anger, a cold sense of priority came over him as well. He had done as was necessary. He would not have done it if it was not. With a blank look, though his eyes glowed, he nodded.

The small teen was immobilized behind him. But Yami walked out the door and did not bother to wait for him. For a moment he was able to move about, past the growing crowd that was listening to a small speech announcing Yoshimori's arrival to speak to them about the wolves. Then he felt a hand grasp his wrist, tugging hard and pulling him to a stop. He didn't turn around, eyes narrowed and focused on the floor for a moment.

"Yami, why would you do that?" he hissed, pleading with him perhaps to lie and tell him that he hadn't really. Yami hesitated for a moment, unsure of what to truly say or even to think. He let Yugi keep his grip on his wrist, allowed him to hold him there in that spot past the crowd, where he saw Sugoroku from the corner of his eye as he looked around in confusion. No doubt he was searching for his former colleague who would never come.

He felt dizzy as the thought was truly considered. His stomach ached, his heart pounding forcefully in his chest, and he tightened his grip on the other wolf's clothing. The material was slick against his fingers, though not with blood as he had first assumed. His eyes squeezed tightly shut.

"Why…? Why would you…?"

Yami didn't want to truly destroy the memory of what Yoshimori meant to the family, but lying seemed out of the question as well. Between the guilt and the shame, his selfishness was borne.

"He was going to kill you."

Yugi stiffened. "You overheard the conversation we were having over there, didn't you?"

"A conversation?" Yami peered forward, towards the doors, eyes sharp and fierce. "Between you and him?"

"You heard us arguing…"

"Arguing?" Yami still refused to turn around. Had there been arguing? How could he have missed that? He frowned. He'd given Yugi privacy. He'd allowed him to speak without his eavesdropping to hinder him. "Were you arguing?"

Yugi was frantic when he spat, "You heard us! You had to have! You wouldn't have done this otherwise!"

Slowly the other boy turned his head to look at him, then very gently pulled his hand away from him. Yugi was shaking, practically vibrating with desperation for him to agree, to justify his words and his loyalty. He was right. Yami would not have killed him without meaning. But it wasn't as he so incorrectly expected, so desperately assumed.

"I never heard you argue."

"You did!" Yugi snarled, the noise strangled. "You did! You had to have! That's why you went after him!"

Yami shook his head slowly. "I never heard you argue."

It was so calm, so quiet, that Yugi could not argue any further. His breath caught, eyes wide, a sense of betrayal making his gaze almost appear to glow. It was wet, shiny, and the fear and horror stared at him like a gaping wound. The smaller teen slowly shook his head, back and forth, desperate that he might say something else.

"I never heard you argue."

He felt as if things were spiraling around him, spinning out of his control. His head ached as he stared at him, mouth opening and closing. The room was a blur around him. The cacophony of noise from others in the room was a chaotic roar. He swayed on his feet for a split second.

Yami watched him for a moment. But then his eyes flickered away. In a show of cold indifference, he spun on his heel and rushed out. He blinked stupidly after him, all but gaping, as his name brought at his attention. Slowly Yugi turned his head, queasy and small, as an officer made his way over. He almost wondered at the idea of them responding so quickly. But they were only a block down. They were _right there_.

And Yami had done this.

With the police _right there_.

He must have been banking on the exact time it would take them to get there. He must have known something about it even though Yugi had no idea. He wouldn't have taken the risk without knowing something about it.

He had said it himself.

He didn't go into something not knowing how to escape as well. No fight he threw himself into was only half-calculated. He considered the odds and knew he would come out alive before he fought anyone. This…

It had to be no different.

"Mutou Yugi?"

He blinked, then frowned as he raised his eyes, tilting his head. His mind was racing but the decision was already made. "Yes, officer?"

 **For the gun ownership, I'm still researching. But anyways, so I was reading somewhere that said something about some citizens going through lengthy LENGTHY licensing procedures. In that case, they would get a shotgun and after ten years of ownership would be able to buy a rifle. Yoshimori carries a shotgun.**


	29. Sacrifices

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day (no update on June 2nd)**

 **Chapter Warnings: Mild Cursing, Discussion About Murder, Sacrifices, Blood, Wolves Fighting**

 **SO sorry for the late update. A lot of things got piled up on top of each other. My job just got overloaded with things that aren't MY responsibility because my manager is useless. And so now I'm working on getting things sorted out, which completely cut into my time for editing because it's exhausting and I can't seem to wake myself up in the mornings for work anymore as it is**

 **Updates might definitely slow down depending on how the next couple of days go. Things are extremely out of hand and so I have to deal with them before I get my updates for this story done.**

 **This chapter is being posted right after edits so any mistakes I might have missed are results of my autocorrect and lack of sleep.**

 **I apologize for anything that reads too terribly.**

Chapter XXIX: Sacrifices

 _Work Log Entry XXIX: October, 1998_

 _October 12_

 _His father has oddly taken well to his pup. We cannot determine if he truly recognizes him or not. They look nothing alike and his father seems to be too depressed to change back to his human form for the time being._

 _The boss wishes for us to perform some tests to ensure that he is not unable to do such basic things._

Yugi was all but shaking when he stepped into his room. He was sure he would have been trembling, that he would have been pale and looked as if death itself had touched him. But what he was, was infuriated and the rage had finally placed some color in his cheeks. His eyes were blazing, even as he carefully shut the door behind him and forced his voice to remain low.

"What the fuck did you _do_?"

Yami tilted his head at him and raised an elegant brow in a sarcastic arch. "I slit his throat with my nails," he said slowly, staring at him intently. "I slit his throat with the nails on my right hand. I killed him."

"You say that like it's okay!"

"It was necessary, so it _is_ okay," he said slowly, grinding his teeth together to keep from snarling. His eyes were darker, like splatters of blood, and his pupils had blown with his ferocity. "I did as was needed."

He nearly spat at him, but instead drew in a deep breath. " _How_ was it necessary, Yami? _Why_?"

Yami narrowed his eyes and then blinked slowly. "Are you sure you want to know, Yugi?"

Yugi let out a low, guttural snarl, his patience snapping as he hissed, "I just fucking _lied to the police for you_! I think that the least owed to me is an explanation, Yami."

The other wolf peered at him for a long moment, frowning and tilting his head slightly to the side. He considered him for a moment, then looked away again with sharp eyes. "You may deserve something but never get it," he growled in response, falling silent a moment later and sighing softly.

"He was a friend! And you went and…"

He hesitated for a moment, then reached out to grab his hand. The material of the teal jacket he was wearing was almost silky, slippery beneath his fingertips. He blinked when Yami turned back to him with something of a stunned, almost stricken expression. His gaze had immediately fallen onto his, burning, and the attention he gave him made his heart race slightly.

But Yugi did not let go, instead lowering his eyes to begin rolling his sleeve up. His skin was bare, the bandages pristine and white where they suppressed his wound. He rolled the jacket all the way to the bend of his elbow, inspecting every inch of skin he could see. Then he did the same with the left, relaxing only slightly as Yami rolled the jacket sleeves back down.

Yugi had almost forgotten his anger in his relief to see he was okay, unharmed. But then reality crashed upon him once more. He shivered, eyes on his again. For a moment he could not think to say it again, then he growled out, " _Well_?"

"He had plans to kill you—"

"How could you possibly know that without having heard us argue? Yami, that doesn't make any sense! Why would you just assume that?"

He bristled. "I didn't just assume—"

"Then where is your proof?"

"He said he wanted to capture Code Name Atem and—"

"I'm not sure if you're aware, but Mai and Otogi both said that the reward is for me to be brought to the labs _alive_!"

Yami narrowed his eyes, blinking long and slow, a sense of bitterness creeping through him. He shook his head sharply several times, then bore his teeth. Yugi didn't understand what he had done, what he had tried to protect him from. But then, how could he? He could barely restrain his growing anger and it made it nearly impossible to verbalize the words attempting to form in his lungs. He was hardly able to be forthright with the information, either, because he could not properly calm himself now.

"You just have to be alive when they get you," he said quietly, voice so low it held the lightness of a passing breeze. "You do not have to be when they truly capture you. You forget what your being Code Name Atem means, Yugi. The whole truth of the Pure-Blood is that their existence is supposed to be a myth. Because they are the only creatures to be able to be taken by death and returned in the same state."

"Yami, you don't honestly think that's…? It's not possible!" Yugi threw out, frustrated as he shook his head sharply and scowled at him furiously. "It's not possible at all, okay? No one can come back from the dead!"

"…No? Then what about after my heart stopped at the greenhouse? It took a few minutes but it still started up again."

The small teen felt slightly dizzy. "It was muscle contractions because of the electricity—just like Mai and Otogi said—"

"For Lupa's sake, you act as if their word is _law_! Is it impossible for them to do any wrong? Is that truly what you mean to say to me? That they speak the truth and I only tell you lies?" he spat, eyes dilated with slight fear as well as an abundance of pure anger. He stared at him, almost blinded by his rage, and then slowly fell silent, blinking slowly as a sickened feeling crept through him. His bones seemed to rattle beneath his skin as he stared at him. "You would honestly trust them over me, wouldn't you?"

Yugi felt his cheeks heat, first with indignation and then with embarrassment. Flustered, the smaller teen mumbled, "They haven't given me a reason not to."

The taller boy snarled low in his throat. "And I have? Truly, Yugi, I have?" he demanded angrily. "You would choose to listen to two strangers of whom we only know the names, the blonde of which you are pathetically salivating over even now?"

Yugi wiped at his mouth immediately, stunned and confused, but there was nothing there and he scowled in frustration. "Look, I don't know if you realize this, but I hardly know more about you than I do them—"

"Have I hurt you? Have I wounded you? Have I purposefully gone about an attempt to cause you pain?"

"No, but neither have they—"

"And yet, you have no _idea_ what they may or may _not_ be involved in! You have no idea if they were truly there with the hunter in the woods or if they truly _were_ there to track him! And Mai is the one who tore his throat out. She smeared his blood across my throat when she picked me up. And she pushed the taste into my mouth for days when she pulled my teeth away from the generator. How are you so terribly certain that she is _not_ bait for an unsuspecting werewolf too foolish to know his own tail from his paws? You believe as you wish, Yugi, but I am not the one who mysteriously appeared that day, claiming to have been tracking the human as well as us."

"No, _you_ just show up in the middle of the night on someone's doorstep, bleeding and mute!" Yugi snapped, blushing again at the way Yami startled for the briefest of moments before his lips curled back to show his perfect teeth. " _You_ just kill while claiming that it is what is best for the situation. _You_ just electrocute yourself and make your heart stop. _You_ just… You just go and kill someone in a public place."

He wished instantly that he could swallow his words. The other boy blinked at him, long and slow, and then grimaced. The expression on his face was one of disbelieving frustration and immense hurt. The way Yami stared back at him made Yugi's heart leap into his throat and his mouth grow dry.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean…"

But hadn't he?

He had meant it.

Because Yami was trying to make him turn his scorn on two others who had not done anything wrong as far as he knew. He was assuming that they had done equal to worse things than him.

And that was something that frustrated Yugi.

That was something that made him stop and stare at him.

That was something which made him bristle and lash out in response.

"Mai and Otogi are _not_ saints, no matter what you might think. No one is a saint. Even _you_ have blood on your hands. Remember that."

"Are we about to compare who might have done the worst?" he snapped. "Because I have a very real feeling that it's _you_ who would win."

"Me? And what about you, little Atem? Do you honestly suspect that the things that probably made you do in that lab are not to be measured and weighed because you simply do not remember? Amnesia does not _erase_. It does not _exempt_ you. You may not remember. But I bet you the ones you have done wrong do."

"That's…that's past."

"No, it's not. As long as you proceed to announce yourself as Code Name Atem, so too are those events present."

"I don't remember them. So they don't… They happened but they don't hold weight right this second! Because you weren't one of the wolves from the lab, were you? And I've done never but try to _help_ you!"

They fell silent for a long time. Yami blinked and lowered his eyes. Yugi frowned, nibbling his bottom lip. They refused to look at each other for what felt like hours. His stomach was rolling with pain. He couldn't bear to look at the taller boy for a long minute.

"Why do you think he was a threat, Yami?" he finally muttered. "Help me to understand… _Please_!"

He opened his mouth, then stiffened, head snapping audibly as it turned towards the door. Yami's eyes were owlish, his mouth dry. The smaller boy blinked, then turned his head as well, confusion making his eyes wide. There was a soft, steady, familiar noise which registered in his ears. Blood rushing in his head, the small teen nearly groaned. His mom was coming up the stairs.

"Hide!" he hissed, spinning on him. "Go!"

Yami blinked at him stupidly, and Yugi ground his teeth together. With a bristle, his attention sharp and detailed, the small teen shoved him towards his closet. The other wolf blinked at him, aghast when the blue-violet-eyed boy opened the metal door and pushed him inside.

"Get under the clothes. Quickly!"

Yami gave him a dirty look, hissing, "What? Why?"

He shot him a furious glance. "Because, she's going to come in! And you need to not be here when she does. I don't need a talk about homosexuality or having a same sex partner if she sees you!"

Eyes wide, cheeks bright, the other sputtered, "W-why would she—?"

He rolled his eyes, gesturing frantically. "Because, what else are you going to think when there's some random ass kid in your son's room who you've never met? She'll think I've been hiding my relationship with you, especially since I haven't talked about Anzu since our first disaster of a date. Now, _hide_."

Yami couldn't truly fathom the idea. So turning to the pile of clothes and digging through them in order to bury himself beneath them was actually somehow comforting to him. He allowed Yugi to quickly cover his head with the stray materials, closing his eyes and ignoring the way his heart was in his throat, beating too loudly in his ears.

Would she really have assumed…?

He supposed he could see from her perspective how that might make sense. As Yugi had said, he would be a random teenage boy in her son's room, standing there talking to him, their body language intense, Yugi's desperate, his own confused and fearful. And if he truly had gone out with this girl Anzu and never spoke much about her to his mom afterwards, then it would certainly seem that he had tried to use her to cover his sexuality.

Yet he still could not fully wrap his head around such a concept. Even as he drew in a deep breath and kept his muscles locked, the click of the door a faint noise in his ears, it confounded him. It was not that he truly cared one way or another about one's sexuality; wolves loved who they loved. They could jump from a male to a female and back again within the blink of an eye seemingly. Their sexuality was fluid, allowing them the chance of a true partnership with whomever they considered their mate, their significant other. He had never truly felt the spark to be with someone else, to wish to care for them far more than he did himself. In his mind most things boiled down to whether he thought they were a part of his pack or not.

That loyalty drove him. But Yami had known of others to sacrifice themselves for their mates, be they human or wolves. And it made his fur bristle and his skin itch and his body stiff. He had not understood what it was that made them do such a thing, even when it had been done for him. His heart hurt at the thought, a harsh contraction in which it twisted too fiercely and stuttered in its steadiness. He gasped and choked on air, desperate to flee the closet space now, to try to outrun the weight of the thoughts in his head.

They were smothering him, even as he forced himself to remain still. Yugi's voice was low and quiet and his mother's was somewhat frustrated. He knew instinctively that they were coming towards the closet, and it made his heart pound at twice its usual rate. It had not stopped hurting, however, and each twist and pump of blood felt like a deep poison in his veins. He kept his eyes shut tightly, jaw clenched.

"And what about these clothes?"

"I need to throw them in the laundry," Yugi huffed, "and I'll do it in a few minutes."

"A few minutes usually turns into an hour when it comes to chores," she said in an annoyed tone, the harshness a bit too biting to be towards mere chores. The small teen knew she was still mad that he and his grandpa had gone out to meet with Yoshimori as they had, though he had failed to tell her as of yet that he had been killed. He didn't know what words he was supposed to use. "But I need you to do them before six, Yugi. I need to wash—"

"They'll be done before six," he bit back, flustered. She kept eyeing the pile, almost as if she could tell something was wrong but could not put her finger on it. Thankfully Yami had remained perfectly still for the most part, so he was basically invisible to her. Yugi himself could see those almost unnoticeable, tiny stirrings of his breaths as he inhaled, but he knew it was his heightened senses. "I'll have them all done before six, okay?"

"When was the last time you even _did_ laundry? That's not all from this week!"

"No, and I never said it was. I said I had slacked off on laundry a couple of days ago, didn't I?"

Kasumi shot him a warning look, telling him to back off his biting tone. Her eyes narrowed into slits and she nearly spat at him for a moment. Instead she shook her head sharply and turned on her heel. "Whatever, Yugi. Just remember where everything is, all right?"

Yugi followed a step behind her, desperate to get her out of the room altogether. "Yeah, the laundry detergent, the scented crystals and the dryer sheets are all above the washer and dryer. Then I have to clean the lint trap so that it doesn't catch on fire." He tried not to, but his voice came out condescending and annoyed and he flushed when she turned around to give him another harsh warning look. "Sorry. I just… I know, okay? I do. And I'll do them in a few minutes, I promise."

She sighed, then shook her head and wandered off. He wondered not for the first time what exactly it was that Yoshimori had done to make her despise him so much. It surprised him, how much hatred and loathing she seemed to possess for him. He watched her go, barely aware of the fact that he was still standing in the hallway. Then he turned and quickly made his way back into the room.

"Yami?"

There was no answer and his stomach dropped as he headed into the closet. His mouth was dry, his stomach twisting, as he saw the pile of clothes completely undone. His teal jacket was lying nearby, shrugged off with obvious care, and he was nowhere in sight. Yugi looked around for a long moment, then huffed. The window was open. Yami had snuck out. But how he had found a path comfortable enough to go without risk of being caught was beyond him. He blinked and looked towards the closet, then the bed.

He had used the bed to cover himself, hiding beneath it just as long it took for him to get his mom outside of the room and hold that mild snippet of conversation. He had then snuck to the window, opened it, and climbed out. Yugi blinked at the glass pane, moving towards it to gently lower it until it closed.

Yami had left it wide open.

He frowned, tilting his head. Had something scared him? Or was he just so angry that he had forgotten? Maybe their argument had been so fresh in his mind that he had simply fled and forgotten to cover his tracks. Or maybe he was so estranged to the idea of homosexuality that he'd fled.

Yugi supposed it didn't matter as he turned to the clothing pile. What did was that he was gone now. And the small teen was on laundry duty. He began to shift through his clothes, then toss them into the hamper. It would be easier to take the entire basket than go with handfuls.

He hesitated as he looked at Yami's jacket for a moment. He had never washed it before. And he was unsure that he would even want him to. But he couldn't imagine that the red-eyed teen would care one way or the other. And he was supposed to be doing laundry, so why not the jacket as well?

He shrugged, snatching it up. The scent of autumn leaves, crisp and curled upon branches of aspen trees, with the barest touch of woodsy oak, met his nose. He shivered, because the smell urged something deep inside of him to rear its head, desperate for approval and attention.

But the softest touch of winter snow, of moonlight cold and unbroken by drifting clouds, of pine needles crushed beneath paws and the slightest hint of rain came as well. The two scents blended melodiously, making his head spin for the briefest of seconds. A smile tugged at the edge of his lips. It was heavenly, the way the air seemed to swell with the addition of the smell.

He hummed and tossed it into the hamper a moment later. It would smell the same later when Yami wore it again, he supposed. Not that he planned to sniff it again at any rate. That would have been embarrassing.

* * *

It was several hours later that Yami returned to the house. The smaller teen was greeted by a frantic, wild-eyed boy who was panting with clear distress as he looked about the room with a widened gaze. His face had grown pale and his pupils seemed almost to vibrate, enlarged with sudden and intense fear. It bordered panic, terror, and Yugi faltered when he spun on him.

"Where…? Where is it…?"

He was rasping and the noise cut low in the small teen's body, his blood cooled by the desperation in his tone. He blinked, shaking his head slightly, heart lurching and mouth growing dry with paste. He stared at him, then shook his head again slowly.

"My jacket—" He seemed to choke in the way his voice tapered off. "Where is it…?"

"I washed it…" He blinked at him, because suddenly Yami looked extremely unsteady and small. "I'll go grab it, give me a second."

He was in a daze when Yugi returned, holding the soft, worn jacket, its pristine condition a reminder of so many things he wished never to remember or ever to forget. He blinked as it was held out to him, the small teen frowning in clear puzzlement, and a son rose to his throat as he stared at it. His mouth was dry, his heart twisting and skipping in its ragged beats, his skin growing further pale, a sweat beginning to bloom upon his forehead. His shoulders shook, harsh and silent, and his eyes grew glassy, watery, his vision slightly blurred. With a strangled noise, he snatched it from him, then felt his stomach coil with growing distress.

He could only stare blankly. His heart was everywhere in his head, pounding painfully. His vision was growing further impaired. Darkness was coiling and billowing inwards. He choked again, shoulders shaking harder. Then the breath wheezed from his lungs and burst forth in a whistle of a rasp. He forced his teeth together, then felt the antagonistic ache and push of his stomach heaving upwards.

He was shaking, erratic and painful, gasping frantically. Then he turned his head. His mouth opened. A spray of bile tainted red dripped onto the floor first in a small stream. Then it doubled. Painfully his knees threatened to buckle and he swayed. He could not breathe as he clutched the jacket closer to himself and doubled over. The noise was a roar of sloshing acid and pounding liquid, swallowing away the burst of his blood in his ears.

Yugi was frozen, too horrified to move. He could do no more than gape as Yami continued to puke. The taller teen heaved and sputtered, spittle foaming along the edges of his jaw. He gasped and snapped his jaws and whimpered, whining with breath whistling from his nose. His eyes were bloodshot, pained as tears trailed down his cheek. He did not seem conscious of any of it, however, oblivious to all but that single piece of clothing clutched his hands. His fingers were strained, his knuckles white, and when he puked again, his wrists had grown red from the tape pressing his circulation away.

Yet, still, Yugi could nothing but gape.

It took what felt like an eternity for Yami to finally stop. The carpet was soaked a hideous yellow-green, edged with red where he'd spewed what Yugi realized with a spinning mind was meat.

He'd gone hunting.

And he'd ended up vomiting it all up again in one moment.

The pile of it was that of a messy blur of red, of white where the bone had been crushed into dust and fragments, and the foam which caked his mouth was a froth of yellow and green, of pink and orange and deep patches of red that looked blackened.

He stared at it, unsure of what more to do. He ran a mental list of how quickly he needed to get it up, how fast he'd have to get the cleaners to clean it from the fibers. His head was spinning, but his thoughts were already racing towards the solutions to clean up this newest problem.

He spun on his heel and was gone before Yami even thought to raise his head. He stretched the fabric out in front of him, a broken cry leaving his lungs before he could stop himself. It was high-pitched and shuddering the second time it came out, an animalistic scream of anguish. When Yugi reappeared he was still whimpering, that sound leaving him in desperate gasps, and he was shaking harder than even before. The tears flowing from his eyes had not ceased and his shoulders were still wracked with his numerous tremors.

He couldn't understand what had upset him that much. It was just a jacket, wasn't it? Yugi stepped forward, moving towards the pile on the floor. It was mostly paste, from where Yami had started to digest it during the Change. He gagged at the thought, then at the acrid smell which came with close proximity to it. He drew in a deep breath, then held it tightly in his lungs as he moved to slide the mixture into the small bucket he had brought with him. He dug it into the carpet, then pushed with the dustpan of the small broom he'd used several times before to sweep away hair and dirt from inside some of the other kennels.

Yami was still shaking, but he had fallen silent by the time he had gotten it up, spraying it down until the entire puddle of discoloration was saturated. He added a few more small squirts for good measure, then got slowly to his feet. When he turned his head, the other wolf was blinking, eyes dried for the most part, though they looked exhausted. The red puffiness of them was nonexistent, nothing to be seen as he struggled to comprehend. He blinked, dragging his eyes towards him, and the agony turned into a swift wave of loathing.

Yugi startled at the sight of it, stepping back with wide eyes. The red gaze burned into his, his shoulders rising into an aggressive bristle. Even as they still shook with the aftershock of his pain, he managed to let out a snarl and bare his teeth. The surface of them was laced with red, flecked along his canines with bile, and the addition of the foam encasing his mouth made him shiver. He backed up another step. Yami looked furious enough to tear his head from his body at any moment.

He clenched his fists, pulling the jacket somehow impossibly closer to his chest, then snarled lower in his throat. The noise was so guttural Yugi almost could not tell if the other boy truly even recognized him, or perhaps if something had seemingly snapped within his brain. Perhaps he had lost all sense of recognition and thus saw him as a great and terrible threat.

But the red eyes were not distant. And he could see the dangerous ferocity, the hideous recognition there, boring into his. When he dropped the snarl lower, Yugi backed up several more steps. He did not advance on him, rather looked as if he too planned to move away. But the smaller boy did not wait to see. Instead he ducked his head, moving unconsciously to cover his throat with his shoulders, and raced for the bathroom.

Yami watched him go. He felt it on his shoulders and the back of his head like a laser. It was hot and ancient and primal beyond recognition. It made his heart race and his stomach lurch and his head spin once more. He nearly puked himself when he got to the toilet, but his nerves, as frantic as they were, righted themselves seconds later. With a task to focus on, Yugi was easily able to simply dump the paste into the water. It turned hideous bright red, swirling upwards, and his head spun painfully with the thought. He nearly groaned in the back of his throat, disgusted and terrified by the sight of it.

But it was Yami which he feared more, even as he flushed, then dumped the other half into the toilet. When he flushed this time, it looked like a swirling whirlpool of blood and guts and it made him sway on his feet. Then, he shook it off, tossing his head back and forth several times to dispel the thought, and forced himself to take a calming deep breath.

When he got back into the room, Yami was back in his corner. His legs were drawn to his chest, his arms wrapped tightly around them. His gaze was stuck on the jacket, set a couple of feet away from him. The anguish was back, the anger long gone. He rocked back and forth every few minutes, but refused to look away from it.

Yugi went about drying the mixture from the floor with paper towels, scraping the carpet's surface first with the dustpan to get the foam off. The paper towels took up most of the liquid, the foam absorbing most of the stain. He dropped the paper into the toilet a sheet at a time, flushing them only when he was sure there was no chance of it clogging.

He returned a few minutes later. But nothing had changed. Aside from the fact that his floor no longer had the hideous pile of bloody remains, everything looked exactly the same. "Yami, I…" He opened his mouth again but the other boy merely shook his head, then ducked to rest his cheek against his jeans. He was still staring at the jacket. Yugi knew it instinctively.

The silence made him queasy.

What had he done?

Yugi couldn't breathe properly as he looked at the other boy. He barely moved but to breathe, in which case his shoulders rose and fell in hideous silent sobs once more. His breaths were even, though now they whistled at the edges again. He wanted to wail at the way it curled in his ears and the sight of Yami, looking so incredibly small, only a sixth of his size, as if he were nothing more than broken limbs and clothing, made him dizzy.

He took a seat on the bed, his own breaths coming in wheezed, his throat strained and his lungs bursting with the effort. His heart ached for him, though he did not know the reason behind Yami's distress.

What had he done?

He should have known better.

He had seen how much Yami cherished the stupid thing.

He'd never understood why.

But it always looked a million times better than his other clothes.

He swallowed thickly, then choked out, "I can get you a new one."

Yugi didn't know why he said it, nor what sense it truly made to offer. The teal jacket had obviously meant so much more to Yami than he could have ever imagined. He could never replace it. Yet somehow his mind thought it justified to whisper such a promise, to offer such compensation. He could have laughed at himself, hysterical with disgust.

His head was swimming again. His voice was desperate, pleading. "Please? I can get you another one."

He whined low in his throat, like a dog begging for its master's forgiveness. It made him feel small and weak, but there was something to be said about the way the air coiled and seemed almost for a moment to swallow such noise. He breathed out raggedly, then shook his head pathetically.

Yami did not lift his eyes.

The silence draped over them further, suffocating in its immense hold. He could barely breathe and the other teen seemed to have similar difficulty. His shoulders were still shaking every inhale. He wanted to draw his own legs up and wrap his arms around them now. But somehow it seemed a mockery of the other's pain, so Yugi simply drew in a harsh breath, then wrapped his arms tightly around his belly. He hung his head, because all he could think to say was the continued pathetic offer to buy another one.

* * *

Yami remained in that corner for two days. He did not touch food or water. When Yugi offered it to him, he would be unsurprised after that first day to find the plate still full or the cup untouched. He had tried on several occasions to coax him into eating or drinking, had practically begged him. But the red-eyed teen would not so much as raise his head.

And he truly feared that he would have even refused to bother himself with the effort of breathing had he not been forced to.

The third day Yugi came back from school, tossing his backpack down and sighing at the disarray his efforts had furthered, when he noticed it.

Yami had moved.

It was nothing more than to pull the jacket into his lap and place his head against it, face angled towards him, eyes dead as they bore into his, but he had still moved. The sight chilled him but it also made his heart pound and a small sense of excitement rush through him.

He wanted to smile but the way Yami peered at him unnerved him as well. He swallowed hard, then shook his head slightly. The room smelled different from what the jacket itself had boasted. Because Yami had not moved those two days, his scent permeated the air at an intensity that swamped even his own. He could almost barely detect himself beneath it.

But the scent was much colder than it had appeared to be at first. There was no mesmerizing mixture of scents. Instead it was one large blend of a harsher tone, like darkness where the autumn's sunlight had been, pine needles shed and crushed where the leaves had been curling inwards, with moonlight like gentle drizzles of honey, and a blistering burst of icy snowflakes amidst the longest winter. He smelled nothing like autumn, and all the season to follow.

He smelled unnaturally like the very embodiment of winter, as if the weather itself relied on his presence to further its cool touch.

Yugi knew better than to push but still he asked, "Did you eat today?" in a small voice. He hesitated, biting his lip until it bled, and then tilted his head. Yami was staring at him with those same dulled eyes, gaze lost of any sense of emotion. They looked at each other for a long time until Yugi finally jerked his head away and looked at the floor.

There was a gentle rustling noise, the slightest of sounds, and it made Yugi stiffen for a moment. It was so small that his stomach knotted with confusion, anticipation, and he barely resisted the urge to immediately look up. But he kept his head lowered, struggling, hoping against everything that the other wolf would not react badly. Maybe if he resisted looking at him Yami might react to him.

For a long minute nothing happened. Then he allowed himself to peek from beneath his lashes. Yami was watching him, and his head was angled in a way that made it obvious he had been waiting for him to look. His gaze caught on his, the two of them stared for a long minute, and then the taller teen shifted his weight. His right cheek slid against the fabric of his jeans, the same rustling noise he had heard before. The process was long and slow, and at first Yugi almost thought he was just scratching his face.

Then he realized he was shaking his head.

The sense of excitement which coursed through him almost made him feel guilty. Even as his eyes grew wider than before and his mouth opened and closed, he felt a strong sinking sensation fill his gut. It laced his lungs, tightening them drastically. He felt as if he might choke, as if the world were spinning around him.

"Are you hungry?"

For several long minutes there was no response, that vacant look making his eyes appear darker and distant, glazed over. Then he blinked and slowly shook his head, dragging his cheek along his jeans again. His eyes shut tightly a moment later, the exhaustion evident in the draw of his brows, the crease of his eyelids, the way the skin along his cheeks drew upwards with the action. His lips had drawn slightly forward into something of a moue as he kept his eyes clenched tightly shut.

"Okay. Have you at least…? Did you…?" He looked over towards the desk where he had put the protein shake in the off chance that Yami might touch it. When he leaned forward, craning his neck and straining his eyes, he could just barely see a frothy foam at the top, colored yellow-white from the vanilla flavoring. He could not see the top of the shake within the cup.

His mouth opened into a wide grin. He had drunk some. Yami had drunk some of the protein shake.

It wasn't as great as if he had eaten on top of that, but it was progress nonetheless.

When he looked back at him, he almost would have assumed him to be asleep. His eyes were no longer clenched so tightly, and appeared rather relaxed. But when he truly studied him, he could see that his eyes were open into slits, his lashes long and nearly blocking the sight of his irises. But he was still awake, even as silent and statuesque as he appeared. He was all but frozen in place, head still against his legs, the jacket bunched in his arms.

Yugi was almost afraid that he would start shaking again, that perhaps he would open his mouth and puke as violently as he had before. But the seconds passed and Yami simply sat there, not at all respondent to him. For a few long minutes nothing seemed to happen. Then Yugi very slowly let out a soft sigh, murmuring, "Good."

It was the only thing he could possibly think to say, as miniscule and seemingly pointless as it was. He closed his eyes for a moment, mimicking the taller teen, and then they both looked at one another again. He wanted for only a split second to ask him if he wanted another one, but immediately fell silent of the idea. His head was spinning as they looked at each other.

"I…I can still buy you a new one… A jacket, I mean…"

He felt as if his tongue was swollen, sticking to the roof of his mouth, and it made him feel lightheaded. The other wolf stared at him, silence deafening as it bore down on his thin frame. They continued to stare at one another, frozen and cautious as their gazes bore into each other. Alarms were going off in his head, warnings that he was stepping on very thin ice and needed to remember himself before he did something more foolish to anger Yami.

Yugi was well aware of just how fragile the other was, how easily he might snap at the moment, and it gave him pause.

For several long minutes there was no response of any kind. Then, very slowly, Yami snapped, voice harsh and irritated, with a raw edge that made him cringe, "I. Do. Not. Want. A. New. One."

Yugi swallowed thickly. Then he looked away. "I'm sorry."

He ignored him. His eyes narrowed and his jaw clenched. Sharply he dug his cheek into his knee and curled his lip back furiously. "Shut up."

He took a seat but not once did Yami look up at him through his lashes.

* * *

He was not sure what had spurred it. Perhaps it had been the intensity with which he was hit by the fear and adrenaline, the worry and the immense pain which coursed through him. It took only a moment, a hideous and long moment, so drawn out that he felt hours had passed.

His blood had grown hot, bursting within his veins, and his vision had exploded with splashes of illuminating white. His head was spinning, teeth biting into his tongue. Bile had splashed forward and through him, scorching his throat hideously. The spasm that had wracked him had sent his legs jerking and twitching, seizing with pain.

Then he had collapsed, falling to the ground and writhing as his body pushed through a wall of flame and his lungs choked with their exhales. Then, very slowly, he had been able to breathe again. He was able to see more clearly, the white dissipating. He was able to remember himself around the pain, the spasm fading from his worn limbs.

When he had come to himself fully, getting to his feet again, he had been winded but unsurprised to see paws where his hands had been. He had not even blinked at the way his vision seemed to have expanded slightly, giving him a wider view of the area around him.

Yugi stood there, motionless safe for his breathing, blinking about himself as he finally turned his head. The woods looked oddly tranquil despite the hideous clarity with which he remembered the hunter setting his dogs upon them. He recalled vividly the way that he had been unable to outrun them, and Yami had snatched him by the scruff to toss him into the greenhouse.

He looked up towards branches thin and layered snow, glistening with faint sunlight and seeming to glow palely before his eyes. The bare branches reached far into the sky, where the clouds were a similar shade of bright white like the water crystals which laden them.

He lowered his eyes, looking towards the ground. His clothes were ruined. He sat back on his haunches and forced himself to resist the urge to whine pathetically in the back of his throat.

They were shredded and the torn material was covered in bright yellow bile. He sighed softly, the noise whistling through the air in a ragged current of white. Stomach still churning, the white wolf got slowly to his feet and began to move forward again.

He didn't have a change of clothes.

He wasn't sure exactly how he was meant to get back into the house without clothes.

Sure, no one was likely to be looking out their window for a nude teenage boy, but it was still pretty embarrassing by any means. And where was he meant to change? Across the street, then run towards the house, scale the wall, and sneak in through the window again?

If he had not had fur to cover his face or the wolf's natural inability to do so, he would have blushed viciously at the very thought.

Still his belly curled with churning pain. He was gnawed by hunger, soft and aching, but the idea repulsed him. He would not eat while he was out in the woods, because he would not hunt like a wild animal. And when he got home, he doubted his stomach would be calm enough to allow him to do so.

Yugi had no idea what it was that he was going to do. As the seconds passed, his muscles twitched, restless beneath his skin. He faltered and looked about him but the cold forest seemed to have no answers. With a sniff of the air, he could detect nothing but coming snow like a blanket of water and the softest touch of prey that he turned away from. He felt his skin twitch again, riding over his muscles with a spasm, and then moved forward a step to rid himself of such sensation.

As he moved about, the wolf craned his head back to look towards the sky again. The clouds looked somewhat heavy, though fluffy as cotton balls torn and unrolled, stretched across like a child's elementary school project. He paced forward slowly, leisurely, not the smallest bit undone by the idea of movement. His paws were carrying him faster than his human body ever had when he walked or jogged. It felt as if he were barely touching the ground as he raced forward; the snow hardly seemed to press beneath his paws, or to emit even the softest of noises.

He wrinkled his nose faintly as he began to move faster, this time his paws stretching far ahead of him. They were so perfectly white that his forelegs blended in with the snow completely but for the long black keratin of his claws. Had he not been able to see every strand of fur on his legs as he began to slow and scent the air slightly, he would have thought he was part of the snow.

He could not move for a moment, scenting something long and sharp which burned at his nostrils. It clogged his senses for a heartbeat, drowning him for a long minute, and then he blinked slowly and raised his head a bit more.

Yugi did not have to think about the smell to know what it was. His eyes widened and he curled his lips back slightly with disgust and confusion. The air was clenched by the harsh metallic edge of the blood staining the snow somewhere ahead of him. But it was unusually sharp, burning, and it caused his ears to ring and his eyes to ache with slight pain.

The noise was the next to enter his mind, sending him reeling. He nearly collapsed from the impact of it. There were large, hideous snarls, which echoed and boomed within his skull. He nearly stumbled with the force of it, then shook it off in order to step forward again.

He could hear the drops of blood hitting the snow now, sizzling as it melted into the snow. Small mists of white surged upwards, a definitive crackling noise within his ears. He shivered and snow began to fall in delicate drifting wisps of white crystals, swirling where the air tossed them gently as it began to shift and tug at the flakes.

 _Accept our sacrifice, Eternal One, for our blood will nurture yours and our strength will rekindle your power. Come to us now, Canis Lupus Dirus, Code Name Atem_!

He snuck forward a step, wrinkling his nose and scenting the air once more. He could only catch the hideous smell of blood at first, even as he lowered his body to the snow and dragged his belly along the ice. It shifted so softly he almost could not hear it. The chanting was beginning to die away once more, as he pushed himself forward with gentle steps. He stretched his paws as far as they would go, his shoulders rippling as his muscles moved and tightened in preparation.

If he was low to the ground, they were less likely to see him. If he crept so slowly, they were at odds with the ability to hear him. If he kept his own ears up and working, his nose twitching as cautiously as he could, none of them would be able to detect him, right?

He paced a few steps forward, dragging himself, feeling distinctly cat-like for this game.

He felt the ice against his belly, though his fur shielded him from the chill it should have offered. His paws did not even truly absorb the impact of the snow beneath, working as diligently as he was attempting to make his mind. He felt almost like a serpent as the smell became somehow stronger before him. He came over the small dip of a dune and then froze in place.

The wolves appeared to be gone. And the two bodies had been dragged several feet, snow smeared with red in its displacement. He was not sure why they had bothered to shift them at all. But then he noticed their heads were tilted far back, the gaping holes of their throats exposed. Trembling, the white wolf crept forward still.

The female lay to his right, a brilliant silver along her back and shoulders, her underbelly a white almost as pure as his own. But her fur was drenched in blood, clumped by it, and his belly ached as he looked it over. When he turned towards the male to the left, his jaw was underlined with a ringlet of black several inches downwards. The underbelly was tawny in color, with black across the bottom of its shoulders, along the front of each forelimb. He shuddered as he glanced slightly towards the tail, which was bright red and streaked with brown and black, the sorted undertones of silver.

He shivered again, moving forward a few small steps to get between the two still bodies. His stomach clenched and his lips curled back, the movement laden with disgust. He could barely hear around him now, so caught up in this grotesque display of symbolism was he.

Yugi knew their deaths to be fresh, the blood to be spilled only minutes before, and it made his head spin as he looked at them. Their jaws had long since grown relaxed, but the blood had dribbled from them towards their eyes and downwards to the snow.

There were fresh paw prints all about the clearing, some colored by blood, but others pure white within the compressed crystals. He sniffed lightly at the air, smelling so many different tendrils of scent that it made his head spin, his senses reeling. He craned his neck, eyes sharp as he looked the prints over and struggled to sort through the smells of the wolves formerly there.

There were so many, all blurring together at a rate that he could not fathom. Every single one of them had become a harsh, invigorating burst of smell which made his head spin. Each individual strand of smell curled within his lungs, swirling and catching inside of him. They sorted rapidly within his mind, but it did nothing to stop him from growing further confused by it all.

And it was the smell of the wolves which distracted him. As he leaned forward and sniffed once more, dragging the scents in, struggling to find if he could sort through them and attempt to identify the number of wolves there, a noise came to him. He stiffened and spun, abrupt and fierce in his movement. He curled his lips back, then froze in place swiftly once more. Eyes wide, a very keen and rigid reality came upon him.

If he snarled at them as they came on him, they would easily kill him. If he threw himself on his side with his throat exposed, there was no guarantee they would see it as surrender and could simply kill him. If he came towards them, even wagging his tail, he was sure they would come at him aggressively. Perhaps, if he remained where he was and kept his body language passive, they would not harm him.

Yugi forced himself to look about the trees. The wolves were immense shadows, ghosts which moved in the snow. He nearly bristled; they looked so unearthly. They looked so unusual and fierce, their lips drawn back, their teeth bared. They came in waves, almost as if there were millions upon millions of them. He backed up a step, glancing over his shoulder and back slowly. The directions they came were from all around, fast beyond his vision as they surged through the forest.

He raised his tail to hold it parallel to his spine, then pointed his nose slightly towards the ground. He pricked his ears forward and wagged his tail in slow sweeps of cold air. He cut his eyes towards the snow, making himself friendly, approachable.

They launched themselves at him in a fury. Snarls tore through the air, then harsh chomping teeth boomed through the trees. They surged towards him rapidly, racing, and the snarls were roars. Still he kept his tail up, wagging it, making himself as approachable as he could possibly muster. The wolf directly in front of him was massive, about the exact same size as Bakura had been. But its head was a bit larger and as it came forward he felt the urge to raise his tail and snarl in response.

There was something wild, unsightly, about its gaze where the pupils were mere pinpricks of black and the irises of such pale purple it was almost white. He thought of milky cataracts and blindness and it made him bristle faintly despite his attempt to keep himself from attacking. But there was something else. There was something about the shape of its face and the harsh shape of its muzzle, sharp and long. He struggled not go raise his lips into a snarl.

His heart was racing as they looked at each other. Their eyes were locked, the other wolf snarling and snapping his jaws. Yugi refused to rise to such aggression at the expense of his own life. So he merely wagged his tail, slowing it in slight warning, and braced himself for impact.

As the snow drifted in front of his sharpened eyes, he nearly quivered. The way the wolves shot to him, snarling and snapping and baring their long fangs, made him dizzy. But still he could not stop staring at the wolf directly in front of him. And it occurred to him only as the canine shot ahead of the rest, eager to spill his blood, why.

Its forehead, right beneath his ears, was stripped of fur. Blood was dripping from scratches along its muzzle. Its pale eyes were barren of fur surrounding its left. The left ear was bleeding as well. Its legs were unusually long. Its chest was concaved in shape, smaller than average. Along its cheeks the fur seemed to have been pulled from his skin.

Yugi could barely contain himself any longer. The wolf looked too large to fight back. But he knew easily that Yami could have taken it. The black wolf was larger than him. The black wolf was also more vicious. He found his tail beginning to rise, infuriated at the very thought. He tore his lips back, exposing each of his teeth.

Instinct rattled inside of him to fight back, to fend for himself, because surely no one else would. He braced himself, lowered his head, and let loose a snarl so guttural that several of the wolves startled. Abruptly they slowed, a quiver racing through them collectively.

As he chomped his teeth, they began to press themselves to the floor, ears back, tails lowered. They stared at him, eyes wide and startled.

But the single dark gray and tan wolf in front of him was unaffected by any means. He came at him rapidly, viciously, snarling. His teeth were bared at him, gums blackened like soot and ash. His nose was wrinkled so far back it seemed almost nonexistent.

As they slammed into each other, the wolf bit at him. His teeth aimed towards his face. But he missed as Yugi forced his body to twist. It threw their equilibriums off. Stupidly he struggled to gain his footing again. The other wolf was on him in an instant.

A face of pale tan and dark brown was immediately borne in his face. The flesh, dark pink and red, along its left eye was painful to look at. Pale skin, almost ashen in shade, shown beneath its russet ears. The cinnamon mixed about the dark gray and peppered silver strands along its forehead were rough against its white cheeks. The teeth were longer than he'd ever seen, surpassing even Yami's. And they came for his throat.

He threw a paw out and caught him in the neck. The unexpected motion was forceful enough to make him gag. His attack halted. He choked for a single second. Yugi struggled to throw himself to his belly. He angled his neck to shield the vein. Then he jumped to his feet. He snarled and bore his teeth angrily. Every fur along his back was in a hideous bristle. He could feel it. And his tail had risen aggressively once more. He chomped his teeth.

A whine rippled through the air behind him. The wolf in front of him reacted instantly. Its eyes were furious as it spun to face the source of the noise. It chomped its teeth and snarled angrily. Yugi lunged forward. But his mind was on the pack. If they saw fit to come at him, they would kill him. He could not face such immense numbers and survive. He did not even truly think Yami could either.

His distraction caused him to miscalculate. Rather than his skull, Yugi caught his ear. He had meant to force him down. But instead he shredded flesh too thin to cause much impact. He felt the blood on his tongue.

But he chomped his teeth inches away. He nearly wailed. The way he landed those few inches from him was pathetic by any means. The minimal damage made his head spin.

And the wolf took full advantage.

Yugi nearly screamed.

Teeth caught in his shoulder. The bones grated hideously. A harsh popping and grinding made themselves known. The air crackled and burst with explosions.

He was wracked with pain. The sensation of his teeth tearing through his muscle made his mouth open in shock. His eyes threatened to pop out of his skill. He could not fully comprehend his own mistake.

The wolf tugged. Yugi yelped. Then his mind seemed to drift. A fog seemed to creep forth. It was harsh and burning. But it comforted him as well. And he embraced it, unsure what else to do.

With his gentle hold on it, Yugi felt as if a dam snapped within his head. The pressure coated him heavily. It dulled the pain and strengthened his mind. He snapped his teeth. Then he turned violently. His fangs caught the wolf's throat. Blood sprayed the air. The white canine shifted his weight. Then he threw his head.

The pain in his shoulder came in a throb. The bone was punctured by his fangs. But it was not fully broken. And it dislocated violently beneath his muzzle. But it did not stop him. He tugged and tossed his head again. The wolf snarled, snapping at thin air when he was dislodged. He pulled back. Then he snapped his teeth again. His incisors split the other's cheek. His body moved forward.

Yugi's paws caught him around the shoulders. He pushed harshly. His weight made him nearly topple. His teeth buried into his skull. The pressure made the other scream. His body forced him further down. Body tight with tension, he kept his teeth in his skull.

He slammed him to the snow. And the wolf twitched and screamed again. He scrabbled.

But Yugi kept the pressure.

He kept his weight upon him.

His paw was against his throat, forcing the gray wolf further down. His blood burned in his mouth. The squirming and thrashing only caused his teeth to go further. His cheek was gushing. His forehead was crunching where his teeth continued.

The wolf wailed and struggled. Yugi did not truly even understand his position here now. He kept him beneath him, pinned. His teeth forced him further down. Every twitch simply proved to clamp his jaws further.

He snarled against his face. He felt blood coursing into his mouth, coating his tongue. He kept his grip. The wolf squirmed again. Then he finally lowered his entire body to the floor. The snarling did not cease as his screaming once had. He instead twisted his head painfully. He struggled to use the angle to dislodge him. As he tilted his head up and braced it against the snow, Yugi simply tightened his grip.

The roar was deafening in his ears. His head was throbbing. His heart was racing. His stomach was churning. He snarled louder.

When he sensed movement rather than saw it, he snarled _louder_. His voice rose in a hideous roar of noise.

Each of them remained there, pressed to the ground. But for one.

He turned his head. The movement dragged the other wolf.

It screamed but Yugi ignored the sound. Hatefully, tail rising in warning, he watched. The female was predominantly bright red and cinnamon in shade. Tawny made up some of the color of her underbelly. But the cinnamon shade seemed to encompass the rest of her body. It was only slightly paler to make up the more average design of the face of a gray wolf.

It looped her eyes, colored the very tips of her brows, the insides of her ears, the fur of her cheeks beneath the inch-long strips of darker red beneath both eyes. The tip of her muzzle was smeared with it, fading into the darker, more pronounced shade of color.

 _Code Name Atem_.

Her voice was crystalline. It was gorgeous, musical. It made his head pound, though at first the words were lost to him. He growled a little louder. She tilted her head, then watched him. Her tail wagged, parallel to her spine. Her eyes were a brilliant golden shade, glowing in the coming darkness. Her manner was gentle, but her words were powerful, intoxicating.

 _You have come, Code Name Atem. At last you have arrived_.

Yugi blinked slowly, pausing, and then very slightly flicked an ear. His wide blue-violet eyes peered at her blankly. In the coming darkness they both looked at each other. It was a curious sensation, to hear and recognize his name and yet be unable to truly respond to it. He blinked and the she-wolf wagged her tail once more.

But both of them stopped short and snarled as the wolf beneath him squirmed. He was snapping his jaws at them both angrily, snarling viciously. But both of them showed only anger towards his growing fit of frustration.

 _Silence, Marik_!

Yugi blinked. The wolf beneath him immediately stilled. All noise ceased. He blinked angry, furious eyes, but did not argue. He merely stared at the she-wolf, frustrated. The white wolf blinked, shifting his weight. His claws dug further into the wolf's coat. The skin was punctured lightly. The blood was sticky beneath his toes, even as slight as it was.

 _You do not speak to him in such manner. He is the one who will lead us to victory. He is_ Code Name Atem, _you fool_! _He is the one with the blood of the gods in his veins. You do not so much as blink in his direction should it not be with worship_.

The white wolf blinked stupidly at her words. She knew he was…? But how did she know that? And what did she mean by the blood of the gods? Was it just another way to elude at his being immortal like the stories claimed? Or was it because he had to have been "blessed" by the gods when he was born?

His stomach twisted. His heart was in his throat. His lungs were rattling as he breathed. He blinked at her. And then he slowly forced his jaws open. The blood was welling from the other wolf's shredded cheek and along his skull. It drizzled into his eye and he growled in disdain but did not move. Yugi glanced at this wolf she had called Marik but he was hardly a drifting thought in his mind.

He turned to her again, eyes wide.

How had she known?

How was that even possible?

His lips curled back slightly as he glanced at her, nervous.

How did she know that?

How could she have possibly…?

 _Your coat is as white as the snow_ … It was said so softy Yugi almost missed it even from where it was projected into his mind. He blinked slowly, then flattened his ears. _I've never seen any wolf with such a pure, beautiful coat_.

Pure? He blinked. Shouldn't his tail still have a scent gland on it? He was tempted to look over. It would have discolored it, even if only slightly. Shouldn't it have? He blinked and pricked his ears forward towards her.

And then it occurred to him, with startling clarity.

Yami's coat was one massive intense shade of black. He had not even the finest sliver of another color anywhere within his pelt. And he himself was pure white. Did the word "pure" have anything to do with the first part of the blood type of the lycanthrope's apparent ancestors? Did "Pure-Blood" hint at the fur color as well as the content of lycanthropy in one's blood?

Yugi blinked. Did that mean Yami was a Pure-Blood too? He startled, then flicked an ear. There was no way, right? Surely Yami would have told him, wouldn't he? He would have told him and explained the meaning behind it and all that, right?

 _Now, rise to your feet and welcome our savior_.

The other wolves were watching with abundant excitement and confusion, curious and anxious to get a better look at him. But it was her words which made his head spin.

How long had these wolves been here?

How long had they been waiting for him to come to then?

How long had they been hiding in the woods as they were?

What was the expanse of their territory?

The forest or the mountains?

Yugi felt sick as he looked at them.

Very slowly, hesitantly, he backed up a step. The other wolves were still all pressed to the ground. A few whined and the russet-furred she-wolf tilted her head at his second step.

 _You are overwhelmed_.

He shook his head slightly, but backed up again. His fur was bristling and his tail had come up slightly. His ears were back, his lips drawn to reveal his teeth. He blinked at them and another wolf whined. This time his eyes trailed the source of the sound. A small, lean black wolf with white ears was pressed to the ground further back. And its eyes were a brilliant teal color.

He snarled low in his throat.

That was Otogi.

Yugi backed up again, lowering his head, then turned away. Another wolf whined but he ignored them, racing off for his home. None of them followed. He heard the she-wolf snap at them to let him go. He heard her proclamation that he would come back soon enough.

He was through the trees and halfway to the house before it occurred to him to turn back. He had to change back before he got to the house. Then he would sneak in and get dressed again. He hissed with distress at the thought, but still spun on his heel and raced back. He hesitated in the trees, glancing at the house. Then he headed further in, just enough to block the sight of it.

It was painful how easily this time he managed to change. The physical ache was almost nothing more than a faint pulsing. He was so frantic in his need to get away that he did not even truly think straight. Instead he ran for the house again. Despite being naked he did not think twice.

The grip on the pipe was harder to keep this time. He struggled to pull himself up. His feet slipped. He had never considered how much traction his sneakers gave him. He cringed.

He would need to get new sneakers too.

He shook it off, then quickly pulled himself up and onto the roof. He was amazed that Yami did not respond to him in any way. But then, it didn't look as if he was in there in the first place. Yugi huffed as he pulled the window open.

He supposed that was actually a good thing. That gave him time to think, didn't it? He pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth. When he stepped over the sill and into the room, he latched the window behind him. A strange smell came to his nose. Immediately he stopped short, eyes wide and confused. What was that? He did not even fully have the proper words to describe it.

It was coppery, metallic, heavy, slight, airy, with a deep _chill_ as its most powerful tone. He blinked and looked around.

But even as he did, an alarm went off in his head.

Yugi turned just in time to see.

He was knocked flat on his stomach in seconds. A long and loud breathing caused hot air to flare over his skin. He blinked wide eyes, then glanced towards the only other that could be there.

The wolf was sniffing rapidly, nose working in heavy strokes of hot air. He paced about the length of him, scanning every inch of the back of Yugi's body. Then hot calloused skin touched his flank. It wrapped around, long claws digging into his skin. He was flipped before he could think straight.

The sniffing continued. Every inch of his body was assaulted with hot air. The wolf didn't even notice him quiver or blush. He went the length of his torso to his shoulder and then paused. He continued sniffing, long and slow, and his ears flicked about for a moment.

Abruptly the black wolf lowered his head and jaw, then rubbed against him. He tilted his entire body to the side. And he trailed the length of him in a rough quasi-roll kind of movement. He twitched and squirmed, moving his shoulders against his chest.

He tipped his nose up and pressed it into Yugi's chin. The small teen wiggled, nearly writhing. The wolf's frame was bulky and strong and knocked the wind out of him each time he put his body into such movement.

Finally Yami moved away as if satisfied. He took a seat a couple of inches away from him. His red eyes were cautious. His lip was curled faintly. His head was tilted. His brows were drawn forward. His paws looked enormous on the floor for a moment. He appeared perfectly calm but altogether flustered as well. The two of them looked at each other for a moment.

Yugi finally drew himself into a seated position. "Are we done?" he grumbled, breathless.

But he was also confused and more than slightly concerned.

What had made Yami react like that? He had never done anything like it before. And why was he even a wolf at the moment?

He blinked and furrowed his brows. He had never turned into a wolf in his house before, had he? He thought he would remember that, _wouldn't_ he?

"Yami, what's wrong?"

The wolf huffed, then got to his feet. He trotted past him, a blur of black, and headed into the bathroom. The door clicked shut behind him and Yugi flushed. Yami had rolled all over him like that…while he was naked.

He blushed harder, then scrambled to his feet. He tore into his drawers to grab some boxers and socks. Then he snatched at some jeans and wiggled his hips frantically to squeeze them over his legs. In his alarm his hands were shaking too hard to make the task go smoothly. When he brought out a shirt and threw it on, he swore he nearly tore it trying to get his head through a sleeve.

Flustered, the blue-violet-eyed teen turned around again only to startle and jump like a cat. Yami was mere inches away, standing perfectly still. His breathing was so slow it was almost completely silent. And his eyes were dark, alert and vicious with something he could not entirely read. Yugi quickly looked away and then stiffened at the sight that greeted him.

His hands were covered in blood. No doubt his mouth was as well. He wondered about his shoulder. But when he glanced at it, he found himself blushing again. He had forgotten he was dressed again.

"I'm okay," he said quietly, raising his eyes to the other teen's. Yami stared at him, silent and almost ghostly in the way he seemed to see through him as well. Yugi bristled faintly at the sensation, though he was unsure why. He did not understand his own reaction at the moment, whether it was the fact that he was truly looking at him with absolute focus or the way he had knocked him over minutes before.

The other teen merely stared at him for a long minute, the seconds passing in agonizing slowness. Yugi pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth. The two of them continued to look at each other. Finally the smaller boy turned away, picking at invisible lint on his shirt in desperation.

Yami remained statuesque, eyes still locked on his form. There was something unusual and dark when he looked up again, however, and it was still unrecognizable to the other boy. Yugi felt as if his insides were squirming as he glanced at him once more. His heart began to hammer, his mouth growing dry.

"You need more peanut butter," the other wolf said suddenly, in a brusque tone. Yugi's eyes widened and his head snapped up but Yami was no longer looking at him. His eyes were on the window and his cheeks were faintly reddened. For a heartbeat neither of them moved nor spoke any further. Then the taller growled, "And I'm going hunting. Don't wait up."

Yugi flushed and opened and closed his mouth. Was it obvious that he had sometimes waited up for him? He could not truly remember doing so beyond the first time he had wandered off and returned with the rabbit or when they had both suffered that nightmare together.

But, had both those times been so terribly obvious to him?

He watched him as he started towards the window, fingers working at the locks and grasping the bottom to slide it up. He blinked and a swell of desperation, abrupt and powerful, made him seek his attention further.

"There's a pack of wolves in the woods who know I'm Atem!"

The words were blurted.

And the effect they had was instant.

Yami spun on him, teeth bared, eyes boring into his harshly. His lips curled back further, his voice rumbling up with a faint snarl.

"I ran into them a few minutes ago… T-the leader—I think she's the leader—called me Code Name Atem. She said I have the blood of the gods in my veins—"

"You saw the pack in the mountains?" he spat, cutting him off efficiently. The air seemed swollen like a balloon with too much water in it. He was unsure if Yami might lose his temper once and for all. If he lashed out, Yugi did not know that he could win. He stumbled back a step, startled by the ferocity, and the taller boy scowled at him for a long minute. "You stupidly crossed paths with the pack in the mountains?"

"I didn't mean to—W-why is it such a big deal?"

"Why is it such a big deal that you went and made contact with a pack of psycho wolves who think of Atem as some otherworldly creature meant to be a 'deliver the lycanthropes'? Oh, yes, _forgive_ me for being wary of a group which spreads stories of Atem as if he is a glorified messiah! Do you plan to make contact with the gods, to grant the rest of our subspecies immortality and give us truth and eternal happiness? Do you plan to ' _bless_ ' us, Code Name Atem?"

Yugi felt his eyes widen drastically, his mouth opening and closing stupidly. He stared at him, frozen in place with shock, and then backed up another step. This time Yami advanced on him, snarling low in his throat.

"They _think_ that Code Name Atem is some kind of glorified savior. They think he is meant to lead a war against the _humans_ and put the wolves at the top of the food chain again. The others think it will be hellhounds that they will fight against. The _truth_ , however, is that _Atem_ is _nothing_ more than a _glorified_ wolf which they stake their dreams on. Though, for what purpose, I do not know. And you are a _fool_ if you think them sane or a good choice to remain around."

He blinked and shook his head slightly. Yami turned abruptly from him, threw the window open, and was gone before he could draw in another breath. Yugi stared at the space he had once been, eyes wide, head spinning.

* * *

He was alone and the bed was frigid with his absence. Yugi stretched his arms out, then his legs, bunched them up once, and got to his feet. The window in front of him was open only slightly. He sighed softly, picking out a dirty shirt and jeans, tossing the window open, and grabbed his shoes.

He climbed out onto the roof, where the snow seemed feet high with the gentle slant, and then moved towards the edge. The world below was perfect white, safe for the barest print of shoes beneath the snow flurry that must have come and passed. He frowned, then shook his head to throw off the sense of frustration that came with the sight of them and the height of the jump. He had not noticed before just how nervous it made him, to plummet even those twelve feet.

He shook it off, then leaped. The snow fell so gently that it was almost like a pillow beneath his weight, but the sound of it in his ears was like a clap of thunder. He straightened, then looked around slowly, and made his way towards the trees. He followed the tracks in a strange mimicry of the wolf under his skin. He was stepping into Yami's footprints without even thinking, eating the distance between them, and when his shoes turned to paw prints and he found his clothes bunched in the knot of some tree roots that were relatively dusted of snow.

Yugi hummed, then strained his eyes for the lighter formation of those paw prints. He didn't pause from following, however, instead slowly moving out through the shadows of the branches overhead. They were long, silver skeletal fingers reaching outwards to great lengths. They made his prints easier to see, however, highlighting them in shadow, while the moonlight made them so white they were nearly blinding. He hummed again, the noise gentle and low, and then glanced about himself slowly.

Yami had begun running at some point. He'd cleared distances with huge leaps, as if he had just begun bounding with immense speed. Yugi sighed, but continued to follow the tracks. Most of them were highlighted by his body leaping and landing into the snow that was too deep to cushion his ascent. So he could pick out his movements much easier.

The small teen smiled faintly as he spotted the large black canine. His body was stretched out on the snow, lying with his limbs long and gangly in front of him. His nose was to the snow, his claws twitching even in the darkness. His eyes were glowing and his breathing was easy as he watched something in front of him. He was extremely relaxed right before he jumped to his feet and sprang forward.

Yugi just barely spotted the gray rabbit which was attempting to run from Yami. It darted forward in the snow, barely leaving a print, but the canine caught it effortlessly. He grabbed it around the scruff, dangling it in the air. It kicked its feet and squirmed pathetically but the wolf did not release, instead pacing forward several feet and dropping to his belly again. He placed it between his paws, putting one leg over its back and pushing it down into the snow.

Not once did he bite it again. Instead he kept his paw there, holding it down, and did not so much as blink. His ears flicked in his direction with slight dismissal but the red-eyed wolf did not glance at him. His eyes were on the trees, even as he kept the petrified rabbit in place.

Yugi came forward slowly, listening to the harsh racket of that tiny rabbit's heart. Then he looked at Yami who flicked an ear at him again in some form of dismissive acknowledgment. Steadily the small teen continued forward, then took a seat a few feet away. The snow chilled him and he hissed, but the noise was minimal and the discomfort passing. His body had begun to heat itself up, to correct the chill he felt. He wondered if soon his skin would end up burning hot and feverish.

Very slowly the wolf removed his paw. The rabbit sprang away a moment or two later. Yami put his head on his paws and watched as it began to put distance between them. Very quickly the wolf got to his feet and tore after it. Again the prey animal was knocked to the snow, then pinned and pressed with a paw. The canine yawned and then glanced slowly over at him. He lifted his paw once more and the rabbit raced away again.

Yugi offered him a small smile and kept himself seated there, eyes glued to the dark wolf who merely stared in response. They watched each other for a moment, studying one another, and the red-eyed canine flicked an ear once more. The rabbit was almost out of the small clearing. He glanced at it as its tail vanished over the edge of a small slope of snow.

Still Yami did not give chase. His eyes were on Yugi, locked and boring into him, and his body was as relaxed as it had been when he'd come upon him in the first place. The wolf slowly rose to his feet a few minutes later, then took off first in a trot and then in a run.

The small boy considered getting up, then shook such a thought away. Yami would return to the clearing. He was not sure of how he knew, just that he did. So he remained there and, sure enough, the wolf appeared like smoke from the northern direction, coming forward through the trees like the darkness itself.

He was slow in his movements, eyes dark and distant, and the rabbit dangled from his jaws limply, appearing almost lifeless. But it also seemed to be an entirely different rabbit this time. It was dark brown, with a white underbelly. Even the ears were different, one floppy and the other erect. It twitched singularly as he dropped it and took a seat behind it. When it sprang away Yami let it go.

He did not follow it even when twenty minutes had passed. The red-eyed wolf was silent and motionless for several minutes longer. Then he turned his head and stared at him, gaze sharp, ears pricked, muzzle tipped towards him. With his usual powerful grace the wolf got to his feet and began to make his way towards him. He stopped a yard away, head tilted, and inquired, _Do you not have school tomorrow morning_?

Yugi blinked wide eyes, startled by the statement, and then tilted his head in confusion. They looked at each other, for so long the small teen felt his head might spin. The small teen bit his lip and shook his head slightly as he muttered, "Yeah, I do…"

 _Then we should leave, yes_?

He hesitated for a moment, then nodded slowly. "Yeah, probably," he murmured softly. He slowly got to his feet, feeling small and estranged as they looked at each other.

As they moved about the woods, there was only the sound of their feet on the snow, their weight crushing it downwards. The red-eyed wolf remained silent for a long minute, then, with obvious displeasure, he slowed and came to a stop. Yugi only noticed a few seconds later, when the sound reached his ears that Yami was no longer moving alongside him.

Heart racing, his head immediately filled with the thought that Yami had left, he spun on him.

Eyes wide and dilated with his mounting fear, the small teen halted.

A few feet away, head down, eyes on the snow, the wolf stood. His face was tipped towards the ice, his ears pricked. His tail was straight, laying limply. His expression was nothing short of forlorn or perhaps completely distressed. When he shuddered, his dark fur bristled and fell in a rapid wave.

 _I do not think the pack is stable_.

He shivered. His tone now, small and exhausted, was even more powerful than his anger earlier. But he wished so badly for that surge of strength and disgust, of frustration, which had colored his tone before. He would have given anything to hear that intense passion coat his voice.

The wolf did not raise his head and Yugi felt sick for a moment. "Why?" he finally asked, frowning when Yami did not respond. The wolf merely raised his head, breathing out long and hard from between his incisors, and stared at him. He seemed at first to consider speaking. Then he very easily looked away and continued to move forward again. He ignored the way that the small teen faltered and then very reluctantly began to follow him.

Yami had no words for him, even when he changed back and Yugi ducked his head and covered his face with his hands after accidentally glancing at him when he was still naked. He shook his head and looked at him, flushed, as the red-eyed lycanthrope finally began to walk again.

The smaller teen paused only long enough to consider his next words, but his voice never gave them life. As he looked about himself once and then turned towards Yami again, the red-eyed wolf was still walking steadily ahead of him. With his departing form so went his idea to speak to him. His eyes flickered away to the snow, his face flushed with frustration. He sighed softly and the noise made Yami pause just long enough to allow him to get to his side.

But he could not bring himself to speak to him again. He put his hands in his pockets, head down, eyes on the snow. His head was spinning with confusion. Now that he was fully awake, he could not help but wonder.

What _was_ the purpose of Code Name Atem?

Had Shizuka been right in saying he was meant to end a war between the lycanthropes and hellhounds?

Or was what Yami claimed the pack believed, with Atem to lead them against the humans, truly what he was meant for?

Was he simply meant to bring death to those around him, like Valon had claimed?

Was there a purpose to his existence?

Or was it some kind of mistake?

Had the gods blessed him as some kind of mistake?

Yami glanced at him sideways as they made it across the street and into the yard. Their eyes were locked on each other for a moment. The silent discontent was clear in the red gaze but Yugi could not sort his own curious swirl of immense emotion. He could not tell if he was winded or excited to go back to bed or if something beyond it lingered deep within his bones.

He wished Yami would speak. But he also wished he never would.

He hoped to listen to his heart beating against the dark silence of the snowy night. But he also hoped the wet twisting sound of it was lost to him. He desired nothing more than to sleep with the other beside him, even when he knew they both started to scoot unconsciously closer in their dreams. He desired the sensation of sleeping in his bed alone, without another soul beside him, even when Yami rested on the comforter rather than beneath it.

Yami eyed him for only a moment longer. Then he turned, grabbed the drain pipe, and began to climb the wall of the house. Yugi licked his lips, looking up at him, and then grabbed the metal himself, working his way up a couple of inches behind him. They were back in his room and starting to get settled again before a few minutes had passed. But he found himself flinching pitifully when he saw Yami take his place in the corner as he himself snuggled beneath his sheets comfortably.

The distance between them was painful and his heart ached at the very thought. He squeezed his eyes shut and ran a single hand through his hair before forcing himself to sink more pointedly into his pillow. He could hear the softest whistle of an exhale each time Yami breathed but he knew from how uneven it was that he was still wide awake. He wondered if he too was caught in the idea of what it would mean to be Code Name Atem, what the purpose was for such an unnatural creature.

Yugi slipped uneasily into sleep, head aching dully as he struggled to escape the darkness of his eyelids. The world was a splotchy red, then a darker shade of maroon which began to grow darker until it was swallowed by blackness once more. From within the darkness came shallow pools of white, budding and opening like the petals of elegant flowers. Within the white came shallow strokes of silver, of gray, all of which started out like smoke and then began to take vague forms.

Before him the world opened into a mass of white and silver and gray. Ribbons of blue and purple, of red laced with violet and heavy touches of gold, began to weave their ways forward. In the silver and gray the bare branches of trees reaching upwards into the sky began to take more prominent form. Stars twinkled with brilliant flashes of gold, speckles of white against a sky glorious with brushstrokes of silver and gray, of gold and red-violet, royal blue and indigo. The branches were of nothing but silver outlines, fading into the starlight and glistening with soft strength. The moon was immense, a brilliant eye of white and gray, boring down on him in this expanse of forest. He blinked and looked about himself, feeling small and forlorn despite the beauty of such a luminescent world. This time he recognized the cores of the trees, where they seemed to pulsate at the roots with stars of gold and cobalt. Their skeletal frailty was elegant, beautiful, and it dazzled him, but it also alarmed him.

He had seen these woods before. He had been within the gentle sway of their ghostly formations before. When Pegasus had injected him with the poisonous mixture of wolfsbane and silver, he had been there. He shivered and a small tremor of white mist began to creep forward, a formless but somehow powerful shape of shimmering shadows. It came within feet of him, slow and long in process, and then very elegantly began to separate and twist into a true definitive form.

The mist vibrated with a pulse of gold, moving outwards with every second, until the vapor was all one solid color. Then, with a piercing tranquility, two orbs of dark solid blue came before him, almond in shape and standing at his same height. The mist smoothed away, the shadows forcing it back, until the dark blue was rimmed by black. A beautiful, sleek, sharp face of brilliant gold like the shade of the sun, began to appear first. Then solid, soft curves of deep fur came in gentle grooves inches outwards, with a muzzle long and large with a sharp nose and black lips.

The ears were rounded, larger than he knew his own to be. The slope of the skull was almost nonexistent, and the width of its chest as it was revealed seemed twice as large as his. The legs were longer, spindly, with immense paws the size of two of his fists placed side by side. The scent which came to him was a river of intense and brutal sensory which made his head spin.

Instinctively he knew it to be otherworldly. It was starlight and water, of fresh snow and drifting waves, of mountain peaks and falling leaves. It was so strong as to knock him off his feet when he inhaled too deeply.

And he realized, as he had the place around them, that the she-wolf—for he could smell she was female, though he hardly recognized it—was just as ethereal. She stood, in some bizarre yet elegant presence, with such grace that it furthered her beauty. Despite her strange appearance, her apparent disproportioned form before him, she was a wolf that possessed great strength and beauty beyond even the world around them.

Yugi was breathless as he looked at her, eyes wide and startled. Her eyes were a similar shade of blue to his, but with an edge of strength and identity which his own had always lacked. Her gaze was sharper, clearer, than his own had ever been, and the way it tore into him made his heart skip and his body feel abnormally hot.

She smelled faintly like Yami, as if the edges of her scent reflected upon his. The white wolf opened his mouth, breathing out in something almost like awe, and then lowered his eyes. An intense wave of shame and confusion touched his frame, burning inside of him, and he closed his eyes tightly. It felt it a crime to look at the she-wolf as he had moments before.

 _You seek answers_ , she murmured, a rough voice like pebbles falling from immense height, laced with the gentleness of leaves brushed over one's skin.

Answers?

His head was spinning. He opened his eyes and raised his eyes to hers again. Their gazes locked, he felt it impossible to look away again.

 _Was_ he looking for answers? Were answers even something he desired any longer?

He was not sure that they meant anything to him any longer. Answers were something that he stumbled upon, but was not fed. Yami let him find his ground on his own, but guided him as well through the process. He pushed him gently towards answers but did not truly give them to him. And if he did, it always felt that something was left out.

 _Clever Yugi. We all speak in half-truths, don't we_? the wolf snickered, the sound of a saw grating against stone and water trickling over budding leaves. She stood before him, a good inch or two taller than himself, and possibly even Yami. The sight of her, with her strange but regal face, her unusual eyes, made his belly ache. _Do you know who I am, my dear child_?

His eyes were wide, confused, as he considered her and shook his head slowly. How should he know? She was unusual but he was not sure of anything concerning her or truly anyone else. He hardly knew much about Yami and he was the one who shared his room at all times.

 _I am Ra_.

He stared at her, uncertain for a moment. Ra was an Egyptian god, wasn't he? That was the name of one of their primary creators. He remembered reading about it in class. He shook his head again, eyes widening further.

 _I am one of the goddesses, Yugi, a guardian of the lycanthropes. I am the one to breathe life in the lungs of those who stand on the precipice. I give to the lycanthropes survival and birth_. She stared at him, eyes sharp and intense, and slowly took a step forward. _I am the mother, the sister, the end and the beginning._

Yugi nearly flinched backwards with disgust. She had been the one to bless him, to allow him to be born. His head was spinning again as he turned away once more. She had been the one to allow the humans to breed him into existence. She had allowed all of those wolves to be experimented on, to be taken captive and killed and harmed endlessly.

 _You wished for answers and I have come to give you some_.

He bore his teeth in a soft snarl, disgusted.

How dare she attempt to provide to him something he was still struggling so heavily with.

How dare she attempt to fix the horrors of her decisions with such simplicity.

 _My guidance to you is this, nothing more and nothing less. You must look to the wolf, Yugi. And it will come to you. The wolf will guide you._

When he looked up again, about to speak, flakes of snow fluttered through the air outside the window.


	30. Loneliness

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day (no update on June 2nd)**

 **Chapter Warnings: MILD Self-Loathing, Mentions of Murders, Mentions of Dead Bodies, Accusations, Slight Anxiety Attack/Emotional Breakdown, Mentions of Loneliness, Hints of Depression, PUZZLESHIPPING~, Hints of Bangshipping (Yugi x Mai)**

 **Okay, so, you can look at the Puzzleshipping as a joke between them as in Yugi taking it too far or as more serious. It depends basically on how you want to see their relationship at this point (though it's still pretty platonic, I think). Also, Yugi does kind of react badly to it afterwards. That's because he's still a little confused about possibly having feelings for another guy, just saying.**

 **I'm trying to take it slowly, with small moments between them that make Yugi question himself rather than him immediately wanting to jump his bones. That's because Yugi IS still confused and attracted to Anzu, after all, and he's still trying to figure it all out at his own pace. Which does mean he has small moments where he thinks about it, almost does it, and then kind of processes it after the moment passes. I don't want it to seem like it came out of nowhere that he's okay with his feelings for Yami and wanting to take it beyond what he or Yami would be comfortable with. I'm hoping it actually DOES seem more organic than Yugi just thinking he's hot and trying to seduce him when he's an awkward sixteen-year-old who doesn't even have experience dating anyone either and considers himself straight for the most part.**

 **Anyways, beyond that, as mentioned in my first note, the Puzzleshipping IS going to be depicted as one-sided for a good majority of the story. Besides that, the Peachshipping will continue for a while longer. But scenes like this (mild almost-kisses, innuendos and jokes) are going to be few and far between. And, odds are, you guys probably won't like how some of the Puzzleshipping plays out at times.**

 **Also, it might seem like Yami is overreacting, but the jacket is extremely important to him and a plot point later in the story. It's further along in this story, but it'll come up eventually.**

Chapter XXX: Loneliness

 _Work Log Entry XXX: November, 1998_

 _November 8_

 _The boss has begun a series of tests, but they are not on the wolves themselves._

 _It has come to my attention that he has begun drinking the Pure-Blood's father's blood._

 _It has done miraculous things to heal him of former wounds._

 _But it is unknown as to why he has failed to try the blood of his prize._

 _He claims that it is "insufficient as of yet"._

 _November 16_

 _The father's health has begun to crash. No one can identify what has happened._

 _It has been suggested that perhaps too much blood has been taken and his body cannot produce it as quickly due to the degeneration performed on him before now._

 _November 20_

 _He has begun to have seizures._

 _It turned him human long enough to puke blood but caused him to change immediately again._

 _We have no idea what has caused this sudden decline._

X equaled…

When was this _ever_ going to be applicable to a _werewolf_ of all things? He sighed softly and his eyes flickered to the corner of the room. Yami was still seated there, silent as the grave, with eyes open into slits of gleaming blood and darkened pupils. His expression was of indifference, but he knew from the way his shoulders rested with slight strain across the right that he was more tense than anything. He didn't think he had gotten over their conversation about the pack in the mountains. He had a feeling that Yami knew a bit more about them than just the idea that they were unstable.

Surely saying that they were unstable would hint at the idea that perhaps he knew a bit more than he was leading on, right?

No one just said something of that nature without some kind of insight to the situation.

Or perhaps he was making a judgment of some kind.

But he had sounded so terribly sure. And to make such judgment seemed out of character for Yami. He tended to see things in ways that were overly simplistic and easy enough for him to point out the success or failure of.

He glanced at him more fully. The other wolf failed to respond at first, then slowly raised his eyes and looked at him. For the first few seconds he did not even open his eyes fully, then a hint of surprise made him frown. Puzzlement made him raise his head further. Then he blinked his eyes open to their greatest and raised a brow in question.

Yugi would have teased that he wanted to know if he knew how to get the answer. But it seemed almost unintentionally cruel seeing as Yami had never been schooled. And it would be humiliating to them both if he had turned around and asked, realized himself, and come to find that Yami was still smart enough to answer it without prior practice.

He was almost flustered by such a thought. If Yami proved himself to be that smart and Yugi himself was not, was that just natural or was it the wolf? He hated himself for thinking it, but he had always been a little competitive about his grades. And the idea that a person who had seemingly grown up in the mountains knowing more than him _by nature_ was daunting and something bordering shameful.

Yet, somehow it would not have surprised him in the least should he have been capable. Yami was, after all, by far one of the most intelligent people he'd ever spoken to. It seemed insane to him that something as small as a math equation would even slow him down. And, who knew, maybe being a wolf for as long as he had made him somehow even smarter.

"How long were you a wolf before you became human?" Yugi asked quietly, debating how stupid he must truly sound. Yami paused for a long moment, visibly startled by his question and then more than slightly flustered as his shoulders rose into a light bristle.

"Why do you ask?" he inquired instead, eyes sharpening with caution.

But Yugi was already aware of the thin ice he was walking upon and his expression did nothing to deter him.

"I'm curious. Am I not allowed to ask about you?"

Yami narrowed his gaze and studied him for so long Yugi found himself finally fidgeting and shifting his weight uncomfortably.

"My parents died when I was about six. So, since then, I suppose?"

He found it strange he phrased it that way, yet he could not call him out on it. In all actually, it was very possible that his time as a wolf had become blurred together into nothing but the biggest events which thus _still_ demanded his attention.

"Oh, okay."

They looked at each other, a sense of familiarity and disbelief sweeping through them both. Yugi ran a hand through his hair and Yami moved to scratch lightly at his wrist. They both looked away swiftly, a disconnect coming between them in a hideous chill which drenched the room. The small teen turned back to his homework with a sick feeling clenching his gut.

He had done that.

He had caused that disconnection between them.

His decision to throw Yami's jacket into the washer had destroyed much of their tenuous friendship. It had frayed it drastically, leaving it wounded and jagged, bleeding and raw.

He swallowed hard, feeling as if blood were choking him, and then twitched as he flipped his pencil between his fingers.

"Do you remember much of your childhood?"

The question startled him audibly. Yugi heard him jerk, his bones crunching with the harshness of the movement. He blinked and turned his head immediately, startled himself to find that Yami was on his feet. His eyes were blown, pupils engulfing his irises for a split second, and then he closed his eyes tightly. But Yugi could hear the effects of his words even if he could no longer see them there on his face.

His heart had picked up and his lungs were straining. There was something raspy in his throat, like a snarl that refused to come forth. Then the lycanthrope shook his head sloppily and moved to take a seat again.

But the air smelled oddly rancid, strong and bitter. He thought of decaying leaves and crushed straw, of burning bark and smoke too thick within the room. Yugi stiffened and looked at him, because it did not smell like those things. But the hideous quality of them was similar.

But what he smelled was the acidic touch of bile that threatened to spill, and the much harsher scent of pine and moonlight and snow, all encompassed by something almost akin sweat.

It was a strangely alluring scent, sweeping into his head and making it spin.

His heart was racing in response and a sense of something unfamiliar swept through him. But when he blinked and breathed again, the air seemed abruptly clear of it.

And, just like that, his heart slowed again. The speed of his thoughts and the swirling rhythm of blood pounding in his ears was gone. He blinked slowly, frowning, and tipped his head to the side. What was that? Yami had sprung to his feet moments before. And his eyes had been dilated—

He cursed mentally.

He'd triggered something.

He'd made Yami think of something he hadn't in a long time.

And it had swallowed him for just long enough that his fear had drenched the room.

"I…I'm sorry, I didn't—"

The red-eyed wolf shook his head again, snapping, "It does not matter. To answer your question, however, yes, I do remember. And I'll tell you that _each_ werewolf in existence has perfect recollection of the events within their lives. They remember words, colors, tastes, smells, anything. They can recall anything and everything."

Yugi shivered, opening and closing his mouth once, and then glanced away quickly. "Oh…" He faltered, then looked back at him. "My memory is splotchy in several areas. I mean, I don't… I think, honestly, that I've lost years of memory."

Yami scoffed quietly, "Well, aren't you just lucky?"

The silence threatened to swallow them both for a moment. Then the taller lycanthrope shifted his weight and drew his legs towards himself, crossing them. He sat there, legs open, the soles of his feet hidden beneath the opposite thigh, and lowered his hands to dig his fingers into his calves. He hummed softly, a hideous and disdainful noise, then ran his nails along the material of his jeans. The scratching noise made Yugi shiver for a moment.

"I would assume it to be the drugs and the experiments done to you to cause such a problem. But I would thank the gods for black spots within my memory."

"Is it so bad?"

He angled his head for a moment, then closed his eyes tightly before drumming his fingers. "Yes. Some of them are that bad."

Yugi thought of Yami's earlier anger towards people, his bitterness. He considered the way that he had snapped he had grown up with the wrong type. It made his head spin for a moment, as he once again considered the other words he had spoken later. He had claimed to grow up alone in the tunnels when his parents were killed by hunters.

Yugi nearly groaned, but instead reached up to tug on his bangs with a soft sigh. Yami had lied. And he had done it _twice_. He had literally looked him dead in the eyes and spoken two different stories of vastly opposing circumstances.

It was odd to consider it as he looked at him, but it struck him as well that Yami obviously had something traumatic buried in his memories. And that was nothing he wanted to think of, let alone speak of. Considering that, Yugi did not truly think he could fault him.

He shivered. His fear scent was still terribly fresh within his mind as well. And that alone was enough to make him back up and reconsider what he should broach as topics of conversation with him. He sighed softly, swallowing, and then looked at his nails for a split second.

"I'm sorry."

"Why? It's over and done with."

Neither mentioned the unspoken warning of, _It's only that way as long as it is not spoken about_. It was clear enough within the small room, a weight which neither was willing to even consider lifting.

"You didn't deserve whatever it is."

"You don't know what I deserve."

Yugi gave him a startled look, eyes growing wide. The despair and hatred in his tone made his spine cold and rigid beneath his skin. He was watching him, red eyes dark and sharp, burning into his. They looked at each silently for another moment. The room felt heavier than ever, and the way it weighed upon them made both feel smaller.

But Yami looked damaged and hollowed out, as if his eyes were dead with his pained thoughts. He appeared to be miniscule in size, as if he were dwarfed by his memories. It made his heart ache to see him like this, the way he shivered and bunched his limbs further together.

He looked away a minute later, the bitterness changing to absolute misery upon his features. He reached over and pulled his jacket into his lap, eyes pained and face crestfallen. He was nearly trembling as he stared at the dark teal color, his fingers stroking lightly at the material. If it were possible, his expression grew further unhappy, until he seemed heartbroken and utterly agonized.

The lycanthrope blinked, looked up at him, and then allowed his eyes to drift towards the window. The expression within them was far away, with a distance so beyond them that it made Yugi stiffen. He could not fully understand what it was that he saw, or whether he was capable of sight any longer. He wondered if grief—of whatever kind Yami suffered—could possibly blind a person to the things happening around them. But the shadow in his gaze passed and his eyes seemed to clear, his mind coming to the forefront of a distance he had been unable to name formerly.

"You're not a bad person."

Yami blinked at the words, eyes flashing, and then his attention flickered to his face with as much interest as a wolf might show a leaf drifting in the wind. His eyes were cunning, dark, and the way he stared made Yugi's heart climb into his throat. They stared at one another for a moment. His lips pulled into a slight smile, his voice low and bitter, "If I am not being paid my dues, I'll be very surprised. Tell me, Yugi, weren't you just calling me something similar upon my killing of Yoshimori?"

He stiffened, and he was not entirely sure why it was that those words scared him more than anything else. The small teen dropped his hands into his lap, eyes dropping because his face seemed almost venomous, monstrous, with gleaming red depths of blood dripping from long fangs. He tapped his nails against his knees for a moment, then bunched his shoulders up as he bit his lip harshly.

"I didn't…" He trailed off for a moment. "That's not what I meant and you know that, Yami. Don't…don't try to twist everything around like this."

"You would rather trust two wolves whose names are the most you know over me. Please, explain to me what it is that makes you speak such desires when you clearly do not think me a bad person."

"You had your reasons for killing him, _right_?"

Yami blinked, his words confusing him as he studied the frustrated look which crossed the other's face upon looking up at him again. "Yes," he said slowly, eyes narrowing as he tilted his head in bewilderment. This was hardly the direction he had assumed this argument would go.

Yugi exhaled softly, then looked away. "Then I'll just have to trust that," he muttered in a quiet, somewhat distant tone. He glanced at his worksheet to attempt calming the way the words made his stomach twist and his heart ache more.

Did Yami not trust him to take care of himself?

Or was this some kind of display of the lengths that the other lycanthropes would go in order to please the Pure-Bloods?

Yami felt his eyes widen, his mouth threatening to fall open for a split second. But his cynical nature was by far a hard one to dismiss upon looking at the way the smaller boy refused to glance at him any longer. He bore his teeth and fought the urge to snarl in bitter discontent. He lowered his gaze, because looking at Yugi any longer made him want to pull his hair from his scalp in anger.

The smaller teen turned around only when he thought he felt the room grow a degree hotter, as if the walls were encompassing something he did not fully understand. He looked quickly over his shoulder, finding the red-eyed teen staring at the ground with a hideously disgusted face.

He tilted his head, then drew in a deep breath. "I know that's not entirely comforting, but I… Yami, if you said you had a reason to do it, then I believe you."

"Now."

No? Yugi furrowed his brows. "What?"

"I said 'now'. You believe me _now_ , but you did not before. And now you expect me to believe in the sincerity you think to display. Yugi, you are a _fool_ if you think I do not know such things as cynicism and disbelief. I know more than you do, when it comes to truth. What you think you know is nothing of consequence to the things that I do. Now, whether you should feel you _must_ believe in my reasoning simply because you do not wish to fight and argue with me anymore is your own doing. But I have never truly killed another without the motive of survival for myself or another."

He shook his head. "I k—"

"You do _not_ know!" Yami spat, eyes gleaming like poisonous gemstones. He bore his teeth in a hideous snarl and his body was rigid with disgust and mounting hatred. "You do _not_ know me! What you know of me is what I _allow_ you to see. I barely scrape the surface with you, for more reasons than I care to explain to you. And I might be your alpha, but you are a fool if you think I will do for you what I would not another."

"You mean saving me? I didn't think—"

"You look at me like it sometimes. You look at me as if you see something there that is not. If I were unable to save you and had only the choice of doing so to help myself, I would. I am not a creature capable of putting away my own survival for the help of another. You are foolish to assume otherwise."

Yugi blinked, then furrowed his brows. "I wouldn't want you to save me if it meant your life. Save yourself before you try to do anything for someone else, Yami." He shook his head, swallowing hard, lightheaded and bewildered as he stared into those hardened eyes. "I wouldn't expect anyone to do that for me."

Yami watched him for a moment, then looked away again quickly. "Those wolves within that pack… They will only see you as one thing. You will only be Code Name Atem to them, never Yugi. And when you come face to face with that reality, you will realize that it is not truly me you will have to worry about."

Yugi blinked, startled, and then frowned as he looked him over more fully. Yami appeared almost dead as he said the words, disgusted and disturbed, and it made his stomach drop. His heart was still in his throat and it made the task of breathing so much harder as he looked him over for a moment. He lowered his eyes to the floor.

"I don't know what I plan to do as far as they go. I never said I was going to join them or something."

Yami barked out a laugh, hideous and angry. "You will not have a _choice_. They have come to know your scent. Eventually one of them will come to retrieve you. Perhaps they will negotiate with you. Perhaps they will not. You are a god to them, not some common teen with a lack of common sense. They will come to you if you do not go to them. Remember that, for you have stepped into a world beyond the darkness of your humanity. Loyalty and survival are key to them. And that comes to them in the form of _you_."

Yugi opened and closed his mouth, horrified, and then felt as if the room were swaying for a split second. He nearly groaned, then turned away to focus on the sheet displayed on the desk in front of him.

Would they come for him?

Would they attack his family or Yami in order to get to him?

What about his friends?

What if they attacked them as well?

What would he do then?

His head was spinning faster. A queasiness had settled into his stomach and he closed his eyes tightly in distress. He shook his head slightly, then spun around to face the other wolf again. There was no smugness to be seen upon his face, nor the slightest hint of wonderment towards his anxiety. But there was something he had never truly seen there before, sharp and dark, and it made his insides twist harder.

"Yami, what…what did you see in me?"

He blinked, his expression confused, and then furrowed his brows as he shook his head wordlessly.

"That night in the alleyway, when Ushio nearly killed me and Tomoya tried to fight him off—what did you see in me? What was it?"

Yami was silent for a long minute. Then he sat up a little more, remembering his own words which he had said within the greenhouse. Yes, he had seen something, and he had sought to save it.

But to put it to words felt disturbing, as if it might cheapen it.

So he remained quiet a heartbeat longer, then he raised his fallen eyes from the floor to the other boy's wild blue-violet gaze.

"I saw potential."

He blinked, his eyes widening at first, then crinkling at the edges with his growing puzzlement as his lips tugged into a full grimace. He was visibly bewildered by the statement, but he did not ask any further. He had the idea that Yami would repeat himself should he do so.

* * *

"Dude, Yug, you okay?"

He nearly jolted in his seat, spinning around to face Jonouchi with wide, startled eyes. He blinked, then offered him a small smile which he knew looked as plastic as it felt. "Yeah, I'm okay. I'm just really tired," he lied. The lack of sleep was not what had done him in, rendering him all but lifeless within the classroom.

He tapped a nail against the wood of his desk and closed his eyes tightly for a moment. The sound was hypnotizing, like that of claws clicking on hardwood or a reptile slithering across stone. He shivered at the idea, but it did nothing to make him turn back around and engage in further conversation.

"Are you sure? You look almost ill…"

Yugi blinked, then turned his head towards Anzu with an almost sickened feeling. How long had it been since he had last spoken to her or spent time with her? He felt dirty for not realizing the length of time which had passed since their last true interaction.

If the others had not been around them, he had not bothered to converse with her. He wondered what it was that she could possibly see in him. He wondered if she truly knew just how messed up he was, if she still had any thoughts about them getting together.

He wondered how it was that he could say he was too screwed up in the head, his life far too complicated, and his world too asunder, to truly try his hand at dating. He wondered how it was that he could say he would never have the opportunity to truly date anyone.

If Yami was right, and the wolves truly came to get him rather than waited for him to go to then, he was sure that he would never bother to look at another girl again. He did not want to risk another's life just for the sake of his own loneliness. Surely she would be able to understand that if he could only find the words to explain the situation without sounding like an absolute idiot.

He offered her a gentle smile, however, warmed by her concern despite himself. "I'm okay. I just really haven't been sleeping well the last couple of nights," he fibbed, tilting his head a fraction and pulling his lips up into a more uneven schoolboy grin. She blushed faintly, her eyes brightening the smallest degree, and he turned away again almost immediately.

"Well, if that's the case, then I have something that will definitely help you sleep well again," Jonouchi announced, and when Yugi turned around, he burst out laughing at the exaggerated waggle of his brows and the saucy wink he threw at him. He shook his head, grinning easily, but the blond simply ignored his bewilderment. "Come by my locker after class."

He snorted and Honda covered his face with his palm as Yugi chuckled, "I don't think extracurricular activities are going to help me."

"Then you've been doing them wrong."

The three of them were laughing now as Anzu gave a long-suffering roll of her eyes but smiled slightly at their antics. Yugi leaned back onto Jonouchi's desk, putting his elbows on the surface of wood and then raising a brow. "I don't think there's a way to do that wrong."

"Sure there is. There's a wrong way to do _anything_ , Yugi."

"Oh, _yeah_? Then tell me, what's the wrong way to do it?" he teased, raising a brow and smirking at him.

"Alone."

Both Yugi and Honda stopped short. The small teen leaned away from the desk, frowning at his friend. The brunet beside Jonouchi gave him a slightly horrified, confused expression. They both swapped looks, and their bewilderment was second only to the disgust on Anzu's face as she turned to glance at them.

"Not with me, you morons," he scoffed, rolling his eyes and blushing faintly when he glanced at Anzu and then quickly away again. The brunette was still disgusted enough to grimace at him but the other two frowned and swapped looks. Then, as if in unison, they scratched the backs of their heads and waited for him to continue. "I meant with a _girl_."

Honda burst out laughing a second later, covering his mouth with his hands. "You did not just say that," he chuckled, "because that would mean that you might actually know how to get _with_ one."

Yugi snorted and then covered his mouth, quickly clearing his throat to keep from howling with laughter. He lowered his eyes to study his friend's desk, forcing himself to swallow the guffaws which made his shoulders shake briefly. He bit his bottom lip as hard as he could, clenching it between his incisors, and struggled not to laugh again.

"I'll have you know that there are _plenty_ of girls asking for Jonouchi Katsuya, thank you _very much_." He declared it with a loud sniff of disdain towards Yugi's second snort and the small teen turned quickly away. "Just because you two can't get any—"

"Okay, you stud, let's talk about how drugging a girl is not considered legal." He was swatted upside the head for the quip and Honda burst out laughing at him as he spun around to face the blond again. Jonouchi gave the small teen a slightly annoyed look, shaking his head and pursing his lips. "I'm just throwing it out there."

"I'm going to end up throwing you out this classroom."

"Honda, protect me," Yugi wheedled in mock distress. The brunet puffed his chest out, then deflated almost immediately. They each turned back towards the front as the teacher strode into the room.

The silence that fell over the room was instantaneous and harsh.

Both Yugi and Anzu swapped looks, unused to the bewildering quiet. Normally their teacher would allow them to chatter until the bell rang for class to begin. But she looked oddly distressed and frustrated more than anything.

"Another student has turned up dead," she announced softly, eyes dark and shiny with unshed tears. Her brown hair looked greasy, stringy from where she had run her fingers through it too often. Her brown eyes were dulled, almost lifeless. "This time it was Kaoruko. Her body was found heavily mutilated in the middle of the street leading towards the nature preserve."

Anzu blinked and her head turned slowly towards Yugi. The small teen was frozen in place, eyes wide and startled. He was sitting a little taller, his fingers gripping the sides of his desk with white knuckles. He blinked and his expression looked sickened as he stared at their teacher in obvious alarm. The way the small teen peered at her made Anzu's heart skip, pounding rapidly in her chest.

A couple of other students had made a similar connection, heads turning slowly to look at the smaller teen. His face grew paler, eyes dilated with confusion and stark terror for a split second. The teacher furrowed her brows and regarded him for a moment.

"He lives right on that street…"

"Yeah, but Yugi is a wimp…"

"Ushio's body was found on his doorstep."

"Tomoya used to be his friend."

"Yugi is too soft to do something like that."

"Evidence is evidence, man."

Yugi groaned deep in his throat, then grabbed at his notebooks. "Fuck," he grumbled under his breath, ignoring the way the others stared at him with wide eyes.

"Look, he's about to run for it."

"If you think he's so guilty, why don't you go call it in anonymously?"

"Because I need more solid proof."

"Like what, another dead body?"

He was out the door before he heard the teacher gain enough control of her surprise to tell him to sit back down. His friends each stayed where they were, looking at one another with bewildered and confused expressions.

"He's fleeing because he's guilty."

"Oh, _shove it_ ," Jonouchi spat at the boy beside him. He jumped and spun on him with wide, fearful eyes. The blond rolled his eyes at him and turned away again to look at desk in boredom. "Yugi wouldn't hurt a fly."

"I bet he's just smart enough to make everyone think that," someone else crowed, making the small trio look up in surprise at a boy with dirty blond hair. "He's probably got a huge IQ and is psychotic. He's probably a psychopath."

"No, a sociopath," someone disagreed, a girl with bright pink-streaked hair. Her blue eyes were shining with laughter, cruel and overpowering. "Psychopaths are the ones who _want_ you to know they did it. Sociopaths are the ones that just _pretend_ to feel emotions."

"He didn't look like he was faking that," someone else argued. The way the class turned on the small girl made Anzu nearly cringe. It was like a bunch of vultures turning on a piece of fresh road kill.

"You can fake something realistically," a boy sneered at her. "That's what actors do, stupid."

"You can't honestly believe that Yugi, the smallest, quietest person in this school, was _capable_ of killing _Ushio_ or _Kokurano_ or _Tomoya_ or _Miho_ or _Kaoruko_." The girl shook her head with a roll of her eyes, sneering at them. "There's no way. Just because he's more secluded doesn't make him a murderer. Besides that, he's like the nicest person in this school. He wouldn't hurt anyone—let alone _kill and mutilate_ them. Close your mouth before you sound any stupider."

Anzu almost laughed with how fast the class shut down the conversation at her retort. They all shot her flustered looks but turned back to the teacher without any further argument. But the moment class was over and they began to go to their next period, the chatter started up again.

Jonouchi was stunned to see the way the argument grew in his literature class. Yugi's absence was regarded as all but an admission of guilt. The outbursts grew spectacularly, vicious as they declared him the murderer somehow.

But it was silenced abruptly when another student he only vaguely recognized turned around to face one of the kids shouting at his friend over it. His voice was low, calm, and his eyes were bored as he said, "Are you sure it wasn't me? I mean, if we're going by circumstance, you can pinpoint me in all of those locations at one time or another around the times of the murders happening."

The teacher, sitting there and listening to them all snarl at each other with amusement, shook his head slightly. His expression grew bewildered as he looked at the brunet who tilted his head at the other boy, their eyes boring into each other.

"Let's see. I was walking my dog near where they theorize Miho was _actually_ killed. I went to the nature reserve just yesterday, using the road that leads to Yugi's house and the shortcut through the woods. I was at school late the day Kokurano's body was supposed to have dropped dead." He tilted his head a little further. "And I used the alley Tomoya was found in. I'm actually almost a hundred percent sure I used it that night too. As for Ushio's body, I don't recall if I was that way that night, but it's entirely possible too. I often go that way. And I know I was at the reserve yesterday until I walked home later that night."

"You've been ignoring curfew!" someone declared in a shocked tone.

The boy raised a brow, snorting in amusement. "Are you honestly telling me that you follow it every night? I know how to protect myself. No one is going to murder me," he scoffed, turning away dismissively and looking at the clock on the wall before turning back with a smirk. "Now, would you like to try to declare _me_ the murderer or not?"

"Okay, so, if you were the murderer, why dump his body on Yugi's doorstep?" someone else asked, voice oddly high-pitched with nerves, eyes wide and fearful.

The boy grinned and his teeth were a perfect display of bright white enamel. He had straighter teeth than Jonouchi had ever even seen on movie stars and it was almost dazzling. "That's easy. It makes me look less suspicious."

All of them froze at the statement.

He shrugged and gestured around. "And that's exactly what it's done, right? It's pointed you in the direction of Yugi." He scoffed loudly. "And now you're all wondering if it's possible I did it. See that? It's called mob mentality. No leads, no clues, and you're all willing to point your fingers at coincidence and bullshit that comes out of someone else's mouth. You're all misled far too easily. Yugi didn't do anything. I didn't do anything."

The entire school was buzzing with the news that Valon had defended Yugi. It was the single most spoken of thing within the building. Honda was amazed by how quickly it picked up after Jonouchi told him after class. Within several hours of the day being over, everyone was joking and relaxing, reading that maybe Yugi and Valon were pulling a murder scandal like out of that American horror movie _Scream_.

Honda was amazed when he found Valon standing at his locker, snickering as someone asked him how he could gut someone else. He turned to them, smirking, and purred, "A hunter's knife and a crock pot."

"A crock pot?"

"To make the stew. Didn't you know that the organs are the most nutritious part?"

 _"_ Oh, _gross_ , dude!"

Valon snorted at him, smirking, and the kid ran off to go see his friends at the end of the hall. The werewolf was not oblivious to the way Honda was watching him and the other brunet knew it. As he came a few steps closer, he could see the way Valon seemed to angle his head towards the ground almost as if listening to his footsteps.

Honda was unnerved when he came closer and the other boy still failed to acknowledge him. The silence was too thick for him to truly fail to feel the weight of it. He swallowed thickly, head spinning, and licked his lips as he bit his cheek for a moment.

"Valon."

He didn't look up from flipping to a page in one of his notebooks. "Honda," he acknowledged in a low voice. He closed the spiral and placed it back in his locker without a second glance. Only then did he raise his head and turn to him.

Honda startled at the golden shade of his eyes. He stepped back visibly, then opened and closed his mouth, furrowing his brows, and found himself blinking rapidly. But the luminescent tone of the color did not change, and the keenness, the utter secrecy, within them did not change in the slightest. His gaze was all but glowing and his lips pulled into a slight grin as he studied the other teen.

He stood a few inches shorter than him, but the golden-eyed boy almost seemed to tower over him with the weight of his gaze alone. To take in the straightness of his back and the regal strength with which he held himself seemed to only further enlarge him. It seemed almost suicidal to take in all of these things at one time because the power of such observation was enough to make the bravest person back down.

Honda may have been far from the bravest person, but he also was not a coward. But before Valon, he felt small and almost weak. There was something eerie and great, beyond his grasp of knowledge, which made him imposing and powerful. He blinked, then backed up another step.

"Come now, tell me you aren't afraid of me," the other brunet teased, winking at him playfully. He remembered that motion, and something startling clicked in his head. Bewildered, Honda tilted his head and frowned at him.

"Your eyes used to be blue."

"Baby blue, yes," he drawled as if it were the most normal thing in the world that his eyes were no longer such a shade. With disinterest the golden-eyed boy glanced away and picked at another notebook. "They changed a couple of years ago."

"What…?"

"Why would _I_ know what made them do that? All I know is that it happened. They changed colors." He shrugged and glanced at him. "I suppose it runs in the family."

Honda shook his head slightly, furrowing his brows and frowning more pointedly. "I remember when you were in my class in middle school. When we had to share facts about ourselves, you said you were adopted."

Valon raised a brow. "What's your point? I never said which family it ran in." He hummed and flipped through another notebook, then pushed it back into place before closing his locker and turning to him fully. "Truly, Honda, what is your point? You act like me telling everyone I was adopted is news or something."

"Well, that's not normally what people say when they're told to…share something with the class."

"I'm not normal, but that's rude of you to point out."

His cheeks flushed, eyes widening. "I didn't mean—"

He was smirking when he shook his head. "You and Yugi both end up apologizing prematurely when it comes to thinking someone is offended. I'm just pulling your leg. I don't care if you say something like that. It's true enough." He turned and started to walk towards the exit, backpack resting on his shoulders. He hummed once, then turned back to look at him over his shoulder. The question was clear enough that Honda hurried to get to his side before he began walking again. "What did you want to talk about?"

"I… What you said earlier…"

He frowned at him, tilting his head. "I don't remember talking to you earlier," he said in a puzzled tone. The brunet beside him halted, confused, and Valon smirked with a roll of his eyes. His amusement made Honda blush faintly with frustration. He was messing with him; why couldn't he tell he was messing with him? "You mean about Yugi. What about it?"

"I, uh…I just think it's nice that you did that."

Valon faltered and turned his head to look at him more closely.

Honda didn't know about Yugi being a werewolf.

Good; he didn't need to.

But it still struck him as strange that his loyalty to his friend, who so obviously was lying to him, extended so far as to awkwardly commit himself to an attempt at thanking him for doing so. He frowned, then shook his head slightly and turned away.

"Yugi is a good kid. Awkward, yes, but a killer? Definitely not." Although, his _alpha_ was another question altogether. He knew his capabilities far exceeded Yugi's at the moment. But, if what he had heard come out of Yugi's mouth in the woods days before was even slightly true, then perhaps it was the smaller boy whom he should be more concerned about. If Yugi truly _was_ Code Name Atem, then he was far more dangerous than the wolf who had bitten him. "Besides, they were cutting into my education."

"You don't seem the scholarly type."

"And how well do you know me, Honda?"

The question made him pause. Valon turned to him, brow raised, expression unimpressed and cynical. He frowned at him, because he did not know him at all, but what did that truly have to do with anything?

"I'm here to get a scholarship to go to the states," he said in a dull tone. "That's why my marks are always at their highest."

Honda could not tell if he was joking or trying to make a point that he truly knew virtually nothing about him. He frowned and shook his head and the other boy turned back away again.

"I'm not here for a scholarship and I don't plan to go to the states." He rolled gleaming golden eyes. "I was just making a point. Regardless, I did it because I don't care for what they were saying about him. He's not a murderer. He's more like a lost puppy than someone who would ever attack or hurt someone else."

Yet, he had smelled Yugi's saliva on that lycanthrope whose head had been torn from its body. It had smelled much more of him around the neck than of his beta. What was his name? Yugi had called him something that day…

"I'm not sure about a lost puppy but I do know he's too kind to want to hurt anyone."

Valon nodded, listening only halfway as his mind circulated with the idea of what it was his name might be. He had all but pushed the memory out of his mind, and listening to Honda around attempting to recall it to the surface was hardly easy.

In his mind's eye his memory was flitting rapidly by. His main focus was upon it, but it was also prodded at in a halfhearted manner by the idea that Honda might speak again. Days flickered by, dialogue and images, so fast that it would have dazed if it were on video.

Then it slowed abruptly.

And, finally, it stumbled to a halt.

 _Yami_.

He had called him Yami.

Yami was the second one. Or perhaps the first.

Their scents were so erratic and his understanding of Yugi and Yami both so limited. He could not tell who had come before the other. He could not tell who it was that had come first. Yami may have bitten him but it was possible that Yugi was infected prior through bloodline. He seemed to have been, but he could not properly tell. He'd smelled it on him before but it was also questionable that he had not simply caught the scent on his clothes from another wolf passing by.

But Yami smelled unnaturally strong as a wolf. He smelled unnaturally powerful, as if he were wolf and not human. He smelled as if the human were but a shell for a wolf powerful enough to force the world to its knees.

"So, anyways, thank you, a _lot_ for doing that. I don't know how he would have reacted if he had come back tomorrow and they were still talking about it…"

Valon nodded easily, giving him a small smile. "It's okay. As I said, I don't care for what it was they were saying." After a moment he glanced over the other boy's shoulder. "Anzu and Jonouchi are looking for you."

Honda looked back, then turned to say a farewell. But the golden-eyed boy was gone, seeming almost to melt into the shadows as he disappeared around the corner. He shivered.

* * *

Yami shifted closer towards the bed, his muscles strained with the thought of moving away again. When Yugi had come back, he'd been panting and shaking and all but sobbing. But he'd settled on the bed silently over an hour ago. Only now had the taller teen considered drifting closer to him, stirred both by his anger to avoid him and his unfamiliarity to resist offering comfort. He was still struggling with such a task, as his own mind told him to flee as quickly as was physically possible. Very slowly he crept closer to the bed.

Yugi did not even seem to notice him. He had not said a word to him upon the two of them crossing paths again either. He had simply dumped his bag and scattered books across the floor, then thrown himself onto the bed. He was still shaking finely, though it was far more controlled than it had been before. But he was no longer breathing heavily and Yami wondered if perhaps he should simply back up and leave him to recover on his own. He hesitated only for a moment, then pressed his hand into the bed.

The slight dip of his weight jostled the smaller boy who spun immediately with a confused and dazed expression. At first he peered at Yami as if he did not see him properly. The way his eyes bore into his was like teeth ripping and shredding at skin. He shivered and the smaller boy blinked at the movement.

Yami withdrew his hand because he could not think to do anything further. His own lungs felt tight and his ribs were aching with the need to draw in breath. Fight or flight was flush against his instinct to stand completely still and potentially thwart a common predator by way of feigning death. He had done so often enough to realize that while it might not work with a clear-minded human, it could very well do so with Yugi. He looked almost catatonic from his mental exhaustion, pupils constricted, irises seeming almost to vibrate within his sockets.

Then, very slowly, moving with deliberate sluggishness, the small teen opened his arms. Yami nearly flinched at the inclination of the wordless plea. He hesitated, his fingers twitching, his heart lurching and pounding in his throat, his head spinning. He nearly groaned, then swallowed back a hideous growl of discomfort. For a moment he could do no more than stare at him.

His lack of movement did nothing to deter the small teen. Yami shifted his weight. In all truth, the idea of getting onto the bed and sitting beside him again seemed the biggest obstacle. This, placed on top of that, seemed overwhelming. He choked on a breath, then forced himself to inhale once more. What more was there that he could truly do?

He hesitated again. He had hoped not even to touch him. He had hoped to simply get close enough that Yugi might draw some kind of sense of comfort from his presence. The idea of willingly placing himself within someone's arms after all of the things such actions had formerly led him to made Yami want to puke.

He thought of bright green eyes, with depths of the ocean, and the kindest gleam he had ever seen. He choked again, distress coating his insides.

He had not physically embraced someone since then. He had not allowed anyone to do the same since so long before Yugi had done so with his wolf skin in the woods. He drew in a breath and his throat seized painfully. His lungs were burning and his throat ached. He could feel the muscles closing, tightening, and he felt as if the world were swaying about him.

Those eyes stared back at him, set against Yugi's pleading gaze, and it made his heart shudder. The pain made his stomach clench and his insides melt. He felt weak, distress swallowing his common sense. The impulse to collapse pushed away his fight or flight. His heart was shaking within his throat. He shivered and the tremble turned into a fine quake until he thought he might collapse forcefully.

Yugi watched him, saw the way a shadow passed upon his face. He was wheezing now, as if something were triggered within his memories. He was shaking and his fingers were twitching sporadically. He was gasping and hissing. Then, very slowly, the darkness seemed to swamp his gaze altogether. There was something disconnected, disassociated, within his eyes, making the red of them almost gray in shade. He looked overwhelmed, dulled by the weight of that which filled his mind.

Yugi felt as if he had opened a chasm between them miles long and mountains deep. He almost lowered his arms, but something stubborn borne within him made him keep them up. He held them in the exact position he had moments before. And Yami continued to stare, wild-eyed, body trembling, his breath coming in low wheezes of pain. Then, abruptly, choking and wheezing, the small boy felt his body nearly fall backwards.

Yami had hurled himself. He had thrown himself straight into his arms. And there he was, quaking and sobbing silently. His pain was enough to make them both shake as if caught within the throes of heavy wind. Yugi tightened his grip around him, shifting to attempt to ease him more comfortably into his embrace.

The movement finally brought sound from the other teen. He was keening again, the noise high in pitch and making his entire body shake with each exhale. He shuddered and moved closer, desperate in the way he tried to bury himself within the smaller boy.

Yugi held him there, frozen but for his arms around him. He thought he heard him whimpering a name, but his voice was so distressed and choked and the keen pitch of his whimpers tossed it away. The small teen rubbed gently at his back and gasped. Yami had clutched at his back with his nails and shifted forcefully forward again. He was pressed so tightly it caused the air to leave him painfully. He could not move.

His fingers seemed almost to curl into his skin, threatening to shred through his clothes and into his muscle. He shivered and Yami let out a noise that was not simply choked or pained. Rather it sounded aggressive as well, a snarl of a whimper, the noises bleeding together agonizingly. But it died away in the stale air and Yami abruptly shifted to bury his face in the hollow of his throat.

Even if he could not feel his dry cheeks, he would have known he had failed to cry by the lack of salt in the air. Yugi rubbed at his back once more, running his fingers along the knobs of his spines. They felt like the buttons of a trumpet, harsh and jagged, like the vertebrae of a lizard. He pulled at the taller teen, for a moment thinking that perhaps he could meld him into his flesh, instinctively wishing to shelter him from such pain. But he was pressed so completely against him that it was impossible.

He pressed his chin into his shoulder, looking towards the wall as Yami continued to tremble finely against him.

When Yami finally drew away from him, it was hours later. Yugi was exhausted by the very task of remaining in place for so long. His legs were cramped. His arms hurt. The shuddering had worn his body through and through. He allowed him to pull away, at first unsure and then with certainty. The taller wolf crept back only a couple of inches, refusing to look at him, blinking at the comforter. He looked exhausted, and his bones looked jagged, as if the muscle had wasted away from such grief.

Yugi had the impulse both to reach out and touch him and to shift away while asking if he was okay. But neither thing happened. He could not force the words out nor dismiss common sense that it would further upset Yami. And to touch him seemed almost as if he were mocking him and his pain.

So he simply leaned a little closer. The other wolf did not move away and he knew Yami felt him there, almost like a second skin. They stayed still, the red eyes on the yellow comforter, his own on the sky blue of the wall. The minutes passed.

Then Yami shifted closer to him. Their shoulders brushed and the taller boy trembled slightly. Yugi bit the inside of his cheek until it bled, then began to dig at the severed flesh with frenzy. He feared moving too closely to him and speaking would surely send Yami running.

Yami eventually turned to him, slow and weary, and the look in his eyes made Yugi's heart hurt more. He blinked, looking away, then shifted closer to him. Their legs pressed into each other and Yugi looked at him as he moved to press their cheeks together for a split second.

His left hand was clenching at the fabric of his uniform shirt and Yugi closed his eyes as the other wolf tightened the grip. He twisted it until it felt that his skin would pinch off with the pain of the shirt clenching upon it. But the smaller werewolf was more distinctly aware of the sensation of the other's gentle body heat and the smoothness of his skin.

Yami's other hand drifted towards his shoulder, clasping there lightly. He shivered and the red-eyed teen moved again to press his cheek into his throat. His pulse was warm and steady in his ear, though the skin shuddered when he swallowed thickly. Yugi reached out to touch his flank for a moment, gently drifting his finger over it before cupping just beneath his ribs.

He had forgotten physical affection.

The embrace made Yami remember those longer nights, the gentle heat and the way those green eyes would watch him through the terrors. He shook it off, then blinked and forced himself to push away the thought. This hug was much different than any he had ever experienced before. The grief was so much more than he had ever felt prior. His frame was still somewhat shaken by it as well.

It had been so terribly constant since he had come to know solidarity. He shivered and looked at Yugi, pulling away when he remembered how close they were. His movement didn't jar the smaller boy enough to release his flank and the consistency of the touch made him tremble gently again. He looked away, glancing at his fingers, and licked his lips to keep from whining low under his breath.

Yugi hummed softly, then risked the chance of whispering, "I think I'm going to get something to eat in a few minutes, okay?"

Yami paused, then nodded slightly. His own belly was empty despite the tossing of the clenched organ. He licked his lips again, then nodded again, unable at first to say a word. Finally he glanced at him sideways, beneath his irises, and muttered, "Protein shake?"

His voice was raspy, breaking and crackling painfully. The way it burst from his lungs made the small teen's heart ache. He tilted his head, then smiled gently, and nodded. His thumb was tracing gossamer circles upon his flank, soft and warm, and the red-eyed lycanthrope shivered faintly. But he also melted into such sensation, leaning his side slightly towards his touch.

* * *

Yugi picked at the spiral ring of his notebook for a long minute, then narrowed his eyes at Yami curiously. The other boy had been relatively silent since the time they had wound up tangled together hours before. The small teen scribbled his pen along his paper for a long moment, then smiled faintly as he glanced at him once more.

Yami had drank his protein shake and eaten the sandwiches he had made for them both. Then he had kept his seat on the bed close to him, he was sure, because he was too exhausted to bother moving away. He had taken the spot close enough that they could touch if one of them shifted a little, but far enough that they were not yet touching.

It was strange to him, to desire so strongly to touch the other boy after having only done so a handful of times. But the way he had cracked and seemingly fallen to pieces within his arms made him that much more desperate to do so a third time. He shook the stupid thought off, feeling foolish and childish, and then looked towards him once more, peering at him sideways.

Yami glanced at him after a moment. His voice was still rough and scratchy even as he mumbled, "What?"

"I was just… Can I ask you something?"

If it was about what had happened, he couldn't promise not to lash out, but still the taller teen nodded slowly. His expression was slightly bewildered and he looked mildly sick to his stomach as they locked eyes for a moment. "What is it?" he asked quietly.

Yugi hesitated for a moment, picking at his nails before frowning at him. "I wanted to ask you about this really weird dream that I had," he admitted, licking his lips. The other wolf blinked at him curiously for a split second, then nodded in encouragement. "The other night after I saw the pack, I had this dream about a she-wolf. She said her name was Ra. And she offered me some…"

At the mention of her name Yami had grown still, eyes wide and startled. He blinked at him and Yugi furrowed his brows, but the red-eyed lycanthrope simply shook his head after a moment.

"She, um, offered me guidance, to help me find some of the answers…?" He hesitated, because Yami's eyes flashed with something harsh and otherworldly. "She said that I need to…look to the wolf? How does that…? I mean, I'm the wolf and the human, right? They're both…part of me. So why would she…? Do you think she means someone else?"

Yami blinked at him, then narrowed his eyes. "You think she means me," he said in a low voice, his tone quiet enough to make Yugi feel almost childish. When he nodded, the other wolf sighed. "Because I've been a wolf longer than you."

"Yeah…"

For a few long heartbeats neither spoke. Yami reached over to take his notebook from him, his nails clicking against the metal spirals. Yugi shivered, looking towards him for a moment, and then murmured, "Do you want to wait? Or should I get you a notebook? Do you want to write instead?"

His nails clicked again, then he narrowed his eyes. For a moment neither of them moved. Then he slowly shook his head, pushing the notebook onto the desk. But the pen was in his hands and his nails dug into the plastic as he twisted the cap gently between his fingers.

"Ask me a question if that's what you want to do."

The smaller teen hesitated for a moment, then offered him a small smile that he knew Yami caught from the corner of his eye. The red-eyed lycanthrope did nothing to acknowledge his attempt at easing his discomfort beyond swallowing. Yugi picked at his uniform pants with a nail, then looked down at his comforter.

"Can you tell me something about the way you're my alpha and I'm your beta?"

"It's the ranking system for wolves who are bitten. Because it spreads the disease between the two of them and binds them in ways that we're still all unsure of, the alpha is the one to bite and the beta is the bitten." He paused. "Have we not spoken about this before? I feel that we have…"

"Yeah, you mentioned it once. But I was…" _More concerned about what happened to Tomoya, why you killed him, why he wound up with his heart eaten like that_ … "We got distracted. The conversation went elsewhere, remember?"

Yami hummed low under his breath, then turned to him slowly with a frown. "I remember," he said quietly, nodding slightly before looking at the pen in his hand again. Focusing was by far easier when it meant you did not have to face the person requesting it. His exhaustion was eating at his insides again. He drew in a breath, then exhaled long and slow. "It's just a ranking system. It also helps wolves to know which is in charge between the two of them, in case something happens. Like, say a beta was to lose their mind because of something, the alpha could subdue them through their ranking commands, but someone else would fail."

"Ranking commands?"

"It's called the alpha command. It allows the alpha in a pair to use a certain tone in their voice which activates a certain trigger within their beta. When that happens, their word becomes law and they are bound by their genetic coding to listen completely to their alpha. It could be completely out of their nature, beyond any semblance of their personality, and the authority created by the lycanthropy spread between them will cause them to do it."

"…So…you could technically make me do anything you wanted?" he asked slowly, eyes wide and horrified.

Yami glanced at him from the corner of his eye. "I've used it twice in order to save you, but never beyond that."

Yugi shivered. "What happens if I bite someone? Does that tie them to you too?"

"Yes, but not as strongly. Once you bite someone, _you_ are the one connected to them, not me. My connection with them would be tenuous at best. I could only truly attempt to use my command if I were able to find them in a completely feral state."

"Feral?"

"Animalistic, where their thoughts and personality would be shut away in their brains. It would be more like an overwhelming state of panic or anger. That would be the only true opening I would have."

"Oh…" Yugi hesitated, then shifted his weight slightly, and turned to him with furrowed brows. "What about what happened in the woods that day? When we ended up fighting, you acted like you were hurt too…"

Yami shivered slightly, then looked away from him completely once more. "I should have called it gene expression. The alpha command is basically a forced gene expression. And the gene expression exists naturally between alpha and beta at all times. That's why, when an alpha turns on its beta, it triggers as well. It allows the beta to survive any attack which might truly disable or kill them when the alpha turns on them. It causes phantom pains and sensations to mirror the beta. The gene expression triggers in both of them because of that."

"So you…you really did feel like you were bleeding and had blood in your eye…"

Yami nodded slightly. "I did."

He shivered. "Does it happen when we're like this too?"

"I wouldn't know. I've never truly gotten into a physical spat with you like this."

He hoped that they never did. He looked at the pen in Yami's hands for a moment, licking his lips. "Do alphas turn on their betas often?"

"There is always going to be some kind of discord between any alpha and beta. Discipline is fine, because it's not truly ever a painful matter. It's when the alpha is angry enough to wish to inflict true wounds that it triggers." He frowned at him slightly. "The pain is said to amplify when it's ignored during an outright attack. I've never seen it, but I have heard rumors that when an alpha is determined to kill their beta, the trigger will kill them both. But the pain would be excruciating for the alpha to force themselves through regardless."

"Why would anyone want to bite someone if they're going to be so tied to them and risk killing themselves if they got into a fight?"

He frowned. "I saw a potential in you that made me want to save you. But, even without that, most wolves will bite the one that they determine to be their mate."

Yugi raised a brow. "Their mate?"

"Their partner. They either sense it through body chemicals and pheromones in the air, or they allow themselves to fall in love with someone else. Their bond doesn't make their relationship perfect or peaceful or easy, but it gives them completeness and guarantees absolute loyalty. Either way, it's something that is not predetermined, but relies on chemistry between the two. And when they find them, most often they'll ask them if they want to be bitten. If they say yes, then they do it. It helps to keep their fights from getting out of hand as well. Quarreling mates can be a hideous thing to watch."

"You say that it protects the beta…"

"The alpha command protects us. We can demand the fight cease as soon as it begins. The beta is protected by the phantom pain."

Yugi shivered, voice coming out slightly playful when he commented, "Must make sex between them very fun."

Yami snorted, somewhere between horror and avid amusement. "Um, yes, I suppose so."

The smaller teen blinked and tilted his head. "So, then, does that mean if an alpha was to bite a _bunch_ of people, they'd be able to control each of them?"

"Yes. Why?"

"I was just asking." He was tempted to knock the pen from between his fingers now. He just wanted to see what kind of expression he would wear if he did. The thought made him smile faintly. "But it becomes strained the further down the line it is."

"Yes."

"That makes sense."

He hummed, then flipped the pen around in his fingers a few times. "Yes. It's a rather complex connection between any wolves involved."

"I can tell." Now he truly did pop the writing utensil out of his hand. But, where he expected it to hit the comforter, Yami caught it with his other hand lazily. He barely even glanced at it before smirking at Yugi's surprised expression. "That's just not even fair."

"I knew you were going to do it. I was waiting."

"That's still not fair at all."

He gave him a small amused grin, then turned away again. "It happens like that, I suppose."

"That pack alpha in the woods… She called me the one with blood of the gods in his veins. What, um…? And then, Ra, she called me her 'dear child'."

Yami looked at him for a moment. "Ra…called you her dear child? And the alpha of the wolves in the woods called you a demigod…?"

"Yeah. What, um…what is that supposed to…?"

"That Ra sees you as important and that we were right when we assumed that you were born with the lycanthropy even though it was dormant until I bit you." He shrugged slightly at his stunned expression, voice growing somewhat cold. "It just means that you were born a lycanthrope and that's why the alpha assumed you to be born of the gods. Because Code Name Atem is meant to _be_ a god to them."

"Ra sees me as important…because of my being Code Name Atem."

"Everything stems upon that one thing, yes."

He frowned at him. "How lonely."

Yami looked at him, eyes darkened with thoughts Yugi could not fathom. They looked at each other for a few long moments. Then they both turned away, feeling in their guts the singularity of their joint discontent in the realization.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled, because he had looked at the corner and he saw the bunched material of the teal jacket lying there where Yami had formerly been. "I'm so sorry about your jacket. I didn't think about it when I put it in. I should have asked you before I ever even considered…"

Yami shook his head at him, jaw clenching in clear warning. Yugi fell immediately silent. Both of them remained drenched in the quiet for what felt an eternity. The air vent vibrated as the heat came on. The clock in his bathroom ticked loudly. The wet twists of their hearts were deafening. Their breathing was the heaviest thing within the room.

"Why do you hate talking about this?"

He was quiet for a moment. "Because, being a lycanthrope, it's not all fun and games. And I don't enjoy remembering my many shortcomings or the fact that your questions always hit too close to home for me."

"They…? How? I don't…? I just want to know more. And it isn't like you were bitten…r-right? You said before that you were born a werewolf."

"Born and raised one. I was born a wolf pup, changed at some point, and I still do it every full moon." He hummed for a moment, then turned to look at him. "My parents were killed by werewolves."

Yugi tilted his head. He was feeding him another lie, something to further disconnect the conversation. But it was not because he purposely cared for the sake of secrecy. He could see it in his eyes.

He was desperate.

And the only way to alleviate the pain which he so clearly felt at the moment, at the mere mention of things he was not ready to face, was to disassociate himself from it. He was trying to both outrun it and face it in a way that a half-truth served to ease some of the ache in his chest.

"What happened?"

His eyes flashed with a brightness Yugi knew to be gratitude at the moment. Then, with a struggle regain his usual ease, the wolf said, in a smaller voice than usual, "There was another pack that came within our territory. I was the only one of six to survive, because the winter was so bad that they just couldn't make it. When it came to fighting, my parents told me to run. I hid away, then came back. But all I found was a bunch of blood everywhere. They took their bodies."

Yugi attempted to dissect the story to find what he could admit the truth of his words. But all he could think might be true was his siblings dying. He frowned, biting his lip. "How old were your siblings?"

His eyes flashed. A small smirk threatened to tug at the edge of his lips. "I'm not sure. I was still deaf and blind when they passed."

Yugi himself thought of darkness, of the sudden and rapid loss of what had formerly been a mass of hearts dissolving into one. And that had been thunderous but so terribly weak and strained as well, burdened with loss and physical pain. He shifted his weight and their legs brushed. He blinked, Yami did not. "I'm sorry."

"It happens."

"It shouldn't have to."

"But sometimes it must. Survival would not be a game of wits and strength if it did not."

"Surviving is fine, but what about _living_?"

Yami very slowly raised his head, then turned to him. His eyes were harsh, burning, as he smirked faintly. "I do that when I am a wolf. I do not do it as a human."

The clear line between them was so keenly cut that the idea made Yugi nearly flinch.

What if he himself became that way?

What if he could only find it in himself to enjoy his life through his human form and never his wolf?

Living half a life and neglecting the other made him feel sick and stupid. He felt like a little kid with no chance of ever growing beyond himself. His mental state might very well remain small and meek and never mature.

Yugi shook his head, slightly flustered, and then lowered his eyes. "Okay," he murmured, voice soft and gentle because he was not sure what else he could do. The small teen looked down for a moment, picking at the comforter again. "Do you think you'll ever…?"

Yami closed his eyes with a small shake of his head. "No, I don't. I don't think that I will ever truly consider myself to be able to enjoy my life within my human form as well."

He shivered. "That sounds…almost lonely."

He didn't blink. "A lot of things are lonely, Yugi."

The small teen looked at him for a long moment, then glanced away again. The matter-of-fact tone of his voice made him feel slightly dizzy with the way the words filled his ears. He suppressed another small shiver, then shook his head and looked at the pen in his fingers again.

"But it is not loneliness. I do not think of it as such, at least. I feel that it is more caution that makes it such."

"But why would you want to be cautious all of the time? Yami, that's tiring. I mean, be cautious when you need to, but relax when it's unnecessary."

He tilted his head. "And how should one come to know when it is safe enough not to be wary, Yugi?"

"When you're in a place that you absolutely _know_ you're safe in," he stated, smiling at him faintly and gesturing around. "Like the house. You know you're safe here, right?"

Yami narrowed his eyes slightly. "Safe enough. But you forget that when you are not home, I am not quite. If your mother or grandfather happens to be within the house at the same time as me, the safety is inevitably lessened."

Yugi blinked, then frowned. "That's true," he admitted unhappily. "But the solution to that is letting you meet them."

He curled his lip, though it was not in offense and rather disbelief. "To _meet_ them is your proposed solution? Yugi, the much simpler way to go about it would be the task of me leaving. Is that not correct?"

The smaller teen stiffened, eyes widening and his stomach sinking with the very thought. He opened and closed his mouth, then swallowed thickly with disappointment. "Do you want to leave?"

Yami hesitated for a moment, opening and closing his mouth in repetition of Yugi, bewildered by the very concept, and then looked quickly away again. His eyes were on the pen in his fingers as he found himself growing still. "No, I do not think it would be very wise of me. And I enjoy your company. But how long is this meant to truly last, Yugi? How long am I meant to be welcome here?"

He shook his head, frowning. "I told you before that you're welcome as long as you want to stay here."

Their eyes locked for a brief second. Yugi felt dizzy and sick as Yami regarded him for a long moment and the red gaze glittered like brilliant liquid gems.

"That has not been revoked," he muttered, the tone so quiet and confused that Yugi faltered for a moment and wondered if perhaps he was _asking_. But the uncertainty and vulnerability was raw on his face and the small teen was almost dizzy with growing shock.

He could not find it in himself to think to speak any words. He swallowed hard, watching him uncomfortably, and then looked down again. He ran a hand through his hair and Yami watched him with darkened, bewildered eyes. Both of them remained silent for a moment, then the taller teen looked at the pen again.

"Then I suppose you would be correct. The easiest choice we could make regarding this would be to meet them."

The small teen looked up after a moment, then smiled slightly before shaking his head. "I think we need to stop talking about all of this. It's kind of depressing."

Yugi expected a chuckle but the other wolf had shifted closer to him. He startled, eyes widening drastically, as a tongue gently traced his cheek. Yami looked relieved beyond himself, and terribly grateful, so much so that he was almost overwhelmed by it. He blinked at him, noticing that Yami did not exactly draw away, and his heart was hammering when he leaned forward and tilted his head.

"You know, humans tend to kiss with their mouths." He was surprised by the warmth and affection within his tone, the strength of it mildly seductive. He felt a shiver trail along his spine due to it, but he could not stop himself from feeling slightly flushed as well.

Yami stiffened in surprise at the words, then the way Yugi further leaned. His face was angled and his own was still turned towards his. If Yugi just tipped his head a fraction—

He turned his head immediately to the side. The smaller teen very nearly touched his lips to his cheek but pulled back just in time. The rejection was something that at first stunned him, then made him snicker. Yami looked at him sideways, eyes sharp and burning as they flickered to his quickly.

"Oh, come on, Yami, if you're going to kiss me, at least do it right."

He shivered because the tone made his skin crawl, heating with something almost akin desire. But the green of the jacket flashed in his peripheral and he drew his lips back in clear distaste. Yugi leaned towards him again and he dodged away from the possible touch.

The small teen was still snickering when he tried it the third time, the fourth, and then finally he sighed in exasperation the fifth. He gave him a lazy smile, then bumped his shoulder enough to jostle him gently. Yugi smiled a little wider and Yami tilted his head curiously.

"I'm sorry. I was just teasing."

He looked at him for a long moment, then frowned faintly before shaking his head. "It's okay. I know you didn't mean anything by it."

Yugi hesitated, because he had to wonder.

 _Had_ he meant something?

 _Had_ he wanted to kiss him?

He tilted his head and bit the inside of his cheek painfully. Had he truly wanted to kiss him? It seemed like it, considering how instinctively he had gone about teasing him before leaning forward. He had never been so bold before, in any way. And it made his skin feel clammy as he looked at him.

He knew Yami was one of the most handsome guys he'd ever seen before in his life. And his personality was something that could have put so many to shame, regardless of his caution and instinctive disregard at times. He was powerful, beautiful, and his heart only seemed that much warmer when he had reason to show it.

So why _wouldn't_ he honestly have a desire to kiss him? Gender aside, he seemed almost like Anzu in that regard. But Yami was stronger and ready to lash out if he saw it necessary. Anzu would never do that unless she felt there was no other way around it. She was like Yugi in that way.

He shivered and Yami looked away from him altogether once more. His red eyes were focused, unsurprisingly, upon the jacket which lay in the corner. He shook the impulse to perhaps apologize again or maybe ask if he was okay. Another part of him begged to say he would buy him a new one.

It was desperation for them to mend this gaping hole—which he knew, somewhere in the deepest recesses of his mind, would never _truly_ be bridged—which made these words continue to rise within his lungs. But that wound would remain open between them forever, great and terrible and raw around the edges.

Even if Yami should find it in himself to forgive him, to move past it, the distance would not be lost. It would never be shaken between them.

Yugi sighed softly. He wondered if this would be another thing that they could never fully shake. What if his teasing and his attempts to kiss him had damaged them somewhere deep down that Yami refused to acknowledge? What if he had truly screwed them up further than he could repair them? He shivered.

But, if it had truly been so undesirable, why had Yami waited so long before turning away? Why had they nearly kissed more than once? Despite himself he had to wonder, even if he failed to understand his own desire to tease him or attempt to do so in the first place. He licked his lips, the inside of his cheek bleeding slightly, and then narrowed his eyes faintly.

He only noticed then that he was staring so intently at the other's face, struggling to come up with some kind of reading of his emotions there, that he had never truly felt the other wolf's aura as he always seemed to other's.

At the mall he had not felt it.

Now he did not feel it.

He had not felt it before then either.

He still could not do it as they looked at each other. He could not feel a single thing of the magnitude which he had when he was around others in the arcade or the mall.

Had he ever felt his emotions before?

Had he ever experienced even the smallest sliver of it before?

He shivered. Had he ever felt anything in terms of the other boy?

Was there even the slightest hint of which he felt his emotions?

Yugi frowned.

Yami felt his.

He knew that.

He sensed them without any issue.

He was able to take one look at him or tilt his head in Yugi's direction and know something was off in his head.

Yami would know his distress with the simplest of soft inhales.

Yugi's cheeks felt flushed with shame for the smallest of seconds. Then he sighed quietly, shaking his head as if to make the words disappear from his mind. His head was spinning faintly as he thought of how easily one-sided the connection between them was times. He wondered if it had to do with Yami being the alpha. Perhaps it gave him an easier sense of being able to read him and his emotions. Or maybe he was just more in tune with everything and that was why. Perhaps, even simpler, it was just the fact that he was gifted at reading people.

Yugi had never truly been particularly successful at doing the same. He was one to be read, not to truly read someone else. His ability, at best, was completely half and half. He did, however, find that his lycanthropy brought forth more comfortably the idea of being able to read those around him.

* * *

He leaned over curiously. Yami was on his back, his legs twisted away from him towards the wall. He was fast asleep, his belly exposed faintly by the way his shirt had ridden up in his sleep. He had been twisting and turning some since he had decided to take a nap. And Yugi had been grateful to see that he refused to move away to the corner as he would have formerly. But he had also shifted away from him slightly and he knew the close proximity had not done him well for rest.

The small expanse of skin made him raise a brow, slightly curious as to if it felt as soft as his cheek has before. He wondered, as well, if it was possible that his skin felt as silky and satin-like as the downy fluff of his undercoat. His cheeks heated, the idea of being a pervert flashing through his mind, but he ignored it for a moment. It wasn't as if he was going to attempt to molest him in his sleep, after all.

His only thought upon leaning over him was for the very purpose of checking his emotional state. Despite everything, the small teen was curious about whether he could sense them now. He was asleep and visibly distressed, which should have made it easy enough for him to be able to sense them. It should have made Yami an open book.

Yugi leaned further forward, tilting his head. He was not entirely sure how it was that he was meant to do this. It seemed childish and unusual for him to attempt this now. He had no experience and no concept of action. He frowned and tried harder to think of something, to listen for some kind of clue somehow. His cheeks heated again. He felt ridiculous.

But he must have been too close.

Yami shifted slightly and his eyes snapped open with a snarl on his face. Yugi barely recoiled in time to avoid being slashed in the face by his hand when he curled his fingers and aimed. He breathed out roughly and the taller teen blinked at him in shock before slowly sitting up. When he faced him again, his expression was one of absolute confusion and bewilderment.

" _What_? What happened?" he muttered, blinking at him again and tilting his head. "Did I move too much?"

Yugi let out an awkward, choked laugh, then shook his head slowly. "No, not at all," he replied, cheeks still dusted with soft pink. He let out another breath, forcing himself to relax further. "I just…um…"

His brow rose and then he smirked slightly, but the edges of it were wry and his eyes were darkened by cynicism. "You were just leaning over me, seeing if I wouldn't notice you trying to molest me?" he supplied.

Yugi's face turned bright red and he opened and closed his mouth before punching him lightly in the arm. His lips were thin with his grimace, his eyes wide, and he bit his cheek harshly. "I was not! That never even crossed my mind!"

Just because he had tried to kiss him—and he still had no idea how it was that he had wound up attempting such—did not mean he planned to hold him at night or touch him under his clothes. His cheeks heated further with the thought and Yami watched him with that same wry expression, not the least bit amused. Yugi shook his head rapidly, flushing deeper somehow, and then grumbled as he lowered his head.

"If you want to get molested, go find Mai."

"I have no plans whatsoever to do such a thing."

"Well, that's the only way it's going to happen, so I guess you'll have to miss out on it then."

"Oh, how _ever_ will I live without such a thing happening to me?" Yami drawled with a roll of his eyes, turning away again and baring his teeth slightly. "I'm sure my heart will surely stop."

"Okay, jackass. I'm just saying, if _that's_ what you want, you should go to her. She seemed very handsy and in love with the idea of corrupting people's innocence."

He chuckled in amusement, tilting his head to the side and smirking devilishly. "That she did," he agreed playfully. "She was very excited about trying to sleep with one of us."

He grinned in response, but his body was tingling with the idea. The blonde flashed in his head and he thought of her hair tousled by his fingers or knotted by the pillow. He thought of her cheeks flushed and the softest gleam of sweat upon her face. He pictured her breasts and the angle of her collarbones and his stomach twisted, heat blooming inside of him. He drew in a deep breath, then exhaled it between his teeth.

Yami eyed him for a moment, both suspicious and curious. His brow rose slowly, but thankfully he did not comment on the arousal Yugi knew he scented. He looked away quickly, then turned towards the window with a backwards glance.

"I…I don't think I can keep this up any longer."

Yami stiffened, eyes wide, back rigid. He stared at him almost blindly, head spinning. Yugi frowned at himself from the reflection in the window, then turned to him again. The blind, vivid panic within his eyes made his body grow rigid as well. Then he blinked, his words catching up to him, and froze in place, galled by his own stupidity.

"I didn't mean like that," he said quickly. "I just meant that we really need to figure out some way to talk to my mom and grandpa about you. If she were to walk in at some point and you were medicated, I think she would easily pick up on the fact that you are _not_ me. We look close enough alike at first glance but that would never work."

He exhaled slightly and the faintest of trembles was detectable to his eyes. Yugi licked his lips, smiling at him slightly, and then Yami rolled his eyes as he looked away. "I would never attempt to second guess a mother's instinct concerning her child," he said quietly. "She would know the moment she entered the room, perhaps even before."

He smirked, nodding slightly. "That's true."

"But how do you plan to pull it off? What words do you plan to say to her? Do you have a plan or will you simply run on instinct, Yugi?"

Yugi's expression fell completely. He blinked at him, long and slow, and felt the softest of aches in his skull as he looked at him. He shook his head, frowning, and then turned away for the smallest of seconds. "I plan to wing it. As long as I can get her at least interested in meeting you without making it seem unnatural and forced, my mom won't notice or suspect a thing. And if I tell her in a couple of weeks afterwards that you need a place to stay for a little while, she should be fine with it."

"Do you truly believe that?"

"If you're as well-behaved as you are now and you act as friendly as possible, she'll love you. She'll let you stay as long as you want or as long as you 'need' without any trouble."

Yami tilted his head. "I feel like it'll be more work than that, Yugi."

"Maybe a little bit," he said with a shrug, "but you'll manage. _We'll_ manage. Just be the way you always are and try to remember that she won't have any idea about what we've talked about. So she might ask about your parents and family members."

He frowned, biting his lip. And, if she did? What was he meant to do then? He shook his head slightly in growing bewilderment.

"We'll come up with something to explain it away," Yugi reassured him, raising his brow slightly and smiling at him gently. "It'll be okay, no worries."

 **Okay, so, updates are definitely going to slow down for a little while. I'll spare you the boring details, but either way, my time is going to be rather tight for (hopefully just) a couple of weeks. I have various real life issues to take care of more than anything.**


	31. Tunnels

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day (no update on June 2nd)**

 **Chapter Warnings: COPIOUS Amounts of Blood, Character Deaths, Dog Deaths, Yugi Being Kind of Badass, Mild Hints of PERCEIVED Fragileshipping (Yami x Ryou), Heavily Implied Tendershipping (Ryou x Bakura), Hints of Implied Heartshipping (Yugi [Atem] x Ryou), Implied Puzzleshipping, Slight Flashback, Mentions of Torture/Experiments**

 **So I listed it as Heartshipping because TECHNICALLY with Yugi being Atem and the implication that Ryou is in love with Atem kind of equals Heartshipping? So I'm going to list it as that and put Atem in brackets cause that's basically how everyone knows Yugi besides his friends and family. So, yep, that's why it's not labeled as whatever Atem x Ryou is (besides Fragile).**

 **Guys, just so you know, STATISTICALLY the American pit bull dog IS considered the most dangerous. But as far as that goes, all anyone has to do is TRAIN them properly. I don't believe for a second that ANY breed of dog is considered a "monster", as some people so often refer to them as. I LOVE pits, I LOVE rottwielers, I LOVE chows, I LOVE shepherds. But the pit IS considered the most dangerous in the US and that's why I decided to use them in this chapter. I don't think they would fair as well in the terrain and everything as the Hokkaido wolfdog that lives there, but for the story, the lab has dogs that are of a more intimidating stature than them.**

 **Okay, so, just to be clear about something? You should NEVER do what Yugi did with the dogs to induce vomiting. Not only is it dangerous to do as the dog might bite, it's also probably more likely to kill them if you press too hard and you can't get your hand out in time. Besides that, though, from what I was reading, a few vets don't think that dogs have the same kind of gag reflex as us so it might very well be extremely ineffective. Anyways, there are tricks all across the internet on how to induce vomiting in dogs if you ever need to. This is definitely NOT the method to do it though, just saying.**

 **ALSO! NEVER put your laptop on your laps. The thing is, when the fan comes on, it's going to be blowing a bunch of fur and dust into the computer. Or you'll be blocking the vents off and it'll cause the computer to overheat. Speaking from experience, guys.**

 **And, last but not least, I swear I spent like three hours looking up Yami's skin tone for this story. The search results mentioned in the chapter? Totally all I could find to match it. I was laughing way too hard about it when I first searched.**

 **That aside, SO SORRY for the SUPER SUPER late update. Without boring anyone to tears, my work life was frantic, my home life got really messed up for a moment there, and I'm working on rectifying both of them. I'm not sure that I'll manage to keep up with my usual schedule, but I should be able to get ahead with some edits even if I can't post the exact day. Hopefully I can get back on track though so whoo, wish me luck!**

Chapter XXXI: Tunnels

 _Work Log Entry XXXI Part I: December, 2000_

 _December 10_

 _A.T.E.M. has spent his time sitting with and watching after another ailing wolf for the last twenty-four hours of his release to be among the pack once more. He has even fended off the wandering noses of several others._

 _But he must know that the other is dying. Any wolf could smell the decaying flesh that refuses to heal from the experiments done to him. The boss is speculating that he may well be fighting them off for the sole purpose of feasting on him later._

 _December 14_

 _We have begun transfusions on the father. The wolves do not seem to have direct blood types like A or O or AB. Depending on the blood-rank, however, the body can forcefully expel it._

 _Such has happened twice with another Half-Blood's being put into him._

 _December 20_

 _After numerous transplants, his father's decline in health has somehow stabilized._

 _It turns out that the Pure-Blood's blood mixed with a lower blood-rank can heal wounds and ailments._

 _But the boss is skeptical that it will last._

Yugi plopped down on the mattress, tossing away his backpack, and crossed his legs thoughtfully as he laid his head back against his pillow. Yami glanced up from his book, yawning with clear disinterest towards the storyline, and then put it aside on the desk. Yugi was surprised upon glancing over and seeing how close he truly was; he had barely looked into the room when he'd taken his seat. But Yami was mere inches and his fingers were long and slender and only centimeters from his shoulder closest him. The small teen grinned slightly, then moved to sit up. Thank the gods that he had seemingly begun to close some of the distance between them enough to wish to be closer to him.

"So, I was thinking that we would rehearse some of what you might say to my mom and grandpa. I'll go ahead and mention you at dinner later today. And I'll keep weaseling you into the conversation until I think she's ready to meet you," Yugi said with a small, slight nod. His mom would be easy to sway as long as Yami treated her as he did him. His gentler nature and quietness were easily seen as the qualities of a kind introvert. It was the caution with which he often regarded the things and people around him that might be more likely to gain their suspicion. "But we need to figure out some kind of answers for the questions that she'll probably ask you."

Yami bit his cheek before tilting his head and nodding slightly. "Okay, what do you have in mind? Should I perhaps attempt to answer them truthfully or would you rather I came up with something?"

"You're worrying too much," he said gently, shaking his head. He gave him another soft grin and raised a brow. "No, what we'll do is come up with false answers. That way there's really no pressure for you."

He frowned but nodded again. "Okay."

"So, probably, the first thing I need to know before I even start on all of those questions is what we're going to say your last name is."

There was a long minute of silence. Not once did Yami open his mouth to answer. Yugi pursed his lips at him, frowning and furrowing his brows. The next minute passed similarly. And then the taller teen shook his head in amusement.

He sighed softly, shaking his head. "Well, you definitely can't use Motou, since that's mine. And if you said Hiroto or Jonouchi or Mazaki they would think that you're related to my friends. So, I guess we could look things up and see which works well with Yami…?"

He looked up and then down slightly, making it a clear almost unnoticeable nod. "Yes, I suppose that will be how we go about it."

Yugi got up and moved to grab his laptop from where it sat in the desk drawer. The other boy watched as he laid it on his lap and started it up again. The two of them sat close to each other, the computer humming where it rested on his legs. Yami shifted close enough that their elbows touched when he leaned forward. Yugi gave him a small smile when the other glanced at where their clothes brushed.

Quickly he turned back to the screen, starting the search engine in order to begin typing. Off the top of his head were only names that he knew from school—and all basically those of only his friends. His mom would immediately latch upon them and ask until he felt he might cave.

"Mm… Okay, so what do you think of Kobayashi?"

Yami tilted his head, tasting the word for a moment. "Small forest," he translated quietly, nodding slightly before smirking with a tilt of his head. "Small forest of darkness; darkness of small forest."

Yugi snorted and nudged him with his elbow. "Shut up. Okay, so what about Sato?" This time he turned away to look at Yami, to see the way his red eyes narrowed faintly and his head tilted as he sorted this word out as well.

"To assist…"

"You seem totally enthused," he scoffed, rolling his eyes before turning away again. "Takahashi?"

"Tall or high bridge."

Yugi startled slightly at how quickly he translated this word. He sorted desperately through his memory. Had he already asked him about that name before? Had he tried using it for his first name at some point? He frowned slightly, then tilted his head.

Yami blinked, then curled his lip back into a sly smirk that tugged only the right side of his mouth. "Lycanthropes tend to be able to translate faster when more and more words are used in a context that requires that sense of knowledge," he explained. "It's like how amnesiacs don't remember that they can speak a certain language but their brain understands it and if they tried, they would get it perfect their first time."

"Well, what do you think then?"

"Kobayashi Yami…"

Yugi blinked, surprised by the quickness of the choice, then grinned happily. "I think it suits you a lot better anyways," he announced, nodding. "Sato and Takahashi don't really seem to work all that well with your name."

Yami smiled faintly, then looked away. The smaller teen clicked off the search engine, then turned the laptop off again, closing it. But he did not remove it from his legs, instead holding it tightly along the back. He raised a brow slightly, then looked towards him with his teeth digging into his bottom lip.

"What _is_ your last name, Yami?"

He turned to him, shaking his head. His eyes were tired, chilled, and he curled his lip faintly as he muttered, "I don't have one."

He opened and closed his mouth, eyes widening.

"I don't have a given either."

Yugi's eyes widened further and he shook his head slowly, stunned. "Your parents didn't…?" he muttered, confused as his eyes bore into Yami's. "Why would they not have…? That doesn't…"

" _Please_ ," the other boy cut in, baring his teeth to make him fall silent. His eyes were wild, his pupils enlarged once more. He was distressed and fearful. The smaller teen immediately looked away again, cheeks hot, and nodded once more.

"Okay."

Yami opened his mouth to speak, but instead leaned forward again. His cheek brushed his lightly, so softly that he almost could not fathom the sensation of such a gentle touch. Yugi felt a cold flash creep upon his spine but it was gone again moments later. He looked at him, for a moment wondering why he had not licked his cheek as he had earlier. But then he realized, startlingly, that he was cautious of his former reaction.

"So, Kobayashi Yami," he announced, smiling faintly, "what about your parents? Are they moving around elsewhere, traveling around the world perhaps? Or are they just not really in your life? Maybe you're here living with a cousin instead of your parents being here?"

"I think it would be easy enough to say that they were traveling instead. I don't think living with a relative here would truly help the situation of my necessity to be at your home for a few days."

Yugi nodded slightly, tilting his head curiously for a moment. "Oh yeah, that's definitely true. We're going to need something convincing to get that past my mom."

Yami frowned and bit his cheek until it bled. "What would be the most suitable solution? _I_ would be suspicious if someone told me that their parents were leaving to go around the world and left their son in a place without them. I mean, if you consider it, a parent cannot just leave their child like they would a dog they no longer want."

He scoffed, shaking his head. "If that was truly legal, I think it would be far more common than any animal-related abandonment." He blushed when Yami studied him in surprise, then rolled his eyes and shrugged self-consciously. "And no, I don't think my mom would take that idea too well."

The other boy smirked, then turned away. They fell silent for a few long minutes. Yugi tapped his nails along the top of his laptop, thoughtful and a little tired. He frowned and tilted his head and the rhythmic noise of his nails sounded like a canine's claws on tile flooring.

"Maybe what we should say is that your parents had planned a shorter trip to Japan but you seemed to have gotten a better education here than elsewhere. Or your parents are coming _to_ Japan from elsewhere when they get enough money but you're an exchange student and it was decided to send you ahead of them for educational purposes. My mom would definitely see that as more admirable."

"The latter sounds more reasonable, does it not? It would also give us room to say that I do not have money to stay in a hotel or to get food on my own any longer. And, if I remember correctly, at some point you mentioned to me that it is illegal to work while in school in this area…"

"You would have to be enrolled in the school and that would be a bunch of paperwork and resources that I just…I don't have. We can't risk that being the fundamental reason that you aren't working."

He frowned. "And, if I were to say that, the only logical school I might attend would be your own, yes?"

"Yeah. Domino High is the only high school in this city. And there are only Domino Elementary and Middle besides that. We don't have any private schools or anything either…" He hesitated for a moment, then picked at his nails as he considered his next words. "Okay, so, then what about you being home-schooled? We can say you're finishing up this semester online and next you'll be in school with me. We can say I met you during a tour of the school and you hung out with us at lunch."

Yami frowned slightly but nodded. "Yes, that's…far more conceivable, I suppose."

"Yeah, I think so too," he announced, nodding and looking at him for a long moment. "It seems the smartest idea we can come up with. She'll accept that more easily. If we went with your parents traveling she'd pry until you ended up fidgeting under all the pressure."

"I hold up better under pressure than you might think. It is when another werewolf attempts to pressure me that I lose my patience." Yami was watching his fingers, eyes on Yugi's nails, studying them as if they might be sharp enough to puncture the plastic case. He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again, the red gaze locked on the beds of his nails. He hummed under his breath, a low and dark noise, and then blinked and looked away. "I only ever have issues with the wolves which challenge me."

Yugi chewed his lip. In his mind's eye flashed the sight of Yami standing so tall, snarling under his breath. He was the one who had stood so great and enormous, boring down on him forcefully as his low snarl made him want to cower. He had been standing in front of him, both facing each other, angry, furious. He remembered it and it made his heart race for a split second.

"Do they challenge you often?"

The seconds passed and the ticking from his nails blended with the clock's second hand from the bathroom. He narrowed his gaze, considering his response, and then slowly shook his head. "No, most wolves do not do anything of the matter where I am concerned," he replied quietly. "And I don't often interact with other wolves as it is."

Yugi blinked and tilted his head, then nodded as he realized it was possibly one of the most truthful things he had told him in a long while. Yes, he realized, Yami did not interact with other wolves often. He did not have a reason or motivation, and the opportunity while he was within his house did not truly do anything to allow him room to do so.

Yugi was quiet for a moment and the way his nails clicked drove his head into a rapid spiral of throbbing ache. He blinked and shook his head, then looked at him for a long moment, studying his face. But the other wolf refused to look up at him again and it made him pause as he swallowed thickly and then pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth.

"You know, when I was younger, I used to panic and have this really bad fear of thunderstorms. So whenever a storm would come, I would duck under the bed and hide there until it would pass. Sometimes my mom would make little pillow forts with me when I was scared enough and I couldn't settle or the storm would last too long. We would sit under a blanket and talk until either the storm passed or I fell asleep."

He blinked and then smiled faintly. "She sounds like a good mom," he said softly. "She sounds like she loves you a lot."

Yugi nodded, grinning, and reached up to scratch at his cheek for a moment. "Yeah, she does. She's a little strict, but I know she loves me a lot. That's why I never complained, even when things got a little…hard."

"I don't see you as one to complain excessively."

"I try not to." He hesitated, then swallowed hard as he looked at him curiously. "But you don't complain at all either."

Yami shook his head. "No, wolves don't complain. Dogs complain. People complain. Wolves do not complain."

Eyes wide, Yugi furrowed his brows for a moment and then shrugged lightly. "That's true," he muttered, though he studied him a moment longer. "Wolves don't complain. But, I still don't think you would be someone to complain even if you weren't a wolf."

He shrugged in response, looking away. "Perhaps not," he said dismissively, yet he wondered. Was it possible that he was wrong? If he was not a wolf, would he truly be as quiet and unlikely to whine about anything that discomforted him? Or would he be one of those weaklings who whined and complained about anything and everything?

They fell into quiet again.

"Where did you grow up?"

Yami blinked and frowned, shaking his head slightly as he muttered, "I… Oh, yes, you mean what to tell your family. I suppose I could say from… Or, no, to do that would ruin our cover story. But, what would be the best place to come from?"

"I don't… Shit, we might need to pick another last name…"

"Can't I be Japanese but have grown up elsewhere?"

Yugi puffed his cheeks out for a moment, then nodded and let out a small sigh. "Yeah, that's right, that's plausible. But I'm not sure where we could even go with being your birthplace…"

The red-eyed boy frowned at him. He tilted his head and studied him. They looked at each other, eyes scrutinizing. What place could they confidently say he had come from?

"Perhaps Egypt? Or the states? Maybe Canada? Or South America? What about Italy? Do you think you could pull off an Italian accent?"

Yami froze for a moment, then shook his head with a bewildered look. All of those places? He could hardly imagine most of them, if any at all. What kind of places were they? He had barely heard of anything beyond the states.

"Your skin tone kind of suggests a warmer climate because you've got a light tan. The fashion says similarly since you like tank tops so much, although the jeans don't really match up with that. But, anyways, your tan could be Italian or Egyptian."

"Should we check…online or…?"

Yugi looked at where his nails were drumming against the plastic, then turned back. He drew the machine closer, opening it, and turned the laptop on a second time. Both of them moved closer until Yami was all but pressed into his side as the search engine came up again. The first couple of images to be shone were all but beyond any semblance of the tan Yami possessed, far too dark. He pursed his lips, then put in the next search term.

His lips tugged up into a grin. "Girls are apparently the only ones with that skin tone," he teased playfully, winking at him with brilliantly shining eyes. The other boy blinked stupidly at him, startled, and then both smiled at each other, Yugi's cheeky and Yami's amused. "You're apparently an Italian female trapped in a Japanese male's body."

Yami raised a brow. "So, not _only_ am I apparently feminine in skin tone, but now I'm also an entirely different race?"

Yugi burst out laughing, covering his mouth, and then shook his head as he bit the skin on the inside of his palm. He was guffawing, choking on the noise, and the other boy stared at him with a shocked expression.

"Sorry, I just—that's _hilarious_! That's amazing."

He gave him a wry smirk, then moved to jostle his shoulder with his. They both watched each other for a moment, then turned away again. He closed the laptop and stretched his arms out. Yami took it after witnessing his struggling attempt to reach the desk and placed it there himself.

"Thanks."

"As long as I don't find out that you've been talking to the other wolves about my girly Italian skin tone and get them confused about my apparent difference in race, then I think we'll be fine."

" _Deal_."

Yami turned away again after a moment, smirking and shaking his head. He and Yugi glanced at each other sideways, then turned from the other's gaze. The large teen leaned forward slightly, tilting his head curiously. "When you tell them about me…?"

"I'll say only good things, scout's honor," Yugi teased, although he could see by the way Yami frowned at him that his humor was lost on him. He was distinctly unsettled but he had also fallen silent again. "What is it?"

He opened his mouth, then shook his head. "Never mind. I am sure it will be fine."

Yugi stared at him but the other boy refused to meet his eye. So the small teen threw himself backwards again into his pillow and lay his hands on his stomach as he looked up at the ceiling. "Well, since I'm going to be doing this, just…remember that your name is going to pop up during the conversation. So don't be alarmed when you hear it, okay?"

He nodded with a distracted gleam to his eyes. "Yes." The tension was still clear in his shoulders but he did not respond beyond saying this single word. His gaze was on the window and his body looked taut with a sense of anticipation that made Yugi shiver. His fingers tapped unevenly along his thigh for a moment and then the wolf was on his feet with a huff. "I am going to go hunt."

"I didn't realize this was going to make you so anxious."

He looked at him, flustered, eyes wide, but did not argue. Instead he turned away again almost immediately and moved straight towards the pane of glass. Yugi opened his mouth, then fell silent as he watched him flip the locks and throw the window open. The rush of cold air which hit him made him stiffen, startled. When had it gotten so freezing cold? He frowned. It was almost like a blanket of ice coaxing its way within the room.

His thoughts distracted him long enough for Yami to disappear before he could even blink. The small teen frowned, tilting his head. The window had been left open in silent invitation, but the teen hardly felt that it was necessary he chased him. What was the point of doing so? Yami just wanted to hunt, to blow off some steam, right?

He glanced at the jacket in the corner. Who was it that was tied to the article of clothing that made Yami react so violently over it? Was it a lover? Perhaps it was a family member of some kind? Maybe it was his father's—because the design was certainly not that of a woman's—and that was what made him so attached to it. He had said his parents were dead—that he knew wasn't a lie, even if Yami did not tell the truth of _why_ —and his siblings had passed long before he had even opened his eyes. If that was true, then he could see it being something from his family.

Yugi sighed quietly. He was tempted to turn around and attempt to speak to his mom or his grandpa. He didn't think he had any true words to say, a subject to broach, but he was oddly desperate for company.

He shivered.

He didn't want to risk upsetting Yami any further than he already had. But he was also tired and something about the idea of being left behind within the room as he was made him feel small and weak. He bit his lip, chewing the inside of his cheek until he thought it felt like bleeding hamburger meat, and then got to his feet. He paced a step, cursed under his breath, sighed softly, and made his way towards the window.

Was it instinctive that Yami guessed he would follow him? Or was it just laziness on his behalf that he had not closed the window? Yugi wondered at this for a moment. Had Yami truly known, that would mean he knew his emotions beyond just what he felt at the moment. Was it possible to sense the tiniest, thinnest thread of emotion and plan upon its possible maturity?

He felt as if his skin were crawling.

Was he over thinking it?

He hoped to the gods that he was.

He didn't want that possibility, for it to be used against him or for himself to experience it either. It seemed sickening, how easily the disease had altered so many things and possibly mutated and twisted away all of what he found to make his life understandable. Now it just seemed to burn and writhe with a million new different possibilities and realities of which he had no comprehension nor cared to think of.

He pressed his feet firmly into the cushion of snow which lay upon the slope of his roof. He was slowly walking, taking small steps to avoid losing his balance. His hand moved along the edge to grip at the outside of the house to make his way towards the gutter to jump. He crouched for a moment, chewing his cheek, and then sprang forward. The landing was soft and cold, like chilled down upon his sneakers, the snow billowing upwards faintly to touch his arms and hands where he was crouched.

The gentle touch was nothing akin the harsh flash of cold from the temperature itself, however, and he hardly noticed it. He wandered forward a few more small steps, looking at the fresh prints he still saw there in front of him. He moved alongside them as he had the others formerly.

His footsteps were soft and shattered, like crunching small splinters of glass beneath his shoes. And it was only as he got into the trees across the street from his house and wandered a few more feet in that he noticed the silence. The forest was devoid of any noise but the natural stirring of cold air where it drifted through the trees. There was not a hint of footsteps beyond the prints he was still following. There was no touch of breathing or even bugs moving about. His peripheral was blank with snow. His forward vision was white with only those small marks to be shown in gray and silver shadows.

He slowed immediately, a sense of uneasiness coming upon him.

It was startling to him at that moment that he even fully noticed such a thing. It felt instinctive to him to stop in place as he did. But he also wondered, feeling sick, if he would have ever considered it without his heightened senses. The silence would not have truly alarmed someone following a trail of footprints as he was in the middle of the afternoon. As it was, the quiet was reminiscent of most winter days, because of the absence of life. None of the predators truly moved about and the herbivores normally tried to race away from the area to find food.

So the fact that he paused and looked about him, alarmed as his skin crawled and his spine tightened painfully, was something he thought had to be attributed to the lycanthropy. Regardless he started to move again, glancing about himself slowly. Something was definitely amiss.

He debated that it was only an hour, maybe with the addition of half of that, before the sun went down completely. Then he would have to rely more on his lupine senses to get through the trees and find Yami. The thought pushed a sigh from between his lips but he shrugged it off in order to continue forward.

The shadows were long, stretched like bones and curled viciously where the thin ends faded into nothingness. The footprints were still cushions of black and gray in the growing darkness, the soles of his sneakers heavier than his paws ever had been. The sky was a silky silver-gray against the growing darkness, the once snowy expanse of them shaded with the setting sun. The silence was hard enough to make his ears ring with the only available sources of noise which accompanied his walk.

His heart was heavy, its thudding and twisting hideous within his skull. His breathing was whistling and harsh, weighted upon the edges, and his lips felt cold, his nose aching with the frost biting against his nasal passages. His footsteps were loud, harsh, and it made the air seem heavier, darker, and the crunching set his heart to a quicker pace.

The air was too stale to truly catch a scent, stagnant and cold enough to bear upon him, and he felt almost blind and deaf as he continued. He could not hear beyond his heartbeat and breathing, he could smell nothing, and the fading light might not have blinded him but his perception was still being tampered with. And such knowledge made his skin crawl even as he continued to track the other lycanthrope.

He spotted him in the trees about twenty yards away from where he had first noticed the blanket to cover his senses. As he continued forward, the other was still and cautious within the shadows, his eyes the only true hint of his existence there. They glittered like gems and flashed like fire. His features were too enshrouded to see his expression and the distance made him look somehow impossibly casual. But his inaction was the silent statement that he knew and was aware of something being wrong.

Yugi opened his mouth, planning to speak all but under his breath, sure that he would hear, but then froze. Something moved in his peripheral. His head turned immediately, lips pulling back, eyes wide as his shoulders rose. But the shape moved past him through the thinner expanse of trees as if Yugi were but a piece of scenery. He stiffened.

The snow was crunching impossibly loud again. And the form staggered and nearly fell more than once. The small teen paced a step, falling immediately still again a moment later.

Yami had turned toward the noise. His eyes were burning and his body was crouched. He could tell he was more likely to lash out than run, however. His hand was braced against the tree beside him and his head was tilted slightly to the side.

The seconds passed. The shape staggered again, then let out a low noise. Something about it stirred Yami. His expression immediately grew disbelieving. His eyes widened, his mouth opened slightly, but he crouched somehow further to the ground.

Yugi frowned, a strange knot beginning to form in his belly. He could not tell if it was suspicion, anticipation, or bewilderment and confusion. But he could not move as he watched Yami closely.

Normally the other wolf would have noticed him by then. His eyes would have locked with his. They would have been watching each other. But he was oddly fixated on this newcomer. And he did not so much as fully glance in Yugi's general direction. The small teen was slightly shaken by such a thought, eyes widening further.

Was he okay?

The newcomer stumbled again. Something was said but the words were too low to carry to Yugi in the stale air. Yet the softer tone of his voice made him stiffen, as it did Yami who crouched further and looked distinctly fearful and confused.

Very slowly, with another distant grumble of their soft voice, Yami began to lean forward. Yugi was seized by the impulse to hiss at him not to. But the way his eyes had grown so wide and his face seemed to have brightened with hope made him clench his jaw. He stared, unable to do anything more. The way he looked towards the newcomer made his stomach drop.

He knew them.

He knew them _well_.

He flinched.

Yami jumped to his feet. The human spun on him. Both were frozen for a moment. Neither of them spoke. Then the taller form shifted, a weak and staggering movement. The lycanthrope hesitated only a moment longer.

Yugi felt his heart clench.

Yami had barreled straight into the other's arms. He had thrown himself without a second thought. The man stumbled and cursed. But he held his weight somehow. It was apparent that Yami was the one hugging. The other had failed to move beyond his stumble.

The small teen doubled over, knocked breathless. Something inside of him was burning. His heart was aching. And his lungs felt too tight. He heaved and warm, frothy bile fell to the snow. He groaned under his breath. Still, somehow, his distress did not break this moment of reunion. When he looked at them in his peripheral, Yami had not released him. And the other still had not fully responded to his touch.

The red-eyed teen had struggled so _hard_ just the day prior to give him a hug. Yet this one skinny, lanky human was enough to make him rush forward to embrace? He felt somewhat cold, numbed along his fingers. How was that even possible? How could Yami possibly say that he didn't want to leave, that he enjoyed his company, when he could not even hug him properly as he could this person?

Yugi shook his head, bile flooding his mouth again. He spat it out and wiped at his lips. The heat made him flinch. His eyes flickered up again. Neither of them had noticed him. And Yami was the one facing him.

Was he so caught up in his happiness upon seeing this boy that he was unable to realize he had an audience? Yugi shook his head. Yami should have known. He should have seen him. He should have been alert enough to realize.

"Let go."

He stiffened and blinked. Had he spoken out loud? He frowned but Yami did not look at him. And the human didn't move. It was the red-eyed lycanthrope which finally backed up a step. The man now clasped his hands on his shoulders. He was weak with exhaustion, Yugi could see even by looking at him from behind, and he swayed slightly when he began to speak. His tone was hushed but incredibly urgent, and Yugi noticed more keenly the way that Yami stiffened rather than the way the statement reached his ears in low rasping grunts.

"No, _please_ , _please_ , you have to run. You have to do it. You have to go— _now_!"

Yami blinked. His eyes were already flickering around. His shoulders had risen faintly. His attention was only half on the figure he had formerly been so relieved to see.

"They're here for you. They came to catch—"

His voice was low, hideous, distorted and guttural. "Who? Who are they?"

"The psychic one. A-and the… Panik—his name is Panik!"

For a moment he was quiet. "Ryou… How many dogs?"

"I only saw about eight of them. They're all American breeds. They're supposed to be the most dangerous—"

"American pit bull." He shook his head. Yugi could see him doing the calculations, the shadows stirring in his eyes. He could fight them off, maybe even win against eight. But he could not do it with the humans there. Unlike Pegasus, these hunters would not want him _alive_. The shot wouldn't be a tranquilizer or a tracker. It would be a bullet meant to kill him. "How many guns?"

"Two rifles, one shotgun. That's all I saw…"

"How far were they last?"

"They were only a mile back. They know you're here. They've been watching. They would have seen us."

"Shit."

"You have to run. Try to get ahead of them. They're going to chase you before they try to send the dogs after you. So you have to run now, before—"

Yami ducked. The bark on the tree nearest him exploded. Yugi gaped, eyes wide and body rigid with shock. The other lycanthrope snarled low in his throat and the figure in front of him shoved at his shoulder.

"If you don't go now you won't get another chance. He missed you on purpose. He's playing a game with you."

Yami glanced at him only slightly, then turned and took off before he could even blink. The figure still in front of Yugi stood there, frozen for a moment. Then he turned away as a voice snickered, "About time your little lover boy ran, Ryou. I was almost beginning to think he would stay here. That would make the whole thing so… _anticlimactic_."

"Fuck you, Panik."

"You won't be around long enough for that."

Ryou shot him a furious look and in the corner of his eye he saw the tiniest speck of purple and blue, the colors blurted together into a gentle blur of soft violet. He blinked, heart racing, and felt his skin grow cold. Someone had followed Yami. Another werewolf had…

He turned back to the bulking shape in front of him. "Do you _really_ think _you_ will be the one to catch Atem? You're a fool."

"I have the perfect bait and a psychic on my side, Ryou. That wolf is going to be the easiest catch I'll ever make."

"You forget how the lycanthropes work. If they sense him in danger—"

"Spare me the children's story. We all know that they won't come here. We _all_ have seen him nearly killed and not a single wolf went to help him then. So, remind me again, why should I fear a myth?"

Ryou nearly burst out laughing. There was always at least _one_ other wolf when they messed with Atem. There was always at least one other lycanthrope which mucked things up for them. And now, there was this wolf in the pines, watching them so silently, so still, like a little statue among the trees.

"Because all myths have some touch of truth to them."

"They aren't _bees_. There is _nothing_ in their genetic coding which requires they come running to his rescue. If there was, he would never have been nearly caught those few times already. Pegasus would never have been able to syringe him."

Ryou ground his teeth together. "Atem killed Bakura, you idiot. He tore Bakura's head off—"

"No, you moron, that was Pegasus. He didn't make sure that Bakura wouldn't ruin his chances of a clear shot. And he never bothered to check to make sure the wolf beside him was really dead. They play dead so well. Bakura was killed by the wolf he was fighting and then Pegasus was knocked down by it. Then it dragged the other wolf through the woods." He chuckled, watching him with small beady eyes that glittered like diamonds. His smirk was a terrible and cruel twist of his lips. "After all, he had to replace you eventually, didn't he? He had to take up another piece of ass—"

"You're an idiot. You're just as stupid as your brother. Remind me, who was it that authorized the Paradox Twins to be sent after him in the first place? And then your brother, the _original_ Paradox, tell me again, Panik, who decided that he was _necessary_ alive?"

Yugi flinched when the smaller figure was thrown backwards in the snow. He shifted his weight, pressing lower into the dead undergrowth. His eyes flickered about rapidly, watching intently as the smaller man—Ryou, they had called him—got to his feet again and backed up a step.

"If you've done a damn thing to him—"

"It won't matter if I have. You won't find out until after this. And by then you probably won't survive. I have a feeling Atem will kill you before you have a chance to get back."

Yugi shifted his weight.

"But good luck figuring out which one is really Atem. Pegasus mentioned two of them. A pure white wolf and a pure black one. We all know his coat used to be solid gray."

"Bullshit."

"How would you know? You've never met him."

"I may not have, but to trust a traitor like you? You are a fool if you think I would ever consider you a reliable source. You poisoned the twins and then those brats that we kidnapped from the high school. All of the possible threats to Atem, you've gone ahead and all but put down."

"And it took you all _this long_ to figure it out."

Yugi stiffened. The twins? Did they mean the wolves who had come after him in the woods the night of his first Change? And the high school students—were those Haga, Ryuzaki and Ryota? Or…did they mean others entirely?

"The only one you _didn't_ decide to poison was Bakura. What an interesting little decision you made. Although, I'm not sure I should be surprised considering you two often screwed around together." He snorted, laughing when he saw the way Ryou's face twisted briefly with pain. "Did you not realize we all knew about it?"

"No, I knew you did," the other sneered with a shake of his head. "Bakura did too. He didn't care enough to stop though. So why should I have?"

"Our most efficient killer and you let him out on his own without modifications to his genetics. You didn't poison him to give Atem a head start that time. I suppose that goes to show that you loved him more."

" _No_." Ryou shook his head, face twisting into a sneering smirk of amusement as he watched him. "You're a fool. I cared enough about Atem to help him escape and then to poison the wolves sent after him. But Bakura was another story. He _knew_ he wasn't coming back. He knew Atem would kill him. He accepted that. He was devoted to saving Atem. Pegasus would have wound up having to kill him before he would get his hands on Atem. I trusted him to do what he had to."

"You _trusted_ him?" The man's laugh reminded Yugi of a hyena. "You trusted the most ruthless killer we had to protect your little infatuation."

"The lycanthropes that aren't _created_ know the loyalty of their entire species. They know the love and devotion that is so often coveted by people. Each of them would lay their lives down for Atem out of pure love before they would let us get our hands on them! Bakura was one of them!"

A gunshot echoed through the forest. Panik looked up and Yugi stiffened in his spot. A barking noise crawled through the air. Then it was followed by four more. The cries were loud and dangerous, booming within the darkness. He pressed himself further into the snow.

"Looks like Espa found your runt."

"Then good luck to him in his efforts of hunting him. Atem will lay waste to both of you."

"You're a fool, Ryou. You always have been."

Yugi remained where he was even as the looming figure took off into the woods. Ryou stood, staring in the direction he had headed, and then looked slowly towards him. The small teen did not bother to hide himself. Instead he got to his feet and made a slow pace towards him, circling him with easy steps.

"You know Yami?"

Ryou blinked. "Is that his name?"

"Yes."

He glanced over his shoulder, craning his neck. He was thin and malnourished, visibly weakened. And when he turned back Yugi thought he looked like a lost drifting snowflake. His skin was too pale and his hair too white. His face was marred by a hideous scar running down the right side. And his eyes were wide, almost like the shape of a doe's, with bright brown which flickered amber in the darkness.

"He was one of the lab wolves. He escaped with Atem." He hesitated, then shivered as he looked him over slowly. "He escaped with you."

Yugi stiffened for a moment, then brushed his foot against the snow uncomfortably. "Yes," he muttered quietly, "he escaped when I did."

"You two look a lot alike. I almost thought… But your eyes are so different. I guess the drugs finally did something to your systems…"

Yugi hesitated. "I don't remember much of it, if anything at all."

"Then you're lucky." He exhaled and turned his head. Another dog had begun howling. But it was cut off violently, with such abruptness that the entire world seemed to fall silent. Then a gunshot sounded again. The dogs began to bay once more. Ryou turned back to him. "Yami is yours, right?"

He blinked at him slowly. _His_? He searched his face for a moment, then nodded slowly. If it meant that Ryou would help him, then he would claim Yami was his. He bit his cheek, wondering if Ryou knew how much he owned Yami rather than he ever could. He drew in a deep breath and his voice came in a low growl of disdain.

"He's my pack mate, if that's what you mean."

Ryou shot him a wry look but did not comment before glancing over his shoulder again. "Espa is near the dogs right now. He's not going to go after Yami until he's sure that Panik is close enough to him to take a shot. Then he'll let the other dogs out to hunt him. We need to make sure that that _doesn't_ happen."

Yugi nearly huffed. _No shit_ they needed to make sure that didn't happen. He chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment, then turned to him with glowing silver-lit eyes. "Where are the dogs? I'll kill Espa and Panik after. But where are the dogs?"

His brown eyes widened at the cold note in his tone. His head snapped back to him with a stunned expression. Whatever he saw in his face, however, made him duck his head away. He tilted his shoulder downwards subtly but Yugi felt his head race with the movement. He recognized it somehow, a harsh and hideous reality within his mind. He was submitting to him, showing his throat.

Yugi growled low in his chest, the noise surging upwards furiously. "Where are the _dogs_ , Ryou?" he spat. "Take me to them."

"Are you…?"

Yugi shook his head. "I'll change when it's necessary. Let's go."

The clearing in which the dogs were enclosed were a good mile further into the woods. As Ryou led him faithfully through the trees, Yugi had the uneasy sensation that perhaps it was a trap. But the way the other remained so quiet and had done so much to distract Panik from Yami as it was said otherwise. He felt the forest heavy and cold against him as if it were breathing death upon his shoulders. The small teen did not glance back even once, nor did he flinch when another gunshot went off. Yami would be okay. He had dealt with similar situations before. He had killed those dogs and the hunter in the same woods before…

"Stay here."

Ryou blinked at him stupidly at the idea. But Yugi was already cleaning the metal chain link fence they'd set up. The dogs inside were all caught on heavy tie-out chains. Each of them spun on him, forgetting the glee of their former barking to see this intruder. Their faces were scarred, hideously deformed, and the wrinkles of their muzzles were large and disgusting. Their eyes were small and beady in the darkness, glowing faintly with the dim moonlight.

Yugi did not let the muscle mass of each of them intimidate him. Yami was larger. And it might have been the connection between them that had saved him in the woods before, but he had still held him back somewhat. He had still succeeded in keeping Yami's snarling jaws a few inches away from his own. He drew in a breath, then paced a step. He knew enough about dog fights and breaking them up to know exactly what he was meant to do. But it was also instinct which reared its head to warn him that his wolf shape was heavier, stronger, would hold up against them better.

He shook the thought off, then came forward again. The dog nearest snarled and chomped its teeth. It sprang forward at the end of its chain. The heavy rattling made Yugi stiffen slightly. Ryou, behind him, hissed a breath, then began to pace at the edge of the fence. His anxiety was growing and bearing on him but Yugi ignored him pointedly.

He moved closer. The dog lunged for his arm and missed. The lycanthrope tilted his head. When he came closer, the dogs bayed and the one in front of him lunged again. He straightened his fingers, drew his arm back. The dog opened its jaws wide. He shoved his hand forward. The dog yelped and scrambled, trying to bite down and failing. He could feel the teeth puncture his skin and his blood was warm. But the impact was small and weak.

The dog thrashed. He shifted his weight. The dog thrashed again. It was choking on his hand. Yugi pushed further. The dog began to move in a rapid spasm. Its eyes were rolling back. Its breathing was heavy and desperate. The wolf, however, simply stood there. The dog scrambled and huffed. Then it began to jerk and fall in sporadic twitches. Finally it ceased. Yugi pushed his fingers into its tongue harder. The body convulsed once. Then it choked, hacking. And grew completely limp.

Yugi drew his hand away. The animal collapsed to the ground, dead. He glanced at Ryou over his shoulder. His eyes were wide, glinting amber, and he looked sick to his stomach. The smaller male turned to him with a hiss, spitting, "Do you think you can do that? I need to find Yami. And I can't do that if I'm killing these dogs."

He hesitated but then gripped at the chain links of the fence. He came over the top with much less grace than Yugi had. He fell into the snow, groaning with pain. Then he slowly got to his feet and moved towards him with a visible limp.

"Straighten your fingers, throw your hand up to the wrist in their mouth, then press on their tongues. It makes them—"

"It triggers the urge to vomit and our hands would be blocking the airways. They choke on their own puke. And they can't pull their teeth out of your arm because of how far back it is and the inability to close their mouths," Ryou said quietly, swallowing hard and shivering as he looked at him. "Where did you learn that?"

"A veterinary clinic."

He searched his face for a minute. "You learned to make dogs puke at a clinic…"

"And realized that they can't properly do so with your hands in their mouth all the way." He shrugged and turned away, eyes falling on the dog nearest him. It snapped its jaws and bristled, its tail wagging like a flag of bright russet. He would have cared a month ago, but now he approached it as he had the other. The saliva on his hand was frozen and frosted, his wrist still warmed slightly with the blood. But his skin was also beginning to tingle lightly and he could feel the swell of energy which would stitch his skin back together.

The second dog dropped a little faster than the first. It went for his arm in the same manner. And in slipped his hand in the same way. His fingers pressed roughly on its tongue. It convulsed, jerked, and dropped. He stepped away from it and moved to the next.

Standing a few feet away, tossing a stone up and down in his hand, was Atem. His eyes were glowing an unholy shade of silver. His right hand was slicked with white snow and frosted saliva. He was barely moving his wrist as he caught and released the rock. And his stance was so relaxed it was almost terrifying to behold.

Then the boy lunged for the gun. Yugi curled his lip back. He aimed. Ryou let out a small choking noise. And the rock pelted through the air. The impact with the boy's skull made the bone shatter. The body fell harshly to the ground. Blood and bone sprayed the air. The snow was flecked black in the moonlight. Ryou choked again. Yugi barely glanced at him.

"Y-you just…"

He blinked at him dismissively. "What?" he spat. "I did what I had to. It was that or let them kill you. And then what? They would come after me. And I have to help Yami. I did what I needed to."

Yugi paused and then strode towards the gun. For a moment he looked sickened by the sight. Then he leaned over and took it into his hand. It glinted brightly in the moonlight, like the surface of a shallow pool. Ryou was frozen in place. For a moment he imagined that he would turn the pistol on him. But the small boy merely turned the safety on. Then he stuck it into his jacket pocket as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

He turned to him now, attention undivided and acute. His lips curled back. "I'm going after Yami now. Stay here or go. I don't know which is the better option." _But you won't get far. Not with that limp. And I can't help you. I've already wasted too much time._ He drew in a deep breath. "In case I never see you again, thank you for this, Ryou."

He turned and ran off before the other could answer him. He got to a point in the woods where he could hear the two dogs snarling and snapping. Then he caught the sound of Panik's voice. Then he noticed the call of another voice. He looked around for a single moment, began to tear at his clothes frantically, and tossed them up into the tree closest him without a second glance.

The Change was a flash of heat and pain which made his spine buckle beneath his flesh. He twisted and writhed and swallowed a hideous scream. Then his body convulsed and began to jerk violently. Abruptly it stilled. The world was brighter than he had known it to be at night. The air was cold but drenched in the smell of life and dead growth. Heavy metallic undertones made his head spin. Then the flood of heated metal and blood and touches of saliva came to him. He shifted and rolled onto his belly. His skin was feverish beneath his fur. His blood was too hot against his muscles.

He ignored it and got to his feet. They were sturdy and powerful beneath him. He growled softly as he shook the pain from his muscles. Then he took off, pelting through the snow. His ears were flicking every which way. He needed to pinpoint Yami before he did anything else. He had to find him and then he could fix this. They could get out of there—

The gunshot made contact this time. Yugi heard the distant cry of pain. He heard the dogs baying. Yami fell, staggering, into the snow. But he was on his feet again immediately. His shoulder was hot, sticky. His bones were grinding against each other beneath raw muscle. He ducked his head lower to the ground. Then he forced his legs to move faster.

The bullet grazed him again. He stumbled, falling. The black wolf drew in a deep breath, snarling. Then he rolled onto his feet again. The blood loss was minimal, however. The droplets which flecked the snow were a misguided map. He snarled again. His legs were pulsing with pain. He felt slightly dizzy. But it did nothing to make him stop.

The dogs were a couple of yards behind him. But he smelled them. Their breath was rancid. Their gasps were hideous booming huffs of noise. They were choking on air. They were pushed beyond their limits of speed. Their sprints would end soon. He was still far below his top speed. But he doubted he would achieve it now.

He was growing tired and the blood loss, as slight as it was, weighed on him. He snarled again. Another bullet came towards him. But it missed him now. He pushed faster. The pain made his body convulse but he ignored it. His legs were straining with effort.

The dogs were becoming a distant noise. The gunshots were beginning to lose their closeness. He panted and moved faster still. And then he heard it. A noise came from his side. He blinked and instinctively pushed to go faster. It was the saving grace of his species. Speed and instinct gave him a strength unfathomable to the human mind. He thought to duck and weave away along the cliffs he was nearing.

But then he caught a snarl. The tone was enough to make him falter slightly. And it gave the other an opportunity it had not formerly had. He yelped. His legs collapsed beneath him. He scrambled for his footing. And a body slammed into his side. He rolled with the impact. The black wolf snarled, lain on his back for a split second. He clawed at the air, snapping his jaws. Then he twisted like a snake to find his belly. He was on his feet again immediately. His teeth were bared. He pressed himself down.

Yugi tossed his teeth at him. They chomped shut near his ear. Then he lowered his muzzle. Their eyes caught. His tail was held high, wagging slightly. Yami stared up at him with wide red eyes. The way they glittered in the dimness of the mountain's immense shadow made his heart skip a beat. The white wolf flicked an ear. Then he leaned forward, licked his forehead, and growled, _Find one of the dens_. _I'll lead them off_.

Yami craned his neck back for a moment. He blinked and looked upwards. He knew the mountain's cliff face to be littered with pockets of earth. He trembled briefly, then turned back to him. _Are you sure_?

The white wolf snorted loudly. His ears flicked. His fur shuddered along his muscles. Then he turned back to him. His tail wagged. _I'm sure_ , he assured him simply. _I'll lead them off. Find shelter_.

He nodded and then moved to sit up. He inched his shoulder along the length of the stone and Yugi watched him for a moment. Then he licked his cheek and turned away again. He sprang out the direction he had come. He snarled and wagged his tail like a war flag. A dog barked and chased. Yugi turned tail and pelted across the snow.

Yami was a shadow across the snowy stone, head lowered, ears tucked. His tail lay straight between his hocks. His fur shuddered. The dogs pelted beyond him and his hiding spot. He remained until he heard the roar of one of the hunters race by on their snowmobile. He turned on his heel immediately after. He scrambled along the edge of stone and the path opened into a clear summit of ice and earth. He kept low to the ground, ignoring the pain of his shoulder where it grazed the wall.

A gunshot made him flinch but Yugi did not falter. The humans were too far back. They had aimed and fired but missed by several feet. He snorted and led them further into the trees. The earth was winding downwards into a clearing of flat ground. The trees were beginning to thin out. He put on more speed, until it felt he barely touched the snow and the world were a blur beside him. The dogs bayed and continued their race. But they were slowing as well. He could hear the coughs that erupted within their lungs with each inhale. He snorted again.

He felt the snow begin to grow harder beneath him. He sprang forward, throwing himself onto the flat ice. He knew the lake from childhood. He had done this many times upon being in the woods during winter. He skidded. The ice was slick and smooth, the surface of it coated in snow. It slid around him, scattering like disturbed winter leaves of brilliant white.

The dogs came moments later. They pelted onto the ice, skidding and sliding. Yugi glanced at them only once to gauge their distance. The two of them were mirror images of himself and Yami, black and white. But their faces were marred with scars. Their eyes were murderous and bloodthirsty. Their tails were wagging with the thought of a fresh kill. They were the canine embodiments of their humans.

He bore his teeth at the thought. Then he began to slide his feet backwards. He was slow, meticulous in movement. The dogs slipped and scrabbled. Their haste caused them to fall. Their dew claws snagged and worked to keep their balance. He hummed and pressed lower to the ground. He backed up further. His movements were sure of themselves. His actions were calm. He tested behind him until the ice felt wobbly and weak. Immediately he began to press his paw into it. The force of it was not enough to make it crack. But it wavered faintly. He backed up further. The ice splintered as his front right paw pressed against it.

It was so soft a split that the noise was almost inaudible. The dogs, in their hateful haze, did not notice it. They bore their teeth and tried harder to navigate. He backed up further. Then he tested the ice again. The place he stood was shaky, ready to collapse. He waited there for them. Any further and he would miss the opportunity. But he did not move. Instead he pressed himself into the snow. He curled his lips back and snarled.

The dogs barked and tried to rush forward. But the snow was loose. And the ice was thick. They slid again. The hunters were coming on them, however. Yugi bristled and bore his teeth in distaste. Only then did he truly notice that it had seemed to take them longer than necessary to find their way there. Fear gripped the inside of his belly. Had they gotten to Yami first? Had they gone back and found him?

He chomped his teeth angrily at the thought. The ice shook with the force of his ferocity. He stiffened. The dogs pressed forward. Then the ice wavered as one of them leaped. Their impact made the sheets of ice burst. Yugi snarled and drew in the deepest breath he could manage. The water was cold enough that the dogs seemed almost to die upon touch. He himself flailed, stunned by the force of its icy grip. His skin tugged and burned. His body jerked with the violent draw of ice poking at his skin.

He instinctively kicked his legs. But his mind was spiraling. The darkness was unholy and powerful. Currents of white touched upon his face. The water was cold enough to send him into shock. But the muscles in his body responded by sending waves of heat. His heart was beating and racing. His paws were moving and kicking.

"Excellent," a voice hissed from further above. They sounded delighted, gleeful. He kicked towards it, struggling. "Thirty minutes beneath the water. He's retained his breath. He's still swimming…"

The words made his lungs burst. A pitiful swallowing cry crept to the surface in a bubble. He flailed and kicked. The ice slashed into his skin like glass. He tossed and twisted. He could not see the bottom from the top. His directions were gone. He kicked and struggled. His front legs breached. Claws folded against ice. He struggled. His nose pulled, strained, above the water.

The air threatened to freeze him. His body heated feverishly. He choked on air. He gasped and sputtered. But his lungs felt empty. He did not taste water within his throat or his aching jaws. He breathed harder. Then he sunk his claws into the thick sheet of ice.

It bobbed from the force, shattering at an already broken edge. He spat as he fell into the water again. His body writhed with pain and heat. He thought his skin might burst from his body. He snarled and grabbed at the ice again. This time he sank his claws in and heaved. The ice held. He pulled himself forward onto the white surface. His body shuddered uncontrollably.

He pressed his face into the snow. Everything burned and stung. He twitched and burned. He swallowed a wail of pain. He felt his legs twitch pathetically. He heaved and choked, breathing hard. Then he clenched his eyes shut for a moment.

"He always seems to improve upon being drowned. His body is marvelous." He bore his teeth in disdain towards the voice in his head. "He is, _truly_ , a degree of perfection."

He struggled to his feet again. He had to find Yami. He needed to find him and they needed to… They had to go back. He had to find him. He was limping when he walked, legs shaky and threatening to collapse beneath him. With a tremor, the wolf moved along the hard ice towards the banks. He shook himself out. His body was raw with feverish energy. He felt as if he might burn away into nonexistence. He panted, then moved quickly to a trot.

He could not manage a run. His body was pricked by needles and pins. And his paws felt as if they might rot away beneath him. He shuddered. Then he pushed himself to climb the hill he had once raced down while ahead of the dogs. He paced and sped himself up, but still he could not sprint. He felt as if he were running upon the surface of broken glass. The snow was a desolate wasteland of shards awaiting a taste of his blood.

 _Yami_? he called only as he neared the cliffs. He knew the humans could not hear him. Yet something held him there, compelled him not to speak until then. He shivered and shook himself out again. The water froze before it touched the ground. He could feel the crystallized beads clumping his fur together along his throat and underbelly. Where his guard hairs were longer, slicked with water, it had not gotten even a flicker of the heat his body so expertly expelled. _Yami_?

There was a sharp scrabbling noise. A hissing shudder met his ears. He blinked and raised his head. The night did nothing but make the colors a shade darker than usual. He felt as if he were staring into a camera with altered color. On the cliff face high above him, a small stone began its descent downwards. He did not blink at it.

Long black claws were first to appear. Then came his face, a wet, twitching nose and the set of black lips. Then his muzzle stretched outwards and over the edge. His eyes were wide, startled, and vaguely disbelieving. His ears flicked about, soft and rounded and perfectly unharmed. He whined and his fur rolled along his body in a shudder.

 _Yugi,_ he muttered, the relief palpable as he began to straighten to his full height. Then he faltered and bore his teeth. _They're too close by. If I come down they're going to shoot_.

Yugi turned his head. Then why hadn't they aimed at him yet? He shivered and looked about himself slowly. He did not see anyone. And all he scented was that of gas and exhaust from the snowmobiles. He turned back, unnerved. _Do you think I can come to you_? he demanded softly. _Or is there a way you can…slither down on your stomach_?

Yami considered this for a moment. If he braced his paws in front of him, he might be able to simply do that. He tilted his head, looking at the distance. The snow would cushion his pads. But he did not know that he would be able to keep himself from breaking his neck if he landed the wrong way. It was, after all, a twenty foot drop. He hesitated, listening to the silence of the forest beyond them, and then turned to him pointedly. _I will attempt to come down to you,_ he answered slowly.

Yugi nodded slightly. _Okay_ , he agreed, shifting his feet with an impatient need. His skin crawled and his heart was beating too quickly. His tail wagged with anxiety, for he could not bear to tuck it beneath his belly. He shivered and fought the impulse to shake himself out again. His fur broke into a bristle as he watched him.

Yami pressed his forelimbs forward, paws barely touching the earth. The snow pushed away in soft clumps as he began his descent. His head was raised well above his feet, as if watching the world around him as he attempted such a maneuver. Then he began to slide. He picked up speed as the seconds passed.

Yugi nearly cried out as he hit a ledge too hard. Yami spiraled and rolled.

 _Shit_!

Yami landed in the snow in a heap of black fur. His limbs shook for a moment. Snow fell on him in a soft heap. Yugi shivered and trembled, eyes wide. Then he leaned forward to breathe in his scent. Yami lay there motionlessly for a moment. Then, as Yugi drew in a frantic breath, the black wolf jumped to his feet. He landed on all four with his tail wagging and his jaws open in a soft grin.

Yugi blinked, then trembled. _You asshole_! he crowed angrily. _You fucking asshole_!

He wagged his tail again. _Sorry,_ he lied, and he knew he didn't sound it at all. He tilted his head and his eyes were slightly soft. _I couldn't help it_.

 _This isn't even the time to be pulling pranks like that_! he spat furiously, though his eyes widened when he realized he had yet to hear a single thing within the trees. Where were they? _Didn't you say the hunters were close by_?

Yami blinked. _Yes_.

 _Then where are they_?

He stiffened and looked about them as well now. He could not hear anything either. His ears flattened against his skull. Yugi felt dizzy for a moment. If this were one of those horror movies Honda so often loved to watch, he knew this would be the moment that Yami told him some great plot twist and revealed himself to be the one helping the hunters. He would say it was all a great big game and a joke that he was trying to save him. And that would be the end of it. He would be skinned and sold on the black market.

 _I'm not sure,_ Yami finally whispered, fur beginning to bristle faintly. _I have no idea. I thought they were right there_ …

 _Wouldn't they have shot at us by now_?

 _Yes, but it's not as if they've given up. Just because two of their dogs are gone_ … He faltered. _Ryou said there were more_ …

Yugi felt his stomach drop. Oh no… He spun on Yami with a horrified expression, paws scratching at the snow with panic. How was he meant to tell Yami that he had left his _mate_ to die after they had both gotten rid of the dogs and the two humans?

 _What_? _What happened_?

He felt his jaws open and close and he shuddered before tossing his head back and forth. His pelt rolled upon his body with a heavy painful sigh. He stared at him, then trembled, and his voice was choked with a sense of immeasurable grief. _Ryou—they're back there with Ryou_. _We—we killed the dogs. And two other hunters came out and I killed them. I left him there with the bodies…_

Yami stiffened for a moment, then he slowly looked towards the trees. But he did not speak for a long minute. Then he closed his eyes tightly and raised a paw to rub at his muzzle. He wrinkled his nose, turned to him, and blinked his eyes open again. _He helped you to find me_?

His tone was not that of an anguished lover. He sounded more like a curious bystander to an event far removed from him. Yet his eyes were sad, but not even near the grief that he had witnessed upon his realization that he had washed his jacket. He did not puke and tremble and burst into dry sobs.

Yugi stared at him in open bewilderment. He did not look even slightly as if he were troubled by the idea of Ryou having died. He did not look at him as a lover would had their lost their partner. He looked so simply removed and laid back about it that it was unnerving.

 _Yeah… He…_

Yami nodded slightly, then flicked an ear. _Okay,_ he said simply. He did not sound aggrieved at all. Yet Yugi had seen how easily he had thrown himself into his arms and hugged him so tightly. He had watched him do so. He had witnessed it. And yet… Yami was just…? He shook his head, bewildered. The other wolf blinked at him, then tilted his head curiously to the side. _We need to get a move on._

 _But Ryou is…_

 _Dead and we are not. Let's go._

 _But wasn't he…? I thought…_

Yami shook his head. _I will answer your questions when we get back. But for now we need to_ leave, _Yugi._ He did not offer him a second glance. Instead he began to move forward, limping slightly but without much difficulty. His shoulder was slicked with dried blood, caked into rough patches of dark brown. The white wolf briefly glanced around, then moved to take his side.

 _Do you even think that they realize there are two of us_? he asked softly, flattening his ears against his skull uncomfortably.

Yami flicked an ear. _I do not know. I cannot be sure. I know that the dogs chased you because you were there. And so they followed the dogs in turn._ He glanced at him sideways. _But if they have realized we are both here, I am sure they will have something else up their sleeves to torture us with. I have dealt with Panik before. He is not easily deterred._

 _Ryou said you were in the labs…_

Yami flicked an ear. _Only for a few days. I was brought in too close to the time of the escape to make a difference. I was not even experimented on._ He pulled shiny black lips back into something of a grimace and tipped his head toward him. _But I remember the screaming from others who had been. And I remember hearing whispers that Code Name Atem truly had come into existence._

Yugi looked at him for a long moment. _Oh,_ he muttered, _so you've been out here for a few months then_.

 _Yes, as had Shizuka and whoever else had managed to escape. We all separated upon being released. And no one knew who Atem was, so there was no real reason for us to attempt to find them._

He nodded again slightly, then turned away. _Okay_. He moved alongside him at his pace, both of them at a slow trot, and Yugi felt sick to his stomach. _Ryou recognized me._

Yami did not look or sound surprised. _Yes. I remember hearing that he was very close to Atem._

 _He said he was the one who let him escape._

 _He must have helped the other wolves then._

Yugi hesitated for a moment. _But you hugged him. And he seemed to recognize you._

 _Yes, because he often visited my cage to feed me. I bonded with him._ Yami did not pause. _I was simply glad to see him. Why are you so concerned about this_?

Yugi couldn't bring himself to admit that he had assumed them to be lovers. It made his stomach crawl too much to force the words into the air between them. So he instead shook his head. _I just… I don't remember anything about the lab—or at least not completely. And, if I'm going to act as Atem, I need to try to recall some things, right_?

Yami stiffened. _I do not imagine that you should truly wish to. I would go by word of mouth, by what others say happened with you in the lab. Then, perhaps, your memories will not come to the surface_.

 _I understand that it was traumatic, but if I do not fully remember, how I am supposed to be the leader that the entire race of lycanthropes apparently thinks me to be? Yami, if I don't remember, I can't understand it all. And what happens then_?

 _Then you thank Lupa for the mercy she has bestowed upon you and do not ask further questions,_ he snarled, spinning on him angrily. The white wolf paused as well now and they both curled their lips back to show off their teeth. _You do not_ want _to remember all of those things which happened back there, okay_? _Believe me_!

Yugi growled low in his throat. _Yet, as you said a moment ago, you did not suffer at their hands_. He raised his tail when Yami did the same. But his mind flashed with previous conversation. He thought of the gene expression. He thought of the way he had seen Yami react to the wounds he had inflicted and he backed up a step. Yami blinked and then lowered his tail when he did the same. _Look, I just…I have to know more about it. What did_ you _hear about what happened with Atem_?

He faltered a step, then shook his head sharply. _Now is not the time to discuss this, Yugi. We_ —

They both sprang apart, eyes widening as their heads snapped toward the noise. Something had been tossed towards them.

Even from the distance Yami could tell what it was. In the shadows of a large tree, half covered in its shade and half beneath the weak moonlight, was a sprawled form. It was slick with black like oil along the hands, smeared across the stomach and throat. The head was twisted back almost until the neck had snapped. The hair was matted and bloodied. The limbs were spread about the snow in a disturbing mockery of an angel. He bore his teeth and snarled low in his throat.

 _Is that_ …?

 _They slit his throat. Let_ ' _s go._

He looked at him sideways. _Yami—_

 _Let's_ go, _Yugi_!

 _Go where_?! _Don't you smell it_? he snapped back desperately. _They're burning the woods. They're setting the trees on fire to draw us out. They're going to be waiting on the other side to shoot us._ _  
_Yami hesitated for a moment, then tipped his head up to scent the air. The smoke came in small coils of drifting black. The scent was harsh, burning like death itself, and he flicked an ear. Low were the popping noises of bark bursting beneath the pressure and heat. He flicked an ear again. _They will have to figure out a way to herd us the way they wish us to go._

Yugi turned his head to look about them uncomfortably. That was true. Something was wrong with this plan they had set. This trap did not truly make any sense. And where did the body play a hand in this scheme? Was it a distraction or meant to be the reason they ran into the trap? He stiffened. It didn't make sense…

 _I don't understand…_

 _As long as I am not the only one…_

Yugi almost wanted to laugh but instead shook his head. And then, with startling clarity, he realized the simplicity and complexity of this trap. It was something he himself had used often in chess. _They put him here as a distraction. And if we go to investigate, one of them will shoot us. But the other is setting the trees on fire and calling for backup._

Yami turned to him, frozen in place. _How…_?

 _You remember that first time we played chess_? _I used a similar technique. I made you focus on my knight when I was really using the bishop. It_ ' _s similar. The fire is going to be the ultimate part of the plan. They think if they burn us out we'll run into one of the other hunters that will surely respond. But in the meantime, if we go near Ryou or attempt to use the woods there as a way through, they'll shoot us from the spot they're hiding in._

He frowned and tilted his head. _Okay, so then what do you think we should do_?

Yugi turned to him fully. _We head for the flames. Because they expect us to go the other way. We head through there, double back, and then run home._ He paused and then looked to him. _And we pray for more snow. We pray to Lupa that we get cover for our tracks._

 _And what if you are wrong_?

He looked at him slowly. _And what if I'm not_?

Yami nodded after a moment. The odds were terrible on either end. He knew it as well as Yugi. And their chances of survival were sleek the longer they waited. _Then let's go._ He was trotting before Yugi could blink and both of them began to run the moment they entered further into the tree line. They bypassed Ryou's body by a mile to the west.

Neither glanced back even once.

The smoke was heavy, black and suffocating, even yards away from the actual flame. They danced beneath the thick blanket like unholy ghosts of vibrant red and drifting orange and the intensity of the ocean. The noise was a hideous roar, causing their hearts to pound with the crackling just beneath. The white wolf was colored orange and charcoal gray and the black smeared with flickers of displaced silver. The billows of smoke made them both squint and the choking aroma of burning trees made it impossible for them to scent anything around them. On his tongue was the taste of charcoal, thick and overpowering, and the smallest underlying touch of the very essence of the trees. _  
_Yugi stepped forward before Yami did. The other wolf hesitated for a moment, then slowly came to his side again. The smoke thickened until they could no longer see the flames birthing it. He pressed low to the ground now, finding the air easier to breathe and was relieved when Yami did the same beside him.

The trees slightly glowed from down here, in a florescent orange border, and Yugi imagined he saw shapes within the source of colors. He thought the red sparks looked like ghosts, restless spirits which wailed in an unearthly groan.

 _Fuck,_ Yami hissed in his head, a low and uncomfortable; nearly panicked tone. Yugi was fascinated by the sight of which the flames granted him, faces unearthly and beautiful against trees swallowed in the lick of orange. He was not looking at the white wolf as he flattened himself against the snow. He was shaking, heart racing in his chest. He could not move beyond this point. He would rather die by bullet than have to go anywhere closer. The heat made the air distort and his body felt too hot to fathom movement any longer.

Yugi looked at him only when his trembles grew so pronounced that his entire body seemed to be personally assaulted by an earthquake. His head turned, ears flicking, and the burn of smoke in his lungs was an unpleasant tickle that he had not realized the existence of before. He blinked, then moved closer to his side.

 _Yami_?

The black wolf shook harder. He was fixated, staring at the blaze which made his eyes hollow and glassy, like films of red against a golden bulb. He was pressed completely into the snow, yet he tried harder to make himself sink into the white powder. He pushed at the snow with his chin and tried to burrow into hardened earth which refused to give way.

 _Yami,_ he tried again, this time with a firmer tone. The wolf did not blink. And the glow to his eyes was dead, artificial. He turned to face him more fully, then pressed his nose into his paw. The other immediately jerked his leg away, folding his paw beneath it and flicked an ear as he turned his face towards him. However his eyes were still caught on the flames and his face was colored halfway orange then black and gray as the smoke billowed outwards faster. _Yami, do you hear me_?

He flicked an ear. _I can't…_

Yugi leaned forward and then crawled a little closer to him. _You can,_ he argued, pressing his nose into his cheek to make him pay attention. Yami blinked and his eyes slithered over, but the shine in them was still alien and desolate. He breathed harshly against his cheek and the way his fur moved made him think of blistering winds and dark nights void of star and moon. _You can. Just focus on me, okay_? _We'll be fine._

Yami blinked and then trembled harder. _I_ can't, he insisted, quaking as he flattened himself further. _You go, Yugi. Perhaps I can—_

He bristled, baring his teeth. _You've never left me before. And I won't do that to you either,_ he spat, shaking his head and then glancing at the flames. They were mesmerizing, but now he could feel that tickle in his throat becoming a long and disturbing scratch and above the scent of smoke was Yami's terror. He shifted his weight, uneasy as he turned back to him. _Now, here's what's going to happen, okay_? _We're both going to get out of here. Or neither of us is going._

In his fear and the deafening roar where his heartbeat met the harsh call of the fire he almost did not hear him. Then he blinked and slowly turned his head to look at him. His ears pricked and he curled his lip back, but his anger was far beneath the tremors of his panic. _That's ridiculous_! _Stop being an ass and go_ —

Yugi chomped his teeth next to his eye. The other wolf immediately stiffened, silent, and sunk his claws into the snow. The heat was blistering as they looked at one another. _Yami, a while back you asked me if I trust you. I do. Now, the question is whether you trust me. Do you or not_?

He trembled and then glanced slowly at the fire again. The whites of his eyes were showing, glowing a pale yellow and orange. His ears flicked. _Yes, I do, but—_

 _Then prove it,_ he demanded. The other wolf turned his head towards him slowly, eyes wide and unsure. Yugi forced away the urge to simply try to make him feel more comfortable instead of trying to coax him to action. Instead he moved until their noses were basically pressed together from proximity. He bristled a bit more, then shifted his weight again. _Listen to me. I promise we'll get out of it. I give my word. Just listen to me, Yami. We'll be okay._

Yami bristled further. _Yugi, that's not…_

He bore his teeth. _If you trust me, then allow me to do this._ _We'll get out of here okay and go right back to the house._ He paused. _I swear to you we'll be okay. Now just…just trust me._

He flicked an ear. Then he tilted his head away. His tail twitched. His mouth opened, then closed again. He curled his lip back slightly. Then he turned away again. _Very well._

Yugi almost trembled with relief, though the resigned note in his voice made him falter. He met his eye, at first afraid to find a sense of defeat and resignation that might bank on his will to live, but instead Yami looked back at him with an expression which harbored the smallest amount of determination. His ears flicked and the fear was constant, pressing on him frantically, but he still looked as if he was willing to _try_ at the very least. The smaller canine was so relieved he nearly forgot himself for a moment. Then he felt the heat lashing more forcefully as the flames began to lick at the air closer to them like an overzealous dog. He bristled, shivering.

He turned to the flames, where they danced and flickered and reminded him of brilliant shows of light and cunning darkness from the smoke. His eyes were caught on the shifting sheets of black merging with the brightness and it made his stomach coil painfully. He crouched lower, pressing his chin to the ground forcefully. Then he forced his paws to inch forward. The time was ticking away in his head. He needed to move faster. They had to get out of there and run.

If he was right, one of them was calling for help. And if they were doing that, there was only so much time before more people arrived to hunt them as well. And what would they do then?

He did not think there was a way to truly outwit more experienced people. He had won against the dogs because he knew the forest well enough and had spent so much time on the ice formerly. But against seasoned hunters in a mass amount? He did not think he could survive it.

He glanced at Yami sideways. The black wolf was watching the flames. He barely even seemed to notice him any longer. Yugi exhaled softly, his body jerking in a gentle spasm, and then whispered, _Yami_?

The black wolf turned his head but his eyes were still on the flames. He flicked an ear, pressed lower to the snow, and then tilted his muzzle towards him in question.

 _You still with me_?

 _Yes._ He was shaken in tone and visibly looked ready to turn tail at any moment. But he held himself there and Yugi felt the smallest sense of elation at such a fact.

 _Then_ … _on the count of three_ … _We'll both leap and run, okay_?

Yami cast him a long, doubtful and sardonic look. _And then what, Yugi_? _What if he is behind the flames waiting for us_?

 _Then at least we can say we tried, okay_?

He shook his muzzle at him, but then turned away. His muscles bunched along his shoulders and haunches. He curled his lips back and his tail began to shake with fearful tension. Yugi would have smiled had he been human, but instead he turned towards the trees uneasily.

 _One…_

Yami sank his claws into the snow.

 _Two…_

Yugi flattened his ears against his skull.

 _Three._

Both of them sprang. The flames blinded them and the smoke burned their eyes. The heat flashed through their fur and tore through their skin. Their paws burned and tingled. The air wreathed with black smoke within their aching lungs. The flames were embodiments of discolored lightning.

Yugi choked as the flames tore upon his fur. He cried out, a screaming call of pain. Yami landed a couple of inches behind him, his body streaked with embers caught upon his fur. His jaws were wide open, gaping, and he was gasping rather than crying. He stared at him, the red of his irises long ago swallowed by his pupils and encircled by the white of his eyes. He panted and choked and stared at him. His fur crackled with smoke, sizzling loudly.

Yugi was still yelping, crying in pain, and then stared at him with a mirroring expression of panic. He was trembling with pain and fear and both looked at each other blankly. The black wolf glanced about but the woods were still too dark. The white wolf blinked as his eyes burned harshly and his body began to ache more than ever. He gasped for breath and strained his eyes to see him.

The red-eyed lycanthrope abruptly dropped to the snow, writhing and twisting. The snow crackled and sizzled. He wheezed and panted, stretching out until his body felt it might snap from pressure. Then he rolled upon his other side and did the same. Yugi stared at him, shocked and mesmerized, his mind struggling to comprehend.

The flames were still bursting with noise within his ears. He was amazed he could even hear anything beyond them. His mouth was still open and the little cries had faltered and become pathetic, gasping whimpers. He gaped at the other wolf but Yami did not seem to even truly see him. When he got to his feet again, he was whimpering and staring about them as if he might see through the sheets of black smoke.

It only occurred to him in the very back of his mind that perhaps he should be more cautious. But his instincts pressed more with the need to extinguish the pain which gripped his body. And he didn't know how, so he whined and cried as if it might save him. He closed his jaws, tongue flicking towards his nose. He blinked rapidly. His nose was burned, singed. He didn't even think he could feel whiskers when he licked his jaws in a miserable attempt to alleviate some of the pain.

Yami was the one to slowly drag himself to a state of comprehension. His eyes were closed and his ears pressed hard against his skull. He had fallen to his side at some point, but now he lay there breathing through bared teeth. _We have to move._

His voice did a strange thing to the smaller wolf. His head snapped towards him. His ears pricked. The whine trickled away within his throat. His eyes, blinded with smoke, strained to see him. His lungs clenched and twisted. His heart began to race somehow faster. He stared towards what he thought to be the source of the statement. His warring instincts to flee, to simply lie down, and to press himself into the snow completely, began to silence themselves. He ran his tongue along his lips again.

 _Where_? His mouth was burning. His tongue ached and felt swollen. The gentle touch was violent against his skin. The fur was singed away and the air nipped at the raw flesh exposed there. He whimpered again, softly, and wondered if he had any fur to boast of.

Yami couldn't tell him where. He had no idea where they were meant to go. It was the fact that they were resting and Yugi's crying that made him anxious. _Away from here. We'll_ … He forced his eyes open but the darkness was as prominent there as it was behind his eyelids. He forced himself to roll onto his belly. In his peripheral a stain of bright red marked the spot his shoulder had once lay. _We'll head east and try to find…_

Was there a river to the east? He could not remember. What if it was behind them, before the flames? He trembled, then struggled to his feet. The pain threatened to make his legs buckle. His shoulders flared and cried with protests of pain.

Yugi still could not see him fully through the smoke. But he could make out the faintest of his outline. He was inches away yet it seemed a chasm had come between them.

 _We need shelter before we do anything_. But what he needed most was for his shoulder to heal. It was bleeding profusely, the wound enlarged and irritated. The fire had burst vessels further beneath his skin. It had charred and inflamed. If he didn't move now, he was not sure he would be able to later. But they had to have heard Yugi's earlier scream. They had to have been coming for them. _We'll move east._

He could not fathom what was to the east. And, when it came down to it, neither could Yami. But he thought doubling back slightly might be helpful. He needed to find something…a way to pull back and take moments to rest. He needed to figure out how to get them to safety long enough for that…

He turned and trotted, limping heavily, and Yugi faltered as he rushed to his side. He winced with each step, but swallowed the cries threatening to expel from his jaws. Yugi panted and his legs shook with each step. It occurred to him that when the other crossed in front of him for a moment, his fur was slicked with blood and his paw print was bright red. The fur was nearly nonexistent along the wound, the flesh blackened along the opening but pale pink beyond. He flinched at the sight of it and looked quickly down.

Their tracks would get them killed.

 _Do you think you can run_?

Yami faltered at the question. _Truthfully_? _No_. He glanced at him sideways, his body feeling broken and battered. _But I can try_.

 _And get yourself killed for it,_ Yugi thought with his ears flicking about. The nerves were raw and blistering. He curled his lips back at the sensation but did not cry out again. His lungs felt tight with the urge to cough, smothering it forcefully as he could see Yami himself doing. His sides would collapse and then enlarge again, somehow failing to expel the noise even as he shook from the force of it. _If we keep this direction, we'll end up on a slope. It's a steeper formation, and it has lots of pockets in the dirt. If we can find one, we can attempt to cover our tracks and hide._

The black canine's eyes were distant, looking at him but not fully seeing him. _How_?

Yugi drew in a deep breath and his legs nearly buckled. The constant speed was bearing down upon his fractured muscles. _I think I can make it look as if you fell over the side of the hill, tripped and bled all over the snow. But it's going to be where the tracks end and how I'd get back that would be the issue._

Yami shook his head, ears flicking, eyes further distanced. _The dogs chased me up that slope…if it's the same slope you are talking about. Their prints are everywhere. The snow is crushed and looks as if it's been run over by a stampede of animals. The snowmobiles went through it as well…_

Yugi felt his stomach tingle and his heart begin to skip, swelling with the thought. The hunters had overestimated their own ability… _Then I should be okay…I think I can manage it._

The black wolf stared at him, a long and silent entreaty. Then Yami looked away from the smaller wolf, eyes upon the trees. _Very well. But how are we meant to hide there_? _I do not have the same camouflage as you_ …

The smaller canine shook his head. _No, and that's why we're going to have to bury ourselves._

The casual declaration made Yami stop short. He stumbled, staggered, then hit the snow. Yugi looked at him, startled, but the other was on his feet again immediately. They looked at each other for a single second, then began to move again.

 _Bury ourselves within the snow_ …

 _I remember watching a documentary about sled dogs in_ _Alaska_ _. The huskies were oftentimes left outside of the tents because of the lack of room and insulation. So the dogs, in order to retain their body heat, would curl up in the snow. They'd cover their nose with their tail and bunch up completely. And when the snow covered them, they'd wake up completely fine._ He glanced over his shoulder and his eyes felt glassy and watery. _And wolves do that. They do it in the wild. Instead of waiting for the snow to cover us, however…_

 _We're going to have to bury ourselves_ … Yami nodded slightly and his step was sloppy with pain. He glanced at him sideways. _I don't know that I would have come up with that idea on my own._

Yugi had no doubt that Yami's plan, had he not been there, would have been much more involved and difficult, complicated beyond measure, but it would have worked. He shook his head to dismiss the idea. _Where on the slope_ …?

Yami barely seemed to hear him for a moment. Then he veered sharply to the right. There, in the darkness, despite the lack of moonlight, the prints were smeared by dark blue and gray shadows. It looked as if the earth had been trampled by a herd of deer. The thought made his skin crawl as he looked upon it. Then he turned to the black wolf again and exhaled.

 _Follow them to the edge. Your prints are larger than mine. But I doubt they will think to notice when I go down there._

Yami flinched. _I do not believe they know you're here,_ he murmured, his realization coming rather belatedly. _You got away from the cliffs before they noticed you when you led the dogs away_ …

He nodded slightly. _Although, I'm sure they have an idea by now. They threw Ryou's body at us, remember? I'm sure they were somewhere in the trees watching us…_

The black wolf shivered, then moved closer until he was at the edge. His blood splattered and fell in rivulets now that he was still. The cold air was making the wound inflame further. Yugi swallowed hard. The residual pain from the flames would do it no good either.

 _Okay, you're going to have to leap for me. Find the nearest ledge and I'll do the rest,_ he promised gently. Yami glanced at him for a moment, his left leg quivering with the tension of his weight. Then he turned away again. When he leaped, the smaller wolf nearly cried out. The black wolf hit the snow-covered stone, rolled down to the second one, and landed heavily enough that the blood pooled hideously around him.

 _Yami_!

He remained still for a moment. Then he flexed his shoulders. His tail moved to curl around his back left leg. Then he slowly stumbled to his feet. He gasped out and his breath was a bright white burst against the shadows. Yugi nearly howled with elation at the sight. He was okay.

Yami craned his head back to look at him. _Now what_? he asked, but he sounded weak despite his determination. The smaller canine glanced beyond them for a moment. Then he threw himself down the slope as well. The rocky outcrop above Yami was so thin he was truly amazed he did not slip. He gave him a small glance of fear and distress, then shifted forward an inch. His side was pressed against the side of the ledge and Yami thought he looked ethereal and ghostly within the darkness.

 _Now we try to stop the bleeding in your shoulder long enough to get you further along the slope and then I'll double back for you._

 _How do we do that, Yugi_? He was exhausted. The thought of trying to stop the bleeding just sounded like a torture in which to waste the last of his energy.

Yugi moved carefully to jump down beside him. _We pack the wound,_ he stated simply. He watched him with troubled blue-violet eyes and he was sure he saw the lack of energy within his own gaze. The smaller wolf stepped close enough to press his nose to his ear, straining his neck up to do so.

He would have buckled beneath the weight of the relief of such a familiar sensation. But instead he shook his head slowly. _Pack the wound_?

Yugi turned away from him, backed up several steps, and then dropped his muzzle to the snow. He brushed against it twice, picking at the softer spots he knew to exist there, and then opened his jaws to grab mouthfuls. Yami was frozen in place, stunned, and flattened his ears against his head in bewilderment. The smaller wolf circled to his other side, then spat the snow onto the wound. It was a miniscule amount and the way it bit the inflamed flesh made Yami nearly collapse. But the cold air held it. And the flesh around the incision itself was frozen as it was, the chill causing the skin to turn black with deceased muscle.

He repeated the laborious task for a few more minutes, then pressed his muzzle harshly into his shoulder. He molded it as he would a cast for a broken foot, compacting it until he thought Yami would buckle beneath the pressure. Then he stepped back, breathing hard.

 _You're going to have to move as quickly as you can. When you move that shoulder, the ice is going to break away quickly._ He looked him in the eye. _When you get to the wall and find a den you can dig into, you'll have to rush yourself. I'll cover you immediately after._

Yami flicked an ear. Yugi tilted his head up to listen. The silence beyond the distant popping and crackling of the flames made the smaller wolf feel surprisingly overpowered and yet somehow weak all the same. But the other seemed not to experience the same sensation. Instead he was studying the wall of the slope. And he moved in a leap, a quick and painful bound. He crashed into the snow but got up again, turning quickly towards the stone.

The smaller canine opened his jaws and breathed in. His tongue was blistered faintly and ached with each inhale. He shifted forward as Yami clawed at the snow, digging at it as quickly as he could with one paw. The landings had both screwed up the use of his hurt limb. Yugi paced about for a moment, remembered himself, and then listened as hard as he could.

Yami pressed into the soft crevice of stone and snow, curling up with his bleeding shoulder pressed into the frozen earth behind him. The other lycanthrope backed up several steps, then jumped the red scar of the other's blood within the snow. He came to his side, listening again for noise, and then began to shovel snow back onto the red-eyed wolf. Yami shuddered and tucked himself tighter into the den he'd dug. Yugi shoveled until he could no longer see him. Then he turned away from the entrance, trotted a step, leaped the blood, and turned his teeth onto his paw.

The pads cracked without effort, swollen and aching from the pain of the flames and constant pressure of the snow moments before. The skin split in large gaping scars of muscle. He moved forward, limping, and thanked the gods for the tracks previously pressed into the snow. He moved in a weak trot, though he counted the seconds in his head and wished for nothing more than to flee as quickly as he could. He panted heavily and then looked back. His bloody prints were the single most visible things amidst the grooves of disturbed snow.

But they were also fading as he knew they would. Being forced into the snow as they were, the cold touch of ice was forcing it to stem. The wound would close soon enough. And he would have to dig a den himself as Yami had and curl up. He would have to hope that his fur was bright enough to allow him to blend in as effortlessly as possible. He wouldn't be able to cover himself up as he had Yami. He'd have to make a wall of snow outside and huddle between it and the stone.

He waited until the paw prints were clear. Then he doubled back, effectively maneuvering to avoid stepping on any of the blood he'd spilled by way of following what little paw prints remained of the dogs that had chased Yami formerly. Then he hurried to the slope and wove his way to some of the patches of snow. He himself had not truly been in this area of the woods in a while. But he knew Yami must have. And he had to have remembered from warmer months before which spot would be a crevice large enough for him to seek shelter within.

The first he tried was a dead end. The second was only a small puncture within the stone. And the third was so slim he could not stick his nose in. The fourth was just wide enough and dipped deeply. It was almost like the cavern he had chosen to hide in when he had first assumed he would change. But the location was wrong.

He scooped the snow out gently with his paws, digging as easily as he could without disturbing it too terribly. Then he allowed it to pile up until it ran the length of the earth to his belly. The wall could not be any higher without looking unnaturally tampered with when he stepped over it. So he moved into the den he'd uncovered, curled up as tightly as he could, squeezed his eyes shut, and lay there.

The hours passed in a haze of darkness. Yugi's body was so weighted and pained that he could not keep a grasp upon consciousness for more than mere split seconds at a time. But when he did wake, most often it was to noises. They were either loud, like the roar of snowmobiles, or the hushed tone of furious whispers. He understood no words and held no true recollection of the engines. But he also did not bother to open his eyes, nor to raise his head and look out over the wall.

When he finally did decide to venture out again, it was dawn. And he knew the hunters were long gone by the way that he had rested undisturbed for the amount of time he had. He was shaky and stiff and his body threatened to fall beneath him. But he crept outwards, keeping low to the ground, and dragged his belly across the snow as he weaved a path near the puddle of blood. He shivered, for it looked as bright red as it would have had there been sunlight when the wound originally shed as it had.

 _Yami_?

There was a long minute of silence. Then he heard the slightest of stirrings. _Yugi_? the other wolf whispered softly. He sounded almost like he was dazed, dragged into groggy incomprehension.

 _Yeah, hey, Yami,_ he replied quietly.

For a moment he was silent again. Then the snow began to shift and push outward until a tiny gleaming speck of black showed. He would have laughed if he were human, because the way his nose began to twitch as he scented the air was adorable, but it also broke his heart.

The snow began to falter and shift in chunks, then fell outwards like shed fur. Yami poked his muzzle out completely until one of his eyes was visible, scanning the area until it caught sight of him. The larger wolf tilted his muzzle, then his bones popped loudly as he pushed himself out of the den. He shook himself, looking towards him with a slightly flustered and distressed gleam to his eyes.

 _How's your shoulder_?

He took a faltering step forward. _Numb, but it's still throbbing every now and then,_ he answered with a glance towards it before quickly looking back. _It looks like charred hamburger meat._

Yugi refrained from mentioning that most of his face had that look to it too. The black fur existed only in patches and his skin was still bright pink and shiny. He shivered. He probably looked similar. He dipped his head towards the snow, eyes on the blood splatter that he'd overlooked the night before. Thank the gods the hunters had not noticed it. They would have surely attempted to get to Yami had they.

 _We need to go towards where they set up the dogs. My clothes are there. I have to get something from my jacket._

Yami tipped his head up and peered at the sloping hill beside them, the frozen stone and beds of snow inches deep. He watched the way it began to light gently beneath the touch of the sun, gentle in its warming embrace. He opened his mouth just enough to breathe from between his teeth, then glanced back towards him uncomfortably.

 _Is it truly so important_?

Yugi looked at him for a moment, then felt his pelt roll painfully. _It was my school uniform. So even if there wasn't anything in there, we need to get it before they figure that out,_ he mumbled.

 _And what if they've already seen it_?

The smaller wolf tilted his head. _Then I'll be amazed that they aren't at the school in a few days,_ he grumbled before sighing softly. _Did they see your eyes_?

 _I would not know. They often have other ways of finding such details._ He hesitated and then flicked an ear sideways. _But I do not think that I ever truly faced them more than a moment._

 _And your eyes appear amber in the moonlight,_ Yugi thought with slight relief. They could have seen it and simply thought his eyes were brown and the color distorted by his ability to see in the dark. He'd forgotten the technical name for the lens that covered the eye and allowed night vision but he was incredibly grateful for it all the same. His fur was ribbed with black and gray soot as he began to pace forward. For a moment Yami did not follow and then he began a more arduous limp behind him.

He glanced at him over his shoulder. He expected him to have his head raised as he normally would. But his nose was towards the ground and his chin inches from the snow. He was clearly exhausted and his limping did him no good for gaining strength. The smaller wolf turned back again when he saw his eyes flicker towards him.

 _You could wait here if you wanted_ …

 _If I stop now, I will not try again later,_ he said in a tone drenched in calm certainty. He shook his fur out for a moment and Yugi was amazed that his wound did not open again. He looked away again quickly before he could be caught staring at the blistered cuts and exposed skin of the other wolf's face. He flicked an ear uneasily as they continued slowly through the trees.

It took about an hour before Yugi managed to spot the chain link fence in front of him. He was exhausted by the time they reached it and he'd made a point of glancing back at Yami in order to check on him more than once. The black wolf had slowed to several feet behind him once or twice but he'd never truly strayed. The smaller lycanthrope turned to him as he came along the edges of the metal.

 _Do you want to catch your breath here while I—_?

 _No. I'll follow you._

He wanted for a moment to plead with him to wait there, but then he remembered his former words and nodded slightly. He couldn't ask him to potentially give up when they had come so far already. He turned to the right and began to move into more of the trees.

 _The dogs… What did you do to them_?

Yugi glanced at him over his shoulder slightly. _I shoved my hand down their throat. They couldn't close their mouths and when they gagged their windpipes were too tightly clogged so they choked._ He vaguely remembered them thrashing and his skin twisted as his fur jerked in disgust.

 _Oh._ Yami did not comment on them any further. But he could not remove his eyes from their prone forms. They lay mostly on their sides, jaws wide open with their tongue stretched out. Some of their mouths were flecked with bile but others were clean. One or two had blood across their cheeks and teeth. He watched them as he would have any carnage from a fight, with sorrow and the racing ache of relief that it was he who had survived.

The humans, on the other hand, were bloodied along the heads and their skulls were concaved from the impact with whatever weapon had been used. They looked grizzled, with dried brown blood across their broken skin and bone fragments. Yami studied them for only a moment, then turned and moved along behind Yugi.

 _What is so important inside your jacket_?

The smaller wolf paused at the tree he had thrown it into the branches of. His eyes shot to him for a moment and he tilted his head for a single second. _I stole one of their guns,_ he replied nonchalantly, though his blue-violet eyes were troubled. _I figured, one less weapon for them since firearms are illegal in_ _Japan_ _. And besides, who knows if we're ever going to need it_?

Yami bristled and stared at him incredulously. _A gun_? _You stole a gun_? He could not name all of the reasons why that was foolish of him. _It's probably filled with silver bullets and you stole it_!

Yugi flicked an ear. He remembered Pegasus lacing the wolfsbane with liquid silver that day. His skin crawled and his fur rose in a slight bristle before dropping again. He licked his lips awkwardly and peered at him for a moment. _Even more reason to take it. It's hard to find pure silver these days. Most of it is substituted partially with iron or nickel. And, contrary to popular belief, I am pretty sure that you can't just go into a store and have someone melt silver jewelry or silverware into bullets. Especially not here in_ _Japan_ _._

The black wolf folded his ears back, staring at him uncomfortably for a long moment. _I concede to your point, Yugi, but this is still rather dangerous_ …

He shot him a slightly disdainful glance. _Since I've been infected, Yami,_ everything _has become dangerous._

He looked away from the other lycanthrope, guilty and slightly ashamed, but Yugi merely sighed at his own brusque response, leaned over to press his nose into his ear, and turned back to the tree. _How do I climb this_?

Yami craned his head back. Yugi had tossed the jacket several feet into the tree branches. He assumed that was truly the weight of the gun which had propelled it so high up as the rest of his clothes were very near the ground for the most part. _You might need a running start. But it is easy. Your claws are made for it. And if you let your instincts guide you, then you'll be fine._

He shuddered, then shook himself. He backed up several feet, looked to the black wolf who nodded distractedly, and then ran. When he leaped, his claws latched onto the bark like hooks. He blinked stupidly at such a sensation, then looked at Yami slowly in confusion.

The black wolf snorted at his inability, his eyes amused but cautious as his ears flicked about as well. _You just have to climb like you would if you were human. One foot after the other. It truly is not that hard._

He curled his lip back in disdain. _Says the one who's more wolf than me._

Yami faltered faintly at the retort, then shook his head. _That has nothing to do with anything and you know that._ He flicked an ear. _Now move. We don't have all the time in the world._

 _Yes, because this would be what I choose to do with it,_ he spat back angrily. _I'd love to spend all my time in life just throwing myself at trees and attempting to climb them as a large dog._

He huffed loudly. _Fine, then I will hold your hand and instruct you,_ he snapped in annoyance. _Place both back paws flat against the trunk, fold your legs until your haunches are completely tense. Move your forelimbs so that your legs are parallel to the trunk and your dew claws grip the bark. Then you will sink your back claws into the trunk, push upwards in a leap, and catch yourself as you were originally positioned._

Yugi peered at him in surprise for a moment, then shifted his paws to scrape his dew claws along the side. The noise of the bark scratching beneath him made him bristle faintly, his tail rising in a rigid stance for a split second. Then he shifted his back legs, bunching them beneath his haunches and pressing his hocks almost completely against the trunk.

 _Am I doing it correctly_?

Yami shifted his weight and took a step, as he knew his stiff limbs might grow too hard to move if he waited any longer. He paced twice around the tree, too ashamed to admit his own weakness and thus pretending to assess his technique before murmuring, _Yes, perfectly. Now try to leap upwards and continue until you get to the height of the branch and grab the jacket._

Yugi nodded and pushed off with his back legs. He yelped as he hooked his claws again. His body jolted along his hindquarters when he hit the trunk. Then he positioned them again, bunching the muscles together and jumping again. He was not sure how high he was going along each of these leaps, but he did not bother to look down. Instead he continued until he was almost level with the branch. He supposed Yami had seen the angle of which it hung as he was able now to crane his neck out to snatch at the sleeve nearest him.

He struggled with the attempt to stretch himself out enough to open his jaws those couple of inches. When he caught the material in his mouth, he tugged hard. The jacket came down with a heavy thud, hitting the first floor inches from Yami who sprang backwards in surprise. Then came his pants and boxers, drifting lazily in the still air from branches farther below, shifting towards the black canine beneath him.

 _Do you know how to get down_?

Yugi shot him something of a panicked and furious look. _Obviously not, Yami_! he spat softly. _I have no idea how to get down_!

He curled his lips back completely to bare his teeth, ears pricked forward. Then he began to pace back and forth, movements sloppy and somewhat disoriented. _You'll have to back up as you would a ladder. Simple steps, don't drag your claws, just move downwards. If you drag your claws you're going to break one and then you will surely regret it._

Yugi trembled faintly before beginning to move his back paw downwards in order to press his claws into the bark. Then he did the same with his other paw. Then he clenched his claws further into the bark and released his right paw to shift it down to sink into the trunk further down. He hung there, eyes wide and startled, and looked at Yami with a startled expression.

 _You are doing well. Continue as slowly as you need to, but do not stop moving._

Yami was circling around him again but did not appear to look at him even slightly. He was limping harder, his limbs painfully stiff and frozen, and he felt as if he might collapse at any moment. His fur was bristling and his head racing with a rapid ache. His body hurt as he began to trot in quick movements to get back the feeling in his long limbs. He shivered and shook himself out as he stumbled a step and nearly fell to the ground.

The smaller canine could sense his growing weakness. It was like a plague had settled upon his skin as he began to lower himself down once more. He was going to have to hurry down or Yami was going to collapse and he was not sure he could help him if he did. His heart was racing as he forced himself further down the trunk until his back legs touched the ground. He backed up, dropped to the snow, panted, and then snatched his clothes up into his jaws. _Let's go,_ he whispered softly, glancing at the other wolf.

Yami nodded and hurried after him as he began to move in as quick a trot as he dared. Yugi didn't bother to pause as they started back towards the slope. Maybe in a handful of hours they could get back to the house and he could take a look at Yami's burns.

Yugi stumbled over the side of the tree's roots. He was exhausted and the two hour long trek was wearing upon him heavily. Yami was steps behind him when he yelped upon impact. He slammed downwards, expecting the ground to rise up as it usually did when he fell. But this time the air seemed to open further and he dropped as if the earth were vacuuming him within its grasp.

He cried out, a whimpering scream which burst through his throat, and Yami snatched at his leg too late to stop the fall. The tangle of brambles of which the white wolf had collided with shook and shed its snowy cover. Yami stiffened and flicked an ear. The gaping hole of a tunnel entrance shone back at him, black and dark, formerly completely covered by snow and bramble. He shifted closer, pressing his nose to the entrance, and drew in a deep breath.

 _Yugi_?

The sound of shuffling met his ears. He had not fully heard the thud of the other canine due to his attention being so caught on the bramble thicket itself. He licked his lips as he heard the smaller wolf moving about somewhere beneath the darkness in the earthen tunnel.

 _I'm okay, Yami,_ he assured him gently. _But I can't get back out. The tunnel walls are too smooth for me to get a grip. It's stone, not dirt, and the snow has slicked it…_

Yami peered into the darkness for a long moment. Then he crept to the edge and pressed a paw into the blackness. Beneath his toes, as he moved it towards himself, he encountered a hideous chill that was too slick to allow him to claim a grasp. He swallowed hard, then very slowly pressed his weight into the wall. He leaned forward still, then allowed his other paw to dip into the shadows until he pressed both into the slick stone.

 _You can still head back to the house if that's what you want to do,_ he called softly. _I can figure out a way back later—_

Yami tipped his weight and slid straight into the darkness. He yelped as his heart leaped in his chest, threatening to break through the cage of his ribs. He panted as his feet connected with solid ground. But his body tumbled straight into the other wolf. Yugi cried out and their limbs tangled harshly up impact. The small wolf shuddered beneath him from the hit and both of them struggled to pull away from each other.

 _Damn it, Yami…_

He shifted to roll himself over onto his side and struggle to drag his weight upon his limbs. His shoulder was bleeding, bursting with pain, and the collective drip of it as he shook himself out made Yugi whimper low in his throat.

 _Now where are we to go_?

He nearly wailed with dismay. He had no idea what direction they had to go. He had no idea even where exactly they were in the woods. He sighed softly and shook his head. His eyes were burning from the chill in the air, but it was somehow much less frigid than it had been above ground. He shook himself out as Yami was doing.

In the darkness, the shapes were smears of endless black rather than grays and silvers. He strained his eyes where they burned and tingle but he caught nothing beyond the bleakness of the darkness around them. He could only vaguely make out the shadows about them, thin strips of colors in different shades which made Yugi shiver.

 _I guess we'll have to figure out which way we go by following the path we're on. There's nowhere else to go…_

Yami sighed softly, shifting away from him in order to lick at the blood on his shoulder. The wound pulsated with pain and made him nearly cry out. The edges tasted of soot and blood and charred flesh and burned fur. He whimpered as he ran his tongue along the bloodied cut.

 _Can you still walk_?

 _Yes._ He forced himself to his feet, then moved past him in a painful limp. The blue-violet-eyed wolf watched and tilted his head, flicking his ear, and both began to move quietly amidst the darkness. Their claws were clicking hideously upon the stone ground and Yugi felt sick as they continued. If he had been paying more attention, perhaps they wouldn't be down there. And then maybe Yami wouldn't be bleeding again…

 _You shouldn't have followed me, Yami..._

 _I would not let you get lost in here if I could prevent it._

He sighed softly, then breathed in deeply, drawing in the scents of the tunnel around them. It was earthen, heavy, and pressed too heavily within his lungs to give him enough of an idea of where they were going. His stomach dropped and his heart began to pound harder.

 _We could lay down,_ Yugi suggested. _Just for a moment or two. You could see about cleaning your wound some…_

Yami hesitated for a moment. He was darker than the rest of the blackness around them, a pitch black void in the shape of a canine. The wolf turned to him after a split second, the red of his eyes glowing like Christmas lights and embers beneath dying flames. He stared at him for a long time, then nodded his head slowly.

 _Please,_ he whispered quietly, feeling weak and tired, exhausted.

Yugi nodded and moved to his side, coming closer to him to lick his forehead. The black wolf lay down slowly beside him, the red eyes flickering with pain as he began to twist around to lick at his open wound. The taste was grimy and disgusted but he settled for the task as comfortably as he could. The white canine hesitated for a moment, then shifted to take the spot beside him, and began to lick at the wound as well where the blood was still seeping through. He shuddered at the disgusting taste and more so at the realization of his own actions.

He had never really considered the way he had fallen into the habit of licking Yami as if he were some kind of affectionate partner. He gave him those little strokes upon his forehead, his muzzle, his ears, and never truly even considered it before. He stiffened slightly from the idea, feeling sick and briefly embarrassed, and then moved to nip at the skin of his shoulder. He could taste the dirt and stone and soot which rested upon it in the form of black residue, clumped upon his pale, bleeding flesh.

 _Don't… Don't pull,_ Yami pleaded, sounding almost panicked. His voice was weak, desperate, and when he met his eyes they appeared almost glassy with growing terror and pain. _It hurts._

Yugi hesitated, then gently tilted his muzzle to press his nose into his cheek. _Okay, I won't do anything else,_ he promised gently, running his tongue over his shoulder again as softly as he could. He shifted closer to him, however, enough that they could press their hindquarters together but spare contact towards the front. _We'll rest until you feel that you can move again, okay_?

Yami blinked at him for a moment, then dipped his head slightly. _Yes,_ he whispered quietly, relieved and pained. _Thank you._

He paused, startled by the gratitude in his voice, and tilted his head in confusion. Had he ever given him the idea that he would not help him should he need it? Yugi struggled to think of an instance but could find nothing. He felt slightly sickened, disturbed by the thought, and lowered his eyes back to his wound to begin licking again.

Yami turned his attention back to it as well, running his tongue along the top half while Yugi groomed the bottom. The underground tunnel seemed to amplify the noise of the pink muscles running over his flesh and the larger wolf flicked his ears constantly in order to hear around it.

Finally, his tongue sore and feeling scraped from all of the attempts to dispatch the hardened layers of disgusting debris which caked it, Yami shifted away from him. Yugi pulled away, eyes wide in the dark, a solid indigo shade within the limited light, and watched as he rose slowly to his feet. The white wolf flicked his ears, then flattened them against his skull, and got up as well.

His nose pressed into his cheek before he could think straight. When he exhaled, Yugi quivered gently at the soft touch. He blinked several times, then felt his tongue rasp over the blistered wounds upon his muzzle. _We should get a move on,_ he said softly, running his tongue over his nose a moment later. Yugi blinked and then wagged his tail in the dark, pleased with the soft affection. _Your mother and grandfather must be panicked upon seeing your absence…_

Yugi stiffened. A sense of shame and embarrassment, coupled with absolute shock, made its way through his system. Oh gods, he had forgotten all about his family, how they might react to his absence. His heart hammered and he flattened his ears against his head in disdain towards himself. He felt stupid and small as he looked at the darker wolf within the shadows.

 _They might have called the cops by now,_ he choked in a small voice, feeling sick and weakened as he looked at him. _I can't imagine my mom wouldn't have by now…_

Yami was silent for a moment. _Cops,_ he echoed softly, flicking his ears before shaking the thought off. He turned away and Yugi came closer to his side, nearly brushing against his flank before maneuvering away enough to avoid his shoulder.

 _They're basically the authority. They hold up the laws and they go around and search for kids that have gone missing or run away or something of that matter._

He blinked and his ears pricked further forward. _Were they the ones to investigate the death of that mammoth student and your friend—Ushio and Tomoya, I mean_?

He felt cold at the mention of Tomoya. He still could not understand how he could see Yugi's life as worth more than his own. How was it that he had come to the decision that he was to save him at the cost of his own life? He could not understand such mentality. It was true that he would go to any lengths imaginable to help his friends should they be in trouble, but he had never truly been in danger of his life then. When he helped Anzu stand up to Chono or got Ushio to leave Jonouchi and Honda alone, no situation had been life threatening.

Yet Tomoya had thrown himself into that fight with Ushio readily. And he'd… Well, according to the newspapers, it seemed as if he had not fought Yami when he went to attack him. They had found no wounds along his hands and legs that suggested he had attempted to defend himself…

He faltered a step. _Yami_?

The questioning, unsure tone of his voice made the other wolf turn to him with a confused expression. His eyes, glowing faintly, seemed to light the edges of his fur closest to his gaze. His brows twitched slightly in the darkness. He tilted his head and studied him for a moment.

 _Yes_?

He hesitated for a split second, then drew in a deep breath. At first he could not find the words and it frustrated him, but slowly he asked, _Did Tomoya fight back_? _Against you, I mean_? _I know he_ … _fought Ushio_ … _but did he fight against you_?

Yami blinked. _No,_ he admitted softly. _I feel that he knew what I was there for. I think he realized I would not harm you._

 _But you tore his throat out_ … _Why wouldn't he_ …?

The black wolf considered him silently for a long minute. _I cut his jugular. I did not rip his throat out. I did not kill him violently as I did Ushio. And he did not fight me perhaps because he realized I could protect you better than he could. Maybe he refrained from attacking me because he knew who you were._

Yugi shook his head. _But he… He knew me as Yugi. He couldn't have had any idea that I was Code Name Atem_ …

 _He could sense it. You can normally sense a lot about wolves before you even come into contact with them. Their scents will give you a million and one details that you would never know otherwise. Perhaps he smelled it in your blood._

 _And you_? _Why would he spare you_?

Yami was silent for a moment, then shook his head. _Yugi, he would not have been able to fight me and win as it was. I was enraged when I saw what Ushio had done although I had assumed it was Tomoya who had done it. And I was so hungry regardless that I would have fought him off even if he had managed to prove himself a worthy adversary. But he was also wounded badly. He was growing exhausted. I think he just…kind of gave up._

Yugi faltered. _Hungry_? _You planned to eat me_?!

He snorted loudly. _Don't be ridiculous, Yugi. I would never eat you._ He angled his head to lick at his shoulder. _You're too thin and gangly._

Yugi's eyes nearly popped out of his head. _What_?! _Yami_!

When he turned back, his red eyes were glittering with laughter. _What_? The smaller wolf glared at him for a moment, then relaxed when he pressed his nose into his ear for a split second before turning away. _I just remember being hungry making me a lot more vicious. I wouldn't eat you._ _And I wouldn't have eaten anyone else. I might have_ left _someone else there to die but I wouldn't have eaten them._

Yugi tilted his head. And what made him different for Yami? He had said he had potential and that was why he had been willing to save him. But what kind of potential? He didn't understand why he would use such a word to describe him or his choice.

He studied him for a moment. _Do you remember getting hit by a car_? he asked suddenly, eyes widening as he himself recalled a dark black wolf of large size getting to its feet and limping away from him.

Yami tilted his head. _Being hit by a car,_ he considered for a moment, flicking his ears and then nodding, _yes, I recall that. I got thrown a considerable distance with the impact._

He hesitated. _Did you see me that day_?

Yami paused, growing still. He blinked at him in confusion for a moment, then shook his head slowly. _No. Not at all. Or at least, I do not think I did_ … He picked at his memories further but they were fuzzy from the pain. _I do not recall. It's…hard to grasp at._

Yugi blinked at him unhappily. _The impact should have killed you. Your skull was fractured and everything._

He stared at him for a long time. _Yet here I am._ He turned away and began walking again. _Regardless, no, I wasn't going to eat you. I just remember being hungry that day. And when I saw what Ushio had done I was furious. Being hungry gave me an edge though. It normally does most wolves. It makes us less likely to back off and far more dangerous because of it._

Yugi sighed softly. _It also makes you more likely to get yourself killed because you won't know when to back down._

He paused a step. _Quite likely, yes. I wouldn't be surprised. In fact, I'm sure it has happened many times. But you have to remember that a starving werewolf is a natural disaster in the works. Their inhibitions are lessened, they are far more dangerous, and they are more than likely going to try anything they can in order to win. And I'm sure many of them have died from wounds and other things. A starving werewolf can't heal._

Yugi remembered Yami's wrists, how when he was first bandaging them they seemed to do nothing. He remembered drugging him and making more and more food for the other. He remembered the way his wrists had begun to mend after his body weight had grown. But he also remembered his wrists from days before, how they had only just begun to heal.

 _How are your wrists_?

Yami stopped short and then rushed to regain his unsteady footing. _They…ache._

Yugi lowered his head, feeling exhausted by the very idea. He should have been more vigilant where they were involved. But what was he meant to do with his shoulder and those burns he was sure he'd retain? What then? He'd be the living example of why fire and guns were not toys to play with.

 _I'm sorry._

Yami ignored him, then faltered and began to rapidly pick up speed. _Do you hear that_? he demanded in an exuberant tone, gaining speed as the seconds passed.

The smaller wolf raced to keep up at his side. _Hear what_? He strained his ears but all he caught was the heavy clicking of their claws and the sound of their paw pads disturbing the ground in the softest of touches. Then he caught a whisper of movement, soft and sure, and it made his skin tingle. It grew slowly, building into a gentle trickling which caused his heart to pound. _Water_?!

Yami didn't answer him, but instead continued quickly forward before halting. Yugi slammed into his side at the suddenness. The other wolf spun on him, eyes flashing, teeth bared, ears pricked and body rigid. For a moment Yugi feared he might sink his teeth into him. His body reacted instantly, his back hunching, his ears folding back, muzzle tipped towards his chin, tail dropping to wag between his legs.

The larger wolf stared at him for a moment, almost dazed in his expression, and then turned away with a flick of his ear. Yugi remained as he was for a few long seconds, then relaxed until he was standing beside him again.

 _Do you smell it_?

He didn't want to try breathing exercises. _No,_ he lied, flustered. If he could avoid having to play at the scent games as his grandpa always tried to put him through he would be incredibly happy. _What is it_?

Yami took a long pause, then began to slowly creep forward, breathing in roughly and scenting the air until his body began to quiver with the force of it. He bristled faintly but continued forward after a few heartbeats that seemed strangely elongated.

When they got several feet ahead Yugi could not help but smell it. At first it had been a mindless trickle of a scent. But now it bore on him violently. He shuddered. _What is that_?

 _Death._ He picked up his pace almost as if he might be able to outrun the word. The white wolf felt small and shaky as he trailed a step behind him. His ears were flat and his tail was down. Death? Yami did not slow his steps until they could see the faintest sliver of sunlight from somewhere further within the tunnel. The optimistic part of Yugi crowed with triumph that they had found the exit but it was the intelligence of his lupine form which challenged this idea, relaying the fact that it was impossible as the sunbeams came downwards and not inwards.

The blue-violet-eyed wolf hesitated a few steps behind him, slowing drastically. _What do we do now_?

Yami glanced at him over his shoulder. _We continue until we find the exit. The river has to have a way into the forest somewhere. There have to be branches throughout and somewhere has to have an area to get out to the surface again…_

Yugi hesitated, wondering, and then froze in place as he tilted his head. _Are these the tunnels_? he asked quietly.

As he'd expected, Yami did not bother to beat around the bush. Disdainfully, curling his lip back slightly in distaste, he murmured, _Yes, these are them._

Yugi stared at him silently for a moment, then shook his head and began to move again slowly. His paw brushed against something and it rattled as it skipped softly across the floor. But the noise echoed loudly and Yami curled his lips back completely at the way it reverberated in his ears.

 _What was that_? Yugi snapped, fur bristling. It wasn't solid like a pebble or a stone and instead sounded strangely hollow. He turned to the other wolf with a frantic expression.

He flicked an ear. The smell of death and decaying flesh was a burning encroachment in his nose. It made his skin crawl as he shifted forward a step. The darker wolf ignored him again as he began to pad forward. He touched the object with his paw, then kicked it forward with a small movement. It rolled and rattled as it pushed further towards the lone source of light.

He tilted his head. He knew the sound somewhere in the back of his mind. With a glance at the other, wondering at the noise, Yami found himself nearly laughing. He recognized it. It was similar to the way his skull had sounded when he hit the brick wall after the car collided with him.

 _It's a bone._

Yugi bristled. He sounded so casual about it.

Yami abruptly stiffened, spinning around with a growl. The smaller wolf strained his ears, listening for whatever might have caused his alarm. For a moment there was only silence but for the soft trickling of the water further ahead. And when he scented the air the fresh decay and wet stone curled within his lungs painfully.

He felt a small tremble coming over him, his spine aching and itching beneath his skin. There was something unnatural about the smell and something even further overwhelming about the small space. Something was wrong…

 _Yami…_?

The black canine glanced at him sideways. _Keep your ears pricked and your eyes open. I don't think we're alone,_ he growled softly, turning away and striding forward again. Yugi hesitated and then hurried to his side. The bone scuttled across the stone of the floor and he bristled faintly as he looked at him.

But Yami paid him no mind and continued quickly forward. It was only as they began to near that source of light that he began to slow and glanced at him with an unreadable expression. Both of them stared at each other, long and slow, and then bristled faintly as they looked forward again. Their steps were slower and more pronounced as the chamber opened beneath them. The water sound was much louder, though nowhere near the roar of a river. The scent of decay was suffocating.

Below them a drop of about twenty feet was a round dip in the earth, almost perfectly circular, with a rather large stone of granite which protruded upwards almost like an altar. Around this stone, in a faint trickle, was a small stream shallow enough to see the bottom in clear specks of shimmering water above dark limestone with the faintest of shadows, about the width of his entire body. The glow of sunlight made the stone look almost ethereal, shimmering with strips of black and blue and specks of golden discoloration. Around the walls, however, were shadowy forms of thin structure, frail and fragile in design. The stone made it almost impossible to see them clearly but he could picture their shapes faintly, light shadows and hideous indefinite forms.

 _What are those_?

Yami didn't answer him. Rather he peered over the edge of the dip in front of him, eyes sharp. _The path is clear down here. We'll have to move down there to get through to the exit._ He pricked his ears again and tilted his head slightly as he started to peer across the small cavern. His eyes flickered when they glanced at Yugi and seemed to glow a bit more when he turned away again. The light had made his pupils mere pinpricks and the smaller wolf shivered as he followed him.

The black wolf was light on his feet, as easily stealthy as he had been the night Yugi had run across him at the dumpsters behind the Burger World restaurant. He was a near-silent shadow, drifting across the stone floor easily, lazily, as if he had never possessed a limp in the first place or his shoulder was completely unharmed. He paused as he lowered himself from one ledge to the next in easy movements, walking like a cat balanced on a fence post. He glanced up at him as Yugi began to place his paws properly upon the floor to start his path to follow him slowly towards the glittering stream further into the cavern.

Yami watched him, then turned and began to work his way to the ledge beneath. It was much narrower and he scrabbled. Yugi stopped short and looked down at him, eyes sharp and alarmed. He stiffened but did nothing more than glance back up at him. _I'm okay,_ he assured quietly, aware of the fact that the small teen looked ready to risk leaning over the edge to grab his scruff. He would take them both down if Yugi was foolish enough to do such a thing.

Yugi nodded and began to work his way back along the ledge he was balanced on. His stomach tossed and he tried to sink his claws in to grip at the slippery surface of the smooth stone. But it was useless and his calloused pads did well to keep him balanced but the very possibility made him extremely nervous. He could drop at any time if he we not careful.

Yami watched him for a few moments, then leaped across to the third ledge. The jump was miscalculated and his back leg nearly collapsed beneath him. His left shoulder throbbed with pain and he felt his head burning as it pulsated through his blood. He would have to lie down again soon. He would need to rest and lay down, to eventually eat and then sleep as long as he could without interruption. He nearly swallowed a groan as he pulled himself to his feet, unable to hold back the slight whimper that left his mouth.

The movement behind him stopped and Yami stiffened as he turned his head to look back at him, eyes sharp. _I'm fine. Watch your steps, Yugi. Do not mind mine,_ he growled quietly, shaking himself out. As expected, blood sloshed and hit the wall of the stone beside him. In the sunlight it was too light, so thin that it spilled downwards in rivulets like rainwater. He nearly cursed. He was extremely unhealthy…

 _Is your shoulder bleeding again_?

Yami hesitated. _Yes_ , he admitted after a long moment, then forced himself to begin moving again. He was exhausted beyond his former limitations and his body felt more worn than he had ever known it to be. He paced forward a few small steps, then glanced up and felt the fur along his spine rise in a bristle. His mouth fell open, his eyes widening in pure horror and shock. His ears flattened and he barely resisted the urge to snarl in distress.

Lining the walls, shadowed deeply from the upper sunlight, was row upon row of skeletons. Their bones were bleached and pale, so white as to compare to snow. Several others still had some decomposing, yellow and greenish or blackened flesh which was quickly becoming destroyed within the limited sunlight, watery and stuffy air, and the harshness of the cold winter. They lined ledges as if they were but amiable Halloween decorations.

Yugi stood at the edge of his own, eyes locked on Yami rather than looking the direction he was. Fearfully he wondered what might have made him bristle so harshly or stand so rigidly with such a scent of horror and terror. He kept his eyes on him because he was a safety net in an area which promised him nothing but panic.

 _Yami_?

He blinked and then turned his head. In doing so the entire expanse of this collection of death came to his eyes. He shivered and quaked, then turned his attention to him. Their gazes locked almost immediately, boring unto each other, and Yugi watched him, anxious and bewildered.

 _Just…follow me,_ he muttered, turning away again, and struggled to force himself to move. His legs were shaky and the exhaustion bore so heavily that he was tempted to simply turn and leap. He was able to do such a thing without a hint of damage to himself when he was healthy. But now…? He could not even fathom pretending to think himself able. _We'll be okay._

Yugi kept his eyes glued to him, watching his slow progress until the larger wolf turned and dropped to the ledge beneath. He landed awkwardly, foot nearly slipping, but held his ground with his nails and pads keeping his weight pinned effectively there. He drew in a deep breath as he sprang, landing on the thin shelve of stone, and glanced unconsciously towards the blood on the wall. If he only brushed closer it would color his fur.

He hurried to scale this ledge, to catch up with the other wolf. His stomach was growling as he stepped a little behind him and the noise echoed viciously throughout the chamber. He almost ducked his head in shame but Yami reacted violently to the noise. He spun, snarling and snapping his jaws. The ledge was just wide enough that he did not topple over, though his blood streaked the stone there as well. He stared at him as he stood there, fur in a bristle, tail raised, ears pricked and eyes locked on him.

But when he spoke, his voice seemed to boom outwards, no longer confined between the two of them.

 _Come out, she-wolf_! _I know you are here_!

He stiffened and his head snapped around. Did he mean the alpha from the pack in the woods? Did he mean another wolf down there with them? What if she was the one who had made the cavern smell so terrible of rotting flesh? What if they were her old kills, left there to be baked in the sun but kept somewhat frozen by the status of the world around them?

The shadows were long and stretched at the ledge he stood on. Even as he craned his head and looked about them, he could not fully see the end of the cavern. It was too deep and the light was unbalanced by the addition of that raised stone within its center, shadowing a good portion of the area in front of him. He strained his eyes, however, and felt his body grow further rigid as he was rewarded for his efforts.

Yami snapped his jaws as she approached, a lighter shadow than the rest, at first blending in seamlessly with the surrounding darkness and then growing more defined as she came into the light. Both lycanthropes were frozen, almost as if bound by the sight of her.

She had the frame of a large gray wolf but her ribs and legs were thinner, her limbs longer, her paws larger. Her face was full of more fur and her cheeks larger. Her almond-shaped eyes were a glowing, ethereal golden, framed brilliantly by her longer muzzle. Her ears were smaller, softer in design, and her gait was elegant as she passed into the light completely. She was thin, lean, with a gorgeous coat of light cinnamon red, her entire body a solid shade of the soft color.

Yami was still, his harsher features falling into one of something almost akin wonderment. He tilted his head after a moment, then began to pick his way along the ledge again, closer to Yugi. She was large enough to be a very capable threat. And she seemed likely to possess the speed that Yugi did. She was somewhat smaller than him, her shoulders leaner and her height an inch shorter. Yet she stood with such regal an air that it made him bristle faintly.

Yugi could not take his eyes off her, even as he too began to move closer to Yami. He was wounded; he might not be capable of fighting her away on his own. Yugi's heart was hammering in his chest as he considered them both.

The pool rippled where she touched it and her paws sank only low enough that it covered half of her toes. She peered at them, eyes cool and mesmerizing, beyond the mortality that even their own uniquely colored gazes offered.

She stopped beneath the rock and took a seat at its base. Her eyes were still locked on them. But her demeanor was soft and simple, friendly even. Yugi watched her, unnerved by the silence she offered, and his ears flicked towards Yami.

 _What do we do_?

The black wolf hesitated for a moment, then forced his fur to lie flat. He drew in a breath, at first attempting to gauge her scent, but the air was too heavy with death. He forced himself to shift a step closer to Yugi, considering her from his perch. _We seek Lupa's Blessing,_ he announced in a loud, firm tone.

The she-wolf turned her attention solely upon him. _My mother's blessing, child_? she whispered, her voice soft and gentle like a drifting wind or the trickle of the water around her. She tipped her head to the side, studying him. _Then so it is granted, Yami._

He bristled and his teeth chomped immediately at the air. Yugi was frozen in place, staring in shock at the idea of hearing the other's name upon her foreign tongue. How…?

She blinked and glanced to Yugi. _Code Name Atem, was it_? _Or perhaps I should call you Motou Yugi_? she inquired gently.

Yugi pressed back, throwing himself unconsciously into the stone. His side ached from the force of it and he stared at her with wide, bewildered eyes. _H-how…_?

She raised her head, looking to Yami who was eyeing her suspiciously, and moved a long tail to wrap around her paws. _I have watched you both from the time of your birth,_ she said simply, and Yugi swore her lips pulled back at the edges into a gentle smile. _I have seen your first breath, your first wound, your first meeting. I have witnessed every moment of your life._

Yugi bristled. _Are you psychic_?

Yami shook his head slowly. _No, Yugi, she is the goddess, Slifer, the Guardian of the Dead._

He spun on him, startled by the shaken note in his voice. _W-what_? he spat out, eyes wide as his fur began to rise once more. _That's impossible—_

 _Clever, Yami. Yes, I am Slifer._

Yugi felt his head snap towards her before he could stop himself. He blinked, unsure of what more to do, and then folded his ears back against his head again.

 _I am the Guardian of the Dead, the goddess of those who have passed among the lycanthropes. I know every moment of every wolf's life, the moment Ra grants them life to the seconds their hearts begin to lose their rhythm. I share with them their experiences through my connection. For once one is born their life will eventually lead them to death._

Yami was shaking slightly. _You can't…_

She looked at him, long and slow, and then tilted her head. _I would never think to harm you, child. You and Yugi are as much my own as you are Ra's as you will one day come to be known as Obelisk's as well._

Yugi glanced at Yami sideways. _She…_? _Who is…_?

 _He's the god of war,_ he answered distractedly. _Slifer, what is_ …? _Why do you have_ …?

She glanced around them as if she had never seen the chamber in its entirety, looking about herself as if with wonderment. _I am meant to protect them, as they have surely entered my domain. But death comes too swiftly now. I am unable to bury them properly and offer their physical bodies refuge within the earth._ She looked back at them. _The humans have overrun this world with a great many bodies. The tortures they wrought upon them surpass my abilities._

Yugi shivered. _The experiments…_

She gave him a dry, distasteful glance. _Yes, if that is what you truly wish to call them. I see them as hideous tortures, but perhaps in your young years your memory is cleaned of your own experiences there,_ she sneered softly, though her eyes glittered with a cautious familiarity which made his stomach drop painfully.

 _I…I don't recall much of anything,_ he admitted quietly. _As Code Name Atem, I don't seem to have many memories, if any at all._

Yami bristled faintly but did not respond. Instead he began to turn and pick his way along the ledge once more. Yugi hesitated, watching him with the widest of eyes, and then began to take immediate action to follow. They both reached the ground a few minutes later, the task of walking hard and laborious for their weakened forms.

The water was cold and soothing and Yugi wanted nothing more than to lay in it and perhaps sleep until he could no longer. Yami, on the other hand, felt slightly sickened by its touch yet overwhelmed by the gentleness of it. He kept himself upright, however, despite the longing he too felt to lay down and rest.

 _Do you wish to know more, Yugi_?

Yami flattened his ears against his head. _Yugi, count it as a blessing that you do not remember and stop while you still have the chance,_ he pleaded softly. _The things I heard were done to you were horrendous. You don't want to know._

Yugi looked at him for a long time, staring at the way his eyes were glazed with slight panic and avid disgust. He blinked at him, then glanced towards the she-wolf again. _Tell me what happened to the other wolves_ … _How did they end up down here_? _What killed them_?

She stared at him for a long minute, though at first her eyes were caught solely on Yami. _Many of them died from all of the experiments done to them. Others from forced breeding._ She glanced at them almost dismissively, yet somehow with the faintest hint of affection as well. _I go above ground to retrieve them when I am given the opportunity._

Yugi flicked an ear. _What was done to them_?

Yami shot him an annoyed look. _You are not the least bit clever,_ he snapped disdainfully. The smaller wolf gave him a flustered glance. _Not the least bit sneaky, Yugi._

 _I wasn't really trying to be._

If he were human he would have rolled his eyes and scowled at him. As a wolf he flattened his ears, pulled his brows forward, curled the left side of his lips back from his incisors, and stared at him in something almost akin distaste.

Yugi wanted to laugh at it. He looked so much like his human self at the moment. He wagged his tail slightly at the sight, eyes bright as he looked at him. His ears flicked and he nearly opened his mouth to pant with exuberance.

 _There are tests done to measure healing capabilities,_ Slifer cut in suddenly, making them both immediately turn back with startled expressions. She sat neatly there, not a single hair out of place, her eyes glacial with disgust and hatred. _They cut the skin, measuring the time it takes to mend. They do it with healthy wolves and starved ones. They force them to breed or attempt to artificially do so_. _They often cut into their brains while they are still alive and without anesthesia._

Yugi felt his fur rising into a bristle.

 _They pit them against other apex predators, often brought from other areas of the world illegally. They are subjected to various poisons, with tests run upon them to insure the dosages will not kill them but that that the toxins are effective. They burn them, scold them, brand them. They put them in tanks and test how long they can swim, when they'll drown and how long it takes to revive them._

His eyes were glazed as he looked at her.

 _They give them adrenaline rushes which spur on changes or transfusions of blood to see if their types will destroy each other. They inflict various diseases to attempt to see if they will die from them. They mutilate their features to see if they will heal. They break and mend bones improperly to see if they will break and attempt to reshape themselves correctly on their own. They will tear teeth out to see if they will grow back._

At this point Yugi had swayed and nearly fallen. He was hacking and choking and his entire body was shaking as he vomited bright yellow bile into the crystal water. His eyes were dilated, nearly completely black, his ears pricked and his tail between his legs. Yami, beside him, merely looked at him with an expression that showed only clear annoyance towards the fact that he had still pushed to hear such things.

Yugi was shuddering when he vomited again. He should have been dead. The experiments should have killed him.

 **The work log entry for the month of December is broken into two parts because, like another couple of entries, it got way too long to put before the chapter because it was almost long enough to be its own separate chapter with the details and events that happened in them.**

 **I'm going to admit that I'm not one hundred percent satisfied with this chapter. But it sets up a few huge plot points later, including some revelations, new characters coming on scene, and some elaborate traps that come up. So, overall, I'm going to say about ninety percent happy and satisfied with it. Anyways, there are some parts of it (i.e. the lack of attention the fire gained, the fact that the hunters didn't seem to find Yugi's school uniform, etc) that play much larger events within the storyline.**


	32. The Pack

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day (no update on June 2nd)**

 **Chapter Warnings: Mentions of Torture/Experiments, Awkward Sexual Situation, Hints of Puzzleshipping, MILD Bloodshed, MILD Fighting, Mentions of Potential Death/Killing**

 **Okay, so just some slight insight onto this. Atem was put through almost every experiment but the one involving the implanted uterus or altering his size. He also was not forced to be put through breeding for the sake of being too young and later unable to change between forms. It was seen as defective as the Pure-Blood should have been able to do so without question. So yeah, Atem was never drugged and had the uterus implanted. But he DID go through all of the various tortures done to the organs (including and not limited to removal, cutting, sheering, being stabbed through, etc) So when Yami says he doesn't think that Yugi was put through that, he's right. Yugi never went through that.**

 **Okay, so the waterfall/gorge area within the mountain range is the Sounkyo Gorge. These waterfalls (Ginga and Ryusei Falls) freeze during winter. So, for the story, I'm going to say that** **the Obaku Dam forced some of the water underground. The amount of water eventually caused the tunnel formation that Yugi and Yami traveled in the last chapter. The water would be running a lot faster and would be a mixture of the river source and the pockets of hot spring water that dried out formerly (before Yugi was even born). This would cause the water to be too fast to freeze in winter. And this fast moving water and tunnel formation also extends outwards enough for the sewer system to be created beneath Domino City in a more natural kind of way/formation.**

 **Geographically the Kobaku rock formation would be the closest indicator of the area; this area is blocked off due to the potential rockfall hazard it poses. But the cliffs would stretch further and for several hundred miles more in which eventually their waterfall would form. This gives it more room to gather speed for the water and the setup for the forested cliff formations that the wolves live and hunt within so often. It's never directly explained and Yugi doesn't truly say much more about it all. But, if anyone was curious about it all, that's the explanation for the area the pack exists in.**

 **Anyways, Domino is situated very near the Daisetsuzan National Park area (as hinted at slightly in chapter thirty when it was mentioned Kaoruko's body was found near the road to the nature reserve). Yugi's house is the last one on that strip of road, but it continues upwards and to Route 273 which eventually leads to the Ginga Tunnel and further. So, across from the street is the forest range which eventually leads upwards into the mountains and from there to the gorge and beyond.**

 **Okay, guys, so I'm not going to post again until the twenty-seventh, seeing as this is the end of Part II. I was originally going to wait until June fourth, but then I started to feel antsy thinking of that (because that's how I always get with posting dates and that's a pretty long time without updates and that always freaks me out).**

 **Anyways, I'm going to use the time between now and the twenty-seventh to get ahead again on my writing for this story as I know that Part III is going to be something of a pain in the ass as I go along with it. So, in order to fix a few details that I know I missed in my original rough draft on my phone, I'm going to be going back and forth with a couple of things. Anyways, expect me to pick up my updates again on the twenty-seventh, unless something happens that prevents me getting back on schedule.**

Chapter XXXII: The Pack

 _Work Log Entry XXXI Part II: December, 2000_

 _December 11_

 _The wolf has finally passed and, thankfully, the boss was wrong. A.T.E.M. did not protect him in order to sink his teeth into his carcass. He seems to have protected him to show that he would not be forgotten, as some of the experiments have altered the perfect memory of the wolves._

 _For whatever reason, his actions have concerned the higher-ups far more than his impending death ever did._

 _December 12_

 _As expected, the deceased wolf's sibling has fallen into a deep depression._

 _According to the tests, however, Pure-Bloods feel emotions far more vastly than their half-blooded counterparts. With such results, it is unknown as to how A.T.E.M. has managed to remain at the wolf's side for this long._

 _It is speculated that he will die overnight._

 _December 13_

 _As expected, he has passed away._

 _A.T.E.M. has not left his side all night._

Yami bristled slightly when he brushed against his side. His shoulder ached and his flank was bruised where Yugi brushed against it softly. The taller boy thought to snarl at him in response to such a touch, furious from the pain which came upon him. But the small teen merely gave him a weak smile and then curled a bit more comfortably into a ball. The red-eyed lycanthrope watched him for a moment and then turned back to the television which played on front of the bed. The mattress dipped when Yugi curled a little tighter.

Since they had gotten back and the small teen had taken care of his wounds—both of them had been stripped and cut with a scalpel blade and flushed with water and disinfectant then stuffed with gauze and stitched—Yugi had not once left his side. The small teen had stuffed the kit under the bed and left it there. He had then sat so close to him that Yami had almost felt completely overwhelmed upon his personal space being encroached. He had lain with him minutes later when he had grown exhausted. And the other wolf had eventually lay beside him and allowed him to move closer.

Now he was pressed into his side and hip, curled up facing the television with his head propped on the folds of his arms where he kept them against the top of the pillow. Yami was slightly stiff with pain but the exhaustion weighed heavily upon him as well. Even as Yugi wiggled and moved a bit more forcefully into his side to get comfortable, the taller teen was growing more tired than responding to the pain. He was not even snarling by the time Yugi finally found himself comfortable enough to simply lay and relax completely.

"Sorry," Yugi grumbled, but he neglected to comment that he was trying to keep him awake. And he was obviously failing. Yami blinked, eyes still glued to the screen for the moment, and nodded curtly. He had meant to make him snarl at him so that he could check that he wasn't going numb. But he had fallen short of snapping now. Yugi shivered.

"Yami?"

The other wolf blinked and his eyes flickered rather than his head turning to face him. "Yes?" His voice was lower, gruff, and it was clear by the glaze in his eyes that he was exhausted and seconds from falling asleep.

Yugi hesitated, then shook his head. Yami needed to rest if he was going to heal. But his head was buzzing and he felt as if he might puke if he slipped away from him now.

"What is it?"

Now Yami stared at him with clear, dark eyes, somewhat concerned but more than a little flustered. Yugi frowned for a moment, then shifted a little closer to him still. It made him grunt between his teeth and wrinkle his nose. But he was responding at least and that made him relax slightly.

"You said that she barely scraped the surface…"

Yami blinked and then scowled at him. " _This_ is what you wish to talk about right now?" he spat in annoyance, shaking his head. "You want to talk about the experiments?"

He began to chew the inside of his cheek, studying him pointedly. The other wolf stared back at him in pure irritation, then sighed loudly and turned away. For a moment neither of them spoke, and then finally Yami opened his mouth.

"They used to remove large chunks of organs to see if it would regenerate. Then, in other wolves, they took them out altogether. They mutated their cells to make them larger or smaller than usual. They did implants to see if males could carry pups. They attempted to change the seed of some of the wolves. Every now and then a wolf would be put into a fighting cage with another animal—bear, tiger and crocodile were most common. They would be struck with cattle prods and starved before being put it. Others would be well-fed and shocked through their collars."

Yugi was trembling, eyes wide. "Was I put through that?" he demanded quietly, eyeing the other wolf as he stared blankly at the television. Slowly Yami turned his head and looked at him.

"Code Name Atem was put through each of the experiments in order to make sure he could withstand torture and regenerate and that he would not die. They had to make sure the creature they bred was truly a Pure-Blood and not just a mockery of one." Yami let him absorb this for only a moment. "But _Yugi_ was never put through them. So count your blessings that you cannot remember and thank Lupa for her discretion, yes?"

He stared at him. "But others remember it…"

The other watched him with something of a harsh look. "And? What is your point? Each wolf at one time or another faces something hard in their life."

"Don't start talking to me like that, Yami. You know I'm just…"

"Upset, yes, I know. But it happened."

"It's _still_ happening!"

"But not to _you_."

"But the others are probably just as innocent as me in all of this and they're the ones being tortured!"

Yami raised a brow. "But what you'll come to realize about life is that it's survival of the fittest. Wolves will die. Humans will die. Dogs and cats and ferrets and little rats are going to die. There's no way to prevent it."

"But I want to help them."

He suddenly sat up, twisting around to face him. For a moment he simply stared at him, then he lowered his voice to a growl. "Then do us all a favor, Yugi, and do not get caught by them again. Once Code Name Atem is captured again, none of us know what will happen. They might damn well kill us all using some strand of your DNA or create immortality in themselves to be able to destroy our entire species. Do you understand? Code Name Atem is a weapon more than a person."

"But if no one knows what his purpose is for—"

"It's not going to be something sweet and simple! Your birth was unnatural and brought on by human manufacturing! You are not listening! There can be no simple and easy existence for a creature so heavily coveted, Yugi."

He frowned, then slowly reached up. His finger brushed against his shoulder and Yami nearly flinched but curled his lip back instead. The smaller teen laid his hand there for a moment, then studied him a little closer.

"This," he muttered softly, removing his hand, "is something that wouldn't have happened if I hadn't escaped."

Yami bristled. "Much worse would be happening."

Yugi let out a small sigh, then closed his eyes. "Maybe, but…" He blinked at him and Yami was leaning more precariously over him, red eyes darkened, his lashes appearing somehow longer for a split second. He looked exhausted and the heaviness of his gaze made the smaller teen shiver. "I'd rather not have anyone get hurt because of me."

"That is going to happen regardless. We all hurt someone at some point."

He narrowed his eyes and shook his head in annoyance. "Yami, that's not what I meant. And you know it! I meant that if there's some way I can stop this, why shouldn't I?"

"Because, Yugi, how is it that you know this will truly stop it?"

He stared up at him, startled and confused, eyes wide. "Why wouldn't it?" he asked with clear confusion. "I don't…?"

"How should you truly speak with certainty about the idea that the experiments and torture would end if you were to hand yourself over to them?" he inquired, raising a brow in such a forceful and sly motion that Yugi thought of a cunning, vicious snake. "The fact is, perhaps even if they were to get their hands on you again, they might simply attempt to breed another like you."

Yugi tilted his head. "Do you really think that's what they have planned?"

"Why stop at one when you can make many?"

He searched his face. "And you think Ra would let that happen?"

His expression was scathing when he smirked at him, a sneer forming on his face. "She allowed us to be born, didn't she?" He curled his lip back. "You, me, Valon—as the hellhound said, there is no reason for our existence beyond destruction."

Yugi shivered and the other wolf watched him coldly. They stared at one another for a long minute and then glanced back towards the screen once more. They paused for a moment before they glanced at each other sideways.

"Do you really hate your life this much?"

Yami blinked and then scowled at him. "I do not hate my life. I am simply mad. And I do not like the idea of the way you keep speaking to me about going back to the humans who did all of this. Nor do I care for the fact that you keep asking me about all of the things that have happened to you in the past."

Yugi flinched. "Well, yes, okay, but I don't understand…"

He shook his head. "Sometimes you don't need to. Sometimes you simply have to ignore things and remain oblivious."

He frowned at him. "When is that ever a good idea, Yami?"

"When things are too miserable to think about and experience without making you desire to kill yourself at the end of it all." Yami paused a small handful of seconds, then smirked as he tilted his head to the side thoughtfully. "Sometimes obliviousness and naivety can be a saving grace."

"You say that like you weren't just kept in a cage," he sighed, raising a brow and frowning at him unhappily. "But you weren't experimented on, Yami. You said so yourself."

He rolled his eyes. "That does not mean I did not hear the screaming or the death cries, the humans all yelling at each other, or notice the way that some wolves would not return. Do you truly not understand how much worse it can be to hear and not see?"

Yugi shivered and frowned at him, eyes flickering away again before finding their way slowly to his side. "I never really considered it," he admitted softly before shifting his weight to wiggle slightly from beneath him. He barely brushed against his left arm which propped him upright but Yami flinched back all the same. He shuffled away from him, then took a seat beside him again. "And I'm sorry. I just…"

Yami shook his head. "I reacted badly. I apologize for snapping," he finally muttered, looking briefly towards the television before turning away completely again. "I just don't understand why you should truly wish to hear about any of the things you had to suffer through before. It just does not make any sense to me."

For a long moment he was silent, then he shook his head and shifted to move from beneath him. The taller teen immediately pulled away and backed up slightly on the comforter. His head tilted and his eyes widened faintly as he studied him for a moment as he began to sit up.

"I just…I don't like the idea of it happening to others. Or me being unable to remember when others are forced to live through those memories everyday…"

Yami tilted his head. For a moment he thought to argue that he doubted they were unable to avoid thinking about it for at least a day. But then he realized, too, that perhaps Yugi was not wrong. Many of them were probably disfigured, with wounds or limps or things that just failed to heal…

"I don't know how I'm supposed to be Atem without them…"

Yami was frozen for a moment, then looked at him slowly, a skeptical expression beginning to claim his face. He frowned and tilted his head slightly. "Memories are not what make a person. It is their choices. Even with amnesia, a person is basically as they were before as their nature and personality are ingrained within them. It is their decisions from the moment of being unable to remember which defines them." He hesitated. "Sometimes, Yugi, I think that my own memory is faulty, because, at times I see things crystal clear. But others they are murky and sometimes altogether black."

"But you said that werewolves have perfect recollection."

The taller teen barely suppressed a flinch. "I don't remember them having done experiments."

Yugi studied him, confused, then blinked wide eyes and froze in place. "You don't remember…" _So he automatically assumes_ … "But…what if they did? What if that's what's wrong with—?"

"I don't want to know!" he spat furiously, eyes flashing like gems. He bore his teeth and snarled low in his throat. "I do not wish to suddenly stumble upon such memory. And if I were ever to be offered the chance of recollection I would deny myself such a thing. I am who I am with or without the memory of what might have been done."

Yugi watched him for a moment, but did not say the words that lay so heavily on his tongue. What it came down to was that no one expected anything of Yami. But the wolves had a very clear definition of what it was that _Code Name Atem_ was meant to be and do. He frowned, then wiggled and shifted his weight.

The other boy blinked at him before turning and lying back as he had before. The smaller teen immediately moved to bump his hip, making Yami growl softly before settling more comfortably once more.

Yugi ignored him and instead closed his eyes where he was laying against the pillow. He supposed he could simply stumble his way through as he so often did.

He must have dozed off for the next time he awoke, the sky was darkened and the moon was a heavy waxing phase within the clouds of dark gray. He blinked against the darkness and strained his vision for a moment, struggling to comprehend his state of sudden awareness. He blinked, for a long time unsure of himself, and then stiffened.

The noise was soft, nearly nonexistent. He froze in place, unmoving beneath the blanket over his shoulders. He didn't remember grabbing it, and it took him a moment to realize why it felt somewhat smaller than usual.

When he looked over his shoulder Yugi was there. He was fast sheep, pillow crushed against his face, forehead and cheek wrinkled with red from his rest. His hair was disheveled and he was drooling from the corner of his lip. But he was under the same blanket as him, most likely because he had become worried about waking him if he settled under the comforter after grabbing the blanket.

But thank the gods for his kindness as it was surely a lifesaver now. Yami could hear her, a light weight moving within a short rustling gait. He shivered faintly, then moved to draw himself out from beneath the blanket and to the floor. Yugi made a small, short disgruntled noise from atop the mattress. But he did not awaken nor do more than roll over.

The door opened a moment later. Yami was digging the heels of his palms into his eyes in an effort to wake himself enough to get back onto the bed when she left. But the heaviness weighed his eyelids and he could barely keep them from closing for the night once more. His head sagged slightly as he heard her move a step into the room.

His first instinct was to remain frozen. His second was to throw himself under the bed. But realization reminded him that should he do such a thing he might wind up falling asleep. The concept made his skin crawl and he quickly banished the thought. Why should she have reason to come to his side of the bed anyways?

But she was getting closer and his heart was racing. His stomach dropped painfully. He drew in a deep breath and closed his eyes tightly. His lungs felt shaky with his growing anxiety and the thought caused him to want to puke.

She came closer still, but stopped at the other side of the bed, closest to Yugi. Yami thanked the gods again that the small teen had been so thoughtful and kind as to grab the blanket and throw it over him. Since he had not fallen asleep without a fleece throw, it seemed far more believable that he had simply fallen asleep watching the television. He blinked at the screen, the reflection which peered back at him. The glass was tinted enough that he looked like a mere smear of dark gray against a white plastic encasing inches thick. He stared at it, the glittering gleam of bright red which peered back at him, soft slivers when he narrowed his eyes into slits.

He could barely keep them open any longer. But she was doing something behind him. He could hear the blanket moving, Yugi shifting awkwardly beneath the throw. There was a soft exhale, one that bordered the place between consciousness and unconsciousness. The small teen stretched only enough to kick his legs, then pulled them up again. His breath whistled through his nose.

Yami felt his head beginning to spin. His eyes had grown wide and his stomach was aching as it twisted tightly. He blinked in the darkness, narrowing his gaze, and then clenched his eyes shut. Yugi was not reacting in any form of stress. But his instincts still warned him of such a thing. He was vulnerable in front of him. He could easily be killed in his sleep.

 _It's his mom,_ he tried to remind himself, but another hideous part of him snarled, _Yours tried to rip your throat out._

It paralyzed him, the way the memory slammed into him. But it was not fully forming beyond the harsh snarl which had left her jaws. He remembered hearing the saliva which fell onto the floor in harsh rivulets. He remembered her voice, hideous and distorted, calling him words he had not understood then.

But his panic was overpowered by his determination to make sure he was not discovered. And it did him well to remember that Yugi was not being attacked. It did well to remind him he was okay, would _be_ okay. His mother was not the same and their situations were so completely different. Comparing them in any sense or manner was entirely disrespectful and almost insulting by every mean. He drew in another deep breath, eyes clenched shut.

He could feel the weight crashing through him once more. His stomach twisted harder and his eyes burned with exhaustion. She would not harm Yugi. And if he kept still and quiet, she would not know of his presence there.

She said something low under her breath, which he assumed resembled a wish of good dreams, then began to turn away. Her departure was as easy as her entrance. Yami reached up to rub at his eyes, then froze.

The door had just barely drawn to a close.

"Yami?"

He let out a soft grunt, exhausted. Then he turned around and poked his head upwards from the side of the bed. He struggled to keep his eyes open. But Yugi seemed to have no problem with the task. His gaze was sparkling with laughter and his lips were drawn in a gentle smile.

"What woke you?"

Yami shook his head slightly, then struggled to pull himself onto the mattress again. He hovered at the very edge, then shifted closer to him. The smaller teen held the fleece blanket back for him and he moved until he could easily be encompassed by it when Yugi released it.

"I don't know." He closed his eyes and his body winced with the weight of it all. "I just wound up awake. I… Thank you."

He could almost picture the confused expression to match his voice. "For what?" he asked quietly. Yugi blinked in the darkness and Yami shifted closer to the pillow. He looked so tired that Yugi wanted almost to draw him closer and allow him to sleep in his arms. But the taller teen was already half asleep and Yugi swallowed hard at the concept.

It took everything in him to prevent himself from asking if he was okay or not.

The stupidity of the question was clear in his mind. Of course he wasn't okay. He could still see his skin raw and pink around his eyes and temple and his shoulder had been raised slightly all day. He was tense, scared, and still incredibly wounded. But he had not wished for medication to help him sleep and so Yugi had not tried to force him.

But now he wondered if he should have. Maybe it would help him ease some of that obvious ache in his body.

"The blanket…" Yami breathed out, almost asleep again. His eyelids twitched as he struggled to maintain enough consciousness to speak. Yugi blinked, then tilted his head before nodding slightly.

"You're welcome." He paused, then yawned slightly. "Goodnight."

Yami started to form the first letter on his tongue but what came out of his mouth was a long, breathy sigh. Yugi snickered, watching him for a moment, then closed his eyes and settled for sleep as well.

He woke again hours later. The window was still cloaked in darkness and Yugi could feel his stomach growling, gurgling with desire. He yawned softly and his teeth clicked. The other boy shifted in his sleep as if to respond to his attack but instead began to slip further from consciousness once more. The smaller teen smiled faintly as he looked him over for a split second before pulling himself into a seated position. Yami breathed heavily through his nose and Yugi glanced at him in surprise before moving to bunch the blanket further around him. He'd get under the covers when he came back. That was probably a lot easier to keep from disturbing him.

He got to his feet slowly, unsteady, his legs tingling and aching, and yawned softly as he reached up to rub at his eyes. He needn't have, however. His eyes adjusted seamlessly as he began to pad through his room. Normally the walls would have appeared simply dark gray in such lacking light. But they stretched before him in a simple shade of dark sky blue paint. He blinked and tilted his head, then glanced over his shoulder. Beneath the window the carpet was dark purple but not nearly black as it normally seemed. He glanced slowly towards Yami.

Where his hair should have been pitch black, he could see the streaks of gold in a more metallic shade, the base of dark strands, and tips of blood red. Most nights he could only see his bangs in stray shades of dark gray. Now they were vibrant even against the night's shadows.

He blinked, somewhat amazed by this realization, yet slightly unnerved as well. Yami had not told him he was able to see so clearly in the dark. He had not bothered to tell him that he too would begin to experience it. And if he hadn't bothered to tell him that, what other kind of unnatural little tricks was he going to stumble upon?

He sighed softly and Yami shifted slightly on his sleep. His head tugged downwards and he bunched his muscles for the smallest of seconds. He relaxed again but his head did not shift back and Yugi could see where the strands were becoming knotted from the action.

He shook his head and turned away to make his trek to the kitchen. When he opened the door he felt that the click was oddly loud but he ignored it. His ears popped slightly with the sound even as he began to pick his way towards the entrance of the kitchen. His stomach twisted with another snarl and he licked his lips as he started towards the pantry. If he remembered right, there should have been some granola bars inside. He thought he remembered picking them up a while back.

Then again, with all of the crap that had happened recently he wouldn't have been surprised if he was wrong altogether. He probably hadn't grabbed them. But when he swung the door open and looked inside, they were seated in their box, the aluminum of their wrappers glinting faintly from the light from the window. He snatched it out towards his torso, stomach growling furiously once more.

Chocolate chip with peanut butter, he read before pulling a couple out and putting them on the shelf again. The wrappers crinkled as he tore into the first one, taking a bite and then ravaging it when his stomach growled harder. He swallowed the chewy bar in two seconds, then followed it with the other in another couple of bites. He tossed the papers into the trash, then backed up a step as his eyes flickered back to the box.

He could eat all twelve of them that very second. But it was smarter to leave the remaining ten there. If he ate them all he was sure his mom would want to know what had happened to make him do it. He only liked granola bars sometimes and those intervals were few and far between in all actuality. So if he just dropped all twelve in his mouth like he was so tempted, she might ask what was going on. She might wonder if he was sick.

His hunger was hardly sated but he figured it would settle somewhat when he was back in bed and got a bit more rest. He sighed and trailed his way back, humming under his breath as he came into his room again. Yami was still asleep for the most part, though it was obvious with the way he yawned and stretched his body out that he was only partially still unconscious. His hand stretched out, searching and reaching, and the taller teen grunted softly before his eyes opened into slivers.

Yugi smirked slightly as he closed the door behind him quietly. The other boy's eyes opened fully, flickering to him, and then closed again. He rolled over as the smaller teen came to his side. "I just went to get a snack," he explained softly, moving to get under the covers. Yami squirmed to give him more room and then finally moved closer to the edge of the mattress so that he could slip under the sheets without too much effort. "Sorry about waking you."

"You didn't," he muttered softly, "I was going to wake up anyways. My face is tingling too much to stay asleep."

He nearly flinched before sighing softly. "Do you…mind if I turn on the TV again? I'll mute it."

Yami closed his eyes again, then shook his head slightly. "I do not mind," he replied softly. It might even do him well and help him fall back asleep. Maybe the light patterns would make him sleepy again. He reached up to wipe at the bridge of his nose and his skin stung for a moment before the surface tingled faintly. He thought of it as a discolored bruise, far worse than the usual dark mark upon one's skin.

The smaller teen had to fumble to reach over his head for the remote which lay on the desk in front of him. Yami blinked as he watched his fingers close around the black object before he felt his weight fall back into the mattress. He sat up just enough to turn it on, then moved to rest against the headboard.

They both stared at the screen as the light flickered and the channel changed with a click of a button. Yami blinked tiredly, barely resisting the urge to yawn once more. The smaller teen tilted his head as the screen changed again, then froze in place. The other lycanthrope stiffened as well, more alarmed by him than the announcement on the television.

But his eyes had not removed themselves from the screen either as he stared, and his gut clenched tightly with shock at the sight. A girl's body had been found, hideously disfigured by the mutilation that had been done to it. The head was half off along the left side, the shoulders broken and caked with bone fragments within dried blood. She'd been scalped, her skull showing where her hair should have been. Her right arm was missing beneath the elbow.

Her eyes were wide open, gaping at the screen. Her right leg had been forced awkwardly up and back, breaking it completely in half so that the bone was an immense shard of white and pink. He didn't know who she was, but he did have enough sense to realize that her physical form put her in the same age group as them. She had most likely gone to the school.

Yugi had most likely known her.

He most likely knew her killer as well.

He was not sure why Yugi turned the volume only to its lowest setting. He knew he was awake and watching as well, so his decision made Yami tilt his head in confusion. But his bewilderment did not last as the horrified tone of the reporter came to his ears in a low hiss of static noise.

"Police are baffled by this newest murder. They have noted that the kill is similar only in the body's heavy mutilation after the death. But the way she was killed is entirely peculiar to them. Unlike the several bodies which have been uncovered so recently, the method of which the killer took her life was not as terrible as the former victims."

Yami blinked and narrowed his eyes. Yugi shook his head slightly and scowled. Their thoughts circulated rapidly in other directions, but swept slowly towards a single conclusion between them both.

Was it yet another _werewolf_ who had killed her? Were they sent after Code Name Atem? Was their method meant to provoke a reaction from him?

"The death has already been determined that the girl's throat was first cut with something very sharp. No traces of metal have been found, however, and so knives have been ruled out as the possible weapon. However, the killer traced precisely along her pulse from her chin to her breast and even the entirety of her right arm."

Yugi stared blankly.

No weapon? That meant they had to have used their nails right? Were a werewolf's nails sharp enough to do that? He sat up a little, glancing at Yami's wrists. He'd been distressed when he had done that, but was it possible he could have done it regardless?

Yami awkwardly moved to draw the blanket up closer to his throat, eyes still on the screen but attention clearly caught on him.

"The body was then given the torture you see now. But she was not living when this happened, thank the gods."

He flicked the television off, then looked at him pointedly. "Nails?" he demanded quietly.

Yami turned to him. "I would assume so. They said nothing about traces of saliva."

"So a werewolf that decided to completely drain the blood from the upper half of the body and leave it in the lower? But you saw where she was. It looked like there wasn't any blood anywhere around her."

"Perhaps she wasn't killed there."

Yugi flinched and then turned to him with a desperate expression. "Okay, so he drags her out after heavily mutilating her. Why?"

Yami shook his head. "You're asking the wrong questions, Yugi."

He blinked and turned his head to consider him completely. "What do you mean? What should I be asking then?" he demanded icily. "You don't always seem to have all the answers or ask the right questions either!"

The taller teen blinked slowly and raised a brow, eyes narrowing faintly as he tilted his head. It was not a challenging expression but Yugi could see the faintest flicker of irritation on his face.

"The placement doesn't matter and neither does the mutilation. As she reported, the death came from their initial attack which was the cutting along her pulse. What happened afterwards is mere distraction. What you should be asking is why the line of her _pulse_. What you should be concerned about is the reasoning behind this fact and why it is that he left her to be found. If he was attempting to place the body under the lure of deaths similar to the others it would make sense. If he had killed her and her body had been stumbled upon, then perhaps it is almost as it was with Tomoya."

Yugi flinched at his name before searching his face for a long moment. "But why the pulse? Do you know of any reason, Yami? I don't understand at all…" he demanded quietly. "I mean, why would a werewolf kill like that when all they need to do is bite! Why didn't they just tear her throat out?"

"Hellhounds are unpredictable."

He waited a long minute, then felt his cheeks flush with frustration as he watched him closely. "And?" he spat. "What does that mean exactly?"

Yami tilted his head and frowned at him openly. "Lycanthropes are sparse where wolves are no longer prominent in the area. They can get away with it around the states, but places such as Britain and Japan or Scotland, hellhounds are more prominent. They are part dog and often mistaken for larger breeds. It is very simple for them to blend in where lycanthropes have problems." He hesitated for a moment. "Thus, most likely, what killed her was a hellhound. It probably cornered her, attacked, killed her, and, for whatever reason, they chose to do so by way of her pulse. I have no answers."

Yugi scowled, shaking his head. "You have no ideas, Yami? You can't be serious. You have to have had some kind of idea, right?"

He bristled faintly. "Why is it that you always assume me to have answers? I have none to offer you! Do not look at me as if I have committed treason for not understanding the reasoning behind the decisions of a hellhound."

"You have to have some kind of an idea! Yami, you aren't stupid!"

"And yet you assume yourself to be then?"

"What? No! I—"

"Then why must you think I have more of an idea than you? I have none. I am _not_ a hellhound, damn it. I lack understanding of them! You can glare at me all you like but it changes _nothing_!"

Was he glaring? Yugi felt his face fall, eyes widening in confusion. He blinked, further startled, and then tilted his head as he looked at him. Quietly, feeling slightly sick, the smaller teen muttered, "I didn't…"

Yami shook his head slowly. "It doesn't matter. The point is that I don't have answers. I'm sorry. But I don't know anything. And arguing about it will not fix anything."

He flushed harder, then looked down, sighing quietly. "I know. I'm sorry. I just… It sucks."

Yami watched him for a long minute or two, then turned away and reached up to run a hand through his hair. He sighed quietly, yawned, and moved to settle back into the pillow. "Maybe you can ask Valon."

The smaller teen blinked and then looked at him with wide eyes for a moment. It was a comforting statement in theory but became obvious how unlikely it was that Valon would be there to help him. He was nice, but he was also elusive. Yugi had not even been able to catch up with him to thank him for making everyone stop acting like he had killed all of the students. Although, he wouldn't have been surprised if he heard jokes and snickers about it later that day…

He sighed and flipped the channel to a comedy, rolled over, and settled into his pillow comfortably again.

* * *

He was barely moving when he began to make his way up towards the clearing. In the afternoon light it was given a reddish tint across the field of snow and all he could think of was the blood that had been spilled in some strange attempt to call to and summon him. He remembered the alpha calling his name, shouting, "Canis Lupus Dirus" and "Code Name Atem" in the loudest of voices. And the chanting set him on edge as he continued forward. He wondered what she did with the bodies, if it was Slifer who came up to receive them or the alpha took them to her. Maybe neither. Perhaps they simply rotted and wasted away. He didn't know.

Yugi hesitated as he stepped into the clearing. The wolves had gone through the area at some point that day. He shivered and glanced around. The tracks were all run over in every direction, however, and he had no idea how it was that he was meant to read them.

Fortunately, it seemed, however, that he didn't have to. When he turned his head slightly, the she-wolf was standing in the tree line. Her head was tilted and her body mostly concealed in the shadow of a large tree. Her golden eyes glinted at him, sharp and fiery, and her ears flicked as she considered him. He was not sure what she was looking for but when she found it she came towards him in a long and slow walk.

 _Code Name Atem,_ she greeted him, wagging her tail lazily and stopping a few feet away from him. _You have returned._

He fought away a shudder and grimace, instead watching her curiously for a moment. He didn't like the way she looked at him as she said it or the way she seemed to peer through his soul. His stomach clenched and he watched her closely. "I wanted to ask you something," he admitted quietly, freezing in place when he heard the rustling of pelts as more wolves began to rush forward.

She held her tail up and the movements stopped. A dead silence had fallen upon the forest as they looked at each other. _Yes_?

Yugi hesitated, then reached up to fumble with the strap on his shoulder. "What is it that I'm meant to do? As Code Name Atem? What is my purpose?"

She didn't blink and instead wagged her tail harder. _You will lead us to victory,_ she proclaimed. _You will be our alpha in the most important war to ever happen between the wolves._

" _War_?" he sputtered. She _truly_ expected him to lead them in a war? What the fuck? He was truly expected to lead and win a war? Shizuka had said the same, hadn't she? And then Mai and Otogi as well, yes? But then…Otogi had been among them when he'd seen them in the clearing…

And he had already known of his identity by then. He had already…

But for whatever reason they'd stayed silent…

 _Yes, when war is to break out between the wolves, you are to lead us to fight our brethren and win,_ she stated simply, watching him.

Yugi blinked at her and slowly shook his head. He had the impulse to snap out a great many reasons why he was not going to be leading anyone into war. But then he faltered. A heady, light, pulsing, intoxicating scent had come upon him, drifting into his nose. He blinked, stupefied, and turned his head in confusion.

A sudden picture flashed within his mind. A woman, no older than her twenties, her hair matted against the pillows, eyes hooded, body covered in a sheen of sweat. Her lashes were long and defined, her chest heaving, her breasts larger than he could even open his mouth. A husky moaning whisper crept into his mind to accompany the image and his skin began to tingle violently.

He couldn't breathe for a moment. His eyes flickered silently until they fell upon a she-wolf with a matching gaze. The silver female stood a little taller, head tilted, eyes sparkling, as the image sprang forth in his head again.

Normally Yugi would have felt his face heat and his body respond to this form of stimulation. But instead something in his spine tightened and his lips curled with disdain. His eyes snapped immediately to the alpha.

"Why would war break out between the wolves?" he asked, pointedly ignoring the way the she-wolf began to shift closer to a tree. She brushed against the trunk, scratching her side roughly, and the scent burst forward in an intoxicating cloud. He blinked, glancing at her sideways, and the image was accompanied by a much louder, lower moan. He curled his lip further, repulsed by the idea and then at himself. What was wrong with him exactly? He'd been attracted enough to random strangers to get aroused before…

The alpha turned her jaws towards the other female, snapping her teeth at her furiously. She bristled and her tail rose high as the silver lowered herself to the ground. She whined and rolled onto her side but the scent came in a heavy breeze that made Yugi stiffen faintly before nearly rolling his eyes.

He should have been attracted to it. He should have been all _but_ head over heels for her at the moment. He could see the other male, the one which had attacked him before, responding slightly. He would draw closer and curl his lip back and Yugi thought he faintly saw his back arch.

A lean black male, on the other hand, began to pant. His ears pressed against his skull and he kept looking off to his left. Yugi's eyes flickered and caught, stunned at the sight. _Otogi,_ he thought as he took in the white tips of his ears and the way his gaze rolled with currents of deep teal color. He bristled faintly, but remembered his face amongst that crowd of wolves calling for sacrifices once more. He had been there when he and the other wolf—Marik, wasn't it?—had come to blows as well.

He remembered him. He had seen him. The small teen huffed softly but Otogi was trembling and he caught the way a sleek-furred golden and silver-furred she-wolf tilted her head towards him. The suggestion was clear even in their wolf expressions. Her ears flicked and her muzzle tipped towards him somewhat. Her brows rose upwards in clear seduction.

It did not take him even a moment to realize that it was Mai.

 _Enough_! the alpha spat furiously, spinning on the she-wolf who still rubbed against the tree trunk. _None of you are to attempt to mate with a son of the gods_!

Yugi turned his head but could not fully take his eyes off of the sideways glances Mai and Otogi shot each other so shamelessly. He tried to imagine it but he could never picture himself being able to do such a thing with Anzu. He did not even think he could see Jonouchi attempting such obvious displays with his future girlfriend. And the gods knew that Honda would never have such abandon. The thought brought, despite himself, the idea that perhaps neither would Yami.

Yugi wondered how easily someone could fall into such a comfortable manner of flirtation as to forget that others might be within the same area as them. Was it possible for someone shy like him or as cautious as Yami or as proud of social structure as Honda to ever become like that? He couldn't tell and the thought made him somewhat shaky.

So caught in their display was he that he hardly noticed that the two wolves were snarling and snapping at each other. The alpha had all but sprung upon the silver wolf and the other was pressed low into the snow with her tail between her legs. Yugi turned to them only after a few moments, then glanced sideways towards where he saw Marik hovering a few steps away. His lips were pulled back, eyes glassy, and his fur was ragged with an intense bristle. He looked as if he might leap forward at any moment and it made the small teen feel almost sick.

Mai abruptly turned her head towards him. Yugi immediately looked at her, eyes sharp. Her dark violet gaze was warm and teasing, but there was something troubled there as well. Her browned muzzle was streaked with the softest hint of silver along the strip of the center. Along her eyes was a golden-brown shade of which blended effortlessly into the tawny shade which came upon her cheeks and downwards along her throat. The white was minimal along her body, with small patches along the fronts of her long legs and the inside of her hindquarters. Her fur was mostly tawny, splashed with streaks of golden, and given the softest touches of silver and gray and strands of black. She was smaller than the alpha and even Otogi who did not appear too large himself.

Yugi tilted his head curiously for a long moment. Then he turned away. "Why would the wolves go to war?" he demanded sharply, cutting them off at the throat. In the corner of his eye, Mai began to wag her tail in something of a grateful manner. He shivered and they both looked at each other for a moment.

Otogi bristled slightly but his eyes were on Mai, his ears angled towards her in clear desire. But he could tell his attention was more on him than even her at that moment.

The alpha stopped her quarrel immediately. Her head turned and her tail wagged. But her body was still clearly positioned to toss the other female to the snow again if she so much as breathed the wrong way again. _The details are lost to time but it is known among both species that it will happen. The wolves will battle. A great many events which have happened long through time have been leading up to this moment._

Yugi bristled. "Why? What happened?" he spat. "What is it that I'm supposed to be doing for the wolves?"

She blinked up at him, now more stunned than curious. Her gaze grew rapidly bewildered as they looked at each other for a long minute. _Do you not know_? _Do you truly not know_? she asked slowly, flicking an ear uncomfortably.

Mai was staring at him, so pointedly that Yugi was forced to look at her finally. The moment he did, his eyes widened drastically.

An image, crystalline in definition, appeared in his mind. The trees were soft in their outline but the focal points of the picture were intense and overpowering upon looking at them. Two wolves, bodies of immense opposing colors, a shadow and mist, stood against a background of pine and frozen undergrowth. The eyes were glowing, red against blue-violet, the two looking at each other closely. Ears were pricked towards each other, their gazes slightly lowered from one another. They blinked and stared and breathed in unison, sharp in attention.

As it faded, she began to tilt her head further. A small whine bubbled up within her throat. Yugi gaped at her for a moment, then bit his lip uncomfortably. They regarded each other for a moment and the she-wolf pricked her ears forward further, furrowing her brows and wrinkling her nose. The two of them stared at each other a moment longer. Then she let out a deeper whine, desperate and quiet.

He knew the two wolves in the forest. There was no way he could have ever missed it. But it made him bristle faintly to think that she had seen them so clearly at some point. How long had she been hiding around to see that?

She tried again. The image changed. This time the wolves were human. The frames were slight, the hair spiky. They were close, walking in unison. Yami was facing him, mouth moving. Yugi was watching him, studying him. They were walking from her view. But he could tell clearly what she had seen.

And he understood her message now as well.

She wanted him to ask Yami.

"Why would the wolves end up fighting?"

She wagged her tail slightly and dipped her head in clear delight that he fully understood her wordless musings. He nodded slightly and reached up to scratch at the back of his head. He nodded at her and her mouth opened just enough to show her incisors in clear happiness.

* * *

Yugi was greeted by an intense and furious scowl when he entered the room through the window. Yami was seated on the bed, eyes sharp, red gaze glittering with disdain. At first he was unsure of what more to do beyond stare at him in shock. What had he done to piss him off? He could not think of anything that might justify his anger. He could not recall having done anything. Was he finally going to let loose on him over his jacket? Had he finally gotten to the point that he was too angry to remain silent about it any longer? His heart was pounding.

And then he saw his nose working. His chest was expanding and contracting in rapid movements. His eyes were sharp and cold, like glittering ruby gems. He was watching him emotionlessly but for his obvious disdain.

He flushed. _The she-wolf and the pack_ , he realized, watching him with something of a horrified expression. He could smell them on him. He drew in a deep breath, then exhaled harshly. "Hey, Yami," he tried quietly, hesitant when he saw his face darken further with distaste. Yugi sighed and shook his head roughly as he reached up to pull on his bangs in frustration. "Don't look at me like that. It's not what you think."

"So then I suppose I am wrong that you were propositioned by a female in heat?" he asked coldly, eyes narrowing into slits. The way they bore into his, glimmering with such open hatred, made Yugi falter for a heartbeat. His lip curled back and the smaller teen thought for a split second he might leap forward at him in his growing anger. "Perhaps my senses are failing me."

Yugi looked away and rubbed the back of his head in open embarrassment. "Uh, no, that's not…"

"Damn right that is not what is happening." He sneered a second later, bristling when the smaller boy glanced at him from the corner of his eye. His gaze was somewhat stunned and slightly bewildered and Yami hated him for it. "And I suppose that the other scents I can catch on you are neither Mai nor Otogi? And would that or would that _not_ lead me to understand that those _other_ scents would be _more_ members of their pack?"

Yugi flinched and shook his head. "N-no… I-I mean… Yes… But…" He hesitated for a moment, then reached up and tugged on his bangs harder for a long minute. "Shit, yes, okay? I went to see the pack in the mountains."

Yami shook his head and looked at the window. "You don't bother to listen to me," he commented coldly. "I cannot seem to truly recall an instance where you ever have."

Yugi flinched. "Yami, I need answers." He faltered. "You might want to ignore everything related to Code Name Atem, but I can't afford that luxury, okay?"

He turned his head, frozen for a moment with a stricken expression. Then he bore his teeth and snarled furiously, "Answers? You want answers? Fine! I can give you answers! What would you like to know, Yugi? How he was butchered and organs were removed? How about how they attempted to perform brain surgeries on him without anesthetics? How about the many times he was locked in his cell without food or water to see if he would die of dehydration within two days' time? Would you wish to hear of how he was pitted against full grown apex predators at the age of six and unable to change or—?"

" _Stop_. P-please…" he begged. "Please just don't…"

"But isn't this what you wanted to hear? About all the things that happened to you as Atem?" Yami sneered furiously, opening his mouth to further snarl at him. But Yugi sprang forward. His hand covered his mouth instantly and he sat on his haunches on the mattress in front of him. The look in his eyes was horrified and desperate as the two of them regarded each other closely for a moment.

"Don't… I don't want to hear anymore…"

Yami scowled at him for a moment, then looked away slowly. He was still furious but the tension was fading from his shoulders. He blinked and glanced at him, then reached up to remove his hand. Oddly, even as he slid his fingers along the top of his hand, he curled the nails slightly downwards. The fingertips brushed against the skin of his palm, tickling him faintly, and then he squeezed slightly. The smaller teen was both bewildered and stunned by the touch, blinking owlish eyes at the other lycanthrope.

The taller boy slowly twisted his wrist to pull his hand away, untangling their hands to lay on his leg as he looked at him. "Fine, I will not speak about it any longer," he said quietly. "But I still do not understand why it is that you do not listen to me. I warn you against the pack and yet you go to see them as if they are your friends."

He expected him to say more, yet the taller boy merely blinked at him. And he realized slowly, feeling sick to his stomach, that Yami was too exhausted to argue further. He was far too tired to attempt to bother saying more. And it made Yugi dizzy to come upon such a realization.

"Do you want a shake?" he asked mindlessly. Maybe he should try to get his hands on collagen powders and drinks instead. Would that help with muscle mass and weight gain? He bit his lip. He would have to do some research first. "I can go make one—"

"You always act as if you need to leap up and take care of me," Yami scoffed softly. "But I don't need you to."

Yugi flinched, eyes wide. Was now the moment that Yami finally said he was going to leave? What was he meant to do if he did? Yugi could feel his lungs constricting at the very thought.

The red gaze studied him a moment longer. "You do not have to go so far out of your way for me all of the time. I understand that you are worried about whether I will heal properly or not, but it will be fine. I have nursed similar wounds before."

Yugi watched him momentarily stiffen at his own words. It was clear by the way his eyes grew somewhat far away that he had not meant to say such a thing. It made him bristle faintly but Yami shook it off seconds later.

With a forced fluidity, the taller teen made his body relax once more as if he had never grown alarmed to begin with. "I will be fine eventually."

"Yeah, but eventually could be a whole lot sooner if you let me help you," he argued, biting his lip. "And besides, I know you hate limping and seeing those burns on your face just as much as I do."

"Hmm, I wasn't aware you hated my face," Yami quipped, with such a serious expression that Yugi immediately opened his mouth before seeing the humor glittering in his eyes. The smaller teen rolled his eyes and barely refrained from calling him a jackass. "I'll try to remember that the next time you try to show me how humans kiss."

Yugi flushed bright red, immediately barking out a desperate scoff of "Next time? Ha! There's not going to be a next time."

Was it him or did Yami's eyes flash faintly with something almost sad? He thought his expression was etched with melancholy but it was gone within a heartbeat. The smaller teen sat up a little straighter, blinking at him curiously. Had he truly seen that? But then…

He'd seemed so attached to Ryou when he had first seen them together. He had hardly reacted to his death, however.

He had not seemed to truly think much of it one way or the other. He had seemed so removed from it that Yugi had initially wondered if he even truly knew him. Was it possible that perhaps Yami had used him as a way to lead the hunters away under the guise that he _himself_ was Code Name Atem? Was it possible?

Yami did always seem to play a big game whenever he tried his hand at victory. He had gambled in chess and in checkers. He had done so even more in his task of leading the dogs away from him in the woods. And he had repeated the gesture in saving him at the greenhouse, whether that was an instinctive reaction or not. He would not have been surprised if Yami somehow knew…

After all, Ryou had _recognized_ Yugi as Code Name Atem. And Yami had explained that he had been in the laboratory for all of a few days. They had not even been able to do anything to him. Yami had said himself, after all, that he did not go into a fight without knowing that he would come out of it. He had said it might not seem as such but that he always knew the odds before he confronted them.

Perhaps he had known that he had looked so much alike him that it was possible to confuse them. They had never seen Atem considering the conversation between Ryou and Panik. He thought it was rather safe to assume that Yami could have attempted to confuse them using his own similarities to him to lead them from him.

But he'd seemed almost shocked to see him when he'd come up on the dogs—

"Yugi."

His head snapped up, eyes wide. He had not even realized he'd lowered it at any rate. "What?" he asked with wide eyes. Yami was staring at him blankly. "Are you okay?"

He blinked and his eyes grew owlish. "Are you truly asking me that?" he muttered, bewildered. "I am not the one who seems so lost in his own mind."

"Oh!" He flushed faintly. "Sorry. I was just…"

Yami shook his head. "Did you hear anything of what I said?"

He blinked. "You were talking?"

His chuckle was warm with amusement. "I was." He paused. "I was asking you to take me to meet the pack."

Yugi was frozen in front of him, somewhat horrified by the very idea. "The pack?" he asked slowly. "You want to meet the pack? But I thought you said you don't trust them."

"And I don't. Which is why I need you to take me to them."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"It does."

Yugi tilted his head and watched him curiously for a long minute. "How?" he asked quietly. "You didn't want to see the wolves before. And if you don't trust them, then why would you want to see them? Yami, seriously, it doesn't make any sense."

"It does. Because you are my beta and I your alpha. And if you are meant to associate with them, it would perhaps be best if you were to allow me to see them before you begin such association." He paused, watching his stunned expression. "What? I may not care for the wolves but you are my beta and I care for you. Am I not meant to wonder about what it is they truly want from you?"

The smaller teen blinked in shock again, then felt his lips tug into a light grin. "You really want to meet them?" he asked with a lopsided smile. He felt almost like a teenager asking his parents if he could date and becoming relieved when they asked to meet his partner. His skin tingled as he looked at him for a moment, curious and bewildered by this sensation. "I mean, you really don't have to—"

"You're my beta. If this is something you truly plan to pursue, then the least I can do is help you to determine if it is safe or not."

Yami wondered if he sounded arrogant at the moment, because a spike of something like irritation pricked at his insides. Yet Yugi looked more shocked and faintly amazed at his statement.

"That would be… _great._ I mean…if you really want to do that," he murmured, cheeks heating slightly with the awe which coated his tone. He barely resisted the urge to shiver with delight at the idea. "I mean, don't say it just because you think that's what I want you to do…"

Yami rolled his eyes. "You will not do things for me when I want you to so why should I do them for you? If I were to adopt the philosophy that you do, nothing I did would ever be from kindness," he huffed, though he paused and tilted his head. "And you should know well enough that I am not one to be persuaded to do something I would fail to originally consider."

He lowered his eyes but there was something harsh that flashed within them and Yugi was very acutely aware of the fact that the female had propositioned him. He drew in a deep breath and looked away at the window with a flustered heat that crept along the column of his neck and across his face. He cursed under his breath, but he had a feeling that Yami heard and looked up at him and he nearly cringed at the thought.

Yami cleared his throat awkwardly, a long and deep noise which made Yugi look up with wide eyes. He faltered when he saw the way the red-eyed teen refused to raise his gaze from the comforter. His wrists were held up and stretched out towards him and his voice was small when he muttered, "I…I need help."

He blinked, then gave him what he hoped to be a reassuring smile. "Of course…"

* * *

His wrists were smeared brown with dried blood but the metallic scent was long gone. Yugi shivered as he looked his long limbs over, shaken by the sight of the discoloration. The fur was matted there, caught in the immense scabs, and the white wolf nearly whimpered at the sight of them. He tilted his head and the other canine merely stretched before shaking himself out slowly. Their eyes caught for a brief moment, then Yami looked immediately away again.

 _I knew I shouldn't have let you change when they looked so bad,_ Yugi hissed, flustered as his ears flicked back and forth uncomfortably. He flattened them against his skull a moment later, wrinkling his nose back faintly. _Now your wrists look worse than ever_!

Yami raised a paw, glancing at them, and then snorted loudly. His breath was a billow of bright white, his frustration apparent in his sharpened eyes. _They do not and you will understand later why I have done this,_ he replied in something of a harsh voice. He faltered for only a second, then glanced at the crusted surface of his shoulder as well.

Yugi felt dizzy and sickened. It was the same hideous brown but with reddish cracks, almost like fine hairs. _For now, this will do what I need as of the moment._

The white wolf tilted his head, unnerved by the words. _You didn't plan to get hurt at some point,_ he said slowly, stretching the words out and watching him with cold eyes. _You couldn't have…_

Yami scoffed loudly. _Of course not. And, if not for these wounds, I would have found some way to split my skin regardless. It was simply by luck that they have scabbed like this. Seeing as it would be hard to feasibly hurt myself when I am healthy, I find this just as profitable all the same._

 _What_? _Why would you want to_ …? He bristled faintly and then shivered. _Why would you assume that you need to do that_?

 _I am not under the assumption that it is of necessity. I am_ sure _that it is._ Yami shot him

something of a disdainful look. _I know exactly what I do and do not need to do when it comes to myself. But for now you do not need to wonder about it. I will explain it to you later._

Yugi was bristled again, lips drawing back. _And when is later, Yami_? he demanded in a clipped tone. _When will you tell me_? _How long am I meant to wait before you answer me_?

 _As long as it is necessary for me to find the words to explain myself,_ he snapped in response, flicking an ear and then beginning to race forward. _But, for now, at least, I would still like for you to take me to the pack._

 _But you smell like blood and you're obviously wounded_! _What if they take advantage of_ —?

Yami turned to him, eyes cold and glittering. _I will sever their heads from their bodies,_ he replied sharply, though he paused and tilted his head as he regarded him closely. _Although, I had also fallen upon the assumption that you would not allow them such a chance as to be able to do so…_

Yugi chomped his teeth, eyes wide and dilated, somewhat fearful. _I would never_! he spat, bristling, and his tail rose faintly as he glared at him. But it was not anger which Yami read there. Instead all he could see was an intense and unexpected fear and confusion. _I_ … _You know I would never_ …

The black wolf gave him something of a wry glance, then licked along his jaws before wrinkling his nose back somewhat. _That is why I said it_ , he responded simply, turning away and beginning to move briskly.

Yugi came to his side, then pushed a centimeter ahead of him. He did not want to overtake him by any means and he was desperate to simply keep pace with him. But he was aware as well that if Yami was ahead of him he was not sure of the message it might send to the pack. It would most likely be perceived as weakness, or so he assumed. The white canine flexed his paws for a moment, then moved slightly closer to him. _Do they hurt_?

The other wolf faltered only faintly. _Not quite,_ he said softly. _Or, perhaps, not enough to truly make me care._

Yugi shot him a concerned sideways glance. _Would you be able to fight if you had to_? he demanded, breathing rough as he considered his options. _If one of them came after you, would you_ …?

Yami blinked in surprise, then turned to him with sharp eyes. _I will manage to hold my own should I need to,_ he replied shortly, _though I would be more grateful if you were to help me._

He huffed softly. _Damn it, Yami, you know I will_! he stressed, bristling faintly before tossing his head roughly back and forth. _I will always help you_. _I just… I can't fight them all off if they_ … _And you're so much stronger and more used to this form than I am…_

He nearly faltered a step, but then flicked an ear. His body stiffened and he spun on the shape hurling itself through the trees towards them. Yugi was bristling and snarling, tail raised into the air like a war flag, as the newcomer approached Yami. The black wolf chomped his teeth and bore them fiercely. His shoulders were braced and squared.

When they collided, Yami was easily thrown backwards. They rolled with the impact. And teeth snapped and tore at fur. The smaller canine was frozen in place. The snarling was a dull roar. The sound of blood spilling into snow was heavy. Teeth clicked. A hideous, high-pitched whimper exploded upwards.

It was this that spurred him into action. Yugi jumped forward. The slender silver wolf released Yami to spin on him. His teeth caught their shoulder, sinking deep. They cried out, a loud and pitiful thing, and he realized that it was not Yami who had yelped. Still, he tugged them off balance. The black wolf rolled over and got to his feet.

His legs were shaky, threatening to buckle. Yugi watched him from the corner of his eye. Then he shook his head back and forth. The wolf snapped at him but missed by inches. He dropped them, bristling, and backed up. They weren't fighting back.

He gave Yami a confused glance.

The red eyes were mocking. _And now you understand why I hate this pack and their ideals. She would allow you to kill her before she would even consider the option to fight back,_ he sneered, chomping his teeth at her angrily. She pressed into the snow but it was Yugi who she stared at. _Because you are Code Name Atem._

He startled and turned his head, lips drawn into a distressed grimace. _You can't be serious_! he sputtered, shivering. _There's no way_!

Yami shot him an irritable look. His shoulder was stinging and he could feel traces of blood somewhere within the cracks of the scab coating his arm. _I am very serious. They will not fight you because of who you are._ He bore his teeth at her when she began to climb to her feet. Her scent made him bristle further, his blood rushing in his veins. He lunged at her before he could stop himself.

Yugi was startled and frozen, eyes wide and mouth opening in surprise. He blinked, bristling. What the hell was he doing?

The she-wolf let out a startled scream of a noise. The two of them collided painfully. He tossed her onto her side. The female scrabbled. Her claws caught on his cheeks. His teeth dug through her skin. Yugi was frozen, horrified. The black wolf crunched bone beneath his jaws. She shrieked an unholy noise. But she was not fighting back now either. She screamed and shuddered. Her paws found useless footing. She attempted to push him away.

 _Yami_! _Yami, stop_! the white wolf pleaded, flustered. His voice came out weak and pitiful within his own mind. He bristled and whined loudly in distress. _Yami,_ please, _please stop_!

His cries were all but nonexistent to him. Yet, somehow, Yami found himself releasing her. He bore his teeth, bloodied. His eyes were wrinkled in the corners. His breathing was erratic. He waved his tail, wagging it. Then he chomped his teeth. She dropped to her belly, rolled over, and exposed her throat to him.

Yami watched her coldly. Then he looked to Yugi. _Do you see_? _Do you see how wrong this is_? _This is why you should never have come here_! _But you have already announced yourself as Code Name Atem_! _And they will believe you because they are desperate for their purpose to be given to them_! he spat, teeth bared. The smaller wolf stared at the stains of red. Their surfaces glittered and danced before him. _They are all a bunch of_ lost, desperate _souls awaiting some big event to justify their existence_!

Yugi bristled faintly, flicking an ear. _You didn't have to attack her. She wasn't—_

Yami sprang for her when she moved to roll over. His teeth chomped shut near her throat. She whimpered and attempted to lick at his jaw. He pulled away and turned back to him.

 _I fear for you,_ the black wolf spat furiously, _as your common sense seems to be so far lacking_.

He bustled. _I helped you, didn't I_? _When the hunters could have easily found you, I saved you using my brain, didn't I_? _Don't call me stupid because you're upset_!

 _I am not_ upset. _I am_ livid. _You disobey me in coming here. And you dare to judge my actions by that of which you see now. But you have no_ idea _what it is that has been done before. You have no idea whatsoever anything to do with this pack_!

He flattened his ears against his skull and his paws twitched as he struggled to hold his ground. Some part of him wanted nothing more than to crawl on his belly and attempt to please him with licks along his jaw. Another part of him simply wanted the fighting to stop. And the last wondered at all of the possibilities and implications of his words.

 _How did you meet them before_? he asked softly, confused. Yami bristled, stiffening, and then bore his teeth into a snarl. _You know them somehow. You ran across them at some point. What happened_?

 _They were confused. They thought_ … He snarled loudly and looked at the she-wolf but the female merely tucked her paws further into her chest and flattened her throat more. _I had just escaped and they assumed that I was_ … _They thought I was you. They_ … _grew angered when they found that I was not. And I_ —

A howl had risen into the air. The sound was melodic and haunting and Yugi froze in place. The tune made no sense to him. Nor did the message it conveyed. Yami bristled, however, and spun furiously, tail raised and teeth bared. For a moment the noise continued, then died slowly. The black wolf waited only a second or two longer, then threw his own head back.

Despite the rigid stance which overtook his body, the howl was beautiful. The haunting edge of it was an undertone, broken beneath currents of ferocity and an inkling of despair. It rose into a crescendo that was the classic peak of a wolf howl, then began to drift away as he lowered his head again. He blinked red eyes and shook himself out and Yugi was frozen at the sight of blood that speckled the snow.

Yugi stared at him, somewhat astonished and confused. He seemed to have lost most of his rage in that song. Yami flicked an ear and looked at him, but his eyes were above his and his head was raised a little higher than his as well. The white wolf flattened his ears against his head again, tilting it and staring at him unhappily.

 _Why did you do that_? Another burst of song came forward. Yami stiffened, bristling faintly, and his ears flicked back and forth as he considered it. They looked at one another for a moment before Yugi swallowed thickly. They were either using their voices in shorter bursts and different tempos to allude to there being more wolves, or there was a great many of them communicating at the moment.

 _We were to meet the pack, yes_? Yami inquired, moving only to scratch his ear and look away. _Then why not announce ourselves_?

 _Because wouldn't it be better to have_ her _lead us_? _It sounds more like we're invading their territory otherwise, doesn't it_? he asked, tilting his head further.

 _I would rather eat my own shit than allow her to lead me anywhere_! Yami spat, chomping his teeth at him. Yugi backed up a step, startled, and then glanced at her sideways in confusion. What did Yami have against…? He felt his fur shudder along his skin. Oh gods… _Besides, I am sure that will be the welcome I will get when they do come._

The white wolf flicked an ear. Then he looked towards the snow beneath his paws and at the bloodied spots on the ice nearest the darker canine. He closed his eyes, wrinkling his nose faintly, and then sighed quietly.

 _What happened_? _You didn't tell me what happened when they realized that you weren't me._ He opened his eyes and a very thoughtful expression fell upon the other's face. His brows rose slightly and his eyes were slightly troubled but curious as they bore into his. His ears flicked and his nose worked for the smallest second.

 _They announced me a traitor and attempted to kill me._ Yami gave him a scornful look. _The alpha especially wanted a taste of my blood._

Yugi was frozen in place. His fur bristled. His eyes grew wide. His heart was racing in his chest. A dizziness came over him for a split second. _No…_ He shuddered. _Yami, you can't honestly… Why would you come here if…_? _Damn it, Yami_!

The black wolf snorted. _Why_? _Because you were foolish enough to remain here when I told you not to,_ he said disdainfully. _And because you are foolish to believe that I would leave you to face a threat of this magnitude alone._

 _Yami…_

 _If you are somehow_ not _truly Atem, they will do the same to you as they did to me. And, unlike me, you are not as experienced in fighting nor do you have the will to kill when it comes to your own survival._ Yugi made no move to argue but the black wolf bristled all the same and glanced about them with his teeth bared. Both of them were well aware that Yugi would not kill for himself and never had. He had killed for Yami, but he had not the done the same for himself.

 _I am Atem, Yami,_ Yugi said quietly instead, watching him. The other turned his head and regarded him with a somewhat distressed and unhappy expression. A shadow of something passed within his gaze, long and sharp and haunting. He shivered and the darker canine simply turned away.

 _Do not say it with such pride,_ he growled quietly in distaste, glancing towards the trees. _There is nothing to be proud of._

Yugi shook his head, watching him. _If I can't be proud of myself in some way, then what am I doing with my life_?

The other wolf grew very still. A faraway look entered his eyes, cold and distant. The trees, lean and tall, made his gaze darker with shadows. _Be proud of_ Yugi. _Do not be proud of Atem. Atem is not something you should find pride in._

He moved a little closer to him and Yami turned his head immediately towards him, reflexively curling his lips back. Their eyes met for a moment and Yugi ducked his head to lick at his shoulder wound. _I have to find some way to be proud of Atem as well. He's important to me._

Yami flicked an ear, then bristled and snarled low in his throat. Yugi ignored the noise but did not pause in licking at the wound. His eyes were already on the forms coming through the trees, the way that several of them were charging and the others were simply racing. Mai and Otogi were in the lead, both running rather than snarling. And they both halted, startled, upon seeing the two of them.

Yugi wagged his tail in greeting but neither did anything but stare. And it was Marik who snarled and snapped his jaws as he approached. Immediately Yami raised his head and pricked his ears. His body stiffened and his tail rose. Both wolves snapped at each other again.

 _You brought the traitor to us_? the alpha demanded with wide eyes, tilting her head as she came to the forefront of the pack. Yami turned his attention to her, but his eyes were on Marik as well. She stared at the way the smaller wolf moved to press his side into his gently. _And yet…you seem to be under his spell_ …

 _Under his spell_? Yugi snorted before raising his head and watching her with a condescending expression. _What spell_? _Common sense_? _Knowledge_?

 _Why have you brought him here_? she asked slowly, baring her teeth at him. _Is he meant to be a sacrifice_ …?

 _I'll rip your throat out,_ Yami snarled low in his throat. He wagged his tail at her in challenge and Yugi brushed against him more forcefully. The black wolf silenced and looked away, huffing.

 _What is the meaning of this, Atem_?

Yugi wished for the smallest second that Yami had warned him prior to all of this. But he would have to take what he could get. Lazily he turned to the alpha and wagged his tail.

Mai flicked her ear towards Yami. The movement drew his attention. An image, hazy and distracted, drifted through his head. The edges were blurred and the content was somewhat confused. But he could see himself there, the alpha snarling viciously and his own teeth bared. He blinked and tilted his head.

 _Yes_? he asked quietly in confusion.

Yugi could see the staring between the two of them but he did not comment. _What makes him a traitor_? he asked slowly instead, flicking an ear. Yami did not so much as blink at the blatant disregard in his tone. _You must know something that I do not._

Mai tilted her head, focusing hard on him. _…What…happened…_? She wagged her tail, pleased with her ability to communicate with him. The black wolf blinked, tilted his head, and then rolled his shoulders.

 _I told her I was not Atem._

She blinked and her head snapped towards her alpha. Another image flashed into his head, accompanied this time by Yugi's voice. They were in the woods, Yami coming back from his change. Yugi was standing there, speaking.

"I am Code Name Atem."

 _Yes._ Yami faltered for a split second. _But she assumed it was to be me._

She was struggling when she turned back to him. Her eyes lit with frustration and her teeth were bared when she could not do it. She clawed at the ground and bore her teeth at him. Then she bristled faintly before whining low in her throat.

 _My pelt is black. She assumed it to mean that the time was coming for the war. I did not correct her. Nor did I explain the significance of her error._ He paused and looked uncertainly towards Yugi, a small shudder running through his fur.

Mai whined softly, her eyes sad for a moment. He glanced at her but her gaze was on Yugi as well. His heart hammered for a moment. The two of them stared at the white wolf.

 _Besides his attempt to masquerade as Code Name Atem_? she spat, spinning on Yami with her teeth bared. She licked her lips, running her tongue over her nose in obvious aggression. _He is a hellhound_.

Yugi paused, then looked at Yami who snorted derisively and glared at her. The white canine opened his mouth in a sloppy grin, leaning over to gently brush their shoulders together. When the other turned his head to look at him, Yami was frozen in surprise at the expression. He tilted his head, furrowed his brows, and then cautiously wagged his tail.

Yugi snorted and then turned back to the alpha. _It's funny that you should call him that,_ he announced, hoping to the gods that Yami did not react badly to his next words, _seeing as he happens to be my_ beta.

Thankfully the red-eyed wolf merely blinked and turned his head away. He shifted a little, bristling faintly, when the pack turned as one to stare with varying degrees of surprise. Immediately images sprang into his head, all but two of them of the white wolf biting a faceless person, and the final of his human form bitten by the canine. He flicked an ear and ignored the urge to correct such images.

But what would they do to their precious Atem if they were to realize that he had infected him? They would come to the reality that perhaps it was impossible that Yugi was Atem just as he so often wished. He shivered and shook himself out, though he was sure his frustration and desperation looked like nothing more than nerves and anxiety to them.

 _Your…_? the alpha struggled, expression growing stunned as she faced him once more. Yami met her gaze unwaveringly, curling his lips back to bare his teeth. _But he said…_

 _What I told him to,_ he snapped in response. _I told him not to tell anyone he knew of me or who I was._

Yami flicked an ear. How elaborate a lie he was spinning. He shook his coat out and chomped his teeth at Marik when he turned to him again. The other wolf responded in kind and both snarled furiously at one another. Yugi snarled and chomped his teeth at Marik as well now, startling him away from the darker canine. They studied each other for a split second and then the tan and gray wolf looked away.

 _Now, what I want to know is how it is that he came upon the rest of you,_ he announced, flicking an ear. Yami's heart was beginning to race, picking up rapidly. He looked almost sick for a split second. Yugi's eyes flickered to his, desperate and confused. Instinct dictated that he attempt to calm him, feeling sick and small at the sight of his growing distress. For a moment he wanted to hug him and the idea unnerved him faintly.

 _He did very much as you did. He came in the middle of a sacrifice. Unlike you, however, he did not manage to flee._ She shot him a scathing and suspicious glance, curling her lips back and baring her teeth. _And he did not say otherwise when we addressed him as Atem_.

Yugi flicked an ear, attempting to make the movement dismissive of her contemptuous attitude. _And why should he have_? _There was no reason for him to do so. I told him expressly not to say a word about me or anything of the sort. The fact that he finally told you he was not Atem is amazing to me._ He hesitated for only a moment, then studied Yami more pointedly. _He said he had abandoned his name by the time we met…_

Yami flicked an ear and looked over at him. At least he had not told them the truth of the matter, that his parents had never truly given him one and he had named him. He almost snarled with desperation, the idea making his skin crawl. He had let his own beta _name_ him, because he hadn't had one. Because his mother would rather have torn his throat out…

Yami felt sick for a moment, then pushed the idea aside. His mother wouldn't have chosen such a drastic path if there had been another way. He may have known her only for a few weeks, but he had to believe that she would not have done it. Circumstances had pushed her into turning her teeth on him. His siblings had all passed before then and nothing was going to reverse all of what had happened. She had been driven by grief and the need to protect him…

Yami was not bitter about it. He had grown up with enough pain and anger to realize that this was not the thing that he truly needed to allow himself to be enraged over. He sighed softly between his teeth and looked to Yugi more pointedly.

 _He is your beta…_ The alpha watched them for a long moment, eyes flashing and face darkening briefly. She curled her lips back at Yami once more. _And yet he does not seem to be keen upon admitting such a thing._

Yugi curled his lips back. _He tends to dislike having attention on him,_ he stated coldly. _And you are welcome to cease your glares and ignorant comments. Or I can put them to an end myself._

Yami startled, head snapping around in surprise. He blinked, eyes wide, and then flicked an ear in mounting distress. His gaze glittered with uncertainty as he watched the other boy. Yugi was bristling and his tail was raised. His shoulders were squared and his entire body was rigid. His teeth were glittering and his jaws were opened only slightly. He was glaring and furious.

And yet he could also see the faintest hint of anxiety beneath his anger. He knew that fighting them off would be too much of a challenge. He wouldn't make it out alive. And if Yami was wounded, he might not be able to rely on his efforts either. They could easily wind up dead within minutes considering the force of the wolf pack they were facing.

Yet he knew as well that it was the she-wolf who led them. And if he could fight her off the others might fall back as well. He shivered and bristled faintly once more.

The alpha merely lowered her head, however. _I will not turn my fangs on Code Name Atem,_ she stated in a plaintive tone. Her eyes flickered to Yami again. _And, as he is yours, he is offered the same protection. None of my wolves shall harm you or yours._

 _Good,_ the white wolf snapped with a pleased expression on his face. The relief was only visible in the way his fur shuddered slightly. _Well, now that that has been established, you had a desire to show me the pack's territory_?

 _The territory ranges throughout the mountains. We will need more than a single day to explore it all,_ she replied in something of a dry tone, eyes flickering towards him and then Yugi. _But we can show you our camp, where we rest and eat._

Yugi startled. She called it a "camp"? But it was meant to be called a rendezvous point, was it not? And what about the den? Wouldn't they have a den in which they would…?

 _It is a camp because they plan to go to war,_ Yami stated quietly, a whisper of his voice so low it nearly drowned within his own thoughts. _If it were not, it would be a rendezvous point or a gathering place. But this pack is geared towards war and victory. As such, they will never be able to call it anything_ but _a camp_.

He looked at him, startled and slightly amazed. That _was_ a war term, wasn't it? They called the bases camps and vice versa, did they not? It would make sense that they would do so as well.

 _Very well, show us the camp,_ he announced, nodding. He cast a small glance towards Yami. He had been inside of it before, hadn't he?

The black wolf studied him for a moment, reading his inquiry, and supplied him with an image which made him hesitate. The sight of it was purely masterful, beautiful beyond his expectations. Within the center of his mind was a great clearing of stone, where water foamed and splattered along the walls and floor. The shadows reflected within the current made intense ripples within the shadowed crevices. The dim light was reflected in rivulets and flickered brightly from one wall to the next. The cavern was a monotonous silver, though further inwards were ribbons of limestone which looked almost carved. Along the back was a small, almost invisible speck of light which he realized was jagged along the sides, torn apart by something up above. Then his vision tilted and above him he could see brambles, bright brown against the sun, so thick and sharp that it sheltered the cavern perfectly.

He blinked and the image was swept away by an immense sea of brilliant red. It stared at him, sad and cold, and he found himself puzzled. Yami's eyes were older, shadowed, and he looked more upset than Yugi had formerly assumed him to be.

 _It looks_ …amazing…

 _The most beautiful creatures are often the most dangerous,_ he bit back in a soft, broken tone. _You must remember that. These wolves are not stable. And they will drag you down with them if they are given the chance. Their beauty hides their venom._

He blinked wide eyes, then glanced at the other wolves. Marik was watching them with a glittering gaze. It was clear he wanted nothing more than to spring at Yami any chance he got. Yugi bore his teeth at him but the other wolf hardly noticed. And the darker canine beside him did not waste a glance in his direction.

 _Remember yourself and who you are, Yugi,_ he stressed softly, _as that is what you may lose if you become too heavily invested in this pack._

Yugi nodded faintly, unnerved. Then he turned to the she-wolf who watched Yami with suspicious eyes. _Take us there,_ he demanded softly, moving a little bit closer to Yami until he could feel the heat of his skin beneath his fur. The wound was angry and sore and pulsated with his body temperature in erratic bursts. But neither acknowledged it as they simply stepped forward, and the she-wolf nodded and turned to lead the way. In perfect silence and unison, the other wolves began to make a flanking formation, encircling them and padding at the exact pace of their leader.

The white wolf was truthfully surprised to see that none of the others turned their attention to Yami. No one snapped their jaws or growled. There was silence beyond anything more than the muscles rolling beneath their pelts. When he glanced at Yami the other wolf looked more exhausted and exasperated than he had ever known him to before. He kept his eyes on the snow in front of them and did not look at him in response.

The terrain was a sloping hill of ice and trees. The undergrowth had most likely been thick and tangled beneath the canopy of trees formerly. But now it was all deceased and pressed beneath the snow. It was harder for a small animal to cross, he was sure, but the wolves, with longer legs and webbed paws, could do so with little effort. Even in his wounded status, not once did Yami falter or begin to slow. He did not even fully limp.

Yugi was relieved by the realization. How much worse could it be if he were to slow and lag behind with these wolves here? He was not sure they would restrain attacking if they saw a weakness in him.

 _Are you okay_?

Yami wrinkled his nose, curling it back faintly, and then raised his head slightly. _Yes,_ he stated simply, blinking as he turned his eyes to him. He looked exhausted but his gaze was glittering with something darkened, haunted and desolate. The smaller wolf faltered and the darker canine turned his face away. Yugi quickly moved to his side again.

 _Does your shoulder hurt_? _Your forelegs_?

Yami blinked again, then looked at him once more. The darkened glaze to his eyes had become curious and slightly puzzled, but the absence of emotion elsewhere had not changed. _They are numb from the cold,_ he replied simply. _And the scent of blood is making them nervous._

Yugi blinked and turned his attention to one of the wolves beside him. They did not look as if they were truly paying attention to them at all… _What do you mean_? he finally asked, turning back. _They aren't paying us any attention…_

 _No_? _You are not looking hard enough. Each of them will move a little closer and then back again the next step. Instinctively they're reacting to me because you are Code Name Atem and I'm your beta. Because of this they see me as a pack mate as well. That means that they are all wary of my wounds,_ he replied, and something smug shone in his darkened eyes. It was almost cruel and laughing, full of mockery, yet Yugi could hardly see it. _Watch them. They move in unison. When you notice one you will see the effect of all of them._

Yugi studied him for a moment, then turned away.

 _Okay, but what does that do for us_? he questioned softly. _Why are you so happy about that_?

He flicked an ear and his expression became colder, guarded. _Because, should you mess up, we may be able to distract them. Lycanthropes will be far more concerned about a fellow wolf bleeding than any inconsistencies your story may have._

He stiffened, surprised, and then hurried to keep pace. _You planned that far ahead_?

Yami turned his head and looked at him with clear warning. _Planning ahead is what will keep you alive as a wolf,_ he snapped icily. _Where your teeth and claws won't save you, your ability to think and adapt must be what you fall back on. Thinking ahead is the only way to ensure survival._

He blinked and watched him closely for a moment. _I feel like I should be taking notes._

 _It may be wise._

Yugi looked away quickly, huffing in frustration. _You don't have to be so harsh. It was your idea to come here with me._

Yami bore his teeth, facing the snow. _You forced my hand._

He spun on him, bristling. _I did not_! _You got jealous because of that she-wolf_! _If not for her scent all over me_ —

 _What I do to protect you or any others I see fit has_ nothing _to do with something so trivial. You still came to them for whatever reason, be it answers or something else, and I am your alpha_! _I am meant to help you_ —

 _What would help me more is if you weren't treating me as a burden and acted more like a friend,_ he spat furiously. _I need one of those more than I need someone to hold my hand._

Yami was frozen for a moment, then snapped his teeth at him in reprimand. The immediate reaction of the other wolves was to stop and turn to them warily. Fur had risen into bristles, eyes were sharp with shock and readiness and excitement, bodies were tensed with anticipation. Yugi paused, flustered, his eyes wide and dilated with shock. The two of them stared at each other, breathing raggedly for the briefest of moments.

 _Are we to kill him_? a new voice whispered, oddly lyrical and strong. The black wolf flicked an ear. Yugi bristled furiously in response.

 _Do you honestly suspect that I should be here if you were_ not _considered a friend_? Yami snarled at him, eyes shooting towards the she-wolf closest him, whose gaze sparkled with excitement. _I would have left you to be caught and killed by now. You pathetic brat, do not tread so far on my patience_!

The white wolf flattened his ears against his head and stared at him. Then he spun on the silver female which crept forward with her teeth bared. She shrunk back instantly, flattening herself to the snow. The alpha eyed her coolly for a moment but did not go about baring her teeth or glaring.

 _Is there a problem_? she asked slowly instead, eyes on Yami but the question proposed to Yugi. _Have we stopped for a reason_?

Yugi bristled, then forced his fur to flatten again. _No, there is no issue,_ he snarled at her, pausing and shooting Yami something of a considerably overwhelmed and flustered look. The darker canine snorted harshly through his nose and stared at him sharply for a moment. _I just_ … _I was not…expecting something that he said_ …

 _But he snapped at you_ …

Yugi rounded on this silver female, teeth bared and jaws agape with ferocity. I _snapped at him,_ he snarled in response. _I did it. You mistook the situation for what you_ wanted _to see._

Yami stared at him, unsure and surprised, his ears prickling with the noise of their hearts thundering in his senses. He was racked with adrenaline and the rush of it made him almost forgetful of himself. But how dare Yugi assume himself to be lower than what he considered him. And how dare he so stupidly open his mouth in such a pathetic manner.

He was itching with desperation now, flustered and growing further irritated. They were all watching him. And they were all awaiting the command to leap at him. He was surprised that none had attempted to sink their teeth into his tail and make him turn on them. It would have been the easiest way for them to leap forward and lay blame on him while being given the right of self-defense.

Their lack of action was unnerving.

Regardless of the alpha's words, there had to have been more than one of them ready to leap for him. He was sure of it and their silence made him bristle further with irritation. He flicked an ear, then forced his focus to register on Yugi fully. He felt sick and small and dizzy for a moment. But the other was not watching him.

Mai relayed an image in his head, of Yugi spinning on Yami, of his teeth chomping and the black wolf stopping. The white canine stopped next to him and they glared at each other heatedly, until Yami bore his teeth with something of a fearful expression. Both of them blinked and turned to her and the rest of the pack seemed to swap looks of suspicion and confusion.

Yugi nodded at her slowly. _Yes._

The black wolf closed his eyes. Had it been another he might have been concerned with his display of anger. The fact that it was relayed so fearlessly as well made him feel sick. Had he been someone else Yugi would be facing the full force of the pack. But, as he was Atem, no one expected differently. The constant experiments were considered a justification for his hatred and rage. It was meant to fuel his power and spark his survival instincts. It was meant to make him a great leader.

Yami narrowed his eyes. He had been unable to rely on such a skewed measurement of importance among the wolves. And when he had fought the alpha back, sparing her and fleeing, he was amazed that they had not caught him. At the end of the mountain range, where the trees began to grow further apart, they had all stopped. They had snapped and snarled and Marik had chased him until he was too exhausted to further drive him away.

He looked to Yugi. If he could not even trust that Yami was his friend, how was it that he was meant to understand the world these wolves so heavily guarded? Would he fully understand it all? He was risking so much of himself, and Yami felt that he had no true understanding of it.

 _Yugi…_

He turned to him immediately, startled. His eyes widened slightly, ears flicking, and he tilted his head minutely.

 _Perhaps we should simply turn back._ Yami felt dizzy, almost desperate, and the need to escape them had intensified. His body was shaking and his nerves aching with pain. _We can go back to your house and attempt this again another_ —

 _Already he attempts to lead you astray_! the alpha spat, snapping at him. Yami barely heeded her attention for a moment. It was when she pressed closer that he faced her, teeth dripping with saliva as he bore them. He was drooling, salivating with desperation. _He means to lead you away from your destiny—_

 _What sense is a destiny if it means only death_? the black wolf spat furiously. _You want nothing from him more than to kill the ones you despise_! _You are no better than the humans who created him_!

Yugi froze in place. _Yami_ …

The entire patrol of wolves heard this name and struggled for the meaning of it. Within seconds, translated, the word became a mantra within their minds. It was spewed between all of them. And then it faltered into silence. Their eyes were locked on him now.

The white wolf blinked. He had spoken too loudly. Yami must have done the same in his mounting anxiety. _We will continue to the camp,_ he said slowly, curling his lip back when the alpha continued to glare at the black canine. _But we will not spend too much time there. I have to go back before curfew._

Yami snapped at the she-wolf when she pressed too close. Their teeth were bared and their eyes locked. Both quivered briefly, an expression of muscles too tightly pulled together. Both snarled low in their throats. They pricked their ears towards each other. A red tail began to rise but the black one was held higher.

Yugi sprang between them, catching her on the muzzle with his incisors. _What was it you said before I agreed to this trek_? _You said that my beta would go unharmed,_ he snarled. _Now where has the truth to that statement gone_?

Yami stared at him with wide eyes. _Y—Atem,_ he managed to spit out, uncertain in tone. The other wolf didn't respond at first, then turned to him with a strained expression. _I don't think my mom will be back before nighttime. The curfew is mostly for teenagers and little kids. The adults have an extra hour, remember_?

His mom? Yugi blinked stupidly at the statement, then felt his eyes grow owlish with realization. Mai and Otogi had been there when they had mentioned that it was his house and not Yami's. But he supposed that they could keep a secret. He certainly hoped they could, anyways. But then, they must have kept it at some point. Otherwise, wouldn't the alpha have known that Yami was in the area or that Atem had been found? For whatever reason the two of them had not spoken to her about either issue…

His eyes shot to Yami's suspiciously, glittering, and he focused entirely on the black wolf alone when he asked, _Do you know Mai or Otogi_? _Did you meet them before_? _When you were inside of the pack_?

He blinked, startled, and then faced him with furrowed brows. _No, I met them the same day as you. They must have been going through their initiation rituals when I was there._ He hesitated, ears flicking; it occurred to him now that she must have known that picture from it being shown to her the moment the two of them had returned. It would make sense that she had shown it to him in what had seemed a bewildered fog of thought. _I never met either of them._

 _Okay._ Yugi looked at the alpha. _We have a camp to see, right_? _Keep your eyes ahead and your wolves away from my beta._

He was startled and unnerved as he had been immediately before upon Yugi calling him such moments ago. It was not the fact that being beta was a blow or anything of the sort. Being an alpha in a situation that was more than them would have made him wish for nothing more than to step back. But being called his beta when he was not sure it could be so easily pulled off was another thing entirely. He was not sure how well they sensed things, if they could tell simply by his energy whether he was the alpha or beta. And if they could, what would they do when they came to the realization that Yugi was lying?

They traveled for a few more minutes, Yugi and Yami pressed so close that each step made their fur tingle where their pelts brushed. The rest of the wolves continued in their flanking formation, and Yugi was now abundantly aware of the way that they truly did step towards them because of the scent of blood that came in soft drifting hints from the larger canine. It was every other foot or so that they did so and the smaller wolf found it almost amazing to witness.

 _Beyond here is the entrance,_ she announced in a sharp, almost demanding tone. Yugi faltered, head snapping towards Yami in surprise when the red-eyed wolf seemed to shudder beside him. A gentle crashing noise was forming in his eardrums and he tilted his head in confusion at the sudden addition of sound.

 _Yami, what's that noise_?

 _A bane of my existence,_ he replied wryly. _You will see._

Yugi tilted his head towards him. It was hard to imagine that Yami's patience could be tried so heavily as to have something nicknamed a bane of his existence. The entire idea made him blink wide eyes and stare in confusion. They studied each other, but Yami looked worn and tired more than anything else. He turned away after a moment and the white wolf was forced to face forward in light of his growing discomfort.

Yugi froze as the roaring grew louder and irritable.

He understood Yami's comment as it came within his sight. He should have realized from the image the other had sent within his head. He had seen the ripples of shadows along the back wall of a stone den or something of the likes. The other had merely omitted the noise, which now roared so powerfully it made his head spin and his heart leap into his throat.

He swallowed hard as he raised his read. The wolves had moved to spread out along the edge of the cliff face they had all come upon. The alpha turned to them with glowing eyes, something between pride and amusement within her gaze. Yugi had the feeling, staring up at the crashing water, that she was testing them both.

Yami flicked an ear. _The water is so powerful it could knock a stampeding elephant off track,_ he said softly. _So it cannot fully freeze during winter_ … _or so I was once told._

Yugi bristled, looking at him with wide eyes. _Then how the hell am I supposed to get through it_? he demanded sharply.

 _The same way the rest of them do,_ he stated simply. _You will need as much speed as you can possibly gather, and then you will leap from as close to the edge as you can._ That _is how you will get across._

 _You make it sound so easy_ …

Yami shook his head. _It's not, but muscle memory and your body's natural endurance will allow it to happen. But you must pick up great speed. If you don't you will not make it._

 _How am I supposed to_ …?

 _You will have to back up several yards, run as fast as you can, step onto the edge of the cliff, where the stones are coarser and the slope is more defined by the tilt of the stone in front of the waterfall._ He paused and looked at him. _They are watching you. And they will be waiting on you to lead the way. It is a test, to make sure their leader is not a coward_ …

 _And you've done it before_?

Yami was uneasy as he shifted his weight and looked about himself. The other wolves were watching them, eyes keen and glittering. And he knew the expression Marik wore was of unadulterated smugness. If Yugi could not get through the water or Yami faltered after him, he would have reason to attack and possibly kill. And the gods only knew how much he truly wished he could do such a thing.

 _I have done it once in entering the camp. And the second I fled through the forest rather than using the entrance._ Yami turned back to see dilated blue-violet eyes and a startled gaze. He frowned and he could sense the anticipation rising in the rest of the wolves. Only three of them seemed even vaguely unsettled by Yugi's reluctance. He shifted a little closer, nearly pressing his muzzle to his, and then stared into his eyes. The sight of them should have unnerved him but Yugi did well in holding his own, staring with wide eyes and studying him as a means of distraction. _Remember something, Yugi. The water isn't the same._

Yugi froze in place, eyes wide and startled.

 _The water will never be the same._ He paused, studying him slightly, and then shook his head briefly. _It's free flowing and colder than anything you've ever felt before._ That _is the most important thing to remember right now. The water is not the same and it is frigid. Your muscles may very well lock up when you leap beneath it. But it will get you through. And your instincts will react to save you from any pain_ …

 _It happened to you_ …

Yami nodded. _Yes, two months ago, it happened to me. Now, if I could survive it, then so can you,_ he replied in a sharper, more determined tone. _You're more physically capable than me now as well. You take the lead and I'll be right behind you._

 _Why…why can't you go first_? he asked, flustered, eyes wide and skin crawling. _I_ … _I could just follow by example._

 _Because they are watching me. They think me the traitor, the one meant to destroy you and deter you of your purpose._ He searched his face long and hard. _And you are the new element. You are the unknown right now. They think you are Atem and you claim the same. So they will expect you to lead me and them as well. I cannot go first as your beta._

Yugi blinked wide eyes, then curled his lips back, flattening his ears against his skull. _Oh gods,_ he muttered softly, shaken. _I should never have_ …

 _You were smart to say so. They would never have believed you otherwise. Atem is not_ bitten _as so they often used to snap. He was created and_ born _a wolf. Your decision worked to save us both._

He flicked an ear. _But how do we know that they don't realize_ …?

 _Because they would have killed us by now._

The finality within his voice made Yugi tremble briefly before he nodded slightly. He paced a few steps, then looked at Yami again before huffing. Then he spun around, trotting towards the tree line further in the distance. Then he turned back, kneading at the snow beneath his feet. His eyes caught on the red gaze of the other wolf. They looked at each other for a long heartbeat.

The white wolf drew in a deep breath, desperate to beg him to somehow prevent his having to do this. Then he forced himself to begin running. He picked up rapid speed, long legs propelling him forward rapidly. He ignored the way his body felt far too fast and his heart hammered. The snow crunched heavily beneath his paws and he felt he might swallow his tongue as he came upon the lip of the ledge. The stone was slanted somewhat, held in place by the lower step of dirt beneath it.

Yugi used it as a springboard. His pads pressed on the smoother surface and he sprang forward. The water foamed and sprayed upon his face. He bore his teeth, snarling low in his throat. The water crashed over him. The force of it knocked the wind from his lungs. He was amazed that he did not fall within the curtains. But it was as if a blanket of cold air had forcefully pressed upon his spine. And it locked his muscles in place as Yami had promised. He slammed into the stone beyond it, rolling with the impact. Then he scrambled to his feet, gasping and struggling not to panic.

Yami came moments later, his landing less than elegant. He was bleeding along the shoulder, the wound freshly opened. He lay there for a long minute, giving Yugi enough time to hurry forward. He immediately licked at the scabbed and bleeding flesh. He ignored it as the rest of the other wolves began to join them.

Yugi licked until all he could taste was blood. And his tongue felt sore from the force of his attempt to heal the wound. He wrinkled his nose back, licked at his ear, and then stepped back. His eyes were concerned as Yami got up again, but neither reacted fully. The black wolf ignored him for a moment, shook himself out, and then blinked tired eyes.

 _Shall we proceed_? Yami announced with a dismissive glance towards the alpha who padded near his side. She flashed her teeth at him only minutely, then turned to Yugi as if to ask for permission.

He nodded immediately. _Yeah, let's continue,_ he said quickly, glancing sideways at the red-eyed wolf curiously.

 _This is where the wolves rest when rain or blizzard comes about. That bramble thicket covering the entrance allows almost nothing to come through. And then they can all fit within this den and the proximity allows them to share their body warmth._ He looked about the walls for a moment. He remembered the explanation being from the she-wolf's mouth when she had thought him Atem. But now he supposed she was leaving the words to him instead. _During fights this is also the best place to allow someone to heal. The cavern keeps itself at a rather steady temperature year round. And the air is so dense and crisp that it does not carry much dirt or debris._

Yugi tilted his head and offered him something of a grin as he glanced towards the brambles as well. _That makes sense. That's actually really smart…_

 _Yes…_

The alpha began to lead the way, claws scraping and catching on the low ledge which barely held itself from the wall. Then she drew her right paw upwards, claws sinking into the dirt above, and pulled herself up and out of the tangle of thorns. Yugi and Yami followed moments later, the white wolf making sure to allow him passage first.

They stepped out, the black canine limping painfully to his side when he moved past him. The clearing beyond the cavern was immense, a swollen field of bright white he imagined was more dirt and long grass during summer. He glanced around and the trees became rising giants of straight bark and shattered tops of branches. He blinked and turned towards the sky, where the clouds were pale and bunched together and there seemed to be not even a hint of blue to be seen. The trees were like sparks of lightning, bursts of dark gray and silver and splashes of brown like mud. The river was a loud and hideous roar behind him, and he could see the swell of the immense river which fed it feet away. The slope of it was odd in the way it rose upwards and slanted abruptly down. The stones at the edge of it, when he turned go see it, were upraised and glittering with stripes of limestone and granite. The water was cold and the bank frozen with dunes of snow and soft smooth pebbles which he could see eaten by the liquid so swiftly moving beside them.

 _The river makes well for a food source. The boar and the bears and the deer keep coming for the water. Because of this, we are ensured almost year round food to be gathered by the pack for consumption._ Yugi tilted his head, curious and wondering as the alpha turned with something of a smug expression. Yami ignored this, instead pausing only to turn and begin to lick at his wound again. It burned and tingled against his tongue as if it were choked with heat and infection. But he did not taste pus and his eyes detected only the red of his blood, his nose the metallic scent. _As a pack, we support each wolf that lives here. And so we bring in fresh kills to be divided when the prey is smaller than deer or boar. No one goes hungry on any given day._

Yugi looked at Yami sideways. That meant that if he were ever to stay there, the meals would be more beneficial and natural for him. He would never have to worry about what had been cooked by his mom for dinner or sharing his plate with him or anything of the sort. He almost sobbed with relief. Perhaps that was the answer.

Yet one look from the other wolf told him otherwise. His red eyes were haunted and darkened with disgust and Yugi felt almost dizzy upon seeing such an expression. It took everything in him to remember that Yami already knew of it all and had even formerly experienced such provisions. He shivered and looked away.

 _That's good,_ he finally muttered when he realized she was still watching him. But there was a shadow in her eyes now as they flickered to Yami as well.

She wrinkled her nose faintly and tilted her head. _What is his name_? she asked slowly, studying Yami closely. _He came to us without a name but I am sure you have rectified this, yes_?

Yami turned his head. _I picked the name Yami,_ he snapped, baring his teeth. Yugi glanced between them, wondering if she truly had somehow missed it when he had called him by his name earlier. _He did not name me._

She snorted softly. _Then I am sorely disappointed, for I almost assumed you to have his favor_ , she scoffed, turning away from him.

 _He does_! the white wolf spat before he could think it through. Yami turned to him with incredibly wide eyes, the whites of them showing for a split second. Then he tugged his lips back on the left side of his mouth and raised a paw to rub at his muzzle as if in embarrassment.

The female turned around with a slightly startled expression, golden eyes flaring with confusion. _You two are bonded_? she asked, looking to Yami as he continued to rub at his muzzle. _But…he cannot reproduce…_

Yugi felt his stomach drop. Oh no…

There was an image that immediately appeared, the black wolf's belly swollen with pups. Yugi bristled and the darker canine curled his lips back. Rapidly a new picture was passed about, of Yami strapped to an examination table. His muzzle was encased in metal wiring, his throat swollen with the addition of an electrical collar. His breathing was labored, his eyes dilated and confused, each exhale coming in rasping growls of distress and pain. Then came a man dressed in white material, scrubs, with a scalpel in one hand and a bottle of alcohol in another.

Yugi was shaking, head snapping towards Yami.

 _They're attempting to ascertain whether I was one of the males given a uterus in the experiments,_ he explained, turning away and breathing loudly through his nose. _I think that was one of the only experiments you did not go through. They would have no need to attempt making Atem bear pups. They would want him pure so that he could breed properly._

 _That's disgusting_!

Yami looked at him dismissively. _That's what they do,_ he replied monotonously. His eyes flickered to the she-wolf. _You know from our scents that we are not bonded. We are not mated._

She studied him. _Yet they are both so incredibly intertwined._

 _Bite_ …

The alpha blinked and turned her head, Yugi tilted his, and Yami glanced in Mai's direction. She wagged her tail happily at the small trio before turning to Otogi. The smaller black wolf flicked one of his white-tipped ears, then took off running. Mai was after him in mere seconds, wagging her tail happily as she gave chase.

 _She's right. It is the bite. It makes us smell more alike._ Yami hesitated, looking towards Yugi for a split second. _Although, I suppose I cannot expect you to know such a thing seeing as your wolves are all infected by hereditary means._

Yugi tilted his head, considering his words. If all of these wolves were infected by heredity then that made it more or less impossible that they were once involved in the experiments, right? Or did that make them somehow more likely? Was it possible they were the wolves bred in the lab?

 _You dare speak to me with such insolence_?

Yami snapped his teeth. _He is my alpha. You are not._ His tail rose and his fur began to bristle. He bore his teeth and snapped his teeth again. _You do not have any footing of which to attempt correction. Hold your tongue or I will tear it from your mouth._

Yugi had the very vague image of a boy biting the tongue from an older woman's mouth. He saw blood and heard screaming which slowly slipped into nothingness. He could not recall which piece of a movie it was which had played in the forefront of his mind. He shivered and ran his tongue over his nose before it truly connected in his head.

Immediately he found his eyes locked with Yami's, where they sparkled with laughter, but from the corner of his gaze he saw the distaste towards his apparent mockery in the she-wolf's. Yugi flattened his ears against his skull and glanced, head tilted, towards a small noise of commotion further ahead of them.

A bone fell into a cushion of snow. The noise of its thud was soft and hollow. Yugi pricked his ears forward, curious. His eyes caught the soft definition of long legs within the snow. The limbs were soft and gentle, a pair of black and the others a tawny shade. They pulled downwards abruptly, flattening somewhat towards the icy ground. He blinked and raised his eyes further.

Otogi threw himself forward, snatched the bone into the air, and released it. It flew straight upwards, swirling, and Mai leaped to snatch it up. They wagged their tails rapidly, eyes sparkling. Mai bowed, turned abruptly, and then raced away again. The black wolf glanced at them, tongue lolling, and then took off after her.

* * *

Yami tilted his head towards him as they finally began to find their positions on the bed again. He lightly brushed against the smaller boy's arm, eyes on the screen again. An anime was playing, the art style one which made him wrinkle his nose faintly. It was too realistic and the thought of its events pushed into actuality made his skin crawl. It was something about vampires and werewolves. They were hunting them for whatever reason…

He closed his eyes for a moment. Would it have killed Yugi to put something on that didn't have any sense of bearing on their situation?

The smaller boy drew his pajama shirt over his head. "I'm sorry…" He trailed off as Yami turned towards him. His eyes were slightly mystified but held a hint of suspicion and cynicism that made his skin crawl. "I just… When she said that you didn't have my favor…"

He snorted. "She was attempting to remind me that I am not as important to you as the pack itself is meant to be. In her mind the wolves themselves are beyond enough reason for you to wish to fight later. She meant to make me feel more ashamed of being your beta than anything else."

Yugi faltered at his nonchalance. "Yami, that's not okay."

"She means to make me assume myself unable to measure the same in importance as you and your followers." He shook his head and slowly flickered his eyes along the smooth contours of his younger-appearing face. "The only true thing to be upsetting is what you said formerly."

Yugi bit his lip hard, studying his face slowly. "I don't know what you…" He trailed off for a moment, then reached up to run his fingers through his hair. His stomach twisted and turned as he looked down at the comforter. "You mean when I called you my beta and said I bit you…"

"Yes."

Yugi waited for him to speak further. But the other boy merely stared, eyes cold and curious. He seemed almost detached from his own words for a brief moment. Then he looked towards him with his head tilted and his gaze more profoundly unnerved than anything else.

But Yami did not speak and the way he stared made Yugi's tongue feel heavy in his mouth. He faltered and immediately looked away again. His fingers picked at invisible lint along the comforter. His eyes felt heavy with growing exhaustion and Yugi found himself biting his lip hard once more.

"I'm sorry." He fell silent for a long minute. His eyes were sharp and cold when he looked up and their gazes locked once more. Yami tensed, startled, and wondered for a moment how it was that he had encouraged such a drastic change in the smaller teen. "But I don't see what it is that I should have done instead. I had to think on my feet and I twisted it around. But you aren't… Why is being the beta so terrible to you? I'm your beta, right? But I don't hate it!"

"It is not that I hate it. By no stretch of the imagination do I truly care what it is that you told her in order to calm her temper. What matters to me is the fact that, while I agree that you have every right to twist the truth to your benefit, you have no idea the responsibility you have placed upon yourself. She will hold you accountable for each and every thing I do—"

"Is that how you see it?"

Yami bore his teeth and breathed harshly through his nose. "You are no such burden to me. I mean only to remind you that _she_ will see this alpha-beta connection between the two of us as such. You fail to realize her hatred for me comes in waves, not simplistic thought. She _will_ turn on you if she deems my behavior unacceptable at some point."

Yugi sidestepped the statement, instead blurting out, "I'm sorry for putting you in that position, okay? I would never have said if I hadn't panicked. But I…I don't know who to trust in that pack. And I… You're the best bet I've got if things go south. You know about werewolves and—"

Yami's hand covered his mouth gently, cutting his words away. His eyes flickered back and forth between his own gaze.

"I am not upset, Yugi. You simply fail to understand." He fell silent for a long minute and a half. "I mean to tell you that you are playing a very dangerous game. Between the two of us, she will attempt to kill me before she would turn her fangs on you. But it is important to me that you realize I do not care that I have been put beneath you as a subordinate. I simply wish you to know the role you have placed yourself within. You have to remember—and do so well—that these wolves are not stable. And you will have no room for true error. She _will_ attack. She _will_ kill."

Yugi hesitated, then reached up to touch his wrist. The other stiffened faintly, then allowed him to wrap his fingers around the small width of bone. He settled them lightly around it and he could feel the way his skin twitched faintly in a shudder that seemed more startled than uncomfortable.

Very gently he traced his thumb around the raised flesh of the wound, where the skin was serrated heavily from the second Change of the day. He needed to bandage them before they went to sleep. With a small sigh, more of a breath than anything else, he shifted a little closer and closed his eyes tightly.

Yami studied him, ignoring the instinct to withdraw his hand altogether. It was not that he needed to or had grown uncomfortable by any means. It was simply that his thumb brushing against the tender flesh made him think of the way his own fingers had dug and dug until they'd torn through and into his muscle and veins. He almost shivered, suppressing it at the last second, and then closed his eyes tightly.

Yugi moved slightly, a gentle brush of his nose against his palm. His voice was a low and gentle whisper of warm air against his skin.

"I need someone on my side who I can trust completely." His eyes flashed open and flickered to his. Yami tilted his head and studied his determined, albeit flustered, expression. "And so far that's only you, Yami. If she's truly going to end up asking me to take over the pack, I want you to be my beta."

Yami blinked and then began only then to withdraw his hand. But Yugi moved to catch his palm, holding it more securely. He had the faint impression of being captured and held hostage and it made his stomach churn painfully.

Yugi licked his lips and ran his free hand through his hair. "I don't know who I'm meant to trust in that pack. Mai and Otogi are the only ones I know as it is. And I can't ask them to do it because they are basically one and the same with the pack." He faltered. "Besides that, you… You're my friend. And you're my alpha. I would rather you be at my side than whomever it is she's chosen."

"You're going to anger them. I didn't tell you the full extent of the pack turning on me when I told them that I wasn't Atem." He blinked and the smaller boy watched him with clear, cold eyes. They stared at each other for a long moment and then Yami shook his head slowly. "When they attacked, I went for the alpha. It was like they all froze and lost any ability to think for themselves. I nearly killed her and fled before they could think straight. I… Yugi, you must be aware that while I may do this for you, you are setting yourself up for their hatred. They will most likely try again to kill me should I step out of line. And you… You are safe as Atem, but _never_ as Yugi."

He blinked, startled as his eyes grew thrice their usual size. He needed to abandon the idea of being Yugi when he was at the camp? He was only meant to be Atem there? He drew in a deep breath, staring at him, and a cold chill began to sweep through his bones.

But who, truly, _was_ Atem?


	33. Forever

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day (no update on June 2nd)**

 **Chapter Warnings: Mentions of Blood, Mentions of Past Wounds, Mentions of Wounds, Puzzleshipping, Mentions of Fragileshipping, Mentions of Tendershipping, Implied Heartshipping (Yugi [Atem] x Ryou), Detailed Wound Cleaning, Conversation About Death**

 **And here we are with Part III! Also, I might be a little late with updates. But that's actually because I've got block for the chapter I'm on in this story and it's killing me, honestly. I think once I get over the hump though, it'll be smooth sailing again. This particular area of the book is killing me, though, just because it's so...sad, I suppose could be the word? Either way!**

 **Anyways, so a side note: The exit wound for a bullet is usually a ton worse than the entrance. That's why Yugi makes such a big deal about it. All of my research says that it's the most likely to get infected and that the cells that die around the area cause a lot of pain and muscle degeneration.**

 **Also! I fucking LOVE wolfdogs (or hybrids, if you will). But the truth of the matter is this. You never have ANY idea what they will turn out like. Wolves are extremely shy animals and are often timid when it comes to people. As far as dogs go, however, their breeds, their ages, their lineages, their process of being bred—it ALL can have varying degrees of affect on them. They could be the most loyal animals in the world but super dog aggressive or so extremely possessive that they might tear someone's face open for being too close. Wolfdogs? They're often STRONGER than regular purebreds, they're often SMARTER than regular purebreds, and they are often UNPREDICTABLE. You CANNOT EVER FULLY train a wolfdog in any reality. And they cannot be fully puzzled out as to whether they will respond like a dog or a wolf in certain circumstances. It makes them DANGEROUS. That's why there are LAWS against owning them. That said, Yami HINTS at this but does not come outright and say so. In a later chapter, it IS brought up again and Yugi DOES find out exactly WHY Yami even brought up the wolfdog status of hellhounds for that brief moment in this chapter.**

 **Anyways, guys, I DO fucking LOVE the hell out of wolfdogs. I admire them, I adore them. But I'm going to say now that they ARE unpredictable, CAN BE vicious, CAN snap out of seemingly nowhere, and they have the factor of wilderness that seems to unhinge their genetics. In this story, it's vaguely mentioned in reference to the actual animals themselves. It's aimed almost SOLELY at hellhounds themselves, because they ARE wolfdog hybrids and they ARE highly unpredictable and more likely to act out in violent or disturbing ways than lycanthropes are.**

 **Part III~ Here we go!**

Part III

Chapter XXXIII: Forever

 _Work Log Entry XXXIII: February, 2002_

 _February 20_

 _I have no understanding of the meaning behind this barbaric exercise they wish us to conduct. Starving the wolves is hardly something that should ever even come about one's imagination._

 _But, for now, that is what must happen._

 _February 22_

 _A war has begun amongst the wolves._

 _They seem to be picking off the weakest of the pack._

 _If you can ever fathom calling them a pack in the first place._

 _February 23_

 _Two have died this day._

 _His father was killed in cold blood in front of him. In a fit of rage, A.T.E.M. changed for the first time from his human form. The bloodbath that came about afterwards was horrifying._

 _The second wolf was named "Kisara" when we first captured her. She was meant to be the next to be bred, but speculation had it that she was mated with the blue-eyed wolf that died months prior._

 _A.T.E.M. caused many of the wolves to back off when the bloodshed became more abundant. He proved himself to be a menace upon seeing death. The boss is more pleased with this than he ever was his survival._

 _February 24_

 _A.T.E.M. has shown an inability to change forms any longer._

 _We have yet to figure out why this has come about._

Yami didn't look up when he entered the room, but his acknowledgment came in a drifting hum of noise. Yugi tilted his head as he turned to look at him curiously. He was seated on the floor, flipping through what appeared to be a medical book on canine anatomy. The smaller teen hesitated, then came forward a few steps, studying him silently and biting his lip.

"What's up?" he asked quietly, biting his cheek. Yami glanced up, startled that he had come closer, and then shook his head slowly as he turned back to the page. Yugi moved a little nearer and now he noticed the words on the page which made him stop short. He was reading on the arteries and which were more likely to bleed than the next. He was literally tracing a line along the vessels which lay along the back of the paws and the shoulders with his right index finger. "Why, um…?"

"I just wanted to see how much blood I've probably lost." He shrugged. "I'm bored."

Yugi grimaced. "That's morbid as hell," he commented, tilting his head further as he studied him. "Why would you want to do that?"

"Because I can," Yami muttered, shrugging again before flipping the page. "I am simply curious. And I like to know about things that pertain to me."

"But blood loss? You can't even calculate it from that!" He felt flushed as he came closer, stopping a foot away from his side.

"And how would you know?"

He chewed the inside of his cheek. "Because I…already checked," he admitted reluctantly. "I checked a while back when I first saw your wrists…"

Yami turned his head to face him for more than a second for the first time since he had entered the room. There was a strange, almost mystifying strength to his eyes, a clarity which made his skin crawl faintly. "And so you decided it was morbid and did not continue to look any further into it."

He felt his cheeks flush. "I'm that predictable, huh?"

The taller teen offered him a small smile, both amused and slightly uncomfortable. "Well, there is that but I also seem to have caught on to some of your more persistent quirks and mannerisms. You tend to deflect and attempt to ignore things that are too hard for you to think about." Yami paused, then slowly closed the textbook as he turned away. A loud sigh left his lips and he offered him a small, almost shaken smile. "I am sorry for having worried you so much in the beginning however."

Yugi blinked, startled, and then moved closer to take a seat beside him. Their knees brushed and he nearly shivered, but both of them were stricken by the intense spark of something which crept between them. Yami looked down, peering at the fabric of his jeans, and both of them paused curiously for a moment.

"Static electricity," he commented lamely, shrugging. "I don't think I put enough fabric softener in when I did the laundry."

Yami shot him what he could only describe as an expression full of disdainful disbelief. He shook his head at him slightly, then looked away towards the book in front of him again. "Regardless, I am sorry for the worry I know I put you through. It was selfish of me to bring my issues here and expect help. I honestly had no right to assume—"

"That's not… Even if you hadn't saved me twice by then, I would have helped you anyways," he said with a determined tone. "I don't want to see anyone suffer like you were. And I… When we met, I felt like we could be really great friends. I thought that I would help you and have one more person to think of as a friend…"

"Don't shorten your friendly nature and giving personality by defining it with thoughts you had much later," he bit out in a sharp tone. "I know that was not the first thought in your mind when you saw me there."

 _No, I thought at first that you were a second body dumped on the porch like Ushio was,_ Yugi thought with a shaky, almost dizzy sensation.

What would he have done if Yami had been nothing but a cadaver left there at his door? He knew he would not have been as attached to him then as he was now—he had been merely curious and interested in him before, after all—but he could not imagine what would have happened.

He could not even fathom the idea of how much he would have hated everything going on without Yami's help and guidance to cushion the blow of the infection. He bit his lip as he turned to face him more fully.

"You're right. I was more worried that you would die from all the blood loss. And if I had the chance to prevent it, then I couldn't waste it just because I didn't know you."

Yami nodded. "That is much more like you than what you said before." He hesitated, then turned to him as well. He was acutely aware of how close he seemed to him now. He could smell the peanut butter on his breath, the whole grain of the bread he had used. He could see the faint lines beneath his eyes where his insomnia seemed to be catching up with him, the smile which threatened to tug on his lips.

He could reach out and touch him and his skin would feel smooth and soft and warm, but their knees were hot against each other. He licked his lips and swore that he saw Yugi's eyes flicker, darkening as his pupils dilated faintly. He could almost breathe in his exhales with how close they were. He swallowed hard, then tilted his head as they looked at each other. He could taste his breath, a fog of peanut butter and bread, with the faintest hint of honey and soda pop. He could feel his body heat and the friction where their knees touched and their pants bunched slightly. He could see his eyes, beautiful and wide and darkened so faintly. And he could hear his heart now, a little louder and faster than before.

Yugi could feel the heat flooding his cheeks the more they looked at each other. His fingers twitched where they touched the carpet. His heart was beginning to thump faster than ever. He breathed in shakily and the other boy considered him for so long he almost trembled. But the proximity made it hard not to want to lean somehow closer. The two of them stared at each other for a moment.

Yugi leaned a little bit, shaky in the way his head tilted. He felt dizzy and small for a moment, the sensation wondrous in his mind. He swallowed hard, curious, but Yami was not pulling away. He blinked and the slight tilt became a bit more pronounced. His palms were oddly dry, though he wondered why they did not bloom with sweat. They were centimeters apart…

Yami turned away suddenly, letting out something of a shattered noise. Yugi froze in place, startled, and felt his skin grow cold with alarm. He was slightly ashamed. But it was more a numbness which seeped beneath his skin for a moment. He closed his eyes tightly.

"I'm sorry. I…I can't…" Yami faltered, for his voice had broken and he sounded both desperate and stupid as he continued. His breathing was ragged and small, almost whispering in his lungs. He closed his eyes tightly as Yugi had. "I…I'm sorry, Yugi. It's… It's not… I… I am not the right person for you to…"

The smaller teen bit his lip and shook his head. Hadn't he just been imagining earlier that day what it would be like when he settled enough into this new lifestyle so that he could go out on a _proper_ date with Anzu? Shakily he shook his head more violently, then turned to him with wide eyes.

Yami had his head turned away, tipped downwards, and he was scratching anxiously at the inside of his wrist. Yugi could hear the fibers of the medical tape pulling and scraping faintly. He bit his lip and shook his head slightly, uncomfortable and shaken.

"I don't know why I did that," he finally admitted in a shaky voice, exhaling loudly. "I really don't, Yami. And I'm not sure why I keep doing this. I…I'm actually trying to figure out this whole thing so that I can be with the girl I've been interested in for… _years_ now…a-actually."

Yami looked over at him, his expression somewhat unsteady, maybe faintly shaken. His eyes were shadowed with something dead and frozen and it made his heart thump in his chest to see such darkness there. He swallowed thickly and shook his head faintly as they looked at one another.

"I don't…I don't mean to…potentially lead you on or anything either. I…" Yugi bit his lip until it bled, dizzy and exhausted. "I don't know what I'm doing…"

He shook his head. "It doesn't matter. It's most likely because of our connection as alpha and beta. It will wear off soon enough," he said slowly, quietly. "And when it does, you and your friend will make a wonderful couple."

Yugi wanted to argue. He was almost a hundred percent sure that that was not the issue. But then, he had no name for the tension he felt or the strange desire he had to be within close proximity of him. And what was there to explain away his desire so frequently to kiss him?

He lowered his eyes, his gaze locked on their knees. For a moment his shame made him desire nothing more than to pull away and lock himself behind the door of his bathroom. But his more prominent half told him to relax, to weather it out, that he needed to calm down before he did something stupid.

"It will be fine when it goes away," Yami continued quietly. "When the link is no longer as new, and you are used to being a werewolf, you will find yourself easily turned away from me and to the girl you've been crushing on for so long. It's just the newness of it all."

Yugi scowled at him, flustered at he snapped, "Don't sell yourself so short."

Yami blinked, startled and confused. "I'm not—"

"I have a feeling you're going to be telling that to anyone interested in you. That it has to do with being wolves and something to do with the lycanthropy instead of genuine feelings," he commented in a cold voice, shaking his head. He was terribly aware of his words and the harsh tone coming out, but he could not stop himself. "Did your mate die? Is that what it is? Is that why you're so…so… _removed_ from it all?"

He faltered, mouth opening and closing, and then turned away with something of a shaken nod. "Yes," he breathed weakly. "She was murdered in cold blood…"

Yugi stared at him for a long time. "Then why did Mai say that you've never been—?"

He bore his teeth, speaking through them in annoyance. "Because we never had the chance. We were too new to the concept of the bond to even consider the physical aspect. And I was too young to even think of such a thing—and she was almost six years older than me. She died in the labs during an experiment. I fled when you were released."

Yugi faltered, shaken. "I thought it was Ryou… I thought…"

"Ryou?" He turned his head, eyes wide. "You thought that Ryou and I were…?"

He nodded slightly, mouth opening and closing.

"No, Ryou was… He fed me and basically took me out for exercise. He was the veterinarian and caretaker for all of us and he stitched us up and gave us the opportunity to heal for a few days in between experiments. He… He and Bakura were fucking the last I knew. They… I believe they hooked up the first time days before you were released. I…I cannot remember exactly, but I do believe it was around that same time." He paused, shaking his head. "Or perhaps it was afterwards that they finally hooked up together. I do not know. I cannot remember. But it was a rumor and many of them had truth in that terrible place…"

Yugi felt his fingers shaking faintly. "Oh my gods…"

Yami tilted his head, studying the smaller boy for a long minute. "I do know that I bit him along the jaw by accident one day. I was sick and feverish and the experiments rendered me angry and vicious. I lashed out and caught him along the line of his left ear. He wasn't infected but I know he got some of the weaker traits of lycanthropy from it."

"The weaker traits…?"

"Slightly advanced healing, stronger bones, faster clotting, strengthened immune system, better senses… I'm sure he was also given the keener abilities of our intelligence as well," he said softly, tilting his head curiously and watching him for a moment. "But I know Bakura bit him so many times he had to have a bunch of stitches and staples put in each time. For whatever reason he never changed, though. His DNA and RNA never mutated as properly as it should have… He got a handful of the benefits of our disease but not all of them."

Yugi chewed his cheek. That was unfair. Why couldn't that have been the case for him as well? He glanced at Yami, then bit his lip until the blood began to drown him. He had been born with it. It had just taken the bite from Yami to push the disease into true mutation. If he had not been there to bite him, his senses would have stayed keener than the average person, his immune system would have been strong… He _had_ been in the same stage as Ryou for the duration of time he had memories of. He had just never truly noticed it.

"Ryou was a very forgiving person when it came down to it. I think he was the only one there who cared about Atem either. He was supposed to have been his primary vet in the labs. And he was most likely the only one to allow Atem the chance to exercise outside or do anything of any magnitude besides rot in his cage." He paused, shaking his head. "I did not see him beyond a caretaker. And, I suppose he might have had some kind of feelings for me—though it is much more likely he had them for you—but I did not share them."

"Me?" Yugi felt as if his eyes might pop out of his head in shock. "No way! He didn't even know me—"

"He knew Atem." Yami tilted his head, watching him closely. "He may have had feelings for Atem. Ryou was his only source of sympathy within that lab, after all. And he had been there since he was young."

Yugi stared at him, startled. "Wait, what? He looked like he was our age…"

He shook his head, frowning at him as he sat up a little straighter. "By the time you were born, he would have been about twenty. So, by the time we saw him in the woods, he would be almost twice our age, perhaps older by one or two years even." Yami paused and then looked away. "Bakura was actually younger than him. He was about thirteen when he was brought into the lab and that was rumored to be only a handful of years before we escaped."

"Bakura was only _sixteen or_ _seventeen_?"

"Give or take a couple of months, I would imagine."

Yugi felt as if he were choking. Bakura had been his own age or possibly only a year his elder. He swallowed hard, his throat feeling swollen and his heart thundering in his chest. He had killed someone barely a year older than him. He cringed. He had also killed Haga, who had been a year younger than him.

He bit his lip and the tissue swelled against his tongue. He closed his eyes tightly. "I can't believe it. Werewolf lifespans are so _short_ …"

Yami reached over, pulling his lip away. "You're going to end up biting a hole through it," he commented softly before shaking his head and leaning forward to place his elbows on his knees. "Our lifespans are some of the longest in existence. What happened to Bakura and those three from your school were circumstances beyond anything that normally would have happened. Territory wars when packs step too far into each other's space are likely to result in hideous injuries and possible deaths. But most of us live for a long time. It's just dangerous. Our world is…extremely dangerous."

"I don't…I just… It sucks… I never considered that I would be someone to _end people's lives_ like this!"

He shook his head. "With the experiments going on and the pack in the mountains and all of the things happening right now, death will be unavoidable. Things are just going to pile up and circumstances will become harder to avoid. But things will also become better eventually as well. Life has a way of doing that sometimes."

"But that's not okay! I've killed classmates and—"

"When you are forced to fight for your life in exchange for another's, there is no question. You will kill as necessary. Any animal knows to destroy a threat when it is cornered. There is no instinct stronger than that of the need to protect oneself." He hummed and turned away. "It could be your best friend to threaten your life and you will _still_ find yourself choosing your life before theirs."

Yugi shivered. "I hate that. I hate…"

The other boy looked at him with a brow raised. "Would you rather you died yourself?"

"Would it end anyone else's suffering if Atem died?"

Yami sat a little straighter, his eyes becoming somewhat clouded and darker. He shook his head after a moment, then drew in a deep breath. "Aside from the fact that Atem cannot truly _be_ killed? No, it would only cause more death and destruction, Yugi."

He nodded and bit at his nail unhappily. "I don't want to die anyways," he muttered quietly. "It always seems like it'll be so painful."

His smile was wry with discomfort. "Yes, they always do seem painful don't they?"

The smaller teen didn't want to move his knee away from his, but the position was uncomfortable. He unfolded his right leg, then stretched it out in front of him. His eyes flickered to the other boy and they looked at each other for a long handful of minutes.

"If you hadn't stumbled across the alley that night, do you think Ushio really would have eaten me?" he asked slowly, furrowing his brows. "He was a lycanthrope, right? And I mean, he wasn't as terrible a person as a lot of us made him out to be. He honestly wasn't too bad when he considered you worth his time. He just… He liked money more than he liked people…"

Yami frowned and then looked away. "By speculation, yes, I think he would have. You ran away. A werewolf chasing prey which runs is spurred on by the chase. He would have most likely eaten you, yes." He stretched his arms in front of him.

"So if I hadn't run?"

"He most likely would have backed off after a few minutes if his scare tactics didn't work. You have to remember that wolves are more likely to let the prey that fights back go free than the one that takes off." Yami looked at him, his lips twisted into a slight grimace. "It is something you will need to remember later. That pack will often squabble. You will do well to remember such a thing. If they should squabble with you, then you should be aware that running is a bad idea."

"You think they'll try to fight with me?"

He shrugged. "They are rather…unruly. I do not know for certain, however."

The smaller teen felt sick to his stomach for a moment. "Oh," he said slowly, staring at him and then looking away. He should have kicked his shoes off and put on slippers but he didn't want to at the moment. "Well, that's…"

"I doubt they will challenge you directly. They are more likely to use me as the way of doing so."

"I'm sorry."

He shook his head. "It doesn't matter."

They both remained silent for a few long minutes. Yugi moved his stretched leg to shake his foot for a moment, waggling his toes under his shoe box lazily. He leaned back, his weight on his arms, elbows feeling warm with the slight pressure. He wondered vaguely if Yami's wrists hurt.

"Do you want a shake?" he asked instead, turning to him. Yami blinked, startled, and tilted his head sideways in momentary confusion. "You know, a protein shake?"

He frowned, puzzled, and shook his head slowly. "Why would you ask me that now of all times?"

"Because I'm home from school, you were reading up on the blood loss, and I just…" He gestured vaguely at him and the book and back again before sitting up again. "I thought maybe you were doing that because you were worried or…?"

His eyes flickered a darker shade, then looked towards his wrists. "I was going to ask you if you could change the bandages again," he admitted quietly, "but I am not concerned about them for the moment. I was merely reading because I was curious about the amount of blood I might have lost. It seems amazing to me still every now and then how the disease keeps me alive when something like that happens."

"Oh." He hesitated, then faced him a little more fully, eyes boring into his for a moment. "Well, yeah, I can redo the bandages. I was going to ask if they hurt earlier anyways but…"

Yami shook his head. "They are not painful. The bandages are simply…soaked." He flexed his fingers. "I think I might have further opened them after that trek into the camp."

He chewed his cheek and swallowed hard. "But they don't hurt?"

He shook his head. "No. They do not hurt. They simply feel…weighed down and somewhat cold." He considered him for a moment, glancing at his wrists and the smaller teen again. "And snug."

"They have to be packed tightly so that you can't tear them open again."

"No, I know. I understand. I was simply commenting." He shrugged slightly. "I am just unused to the sensation. Before they did not bleed as badly, I suppose."

Yugi felt a small chill climb up his spine, his marrow growing frigid. "Let me see them?" he finally asked, holding a hand out. If Yami was disturbed by the more direct manner he presented him in asking, he did not allow it to show on his face. He simply reached over and laid his hand facing up in his, allowing him room to pull his arm a little closer. He cringed immediately upon seeing them, wondering in horror how it was that he could have even missed it the first time.

The entire outside of it was smeared with dark red, the contours of it soaked. Yami was not sore to the touch when Yugi gently prodded at it and kept his eyes on his face. But the entire bandage was run in a long current of red and brown along the length to his elbow. The white was barely noticeable on the other side and was slightly yellowed at the edges. He groaned in the back of his throat, shaking his head slightly.

"Do you think it's infected again?"

Yami shrugged dismissively. "I would think so. My skin feels hot around the wound and the yellow on it looks like pus. But I am not concerned about it. When it is clean, the disease will fight off the infection again."

"Did they get worse because of the Change? Is that what happened?"

Yami faltered for a moment. "You can't force me not to change if I want to," he said in a low voice, something almost tinged with bitterness and resentment. He drew in a deep breath and for a moment his eyes seemed to rattle within their sockets. Yugi felt sick when he looked it over. "You can't ask me not to. I'll do it anyways. I…I can't just…"

Yugi thought he looked as if he had just pointed a gun at his head. He looked seconds away from trembling. He shook his head slowly, perplexed by the anxiety of his tone.

"I wouldn't ask you to," he said quietly. The words were met with skepticism before his eyes seemed to clear with something almost like gratitude. Yugi felt choked by the very sight of it. "I just wanted to know. I need to figure out if there's a way to heal them before the full moon comes again."

Yami tilted his head. "If I have enough to eat and it's healthy, I should be able to accelerate it," he replied thoughtfully. "I would just need to change it more frequently and wash it out—"

"We can do that. I can change them before and after school and before bed." He chewed his lip and bit the inside of his cheek until his tongue felt choked with blood. Then, feeling somewhat unnecessary and small for a moment, Yugi echoed himself imprecisely, "I can wash them after school and before bed too."

The other wolf was frozen for a moment, staring at him with widened eyes. There was something distinctly stunned and mystified within his gaze. Yet he looked altogether amused as well. His lips tugged into the slightest of a lopsided smile and he watched him with something that looked more warm than laughing.

"Then we can do protein shakes before and after school. Doing those three times a day would probably be overkill. But I could probably find some of those weight gain protein bars to help you pack on some calories and then we can go with it from there. You should be able to recover relatively quickly, right?"

Yami nodded. "Thank you."

His grin was wide and full of teeth, his eyes brightened as his entire face lit up. "Of course! You're my friend," he said, getting up and stretching himself out. "I'll be back in a second with the first aid kit."

He blinked up at him, stomach twisting. "Truly, Yugi," he tried again, frowning at him with something of a solemn expression, "I owe you a lot."

The smaller teen paused, seeing something almost anxious in those dark red eyes, and swallowed hard. His grin fell away and his own gaze grew a bit unnerved before he found himself smiling faintly. "I owe you a lot too."

"Do you?" he asked in a voice that was near exhaustion. There was something cold and despairing in his eyes now. "I feel I owe you more."

Yugi studied him for a moment, then looked away. "I don't think so," he answered with a shrug, moving towards the bathroom before the taller teen could object.

He spent a minute gathering his courage. Yami's expression and the cracking lilt of his voice had shattered much of his confidence in going back. But he was okay from what he could see. He looked more solemn than usual, maybe a bit melancholy, but he seemed more or less okay. Yugi had to grip the kit until his fingers turned white with the force in order to knock away the shaking that occurred in his hands. He bit his lip, looking the red plus sign over, and turned back to walk into the room again.

He almost wished he hadn't.

Yami was starting to unravel the soiled dressing on his left wrist. The fibers were all clotted together from the dried blood and the way they pulled apart made it sound as if he were tearing duct tape.

Yugi cringed.

The white of the bandage was hideously discolored as he dropped it away in coils. The insides were black and stiff with dried red and brown and the edges were discolored bright yellow. He drew in a deep breath within his nostrils, his lungs aching with the cool relief. He watched as his wrist was slowly revealed and stiffened painfully upon seeing the fresh swell of blood that came and traveled downwards to his elbow.

He had to stop himself from leaping forward in a panic, to tell him not to do anymore. But he turned instead, looking to the bathroom again. He selected the darkest towel, a deep mahogany color, and dropped it onto his arm as he came back. When he got to his side, he slipped the towel into his lap, took the seat next to him, and bit his lip as they looked at each other.

The soiled bandage was only halfway undone, as he was sure Yami saw the potential of bleeding on the carpet as a bad idea as well. With the addition of the towel there, the taller teen began to unravel it further, peeling it away and dropping it aside. His wrist swelled with bloody currents, the red of it horrifying to behold. It dripped in hideous rivulets down his arm to his elbow and fell almost like rainwater. But it was not the blood that made Yugi want to puke.

Yellow pus was welling up now, pushing towards the surface when he reached up to touch the towel to his wound. The creamy color against the red of Yami's blood made Yugi's head spin and he swallowed thickly. The smell was that of decay and dying muscle, one of which reminded him of Valon upon first breathing it in. He could see, when Yami swiped at the flesh, that the edges were crusted in black, the cells long deceased. He nearly groaned again.

Maybe he should have tried to put some drain tubes in his arm when he stitched them back. He felt stupid now for having never considered before.

Yami pressed the towel into his arm, applying as much pressure as he possibly could. The fibers grew hot enough to singe in his chaotic mind, but they absorbed the liquid all the same. He could see it spreading outwards, infecting others, coloring it a shade darker than its usual.

Yugi pulled out the saline solution to dab onto one of the cotton balls. "Does it hurt? You look like you're in pain…"

"No." He hesitated for a moment, eyes flickering towards his. "But my head is beginning to feel light."

"Oh…" He wondered if he could use the belt on his waist to help Yami apply enough pressure to stop the bleeding. But the thought staggered, falling away and shattering into nothing. "Well, give me a second and I'll—"

"It's not the blood loss. I'm just…a little queasy looking at it right now. It's mine and it makes me a little nervous. If it was someone else's I wouldn't have an issue." He shrugged and wadded the towel further together, pressing it into his skin harder than before. "But it will pass. I just… I think we redid the wrapping too soon yesterday…"

Yugi shivered. "I'm sorry."

He turned to him, eyes bright with something friendly and warm. "It doesn't matter, Yugi. Besides, this is just as healthy as washing it with the saline. My blood is expelling the infection as well. It will force more of the pus upwards and out of the wound."

"That still could have been avoided if I hadn't been in such a rush yesterday when we got back…"

Yami shook his head. "Your mother was going to come in at any moment and my arms were bleeding. There was not truly a choice in the matter." He hummed and wiped away another bit of blood, pressing the towel against it harder once more. "Unless you wanted to explain to her why a stranger who looks like her son has an issue with bleeding everywhere was in your room…"

"No, definitely not," he snorted, smiling faintly. "She'd probably try to beat you to death with something out of shock."

Yami smirked in amusement. "You think so?"

"That's not something to laugh about. She'd probably swing a skillet at your head until it popped." Yugi gave him a wide grin and tilted his head, eyes bright with laughter. "And I bet she'd love to deal with getting the blood and brain off the wall if it just meant she got rid of the threat."

Yami paused for a moment, studying him curiously, and then tilted his head slightly. "Hmm. I cannot see her accomplishing that. It is not an easy feat by any means. Werewolf bones are so much harder than human ones and our ability to heal where head wounds are involved is legendary."

"Are they?"

"When it's along the throat or the skull, our healing is instantaneous," he snickered. "All werewolves have that ability. It's limited only to the areas the wolves will bleed out the fastest or the most vital organs are, but it happens all the same."

"So then…say your ribcage was broken and punctured a lung…"

"Your lungs would mend around the splinter of bone, eventually being able to regenerate until it could push it back out again. The bone itself would probably be crushed into nothingness the next time the person changed." He shrugged. "The body mends itself rapidly and basically to perfection."

"That's…amazing…" He bit his lip. "But why not your wrists?"

"It is. It's just taking longer because I do not have enough food or body weight to fix it without exhausting me." Yami wiped at his arm again and the pus was bright white and creamy in color. He curled his lip back and both of them wrinkled their noses at the scent that came with it. "If my body repaired itself too quickly it would probably leave me comatose."

Yugi tilted his head and bit his lip. He remembered Shizuka mentioning that the disease would save the fetus and her even when she wanted nothing more than to curl up and die. He remembered her despair and frustration, the way her voice seemed to shatter with it. His eyes lowered to the wound on his arm. Gods, how had he not thought to take better care of it? Sure, Yami was not helpless, but with the shoulder wound and everything that had physically taxed and stressed his body…

"When we get this done, we need to look at your shoulder too." His voice sounded as if it were coming from far away. Yami blinked at him, confused and startled. "We'll go ahead and get all three of them cleaned for the night."

He grimaced. "All three of them? You will run out of towels before that's done."

Yugi shook his head, his smile strained. "We could always do this in the bathroom. If you sit in the tub, I can clean your wounds more easily. We can clean both of them and wash the blood off in a few minutes…"

Yami was heavily tempted to say yes. Yet the idea of such little space to maneuver, of the way that Yugi would have to sit beside or behind him, made him want to puke. He shook his head slowly. "Maybe another time. It might work best later."

He nibbled his bottom lip. "Okay. Let me go get another towel. We should have a black one somewhere in the laundry room."

He nodded slightly, his throat feeling tight with tension. His voice was cracking again. He had the feeling it might break away into nonexistence soon enough. "Thank you."

He got up. "Of course."

Yami listened to him as he padded out of the room. He clicked the door shut behind him gently, then trotted off elsewhere to get the towel he had spoken of. The red-eyed wolf closed his eyes for a moment, lowering his head slightly.

When Yugi came back into the room, the other boy had shrugged away the towel and was using the spray bottle to gently clean it out further. A few more stray specks of pus and dead cells had fallen into the cut, washed out easily. Yami wiped it away, glancing at him over his shoulder, and then turned back again.

"Do they hurt?"

Yami blinked and shook his head again. "No, not at all," he replied simply, turning to look at him. "They're tingling but that's because my body is attempting again to heal them. Now that they're clean it will be easier for them to mend once you have stitched them."

Yugi nodded slightly as he took a seat in front of him and allowed the kit to sit between them. He chewed the inside of his cheek, then dug into the box to pull away a piece of gauze and the suture materials. "Good. We can get your wrists done, then your shoulder."

He nodded his head and lowered his eyes as the other boy reached for his arm. He scooted closer still, until their knees were touching again and Yugi could lean over him more comfortably. He licked his lips, then grabbed at the scalpel with his other hand to begin scraping some of the dead tissue away again. "Can you open your hand for me? It'll make the muscles in your arm less tense."

Yami hummed and flattened his hand out. "I do wonder how it is that you and your mother are so successful and yet…" He frowned and his voice came out a miniscule hint troubled. "Why have you not…gone elsewhere? Why have you not joined your father? He is in the states, yes?"

Yugi shifted a little closer, using the gauze in his left hand to wipe away some of the tissue again. The blood that welled up made him smile faintly. "Japan is one of the best places in the world to get an education. And I was born and raised here. We also have family here, even if my dad's isn't really around that often. And Japan is so safe. Until this year… Honestly, I don't think I've ever actually heard of much happening in Domino City or Japan altogether. Murders are rare, robberies are rare… In the states, their crime rate is much higher. Things are a lot more dangerous there. And the school systems are not as…keen, I guess, as ours."

Yami tilted his head. "But, were you to learn at home, I am sure your mother would have done you great justice in teaching whatever it was that you might need."

He hesitated, then moved to lace the needle he had grabbed a moment ago. His eyes flickered up to the other boy's slowly. "I was picked on a _lot_ growing up. I…I have a lot of trouble making friends with anyone. Anzu took pity on me growing up, became my first friend, and she's literally the first one to _stay_. Tomoya was my second, even though it was more whenever we chose to hang out than a constant thing. Jonouchi and Honda became friends with me _after_ my first month of run-ins with Ushio."

Yami stared at him, thoroughly disgusted. "Who in their right mind would wish someone such as _you_ harm?" he spat. "Who is so foolish as to desire to hurt you of all people?"

Yugi glanced up at him, startled by the hatred which surged beneath his tone. Yami's eyes were dilated with anger, his lips were curled back to bare his teeth, his brows were furrowed with disgust, and his shoulders had risen into a bristle.

He swallowed hard. "Because I'm smaller than them. And I'm quieter than them. I don't like to fight with people."

Yami raised a brow. "The boy in the mall."

Yugi blinked, confused by the statement, and for a moment he had no words to describe his puzzlement. Then he raised his head a little, remembering the jeers, the way he had insinuated that he and Yami were together. Again it flashed in his thoughts that Yami had not argued or denied it in any way, yet he turned away from him whenever he made a move. It did not help, however, that he did not know _why_ he continued so stupidly to try. He did not understand why it was that he ever attempted it when he was still interested in the possibility of a relationship with Anzu.

"Hirotani," he said quietly. He had insinuated that Yami was there with him to carry his clothes and make him take it up the ass later. He chewed his cheek, then shook his head. "Yeah, he's one of them…"

"He was upset with you over the girl."

"Yeah, she, um, has a problem with me too. I think I offended her in one of my classes. Tomoya and I were talking about something and I think she overheard it and thought it was offensive." He shook his head. "But Hirotani dislikes me because I don't like sports and I like games and puzzles more. He used to pester me to play sports and whenever we lost because of me he would get pissed. He blamed it on me."

Yami shook his head, a growl curling from his throat.

Yugi lowered his eyes back to his hand, preparing the sutures to knot at the end and start to sew his skin back together. "I'm not athletic, I'm small, I don't like to fight with people, and no one really takes me seriously. So, I guess, if they're all werewolves like I've kind of begun to think, then it makes sense that they would want to fight with me over it. I seem a lot weaker than them, after all."

"I hate your species. I hate it a lot."

He gave him a wry smile. "You don't think they're wolves then?"

"It is pack mentality, but it is not canine."

Yugi hated the certainty in his tone. But he was right. From what he knew, most canines did not bother to pick on each other unless provoked first. And humans picked on anyone and everyone when they so desired.

"Are they wolves?"

He nodded slightly. "They all tend to shuffle away from me every time we pass each other. They skirt around me every chance they get. And they won't make eye contact with me anymore."

Yami tilted his head. "It would make sense." He turned his attention towards his wound as Yugi skillfully crossed the sutures to bring the skin more tightly together. "You have become stronger than them now and they sense your strength from your scent. The idea would be that they would duck away from you in order to avoid potential conflict with a more powerful predator."

"I thought Ushio was the only one," he admitted quietly. "I really thought he was until I started to notice all of their reactions whenever they were near me."

"It is slightly surprising to see that they all may have something of lycanthropy in them. I had not expected such an abundance of them. I thought more would be hellhounds than lycanthropes." He licked his lips as Yugi began to snip away the last of the sutures. The trail ended in the very crook of his elbow. The cut must have been forced further back during the Change. He had not known it to be so long before. The smaller boy flashed him a small smile and then moved to line the wound with gauze. Yugi wrapped his arm securely and then touched his palm his fingers.

"Is it too tight?"

He shook his head. "No. It feels rightfully snug."

"Good. As long as it's secure but not restricting," he commented with a small smile. But there was something in his eyes that unnerved the taller boy as he watched him. "Here, let me get another towel and we can work on that with your other arm."

Yami frowned at him, eyes dark as he shook his head. "You're upset."

Yugi paused, standing above him and blinking at him as he bit his lip and blood spilled into his mouth. "I just… I honestly don't understand what in all it is that you see in me that makes you say those kinds of things."

"Such as what?"

His cheeks were flushed but his eyes were clear with a cold clarity. "You told me that I'm the closest thing to selflessness. Then you say that we're friends. Then you throw yourself at the mercy of that fucking pack in the mountains in order to keep me safe. You nearly died three or four times now because of me. You _just_ _now_ got offended over the idea of people bullying me. I just… It doesn't make sense to me."

"I do not understand, either, why you put up with me. Yet somehow, for whatever reason, you do. I lash out and you attempt to make me feel better. I snarl and snap and you try to calm me. You do not lash out at me. And you extended your welcome for me to remain here as long as I should desire. Your actions make little sense to me either!"

He shook his head, his eyes glinting for a moment as he reached up to run his hands through his hair. "I care about you, that's why I do these things. You're a great person. You—"

"I'm a great person?" Yami scoffed loudly and shook his head in frustration. "No, anyone worthy of that title is in competition with you. I am a mildly okay person. _You_ are a great person."

Yugi shook his head again, more stubborn in his motion now. He closed his eyes and tugged on his bangs harder. "I don't want to have this argument…"

"Is this an argument? I thought I was merely pointing out the faults of your logic." He fell quiet for a long minute and a half. "Never mind. I…"

"Okay, well, when you argue, most of the time the other person becomes just as unhappy as you are. And that's exactly what I _didn't_ want, Yami."

Yami looked up. "You anger me because you do not value yourself. You do not see your value as I do and I cannot understand it. And I hate it. I…"

Yugi felt his eyes widen faintly before he blinked and offered him a weak smile. "You have self-esteem," he said in a tone that made it clear he would not hear anymore about this or speak about it another word, "and I don't. That's the difference between us. And I'm going to go grab that towel now, okay?"

Yami stared up at him, eyes wide and horrified, and then looked away. He touched at the line of his bandage, tapping along his veins. His face felt cold with shock, his spine tingling with distress. How was that possible? How was it that Yugi had no sense of his own worth? And how was it that he held no self-esteem of his own?

He swallowed thickly and his fingers brushed against his pulse. His heart was a shallow hammering beneath his fingertips. He pressed his tongue between his teeth and closed his eyes. It was painful to think that Yugi thought so little of himself. But it was also worse now that he had announced himself as Atem. If someone came to realize his lack of self-respect, the wolves would end him.

"Okay, so here we go with this one." He dropped the dark brown towel before he could stop himself, then felt his cheeks heat. "I forgot I had already grabbed the black one…"

Yami glanced at both bundles of fabric with something of a disdainful expression. "Does it matter? It means an extra towel just in case, yes?" He hesitated when he realized his voice had grown angry and frustrated. Yugi looked at him with something of a dismayed expression. "We are… We are doing my shoulder, yes?"

He blinked. "Of course!"

The taller teen nodded. "Okay, then this towel will do for that," he said quietly, pulling it into his lap as if it might make him feel better and forget his sharper tone. He pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth and peeked at him from beneath his lashes with as best an apologetic expression he could manage.

As he had expected, Yugi met him halfway. He offered him a small smile, forgiving and warm, and moved to take the seat in front of him again. He laid the brown towel out for a moment, putting the soaked one on top of it. "I should have brought a couple of bags to stuff them inside. Then again, I guess I can just toss it into the hamper at some point."

Yami nodded. "Yes, that would be a good solution," he said quietly, watching him curiously for a moment.

"Yeah, I just have to make sure it's buried so if my mom comes in she won't notice it. She'd freaked out if she realized that there was blood on it." He paused and then tilted his head, smiling faintly at him. "Of course, she'd freak out a _lot_ more if she realized that it was someone she didn't know who had put blood on her towel."

He gave him a small smile in return, a ghostly mimic of his own expression. They looked at each other curiously for a moment. Then Yami began to work at the bandages on his arm, undoing the white fabric of it and starting to pull it away completely. Curiously he began to unwrap it, tilting his head, and wrinkled his nose at the smell which greeted him now as it had then.

"I'm sorry for upsetting you."

Yugi shook his head. "It's okay, Yami." He smiled a little wider and raised a brow. "And how's that one looking?"

"The same as the other," he snorted, grabbing the black towel to begin catching at the fresh blood seeping from the wound. The rivulets of bright red made his stomach toss as he began to unravel it further. "Just as much pus and blood to be shed here."

Yugi smiled a little more, chuckling softly, and then watched him curiously for a moment longer. "That's really gross," he commented, reaching into the kit for a new line of suture to thread through the needle. "I think I have some Neosporin we can use on your burns too. It should help with some of the sting."

Yami nodded slightly. "Please," he muttered quietly. "They tend to ache sometimes."

"Okay, then that's what we'll do," he agreed warmly. "We'll go ahead and put some ointment on those bad boys and wait to see if it helps out some."

"Thank you."

He nodded and smiled a bit more, eyes growing affectionate as he watched him dab at the blood swelling upwards again from his wound. "No problem," he said easily, running his hand through his hair once more. "You would do the same for me, right?"

"Yes."

Their eyes locked for a brief moment. It was almost painful how easily he fell into the harsh stare of them. Yami was determined and there was something cold and fierce within his gaze. Yugi felt a small bit of heat in his marrow and it made him falter as he held the needle between his fingers. He licked his lips uncomfortably and the other boy continued watching him a moment longer.

He rubbed at the blood on his arm again. The pus swelled in cream and yellow and white. He shook his head slightly, frowning, and then wiped harder. The blood swelled and oozed upwards as he began to peel away the bottom of the bandage near the crease of his elbow.

Yugi moved the bottle of water and saline back and forth between his hands. He licked his lips again, tilting his head curiously for a moment. The smell was just as bad as it had been before. But this time it made him shiver with distaste as he glanced up at Yami again. The other boy was busying himself with the effort of wiping away the excess bodily fluids.

"And they still don't hurt?"

"My face is burning slightly, but my arms are okay. When this is stitched, I'm sure they'll be more or less fine afterwards." He hummed softly for a moment, then closed his eyes. "And then my shoulder just hurts a little. It's sore more than anything. I think I slept on it with too much weight."

"Oh… I'm sorry." Yugi hesitated and then reached over with the brown towel in his lap, catching a few stray beads of bright red falling down his limb. It dripped and fell towards the material beneath, his stomach tossing at the sight of them. "Here, be gentle, okay? You don't want to bleed more than you already have."

"I know. I just…I…don't like having to wipe everything like this so much," he commented with obvious dissatisfaction. "I'm tired of doing this. It's tedious."

Yugi smiled at him gently, eyes searching his with gentle kindness and warmth. "I'll do it, Yami," he said softly. "You can stop and I'll do it for you."

Yami looked up from beneath his lashes. Yugi's expression was so open and friendly and gentle that it made him feel somewhat dizzy. He was warm in expression, soft and sweet with friendliness and affection. "No," he muttered, looking away again, "I need to get used to tending to my own wounds. I do it so often as a wolf and never a human that this is odd to me. I can't have that continue…"

He nibbled his bottom lip again and then flinched from the pain that greeted him there.

"I told you not to keep biting it. You're going to end up with a hole in it, Yugi, and then _you'll_ require stitches." He continued wiping at the length of his arm where the blood was drenching the heavy black fibers. "You shouldn't worry so much about me. I promise you I am okay."

"I'm going to worry regardless. That's what people do! Friends worry about each other!" He wiped at his lip, his mouth throbbing with pain for a long minute. He hesitated as he looked back up at him more fully. "So tell me something, okay?"

He nodded. "Okay, what is it?"

He passed his tongue over his lips again, closing his eyes after a long moment. His mouth felt swollen and the flesh far too tender. He ran a hand through his hair.

"What about the wolves in the pack or the ones in the school?"

Yami blinked and looked up, wiping away the last bit of cerise liquid. Yugi grabbed the scalpel in his hand, his fingers twitching as he motioned for him to stretch his arm out and place his hand in his again. "What about them?" he muttered, raising a brow as he placed his hand palm-up in his. He studied his face as they looked at one another.

"What are they? They call me the Pure-Blood and Mai said that she's a Full-Blood and you called yourself one of them too."

He blinked at him, then wrinkled his nose. "Unless something has changed, the wolves within that pack are all Full-Bloods. That means that we are only somewhat weaker than you. It also means we have more active genes from the lycanthropy. When we bite someone, we produce a Half-Blood. That's the more common bloodline you'll find among lycanthropes." He watched him as he wiped away the dead tissue with a new pad of gauze and began to wash the wound. "They're the average wolf, stronger and smarter and faster than humans but not nearly as much as either of us. Only half of the benefits of the lycanthropy are accessible to them. When they bite someone they create another of themselves."

"How does that work? If I bit someone they'd become a Full-Blood, and if you bit someone they'd be a Half-Blood. But if they bit someone…"

"Because a Quarter-Blood is only ever _born_. They benefit as Ryou did, with slightly better senses and the ability to heal a bit faster. But none of them will ever change."

Yugi struggled not to sink his teeth back into his lip. "But _you_ bit Ryou—and so did Bakura. So how was he not…?"

"Sometimes when a human is sick with a medical condition before they are bitten, it can take years for the lycanthropy to reverse it enough to allow them to change. Other times, the lycanthropy acts much like its closest cousin and destroys the host very slowly and painfully."

"What's its closest cousin?"

Yami hummed in the back of his throat. "Rabies. Rabies is its closest cousin. But where rabies is weak, lycanthropy makes viral diseases look tame." He tilted his head. "Sometimes the lycanthropy just does not take to the human host and they end up having the dormant version of the disease. It's so rare, however, that it's probably less than one in a trillion to avoid infection like that. Lycanthropy is such an aggressive disease that it's capable of attacking and infecting every cell in the body in a mere hour."

Yugi's eyes widened drastically. "W-what? Seriously?"

He nodded distractedly. "It's probably the most powerful disease to exist," he muttered. "It completely mutates DNA and RNA strands within a month."

Yugi swallowed thickly. "That's…terrifying."

"Yes. But it's also an amazing gift." Yami watched him tie the end of the thread before beginning to push the needle through his skin. It was a tight pinching sensation but his arm was already tingling rapidly. The wound being allowed air gave it room to promote the healing it needed now. "But, as for your bullies, I think them only Half-Bloods. And, unless the pack has begun to allow them into their ranks, they should _all_ be Full-Bloods."

Yugi picked at his bangs, pulling roughly. "Did you notice the same thing that I did?"

Yami looked up at him fully again and the way he peered at him made Yugi reconsider the words. There was something desperate and frantic to his gaze and the smaller boy had the urge to pull away and bundle himself together tightly. His energy was an assertive blanket which weighed upon him heavily.

"There are many things I know about them that you do not," he finally responded, voice low and scratchy with confusion. "And a great many of them you will have to hear from them yourself for I cannot bring myself to relay them to you. So I am not certain what you mean to ask me…"

He blinked wide eyes. Yami was becoming distressed because of his own mounting anxiety. He drew in a deep breath, licked his lips, looked down, and closed his eyes again.

"I mean that Otogi and…Marik…?" He nodded when Yugi fell silent with a questioning look. He smiled faintly when he continued but the confusion was clear on his face. "From what I saw, Otogi and Marik are the only two males there."

Yami blinked. "I was not sure you had noticed."

"Well yeah! Why wouldn't I have?"

He shrugged but his movement was slightly defensive. Yugi looked back to his arm, continuing on his stitching again. "I don't truly know the reason behind that. But I _do_ know that Marik was the _sole_ male within that pack before then. Otogi must be newer than him. But he's not a Full-Blood and I have no understanding of his placement among them."

Yugi was tearing holes into his right cheek. The blood was harsh and fiery against his tongue. "That female…the one who…propositioned me…" He could see his head snap up and his lips twitch, threatening to turn into a snarl, from the corner of his eye. "Did that happen to you too?"

He growled low in his throat. "Often. And whenever I sent them away Marik came to make his claim."

Despite the disdain in his tone, Yugi had to wonder. For the smallest of split seconds, he wondered about the idea of that. If Marik got to sleep with those females all of the time, wasn't that basically the same thing as a current day harem? He imagined that it was both prosperous and fun to the other male. And he could easily see himself or Jonouchi having the times of their lives doing that kind of thing. He knew he'd only settle with one, but the idea that he could _choose them_ was somewhat amazing to him.

The red-eyed teen nudged him gently with his free hand. "You can fantasize about that magical stuff _after_ you at least finish my arm, please," he said in a mixture of a plaintive and bored voice. Immediately Yugi felt his eyes grow wide, his expression somewhat horrified. "I simply need that done and then I can go play in the woods while you enjoy yourself."

His bluntness made Yugi flush before he scowled at him. "I'm not going to jack off to that, okay?" he scoffed, annoyed. His face was still bright red but now he also assumed it to be creeping along his throat and encompassing his ears. He could have cursed, but instead looked away to his sutures. "I just… Shut up. Anyways, no, once we finish this, I'm going to fix up your shoulder and then we'll watch TV or something."

Yami snorted softly. "I would not truly be surprised if your classmates are Half-Bloods. It would explain their ferocity as well. Most of them suffer from chemical imbalances when they first begin to experience anything related to the lycanthropy. And it gets worse when they don't change often enough. But it also amplifies their core personalities. If they were greedy and knew the strength of their new abilities, I doubt they would not be excited to test the limits. Half-Bloods are very dangerous, especially when they are newly bitten or changing. Most often they have more problems with control than any other wolves. And their personalities are more human than wolf. It makes them more likely to become addicted to their newfound abilities than anything else."

He blinked. Where had he even drawn that from? He felt his teeth dig further into his cheek. Yami was changing the subject both to help ease his embarrassment and to avoid mention of the pack again.

"Hellhounds are just very chaotic as it is. They're more often like daredevils and adrenaline-addicts than anything else. They do what they want, however they want."

He looked at him curiously. "And do you think they have them in the labs? If they do, can't we find a way to maybe make them work with us? I mean…"

Yami blinked, then shook his head slowly. "Hellhounds will do as they want, no matter the destruction wrought. Thankfully, however, most often they are mentally stable and powerful enough not to be concerned over. They can maintain themselves by eating and hunting, just as a lycanthrope can. But…they're also part dog."

Yugi thought of the way Valon looked so much like a king shepherd. "So? What's your point? What difference does that make?"

"Not much of one. But it does determine the way that some of them react to lycanthropes. Dogs are normally very vicious towards wolves. Because of that it could be more dangerous than anything else. Besides, hellhounds will do as they wish, whatever will benefit them in the end."

"So, in other words, they're more human-like than wolf-like," Yugi commented with a raised brow. His slightly flustered expression made him snicker. "What? You don't normally beat around the bush."

Yami shrugged a shoulder, eyes on his wound. "I do not like speaking ill of the species you wish you still were," he admitted uncomfortably, "and I do not like the way your eyes look when I do. I do not like your unhappiness or discomfort."

Yugi faltered, eyes widening drastically, and a small dust of red appeared in a line along his cheeks beneath his lashes. "Oh," he mumbled lamely, shaking his head slightly, "well you don't have to try to mince words with me because you think I'll get upset, Yami."

"Whatever. You asked so I told. Regardless, more to the point, hellhounds are unpredictable. And I doubt that any of them would wish to work with a lycanthrope for any measure of time."

"What about Valon?"

Yami looked up and something harsh glittered in his eyes. "Valon? You would wish to bring Valon into our business?" He did not sound mad, but Yugi saw his eyes and it made his skin begin to push together into bumps of gooseflesh. "I do not think that would be a wise decision. First you would have to find him at some point, then you would need to be careful about what would be said to him. He's already proven he'd rather blame you than admit that his existence means just as much destruction—"

"What does that mean, anyways? What exactly is it that he means? I mean, I'm Atem, but…"

Yami blinked at his mystified and somewhat fearful expression, then looked at the wound on his arm again. "Pure-Bloods are meant to be extinct. They were never meant to exist among humans but for three of them—Slifer, Ra, and Obelisk."

"Why them?"

"Because Lupa loved them, I suppose. Or perhaps she thought it necessary to have three of them remain to fix things if they should ever get out of hand."

"Oh, out of hand, you mean like _now_?"

Yami's lips twitched, but Yugi could not tell whether he meant to smile or grimace as his expression grew calm once more. "Yes, but you came into existence, and I am not sure that they will act more than absolutely necessary." He looked at him, eyes tired and slightly burdened with a touch of sorrow. "Atem is the catalyst for a great many things, and he's also meant to be the solution to even more of them. I am sure the gods will help, but I feel they allowed your birth in order to alleviate their responsibility with this world."

"That's…really kind of fucked up."

"They have to maintain balance. Ra rules over life, Slifer over death, and Obelisk over war. They have their many sub-domains, health, vitality, fertility, peace, justice, judgment, guidance…" He shrugged. "Atem was probably the easiest way to maintain balance and send forth warning that the gods had come to help."

Yugi nearly groaned in the back of his throat. "So I'm seriously thought of as a god of some kind?" he muttered, flustered.

"Well, for most, yes. For others, possibly not."

He bit his lip. "What do you think of me as?"

"You're Yugi to me. Atem is just a name applied to a familiar face." Yami paused for a moment, then shook his head. "I think of you as a friend, not a god. And I'll be damned if that ever changes."

His lips curved upwards into a small smile. "Thank you."

Yami nodded and watched him as he tied the last suture and sat back some. Yugi started to put the needles and suture thread away, then paused and glanced at him curiously. Yami had been so busy watching his hands that he took a moment to look up and realize he was studying him.

"What?"

"I'm just trying to figure out if we're going to have to stitch your shoulder too," he mumbled, biting his lip and wincing. "Ow! Why can't that instant healing thing kick in on this?!"

"Because your lips don't bleed as much as head wounds or your wrists or your tongue or a punctured vital." He smirked at his frustrated expression. "Your body has no reason to treat it as anything more than a simple scrape."

Yugi snorted and shook his head. "Yeah, well… It should. This is irritating."

Yami rolled his eyes. "A minor inconvenience in the grand scheme of things," he snickered, smirking when Yugi shot him an annoyed look. "A more major, important inconvenience would be how badly reactions may be within the pack when they realize how humble you actually are."

Yugi faltered. "Why do you say that?"

"Because they're going to be expecting a leader prepared for war. They thought that was me because I nearly tore one of the female's throats out when she got too close to me that night during the sacrifices. I believe that is most likely why the alpha even came to assume that I was you."

He shivered. "Great." His eyes fell to the kit again. "I wonder if I need to get more suture from downstairs… Mom won't notice if it's just one size. She'll be okay with that. I can just tell her I was restocking the kits in case of emergency…"

Yami blinked and furrowed his brows. "There are sizes to sutures?"

Blue-violet eyes widened and flickered to his. "Well yeah. You don't want to use a wider one around someone's eyes. If you did, you'd probably damage their eye further. So they have sizes. For around the eyelid you would use a 6 and for something like your wrist you would use a 4. 4 is larger and 6 is much thinner."

"Ah, okay." He hummed low in his throat for a moment. "So the thinner would be used for more sensitive skin and the others would fit for other specific areas. And how long do they take before they have to be taken out?"

"Depending on the condition of the wound, its location, whether someone is taking medicine for it, and other things, it could be a couple of days to a week or two." He shrugged. "But, when I say that they will be healed by then, I don't mean like ours do. I mean it just doesn't need the top layer of skin to be held together anymore."

Yami nodded slightly. "I would not have expected the human body to be capable of such a thing."

He smirked slightly. "Nah, they're limited to more average healing rates," he teased, smiling a little more when the other boy wrinkled his nose. "But every now and then you get someone good at healing fast."

"Mm, yes, the anomalies."

He snickered. "Exactly," he snorted, turning away, "the anomalies. Now, do you want me to come over to you or—?"

Yami blinked, straightened a little further, and then moved to his side, plopping down beside him with his shoulder braced. Yugi blinked in surprise, then rolled his eyes.

"Well, I guess that answers that question."

"Yes."

"You didn't have to."

"You also are not required to accommodate me as completely as you do. I am fully capable of moving and doing things which do not require your assistance. Yet you would gladly move about to fix things for me that you do not need to." He rolled his eyes and flashed him something of a smile. It was soft and gentle, unlike the cautionary light in his gaze. "I like to do things to ease your burden as well."

"You're not a burden."

"You just have not come to realize it yet." This time he looked away and instead found his eyes locked on his bandaged arms. They looked so pristine. "But when you do, remember that I said so before you came to such a conclusion yourself."

Yugi shook his head, scoffing, "The only burden in this room is me. But whatever, Yami, I don't want to get into an argument with you over this either."

He gave him a wary look. "You will see later how it is that I am right," he said quietly before shaking his head. "But I suppose for now it does not matter. Anyways, my shoulder shouldn't require stitches, I don't think."

He tilted his head. "I'm surprised you didn't lose function in it, honestly. He must have grazed you or something…"

"No, he managed to completely break the bone with the shot. It's just that the angle was inches from the joint so it did not stop me completely. He was close, however."

Yugi was frozen for a moment. "So you didn't think to mention that at some point?"

"Why would I have? The ice and the Change after the whole thing did well enough to fix most of the damage." He shrugged leisurely and stretched his legs out in front of him.

"And the bullet?" he asked urgently, "Where did _it_ wind up?"

"The exit wound is right here."

Yugi was frozen, horrified, as the other boy placed his hand near the tuck of his armpit. His eyes nearly popped out of his head and his body was frail with confusion. He felt dizzy, nearly swaying with horror, and opened and closed his mouth in disbelief.

"Well, on the human body it's there. But on the canine it's a little lower." He tilted his head at his expression, then shot him something of a confused look. "What? It shot straight through, landed right in the snow."

"You never told me! You never even thought to mention that?! You truly didn't consider that maybe you should tell me so that I could see about that wound too? The exit wounds are always so much larger and worse!"

"Well, the close proximity to the ribcage and the blood vessels triggered my body into healing it. My shoulder was still somewhat dislocated and it hurt but it was no longer broken and I could walk on it without the threat of bleeding out." Yami glanced at the wound for a long moment, then lightly prodded at it where it lay beneath the soft fabric of his tanktop. "It will only take a few more days to truly heal—less than that, even, maybe."

"You're not concerned at all?"

The heat in his voice made him glance over in slight confusion. "No, because I know my body will mend itself."

"And what if it couldn't?"

"Then I would ask for your help if it was possible to recover and go off on my own to lay down in the woods if it wasn't." He gave him an irritable look that spoke of clear caution to watch his own mounting temper. "But I know to trust myself enough to realize that, yes, the wound may look terrible, but it will heal. And I will be fine."

"That kind of thinking is probably what kills most werewolves," he spat, flustered as he shook his head angrily. "No wonder the Pure-Bloods went extinct!"

The other boy blinked wide eyes, then snorted so loudly that Yugi jumped at the sheer volume of it. His shocked expression made Yami freeze, red eyes wide and startled. They stared at each other, blinking, and then burst out laughing. He leaned his shoulder against his playfully and the other wolf let out a whistling gasp of a noise. They glanced at each other from the corners of their gazes, then laughed harder.

It took a solid few minutes for the two to settle again. And even then, there were soft chuckles whenever they caught the other's eye. Finally the room became mostly silent but for their breathing and the smaller teen cast Yami a small grin as he faced him completely again.

"Can you take your shirt off for me? I need to at least check the wound before I do anything else."

Yami nodded and turned away enough to grab at the top of his shirt, tugging it over his head by its collar. He dropped it lazily into his lap and turned to him patiently as the other boy shifted to a spot diagonal of him.

Yugi was slightly awed by the sight of it. He'd never seen a gunshot wound before and the dark red diameter of it was almost a perfect circle. The skin had, unsurprisingly, drawn itself more or less to a close. The top merely looked sore and reddened. But its core was sealed with dark red and bloodied tissue. All it would truly need would be a good patching of the skin growing back and it would be fine. It would look perfectly new.

"This isn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be," Yugi admitted quietly, studying it a moment longer. He had expected pus and blood. Most gunshot wounds got heavily infected. The way the body was forced to cave inwards in light of the bullet's path, the cells dying rapidly at mere impact, usually caused a lot of complications. If they were fully clothed when it happened, there was even more reason for infection as the fabric would go through the skin as well. And who knew what clothing really picked up throughout the day?

Yami twisted his head around and flexed his shoulder forward just enough to look at it as well. It ached to twist it so far but it seemed to do well to give him a view. Yugi was right. It did not look bad. He turned away again dismissively. So he had no reason to worry about it any further.

"I'll still clean it though, just to be on the safe side."

He hummed, nodding.

Yugi had to lean around him to grab the kit and he was abruptly aware of just how much personal space he was intruding upon. If he just tilted his head to the side and tipped his chin slightly downwards, he might almost be able to mouth his crotch. And that close proximity made his skin crawl as he snapped back to position and looked at the mostly-healed wound in front of him.

"Do you think they're really extinct?"

Yami blinked. "Aside from Ra, Slifer and Obelisk? Yes, I think the Pure-Bloods besides them and you are dead," he commented with a small frown, glancing at mm curiously. "Why do you ask? It is most common knowledge among the wolves that both original branches of the werewolf subspecies are long deceased. The only for the hellhounds' Harbingers are Skoll, Morrigan and Hati."

Yugi nibbled his lip. "But if Ra let _me_ be born, doesn't that mean it's possible that there are other Pure-Bloods around?"

"I would think not. It would force nature on its head."

With how often he had been told how unnatural his own birth was, the small teen did not even think to ask why. Instead he drummed his fingers against the bottle in his hands. "So, you don't believe there's any way that maybe, just _maybe_ they might have merely gone into hiding or hibernation or something?"

"Truthfully? No. I think if that were to be true, the gods would have destroyed them themselves. Pure-Bloods were never meant to exist among humans."

He let out a flustered breath. "And what about the reason they even exist? If they weren't meant to be here, then _why_ were they even created? And what about other werewolves? Shouldn't that mean that _they_ shouldn't be around humans at all either?"

Yami turned to look at him now and Yugi hastily began spraying the center of his wound in order to avoid having to catch his eye. "You're mistaking all werewolves for lycanthropes and all lycanthropes for Pure-Bloods. There's a very clear line between each wolf in existence." He paused, allowing him to wipe at the exposed tissue and muscle. He was tempted to look now, to see if it might look even slightly cleaner with Yugi's gentle but attentive care. "You have to remember that hellhounds are half dog, and they often look like friendly canines with odd eye color. And lycanthropes live in areas where wolves are prominent in order to avoid detection. Hellhounds can get away with scavenging within the walls of a city like this. That's why it's so heavily populated with them."

Were there a lot of hellhounds in Japan? He had never considered, although he did remember Yami saying so minutes before. He bit his lip and wiped again with the gauze in his hand. He would need to sneak another roll of that upstairs into the first aid kit again as well. He glanced at the tape but the roll seemed more or less untouched. There was no need to grab more than necessary. Then it would seem suspicious.

"And Pure-Bloods are meant to be _truly_ immortal, Yugi. As such it is said they can recover from any wound and bring themselves back to life in a healed state from their deaths. The werewolves you see in that pack and around your school could never do that. They are harder to kill than regular humans, but they are not immortal. They can die and it will be permanent."

He sighed quietly. "What about a werewolf's average lifespan?" he finally muttered. "Without all of the hunters and the dangers, how old do you think they could become?"

His brow rose slowly. "Truthfully? As long as they remained healthy and out of trouble, they could live forever. They would just have to maintain their health and change a little more often. But they could exist until the end of days if that's what they so desired."

Yugi paused in dropping the bottle back into the kit, then looked up at him from beneath his lashes. "And… How long do you think _I_ will last?" he finally asked, voice low and quiet.

Yami turned around with wide eyes, staring at him. His expression was overshadowed with guilt and something like disbelief. His eyes looked tired, premature with exhaustion, and his mouth was quirked into a slight grimace of pain. The question itself seemed to similarly wind him as it did the taller teen.

He drew in a deep breath, then gave him a small smile, but it did not reach his gaze and his voice had lost all sense of lightness to be replaced by mounting despair and distress.

"Forever, Yugi. You'll last forever."

 **That suture thing by the way? Totally true. But can someone explain to me PLEASE why when I was looking up the sizes necessary for certain wounds, the graph ALWAYS showed the size for PENIS WOUNDS? Like...do those happen often? I'm so confused.**


	34. History

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day (no update on June 2nd)**

 **Chapter Warnings: Discussions of Bloodshed/War, Discussions of Death, Hints of Puzzleshipping, Hints of/Implied Yugi x Valon**

 **Okay, guys, so this is the first time that the Lunar Ascension is brought up in a little bit of detail. This story is skewed and messed up and, depending on who is telling it, altered in various ways. The truest version of it is lost among the living wolves, as Yami tells him at a later point in the story. But the gods know it well.**

 **As they do Atem's "verse" (the proper telling of his arrival) but it's at a much later point in the story that the TRUE story of the Lunar Ascension is fleshed out and told to Yugi. And I haven't decided yet if I'm going to make the verse for Atem's arrival or leave it as vaguely mentioned/hinted at in order to keep the wolves in the dark for the most part as to his meaning.**

 **So, the monitor lizard thing? Debunked. They finally realized it wasn't the bacteria in the mouth that was killing the prey and that the lizards produce venom. I didn't find that out until I was doing research again when the chapter was already written (about a month or two afterwards actually haha) and I don't entirely think it's necessary to change it simply because it's only brought up once or twice.**

 **Also, DOES ANYONE know the name for the ship for Yugi x Valon? I checked like ten different lists and couldn't find it anywhere?**

Chapter XXXIV: History

 _Work Log Entry XXXIV: April, 2002_

 _April 19_

 _A.T.E.M. does not seem to possess any signs of depression despite having been exposed to death so openly on numerous occasions._

 _The boss is pleased to find that he responds well to both verbal and visual cues. It is under speculation if this is his wolf responding or the shell of humanity that the Pure-Blood wears so easily._

 _April 28_

 _A.T.E.M. has begun to show the ability to predict certain behaviors. He has learned to watch muscle movement in order to predict the signal and reaction expected of him._

 _When I tried to raise my hand to gesture that he back up, he had already done it and was waiting for me to feed him from the very back wall of his cage._

 _He is learning at a stunning rate._

 _His adaptation skills are beyond human capabilities._

Yugi was lying close enough that their body heat was shared equally between them. The smaller teen had somehow found Yami climbing under the comforter with him beneath the sheets as if he belonged there. It had made him grin and snort softly, but he had the feeling his sudden bravery to do so was because he had scared him earlier. Their conversation had turned heavy when he had asked him his estimation of _his_ lifespan. And the silence had been deafening when they had not spoken for a solid ten minutes and awkwardly avoided looking at each other altogether. He had scooted closer when Yami had gotten under there with him, desperate for the sensation of his alpha being there. Something about the idea of regulating himself to his beta again at the moment made him feel calmer, more relaxed, gave him the ability to breathe again without choking.

"So what were werewolves made for? Was there a reason or was it some weird kind of evolutionary branch or something?" He snorted. There was no way humans turning into wolves was a new branch of evolution. There was just no way whatsoever.

"War," Yami replied quietly, staring at the television as it might save him from this conversation. But the word caused Yugi to sit up, turning to him with wide eyes full of shock and horror. He wrinkled his nose slightly, the motion reminding the smaller boy of a rabbit twitching, and then shook his head slowly. "They were created for war. Against the humans. During the time of the Lunar Ascension, the humans had turned on the wolves—"

"Lunar Ascension?"

Yami was quiet for a moment. "It is what we call our origin story. Every species has an origin story, I'm sure. We call ours the Lunar Ascension. It is, after all, the moon that we were created from," he muttered quietly. "It's why we change on the full moon, why nighttime makes us happier than day…"

"Whoa, wait… What? Created from the moon?" Yugi shook his head and felt dizzy for a moment. "Is this a mythological story or an actual thing? Because this honestly just sounds insane and impossible, Yami."

And immediately he felt bad for saying such a thing. Though it _did_ sound like a child's fairytale, he had not meant to so blatantly display his narrow-mindedness like this. And he feared Yami taking it the wrong way, as an insult of some kind. It was like disclaiming someone's heritage, saying that there was no way they were a certain ethnicity when they clearly knew their own culture.

He felt sick, horrified, and for a moment he opened his mouth to apologize to him, faltering when the other boy did not seem offended.

Yami's lips had quirked into a wide smile of amusement. He looked at him fully now. "Not quite the moon as you are thinking," he chuckled. "When I say the moon, I mean the Mother of Wolves, Lupa…or Luperca, depending on whom you speak to. She is the embodiment of moon and starlight and her mate Fenrir is the one of night and winter."

Yugi stared at him for so long without blinking that his eyes began to hurt. When the other boy snorted, he rolled his eyes and huffed. "No, seriously, Yami."

His lips tugged into a wider grin, his eyes bright with laughter before he shook his head. "No, but Lupa is the source of the lycanthrope subspecies. Her dormant state as a slumbering god is the moon and the stars, which give us our power to change and our insomnia." Yami fell silent for a moment at Yugi's skeptical expression and his own face began to slip slightly as he analyzed his cynicism. Suddenly he wondered why he had even thought to open his mouth for explanation. Surely saying it was a war and then refusing further information would have served better than this. "Fenrir comes to the hellhounds in the formation of the blackness of the night sky and the cold chill of winter. He is the father of the hellhounds and that is why they change on the coldest night of the winter season."

The smaller boy studied him, unable to believe his own ears. He had listened to the Japanese origin story growing up, listened to tales of the wolves being gods and guardians. Yet somehow this sounded so far from the truth that Yugi could not help but hesitate. And he could see the hurt coming on the other boy's face and it made him ache to realize he was inflicting it. He drew in a deep breath, then exhaled quietly.

He had met Slifer, had he not? She had known their names without them telling her. And she had seemed to know so much. It was more possible to suspend his disbelief as he considered this.

"I'm not going to lie, Yami. I'm honestly struggling with the idea. If they're gods, why should they go dormant? They hadn't created the werewolves yet, right? I mean… So Ra and Slifer and Obelisk and the other three… They wouldn't exist yet…?"

Yami opened and closed his mouth. Then he too drew in a deep breath, sighing heavily before shaking his head. "I would think that immortality would bore a creature that had existed since before time and the earth. I would assume they slumber because it is a time of peace and when they awakened, they hoped to find something new, to see a progression in the world that might be more exciting…?" He trailed off. "I would not know. Perhaps they wished to cease listening to the suffering of the world below so they slept. I don't know."

Yugi blinked wide eyes. How was it possible to turn away from someone else's suffering and grief? He struggled to consider, then froze in place.

Fear.

Fear was enough to make even the bravest person turn away from pain that might overwhelm them. He could not see Yami being truly afraid of much, however, and the idea that he could turn a blind eye hurt so much more than even the thought of his own death. What would happen if he was his last resort on that fateful day and he turned away when he needed him? Was it possible that Yami would be so overwhelmed as to race the other way when push came to shove?

He bit his lip until it bled, wincing at the faint prickle of pain. It must have been healing earlier, as it was not nearly as painful as it'd been formerly. He looked away from the other boy for a moment, studying the screen.

"Okay, so then… Tell me the story, Yami."

Yami faltered for what seemed to be hours. The silence was long end suffocating and seemed to weigh upon them forcefully for what felt like a lifetime. Then, slowly, with obvious hesitance, the taller boy began to speak again.

"It was the most brutal winter the world had come to know. The humans call it the Ice Age"—Yugi's head snapped around and his eyes grew wide with bewilderment, startled—"and both subspecies call it the Lunar Ascension. In the midst of the winter, when the ice would not cease, and it seemed the sun would never appear again, the humans turned on the wolves. They had been harnessing dogs for years before that day. But the prey had long since moved and the wolves were starving. The humans were starving. Many animals were migrating in patterns I am sure would be unnatural now. The gray wolves and the dire wolves had begun to share territories. Packs were immense, the ranks of hundreds…"

Yugi nodded at him when he fell quiet for a minute. His red eyes were troubled as they peered back at him and the smaller teen wished he had words to wipe it from his face. His obvious discomfort made him feel somehow small and responsible, but he did not dare offer him a way out. Today Yami had been oddly open and willing to converse with him.

And his quiet nature, as much as he enjoyed its company as well, would dictate the subject be swept under the rug completely.

So he waited.

And a few long minutes trudged by.

Finally, feeling somewhat cornered but also incredibly obligated to tell him such an important story amongst their species, Yami closed his eyes and continued.

"The wolves had prepared to move to chase the herds, perhaps the mammoths or the horses or whatever it was that they would eat." He shrugged and Yugi smiled faintly. "I do not suppose it matters what they planned to hunt. It only matters that upon their plans to do so, the humans had another idea altogether."

A sudden certainty crept through Yugi and his stomach clenched. His heart was in his throat and his body felt small and sick.

"I suppose they were desperate and the dogs starving as well, for the set upon the wolves for their new source of prey. The packs were not made to fight against spears and human weapons even back then. And the dogs had fared better from the last of the humans' meals which they shared with them throughout those cold months." Yami paused, then sighed softly. "The wolves broke apart into smaller packs, panicked and confused by this sudden threat. The humans had, after all, been something resembling their hunting partners before then. But they had turned on them and their own former brethren had come for them too."

Yami bit his lip and opened his eyes. He was looking at the television, gaze shadowed faintly, and now Yugi was sorely tempted to simply tell him to call it quits. They could just lie down and go to sleep instead and he could tell him again some other time.

"The humans used the dogs to trap them. The wolves were often too tired to fight them away and even if they tried, they would come to die in battle. They were stronger, but they had suffered more. So the fights were heavily outmatched and the weaponry, as primitive as it was, served in human favor." He snorted quietly. "The packs dwindled to about half of their immense ranks. Their constant prayer finally woke Fenrir, who came to earth in his all of his glory and gave the wolves of darker fur a gift, for they were the ones picked off first. He allowed them the ability to change forms, to become the animal of any shape whose heart they consumed. They changed into dogs, infiltrating as necessary, and killing and slaughtering to drive them back. The gray wolves he gave the ability to draw strength from the blood of an enemy. If they could drink a mouthful, they could heal themselves almost instantly. And the white wolves, he gave the ability to change into shimmering mists, ghosts of themselves. When he came to the dire wolves, he gave them another gift, one of which he knew would decimate the humans. He gave them ability to inflict with disease upon the man who they could cut through the skin of."

Yugi felt his mouth fall open, horrified. "Holy shit…" he muttered, unable to help himself. His cheeks reddened at Yami's slightly surprised expression but he waved it off and the other boy grinned almost mischievously.

"The wolves turned the tide. And eventually the humans and dogs were all but slaughtered. Fenrir did not care to cease the death toll. And eventually the rage from these first hellhounds awakened Lupa who saw the suffering of her own species and grew just as enraged. However, unlike her mate, she encountered mercy from the humans. While she went to check on a litter of pups that had been left defenseless in their den, left to the elements and hunger, she found a human woman. And the woman was feeding the pups, who were just old enough to accept the meat she offered."

Yugi nodded slightly, but his disbelief was growing a bit more. It sounded all so much like a fairytale, like a myth of epic proportions, with just enough truth to be possible…

Yami sighed quietly. "When she saw this, she thought that there had to be some good within the humans, and that there had to be at least one reason to save them. So she tried to convince Fenrir to listen to her plea to cease the bloodshed. But he was still angry and he refused her." His eyes flickered away. "He encouraged the fighting to escalate. And so Lupa came upon her own decision to cease this fighting. She found the yearlings of a crossbreed, with the leaner design of the gray wolf but the harsher jaws and firmer chest of the dire."

Yugi froze in place, eyes widening in shock.

"There were only six but their strength and determination gave her hope that it would work. And so she gave them a gift, one so powerful that even those early hellhounds could do nothing to stop them. She gave them the ability to come back to life no matter the cause of death. She gave them the ability to best the greatest predator when they were under the pressure of battle. She gave them the health of a million wolves, allowing them to heal as rapidly as necessary in order to win. And she allowed them the gift to infect the humans, to give them the chance to fight back. She warned them of their potential 'offspring' having a lack of strength and ability in revival. And she told them the change for them would be excruciating."

Yugi blinked in shock, then shook his head. "They came from the wolves?! Werewolves came from the wolves?!"

Yami paused and nodded. "We came from the wolves, hellhounds and lycanthropes alike." He hesitated briefly, then ran a hand through his hair. "When the war between both sides began, Fenrir accepted this as a challenge of authority. He gave each of the hellhounds the ability to change into the human form, to allow them to utilize weaponry. But in turn he created only six other hellhounds to match the caliber of the new wolves Lupa had given life to. He created six beasts, the Harbingers, with the ability to utilize shape-shifting, blood drinking, and infection. They were altered significantly by this power, however, and their minds deteriorated from the pressure of the war. They became unstable and more chaotic, but held together enough to fight back. However, the shape-shifting into dogs began to change their molecular structure and their features became somewhat deformed. They became more dog-like, less like wolves, all but three who did not change beyond into their incorporeal forms."

He bit his lip. "Let me guess, that would be…Skoll, Hati and Morrigan… Right?"

Yami smirked. "Perception of that magnitude can be very dangerous," he teased before rolling his eyes. "Yes, and the three Pure-Bloods to fare the best were given the ability to become gods to rival them and maintain the balance over both lines of werewolves. However, it was neither side's victory which caused the fighting to stop."

"No?"

"No, it was the sun. It finally came back and the ice began to slowly melt enough that the herds began to migrate back. The humans had learned their lesson and they did nothing to disturb the wolves. They moved to chase the mammoths and the wolves came to chase the horses and rabbits." He shrugged. "Lupa and Fenrir were so relieved by this that they came to settle with the wolves an agreement that if they should need them again, a wolf of both sides would be born. They would be descendants of the original packs, with the bloodlines of gods, and would have the abilities of their ancestors. You. You are gifted the immortality of the Pure-Bloods."

Yugi blinked stupidly. "But I'm not descended from…" He shook his head. Ra's words echoed in his head, her declaration in which she had claimed him her "dear child". His heart hurt, staring at Yami now. "And who would be the hellhound to rival me? I don't… I mean, that's what this is, right? If I'm born, then that means there's a Harbinger, right?"

Yami shook his head. "Yes, but it does not mean that you are truly to fight _them_. You forget yourself, Yugi. You are meant to fight to protect the wolves from the _humans_. You are meant to fight them away and protect us."  
"But the alpha, she mentioned that I would win a war against _hellhounds_ , Yami."

He frowned, studying him. "Then perhaps it is both. Maybe the Harbinger will prove to be a problem and you will have to eliminate them as well." He tilted his head. "But I do not think you have met them yet."

Yugi looked at him, shaking his head. "So, you don't think it's Valon?"

The snort that left him was derisive. "You're kidding, right? Valon is very aware of his condition. And he is very stable as well. _He_ is not the one who would lead a war against you by any means, Yugi."

He felt blood flood his tongue as he clenched his eyes shut tightly. "Well, that's good, at least. I don't want to have to hurt him."

Yami raised a brow. "You don't want to hurt anyone."

His cheeks flushed. "No, not really," Yugi admitted reluctantly. "But Valon has been really cool and good about everything, honestly, Yami. He could have been a lot worse when we've had run-ins. But he's very mild and…"

He nodded. "Yes, I know. He is doing well to maintain his disease," he said quietly, and Yugi could see a small glimmer of respect in his darkened eyes. "He is doing very well with the task of keeping himself from public scrutiny and any sense of detection. He has figured out his limits and works around them. It is admirable, especially for a hellhound. It must be much harder for them…" Yugi blinked, then pressed his tongue into the back of his teeth forcefully for a moment, closing his eyes. "If we were to stop anyone from getting infected, do you think that would help to slow down those people in the lab?"

Yami was frozen for a moment, then bristled as he growled, "No. You seem to be forgetting that many of the people who are experimented on are regular humans who have been _kidnapped_ and infected forcefully."

He looked at him, blinking his eyes open slowly, then glanced away again. "Well, I mean, if there's some way to help them…"

Yami curled his lips back. "The best way that you can help right now, as Yugi, is not to get caught. When you are caught, that is when we are all _finished_ , understand?"

He bit his lip. "Do you believe that?"

"I have to."

"Why?"

"Because, otherwise, all of those sixty wolves who died to allow your escape suffered for nothing." Yami tilted his head and his eyes grew sad and troubled as he looked at him. "I…I think… I think I need to go outside, to get out of here…"

Yugi blinked, then nodded as his heart somehow shattered further at the sight of his mounting distress. He had not realized it was possible to hurt this much before. "Okay, but it's after curfew. You'll have to be careful—"

His eyes grew owlish. "You will not be joining me?"

The smaller teen blinked, eyes widening to thrice their usual size in confusion. "I figured, I mean, from way you said… Uh, yeah, I'll definitely come with you. Give me a second to change into jeans."

Yami nodded distractedly and went over to the window.

* * *

"Are we doing a hellhound hunt or something?" he teased minutes later, hoping to lighten the anxious mood Yami had been in since the moment they had crept out of the window. His words seemed to fall on deaf ears, however, and Yugi sighed softly as he looked at him. They were in the lesser used cemetery, both of them standing within inches of the gravestones, and Yugi could already see his eyes on those wispy tree limbs where the snow still dusted the tops. He tilted his head, watching him curiously, and then bit his lip as he saw his eyes so heavily focused on the willow.

Abruptly the other boy turned towards him. "No, I wanted to stretch my legs," he muttered, but his voice was oddly small and more acutely relieved than anything else. Yami licked his lips, watching him for a moment, then offered a weak smile that was so frail it seemed that it might shatter away any moment. "I just wanted to get out for a few minutes. We were… The conversation was a little uncomfortable and heavy to me."

Yugi nodded slightly, biting his lip. "Can I ask your opinion on something?"

Yami blinked and his brows furrowed in confusion as he considered him. "Of course," he finally answered, studying him a bit closer.

The smaller teen smiled a little in amusement. "You can't always say that because you tend to get upset with some of the things I say, remember?"

He snorted, smirking faintly. "I never said I might answer."

Yugi laughed quietly, raising a brow. "How rude," he teased, though something solemn crept through his system, pushing away his amusement. "I wanted to ask Valon something."

His brow rose very slowly and his face screwed up in mounting confusion. "Okay," he coaxed when his beta fell completely silent again.

"Since he's a hellhound, he would know, right? I mean, about the body that was drained of blood along the pulse… He would know if it's a hellhound kind of thing, right?"

Yami faltered, startled by the question, and struggled to remember the conversation which had accompanied the body. They had spoken about it, right? They had held a conversation and—yes, he remembered now. He had suggested it was a hellhound.

"I believe he would, yes."

Yugi caught onto the hesitance in his voice and immediately asked the question which had just crossed his mind as well. "What if it turns out that _he_ did it?"

Yami studied him. "Take it in stride. We have very limited knowledge of hellhounds as it is, Yugi. There could be a very important reason if he did do it. And I don't know that he'll explain it to you seeing as he knows that you're a Pure-Blood and, by deduction, most likely Atem." He shrugged at his startled expression. "You have to be calm if he does reveal this to you. It means he's putting enough trust in you to actually tell you outright. And if he says no or feigns confusion, humor him. He may tell you more that way."

He nibbled his lip. "I'm not sure I can do that," he admitted quietly. "I don't like the idea of having to face him later knowing that he might have killed her…"

Yami shrugged. "Then do not ask."

It was said with such simplicity that Yugi felt his eyes grow thrice their size in shock. His cheeks felt slightly warm as they looked at each other for a long moment. But his words made sense. What it truly came down to was necessity versus curiosity and to fall prey to his own desire for answers or to shy away from a possibility that made him nervous.

But what was he really going to do if he was to say he had done it? Yugi doubted he would be able to fight him if it came to that. At any rate Valon possessed such experience being older and more knowledgeable of the Change that he had no chance.

"I guess I'll just figure it out tomorrow when I see him." He bit his lip until it seemed to bleed in a metallic river upon his tongue. At Yami's confused glance he explained, "He goes to school with me."

The taller teen blinked, then nodded slightly. "I should have assumed that," he muttered with a shrug before his eyes flickered briefly to take in the shape of the willow tree. "But I would not recommend asking such a question when in the company of others. If your classmates truly are wolves as well…"

"Considering the way they all think I killed Tomoya and Ushio and Kaokurano, I think they'd find it great to see me accusing someone else," Yugi snapped bitterly, running a hand through his hair, "especially when Valon made them shut up the first time by pretending that he could have been the one to do it."

Yami blinked. "Huh?"

The smaller teen raised his eyes to his, then smiled at his bewildered expression. His brows were pulled forward, his eyes crinkled with the wrinkling of his nose. The way his lashes cast shadows on his irises made Yugi think of just how handsome he truly looked.

"I forgot I didn't tell you about that," he mumbled, blushing faintly when he saw the way he arched a brow in confusion. "The other day when they found her body, everyone started to make jokes that it was me because she was found so close. And they all started adding on about the other deaths—Miho, Kokurano… They all got really enthusiastic about it when I ran off. So Valon told them that they might as well accuse him too because he had been in each of those areas around their times of death…"

The red-eyed boy blinked and tilted his head. "That was very kind of him…to take their focus off of you," he remarked thoughtfully.

"It was. But it didn't last."

"No, I don't suppose it did."

Yugi huffed an annoyed breath. "But they're pretty convinced that I'm apparently the one who did all of this and I'm sure that'll change with a new rumor sooner or later. Valon saying he might have been the one to do it will probably make them think we're both in on it."

"Do you believe so?"

He scoffed, "Either that or we're screwing because one of us caught the other and forced them into it with blackmail."

"That's disgusting."

Yugi found himself blinking in confusion and looking at him curiously. "You mean two guys screwing?"

Yami gave him a disdainful glance. "The idea of forcing someone to sleep with another through blackmail," he corrected him quietly before shaking his head. "What one does with another is their own business as far as their preferences, be it sexual or anything else."

"So you don't care one way or another."

"It does not concern me." He paused, considering the real question behind his words, and then slowly shook his head. "One's feelings need no justification. Should they be attracted to the same sex then that it as it is meant to be for them. Love comes in any way it wishes."

Yugi seemed to visibly relax for a moment, then looked away as he licked the sore skin of his lip. His breathing was slightly shaky for the smallest of seconds before he cast him a wide smile. "So you wouldn't even think much if I did say I was screwing Valon?"

Yami's eyes flashed faintly before he scoffed. "I would smell him on you." He wrinkled his nose, pausing, and slowly shook his head. "If he should be the one to make you happy…"

His insides felt warm with relief for a split second before he tilted his head when he saw the slightly troubled expression which made the other's eyes glitter faintly. "What? Why are you looking at me like that?" he asked, his voice slightly demanding but more so confused.

"Well, it is simply…if you are truly interested in him, please heed caution. Lycanthropes and hellhounds cannot be as willful and simple as humans. Our salivas are toxic to each other when they hit the bloodstream…"

Yugi blinked, then blushed. "I'm not interested in him! I'm interested in…" He blinked again, because his first impulse was to say another. "Anzu."

Yami nodded and bit the inside of his cheek, looking towards the tree with its draping snow-covered limbs again with darker eyes. "I simply mean to say that should your tastes change, remember caution should it be towards a hellhound. Their saliva may not kill you unless in heavy doses but if you were to have a wound and they were to attempt cleaning it, it would cause infection. And it would be one of the most painful sensations you will ever feel."

He shivered. "Did something happen to you to…?"

Yami blinked, furrowing his brows, and slowly shook his head. "No. I simply remember the wounds my…friend suffered when he was pitted against one in the lab," he finally muttered. "He was unable to heal properly for days and they were forced to run blood tests when they realized the hellhound was in just as bad a shape."

"What happened to him?"

He turned his head in silent questioning.

"Did he…?"

The sound which left him was something between a sneer and laughter. "No, he did not die from that. He was too strong and smart." He fell silent immediately after.

Yugi wanted to ask, but instead turned away. He didn't have to look again to know that the other's red eyes were on that tree again. But it did not stop him from asking the next question to come to his mind. He turned to him, eyes pleading, and whispered, "Will you come with me to see Slifer? I wanted to talk to her…"

His countenance was nothing short of bewildered as he looked back at him in silent inquiry, but then the taller wolf finally nodded. He tipped his head to the side, watching him, and then looked away. "Yes, I will go with you."

"Thanks."

He nodded.

* * *

Yugi was unsure why it was that Yami took to going as a human when he had announced he didn't want to change. He wondered if Yami had any idea why it was that he had decided against the idea of going as a wolf. He sincerely hoped somewhere in the back of his mind that Yami truly had no idea. He didn't want to have to admit to the reality of his fear of changing his skin when the other was so clearly enamored with his own ability. How was he supposed to explain his unease of such a thing to someone who so obviously revered such an ability?

He tilted his head and glanced at the red-eyed lycanthrope as they stepped further into the small tunnel. On two feet he could sense the nearness of the roof, the rocky surface of which would brush against his hair if it were only a couple of inches smaller. It surprised him that Yami did not seem to care when he realized his hair had to brush against it. His hair was longer, a little wilder, and it had to touch it considering his slight height advantage over him.

"These are like the catacombs," he muttered quietly. All he could hear was their sneakers against the stone and his own heartbeat in his ear. Every now and then he could catch the smallest tickle of noise of which he would gain from Yami's gentle breathing. When he kicked a stone and it skirted forward in a rasping hiss of noise, he sprang like a cat. The impact with the ceiling nearly made him wail, but the wind had been knocked from his lungs beforehand. He nearly choked as he turned his head to glance at the other boy's face.

Yami, at first, appeared startled, then concerned, but very quickly looked amused; he seemed almost to be swallowing laughter as he stared at him. But the smaller teen hardly cared around trying to catch his breath again.

"Shit," Yugi muttered, blushing when the other snorted roughly through his nose in an effort not to guffaw. "Shut up."

"That must have been one terrifying rock monster," he chuckled, biting his lip and looking away quickly. "I can't believe you jumped that high!"

"Um, I'm not entirely sure what you might have heard, but I think I told you to _shut up_ ," he grumbled, scowling at him playfully. He shook his head when he saw Yami's shoulders shake silently before he straightened and started walking again. Yugi huffed and hurried to get back to his side. "You would have freaked out too! I mean, the last time I was here and kicked something it was a _bone_ , remember?"

"Yes, and I also remember you jumping then too," he snorted playfully. He glanced around cautiously and then bit his lip. "You have an impressive ability to jump almost three times your height when you're scared."

"Shut up," he grunted, his voice wheedling as he ran a hand through his hair. "I'm not scared that often! It just surprised me, that's all! It was all silent and then—"

"Oh please, don't even try to justify that! It was hilarious!"

" _Yami_!"

" _Yugi_!"

He rolled his eyes. "You're such an ass."

"I am not." He fell quiet for a moment, then wrinkled his nose. If Yugi hadn't been looking at him prior, he knew he would have missed the action. He turned away, drawing in a deep breath. He nearly recoiled at the decaying smell, then grimaced. "We're very close."

"I wish it didn't smell like that. It's disgusting."

"The smell of death doesn't make you happy?" Yami drawled sarcastically. "I am amazed."

"I think I'm going to start calling these tunnels the catacombs," he announced, ignoring his words, and rolled his eyes again. "I mean, technically catacombs were used for ritualistic purposes and all that, but it was still tunnels with dead bodies so maybe…"

"Yes, well, I highly doubt that Slifer does much with them ritualistic or otherwise. I am almost certain she merely harbors them here and then helps their souls into passing into Paradise," Yami muttered, looking around and then stepping over a stone that might have gone flying had he kicked it. "After all, she is the _guardian_ of the dead, not some random scavenger looking to devour the remains of the corpses she runs across."

"That's…disgusting," Yugi huffed. "Why would you even bring that up?"

"Well, what would be more ritualistic than having some purpose for the rotting meat on their bones?" His lips pulled into a wide smirk. "You can't do much else unless you were going to try peeing around the—"

"Please stop. Or else I'll puke on you."

Yami rolled his eyes. "You don't even know where I was going with that," he teased, "it could have been a way of getting laid and—"

"Necrophilia is not something I'm interested in, thanks." He snorted loudly and rolled his eyes. "But seriously, let's not talk about that anymore, okay? This place is making me a little queasy."

Yami frowned. "Okay."

It took a few more minutes to come upon the small stray beam of light which would lead them further towards the cavern's dip. Yugi shivered but the other male hardly paid attention. In his mind was the clear image of the bones set against the light, rows upon rows of shadow and decayed meat, of wasted muscle and breaking skeletons so fragile one had only to touch to grind them to dust.

"So what now?"

Yugi blinked and tilted his head. "I don't know. Where do you think she is?" he asked awkwardly. "I mean, wouldn't we sense her?"

"If I recall correctly, it was not you who recognized her to be here."

He felt his cheeks heat and shot him an annoyed look. "Oh shut up. It's not my fault I was more concerned about your shoulder than you were!" he snapped, blushing harder when Yami gave him a surprised glance. "But seriously, where do you think she might have gone?"

Yami tilted his head, then smirked as he pointed downwards into the dip of the cavern, towards the center of the pool of incoming moonlight, as soft and silky as a sheer silver curtain. Yugi strained his eyes, then caught sight of the pair of golden pinpricks of bright light from the center of the space. They glittered with something almost like laughter as they looked back at him and the small teen was frozen in place beside him. She was nearly invisible upon the face of the rock, her bright red coat the shade of granite in the moonlight, blending in to near perfection with the stone beneath her.

"Oh."

She rose to her feet, shaking herself out, and began to move to the edge of the stone lip to look at them. _You are human now,_ she acknowledged, though her statement was geared more towards Yami as Yugi blinked at her in confusion. _I would have expected it from Yugi, but you, Yami_? _It surprises me._

Yugi bristled faintly at the wondrous note in her voice but Yami seemed hardly worried about the tone or the words that were spoken in it. He tilted his head and watched him for a moment. "Changing would have been arduous for such a small amount of time spent here," he answered without pause. His red eyes flickered towards the smaller teen for a moment, then back to the goddess. "I considered it, but it seemed a waste of energy to do so."

 _Ah, yes, and you have no reason to feel need to protect yourself either,_ she said softly with a flick of her ear. _Your teeth and claws would have been displayed for nothing._

Yami hummed and then moved to take a seat. He scooted to the edge, tilting his head towards Yugi as if awaiting a protest. When a full twenty seconds had passed he leaned forward and threw his legs over the edge. He moved to lay his hands flat behind him, leaning into his arms with a lazy, thoughtful expression.

Yugi hesitated, staring at him in complete confusion. Since when had Yami ever been so inclined to relax so easily? His stomach tossed for a moment and he bit his lip as he considered his reluctance to truly be around him physically for too long an amount of time. He faltered, glancing at Slifer, but reality struck that he most likely looked cowardly simply standing and staring at the other wolf. So he moved forward, took a seat, and threw his legs over the edge as well.

Yami shot him a sideways glance but did nothing more. Slifer seemed to smile faintly as she looked at them curiously, and her black lips had drawn back into something like the smile of a golden retriever dog. If her tongue had been displayed in a pant he would have assumed her to be a red-furred mongrel of some kind.

Yugi shivered and his first impulse was to bunch his limbs or move towards Yami, who would have served as something of a buffer between them. But he was abundantly aware of his fascination with the she-wolf and it unnerved him how much his stomach twisted and his eyes threatened to narrow. And he was more aware of the fact that Yami had put inches of space between them for a reason and so he would maintain that distance.

"I wanted to ask you something," he announced in order to cut their attention away from each other. But Yugi realized, flustered, eyes slightly widening, when neither of them turned their heads, that they were both focused on him instead. He twitched, then chewed the inside of his cheek, feeling something like shame sweep through him. He felt stupid and childish now. "Um… There was a girl that was found. She was…heavily mutilated and her body was found with a line cut along her pulse and her blood drained…"

Yami blinked. "You wished to ask about that?" He turned to face him completely, brows furrowed. "I had thought…"

Yugi shook his head, and it was oddly comforting to face him now as well. "I was going to, but she's a goddess, so she might know…right?"

"Possibly," he muttered, shrugging.

She pricked her ears forward in slight wonder, tilted her head, and shifted to sit on the rock comfortably. _It is hellhound, if that is what you meant to ask. And it is not your friend, the one whom you helped formerly._ Her ear flicked and Yugi bit his lip until it nearly bled. _It was a new hellhound, related by bite to the one who ate your classmate's heart and the owner of that shoe store._

Yugi sat up a little straighter. The owner of the Junky Scorpion? He had thought it might have been Ushio to kill him…

 _But I am lost as to their name. They are not a lycanthrope and so only Morrigan or Skoll might know of them,_ she said dismissively. _But the bloodletting was done in order to attempt awakening the blood drinking trait of the hellhound. If one can drink blood then they can heal faster in battle and regain energy at a much greater rate. It's a gift only the Harbingers possessed, as is shape-shifting and spreading the disease._

He tilted his head. "So hellhounds aren't able to infect you through bite like we are?" he asked, glancing at Yami sideways. "Why not?"

 _Their ability to become incorporeal makes their most of their genetic coding unstable. They suppress more and more of their natural chemicals whenever they change into that form and that also makes their brain a bit more unbalanced. The saliva's molecular structure would be altered enough that it would be impossible for the infection to be transmitted in such a way._ Slifer looked away from them and her face appeared smooth and warm against the cold moonlight. She had a narrow skull but her jaw was larger and somehow narrower than Yugi had seen on wolves in pictures. He supposed that had to be the dire in her genetic formation.

"Then why is their saliva toxic to us? If it can't spread their disease then…?"

 _Their saliva is still full of toxins, just not the ones that carry the disease. If they bite anything that isn't another hellhound and it survives, the wound will become extremely infected and they will have a matter of hours. Once that time has passed, they'll drop dead from the infection reaching their heart._

 _Like the monitor lizard family,_ Yugi thought, feeling slightly sick. He remembered Ryuzaki talking about them in class in middle school, the year before. He'd been so determined to talk about dinosaurs when the teacher would not allow him to and had found that loophole. She'd found it funny that he had managed it when he had not always been too good at finding third options. But Yugi had found it somewhat admirable and he had been slightly surprised when the class had laughed about his obsession with them.

He blinked.

And now Ryuzaki was dead, probably still somewhere in the woods with Haga and Ryota's corpses…

"What is Paradise?"

Yami blinked in confusion. He could have sworn he'd talked to him about it at some point. But then again, maybe not. With everything happening and the lag in his mental abilities because of his blood loss, he had not assumed his memory to be absolute any longer. Oftentimes it became fuzzy in certain areas and that was not something he could force away without proper healing. So he stayed quiet, looking between them.

Slifer was silent for a moment. Then her golden eyes fell on Yami. _You have not told him_? she asked slowly, head tilted. It was curious, but held the slightest tone of accusation.

"I was not aware I was expected to constantly talk about death with him," he scoffed, turning back. "I suppose I would have answered had I ever been asked."

Yugi didn't like the way they were staring at each other now. He shivered, moving to lightly move his arm to nudge Yami. The other boy turned to him immediately, confused. "I didn't ask him before," he said, turning back to the female. "But someone mentioned it recently and I want to know what it is."

Who had mentioned it recently? Yami bristled faintly. Yugi had not smelled of other wolves beyond the pack. It was possible they had told him of it. He would not have been surprised. With all of their preaching and mythology he would not be the least bit inclined to believe otherwise.

 _It is the afterlife for werewolves,_ Slifer stated simply. She flicked an ear. _Every wolf goes there when they have died, regardless of what path they have chosen formerly in life._

Yugi blinked wide eyes. "So Ryuzaki or Ushio…?"

The other teen could not read the emotion in his voice. He could not tell if he was hopeful or if he was angry. It sounded a mix and that unnerved him slightly.

 _They are in Paradise. Any wolf who has passed will come to find their way there. I take the lycanthropes and Morrigan the hellhounds._ She watched him now, eyes sharp, full of cunning and question. _Paradise is a place of eternal rest. The hardships of their lives are more or less forgotten and they can be among those they loved and lost. Their actions in life do not determine their place in death._

Yugi chewed his cheek. "Is Ryou there?"

Yami startled. "Ryou?" he muttered, confused as he blinked wide eyes at him. "Why would you wish to know about Ryou?"

"I owe him." _For helping me save you._

Slifer tilted her head in puzzlement. _Ryou could not change. His soul was not wolf. He was merely bitten._ The red-furred she-wolf considered him for a moment. _I do not know where human souls go._

He swallowed hard. "Okay." He hesitated. "They have to have changed in order to go into Paradise when they die then…"

 _Yes._

Yami was still watching him, suspicious and unnerved. Yugi still thought there had been something between himself and Ryou, didn't he? He shook his head slightly, then muttered, "Humans have their own version of Paradise, yes? It's referred to as heaven or something of the sort?"

"Yeah, but I mean, you have to basically be the best person ever to get there when you die. I just… It's strange to me. The wolves can go the moment they're dead. But humans have to _work_ to go there or end up in purgatory or hell."

 _And hell is perceived as a place of punishment, yes_?

He nodded slightly. "Yeah, it's the place someone like Ushio or Haga or Ryuzaki or Ryota would end up for murder and trying to kill someone."

Yami glanced away. "And the fact that they are in Paradise upsets you?" he asked finally, furrowing his brows. "Not the idea that they were killed in just as painful ways as they inflicted?"

Yugi flushed bright red, then looked at him with wide eyes. "I didn't say that! It's just surprising, okay? I mean, if you were raised thinking as a person, you would find it weird too!"

He bristled. "Does it truly bother you so much? If you hate your life so much, why do you not just _take_ it? You can end it any moment that you wish yet you just keep complaining and—"

 _And allow both worlds to become further awry_? Slifer cut in with a smooth, lyrical whisper which made them both spin on her in confusion. _With the unbalance they already suffer, why should you upset it further_?

Yami stiffened immediately. Yugi frowned and tilted his head in puzzlement. Neither of them so much as glanced at each other, the heat of their argument lost completely.

"Unbalanced?" the taller teen said slowly. "What does that mean exactly? What kind of imbalance?"

 _Too many wolves are passing. Morrigan and I are both unable to help them as much as necessary. When one soul is guided to Paradise, another is immediately awaiting us. Their deaths are near constant._

Yami curled his lip back. "And, of course, Atem is expected to be able to stem this flow and stop Paradise becoming flooded," he scoffed. "And I'm sure Obelisk is happy to find that his domain will be enlarged."

 _Obelisk is as enraged as the rest of us are,_ Slifer snapped. _None of us wish to see the wolves suffer so_! _You cannot truly expect that any of us should ever be so glad to see the suffering you all go through._

"Wait, Paradise can become _flooded_?"

"Not truly. It is a figure of speech. I just meant that there are so many dying that Slifer and Morrigan are overwhelmed. Paradise is endless." Yami looked away quickly when Yugi glanced at him with wide eyes. "Regardless, that's disturbing all the same. What is happening with the souls already there?"

Slifer stared at him and, when Yugi glanced at her, he thought he saw a million secrets and the most powerful of knowledge buried there within her gaze. He swallowed hard and resisted the urge to flee away from her altogether.

 _They are growing restless_ , she stated simply. _They are restless and tired and growing anxious. I suppose they will begin to find rest again when they are assured of the fluctuations of death ceasing eventually._

Yami fell silent for a long minute, staring at her before looking swiftly away. "But they are not fighting each other?"

 _No._

"What happens if they start fighting each other?"

 _If they should destroy each other in Paradise their souls will be expelled into reincarnation. But such a thing is usually done by choice rather than punishment._ She flicked an ear, facing Yugi more fully. _All of the wolves that are dying and scattered about for us to guide are from the experiments. Many bodies are dumped within the woods, as many as are then incinerated beneath the ground in their lab._

Yugi blinked. "Okay, but if I were to go down there, it would be suicide. I don't even know where I would be going…" He trailed off as her eyes fell on Yami and the other wolf bristled faintly with distaste towards her expression. "And asking Yami to take me there is just inconsiderate and rude."

Yami blinked wide eyes, then glanced at him in confusion. "I could not take you there regardless. I do not remember the way."

Slifer flicked an ear, turned her muzzle towards the floor, and rolled her shoulders in an almost human shrug. _I suppose it does not matter whether he could or not. The fact is that you are unprepared and would most likely see yourself to your death should you do such a thing. I would suggest that you do not do something so foolish by any means._

"Then I guess it's a good thing that I wasn't going to," he snapped, blushing when both wolves gave him slightly surprised looks. He ran a hand through his hair, then glanced towards the ceiling. It was so bright beneath but he could hardly see the sky from there. It was too thickly covered. "I don't plan on going there anytime soon."

Yami watched him for a moment with an expression that looked almost faintly suspicious. He tilted his head, studying him, and his eyes were garnet gemstones beneath such low light. His lips tugged into the smallest of smirks. "Well, now that that's settled," he commented, drawing the words out and turning away, " _I_ have something to ask you."

The she-wolf pricked her ears forward. _You_? The inquiry was soft, faintly mystified, and Yugi felt suddenly small and indescribably stupid. Was he the only one who seemed not to know anything about the wolves? Sure Yami had more experience than him and Slifer was a goddess, but _everyone_ seemed to know more. Valon knew more, Ushio, Ryota and Haga, Ryuzaki, Mai, Otogi, the wolves in the pack…

He could have groaned for all his inexperience and missing knowledge.

"I want to know why it is that you saved us that day in the woods," he announced in a calm and clear voice that immediately drew Yugi from his self-deprecating thoughts. "You led us to the brambles so that Yugi would fall in. But I was told when I was young that the gods were never to interfere with the events of a lesser wolf's life, yes?"

Slifer tilted her head. _I broke my oath,_ she said slowly, eyes narrowing faintly as she curled her lip back. _I broke my oath, but Ra has before done the same with you both as well. She has visited both of you in dreams, though her focus is mostly upon Yugi. She favors him, but that is for reasons I have no right to tread upon. I value you both, and so I distracted your thoughts with fatigue and bewilderment until the moment Yugi stepped too far and fell into the tunnel._

Yugi blinked wide eyes. She had distracted them...? But how was that even possible? He supposed it was within the realm of possibility that if one was touched by death then perhaps she could influence their thoughts. But he had never been touched by it…had he?

 _The hunters were coming back. One of them claims himself to be psychic and he seemed to sense your trick. Hiding within the snow… It was a brilliant plan, Atem. And had you left any later than you had, things would have fallen apart. But it was your detour to gather your things that left you both open to their approach. Had you never have done so, you would have been long removed from the forest before they got there._

Yugi blinked. "If I hadn't gone back they would have found another way to track me," he spat, eyes widening and his cheeks growing hot with misplaced pride. "And then what? I don't know about Yami, but my best interest is in what helps me live longer. And letting them figure out what school I go to or find that extra pistol is not a way to let that happen."

Yami glanced at him dismissively. "You broke oath in order to save Atem. Does that mean you shall be punished?"

His eyes grew wide and his head snapped around. "Punished?" he muttered, amazed by the very idea. How was that even possible?

 _I will accept any punishment my brothers and sisters see fit, but they know as well as I that the rules must be bent. If the werewolves are to survive, we must be willing to step from our havens and suffer consequence should it become necessary. You both are our priorities, not our need to remain hidden and away from influence of the wolves' lives._

Yami nodded. "Yes, I suppose that makes sense."

Yugi shivered faintly, watching the two of them again. If the gods were going to step out at some point and walk among the regular wolves…

"How did you break your oath? I mean, what was your oath then? Just to not interfere with living wolves?"

She sniffed loudly, and the noise seemed almost indignant. _I am never meant to interfere with the living as my domain is death. Ra resides over the living. I am but the guardian who helps souls to their eternity of peace._ She turned away. _None of us are meant to directly interact with a wolf because their beliefs might change and their free will might be tampered with._

Yugi blinked and his thoughts fell immediately on the wolves in the pack. Had their free will been taken by the alpha preaching about him? Had they all been brainwashed and forced to believe in him and the war he was meant to win?

"I think we need to return," the taller teen said abruptly, pulling himself to his feet and stretching himself out. Yugi looked at him for a long moment, unable to do much more with his head spinning as it was. Then his eyes fell on the hand that was stretched towards him and he swallowed hard as he reached up to clasp it. Within seconds he was on his feet again and Yami didn't bother to look back at Slifer even when Yugi did so.

* * *

A raven was crying when he looked up. It was a smear of ink, stretched both ways, against a red-orange sky. The clouds were small darker touches of color, though they had no true definition or form of any kind. He watched it for a moment as it tore across the sky and cried louder. He craned his neck until it felt sore, watching it with wide eyes in order to keep from looking downwards. He knew what awaited him if he did and the thought was not a comforting one. His stomach ached and tossed as the bird swooped downwards, and his eyes refused to raise themselves from it.

The river was immense and red, burning with the cold chill of orange splashed against it in reflection. And, as he looked at it, the earth beneath his paws—whatever surface that may have been; he could not be sure—began to break away. He thought to look down but his eyes were still on the raven. It was the size of an eagle, beautiful glossy black with a beak the same shade and eyes with a beady reflection and a ring of hideous red.

It landed on a branch which seemed to swell up into the air out of nothingness, as if the fog were crystallizing itself in the formation of such a thing. It was jagged and glorious and silver in sheen as if it were glowing. He struggled as the world began to disappear beneath him more completely. The liquid was hot and acrid, the scent trickling through his nostrils as his eyes burned with it. It sloshed upwards into his fur and tugged like claws and teeth as it began to weigh him down.

He thrashed and his paws flailed as he kicked to keep himself above the surface. His throat ached as he panted and he drew his lips back with displeasure. He gasped and chomped his teeth, a name appearing in his mind as the raven began to change. Its feathers dropped away in rivulets of blood and black gloss. The beak broke away in half and teeth protruded forward, the nostrils formerly hardened soft and moist and calloused.

The beadiness of its eyes became a violent and mesmerizing cunning and the hideous red began to brighten and glow. The last of its feathers fell away and the creature that stood before him now shook itself out and looked at him calmly.

The blood swelled up and tugged firmly at his throat, trying to pull him downwards. But the other stared, not the least bit alarmed or considerate towards helping him.

 _Morrigan,_ he gasped out, his muzzle swaying beneath the blood. The salt of it burned his throat and the heat scorched him violently. He struggled and coughed. The she-wolf tilted her head and slowly she wagged her tail in acknowledgment. But still she did not help him.

He felt something like teeth in his side. The bright burst of pain made him yelp. The blood swept into his mouth. He choked and kicked his legs. His claws were dripping with blood. He gasped and panted. The teeth dug in further. Then another caught his other side. Another captured the base of his spine. He screamed. The blood welled up and swallowed him.

 _Atem_! _Atem_! _Code Name Atem_!

His vision was colored in red but when he twisted there was white. He snapped his teeth. The creature held tight. Without the skin and nose, it did not look like a wolf. But the skull was so narrow. And the jaws so incredible. He could not mistake it for a common dog or another animal.

There were so many of them. They created something like a chain. Rows upon rows of teeth were dug into the wolf in front of them. The skeletons were bright white as if bleached by the sun. The teeth were sharp and hooked. The bones had cracked and split where they touched with their jaws.

They were tiny deep black fissures. Yugi struggled. He could feel his own blood mixing with the river. It was boiling and yet so cold all at once. He snarled and snapped. The wolves did not release. But he was breathing. Even beneath the blood, he was breathing. He snapped again but there was no release.

 _Atem_!

He bristled.

 _Son of Lupa and Fenrir_!

He squirmed, struggling to move away. He could hear their teeth clicking as the call trailed through the skeletons. They tugged and pulled him further. The cry rose again.

 _Morrigan_! he pleaded louder. Perhaps if he appealed to her she would save him. Maybe she could make them stop. She was the goddess of the dead too, right? She or Slifer could—

They rattled and collapsed as his paws touched ground. He startled and jumped, for it sounded like a hideous landslide. He sprang and spun around, confused. They all snarled lowly until the noise died away. He shook himself out, trembling, and then pricked his ears forward. His stomach tossed and flipped. He bit his tongue with the force of his own panic.

 _Relax, my dear child._

The voice was low, somewhat rough, and Yugi felt his head snap in the direction of it. He chomped his teeth fearfully, fur still raised in a hideous bristle. They stared at each other for a moment. Then the wolf flattened his ears back unhappily. _Ra…_ he muttered, his voice nearly cracking with uncertainty. He glanced around, desperate to see a face besides hers who he might recognize.

Where was he?

 _Where is who_?

Yugi blinked, confused, and turned to her. Instinct said not to take his eyes off the potential threat. He ran his tongue over his teeth for a moment, unnerved. She had read his thoughts?

 _You are dreaming. Your mind is most vulnerable in this state of being, child._

Yugi bristled somehow further. Where was he? Who was he? Was she playing with him? Slifer had said… But then she wasn't here. And who had been beside him?

 _Atem._

He took a moment, alarmed and confused. Then he looked at her more fully. His breathing came out uncomfortably tight from within his constricted lungs. Atem was his name. He remembered that much. He blinked, flicked an ear, and kicked at his nose with confusion.

 _Yes._ The golden she-wolf looked as awkward now as she had the first time he had come across her in this dreamscape. Her wide chest, the shape of an immense barrel, the long legs and sharp claws… He blinked up at her and curled his lips back further when she moved a little closer to him. He tilted his head, studying her for a moment, then bristled a little more. His eyes flashed as he looked away again. _Listen to me._

He blinked and turned back. When he had been with Slifer… Yugi pricked his ears forward. He fought for a moment, grasping strangely for purchase upon thoughts that felt foreign to him. He strained his senses, his ability to focus. His mind spun and danced. He struggled harder. An image was forming, imperfect and shattered like broken glass.

 _Do not strain yourself, child. You will recall all as needed when you are closer to awakening. Doing so now will only stress—_

He snapped his teeth. _You cannot tell me not to wonder_! _I have a right_! he spat, though instantly his insides curled with shame and confusion and a sense of brief and uncontrollable loss. He looked away, eyes sharp and narrow with frustration. Who was the other wolf…?

The she-wolf let out a loud noise, a cross of snarl and snort. She watched him and her eyes were sharp with laughter and cruelty. _You wish to know who it is you are trying so hard to remember_? she spat in a tone of malevolence that made his head snap up in confusion. He blinked, watching her, and then struggled again. That image, as fragmented as it was, had grown misty and unusual within his mind. What was he seeing? It was so…almost estranged and otherworldly. It reminded him faintly of her.

She flicked an ear. Beside her the mist seemed to swirl and dip upwards. It danced, laced with the brilliance of red blood, and then began to sweep in the formation of a shower of rainfall. He shivered, for something powerful and strange seemed to swell within his senses. The mist darkened and its torrential pattern fell away.

An immense black form stood before him. The ears were small, curved gently. The face was wide, bushy. The slope of its head was sharp and narrow. Its eyes were an ungodly shade of red he did not recognize. He blinked and stared. The figure towered by an inch or two. And its weight was greater than his own. Its paws were huge, its claws long and sharp and hooked. The chest was narrow but the bones were thick and he could see the broader curve of them towards the center.

He frowned and tilted his head and a light dawned in the back of his mind of this wolf's apparent identity. But the eyes were wrong and as the name crossed his mind, instead he said, _This isn't Yami._

She flicked an ear dismissively. _No, of course it is not. He is not dead. And you are dreaming. He is not. This is as close a representation as I may gather of him._

Yugi remembered the lively gleam in Yami's dark eyes and the thought made his tail twitch in the beginnings of the smallest of wags. He watched the she-wolf, ignoring this unnamed scepter beside her. Just knowing his name, remembering it as fully as he could, able to apply it to a face so often troubled by what seemed to be mere existence but still soft and patient as well, calmed him some. Yami was still beside him, asleep in his room, probably next to him under the covers. Or no, he was probably—

 _Focus on me,_ the she-wolf spat now and his attention was caught on the blaze of her dark blue eyes, so much like royal gemstones. She bore her teeth, bright white and flashing against her pelt. She looked like the embodiment of the sun, of silken fur and spikes of enamel. _You do not have need to rely so heavily on him. Atem is meant to rely upon_ himself, _without such obvious need of another_!

Yugi flicked an ear. _Atem is a name applied to a living person. I was raised as human. As such, I need social structure. I need people to fall back on. That's what friends and family are for. If I do not have them, then what do I have_? _Who am I without them_?

 _Self-reliant, self-efficient, capable, adaptable._

He blinked. _All of the things that others are. But I've never managed it. I can't be alone like that. It hurts. I can't prosper with it._ He hesitated. _But neither wolves nor humans are meant to be alone for all eternity._

She blinked.

 _But who does Atem have, Ra_? _Who is meant to help him_? _If he is all alone, who will catch him when he falls_?

 _He should be capable of picking himself from the ground_! the goddess snarled in rage, her pupils vibrating with the immensity of such an emotion. _He should be able to stand on his own four paws. He should have the ability to stand and fight and do as he_ must!

 _Which is fine in theory. But neither wolf nor man can prosper like that_!

 _A werewolf is neither—_

 _A werewolf is_ both! _A werewolf is human and wolf_! _It is born with both forms and sets of instincts. Surprisingly, most are one in the same. The only difference between them, truly, is that wolves are not ruled by society and expectations beyond their capabilities. They are only asked to survive and they do so as well as they can_!

Ra flicked an ear. _You were born with another._ Atem _was born with another,_ she snapped bitterly, eyes flashing as Yugi peered at her in confusion. _I allowed not one Pure-Blood to be brought to life through unnatural cause, but two. I allowed two wolves to be born that day. You know the date._

He stared at her, eyes wide and full of disbelief. _There are two of us_? he asked in amazement. _There are two Pure-Bloods_? _Two Code Name Atem_?

She scoffed loudly, stepping closer to him. _No, there is but one Atem. The second wolf was meant to be the backup. He was meant to be his companion. His_ sole _companion. As you have said yourself, my dear Atem, wolves were not meant to be solitary creatures._

He stared at her, amazed and bewildered. Because the truth was that, no, they were not meant to be solitary. But Atem was not a natural wolf. He was not a natural werewolf. He was a creature that seemed to defy explanation. He was someone burdened with immense destiny.

And what was that destiny to do for him but wreak destruction and havoc?

How was it that a god could perform such a callous act? She brought first him and then another into a fate not too terribly unlike his own?

 _You condemned not_ one _wolf but_ two, he hissed softly. _You condemned them to something worse than death._

 _A great many things are condemned to things beyond others' understandings. Your knowledge is so limited and narrow in vision. You have no idea the greatness which you possess. Your partner will show you such power and ability when the time comes._ She bore her teeth. _But first you will have to learn of self-reliance and strength, of the ability to stand upon your own paws and face your threats without mercy. You are nothing but a shadow of the wolf you are meant to be._

Yugi stared at her and his body felt cold as he watched her. Perhaps to a god, immortal and with such power as to mold the world to her fitting, the realization was a lazy and stupid one. But to him, his world felt small and meek. Reality bit at his body and tore at his bones.

He was an instrument, a means to an end.

And, when he fulfilled his purpose, when his life held no more merit, what would become of him?

Perhaps it was merely a pawn she saw when she looked at him. Maybe she could not see Yugi, and only Atem. Unlike Slifer, perhaps her own vision was narrow and tunneled and her goals kept her from realizing the importance of this realization.

As he looked at her, he thought he saw the madness he had seen in Kokurano's that last day he was alive. He thought he saw the spirals of madness and prophecy.

And he wondered at it.

Was it possible for a god to fall upon madness?

He watched her. And his insides warmed with laughter and disbelief. Was she so far removed from him that she could look at him now and tell him that he had a sibling of some kind who shared an equally despicable fate as his own without so much as a care?

How cruel.

The gods did not care.

And the pack saw Atem as merely a leader to their own victory. They saw him as a means to propel themselves further. He was nothing but a puppet for either of them.

Code Name Atem was a puppet.

Code Name Atem was a curse.

Code Name Atem was a creature that shouldn't exist.

He woke moments later to Yami beside him. He was fast asleep, face buried in the pillow. His eyes were twitching behind his lids. He was breathing slightly hard. His fingers would twitch faintly where they rested against the blanket draped over him. When he snorted loudly in his sleep and the movements stopped but for his eyes, Yugi felt he was dreaming of a hunt gone wrong. The simplicity of it burned at his insides briefly and bitterness came over him for only a moment.

Then he scooted closer to him. The movement jostled the taller wolf. His eyes snapped open. His gaze penetrated the darkness like fire. He blinked and stared at his face. And Yugi's cheeks grew hot with embarrassment. He felt like he was eight again, when thunder had scared him so much he had crawled under the covers with his mom out of fear.

But, unlike his mother that night, he was not told he needed to get out and sleep in his own room. He was not taken back to his bed and he didn't make a pillow fort with her. She didn't sit in front of him and tell him a story until he fell asleep after taking medication. She didn't leave him sometime in the middle of the night again.

This time Yami blinked, sat up, stretched himself out until his bones popped, pulled the blankets back, and burrowed beneath his comforter and sheets. Yugi stared at him, somewhat amazed and mystified, and then smiled faintly. The other wolf watched him, staring in silent question, asking if it was okay, and then snuggled into the pillow. He hesitated only a moment, scooted closer until Yami's scent seemed to swell and burn within his lungs. When all he could remember was ice and moonlight and fallen pine needles, his dreams were soft and gentle.


	35. Games

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day**

 **Chapter Warnings: Mild Bloodshed, Mentions of Sacrifices, References to Death, Slight References to Cult-Like Mentality, Slight Implications of Child Neglect, Mentions of Former Bullying, Mentions of Night Terrors, Mentions of Drug Overdose, Hints Towards Trauma, Slight Puzzleshipping, Slight Peachshipping, Slight Male Posturing**

 **Okay, so I had hoped to post this on the fourth since I was too exhausted on the thirtieth. But then I was exhausted after basically putting away an entire truck of merchandise up by myself. And then I was exhausted after work on the fourth and passed out like an hour after I got home (no writing done, no nothing). I felt terrible but it's over and done with so…yeah. I'm sorry anyways, though, guys. I still feel kind of terrible but yeah, so…anyways!**

 **So, the next chapter is set up for one final polish, and I'm working on editing the next couple as well. I might miss an update simply because it might be necessary due to work because of a couple of small scheduling issues within the company. Hopefully I can get ahead of that and not have to worry, but just in case, here is my warning for it.**

 **All right, so there's a small bit of explanation for Yugi and some of his mom's behavior. That's where the hints towards trauma come in, the drug overdose, the implications of child neglect, and past bullying as well as the mention of night terrors. They're all put up there as warnings, but they're really only mentioned and not expanded on, but it's there just for the sake of any triggers.**

 **Also, so Ryuichi is Fuwa's first name (Fuwa being the game show star from season zero), but Yugi refers to him by his last name. It's not out of respect this time, but mostly because he does not care to call him by his first name as it makes them seem far too friendly. He only really calls Yami and Anzu by their first name, although he's called Jonouchi by his first name, Katsuya, a few times. He doesn't truly use his friends' first names because using their first names is kind of reserved for more important moments (such as Yugi's apology about Shizuka). Anyways, so Yugi calls Ryuichi by Fuwa because he doesn't like him in the slightest.**

 **I will say that a couple of chapters will probably be posted late due to their length and a couple of details that need to be fixed (some spelling issues and descriptions that I messed up on my rough draft because I had not completely finished plotting out certain characters and their interactions). So I will say that a couple of will end up being late due to this, but hopefully I'll be able to make a note of it before I have to post the chapters in question.**

 **Anyways, sorry for the absence and enjoy the chapter~!**

Chapter XXXV: Games

 _Work Log Entry XXXV: June, 2002_

 _June 6_

 _Brain scans have been done to determine the range of emotion A.T.E.M. is capable of feeling. We are unsure of what this has to do with his ability to adapt and live on his own. But we are curious about it all the same._

 _His lack of depression upon being so constantly exposed to death is beyond us all._

 _June 16_

 _The scans have proven that A.T.E.M. feels every sense of emotion there is. There is nothing hindering his ability to experience any array of emotions._

 _His lack of depression is confusing._

 _June 19_

 _A.T.E.M. shows no signs of discomfort upon being experimented on._

 _I wonder if it is adaptation that caused him to display shows of emotion._

 _Perhaps his body provides stimulus but he does not truly understand or perceive them._

 _I do not know that the boss is worried about the possible evidence of his creation being a sociopath._

Yugi hummed a little quietly, glancing at the other wolf uncomfortably. _Thanks…for last night,_ he whispered quietly, licking his lips as Yami blinked at the snow and then raised his head to look at him in something almost akin confusion. The moment passed, however, and the black wolf merely nodded as he glanced away again. The white canine turned his head towards the snow as well and then began to slowly walk forward, eyes on the trees in the distance. _And…thank you for coming with me now…_

Yami blinked and raised his eyes from his paws, the sound of a mouse scurrying beneath the surface dying with such movement. He wondered vaguely in the back of his mind if he might find it should he look down again and attempt to listen for it once more. _Why are you thanking me_? he finally asked slowly, voice tired and somewhat flustered. Yugi could sense his unease towards the entire idea of coming amongst the pack again.

 _For coming with me. You hate the pack._

 _I do not hate them. I hate what they stand for._ Yami paused for a moment and wrinkled his nose, tipping his head back as a snowflake drifted by. His tail came up and wagged slightly as he looked at it. His eyes grew bright and warm with happiness at the sight of it. _And I loathe their idea of who Atem is as well as their thoughts of worship and summoning. I hate many of their beliefs. And I_ despise _their constant willingness to spill blood. But mostly I hate the way they looked at me before, just as they look at you now._

Yugi blinked and fell short a step, considering with his head clocked to the side. Did they look at him in a certain way? Did they tend to watch him as Yami was alluding to? Was there something different in the way they regarded him than they did others?

He felt stupid for a moment. Surely they did. They thought of him as some kind of savior, didn't they? And the gods saw him as a pawn…

 _I guess I'm just really glad that you see me as a friend instead of Atem,_ he finally muttered. His voice was small, cracked, and his eyes were on the trees and their jagged, lonely branches. One swayed in the tiniest of winds and the sky seemed to split open. Snowflakes began to scatter in rapid streaks of white, falling in immense clumps. Yugi watched them for a moment, then glanced at the other wolf when he could no longer take the weight of his silent stare.

Yet the expression of pity or suspicion or sympathy or smugness he had been expecting was not there. Yami was simply watching him, his eyes unreadable, his red gaze burning with something he could not recognize. Then he shook his fur out and began to walk again with the laziest of strides.

Yugi hesitated, for the smallest of moments, and then followed awkwardly at his side again. It seemed natural to be a step behind him, but the reality was that the wolves would see it another way entirely. He knew and realized this and it made his skin crawl as he hurried to overtake him by a step. Yami did not so much as glance at him.

 _Do you think all of the wolves in the pack just spill blood all of the time_? he asked quietly, feeling queasy.

Yami flicked an ear. _I am sure if they did Mai and Otogi would not be in the pack. Or, at least, they might be starved and picked on constantly._ He tilted his head. _Then, possibly, subsequently killed for further refusal to accept their way of life. Then again, if they should be giving_ offerings, _then perhaps the wolves were desperate to die._

Yugi froze for a moment, then turned to him with an anxious expression. _Desperate to die_?

 _Perhaps they were wolves from the lab._ His tone had grown dismissive and his eyes were distant as he looked at the snow which landed on his muzzle. It shrank and melted within seconds. He wrinkled his nose. His body heat must have fluctuated in order to maintain enough of a temperature to make the snow melt so instantly. _It is possible that they decided to sacrifice themselves in order to bring you there because of their tortures._

Yugi shivered. The idea made him want to puke. _That's_ … He couldn't find words for it. It was insane and pathetic and ridiculous and…

He faltered. The words rang in his ears for a moment.

Had he just been callous enough to call someone else's solution to their pain and sorrow pathetic? He turned his head away.

And that was the only reason he did not see him.

Yami, however, snapped his jaws. The clicking made Yugi jump. His head snapped around. The black wolf was knocked a step back. The other wolf was shaking with rage. Yugi snarled, drawing his lips back. Yami bit at the air. The newcomer returned the gesture.

Instinctively Yugi began to back up. The two wolves circled once. The movement allowed the smaller wolf to recognize the interloper. He bore his teeth in annoyance. Marik was picking a fight with Yami. He growled in frustration. Why did everything have to be so violent _all the time_?

Marik lunged for him. Yami waited, then ducked. His teeth snapped at his leg. The bone cracked and splintered. Marik snarled in pain. His teeth caught the other's shoulder. He tore at his skin but barely nicked the surface. Yami clamped his jaws. The bone fractured and split.

Yugi shivered. A sheet of snow was falling. Yami was layered in it. Marik was beginning to become similarly covered. He could barely smell blood. And when Marik pulled back, it was all fur in his teeth. Yami angled away from him. When he tugged his muzzle, the gray wolf stumbled but did not fall. He shook his own coat out. The skin exposed was pale and near icy in appearance along his shoulder. Yugi thought of bone and his heart began to race.

Yami released his leg. Their teeth clicked in the air again. Both wolves were mirror images of each other. Their tails were up. Their backs were covered in a bristle. Their ears were pricked forward. Their lips were drawn back. Their eyes were glittering with anger. And when they circled, Marik seemed to hardly limp.

They sprang at each other. Sheer body weight kept Yami from being overpowered. When Marik attempted to drive him back, he failed. His teeth caught at his cheek. The black wolf tilted his head to the side. The grip was powerful but the pain minimal. The skin would heal immediately. He didn't need to worry.

Marik released, tossing them sideways. The locked formation of their limbs threw them both. They hit the snow. The black wolf used the new position to his advantage. Even as the gray went for his throat, his back feet caught his jaw. He kicked like a cat, pulling at fur along the bottom of his mouth. The force alone made Marik's jaw ring with pain. He backed up several steps, tossing his head. Yami rolled over onto his feet again.

Yugi flicked an ear. More wolves were coming. His eyes shot to Yami's, meeting them. They looked at each other and for a split second Yugi thought he read a million secrets there. But the moment passed. The black wolf sent a simple, _They will not interfere_ his way. Then he sprang at the other wolf.

The gray wolf put too much weight on his broken limb. In the heat of battle, his adrenaline had cushioned the pain. But it did not promote healing. His leg buckled and fell beneath him.

That same moment Yami was upon him. His teeth caught in his throat. He threw his weight. Marik struggled, snapping his teeth. He snarled and growled and then settled after a few minutes of squirming. The black wolf did not release for a minute. And then another passed.

Yugi blinked, startled. And realization struck him. Yami was going to hold him there until he either thrashed so hard he broke his own windpipe or he succumbed to exhaustion. The smaller wolf hurried to his side, panic causing his heart to race.

 _Yami, let go of him._

The black wolf looked at him, then clamped his jaws harder in silent dismissal. Marik yelped and struggled. Then he panted and grew still again, snarling low in his throat. It was the fur which protected him now. Had his coat been any thinner, the mouthful of it any smaller, Yami would have hit the jugular.

 _Yami, please_!

The black canine stared at him for a long moment. His eyes were sharp and cold as they looked at each other. Yugi could feel ice swelling in his bones. His body felt cold with panic. His heart was beginning to race with disbelief.

 _Yami, please, just let him go, okay_?

And then Yugi saw that his eyes had drifted. And in the surface of his pupils was a new image, a reflection that made him freeze in place. The alpha, an odd red-orange glint against the darkness there, was watching him. Her chin was raised and her face dismissive. They stared at each other for a long minute. Marik screamed when Yami pressed his teeth harder into his throat.

 _Yami, stop_! Yugi spat, flustered. His fur was bristling fearfully now and he felt sick as he looked at him. The black canine glanced at him now. It was the fine tremble which overcame the white wolf a moment later which made him release. He opened his jaws fully, spat a mouthful of fur away, and then snorted loudly.

 _What the fuck was that_? Yugi demanded, hurrying to his side when he took a seat. The white wolf was next to him immediately, eyes wide and dilated with fear. _You didn't need to—_

 _Rank challenges can end in death when they happen often enough,_ Yami dismissed him. _This is not the first time he has done this. When I was here prior he did it constantly. And now he thinks I won't fight back because I am not Atem. Next time I'll kill him._

 _You were just talking about their willingness to kill and now you're_ … Yugi shook his head in frustration. How could Yami not see what was so wrong with this whole thing? But then, he himself had at some point thought of how nice it would be to be able to get his bullies off his back. He had imagined fighting back once or twice but it went against a lot of his beliefs and so he couldn't bring himself to even truly consider it for longer than a moment.

Yet, now, as a wolf, fighting was second nature. He could respond simply through reflexes and not have a single problem. He felt his skin jerk in a shiver beneath his pelt. He had killed two wolves now, and inadvertently about seven others.

The black wolf flicked an ear in his direction. _I only have so much patience for the brainless,_ he snapped in response. _I can only take so much of his constant delight to fight me. There is only so much I can do with it before I have to force him back. Maybe now he will take that as a warning and no longer think to charge me so quickly._

Yugi glanced at Marik and it occurred to him that most likely that would not be the case. Marik had attacked him in the woods and refused to stop even when the alpha commanded it. If he refused even her, it was possible that he would never heed such caution.

He considered him for a long moment. But why _wouldn't_ he? Why _wouldn't_ he think better of it? It seemed so…strange. Was there something wrong with his thought process? Maybe he simply loved to fight and nothing else…

Yami turned now to regard him fully. His stomach tossed and he swallowed hard as he considered his own actions moments prior. It was a stupid idea to have held on so long. He was sure the wolves had to be suspicious of their rank by now.

But then…perhaps not.

Yugi had not snarled at him or vice versa. And no one seemed to be sending images about. Perhaps his protests had been aimed only towards him. That was highly possible as well.

The white wolf did not do more than move over to sniff at his cheek. The blood was dried and the skin closed. He looked perfectly fine. That was a relief at least. Yugi turned away and glanced at the she-wolf and the others which stood there watching them.

They probably saw it as a display of power somehow. Yami flicked an ear and Yugi bristled faintly. Was that a possibility?

And now, as they both turned away, images sprang to mind. The sight of Yami nearly killing Marik, of Yugi standing there all but uselessly. Questioning pictures sprang forward immediately after. Some of them showed Yugi pressing Yami to the ground, teeth in his skull. The white wolf started slightly at the idea of it, eyes widening, but the black wolf merely glanced at him sideways. Another showed Yami biting Yugi, a faceless human with bright blue-violet eyes. Others had the definitive features of his face. Others were of Marik's shattered leg.

Yugi bristled slightly, eyes on Yami. _What are those pictures_? _The ones of me biting you_?

 _Punishment for disobeying your direct order to release him._ Yami blew out a deep breath buried somewhere far in his lungs. His nostrils flared faintly and he curled his lip slightly as he drew his jaws apart in a loud yawn. _They assume that my disobedience is grounds for punishment and now they wonder if I perhaps bit you._

He blinked. _What do I do about that_?

Yami studied him for a moment. His head tilted to the side and he considered him thoughtfully. _You could attempt the alpha command, but I do not know that it would work. Or you can punish me._

Yugi stared at him and flattened his ears against his skull. _I'd rather not do either, thanks._

Yami flicked an ear. _Then let them wonder. It does not matter. None of them will truly question you. They all believe in you. None of them will think to challenge your authority._

Yugi stared at him for so long his eyes felt as if they might burn within their sockets. _Because I'm Atem,_ he thought in response to the unspoken question that reared itself in his head. He flicked an ear, moved closer to him, and wondered whether they would allow him to get away with murder without a second thought.

He shivered at the idea. If none of them would have stepped in to stop Yami, then wasn't that just as likely? He wondered if there was a line they had drawn in the sand or if nothing of the sort would ever come to be a reality.

Yami tilted his head towards him. _I still do not know her name,_ he muttered softly, eyes sharp as he considered. _I have never known her name._

He blinked, confused. _Whose_?

 _The alpha._

Now his eyes fell on Yami's instinctively, startled, and a small bit of fur rose along his back in confusion. _You don't know her name_? _But you were_ —

 _A name is of no importance, especially one such as mine,_ she cut in, making them both turn their heads warily. She was still watching Marik but there was only scorn within her gaze as the wolf struggled to his paws and licked his broken leg. _What matters is what I am here to do, what I shall give you_.

 _Give me_? Yugi thought with a dizzy head, his fur rippling with a rapid bristle of discomfort. _What in the world does she think she can give me_?

Yami watched her for a long minute, then looked to his wounded challenger before shaking his fur out. The movement immediately made the white wolf turn to him and the two of them locked eyes for only a moment but a million words seemed to pass through. Yugi drew in a deep breath, looked to the alpha, and in his strongest tone, demanded, _What more do you plan to give me_? _Your pack is mine, isn't it_?

She watched Marik a moment longer, turned her head to him, and locked eyes with him for the first time. _A great gift, for should you rule my pack you will need power and ability, yes_? she said in a tone of both condescension and amusement.

The white canine glanced sideways towards Yami in mounting unease. _What is that supposed to mean_? he asked him in a low voice, scared and feeling somewhat sick. _What does she mean by that_?

For a long time he was simply stared at. Then the narrow red eyes flickered, flashing with something dark and unreadable. _Yugi, what was it that made you notice this pack that day in the woods_?

 _The smell of blood…_ He almost trembled. _They were performing… Oh gods…_

Yami nodded slightly, turning away. _Exactly._

 _B-but she can't honestly think that I want another sacrifice, can she_? he sputtered, horrified. He flattened his ears against his skull, heart pounding shakily in his chest. _I don't want someone to die again_!

Yami's voice lacked any emotion, his eyes blank, and his stance seemed visibly nonchalant and careless. _Atem is a creature of myth to them, a god with a face of white snow and bright blue and violet eyes. To them he is a wolf meant to be worshipped and praised. And what other way can one do such a thing without giving life and thus power_? _Think of the human gods, Yugi. In ancient times, they offered sacrifice to them to keep them strong or gain their favor. Why should this be any different_?

Yugi was almost shaking and a fine tremor swept through his tail as he struggled to suppress it. He already looked weak and instinct whispered to swallow such emotion. If they sensed it…

 _That's disgusting_! _Most people offered animal blood or burned meat or wine_!

Yami tilted his head and watched him with dark eyes. _What is a wolf, Yugi_?

 _An animal._

 _And what is a werewolf's main mentality_?

He almost said it was animalistic but a more horrifying thought struck him. The human brain controlled a wolf body. Their main mentality was that of the human. He shivered and his stomach dropped painfully.

 _That's still not…_

Yami cast him a look that seemed vaguely patronizing but mostly comforting in the most awkward of manners. _You must remember, too, Yugi, that they were raised to believe in you. It is in each and every one of their stories. It is something that they were taught as pups and reminded of in adulthood. It is the very basis of their lives. You are the core of everything to them._

The words caused his marrow to run cold. He stared at him, eyes wide, and then bristled faintly with disbelief. _A cult,_ he thought vaguely, looking towards them. _They are like a cult._

 _Yes_. Yami paused and then looked at him, flicking and then flattening his ears. _Do not deny her this privilege, Yugi. Should you do so the pack will become upset and suspicious. They may suspect you to be lying. And you do not want such a thing._

Yugi didn't argue in the slightest. Of course he did not want that. Especially if that meant they came after not _only_ him but Yami as well. They would kill him. They would completely rip him to shreds. He drew in a deep breath, looking at the alpha, and wondered what kind of sacrifice it was she had in mind. Was it special? She said a great gift of some kind…

He shook the thought off. He'd have to figure it out when it happened. There was really nothing else to do or say about it. His eyes were back on Yami again. _No,_ he agreed quietly. _What did she mean by ruling her pack_?

 _You are going to take over, yes_? _That's what Atem is meant to do. He is meant to claim the pack and lead them to battle._

Yugi faltered briefly at the very concept, eyes wide as he looked towards the alpha again slowly. _Okay, so I take over the pack, but then what_? _I don't know what leading an army in war is supposed to mean_!

Yami snorted and licked at his paw in amusement. _That's not something most people know either._ There was a considerable pause before he looked at him more fully, eyes sharp and darkened with some kind of shadow Yugi could not understand. _These wolves were raised for war, but I do not expect them to fully understand the complications or the price of such lifestyle._

Yugi stared at him, confused and more than slightly bewildered by such a thought. Why wouldn't they have understood? They were raised to believe that he would save them and so many of them had sacrificed themselves already. How was it that they could possibly overlook the severity of the situation? They had seen family fighting and killing each other and the alpha _preached_ it!

 _I do not believe they know what it is that they are to truly do,_ Yami explained softly, licking at his leg more persistently. The blood was so miniscule that it had dried from the chill in the air. But he still licked at it for no other reason than distraction. The implications of his own words scared even him. But he supposed it mattered to Yugi more than it did him. When it came down to it, _he_ was at the core of it. Yami was simply a spectator, possibly a mentor if he could ever keep up with the other wolf as it was. _Death is not something they should embrace so simply._

Yugi felt sick as he looked at him before glancing at the she-wolf again slowly. Their eyes caught and she wagged her tail in amusement upon seeing his expression. He looked slightly older to her, as if something had come to his mind in a brilliant stroke of realization and, though he struggled to understand, it was impossible for him to ignore. She turned to the pack members behind her, raising her tail. _The Pure-Blooded One is in need of a sacrifice of blood and great power. Then he shall come to us in all of his glory as our savior._

Yugi shot Yami a horrified, sickened glance. The larger wolf shook his head slightly. The white canine looked away again, but his lungs were tight and his stomach felt heavy and swollen.

* * *

"I believe you had something you wanted to ask me."

Yugi blinked in confusion and tipped his head towards him in response. He couldn't remember wanting to ask him anything as it was. Had there been something? He furrowed his brows, wracking his brain, and then shook his head slowly.

Yami snorted in amusement but did not supply him an answer. When he brushed against one of the headstones and read it over, his red eyes were wide and glittering slightly. Then he moved and took a seat on the top of it with little thought.

What would he have wanted to ask him? Yami sounded so certain of his words. So he definitely knew he needed to ask something of him. Did he know him so well? Yugi felt flustered as he considered him. He always seemed to struggle with the task of keeping up with Yami. So how was it fair that Yami could read him so well?

And then it clicked in his head.

Yugi looked up at him, eyes bright, and laughed, "Oh, wow. I forgot all about it with everything going on."

He hummed but didn't bother to speak.

"But, yeah, I was going to ask you before I made the announcement to the pack. I'm sorry for not thinking it through. But I didn't consider it before we actually left."

Yami studied him for a moment, nodding slightly.

His cheeks felt hot for a few heartbeats. Yami was staring at him, watching him closely, and his stomach dropped as they looked at each other. Yugi's hand rose and he scratched at the back of his head. "Well, anyways, um… Can you be my beta while we're with the pack? Outside of the pack we'll be right back the same way as we always are, okay? You're my alpha and I'm your beta."

"You say that like the titles mean something," the red-eyed wolf scoffed, but his tone was playful as they looked at each other. "The only time that they have any power is within packs. Then alpha and beta mean something. As for the one who bit the other, that's all they refer to."

Yugi frowned at him, nibbling his lip until he felt and tasted blood. "And when there are only two wolves in a pack?" he asked quietly, nervously. The question made Yami stiffen, the taller teen almost statuesque for a moment. The words made him think of their conversation before, how he had said most bitten wolves were there because they were mates. Or their companionship was so coveted that they wanted to immortalize it.

He finally glanced away, but his eyes were on Yugi's hands tucked in his jacket pockets rather than looking at the willow as the smaller teen assumed they would be. He tilted his head, studying the outlines of his knuckles beneath the surface of the jacket. The implications of the question were lost on neither of them.

"They act as equals unless it is an emergency."

Yugi shivered and his heart raced with the simplicity of the words. He smiled slightly, because it was oddly stunning that the taller teen seemed to be able to make such complicated choices seem so easy. It was almost as if he simply shrugged, decided at random what had to be, and shed away the rest. He seemed to know when to dig and when to barely scratch the surface with most things.

He envied him that.

"I won't tell them you're my acting beta within the pack if you don't want me to. I mean, if it's going to be a problem…"

Yami did not so much as blink when he shook his head immediately in dismissal of his words. "I do not care one way or the other," he said slowly, "but we must watch what we do inside of that pack, Yugi. If we make the wrong move, or give them reason to suspect us of lying, we will _not_ make it out alive."

Yugi bit his lip and shook his head. "But that's why you're the alpha, right? Because you're smarter and you can teach me," he muttered in such a small voice that the other wolf blinked, startling faintly. "I mean, that's why you've survived as long as you have. You didn't have your parents to help you and you know a lot more than I do. And it's pretty obvious that you can do almost anything you decide to put your mind to."

He studied him, red eyes cool and unblinking, and then glanced away almost dismissively. "I don't know nearly as much as you think," he muttered softly, shaking his head. "You simply wish I did."

He faltered, face feeling oddly cold and his skin icy with growing confusion. Yami didn't have much self-esteem at all. The smaller teen glanced away and then back, but his mouth felt twisted and he couldn't tell if it was a grimace or a half-hearted smile.

"You still know more than me either way. Which I guess isn't really hard," he teased, though his voice came out slightly small and Yami did not seem even remotely amused. He sighed, running a hand through his hair, and then looked at the willow tree for only a moment. Then he turned back and the other wolf's red eyes bore into his. "Well, anyways, if you don't mind, then can I ask you to be my beta while we're in the pack?"

"You beat around the bush too much," Yami snorted before shaking his head. "Yes, let's do that. When we are with them, I will defer to you and when we are not, we will be as we always are."

Yugi smiled widely and his expression of absolute happiness and warm relief made the taller lycanthrope feel sick. He looked at him, meeting his eyes, for only a moment longer. And then he turned away and stared at the snow as if it might somehow save him from the disappointment he was sure Yugi would come to know.

He did not look at him again until Yugi yawned, stretched his arms, and muttered, "Want to go back?" after three long hours. He glanced at him more from his peripheral rather than head on, then nodded, and kicked himself off of the gravestone. The smaller boy was painfully aware of the distance between them, which seemed oddly intensified as the seconds passed. Had he done something? He had asked and that had been it, right?

He wanted to apologize, but what was there he was meant to say? Were there any words he could actually speak to make the gap between them lessen somehow? He doubted it. And he had no explanation for the thing he must have done wrong.

"You have school," Yami said quietly, with such lack of preamble that Yugi startled. He nearly tripped and his balance caught just before he fell straight into the other wolf's side. Flushed, he glanced at him, but the other merely snorted, lips tugging faintly into a smirk of amusement.

"Yeah," he muttered, hesitating. "And probably two hours before my alarm goes off."

"Do your mother and grandfather never check on you at night?" His face was more scornful than amused now, his eyes flashing with something Yugi could not define. "There has only been that one instance that I know of upon which your mom entered the room to see you. But there is so much going on within this little city right now! Why would they not take the time to check on you more often?"

Yugi blinked, then shook his head. His face felt colder than before and he reached up to rub at his cheeks. But the skin was warm against his fingers and he felt oddly stricken by the thought.

"She used to check on me a lot. When I still had night terrors almost every night, she would come and check on me. Most of the time she would end up waking me and telling me stories until I fell asleep again. I was around eight when she stopped. I told her I didn't want to be coddled anymore." He hesitated, then kicked at the snow lightly with his sneaker, smiling sardonically at himself. "From eight to twelve my night terrors were _so_ much worse. But I used to get mad when she would try to help me. I felt too childish, like a baby. It started to get to me because I was already dealing with being bullied. It seemed like if they found out about it, that would just give them _that_ much more to attack me for."

Yami blinked, eyes widening, and then furrowed his brows. "That does not explain why she does not check on you now," he argued quietly, when he saw that Yugi was struggling to think of what more to say. "There is a curfew in place and you are out here, in the woods. It is hours _past_ the curfew as well. I simply do not understand how she does not recognize that you are absent."

He bit his bottom lip. "Because when I was twelve I yelled and screamed at her not to do it anymore. I asked for higher dosages for my medication, because I could do that instead of having to deal with my peers _somehow_ finding out about my mom checking on me in the middle of the night all of the time. I realized when I was thirteen that it didn't make any sense that I worried about that. And it hardly made sense that I asked for a higher dosage. I was actually against taking the pills every night as it was."

Yami shook his head, puzzled.

Yugi grinned at him, glancing sideways at his face, and then turned away again quickly. "Anyways, so, they began to taper off. The night terrors became far less frequent and I could deal with them better. I don't thrash like I used to and I don't scream and wake everyone up in the house anymore. I don't have to worry about my dreams most of the time. And my mom realizes she doesn't have to watch me every five seconds. Although, I'm sure my grandpa's attitude that I'm capable of taking care of myself also helped."

He was growing impatient and the smaller teen could sense it. When Yami stepped forward, he spun on him. His blue-violet eyes were narrow and his expression less than amused.

"She doesn't have to check on me. I'm not a little kid. And she trusts me not to do stupid things. I'm honestly pretty self-sufficient for the most part. It might not _seem_ that way, but I can handle most issues." He paused, opening and closing his mouth, and spun on his heel again. "But the thing is, she checks up on me in different ways now. See, she doesn't have to physically check to see that I'm in my room. Because she can check to see where my _phone_ is using hers. If I leave it in my room, she assumes I'm asleep in there. And then she doesn't have to worry about waking me by coming into my room."

"She tracks you using your phone?"

Yugi nearly snorted at the incredulous, bewildered tone of voice. "Yep. Technology is crazy. They put chips in animals' shoulders to track where they are. They use collars to correct bad behavior through static or vibration when a dog misbehaves. They can do all sorts of things that weren't possible just a couple of years ago." He hesitated, then looked at him over his shoulder as Yami began to lag behind slightly. He gave him a small smile that made the other boy frown in puzzlement. "But I've always woken up when someone tries to come into my room at night. It's just natural to me and she's always known that. And I think she _knows_ that my night terrors still happen. I think she realizes that I manipulate myself into not reacting sometimes. And I think she has an idea of how much medication I _don't_ take. She's not stupid. But she also doesn't want to make me feel like I am either. So we kind of dance around the subject…"

"But schoolmates are dying, are they not? And the curfew is island-wide, yes?"

Yugi paused, then looked at him as he came to his side. "She isn't neglecting me," he said slowly, frowning at him as he tilted his head in mounting frustration as he struggled to find the proper words. "Yami, she's trying to give me just enough space so that I don't end up relapsing somehow."

"Relapsing?"

"Into depending on the drugs as often." He paused, then huffed. "One night I took so many I should have killed myself. It wasn't even for a malicious reason. I just… I kept dozing and the night terrors would start almost immediately and I would take more and more to keep up. And somehow that basically turned into the whole bottle. The dosages were the _highest_ they could give me for my age and weight. And they just weren't working and I… She's been afraid of bringing it up to me. She says she found me passed out in the living room with the empty bottle nearby. But when she checked on me I was still alive and seemed perfectly healthy. It was a new bottle and there were about fifty pills in there."

Yami blinked, stopping short, and stared at him with something akin horror and disgust.

He shrugged. "I just wanted to actually be able to _sleep_ , Yami. I just wanted to be able to _rest_. And it just… It didn't happen like it should have. It just… She's been afraid of talking to me about it. And she's even more concerned that I'll end up in that kind of state again." He shook his head. "I think she blames herself for it. I think she's too scared that if she steps on my toes, somehow I'm going to end up like I did then."

"That doesn't make any sense…"

He raised a brow, grinning at him. "Humans are nonsensical," he teased playfully.

Yami shook his head. "So she thinks that one night she'll check up on you, you won't be able to sleep, you'll take too much medication, and she'll find you lying in your room with an empty bottle," he said slowly, narrowing his eyes. "That doesn't make any sense."

Yugi snorted, looking at him. "It makes plenty to her. And I guess I could understand it if I was in her place. She introduced the medicine to me, got the doses raised when I asked, and listened when I told her not to check on me anymore. She probably feels like she should have been checking on me more often and when it happened she was horrified." He shrugged, but his eyes had become distant, somewhat sad, and the taller teen felt sick as he looked at him. "She checks on me by my phone, makes sure I'm not out past curfew that way. And if I am, then she's able to call me basically instantly. So, truthfully, she's still hovering, but she's doing it in a new way."

Yami stared at him, eyes searching his for a moment. It was bewildering to him. Of course technology had been advanced. He had seen new equipment upon escaping the tunnels than what had been there formerly. He understood that. And he knew about the chips and the transmitters to be inserted beneath the skin, embedded deep within the muscles, which tracked their queries.

Fuck, he'd _had_ one in his own shoulder.

Yugi had removed it, after all…

"Was your phone at home…?" he asked slowly, furrowing his brows. Yugi glanced at him curiously as the words left his mouth. For a moment he struggled to speak and then Yami shrugged it off and resumed his question. "Was your phone at home the night of the fire?"

The smaller teen hesitated for a moment. "Yeah," he mumbled, sighing softly. "I was freaking out and thought she would have called the police all for nothing."

The simplicity of the statement made Yami falter and his eyes flickered about for a moment before he shook his head slowly.

"That's…"

"She's not a bad mom. She just… I don't think she ever really wanted kids in the first place. And then she was pregnant and decided that she would figure out how to be a good parent as she went along. She's not the most maternal person in the world. But she _does_ love me." He shrugged now and his eyes were more distant and soft than they had been before. "And she'd do anything for me. She just doesn't show it in the same way other moms do. She's not like Anzu's mom. Her mom likes to text her every day, ask her for every minute detail in her life. Her dad is a police officer who's working on the cases now. She's been freaking out because of it all. Anzu says it's suffocating."

"You almost sound wistful."

He laughed. "Not of that," the small teen said softly, turning to him with bright eyes. "I'm more curious about all of the information her dad has on the deaths. I want to know what they think is going on."

Yami shook his head slightly. "I am sure they have some idea of what is going on. I suspect they will think only that dogs have done it, however."

Yugi smirked. "I'm not really worried about that. I just… I was there around most of the bodies at one point or another. I want to know if they're looking for me."

He startled. "Surely she would tell you if they were?" he asked quietly, biting his cheek. "She is your best friend, isn't she?"

"She is, but it's against the law for her to talk about that kind of thing…"

Yami watched him closely. "But I do not believe that someone would betray you in such a way. Especially the girl who holds your heart." Yugi blinked, head snapping towards him now, as his voice swam in his head and circled almost like a shark. His tone was oddly neutral but there was an underlying heat to his words which startled him. "You are not so foolish that you would trust someone blindly. And I do not believe someone to be so deceitful as to lie to you and pretend to be a friend but not reveal such a thing. Surely if they suspected you your life would be over…"

Yugi nodded slightly but then searched his face. _I trusted you blindly_ , he thought vaguely. _I let you into my house when you could have easily killed me. I took you shopping for clothes when you could have easily killed everyone there if you'd wanted. I haven't told you to leave even after watching you kill. I trust_ you _blindly._

Yami considered him a moment longer, studying his expression, and then looked swiftly away again. "I think if she had to choose, it'd be you over the law."

"Why do you say that?"

His red eyes flickered and locked with his, a million and one different secrets swirling within them. He curled his lips back into something that seemed like a cross between a smile and a smirk, tilted his head, and said simply, "Because I would."

Yugi stared at him, stunned into silence, then blushed faintly as he considered. He would choose him too. He would choose any of his friends. But the quickness of his decision regarding Yami startled him. It was instinctive, how quickly he almost opened his mouth to say the same. He kept his tongue between his teeth, watching him, and then looked away.

Yami trusted him. Yami trusted him _blindly_. He always _had_. Whatever potential he had seen in him, he'd had to trust that Yugi would not turn into a monster like Ushio. He'd had to put faith in the fact that he was _worthy_ of saving him. He'd had to place himself in his hands to get care for his wrists. He'd had to hand over control every time he took those pills to sleep. Their entire relationship had been blind trust on Yami's behalf.

The thought shook him to his core. His heart felt as if it might shatter. His lungs felt slightly tight. He looked down, staring at the snow, and his head felt light as if it were stuffed with cotton.

"I would choose you too."

Yami stared at him for a moment, only long enough to consider him, and turned to walk again. "You have school tomorrow. Let's go." He did not glance back even when Yugi looked up and took up a slower pace behind him.

* * *

Yugi picked at his backpack strap, eyes flickering towards the taller teen. Yami had been leaning against the wall, picking at his nails, biting and flicking at the bottom, since the moment he had woken. He was not truly biting away the ends like he had initially assumed he was. But he looked uncomfortable all the same and he had the feeling the other looked like that because of their conversation earlier that day. He sighed and glanced around slightly, looking for anything that might have slipped his mind.

"I'll make a shake when I get home," he announced, looking at the other who blinked and raised his head in momentary confusion. "I don't think I'll have time before I have to get to school. I should have gotten up earlier."

The sigh that left his lips was longer than Yami cared to hear it and the taller teen shook his head with a dismissive glance. "It does not matter," he said simply, giving him a sharp look when the other opened his mouth to object. Very quickly Yugi closed his mouth again and glanced away towards the window before steeling himself enough to look at him once more. He leaned a little further into the plaster behind him, and the cotton of his tank top did well to absorb some of the chill it possessed. "I will go hunting instead, I suppose."

Yugi opened his mouth again, and then felt his cheeks flush at the more annoyed look the other shot him now. "What? I'm not supposed to worry about you doing that? Seriously, Yami, did you forget about the hunters that have been roaming around looking for Code Name Atem?" He faltered and then tilted his head, feeling slightly sick to his stomach. "Looking for me?"

Yami snorted softly. "I am not some mindless pup," he scoffed before he tilted his head and stared at him with a puzzled expression marring his usually unreadable face. "I can take care of myself well enough…"

"And if they catch you off-guard, what then?"

He tilted his head further, then furrowed his brows. "You know I am capable of protecting myself."

"And? What's your point? You got pretty hurt the last time we had a run in with them," Yugi snapped, blushing when the other's red eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed in frustration. He lowered his eyes quickly, puzzled by his own irritation, and then looked at him again with a flustered expression. "I just…I know that you can handle it yourself, okay? It's just…with all of the stuff going on, with the pack and the hunters and everything else…"

Yami considered him for a long minute. "You would rather I not go out," he finally commented, narrowing his eyes into slits before scoffing softly. "You do realize that hiding away will do nothing in the long run, yes?"

"But it doesn't have to do anything more than keep you alive for another day, right?"

Yami stared at him, eyes growing wide, slightly fascinated and minutely shocked. Then he nodded slightly, turning his gaze on the carpet as if it might somehow comfort him. He shrugged his shoulders, flustered, and tilted his head again as he looked at the deep indigo shade of the fibers. "Very well, I will not leave the house until you return," he replied in a low voice, one that spoke of discomfort and frustration more than anything else.

Yugi felt almost sick with relief, grinning childishly at his agreement. "Thank you."

"Go to school."

He nearly cursed; he was so going to be late.

It took him twenty minutes to get to the school and the gates were just about to be shut. A couple of police officers glanced at him, having been stationed there after the recent dead body found. He shuddered, trying to ignore the way his heart raced at the very thought. Then he shook it off, hurrying through the doors and towards his homeroom.

It was surprising, that all of his classmates seemed to be in an uproar about something.

When he slipped inside, he expected someone to notice.

He even expected that they might sneer at him that he had killed someone else and when his killing spree would end.

But none of them even noticed him.

His friends did not even seem to realize that he had joined them.

The thought stung faintly but it was also soothing somehow.

Yugi wandered forward, stepping further into the classroom, then slipped past his best friend's desk for his own seat in front of him. But his stomach tossed and the hairs on the back of his neck rose in a slight bristle. When he turned his head, his skull felt fluffy with useless information, unnerved by the sight in front of him. There was a boy, no older than himself—or perhaps he was much older but looked his age? He could not tell—seated in the desk directly to his side, in front of Anzu, who had taken Honda's seat.

Yugi glanced around for the brunet, relieved that he had not been moved further than the seat diagonal his left side. He nearly laughed with happiness at the realization. But the sensation fled him quickly. When he turned his head again, there was a gaze of purple eyes, somewhat dark, somehow glassy, peering at him, and his stomach tossed more painfully.

He tilted his head. His spine felt tight beneath his skin. His fingers were itching. A million different thoughts sprung through his mind. A million different instincts told him to run. Another million told him to lash out. And only one said to keep still, to pretend that it was normal. He focused on this last one, struggling to maintain his attention upon it. By the gods, it was horrifying to have to try so hard to simply consider this.

He drew in a small breath, holding it deep within his lungs. But all he could catch was spearmint from this other boy. His gum was too strong and it burned his nose. He could not get past such an intense, disgusting scent. He was, in absolution, trapped by the swirl of harsh iciness when he drew a breath in and exhaled it through his mouth. Yugi wondered vaguely if he knew what he was doing. Or maybe he was just one of those people who unconsciously breathed through his mouth.

The thought sent his head into a spiral. He narrowed his eyes faintly. Then he glanced sideways towards Jonouchi, who appeared oddly quiet and only minutely concerned. His absence of conversation made Yugi nervous beyond his own capabilities. His stomach knotted again and his tongue felt dry, pasty where it pressed into the roof of his mouth. He drew in another breath but the spearmint made him dizzy, so he turned away quickly to face the front.

And then he noticed him breathing through his nose.

Yugi blinked and glanced at him from his peripheral. He was studying him, not straight on, but from his own peripheral. And the thought unnerved the small lycanthrope as they stared at one another. He knew the other was well aware of what he was doing, because his thin lips curved faintly and the redhead looked as if he might burst into laughter at any moment.

The thought was nerve-wracking and the small teen fidgeting. His fingers tapped the surface of his wooden desk and his head felt dizzier as the seconds passed. How was it possible that one person could throw him for such a loop? He seemed inconspicuous enough. Was he overreacting? No one else appeared to have a problem with him.

Yet, when he glanced forward, he saw Valon. The hellhound was staring forward, but his jaw was clenched. And his golden eyes were unusually frozen with anger. He was gripping the edges of his desk with harsh fingers. And his nails were breaking at the fibers where his pinkie brushed against the side of it.  
Yugi startled.

Did Valon sense it too?

He straightened slightly.

That meant something was surely wrong, right?

Valon had been a hellhound far longer than he a lycanthrope. He had said so himself, hadn't he? So why _shouldn't_ he believe in Valon's senses more than his own? Even if he were overreacting, a reaction from another wolf had to mean something, did it not?

Yugi drew in a deep breath. But, again, all he caught was spearmint from the newcomer at his side. However, he came across the scent of salt as well, harsh and strong, as if someone had broken into a rapid perspiration at some point. And it did not take him much effort to see that it was Valon who had done so. The way he tipped his head slightly to the side, eyes glued to the chalkboard, gaze burning, fingers clenched, his body rigid, pointed to such a reality.

Yugi nearly groaned. Was this newcomer a werewolf as well? Was he someone to make Valon nervous? He ducked his head away, gazing sideways and back at Honda with clear discomfort. The spearmint burned and tickled his nose. He thought it was acidic for the way his nose proved to be against it. He felt almost as if he had pressed his nose into a vat of boiling water for all the pain it brought to him.

"Who is he?" he mouthed, tilting his head only slightly. He did not want to provoke this new boy somehow.

The brunet wrinkled his nose, glancing at the newcomer, and then snorted. "Fuwa Ryuichi," he hissed under his breath, the words just barely reaching Yugi who blinked in confusion. Then his head snapped around, startled, and his eyes grew thrice their average size.

Fuwa Ryuichi?

That was someone just barely a handful of months older than him, who lived his life basically centered around the aspect of winning game shows on television. He had seen him several times, and now his dark red hair and glowing eyes made sense to him.

He grimaced, tilting his head, and as their eyes locked his stomach tossed painfully once more. "Motou Yugi," he finally muttered, giving him a cautious smile when the other turned to face him completely now. Yugi almost reached a hand out but he felt as if his palms might itch after touching him. And he was not sure but he felt they might be clammy and to show that to him when he could potentially be another wolf felt foolish beyond any idea he might have had formerly. "Are you going to be attending here?"

It occurred to him as the words left his mouth that Fuwa should not have been there. He tilted his head and he felt as if the world were spinning for a moment. He lived in another part of Japan, in the Honshu area rather than Hokkaido. He was not meant to be in Domino City of all places. Unless he was a wolf and sensed him as Atem, there was no reason for his being there.

"I am," he said proudly, with a tone of superiority which made Yugi bristle faintly with distaste. In his peripheral Valon curled his lip and fought not to glower. His fingers tightened and the bones looked frail beneath his skin. The tendons were pulsing against the surface. His eyes were glowing with near hatred. "My parents thought it would be a good idea for me to become integrated with the highest-scoring high school of Japan."

The small teen blinked at him. For a moment he could not recall. But it came to him in a rush. Hokkaido had been proclaimed the best area for high schools to be learned within, Domino City the top prefecture. His stomach twisted and knotted painfully again.

He had assumed that they would have declared otherwise after so many deaths. What if that drew more and more attention? What if more students began flocking there? What if there were more schoolmates to die for it?

"Well, welcome to Domino High," he said in as friendly a tone as he could muster. But his attention was on Valon, who seemed to struggle not to snarl in disgust. When he looked away, the other tilted his head. His golden eyes slid over to regard him. Yugi gave him something of a helpless look. But the other boy merely glowered further. Then he turned back to the board as if his life might depend upon it.

"I understand that you are all excited to have such a famous new classmate, but remember yourselves, class. We have much work to do and little time before midterms begin to come for this winter. You can all socialize in between classes and during lunch. Now you have to pay attention to what I have to teach you."

Yugi felt sick. He felt dizzy. When he swallowed, it choked in his throat. He closed his eyes for a moment. He could hear Valon now, snarling low under his breath. He was so tense that his hatred pulsated through the air in waves. The power of it nearly knocked him off his feet.

Yugi reached up, running a hand through his hair. He could ignore the teacher, continue conversing. Some of the other students seemed to be doing that. They were whispering and Fuwa was speaking to them in response. A girl giggled when he flirted. Another seemed to swoon within her seat.

Yugi nearly scoffed. Then he opened his eyes, tipped his head up, and watched as she began to instruct them on the math equations that so many of them had missed upon testing. Chono was a hard teacher to impress and her reluctance to truly teach them rather than punish had always been obvious to each of them.

But none of them had ever argued with her, nor directly disobeyed her. She was ruthless and savage when she was truly angry and set her eyes upon someone. More than once she had gotten students in immense trouble. Beyond his taping her temper tantrum towards Anzu earlier that year, he knew of no one else willing to come up against her as the two of them had.

The class passed almost without any further disruption, but it was as Fuwa leaned forward to ask someone else something that Valon spun around. His golden eyes were glowing around the pupils. His lips were drawn back. His teeth looked oddly pronounced and there was a strange curl to his canines. Yugi sat up straighter, stunned, and then shifted back in his seat. His teeth were spaced as if he were about to change. And his canines were a bit larger, thicker, the edges of them sharpened and curved back. He had dog teeth within his mouth.

Yugi felt dizzy for a moment. Had his own teeth ever done that? He wondered and his head swam with the idea.

"Whoa, what do you think you're doing?" Fuwa snorted in response, backing up with a wide smirk. "You don't have to bare your teeth there, buddy."

"I'm not your buddy," Valon hissed sharply, his voice so low and guttural that everything in the room stopped. His words were the only noise to swell within the deep silence. His eyes were sharpened, glittering, and he seemed to sneer silently for a moment. "And do not lean into my personal space again. I will put an end to you, you worthless bastard."

For all his mocking laughter, something seemed to freeze within the boy. Before Yugi's very eyes, Fuwa seemed to fold in half. His smirk fell from his face and his countenance drained of color. His gaze seemed to darken, growing glassy with fear. But then he shook it off, an almost instant action. He huffed, scowling at the hellhound, offered only the smallest of nods, and then turned away again.

Valon breathed in roughly, eyes still burning. Then his gaze flickered to Yugi. There was a warning, long and sharp and definitive within them, but he could not understand it. And the boy did not wait for him to learn its words. Instead he turned away again, shoulders still rigid, focused on the board in the front of the class. He looked at Chono almost as if she were his salvation even as she stared in puzzlement and considered him for a long minute.

But it was no secret that she felt something beyond mild appreciation towards the golden-eyed boy. Yugi thought perhaps it was a preternatural attraction which kept him in her good graces. Or perhaps he was just as gentle-mannered and studious as he needed to be in order to avoid her wrath.

But he felt, somewhere deep inside of him, that Chono had a more definitive desire for the hellhound than anything else. As he glanced between them, her eyes seemed to sparkle with something akin desire, lust perhaps, and it unnerved him.

He glanced at Fuwa but the boy would not catch his eye.

It was both relieving and unnerving. He looked to Valon again, but he did not turn back for the rest of the class.

"I bet you those games are rigged anyways," Anzu stated with disapproval clear in her tone. Yugi roused from his own task of studying Valon as the hellhound picked at his nails and waited within line to gather the bento dish he wanted.

The small teen blinked and tilted his head, eyes sliding over to her. Her blue eyes were locked on his face, searching it almost desperately. She seemed unnerved, almost threatened and desperate. He wondered if she felt as uneasy about this boy beside them as he did.

"Do you really believe that?" Fuwa asked in a smooth tone, smiling at her in open amusement. His tone prickled at Yugi's nerves and the smaller teen turned to him, eyes flashing with something dark and unreadable. His smirk was teasing but his eyes seemed cunning as he leaned forward to speak again. "Would you like me to prove myself?"

"How would you do that?" Honda snorted, not bothering to look up from the notebook he was writing in. Yugi glanced at him, tilting his head slightly, and wondered at the scornful note in his voice. Something was wrong with the brunet. He had never been hostile like he seemed to appear now. He furrowed his brows. Did he sense something off about him as well? Or was it something simpler?

He felt sick for a moment. Was Honda jealous? But what reason did he have to be jealous of Fuwa of all people? Yugi nearly snorted at himself, feeling oddly mirthful at the idea and somehow beyond himself with disappointment. No, Honda wouldn't be jealous without reason as his own mind was suggesting. It wasn't as if Fuwa were competing with him for Miho seeing as she was no longer there with them.

The thought made him cringe inwardly. His eyes shot briskly towards Valon again. The brunet had lowered his head. His fingers were still working to clean at his nails. Yugi recognized the desperation in the movements and it made his heart ache.

Yami did that when he was unnerved. He did it when he was scared. He did it when he had no words to describe the discontent he felt at times. He did it when he was unable to do anything else.

Yugi swallowed thickly.

The golden eyes flashed. The boy's head snapped up. At first his gaze shot upon the cafeteria in rapid blows of topaz. Then he stiffened. His eyes fell upon Yugi slowly. He straightened. His hands dropped to his sides. The blood red of his nails made his stomach churn. Valon slowly shook his head. Then he turned and headed after the student in front of him to gather his food for lunch.

"Yugi is amazing at games," Anzu declared. The use of his name made his head snap towards her. He blinked, confused, and then tilted his head. The entire table was looking at him, from Fuwa to Jonouchi to Honda to the girl he did not recognize at the end of the wooden furniture. He glanced between them all, unnerved, and then turned to the brunette for answers. She was staring, determined and somehow slightly fearful as well. "If you can beat him in a game, then I'll believe you when you say the games aren't rigged."

"And then what?" Fuwa inquired in a smooth tone, raising a brow. His eyes slithered to encompass Yugi who felt sick upon meeting his gaze. His smile reminded him of the Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland. He nearly groaned. "What do I get besides that? There has to be something else for all the effort I'll have to put in against the King of Games, right?"

Yugi felt dizzy. How did he know about that nickname?

Jonouchi looked at him, eyes wide and somewhat suspicious. He looked unnerved and as undone as Yugi himself did for a split second. Then he turned to Yugi and the look they shared had a startling clarity to it.

Fuwa had studied him for some reason.

He blinked and looked at the redhead for a moment. His hair seemed oddly greasy for a second, his eyes squinty. Yugi nearly curled his lips back as he saw his dilated pupils. And the way he angled his body towards the brunette's stroked at his nerves.

"What do you mean?" Anzu finally asked, furrowing her brows in obvious confusion. "I said I'd believe you. What else would you—?"

"If I win, you go out on a date with me."

"That's not fair at all," Yugi spat in response, startling them with the ferocity of his tone. "She's not some kind of prize that you're supposed to get for winning at a crane machine, you ass."

"Did I touch on a nerve, Yugi?"

Yugi faltered, eyes widening. _Had_ he struck a nerve? He blinked, then glanced at Anzu.

The girl was staring at him, stunned, but her eyes were also hopeful now as well. He looked away again immediately. His lungs felt tight and his throat sore for a moment. His head was spinning again. He bore his teeth behind his lips, then shook his head rapidly.

"That's not how you're supposed to treat a person."

"Odd, for a second you sounded almost jealous."

His cheeks flushed and then drained of color. _Was_ he jealous? Yugi considered for a moment, but the anger felt only like indignation on the brunette's behalf. When had he grown so cold towards the idea of her being attracted to someone else or another guy lusting over her? Before he would have been at least flustered, unhappy and annoyed. Now he felt cold. Something was wrong with him. There had to be something…

"No, that's just disrespectful. How dare you think that you can just say that to her? She's a woman, not some kind of doll—"

"Whoa, Yug, relax for a second," Jonouchi commented, reaching over to touch his shoulder. The steadiness of his palm there made him want to melt into his grip for a moment. He felt dizzy, confused, and his insides were burning and freezing all at once. "Even if she agrees, he has to beat you at a game. And we all know that's basically impossible."

He didn't feel so sure. He looked to Fuwa, who seemed as stubbornly set in the idea as he felt unnerved by it. His lips curled into the widest of smirks and the small lycanthrope glanced desperately away from him. His eyes shot to the form of Valon again, relieved when he spotted him leaving the line.

For a moment, as their eyes locked, the hellhound paused. He blinked at him and Yugi wished desperately that he would come over there.

Maybe he could tell him off again, make him back down. But the other boy blinked, glanced at the game show winner, and then turned and headed for the table he always sat at with his friends.

"What's wrong? Are you scared of a little competition?"

He sounded like a snake. Yugi looked back to him. His eyes flashed and his spine tightened beneath his skin again. "Not at all," he snapped coldly. "I'll bury you when we get to the arcade."

And yet, somehow he found himself unable to beat him. It could have been his distracted state of mind, the way he struggled with the idea of what it was he actually felt, if he was jealous or not, the jumbled mess that seemed to have become his romantic interest. After all of those times he'd tried and nearly succeeded in kissing Yami, why was he suddenly so desperate to protect Anzu from Fuwa?

If Yugi was just reacting to him the way he was because he was upset with the idea of him being able to woo her as a girlfriend rather than his being infected with lycanthropy, then what did that mean for him exactly? He could count on his fingers how many times he had considered Yami handsome, had flirted or teased him, had tried to kiss him. But then, he also realized, he could do the same when it came to Anzu as well.

He had never been prolific in flirting or teasing. He had never had the confidence to truly attempt more than friendship for the most part. More often than not he considered himself lucky if a girl called him cute. It was weak, but it was true.

He stared at the screen, the words "You lose" flashing across. He tilted his head, considering, but the idea of playing again made him want to puke. More importantly, however, as he sat back slightly and stared a little longer, he could not believe he had been swept into some kind of pissing contest like this.

Anzu _wasn't_ his. She was free to do whatever she wanted, to date whoever she so desired. And the sting of that realization came only in the fact that he had preached that she wasn't some prize to be won and yet had gone and acted as if that were the case altogether.

He blinked slowly. Then he looked at Fuwa.

"I guess you win." Yugi glanced at Anzu, and that look in her eyes made him cringe

mentally. Why did she have to look at him as if he had just stabbed her in the chest like that? He couldn't believe she had even gone along with it in the first place. "But I don't even know why you think that's going to justify anything. Anzu is the one who can choose who she wants to date."

He nearly flinched. He had held her back from dating anyone else with the false promise that they might truly happen. And, as the time ticked away, he wondered why she even bothered to pretend to believe him any longer. He thought he himself would not have. It hurt but he honestly did suspect that he would have given up by now. Holding out for so long would have simply turned him away. And somehow she had held on.

And he was going to break her heart.

Because he was selfish.

He glanced at her sideways.

But there was no way, however much he liked her, that he was going to let her be put in danger because he was Code Name Atem. He would rather die than let any of them get hurt because of that.

So perhaps hinting that she turn her attention to someone like Fuwa would be a better idea altogether. Then she would no longer be strung along by the idea that they might get somewhere in a relationship and then perhaps things would be easier. His grandfather being ill was hardly an excuse but his involvement with the pack, his time spent with Yami, more than justified trying to push her elsewhere.

He shook his head when Jonouchi gaped at him. "You actually lost?" he cried, staring at him as if he were some kind of new species that just so happened to wear the same face as his best friend. Yugi awkwardly scratched the back of his head and got up from the arcade stool, stretching his legs out.

"I guess so," he finally muttered, shrugging. His eyes flickered to Anzu and the pain seemed to lessen somewhere in his chest. "But it doesn't actually mean anything. You don't have to date him at all if you don't want to."

She shook her head slightly. Her expression was a mixture of sorrow and bafflement. He felt the smallest touch of embarrassment but turned away from it. He tried his hardest to give her a sheepish grin but it felt twisted, almost scornful, upon his lips. It still amazed him somehow that they all stared at him as they did. It was not impossible that he lose at some point. It seemed only logical that he would eventually find someone who could beat him at a game.

Yugi tilted his head and then narrowed his eyes. Yami could win at games. He just had to have Yugi teach him once. Then he'd turned around and won that second match. He did not take long to figure out what it was that was needed of him in order to win. He tipped the odds in his favor in mere seconds when he thought it over.

He worked backwards, then forwards. A loss never seemed to truly daunt him.

It was only when it came to battle that he became aggressive and vicious beyond understanding.

But that was because he knew what survival dictated of him.

Yami could easily kill and had proven that several times. But Yugi had seen him also show that she-wolf mercy. He had allowed her to live. And he had backed away from Marik as well when he had asked him to. It had not been his first instinct to let him get up again. He had only done it because he had objected to it.

Yugi chewed the inside of his cheek until the tissue felt raw and sore.

Yami knew mercy.

He just did not always show it when it was unnecessary, when he was cornered, when the battle had no other way of being won. He understood that.

What he had said about Haga and Ryota and Ryuzaki was true. They had all known him. They could have all turned on him at school, led the humans to him to capture him and run experiments on.

Yugi felt dizzy for a second. Something about Fuwa was off.

Maybe he should try harder to persuade her not to do it. Maybe if he gave her a reason, she would listen to him, like Yami did—

He felt the color drain from his face.

She wasn't Yami.

Yami wasn't Anzu.

Comparing them, when their situations and personalities and everything about them was so vastly different was unfair by far. There was, truly, no ground between them to compare them evenly upon. The only thing that stood between them steadily was that he was a friend to them both.

He glanced at Anzu more pointedly as Fuwa came to her side. A small, shallow flicker of shame lit at his insides. Was this some kind of territorial debate between him and the other boy? Or was he actually dangerous? Yugi couldn't tell at the moment. He had always kind of assumed that he and Anzu would truly end up together, being that sweet high school couple that everyone often loved and simultaneously hated.

The reality of that had spiraled out of control long before she had ever gotten the nerve to ask him out. And it was clear to him that there was one too many barriers that had appeared that could cause them to take various steps back rather than forward. Yami was only one, the hunters another, his mother and grandfather one more. There were so many others on top of it however—Atem, the humans running the experiments, his night terrors, his medication, the lycanthropy, his murdering of others.

There was far too much that he could not stop by himself. And he was too young to be able to juggle so much at one time.

He was already struggling as it was, just lying and keeping up with them. Then he had to help Yami with his wounds. Then he had to remember the full moon each month. Then there was the effort he put into trying to keep his grades up.

It seemed _endless_.

But it also seemed almost mindless as well.

When he did not focus on it, it did not seem so terribly daunting as it did now.

"Well, what do you say, Anzu Mazaki?"

Yugi startled at the way he said her name, the way it spilled off his tongue. It sounded like some kind of sordid secret rather than a simple acknowledgment of another person. Yugi almost thought he could see his thoughts, the way she would lay sprawled across his bed beneath him, in his eyes. He bristled faintly but did nothing more. He had no right to say anything to object further than he already had.

And, if Anzu had agreed to this entire thing, that meant she was at least somewhat interested in Fuwa, right?

Or—as he glanced at her, his stomach sank in confusion—had she thought that he would win as some kind of token of his affection?

Was that possible?

Anzu always had been the hopeless romantic type growing up…

His head spun for a split second. When he got home, he could sit with Yami and watch television until they both fell asleep. He could relax and put everything aside and…

"It would be pretty cheap of you to back out after making a deal with me."

"Don't pressure her," Honda snapped icily. "That's not how you treat a potential girlfriend."

Jonouchi glanced between the two of them again. Then his eyes flickered to Yugi slowly, widening in apparent confusion. It was clear he did not understand, perhaps that he didn't want to either. The smaller teen held his gaze only for a moment longer, then turned away again. His own thoughts were more traitorous towards the brunette, flickering between disbelief and scorn.

 _She shouldn't have made that bet if she didn't think that he would hold her to it._

 _They shouldn't have bet on me at all._

Why _had_ they? Just because he was good at games did not mean that he would never be beaten at some point. Yami had proven that. If they had been there for that, however, he felt that they would have been more amazed and disbelieving than they were now. Yami wasn't the famous lucky game show champion that Fuwa was. He had just been playing with him, curious to learn the art of chess and checkers, and had used his time to strategize until he'd come upon the solution necessary to win against him.

He had to pick up games. Yugi had to do the same. Once he was taught, he could beat almost anyone. Normally he could strategize enough to actually win that first time. But he had a feeling Yami shared that ability. He just had not used it against him. He had, most likely, wanted to see a victory in action before he attempted to claim one for himself as well.

"If you don't want to date, you don't have to," Fuwa commented, but his smirk was devilish and his eyes a little too dark for Yugi's liking. "But you did agree to the terms."

She shot him an annoyed look, feeling almost helpless and cornered now. Yugi really wasn't going to fight back and argue with him anymore. He really wouldn't help her stand up to him anymore than he already had. The thought made her stomach queasy and she almost wanted to puke in disgust.

The thought occurred to her, however.

When had she become someone who needed to rely on someone else to save her?

She had always been able to stand up for herself before. Was it the idea that Yugi was drawing away from her so completely that made her so uncomfortable now? Was that what had thrown her off her feet like this?

"Let me sleep on it," she snapped in a tone that startled the four males. Yugi shot her a shocked glance but quickly looked away again when she turned to him. Honda and Jonouchi both wisely swapped looks, stayed quiet, and stared at Fuwa instead, almost as if they expected some kind of objection.

But the other boy merely nodded, inclining his head in something almost akin the bow of a tourist, and said, with something an almost predatory smile, "Of course, Anzu. Take as much time as you might need."

* * *

"You look…rather exhausted," Yami commented upon seeing him enter the room. He was seated in the corner, his jacket in his lap, bundled up and yet somehow neatly spread on his legs. He looked extremely relaxed, his face warm as he stared up at him. His eyes were gentle, curious and wondrous, and he tilted his head in consideration. His bangs fell to frame his face more noticeably and his gaze seemed to be half closed.

"Yeah, a little bit," Yugi agreed, his voice slightly gruff before giving him a small grin as he started forward. He considered the position Yami sat in, how comfortable he appeared, and then turned away. Unbidden came the thought that he looked preternaturally beautiful, like some kind of exotic creature wearing a human skin. He supposed it was true, especially when he considered that Yami was born as a wolf rather than a human. He dropped away his backpack and moved to his bed, groaning as he dropped onto the mattress. "Today was kind of crazy."

Yami tilted his head, silent encouragement to either continue or leave it be. The fact that he did not push made Yugi feel better as he raised his head and turned to look at him more completely.

"There's a new student at school named Fuwa Ryuichi. He's from Honshu and for some reason he's decided to go to Domino High now. He said something about it being a good school but I kind of doubt that's why he's there. He's famous for being able to win at any game he plays when he's on TV." He watched him, biting his lip hard enough that he felt almost sick. "Valon got really upset about his being there. He threatened to kill him, actually."

This peaked the red-eyed lycanthrope's interest. He shifted his weight and sat up a little further where he was resting against the wall comfortably. "Valon did not seem like the type of wolf to be angry over nothing. He does not seem like the needlessly violent kind of person."

He shook his head. "He's not. He's never even gotten in trouble at school before. He's actually really cool and super polite."

"Then he's the hellhound version of you," the other snickered, grinning when Yugi startled slightly before blushing slightly and shaking his head.

"If you want to think of it like that, I guess." Yugi shook his head again, scratching his cheek, and then looked quickly at the comforter before turning to him. "But he's really easygoing and not the least bit violent most of the time. So I don't… It could be that he's another wolf or something that just rubbed him the wrong way…"

"But he rubbed you the wrong way as well, did he not?" Yami inquired quietly. "I feel that this is where the story is leading."

"Yeah, he did—he _does_. He rubs me the wrong way. And I thought that, actually, it might have been because he was flirting with Anzu—"

Yami shook his head. "You don't smell as if you were jealous. It tends to linger on your skin like a fever. And it smells more like your blood rushing to the surface."

Yugi blinked, at first startled and then disgusted, and blushed faintly as his lip curled. "That's so gross," he muttered, blushing harder when the other wolf cocked a brow and seemed to smirk at his childish reaction. "Well it is! I don't want to smell people's emotions like that!"

He snorted. "Too late to change that." He lowered his head, moving to scoop the jacket up a bit more comfortably into his arms. He pressed it into his neck and closed his eyes lazily. "You just haven't fully noticed it yet. Just wait until you do. You'll find out a million and one things about people that you never knew before."

"I don't want to do that! That's horrifying! They'd have no privacy and I…I don't want to be like that."

Yami scoffed quietly. "A _wolf_. You do not want to be like a _wolf_." The look he shot Yugi was both frustrated and slightly sympathetic but they were both well aware he lacked the ability to truly empathize with him. "But that's what you are, whether you like it or not. And if you ignore it, you'll find it harder than ever to survive around here. You'll find it incredibly hard to adapt to the situations you'll need to."

Yugi bit his lip but shook his head again regardless. "I don't want to sense things like that, Yami. That's not… I mean…" He trailed off and looked at the comforter. "I don't want to sense someone's emotions when they don't want to show me. And I don't want to know what someone is actually thinking when they don't want to tell me."

Yami shrugged. "You'll find it's actually a very liberating experience to know that someone is not preparing to trick you when you need them most," he said quietly, voice so low it was almost a whisper. The edges were sad and almost wistful and Yugi felt his head turn immediately towards him again. The taller teen was no longer looking at him, but rather at the teal fabric of his jacket and Yugi's stomach knotted at the forlorn expression on his face.

"I'm sorry…"

He blinked and his eyes flickered to his face, gleaming now with open confusion.

"I'm sorry that you've been hurt so often."

Yami narrowed his eyes, shaking his head, and then shrugged. "It's part of life," he said shortly. "It's a part of life that one suffers."

"But it doesn't mean it should happen," Yugi argued heatedly, blushing again when the other stared at him blankly. "And especially to someone like you. You don't deserve that!"

Yami watched him for a moment, then tilted his head. "Then what do I deserve, Yugi?" he asked quietly, lips tugging into a smirk. "You don't know me well enough to know what it is that I do and don't deserve. And I am sorry for giving you the impression that you do—"

"I know you," he objected harshly, "even if you don't want me to. I _do_ know you. Or at least a considerable chunk of who you are. Don't act like I don't."

Yami raised a brow. "If you truly knew a considerable chunk, as you just put it, you would not be so willing to have me here."

Yugi scoffed, going to snarl at him, and then paused. "I know a lot more than you think," he said quietly, the words small and weak on his tongue. They seemed to crystallize and shatter within the air. The other wolf froze, stiffening in his spot, and the way their eyes met made his heart skip beats. There was such sorrow it seemed to swallow his entire world. Then Yami abruptly looked away, nodding slightly, and Yugi rubbed at the underside of his wrist.

"Yes, yes, I suppose you do," he finally grunted, reaching up to bite at his nail lazily. "How unfortunate for you. Now you're dealing with the mess."

Yugi felt sick when he looked at him for a moment. "You say that like I didn't know what I was doing," he said quietly, slowly, shaking his head.

Yami eyed him now. "Did you? _Do_ you? Can you honestly tell me that you know anything of what you've set into motion by doing this?" he demanded icily. "Because I do not think you do. And I fear for you."

He startled at the broken tone the last few words took on, then raised a hand to scratch at the back of his head. "I can figure it out."

"You will not have much room to maneuver for such understanding. And you do not leave yourself much time to figure it out as it is. Do you understand what it is that is happening now? I feel that you fail to realize it truly. If you did, you would not be so blasé about it."

Yugi looked at him, studying him for so long his eyes felt they might burn and his vision blur. "Maybe not. But I…I'll figure it out, Yami."

"How? If you do not even wish to use your lycanthropy to your advantage, then how do you expect to survive to see the end of this?"

He looked at him, swallowing hard. "I'm immortal, right?" he said quietly. The other boy stared at him, eyes glittering with alarm. "So I think I can figure it out with a few fumbles…right?"

The red-eyed boy stared at him, then shook his head harshly. "I should hope so, for your sake," he finally spat. "For you have no idea what it is that you've done to yourself."

Yugi turned away again, shaking his head. "I'll have to have faith that it'll work out," he said wryly. Then he turned his eyes onto his backpack for a moment. "Anyways, so Fuwa challenged me to a game for the right to date Anzu. It was basically one big pissing contest. He said that if he won he would get a date with her and she said that I could beat him at any arcade game."

He stared at him, still angry, but allowed the subject change for nothing more than his own desire. "You lost."

"You could at least _pretend_ to be surprised," he teased, turning to him with a small grin. "I mean, I held my own against you several times in chess and checkers."

Yami raised a brow. "Yes, but you weren't distracted then. Did you even manage to hold your own for a few minutes?"

His cheeks flushed. "I… Not really. I think he kicked my ass in five seconds flat, honestly."

And, then, to add to the humiliation, he had made a point of saying, in a loud and jeering voice, "Oh, Yugi, you don't have to keep calling me Fuwa. You're a friend, right?" before he'd left. Because, as he had stared at the redhead, he had remembered never truly giving him permission to call him by his first name and extending the common courtesy of using his surname had been automatic. And Fuwa had wanted to make a point of how Yugi was forced to respect him but not the other way around.

It was another posturing game, one that Yugi had bristled at only long enough to offer him a strained smile and wander out the door. But he had made sure to push home the fact that he did not care to show him decency by using his last name, nor had he allowed him to use his first name until the moment he'd managed to knock him off the pedestal his friends had placed him on.

And Yugi was abruptly aware now of just how much it had been akin to kicking him while he was still down. Had Yugi been more about self-respect and full of the same need to posture, he would have gotten angry. Rather, he'd been mildly irritated before leaving, though Fuwa's eyes had been hideous and mocking despite his lack of care towards such a thing.

Yami snorted. "And you thought it was because you were jealous?" he inquired playfully. "You probably got just as uncomfortable as Valon was when he saw him."

Yugi bit his lip. "I still don't understand why he…"

"He's probably another hellhound and he's drifted into the wrong territory," he said dismissively, but there was something cold and dark in his eyes. It was considerate and iced over, like a thought from long ago. "Or a lycanthrope Valon has crossed paths with before that he was not happy to see now."

"I guess so." Was it just him or did his voice seem somewhat reluctant? He wondered briefly; had he been hopeful that there was something worse between them? That Valon might attack the other boy? He sighed and shrugged when Yami's gaze grew curious. "But he kept watching me. Even when he was messing around and teasing Anzu, I swear every time I looked he was staring at me."

"Maybe he's attracted to you."

Yugi chucked the pillow at his loud snort and the guffaw that followed quickly after. "You ass," he laughed, shaking his head. "Be serious!"

Yami held a hand up, chuckling. "I can't help it. You left yourself wide open. I almost feel like you were fishing for it."

He rolled his eyes. "No, you jerk, I wasn't! I was just… It was weird," he huffed. "I didn't realize that he was going to do that."

The red-eyed wolf studied him for a long time, then looked at his nails as if they were the most important thing the world had to offer. "I would not assume him a threat for the moment. He may just be messing with you. Some hellhounds tend to do that."

"You seem convinced that he's a hellhound…"

"No, not at all. But, otherwise, he's a human and that most likely means he's a hunter of some kind. And that would mean far more suspicion is needed whenever you are around him. That also means more trouble is likely each time you should interact with him."

"You think one of the hunters figured out that there are wolves in my school?" He bit his lip. "Do you think Espa and Panik saw my jacket?"

Yami shook his head. "I think he is working separate of them. Otherwise I do not believe you would have made it home okay."

His stomach dropped. "Do you think he'll try something with the others there too?" he choked out. "I mean, he…"

"You worry more about others than yourself," Yami muttered softly before shaking his head slowly. The observation was brushed away again almost immediately. "I do not know. All hunters work in different ways. Some will use friends and family. Others try to simply lure their one target away to kill discreetly."

"Based on what I've told you about him already then, what do you think? Give me an educated guess."

Yami tilted his head and watched him for a long minute and a half. "I think your friends will do nothing to deter him should he come up with an idea of attack."

His stomach sank. "So he'd probably kill them."

The taller lycanthrope watched him for a few seconds. "Yes." He tilted his head. "If he's skilled enough, he'll find a way to do so discreetly."

Yugi trembled faintly. "How can you say that so…easily?" he whispered shakily.

"It's not done easily. But I am not attached to people the same way that you are—"

"So, if it was _me_ in their place, you wouldn't even care? Is that what that means?"

Yami rolled his eyes. "Of course not. I mean that I do not have to worry quite as much. As far as they and I are concerned, you are not an innocent. You placed yourself directly within the path of a possible death. Your demise would not be a casualty."

Yugi gaped at him for a moment. Then a cold splash of realization came upon him as well. Yami was right. He had more or less embraced the entire thing. He was, irreversibly, caught in the midst of it all. He had _placed_ himself there consciously. The moment he had declared himself Atem he had drawn a line he could not cross back over.

He bit his lip, then ran a hand through his hair. It would be so easy to snap at Yami now. It would be so easy to snarl and sneer at him. He thought about lashing out and screaming. But it lasted only a split second. Then he deflated and his anger drifted as if it were but a passing breeze.

He glanced at Yami, the white bandages on his arms, and his voice came out small and yet somehow slightly hopeful. "We should see about getting my mom to let you stay over here." The change of topic made Yami blink, mystified and confused. "I can talk to her about it tonight. I can at least put it in her head that you exist and we're friends…"

Yami nodded slightly, but the change of topic still startled him and he felt almost sick as he considered his words more fully. He wanted to begin to weasel him in at dinner conversations today? But had he not just been insufferably rude and inconsiderate moments before? His cheeks felt cold and he could tell the color had drained from his face.

Yet Yugi failed to notice. He was watching his backpack, thinking a million miles ahead of his own infrequent, halting thoughts. "But first, I think we should get your wrists cleaned up again. This is probably the last time we'll need to do it."

 _Until the next time, I suppose,_ he thought distastefully. _Until I next dream of it all and freak out or I push myself too hard. Or I just get hurt. Because I am prone to such things as well_ …

The smaller boy had gotten to his feet. "I think if they aren't already healed then they will be by tomorrow morning."

Yami nodded. "Yes, most likely."


	36. Disorders

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day**

 **Chapter Warnings: Perverse Thoughts/Ideas, Sexual Frustrations, HEAVY Hints of Puzzleshipping, Yugi Struggling with Sexuality, Discussion of Murders, Mentions of Cannibalism, Mentions of Animal Kills,** **Slight Hints of Anzu x Valon [Celesteshipping], Hints of Anzu x Fuwa, Mentions of Mental Disorders (Sociopaths, Schizoid Personality Disorder, Narcissism), Mentions of Grief, Symptoms of Suppressed Grief and Emotional Distress, Mentions of Kidnappings, Mentions of Experiments**

 **I have no idea if there's a ship name for Anzu and Fuwa, but either way, I decided not to waste time searching for this when I had a bunch more writing to do instead (cause, oh my gods, have I been slacking, holy fucking shit!).**

 **Obviously I'm not a psychiatrist or anything of that manner. But I did some research on all three of the mental illnesses mentioned above. And I did try to match them up accordingly, but I could very easily have gotten something wrong. In which case, if I did, I apologize but again, I'm doing research and I'm not going to be an expert on it by any means. From what I could understand of it, a sociopath feels basically nothing but does like an adrenaline rush in which they love to disobey the law and get in trouble later. But they aren't as likely to be as boastful as psychopaths, who tend to snap more violently and like the idea of having everyone KNOW what they've done (minor law breaking, murders, etc). And those with schizoid personality tend to hate their parents and family, do not feel emotions in much of any capacity, and often disobey and break rules for the fun of it. All three of them tend to not care for the others that get involved in their issues, not limited to friends or family. They also tend to have trouble maintaining relationships with any romantic interests they might have at that time. They bounce from one partner to the next and often manipulate them until they tend to emotionally destroy them and then bounce to the next. They all also tend to be abusive to animals (although I could be wrong about the schizoid personality disorder because it's been a while since I researched them for the chapter). Narcissists, from what I remember, are a branch of sociopathic disorder? I believe they basically feel only emotion branching from approval of themselves and basically preen beneath appraisal? If I remember right. No one quote me on that!**

 **So, the rabies comment about it being scarce in Japan is true. They have not had an outbreak since the 1950s. That aside, most of the animal facts are correct when Yugi mentions them. Bears aren't known for really having a killing technique. They simply barrel their prey and try to use their weight to pin them while they start biting and slashing at them. Cats kill by bites mostly to the back of the throat. Wolves usually go for hamstringing and biting into the windpipe. The saltwater crocodile DOES have a psi of 3000 and they do use the water to loosen their prey's meat to eat in gulps and do use the death roll as a means of tearing off chunks of food as well.**

 **So, new information on the past of the experiments, new information on the cases and their definitions for the police. You also get a hint of some of the things that Yami has been bottling up and hiding, though not much. Also, Yami's friend mentioned in this chapter is NOT named until later in the story (though I have no idea just yet when it'll actually be).**

Chapter XXXVI: Disorders

 _Work Log Entry XXXVI: October, 2002_

 _October 11_

 _The boss has finally come to the conclusion that we are to test A.T.E.M. in every way imaginable._

 _He was removed from his cage for hours on end and later returned to be restrained within another room within the labs. I do not know which tests have been performed, but the pup looks ragged and exhausted now._

 _But, judging by the look on the boss's face, it must have been a success._

 _October 12_

 _We were not told the rogue experiment's purpose until today. A.T.E.M. was sent out to with express commands to hunt and kill several animals yesterday._

 _He did so without a blink._

 _When he returned they ran tests on his blood pressure and various smaller tests to assume his health after each attempt._

 _No signs of fatigue show in his systems._

Yugi unlatched the lock to the window, sliding it open after a minute of being in the room. It was frosty outside but, when the air pressed against him, his body seemed to swell with heat to combat it then lower to a more comfortable standard. The feverish sensation was gone instantly and his body felt surprisingly content and not the least bit undone. He narrowed his eyes, straining his vision against the harsh glare of the streetlight, and poked his head out when his room remained occupied by only him. He almost opened his mouth to question his companion, then jumped backwards with wide eyes, blushing furiously as Yami appeared mere inches from him. He backed up, gesturing him in, but it seemed more that he was waving awkwardly.

The taller boy blinked, then shrugged and came over the sill and into the room again. He yawned and Yugi was somehow incredibly relieved not to see blood on his face. But he could not recall him ever having come back from a hunt with blood anywhere. Beyond the time he had brought the rabbit into the room with him, he could not think of a single instance.

"Was it a good hunt?"

Yami wrinkled his nose and raised a brow, an elegant and lazy maneuver on his own behalf. "I caught a rabbit," he said in a voice that lilted with slight laughter, studying him pointedly to see if he might flinch. Yugi wrinkled his nose but did nothing more. "And I took down a serow when I was still hungry. So I should say yes, it was a very good, highly enjoyable hunt."

Yugi nodded distractedly. "Good." His voice was sincere enough but his eyes were slightly clouded with other thoughts. "I started talking to my mom about you. My grandpa was more excited about meeting you than she was."

He tilted his head. "Was she upset?"

"No, I think she was more tired than anything. I think she was more surprised that I was mentioning someone else like that. She was interested enough to ask about you but not to extend an invitation to meet you." He paused, eyes flickering between his as he bit his lip. "I think she's more likely to do that when she hears a bit more about you."

Yami blinked. "And your grandfather?"

He was troubled when he muttered, "He seemed incredibly excited about the idea of meeting someone new that I might be making friends with."

He furrowed his brows. "Why should he be so excited about that?" He paused when Yugi grimaced and then dipped his head slightly in a curt nod. "You suspect he realizes that someone is helping you as a wolf."

"No, I _know_ he does. He's been watching me too often and closely for it to be anything else." He shook his head, flustered. "He's well aware that someone is helping me now. He's noticed that I'm handling the entire thing better than ever before."

He nodded slightly. "Yes, I see. I can understand such a concept." He glanced around for a moment, then moved toward the bed with a glance at Yugi for permission. The action made the smaller boy stiffen in shock, eyes widening before he immediately nodded and gestured. Yami did not give him a chance to change his mind, taking a seat and then curling up on his side. His eyes were glossed with exhaustion from his exertion but clear with excitement as well. "I would come to such a conclusion…"

Yugi almost groaned at the realization of how tired Yami truly appeared now. If he was so exhausted then why would he have bothered to answer him? Was it fear of coming off as rude or the idea that he had answers to questions Yugi wanted to ask him?

"Here, let me get your blanket and—"

The taller teen shifted his weight, then sat up. "I am still awake. I might be tired, but I am still awake, Yugi." There was a single moment of hesitation now. "And I am capable of grabbing the blanket for myself…"

"I know, I just want something to do," he muttered, feeling flushed. He shouldn't have said anything. Yami looked incredibly unsettled now. He looked like he might flee at any given second, if only to prove that he was not defenseless and still very much alert. He stared at him and both of them studied each other for a moment before he lowered his eyes. He really should never have said anything. "I mean, after tonight and thinking about what Fuwa might do…"

"I do not know for certain that he would harm them, however. You must remember that I am not an expert on humans—"

Yugi shot him an annoyed glance. "But how often are you truly wrong?" he snapped. "You knew well enough to bank on the idea that I would not end up going rabid or something from the lycanthropy. You knew well enough to come to ask me for help, that I wouldn't just turn you away. You knew well enough that the drugs I was giving you wouldn't hurt you."

"I trusted you," Yami spat in response, shoulders rising in a bristle. "I was desperate and I remembered what I saw in you that night when you were attacked and I came to the decision that if I were to ask you to trust me, why should I not attempt the same? And I figured, should things turn for the worst, I would kill you and move on."

Yugi stared at him. He was lying. Something in his words was wrong. It was a blanketed statement somewhere within the rest of his words. But it was there and he recognized it. He could not fully place it, but something was wrong with it.

He shook his head slightly, unnerved by the intensity in the other boy's gaze. He was pleading with him. He didn't know what about but he did recognize that much at least. He let out a small, deep breath.

"Fine, whatever. So you decided you would trust me because I would need to do that with you. That's just great." He shook his head, flustered. "But you have a better intuition than I do, don't you?"

Yami studied him a moment. "I do not know. I have not tested my intuition against yours." He tilted his head. "Based on logic and reason, however, I think that Fuwa would turn on your friends in a heartbeat if he's truly fixated on you. And I feel you would have come to that conclusion on your own…"

He bit his lip. "When it was too late."

"You aren't as suspicious as I am," Yami attempted to mollify him. "You're not as bitter or resentful. I, however, am. I am much more likely to bite someone than I am to welcome them as a friend. I do not know altruism and optimism as strong as yours. I am not the same person as you."

He huffed. "No one is asking you to be, Yami. I just—"

"I merely suggest that you watch him. You should keep an eye on him. I do not suppose it will truly matter to him how noticeable you are, just that he has your attention. _That_ will be all he will care about."

"Why do you think that?"

"All human hunters wish that their prey know of their presence. They are too proud a species not to."

Yugi flushed faintly. "Can we not take digs at my species like that?" he muttered uncomfortably. "I mean, I get that I'm a lycanthrope too, but…"

The taller teen turned his face away but his eyes were flashing. His jaw twitched visibly, his teeth glinting with moonlight when he curled his lip slightly. First Yugi said not to hold back when he spoke about his former species and now he pleaded otherwise. He would get whiplash before he died, he was sure. "My apologies," he commented wryly, "although I seem to be biased in the idea that perhaps you are more like a wolf than a human now."

He licked his lips. "I could be, but I don't see myself as one," he muttered, feeling slightly sick. The other boy did not raise his head, however, and the burden of those words felt lighter than ever. He drew in a deep breath, letting it out in something almost like a contented sigh. "Do you know anything about Fuwa?"

"I have no recollection of him."

Something about the words made Yugi stiffen in something almost akin confusion before he frowned and bit his lip until it bled. He tilted his head, watching the other wolf, and forced himself moments later to simply shake it off.

"Okay." He closed his eyes. That should have been somewhat comforting, right? The truth of it was that Yami seemed to know of the more experienced hunters than the wannabes. The fact that Fuwa did not immediately alarm him had to mean that he was relatively new and unknown as a hunter, right?

But Yami had foggy memory. Some of it was blocked out, completely unreachable. He had said so himself, had he not? So did that not mean that perhaps they had once crossed paths but Yami could simply not remember it?

He groaned and ran a hand through his hair. The noise caused the alpha to look up with confused eyes. Yugi shook his head, glancing at the window sideways, and then sighed quietly.

"I am sorry…"

"It's not your fault," he objected immediately, giving him a small, weak, ghost of a smile. He shook his head again when Yami went to object, and instead reached for the blanket on the back of the desk chair. "I'm just…frustrated."

Yami hesitated, and both of them were startled by the way the words rolled from his tongue in his next statement. "Is there anything I can do to help you?"

The words and the intent behind them were clearly innocent. But Yugi stiffened as he considered them and his stance caused Yami to hear the words in a similar manner. His eyes widened and his mouth opened once, then twice, but he did not attempt to negate the effect of them. And the smaller teen felt oddly lightheaded and powerful at the thought of the words that had left his friend's mouth. He lowered his eyes, however, and his cheeks continued to burn.

The minutes passed. An image was burned fiercely in Yugi's mind, immense and powerful. Yami was glistening with a sheen of sweat. His eyes were hooded. His mouth was open partially. He was breathing heavily, nearly rasping. His hair was in beautiful, knotted disarray. And his lips looked somehow swollen.

Yami did not harbor such thoughts. His own mind was incredibly blank. Some kind of line had been crossed. He could sense it. He could almost taste something electric in the air. It made him nervous.

But he was frozen in place. And his stomach was growing knotted. He had not meant the words as they had come out. He had merely meant to offer support. But it was obvious that he had stated it in the wrong manner.

Finally Yugi raised his head. It felt like an hour had passed. He opened and closed his mouth. His eyes looked bright and feverish for a moment. Then they seemed to clear as he bit his lip. He shook his head, offered him a small smile, and murmured, "I think I can figure it out on my own…"

Yami almost objected. Then his statement resounded in his ears and his cheeks became flushed. He cursed mentally, snarling at himself. Then he turned away again and shook his head. He didn't need to sound any more foolish than he already had. Nor did he need to proceed to alienate himself any further.

"Thank you though."

Yami snorted softly. He shouldn't have been thanking him for such a stupid thing. It was not as if they were laughing about it either. If they were joking around he could have understood the concept. But now he was simply frozen and staring at the comforter.

"I'm going to call it a night. You can stay up if you want to…" Yugi hesitated for a moment, glancing at the television in the corner. "I think I'm going to have that turned on and set to go off in a couple of hours. Is that going to keep you awake?"

Yami shook his head soundlessly.

The smaller teen hummed, reaching over to grab the remote from the top of the desk, and turned the screen on. He was shaking slightly, his fingers trembling, but he did not bother to hesitate in setting the timer and going to lie down next to the other boy. He put the blanket beside him, lightly touching Yami on the side with it, and then turned to face the other wall. The volume was so low that the static of its speakers pushing forth the noise was louder by far.

"Goodnight, Yami."

There was the briefest pause to consider, then he hummed softly. "Goodnight, Yugi."

It was within twenty minutes that Yami fell fast asleep. The run had exhausted him and his wrists felt heavy with new growth and healing. He was curled up tightly, the blanket thrown over himself lazily. His head against the pillow and his gentle breathing did well to soothe the shame that burned in Yugi's veins.

He had not fallen asleep.

And that image was racing through his head again.

He could not tell the position. In all actuality the background was but a blur of silver. His eyes were hooded and burning. His cheeks were flushed. His forehead was shiny. His skin was pulled tight over powerful muscle. His mouth was open in that small formation to pant. His heart was a hammer in Yugi's ears. And the disarray of his hair was either from the pillows or his fingers having clutched it tightly.

He hissed in annoyance at himself. But another part of him wondered.

What would it be like?

If he tried to pursue that image, where would it lead him?

If Yami reciprocated, would it be like that?

In his mind the image was almost silken, spun like gold, its importance immense and great. It shook him to his core. Formerly it had been Anzu who played such a role in his mind.

Her hair would be upon his pillow, spread out and knotted faintly. She would be gasping. Sometimes she would whisper his name—though it always sounded somehow _wrong_ , like that wouldn't be how she would say it—and other times not. She would writhe and wiggle.

And he would struggle to maintain that image, guilt ridden and flustered that he was using his childhood best friend, until he could finish. It was always so hard to focus and keep it in his mind as long as it took.

And yet, for whatever reason, this picture was _burned_ there, _branded_ and somehow _absolute_. His head swam for a long minute. He drew in a deep breath. Then he squeezed his eyes shut tightly. He almost considered it. Then he fought it off.

Yami was not Jonouchi.

Yami was not Honda.

Neither of them were a lycanthrope.

And neither of them possessed their senses.

Unlike them, Yami would awaken and look for the source of the noise or the movement or the smell. He would know immediately and he'd grow further unnerved. He would probably flee.

Who _wouldn't_? If he had said something like that to a friend, they had gotten an erection and had beaten it off beside him _in the same bed_ , he would freak out. He'd try not to, but he knew he would.

Especially when it was clear he was not interested.

Especially when he had already had a mate and watched them die.

Especially when he had tried several times already to avoid unwanted kisses.

Yami had tolerated a lot of his crap.

And, besides that, his sense of manners refused such an idea.

He would not do that when _anyone_ was present.

And he wouldn't do it when he _knew_ damn well that the object of his need was uninterested in him whatsoever.

He swallowed thickly, glancing over his shoulder. Yami was still fast asleep. His flank rose and fell. He twitched and breathed evenly in his dreams.

Yugi sat up. He had never been attracted to a guy before now. The idea made him nervous. It was dumbfounding to him that he might want to be with a person of the same gender more than a girl he had been attracted to for so much _longer_. And it was horrifying to assume that he had no experience with any of it regardless.

But he considered the idea for a moment. He thought of how much the idea of his lips so swollen and his skin so lightly glistening made his heart hammer. He thought of how often he'd leaned forward, teasing or maybe trying to tempt the other wolf. And the seconds trailed past him in rapid succession.

Yet it came to him as well.

What if there was no _true_ attraction?

What if it was somehow a combination of their connection as alpha and beta and the lycanthropy itself?

What if it made him more attractive to Yugi because he sensed the wolf in him?

What if it was because he sensed something in his body chemistry that drew him closer?

What if that was what he was suffering?

What if it was never and would never _be_ a true crush?

His head spun and his stomach knotted. His heart ached violently. He was overwhelmed with the urge to puke. Was it possible that his entire draw to someone could be changed by the disease in his veins?

He nearly groaned in desperation.

If only someone would give him answers…

* * *

Yugi glanced over his shoulder as he pulled at the strap of his backpack. His stomach tossed, their eyes locking for a moment. Yami was watching him, gaze sharp and curious. It was almost as if he _sensed_ his frustration again. He'd spent more than half of the night struggling with the idea of being attracted to the other wolf. And now he was half-asleep and almost stumbling through his morning routine in order to make it to school on time. He was honestly tempted to simply drop his bag, curl up into a ball, and fall back asleep.

But the way Yami stared at him unnerved him. Did he know? Did he know he'd stayed up so late, disgusted with himself for his sudden disloyalty to his best friend? Did he know that he had been watching him, minutes from simply breaking down and exhausting himself, when he had finally slipped into sleep? Did he know about the way he had woken up a few minutes before the alarm, sat up, and blinked drearily when he smelled Yami so close to him? Did he know he had almost scooted closer until they were touching, until he could almost simply reach out and pull him closer?

His heart was racing. His head was spinning. He felt sick. He wanted to bury his face in his hands. He wanted to tell Yami everything. He wanted to hide. He wanted to throw himself at the other boy. He wanted to pursue the idea. He wanted to lie down and sleep forever.

"I'll make a shake after school," he muttered, the words tasting funny in his mouth. He felt dizzy and confused and swore he might sway on his feet. "I don't have time now."

This time Yami did not argue. He nodded lazily, as if he had already considered such an idea. Then he tilted his head and watched him for a moment. "Do you sense the snowstorm that's building up?"

Yugi blinked, head snapping to his again, eyes wide and curious. "Snowstorm?" he whispered curiously. "What do you mean a snowstorm?"

"You don't feel it? The air is colder and thicker. And the pressure in the atmosphere has grown twice as powerful…" He tilted his head, studying him for a moment. His eyes grew considerate, watching him keenly. Had Yugi truly failed to notice? But even as human as he wanted to be, he should have been able to smell and sense the coming storm, right? Or was he so afraid of being a wolf that he truly would not listen to his senses? How could he fear something so…normal as that?

"I didn't notice it."

Yami merely stared at him for a moment. Then he nodded and looked away. "Well, it's coming. It'll be either tonight or early tomorrow morning when it begins to fall."

Yugi nodded slightly, unable to do much more than stare at him in silence. His cheeks felt slightly flushed for a split second before he smiled faintly. This was incredibly awkward. How had he wound up in this position?

 _You're the one with the raging hormones, not him,_ he thought, annoyed with himself. He ran a hand through his hair. "Thanks for telling me. I'll have to check the weather when I'm at school and see when they think it'll fall."

Yami regarded him for a moment. He should not have needed a weather announcement. He was a wolf. He should have been able to realize it for himself what pattern of weather there was. It almost disgusted him how naked and lost humans seemed. He shook his head slightly.

"I'll see you when you get home."

He felt like something inside of him was sore, almost bleeding, and the pain seemed raw and chafing. He nodded slightly and turned away, walking back towards the hallway. He hesitated, then turned to look at him over his shoulder again.

"I'm sorry."

He opened his mouth to object, eyes startled, but Yugi had turned tail. He was racing down the stairs before Yami could even truly blink. His stomach tossed as he listened to the front door open and shut quickly. He turned around and moved to the window; even from a distance he could see that Yugi looked incredibly small and shaky.

He had read something on his face. The taller teen must have been displaying something he should not have. Had his disgust shown? Or was it something bigger than that? Was it something worse? Oh gods, Yugi could have easily taken the disgust for something more than what it was. He had not meant for the small teen to consider that he was disgusted with him for his apparent attraction to him. It was his dislike of the wolf that turned his nose up at him.

But that was nothing to apologize for, either, he supposed. It was not as if he had asked Yami to bite him and then turned around and said he didn't want it any longer. It was not like Yugi was some kind of ungrateful brat. He had shown plenty of times that he was happy to still be alive.

He may not have been happy about the circumstances that had allowed him to live, but he did not wish to be _dead_.

Yami had seen that with his own eyes, let alone heard it when he spoke about the war and Atem. He shivered, leaning against the glass. Yugi was picking his way across the sidewalk at a lazy pace, fingers working at his phone screen. He stopped at the edge of the street, looking back and forth across the asphalt as if he expected a car. Then he scuffed his shoe as he turned around, eyes instantly locking on him.

The seconds passed in which Yami struggled to think of something to do. Would a smile and a wave make up for the instance just minutes before? Or was that too seemingly condescending?

Thankfully it was Yugi who finally smiled at him. His eyes looked bright even from the distance, and his entire face lit up. The effect of it was instantaneous and Yami's lips curled into a mirroring grin. The small teen waved, studying him for only a moment longer. Then he turned and started off in a jog for the school.

Anzu was already there at the gates. Honda and Jonouchi had yet to show and the brunette looked oddly uncomfortable, possibly slightly troubled. Yugi hesitated as he looked at her. Was she hoping he would come early enough that she could talk to him? He felt sick for a moment. The thought made him slow drastically. After what had happened last night, he hardly wanted to have to deal with the thought of explaining that they probably could never work out…

He sucked in a breath between his teeth. Maybe he could turn around and walk back, wait a while before he came to her side. But the seconds passed and the escape route was quickly becoming foggy. He breathed in deeper, then swallowed harder. No. He couldn't do that…

"Anzu," a new voice purred, deeper than his own and content as a cat. Yugi blinked, startled, and his lips curled faintly with annoyance. In front of him, Fuwa was making his way towards the brunette. He was walking as if he owned the world, with such arrogance and a straight back too ramrod to make him appear regal as Yami's did.

"Oh, hi, Fuwa," the girl greeted him in a somewhat quiet tone. She glanced around quickly and Yugi felt sure she knew he was there, but turned to face the redhead with an awkward smile. If Anzu had turned just a degree further to the right she would have caught sight of him. He thanked the gods that she had not noticed him yet.

" _So_?"

Yugi glanced over his shoulder, then hurried forward. Yami had said he was likely to use his friends against him if he was simply given the momentum. He sped towards them, jogging in what he hoped seemed a carefree manner despite how hard his heart was beating in his chest.

"Hey, Anzu, Fuwa," he greeted in a lazy manner, giving them both grins that he desperately hoped were friendly enough. "You guys are early."

His best friend shot him what appeared to be a grateful glance. "Yeah, I wanted to leave the house early." She paused, then bit the inside of her cheek and considered her next words for a long moment. "My dad was talking about something I didn't want to hear anymore about."

Yugi glanced at her, blue-violet eyes puzzled for a moment. She had never been one to shy away from subjects of conversation. That was hardly something she ever did. He blinked at her, then felt his eyes grow wide.

Her dad, the leading investigator in those murders, had been talking about one of the bodies. He had to have been. Nothing else really made Anzu flinch back more than corpses and the technical side of conversation that came with discussions about them. She hated to hear about someone who had died. And her father was one of the best investigators in Japan. He was always the first on cases such as the mutilations that had happened.

He thought of Tomoya for a moment and his stomach knotted bitterly. He should never have run from Ushio. He should have pretended to never have noticed him. He should have stayed in the school. He should have hid somewhere…

His eyes flickered away. Tomoya's dad had found him that day. He wondered if Hanasaki was still looking for answers. That would be the least he could give him, wouldn't it? He could tell him finally what had happened, possibly put his mind at ease if only slightly. He nearly groaned in the back of his throat. He doubted it would do him any good.

But he knew Yugi was involved. And he knew Ushio had been involved. He probably wondered more about Yami than he did anything else. He could never have recognized his scent. Perhaps if he went to him, explained…

"What did he do? Talk about the murders?" Fuwa asked with a raised brow, voice cloaked in amusement. The statement made both Anzu and Yugi stiffen and stare at him in something almost like alarm. "I mean, you seem like a strong girl. I can't imagine it was anything else to scare you away."

Yugi felt his skin grow cold and clammy in the center of his palms. Unnerved, he glanced at his friend and felt his stomach clench tightly for a split second. He drew in a deep breath, swallowing hard.

So he had not been the only one that Fuwa had researched. He had to have known that her father was involved in the case. And he had to have dug around at the arcades he played games at in order to have asked around. Because the king of games title was simply a running gag in Domino, a little joke that they had made. He had been proclaimed the king of games for beating high scores around Domino and almost everyone knew his initials at the arcades.

Which meant Fuwa had done some deeper study to find out more about him, to find the information he had been looking for. And any of those people at the arcades could have named Jonouchi or Honda or Anzu as his friends, described them down to minute details…

With that realization, Yugi felt winded.

Fuwa had barely had to put any effort in if he had followed that trail.

"They're not murders," Anzu said sharply, shaking her head. "They're animal attacks. No person could ever possibly do that."

"Animal attacks?" the redhead scoffed. "No way. No animal kills as violently as that. Not even lions or bears."

"Bears don't have a definitive pattern of attack," Yugi objected quietly, frowning. "They charge their prey and try to crush them using their weight. And they maul them. They don't know how to properly kill so they use brute force. From what I understand they would have to measure bite marks against common predators in the area and go from there."

"Okay, but what animal knows to go for a girl's stomach like that? They left the babies there to rot in the snow." The redhead shook his head, eyeing the smaller teen with a sharp look that bordered amusement. "A predator would have eaten them first. It's the most nutritious part."

Anzu scowled at him furiously. "There was only one baby and it was torn to shreds."

Yugi felt sick. Had something else come about to eat the other fetuses that had been there? Or had her father simply said that there was only one baby in order to protect her from the idea of how much worse the reality of it had been?

"The placenta is more nutritious than the actual fetus would have been." The smaller teen shied away from the stunned, disbelieving expression on Anzu's face. "It's an organ that would be highly nutritional because of the fact that it encompasses the baby and feeds them nutrients. So an animal like a bear could have done that. It could have easily simply eaten that and run off…"

"And what animal do you know that would do that?"

 _None. Not any wild predator I know of. Wolves would never do it, big cats would never do it. Bears would eat then turn back around and go for more._ He nearly groaned, then shook his head, snapping, "How would I know?"

Was it a hellhound? Would a hellhound do that?

"Well, you were just educating us on bears. So why not tell us about all the predators, Yugi? You seem to be the biologist of the group."

"His mom runs a veterinary clinic, you ass."

The sheer disdain in her tone was enough to make Fuwa stop short. His eyes flickered to hers, catching there, and he nearly curled his lip slightly in annoyance. Then he shook it off and said, very softly, "I'm sorry if I sound arrogant. I do not mean to antagonize you. I thought maybe you were just a hobbyist."

"And if I was?" he asked in a somewhat flustered tone. "Then what?"

"I still should not have sneered. I am sorry." His eyes looked like razors. Yugi felt sick to his stomach as they bore into his. "I am not used to being around average people anymore. I have always been around stage hands and hosts for interviews."

The lycanthrope stared at him blankly. "That's fine," he said finally, his lips threatening to fold back into a snarl. "I don't mind."

"Are you sure? You sounded upset for a moment, Yugi."

"I just don't think that hobbyists should be looked down on simply because they want to narrow their research and activities to certain things. You shouldn't speak ill of them," he snapped before he could stop himself, adding spitefully, "especially when so many people assume that's all _you_ are."

The words struck the cord just as he had expected them to. His eyes narrowed and his teeth ground together, his voice flat as he hissed, "Hobbyists are people who simply have idle time and so waste it on things that they can never accomplish further—"

Yugi shut him down as quickly as he could, sensing something dark and hideous in those eyes. He felt as if he were looking at Yami in the woods that day, when he had just killed Ryuzaki, moments before he attacked him in retribution for the hit he had inflicted to his head. He was a cornered animal, vicious and wild and ready to inflict as much pain as necessary to protect himself and scare away the threat.

"Either way, I don't know of any animal that would kill like that, eat only the placenta and a few other organs, and leave the fetus in torn chunks like that. That isn't normal predatory behavior. Bears don't do it. They would go for all of the organs and especially the baby. There's no way it would have left the body in that condition."

For a minute they were all quiet, then a new voice murmured, "But it is unwise to assume it was human either."

The small teen spun around, startled, and flushed when he saw Valon standing a few steps away. His head was down, his phone flashing against his eyes in a way that made his heart pound. There was something dark and hideous within his gaze as well, but his angled head made it all the worse. He looked as if he might snap and the curve of his head turning back to face them would be the only acknowledgment they would receive.

Yugi swallowed thickly. His eyes were like two flat golden coins…

"Yeah, but then what else could it be?" Fuwa baited him in annoyance, smirking in amusement. "Are you really going to say an opportunistic predator would ignore that kind of meal? That leaves only a human."

"But why kill the baby? Why not steal it? Most women who do such things do it for the child they are unable to have." He did not look up from his phone but Yugi felt his eyes on him, harsh and burning. He thought he felt a warning there, branding itself against his skin desperately. "And unless we are looking at a cannibal of some kind, the organ removal makes no sense. The dismemberment of the child makes no sense. And the kill patterns are almost random and unconnected. There would have to be some kind of connection. Killers do not work at random. There is always something. They leave their own fingerprint biologically. It gives them away."

"What about the fact that they're all students who went here?" the redhead sneered, smirking as if he had just caught a silver fox when he was looking for a possum. His eyes were glittering and the flatness of them matched Valon's as the hellhound raised his head and looked towards him slowly.

"I was not aware that the owner of the Junky Scorpion was a student here," he said slowly, the curve of his mouth subtle in its display of his canines. He smiled smoothly, fluidly. "He had nothing to do with anything. And what about the man at the museum? In broad daylight, he was killed within his office."

"Yoshimori," Yugi whispered quietly. All three of them glanced at him for explanation and he felt sick again. "His name was Yoshimori. He was a friend of the family."

"Regardless, explain him then," Valon said, turning on Fuwa with a glittering violence within his eyes. The other boy backed up a step, eyes widening in response to such open aggression. "He had nothing to do with anything. He was simply there. And someone killed him."

"You forget the girl in the hospital." He was sneering and Yugi felt like he might sob brokenly. Shizuka… And, oh gods, Jonouchi was going to be here soon. He'd hear them talking and he'd hate Yugi forever. "She had her head taken off."

"And no organs taken."

"That doesn't mean they couldn't have a vendetta against them."

"And what would tie them together? There is no reasonable thread. Serial killers are never truly random."

"How the fuck would I know?" Fuwa ground his teeth together, the urge to snap at him overwhelming. He breathed in deeply between his incisors, struggling to fight away his hateful scowl. "That's a job for the police."

Valon snorted loudly. "And a lot of good that they are doing." He glanced at Anzu and offered a sly grin. "No offense, Mazaki. I just do not think they have gotten very far. And what use is the police force when they cannot help the innocent from more deaths?"

Anzu flushed and the color was oddly attractive for a split second. Yugi bit his lip and Valon tilted his head as the scent of blood swelled in his nose. He could almost taste it for a split second. His eyes flickered to Yugi and he knew the smaller boy felt it as well. But his reasons seemed less innocent than snacking. His lips threatened to pull into an amused smirk. The boy looked so confused and lost.

He'd leave that to Yami to teach him, however. He nearly snorted out loud at the thought.

"Well, they have to…catch someone before they can protect anyone," she said, clearly flustered by the deep golden eyes on hers. They had brightened, seemingly springing to life upon seeing her blush. The thought made her cheeks redden further. It wasn't her fault that Valon truly appeared handsome and otherworldly more often than not. And he'd grown so much more beautiful as the years had passed. If she had gotten classes with him beyond their math and homeroom she thought Valon would have been more of a focus of get affections as he had been when they were in middle school. "It's kind of hard to prevent deaths when no one has any idea who might be causing them."

"A truthful statement." The brunet glanced at the street and then turned back to Fuwa with something cold and distinctly vicious. "I am getting to class."

Yugi startled when he saw those harsh eyes flicker to his. He nearly squeaked, his entire body caught with the tension between the two males and Anzu's sudden sexual peak. He could smell it, like he did the blood, and it made him dizzy.

"Tell Jonouchi and Honda I said hello." He smirked slightly and the edges of his lips teased so brilliantly that Yugi nearly groaned in his mounting confusion. "I'll speak to you later."

He nodded, focusing on these words as if they were straws he had to grasp tightly as they were the only things capable of keeping him upright. "Okay," he agreed. He sounded so eager he thought of an excitable dog.

The hellhound tilted his head only slightly, then turned to his phone again. He walked without once glancing up, then headed straight through the doors of the school without a second look. The moment he was gone, Yugi found himself surrounded by Jonouchi and Honda who stopped at his side. He felt flushed because Anzu was still watching Valon and that scent was still there and his head was burning with desire and, by the gods, he needed a grip.

Yugi nearly laughed at the thought. His cheeks heated furiously. He nearly cursed under his breath in frustration. Damn it. He clenched his hand around his backpack strap, hoping to relieve some of the tension before either could notice. But Jonouchi was giggling and it was pretty clear he knew what was going on.

The blond snatched him around the shoulders, drawing him into his side, and rubbed his knuckles against his scalp, laughing. "How's my little buddy?"

 _Wilting and extremely glad for it_. He grinned widely and squirmed in his grip, struggling playfully. "I'm tired. I want to go home and sleep some more."

"You're speaking my language," he snickered, scuffing him a little harder. "Bed is where I want to be."

"Too bad we all know sleeping isn't what _you_ would be doing in it," Tristan snorted, rolling his eyes. Yugi laughed loudly and Jonouchi released him to scowl at the brunet. "What? I can't help that I'm telling the truth. You never sleep."

Yugi shook his head, holding his hands up. "I'm not getting involved in this." He grinned when the blond shot him a playful glare. "I am not involved in this at all."

"That's not what you said…"

"Are they always like this?"

Anzu startled violently, jumping and looking at him with wide eyes. She hadn't realized he had moved at any rate. She drew in a deep breath, feeling indignant and small for a split second. Then she shrugged it off. "Well, yeah, they're best friends."

Fuwa hummed slightly. His eyes looked anything but amused as he smiled and nodded. Anzu shivered slightly. They looked almost dead, but there was something in them that seemed cruel and cunning as well.

"That's nice."

"Yeah, it is."

"We need to get to class soon." But his head turned to her and she felt sick as their eyes locked. Had she been imagining it? Fuwa's gaze was far warmer and gentler than it had been moments before. Had she simply been seeing things? But hadn't Valon's looked the same before? "So what did you decide?"

"I'll give you an answer tomorrow," she sidestepped, feeling oddly shaken and somewhat stupid for a moment. "I need a little more time to think it over."

He nodded, even if his expression seemed to have darkened slightly. She suppressed a shiver and her eyes snapped towards Yugi and the other two as they began squabbling again. The smaller teen seemed to be arguing that he didn't want to be involved at all and Jonouchi and Honda still seemed to be baiting him to get into their game. The courtyard was filling with students now, however, and it was clear that Yugi seemed to have noticed it. They glanced at each other, their eyes catching for only a moment. Then they looked away again.

"We should get to homeroom."

Jonouchi and Honda both swapped looks, shouting, "Race you!" and took off without a second glance. Yugi rolled his eyes, smiling, and then shook his head as he looked at them both curiously for a moment. Anzu and Fuwa both glanced at each other and away again. It almost looked like some kind of cutesy, embarrassed scene, and it made Yugi bristle only faintly before he shrugged it off almost immediately again.

He got to her side, though he did not overstep. It was not that he was worried about offending her. It was the fact that when he looked at her and thought of going faster, it occurred to him that Fuwa would still be there. And he could not willingly allow her to be beside him alone if he could help it.

Fuwa glanced at him as if he _knew_ his line of thought. But he did not comment and turned away again as if he had never considered anything in those regards. His interest seemed to have dwindled at some point and it made Yugi's stomach toss and turn for a split second.

"I wonder who won."

The statement startled him after the long minute of silence. Yugi blinked, turning his head, but something swept over his senses. It was oddly sweet, with a somewhat bitter edge. He blinked again, nearly stumbling over his feet. A harsher tone of butter and then heavy metals began to coat his nose. He faltered completely for a moment. His eyes stretched wide and his mouth felt dry.

That was blood.

Quickly he glanced over at first Anzu and then Fuwa. But neither of them seemed to be bleeding and now the brunette was watching him with an extremely concerned look. The redhead, however, paused a second later only when he realized they both had stopped. Then he turned his head, eyes wide, and asked, "What's wrong?"

Was it him? Was _he_ bleeding?

He couldn't remember having a cut or anything.

"Nothing."

Was it Yami's blood?

No, it did not smell like it. The metallic undertone was too harsh. Yami did not have that much iron. He also did not catch even the slightest hint of moonlight and stars against clean, crisp winter air or snow beneath the branches of a pine tree. There was no touch of such things now. And the smell would have come beneath the blood. It would have been the undercurrent of the metallic scent.

But then…what was it?

Yugi shook his head. "I have to go pee," he announced, voice startled, the edges of his words nearly causing him to blush. He sounded so crass. He felt flushed as he turned and trotted around the corner to make his way into one of the rooms. Immediately he ducked into the stall. His stomach dropped and he felt dizzy again.

He pulled his shirt up, glancing at his side first. Then he looked over his stomach. He pulled the sleeve down, taking in the flesh of his shoulder. He felt sick for a moment. But he seemed okay. There did not seem to be the slightest blemish upon his skin anywhere. And there was no pain in his limbs anywhere. He considered himself for a moment longer. Then he shook his head.

He could check himself everywhere. But the smell was gone. It was _long_ gone. He had just panicked for no reason. He was perfectly fine. He had no reason to worry whatsoever. Yet, that smell burned his nose still, branded in his thoughts. What was it that had happened? He couldn't figure out where it had come from. And when he had turned towards Anzu, it had seemed to waver almost completely. But when he had looked at Fuwa…

He curled his lip back. _Fuck_.

* * *

"So what's your problem with him?"

Valon didn't bother to look up from his notebook. "I don't like him." The hellhound tilted his head and narrowed his eyes into slits. He flipped his notebook open to another page, dog-earing it, and the dropped it into the locker with a lazy movement. He faced him now, tilting his head again. Yugi was agitated beyond belief. He was fidgeting terribly.

"It's more than that."

The brunet paused for a moment, considering him again, and then drew in a deep breath. "It is. But I cannot tell you what." He paused again, tilting his head. "You will see for yourself…"

"I know he's got to be a hunter."

Valon smirked faintly. "Very astute."

"Thanks. I try to keep my detective skills sharp."

He chuckled. "That's a nice philosophy to have," he teased before falling silent for a moment. His lips tugged into something of a grimace. Then he shook his head and watched him more pointedly. "I do not know what he's here for. It's highly possible that he was contacted to get you."

Yugi drew in a breath. "Yami said something similar."

"I would not put it past him." He paused. "He knows I'm not human but he also seems to realize I'm not a lycanthrope. Something about the situation is keeping him from coming after me as well."

"Valon, I don't… I can't sense anything from him."

The hellhound shook his head. "I don't think he feels anything," he admitted after a moment. "I think he either has a very tight control over his emotions and expressions or he does not feel anything and is a sociopath. It would do well for him to be the latter. He would never feel anything. And most sociopaths are very clever."

"You almost sound wistful."

His teeth were razors when he grinned. "I am one," he purred, shaking his head.

Yugi stiffened. "Huh?"

Valon tilted his head. "You didn't realize? Yugi, have you ever truly sensed anything in me that isn't what a wolf might feel?"

Yugi blinked. He struggled to think back. He'd seen him unnerved. He'd sensed his tension. He'd noticed when he was annoyed. He'd seen him spin around and snap at Fuwa. He'd seen him threaten the other boy.

He swallowed hard. "No…"

The hellhound nodded. "Animals aren't sociopaths. There's no genetic coding in them able to twist like it does for humans to make them unable to feel. I, at most, experience what my canine side does."

Yugi blinked and his eyes stretched wide. "Were you always like that or…?"

"Let me put it this way." Valon closed the door of his locker. "I used to like to find animals that the stray cats living in my yard had attacked and left for dead. And I would cut them open and stick them in the intestines to keep them pinned. Then I would sit for hours and watch them as they finally began to die."

He flinched violently. "Oh my gods…"

"But it is a good thing I am not a psychopath. As strong as I am, with as much of the disease in my veins as there is, I wouldn't be able to keep myself from killing and mutilating almost everything in sight." His grin was feral again, eyes dancing. "I think that is what makes Fuwa nervous. That is what most likely holds him at bay now."

"He doesn't hunt hellhounds…?"

"We're a lot less stable than you lycanthropes. You aren't as willing to kill yourself to kill an enemy as we are." He shrugged and then glanced over his shoulder slightly before turning back. "Psychopath hellhounds are the most volatile, reckless, creatures ever to exist."

"W-when did you change?"

He tilted his head. "When did my eyes turn gold?"

Yugi shivered and bit his lip hard. "Were you still torturing animals then?" he asked softly.

Valon considered him for a long moment. Then he leaned forward. "Do you want to ask me your real question or are you going to keep going with this stupid line of inquiries, Yugi?"

He flushed bright red. "I…"

"I haven't killed anyone. But I did kill someone's pet dog. They were abusing it and starving it. And it would not allow me close enough to release it from the chain it was tied to. So I tore its throat out and left it there." He shrugged lazily and looked at his nails. "The owner hardly cared. He cursed, blamed it on some teenagers, and left it to rot. I turned around and buried it."

Yugi shivered. "But you have to eat human flesh in order to become incorporeal, right?" he asked slowly, swallowing hard.

Valon snorted. "I do. But it's never been a fresh kill. It's hard to cover your tracks when the people you want dead are the ones who take care of you," he spat. There was a surge of energy, harsh and whipping, which slammed into Yugi's senses. But it was so abrupt and dangerous that he could not pretend even slightly that it was human. "I'd be the first suspect, after all. And then what? They prod me until I become mad and attack them as a dog? Ha. I don't think so."

"You don't…seem like a sociopath though…"

He grinned. "I'm neutral more often than not, completely bored and disinterested in everything. I lash out when I'm mad though. And, actually, I say it's me being a sociopath, but it's more like schizoid personality disorder, actually." He tilted his head, studying him. "I still haven't broken the law in any way. Or put anyone in reckless danger of any kind."

"What's schizoid…?"

"Lacking empathy, being more or less completely uninterested in other people. I care nothing for most people or anyone around me, in fact. But the wolf causes me to feel what others feel at times. And that makes me react in turn. But I could care less all the same." He paused. "I experience what a wolf feels when presented with certain things. Otherwise I do not and will never come to care for anything."

Yugi ran a hand through his hair in surprise. "Oh." How had he never noticed? His cheeks heated faintly with discomfort. Fuck, wow, how had he missed that before?

Valon smirked easily, then bumped shoulders with him in a way that was mockingly playful. "You weren't meant to know. I didn't want you to. Therefore you had no idea."

He blushed a little harder. "That makes a lot of sense now that I think about it… You've never been that social. And you've always kept to yourself. I never considered it before, I guess…"

"I'm not surprised." Valon chewed on his pinkie nail and Yugi swore his blood looked black and thick when it pooled beneath his nail and spread outwards along his cuticle. It was almost like sludge for a split second. "The only time I feel anything is when I'm on four legs. And that's because animals aren't born sociopaths."

"Then…do you fake your emotions?"

The hellhound's lips twitched. "All but my anger. Which, when I'm mad, it tends to become instantly calm again moments later. It makes me more vicious and likely to attack."

Yugi nodded slightly. That also explained his lack of relationships. He simply didn't care for them. Everyone had wondered why, when every girl seemed willing to date him, he simply turned away from them without a glance. Jonouchi had labeled him as gay. Yet whenever a guy showed interest in him Valon also seemed to look through them and ignore them just as well. Honda had said he must have been asexual then.

Those seemed so innocent compared.

"Then…do you think that's what Fuwa is?"

Valon snorted. "Schizoid or sociopath? No. I think he's an egotistical brat who thinks too highly of himself. I think he's a narcissist and someone ought to destroy him." His lips pulled back again and the smile was so feral it made Yugi's heart quiver and race. He looked as if he might just leap forward and go for his face at any moment. "I want to kill him myself. But he's got his eyes on you."

Yugi froze. "You won't help me?"

He studied him, this time frowning as he considered him. "I am not allowed to." He shrugged. "Atem is a creature meant to be among the lycanthropes. He is not to have a paw within a world of scepters and spirits such as mine. But listen to me, Yugi. I do like you. It's a surprising sensation."

Yugi felt shaky but something in his head seemingly rejoiced at the thought. His eyes stretched wide and he felt almost breathless as Valon reached out and ruffled his hair awkwardly as a sibling might. He could see something in his eyes, deep and gorgeous, swirling like leaves adrift in summer winds, and his heart pounded.

It was the wolf. The wolf felt something for him, a sense of companionship and loyalty. For Valon's golden eyes beyond this swirl of color were flat and dark and not the least bit amused. They were cold, deathly, and it shook him to the bone.

His lips twitched. "But I cannot interfere when my gods and yours have made such a thing clear."

His eyes widened further. "Your gods?"

Valon sneered, but it was somehow playful all at once. "Do not attempt to play me for a fool, Yugi. I know that my mother has made contact with you. Eventually my father will as well." His smirk was all canine, cunning and deceitful. "Wait patiently and do not do anything stupid."

He opened his mouth but the hellhound merely shut his locker, turned his eyes on something beyond his shoulder, and wandered off. He did not glance back and Yugi felt sick to his stomach. His head turned and his eyes fell on Fuwa down the hall. He spotted Jonouchi and Honda with him, Anzu a few feet further from them.

Yugi glanced over his shoulder. Valon had disappeared as if he were nothing more than a figment of his imagination. A sociopath…

It explained so much. Yet it left him feeling oddly shaken and broken from the truth of it all. He had not even fathomed the idea before. And the schizoid personality disorder he had mentioned did not explain it all. He was a sociopath. He'd said that first. And from what he remembered from his classes, sociopath fit the bill better.

He had witnessed him manipulating a teacher before when he had forgotten his homework assignment. He had blamed it on a traumatic experience back at his home, one which Yugi was sure Valon had forgotten just as he had himself. He had seen him flirt with a girl in order to get answers on a test but he had also seen him feign interest in another not hours later in middle school. He nearly groaned. Everything seemed to make sense now.

Yet he was still reeling.

How had he managed to hide it so well?

Was it by efforts of the wolf?

Or had Valon used his solitary nature to build up an understanding of what he needed in order to manipulate and twist the truth to his desire?

Had he people-watched and experimented on certain targets he'd chosen in order to get his way?

Yugi shivered. His eyes fell on Fuwa. Was it possible that he was the same? Or was he a narcissist as Valon had suggested? He didn't remember enough about them. Maybe he could use the time he'd spend at the arcade for that instead. He and Yami could talk and he could search some information on that again.

"Hey, so, you ready for the arcade?"

Yugi shook his head. "My mom needs help with another surgery," he lied, shrugging lazily. "Apparently it's one of those fluffy American dogs. I think they're called Pomeranians or something? She said the little guy had gotten stomped on by a horse but was still alive."

"Seriously? That's insane," Honda muttered, eyes widening drastically. "What's the survival rate?"

"They're mostly internal bleeding so I'd say about ten to twenty percent maybe?" He tried not to notice the way Fuwa all but narrowed his eyes into a sharp glare to watch him angrily. "I'll go with you guys tomorrow."

"Yeah, sure, no problem, Yug."

* * *

"Okay, so, here," he muttered, stretching his arms out to hold the protein shake within the other boy's range. Yami hesitated for only a moment, then took the cup from him, tilting his head. Yugi quickly tossed his bag to the ground, locked his door, and headed over to his desk to start up the laptop. He was ready when the search engine loaded, scanning rapidly for signs of narcissism and the personality disorder.

He searched a few links but the idea of self entitlement did nothing for him. Everyone felt entitled to something. He supposed maybe he could even apply it to his demand for Anzu's affection after agreeing to the bet. He also thought perhaps the idea of appraisal came in his need to prove that he could win those games…

He shook his head. His eyes flickered away from the screen. His cheeks heated when he realized Yami was leaning over his shoulder. His cheek was inches from his face. His red eyes were glued to the screen. His head was tilted. Yugi drew in a deep breath, looking quickly away again.

"Is this about Fuwa?"

Yugi halted, eyes widening, and spun in his chair to face him. Yami reacted accordingly, moving back before his chair could swing into his stomach. He sat up a little straighter, eyes wide and confused. "Yeah. How did you…?"

Yami shook his head. "Valon does not have an immense ego."

He hesitated. "Valon doesn't seem to have an ego at all, actually."

He snorted loudly. "No, Yugi, he has one. It might be small and mild, but it is there."

"He's a sociopath…"

Yami faltered, eyes widening in immense confusion. When he shook his head, Yugi blushed faintly.

"He doesn't feel anything. The only emotions he experiences are because they're what the wolf feels. He doesn't really have an ego. But he's manipulative and smart."

The other wolf nodded, then smirked faintly. "That explains a lot then," he commented before shrugging and turning back to his laptop screen. "Now, as for Fuwa, what is your plan?"

He shook his head. "I don't have one. I don't know what to do, honestly."

Yami raised a brow, studying him. "None at all?"

Yugi shook his head again. "I don't want to get the others hurt. And if I challenge him outright, that's all I'm going to end up doing."

"But you have to take risks to save yourself and others at times." He fell silent for a moment. Then he leaned away from the screen, backed up several steps, and considered him closely for a few long minutes. "He is highly unlikely to care for any consequences that come about. He's probably been hunting for a while and that means he'll come to the decision to kill all of you one way or the other."

Yugi felt sick as he shook his head again. "I know, Yami. But I…I don't want to endanger them anymore than I already have!"

"Life is a game of danger regardless of species or outside influence. You cannot protect everyone, no matter how much you may wish otherwise, Yugi."

"But my friends? I should be able to protect them at least!"

Yami shook his head roughly. "A mother cannot always protect her child. Why should you be given such privileges when she is not?" His eyes narrowed into slits. "Your friends may be important to you, but they are not to others. Remember that. It's something you'll need to know later."

Yugi felt his cheeks heat before scowling at him angrily. "You could be nicer about it! I would try just as hard to save you if the situation was reversed."

"And I you. But I simply mean to say that you cannot always save the ones you love. The world does not work that way. Not everyone will always make it out alive, Yugi."

"But I can try to make it happen!"

"Then give it your all and do not look back. Either decide to do it and stick to it or face the fact that you could have tried harder and failed to. That's how things work." He looked exhausted and withdrawn now, eyes gleaming dully like a worn penny. Abruptly his gaze lowered to the ground and his lids became hooded as he looked at the carpet fibers.

Yugi felt a chill run down his back. "Who, um… Who told you that, Yami?"

He drew in a deep breath, which shuddered and rattled his veins. Then he looked up, voice cautious as he murmured, "My closest friend. A month before he died."

He flinched. "I'm sorry."

Yami shook his head. "Don't be. He got what he wanted…" He paused and shrugged after a moment. "I'm alive. He wanted me to stay alive. And here I am…"

"He must have loved you a lot."

The taller boy flinched violently, stepping back and shaking his head. Something in his eyes was dark and shadowed and the dullness had become uniform, until his gaze was all but dead. "He…" He tossed his head again and drew in a rough breath. "It doesn't matter."

Yugi frowned, leaning forward slightly. He was tempted to reach out and touch him, to maybe put a hand on his shoulder or possibly pull him into a hug. Maybe he would just touch his wrist and feel secure in doing so. But he knew to do so would be fatal. Yami would most likely turn tail.

"It's okay to mourn."

He bore his teeth, though Yugi could see that it was not because he was angry, but rather that he was trying not to run. "I've done enough of that already."

"Yami, it's okay—"

"I mourned the first twenty times! I don't want to anymore! I want it to be over with!" he spat, tossing his head again and chomping his teeth.

Yugi swallowed hard. "Grieving doesn't work like that."

"But it should!"

He looked so fragile that the smaller teen felt shaky just upon keeping his eyes on him. Yami had begun to shake finely now as well, eyes gleaming. But he kept his head down and his fingers were flexing, twitching, at his sides.

"It should," he agreed, "but it doesn't."

The other boy shook his head again, a tired and sloppy movement that highlighted his distress.

It was cruel, but the smaller teen bit his lip, hesitating for only a moment, and then asked, in a soft and coaxing tone, "What happened?"

He bristled, his lips curling back. His shoulders rose. His hands flexed and his fingers curved. He was shaking harder. A low snarl rose from his throat. "He…" He opened and closed his mouth. For a moment he struggled. Then he learned forward. He doubled over, folding.

Yugi heard the impact before he saw it. He flinched, at first gaping at the other lycanthrope. Then his eyes lowered. Yami stared at the floor. Both of them blinked at the frothy edges for a moment. The bile was bright white. When the other boy raised his head, his mouth was flecked. And his eyes looked completely lost for a moment.

When he wiped at his mouth his hand was shaking violently. He blinked, looked at it, then dropped it back to his side. Voice hollow, he grumbled, "I can't even puke without making an ass of myself."

The smaller teen startled, eyes widening. "What? You didn't make an ass of yourself—"

Yami scowled at him. "I just vomited on your floor. _Again_. I couldn't even make it to the bathroom. That's not exactly the best way to do things," he spat, shaking his head and baring his teeth. Yugi felt sick. His gums were bright white. He felt dizzy for a moment. Dogs got white gums when they were in shock. Yami had not been wounded, however. So why would his gums have turned white like that? Was it some kind of trauma? Maybe it was like phantom pain. "Fuck. I should wear a bucket around my neck."

Yugi shook his head immediately. "No. That's not your fault." He narrowed his eyes, glaring at him. "It's not your fault that you got stressed out. If it's anyone's, it's mine. I pushed."

"And I puked on your carpet because I'm too weak to talk about it."

"Losing someone and reacting badly doesn't make you weak!" he snapped. "How long has it been anyways? I bet it hasn't been long enough to warrant you saying that!"He fell quiet for a moment. "Six months."

"I couldn't even face my grandmother's grave for _four years_! Six months is like a blink compared to that, Yami."

Yami shook his head roughly again. "That's stupid. You're trying to comfort me and I don't need it," he growled after a moment. "And six months is plenty of time to—"

"So, say I die today," Yugi cut in, blushing as he immediately knocked on the desk and hoped that metal worked just as well as wood, "you wouldn't miss me six months from now?"

Yami startled, then blinked. "I… Of course I… But…"

"Then why can't you mourn him any longer?"

He curled his lips back. The gums were bright red. "It isn't the same situation. You don't understand—"

Yugi shook his head. "No, I don't. And I won't pretend I do. But I…I don't think that you should set a limit on how much time you can spend missing someone. That's not how grief works, Yami." He paused, watching him. _And I don't think you've ever had the chance to properly grieve him, have you? You've been too caught up in staying alive. You haven't found the time to do it…_

"Six months…should be the blink of an eye to a werewolf."

"And I suppose pain should be that same way?"

Yami faltered. "I… It would be easier if it was."

He nodded slightly. "It would. But it's not. And I'm sorry…for making you remember what happened. I didn't mean to make you feel that again."

He shook his head, then cleared his throat in discomfort. "I didn't."

Yugi gave him a soft look, then smiled faintly when Yami glanced at him almost timidly. "You did. I saw your gums turn bright white," he muttered quietly. He had the impulse to reach out again, to touch his wrists or pull him into a gentle hug. Or perhaps he would hold him a moment and then let go when he felt Yami was stable enough to stand without quivering like he was now.

Yami flashed his teeth in distaste. "I forgot that happens…"

"I've never seen that except on dogs who have been physically injured to the point of shock…"

"Hellhounds' gums turn bright red and sometimes bleed. Ours turn white and our saliva glands start to instinctively open further. It makes us more dangerous. The lycanthropy comes to the surface like venom and the hellhounds release a chemical odor that's almost like skunks when they spray…"

"I thought you didn't know much about hellhounds."

Yami gave him a slightly flustered look, then smiled faintly. "I don't. I just remember overhearing it. I found it kind of fascinating. It's similar but the hellhounds' blood is given an odor that tends to petrify potential threats…"

Yugi smiled a little wider. "That's pretty cool."

He nodded, then grimaced. "It won't help with Fuwa, however. He probably wants you salivating and freaking out. I bet he takes enjoyment in seeing white gums on wolves. Just makes the kill more thrilling."

"He probably gets off on it," he snapped bitterly, blushing at his tone, and then ducked his head as his eyes turned towards the laptop briefly.

"I wouldn't be surprised." His snort was self-derisive and his face had become twisted with frustration. "Although I've always heard that hunters have to have some kind of a hard on to do it like that. Some of them hunt them while they're still human. I think that's actually because it's easier more than anything though."

"You don't think they just do it because they can?"

"Perhaps that as well."

Yugi bit his lip. People did a lot of things for no other reason than that they could. He fidgeted and Yami glanced at his awkward, nervous movements with something predatory in his eyes.

"Valon thinks Fuwa is a narcissist." He tilted his head, then scowled uncomfortably. "I can't get a read on him. You know how we normally pick up on emotions? It's like he doesn't have any."

"Narcissists only feel approval towards themselves, yes? Is that not the general gist of their range of emotion?"

"Yeah…"

Yami considered him a moment. "Then why not flatter him? You might sense something then."

"Or piss him off further."

"And the harm in that would be what? Your friends might see his reaction and think it's odd. Or tease you as if you have a crush." They both felt the smallest twinge of warmth flood their cheeks beneath their eyes. The dusting of pink was light and merciful. "Or they may very well find it funny. Does it truly matter? He will go about his plans one way or another regardless."

Yugi shook his head. "It would be easier to think that way if I wasn't scared of what might happen to them," he snapped, blushing furiously at Yami's surprised expression. He ducked his head. "You can keep a level head because you aren't attached to them."

"You're right. They are merely names to me."

He fidgeted again.

"If you mean to ask me to tell you how to hide away from your emotions, I will not help you," Yami said in a cold voice, his eyes narrowing and lips pulling back. "Shutting off emotions is dangerous for a werewolf. It makes them unstable. That's why even sociopaths are able to feel _something_ as a wolf. It may vary from shallow to deep, but it is there. The emotions not having a way out is dangerous beyond understanding. It makes them more likely to lose their mind."

"Speaking from experience?"

Yami blinked, then snarled, "Of course not. I am not a fool. As hard as it is, I find other things to focus on. It gives me more time that way. I don't end up being a mess." He faltered, eyes falling on the carpet. "Although, apparently that does not mean that I won't puke on your floor… Where is the cleaner?"

Yugi shook his head, getting up. "I'll get it."

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because it's my mess. I'll clean it."

"That would work out. If you weren't a guest." He stretched his arms, glanced down, and then stepped around the frothy pile.

"Being a guest does not exclude the ability to clean when a mess is made," he argued, annoyed. "I am capable of—"

Yugi faltered, stopping a step away, and then turned around. Yami was glaring at him, eyes sharp and angry, his lip twitching with anger. He hesitated, then offered him a small, gentle smile. "You don't need to get offended. I don't think you're incapable of anything, Yami. I just… I like doing things for other people."

"No, you simply blame yourself for my mess up."

"I don't blame anyone for anything. It happened. So you puked on the floor. It's hardly anything worth being angry over. Do you remember me being upset the first time?"

Yami chomped his teeth angrily. "You were in shock because of my behavior. That hardly counts for anything."

Yugi stopped and stared at him completely now, frozen as he considered him. His stomach knotted and his heart skipped a beat, nervous and increasingly anxious.

"I get that you're upset. I understand that you're pissed. And I'm pretty sure it's because I'm an idiot. But I promise you that it's okay and I don't _mind_ doing this. Besides, it's my room and that makes it _my_ responsibility."

The other wolf curled his lip back in annoyance. "I do not think you an idiot," he snapped. "I never _have_. But I do wish that you would not attempt to treat me as if I am incapable. I can clean up after myself—"

"I told you. I don't think you're incapable. In fact, you're probably the most capable person I've ever known. But I can clean up a mess just as easily as you can. And I don't want you to have to do it."

"But why _not_?"

Yugi shook his head slowly. "Why would I want you to? Yami, that's not… I would do this for any of my friends. Why is this upsetting you so much?"

He bore his teeth, breathing roughly through his nose. "Because. You. Do. _Everything_!"

The smaller teen froze, startled. "I don't…" He opened and closed his mouth. He made Yami feel useless, didn't he? His cheeks heated and his eyes flickered away. "If you really want to, the cleaning supplies are under the sink…"

Yami was still bristling before stopping short and studying him for a moment. Then he found himself staring at the carpet as well, the huge splotch of foaming white and yellow. He swallowed hard. By the gods….

"I'm…sorry. I shouldn't have snapped like that…"

Yugi considered him for a moment, then shook his head. "It doesn't matter. You're just restless. I get that way sometimes too. You didn't spend nearly enough time outside in the woods hunting last night did you?"

He furrowed his brows. "I thought I heard someone so I ran," he admitted. "I was already waiting near the tree line for about thirty minutes when you opened the window again."

He stiffened. "Who do you think it was?"

"I don't think it was a hunter. But I thought maybe they had a dog. So I turned tail. I hate dealing with dogs." He looked at him uncomfortably. "You always wanted a dog though, haven't you?"

Yugi have him a wry smile. "Yeah, but it's not like that's the most important thing in the world."

"I really _did_ ruin a lot of things you had set in motion for your life, didn't I?" He looked at the carpet. "I'm sorry."

The smaller teen felt sick for only a moment. Then he shook his head and looked away. "You didn't ruin anything, Yami. You saved my life. Even if you had been a human instead, it'd still be a lot of changes to happen. I'd need help to do everything. I'd be crippled. And I'm not sure that physical therapy would do me any good."

Yami considered him. "I don't think you would have survived."

He smiled faintly and shrugged. "You're right though. I probably wouldn't have," he admitted. "But, I mean, here I am, alive and healthy. So…let's just move on from that."

He shot him an annoyed look, but the edges of his lips threatened to pull into a grin. "I suppose that's all we truly can do, yes?" he commented quietly. He looked at the laptop for a moment, then turned back. "We can discuss things further when the floor is clean, right?"

Yugi grinned at him widely. "Yep."

But when he returned he knew they weren't going to have that conversation. Something had closed in Yami's expression and his eyes had grown shadowed. He was not the least bit happy to deal with any of it. And so he gave him only a mild look of warning before he wandered away to take a seat on the bed as Yugi began to clean the floor. Every time Yugi glanced up in his peripheral the other boy looked ready to spring up and help him. But he also looked considerably lost and confused. If he didn't know how to do it, there were no means by which he could.

"This day…is getting worse and worse."

He paused in scrubbing the carpet and looked up in confusion. "Why do you say that?" he asked, frowning.

"I…" He fell silent, then pressed his mouth into his right hand, long fingers curling to claw slightly at his lips. His eyes were forlorn and miserable for only a second, then abruptly cleared. "Everything is just…wrong."

"Like what?"

Yami shook his head and his nails sunk into his skin. "Life," he muttered in dismissal, "and everything involved in it."

Yugi sat up a little more, frowning. "But your life isn't so bad now…right?"

The taller teen blinked. "No, it is not so bad now," he said quietly. "Or, at least…not where you are involved. There are just some things that…have always been and will always _be_ miserable and not worth a damn."

"Well, yeah, that's kind of how life works." Yugi got up, looking the spot over. It looked as if it had never seen the light of a day of vomit before. He nearly grinned and congratulated himself. "Do you want to tell me?"

Yami stiffened considerably. His head turned and he looked at him for a long moment. His expression was cynical, altogether incredulous as well. "No."

The smaller teen tilted his head. "It might help."

He shook his head roughly. "I do not want help. I will deal with it on my own."

"That's kind of lonely, don't you think?"

Yami hesitated, then offered him a weak smile, turning his eyes onto the floor. "Maybe, but I never really tried to exist any other way."

He hummed, then turned away and started towards the bathroom again. "If that's how you want to live, then that's how it goes," he said almost carelessly, though the glance he cast at him was full of amiable concern and friendly affection. "But it wouldn't always hurt you to let someone else in."

The red-eyed teen considered him, then moved his foot to brace against the side of his bed. His eyes narrowed and his lips tugged downwards. "Do not think me ungrateful, Yugi. And do not think I do not value your friendship or respect you. But I have no desire to bring you any further into my life than is necessary for us both."

Yugi froze for a moment. "Is it so bad?"

Yami bristled faintly, then looked more keenly, searching his eyes. "I think the misery of it might destroy you," he said eventually. "The desolation of it would make your world a very bleak one at that."

The smaller teen swallowed hard, then looked away. "This entire world is pretty bleak…"

"Yet you always manage to smile."

Yugi hesitated, then turned to face him more completely. He bit at the inside of his cheek and offered him a cautious grin. "When I was growing up, my mom told me that smiling would help make things less stressful. She said something about endorphins or something or other. I smile because it's easier for me to do than wallow." He opened and closed his mouth. "If I wallow, I tend to become extremely overwhelmed. And when I get overwhelmed, it makes me…break."

Yami blinked. "Break?"

He chewed his lip and ran a hand through his hair. "I…start bawling and I have no idea how to stop. And it goes on for hours and hours, until I can't breathe or cry anymore. I always feel numb afterwards. And it tends to wear on me more when I try to crawl out of the emptiness again." He hesitated, then tilted his head. "I used to have really bad days. And they were frequent. It was…terrible."

He shook his head. "We don't need to talk about it."

"No, it's fine," Yugi objected softly. "I don't actually mind talking about it. It isn't something I want to talk about all the time. But I can sometimes. It's… I mean, I've learned to deal with it, Yami."

The taller teen bristled faintly. "I don't deal with things well."

"You're a lot more…passionate than me, I think. It makes it harder for you. I'm more optimistic and can roll with punches. You tend to be more pessimistic and stubborn." He paused for a moment, flashing him a wider grin. "You roll with the punches well enough. You adapt to changes really well. The only issue is that I think that you're so unlikely to try to find the silver lining that it makes it harder for you."

"Perhaps." He paused and tilted his head curiously. "I mean, it is possible, yes, but…"

He shrugged. "It doesn't matter, honestly. We all deal with things in different ways. It'll work out as things go on."

"You are very…relaxed about things…"

Yugi glanced at him as he deposited the cleaning supplies, confused and curious. "Yeah, I guess so?" He has never really considered that he appeared that way. More often than not he was more upset inwardly than anything else.

"I envy your optimism. It is yet another thing which makes you better than me." He fell silent again, then shook his head, a shallow smirk on his face. "Your mother is coming."

He shut the bathroom door and Yami slid off the bed, dropping along the side of the piece of furniture. True to word, his mother came up the stairs only moments later. She knocked twice and he called a quiet, "It's open" as he wandered over to close the laptop down. He watched Yami in his peripheral but the red-eyed lycanthrope hardly seemed alarmed by any means.

Kasumi stepped into the room after a moment. "You want to help me make dinner?" she asked quietly, glancing around the room briefly. It was always somehow surprising to see his room so clean and nice when she had heard horror stories about other teenage boys' rooms beforehand. She still remembered the first time she had stepped into her husband's room. He'd cleaned it up mildly but things had still been scattered around the room, sheets of paper and books and things of that nature.

"Sure, what are we making?" He didn't glance at Yami to ensure she didn't look either, but moved around the bed to take a seat at the end. He'd do homework later. How late was it anyways? He almost dug his phone out of his pocket but it seemed incredibly rude at the moment.

"I was thinking chicken donburi."

Yugi blinked, eyes widening, and grinned excitedly. "Yum! Yeah, let's do that!" He was on his feet before she even registered that he'd moved again. Then he seemed to almost bounce away and out of the room. She blinked a few times, unsure, and then smiled as she came out after him.

Yugi had always loved chicken donburi. Behind hamburgers, it was his favorite food. She remembered bribing him with it for information on his grades and how his friends were doing when he was particularly upset or closed up. She supposed she truly shouldn't have been so surprised to see that it hadn't changed.

"So, how was school?" she asked, moving around him to grab a pot to boil some water. Her son glanced to, blue-violet eyes sparkling with excitement.

"Pretty good. I'm getting better with some of the math equations, so that's always good." His smile felt fake as he cut the package of chicken and prepared a skillet with oil.

"You didn't go the arcade with your friends?"

He almost paused, but shrugged it off. "I wanted to study instead," he murmured, feeling pleased that it wasn't entirely a lie. "Besides, I figured the earlier I got home the better. I didn't want to end up missing curfew."

"They've started to shut everything down an hour before curfew," she said quietly, biting the inside of her cheek. Her eyes flickered to his uncomfortably. "That gives everyone an hour to get home. Then the police can still patrol and avoid having any issues with regular civilians."

Yugi frowned, furrowing his brows before blinking at her curiously. "You talked to Anzu's dad," he realized quietly.

Her nod was short at best. She put the pot of water on the stove and turned the dial. The blue flame looked bright, glittering where it touched her son's eyes. "Yeah," she sighed, and the noise made Yugi think momentarily of the fact that he had never gotten to know what it was Anzu wanted to tell him that morning. "He said that the attacks are being ruled as animal but that the closest suspect, when the bite marks were measured, was a canine."

He frowned at her. "Like a stray? Or a pack of dogs that were trained?" he asked slowly, narrowing his gaze. "Does he think it's something gang related?"

Kasumi shook her head and turned to face him completely. "No, he thinks it could be a rabies epidemic, but we haven't had issues with rabies in a long time." She paused. "And the bite patterns, when measured, do not match up with any breed in Japan."

He tilted his head. "What does that mean?"

"They match the bite patterns of canis lupus."

Yugi pretended to consider the statement for a moment, then raised a brow. "No way. Wolves couldn't do that kind of damage," he snorted, though his palms felt hot, sweaty. "Besides, what wolf decapitates prey? And the coroner said that Ushio's entire _skull_ was crushed from whatever attacked. And that the angle suggested that they came from the front left and sprang that way. That's feline."

"The bite force of a gray wolf shatters bone but it doesn't decapitate," she muttered quietly. "It's in the low thousands. The damage this 'canine' did was about three times that."

He blinked. "Siberian tigers don't even have that kind of power." But apparently werewolves did. He supposed it had to be when the adrenaline rush came through. Because he did not think he was capable of decapitating another animal or person as he had Bakura without its aid. He did not even think Yami could.

"I know." She paused. "The only animal _with_ that type of jaw strength is the saltwater crocodile."

Yugi froze, eyes widening. "But they don't decapitate…"

"No, they use that little death roll technique of theirs and leave the bodies in the water to rot so that the meat softens enough to tear off in chunks," she agreed. "He thinks that someone might have imported wolfdogs from the states somehow. That maybe they've bred them for this kind of use…"

"They couldn't maintain that jaw strength though, not unless they were constantly testing them. And their teeth would break from doing it. They'd be all but defenseless." He paused, thinking it over. "And what about Ushio? Wolves can jump high and they're good at opening their mouths all of the way, but he would have been able to throw them off."

 _Unless they were possibly two hundred pounds, with a wider jaw than usual, a high-functioning human brain, and cunning and stealth beyond your wildest imagination._

"So they've ruled out it being people?"

"Unless, like you said, they're releasing the dogs _after_ killing them, then yeah, there's no way. Besides, there are no traces of metal or anything to indicate a human weapon of any kind."

"So then wolfdogs from the states…" He shook his head. "That would have taken _years_ to get that kind of trait bred into them."

"Yes, but…" She shook her head. "There have been rumors about someone experimenting on dogs and importing all kinds of illegal animals from different parts of the world. They can't find traces of it to lead to any particular name, but they think it's a lot like poaching and sex trafficking in how they hide it."

He was staring at her, eyes faraway, a shadow crossing his gaze, his teeth digging at his lip, the fingers of his right hand curled to dig his nails into his thigh. "Experiments on dogs?" he asked, voice seemingly miles away.

"That's the rumor. Apparently they're attempting to breed some kind of superior canine. No one actually knows anything about it, though. And no one even talks about it anymore."

Yugi almost laughed. _That's because they're not dogs and they're probably hiding around as wolves in human skin,_ he thought, cheeks feeling flushed for a moment. He could tell that his face had drained of color, however, that his body was cold and shaky more than anything else.

He licked his lips. "When did you first hear about it?"

She blinked and studied him for a moment. Something had changed in his expression. Something had changed in the way he was holding himself as well. Something about his eyes or perhaps the tilt of his chin. She wasn't sure what it was exactly but she saw the change in him and it made him seem almost empowered, stronger than ever before. It was almost strengthening just to look at him.

"A few years before you were born."

His eyes widened and his mouth opened and closed. Blinking, horrified, the small teen felt his gut twisting painfully. _That long_? he thought desperately. _They've been experimenting that long_?

She bit her lip. "From what I remember, that was also the same year that tourists were reported as kidnapped and high school students seemed to disappear almost without a trace."

He grimaced. "Kidnappings?"

Why _teenagers_? Why would they go for teenagers? If they were in high school they were at least sixteen…but why teenagers? What was so special about teenagers?

"That's the rumor. But it could have been that they got lost or decided not to go home. The teenagers were all clearly marked as kidnapped, though. There was usually someone who might have seen it happen somewhere at some point."

A few years before he was born, his mom was eleven. The only reason they hadn't kidnapped her was because she had been too young. He felt sick and dizzy. But what about Shizuka? Had they grown bolder as time passed or had they simply decided they no longer cared not to?

Had they slowed down their activities at some point? Or was there someone in the force who also helped them remain secret? Had the kidnappings been covered up?

"And what happened to them?"

"They usually reported that there was some kind of large dog with them to keep them from stopping the kidnapping. They all said it wasn't any breed they had ever seen before. But they always had a shock collar and the dogs were always pretty vicious and responded to commands in different languages…"

Yugi stiffened. "Any idea which?"

"Someone reported English. I think an exchange student mentioned Russian. They don't know." Kasumi hesitated for a moment. "But they definitely think that they're connected to what is happening now. They all think that this is the same organization, especially with the dog breed and the bite prints matching wolves."

He shuddered slightly. "But the bite pressure still wouldn't match up. They'd have to have really large jaws and cheeks. And the size of the head would have to be huge to support it."

"That's why everyone is skeptical. They're checking on the wolves in the zoos, just to make sure that none of them could have gotten loose."

"Asahiyama is the only one with wolves and the glass tunnels would make it impossible for them to get loose." He shook his head. "What about a narrow-mouthed feline of some kind?"

"The only feline I know of with a jaw that's narrow is a cheetah and that's nothing compared to a canine's in length." She sighed softly and shook her head. "The whole thing doesn't make sense."

 _It makes plenty of sense, but for all the wrong reasons,_ he argued mentally. It all made absolute, perfect sense, in a way that felt disgustingly fairytale rather than horrifying. "Yami said earlier that he thought maybe someone had been using wild animals to make the dogs more vicious and ready to kill…"

She blinked. "Yami knows about it?"

Yugi carefully picked at his words, thinking for a moment to backtrack before shrugging slightly. "I mentioned it to him in passing. He was kind of curious about what I think about it."

"And? What did you say?"

"That I think it's a cat and not a dog. I didn't know about the bite patterns though." He shook his head. "But that doesn't really change anything. There's no way it's canine."

"What did he think of the idea of someone killing and then sending the dogs afterwards?"

He shook his head. "He said it's more believable than someone managing to actually train a large, wild cat to do something like that." Then he paused, pretending to consider his new statement a moment longer. But in his head the words were already a finely spun web of silk, just awaiting her acknowledgment. "Yami thinks a large part of it could be to cover something up. The bodies showing up and some of them being dug up in graveyards…"

Kasumi was nothing if not shrewd, something that she'd passed to her son in abundance, yet even she was thrown by the idea. She furrowed her brows and tilted her head, confused and thoughtful.

"What kind of cover up?"

Yugi felt like his teeth had become daggers, sharpened with his satisfaction. If he could get her curious about his ideas and the way his mind worked, she'd become far more perceptive to his name. And if she was so far gone as to be intensely aware of each time he was brought up, Yami would have an invitation to the house very soon.

The only hard part of maintaining it was how many lies he spun and how much he put behind each of them. If he could keep them minimal, then he'd be able to explain them to Yami who in turn would know them when he met his family. If he was just listening in on it each time, it would be much easier for them both.

But he didn't even know if he was still in that room, waiting and listening. He could have wandered off at any moment and Yugi would never have known.

* * *

He heard her footsteps before he recognized them. They were approaching the little home and it made him freeze in place. His hands tightened on his backpack straps. His fingers ached, growing white with tension. His eyes widened and his breath stopped.

Yami, behind him on the bed, angled his head towards the floor. Then, as one, they both straightened, though for different reasons. Yugi was relieved, the definitive rhythm of step recognizable in his ears. Yami was rigid, both with disbelief and open confusion.

"Anzu!"

The ecstatic tone made the taller teen lose his frustration. When Yugi turned to him, face alight with a grin, the other offered a small mirror of one. Their gazes locked, the red-eyed lycanthrope tilted his head and tried for a kinder expression. But his mind was racing and his stomach had become mildly knotted.

He had assumed it to be Fuwa, as had Yugi initially. He had thought, for a split second, that the hunter had found his home, was now going to lure him out to kill. He'd been ready to change, to race after Yugi when he went out there…

How had he not recognized her footsteps?

Yami barely resisted the urge to curl his lip.

Because he'd only heard her approach once in his human form. And, as a wolf, he had never heard her walk but for in the group with Yugi and the two males. He'd never heard her singular step before. He needed to listen now, memorize it, so that he did not cause error the next time she should arrive.

"You are excited," he teased, raising a brow. It was a vain effort to make himself appear more relaxed. But his tone was edged with frustration and his lack of enthusiasm made it seem almost threatening.

Yugi faltered, stumbling upon hearing the bite of the statement. When he turned around, his eyes were wide and confused. The taller boy struggled to reign in his temper, his self-directed anger merely simmering beneath the surface. He wondered if it showed in his eyes. Did it make his gaze harsh and dangerous, unfriendly and hateful?

"Is she the girl?"

Yugi blinked, then blushed bright red in surprise. His face felt hot but his mouth didn't stretch into a grin as it had formerly. In fact, the delight of seeing her and being alone with her for a few minutes before they got to the school was overthrown by the mere ferocity that colored the other boy's expression.

"Yami…?"

The red-eyed teen blinked. The spiral of anger seemed to dissipate along the edges, becoming laced with guilt. He nearly groaned with disappointment. He was always doing something or other to ruin the other's good mood.

"It's okay, Yugi. I just…" He opened and closed his mouth, then shook his head and offered him a more encouraging smile. "I didn't think. But, anyways, have fun, okay? Don't waste your time beating around the bush."

The way he said it was genuinely comforting to the smaller teen. The strength it gave him made his cheeks heat faintly once more. He blinked, then grinned a little.

Yugi had not forgotten the anger on the other boy's face mere moments before, however. He saw it still, crystalline in his mind, and it seemed stunning, vivid and powerful. But he could play and pretend that he wasn't as upset by it as he truly was. If for no other purpose than sparing Yami of his embarrassment, he could do that.

"I hope it goes well for you."

And if there wasn't something odd and powerful and strangely, almost _wistful_ , within his tone…

He wondered if he was thinking about his mate who he had never really gotten the chance to know or the friend who had sacrificed himself to get him out of the lab. Both thoughts made his stomach churn and he quickly turned away again.

"I'll see you after school, okay?"

"I will be here."

Yugi sensed the distraction in his tone but did not bother to say anything about it. He frowned and raised a brow, blinking, but did not turn around to face him again. Yami deserved some time alone and the chance to deal with emotions he might not have formerly.

He was downstairs and out the door before she had the chance to knock. "Hi, Anzu," he greeted happily, moving to close the door behind him and step around her towards the street. "What's up?"

She glanced at the door and then at him. How had he known she was there? He hadn't even paused when he saw her there or anything. She blinked, eyes wide, and then shook her head. When he glanced over his shoulder at her in, puzzlement, she forced herself to smile.

"I thought we could talk while we're walking to school," she admitted. He blinked at her, at first curiously, and then with a sense of nervousness that made his eyes widen briefly.

He couldn't escape her when he was walking at her side. And it would be impossible for him to shy away if she was watching him. Yugi drew in a deep breath, fought the urge to groan in growing distress, and then forced himself to a calmer state. "Oh okay. What about?"

The brunette frowned, biting her lip. "I don't know how else I'm supposed to say this, Yugi…" Anzu hesitated and Yugi looked over at her rather pointedly. He knew what she was about to say, she realized, and it made her heart ache at the flat distance between them.

When had it become so apparent that he was no longer interested? Had she overlooked it at some point? Had she been so hopeful that she'd been blind to it?

Her face collapsed, so crestfallen that Yugi nearly flinched. Then he shook his head slightly and offered her a grimace. "I don't know where your mind just went, but I don't think it's right," he finally muttered, turning away and kicking at a light coat of ice on the sidewalk. He wondered if it would snow today…

"Huh?"

He drew in a deep breath. "I'm sorry. I haven't exactly been the best person recently. And I wouldn't blame you if you were mad at me. I led you on without really meaning to. But the time isn't…right for me to date. I have…other obligations that came up. And I haven't found a way to actually balance them all out yet."

Anzu blinked and sighed softly. She felt like she should have seen this coming miles back.

"I'm still trying to figure out a way to make it all work in harmony. Then I could…" He blinked and then turned his head to look at her. "I won't blame you if you're tired of waiting on me to get my shit together, Anzu. And who knows? Maybe Fuwa would treat you better than I can anyways…"

She grimaced. "I highly doubt it," she grumbled under her breath. "I…I don't mean to rush you or anything, Yugi—and I feel like I've been pretty patient for the most part—but it's kind of hard. You haven't told any of us anything for a while now. It's starting to seem like you're closing yourself off."

He stiffened, eyes growing wide. "I-I'm not," he stammered before he could think straight. "I just…there's a lot happening right now. And I can't really…work out much of anything with it all."

"You know you can tell us anything…"

Could he? If he turned around and told them he was a wolf, he doubted they'd be very receptive to it. And he didn't think they'd care to stick around for something as gross as the Change was. He bit his lip and fought the urge to growl in distress. Besides that, he already had so many issues with trying to get his body to go through it without as much trouble. Yami had said it would get easier but it hardly seemed to be.

And it was not as if he could ask _Yami_ to do it. He could, but the other wolf would most likely grow further upset than he already was. And his hatred for people was enough to make him cower at times. He nearly sighed but fought it off at the last second.

"I know. But if I was going to tell you guys, I'd need to find out the best way to do it. I can't just explain it right off the bat. It's…a lot harder to work out than that."

And wasn't that the truth? Fuck if he wasn't aware of how hard it was to actually keep up with it on a regular basis, let alone with the thought of telling someone. He sighed loudly, annoyed, and then shook his head sharply again.

"But, I promise, when I figure it out, I'll tell you guys." _Maybe. I might not be able to. I wonder… Would Yami object_? _Would he kill them_? _Would he try to kill me_?

Anzu nodded. "Okay."

The simplicity of the response made him bristle faintly. He turned his head, confused. "You don't sound surprised…" he realized slowly.

"I saw your grandpa last week. I asked how he was and he said he was feeling the best he has in years. It wasn't hard to put two and two together. But now I have the chance to actually find out what four _is_ instead of constantly guessing."

He flushed. "O-oh. I…I'm sorry, Anzu. I would never have—"

"I know you'd never lie to us unless it was important. That's why I never said anything to Jonouchi or Honda about it." She paused after a moment. "Although, I'm not going to lie. I was _seriously_ hoping that you would say yes so that I could avoid my half of the deal with Fuwa."

She was laughing but Yugi stiffened considerably. "You don't like him?"

"He…kind of makes me nervous."

The smaller teen felt sick as he considered the words. "Nervous? Really?"

"Yeah, he's… There's just something about him. I don't think I like the way he acts. Or maybe it's the way he says things. He kind of seems to think he knows more than everyone else…"

"Well, he _i_ s a celebrity…" He was relieved that she didn't like him, but to say so, he'd have to let her know more than he was willing. He wondered, however. _Would_ Yami kill them if they found out about his lycanthropy?

"Yeah, I guess."

"He probably isn't used to people being smarter than him or anything like that. I think it probably just gets on his nerves." Yugi paused and wondered, the thought making his skin crawl. His lips threatened to curl back. "I don't know why he's here though. Aren't celebrities normally homeschooled?"

"Yeah, I think so."

Yugi ignored the considerate glance she cast in his direction. She didn't know where he was going with this topic. In all actuality, neither did he. He shook his head and dug his hands into his pockets. "Kind of makes you wonder why he's actually here," he mumbled. "Why would he come to Domino? He said it was something about the best school curriculum but that doesn't make any sense to me. He doesn't need to have any real education anyways. He's a celebrity. He'll get around things with the money he gets from the game shows he wins and the amount they pay for him to make appearances."

"Maybe he just wanted to be a normal kid for a little while?" she suggested. They both glanced at each other. Then they burst out laughing at the concept. Someone as pampered as Fuwa would never come to a school for a chance at education or being around regular peers.

But was it _just_ Yugi he was after? That hardly made any sense whatsoever. What it came down to was a question of whether he had been following him for a while or if someone had led him to believe that Yugi was in that school. Then, barring his fascination _with_ Yugi, was it possible that he had been sent by the human organization that was breeding the Pure-Bloods in order to capture more wolves? Were they just setting up a plan to kidnap more people? Was Fuwa meant to be some kind of distraction?

"I think he'd rather have a baby puke on him."

"So then why _is_ he here?"

Yugi shook his head.

* * *

"How about dinner, on me? To celebrate my new friends?"

The small teen had been staring at him pointedly for the last ten minutes. Since the moment that he had grabbed Anzu by the hand, announcing they were a couple, and seemed to flaunt the new development. Every time he kissed her cheek or said something moderately flirtatious, Fuwa was watching him. His eyes were sharp and cunning, daring him to say something to challenge him. It was almost as if, as he watched him, he thought it would provoke Yugi to change. He acted as if the smaller teen might suddenly lunge forward, fangs and teeth and glowing eyes.

Was that something that triggered the Change? Was emotion something that made it happen? He remembered that Yami had been changed that day he came home from the woods. His late arrival had been pronounced by Yami throwing him to the floor and sniffing him. He wondered now if he thought his lateness was because the hunters had caught him. Was it possible that the red-eyed lycanthrope had changed by accident, by pure distress and confusion?

"Dinner?" Jonouchi asked with wide eyes, gaze flickering between the group of them in obvious confusion. "What kind of dinner?"

"I was thinking Bonnokazi. They remodeled an older restaurant into a new Bonnokazi a couple of months ago. It's just on the outskirts of Domino, right before you'd get to Obihiro."

Yugi froze in place. What was it about Bonnokazi? The food was amazing, yes, but it could not be a coincidence that both Yoshimori and Fuwa had a desire to take him there. Yoshimori had wanted him to go to Sapporo, however, and Fuwa to the edge of Domino. But it was the same restaurant…

He felt extremely unnerved, more than a little sick. Had Fuwa known Yoshimori? Was that why Yami had killed him? Had he known something about it and gone to stop him before he could manage anything? He knew he'd done it to protect him, but from what? Certainly death, but what about the restaurant? What was wrong with the restaurant?

"Yeah, let's do that," he agreed quietly when he realized they were facing him, awaiting an answer. Fuwa grinned in an expression that was almost feral, devilish, disastrous. Yugi blinked and for a moment something primeval and powerful surged through him. His lips threatened to curl back and his body grew hot with feverish anger. His mind was caught beneath one concept, which pushed away any others to cross its path.

He had to protect them.

They were his friends, his family.

His _pack_.

The thought threw him only minutely. Most of his mind was still caught upon the intensity of his growing anger. Fuwa was a threat. He was a huge, immense threat.

Every other insecurity or vague fear was nothing in comparison. And Jonouchi, Honda and Anzu hardly had any impact beyond his mounting frustration. How could none of them feel it? How could none of them tell?

He nearly bore his teeth but pressed the urge away. He needed to find out what was so important about Bonnokazi. He needed to see why it was that _two_ hunters had wished to lure him there. Two different spots but the same menu served and the same specialty food…

And, as he sat there, the others chatting around him so loudly that their voices became a monotonous blur, he found the answer.

A soft, woodsy, slightly spicy undertone came from the food. It swelled up and billowed until his nose burned.

His eyes shot to Fuwa's.

"You fucker," he spat, the tone making the others fall completely silent. "You absolute _fucker_."

Jonouchi sat up a little bit, his fork in one hand, his soda in the other. He had been preparing to take a sip, then to dig in. But he froze as his best friend slammed a hand into the table and snapped, "Don't eat or drink anything."

"Normally they don't smell it," the redhead snarled in distaste before grinning viciously, expression feral. His eyes glinted hideously with laughter. "Kudos to you, dear Motou Yugi. I applaud you."


	37. Flames

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day**

 **Chapter Warnings: Bloodshed, Stabbing, Threats of Tortures (Skinning), Murderous Intent, Mentions of Murders, Someone Catching on Fire, Thoughts of Death, Mentions of Arson, Mention of Dubious Healing Methods (Bloodletting, Triggering Change, Biting)**

 **So, as said in an earlier chapter, the Bonnokazi restaurant was opened in Domino as it had been in Sapporo, near Oniro. Yoshimori attempted to convince Yugi and his grandfather to go with him there formerly. And Fuwa actually did take them.**

 **Okay, so wolfsbane oil (tincture) is used internally in the medical field. It diminished the rate and force of early stage fevers, slight local inflammations, feverish colds, laryngitis, first stages of pneumona and erysipelas. It helps relieve pain of neuralgia, pleurisy and** **aneurysms** **. But wolfsbane itself is so deadly just touching the plant will kill. As for the werewolves, the oil itself can stunt the senses when touched, dulling healing as well. It's harder for them to smell in any way and being within proximity of it for a while will cause the wolves to develop rashes because the residual sense of it causes physical distress throughout the body. They CAN, however, smell the herb when it's put in food as the heat makes it more potent, though if the wolf has never been exposed to wolfsbane before, they might not fully determine why they're so alarmed by it.**

 **Similarly, silver does the same. Yugi's body attempting to heal around the knife causes far more damage than it would have had it not done so. Anyways, so, his hand wound got far worse due to this. The flesh starts melting and blistering around it. Because of this, it also tends to produce enough heat to oxidize the metal enough to leave residue in the skin (which is something akin the way that sterling silver can make your skin turn green, black or gray). So the particles remained in his flesh and wound up burning Yami when he tried to clean it.**

Chapter XXXVII: Flames

 _Work Log Entry XXXVII: August 2002_

 _August 2_

 _A.T.E.M. is to be monitored for the week of the full moon._

 _The boss is adamant that he will change this month._

 _August 22_

 _Blood tests are being run to analyze his state of wellbeing during the hours of the day. Later I will run more and acquire a small sample of stem cells to ensure his health throughout the Change. Should a complication occur we will have healthy cells to implant in him._

 _August 23_

 _It is currently_ _06:39_ _._

 _A.T.E.M. did not change this month._

 _August 26_

 _There is no detectable defect to explain his inabilities._

He was frozen there, cheeks growing pale and cold. His stomach dropped and he felt sick as they looked at each other. The small lycanthrope could not turn away. And it occurred to him, horrified, that his friends were frozen and staring at him. In his anger and need to lash out, he had all but forgotten that they would be stunned. He felt stupid and childish now, almost ashamed of himself.

Yet, it came second to the terrible pain in his hand.

Yugi had not seen him move.

But his hand was grasping the blade.

And the knife was embedded in his hand.

It was right between the bones of his middle and ring finger.

And the burn was excruciating.

How he failed to scream was beyond him.

Was he in shock?

He blinked. What was that noise in his ears? That really high-pitched cry, almost like a whimper? Was that… _him_? But that still wasn't a scream like he'd expected…

Why _wasn't_ he screaming?

"Wow, you're much tougher than you look," Fuwa commented, the smirk on his face hideous and cold with laughter. His eyes were dark, glittering, and they seemed to sear through him. Yugi's breath became tight and laborious. "But I think that'll change."

His eyes saw the blood as it began to seep from beneath his fingers. It spread upon the beautiful paper design of the tabletop, drenching the fibers. Yet, somehow, it did not have a hold on him. It was the fiery, burning edges of his skin which grasped him. And it was hideous how great it was. The smell of it was rotting, curdling flesh. And he could _feel_ it. He could _feel_ his skin trying to _heal_ around it. And the burning was becoming _worse_ , far more intense. And, oh, it felt as if he were dying of poison in one hand. It felt deadly and terrible and horrifying…

But it was so isolated as well.

It was contained in his hand.

It did not spread.

It simply worsened.

"When I peel your skin off to see your pelt, I'm _sure_ that will change, won't it, Yugi?" he sneered, leaning forward. "It appears that's going to be the only way for me to see it, isn't it? You just _won't change for me_!"

The smaller teen finally reached for the object in his peripheral, desperate. His fingers were inches away. If he could grasp it…

"Nuh-uh, little Yugi," Fuwa sneered. He waved a fork, polished and sharpened along the teeth, before his face. "This one will go into your eye if you try it."

He was almost willing to take that risk. He just wanted the burning to _stop_. He would die if it didn't cease. By the gods, he hoped it would fade and dissipate altogether soon. He was losing his mind. It would burn its way through his blood and completely destroy him.

"I must say. You have _amazing_ control, Yugi," the redhead teased, his lips drawn back into a bright grin. Yugi bore his teeth in frustration, watching him with hateful eyes. "Normally a wolf would have changed by now."

He stayed quiet for a moment. He was feverish. He could feel sweat trickling down the back of his neck. He nearly spat in mounting panic. He needed that burning smell to leave his nose. He needed to get the reality of what it meant out of his head.

"Why are you all hunting us?" he spat, voice slightly delirious with tension. He narrowed his eyes and curled his lips back further, baring his teeth. "It's not like I asked for this—"

" _Us_?" the redhead whispered, in a tone that made Yugi's heart quicken and shatter in his chest. A cunning brutality had awoken in Fuwa's gaze and something beautiful and hideous shone there in its shadows. He peeled his lips back and his teeth looked like small white daggers. Yugi bristled and snarled low in his throat. "So the rumors are true then."

He yelped. The knife cut backwards. His skin split. The burning smell intensified. His eyes flashed, dilated. Something flickered across them. Fuwa smirked wider.

"Yes, call the other here."

Yugi snapped his jaws, but his voice refused him. He glared at him, expression cold. But his heart was pounding faster. And his mind was racing. In the split second he had cried out, he'd felt it. It was almost as if a puzzle piece had fallen into place as necessary. From it an image scraped together.

And, in the rawness of its formation, had come bright red eyes. The jaws were huge, the body immense, the fur the color of darkness itself. He cursed himself. He'd pictured Yami. And in doing so, he'd sent the image of the redhead before him, had projected his fear for the other wolf to sample. And though he couldn't feel him, he knew it as he did that his friends were staring in horror around the table.

Yugi breathed in deeply, then flinched. The blade cut back again. His skin sizzled. Or perhaps it was his blood. He couldn't tell. He drew in a harsh, clogged breath, choking. Then he exhaled between his teeth. He could lash out, hope for the best. But Fuwa was waiting on that. He was also waiting for him to change.

"Aw, look, your gums are bright white."

He bore his teeth, his breath rattling in his chest. "They'll be red when I rip your throat out," he spat. The redhead smirked, then swatted him. Yugi shook it off, snarling low in his throat. He needed to think quickly. Either Yami was going to show up or Fuwa was going to get impatient.

Neither idea was one he wanted to face the consequences of.

"I think you're confused, little boy. But, I've always been curious. Do you lycanthropes _really_ pray to Lupa when you're in times of need? I've always found it funny that only one subspecies prays to one god."

"I'm not very religious," Yugi spat, snapping his jaws again. He twisted and angled his body away from the fork and closer to the edge of his seat. He could move no further, but it would do him well to remain there. If the hunter in front of him got any ideas with the second utensil he could duck away from it at least. He'd keep both his eyes that way. But that was only assuming that he moved faster than Fuwa. And that he didn't already see past his plan.

"How sad. Do you think the other is?"

"You won't find out."

"And why do you say that?"

"Because, Fuwa, if _he_ comes, I am the _last_ thing you're going to have to worry about." His lips pulled back further and his teeth were shimmering where the candlelight touched them. "He'll lay waste to you and the staff. You fucking coward."

"That's supposing he can get into this restaurant in the first place. Didn't you notice it, Yugi? The doors are laced with wolfsbane as well, the handles have the oils on them. It was used to slow you down."

Yugi nearly flinched. He was so stupid. How had he failed to notice? How could he have risked that? And now his friends and Yami…

"What about them?" he demanded angrily. "You'd kill them too? Just for being acquainted with me?"

Fuwa grinned like a shark with a fresh kill. "They must know. They've been your aid to pass for an average human."

He burst out laughing, his guffaws hideous and mocking. "You absolute _moron_! My beta would have killed them! How would I be safe if there were witnesses?" he sneered. Maybe if he ran his tongue along his palm… Was the wolfsbane alone capable of triggering the Change or would it require more? He remembered thrashing about, puking bile and blood.

Could he truly risk that?

His friends would see their deaths before he had changed completely. And, without Yami, he was not sure he could truly direct himself through one on his own. It was always an outside influence to trigger his body into such a response—the full moon, the wolfsbane and silver injection, Yami instructing him how to, helping and guiding him through it…

"Beta?" Fuwa searched his face. "You bit someone and they…survived?"

He grinned at him, eyes flashing. His thoughts were racing even as he snarled, "You're not the brightest crayon in the box, are you, Ryuichi? If I bite someone and they survive, the infection spreads. And that makes them more dangerous than I am."

He wondered if he could signal Jonouchi or Honda somehow. But taking his eyes off of him could have dire consequences. And who was to say he wouldn't realize ahead of time?

"Your hierarchy creates wolves with less and less strength as the line continues. You might be strong, but your beta will be weak."

He wanted to laugh but the pain was becoming a flare signal through his veins. Instinct said to lash out, to try to get the knife out of his hand and run. He wondered what Yami might do, if he would kill before he would flee. It was clear that he was not one to be daunted when it came to death, nor the act of attacking. He was and always would be powerful enough to do what Yugi deemed rather unacceptable.

If he didn't want the entire restaurant to be destroyed and the walls to run red, he would need to get out of there on his own. Otherwise Yami was going to lay absolute _waste_ to them. It was instinctive to him, knowing that the black wolf would do such damage. He had seen him before, in the woods, and he'd thought it unnecessary but now he realized Yami would do it here as well. He'd kill every single person in the building and Yugi might be lucky if he listened when he asked for his friends to be spared.

He could fight his way out. He'd _have_ to.

But how was he supposed to do that _and_ protect the others?

The rest of the staff was in on it. He had smelled the wolfsbane when he'd entered the room. He just hadn't recognized it. Fuwa had kept his focus. He'd been blind to the fact that they had all been there, laughing and smirking and watching them.

One of the women had her hair up in a bun. Her skin was tan, her eyes dark brown. Her face was sharper than he was used to seeing, her expression cold and vicious. But her lips were thin in their small smile.

And the woman beside her was more worrisome to him; she had dark red hair that looked like fire. It was wild, framing a pale face with wide eyes that flickered bright brown like glistening amber. The lashes were long, drawn with kohl to flare outwards like a stripe on either side of the face. When she smiled it was wide, victorious, and her canines looked pronounced and hideous.

She looked, as he blinked and struggled to think straight, like a tiger.

"See something you like?" Fuwa sneered.

Yugi blinked and turned back to him, curling his lip. In the corner of his eye he could see Jonouchi moving. He had grasped one of the other knives, sliding it towards himself slowly as not to attract attention. He was watching Fuwa as closely as the lycanthrope was.

Thank the gods for him and Honda. Both of them knew how to fight, at least. And he doubted any of the staff in question were wolves. They would have most likely died from the exposure to the wolfsbane.

"I was just thinking about how easy it would be to kill you if there weren't so many here."

Yugi was amazed that his bluff came out evenly. Or that his face did not break into a blush. Half of him barked the order that there was no chance of escape without bloodshed. But the other begged for his own innocence to be spared. He hadn't killed someone as a human—

 _Ryota,_ a voice hissed in his ear. _You killed Ryota._

The wolf had pinned him with his teeth at his face, trying for his throat. And Yugi had cut through his jugular with that rock he'd had in his hands. He remembered. And Yami had done the rest. He'd killed Ryuzaki and Haga, even when Yugi screamed for him not to. He'd killed Ryota when he was human and the other was a wolf. He'd…

But Fuwa was _just_ human. He was human and he was killing other people and…

Wouldn't the world be better without him?

But Yugi wasn't a god. He had no right to think that.

And he wasn't allowed to pass judgment like that.

He almost trembled but his body refused him. In its fight or flight, his muscles had all locked. And weakness was an impossibility for him. He couldn't do much more than stare and answer, almost as if instinct ruled him more than logic.

Had Yami ever experienced that?

Yugi supposed he'd have to ask when the black wolf came and attacked because he was taking _so long even thinking of a plan_. At this rate Yami would kill everyone before he came up with anything.

He felt flushed and pathetic for a moment.

The heat billowed through his veins, then fell into a more suitable temperature once more.

But, by the gods did his hand burn. And his fingers were soaked, boiling from the heat of his pooled blood. He was dizzy and his head light. He was almost willing to bite his own hand off to get away from it.

 _I killed Ryota because he nearly killed Yami. I killed_ Bakura _because he almost killed Yami. I can kill to save Jonouchi and Honda and Anzu, right_? Yugi was struggling to breathe, or so it felt. But the intake was easy to Fuwa, who was watching him so closely. To the hunter, the lycanthrope's breaths were steady and his body was all but completely still. _I killed both of them for one person… Yet I can't find it in myself to try to kill a_ hunter _who wants to_ gut _me and save_ three _of my friends…_

He swallowed hard. How was it that was even possible? How could he see one life of a person who was still virtually a stranger as more important than those of his friends?

"I don't know about Jonouchi or Anzu," Honda began in a slightly nervous, but mostly pissed tone, "but I want to know what the fuck is going on right now."

"I don't see the harm in telling them, do you, Yugi? I mean, your beta is going to end up dead when he comes here. And I'm going to kill _you_ —"

"Bite me," he spat. "I'll kill you first."

"I'm very interested in what your coat looks like." Fuwa smirked around the sneer, eyes boring into his haughtily. Yugi nearly shivered with disgust at the way they seemed to flatten like shallow pools. "Why don't you just change? It would be so much easier than making me carve you open in front of them."

And how pathetic would it be to admit that he couldn't change? That he literally had no idea how to do it by himself without coaching? Yugi would rather bite through his own tongue than admit such a thing.

He bore his teeth and snarled low in his throat. "Do you often try to hunt wolves when they're human?"

"They're only human for so long," he snorted disdainfully. His lip curled back further and his eyes darkened drastically. "And when they're not, they're a menace."

"The only menace in this situation—"

"Spare me your attempts to preach your innocence to me, you stupid brat. I know what you've done. You turn on schoolmates and wolves alike."

Yugi blinked. "What?" he said weakly, startled.

"The first death was Miho. Then there was—"

His eyes stretched wide. "I had nothing to _do_ with Miho!" he sputtered, stunned. He moved his hand and barely suppressed a yelp when Fuwa dragged the knife through his flesh closer to his bones.

"I wouldn't suggest moving any more, Yugi. If you do, this knife might go through your bone. And if it hits the marrow, your disease will basically eradicate you trying to get the poison out. We wouldn't want that, now would we?"

"Disease?" Anzu whispered, eyes wide and flickering between them. Yugi mentally squirmed, shame drenching his insides. "What disease?"

"Oh, I nearly forgot. You're a clever boy, Yugi. You actually managed to distract me for a moment there." His smirk was wolfish. His eyes glinted like steel. The silver blade burned his skin even further. "You see, Jonouchi, Honda, Anzu, your dear friend Yugi has been keeping a secret from you his entire life."

Yugi almost spat that it was false. But reality crept on him as well. It burst in his blood and his mind exploded with the concept. If he said he hadn't been infected until recently, he'd give Yami away.

And if he gave Yami away, then what good was he?

The other three were watching him. He could feel it. And he sensed the unease from Jonouchi, the tension and anger which made him clench his hand around the knife in his lap. He familiarized himself with the growing panic and helplessness which came through Honda as he realized that this was the moment he was quite possibly going to lose his childhood best friend if he wasn't careful. He knew Anzu's horror and panic, the stunning reality that perhaps she didn't know Yugi nearly as well as she had always thought she did. Oh gods, and if she only knew the half of it…

"He's a lycanthrope."

Honda blinked, then barked out a laugh. Jonouchi and Anzu both shook their heads, confused. Only the brunet seemed to truly know what it was that the word meant and Yugi supposed that shouldn't have been a surprise. Honda had always enjoyed legends more than the rest of them, especially American and European ones.

"A werewolf? Fuwa, are you drunk?"

Now Yugi snorted loudly and grinned despite himself. Of course Honda would be the first one to ask a question like that.

"Are we in the middle of some kind of role-playing game?" Jonouchi took up the jeer, smirking faintly and shaking his head. "You can't be serious right now."

Anzu studied them for a moment. Werewolves were things of fairytale and legend. But Yugi had begun to look increasingly sick the longer the knife was in his skin. And his face was so much paler than usual. His eyes had grown strange, dark and lost. Even though he appeared outwardly calm, it was there, and she had never heard of someone's skin burning as his had the moment the knife touched him. The smell was still harsh and laden in the air and the undertone of it was riddled with a soft hissing and crackling noise as if someone had put oil in a hot skillet.

Fuwa scowled at them, eyes flashing. "You don't believe me?" he accused angrily, baring his teeth in a sneer. "Well, I suppose it would be hard to believe that someone as weak and spineless as him would be a wolf. And his lack of changing is irritating by all means. But he's only toying with me—Oh, Jonouchi, don't move anymore. You wouldn't want that knife to be the reason Yugi loses his hand, would you?"

The blond stopped short. His eyes widened slightly and his teeth ground together. "Damn it."

"I hunt wolves for a living, you stupid boy. I am used to their savagery. And I know what it takes to push a human towards killing. I wouldn't have killed two years ago. And now…" He smirked and leaned towards Yugi, so close that they were almost sharing the same breath. "Now I'm willing to kill any and every wolf I cross paths with. Human form or not."

The smaller teen snarled softly. The only plan he had in his head would take a lot of maneuvering. He was not even sure he would be capable of it. If Fuwa was right and his reflexes were dulled by the wolfsbane from the door handle, what was to say his strength wasn't as well?

Then again, he had never _tested_ his strength. He did not know what it measured out to be. He swallowed hard, then narrowed his eyes further. He'd have to try. And damn himself if his hand was wrecked from it.

He drew in a deep breath, counting to ten.

"Yugi has never done anything wrong before," Jonouchi protested sharply, a sense of desperation making his voice a little higher than usual. "He wouldn't hurt a fly—"

"Werewolves are all about patience. They will wait until they have the perfect idea of ambush to kill their query. Hunters, on the other hand, must adopt impatience to do so." He smirked as Yugi got to three. "We have to counter them at every chance—"

He slammed his elbow into the table. The wood splintered and shot upwards. The piece of furniture lurched viciously towards him. Jonouchi and Honda both flinched backwards. Anzu yelped. The food slid and spilled forward. Yugi shook his head as he was met with rice to the face.

The small teen jumped to his feet. The knife slid through his fingers like butter. He backed up a step. His breathing was rough now. Fuwa was covered in the Everclear he'd ordered himself when they'd firs t arrived. The food slid from his lap when he stood up. But he was close to the edge. And the candle that trailed the plates caught his hip. His clothes caught fire.

Yugi panted. His hand was bleeding heavily. He could barely move his middle and ring fingers. When he clenched his fist they hardly seemed to exist. They were numb now, tingling faintly.

But it was not a healing tingle. It was one of discomfort. His body could not combat it.

His adrenaline had spiked, however. He could hear everything in a dull monotonous roar, yet pick them all out in detail. Yugi blinked and panted. The smoke was almost more daunting than Fuwa's screams.

His head was spinning. The smoke wasn't the same as the forest fire. It was more gray than black, but the destruction was all the same. He opened and closed his mouth. The flames weren't as mesmerizing. But the way Fuwa scrambled and tried to roll to put it out was.

His entire crotch was on fire. His legs were halfway caught. His face was twisted in pain. His screaming was getting louder. His writhing was horrifying to watch.

Had he truly done that?

Had he truly just caught someone on fire?

He had just meant to distract him.

He hadn't wanted to—

Yugi yelped. Claws dug into his shoulder. He was thrown backwards. The momentum tossed him to the floor. His head pounded. His heart lurched in his throat. He coughed. Then the smell of fire made his body ache. Yugi opened and closed his mouth again. His eyes flashed open.

His shoulder stung violently. He was panting and choking. His head ached. He gasped out in pain. Then he struggled to roll onto his side for a moment. Only when he felt the disturbance in the air did he experience it again.

The adrenaline swept through like a fever.

Yugi scrambled to his feet.

He backed up a step. His teeth were bared. The snarl was almost as loud as the screaming. The fire had spread. It was too hot in there for it to have _just_ been Fuwa's clothing any longer.

The tan-skinned woman was in front of him.

She was wearing some kind of glove on her right hand. And the nails were sharpened spikes of silver. He bristled. No wonder his shoulder hurt. No wonder his adrenaline had crashed for a moment. He panted.

When she stepped forward he found himself shaking. He couldn't tell if it was tension or pain or pure terror. But he jumped back as she slashed at him. She was faster than he had expected, almost cat-like. When she came at him again, he nearly fell. He wasn't used to fighting as it was.

But she was so terribly _capable_.

The woman leaped at him. Yugi pivoted. They hit the ground hard. His shoulder slammed into the ground. The tile stank of alcohol and something harsher, heavier, with a sharper touch. He couldn't focus. She landed on him. He kicked outwards. She was tossed back a few feet.

He couldn't think straight. The smell burned his nose. The smoke made his head spin. Something was crackling and threatening to burst. The heat was swelling in the restaurant. It felt as if he had stepped into a water heater.

She took only a second to recover. She was on her feet when he was. Yugi braced himself. If she came again, he could toss her back over himself. He could use the momentum to toss her _away_.

The problem was that getting up and turning around could take time. Especially if she used those claws on him again somehow in the meantime. He wasn't even sure he could manage it with his right hand as it was…

He risked a glance at it. The flesh looked as if were barely connected. He thought of an alien's long fingers…

He'd need stitches. He'd need...

 _To pay attention_! the more panicked part of his mind screamed. He snapped to awareness again. But the woman with the strange brown eyes was at her side. She placed a single hand on her shoulder. When the other looked at her, there was a simple shake of her head. They stared at each other for several long seconds. Then they turned almost as one and began to leave him there. When they got several feet away he realized he could not see straight anymore.

The smoke was too thick. He could not see anything within ten feet of himself. And the smell was acrid. His heart pounded in his throat. His pulse was flaring. He shook.

Something came at him from the side. He could barely breathe. They crashed into the ground. He almost screamed. His shoulder was _burning_. His hand was _breaking and splintering_. His body nearly writhed. But he held still. For, in front of his eye, was a single silver point. He couldn't breathe.

"You stupid bastard."

Yugi couldn't answer him. The knife was still colored by his blood. It threatened to drip down. If it dropped into his eye…

He breathed in shakily. Was it over then?

Yugi bore his teeth. His hands could barely restrain Fuwa's attempt to stab. Their arms were shaking. His adrenaline was fading. There was too much blood loss. There was too much pain. There was too much smoke. There was too much _wolfsbane and silver_. How had he never noticed? He felt sick.

He had sensed it in the food. How had he not known it was on the handle? How had he not known the utensils were silver? How had he not realized that the restaurant _had_ to be a hunter's paradise if _two_ of them had wanted to lure him there?

Yami would have known. And wasn't that just worse?

Yami would have known the _moment_ he even got within feet of the building.

He wasn't as trusting as Yugi. And he thought more about the darkness of the world than anything else. He was just as he had told him, a pessimistic creature by habit, and a vicious killer when occasion called for it. When it was kill or be killed, he was the one who turned situations on their heads.

And now, he was going to be alone again.

Because Yugi did not think he could hold Fuwa off any longer…

Something cracked. Yugi froze in place. His struggles seized. Pain jarred him. But it was not another stab wound. The small teen was frozen. His heart was the only thing he could feel.

It took him a long moment. Everything that had faded away came to him in a roar. The sound burst against his drums. The air crackled noisily. The pain enveloped him hideously. The smoke choked through him.

The pain was emphasized again. His body jerked. Something weighed him down. Yugi couldn't think straight. He blinked, tried to pull himself back. Then he nearly wailed. Nothing seemed to be working…

"Come on, bud."

His head snapped around, eyes wide.

 _Jonouchi_?

The blond was crouched next to him, breathing hard. He had soot smeared along his left cheek and he looked sick. He had puked, Yugi realized. His mouth was flecked with it. The smaller teen reached pathetically for him, struggling to get his arms out from under whatever it was.

Jonouchi grunted with his exhaustion, gripping his arms and pulling. He slid and the weight was kicked away when the blond flexed his long leg. Yugi glanced down and immediately wished he hadn't.

Fuwa was laying facedown on the floor. A pool of blood came from the side of his head. A shattered plate lay scattered around him.

The shattering noise…

The dead weight…

 _Was_ he dead?

Yugi didn't ask. Jonouchi had pulled him to his feet. He was tugging him along by his arm. The small teen choked on a breath. Then he nearly groaned. What had happened to catch the entire building on fire? He hadn't planned for that…

He hadn't even hoped such a thing could…

"Thank you…" He coughed loudly, then closed his eyes tightly. His knees gave out for a second and he stumbled so hard he brought Jonouchi down next to him. He groaned, insides writhing, and then leaned forward further. His back arched and he puked. The smoke was so heavy and dense he couldn't see even those few inches from his face through the darkness of it.

The blond cursed lightly, then reached over to grab him.

Yugi cursed at him, but it was so low that he thought he was mumbling. He was coughing when they finally got outside. He could hear sirens somewhere in the background, a couple of streets away at the most.

"Are you okay?" Anzu demanded, moving to their side. Jonouchi had to kneel to put him down without jostling him. Yugi groaned, rolled onto his side, and puked again. It was flecked black.

He blinked. How long had he been in there?

Had he inhaled so much soot? Or was his body working in overtime to get rid of one issue before it grew into a million more?

He halted and blinked, a noise registering in his ears. What was that…?

Yugi sat up and looked immediately around himself. He recognized the rhythm of it. But he didn't see the owner yet. Where was he? He had sensed him before. He had only encountered a split second where he had sensed him, felt him as if he were a blanket or a breeze of air. The small teen hesitated and looked around again.

Was he…?

Yugi blinked, then angled his head upwards.

There he was.

He was a few yards away, among some of the higher branches. He was crouched among the large trunks of them, hands splayed expertly along their surfaces. His eyes were glowing, almost cat-like in the way they glittered against the darkness. His thin frame was bunched along the branch and he almost seemed to be nonexistent there. If Yugi had not been looking for him, he would never have noticed him. He was in all black clothes and looked almost as if he were nothing but a shadow, thin and draped over the wood.

He shivered, then looked away. When he lowered his head again, his mouth opened wide to vomit once more. He was shaking and groaning when he finally noticed his friends watching him.

He moved his hand, then whimpered low in his throat. A glance at it showed that the skin was swollen, blistered hideously, and the edges of it were bright red and pink. He shivered and his body began to shudder painfully.

"I'm sorry," he moaned, his voice pathetic and small. "I didn't know he would…"

Yami remained crouched, tense. His stomach was burning. His muscles were taut and stretched. His nails were sunk in the bark. His eyes were painful from the flames. He could feel his blood in his body as if it were touching him. His head was spinning yet focused on only his charge. The red-eyed lycanthrope leaned forward, then slightly away again. His gaze narrowed, his lashes doing well to shield his eyes from much of the glare. But the sirens made his heart beat faster. He bore his teeth, gritting them behind his lips.

His adrenaline kept his entire body frozen. And his heart was in his ears. His stomach churned and ached. He nearly snarled in distress. But he kept his eyes on Yugi, who looked miserable and pathetic in the way he crouched there. He seemed almost as if he might puke again at any moment.

The fear was evident in his expression, however. He could see it. He was confused, unsure of what he was doing. He wasn't sure about if his body was trying to force the Change or why his vomit was flecked with soot.

He would have to explain that later.

Yami pressed his forehead against the branch in front of him. His eyes sharpened and flickered away. He bore his teeth.

"I'm so sorry."

Jonouchi shook his head. All three of them were watching, staring at Yugi blankly. There wasn't much that they could say or do at this rate. He looked like he was too miserable to talk and answer questions. And he himself just wanted to lie down. It was insane. Fuwa had thought Yugi was a _werewolf_. And the sad thing was that Yugi had not denied the allegations by any means. In fact, he'd even encouraged them.

If Fuwa hadn't stabbed him, the blond really _might_ have believed they were performing some kind of weird role-playing skit. Yugi could have been enrolled in some multi-player game. He did love any game he could get his hands on. He was in love with games—board, video, computer.

He was almost fanatical about them.

And his dad worked overseas for a gaming company. Oftentimes Yugi got his hands on new releases long before they were announced to the public. He was used as one of the audience testers, telling how much he liked or disliked the game mechanics, the play. He always gave Jonouchi and Honda the chance to play them, then sent them back with an essay about the pros and cons of game play and various elements.

So perhaps role-play would not have been too farfetched for the small teen.

But then Fuwa had stabbed him…

The redhead had literally fucking _stabbed_ Yugi in the hand.

He shot a helpless glance towards both Honda and Anzu but the two of them seemed just as confused and lost as he was. Only the brunet would meet his eyes and that was too fleeting for him to get a read on his face.

"Yugi…"

The small blue-violet-eyed teen didn't answer at first. He just continued staring upwards at the trees, but when Jonouchi looked he couldn't see anything. There was a red glare from the flames but he knew that couldn't be what he was so focused on. He seemed to be looking at something that he couldn't see.

When he turned back his eyes were on him. His gaze was shaky, pupils vibrating in his irises. He was shaking hideously now, more so than even before. The tilt of his head was fearful, terrified, and his breathing labored.

Jonouchi swallowed hard.

"Are…are you…o-okay?"

Yugi shook his head in a slow, uneven, jerky movement. His stomach tightened and knotted painfully, seizing. He couldn't breathe for a moment. He turned away, swallowing thickly, and his eyes flickered back again. Yami was still watching him. His eyes glittered with the fire's reflection. The smooth planes of his face were all but invisible. Yugi realized without much thought that his friends were unable to see him.

It was the wolf that recognized him even in the dark. Because his human half was too shocked to care for his presence there. And Yugi could sense a huge, great, terrible divide between the two halves of his own mind.

And that was almost more terrifying than the very fact that he'd just been attacked…

Yugi forced himself to stumble to his feet, the animalistic half of his instincts whispering for his retreat. His lungs wheezed painfully. "I…I have to get out of here," he croaked. His eyes widened further and flickered towards Yami once more, stomach dropping again. His heart pounded. "I…I can't stay here…"

"Huh?" Honda objected in surprise, startling Yugi. The small teen spun on him, shaking violently. His hand was bleeding profusely again and the sleeve of his jacket was completely drenched. "You can't just leave! The paramedics and the police are here!"

"I can't stay—" He opened and closed his mouth, then choked on another breath. "They'll see that I'm not… And then they'll… Oh gods…"

"Yug, buddy, you're not making any sense…" Jonouchi tried.

The smaller teen reached up and grasped tightly at his hair. When he yanked, the streak of blood across his bangs was black and sticky. His fingers were twitching where he'd been stabbed and the blood was a fresh and somehow crusted mass of oil upon his skin.

"I can't… I can't go to the hospital." He was panting and Anzu thought she saw a strand of drool dripping from the corner of his mouth. When he spoke again, the inside of his mouth looked pale, whitened like fresh snow. Her heart landed in her throat. Fuwa had said that his gums had turned white… "They'll lock me up. They'll…"

"Lock you up?"

Yugi shook his head rapidly. The sirens were too loud. They were _so close_ now. He turned towards Yami, blinking. He almost wanted to beg his help but there was nothing the other could do for him. And he could see the way his body was so tense what little restraint he possessed might shatter if he moved the wrong way. The red-eyed lycanthrope looked as if he might be moved to kill before he would to listen.

He glanced over his shoulder. The entire building was in flames. The light was blinding. The noise was a deafening roar. His body trembled again. He turned on his heel. When he took a step forward, he nearly fell.

"Yugi, you can't just—"

He spun on her, teeth bared, one eye glittering against the darkness and the other reflecting the flames at her. His shoulders had risen, his fingers were twitching, and his legs had lost their shakiness for that single second. He looked as if he might lunge at her, snap his teeth.

She was frozen, too stunned to breathe, and both Honda and Jonouchi gaped.

"I'll…explain tomorrow," he finally spat out, glancing at the sound of a car door opening.

The small teen stiffened, then turned and fled.

It took him a solid ten minutes to slow down again.

The adrenaline had faded and now the rush of pain sent him staggering. When he fell, he could still hear them. Jonouchi, Honda and Anzu had begun telling the same story. They had been walking nearby, heading to one of the parks. They had seen the first few flames and called the cops. They had no idea what had happened beyond that. When their appearances were brought up, they said similarly that they had gone in to check on anyone but had not seen or heard anything.

He crouched and took a seat next to a large tree trunk. He struggled for his breath and raised his knees to put his head against them. He was dizzy and his stomach hurt. His heart felt constricted and his shoulder and hand were on fire again. He couldn't think straight. Which way was home?

The branch above his head dipped.

Yugi froze. His head snapped up.

Yami was crouched above him still. His long fingers were sinewy with tension. His sharp eyes were vibrant with power. His body was keen with strength.

At first Yugi almost did not recognize him. Yami looked more wolf than human, even in his golden-bronze skin. His sneakers hugged the bark to keep his balance. His face was sharp and dangerous. His teeth were like jagged glaciers when he opened his mouth for a moment.

"Yami."

The taller wolf blinked, watching him. His long lashes made his eyes look darker, hollow and angry. His head tilted, lips pulled back furiously. Very slowly he moved the length of the branch, getting to his feet fully. When he moved to the edge and the twigs began to seemingly splinter beneath his weight, the red-eyed wolf leaped.

He landed easily in front of him. Yugi expected him to say something. Maybe he would point out how foolish he was. But the other boy moved only closer to his side. The seconds passed as he hovered there. Then he slowly took a seat beside him, eyes glowing against the gloom of the woodsy shadows.

"I… I…"

Yami shook his head slowly. His hand reached out to touch his. He trembled, threatening to snatch it away from him. But his grip was light, gentle, and his heart skipped at the gossamer sensation of it. He trembled again. The other wolf moved closer until their hips touched. Then he drew his hand lightly, gently into his.

His palms were soft and his fingers were incredibly warm. Yugi almost wanted to press against him until he was completely encompassed by him. He trembled, eyes widening. Yami ignored it, looking his hand over for a moment. Then he raised it to his mouth.

The smaller teen was shaking. He almost wanted to snatch it away from him again. Was he going to say it was irreparable? What if he told him it would never heal? Shame swept through him. What if he was the first wolf without a limb? What if he had to bite it off to keep some kind of infection from coming through? What if the wolfsbane and the silver were destroying him from the outside _and_ inside?

Yami didn't glance at him. Instead he pulled his palm closer and tipped his head towards it. When his mouth opened, Yugi feared it would be teeth to touch his flesh. Instead it was his tongue, soft and gentle, as it brushed against his skin. But the smell of burnt flesh came to him again. The small teen cringed, trying to pull his hand away.

His fingers clenched around his wrist immediately. His tongue was soft and soothing. But the burning smell was coming tenfold. Yugi squirmed but he was exhausted. He couldn't truly find the strength to pull away. He trembled again. Yami continued licking. His skin tingled faintly.

But he was not sure it was soothing so much as slightly painful. It seemed a parody to him that Yami was trying so hard and he was unsure of the benefits of it.

"I-it hurts…"

Yami glanced at him sideways. "I know." His voice sounded slightly muffled. Yugi almost thought of cotton balls stuffed in someone's mouth. He blinked, confused, and furrowed his brows at the taller teen. But he was already back to licking the wound again. He glanced at it.

Was it still bleeding as badly? He couldn't tell from the position. Yami was cupping it too closely for him to see it properly.

He whimpered. And his mind flashed with a thought. He struggled, attempting to snatch his hand away again. "Wolfsbane," he managed to whine, trying again to pull away. His heart was in his throat once more. He squirmed.

Yami held his wrist a little more tightly. Then he cupped his hand more comfortably, grip firm and restraining. "I know."

Yugi faltered. He almost couldn't understand what he was saying. It sounded almost as if he were speaking around a huge mouthful of food. Or with his face pressed against a pillow. He blinked and furrowed his brows again. What was wrong with him?

Finally Yami lowered his hand away. The skin was tingling, but there was an undercurrent of burn. Yugi swallowed hard. When he looked at it, the edges of the wound had closed. The inside of his palm was still covered in dark red but the exit wound was more or less lost upon fresh muscle growth. The other side was still bleeding, however, towards the bottom and the middle.

"I can't do much more."

Yugi blinked, then looked at him in confusion. His stomach seized painfully when he noticed his face. His nose was wrinkled in pain, his eyes darker than usual with an unidentifiable ache. His brows were furrowed faintly. He looked almost…sick in all actuality.

"W-what's wrong?" he demanded, eyes widening drastically. He could feel the shame coming on in waves. What if he'd done something and Yami was going to end up dying from it? What if he was growing sick as the seconds passed?

What if he was _sick and dying right in front of him_?

What if he was suffering the same thing Yugi was?

Yami paused for a moment, then opened his mouth wide. His gums were pale. But his tongue was larger than usual, swollen. He could see along the surface of it that it was coated in blisters. In the dark they were almost black, enlarged to the point that he flinched upon seeing them.

"Oh my gods!"

Yami rolled his eyes. "It's not that bad!" he huffed, shaking his head. He moved to drop his hands into his lap and stretched his legs out in front of him. Casually he leaned his head back against the trunk behind them.

"How did that even…?" He hadn't spoken when he had gotten there. And he hadn't bothered to say anything when he was resting beside him moments before. But Yugi knew it wasn't something he had come to the restaurant afflicted with. Stomach knotted, the small teen looked at his hand and then at the other boy. The silver and wolfsbane… It had burned his tongue…

"Did you know that would happen?"

"Any part of a wolf's flesh that touches silver tends to burn, so yes." He looked at him from the corner of his eye and studied him for a long moment. "I was well aware."

Yugi trembled again. The police were escorting his friends back to their homes. Or perhaps they were going to end up at the station. He didn't know. He had only heard something about the car. He ran a hand through his hair. Eventually one of them was going to start out into the woods looking for clues or something like that.

He didn't want to be there when they did.

"Are you okay to walk?"

Yugi blinked and his heart ached at the shallow, stuffy quality of his voice. He swallowed hard and then moved to stretch his legs towards himself. "I don't know," he finally admitted. "I…I think so, but I'm so tired… Maybe I should try to get into one of the trees…"

He angled his head back. If he was high enough up, they wouldn't know he was there, winter or not. He shifted his weight and studied the branches for a long minute.

"No, I'll assist you," Yami stated calmly. "You would fall from the tree with all of your trembling. Your balance is shot as well. Anyone who might have escaped that fire would easily find you."

Yugi looked at him, frozen. "D-do you think someone…?"

"If you mean to ask me about Fuwa, I do not think he was left in there, no. I did not see anyone go back to grab him, but I was not completely focused on them." He got to his feet, tilting his head, and then stretched his hand out. "It's going to be a long walk. You'll have to pace yourself."

Yugi swallowed hard. "You aren't going to…leave me… Right?"

He could have covered his face in shame. He hadn't even meant to say the words. But they had come out regardless. And the tone was weak and pitiful. The small teen wasn't surprised that it stopped Yami in his tracks. His very movements ceased and his eyes grew as wide as saucers for a split second. He looked at him and his gaze was soft and gentle, possibly a mirror of the way he was usually considered with.

"No, Yugi, I won't leave you."

But the way he said it seemed almost as if it were a promise meant to last a lifetime.

* * *

The screen seemed almost to flash more aggressively than ever each time Yami found it in himself to close his eyes again. Yugi was curled into a ball beside him, fast asleep, tucked tightly beneath the blankets with his back pressed against Yami's as if he were seeking comfort even in his dreamless state. And Yami knew it was a dreamless slumber only because of the way Yugi would twitch and breathe harder and then sweat and pant, choking. He would whisper in his ear, telling him to relax, and it would achieve this goal but not before Yugi would begin to tremble and shake harder than ever.

And then he would fall into a deeper state of unconsciousness, the scent of his fever heavy in the air. Yami could not breathe even once within the small room without that smell threatening to suffocate him.

He hated it.

But perhaps he hated more than that the way the screen flashed so much in front of him now. It was late, perhaps three in the morning if Yami could trust his own tightly-wound internal clock. And the way the lights flashed made his head spin with frustration. He'd muted it when Yugi had expressed distress in his sleep, breathing harder, whenever a voice came through the speakers. But he had put it on in order to help himself cope with the task of falling asleep as well.

He should have been paying more attention.

He should have tried to help him beforehand.

He should have listened to him when he'd expressed his concerns.

He shouldn't have wallowed in his own misery as he had.

Yami drew in a deep breath, holding it in his lungs. That suffocating smell, thick and drenching, seemed to swell and knot within his body. He exhaled slowly, eyes darkening as the television flashed once more. His brows drew forward, knitting together, as a news reporter began to speak, a broadcast that he had not realized could cut through the failing comedy that had played formerly.

Beneath the image was a rolling bar of information, the words _New Bonnokazi restaurant caught on fire by arsonists_. The last word translated slowly in his brain and his stomach dropped as he considered them. The police already suspected it was more than just simply an accident of some kind to cause the restaurant to catch on fire?

If that were true, did that mean that Yugi's friends had potentially said something they should not have? Was it possible that they had pointed the finger towards the smaller boy without even truly realizing it?

He glanced over his shoulder as Yugi quaked in his sleep. When he reached over in the dark, fumbling to rub his flank, the smaller teen shook harder. For a moment he thought to retract his hand. But then, slowly, as if he had somehow summoned such a reaction, Yugi clenched his hands around Yami's.

His hand was held there, beneath the blankets, in front of Yugi's belly. He could feel the shuddering flesh when the small teen trembled, but the movements had lessened the longer he held his hand there. And Yami shivered at the thought, but his eyes had fallen back on the screen.

The scrolling text had been blocked over.

 _Subtitles_. The word was a foreign one, but the concept was simple as the reporter's mouth continued to move and the words began to change in response to such a thing. He tilted his head, considering, and the pillow felt oddly damp beneath his skin. Was he sweating as well?

Or was Yugi so terribly off that he had soaked the pillow?

Yami shivered and cast an uneasy glance over his shoulder.

If Yugi did not feel better in the morning…

He was not sure what he was meant to do to help him beyond this. The most he could think to do was bleed him. He could potentially push the silver and wolfsbane out by draining his blood into the tub or the sink. But he'd risk killing him if he could not truly heal from it.

And when Yugi came back to life, he'd be feral and angry. He'd kill him in turn…

The only other option he knew of was to force Yugi into the Change and then bite him again, perhaps try to push the silver and wolfsbane out using the lycanthropy itself in a fresh strain. But the gods only knew if such a method truly worked…

 _The police are unsure of who might have caused this establishment to burn. But it is certain that they have connected this incident to the fire which claimed the forest days prior._

Yami stiffened as he read these words, eyes widening drastically. They thought the two events were connected? They had assumed the restaurant to be caught on fire by the same people who had burned the trees to smoke them out? His stomach dropped and his mouth grew dry. There was absolutely no way.

Espa and Panik were members of the organization running the experiments. He had crossed paths with them numerous times. He had been poked at and prodded more times than he could count at their whims. He had lashed out and gotten shocked in turn more than once, though Ryou had been merciful in his conditioning.

He'd told them to knock it off, to stop pestering him. He'd chased them off.

And, in turn, Yami had left him in the woods to be killed and then abandoned his body to rot in the snow.

No doubt Espa and Panik had not removed it for a proper burial. The most they would have done was likely drag his corpse out of the trees so as to avoid implications of a murder happening once more. But then…

To set the incident up as a murder scene that was potentially being desecrated and the murderers panicking to cover their tracks could help them immensely. They were smart. He knew that. They were the number one hunters to capture the wolves in that damn lab…

 _Both the forest fire and the restaurant's arson happened within days of each other, so it is only logical that they would be linked in such a way. But the proof is in the methods and their purposes._

Yami squeezed his eyes shut, a sense of understanding dawning on him now.

They had left his body there.

When he opened his eyes again, there was a vague picture of the building behind her. She was gesturing and the words beneath were coming faster. His lycanthropy kept with them, however, allowing him a speedy read that did nothing to strain his concentration in the slightest.

 _The arsonists left vital clues as to their involvement in both crimes. At the scene of the forest fire, a brand of American gasoline was used to light the trees on fire. And similar traces have been found here in the rubble of the restaurant. The entire floor and walls were drenched in it prior and subsequent to the fire being started._

 _And a number of bodies have been found in both areas._

 _The forest fire harbored several human corpses as well as animal._

 _This one claimed only human victims. But the damage has been far more extensive. No one has more details on this subject beyond the police, who are now officially considering both cases as a homicidal attack of some kind._

 _In the wake of the many murders within Domino on top of such suspicious actions, the curfew is being advanced to an hour earlier than formerly. All residents are urged to be home by or before_ _six o'clock_ _each night._

They had not listed names. Yami furrowed his brows. Were the bodies too immensely charred to be identified? Or was it for public appeal that they did not name them? Had the police requested such discretion?

He supposed it did not matter.

Had Fuwa been hired to capture Yugi, it would be clear to them soon enough that Atem had put an end to him. In the meantime, however, Yami simply had to make sure that Yugi was not seen in his weakened state. The gods forbid such a thing should happen…

But it was a curious situation. Anzu, Jonouchi and Honda had all been there. He had seen them. He had _heard_ them relaying their fabricated story to the police. Jonouchi had led them to say that they had been going to get some food from the Bonnokazi restaurant but the building had been on fire. Because of this Anzu had been told to call the police while Jonouchi and Honda went in to check on anyone who was in there.

Anzu had not called the police because she'd followed them in instead. But they hadn't found anyone and had run back out almost immediately after. Because of this none of them knew the circumstances of how it happened or what caused it.

But clearly they had been taken to the station for their interviews, yes? Even Yami understood such a concept after having watched a few crime movies on television. He had seen the process, even if it was most likely exaggerated for entertainment purposes. And he was sure the fact that Anzu was the daughter of the detective on the case made a very big difference.

Regardless, however, he had to question whether anything they had said might have implicated Yugi in any fashion. If that was the case, he'd have to find some way to figure out an escape route should things blow up further. But the fact that they had not mentioned names, nor even thought to include the fact that the three teens had been there in the first place made him nervous.

Was it meant to be hidden from public eye?

Or was it going to be flaunted later?

Yami shivered and looked at Yugi again. The small teen was clutching his hand tightly, his blunter nails digging into the side of his palm. When he considered his face, the entirety of it was soaked with sweat. He could smell the perspiration now that he was facing him, beneath all of that hideous smothering feverish scent.

He should have been paying more attention.

 **Okay, so the gasoline thing goes like this. When you clean gasoline up, most of the time the particles still left can still catch on fire if not cleaned up properly. But, the restaurant was going to be caught on fire regardless, in order to get rid of the bodies as otherwise it might be a hassle. So when Yugi catches Fuwa on fire, it all kind of goes from there. So Yugi can just BARELY smell the gasoline on the tiles because it's been "cleaned" or at least soaked up. Because of this, Yugi has a hard time detecting it in the first place, though his state of mind didn't help at all.**

 **Anyways, point being, the place was highly flammable (although it took longer because of the "clean up" of gasoline) and Yugi isn't the only one who caught a couple of things on fire (the workers and his friends started to further the damage, which is mentioned more in the next chapter).**

 **The broadcast mentions there being bodies. In the next chapter, Honda says otherwise. There's a reason for this, I promise. You'll see in a later chapter, but it DOES come up. I'm debating how it will happen, but most likely Anzu will explain it to Yugi when he gets some alone time with her later.**


	38. Speed

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day**

 **Chapter Warnings: Puzzleshipping, COPIOUS Amounts of Blood/Bloodshed, Slight State of Delirium, Somewhat Improper Wound Care, Naked Yugi, Innuendo, Suggestive Situation, Yami Washing Yugi's Hair, Bathing, Innuendos, Awkward One-Sided Sexual Tension, Mentions of Slightly Altered Mythology, Kidnapping, Implied Character Death, Yami Being Somewhat Badass, Character Deaths**

 **Okay, so when Yami says "I allow others to masquerade in my place", you can apply it to several instances. He lets Yugi play at being the alpha between them while they're in the pack. He let Yugi endanger himself in the woods when Espa and Panik were chasing them. He's letting Yugi come up with stories to tell his mom with fabrications about who he is and how much of a friend he is to Yugi. You can apply it to any of those instances. But he has a few more secrets that come out as the story goes along and Yugi is technically not the only one doing similar things in this aspect.**

 **Um, okay, so the Ragnarok myth. I get the gist of it—the world begins to end, Fenrir is released, he kills Odin, Thor (?) kills him, and Hati and Skoll devour the moon and the sun. As for WHY Fenrir was trapped like he was, from what I could gather of the reading I did back while writing the chapter, it was because they were afraid he would turn into a monster. He would turn into the monster that he did in Ragnarok when he killed Odin.**

 **The shape-shifter thing will come up later in another chapter, along with the name for the character in question. A certain character knows it and it comes up later when another certain character confronts them about it rather happily.**

 **Okay, so, gray wolves get to at least three feet tall at the most. Dire wolves only got to two feet and perhaps a little taller by a couple of inches. If my notes are still current, Yami stands at three feet tall, with longer legs, stronger muscles, and thicker fur. Anyways, so he stands at three feet and the shape-shifter is only a couple of inches taller than him. On their hind legs, Yami is about 6.6 feet on his back legs; the shape-shifter is about seven.**

 **Hi: First off, hello~ (Loved the choice of guest name) Thank you so much for that! I'm so glad to hear that the style for that scene worked out so well!**

Chapter XXXVIII: Speed

 _Work Log Entry XXXVIII: November, 2002_

 _November 20_

 _The Pure-Blood's ability to kill so effortlessly is something highly coveted by the boss._

 _I fear for both their sanity._

 _November 22_

 _I cannot decide whether this beast A.T.E.M. is the monster or if it is our boss. Either way, they both reek of death._

He groaned. The sunlight coming through the window was unusually bright. His head throbbed. His mouth felt cottony, his tongue glued to the roof of it. His shoulder throbbed again. Yugi ducked his chin to touch his chest. He drew his legs closer to his stomach. The movement made him brush against something warm and soft. He blinked and opened his eyes. Then he flinched and shivered.

Yami was awake and staring at him, expression somewhat frustrated.

He'd been shaking and groaning all throughout the night, Yugi remembered. His face burned as he looked at the other boy. He'd woken the taller teen on more than one more occasion. And it wasn't that which had eventually made Yami snarl at him in anger. It was the sharp kick to his gut he'd given him by accident when he'd rolled over. He'd been sweating on and off and feverish since before they'd even gotten home.

That hadn't changed. His face was drenched. Yugi reached up to rub at his cheeks and forehead. Then he moved to sit up. Yami was faster than him, however. In an instant he was upright beside him. His hand cupped his lower shoulders and the other helped to guide him gently by his upper arm. Yugi trembled and the sheets stuck to his skin.

He panted and his eyes stung.

The other wolf grimaced. He reached out and wiped at his eyes with the hand that had been holding his shoulder. Then he moved to wipe at the sweat on his forehead and along his temple.

Yami looked pained and exhausted, older than Yugi had ever seen him. It hurt him to witness such a change in the other boy. He was so full of life and passion that the sight of his face now made the smaller teen want to puke.

Instead he leaned forward. His forehead fell to nestle against Yami's shoulder. The hand on his arm shifted to his ribcage. The other traced a path along his spine gently. His touch was gossamer where he let his fingers wander. But he held him firmly, muscle bound beneath soft skin.

Yugi trembled again. "What the hell is going on with me?" he croaked, voice hoarse and scratchy. The noise of it made his ears ring. He flinched and whined low in his throat. The movement shifted his head a little further into the taller lycanthrope.

His temple was against the column of his throat. His skin was nice and cool against his sweaty body. But it was the soft rhythm of his heart which helped to calm him further.

Yami cringed faintly and moved to lay his chin on his head. Yugi's scalp was soaked, his hair slick with grease.

He had expected as much. What he had not expected was the billowing heat that scorched him more potently than it had throughout the night. He was so feverish. What was he meant to do to lower his body temperature? Should he open the window? If the cold air came in…?

But Yugi would begin to tremble again…

Yami was out of his element. When he himself had been hit with silver and it'd entered his bloodstream, he'd been delirious. It had been a full day of disoriented and listless wandering. It had been that which had led him to the pack. The smell of blood after days of being wracked with fever and chill had rendered him stupid. He'd foolishly gone for the first opportunity of food. And he'd regretted it ever since.

But he hadn't been human. And he'd mostly tried to sleep it off. Yugi, in contrast, had moaned and struggled to get comfortable when he slept. But then, could it be the blankets? Yami himself had been using small dens that had been abandoned beforehand. He had not had proper cover like the blanket offered.

He nearly whined in distress. He had no proper foot to stand on. Being more attune to his wolf body than his human one would not help him now. This entire situation puzzled him.

"Your body is trying to destroy the damaged cells in your blood. Since you were touched by wolfsbane and then stabbed with silver, your body is struggling." Yami opened and closed his mouth, considering further explanation, but his tongue was still raw and sore. It did nothing to make him feel good about all that had happened. He touched it to the roof of his mouth, fought away a flinch, and nearly snarled when a blister popped. He hated when he burned his tongue. It didn't happen often but having experienced it once was quite enough for him. "You should perhaps stay home today…"

"I can't," Yugi croaked. "I have to… I need to at least let my friends know I'm alive. I can explain a little to them, and…"

"Your friends knowing the truth would be justification for exhausting yourself further?" Yami scoffed, voice bleeding with absolute scorn. "You cannot tell me you value yourself so little and them so much."

Yugi moved to rub his forehead against the collar of his shirt. The tank top was surprisingly soft to the touch. He could have melted into it. And Yami was so cool compared to the fire in his blood…

"I need to at least _try_ , Yami," he pled in a weak voice. He felt if he tried to move, however, he'd drop on his face. He tried to grip at his companion. His right hand burned and his fingers ached. Immediately his hand flared and raced with fire. Layer upon layer of heat swept over his skin.

Yami turned his head to look at it, lifting it a bit so that his chin no longer rested on his oily hair. He stroked at his back self-consciously, unsure of what more he was meant to do. As long as he was comfortable in that position, Yami would stay in it for him.

But Yugi's hand was bleeding hideously. He could smell the fever in it, the infection like ionized atmosphere. He wrinkled his nose. It smelled of bitter pus and dead flesh. The blood was slowly but surely spreading upwards and outwards through the layers of gauze he'd used to wrap it last night.

Yami's heart trembled in his chest.

"You need rest." He stared as the cotton began to turn red, at first a droplet of discoloration and then a rapid churning river of bright crimson. His head swam for a moment. He shook it off viciously. "Your hand is going to need attention. You'll need to wash it…"

Yugi wanted to plead with him that it was fine.

But in the corner of his eye he saw it too.

The bandage was soaked.

And his fingers were numbed from the heat.

Or perhaps he had simply lost sensation in them. He couldn't tell anymore. Exhausted, he mumbled, "Yeah, I know…"

Neither of them mentioned that it would be easier for Yami to do for him.

Neither of them mentioned that Yami didn't know _how_ to do it.

Neither of them mentioned that Yugi was too delirious and feverish to instruct him properly.

"Don't you ever get tired of getting hurt?" the smaller teen whispered in a low voice. Yami couldn't tell if he was talking to his hand—and expected an answer—or if he meant to ask him. It was only when he raised his head, looked at him, and continued with, "I do" that he realized he had directed it towards him.

He bit his lip. "I get hurt a lot," he answered quietly, shifting to help him regain some of his balance. Even on the bed he seemed so _flimsy_. "It does get rather tiresome."

Yugi nodded, brows furrowed and eyes glazed with pain. "It does." He trembled, his entire body seemingly becoming boneless for a split second. He gasped for breath, then groaned again. His wounded hand was held out as if to keep him from colliding into the wall like someone searching blindly in the dark. "Maybe I should…have them come meet me here…b-before school. Then I can just…come back inside…"

Yami almost reached out to stroke his hair. Instead he moved his blond forelock aside, wiped away some sweat with his palm, and struggled not to whine in mounting distress. Yugi looked so small and broken, like a discarded toy of some kind or a splintered bone. He wanted to pull him closer, hold him in his arms, and just keep him there. Maybe then he could protect him. And things like this run-in with Fuwa would never happen…

The small teen slid away from him. His movements were slow but calculated. His pace was sluggish and his hands were held out to catch himself. He used only his knees in their kneeling position to draw himself forward. Yami immediately moved to get to his feet, stepping back only once, and hurried to the other side of the bed.

Yugi was just getting there when he reached out again. The small teen stuck his tongue out and curled it along the corner of his lip. His eyes were glazed but determined, staring at the carpet. His arms were steady but his hands were shaking. He drew in a deep breath through his mouth.

His exhale was sour. Yami could smell the infection in every part of him. And the fever was vicious where it lashed at his skin. He was about to suffer through a set of chills, however. He could sense it. As he had all throughout the night, the red-eyed lycanthrope recognized the abrupt spike in his temperature, burning until it could no longer, right before it would shatter and fall. Yugi would lose his balance…

He caught him by his hips when he nearly tumbled. The balance was awkward. Yami was bent at the waist, hissing with displeasure. Yugi's arm shot across the bridge of his nose. His shoulder was crushing his throat. His breathing was heavy and foul. His trembling nearly knocked him off his feet. His heart was hammering inches from his face. Yugi snickered and then gasped for breath.

"We're quite the pair," he commented. Yami moved to grip him more firmly. He slipped beneath his arm and draped the limb over his shoulders. The other hand gripped lightly at his waist. His long fingers awkwardly touched the hem of his pajama pants.

"Why do you say that?" the red-eyed boy asked curiously. He shuffled forward, a small half-step to set the pace. Yugi was so concentrated on doing that, mimicking him as best he could, that Yami had nearly forgotten the question when he finally answered a few minutes later.

"Because we're always hurt and lame."

He was panting and shaking harder than ever. His eyes were scrunched shut. Yami wanted to wipe some of the sweat from his skin again but it seemed almost childish and stupid to him. It was not doing Yugi any good by any means. He fought an irritable sigh from the edge of his lips. He truly was so worthless at the moment.

"We are," Yami agreed instead, because he could feel the lameness now in all its burden as he always had when he was wounded. "That seems to be our modus operandi."

Yugi snickered. His eyes cracked open and he shot him a wide grin. "Latin; I'm impressed," he teased. "I thought you really only specialized in charades."

"I'm a wolf of many talents," he murmured without modesty, though his eyes looked slightly troubled the more Yugi studied them. "You should ask me what I'm actually bad at."

He snorted. "I'll list them for you," he scoffed. "Nothing."

Yami blinked and nearly stopped altogether. "Huh?"

"I said you're not bad at anything," the smaller teen stated again, raising a brow. "I'm not saying you're perfect or anything, but I mean… When you apply yourself, I don't see you failing at anything."

Yami grimaced. "I'm bad at a great _many_ things," he said instead, voice scornful. "You just have not witnessed them yet."

"You just don't apply yourself as much as you should." He sounded so certain that it almost made the taller teen question himself. But Yugi's words were too gentle and easy to be applied to him. Yami shook his head slightly. "Yes. Don't shake your head at me. I'm serious!"

"As am I," he replied gruffly. "And I'm telling you that you are wrong."

"I don't think you see yourself very clearly," Yugi snapped in a flustered voice. His eyes were oddly lucid but his tone was laced with grogginess and the heaviness of acute pain. "You're an awesome person. But I can already see that you're about to argue with me. I can't tell if you just don't like compliments or if you're just extremely hard on yourself."

Yami flushed, entire face draining of color and then turning bright red when Yugi poked him in the chest with a finger.

"I've decided it's both."

He blushed harder. He said it so much like a fact that the taller teen almost immediately agreed with him. He blinked at him, stupefied, and then looked away when Yugi turned back towards the bathroom. "I don't know myself anymore," he finally exhaled.

Yugi blinked. Then he turned his head and stared at him. "What?" he asked in a tone that was both concerned and increasingly bemused.

Yami hesitated. He still looked so lucid. But if they had this conversation… Why wouldn't he be lost to it later, forget it by the next day?

But he couldn't stop himself now. He had already said it…

He exhaled again. "I said, I don't know myself anymore." He opened and closed his mouth and Yugi searched his eyes rapidly, as if he might find answers to questions he had asked himself privately and never brought to Yami's attention formerly for fear of alienating him.

"Why do you say that?"

The red-eyed boy hesitated. "Because, sometimes, I remember things I don't want to. And I realize the significance of it and it horrifies me. Because I…I allow others to masquerade in my place."

Yugi's eyes flashed. Something abrupt and cold entered them. "But that's their choice to do that! If they want to pretend to be someone they're not and they do it _knowingly_ , then why shouldn't you let them?" he demanded hotly. "You shouldn't feel guilty for something like that. And that shouldn't make you feel like you don't know yourself!"

He was silent for a long time. "Yugi…" His voice had grown strained and small. A blister popped against the roof of his mouth again. The blood tasted rancid against his tongue. "I…"

"Let's put it this way. You're Yami."

He blinked, then furrowed his brows. "Yes, that's the name I respond to," he muttered, unsure of himself as he shook his head. "But what…?"

"No, that's who you _are_. You're _Yami_. You're not without a name anymore, remember? So you can…basically pretend that whoever you were _before_ now never existed." He was cheerful now and Yami smiled faintly at his logic. It really wasn't that simple but Yugi didn't seem to realize that as the sickness tugged at his insides more rigorously. It was becoming clear that he would remember the conversation but he doubted he'd think about it much, if ever again. He grinned a little wider when the smaller boy nodded in determination. "No dwelling for you. Now that you're Yami you don't have to remember anything you did when you weren't him!"

He chuckled. "I suppose not," he agreed easily. But the weight on his heart didn't lessen in the slightest. He drew in a deep breath, then exhaled it, and helped him to the sink. "Are you capable of a shower? You look as if you're too shaky to stand up for that long…"

"I don't think so." He looked at his reflection briefly, but lowered his eyes to his hand more pointedly. His heart was in his throat again. He trembled harder, a furious burst of shivers, then managed to shake them off. He turned on the faucet. "I'll look at this first. Maybe I can make the bleeding stop…"

"Would you care for me to remain here?" He hesitated. "I mean, perhaps I should… I can leave you to take a bath or…"

Yugi snickered. "You don't want to see me naked? I'm insulted!" he joked playfully. But his gaze was brimmed with pain as he watched his reflection and caught his eye there. He was struggling with the bandage he'd thrown on his hand.

It made his entire frame shake as he tried to peel the tape away with his fingernails.

Yami blushed and rolled his eyes. "I'm sure your body is amazing," he deadpanned despite the steady rise of heat beneath his skin, "but I'm not particularly sure I want to see it when you're sick. Thanks, but I'm not into that kind of kink."

Yugi laughed softly, but the noise fell away after a few seconds. A frustrated grunt left him, then a hiss of pain. The other wolf came to his side, steadying his shaking hands and peeling away the bloody bandage. There was pus and black tissue which came immediately from the wound. The smell made him nearly flinch back. The smaller teen groaned.

"Fuck, that's rancid!"

Yami chuckled. "Anyone hoping to get lucky with you would never look twice if they ever saw this," he teased. Yugi snickered and tapped his shoulder with his other fist. He looked down at it as the other boy put it beneath the water.

"They would come back though. No one can resist Jack."

"Jack?"

"Mmhmm, Jack Mehoff."

Yami burst out laughing. "Lovely name for your lonely friend there," he guffawed. He shook his head and ran his fingers over his wound gently, pushing at the severed dead tissue to dislodge it away. Yugi stared at the other boy and his face flushed for reasons beyond his fever and chills. There was something incredibly intimate about the action and it made his heart pound. "You're going to have to be careful with this. It's going to be a few days before it heals completely, Yugi."

"O-okay."

The choked tone of his voice made the other boy look up. But Yugi ducked his head so that he could not see his expression. He reached his free hand up to scratch at his cheek.

"I don't think I could manage a shower," he said to divert the subject of conversation. His face burned even more now, and his body shook with a burst of pain in retaliation. His knees shook, threatening to buckle. But somehow he managed to hold himself. "I'd have to take a bath…"

"I'll wait outside—"

"You could just sit on the toilet, maybe face the door." His face was going to explode from the heat. His heart was racing. He could barely breathe anymore. "I…I mean… O-only if you'd be okay with… But you don't h-have to—I totally understand if you don't—"

"You would want me to sit there?" He gave him a confused glance, twisting around to look at him completely now.

"Well… I… You've already _seen_ me…" He opened and closed his mouth. "Fuck, you undressed me during my first change! I mean, you've seen me naked. You even played charades with me in the woods and—"

"I was simply messing with you when I decided to play charades. And you would have killed yourself during the Change if I hadn't gone ahead and undressed you." Yami blinked, then frowned and turned back to the water, rubbing at the wound. Giving it physical stimulus was another way of getting it to heal faster, as he'd learned while he was on his own. It promoted rejuvenation among the cells, caused them to oxygenate and replenish. "But, if it will make you more comfortable, then yes, I'll sit nearby while you take your bath."

Yugi sighed softly.

At least Yami was not cruel enough to tease him about it. But he realized how potentially dangerous it was to leave him alone in such a state as well. He knew it would be easy for him to shiver and shake and faint and drown under the water.

His cheeks heated further. Should he make it a bubble bath? He could hide under that. But then, it was true when he said Yami had seen it all before. He _had_. Besides that, the other wolf seemed hardly to care. He was more wolf than human. It probably made it easier for him to just kind of say something like "And that's a penis. Yep. That's cause he's a guy. Like me. We have those. Yep."

He flushed harder. What the hell was going on in his head?

Yami took a seat on the toilet lid twenty minutes later. Yugi was settled within the warm water without much more of a care. The liquid was crystalline and sparkled where the light hit it. And he was so relieved to be able to just sit and feel something just so all encompassing to encircle him and soothe his worn muscles that he hardly cared. The other wolf could have ogled him and he'd still not give a damn. He was so comfortable and happy for the moment that nothing could truly put a damper on it.

He slid back in against the edge, tipping his head back and breathing out happily. The only thing he knew would be upsetting would be the blood he knew his hand would shed. When the water turned red he was absolutely sure he would regret this decision altogether.

Yami braced his elbows against his knees as he leaned forward. "Do you plan to explain to your friends that you're a werewolf?" He asked quietly, addressing the elephant in the room at last.

Yugi but his lip and reached for his shampoo. If he did this fast enough, he could avoid the tub looking like he had failed at a suicide attempt. "Well, I don't…really have much of a choice," he said quietly, swallowing hard. "I mean, after all the things that happened…"

Yami nodded. "You're right. It would be impossible to explain it all away…" He paused. "Please be mindful of what you tell them, Yugi. Do not tell them that someone like Valon is a hellhound or anything. You don't want to put them in danger…"

He looked up and studied the other boy's slouched form. "What do you mean?" he asked, abruptly exhausted.

"Just…be careful and discreet. Remember that names are unnecessary in explanation. Other wolves might find it threatening that they know. If that happened they might try to kill them."

His stomach dropped. "No…"

Yami was silent.

"Gods, I'm just one big ticking time bomb, aren't I? I'm going to get them killed or hurt no matter what I do!"

The taller teen hesitated for a long minute. His fingers caught at the collar of his shirt when he looked for something to tug at. His stomach churned. Yugi sounded so despaired that it hurt just to hear. He swallowed hard.

"There's nothing I can do to keep them from getting hurt or anything!"

There was the most obvious but least likely solution, which would mean cutting them out completely. But he knew Yugi would never do that and from what he had seen through the window of that restaurant, they hardly seemed as if they might accept that. The way he'd watched them all start to catch the decorations on fire and witnessed the blond go back for him, he was extremely doubtful such a plan would work.

"You'll have to make sure you are careful and clear in your plan of what to tell them. If you are not, you risk angering someone." He paused. He had the impulse to turn and look at Yugi over his shoulder as he felt his stare against his back. "Do not let them know whoever else you might think is a wolf. And do not alert them to any hunters. It makes them a target. It will pay for them to be cautious but not obviously or overly so."

Yugi swallowed thickly and looked at his shampoo. But his hands were shaking too hard and his blood was beginning to slick the side. He had not realized he had clenched his hand to such a point. He shivered. The water rippled as blood dripped into it. He swallowed hard again.

Yami was not sure if he was meant to turn around and offer help. Would it damage Yugi's sense of pride to do so? He himself would have been horrified in his situation. But then, he himself had been disgusted with himself upon asking for help for his wrists.

He shook his head. The dripping noise was becoming steadier. And he could hear Yugi's breathing coming out a little shaky. He hesitated. Then slowly, the red-eyed wolf turned his head. From the edge of his peripheral, he saw Yugi's hand drenched bright red. His fingers were shaking too hard to open the cap of the bottle in his hands.

He didn't ask if he wanted help. If he were in the situation, he would hardly desire someone draw attention to it. Yugi looked up only when he took the bottle from him and popped the lid. When he dumped some into his right palm and put the bottle aside, Yugi smiled at him gratefully and tipped his head back.

"When I was younger, my mom used to do this. She'd make a bubble bath for me and then we'd tell stories while I sat here. We'd take turns telling parts of the story and add on where the other left off." He hummed softly when Yami shifted to lean over him. His fingers were soft, warm, gossamer and gentle, when he began to thread them through his hair. "There was one time we went over a bunch of myths about how the world was created. We told Navajo, Norse, Japanese, Egyptian… You know, in all actuality, most creation myths are the same."

"Are they?" Yami asked softly. He worked his hair into a lather, from root to tip, and pulled his bangs gently backwards so that there was no risk of them falling into his eyes. He massaged at his scalp with his nails, light little strokes, well aware that too much pressure would split the skin.

"Yeah, there's usually nothingness. And in the middle of the nothingness there's a void. And the void is where things begin to appear. I don't remember it all exactly, but I think the void would be called chaos or a word similar to it. And it would create the world itself, the elements, then the occupants of it." He was quiet for a moment. "Then they would have more and more myths about everything. In Native American mythology, the coyote stole fire for humans. In Greek mythology, a titan named Prometheus did it. In Native American mythology, most of them descended from the animals, wolves or bears. In Greek it was the gods making people from silver and bronze, things like that…"

"What was your favorite?"

He was quiet for a moment. Yami was reaching over to turn on the faucet. But the seconds were dragging out. In hindsight he realized his hesitance, blushing at his own lack of foresight. "You can use the cup that has the toothbrushes in it," Yugi mumbled, blushing faintly. He was such an idiot sometimes. "Just go ahead and put them on the counter and use that."

Yami got up after a moment of consideration. It felt wrong to leave him like that but there was really nothing else he could do for him. Calmly, he removed the utensils and unscrewed the top where it had been given holes to hold them, then lay them along the counter.

"I don't really have a favorite creation myth. My favorite story was actually Ragnarok from Norse mythology," he admitted quietly. Yami paused in his stride back to him, eyes widening. The end of the world was what Yugi liked to hear about? He saw the look on his face and grinned sheepishly. "Yeah, I know. It surprises everyone."

Yami shook his head. "Why is that your favorite?"

Yugi licked his lips and considered his next words. "Fenrir was set free," he said finally, when he could not come up with anything else. He looked away. "He was set free. And his sons were finally released from their slavery too."

Yami blinked, eyes growing thrice their regular size. "Fenrir?" he muttered, frowning before realization came over him. "Oh yes, I remember now. Fenrir was chained to a rock for all eternity until the day of Ragnarok. Then he would be free and eat Odin. And his sons Hati and Skoll would be able to eat the sun and the moon."

He nodded a little. "I always thought it was cruel of them to chain him up and enslave his sons to chase the moon and sun in the sky. It just wasn't very fair to me. They shouldn't have been afraid of him."

Yami chuckled softly. He reached over for the knobs and twisted hot and cold before filling the container. The water beneath was murky, ribbed with bright red and grayish with soot and the edges white and sudsy where they touched the sides of the tub. He frowned and shook off the sense of dread and shame that came through him, then tapped gently on Yugi's chin to tip his head further back.

"Did you think it was fair of them?"

"Well, no, but I also did not have much time for stories growing up," he said in a slightly distant tone. He moved his hand to touch his forehead, shielding it from potential back spill, and poured in slow cascades of water. "Tell me if this becomes uncomfortable for you, Yugi."

He snickered. "You're okay."

Yami smirked a little, shaking his head, and moved his hand down to trace his roots. He shifted his fingers through, combing the long strands, and hoped to the gods that this was at least somewhat productive. He hadn't had anyone wash him before. He had always groomed or jumped into a body of water as a wolf or used a single stall bathroom as a human. Hopefully Yugi's hair would be as clean and pristine as usual…

He turned on the faucet and got some more water into the cup. "Well, it still stands if I ever pull on your hair or something."

"With as gentle as you're being?" Yugi scoffed. The water falling against his scalp made his entire body tingle with pleasure. " _My mom_ used to pull more than you!"

He snorted. "Well I'm glad I'm doing better than she did," he stated dryly, flashing him a small grin when Yugi peeked an eye open to look at him. His fingers worked and combed through the strands again. He was humming softly, low and melodious.

Yugi almost wanted to sink under the water, he was so comfortable with the sensation of his touch and the whisper of noise from his gentle humming.

"Do you want me to tip my head further back?"

Yami blinked, startled from his humming and the ease of helping to bathe the other boy. He hesitated as he considered the question, then shook his head. "No, it's okay." He ran his fingers through, searching for more soap. The suds had left but he was not sure it was as clean as it should have been. "Keep your head like this. I'm going to rinse it a couple more times."

Yugi swallowed a moan when he continued to trace small patterns across his scalp with his fingers as he picked at the soap again. "Okay."

"You're not sweating anymore," he commented softly, rinsing a second time. He threaded his fingers, sifting through the wet strands, then ran his hand along the bottom of his neck. There was just the tiniest hint of shampoo left there. He got more water, cupping his head and pouring slowly. When the liquid touched his fingers, moving downwards, Yami snickered as Yugi shivered.

"I think it's from washing my hand," the small teen admitted quietly, turning to glance at him. But Yami looked so at ease that the smaller teen felt his heart pound with satisfaction. "My fever is broken…but my hand still hurts."

 _Not to mention that the water is almost completely red now,_ he thought shakily. He glanced at it and his stomach curled painfully, his ease dying away now as he considered.

"I suppose so," he said with a somewhat distracted tone. He reached across the tub for the conditioner. His red eyes flickered along the instructions for a few seconds. "Do I truly need to leave this in for five minutes?"

Yugi shook his head. "Not really. It just makes your hair shinier when you do," he replied dismissively. He made a gesture with his unwounded hand lazily and then tipped his head towards him. "I think I spoke too soon. I'm kind of getting dizzy again."

"You moved too fast."

"I'm moving slower than a snail."

"And that's apparently still too fast."

He growled softly, casting him a somewhat irate look before narrowing his eyes. His next breath came out in a huff. "This sucks," the smaller teen commented, cheeks heating faintly. "I can't even really relax. My body hurts too much."

"It's supposed to," Yami muttered, working his fingers through his hair again. He ran the conditioner from root to tip and slicked his bangs back somewhat. His hair already seemed so much better now that it was not lathered away by sweat. "It's trying to heal and can't do so on its own like this. Your wound got infected and you're trying to fight it off. It's going to be a struggle."

"Well it sucks."

"There is no debate regarding that."

Yugi sighed roughly but there was a small pressure in his nose, pushing forward beneath his skin. He swallowed hard and his head spun painfully. "If I stay home, I need to…" He covered his face with his hands. "I need to change the sheets and get some food…"

Yami paused briefly as his fingers worked at the nape of his neck. He slicked his hair with conditioner and chewed his bottom lip, somewhat uncomfortable. He would have offered to do it for him, but where were clean sheets? He knew where the kitchen was but what would Yugi want to eat?

He filled the container with water again, then let it sit on the toilet lid for a few moments. Yugi gave him a puzzled glance before looking at the cup sideways. Was he letting it sit until a few minutes had passed? He swallowed but his throat had grown dry.

"You can rest on top of the comforter, use the fleece blanket," he murmured, eyes flickering towards the water rather than locking on Yugi's. The liquid had all but become one big burst of bright red. Gods, his hand was bleeding so much… "Should we drain the tub and get new water?"

Yugi glanced at the water and swallowed again. The pressure in his head had grown worse. Had he just been so initially relieved by everything that his body had neglected to tell him how much pain he was actually in? He breathed out softly. He wasn't hot and he didn't shake again. But his head was beginning to throb once more.

"Yeah…"

Yami was silent and still for a few seconds. Then he slowly reached into the water. His hand groped along the bottom of the tub until he found the plug beneath the drain. "Do you want me to look away while you set up a new bath?"

Somehow it surprised him how polite the other wolf was being. There were no quips about how he couldn't do anything for himself at the moment. And he didn't tease him about how immobile he was. He didn't point out how childish it was that he was being bathed by someone for the first time in almost eight years. He didn't even poke at how disgusting all of this had to have been for him.

Yugi looked at the water as it swirled down the drain. "I'll do it."

Yami hesitated. He wanted to remind him he was perfectly fine doing it for him. But it occurred to him that it was possibly a shameful idea to the smaller teen. The entire situation was unfair to him. His red eyes flickered away and he took a seat with his back to the wall, eyes closed.

Yugi looked at him, relieved to see how comfortable he appeared. He had, despite himself, the urge to apologize. It was a sharp and almost eager pulse of energy beneath his skin, a begging sensation to promote his words. He swallowed hard, shaking his head slightly.

The taller teen opened his eyes into slits. "I should have paid more attention to Fuwa," he commented quietly. "I should have tried to find out more about him. I'm sorry for not doing that…"

The knobs jerked beneath his fingers. His eyes grew extremely wide, his body seizing with shock. He heard the pop of his bones as he looked over his shoulder. His mouth opened and closed stupidly, expression that of a fish out of water.

"Huh?"

"I should not have left you alone to deal with him."

"You had no idea he was going to try to lure all of us to that restaurant, Yami. It's not like the two of you planned it together," he scoffed, blinking and shaking his head. A dull steady pain started at the base of his neck. His hand was throbbing again. He twisted the knob with shaky fingers and the water gushed out quickly. "And I didn't even consider contacting you for help…"

"I still should have paid more attention. That wasn't fair to you." He paused when Yugi put the stopper back in place, the water a comfortable temperature. The smaller teen turned around slowly to study him with wide eyes. "I'm sorry."

Yugi fiddled with the knobs, his fingers clenching around them. "The more important thing is that you actually came to help us. You didn't have to." He swallowed hard again. "It means a lot that you did."

Yami considered him for a moment. Then he turned away again slowly, eyes on the floor. "That's my responsibility as your friend," he murmured. His tone was exhausted and Yugi swore he could see him aging in front of him for a split second. He cursed when he realized the water was almost too high, quickly twisting the knobs to turn it off. The red-eyed teen simply stared at where his hands were settled on the knobs. "We need to look at your shoulder too. I don't think it's infected though…"

Yugi blinked, then glanced at it. He had almost forgotten about that woman. She'd had those silver caps on her nails, filed into spikes…

"No, I don't think it's infected either."

It looked like a small scrape wound, as if he'd bumped his shoulder against something. It hardly looked like his hand had. But it was not healed by any means and the blood on it had clearly just clotted completely hours before. He was amazed his writhing in the middle of the night hadn't done anything to reopen it.

Yami shifted to grab the container from the toilet and go to the side of the tub. The smaller teen sighed softly, turning away from the faucet to face the other wall. He blinked, nearly exhausted, and then slowly lowered his hands beneath the water. "That's a lucky occurrence. It would be rather traumatic if it was," he commented in a somewhat grim tone. He took a seat again and reached over for his hair. "Tilt your head back."

"I really thought for a second there you were going to say it was your responsibility as my alpha," he admitted, voice rather small.

Yami hesitated, placing the smaller teen's palm against his forehead to begin pouring water. He almost had. He had only slightly missed saying it. His first impulse had been to say alpha. His second had been to say that they shouldn't talk anymore. The word had changed when it had come out of his mouth, however. He had not been expecting himself to answer, in all reality.

Making friends with Yugi more than he already had would be a disaster for the small teen. There was just no way that he would do well with the backlash he would wind up getting. His philosophy of forgetting who he was before he had a name was easy in thought but much harder in effort. He let out a small breath that was swallowed away by the sound of the water dripping.

Yugi groaned softly, stomach knotting. He couldn't tell if he was hungry or anxious anymore. "I won't make it through the school day," he grumbled, speaking more to himself than to Yami. "I need to text them to meet me here…"

Yami considered him for a moment. "Are you okay to go outside?" he asked after a long moment. "Are you going to be okay to explain it to them? I can go with you…"

The smaller teen stopped breathing for a second. Then he squirmed. Yami released him immediately. Yugi turned to face him, eyes wide and mouth opening and closing twice. The way he looked at him was almost as if he were some kind of strange, mythical creature.

"I'm sorry if I over—"

"You would—"

They both fell silent when they realized the other was talking. Yami blinked. Yugi frowned. They considered each other again. Then the smaller teen slowly shook his head and muttered, "They don't need to meet you."

The other wolf studied the exhausted, heavy look in his paled blue-violet eyes, the way he seemed ready to drop at any second. He looked as if he would slip beneath the water without warning…

"Are you sure? I don't want you to say that and then have overtaxed yourself when you come back in…"

Yugi shook his head and flashed him the smallest ghost of a grin. His eyes were glazed with pain now. His hand was burning. When he flexed it beneath the water, he swore it poisoned him further. "I won't, Yami. It'll be fine. I'll make sure of it." He paused. "Thank you…for the offer. But…they really don't need to know everything. I don't want them to put you under the microscope. You don't like people as it is. I don't think they'd make you like them any more than you already don't."

Yami raised a brow. "They are your friends. I trust your taste in character."

The smaller teen shook his head. "But you wouldn't trust them," he stated softly, watching him. "And I don't want them making you uncomfortable like I know they would. That's not fair to you. And it wouldn't be fair to them when you possibly snapped at them. It's okay."

He was silent for a minute. "You wish to put my comfort before your health," he said slowly, as if trying to see where the logic was in a stupefying situation. Yugi grinned slightly. He supposed it could be seen that way by the taller teen. Yami had made it pretty obvious at times that he was not used to being shown any type of kindness or sympathy. From his point of view, he could see how frustrating that would be to him. "That's idiotic."

"Then call me an idiot." He turned to the side and tipped his head back again. For a moment the other boy simply stared at him. Then he moved to shield his face with his hand again, pouring the water into his hair once more. "But I promise it will be fine."

"Don't make promises you can't keep. You survive longer that way."

Yugi faltered at the harsh note in his voice. "Are you mad at me?"

"You put people before yourself. Of course I'm pissed."

The smaller teen huffed and then smirked. "So, you're going to tell me that wolves don't put each other before themselves? Out in the wild and among werewolves, that doesn't happen?"

Yami opened his mouth, then slowly shut it again. His expression was annoyed and cold. "When they've been born and raised among those wolves, sure. But not—"

"Alphas and betas don't do that?"

He growled low in his throat. "This isn't some kind of wolf bond that makes you do this," he snapped harshly. "You've been doing this since before you were even bitten!"

"So? You bit me again when I wasn't acting as Code Name Atem. But what's your point? I was still wolf then too."

Yami hissed as he turned the faucet back on. "Stop being an ass. You know exactly what is wrong with this. Besides that, your friends have been there longer than I have. You should be far more worried about their discomfort than mine." He twisted the knob, turned back to him, and resumed rinsing his hair.

Yugi rolled his eyes. "You're just being difficult now. Let it go, Yami. I already chose. I'm not going to have them meet you. Whether or not that's because I don't want you uncomfortable or them to feel that way is kind of irrelevant."

"Your forgiving, selfless nature is going to get you _killed_ one day, Yugi," he spat furiously, shaking his head. Yugi almost expected him to pull on his hair in his anger but his fingers were gentle and his grip soft. "Learn to consider yourself before you do others."

He sighed loudly. "Can we not argue anymore? I'm not going to have any energy left to talk to them if we keep going like this."

The red-eyed lycanthrope glanced at him, studying, and then bore his teeth before shaking his head and putting the container aside. He ran his hands through Yugi's hair in that same gentle manner he'd shown him throughout the conversation. The strands were soft and silky, but not slimy like he had equated the conditioner to making it feel.

"Go ahead and pull the plug. Your hair is clean. You can get dressed against and…text your friends." He didn't glance back when he left the room.

* * *

"Hey." He shut the door behind him, then grimaced when his fingers throbbed in response. The bandage remained pristine and white, however, when he looked it over. His stomach knotted faintly. When he looked up again the three of them were still watching him. Their expressions were confused, concerned, and varying degrees of alarmed.

"How's your hand?" Jonouchi asked, eyes on the appendage.

Yugi blinked, looking down at it, and flushed brightly when he saw how it was shaking so hideously. He moved to duck it behind his back but his shoulder hurt with the movement so he flexed his fingers and drew his injured hand to his other one. The shaking didn't stop. He furrowed his brows, annoyed.

"It still hurts. Really bad," he admitted unhappily, swallowing thickly. "But it's not as bad as last night. A friend helped me with it some…"

Honda grimaced. "I can't believe he almost took your hand off like that…" He studied him a moment longer. Yugi had looked up and was watching him with a somewhat confused expression. "What was he talking about, though? He called you a lycanthrope…"

Yugi cringed and his hand tightened around the injury before he yelped. He released it immediately, then glanced at it again. It wasn't bleeding yet, thankfully.

"He, um, hunts— _hunted_ —werewolves," he muttered, picking at the edge of his bandage with growing anxiety. He wondered now if maybe he should have let Yami meet them. It would have been a distraction by any means. And he was sorely missing that opportunity now. "I'm not exactly sure how he knew that I got infected…"

"Infected?" Jonouchi muttered, voice confused and incredulous. His honey-brown eyes had grown thrice their usual size. "What do you mean 'infected'?"

He bit his lip. "I got—"

"Your hand is bleeding!" Anzu cried out, eyes wide with horror. It was clear that she had not been expecting that to happen. She had begun to breathe in shakily and Yugi stared at it for a moment. Then, slowly, he raised it somewhat to look it over more thoroughly.

"It's from the silver. It's like an allergic reaction to it," the small teen murmured, flexing his fingers. The pain split through his nerve endings. He almost yelped but fought it off. "It's been bleeding on and off all night. And for the last couple of hours."

"So what—?"

Yugi felt the alarm in his spine before he heard it from Yami. The snarl was low and vicious and his eyes snapped up in confusion. His gaze did not turn towards the window but rather the street.

Something was going on if Yami was reacting…

And then he heard it.

His eyes darted quickly across the street, from one end to the next.

His spine tightened.

The pain in his hand had grown numb from his rush of adrenaline.

He didn't recognize it at first.

Every part of him so was so keen on the idea of a wolf approaching that it almost completely slipped his mind.

"Anzu, watch out!" he cried loudly, mouth snapping open as Yami cursed in his room. The sound was muffled but loud enough that it jerked him to attention.

The car slammed into the curb. Yugi flinched from the onslaught of noise. The radio was blaring. The windows were rolled down. The driver was hissing in a language he did not understand. He blinked, eyes wide and startled.

Anzu was frozen in place.

Her shock and confusion held her firmly at the edge of the grass.

Yugi tried to get to her. But his head was spinning. His stomach was tossing. He couldn't think straight.

Yami's snarl was a hideous bass beat in the back of his thoughts.

He couldn't breathe properly. And his heart was in his throat.

The car door opened before he got within an inch of her. His outstretched arm touched only air. Anzu screamed. The door shut again. Jonouchi and Honda were frozen, eyes wide. Yugi blinked.

The driver only glanced at him. Her lips pulled into a smirk. When she winked, Yugi felt his stomach churn.

Oh gods, he recognized that face.

He recognized those dark eyes and the sharp planes of her face…

He bore his teeth. Damn it.

He took off after the car. Jonouchi and Honda broke into a sprint a couple of steps behind him. The car moved just fast enough to stay a few feet ahead of them. No doubt they did so to keep him in sight.

They didn't want him to lose the trail.

And they knew how wounded he actually was.

They'd been at the restaurant.

They were finishing what Fuwa had attempted.

Yugi was panting when they turned the corner. He slowed drastically, doubling over a moment later. His stomach was in knots again. He couldn't think straight again. He gasped and groaned. Jonouchi and Honda passed him easily. The blond glanced back but Honda remained focused.

"Yug…?"

He shook his head and waved him off in an almost casual motion. His hand was clenched and blood dripped from the wound. And, as he panted, a cold burst of air seemed to slam into him. He gasped and glanced up. The sky was bleached white. And the clouds were heavy, dense. When they opened, the first flake was weighted and wide.

He had forgotten the snowstorm meant to come through. Yami had predicted it to happen in a day's time. And now here it was. He trembled. It was as if everything were conspiring against him.

He was wounded.

He was exhausted.

The car was ahead of him.

His friends were still running.

And then he felt him there too.

He could have cursed.

Instead he started running again. Jonouchi and Honda were several yards ahead. Yami would be closing in soon as well.

The reality was that he needed to beat them there.

He especially needed to get there before Yami.

Who knew what would happen if Yami got there first?

The wind was crisp and harsh. It funneled through his hoodie and down into his skin. He hissed, but his feet kept moving. The snowflakes came in bundles, drifting steadily down. He was shivering even as he overcame the taller boys.

The car turned a corner.

Yugi only noticed he was mere feet behind it when he realized it had sped up. When it weaved around another corner, he slowed down. His sides were aching. His hand was shaking.

He sensed Yami nearby now, closer than before.

Was he faster than him?

He knew he was more dangerous.

Maybe he should let him…

He nearly scoffed at himself. No. Absolutely not. He couldn't let Yami get hurt. He groaned under his breath. But hadn't he gotten everyone else hurt already? And when they got wherever the car was—

He looked at the road, then towards the trees further along.

If he took the shortcut through the park…

If they were headed towards the piers and one of the abandoned factories, then he could use that as a way to play catch up.

Jonouchi and Honda ran past him after the car. They glanced at him but he hardly paid attention.

Yami was long gone. Probably he already knew where they were headed as well.

He turned on his heel, taking the woods.

The trees were narrower and more spread out due to the hogs that ran through this area. Yugi could sprint and the ground was almost flat. The path was also almost a straight shot. There were no turns and the possibility of people seeing was almost nonexistent unless one should be out in the woods.

He jumped a fallen log, landed heavily, and lurched over. He was gasping and panting, body heaving. This way cut the path by half. He could be at the factory before they would…

If he kept going.

He was so tired. It might be easier if he was a canine. He could burst forth with speed. He could use all four legs and never falter. His legs were longer in that form…

If only he actually knew how to do that on his own…

Yugi shook it off, drew in a deep breath, and ran again. It took him all of ten minutes to make it there to the lot. But he had no idea which would be the ones they'd use. During the second World War, Domino had been a resource for gun metals and artillery to be made. The factories had been the primary base for much of the metal being molded into form. But Japan had since abandoned its view of weaponry.

Hoops were jumped through in order to gain guns, hunting or otherwise. And only the police ever seemed to truly have them any longer.

He paced along the entrance of the pier. The factories stretched for mere miles, not the largest amount of space by any means.

Yugi drew in a deep breath and slowed his steps.

Where were they?

Where was the car?

He strained his ears. Then he finally caught it. The car rumbled so softly it was almost inaudible. The tires on the asphalt seemed to glide. The volume of music had been all but muted. He was panting but his lungs felt unusually full. A glance was cast around the pier.

Yami was nearby.

He couldn't tell how close, however.

Yugi moved away when the car began to speed towards him. The woman's smirk had widened upon seeing him now. He waited just long for them to head into the factory they desired. Then he glanced at the exhausted Jonouchi and Honda who were both doubled over, panting heavily.

He swallowed hard, then moved again. His heart was in his ears. His stomach was in knots. He could barely hear his own thoughts. He was cautious as he moved along. He almost startled at the sound of his own sneakers on the concrete. He faltered and glanced back.

The two taller teens scrambled to catch up. But Yugi sensed it. His head turned back. His body clenched in pain. A dull, steady throbbing came to him. He could smell the wolfsbane, sense the silver lingering in the cold air. A snowflake spiraled in front of him. He choked on a breath.

Then he stepped forward again.

And, as he did, Jonouchi and Honda cried out.

He didn't flinch when the metal gate fell behind him. The thick links were rusted but steady when his friends touched them. Yugi resisted the urge to try to find the exit. Instead he looked up. The woman from the restaurant, the one with the sharp face…

"I'm amazed that you truly came for her."

Yugi didn't look at Anzu. She was kept on the other side of the walk, though he did not know that it was by force. There only seemed to be two of them. He trembled, body jerking, and leaned over to wretch violently. The sound of it was wet and slimy. And it dulled the roar in his veins.

However, his eyes wandered.

Two glowing amber eyes met his.

He hadn't been wrong in assuming she was feline in expression. An unusually small orange and black tigress was in the shadows in front of him. She laid there, crouched low to the ground.

And he realized she was frozen by his gaze as much as he was hers. Instinct for big cats was to back away when potential prey turned to face it. For a wolf, it was just more exciting. For a human, it was terrifying.

He backed up a step.

Anzu cried out. His head snapped up. Metal hitting metal burst through the factory. The noise numbed him.

And she sprang.

At first he could not understand it.

He blinked and his head turned.

But he didn't recognize it at first.

It was only as her weight collided with his that realization came to him. He folded beneath her painfully. A yelp of agony left him. The impact with the ground winded him. Her paw in his chest kept him breathless. Yugi couldn't fully comprehend the sight of the tigress above him.

What the hell was…?

Then she withdrew her paw, stepping away. He blinked and gasped for air. And then he made a mistake. He tried to roll over to get up. And her paw crashed into his spine. He screamed. The tigress lashed her tail. The woman chuckled.

"Did you know that a tiger's swipe could break a bear's jaw?" the woman sneered.

He could hear heels against the ground when he didn't have any more breath. His eyes opened when she was close to him. When she crouched in front him, he tried not to vomit again. All it would take would be one of them turning him onto his back.

He'd choke on it…

The woman was a soft but rich blend of caramel and olive in tone. Her eyes were sharp and narrow. Her nose was small and dainty. Her hair was in several long braids which were then held together with golden beads of three. Her clothing was flowing, low cut to show off her sharp collarbones. Around her neck was a thin band of shiny green metal. A jade beaded necklace hung in two rows around her narrow neck. When she truly got to his side and leaned close, her lips were perfectly rose shaped.

Her build was extremely athletic, soft in design and thin in shape. And her shirt came only to the bottom of her ribcage. She looked like some kind of model rather than a hunter.

"Do you know who I am?"

Yugi blinked up at her stupidly. In her hand was a familiar black case, much like sunglasses. He breathed in shakily. "A hunter," he ground out from between his teeth.

"No, not by trade." She chuckled. "I'm actually a dancer whose husband's blood is on _your_ hands."

He blinked at her again.

Husband?

His mind raced and his stomach dropped.

No wonder she had attacked him in the restaurant.

Fuwa…

"My name is actually Aileen Fuwa." When she stood up, he got the smell of sweet designer perfume. It was underlined with something sharp and deadly, however, woodsy. He struggled to think straight. She was wearing a perfume made with wolfsbane… He blinked up at her again and the distance while on his side made it impossible to meet her eyes. All he could see was the underside of a short skirt of pale purple, a cloth belt of the same color along her hips. "And I suppose that's really all you need to know, isn't it?"

He almost wanted to argue.

But she had moved again.

She was as silent as a snake and as vicious as the tiger circling them. She held a syringe in her hand, flicking the needle. "We can't have air getting into your veins. That would be far too easy. I plan to watch you change. And then I'm going to allow my dear daughter to eat you alive."

Yugi blinked, stupefied, unable to think straight. She was going to inject him to force the Change? And then what? He would fight to the death with the tiger? He couldn't breathe as she tipped his chin to the side. She felt along the column of his neck, then pricked his skin.

"When you inject it along the jugular, it goes to the brain faster. It makes the Change a lot worse, but it makes you start sooner." Aileen flashed him a smile that reminded him of rattlesnake venom. "Enjoy it, Yugi Motou. I would hate to see you be too easy a kill. Not after you took my husband from me."

Yugi panted, then screamed. The tigress, given a single nod, lunged for him. She went for his throat. His body thrashed and she missed. Yet she caught his arm in the attack. And he could feel the bones breaking rather than hear them.

Then she cried out, recoiling. Aileen startled, eyes widening. A gash had formed along the tigress's muzzle, behind her nose. The woman blinked, then raised her head.

"You should get your nose checked," a familiar voice spat in dismissal, coming forward.

Anzu was the first to see him. And, at first, she assumed it was Yugi somehow. The impossibility of it struck her only after initial thought. But they were nearly the same height, with similar wild hair and a thin build. Her heart was hammering. When he tipped his head upwards, she caught sight of the strangest eyes she had ever seen.

They were…

Blood red?

"You smell like a cheap lay."

Yugi wanted to scream for him to run. But his body was thrashing too hard. And his heart was hammering. He couldn't breathe. And the tosses of his body made him dizzy. He coughed, sputtering, and bile spilled from his lips.

"Excuse me? Who the fuck are you?" Aileen sneered. She had straightened to her full height and her eyebrow had risen in dismissal. The tigress looked angered more than anything.

"The one who's going to put you in the ground next to that pathetic little Fuwa brat."

Jonouchi and Honda both stared in confusion. From their position, neither could see beyond the cat and human pair. But the voice was not unlike Yugi's, though deeper and maybe a little richer. They both glanced at each other and then turned back with frustrated expressions.

"You dare speak ill of my husband?"

He snorted loudly, voice coming out in mocking laughter. "You're a widow."

The tigress snarled, tail lashing. Yami glanced at her dismissively. "Oh, calm yourself, kitten. I'm going to kill you too. Don't worry." He bore his teeth into a smirk, leaning towards the large cat. Aileen was reaching into the line of her fabric belt, which he considered must have been lined to hold so well against her hips. "When I kill her, I'll make sure you follow quickly."

The cat lashed out with unsheathed claws. Yami narrowed his eyes in boredom. "You call that an attack?" he sneered. Aileen flicked her wrist and he moved his arm. He arched it, bending at the elbow. Then he jerked his wrist in response. The whip caught around his skin, constricting and strong.

He smirked again. "Silver-tipped. I applaud the effort."

The tigress started to pounce. He pulled his arm, then threw his weight to the side. As expected, Aileen was hurtled sideways. The whip dropped to the ground with the impact. The two females cried out in unison. Then the tigress snarled and snapped at the human. Aileen scrambled to push away from her.

Yami tossed his head back and forth. His muscles corded and tightened, pulling taut. He pressed his weight into the balls of his feet, eyes narrowing faintly. From behind the chain-link door, Jonouchi and Honda gaped. The two teens were frozen in place, watching him. The red-eyed lycanthrope could sense it. And when he lowered his head slightly to glance at Yugi, he could see it from the corner of his eye.

The tigress lunged. His weight propelled him forward to his toes and he leaped. The movement threw him a full twelve feet in the air. A rapid snapping noise broke through the factory. It was almost like gunfire and Yugi whimpered painfully. A low, pleading note escaped him. Anzu flinched, but could not look away.

The newcomer twisted in the air, spinning almost like a cat. The clothes along his body began to split at the seams. They bunched and tossed and tore where the knobs of his spine distorted and rose sharply. His arms were braced for impact with the ground. His hindquarters followed a moment later. All four were pointed towards the ground as his spine arched high into the air.

His lips curled back. His nose wrinkled forcefully. His teeth glinted in the light, highlighted by the saliva that coated them. A tiny drivel of blood began to leak downwards as the muscles contorted around his eyes. His jaws lengthened, the bottom stretching forward at first. The top rushed forward with a crunch of bone and cartilage. His fingers curled and stretched. His nails thickened and curved up and inwards. Tendon and muscle rippled along the back of his hands. His shoulder blades arched upwards beneath his skin. They rose and shifted, pushing outwards to take on a broader shape.

The clothes fell away to reveal a body covered in hair that seemed to writhe as if fully alive. The muscles bunched more violently around his face. His jaw grew to its full length. Red eyes grew bright and became burning embers, glowing vibrantly. His spine arched and shifted again. The popping noise accelerated as the bones lengthened violently once more.

But then time began to catch up with the Change.

His back lost the harshness of its arch, growing smoother. His nose grew black and his fingers shortened. The skin on his palms became calloused and began to shift and lump to form pads. The hair along his body grew shiny and glistened as it became longer, coating every inch of him. His shoulders set themselves. His chest expanded with a tightened breath. And his tail quivered as if it were that which had been disconnected from a lizard.

And then he landed.

The impact was enough to make him nearly collapse, the height and power thrown into the leap making his legs nearly fall beneath him. But they held him impossibly, folding for a split second before straightening again. And then he was facing the tigress.

Honda realized, startled, that the tigress had been staring at him the entire time. She was frozen several steps away. Her amber eyes were wide in shock. And her pelt was twitching and quivering. She was unnerved and terrified.

The black wolf took a moment to lower his head and shake his neck slowly. Every muscle shook and the fur quivered, rich as dark shadows at night. Each strand glistened beneath the light overhead. Then he stretched a back leg and the shake traveled through the entirety of his immense body. The tension along his form was shed like water. Then he stood there, eyeing the tigress with an expression that was less than friendly.

Throughout the Change, she had been watching with wild eyes. Her mouth had opened slightly. She was panting then. And the finest of trembles had come through her. Now her tail lashed in annoyance. And the shock seemed to fade from her system. She growled and flexed her claws on the concrete.

Yami raised his tail. His lips pulled back completely. His ears tipped forward. His eyes blazed. His fur bristled along his spine. His maw opened just enough to show the scissoring design of his sharp teeth. His paws moved just enough to brace for a swift leap. Each limb was tense with pain, but he could not show that.

The tigress lashed out at the air between them. The display was nothing more than a promise of threat. The wolf didn't blink. Instead he launched himself for her.

Honda watched them collide with a sense of horror bubbling within his stomach. Jonouchi watched with the eyes of someone who couldn't believe what they were seeing. Anzu gasped, eyes wide, wanting nothing more than to find the strength to look away.

The canine slammed into the big cat. His teeth went for her eye but missed at the last second. The large fangs cut through her muzzle instead. The bone cracked and splintered. The feline snarled and twisted to dislodge him. Then her paw slammed into his shoulder. Yami held tight, bending his spine to raise himself to his hind legs.

His balance reversed and shifted to hold him. Both of them tumbled forward, then sideways. The tigress flailed at dead air as she was tossed onto her flank.

Yugi whined loudly, trying to pull himself to his hands and knees. But his body weighed too much. Every muscle beneath his skin screamed in torture. His vision grew blurry at the bottom, almost as if he were about to cry. His lashes cast his eyesight in near blackness. And he stared blankly, his mind scrambling to give him answers and explain the scene in front of him, as his entire body twitched painfully.

They were becoming smears of paint. One looked like an ink blot. The other seemed like the brilliant shade of an autumn leaf. He thrashed. His vision swam and danced. His eyes were burning. His fingers flexed and twitched.

Yami backed up several steps. Fur had been snagged and pulled away. The skin was pale white, though near his neck it was speckled with black. Honda strained his eyes, wondering if it was hair he had not seen. But it seemed to be a discoloration of his flesh, almost like blackened freckles.

The shape-shifter threw herself onto her stomach. Her tail lashed and she got to her feet, snarling. Yami did not bother to approach her again. The two apex predators studied each other for a few moments longer.

Their stillness allowed Yugi the smallest sense of focus. Yami had blood along his cheeks, smeared across the black strands. His whiskers were dripping with it. And his teeth were speckled with grizzle.

The she-cat's entire muzzle was bleeding profusely. Some white bone glistened above and behind her nose. Puncture wounds were large and bleeding. And the splinters of bone poked upwards from the bleeding muscle. And her paws, when he was no longer able to look up, were littered with long black strands between each toe.

When he chomped his teeth, Jonouchi flinched. His head turned when he caught the noise of a gurgle. His eyes fell on Yugi and his stomach dropped. Yugi was laying there, twitching and frothing at the mouth. He groaned and the noise was watery. For a split second the blond thought to speak, though he did not know what to say, but fell silent as the two animals collided again.

The roar was great and hideous. The snarl to match made Anzu tremble. The wolf went for the cat's broader face. Yet the tigress took upon his strategy and rose onto her hindquarters. The position was aggressive and defensive all at once. But it did nothing for her.

Their height difference was mere inches when Yami mirrored her. They were locked there, braced on their hind legs. The tigress appeared more muscular as she tried to sink her teeth into his throat. But the physical prowess was hidden by long fur in the black wolf. And when he snapped his teeth, it showed in the ripple of fur along his throat.

The longer muzzle was his savior. The teeth opened wider. The bite force was more concentrated in a single attack. So the way the tigress screamed as his jaws closed on her skull did not surprise him. The cat snarled and lashed out, claws cutting through his fur. Yami tugged her hard. His force was thrown into his neck. His mouth closed tighter. His shoulders tossed forward. She stumbled and lost her balance for only a second. Her tail came straight up, locking her spine to keep her footing. The potential of his attack was utterly lost.

The thought was infuriating to him.

He snarled low in his throat. Then he lurched forwards, upward. His body straightened to a taller height. His neck bunched painfully as he tossed his head.

The crunch of bone made Yugi's head spin. Was it his own? He could not tell. His body was vibrating with the fit that had overcome it. His entirety was on fire. And should his bones be cracking, he would not be surprised. He could not see any longer. And noise was found focused in his skull rather than his ears. There was no measurement of movement or distance. Time was nothing more than a brief, vague idea far in the back confines of his mind.

The tigress let out a cry. Then she wheeled her front legs. The momentum caught Yami's shoulders. Then her paws slipped. When he snarled and huffed against her face, they slid down his chest. Had he possessed more height, longer limbs, and a similar flexibility to his opponent, Yami would have easily snapped her throat.

But her inches to loom over him, her more flexible spine, and her lengthier legs, all left him at a disadvantage. His more robust power was a burden rather than a strength in that moment. And so they were held in a stalemate.

Both animals were locked in place, frozen.

Anzu thought they looked oddly alike. Their tails were straight up. Their bodies were held in a statuesque manner. Their breathing was almost in unison, heavy and fast.

Yami reversed his grip. His incisors, formerly tearing into her face, tugged downwards. She reared upward in pain, falling forward. The maneuver was taxing, however.

Honda noticed it immediately. The power of the attack sent the wolf falling backwards and to the side. And the tigress fell with it. And only one thing kept her from completely gutting him before their eyes. Her back legs had collapsed beneath her. And when she flailed and kicked, the claws caught in his long fur.

His mouth was sore for a moment. Yami raised his hindquarters into the air and twisted his body. The movement righted him again. Her back paws were pressed into his throat. His forelegs were bent and folded almost beneath his chest. The struggle was to straighten them now. They strained, weak and weary, before popping. His paws flipped and he pressed his claws into the concrete for further purchase. Their position beneath her thicker, shorter throat was immense help to him. It was further gratified when he raised his head and pulled her with him.

Jonouchi thought he had seen something like that in a video. It had been a puma attacking an elk, but the purpose had been similar. Both predators placed immense pressure on the windpipe in order to close it. Then it would completely cut off air and blood flow…

But Yami did not care for that. He was merely biding time. He had to stun her, so as to get distance between them. And, if there were more room, she could have slipped away. If she thrashed and rolled and struggled, he would be forced to release. It would not be without pain on her behalf, but it would happen all the same.

But Yami had not given her room to move. His body was too tightly pressed against hers. And if she should squirm, it would most likely snap both their necks. Yami panted, cheeks puffing with his desperate exhales.

He took a moment to catch his breath. Then he pulled away. He released her, tucked his paws, and rolled a couple of feet away. Then he scrambled to his feet again. His sides were swelling and falling rapidly with each breath. He stared at her, shaking his body out. She had not drawn blood yet.

By some miracle his pelt had shielded him from her claws…

Yami struggled to brace himself properly. His lungs were burning. But he was not anywhere close to exhaustion yet. And, soon, he would find his adrenaline crashing through him. He pulled his lips back angrily. His incisors glistened.

The cat launched herself. He stiffened his muscles. The force of it would have knocked a grizzly off its feet. Yet his body held itself. He was pushed barely a centimeter back, claws clicking. Then he aimed his teeth and snapped. Claws tore at his shoulders and flanks, cutting wildly. But in no way did it subdue him.

He had missed the vein.

And that was the most fatal mistake he could make.

A harsh blow to the ribs made him yelp, releasing her and scrambling back a few steps. They weren't broken, as he would have known if they were, but the impact had not been artificial either. A sprain, perhaps? Or possibly a bruise?

He did not think it mattered. He was aware of the sting as he turned to face her again. That was all that mattered, he supposed, that he did not lose sight of that. He was far from an adrenaline rush, he knew.

He was still thinking coherently.

And his instincts were still flaring.

Part of him boasted of the need to shield his side from her. The other said to respect the larger predator and back away while he had the chance. But the largest part of him was analyzing. He had to aim for her throat. If he could put all of his strength into the attack, he would end this fight.

He could _win_.

But this was not the question he needed answered. Yami was well aware of his capability to win. He had not come into this fight with the idea that he couldn't. It required more concentration than he had mustered so far, however. And he had to remember her strengths against his. He had overlooked them so far. That was why they were at a stalemate for the moment.

But he knew fully well of his capabilities. He could bleed her like he would a boar. Or he could cut her jugular as he would a serow. Shape-shifters were not as powerful as one might have suspected. They traded strength for speed in battle and in their own changes, allowing them the ability to shift nearly instantly. All of their strength was focused in their speed, which gave them the ability to flay an enemy alive if they were weak enough. However, the bulk of the animal they became did weigh them down and put at odds their natural talent with their body.

Werewolves, on the other hand, had a—depending on if they were bitten or not—wolf body that was influenced by their human form. Because of this, the ability to change had to be learned over time and forced rather than almost immediately acquired. They dictated whether it was strength or speed that was their greatest attribute by their own free will. They chose to be faster and stronger. It was the gift for something that some considered a curse. It was the free will of the wolf and the human shell that they all grew to take form in.

A balance was easily found when one was used to the stress of it all. When they were used to the Change and utilized it often enough, began to know it well, they could begin to balance strength with speed as necessary.

Yami himself was built for raw power, however. His teeth were longer, his jaw a bit larger, his shoulders broader. He was built for battle, with a more compact shape than Yugi himself. The white wolf was the one built for speed between them, with longer legs and slimmer shoulders. He had the power of a Pure-Blood, of course, raw strength and stealth and a terrible bite. But if he were to go up against Yami, he would not have much chance of overpowering and dominating him.

The shifter was fast as a human. But the bulk of her animal shape cut into that swiftness when she shifted. She was too small and thin as a human to deal with the power of the form she had. She did not have power as a human and so she lacked it as an animal. And so her speed was sacrificed as well. She was not used to this shape by any means.

Yami flicked an ear slightly, lazy in motion. In a fight with a more experienced tiger shifted he would still win. His body possessed too much raw power and strength and endurance—as was the werewolf's gift—to be scared off or overturned by speed. And no shifter would ever be able to boast of endurance like the wolves. They tired easily and waiting it out would mean a few minutes of endurance rather than hours when they fought each other. Even the shifters whose forms were wolves were easily picked off if there was need to. They were fast but not durable. They could shift faster than the werewolf could change, but that seemed to be their only gift for the most part.

This shifter was too new to her form. She had no idea how to utilize it well. But a tiger was never something to consider an easy kill. Inexperienced or not, she was an opponent to be taken seriously in battle.

They had more animalistic instincts. Theirs were strong enough that if they were on the verge of death, they might save them at some point. Whereas the blindness of the adrenaline rush gave them more strength, triggered the healing and their instinct to kill, the shifters were able to maneuver to save themselves. They were not put into a blind rage or a burst of strength and speed. It did not matter how many times he pinned her, or how often he got close to her throat. If the animal itself knew of a way to escape, it would do so. And he would be left scrambling.

Yami bristled faintly. He'd been told it was like they possessed two brains in their mind. One of them was animal, one of them human. Their instincts were widely different. And their thoughts never quite matched.

He needed to get her away from Yugi and his friends. Yugi was his pack mate. Yami snarled and wagged his tail slowly, eyes glittering. Lycanthropes did not abandon pack mates in need. And, if these were truly Yugi's friends then that made them his responsibility as well.

If not for that thought, Yami would have paid no heed to the collateral damage in the meantime. His first concern was and would always _remain_ the need to help Yugi. Beyond that, bystanders were not of his concern.

He backed up and snapped his teeth. The tigress stopped pawing at her bleeding muzzle. He bristled and snarled, bunching his shoulders.

If she had been more experienced he would have tried his chances.

But her inexperience now was just as dangerous to him for the moment. The animalistic half of their shapes was always stronger when they were less controlled. Yami had to play it safe before he could even truly think to attack.

He could wait for her to trigger his adrenaline. But he was often so accurate and vicious in fights that he did not need it. But now wasn't the time to attack without a strategy. His life was not the only one on the line. If he fell, Yugi would come after him. And he did not think they would spare the humans…

Yami snapped his jaws and began to back up.

He had speed. That was what he had against her. He had speed, experience, and the knowledge of what he knew he could and couldn't accomplish.

He charged her. There was only a foot of space between them. But his muscles propelled him. He slammed into her like a speeding car. His teeth jarred her skull. She spun with the bite, crashing to the floor. Yami spun back to face her, a couple of yards away, and snapped his teeth again.

Honda would never have seen it if he had blinked. The attack happened in the length of a heartbeat. The wolf was there in front of them one second. Then he was halfway across the warehouse the next. If he had not seen the tigress he would have thought the wolf had fled. But then she'd staggered and fallen.

And there was blood in an immense arc across the concrete.

Her face was mutilated. The entire right side of it was bleeding and torn in ribbons. He'd clipped her across the cheek. But the main damage was to her head. Her skull was bleeding drastically. The bone was exposed from the top of her eye to her ear. The slab of skin and muscle was hanging from a strand in front of her ear.

Jonouchi was gaping. That wasn't possible. He had seen the same thing as the brunet but it wasn't possible. The blood shed on the floor was too much. And the wolf wasn't…

He didn't even see him at first. It was not until he chomped his teeth again that the blond raised his eyes. Yards away, the canine was watching her. The tigress was on the ground, lying on her side. The impact had thrown her, after all. But how had he managed…?

"He _barely moved_ ," the blond whispered.

"I know…"

But he'd launched himself like a speeding car. Jonouchi couldn't stop thinking of bullets. How had he managed that speed? Wolves and dogs… They weren't _meant_ to be that fast! Humans definitely weren't that fast…

He hadn't even seemed to move as a blur. It was more like he'd…vanished and reappeared…

She was slow in getting up.

The sound of bone and cartilage grinding together made Yami bristle. She was healing. Her body had not risen because the instinct to heal had come on. He listened to her body repairing itself. His eyes flickered to Aileen, then to Yugi.

Neither was paying him attention. Her focus was on the small teen.

And Yugi was too lost in his pain to notice anything.

Well, he supposed he should thank Lupa for that. He would not see the worst of the fight. Because he could see it in her eyes as she got up. Something powerful, almost _ancient_ lingered there. It was unnatural and consuming. The animal brain had woken.

And it was not happy.

Yami bore his teeth, wagging his tail slowly. Let her come for him. He could lead her away better. The collateral damage would be minimized.

Yami chomped his teeth, then backed up. She was stalking closer, a slow and steady walk. It was clear that the tiger brain controlled her now. The human had been fearful. The tiger saw a potential meal.

It did nothing for camouflage. It did nothing for ambush. Had he not been as confident in his own abilities, he might have become unnerved.

Yugi panted and his eyes stretched wide. The pain caused his entire body to thrash again. But it hadn't triggered the Change as she had boasted. There was not a single urging of it. His instincts were stunted. He couldn't think straight to do it. And his senses were too shattered.

Most noise came in a monotonous roar. And his vision was all but scorched by darkness. He could see very limited range, from expanse to distance. It was like tunnel vision, except so close that it had to be inches. The only thing he could feel was the burning in his body. And it was simply growing, expanding. The taste in his mouth was blood. His thrashing had caused him to bite his tongue. And all he smelled was wolfsbane. She was so _close_ to him…

Aileen was actually still crouched beside him, face thoughtful. The black wolf was holding his own against her pet and Yugi was not changing. How he was able to suppress his body's natural reaction was beyond her.

Any other wolves would have turned by now. They'd have puked and writhed and whined until their bodies began to grind with tension and stretch into their true shape. She narrowed her eyes, glancing at the other wolf.

She'd never seen a werewolf able to take a tiger shifter on with such ease. Her newest was unfamiliar with the task of killing but her instincts did her well. Usually she could break a wolf's neck with a swipe of her large paws. This one, however, was vicious and well-built, with a strength that even his body did not entirely boast.

Was there something in their genetic coding?

Were they one of the ones that had been experimented on?

It might account for it. The black wolf was far too powerful to be an average Half-Blood. But Yugi had seemed like a regular human. Fuwa had picked his life apart from school records, down to the very first. He had, according to them, never been experimented on.

But medical records he'd had to bribe and sneak around for had painted a rather strange picture. His nights were haunted by terrors, his healing was faster than average, and oftentimes his medication was so high that the doctors worried.

Notes on his charts said improvement was slow, if there was any at all.

She scowled. It would not be hard for his human parents to forge papers. It did not take many connections to do so. And people often just believed whatever was put on paper. It could be possible the reason Yugi did not change now was because of the experiments that had been run on him. It would explain how badly the wolfsbane and silver had affected him at the restaurant.

She looked up again. The tigress had begun to sprint. The wolf waited a moment, then turned tail. They tore across the factory. The wolf leaped the production table in the middle. He landed with grace and did not pause in the lead. The tiger did the same, then sprinted faster.

Her claws hooked on his back leg. The wolf spun and snapped teeth at her but missed. The tigress used her other paw to smack him in the head. The wolf snarled but the blow didn't completely faze him. The second hit sent him rolling, however.

The blow was to his shoulder.

The blood came in a harsh rivulet of red.

The wolf snarled and snapped as it hit the ground.

The tiger sprang on it.

Aileen smirked. It would be over in a few minutes then. She turned back to Yugi. "Your friend is about to be ripped to pieces," she snickered in his ear. Yugi gave no acknowledgment of her. "I would try to change if I were you."

Yugi couldn't fully understand her words.

Who was…?

His friend…?

Torn to…?

He blinked but could not see. The tunnel vision was gone altogether. It was almost as if his eyes had been sewn shut. He twitched but he couldn't feel much of anything anymore. How her words even filtered through his ears was beyond him. He couldn't hear past the roaring boom in them…

"I suppose you don't care much for him then."

Him?

Who was _him_?

Who was it that he didn't care much for?

He drew in a breath that caused his entire body to shudder.

 _Who_ …?

Her perfume made his head spin.

Yugi choked and expelled more bile. The twitching began to fade again. Was he even still alive at this point? He wasn't sure he could hear his heart. Or feel his blood anymore. His veins felt as if they had been burned away. He choked again.

He had to still be…

If he was…

But what…?

And then something snapped in his head. It was if a door were opening. It ricocheted through his thoughts. It burst forth painfully. It caused him to writhe again. Something crunched and snapped. And the door in his mind opened further. A million things rushed forth.

There was the sound of trickling water. There was an owl hooting. A rabbit moved in the snow. The branches stirred with a breeze. Teeth snapped. A snarl sounded. The earth twisted and tilted. A star burst. A rock glittered with light. Eyes like liquid sunlight burned. A shadow swept across an expanse of snow.

And then blood dribbled. The rabbit was torn to pieces. Blood flecked a wide mouth. The air was metallic. When he breathed the mist was bright white. The face smeared with blood was long and large. The lips were shiny black. And when his focus shifted, bright red eyes peered at him.

And his heart began to beat harder than ever. The blood in his body felt like acid. His throat burned. His ears roared. His mind scrambled. He struggled to keep his eyes on theirs.

And, oh gods, if it wasn't worth it.

The gaze was pure warmth, a fire he did not know how to approach.

Yet it was soothing and gorgeous and he loved the way it bore upon him so beautifully.

Yugi felt his spine elongate, arching and writhing. He bore his teeth. The red eyes glittered. He felt blood in his mouth again. It was burning. He felt his tongue blistering. His body jerked again. His stomach ached and burned. He gagged and spat bile forth. His head snapped up and his jaws opened wide. His neck strained with tension.

"There you are." Aileen got to her feet and looked up. The tigress and wolf seemed to have grown rather still. She had failed to notice the silence from the two apex predators until that moment. Now it made her stiffen. She had heard the death scream…

Were they too exhausted to move?

But wolves possessed amazing stamina. Unless she had mortally wounded him and he had not had time to scream, there was no true explanation. Then her pet would be catching her breath…

There was no sound from the two of them. She glanced at Yugi. The boy had changed into a pure white wolf. But blood leaked from his shoulder and paw and it looked black and sickly. His mouth was stained red and yellow, a combination of blood and bile. His eyes were glazed, staring off into the distance.

"Shit…is he dead?" Jonouchi whispered, but his eyes were on Yugi now. The wolf and tiger had gone beyond his line of vision a while back. Honda had remained watching them. But he had looked away when he thought he heard Yugi rasping. He was so still now, or perhaps his breathing was so slow it was impossible to see.

"Yugi…"

He certainly didn't respond to the call. His body didn't jerk. His eyes didn't clear.

If he was breathing it was not noticeable. Honda strained his eyes. Was he…?

But how was that even possible? What had she done to him?

"I suppose I'll have to kill you myself—"

Aileen froze when a scratching noise surfaced. Her eyes flickered towards the two animals and her face lit with laughter. So her pet _was_ alive. The realization was beautiful to her. Yugi would get his long drawn out death and she would not have her own hands bloodied…

If there was nothing she hated more in the world, it was the idea of having her own hands bloodied.

The tigress was breathing heavily when she moved. The rumbling noise was almost like a panting snarl. Her back was arching faintly, her shoulders rising. And then she heard a crunching noise. Aileen faltered. Why would her pet make that kind of noise? That was not a usual sound…

The crunching became a hideous splintering. And then came a sound like shredding paper. And, before her eyes, horrified, the shoulders split. At first it seemed only to be a wound. Then something small and black breached it. And then something larger, dark as the night sky.

It withdrew for only a moment. When it came again, the sound of paper shredding returned.

And the wolf sprang from her shoulders. His fur was slicked with blood. And grizzle hung in ribbons along his muzzle and cheeks. He came forward slowly. Then he shook himself out. And the flesh on his fur flew away. Droplets of blood, still completely wet, sprayed the floor.

Yugi trembled and looked at him. Yami held his jaws in a manner that did nothing to truly shield what was in them. When he came closer, the white wolf knew what it was by smell.

But he displayed it to Aileen by sight.

The organ hit the ground in a wet, splattering noise. The bone dropped and sounded almost like a plastic chip from a checkers game board. The blood from the muscle came from the severed tubes.

And when it was lost, the entire form of it deflated.

"You… You destroyed…"

Yami snapped his teeth. His tail rose slowly. He stalked forward, easily stepping over the stolen prizes. His red eyes were full of hate that Yugi had never witnessed before. The white wolf let out a small whine.

But Yami didn't pause.

His ear flicked towards him instead.

His teeth chomped together again.

Aileen snarled under her breath. Then she reached into her back pocket. Yugi only heard the electricity. Yami saw a small red pinpoint of light in front of him. It was aimed at his forehead. The red-eyed wolf snapped at her, eyeing the machine.

It was not a gun.

He'd take his chances with it.

Yami launched himself. The device went off with a crackling. His rage improved even the force of his leap. The prongs landed in his chest. But his teeth were in her throat. She screamed as they hit the ground. Her hand flailed and it hit Yami in the neck. But the shock was numbed away by the hatred. There was not a single part of him which felt it.

Yugi moved to pick himself up. But the most he could do was crane his neck. And that was the only way he could properly hear it.

Her head had gone rolling.


	39. The Alpha

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day**

 **Chapter Warnings: Mild Blood, Mentions of Deaths/Murders, Mentions of Killings, Awkward One-Sided Sexual Tension, Pack Mentality, Sacrifice, Werewolf Night Vision, Hints of Cult Mentality**

 **So, one of the things that needs to be clarified is this. Yugi doesn't actually KNOW where Yami bit him. It's not ever truly mentioned between the two of them. Yugi just kind of accepts that Yami bit him (even if he does wonder why beyond the whole "potential" comment). So he never really asks.**

 **But in this chapter he says it was his wrist. And, just to clarify, it wasn't. It's a possibility that I'll bring it up in a later chapter, but it's not likely as it's not the most important detail to either of them. But that's why there was no mention of it hurting longer than it took his arm to heal or any residual phantom pains from it or any kind of thing like that.**

 **Yami's explanation for his line of thinking when leaving Ushio at Yugi's door is an extremely real thing for werewolves. Despite the fact that he was starving at the time, he had bitten Yugi and so assumed the role of providing him with food before he did himself as he knew he was healthy enough to hunt on his own and Yugi had been half-dead. Which, this would have been a little before he would have started hunting that small dog, gotten hit by the car and had his skull all but crushed in from the impact, gotten up while Yugi was gaping at him, and wandered off again.**

 **So the alpha's name comes up in a later chapter. I had originally planned for her to be three different people at one point (Kris first, Vivian second, then Rebecca) and then I realized I had plans for all three of them and I couldn't... So then I picked someone else from a later series and I'm not one hundred percent sure that it works with her character in canon but eh.**

 **Okay, so aside from that, I might be stepping back on updates after this chapter (or the next). It might be a few days (I'll try to make sure it's no more than a week) before I get the next handful of chapters out. I need to get some more things set up in the writing, as well as get ahead with some more projects and a couple of things that I need to focus on in real life again.**

Chapter XXXIX: The Alpha

 _Work Log Entry XXXIX: December, 2002_

 _December 25_

 _He still will not change but his human form has proven itself to be quite capable._

Yugi got up after a few long minutes of kicking his legs awkwardly and struggling to get back up. His legs ached and burned and his shoulders were pulled too tight beneath his skin. He was barely able to keep his focus on breathing as he slowly got to his feet. His legs trembled beneath him. His mouth tasted terrible. His eyes burned. He limped a step, nearly fell, and then choked on bile in his throat again. The white wolf staggered, looking towards the red-eyed lycanthrope before turning away again. His eyes fell on Anzu, who was trying to flip the switch on what looked to be a large metal cage.

He blinked.

When had it…?

He could have sworn…?

He glanced at Aileen and her head, where it lay feet away. Then he turned back. Had she not had Anzu captive on the walk overhead? He stiffened and felt sick. Had the cage fallen? Anzu looked somewhat shaky. She was even perspiring now…

Yugi crept forward. The sound of his claws against the concrete made his head ring. The wolf breathed in unsteadily. His mouth ached and drool slipped from his jaws. He shook finely, trembling. His movements slipped, staggering, but he didn't fall. The brunette faltered in her movements. She couldn't reach her fingers high enough to get the pin holding the door in place.

"Yugi…?"

Did he recognize her?

Did he know who she was?

Or was he planning to attack her?

She trembled. Then she backed up from the cage door and moved towards the center. Because of this she missed it when he tilted his head at the fear in her voice. The white wolf flattened his ears for a brief moment and moved closer. He was tired when he angled his head back to look at the lock.

It was too high to reach with his nose…

Yugi stepped closer. His movements were sluggish as he leaned back and put his paws against the metal. It took him a moment to angle himself comfortably. Then he slid a paw up and to the bolt switch. His claws touched the bottom, the black keratin jiggling it faintly. Then he inched closer. He felt like he was sliding backwards for a moment. His stomach was cold…

He jerked.

The bolt flew into the air and dropped a few inches away. Yugi fell back, panting and exhausted. His ears flickered. There were three heartbeats…

He panicked. _Yami_! he immediately cried, scrambling to get to him. He slipped, sliding across the floor. Then he hit the ground in a tumble. He groaned and whined. His stomach pulsed with pain. His heart hurt. His lungs were strained. His legs trembled and buckled beneath him. Then he snarled as he dragged himself back up again.

 _Yami_ …

He slipped and nearly collapsed again. Then he spun unevenly to face where the black wolf was. When he got to his side Yami was blinking lazily. He hadn't moved beyond that, it appeared. Yugi slipped and fell against him, his relief making it too hard to stand. Yami blinked, looking at him sideways, and then turned his head to press his nose into his cheek. He huffed loudly so that the fur blew aside in uneven strokes and then closed his eyes again.

 _Are you okay_? he demanded shakily. _Is it still shocking you_? _Fuck, if only I had my thumbs_!Yami blinked, then turned his head. _I'm fine. Just tired. Give me a minute and I'll get up and move around again._ He opened his jaws into a loud yawn and closed his eyes again.

Yugi whined a little, tail wagging. _Okay, good_! _I don't…_ He faltered, but he felt that Yami understood the sentiment all the same. He whined again. The other wolf slowly pulled himself to his feet after a long minute. When he was steady again, he shook himself out.

The white wolf covered his nose with his paws. Yami smelled like rotten meat. He supposed it had to have been the way he had killed the tigress. He shivered and flicked his ears as the other moved away from him.

 _Stay here. I'll be back in a few minutes._

Yugi wished he could have leaped to his feet to follow. Instead he whined and raised his head as Yami began to leave him there. The white wolf sat up but his spine hurt and his mouth still ached. He still tasted bile, intense and acidic. Maybe when he got home he would drown himself in soda and get rid of the taste.

He couldn't bring himself to look towards his friends. He was exhausted and the other three seemed too stunned to do much more than stare. Their hearts were beating too quickly and they all seemed almost ill from scent alone.

Yugi moved his paws closer to each other and tried not to bristle in discomfort. The seconds were ticking by and Yami was still gone. What if he was going off into the woods like a family dog might? He would die under the trees or something…

He let out a high-pitched whine, begging the other to return. It burned how much he needed him there, how easily Yami seemed to refuse him for the moment. He drew in a deep breath, whining again, and his body quivered.

It took a few minutes for the other to come back. He was dressed again, skinny black jeans and a tank top beneath his usual teal jacket. He dropped a bag next to Yugi, muttering, "Go change back" and headed for the metal door that separated them from Jonouchi and Honda.

Yugi shivered and whined again before grabbing the bag in his jaws. Yami was watching him now, he realized. He glanced back, slightly unnerved but definitely grateful, and turned to hurry out the back door Yami had left open for him.

It took him twice as long to change and get dressed. And when he came in he was limping and looked exhausted again. He dropped the empty backpack aside and took a seat a few feet from the other wolf. "Everything hurts," he whined.

Yami scoffed. "Try having a tigress almost rip your stomach open. _Then_ we'll talk," he grumbled before turning around to grab the chain which held the door in place. The first tug lifted it only halfway. The second sent it reeling up and into the slot with such speed that the building groaned.

Yugi frowned at him. "I'm sorry…"

The taller teen shot him a look that he could not entirely read. But he didn't speak again. Instead he slowly lowered himself to the floor. Yugi blinked and opened his mouth, then faltered.

There was heat radiating from the other wolf. It swept through the air like summer sunlight. And when he looked at him, Yami was shaking. The tremors were so fine that he almost could not see them. At first, in fact, he had completely missed them. Now, however, they stood out as if someone had shone a spotlight on his thin frame. Yugi could have sobbed for how ill he looked at the moment.

Yet, somehow, Yami still seemed to hold himself with grace. His head did not sag and his face was not shiny with sweat. He was breathing hard, but not panting in such an obvious way. His breaths were short, shallow, and it hardly seemed noticeable in all actuality. He looked like what Yugi had always thought a leader should even in the heat of a lost battle….

The thought made his heart pound but it did little to make him pause and reconsider his thoughts. Instead he drew in a deep breath, struggling to think of the words. He furrowed his brows, focusing on a spot of blood on the concrete and narrowing his eyes.

"The day that I stayed late after school to make up my exam," he began slowly, feeling the life drain from him at the very thought of the entire event. His eyes flickered towards Yami, wondering for a moment, if he truly thought he still possessed that same potential which had caused him to bite him.

Did he truly believe in that any longer?

Or had he finally come to realize just how little his beta truly was worth?

"Chono left me in the library. I went to see about if there were some textbooks I could look over the material in. When I did, I ran into Kokurano…" He blinked and shook his head. "He was having some kind of seizure. But he was…talking to me. I freaked out and ran. I didn't realize that Ushio was nearby—or that he was following me…"

Yami closed his eyes, tipping his head back. The metal was soothing against his burning scalp. But Yugi's words made his skin crawl. He supposed it was only right that they might hear the full truth. They were his best friends, after all.

Why should he truly hide anything from them?

His movement had caught Honda's attention. The brunet was staring at him, unable to look away, eyes wide and startled. The boy looked so sickly sitting there. He was breathing so evenly, but it was clearly strained. Honda frowned as he considered him. Was he going to be okay?

It took him a moment to realize. He was so consumed by the idea that the wolf might die right there that he did not immediately notice. He had been tempted to reach over or perhaps ask if he was okay. Taking down that tigress could not have been easy, after all.

But then he saw bright red.

And he had originally considered it to be a fleck of blood. Then his face flushed and his eyes grew wide. The wolf had opened his eyes into slits. And both were focused on him, boring into his.

He immediately looked away. Yami snorted.

The noise made Yugi pause. He looked over but the wolf simply shook his head with his eyes closed once more. The smaller teen hesitated a moment longer. Then he continued quietly.

"I managed to lose him in the woods at first." Now Yami opened his eyes and stared, expression a mixture of bewilderment and wonder. Yugi carefully ignored him. "Then he managed to corner me. He was choking me and I pretended to lose consciousness. But when he dropped me I ran. And he began to change…"

Jonouchi looked horrified. " _Ushio_ was a werewolf too? Holy shit…" He glanced at Honda. "Imagine if he'd ever gotten creative and tried to bite us. We'd be _dogs_."

Yugi couldn't help but laugh. "Shut up. I'm giving you answers and you're making jokes," he grumbled, making the blond flash him a sheepish grin. "Anyways, when he changed, I was so shocked I couldn't move. I was terrified. And then I heard snarling. And I really freaked out because that meant there was probably a pack of them…"

Yami snorted loudly and then closed his eyes again. "A pack? For an ape with proper teeth," he sneered. "As if that would ever happen."

He smiled faintly. "I didn't realize until after they found the body that it was Tomoya. He tried to save me from Ushio but since he was so much bigger than Tomoya it didn't work out so well. I tried to run and Ushio attacked me again. I got knocked out from a head wound and blood loss. When I came to, both of them were gone but I had a bite mark on my wrist."

Yami blinked and now he was paying him far more attention again. He sat up slightly, watching Yugi closely even as the other boy glanced at him sideways. The taller teen furrowed his brows and the smaller boy flashed him a small smile.

His kindness seemed to burn his blood.

"I found out later that Tomoya had bitten me. I had a concussion for a little while and couldn't remember what had happened. But I remembered when Tomoya's picture was in the paper. Ushio must have torn his throat out because he'd protected me."

He bristled faintly but only Yugi noticed and the small teen did not bring attention to it. Jonouchi and Honda both glanced at him and the blond gestured to him with a thumb. Yami nearly snarled at his lack of discretion, but to do so would have meant far too much energy spent. He didn't have that.

"I ran into Yami the night I changed the first time." He fidgeted. "At the festival."

Anzu blinked wide eyes and glanced at Yami sideways. The lycanthrope was trembling again but when his eyes snapped to hers it was not pain she saw there. He looked tired and impatient. But mostly he looked distressed and unnerved. She turned away, cheeks dusted pink. His eyes were so sharp and piercing…

"Wait, so what about what happened to Ushio? Who did _that_?" Honda demanded, making sure not to look towards Yami. He didn't think the wolf would be thrilled with the way that action might have insinuated he had done something. Yugi looked at him with wide eyes. "I mean…? It wasn't Tomoya."

He drew in a deep breath. "I think it was probably his dad. You know how much he cared about him. I think he realized it was Ushio and attacked him."

"His _dad_?" Jonouchi asked incredulously, eyes growing twice their normal size. "But his dad was always so calm and nice. There's no way it was him."

Yugi shook his head. "Grief makes you do crazy things, I guess." He looked at Yami for a moment, the two of them staring at each other for that brief second. "I don't think Aileen would have had the motivation to do this if I hadn't…killed Fuwa."

Honda shook his head. "Yugi, there's no actual evidence that you did. They didn't find a body, let alone Fuwa's. They would have done testing to identify him. He got out. I don't know how, but…"

Yami looked over at him with sharp eyes. "There were a lot of people in that restaurant. It's very easy to point the finger at one person and have it be someone else entirely. I would not know who would have saved him, nor their reasoning, but I am not sure that he was alive or dead when they took him. It would be a scandal should someone see him dead or alive within an obvious arson."

This peaked the brunet's interest slightly, his hazel eyes widening and gleaming with something curious and bemused. "So you think it's possible that they simply took his dead body?"

"I think it is more likely than his survival. The amount of smoke I saw coming through the window—"

"You were there?" Jonouchi suddenly spat, turning on him. "And you didn't think to _help_?"

Yugi immediately moved to shield Yami from him, snapping, "I didn't want him there. He wasn't supposed to go there and he wasn't supposed to even come here. He came both times because he realized I was in trouble. He's not obligated to help anyways! After all, he isn't the one who bit me. He…actually kind of took pity on me because Tomoya was dead."

Yami blinked, then scrunched his nose up. Where the hell was Yugi going with that?

"He helped me through my first change. If he hadn't been there I'd be dead. Ushio nearly tore my throat out when he attacked me. The wound opened again and I was bleeding out." Yugi gestured slightly towards the other lycanthrope but his eyes had grown distressed and somewhat desperate. "And Yami was nearby. I don't really remember it all that well, but when I woke up again he was there so…"

Why was he lying to his best friends of all people?

With how distraught he had seemed before, why should he not be telling them everything from the very moment he had come to realize werewolves existed? He was so loyal to him; Yami didn't even think he was given _half_ the loyalty that they were and Yugi had proven himself to be such on multiple occasions.

So why lie to them now?

Yugi had the opportunity to tell them everything and he was lying now?

That made no sense to him. Yami furrowed his brows as he watched him. And the way he had positioned himself was as if he thought they might turn on Yami at some point. But what would be the point of doing such and why should he do so now? He was given a chance to unload every single ounce of the lie he had begun to carry on his shoulders and not once did he consider it?

Yami continued watching him. Then he closed his eyes and shuffled to draw his legs towards himself. From there he tipped his weight and crouched forward. His fingers balanced on their very tips, his sneakers folded at the toes. Yugi glanced at him, startled, as he got to his feet and straightened his weight.

Neither of them acknowledged the question in his red eyes.

"So, in other words, you both are big slobbering dogs."

Yami wrinkled his nose. The blond was grinning at them both with bright eyes. He blinked and shifted his weight lazily. Yugi frowned even without taking his eyes off of his alpha. The tension was still clear in the factory and the air seemed entirely too weighted. But the attempt to joke around and forget some of the frustration was appreciated.

"I would not say I slobber," the red-eyed lycanthrope argued, rolling his shoulders and flexing his fingers. "I would be more inclined to drool and rub it on someone else."

Yugi snorted and rolled his eyes. "How nice."

"Well, I could poop on the carpet if you would rather."

Jonouchi sputtered out a startled laugh. Honda had his face covered, shaking his head with a snicker. Anzu was the only one watching Yami with a clearly unnerved expression any longer.

"Um, no thank you?"

"Then don't argue with my methods." He tugged on his jacket sleeve, checking his shoulder. The wound had healed but the pain was still there. Yami turned back to him when Yugi leaned a little closer to see as well. When he shifted his weight, the pressure on his left leg was only slight, the pinpricks easy and manageable.

It took him a moment to realize the other boy had spoken. He'd leaned closer again and was frowning thoughtfully, puzzled. Now Yami looked at him and blinked.

"Did you speak?"

Yugi frowned, then tilted his head. "I asked if you could walk."

"Oh. Well yes, I believe so." He shrugged. "I suppose we will find out when I either collapse or make it back."

Yugi gnawed on his bottom lip. "That's not funny," he grumbled, watching him with a somewhat flustered expression. Yami merely blinked at his discontent tone and looked away after a long moment. "But I'm serious. Do you think you can walk back with me or not?"

Yami huffed at him, baring his teeth for a single second. "Yes, I think I can walk back with you." Then he turned away again to pick at his nails.

Honda cringed when he saw how dark red they were. "Are your fingers bleeding? Under the nail beds…?" he asked with wide eyes.

Yami faltered, then inspected each of them closely for a moment. Bewildered and slightly alarmed, he even went about pressing on each of them to test for pain but nothing so much as stung. When he looked up, he seemed extremely confused. "No… Why do you ask?"

"The color," Yugi supplied quietly. He glanced at his own fingers but they had since grown a bit deeper in shade and seemed almost caught between the two colors. He wondered how much longer he would be able to say such a thing. "Our nails are a lot darker than theirs."

Yami blinked and looked them over again. "Oh." He didn't bother to look at their nails as well. But he did glance at Yugi's with a thoughtful expression. He nodded slightly, turning away. "Thank you for your concern."

Jonouchi scratched at his wrist, growing more and more uncomfortable as the seconds passed. He looked between the two teens and his stomach flipped. At first glance they had looked so much alike. Up close, there were such distinct differences that he was almost ashamed to have considered it before. Yami had a more feral quality about him that almost bordered ancient. And Yugi seemed softer, kinder, with that younger look to his face and his usual gentle demeanor.

But they shared between them an unnatural, seemingly eternal knowledge, a great secret, and that scared him more than if Yugi had become unidentifiable as a person.

He drew in a deep breath. "Thanks for looking out for him…" He said it in a somewhat tight voice, so uncomfortable that Yugi blinked in confusion at the strain in his words. Yami glanced at him with a somewhat uncomfortable expression. The two of them locked eyes, red against light brown, and the human looked quickly away again.

"I would do it again if I had need to." He looked away as well. Yugi glanced at him sideways and bit his lip. It was not as easygoing as saying a simple "of course". And, in fact, it almost sounded threatening at its core.

It was almost as if he were giving Jonouchi and the others a very clear line, a warning that should they step over such a barrier he would rip them to shreds. But the thought made no sense to Yugi.

Why would his friends be a threat?

"So, um… This has been a thing since the festival?" Honda murmured and Anzu felt her cheeks pink faintly. It almost sounded as if he were hinting at them being a couple rather than Yugi being infected with lycanthropy and someone helping him deal with the complications of it.

Yugi frowned faintly. "Yeah, the night of the festival was the full moon," he mumbled, looking awkwardly towards the floor. "I started to change so I ran off to the woods. And I ended up reopening each of the wounds and started bleeding out. I… Yami found me there and helped me nurse my wounds so I guess it all worked out…"

Yami shot him a sidelong glance. His eyes were darker, with an edge that made it clear he was not the least bit happy. The smaller teen glanced towards him in response and then turned away again.

"Wait, so, this is going to happen _every_ full moon for you guys?" Jonouchi asked skeptically, looking his best friend over and resisting the urge to scratch harder at his wrist. "Isn't that…kind of bad?"

Yami turned to him. "In the case of hunters, yes. If we can see clearer because of the full moon, so can they. But it's also better for us because it makes it easier for our bodies to grow more accustomed to the Change and how physically taxing it is." He narrowed his gaze into mere slits. "The most obvious obstacle would most definitely be the hunters."

The blond frowned at him. "Can't you change like…in a basement or something? Somewhere hunters wouldn't _find_ you?"

"I don't know that that would work," Yugi answered with a puzzled frown, tilting his head as he considered the question more fully. That might have been a little safer, but a part of him seemed to recoil hideously at this very thought. "I think that would make us more inclined to lash out than anything else. It'd be hard for us to keep a level head…"

"Would it?" Honda muttered, glancing at Yami for an answer now. "I mean, I can see an enclosed space not doing well for a wild animal. But you guys obviously have your human brain so wouldn't you understand what's going on?"

Yami bristled faintly and tried is hardest to shrug it off. _They're just curious,_ he hurried to reconcile mentally, a vain attempt to calm his growing temper. _They do not mean to try to do me or Yugi any harm…_

"I cannot be sure. And I do not care to test it out. We might turn out to be perfectly okay or we may turn around and try harder than ever to make an escape. It is not something I am inclined to test out by any means."

"But for safety…"

He bristled again, this time unable to suppress the urge to snarl. "The _woods_ are safe. For a wolf, the _forest_ is the safest place to exist," he breathed out, struggling not to snap his teeth. His distress made Yugi turn his head with wide eyes. Was he shaking? Everything seemed to be shivering around him. "And, should we need to go into confinement, I am sure a natural outcropping or cavern along a mountain face would be much better than a human home."

"Yami."

His head snapped towards him. His lips curled faintly in challenge, eyes bright with ferocity. Yugi frowned at him, gnawing on his bottom lip. The two of them studied each other. The red-eyed wolf bore his teeth and exhaled in a gust, as if he were seconds from snarling. The sight rattled Yugi's resolve only slightly.

"You need to calm down." He tried to make his voice soothing but the anger radiating from the other male seemed to cow his gentler side. Naturally anger rose to match his, their eyes remaining locked for far too long. He shook his head and expelled some of his frustration with the movement. "They're just curious about it."

Yami snarled low in his throat, then snapped his head away to glare at the door over Anzu's shoulder. The brunette shivered and the movement made his eyes slide over to hers. Her breathing quickened and her heart began to race. Yugi heard it, interest peaking, and he looked between them slowly. Yami was so stiff that it almost seemed a movement might break his limbs.

If he leaped at her, the smaller teen didn't know what he was meant to do.

Then the moment passed. Yami turned away first, huffing loudly through his nose. He reached up, running a hand over his face as if to scrub away his frustration. He scratched gently along his pulse point for only a moment, then folded his arms. The gesture at first appeared aggressive, and then Yugi noticed the positioning. It was slight and he would have missed it at any other time. But his attention was so ensnared on the taller teen that it caught and held his focus with intense definition.

His fingers were spread to encompass some of the bones of his ribcage and his knuckles were clenched so tightly that they had turned white under the strain. He pulled at the outside of his jacket, tugging it more firmly against his lean frame. And then Yugi noticed his head was both turned and cocked slightly to the side. The way his chin was tucked into his collarbone was forceful but it also served to further highlight the difference between his anger and mounting distress.

Yugi swallowed hard and bit his lip. Maybe if he got between them further…

He doubted it would do much but stress Yami out more. He drew in a deep breath, then looked at his friends again. He moved his hands to his back for a moment, then pressed his fingers into his skin. "I think being locked up in a room would drive a werewolf mad," he announced, making them turn to him again. In the corner of his eye Yami remained perfectly still. A dripping sound began behind him, soft and easy at first.

Now that made the red-eyed wolf raise his head. He tilted it again, listening, and then loosened his grip on his ribs as he turned towards the source of it. Yugi shot him a glance that the other faltered upon seeing. They looked at each other, long and slow. His fingers pushed harder and the dripping escalated.

As did Yami's shock.

Then came the impatience and mounting anger.

His eyes glinted like gemstones and his lip curled. "Stop it," he growled, shaking his head furiously.

Yugi pressed just a bit harder and swallowed a cry of pain. Now the dripping was almost steady. He was dizzy from the noise but he didn't bother to stop for a moment longer. Then he pulled his other hand away and Yami bristled at him in outrage.

" _Why_ would you do that?" he spat, baring his teeth. His voice was a low, hideous snarl. The edges were so guttural that Honda could barely tell he was talking in the first place. "That was stupid. I did not take you for such an impulsive idiot."

"What? I didn't do anything!" Yugi argued, though he almost laughed out loud when Yami huffed and snarled a little lower. Instead he moved his hand as if he had forgotten the wound, gesturing lazily. "I have no idea what you're even talking about!"

"Probably that your hand looks like it had a run in with a chainsaw," Honda sputtered, gaping at it. The expanse of it seemed to have opened further and every contour of his skin was soaked bright red. He gaped, eyes wide, and grew pale when Yugi seemed almost dismissive of it. "You should, uh…get that looked at…"

"I'll stitch it when I get home." The dizziness was more abundant now. But Yami's distress was gone and replaced by immense worry now. They studied each other for a moment. Yugi wanted to smile at him but his body felt too heavy. He needed to lie down. The adrenaline of his friends meeting Yami and the idea that he might die from the fever that had come over him had begun to fade. Wounding himself had not done him good, however. "It probably looks worse than it is."

Yami twitched and shifted his weight. His right leg burned when he applied too much pressure. He considered the smaller wolf, frowning. His actions made no sense to him, unless he had truly been so concerned for his mounting anxiety that he had acted on it.

But then, why should he go to such drastic measures?

Surely his friends would have listened to him if he said he wanted to leave, right?

"I don't think so."

Yugi looked at him. "No?"

"Definitely not…"

The small blue-violet-eyed teen frowned and looked his hand over for a long moment. Then he shook his head slightly and considered the other wolf. "No, I don't think so either. You're probably right. I need to…" He flexed his fingers and the nerves danced with numbing fire. "Yeah I really think I need to get this stitched before I do anything with it again…"

Honda glanced at both of them and cursed under his breath. His school uniform was going to be wrecked. Maybe it was the perfect excuse to order a new one…

He began to pull at the bottom of the jacket, the threads splitting fiercely where they were already frayed about an inch up from his hips. Yami startled, eyes growing wide with shock and Yugi opened and closed his mouth in surprise.

The brunet took the smaller teen's wrist and wrapped the cloth around the gaping wound to begin stifling the blood flow. "You need to keep your hand held higher than your heart. It'll slow the bleeding down," he reminded him quietly, securely knotting it and folding Yugi's fingers experimentally. When he saw they were still fully functional, he let go.

Yami studied the two of them in surprise for a moment. His teeth dug into his cheek. Why hadn't he known that before?

"Why?"

Honda blinked and looked over, as did Jonouchi and Anzu. Yugi, however, smiled faintly, turning to him, and murmured, "It reduces blood flow. When it's a closed wound it helps reduce swelling. When it's an open wound like this it helps stop blood flow so that blood loss is significantly less."

The other wolf frowned, studying him, and then nodded and turned away. He supposed that was a good thing to know. It would help him to make sure he didn't lose a hand, he was sure. That would be bad for a werewolf. His life wasn't rainbows and butterflies.

He'd need all four feet and his balance to get about.

"I think we should get home."

Yami turned back with a somewhat startled but mostly self-conscious expression. He eyed him for a moment, studying the way he kept his hand up, fingers splayed slightly. Then he glanced at the others who were now watching him as discreetly as they could from their peripherals. He bristled faintly but swallowed away his growing alarm. They were paying rapt attention now, as was Yugi as he studied him intently.

"Yes… That would be good…"

The smaller teen smiled at him and he swore the curve of his lips made his stomach toss faintly. He swallowed thickly, though his instincts were telling him to pull the fabric away and clean the wound again with his tongue.

But to do so in front of Yugi's human friends seemed entirely too stupid and foolish for him to overlook.

* * *

When Yami made it up the drain pipe Yugi was beyond ecstatic. He had not had to help him from the ground up as he had before. Not that he wouldn't have done it in a heartbeat—he would have—but it was so nice to see that he was able to move about and climb without such dire need of assistance. The fact that he did not limp as profusely or require additional help to get back into the house was amazing after the last time he had seen the effects of electricity in him.

Yami did, however, pant and shake himself out as he moved to step over the ledge. His sneakers were coated in ice and his hair was white with snowflakes. When he got to the edge of the window, he backed up into the wall beside it, then slid down the surface of the smooth plaster.

Yugi wondered if he had looked nearly as nice with snow in his hair as the other wolf managed to. He didn't seem cold or uncomfortable. Or the slightest bit flustered by it. He simply lowered his chin to his collarbone and closed his eyes. There he sat, breathing in heavily, while the white began to fade first to gray and then to the sleek shine of raven hair. His shoulders didn't hunch together. His fingers didn't look red. His face was not tight with a look of discomfort. He hardly seemed upset by any stretch of the imagination.

"You lied to them."

He would have flushed if the tone had been accusatory. As it was, he simply sounded as if he were telling him the sky was blue. Yugi shifted his weight, then moved closer to him. When Yami did not raise his head nor bother to speak again, the small teen hesitated. Then he moved to crouch in front of him. Yami's legs were splayed outwards, his right bent so that his knee looked knotted. Yugi moved his one knee to press into the carpet in front of him, in between the other's legs.

"They don't need to know all of the details."

This time his eyes flickered open partially. He raised them, peering through his long spidery lashes. If he was surprised or concerned about the proximity, he did not show it in any measure.

"Why not?"

Yugi smiled faintly, moving to rest his uninjured hand on the carpet. "Because, I don't want them to know it. And you aren't comfortable with it." He studied him for a moment, but the other wolf did not argue as he had assumed he might. He merely watched him, red eyes slit by black and darkened by long shadows. "They don't have to know everything."

Yami tipped his head up now and it was clear the movement took a lot of effort on his behalf. It was abruptly apparent to Yugi that he had not fully recovered from whatever fever he'd had after the Change when he'd become human again.

"They're your best friends."

Yugi shook his head. "I don't tell them everything. They don't tell me everything. There is not a single person in the world who tells someone else _everything_ in their lives." He paused, watching him, and then smiled a little more. "Why should they have to know at your expense?"

He blinked. "I would not have minded."

The smaller teen curled his fingers against the carpet fibers. "No? So you didn't get extremely nervous back there and snarl at Jonouchi? Or glare at me? Or wrap your arms around yourself and tuck your chin like you were trying to fold in on yourself?" he asked gently, shaking his head again and offering him a kind look. "Yami, I _noticed_."

Yami stared at him, then narrowed his eyes. "Yes, and then you opened your wound."

Yugi shrugged. "Yes. I took their focus off of you." _And paid for it with dizziness and head rushes,_ he added silently. "But the point is, why should I give them anything that comes at your expense, Yami?"

"Because they're your friends."

" _You're_ my friend."

"You've known them longer."

"I've known _you_ long enough."

"They fear for you."

"Are you going to tell me that you don't?"

Yami fell silent for a long moment. Then he shook his head slowly. "They didn't risk your life or infect you with some kind of disease."

Yugi didn't blink. "They also haven't _saved_ my life almost six times already and _they_ couldn't have saved me if they had come across the attack from Ushio. They would be long dead now like Tomoya is."

He curled his lips. "They don't kill people."

"They haven't been forced to."

The taller boy fell completely silent now. His breathing came with a soft whistle of a rasp a few moments later. His eyes burned into his, then closed tightly, and he tipped his head back. Yugi felt a small, somehow lingering and intense moment of longing for a split second. He gripped at the carpet fibers harder. His mouth was growing hot and drool threatened to leave his lips for a moment. He wanted—and he was amazed that he was not embarrassed and horrified—to lean forward and kiss along his neck. He wanted Yami to moan and writhe and his pulse to jump beneath his lips and tongue as he dragged it along the column and dipped it between his clavicles.

His breathing grew slightly erratic. His heart was racing. His pulse pounded in his ears. It would be so easy to just—

Yami seemed to respond to his new focus. His eyes opened and his head jerked forward. The movement was defensive. His eyes were troubled. The smaller teen blinked and looked away quickly. Maybe if he remained focused on the wall, the other wolf would not notice the lust that darkened his eyes.

But he could smell it. If Yugi could smell it—a coppery, pulsating wave of heat and pheromones—then surely Yami could too. The thought made his throat heat with a blush and he tucked his own chin against his neck, horrified. But he couldn't move and Yami made no effort to force him.

The moment passed. The seconds came long and slow, rushing by with a ticking sound. Then the tension left him. And Yami blinked in a lazy fashion. They considered each other, one from the peripheral, the other with a steady blankness, their stare steady and headlong.

"You do not plan to tell them I killed Tomoya."

Yugi blinked and turned his head. He considered him, the way his eyes seemed uniform in shade. Then he frowned and gnawed the inside of his cheek as he studied him.

"No," he admitted, swallowing hard. "I have no intentions whatsoever of telling them anything about that."

"Will they respond badly?"

Yugi frowned. "He was a friend," he supplied in a slightly clipped tone. "But it's not how they might respond to it. It's more about how much I don't think I want them to know."

Now Yami furrowed his brows and studied him with a strange, thoughtful expression. "Why wouldn't you want them to know?" he finally inquired. His eyes flickered about, dancing where they probed at his. "I would think you would be doing them a service in telling them that I'm more dangerous than they seemed to think."

"They know you're dangerous," Yugi replied evenly, shaking his head. "They saw you kill the tigress. And they saw you slaughter Aileen. Her head rolled, after all. The point is, though, that I don't want them to know that you bit me."

"Is that something to be ashamed of?"

Yugi immediately shook his head. "Of course not. But what happens if they get caught as a way to find me? Then they end up saying that someone bit me and you're their next prime kill."

"I don't need you to protect me."

"I would have said the same thing a month ago. Now I'm here. And at this point, I'm so glad you're here right now to do just that. You have no idea how grateful I am." He paused, chewing his cheek, and his face heated at the astonished expression marring Yami's face. "You've saved my life and you're still here when you could have left a long time ago. It means a lot to me that you haven't. I mean… There have been ample opportunities for you to sneak off and never come back and you haven't taken them."

Yami blinked at him. Then his own eyes grew thrice their regular size and a small blush dusted beneath them. The smell of the blood rushing to the surface made Yugi stiffen slightly, head spinning for a brief moment. Then he swallowed away the tension in his throat and forced his spine to relax again. But his lungs were aching and his mouth was salivating again.

He swallowed it away forcefully, drawing in a deep breath. Maybe he should move. But it was hard to. He didn't actually want to. And Yami was not making any true objections to his close proximity…

"Not to mention that you helped me through the Change multiple times now. And you've gotten me past the first two months as a new werewolf. Isn't that the minimum of the alpha's job when they bite someone?"

He shifted his weight. The spell from his blush was lost. And the desire Yugi had felt before dissipated as simply as if it had never existed to begin with. They eyed each other. Then the smaller teen inched back and Yami moved to fold his other leg and cross them in front of him. In the teal jacket, the position made him seem oddly childish, as if he were a young boy playing with clothing a size too big and listening to someone teaching him a new hobby.

He had that same passionate intensity in his eyes now. It made Yugi's heart skip beats and prance about within his chest. He swallowed hard. Then he moved to sit back on his legs and sigh softly.

"But I do have to ask you something. Because it never made sense to me and I've been wondering for a while…"

Yami blinked at him but didn't speak.

"Why did you leave Ushio's body on my doorstep that night?" He watched him blink again but there was no tension or stiffness to be found in his limbs. Nor did he appear to be mildly upset by the conversation in any manner. "I never understood that…"

The taller wolf closed his eyes, exhausted as he muttered, "I was nearby when I killed him. And it occurred to me that you probably did not know how to heal yourself properly. I was not thinking at the time because I myself was _starving_ but I was also very healthy. I left him at your doorstep in case you were hungry."

Yugi would have recoiled a week ago. Now he simply cringed. "Gross," he muttered, shaking his head slowly. "That's disgusting, Yami."

"Ushio would have been a good meal. He was meaty and muscular and had a layer of fat to him. It would have healed you." Yami had a faraway note to his voice. "Some werewolves will eat each other when they're starving enough or prey is too scarce. Or when they need to heal. It's especially beneficial when the forms are the same when they do it."

"Are you being serious right now?"

Yami quirked his lips and opened his eyes, smirking at him playfully. "Why should I not be serious?" he asked.

Yugi relaxed visibly. "Your eyes give you away."

"Damn." He chuckled. "No, I have never heard of werewolves truly killing each other for meal unless a long famine had driven them to it. But they would most likely die before they got the chance regardless. Starving wolves are far from the most stable."

He smiled, nodding. "So…you left him there for me to eat?" His smile fell away just as quickly as it had come. His voice was painfully disgusted. "I wasn't expecting to hear that…"

Yami looked away towards the carpet now with a simple shrug. "I told you I was starving. I was not in the best state of mind."

Yet he'd still managed to subdue his own hunger and drag the corpse to Yugi's door. He frowned and bit his lip. "You scratched at the door until you heard me moving around," he said slowly.

Yami nodded. "I wanted to make sure you were still alive. I just did not stay after I heard you approaching the door."

Yugi nodded and bit harder until blood began to come across his tongue in tiny waves. "How did you manage to do that to him? They said that his skull was…and the angle…"

"I came at him from the side. I was still mad about what he'd done, that I'd killed the wrong person. I was tired and hungry. And I spotted him, remembered his scent, and followed him until he was paranoid. Then I charged him. It does not take much effort for a wolf to leap high enough. It did help that he had his head angled down before I attacked. He didn't realize what was happening. He had just heard me snarl and I moved too fast for him. Then I had his head in my mouth."

"And you crushed it…"

"My jaws are a lot stronger than the average dog's."

Yugi nodded. "Do you know _how_ strong?" he asked slowly, biting his lip and studying him. "I mean, do you know if it's stronger in us than…?"

"At the lab, the wolf in my cage with me said that Atem had measured so high that it almost broke the scale. They said something about the pterygoideus muscles putting immense force behind the bite. Atem was in a more feral state and they said it was unlikely he could truly utilize that force unless in a similar situation. But they also said the standard bite produced weeks before was three thousand or more."

Yugi stiffened. That made his jaw pressure around the same as a saltwater crocodile. Which meant that maybe it was not so farfetched to assume that the other wolves had similar bites…

"Is that from being a Pure-Blood?"

Yami shrugged and picked at his nails. "I would not assume it to come from anything else." He ran a nail over his canine, cleaning the blood from beneath it. "Although, I am sure that they might have been capable of similar things using the average werewolf with some of their more…dangerous experiments."

"Your cell mate… Did he have similar jaws?"

"He was a regular Half-Blood, so I would think not."

Yugi nodded slightly. "Okay." He paused, getting to his feet, and bit at his nails uncomfortably for a long moment. "My friends don't need to know that you bit me. They can believe that it was Tomoya during the fight against Ushio. It's as simple as that."

Yami looked at him, his eyes seemingly seeing through him, and then nodded. The relief was clear in his gaze, as was his distress at such a statement. But it was obvious that he did not truly agree, nor understand why he should want to hide that from them. He scratched the inside of his right wrist and studied the smaller teen for a few minutes longer.

* * *

Yami wondered if anyone ever actually noticed that he and Yugi would disappear into the woods and come back hours later and sneak in through the drain pipe. It was not like he was out of their sight completely. There were still people nearby who might see them. The idea was not one that pleased him. Had anyone noticed them climbing in through the window or the way that they disappeared for hours? He thought it a little too convenient if they hadn't. That would be entirely too unnatural for human neighbors not to be nosy enough to see and notice and wonder. It was bewildering to him that they would not consider.

He shook his head slowly. Maybe he was over thinking it. After all, he had not once seen his neighbors anywhere nearby. He never saw a car or anything of that nature at that house. He had certainly never witnessed anyone peeking out the blinds or anything. And he was sure Yugi would have noticed their presence had they been nearby.

He would have told him if they had seen them…

He blinked and exhaled softly, turning his head to look back over his shoulder. "What are you doing here, Mai?" he asked softly, raising a brow slowly and studying the well-muscled but slim violet-eyed she-wolf. He could see her easily being one of the most athletic women alive by human standards. "Shouldn't you be having a romp with Otogi as per usual?"

The she-wolf wagged her tail, taking his dry inquiry for humor. He smirked faintly. She was so easy to get along with.

It was almost a shame that he had not met her before now.

 _The alpha has requested that both you and Atem are present for a meeting later in the day,_ she announced with another slow wag of her tail. She tilted her head, watching him. _She means to make an important announcement not to be missed by any of the pack._

The casual use of the word made him bristle. But the reality of it was that as long as he was Yugi's beta among them, he was a part of Yugi's pack and that meant the smaller wolf's union in theirs made him a part of it as well. He wrinkled his nose and sniffed disdainfully.

"I will alert Yugi to that," he dismissed, turning away again. Then he looked back at her and studied for a moment. How odd it was that she did not shy away from eye contact with him. "Was there something else?"

Mai considered him, flicking an ear. This time her voice broke and splintered away and so she projected a picture to him. It was of him and Yugi, the two of them in the woods. Yami was at his side like a shadow and Yugi was in stride with him. Their long legs moved in unison and they both looked incredibly relaxed.

He blinked. "What about it?"

This time the image projected was not of peaceful content. Blood splattered across snow and concrete for the background changed rapidly, and large teeth against a black muzzle had bitten through pale creamy skin.

He bristled now. "I didn't bite him."

She tilted her head. Then she wagged her tail slowly from side to side. A light burned in her eyes, one of soft laughter and reassurance. But through his mind came a light and soft wintry scent which tugged and pulled at his insides. The power burned beneath his veins and the image that appeared in the forefront of his mind was that of a red flame surrounding both himself and Yugi as humans. And there was a thick thread which corded them together, one which wavered only faintly on Yugi's side. But it was the undercurrent of scent which came from her memory that made him stiffen. He had hoped that the edge would have been taken off, that it was unidentifiable whom had bitten the other.

He bore his teeth. "I didn't bite him," he repeated. But he didn't sound as firm as he had before and now he almost desired nothing more than to curse.

Her tail wagged slowly again. That little glint in her eyes shone the slightest bit more. His stomach tossed, but not with nerves. He could feel the anger rising, the coming urge to snap his teeth and spring upon her. He thought to throw her to the ground, to bite through her jugular…

She flicked an ear and now her eyes lowered. But the image still came to him. It was that of Otogi at her side, from that day they'd met and he'd led Yugi home, and her voice was in his ears as it said, "We can't tell the pack. I think we need to watch them, maybe make sure nothing happens to them. But we can't tell the others. Mother will lose her mind if she hears of a potential wolf, let alone _two_. And you know the uproar that will be caused from it."

Then Otogi's voice came into his ears. "As far as the pack is concerned, neither Yami nor Yugi exist. And we'll keep it that way until something changes."

Yami stiffened again. "How did you even…? How long have you…?" he asked slowly, narrowing his eyes. "Why wouldn't you…?"

She looked up at him through long blonde lashes. The resulting image was that of what he could only assume was the night he turned and attacked the alpha in a bid to escape. The pack was hovering, the alpha was bleeding from a wound to the neck and along her shoulder and chest. Her right leg was slick and shiny. The pack seemed incredibly small in stature, their eyes darkened and their faces drawn. They looked like ghosts in comparison to the powerful spirits they had possessed when he had thought to plan an escape.

He nodded minutely.

She'd wanted to protect her family from more pain. Yami picked at his nails and ran his tongue over the top of his teeth. That was understandable. He would surely do the same should he have had any…

"Make sure that not a word of this is ever spoken within that pack," he said softly, his voice somewhat stiff with the idea of such an admission. She stared at him now, a sense of wonder and curiosity within her eyes. And he knew she had sensed it, the desire to hide such a secret at any cost. "Why did you come here? That message was not all."

The wolf flicked an ear. Then she offered him a simple tail wag that barely made it both ways. The image was that of Yugi looking up. His blue-violet eyes sparkled and his lips tugged into the faintest of smiles. His face lit up despite the light movement of his mouth and his head tilted slightly. The object of his attention was not in this picture and he stared at her, bewildered.

Did she see it too?

He swallowed hard.

Did she see the same thing in him that had caused him to turn back and bite him?

He searched her eyes. "You're protecting Yugi?"

Her ears flattened faintly and she curled her lip. It was not the slightest bit aggressive by any manners. It was simply distasteful and—if he were truthful with himself—it seemed almost oddly displeased and disappointed. Mai's eyes burned into his again, fierce and annoyed. She looked as if she wanted to bite him for his idiocy. But what exactly he had done wrong was another question altogether.

Yami tilted his head. Then he considered her a moment longer. "I appreciate it," he said slowly, as if it might appease her somewhat. Her eyes widened, ears pricking again, but her expression was still somewhat frustrated. The surprise did not wipe all of it away.

She seemed as if she might show him something else. And he thought it vital, terribly so, but then a noise stopped them. Yami moved to shield her from the view of the street, an instinctive maneuver to protect the weaker of the two. She flattened herself to the ground, statuesque in her stillness.

Then Yami picked up on the noise. It was soft, steady, and there was a low whistling to accompany it. But it was the solid, firm, loud and somewhat quick rhythm that made him relax. He didn't glance back at her, instead heading for the edge of the trees.

Mai watched him, interest peaked. Yami cast a single cautious glance towards the house a little further down the street. The tension made his shoulders rise slightly. But it failed to remain long. There were no movements and no sound from within it. She saw him pick his way casually and with slight trepidation towards the figure coming from further down the street. At first the angle made it impossible to see the newcomer. Then she blinked and her tail wagged happily at the sight.

Yugi, however, had an entirely different reaction. He was so busy staring at the ground that he nearly did not hear him.

The noise of footsteps startled him. He jumped visibly. His head snapped up. His shoulders rose. His eyes grew thrice their usual size. His breathing quickened. For a moment all he could think of was Fuwa.

If he was alive, how had he found him so soon?

Was he there to finish the job?

Then the figure stopped. Their head tilted and their eyes flickered across his. Yugi blinked in confusion. Then he raised his head a little more. The tension left his body.

And his face lit up.

The smile was brilliant and warm. His eyes were luminescent with affection and surprise. "Hey, Yami," he mumbled, shaking his head in slight bewilderment. But his smile didn't falter and his eyes remained warm and beautiful. "What's up?"

Now that he was only a few feet away from him, it occurred to Yami that he was not sure what he had wanted to say. His thought process had only gone as far as desiring to see him. That alone had made his legs move. Now, however, he faltered and wondered. He chewed his cheek and scratched at the inside of his wrist, unsure of what to say.

Yugi blinked at him and his smile began to fall somewhat. "Are you okay? Did something happen?" he asked before he could stop himself. "Did you go hunting? Are you hurt—?"

Yami chuckled. "I'm fine, Yugi."

He smiled again, eyes brightened with relief. "Good." Then he blinked again and furrowed his brows. "So then… What are you doing out here?"

The taller teen opened and closed his mouth and struggled for an answer for a few moments. Then he smiled faintly, the edges of it tight with his admission. "I wanted to see you," he muttered. His skin tingled slightly.

The smaller teen blinked, surprised, and the reddening of his cheeks was soft and startled. He smiled a little more—or maybe it softened further somehow. The two wolves looked at each other a few moments longer, until Yami glanced over his shoulder and along the street.

"Are your neighbors not home often?"

The question startled him so much that Yugi almost assumed he was hearing things. Then he saw where his eyes were focused and sighed quietly. "No, they're home. They work at home. They're a couple of famous freelance writers. They rarely pop out of the house though, unless they're about to go somewhere for their next articles…"

"Why do you sound so upset about it?"

He shook his head. "I'm not. I just… It's… They were home last weekend. I didn't realize it. My mom has the idea that I've been going into the woods a lot more often than usual." He bit his lip. "She's worried about what might happen because of all of the things going on and the murders."

Yami frowned. "I'll hold off from—"

Yugi immediately shook his head, eyes sharpening. "No. No, I'm not going to let you do that. That's not fair to you. I told her I wouldn't go out into the woods anymore. But that doesn't mean anything for you. You can come and go as you'd like." He paused, studying his face. "I'm not going to try to make you stay around like that. All we're going to have to do is be a little more vigilant I guess. We don't want them to tell my mom I lied and I'm still running around in the forest when I said I wouldn't."

He tilted his head. "The easiest way to ensure that they don't tell her is to simply not do it," he argued.

"Okay, well that's nice in theory, but Yami, do you honestly think that you can keep from going into the woods?" he asked skeptically, brow raised. "I appreciate the offer. I really do. But it doesn't really…work like that. You get restless and I like my room being in one piece."

Yami blinked, then rolled his eyes. "Yes, my restlessness would not do well for that. Would it?" He considered himself for a moment, then glanced over his shoulder. Mai was nowhere to be seen. The image of Yugi's face lighting up was burned into his mind. His lips twitched faintly. Then he turned back slowly. "Are you opposed to going to the woods now? The alpha has sent summons for us."

Yugi blinked and frowned, his entire body seeming to shrink within itself for a moment. His fingers fidgeted with the straps of his backpack. His eyes flickered across Yami's uncomfortably. Then he sighed softly and looked downwards. "A summons? For what?"

"Mai said that it had to do with an important announcement. She may have insinuated that it was more vital for the two of us to attend than many of the others," Yami supplied quietly, studying him for a moment. "You realize that it is possible for me to attend alone—"

" _No_!" Yugi spat immediately, eyes fierce as they burned into his again. "You are _not_ going on your own."

Yami frowned and tilted his head. The smaller teen looked almost ready to lunge at him should he argue with such a decree. But his own mind hurried to feel relieved for such a statement. Not having to go there alone was amazing to him. The security of having Yugi there beside him to play as Atem was beautiful.

There was no fight to break out if he was there.

He wouldn't have to snap his jaws and draw blood and snarl when they drifted too close or challenged him because of Yugi's absence.

When he simply nodded, Yugi deflated. The tension left him completely. He drew in a deep breath, then looked down again. The reality of it was that he should have known Yami would not fight him. Or at least he would not when he was so clearly distressed.

Yugi bit his lip and shook his head slightly. "Sorry, I just… You can't go there on your own. After you told me about what happened with the alpha…" He glanced away, eyes darkening with something the other wolf was unsure of how to read. "Let me go ahead and grab some clothes and we'll head off."

Yami shook his head. "I am not sure of when the meeting is meant to take place. Nor do I know of what is to be spoken of there. Do you truly wish to change and go there?"

"Well, I'm not really willing to have to buy _another_ uniform because it got drenched in the waterfall. Or because I decided to go as a human and they attacked. Thanks but I'm going to have to say those aren't the most fun ideas." Yugi flashed him a small smile, then shook his head. "Besides, I doubt it would be a good idea for either of us to show up as humans."

Yami nodded slightly, eyes growing somewhat cold. Yugi had no doubt he was thinking of the possible consequences of such an action. "No. I am not sure why I even assumed to ask such a thing," he admitted quietly. "Very well, let's get a change of clothes and…hmm?"

Yugi smiled and rolled his eyes. " _You_ don't need a change of clothes. _I_ do. I'll just grab a different outfit and we'll change in the woods and head out."

The red-eyed lycanthrope considered him for a moment. Then he nodded slowly and turned his eyes on the house over his shoulder again. "All right, well… Be quick, I suppose."

The smaller teen laughed, rolling his eyes.

* * *

He shook his fur out slightly. By the gods, that water was cold. Yugi stumbled a step, then another. He shook himself again, flustered. The water dripped from his waterproof pelt and he wrinkled his nose in distaste. Yami did the same next to him, shaking himself out and padding alongside him. The two of them swapped mirroring looks of frustration, both seconds away from complaining about the waterfall crashing behind them so loudly.

 _They couldn't have picked a drier location_? he complained, raising his paws and shaking them out between each step. He thought briefly of how cats would kick away little socks or boots on their paws.

Yami flicked his ear. _It would hardly be so secure._ He glanced about the large stone cavern, the roar of the water behind him faintly dulling his hearing. He shook himself again, listening for the sound of paws up above the ground. They were almost undetectable at first. _Someone realizes that we are here._

Yugi shot him a confused look, then bristled in alarm. _I'll head out before you do,_ he announced immediately. His lips threatened to curl, his shoulders squared with tension. The white wolf looked at him for a moment. Then he turned towards the ledges which lined the wall, his stomach tossing. He could hear soft paw falls now as well.

He braced his legs, then moved to pull himself up. The stone clicked under his nails and the bramble patch covering the entrance looked like browned teeth. He glanced at Yami who watched him with a somewhat flustered look.

He didn't bother to look at him again. He had not noticed it before, but beneath the brambles the crevice was jagged and harsh. The rocks more or less encompassed much of the bottom of the knot of tangles, and the exit bristled of dark stone where the tips seemed to press forward to stroke upon one's fur. He wondered at the defensive structure of it for a moment, seeing as the hole was only wide enough for a single wolf to make its way through at one time. The ledge itself was just large enough to support himself and Yami, who pressed nearest his side and looked at him curiously.

He listened to the movements beyond the small pocket of an exit, the sound of paws and a soft growl making him stiffen faintly. Yami remained beside him, eyes on the entrance now, and the smaller wolf glanced at him sideways. It was somehow incredibly comforting to see him there, standing at his side, comfortable and not at all undone by it all. The black canine tilted his head and looked to him again, both of them watching each other for a moment. He ducked his head, pressing his muzzle into his shoulder in beckoning, and Yugi turned back to balance himself on his hind legs.

He had been so scared the first time—that any misstep might get himself and Yami killed—that he had almost forgotten it. He reached his front legs up, claws hooking on the stone surface, the thorns tangled against his paws. He flexed his toes, then pressed his claws further down, pulling his muscles tight, and sprang. The momentum allowed him to pass through the brambles almost effortlessly, paws braced on the stone and sand in front of him. He almost stumbled, then caught himself immediately after.

The world seemed to open before him in harsh cold air and the first drifting flakes of snow. He took a step forward and Yami pulled himself to his feet behind him. A flake fell into the smaller wolf's eye as he glanced at the other wolves coming towards them.

The wolves all fell silent and began to respectfully lower their heads, ears flattened against their skulls. Yami came along his side, watching them with slight disdain in his eyes. Then he turned towards Yugi, ears pricked forward.

 _You dare to not bow before Atem_? _Traitor_! a cold voice spat out.

Yugi reacted first, head snapping around. His fur was in a bristle, his tail threatening to rise. Yami, however, merely turned his head. The tan and gray wolf was watching him. The lean, muscular body was shaking faintly, rage on clear display. The outburst had caused several wolves to look up now as well, though many of them had their bodies pressed to the ground, their eyes raised only to see the disturbance.

Yami blinked at Marik, then snorted loudly. _You are not bowed either,_ he sneered in response, hardly paying him attention enough to even say those words. He turned back to Yugi immediately. But the white wolf did not pay him attention either.

Some of the other wolves were growling. Yugi could not tell if it was at Yami or Marik. His eyes flickered across them and his lips curled faintly. If any of them expected to get to Yami—

Marik let out a high-pitched whine when one of the other wolves moved. The bite to his flank was harsh enough to stun but not to draw blood. He bit at them in turn but missed. The next bite came from the left. This tore at his ear and caused Marik to snarl.

Yugi watched them, startled, and then eyed Yami sideways.

 _Your direct orders were that none of them treat me as a traitor,_ Yami reminded him quietly, eyes on Marik. _In doing so, it was considered a decree from Atem himself. If he does not bow, they may very well escalate into drawing blood. If he then still refuses, they will kill him._

Yugi stiffened, horrified. But some small part of him whispered, _As long as it's not you_ , and that thought hurt him. He'd never truly considered one person's life worth more than another's. He'd choose family and friends over direct strangers, of course, but to actively think such in a situation that truly meant life or death made his skin crawl.

Yami stepped forward. The wolves all froze for a moment. Several eyes, too bright and deep and glittering to be human or canine, peered back at him. He raised his tail when one of them moved, then dropped it again when they settled.

 _Let him up. No blood needs to be spilled this day,_ he commanded in a deep, rumbling snarl. Yugi thought of distant thunder and snow from a storm. He blinked, eyeing the black wolf.

Yami was focused on them as they all begrudgingly growled at Marik and separated. They drifted to different spots only feet away from each of them. Marik was lying on his stomach, crouched and snarling with disdain. Yami watched him for a moment, then shook himself out lazily.

The movement seemed to lessen the tension of each bystander. But it seemed to enrage Marik. His lips curled back and his ears flattened against his head. A small bristle traced the line of his spine. His eyes were glowing with anger.

Yet Yami did not pay him any mind.

It was Yugi who stepped towards him. His ears were angled forward, his shoulders braced. He pulled his lips back and snarled low in his throat. _You do_ not _challenge my beta,_ he snarled, snapping his teeth when Marik growled in disdain. He raised his tail when the other glared at him angrily. Then Marik seemed to realize himself, and the fact that his family would not come to his rescue, because his eyes flickered away and he lowered his head to his paws. _You are_ never _to challenge him again, understood_?

Marik moved to lie on his side, then on his back. His paws were folded against his chest and eyes were on the snow. His tail was tucked, his throat exposed.

Yugi turned away again immediately, tail dropping. It was only then that realization came over him. It shook him to the core when he looked around. Yami was nowhere to be found.

He took a moment, sniffing rapidly, trying to draw in his scent against the cold air. A snowflake landed on his nose. He blinked. Then he took off running. Yami had gone further into the camp, had to be nearby.

He was bounding so quickly he almost thought his paws were not even touching the ground any longer. Yugi raced past a set of curious faces. Then he slowed. The black wolf was a few feet ahead of him, pace only a fourth of what Yugi's own panicked one had been. He shivered, stomach knotting. Then he came forward again.

 _Where are you headed off to_?

He didn't mean for it to sound half as accusatory as it did. Shame drenched his insides at the cold tone. Yugi ducked his head as he came to Yami's side. But the other wolf was not the slightest bit upset.

 _I thought I smelled blood_. He paused and flicked an ear. _You did not have to do that._

 _What_?

 _Warn Marik away. I would have dealt with it._

Yugi bristled faintly. _At what price_? _One of you dying or you getting hurt all over again_? he spat, flustered. His tone made Yami turn his head a fraction. _Is it really so hard to believe that I don't want you getting hurt or anyone being killed_?

 _Not at all._ Yugi _wouldn't want it to happen_.

He faltered. _What_? _What does that…_?

Yami gave him a cynical look. _You are Atem right now. He's a werewolf meant to win a war. Death and carnage should be the least of things he might attempt to prevent. In fact, death stalks his paws. Why should he care that his beta is challenged for rank_? _You allow me to stop the bloodshed and Atem to lead. Had he managed to challenge me, you could have used it as a way of measuring strength within the pack._

 _That's bullshit_!

Yami eyed him again. _Remember yourself, Yugi. This isn't a game. If you mess up, it could mean a war within the pack itself. Those are casualties that none of us should have to suffer._

 _So it's a game when he challenges you then_?

 _No, but you don't have your memories as Atem. That makes you vulnerable to them. You mess up and it could mean the end of both of us._

He snarled, glaring at him angrily. _Thanks. I'm so glad to see you have so much faith in me, Yami._

The black wolf turned away. _Don't be foolish._

The reprimand was so softly spoken that it hurt more than it he had turned and bit him. Yugi slowed a couple of steps, hanging his head for a brief heartbeat. It stung that he had accused him of such a thing when he had known from the very first that Yami did not think lowly of him. He wouldn't have helped him for so long if he had.

 _What kind of blood…_?

It was a weak attempt to change the subject but Yami accepted it all the same.

 _I thought it was wolf but I cannot be sure._

The smaller wolf stiffened. What if it was another sacrifice of some kind? What if it was the smell of those dead bodies that had been used in the rituals to try to summon him? What if Slifer simply had not gotten to them yet and they were still in the camp? Yugi felt sick.

Yami stopped, sniffing the air and looking around. He turned to the right, trotting now. Yugi sped to his side, stomach aching as he considered what it might mean for blood to be there again. Had she meant to have a sacrifice? Was that the announcement?

His heart was pounding at the thought.

Yami stepped aside and then further into the camp, coming towards what looked to be a large stone upraised and centered within the northern corner of the area. The trees cut the sky like dark shadowed towers as Yugi looked at them. They were the thickness of his chest and shoulder width, looming high overhead. He thought of sheer cliffs with a web in the center of a small crevice. The branches, spiny and long, were immense and interlocked powerfully to block the white of the snow falling down towards him. He looked around for a moment, seeing the long towering figures of them, outlined in dark gray and black, and considered the three-sided barrier they helped to create. He could see bramble thickets and a couple of small knots of thorns and dead ferns tangled together along most of the bottom. The undergrowth would slow any potential threat. The waterfall being the more direct entrance helped to shield them even further…

It was only as he studied a couple of the trees further, the way they almost seemed like large spears, that he realized Yami was no longer there. He blinked, then turned his head to look for him. The black wolf had disappeared but there was no other true area within the camp that he could have gone. Yugi glanced back and forth within the trees and towards the path they had come. But none of the other wolves seemed to be following and the thought was dumfounding to him for a moment.

He trotted towards the den, the smell of iron and the thickness of butter meeting his nose. Yugi halted several feet away, flattening his ears against his head. _Yami_? he whispered softly, almost afraid he would not gain a response.

Perhaps his fear resonated with the black wolf. His response was immediate. _I am okay._ There was a moment in which Yugi struggled to make his feet move again. Then the other's head poked out of the dark shadows of a dip of earth beneath the stone, where the rock was jagged and looked to be shredded by the wind. When Yugi got closer, the fractures were long, solid, stretching up and outwards, and the darkness made the black wolf's eyes glitter like glowing embers. He tilted his head up and looked at Yugi pointedly when he stepped closer, then turned back.

He seemed to disappear from view again. The stench of blood and bone marrow—that was the smell, he realized; his wolf senses recognized what his human mind hadn't—bombarded him immediately. Yugi shivered and shook himself out. He glanced over his shoulder, then moved closer. He dipped his head, looking about the darkness, and bristled faintly in a shudder. Then he moved forward and the drop in the earth seemed oddly incredible. It was a slick tunnel, almost like the stone passageway of which Slifer had tricked them into falling down through the brambles.

But the earth was still soft sand and hard-packed the lower he went. The dip itself encompassed his body on all sides, large enough for him to squeeze through, low enough that it brushed and tugged on his shoulders and back. The ground was riddled with soft pebbles from the shattering of stone overhead. His paws were almost silent due to the winter air biting at the surface of the earth. And he felt cold and almost sick as he continued forward to see where his paws might lead.

Had the air not been bathed in such a buttery, metallic scent he was sure it would have smelled of mere dirt. The navigation would have been harder, more suffocating, especially should someone plan to attack. But it was already a matter of only being room for one to come in. Ambush was an impossibility. And when he finally felt the rock strain from his back, arching perhaps higher or the earth dug possibly lower, he realized how cramped it all was.

There were only mere feet between himself and Yami. And the source of the smell was only inches in front of the black wolf. He didn't have to strain his eyes as he had originally assumed. Rather, his vision seemed to encompass it all, giving him a well-defined measurement of the den, the arching walls and slanted floor. He got the shape of his alpha next to him and the dead form of the she-wolf lying before him. And the coloration should have been darkened, shaded, all but splotches of dark gray and black. Human eyes made the world in the dark nothing more than a shadowy mess like ink splotches across a page. Wolf eyes detected the faintest light and projected it back into the retina to allow them to see. He was not entirely sure what werewolf eyes did, except that the red was the most vibrant, both in Yami's irises and in the pool which lay at the she-wolf's paws. And the walls were defined and sharp, as if he had run his hands upon them; he could count the crevices. How he saw in this pitch blackness was something he did not know. And it was both exciting and somehow horrifying.

When Yami turned his head, he could see the faintest glint of something like embers within his pupils. His irises were glowing, glittering, and the way his eyes bore into Yugi's made them seem to look like fire, the edges spread outwards against the black skin surrounding them. The fur along his cheeks, muzzle, and brows seemed to be highlighted with bright red.

 _Do you think it was murder_?

Yami blinked. The movement looked like a light flashing out of existence for a moment. Then the wolf turned his head. His profile was large and keen, and the longer Yugi faced him, the more he could see each strand of his fur and the layering of his undercoat beneath the long guard hairs. He could see the way his muscles twitched along his chest with each breath and the moisture on his nose. The wolf was a large, immense, shadow with layers of darkness against his pelt, beautiful and hypnotizing in the way he was so defined in the shadows.

 _I do not. It seems too…peaceful. She's lying there and I don't detect another scent except for possibly a few other wolves who have come in here before. I cannot be sure, but I do not think I see signs of a struggle. There are no claw marks or traces of fur scattered around. I do not even see blood on her muzzle._

Yugi forgot himself for a moment. _Do you see the world like I do right now_? he demanded, somewhat excited. _It's almost like some kind of magnifying glass over the top of the lenses and then there are splashes of color all around. It's not like broad daylight but it's…really close_!

Yami snorted and the wave of white frost made Yugi shiver. He thought he saw the very beginnings of crystallization on the tip of the larger wolf's nose. _Yes, werewolves are able to see in the dark very accurately_. He turned his head again to look towards him with his ears flicking slightly. _We see the colors at all times even if it is pitch black for a human. It helps for hunting on nights when we do not have the moon overhead_.

 _Really_? _Does it happen the same in human form_?

Yami tilted his head. _No, the colors are slightly duller. But we do see the same besides that,_ he answered somewhat dismissively. _You're no longer blind in the dark._

Yugi nodded slightly, then wagged his tail slowly. _This is really kind of amazing_! _I never expected this would be what would happen_! _I can see_ everything _in here_!

His excitement was contagious. Yami wagged his tail and his fur made a soft scratching noise against the wall of dirt and stone. Yugi blinked, wagging his tail harder in response, and both of them looked at each other for a moment. Yugi thought that, had they had more room, Yami might have even tried to play with him again in a wrestling match.

That thought brought back the definition of the space they were in, then the realization of his own momentary forgetfulness. His tail dropped and his ears flattened against his head. _So… What do you think happened then_? _Someone had to have killed her. There's no way she could have cut her own throat like that_ …

Yami considered her for a moment. _No, but there are too many scents all layered on top of each other to give us a clear definition of who did it. And she must have done it on purpose._ He tilted his head. _I guess this would be her sacrifice of "blood and power" as she so elegantly described it before._

The white wolf bristled with an abrupt flare of annoyance. _Why would she even assume that it was necessary_? _That makes no sense_!

Yami studied him. _Perhaps she did not believe the pack would follow you if she was still here._

He curled his lips back. _So she killed herself because she assumed I was weaker than the other wolves. That's great._

The red-eyed lycanthrope watched him for a moment, then bore his teeth in anger. _I think she offered herself as a sacrifice to ensure that the pack would not feel divided in showing loyalty to you. It does not always have to be about weakness and strength. It can be that someone else is looking out for you instead._ He paused, tilting his head. _This is a world of politics and power and games where one could easily die for a misstep. You must take help where it is offered._

Yugi felt his fur rise and fall in a jerk, his skin shuddering on his back.

Yami was silent for a moment. _Not everyone here in this world will allow you room for mistakes. Just as others will try as hard as they can to either help you or stop you. But do not assume that all of us are like your bullies. It will more than likely get you killed._

The shame that came over him at the statement made his skin crawl further. He lowered his eyes again, looking at the she-wolf. Her blood was one huge pool of bright red against the dirt. He wondered if she had known for sure that there might be issues or if it was simply the idea of such a thing happening which made her take such steps. How long had she been planning it? How could she have known that Mai would truly find them? Had she planned to do this just today?

 _So…what now then_?

 _I suppose now we attempt to make an announcement to the pack. That is all I know to do. But it will have to come from you, Yugi. And do not be surprised should they react as I suspect they will._

 _How do you think they'll react_?

Yami looked at him for a long moment. _As if you are a god and they always knew you would find your way to lead them. As they always seem to when you are here._ He tilted his head and Yugi found himself frozen, staring at the burning pools of lava that were his eyes. The werewolf's eyes were amazing. _The usual._

Yugi glanced at the she-wolf once more. _Did they all treat you like this before too_?

 _All but Marik, yes. He has never been all too impressed with me or my existence. But they all treated me as if I was a god. When I refused to speak the alpha claimed it was because I did not think them worthy of hearing my voice._ He looked away from Yugi when the white wolf raised his head to stare at him in surprise. _Then Marik began to make an uproar about it and I wouldn't fight him when he attacked me. She saw it as weakness. I refused to speak or fight back. When she challenged me I surprised all of them when I nearly tore her throat out._

 _Why didn't you try to tell them before that_? _Wouldn't it have saved you a lot of trouble_?

Yami stared at the carcass in front of them, considering the question. _I was not willing to disrupt the way of life they had adopted. Should the she-wolf claim I saw them as unworthy who was I to argue_? _It is like your religion being questioned and tested. No one would take kindly to that by any means._

Yugi studied him for a long minute, eyes sharp and glittering. _That's not it. That's not the reason. Why did you really stay quiet_?

Yami turned his head now, lips curling faintly. _That's all the reason you need to know,_ he said simply, shrugging him off. _It does not matter beyond that._

He almost argued. But the anger made the other wolf's fur quiver and so Yugi swallowed his annoyance. The smaller lycanthrope turned his head away, looking at the body now as well. Her eyes were peacefully closed. Her ears were perked lazily forward. Her entire body was immaculate. Had it not been for the stillness and pool of blood, he would have assumed her to still be alive. Her legs were outstretched, her head lowered to them. Not a single hair seemed to truly lie out of place.

Yami watched her a moment longer. _I suppose now we shall be forced to make formal introductions to each wolf within the pack. Then we shall have to explain her sacrifice to place leadership upon your shoulders._

Yugi hated the fact that he made the statement sound so easy and simple. He thought that he made it sound diplomatic and genuinely effortless. His skin crawled. How was he meant to follow such a lead? Yami had seemed to have so much more of a concept of identity and understanding than he did when it came to this. How was it he was supposed to mimic it? He was not truthfully sure he had half the ability that Yami seemed to flaunt before him so easily…

He drew in a deep breath. _And what if they actually_ don't _accept it, Yami_? _What do we do then_? he asked slowly, studying him.

The black wolf looked at him. _There is no margin for error. If they do not accept it, we may find ourselves in the predicament of forcing them to think you their leader._

Yugi felt sick. _Force them to submit_? _But Yami…_

 _They should not truly have issue. They are meant to be Atem's pack, the most faithful of his followers. That truth will have to come through in the end._

 _What if they decide that they don't believe I'm Atem somehow_?

Yami didn't blink. _Then we either force them to listen to us as we declare otherwise or we flee. But to do the latter means they will most likely hunt us both like common dogs and slaughter anyone within our lives whom we may hold dear._

His fur bristled. He meant Jonouchi and Honda, Anzu and his mom, his grandpa… _They'd go that far_? he whispered shakily.

 _They were once tricked by me. If they should suspect you of a game, they would turn on your friends and family as well. It does not help that you have proclaimed me your beta. It does nothing to further gain their loyalty, especially should one of them challenge you and you refuse._

He shivered. That was understandable. Yami had played them for a fool before. They had to be anxious at the sight of him. And perhaps they were even suspicious of him already…

 _So what do you think we should do then_? he asked hesitantly. He flicked an ear and listened for the wolves further towards the entrance of the camp. They appeared not to have moved for the moment. He drew in a deep breath and glanced sideways at Yami for a split second. _How are we supposed to…_?

 _How are we supposed to…_? Yami echoed him, voice slightly bewildered. His red eyes flickered about the den for a moment. Yugi considered it as well now, studying and wondering. It occurred to him that if he was truly meant to take her place, then this den might very well become his own. His stomach knotted. How was he meant to do that when his place was _at home_? Could the pack even truly survive that? They had all—most likely—grown up with the she-wolf readily there at all times.

He couldn't do that for them.

And he wouldn't ask Yami to make such a sacrifice either.

Not only were they openly aggressive towards him, he also rather clearly all but despised them in turn.

And who knew if they would truly listen to him?

They had done so minutes before, but he had also _been there_.

Had he not been, there was no guarantee they would have listened.

But then, would Yami have even cared to stop them killing Marik?

 _I suppose now we will have to summon them here in order to introduce ourselves. Then we can learn their names and scents,_ Yami interrupted his line of thought effortlessly. The black wolf turned his head and considered him with an expression that was slightly bewildered and amused. Yugi stared back at him almost mindlessly. _I think the act of scenting them will do you better…_

The white wolf stiffened considerably. _When you say learning their scent….you don't mean like…sniffing their butts and then letting them smell mine…right_?

Yami snorted loudly, tail wagging happily at his mounting embarrassment. _No. There are several scent glands that can be used instead._

Yugi thought of the way his cheeks had smelled so strongly of him moments before he had seemed to gain full consciousness that day the hunter had cornered them at the repurposed greenhouse. The thought made his fur bristle faintly. But it did give him an idea of alternatives. There were scent glands in the cheeks, on the tail, and the bottom of the paws…

 _So, then, what do you think_? _Is it best to find out how they smell before their names are introduced or what_?

Yami considered him for only a moment. _You act as if we are bloodhounds being trained to trail someone,_ he scoffed scornfully before pausing and looking at the body again. _But it would be wise to do such regardless. Scents will stick with your mind long before names will as a wolf._

He nodded slightly. _She never told us her name…_

The black wolf tilted his head. _I am not entirely sure that she had one. Truth be told, she never seemed to introduce herself. And she never gave me a name to call her by either._

Yugi considered it for a moment, then looked away. _Do you think she didn't have one or she just kind of…shunned it_?

Yami wrinkled his nose back. _I can assure you that I have no idea,_ he drawled in a somewhat bored yet acutely disturbed tone. But he, too, realized the parallel Yugi was hinting at. He did not agree with it in the slightest but he did take note. He shrugged it off. _I am not sure how you wish to announce this to them…_

 _I'm honestly kind of more worried about what we need to do with the body,_ Yugi admitted reluctantly a moment later. _I mean, it's… What are we supposed to do_?

The black wolf blinked. He stepped forward once, tilted his head, and sniffed lightly at the she-wolf's neck wound. _I should think they would have their own ceremonies for such a thing, right_? _Surely they have some kind of idea after all of the sacrifices they've done…_

Yugi shook his head. _I think they just left them. And then Slifer came and got them at some point,_ he said uncomfortably. _I don't see what else it is that might have been done with them… It's not like they have funeral pyres like humans do. They aren't going to burn the bodies to send their souls off… Or however those things went._

Yami snorted softly and he swore he saw a glimmer of laughter in his eyes. But it was gone again when he turned his head to glance at him more pointedly. _I should assume we would hold the meeting before we do much else, truthfully. The more pressing thing is whether or not the other wolves are going to allow us room to become the alpha and beta._

 _You just said that they wouldn't argue…_

 _With you. We've seen several times that Marik at the_ very least does not care to adher _e to pack hierarchy where I am concerned. Now why should he keep from challenging me a second time_? _He has done it multiple before and especially now that you are here._

Yugi considered him for a moment. _Do you think he's going to be so reckless that he'd do it again_? _After what the pack just did_? _And…_?

He shook his coat out. _I think your warning might have done him better than the wolves themselves. But, in the off chance it did not, I will deal with it,_ he commented casually, tone flippant as he began to move aside from him and brush against him to get through the entrance.

Yugi swallowed thickly, watching him, and then flicked his ears to flatten them against his skull.

 _How are we…_?

Yami turned to look at him over his shoulder. _You will have to howl,_ he stated simply. When Yugi froze in place and stared at him with wide, fearful blue-violet eyes shaded indigo in the dark, he tilted his head. _You cannot truly expect to hold a meeting with them if you can't…_?

 _How about we just pretend this never happened and—_? Yugi caught himself when he realized how pathetic he sounded. He shivered, shaking himself out. _I don't… I mean, how am I supposed to…_?

The darker wolf trotted out of the den, turning to face him as he came behind him. He was slinking as if he had been scorned and Yami sighed softly as he moved to brush his nose against his cheek gently. _I will do it this time. But you will have to learn. I know you do not want to, but you cannot rule this pack as Atem if you are not willing to do something as small as howl to summon them._

Yugi could name a hundred reasons why he should never have to howl. He didn't have a voice for that, didn't know how to, and to howl was almost terrifying in theory. If he learned to do that, he was going to be considerably less human. There was a clear line between what humans and wolves could do and he did not think howling went both ways.

Yami turned away from him, then threw his head back. The howl which left his black muzzle was long and beautiful, with a low undertone which seemed almost mournful. When he lowered his head, he glanced back at Yugi, wagging his tail slightly. The pure joy of the action made his heart pound and he wagged his tail in response before he could think better of it. The black wolf spun around to face him fully now, his eyes glittering, and the simplicity of his happiness made Yugi want to smile.

The very act of howling had seemed to almost liberate the other wolf. But it lasted all of seconds. His tail dropped and his head tilted towards the ground. His ears flicked back and forth rapidly. Yugi looked about himself, the sounds of paws making him bristle faintly. He shuddered, then looked to Yami who lowered his nose to sniff at the ground near his paw. He picked up a small stone in his mouth, dropping it again lazily.

Was he becoming anxious? Yugi could not tell completely. It seemed odd to him that Yami should summon them and then grow unnerved by their presence there. The wolves came from what seemed to be every direction. Each of them were glossy coats and smells of ice and frost and forest and wet dewdrops and blooming flowers and—

He drew in a deep breath. The pack seemed to bunch up in groups before him. Otogi and Mai were prominent in the edges of his sight. He blinked and looked at them for a moment. Both seemed perfectly at ease, although a slight flicker colored the she-wolf's eyes for the smallest of moments. He looked about them for a moment, then glanced towards Yami who dropped his pebble again and quickly grabbed it once more.

He shifted his balance awkwardly on his feet and his tail twitched, anxiety growing in his gut. _The alpha has died,_ he said without preamble, unsure of what more to do or say. The wolves blinked at one another, swapping looks and flicking their ears. An image sprang from their minds, rapid and overwhelming. There was him, in her shadow, standing as she began to fall. He bristled faintly, then shook it off. But it gave him the information he had been wondering about. He was correct in assuming that they had all known it would happen.

Otogi and Mai glanced at each other. Another wolf threw their head back. The howl that left them made his skin shudder. Immediately the rest of the pack began to echo the cry. Their chorus was like screaming at a concert during a favorite song. It was melodious but never as loud as Yami's own had been. Yugi stared at them blankly, unsure of what more he could do.

And then they all began to clear in his head, words he had failed to notice before.

 _Code Name Atem_! _Our leader_! _Our savior_!

Yugi shot Yami a glance. The black wolf looked back at him, calm and steady and altogether unconcerned. It was as if he had expected this the entire time and so did not care to point it out to him as well.

 _Yes, I… I plan to take her place as your alpha,_ he murmured softly, cutting into their racket ineffectively. He flattened his ears against his skull as they continued howling his name, changing in such a ritualistic fashion. He bristled faintly. He couldn't help but think of cults again.

This was not the natural, beautiful family unit that wolves existed in. The human minds had corrupted such a concept. A pack had become a group of individuals with a mindset that was both horrifying and disturbing. He felt his skin shudder beneath his fur for a moment.

Yugi tilted his head, considering them. The sound reached a crescendo, then slowly dropped away. The wolves considered him for only a moment. Then, as one, they dropped forward on their forelimbs, bowing before him. He bristled, horrified, and his head turned immediately towards Yami.

But the wolf was gone.

The white-furred canine froze in place. His stomach dropped. Like a human, bile began to inch its way along the back of his throat. He swore under his breath and looked about the clearing. The snow was too new. There were no prints to see. Yugi was frozen only long enough for the wolves to begin howling again. Their praise made his skin crawl.

He took off when he noticed they all seemed encompassed with the task.

But he did not know which way he had gone. Had he, Yugi would have found him at the edge of the woods. The trail was a few miles long, something Yami traveled in mere minutes when he began to trot. Should Yugi have known to follow him there, he would have seen him slip under the iced ferns and into the narrow dip of a small tunnel.

The tunnel was only large enough for him to crawl on his belly and shift forward in slow movements. It took him a full minute to get to the dip of which he knew would lead to the tunnels that Slifer frequented. The black wolf stretched his paws out, wiggling his hindquarters until he dropped. It was only a couple of inches but his eyes had not adjusted as of that moment.

He lowered his head, sniffing faintly at the stone floor, and began to slowly pad forward. The tunnel smelled of rock and molded earth, with the faintest traces of water and ice. The earth would never grow cold enough, the touch of winter never ran far enough, to even frost the river which ran down there. He exhaled deeply and the dirt came in a small cloud, drifting through his senses with small messages.

But none of them possessed the clue of where the goddess might have been.

It did not take him long to find her, however. He sensed her a few minutes into the trek, the scent of decay and rotting leaves, wilting flowers and budding leaves and _ice_. She, like him, smelled of snow and winter. He shook his fur out. She did not possess the same trace of pine needles or moonlight. It was somehow comforting to remind himself of that.

He stepped into the stone clearing, where the earth seemed to drop into a sheer cliff and the river raced as loudly as the waterfall. The sound echoed in the stale air, taunting him, but he forced it away. The she-wolf rested feet away, her tail wrapped oddly around her paws, her eyes closed, ears pricked in his direction. He wondered, looking upon her beautiful solid russet pelt, if she was guiding the alpha to Paradise.

 _Hello, Yami._

Her voice was oddly reverberating in his head. Yami stood taller, in front of her, eyes sharp and narrow. He tilted his head, studying her, his mind racing with possibilities. Then he took a single step forward.

 _I am well aware that you know what has happened. You are, after all, the goddess of the dead,_ he stated in a respectful tone, watching her as her eyes opened into lazy slits. _But I came to you to ask you a question, Slifer._

She considered him. _Ask_.

Yami bristled slightly. _Do you desire we bring your daughter's body to you_?

 **Pterygoideus muscles- the muscles that close and open and move the jaw forward. So, in other words, the pterygoideus muscles constrict harder when the wolf is in a fearful or feral state. The bite force becomes twice to three times stronger depending on the state of the wolf's mentality.**


	40. Answers

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day**

 **Chapter Warnings: Pack Mentality, Slight Innuendo, Yami Being an Adorable Fluffball, HEAVY Puzzleshipping, Cult Mentality, Mentions of Death, Sexual Tension, Peachshipping**

 **There is a mention of cult-like mentality, including a kind of religious cult kind of mentality. It's mostly horror movie kind of stuff that does happen in real life, but it's used as a way of explaining the way that some people view themselves and their purposes in life. And it works in comparison to the pack's mentality. It's a lot more the horror story kind of side of things where that applies, so no offense is meant but this kind of stuff does happen, so that's why Yugi mentions it to Yami.**

 **Okay, so I think I should be able to keep my updates consistent for a couple of chapters. But I can't promise it don't quote it on me. Anyways, so! I think I got all of the warnings necessary for this chapter, but I've been away from the chapter for a while, so I'm sorry if I missed anything. Feel free to tell me if you think I should have put something else there.**

Chapter XL: Answers

 _Work Log Entry XL: September, 2003_

 _September 1_

 _More wolves are being captured and imported as subjects. The boss has decided to attempt to breed more Pure-Bloods into existence. But "Atem" has been the only one that has survived this entire time. And all of the she-wolves being forced into copulation die shortly after pregnancy is announced._

 _September 20_

 _It is more or less clear that the Pure-Bloods cannot be bred again. Each female chosen to be put through deevolution has died hours after the first experiment._

 _The boss has decided that efforts need to be doubled and breeding is to commence for the Half-Bloods to produce Full-Bloods capable of withstanding the procedures._

 _September 30_

 _None of the she-wolves will bear pups._

 _The boss is furious._

 _Some of the others see this as an omen._

 _I cannot decide if "Atem" was a freak mistake in being born._

The she-wolf studied him for a long handful of minutes. Yami almost felt as if the air were being swallowed from the tunnels altogether. The stench of death wreathed his nose, shuddering in his lungs. He bristled faintly again, a tremor running through him. His paws itched and he shuffled his weight just enough to press his long claws into the stone beneath him. The sound was oddly stabilizing to him, echoing faintly in his ears and making him feel safer than he had moments before. It was as if the noise had drawn her from her own state of mind, making her blink and tilt her head.

Her lips pulled upwards into a smile, her expression gentle and soft. Her eyes were full of thanks and mild disbelief. _Yes. I would appreciate that a lot, Yami,_ she whispered in his mind, voice soft and trailing. He thought of mist and currents of it against the shadows of trees and shivering with the pounding of the crashing roar of the river beyond. His skin crawled faintly. They looked at each other for a few more moments.

 _Consider it done,_ the black wolf growled, turning away and starting back the direction which he had come. But he halted when she called his name again, a gentle whisper of sound in his ears. Against the river, had her voice been projected outwardly, it would have been altogether nonexistent.

 _Your kindness to the dead is astounding._

Yami faltered. Alarm made his pelt ripple with a bristle. He bore his teeth and his legs quivered for a split second. Then he turned away again, pelting for the exit. It was terrifying of her to mention such a thing. But the words would not leave him. They echoed dutifully in his head, his ears hurting with the ring of them.

How could she have…?

 _She's the goddess of the dead, you moron,_ he berated himself angrily. _Of course she knows_! _Of course she knows what you did…_

He threw himself up into the tunnel he had originally descended from. The task of snaking his way upwards and out of the narrow slip of an exit was exhausting. When he got to the top, he had to unfold his forelimbs and press his paws into the cold earth to pull himself up and out.

The small handful of minutes underground rendered him shocked upon coming to the surface once more. The snow had picked up. It was heavy, dense. The flakes were almost large clumps of ice. He blinked and the chill of the air pressed into his fur. The underground had been warmer, he realized, if only by a few small degrees.

He shook himself out and the snow crunched only the softest degree beneath his paws. Had it not been for his heightened senses, he doubted he would have ever heard it. He flicked an ear. They were still howling for the moment, no doubt continuing their unwanted celebration of Yugi taking command of their pack.

Yami turned towards the camp, paws carrying him there effortlessly. Memory allowed him easy enough travel to get to the clearing. The wolves did not bother to glance at him around their noise but Yugi did not seem to be there. He blinked and tilted his head. _Yugi_? he called out, looking about himself with his shoulders squared. Realization struck him that the small teen was his only cushion should they decide to turn their teeth on him. He bristled faintly and looked at them.

He could hold his own if they attacked him. But, by the gods, it would be so much easier if they weren't given the chance. He flicked an ear, eyes flickering about nervously.

And then he heard it.

There was a single thumping, wet and rhythmic, and he turned immediately towards it. Yugi was a few yards away, rapidly racing towards him. He wagged his tail slightly, relieved to see him there. But the white wolf curled his lips back, stopping a few inches away from him.

Where _did you go_? Yugi spat, bristling and tossing his head angrily. He moved, twitching, his legs rising and falling on the ground in distinct frustration. His anxiety made his shoulders shake faintly. He flashed his teeth again and the whites of his eyes showed as he glanced at the pack beyond them. The noise was finally falling away.

 _I had to speak to Slifer._

Yugi froze and blinked at him now, eyes wide and head tilted in confusion. _Slifer_? _About the alpha_? he inquired quietly, though he knew as well as Yami that there would have been no other reason to do so. They considered each other for a moment. _What did she have to say_?

 _That she would like us to bring the body down to her._ The black wolf blinked. There was no real reason to tell Yugi that the alpha had been her daughter. He would come to the conclusion on his own. And he was not willing to be the one to answer every question he desired to ask. _I thought the offer would do us better than to wait and see what the pack wanted to do._

 _Okay._ He hesitated for a moment. _Then when do you want to take her down there_?

 _The sooner the better, yes_? _That leaves no room for them to question your acceptance of her offering to lead the pack._

Yugi flicked his ears, then flattened them against his skull uncomfortably.

Did it truly matter how he reacted to it?

They seemed so wrapped up in their praises that they did not even appear to notice that he had moved away and was standing with Yami now.

Would they even notice?

At this rate he suspected the contrary. But he wasn't about to question Yami so thoroughly.

 _Should the pack even know that we're moving her or do you think they'll want to see her before and know what we're doing with her otherwise_?

Yami wondered at this for a moment. They would most likely care more that Yugi was absent when they had been crying his praise for so long. But if he were to move the female by himself he was sure one of them might declare that he had done the killing himself. More likely than not he'd be cornered and have to fight them off before Yugi even got the chance to interfere. As much as they might listen to him, the excitement of the excuse to attack the wolf they perceived as a traitor would be much more powerful.

But if Yugi was the one to help him move her, not only would it be more symbolic to them, but it would be less likely to draw confrontation. It was more a matter of whether one of them might leap up and try to chase them to the tunnels. He bristled faintly, then shook it away.

 _I suggest that we allow them to finish their celebration for the moment and then announce that we will be moving her to a burial site of our choosing._

 _You don't want to tell them about Slifer_? _I mean, don't you think they probably already know_?

Yami wrinkled his nose and bore his teeth minutely in a nervous gesture. Then he shook his body out and every fur seemed to fall back in place perfectly once more. His expression was calm again, his ears pricked towards him. His eyes were sharp, somewhat cold and distant. _I do not think they do. I think they expect someone is here. But I do not think they know it is her by name. And I will not be the one to tell them such a thing either._

 _What's the wrong in telling them_?

He leveled him with a look of disdain and slight annoyance. _Yugi, I do not know if you are joking with me or being serious right now._ His eyes glinted fiercely and his lips curled back, his fur rising along his shoulders. _But I am not allured by the idea of these wolves connecting_ me _to an ancient deity of_ death. _Not only does that seem to symbolize more to come but I would also assume it might make them think one of us is_ marked for _death. Humans believed that one didn't see an omen of death unless they or their family was meant to die. These wolves are shells of fur and teeth over a human brain._

Yugi flicked an ear unhappily, then nodded slightly. _Okay. I'm sorry. You're right. I was just curious. Don't get so mad at me,_ he grumbled in annoyance.

 _I'm not mad. I just don't… You're smarter than this_!

He didn't want to admit that while the pack worshipping him as they did was unnerving, it also thoroughly excited him somewhere deep in his bones. It was horrifying and he hated it, but at the same time a part of him seemed to nurture it. He could feel a small and swift pain beginning to toss his stomach and he blinked at the other wolf. Yami was still watching him, his expression more irritable than ever. Yugi tilted his head, flicking an ear.

 _I'm just kind of freaked out…_

He felt sick for lying.

He was also elated.

He should have said so.

But what if Yami saw him differently?

What if he assumed he was no better than the rest of the pack?

He was being worshipped, his human mind seemed to recoil, but his instincts embraced it and nurtured it and drew it higher than he thought possible.

Yami eyed him for what felt like hours. Then his red gaze flickered away. He shook himself out again, allowing his fur to fall back in place, and blinked lazily towards him. _You're still smarter than this._ The compliment was harsh enough, the tone so biting, that he cringed at the note of it. Yugi flattened his ears against his head and Yami shot him an annoyed look once again. Then his ears flicked, his eyes grew softer, and the black wolf leaned forward to run his tongue over his forehead. _You can't make mistakes here, Yugi._

He wagged his tail slowly, then nodded again. _I know. I just… It's so…crazy, I guess._

Yami was not looking forward to seeing Slifer again. The tension in his body was not only towards Yugi in regards of frustration. He didn't want to hear what she might say to the question he had desired to ask her. But he also would not ask it in front of Yugi. He didn't need to know more about the circumstances in the lab than he had already told him.

 _You do not have room to become overwhelmed here_ , the black wolf urged, shaking his head at him and glancing sideways towards where the wolves seemed to be coming closer. He glanced at the one who have formerly solicited herself to Yugi and his fur bristled faintly in a shiver of disgust. These she-wolves were unnatural to him, almost shameful in their degree of such display. He flexed his claws and wished for a moment that his blood might freeze beneath the dark layers of keratin.

 _I know_ , Yugi replied, feeling small and tired for a moment as he looked back at the other. It was odd to see the height difference in the two of them so apparent now, as if Yami stood meters higher than him. He seemed so much smarter at the moment, older and wiser. It was almost otherworldly and disturbing to him. Yugi looked away again, kneading at the ground in his growing anxiety before he shook it off once more. He raised his head, eyes on him again. _Okay, so when do you want to do this_?

 _As soon as possible, no doubt,_ the black wolf replied in a distracted tone. It did not matter in all actuality. But he did have to ask Slifer that question and he supposed it was better to do so sooner, before his nerves were lost to him. _I suppose now would not be a bad time._

Yugi nodded, then glanced at the wolves. They looked like ghosts, most of them with paler fur rather than dark. They were mostly of silvers instead of grays, and not one of them possessed a pelt that was only one solid shade of color. He supposed that was because they were not Pure-Bloods…

He flicked an ear uncomfortably at his own train of thought. Had he truly just assumed that without effort? He usually had to stop and rethink his own words when he thought of the wolves. He didn't even truly want to consider himself one unless he was forced to. It was undeniable that he changed into a fluffy white canine, at will or on the night of a full moon, but he didn't want to think of it more than was absolutely necessary. He shook his pelt out some, blinking against the snowflakes for a moment.

Yami gave him only a single glance. Then he began to trot forward and away from the other wolves which seemed to be gathering around them. He moved without effort, like a seamless shadow, and drifted into the den without a second look. Yugi faltered, glancing at them, and then took off after him as he realized they were all watching him expectantly. But the look in their eyes was different from what he had assumed they would be.

 _They look like they think I'm about to punish you for coming in here._

 _Most likely because they assume that you have not been in here before I set paw here._

Yugi blinked in the darkness. Yami was a large black definition of dark fur that made the den look like an abyss of which no light could touch the inside. He shivered slightly, then stepped closer to his side. He was looking at the alpha once more, but now his eyes seemed darker than before, somehow distracted.

 _It might do you well to be the one to take her, Yugi. I am not sure if they might see it as mutiny should I do it instead._

His skin jerked under his pelt, crawling with disgust. _What_? _You can't be serious_!

 _Why not_? Yami asked, flicking his ears and tilting his head towards him. His nose was glistening somehow in the dark, though Yugi knew it had to be his eyes and the advanced heights of his vision more than anything. He licked his lips and the black wolf eyed him curiously, their gazes locking for only a split second. _I am rather sure you will not like the attack that might come about should it be me to drag her body from her den, Yugi._

The white wolf flattened his ears against his skull. _All of them are just ready to fight all the time, aren't they_? he snapped in a bitter tone. The words startled Yami who looked up and stared at him curiously. _I hate it._

Yami was not sure he had any sympathy to offer him, but he nodded all the same and tried to keep the irritated bitterness from his tone when he said, _I know, Yugi._ But he must have failed, for the smaller canine turned his head more fully towards him and his eyes appeared wide and startled. Yami ignored him and instead sniffed at the alpha's cheek for a split second.

 _What's wrong_? the smaller wolf demanded. He bristled faintly, then flicked his ears again and leaned his muzzle towards Yami. He wanted to bury his nose in his fur, though he could not tell if it was from the desire to smell his scent more closely for its calming quality or because he was just worried for him. He was not sure which was more likely either. He licked his lips and his instinct was to ask forgiveness for something he was not sure he had done.

 _Nothing._

 _You can say that to people who don't know you, but not me,_ Yugi objected, watching him with sharp blue-violet eyes. He pricked his ears forward. _What's wrong_?

 _Allow me to rephrase. It is nothing that_ you _must worry about._ The black wolf snorted, then glanced at him sideways once more. _It does not concern you in the slightest, Yugi._

He blinked at him, then flattened his ears against his head. Yami truly did have a lot of secrets, didn't he? He had a lot of problems with admitting to things. And he was fearful of many of them coming out at some point. Yugi felt small and sick at the idea. Yami was defensive when they threatened to come to the surface. He was violent when he was backed into a corner. He was aggressive when he got scared.

His gruff response did well to remind him of this.

Yugi drew in a small breath and turned to the she-wolf. Oh gods, he did not want to have to pull her from the darkness of the den and drag her into the clearing. The pack would be anything but welcome to the sight, no matter what Yami said. He shivered. The concept that they might very well be relieved to see their former alpha dead scared him.

How horrifying the idea was. He could not understand how someone could possibly think that it was okay such a thing could happen. Their own alpha was dead. She was cold, lying on the ground with her throat split open. Someone had bitten into her jugular. And what were they doing?

Celebrating his newfound leadership.

Not only that, but Yami said he assumed they would take it well only if he were to be the one to drag her body out. The entire concept was horrifying. What kind of twisted reality did all these wolves live in?

Yami was right.

This was a rather sick, dark world he had set foot in.

He wished he had never opened his mouth and said he was Atem. Things would have been so much easier. But he had stumbled across the pack in the woods before and even if he had denied it, they probably might not have listened. Worse yet, maybe they would have and _might_ have actually killed him for being misleading.

But then, life was better than death, was it not?

It was always better.

He shivered slightly. If he had not been bitten then he would never have had to deal with it in the first place. He would never have come across them because he would not have smelled the blood.

He would never have gotten…

…to meet Yami either.

Yugi sobered at the thought. His anger came crashing around him, shattering like splintered glass. He swallowed hard, looking at the red-eyed canine and feeling sick. Maybe he was foolish in thinking so, but he considered Yami to be worth it. All of the stress and the anger and the great, many issues he had come across, all of it seemed to pale in comparison. He was the best friend Jonouchi could not be. And that made him one of the most important, powerful forces Yugi had in his life.

Yet, regardless, despite the frustration that seemed to trail Yami like death did himself, he found it comforting. Yami was the first person he had ever known to be willing to do so much and ask so little in return. When it came down to it, Yugi had offered him a place to live. Yami had not assumed to gain one. And when he paid attention to this, he also noted that not once had the other seemed to take it for granted. Even sleeping beside him was something that Yami seemed to treat with great care.

It was almost humbling.

Yugi flicked an ear, warmth coiling somewhere inside his chest, deep in his bones and pulsing with his heart. He was honored to have Yami there, to have him as a friend.

The small canine wagged his tail when the other wolf glanced at him. _Okay, so let's get this done. Slifer will probably want the body before next year, right_? he commented in a matter-of-fact tone.

 _I would assume so considering that her flesh would be eaten from her bones by then,_ Yami replied dryly. He watched him with a thoughtful expression and Yugi wagged his tail again before looking down. The act of grabbing her was disturbing to him, something that would make his skin crawl later he was sure. But he still found himself moving forward to grab at the scruff of her neck. He had to. Yami needed him to. The wolves might turn on him otherwise.

But what was he meant to say when he got her out there? He furrowed his brows and his ears flicked back for a moment. Were they near the den's entrance yet? Were they waiting on them? He looked at Yami sideways, then began to gently tug at her scruff. The body was weighted so heavily he nearly fell backwards.

He blinked, startled, and looked at Yami more fully. How had he managed to move Ryota so easily when he could hardly move this female? Then again, Yami was much more used to being a wolf than he was.

Was it possible that he had more of an idea how much pressure and muscle strength was needed? He said muscle memory was almost instantaneous for a werewolf. He bristled faintly. If that was true, how many times had Yami been forced to shrug a dead body away with his teeth like that?

Had he done it on more than one occasion? Was that how he knew what to do with it? Was that why he had managed so easily that day?

He looked at him closely. He had torn Tomoya's throat out. He had killed Ushio by caving his skull in with his teeth. Then he had dragged him to his door and propped him up. Had he learned to do that from dragging him to the door like that?

He dragged her a step, the muscles in his neck aching with the task. He bristled, then jerked his head violently once more. A second later he backed up, tugging again. His throat felt tight and corded and his stomach tossed painfully. He shot Yami a somewhat lost look.

The black wolf chuckled softly, then stepped forward. _You need to open your mouth more, take in a larger portion of her scruff, then back up steadily. Don't bother with shaking your neck out. You'll only waste more energy doing so,_ he murmured, wagging his tail, and then opened his jaws wide in front of him to show each tooth. _Brace your shoulders and square your muscles in your legs. It's easier when you are tugging something._

 _That's so…_ Yugi flicked his ears and glanced at Yami uncomfortably. Then he quickly looked away again and stepped back, pulling his teeth away from her body. For a moment he hesitated, then he opened his jaws more completely, the muscles popping from the unusual treatment. He leaned forward, then grasped gently at the scruff there, closing his jaws as tightly as he could without harming her in the slightest. She was dead, he knew, but it was impossible to think that that meant he was supposed to treat her as nothing.

 _I know. It's not very desirable. But it is necessary. Especially if you should ever be on your own and need to hunt and later move your meal for burial. It will definitely help for larger prey like serows or boars,_ Yami stated almost distractedly. He tilted his head and studied him for a moment, eyes flickering about Yugi's for the briefest of seconds. _Not that you ever will be. It simply… It is a good skill to have._

Had he seen something in his eyes? Yugi thought he almost seemed ashamed to have even spoken about the entire thing. The small wolf wanted to reach out, to press his nose against his ear or perhaps to brush against his side in reassurance. He flicked an ear. How strange was it that he had so easily picked up on wolf body language almost without pause?

He braced his legs, squaring his shoulders as if he were being faced with snarling teeth in challenge, and then backed up a step. This time her body was less resistant, though still heavy, and he felt his legs quiver faintly for the briefest of moments. He was not exhausted, but his right forelimb still ached with residual pain from the wound it had formerly harbored.

 _When do you think my leg will stop hurting_? he asked to deter the shameful expression on the other wolf's face. His brows were up, his ears moved to the side, his eyes lowered towards Yugi's muzzle. He blinked now, however, then flicked his ears forward and tilted his head, eyes bewildered.

 _It has not already_?

 _Don't sound so worried. I mean that it hurts when I have to use it like this. I just… It stings. It's not nearly as bad as it was before—at all._ He tugged again and his back legs bunched and rippled with his weight as he followed the movement steadily a moment later. He was inching towards the entrance when he felt the trembling coming through his leg more painfully. It shook him and he nearly collapsed before regaining his footing at the last second.

 _Give yourself a moment to rest,_ Yami commented, stepping a little closer. He considered him for a moment, his eyes on his leg more than anything else, and then tilted his head. _I did not consider that your leg might still ache. You were using your hand so well again…_

Yugi thought for a moment it sounded oddly almost sexual the way he said it. He would have flushed had he been human. But as a wolf, his coat shuddered faintly and his breath came out a little heavier. He shook it off. _I didn't think about it._

Yami bristled slightly and Yugi wondered if it was in response to his reaction or his words. _You shouldn't ever fail to consider wounds like that._ His voice was more chastising than the smaller wolf recognized ever being directed towards him. He blinked, startled, but the other wolf seemed distracted, as if he were speaking to himself rather than Yugi. It was odd to see the glazed glittering in his eyes or the way he blinked down at the ground and tilted his head again. His ears flicked. Slowly, as if he were digging himself from some pit he had fallen in, he raised his head again and studied him. _I suppose I can push her by the neck to make it—_

 _And make them think_ you _did this_? _Nice try, Yami,_ he snapped angrily, bristling in response to his words. He curled his lips back and bore his teeth even where they were buried in her fur. _You can't just do that. They'd either think you did it or consider me too weak to drag her out._

Yami flicked an ear. _Do you know for sure that I didn't do it_? he asked slowly.

Yugi eyed him in frustration, bristling further. _Um,_ yes, _I do, actually, but thanks for asking,_ he spat.

 _How_?

 _Because you've been with me all night. And why would you come to the camp without me when you know they might attack you_?

 _I offered earlier._

Yugi snarled and raised his tail, anger making his skin jerk under his pelt. _Yami, what the hell is your point right now_? _The den doesn't smell enough like you to make me think it was you who killed her, okay_? _So just knock it off._ He trembled slightly, then shook himself out once more. _Look, Yami, I know it wasn't you. So why are you even bothering asking me right now_?

He tilted his head. _How funny,_ he commented thoughtfully, flicking an ear, _that you're defending me now when usually you tend to think the worst of me when it comes to life and death._

Yugi faltered, tail dropping, eyes widening drastically. He blinked at him, horrified, and then bristled faintly. _I don't have a worst to think of you,_ he said quietly. Yami blinked at him and the smaller teen lowered his ears to his head, shame burning through his veins. _Yami, I don't think the worst of you. I never had. I just... I don't always understand. And that makes it hard to recognize your motivations when it comes to these things. You kill or attack someone and I don't know why you do it. And I try to come up with reasons but they're never right and I just…_

Yami flicked an ear again, then shuffled a little closer. Yugi noticed he was taking measures to avoid stepping foot in any of the blood smeared on the hard-packed earth.

 _What would my reasoning be for killing her_?

Yugi blinked, then looked up. Their eyes locked, but there was not aggression to be stirred in either of them for the moment. He blinked again. _I don't know… You hate the pack, so maybe…_

 _I do not hate them. I hate what they stand for. No one should so gladly take another's life nor offer their own with such lack of care._ He paused. _Another reason_?

 _Well, after the way that they've all been reacting to me taking over the pack…_

Yami shook his head. _No._

 _Then I don't know, Yami,_ he said quietly. He backed up a step, then dragged her forward with him. His neck corded painfully for a moment, then relaxed once more. _Why would you_?

 _Well, seeing as she's been alpha for what must have been years, I would assume to think that she would be the pivotal point of the pack. Seeing as that would be truth to an outsider happening upon the pack, killing her would gain them the spot in the hierarchy. Or it would cause the pack to crumble should their teachings be dropped due to her death. Strategically, an enemy would use it to weaken the pack and attempt to usurp the newcomer._

Yugi froze. _You think someone might have…_?

 _I think it is possible. I would not be surprised. Not every wolf within this pack would be able to boast of contentment. One or two wolves have to be unsettled and restless. They may even consider themselves better leaders than you. But I do not know. I am merely speculating, Yugi._

 _But that's why you would have done it…_

 _I would surely have had the opportunity presented itself and I was thinking such a thing,_ he said without much care. His tone had become somewhat bored and disinterested. _But seeing as you are correct and I have no place in this sacrifice, it is not hard to think objectively on the subject._

Yugi blinked at him again. _So who do you think is the one who would do that_? _Any ideas_?

Yami wrinkled his muzzle. _No. I do not know._

He frowned and stared at him, eyes burning into his. Then he looked down again, and began to drag her out of the den once more. _Okay,_ he murmured, his back legs sinking further into the earth as he flexed his muscles to tug her again. The dirt shifted faintly beneath his pads and his claws sank into the earth. He tugged, backing up another step and feeling a fresh pull of cold air pouring through his fur along his tail and hindquarters. He jerked, startled, and then nearly groaned mentally.

 _Is someone sniffing your butt_? _You could tell them not to,_ Yami suggested, voice smug with laughter. Yugi looked up at him, wrinkling his nose back, but snorted out a snicker and glared at him despite himself.

 _The wind is sniffing my butt._

Yami exhaled so loudly it bordered on a bark. He was shaking, tail wagging, his eyes glowing with laughter. Yugi shot him an annoyed look, but his exuberance was hard to dismiss and the small teen found himself wagging his tail in turn. Yami looked so happy, standing those few inches away, body trembling finely, tongue lolling as he panted. His head tipped to the side and his ears, pricked forward as they were, made him look almost like Blankey when she waited for someone to pet her.

He could feel the smallest heat of affection seeping into his blood, uncoiling in his chest and unraveling beautifully. He trembled in response, his eyes soft as they bore into Yami's.

 _That's awesome,_ Yami finally laughed, wagging his tail again before trotting forward a few more steps. _The wind is interested in your butt._

Yugi couldn't help the snort that left him. _Don't be jealous that I can get suitors and you can't,_ he teased, tugging on her again. He bristled faintly when the breeze sliced through his fur again. He sensed it more than he felt it, his thick coat taking most of the sensation away.

Abruptly his good humor fled him.

Yami dropped his tail, closed his mouth, and flicked his ears. _I've had plenty of suitors,_ he said quietly in dismissal of the subject, challenging him with his eyes to question him further.

The smaller wolf turned his eyes towards the wall beyond his shoulder. Then he tugged again, backing up several more steps until he was almost inside the clearing again. He shivered faintly, then dropped back another step, wondering if the other wolves were closer, if they might come near them. Yami came a few seconds after he stepped out into the colder air. The snow was drifting in heavy currents, sheets of bright white with a gentle touch against the earthy background. He blinked slowly, looking up and away from it all before dragging her that final step into the clearing. The snow was almost an inch thick already.

How long had he been in there with Yami?

Was the snowstorm supposed to be so bad?

He kind of hoped it was going to simply drift. He didn't want too much snow at one time. Blizzards were always so terrible in this area. Hokkaido had huge amounts of snow at any given winter, and the temperatures year round were always relatively cold for the most part. What it came down to was whether the power would go out from the force of the storm or if the blizzard would immobilize them completely. He had heard of that happening when he was a baby, how the snow had piled too high and the power had gone out for weeks on end.

He didn't want to have to experience that.

And, should it happen, what would he do about Yami in the meantime? Would the wolf run off on his own? Would he remain in his room with him, waiting it out? What would happen with food and water?

He didn't remember hearing it would be bad, though. They had said something about it being colder than usual, that the temperature was dropping more than average this winter. They had even said that it would be wise to have backup generators just in case. But he mostly recalled that they had said it would be flurries rather than one immense storm.

He glanced at Yami as the wolf managed to slip between the she-wolf's limp body and the wall of the stone den. Her head was tipped straight upwards, her eyes closed peacefully. Yugi had not realized until just that moment how desperate he was to see just that. It caused his legs to quiver faintly with relief as he glanced towards Yami once more.

 _You look oddly…exuberant,_ the black wolf noted, eyes flickering and ears pricked towards him. Yugi tugged her until her entire body was in the clearing, then he released her, licking at his lips. They felt numb and his teeth a little too large, maybe too thick and sharp. He flicked an ear again. Yami stepped closer, sniffing at the deceased alpha for only a moment. _Should I ask_?

 _Her eyes are closed,_ Yugi said simply.

Yami blinked, then raised his head, tilting it a fraction. _Her eyes are closed and that causes you excitement_? he inquired slowly, expression purely puzzled. His brows had drawn together and he was eyeing him curiously.

 _No. It's just easier to deal with the fact that she's dead if I'm not staring into her eyes while I'm moving her,_ Yugi admitted quietly, awkwardly. He felt almost shameful to consider the words, then looked away when he saw the way he was staring at him in such surprise. The white wolf flicked his ears and lowered them to his skull uncomfortably. _I just…_ _I think it makes it easier._

Yami blinked at him curiously. Then he closed his eyes in what Yugi thought must have been one of the most unnatural actions a wolf might ever perform. _I suppose there could be some truth to that,_ he considered. He stood perfectly still, his exhales soft and small, white against the air. Then he opened his eyes again, but they were not on his face any longer. They were on the wolves surrounding them at that very moment. _I have never truly thought of such a thing before._

 _Have you ever buried a body, Yami_?

He jerked as if Yugi had snapped his teeth at him. Then he bristled and glared at him before looking at the she-wolf between them with a pained hateful expression. _Not one like hers,_ he spat at him in answer. But there was a tremor beneath his words and Yugi felt sick for ever having asked such a stupid question.

 _I'm sorry…_

 _Don't…_ Yami bore his teeth for a moment, then shook himself out. The movement seemed to make the other wolves drift closer and they collectively bowed their heads upon taking in the state of their former alpha. One she-wolf pressed herself so firmly into the ground that her belly was flat against it. Another whined and covered their face in the bowed position their body had taken on. Yugi watched them, startled, and then turned back to Yami who stared with a frosted gaze. He snorted derisively after a heartbeat, then looked away with a more frigid glare on his face.

An image sprang into his head. Yugi jerked, head snapping towards the wolves who now collectively watched him. They were all surrounding the body, howling, then burying her in the woods. The white wolf blinked, ears flicking.

 _I plan to bury her,_ Yugi said quietly, hoping that his voice traveled. It was telepathy, so he was not sure that they would fail to hear or not. It seemed inconsequential to him whether they did or not. If one failed to, the rest would surely fill them in on such details. He blinked again, then ran his tongue over his jaws. _I wanted to oversee it myself._

The wolves all glanced at each other, then rapidly dipped their heads to him. And, as abruptly as they had come, they seemed to trot away without a second look. Yugi felt sick to his stomach. If he died, would they do the same to him?

Yami was bristling when he turned back to him. But he did not speak, instead leaning closer to the carcass, and wrinkled his nose slightly. His ears flicked sideways and then forward again, his eyes flashing coldly. His red gaze was glittering, reflective and strong.

 _You okay_? He felt stupid even asking. He'd just made him think of things he obviously did not want to. And he'd just further insulted him by inquiring that. He tilted his head, watching Yami before looking away again. _Never mind. Um… H-how are we going to get her there_? _The entrance to the tunnel is—_

 _They just turned their back and left a virtual stranger to deal with the body of their alpha. They must have loved her at some point to follow her, yet they simply allowed you to stake a claim as the one to move her,_ Yami spat viciously, eyes sharp and burning. Yugi startled, eyes on him again, blinking stupidly at his rage. _Atem or not, they have no true grounds to believe that you will do as you say. Why should they think that just because your name is Atem that they should leave a loved one to you for burial_? _It's pathetic._

Yugi flattened his ears against his skull, then pricked them again, nervous. _I don't…_ _They just…are…Yami…_ He looked away when Yami glared at him, his eyes immediately on the ground beneath them, watching the flakes gather and clump together. He didn't want to start a fight and wolf instinct said to hide away from his anger in order to prevent one. His lips drew back onto an almost human grimace as he stared at the snow. The flakes were glossy and individual shapes were glittering in front of his eyes. Small shadows traced borders of each of them, with silver tints and bluish gleams. He drew in a long, steady breath, and waited for the anger to pass from the other wolf.

 _I just… It's impossible to me,_ Yami snapped, voice losing its ferocity as the seconds passed. _I don't understand how it is that someone can simply forget the meaning of another person in their life just because…_

Yugi thought of religious cults and his skin crawled. He turned his head towards him again. _Some people think that they've been chosen by the god of their religion. And they'll see it as a divine proclamation of some kind. They'll kidnap and rape and murder and sometimes even molest little kids because others believe that that's what their god would have wanted. They think that that person is who their god speaks through and that's why they would gladly do anything and everything that person said._ He blinked and tilted his head, watching as Yami considered the words. _Some people just need to be guided by the hand. They need someone who will lead them, believe in them, and make it okay when they feel it isn't. And others can't face death. So they try their hardest to turn their backs on it._

The black wolf blinked, then glanced at the she-wolf. _They used to believe that she was that person. Now you are here and everything has changed. I do not understand how their minds work like that._

 _They used to believe that you were Atem._

He looked at him sideways, eyes just beneath his. There was a tension growing in his spine that made it hard to keep from snapping his teeth. _Your point, Yugi_? he demanded.

 _All I'm saying is that if you had pretended to be Atem, they would have followed you just as exactly as they are me. If you had said you were going to bury her had this happened before, they would have listened just like they are now. As far as they're concerned, I really_ am _a god among mortal wolves._ He flicked his ears and glanced back at where they were fading from the tree line. He bristled as the wind stirred his fur, then turned back to lock eyes with him. _I'm terrified, Yami._

He raised his head now, startled by the horrified note in his voice. _Hmm_? _Of what_?

 _Of being Atem. I don't want to be._

Yami blinked at him. _Then tell them you are not._

 _And then what_? Yugi snapped. _Then they attack and kill us_? _Good solution, Yami._

He stared at him, red eyes gleaming with something almost ethereal. _You would not die but once,_ he said slowly. _You are a descendant of Ra. And I am sure you are a Pure-Blood. As such, you would come back as you were before the death occurred._

Yugi bristled. _I don't want to die_! he barked back, ears against his skull, eyes seemingly vibrating within their sockets. _I don't want to die, Yami._

 _I know,_ he said simply. _So then do not tell them._

 _You say that like it's that simple._

 _That's because it_ is _so simple, Yugi. We are backed into a corner now. There is no room for us to maneuver back from it. As far as they are concerned, you are their natural, all-powerful, godly leader and I am your second-in-command. You are Atem and I am Yami. You are the savior and I shall play the traitor._ He looked at the alpha for a moment, then flattened his ears in open grief. _I told you not to come here. I told you and you did not listen to me._

Yugi fell silent, then moved to press his nose into his ear, closing his eyes as he leaned closer. The black wolf smelled so much of pine and moonlight and stars that were blinking in and out of existence. He was ice and rivers and fresh water and shadows draped over blankets of snow, where the flakes were lined in silver and light blue and touches of gentle gray.

 _It'll be okay._

* * *

Yami released hold of her the moment they entered the clearing in the tunnel. Then he backed up a couple of steps and signaled restlessly with a flick of his ear that Yugi do the same. The smaller wolf seemed to recognize the necessity even before he fully finished moving, or perhaps he was so in tune with Yami that he quickly did the same. Either way, they both stood several steps away from the body as they waited the seconds out.

Yugi shifted his paws nervously. His claws made a long, low scraping noise on the stone. Yami bristled faintly at the disturbance, then lowered his head slightly in frustration. He resisted the urge to shake himself out, the stench of death burning in his nostrils for a moment.

Was it memory or was it fresh?

What was that heavy smell of decay?

 _Thank you,_ Slifer intoned, coming from somewhere deeper in the shadows. Yami blinked, then raised his head again. Beside him Yugi was watching her, eyes sharp, stomach knotted. His ears were pricked, his gaze burning into her face but not her eyes. He bristled faintly, then relaxed again. _I am relieved to see my daughter put to rest._

Yugi startled, freezing in place. Then his head snapped towards Yami. _Daughter_? he sputtered, eyes the size of twin moons. He stared up at Yami as if he had just committed treason. _You didn't tell me she was her daughter_!

 _It was of no importance. The entire objective was to get her here for Slifer to receive her. That was all that mattered. That is what we have done. Her heritage is not important._

 _That's crap and you know it_! _How could you not tell me_? he spat before glancing at the goddess once more. Her fur had risen faintly and she ignored him as she looked over her offspring's bloodied throat. Her golden eyes were glazed, somewhere between sorrow and acceptance. Yugi blinked at her, then flattened his ears again, watching as she licked her cheek once and took a seat beside her for a moment. There were several seconds in which she merely watched her, seated so close that they were almost touching. Then she lay down beside her, eyes glazing over before she closed them.

 _We should…go,_ Yugi commented, eyes widening once more. He glanced at Yami awkwardly, fur rising into a faint bristle. But the black wolf did not take his eyes from the scene in front of them. _This is private, Yami_! _We shouldn't be watching them like this…_

Yami turned his head. _She is guiding her spirit back to_ _Paradise_ _. You've mistaken this for mourning. She will mourn when we are gone and not a moment sooner._

 _How would you know_? _She could be grieving_ and—

 _No, she could not._ He paused. _Yugi, a god does not grieve where the mortals can see. If she grieves, it will be when she is alone and when there is no chance of another finding her. Gods do not grieve in front of a mortal because it gives the impression of a shared bond. The gods are not here to guide us. They guide everything else. Free will guides us._

 _But…_ He stared at him for a moment, then bristled, snapping his teeth in frustration. _There's no such thing as free will where Atem is involved_!

Yami froze in place for a moment. Then he narrowed his eyes. _You took the name freely. You are the one who announced yourself as such. Had you not, none of them would be the wiser._ He looked at him, tilting his head. Yugi was still bristling, growling low in his throat. He looked infuriated and it surprised the larger wolf if only mildly. _You could have said you didn't know who they were. It was much more likely than ever stumbling across Atem as it was._

Yugi stared at him. _He_ had already stumbled across Atem. _He_ had stumbled across him by complete accident. He growled a little louder. _Someone has to stop the experiments and the fighting. And the murders—they have to stop too_!

 _And that's your decision_? _Yugi, the world is not going to be righted by one person with altruistic tendencies and a heart of gold,_ he objected, eyes sharp and glittering in the darkness. Yugi could see the way his pupils had grown slightly enlarged, anger seemingly making them somehow darker than ever before. _The world runs on the actions of everyone within it. The wolves suffer greatly for family members and friends and each other and the choices they make. This pack is a miniscule amount of wolves that exist in the world. You have no idea how much good this will do them. You have no idea how much damage it may cause as well. You wish to stop the things happening here, yes, but what of other places_?

 _The wolves will come for Atem._

Both of them jumped. They had been so caught up in their own conversation that the source of the voice made them bristle. Yugi bore his teeth and Yami snarled low in his throat. Then a heartbeat passed and both wolves faltered, relaxing once more immediately. Slifer watched them as if they were the most entertaining people she had ever come to know the existence of. She stared at them with sparkling eyes and her ears pricked forward, head cocked only slightly to the left.

 _What does that mean_? Yugi asked, calm now. He blinked at her, ears flicking, and his eyes darted around the numerous cavernous tunnels where they seemed to stretch endlessly into the darkness. He considered them, the gaping maws of their openings, and the shadows seemed more immense than ever. _You said the wolves would come for me…_

 _All wolves respond to Atem,_ Slifer said simply, but her eyes seemed to be on Yami rather than him. Yugi bristled faintly and bore his teeth, the action causing her eyes to fall on him once more. _All lycanthropes respond to the needs of their alpha. Atem is that alpha. He is the god among them. And so he shall have thousands within his legions, ready to spill blood during war for him._

Yugi bristled further. His eyes shot to Yami and then back. _Thousands_? he echoed. He was responsible for _thousands_ of lives now? _But if they don't know where I am…_

 _Word has already spread elsewhere that Atem has been created. The wolves felt it the moment you were born; they just did not realize it was you brought into existence. And they will find their way to Japan soon enough. Each of them will be called upon to find their way here, to you._

Yami bristled faintly, then huffed out a breath which seemed to make his entire frame quiver slightly. He ignored the helpless look that Yugi cast him, pleading for him to tell him otherwise. But hadn't he mentioned it before? Hadn't he told him that all wolves sensed and responded to Atem as their leader? What did he expect him to say now? "Slifer and I are just kidding. There's no war and no wolves respond to Atem at all"? Was that what he wanted to hear?

But to allow him to stare at him like that and not bother to speak felt sickening to him. He looked to him, mimicking the words Yugi had attempted to comfort him with minutes before. _It'll be okay._

Yugi stared at him as if he could not tell if he was mocking or genuine in his words. It caused Yami to feel as if someone were cutting into his skin with a scalpel and the sensation made him want to vomit once more. They stared at each other, however, seemingly frozen in place from it all, and Yami tilted his head towards him uncomfortably.

 _Do you honestly believe that_?

Yami felt cornered. No, he didn't believe it would be okay. There was nothing okay about any of the situation in question. Yugi was playing the role of a god in which death and chaos would surely follow his paws every step of the way. And the gods themselves were coming to him, speaking to him one by one. First there had been Slifer, or perhaps Ra; who had contacted him first? He had heard him even mumbling the name of Morrigan in his sleep, pleading with her for whatever reason. That was three of them, half of the pantheon as it was. There were only two more hellhounds and one lycanthrope to find their ways into his life.

No, that was not okay. It left no room for the potential of something better, either. His skin crawled for a moment. He turned his head away immediately, refusing to speak to him any further. If he tried to answer his question, he would surely puke.

Yugi turned away as well, tail drooping and head lowering slightly. His eyes fell on the alpha, however, and his stomach twisted and knotted inside of him. Her face was so full of fur, immaculate in placement, almost otherworldly in design. Her eyes were shut but he remembered the golden hue of them, and her coat was one shade of red on top of a lighter one.

How had he failed to realize the resemblance?

How had he not noticed that she was the goddess's own daughter?

He raised his eyes to Slifer. Their muzzles were almost the same length, but the goddess possessed one larger, more powerful. Their coats were such similar shades or red, their legs longer and spindly, their tails mirror images in their bushiness. He blinked at her, undone by how she stared so calmly back at him.

But then, what did she have to feel unnerved about?

 _I, um, think that it's time for us to go,_ he muttered quietly, shuddering faintly. The air felt cold and suffocating, as if it were drowning him forcefully. He wondered if it could swallow him whole or travel down his throat and sever his brain from his body. All it would take would be one blow to the nerves there… _Right, Yami_?

 _I wish to speak to her about something._ The black wolf turned to face him again now. Yugi blinked, looking towards him as well, expression questioning, head tilted curiously to the side. But his expression was troubled and not at all friendly or comforting. He was too lost in his own thoughts to even appear otherwise.

The smaller wolf flattened his ears against his skull for a moment; Yami wanted him to leave him there with her. This conversation wasn't for his ears. _Okay. I…I'll be at the camp then._

Yami nodded distractedly. _I will meet you there in a few minutes,_ he promised, now moving forward to nudge him in the shoulder with his muzzle. It was a friendly gesture, telling him to hurry up and not to worry, but it still unnerved Yugi how distracted the darker wolf seemed even now. The smaller canine didn't comment, instead turning and trotting towards the entrance. He cast a small glance back, startled when he saw that Yami was watching him, though he immediately turned back to the goddess upon their eyes locking. When his paw steps faded, the black wolf blinked and looked at her more pointedly.

 _Do you know what happened to him_? he demanded, baring his teeth as a million thoughts began to race for his attention. The action made his head throb for a brief second and his tail bristled faintly.

She watched him, golden eyes cunning with memory that far surpassed his own. _I know exactly what happened to him. I also know where he is in_ _Paradise_ _,_ she said in a level tone. There was something arrogant about her posture now that Yami had not noticed before. _Do you want to know_?

 _Yes. I… How soon after did they…_? _I…_

 _They killed him only minutes after you turned back. He was knocked aside by one of the guards and managed to take a back route to cut them off from capturing you again. When he killed Pandora, Pegasus got to him._

Yami bristled. _Pegasus killed him_?

 _Does it matter who raised the blade, Yami_? the goddess drawled. _Surely you are not so lost without him as to not realize that knowing will not bring him back._

He snapped his teeth. _Fuck you, Slifer._

She blinked at him lazily. _Besides, unless I am wrong, you appear to be recovering fine, yes_? Her eyes burned into his. _A lover lost is another gained, no_?

He was shaking. _No_! he snarled angrily. _You're wrong._

 _Yes, I suppose I am. I had not noticed such scars marring your soul before this moment,_ Slifer continued in a somewhat bitter tone. _Yes, his death still keeps you up at night and haunts the worst of your dreams. It guides your course of action in life even now, doesn't it_? _That is why you look so much…older than you truly are._

Yami trembled, heartbeat erratic and heavy in his ears. _Damn you…_ He felt sick. _Is he happy_?

Slifer blinked at him, long and slow, and her eyes glittered almost disdainfully. _He is. At least most often. Some of your choices trouble him._ Her ears flicked back and forth rapidly for a moment. _He wishes for me to tell you something._

Yami backed up, panting. His gums were bright white, his tongue pale. _Tell him I'm sorry,_ he managed to choke out, turning away and racing rapidly for the entrance of the tunnel.

 _He saved your life and you will not listen to his message_? Slifer called after him, tone mocking and distant. She sounded more malicious than he had initially thought her capable of in regards to him. He had never come across her in such a sadistic tone before. Yet her voice was fading as he barreled through the entrance of the tunnel.

The black wolf snapped his jaws as they collided. The impact was so painful it seemed to knock the wind from his lungs. He and the white wolf tumbled, snapping at each other in a state of confused panic. Yami could feel it festering inside of him. It made him twist as their legs knotted. He snapped his teeth and struggled. The other wolf bit at the air next to his ear. They snarled angrily. Then Yami was abruptly butted painfully in the shoulder. He tottered sideways, snarling. The other wolf wriggled beneath him. Then they broke apart again. He panted and scrambled to his paws.

Yugi was staring at him. Recognition had dawned on him before that moment. It was startling to Yami how easily he seemed to have snapped out of it. Had his panic been so encompassing? He blinked at him in confusion, then flattened his ears against his head. The white wolf merely watched him.

 _Want to talk about it_?

Yami wanted to die, was what he wanted. He looked away quickly. _No,_ he answered in a clipped tone. _Can we go home now_?

 _I thought we were going to introduce ourselves._

 _It can wait…_

Yugi watched him for a moment. Then he leaned over, running his tongue over his forehead. He seemed oddly at peace with such gestures, something that startled Yami. The two of them blinked at each other and the black wolf wondered what Yugi might think of him if he had heard the conversation he'd just had. _Of course we can go now,_ he answered, ignoring the pleading desperation which had colored Yami's voice moments before. _Give me a minute to tell them I'm leaving. We'll leave immediately after, okay_?

He nodded in distraction, but watched as he took off in a trot towards the other side of the clearing. He did not throw his head back and howl, but rather approached Mai and Otogi where they were laying together lazily. Both wolves got immediately to their paws, though he was sure Yugi told them it was unnecessary and relayed his departure.

Yami flicked his ears.

It was strange not hearing his gentle voice in his head at the moment. He was so used to being close to him and capable of listening when he directed his words outwards. It was almost lonely in his own head without the touch of his friend's voice there.

Yugi wagged his tail at the two wolves as they split up and began to find other members. No doubt each of them would gather to see them off, but the white wolf started towards him abruptly. Yami faltered, realization coming over him. His eyes had changed slightly and it occurred to him that they would not be leaving as of that moment.

 _I need to speak to Slifer for a moment,_ Yugi revealed, stopping in front of him. Yami bristled faintly, unnerved, and cast a small glance over his shoulder towards the entrance once more. He felt as if he could still hear her, growling and snarling in his ear about lovers and promises he could not think to keep any longer. He turned back. The white wolf watched him with gentle eyes, hesitant as he licked at the tip of his muzzle, just beyond his nose. His eyes were soft, warm, and Yami felt winded just looking at them. _She knows something that I need to ask her about._

Yami glanced at the entrance again, then turned back uncomfortably. _Okay,_ he agreed reluctantly. _Go ahead and see her._

 _I don't suppose you want to come_?

If he had not said it in such a calm voice, Yami might have buckled and followed him. He would have pushed away his discomfort and anger and followed him without a second thought. As it was, Yugi was calm and collected, and it was clear he did not expect him to in even the slightest.

 _No._

Yugi nodded and his body brushed his as he stepped around him and towards the entrance. He glanced at him only once, more for reassurance, then began to make his way into the tunnel. He would make this quick. He trotted as quickly as he could without breaking into a run. And the clearing seemed to come to him in a swift heartbeat. He paused, stopping short in front of the gorge, where the water roared and splashed and foam sprayed from the immense flow.

He looked the river over for a long minute, eyes sharp, the darkness splashing with faint ribbons of white and silver across the stone. He looked up again and in front of him Slifer began to pick her way through the shadows and towards them. The golden-eyed she-wolf tilted her head, gaze full of cunning and something like soft affection which traced her irises more fully.

Yugi glanced down at the water again. It wasn't the same water. Yami was right. It would never _be_ the same water again, either. He was right. He was absolutely right. He just had not considered it before that moment, at least not completely.

 _Slifer, I want an honest answer. And I'm going to ask this only once. I_ know _you know where the lab is,_ he said slowly, turning to her now. His fur bristled finely and the roar of water made his body ache as it crashed fitfully against the stone. It would erode it further. It would completely shatter the stone, wouldn't it? Eventually the tunnels would cease existence, wouldn't they? Eventually, when the world began to change even more and the mammals were forced to extinction like the dinosaurs… He shook his musings off. _I know that Yami knows the entrance. He won't tell me. And that's fine. But I want to know if you know where they are as well._

She studied him silently for what felt like hours. Then she, very slowly, took a seat. Her tail was long and curled sideways when she tucked it against her paws. The hair was long and fluffed outwards, covering her paws brilliantly. The uniform shade of her pelt made him think of shadows and darkness and it startled him somehow. _I know the entrance. And I will show it to you when the time comes. But that is not now and I will not put you in harm's way for the sake of your curiosity._

Yugi exhaled and his breath came in a bright puff before his eyes. _Okay,_ he said easily, nodding in response. He wagged his tail slightly before it abruptly dropped away again. _Do you know what they are doing to them now_?

 _I am aware of their suffering, yes. Just as I am the one who listens to the grievances of the dead,_ she said with cunning eyes, though the gleam of them faded a moment later. _Why do you ask such questions_?

 _Was your daughter one of their victims_?

Slifer considered him for a moment, something dark and dangerous flickering in her eyes _No, but she did help them to escape. If you mean to ask me the purpose of her sacrifices, I will tell you now that it was not of malicious intent._

 _No, I didn't…_ Yugi watched her with his head tilted. _I never considered it. I think it was misguided but I didn't think she forced them or anything of that nature. I just… Who was experimented on within the pack_? _Are there survivors_?

 _Those sacrificed did so of their own demand. They were mercy kills. Whether you see them as right or not is beyond my care. As for those others experimented on, there is a short supply of them among you now._ She flicked her ears and watched him closely. _They will come to you in time. You will notice the discontent and behavior which separates them from the majority._

 _Was Yami experimented on_? he demanded, eyes glittering with rage. _I don't want an evasive answer. Tell me now. I need to know._

 _You are Atem. Why should his suffering affect you_?

 _He is my friend. I want to know._

Slifer flicked an ear and her eyes grew somewhat distant. _Extensively,_ she said after a moment. _His former mate says that he was experimented on to same extent that you yourself was._

Yugi could feel it. She knew something more. And she was withholding it from him for some reason. He bore his teeth for a moment. _Okay._

 _You had other questions._

 _Is he a Pure-Blood or a Full-Blood_? _I don't… I'm confused on the difference. And I know he won't answer me if I ask him,_ he exhaled.

 _Does it matter_? _You will find in time that it does not matter the type of wolf one is. It matters where their loyalties lie. Some are only for themselves. Others live to please the next person. Another might have loyalty only for their mate and the next for everyone in their pack. Do not think ill of him for denying you answers at times. He struggles with much grief and pain._ She looked mildly ashamed for the briefest of seconds. Then she closed her eyes and angled her head lower. _You must forgive him for misguided attempts to help you and protect you from further damage. He tries hard. It just does not always work in his favor._

Yugi shook his head. _No, I understand that. I don't mind that he does that._ Considering that he himself was doing that with multiple things, not limited to his friends and what he had said to them, he didn't mind that at all. _I just… He's gotten hurt a lot more since we've met. I just kind of worry about him. I…_

 _He will be fine. I can guarantee you only that._

 _So you won't tell me which blood type he is._

 _It is not my place. He will tell you himself soon enough._

Yugi considered her, listening and tasting the words before tilting his head slightly. The white canine stared at the she-wolf for a long minute, then closed his eyes. _What about the wolves in the lab_?

 _Most are infected artificially by means of blood and saliva. Many of them are Half-Bloods. The Full-Bloods are used for breeding purposes and do not often escape._ She watched him more closely. _You know a secret, Yugi. And it is one you will have to guard as preciously as a heart._

He shivered, watching her. _Will we make it_?

 _Sacrifices are made in battle. Whether you can keep up with the demands of war are another question altogether._ She studied him more closely for a long moment. Then her ears pricked forward and her eyes glowed as they flickered into his once more. _You shall both have sacrifices to make. Survival is another matter._

He bristled faintly, glancing towards the entrance once more. Then he flicked an ear and turned back with a somewhat flustered expression. _I said we would go back when I got my answers. I don't expect to get anything else out of you,_ he said, insides knotting painfully. _Until we see each other next._

Slifer was silent as he began to trot to the entrance. In the darkness Yugi thought he could only hear his heart pounding more than anything else. His claws clicked against the stone and Yugi was almost a step out of the tunnel when she answered.

 _It shall be sooner rather than later._

He slowed a step, but Yami was watching him now and reality seemed to strike him violently in the face. He slipped out into the snow and the black wolf greeted him with an antsy shift of his weight. He couldn't meet his eyes for a moment, then forced himself to wag his tail.

 _Did you get answers_?

Yugi nodded. _I did. Let's go._

 _What did you talk about_? he demanded, falling into step beside him. He blinked curiously at the other wolf and Yugi felt sick to his stomach for a moment. He wished he could have believed Yami when he said that he would tell him anything he wanted to know about him.

But he knew too well already.

Yami lied and fed him answers from the palm of his hand but did not give him all of the truth. He had to pick the pieces out and analyze them himself, draw them close and sort through them rapidly. He blinked and shook his fur out. To say that he felt terrible that he could not hold him at his word where such a thing was involved was an understatement of epic proportions.

 _Nothing you need to worry about._ He wondered if Yami had heard his musing. But the curious, surprised glance he gave him suggested otherwise. He tilted his head, then pressed his head into his shoulder. He was not entirely sure where his mind came up with such casual actions to take. They were so animalistic that it was startling as he opened his eyes again and considered. _I was offering her condolences for her loss. I didn't realize she was her daughter._

 _That's understandable. I did not realize either._ But something in his voice was clipped as Yugi pulled away to begin walking again. Their shoulders were all but brushing as they began to continue towards the entrance of the camp. The thistles were large and immense, the thorns like razors in the snow, layered so brilliantly that he thought of crystal shards and broken glass. He flicked an ear and glanced at Yami sideways when he spoke again. _She looked like her only when you thought to consider the two of the next to each other. Or you immediately saw one after the other as I had. It occurred to me only today._

 _It kind of amazes me. I didn't think that any of the wolves were related to the gods. She made such a big deal about me having their blood…_ Yugi paused and tilted his head. _Why should she have been so excited about my existence and being related to Ra if she was already related to Slifer_?

 _Because Atem is a Pure-Blood. And the fact that she is dead says that she was nothing more than a Full-Blood. She healed much faster than the average werewolf but was not able to revive herself after being mortally wounded. She wasn't like you. One can kill you and you'll come back to life again._

 _What about the head being taken off_?

Yami blinked. _Pure-Bloods heal too quickly. Their body rapidly rejuvenates and mends the wound before they can possibly cut through the spine or the muscles around the neck. And removing organs only causes the body to rapidly regenerate them. Or so the legends say. Considering there were only three wolves before with the ability to come back to life when dead…_

 _So that's more of an idea, not a true thing_?

 _It was tested in the labs. But I do not know to what extent. And I do not recall ever hearing about the results. If they were done successfully, Ryou was never told of them. And so he did not tell me or my cage mate._ This caused his fur to shudder faintly and Yugi blinked in confusion at the rapid twitch. _Many wolves were killed in the revival of Atem. And I am sure they were more extensively studied than he could ever be._

Yugi continued to walk slowly, lazily striding forward beside him as Yami did the same. They were moving in unison again, something that only mildly surprised the smaller wolf.

 _So, then that's the only thing between Pure-Bloods and Full-Bloods_?

 _That and their pelts being solid colors. There is also their strength and the fact that the wolves are stronger mentally than the others. We can project thoughts. Mai can do so for a limited time. Otogi can get the spare word out. Then they both must resort to pictures to communicate._ The red-eyed wolf blinked slowly, then pricked his ears forward lazily. _The lycanthropy as a whole is more active and powerful than anything else. They heal more quickly. They can kill more easily. They're faster. They're stronger. The lycanthropy makes almost everything almost three times the rate of a regular human._

 _So then that means that the wolf is far more powerful than the other blood types._

Yami flicked an ear. _They called them breeds at the labs. The Half-Bloods were the most common. The Full-Bloods were rarer. And the Pure-Bloods were extinct._ He slowed a step and Yugi found himself mimicking him, uncomfortable and feeling sick. _So they called them breeds A, B and C. Quarter-Bloods were not considered anything more than a watered down species. They basically considered them to be nothing more than just a mutt._

 _Oh…_

That was disgusting. He looked at Yami for a moment. How could they possibly do that? But then…they had named Atem after the abbreviations of his own experimentation. In all reality, he should not have been so surprised.

* * *

Yugi closed his eyes tightly for a moment. Yami had settled himself on the bed a few inches away, picking at his nails. In his boredom he had not noticed the way the smaller teen had been staring at him for so long. Yugi was both thankful and driven mad by this reality. It was merciful yet somehow ruthless all the same. Yugi felt as if he were dying.

Something about the way his spine curved and the muscles in his arms flexed as he bit at his nails made his heart pound. Something about the tilt of his head and the cords in his neck made him shiver. And the way his heart sounded in his ears, soft and rhythmic, warm beyond his comprehension, made his nerves dance with fire. He kept his eyes closed tightly.

But the image behind his lids was far from what Yugi had thought it would be. But, there to greet him like the best of phantoms, was the brilliant vivid image of the wolf beside him. His lips were swollen, his eyes hooded and darker than ever. His lashes were splayed and his skin glistening. His collarbone was soaked in salty perspiration, a pool of which he wanted nothing more than to stick his tongue in. His hair was tangled, his bangs knotted thickly. His chest was heaving and his cheeks were flushed. The pillow was shaded dark with his long black hair and the tip of each strand was like a fiery burst of color against white.

But this image was not all which tore at his insides.

Beneath his clothing his skin was burning. Fingertips like silk, soft and warmth, trailed fire upon his flesh. His skin itched and tingled and danced beneath their golden touch. His heart rocketed and his breath caught in his throat. He gasped and nearly writhed. In his mind hands were touching along his pulse, tracing the curve of his neck. And oh gods, the things that just his fingers could do…

Yugi felt his eyes snap open before he could even recognize the action. He startled, sitting up much straighter than he had been initially, slumped against his headboard and looking at the television. Beside him Yami was stiff and frozen, as if he were able to see his thoughts or hear his racing heart.

He glanced at him from the corner of his eye. He had not thought for more than a second that the other could have sensed it. But it was rather clear from the way Yami peered at him sideways that he knew. And the stillness in his body was not arousal of any nature. In fact, as Yugi ran a hand through his hair, he caught the thick, bitter and sour pulse of fear which swelled upon his natural scent.

It was enough to knock his thoughts from his mind altogether.

His heart skipped, a sickness seeming to swell through him in response to this sensation.

Did he smell it?

Yugi nearly groaned with disgust. _He_ could smell it. Of course Yami could if he could. His nose was so much better than his as it was. He shook his head and dropped back against the headboard again. What was he supposed to say? That he had been about to fall asleep and had dreamed of that?

Yami was still frozen next to him.

He fidgeted, closing his eyes tightly again. But the image was back and Yugi nearly spat at himself in dismay. Awkwardly, the small teen shook the idea off, then opened his eyes again into slits. Why was he suddenly so restless? Was it something to do with being a wolf? Had something triggered it? He was relatively sure he had handled this situation a thousand times better when he wasn't infected and only liked Anzu.

But did he even like Yami in any other way than friendship?

Yugi couldn't tell. Yes, he liked Yami. He liked him a lot. But it felt more…friendly…than it did anything else…didn't it? He tried to consider it more closely but it seemed to be shattering away in his head. His senses were more geared towards confusion and disbelief than a desire to truly analyze. So what was he meant to really do?

Yugi shook his head.

Yami turned his head now, the bones so tightly knotted together in his anxiety that they cracked loudly upon performing such an action. He blinked at him, eyes wide, and Yugi finally seemed to notice his movement a minute later. He blinked once, then twice, and turned his head. The stare they shared was so awkward Yugi felt as if he might puke at any moment.

Finally the taller teen relented, leaning away from him slightly. He settled a bit more on his haunches and for a moment he looked almost sultry. But there was something antagonistic and cold in his eyes that made Yugi feel sick. Then it was gone again and Yami was looking at the comforter.

"Sorry." It was clipped and tired and so forced that Yami blinked and turned his head with a startled expression. Yugi looked pissed, as if his silence had angered him somehow and the way they stared at each other made him anxious.

Was it really so bad to think of him as a partner? Yami acted as if it were the worst thing in the world. He looked at him as if he were going to be sick and the anxiety was clear in every line of his body. Yugi couldn't understand how it was that Yami could be so comfortable with him and even manage to go as far as helping him with a bath if he had no desire whatsoever for him Unless that was some part of the wolf instinct which proclaimed that one did anything and everything for a pack mate without a single pause.

But he didn't think there was someone else who could manage that.

And the way Yami looked at him now infuriated him further. How could he possibly do all of those things and not think more? Yugi wasn't sure that he _wanted_ him to, but it was still annoying to think otherwise. Did Yami truly not think of him as anything beyond that of a beta or a friend? If he was suffering these emotions, why couldn't he as well?

He knew somewhere in the back of his mind that he was being considerably unfair. It was stupid to think that just because he felt something that Yami had to as well. But what about when they had almost kissed? That had been as much Yami as it was him. He couldn't deny that.

But Yami had said it was the connection between them because of the bite. He had said it had amplified his platonic relationship to something further. And it was solely because of this one bite. That had to be a lie, _didn't_ it?

Yugi didn't like the idea that he might be unable to feel his own emotions without the bond stretching them into something else. And what of any other emotions he had? What of what he felt for Anzu? Admittedly it seemed to have fallen in second place with this recent onslaught of emotion for Yami, but it was still there. He knew and felt it…

He looked at Yami more closely. The taller lycanthrope seemed more shocked than unnerved now. And that was quickly changing as well. Yugi's frustration must have been fueling his or perhaps it was the eye contact. He was rigid and his lips were twitching with the instinct to pull back to bare his teeth. The enamel looked ironically brilliant, hideous to the eye, and he thought he might lunge at him any moment. But it was the low noise in his throat which unnerved Yugi further. He sounded as if he were struggling not to snap his teeth and attempt to shove him away from him.

Yugi blinked, then snorted and looked away. "Sorry," he muttered quietly now. He blinked again, tired as he reached up and ran a hand through his hair. He shook his head and struggled to keep from yawning in growing anxiety. "I think I'm getting restless."

It was the stupidest, simplest excuse he could use. And that made enough sense to him that it allowed Yami to nod in dismissal. He did not look at him as if he were mad or even mildly upset any longer. In the corner of his eye he actually appeared somehow crestfallen.

When he turned his head, however, that look was gone. Yami was all but expressionless, his eyes dark and thoughtful. But there was nothing beyond that. He was watching him calmly, carefully.

"I need to call Anzu later."

Yami didn't do anything but nod. But there was something harsh and shaded in his eyes and Yugi felt sick for a moment.

* * *

Yugi stepped a little closer to her, though he was trying more to keep on the edge of the curb than anything else. He felt precariously happy with the sensation of his balance being off as it seemed when his feet tilted sideways. She was standing so close to the edge as well, an inch or two from his shoulder. He was amazed, because he did not have to move his arms to stay balanced. He was completely able to simply maintain his balance with his slow stride and calmer stance. It was amazing to him and it made his heart pound a little faster, gleeful of this newfound ability.

"This is so fucking great," he muttered out loud before he could stop himself. Anzu cast him a sideways look, then smiled in a somewhat bemused, startled manner. He realized he hadn't said anything for a small measure of time and his sudden outburst probably seemed more out of place than even his surprising invitation to see if they could work out what seemed like a rapidly failing relationship. He glanced at her, then gestured lazily at his feet. "I'm doing it without having to try to balance myself."

"Oh." She nodded, smiling a little more. Then she rolled her eyes. "You always have been amazed by weird things like that."

He blushed slightly, then grinned at her like a schoolboy, but when she looked at him, the innocence she had once seen there was all but nonexistent. How much had he gone through since he had been infected? He had not opened up to them about it aside from being attacked by Ushio in the forest and Tomoya saving him. It seemed odd that she had never bothered to consider that it might have given him a harsher understanding of a world she did not know. The thought made her bite her bottom lip, feeling sick. What had he experienced in the time that he had been hiding this from them?

"Can all werewolves do that?"

Yugi startled and then blushed furiously as he stopped short on the sidewalk. It caused him to topple onto the street again and he quickly stepped back onto the concrete. This time the pleasure in his face was gone, stripped bare to seem uncomfortable and somewhat anxious. "Yami probably can," he admitted, but his eyes seemed distant for a split second. Then he grinned at her and his focus was on her alone once more. "I forgot you guys knew. I didn't even think about it."

She gave him a tight smile that felt weak and almost shaky. "Jonouchi and Honda are making a list of questions they wanted to ask you and Yami," she said slowly. He blinked and his expression became both startled and fierce, as if the mention of them interacting with Yami struck something defensive inside of him. She frowned faintly. "I'm sure none of it is inappropriate."

"Oh please, I'll bet half of them are." He rolled his eyes but he was smiling again and looked rather relieved at the idea. No doubt he was fond of his friends' antics when it came to such things. She thought it was amazing he had not been persuaded otherwise. It seemed so strange that his humor would remain when he himself seemed almost unrecognizable behind that familiar face and those wide, beautiful eyes. "One of them is guaranteed to be about whether we act like bunnies."

Anzu blinked, then blushed. At least he hadn't been crude, dodging the action as effectively as he usually could. It brought the smallest of smiles to her face. At least that hadn't changed either. "Well, yeah, there's no question about that one."

They both blinked, then laughed at the unintentional pun. Their eyes flickered away again, though he seemed more shy than unnerved and she was relieved for that.

"And another is going to be about doggy style. Then there's going to be something about multiple partners. All of the good stuff that Jonouchi always talks about." He was grinning so widely that his face lit up brilliantly. His eyes looked so beautiful against the pale pallid of his cheeks and his long lashes seemed to frame them even more fully than before. Were they longer? She hadn't noticed before but she thought they were a little bit lengthier. "But I don't even think I want to know more about what they might have written down. I'll bet it's stuff that will make me squirm."

She smiled widely. "You think so?" she asked playfully. "You're not too squeamish when it comes to kinks."

Yugi's entire face turned bright red and he stumbled a step, nearly falling flat on the pavement. His eyes nearly bugged out of his head as he opened and closed his mouth. He rubbed the back of his neck, then grumbled, "Jackass" under his breath. The word startled them both and she tilted his head as his face drained of color and he stared at her almost in panic.

Oh gods, had he just…?

He called Yami jackass. And he did it whenever he said something like she had. But he had always affectionately dubbed her crazy when she said something of that manner. The shift in his teasing was horrifying. Why had he called her by what he did Yami when he made lewd comments or jokes that made him blush?

He cleared his throat awkwardly. "Sorry, I call Yami a jackass when he says things like that," he explained in a tired tone. "I guess I've been around him more than I have you guys lately."

"A little bit," she admitted when the silence seemed to choke them both for those few seconds before she could answer. She swallowed hard.

That was what was different.

She could see it now.

She could sense it as well.

And it was both startling and heartbreaking to realize.

"I'm going to have to spend more time with you guys," he announced, ignoring her shocked look. "No one is supposed to take priority over anyone else when you're friends. That's not okay."

Anzu blinked, undone by his words, and considered him for a long second or two. "But he's helping you with being infected, isn't he? Isn't that what you said before?"

"That doesn't mean I'm supposed to ignore you guys in favor of him," he argued, eyes narrowing slightly. Something in his gaze was dark and dangerous and it made her skin crawl. He blinked and it was gone again but the shadow of it seemed to linger on his face. "Anyways, he can hang out with us too. It's not like he's some kind of pariah or something. He's different but he's not going to hurt anyone or anything. He's fine."

Anzu wondered if he was trying to tell her or convince himself at this rate. She tilted her head, searched his face, and frowned as she studied him. Her expression made something in his eyes sharpen and there was a cunning there she had never seen before. He looked animalistic now, with dark eyes and furrowed brows and a restlessness which made his face darken faintly.

"What? You don't think so?"

She might have answered if his tone didn't sound almost threatening. Instead she turned away and began to watch her steps on the pavement, walking with a sense of bewilderment in her movements. She blinked, glancing sideways at him, and then sighed softly.

"I'm sorry," he apologized awkwardly. "It's a lot harder to control myself constantly. I… Yami told me it gets easier as you change more often but it just seems to be getting worse, actually. Especially when someone makes eye contact with me. I tend to get angry sometimes. It's harder than I thought it would be."

She blinked. "Do wolves have problems with eye contact?" she asked in a startled voice. She turned her head towards him now but his eyes were on his feet as he balanced perfectly on the edge of the curb once more.

"They take it as a challenge of rank in the wild. It's no different for werewolves. Yami will barely ever make eye contact with me straight on when we're alone. I have to really surprise him if he's going to do it." He shrugged. "But then, I'm so used to making eye contact with people when I talk to them and he gets unnerved when I do that to him. I think he expects me to attack him or something."

Her heart was twisting painfully in her chest. "Do you think he's actually scared of you or of hurting you instead?"

Yugi snorted. "Oh, I'm not dangerous to him. He killed that _tiger_. He knows he can handle me, even if he's not as used to his human form. He could wipe the floor with me."

"So you think he's more afraid of hurting you then…?"

Anzu could feel it when he grew somewhat distant, distracted. The boy blinked, raised his head slightly, and his eyes were on the road ahead of them without a glance in her direction. He watched the gathering shadows as the sun set and didn't once look at her again for a long minute and a half.

The distance was physical to her.

It was startling to sense it and it was amazing to her how acutely it dug into her.

"Maybe," he said vaguely. Then he waved it off dismissively and turned to her with another grin. "I don't know that he isn't but I don't know that he is. So I guess it's all speculation, really. It doesn't matter though. All I meant was that he gets really nervous when we lock eyes. He tends to become really uncomfortable and restless after that. It's just awkward. And I guess it's happening with me now too. I didn't think about it before. I would have warned you ahead of time."

"That's okay."

But it really wasn't, was it? Because Yugi didn't even seem to be there with her. And there was a third, invisible person with them both. Her heart ached as they continued towards her house.

Their talk during dinner after the movie had been fun. But then they hadn't been completely beyond the most basic of topics. They had mostly talked about school and food and the movie itself.

And now she understood why he had made that the most they breached. Because now she could feel it and it was a jagged scar in her skin.

She felt sick.

Oh gods, how much longer was she supposed to let this go on…? Should she tell him…? What if he didn't know? What if he had no idea yet? What if she was looking too far into it? Her chest felt tighter than ever.

"No, it's really not," he argued, shaking his head. "I shouldn't have thought I was immune to it. It was pretty stupid of me considering I'm not immune to anything else."

She swallowed hard. "Yugi…"

They were at her door and she couldn't say anything more. The smaller teen was looking at her and the tenderness in his eyes was beautiful, but it was steps away from it had been formerly. He had not come to realize it. But she did.

She drew in a shaky breath. And he looked to be mirroring her for a moment. Their exhales were bright white puffs in the air and she shivered. It was perfect. It was gorgeous. It was all it should have been.

It was the perfect guy.

It was the perfect date.

And it should have been the perfect kiss.

But that did not happen.

Yugi leaned forward. And she let him, desperate and selfish. She wished for just a moment that it would work. She would have wished on a shooting star or prayed to an altar. But even as the other teen tilted his head and his eyes began to close, something seized him. Immediately, inches from her lips, he backed up.

The step was shaky. His legs looked ready to buckle. And, as he took in a breath, he exhaled what had been his dinner. He had missed the porch by mere inches. The flower bed was not so lucky. Anzu watched, heart pinched with white-hot pain. She closed her eyes, sighing softly, and looked away when she finally opened them again.

He was doubled over and the moan which left him was pathetic and heart wrenching. His eyes were dilated, full of confusion and anxiety. It burst through his gaze in ribbons of shock and pain. And when he looked up at her again, he was absolutely horrified.


	41. Hot Chocolate

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day**

 **Chapter Warnings: Emotional Distress/Anxiety Attack, Character Death, Jokes about Sex, Sexual References, Conversations About Sex/Age of Consent, Mentions of Pedophilia and Child Pornography**

 **I am SO sorry this took so long to get out. It drove me NUTS. I'm using two laptops and I FINISHED EXITS ON ONE and then I SAVED IT, but when I used the USB with the OTHER LAPTOP it was already opened and I SAVED OVER the edits cause I am CLEARLY a moron. And this is why I am NOT allowed to have nice things. Just saying!**

 **ANYWAYS, on to the important things!**

 **I just want to make something clear. I don't want anyone continuing the story with any misconceptions.**

 **First off, the Peachshipping is officially over after this chapter. They'll STILL be close friends. But there won't be any romantic moments unless one-sided and unrequited on Anzu's behalf.**

 **Second, you need to always remember that Yami DOES lie a LOT in this story, more for his own sake than anything else.**

 **Third, if you've ever read _Marrow_ (and even if you haven't), Yugi is going to figure this out later in the story, but it's mentioned that wolves really only take on one partner seriously, as in FULL COMMITMENT, as in head-over-heels, would-die-for-you kind of thing. ****Yugi is told this later, when Yami is asked about that kind of thing. But the wolves bond with whom they feel the SAFEST, MOST COMFORTABLE, MOST LOVED, and who they believe will allow them to GROW THE MOST and BETTER THEMSELVES, and just feel the overall BEST with.**

 **They can be as promiscuous as they want (as Mai and Otogi tend to be), but they DO settle down with one special person whom they share the most with and can bond COMPLETELY with. For Yugi, that ISN'T Anzu. There's a reason for it (and it's NOT because she isn't a werewolf; I promise, it has more significance than just that), and there's a reason you won't see more than slight Puzzleshipping throughout the story. Because Yugi is no longer suppressing his emotional attachment to Yami, he most likely won't even have fantasies about him anymore. This is something of a slow burn, but the romance isn't the biggest plot point whatsoever. It drives a lot of things, but it is NOT the most important thing. Making the romance more abundant would do a disservice to the characters as they already are.**

 **Fourth, gender is something that the wolves don't give a single shit about. Gender doesn't change a single thing for them in any way (they aren't endangered and so they don't have to constantly reproduce nor do they feel the need to). They bond with whoever they feel can help them grow the most and they can help to do the same.**

 **Fifth, this is NEVER going to be m-preg and it's NOT going to have any kind of kinky alpha-omega or alpha-beta dynamic kind of thing that I know is a huge trope for the werewolf stories. It's not happening, sorry (not sorry). I feel like everyone already kind of knows this already, considering the way the story has played along already, but I had the sudden realization that maybe clarifying would do me some good. (IF it does me even that.)**

 **Yugi's acknowledgment of his attachment to Yami changes some small things for Yugi. He responds to him more. And he might seem out of character in certain instances.**

 **Okay, onto the lesser things, so since there's Burger World in canon, I kind of made up a chicken place called Chicken Palace. Why? Because I wanted a more neutral spot in the story (and I can use it in other stories because I have this really weird habit of making Yami like chicken and fish more than other meats?) so I'm making that a location in the story. In principle, it's basically the chicken version of Burger World.**

 **Domino Café is modeled after the three cafes mentioned in Yugi's explanation. I looked up pictures, then decided to add a spin with the pictures of mythology and things like that on the walls. The café is going to be used a couple more times in the story (not quite sure HOW many more times). The drinks ordered are (based on) Kuramae hot chocolates (630 yen) and the pastries are Papua New Guinea Samoas (450 yen) that I found while researching cafés in Japan. They're made in singular batches from what I read and the pastries are only powdered with cacao but I liked the idea of cinnamon too so that's how they turned out. And, in the actual café, I don't think that they come with whipped cream but I really wanted to write about Yami having whipped cream on his nose, so that's kind of how this happened. Ahem, anyways…**

 **OKAY, SO! The age of consent in Japan is brought up again, as is the prevention of corruption of a minor law, and pedophilia and child pornography. These are apparently really common in Japan, as much as I hate to say it (or so my RESEARCH says; don't quote me.) It's not meant to offend anyone. I don't live there, so my concepts might get mixed up sometimes when things are mentioned. Anyways, the topic comes up again because of something coming into play in this chapter, but regardless, from my understanding, the laws should be rather realistically described? I spent like three hours reading over and polishing this when I initially wrote it, but I am prone to mistakes, so if anyone wants to correct me, PLEASE FEEL FREE TO. I would LOVE it, actually. I don't want to misrepresent or reinforce some kind of stereotype.**

 **Yami does call someone "exotic" in this chapter. It's not meant as a discriminating term. He literally means that they are exotic to his understanding; they're different from him and he's extremely curious. He means differences in mannerisms, culture, ideals and values, things like that. I'm only explaining because he uses that same word to describe them again later in the story (or he will if I don't change an idea later).**

Chapter XLI: Hot Chocolate

 _Work Log Entry XLI: November, 2003_

 _November 12_

 _For now the breeding has been put on hold._

 _November 14_

 _The boss has been spending more time with "Atem" than usual. He has even taken him out of his cage alone to allow him time to hide with him outside._

 _No one knows what is going on_

 _None of us are meant to do more than feed and maintain his health beyond performing tests._

 _November 18_

 _I believe he is talking to "Atem" about something he doesn't want any of the rest of us to know._

 _But I do not know if the Pure-Blood understands half of what he says._

 _Because, whenever I feed him or try to say a word to him, and he looks at me, his eyes are still black but they give him the impression of being unable to focus._

 _November 25_

 _"Atem" will not speak._

 _The boss is furious._

 _No one knows what has happened._

 _Whenever the pup opens his mouth, he cannot form noises, just silent mimicry._

 _November 30_

 _I cannot understand why the boss is still pulling him aside for time alone. I am confused as to why it is important for them to go alone together for whatever reason._

 _I have the feeling that the boss is trying to manipulate him in some way._

 _And he is only seven mentally and physically._

 _It would be easy for someone to twist the way he looks at things…_

Anzu didn't want to cry. The rejection was clear and her position as his best friend was shaky now as well. She felt it deep in her bones. If only for her own grief, she would wait to bury her face in a pillow.

And, beyond that, Yugi needed her. He was still staring at her, terror and horror on his face in equal amounts. And the look of complete incomprehension drilled holes into her already bleeding heart, stunning her.

The pain was so acute and she couldn't breathe at first.

"It's Yami," she said, certain and shaken by the revelation which left her mouth. Yugi blinked at her, that look on his face only growing tenfold. He stared, eyes blank and confused, and did not once think to answer her. "That's okay."

Yugi shook his head very slowly and his mouth opened and closed. He blinked and his eyes dilated further, his focus shifting elsewhere for a moment before pinpointing her once more. He gaped, then snapped his jaw shut. Then he trembled and reached up to cover his mouth with his hand. He gaped at her behind his palm. Then he shook his head again.

The incomprehension was slowly clearing away, leaving behind only a pure, cold wave of pain and agony which made her shiver. They stared at each other and slowly Yugi forced himself to straighten from his doubled over position. In a shocked fashion he blinked at her and slowly shook his head again.

Then, abruptly, his jaw clenched and he looked away as if ashamed.

"Yugi, it's okay."

"No," he ground out, voice a low and hideous moan of despair, "it's actually not. It's not okay at all."

Anzu frowned at him.

When they had been in the factory, she did not think even the two of them had noticed, but both Yugi and Yami had seemed somehow almost perfectly in sync with each other. Emotionally, Yugi had seemed to check on Yami more than he had any of them. And he'd been rather in tune with him, as if he had sensed his emotions before even Yami had. They had almost even seemed to breathe at the same time, as if they were altogether one person rather than two separate entities.

She had wondered then, but now she was absolutely sure.

It was heartbreaking by all means but it was understandable as well.

"I don't…" He shook his head rapidly. "Yami isn't…"

She frowned at him and her heart twisted a little more, sympathetic for him.

Yugi hadn't realized before. He wouldn't have asked her out if he had realized just how truly attached to him he was. He wasn't one to play a game with two people like that. It shook her to realize such a thing.

"Fuck," he spat. "Shit. _Fucking_ _shit_. Bitch. Motherfucker. _Damn it_."

Anzu shook her head. "It's going to be okay, Yugi. It'll work out."

But she didn't know that, did she? As much as she thought they seemed in tune and hyperaware of each other, she had no idea what Yami was truly like. She did not know if he was capable of being the person Yugi would need as a lover. And she had no idea if he even swung that way.

She had no idea how werewolves worked beyond Yugi, and he had only recently been infected.

There was no way of knowing if Yami would handle the situation with grace or disgust. There was no such knowledge of any kind.

She closed her eyes for a moment.

But what she had seen in the factory… Did he show him that every day they were together?

She looked at him again now, exhaling softly. "You just have to tell him and be patient."

He looked at her slowly, expression that of one staring at a mythical creature of no definition. Then a high-pitched, rapid noise of hysteria left his lips. "No," he said blatantly, voice squawking painfully with his denial. He shook his head angrily as his voice grew frustrated. "I can't do that."

"What?" she asked, eyes wide and face startled. "Why wouldn't you tell him?"

Yugi shook his head again, then raised his hand to begin digging into his nails. "He's already… He had a mate. She died and he… He's never recovered. I can't do that to him again."

She stared at him and horror made her eyes wider than ever. "Do that to him again?" she echoed softly. "What does that mean exactly?"

He looked at her, then froze. Something dark skittered across his eyes and his mouth opened and closed frantically, horrified. "I…I can't… Oh gods. Anzu, I…" He faltered, then shook his head. "I didn't even think about it before I…"

The brunette shook her head. "Yugi, what's going on right now?" she demanded sharply.

He stared at her. "I… Anzu, there's no way that both Yami and I are going to survive. It's just not…possible. Not with everything that's going on right now. I… We're both running on a limited time frame. It's borrowed time and…"

" _What_?" Anzu cried in shock, eyes wide and her body shaking slightly. "What the hell are you even talking about right now?"

"There's something that's going to happen soon. It's a war that is going to devastate a lot of people…and things in general." He faltered, then fell completely silent before shaking his head slowly, eyes glazed. "I don't think that Yami will let anything happen to me."

She shook her head, gaping at him. "What about you protecting yourself?" she demanded, though the word "war" was far more prominent in her mind.

Yugi blinked at her, but didn't answer.

 _I trust him a lot more than I do myself sometimes._

Saying that would have been suicide where Anzu was concerned. As much as he loved her, she would take this and run with it. And she would tear into him about valuing himself more, remind him as she always did that he was capable just as everyone else was.

But he was tired and enduring that seemed too much to be added at the moment. Instead he closed his eyes and shook his head.

"Look, Yami and I will watch out for each other."

"But you just said—"

Yugi blinked his eyes open, narrowing them. "That one of us will most likely end up dead," he agreed with a shrug that was almost casual. "It's true. One of us is either going to end up incredibly hurt or dead by the end of this. But that's not the…"

What _was_ the point?

 _Why_ had he even begun telling her this?

He blinked again, then exhaled softly and looked down at the flower beds. One of the flowers was weighted down with his puke and the way it sagged made him want to scream.

"Yami never recovered from the death of his mate. And I…I'm not willing to say something to him if one of us isn't going to survive, Anzu. It's not fair to either of us." He fell silent again.

Was being quiet about it fair to him? Yugi supposed it didn't matter, however. The fact remained that the war would happen. He didn't even know why he had tried this in the first place. Why had he even invited her? His mouth was dry as he considered. How stupid could he have possibly been?

He should have left it alone. Even if he never truly knew the extent of his desire for Yami, it would have been better. And maybe the damage to Anzu's heart would have been minimized. Oh gods, he'd played a game of tug of war with her emotions, especially now.

"Anzu, I…" He wondered if he could see the regret in his face. But he didn't dare bank too steeply on such a thing. He'd hurt her. He deserved to be as humiliated as his awkward tongue forced on him. Yugi opened and closed his mouth and his voice came out exhausted and grieving as he tried again. "I'm so sorry."

He wanted to say that he had never meant to hurt her. But further words seemed to be shortening of his genuine remorse and less seemed to be lacking. So he fell silent, because she also already knew that. He had never wanted to hurt her or any of the others. She knew that. He had to trust that she did, that she still believed that despite everything.

"I know." She sounded just as tired as him, maybe more aggrieved as well. Yugi wanted to duck and turn his head away, but instead swallowed hard. When she stepped towards him, he forced himself not to back away rapidly. She drew him into her, a simple friendly hug that she would have given him growing up. "It'll be okay."

He wanted to say that she didn't know that. But it was easier to hear from her mouth and actually want to believe it. And it made it harder to resist as he hugged her back just as tightly. "Thanks."

Anzu pulled away after a moment, watching him, and then turned and headed for the door. He watched her, eyes troubled, but waved back when she turned around to do the same. There was truly nothing else they could say. He'd spoken too much as it was. No doubt she would constantly wonder when the day would come that she would never see him again.

He lowered his eyes the moment she stepped inside.

The damn flowers were still weeping, slimy and weighted. He stared at the petals for a moment, amazed that they were not dead and gone beneath the snow. No doubt her mom had been paying them special attention. No doubt his vomit would freeze—if it had not already—and reverse all of her efforts to keep them alive through winter. The thought was sour as he tasted it on his tongue.

Yugi turned away and started down the sidewalk again. He moved onto the edge again, balancing himself without effort, and began to steadily pad down the length of the street along it. His eyes were dark and his head lowered, his thoughts frantic. Yami would be in his room waiting, wondering…

He didn't want to go back and face him yet. If he did, Yami would know something was wrong. He would sense it. And he would ask him only once, respect his boundaries when he saw how upset he was, and let it die away with his attention to it.

It was comforting to know but it did nothing to calm him.

Anzu had to be heartbroken. He knew that. He had seen it in her bright blue eyes. And he knew she had just barely suppressed the tears in order to comfort him. She had always tried hard to help make the group more comfortable even when she herself was drowning. He stared at the cracks in the pavement. He was so stupid. He couldn't believe he had done that.

And to puke when he had tried to kiss her seemed even more humiliating than ever. He hoped to the gods that she did not assume it had anything to do with her. Gods, he hoped she understood it was nothing at all to do with her. But his entire body had been repelled, had rapidly backpedaled. He had struggled and tried to push it down again, but it had not worked in the slightest. And, oh gods, the way his muscles and organs had twisted and writhed beneath his skin. He had been unable to stop himself at that last second, the wave of nausea throwing him almost off balance.

Something in his head had simply spat at him in denial, cutting him off rapidly from his decision. Yugi shook his head to clear the thought away. But it was so hard not to consider it all.

And when had it become Yami for him?

 _How_ had it happened?

Yugi could not think straight.

He bit his lip until the blood was all he could taste, replacing the acidic tone of his mouth. He shook his head again. He didn't want to go home. He didn't want to face Yami. He didn't want to see his mom or his grandpa. It seemed far too painful to even attempt doing so.

He swallowed hard. His heart was in his throat. His breathing was tight. His lungs ached and burned. He stumbled a step, catching himself. Then he nearly collapsed again. He was shaking. His eyes were blurry.

He had no idea what Yami felt in comparison to him. He had no idea if he would ever see him as something more than friend or his beta. Fuck, he hadn't even gotten over his grief for whoever his mate had been.

And what if werewolves only ever had _one_ mate?

What if they were stuck eternally with the pressure of loving only _one_?

What if he was in love with a wolf that could never show him the same affection?

His vision was tight around the edges. He was shaking. His fingers were blurring in front of his eyes. He breathed in and the noise was hideously ragged. It was estranged and tight in his throat. His heart was pounding.

He couldn't move for a moment. Then his legs buckled. He collapsed into an awkward seated position. Resting on the curb, Yugi tried to calm his breathing. He attempted the slow, steady, drawn out breaths.

What he managed was short and shallow.

And it only made it worse.

The whimper which left him was scathing. He was amazed he was not sobbing. But his body was shaking in a fit. And his lungs were only growing tighter as the seconds passed. He clenched his fingers. One hand was buried in the snow. The other tried to pull the collar of his shirt from his throat. It was too constricting.

The air was too shallow.

Nothing was getting to his lungs and—

He could only hear it distantly. It was the crackle of a twig. Yugi's eyes grew wide, dilating. His head rose only slightly. His shaking quelled for the briefest of seconds. Then it came back with a vengeance.

One of the hunters was standing in front of him.

He didn't know them beyond their hair, layered and green. And they looked vaguely familiar. But Yugi could not place a name.

Nor could he find it in himself to attempt to move. He could not even breathe properly. Attempting to run away was impossible. Even getting up was far from feasible for him.

He blinked, but his eyes were on the barrel of the gun aimed at him. He could not think straight. The shaking was uniform in its violent throes…

The sound of his finger tapping the trigger made him stiffen. But it did nothing to stop his movements. He was still vibrating like his phone would. And his eyes were still trained there.

So he missed it.

The hunter jerked and gasped. Blood spurted from his throat. He turned to face something beside him. His eyes were wide and dilated. His voice was a croak, pained and desperate.

"Your future…is black to me…"

The newcomer snorted loudly. "You aren't meant to know it," he said softly. He watched the hunter drop first to his knees, then to lay completely sprawled on his stomach. He wrinkled his nose, the scent of his blood making his stomach curl. He smelled too strongly of old food and spoiled milk.

Yugi stared at the newcomer and his heart quickened for a new reason. His lungs lost their tightness. His chest expanded comfortably. He blinked up at them as they approached. For a moment he thought they would stretch their hand out to pull him to his feet. Instead they moved to his side and plopped down on the sidewalk beside him.

"That was Espa," he said dismissively, picking at his nails. The ends of them were smeared with the bright red of the blood. He pressed his lips together thinly, frowning. "He smelled like he had been living off of rotten milk and molded bread. His blood stank of it."

The nonsensical direction of the conversation, when he could have easily been asking how he was, made Yugi smile. He shifted a little closer and their shoulders brushed slightly when he looked him over. "I didn't think you'd be out of the house," he admitted quietly. "I was expecting you to be in the corner or sleeping next to the bed or something."

"I became anxious. And I believe your mother might have been headed in to begin on your laundry?" he murmured with a shrug. Yami cast him a small smile and then closed his eyes as he turned away again. "I did not assume to think that it was my place to meet her on such secretive terms."

Yugi laughed. "She'd probably beat you to death with her ladle. It's her ultimate weapon. She can best someone with it like nobody's business," he teased. He paused, then found his laughter drifting as he considered him for a long minute.

He did not think he even knew Yami well enough to know if he might be attracted to someone, let alone him. He chewed his lip.

"I do believe you mentioned that once before. I still have yet to see her yield her weapon," Yami commented in a somewhat dismissive tone. He opened his eyes just enough to peer ahead and into the trees that sheltered Espa from view for the moment.

"Good. You don't want to see it, I promise."

"But I am curious."

"The only time you're ever going to see it, Yami, is if she comes at you with it for some reason. She doesn't just use it on random people at random times. She's totally got to have a reason and she'll maul you steadily with it."

"That sounds lovely."

"It is. I'm pretty sure that's why my dad fell in love with her." He looked him over for a moment, then shifted the smallest centimeter closer to him. It was comforting to see Yami allow him such an action. Not once did he so much as blink or try to move away. The red-eyed wolf remained at his side as if he were not aware he had moved to begin with. "I'm thinking she beat him with her ladle at some point and it made him happy."

Yami snorted loudly, looked at him and laughed with a startled expression. "Your father sounds like an interesting man." He smiled widely, then shook his head and turned away, eyes on the trees again. "I should move the body."

"Why? None of the other bodies were moved." Yugi hadn't been aware of just how bitter his voice could sound until that moment. Yet he didn't care to try to change his tone, instead scowling faintly in the body's direction. "Let him rot there."

Yami blinked and tilted his head. "You're in a lovely mood," he teased before falling silent again. He considered him with curious red eyes for only a moment and then narrowed his gaze slightly. "Did something go wrong with Anzu?"

Yugi hesitated for a long second, then sighed softly and leaned forward to put his elbows on his knees. "I just… I realized that there's no way that we're ever going to work out." He scooted his leg and kicked at a pebble in front of him. The salted roads made it skitter instead of roll. There were too many bunches of ice like glaciers of dark, clear peaks upon the asphalt. He narrowed his eyes and shook his head. "So I told her I'm sorry and I was about to head back."

That was funny.

Yami was rather sure he had walked up on him nearly having a panic attack on the side of the street. Then again, perhaps the human panic attack was not as terrible as a werewolf's. Yugi had not seemed to be hallucinating or thrashing on the ground. Sure, he had been in the throes of a rather human one, but it had not been as all-encompassing as a werewolf one.

He frowned. "I'm sorry it will not work out between you two," he offered quietly. He moved his leg to nudge Yugi's gently and the smaller teen blinked wide eyes at him. "Don't worry, Yugi. You'll find someone."

The smaller teen nearly grimaced, but forced himself to smile instead. His red eyes were so warm, but they were not as deep in emotion as he initially assumed they might be. Yami was shielding something from him, a thought that he did not want to share with him in the slightest.

"Yeah, I know I will. But it can wait. It's not that important, I guess."

"It was important to you. You wanted something of your human side to remain in your life. You wanted some of the normalcy of it. And I'm sorry it wasn't given to you."

Yugi shook his head. "It happens like that sometimes. That's how the world works and all that." He shrugged lazily and ignored him altogether, eyes on the ice again. "Life can't be perfect for anyone."

Yami frowned faintly. Then he glanced over his shoulder. From the window of a house a few feet back there was a slender silhouette. He recognized only the cut of her hair but he knew her all the same. When the curtains pulled back slightly, her blue eyes were on him immediately. They were rimmed with red and her cheeks were still wet. He blinked at her, wondering at her pain, whether anyone knew that ache so acutely as she and Yugi seemed to at the moment. He supposed humans and their tendencies to leap between partners did well to allow each their turn of misery.

He blinked, then looked at Yugi. But his pain seemed oddly estranged to hers in mere observation. There was something oddly cold and distant in Yugi's and something barren and broken in Anzu's. His eyes flickered away as he got to his feet and turned to face the smaller teen.

Yugi looked up at him as he had expected, but his eyes were more confused than ever. He blinked and tilted his head. "I don't want to have to get up yet," he mumbled in a soft voice, smiling at his surprised expression.

"But you cannot simply remain here and mope."

He laughed softly, shaking his head. "I wasn't going to, actually," he said with a grin. Something about his impatient expression was altogether amusing. He smiled a little warmer. "I just don't want to get up yet."

Yami considered him, then paced a step back and forth before pursing his lips. He almost moved to crouch in front of him, then thought better of it. His eyes flickered away and back. He could sense Anzu still watching them and it made him anxious for a moment.

"You know what I did when my…friend died?" he asked in a slow, forcefully even tone. Yugi blinked up at him, startled, and then tilted his head in confusion. There was curiosity and the faintest hint of pain and disappointment in his eyes. Yami chose to ignore each of these. "When he died, I ran from one side of the mountain range to the next. I crossed the gorge and leaped into the river and I hunted. And I kept moving until I couldn't anymore. I collapsed in the middle of the woods and heard the fighting and found myself with the pack."

Yugi tilted his head. He was almost afraid to ask him why he would tell him this. But instead he offered him a small nod, realizing his more important message. He wanted him to move. He was telling him that it would help him keep his mind off of it. He smiled and shook his head after a moment.

"I don't want to run right now."

Yami hummed and clicked his tongue. The noise seemed to resonate in the cold air for a moment. "You know what would cure all of your problems?" he asked, grinning at him like a schoolboy. Yugi blinked and raised a brow. "If you had sex with me. All of your worries and woes would go away altogether. It's a guarantee for sleeping with me."

Yugi burst out laughing, shaking his head, and rolled his eyes. "You won't even kiss people. And you're over here talking about sex."

"If you do it like a wolf, you don't have to bother kissing."

He laughed harder, shaking his head again, and then watched him for a moment. He stretched a leg out and his sneaker touched his as he smirked at him. "You wouldn't sleep with anyone unless you loved them," he said with certainty, smiling a little more as his eyes met his again. "You're definitely not one to go around and sleep with a random stranger."

Yami smirked and trotted a step before turning around again with bright, glittering red eyes. "You know me too well," he teased playfully. "When did you start to read me so easily?"

Yugi felt as if his heart were in his throat. Something about the way Yami agreed with him so easily, the way he smirked at him with such bright eyes, made his heart pound and ache. He smiled because he could not help it, however. It was infectious to see that broad grin on his face and it was mesmerizing to think that it was pointed at him.

"I pay attention," he answered, but he seemed almost breathless. How beautiful a smile Yami was wearing. He had never seen it so bright and gorgeous before. He had never seen it with those glittering eyes and his long lashes shimmering faintly from the light of the porches nearby. Yugi smiled a little more. "Besides, you're more passionate than anyone I've ever met. Why would you ever sell yourself so short for that?"

He hummed. "I might be persuaded if it would help someone else," he answered, but his eyes were shaded now and he seemed to be staring into the distance even as he remained focused on Yugi. "If they needed it and I could offer it, I might try."

"And damage yourself in the meantime?"

Yami lost his faraway look. His eyes were glued to his now, glittering embers in the dark. "Surely the sacrifice would be worth the reward if I cared for the person enough to try, yes?"

And the way he stared at him seemed to burn. Yugi stared up at him, stunned, slightly horrified, and the way his marrow flared with shock made him almost laugh out loud. He blinked, staring harder, unable to think straight.

Had he just…?

Yami had just insinuated that he…

He wished he could have trusted himself to agree. He wished he could have said he would have taken him up on the offer any time. He wished more than anything that he could have allowed himself to be the person confident enough to say yes. Or the jerk with the disbelief who would push Yami to prove himself. But then he looked at him, and he saw the tightened knot of muscle along his collarbone and he thought of all of the many repercussions that could come about.

"I suppose it could be," he finally said. And, with a shrug, he stretched his legs out in front of him. His butt was mildly cold now. "But thankfully I don't believe in sex being a cure for life's many woes."

Yami blinked. The muscles in his body tightened then relaxed as if he had never been unnerved in the first place. He flashed him another smile. "It might be one day, but it's not now," he said with a shrug. He hesitated a moment and Yugi laughed softly at the movement. Then, feeling slightly bolder, the taller teen stretched his hand out, palm open and fingers splayed for him.

Yugi looked at his hand for a moment, smirked a little with the smallest shake of his head, and grasped his hand. Yami tugged him to his feet and Yugi wiped some ice from his pants in a lazy manner. "I'll have to throw these into the dryer when we get back. I don't want my mom realizing the cold doesn't affect me nearly as much as it used to. She would definitely know something was up if I don't."

"Yes, there's no need for her to beat you with a ladle," he drawled and Yugi snorted as he shoved his shoulder gently and grinned at him. "What? I certainly wouldn't want that!"

"Jackass."

* * *

Yugi tossed his phone to the bed and plopped down beside it. Yami looked up from his protein shake, sipping and studying him over the rim of his cup. The smaller teen huffed and threw his hands behind him with a lazy shake of his head. He didn't look distressed, just tired, and Yami was relieved to see that, for the moment, things seemed relatively calm. He leaned back into the wall and closed his eyes again. The protein shake tasted so much like peanut butter and chocolate that he could hardly find whatever lingered of the banana.

"Well, there goes my monthly talk with my dad," Yugi announced, rolling over onto his stomach to face him. The red-eyed lycanthrope blinked his eyes open again to look at him. The smaller teen kicked his legs and narrowed his eyes into slight slits. "You know, as much as I love having you all to myself, I think you should meet the others."

Yami blinked and pressed his lips to the rim of his cup, watching him curiously for a long moment. "The others?" he drawled around the glass against his mouth. His eyes were blissfully lazy, the medication doing well to slow his more anxious thoughts and desires. He blinked again. "But I have already met them."

"Yeah but everyone was stressed out then. They'll all be relaxed now and I want you to meet them when they aren't scared and freaked out." He paused, wondering abruptly now if he sounded overly anxious and pushy. "But, if you don't want to, then I won't force you. It's your choice."

"I do not mind meeting them," Yami replied quietly, but he blinked and his eyes became somewhat hooded for a split second. "I would like to meet them under better circumstances than we originally made acquaintances. It would do us all better to meet again and see each other in different lights. I am sure there would be less tension to deal with should that happen."

"Tension?"

"They only just found out you were infected. I should assume they would be a little anxious about it all, especially where I am concerned." He tilted his head. "I killed in front of them, after all. I would not be surprised if they tried to avoid me at all costs."

Yugi shook his head. "Jonouchi is pretty curious about you. I think he's more likely to cling to you for a little while because of how you killed her. He tends to idolize people who can do crazy things like that." He grinned at Yami's startled expression, then shook his head. "And Honda will want to know more about it just because he likes learning new things. And Anzu will probably be nervous for a little while but she'll get over it. It will basically be one long session of Werewolves and Lycanthropy 101."

Yami blinked. "Werewolves and Lycanthropy 101?" he repeated awkwardly, confused. "What is that?"

"Basically us teaching them some about werewolves and lycanthropes." The smaller teen shrugged and studied his face for a moment. "You don't have to answer any questions you don't want to. But it would be nice if you guys met more officially."

Yami nodded slightly. He could handle a little bit of answering questions. He could do that easily enough. As long as he could veto any information they planned to ask for, he did not mind it in the slightest. He shrugged after a moment. "When are we to do this?"

He tilted his head sideways and frowned faintly. "We can do it in a couple of hours if you want. Or tomorrow. It doesn't have to be today at all—"

"I am not tired yet. I was just restless and it's helping me relax. I'm wide awake. And I have nothing better to do for the time being." He fell quiet and wondered if Yugi thought he was being too forward. It was intriguing to think that he might meet the humans without the specter of death which had followed them before at the factory warehouse. Then again, he was sure they would look at him the same way now as they had then. He _had_ killed in front of them, after all. If they had any sense of self-preservation they would remain cautious of him. He tilted his head. "I do not mind going whenever you want you find yourself ready to as well."

Yugi blinked, then raised a brow. "Well, Jonouchi and Honda should be at the arcade by now and Anzu wouldn't be far behind them, I suppose. I can text them in a few minutes, then get them to meet us somewhere else. Burger—or maybe that Chicken Palace place or the park. The park might be better. I doubt anyone would be listening to us there."

Yami blinked at him, considering for a moment. "Burger World? Is that what you were going to say?" he asked slowly, furrowing his brows. Yugi seemed upset at the very fact that he almost said the name. He considered him again, then narrowed his eyes.

He remembered the dog under the dumpster, trying so hard to get at it. He remembered Yugi dragging it out, sedating it, handing it off to him. He remembered that small apology he had given him, saying that he shouldn't have blamed him for wanting to survive.

He lowered his eyes to the carpet. Then he tipped the glass back and swallowed the rest of the sedative in his drink. Was he still upset about that? Was it possible those memories were what made him avoid the restaurant?

"Yeah, but there was an employee who kind of attacked us there. And I don't think I really want to have to deal with the idea of remembering that or making them remember it either." Yugi shrugged and grinned at him after a moment, biting his lip when he saw the way Yami blinked in surprise. "Chicken Palace is strictly chicken, obviously…considering their name. Um…and then the park wouldn't have food or anything but—?"

"What about those drinks with the frothy white stuff on the top? The ones that are fluffy with syrup drizzled over the top?" Yami interrupted, curiosity making his eyes wide and childish in the face. He looked so innocent again, soft and gentle and all of the things that Yugi could not normally apply to him. "Like in the commercial we saw."

"Oh! The hot chocolate and the coffee ad," Yugi muttered, rolling his eyes at himself. He smirked and raised a brow. "Coffee makes people move around faster and things. The caffeine supplies the body with a rush. You're better off with hot chocolate."

"What is hot chocolate?"

The smaller teen almost scoffed at him. Then he froze in place, eyes growing wide with shock. He had given Anzu and Honda and Jonouchi hot chocolate. He had never made any for Yami before. The thought was almost horrifying to him.

"It's a sweet drink, lots of marshmallows or whipped cream on top. I can make you some. My mom has the best recipe for it. But I don't usually put whipped cream on it. Or syrups." He tilted his head and smiled at him. "I'll tell you what, Yami. We'll go by the café down the street before the others meet up with us. We'll get a couple of hot chocolates and then go to the park with them afterwards."

Yami blinked at him, then nodded and shifted his weight. He climbed to his feet after a moment, then put the cup aside on the desk. "I agree with this plan."

"You just want whipped cream."

"They seemed to be enjoying it. I want to see what it tastes like," he said dismissively, waving a hand in sheer disregard. Yugi simply grinned at him and Yami looked away as the smaller lycanthrope began to mess around on his phone again. He stretched out on his stomach, lazy and tired in his motion, and yawned as he flexed his arms over his head. Yami moved to take a seat at the very edge of the mattress.

Thirty minutes later, Yami snuck off the roof and Yugi shouted a farewell to his mom without a second glance. He met Yami at the street corner, the taller wolf grinning faintly and looking at him with barely contained excitement. Yugi had just barely managed to get his agreement to wear gloves, a scarf, and a heavier coat. The argument had gone on for what felt like hours before he'd finally relented. Now, Yugi was dressed in a similar black coat, the collar pulled up, a red scarf around his neck and matching gloves on his hands. Yami had blue instead of red, the collar pulled down because it itched where it touched his skin.

"Come on," Yugi murmured, brushing against him by accident on the sidewalk and striding towards the little café. He hoped Yami would not be disappointed by his first hot chocolate and whipped cream experience. Depending on the barista, the chocolate could turn out amazing or disgusting. There was almost no in between and Yugi hoped that Yami would not be let down. The other teen hurried to follow him, their steps in unison, something which made Yugi acutely aware of how many times he had noticed this before.

"You can take your gloves off and put your hands around the cup and we can pretend that you're warming your hands up that way." He paused and cast him a small, slightly cunning grin.  
"People won't think twice about it."

Yami nodded and hummed as he looked about them curiously. His fingers were too warm beneath the gloves and he swore they made his palms itch. But he forced himself to ignore it, instead allowing Yugi to lead the way. They were side by side, but he was paying enough attention to his body language, the subtle turns of his body, that he could say Yugi was leading him. If he began to turn right then so did Yami. If he moved a step faster or turned towards the street, Yami mimicked him in mere microseconds.

"I didn't tell you, but there's going to be a small wait between us ordering and getting the hot chocolate, by the way," he announced, glancing over his shoulder at him. "Since it's a small café, they take orders one at a time in the way they're received. And, besides that, they have the best cheesecakes and hot chocolate in Domino. But they take a while to get the cups done. And sometimes they have the occasional bad batch."

Yami blinked and tilted his head for the briefest of moments. "I am sure it will be fine."

Yugi felt his fingers twitch as he swallowed away the urge to snap at him. He didn't want the entire thing to be "fine". He wanted it to be great. He wanted Yami to enjoy it. The thought made him pause for only a split second. Then he shook it off again. It would be okay. Yami just had no idea how much he wanted this to turn out well. He swallowed hard and bit the inside of his cheek uncomfortably.

"Okay, so the second floor has a little more to it, but it's more just a little eating area with larger windows. Since they do a little bit more food upstairs than downstairs, there's less risk of the candy melting. Hence less windows on the bottom, and especially not as large as the ones on the top floor." He hummed and moved to gesture towards the building coming up in front of them. "They set up like a cross between some of the more popular cafés in Japan. They have a little Ferris wheel attraction like the one in Shiroi Koibito Park, some of the decor of Saturdays Coffee, Royce' Chocolate World, and a couple of others. They advertise it as a mixture of all of the best cafes they've set foot in."

Yami tilted his head and looked at the building in surprise. It was nestled rather tightly between a smaller restaurant to the left and a laundry service to the right. The outside was perfectly white, with a single strip of red lettering which showed off its name, Domino Café. Its simplicity in name was as plain as its outside, but it did not take him long to catch the sweet scent which crept through the cold air upon the door opening. Two small kids were running off with a light, thin biscuit of what looked like a fluffy hamburger bun with a chocolate bar wedged between them both. He licked his lips, because the little pastries looked cute and struck his hunger for a split second.

The sweet aroma was that of chocolate and pastries and he could catch the smallest hint of which he considered to be hot coffee and leafy tea. The softest tingle of noise alerted the person behind the clear display of wrapped candies to their arrival. The glass case was full of them, all brightly colored with aluminum wrappers which seemed to glow beneath the fluorescent lights overhead.

Alongside them were several small displays of cups and mugs which one could purchase for a small amount. To the opposite side was an immense standing display of bright, large lollipops which he wondered at the logistics of being able to stick in one's mouth. The walls were lined with shelves of which he could see napkins and towels, all with the softest distinction of the logo embroidered on them. To the far right, towards the corner, was an elegant staircase with some Christmas lights strewn across, the color a singular white rather than multiple.

The floors were a small pattern of symbols and shapes which Yami was too distracted to translate at the moment. But it looked immaculate and the soft yellow cream color of the plaster around them made his insides feel slightly warmer. There was a small chandelier of glass and beads with a set of about seven lights overhead in the center of the ceiling, doing well to shine on the case more directly. There were several yards of bright wooden tables, some circular towards the front and others longer and rectangular towards the back. Above each of them were small beams where the lights were strung for decoration and the regular fluorescents were all but hidden where they dangled downwards.

Yami found the atmosphere far more relaxing than he had originally assumed. The corners of the area were given spots of greenery, the pots of ferns and fichus plants. A small tangle of roses sat near the display case, where they were meticulously cared for and still bloomed to their fullest due to the warmth of the bakery café. There was the rare painting along the wall nearest the plants, as if to take up as miniscule an amount of space as possible. They were Japanese myths and legends, of which he knew were replicated rather than original pieces. Some showed a white wolf, others a black one, some showed foxes and women with the shadows of vixen. He blinked and studied them for a moment, then glanced at Yugi sideways.

"The wolves and the foxes…?" he prompted quietly, unsure of what more to say or how better to phrase it. He considered it for a moment, eyeing the paintings and their lighter tones, the shadows which danced across the darker canvases. He tilted his head and wondered at them, unable to keep his attention on Yugi for more than a moment in their presence.

"The owner's daughter loves the old stories about them. The white wolf is one which helped a samurai on his path. Its name is Oinusama. The black wolf is called Ooguchi no Magami. The foxes are known as kitsune. One of the most popular ways to recognize them when they change into a human form is by their shadow because it remains vixen," Yugi explained, taking them in as he always did. He had not come to the café in what felt like ages and so he considered it for a moment longer, feeling warm with nostalgia. "There are also a few legends about the kitsune marrying a prince…or something like that. I don't remember. But the kitsune god is referred to as Inari."

Yami looked at him again, red eyes alight with curiosity. "The black wolf is called the Large-Mouthed God?" he asked with a small smirk. "That's a little odd, don't you think?"

Yugi smiled faintly. "The Anui referred to him as that, yeah," he snorted. "But they also worshipped the wolves and lived in a more basic state as farmers and all of that. Then the Japanese from further south, along Honshu, came upwards and modernization started. The wolves were purged and they started rounding up cattle and building places like Domino and things like that. Ooguchi no Magami is all but forgotten aside from pictures and local legends told during holidays. Domino is basically one of the only cities that still regard most of the lore anymore aside from horror stories and urban legends."

Yami nodded slightly, then turned away. The chalkboard over the woman's head was brightly spotted with symbols and items of which boasted prices and cute drawings beside them. Some had cups with steam, others chocolate bars, and he saw a few with tea leaves as well. On the second chalkboard, to the right of the beverages, were the prices of wrapped candies, while others were those of slices of cheesecakes and berries. He tilted his head as he considered the menu curiously.

"Six hundred and fifty yen for a cup of melted chocolate?" he mumbled, eyes narrowed and lips quirked slightly downwards in surprise. Wasn't that a good quarter of the prices which they had paid at the mall when they had shopped for clothing? Was this near the same price as the sneakers he was wearing? A beverage could only last as long as he could sip it. Shoes lasted for as long as it took to become worn down. He shot Yugi a sideways glance, slightly unnerved by the idea of such a thing.

"It's a decent price," Yugi stated with a shrug. "Besides, it's authentic and they do well to make their hot chocolate unique, Yami."

The other wolf stared at him. "But it's…"

The smaller teen watched him for a moment, tilting his head towards his silence. Then he frowned slightly as he looked at him. "Yami, it's okay. I offered to bring you here. I know the prices. It's not a big deal. I have a lot more than that anyways."

"But it's… A beverage does not last long…"

Yugi flashed him a small smile. Yami had balked similarly upon seeing the amount of money spent at the mall that day. But then he had backed away from his skepticism because of the necessity of clothing. Now he was frowning at him, eyes troubled, because the drink would not last nearly as long and was so deemed unnecessary.

"We don't know if we'll get another relaxed day like this after everything happens, Yami." _I don't even know if we'll survive to see the end of it._ "I don't mind buying something like this if it's going to be enjoyed and you get to have a new experience."

The second part mattered the most to him at the moment but Yugi had no plans to tell him that. He moved a little closer, brushing against his arm gently. "I wouldn't have offered if I couldn't afford it," he said quietly. "I really wouldn't have, Yami."

He frowned a little more pointedly, then glanced up at the menu and back. "Yugi…" He faltered, then sighed when he saw the stubborn light which flickered in his eyes. "Which flavor is your favorite?"

Yugi smirked at him, then turned to the menu in question. "The white chocolate was _divine_. But you have to have a pretty big sweet tooth for it. Um… There's a dark chocolate drink which is somewhat bitter, but the green tea they put in it helps bring out more accents from the chocolate flavor. Since this is your first time trying it, we'll go with the milk chocolate one. It's got a little bit of green tea in it which boosts the flavor a lot too. Plus, you get a lot more whipped cream on that than you do the others."

Yami looked at him for a moment, then nodded. "When do we meet the others?" he asked after a heartbeat of silence passed. He could not stand the way Yugi seemed to have lost the courage to speak to him for that split second. He was only mildly startled as well to see that the smaller boy was studying the chalkboards instead of looking at him.

"We have at least an hour. Honda and Jonouchi are trying to beat a high score on one of the arcade games. Anzu is doing a little bit of shopping with her mom at the mall. She'll be done by then and we can all meet up here if you'd like? I told them I was heading this way with you anyways and Jonouchi said he might want a couple of cups of cocoa after he wins anyways." He turned to him and tilted his head only minutely. The smile on his face was soft and relaxed. "So, we can have them meet us here and head out again to talk."

Yami nodded slightly, then lowered his voice. "Am I allowed to take off these ridiculous layers?" he questioned in a pointed tone. The scarf was bunched against his neck and Yugi tried not to laugh when his chin dipped beneath one of the folds while he spoke. Yami shot the scarf an irate look. "The café is rather warm."

He smiled. "Yeah, you can take it off. I'll do the same after we order."

He nodded again, dismissing the idea of instant freedom for doing so only when Yugi led him to such action. The smaller teen rolled his eyes with a knowing expression, smiled at him lazily, and headed for the display case.

The girl was dressed in a small apron of which had the logo in bright red and soft ruffles at the end, though he assumed they served as the tops of pockets. The usual skirt which she normally served in had been changed for warm tights beneath her stylishly torn jeans and her usual button-down short-sleeved shirt was changed for a long-sleeved. The tie was bright red against the white and her hair was pulled back into a ponytail, the dark brown tresses falling in small waves along her heart-shaped face.

He smiled at her indulgently as he always had when she greeted him a bit too loudly. Then he nodded at her and resisted the urge to glance over his shoulder and make sure Yami was still there. He could tell just by the way her eyes flickered over his shoulder and briefly towards the wall what he was doing those few feet away.

"I was interested in getting two Kumarae hot chocolate," he announced, trying not to encourage her usual flirtation with a lack of eye contact as he studied the menu. "And two of the Guinea Samoa…"

She was distracted as she answered, eyes peering up from beneath her lashes towards Yami rather than him. "Did you want the whipped cream on top of both of the hot chocolates? Or one or none?" she asked, not bothering to stop her blatant staring.

Yugi cast a small glance over his shoulder towards Yami where the other boy was carefully avoiding looking towards them. Instead he studied the walls and the paintings, red eyes keen upon them as if he were heavily fixated. Yugi grinned as he turned back, not the least bit concerned. Yami could handle her crush just as well as he did he supposed. "Both, please."

She nodded again, then bowed to him, giving him a soft thank you for his patronage. Yugi did the same immediately after she rose again, then turned and trotted towards Yami.

"It'll be about thirty minutes. They make the whipped cream in single batches just like they do the coffee and chocolate. So it will be a wait, but not too terribly long." He let out a breath as Yami turned his full attention to him again. His eyes were bright and his excitement was almost tangible. Yugi wanted nothing more than to imprint that expression into his mind to remain in his memory for the rest of his life. It was almost so mesmerizing as to take his breath away. He bit his lip to keep his breathing even. "So, did you want to take a seat?"

Yami considered it for a moment, then nodded, ignoring her glance at them. She looked relatively puzzled from what his sharp peripheral gathered of her expression, not the least bit malicious but not quite ecstatic about their closeness either. He wondered at this.

Her staring had been as obvious as Mai offering to sleep with them both or the she-wolves throwing themselves at his feet as they had formerly. The nervous smile on her face had done similarly in expressing her desire. But she looked more worried than anything, bemused by their physical closeness.

Was there something wrong with the way they were standing like this?

Yugi didn't bother to address it if there was. He simply grinned at him and turned to lead the way towards one of the tables. It was longer, rectangular, towards the staircase which would lead to the upper level of the store. He glanced at the beautiful golden tone of the smooth metal that made up the railing, then turned back to the smaller teen.

"Did you order a drink for yourself as well?" Yami asked, pulling the gloves off only when Yugi began to do so. The mimicry was almost seamless, though the smaller teen merely raised a brow and ignored it after.

"Yeah, I figured I might as well. I haven't been here in a little while. And I'm kind of thirsty and hungry, so why not?" He shrugged his jacket off and plucked the scarf from around his neck, pushing them into the seat beside him. Yami did the same, watching him for more of a direction of which he might understand further. The smaller teen shrugged, then sat against the backrest of his chair with a small sigh of contentment. "Besides, I wanted one of the samoas with it."

"Samoa?"

His blue-violet eyes twinkled. "You'll love them," he guaranteed with a lazy gesture of his wrist. He smiled at him and Yami wondered at how one's whole face could light up so brilliantly. He blinked and Yugi licked his lips with a backwards glance towards the staircase. "Do you smell that?"

Yami blinked again, then leaned forward. When he inhaled, all he could truly catch was that of flowers rising from beneath trenches of snow and water thawing from the touch of the sun. There was heat and the lightest brush of grass and fallen leaves, the tiniest lilt of which he could not describe but thought of as beautiful as moonlight trickling between tree branches.

Beneath that came the fresh smoke of a grilled piece of meat, one which he had recognized momentarily as something he had once hunted in the forest. It was buttery and charred and the layer of fat was soft in its succulent touch. Yami drew in a deeper breath, mind working to identify the many shadows the scent was pocketed within. There was, around this, the slightest hint of citrus, sharp and bold against his nose, and the heavier touch of a sharp, bristling herb which he could not name. He paused and tried again, his mind working harder now than ever to supply him the name of this meat.

Yugi smiled across from him, sniffed once more, and then tilted his head. Yami was trying harder than he had originally assumed he would. He had expected him to sniff, relay it easily, and then grin at him when he bristled and said that wasn't fair. But instead he was leaning forward as a dog might strain at the end of its leash, nose working in rapid gusts, eyes darkened with thought. He could see the gears like shadows behind his eyes, dark and pedaling rapidly for his answer. Yugi wondered if he had ever even tried the meat in question.

"I cannot identify the meat," Yami finally answered a solid minute later. He dropped back into his seat, sighing forcefully through his nose. He did not look ashamed, though there was the slightest frustration there around his wonderment. "What is it?"

"It's boar," the smaller teen said with a glance back over his shoulder. "They like to smoke the boar themselves before they begin making their sandwiches for order. It's a really cool process. They let you watch as you eat."

Yami nodded slightly. "I've only hunted boar once. I preferred the serows," he muttered, voice almost inaudible as Yugi turned back to him. There was something distracted and somewhat forlorn lingering in his eyes. "But I do remember that they were somewhat heavier and harder to kill. The serows have that thick fur during winter. But the boars possess strong hides all year round."

"Was it hard?"

He didn't blink, nor bother to ask for clarification. "Serows tend to look back over their shoulders constantly. I did not ever truly bother to attempt stalking them. Boars were more likely to attack you the moment they spotted you. It was harder to take one down because they constantly charged and tried to keep in time with you. And their tusks were much sharper than I assumed they would be."

Yugi stiffened. "Were you hurt?"

"No more than a scratch on my right leg. It was gone in only a few minutes after I ate and rested," he said dismissively. He sniffed again, then turned to him. "The spicier scent, what is it?"

He grinned at his demanding expression. "Is that bothering you?" he laughed softly. "It's rosemary. The other one is lemon. They smoke and season the boar, then slice it into very thin slabs and sandwich them later."

Yami nodded after a moment. "It was driving me crazy." He gave him a small, somewhat nervous smile. "Did you come here often before you were bitten? Is that how you know the scents and their processes so well?"

Yugi felt his lips fall into a thin, pressed line. "My dad would bring me here when he was in Japan," he answered with a small shrug. His eyes fell onto the table, the pattern of wood comforting to look at. "We would sit at this exact table if we weren't getting something to eat. If we were, we would go up there and watch them as they prepared the food."

"I'm sorry…?"

He blinked, wondering at the apology, then looked at him curiously. "It doesn't matter. I'm not upset or anything—I mean, not about the question. I just haven't seen him in a while. He called me earlier and we talked while I was eating breakfast. I just don't see him as often now that he's been promoted. It sucks. We used to come here once a month."

Yami studied him, then tilted his head. "How long has it been since you last came here?" he asked slowly, frowning in puzzlement.

"Almost eight months now."

He cringed. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked."

Yugi gave him a smile that was pained around the edges but comfortable and bright at its core. His eyes were lighter than they had been moments before and his expression was no longer saddened. "I don't mind answering questions, Yami. I enjoy it when you ask me things. I like it when you're curious."

He frowned. "You enjoy me being curious about you?"

The smaller teen snorted. "And anything else. I enjoy you being curious about anything. If you have a question and I might have the answer, then I want you to ask me. Don't feel ashamed to do it. I'll always try to give you the exact answer." He paused, wondering at his own tone of voice before smiling once more. "Look, if I have the answer, I'll always gladly share it with you, no matter what the subject. So, ask away."

The red-eyed teen frowned, biting his lip. "I remember being told something similar one time," he said after a long moment. He closed his eyes and tilted his head slightly. "It was in regards to himself more than anything else, I suppose. I really was more curious about him and his experiences than I was the world that surrounded him formerly."

Yugi felt his smile drop away. His stomach was twisting roughly into hideous shapes now. "Did he keep that promise?" he asked after a moment.

Yami smiled now, though it was sad and his eyes were darkened with grief. "Every single time," he admitted, looking away after a moment. "He would answer my each and every question, even when I asked the same thing over and over again."

"You must have been younger…"

"No, I just learned to think in a different way and view the world in another manner so that the questions could be answered through experience rather than inquiry." He faltered, looking away quickly and considering the wood patterns of the table they sat at. "I do not want someone else to die for my stupidity."

Yugi blinked wide eyes, shocked by the statement, and rapidly shook his head. "Yami, that's not… You didn't do anything to get him killed."

He laughed lightly, the sound cold and cynical, and looked up at him with a sneer forming on his lips. "Yugi, you do not know what I have and have not done growing up. I appreciate your belief in me, but circumstances make me responsible for his death. It was an accident but if I had been smarter and listened to him more, he might still be here. He might have escaped the tunnels with me rather than…what they did to him."

Yugi opened his mouth to argue, then immediately stopped himself. The barista was heading towards them, eyes bright and questioning. She held the cups of cocoa on a metal tray in one hand and two small dishes of pastries in the other.

"Thank you," he said, allowing her to arrange the dishes as she saw fit. Yami echoed in a quieter tone, voice soft and almost shallow in the warm air. Yugi glanced at him to see him look at her for only that brief moment it took her to make eye contact. She blushed and Yami turned away without a second glance. Yugi wondered if it was the way he looked up, grateful and friendly, or the color of his eyes which made her react that way. Either way, his lips twitched and he fought off a smirk of amusement.

She turned away and seemed to hurry for the display case again. Yugi smiled faintly and turned to Yami again. The other boy was sniffing at the pastry, head tilted, eyes bright with mystified wonder. The little cake was fluffy, square in appearance. The sides were framed with cinnamon and chocolate which dusted the inch high concoction. The color beyond that was a gentle, light vanilla shade of which reminded him of soft pillows. The center was given a dousing of milk chocolate which was given the smallest hint of what seemed to be grains of sugar. The entire thing was a perfect square about the size of his own thumb length and width wise. On the plate beside it was a tan cup with small, neat grooves of which swirled upwards like currents of smoke. It was shorter than the cups Yugi usually gave him his protein shakes in, with a wispier effect given its lighter color. An inch of bright white _fluff_ rose above it, swirled from the outside inwards in layers upon layers, swaying gently and melting along the edges from the heat which cushioned it below.

Yugi smiled at him. "It's a combination of graham cracker, marshmallow and chocolate ganache. The marshmallow was made right after we ordered and it's cooked on a small flame that they can start on one of those little burners. The flavor comes out smoky and then she dusts it with cacao bean along the sides along with some cinnamon."

Yami sniffed again, then looked up at him from beneath his lashes. He looked as delighted as a child on Christmas Eve, eyes bright and wondering, his face lit with curiosity.

"It's the best thing to go with the hot chocolate they serve here. Or at least I think it is. Jonouchi thinks otherwise but that's because he's a pig and likes to munch down on boar sandwiches instead of pastries." He watched him, his insides burning with joy and excitement. "Well? Aren't you going to try the hot chocolate yet?"

Yami hesitated, then looked at the cup and the froth of white which made its crown. He tilted his head in puzzlement and considered the idea for a moment. How was he meant to drink that? The foam was so high and the edges were melting, but there was no spoon or a straw for which he could pick at it with. So how was he meant to do it?

Yugi was struggling not to laugh. Yami was looking at it as if he might expect it to lunge out at him at any moment. He smiled a little and the taller boy sniffed again before furrowing his brows. Tentatively he leaned forward and his tongue flicked out to touch the soft white cream.

Yugi laughed out loud when he drew his tongue back, eyes on the bit of whipped cream on the tip. He blinked at it, then at him, blushed, and pulled the pink muscle back into his mouth. His eyes widened, then lit in further wonderment at the soft texture and the way it so effortlessly melted upon his tongue. He lapped at his lips where he could feel it lightly touching his mouth. He blinked again, eyes brightening further, and wondered at the lightness of its flavor once more.

"I'm going to guess that you like it."

Yami blinked, then nodded as he licked his lips again. There was none remaining but he had to make sure. "It is delicious," he announced, pulling the plate and cup closer to himself. He had not noticed the tiny wafer which was seated beside it, the only thing which was spared of anything chocolate. He looked at it for a moment, then turned back to Yugi. "How am I meant to drink this properly?"

Yugi laughed softly. "You can either lick the whipped cream off or wait for it to melt into the cocoa. It's either way you prefer to do it." He paused. "Or I can get you a spoon and you can eat it like that, I guess?"

He shook his head. "No, a spoon seems unnecessary. I think I would rather lick." Yami looked at him from beneath his lashes, then smiled a little more. "But will I get it all over my nose?"

"Not if you use your tongue instead of trying to drink from the rim of the cup, I think," he answered with a small shrug. "But I haven't had whipped cream on my hot chocolate in a while, honestly."

He blinked wide eyes. "You don't normally have whipped cream on your hot chocolate?" he demanded in a shocked, incredulous tone. Yugi laughed at his scandalized expression. "Why would you not want whipped cream on top? It is delicious!"

Yugi rolled his eyes, smiling brightly. "It is, but it's also really sweet. I have a big sweet tooth some days and not others. And I tend to only like sweeter things about a month of two apart." He shrugged slightly, then looked him over again. His eyes were still so bright and his smile was purely blissful as he continued talking. "But I'm glad you like it so much."

Yami stuck his tongue out and flicked the cream with the tip of it once more. Then he licked his lips, closed his eyes with a blissful expression, and lapped at it again. A moment passed in which he continued to lazily do this. Yugi smiled wider and pulled his own cup closer to himself. He did not truly think that he would drink it all, but he assumed it would do him well to pretend. He could tell that Yami would become uncomfortable otherwise.

Yami opened his eyes just enough to look at him, then sat back slightly. After a moment he dipped his pinkie finger into it, scooping more of the white cream from his beverage with just the smallest hint of the chocolate beneath his nail. The movement had instantly cooled it and he considered it around licking away the cream. "Will the chocolate itself be just as good?"

Yugi smiled faintly. "I think it's better than the cream itself. But others like the cream more. I guess it depends on how much of a sweet tooth you really have, Yami," he answered with a small shrug. "But I like them both a lot."

 _Hopefully she made them as best she could. I don't want Yami to be disappointed with the actual hot chocolate itself. That would be terrible. I don't think I could handle that._ Not when it had taken him so long just to get him to agree to allow him to get the drinks in the first place. He hadn't even mentioned the cost of the pastries in front of him as well. If he had known, he would most certainly be upset with it. And Yugi really hoped to the gods that it would not happen.

Even as one-sided as it was, Yugi could not help the small hint of hope inside of him which bloomed through his veins. It was beautiful and comforting despite it all. And all he could think was, _This is almost like a date. This is almost like Yami having agreed to date me. I don't want this to be ruined by someone who made an off batch of hot chocolate._

Yami lapped at that small touch of chocolate beneath his nail. The first to touch his tongue was a single hint of bitterness, cacao rather than milk chocolate. The sensation was welcome against the sweetness which lasted on his tongue now. He licked his lips as a sharper, warmer hint of something came soon after, light and airy as well. He blinked. The sense was warmer, lighter, and the bitterness was swayed by the smallest touch of sweetness like candied mint.

"Is it good?" he demanded, unnerved by his contemplative expression. He was seconds from squirming in his seat.

Yami blinked, looking up at him, and gave him a small grin. "Very," he said with an easy nod, turning back to his drink.

"Then why are you looking at it like that?"

The other wolf glanced over his shoulder and then back before reaching under the plate for the napkin beneath it. He slid it across the table and Yugi burst out laughing. The girl had put her name and number on it, a bold attempt for him to notice her considering she had only awkwardly smiled and teased him. Yugi smiled widely, looking it over, then glanced at the drink in front of him. "That's great," he chuckled. "When do you two plan to hook up?"

Yami had cream on his nose and was bug-eyed when he looked at Yugi now. "Hook up?" he echoed in a mystified tone. The smaller teen snickered again, then raised a brow. Yami tried to run his tongue over the tip of his nose and failed.

"You know, bump uglies?"

He shook his head slowly at the statement. His eyes were still wide and mystified, but his focus was definitely on the whipped cream instead of the conversation any longer. He tried again and Yugi swore he had to have been forcing some kind of minimal change because his tongue seemed a lot longer this time. He was just amazed that it didn't flatten out further and the end didn't scoop up and run completely over his nose like a wolf's.

"How about copulation without commitment?"

Yami blinked at him, then lapped his tongue at the whipped cream again. "You mean like the forced breeding within the labs?" he asked slowly, tilting his head.

"Kind of—well, no, not at all."

"Then what…?"

"I mean more like… Okay, so basically, a hook up is when a guy and a girl meet up, have sex, and almost always never see each other again." He shrugged at Yami's stunned expression. "It's perfectly normal for people to do that and for them to use the other person for relief."

Yami blinked again. Then he cast another awkward glance towards the girl at the display case. She was pointedly keeping her head down and Yugi wondered if she had taken his laughter the wrong way. Immediately he deflated, wondering if he should try to explain…

But what was he going to say?

"Sorry, I think you're brave for doing that. I was really only laughing because Yami is helpless when it comes to things like this"?

It was true, but who would really believe that Yami was as innocent as he was?

He had a face that could charm the devil and eyes which could burn through one's soul when he paid them full attention. Anyone would think he had miles of experience behind him when it came down to it. Yugi looked down at his own cup.

"That's… I'm not doing that."

"I know. I was just teasing."

Yami shifted his weight awkwardly, then tilted his head uncomfortably. "I had not assumed that she would…" Then he paused and furrowed his brows. "Not to say that she is not beautiful, but my tastes run differently."

Yugi raised a brow. Yami had tastes? The smallest trill of excitement crept through him. If Yami still had tastes, did that mean he might actually be recovering from the death of his mate? He hummed slightly, then tilted his head and asked, "And where do your tastes lie?"

Yami was licking whipped cream from his nose again. He must have tried to sip the chocolate drink while Yugi was musing because there was a nice frothy white foam almost covering the top half of it. The taller boy glanced at him from beneath his lashes and then away again, trying to lick away the foam. "They're more…exotic," he said after a moment, slow in his answer. "It seems the most…fitting word."

"Exotic?" the smaller teen asked, wondering at the way his blood heated with excitement when the word rolled off Yami's tongue. "Exotic how?"

Yami glanced at him again. Then he licked away the foam in one swift movement and fell back in his chair with a thoughtful expression. "Species, birthplace, skin tone." He shrugged.

"You like a human?"

He wrinkled his nose. "I suppose you could say that," he answered somewhat disdainfully. "But I do not know why we should entertain this conversation any longer. I am not looking for anything. They simply caught my eye and I thought them gorgeous. I am not interested in much else rather than companionship. I do not desire anything more."

Yugi nodded after a moment. "Okay." He shrugged. Yami was looking at him oddly, something between contemplative and fearful. The red eyes had darkened and glittered only slightly beneath the lighting.

The smaller teen thought of the night before, how he had so boldly proposed sex with him as a cure for his woes despite the obvious fear and hesitancy which gripped him immediately after. He thought of that little smile, full of secrets and curiosity. And he wondered at his words now. He supposed he could say that they were human?

Then again, Yugi guessed it didn't matter any longer. As he had told Anzu, the time he ran on was borrowed and one of them was likely to end up dead.

"I—" His phone was vibrating in his pocket. Yugi ignored the way Yami watched him so curiously as he dug through his jacket to reach the inside pocket. He'd put it there to buffer it from the cold. It was pressed into his side due to the placement and he'd hoped that it would keep it from any kind of weather damage. The screen was lit up and Jonouchi's name was in the center.

"Hey, Jonouchi."

Yami blinked, watching him, then moved to take another long sip of his cocoa, licking at the cream on his nose again. The two flavors did well to complement each other, vibrant and wondrous in the way they chased one another on his tongue.

"Hey, Yug, so we decided to go ahead and come over to the café. We're about ten minutes away." Yami wondered at the slightly flustered look that crossed Yugi's face at the news. "Anyways, so, are we leaving the café to go to the park or are we staying there?"

He glanced at Yami, raising a brow. The other wolf paused for a moment, then raised a finger in silent answer. Yugi smiled at him slightly. "We're still going to the park," he answered, though he had to fight the urge to nod as if the blond could see him. "But we can stay here as long as you guys want if there's something you wanted to get."

"I've been craving one of the sandwiches."

The smaller teen snorted. "You're always hungry. You craving them isn't surprising," he snickered. He watched Yami lick away the last of his whipped cream and sip at his drink once more. When he reached for the somoa, Yugi couldn't help but grin. "Yami and I are seated towards the back, near the staircase. If you're going to get the sandwich, you'll definitely see us."

Yami looked the little pastry over for a moment. The cinnamon and cacao was on his fingers in a fine dust from where he had just barely touched it. The taller teen considered it for a moment, then leaned forward to sniff it again. No matter what way he grabbed it, there would be residue in his fingers. He could always lick it off, but that seemed somehow almost disrespectful.

Regardless, he was curious about it and he wanted it.

"All right, cool. We'll see you then."

"Okay," Yugi said, distracted by the way Yami was eyeing his small snack. He smiled lopsidedly as he slid the phone aside to rest in his coat pocket again. "If you pick it up by the corners, you won't get too much on your fingers, but if you're not used to holding something like that, then you might drop it."  
Yami narrowed his eyes. "How many times did you drop it?"

He took a moment to sort through the memories of the small café. "Let's see, I think I did twice? The third time I actually managed to catch it before it hit the floor."

He smiled faintly. "Think I'll be able to catch it if I drop it?" he teased, eyes bright and full of laughter. "Because I kind of doubt it."

Yugi snorted. "I was trying to find a nice way of saying no but you just saved me the trouble," he snickered. "If you drop it, you can have mine instead."

The humor seemed to fade before he could fully catch himself. His eyes lowered to the set of plates in front of him. "You have not even touched yours," he commented, frowning. "Why?"

Yugi smiled at him. "You were more interesting than the cocoa," he admitted with a lazy shrug. He leaned forward and drew his cup closer, taking a sip. The cream was almost completely melted as it was. It only barely touched the tip of his nose. He ignored it but Yami seemed completely enamored with it. "So, yeah, if you're worried about getting it on your fingers, you should grab it from the corners."

He hummed in acknowledgment but did not answer for a few moments. Then he leaned over, grabbed the cup, and took another sip. It occurred to Yugi with startling clarity that Yami would not touch his until Yugi did his own. Until then he would not even reach for it. The smaller teen frowned faintly, then grabbed his own pastry. He snatched it up by the corners, angled his wrist so that it would drop more likely into his palm than onto the table or the plate beneath. Then he took a quick bite and put it back, raising a brow at him in challenge.

Yami snorted and mimicked him in grabbing it, though he was not as fast and merely nibbled at the edge. Then he blinked, bit a little more, and chucked it into his mouth with the smallest noise of approval. Yugi snorted loudly, smiling in amusement, and shook his head as he watched him happily chew and swallow.

"See? Perfect complement to the hot chocolate."

The taller lycanthrope licked his lips, looked his fingers over, and grabbed the napkin that had the girl's print on it. For a moment longer he hesitated. Then he wiped his fingers clean on the other side of the paper. "It was," he agreed, though he cast the napkin a somewhat guilty glance.

He supposed he could dispose of it outside and—

"Don't feel bad. If she's not your type she's not your type," Yugi said in a calm tone, shrugging. "Besides, it's not the smartest way to ask someone out. If you hadn't noticed, she couldn't hold it against you. And I don't even know if she's sixteen yet. She was twelve when I started coming here with my dad. That was about three years ago and I have no idea when her birthday is."

Yami blinked and gave him a curious glance. "Why would it matter if she's sixteen yet?" he asked with a tilt of his head.

"In this prefecture you have to be at least sixteen before you can date someone. Sixteen is the limit here in Domino. So say a nineteen-year-old was dating a fourteen-year-old? They could get arrested because she's not considered legal until she's sixteen."

"Legal?"

"Old enough to have sex."

Yami blinked wide eyes. "What? Humans have rules on that too?" He glanced over his shoulder towards her, then wrinkled his nose. "Not that it matters to me one way or another. But, in the lab, they would keep the females in their wolf skin until their bodies matured enough to go into heat. When that happened they would try to forcefully inseminate them with a drugged male… It's a way of drastically aging a body that otherwise couldn't do anything they saw necessary. Of course, physical stress often rendered them all barren, but the concept is the same…"

Yugi found that his tongue was plastered to the roof of his mouth in his horror. "W-what?"

Yami looked at what was left of his cocoa and his stomach ached for a moment. Had he truly just spoken about that? He blinked, then raised his eyes to Yugi again, voice lower with the tension which gripped his body.

"Sorry. I didn't mean to…" He faltered. "I just… It's strange how much humans wish to dictate. Wolves mature faster than humans because of their shorter lifespan. And they often choose for themselves whether to leave the pack in search of a mate. But humans…they have to control every aspect of it…"

Yugi frowned. "Yami, wolves mature faster than humans, yes. Which is why when you look at dogs versus people, some of those one-year-olds make smarter decisions than an eighteen-year-old human. The problem is that humans aren't like wolves. There are too many of us and not enough structure. As much as we try, we can't control everything. And people get away with really bad things."

Yami blinked. "I am aware that many people get away with things they have no right to."

He shook his head. "No, what I mean is…some people like to have sex with… _younger_ generations. They're called pedophiles and—okay, so, do you remember when we were talking about Yoshimori? Do you remember that? We had a conversation about his watching me as a kid, if I thought it was predatory or if he knew I was a werewolf?"

His lip curled. "Yes. You said that now that you're sixteen—"

Yugi held a hand up and Yami immediately fell silent again, regarding him with darkened but curious eyes. "I'm not going into that again. What I mean is that people like _younger_ than teenagers. Some like six and seven-year-old kids and they might kidnap them and rape them or even sell them for pornography or sex trafficking. What it boils down to is this—under the penal code, any person at the age of thirteen is considered allowed to have sex. But on top of this law is that the prefecture has the rule that should someone older than that person be interested in them, they could be arrested. So, fourteen-year-old with nineteen-year-old? Arrested in certain prefectures, but okay in others. Now, two fourteen-year-olds? They might get away with having sex without repercussions. Why? They're both the same age and they're considered legal. It's rare from what I know, because I don't think that there are many people who claim to be sexually active for the sake of it at such a young age. But then, it's highly possible that they might _both_ be prosecuted as well. Seeing as they both live under their parents' roofs and rely on them for financial reasons, their guardians can very easily declare it rape. And _that_ might be the way for one or even _both_ to be prosecuted. But sometimes the laws are somewhat strange and harder to interpret."

"Why are they not clear cut?"

Yugi shrugged. "Differing circumstances, I suppose. But in the states, each has its own age limit to base legality on. They're given the ability to have sex without repercussions at whatever age was chosen, can even marry or drive around that same time as well." He frowned and pushed his plate towards Yami, the samoa the last thing he wanted to bother eating at the moment. The other boy blinked in confusion, shaking his head, and Yugi gave him a small smile and a dismissive flick of his hand. "Anyways, there is no protection from a statutory rape clause here as there are in the states. They call them the Romeo and Juliet clause which dictates that if the two are close enough in age then they can have sex and it not be seen as punishable."

"All right, so if there are laws to negotiate the initial age of consent, then why would thirteen be considered such?"

"Well, the law on top of the legal age of consent is something I think they call the prevention of corruption of a minor. It makes the legal age within that prefecture somewhere from sixteen to eighteen years of age." He took a sip of his cocoa and shrugged slightly. "The only way that I know of that two thirteen-year-old kids could have sex and not worry about it would be by consent of the parents. And that would mean that they saw the relationship as truly or sincerely romantic. And, as far as I know, if they were to be the same age they might get away with it as well. But beyond that, I know that the most likely way to get past the prefectures' declaration of age would be that of parental consent. Then certain areas allow marriage of girls to be around sixteen and eighteen for boys with consent, or twenty otherwise."

Yami nodded slightly. "So it's meant to be used for protection of younger children and people," he commented with a tilt of his head.

"Yeah, exactly. And it's…" He fell quiet for a moment, then awkwardly laughed under his breath. "This is a really heavy talk for hot chocolate and pastries. I… Wow, this is really a strange conversation to be having right about now."

The red-eyed teen blinked, but it was not embarrassment which made him consider him more closely. Rather he wrinkled his nose and shrugged with casual dismissal. "You are the one which brought it up," he said with a raised brow.

He smiled wider. "I know, but you asked so I explained." He peered into his eyes a little more pointedly, hopeful that nothing he'd said had upset him in any manner. Yami had spoken about the labs, after all… "It boils down to the idea of if they're the same age and thirteen or older, then they should be fine. If they're older and younger, their parents might prosecute. If they've got parental permission, they're free to do as they like as long as they're thirteen or older. And, basically, marriage should probably be after you're twenty to avoid parental consent."

Yami smirked and shook his head. "Thank you for the explanation. You're right though, this is rather heavy. Let's talk about something else, yes?"

Yugi opened his mouth, then paused and blinked wide eyes. The door swung open and a small, soft jingle came through the speakers overhead. He looked at the door and the three figures which came in. The blond and brunet were laughing at each other, full of banter as they always seemed to be, and Anzu trailed them with a somewhat tired, almost reluctant expression. All three of them paused, glanced about them, spotted Yugi, and made a bee line for the two wolves.

Yami moved to scoot over a chair and Yugi felt his distance much harsher than he truly should have. It was, after all, only one seat diagonal to him, but it still somehow burned him. The smaller teen glanced at him, eyes troubled briefly, but the other boy merely continued to move his stuff until he could put it in his lap. Then he snatched his cup and settled it slightly in his lap, taking a large sip a second later and ignoring the way Yugi watched him.

He smiled in amusement and shook his head. He didn't have to move. They could have changed seats at any moment or the others could have asked Yugi to take a seat further towards the wall. Yugi licked his lips and took a sip of his own cocoa, ignoring the impulse to tell Yami he hadn't needed to do that.

"So, what's up, guys?" Jonouchi asked, coming to the side of the table. His small best friend looked up with a grin and bright eyes. The red-eyed boy merely looked up and considered the three of them with a tilt of his head. He was not alarmed nor threatened in the slightest, just full of contemplation.

"We were just talking about some stupid things," Yugi answered. But he was suddenly acutely aware of that napkin Yami had moved and was holding in his right hand. When he glanced at it, the other boy tightened his grip and then stuffed it into his jeans pocket. No doubt he was simply trying to hide it away from them. "Nothing too important. Besides, what's there to talk about? We were saving the best topics for last."

"You mean whether you guys do it doggy style or missionary?" the blond quipped immediately. Yugi groaned and rolled his eyes but Yami blinked and snorted loudly, turning back to his cup. Jonouchi and Honda glanced at each other sideways, laughing, and looked at Yami more pointedly.

"You guys look a lot more alike when you're further away," Jonouchi noted, frowning faintly as he took in their expressions.

Yami's eyes were much darker than Yugi's, the shapes of them entirely too different. Their skin tones were several shades away from each other and the way they held each other was altogether different from anything he had seen before. It was almost like one of those spot the differences worksheets. Yami's jaw was sharper, his hair longer, with more color to the strands. His shoulders were slightly broader and his stance at the moment was relaxed but with the finest hint of tension beneath his skin. His fingers were longer, his hands a little wider, with darker nails and what looked like sharper tips. His collarbone was the smallest bit deeper than Yugi's and the way he raised his chin as he considered him was completely unlike his companion.

He glanced at Yugi again. His eyes were so much wider, with long and thick black lashes like spider webs. His cheeks were fuller, softer, more cherubic. His skin was still so much lighter than the other boy's. His fingers were shorter but slender, his hands thinner, and his wrists were the smallest hint wider than Yami's. His head was lowered if only slightly, more submissive than challenging, though there had been the most subtle change in the last couple of seconds.

He did not miss it in the slightest. And it made his stomach hurt to see it.

Yugi was watching him with an expression of darker eyes and a cunning which he had never noticed him to possess before. The line of his shoulders had risen only faintly, but it was there. And his chin was tipped slightly upwards, this time declaring an open invitation of challenge which unnerved the tall blond.

"They could be fraternal twins though," Honda said with a hint of dismissal, shrugging. He must have seen the tension in both of their bodies because he shot Jonouchi a look to be quiet on the subject. "Anyways, so, we're going to go grab a couple of sandwiches. If Anzu isn't coming, then she'll keep you company, I guess?"

The brunette looked flustered at the declaration but nodded all the same, casting them both small smiles. "Yeah, I'm going to stay down here with you guys. I don't really want anything to eat."

Yugi nodded and looked at Jonouchi. "I think they just started assembling the first sandwiches a few minutes ago," he murmured, grinning at him playfully.

" _Sweet_!" The blond trotted off with Honda a step behind them. The squabbling began the moment they stepped onto the first stair. They snickered and laughed and hurried up the staircase. Yugi watched the two of them disappear and then turned around again. Anzu was avoiding looking at either of them and Yami was cradling his cup in his hands, eyes on the other side of the café.

How awkward…

He looked to Anzu. "So, um, my mom mentioned something to me a couple of days ago. It was something about the, um…the deaths going on," he mentioned, biting his lip and watching him closely for a moment. "There are a bunch of biologists that have been brought here to look into what animal could be doing it, right?"

Yami looked up now, at attention and curious as he considered them both. Anzu swallowed hard, looking away when she realized that the red-eyed lycanthrope was staring at her. She fidgeted, then turned to Yugi solely in an effort to draw some comfort from a more familiar face.

"They called in a bunch from the states, yeah. Apparently one of the murder victims was a citizen there. I don't think they've told anyone the name yet, but they contacted the authorities over there to find out and ask for help with it all. With the FBI there were contacts brought out to discuss what animal it could be. Everyone assumes it's a wolf and that's not possible here. So no one really knows what to say about it." Now she glanced at Yami minutely and swallowed hard. "Although, now I guess we all know what could have caused it…"

If he had not known her for so long he might have thought she was accusing Yami. It would have made him bristle and snap at her. But the time spent with her growing up did well to stem his initial response. She was just referring to the strength displayed during the fight against the tigress. She did not mean that Yami was the one to do it.

"She said the prints are definitely that of canis lupus but the bite force is beyond anything they're capable of. Is that right?"

"Something about it being over three thousand pounds of pressure," she admitted, biting her lip and shaking her head. "That's what a crocodile in the Nile bites at. They're freaked out somehow someone is hiding the initial murder by setting wolfdogs on the bodies afterwards."

Yugi shook his head and glanced at Yami before turning back. "He's been with me since before the last few deaths happened," he answered the unspoken question, shrugging and shaking his head slightly. "Anyways, but Yami did mention that when a wolf gets extremely stressed, they're able to bite a lot harder. I don't know the extent of that, but it is possible that something is going on to make the werewolves attack."

Anzu nodded a little but did not comment further. It was obvious she was thinking of his words the night before, about a war and either himself or Yami dying. She looked over to the red-eyed wolf and bit her lip. "Thank you for helping us at the factory, by the way," she said instead, because it was the only time she thought she might be able to tell him so.

Yami nodded in response, without much more than a blink. She almost cringed as she looked into his face for a moment. He seemed unnaturally still and his unblinking stare was so much that of a canine that it scared her to see. His lack of a smile to acknowledge her words made her skin crawl beneath her coat and she let out a small breath.

Yugi nudged him from under the table and when he glanced at him the smaller teen tilted his head slightly towards Anzu again. The movement jarred him enough to turn to her again and say, "You're welcome…"

The smallest teen snorted at the obvious question he could hear ending the statement. Both Yami and Anzu glanced at him as he shook his head and closed his eyes. Poor Yami, he was so awkward when it came to interacting with regular people. He supposed that shouldn't have been too surprising. Yami was so unlike any regular person, and he was one of the kindest, beautiful people he had ever met. But he was still so antisocial when it came to regards towards humans. He had no proper understanding of it all or what was expected of him.

"So, did we miss the answer about the doggy style thing or is that still a mystery?" Jonouchi announced as he took a huge bite of a half-eaten sandwich in his hands.

"You just got that thing and you're already almost done with it?" Yugi huffed, looking at the bright bread and the slices of smoked boar. He rolled his eyes. "And, let's talk about privacy, shall we?"

"Well, actually, it depends on what form you're in. If you're a canine, then obviously it would make sense to do it that way." All four of them stared at him with eyes which looked as if they might bug out of their heads. Yami snorted into his cup, smirking widely and shaking his head. "You all are absolute morons."

Honda burst out laughing, grinning widely and tilting his head as he regarded him. "That's awesome." He looked at Jonouchi. "He's got more balls than you."

Yugi rolled his eyes. "Oh please. That's just him being a jackass," he snorted, nudging Yami again under the table. It made the other boy snicker harder around sipping his drink. "Anyways, so, um, the park is where we need to continue this conversation if you guys want to actually ask us any questions."

Yami put his cup down after a moment, empty and licked almost completely clean with a tongue that seemed both human and canine. He licked his lips after, then got to his feet as Yugi did the same. The smaller teen pulled the jacket on, checked his phone, and then redid the scarf around his neck. The taller boy followed his lead, glanced at the cup of cocoa that was still almost completely full, and then drew his gloves back on with a somewhat flustered sensation in the pit of his stomach.

Yugi turned away from him and trotted towards the front of the display case, cup in hand. He chatted with her for a few moments while Jonouchi studied Yami and Honda watched Anzu with a sympathetic expression. She had not told him what had happened the night before, had just called him crying and asking him to talk to her about anything he could think of. But, judging by the way she seemed to have trouble looking at Yami head on and the way the two lycanthropes had been so in tune with each other…

Yugi returned with a Styrofoam cup, a small straw stuck inside a cap which shielded the drink from any outside debris. He looked at Yami, stretching it towards him, and murmured, "Here, in case you still want to take your gloves off."

The drink wasn't nearly hot enough to provide a real cover for his lack of gloves, but no one else would realize that. Yami blinked in surprise, then immediately took his gloves off to toss into his pocket and wrap his hands around the small cup. "Thank you."

Honda was oddly sure of the idea that their closeness at that moment was not strictly of the platonic sense. There was something strangely close and powerful between the two of them, which managed to draw them together somehow even more. It was as if one were the extension of the other, like their breath gave the other life. They did not so much as have to glance at each other to fall into line side by side. But when they got out the door, Yami dropped to the back and Yugi remained in the front.

Honda glanced at him as he began to move past him but Yami did not blink. Instead his eyes were ahead of them and he seemed almost to be scanning the area around them. He wondered if threats were often or the entire thing was a show of nerves which Honda himself still had yet to recognize and decipher. He frowned faintly as the blue-violet-eyed teen began to walk beyond them, saying something along the lines of, "You know, doggy style is supposed to get you deeper though."

The comment startled all three of his friends, but Yami merely snorted in response. "If it is not required of me to be on my hands and knees, I will happily avoid it."

"Okay, so basically what you're saying is that your partner's comfort matters little to you as long as you don't have to be on your hands and knees."

"No, what I mean to say is… Actually, yes, I will go with that answer if it will end this conversation."

"You're no fun."

Yami rolled his eyes. In front of him Honda glanced over his shoulder and then turned away again. Anzu was in front of him, carefully keeping her eyes on the ground rather than anywhere else. Second in line, Jonouchi snickered and shook his head as if the conversation material truly surprised him.

It took only ten minutes to make it to the park. Yami immediately stopped short, sniffing, but the air was icy and there was no lingering scent of anything even remotely threatening. He kept a couple of feet behind the rest of them, on alert and wondering at the lack of alarm which came from the humans.

How could they not be worried that at least one thing might go wrong?

Were they truly so removed from their own instincts?

The change in dynamics to allow the humans to rest in the middle of their group was an unspoken directive. With Yugi in the front and Yami in the back to bring up the rear, they were moderately protected. Yugi would sense an oncoming threat from the front and Yami from behind. Had they had more wolves, a flanking position would have been the easiest and most effective of any.

"So, questions and answers session can start now," Yugi announced, turning around and looking at them with bright eyes.

He remembered the hellhound he had seen here, among the grass, about to bite those kids when they had annoyed it. He remembered staking this small spot out in hopes of seeing Yami again after the disaster of his first change. He remembered Jonouchi claiming to have seen him there, looking for something in the dark. And all he could think now was just how relieving it was to actually consider that they knew and he did not have to keep it _all_ in the dark anymore.

"All right, I want to know about what happened that day at Burger World. I'm getting the idea that you were infected and he reacted to you," Jonouchi said with a sideways glance at Yami as the other wolf came around his side and sipped at the hot chocolate in his hand. Was it still considered hot chocolate if it was almost freezing cold like the air around them? He guessed it didn't matter. At one point it _had_ been hot. Jonouchi considered him again, then frowned as he looked him over. "And where were you when that happened?"

"Okay, so I had just gotten infected by Ushio before we went to Burger World. He definitely had to have been reacting to me being there, considering what he said about it being his territory. And, when we were in the alley and he attacked us as a wolf, I don't know at all why he ran off like that. He just fled." Yugi shrugged. But in the back of his mind he considered more of the fact that, as Code Name Atem, the wolf must have reacted and fled from the possibility of harming him. "As for where Yami was, he didn't even know I existed until the night I changed at the festival. If not for then, I doubt he ever would have come to find me."

Yami chewed on the end of the straw. Something about the way the ends folded and the small item crinkled beneath his teeth managed to soothe some of his more irritable nerves.

"Okay, so what about what happened with Ushio? Who did it and why?" the blond burst out, looking at Yami more pointedly now.

The red-eyed lycanthrope blinked and turned his gaze on him, unfazed by the challenge which glittered in his bright brown stare. "Tomoya's father is the guess Yugi has. I do not know more than he does, contrary to whatever belief you might have." He sipped his drink again, watched him with a slightly more aggressive gleam, and then closed his eyes. "He is the only one with plausible desire, yes? Ushio killed his son and he turned to take revenge on his son's killer."

The blond shook his head, then glanced at Yugi now. "What about my sister? What happened to her?" he asked in a voice that made it clear accusations were being slung now. Yugi flinched, startled by the ferocity, and Yami bristled as he opened his eyes again. "Because, I know I'm not the smartest person in existence, but I'm also not stupid. The day _after_ you met her, she wound up dead. What the fuck is up with that?"

"You think _I_ had something to do with that?" Yugi demanded, eyes stretching wide. "Me or Yami? Neither of us… I don't know what happened to Shizuka. I'm sorry. I don't…"

Jonouchi searched his face, seemed to deem his sincerity acceptable, and turned to look at Yami. But his expression was cold and glacial and the moment their eyes locked his body froze in place. There was something dark, swirling, a tumultuous shadow, which coursed through his gaze, and it rendered Jonouchi immobile.

"You saw me rip up a tiger from the stomach through to the shoulders," Yami said slowly, lips curling back to show off bright red gums and sharp, glittering teeth. "Do not make me assume you a threat as well."

Yugi flushed and then snapped his fingers, unable to think straight long enough to remember his name as shock set in and the instinct to stop their potential fight came over him. But Yami responded all the same, startled by the sudden noise. He lost concentration and the anger in his body dissipated with bewilderment at the source of sound. At first he almost seemed so startled that he looked as if he had been shot at and Honda wondered briefly just how much louder it was in his ears than theirs.

"Look, no one is a threat to anyone else here, okay? Don't try to scare anyone, okay, Yami?" he tried softly, swallowing hard as the boy looked back at him in puzzlement. Honda was amazed that he did not snap back in response, eyes widening as Yami merely snorted, turned back to his chocolate, and ignored them for the moment. Anzu was barely breathing, horrified by the way he had so openly lashed out.

What if he did not listen to Yugi the next time?

Would they fight?

Would Yugi really turn against the wolf when he was so clearly in love with him?

And, if the feelings were not reciprocated, would Yami simply kill him for stepping between him and his perceived threat?

She didn't know enough about wolves to know if he would go so far…

"But I don't know what happened to Shizuka, Katsuya. I'm sorry. If I did, I would tell you," he said with a shake of his head. "You know I didn't want anything to happen to her. I was just talking to her and the next thing I knew she was dead."

"Let the dead sleep then," Yami cut in with a more annoyed tone, startling them slightly. "Ask another question. There's really not much time before curfew. Sticking to one subject is rather foolish if you want to know more."

Jonouchi could have punched him. Yami was not looking at them, but his voice was oddly annoyed and full of disdain. He must not have known the pain of losing a loved one if he was so eager to drop the subject. He almost opened his mouth to say so, to snap at him for his disregard, but then his eyes flickered.

They shot to his and the way Yami looked up at him from beneath those long lashes made his stomach drop. There was something harsh and cunning, but pained and raw there as well, almost like fresh waves of agony and anger. But he was not rigid as he had been moments before and he did not snarl as he thought he might. Instead he stared at him for the solid six seconds he could meet his eyes and then turned away a moment after Jonouchi looked at the ground again.

"Okay, so what about what happened with Fuwa?" Honda cut in, ignoring the tension which flared between the two of them. He was not willing to leap into a fray between Yami and Jonouchi, no matter how loyal he was to the blond. Common sense said that the werewolf could snap his neck as if it were nothing. He had to be far stronger than any of them had truly considered and the reality of that was horrifying. "What was it that he put on the knife that made your hand react like that?"

Yugi blinked. "On the knife? He didn't put anything on the knife," he muttered, then blinked and shook his head. "He dusted the doorknobs with wolfsbane and he poisoned the food the same way. Which was why I told you not to eat. But the knife was silver. And it got into my bloodstream and it really messed up my hand."

"It looks perfectly healed now," the brunet commented, an afterthought as he looked it over when Yugi held it up for inspection. "So then those myths are true? You guys are weak against silver."

Yami sniffed disdainfully, the noise loud and frustrated. "Not quite. It is more that we are extremely allergic to it. As such we cannot be exposed to it for long quantities of time. If the blade had stayed in his hand much longer, he probably would have developed relatively permanent nerve damage."

"What about being in the same room as it? Does it make you guys anxious or anything? Can you even tell that it's there or not so much?"

"I don't recall having reactions to it simply being in the same room as a wolf. I think it is only when we touch it that it affects us in any manner." He paused, then thoughtfully murmured, "I know that mirrors with silver plating will show a distorted reflection depending on how aged it is. Beyond that, I've never known it to affect anyone unless by physical contact. I'm not entirely sure as to what else silver might do for us in any other manner."

"Okay, so what about bullets? Do the regular ones kill or do they have to be silver?"

"No, regular can kill as well." He shrugged. "Silver are just far more likely to immobilize when it's a running target the hunter is aiming at."

Jonouchi looked at him for a moment. How many hunters had Yami run across? He looked as young as they did, but his eyes were wary and cold with age. There was something odd about thinking about it in any manner. It caused the tall blond to stare in open bewilderment. How could he know so much when he looked as if he was only sixteen?

"How old are you?"

Yami blinked in surprise at the words. Honda had been asking something as well but now he could hardly recall what it was. He frowned, tilting his head. "Sixteen," he answered in a relatively smooth tone, though he looked disturbed mildly by the question. "Why do you ask?"

Jonouchi shook his head, staring. "Wow, then you and Yugi really _could_ be fraternal twins, couldn't you?" He was vaguely awed and Yugi froze as he saw the way Yami bristled faintly. "That's insane. When is your birthday—?"

"His birthday doesn't matter. We were going to talk about wolves, not him." He did not realize he had snapped until Yami gave him a startled look with wide eyes. All three of his friends turned to him with mirroring nervous expressions that he brushed aside almost immediately. He caught the other wolf's eyes, hoping to reassure him that he would not allow them to make him feel cornered or uncomfortable. "Anyways, no, we turn into regular wolves. There's none of the movie wolves at all unless you count when we're actually changing. Then we tend to look like them…"

Yami turned away and swallowed another pull of his chocolate with an awkward glance at Jonouchi. He hadn't expected Yugi to leap in like that. And the blond was clearly flummoxed by the action. Anzu was flushed from what he could see from her image in his peripheral. She wouldn't risk a glance in his direction but her eyes did lock once with Honda's for a split second.

Yugi let out a small breath but did not bother to apologize, though when Yami glanced up again, their eyes locking, he did wonder what the other wolf might have said, if he would have lied or told them the truth. But he'd looked so startled and his first instinct had been to protect him…

He frowned. When had his friends become potential threats? When had he come to view them as people he needed to keep Yami safe from? He blinked a couple of times, then looked to Yami again.

"Is it still considered hot chocolate if it's cold?"

The ridiculous question made all of them relax but Yami was staring at him with a very serious expression. Yugi shook his head, smiling at him, and the others let out a collective exhale of relief.

"So, here's a question. Do you guys eat out in the woods or out of a dog bowl?" Jonouchi said with a somewhat snide tone, glancing at Yugi with clear frustration. He had snapped at him and now he was getting him back. Yugi was amazed at the maturity. He rolled his eyes as Yami blinked and raised a brow.

"Depends on what I'm eating," he said slowly, voice even and calm as they all glanced towards him now. "If I'm eating serow or boar, I'll eat in the woods. But humans have to be cooked and put in a bowl to be properly enjoyed."

Yugi felt his eyes grow comically wide before he covered his face with his hand, snorting loudly. " _Jackass_ ," he muttered, shaking his head with a large grin. "You're such a jackass. Yami, stop trying to scare them. That's not nice."

The taller lycanthrope flashed them a wolfish grin, drank the last of the hot chocolate, and tapped his nails against the Styrofoam. The sound was sharp in the cold air and the answering patter of their heartbeats was much more acute than he had ever noticed. He blinked, tipping his head to the side, but did not bother to stop tapping. And it was only a moment later that he became aware of whose heartbeat he was mimicking perfectly in time.

"Anyways, Yami is strictly carnivore as in he eats animals, not people. No partial cannibalism for him," Yugi drawled, his heart skipping a beat as his nails continued to tap softly. Yami blinked and smirked a little before turning away from them altogether. "He's just messing with you guys."

Honda didn't have the heart to tell Yugi that they all already knew that. Yami had made it pretty clear he was teasing regardless. His eyes had been light with laughter even when his face was expressionless. But it was far too clear that Yugi was extremely nervous about them meeting him altogether. That must have been why he had snapped at Jonouchi and why he kept fidgeting and looking to Yami more than he dared to glance at any of them.

"So, um, what about when you die? Do you stay wolves or become human again? And how long does it take?"

"From what I've always been told, we become the form we were born in. Yugi being born human would make him turn into a human. Me being born wolf would make me turn into a wolf." He did not mention that he'd probably die _as_ a wolf, rather than human. Odds were he would not go through a post mortem change to begin with. "I don't know how long it takes. It probably varies depending on how often they changed."

"Okay, so girls—"

Anzu blushed and scowled at the blond angrily, snapping, "Jonouchi, shut up!"

"What? I want to know!"

"Why? It's not like you'll ever get a wolf chick," Honda laughed, smirking. When Jonouchi gave him a surprised look, the brunet snickered. "They're too hot. And you can't even get a human girl."

"How would you know? You've never met one! They could be _ass_ ugly!"

"Then I hope for your sake that one is, because that's the only way you're getting with one."

Yami wrinkled his nose. "One of them might take pity on him," he said dismissively, shrugging. "Some of them live to take others' virginity."

Yugi was blushing as he thought of Mai, murmuring, "Even Yami is talking shit now, Jonouchi. I think you should stop while you're still ahead."

* * *

Yugi was lying on his stomach again, face against the comforter, eyes on the other boy. Yami didn't bother to acknowledge him around sitting down at the edge of the mattress again. He had been all too relieved to drop his heavier coat and throw his teal one back on. The scarf and gloves had been shed the moment he had gotten into the room and he had not once glanced towards them again. The smaller teen sat up a little more, watching him, and wondered at the way Yami seemed so comfortable in the color. It made his skin look warmer but it made his eyes appear almost demonic. The effect was oddly hypnotizing.

"That color is really nice on you."

Yami didn't look at him as he picked a stray hair off one of the sleeves. And his voice was distracted and more than slightly distant as he muttered, "I wish it still smelled the same."

Yugi flinched before he could stop himself. He reached up to rub at the back of his head and his eyes lowered to the comforter. He didn't see it when Yami turned around, cringing at his own thoughtlessness, and it made it harder to look up. It had not been said scathingly, but Yugi still couldn't find it in himself to look up as he muttered, "I'm sorry, Yami."

The taller teen shook his head, even though it was lost to the smaller boy, and moved to take a seat on the mattress with him. The movement jostled Yugi enough to make him look up with wide eyes and Yami shifted slightly closer.

"Tell me more about your friends," he invited, ignoring the startled look on his face. He tilted his head and watched him. "You are particularly close with Anzu, but Jonouchi is your best male friend. Honda is…"

"He's Jonouchi's best friend," Yugi said with a small tilt of his head. "He's been friends with him since they were little kids. They were in a gang together."

Yami raised a brow. "I find it almost hard to find that Honda of all people would be in a gang as a child," he murmured. "He is far more reserved than Jonouchi seems to be. He seems more polite and strict as well."

"You got that all from an hour and a half spent with them?" Yugi asked, almost amazed by the very concept. He'd gathered that much information in all short time? He'd been forced to spend so much more time with them in order to gather half of that. He wondered if that was the difference between someone who embraced their wolf half fully and someone who tried to hide it away. "Anyways, yeah, you're right. Jonouchi is extremely hot-headed and has a short fuse. Honda tends to be the only one who can fully talk sense into him. And I'm pretty sure that's only because of the fact that he's been his friend for so long. If not I don't think he'd listen to him either. But Honda was the leader of the cleanup committee at our school all through middle school. This year he's stepped back to relax some. But he's got some of the _highest_ grades at our school. He's easily one of the smartest people I've ever met. And he's pretty level-headed."

"He seemed somewhat upset…"

"Anzu gets along with him a lot better than she ever has Jonouchi. They argue too often because Jonouchi likes to talk about porn and she thinks that's disgusting. I think she ended up calling Honda yesterday after what happened? They're more alike so I could see her doing that. Jonouchi probably would have been more shocked that I wasn't trying to bone her."

Yami raised a brow. "You seem rather…crass now that you are home," he commented with a shrug. He leaned forward to brace his elbows on the mattress, watching him curiously. "Regardless, I do think it plausible that he would be upset for the sake of his friend."

Yugi nodded a little, then let out a breath. "I met Jonouchi and Honda during school when we were all around twelve years old, I guess? They were both still running around with the gang and Honda was getting tired of it. Jonouchi was willing to follow him out of the gang at the price of them fighting their way out." He paused and narrowed his eyes. "But they had spotted me walking home alone that same day. They managed to grab me and drag me into the warehouse they usually met in. I got beaten unconscious but woke when they were going to try to string me up by a crane."

Yami blinked, eyes dark and cold as he listened. He tilted his head and studied him for a long moment and then narrowed his eyes. That perhaps explained the reason that Yugi had come to panic about his classmates finding out about his night terrors and screaming at his mother to stop checking on him at night. The trauma from that event alone could have easily pushed Yugi to such paranoia…

He wondered, however, how much further his lycanthropy—as dormant as it had been then—had taken such an occurrence. Had he been afraid to walk home alone? Had he taken a new route home? Had he taken _several_ new routes? When had he come to calm down enough to take only one again?

And, had he done anything drastic upon awakening there?

If the lycanthropy was dormant to the point of him having advanced senses as Ryou had, but not active enough to change, did that mean he had been in a human mindset and panicked?

Or had the wolf hidden in his genetics made him violent?

"Anyways, so Jonouchi and Honda realized what was happening and managed to get me out of there. After that I think Jonouchi went to Anzu to give a tip involving the gang which got them busted. We ignored everything that happened that day until about two years later." He shrugged at the other boy's bewildered expression. "Honda wanted help with impressing Miho, who had a small crush on me. He was jealous and wanted to pummel me for it but Jonouchi talked him out of it after pointing out that I was the only reason they weren't thrown into a detention center. We tried a few things to make Miho pay him attention but she admitted later that she was just copying my schoolwork and wasn't interested in anyone."

Yami snorted. "Resourceful girl," he scoffed before blinking in surprise. Miho…was she the girl who had first been murdered? Her body had been in the papers for a few days. Then it had seemingly drifted somehow. But there had been multiple searches and rewards to find answers to who could have done this to her. It had been amazing to him to hear such support from people who had seemingly owned no sense of responsibility for her.

"Yeah, well I guess that ran out at some point considering what happened," Yugi muttered with a shake of his head. He eyed him for a moment, relieved that Yami was still there, in reach of his hand, close enough that he needed only to stretch his fingers out. It was amazing to him, how much warmer his body seemed as the blood raced through his veins. Yami was _alive_ , when someone else could have clearly killed him. He was still there, when he could have been captured again. He was right in front of him, lying on his bed, when he might have easily been buried in the woods had he been born human as Miho had. "But, anyways, so after that we started hanging out every now and then. Tomoya would also spend time with us every other day and we all made pretty close friends. Aside from the bickering that comes from Jonouchi and Anzu being together too often or too long, all of us are pretty close."

"Tell me about Tomoya."

He blinked, then frowned. "Why?"

"He fought Ushio for you and I tore his throat out. I am curious as to his reasoning for saving you that night. It just seems…odd to me, I suppose."

Yugi felt his frown deepening. "He was one of the misfits at school. He was small, quiet, polite, and liked to stick his nose in a book before he would make conversation. He was really cool though, and he could have made a million friends if he had only put in the effort. But he didn't want to waste time with people who weren't worth it to him."

He tilted his head a fraction further.

"So we actually became friends around sixth grade, I think? It was before Jonouchi and Honda and I started actually hanging out. He was always somehow laid back but kind of tense all of the time. I thought it was because back then he was worried about my habit of being bullied. I think now it was because he knew I was infected but had no idea whether I would ever change."

Yami nodded slightly, then searched his face. Yugi looked somewhat distraught by the conversation. He blew out a small breath, then murmured, "Your room used to smell of Jonouchi."

The way the words came out made Yugi blink wide eyes. Was he insinuating…? He blinked again, then blushed faintly, and immediately shook his head.

"He stays here sometimes. His dad started drinking a lot when his parents got a divorce and his sister went with his mom. His sister was his dad's favorite just like she was his mom's." He fell quiet for a moment, then sat up slightly, blinking at him again. "He gets abusive when he's drunk, sometimes more emotional than physical. Jonouchi will usually sneak out and find his way over here when that happens. Sometimes, depending on how bad it is, he hides at Honda's house. He knows how suspicious my mom gets whenever she thinks something is wrong…"

Yami furrowed his brows. "And she has not suspected anything about this? About me living here and you getting hurt so often? Surely she's seen the bloodied towels and the bandages and everything else."

Yugi shook his head. "I know she suspects something is going on. She's a lot smarter than even she gives herself credit for. But she's one to confront you when she has proof. And she might not want to, sometimes, considering my record for getting hurt or messing up, but she still trusts me." He sighed quietly. "She definitely realizes something is going on. She's not the least bit stupid. Or oblivious. But I hide the bloodied stuff where she can't find it and I've been sneaking the bathroom trash out to drop off at school. She won't confront me with _accusations_. She confronts me when she has _proof_. So, until I slip up or she gets a bit more headway into it all, she isn't going to say anything yet."

Yami closed his eyes and then shook his head. "That makes things easier."

He was pulling the covers back and climbing under the sheets when he yawned, "Definitely." He wrinkled his nose and lay back against the pillow. "Honda has parents who tend to like to let him do whatever he wants. He could probably get away with murder, honestly. I think he's a miracle child or something for them, because he's the only one and they tend to spoil him. It's a wonder he hasn't turned out much worse than he has. Most kids like that expect everyone to give them things and never to have to bother with working or anything else. Lots of the time they're also liable to use and abuse people to get what they want. Honda is pretty much a solid person, loyal to a fault. He'd follow Jonouchi anywhere, which I'm guessing is how he wound up in a gang with him?"

Yami watched him yawn again, then shivered as he suppressed the impulse to do the same. He stretched himself out on the comforter and blinked at him lazily.

"His parents got him a puppy this year. He'd only mentioned it once and they got it for his birthday. Her name is Blankey. She's a six-month-old German shepherd puppy. She has really gorgeous markings, with brown, gray, tan and a little bit of red in her fur." He paused. "Anzu wants to go to dance school when she graduates. She's going to take up a scholarship for a school in the states because she wants to travel too. Her mom is a real estate agent and her dad is a police officer. Her dad is working on the cases involving…Ushio and…the others…"

Yami smiled faintly as Yugi let out a low, almost inaudible mumble and began to drift. The taller teen laid his head on the pillow and turned towards the wall, eyes starting to feather shut.

 **So, the Espa thing will come up later. Why he was there, how he knew to find Yugi there, things of that nature. It should be in about ten to fifteen (don't quote me) chapters that it gets cleared up? But he didn't just stumble across Yugi and the reason Panik wasn't there as well gets brought up in the next chapter.**

 **Let's hope I can get back on schedule with updates cause this is driving me CRAZY.**


	42. Anxiety

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day**

 **Chapter Warnings:** **Mentions of Death, Mentions of Killing/Death, Mentions of Sex, Jokes about Sex, Jokes about STD, Implied Celesteshipping [Anzu x Valon], Night Terrors, COPIOUS Amounts of Blood, Anxiety Attack**

 **Okay, so Yugi makes a joke about going bareback with Yami doggy style in a hotel room. Just saying. And about hot tub sex. Take that however you'd like. He also says he probably got AIDS. Yeah, not so funny. But Yugi is being sassy so I'm REALLY hoping doesn't come off as offensive to anyone.**

 **Wish hounds (Wisht hounds) are actually British hellhounds, ones that are said to be headless and appear in the moors, from what I remember. They were created from unbaptized babies who died young. I think they were also rumored to chase after and steal little kids as well? But they hunt by howling loudly and then chasing their prey and if you hear the howls about three times, it means that you're marked to die? I believe that's how it goes. I really need to look back at my notes again.**

 **Anyways, so wish hounds are a subspecies of the hellhound, but they do not interact beyond dreams and little deals with humans who are smart enough to find them. They're not directly in the story beyond mention, but they have the ability to give a human what they wish for in ways of things such as visions (Espa) and extremely good luck (Fuwa).**

 **But they cannot reverse death, help to heal the human in question, and they have no physical forms and act as phantoms. They also cannot interact with living wolves and they bow to the gods as well, which is why Espa could not see Yami or Yugi but could hunt other wolves with that ability. The wish hounds are THE black dogs/hellhounds that chase the humans down for their souls when their time is up.**

 **The wish hounds won't come up again until later, but they will get another mention as the story goes along. But I didn't want anyone to think that Espa's words from last chapter were random, or that Yami mentioning the supernatural luck thing is a gimmick.**

 **Okay, so, from what I've been reading, the way to calm someone's breathing is exactly how it's done here. Four second inhale, four second exhale. Beyond that, I've never experienced a panic attack. I've never witnessed one. A friend did call me on the phone in the midst of one but I got her thinking about other things and talking until she calmed down again.** **But yeah, beyond what I was researching, I have no idea. If there are other techniques, feel free to tell me. I'd love to know. And, if this is a bad representation, tell me that too! I want to know.**

 **Also, guys, I have not played Reversi in so many years that I've forgotten altogether how to play it. And I can't really find much time to actually research around trying to keep up with posting and working on editing other stories (not limited to _Sky Dance_ 's sequel cause apparently that just took priority for the gods know how long). I don't remember if you can even tie in that game, or how you win or lose anymore. It's kind of sad, but meh.**

 **And totally sorry for how long it took for me to get this up! I have the next chapter set up for its next round of edits as well as the one after that. So they MIGHT be posted on time?** **PLEASE don't quote me on that.**

Chapter XLII: Anxiety

 _Work Log Entry XLII: December, 2003_

 _December 1_

 _The boss has grown impatient with "Atem" once more. He wishes for us to push his growth rate, but the Pure-Blood still refuses to change forms despite the numerous drugs and testing._

 _December 8_

 _It is the full moon tonight and most of the wolves have changed due to the draw of the wolf and the ancient event known as the "lunar ascension"._

 _But "Atem" has not and the boss is far from pleased._

 _December 16_

 _"Atem" has recovered his voice._

 _He spoke long enough to say he wanted more food._

 _December 20_

 _The Pure-Blood looks outwardly healthy and his vitals are all extraordinary._

 _No one can understand why it is that he cannot change._

"Okay, so, I told my mom that you—"

Yami shook his head, eyes full of laughter. "Yugi, there's no need to worry so much. I can hear through the walls. Relax. And, even if I couldn't, we've rehearsed most of it. And I've got brilliant recollection. So, breathe, okay?"

He opened and closed his mouth, cheeks slightly dusted with pink, and then nodded. "Yeah, I…I kind of forgot about that," he admitted before sighing softly. "Not that we had rehearsed and all that, but I…I guess I got excited for a second there."

He smirked and shook his head slightly in amusement. "I can tell," he teased easily, eyes brightening further as he noticed the fine tremble of excitement which came over his frame. "She wishes to meet me so soon?"

"Yep, they want to meet Kobayashi Yami soon," Yugi said with audible elation. His eyes were bright with excitement and he looked incredibly relieved as well. "The homeschooled sixteen-year-old who's beginning to run out of money and doesn't have a job and whose parents are going to be coming to Japan soon but not soon enough. And you plan to go to Domino High after you finish your semester online. We did agree that you're Italian, right?"

"My skin tone only matched Italian girls so…yes?"

Yugi snorted so loudly he was amazed that none of his family heard it. He covered his mouth and shook his head at him, eyes bright with laughter. "Shut up," he teased before shaking his head again and rolling his eyes. "Anyways, okay so you're actually from Italy, lived there for a while, came here for educational purposes. That works for me."

"I am Japanese, though, yes? My last name…"

He nodded almost immediately, flustered for a split second, then smiled a little more. "Right, Japanese last name. Your parents raised you in Italy but you came here for education that you wouldn't get elsewhere."

"Yes," Yami agreed with a somewhat undone expression. "I do recall us agreeing to that story. That is the most acceptable to your mother, is it not? That's why we came up with it…?"

"Right. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm just so excited that I guess I forgot." He shrugged in such a childlike manner that Yami had to smile faintly. "It just… It's kind of amazing, I guess. I mean, I was expecting it to take a bit longer and it didn't and I'm just super relieved. I mean, considering how long I thought it was going to take and she's already cracked and this is _awesome_ , Yami."

The taller lycanthrope smiled in amusement and shook his head. "I had no doubt that you would eventually make her curious enough to invite me over." He watched him with that same usual patience that he always exuded and Yugi couldn't help but smile at him more. "And I believe that we have rehearsed well enough to put this plan fully in motion. Do you believe she'll truly let me stay here?"

Yugi nodded. "I do. I think we just have to be careful about we do and don't say to her as far as everything else goes. I know for a fact that she's not going to let you sleep in my room with me. She'll probably have you go out to the living room and rest on the couch the entire time you're here."

He frowned, his own amusement draining away in an instant now. "Yugi, what happens when your mom realizes that my parents are not coming anytime soon? She will not be pleased when she realizes that I have been here for longer than a week or two at maximum. We need to think of something else as well. She is going to be suspicious when I have no news of my parents' return and remain here…"

And, just like that, Yugi felt as if his world were crashing down around him. His breath caught and he stared at him, eyes wide and stomach twisting painfully. Oh gods, had he really not thought that through? He swallowed hard, shaking his head faintly.

"Well, I guess… When that day comes, you'll have to go back into hiding in my room again…"

And, oh, how temporary and nearsighted this plan seemed to him now.

Yugi bit his lip. Rather than finding a solution he'd found a momentary compromise. It stung to realize how naive he'd been in not realizing this ahead of time. He swallowed hard and choked on his tongue as he considered it all.

How many times had he mistakenly assumed that it would be okay, easy, to balance things? School, a pack he was now leader of, friends who now knew his secret, his lycanthropy, hunters, hellhounds, and the tensions which had sprung up now that he could truly _sense_ the wolves in the school.

He swallowed hard and then bit his lip again.

"I suppose for the time that you are relieved of having to hide me in your room, it will be easier for us both. It doesn't matter to me, I have always adapted when it has become necessary."

Yugi didn't bother to tell him how much that statement made his heart ache for him. Instead he gave him a smile that _should_ have been megawatts brighter than it actually was.

The look did not mollify Yami who blinked wide eyes and said, in a low, cautious tone, "It will all work out okay, Yugi. It might not be easy, but it will be okay."

* * *

Yugi hummed as he pushed his books into his locker and shut the door slowly. Anzu was the only one with him at the moment, while Honda and Jonouchi were back still grabbing things from their own lockers. The smaller teen turned to her with a small grin.

"How is dance class going?" he asked, eyes bright and curious as he picked at the end of his spiral notebook. He wondered if she would notice his anticipation and comment on it but she seemed to be somewhat surprised by his excitement. He was okay with that. If she didn't know about his plan with Yami it was all the better. She already knew that he was keeping Yami at his house without anyone else's knowledge. It seemed like saying more would be potentially harmful towards Yami himself.

"I'm learning hip hop moves now. It helps me be more versatile when I go to the states," she admitted with a small shrug. "No dancer can really just focus and stick to one style if they want to make it somewhere. Or at least that's what my instructor keeps saying anyways."

"Hip hop is fun," he said, but his tone was clearly distracted. He graced her with another wide grin, glanced over his shoulder towards the other two of their group, and then looked back to her. "You aren't going to give up on other styles for just that though, right?"

"No, I'm going to just learn as much as I can before the end of high school. My scholarship is going to be top notch." Anzu was watching him with a determined expression, one which he had always known when they were growing up together. He smiled a little more, paying her more attention than he had before. The brunette watched him for a moment, then tilted her head slightly. "You look…a lot happier."

Yugi faltered for a moment, eyes wide and startled. He blinked a few times, watching her, and then shook his head. "What do you mean?" he asked, frowning at her minutely now.

How did he seem happier? Yugi couldn't remember doing anything to make it seem like he was. He was still excited about his mom wanting to meet Yami but he did not think it remained so apparent on his face. He had all but forgotten about it during class as it was.

Now he only remembered it because of the fact that she had said that. And it was the only thing he could think of that would lead to him seeming happier than usual.

"Did Yami"—His eyes grew wider than she had ever seen them—"do something to make you smile like that?"

He blinked again, then furrowed his brows. "Yami?" he echoed, surprised by the casual note in her voice, though not oblivious to that small brief flicker of pain at the use of his name. "Um, no, not at all. He hasn't done anything differently at all. I…I mean, he's probably asleep by now or reading or something. But no, he didn't do anything differently to make me happy. Why do you ask…?"

Anzu smiled, but the edges seemed sad. "I just haven't seen you this happy in a pretty long time," she admitted with a small shrug. "Actually, there's something different about it… I don't think I've ever seen you smile like that before. I figured it had to be because of Yami…"

Yugi blinked a few times, shaking his head slowly in puzzlement. "I didn't even realize I seemed happier than usual." He tilted his head. He had the smallest, slightest impulse to apologize but it seemed ridiculous to bother. Why should he apologize for seeming a little happier than usual? He didn't want to make her think that he didn't care about her and flaunt whatever it was he had with Yami, but to apologize for it seemed almost stupid to him. "But nothing is different."

That wasn't entirely true. Before she had mentioned his name, his eyes had been bright, but when his name came up, his entire face had lit up like a megawatt bulb. She didn't think she had _ever_ seen his face so open, so happy and beautiful. A twinge formed in her chest. Then it became a pulsing ache which made her nearly flinch.

Anzu wished, not for the first time since their conversation, that she could have made him just as happy as he seemed now.

"Okay." It wasn't worth arguing over. It just hurt more to think that someone else could make him so happy when they couldn't last more than what seemed like thirty seconds. She drew in a breath, then exhaled softly in discomfort. It was painful, but at least she could say it. "Well, I'm glad that he can make you this happy. I can see why you would like him back."

The words startled him so much that he dropped his notebook and stared at her as if she had grown a second head. Yugi shook his head, expression somewhat bewildered, then crouched down to snatch it back up again. His eyes were slightly narrow and he frowned at her noticeably for a moment before shaking his head.

"I don't think that Yami has any feelings towards me like that."

He could have flinched from the fresh pain that came with that admission. But he had promised himself that he would not push him into anything. Yami was still mourning his mate, his best friend, the others who had died in the lab.

He didn't want to force him to have to mourn him as well.

Anzu shook her head. "Why do you say that?"

Yugi blinked at her and then tilted his head. "Because I don't know if he does and I don't think he has any feelings towards me," he said with a shake of his head. "I'm pretty sure he's not interested in me in any way besides friendship."

The brunette froze, standing on a precipice where she either gave him something of a misleading opinion or crushed him there with confirmation. But she couldn't help but think of the way they had seemed to know each other so exactly in the warehouse. Anzu couldn't stop herself from thinking about the way Yugi had leaped at the opportunity to protect him from the conversation Jonouchi and Honda had attempted to have. The way he had flared up when Yami had gotten even the slightest touch uncomfortable had been stunning to her.

"Maybe you're just thinking too hard."

Yugi shook his head, watching her closely. "Maybe," he said, voice slightly dismissive, but his eyes were still cautious, curious about her words. He blinked a few times, then shook his head again and looked his notebook over to busy himself.

"I'm sure you're looking too hard."

He blinked, then glanced at her sideways, and the two of them were frozen for a moment as he considered her. Had he been looking too hard? Yugi could see that being one of his _many_ faults. But it wasn't as if he had a reason to beyond his misplaced hope. And that made his skin crawl as he considered it.

"I guess so."

Anzu didn't answer him now, unable to meet his eyes and say anything further. She had probably overdone it as it was and she should never have opened her mouth to begin with. She lowered her eyes first to the floor and then looked towards where Jonouchi and Honda were coming over to them. Yugi looked up at them, grinning, but there was a soft strain in his eyes.

He wasn't ready then to go to the arcade, just as he wasn't ready a couple of hours later to make his way to the house. His hands were tucked in his pockets, his shoulders hunched, his backpack on his shoulders feeling overwhelming in its weight. Yugi glanced around him twice, crossed the street, and began to slow his pace further as he kept moving. Yami was probably wide awake, waiting on his mom and grandpa to settle down from whatever they were doing. And Yugi wished he could have said he hadn't expected them to be home yet, but he could see his mom's car.

The knot in his stomach pulled tighter.

Yugi glanced over his shoulder. The neighbors still seemed absent for the moment, but as he turned his head away, he wondered who might be lurking in the woods. His eyes shot uncomfortably towards them and his stomach lurched.

How many hunters could be lurking around the trees, watching and aiming to pull him away from the public?

How many of them were like Pegasus, brave enough to stalk him and set Bakura on him?

His heart lurched. Oh gods, Bakura…

He still felt numb considering the truth of the matter. He had killed him. He'd ripped his head off in a fight. It had been a bid of his life or Yami's and it was horrifying to think that he could commit murder for him like that. He'd killed him and attacked Pegasus and then he'd turned and killed Ryota as well.

He'd killed them.

He'd killed Bakura in the heat of the moment, under the rush of adrenaline.

He had turned on Ryota _knowing_ that there was no chance that he would be able to leave the situation with him still alive.

Yugi was shaking when he made his way to the door. Maybe he should have doubled back a couple of times, taken completely different routes to keep someone watching from realizing where he lived. But part of him was too shaken to want to turn back and another part reminded him that curfew was in effect in only a few more minutes.

The small teen opened the door, stepped inside, and locked the door behind him. His mom had said that businesses were being forced to close an hour before curfew in order to make sure workers got home. It explained the mild darkness he was thrown into upon stepping inside. Yugi turned to the staircase, glancing over his shoulder once more towards the woods.

Were any of the wolves nearby?

Did they know where he lived?

He shook his head and threw the door open, locking it after him before trotting up the stairs. His mom and grandpa were laughing about something, oddly relaxed with each other. Since he had been born and his grandpa had begun his tests, they had been rather strained. He supposed his lack of initiating them now had done well to calm his daughter's anger towards him.

Yugi stepped into the hallway, locked the door behind him, and headed for his room.

"Yugi," Kasumi called after him, making him pause and spin around with curious eyes. She was leaning back in her chair, so far from the table she almost toppled to the floor, in order to look at him. "Why don't you come join us? We were about to start making dinner and playing some board games."

The small teen smiled and raised a brow. "You must be extremely bored if you're considering playing games with me and Grandpa," he teased before turning away. "Give me a minute."

"I won't say I'm _not_ bored out of my mind."

"Do you hear that, Yugi? She doesn't want to spend time with us!" Sugoroku cried loudly, making Yugi snort as he kicked his shoes off and stepped into his room.

Yami was nowhere to be seen. Yugi cursed, immediately looking towards the window, but the pane was shut tightly. It was even locked. Yami might have been smart and resourceful, but he doubted even _he_ knew how to make the locks turn when he was outside.

"Yami?" he called quietly, feeling breathless for a moment. Usually he was there to greet him with that silent manner he always possessed. He would look up and regard him for a moment, maybe nod. Now he couldn't see him anywhere and the only place Yugi could consider would be the bathroom. But he would not try knocking on or opening the door if the other was using the toilet.

That just seemed incredibly rude to him…

The door of his closet creaked open and he startled.

Yami wrinkled his nose as he stepped out of the small space, rolling his shoulders and yawning. He rubbed at his left arm and Yugi could see the imprint of clothing in red along his elbow and cheek. He snorted, then smiled and shook his head, eyes soft as he looked at him.

"You were sleeping in my closet?"

"I did not want to be asleep in plain sight had they decided to come into the room," Yami said somewhat dismissively. "I figured the closet was safer than the bathroom."

Yugi smiled a little more, watching him with his head tilted. Yami's hair was ruffled and in clear disarray, his eyes were hooded, his lashes oddly clumped on his left eyelid, his cheek colored pink from clothing wrinkles. He shook his head slightly, then hummed as he dropped his backpack aside and sighed softly.

"You're okay though?"

This caught his attention.

He blinked and his red eyes flickered with something cautious and powerful. "Yes. Is there a reason I might not be?" he asked in a more demanding tone. The tired look had left him completely and his alarm made his eyes darker than ever.

"Not that I know of. I just… I've never come home and had you come out of the closet like that. It worried me, I guess." He paused and bit his lip. "Did I give you meds this morning or did you get some yourself? Were you just tired or…?"

Yami blinked, caught off guard for only a moment. Then he shook his head, murmuring, "I wanted sleep and I didn't want to dream. I grabbed the medicine myself."

Yugi nodded and relaxed visibly. "Good. I didn't remember giving you anything. I was kind of freaked out for a second there."

He shook his head again. "No, I did it myself." He faltered, then looked him up and down and furrowed his brows. "Are you all right? You look a little…flustered, I suppose?"

His eyes widened. "Flustered?" he echoed in surprise. Was he flustered? He didn't see why he might be. Although, then he considered his conversation with Anzu and his impulse was immediately to flinch. Had he been thinking about that at any point? Yugi wasn't stupid. He knew he had at some point. But he hadn't when he had stepped into the room…

"Yes, I believe that's the word…"

Yugi shook his head. "I was just worried about you, that's all," he murmured softly, offering him a gentle smile. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. Yami was not looking at him in any manner differently from how he normally did. How was it that Anzu had any idea that he might like him back? It was insane. _And I need to stop thinking about this before it gets worse,_ he decided immediately. "Anyways, go back to sleep, okay, Yami? I'm going to go play some games with my mom and grandpa."

Yami nodded slightly, but his eyes had grown narrow. "Very well," he commented softly, tilting his head towards the door and listening for a moment. He could hear a collective shifting of game pieces, all plastic and loud where they touched their boards, and his head scrambled for an exact number of how many there might be. But they all sounded the same and it was hard to determine. He had not even tried to count by sound alone in a while. He almost wondered if he had lost the ability as it was…

His red eyes flickered to Yugi solely again, attention focused completely on the small teen once more. "I am going to go back and sleep some more. Enjoy your time with your family." The words were stale in his mouth, though it was not by any lack of care. In fact, Yami thought with startling clarity, he almost wished for the ability to do the same. But his own family was long gone; sixteen years was a long gap to attempt to fill. He shivered, then shook himself out and yawned to cover for the momentary spike of disgust in his veins.

They shouldn't have died like that.

 _None_ of them should have died like _that_.

"You okay? You look upset. I can tell them no—"

Yami shook his head. "No, it is nothing to do with that, Yugi. Besides, enjoy some time with them. You never seem to outside of dinner," the taller lycanthrope commented with a simple shake of his head and a wide smile. "I am perfectly capable of sleeping without someone else in the room."

"Well that's good," Yugi laughed softly. "Means you're not terribly codependent."

Yami blinked and his eyes widened slightly. The color seemed to drain from his face before he shook it off and yawned again. He rubbed at his face to keep from staring at the other boy again.

Wasn't he? Wasn't he terribly codependent, however? He could not think of anyone in a more accurate depiction of the word.

He was hiding in his room, he had to take medication to sleep properly at times, and he could rarely keep from curling up on the bed with him. He waited anxiously at times for him to come home from school. He couldn't keep track of his own meals half of the time and Yugi was the one to bring him food.

What part of that was not hideously codependent?

"You're sure you're okay?"

"Absolutely, Yugi. Go and have fun with your family. I'll probably be awake when you come back."

Yugi hesitated for a long second, then he nodded with a small sigh. "Okay, sure. But, just…tell me if anything goes wrong? I mean, if you decide you have to go hunting or something, can you warn me? I don't want to come in here and not be able to find you…"

He wondered if Yami thought he sounded as much like a helpless child as he did. But the other boy merely smiled at him, nodded, and turned away with a yawn.

Maybe they were both a little codependent.

Yugi turned on his heel and headed out into the kitchen to see what game had been selected for the first round. Then he felt his lips pull into a slight frown. Reversi… How wonderful. The one game he and his grandfather always tied at.

"I'm going to sit this game out," he announced, taking a seat immediately and watching his mom as she shot him a flustered look. She hated the game. Sugoroku loved to practically lead her around in circles and tease her about her inability to win most games. She was much better with games that did not involve strategies of any kind. She was always better with luck-based games than anything else.

"All right," his grandpa agreed, grinning at his daughter who rolled her eyes and glared at her son. Yugi grinned and winked at her and Sugoroku snorted with amusement. "So, how was school?"

"Fine." He sat back in his chair and his mom sighed as Sugoroku began to make a play. She rolled her eyes again, then mimicked him lazily. Her strategy had always been to copy him because it made it easier when she lost. Yugi smiled faintly and shook his head. "I spent most of the day with Yami after school. Jonouchi, Honda and Anzu were kind of busy so we decided to hang out."

His mom looked at him sideways, her eyes light with curiosity. "Yami, hmm?" The way she said it almost made him wonder if she knew about his crush on the other boy. But he also realized she was more caught up in the idea of what Yami might know rather than anything else. She was curious about the murders and Yami seemed to have small, mild answers if any at all. "How is he doing?"

"He's good. He was pretty bored so we started playing checkers to pass the time." He shrugged. "Turns out he was raised in Italy and his parents are actually Japanese. I didn't know that until today. He was home-schooled before last year."

Sugoroku moved a piece, grinning. He was so focused on his play that he seemingly missed the invitation for more questions. His mom, however, immediately launched into another. Yugi prepared himself for the possibility of more questions than he had answers for.

"So then how long has he been here in Japan?"

"Apparently he came just this year. He was in Italy until now and he just started school this semester. His parents are still in Italy for the time being."

"He's here alone?" She paused, staring at him, her piece still hovering over the board, eyes wide. Yugi couldn't stand the way she was looking at him, so he reached over to place the piece for her, a completely different direction than she had been attempting. She glanced at it, surprised, and Yugi drew in a deep breath.

"Yeah, for right now."

"Why? Why aren't his parents with him?"

"I don't know. He seemed a little upset so I decided not to ask," he lied with a shrug. "I just figured I might as well leave well enough alone. I didn't want to upset him."

She nodded and let out a sigh as her father moved a piece. Somewhere in the back of her mind Kasumi had truly been hoping that the game would stop. She _hated_ Reversi. "Okay." She mimicked his play and didn't bother to look at her son as Sugoroku moved again. She rolled her eyes. "I'm guessing he has a good relationship with them then?"

"I think so, yeah. But I'm not sure. He doesn't really talk about them. I think he's sad that they aren't here yet."

Kasumi nodded and again copied his piece on the board. She almost sighed out loud when her father immediately launched himself into the next play. "Well, that makes sense. I would probably be upset too."

"Probably?" Sugoroku huffed. "You wouldn't miss me if you were away?"

"Depends on if you would insist on a game of Reversi," she sniped in response.

Yugi snorted and then shook his head, smiling widely. "Of course a game would decide that for you," he laughed, rolling his own eyes now. "Anyways, so yeah, I don't know about his parents or anything. I just know that he's here in Japan on his own for the time being."

"Is he staying with a friend of some kind?"

Yugi frowned, wondering at the answer he could give. He'd set up the game of checkers already. There was no way they had gone somewhere besides Yami's place to do that…

"He's staying in a hotel room."

She paused, looking at him in surprise. "He's staying in a hotel room?" Then she pursed her lips. "You were _in_ a hotel room with a _boy_?"

Yugi huffed. "Yes, and around the checkers game we had wild sex doggy style and ran off to play in an extravagant hot tub where we screwed around some more." He rolled his eyes twice, then made sure she was watching him just as keenly when he did it a third time. "No condoms, no lube, bareback. I think I probably got AIDS from it all and I totally consider it worth it."

Sugoroku choked, laughing so hard that he dropped his piece and had to close his eyes. He covered his face with his hand and shook his head, laughing harder. Yugi grinned at him, unable to stop himself, and then shook his head, snorting. And, if he was listening hard enough, he thought he heard the softest trace of a baritone chuckle around the rest of the noise.

"You go and get it, Yugi," his grandfather snorted loudly, shaking his head. He was red in the face and Yugi grinned a little more. "We've got a wild child here, Kasumi."

"Oh, well, _forgive_ me for not finding it funny," she snapped, startling them both. Yugi felt his head jerk towards her in surprise, grin falling away instantly. His grandpa blinked and frowned at her. "I don't think that unsafe sex is anything to laugh about."

Yugi gave her a flustered look. "But we all know I didn't do that," he said slowly. "The point is, Yami isn't going to just bend me over and screw my brains out, okay? We were in his hotel room together, yes, but all we did was play checkers and a couple of video games that I lent him. It's not like we both went and stole alcohol and just drank our inhibitions away. I'd like to point out how sober I am right now. Thank you for noticing."

"That's not the point—"

"Okay, well, if I remember right, you used to say you'd support me whether I was with a girl or not."

"And I _will_!"

He shrugged at her and moved to place another piece when his grandfather took the opportunity to do the same. This one was almost a mimic as his mom had been doing the entire time. When he sat back again, Yugi turned and tilted his head as he considered her annoyed look.

"The point is, I know that. But you also know that I wouldn't just follow someone into their hotel room and have sex with them like that. So maybe you could wipe that look off your face and then we'll talk some more about this."

Sugoroku stopped short, startled by his annoyed, darkened tone. He did not think he had ever heard him use it before. It was amazing to see how frosty his eyes were, how little humor he possessed now. He swallowed hard, eyes flickering between the two of them. His daughter was glaring but his grandson was simply staring, eyes sharp and boring into hers.

"No one really thinks that you would do that," he attempted to mollify them both. But his daughter bristled further and Yugi merely blinked, begging her to challenge him. Sugoroku sighed softly. "All I want to know is if he could hold his own against you in checkers."

"He won in a few moves actually. He reversed his strategy on me and managed to get almost all of my pieces in about ten turns."

He blinked, plum purple eyes widening. "I have to see that some time."

"I could invite him over for dinner sometime, I guess." It was honestly one of the perfect openings, especially now that his mom was so defensive of what he might say and do. If she refused him, they might argue further, and that was something he knew she didn't want. His grandpa had unconsciously just given him the perfect opportunity. "Although, if Mom is going to look at him like that, I don't think I should."

Kasumi pressed her lips into a thin line, scowling at him. "I'm not going to scare him off," she said in an annoyed tone. "But, I want to know more about him before you invite him."

"Like?"

"Last name?"

"Kobayashi."

"Age?"

"Sixteen."

"Do you have classes together?"

"No, he's getting some special arrangements to help him catch up with the curriculum."

"What does he look like?"

Yugi bit his lip, then snorted and shook his head. "You'll see when you meet him. It's a surprise."

She rolled her eyes and looked at the board. Then she moved a piece to copy her father again. "Birthplace?"

"Honshu. But he only stayed there for a year or two. Then his parents moved to Italy." He hummed low in his throat. Hopefully Yami was still wide awake and listening. He didn't think he'd decided to go back to sleep after all of the tension he'd surely sensed.

"History of partners?"

Yugi blinked, then gaped at her. "Huh?"

"Who has he dated?"

His cheeks flushed. "I think he was with one girl for a little while but I doubt they were serious. Then again, for all I know, he might not even want a relationship with anyone. He could be an asexual for all I know. I didn't try to ask him for details."

"So he's quiet about it. That's good."

He blinked, about to ask what that meant. And then he remembered Jonouchi. Yugi rubbed at the back of his head. He had never really gotten over the way his mom seemed to hate when the blond was alone with him. Because she knew what they would talk about, because she had walked in on Jonouchi offering him a tape more than once. He could have groaned with despair and embarrassment.

Oh gods, he'd never hear the end of it.

"Yes, he's very quiet about that kind of thing." _That's why I have no idea if he could ever like me back. Don't you just love my one-sided affections, Mom_? _I have no idea if the guy I have a thing for might like me._ "He never even says anything about girls or guys so he could be asexual for all I know. Anyways, that's not the point."

She rolled her eyes. "Does he get along with your friends?"

"Yes. We all get along pretty well."

"Good." She followed her father's lead again. Yugi knew she was hoping that he would call it quits considering how little fun she was as an opponent. He also knew his grandpa was hoping that he might take over if he got frustrated enough. The three of them were running circles around each other, planning for things that they each knew likely wouldn't happen. "What about his grades? Are they better than yours?"

Yugi cringed. "Probably."

He wasn't stupid, but he also didn't apply himself as much as he should have. Tutoring Jonouchi on certain days didn't change his reluctance to do homework or class work all of the time. He just got restless and it was more fun to ignore most of his work than have to do it all at once as they so often asked of them. But Yugi had always tested well and his grades were almost always in the higher range of B's and A's. He didn't think he had gotten a C in a long time.

"Maybe he can tutor you then."

"My grades are okay!"

"Yes, they're _okay_. If you want to make it into a good college, you need _excellent_ grades."

Yugi barely refrained from saying he most likely would never _see_ the inside of a college of any kind. The thought made his chest ache. This entire thing, being bitten, being Atem, it had ruined all of the choices he should have had after high school…

"I'll ask him but I wouldn't put any faith in it. He's super smart but I don't pay well enough attention." He raised a brow when she gave him an annoyed look. "What? You know that just as well I do. I've always had trouble concentrating on schoolwork for more than thirty minutes at a time."

"Yes, well, if you're willing to have little fantasies about having wild sex doggy style with him in his hotel room, I think you might have the ability to pay him a bit more attention."

 _And I am never going to hear the end of that one either, am I_? he thought with a roll of his eyes. That was just great. She was going to hold that over his head for the rest of his life as well, wasn't she?

"You're forgetting the sex in the hot tub," he said cheekily, smirking at her frustrated expression. "What? If you're going to talk about my fantasies, you might as well do it right. You can't forget the most fun one."

"I knew I should have had a girl."

Yugi burst out laughing. "I wasn't aware you could choose what gender your babies are," he snickered, tilting his head and raising a brow. "In that case, if I ever knock someone up, I'll have to choose a girl. Then I won't have to worry about them being stupid obsessed with sex like all us teenage boys."

Sugoroku snorted loudly, shaking his head. "You say that like your mother wasn't a teenager when she got pregnant," he laughed. Kasumi turned bright red, shooting him an angry glare. "Or how they conceived you in a hotel room."

He blinked and ran a hand through his hair. "Actually, I thought it was my dad's dorm room, but okay, either way." He shrugged. "I'm here so it's all good for me."

His grandfather laughed softly, then shook his head. "I could see how that would be good for you," he snorted, watching him with bright purple eyes. "Either way, though, your mom just doesn't want anything to happen to you because you were being reckless like she was."

"I know that. That's why I haven't done anything stupid." _Yet_. "Besides, I don't think she has to worry about that anymore anyways. Anzu and I decided we didn't feel anything for each other after all."

Both of them sat up slightly straighter, eyes wide. "Really?" they asked in unison.

He shrugged. "It happens like that sometimes," Yugi said with a shake of his head. "We tried it out a couple of times and it just didn't work. In retrospect, I guess after we realized the first date was a bust, we really shouldn't have bothered for a second."

"Well, I'm sorry. I thought you two would work out…"

"Wasn't meant to be, I guess. It doesn't really matter, though," he muttered, shaking his head and looking at the board in front of him with a shrug. "I think she has a thing for Valon, too. Maybe they would work out better."

 _Aside from him being a sociopath. I don't think he would ever be able to date her_. Then again, he supposed it was none of his business if they got somewhere in a relationship. Anzu and Valon had every right to try whatever they wanted to. Yugi put his elbow on the table and propped his chin in his palm.

"I guess it really doesn't matter." He wanted to get up, maybe to check on Yami or perhaps to just pace around. Instead he kept himself still, eyes on his mom for a moment. "Who she dates is her own business. And the same goes for Yami. But, if you put that piece down right there, you'll win, Mom."

She blinked, eyes wide as he pointed to a single empty spot. When she put it down, Sugoroku huffed in disbelief, leaning forward, and began to count the pieces she could claim before freezing. His head turned to Yugi and his mom did the same, both of them blinking curiously at him.

"You both never really noticed that I put that piece there, did you?" he commented lightly, smiling in amusement. "You should have paid more attention, Grandpa."

* * *

"Yami…" He reached over to tap on his shoulder lightly and the other boy blinked, eyes flashing open in the dark. He let out a low noise in the back of his throat, something like a snarl and a hum mixed together. Then he shifted a little away from him in order to blink and sit up, yawning.

"What's going on?" He palmed both eyes and shook his head as another long yawn left him. He ruffled his hair, running his hands through it, and then stretched his arms out in front of him. He blinked, looking to him with a small, confused shake of his head. "Are you okay? Did I kick you or something?"

Yugi blinked at him, sitting up now as well. "You've never kicked me in your sleep," he pointed out, frowning in puzzlement. Why would he have thought that he had done that of all things?

"I know I haven't. But you didn't answer."

Yugi blinked again. "Oh." He bit his lip, then ran a hand through his hair unhappily. "I just… I needed to know something. Um… W-when you killed Espa… What about Panik?"

Yami blinked, then ran his palms over his eyes again. He shook his head, flexing his jaws so wide that Yugi almost thought he could stuff his own head in. Then he remembered the terror of his dream, the alligator and Fuwa's voice, and it made him shiver. The other wolf snapped his jaws so hard that the air seemed to shudder with the wave of sound from the enamel chomping together. He shook his head rapidly, ran a hand through his hair, and turned to him.

"I ran across Panik before I did Espa," he said slowly. "They had separated and Espa had gone after you and Panik went to see if he could set a perimeter to find out if there were other wolves around. I snapped his neck when he had turned his back on me for a second. It wasn't hard hiding when he couldn't see as well as me in the dark as it was…"

Yugi felt his body quake once before relaxing. He drew in a deep breath, then exhaled loudly. "So then both of them are dead," he commented, flustered and nodding. "That's…that's really good."

Yami blinked, then shook his head. "Why are you even asking me this now? It's"—he paused, tilting his head and considering—"almost four in the morning. Why would you wish to have this conversation now?"

He flushed, then gave him an incredulous look. "How the hell do you know what time it is? You didn't even look at the clock or check my phone…"

The taller teen snorted and pulled his blanket a little higher on his shoulders, draping it there as if it were a backwards cloak. "When you become more used to the Change, your body begins to adapt to the cycles. Due to this, you're able to easily tell the time by how much you can sense of the moon overhead. It's a neat instinct."

Yugi huffed, knowing that he was both mocking and teasing him by saying that. But at least the difference between him and his bullies was that he was merciful in not digging the knife any deeper. Besides, Yami had never been openly malicious when it came to teasing him.

He was more anxious about other things, however, ignoring his light teasing and bulldozing into another question altogether.

"Do you think Fuwa could still be alive?"

His friend stopped short. His eyes widened, his head tilted, and he blinked slowly. "Fuwa?" he commented softly, echoing Yugi in a wary tone. The red-eyed wolf shook his head, narrowing his gaze, and furrowed his brows. "What does he have to do with anything?"

The smaller teen blushed, realizing how incredibly disconnected his conversational skills were at the moment. He sighed softly, then shook his head. "I just… I was having a bad dream and I recognized his voice and I… And then I started thinking about Espa and Panik and it's just…kind of throwing me off, I guess."

Yami blinked at him, eyes clear and awake now, and then shook his head. "I don't know," he answered truthfully. He frowned at him, moving to settle back into the pillow. It was hard to keep his eyes open any longer despite his attempts to remain fully aware. But he kept his focus on the smaller boy, frowning. "I would not imagine that he was capable of getting away. But I could be wrong, I suppose. If he was endowed with supernatural luck, I would assume so, but I…"

He couldn't say for sure. Yugi sighed and moved to lie comfortably beside him again. It was odd to him how much he wished Yami would get under the covers with him again. But asking him to do so meant explaining how much just his presence and natural scent did for him. And that…

Yugi couldn't find it in himself to say that he kept the nightmares and terrors at bay.

"Is there a way he could have gotten lucky like that?"

"He could have made a deal."

"A _deal_?" He turned his head, eyes wide, and stared at the other teen. In the dark his red gaze looked black and silver until he rolled away from the window to face him more directly. Then they glowed, a dark and off-colored shade of amber. It was strange, the way his eyes looked almost rustic. But then…

That was what happened when predators ran around at night, right? Their eyes often looked a different shade than they actually were, with a uniform color that glowed from inside the pupils?

"With a wish hound, I would think." He blinked and his eyes were hooded. Yugi blinked at him, startled, then frowned. Maybe asking him and keeping him awake like this was unfair. Yami was visibly tired. He was so clearly exhausted. And the medication he'd taken only seemed to make it worse. He waited a few seconds, debating it, and then sighed softly. Yami was breathing evenly again and his heart was slower than it seemed when he was awake.

He was fast asleep again.

Yugi ran a hand through his hair. That was okay. Yami needed sleep. Something was going on in his head and messing with his sleep patterns if he was so desperate for medicine. He had only wanted them before because they needed his metabolism to slow down and sleep was the sole way to force his body to do so. Now he was taking them on his own, not even bothering to ask him about it any longer. He was simply doing as he saw necessary in order to sleep now.

The smaller teen sighed again, running his hands through his hair, and shook his head in frustration. Yugi laid more comfortably back into the pillow. What the fuck was a wish hound though? Was it a werewolf too?

Yugi blinked.

Hound…wish hound—hellhound.

Fuck, what else kind of wolves were there? What the hell kind of craziness was that? How many hellhounds—classes or subtypes or species or whatever it was— _were_ there?

He hesitated, but Yami seemed to be sleeping like the dead as Yugi leaned over. He pulled the fleece blanket a bit higher on the other teen, then moved to tuck it more tightly around his lithe frame. It occurred to him how ridiculous it was that he was tucking him in, but it felt good to be doing something. He licked his lips, then closed his eyes to settle next to him.

His sleep was of nothing but darkness. And then he heard the faintest noise in his ears. It was a whispering hiss, soft and dangerous. And it was becoming louder, frantic. Yugi felt something jerk beneath him. His immediate thought was that he was falling off his bed. His second was that something hot was touching his skin.

And it was spreading outwards.

It encompassed his wrist towards his elbow.

He jerked away from it. His eyes snapped open as he flinched. He blinked, startled into awareness. His arm was still burning. He hissed and started to sit up. In the dark, dazed, the small teen could not understand what the hell was going on. He was still exhausted. The darkness he'd been encompassed by had not given him even a hint of energy.

What _did_ give him the faintest spark of energy was the horror of the scene in front of him.

Yami was writhing on the mattress next to him. His nails were cutting into his wrists again. And the blood was spilling in waves. Sinew and muscle were cut through with slick, sharp slapping noises. Yugi gaped, at first too shocked to move.

But the taller teen was still thrashing. The blood looked like oil in the sheets. It horrified him further. The sky blue of the cotton was eagerly drinking away the blood, soaking in it hungrily. Yugi felt dizzy for a moment. And for a split second he wondered what was happening.

His mouth opened and closed again, eyes wider than ever. Yami's jaws were open. The snarling was escalating and dropping in rapid crests of noise. His nails were growing darker. His fingers were splintering viciously in the air. And, when his mouth opened further, it made Yugi's heart stop.

His gums were bright white. Along his teeth, they were beginning to bleed. The bright red against his enamel was terrible. He couldn't move. The teeth began to fall away. Long, sharp canines began to push upwards. He snarled louder and the noise was pushed into a hideous gargling.

Oh gods…

" _Fuck_ ," Yugi breathed out. But he couldn't move for a long moment. Yami was thrashing again, harder than before. He kicked his legs from beneath the fleece blanket. His back arched upwards. The vertebrae began to pop beneath his skin. His fingers were beginning to fold and snap loudly. His nails were split and sharper, buried to the knuckles in his own skin.

Yugi launched him forward. He caught the wrist closest. Yami snarled and spat. His gargling grew louder. His back arched off the bed. Then he jerked harder. And Yugi couldn't stop himself from flinching slightly. Yami's jaw was becoming elongated. His lips were pulling further back. His gums were bleeding heavily. The cords in his neck thrashed and pulled taut.

Yugi squeezed on his wrists and tugged him slightly forward. The other boy thrashed and snarled. The smaller teen couldn't think straight for a moment. The wolf snarled and his mouth stretched even further. He snapped his teeth. The enamel clicked too loudly. Yugi flinched, releasing him.

He could only gape for a moment.

He opened and closed his mouth.

And then it occurred to him.

Yami was thrashing.

Yami was snarling.

Yami was _changing_.

He blinked.

Yugi launched himself forward. His arms wrapped tightly around Yami's torso. He forced his arms to his sides. He pulled him tightly to his chest. His fingers dug into his spine. Yami tried to twist and thrash. But the lack of space made him snarl louder. He threw his head back as if he might howl. But then his jaws snapped shut again. For a moment he was frozen. Then his eyes seemed to roll up into his head. His eyelids fluttered and twitched, then began part. At first all Yugi saw was white. Then they rolled downwards again.

Yami blinked slowly, gaze sharp and glittering in the dark. His mouth was bleeding still. His lips were colored bright red. His eyes were glowing. His mouth opened and closed. Yami's countenance was almost more wolf than human. His eyelids were black around the corners. His gaze had become almond in shape.

His mouth opened and closed again. His teeth clicked. Then he snarled louder. And Yugi swore he looked _so much_ more wolf than human. His spine was harsh and taut like a bow. He could feel each of his vertebrae like knives. His hands twitched and his claws flexed. And when he tilted his head, he looked vicious and dangerous.

Yugi was frozen.

Yami's jaws flashed open.

And he lunged at him.

The smaller teen released him with a yelp. But the other boy merely threw him backwards. Yugi landed hard on the mattress, winded and shocked. The mattress was suddenly light, Yami's weight gone.

Yugi drew in a long breath, then forced himself to sit up. He searched the darkness for a moment. Then he looked to the window. Yami didn't seem to be anywhere in sight. And the window was still completely latched. The locks were in place. He would have heard him had he fled out the window, wouldn't he?

Yugi blinked, then looked towards the sheets.

He hadn't noticed when Yami had begun thrashing.

He hadn't heard him before then.

He hadn't realized this was going on. He had not felt it when his distress had peaked. He had not woken from the kicking or snarling. He had woken because he'd felt his blood on his arm. And because the mattress had jerked when the other lycanthrope had thrashed too hard.

He closed his eyes for a split second. Then he let out a deep breath.

"Yami?" he whispered.

It seemed ridiculous to speak into the dark room. He shivered, then got up.

Had he gone to the bathroom? Was he hiding in there?

Or had he gone into his closet as he had earlier that day to rest?

Yugi pulled the door open to his closet first, whispering his name again. But there was no answer and his heart had begun to skip beats. Fuck, where could he have gone?

He turned to the bathroom, opening the door now. When he peeked inside, the darkness came in splotches and shades. It was amazing to him how brilliantly his new eyes adapted to it. He could make out the toilet in a shade of silver, dark but not quite gray. The mirror showed his own face in gray and black and a streak of his bangs in soft gold. The wastebasket was completely black, an abyss, the bag dark gray. And the shower curtain was still pulled open to see into the tub.

And the red-eyed teen was not there either.

" _Shit_ ," he whispered, stomach dropping. Fuck, where had he gone? Yugi drew in a deep breath, trying to scent him. But the room stank too deeply of blood. The metallic aroma was harsh and burned his nose. And the air was laden with the warmth of it, pressing hard on his skin like a blanket.

"Yami, please come out…"

He had no idea where he could be. The thought was alarming to him. There were only so many places he could hide as it was. He could list them off the top of his head. But then, what did he know about Yami hiding? He'd proven himself capable of stealth on more than one occasion.

Yugi felt sick.

"Please? I didn't mean to freak you out," he pleaded, swallowing hard. The small teen looked around again, heart pounding. "I'm sorry…"

There was the softest shift of noise. His head snapped around. He couldn't pinpoint it. And it lasted only a second. There was the softest, most uncomfortable noise.

"Are you mad?"

Yugi blinked.

Where the fuck was his voice even coming from?

He looked around himself for a moment. "No," he muttered softly, shaking his head. He faltered, eyes widening. His mouth opened and closed and his eyes grew wider than ever.

The bed…?

Was Yami…?

"Why would I be mad?"

He tilted his head towards the ground, listening hard. He blinked, because Yami didn't respond for what felt like hours. He couldn't hear his heart or his breathing. He shifted closer to the bed, then glanced over his shoulder. For a split second he expected him to be behind him. He would be standing there, watching him.

But he wasn't.

Yugi turned back, frowning. The bed…? Was Yami really over there…? He strained his eyes, but he could not see any blood anywhere. Surely if he was…but he'd been on the other side of it. He would see the blood smeared on the other side if he was right…

"Come out, okay? I'm not mad. I just want to know if you're okay, Yami. Please…?" He faltered for a moment. How was he so quiet? He wished he had Yami's capabilities and trust of his senses. Then maybe he would be able to pinpoint his exact location… "I'm sorry for scaring you."

The shuffling noise returned. Yugi immediately stiffened, then started forward. It was the bed. Yami was either hiding beneath it or behind it. He had to be…

Yugi crept towards it. "Are you okay, Yami?" he whispered, moving to crouch in front of the bed. He licked his lips and went to pull up the blankets that had fallen over the edge of the mattress, pooling on the floor. "Please, just come out."

When he pulled the blankets away, he yelped and stumbled back. He fell on his ass, legs spread out in front of him. A small curse left his lips. Yami paused in pulling himself out of the gap between the bed and the floor. Then he shifted away from him and took a seat a couple of feet away. His legs were drawn up and his arms wrapped around them. He kept his eyes on the carpet.

Yugi breathed in deeply, struggling to remember how to steady himself. Then he let out a small sigh and shifted closer. The other boy snarled when he got too close. The noise was distress more than aggression, but he still heeded it. Letting out a small sigh, the teen licked his lips and sat back on his haunches.

Yami blinked, then raised his eyes slightly. Yugi's position was maintained for only a moment. Then he moved his legs and folded them beneath him. The crisscrossed position made him frown. Why wasn't he mad? He couldn't sense anything but concern and bewilderment. But he didn't want to look up at his face. What if he was reading it wrong and Yugi had finally gotten so fed up that he was glaring?

"I'm sorry for scaring you."

Yami cringed. Scaring him? _He_ hadn't scared him. He'd been too angry and scared to face him, yes, but it was not fear _of_ Yugi. Yami swallowed hard, then moved his head to bury his face in his jeans. His fingers flexed and his nails felt laden with blood. Were his fingers sticky? They clung tightly to his jeans, he knew that much. But he was not sure they felt as they should have…

"We need to look at your wrists."

Yami flinched. "No."

Yugi blinked. "No? You don't want me to bandage them again?" he inquired. He narrowed his eyes and tilted his head. "Are you sure? I'm going to have to change the sheets and everything anyways. I figured I would look at them around doing that."

He shook his head rapidly.

Why couldn't he just…?

Why the hell was he so…?

He blinked and hissed, "You should be pissed."

"Because you had a night terror and the medication didn't keep it away?" Yugi asked in an incredulous voice. "I should be pissed at you because you might need a higher dose than I do? Because you panicked and clawed at your arms? Or that you started to change when you couldn't wake yourself up? Which one am I supposed to be so pissed off about, Yami?"

The red-eyed teen raised his head just enough to peer at him from the very edge of his peripheral. Yugi was watching him with an anxious, miserable expression. He wondered if he could tell just how stupid he felt. Or if he was simply trying to sympathize with him when there was no reason to.

"I ruined your bed."

"Ruined my…? Oh please, I needed a new mattress anyways. When I get the laundry done in the morning, I'll tell my mom that I puked on the mattress or something. I'll say I didn't wake up and it soaked through. She wouldn't want me sleeping on a soiled mattress." He flashed him a grin, eyes bright and kind. He was notably worried and it made his body slightly stiff, but Yami could see it more in the set of his shoulders than his expression. "And if there's anything on the carpet, it spilled over. I just didn't wake up when it was still wet and there's nothing she can do about it."

"You shouldn't have to lie so much…"

"I don't consider it lying if it's to protect someone. To me lying is something that you do for personal gain. But it's more complex than that when someone else is involved," he answered, shaking his head. "And it's not as if I had done this in your place, I wouldn't come up with the same kind of story. Because I would."

"Why aren't you mad? Anyone else would be."

"How am I going to be mad about you getting hurt or having night terrors, Yami? The only thing I'm upset about is that you don't want me to bandage your wrists. And you need them done. And that you even _think_ for one _second_ that I would be upset with you over _this_. That's upsetting. You shouldn't be scared that I would be mad at you over that."

Yami felt small and childish, like he had gotten chastised by a concerned bystander or a loving family member. He faltered, staring at him, then looked away again. How stupid of him. He should have known.

Yugi wasn't…

He just…

He wasn't that kind of person…

"I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"Upsetting you… I… Do you want help with the sheets?" He blinked when Yugi immediately shook his head and sighed softly. The smaller teen got to his feet and for a moment Yami thought of executioners towering over their targets. And he wondered about how the gods looked when they retrieved souls to drag to Paradise and his heart ached and his chest grew tight. He looked immediately away again, struggling to breathe in. His words came out in a tight, choked tone. "We can bandage my wrists after—"

Yugi was silent when he crouched next to him. But he was sighing when he drew him closer and hugged him tightly for a second. "Why do you always do this? You're hurt. Stop trying to look for things to do. You could end up hurting yourself even more and you don't even consider that, do you?" He pulled away after a moment, afraid of pushing too far into his personal space, and stepped back. "We can do your wrists now."

Yami blinked, then looked up at him. His body was too stiff for a moment to even fully perform the action. His bones popped with the movement. Then he shook his head and the noise sounded like gunfire to him.

"Let's get the bed first. Then we can do my wrists."

In what world did that make sense? Yugi supposed he could just be too self-conscious to want him to pay him so much attention. Or it could be that he was simply too freaked out. Either way, he was reluctant to acquiesce. But then, Yami would heal soon, wouldn't he? Or at least enough to stop the bleeding. He was not sure, but perhaps then he would be more comfortable with the idea of letting him stitch his wrists again.

"Okay, sure. We'll do the bed first."

It took what felt like hours. Yami helped him awkwardly, occasionally wincing and hissing when the fabric brushed too hard against his skin. The aching wounds were too raw and fresh and Yugi flinched upon seeing them. With the lights on, Yami looked pale. Blood loss would do that to anyone, he supposed. But it hurt to see him with such an ashen color to his face.

He threw the sheets to the floor, dug under the bed for the first aid kit, and threw it onto the mattress. The bright blue fibers were soaked completely, and the sound of it hitting that spot let out a squelching noise. He thought of boots sinking into mud and rain-laden straw and nearly hurled.

Yami glanced at the box, frowned, and then sighed as he moved to expose his wrists to him. Yugi squeezed his eyes shut the moment he got a glance at them. Yami had torn to the bone. He could see it, pale and shiny, against the grizzle of torn flesh. The red edges were layer upon layer of gouged muscle and sinew and veins that were rapidly repairing themselves. His hands were shaky, the blue and purple of his veins along his fingers sharply outlined.

Yugi drew in a deep breath, opened his eyes again, and began to dig into the first aid kit. He would patch his arms up. Then he would go to the washer and see about what he could use to get the blood out. Then, later, when everyone was awake, he would tell his mom he'd puked and the mattress was soaked.

And he'd have to hope that she would buy it.

* * *

Yugi drew him a little closer. Yami squirmed now, slightly uncomfortable, and glanced over his shoulder at him. The smaller teen shook his head and moved the comforter to drape more notably around the other teen. Yami blinked and frowned at him and Yugi sighed softly as he closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath. "Just relax, okay? I just don't want you to have another night terror. And you snapped out of it when I was closer to you."

Yami blinked and then turned away. "I'm sorry," he repeated softly. He closed his eyes again and his breathing began to even out slightly. But his body was still tense and Yugi was well aware that he was not going to fall asleep as quickly as he had before. He'd _barely_ convinced him to lie down under the comforter instead of on top of it and then he'd pulled him closer to him when he'd hovered at the edge.

They weren't spooning but Yugi kind of had half the mind to for a split second. Then he rolled over. The movement made Yami look over his shoulder but the smaller teen yawned, ignoring him. "Go back to sleep, okay? You're okay. Your wrists are clean. You shouldn't have any issue sleeping now, okay? I'll get you some more medicine if you're worried, Yami. But I don't think you'll have any problem."

Yami stared at him for a long minute, then turned away and faced the window. Maybe he should go running for a little while instead. Maybe he should go hunting. Maybe then he would be exhausted before he passed out.

Behind him, facing the wall, the small teen found his eyelids fluttering shut. He'd planned originally to stay awake until Yami fell asleep. He'd meant to monitor him for a few minutes, see that the dream didn't come back.

Instead his body felt weighted and heavy and when he breathed in, he smelled aspen trees and snow as it drifted in small flakes of white. Moonlight was cold and soft, drifting through the shadows of branches and drizzling onto his skin. The air touched through his flesh, shifting through his hair. And, abruptly, softly, with cold breezes, the blue-violet-eyed wolf was coaxed forward. He flicked his ears and looked about himself.

The snow crunched beneath his paws. The trees were golden towards their cores, soft and glistening. The branches were all thin and layered in inches of ice. The silver of moonlight made it seemingly glow and the shadows which draped across the snow were gorgeous cobalt blue. It shimmered where the light was more direct upon the crystals. And when he glanced up the moon seemed to be draped in ribbons of gold and dark violet, splotches of dark blue like the specks in his eyes, and layered with the softest twinge of silver around the edges. The sky was black, but all around the trees there were long, beautiful smears and touches of silver where the stars mottled together. The tips of the branches around the darkness were like sharp teeth and hideous claws. He stared up at the soft tendrils of violet and royal blue and silver and white.

 _Atem_.

Yugi blinked and turned his head. There was a river nearby. He could hear the water. It was soft and trickling, the stones within the currents of its gentle touch glittering, the tops covered in inches of snow. He flicked his ears towards the river and back, then turned his head. Immediately his eyes sought the shape of a form approaching him.

The wolf was immense in size, almost as big as Yami. But it lacked the larger chest and its shoulders were not as broad. He was slender, with long legs and a large head. The ears were soft, the cheeks broad and fluffy. He trotted with grace that Yugi wondered if he'd possessed when he was alive as well.

He was dark brown along the face, with a deeply set cinnamon around the center of the forehead. His ears were red-tipped, his eyes circled with soft smears of white. His brows were somewhere between tan and tawny in shade and the gray came further along his neck when he navigated the dune between them. He was tall, legs firm and body relaxed. When he stopped a few feet away, Yugi could see that he had a good inch over him in height, that his white legs were the tiniest hint thicker than his own as well.

The wolf's eyes were a brilliant shade of green. Yugi was reminded of emeralds and sea water and fresh leaves. But mostly he thought of teal, because the very slightest hint of blue encircled his irises at the edges.

 _Hello_.

The wolf cocked his head. Then his tail wagged, long and bushy, tipped with black but mostly colored bright cinnamon red and dark gray. Yugi could see the touches of brown and tawny in the undercoat. _How are you, Atem_? the wolf asked, wagging his tail more now. His eyes were bright and beautiful as they bore into Yugi's.

 _I'm good,_ he said absently, though he was staring at this newcomer with darkened eyes. He knew this wolf. He had seen his eyes before. He had met him before. He blinked and flicked his ears forward, eyes caught on his face. He _knew_ him. He _did_. He… _You helped me the night I changed._

The wolf wagged his tail harder. _Yes_ , he admitted, watching him. _I did. I tried to help you heal enough to recover. It helped that Yami was doing the same._

Yugi blinked. _You know Yami_?

 _I do. I know him very well_ , the other stated simply before glancing over his shoulder. His neck was dark, with ringlets of glossy gray and black and brown which faded to white on his chest. His red ears pricked forward before his head swung back to face him. _Come with me. I was sent to summon you to meet Ra._

Yugi blinked, eyes widening. _Ra_? _She's never sent someone to fetch me before,_ he commented, tilting his head. _Is everything okay_?

 _I don't doubt things go wrong for gods occasionally as well,_ the gray wolf replied, giving him a small, playful glance. He began to walk in a slow pace, allowing Yugi to get to his side. They were trotting within seconds. Yugi looked at him, eyes wide as he considered.

He was strong, muscular, with large jaws and wide cheeks. His eyes were intelligent and secretive and his lashes were an odd gray-silver color. He held his head up, his ears pricked forward, and moved gracefully. He looked incredibly capable of taking on any possible threat, both by strength and strategy.

So why was he _dead_?

Had _he_ been experimented on?

Had he gotten killed in the—?

Yugi found himself stumbling, eyes wide and horrified. His mouth opened and closed twice and he stared stupidly at the other wolf. The gray canine turned around with a startled expression, brows raised, ears flicking, head tilted. Yugi felt a hideous cry welling from inside of his throat. His eyes were dilated, but the whites were unusually visible.

 _You—you were his cell mate_!

The wolf blinked. _Clever Yugi_. He tilted his head. _Yes, I was his cell mate. I came to know him very well. He is a very beautiful soul, don't you think_? _I miss him a lot. He was the one bright spot within that diseased shit hole of a place. And he is so troubled now._

Yugi bristled faintly, more with fear than aggression. _He wasn't troubled then_? he asked, ears flattening against his skull. He felt his skin shudder, fur rising and falling in jerks. _He wasn't troubled when he was in the labs_?

 _I didn't let him dwell on such things._

His heart felt weak in his chest. Did _he_ let Yami dwell on those things? He had asked him on numerous occasions to talk about it when he did not want to. That definitely gave reason to believe he was doing such a thing. He felt small, reprimanded by the simplicity of his realization.

 _W-who…_? _What's_ _your_ …?

The wolf gave him a somewhat amused look. His eyes were glowing now, glittering with laughter, and then turned away. _I am not allowed to tell you my name. Yami would not do well to know I am doing this now,_ he replied gently, shaking his head. He turned away again, trotting forward as Yugi stumbled a step behind him.

The seconds passed before the wolf turned to him, spinning around to acknowledge him more fully. He shifted his shoulders, then shook himself out lazily as he considered him. His ears flicked about and his eyes looked towards the small dip of the hill down the dune rising before the white canine.

 _Ra is waiting towards the banks,_ he murmured softly. His ears pricked forward again and then he glanced over his shoulder once more before turning to him. His nose brushed his cheek, then his tongue ran over his muzzle to his forehead. Yugi shuddered, eyes wide and startled. _I will be here whenever you or Yami should need me._

He stared back at him, fur twitching along his shoulders. When he tipped his head up the slightest bit more, the gray wolf watched him with bright eyes. He was friendly, not the least bit angered by his stubborn stare. Finally Yugi moved forward to press their shoulders together, brushing against him as he began to move forward. _Thank you,_ he replied, glancing over at him again one last time. Those green eyes were glittering, something that Yugi did not fully understand shining there.

 _Thank you for helping him,_ the gray wolf answered with a look away. He turned and began to move away into the blue shadows tossed about by the crowded trees. Yugi watched him, fur shuddering along his spine once more, and turned back to the dune. He trotted quickly to leap over the pile of snow and barely caught himself as his paws slipped briefly. He flicked his ears again.

 _Welcome, Atem,_ a husky voice called. He thought of smokers for a moment, then looked over. The she-wolf, golden and seemingly glowing even in the darkness of the eternal night his dreams seemed to possess, was seated feet away. Her tail flicked and her ears pricked forward further to stare at him coldly.

 _Did you summon me here_?

The goddess narrowed dark blue eyes, then growled softly, her voice embittered. _I did not. You found your way here of your own volition. I simply thought it wise to bring you to me in order to speak to you before you began to seek answers from unreliable sources._

He bristled. _You think_ he's _unreliable_? he demanded. The green-eyed wolf seemed the most reliable of the ones which haunted his dreams. It was Ra who seemed to play games with him, or mock as if he was nothing but a foolish child. Slifer seemed to watch him, guide only when pressed upon for information, and simply evade the answers he might wish to have given him. And Yami fed him half-truths because, Yugi realized, he was too fearful of facing his past to give him all of the answers he sought. He was too busy running from the things that upset him to find the strength to speak of the things Yugi wanted him to.

 _Him_? _No. He is one of the most dependable wolves to grace life or death,_ she answered somewhat ruefully. Her ears flicked about. _But his motives are not as straightforward as you might believe. You yourself are not the most important person to him._

Yugi blinked. _No, because Yami is_. His fur lifted along his shoulders and bristled harshly within the dark blue of shadows draped across his pelt. He blinked, then curled his lips back uncomfortably. _What is your point_?

 _You are Atem, are you not_? she drawled. _And yet he chooses to care for another._

 _What's your point_? he repeated. _I have no problem with him caring more for someone else than me. It is not my right to demand he care more for me than them._

 _You are oddly demure about this fact._

 _Yami is important to me. And he's important to this other wolf. Why should I attempt to smother whatever connection they might have had together_?

But was it one-sided? Yugi had to wonder, confused. Had Yami felt something in return for him? But Yugi was not sure that he truly wished to know. Perhaps it was too much to expect the possibility that Yami had only felt something towards his mate. He blinked. His mate had been female. Why would he have felt anything for his cell mate, however?

And why should he feel anything for _him_?

 _How did he survive the experiments_?

He could not bring himself to speak of Atem in the first person. It seemed too all-encompassing to him and so he shied away entirely. Perhaps Yami was not the only one too afraid to face realities he did not like.

Ra blinked at him. _Must you always ask such frivolous questions, Atem_? _You survived because the wolf is born of resilience and strength, the power to overcome and be born anew._ That _is how you came to survive. And you_ … _you cannot die. The_ wolf _cannot die._

He stared at her, lips curling slightly. The wolf could not die? Did she mean that she would not _allow_ him to die? Or did she mean that his death meant the fall of the lycanthropes and thus she would never have allowed it?

The power to overcome and be born anew…

Did that truly mean he would come back from the dead? That he would be revived into a body that was already healed or still healing? Was that the truth of what Yami had told him of the Pure-Bloods? Was that the real gift of the immortality he might possess?

 _Yugi…_

The word drifted softly through his ear, his head swimming with the noise. He blinked and turned his head, glancing around. But he could tell already that they were not there. He blinked again and looked towards Ra.

 _Is he okay_?

Ra stared at him with something almost frustrated. _He is, but you respond to his call like a dog, so why not return to your master_? she sneered. Yugi bristled but the idea of being capable of relieving whatever worry Yami had seemed to push away the sting of the insult. Ra was too arrogant and proud, clearly still ruffled by the last of their conversations.

 _At least I have someone to return to,_ he replied coldly. The response startled the she-wolf, though he did not think it was with anger. He thought, oddly, that really she looked as if she were more surprised and maybe somewhat pleased. He wondered if it was the fact that he and Yami were so close. She had claimed that Atem was meant to be self-reliant, however.

So, why should she be proud to see him so dependent upon Yami or vice versa?

His name came to his ears again. He tipped his head back, ears flicking back and forth. Where was he? Yami wasn't in his dream. He must have been awake. Was he hurt again? Yugi blinked towards Ra. And the she-wolf offered him only a cynical look. Her head tilted, her eyes narrowing.

Yugi blinked again and Yami's face was in the center of his sight. The red eyes were wide, head tilted, and mouth set in a thin line. He looked worried, but also somewhat sick. The small teen blinked, then swallowed hard. He felt exhausted, and for the smallest moment he wondered about bright green eyes and dark gray and brown and white fur.

"What's wrong?" he asked before stopping short. His eyes widened drastically again. What was that smell? He blinked, then started to sit up. Yami moved a couple of inches back from him. Yugi rubbed his hands over his face and then turned his head.

Oh…

"I'm sorry," Yami said immediately. He looked almost scared, somewhat submissive and awkward as he fidgeted unhappily. Yugi swallowed hard. The taller teen looked absolutely _miserable_ , actually.

"It's okay," he promised, giving him another kind smile. He rolled his shoulders and looked at the other side of the mattress. The smell was acrid and keen and Yugi pursed his lips. Yami had vomited on the mattress, but he wondered if he'd also hit the floor beneath it as well.

"I didn't—"

He turned his head, tilting it towards the taller boy. "I know you didn't mean to. And it's okay, Yami. It's fine. You got sick. It happens." He yawned. "Give me a minute and I can clean it up."

Yami frowned, red eyes widening. He should have cleaned it himself. He shouldn't have woken him like this. The taller teen felt stung by his own thoughts now. It was stupid of him to do this. He should never have woken him like this…

"I can clean it," he answered in a weak voice, eyes widening further. He tilted his head and looked at Yugi. Why had he not thought to do this himself? He felt sick. Why had he not bothered to do so himself? He could have cleaned it himself without waking Yugi up in the first place.

"No, I'll get it," Yugi argued, shaking his head and starting to get up. The comforter was covered in it too. Oh gods, poor Yami; what had caused him to vomit?

Had he gotten scared?

Had he…?

"Yami, how much medicine did you end up taking?"

He froze, eyes widening, and then looked towards him with a somewhat startled expression. He swallowed hard, then mumbled in a self-conscious tone, "I took a few more when I still couldn't sleep. You were fast asleep and I decided to get up and get some more medicine. But I ended up…" He gestured vaguely at the mess on the mattress and looked awkwardly down at the mattress. "I'm sorry. I should have just cleaned it myself instead…"

Yugi blinked and shook his head. "You shouldn't take too much medicine at one time," he said, rather than answering his slightly sardonic scornful comment about himself. "You can either end up vomiting or passing out. You don't want to overdo it with this stuff."

Yami glanced at him sideways and found his stomach tossing. Yugi had said his mom had found him passed out on the floor after taking all of his medication before. Had he been almost comatose? Had he simply lay there unreceptive until she had managed to wake him?

Yugi stretched his arms over his head, then jumped to his feet and padded towards the bathroom. Yami watched him go, then looked at the mess he'd made. His stomach knotted and his mouth was dry, cottony from the plaster of spit holding his tongue to the roof there. Why had he woken him?

Yami blinked and shame crawled up the curve of his spine. Because he had gotten scared. Because he had thought, for a single second, that he was going to be attacked for the weakness. And, for some reason, he'd thought that admitting to it would somehow lessen the pain.

He looked away and then twisted around as Yugi returned to his side. The small teen was humming as he crouched down. His blue-violet eyes widened for a moment and Yami looked downwards to see what he was staring at.

Yugi was frozen now, startled, slightly horrified.

The red-eyed wolf felt sick.

Yugi was staring at the blood smears across the carpet, the indigo fibers stained dark brown, almost black. He could see them from the position Yami had dropped to the ground to the exact spot he'd crawled under the bed and hidden there. He imagined more of the floor was stained like this.

"How are your wrists?" Yugi couldn't remember how far he'd had to bandage them, if he'd dug deeper than before rather than clawed them open to his elbows. He blinked and raised his head, risking a glance. He'd dug to the bone of his wrists and he'd gotten halfway to his elbows. The entire length of his upper forearms was covered in tight white tape. "Do they hurt?"

Yami had the impulse to hide them behind his back but shrugged it off. "No, they feel okay," he muttered, voice sounding moments away from a croak. The edges were cut and ragged. He thought of shards of glass and shattering stones. The red-eyed teen wondered if Yugi thought it as weak and raw as he did. But he couldn't raise his eyes to his again. "I think they are all right."

"I can clean them again before I go to school," he offered, turning back to the blood on the floor.

Maybe he should get some more of that cleaner from the operating room again. Since he'd been bullied, Yugi had been stealing small quantities of it, diluting it just enough so that it did not seem to mess up the carpet and its color. He had only ever grabbed it from older supplies, more often used spray bottles rather than new shipments. If he'd opened new ones it would look more suspicious than anything.

Yami blinked. "No, that's not necessary."

The smaller teen hesitated, then looked up at him. It was a low blow, and he knew that, but he had to at least see if they were healing even slightly. Yugi cleared his throat and tilted his head. "I know it's not necessary, but it would help a lot to put my mind at ease," he said quietly, waiting as the seconds ticked by in near silence.

The red-eyed boy faltered for a moment, silently looking over his wrists. Then he let out a long, cold breath, and turned to him. He really did not want Yugi to see them. But he also didn't want to burden him any more than he already had.

"Okay."

He blinked, heart breaking at the shattered tone of the word. Yami looked completely miserable and the smaller teen wanted for a moment to pull him close, maybe whisper in his ear to reassure him. Instead, knowing well that Yami would flinch away from any touch he might offer, he grinned childishly as if it might ease his tension.

"I'll check them before I leave for school," he repeated himself, feeling slightly stupid for doing so. He'd already said that and now it made his stomach turn as he looked at Yami. Then he glanced down at the mattress again and wondered. Wouldn't it be wiser of him to just go ahead and skip school that day and talk to his mom about getting a new mattress? He sighed and stood up. "School is going to have to wait, actually."

Yami blinked and his eyes grew large with disbelief. Had he caused him to change his mind and skip for the day? He truly should have just let him sleep at this rate. He was so stupid to have done this. Why had he opened his mouth and done this? He could have cleaned it himself. And Yugi would have been upset but he wouldn't be awake an hour earlier than necessary and he wouldn't have to worry about cleaning. And he wouldn't be considering skipping school.

"I need to see about getting a waterproof cover too, just in case—and new sheets and a comforter." He hummed, tilting his head to the side and wondering at the thought. Why hadn't he considered a waterproof cover before then? It would have been a lifesaver right about now. "Maybe I should get a couple more pillows too…"

Yami cringed visibly. "Maybe I shouldn't…"

Yugi blinked and looked up. "Shouldn't what?" he asked, tilting his head. His brain was still rolling around with the idea of what sheets and comforter he should get. And, subconsciously, he had begun to wonder if perhaps getting an entirely new bed would be a better idea. Then again, if he was going to do that, he would have to find a way to hide the blood he knew was beneath the bed frame. He could pull it out of place, clean and then move it back. But that seemed like a lot more work than he cared to commit to. He looked around the room for a split second and the relief of his gaze removing itself from Yami's face allowed the other boy to speak again.

"Maybe I shouldn't sleep on the bed anymore."

Yugi blinked and his head snapped around. His eyes were wide, his breath catching for a moment. Yami was staring down at the mattress, but Yugi knew he could see his expression from the corner of his eye.

He frowned. Saying the wrong thing would be catastrophic to their relationship. He knew that without thought. Yugi considered, staring at him, and tilted his head as he tried to find words. Yami was staring at him from his peripheral. He wondered how keen his vision truly was from that single point. As a wolf, they were capable of catching even a mosquito in flight. As a human, he did not know what limitations it possessed.

"Do you not want to sleep on the bed anymore?"

Yami blinked, then turned to him and searched his face for a moment. "No," he muttered, swallowing hard. "I do, I just… This always seems to happen. If I vomit on the floor, that's…less distressing than destroying your bed like this…"

Yugi shook his head and sighed softly. "Yami, I promise you, I'm not mad at you. I've never been mad at you over this. You took too much medicine and you puked. I'm not going to turn around and blame you for that. You reacted badly when you took too much." He swallowed hard and closed his eyes. "But if you don't want to sleep on the bed anymore, that's okay, but at least let me get you a futon or something. I don't… Oh, wait, I've got a sleep mat in the closet that you can use instead. Jonouchi, Honda or Tomoya used to use it whenever they would spend the night."

Yami pursed his lips. "A mat?" he murmured softly, blinking. Some part of him felt cold and etched with pain, hollowed out. He didn't want to move away from Yugi but sleeping on the bed seemed like a bad idea in every sense now. He was and always would be haunted by nightmares and terrors. And each time he had cut into his own flesh with his nails and bled everywhere. And he'd puked on the floor when he'd gotten distressed formerly. Now he'd done the same on the bed and that just seemed ridiculous to disregard. But did he really want to sleep on a mat?

 _Could_ he sleep on a mat?

A cold shiver spread up his spine and his eyes narrowed into slits. His lips threatened to curl back as a harsh wave of fear gripped him. He'd slept on mats before. There had been metal doors and glass cases and long periods of being dragged out and brought back without enough of a memory of what had happened from leaving to returning. There had been shocks and volts of lightning through his skin and metal cutting into flesh and—

" _No_ …"

Yugi froze in place. His alpha's eyes were far away and he was croaking in a hoarse voice. He looked shaken, horrified, as if some distant thought had crossed into his consciousness and it was burning him. He swallowed hard but Yami looked dead, his eyes hollowed out. The life seemed to have been dissipated from him completely.

"Yami, hey, I didn't mean any…" He stared at him, unable to think of what more he could say. Then he wondered if talking was even a good idea. Yami had begun to quiver and his entire body was wracked with fine tremors. The smaller boy swallowed hard, looking at him. He couldn't remember if he'd dealt with anyone when they'd had an emotional breakdown.

He'd held him earlier that morning in order to stop him from thrashing and changing. It had seemed stupid, but somehow correct all the same. Yugi shivered and shook his head. Was he okay? Was he going to be sick? What if he started puking or vomiting or something? He had taken care of his grandpa when he had gotten sick, had helped him nurse his grandma, and assisted his mom with surgeries.

But this was different.

He'd never had someone do this before. Yami had done it once or twice but he'd seemed to snap out of it. Now he hardly seemed able. He looked sick and deathly, as if he might vomit again. And the trembling hadn't ceased.

Was he supposed to talk?

Yugi wasn't foolish enough to think touching him might do him any good. To do that made it more likely Yami would lash out. And then, if he hurt him, he could not see Yami recovering well from the shock of it. He drew in a deep breath.

Touching him and speaking were out.

But what of his other senses?

Yugi blinked and shifted his weight. Yami tracked his movement with a turn of his head but did not raise his eyes. He didn't think sight was the best cue to rely on to help him, either, however. He had simply meant to sit back on his heels some.

He blinked again, then looked at him more fully. Yami wasn't breathing regularly. He was shaking and his breaths were erratic, short and shallow and so swift they made his head spin. Yugi blinked, then drew in a long, deep breath himself. What was the timeframe for breathing when someone was panicking? How many seconds?

His mind was racing.

Yugi struggled for a moment to comprehend half of the thoughts in his head. Instinct said to try to reassure him. Knowledge said to not startle him. Instinct said to offer comfort. Knowledge said Yami might lash out in his disoriented fear. Instinct offered guidance to speak to him. Knowledge offered the idea that he might grow further overwhelmed.

And then, as he forced the myriad of thoughts away, another came to him.

It was like a burst of knowledge, trickling and surging upwards from the recesses of his mind.

Four seconds.

It was four seconds, in and out.

Yugi blinked, then began to inhale for four seconds, following it when an exact exhale. He did it easily, gently, knowing that somewhere in his subconscious Yami was listening to it. It took Yugi a few minutes, sitting there, moving only to cross his legs and settle, for the other wolf to really respond. His red eyes flickered and then caught on his face for a brief second. But his breathing had begun to unconsciously mirror his. He was drawing in steady, calm breaths, and the shaking was beginning to stop. It took another few minutes. Then the taller werewolf looked away and let out a long, distressed breath which echoed in Yugi's ears.

"I'm sorry."

"You apologize for such stupid things," he admonished gently. "Do I seem upset?"

Yami eyed him for a moment, then shivered. "You're very patient and kind," he muttered, shaking his head. "You must have strength in spades because I don't think anyone else would have done that."

"I feel really stupid for not realizing you'd pick up on my breathing patterns sooner than I did. I was trying to think of how to reach out and make you calm down and I didn't even think of hearing beyond talking." Yugi fell silent for a second, then smiled at him widely. "But you're okay now, and that's all I care about. So…don't apologize… _please_? I don't want you to feel bad for that. Anxiety isn't something you need to apologize for."

Yami frowned and tilted his head. He wondered vaguely if Yugi even understood how much of a coward he truly was. The half of him which responded to his kind words wanted to find relief in the statement. But the other half was bitter. He should have been able to deal with things on his own. He should not have to constantly rely on someone else. It had gotten his friend killed before.

What if Yugi was up next because of him?

He closed his eyes tightly.

"You can do whatever you want, Yami. You can sleep on the bed or wherever you'd like," Yugi said softly after a moment, licking his lips. "I didn't mean to upset you or anything. Just… You're free to do whatever you want. And I don't want you to feel pressured to do anything. If you want to leave and run or anything, you can do that too. I won't hold it against you. You're free to leave too. If you ever think that would be the better choice for you, then do it. You don't even have to offer me an explanation."

Yami opened his eyes again, looking at him sideways. His head tilted as their gazes locked and the way his red eyes bore into his made Yugi anxious for a moment. Then the other boy exhaled long and loud and shook his head.

"I don't want to leave here." _I don't want to leave you._ He shook his head again. _I don't want to be alone._ "And, if I ever need to, I'll tell you first."

The promise made Yugi's stomach ache.

Yami wouldn't abandon him.

 **Yami's reaction of hiding under the bed has a purpose by the way. It wasn't just for comical effect. It's been hinted at in chapter forty. When Anzu asked Yugi if she thought Yami was afraid of hurting him, it was a hint towards this. Yami tends to try his hardest NOT to lash out at Yugi but he ends up doing so at times. And so, this time, when he nearly attacked Yugi, he hid under the bed to help himself calm down. He also hid in the closet earlier in the chapter because he was afraid of waking up in such a state and attacking Yugi's family if they were to hear him.**


	43. Ice

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day**

 **Chapter Warnings: Mentions of Vomit/Blood, Cleaning of Blood/Vomit, Slight Flashbacks/Mentions of Disturbing Memories, Yugi is Slightly Perverted, Mentions of Sex, Mentions of STDs, Slight Puzzleshipping, Dead Animal**

 **The price for the mattress is actually the result of about an hour's worth of research on Japanese beds and price points. It was kind of ridiculous how anal I was about this entire thing, especially when it was like two in the morning and I'd just woken up from a rather deep nap. It was insane. Anyways, so yeah, that's the price point for the average Japanese bed.**

 **The mythology in the chapter is what I know of the legends/lore.**

 **The Anui people DID worship Ooguchi no Magami and believed themselves to be descended from wolves, the Inuit people believed in a great white/silver wolf named Amaroq, the Romans believed in Lupa/Luperca nursing their founders Remus and Romulus, the Turkish people believed they were descended from wolves.** **And, if I remember right, it was said that Fenrir formed rivers because of his drool from his mouth being propped open with a sword while he was imprisoned.**

 **Anubis being a jackal is being debated or it was, as I was reading on multiple sites, and might be a wolf instead, but Wepwawet was a wolf and a god of war and the house of the pharaoh when he went into battle. Morrigan in Irish mythology often changed into a wolf and aided one army over the other in war by way of changing into a woman warrior (if I remember correctly). King Lycaon was changed into a wolf for eating human flesh when he angered Zeus in Greek mythology and Gilgamesh spoke to a god about how fickle a lover she was when she turned the human into a wolf to be chased by his own sheepdogs.**

 **The way Kasumi makes the tea is what I could find of the traditional way it's made in Japan. On the subject of Yugi's mom, she's not as blind as she pretends to be. Just remember that.**

Chapter XLIII: Ice

 _Work Log Entry XLIII: February, 2004_

 _February 11_

 _"Atem" has yet to change. We have exposed him to silver, wolfsbane and even injected him with both, pushed two million volts of electricity through him in one shot, nearly bled him to death, and yet it has done nothing but make him horribly sick._

 _February 19_

 _"Atem" was speculated to have died today. A guard passing his cell had assumed that he was dead. But upon trying to find his way inside to check on him, "Atem" went into a rage and nearly killed him._

 _We have yet to teach "Atem" the proper usage of his own voice. He only says "Food" when he is hungry enough._

 _February 28_

 _The guard "Atem" attacked days ago has passed away. He was thrown into a violent seizure when he was exposed to "Atem" again in passing. When he died, the boss was amazed._

 _I am wondering if perhaps A.T.E.M. truly is an omen of death._

"Well, I have to make sure my lover likes it too," Yugi snorted loudly as he looked over his shoulder at her. His mom shot him an annoyed look and rolled her eyes again. He grinned widely, then turned away and played with the doorknob for a moment, waiting for her to catch up with him. He opened the door only when she got to his side and both of them stepped back into the house.

"I wanted to ask you something," his mom said quietly, making Yugi pause as she started to make her way towards the staircase with him. Upstairs he could hear his grandpa moving about and he strained his ears for Yami. The only sound of his existence was the soft, familiar beat of the other boy's heart. It was easy and warm and beautiful in his ears, as usual to him as his own thoughts in his head. It made Yugi relax as he turned his head to look at his mom again. "Do you remember the conversation we were having yesterday?"

Yugi blinked; they'd really only had one conversation all day yesterday. "Yeah, of course. We were talking about Yami. And then you won Reversi against Grandpa. Why, what's wrong?" he asked softly, frowning.

"I was wondering if you would like to invite Yami over for dinner sometime this week," she admitted quietly, blue eyes studying his. Yugi blinked, then raised his head and felt a grin crossing his face. "I thought it might be good thing to meet him if you guys are actually…"

Yugi blinked and that grin fell immediately before it could even form. He frowned, puzzled, and then shook his head slightly. "Yami and I aren't dating," he muttered quietly.

"Oh." Kasumi blinked stupidly and then reached up to rub at the back of her head. Her cheeks were faintly dusted with pink and Yugi frowned a bit more. "I just assumed that… I mean, you talk about him a bit differently than you do your other friends. And I thought you sounded more… _affectionate_ than you did even when you used to talk about Anzu."

His eyes stretched wide and his mouth opened and closed. Shit, could Yami hear them from upstairs? He felt his cheeks turning bright red and he scowled faintly as he reached up and covered his face with his hand. No doubt Yami could. If he could hear his heart from downstairs, then there was no way that Yami could possibly be deaf to their conversation.

Yugi shook his head and closed his eyes. "I, um, no, we're not together. I just… I like him a lot. He's really cool," he answered, lips pressed tightly together for a brief moment. Then he flashed her a wide grin and tilted his head. "I don't think I've ever seen him attracted to anyone. I still think he's kind of asexual."

His mom's lips quirked up slightly in amusement. "Well, I guess we'll see about that when he comes to the house for dinner," she murmured, smiling widely and shaking her head. The smile fell away after a moment and tilted her head towards Yugi more pointedly. "They should be here to drop off the new mattress and sheets in an hour."

Yugi nodded and opened the bottom door to enter the staircase. He still didn't know if he was going to use the excuse that he might start studying or say that he was going out to the cafe again. If he did that, he could spend more time with Yami over there. If he decided to just sit around and study, Yami would most likely have to run off to hunt.

"I'm trying to figure out if I want to study here or at the café," Yugi admitted with a distracted glance at her. He opened the second door and she followed him a few steps behind. "That way I can stay out of the house while they do that and don't end up getting in their way."

"Well, I'm sure if you decided to stay in your room, they could always work around you if you stayed at the desk."

Yugi shook his head. "I'm not going to do that. I don't want to have to deal with them walking around me. I feel like I'll end up puking on them from nerves alone," he answered, mind immediately turning away. He'd have to set up the day for them to meet, one that worked later into the week so that everything was comfortable for him. Yami would have a better warning and be able to more steadily work against embarrassment.

He didn't think they needed to go over anymore questions, though. He was pretty sure Yami was becoming slightly exasperated with it by now. "But, anyways, I think it'll turn out okay for the most part."

Kasumi shrugged, heading towards the kitchen. Yugi would do what he wanted. If there was anything she had learned about her son, it was that while he would concede easily with _a lot_ of things, he was unrelenting and impossibly stubborn with others. The small teen would fight her tooth and nail on some things. And she knew by the way he had raised his voice just the slightest bit more that he would argue until she was unwilling to any longer.

She wanted to say it was from his father, because she really hated that fact about herself, but it came from her side of the family. Her father did the same. She did the same. Her husband simply argued until either there was a form of compromise given or he finally just didn't care enough to continue. His parents had done the same the few times they'd met and disapproved of her.

Kasumi sighed softly. "Well, just let me know if you decide to leave the house. Text me," she called after him as the door of his room opened.

Yugi turned around, eyes wide. "Of course," he promised, blinking. "I'll text you when I leave too."

She nodded, watching him for a moment. Something was different in his face, even with the last few minutes that had passed since they'd locked eyes. Something was entirely estranged in his face, undetectable at first glance but harsh as it burned at her subconscious.

He didn't look sick.

And he appeared to be more or less at ease at the moment.

Was he nervous about her going into his room when he left? She had plans to. He had seemed perfectly happy and healthy all day. Yet he had puked all over the mattress and sheets, the comforter and the floor? She didn't see how that was possible when he had been so blasé and easygoing since the moment he'd told her.

When he was sick, he normally looked incredibly nervous or guilty. So, no, she didn't buy his excuse at all. But she had smelled the vomit the moment she'd walked in, along with the cleaner he'd been using to try to get it up. And he'd looked distressed but not _sick_.

She had raised him.

She would _know_ if he was sick.

Just like she knew at that moment that Yugi was well aware of her intentions. She didn't bother to hide it, smiling at him in that way that said he was absolutely right, and his cheeks flushed, then paled as he looked at her. They considered each other, then Yugi turned and headed into his room and locked the door behind him.

" _And_ we're screwed," he announced, stepping around the side of the bed. Yami looked up from where he had been messing with his small television around reading another of the books on his shelves.

The red eyes were impassive. "You seem to have a liking for vampires rather than werewolves," he commented in a dismissive fashion.

Yugi rolled his eyes. "I like _Dracula_. The others were gifts and presents that my friends got me for my birthday or whatever holiday because they had no idea what I would like. Considering I was completely enamored with _Dracula_ for a whole year, they took that as me apparently liking _everything_ vampire." He paused, then huffed. "Which I don't. I don't like vampires. Werewolves were always more interesting to me anyways."

"And now you are one."

Yugi snorted. "Yes, and now I am one." He raised a brow and crossed his arms. "Were you even listening before?"

Yami blinked. "You said we are screwed. I assume that has something to do with your mother being disbelieving of your lie?" he inquired with a wrinkle of his nose.

The small teen blinked, then smiled slightly in amusement. "You're so relaxed right now," he said in a somewhat awed tone, remembering for a moment the distress Yami had displayed earlier. The sight of him so at ease now made him feel slightly warm with relief. "Normally you're so much more…petulant about things like this."

The other wolf shook his head. "I am not petulant when it comes to problems arising. I am petulant when I cannot understand or feel the emotional attachment shared by someone else regarding certain things. _That_ is what makes me petulant." He paused, then tilted his head as he looked him over. "I simply meant that, yes, she plans to examine the room the moment you leave. So why don't you and I clean under the bed so that she cannot _find_ the blood?"

Yugi groaned. "I really don't want to."

The other wolf smiled slightly, then closed the book and got to his feet. He stretched himself out, admiring the way his bandages made his skin red for the briefest of moments. Then he yawned and said, "I'll do it. It's the least I can do, yes?"

The smaller teen frowned and shook his head. "I don't…I don't want you thinking you have to repay me all of the time, Yami. I promise you that you don't. I don't want you to. Besides, you've done a lot for me…"

Yami wrinkled his nose. "Not in the way of cleaning. Unless I am wrong, you are the one who cleans up after me." He took a small step towards the bathroom, looking at him as he shifted his weight awkwardly. Would he object to him trying again? Yami narrowed his eyes. "Fine, then do not consider it repayment. Consider it me…doing something to ease your fatigue."

Yugi rolled his eyes, smiling in amusement. "I'm not fatigued."

He snorted. "Then why not clean your floor?"

The smaller teen felt sick to his stomach as, from the very back of his mind, a thought began to slither forward. _Because I'm tired of lying to her,_ he realized with a frown. He was exhausted and worn out doing it. Each time became easier, yes, but it also became more complex and uncertain. His mother picked up on him as she always did. She might not push, but she knew. She was _well_ aware. She had every lie in her head somewhere, stored and waiting for him to slip up.

And his friends knew. So, why couldn't she?

 _Because you never_ told _your friends_ , a voice sneered in his head. _Your involvement in their lives made Fuwa turn on them too. And the least you owed was an explanation for nearly getting them killed._

Yugi bristled slightly and the way he raised his shoulders caused Yami to step back with a startled expression. The smaller teen blushed, ducking his head. "I'll help," he announced with a sigh.

And Yami wondered at the idea of forcing him into another argument. To push him backwards into one seemed entirely too stupid to him. So the taller wolf nodded dismissively and trotted off for the bathroom without a second glance.

Yugi smiled faintly, then followed dutifully a step or two behind. Yami grabbed the chemicals from beneath the sink, handed them to him, snatched up the same bucket he'd used a few days back to gather the bloodied bandages in, and pulled out a small yellow sponge. He hesitated, looking it over, then considered the small tool, turning to him with furrowed brows.

"Do you mind using this?"

He furrowed his brows, at first confused, and then smiled and shook his head. He was asking because he didn't know what it was used for otherwise. "It's one I haven't bothered to use yet. So, yeah, let's go ahead and do that. It'll help get it off the wood if there is any."

Yami frowned. "There's some on the frame," he said softly, getting up again and following him out towards his bed again. The red-eyed teen paused only for a moment, considering it, and moved to the side of the bed. Yugi was just putting the cleaners down when Yami grabbed the end from beneath and began to pull. It budged easily, then slid on the carpet almost as if it were on wet tile. The smaller teen cursed, snapping, "I could have helped you with that!" in an annoyed tone.

The other boy glanced at him, turned away, and pulled harder until he'd tugged it towards the center of the room. Yugi sighed, moving the bottles and supplies away. A glance at where the bed's legs left indentations in the carpet made his skin crawl for a moment. The carpet was _smeared_ with dark red turned brown against the indigo shade. It was hideous, drawn in a large pool towards the middle. The fibers looked weighted down, as if he had just moved from the spot after having lain there for hours. Yugi swallowed hard.

He'd bled so fucking much…

The smaller teen shook it off. He'd expected to be the one to make the first move, but a single glance told him that Yami had gotten there already. The other boy was busily studying the large stain in the center and watching it with dark eyes. When he reached out, Yugi wordlessly handed him the spray bottle.

For over an hour the two of them picked apart each stain, scrubbing with floor brushes and treating the carpet twice to get the color back to a more uniform shade. Then Yami wiped away the blood from the bed frame without a second glance and both of them pushed the piece of furniture back into place again.

Yugi dropped the sponge into the water he'd poured into the bucket sometime during the cleaning. Then he yawned, sighed, and stretched his arms over his head. "Naptime!" he announced, grinning at him playfully.

Yami dropped the brush into the bucket and wrinkled his nose when a droplet of reddened water touched his skin. It was so cold he thought it could freeze his nerves. He looked to the other boy, smiling faintly. "No, now is when we decide if you're staying here to study or if I'm going hunting alone."

The smaller boy stiffened. "Hunting? Is that what you wanted to do?" he asked in comfortably. The thought of eating as a wolf…

He still shuddered at the idea.

The taller teen tilted his head, then cleared his throat awkwardly. His voice was soft, questioning and uncertain, as he admitted, "I would rather go back the café again. I would like to sit and talk if you'd be willing…"

Yami felt immediately foolish and stupid for the request. Yugi had better things to do. He had a million different things he could participate in besides idle conversation…

Yet Yugi merely blinked, then beamed. His entire face lit like a megawatt bulb and Yami felt his stomach twist. "I'd love to go with you to the café instead," he agreed, his teeth bright and beautiful as his face seemed to somehow brighten further. His eyes were soft, glittering, and he watched his startled face with amusement. "Give me a minute to get my backpack so I can get my study guide and pretend to do that while we're there, okay?"

He nodded, though he was unsure what more to do than stare at him at his easy acceptance of the suggestion. How was he so content to spend time with him like this? It was so strange to him that he would desire that of all things.

Shouldn't he rather want to spend time with his friends? Yami frowned faintly. His friends… He shivered as Yugi began to pack his bag again and sort through it more happily.

His stomach was twisting and his heart was in his throat.

Why was he considered one of them?

Yami nearly flinched. In his place he'd deny him that spot in a heartbeat.

But Yugi was too gentle and beautiful a person. He would not turn away from someone in need. And he cared beyond what Yami had originally assumed humans capable of.

His mouth was filled with blood.

Yugi needed to choose better friends, ones that had things to actually offer him.

Yami looked away immediately when the other boy turned to him.

* * *

Yugi hesitated for a long moment. Then he dug through his bag for the smallest pocket and pulled out a single coin. He placed it on the table in front of him, then scooted it forward on the wooden table. The movement caught the other lycanthrope's attention immediately, as he had known it would. His red eyes flickered away from the cup in front of him to peer curiously at his finger. The smaller teen licked his lips, then grinned as he said, "Penny for your thoughts?"

Yami blinked wide eyes. His expression was owlish and childlike as Yugi pulled his hand back and the copper coin glittered in the lighting from overhead. The taller teen tilted his head, blinking again, and then looked up.

Yugi felt his cheeks heat faintly. "I mean, I know they're worth more than that, but I've always wanted to ask that and I had an American coin in my bag and I thought it was kind of clever, I guess?" He swallowed hard. "Sorry, I'm just… I'm a dork."

His smile was warm and bright, friendly and beautiful. "No, that was honestly kind of funny," he replied softly, raising a brow, and searched his face for a moment. "I just… I didn't expect you to say that. Or have American currency in your bag…"

Yugi smiled a little warmer. "My dad works in the states. He always brings me some coins and bills when he comes back." He searched his face for a moment. "I'm glad you think it was funny."

Yami tilted his head slightly. "How much do you think my thoughts are worth, Yugi?" he asked softly, interested and curious.

The smaller teen hesitated, then opened and closed his mouth twice. His thoughts were worth so much. Yugi was unsure what to say now. His mouth tugged slightly downwards and he drew in a deep breath. "Millions," he whispered with a look at the papers he'd lain to the side in order to push the penny towards him.

Yami hummed. "I believe them worth less than even this," he stated calmly, sliding the penny back to him. Yugi stared at him, incredulous. "But, I'll tell you what I was thinking about if you'll tell me what you are."

Yugi nodded immediately, though some part of him realized how ridiculous that was. He shouldn't agree so easily. It made him look overeager, maybe even immature. He frowned slightly as the other boy settled into his seat. He seemed to be debating how to phrase the words.

"I was imagining how your mom and the two workers are doing with the bed," he lied slowly, eyes narrowing. Yami tilted his head and watched him for a moment. "Do you think we got it all?"

Yugi had a slightly disappointed look in his eyes. "I hope so," he admitted softly. "There doesn't seem to be anything else that we'd have been able to do."

He nodded and closed his eyes. "What were you thinking about?"

 _Boning you_ , the small teen almost blurted out. Instead he rolled his eyes at himself and sighed loudly. Why couldn't he keep that kind of idea out of his head? Yami was not ready. He might never even _be_ ready. He knew that. So why did he keep…?

"That my homework sucks and my friend looked troubled even when he's been happily drinking hot chocolate and eating a Samoa. So then I figured I'd ask what was on his mind and here we are."

"Do you think that the bed will do well as a replacement?"

Yugi smiled wryly. "Well for thirty-three thousand and eight hundred and twenty-five yen, I would hope so," he snorted shortly, tilting his head. When Yami stared at him with a somewhat horrified expression, he quickly added, "I'm sure it's fine. I was just kidding."

"That's…so much money. Why would you…?"

He shook his head slowly. "It's fine. I promise. I needed a new mattress anyways, so I figured I'd get a larger bed altogether. And it's not a big deal at all." He opened and closed his mouth a few times, then looked down at his papers. "Besides, Yami, I don't like the idea that if I'd cleaned it you'd still be sleeping on that side. It's…gross."

No more gross than choking on vomit and having a seizure due to it. He could not think to put that into words, however. He didn't remember it beyond his cage mate's actions. He'd grabbed him, thrown him onto his side, and kept him there until he'd stopped his violent convulsions. He still remembered the smell and the suffocating effects of it. But he could not recall further than that. He thought they'd taken the cots apart and cleaned them both—possibly even replaced them. Other times he wondered if they simply wiped them down and his cage mate had swapped them around so that Yami would not have to lie in his ruined bedding.

He shivered, the tremor violent and swift.

So many times his cage mate had helped him in ways he had not understood back then. He had not known what to do when he'd been there for so long. And his cage mate had come only about two months before they'd all escaped…

Yami bit the inside of his cheek hard.

Yugi was watching him intently. "What's wrong?"

He shook his head. "Nothing," he answered curtly, narrowing his eyes into slits. "Nothing that…matters. What matters now is that I am here, with you. _That_ is what truly matters."

If it had been another time, perhaps another place, and the circumstances different, Yugi might have felt his entire body warm with the statement. Now it made him feel cold, as if ice were crawling upwards through his marrow. He fought away a shiver, then licked his lips and took another small sip of his cocoa.

It bought him just enough time to think.

"You're still looking at the pictures on the walls," Yugi commented with a sideways glance towards one of them. He smiled lopsidedly, ignoring his impulsive thought to ask him for further explanation. The red eyes flickered upwards towards the paintings, his head tipped slightly upwards as he considered them again. Yugi looked back at one of the wolf paintings and smiled brightly. "That's Ooguchi no Magami. He's the Large-Mouthed Pure God. The Anui people used to worship him. But when Japan became more modernized, he began to lose meaning."

Yami frowned slightly and looked towards him again. "He looks much like Fenrir," he said quietly. "Except he does not have a sword keeping his mouth open because of a self-fulfilling prophecy. And there are no chains to bind him to the earth. There are no rivers forming from his drool."

Yugi tilted his head, frowning. "He also never bit a god's hand off while being chained to the earth." The smaller teen bit his lip as Yami stared at him curiously. "Ooguchi no Magami was more of a benign, benevolent god. He helped travelers who had lost their way. He helped those who were confused and lost in the mountains or who needed guidance in life choices. They considered him a really pure god because the humans descended from the wolves."

His head tipped up, eyes wide. "Descended from the wolves?" he inquired curiously.

"The Anui people believed so, yeah. So did Native American tribes. I think most of Alaska's Inuit people believed that too? And I think the Roman people believed that some of their own were born from them too. I know Romulus and Remus were raised by a she-wolf named Lupa…or Luperca by others. The Turkish people also believed something similar."

Yami blinked. "You know a lot of mythology," he said with a slight frown. "Why?"

He remembered that Yugi had mentioned he and his mom had swapped stories on mythology, though he had implied it was mostly towards creation myths. But Fenrir's binding was not considered a story of creation, was it? But Yugi had known of it and Ragnarok, the complete antithesis of this assumption.

And, surely, Yugi and his mother had not gone over so much mythology while he was growing up? It was possible, but for some reason Yami had doubts that such a thing had been how Yugi had come to know of such things…

His grin was cheeky, his eyes shining brightly. "I read a lot of books on wolves in order to try to understand some of what was happening before you came to the house." He paused and looked over his shoulder. "I also grew up with some mythology about wolves. My grandpa often told me stories to help me fall asleep at night."

The other boy nodded slightly, tapping his fingers and then putting his chin in his right hand. His eyes glittered as he looked towards the pictures again. He tilted his head slightly and his chin touched his knuckles as he closed his eyes.

"Anubis was a jackal but there's debate that he's actually a wolf. Then the Egyptian jackal was identified as a subspecies of gray wolf. So I guess that doesn't matter. Wepwawet, the war god, was also a wolf. Then Morrigan in Irish mythology changes mostly into a wolf or a raven." Yugi shuddered as he turned back. He was grateful that Yami did not see the unnerved reaction. He licked his lips. "King Lycoan was changed into a wolf by Zeus in Greek mythology. He's considered one of the first werewolves. But there's actually an older account in the _Epic of Gilgamesh_ where a herdsman was turned into a wolf that hunted his own sheep and his dogs attacked and hunted him. There are actually a lot of people who think they descended from wolves…"

Yami opened his eyes into slits and stared curiously. His gaze was darker, the shadows of his lashes long and sharp against his red irises. "And yet more than half of them are fearful of them."

"I know. Humans are kind of…stupid about certain things."

"I do not understand how you can say it with such fondness." Yami smiled when Yugi shrugged awkwardly, unable to argue with him. The red-eyed wolf tilted his head and studied him for a moment. "Humans are…foolish and self-righteous. And too empowered to know when to stop themselves from further damaging themselves or another."

"I know."

He shook his head, pulling his right hand away to reach out for his cup of cocoa. He gripped it lightly in his hand, twisting it around several times with lazy flicks of his wrist. His nails were darker than Yugi ever thought he'd seen them before, though he realized now that it was merely because the white of the cup contrasted them harshly.

"The mythology humans came up with is beautiful, however," he commented in a somewhat wistful tone. Yugi blinked and sat up slightly straighter, confused. "All of them teach morals whether through animals or lessons of one direction or another. It is somewhat shocking to me at times, I suppose."

"In a bad way?"

"Not at all." He fell silent for a long moment. "I just find it kind of odd, truthfully. So many people hate wolves and fear the dark or the unknown. Werewolves are considered a combination of all three. Being descended from wolves seems like it would be an impossibility for any group of humans to grasp as their beliefs."

Yugi swallowed hard. "Do you think maybe the reason they think that is because they _are_ descended from them? Like…the werewolves became permanently human and passed along the stories in ways that changed the truth of it?"

Yami blinked. "I had never considered it before but it's possible, yes." He fell silent again. Then he ran a hand through his hair, looking away and dropping his other hand from the cup to lie on the table. Yugi could not stop staring at those long almond-shaped nails. They were so dark red, like the beds were lying on a pool of blood that was pressed hard against the skin beneath.

He thought of the way his hands had looked only the night before. He pictured the way his first knuckles had buckled downwards and outwards, snapping loudly as the joints broke and reformed. He remembered the way his second knuckles had folded inwards and cracked, splintering, and his palms elongated. He remembered those claws, sharpening and expanding, hardening layer upon layer as it darkened with the rush of blood surging to the surface. He shivered.

Yami did not seem to notice, or, had he, he did not bother to comment. Nor did he look at his fingers. "Slifer is here, in Hokkaido, Japan of all of the places in the world she might exist. Ra is reaching out to you in your dreams, meaning she dwells close to here as well. A Harbinger is here. Morrigan has contacted you within your dreams. Obelisk, Hati and Skoll must be nearby as well."

The musings were private ramblings, merely spoken out loud. Yugi tilted his head, ignoring the urge to ask for further explanation. The movement made Yami blink and the red eyes glittered faintly.

"All six of the gods among werewolves existing in one place?" he said softly, smiling faintly. "It should make sense that they would dwell where their lineage would remain the most."

It took him a moment. Then he blinked wide, shocked eyes. "You think they're here because the Anui people were truly descended from the wolves? That they actually _did_ come from werewolves?"

Yami shrugged. "It is a theory. But it would make sense, especially when your classmates are taken into account. I have never known wolves to live so close within proximity like this without reason, whether it is or isn't known to them."

He considered it. But how many of them could _truly_ be descended from the Anui people as well? He supposed when they'd all procreated, the lycanthropy survived beyond all of the watering down of blood lines. Yugi tilted his head again. It made sense. It made a lot of sense.

"You think Obelisk, Hati and Skoll are here?"

Yami blinked. "A Harbinger is running about in Japan. The hellhound deities will most certainly be here as well. And with Slifer and Ra here? Obelisk must be."

"Why are they all here? Is it really because of possible lineage?"

He shook his head. "The war," he answered simply. "They are here not because of familial ties, but because of the war coming to pass soon."

Yugi felt sick to his stomach. The war… How could he have forgotten? He drew in a deep breath, feeling almost dizzy for a moment, then blinked. Yami was scratching lightly at his arm. It made his hoodie sleeve ride up slightly.

"Pull your sleeve back down," he muttered without thought. The other wolf blinked, startled. "Your bandages are going to show otherwise."

He looked chastised as he followed his advice. Yugi felt his cheeks heat. Had he made him feel stupid? He hadn't meant to by any means. He nearly sighed, then leaned forward, licking his lips.

"Do you ever wonder if Atem is a force for good or evil?" he asked suddenly, quietly, unable to help himself. His mind was racing again. The war was prominent in his head, far more focal than even his embarrassment of surprising Yami in such a way. "I mean…"

Yami shook his head. "Atem is not a force of some moral power. He's a wolf meant to lead a war. Whether he leads the right side into battle is just a consequence of which I have no answers. But I also do not believe in the innate idea of evil and justice. One is able to rationalize the worst of choices even when it harms multiple outside parties. Remember that, Yugi. No matter what choices you make as Atem, there will be someone who believes it to be wrong or perhaps evil, even. But circumstances are what make the decisions important."

Yugi shivered.

His red eyes hardened. "But I will also say that as long as your goal is not ultimately simply to further yourself at the expense of others, you are as best a leader as you can be."

* * *

"I think that's probably him now," Yugi announced, leaping up from the couch and heading for the staircase. His mom muttered something to his grandpa that Yugi _knew_ he could have heard but didn't care to. He hurried down the stairs, then jumped the last few as he threw open the bottom door. He trotted to the entrance, opening it, and laughed as Yami glanced over his shoulder uncertainly towards the woods.

"Nervous already? You haven't even met them yet."

Yami wrinkled his nose at him. "It's healthy to be a little cautious. Especially when the woman I am meeting tonight uses a metal ladle as her choice of weaponry when angered," he scoffed dismissively. He turned away, closing his eyes, and then looked towards Yugi again. But his gaze seemed to shift to a point over his shoulder a split second later.

He almost glanced over. But an instinct said not to, as Yami was too tense. He might turn and flee at any given moment. Yugi was aware that taking his eyes off of him was a genuinely terrible idea.

"She won't use it against you. I promise. I won't let her do that." He smiled when his eyes flickered to his slowly for a second. "Besides, as long as we both know our answers, she won't have any reason to knock you around with it."

He nearly groaned. They had memorized them the first time they'd discussed it. Now it was simply overkill and beyond annoying to go over it numerous times like this. So instead he nodded, hoping that Yugi would not force them to go over every answer as they had before.

"Okay, come on, let's get upstairs," he announced. For the briefest of seconds he almost grabbed his hand. There was a strange instinctive need to grasp his hand in his, to twine their fingers and pull him along. Instead he caught the sleeve of his jacket and tugged gently. He stepped back and Yami followed, eyes sharp as they flickered about.

He had not been in the house by way of the front door in what felt like years. He bristled faintly at the chemical aroma and the scent reminded him so hideously of his nights formerly that it made his jaw clench. Yugi touched his arm and the other boy jerked, turning to him with wide eyes.

"Hey, nothing is going to happen here," he said gently and Yami hated himself for his transparency. But Yugi smiled at him softly and his eyes were kind, as benevolent as ever. "I know the clinic level freaks you out, but we're going to go back upstairs. And when we do that, it'll be without having to hide you in my room. Remember? That's why we're doing this, Yami."

He nodded stiffly but his eyes flickered towards the kennels and the corridors marked by the swinging doors. And he smelled those harsh chemicals so bitterly in his nose that he bristled despite himself.

"How do your wrists feel?"

Yami blinked, startled from his thoughts. His first instinct was to turn on his heel and bolt. The second was to snap that he already knew they'd healed over. The third was to simply stare at him and hope to the gods that Yugi somehow found a way to drag him up the stairs with him because his feet surely would not work.

"You looked at them earlier," he said in a thin, croaking voice. His eyes widened. Would his mom and grandpa be able to tell that his voice was damaged? Yami nearly flinched at the thought.

Damn it, maybe this was a bad idea…

"Yeah, and they seemed mostly healed. That's why I let you take the bandages off," he agreed softly. His distraction was working, though. Yami was staring at him in puzzlement towards his question. "You can still see a little pink, though, which is why you're wearing the jacket."

"Yes."

He smiled and then gestured with his free hand for Yami to take the lead. He hesitated, watching the smaller teen, realizing he'd said it to reassure him. If he could heal within the safety of the house, he could meet his family as well.

Yami reluctantly began to tread up the stairs. Yugi had explained he would have to kick his shoes off in the hallway, that he'd move them towards the entrance of his bedroom with his own. He had felt stupid and intimidated upon practicing walking without his sneakers formerly.

That did not change now.

Kasumi found her mouth dropping open. Yugi was laughing behind his hand, face covered by his palm. His fingers were spread just enough to allow him to see through them. Her father choked on whatever snack he'd been stealing from one of the plates she'd begun to set on the table. If she had been holding one any longer, she was sure it would have shattered by now. Her fingers were nerveless, she felt.

Yami turned around after a moment, then froze. Kasumi still had not gained control of her mouth. Her jaw was still unhinged, eyes comically wide. Beside her, Sugoroku was still sputtering with a similar size to his plum purple gaze. Both of them stared blatantly, while Yugi snickered and shook his head, laughing out loud a moment later.

The noise made Yami jump. He spun on him immediately, eyes growing larger than Yugi had ever seen them before. The small teen snorted and shook his head again, swallowing hard to suppress further guffaws. Then he looked at his two guardians and smirked in amusement, pulling his hand from his face.

"Surprise," he teased, laughing at their stunned expressions. In unison the two of them seemed to regain some composure. His mom's mouth closed and pressed into a thin line, borne more from embarrassment than disapproval. His grandpa let out a hardy laugh of amusement and tilted his head. Yami frowned and pulled on the sleeves of the black hoodie he'd zipped up halfway over the white button-up shirt Yugi had loaned him.

"Mom, Grandpa, meet Kobayashi Yami. Kobayashi Yami, meet my mom and grandpa." He gestured slightly, then rolled his eyes as he turned to the other teen. "I'm sure you can figure out who's who."

This made his lips quirk. "I'm not sure I can. The family resemblance is uncanny."

 _His_ resemblance to _her_ family was uncanny. Kasumi shook it off, then swallowed hard. Her mouth was dry as she looked between them. There was something in Yugi's eyes, warm and glowing. And the expression was somewhat morphed, more easily hidden away, but it existed in Yami's as well. "Please, call me Kasumi," she muttered before she realized Yami had not bothered to call her "Mrs. Motou" yet.

He blinked, then dipped his head and offered her a rather stiff bow. It was nerves, she realized, which made him look so uptight at the moment. She saw it when his eyes frantically flickered to Yugi's. And her stomach dropped as the other boy relaxed when her son smiled and tilted his head slightly. It was odd, seeing this stranger who looked so much like her own son, standing a few feet away and mere inches from Yugi's side.

When his eyes shot to hers again, unnerved, her stomach felt as if a lump of ice had formed in its pit. His irises were so unusual. Was it natural? Perhaps he was wearing contacts.

But why should _anyone_ want eyes such a demonic shade?

Was he simply attempting to play at a role such as that of a teenage outcast?

Was it for a gaming trend?

Yugi _had_ said he loved games…

Sugoroku smiled in amusement beside her. The movement immediately made Yami turn to him. His gaze had sharpened, flickering with trepidation. His irises glittered and his pupils dilated faintly, as if with fear. But his body was stiff and the elderly Motou realized instinctively that his more patient aggression was animalistic rather than truly fearful. His smile wavered slightly.

Yami knew he saw it. He could sense it. Sugoroku could damn well truly _sense_ it. He saw it in the way his eyes glittered again. The lighting of the chandelier was pale in his eyes and it made his pupils golden around the edges from the pale yellow glow the bulbs emitted. He was dangerous. He was cunning. And he was in their house.

His eyes shot to Yugi. The smaller boy had lost his amusement. In his gaze was a very clear, _powerful_ warning. Should he say something to allude to his infection, there would be hell to pay.

Exhilaration shot through his wizened frame. He turned to Yami again. Those red eyes peered at him with secret cunning and ferocity. He smiled a bit more, forcing the waver to leave his lips. "Feel free to call me Sugoroku," he announced, tone somewhat giddy. It was enough to make his daughter furrow her brows and glance at him sideways.

Yami frowned and bit the inside of his cheek. Was this where he told them to call him by his first name rather than his last? The idea made his stomach toss. He'd only ever introduced himself as Yami. The lack of a last name had seemed to make everything so much easier.

"So, Kobayashi—"

"Yami, please…"

It was so quiet that both of them nearly missed it. He sounded unsure, slightly breathless, maybe a miniscule strangled. Yugi looked towards him in alarm. Would he throw up again?

Kasumi picked up where she had left off, showing grace in the manner of flicking her wrist so that her palm was in the air. Yami felt a small twinge of tension leave his shoulders. She had no weapon. She had no knife. She had no ladle. She had _nothing_.

"Feel free to pick a seat, Yami," she said gently. Something about the way he held himself seemed unnaturally curious and yet withdrawn all at once. She glanced at Yugi from the corner of her eye. He had a mirroring posture, but the slouch was still evident. He'd gotten it into a more acceptable hunch in terms of degree, but it was _still there_. Somehow that was more relieving than anything else.

Yami looked at Yugi. Would they sit as they had the multiple times they'd eaten in the kitchen instead of his room? They'd seated themselves across from each other, Yami closer to the wall, Yugi towards the center of the small room. The other teen moved past the two of them, made his way to the seat Yami normally took, and plopped down.

Kasumi was so unnerved by the way Yami seemed to defer to her son that she failed to reprimand him. Instead she watched the other boy uncomfortably shift past her and take the seat across from him. His eyes were on the table, staring at the food in the center, rather than watching as she and her father swapped looks.

 _I don't like this_ , she tried to convey with a rather long stare and furrowed brows. He grimaced, then shrugged the shoulder which would be out of view of both boys. She sighed softly, but the noise made Yugi look up with wide eyes even as it seemed to cause Yami to bunch in on himself. Kasumi swallowed hard. He looked small, thin, as if his clothes had more weight and volume than his own lithe frame.

"I hope you like salmon," Sugoroku announced. He jovially moved to the other side of the table, furthest from the hallway, and took a seat. Yami blinked, glancing at him now, finding it impossible to ignore the stare he gave him. Why did he have to look so ludicrously ecstatic to see him there?

He nearly bristled. Did he want to run tests?

Yugi moved a little. The subtle shift made Yami turn back to him. He had slouched considerably for the briefest of moments. Then the taller teen stiffened. Something had just touched his foot.

He blinked.

It came again.

This time he could differentiate the soft manner from his initial thought of a bug or some kind of weapon beneath the table. Yugi was touching his foot with his own. He recognized the body heat and the gentleness, the vaguest structure of his warm toes.

The physical contact relaxed him slightly. He forgot his initial concern.

Yugi would not allow his grandpa to perform tests on him.

He would not let him bully him into such a thing.

There would be no games where Yami was concerned.

"I love salmon."

Kasumi took her spot at the head of the table. Both Yugi and Yami sat at her sides, the guest to the left, her son to the right. She felt oddly out of sync, as if her place had been lost.

Yugi normally sat to the left of her during dinners. Guests normally sat to the right.

Had Yugi chosen that position to throw her off? Had he meant to keep her from inquiring too much?

A few minutes of silence passed as they began to eat. Yami picked awkwardly at his food and Yugi practically seemed to stuff the entire filet into his mouth in seconds. Kasumi shot him an annoyed look that he gladly ignored. Sugoroku blinked and stared at his grandson in amusement.

"So, Yami"—she tried her hardest to ignore the way his eyes flickered immediately to her, darker than they had been moments before—"tell us about yourself."

He found it hard to keep the chopsticks in his hand. So he put them on the edge of the plate and blinked as he tried to think of something to say. Finally, unnerved, Yugi touching his foot again beneath the table, he drew in just enough breath to ask, "What would you like to know?"

Kasumi smiled at him, but it was so forced it seemed to hurt her jaw. "Anything you would like to share," she answered. She hoped that it might put him even remotely at ease but it seemed to abruptly make him more anxious. She wondered if perhaps he was one of those people who could not handle full reign when given in terms of conversation.

"How about a favorite color?" Sugoroku asked suddenly. His addition to the conversation caused Yami's eyes to dart immediately to him. If her father was unnerved, he did well not to show it. Kasumi did not understand how he could meet those red eyes and not feel as if the blood were slowing in his veins.

Yami hesitated. "I like teal," he admitted quietly, "but also blue and purple. Blue-violet, sometimes dark green."

It was an awkward answer but Yugi felt a small burst of pride in his veins. Yami was not fleeing. He had plenty of room to do so, sitting there where he could leap to his feet and run into the hall any moment. But he was holding his ground.

"Good choices," the elderly Motou commented, smiling widely. Yami thought of sharks with wide, jagged teeth. He thought of crocodiles and teeth that lined large, elongated jaws. "What about games? Do you enjoy games?"

Yami blinked. "Yes," he said quietly. "I do enjoy games."

"What's your favorite?"

He tilted his head slightly, spurring Yugi to sit up a bit more. The movement was reassuring, if only because his peripheral could focus entirely on him. "Chess, I think," he mumbled, clearing his throat after a long moment. "I like the strategy involved in it."

"Ah, a worthy challenger, I hope," Sugoroku teased, smiling widely. His grin was still so shark-like. Yami thought of needles in his skin and very nearly snarled. It was only Yugi touching his foot again which calmed him.

"He beat me the second time we played," Yugi said with a grin. Yami blinked and looked at him, surprised by how proud the smaller teen seemed. "I taught him how to play and the second game he won using the king's gambit play."

His grandfather smirked. "Is that so?"

"He'd probably best you in a few minutes flat."

Yami blinked wide eyes. "Huh?"

Yugi laughed out loud at his startled expression. "What? You could totally beat him at chess. He can never win against me. And if you can beat me, then you're already better than him."

He blinked again, then blushed slightly. Kasumi studied the brightness in his eyes and it unnerved her further. She looked towards her father, but he seemed enthralled by the idea of having another opponent in a game. She nearly rolled her eyes.

Why couldn't he be serious for even a moment? Was she just paranoid and seeing things where there wasn't anything, or was he deliberately ignoring some of what seemed to be staring her in the face?

"I wouldn't go that far. It was luck."

"Luck?" Sugoroku scoffed. "Luck doesn't exist in chess!"

His cheeks heated further. Yugi smiled at him, a kind gesture which he drew strength from. Facing Sugoroku, Yami murmured, "I will gladly play against you at some point."

Kasumi rolled her eyes. "Don't encourage him." Her dry comment made Yami turn to her with widened eyes. They were so much darker than they had been the moment before. Her heart seemed to be skipping beats. Her stomach knotted. "Are your eyes naturally that color?"

Yami blinked wide, startled eyes. Yugi flinched in his seat. "Jesus, Mom," the smaller teen hissed, shaking his head at her. Something flashed in his eyes, sharp and dangerous. She thought of knives and sharp teeth bared against someone's throat. It was horrifying to think such a thing upon looking at her own son.

How had she gotten so far removed from him like this?

"I, um…y-yes?" Yami said awkwardly. The tension was wearing on his skin. Part of him wanted to flee. But another half said to stand his ground. If one of them moved suddenly, he'd end them. The fight-or-flight instinct was burning, raging beneath his skin. He was fierce, he was deadly. He was also scared and incredibly confused. "My eyes are…this color naturally."

"I've never seen that color before," she muttered in way of apology. She shot her son an annoyed look towards his pissed expression. "I've never seen or heard of anyone with red eyes like that."

Yugi huffed. "Albinos have that color—"

"I'm not albino," Yami cut in, voice flustered. His tone caught the other boy's attention. His head turned instantly towards him. They both blinked at one another. "But this is my eyes' natural color."

Should he apologize? It seemed only right to do so.

Yugi shook his head as if he could sense his train of thought. He touched his foot again and it made Yami glance at him in bewilderment.

"Yugi said that you were staying in a hotel room?"

His head turned, eyes widening again. "Um, yes…I am," he murmured, barely resisting a stutter. He blinked at her again, tilting his head slightly to the side. She looked undone by his eyes on hers directly so he turned to snatch at the cup of water beside his plate. He took a small sip and the iciness soothed at some ache in his throat.

"That can't be cheap."

Yugi sat up a little more. A thrum of excitement coursed through him. Was she about to suggest what he thought she was? He could feel the hope swelling up inside of him. And then bitterness came at the very edges of it. What if he was getting so excited all for nothing?

Yami bid his time for a moment. When he realized that she was still watching him, could probably tell he was merely nibbling on the glass out of growing discomfort, he finally lowered the cup to the table. "Yes." What else was he meant to say? Truly, what else was there to say?

She hesitated. Her eyes flickered to Yugi and then her father. Both of them seemed to be watching her, waiting to see which direction she went. She wished Yugi would be the one to extend the invitation. It would surely be easier coming from him than it was her. Yami was so in tune with him already…

Kasumi nearly choked. A thought occurred to her. What if Yugi had not been joking when he'd said that Yami was his lover? He might have been teasing about sex in his hotel room or in a hot tub, but what of that had not been a joke? He'd denied it outright just hours earlier that evening.

But, what if…?

It would explain the way Yami looked to him for guidance. It would explain the light in his eyes when they looked at each other. It could explain almost everything about the nerves he exhibited now as well.

By the gods, how had she failed to consider it before that moment…?

She almost wished she could retract the entire statement. What if she was giving them a reason to break the rules? What if Yugi snuck out of his room and they consummated their relationship? Yami was sixteen and so was Yugi. Truthfully, it was their own right to do that should they want to.

But did Yugi even have _condoms_? What if he caught something?

But Yami was staring at her. His expression was unsure, confused, and something in his eyes made her resolve strengthen. She'd have to trust Yugi not to be stupid. And, should he abuse this, then it gave her reason not to allow him such leniency all of the time. Not that she wanted to know every minute detail of his life, but she did have to wonder about the things that didn't quite match up any longer.

Kasumi drew in a breath. "Would you like to stay here for a few days?" she finally asked. "I'm sure your parents have to worry sometimes with you being in a hotel all of the time without them there…"

Yami blinked wide eyes. Yugi nearly leaped to his feet, a triumphant cry dying on his lips. Sugoroku considered his daughter, then looked at Yami closely. What if he proved to be dangerous? What if she was making a grave mistake? What if he decided to kill them both in the middle of the night? What if he attacked Yugi?

And yet, for the life of him, he could not take these concerns seriously.

Yami looked too startled and nervous, like a deer caught in headlights. It was true that the most beautiful and innocent creatures were often the most deadly. But he did not think Yami would truly do them any harm.

And his daughter would laugh or cut him off at the knees the moment he began to warn her.

"I, um… Y-yes, I would…if it's not an inconvenience to you…"

"It's not an inconvenience at all," she assured him instantly, waving her hand somewhat dismissively at his bashful acceptance. He blinked at her, eyes brightening the smallest touch, and his lips tugged into the slightest of smiles. He looked like an innocent teenager, with bright eyes and a handsome face. But his gaze was worn around the edges and he looked raw, the edges of him frayed with experiences she could not begin to imagine. "I would not have offered if it was."

Yami accepted this with a nod. "Thank you."

"There are going to be rules to you staying over, however," she announced dryly. Yugi rolled his eyes and she gave him a frigid look of warning. Sugoroku smirked in amusement; the two of them always seemed to butt heads when it came to honest rules. Kasumi turned back to her houseguest. "Now, normally when a guest spends the night, Yugi will pull out a mat for them and they'll sleep in his room. It's normally Jonouchi, Honda or Anzu. But, this is the first time I've ever met you. And I've known those three for years. So, you can see why this is going to be different, right?"

Yami nodded. "Yes."

"Good. I can get some clean pillows and a couple of blankets for you to spend the night on the couch. Or, if you'd like, you can use the mat that Yugi has in his room out here. You can watch the TV for as long as you want, just make sure that the volume is lowered. I have a surgery to do in the morning and my father needs his sleep."

He nodded again. He was paying her such rapt attention that her tongue seemed to stick to the roof of her mouth.

"Yugi will sleep in his room. If you're hungry, go ahead and feel free to find some kind of snack. Please do not make too much noise." She paused. "We have a spare toothbrush and toiletries in the bathroom. Feel free to take a shower before you go to bed or when you wake up or whenever you'd like to. Do not go into Yugi's room."

The smaller teen blinked, eyes wide, then blushed furiously at the insinuation. Yami blinked and looked at the smaller boy for a split second before turning back. Kasumi swallowed hard.

"If there's anything wrong, feel free to wake us up." She shot her father a look when he furrowed his brows. She wondered if he understood the distance she was attempting to create between the two teenagers now. "Should you leave the house tomorrow, please remember to tell one of us, especially if you decide to return to staying at your hotel."

He nodded again, but this time his eyes had grown slightly wide. There was something feverish in his gaze, strong and dancing like flames. She stiffened slightly, unnerved.

"I think that sums it up for now…"

Yami blinked. "Okay."

Kasumi sighed softly. Then she turned to Yugi. It was hard to look at him now as well. Was she seeing things or was that same fire in her son's bright eyes now as well? Her stomach churned.

"Finish up dinner and get ready for bed. You have school in the morning, remember?" she directed. Yugi blinked at her, startled, then nodded and turned back to his plate. His grandpa began to hurriedly finish his own food and Yugi followed suit after a moment. Yami was studious in the way he picked at his salmon, slowly eating and chewing with what seemed a contemplative look on his face. Kasumi herself finished her plate and began to collect the other two dishes that were cleaned of food.

"I'll do the dishes, Mom. Don't worry about it."

She blinked, looking at him in surprise. He smiled brightly up at her, as if the very thought made him giddy. But he hated dishes and she couldn't help but wonder if perhaps she was doing this because it would give him a reason to stay in the kitchen longer. Kasumi felt a small, shameful wave of curiosity come over her. She could wait until they were talking, Yugi doing the dishes and Yami finishing his food, and eavesdrop.

But that was childish and so impolite that it stung at her insides.

"Are you sure?"

Yugi stretched his hands out for the plates. "Absolutely." He drew them back onto the table in front of him when she handed them over. Then he waited patiently until Yami silently finished the last of his salmon and rice. He reached for the plate and Yami slid it towards him with wide eyes. The small teen got to his feet just as his mom and grandpa left the room to head down the hallway.

"You did pretty well," Yugi commented in a soft voice, turning on the water to keep his words from being overheard.

Yami gave him a somewhat bitter look. "I sounded like an absolute moron," he hissed, eyes narrowing with disdain. "And I feel as if your grandfather was expecting me to change at any moment."

The smaller teen huffed. "You did not sound like a moron," he argued with a roll of his eyes. "And, yeah, he probably did."

He shivered, falling silent for a long minute. Yugi had assumed the conversation done and his mouth felt dry at the prospect. Then, very quietly, came the question, "Does he test you often?"

Yugi dropped the plate so hard that the sink rattled. The crashing noise of china made him flinch. His ears rang with the sound, echoing in his skull. He ground his teeth together, eyes wide and stunned. His head snapped around, mouth opening and closing. Yami was staring at him with a horrified expression, concerned but rooted to the spot.

"Yugi, are you okay?" his mom called immediately. He could hear her coming and it made his skin crawl for a brief second.

"I'm fine, Mom. One of the dishes fell out of my hand," he replied loudly, the echo still prominent in his head. His eyes were still glued to Yami. The other boy shifted his weight awkwardly, watching him stupidly. "Oh, Yami…"

He bristled, his startled reaction drifting away instantly. "Do not pity me," he spat in a low tone. The words were like a slap in the face to Yugi but he did not flinch. "I…"

"I don't pity you. I just…I'm not going to let him do anything to make you uncomfortable. He's not going to do anything with you like that, okay?" Yugi said gently, sighing when he saw the hard clench of the other's jaw. "I promise you that I won't let that happen, okay?"

Yami licked his lips. His eyes were slightly dilated. "What does he do when he tests you?" he asked softly. It was puzzled, shaken and bewildered.

He shook his head. "Nothing like the lab experiments," he answered, eyes on the dishes in the sink and mind running a million miles an hour. "He likes to see if I can track him through the house. He'll see if I can tell smells apart, movements or things he's touched. Sometimes he'll flick a coin to see if I react to the reflection of the light when it hits the wall in my periphery. Every now and then he'll say something under his breath, like my name or a certain phrase, so that I'll turn around. He's never hurt me and he doesn't have a malevolent bone in his body, Yami. I wouldn't have asked you to do this if I thought he would do anything to you. Trust me."

Yami blinked. Trust him? Yes, surely he did, right?

But something inside of him hesitated. Something inside of him whispered that something was terribly wrong. But he had no idea what to say. He had no idea how he was meant to respond. So he merely nodded, because being mute was something he could fall back on. When he did not have words, he had silence. And the silence had never betrayed him as words had.

Yugi could see something drifting in his eyes. It was dark and harsh, insidious. He turned away, back to the dishes. He wiped them down, rinsed them off, and stuck them into the dishwasher. Then he turned around again. That darkness had not passed from Yami's eyes. Something was haunting him.

He licked his lips. "I'll go ahead and get you a set of sheets and a couple of blankets okay?"

Yami blinked. "Can I have the fleece…?" He trailed off and he felt stupid again, childish and too young. Yugi frowned, puzzled. Then he nodded, his smile soft and gentle but strained at the edges. He saw it, the distance…

"Of course. Give me a minute."

Yami nodded and got to his feet. He was tempted to follow, but if he was nothing else, he was obedient. So he padded to the living room instead. Had he followed Yugi, he might have heard the conversation. But, as it was, he turned on the television, lowering the volume, and stretched upon the cushions of the couch.

Yugi, gathering a pillow from the closet and moving almost silently, heard the softly spoken words. It came from behind a closed door, but his hearing caught them and nurtured them into meaning inside of his racing mind.

"I'm not sure I like the way he looked at Yugi."

He would have instinctively responded to his name. But now he stood frozen and curious. His head snapped in the direction of his mother's bedroom. His eyes glittered faintly. He wondered at it all. The way Yami looked at him?

"The way he looked at him?" his grandpa murmured in a quiet voice, echoing his thoughts. Yugi wondered if they were attempting to make sure he could not hear them. It would make sense but he could not determine the truth behind this thought.

"He looked at him like…" His mom sighed in obvious frustration. Yugi pulled the pillows down and clenched them in his hands. "I don't know how to explain it. But I don't like it. It was…too… _intimate_."

His grandfather usually would have laughed at that kind of statement. This time he was oddly silent. The seconds passed. Yugi could hear the clock ticking in the bathroom. He could hear the air currents as the heat trailed through the vents. He could hear the steady static of soft voices from the television, the volume so low as to be almost mute.

"They did seem…oddly close."

She was quiet for a moment. "I knew I wasn't imagining it."

"No, you weren't." He wondered if Sugoroku would have the audacity to attempt to tell her his secret now. He wondered if he _truly_ understood the immensity of what he and Yami were. "They do seem very close for how long he's claimed they have known each other."

"I can't help but wonder if he is simply going to use him as a rebound now that he and Anzu have called it off. Or if maybe he's confused. Maybe he just feels strong friendship towards him and he's misread it…"

"Yugi has always been a smart kid. He gets it from you. I don't believe for a second that he would ever use someone else like that." He hesitated. "But I don't know what they have together. I'm not sure that he's in love with him or not. But I don't… Yugi is _smart_ , Kasumi. I don't think he'd ever be foolish or callous towards someone else like that."

"He might not _mean_ to. He might think it's a fun fling or something and Yami might see it as a serious relationship! And then what?"

Sugoroku was silent. Yugi was clenching the pillow so tightly he thought the threads might burst beneath his fingers.

"I don't know, Kasumi."

She sighed and his grandpa started for the door. Yugi turned on his heel, headed into his room, grabbed the fleece off of the bed, and headed back to the living area. Yami was seated in the center of the couch, eyes on the television. He looked incredibly troubled again, but he was not as haunted. He could see the difference in the two expressions and it seemed to relax his anxiety.

But what had his mom seen?

What had his grandpa seen?

He smiled as Yami looked up. He stretched the bundle to the other boy who blinked and reached out. "Thank you," Yami murmured softly, taking it from him and sorting through the materials for a moment. When he saw the fleece he seemed to visibly relax.

Yugi smiled a little more. "Do you want some help making the bed?"

He shook his head. "I think I have it."

Yami still had not fully made the bed for himself in the middle of the night. He'd dropped the two pillows against the armrest, draped the fleece over himself, and snuggled into a ball. The television had been playing for hours so he'd turned it off. But in the dark the shadows were stretched for what seemed like infinity. And his skin crawled as he thought of what lurked in the darkness.

There was so much pain to be found there.

He swallowed away a whimper.

His mind scrambled.

Why were things happening now?

Why were so many things coming to the surface?

Yami bristled in the darkness. His shoulders rose and a snarl threatened to creep out of his throat. He would not sleep. His body was weighted and fatigued. But he had not taken medication and his current failure to respond beforehand did nothing to calm him. His heart was in his throat and his tongue tasted of metal and copper.

He could not risk tearing his wrists open again.

He _would_ not risk it.

Yami drew in a long, sharp breath.

Then his ears caught a noise. Immediately he sat up. A snarl snapped forth from his jaws. His shoulders rose. Had someone gotten inside? He could not tell where they were for a moment. Then he looked towards the entrance of the living room.

Something flashed in his mind.

It was brilliant, hideous, terrifying.

He saw a tall frame, willowy and lanky.

It was wasted muscle, disease wreathed upon a body.

They were dressed in white.

The shoes were black, dressy.

The edges of their outline were baggy.

Their legs were too thin beneath their clothes.

He could see where the pants legs cushioned the fragile knees.

His mind scrambled and raced.

His head snapped up a bit more.

Their eyes were glittering in the dark.

Or perhaps it was one eye.

But it glittered and glowed and it made him sick.

For against what should have been skin, was plastic.

It reflected the bulk of the illumination.

And it stretched downwards.

It distorted their face hideously.

The mask stretched outwards on both sides.

And he prayed it was never removed.

For the skin beneath it was terrible.

And he was terrified.

And, oh gods no—

It happened in a flash. Yami backed up an inch on the couch. The snarl grew lower. Then it stopped trickling from his throat. The shape in the doorway was short and nimble in frame. They were dressed in baggy, light clothing. And their eyes glowed brilliantly in the dark.

Yami could not help the way his heart skipped and raced. His panic decreased, then ceased entirely. He closed his eyes, exhaling in relief. "Yugi," he whispered softly. He smiled in the dark and the other teen offered him a mirroring expression.

He could not read his features entirely due to the lack of lighting and his body trying to relax. But he could see the shadows more prominently on the right side of Yugi's face. And he saw his hair layered in the dark, gray and silver against deep, glossy black. He could see the small curve of his lips in the dark, though his eyes were too uniform to read for emotion in the dark.

"Hey, sorry. Did I wake you?"

Yami shook his head. "I've been awake. What's wrong?" he asked, demanding an explanation now as he finally seemed to fully relax. He licked his lips. "Are you all right?"

Yugi padded into the room, circled the coffee table, and then took a seat on the side. "Yeah, Yami, I'm fine. I'm just… I guess I'm so used to sleeping with you there that I couldn't sleep now. It's…too lonely, I guess…"

He blinked and tilted his head. "Oh," he said quietly, because he did not know what else to say. Impulsively he moved to make room for him on the couch. In a split second decision, he even extended his arm where the fleece was draped more heavily over his shoulder. Yugi blinked in shock, then smiled in amusement, and came to take the space beside him.

Yugi sat so close that their body heat mingled in the mere inches between them. Yami draped the blanket over his shoulders as far as it would go without removing it from his own body. He was surprised how peaceful it was to have the small teen so close to him. How strange to assume that he might even consider the proximity comforting.

They looked at each other in the dark.

Yugi wondered if companionship came easily to the other boy. It seemed hard for him when his friend and cage mate had died. He did not even want to consider the female who had formerly stolen his heart and returned it shattered and broken. It was by no fault of her own, but it still hurt him to consider.

He closed his eyes for a moment. Then he turned his face away. He looked oddly fatigued, weighed down by something Yugi himself had no experience with. It hurt to see him in such a way.

"Why are you still awake?"

"The same reason as you, I suppose."

But was he lonely? Yami considered. There was an aching pit in his chest, a void of some kind which smothered him. Yes, he was lonely. But it was not in the same sense as Yugi felt. His loneliness was borne of misplaced kindness and deaths which still choked his insides. His was of a greater suffering than being merely thrown out of routine by the lack of a physical body beside him.

And yet, something about the way that Yugi so simply accepted his lack of response made him feel much better. And the companionship he offered him made his heart feel a little less strangled. Every part of him seemed to push back on the gaping wound, attempting to close it if only slightly along the edges. And he wished he could ask Yugi to further his commitment to it. He wished he could ask Yugi how to heal it.

But it hurt just to consider and it left him breathless. So Yami pushed it aside and he pressed a little closer, until their sides were flush together and the warmth came in pulsating waves. And he wondered how Yugi might be able to heal him—if only slightly—without even trying.

He was trembling before he could stop himself. Yugi looked toward him, smiling gently, and moved to draw him closer. He held him until the trembling subsided, arms loose around him. The gentle touch made Yami think of warm pelts pressed against his side and the soft kiss of a canine's tongue upon his skin.

Yami pulled away a few minutes after he'd stilled. His eyes were on the carpet, his sight not truly focused within the dark. He ran a hand through his hair and closed his eyes again. "Thank you," he muttered.

"For what?"

"Putting up with me."

Yugi laughed softly. "My pleasure," he teased, though the promise of his words served to underline the soft statement. He beamed at Yami in the dark and the other boy couldn't help but smile in return, shaking his head.

He hadn't been wrong to bite him. He'd been exactly right when he'd chosen to do so. Against everything Yami had told himself when it came to such action, against every instinct in his body, he'd decided to save Yugi that night. And he was so happy to have done so.

He was the gentlest soul that Yami had ever come to know. Beyond his cage mate formerly, Yugi had to be the kindest person who had ever come to cross paths with him.

Yugi reached out abruptly. The action made Yami look up with wide eyes. His fingertips grazed his cheek. The touch was soft and gentle. And his skin was warm and beautiful upon his eyes locking with Yugi. Their gazes locked and his fingertips trailed down the length of his face. Then he closed his eyes and pulled his hand away.

"Are you okay?"

"Tired." Yami watched him as he put his hands in his lap and shifted his shoulders slightly. Yugi licked his lips. His fingers were still tingling, the softest, gentlest warmth along the ends of his digits. He opened his eyes again, continuing with, "What do you want for breakfast?"

Yami tilted his head. "You still have several hours before your alarm goes off," he objected.

"I know, but I figured I would ask so that when I bother to get up and make breakfast, I make the right thing," he teased softly, smiling at him. Now his eyes glittered with amusement, the close proximity giving Yami just the slightest bit more definition to read his emotions.

"Ah, I see." He smiled slightly. "What do you want for breakfast, Yugi?"

He tilted his head. "Fine, pancakes it is," he snorted, smiling wider. Yami rolled his eyes but could not help the small bit of warmth which filled his stomach. Yugi leaned forward and bumped their shoulders, eyes bright and beautiful in his own. "Extra syrup and maybe some berries? Mom got blueberries. I don't remember if you've ever had blueberries?"

"No I don't think I have…"

"Would you like to try some then?"

Yami blinked, nodding slightly. "Yes, please," he agreed, licking his lips again. "I think I would like to try that…"

He smiled and shook his head. "Then that's what we'll do." He leaned a little closer, then yawned. His forehead fell against his shoulder and he sighed softly. "I don't want to go back to bed yet."

"I could wake you in a couple of hours, maybe before your alarm goes off?" Yami offered softly, looking at him. Yugi blinked, eyes wide, and stared at him in shock for a moment. Then he smiled and shook his head.

"You don't mind?"

"Not at all."

* * *

Yugi blinked his eyes open and stretched. It took him only a moment to realize he was not in his bed. Nor was he completely resting on the couch. He blinked, then shifted his weight to sit up. His scalp tingled faintly where his hair brushed against Yami's chin. The other wolf did not respond, however, and Yugi yawned again, covering his mouth and stretching his arms out once more. He took a small glance at what position he knew he'd been lying in and found his cheeks heating slightly.

He'd fallen asleep with his head in Yami's lap. And the other wolf had let him. He'd even put a blanket over him in the meantime. Yugi ran a hand through his hair and looked over at him. Yami was watching him, eyes keen and wide awake. He hadn't slept any, Yugi knew, but he was still seated there all the same.

"I'm sorry. I didn't think I'd fall asleep on you like this…" He snorted, his mind foggy with the slight pun, and then rolled his eyes at himself. He glanced around for a clock of some kind, then looked into the kitchen. He could see the red print of the numbers, but the angle was all wrong to read them. He turned back. "You could have woken me up. I would have moved for you."

Yami shook his head. "I didn't want to. And you were comfortable. I wasn't willing to wake you," he said dismissively. He looked at him for a moment. "You still have an hour before your alarm goes off."

"Which means thirty minutes before my mom's does." He stretched and got to his feet. He felt the loss instantly, but shrugged it off. Yami wasn't truly going anywhere. He'd see him in a little while as it was. He would make breakfast and everything would be fine. Yami wasn't leaving him and running off into the mountains. He watched him for a moment. "Thank you…for not waking me then."

"You needed your sleep."

"But you need sleep too."

Yami shook his head. "Not tonight," he said quietly, shaking his head. "Definitely not tonight. Perhaps later."

Yugi nodded and turned away. "I'll see you in a little while." Thirty minutes before his mom's alarm went off…

It might be a smart idea for him to get up and start on breakfast then. She wouldn't be able to start a conversation with Yami and possibly trigger a reaction without meaning to. That would solve a lot of the potential issues. He would play the buffer and they'd have to work around him. She couldn't question him as he knew she wanted to. There would be no comments about his lacking an Italian accent or if his eyes were truly that color. He could even make her bypass the possibility of asking him to speak in Italian.

Yami's similarities to Yugi in appearance had done well to startle her enough not to ask. But he knew she had been wondering. It was impossible for her not to have. And he did not know that Yami could actually _speak_ Italian—perhaps he could. It was close to Latin and, from what he had read on mythology for werewolves, they could all basically read and speak in it. So maybe…

He shrugged it off and took a seat on the bed. He would have turned on the light had he not known that the neighbors were home. They might have told his mom later about this and she would get the rightful idea that he had been with Yami instead of asleep in his room…

When her alarm went off Yami jumped and looked over his shoulder. It was a lot softer than the one which always woke Yugi. He blinked and looked towards the kitchen curiously. The alarm might actually be preferable to the quiet that pressed so hard on his form. The alarm would mean Yugi would come out again, as well, and that made him feel better. He liked the idea of his beta coming back. They could sit together again before he had to go to school.

He always woke up earlier than necessary, took a shower and settled somewhere in the room to talk for a little while. Then he'd sit alone while Yugi made him some breakfast, ate his own seconds later, and eventually raced off for school.

The red-eyed teen looked up with a startled expression moments later. His stomach knotted briefly. He recognized the soft footsteps coming into the kitchen and it made his eyes wide. He blinked and tilted his head, sitting up completely again.

"Why are you up so soon?" he asked in confusion. "Your alarm has not even gone off yet."

Yugi grinned at him playfully. "I didn't fall back asleep," he admitted lazily, tilting his head at him. "You look happier than you did when I left."

"I am grateful for a friendly face."

He raised a brow, smiling warmly. "Well I'm glad I could deliver," he announced. His face seemed to light up a bit more and Yami rolled his shoulders as he shrugged the fleece away and got up to take a seat at the table. It was amazing how easily Yugi seemed to accept things like that. He'd probably still have been incredibly suspicious of the statement. "Do you want to learn to make pancakes?"

"Are you going to attempt to make me prepare them each time now?"

Yugi smirked at his amused, raised eyebrow. "Yes, you jackass. Then you'll make breakfast the rest of the time you're here," he snickered. He rolled his eyes and shook his head, turning away to head for the pantry. Yami put his hand in his chin and glanced around the room. Had there always been little charms hanging from the chandelier? He'd never noticed before. It threw him off slightly.

The red-eyed lycanthrope got to his feet and moved to his side. Yugi was pushing the metal bowl aside and picking out the box mix of the pancake batter. He glanced sideways at the taller teen, smiling faintly, and looked back at the bowl again. When he dumped it in, Yami remembered vaguely that he'd burned his hand trying to make this same food. It was a small hint bewildering to him that he had even done that to begin with. Common sense should have told him not to try.

But he'd been hungry.

And he had never had difficulty learning from visual experience. He had simply done things in the wrong order. Yet, when Yugi turned on the stove, his skin flashed with pain and he jerked back with a wary expression.

Yugi looked at him and then back towards the stove. Then he shook his head and smiled at him warmly. "You're not going to get hurt, okay? I won't let anything happen to you." He turned away and poured some water into the bowl with the mix. Yami watched him stir for a few long seconds and the other boy turned around to reach into the fridge for a small container of berries. The soft blue shade of them reminded him of nighttime, the outsides of each traced with something like silver clouds as if the moon were hidden behind them.

"You're making pancakes?" his mom asked, walking into the room. She noticed that both of them nodded but didn't turn around. Their shoulders were close to each other. They were very nearly touching. Kasumi had never seen Yugi so passive about his own personal space. Even if it had been Anzu, she thought he would have attempted to put more room between them. Her lips thinned and she narrowed her eyes slightly. "Whose idea was this?"

Yugi blinked and now he looked over his shoulder. The disapproval on her face confused him. "Mine," he answered slowly, glancing sideways. Yami was picking at the berries. He saw one of them puncture beneath his nail and the index finger holding it was colored slightly violet and blue. The small crescent shape was almost undetectable at first glance and, had Yugi not had such keen eyesight, he thought for sure he would have missed it. But the small, warm scent of blueberry made his nose tickle slightly. And he could faintly hear it when Yami drew in a deep breath to sample the smell more thoroughly. He resisted the urge to burst out laughing.

"Did you ask Yami first?"

The boy turned at the sound of his name. His eyes were wide and startled. "Ask me what?" he requested in confusion, eyes flickering to Yugi and his mother uncertainly. When had he needed to ask him something?

"Pancakes are one of Yugi's favorite breakfasts. I was simply wondered if he had asked you before he began making them."

Yugi blinked. "Yami loves pancakes."

Yami nodded slightly. "I do, yes. I love pancakes."

His mom stared at Yugi for a moment. Then her eyes flickered to Yami. The boy looked confused still, more like a deer caught in headlights. Did being the focus of attention make him nervous? She nearly snorted loudly. There was no way that this boy could be rendered nervous by that of all things.

There was something else going on.

"Besides, I decided I would let Yami try blueberries in his pancakes. He told me a while back that he's never had blueberries."

Kasumi narrowed her eyes, voice tight. "The ones that were frozen and you said you would use for smoothies?"

Yugi didn't bother to grace her with a curt reply in return. Instead he turned around, voice bright and cheerful. "Yep! That would be them!" He was speaking a bit loudly and Yami nearly flinched at the octave. He looked at Yugi and back, then turned to the plastic container in his hand where he'd been picking at the berries.

His mother sighed. "Well, at least you're eating them," she said dryly, rolling her eyes. Yami watched her shuffle towards the corner of the kitchen and grab what looked to be a metal dish with a long spout. The handle was long and smooth, elegantly done, and sturdy enough that she could hold it comfortably in her fingers.

She pulled it towards the sink, stepping around Yami who awkwardly pressed further into Yugi's space in order to avoid brushing against her. She noticed with a small hint of amusement that Yugi nearly knocked the bowl of batter over from the unexpected touch. The glare he shot Yami was playful. Kasumi filled the kettle with water, then turned on another part of the stove. The bright blue flames made his skin crawl for a brief moment. His lips threatened to tug downwards and his teeth ground slightly together.

"Do you like tea, Yami?"

Yugi blinked and poured some batter into the skillet. He reached up into the cabinets to grab a couple of plates, then moved to pull out a spatula from the holder. There were a few whisks, a couple of other spatulas, a few large metal spoons.

"I prefer water," he said quietly, unsure what more to do. He could not think of what else there was to say and it made his stomach churn harshly. Yugi glanced sideways at Yami for a split second and then away again. "But thank you for the offer."

Kasumi raised a brow curiously. "Were you raised to be so polite or did you learn that yourself?" she asked with her head tilted.

Yami felt his lips twitch downwards. "My parents raised me to be," he answered slowly, remembering abruptly the culture within Japan. They were raised to be polite, and businessmen were respected almost more than anyone else. He stared at her, realizing with harsh clarity the meaning behind this question. "But I do not think I wouldn't have wound up polite anyways. I… Politeness is a good virtue to have. I don't like the idea of not being polite."

Yugi flipped a pancake. His eyes narrowed.

Had Yami taught himself or had his cage mate? Or was it just something ingrained in him? Did wolves instinctively show respect to one another? He supposed they had to. The hierarchy hung in the balance, did it not? And Yami was in a territory he did not consider his, even _after_ all of that time he'd spent there with him.

Kasumi nodded and leaned against the counter. Yugi was watching her. She could tell, even though his head never turned and his eyes never truly focused on her. It was clear despite everything. Somehow he was studying her, watching everything without so much as a tilt of his head.

He, like Yami, was measuring her words. She had seen the dawning of realization come through those red eyes, brightening the ring of his irises nearest his pupils. The surprise and then mild disappointment within his gaze was blatant. She would have smiled if she had not known it would have looked like she was the cat that had caught the canary.

Yugi put a pancake on the plate. Yami shifted his weight. Kasumi looked at the kettle. The minutes passed. The kettle began to whistle. Yami turned his head with curious eyes. Yugi wondered vaguely if he should ask for a cup.

She poured the water into the cup to nearly an inch below the rim. She let it sit there, reaching into the cabinet overhead again to pull out a small, clay pot. The spout was short, narrow, and came only a couple inches from the small frame of its base. The color was deep red, the shape of it so smooth Yami almost thought of glass. The lid was small, short, and when she opened it, he knew that the basin could not be very large. Regardless, she pulled out a bag which he could hear crinkling softly as she put it aside and reached to where Yugi was holding a spoon out without prompt. She thanked him but neither of the two boys was listening; Yugi was still completely focused on his breakfast meal and Yami was too shocked by the sight of the tea to bother.

The smell which came to him was soft but spicy, lingering between earthy and mint-like in scent. Yugi felt queasy, thinking briefly of wolfsbane, but Yami thought it smelled almost like summer sunlight too deeply absorbed in greenery. He drew in another breath and ignored the way Yugi snickered under his breath at him.

She poured a small spoonful of the dried leaves into the clay teapot. Then she waited another minute before pouring the cup of hot water in as well. The cup was warm, but not too hot, and Yami watched her put the lid on top. A small pinprick of a hole allowed steam to escape from the lid, though it was already drifting from the spout. The handle was only an inch longer, Yami noticed with wide eyes, studying the small clay device.

Kasumi was watching him in turn. And Yugi was officially studying them both now. She had no doubt that he had gotten up earlier than usual in order to see to it that Yami wasn't interrogated. She nearly rolled her eyes. Yami seemed capable of handling his own, even if he was a little closed off and more confused and cautious than anything.

She turned away again, gripping the handle tightly and pressing the lid firmly down on the pot. Yami looked at her, entranced by the movements, and his red eyes glittered with perplexity. She nearly smiled, but ignored it in order to begin pouring. The teapot was tipped sideways and he thought the liquid was a deep yellow color. She waited a moment, poured some more, and the color became greener. When the last drop was inside of the cup, she set the kettle and teapot aside, though she did not drift towards where Yugi was still working on pancakes.

Kasumi smiled faintly at Yami. The other boy blinked in confusion, then turned away and looked at the plate of breakfast pastries. Yugi had drenched each of them in syrup and rubbed butter into the pancakes before adding the next. He had not even noticed he was doing that before now.

Yugi grinned at him sideways. "Did you enjoy watching tea being made?" he snorted.

Yami blushed slightly. He'd never seen that before. It was so strange and different to see it being done in front of him. He looked between Yugi and his mom for a moment. Then he looked down at the plate. Yugi drenched the top of the last pancake with syrup and butter and handed it off to him.

"Thank you…"

Yugi nodded, humming, and began to work on his own plate of pancakes. He narrowed his eyes and considered for a moment. Did he want blueberries? He didn't even know if Yami would have liked them as much as he did the plain ones he usually made for him. Maybe chocolate chips would be better. He did want something sweet…

Then again, he'd had hot chocolate and a Samoa the day before. Why should he eat any more sweets? But he did think that sweets might taste nice. Yugi put the rest of the blueberries back, then searched through the pantry for some chips to put into the pancake batter. He brought out a small bag of semisweet and began to mix them into the metal bowl.

Yugi glanced at his mom and the way she was staring at Yami at the table made him wonder. What had she seen between them? Why had she looked at them like that when she'd walked into the kitchen? She'd seen them in the kitchen and her expression had been disapproving. And he knew for a fact that she had not been upset by only his decision to make pancakes.

"How do you think your midterms will turn out?"

Yami blinked and looked at them with a startled expression. The fork was stuck in his mouth now, his eyes on Yugi more than Kasumi. The small teen was staring at his skillet, flipping a pancake skillfully.

"I think I'll definitely pass. I don't think I'll get all A's, but I know I _will_ pass." He shrugged. How he was even concentrating enough to talk to her was bewildering to him. His mind was still on what it was that she had apparently seen between them. She said she didn't like what she'd seen during dinner…

Kasumi watched Yami as the boy went hack to nervously eating his food. He would cut small pieces and self-consciously shift his weight with each bite. He would lick his lips and ignore the way that she was staring at him. Then she could see him hesitate, his eyes flickering about their faces before he'd tuck back into his food. He'd narrow his eyes and lick his lips and awkwardly shift his weight again.

But every time he got unnerved like that, his eyes shot to Yugi. She imagined that when Yugi took a seat in front of him, he would _still_ assume such flighty actions. She shook her head slightly and took a sip of her tea.

"Do you need any help studying further?"

"No." Yugi dropped the last pancake onto his plate. "I'm exhausted from studying too much. Besides, I can always ask Anzu or Honda or Jonouchi for help too if I really need it. Besides, I don't think I can cram anymore in my brain right now."

Especially when he couldn't even shake off one thought.

He nearly scowled, but instead dropped gracefully into his seat and put his plate on the table in front of him. He ignored his mother's stare and took a large bite of pancake to keep from having to speak any longer.

Kasumi watched the way Yami did exactly as she had expected. His eyes flickered up, locked on Yugi, then fell back to his plate. Her son glanced at him as well, then went back to wolfing his pancakes down. Yami fidgeted. Yugi licked his lips. It was only after a long moment that they both locked eyes. They smiled faintly at each other, then immediately looked down again.

* * *

Yugi shivered. Yami, a step behind him, glanced around them. The smell of blood was harsh, swamping their senses. Yugi felt sick as he crept over the small bend of a hill and peered further into the icy forest. He cursed and Yami looked at him sideways before craning his neck and tilting his head. His eyes flickered only once in search of the disruption, then found the shape in front of them as well.

The deer had been ripped almost completely through. Blood flecked the ground in waves of bright red. The snow seemed to be steaming from its touch even now. The head was snapped and lay upside down. The head of antlers were shoved almost into the bark of the tree neighboring the body. The bone of its throat jutted through soft brown fur in a peak of hideous white and red strands of bloodied sinew. The skull was concaved along the ears, the flesh of them torn away to red stumps.

The legs were shattered in half, sticking prominently outwards in awkward positions. The blood of them was dark and dried against the legs. The hooves were all but hanging by muscle, dark and hideous in the shadows. The organs had been drawn out, scattered upon the snow in heaps of muscle and blood. The back legs were splayed upwards, as if it had been attempting to kick away the threat. The body was frozen, stiff among the shadows.

"What…?"

Yami tilted his head. "Definitely werewolf." He padded forward, lazy in his stride, and wrinkled his nose as he came along its side. The carcass was huge, the buck extremely healthy and well-maintained, and he furrowed his brows. It smelled keenly of wolf, but the undertones were that of ivy and nightshade and his stomach churned. "Hellhound…"

Yugi blinked. "Valon, maybe?"

He shook his head. "I don't think he kills for sport, do you? He would have been caught by now and experimented on if he was that foolish." He looked at Yugi with a frown and narrowed his eyes. "No one would consider this a normal animal attack. Especially since the neck is broken in half like that. Don't you think that's a little too much to be an average predator?"

Yugi huffed. "Well, yeah, but…" He fell silent for a long minute and a half. Then he shook his head. "That's insane. Why would they want to leave evidence behind like that?"

Yami shook his head. "They probably didn't." He opened his mouth but Yugi was moving forward again. He got to the other side of the deer and yelped. The air rushed beneath him. The snow shot into the air. Yami gaped. A snapping noise made them both flinch. The smaller teen cried out. He was suspended in the air, eyes wide.

Yami blinked, frozen in place. Then he blinked again. He exhaled and the snow drifted from where the air was still disturbed. Then he blinked again. His mouth opened and closed. His lips twitched awkwardly. Then he snickered, unable to stop himself.

"This is _not_ funny," Yugi spat. The net was tight where it held him. It seemed to embrace his skin like a second layer of clothing. He ground his teeth together. His leg ached from where it had initially sprung underfoot. He snarled loudly in anger.

"Hey, relax," Yami chuckled. "It's just a net. I'll get you out in a second."

In his rage, the smaller teen ignored him. He clawed at the rope. Then he chomped his jaws. None of it did a thing. He bore his teeth and snarled again. He lashed out but the net simply jostled. He could have screamed.

The net jerked. Yugi spun on him. Yami had jostled it again. But he hadn't managed to tear it. He frowned and craned his neck. He wondered at its strength. Were there metal fibers? He wouldn't have been surprised. They had set the trap right _next_ to the carcass. They had to be aware it was not a natural predatory kill.

It only surprised him that it was not silver.

"Stop squirming."

Yugi bore his teeth. "Oh, _fuck off_ , Yami."

The embittered note in his voice made Yami freeze. His eyes grew immensely round. He froze in place, startled. Then he bit his lip and shrugged it off. He leaped again. His nails snagged one of the finer threads. It tore with an audible ripping. Yugi looked towards the possible opening with wide eyes.

Yami swiped again. This time he nicked his skin as well. Yugi hissed and the other boy ignored him. Another leap and the threads tore again. Then he repeated the gesture a fourth time. Now the net weakened from the jostling. The metal fibers wore from the movement. He lashed out again. His nail cut through another large square of rope. And Yugi yelped as the net folded beneath him.

He hit the ground with a cry. The snow softened the blow. But his ears were ringing. His tongue was swollen. His mouth tasted of blood. He blinked away the dots behind his eyes. He shivered. Then he looked towards Yami. The other wolf was frozen, listening. His eyes were narrowed and his head tilted.

Yugi felt sick. They were close by, _weren't_ they?

And he'd just foolishly alerted them to their presence there…

Yami bristled, drawing in a deep breath. "I smell burned flesh," he said softly, snarling. His head turned. His eyes shot quickly back and forth in the shadows.

Yugi drew in a deep breath, stiffening. His heart rocketed in his chest. He trembled harshly, then opened and closed his mouth. His eyes shot into the shadows as well.

No…

No, there was just no way.

There was absolutely no way.

It couldn't be Fuwa.

Fuwa was dead.

Fuwa _had_ to be dead.

The snow exploded next to him. Yugi jumped to his feet, horrified. Yami snatched his wrist. Yugi stumbled after him. The other boy was tugging him rapidly along. Their feet were moving too quickly. Yugi could barely even keep up. His eyes were burning from the speed. The cold air cut through his skin.

They slipped across the downhill lurch of the incline. And then they both slid. Yugi gaped and slammed into the ground. Yami grunted as he landed on his ass. His mouth opened and closed. His breathing came in ragged gasps. A harsh, hideous crackling noise burst forth. Yugi felt his head spin. He could barely catch it around his heart in his throat. He gaped and panted. His body was shaking.

The snow came in flurries. Rushes of white began to blind him. The clumps of ice swirled beautifully. Yugi felt sick. Yami struggled to get up. But the ground was too coarse. It was jagged, bumpy. He opened and closed his mouth. He gasped outwards. Then he scrambled for a grip on the ice. The snow was thick lying upon the layer of ice.

The ice was…

He looked frantically towards Yugi. The small teen was scrambling for his feet. "No, Yugi, stop—" The other boy heard him too late. His feet moved, scrabbling. The snow flew into the air. And the ice shattered. Yami lunged for him. The water burst upwards. The red-eyed teen felt it beneath him now. The roar of noise burst through him. He cried out.

A bullet shot through the air. It exploded into the snow right where Yami had been moments before. The icy current caught him terribly. It threw itself through his skin. It surged into his blood and lashed through him. His lungs ached and burst in his chest. His heart was too fast.

The darkness lapped at his senses. And it roared in his ears. Ice shards cut into his skin. He tried to lash out. And the current threw him harder. Yami gargled. The bubble of his breath barely touched the ice above his head.

The blackness choked him.

It was endless.

It was hideous.

It consumed him wholly.

It embraced him beautifully.

And then, with wispy touches, it began to recede.

The ice of the winter air burst through him.

His lungs rebelled.

He choked and expelled water.

The cold air bit into his skin.

His breath came in a raspy burst.

He croaked.

His eyelids fluttered.

The darkness was uniform at first. Then it began to differentiate in shades. Dark black encroached upon territories of gray. Dark cobalt layered itself throughout dunes of white and silver. He gasped and croaked again.

He was twitching. His fingers shook. His body was stiff and cold. He gasped harder. Then he looked about himself. He didn't recognize the trees. They all loomed over his head in uniform towers of bare bark. He drew in an aching lung of breath. Then he blinked again, eyes wide.

The snow was cold against his cheek. He felt numb. His lashes were frozen. His skin was covered in ice. He shivered. His entire body was wracked with pain. He gasped and blinked. Then he shivered harder. Finally the boy dragged his leg closer to him. They were sprawled apart, legs bent and covered by inches of snow.

He drew his legs closer. Then he clawed at the ground. It was a heavy burst of pain to greet him. He was still numb. But his flesh burned. And he was exhausted. He drew in a deep breath. His shoulders hurt. He could feel the muscles beneath his skin bruised and crushed. He drew in a large breath, then exhaled.

He watched his breath puff out in white swirls. He growled softly under his breath. He closed his eyes. The cold bit at his insides. Every part of him was in agony. He was bruised. He was exhausted. He was numb and cold. And his breath was too tight and terrible. He gasped inwards, choking harder. Then he exhaled hard and closed his eyes.

His body was shaking. The cold chilled him more. He shook harder. The noise in his lungs was broken. His ribs felt achingly shattered. He opened and closed his mouth. The air was frigid in front of his nose.

He closed his eyes. The snow fell from part of his clothing. Then he staggered to his feet. His legs were broken, gelatin. He felt shaky as he nearly fell over. Water shot through his open jaws. He stumbled again, only moving a small step forward. He opened his eyes and wiped at his mouth.

"Yami?" he whispered.

The forest seemed to swallow his name. Yugi looked around. His eyes were still adjusting. And his ears ached hideously. His blood was rushing in his veins. It was attempting to warm him. But he felt it weakly. It would not manage such a feat. He was too cold. He was frozen and tired.

Yet he stumbled again, forward and awkwardly. He nearly fell on his face, then shook it off. He gasped, eyes staring bleakly into the darkness. The snow looked too deep to traverse. He closed his eyes and angled his head lower.

He looked over. His body was imprinted there in a long line of broken, cold earth. The snow seemed feet deep. His eyes were burning still. The air had rendered them dry. He drew in a long breath and narrowed his eyes. Then he groaned out a rattling exhale. His eyes flickered away.

He could see the large boulder upon the bank which had caught him. A knot of branches were tangled where the ice of the river was weak. He shivered and breathed harder. The debris had saved him somehow. It had managed to hold him from the current. It had saved him…

Yugi breathed out and stumbled again. This time he forced his voice to come out louder. "Yami?" he called with the slightest bit more volume. But the reality was that he was the only one there. He knew it somewhere in the back of his mind. His heart was shaking and his lungs were too tight in his chest. His stomach hurt viciously.

He had woken alone. Which meant Yami—if he was not still somehow trapped under the surface—was further down the river. Unless…

Yugi couldn't think straight.

Could he have wound further upstream? Had there been another break further upstream? Or was it only possible he might be further downstream? If he tracked the course of the river, which direction made more sense?

Logically he was smaller than Yami. That meant he was easier to carry downstream. That also meant, however, that it would be easier for him to get caught in a tangle of branches and stone and get out of the river. Yami weighed more, so his journey could have meant more velocity from the current. Or it might have meant that he was somewhere farther upstream, the ice having broken and his body expelled…

Yugi choked on a breath. He had no idea which way to go…

His mind told him to simply follow the river. He turned around and stumbled along the bank. He'd search downstream first. Then he would double back and try for the course of the river upwards. He shivered and trudged along.

His plan was cut short when his body locked into place. He'd been out for hours. He'd traversed the length of the river for miles. He'd moved for hours on end. And he was still exhausted. His stomach knotted. His blood had slowed. He'd ignored the first warning his body had offered him hours back.

His heart had slowed and his body had shaken rapidly. He'd gone through convulsions, vomiting in immense waves of yellow and green bile. Blood had scraped up the back of his throat with terrible pain. The blood had slowed almost completely in his veins now.

And he was exhausted again.

So he stood frozen now, staring into the darkness. The snow was up to a foot high. The icy river roared with noise in his ears. His stomach jerked. He convulsed once more. Then he vomited heavily and shook hideously. His body trembled and heat burst through his deadened limbs.

His body felt too cold and numb. And the fire within his veins writhed and jerked. Yugi would not be able to move for much longer. His body was hideously attempting to repel the pain and cold. He was frozen and terrible and he needed to leave. He had to go.

His heart hurt in his chest, however.

His mouth opened and closed. He swallowed thickly. His mouth tasted hideous. The acrid tang of bile made him shiver again. He gasped and choked again. Then he closed his eyes and his body quaked once more.

"I'm sorry," he croaked softly, shaking his head. He was still whispering under his breath when he stumbled towards his house. He was covered in snow which he shed with awkward jerks. He shrugged the ice from his limbs. Then he ruffled it away from his hair. His strands were frozen in the cold air. The small teen wiped his face.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Yami," he choked out. Then he dusted his legs off and even kicked his shoes away. He forced the door open with a shaky hand. Thankfully it had not been locked. Yugi shook his head and locked it behind him.

Then he trudged up the stairs and to his room. The warm air made his entire body ache. The numbness receded, then came in hideous bursts. It clawed at him, tearing through his senses. He wiped at his nose where it burned. And he rubbed his eyes where he could feel fire trailing his cheeks.

He choked and sputtered and gasped for air.

And then he locked the door behind him. The bathroom…

Maybe if he got into some warm water…

It might be painful, but it would be just deserved.

He shouldn't have panicked.

He'd possibly gotten Yami killed…

It was almost four in the morning. He could see it when he glanced at the ticking clock on the wall. Then he dropped his clothes away and turned the water onto its hottest setting. He plugged the drain only when he saw steam rising in silver and white ribbons. He leaned over the surface of the water and the harsh touch of it made him hiss. His other hand reached out and turned the knob for cold water. The warmest temperature he could get it seemed to still be too hot or perhaps too lacking.

Yugi turned the knobs, then forced himself to get up and take a seat under the water. The initial touch scolded him. Then his body rapidly tingled. He jerked in a shiver, then relaxed. And he forced himself to lay there. His legs were outstretched and his eyes were on the tile in front of him. He tipped his head back. The steam rose in soft licks to caress his face.

He did not know how long he remained in there. But the water was lukewarm by then. And he could feel the wrinkles more than see them. He did not want to move but he could hear his mom and grandpa now. They were talking in low voices. His mom demanded to know if he had come back. His grandpa tried to keep her from calling the cops.

When had they gotten up?

Had he dozed at some point?

Yugi pulled the plug, got to his feet, and forced himself to step out and head towards the towels hanging on the rack. He rubbed himself dry, glanced disdainfully towards his clothes, and headed into his room.

He headed into the kitchen a few minutes later, dressed in pajamas. But he didn't look like he'd slept at all and it occurred to him that he could not pretend to be tired. Some part of him was screaming for him to go back. He'd search upstream when he got back outside. Then he'd find him and things would be okay.

But reality bit at his insides.

By now someone else had found him. It could have been the pack or a hunter. It might have simply been scavengers. But someone or something out there had to have found him by now. And that made his skin crawl with his anxiety.

What if he came across nothing more than a hollowed out husk of what had once _been_ Yami?

His heart shuddered in his chest.

 **I'm not entirely sure I'm too pleased with the way this chapter plays out as a whole, but the events have to happen because otherwise the character development for Yugi won't come about as properly as it needs to! SO! Bear with me and trust that everything will be okay in the end.**

 **Also, the net that is used for werewolves is one that has small fibers of metal mixed in with the rope in order to strengthen the bindings. Usually it is silver used for these purposes but this net did not have silver, but rather basic metal. I don't think that nets actually have any metal fibers in them so that's why I'm putting a note about it being used for the werewolves.**


	44. Damage

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day**

 **Chapter Warnings: Mentions of Possible Death, Mentions of Starvation, Mentions of War, Mentions of Bloodshed, Implied Torture, Yugi Gets Violent, Bloodshed, Character Killing/Deaths**

 **So, first things first! The work log entry is broken into FOUR parts. The reason being that, otherwise, the entries stretch for an entire page and a half and I would rather not have an excessively long entry like that because it would drag itself out pretty badly. I meant to ask in the end notes if you guys would have minded a huge chunk like I do, but I totally forgot. Anyways, so, that aside, let's get onto the bigger more necessary notes!**

 **Okay, so! There's a plot twist/subplot that comes up early in this chapter that will be explained later on. Because, as you'll see, there was a little kink in the plans with the gods and their idea of how to rectify the situation they created. But, mostly, it's going to be corrected and completely come to fruition in the last handful of chapters. We're not at the halfway mark yet and I'm totally going to say when we are, but anyways, there are a bunch more chapters to come before the end—not so much until the midway point though.**

 **Anyways, so here we get some backstory on one of the gods. And then you'll get a little surprise at the end of the chapter as well~**

 **Beyond that, enjoy~!**

Chapter XLIV: Damage

 _Work Log Entry XLIV: March, 2004 (Part I)_

 _March 10_

 _A.T.E.M. is unnaturally quiet. He does not bother to interact with the others despite their attempts to do so with him._

 _The boss seems to believe that it may be the experiments that have altered his ability to socialize. He has grown furious but he is the one that made us do it._

 _March 12_

 _The boss has introduced all of the wolves to the usage of a shock collar in order to prevent their attempts at escape or counterattack. They are restless and have grown vicious from the lack of exercise and their minds seem to be deteriorating as the time passes._

 _A.T.E.M. has yet to do anything worthy of being shocked but the others have been shocked over twenty times just this hour._

 _March 20_

 _A.T.E.M. has not spoken as of yet._

 _We worry that his voice box may not work after all of the experiments._

 _The boss was not pleased with this hypothesis._

Yugi paced the length of the river once more. He was traveling the rocky banks for what seemed the millionth time. He'd been there for hours now. He'd skipped school, telling his mom and grandpa the earlier that morning that Yami's parents had made an emergency call for him to meet them. He had lied that he had no idea what had gone on, just that he'd walked with him to the airport and come back home and arrived late that night when he figured the two of them were still asleep.

Now he stood on the bank, picking his way across. The ice was so thick it was amazing that it had ever broken in the first place. How had it collapsed beneath them at any point? Yugi could hardly fathom that it was so weak in one area like that.

But then, he'd been unable to see it in the darkness of nighttime and the sudden flurry of snowflakes. And now he was similarly stunted because the sun was blocked behind what seemed like layers upon layers of clouds overhead. And if the snow didn't stop falling soon he knew he'd have no chance whatsoever of tracking anything left of the other boy. When he'd trekked through the woods and found the initial break in the river, it had been by auditory means. He'd heard the rushing water long before he'd seen it. And the surface was already beginning to frost over once more.

Yugi shook his head. He hadn't been able to catch a scent. He'd found one from their initial run but he'd missed it the moment he'd stepped back out towards the river. There had been nothing there for him to see. And the snow had started only about twenty minutes ago. If Yami had truly wound up getting out of one of the softer patches of ice along the river, then he had no doubt that he could track it by scent alone where he had breached.

He glanced around only once. It had been oddly quiet but the weather had put strain on the animals willing to brave the snow as it was. Yugi shrugged his clothing off and tossed them into his backpack a step behind him. Then he moved it to the base of a tree where the roots looked oddly raised, dug a small pocket of snow away, and dropped it there. He buried it with a fine layer, just enough to cover, and forced himself to get to his hands and knees.

He'd only changed by his own will, on his own, once before. When Aileen had poisoned him and he'd realized that it was the only way he could possibly help Yami if he needed it, he'd changed. And the times before that, Yami had been there to help him each time. He had been there to speak to him and encourage him to keep going.

And he would still be there to help if Yugi had not fucked up so terribly.

The thought made him bristle. The snow crunched when he crouched there. A burst of heat came into his body, surging through his blood. At first he could feel nothing but that. He struggled to force himself to focus. His mind was racing now. If he hadn't messed up, Yami would still be there. If he hadn't tried to get up when he warned him against it, the ice wouldn't have broken.

If he had not snapped at him, perhaps he would have dropped him out of the net sooner. Then maybe they might have even been able to scent the hunter before he spotted them. They might never have even gotten shot at. Perhaps they wouldn't have even run towards the river in the first place.

But had the hunter already shot off at the river beforehand? Was that why the ice had bowed beneath their weight to begin with? There was no other reason Yugi could think to explain it. And he knew that he'd shot at Yami when they'd both gone under. He'd heard it around the terrible popping in his ears when the water had enveloped him…

He rolled his shoulders. His spine popped. The noise made his skin crawl. Ribbons of muscle writhed beneath his flesh. A pulse began in the back of his head, throbbing painfully. His fingers flexed, gripping at the snow. He sputtered. Bile rose like waves in the back of his throat. He opened his mouth and it spewed from his jaws. A long strip of saliva clung to his teeth.

The heat was pulsating. His marrow was on fire. His back arched hideously. His shoulders rose and fell. His body heaved, shaking violently. His stomach lurched forward. He heaved again. The smell made his eyes burn. His mouth was salivating heavily. He almost thought he might drown. Drool dribbled in heavy strands, stained yellow and orange.

His body shuddered harder. His shoulders cracked and rose again. His face was burning. The skin prickled and ached. His gums were growing swollen now. The roots of them expanded, then pushed out. His first tooth to fall was his right upper canine. Then the other followed. Blood trailed down his jaws. He convulsed heavily and vomit spewed through the air into the snow. The steam which came up made him tremble.

His teeth dropped slowly, like gathering rainwater. He could hear his bones snapping now. His spine arched again. Then it seemed to splinter and break. His palms began to elongate. His back legs shifted and jerked beneath the pressure. He bore his teeth as new enamel pushed through his gums. He convulsed again. The world seemed dizzy before he clenched his eyes shut.

The snow was hissing. He vomited. Drool fell to the ground. A wind rustled the tree branches. He choked on the taste of blood and bile. His skin itched even more. The pores opened and fire lit his nerve endings. Fur sprouted through the openings, pushing hard outwards. His body writhed and he found himself lurching over. When he hit the snow, it steamed and rolled upwards in sweltering bursts of heat.

Then, abruptly, it began to cease.

His body seemed to lose its heat. And the pain began to recede. Yugi panicked. Had he fallen short of being able to change? Had he somehow stunted it? What if he wasn't able to anymore?

It sent a hideous tremor through his body. And then he noticed it as his eyes opened. His mouth opened and closed. And the snow trembled beneath his gaping jaws. He was panting and his tongue was long where it pressed into the cold ice. Yugi could have trembled with relief. His entire body ached and throbbed, pulsing with pain.

He'd done it. He'd changed.

Yugi remained immobile, lying there on his side, for a few minutes longer. Then, finally, he rolled over. It was so cold that his vomit was frozen already. He glanced at it only briefly. Then he turned towards the river. The snow was picking up. He didn't have time to wait and plan.

He took off upstream, racing against his pounding heart. His fur shuddered along his body. His shoulders shook beneath his skin. He lowered his head, breaths puffing from his nose. He trotted on quick feet, feeling almost as if he were gliding upon the snow.

He licked his lips and his tongue passed over his nose. The air was frigid but his body was oddly warm. He did not exude nearly as much heat as Yami had that day upon killing Aileen. He'd been so feverish then that Yugi had been scared he might die from heat stroke. Now, however, his body was warm but not overheated as Yami had seemed.

Yugi pushed the thought from his mind. He did not have time to hash over that anymore than he already had. He drew in heavy breaths and lowered his nose closer to the ground. The banks were slippery now, cushioned by snow and ice which padded the more painful stones lying beneath. He drew in a deep breath again. The scents to come up into the air were mere tendrils of snow and dirt.

His skin prickled beneath his pelt. His tail shuddered as he hurried forward. His paws moved rapidly and he paused along the bank where the ice had initially broken and they'd fallen through. Yami's scent was highlighted here, heavier than usual. The ice and moonlight and pine were so immense he almost thought he was lying beside him again. His heart trembled in his chest. Did his pillow still smell of him?

He shook the thought off, the pain crushing him. Then he drew in another deep breath. He knew the anxiety had caused his scent to come out more potently. And Yugi knew his scent more intimately than he thought he did anything else. His mind recognized it. And he knew it was not something he would have forgotten, regardless of whether he now bothered to reacquaint himself with it.

He turned around, then sniffed the air. The only thing he could detect beyond the lingering touches of both his and Yami's scents was the light fluffy touch of the snow overhead. It would come in blankets soon, swirling down in heavy touches.

His skin jerked. He turned again, sniffing. The river gurgled beneath the ice. If he focused even the smallest hint more, it would become a long and steady roar.

He turned towards it, judging the distance of the ice. The river was wider than usual, probably from the heavier rains and the momentary melt that had come earlier that month. Yugi cursed mentally, then looked about the bank. The stones were perceptible in his vision only by the soft rise beneath the snow, making the layer of white somewhat uneven. He trailed along the edge of the bank, eyes on the rocks, then spotted one which seemed larger, rising higher than the rest.

He circled around it. The stone was probably large enough to support all four paws. The only problem was that he did not know what lay beneath it and the snow. Were there pebbles? Or were there more rocks? Which one was more likely to bend under the pressure when he launched himself? Which one's structure would break and send him a shorter distance? If he landed on the ice, would he go under again?

A surge of bitterness swelled in his veins. His teeth were bared in the frosty air. Did it matter if he went under again? It might even be the better idea of searching. Perhaps he'd end up where Yami was.

But fear made him rethink. Maybe if he tested his weight on it before he tried to leap from it… But what if he did that and weakened what little foundation it might have? What if, because of this, he was unable to do anything more than hit the middle of the river and go under again?

His heart was racing. His stomach ached.

If he were so foolish as to throw himself into danger like that, he'd surely get himself killed. And that was hardly something he wanted. He didn't want to die. Death was nothing Yugi wanted to see at any point.

His ears flattened against his skull. He whined faintly. Then he looked about himself and backed up a few feet before running. When he reached the rock, he threw himself off of it. He cleared the seven feet of frozen water, landing nearly twice as far. He stumbled. The muscles in his back legs hurt. He shook it off, blinking, and then trotted forward in a hurried stride.

He trailed the river for miles.

And the pattern persisted for a week. On the last day of that week, tired and without a clue, Yugi took to the job in his human form. He could hardly detect the tracks they'd made. The snow had buried and covered most everything.

But Yugi had still tried everything. He'd traced the river, both banks, tested for cracks in the ice with wary paws. He'd circled back more than a thousand times it seemed. Yet the snow had not stopped and he was too exhausted to continue changing as he had so many times before.

So now he paced about the banks. How had he come to miss the net trap he'd been ensnared in? Had the hunter reset it yet? Would he attempt to kill him a second time? Why hadn't he _come back_?  
Yugi shook it off and pressed his foot against the ice. What was he trying to find now that he had not all those other times? A week had gone by, after all. And the snow was a ton heavier than it had been initially. Now the air was cold enough that most people had called out of work or school in order to stay home. And here he was, trying again.

But there were no clues to be found even as he retraced each of their steps. He did not find pockets of snow or the ice broken in other places. There were no hints of where Yami might have wound up.

Impatience wore him thin to the bone. He was well aware that he'd lost weight. His eating habits had become all but nonexistent. He'd begun to grow angrier rather than sadder. And it was driving him insane with hatred that he was bound by his own lies and forced to waste time. He'd go home after pretending to attend school, ignoring it when his mom would give him strange looks for his outright lies. He'd come back before curfew, waiting just long enough for his mom and grandpa to fall asleep, then return to search some more.

Yugi shook his head slightly now. Yami was not dead. He _couldn't_ be dead. His eyes narrowed. There was no way that he was dead. He shook his head, though another thought crossed his mind.

Slifer could tell him if he was.

His head snapped around.

Slifer could tell him.

Yugi spun on his heel. He had no clues to follow. But he could easily find Slifer to ask for answers. He knew very well that he could find her and—

He was jogging now.

Slifer knew where the labs were.

Yami might damn well be in the labs instead.

His legs raced faster and his mind was scrambling.

Blue-violet eyes flickered about the snow and he hurried faster. Where was the entrance? If it was big enough for himself and Yami to fall in as wolves, it was large enough for him to enter as a human. He'd forgotten a former trip to the tunnels to see Slifer. He'd gone as a human. Yami had gone with him.

He looked about for the entrance of it, the thicket of which he knew an entrance hid behind. Yugi looked over his shoulder. Was this the same part of the forest? He could not even remember. Where had he fallen into the entrance of the tunnel systems before?

He'd fallen straight into it…

Yugi turned his head, mind racing. His eyes snapped towards the tunnel entrance once more. He could remember it now. A muscle memory somewhere in the back of his mind told him the tunnel was there.

There it was. He could see the shadows of the snow where it fell against the lower branches of the thicket. His skin crawled as he hurried forward. Was that truly the entrance? Yugi crouched next to it, then pushed the brambles away. The snow was so thick that it fell in a rushing thud towards the hole beneath it. The noise rattled upwards and made his eyes widen further.

Then came the soft sliding noise of it as it followed the dip of the stone beneath. His skin crawled and he bore his teeth faintly. The thicket was dark brown, soaked from slightly melted snow which had been absorbed into the branches.

He looked it over, pushing it further back. He put his legs over the edge, thinking to drop back into the entrance. He slid down the slightly wet stone. The sound of his sneakers touching the floor made his stomach toss. He was so much lighter. Yugi felt sick; he needed to eat again. He had to start eating again…

Yugi pressed onto his haunches, weight balanced more pointedly on his toes. He reached out and touched the roof overhead. He'd have to move on his hands and knees. Perhaps changing would be much easier than bothering to shuffle about in the dank stony earthen path. Yugi reached out and forward a couple of times, then moved his palm about. He shook his head and pressed his knees towards the stone.

The snow was a soft cushion and he realized that, not only would he ruin his school uniform once more, he would also find himself chafing the skin of his palms and knees. Yugi shook his head and began to strip of his clothes. It would have to happen. He would need to figure this out. He would have to come back this way when he went home again. He would make a mental note for that.

Yugi moved a few paces ahead, hands and knees pained from the cold chill of the touches. His eyes narrowed and he nearly snarled in annoyance. He should have changed beforehand. For some reason Yugi thought oddly that he was like Alice within Wonderland, though he did not remember much of the story. Hadn't her adventures been a dream?

He could have sneered at himself. Wouldn't that have made his life _that_ much easier? He could have spat at himself in anger. If he were merely dreaming, Yami would still _be there_. The anger which coursed through him caused his entire body to arch with pain. He clenched his jaws and his teeth ached as they ground together.

Yugi paced forward a single step. The bones crunched along his spine and his legs quivered. The pain ricocheted through him in violent bursts. His skin jerked and shuddered. His heart was in his throat. His head pounded. Blood filled his mouth. A heavy heat billowed through him. Yugi shuddered and his arms collapsed beneath him. His fingers flexed and curled inwards. His nails splintered and cracked, then hardened with rapid bursts of noise.

He whined and bile dripped from his jaws. The taste made his head swim. A twinge of blood colored his tongue. The weight of it was harsh, caking the muscle to his palate. His head swam, his vision dizzy. His ears flicked back and forth. His breathing came out tight and harsh. He could not comprehend the pain that swept through him. He gasped and expelled vomit. He choked and sputtered. The noise echoed through the darkness. The shadows seemed to swallow the intensity of his heaving. His retching reverberated in his own ears.

His spine arched. Then it flattened and jerked. His fingers grasped at the ground. His claws splintered from the grip. Then they repaired themselves. Rapidly his skin bulged and tugged. Fur came in a shower of white. He gasped and choked. His teeth fell from his aching mouth.

Somehow he did not collapse. Yugi shivered. His skin rolled along his body. He panted. Then he stumbled forward and began to make his way through the dark towards the direction he knew would lead him to Slifer.

He panted and staggered. And his breath was a heavy current of bright white with each exhale. Yugi kept his ears angled forward. His eyes were shifting through the darkness in search of what he assumed were warped shadows. He strained his eyes to see around himself more comfortably. Then he relaxed slightly.

He could hear her approaching him. The welcome sound of her paws on the stone was alarming to him. He licked his lips as he spotted her. The golden eyes glowed and glittered. Her gaze bore into his.

For a moment he could not think.

Then, abruptly, eyes narrow, he growled, _Is he dead_? _Is Yami dead_?

The she-wolf was silent for a moment. She stood more directly at his height, he realized. She was level with him, but her head was larger, a bit broader. Her skull was wider in shape and her ears were possibly a little shorter than his own. But they were soft and gentle in their rounded triangular shape.

 _I cannot tell you that_ , she said finally, awkwardly. Her head tilted to the side and she considered him closely. They were mere feet from each other. Yugi watched her with dark eyes, annoyed. _I have never been able to see the lifespans of you both. My ability to see your paths ceased upon your meeting each other. But, before then, I knew you as intimately as I might my own abilities._

 _But you know when a wolf dies. You are the one to lead their soul to Paradise_!

Slifer flicked an ear. Her eyes were softer, sympathetic, but there was a secretive glint there as well. And a frost had begun to clear away any hint of kindness as the seconds passed. _I am unable to intervene with Atem beyond what I already have,_ she said simply. _You and he are beyond my jurisdiction of assistance. Cease your inquiries of me. I have no answers for you._

 _You are unable to help me_? he spat furiously. _Because I am Atem_? _You stupid gods allowed me to be born and yet none of you will help me_?

Slifer curled her lip. _You walk beyond us. You are meant to be among the mortal wolves. We are not._

Yugi snapped his jaws. _You disgust me,_ he snarled. _Two Pure-Bloods were born at your whims and none of you will take responsibility and guide either of them_?

 _Should we interfere more, we will influence the design of which you are meant to create and weave for yourself. Should we step too closely and influence too greatly, the future may become more bleak than even the present._

Nothing _could_ possibly _be more bleak than_ this! Yugi roared at her. He sprang forward a pace, snapping his jaws. But he meant merely to display his distress, and she took it as such. Her ear flicked in acknowledgment of his pain but she did not do more. _Yami is possibly_ dead! _I'm the one meant to lead these wolves into battle and I don't have anyone to help me any longer_!

Slifer remained silent for a long moment. Then she closed her eyes. It looked unnatural and altogether horrifying to behold her like this. He had only seen her close her eyes when she had meant to guide her daughter to Paradise. And now she was doing the same in front of him. It shook him and his heart rattled in his chest.

 _Yugi, allow me to tell you a story,_ she whispered, voice soft and parental now. There was a part of him which seethed under such a tone and another which welcomed it more than anything. _When I was born, a great war was being waged. My mother and her kin were all but dead. The winter was harsh and terrible. The humans treated us as rats. My mother attempted to care for me as best she could. But even she was not impervious to the humans and their weapons. I was only two moons old when I found her carcass strung up by a tree. The humans had gutted her and put her pelt on display for us to see._

Yugi shuddered, fur rippling with the frantic need to flee. _Slifer…_ he whispered, unsure of himself. Should he flee? He felt he might need to. The tone of voice had become cold, simplistic, so far removed that it horrified him.

 _At two moons, I had but one wolf to take care of me. And she died in an attempt to save me. She, too, was strung up on a tree, skinned and left on display. The war was growing harder and things were uneven and bleak. I was the only pup to survive for so long. But I did not possess the ability to hunt on my own. My mother's death taught me the value of hiding away from the humans, but it is by example that a wolf is taught. And I had no ability to carve weapons as the humans did. I lay starving, unable to do more than eat mouthfuls of snow._

He trembled, eyes wide in horror.

The she-wolf opened her eyes. _Now, I was not a stupid child. Nor was I the most innocent creature to walk the earth. And I prayed for days that someone might end my agony. I waited for what felt like years. And when I finally began to succumb to death, I found myself welcomed with a choice._ Her eyes glowed and her lips curled. _It was that of whether to let myself die and possibly allow the death of others I could potentially save or accept a gift of which I might heal and be reborn again. I chose the latter, though I was so desperate to find an end to my pain._

His ears flicked. His fur shuddered. He almost snarled. His anxiety was a potent scent in the air. It drifted between them in zephyrs. The cold chill of winter seemed to embrace and amplify it.

But Slifer did not comment. Nor did she pause.

 _My dear mother, Lupa, gave me the ability to heal from my hunger. She taught me to hunt and allowed me to grow for about six moons. And, then, she guided me for one more year. Upon that final day she remained there, she reminded me of my promise. And she gave me my immortality, the ability to recover from any wound, to breathe life into dead lungs as I was struck down in battle or by hunger or disease or anything of the sort._ She bore her teeth. _And I led the wolves into war. I did it when she left me. And I killed and I slaughtered. I was to them as Athena was to the Greeks. I was a war goddess, but my paws were stricken by death. And I smelled of it. No one could look upon me without sensing it, knowing I had once treaded that path and come back._

He flattened his ears against his head. _I don't…_

She sneered at him, eyes like fire, teeth showing in a hideous expression. _I was as an alpha should have been. Able to think on my feet and decide for myself what was right and wrong. I turned the tide,_ long _before Ra or even Obelisk was born. But even I was not impervious. Things wore on me and I welcomed them when Lupa brought them to me. We were each touched by her, warriors beyond even the other Pure-Bloods' capabilities_. _She chose us for a reason. I, for my touch with death. Ra, for her grief upon her pups stillborn. Obelisk, for his ability to fight off forces which might have killed others._

He shook his head, eyes wide.

 _Lupa did not interfere beyond us. She left us there to guide the wolves. How we managed to win was beyond me. When we went up against the Harbingers, I was amazed we survived. That said, we were forced on our own at one time. And we were brought together by chance upon Lupa seeing us as worthy. When we went to slumber the first time, alongside her, it was because we thought it safe. It wasn't_. _Mistakes were made even back then. And they still impact now. The present is corrupt because of us. Because we were foolish and stupid. We have upset the balance of a great many things right now. But we are still trying to fix them. And to do further would be corruption. Our interference would mean death, possibly millions or maybe as slight as thousands. We made our choices back then, as we were free to do. And now, we leave you and your pack to do the same. Wolves are nothing if not champions. Humans brought us pain and chaos, we returned the favor tenfold. They brought us war and we won. You shall have to find your footing on your own. Yami cannot teach you your place. Nor can we._

He felt shame rush through him. _And what if I can't do it_?

Her eyes were cold, calculating, and her hatred clear. _Then, the second Pure-Blood will do as necessary to ensure survival of the lycanthropes._

He bore his teeth. _It's not Yami, is it_? he whispered, heart choked in his throat with sudden realization. _He's not the second Pure-Blood…_

Her smile was cold and hideous. _No. He is not._

* * *

Yugi was trotting with his clothes in his mouth. He'd been trying to find a place to change and dress himself, but it was hard to really consider. The trees were long and dark, shadowed in the forest along the miles of virgin snow. His paws continued to sink into the ice crystals, though his webbed feet managed to keep him from falling as far as he would have had he been human. He sighed and the laces of his sneakers slipped around his canines for what felt the millionth time since he ran off from Slifer.

His ears flicked and he dropped his clothing immediately. Wolves? His fur bristled faintly. Then he blinked and turned his head towards the source. It was faint, altogether unnerving, but he recognized it. The wolves coming towards him had a stride that he knew, if only vaguely.

 _Mai_? _Otogi_? he called uneasily. Was he right or had he simply heard things?

At his voice, two forms came bounding through the snow towards him. They looked incredibly relaxed, and a pang filled his heart. Had he and Yami ever looked so nonchalant and careless?

Both wolves stopped a few feet away, wagging their tails in exuberance. Otogi tipped his head to the side, tongue lolling, and Mai stretched herself out in a leisurely action. It was slow, lazy, and her tail continued wagging. They both looked at each other and then to him again, ears pricked in wonder towards his possible request.

Yugi felt his heart squeeze in his chest. How could they be so easily joyful like this? It was amazing to him. There was going to be a war, Yami was missing, their former leader was dead. His stomach dropped and rolled painfully. He swallowed hard and flattened his ears against his head before pricking them forward again immediately. They didn't need to see how miserable he was.

 _What are you guys up to_? he asked, somewhat bewildered. Mai wagged her tail again and Yugi felt his eyes grow wide. The image in his head was that of a short-legged, gray animal with long fur of a texture that reminded him of wool. The eyes were wide, circular, bright brown with blown pupils. The ears were sharp and almond in shape, rounded slightly, the tuffs surrounding them large and bushy. There was a small, tiny set of horns inches from its eyes. Yugi stiffened. _You guys were hunting_?

Mai tilted her head and licked her lips. He would have laughed if he was human. Obviously she'd enjoyed it. He wanted to roll his eyes. Then he tilted his head slightly and considered them both. Neither of them had the slightest hint of blood on their muzzles. But, now that he focused, he could _smell_ the sweetly scent of the serow meat on Otogi's breath.

 _Was it only the two of you_?

Otogi wagged his tail in answer.

Yugi was about to speak again. But then a large black wolf with red eyes appeared in his head and every thought he had halted. He looked at Mai, heart squeezing in his chest, and wanted for even a moment to leap forward and attack her. But the physical outlet would have done nothing for him. And she hardly deserved that.

Yugi tilted his head for a moment. Then he pricked his ears toward her. He wondered if it was possible to project a series of images to her as well. He'd never tried it before. In truth, he was not even sure how it was that he'd managed to speak to any of them in the first place.

He licked his lips and shifted his shoulders. _A hunter scared us, shot at us when we were looking at a deer killed by a hellhound. We tried to run, got to the river, and ended up falling through the ice. We were both separated. That was a week ago and I haven't found him yet._

Both wolves were frozen in place, eyes wide. Then, in unison, they looked at each other and back. Yugi flicked an ear uncomfortably.

Mai projected a picture of the river. Yugi nodded. Otogi projected a picture of a break in the ice, of a drowned wolf body lying against the stones of the bank. Yugi didn't have the heart to say they were human at the time. He nodded instead, feeling exhausted.

 _I need to go to the camp,_ he announced, eyes sharp. _I'm going to organize groups to search for him. It's been a week and I'm not making any progress on my own._

Otogi and Mai wagged their tails. He flattened his ears against his skull and bristled faintly as he began to gather his clothing again. Maybe he should try to dig a little den and stuff them inside. Or perhaps it would be smarter if he went about trying to hide it in the branches overhead. He wondered at the idea. Neither would prove to be completely void of snow and soaked clothing, however. He nearly sighed in frustration. Maybe he could bring his clothes to the camp entrance and hide them in the cavern behind the waterfall. It might get some spray from it, but he did not know for sure.

He shrugged it off, then decided it was best to go ahead and hide it nearby or perhaps change back and get dressed. He supposed he did not need to truly worry about it all. In the long run it only mattered that he got home in clothes. He could just throw himself in the snow and walk home after dusting himself off, saying he was playing in it.

 _Let's go,_ he muttered, snatching his clothes up again and beginning to trot along. Mai and Otogi both glanced at each other, then seemed to grin in amusement as they followed instantly. He moved like an inverted white shadow among the snow.

Mai and Otogi looked at each other. Yugi looked as if he were one with the snow. He seemed so pristine white as to have had his fur molded from the very surface of the beautiful field of unmarred ice. The two of them moved in a slight flanking position, steps behind and to both sides of him.

He began to slow eventually, then turned his head towards them. _You two need to go ahead of me. Go and tell them that I want search parties out and about,_ he directed quietly, eyes snapping between them as he turned around. _I have one more place to look before I come back to the camp._

Both of them swapped looks, wagged their tails and dipped their heads, and then ran ahead of him. When they reached one of the ridges, Mai let out a small howl even as she raced alongside Otogi. They both let loose small, short bays to echo each other, and Yugi watched them until they disappeared beyond his vision. Then he turned and trotted into the trees, changed back and dressed himself.

He did not know if there was any chance Yami might be there, but he searched regardless. Yugi trotted along, colder than he had been with his thick pelt. His shoes were soaked as he continued to force his way through the snow in order to make his way towards the pier.

He checked the water. He did not think that there would be any sign, especially with the amount of snow which had fallen, but he still looked about the surface. He licked his lips. Perhaps he would be fine. Perhaps he would find him, completely fine and alive, somewhere nearby and not have to worry about it.

Yugi shook his sneakers and the snow fell away. His toes were cold but he could not find it in himself to care as he continued moving. It took him a long minute and a half of searching for any amount of ice which might have been formerly broken. But it all seemed as if it had been firmly frozen for a rather long time.

Yugi turned towards the warehouses, wondering if perhaps he might have hidden within the buildings. He searched each of the abandoned factories and warehouses. Then he looked through all of them, sniffing heavily in order to get even the slightest trace. And he caught nothing.

Not one of the fifteen abandoned buildings held even the smallest sense of the other wolf's presence. It made his skin crawl and his stomach ache. Yugi turned away and started back away towards the forest. He'd have to make his way to the camp and see if there was any news.

But, what met him upon entering the clearing again was that of several wolves running off together. They must have been the search parties. Yugi flicked an ear and continued forward, the waterfall roaring in his hearing. He could not tell how many had remained and how many had left.

Yugi moved somewhat slowly. His ears pricked forward and his nose wrinkled as he considered his options. Mai and Otogi would have told him had Yami returned to the camp. He knew they would have. And the fact that groups of three and four were even leaving as it was meant that they were taking the task seriously, did it not?

He could have sighed with relief. But another thought occurred to him. What had they said to get them to go and try to see what was happening? Had they told the truth? His throat felt tight, his chest heavy. By the gods, he hoped not…

Marik came up to his side. Yugi blinked, stopping short in surprise. He had not expected anyone had seen him at that moment. The fact that he stood in front of him now, eyes gazing into his, was both startling and somehow infuriating.

He pricked his ears forward. His head tilted to the side. _Marik,_ he greeted in a somewhat dismissive tone. He sighed softly and the other male watched him with glittering eyes.

His voice was strong and smooth, more prosperous than Yugi remembered it to be. He could not recall many conversations with him, but now he felt uneasy as he listened. Other wolves stopped their actions to turn their heads and the white canine was acutely aware of how they all seemed to stare.

 _You should use such resources on better endeavors._ He sounded almost authoritative and diplomatic, but Yugi felt he might as well have been staring at a snake with its fangs bared. He blinked, eyes sharpening as he continued. _Death happens. You must simply move on. He may have been your beta but you can easily replace such a rank. It would be better to have a wolf within this pack as your second-in-command. He was going to betray us all anyways_.

Yugi stared at him. When he blinked, it was long and slow. His ears flicked back and forth. The wolves were all staring. They were all swapping looks now. Their ears were flicking about. Their eyes were locked on them now.

 _It is best that he is gone before any damage was truly done._

 _And the damage done to me_? a part of Yugi wailed in his head. But it did not come forward and he shrugged it off. His eyes flashed and he stepped closer once, blinking long and slow again.

 _He would have gotten us all killed._

The white wolf breathed in deeply, watching him closely. His eyes searched his pale lavender gaze and his ears flicked again. Marik was watching him. He was staring as if he had something in his eyes that might be worthy of provoking.

 _You know this_! _He was here once, pretending to be you. He was willing to masquerade in your place and pretend to know what was to come later. The gods have taken him for a reason._ With a colder tone, one which made many of the wolves stiffen, he added, _May Slifer take his traitorous soul._

Yugi stared at him. He was stiff. His body felt frozen. A tremor seemed to race through each of the wolves surrounding them. Many of them had drifted closer. Some had backed away and had their heads lowered and their ears flat. Yugi noticed all of this from the corner of his eyes. But, in front of him, there was only Marik.

And, beneath his skin?

There was only rage.

He didn't try to restrain it.

Yugi did not even recognize he had moved. In a flash, he had launched himself. Marik cried out as his teeth caught his face. He tore back a step. Yugi pulled fur and soft flesh away. Blood dripped to the snow. He lunged again. Marik rose onto his back feet to attempt to brace himself. Yugi slammed into his shoulder to knock him off balance. His teeth snapped into his face again. Blood splattered. His tail was stiff in the air, his lips pulled back, his incisors painted red. The gray wolf backed up a step.

When he tried to back up again, Yugi caught him by the muzzle. His teeth snapped into the bone of it. And blood sprayed and dripped. Marik screeched and struggled. He tossed his head frantically back and forth. He jerked back a step and Marik stumbled. Yugi released him, running on pure instinct.

His anger made him bloodthirsty. The fight was over the moment he'd snapped. Yet Yugi did not sense that. He caught Marik by the scruff as he was stumbled forward. He jerked him back and sent him onto his side.

He caught him by the skull. Then he knocked him onto his back. His teeth aimed for his eye. Marik squirmed and kicked at him. Yugi bore his teeth inches from his face.

 _If you_ ever _speak of Yami in such a way again, I will_ kill _you,_ he spat furiously. He could taste blood on his tongue and it was disgusting. Yugi bore his teeth again. His exhales were hot against Marik's eye. The other wolf's pupils were blown with fear. His ears were flat against his head. His lower body was twisted upwards, his underbelly exposed, tail tucked tightly.

Yugi pulled away, then looked to the others, tail raised high. _Would anyone else like to speak to me about replacing Yami_? he snarled furiously. He snapped his jaws and all of them flinched and bowed low to the ground. He bore his teeth and glared at each of them. His rage was so powerful his body almost shook. _Yami is still alive. And I'll be_ damned _before I allow a single_ one _of you to speak ill of him._

Not a single wolf questioned him. Another week passed. Yugi had not gotten a single hint of where Yami might have been. And the other wolves likewise offered him awkward apologies. Each one would creep up to him, head bowed and ears flat.

Yugi had yet to learn even a single one of their names. Since all of their time and energy had been put into hunting and finding Yami, it seemed unnecessary to even bother with introductions. His own time was spent at school once a week to make sure they did not completely leave him in the dust with curriculum and his own solo searches.

He had come to school this time. And he'd ignored the stares he'd gotten upon entering the classroom. Many of the whispers he'd heard had been about how the drugs he was on must have had terrible withdrawal symptoms. Someone had suggested he was on PCP and then another had laughed that was how he had wound up killing people. The theory was he murdered them, then stole their wallets and bought his drugs.

Yugi had not entertained looking into the mirror that morning. He knew how badly he'd done with taking care of himself. He'd forgotten to eat more often than he cared to admit. And he was often staring into space when he was stuck at school for the day. He knew his eyes looked black from lack of sleep since he snuck out every night to keep checking for anything he might have somehow overlooked.

The teachers were gaping at him. He noticed it, even as he ignored them. His head was propped in his chin and his eyes were glued to his paper in front of him. The rings beneath his eyes made them even more sallow than they already were. His skin had pulled taut over his bones and his baby fat seemed to have disappeared altogether. Yugi may not have cared to study it further, but he knew that much at least.

Even Valon gave him a somewhat disturbed look as he took the seat beside him in confusion. "You look like shit."

"It accentuates my eyes."

The hellhound tilted his head. "Is there anything I can do to help?" he offered awkwardly. A small part of him was eager to see if there was anything, that dog—or perhaps it was the wolf—mentality which begged to make him feel better. The majority of him, however, did not care in the slightest. It was odd working with such confliction all of the time. He was used to it, but he still found it strange. So many wolves so often complained of feeling too much. Yet he felt only what the canine side of him could.

Yugi looked over at him. His eyes were paler than usual. The bags beneath them were deep and blacker than even Valon's pelt. His lashes framed them in a way that made the visual abuse that much worse. His cheeks were sunken around the edges. His hair looked matted or knotted around his bangs. He looked as if he had dried blood near his right ear. His collarbones were more pronounced. His shoulders looked thinner. His wrists were hardly the size of the circle his pinkie and thumb made when he pressed them together. His clothes hung from his frame in a ragged fashion.

"No," he finally muttered. "No, I don't think you can help me in the slightest, Valon."

He left it at that, nodding and getting up to go to his regular seat. He did not glance back or turn around again to talk to him for the rest of the day. Yugi was so thankful he might have burst into tears.

* * *

"Slifer."

He looked ridiculous calling into a tunnel like this. And he knew anyone who might have been foolish enough to go into the woods in the first place would think he was nuts. But Yugi ignored that part of his mind which rebelled at the very concept. He remained crouched there, listening to the steady sound of the water underground. In the sunset he could hear it, because the forest around him seemed rather still and lifeless and below ground the sound was softly amplified. It bounced about upon the walls, ricocheting until it met his ears.

"Slifer," he called again. He tilted his head and listened harder. He was not sure what made him finally look back down. He had been about to give up and climb down. It could have been a movement or it might have been a sound. Either way, Yugi found himself looking.

And, in the shadows, a pair of glowing golden eyes peered back at him. Her gaze was translucent, a single uniform shade of golden-gray which shone brilliantly in the dark. He wondered at the sight of them. Then he licked his lips.

He had not bothered her since their argument weeks back. Crouching in front of the mouth of the tunnel, watching her now, he felt slightly awkward. Yugi tilted his head and narrowed his eyes, his lips twitching until they pulled into a grimace. But she had come for him. She had come when he called her. It was somehow amazing to him that she had done so.

"I need your help."

The she-wolf peered at him silently for several minutes. Then she spoke, voice soft and critical, her eyes sparkling in the dim light. _What is it you seek from me, Atem_? she requested. He thought he could hear her claws touching the stone wall between them, keeping her from approaching him fully. _I will not tell you more answers of which you desire. I know that you are not foolish enough to ask me about Yami once more._

The warning in her tone was tangible. Yugi might have snapped at her, had he possessed the energy. Rather, now, he merely shook his head and continued to stare. If he truly focused enough, if he had pushed the brambles further back, he might have seen her softer features. But, as it was, he had pushed them only enough to be able to spot that she had come when he called.

But he imagined her ears pricked and her lip curled in frustration. They had not parted on good terms. His anger for her dismissal had been hideous. And his disgust towards her inability and refusal to give him answers had felt like a stain on his soul. He imagined her shoulders distinctly squared and her fur rising into a bristle along her tail. He'd noticed that last time they'd spoken. Her tail would gain the smallest lift of fur when she had gotten irritable.

"I haven't found Yami yet," he said in a cold tone, eyes flickering about hers and his lips curling for the briefest of moments. He shook his head slightly, then narrowed his eyes and watched her. "But that's not what I came here for."

The goddess peered up at him. He thought of monsters that lived in sewers in books and it made him almost hiss. But she was curious, not antagonistic or angry as one of those beasts might be. So he merely frowned faintly, tilting his head as the silence stretched until, finally, with mild annoyance, she asked, _Well_?

He frowned. "I need a new beta. You mentioned that you were once an alpha. And I…I need help. The pack is suffering because I don't trust any of the wolves there to replace him as my second-in-command."

She was silent for a long moment. Then her breath came out in a misty current of silver-white. Yugi blinked down at her. The blue-violet-eyed teen watched her stare back, peering easily. The goddess slowly tilted her head, something he only saw from the angle of her eyes now.

 _But you would trust me_? she asked slowly. Her voice was both amused and bemused. _You would trust the very god which told you formerly she would not help you with your own issues or finding your alpha_?

Yugi tilted his head to mirror her. "I need someone to fill the position. And I need someone who will do it without going behind me and destroying what I'm trying to do. And I do not think you're going to tell me what I should and shouldn't be doing," he said slowly. Then he narrowed his eyes further and swallowed hard. "I need help from someone who can hold his place as the beta. The pack is suffering otherwise."

 _Do you assume that I should do this because of the fact that my daughter once sat as their leader_? she drawled softly. Yugi blinked and raised a brow, staring at her coldly. She reconsidered for a moment and her eyes glittered in the dark once more. _No, you are not so foolish._

"I just wanted to know if you would hold the spot. You can show up at the camp for a little while, ignore everything else, and leave as you see fit. I don't care. I just need to get them to relax and believe that there's still _some_ kind of structure in the pack. Even with how tilted and stupid it actually is."

Slifer watched him. _You appear to be beyond yourself with stress._

He bore his teeth. "What tipped you off?" he sneered. Then a small current of shame came through him and he sighed loudly. "Will you take his place or not? All we have to do after that is meet the pack. You can all get your names and everything and I'll be okay to ignore that you exist unless something comes up."

 _Ah, the life of a goddess. You do make it sound so fine._ She was sneering as well, but hers was playful where his had been bitter. She pulled away and her eyes disappeared from his sight. _Very well. I shall offer my assistance with this task. It will not last for long._

Yugi blinked. Did she mean that Yami would be back before long? Or did she mean that something would happen to push her out of the position? Did she think Marik or someone might be foolish enough to challenge her? He bristled faintly.

 _I shall meet you at the camp._

He rolled his eyes at himself when he thought blankly of how she might know where it was. She knew because that was where her daughter had lived for however long. He shivered. How old had she been? How old was _Slifer_?

The teen met her as a human. Slifer was a glorious beautiful red-furred she-wolf. She stood to his ribcage in height, inches taller than that of a Great Dane he remembered meeting at the clinic. Her head was smooth, her body a solid color of rich soft russet. He had seen it before, but her frame appeared almost delicate and slim. Her ribcage sloped gently upwards, not tight like a greyhound's, but slightly similar. Her legs were longer, thinner, and her back legs seemed powerful, as if she were built to leap. Her tail was long, hanging far beyond her hocks.

Yugi shivered. She was beautiful, ethereal, dangerous in appearance. She looked as if she might enchant someone while tearing their throat out seconds later. She was powerful, her aura young and ancient all at once. He did not know what to say, nor to think.

"Thank you."

The she-wolf hummed softly and turned away. She began to trot and he kept to her side. When they came upon the entrance, she swept past him, trotting faster, then sprinted and leaped without a single glance. She disappeared behind the waterfall and he sighed as he forced himself to follow. He sprinted, jumped, and groaned as he nearly fell over upon reaching the other side. He hated the stupid waterfall and the camp beyond it.

 _You shall have to lead the way._

He sighed quietly, rolling his eyes. Then he nodded and turned away, starting to scale the wall of stone at the end of the small cavern. He picked at the edges of the thistle overhead, pulling himself up and out of the small hole. He got to his feet again and dusted himself off. He was soaked, however, and the way the snow crystals lightly began to drift upon his chilled form did nothing to make him look more presentable. He ignored the urge to huff in frustration, turning back when he heard the slinking of Slifer's thin form in a simple rustle of thorns.

Several wolves looked up. Some glanced away again upon recognizing him. Others tilted their heads and began to bristle upon seeing Slifer. A couple froze in place with wide eyes. Marik, further within a group of she-wolves, blinked and considered them both with a gaze of purple ice.

He would have smirked at him had he cared enough. He glanced at Slifer sideways. Her eyes flickered to his. They considered each other. Then she tilted her head, saying, _I am well aware of Marik and his presumptuous attitude. Do not concern yourself with how we might butt heads._

He felt sick. Something inside of him twisted painfully. He remembered her words from minutes before, how it would not take long. It made him frown faintly before he shrugged it off.

He clapped his hands together. The noise made each of them look up with wide eyes. They did not know his human form by sight, but he was aware that they knew his scent. And he knew they could sense him as if he was omnipotent and their prayers his beckoning. He supposed it was and they might have even assumed that of him.

"As each of you is aware, Yami has been missing for the last two weeks. Because of this, many of you have begun to worry that his absence will affect the pack in a negative manner," he announced loudly. His eyes flickered towards Otogi and Mai, both of whom stared at him with shocked, bewildered expressions. "To rectify this problem, I have brought a momentary replacement to take care of his responsibilities within our pack."

Many of them turned to Slifer, somewhat bewildered. Amazement flashed through some of their eyes. One of the she-wolves dropped to the ground in a bow, whining and wagging her tail with her eyes on the ground. The others quickly swapped looks. An image pushed through Yugi's mind, of what he assumed to be Ra, Slifer and Obelisk. It was truly only three forms, wolf shapes of ginger, golden, and gray fur.

None of their eyes were colored. Nor did they have definitive features beyond the solid pelts. Yugi considered it, then nodded in agreement.

"Correct. This is Slifer."

A rippling wave of silver and gray pelts bowed down in respectful poses. Yugi blinked and smirked slightly, voice low when he snickered, "Looks like you're more popular than me, Slifer."

The she-wolf looked towards him. _It's because I am beautiful and you look disgusting,_ she stated without a single second of thought. Yugi burst out laughing, then shook his head and rolled his eyes. Her golden eyes sparked with laughter before she turned away again. She strode forward a step, raising her tail and pricking her ears. Each of the wolves froze and began to collectively rise to their feet once more. _I am aware that tensions are high at the moment regarding the loss of your beta for the time being and your former alpha. Trust that all issues shall be taken care of as necessary._

He blinked in surprise. It shouldn't have surprised him how easily it was that she addressed them. She was a goddess, after all. Grace must have been natural for her by now. Perhaps she had always been elegant and regal, however. Perhaps she knew more of it than even Ra did.

Yugi looked about the wolves and then back to Slifer. All of them watched the pair with glowing, considerate expressions. He turned away and considered the way that each of them looked at them with such clear eyes. Then, finally, Yugi looked towards them again.

"Slifer will be here when you might need her. But she has other responsibilities, as you are all aware." He watched as their eyes immediately came to his face once more. "I do not expect her to remain here with us often and it should not be a surprise to any of you should she not be here for long stretches of time."

As if it were a dismissal, the red she-wolf wagged her tail once, regarding them all with her glowing eyes. _I shall return soon, but for now I have something that must be done._ Yugi blinked after her, confused and startled for a moment, and then watched as she slipped through the tunnel of the waterfall cavern.

When she disappeared completely from sight, Yugi pressed his lips together in a thin line. Then he turned back and looked about them. How many were even in this pack? A small bite of guilt lashed at his insides. He was so selfish. He had told them to run about and look for Yami and yet he did not know a single one of them by name beyond Marik, Mai, and Otogi…

But today was not that day. He would find time soon and it would not be then. He shook his head, running a hand through his hair.

Mai came towards him. Her ears were against her head. Otogi was at her side. Both of their heads were lowered when he looked at them. He tilted his head at them in confusion. The two of them kept their heads almost low enough that their chins touched the ground. Then came the image in his head.

The river had been tracked several times. Not one wolf had caught a trace of the black canine in question. But this time, they'd found human prints. And they'd found dog tracks. And another piece of evidence was a syringe which looked freshly used. The needle was splintered with red and the glass was perfectly pristine, laying in the surface of the snow as if it had been dropped in haste.

At first he stared at them. Then his stomach churned and his blood heated. Had Yami found his way back to the river? And a hunter had injected him with a drug to subdue him while his dog had kept him preoccupied? Yugi blinked, then he turned on his heel to follow the direction Slifer had gone.

He didn't look back but he could hear Mai and Otogi whining as he departed. It took him only a few minutes to catch up with where he knew Slifer had retreated. The hatred in his blood was boiling. He couldn't think straight beyond kicking his clothes off and burying them beyond the brambles, in those immense inches which rose so much higher than they appeared. He dropped into the tunnel.

Bile came up the back of his throat. His entire body arched again. The muscles rolled beneath his skin. The tendons seemed to crack and ache and he spat a mouthful of vomit. His eyes narrowed in the darkness. The anger was flashing in red in his head. His body was burning with it. His veins raced with fire. He snarled and snapped and teeth fell from his gums. The aching flesh was serrated roughly, the enamel sharp as it pushed rapidly upwards.

He was not completely aware of the changes going on. His body was too hot. And his mind was racing. What if Yami was being tortured again? What if they were already picking him apart and running experiments? He couldn't breathe for a moment. When he drew in a deep breath, a snarl came, long and sharp, from within his throat. He raced forward, body on fire and teeth bared. How dare they!

He exploded into the cavern, snarling so loudly that it rumbled along the walls. He sounded like a rabid animal, as if his humanity were long gone. He bore his teeth and snapped his jaws. His tail was raised and his ears pricked, shoulders squared. The she-wolf approached him from the shadows but did not raise her head or her eyes. Slifer almost appeared to slink towards him, head lowered and ears back against her skull.

 _Where are they_?

She growled softly. His voice thundered through her skull. The intrusion made her fur rise into a soft bristle of anger. Still, she was not willing to fight him. Had his head been clear, had she not known a moment such as this might come to pass, she would have. But instead, now she wrinkled her muzzle into something almost like human contempt.

How long it had been since she'd been human. She could barely remember such sensation. Slifer curled her lips. Had she ever turned human before? She wondered for a moment. Then, quietly, dismissing such curiosities, she said, _I shall lead you there. But should you enter them, it will be on your own._

Yugi wagged his tail and saliva dribbled from his mouth. _Good,_ he snarled.

It was surprising how terrible and hateful he looked. Slifer watched him with a rather cold, displeased expression. His anger came to her in waves. Her fur lifted in response to each. She bristled faintly but the darkness did well to give Yugi an inability to see her response. She very slowly turned from him, moving in a stiff trot of a pace.

Yugi was at her heels in an instant. His snarling failed to cease. The goddess ignored the rumbling noise, her eyes cold and terrible as they looked forward within the darkness. She moved upon the precipice of the cavernous crater beneath, the gentlest trickle of water from the pale, thin stream around the upraised stone. She moved until she was parallel to the rock, then placed her paws upon the thin ledge resting beneath it.

Yugi snarled a little louder. The air was stale, stony and earthen and wet. The chill of the atmosphere around him bit at his skin from beneath his fur. His paws felt packed against ice and his ears could catch only two sounds—their heartbeats and the water. The direction of the trickle's flow made his fur bristle furiously.

Slifer moved further along the ledge, a small pebble breaking under her touch. It fell away into the water with a gentle splash. Yugi waited behind Slifer for only a moment as the she-wolf carefully trailed the sheer drop of stone. Then he looked down and leaped.

The water shot straight into his face and splashed across his body, despite how little of the stream seemed to exist there. He tipped his head up, his paws aching from the landing, but his toes so cold that he could hardly feel the tingling. He watched her as she considered him, looking cautious, and then continued to simply walk about the stone ledge. She did not bother to speed up, instead tracing her route without worry.

Yugi growled in annoyance, nearly snarling once more. He was tempted to chomp his jaws again, to startle and perhaps bully her into moving faster. His ears flicked about and his eyes shot along the walls which lined the chasm he rested in. There were skeletons, the stench of decay and mold and blood coming to his nose. He huffed and his breath was misty in the air. His fur rose and fell in a shudder, his ferocity growing as he bore his teeth.

Slifer moved past him, trailing the length of the stream. Her paws were so soft that the water seemed to merely ripple beneath her. Yugi, turning back to follow, almost thought that she was walking atop the water. But he could see where it wet her paws as she continued forward and it made his skin crawl.

She was a goddess. Why could she not move faster? Was she stalling? Yugi snarled low in his throat, lowering his head, and moved angrily behind her. She would not turn and face him in a fight. He knew that already. Her initial dismissal had done well to assure him of such a thing.

They continued for what felt like hours. Yugi was snarling louder now, ears pricked forward and anger making his blood boil. His tongue flashed out against his tongue and he almost thought to lunge forward. Then he jerked, jumping faintly. His head snapped around. A distinct roaring noise burst forth from his left side, echoing within the cavernous tunnels and making his ears ring. His eyes flickered about the tunnel for a moment, mind rapidly working to assess the existence of it. But he knew of the raging water, though its source scared him. And, beneath that sound, was yet another. He could not recall it, however, and it made his skin crawl.

Slifer dropped over the edge of a small cliff of steep stone. Yugi paused, eyes wide, and came to the side to look at the height of such a precipice. He hesitated, then considered the large distance. But the she-wolf did not turn back and reality slammed into him that he could not wait.

He jumped. The pain nearly crippled him. His legs ached upon landing. And his pads felt as if they had split. Yet the ache seemed to immediately smooth away. His impatience, his anger, forced it aside. There was no time to focus on it. He raced forward, teeth bared again, and the goddess did not glance at him.

The roaring grew louder.

Slifer dropped along the face of another wall of sheer stone. Yugi hurried after her. The drop this time was only inches and the roar was deafening now. He could feel tremors burst through the air, vibrating against his skin. His fur was soaked from the spray which burst upwards. A single trickle of water from the stream they had followed formerly dropped into the immense crash of the racing river beside them. The stones rattled from the force of it and the white wolf looked beyond his shoulder to see that the darkness of the tunnels burst forward.

The walls of this gorge were almost nonexistent beyond where he stood now. In front of him, Slifer began to slow. Her trot was stiff again and she looked towards him with glacial golden eyes.

 _Beyond here you are on your own._

Yugi snarled, this time with a sense of delight in his body as well. Yami had to be there. He wasn't dead. Yugi refused to believe that. He probably wished himself deceased, but he wasn't. There was no way. Somehow he felt that he might know it had he passed. Wouldn't Slifer have hinted at that by now as well?

He bore his teeth at her, tail rising and ears pricked. _Thank you_ , he dismissed her, turning away. He tore off down the stone tunnel. He could hear her heartbeat behind him for what felt like miles. His entire body was stretched in his sprint. He could hear the river roaring even louder beside him. The walls of the gorge were immense and large beneath his paws. He ignored the thought, eyes searching for the end of the darkness in front of him.

Yugi leaped from one small ledge to the next. He cleared another ledge, leaping to the top of a small wall, and raced faster. Finally, minutes later, the darkness seemed to seep away. He was panting now, eyes flickering about the shadows. Then, in a flash, his rage returned. And his vision became focused on one small image before him.

The smooth arch rose wide in the air. A strip of yellow banded across the top, with characters he could not understand in their worn appearance. He slowed only slightly, peering forward. The river had slowed, flowing through two different passageways. Beside the entrance of this smoothed, human-made tunnel, the natural one echoed with the chamber of noise. He flicked an ear, then leaped from the small ledge he was standing on.

The water was shallow here, but he imagined the natural path of the river was by far deeper. Yugi shook it off. His coat was drenched and his nose was cold, icy and wriggling as he sorted through various scents. Mold was the first he could catch, bursting in his nasal cavities with a chilled, bitter touch that soured his temper further. Chemicals came next, that of harsh burning anesthetics and artificial fires. The walls were lined with small patches of lights and he wondered at their shallow illumination.

The pipes ran wide as well as narrow along the surface. There were inches of stone pressed to either side, brick and cement which served as careful steps. The water was icy where it embraced his paws and Yugi ignored it as he padded swiftly forward.

The water trickled softly like a brook beneath his feet and his tail twitched as his fur rose and fell in a shudder. He snarled low in his throat. His body was too hot. And he was unable to stop himself from biting at the air in his hatred. The tunnel stretched for what felt like forever. In the pale yellow of the light, he bristled and the scents came forward more heavily.

And now he caught the electricity which burst in the air. It shuddered and shivered, touching his fur and setting it alight. He snarled again, charging, his adrenaline bursting with hatred. His ears pricked forward and he could hear them all now. The wolves' heartbeats were low and unsteady. Breathing was a raspy affair. He could hear low growls and slight snarls. There were breathy whimpers and hisses of sickness which cloaked the air.

A cough caressed his ears. A human was striding nearby. Yugi jumped onto the stone lip of the step which hovered an inch above the height of the water. He hoped when the river grew swollen from melted water late springtime, they were all drowned. His anger made him faster than he thought he'd ever known himself to move. His paws were rapid, the click of his claws falling in swift succession.

A familiar scent came to him. Sickness and death plagued his senses. He could hear the last shudders of hearts as they grew silent. He could smell the harshness of decaying flesh. He could taste the blood and drugs on his tongue. He could feel the earth, drenched and sweltering with heat, like blood lapping at his paws. And he could see it. He could see the devastation of the many bodies which were lying still in cages.

But his mind was focused on this human. And his hatred swelled further. He rushed faster. His entire body was pushing at speeds he did not know. He might have compared it to a cheetah had he not been so enraged. He sprang as the human rounded the corner. His teeth opened and blood coated his tongue. The scream was hideous and cruel in his ears. The racket made the wolves all move to their feet. Panting and rasping met his ears.

The human tried to throw him off. Hands fisted at his neck. Fingers tried to dig into his throat. A knee kicked at his ribcage. Yugi shook his head harshly. The man screamed again. Blood spewed into the air. The wolves were baying now—with cries, chants, loud calls of alarm and panic. He could not tell what they were. They came in a deafening harmony of his blood pounding in his ears.

This man smelled of wolfsbane and iron. He smelled of copper and butter. And Yugi wanted nothing more than to make it cease. He pulled back and opened his jaws further. The man's face was covered in blood. He was blinded and his blond hair soaked in red. Yugi was breathing heavily, hatred making him burn. Exhaustion did not touch him in any fashion and the white wolf wagged his tail.

The wolves began to howl. He could not hear them fully. But he thought he understood them somehow. His name. They were calling for Atem.

Humans moved about in another corridor. The man in front of him tried to grab him. Yugi opened his jaws wide. He snatched at his head and threw his mouth from side to side. The vertebrae snapped loudly, heavily. It burst so thickly he quivered. Then he dropped him away.

Yugi turned his head. There were only two people coming towards him. His lips curled back hideously. His teeth glowed as he stared. The silver-gray-haired man was recognizable in front of him. He bore his teeth harder, snarling louder. He chomped his jaws. The other man began to slow a few steps behind him. He was watching Yugi with an expression he could not read.

The white wolf lunged at the taller man. His teeth opened large and wide. His teeth were a flash in his brown eye. His jaws clamped to his face, holding his skull. The weight of his attack threw him down. The man beyond them seemed to snicker softly. The noise made him snarl louder. His eyes rose and fell on him, angry and smoldering. He tightened his teeth.

 _Pegasus,_ he remembered the name. That was who he was holding. He was the one who had set Bakura on him. He had infected him with wolfsbane and liquid silver. He had tried to kill him in the woods.

Yugi shook his head sharply. Pegasus punched and kneed at him. The kick to his back leg might have stunted him before. But his anger knew no bounds now. The white wolf simply threw his head again. And Pegasus screamed loudly for help.

Yet the only one standing close enough to offer assistance did not seem to care. His face was covered in a mask of some kind. It looked almost feathered, in a sharp plastic design. The skin beneath the eyes was heavily wrinkled. And it looked almost blackened within the shadows of its thick frame. They were beady, a hideous brown so flat it made him shudder.

Pegasus kicked at him again. Yugi released, backing up a step. When the human managed to get to his feet, the white canine leaped again. This time he aimed for the throat. And, with a singular focus, Yugi felt sinew and muscle and bone break and serrate between his jaws. He landed in a mass of blood along his jaws and face. His entire body quivered with hatred.

The wolves screamed with something like amazement and joy. Yugi paced forward. The human in front of him smirked. His lips looked almost leather. Yugi bore his teeth, snarling furiously. He snapped his jaws. Blood was smeared along his right cheek, his eyes covered along the corners where his muzzle further wrinkled. His breathing was furious, a hideous panting of hatred.

And then he smelled it. The scent was deep, familiar, beneath the currents of medication which made his fur lift. He smelled of the softest hint of pine, of decay and darkness. And the thought infuriated him. He had Yami. _He_ had _Yami_!

Yugi snapped his teeth again. He licked his nose. Their blood was disgusting against his tongue. The man in front of him smiled wider. He went to leap, then yelped. A buzz of electricity slammed into his shoulder. He jerked, a convulsion crashing through him. It lasted only a moment, however. His adrenaline was crashing too hard through him. The pain did not register. And the shock was so minute he could not tell if it had ever truly existed.

He wagged his tail, eyes glittering. The human stopped short, staring at him in shock. Yugi lunged for him, then cried out. He was thrown sideways, rolling with the impact. With a snarl, he struggled to his feet. His body convulsed again. The taser was crackling. He snapped his jaws.

He anticipated the next shock, preparing himself, but it did not come. Yugi was released of the small flash of pain. The man cried out. His arm was raised upwards. A beast of deep gray, so deep it possessed the slightest hint of blue, had leaped at him. The taser crashed to the ground. The immense wolf threw him onto his back with the attack.

The screaming echo of the captive wolves was horrifying. He thought of seas of red and his pelt dragged by sticky liquid. Yugi shuddered and his fur rose and fell in a rush of adrenaline. The wolf knocked the man's head forward. The hit was enough to draw blood. His beady brown eyes rolled up in the back of his head. Yugi snarled low in his throat.

The blue-gray monster turned towards him. Its tail rose and its lips pulled back. Yugi snapped his teeth again. The snarl that answered him was an amazing roar. It crept beyond his blood as if he were on fire. His nerves were bursting, pricking with pain and electricity. It felt almost as if a force were pushing through him even as the adrenaline seemed to be slowing.

Dark, glowing amber-red eyes stared at him. The ears pricked forward. The head rose slightly. The beast came forward a step. The claws clicked loudly against the stone. Yugi stepped forward to meet him. His tail rose and wagged slowly. His eyes glittered, hateful.

The man was still alive. He should have killed him.

Somehow the idea of this man's survival was even more a disgusting crime than the idea that Yami might still be in one of the many cages.

They collided in a flash. Yugi bit at cold air. Teeth found purchase in his shoulder. A tug threw him across the floor. Yugi's head slammed into a steel cage door. It rattled and the noise shook him. He scrambled to his feet. The wolves were howling. His heart was in his throat. Blood coated his tongue. Yugi threw himself forward again.

White against gray, the two of them landed in a mass of teeth and claws. His black claws bit into his fur. His skin split beneath him. Yugi yelped at the pain. His scruff was caught by large canines. The wolf threw him once more. Yugi rolled with the impact now. He gasped and sputtered. His body felt weak, shaky, for a moment. Then he snarled. Hateful, he came at him once more.

This time the gray wolf allowed him to bite at his face. Then he turned his head. A forelimb rose and slammed into his side. Yugi let out a scream. The bones of his ribs seemed to crack. Immediately he let go. The wolf held him with a single paw to his side. His claws were beneath his fur, in his skin. He panted, eyes glazed and fearful.

Yet the wolf merely snarled down at him.

Drool dripped in a heavy stream of glistening liquid. Yugi cried out again. The pressure on his ribs increased. Instinct flooded him. Harsh and cold, the shock of such foreign touch burst through him. He craned his head back, exposing his throat. And his tail curled up and between his legs. It tucked tightly and he trembled. The whimper which spread through him was one of meek surrender.

His eyes were averted, falling upon the cage he'd hit moments before. Within it sat a single thin she-wolf. Her fur was black but with a small blaze of dark gray along her chest. Her sleek build was dog-like, her ears too pointed to be pure wolf. Her cheeks were sallow, sunken, and her gaze was crystalline. Her eyes were oddly colored, her right a hideous aquamarine which made his heart shudder in his chest. The left was a glowing, perfectly abnormal golden shade, one which seemed to seep beneath his skin with fire.

The wolf above him snarled and grabbed him by the scruff. He was hauled to his feet with a yelp. But the grip was soft, almost gentle. He panted, drawn from his shaken realization, and trembled faintly. Blood leaked from a cut on his side. His ears rang in the stillness of the tunnels. The wolves had all grown quiet.

Somehow they had fallen into a nonsensical silence.

The gray wolf smacked his shoulder with a hard muzzle. The thickness of the appendage shook him. Yugi nearly tumbled. Then he staggered forward. His eyes flickered towards him. The amber-red gaze was kinder now, encouraging him to move forward. Yugi stumbled, then yelped as he dropped over the step. The water splashed into his face and he tumbled over himself for a moment. The wolf dropped down beside him and began walking. Yugi hurried to his paws, following.

It took him a few long minutes to actually feel the shuddering his body had taken on. The pain was acute now. He felt small and weak and tired. But the anger was still there. And it was so hard to think straight with it there. He should be back at the labs. He needed to find Yami. That man had smelled of him—or at least he had faintly…

The gray wolf did not pay anymore attention to him. It was only as they began to make their way towards the red-furred she-wolf feet away. She sat there on the ledge he'd left her at, golden eyes softened with something almost akin relief upon seeing him.

Yugi hung his head. He felt chastised and stupid now. He had run from her with the idea of spilling blood until he found Yami. And he hadn't even been strong enough to beat _one_ wolf. What if one of the other wolves had gotten loose? What if they had gotten to him, killing and fighting and trying to destroy him?

He doubted he could have fought them off.

The gray wolf stood beside him, head tipped towards Slifer. _We have returned,_ he said in something resembling a sneer. Yugi blinked and glanced at him, then towards Slifer.

The she-wolf smiled faintly, her golden eyes boring into his. _Did you find what you were searching for_? she asked in a gentle tone. Her kindness was lost on him, however. The white wolf was more ashamed than he thought he'd ever been before and so could not meet her eyes.

Staring at the ground, he snapped, _No, I didn't._

 _Not for lack of trying,_ the gray wolf growled beside him, and he could hear the laughter there. It stung and Yugi hated him for it. But then those amber-red eyes were on him and his lips curled in frustration as he raised his head to glare at him. The wolf did nothing more than snort at him. His long tail wagged. _I have been wondering when I might meet you, Atem. Allow me to give you my name. I am Obelisk._


	45. Specters

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day**

 **Chapter Warnings: Mentions of Blood, Mentions of Death, Implications of Homosexual Relationships, Implications of Sexual Relationships, Consumption of Blood, Mentions of Consumption of Blood, Hallucinations, Emotional Breakdowns, Nightmares, Gunshots**

 **All right! So it's our favorite hellhound for a part of the chapter. And he's actually a LOT of fun to write the point of view of? Like I wasn't expecting to have so much fun with that? Anyways, you'll be finding out a few things about Valon.**

 **Coffee is made in several ways in Japan from what I was reading and none of them really require a coffee machine of all things. That's why Yugi is kind of surprised/put-off by it. For the sake of being able to make the coffee faster, Valon uses the machine in that scene (it's rarely used otherwise, as his family mostly makes it in the traditional sense instead). Usually it's "drip" coffee instead of anything to do with a machine so yeah... Some needless trivia but it explains Yugi's surprise so it's somewhat necessary.**

 **Yugi uses a new nickname for Yami, by the way. He uses it throughout the book later, scattered about rather randomly instead of frequently. And you'll see the way that Yami reacts to it much later when Yugi calls him by it but for now, just know that it's going to be a bigger element later on. I promise I didn't just throw it in just because~**

 **Anyways, it's totally my fault that this didn't get updated this time. I kind of got distracted with other real life stuff and then I lost motivation for a good minute because I SUCK at going to sleep on time and then caffeine tends to just drain me SO badly, holy shit.**

 **And then I got distracted by a couple of other things (including a couple of other plot bunnies that won't leave me alone, send help omfg). Anyways though, I am SO sorry that it took me so long to get this chapter posted. I have no idea when the next handful will be updated, but I'm going to TRY to get it done so that I can take a break and work on edits and things after this part of the story is completed (so basically chapter forty-eight will be the end of part three and then I'm taking a small hiatus to get things running smoothly with updates and some additional details and things I need to fix).**

Chapter XLV: Specters

 _Work Log Entry XLIV: March, 2004 (Part II)_

 _March 21_

 _A.T.E.M.'s lung capacity has grown in intervals of twelve minutes since the first time we attempted the task of drowning him. The boss thinks it may be because of his wolf nature and its tenacity to survive or the fact that Pure-Bloods cannot die that this is the case. But I think it is simply because he does not know what else to do._

 _March 22_

 _The boss is unhappy with "Atem's" sudden plunder. He cannot last more than twenty seconds underwater now. We speculate that his brain may be damaged from all of the experiments we have performed upon him._

 _The boss wants to perform a surgery tomorrow to see if we can correct this._

 _March 23_

 _No matter how much we try to get through his skull to his brain, he heals far too fast. It has been rendered impossible to do more than guess at the reasons behind his sudden lack of lung capacity._

 _Under anesthesia, "Atem's" blood pressure rises with each incision we make. It would appear that while asleep, the Pure-Blood's body has the capability to heal itself without so much as a pause in its instantaneity._

 _We think that this must be how they remain immortal._

Yugi stared at him blankly. Obelisk? He could not think straight for a moment. This was Obelisk? The war god was this large gray wolf, the size of Yami, with a somewhat longer jaw and heavier cheeks? He was the one with the larger nose and the fur which didn't look as thick he imagined his own was? This was the war god, the one which all of the wolves seemed to worship within the pack? He blinked stupidly and stared at him blankly once more. He was barrel-chested, though his frame was still somehow narrow and slender. But his shoulders were wider, broader, and his back legs were well-muscled. His legs were somewhat thicker, his paws immense in size.

His eyes flickered to Slifer, a sneer coming over his tone. _And you claimed that the gods would not come to cross paths with me any longer. Or that there would not be direct interference._ It was cruel and cold, but his anger was wild and burned beneath his skin.

 _I said that we would not dictate your decisions,_ she answered softly. Her ear flicked and her golden eyes were glowing beautifully in the dank underground tunnel. The lack of lighting made her eyes uniform, golden-gray in color. Her head tilted. _Nor would we give you answers which might change the course of the necessary directives in order for our outcomes to be favorable. We are all walking upon thin lines. Influence could ruin everything._

Obelisk considered them both for a moment. _Gods are not meant to direct the future. We were born and raised within the past. That was where our influence was meant to remain._

Yugi shot him a furious look. _I don't really care for all of your deity bullshit,_ he said angrily. _I got a bunch of it from her. And I'm done hearing about it. It's very clear that none of you will actually help me with the problems I have. Not one of you will help me find Yami, or help me run that damn pack, or even give me enough advice to deal with it all. I'm alone in this. You three had each other_! _But I am alone now. Yami is gone and he's the only one that was willing to give me answers._

Slifer closed her eyes, voice soft. _He is not the only one. If you were open to your dreams further than panicking and waking early, you might find more answers. I am aware that you know Bakura. He would give you answers. And what of Yami's former lover_? Her eyes opened now. Yugi stared at her for a moment, then flattened his ears against his skull and snarled low in his throat. _What of his cage mate_? _He has made contact with you on several occasions. Why not attempt to find your answers from him_?

Yugi breathed out with a shuddering body. He bore his teeth again, snarling furiously. _You are_ shit, _Slifer. You are a worthless piece of shit,_ he snapped, his teeth chomping into the frigid air. He moved and leaped to take the ledge which separated them. His fur bristled and fell in a rapid shudder. But his body hurt and he did not want to fight further. He was angry and refused to glance at either of the gods as he began to move again.

A soft clicking noise echoed after him. Yugi did not look over his shoulder. He could tell that Slifer was not the one following him. He narrowed his eyes. His stomach hurt and his lips curled back in anger. _Why are you following me_? he spat at the newcomer trailing after him.

There was silence for a moment. _I am trailing you,_ he said simply. Yugi ignored him, speeding up into a trot. His impulse was to spin around and face him in his anger. His lips pulled back completely and he snarled viciously. _Because, when you should run out of energy as your anger fades, you will need a friend._

Yugi bristled. _A friend_? he spat. _You are not my friend._

 _No, perhaps not. But I shall be your companion until you have recovered yourself._

He snarled softly. _A companion_? _Really_? _You aren't_. _You aren't a friend and you're not a companion. You are simply watching me. Because all of you apparently expect a war to be won when I am unable to._

 _You do not even truly know yourself. How are you truly meant to lead a pack into war and be victorious_? Obelisk said in a low, somewhat scornful tone. _You do not know yourself as Yugi nor as Atem. It is not within your capabilities for now to find victory._

Yugi bristled and snapped his teeth sharply. _You expect to tell me that I don't know myself and think that I am supposed to think you might know better for me_?

He snorted loudly behind him. _Hardly,_ he scoffed in a cold tone. It was indifferent and chilled and Yugi ignored the urge to spin around and glare at him. _But, should you truly desire to be as you are expected you would have to have more strength and ability. In order to do that, you must find yourself. And your definition of identity comes through your friends. That is not something that you will have the ease of doing later. It is impossible to be a leader and not know yourself expect by how others might define you._

 _How nice. You're a psychiatrist now. The war god of the lycanthropes is a fucking psychiatrist,_ he snarled furiously. But a part of him was stung and another wanted to sneer. Obelisk was not wrong. He was unable to know himself in more ways than that of the way others saw him. When he was asked to define himself, he used the descriptions his friends gave.

 _You're a lost, confused little bastard. And it is impossible for any of the other wolves to miss. Your human counterparts within school most likely have capability to see the same._

Yugi blinked and almost slowed. Then he hurried a bit faster. He hated him in that moment. Obelisk was a piece of crap just like Slifer was. Both of them were useless and pathetic.

 _When you run out of steam, an ally will do you well,_ the gray wolf continued lazily. His tone was untroubled and somewhat amused. Yugi wished he could have turned around and attacked him. But Obelisk was far more experienced and stronger than he was. He'd pinned him in mere seconds back there.

Yugi ignored him, following the water of the stream until he could see the tunnel's entrance. The jagged cut of the light filtering through was like a gaping maw. The tunnel continued for miles beyond this exit. And in the dark he could hear the water swollen to tenfold its current strength. He flicked his ears and turned away, heading for the entrance.

The river gushed in the dark beyond him. The sunlight bathed him as he came through the sunken hole. The edges of the stone were covered in snow and slicked ice which hung from the top in large stalagmite formations. When he'd used this exit formerly, there had been nothing but the chill of winter air. Yugi would have to squeeze around the large spears of ice. He thought of glistening swords and pale blood, then stood on his back legs as he came to the wall. He grasped the bottom of the mouth with his paws, them moved his right leg to grip with his nails into the hardened dirt. Then he drew himself upwards. The ice stroked his ears gently and his skin pricked with unease. His eyes flickered towards the ice and then away again. He squared his muscles, then squirmed beneath the touch of the cold crystals upon brushing his side. He felt like a cat attempting to climb into a box too small for them.

Yet somehow he managed to pull himself out with the smallest passive touch of ice which slicked his coat down on one side. He landed in the snow comfortably, shaking himself out, and would not have turned back if he had not heard the harsh breaking noise.

His head snapped around, eyes wide, and his ears pricked forward as the icicles were thrown through the air and into the snow. They landed with loud thuds and large waves of white from the impact.

Yugi blinked and flicked his ears. It was hard to look at the other wolf and not feel as if he were staring foolishly. But the gray canine ignored him, the smallest hint of water touching his cheeks and muzzle. His whiskers were slicked slightly towards the front. Yugi shook himself out and regarded him for a moment. No, Obelisk's eyes weren't truly flecked with red, or at least not the same shade as Yami's. His seemed more scarlet or perhaps with a small touch of orange which made it seem almost like a paler shade. There were the smallest hints of golden within the orange, giving them something almost akin the center of a wild flame.

His eyes were more orange and gold. The red must have been from the way his pupils had expanded and flashed in the dark. Yugi saw that now and his stomach sank as the realization came through him.

He'd never seen anyone else with red eyes like Yami had.

It made him wonder how it was that Yami had them. Was it because of the experiments done to him? Had they somehow altered his eye color? Shizuka had mentioned that her own eyes had been hazel rather than the gray they'd appeared when he'd met her.

And he could imagine her with eyes like that.

But Yami?

Perhaps it was prejudice and how he'd only ever known him to have those eyes, but he could not picture them another color. Gold was impossible. Brown was too standard. Green would have made his skin look oddly pale or dark. Gray might have been a possibility but it might also have made him look incredibly pale.

He watched as Obelisk began to move to his side. Yugi flicked an ear, uncomfortable as they considered each other.

 _You could have done that,_ the other commented in a slightly gruff tone. He was dismissive, eyes sharp and cold but tempered with intelligence. He watched him and Yugi bristled as he stared back. The silence was pregnant and his fur rose further with suspicion. _Had you cared enough to try._

He bore his teeth. _Why should I have cared to do that_? he scoffed petulantly. A small part of him was curious, however. Obelisk did not have even the slightest scratch on his face nor did he seem the tiniest touch winded.

The gray wolf regarded him for what felt like ages. Yugi had begun to bristle furiously, his lips curled back as his ears pricked forward. His anger was rising further now, his blood hotter than ever. A tremble came through him. His voice began to curl upwards in a hideous low snarl. Obelisk, however, remained impassive. It was so simple a stare that it unnerved him somehow further.

 _You do not know your abilities as a wolf because you so foolishly regard your human side to have more worth,_ he said dismissively. _You do not know the strength, or the greatness of which each wolf possesses. It is impossible to step foot within this world and embrace one half of yourself and refuse the other. You are childish in your attempts to try. As a wolf, your capabilities are beyond many humans' wildest dreams._

He flicked his ears away. _Have you ever been human before, Obelisk_? he said softly. He stepped forward and watched him with dark eyes.

 _I have. On several occasions I have shed my fur for that hairless hide,_ he said distastefully. _Not once have I ever come to care to do so more than necessary._

Yugi growled low in his throat. _Then you don't understand it, do you? I was raised as a human,_ by _humans—_

Obelisk's laughter was harsh and barking. _You were_ created _through a series of disgusting_ experiments _done solely to your_ parents. You _are the result of years of tampering_ _with evolutionary traits which should never have been done. Whether you have become so traumatized that you have fabricated your memories in order to suppress your past, is not my care. You were adopted by your mother and grandfather when you were able to escape. Your mind further fabricated these memories in order to allow you to adapt._

Yugi bore his teeth. _And Anzu, Jonouchi, Honda, Valon_ —? he demanded, jumping when Obelisk snapped his jaws at him angrily. He stepped closer and the white wolf flattened his ears against his head in confusion.

 _You have associated yourself with the Harbinger_?

He snarled louder now, then wagged his tail slowly. His hatred swelled as he stepped closer now. _One of them._ Yugi was unable to stop himself from sneering now. _But there are two, aren't there_? _There are two Pure-Bloods, one of which I haven't met yet, and I am Atem. Now, Valon is one of the Harbingers, and he claims Morrigan is his mother. And the second Harbinger_? _I have no idea._

 _Do you have a suspect_?

Yugi ignored him now. No. He tried not to run around accusing other people of being mythological creatures that could potentially destroy the balance of the world. He huffed and began to trot forward. For the long hour that he kept moving, Obelisk remained mere steps behind.

It was unnerving to him how he remained so close and yet did not attempt to interrupt him nor guide him any longer. It made his skin crawl and Yugi could not fight away the very sense of disgust which crept through him at the thought. The only wolf that should have been following him was Yami.

A wave of pain tugged at his insides. With it came a crashing tsunami of exhaustion. Yugi slowed in his steps until he was walking so minutely he did not think he was truly moving anymore. Obelisk was still behind him and he wished more than ever that he might turn his head and see Yami there instead. It was a heartbreaking thought for him and so he felt his breath come out in a slow, uncomfortable squeeze of his lungs. Cautiously, terribly aware of the god's presence behind him, he lowered himself into the snow.

On his belly, Yugi laid his chin upon his paws and closed his eyes. He felt weak and beyond physical exhaustion. His entire body was weighted beyond recognition. And he wondered if he might never be able to find the strength to get up again. His stomach knotted, hurting, and he wanted for a moment to burst into tears.

But the wolf had no physical outlet like that. The tear ducts were only meant to expel foreign objects within the eye. They pushed at the layer of lint or dust or snow or whatever it was in order to shed it from the organs.

But he was breathing harder. Yugi recognized that all the same. The pain had strangled his lungs and forced his windpipe to squeeze tightly. His heart was in his throat and his body was shaking in ragged jerks. He shuddered and rasped and the wheezing made his ears ache and burn. The sound of his own heartbeat seemed muffled beneath it all.

He lay like that for what felt like hours. The white canine did not remove himself from the snow even once. He didn't lift his head beyond his bodily convulsions. And he was tired as he kept his eyes tightly shut. When he stilled, he couldn't comprehend the time that had passed. His first thought was that it had only been minutes, because, when he opened his eyes, Obelisk remained close by. He was seated a few feet away, eyes on him and head tilted somewhat to the side.

Yugi looked up at him, unable to find the strength to raise his head. He hadn't found Yami. Nor had he even slightly managed to do more than kill two humans. That had not freed Yami if he truly _was_ trapped within the labs again. But then, it may have confirmed that Yami was not there. The wolves had shouted his code name as if they had a right to. Perhaps they had sensed the strength in him, felt some tie to him that he did not think he shared.

But they would have reacted similarly to Yami, right? Mai and Otogi had both said they smelled extremely similar. Yami had said it was because of the bite. He thought it was because of bloodline more than anything. He was a Pure-Blood and Yami was not the second, but he was close. He was purer in blood than even Mai as a Full-Blood.

Hadn't he claimed such a thing?

Yugi felt lightheaded and overwhelmed. He closed his eyes again, then shifted his chin slightly to press his muzzle more pointedly into his forelimb. He felt altogether stupid and childish, foolish beyond reason. His stomach knotted and the impulse to shake and quiver came again.

 _For a boy so keen upon pretending to be of a human frame you do seem rather wolf-like in your mourning,_ Obelisk stated in a soft tone, his orange-red eyes boring into his skin. At first Yugi ignored him. Then he finally tilted his head and looked at him from the corner of his eye. _Do you reject the wolf so much that grief is the only thing to fuel your ability to use it_?

Yugi looked away again, flicking his ears again. He wanted to turn his back on him completely and ignore him altogether. But it was impossible to think more towards such ability than mere subconscious beckoning.

 _Rage._

 _Hmm_?

 _Rage fuels it too._

 _Rage_? _What rage_? _Your anger, spurred on by the loss of your friend_? Obelisk said slowly, and Yugi felt a part of him sting at the soft rebuttal. It was almost painful to think that someone else might see so far beneath his skin. _Your rage comes only from your shattering heart. This is because of your imbalance as a lycanthrope. You use your wolf skin only for the sake of releasing pent up energy. And in turn your emotions become unstable and unrestrained within your true form_.

Yugi did not look at him. _Becoming a large canine again was not my first choice in life,_ he spat childishly. _My first choice was to get through the end of the year at school, then to get to college, and eventually to make my way into veterinary practices._

 _Life is altered all of the time. Should it not be, free will would be nothing more than ideology. You have made your bed in rejection of your true form. And now you shall have to rest in it._ Obelisk was scornful for only a moment longer, then huffed and turned away from him. He took in a landscape of white where the branches were thin needles like the smallest splinters of lightning as it forked the sky. The heavy blanket of snow upon each surface was serene and beautiful, so opposing of the pain this young pup displayed before him. _Would you like to come to know how to embrace your strength without sacrifice of your mental capabilities, Yugi_?

The white wolf turned to him now. He was bitter and his eyes cold as he snarled, _I don't care. I don't want this. I don't want to be Atem. Find the other Pure-Blood._ _Force_ them _to this fate._

Obelisk faced him. His gaze was cold and crystalline, clear with displeasure and an abundance of mounting annoyance. There was a lingering shadow of wisdom, eternal and long forgotten to the living, and a sense of foreboding which made him lose his younger appearance. Yugi could see the strength in him, the power and beauty of a creature never meant to exist, with greatness which rolled from him in billowing waves.

 _Do not be a petulant child. There is only so much room for them within our world. You chose to announce yourself this way. You shall live with the consequences. And you shall have to learn to adapt to the changes necessary, to grow beyond your mortal body's restraints. Half of the battle is embracing your nature. The other shall be learning yourself in ways you never considered. Now, I offer you assistance in way of both of these tasks. Shall you truly be so pitiful as to turn it down_?

He was not sure if it was fear or desperation which made him stare at him so blankly. His body shuddered, fur rolling along his skin, and his eyes bore into his for a moment. How unusual that Obelisk met his gaze with such little reaction when Yami had always either looked away or begun to lose his temper.

 _What is it that you have in mind_?

The god looked neither relieved nor expectant. His gaze was curiously blank, his expression one of mild contemplation. Slowly, with his head tilted, Obelisk rose to his paws and watched him. Now his gaze became intense, burning into his, the strength of which he projected the expression making Yugi's skin burn.

 _We have but a week, perhaps two, before things shall begin to change for you,_ he said slowly. _In this time, we must hasten to bring you to your strongest._

Yugi flicked an ear. Then he got to his feet as well. Obelisk circled him and the white wolf thought of snakes preparing to strike. Then it drifted from his thoughts and he found himself flattening his ears against his skull.

 _There is much we must do with you. You must have at least basic control of yourself before that time comes._ He turned away and began to move briskly through the trees. Yugi hesitated only a moment, then quickly began to give chase. They traveled only a short distance, in which Obelisk moved to the center of a small clearing. The rock he leaped onto was flat and smooth, layered with snow, inches of which covered his enormous paws and came to his wrists. He gazed down at him as he took a seat. _You tap into the residual strength of the wolf each time you experience a strong emotion while in this form. You were so enraged upon entering the underground lab that you killed without thought or remorse. Formerly, you tore the head from Bakura's body in order to save Yami. First you felt the need to protect Yami. This time you were driven by the desire to save him when you were convinced you had done wrong in the first place._

Convinced? Yugi nearly scoffed at him in disgust. He was not convinced of anything. He was _certain_ that it was his own misguided attempt to get a closer look at the carcass which had caused this. He had been brainless, thinking so pointedly of the idea that Anzu and his mom saw something from Yami that he himself did not, and that had caused him to forget his caution and step into the trap. It did not help that he knew he'd raised his voice when he'd snapped at Yami to fuck off and leave him alone. And if he had listened when he'd pleaded with him not to move, neither of them would have fallen through the ice.

 _You formerly assumed it to be an adrenaline rush, yes_? Obelisk continued, taking his silence for deep consideration though part of him was aware that Yugi was simply berating himself. The gray wolf ignored this, however. _You would be right. But not in the sense that you suggested it._

Yugi pricked his ears and tilted his head. _Meaning what_? he drawled in a somewhat sardonic tone. He wrinkled his muzzle slightly.

 _For most mammals an adrenaline rush means simply that they are coming upon the instinct of fight-or-flight. For the werewolf it means something greater than just that._ He considered him for a moment, then closed his eyes as he picked his words. He was still for so long that Yugi leaned forward and peered at his chest to see if he was truly breathing any longer. Satisfied upon seeing the rise and fall of his ribcage, the white wolf settled back again into a straighter posture. Finally Obelisk opened his eyes again, peering at him with something akin humor in his gaze. _When we experience a rush of adrenaline, it pushes our bodies into the trigger of healing rapidly. We cannot feel any pain inflicted at that time. It makes us stronger than ever before, immensely so, and our strength goes beyond that of even an African gray elephant._

Yugi blinked in bewilderment. _And a jaw pressure of over three thousand_? he queried, curious.

 _My own exceeds such meager numbers. But for now yours shall be much within that range when your adrenaline is triggered. Once you are able to control your strength without such necessity, you shall find yourself able to call upon much more strength than ever imaginable in doing so. Your jaw power will become beyond that of three thousand._ He fell silent again, then blinked once in a long, slow measurement of time. _You must attempt to embrace your strength. You'll have to channel the energy from the very first moment you experienced it. Which would mean more to the point that you will have to feel those emotions and hold them more firmly, influence them to give you strength but not to cloud your judgment._

Yugi could not help but stare at him in slight bewilderment. _I can't do that._

 _Not as you are now, no. But you can learn. When you accept that you are just as much wolf as you are human, you will learn. But the human half is far more emotional, while the wolf amplifies such sensations and makes them a thousand times stronger._

He fixed him either a cold stare. _Just because I decide to "accept" the wolf side of me doesn't mean I'll turn into the ultimate war weapon for the lycanthropes. I don't think any of you truly understand how much more it would take for me to do this kind of thing._

 _It will hardly be an easy feat. Things will be dire and terrible and much blood shall be shed. You assume because I can instruct you that it shall be easy_? _I will not do the work for you. You shall have to find your own path and your own way upon learning to do as necessary. Leaders are not made in minutes. And great ones are trained rather than spawned._

Yugi glared at him, lips curled back. _You say it with such ease still. What is wrong with you all that you assume I shall be able to mold into this being you all wish me to be_?

Obelisk did not grace him with more than a dismissive flick of his ear. _Because your reluctance and prejudice shall cloud your mind, I will deliver you the truth of your choices and the consequences of your desires and journey later. For now, I will teach you something else._

He was frozen for a long moment. Then he tipped his head up slightly and wrinkled his nose back faintly. _Like what_?

Obelisk rose to his feet. With a great snarling face, the wolf sprang forward with dark, glowing eyes. He landed a step in front of him, so close that their noses were mere inches apart. His teeth were a glittering mass of bright enamel which made Yugi stiffen upon seeing them.

 _I shall show you how to fight._

When he sprang at him again, Yugi was frozen for a moment. It was an unconscious, instinctive reaction which made him jerk to the side. He sidestepped by mere inches. Obelisk didn't even pause. Somehow, on two long forelimbs, he turned on him. His large jaws were open and bared. And they clipped his shoulder as he landed completely.

Yugi didn't know what to do or say. He stared at him, uncertain and blinking. The attack sent his shoulder reeling in pain. But he had not drawn blood. Nor did Yugi think he'd truly caught his fur even. It was a small, groggy realization, one which shocked him. Obelisk had muzzle-punched him. He'd had his jaws wide open and his teeth bared. And he'd punched him on the shoulder with his muzzle. Yugi was stunned.

The single moment he stared at him, Obelisk acted again. He threw his muzzle. The impact sent Yugi rolling. His shoulder stung and ached now. He quickly moved to his feet again, however. His eyes were wide and cautious as he stared at him.

He blinked at him. Obelisk responded by hitting him again. Yugi fell to the side once more. He yelped, then rolled to his paws as he had before. His eyes were wider than before, shocked. Obelisk stepped closer. Then he sprang. Yugi reacted instinctively once more. He stepped aside, stunned. The gray wolf took a swipe at him when his paw. The white wolf yelped as his shoulder was caught. Obelisk threw him onto his side again.

The gray wolf loomed over him now. He was a colossal shadow of sharp white teeth and cold orange-golden eyes. His ears were pricked forward. His lips pulled back to display white enamel. Yugi did not move. What was the point when Obelisk would simply throw him down again? Why should he bother to try to stand when the snow was so soft and welcoming?

 _So you plan to simply lie there now_?

Yugi bore his teeth. _I'm tired of getting hit in the shoulder or thrown down like this,_ he snapped coldly. His fur rose and fell into a bristling wave. _You aren't teaching me anything either. You're just knocking me around_.

Obelisk wrinkled his nose. _I am testing your reflexes, which are disgustingly weak and slow beyond understanding,_ he scoffed, watching him darkly. _Do you realize that, had I truly been a threat, you would be long dead_?

Yugi huffed. _But you're not._

 _You didn't know that in the lab. And how should you know that I am not planning to kill you while you are defenseless now_? _Are you truly so foolish_? _You cannot trust others so easily._

The white wolf bristled again. Then he looked about them for a moment. The movement earned him a muzzle-punch to his shoulder again. He snarled and turned on him angrily. Obelisk did not blink.

It was hard not to spit at him that the only one he'd ever trusted blindly was Yami. Now that he was gone, there was little to bother with. But he could feel the sharpest rebuttal in the back of his mind and his blood burned in denial.

 _I don't trust you,_ Yugi snapped, getting to his feet. _But if you wanted to kill me, you would have done it by now, right_?

 _There is truth to those words._

Obelisk flicked an ear and glanced at the red she-wolf with distaste. Slifer came along the top of the dune of snow nearby and began to trot leisurely towards them. Her golden eyes flickered to the gray wolf and then to Yugi. The white wolf took the chance to shake himself out as he took a single step closer. A spiteful part of him said he should muzzle-punch Obelisk while he had the chance but the rational said Obelisk could rip him to pieces. Slifer was watching him with something almost like amusement and Yugi wondered not for the first time if she able to read his thoughts.

 _I don't kill without reason._

Yugi flicked an ear. Neither did Yami, but he had a feeling that Obelisk didn't share the same meaning as the other boy did.

Slifer stopped a foot away from them. Yugi was suddenly aware of how much taller Obelisk seemed than her. His shoulders were broader, his neck even thicker, and his tail was a little shorter. He stood on long legs and immense paws, and his muzzle was more rounded than hers, broader. His coat was thicker, longer, and for the first time, Yugi noticed patches where it appeared to be sliced with black. He bristled faintly, eyes widening, and wondered at the idea that a werewolf might be able to have scars. He should have had scars if that was possible. His chest, his throat, his shoulders…

Obelisk, however, was marred with them everywhere. His entire face was pocketed with them, along the muzzle, the ears, his right eye, his shoulders and legs. He was riddled with them. The rest of his fur was so dark and long that Yugi did not think he could see anymore.

 _You should teach him rather than simply launch yourself at him as you did,_ Slifer drawled, ignoring his response. Her voice was chiding and her eyes were pointedly annoyed. _He is a pup, after all. His reflexes aren't as great as someone such as Marik or Valon._

 _I have to know what exactly I am working with, do I not_? _You cannot honestly say to me that I should not have at least_ attempted _to know how much or how little he might know._

 _You attacked him senselessly_.

 _I'm a war god_!

Slifer looked older, full of a wisdom that neither wolf could touch. Yugi pricked his ears and Obelisk wrinkled his nose in disdain. The she-wolf watched him with an annoyed expression glittering in her eyes. _And I rule over death. Yet you do not see me killing him or throwing him among carcasses for my own entertainment._

Chastised, Obelisk curled his lips back, growling, _Why have you followed us, Slifer_? _What is your reasoning for this_?

Yugi flicked his ears and glanced between them more curiously. Both deities stared at one another for a moment, and he swore something passed between them that he could not fathom. Were they communicating privately, cutting him away from his ability to hear? He'd done so unconsciously on several occasions when speaking to only Yami. It had been shocking for him to do so, seeing as no one else responded beyond the black wolf.

Had he someone managed to shut others away by some touch of his subconscious? It had to be something of that nature. Nothing else made even the slightest hint of sense regarding it.

 _I have come to tell you something,_ Slifer stated now, turning to him with glittering golden eyes and a look of wisdom which made his skin crawl. Yugi flicked his ears and his eyes shot towards Obelisk and back. The gray wolf was studying them both speculatively. The white canine turned back to her with a tilted head, feeling small as they both watched him. _It regards my rank as your beta._

Yugi blinked and flicked an ear again. Then his head turned to Obelisk and back, eyes narrowing faintly. _You want him to replace you in the pack._

Both wolves watched him with cool expressions, untroubled even slightly by this announcement. Slifer nodded towards the gray wolf with a glint in her eyes which was both tired and proud. _He has never once lost a battle, Yugi, and he can teach you much more than I can._

Some part of him agreed with the statement. Obelisk was a wolf which could fight beyond what meager degree he could. And he had no doubt that Slifer could do so similarly. But, the truth of it came in the line of his more muscular shape and lean build. He was more likely to teach him and battle it out with him than Slifer was. It occurred to him, looking at her now, that her place was among the dead more than the living. She was worn and tired even if she seemed boundless in energy, and it was clear that there was nothing that she might teach him. Her old wisdom had sucked the life and ability of others as the years had passed. Perhaps the death she'd been confronted with so long ago still held her in a vice grip. Because, as he looked at her, he could see the disregard and now he wondered if it had always been there but he had overlooked it formerly.

He looked at Obelisk. He seemed more or less lively, though immortality had done well to remind him that his life was not that which rested in the present. It was in his wariness, a sense of acknowledgment that accustomed itself in the form of hunger for battle. He would teach him, he would do what he could to help him remain alive, but he too was incredibly removed from the very fabric and idea of life.

Yugi shivered. Yami had said he did not care for his life as much as he did his. He'd told him, had said he was not suicidal and dying was not what he desired, but that when it came he would not fight it. Obelisk and Slifer did not get even that privilege. They would not die. They could _never_ pass peacefully. Paradise was but a momentary resting place of dreams and myths for them.

And it occurred to him that they had subjected him and this other Pure-Blood to a similar fate as well. It was shocking to look at them and realize with such disgust that if they somehow survived and pushed beyond all of the war, there would be no Paradise to walk into.

Yugi swallowed hard and felt as if he were choking. His eyes flickered between them. Immortality was not a blessing. It was a goddamn curse…

 _Do you want to take her place as the beta_? he asked, voice somehow steady. He assumed that the numbness in his bones was what kept him so eerily calm at the moment. More than half of him felt broken and the other was raw and jagged with ache and despair.

Obelisk looked at Slifer for a long minute. _Yes, I suppose I might as well take her place. She would rather rest than fight in another war, I am sure._

 _I lay with the dead. This world here is not one my paws are meant to tread,_ she said dismissively. Her tail moved slightly to the side, a small bristle rising faintly along her shoulders. _Death is not meant to linger among the living._

Yugi felt his own fur lifting along his back, skin twitching and shuddering beneath his pelt. By the gods, did she truly have to say something like that? Did she truly have to say _that_? He felt sick as he looked at her.

Death was everywhere, because he was Atem. That made it all the worse. If death were to stalk his paws, then why was it that she backed away now?

* * *

He could hear the broken breathing as he considered it. It inspired nothing from him. As with all other things, living or otherwise, he failed to truly feel the slightest emotion towards them. His sympathy for living things had not existed in his life, not for more than two years now. He still remembered, years back, when he had sat upon his driveway, legs crossed and head tilted to the side. His adoptive parents had been gone for hours.

He was seated beside a complex trap fashioned of twigs and twine and a little bit of netting. The rabbit was screaming in vain, squirming anxiously to get out from beneath his fingers. He watched it as it clawed viciously at his wrists and the thin, sharp keratin tore through his skin. The little ribbons of blood had been brilliant against his pale skin.

What he remembered most, however, was how its throat had broken with the heaviest popping of a noise.

It still brought him a thin smile of amusement.

Valon smirked as he considered the choking rasp of the breath from one of his classmates only a few chairs aside. He glanced sideways, head tilted, and his smirk grew tenfold with amusement. The teacher had stopped talking now. Everyone seemed to have collectively grown still, somehow aware of themselves now.

The heavy breathing was ragged now.

The enjoyment was growing more abundant now. His lips pulled back further. He turned his head enough to watch him. And, when he abruptly leaned to the side and lost his breakfast on the floor, the hellhound was the first to nearly laugh. A part of him trickled with the faintest touch of confusion and reluctance, of discontent towards his own reaction, and he felt his smirk fall away completely.

When Yugi raised his head again and rubbed the back of his hand along his mouth, his eyes were glazed. He looked, not for the first time, physically and mentally exhausted. Valon wanted, for the briefest of moments, to offer him assistance. The other half of him was cold and void, a blankness which Valon had always known.

He leaned forward slightly, intrigued by something far from the mess of Yugi's expression. His vomit smelled strange, to a point of which it made his stomach coil with disgust in response. Alarm trickled through him as he looked down. The smell was hideous, burning, and it seemed to sear within his nasal cavity. He wrinkled his nose, then looked upwards towards the other boy's face once more.

Yugi wiped at his mouth again, then got to his feet. He looked unusually ashen, and Valon almost snarled at him in disdain. The small teen wasn't eating regularly. He had vomited up only dark golden-colored vile. It looked slimy and hideous against the tile flooring. It was all liquid in appearance and his wrists looked like broken twigs.

Now the other boy did get to his feet. The movement surprised Honda who had started to rise as well. The brunet froze in place, hazel eyes shooting between them. Yugi didn't look at either of them and instead scooped his textbooks up to head for the door. Valon might have simply moved to another seat had it not been Yugi who had puked.

But the hellhound glanced at Honda sideways, curled his lip back in a brief sneer, and followed Yugi out the door. The moment he stepped into the hallway, the small lycanthrope halted from where he'd been about to turn around the corner. His head snapped around a moment later, eyes wide and dark against his pale face. As Valon approached, he swore his pupils seemed to be vibrating. The sneer grew on his face.

"How long do you plan to starve yourself?" he scoffed, wrinkling his nose back and beginning to step closer. His chin tipped up and Yugi tilted his head, blinking at him in shock. "You stink of rot and your vomit smells of death. You haven't been eating and your body is going to start losing more and more strength and muscle tone."

Yugi blinked and swallowed thickly. His eyes flickered away to the lockers and then back to his face. The reluctance in his gaze made Valon bristle further. "You say that like I had muscle tone to begin with," he muttered softly, unable to meet his golden eyes and looking quickly away from him even in his peripheral. He began to fidget, tugging on his sleeves with the opposite hand.

"It was subtle but you didn't look like a wind might knock you over," he spat, eyes frosty when Yugi risked a glance towards him. "Now I think the smallest movement might make your bones break. I feel as if looking at you might endanger you somehow. You are a _shell_ of the little bastard I saw the day you wandered into the library."

"A… A lot has changed since…"

Valon wrinkled his nose. "It is odd that you should smell so strong according to your bloodline as a lycanthrope. Yet, I do not smell him on you any longer. Nor do you come off as powerfully as you once did…"

Yugi cringed visibly. His head was bowed a moment later, and he trembled once. The hellhound considered him. The merciless half of him sneered that he should tear into him, make him squirm. It was that part of him that, growing up, had often whispered how easy it might be to kill his adoptive parents, the one which had reveled in breaking the neck of that small brown rabbit. The other part of him was pained to have caused him grief and that side both startled and angered him. Why should he feel so attached to him simply because they were both wolves?

Yugi was _not_ his pack.

He didn't have a pack…

The thought was both relieving and pained. Valon shrugged it off. In a disdainful voice, he hissed, "You are a walking target for the next wolf or hunter brave enough to come upon you."

 _Let them_! Yugi nearly spat, though his inner hatred was far stronger than his outward despair. He shook his head and sighed, tugging on his jacket sleeves harder. "I just want to go back home."

"Your alpha left you."

But the symptoms did not align. A beta abandoned by their alpha was usually resentful more than so incredibly broken over it. And Yugi was _shattered_. It did not take more than a glance to realize that. So what had happened between them? If he did not know any better, he might have assumed…

"Oh shit."

The soft expletive made Yugi raise his head. He was exhausted, and it showed terribly on his face. But it was alarm and more abundant fear which gripped his expression now.

"Do not…" Valon opened and closed his mouth for a moment. Then he looked down and away and back again. He grimaced and his stomach twisted with misery. "Look, I know that it hurts, but you are foolish if you assume that starving yourself will do either of you any good. Yami isn't—"

"He's gone." Yugi was shaking slightly, though somehow his eyes had hardened and he looked furious. "He's probably dead by now. Or he's still trapped under the ice… Fuck, he could be frozen for all I know…"

Valon stepped back several paces when Yugi threw up once more.

Gods, his bile stunk of rot. He was so starved and his body so forcefully turning back on itself in desperation that he seemed to smell of organs left in a heated room. He was ill, yet somehow he had not lost his ability to judge and calculate mentally. But if he changed again anytime soon he had the feeling that Yugi might damn well lose any semblance of who he truly was.

A starving werewolf was never a good thing.

He struggled to think of words necessary for Yugi to understand his growing alarm. "If you keep going like this, you'll kill someone." It didn't sound urgent enough in his head but the effect it had was immediate. Yugi stiffened, then stared at him as if he'd been struck. The hellhound wondered how the thought of that could scare him more than his own identity. Wolves were going to die merely because he existed yet human death was what made him tremble?

"You're starving. If you don't feed yourself before you change again, you're going to kill someone. You're going to completely destroy anyone who crosses paths with you, whether you're human or wolf." He bore his teeth, voice bordering hatred. "I don't suppose that your alpha happened to tell you that anorexia is not the way to go."

He narrowed his eyes, anger beginning to boil in his blood. "Anorexia?" he hissed. "I'm not anorexic."

"Well I don't see you making an effort to sustain yourself," Valon snapped. "You think that punishing yourself will bring him back? Try again. All that you're doing is setting yourself up for _murder_. And I'm sure Yami wouldn't have wanted that for you."

Yugi blinked at him. "Yami is probably dead. Does it matter what he would have wanted?" he said bitterly. "And it's not like I'm _trying_ to starve myself. I just… It's hard to eat anything when it tastes like mud!"

The hellhound considered him for a long time. He'd heard stories about that kind of thing happening. When a wolf lost their mate to death, most of them either ceased to have the will to survive or became increasingly reckless to the point that they often almost got themselves killed. They might charge another pack during a border patrol, so that the wolves would most likely slaughter them. They might fall into a hunter's trap and welcome the opportunity to be their newest kill.

Many of them who remained living were so aggrieved that most efforts that had been day-to-day for them before had become torturous. They weren't foolish enough to deprive themselves of food but they did say it lacked in taste and quality. Many of them even said that they had lost the ability to see in color or that things were too strenuous.

He did not know the truth of the former claim. It seemed impossible to him that it might be truthful. Perhaps in their sorrow the colors were less intense or possibly even dull. But he did not think that sorrow reached so far as to entirely corrupt the perception of their vision and color values to such an extreme.

"You have to find some way to get over that. You are Atem, not a pup. If you let yourself deteriorate farther, you'll be a killer who doesn't know how to stop. Do you understand that?" he bit out. His golden eyes were sharp, hooded with his long black lashes. He watched him for a moment, then wrinkled his nose back. "Imagine the damage you could do. You would lay waste to this entire island even as they tried to put an end to you."

Yugi bristled at that slightly wistful note in his voice. "I'm not going to kill anyone—"

"Not if you stop starving yourself."

His cheeks were slightly hot but he could not stop glaring at him in response. Yugi shook his head and spat, "Do you even know what it means to lose someone? Because I have the feeling that you don't know what emotional pain is, considering you're _a sociopath_."

"You say that as if I should be ashamed of that. Being a sociopath puts me steps ahead of the rest of you. Now, as for feeling the loss of someone? No, I never have. My emotional ranges are very limited, as I told you before. I understand you're grieving, however, and I don't know the feeling so I cannot sympathize, but I do care to make sure that the rest of us don't end up killed because one wolf was foolishly starving himself." Valon paused and tilted his head, watching him for a long minute. His lip curled back and his eyes flashed. "I may not understand what it means to have lost someone, or to think that food tastes of mud due to depression, but it does not change anything. The point is that you cannot allow this to deter you from taking care of your own health. It will destroy you. You _are_ already immortal. What do you think will happen when you go up against humans and end up killed for one second and alive the next? You'll completely desecrate this damn island."

That wistful tone had not abandoned his voice. It was horrifying to hear, beyond any idea of comprehension he could offer. Yugi wanted to shake his head, both in bewilderment and in disgust. How was it that his voice could carry so much emotion when he himself did not experience it?

Was it an adaptation to allow him to seem more normal and human?

Was it something that the werewolf itself was able to manipulate in order to blend in?

"What am I going to do?" he asked softly, swallowing hard. "You don't understand what I'm going through and yet you're passing some kind of judgment over me—"

"You're right. I _am_ passing judgment. Because you are being considerably stupid and idiotic in your decision to forego food, Yugi." He bore his teeth, white gleaming enamel with the softest touch of blue from the fluorescents overhead. "If you start killing all of the humans, I'm going to be the one to rip your throat out."

"It _almost_ sounds like you care."

"No. I simply have an instinct for self-preservation, something I feel you may be very unfamiliar with at a time like this."

Yugi's skin crawled, an echo of a threat rattling in his thoughts. Then he shook it off, scowling at him as his stomach lurched and ached. What the fuck did he actually know? Valon didn't even know what emotions were! Or at least not the ones that were worth anything. He said he felt what _dogs_ felt. He didn't get a full spectrum of anything else outside of that. And that should have made it clear that he had no right to judge.

Valon wrinkled his nose at him. It was hard not to respond to the waves of anger which came from the small teen in front of him. But it was not with sympathy and parts of him were desperate to lash out and beat the defiance out of him. Wolfdogs were often territorial, the hellhound decided, fighting the urge to snap his jaws at the smaller boy. Yugi was fucking immortal, unlike him. If he got a good twenty deaths in, it took only one moment for Yugi to let his control slip in his feral state and he'd kill Valon permanently in turn.

The risk of that was far beyond what irritation he felt towards Yugi's dismissal. He drew in a deep, ragged breath, then looked towards the locker. Both of them lost part of their ferocity in the single span of that movement. Valon found his irritation prickling upwards as the moments passed but it slipped and slithered like a snake mere heartbeats later. He exhaled harshly, then looked towards Yugi again.

"Here, come with me."

The lycanthrope hesitated for only a second, then began to slowly pick his way after the hellhound. It was about ten minutes later that they began to slow down once more. Valon had led him back to his locker to dump his things and then taken a detour to do the same with his own. Both of them had walked down the street until they had come across a small café where Valon immediately prickled with tension but relaxed enough to lead him in.

Yugi felt his skin heat with shock for a moment, his body slightly burned with the warmth of the air. His stomach curled slightly. His mouth grew dry. The smell of coffee tickled his nose and he felt almost sick as he looked around them. He couldn't imagine Valon ever existing in a place like this—not for a casual cup of coffee, not for even people watching in order to emulate them all.

The coffee shop was tiny in comparison to the one he'd taken Yami. There was no upper level and the slanted roof overhead was lined with dark umber beams for support. From many of them hung large lanterns with hand-wrought iron which held designs of stained glass in the formation of leaves of fall colors. The tables were dark, a mixture of cherry and brown in color, with such a smooth finish they seemed to almost _glow_ beneath the gentle touch of the sunlight from the large panels of glass to the right. The middles of each table were plated with glass with what seemed almost random designs within the wood beneath. The chairs were somewhat lower to the ground than the usual, and they lacked any arms, but held the same shade of wood.

Feet beyond this was a desk of wooden paneling, layers upon layers of shutter-like designs like the doors of a pantry. It curved around the left side, then stretched only about a yard to either side, where the cash register sat comfortably on a much shorter space of similar woodwork. This stretched the length to a very mere inch from the glass door exit. Beyond this hung large mugs waiting to be filled with coffee, and Yugi could see the various creamers and a small display of desserts beside it. Various shelves held a few items of which Yugi couldn't quite remember the name of, nor cared to bother much more with.

"What, um…?"

"It's my family's café," Valon admitted in a grudging tone, his voice dry with disgust. He glanced around once, then turned to him with his nose wrinkled. "For some reason my adoptive mother thought that this little spot needed to be turned into a coffee shop. She gets decent business, I suppose, but—"

"Valon, is that you?"

His entire face morphed for a split second. The hatred was sharp and singular. It lit his golden eyes and made his brows furrow and his teeth glint when he peeled his lip back. He bristled for only as long as it took Yugi to blink. Then he looked emotionless again and his voice was calm and soft as he called back, "Yeah, it's me."

Yugi was bewildered when a woman with long brown hair came out from what looked to be a dark black curtain. He blinked and narrowed his eyes. Had he truly missed that? He glanced around once more and then shivered. He'd missed the paintings as well, of raccoon dogs and cats and the foxes from the village in Honshu. He'd missed the cobblestone-like pattern of tiling beneath his feet as well.

The curtain did little to give him a look beyond the small shop entrance. There was not a single bit of room to see what or who might stand beyond it. He tilted his head and considered for a moment, searching the emptiness of the black material. Then he looked at the woman.

Her hair was dark brown, a shade from the chocolate color Valon possessed, and fell beyond her shoulders. Her eyes were a wide, rich blue that bordered on baby, and her lashes seemed almost dark brown rather than fully black. Her face was soft, warm, and she looked perplexed and bewildered.

Yugi looked at her and tilted his head. His eyes flickered between the two of them curiously. Valon had lost his irritation. But his annoyance was becoming clear.

"Is something wrong? You've never been here before…" She considered him for a moment, blue eyes confused. She looked at Yugi for a long moment. "Are you okay?"

The hellhound flashed her what seemed to be a calm, _almost_ friendly smile. But the look of his eyes was predatory and cunning, almost simplistic in design.

"No, I'm fine. There's nothing wrong." His eyes flickered to Yugi, the golden blaze of them dark and strange upon locking with his. The sharper angle of them and the color were brilliant in contrast to hers. "I simply wanted to bring a friend here for a cup of coffee."

"You should be in school…"

"Lunch break," he answered in a drawl. His voice was oddly restrained in tone as he looked at her. Yugi felt his stomach drop, remembering only then what Valon had said about them before. He wanted to kill them, but to do so would place him as the first on the suspect list when the police began to search.

"Oh." She hesitated visibly. "But that's still… Valon, what's going on? You've _never_ come here before."

Saying it like that didn't give it new meaning. Valon wrinkled his nose at her dismissively. "He wanted coffee. This shop is the closest."

Her eyes were wide, worried, and she glanced at Yugi almost dismissively in her haste to understand what the hellhound was hiding from her. "Valon…"

The boy blinked. "Seiko," he commented, an almost mocking tone entering his voice. He narrowed his eyes and tilted his head, watching her for a moment. Then he sighed loudly, yawned once, and began to make his way past her just enough to peer at the curtain. Yugi wondered if somehow Valon was capable of seeing through the thick strands to the other side. Perhaps it had to do with his being a hellhound instead of a lycanthrope.

"Is Kris here?"

She frowned at him. Her eyes flickered to Yugi again. "Um… Yes. She insisted on coming to see about some new flavors I was trying to make," she answered with another reluctant glance towards the lycanthrope. Something about the way she studied him made him think she was fearful. Did he look so bad?

Valon's expression had become frigid. "She's supposed to be at home," he spat through his teeth. "Why isn't she there?"

"She followed me here! What was I supposed to do?" Seiko argued, blushing when Yugi blinked in surprise at the harsher tone. She was soft-spoken and her voice reminded him slightly of wind chimes. But her rising anger made it almost brittle. Yugi glanced between them again. "And, besides that, she can't stay in the house forever!"

Valon let out a low, hideously exasperated sigh. His voice was a snarl now. "I said until the end of winter. She needs to recover and not catch something _else_. So she should stay home until winter has passed."

Yugi felt his skin crawl. Valon had said before the coming winter would be horrendous. He'd hinted at a catastrophic effect, that it might be as terrible as the one which had come upon the Lunar Ascension. If he was saying she needed to stay hidden until after then, did that mean he considered the war was going to happen soon as well? That it would be contained within the season?

"Yes, well… You try to tell that to her."

He rolled his eyes. "I already did. That's why she was crying earlier when I left for school, remember? You simply took pity and let her come here."

"I can't help it that you seem to be lacking a heart! She's a six-year-old, for Pete's sake! Ignoring her when she's unhappy isn't something a mother does—"

"Then, I suppose it's a good thing that you're _not_ her mother, isn't it, Seiko?" Valon sneered, unable to stop himself now. He watched the hurt come across her face, then the way her entire expression shattered before his eyes. And not once did it elicit even the slightest of reactions. Even his wolf half did not respond to her pain.

Her eyes flickered to Yugi again and this time they were incredibly wet. The small teen looked away immediately, cheeks heating with embarrassment. He didn't need to be here. And he didn't think he wanted to hear anymore about it all.

"I _pity_ the girl to fall in love with you," she spat in an acid tone. When she stalked away, Yugi could only hear her boots on the floor and it made him feel sick. His heart went out to her but another part of him seemed to laugh at the idea in and of itself. Someone love Valon? He didn't think the brunet would ever let someone close enough to truly do so. Nor did he truly consider him malicious enough to play with someone so cruelly.

Valon may have lashed out at his adoptive mother, but he did not seem likely to purposely destroy someone else. There just…seemed to be something cold and hard about his treatment towards her that expanded only so far as the brunette. He did not think Valon might turn that on anyone else without reason. But why was he so vicious towards his adoptive parents to begin with?

"Damn it, Valon." Yugi looked up in surprise. The boy stalking towards them was a good foot taller than the hellhound. His shoulders were broader and his arms boasted of wiry muscle. The small teen felt the urge to both bristle and back away to let a more powerful opponent pass without delay. His stomach knotted. The boy had the same brilliant blue eyes as Seiko, but his face was harsher, square in shape, and his gaze was oddly wide and crystalline. In his anger he was scowling but Yugi imagined he might have looked like the average big brother figure otherwise.

But…

Was he older than Valon? The thought shocked him somehow.

"It's not my fault that she doesn't listen and then cries over nothing," Valon said in a bored tone. He didn't even grace the newcomer with a sideways glance. Rather he began to pick his way towards one of the coffee machines, slipping behind a small swinging door. The brunet scowled at him more deeply, even further put off by his dismissal than ever, it seemed.

"You're such an ass." His eyes were on Yugi now and the small teen bristled at the distasteful glare he was given. "Who is this? Your newest fuck toy?"

Valon didn't look up from the measurements of coffee he was putting into the machine. "I don't know yet. Yugi, do you swing that way?" he asked without a care.

Half of him hated that Valon could pull off such responses with so little effort. Another part of him snarled with dismay at the very concept. But a more prominent part of him _wondered_ at how it was that Valon could sleep with someone when he didn't feel anything. Did that make it easier or harder to understand?

How many had he slept with?

How many had he dismissed seconds later?

Part of him was well aware that he didn't need to bother to worry about it. Yugi was not attracted to him in the slightest and he was sure Valon cared more about the aspect of him being Atem than anything else. Still, he had to wonder about it…

"No. No, I don't…"

"Well, there you have it. He's not my newest conquest." Valon snorted loudly and the machine made an obnoxious beeping noise. Yugi realized slowly that it was an American model that he'd never seen before. But the machine itself was a concept he'd heard of on multiple occasions. It took out all of the effort of making a good cup of coffee by simply draining hot water through the paper filter and into the pot beneath. His skin crawled again. Why would a café have one of those? "Regardless, what I do with other people is absolutely _none_ of your business, now _is_ it, Houzan?"

The look he shot him was scathing. Yugi was staring at the wall to avoid seeing the tension both of them wore. It was in the back of his mind that Valon could easily destroy this human boy. He was capable. And his temperament was so void that he might even have seen nothing wrong with it. But for some reason he held back. For some reason he did not speak a word against him now or even lash out.

It reminded him of Yami. When he'd first come into his house, he'd been nervous and so much like a cornered animal. If he'd lashed out Yugi would not have thought twice about it.

Yami could have easily killed him on those occasions he'd angered him. They were both well aware that he was capable. Yami was a lot of muscle and power that Yugi just did not possess. He knew what he was doing and he had a keen insight into what he could and couldn't do as a wolf. He knew limitations and strengths and he was strategic. He could have killed him and his family any time he had so desired.

And Valon could do the same. And it was clear that he felt _enough_ to hate the two to adopt him. But Yugi wondered if he hated his siblings. From what he knew there were two of them, a boy and a girl.

"Is Kris's fever down yet?"

Houzan blinked, then sighed. "Seems to be. She wasn't shivering the last time I checked," he answered with an awkward glance at Yugi. The blue-violet eyes were trained on his adopted brother, boring into his skin with confusion and wonder. His face was oddly blank, however, and the way his eyes spoke of such emotion unnerved him.

Valon turned around, leaning against the counter. Yugi could see a small green light as a pinprick from the distance, next to the uppermost button in the center. He blinked at it, but was instantly watching Valon and Houzan once more.

It was odd, how much they looked alike. They both had the same chocolate brown hair and their eyes were even shaped similarly. Valon had darker, longer lashes, and Houzan had a sharper jaw and larger build. But, in his school uniform, Valon looked unassuming, and in Houzan's dark royal blue jacket and gray shirt he seemed oddly enough like Ushio in body mass and intimidation factor. Both of them had spiky hair, though the direction of it and the way it fell across their foreheads was different.

But what struck him was that Houzan had _blue_ eyes, the shade of a robin. And it reminded him a lot of Valon's own sky blue before he'd hit puberty and the hellhound gene had expressed itself.

"Are you sure you're adopted?"

Houzan and Valon both stopped their newest conversation to look at him. Those golden eyes were somewhat amazed, but the pupils had expanded and Yugi could almost _feel_ the hatred radiating from them like heat. His brother's blue eyes were wide, startled and confused, and he looked between them almost nervously. Yugi realized only then that Valon had gone completely still, almost statuesque, and while his expression seemed outwardly amused, he also seemed to push forth waves of anger and disgust.

Houzan must have sensed it. Even with his dull senses, he must have known and felt it and so he was cowering as it bore down on him. He shuffled nervously and he looked incredibly like a small boy watching his parents rip into each other at the dinner table. Or perhaps he looked liked a gazelle caught between a lion and a crocodile, a piece of prey far out of its league and being challenged by the two most vicious of predators.

But then the ferocity seemed to ease away from Valon altogether. In a lazy flourish, the golden-eyed boy pulled his lips into a grin, flipped his wrist, and said in a low, drawling tone, "I think I would know if I was related to this moron."

Houzan shot him a dirty look. "Screw you, Valon."

"Not now, thanks. Try another time."

Yugi awkwardly rubbed the back of his head, licking his lips and turning towards the coffee machine next to Valon once more. "Sorry, you guys just kind of look alike."

Valon's grin was that of a wolf. His eyes were glittering and his stance was somewhat straighter. "Well, I'm lucky, I suppose, that my adopted parents aren't blond or another ethnicity, yes?" he asked in a calm voice, but when Yugi looked up, his mouth moved in the corner. His voice was so low as to be inaudible to his brother, but just enough to reach him. " _Camouflage_."

Yugi's stomach dropped, eyes stretching wide. Camouflage? Hadn't Valon been adopted with proper paperwork? He hadn't even considered formerly that perhaps his parents might have influenced his adoption, made sure that this couple was the one to get him. How many favors had been pulled to ensure Valon was here, in Japan, among the Domino City High students in a grade above him?

His stomach knotted again and he looked towards Houzan. Did Kris look similar to him as well? Did they look the same? Was she related to Houzan or was it possible she was truly Valon's sibling? He seemed to care for her, so much more than he did than his adoptive family. Was it possible then? But how…?

Now his blue-violet eyes fell on Valon again. And the brunet was watching him with smug laughter in his eyes, a sneer crossing his lips only minutely. He looked like how comic artists had drawn Two-Face as in the Batman series. Half of his face was moving, the other completely still. He looked beyond himself with laughter and amusement and Yugi felt sick to his stomach as they watched each other.

Who _were_ his parents?

Yugi blinked and his breath felt harsh when he inhaled again slowly. He'd said he'd met his mother, that she'd visited him before. The thought burned in his mind and his mouth was drying out. _Morrigan_. Morrigan was the only hellhound that he knew of in his dreams. She had to be…

But how was she his _mother_? She couldn't be. That was impossible. Was he simply related to her as he was Ra? It made no sense otherwise. There was no way that she had…

But _Slifer_ had buried her own daughter in the tunnels. She had…

And the alpha had been directly descended from…

"Where is she anyways?" Valon asked, turning his attention completely to his adoptive brother. The brunet was staring at Yugi with a confused, almost horrified expression, stunned and unable to look away from the dawning of comprehension and disbelief on the lycanthrope's face. The hellhound leaned forward, then snapped his fingers hard in front of his face. The sound of it seemed to echo in the small room and Yugi blinked at the addition to his thoughts just as Houzan jumped and gave Valon a startled look.

"What the fuck was that for?" he complained.

"You weren't paying me any attention. Stop ogling Yugi and answer my question," the hellhound dismissed him. His eyes were bland, void of emotion, and his voice was flat. Houzan shivered, unable to suppress it in time; damn his parents for never listening to him. Something was wrong with Valon. Something had always _been_ wrong with him. He did not even understand _at all_ how it was that he projected such life one second and looked so deathly the next. But he did it only when he was beyond caring to keep up whatever facade it was he was projecting. And so far it seemed only he had seen it. Valon smirked at him, the curve of his lips cynical and vicious. "Where is Kris?"

Houzan watched him for a moment, unnerved by the way he seemed to project himself so easily without even moving an inch more. He almost felt as if Valon were close enough to smother him, to just draw the air out of his lungs without a second thought. And yet, he was inches away leaning against the counter lazily, and not once had he made a move to come closer.

There was something just so eerie and unnatural about him altogether. His eyes turning golden had been the last straw for him. He'd considered him an anomaly and exceedingly vicious from that moment on. After all the animals he'd witnessed Valon pinning with pencils on the lawn so that he could watch their intestines shake and slither with each heartbeat…

He shook the thought off. He was simply amazed Valon had never laid a hand on any of them. And, by the gods, if he wasn't seemingly _obsessed_ with Kris! Houzan wasn't related to her, so perhaps it wouldn't have bothered him as much if Valon had gone after her, but he did worry about it often.

"She's at the house. Why?"

Valon tilted his head. "Funny. Seiko said otherwise." He glanced sideways at Yugi, calculating for a moment if he might be a threat to her or not. Then he wrinkled his nose. He wouldn't be intentionally. But she didn't know that. Exposure to him on top of Valon would surely ruin her, however. "I don't want to see her right now. I just wanted to make sure she hadn't wandered off on her own. _Again_."

The last word sounded like a stab. Yugi blinked, looking up at blazing golden eyes that Valon aimed at his adopted brother. His lip was curled faintly and the tip of a canine showed there.

Houzan struggled not to flinch and when he pulled through Yugi was actually somewhat amazed. It had seemed so much more likely that he would step back and possibly even flee. Instead his hand was shaking slightly but his eyes never left Valon's.

"If she's here then I didn't know. I just got here a few minutes ago," he said in a somewhat strained voice. His eyes flickered to Yugi again, then back towards the hellhound who merely studied his in response. "Although, I wasn't expecting you to be bringing a new toy to my mom's café."

Yugi felt his cheeks heat but it was with anger that he snarled, "I'm not fucking him, all right? Leave it alone."

Valon snorted loudly. "Put your claws away," he scoffed at him, turning immediately to his adoptive brother. "Regardless, I just didn't want her to run off on her own. And whether I screw Yugi or not is none of your business. N—"

" _What_?" the smaller teen burst out, eyes wide and face red with indignation. "I'm not—"

"Could you lower your voice, please? There are other people here. Thank you," Valon said without missing a beat. He was back to his brother before Yugi could blink. "I need her to stay in the back and not come out here until Yugi leaves, understand?"

"So you _are_ going to screw him!"

Valon sighed loudly, clearly exasperated. "And this is when I remember that you're only fourteen," he grumbled, reaching over to shove him away gently by the shoulder. "If it makes you feel better, then yes, go for that excuse."

Yugi blinked and looked at Houzan with wide eyes. He stood so confidently that he could have passed for the same age as them. The realization threw him for a loop that he was only fourteen. Even when he was nervous, he was able to carry the weight of his projected image rather than his actual one.

He wished he could so easily project the image of Atem to those wolves, that he could pretend to believe in it and hold himself in the way they must have wanted. His skin crawled. What did a fourteen-year-old boy have that was so much better than him? How was it that he had gained this trait when Yugi himself was left without it?

He imagined Yami could do the same. He'd probably be able to twist someone's thoughts to his whim if he tried. And he'd effortlessly show himself to be exactly as he described in order to prevent their questioning of his status, whether it was his age or his name or whatever he wanted.

Yugi felt a sharp sting in his throat and the way it gripped like a vice when he swallowed made him nearly flinch. His heart hurt, twisting painfully in his chest and he felt almost dizzy for a moment. But Valon and his adoptive brother had not taken even a moment to consider his pain and somehow he was so grateful that he almost wanted to wail his happiness.

"Whatever. Just keep her out of here."

In a rare show of affection, the hellhound reached out and caught him around the shoulders, drawing him close enough to run his knuckles over his hair. Houzan cried out indignantly and squirmed, whining about his hair, and Yugi stared at the display as if the sight of it might somehow save him.

Finally, panting and falling on his butt, Houzan escaped the werewolf and glared up at him with an indignant huff. His blue eyes narrowed and his mouth turned downward in a pout of frustration. If Valon was even mildly interested in his display, he did not show it by any means. But the humor in his eyes was relieving in its genuine touch and it made Houzan stare for a moment longer, confused and bewildered at the sight of it. He was so…odd.

Yugi let out a small breath, something which shuddered and choked in his lungs. Valon looked to him now, and the ease disappeared from him entirely. In front of him, mere inches away, his adopted older brother turned into something stealthy and vicious. His shoulders tensed and his eyes narrowed into slits as his lips curled only faintly. For the smallest moment he looked as if he were a predator prepared to fight for a member of its family. Then he blinked and the tension was long gone once more.

"Houzan, go keep Kris company. Yugi and I have a few things we need to discuss. Keep your parents back there too. I'll tell them when a customer comes," he directed, his tone something cold and slithering. The tone of it was enough to make the youngest boy immediately jump to his feet and run off behind the curtain again. It left the two wolves to stare at one another, golden eyes boring into blue-violet as Yugi struggled to look back at him properly. "All right, so we're going to have to keep our little doggy ears perked up in case Houzan decides to ignore me and give in to his curiosity instead of listening for once. He never has been too bright. Listening in would be one of those foolish things I know he'd do right about now."

Yugi swallowed hard and looked towards the coffee machine at Valon's side. It made his skin crawl as it beeped loudly once and the smell of coffee was harsh and burning in his nose. The smaller teen watched the little green light for what felt like hours. Valon hummed and turned away to face it and when he reached over for a small pitcher behind it, Yugi felt almost dizzy. There was something in it. He could sense it and feel it and just the thought of it being around him made him slightly nervous.

He shifted his weight more than once, anxious as they glanced at one another. His eyes flickered back and forth between the coffee maker, the small pitcher, and the hellhound who was reaching for a cup from the iron rack which held them over their heads. He selected one with a smaller bottom and wider rim, poured the coffee inside, and did the same with his own cup a moment later. When he poured what looked like creamer into the cups, Yugi felt his skin crawling.

That wasn't creamer. Every part of his body told him that if was not _just_ creamer. His head was spinning even as Valon casually handed him the cup with what looked like the most. The coffee had become a deep burgundy color, as that odd shade of creamer had seemed. And the bubbles at the top were small, soft, and it was deceptively pretty where Yugi felt that it was toxic and vicious.

"Just drink it," the hellhound snorted, taking a sip himself and licking his lips pointedly. Yugi stared at him blankly for a moment, then looked back at his mug. "It'll help with your hunger. That way you won't end up murdering someone without meaning to."

He swallowed hard. "Because murder should always be consensual and conscious," he said dryly, rolling his eyes. Valon's answering smirk made him shiver. "What's… What's in the creamer?"

"You tell me your secret and I'll tell you mine."

Yugi raised his eyes and glared at him for only a moment. Then he blinked and shook his head, looking down at his cup once more. "I'd rather keep my secret to myself. Thanks."

"Then you don't need to know what's in the coffee."

"I do if I'm going to drink it."

The humor was gone from his face and his eyes looked cold and harsh. "You don't. Because truthfully, I am not giving you a _choice_ ," he growled. His words made Yugi look up and his blue-violet eyes grew thrice their regular size in shock. Valon was radiating anger, the push of it so violent it threatened to knock the small teen off his feet. "If you won't drink it of your own volition, I will force you to the ground, pin you, and pour it down your throat. Now, seeing as someone might walk in and see that, I'd rather not _have_ to. But, push my hand and I'm going to make you regret it."

Yugi stared at him, unable to do more than gape for a long moment. Then his eyes shot to his cup again. His stomach knotted and his heart skipped and pulsed harder than ever. Then he blinked again, lowered his eyes further towards the floor, mind racing.

"It's nothing that will hurt you. I even drank the damn thing in front you. And you watched me put it all in my cup, right? So then why wouldn't you assume to think that it's _not_ poison?"

"The last time anything was put in my food or drink, it was wolfsbane." He hissed out a breath and shook his head, eyes darkening with remorse. "I nearly got my friends killed because of it all."

Valon drummed his nails on the counter. "Funnily enough, hellhounds can't drink wolfsbane either, considering how poisonous it is." He rolled his eyes when Yugi failed to respond. The broken look in the lycanthrope's expression made him bristle. "Just drink it."

"It smells weird."

"But it will help you. So. _Drink_. _It_."

He hesitated for a moment. It didn't smell like wolfsbane but it did seem familiar. Yugi struggled to consider where he had come to know this sweet scent from. But he could not fully recollect it and so the small teen finally licked his lips, looking towards him pointedly, and took the smallest sip.

All he could catch at first was a dark, roasted coffee blend with an undertone of something like cherry and chocolate. Around this was a brilliant current of sweetness that he recognized as hazelnut. But beneath it, swirling on the tip of his tongue and soaking into his taste buds, was something entirely different. He could not describe it at first, but then it came to him that he thought it had a hint of copper or perhaps metal instead.

Yugi stared at the hellhound for a long time. Valon was smirking, drinking from his cup once more. The lycanthrope lowered his eyes only then, taking another small sip. Some part of him rejoiced at the sensation of the coffee in his veins. The taste burrowed itself further under his skin and into his bloodstream. From there it seemed to travel rapidly and pulse through his entire body in a brilliant flash of strength and energy.

A small part of his mind was backpedaling rapidly. The scent was too familiar and the taste… He'd known it on a couple of occasions, but usually it was…

But this wasn't…

Yugi blinked at his cup. Then he raised his eyes. Valon did not feign innocence nor disregard for his silent question. Instead he nodded slightly and settled more comfortably against the counter behind him. His eyes were calm, mild, and he studied him impassively for a long minute.

"It has to be a part of Kris's diet."

The smaller wolf blinked and slowly tilted his head. His brain was still struggling with the concept of what had given him energy just that moment. But part of him was desperate for the touch of it again and the taste on his tongue was somehow so pleasant it seemed to make his blood sing.

"Kris?"

Valon watched him for what seemed like hours. Then, slowly, the golden-eyed wolf considered him and then the cup as well. He looked at the contents, the deep burgundy shade of it, and lowered his index finger into the coffee drink. It was still rather hot but he didn't bother to flinch. He stuck his tongue out and a single droplet splashed on its surface as he continued to stare at him.

"My little sister has begun changing prematurely due to exposure to me," he said slowly, quietly, eyes sharp and calculating. He was cautious and wired but somehow his frame was still incredibly relaxed. Valon seemed not even to notice his shock or perhaps he was simply waiting patiently for his response.

"Exposure to you…?"

The hellhound stuck his nail into his coffee again. "A werewolf exposed to one stronger and more pronounced than themselves has the ability to sometimes trigger the dormant gene within others that haven't changed yet."

"We can…?"

His expression was unimpressed and bored now. "I'm a Harbinger," he drawled lazily, once again flattening his tongue and dripping coffee from his nail. "I am the strongest hellhound in existence…or, at least, the _mortal_ one. And you, likewise, are the strongest as a Pure-Blood. You trigger lycanthropes to change early as well."

Was that why so many kids at their school seemed to be changing so abruptly now? Yugi didn't have any proof that it had been him. But he didn't have any that it wasn't either.

He stared down at his cup, drumming his fingers along the handle. It made a lot more sense now.

"Relax. It wasn't human blood." When he looked up, Valon flashed him a smirk of such mocking brilliance that it made him bristle in surprise. "Well, yours isn't anyways."

"But yours…"

"It's animal blood in this cup. My sister needs human blood. As do I. But I have animal blood in case of emergencies as well." He looked leisurely, without a care in the world to grace his expression. The hellhound probably only felt the need to worry when it directly affected him in some way. Yugi felt small and stupid before the face of his indifference now. "My saliva acts as an anticoagulant just as a vampire bat's does when I should desire it. When I hunt, sometimes I bring back vials in order to make sure Kris doesn't go hungry. And sometimes I have to get blood from humans stupid enough to come home with me."

"So, all those people your brother thinks you've hooked up with…"

The laugh which left his mouth was a cackling and his golden eyes were wild with amusement and darkness. "I'd _break_ a human if I took them into my bed," he sneered, smirking widely and tilting his head to the side in open mockery. "And when there are so many _wolves_ to choose from? What is a human to a wolf?"

Yugi felt sick as they looked at each other. "How does a family end up adopting two hellhounds?" he inquired after a long minute.

"I'm sure my mother had something to do with it."

The lycanthrope stiffened. "Your mother?"

The bored expression on his face intensified now. "Morrigan, yes," he said with a lazy wave of his wrist before downing his cup and putting it aside on the counter next to his arm. His smirk was malicious and his eyes cold, threatening, as he looked at him now. "I think it might be a good time for you to get a move on, Yugi. The blood will last you two days at the most, I should assume. If you change, I'm sure it will only last as long as it takes to change the second time. Be careful what you do in the meantime."

He sounded cautious, full of a darker promise that Yugi did not quite understand at the moment. Then he blinked and looked away, shaking his head.

"Finish your cup." His eyes flickered back to his. As Yugi obliged in downing the rest of his cup, Valon closed his eyes and somehow slumped further back into the counter. His arms crossed loosely over his chest. "You should start eating again."

* * *

The woods were too broad, Yugi decided as he paced about the river. Maybe if it was shorter the trip wouldn't be so taxing and he'd be able to get back and forth with little difficulty. But the woods stretched for miles upon miles. And that was something that Yugi had not completely considered when he'd gone running out there. After he'd heard about the blizzard coming through he'd initially assumed that he would have more time to search for anything before it began. But it was as if, the moment he stepped outside, the heavens had opened up and the snow had come in large bundles of white crystal and small frozen droplets of sleet had come crashing forth as well. He'd been covered in mere minutes, his constant movement shedding it to the ground like a second pelt.

Yugi was running when he came to the bank. The ice was frozen solidly again and the new snow simply layered on top of it like it would a car's windshield. And it was already several inches and the white wolf wondered how it was that he had not gone blind yet beneath the onslaught of snow. The thick flakes and the rapid speed of their descent made him nervous. The earth was one massive flash of white and his vision seemed keen enough to just see yards ahead of him. When he looked over his shoulder, he saw no prints left within the white.

The wolf shook himself out slightly. His pelt was bitterly pressed down and his stomach ached as he looked around himself nervously. The river was frozen completely. There was not the slightest trickle of water to be heard and it was even more terrifying to him than anything else. He could be lost in this blizzard forever and he'd still think the unnatural stillness and the silence safe the snow falling to the earth was too suffocating to endure.

The shadows which underlined their descent were constant, black against the bluish gray of the ice beneath the night sky. Yugi glanced up and the sky was a hideous off-white that reminded him too much of fresh ash. His fur shuddered and twitched and his muscles grew taut with confusion and disbelief at the smothering vice grip.

His ears flicked. Despair lit its way through his veins and pooled in his stomach until it became a harsh lump of stone. He did not even know what he had expected. He'd traced the river for weeks now. All traces of Yami's existence there had begun to fade just as it had from his own bedroom. The sheets had begun to lose some of the more frosty scent, but the moonlight and the softest touch of pine was resilient, buried there in each strand.

But all traces here were gone. And any sign he might have found before lost. And with the idea of searching came the more abundant burst of Slifer's words, that he would not find aid in her or Obelisk. And Malik had said he was dead. His skin crawled and his heart hurt as he flattened his ears against his head.

Was Yami lost to him?

What if he was already in Paradise and refused to visit him in his dreams like the other wolves did?

What if he hated him?

What if he blamed him for…?

He choked and the noise that left him was a sob. It was unnatural, brutal, and bore an echo of defeat he had not known himself capable of. His legs threatened to buckle beneath his weight. Pain lanced through him forcefully and he felt dizzy and weak. His breathing grew tighter than ever. He was dry-mouthed, aching, and everything felt heavy and large and burdensome. And the pressure on his bones was harsh and terrible and he felt sickly once more.

 _Atem…_

His lips curled back, disgust surging through him. Atem? He wasn't Atem. Atem wasn't this weak. Atem couldn't _be_ this weak. Atem was supposed to be some kind of savior, a warrior that didn't fall. He wasn't forced to his knees by something so small and weak as the loss of someone else.

No matter what they might have meant to him.

Ragged, breathing so harshly that his head spun, Yugi bore his teeth and raised his head. Against the ice, she looked like a scepter of golden fur tugged by harsh wind and blazing blue eyes. _What more do you want from me now, Ra_? he spat bitterly. _You've already taken my life._

The goddess cocked her head to the side, in something of a foreign expression of perhaps forgetfulness or sympathy. But he thought it more mocking than anything. A feverish heat came through his body, rage and hatred bursting in his veins in waves.

 _Your life_? Her voice was wistful, drifting through the air on the softest of breezes. She stepped forward again and the edges of her fur almost seemed to shimmer from the angle of the snowfall. But some part of his brain wondered. Slifer and Obelisk had appeared in the physical plane. He'd yet to see Ra in any way beyond his dreams.

Was she really there?

 _You consider him to be your life_? _Truly, Atem_? _It is not your freedom that holds such priority_?

 _Freedom_? _What freedom_? Yugi snarled, baring his teeth again. The snow was so thick and he swore her image seemed to waver beneath the force of it. And he wondered, again, if she was real or something projected at him in the dark, to make him feel less alone and more encompassed by the goddess before him. _There is no freedom_! _I'm nothing more than a symbol—a sacrifice on top of it_! _What happens to me when the war ends_? _You'll all kill me. What kind of life is that_?

 _At least you would know your purpose. Name one in your world who knows theirs as well. None of them do. Humans and werewolves alike drift through this life with no idea the greatness that comes from their suffering. The immensity of your pain is measured in reward later._

 _How_? _How can that be when we're already suffering so much_? _And what about wolves who don't_ deserve _to go to Paradise_? _What about them_?

 _Who are you to judge my children_?

Yugi snapped his teeth. _The creature that you made to save them_!

Ra was silent for a moment. Then she seemed to slip and shiver into nonexistence, as if someone had quite possibly smeared her image away. It struck him with fear for a moment, then anger.

Of course she was not there. How foolish of him to think she might have been. He should have known better than to assume she might recognize his need of her appearance there. The fact that she'd even shown herself like this was insulting, mocking beyond what he could fully understand.

Yugi looked away towards the snow. His ears flicked and his eyes darted about for a moment. Then he bore his teeth again, growling low in his throat. _Is there never enough for you gods_? _Is there never a time when you look at us and think twice_? _The suffering we go through—is it truly worth it to you_? _Do you actually consider that to be a concept of our importance_? _You disgusting little—_

He had expected her image to still be there, that perhaps she had projected it again. The waves of anger that came through him were violent and hideous. His teeth were flashed against the wind and his tongue dried out from a blast of frigid cold. But the sight to greet him made him freeze, cold and stunned and altogether horrified.

 _Yami_? He was trembling and his voice was cracked. He stared at the figure, a large face of immense black fur that whipped violently in the growing wind. Unlike Ra, he looked physically present, as if Yugi could reach out and touch him. But he didn't have the strength to do so and it made his heart race and his body quake further. When he fell onto his stomach Yugi wasn't sure what forced him there.

Had he really come to visit him now?

Was he truly dead?

He was standing exactly where Ra had. And he did not seem to either recognize him or perhaps he did not care to fully acknowledge him. His indifference was a stab to the white wolf's trembling heart.

 _Oh, Yami…_

The wolf blinked once, lowering his head slightly. Yugi did not hear him when he moved. And he could hardly see the movement of his large, dark frame when the snow fell so quickly.

 _I'm sorry. I'm so sorry…_

He watched him with dark red eyes, a shade deeper than Yugi was used to seeing. But he remembered the pain he'd seen in that same color, the way he'd almost folded in on himself in the warehouse.

Did he pity him? It was the only expression Yugi thought himself able to see in his face. The white wolf felt small, immensely so, and he was exhausted as they looked at one another. His stomach knotted painfully. He swallowed hard, head swimming, and he wondered if he was truly dead, if there was nothing in him that truly retained care for the smaller wolf in front of him.

Did he blame him?

Yugi blamed himself, so why not Yami as well?

And, oh gods, wouldn't it have been better if he'd never opened his mouth and…?

The noise which left him was pitiful, crying, so tight in his throat that it choked pathetically. He gasped and sputtered and his sides shook as he wheezed.

 _I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I should never have lied. I shouldn't have… I… Oh, Yami, I'm so sorry. I never meant for any of this to happen and…_ He gasped and his body shook like a tightly wound bow. He opened and closed his jaws, eyes horrifically wide, the whites of them showing in his despair. Yet the figure in front of him did not move. Not an ounce of mercy or acceptance came to him. Yugi shook harder.

Something dark beckoned at the back of his mind. Yugi could feel it crashing forward at the edges of his thoughts. Pathetically, shaking, he opened his mouth again, the noise of a whine leaving him. _Please, Yami, I… Aibou, please…_

Now the wolf raised his head and the look in his eyes seemed shattered. In the silence the snow seemed to crackle with heat against his long fur. Yugi shuddered and panted and his breath was so white it matched the world surrounding them in billowing curtains. He gasped harder and looked up at him desperately but the wolf merely turned his head away. Then, as if with a great effort, the black canine threw his head back.

The noise which left his throat sounded so thick and powerful as to draw the dead from their resting places. Yugi blinked as the darkness dragged at his limbs and soaked into his blood as if it might weigh him. He could not keep his breathing steady and his heart hurt as he watched him. As the noise hit a crescendo, the earth seemed to quiver. And the ice seemed to fall faster. And the darkness was heavier than ever. And Yugi was screaming on the inside. He struggled for his paws but Yami was disappearing in front of him. First came ripples of white beyond his shoulder, then his long arched neck, and beyond his muzzle and head. Then, against the gray of the sky, he became but a faint silhouette.

 _No,_ please! _Aibou, please_! _Come back_! _Don't leave me_! Yugi screamed. He tried again for his paws but somehow he was rooted. And the darkness swept forward with long fingers. He sobbed brokenly as red eyes peered at him for only a moment.

He did not know who disappeared first. Had the darkness come to him before Yami faded? Or had the opposite happened?

Regardless, he was alone again. And Yugi hated the overwhelming sense of need which came with it. The darkness was so complete as to swallow him whole. He screamed and bayed until his throat began to burn and he thought he might choke on his newest breath.

And, as if in answer, a voice hissed, _Rise then, Atem._

But Yugi was falling. He could feel it. And the darkness seemed to be splitting. Colors of different magnitudes, brutal and with shades of which he had no name, began to spiral up and out. It was a ribbon, a hairline fracture, then bursts of color. They swept upwards until it burned his eyes to see them. And, as he clenched his eyes shut, a smell of metal and sweet rot came to him.

 _No…_

He was dizzy as he spiraled closer to the smell. And he knew instinctively where he was. It hurt simply to consider his place within it. And, as he hit the liquid, his body was swept in a frantic current of panic. He thrashed and the stickiness clung to him like death. Yugi flailed his paws and tried to throw himself out from beneath the weight of it all. But something brushed against his side. And, as much as he tried, he could not stop himself from opening his eyes wide in horror.

A long, white form of splintered bone, perhaps a rib or a femur broken in half, floated in front of his eyes. He sputtered, gasping and choking, and his head spun with horror. What the hell was going on? He'd never seen this before… He'd never… What was going on…? Why was he…?

The fear made his entire body thrash. The blood seemed to seep into his body, drenching his skin and swimming into his own veins. His heart was shaking and stuttering within his chest. His body quivered and shook. He opened and closed his jaws and flailed but nothing helped him.

He was choking. He could feel it. He was dying—

 _You are not dead._ The voice was snide, harsh, with not the slightest touch of sympathy. _Atem cannot die._

 _I'm not Atem,_ Yugi wanted to cry. But wasn't he? He'd taken on this responsibility and he knew what was going to happen. And he was sick, thrashing, dying. And he'd drown beneath the blood and choke on bones and he'd rot in the snow where he truly was and—

He was flailing again, a vain attempt to save himself. But somehow he managed to right himself. And further, somehow, he seemed to catch his balance. His breathing was still choked and sluggish, weighted with this heavy decay in his nose. But he was managing it. In some way or another, he was upright and he was…

The heat in his body was one he did not entirely recognize but it was not completely foreign either. Yugi choked and sputtered. Parts of him seemed to ripple with pain. Others seemed to swell with relief. He flailed again. He gasped and choked. And he threw his head back as he seemingly breached the surface.

But all he could see was red around him. Bones were still scattered about. Most of them drifted along in the slightest tug of the current which caught at his skin and threatened to drag him away. In his exhaustion, Yugi almost did not notice it. But then he glanced down. His clothes were against his skin, tugged and beckoned by the river surrounding him.

When his eyes flickered up, a face of long gray and white and black fur peered down from the surface of the river. He could see the way the blood reflected in his gray eyes and it shook him to the core. The balance of dark orange against its surface boring into his made Yugi dizzy.

 _Bakura_! But he didn't know if the thought would reach the other wolf. If he was dreaming and he was human, did the laws of their communication transcend here too?

But if he opened his mouth, he would taste blood and he was scared. He didn't want to choke on the redness that surrounded him. And what if it swallowed him whole? But what if, somehow, for some inexplicable reason, it _all_ swept its way down his throat and became a part of him?

He was terrified as he looked about himself. Bakura continued to watch him. His voice was cynical and cold, his loyalty visible but his disgust far more evident.

 _Does death scare you so, Atem_? _Maybe you should never have been stupid enough to open your mouth and tell everyone who you are. Ignorance is bliss, right_?

 _Can you hear me, Bakura_? He was whispering, for some reason he did not recognize. The fear was gripping and his body was held within it. Yet Yugi raised his eyes and Bakura peered back at him plainly.

 _Do not use me as your anchor within this place,_ the wolf snarled, peeling his lips back and baring his teeth fully in response to his plea. _I am not the one to save you. I have done what I was meant to. Now you are on your own._

 _Wait—_

 _You will become trapped here if you are foolish enough to attach yourself to one of us. We are ghosts now, Atem,_ a new voice said, equally as cold but with a hint of disapproval and affection as well. His head turned and Yugi wondered why he was at the bottom of this river when the others were so far above him. A face of black and dark brown, with the smallest touches of tawny and silver, peered down from the opposite bank. Beside him was a russet-furred wolf with light gray across its forehead and tawny undertones. They were none he recognized. _Scepters do not interact with the living so fully. Should you try to use us as an anchor, you will find yourself lost here, within the darkness._

 _Why_? _Why aren't you all in Paradise_?

 _We are,_ a quiet voice whispered and his head turned again. Beside Bakura, the dark gray wolf stood, green eyes soft with sympathy but hardened with frustration. _But we are here for you. Until he comes again, and the cycle begins anew._

 _He_? Yugi asked, confused. His eyes flickered about them. More wolves were gathering. But the blood was growing thicker and it was harder to see them. Could they even hear him any longer?

 _Do not fear this place,_ the gray wolf called to him, voice as prosperous as rolling thunder. _It will not harm you. But there is someone who needs you more than he does us. And so you must go to him rather than stay with us._

 _Who_? _Who is he_? _Who needs…_?

He fell silent because he could no longer even sense them. And the blood was so thick as to be black around him. Yet this blackness was not terrible. Something about it tugged at him with delight and a sense of gratitude touched at his insides. His heart felt filled to burst and his body quivered.

Someone needed him more than they needed the other wolves? Did they need Atem or was it Yugi? He looked at himself. There was not a single hint of his wolf persona in this human form. So did that mean they truly needed him? That they needed _Yugi_? Insignificant little Yugi?

The idea was shocking. Atem was the god, the wolf. Yugi was a mere lamb in comparison. Who could need Yugi instead of Atem?

The blackness was inky and surreal. For the longest time it surrounded him, swallowing him whole. And then, abruptly, it began to recede. It swelled away and disappeared as if it had never existed. Yugi looked about himself. The blood was gone. The area around him was littered with thin trees and soft mud beneath his knees. Was he kneeling? The ring of growth seemed only to go as far as he could see, as if the world were swallowed beyond it.

It was a dream. Of course the world might be secluded to one small spot. Yet part of him yearned to explore. It was momentary and it ceased immediately, but it had been there.

Yet the water in front of him reflected only the darkness. When Yugi finally inched closer, his tongue was pressed hard against his palate. And his hands were shaking. He was cold, almost frosty with ice from the temperature. He swallowed hard and inched closer. And his heart threatened to leap out of his throat and his mouth was so dry he wondered if he had ever known it to be otherwise.

What stared back at him was not his own reflection.

He had never known such a skin tone. And his own face was not marred by wounds as this one was. And the sunken hollowness of those eyes may have been mirrored in his own, but his defeat was not present. His despair was replaced by livid anger, by hatred which could have made the earth freeze. Their pupils were blown and the ringlets of their irises were blank and cold and so far smothered that Yugi almost did not see them at all. Their lips were caked with blood but Yugi did not think it was their own. The wounds that stretched across their face were so red it looked as if it would never cease bleeding.

"Yami…" He was breathless, choking, and he felt sick as he looked down at the water. The name offered the reflection no sense of acknowledgment or comfort. This face peering back at him was layered in things that Yugi had never seen before to be expressed there. But he knew it all the same, blown pupils and hatred and the scratches and wounds… "Oh, Yami…"

There was the faintest hint of recognition in that cold gaze now. But he did not know what stirred it, his name or his expression or Yugi's voice or what. But it was there. And, as they stared at each other, Yugi felt tears in his eyes and his knees were glued to the bank with mud. But his hand reached out slightly, shaking with such fine tremors it made him feel sick. And, in response, warily, Yami watched his fingertips, seemed oddly as if he knew them more than he did the boy who owned them, and reached out as well. Before his eyes, Yami had begun to heal. The wounds had begun to stitch together. But the toughness, the rough exterior, the chill of his posture, did not fade in the least.

And, as Yugi almost touched the surface, a harsh burning sensation crept through him. Yami blinked and something panicked and dazed began to cross his expression. He moved frantically. His hand stretched further. Yugi wondered if he might reach out of the water and touch him.

"Yugi!"

The boom of noise spread through him in echo of his name. His heart skipped and flushed and his skin crawled pathetically beneath his pelt. Yugi jerked awake and the darkness was soft and warm. He blinked stupidly, the ice clinging to his face. His vision was gray and the length of his body was layered with something soft and reassuring. But the noise came again. And this time he heard a whistle of air and the burst of snow nearby.

He was in a panic when he got to his feet. The movement was so swift he barely processed it. And, when he ran, his body was shaking. The gunshot came again. It missed him by an inch. Yugi bore his teeth, panicked even more so. But it came to him as well. The snow falling and the inches which had accumulated did well to shield him. It did the best it could to offer him the camouflage to escape should he move fast enough.

They were aiming at movement but did not see him clearly enough to anticipate his trek. And he was so brilliant white that he blended all but effortlessly. But he did not know which was safer in the long run. Did he race for safety amongst the trees? Or did he move slowly? Both held so many risks of their own…

Instinct did nothing to guide him now.

His racing mind held his thoughts in sharp claws and bared teeth. Yugi could not, however, process which threat was more immense. In the shadows of his mind, Yami was still crying his name in empty despair and avid hope even as he faded from his dream and returned to this situation.

So Yugi was frozen in rationalism.

Even as he began to run again, speeding along, he could not think more on his odds of survival. Yami was alive. Yami had to be alive if he had been healing in this dream, right? He had to be alive and he was going to be okay.

He'd _recognized_ him!

His heart leaped with joy but the rational part of his mind told him celebration was foolish at the moment. But still, he could not stop himself thinking of it all. Yami was going to be okay. He'd healed and he was going to be okay and he was still alive and—

The gunshot echoed behind him. But Yugi did not react to this beyond a flinch. His eyes were glazed fearfully but he did not move faster. Nor did he attempt to make a noise of protest. But his breathing quickened and with it, his paws began to feel heavy. He drew in ragged gasps, shaking it off minutes later. The heaving he was thrown into nearly forced him off balance. Yugi struggled for a moment.

But the gunshots had stopped. He moved a small bit faster. The snow was lightening in its fall. He didn't want to be out in the open if it ceased altogether. He was shaking when he reached the tree line. And it occurred to him, abruptly, that he'd made a grave mistake.

They had purposefully missed him each time. They had wanted him to move. And he'd done exactly that. He'd gone for the trees. And that was where they would be waiting for him.

Because, in the trees, it was more obvious when he was moving. And it was easier for them to outline him against the trunks. He was so stupid. He was a fool. And he was going to die for it.

Perhaps he deserved that.

He didn't think he could lead the pack. And if that was what he was meant to do and he failed at such a responsibility, then why shouldn't he see this as a just punishment?

They would die with or without him there.

They would rot whether Atem was involved or not.

He wanted to puke.

His movements slowed.

His eyes darted about.

There, in the snow-laden undergrowth. He could see the human. They were feet away from each other but the human did not see him. In the dark, in the falling snow, the woman hunched in her large off-white jacket could not visually identify him. He was so white in color and she did not possess his night vision. Nor did she know the strength of his eyes.

And he could kill her.

If he charged her…

If he raced at her with his jaws open…

But to do that, he'd have to find something inside of him he'd rather not exist. And that kept him there, rooted in the snow. How had she come to find him? Had he cried out in his dreams? Had it attracted her? But why was she there? And how was she not frozen by now?

He bore his teeth. She had to have known to put heated bottles beneath her insulated jacket. That must have been what kept her warm now. For her hands were trembling and her cheeks were a bright shade of red.

Yugi hated her.

Somehow, somewhere deep inside of him, a billowing rage came forth. It swept through him and tore apart his thoughts and ruined his rationality. And, by the gods, did he _welcome_ it. He could kill her. He could spill her blood. He could tear from her throat and watch her essence soak the snow. And, oh how the ice would steam and the mist of her death would be glorious.

He bristled. His own mind was racing faster. Reality and humanity collided with instinct and animalistic anger. He wanted to kill her. But he'd lose his cover. He'd lose his ability to say he chose the right reasons for any damage he did another. He could kill her, but how would he say it was for selfless reasons such as saving another when it revolved only around himself?

Yugi was floored by this idea. His ideals and his newest concept of survival bore upon one another. He wished to scream, or perhaps to howl. But in the dark, in the cold, the lycanthrope knew himself capable of neither. Everything within him shook. And he peered at her with eyes tuned finely for the weather, his body pushing itself to maintain the heat within his blood to keep himself from freezing.

He stared at her. And she squinted. But she did not see. And the blindness made her a piece of prey easily picked off. It surprised him how much he detested her weakness. She was vulnerable and all but helpless should he attack. And he hated her for this. Because he was inclined towards mercy and she saw him as a monster whose pelt she would strip from his skin.

Yugi placed a paw forward in the snow. The sound seemed like a booming in his ears. But this girl did not hear him in the slightest. He blinked and stared and watched her coldly, all the while wondering at it all.

Was she innocent?

If he killed her, how many would he save?

Yugi stared at her. And his eyes began to burn. The snow fell into them in thick flurries. And it hurt when they melted against his corneas. It felt as if perhaps a terrible parasite were wriggling its way forward, into the pits of his mind, to destroy his rationality even further.

He stepped forward again. And his eyes flickered away, catching upon the shadows beneath the trees. Within the snow, they were gray and black, with the softest smears of cobalt blue to underline them. He felt mesmerized, something within him reveling in this single realization. He'd die in the snow. He'd be beneath the trees. He'd be as a wolf should.

But he was also human. And part of him hated himself for nearly forgetting. He was human and no human should have to die in the woods. No one should die alone and cold in the ice. No one should ever have to face such destruction for reasons that seemed to so desperately elude them.

Yugi bristled and his teeth felt hot, tingling along his gums. He was slathering, he realized slowly. He was so angered that his saliva was dribbling from his jaws. He almost snapped his teeth in anger, but lost the will as he considered the woman again. The trees surrounding her seemed to stretch for miles, never ending, and it hurt to look through the darkness between them and consider that he might not make the trek to the human city beyond them.

And then he saw it.

His head snapped around. His slobbering jaws parted faintly in an effort to pose a threat to a possible enemy. And then his eyes grew wide and his body ached with fear and remembrance and he was nearly knocked from his paws with desperation.

 _Yami…_?

The being in the trees was large, immense, with a coat so dark as to invoke nightmares. And its eyes glittered with frosty layers of red snow. And it seemed to weave its way beneath the trees' shadows in fluid strides. It seemed almost to disappear a moment, then to reappear. All the same it danced beneath the small layers of darkness and paused with glowing red that looked almost distinctly amber. The small wolf trembled.

Was it him? It had to be him, didn't it? No other wolf he knew of had such dark fur. None had such a lean frame from the side, with obvious muscle tone and immense strength to possess the length of it. And no other wolf he'd come to know had such red eyes…

 _Don't leave me—_ Please! he begged. And he stumbled forward a step in the snow. He didn't open his mouth. By some mere miracle his voice did not come out. There was no cry of panic or plea to leave him. He stumbled a step.

The shadow danced beneath the trees, darting away and spinning around. The black tail came up, long and curved only slightly with its enthusiasm. Yugi hurried to catch his footing more comfortably. Then he began to race.

Yami sprinted away without a second glance. Yugi cried out for him to slow down and the wolf turned to glance at him. His tail wagged and he stood those feet away. The white canine chased once more. He scrambled and raced and his heart threatened to leap from his chest.

The gunshot echoed. The tree feet behind him exploded from the force of the bullet. Yugi stumbled. Yami looked beyond him towards the source of it. His lips peeled back. His teeth were bared. His eyes were enraged. His fur lifted into a bristle. But he did not snap or snarl. Abruptly the black wolf turned to him. He tossed his muzzle into his shoulder, jostling him with the encouragement to run. But not once did a word leave his lips.

Yugi stared at him, scared and bewildered. Was he okay? Had he lost the ability to speak? Was he too afraid to? Yami did not allow him to consider for long. Nor did the human behind them. The bullet shot through the side of the tree trunk. The splinters of wood sprayed the air and littered the ground in sharp spikes.

Instinct threw him to his feet now. Yugi was running before he could consider. And, somehow, despite his previous declaration that Yugi was faster, Yami ran ahead of him. The black wolf was mere feet ahead. He cleared distance, spinning around to consider him, and then tore away again. But he never left Yugi's sight. And when he got too far, he turned to look over his shoulder and seal him with a glare which made him run.

And, as the trees thinned somewhat, only then did Yami turn to him fully. The wind whipped at his fur. The snow threw itself into Yugi's eyes but did not obscure his realization.

The wolf in front of him was not his alpha.

The eyes were estranged, somewhat wicked. And the red of them seemed shattered, the uniform shade of them coming in dark chips and clouds of ice. The ancientness which came from them was bewildering and so powerful and immense that it shook him brilliantly. Yugi felt sickened, swallowed away by it, and his head swam.

He knew those eyes.

And he knew their meaning.

His heart shook. Those eyes should have been golden. And they should have been in the body of a canine with large black tufts of fur around the ears and a frame of leaner legs and slight feathering along the forelimbs.

 _Morrigan,_ he whispered, staring up at her with pronounced shock which he could not shake. And the despair which came through him was horrifying. He almost cried. Parts of him screamed. But the hellhound watched him with such frigid perception that he hated her all the more.

Why save him when he could not do the same for others?

And why do so in the form of the one wolf they all knew could destroy him?

 _Is he dead_? He choked on the words, spitting them forth and gasping raggedly for air.

Morrigan blinked at him. And her voice was all of the cunning of a snake and the beguilement of an enchantress. _You shall find your answers only if you live to see the next day._ She looked beyond him, over his shoulder, and then shook her fur slightly to shed the snow.

 _But I need him. I need Yami here_! _I need him with me._ He was pathetic in his pleas. Yugi knew _that_ more than he thought he recognized anything else. His heart was shaking and he felt sick. _Please, Morrigan, I need him. I need—_

 _And you shall have him again_ , she snarled. Her expression was of ugliness Yugi had not expected. Her eyes were glowing, furious, and her lips pulled back to show glittering white teeth. She stared at him. _But you cannot meet him in death if that is what you wish. Not for now._

 _For now_?

Did that mean he was already dead? Or did that mean they would both wind up dead soon? Yugi felt dizzy, infuriated and stupid all the same. His head swam. He shuddered pathetically.

 _What does that mean_?

But the goddess merely snorted. And abruptly she snapped her teeth and caught his throat. And Yugi cried out in a panic. She threw him forward and away from her. And he rolled from the force. Blood filled his mouth and his paws slid beneath him. The ground lurched and seemed to pull forth from beneath him. The air tangled in his fur. Brambles snapped and caught in his coat. And he tumbled down the smooth slope of stone.

The darkness came in a rush. He blinked against it. The shadows shifted before him. Some thickened, some lightened. In his mind, they were frantic bursts of movement. And then they began to move away. He blinked again, stupid and mystified. Then he tried for his feet.

The air beyond him exploded. The noise made him flinch away. The tunnel seemed to pulse with the pain of it. He gasped and stumbled back several steps. And then the ground seemed to fall forward in front of him. It was a rushing current of noise. First came a cascade of dirt. Then came the telltale clutter of stone and pebble. The noise was deafening in its smothered state, the air swallowing it whole.

Yugi choked on the cloud of debris which enveloped him. Then he sneezed. His entire body jerked. He gasped and panted. His tongue tasted of dirt and heaviness. The small wolf felt sick and breathless. He shivered and his body ached.

When he looked up again, the dirt made his eyes water. But the snow which had come through as well made his vision somewhat clearer. He could see it against the shadows. And when he looked up, he knew the tunnel's entrance had shattered away into nothingness. The brambles had broken and come down with him. And the bullet must have caused it to cave in.

He craned his head for a sight of the sky beyond the darkness or the littering of stones and dirt. Nothing greeted him. He looked around for a moment, stomach tight in knots. He'd been knocked far further back than he'd initially assumed. At first he had considered that he'd merely gone the length of the tunnel's entrance to the end of its dip and scuttled slightly on the ground.

Realization struck him that he'd gone several feet _beyond_ that mere distance. He'd rolled and slid a few yards extra. And the snow that had melted beneath his warm skin had done well to shield him from the pain of such a descent.

Yugi bristled fearfully for a moment. Morrigan had saved him. And she'd thrown him into the tunnel forcefully. She had known the hunter would be close enough, would have better aim. And she'd saved him.

But…had she saved herself?

Had she gotten away before the girl could make her the newest of the trophies to line her walls?

She was a goddess, yes, but he had no idea what she could do. The Harbingers had been mortal, from what he'd understood of Yami's story. The Pure-Bloods had been the ones capable of coming back to life when they'd been struck down.

Valon had said she was immortal, but he didn't know.

How long would it take her to recover from a mortal wound?

How long would it take before she could run if she was struck down?

Would it be instantaneous or would it be slower?

Yugi looked towards the entrance and strained his vision. But there was not a speck of the sky to be seen. And digging his way out just to check would most likely get him _killed_. So he backed up a few steps, looked over his shoulder, and paced briefly before trotting down the line of this tunnel.

He'd ask Slifer. She would know if her sister was hurt, right?


	46. Counsel

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day**

 **Chapter Warnings: Mentions of Hallucinations, Mentions of Death, Slight Mentions of Lore/History, Yugi Being Bitter, Mentions of Murder, Mentions of Sacrifices, Mentions of War**

 **The work log entry hasn't been posted just yet, but in one Atem is referred to as a Hound of Heaven.** **The explanation comes in this chapter why they have this name as well as the Pure-Bloods (but not the Eternal Ones because that comes later). Anyways, so, the mythology behind this is as explained, including the real life story about Theiss of Kaltenbrun in the middle ages who claimed he was a werewolf, a "Hound of God", who fought the devil during certain seasons to ensure a good harvest for the year.**

 **Next chapter will definitely NOT be posted on time. I have some files and things to go through to figure out how I want to present some of the info in there before I do anything else with it. I thought the scene came up later than it does. So expect it about a week or two from this update.**

 **On that note, beyond that, updates should even out again with part four.**

Chapter XLVI: Counsel

 _Work Log Entry XLIV: March, 2004 (Part III)_

 _March 24_

 _The boss has decided that we shall drug "Atem" with nerve suppressants but perform the surgery while he is completely awake._

 _With drugs in his system, "Atem's" body reacts the same way as it would while asleep._

 _March 25_

 _"Atem" is completely sober and we have begun the procedure._

 _The healing has not slowed even slightly. We suspect that this allows them to heal from life-threatening wounds without much trouble. It seems particularly focused in the head, unlike the hellhounds, where it is focused more prominently towards the neck._

 _This leaves us to question the sanity of the choice to recreate this creature._

 _March 26_

 _None of the other wolves have progressed or fallen behind in their experiments. Lung power remains steady, heart rates remain constant, and the cellular evolution of their genes is unfaltering._

 _"Atem" is the only issue._

The silence beyond the clicking of his nails was horrifying for the white canine. Every breath he took seemed amplified within the darkness. And he had no idea what direction it was that he was truly going. He'd simply begun trotting and had not ceased his movements. But he had not come upon Slifer's altar for the dead and none of the tunnels stank fully of rot and decomposition. Perhaps he had come from the wrong tunnel and the area had been a deceptive angle, a hideous mimic of the one before it. He felt sick, his stomach hurting with despair, and he almost puked as he continued.

Morrigan had saved him. Slifer was somewhere within the tunnels. She could tell him if her sister was okay. He wanted to know that more than ever now. In the dark, in the quiet beyond his own movements, he could not think beyond this task.

He had to know if she was okay. He had to understand what had possessed her to intervene as she had. Would she not he punished for her actions?

She seemed to be the only one to truly care. She'd directly stood between him and a hunter. Granted, Obelisk had come to rescue him in the labs and had even agreed to become the pack's new beta, but he was a lycanthrope. Morrigan was a hellhound. And she had a son who he _knew_ she had to have been interacting with on a more consistent basis than he himself crossed paths with Obelisk or Slifer or Ra.

To be so delicately laced between two entities as well as her own duties surely meant more of her care and desire and will of their safety than the others, yes? He shivered and lowered his head. The tunnels smelled of dirt and mold, sometimes of root rot and water which he could not pinpoint the location of. His nose detected nothing beyond this. He did not even smell bone or broken flesh or decay or metallic blood. He could not even detect the faintest hint of Slifer herself.

Where was he?

Had he hallucinated her actions?

Perhaps he was wrong and Morrigan had simply let him be shot in place of herself. Perhaps it was his punishment for such stupidity as to place himself in such a position. And, maybe, in all reality, this place before him was limbo. Perhaps limbo stretched around him in never-ending lengths which he could not hope to measure. And, because of his inability to fulfill the very role of his own creation, Yugi was trapped there rather than allowed passage to Paradise.

Yugi hated himself for a moment. How could he possibly be so foolish? The gods were treading within his life now. And he was making mistakes that even a five-month-old pup would know better than to make. His skin crawled, his fur shuddering along his flesh, and he felt dizzy and stupid all the same for it. He opened his jaws, then closed them again with a large inhale.

How could he be so foolish? How could he be so lost? Was it truly possible that the gods had seen it fit to allow his death and replacement? They would call the second Pure-Blood out and they would take his place. Yugi drew in a deep breath. Both relief and disgust filled him at the concept.

How expendable were they all? If he was meant to be Atem…how easily could they replace him with another? It shook him as he continued walking. His legs were beginning to feel the softest hints of strain. He was so tired. And his belly gurgled softly with the need of food. He licked his lips and closed his eyes for a moment, ears flicking about rapidly for noise.

Yet it was not with sound that she came to him. It was with absolute silence and deadly precision. Yugi had just barely opened his eyes in time to avoid collision with her. And, upon seeing her eyes, molten topaz gems which bore through the darkness in a glittering halo, he felt his legs tremble beneath him. The happiness and despair met him in equal fortitude.

 _Slifer,_ he gasped out.

She eyed him silently for a moment. Then she came forward. It took several minutes for his eyes to take in the details of her. She was slimmer then even before and her face somewhat sunken. Her fur seemed somewhat rugged and she appeared tired. Yet somehow she retained some ounce of magnificence, of majesty, which Yugi felt cowed before the sight of.

The she-wolf closed her eyes. _You are foolish to do such things,_ she said in a gentle tone. As she opened her eyes again, she was tired rather than hateful. Yugi was so relieved that he could not suppress the tremble which came through him. _You cannot live your life by the measurements of who remains in them at one given time, Yugi. It will destroy you._

Hearing his given name from her voice made him cry out. He shook and nearly collapsed, then breathed in roughly and struggled for coherent thought. _Slifer, please, I…I need him. I need Yami here—w-with me. I don't… I can't do this without him._

Her eyes hardened, then softened once more. She came towards him again, pressing her nose to his forehead and then licking there. Then she sighed loudly and moved to press her nose into his cheek. The exhale was harsh and loud and Yugi nearly cringed away from it. It seemed almost to encompass the resolution of the entire world and the deaths of those to tread the path.

 _You must cease your searches for him._

Yugi pulled away from her. His teeth snapped sharply in the dark. His fur rose furiously. Rage, indignant and hot, coursed through him. He snarled low in his throat and curled his lips back fully. _Fuck you,_ he spat. _I'm not going to just stop looking for him because you think I should. You don't care anyways. None of you give a single shit about any of us_!

Slifer looked at him with all the impatience of a mother ready to discipline a destructive child. She glared at him from the dark and her eyes were hateful for a moment. _You do not know the pain that each of us feels when one of our own is determined dead for no other reason than we are not allowed to interfere to save them. You have no idea the lengths of which we have gone at one point or another to try to save them when we can hardly do so ourselves._ She fell silent for a moment. _We care. We cannot always prevent destruction and oftentimes our domains feed such despair which grips you. But we do care. And we love each of you._

 _What does a god know about love_? Yugi spat. _None of you have any idea what this…_

 _I know much about love. As does Morrigan. Do you think she watches Valon so closely for the sake of sealing her lineage in this pathetic world_? _No, she cares for him in increments of which no mortal soul could ever understand. To put such feelings into words would be to insult them._ She was spitting at him and he was disgusted to see her slather for a moment. Her rage was endless and her pain was lined with teeth ready to inflict merciless ache upon him as well. _It does not matter. You are not to search for him any longer._

 _Why should you have the right to tell me that_? _Atem is more important than you, isn't he_? _And he can't function without his alpha. What is so hard to understand about—_?

 _Do not think yourself above me, child. I shall prove you wrong within the heartbeat you cease to breathe._ She bore her teeth for a moment. Then she flicked her ears back and watched him with cold eyes. _You do not fully understand the truth of this situation. And for that I cannot fault you. The mortal mind was never to know these things. But I shall tell you what you wish to know as to my request. And that is simply this, Yugi._

He blinked and tilted his head, somewhat bewildered by her change of direction. Where was the ferocity? Had she truly become so worn and exhausted? His heart ached for her.

 _Events have come to pass. By their chain of effect, Yami shall be returned to you._ She did nothing but watch him upon speaking of such matters. But Yugi felt as if his heart might explode or his brain burst with excitement. And the emotions which swept through him left him adrift. His mind was spiraling. But the goddess merely studied him. Her voice was so cold and calculated that it might have scared him another time. But now it simply made his heart pound and the words warmed him to points he thought he might burst into flame. _Cease your search for him now, however. It will lead you only to madness and pain. You must give him the time to find you._

Yugi shivered. He wanted to ask for more details but Slifer turned from him. She began to lope ahead of him and the small wolf realized that to remain back there would be a mistake not easily rectified. She would surely leave him there to rot on his own. He followed her quickly, head spinning.

His stomach was in knots and his heart hurt from the rapid beat it had taken up. His eyes flickered about and the darkness seemed almost to subside with his growing happiness. He licked his lips, keeping pace a few steps behind the goddess.

She had said that he would find his way to him. But what did that mean for him in terms of his physical status? Would he be wounded as he had in his dream? Would he be half-dead? What if he made it back to him only to die right in front of his eyes?

Yugi was shaking again.

What state was he going to be in? What if he was dying or he was recovering or something? What if he was poisoned or he returned just long enough to die among the pack wolves?

He was breathing harder than ever.

What if he had amnesia? What if he had no idea who Yugi was or that he'd bitten him? What if he was under the impression of being completely human? What if his mind had regressed due to experiments being run on him and he thought he was a child instead? What if he was just so traumatized that the truth destroyed him? Or what if—?

 _If only you had the ability to worry about the others within your pack as you so clearly do him._ The words were so cold and mocking that Yugi flinched behind her. But they became wistful along the edges as she continued. _Then you might understand what we feel for each and every one of the wolves that pass or become wounded…_

A part of him felt raw, exposed, and he licked his lips to bite away at the sensation. He was cold from the harsh edge of her tone, but it was more than simply being chastised which made him feel ashamed.

It was the truth of it.

He did not know the wolves within the pack. And all of this time he'd ordered them to search, he still did not know their names or anything about them. Since he'd announced Obelisk the new beta, he'd failed to give them more than a second glance upon telling them to patrol and search. And he'd grown even further enraged by it all because he'd known that none of them would come back with answers.

And that infuriated him to the point of absolute ignorance.

Shamefully, Yugi shivered and lowered his head. He needed to give them more. He needed to _know_ more about them. He needed to figure out who was who and what they were all best at. Then he could find out strengths and weaknesses. And he could attempt to cater to their needs that way instead.

But what needs did they have?

So many of them simply seemed inclined to worship the ground he walked on. And that scared him more than even his growing lack of identity. Because, who was he if he was not Atem and who was Atem if he was not among the wolves? And who were the wolves Atem was meant to be amongst? Who were the wolves he was meant to save by declaring this war? And who were the ones who were meant to lay their lives down for his sake? Who were they? And who did they assume _him_ to be?

He felt sick and small now. How stupid was he to think himself capable of such immense responsibility when he only seemed to find the ability to care for one person at a time now? He was so foolish. He was young and blind and foolish and stupid beyond his years.

 _I can believe that you care. I can even believe that Morrigan and Obelisk do as well. But Ra_? _She did this. She brought me and this second Pure-Blood into existence. And she allowed this entire thing to happen._

Slifer's ears flicked. _Even the gods are capable of mistakes. You learn to judge some and forgive others. But such passing is not the right of you or any other mortal._ She fell silent. _I understand your outrage. I felt something very similar when the humans first began to experiment. And we all chose to have your existence become a truth. We all decided that we could not cease this battle without a warrior created to do so._

 _But the wolves said it was told in legends that Atem would come one day._

 _No, it was passed among them that when a time came in which the humans once again threatened them, a Pure-Blood would come into existence to end their suffering. The name Atem was announced upon your birth, when I myself spread it to the pack my daughter led. And from there the word has spread that Atem is the name of the wolf meant to save the lycanthropes and hellhounds alike from the very cusp of destruction._

He shivered. _And how did you all come to the conclusion that one wolf would be enough_?

 _We didn't. We knew one wolf alone was not capable. A second was born, the same day, the same hour, down to the very minute and perhaps even the same millisecond in time. And they were meant to be the foundation of what Atem himself could not do. What Atem could not face, this second Pure-Blood would._

 _There's a lot I can't face._

She narrowed her eyes. _Then I suppose you must find that second Pure-Blood._

He was shaking. _But it's not Yami._

Slifer's head turned and she looked over her shoulder at him. _No, Yami is not the second Pure-Blood._

He felt his heart crumbling to fine red dust within his chest.

* * *

He tilted his head up and his skin felt stretched along his muscles. Exhausted, the small wolf trotted forward a few more steps and flattened his ears against his skull. He'd barely gotten into bed and slept for a couple of hours after forcing salmon and rice down his throat. It had tasted like dirt and sandpaper as he'd made himself eat it. And he'd narrowly managed not to alarm his mother and grandfather further with his state of well-being. Being drawn into Paradise only hours later did nothing to help him in the slightest.

He felt as if he could barely lift one paw after the other to continue walking. And his stomach was knotted as he forced himself to keep going. The trees gave way to the smallest of clearings, where the earth dipped just enough to give them a formation like a miniscule meadow. It made his skin crawl and Yugi glanced around for a moment. Since he'd originally been drawn into this place, he'd instinctively been walking.

The trees had looked like immense tombs, with towering crowns which rose high in the sky as it to offer it support. Yugi thought of thorns and needles and teeth that opened into gaping maws. They looked like silver scars against blue and black and the faintest gleam of a million stars and the brightest moon he'd ever seen. Yet the beauty of the surroundings did not calm him and his skin continued to crawl and his muscles ached as he kept moving.

He wondered at the absence of the other wolves. Where was Bakura? Where were the three wolves he had seen on the river banks? And the other wolves that had come to see the disturbance and witness the one they had all likely died for; where had they gone? Did any of them realize how weak he was compared to the ideas they must have held in their heads where he was concerned?

 _Take a seat._

Yugi blinked and looked up with wide eyes. His paws slowed and his fur rose and fell in a rapid wave of bristle. Then he lowered his head and continued forward until he was on the very outskirts of the small circle of a clearing. He took a seat there, ears pricked forward, eyes on them as he noticed their forms slinking out of the dark. It was Ra, Slifer and Obelisk. He wondered where Morrigan was, casting the smallest of glances about them. But he could catch no hint of anything beyond them. And he doubted the hellhound cared to come here to see him again.

 _We have come to hold counsel with you._

Yugi blinked and looked towards the golden-furred she-wolf. Her blue eyes were dark, glowing, and the way they stared into him made his heart race. Hatred sprung through him and he almost bore his teeth but remembered himself at the last second. He could not fight her. And especially not when there were two other gods to bear witness. They'd kill him before he could blink.

But the ferocity did not fade and so he was forced to pick a stone beneath their paws to stare at. The fact that it even existed above the inches of the snow made him curious. The sides were slick and there was only the smallest hint of its existence in dark gray stripped with blue and black, flecked with the softest touches of silver. Its shadow was harsh and inky, reminding him of the blood from the river and the way the darkness had been all-consuming.

 _Counsel_? _Why should I want counsel from you_? he asked in a cynical voice, bristling faintly and shaking his head slowly in annoyance. His bitterness was harsh and cold in his gut and his blood was hot with anger. But he shook it away as he might the snowfall from the night before. Now wasn't the time to be angry.

 _There are things that you don't know. And things that Yami did not have the chance to tell you before you became separated as you were._

His fur rose into a bristle. He barely suppressed a snarl of outrage. Before Yami was separated from him? He hadn't been _separated_. He'd been basically almost _killed_. And Yugi wondered if he was even alive to begin with. When they said he'd be returned to him, did that even mean what he thought? It left so many possibilities of interpretation. It would be so easy for him to come to him half dead and bleeding and mortally wounded, ready to croak in front of him.

Being separated from him was the mildest way of interpreting the event. He bristled a bit more. Then he swallowed hard and kept his eyes trained on the rock. If he did not look at them, he would not want to attack them. And if he didn't try to attack them, he'd make it out of the dream alive.

 _Like what_? Yugi inquired, though he thought his own voice sounded choked with anguish. _What is there to tell me_?

 _He told you what he knew of the Lunar Ascension. And for now that will have to suffice. You will come later to understand its full meaning,_ Slifer said now, taking a lead that was not properly hers to possess. Ra shot her a dirty, almost infuriated look that the red she-wolf ignored without a pause or the slightest touch of hesitation. Her eyes were on Yugi and he could feel them as a warmth, almost as if he had known them his whole life. It made him bristle somehow further. _What we mean to speak to you about now is the Hounds of Heaven._

He blinked and his eyes flickered up to lock with hers. Beside her Obelisk closed his eyes and tilted his head as his back paw rose to scratch at his ear in a lazy motion. Ra, beside him, remained statuesque, a shadow with definition that looked almost lifeless against the moonlight.

 _Hounds of Heaven_?

 _The second name of our species._

Yugi pricked his ears forward. _The second name_? _Of all werewolves or just us…_?

 _Only us, the Pure-Bloods._ Slifer was silent for a long time. Then she looked towards Obelisk and Ra as if in askance before shaking herself out and stepping closer. _We are the Hounds of Heaven, named for our ability to touch_ _Paradise_ _and return to the living when our wounds healed. Immortality gave us many names and two of them survived. Regardless, my purpose of explanation is that you wished to know more of your origins. And this is what you must come to know._

Yugi pricked his ears forward, eyes caught on hers. He could not immediately stop his surge of anger, nor the pain which came afterwards. It hurt him to notice it and his stomach ached as he watched her with growing bewilderment.

 _I remember reading something where werewolves were called the Hounds of God,_ he said slowly, eyes on her and ears flattening back. _It was someone in_ _Germany_ _… He was old, completely elderly…Theiss of Kaltenbrun._

He was unsure where the words came from. Some darkened corner of his mind seemed to spit them forth, memories and half-formed ideas which crept from the subconscious. Was this the perfect recollection Yami had spoken of before? He supposed it must have been, because, had it not been, he would never have recalled.

 _Yes. A human who wished to become one of us. He made a story among the humans that the werewolves were used to fight the devil which plagues their religion. He claimed that they changed in order to fight witches, to protect the crops and make sure that none went hungry._ Obelisk was scornful, his voice dropping with mockery, and his amber eyes were dark with disgust. He was seated with his tail stretched out behind him, his ears pricked forward and his head tipped towards him as he continued. _Theiss of Kaltenbrun was desperate to escape his own age and mortality is as it implies. Death was behind him for months before he came upon the scheme of declaring himself a wolf._

 _Okay, but what does that have to do with us_?

 _We, as the Hounds of Heaven, are gifted beyond what most wolves know. As we are, so are the Harbingers of Death. And behind them are the hellhounds which possess one or more of their strengths. The Hounds of Heaven were created to fight the Harbingers of Death. Between the two subspecies, there is a lot of pain and destruction that was wreaked. You must understand that while names are written by these, not all of us think in terms of these definitions._

Ra curled her lip back. _Lycanthropes are just as capable of evil as the hellhound. And the hellhound can do just as much good as the lycanthrope. Identification does not define them. Remember that. Valon has proven himself to be more than what he seems as a Harbinger. And you have not even slightly scraped the potential of your strength as a Hound, Atem._

 _What are you talking about_? _What does that have to do with anything_? Yugi demanded, voice growing hot with anger. _I don't understand what you're talking about._

 _Forgive my sister,_ a new voice sneered. Yugi's head snapped around. The newcomer was lithe, lean, with a slight tuck to her underbelly and waist, her fur long and feathered gorgeously along her forelimbs. Her eyes were glittering red, like gems, but a pale green encircled the pupils and from there was a ringlet of harsh golden that drifted into red. But the shade of this discoloration made the red beyond this slightly pinkish in shade before solidifying to a ruby color. Her ears were larger, straighter, and her frame thinner than even Slifer's. She stood at the same height as the goddess of death, but her own muzzle was thicker, yet sharper, and Yugi thought of a coyote or a jackal with longer legs. _She is quite foolish when it comes to the task of speaking with the living. She herself had for years cut existence from the wolves within your own world. She rests more than any of us._

 _I remember telling you to make yourself scarce—_

She snorted loudly and the puff of her exhale was silver and glistening. When she pulled her lips back and pricked her ears, the sneer was oddly beautiful and somehow mesmerizing to behold. Yugi blinked and his eyes widened drastically. _You are not Lupa, dear sister, however much you wish to pretend so. You are a fool to think that I should listen to you when you hold no power over me._

Obelisk was thoroughly amused when his sister bristled and snapped her jaws. But Slifer merely tilted her head and her lips seemed to pull back into a smirk or amusement. Ra snarled softly and the black she-wolf flicked an ear with a clearly dismissive expression.

The she-wolf had a coat of such blackness that Yugi almost did not recognize the soft touches of reddish brown which lay as her undercoat. She was cinnamon and fire beneath her guard hairs, with only the faintest touch of it along her jowls and the center of her throat. There the hair was just thin enough for him to catch a glimpse.

 _Hello again, Yugi._ She sniffed loudly. _Or perhaps you should hear your name as Atem_? _I do not know your preferences. Do you have one_?

He was breathless for a moment. _Y-Yugi… I prefer Yugi,_ he said softly, gently, confused. His eyes were wider than ever and he felt sick as he stared at her. _T-thank you for…for helping me. You saved my life before._

She smiled at him, her eyes alight. Her tail tagged slowly from side to side, and Yugi could see that, like her son's, it was curved to the right in a permanent twist. It was slight and warm and looked so much more akin a dog that it was amazing to think she was even half wolf.

 _You are welcome, Yugi._ She paused and her predominantly red eyes flickered to Ra, her expression dismissive. A sneer covered her face for a moment as she lowered her tail once more and wrinkled her lips back slightly. _You, dear sister, need to learn to respect another's free will. Yugi does not understand and your impatience cannot lend the knowledge he needs. You have to remember that he is young. He is not_ used _to this gift of immortality. He and Yami come from the same place. Is that not why you allowed him to bite Yugi in the first place_? _You could have_ easily _prevented it_.

Slifer closed her eyes and tipped her head to the side. _Quarreling will get us nowhere._ She was watching Yugi again when her eyes opened and she got up to pad a couple of steps closer to him. Her red fur was beautifully silver and gray and luminescent beneath the moonlight. Somehow Yugi thought she looked all the more powerful and ethereal for it. _Morrigan is right. Ra does not mean to make you feel foolish but she has not been awake for long and her exile was self-inflicted. She sees things in a way of which you are infuriated and none of us fully agree upon._

 _What does that mean exactly_?

 _It means that Ra may be powerful but she is not subtle. Nor does she mean to make you feel that she does not care. She does. But her love is jaded and she's not especially used to interaction with her children altogether. Obelisk and Slifer and I know more of the wolves and their lives than she herself does._

He bristled faintly. _But she sees suffering as a measurement of how important someone is_! he burst out. _Nothing excuses that_! _Not an absence among the living or anything of the sort_!

Morrigan stared at him for a long moment. _Oh, dear Yugi, you are a new immortal, standing among ones that have existed since before time was truly a written concept and writing was drawing upon the walls of caves._ Her eyes were somewhat pitying now. _We_ all _see suffering as a means of declaration of importance. If you do not suffer, you do not know of purpose. Purpose comes from the ability to persevere where you were not originally thought capable. It is the harsh reality of the gods. We are not able to completely immerse ourselves with living wolves. Nor can we fully expect you all to understand the lengths which we go to ensure at least_ one _of you all survive._

He bristled. But she did not soften. Nor did she blink. Instead her red eyes were the pale reflection of wine, flat and tired, as she came closer to him. Yugi almost backed away but some part of him was too angry to assume the ability to move. So she was able to press her nose to his and pain crashed through him in a violent shudder.

He awoke to the sky still that same shade of silver-gray which came with the nighttime and snowfall. In the darkness of his room, only the faint illumination of the digital clock near him shone. There, in the shadows, he could only narrowly find the numbers to read early morning, hours past midnight. His entire body throbbed with the remnants of her forceful exile and his tongue was glued to the roof of his mouth. He reached up to rub at his eyes with the palms of his hands and he ran his fingers through his hair.

If Morrigan was so willing to interfere with their lives to the point of saving him as Slifer and Obelisk already had, what did that mean of Ra? Was she so closed off from her own self-exile that she truly did not understand what her callousness might invoke in others? Did she truly not understand his anger towards her coldness? If she didn't, that was her own fault. She had done so to herself. And Yugi hated her all the more for it.

But how else was he meant to see her seemingly constant rejection? It seemed so hideously easy for her to cut herself away from them. And she did not appear to care beyond ensuring that the rest of the wolves survived. If he was so expendable then why should Morrigan and Slifer insist upon loving him? And what had she said about Yami?

That Ra had allowed Yami to bite him? That they were both unused to their immortality? But wasn't that impossible? Obelisk and Slifer had both said before that Yami was not the second Pure-Blood. They had not told him what class of lycanthrope he was, but they had made it clear that he was not the second wolf meant to be Atem.

His skin crawled.

But, regardless, what happened when Yugi and this other wolf became unnecessary? Would they kill them themselves? Would Ra and Slifer and Obelisk and Morrigan and the other hellhounds…would they destroy them? Would they prove themselves to be as merciless as humans viewed the species altogether? Werewolves and natural wolves alike were seen as monstrosities. Would they prove to him that the human half of them was truly superior in all manners?

Perhaps they wouldn't be able to kill them. And then what? Would it become as Fenrir was in mythology? Would they tie him up and bind him purposefully with the declaration that he should never be released? And would he simply rot there? Would the hunger destroy him? Or would they finally resort to the attempt of killing each other?

Yugi was breathing hard.

What part of him would exist when that happened? Would he truly be Atem by then or just as useless as he was now as Yugi? Was there even the slightest hint of the power within him that they claimed Atem possessed?

Was he wrong? Were they all so completely wrong?

* * *

Yugi forced himself to swallow the bite of food lying on his tongue. He was tired but so hungry that it amazed him he could even sit there and look at them. The dizziness was dancing in his peripheral and he was so bewildered by the very fact that he even remained there at the moment. But he propped his elbow on the table and watched them as they all finished off their own food and Honda sipped loudly on his soda and Jonouchi burped and nodded in approval. Anzu wrinkled her nose at the blond and watched Yugi with concern clear in her azure eyes.

"Do werewolves not eat that much?" Jonouchi asked skeptically, looking at him when Yugi nibbled on his sandwich again and blinked wide eyes. "I mean, you're barely touching your food. And _you_ invited _us_ , remember?"

He frowned and took a larger bite to stall for a moment. He didn't want to point out that he hadn't spoken to them since Yami had gone missing. Or at least he had not in more than a few brief sentences when he saw them at school upon deciding that it was important enough to attend. He bristled and his skin crawled and Yugi chewed carefully as he debated his words.

Whereas Anzu would usually nudge him in the ribs and point out how rude he was being, her own curiosity held her in a vice grip. So she did nothing more than stare at him in question, as concerned and bewildered as Jonouchi was.

Only Honda had the decency to look slightly flustered by his friend's lack of tact. Yugi almost smiled at the way he glanced at his best friend and then the small teen and ducked his head to rub at the back of his neck awkwardly.

"You're right. I'm just… I'm not doing so hot with keeping up with meals," he admitted softly. "And I can't eat all that much at one time or else I might end up puking. So I'm really trying my hardest not to eat too fast or too much and save myself the embarrassment."

"What happened? Why aren't you eating properly?" Anzu asked softly, voice gentle and concerned. Yugi blinked at her and looked away. But Honda and Jonouchi stared at him in bewilderment, both of them wondering how it was that his mom had even let him leave the house.

"I don't want to talk about it." He cleared his throat awkwardly and the lump that had formed there was harsh and swollen. "It doesn't… It matters. But it doesn't concern you guys so…"

Both of them swapped looks and then glanced at Yugi with concern clear in their eyes. Not one of them had the heart to push for more answers, however so each of them fell silent and glanced at each other once more. Then, collectively, they turned to their drinks and took sips or played with their phones after digging them from their jacket pockets.

He felt his skin prickle, his relief immense as he looked at them again. "Well, anyways, I haven't really spent time with you guys recently so I… Want to go to the arcade after this? Or the park or something?"

"Dude, totally the arcade. The park is boring," Jonouchi snorted loudly. He took a long drink of soda and Yugi listened to the way the bubbles rushed up along the sides of the straw with the disturbance. He watched the way the ice clinked against each other and the soda began to chip away at the cold exterior. The bubbles fizzled and then burst, small droplets of spray rising up and over the rim of the tall glass. It made his skin crawl for a moment. He felt sick. Did blood do that from gaping wounds? Had Yami's blood ever done that before?

He was dizzy for only a moment. Then he shook it off as quickly as he could manage. His smile was strained and his mouth felt sharp as if teeth were digging through the muscles. He wondered if his lips quivered beneath the ache.

"Yeah, the arcade is better."

There was more noise and maybe the games would distract him some. That might help him a lot if he did that. That would help keep his mind from circling back endlessly to Yami. Maybe the games would keep him from wondering even more than ever.

"Then eat up and we'll head there."

Yugi resisted the urge to swallow hard. Instead he grabbed his sandwich again, taking enough of a bite that it would keep then from thinking too hard about his lack of enthusiasm. His appetite was so far dwindled that Yugi could not think straight.

It took several long minutes to finish eating, his stomach aching from the new sensation of fullness. He'd neglected feeding himself for what felt like years. And his stomach threatened to rebel against his choice to eat then. But he shook it off and walked as quickly as he could with them to get to the arcade. The walk was so simple that it almost had enough strength to ease the tension from his body.

A few children were playing in the snow further down the street. They had dressed themselves to the extent of almost looking like large, colorful marshmallows and it made Yugi blink in surprise. Snowballs collided with other kids and burst, dropping into the snow again. They played as if the world held no sense of danger or touch or disappointment to be beheld. And he hated them for it. He hated their laughter and their joyful faces. And he was disgusted with how their cheeks reddened and their eyes shone even from so far a distance from them.

He hated them. He wanted to show them the suffering that existed. He wanted to make them understand. They didn't know any extent of pain. It hurt to look at them and know that, while he and his friends might suffer, these kids were untouched, so innocent that the world saw them as nothing more than a distant distraction of youth. And, for the smallest second, he wished that he himself could go back to that. He wished with everything in him that the world would have allowed him to remain is such blissful ease.

When had he lost that naivety? He struggled for a moment, watching them. Had he ever truly possessed it? What it came down to was that, in all actuality, he was unable to recall it. When he'd been younger, he'd been chased by other kids and picked on for being smaller than them or having strange colored eyes. He didn't fully remember ever having absolute freedom from the entirety of such experiences. And it hurt to remember this, to actually think it over and see it in a new light.

Yugi shook it away. His eyes flickered and fell back on his friends. All three of them were feet ahead of him. When had he stopped walking? His skin crawled. He almost didn't recognize ever having done so. Still, he forced himself to move again though the urge to watch those kids again burned in the back of his mind. And he again desired to throw at them the harshness of the world, the way that death and illness and pain truly ruled it.

He kept his eyes on the back of Jonouchi's jacket, feeling sick for his anger. It caused him to bristle further and he was sickened with his growing disgust. It made his skin crawl for only a moment, but the bitterness was so close to the surface that it calmed his anger slightly. With frustration Yugi continued to walk, eyes narrowed slightly and his lips threatened to curl with anger.

"I'm totally going to win at that Kung fu game this time," Jonouchi said suddenly, startling Yugi who blinked wide eyes and stared at him in confusion. The blond tilted his head at his open bewilderment and the laughter left both Honda and Anzu's faces. They blinked at him, somewhat stunned by his confusion.

He blinked in response, then glanced at the arcade doors and back. "Kung fu game," he whispered under his breath, the statement inaudible to the others. Then he blinked again and smirked at Jonouchi with bright eyes. "Yeah, right."

All three of them still seemed troubled but the blond shook it off just enough to give him a smirk. "I'm totally going to beat you at it."

Somehow, from somewhere in the back of his mind, Yugi heard the whispered hiss of _If Fuwa could do it, so can I._ The effect of it was instant. The small teen felt sick to his stomach, his distracted mood becoming exceedingly sour.

But Jonouchi hadn't said that. And Yugi was well aware of it. It was his own nightmarish thoughts, sharp and dark, pushing upon him for attention. He hated it. He hated everything about it. And it made him further infuriated. Yugi hated himself somehow for it. And he glanced slightly towards the children where they ran with rosy cheeks and snow in their hair.

He wondered if he had eaten enough.

He couldn't truly remember ever coming to such anger without outside influence. And he wanted so much to take it out on the happiness they so effortlessly exuded. Whenever he had lost his temper it had been for more than just looking at someone and seeing something that made him envious. It had been actions and events which spurred his anger, stroked at his ire, pressed painfully until he felt suffocated with tension and need.

Maybe hunger made the wolf cranky. Maybe it made them violent. He supposed that would make sense considering what it was that Valon had said. Yami had even told him before that it made their minds unbalanced. But did it make them uncharacteristically angry like he thought he felt? Or did it just tend to push on the limits of their patience with certain things? His lack of answers was infuriating to him.

He wondered if the others sensed it, his sharp and abrupt discontent. Did they recognize it? Or were they actively trying to ignore it? Were they trying to convince themselves they were wrong? That he would never act in that way? His skin crawled with frustration. He would have loved this any other day. But now he could only find more anger to display.

Yugi forced it away, skin crawling and stomach curdling with pained tension. His heart felt shaky in his chest, but it stemmed more from grief than nerves now. And it hurt even more to feel such anger and revulsion towards children who had nothing to do with him. It all ached and burned in his veins and he felt dizzy and sick and childish and stupid.

He licked his lips, shaking his head slightly, and made his way quickly through the door. Inside the air was much warmer, to the point of suffocation. The lights bounced endlessly before his eyes, images moving with grace that made his head hurt. His neck ached brilliantly when he turned his head and the smell of sweat was stale and cold in his nostrils. A million different voices splashed in his ears, slithering and slipping in his head. It made his head spin and his stomach toss to smell the newest waves of fried food coming from the stand. Spilled soda was sticky and sugary, clogging his senses. And the heat in the large area made it feel claustrophobic for the moment.

The large rows of booths were filled with teenagers on the large seats, all of them laughing as they tried to beat high scores. The lights that reflected in front of their faces seemed to bounce off of their corneas and project further images into Yugi's eyes. They seemed to burn and dance and brand themselves in his mind, currents of pain and falsity. The talking was a huge, monotonous spout of noise, screaming and roaring in his ears. He blinked stupidly and looked up at one of the bulbs hanging from the ceiling. The way the light beamed down at him strained his eyes and his heart twisted and knotted and constricted painfully. He was exhausted now, stupefied somehow, and his body felt oddly cold.

It took them a few minutes to become situated comfortably enough to try conversing. Anzu looked especially worried, fidgeting, and Yugi felt sick to see it. She was usually so level-headed and capable and now he reduced her to this. He wondered if she felt as if he were being unjust in bothering to come with them there. Did she think he was as useless as he felt?

He cursed under his breath, his blood feeling icy with frustration. He needed to stop. He had to change his line of thought or he was going to end up doing or saying something stupid…

Yet, all roads led to Yami, didn't they?

Yugi could have flinched. _Rome, all roads lead to Rome,_ he thought frantically, but that was hardly true in his own head. In his mind, all _things_ led to Yami. He folded his hands in his lap, then glanced out the window and back to her curiously. What were they doing here, honestly? Why had Jonouchi and Honda left them alone to sit there together? It seemed so childish and stupid to him. But perhaps that was only because of those times they had attempted to push them together like Barbie dolls. Then again, back then he had wanted that.

His skin crawled. How long ago had it been? He didn't even know if it amounted to a full month since they had stood on her porch after their latest disaster of an attempted date. His stomach churned. An overwhelming urge to apologize and bury his face in shame crept through him.

"Are you okay?"

No. Nothing was okay.

"Yeah, I'm okay." He blinked and offered her a strained smile that did nothing to comfort her. Anzu frowned at him, both puzzled and disbelieving. Then she looked at the table for a moment. Yugi glanced at her nails, the way they had been manicured recently. The polish was a soft sky blue and his stomach ached. "Are you okay?"

"I guess so."

Yugi exhaled softly, then leaned forward and watched her. "Don't tell Jonouchi or Honda…a-about me and Yami…please?"

Her eyes stretched wide for a moment. Her frown grew more pronounced. Yugi felt stupid and sickeningly foolish to even ask that of her. Not only was he selfishly redirecting the conversation, he was almost accusing her of being a gossip.

"That's your business, not mine. And if you don't want to tell them, then don't." She sighed and glanced over her shoulder and Yugi felt as if something of a secret dangled in her mind as well. It disturbed him but hypocrisy held his tongue and so he merely looked away again. "And Yami isn't… He's not our business. We've only met him twice and one of those times he had just killed a tiger in front of us. I hate to say it, but I don't think I want to know more about him than is absolutely necessary…"

Yugi nodded, not the least bit undone by the news. In their shoes, he thought he would have done similarly, entertain the friend who had become entwined with them but avoid them any chance they were given. He watched a couple of cars pass by, saw a child stumble on a step to one of the shops. When they fell he nearly burst into laughter. Hatred swelled in him again and shame dashed through him with startling accuracy. He was losing his mind. He was losing himself…

Was it truly possible to only know oneself through another person? And was that what was happening here? He felt dizzy with realization.

He had lost sight of Yugi the moment that Yami had been swept away in the river. And now, even as he tried his hardest to recall, what he managed was only time spent with the other boy.

Because Yami had drawn out some hidden piece of him. And that piece had seemed better than all the rest. And now it was gone. It had slipped from his fingers just as Yami himself had. It burned him and his body ached at the realization. Something inside of him felt hollow and broken and pain ravaged his body. He wanted both to puke and burst into tears and to sob until he ran out of breath and his lungs constricted and his heart collapsed in his chest.

Yugi felt as if he were choking. The lump in his throat was ice and fire and scraped at his insides as if it might destroy him from the inside out. He could see his fingers trembling, though he did not want to focus on that if he could help it.

Raggedly, drawing in a deep breath, the small teen asked, "You guess so?"

She blinked and finally Anzu seemed to focus completely on him again as she turned back. Her bottom lip was between her teeth and she was watching him pointedly now. "I'm not…you know, bitter or anything. I'm…I'm just… I don't know what to say or do around you anymore. We were so often dancing around the question of us being a couple that I never even thought of what to do if that didn't work out." She paused, then shrugged. "It just seemed so… _easy_ months ago. And now it's…"

"Complicated? Frustrating? Stupid?"

"The last one doesn't apply to anything, but the other two, yes," she answered with a small smile. Her eyes had softened considerably but she did look tired and Yugi wondered how miserable the two of them appeared now. She tilted her head, watching him for a moment. "I never really expected that you would want to be with someone else when you'd had a crush on me for so long…"

"I don't know how it happened…" He felt incredibly small admitting it. Because, when he tried, he could pinpoint the very moment his desire for friendship with Anzu changed. "I just know that it did. And I…"

"It's okay."

Because it most likely didn't matter. Yugi hated himself for thinking it. But the truth was that it was unavoidable, that it couldn't be changed. His attempt to explain was all but beating a dead horse. But his explanation was useless and his apologies pathetic. Neither did anything for her. Neither did anything for him. He felt guilty for using her, but he had a feeling she already knew that, somehow, and she didn't want to know more.

Yugi closed his eyes. "Thank you for being so supportive…about…everything I guess," he muttered so low under his breath that he almost feared he would have to repeat it.

"We're still best friends. We'll always _be_ best friends," Anzu said with a small choked knot in her throat and widened blue eyes. She shook her head slightly, offering him a strained smile. She wished more than anything that Jonouchi and Honda would come back to the booth so that they could all sit around and the tension could be withdrawn from their situation altogether. "That doesn't change just because our emotions have."

He was so relieved to hear those words that he almost burst into tears. His eyes stung and his mind raced. She didn't think he had changed too much to be recognized. She could still see him when she looked at him. And that broke his heart even more.

"All right, so!"

Both of them looked up, Anzu jumping a mile and Yugi merely blinking. The lycanthrope struggled for a moment not to snicker at her skittishness. Surely if she was meant to be afraid of something it should have been him, right? Jonouchi and Honda both ignored her startled reaction.

"You and me, right now. I'm going to kick your ass. Let's go!" the blond announced loudly, smirking at him before turning and starting towards the nearest set of seats. Yugi snorted in amusement and got to his feet to follow him.

For hours the four of them remained at the arcade. Anzu and Honda had played a couple of games on their phones, teaming up for a couple of levels and events. Yugi and Jonouchi had challenged each other to the same set of games with higher scores until eventually both of them had gotten migraines. They'd left as others had begun to. Because of the curfew, each of the others began to file out with small groups of more than one or two.

They were all but the last to truly step out onto the sidewalk.

Yugi himself stuffed his hands into his pockets and bunched his shoulders for a moment. He didn't feel the chill in the slighted but the others did and his will to blend in forced him to pretend otherwise. He glanced around cautiously, then turned back, murmuring, "You guys will be okay walking home together, right?"

Honda blinked, confused. "You aren't coming with us?" he inquired softly. He considered the smaller boy for a moment. Yugi's house was in another direction, that was true, but it did not go beyond a few minutes' difference in distance. And wasn't it smarter for all of them to remain in a…? The thought fell short.

Yugi shook his head and his words were an almost revelation of Honda's thoughts. "No, I don't need the protection, remember? Werewolf here." His wink was of forced humor but the brunet could see his frustration beneath the barrier of his irises. Something was pushing the small teen rapidly towards anger. And he did not know what it was but he worried for him. Yugi being angry was a rare thing but it also tended to press at his patience enough to make him seemingly become an entirely new person before someone's eyes.

And Honda could see it. He was at the breaking point of it. It confused and scared him to see that. Yugi had seemed so much more composed and maybe even slightly happy while they had been in the arcade.

The small teen glanced over his shoulder abruptly, his eyes flashing as he looked around. His shoulders rose with the beginning of a full-bodied bristle, and Jonouchi stared at him with obvious discomfort. Anzu was immediately alarmed, looking around as well, and Honda felt almost dizzy for a moment. Was it another wolf? Was something going on? He drew in a deep breath and shook his head slightly.

Yugi was breathing long and slow, eyes flickering about and his body tense. He seemed to be more put off at the lack of answers he got, because he turned to them abruptly. "I'm not sure but I think someone's here. You guys need to get a move on. Keep close together and don't drag along. I'm going to see if I can find out who or what that was."

Anzu frowned. "What did it sound like?"

He was quiet for a moment, tipping his head to the side. Then he blinked and furrowed his brows. "I think it's someone's sneakers but I don't know for sure…"

"Maybe it's Yami," Jonouchi said with a dismissive wave of his hand.

The mention of his name made Yugi stiffen noticeably, eyes widening and appearing to almost shimmer for a moment. He drew in a breath that was ragged in their ears and Honda blinked with a stunned expression upon seeing the absolutely devastated, agonized look in his eyes. Anzu looked away immediately, cheeks tinted pink with embarrassment to see him in such a state. And Jonouchi cringed as Yugi finally turned away with a shake of his head.

"I would know his footsteps," Yugi said quietly, shaking his head a second time. He looked around once more. Then he faced them with a shaky ghost of a smile. "Anyways, you need to go before curfew. Text me when you get back. I'll see what it is."

Something inside of Anzu began to ache at the pained dismissal. "Tell us what it is, okay? Whatever it is, I want to know…" She hesitated for a moment, glanced at Honda and Jonouchi, and then continued. "Be safe, okay?"

Yugi graced them with a more genuine smile, tilting his head to the side. "Of course," he agreed. Then he gestured for them to start moving and watched until they had all but disappeared from his sight. He was quick to begin moving in the direction of his home but first, he'd have to double back a couple of times and—

"Atem."

He was frozen in place for a moment, startled and lost at the sensation of the name in his ears. It held such power even when it seemed to mean nothing. Yugi faltered in his step, however, then turned his head and stared. In the darkness of the shadow of a building over, there was the faintest outline. He blinked and his eyes focused almost immediately.

They were taller than him and something spiteful inside of him snarled that it was not hard to be. But they stood almost a foot higher. Their hair was glossy and strangely almost silver in the shadows, giving him the initial idea that perhaps it was somehow Bakura or Ryou.

Something inside of him snapped and ached and burst against his hollowed body. He wished, _oh gods_ how he wished he'd never killed the gray wolf. He had never meant to. And it hurt as his mind recalled his fresh blood, hot and metallic, covering his face and eyes, almost to his throat.

His head spun for a moment. His throat felt tight and he shivered. Then he blinked. Bakura had growled at him in that dream, said he'd done what he was meant to.

Perhaps it should alleviate his guilt that he was at peace with his death himself. It made his skin crawl, however, to consider the truth of it. He brought in a deep, almost ragged breath, then shook it off. Who was…? Someone had come for…

Atem. They had come for _Atem_ …

Yugi narrowed his eyes, phantoms in his mind writhing for his attention. This newcomer had pale hair which spiked upwards only along the bangs and fell mostly straight along their shoulders and along their back. He blinked and tilted his head, brain working rapidly for the voice that had come from the boy's throat.

He blinked slowly.

His mind was racing.

Then he blinked again.

"Marik," he greeted in a voice that was almost dismissive. He could not fully understand how his brain even identified him. Somehow he'd connected that voice to a face that was unlike the wolf he'd come to know to harbor those eyes that always seemed to bore through him. He furrowed his brows. His emotions were as shut off as Yami's, however, and Yugi had yet to truly understand and read them altogether.

So he stood there, unsure what more to do. A part of his mind rebelled at his presence. If he was there, had he seen his friends? Did he know the direction he had been heading?

His skin prickled. Why was he here? Marik didn't need to be there at all. He'd never seen him as a human before so why had he shown himself as one now?

It alarmed him, setting him further on edge. He had found the source of the noise, however. He realized it now. Marik had been walking down the street towards them but must have heard him talking about them going without him.

Now that Yugi was truly looking at him, Marik seemed more top heavy than slim and lean as he and Yami were. He was taller, but his torso was somewhat triangular, almost like that of a bodybuilder. But he did not have the muscle necessary for that. He had the slightest bulge in his biceps and Yugi could easily imagine he might have a six-pack of abs but he could not see much beyond that.

"What are you doing here?"

He didn't care how harsh it came out, his mind racing. If he had seen his friends, what did that mean for them? Jonouchi and Honda and Anzu could all be killed simply because he did not choose to live in the mountains with the pack. They could easily be picked off, as could his family. Which begged the question once more of whether he had seen the direction he was heading…

"I was sent by Obelisk."

Yugi couldn't fully focus on the discussion, but it was as if half of his mind had dedicated it to this very idea. He blinked, voice calm though the undertone was frosty. "Obelisk sent you?" He made a small hand movement, gesturing for him to continue and make it quick. But the other half of his brain was struggling. How was it that he had not realized that someone might have been coming up on them? And did he know? Did. He. _Know_?

He didn't want to have to fight Marik for his friends and family to remain safe. He didn't want to do as he had done before. He didn't want to kill Marik just to save someone else.

Why do that when Yami would eventually be returned to him?

His head spun.

 _Alive or dead_?

"He's calling for a meeting. So I offered to come here to retrieve you," Marik explained in a voice that was oddly silky. Yugi blinked at him, processing the words, and the smallest hint of anger spiked through him. Obelisk was calling a meeting? He was calling a meeting when that was the alpha's job? "And so I assumed it would be wiser to come here as a human instead. I don't think being a large wolf would do well for most people."

Yugi stared at him for a moment. Would they have assumed he was an oversized dog like his frantic mind had the night Ushio had attacked him? Would anyone really have known that he was a wolf to begin with? Considering their extinction he did not assume that any of them would truly think wolf before they did dog.

"Yeah, that's a good idea." It sounded mechanical, as if he weren't paying full attention to Marik or the words coming out of his mouth. Yugi blinked and his eyes flickered away and back again. Then he seemed to truly notice Marik's stare because he began to bristle slightly before curling his lip back. "Did Obelisk say what it was _about_?"

He would have assumed that Yugi was spiteful of the god being in the pack, had it not been for the glare that Marik himself was receiving. But it did not make sense as Yugi himself had brought Obelisk to them to begin with. To be spiteful was foolish. So he merely frowned and bowed to him, eyes averted to the cement, licking his lips.

"He did not give me any details. He said to simply find you and bring you to the camp."

Yugi stared at him, both frustrated and exhausted. It felt as if some massive war were being waged inside of him, desperately tearing through him in its need to conquer. And all it did was make him feel heavier, the loss and exhaustion and the anger and everything inside of him bursting and then damming again. He blinked and his eyes lost their fire and for a moment he looked childish, a small boy with a face as cherubic as a baby's, with eyes too wide to go unnoticed.

Marik did not see this from where he was carefully keeping his eyes on the ground. But he did see it when Yugi exhaled softly, eyes faraway, thoughts even further, and slowly looked towards the bleak white-gray of a sky that was bound to bury the world in snow and rain. He looked arrogant and somehow incredibly astonishing in his expression for a moment before he blinked. Yugi turned back to him now and their eyes locked though Marik felt instinct warring inside of him to look away once more.

"Let's get a move on then."

Only as they began to navigate the woods did the snow begin to fall. It was a drifting flurry of white at first, flakes which danced on the wind and dropped gently before their eyes. Yugi looked at it, thinking of ice that had been had been soaked with blood. There was so much blood that had been spilled now that he was a wolf. There never seemed to be days without it any longer. How many times had he and Yami spilled blood on the snow now? Or Mai? Otogi?

What about Bakura and Kaoruno and Haga? Or Ryuzaki and Ryota? What of them? They'd all died. And for what? For _him_? Yugi nearly scoffed, hateful and tired, and his breath came in a furious gust of white before his face.

What of the two wolves that had charged him in the woods when he'd left the festival? He still did not know what had happened to them. But he knew that Yami had destroyed them, ripped them to shreds to protect him. He'd killed Ushio. He'd murdered Tomoya. He'd probably played the reaper to a million others as well.

Where was the line drawn?

When did it become overbearing on his own soul for such a thing to happen?

He'd been the one to kill Bakura. He'd stabbed Ryota in the throat with a rock. He'd killed that man in the labs. And he had mutilated Pegasus in front of that other man's face.

But, oh gods, who had done Shizuka in? Who had destroyed her, ending the life of a girl who had been kidnapped and tortured endlessly? Who had been cruel enough to tear the head off the shoulders of a blind girl?

The world was a dark and sickening place. Yugi hated it. He hated the people who dwelled in it. He hated the wolves. He hated the gods. He hated the way the strong survived and the weak were so effortlessly picked off. He loathed it all. And he wished there was something to aim his anger towards. But then the exhaustion came over him and, with a tired mind, he thought of Kokorano, who had choked on his own blood while telling him that the shadows were bleeding.

He wanted to collapse, to sob in broken breaths and let himself curl up in the snow. He wanted to give up. Anything was easier to give up on. But part of him snarled at such a thought, with such resilience that it made his heart pound. The tear grew larger, a gaping chasm which made his skin crawl. He was overwhelmed by the intensity of it, the way his body throbbed and ached beneath the surface of it all. And he thought, somewhere beneath it all, of Miho's twisted broken body found in that quad so long before he'd crossed paths with Yami.

Everyone dead seemed to pop into his mind, faces with names that he knew that others didn't. The pack would never know them, would never realize their meaning in his life. That hurt just as much, or perhaps even more. And he hated it more than ever.

The wolf who had been Yami's cell mate appeared in his thoughts, a prominent face of brown and black and russet-brown ears. His eyes were beautiful glowing green eyes and it burst the dam deepest in his heart. The pain was enough to make him stop walking. His head spun. By the gods, what had this boy known of Yami that Yugi himself didn't? And how much pain had he nursed the red-eyed boy through? How many nights had he known Yami better than Yugi could ever truly hope to?

Marik turned towards him with a puzzled look. The silence between them had grown somewhat daunting now. The smaller boy blinked, then glanced at him with darkened, confused eyes. They seemed unable to focus on him, however, staring through him rather than at him.

But Yugi's mind was taking detail, small notes which he spat forth through his subconscious. Marik had a caramel skin tone, noticeable by the slight shadowing which made it appear almost gray in the dark. His eyes were wider than Yami's, with lashes that were not particularly long or short. But both of them had what appeared to be tattoos at the bottom, triangular almost, but somehow also like sharp wings. His hair was much like his fur in his canine form, with a shiny gleam to its platinum-blond appearance, the shadows of it a soft silver color much like his coarse guard hairs. His bangs were feathery, wispy, and angled outwards to fall in layers on either side of his semi-narrow eyes. From there his hair fell in uneven tufts along the back, ending a little beyond his shoulder blades. But, unlike Yami or himself, his neck seemed unusually corded, his collarbones sharper and his shoulders slight.

Yugi looked away again. "You're Egyptian?" he asked in a quiet voice.

Marik stiffened for a moment. "Yes. How did you know that?"

"Your name." He hesitated. "Your skin tone."

He'd recognized it from that day looking through pictures to figure out what they could say Yami's nationality was. It burned to think about and his chest felt tight, cold, and his heart was aching as it beat too quickly.

"Oh." He sounded slightly unimpressed but Yugi didn't care to see if he had read the emotion properly. His mind was so tired he could not find it in himself to truly pay attention. He wondered at the newly risen disgust which came over him now as well, but shook it off moments later. It wasn't worth analyzing, especially when Marik began to talk again. "Yeah, I came from Egypt a few years ago. My sister Ishizu and I—"

"Ishizu?" He furrowed his brows. "That's Japanese."

"Yeah, she prefers it to Isis."

"But Isis is her actual name."

"And she prefers Ishizu."

Yugi glanced at him sideways at the tone of his voice. His lips threatened to twitch up into a smirk and he wondered where that impulse had come from. He couldn't remember smirking often. The very idea surprised him as it was. But he knew he had done it before, just, he supposed, not with the sneering connotation his face would have possessed.

"Why did Obelisk choose to send you anyways?"

Marik narrowed his eyes, his irises flashing for a moment. His lip threatened to curl back in annoyance. "He didn't. He asked someone to come retrieve you and I figured I would do it."

Yugi snorted softly but the derisive note did not go unnoticed. The wolf beside him bristled indignantly and the smaller teen ignored him. His mind was already on other things, which ached and stirred and burned. What was it that Obelisk could possibly want to talk about? Why would he summon them all for a meeting? Was it actually going to be important to him or just to the other wolves?

The thought angered him somewhat. He should have been grateful that Obelisk was doing this in the first place. The fact that Slifer and Obelisk had both stepped in to replace Yami for the moment was amazing in all actuality. They could have ignored him. They could have disregarded the pack's needs altogether.

It would have been so easy for Morrigan to turn her cheek when he'd needed her in the woods. And it would have been simple enough for Slifer to say it was not her problem that Yami was missing. Obelisk could have watched him wander away from the tunnels and called it quits but he'd stuck around. Part of him knew the reasoning behind their actions, that he was Atem and that was the most important thing to them.

He shrugged away the initial sting of hatred that came through him. He needed to focus and pretend to care about this meeting. If he didn't he couldn't be sure how the wolves might act. What if they took his anger for means of betrayal or something of that nature? He felt his skin begin to crawl at the idea. It was disturbing how easily animals read and deciphered emotions and reacted in kind. It was a mob mentality that swelled and grew to greater proportions than most humans could grasp.

When they reached the camp, Yugi was steadily ignoring the boy beside him and hoping that it would go quickly. The moment he pulled himself out of the bramble thicket, the wolves began to bow in unison. He blinked at them, then glanced towards where Obelisk was coming. The wolf was immense when he stopped and stood before him a few feet away. He stood at almost the bottom of his ribcage at the whithers and his head came to nearly his collarbone. He had never truly measured him before now and it amazed him how the wolf seemed so much larger now that he was human…

Even Yami didn't seem that large.

He considered that for a moment. Had he ever actually tried to see how tall the black wolf was before? He couldn't think of an instance.

He could not even fully remember seeing Yami as a wolf while he himself was human. How many times had that happened? Twice, three times—four at the most? He knew he could count them on his fingers. And it hurt to consider this as he looked at Obelisk and remembered Yami adamantly declaring that he experienced life only as a wolf and merely survived when he was human.

Yugi struggled for a moment to shake thought away, but not before he remembered Yami saying that he didn't value his life as much as he probably should have. He had said that healing and immunity could make anyone assume they were immortal, that he knew he wasn't but that when death came for him he would not fear it. But Yami was alive and he wondered at those wounds he'd seen upon his face in that dream in the woods.

He tilted his head. Was it a dream though? Or a hallucination? He'd seen Yami before him in the snow, when he'd howled and then disappeared before his eyes. Or perhaps it had been Morrigan wearing his skin like a well-loved coat. But he could not fully believe that. She had not had the same eyes as him when he'd come across her finally in front of the entrance to the tunnels.

Yugi nearly closed his eyes, mournful and tired. Then he forced himself to face Obelisk head on. "What is this meeting about?" he asked in a low voice, unsure of his tone and the bitterness in his blood.

 _Y—_

 _An intruder, Atem_! _We have found an intruder_! another wolf crowed, her voice bright and amazed and full of excitement. She came bounding towards them, a body of bright gray and silver with the smallest hints of black along her back. She was wagging her tail and her brown ears flicked back and forth about the others coming towards them. _She—_

Obelisk snapped his teeth at her furiously, tail up and eyes blazing. _I do not recall you having the ability to call a meeting, you idiot child,_ he spat at her before his ears flicked towards Yugi.

The small blue-violet-eyed teen blinked in confusion. His gaze shot towards the she-wolf and then the shape he noticed further into the clearing. She sat apart from the others, red fur glistening like a pale silver flame and her golden eyes glowing in the darkness.

"Slifer," he commented, unable to think straight. "What is the meaning of this?"

 _She's to be a sacrifice_! a new voice cried.

 _Her blood will give you strength_!

 _In your name, she shall draw her last breath_!

Yugi felt his head spinning. A sacrifice? What the hell were they going on about? He blinked stupidly, then shook his head slowly.

 _She was found by a patrol. She wandered into the territory,_ Obelisk supplied in a furious tone. His eyes were on Yugi's, scornful, hateful and dark. He realized belatedly that he saw their disobedience as a result of his lacking leadership. Yugi wished he could argue but it was far from undeniable. _She insists that she was simply looking for traces of someone who recently went missing—_

"You don't really believe that bullshit, do you?" Marik snapped, eyes wide and glittering in the dark. The usual lavender shade of them was mauve with night vision. He scowled at Obelisk, then turned to Yugi with a shake of his head. "Why would you even listen to an outsider? She's probably a traitor!"

Yugi glanced at him sideways but didn't turn his head. Immediately his eyes were on Slifer again, then Obelisk. He considered them both for a long minute. "Well, I won't know until I take some time to talk to her, will I?" he said sarcastically.

Marik bristled. "You would hold discussion with a wolf that could very well be from the labs? What if she's going to lead you to—?"

Yugi turned his head now, eyeing him coldly. "I went to the labs," he said quietly, "I was born in them. If I want to go back, I know the way. There's no reason for a _decoy_ to bring me there."

The other wolves paced restlessly now, some snarling and others circling the spot behind Slifer. He could not see more than tawny paws but he assumed it must be the she-wolf in question. Yugi ignored the remark of "And if she attacks you?" and stepped around Obelisk without a care.

The god flicked an ear, then turned and followed him. When he got to his sister's side the two of them shared a look that made Mai's skin crawl. But as she glanced at Otogi the predominantly black wolf merely turned away and flicked his white-tipped ears uncomfortably.

Yugi could feel the unease of them all as if he were burdened with it as well. But he was tired and more exasperated than anything and because of this he barely gave the wolves circling their prisoner a chance to move out of his way. But they instinctively shifted away to give him space to move towards their captive.

"Who drew blood?" he asked quietly. But the wolves shied away from him instantly, flinching at the anger in his tone. He narrowed his eyes. " _Well_?"

Slifer turned her head. The ferocity in his voice was almost feverish. _It should not matter who has done it, simply that it has happened, Atem,_ she reasoned, but his sideways glance at her was hateful and she wished for a moment to rip his throat out. The boy was so petulant. His loss was great, yes, but not many were given the gift of return that he was. Had they not told him Yami would come back? Yet here he remained, acting as a child might. _Do as you should wish but her wounds are superficial. They have most likely healed already but the blood remains._

Yugi ignored her now, turning to the apparent prisoner. "Can you walk?" he asked just to be sure. The she-wolf in front of him blinked dark gray eyes and bristled faintly. Immediately she sprang to her feet, fur ruffled and legs slightly shaky. It was abruptly clear to him that she'd been extremely fearful behind the well-placed facade she'd created.

"You can't actually be considering going somewhere alone with her!" Marik protested loudly. His outburst made several wolves turn to look at Yugi, though most were with trepidation towards the possibility of his anger.

"And what do you have in mind? That I take you?" the smaller boy spat, glancing at him and curling his lip back. "That sure as fuck isn't going to happen. You just said that she should be killed as a sacrifice!"

Marik glared at him, his lavender eyes darkened and more than slightly blackened by his dilated pupils. Yugi wondered if it was hatred or bloodlust that made them so hideous. "You should at least take someone with you!" he snapped. "She might try to kill you when you least expect it!"

Yugi snorted loudly and gestured at the she-wolf. "You can't honestly think that she's going to attack me all on her own! Look at her! She's shaken up and wounded as it is! _None_ of you can argue that she isn't. And, in case none of you were listening, she came here looking for someone. Does that not mean anything to you? She probably didn't even realize that you all were here." He halted for a moment, then turned back to her. "I highly doubt you were looking for me."

She bristled and glared at him. Her lips pulled back and her eyes narrowed with a look almost akin hatred. Yugi tilted his head, studying her for a moment, and his own lips began to tug into a grin. She had a similar expression to Yami when he was at his most angry. It was oddly amazing to see it in her face there.

"If you all are so worried, Obelisk and Slifer can accompany us. I'm sure she won't attack me with two gods there as witness," he murmured, voice bordering a sneer as he turned away. Both wolves blinked at each other, then began to follow as the hostage flattened her ears against her head and glanced around herself awkwardly.

Yugi led them a couple of miles from the camp, stopping in a small grove of trees where the branches were oddly shaped and the roots knotted as if they were bodies piled on top of each other. An image of them, all decayed and disemboweled, with blood and tendon which clung to their forms in chunks among fur and hair that held it just barely in place, began to form in his head.

He turned away from this image but it was burned behind his eyelids, branded there. The blood oozed as if part of a shadow which trailed like ink through the dirt. He shivered and turned around again. Slifer and Obelisk had taken a uniform flanking position a few paces behind the prisoner. He snorted at the thought. It was hard to see her as a threat in any fashion. Her head was down, her ears flattened, and her eyes were lowered to the ground. She was limping and he could only imagine the scuffle she'd been part of when the wolves had gone after her.

Her fur was slicked along her front legs and right shoulder and her back right was torn along the knee. But now that he could see her, he had to admit that she was a gorgeous color, of dark brown almost like chocolate. Her undercoat was that of tawny and light golden brown. Her ears were black, her face a solid color but for her cheeks where the outer edges were tawny. Two ringlets of golden circled down from behind her ears, spreading down her chest. Her legs where a dark brown almost as dark as the black of her ears and he realized he'd been looking at the wrong wolf earlier.

Yugi bit his lip and considered how he was going to speak to her. But his first impulse was to huff in annoyance from his pack's hastiness. It was his second that he went with. "Come here," he murmured, gesturing with a hand. He crouched and gestured again. The she-wolf eyed him cautiously, then glanced around them as if for an escape route. "I'm not going to hurt you. Please, just come over here."

Slifer and Obelisk swapped looks but did not intervene. In a bid of unison both wolves moved away from each other and paced a few feet away to take seats at the base of some trees. They both lay with their chin on their paws, ignoring the she-wolf's shocked expression at their careless dismissal.

Yugi snickered at her opened mouth and flattened ears, the way she glanced back at him with widened eyes. "Why should they protect me? I don't think you're going to do me any harm."

She bore her teeth at him, snarling, and an image appeared in his head. Her muzzle was bloodied and his face was gouged with teeth marks. He laughed loudly and she snapped her jaws at him, bristling and snarling louder.

"You think you'd be able to do that?" he asked frankly, smirking. "Surely you don't think you could do that to Atem."

The she-wolf faltered visibly. Her aggression became skeptical, her eyes flickering about as her ears pricked and searched for noise around them. The only thing her efforts received was a loud snort from Slifer behind her, as if she were close to snoring or perhaps sneering at them both. She blinked and glanced at them once more. Her gray eyes flickered once more back and forth.

"Come here."

This time the patience had turned to iciness. Her eyes shot to him again. Hesitantly she moved to come closer. Within inches of him, she bore her teeth as if in warning but Yugi ignored her. His hands came out and she yelped rather than attacked, unnerved by the way he so easily sorted through her fur. He inspected every smear of blood for a few minutes, checking wounds that had healed long before and then studying her shoulder where it was still throbbing. Quietly, the boy in front of her—Atem? Was he truly Atem?—settled back on his haunches and pursed his lips.

"Your shoulder got pulled out of place. But it's probably not too bad. You can still walk on it so I don't think you should worry too much. Probably when you change back it'll move back in place."

She blinked and tilted her head. An image formed in his head, of him in a white coat with a stethoscope around his neck and a clipboard in his hand. Yugi snorted loudly, laughing.

"My mom is a vet."

She blinked again. Hadn't it been said that Atem's mother was long dead? She considered him for a moment. Did he mean his human replacement? It would make sense. Camouflage was a necessity. Her gray eyes flickered towards the trees. She could run if she wanted to.

Yugi hummed in the back of his throat and it almost sounded like a growl. Her attention was immediately caught on him again. "So, you said something about searching for a friend of yours?" he prompted, smoothing the fur along her shoulder again. It was a lighter, tawny color there as well, and the undercoat was soft and downy. Behind her shoulder came a grayish patch of color which trailed downwards in a tuck that went along her underbelly where the very edges along her hind legs were white. The hairs on her back were scattered with black and dark gray and her tail was deep chocolate with a slight tawny patch along the bottom.

She pricked her dark ears and glanced once more at the two gods. Were they truly divine? Were they really deities? They looked so lazy and lackadaisical at the moment. What kind of deity appeared in such a way?

And when she glanced back, this boy in no way fit the description of the Atem she had been taught about. He was meant to be a war hero, a god among mortal wolves. He was supposed to lead them all into battle and win the war. This boy looked nothing like a warrior and his pack seemed uprooted in madness rather than grounded with hierarchy.

In his mind was a brilliant picture of a deep gray wolf with pale silver, tawny and white markings upon their face. The muzzle was colored with dark cinnamon brown and the cheeks were immense and large, their ears dark red and the fur along their forehead scattered with dark brown and black. His eyes glowed brightly with strength, both inner and outer, and the color of them was a gorgeous green that pulsed with life and vigor.

Yugi felt his heart clench. Yami's cage mate, he realized, head spinning. It was Yami's cage mate. It was the green-eyed wolf who held the red-eyed boy above everyone and everything else. His heart was shaking in his chest. Pain flooded each thought and breath and any hint of comprehension his mind provoked.

He cleared his throat awkwardly. "How long has he been missing?" he asked slowly, narrowing his eyes and hoping he did not sound as foolish to her as he did to himself.

Her eyes were piercing, boring into his. A struggle persisted in her mind, both for secrecy and for the inclination of answering his question. He could be nothing more than a fool, leading a pack of idiots. He might very well simply be a boy who wanted to seem more important than he was.

Finally, with reluctance clear in her eyes, an image was projected of deep green grass and trees with branches full of leaves. The sunlight was strong and the scent that came to his nose, a phantom touch of smell, was that of bloomed flowers and fresh water. It was the perfect picture of summer.

 _Six months ago_? _So soon_? Yugi thought with his head spinning. He'd gone missing during the summer six months back? When Yami and Atem and the others had all escaped? His mouth had grown dry and his tongue was plastered to his palate. He closed his eyes for a moment. "So, then, when I escaped."

For a moment there was only silence. Then she whined softly and her eyes were begging, desperate for his attention. Yugi blinked at her, frozen in place, and felt sick and lightheaded for a split second. They watched each other for a long time and then her mind seemed to burst as if a dam had been busted apart. A voice was softly spoken but authoritative, with calm baritone notes as it murmured, "He's here, Echo. He's in Japan. I think I've found him."

Yugi was frozen. He'd been looking for Atem, _hadn't_ he? His throat felt swollen. "So your name is Echo?" he asked instead, fighting the urge to both mourn for a wolf whose name he did not know and the possibility of yet another painful death at the hands of merciless humans which were prone to kill. "And he came here to find me?"

She flicked her ears. His face appeared again, his green eyes the fiercest shade he had ever come to know. His heart was pounding and his head spun once more.

"I don't think I met him."

Her ears flattened. Her eyes began ash-colored pools of agony at the words. She blinked at him, then turned away.

 _Not alive…_

No, he had not met him alive…

But to tell her…

She visibly shook and her head snapped towards him. Her eyes were mournful but her face was twisted with hateful anger. She raised her tail, her fur raised in a furious bristle.

"I don't know that he escaped. And I never met him when I was in the lab…"

But had he?

Yugi could scarcely remember. And if he was Yami's cage mate, why would Yugi ever assume that he had met him? He hadn't met Yami back there in the labs. So surely he had never crossed paths with him either. He considered her again.

"What was he to you?"

She hesitated for a moment, then dug at the snow with her front paws in avid frustration. Yugi realized not for the first time just how limited the ability for the other wolves to speak seemed to be. Mai had trouble with it, Otogi could form basic words, and many of the other wolves simply saved their strength until they had something of interest to tell him that could not be portrayed through pictures. This she-wolf had most likely used her mental capabilities for the task when she'd been attacked, trying to convince them she wasn't an enemy.

The she-wolf finally turned back to him, then glanced at Slifer and Obelisk and bristled. For a moment neither of them moved and then, huffing, Echo snapped her teeth at the god of war. Obelisk cracked an eye open, tilted his head, and then raised his chin just enough to shift his position and tilt his body away with his back to her.

Yugi snorted and then shook his head. His amusement drained when she turned to him angrily, her tail wagging in frustrated jerks back and forth. She chomped her teeth again and flicked an ear towards Obelisk once more.

He considered the angry movements, then the slight gleam of frustration in her eyes. Finally he looked back and forth between them. When Echo snapped her teeth at him again and dug at the snow once more, he looked at the two gods once more. But neither provided an answer.

He wracked his brain for a moment.

Then he blinked at her.

"Your beta?" he finally muttered, eyes flickering about. Echo swung her head around to look at him in surprise, as if she had thought it hopeless he would realize the meaning of her tantrum. Yugi was watching Slifer now, however, mind burning with the possibility of whether his body had wound up with her in the tunnels. "So then…I'm guessing you're the alpha."

She pricked her ears forward and blinked at him. With a small wag of her tail, she confirmed his theory. Her eyes were bright and warm and her expression was far less frosty than it had been originally. The chocolate brown wolf glanced over her shoulder at the other two and then turned back after a moment. Yugi looked at her for a long time, then shifted position to stretch his legs out. The ice immediately chilled him but he ignored it, as a moment later his body began to fluctuate its temperature as he had been certain it would. He forgot the cold and watched her for a long time.

"You have a pack from wherever you came from"—He smirked in amusement when he saw a red and white flag with a blue patch filled with stars—"so I don't see why you would want to stay here."

Echo flicked an ear, then blinked at him. Her gray eyes seemed bewildered for a moment before she paced a step back and tilted her head. An image appeared in his head again, this time of wolves fighting and blood spilled. He himself was in the fray but in the image his colors continued to change, all solid but with different shades entirely.

"White," Yugi grumbled, feeling both sick and dismayed. "My fur is white."

She looked startled and he wondered at the sight for a moment but then his head was filled with images again. A white wolf tore into a black one's throat. A white wolf snapped teeth dripping with blood. A white wolf whose face was smeared with red. A white wolf running after a retreating black dog. A white wolf with much more muscle and strength than he ever thought he'd possess.

Yugi shuddered. Then he shook his head slightly. The images were burned there. And when they cleared a new wave came within a nanosecond. There were wolves everywhere, herself and Yugi, and black dogs the same size or bigger. Blood sprayed across laboratory walls and through air that was quivering with noise. Human corpses were left beneath fallen comrades and guts were torn and spilled about. Pawprints outlined in red ran from one side of the room to the next. Death and decay was everywhere around them.

The war.

She was going to stay for the war. Yugi wanted to object but the thought occurred to him as well. If he denied her, then wouldn't he be seen as weak afterwards? The thought was both stunning and frustrating. He could feel both bewilderment and aggression filling him for a moment. Then he shrugged it off.

This was her choice.

If she wanted to believe in something he didn't know he was capable of, then that was her choice.

Yugi bit the inside of his cheek. Then he tilted his head. "You're free to stay or leave as you please," he commented dismissively, feeling both sick and stupefied.

She sent him a picture, of wolves which he did not recognize and herself there among them. Her pack? But though the image was overcome with ice and winter, the snow was not as thick or high as what surrounded them now. And he realized with startling clarity, feeling sick and small, that she meant to go back for them and bring them with her.

He swallowed hard. "If that's what you want," he muttered softly. He couldn't raise his voice any further and his head was spinning now. How could she even think to do that to them? What if none of them survived? She might have been optimistic for the outcome, but he himself knew better. Had she ever fought before today? She still looked somewhat shaken. So why would she enter a war when she had no experience?

Yugi nearly laughed out loud. Who had told him that wolves responded to the needs of Code Name Atem? Was it Mai and Otogi? Were they the ones who had mentioned he would find support from wolves he did not know? That they would appear from seemingly nowhere, all willing to follow his lead and listen solely to him?

And now here Echo was, doing just as they—or perhaps Yami—had predicted.

He shivered and moved to stand again, eyes falling on Obelisk now. The movement had made both gods raise their heads. They sat up unison and turned to him with unblinking eyes of amber-flecked gold and topaz. In the dark Obelisk's eyes were nothing but dark orange, smeared with the faintest hint of yellow and Slifer's looked ominous and unholy.

"Then I suppose I'll see you again when you come back," he muttered, but shame made him almost too nervous to look at her again. When he did, their eyes locked and her tail wagged slowly. In a halting voice as soft as rain dripping, came the words, _We pledge our…allegiance…to the Hound of…Heaven._

A shiver ran through him again. "Good." What else could he say? He couldn't think of anything more. He licked his lips and turned to Obelisk. "How about some practice?"

The wolf perked up the moment he said the last word and Slifer snorted as she got to her feet. Echo considered them for a moment, bitterly eyed the other she-wolf, and then followed her as she began to lead the way.

It was not even thirty seconds after changing and preparing himself to fight that he was pinned beneath the war god.


	47. The Present

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day (No updates through September)**

 **Chapter Warnings: Mild Hints of Self-Hatred, Mentions of Death, Character Death(s), COPIOUS Amounts of Blood, GRAPHIC Wound Description, Nightmares**

 **Okay, so it's time for you guys to meet the wolves. And yes…it is a huge thing because holy shit, it's a clusterfuck of them, just saying. There's over twenty and that's why this chapter took longer coming out than it would have otherwise. Cause I completely lost some of my files as far as the characters and their descriptions go.**

 **Explanation goes like this. In case you're not familiar with the characters or names, Zuzu, Ruri and Ray are apparently the same people in Arc-V (the one with the multiple dimensions and all that). That's why they all have similar features, and why Ray is older (because apparently she's the original incarnation). Anyways, as far as the litters go, Patty, Mikiyu, Mieru, Zuzu and Ruri are from the same litter. Ray, Aki, Asuka and Barbara are from their own litter.**

 **Sherry herself is from a different pack altogether. Her backstory comes out later, when she and Yugi actually really interact. But I promise, I didn't just throw her in there for no reason. Also, you're going to see that three "psychic" characters are in this pack—Divina, Ishizu, and Mieru. There's a reason for this. And you'll see later why it is that they do certain things that don't quite always add up.**

 **Also, Ishizu and Marik look nothing alike. There's a reason for it. It's explained later why.**

 **Okay, so, I know that it gets ridiculously confusing reading so much description at one time, especially when their names are only said once or twice at the most. So, again, if you guys want me to, I CAN work on getting up some pictures of the wolves so that you can picture them better. I have no idea when they'll all be posted and everything, but I'll definitely look into getting them up if that's what you guys want. *shrugs* Or not. Just shoot me a comment or a PM or email or something and I'll go ahead and get on it. Also, as a future note, as a quite a few characters tend to have oddly-colored hair (purple, pink, etc), most often I'm going to go with a darker color like brown or black or burgundy in shade while the lighter shades will be gray or silver or tan or something along those lines. That's why Ruri and Zuzu and Ray aren't a complete match in hair color. But their eyes will match up so that should make it somewhat easier to picture them? Or not haha I don't know, seeing as I'm the author and it helps me picture them better haha**

Chapter XLVII: The Present

 _Work Log Entry XLIV: March, 2004 (Part IV)_

 _March 27_

 _Due to the dates in which the wolves are born and the constant altercations to their genetics, the she-wolves are all hitting their menstrual cycles at different times._

 _Many of the wolves have begun to breed. We have been completely unable to stop them._

 _But I have begun to think that the boss does not want us to._

 _March 28_

 _Nothing about "Atem" has changed in the slightest. The boss has begun to lose patience once more._

When Yugi found his way back to the house he was bruised from the beating he'd taken from Obelisk. He was sore and tired and every muscle in his body seemed to be screaming at the moment. He was somewhat dizzy from hitting the ground so much but he was more perplexed by Echo's declaration. Not once during those numerous attempts to practice fighting had he forgotten. And each time he'd hit the ground the words had repeated themselves in the hollow chamber of his thoughts. He'd felt suffocated and confused and had been so distracted that when he got to his feet Obelisk threw him back down. At one point, when chastising him for being distracted had proven insufficient, the god had looked at him, knocked him over for the thousandth time, and simply sat on him.

It had taken him a solid thirty minutes to squeeze his way out from under him. And he knew for a fact he'd only managed it because Obelisk had decided he was tired of that seatting position. From there Yugi had been so exasperated as to declare he was going home again. It helped that he'd been more than slightly cautious of what time curfew was and things of that matter.

But he could not understand it. How was it that someone could place so much faith in a creature bred by myths? A person who probably looked just as lost as he felt? A boy who was unwilling to be as bloodthirsty as the very pack he held domain over? Echo would have died had he not been. And he knew she noticed. But how many times could such a thing be said as far as Code Name Atem was concerned?

Exhausted, the small teen threw the front door open and only barely glanced at his mom who was bringing a dog from its kennel for some food. The canine immediately cowered and backed further into the space it was given, trembling and staring with wide eyes. Yugi glanced at the dog for a moment, thinking of the more aggressive reactions he'd been given before, and did not bother to comment. With a shake of his head, warning his mom from conversation as well as shrugging away the thought of reactions to Valon's presence before his infection, the small teen headed for his room.

It took only a few minutes for her to inevitably follow him. Yugi was seated on the bed, picking at his backpack to pull out some paperwork for school. He glanced up as was expected of him and tilted his head only when she shut the door behind her with a small sigh.

"What took you so long?"

Yugi blinked. She wasn't crying but she sounded incredibly close. He shifted his weight, his irritation forgotten. In a quiet voice, he muttered, "I'm sorry. I wanted to walk back with the others but it took longer to get back than I thought it would."

Kasumi shook her head at him, her eyes staring at him with something bridging disbelief and bewilderment. Yugi watched her with his head tilted, guilt gnawing at his insides as he considered. "Yugi, I don't know what you're doing anymore. I don't even know what it is that you were doing before. And I'm almost afraid to ask. But I guess it doesn't matter. I should be grateful that you even made it home with everything that's been happening—"

"Mom…"

"—but everything about you has changed right in front of me. I almost didn't recognize you when you walked in. I've never seen you so angry before. Not even when your grandfather pesters you about your hyperosmia. And I just…"

He sat up slightly straighter, a lost feeling coming through him. His fingers flexed and then tightened along the surface of his comforter for a long minute. Then he licked and chewed his bottom lip, head spinning slightly.

"I know I haven't exactly…" He fell silent again, struggling for the words. "I shut you out recently. And I didn't do it on purpose. I didn't mean to… I never wanted to hurt… Things have just become really stressful for me, so I…"

And what kind of apology was that? But he wasn't sure he had any other words for her and it hurt to realize that he was at such a loss. Even if they did not always get along, at least before he had known what to say to her and how to soothe her fears. He had known back then how to comfort her and now he felt sick to see and realize such distance had grown between them.

He opened his mouth, but she spoke before he could.

"Yugi, I know what heartbreak is like"—The small teen felt his eyes nearly pop out of his head with shock; what?—"and I know how hard it is to get past it but it _will_ sort itself out."

He blinked. _Oh no_. "Mom, it's not—"

"I don't know what happened between the two of you, and I won't pretend to. You're able to make your own decisions in life. But it gets easier. And I don't want to see you so depressed anymore. Ever since Yami left—"

He flinched, unable to stop himself, and cursed mentally. "Please, Mom—"

"You can't even hear his name without flinching."

Yugi bit the inside of his cheek. It wasn't a lover's quarrel or a breakup that did that to him. It was the fact that the gods had promised he'd come back and yet there was a lack of the black wolf in his life _still_. And that hurt more than any little broken heart he'd read about or seen acted out on TV. It was miserable and disgusting and it hurt to even consider him in a sense as lost. Because then he thought of hunters or a dead body within the snow, half-buried and awaiting his discovery. And it scared him more than even the thought of being alone.

It scared him more than the war or the hellhounds or being Atem.

Everything was so much worse when he thought that he was going to come across a dead body he recognized. Because a part of him just knew that should he come across Yami in the woods he would know him. He would know him as he did his own skin. And he would mourn and despair and rot away inside the empty cavity of his own body.

His heartbeat would become foreign to his own ears and his blood would burn him. His marrow would dissolve in his bones. His organs would become mush.

Yugi felt it somewhere deep inside of him, the despair creeping through him.

He wouldn't know himself anymore.

Because somehow, somewhere along the way, he had come to define himself by what _Yami_ said he possessed.

His kindness, his heart, his cunning, his liveliness, all those things Yami had mentioned, he felt had deserted him now. It hurt him more than he could find it in himself to acknowledge. And he both hated himself and cherished his memories for it.

Because, if he could remember it through memories of Yami, then that meant he could become that person again, right? He could find those traits again and bring them to the surface and drag them into his predominant personality, couldn't he?

But that seemed like so much work to be done and it was simply _easier_ to just roll over and stay angry. It was so much easier to simply take his frustration out in the form of ignoring others.

Yugi blinked. But since when had he ever truly wished to do that before? His mom had taught him better than that. She'd taught him to stand and fight and make changes when things were tough. She'd taught him to adapt and manipulate things until they began to work in his favor again.

His heart was in his throat for a moment.

When had he forgotten that?

When had he lost himself so much?

Yugi swallowed hard, then leaned forward. For a moment—only a split second—he wanted to get up and run into her arms. He wanted her to hold him, reassure him, maybe to even coax him into medicine and tell him that things would be sorted out when he woke up. But that single moment died away again. And he watched her for a heartbeat, a brilliant and powerful sensation of loss and acceptance coming through him.

He had to change this.

He had to forgive his ignorance and arrogance, the two things that had grown so much since the moment he had announced himself as Atem. Because who was Atem as opposed to Yugi? And who was Yugi if he could not recognize him within himself?

But how was he meant to change it?

There was so much he hated and despised about himself at the moment. His relationship with his mother was just one of many. But it had to be one of the most important. And he couldn't forget that.

Because, who knew how long he would truly survive? Who knew how long _Yugi_ would exist? Eventually he would have to become Atem and there would only be room for him there inside of him. As much as he hated the idea, the truth of the matter was that the wolves needed him. And he could not survive much longer with a foot in both the human and lycanthrope world.

"I'm sorry for scaring you," he whispered, shaking his head. "And I never meant to hurt you by ignoring you. I love you, Mom."

It was not what he truly needed to say, nor was it the apology she deserved, but it was all he could come up with.

* * *

Yugi trotted into the clearing without a glance at Marik who was playing guard at the front. He growled softly but noticed immediately that Yugi would not give him the time of day and so fell silent again. In the center of the camp, the white wolf held his tail up and snapped his teeth. It was an aggressive approach but the wolves all turned to him as if he had threatened to flay them and wear their skins as his newest jacket. Yugi looked at them for a moment, dropping his tail, and wagged the long appendage.

The sight made many of them tilt their heads in clear bewilderment but Yugi ignored it for the moment. Obelisk was seated, eating something that looked suspiciously like a rabbit, and Yugi shook off the mournful pang which came through him at the sight of it.

 _I think that it has gone on long enough that I haven't known your names,_ he announced loudly, heart pounding in his chest as the wolves looked at him with shocked, bewildered expressions. He licked his lips and flicked his ears. By the gods, he hated having so much attention on himself. But he'd suck it up. He'd called it upon himself as it was. _Out of all of you, I know only Mai and Otogi, Obelisk and Marik. The rest of you are a mystery to me. That_ has _to change._

Obelisk stared at him with dark amber-specked eyes, head tilted slightly. Then he turned away as Yugi glanced at him. The god flicked his ear, then looked towards his meal once more. Yugi could hear the bones crunching loudly as he faced the other wolves again. His ears flicked towards it once, then twice. Then he shook it off.

The wolves had begun to sort themselves into an awkward semi-circle formation. But it was only for a moment. Then one of the she-wolves snapped her teeth, held her tail up, tilted her head and flicked an ear. Yugi did not hear what statement it was that she spoke to them.

But whatever it was she said, all of the wolves began to form into a solid line. And then the she-wolf turned to him with an expression so icy it put the snow to shame. Yugi almost bristled with disdain at the look, but shrugged it off as she approached.

It all seemed to become a blur, the myriad of scents and names and _voices_ all so much as to make his head spin. There was Aki, the she-wolf who had commanded them prior, with dark fur almost deep enough to be considered black. Her brown eyes had unnerved him entirely, boring into his with such emotion that it had nearly knocked him backwards.

She smelled of freshly grown thistle and trunks bitten away by winter, of fallen leaves and blooming honeysuckle. And she stayed for only long enough to deliver her name, sniff his cheek in turn, and trot off without a second glance. This seemed to set the mood for the series of introductions as, almost immediately, they would do the same.

Behind her came a she-wolf named Dextra. Similar to Aki, she had a darker coat of reddish-brown that looked almost like burgundy. Beneath this color was a deep tawny and light brown like chocolate, with long legs of gold. Ringlets of gray deep enough to be almost blue in shade encircled her neck in doubles and disappeared at her dorsal cape. She was thinner, limber, but her muzzle was slightly larger and the light brown splash of fur along the top of it was gorgeous.

She smelled of river water and flowers, and she left after they both sniffed each other's cheeks. Her amber eyes flickered across his for only a moment before she raised her chin and stalked away.

Yugi would have blinked and looked at her again had there not been another to take her place almost immediately. This wolf was named Kari, a female with similar red fur to the other two. But it was not quite as dark and looked more cinnamon than burgundy. And her muzzle was not as long or as thick, her features sharper than he'd seen of the others'. She smelled of bark and morning dew. And she lingered for a few moments longer, her long legs splashed white and russet as she moved to sniff his cheek.

She wagged her tail once, dipped her head, and turned to trot away.

Maria was only an inch or so shorter than himself, somewhat more petite in size. Her cheeks were fuller, fluffed with her winter coat. But her muzzle was slightly shorter and her coat was a russet so light it seemed to be golden in places. It shocked him to see, as her entire body was almost the same shade. He would have assumed her to be a Pure-Blood due to this alone had it not been for the white scattered about her coat.

The bottom of her muzzle was colored it, and by her eyes and brows was a scattered peppering of silver and dark gray. The white disappeared along the bottom of her throat, the russet encircling her chest. From beneath the crest of her ribs was the white again, where it spread along the underbelly and colored the inside of her long legs.

She smelled of moss and sunlight and when she left, her tail was tipped with black as well.

Patty was an incredibly small she-wolf, one which was only about the proper size of a yearling. Her long legs were lanky and her features were far too wide and fluffy to be of an adult. And her features, as she looked up at him, a good head smaller in size, were an odd pattern of coloration.

Her muzzle was a deep chocolate brown along the edges, but faded into a soft peppering of gray and silver. Her brows and stops were rings of light tawny in shade, almost circular in design to mirror glasses. Dark gray outlined them from there, acting almost like kohl as it stretched towards the ends of her cheeks. Above her muzzle was mottled light silver and gray with stray hairs of brilliant cinnamon brown. Her ears were a bright, almost startling red, tipped with dark brown and given tawny guard hairs on the insides.

Her main undercoat was a soft golden shade and he could not see even a touch of white there. Her tail, when she turned away to trot after Aki and Kari, was a brilliant red with stray black guard hairs, the tip of it a deep startling obsidian like the night sky.

Mikiyo, the next she-wolf he met, was of brighter coloring. Her fur was golden more than red, though there were slight russet undertones. Her ears were the darkest part of her, with more red and slight touches of brown as well. Her face was an even coloration of silver and white, with ginger and golden evenly dispensed from her muzzle to her stops and brows and to her cheeks. Beyond her brows were silver and white through to her ears where the guard hairs resembled similar shades.

Her legs were tawny, with white as the layer beyond there, her dorsal cape covered in silver and specked with brown and gray. Her tail was a bright russet, the tip of it gray rather than black. And her lean form was far more muscular than slim. She smelled of sunlight and dappled leaves and light shadows when they briefly scented each other's cheeks and then she escaped his sight just as quickly.

Mieru was a yearling as well, with longer legs and fluffy cheeks not unlike those of Patty. But she had the slimmer build of Mikiyo as well, with a slightly sharper muzzle that showed her younger stature, black like tar until it faded at her eyes. From there her fur became a chocolate brown that quickly transitioned to red as well, russet all along her form. Her ears were deep red and brown. Her eyes, bright green, looked phantom-like against her brilliant coloration.

Her body was slender and small, her legs almost scrawny in width. The dark brown ran the base of her shoulders to outline them and then cover her dorsal cape. Her paws were black and dark brown at the bases. And her long tail was a bright striking red much like her ears. She, unlike them, had a slightly sloping ribcage and her undercoat was brilliant red as well.

But, it was as she looked at Yugi that he felt his stomach churn and knot. His fur lifted into a slight bristle and his tail flicked uncomfortably. There was something haunting and dispassionate within them, boring into him. And, as they sniffed each other's cheeks, he caught only the smell of sun-baked sand and water touched by leaf rot. It was bewildering, almost horrifying, and he stared at her for a long moment.

Then she curled her lip slightly, the dispassion clear in her gaze, and turned to follow Aki who glanced at her sideways when she approached. And, oddly, Yugi felt somewhat stricken as he considered how much alike they almost seemed at that moment.

Sherry LeBlanc introduced herself as such, with a clear French accent that surprised him. She was larger than he'd initially assumed. Her stance made her seem more powerful than even he was. And she stood with her head raised and her fur in a slight bristle. Her body was wiry in strength, her tail longer than usual with a black tip and her body blonde and golden. Only the smallest touch of gray and black touched her back and dorsal cape.

But her underbelly and the bottoms of her paws were white. Her ears were pricked forward the entire time. Her emerald eyes were darker than he'd ever seen someone to possess. And her muzzle was larger than many of the others', as if to pronounce her core strength. And she smelled, oddly, of nothing more than fallen pine as she turned and trotted away with her tail up.

He felt almost as if she wanted to challenge him but the white wolf could not find it in himself to bother with anger.

Zuzu smelled of something like lilac and rose, or perhaps fresh leaf growth. She was a smaller, more petite yearling. Her muzzle was longer. Her eyes were a little wider. Her ears were softer in their triangular shape but larger as well. And her long legs were spindly. Her frame was entirely thin and small, almost as if she were a hybrid rather than a full-blooded she-wolf.

Her muzzle was white on the underside and about an inch beyond her nose. Then the core of the bridge of it was cinnamon brown, soft where it stretched upward and followed to the center of her forehead. Along her stops and brows were light touches of white that became ginger as well, then fell into light gray and silver. Her ears were bright red and tipped dark brown.

Her undercoat was clearly ginger and beyond her head and dorsal cape, her fur became far more black and gray and silver. Her underbelly and legs were bright white to match her muzzle and her tail was a bright ginger with the same black tip many of her sisters possessed as well.

But she was the only one of the yearlings with bright blue eyes, as if she were younger than he'd initially expected as wolves did not have such a shade naturally. And, when they locked eyes for a brief moment, she wagged her tail and lowered her gaze and head in a small dip. Then she turned and trotted away before he could do much more than stare in bewilderment.

Barbara smelled of stone and earthen tunnels, like the underground network which Slifer lurked. Yugi nearly shivered when they scented each other, for all he could think of was that underground tunnel system. And it made his stomach ache.

But she was larger than many of her sisters, though leaner than Aki appeared. And her fur was black only along the face, stretching from muzzle to cheeks to her ears. Beyond there her fur turned brown and russet, equally intertwined, encircling her face and neck to become a long strip downwards to her chest. It spread along the front of her shoulders and ended at the beginning of her legs. From there, the thin limbs became a solid black much like her underbelly and back. But her dorsal cape was bright ginger and the undercoat along her back was red, ending with a russet and cinnamon tail tipped black.

Her undercoat along her sides and hind legs was a gray and silver shade, however, almost startling him.

She blinked dark brown eyes at him, then turned and trotted away without a single glance. Yugi flicked an ear, annoyed, but did nothing more, as the next she-wolf had already come to greet him.

Ruri looked much like Zuzu in build, he noted, and she even smelled similar. But she did not possess any similar coloration beyond white and black fur. Her muzzle was streaked with black, stretching from her nose to her eyes where it became white along her forehead. Only atop her eyes and outward to her ears did they possess more color, where it became silver and light gray.

Beyond her full white cheeks, her neck and ears seemed a stunning shade of white as well. And, only behind her ears did there seem to be dark gray, smoky and gorgeous like ash. Along the shoulders she had a faint streak of dark red almost like burgundy, much like the shade of which Aki's main coat possessed. Her lower body was silver and white, though the front of her long limber legs were far more silver than white.

Her back was lightly peppered with black guard hairs that just barely added more color, though it seemed to fade entirely towards the base of her tail. From there it became dark gray that was almost blue in shade, glistening where the sun could only faintly touch it. Along her hind legs the silver colored only the front, making up the entirety of her undercoat as well. And then, inches above the middle of her tail, was another long splash of burgundy—a scent gland, Yugi was sure—before the gray faded to silver and then to a tip of bright startling white.

She stood before him with her head tilted, her eyes a pinkish shade much like wine. And her white ears flicked back and forth as she considered him for a long moment. Her eyes bore into his for a long moment as she wagged her tail brilliantly and turned away with a dip of her head.

Himika was a larger she-wolf, with a deep ginger coat. Her face was a splattering of ginger and gray and white. Her muzzle was mostly red, with a small splash of burgundy a few inches beneath her bright striking blue eyes. Her forehead was a deep gray with a heavy splattering of russet which came to her ears. They were deep red and the backs of them lightly speckled with gray and silver and black.

Gray and silver peppered the fur beyond her eyes, where her bright red brows faded into white and gray along her lids. Her white cheeks faded to ginger again in a soft v-formation beneath her muzzle. From there her fur was light russet, became black in the shape of a ringlet, and then disappeared into dark red. Along her shoulders and back there were long black strips, from her dorsal cape to her tail.

White outlined the back of her shoulders, then tucked away to nothing. But along her back legs it stretched from beneath the russet to her very toes. Her tail was the darkest shade of red he had ever seen, the tip of it deep obsidian. Her frame was larger than some of the other wolves', her chest tucking slightly towards her hindquarters.

Ray came after her. And, stunningly, Yugi found himself almost startled and stepping back in surprise. She was tall and lanky in her slender build. But her face was extremely similar to those of Ruri and Zuzu's. Her muzzle was sharper, her eyes softer, her ears a little smaller than average. Her cheeks were fuller, her legs longer than the other adults.

Like the other two, her muzzle had a small inch of color between the nose and the rest of the bridge. The red was soft where it started behind the white, pushing upwards toward the eyes where it became speckled with gray and silver. Her brows were bright ginger. Around her forehead was silver and gray, turning darker near the cheeks where they became white beneath.

The back of her neck was touched with tips of black and gray. Along her dorsal cape was black and tan and slight brushes of tawny. Her legs were dark red, fading to a lighter shade along her paws. Brown and cinnamon speckled along her sides, covered with black guard hairs that made a deep saddle. Her undercoat was a similar ginger to her legs, her hindquarters shaded with cinnamon and gray. And her long tail was touched with a light splattering of burgundy, the tip colored deep black.

And Yugi wondered, bewildered and confused, if perhaps she was somehow more closely related to Zuzu and Ruri. Was that possible? Or had the dad been one that their mother had taken to more than her other various suitors? But then…had she mated with other wolves? Or had she had a single mate? Yugi did not care to consider it for much longer. And asking seemed impolite and bordered disgusting.

Asuka was a fairly lean she-wolf with gorgeous markings, something that Yugi had never noticed of her prior. He had seen her several times before, he realized, but he'd never gotten so close to her as to smell her or face her entirely. Her scent was of weathered stone and fresh rainfall.

Her ears were golden in color, blond around the edges with slightly russet bases. Her forehead between them was slightly brown and tawny, falling into silver around the top of her eyes. Her brows were silver, her stops russet, and her muzzle was a shade between. Around her whiskers were slight streaks of black and gray. Her cheeks were white, rimmed with silver, however, and faded at the bottom of her muzzle.

A ringlet of golden russet encircled her neck, then faded into silver once more. Her shoulders were golden, her dorsal cape blackened before fading into white and silver. Beyond this streak her back was given scattered black and gray, with the tiniest touch of red along the tips. Her front legs were a pale blonde shade, her back a similar shade, though they became white at the front and her paws were perfectly pristine like snow. Her long tail was silver and gray and gold, tipped with russet and a final splash of black at the very bottom.

Azul was a silver and gray wolf, with russet and black-tipped ears. Her brows were faintly white towards their core, but silver at the edges. And the only brown that graced her coat was along the bottom of her eyes, beneath her ears, and towards the guard hairs within them. Her neck was threaded with dark gray and black ringlets, though they seemed paled against the soft silver of her base color. Her dorsal cape was faintly black at the tips, but the base of it was bright silver like soft shadows across the ice. Her long legs were splashed with gray along the front, a stark white much like the snow.

Her underbelly was pale silver, fading into white only along her legs. Her tail was a singular gray and silver blend, the tip and scent gland black. And, it was only as he sniffed her cheek and recognized the smell of fallen pine and bitter roots. And it made his stomach churn.

Abruptly he remembered Yami attacking her. He remembered the way she'd writhed in the snow, showing surrender that his alpha had not taken kindly towards. And he felt sick as he remembered the reason _why_ he had thought to turn his teeth on her to begin with.

She'd propositioned him in the snow…

He backed up abruptly, curling his lips. Her ears flattened, her tail wagging slightly, before she turned and wandered off. Unlike the other she-wolves, she did not appear to be drawn towards them in the manner of standing about and speaking. Yugi watched as she wandered further into the camp, almost away from his eyes entirely.

Divina had dark green eyes, the most memorable thing about her. Like Azul, she had pale silver and gray fur. She lacked the ringlets but for one that faded into white at the base of her neck. And her face was much paler, her eyes encircled with white and her cheeks bright and snowy. Her limbs were perfectly white. The silver made a streak along her back, fading towards her back legs, her tail streaked with black and gray there. Her tail was the darkest thing about her, blackened at the tip and scent gland.

But the way she stared at him made him bristle. He found his shoulders squaring, his eyes sharpening, his lips curling faintly. But she did not so much as blink, merely staring. And then, abruptly, her head tilted and her eyes seemed to become glassy. She sniffed, blinked, and then turned and trotted away.

After her came Ayukawa. She was a larger she-wolf, with lean muscle laden with power. She was ginger in color, with the shade almost singular across her pelt but for the white along her cheeks beneath her eyes and around her brows and scouring her underbelly. Her back, past her dorsal cape, was peppered with black and gray. But it faded only inches from her hindquarters. And her tail was that same russet shade, with a single speck of black along her scent gland and her tail tip.

She had dark golden eyes that looked incredibly exhausted and hollow. And Yugi had the striking idea that perhaps she knew what the touch of death was. And it scared him as he stared at her with a somewhat horrified expression. The smell of ash and fresh flames seemed to streak her fur, he felt, and he wondered briefly at what an incinerator might smell like.

Abruptly, looking at her, he knew.

She'd been part of the experiments…

He shivered as she walked away, flattening his ears against his head as he watched her go. But she did not get far, instead moving to take a seat a few feet from where he and the newest wolf would meet. She lay there, head on her paws, ears flicking as she kept her tail wrapped around her back leg.

And then he turned back.

Yugi bristled, startled and confused. She stood with her head tilted to the side, icy blue eyes peering at him curiously. Her fur was a beautiful glossy black along her head. But beneath her eyes were singular streaks of gold. And beneath this was black as well, white coloring her cheeks beneath this. Her muzzle was split in half with the color, her top along the bridge to her eyes dark like obsidian.

Her neck was mostly silver and gray, ashy in color like fresh smoke. And her chest and underbelly to her back legs were white. Her front lets were streaked with silver, but gray towards the base, then black at the paws. And all four limbs followed this pattern, however the insides of her back legs were deep black like her face. Her tail was dark black, the tip brilliant silver and white.

He flicked an ear, feeling sick for a brief moment.

 _I am Ishizu Ishtar_.

He bristled further and backed up a step, startled. _Ishizu Ishtar_? He repeated the words because he couldn't believe them. Then he flicked an ear, feeling sick again. _There's no way. You don't look anything like…_

Ishizu shook her head. _No, my brother and I do not have much in way of similarities_ , she agreed. Her tail wagged slightly. When Yugi leaned forward faintly, he smelled ice and cold shadows, like ivy draped in winter. And he shivered again as she moved a little closer. Her blue eyes sparkled with something almost like laughter. _Do not worry, however_. _It changes nothing_.

* * *

Yugi blinked and turned his head to look at her over his shoulder. He flicked an ear and tilted his head, not the least bit amused by her appearance there. Lazily the white canine glanced back towards the other wolves and then the red-furred goddess in front of him. But Slifer did not seem to take his unease for anything more than a slight inconvenience as she stopped in front of him. Her golden eyes bore into his and his stomach sloshed with confusion for the smallest of moments.

 _You should do more with them. Simply coming to know their names does not fix your disconnect with them._ Her head tilted and her ears were angled towards him. Her golden eyes flickered back and forth for a moment. _Exercise should do you well to bond with them._

Yugi's head tilted as he considered the pack of wolves in front of him. Each of them had turned towards him with somewhat confused eyes and he wondered at their bemusement. What was there to be puzzled about? He stared at them a moment longer, then felt his stomach drop.

 _Because I'm still here,_ he realized with a guilty sensation. He was still there and he usually wasn't. He was almost always gone without minutes of being there, hours at the latest. He'd spent the whole day with them now, and sunset and, consequently curfew, would eventually end up coming soon as well. It made his fur rise and fall in an uneasy wave of a bristle, stomach churning for a moment.

He glanced at Slifer again. He'd come here to do more with them, to find his place as the alpha, as Atem. When he got home, he'd try to do the same with his family. It was unfair of him to so callously spend more time with one and not the other. His ears flicked and his stomach tossed again. All of the smells and various names that had been thrown at him earlier still burned at his senses and his stomach was in knots as he considered it.

What if he got the names wrong?

It wasn't as simple as when he'd spent all that time with Yami and learned his scent through exposure. It was not as easy as recognizing Slifer against the earthen and rotten smell of the tunnels, the wet slick stones and fresh water. It was not as methodical as his exposure to Obelisk had been, when the god had so effortlessly thrown him around so many times that he'd managed to pin him. It had been an intense myriad of smells and names and various attempts at facial recognition that he was not sure had taken.

He was exhausted just thinking of it all over again and the various names burned in his mind for a moment. Yugi flattened his ears for a moment, considering them and then her more pointedly. He was dizzy at the very aspect before he finally licked his lips and closed his eyes.

Maybe that perfect recall Yami had boasted of before would help him to keep their identities somewhat untangled from each other.

 _What did you have in mind_? he asked rather reluctantly. He opened his eyes again, watching some of the other wolves moving about in front him. Marik and Otogi really were the only males in the pack, and both of them seemed to have favorites. But whereas Marik seemed to have a great _many_ favorites, Otogi seemed more or less exclusive to Mai. They were almost joined at the hip and their banter was more innuendo than mere snark. Yugi had wanted nothing more than to hide with them and the two gods, to escape his own declaration of committing himself to the pack.

 _Perhaps a run through the woods. Although, if you truly wish for unity, a display of strength during a hunt might do you better._ She was watching him with something cunning and sly in her golden eyes and it surprised him to see such a thing. It was not that he had never seen it before. It was that now that they were talking about the _pack_ that she held such a gleam in her gaze. It was unnerving as he watched her. _Wolves bond through exercise, whether it is a simple patrol of the territory or a hunt. I would go for the latter, however. It will instill more belief in you than a simple show of speed._

Yugi blinked and stared at her a moment longer. _But why do I need to do that_? he asked skeptically, unnerved by her blatant staring and that hideous gleam in her eyes which seemed to continue to grow as the seconds passed. _You said it yourself._ All _wolves will respond to my call when I make it._

Slifer's breath came in a wreath around her face and her eyes glowed brilliantly, setting it alight in a beautiful show of golden embers. _Yes, but how do you come to expect such loyalty when you yourself are doubtful of such things_? _If you cannot even believe in it yourself, then why should they_?

Yugi snorted loudly. _I am Atem._

The arrogance in his words made his stomach roll. Bitterly, the white wolf considered himself, his statement making his heart feel almost heavy. He wondered if ever there could be such a heavy burden as false pride and it stung to consider. He flicked an ear, feeling chastised even as the goddess merely glanced at the pack again.

 _She does not believe in you._

Yugi blinked and followed her line of vision. It was a slimmer she-wolf, with a leaner build but a strong body. Her legs were a little longer than the other wolves' and her muzzle the smallest fraction of an inch larger. Her ears weren't as softly rounded, almost sharp like a coyote's.

 _Her_? He racked his brain restlessly. What the hell had been her name? He could not remember for the life of him. He considered her for a long minute, stomach rolling, and sniffed loudly for a moment. _Aki._

The she-wolf beside him seemed to beam at his remembrance. _Yes, that's her name. She was not impressed with your speech and efforts to get to know them all._

I _wasn't impressed by it,_ Yugi thought scornfully, ignoring the goddess for a moment. His eyes fell back on the she-wolf in question, ears pricking forward. He didn't even remember her voice, but he did remember how odd her fur color had seemed to him when the introductions had ended. He'd looked over and spotted her again, bristling faintly with growing unease at the sight of her coat, and had forced himself to relax a heartbeat later when the initial shock had dissipated.

At first she appeared predominantly black, her fur long and thick in its winter pelt. Then she'd gotten closer and where the sun touched her fur, her undercoat had been a brilliant dark chocolate brown that looked almost burgundy in shade. When she walked she seemed more to glide, moving fast and efficiently, with fur that rippled over her pelt beautifully like waves. Her paws were tipped with white, each toe colored the shade of snow. Her muzzle was solid black from the nose upwards for an inch, where it branched downwards almost like wings, and spread outwards along her large cheeks. From there it mixed into a brilliant shade of silver and gray and red cinnamon in certain spots and traveled down the length of her chest to her underbelly and the tip of her tail.

He'd thought, when he'd initially spotted her again, that perhaps she was actually part dog somewhere. But then he'd remembered how she'd appeared when she'd been closer, how she'd commanded the wolves into a line, and that glimmer in her eyes had told him otherwise. There was something ancient, brilliant, and incredibly heartbreaking within them, which had shut his thoughts away completely. Her dark brown eyes had been a shade from her fur, almost as if they were meant to blend in, and upon locking with his they'd flared with a great and terrible hate.

Yugi watched her now, eyes sharp and curious as he studied her, and then blinked and looked away. His eyes fell upon Slifer again. _But she's still here._

The goddess tilted her head, expression one of distaste. _You would allow them to leave you_? she scoffed. The intense cunning had turned to vibrant dissatisfaction and growing disgust. _You would allow your wolves—bred for the purpose of fighting within a war you meant to win—to turn upon their own calling_?

Yugi blinked and then bore his teeth in disgust. _You cannot truly mean to tell me that you all created these wolves for no other purpose than to have their carcasses lying around for the sake of a war_ no one _should have to fight._

 _We have and we will tell you so again,_ Obelisk's voice commented casually, the wolf trotting towards them with an easy stride. His eyes were glowing in the coming shadows, and his lips were curled slightly but it did not look aggressive by any means. Yugi blinked at him and his easy tone, slightly angered but somehow comforted by it as well. At least the gods were consistent. _They were born and raised with one purpose. This pack is meant to be used within the war. The other wolves will come because of who and what you are._

But Yugi had to wonder; what _did_ they think he was? Who did they think he was? And how many of these wolves would assume him to be something he wasn't? Echo had seemed to think he would harm her, though even in her fearful state she had been too smart to turn her teeth on him.

How many of them were going to be disappointed when they saw who he was? How many of them would be disturbed by his mercy and his desire to stop the bloodshed?

How many of them were just as trigger happy as the wolves in front of him? How many of them were as war happy as the gods before him? How many of them thought _he_ was meant to be the same way?

And how many of them might turn on him for _not_ being that way? Were any of them brave enough? Aki had seemed to be just bold enough to display her disdain towards him, but not any open hatred of any kind. He shivered and looked towards her and back.

 _A hunt_? _As in chasing prey and then killing it_?

If he were human Yugi knew Obelisk would have rolled his eyes up into the back of his head with his exasperation. The image was hilarious to the small wolf but he did nothing more than consider it for a moment before shrugging it aside.

His lips had curled back with annoyance and his voice was a simple sneer as he spoke again. _Is the act of spilling blood too much for you_? _Because I think I recall you tearing the head from Pegasus's body without hesitation. And what of Arkana, whose face you ripped to pieces and a throat you tore out_?

Yugi was silent for a long time, ears flicking about for a moment before he narrowed his eyes and considered him more closely. He glanced sideways at Slifer but the amusement in her eyes angered him to the point of a near snarl of disgust.

He turned back to Obelisk. _I don't recall being in the right frame of mind either, do you_? he spat.

Slifer let out a breath that sounded oddly like laughter and his fur rose furiously as he spun on her. Obelisk blinked a few times and then tilted his head, voice simplistic as he murmured, _You truly do not believe that you can kill another creature without being too angry to think your actions through_? _Are you so foolish a boy_? _You cannot believe yourself so pure, surely_?

Yugi drew his lips back. He bore his teeth furiously and angled his ears forward. _You disgust me._

The gray wolf snorted and flicked his ears as he took a seat. His frame seemed to loom over Yugi in this position, and his raised chin did more than enough to make his heart skip a beat with discomfort. Yugi stared at him, unnerved and almost physically winded from it all.

 _Because I'm a wolf and you're a sheep with the pelt of one_? he scoffed. His eyes were bright with disdain and growing amusement. His ears flicked towards one of the other wolves nearby. They were circling and trotting about in the snow, sensing the tension surrounding the three of them and wondering at their own ability towards intervention. _You should look upon yourself in the mirror, Yugi Motou. Or do you not know yourself well enough to do such a simple thing as that_?

He bristled and snapped his teeth an inch from his nose. His breath came in heavy puffs of white before his face, glittering and large, dense in the cold air. He wished he could have been powerful enough to forget his own weakness in exchange for the leap he'd have to take to attack the god of war. But his mind backtracked rapidly, hideous in its desire for self-preservation. He could not win. Obelisk would make a fool of him. He'd rip Yugi to tiny, unrecognizable pieces.

The pack would be alerted to just how frail his ability was to even exist as a wolf to begin with. And that was something he truly _could not_ allow. So he backed up a step, still snarling, and glared at him somewhat uncertainly. No, he didn't see himself in the mirror anymore. No, he didn't think he could face himself there for more than a few moments.

But at least _he_ had not lost his humanity.

He glanced between them now. Had either of them ever _known_ a sense of humanity to begin with? Or had they simply known the cruelty of war so horrifically that they had never come across the slightest sense of it? Had they never changed?

He bristled and curled his lips back, then backed up a step as he looked at them. They were so alien to consider; such ideas didn't belong in his head. He didn't want to lose himself. He didn't want to forget what made him human…

But what was so great about being human?

It hadn't saved him from the loss of Yami on the river.

It had not kept him from being injected with wolfsbane or silver on multiple occasions.

It had not saved Shizuka in the hospital.

It had not made it easier to pretend upon being with his friends.

It had not rescued him from his own depression.

What the _fuck_ was so great about _being human_?

What was so great about being Atem?

Was it even _worth_ it to be Yugi Motou?

Yugi felt something cold forming in his gut. _You're the past, Obelisk,_ he spat before he could stop himself, _but I am the future._

 _And what a fine future it is to behold,_ the gray wolf drawled sardonically with a flick of his ear. _You may present the future but you do not own it yet. And until you do,_ I _am the_ present.

And he hated him all the more for it.

Yugi turned away before his anger could take hold. He was not stupid enough to pick a fight with the god. Obelisk would lay waste to him. And that was nothing he could manage to fend against. The small wolf flattened his ears and glanced at the wolves again, unnerved at the ease of which they seemed to draw towards each other. They broke off into small groups at times, wandering without a second glance. And it made his heart ache to realize that perhaps he would never be able to do that same thing.

He raised his head the slightest fraction as Mai and Otogi glanced towards him. Both of them lowered theirs slightly and wagged their tails but he didn't know if it was jovial or congratulations or mere submission. The thought made his skin crawl under his pelt.

 _You expect us all to hunt_? _The pack is over twenty wolves. There's just no way that_ —

 _They all hunt together when you are not around._

But how? How could such a large pack hunt when it would be so easy to detect them? There were so many of them there. There were so many and even if they could all hunt, how did they manage to catch food traveling in such a huge group? He could not understand how it was that it was possible.

Obelisk gave him a look that he knew would have translated into a smirk had he been human. _I'll show you how it's possible if you will simply call to attention such a task._

Yugi considered him for a moment. Was it even worth it? The wolves were so much like a cult. They did as they desired with disregard to anything that did not affect them in any manner. It was as if personal gain were all which mattered to any of them. And, if they were truly willing to kill simply for the sake of secrecy and having Atem among them, then what was to prevent them attempting to do so with him now?

Hadn't Yami said something similar to hint towards how they might go against his family and friends for the sake of controlling him? They were closed off from the world; they performed sacrifices of other wolves. If that did not define the makings of a cult, he did not know what did.

The thought made him want to puke. How was it that he could even stand to be among them in the first place? His stomach knotted and he looked between the two gods cautiously for a moment. The pack was of followers and the gods were their superiors but _Atem_ was their _absolution_. He was their reason for existence. He was the rise and fall of the sun and the moon. He brought life to their forms when they were wary and exhausted.

He was like a god which received more worship than the rest.

He was the future.

But Obelisk was right.

The two gods were the present.

Yugi flicked an ear and tilted his head slightly as he peered at the two of them. If he were to summon them for a hunt, did they expect him to lead it? How was he supposed to do that? He could not bear the thought of having to hunt and kill for nothing more than the sake of showing these wolves he was powerful enough to lead them. And what proof did he truly have to provide them? It made as little sense as the very idea of the thought of the wolves pledging themselves to him in the first place.

But perhaps it was not a bad thing to give them another reason to believe in his worth. Why should he disregard the idea of giving them more reason to follow him than what the gods deemed their "purpose"? Yugi felt lightheaded to look at them now, but shook it off moments later.

 _Then let's get a move on with this,_ he said with a somewhat dismissive sneer of a tone. He turned away as the two gods swapped looks and quickly trotted forward without a backwards glance. The other wolves responded to his unspoken presence with immediate glances in his direction. Each of them watched with curious eyes, almost stunned by the alpha's appearance before them once more. Yugi raised his chin, lifted his tail slightly, and then moved forward a step further. _I am calling for a hunt._

Aki was the first to respond, brown eyes growing wide before she bristled faintly. Her gaze flickered about the other wolves for a moment, as if she were nervous but incredibly angry as well. A few feet away from her, Marik lifted his head and peered at him in slight bewilderment. Mai and Otogi both blinked and turned with wide eyes before subsequently tilting their heads in surprise. The brown and white she-wolf came towards him with a somewhat dismissive expression to her eyes.

 _Hunt_? _You wish to call us to hunt_? She was sneering and sounded unusually comfortable and able in her spoken words. Yugi peered at her with his ears pricked forward, lips threatening to curl back in growing disdain. She had been blatant in her disregard towards him, even before he had come to officially know her name. Oftentimes he would see her for only a second and then she would be long gone. She had openly ignored him when he had spoken formerly and now did not make even the slightest of differences. He curled his lips back, showing his teeth now. She peered at him coolly. _You barely spend time with us and then you call us to allow you to know us. And now you demand that we_ hunt _for you_?

For _me_? Yugi echoed her in disgust. _No, you can hunt_ with _me_.

Aki snorted loudly enough that several of the others startled. Nervous glances were swapped around. And then somewhat excited looks were cast at them. Yugi could feel the fur lifting along his back and the disdain in his blood was rapidly growing into a ravenous hatred. He could spill her blood and maybe it would alleviate some of his fury. Maybe it would bring his personality back to what it had been before. Maybe, if he tore into her, he could get rid of some of the pain and the anger and all of it would go away for a few minutes.

And wouldn't that be _worth_ it?

He almost lunged at her. His mouth had opened the smallest of millimeters. And then it snapped shut in a snarl as Obelisk and Slifer moved to his sides. The she-wolf came to his left and the god of war to his right. It was somehow stunning to him how swiftly even Aki took notice of this. Within mere seconds the brown and white she-wolf had backed up several steps and subsequently lowered her chin a fraction. Her eyes fell onto the snow beyond one of their paws and not once did she show them the same arrogance.

And he hated her for it.

But he hated the gods more for showing their capability to draw it from her.

Yugi felt the fur fall flat on his back again. He looked sideways at Obelisk. _You're to join us,_ he announced, though he'd known the other wolf had planned to do so long before. He wrinkled his nose when the gray canine glanced at him, then turned towards Mai and Otogi. How did the hunts normally go? He couldn't recall. Alphas were to lead them in hopes of finding prey, but they all separated and tried to hunt the weakest within a herd, right? But did _werewolves_ hunt like that?

He wracked his brain but he couldn't know. Yami had hunted on his own. He'd never needed help. And he'd only ever seen him before or after he'd gone about it. He'd eat and then return or he'd devour his catch and then trot along again. There was no amount of him trying to force Yugi to help him, nor ever an attempt to teach the smaller wolf how to do so on his own. Yami had been careful not to make him feel he had to do it. And the one time he'd _truly_ bothered to watch him hunt, the wolf had caught and released a single rabbit multiple times.

Yugi swallowed and looked towards Slifer for a moment. How had her daughter done this? How had she led so many wolves so effortlessly to hunt or do _anything_ in general?

The thought was crazy to him. How did anyone keep track of so many lives? And what of the hierarchy? Ever since he had set foot in the camp, things had seemed to become more and more chaotic. It did not help how often he neglected them, however. He was aware of that, even if he did not want to linger on such an obvious flaw he displayed so blatantly.

It was bewildering and confusing to him in every sense of the thought. He did not know how anyone could so easily find a place among twenty others and be accepted as their leader. It was insane to him. How was it even slightly possible? Yugi felt dizzy and small in the shadow she had left over the pack. He did not know how to fill the darkness her absence so keenly left for him to embrace.

And his lack of understanding could have been hidden before, cushioned almost effortlessly due simply to the presence of Yami's being there. If he were still there at his side, he could have explained. He could have helped him to find his answers or to seem more official an alpha. He lacked in every department, for his disregard and his stunted knowledge of it all.

 _Are you going to join us_?

The red she-wolf did not blink at him, shaking her head slowly and studying him with her intense golden yes. _No_ , she answered dismissively. _I will not be a part of this. But Obelisk will do you well._

Yugi huffed softly. _Yes, he'll do fine,_ he snapped with slight embitterment. He glanced at the gray wolf with growing disdain and turned away again. _Mai, Otogi, come with me. You'll be my flanks._

The two wolves blinked in surprise for a moment and then began to race forward. The announcement seemed to further ruffle Aki, however, because the she-wolf bristled as they passed and almost seemed to want to chomp her teeth in resentment. Yugi took the smallest hint of pride at angering her further but a bite of guilt came with it as well. Why should she be so upset about it? Had she expected him to call on her?

The thought made him falter. Was _she_ the original beta? He had seen her that night when he'd stumbled upon the sacrifices. But he'd never seen her do much beyond sit and watch. And he'd assumed she was just as the others were—spectators who wished to see Code Name Atem come from all the carnage.

So it made little sense to him. She had not even sat with the alpha prior. And he had not seen her directly associated with any of it. His stomach ached as he fought back the urge to glance over his shoulder. She would get angrier and he didn't need that.

He doubted she would actually attack him outright but a verbal spat would require too much energy for him to maintain and hold his own in. So he shrugged it off.

Mai was a few inches away from him and Otogi was on her other side. The two of them glanced at him with something like elated puzzlement. He looked at them for a moment, then snorted softly and almost wagged his tail at them. It was odd how nervous they seemed.

But he didn't bother to comment on it as they continued forward and now he could hear the other wolves beginning to follow. They moved in what seemed to be pairs and small groups of three as he was doing. He couldn't fully tell due to the sound of their paws on the ground, the way the snow crunched loudly and their breaths seemed to come in unison behind him. They sounded like an army, moving in the same heartbeat and never pausing. It was almost enough to make his fur rise in a bristle.

A moment passed and Yugi waited for the inevitable. As he'd expected, only a few more minutes slipped by. Then Obelisk came to his side, pushing between him and Mai with little effort. The she-wolf and her companion naturally fell back a step and then moved to take the places directly behind them. Yugi thought of traffic and cars merging in lanes for the smallest of moments. Then he shrugged it off and turned his attention towards the god with a sideways glance.

 _So what now_?

The gray wolf snorted softly and Yugi noticed how languid his stride was, wondering if he himself looked so lazy and casual in his movements. _I suppose we'll go for the boars. They are closest, yes_? he commented with a voice that said he clearly did not give a damn. It made Yugi's stomach drop and his mind race for a moment.

Pain lanced its way through his heart and spread through his veins with each pump. His lungs tightened for a moment and he begged his thoughts to turn away. But, by the gods, was it nice to hear Yami's voice in his head again, soft and simplistic.

"I've only hunted boar once. I preferred the serows. But I do remember that they were somewhat heavier and harder to kill. The serows have that thick fur during winter. But the boars possess strong hides all year round."

Yugi felt his heart pounding and he wondered if the god beside him could sense it. Did he know where his mind had gone? Did he know how broken he felt at the mere memory? How long ago had it been? Weeks? A month?

"Serows tend to look back over their shoulders constantly. I did not ever truly bother to attempt stalking them. Boars were more likely to attack you in response. It was harder to take one down because they constantly charged and tried to keep in time with you. And their tusks were much sharper than I assumed they would be."

Yugi felt sick as the words faded from his thought.

Yami had gotten hurt. Yami, the wolf who seemed to be able to pick fights and win no matter the odds stacked against him. The same one who had so recklessly gone to save him that first day he changed. The boar had managed to scratch his leg, had put a sense of wariness in Yami. And he had the sudden thought that perhaps the boar had done more than just that mere cut.

And his heart hurt more than ever.

He lowered his head slightly. _Aren't the boars more dangerous_? he finally asked, eyes cold as he looked at him sideways.

 _Any prey animal can be dangerous. Tusks and hide make them strong but they can be killed all the same._

 _That's not the—_

 _Ask these wolves what they eat most._

His ears flicked about for a moment. They ate boars more than serows? He supposed that made sense. The boars were going to be in larger groups, weren't they? Then again, he couldn't remember all that much about serows to begin with. He had limited knowledge of prey animals. Predators had always been his forte when it came to learning about them. And now he almost wished he'd learned more ahead of time.

But he did not suppose it actually mattered. The wolves ate what they wanted. And they probably had a lot of experience with the boars as it was.

It took only twenty minutes for them to catch a sign of them. Obelisk lowered his nose to the snow and then shot him a sideways look before trotting ahead with his tail raised only slightly. The white wolf did not bother to try to overtake him or go to his side. He simply quickened his pace. In turn, as one, the wolves did the same behind him. They were like a river in the richness of their coats as they moved. Their eyes were trained forward, their ears pricked, tails coming up in slight wags.

Obelisk stopped a little away and now Yugi could hear them. The snow was being dug into. The boars were panting, breathing out so loudly he imagined they were dragons instead. The white wolf crept closer and he was oddly shocked by the sight of them. They were huge, so much larger than he'd originally assumed they'd be.

And the tusks were so immense that they made his stomach drop. The boars each boasted a height near the same as the wolves themselves. The realization and seeing them in such hulking size was horrifying. His eyes were caught on them, holding tight in the effort of giving his brain recognition and description.

They were bulky masses of two coats, with feet buried beneath the snow. The front of the body was incredibly powerful, full of such strength and muscle that it made him falter to a stop. The back legs were thinner, so much so that he thought of wasted muscle from a senior animal. The shoulders seemed to rise like the peaks of a mountain, dark and hideous against the white of the snow. And the thick neck made his fur shudder as he imagined just the effort it would take to puncture such muscle. And, by the gods, their heads were huge. He did not know what more to do than gape at the immensity of its skull.

His fur shuddered along his back. Obelisk looked not the least bit undone by the sight of them. And some of the other wolves even began to spread about to attempt an ambush technique. But Yugi was frozen there, shocked into sheer stupidity by it all. How were they so big? He hadn't realized they would be so large.

His stomach rolled painfully and he pricked his ears forward. The other wolves began to move towards the shadows along the bare trees further beyond his vantage point. They faded into the darkness as if swallowed whole. He saw them in his peripheral but never turned his attention away.

Obelisk moved past him, trotting a few feet along. And then, before his eyes, Yugi watched the wolves rush forward. More than twenty canines now sprang towards a crowd of over ten full grown boars. And the mere ferocity of their gesture and the defensive flanking of the pigs made his heart pound hideously.

There were thick manes of fur along the tops of several of the huge bodies. How was it that the wolves were brave enough to go up against _male_ boars? They were vicious, hideous, and they would likely rip them to pieces.

Aki was one of the first to get hit. A tusk caught her shoulder. She wheeled around. Her teeth snapped on the very bridge of its large nose. The tusk glinted red at the very tip but the she-wolf did not respond beyond moving back a few steps. She and Mai stood inches apart, tails wagging in the air slowly as they bore their teeth.

Otogi was nearest Obelisk. The two of them were attempting to drive the pigs apart from each other. Marik was charging recklessly at a male, then wheeling back and rushing again. He, too, was trying to find a weakness and a way to separate them, Yugi realized. His teeth were constantly shown. His fur was in a bristle. His tail was wagging. When he was chased, nothing of his posture changed. He was angry; he was ready to spill blood. He did not care to do much else in all actuality.

Yugi crouched in the snow. The wolves all circled and danced amongst the huge shapes. They wove their ways like shadows. He could feel the surprising urge to join them. But caution held him still. As Marik was finally caught and tossed forward, Yugi flinched. The wolf landed on his back, rolled over, and got up again. The attack seemed to have hardly fazed him.

It almost told the excitement in him to charge forward. It nearly made him think that perhaps he would not feel any pain either. But the harsh reality of it struck him as well. The wolves were all used to these things. They knew what they were doing. They had so often gone about hunting like this. And there was not one of them who did not know their form better than him, he was sure.

And he remembered, for a moment, how the adrenaline had crashed upon fighting Obelisk. He'd felt the pain then. And the gray wolf had not even meant to hurt him in any manner. He'd simply meant to distract him. He'd meant to drag him out of the labs. He'd meant to make sure he got out of it okay. Just the mere thought of his encounter then did wonders to cease any sense of casual enticement.

His stomach knotted and he bristled again. The wolves continued to dance around the pigs. Then they turned and weaved between them. The family unit separated only for a moment. Then they began to close in on the wolves, forcing them back out of their circle. The snarling that came about was mixed with loud squeals. When Yugi blinked, Marik had caught one of the pigs by the leg. He was holding it in place, trapping it. When it twisted and tried to charge him, he moved with it. It ran in a circle, panting and squealing.

Then Obelisk came forward. The solid gray wolf slammed into its side. It screamed and fell from the impact. Some of the wolves leaped on it. Others dwelled at the edges. Aki was forcing a boar away from where it was attempting to get at the two males. Otogi and Mai chased another. A pig squealed. Marik snarled and snapped. Obelisk kept his entire body still, using his weight to pin it down.

But it was thrashing and Yugi was amazed that neither of them went flying. Another wolf sprang at the query. And then another followed suit. Yugi could hardly tell them apart in his shock. The way they leaped into the action of trying to kill the pig was so animalistic it was stunning. His human side was appalled, but a part of him was mesmerized. They were snapping and digging teeth in. One of them was trying to tear open the gut.

And then Yugi felt it. Something inside of him grew enlarged, panicked and yet ecstatic. Waves of heat swept through his blood. His mouth opened and closed. His ears flattened against his skull.

Snow was flying in the air. The wolves were snarling. The boars were squealing. Several of the canines dashed from their prey and back to. At first Yugi didn't understand. But there was a roaring squeal of a noise. It seemed to make the very air quiver. In its core, the wolves responded in unison. Each of them released the boar and tried to run. But the pigs charged without a second thought.

The wolves snarled and snapped. They turned tail and fled a few feet. The pigs chased. The bleeding victim they'd chosen struggled to its feet. Yugi crouched lower in the snow. Fear lanced through him. His breathing came out in small gasps.

There was a hideous whimper. Yugi blinked and raised his head. In the snow, the boars could not see him. But the she-wolf in front of him screamed. And he struggled to recognize her. But the smaller form did not seem to notice him. He blinked. Blood splattered the snow. The wolf screamed again. The boars lowered their heads and—

He moved. Obelisk's head snapped up. Aki, panting and quivering, froze. Marik bore his teeth with wide eyes. Mai flattened her ears against her skull. Otogi blinked, horrified. The others panted and collectively looked up with shocked, bewildered expressions.

The wolf was as white as the snow. His fur was bright, glistening. Where the moonlight touched him he seemed to glow. But it wasn't this that surprised them. The canine charged straight at the boars. His teeth were bared, fur up in a bristle. His tail was raised, ears pricked. He snapped his teeth inches from the boar's face. And the beast squealed as if in horror.

Teeth glistening with blood, the pig backed up. The wolf snapped his jaws again. Then he launched forward once more. His teeth were opened wide enough to almost swallow the animal. In a flash he'd caught its eye. The other pigs squealed and charged.

Obelisk snarled and rushed forward. But Yugi simply released. In a matter of moments the boar's tusks were tossed at him. The smaller wolf lowered his body and snapped his teeth. Something broke and splintered. The pig screamed. The white canine dodged away and charged another.

In mere seconds the pigs were running. The wolf was shaking, covered in blood. Obelisk could not tell if it was his own. He was trembling too hard. His blue-violet eyes were plum in the dark. He was panting but looked far from exhausted.

A few seconds passed. In the darkness, Yugi looked like a specter, so white it was amazing he existed. Obelisk trotted forward cautiously. He pricked his ears and looked the smaller wolf over. But Yugi paid him no attention. Rather he lowered his head, moved forward a few steps, and whined with his ears flattened against his skull.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he saw red eyes and black fur. And the blood pooled around his mouth. His sides were slicked. His entire body was frozen and still. But in the snow in front of him, a much smaller, lithe body of smooth muscle and glistening fur lay. It was mostly red but the undercoat was shaded an odd brown mixed with tawny. And the way the legs were splayed spoke of a broken ribcage. The body was trampled almost in half. Fur, muscle, and grizzle were splattered upon the ice surrounding it.

Yugi could not breathe for a moment. His entire body shook. His ribs seemed to crack beneath the strain of breathing. His face was wreathed with shaky exhales. He shuddered harder. Then his eyes flickered as if he'd blinked. Obelisk could not tell if he had. But the other wolf was so hauntingly still, frozen in place, that it made him stiffen. Finally, as if in a daze, the white canine looked over.

 _I…I was too late. I don't… H-how…_? He trailed off for a moment, then bore his teeth. His entire body was shaking again. His eyes were wild. _Why didn't any of you_ help _her_?!

Obelisk did not speak for a moment. His amber-specked eyes flickered away to the body and then back. He stretched his neck out, sniffing for a few moments before wrinkling his nose. _The purpose of this event was to hunt. None of us were able to watch each other while we were doing so. She should have had the sense to pay enough attention and not get herself hurt._

He bristled and snapped his teeth. _She's dead, Obelisk_! _Because none of us were paying attention when she was being trampled to death. How do you justify that with hunting_? _That's bullshit_!

 _Perhaps for you, seeing as you were not doing anything to help feed the rest of your wolves, it is nonsensical. But for us, we were busy ensuring that we ourselves did not end up being gouged with tusks._ The gray wolf flicked an ear and sniffed loudly for a moment before looking at her body curiously. How odd that her spine had snapped beneath the pressure. She was completely sheered opened on the side facing them. And her entrails were bright pink against the red. Her fur was slicked back completely, torn away on the outer edges. _It is a tragedy but it does not end things for the living._

Yugi's immediate response was to ask if he would feel the same way had he been the one broken so pathetically and lying before them in his own blood. And then he remembered himself. He was Atem here. And he was the most important wolf within their ranks, regardless of even the gods that so often surrounded him.

And he wondered how it was that anyone could think that. How could _any_ of them think his life more important than that of the wolf beside them? How could any of them assume that the person they'd grown up and survived with was worth less than a stranger? Did belief systems really dictate such things?

He looked at them. Marik was covered in blood from the mouth to his chest. He was licking at his mouth, clearly impatient and hungry. Aki was breathing slightly hard and the tiniest trickle of blood slicked her shoulder. Her mouth, too, had the smallest touch of red. And her eyes were glittering darkly with hunger. Mai was favoring her left leg but the wound looked extremely artificial, the bottom of her limb bright red. Beside her Otogi had come about the events unscathed, teal eyes bright with excitement and hunger. His white-tipped ears flicked for a brief moment and then he lowered his eyes and sniffed at the snow with a leisurely breath.

Yugi stared at each of them and wondered for a moment. And, when he turned his head to look at Obelisk again, there was the faintest touch of disbelief to trickle upon his insides. He blinked, bewildered, and his fur bristled slightly once more.

Would he have cared if it had been Ra or Slifer lying there? But why should he?

They could come back.

They would heal and come back the same as they had the moment before their death.

His stomach dropped. Obelisk didn't feel remorse. Yet they had all claimed that they loved the living wolves. They had all said… Even Morrigan had… He wanted to vomit. But what came out instead was a soft comment of, _I have something to do. Take her back to the camp and bury her somewhere._

Yugi all but fled when he turned away and picked his way past Mai. The she-wolf gave him a confused, concerned look, but he did not pay her any attention.

* * *

He dropped in front of her with what felt like stones filling his gut. His paws clicked on the slabs of slate and his fur bristled briefly as he listened to his own steps amplified violently throughout the darkness around them. The she-wolf glanced up immediately but did it with such leisure that he knew he had not surprised her. Nor did she truly care that he had come to see her.

 _You knew that she was going to die._

Her ears flicked and her golden eyes were glacial. _Of course I did,_ she drawled in a somewhat lazy tone. _I know each death to transpire. I could tell you in all its entirety which of the pack will fall and when. But to do so is dangerous. I can see your anger, your selflessness. You wish to save them all. You are a fool to assume such responsibility. You do not possess the strength to save yourself, let alone them._

He drew his lips back. _Isn't that what I am meant to do_? he spat. _But how can I when none of you will help me_?!

Slifer tilted her head. _The three of us have done more for you than you know. That's not even including the numerous things the Harbingers have done for you as well._ Her golden eyes flickered away for the smallest fraction of a moment. Her lips pulled back into something almost akin a human sneer. Then she turned away entirely and lowered her head onto her paws.

She looked so incredibly weary, as if immortality had done nothing to slow her true aging. He wondered at how many scars might have littered her skin beneath her fur. And he had to wonder how much she had seen and experienced, how jaded it must have made her. And then he wondered if perhaps she was so dismissive and beyond grief of death because she herself had experienced it before. Did it change someone that much? He knew people went through stages and sometimes they were stuck so far in one that they never recovered. But had Slifer ever experienced that? Or had she always been so bitter and cold? Resilient towards pain?

Had she ever felt as if the world were moving against her? That every part of her life was hollow and someone important was missing beyond her understanding? Had she been too young to truly know and understand her mother and family's deaths?

The thought bewildered him. How could she have suffered loss like that and not aspired to want to protect the ones who were still alive now? But then, she saw their entire lives in her own eyes, didn't she? She knew them. She possessed the knowledge of every birth to the end of their lives, didn't she? How was it fair of him to judge her knowing that?

 _Because she doesn't seem to ever truly care,_ his mind spat forth furiously. And the cycle began again, anger creeping into him. His sense of confusion was swept away within moments.

He bore his teeth at her, but her exhausted expression seemed to undo some of his aggression and he wondered at himself for a moment. It was so much easier to be angry and tired than to try to find sympathy and compassion. It was overwhelming how simplistic it was in comparison.

 _You let me lead them off into the woods knowing that little girl was going to die._

 _You do not truly believe that you are capable of fighting death, Atem_? she drawled dismissively, turning her head and eyeing him sharply. _I assume you are confused or perhaps you have simply forgotten the warning of which your Harbinger friend spoke of. Death stalks your paws, Code Name Atem. You have no reprieve from the sight of it. As is the same for all other wolves._

He snarled low in his throat. _I could have saved her._

 _Could have, would have, should have,_ she spat back, but her voice was free of venom and laden with wary exhaustion. _Does it truly matter_? _Death happens. It will_ always _happen._ _You are a fool to think otherwise, Atem._ You _cannot prevent it more than you could your own collision with that boy, Ushio. You do not define your life. Your life happens. That is the way that_ Atem _lives. He is a god of a smaller decree. And he will be treated as such._

 _That's not the way the world works_! _That's not how life works. People can change their circumstances all of the time—_

 _But the wolves cannot._ She sat up and her eyes were glowing in the darkness, boring into his body hideously. Her lips peeled back and her teeth flashed brilliantly in the shadows. _We are bound by a very strict nature. Our DNA makes things hard for us. Our natural instinct makes survival something almost impossible rather than obtainable. You do not understand your own path and that is forgivable but it is not your right to judge me. Nor my sisters or brothers. You have limited understanding. You do not grasp the concept of eternal life and the gift of immortality without spite._ You _are not the Atem that is needed._

 _And the other one_? he spat. _I have yet to see anything that hint at a second Pure-Blood to begin with. Either there isn't a second or you all have withheld him._

She tilted her head. _And give you the opportunity to hide behind them_? she asked in a snide tone that made him bristle with something almost akin fearful apprehension. _Why should we do that_? _You've embraced the name but neglect the significance behind it._

Yugi stared at her, disturbed by the implications but well aware of them at the same time. It caused his fur to bristle more noticeably and he hated her for it. More than ever he despised her for her ability to press upon his weaknesses like this. It was overwhelming to see and it made his heart ache where it pumped rapidly in his chest. He drew in a deep, slightly overwhelmed breath.

 _Why me_? _Why is it me_?

Slifer watched him for a long moment, then slowly moved to sit up. If she had looked any wearier at that moment he would have thought her bones would pop from the action. It was exhausting to him to merely watch her and his skin shuddered beneath his pelt as he tilted his head.

 _Why you_? she repeated in a low, almost wistful tone. Her golden eyes flickered away for a moment and then fell upon him again slowly. _You are the blood of Ra, are you not_? _And the first in generations to come out of the dormant stance of your lycanthropy. Do you not understand the significance of that alone_? _But you named yourself Atem. You proclaimed it to that pack of yours. And you ask me now why it is_ you _are to be Atem_? _Why it is you who are so important_?

 _Important_? _I'm a pawn in a war—_

She snapped her teeth, bristling as she spun on him. _You are the king, the battle cry, the last breath._ You _are the primordial force to kill and cause bloodshed. Do you not understand_? _You are the most significant part_ of _this war._ She blinked and her eyes flickered away. _Do you truly believe that I would have saved you otherwise_? _Or Obelisk_? _Or my sister Morrigan_? _Her very son is the melee of it all as well. He has to fend for himself against those humans who wish to harvest his power and use him for breeding. And her daughter is so young she could lose her innocence and thus her soul from the pressure. And gods forbid her other daughter reigns loose._

 _She has three_? he managed to breathe out. _But there are only two Pure-Bloods_!

 _And one of her children is not pure. But where her power is limited is not something I know._

 _Valon… Is he going to survive_?

She blinked and raised her head to look at him again, a glint in her eyes that said she wished to rip his head from his body. _You worry about the Harbinger more than your own kind_?

 _We're all wolves, aren't we_? Yugi snapped bitterly. _We're all the same species. Just because he's a hellhound and I'm a lycanthrope doesn't mean more than blood type. And he's a friend. Of course I'm going to worry about him._

Slifer wrinkled his lips back and bore her teeth. _The future is not set in stone. Beyond your involvement in this war, there is nothing I know of for certain but the next death to happen. As for Valon, his future is a mystery to me. I am not the god he prays to. His mother and father are._

Yugi was frozen in place, horror swamping his senses. _His mother and father are gods_? he whispered, eyes so wide they seemed to eclipse his face. _How am I supposed to compete with_ that?!

 _You are a Pure-Blood. We won the war before. We shall again now,_ she drawled in a simplistic tone, as if there were nothing more to say about it all. _Their blood is watered down from breeding with humans. Yours, however, is not. It was simply dormant before now. That is the difference._

 _That's crap, Slifer. Valon's parents are both gods—_

She snorted loudly. _Yes but what is your point_? she asked dismissively. _Have you forgotten that there are two of you_? _You and the second Pure-Blood exist to shoulder a burden of equal proportions._

 _But I don't know who it is_! _You said it's not Yami. Then who is it_?!

Slifer shook her head and got to her feet. But she did not attempt to loom over him as Obelisk might have. Rather she simply stood there and shook herself out once before turning away again. _Why should knowing their name make a difference for you_? _You fail to understand that while they exist, they cannot finish what you have already begun. Do you not wish to save the others_? _I was under the impression that you desired to help them._

 _And yet death stalks my paws. You have told me so, Obelisk has said the same, as has Ra. Between the three of you, I am amazed that I'm not surrounded by carnage—_

 _But you are, are you not_? _The child who died tonight, your best human's younger sister, Yami, the wolves he's killed, the heads you yourself have taken off. Tell me, Yugi, when did any of that cease to exist because of your mounting stress_? _When did any of that change simply for the sake of your distress_? She curled her lip. _Yugi Motou is a human boy who values life, is he not_? _So why does Atem the wolf fail to think to fight for them_?

He was frozen for a moment. _I do care. I…I do value… But what's the_ point, _Slifer_? _I can't change anything, can I_? _They're still going to die._

She looked at him spitefully. _Yes they shall, but all things young must pass when they grow old. But generations are built on what happened before them. You can either allow them to survive or bring an end to the future of wolves who might otherwise make changes that we ourselves cannot._

 _Atem is meant to secure the survival of the wolves, is that not true_? _And how is he meant to do that_?

 _By being the leader the wolves need._

 _The wolves can't follow an alpha that's already dead._ He halted, eyes growing wide, and Slifer studied him with brilliant golden eyes. She almost seemed to see through him and his heart began to race with panic. The smaller white wolf paused for a long minute, gaping as his jaws fell open, and turned and ran the way he'd come.

* * *

The edges of the forest were blurred, the fine definition of them almost invisible within the dark corners. The clouds were dark, thunderous, and the pine needles looked like skeletal fingers. Yet the shadows seemed filtered through with soft touches of light, gentle and beautiful beyond what he'd ever known. Yugi stared forward against the darkness, considering it all, and watched the branches as they moved ever so slightly.

In the dark there was limited definition to the space around him but the sky seemed miles above and the shadows seemed to drench the earth like oil. And the branches were so tightly knit as to be that of a huge spider web. His skin crawled but the blackness was a blanket too thick to truly see beyond.

When he lowered his eyes again, his heart was racing. When had the wolf gotten so close to him? The massive frame was fuzzy around the edges, the hairs blending in with the dark shadows beyond them. Yugi would have been alarmed if he had not known those brilliant eyes. With a sense of panic and growing definition, the white wolf hurried forward in a bound, the snow lagging him slightly but the muscles in his body doing well to plow through it.

The red gaze looked unusually cold and suffocating, like the very manifestation of the winter around them. But Yugi did not slow, stopping only when he was feet away, panting from the exertion and feeling amazing despite it.

 _Aibou_!

The red eyes flickered, curious, but the black wolf did not respond beyond this. The dark nose was wrinkling softly as it drew in breaths and Yugi wondered if he was imagining it that the other canine seemed to be _scenting_ him. His heart was stuttering in his chest, eyes growing wide and confused.

 _Yami…_ He faltered. The wolf showed him no true signs of recognition. Instead it sniffed softly at him again and angled its nose to the snow as if looking for prey beneath the ice. Yugi shivered and moved forward another step but Yami did not regard him for a moment. It was only when Yugi lowered his own head and snarled low in his throat that the other slowly responded.

First the ears pricked. Then, silently, the wolf blinked. The red eyes flickered towards him. The gaze was colder now. The twitch of its nose stilled. Lips began to curl and pull back. Incisors glinted in front of him. Along its neck, the fur began to rise. And then, with a snap of its teeth, the wolf straightened. Its shoulders squared. Its tail rose slowly.

Did he not recognize him?

Yugi fell silent, then raised his tail into a wag, keeping it parallel to his spine. The black wolf stared for a moment. Then he turned away again, aggression dropped in an instant. The smaller wolf felt as if something inside of him were shattering away into nothingness.

 _Please, Yami…_

The other canine stepped away from him, moving as if to slip around his side. The action made Yugi bristle. Immediately he stepped in front of him again, growling now. The forceful action was almost enough to make them bump shoulders with the speed. But Yami dodged back and snapped his teeth again. The two of them stared at one another. The red eyes were glittering now, with a brightness of rage and wild confusion.

There was a feral quality to his expression, something that shook Yugi to the core. He did not seem to be merely looking at him. He seemed to be peering _through_ him. Or perhaps he was imagining killing him. The sight brought a stutter to his lungs. His heart skipped beats. His stomach dropped. Yami stared at him, furious, wild, and altogether confused.

Did he even hear him? Did he understand him?

Yugi flattened his ears against his head. He didn't want to fight him. He especially didn't want to hurt him. Where were they anyways? It didn't look like the forest of frost— _Paradise_ , he reminded himself abruptly—that the gods had drawn him into for counsel.

This wasn't the same place.

But was it the forest beyond that river of blood?

Yugi considered for a moment. Then he licked his lips and moved his head to a tilt, bristling faintly. Maybe in his state of fear from the dreams, Yami had suppressed memories and did not wish to acknowledge him. The smaller wolf was frozen for a moment. Then he craned his neck to lick at his forehead. Oddly enough, the black wolf did not so much as flinch from the soft touch. Instead his nose wrinkled and confusion lit his red eyes for a moment.

 _I'm sorry, Yami,_ he said quietly, a strained note creeping into his tone. _I'm so sorry. I wasn't able to save you. And I couldn't protect you. I'm so sorry. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I'm so sorry for not being able to protect you. And I shouldn't have said you weren't… I didn't mean to say that you might be…_

The wolf tilted his head, pricking his ears forward. Red eyes regarded him for a long minute, both unclear and somehow startlingly powerful in their clarity. He bristled and then peeled his lips back to show his teeth again. The low rumbling snarl did nothing to deter Yugi however.

 _Do you even remember me, Yami_? _Do you remember yourself anymore_? Yugi snapped his teeth when the other seemed to attempt to move around him. The action caught him only a dismissive snarl before the wolf turned away again with his ears flat. He was eyeing him sideways and the white wolf felt small and sickly at the sight of such dark red eyes given human expression.

For a moment he remembered that bloodied, tired face that had stared back at him from the surface of the pond of water and it made his heart quake in his chest. His breathing had grown tight again and his fur was lifted in a fearful bristle. How much of that had been true? Had he merely been projecting what he feared had come to happen to the other lycanthrope? Or had Yami truly been hit and struck and wounded to such a state?

A restless sense of disgust came through him.

Yami had been human in his dream.

Had he been _beaten_ in his human form?

Or had the wolf half of him simply carried the pain to his human form as well?

He snarled low in his throat, outraged by the very concept. Who was so foolish and disgusting as to do this to him? Who was so angry as to harm him? How had they found him? Had he been half dead as Yugi had felt upon waking?

The black wolf eyed him coldly. The ferocity was feverish in his dark red gaze and Yugi felt sickened at the sight of it. He had witnessed his anger before, but never so clearly focused upon him. And the sight of it was both riveting and horrifying.

 _Do you understand me_? _Do you remember me at all, Yami_? he pleaded, blinking at him and trying his hardest to keep from crying out at the cold uncaring look in his gleaming eyes.

Slowly, with a voice guttural, so deep it seemed almost to scrape the very bottom of his lungs in the effort to crawl forth, the wolf snarled, _No._ And then he lunged.

Yugi barely managed to jerk his head to the side. Yami had aimed for his throat. But the movement had saved the white wolf. He backed up a step, trembling. The black canine loomed over him. His red eyes were glowing brighter than ever. Hateful and feral, the canine moved closer. The snarl was deafening now. The noise seemed to shake his very marrow. Yugi backed up again, flattening his ears against his skull.

 _Yami, please,_ he cried out haltingly, eyes wide and terrified. _I don't want to fight with you—_

The teeth clicked to a shut in front of his nose, mere millimeters away. The snarl that bubbled up was hideous, almost human in its guttural edge. _Move_. His teeth were glacial in their glimmering edge. His ears pricked forward and his gums looked oddly blistered, Yugi realized. When he focused he noted the heavy stench of blood. The coppery edge made him flinch back. He could not see any red upon his lips nor his gums or within the space of his sharp teeth.

And he did not seem to be in pain.

But the smell was overpowering, so immense that it threatened to swallow him whole. Yugi backed up again and now Yami seemed to stare through him for a brief moment before turning away entirely. He was sniffing again, as if something were buried beneath the snow and the rotting earth under it. Yugi bristled but kept his head lowered in a more submissive stance. Yami would demolish him in a fight, just as Obelisk would if they ever truly had a spat that was more than mild inconvenience.

If the god were ever to lose his temper with him then Yugi knew his life would become mere seconds. But, looking at Yami now, the black wolf did not truly appear to care for his presence there in any way, shape or form. If, in this dream place, he didn't know who he was, then it made sense.

But Yugi was desperate to be proven otherwise. He wanted Yami to turn towards him, with hate or fury or disgust, with that beautiful gleam to his eyes that said he knew him, that he recognized him. Yugi didn't think he deserved forgiveness, considering what had come about from his mishap at the river, but he swore to anyone listening that, if Yami just _remembered_ , he'd be happy.

 _Yami,_ he said quietly, slowly, with cautious eyes. The canine did not truly react to his own name. It was the mere disturbance within his mind that made his eyes slowly flicker to his face. Yugi was stiff, legs threatening to snap beneath the pressure of moving. Even his heavier breathing seemed to make them ache. _You smell like blood._

The black wolf slowly raised his head. Teeth were bared in an instant. The snarl was a gurgling of power and weakness all in one. And Yugi felt his heart stuttering in his chest now. The pain which swept through him was almost enough to make him sob. In front of him, blood had begun to drip and stain the snow. Yami blinked and his eyes looked glazed over now. Something fearful and full of disdain began to cloud his gaze.

 _Yami_? It was foolish, but he still moved closer. The action made Yami snap his jaws at him but a violent shudder wracked his frame and he missed. He was heaving for air now, as Yugi had been minutes before. But the gurgling noise was a million times louder. And Yugi could smell the blood in waves and buckets. It was as if he were in the river again. The metallic stench was suffocating.

Yami jerked. His spine began to arch. Then it straightened again. He snarled. His mouth fell open. His teeth glinted. His eyes were almost blind with panic. He heaved and shook. His sides collapsed inward, then slowly expanded. He gasped and choked. His eyes glazed further. He tried to blink. He coughed. His ears flattened. His legs buckled. A whine left him first. Then the gurgling came louder than before. Yami lay there, shaking so hard his entire body seemed almost to vibrate.

And now Yugi could see the wounds. They _covered_ him. His sides were torn beneath his fur. His legs were broken, the bone splitting the front right. His shoulder was stripped. His muzzle was bleeding profusely. An eye was scraped and bloodied. The back limbs were covered in blood. The tail was torn to bone at the base. But the most terrible one was something he had never seen before.

Yami's entire stomach had been ripped open. And the organs—

Yugi flinched and gaped, horrified. They were throbbing, moving in time with his pulse. The ribs that should have encased his lungs were broken in shards. And it almost looked as if something had somehow managed to _bite_ through it. The bone nearest was scraped in the fine definition of teeth. He looked trampled in certain spots.

Yugi was shaking when he came closer. Yami was heaving and panting, shaking harder than ever before. The smaller wolf came to his side now, unsure of what more to do. Was he dying? This was a dream right? Was it a figment of his fears? Or was it like when he met with Slifer and Ra and Obelisk? What was he…?

 _You're okay,_ he whispered in the shakiest voice he had ever heard. It cracked and broke at the edges. But Yami didn't respond and so Yugi ignored it as well. Instead he quickly lowered his head and licked at one of the wounds on his face. The blood was stale and almost crusted. The taste was hideous, layered and caked with dirt and pus. He cringed but instinctively kept going. It was no different than when Yami had done the same for him during his first Change. He owed him that much.

The black wolf was still shaking and his tongue almost missed the scab along his eye. It was probably the most miniscule of wounds when he considered the enormity of the others that littered his body. But he didn't have hands and thumbs and fingers. He couldn't place his intestines back or arrange his organs properly. And he couldn't manage to pop his shoulder back into place. And to try to touch his organs with his nose and shift them back into his hollowed form would be dangerous to consider. He didn't know if the sweat from his nose might be harmful or if it might leave fur or he might puncture something. And so he focused on his face. If he could save his eye, at least that one organ, it was one sense that Yami would not lose.

 _I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I never meant for anything like this to happen,_ he whispered. His tongue worked furiously to clear away some of the pus that was seeping from beneath another large scab. He was covered in them. Yugi had never seen something like that. There was a scab atop another. And beneath them, the wound festered and grew that much worse. The white wolf was covered in yellow and red all along his chin. _I'd do anything to help you—but I don't know what else to do. I don't know what else I_ can _possibly do. I…I just want you to be okay. I want you to survive—_

The black wolf gargled again, choking and sputtering. Yugi was abruptly reminded of his first Change again. He'd gone to Paradise and Yami's cell mate—he'd been the one to help him, he knew now—had told him not to worry, to let it happen, that he would heal. But hadn't Yugi begun thrashing and trying to shake the incredible pain that had come over him?

And then he'd woken.

Desperately, Yugi sped up, licking so hard that the bottom scab finally gave way. The wound was so irritated that the pus came in a clump as it had his wrists before. And the blood was tainted with the hideous taste. It was so sour and bitter that he almost recoiled. But his tongue was still working and panic made him more desperate than ever.

 _Please, Yami, don't leave me yet. I—I need you. I need you so much—_

The black wolf shuddered, snarling low in his throat. The gurgling came tenfold somehow. Yugi left the wound on his eye, hurrying for the split that marred his nose. The wound was gushing blood, so much so that he thought he might bleed out in front of him.

 _I'll fix this,_ Yugi pleaded, immediately licking at the wound there. _I'll save you this time, okay_? _I'll—I'll get you all healed up again. A-and then you'll be okay and I'll see you again the next time, when you are—oh gods, I'm so sorry_!

Had he been human, Yugi thought he might have burst into tears and wound up too shaken to further help him. In this form, instinct existed in one form—he had to heal him. He was his alpha, his friend, someone he cared about too much to discount. He would not leave him to die like this.

Yami was shaking and panting. The coughing had gotten worse. And Yugi could almost taste the sickness upon his own tongue. The white wolf ignored it, a vital part of him shutting off in favor of focus. The human half of him was laden with remorse but the wolf part, where instinct and loyalty lay, kept upon the task. The action was more necessary than ever, he knew. And that was why his tongue kept working, why his mind was so rapid in its sheer need.

But already he could feel him fading from his touch. His desperation did nothing to hold him there. As he tried to further speed himself up, licking at the wound with such panic it made his own body quiver, the wolf seemed to be dissipating. Yami was rapidly fading, as if he were but a strand of dark smoke.

 _Please, don't—_

Yami looked up at him for the first time. And his red eyes were glazed with panic. But there was a hint of acceptance there too. And he looked both bitter and exhausted. He looked far too worn to bother with even the smallest intake of details. But he seemed, finally, to recall him in the slightest degree. His red eyes widened and the bruising surrounding his right, where the lid was still swollen, seemed to split again with his shock.

He looked as if he might try for his feet. Yugi hurriedly licked his forehead, voice cracking as he muttered, _It's okay, Yami. It'll be okay…_

Yami gave him a look that seemed far more stricken than fearful now. He tried again as if he might get to his feet. But he could feel it too, that tug of consciousness that Yugi was merely seeing. The smaller wolf felt sick as he looked at him. The other didn't form words, looking too exhausted to try. He blinked wide eyes and strained his neck but the wound made him flinch. Yugi was sure he would have been sobbing by now if he were human. Instead he licked his forehead again.

 _I'm sorry, Yami…_

His awakening was just as comfortable as his initial loss of consciousness. Yugi blinked his eyes open to the gentle sky blue of his ceiling. His stomach was in knots and his heart was in his throat. The taste of pus and blood still covered his tongue, gluing it to the roof of his mouth. When he raised a hand, his fingers were trembling harder than he'd ever seen them before.

The small teen swallowed, bitterness welling in his stomach. He could not think straight for a moment, furious and undone by it all. And then it faded. His stomach tossed and he rolled over. Bile, hot and burning and almost ochre in shade, splattered to the floor in a hideous trail. He blinked at it, then reached up to run his hands through his hair.

The image of the black wolf lying there, bleeding, his insides strewn across the snow, burned in the forefront of his mind. Hatred and disbelief came first. And then was the overwhelming defeat that was despair. His heart still in his throat, feeling sick to his stomach more than ever now, Yugi closed his eyes tightly. But it seemed to make the image in his head tremble harder. And he hated himself for it, even as he reminded himself he did not know what was going on, nor if it was truly—

But the way he'd felt, the taste of his blood, the pus on his tongue, was all real. And he'd known the smell of infection, the heat that his eye had given off due to it.

But how had he come to the dream unharmed until then? Had his apologies made him remember? If that was it, Yugi hated himself for it. Yami had been okay at first. He'd been angry, hateful, almost feral, but he had been okay. He'd been okay, sniffing the snow for whatever reason, even with all of that anger he'd been carrying and displaying.

He had not shown such terrible signs of wounds and near-death. He had not looked as if he might drop at any moment. He had not lay there, bleeding out even as his limbs sprawled broken beneath him. And, gods, if he hadn't looked as if he had not eaten in years. He was so thin, bony and knobby. He'd looked as if he'd been starved and something else had tried to eat _him_.

Yugi got to his feet, ignoring the pool of vomit on the floor. It stunk like decaying flesh, as if his own insides were rotting. It shocked him, but at the same time spite made him almost grateful for such a thing, as if his death might do well to prevent Yami's.

He shook his head to scatter the thoughts coming. He didn't want to have to think of Slifer and Morrigan, their cryptic words and Obelisk's all but silent agreement. He did not want to think of the loneliness that being Atem brought, nor the declaration that there was a second Pure-Blood that was not Yami. A second Atem, meant to take over should Yugi be unable to perform his role as necessary.

He was out the door before he could think about it. He was not sure he wanted to see the pack, but the camp seemed to be the destination his restless body had in mind. He was not the least bit uncomfortable with this knowledge, however. Being there meant well—it gave him just enough of a feeling of familiarity to take his mind off those terrible thoughts. It might even possibly help to ease some of the ache of loneliness plaguing him now.

Yugi was cold, his feet almost numb from the ice. But as he looked down, they did not seem to be more or less harmed by the cold itself. He did not see the slightest hint of frostbite in any way. And it was only then that he truly noticed he had never bothered to change his clothes. He was still in his pajamas, the soft blue material making his stomach knot unhappily.

He had not even considered that he'd need to change. The stupidity of the decision was shocking to him for that small moment. He shook his head, then glanced around unhappily. Very slowly, swallowing hard, Yugi looked into the tress. None of them were around at any rate, but he did not think for even a second that none of them would come about soon enough.

A debate went through his head for a long minute. He did not know whether it was worth it to take the pajamas off and change or if he might just need to turn back and go home again. But now he wondered which was smarter. If he went to see the pack, it might distract him some. If he want back home, he wouldn't have to deal with the mess that _was_ the Change.

Yugi wondered at this for a few moments. Then, finally, the smaller teen began to slowly strip himself of the soft cotton material. He'd bury them and retrieve them after he changed back. But he wondered if he thought for even the smallest of seconds that he could do this without breaking down. The realization of his own doubt was powerful and nearly overwhelming.

The action of changing now was almost as monotonous as the more constant action of forcing food down his throat. He hardly felt it in the numbness that had come over him now. His legs carried him but his thoughts were fragmented and small. Yugi kept his head level by mere muscle memory, trekking easily and without thought. His legs moved faster than he could think to stop and turn back.

But what was there to go back to? His house? His mom and grandpa were oblivious, fast asleep and ignorant. And he was trotting around in a second skin that only his friends knew of.

Maybe it would have been smarter to go to them. Surely Jonouchi or Honda or Anzu would do well to console him…

But he could only imagine trying to explain to Jonouchi that he was in love with Yami. The blond would be surprised, then insist he was gay, that no one was straight and could love the same gender even in a singular sense. He'd probably frustrate him more than Yugi wanted to admit and things might explode from there.

And Honda, he was sure, would be somewhat flustered and more than likely unsure how to stay around him after the initial revelation. There was sure to be a small—miniscule, really—adjustment period for him to settle into this news. And then he'd still most likely be the smallest degree uncomfortable upon seeing him and Yami together in any sense.

And why would he want to burden Anzu with this information? She still had feelings for him. He knew that much for sure. She wasn't very good at hiding it from him. And his whining over Yami would do nothing to help her move on in any sense. It would also likely be more damaging than anything. And he did not even know that Yami shared such feelings to begin with.

Yugi shook the very thought away. Whether or not Yami felt the same didn't truly matter. What _did_ matter was when he came _back_. When Yugi got him _back_ —that was what mattered. The rest could be pushed beneath the rug for a little while.

The white wolf shook himself out after a moment, encouraging himself to banish the thoughts altogether. Then he lowered his nose to the snow. If he could simply pretend he could almost smell pine and darkness, the soft drizzling of cold moonlight. His ears flicked and his head snapped up again as he looked towards the shadows further along the short incline. Something sparkled in the dark and his lips curled back. It looked like the gleam of eyeshine.

His ears pricked forward further and he strained his hearing. There was a heartbeat, slow and steady, in the dark. He sniffed lightly and then forced the fur to lie flat along his spine again. He knew the smell.

 _Marik,_ he called quietly, sniffing deeply once more. He shook himself out again, trying to shove aside the ferocity that was beginning to form in his blood. Why did Marik seem to be everywhere he wasn't needed? The reality of it made his lip curl slightly in which he turned away again.

The gray and tawny wolf slowly made his way towards him from the trees further along the incline. His lavender eyes flickered in the dark where the shadows and moonlight touched them. His ears pricked and angled away again as he tilted his head and considered Yugi for a moment.

 _Are you all right_? The words were frayed at the edges but Yugi could understand them all the same as he stared at the gray wolf. They blinked at each other. The white wolf tilted his head. Marik was watching him, focused on him entirely even as his ears flicked about. _You seemed…angered._

Yugi huffed softly. What did Marik know of what he might feel? _I'm fine,_ he commented dismissively. _I'm just thinking about a few things._

Marik tilted his head, watching him curiously for a moment. An image flashed through his mind, of boars and a broken body covered in blood. Yugi bristled at the onslaught of pictures, but they were not as vivid as his own sight of the girl's body—Patty; her _name_ was Patty—had been. Marik had not seen the broken corpse, the blood that had stained her body so horrifically.

He wondered if they had buried her as he'd instructed or simply left her to rot. Either idea was terrible all the same. She shouldn't have died. _No one_ should have died.

Yugi flicked an ear, attempting to regain his composure. _That was not truly in my thoughts until now, but thank you for the reminder,_ he sneered softly before flattening his ears against his skull uncomfortably. _Why are you bringing her up_?

Marik tilted his head. The image of a small animal, goat-like in appearance, with a wooly coat and thin legs and a small head of horns, passed through his thoughts to Yugi's. The white wolf blinked blue-violet eyes and huffed softly.

 _Serows_? he said quietly. He imagined those bright brown eyes peering at him, big and round like muddy disks with black centers. He remembered the leaps they took, how they climbed mountain walls and cliffs and did nothing to truly fight. They simply fled, glancing over their shoulders constantly, and pranced as if they had never been in danger to begin with. Yugi wondered at their rate of survival and thought of how odd they truly were. The deer had antlers to combat predators. The boar had their tusks and hides. The serows could climb and disappear before a predator could truly catch them. _What about them_?

For a moment there was silence. A glint of something entered Marik's eyes and the white wolf blinked curiously at the sight of it. But he could not read it in the slightest. _We could try again._ The words were soft, almost reassuring, and Yugi blinked in shock at the tone. _It was bad luck. The boars are more violent. Serows are easy to hunt._

Yugi blinked at him, staring, and then slowly shook his head. _I don't think that's a good idea,_ he objected, flicking an ear. _I don't think that was just a random bout of unluckiness hunting, Marik. And I don't want to put the pack in danger of—_

The other wolf snorted softly, the frost making his exhale a wreath of white. Against his eyes, the shadow of his breath looked almost ghostly and haunting. _We hunt all of the time,_ he interrupted easily, taking a step forward and stopping only feet away from him now. The glint in his eyes was something that was oddly mesmerizing upon facing completely. _This pack has always hunted boars and serows._

Yugi curled his lip. _Yes, and you always spilled blood in attempt to summon me, is that not also true_? he spat dismissively. _You chose to end each other's lives for no other reason than to chase a myth._

Marik snapped his jaws now, broad shoulders becoming squared and raised as he bristled. _A myth_? he sneered. _Is that what you consider your own destiny_?

 _Destiny_? _To be stalked by_ death _is a destiny to you, Marik_? Yugi almost quivered with the hatred that burned through his veins. He was bleeding beneath his skin, infuriated by his very words, and it made his tail rise aggressively. _Why should anyone consider that a destiny of any kind_? _Are you stupid_?

 _It's a privilege to be Code Name Atem._

 _A privilege_? _How_? _In what world could this possibly be a privilege in any sense_?

 _You_ matter! Marik spat hatefully. _Atem matters more than anything in the world. You should feel privileged for being the one werewolf in the world that all the rest bow down to._

Yugi blinked, stunned. _Every life matters. You have the same mentality that the gods do. And suffering does_ not _equate to purpose, Marik._

 _Do you know what suffering is_?! _You have an entire pack dedicated to you. You have the ability to make the world bow beneath your paws. You are_ immortal—

 _And what does immortality do for loneliness_? Yugi asked quietly. _Does my immortality ensure the survival of anyone else_? _Tell me, Marik, what use is it to be able to come back from the dead when you cannot give such a gift to another_?

 _Words like that will get you killed. The life we lead isn't one meant to be sentimental._ Marik huffed and raised his head, curling his lip back slightly in disgust. _Atem isn't meant to be weak._

Weak?

Yugi stared at him. How could anyone see life in such a depressing haze as these wolves so foolishly chose to? And how had their former alpha convinced so many wolves of this bleak lifestyle and idea being that of what was necessary? How had she managed to spin it in such a manner as to make it seem beautiful?

Yugi fell silent for a long time. _Were you born into this pack_? he asked quietly.

Marik snorted loudly and bore his teeth. _No,_ he snarled, but the disgust in his voice was heavy and evident. _I was born within the labs._

He blinked and stared at him. _So you were experimented on._

 _As was my sister Ishizu._ He huffed again and shook himself out, the muscles rippling rapidly along his body. He seemed almost to shimmer beneath the shadows and cold moonlight. _What is your point_?

Yugi shook his head, watching him with darkened eyes. _Nothing of any matter,_ he said finally, sniffing and raising his chin only slightly. _Are you a Full-Blood_?

Marik let out another disgusted noise. _Why should it matter what blood content I possess_? _I am a lycanthrope, with the same power as you for the most part._

Something glinted in his eyes but Yugi was unable to understand it and it was gone in an instant. He wondered if he was seeing things in the dark, if perhaps his mind were too wound up with his own sleep deprivation that he could not think or see straight.

 _You speak well mentally,_ he said quietly. _I'm used to the images the others send me. Even Mai is unable to hold a conversation with me like this._

 _Mai is not the strongest in the pack._

Yugi stared at him for a moment, then tilted his head. _Yes, but she's the one that speaks to me the most often. And I know she's a Full-Blood._

Marik snorted and turned away. _It takes much of my concentration. I cannot do it if I am running or even trotting,_ he revealed in a soft voice. But there was an edge to his words which bordered something Yugi did not know how to properly read. _And I cannot keep it up for longer than a few minutes at a time._

Yugi watched him for a moment. _You seem to be doing well for the moment,_ he retorted, studying him closely. _And it's been more than a few minutes._

 _Has it_? Marik looked up at him, that gleam in his eyes again. Was it moonlight? Was it emotion? Yugi strained his eyes and wracked his brain for the meaning there. What was it? What was he seeing there? _It must be our idleness._

So if he remained idle here…

Yugi looked away, dismissing the statement. His thoughts were jagged rocks and gaping maws, sharpened teeth and glistening blood… _Serows are easier to catch, hmm_?

 _We eat them more often than the boars._ He remained quiet for a moment. _But the deer are what we mainly strive on._

He considered the words but his mind was on something else entirely. With a turn of his head, the blue-violet-eyed wolf asked, _Did you know Atem before you came here_?

Marik blinked. _I knew of him. But we all knew of him there._ He fell silent again and then leaned forward. He was sniffing lightly but something along his spine rippled as if with agitation. The image to appear in his head now was that of concrete walls and a door which looked almost like that of a sewer drain. At first there was not much to be seen. Then, very slowly, there was the sight of a small pup. The wolf was of the smallest size, a runt in all sense. He was malnourished and starved, exhausted, but still managed to move upon trembling legs. The eyes were black, like ink wells and blood beneath the moonlight, the fur a soft gray shade that looked so downy that Yugi almost wished he could have touched it…

But as he thought this, the image shattered away. Marik watched him, lavender eyes glittering in the darkness. The shade of them was darker, more mauve in depiction, as they looked upon each other. But now he looked simply aggravated, as if memories were nothing he wished to hide behind.

Yugi watched him for a moment. Had he been gray when he was born? Had his pelt lightened until it had become white? He huffed softly. The experiments could have done something to the genes and altered the very pigmentation, he was sure…

 _We never crossed paths beyond that_?

Marik watched him, but his voice did not come to Yugi's mind now. He simply shook his head and breathed in deeply, scenting the breeze. The air was crystalline with the exhale and he bristled as he shook himself out again. Another image came to Yugi now, a fluffy wool coat of deep gray with brown undertones and thin legs, a face of fluffy fur deeply set against wide dark brown eyes.

He blinked. Marik must not have been able to speak to him any longer. Yugi turned away and began to walk again, wrinkling his lips back and baring his teeth. _Serows, huh_? he asked, disinterested in the continuation of the conversation. _They're that much easier_?

He glanced over his shoulder at him, watching Marik nod silently and stare back at him something almost cold. Yugi turned away again, trotting forward now, and headed towards where the entrance of the camp might be. But, rather than towards the roar of the waterfall, he turned and sidestepped the rushing water to head beyond it to the trees. It was probably a good idea for him to learn the path it would take to get back to the camp without using the waterfall as an entrance. Unless the wolves were hiding within the cavern behind it, there was no reason for him to use it so often.

Marik was silent behind him for a moment. Then a cliff of sheer stone, rising feet higher than Yugi could ever hope to scale, the surface slick with water and the roar of the river dulling his ears, began to form in his mind. The sunlight hit it at such an angle as to make the cliff appear as shiny as fish scales as they leaped into the air, shedding the water as if they were born for the sky. Yugi blinked, studying this image in his head, then glanced upwards towards the embankment of stone before him, where it rose for feet beyond their heads. It was thunderous and beautiful in the way it sent a tremor down his spine, the sight of several frothy formations of water dropping in immense pressure.

He blinked and tilted his head, then glanced sideways towards Marik. He had never noticed the cliff face properly before that moment. The cavern behind the waterfall crashing so heavily in front of him was hidden beautifully, perfectly. And he realized that it had to cut through the earth in a way to avoid the river that should have run through the center of the camp. But now he realized the wolves had chosen a much more secure area than he had initially assumed. The cavern opened into that thicket of brambles which cut upwards into the side of the gorge, where the ground was just fertile enough for growth. And, should he attempt to circle back in this manner from this side, he'd have to scale several feet for miles on end. And then he would have to challenge the river in order to get there.

From the direction he came back from the camp, without leaping through the waterfall, he'd been unconsciously tracking the river. He'd followed it in a sense, though not as purposefully as he would have had he made a point of doing so. He'd trailed it in a manner of trekking a familiar path, without even the slightest hint of navigation on his own behalf. So he would be able to cut around the river, following the banks, then come down the incline of the mountains with near senseless ease and almost no stops. Where he would have had to cross the river formerly, it was trailing the direction he was meant to travel and he could simply walk along its side.

His ears flattened for a moment, then flicked about once more. He glanced at Marik sideways. _Is there an alternative route into the camp_? he asked softly.

The gray and tawny wolf considered him for a long minute, then tipped his head back and looked about them. The image that appeared in his head was the original which he had shown to persuade him otherwise. And, abruptly, Yugi was certain of one thing.

The wolves may have been built for war. They may have been raised to fight for him. But all of them were content and secure in their habits. None of them knew of a second entrance into the camp beyond the same path he took on his way back to the house. The thought was both infuriating and daunting to imagine.

Why had he not considered that before? It was horrifying to think about it. They had a blind spot that could be miles wide and none of them—not himself, not the gods, not the pack, not _Yami_ even—had considered to check for such a possibility.

He flicked an ear and then turned to trot a few feet. Then he faced forward, throwing himself through the waterfall without effort. The momentum alone sent him well past the water. But his repetition of such actions had done well to prepare and secure his muscles in the necessary manner to accommodate such leaps and landings.

He had almost gotten so used to it that he could simply land and keep trotting immediately after. But the water did weigh down on him and his coat was drenched. He shook himself out, then looked toward the ledge in the wall and the opening of the bramble thicket overhead. Climbing through it was still a pain in the ass altogether, but it was not unbearably so. Yugi huffed and the click of nails alerted him to Marik coming to his side from beyond the water. He flicked an ear in acknowledgment and then threw himself onto the small ledge, balancing somewhat precariously before stretching himself onto his back legs and placing his forelimbs on the stone outside the cavern. He drew himself up and out of the entrance without difficulty, then shook himself out again before quickly trotting forward.

Yugi ignored the way some of the wolves immediately looked up, startled by his sudden appearance. Aki glanced at him, eyes bleary with sleep, sniffed dismissively, and put her head back to tuck her nose beneath her tail. The huff that left her was full of disdain as she tightened her muscles and closed her eyes.

The white wolf spared her only a minute glance. Then he trotted past her without pause, sniffing the air lightly and raising his nose. _Obelisk,_ he called softly, blinking and looking about them for a moment before stopping a few feet into the camp. His name made the god rise to his feet almost instantly, dark gray fur laden with flakes of snow. The smaller wolf would have smirked and raised a brow had he been human. Now, however, he merely snorted and cast a brief glance around as if he had not truly called him forth.

The god shook himself out and yawned but did not stretch, almost as if he were fearful that to do so might give the illusion of bowing before him. _What is it_? he asked quietly, flicking an ear and opening his mouth wide in another yawn. Yugi looked at his teeth, perfect white spikes of enamel among bright pink gums. He blinked and wondered again at his own appearance. He wondered if his nails were darker or his teeth whiter, if perhaps he was changing so much it was impossible to miss.

He shook the thought off and tilted his head. _Are the serows easier to catch_? he asked quietly, not entirely failing to feel slightly undone by the idea of it. He huffed softly and flicked an ear. _The pack has to be hungry considering our loss before…_

Obelisk blinked at him and sniffed softly before tossing his head and scratching at his ear with his back leg. He shook himself a moment later and considered the white wolf for a long minute. _They catch rodents and smaller prey when they grow hungry. But yes, I imagine it did not do well to fill them all today. Smaller prey animals are scarce, after all._

Yugi huffed. He would have asked why it was that Obelisk did not take them or they did not go to hunt on their own. But then he remembered himself. He was their alpha, not the gray wolf in front of him. Obelisk may have been a god but Atem was their savior.

 _Do_ you _hunt them yourself_?

Obelisk sniffed quietly and flicked an ear. His eyes flickered towards where Marik was studying them, mauve eyes dark and glittering beneath the moonlight. He did not blink at the way they caught eyes and the other wolf immediately lowered his gaze and turned away. The god faced Yugi fully, watching him with an expression that was almost lazy. _I do. They are much easier prey than the boars. And the deer have antlers to combat us. But the serows simply climb the sheer drops of cliff instead._

Yugi watched him for a moment, then glanced over his shoulder for the briefest of seconds. _Is anyone likely to get killed from it_? he asked in a more direct, scornful tone. _Or will everyone most likely come back in one piece_?

 _If their footing is firm and their paws steady, they shall be fine,_ he said with a dismissive expression. His ears flicked again and he shook his head as he turned away. _Patty died because she was young and foolish and her inexperience led her to attack a boar almost thrice her own size. It was an accident, as tragic as it was. But death is going to happen regardless of precautions and attention put into prevention._

 _Any one of us could have saved her—_

 _Or gotten ourselves killed in the meantime,_ he snapped icily. _You are a fool to consider that her life is greater than another within this pack. She was too young to be of much value. You mourn her because she was an innocent in your eyes. But death will always happen, regardless of your whims and desires._

Yugi bristled. _And have you noticed even one of these wolves hold time to mourn her_? _I haven't_. _Does that mean she was worthless then_?

Obelisk wrinkled his nose, drawing his lips back slightly. _No, but compared to another more experienced wolf the loss is slight._

He could have lunged for all the anger that swelled within his bones. But his frustration seemed to dissipate, exhaustion biting at his senses. A flash of black fur and falling blood, of a belly split and spilled entrails, came through his mind. Yugi felt dizzy as he tried to force it away.

 _Whatever,_ he finally snapped, shaking himself out again before flicking an ear uncomfortably. _Do you think it's a good idea to try again with serows this time or not_?

 _I would think it would be fine,_ Obelisk drawled but Yugi had the faintest suspicion that the deity did not truly care in the first place. Death was nothing that inconvenienced him. And it would not even cause Slifer to blink. As far as they both were concerned, death was a rite of passage of some kind. He shook it off, watching him for a moment. _I do not believe that anyone will be hurt by a serow of all prey._

Yugi watched him a moment longer, then turned away again. _I am calling for a hunt. Mai, Otogi, stay back and watch the camp,_ he announced loudly, trotting forward and ignoring the way that some of the wolves startled as if he had shocked them. Some of them sprang to their paws, stunned by his booming voice within their ears. And others blinked groggily and stretched as they began to rise to their feet.

His eyes flickered towards where Aki had come to raise her head as well. The she-wolf blinked, eyes cold and puzzled, and then finally rose to her feet. She sat, craning her neck as if she might howl, and then got up. When she stretched, it was not in a bow but a forward lean which made her bones pop. Yugi stared at her as she straightened and slowly glanced towards him sideways before moving to his side, lazy in her actions. Her head was lowered only slightly, eyes chilled if only mildly. She blinked and yawned just as the other wolves gathering before them.

Yugi barely paid them attention, instead trotting ahead without a second glance. Obelisk followed a second later and the rest fell in line behind them. The white wolf did not care for more than a second that they were trailing him. He could hear each of them, some still yawning and others hurrying to keep pace until they all fell into a comfortable line.

 _Where are they most likely to be_?

Obelisk snorted behind him, voice full of amusement. _Can you not use your nose, Atem_? he teased, but Yugi ignored the playful note in his voice and instead looked about them.

The cliffs were tall, looming walls of stone and he could faintly hear the roar of the river and the waterfalls as they crashed against the rocks. The outcroppings overhead lay in a way in which Yugi could not truly tell where the height of the mountain leveled out to carry the river. He could not tell where they ended against the sky due to the darker hours and the shadows which the clouds cast. He could feel the chill and lightness of snow to come and it made his head tip upwards once more as he listened again to their steps in the ice. A few large, tall trees rose against the cliffs, the tops laden with white, and Yugi watched their shadows in the dark, inky pools of black against the snow.

 _There should be one or two of them further into the forest,_ the deity finally commented, eyes laden with shadow as he looked about them. _If we split up, we can ambush them and push them towards the center. From there we can use numbers to ensure they don't escape. I'm sure any of us will be able to deal the death blow._

The white wolf snorted softly and nodded mindlessly towards the statement, trotting ahead of them by those few feet. Obelisk came to flank him and Yugi glanced at him sideways as they continued side by side. As they moved, he could see the other wolf lowering his nose to mere inches above the ground, scenting the snow and air calmly. A single flick of his ear was all the warning Yugi was given as the other wolf began to trot faster.

 _There are two ahead. And if we split into groups, we can take them both down using a simple chase technique._ The other wolves seemed to collectively affirm this, images of blood smeared upon their jaws coming into each of their minds. Yugi flicked an ear in acknowledgment and sniffed lazily at the air. He did not truly catch what it was that Obelisk had. But he did smell something soft, almost balanced oddly between sweet and sour. And he wondered at this for a moment as he tilted his head. Was this what Obelisk had used to determine their presence there? _Go in groups of two. We'll cut them off before they can break the circle._

Yugi wondered if any of the other wolves were curious as to why he was not the one making the orders. Perhaps they had not even noticed in their excitement. He blinked and his lip curled in dismissal of the thought. No, they had noticed. When did they fail to notice a single thing which befell their omen of death? 8It was as if they worshipped and desired nothing more than to be driven to death in such a way.

The wolves broke off into small pairs and some of them, he saw, ran alongside them, pacing as they began to veer away and towards the trees surrounding them. When they melted into the shadows, he counted all but himself and Obelisk to be moving into position. He glanced at the other wolf but the god did not seem disturbed in the slightest.

The trees seemed to close in around them as they began to get closer to a small incline of clearing. He could faintly see the impression of cloven hooves, blackened shadows rather than soft gray and gentle silver. The trees were a blur as he kept pace with the beta, eyes keen as they kept track of Obelisk's larger paws. He narrowed his eyes and focused on the way the shadows seemed to lengthen faintly where the two of them stepped into the darkness. The sight of it was somehow mesmerizing and strange to him and where his fur was dappled he was sure it looked like water rippling beneath sunlight.

He drew in a deep breath. That sweet and sour smell was back within his nose in an instant. Yugi felt it on his tongue, soft and yet somehow heavy all at once. He flicked an ear and the collective sound of their breathing made him almost tremble. There was something almost primitive about the situation, a delight of which Yugi had no words to describe. And, yet, even with this knowledge, there was a harsh and brutal slap of frustration that came upon him like a clap of thunder.

How often had he stood aside as Yami had hunted and then judged him for his ability to simply do as he needed? How often had he been disgusted that Yami could find it in himself to do this very thing?

And why had he never thought to simply join him instead? Maybe if he had, he would not be so hopeless now. Maybe he would understand his role more now as the alpha or have the stomach to do such things as necessary.

There were the faintest of indentations within the snow now, just slightly more noticeable. A cracked twig and the smallest showering of snow dusted from the collision within the undergrowth to cause the branches to fall bare. There was a long bramble thicket which had been shrugged of snow, the branches nearest the trees shed of white.

The serows were about the size of him at the shoulders. The fur was dark gray, almost black like the shadows beyond them. The coat was extremely bushy, the tails especially so. Both of them stood a little taller upon his appearance there, Obelisk at his side the first to draw their attention.

Yugi slowed his movements, but Obelisk seemed to gain speed. A command of wordless intent came forward, harsh and loud, and Yugi slowed further. The wolves within the trees raced forward, snarling and baring bright white teeth that glinted like blades. He came to a stop as one of them whistled through its nose and began to try to run.

The white wolf tilted his head. The ears on these animals were small, short, the coat extremely long and wooly. The fur was whitish around the base of the neck and much of the body was black along the bottom of the legs. He could not tell the male from the female in any manner as it was. And both possessed small, backwards horns which looked too short to pose a threat.

Yugi barely blinked.

Obelisk had cornered the darker serow. Aki had gotten the other. The female caught first the shoulder. Then Marik lunged for the throat. His teeth snapped shut on the windpipe, crushing it effectively. The serow cried out, whistling and struggling. Aki released the animal's shoulder and moved for the front leg. There was a loud, hideous snapping noise. The sound of it punctuated a cry of panic. The serow struggled harder and whistled louder.

Yugi tilted his head curiously after a moment. His eyes flickered away. In a flash blood sprayed across the snow. He blinked again and raised his chin slightly. And then he saw the serow collapse completely, eyes glazed over as Marik twisted his jaw. The snapping noise came again, the neck breaking. The white wolf blinked.

Obelisk had driven the other serow a few feet away. And, as Yugi turned his head to follow this new path, his eyes grew extremely wide. The god did not slow his steps. In fact, he moved so quickly that Yugi barely had time to blink. In a flash of gray, Obelisk had overtaken the other animal. And he had spun around to face the creature with dark, glittering eyes. He lunged forward and snapped his teeth open.

His immense jaws closed on the neck there. Blood gushed outwards. And the serow screamed. But the kicking legs began to lose their frail flailing. They began to grow still and Obelisk shook his head. The body was slid on its side. Yugi blinked. The blood was everywhere within the snow. And, as Obelisk pulled away, his entire face was smeared with red.

Yugi shook his head, disgusted. But he was curious as he smelled the air. The metallic scent was somehow mouthwatering. It made his heart race for a moment. And then he shook it off. Shame had curled its way through his belly. His mouth was watering and yet he'd turned his nose up on several occasions.

And he did not want to so much as look at the blood there. Yami was not there to encourage him to eat the animal. And he was somewhat horrified by the very same idea. He was glad that the other was not there to point out that perhaps Yugi should try to cater to his wolf diet rather than his human one.

But Yami was gone.

And Obelisk was the one playing as the beta in his absence. The thought made the world seem darker, duller, his body feeling hollow and disgusting. The pain was focused within his heart, something which made his ears flatten and his tail droop. Yami was gone. Yami was missing.

But…

Yami would come back.

He blinked and curled his lip. But that was only applicable if the gods were to be trusted. Were they not, then clearly Yugi would most likely never come to see Yami again.

He tried his hardest not to cry out hatefully. Then he shrugged it away and his eyes flickered towards where the wolves were gathering about. Each of them was wagging their tails, slavering at the jaws. Their teeth clicked when they growled at one another defensively to pick at their meal.

And then Yugi noticed something. As his eyes flickered upwards once more, he found his mouth drying out. He opened and closed his jaws and his eyes narrowed in frustration. His ears pricked forward. Each of them had turned to face him, eyes expectant and large. The pupils were dilated, swallowing away their irises. The excitement and pure triumph cowed him.

He blinked and flicked an ear. Why were they watching him like that? Yugi considered for a moment, bewildered, and then nearly bristled. He remembered Yami refusing to eat before him and his stomach dropped.

Because he had been the one to provide the food, Yami had considered him the alpha. Now, as he was Atem, the wolves were waiting for him to take the first bite as a leader was meant to.

He flicked an ear once more, then raised his head. _I have already eaten,_ he said quietly, sniffing softly against the dark, cold air. Dawn had to be coming in only a matter of half an hour at the most. The realization struck him slightly before he shook it away again. _I am full._

The others blinked and then looked wordlessly towards Obelisk. The god was watching him, glittering eyes and sharp teeth when he curled his lip. And then they studied each other for a moment. The other wolves blinked and flattened their ears. And, finally, with a sense of something admonishing within his very stance, Obelisk lowered his mouth to begin stripping the fur from the serow beneath him. Yugi turned away, sniffing again at the snow.

The mouthwatering quality did not return despite the heaviness of the metallic scent held so tightly within the air. Yugi flicked an ear and sniffed again, the snow shivering from his breath as he began to turn away and start towards the trees once more. The other wolves were hungrily gulping food. He could hear their jaws clicking, softly growling at one another. Muscles and tendons snapped and pulled beneath their teeth. Their breaths were heavy, shuddering, and Yugi shivered.

The crunching of the snow beneath his feet was soft and comfortable within his ears. He pricked his ears and tilted his head. There was a much faster noise of snow being crushed beneath paws. The weight was slighter than his own, a realization which threw him off as he blinked wide eyes and stared in confusion. In the darkness Yugi could barely make out the shape coming towards him.

It was the dark violet eyes which compelled himself not to snarl and snap his jaws. He bristled only mildly, then forced it away with a shake of his pelt. Calmly, tipping his head up, Yugi called, _Mai, what's going on_?

The she-wolf stopped a few feet from him, tail wagging. Her eyes were glowing, glittering brilliantly, and she tilted her heard slightly. Her ears flicked up and then away again. Her bright purple eyes were soft with excitement and Yugi blinked in surprise at the sight of it.

An image began to appear in his head. A thinner, leaner black she-wolf formed there within his mind. Soft and beautiful fur was underlined with an undercoat of soft brown and tawny. And dark gray eyes glittered in the shadows. Yugi blinked wide eyes, startled by the sight, and flicked his ears to press back against his head for a split second.

 _Echo is back_? he asked, whispering, and his heart seemed to ache at the realization for a split second. Then he shook it off in order to lick his lips and study her more intently. _Why has she…_?

And then he remembered, abruptly, with his heart pounding and stomach aching, that her words formerly had been truthful. She had brought her pack back in the necessity of aiding him in this war. He blinked at her and then flattened his ears again, disgusted by the very idea.

 _She brought them with her_?

Mai wagged her tail again. Her eyes were bright, beautiful and shining, as she nodded and dipped her head slightly in a more respectful notion. The she-wolf flicked a golden ear and wagged her tail faster. _Yes, her entire pack._

Yugi nodded slightly, disgusted by the very idea. Then the she-wolf kneaded at the snow for a moment. The white wolf considered her for a single second before tilting his head. _Go ahead and get some food. I'll send Otogi to join you when I reach the camp._

She blinked, then ran her tongue over his nose before dashing past him. He could hear her panting even as the seconds passed and he quickly shrugged away his initial shock to pick his way back down the path of which they had once traveled.

Upon reaching the camp, Yugi had shaken himself twice in an effort to dry himself. And then he yawned and shook his head as he trotted forward. Being awake for so long and ignoring the night terror of which he had been so easily horrified had tired him out. He could feel the exhaustion creeping through him, slight and terrible, and he yawned as he licked his lips.

Otogi greeted him with a small, booming bark of a noise. Yugi pricked his ears and trotted forward a little faster. In a dismissive tone, he murmured, _We caught a pair of serows. Go ahead and find the others. Get a bite. I am fine to remain here on my own._

The wolf licked his lips, flattening his white-tipped ears against his skull, and happily raced forward and past him. Yugi did not watch him go. Instead he came further into the camp and his stomach dropped at the sight to greet him there. His heart was in his throat and his eyes wide with horror.

Ahead of him the wolves were gathered about in a circular position. Echo was a few feet away from them, seated with her chin tipped slightly upwards and ears pricked forward. Her eyes were caught on the others, where they sat feet away with their ears flicking plainly back and forth.

Yugi stepped closer. Echo turned her head. Her gray eyes widened slightly. The other wolves collectively raised their heads. Yugi stared at them, unable to look away.

He felt sick.

All of their eyes on him were widened, bewildered or shocked or extremely excited all at once. But their image before him made him feel sick and weak. Within many of those gazes, there was such innocence as to suggest disbelief and shock. And Yugi could feel a tremble going through him.

They were, collectively, all of them one and the same in a sense, so terribly _young_.


	48. Roles

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day (No updates through September)**

 **Chapter Warnings: Mentions of Killing, Mild Self-Hatred, Character Death, Bloodshed, Cult Mentality, Mentions of Past Deaths, Depression, Mild Hints of Homosexuality, Mild Hints of Anxiety, Nightmares, GRAPHIC Wound Description, GRAPHIC Description of Death**

 **ALL RIGHT GUYS! LOOK AT THAT! We are OFFICIALLY at the HALFWAY MARK! WHOO! *dances around* I was almost scared I'd never get to posting this part considering my apparent INABILITY to keep on track with my schedule.**

 **Anyways, so yeah, halfway point!**

 **Part four will pick up in a month. That gives me a BUNCH of time (gods help me; pray for my soul lmfao) to get back on track and finish a few things that needed to get done a LONG time ago that my lazy ass apparently decided to just neglect like nobody's business. Fuck me. But then if I can get back on track with it all, then maybe part four can be updated in a timely manner, as I originally said it would be. Unless I'm exhausted or don't have time to post, I should be able to manage it if all goes well! So, yeah, long story short: Wish. Me. LUCK!**

 **Anyways, so, you're going to see Yugi tell his mom absolute LIES in this chapter. And he's going to do it again later on. But it's not just her he's going to be saying these lies to. And you'll get a clearer picture of it all as it's brought up again later.**

 **Just a quick note: The werewolves have extremely strong noses. So they can catch someone's perfume or natural scent in mere seconds upon being exposed to someone. Anyone from Yami to Otogi can catch the lingering smell of another wolf or a random person on clothing or even skin or hair. So if Yugi were to step close to Anzu at some point, then interact with Yami Yami would still be able to smell her on him, even if they didn't directly touch. It's more pheromones and things of that nature, which the wolves can scent and their brain kind of catalogues and provides answers for. That's why Yami scented Valon on Yugi that chapter prior, and why Yami could smell that she-wolf on Yugi when he came back from the woods. It's never explicitly explained prior to here and it'll be addressed in a later chapter, but it is relevant for the last scene in this chapter.**

Chapter XLVIII: Roles

 _Work Log Entry XLIV: March, 2004 (Part V)_

 _March 31_

 _The boss is allowing "Atem" to rest for the day. He does not permit him to have extra food or water despite how exhausted the Pure-Blood seems._

 _Whispers have begun that perhaps PB-A 26 is yet another failure._

 _The boss has begun punishing anyone to say it close enough for him to hear._

 _He says that "Atem" being alive now is just enough to prove the breeding was a success._

Yugi returned the next day to the wolves playing amongst themselves. The American wolves had been accepted with little argument upon his declaration that they were staying with them. But he had hated the way Obelisk had looked at him, as if he were waiting for Yugi to realize something more that the white wolf refused to consider. The silence he had granted the beta in turn had made many of his wolves curious but none of them had been brave enough to question him in any manner.

He could see Echo at the end of the group, watching some of her wolves as they began to wag their tails and paw at one another. Yugi flicked an ear, thinking of Yami pawing at his leg, dropping into a play bow before him in invitation. How long ago had that been? Months?

It felt like decades.

He felt as if he could not remember a time in which Yami had been with him in more than a sense of dreams. And it hurt to feel this in any manner. But dreams seemed more alive than his movements now and his breaths were too shallow and broken to even seemingly touch the air.

His ears flicked. He looked about himself for a moment. Then he pushed further into the camp. Collectively, the wolves looked up. Among them, surprisingly, was Slifer. The red she-wolf was lying nearest Obelisk, the two gods obviously conversing. But the wolves had given them a wide berth, as if afraid to approach, almost like they felt inferior by mere design.

The idea made Yugi bristle faintly before he shook himself out and trotted forward. There was no reason for him to show such unease. But his eyes flickered towards those American wolves and his heart ached just as it had before. They all seemed so young and all of them could have just hit puberty for all he could tell. His ears flicked and then flattened for a moment before he lowered his nose towards the snow to feign interest in scenting the tracks there.

He'd have to line the American wolves up and meet them as well soon. He'd do their names, their scents, and then focus upon them as a whole in order to save them to memory as solely as he was able. But for the moment, for this day, he did not care to.

Yugi glanced about them for a moment before turning away again. His ears flicked again and he hated how instinctive it was, but raised his head as one of the Americans came towards him. His eyes widened, head tilting, and he raised his head further in surprise. They were the average height of a wolf, perhaps four inches beneath him in size. But their fur was a brilliant dark gray that looked almost black, with a soft undertone of lighter silver and tawny along the shoulders. His muzzle was a little smaller than Yugi's own, smoother and softer in definition, more like the North American gray wolf he'd seen in pictures, but the nose was smaller and he wondered at the sight of it as it wiggled and the other breathed his scent in.

 _Hello,_ Yugi muttered, stepping closer and raising his chin the smallest degree. His tail had naturally risen to run parallel with his spine and he was amazed to realize it was wagging slowly back and forth. Bright, royal blue eyes peered at him in surprise for a moment before the darker wolf mimicked him, tail wagging faster than his own.

Slifer and Obelisk both were staring at the strange display before them. Yugi had not shown much care in days, yet this younger wolf had come forward and he was wagging his tail like a yearling. The thought stunned them both but Slifer found humor in the sight. Maybe, somehow, Yugi had found a sense of kinship in the younger male.

Yet, even as the thought passed through her mind, Yugi had slowed his tail and craned his neck to sniff more noticeably. But something in his eyes had changed and they looked both horrified and mystified. The larger wolf stepped forward again, tilting his head once more.

His eyes were so much like those of Ra, as if the she-wolf had taken another form. The intelligence and power and sheer energy within that gaze made Yugi feel as if he were standing before something much greater than even himself. He looked otherworldly, godly, and the sight was both amazing and horrifying all the same.

Yugi flicked an ear. _What is your name_? he asked quietly, projecting the words solely to this smaller wolf. The gray ears pricked forward, then flicked unconsciously as if someone had called his name. Then he stepped closer and an image began to form in Yugi's head, symbols and words which rapidly began to translate, piling upon each other until they all began to form the same statement. Yugi blinked. _Yusei_?

The wolf blinked and wagged his tail once as if to reward him. Yugi considered those symbols where they still lay within his mind as if burned there. And his mind rapidly worked to supply him an answer as to the meaning behind so many words for one simple answer.

But Yusei meant "planetary" and that was not something that could be translated directly into an image, after all. But all those languages… He tilted his head and wagged his tail again.

 _You're American_? The name certainly wasn't American by any stretch of the imagination. The fact that Yusei had come to him through an American pack was bewildering as they looked at each other.

The smaller wolf tilted his head and wagged his tail. A small island appeared in his mind, stretched and elongated and so familiar to him that Yugi did not pause to consider.

 _Honshu_?

Yusei nodded and watched him for a moment. Then he wagged his tail a little more, staring at him with deep blue eyes. _Born in…_ He tilted his head further and considered him for a moment. Then he shook himself out and straightened a little more. _Moved to…_ _America_ _…_

Yugi could see the mental strain it took for him to focus entirely on the task of projecting the words forth. It was hard for him to truly speak as Yugi was. There was a shadow of hesitancy, as if he could not fathom forming more than these words, and the stress was obvious in the way his fur rose into a mild bristle.

Yusei dipped his head and flicked an ear towards where Echo and the others sat watching. The white wolf felt his stomach sink looking at him. He was so much leaner and smaller, with longer legs and disproportionate paws. He was almost exactly what a natural-born yearling would look like in the wild though somewhat more powerful, perhaps slightly more mature. The reality of it shook him to his core. How old was he? Yugi had yet to see him in his human form, but he imagined he had to be one of the youngest…

And all of them had just seemed to hit puberty. He thought only Echo herself and the beta possibly seemed to be older than fifteen. What had triggered them changing? Yami had mentioned puberty did it, as did near death experiences. He hoped to the gods it was the former…

 _It's nice to meet you, Yusei,_ he murmured, pricking his ears towards him and watching him with a bright gaze. The other wolf had such gorgeous blue eyes, even more royal than his school uniform. The effect of them was unlike anything he'd ever experienced before. He thought them almost as exotic and beautiful as even Yami's… _I'm Atem, but you can call me Yugi if you'd like._

Yusei's ears flicked and then pricked and pointed at him. His dark tail wagged and he tilted his head in near bewilderment at the words. Then he opened his jaws slightly and the sight of his incisors made him look so much a yearling that Yugi's heart ached. He looked so damn _young_ …

He wondered vaguely if Yami had ever had such thoughts. Had he looked at him and thought something similar, as if he were younger and held all the definition of a boy before puberty? Yami had not seemed overly surprised when he had claimed to have gone through puberty before, nor had he seemed as if he looked down on him in any manner. It made his skin crawl to think that perhaps, rather than potential, Yami had seen someone too young to die and had leaped to bite him instead of allow him to waste away.

It seemed to cheapen his action, but the concept was not one Yugi could ignore. It was easy to fall back into such a thought. He must have looked far younger than he actually was. He must have seemed smaller and all but helpless when Yami had stumbled across him. Yugi had no doubt that the taller teen had felt some small hint of protectiveness in response to the thought of his state of being and age. It was only natural to think to save someone younger than yourself, if only because their innocence beckoned them to do so.

Yugi looked away from him now and tilted his head as if to tip an ear towards the ground. Yusei had lowered his head in response, surprised and perhaps confused by the sudden change of direction he had taken. Yugi ignored this and began to trot forward again, sniffing the air only lightly and pretending that he did not notice the odd looks these wolves cast towards him for such an action.

His time spent with the pack was monotonous at best. The white wolf laid his head on his paws and watched for the majority of it. The wolves around him seemed to all behave in their separate small packs, as if ingrained to find only those which matched a certain criteria within their own minds. The Japanese wolves—or so he assumed them to be, as they had been within the mountains for so long—tended to drift further from the Americans. Every now and then one or the other would come closer. They would sniff, wag their tails cautiously, and then quickly turn away again.

Yugi couldn't help but notice that not once did Yusei make the effort to move away from his pack members now. Echo had lain down, her beta nearby snoozing in the shade, and Yusei remained only feet from them. The smaller gray wolf had grown unnerved for whatever reason, sitting up and watching rather than relaxing as the others seemed to be.

He only seemed to move away when Marik and Aki approached. The American wolf sniffed at the male, curled his lips, pricked his ears forward and got to his feet to shift a few paces away. He did not fully retreat, however, hovering, and soon took a seat again with a darkened gleam to his eyes. Marik ignored him now, sniffing at the she-wolf that served as Echo's beta. The female blinked, her head tilted, and then peeled her lips back to show off jagged white teeth.

Marik did not respond further than a mild bristle that began at his shoulders and trailed the length of his dorsal cape. Aki, having paused from where she'd initially been about to continue walking, sopped altogether and flicked her ears, considering them with a relatively unimpressed expression. Then she came closer, blinking lazily as she looked at the three wolves in the forefront and then towards the rest of the pack. Her ears flicked, in something that Yugi almost would have labeled as a suspicious movement. And, as if beckoned or perhaps as if she were capable of reading his mind, Echo rose to her paws.

The darker she-wolf's head came up, her ears pricked forward. Her gray eyes glittered fiercely and her lips curled back to bare her teeth. She came forward a few steps, slow and threatening. Aki blinked, turned her head in a slow gesture to look at her, and blinked in an exaggerated motion as if to taunt her.

Yugi blinked, stunned, as the wolves began to snarl and lunge at each other. Echo and Aki took a moment to size each other up, the dark-furred she-wolf snarling as Aki finally drew her lips back to expose her teeth. The other American wolves began to jump to their paws. Tails came in up unison, as many of the Japanese wolves began to take unkindly to the potential spat as well.

Within a heartbeat Yugi himself was on his feet, eyes wide and fur rising in a bristle of alarm. He faltered when he took a step, unsure, and then felt anxiety prickle at his insides. He wondered if they sensed it, because Aki and Echo were inches away from each other, ready to lunge. He hesitated, then moved forward again. Immediately Obelisk and Slifer responded to his action, on their paws and starting towards him.

The white wolf could think of no other means of distraction but to snarl and snap his teeth as he got closer. His fur rose into a bristle, his nose wrinkled from his curled lips. He stepped closer, tail rising. Both Echo and Aki seemed to freeze for a split second. And then their heads turned away. Both she-wolves lowered their muzzles and turned their faces from him, as if staring at the snow. Marik flattened his ears against his head and turned away with them. Yusei stared at him in bewilderment, as if unsure of why he might have interrupted.

Yugi finally allowed his bristle to drop, then huffed loudly through his nose. His tail fell immediately after and he flicked his ears uncomfortably. Everyone had begun to watch him now. Even Slifer and Obelisk seemed to be awaiting his reaction. They were staring, eyes seeming to glow as he glanced back at them minutely.

The white wolf glanced at Aki, at a loss now as to what to do. The she-wolf had long since raised her head and turned her attention to him, as had Marik himself. The two were watching him with cold expressions, studying. Yugi wondered if he looked as small as he felt at that moment.

What would Yami have done?

It would have been so much easier to know what to do if the black wolf were there. The thought made his fur ripple in a grieved bristle before it fell flat again. He blinked and looked at Marik as well, then glanced at Echo. Between the three of them, from what he could tell, Echo seemed the most sensible. And if she was sensible then perhaps she was like Yami in that way. He doubted their logic would be one hundred percent similar but he had to hope somewhat.

Yugi flicked an ear then pushed past the two wolves, between the females as if they were nothing more than decoration. The reaction was immediate. Both sides pulled away, lowering their heads, but Aki and Marik were the first to turn and move away completely.

Obelisk and Slifer stared as if they couldn't comprehend the action. The thought made his fur bristle slightly for a brief moment before he shook it off once more. The two gods watched for a second longer then flicked their ears as if to dismiss the sight before them. Yugi wondered if this kind of disruption would have been handled differently by anyone other than him.

Would a natural leader have launched themselves into the fray, pinned them in anger? Would they have snarled and snapped and tried to make them cower? Yugi felt smaller than before now, nearly flattening his ears against his skull as he turned away again. He looked at the snow, uncomfortable and dismayed.

Was anything he did ever right?

 _Echo,_ he announced, head snapping towards her. The she-wolf raised her head, startled, and then stepped closer only once. Her head was tilted, gray eyes puzzled, and her ears flattened against her skull in a submissive stance. Yugi stared at her for a moment, not the least bit surprised to see her eyes lowered and focused somewhere below his gaze. _I want to ask you something._

The reassuring tone of his voice was enough to make her blink in bewilderment. Then she glanced at the two gods standing a few feet away. The sight of them seemed to make her bristle briefly and he could not help but remember the frosty reception she had gotten when she'd first stumbled upon the pack. They had been there when he'd spoken to her, but they'd also stood around and allowed her harassment. He could understand the apprehension in her eyes as she looked at them and back.

 _They won't be following._

Echo tilted her head and flicked an ear before slowly moving to follow him when he began to trot past the other wolves. With Marik and Aki gone they seemed to have lost their spark for any sort of antagonism. Yugi wondered if it was truly because they had moved away or if it was simply his intervention which had done so.

Regardless, the two of them moved towards the edge of the camp, where the trees grew more thickly and the sun seemed almost blocked by the branches even with as bare as they were. He turned to her only after glancing towards the stone cliffs that riddled the path higher towards the top of the mountain and the expanse of what had formerly been blue-gray beyond. But they were mostly white now, with silver flecks and twinkles of blue from the sun casting shadows and direct light.

It was always amazing to him how much the world could change between seasons. The earth was a canvas that constantly adapted, worn at to the point of breaking but somehow still incredibly persistent. He shivered and wondered, but his focal point of thought scared him so he shrugged it aside without true consideration.

 _Why were they fighting_? he asked quietly. His ears flicked. His head tilted. He considered her, eyes cold and glittering, and pricked his ears forward almost curiously. _What made them all so upset_?

Echo blinked and her stare was at something over his shoulder, giving an impression of attention but showing as well the respect that came with limiting eye contact. _Culture_. The word was said so quietly that Yugi almost could not catch it. But then her eyes flickered briefly towards him, dark gray and flashing for a split second.

Culture? Yugi blinked. They had almost fought because one pack was American and the other was Japanese? What kind of stupidity was…?

 _That's ridiculous,_ he snapped. If he and Echo could stand in front of each other without losing their minds and trying to dig their teeth into each other, why could they not do the same? It seemed incredibly foolish, a waste of time and energy in every sense. He bristled faintly, then shook it off. _That's not going to happen again._

Echo tilted her head, an ear flicking in something almost like bewilderment. Her gray eyes caught his now, for only a split second, but she seemed somewhat undone by the idea. He almost thought he saw perhaps dismay or distaste or maybe even the slightest hint of fear.

 _You don't think that I should step in_? he inquired quietly, tilting his head and staring at her with a bewildered expression. _Why not_?

She stared at him with something almost cold in her eyes. Yugi wondered at it, curious as she remained deathly quiet for a long minute. Then, finally, with severity, her voice came to him in a cold chill of distaste.

 _Why are you asking_ me?

He blinked, eyes widening, and his ears flicked, threatening to flatten against his skull with dismay. She had said it with such disdain that it amazed him. The white wolf tilted his head. _Is there a reason I shouldn't_? he asked slowly. She had been directly involved, hadn't she? So why would he have asked someone else? The thought was flabbergasting to him. _You were—_

 _You should ask your beta,_ she snapped in a tone that spoke of no room for argument. Then she shook her head and in his mind was a flash of blue-gray fur and dark golden eyes with flecks of amber that looked almost red. _He is the one directly beneath you._

He could see the way her eyes flickered, growing somewhat unfocused. Clearly her energy was being robbed in the effort it took to get the words across to him. He shivered, wondering at this disconnection between himself and these other wolves. Was it truly something that only the Pure-Bloods could perform? Or was it something else entirely?

Marik had been able to talk to him for a lengthy amount of time. Was it so impossible for the others to truly do so?

 _Obelisk was not involved—_

 _But he is your beta._ This time the words were frosty, her eyes sharp with disdain. Then her ears flicked for a moment with nervous tension and Yugi shivered slightly at the sight of it. The words were frayed around the edges when she spoke again. _You should ask him an opinion of your actions._ I _am a subordinate now._

A subordinate?

Yugi stared at her, stunned and visibly shocked by the idea. She was the alpha of the American wolves, wasn't she? So why was she…?

His heart sank. She meant that he was leader.

Because he was Atem.

The hole in his chest opened anew, raw and jagged along the edges. The ache made his heart hurt more and his body felt as if it were on fire with shame and disbelief. Were they truly all so mindless? How could such a thing be possible? It should have been impossible by any means…

Yugi stared at her, a furrow of ice beginning to crystallize within his belly. His eyes were sharp, daggers of gleaming frustration and hatred. He watched her and, for the briefest of moments, wished to lash out and catch her throat between his teeth. She had it so much easier than he did, knowing her place in life far better than he ever could. She was a warrior in the war, not the leader of an army of wolves. And her decisions banked more on personal gain and duty than the lives of other wolves. His decisions held what could be an entire species' destruction altogether. The magnitude of their differences was so terrible that he did not even think it right to compare them. She was what he had been formerly, a gnat, where others were krakens and monsters of mythological degree.

His stomach sank further, that ice growing further and further pronounced. The hatred billowed through his blood like dam water and he swore his teeth seemed to itch with desire to tear into her flesh. He felt his fur lift and fall, shuddering with rage, and then he breathed out hard enough that his entire body trembled.

Echo seemed to have realized her misstep. Her ears were folded back, eyes on the snow. Her fur was perfectly flat along her back, but her shoulders seemed almost to quiver. Yugi didn't have to check to know that her tail was between her legs in a show of open submission.

He blinked, the rage beginning to slowly die away in his veins. And then he flicked an ear, eyes scanning the area he had last seen Obelisk and Slifer. The two of them had seemingly vanished into thin air. Or perhaps he was too far to see them any longer.

He supposed it didn't matter. He'd find them easily enough. It was not as if they ever hid from him. Yugi sniffed loudly and shouldered past her without a second glance. But he could hear her when she shifted her weight, moving to look back and following after several long moments of hesitation.

Yugi flicked an ear and shook himself out for a moment, then quickened his pace.

A few feet away the two gods were sitting with a bone between them, one that had been cracked open and the marrow stripped of it. Occasionally Slifer would take a bite of it, splintering the bone further as if to ease some kind of pressure that lay in her lean frame. On the other hand, Obelisk simply yawned and shifted his weight, once or twice batting at the piece of skeleton as if it might make a good game of hockey or ball.

The white wolf stopped a few steps back and narrowed his eyes, considering them for a moment before trotting forward. _Obelisk—_

The gray wolf was on his feet immediately, so fast in movement that Yugi flinched and Slifer looked up with something like annoyance on her sharper face. A look passed between them and Slifer followed her brother, getting to her feet and trailing him when Yugi began to lead the way. Where he would have stopped at the edge of the camp, the two gods merely continued forward. The white wolf hesitated, startled by the suddenness, and then finally flicked his ears and followed, bewildered.

They stopped several miles into the trees. The winter had given the white a deathly silence and the shadows around them seemed miniscule where the sun reached through the trees and their scarce limbs. The bare twigs that made their ends looked like skeletal fingers and broken bones, joints that were too shattered to repair. He shivered and a tree crackled, the bark forcefully expelling itself with a hideous cry. He startled but the other two merely turned to him now. Against the snow, the two gods looked like fire and soot, and he wondered if he was still capable of blending in so well as was formerly claimed.

He tilted his head and considered them both for a long moment. Cautiously Yugi came a step closer, mumbling, _Did I do the right thing in stopping them from fighting_? but his voice sounded too small and he was not sure he wished to have that question answered. He faltered but neither answered him regardless and his stomach tossed as they peered at one another.

Obelisk charged him. The abrupt action made Yugi jerk back, snarling and wide-eyed. The gray wolf spun on him without a moment of hesitation, snapping his teeth at his scruff. Yugi had a moment of remembrance. Dogs were rushing at him through the snow. Yami was snarling beside him. His jaws clamped into his scruff. His head jerked. Yugi rolled…

He squared his muscles now, however, bristling. The teeth sunk almost uselessly into his scruff, his hold tenuous at best. And then Obelisk tossed his head. Yugi growled but the movement did nothing more than pull lightly on his fur. He flicked his ears and glanced at Slifer, bewildered.

What was this even about?

 _Are we training or something_?

Slifer was chortling when she answered. _I should think so. He's not drawing blood and I'm sure he has not lost his touch in battle._

Yugi huffed and shifted his weight as Obelisk pulled away from him with a dismissive expression. _Why_? _That's not what I wanted to talk about,_ he objected in annoyance. He shot the gray wolf an irate look when the other did not respond besides pressing closer to him. When he lunged this time, the white wolf snapped his teeth in frustration. Instantly Obelisk raised a paw and aimed at his muzzle. He backed up, white ears pricked.

 _We have more important things which require discussion,_ the god of war commented with a dismissive sniff. _Such as your lack of control of your abilities. You can change now, yes, but you still lack the ability to do half of what you are capable._

Yugi flicked an ear. _I don't care to—_

 _Then I'm sure Yami will understand why you're lacking any sense of yourself when you get killed in battle,_ he scoffed furiously. _I'm sure he won't see you as weak and disgraceful._

He flattened his ears and then bit at his nose, snarling. Yami wouldn't think that of him. He knew that. He was bristling, growling, but he could not help but remember that day in the woods. Yami had said he hoped he lived long enough to grow up.

Yugi stared at the two of them for a long minute and a half. He had said that. He remembered that so well. And here these two wolves were, both threatening his life but offering to help him with it as well…

He blinked and looked away. _What are you trying to teach me_? _You mentioned something about the adrenaline rush last time we spoke._

Obelisk snorted. _And, as I told you formerly, it is not an adrenaline rush. It is the natural strength of the Pure-Blood. It is the natural advantage of every werewolf in existence._ He sniffed disdainfully and watched him for a moment. Yugi seemed to have shrunk at the mere mention of his missing alpha, as if the thought of Yami alone was enough to break him in half. Perhaps it was. After all, he was still rather convinced that the black wolf was dead. _And, if you wish to survive, you would do well to learn to utilize such a gift, Yugi._

He raised his head, turning blazing blue-violet eyes on him. _You call it a gift_? _When it kills other wolves for no reason_? _Because you can't control it and—_

 _If you were to embrace your heritage, you could most certainly learn to control it. It simply takes a solid mind and focus._ Obelisk glanced at Slifer and back. _How do you think we have survived_? _It is not through pure divinity in and of itself._

Yugi blinked and flattened his ears, considering him for a moment or two. _You both are here. But Ra is not._

Slifer shook her fur out. _She prefers to rest in_ _Paradise_ _rather than be forced to the realm of the living. It is her choice. Perhaps one day she shall come back to her physical body and wake from her rest. Perhaps not. She is the guardian of life, after all. She is the one who grants rebirth and special cases of birth such as your own._

 _But you both are here…_

 _I prefer to see the wolves myself as they begin to pass into_ _Paradise_ _. And Obelisk likes the trials that life still presents us all._ The she-wolf considered him for only a moment longer, then shook herself out once more with a flick of her ears. _If you should truly survive this war, I am sure you will come to find that immortality can be rather…boring more than anything else._

Yugi tilted his head and considered her for a long moment. The words in his head were more depressing than he wanted to admit and the reality of them scared him for a moment. So, reluctantly, the white wolf turned to Obelisk now instead.

 _If I learn to control it…_

The unspoken words hung between them and both deities eyed him with equal wonder for a moment. Then, the gray wolf seemed almost to smile, his eyes softer than Yugi had ever before seen them. Obelisk came a step closer, nudged his forehead with his nose, and calmly murmured, _It will surely lessen casualties._

It was enough to make Yugi nod and sigh, the reassurance short and swift. But it left him just as quickly as he looked up again with what Slifer saw as defeated eyes. The thought was appealing but the reality of it seemed to shatter his mind altogether. The implications made his fur shudder and he felt sick as he considered the other two wolves.

 _Will it_? he asked, but another part of him snarled with rage. _It won't bring Yami back._ The last words were not spoken but he could see that the deities understood such expression upon his face with little difficulty. They considered each other for a moment longer. Then Yugi looked away again. If embracing the innate strength that the lycanthropes possessed was a way of preventing more unnecessary death, then perhaps Obelisk was right in his idea.

 _Then teach me,_ he said so quietly that both wolves had to strain themselves to receive such a message. Yugi looked up a couple of minutes later, when the silence had stretched too thin and he wondered if perhaps Obelisk might deny him such opportunity.

The gray wolf tilted his head and then leaned forward. The movement seemed almost to cause his shoulders to roll in a human manner. Yugi tilted his head, pricking his ears forward. He remembered vaguely how human that had looked upon Slifer doing so. But on this giant male in from of him, it seemed more controlled and somehow chaotic as well. It was unnatural and somehow vicious all at once.

 _Naturally your instincts will warn you when another wolf comes to fight with you. Your body will brace itself and you will find yourself prepared if only for the initial impact._ The gray wolf growled softly and then circled him once before pricking his ears forward. Slifer closed her eyes and tilted her head, almost as if she was listening and regarding them even with this sense blocked away entirely. He supposed it would not take much for her to make sense of these actions through her ears alone. _It's what saved you at the greenhouse and what helped Yami to beat that tiger in the warehouse as well._

Yugi blinked, at first stunned he should know such a thing. And then he sniffed and flicked an ear. Slifer had said she knew every moment of his life as life brought him closer to death. Ra knew him because she had given him his first breath. And Obelisk had knowledge of war. It should not have been surprising that simple altercations and fights would fall beneath such a blanket of a domain.

 _It also saved you when Marik attempted to kill you for coming into the pack's territory._ The white wolf remembered that. It was not hard to recall. He'd felt the adrenaline rush then too, just as he had when he'd killed Bakura… _Like the Change, it is easy to call upon your ability to experience such strength._

Yugi flattened his ears against his skull, eyes darkening. _And I'm sure we do it the exact same way,_ he drawled.

 _Yes. Or I might beat the insolence out of you in order to bring it forth._ Obelisk's tone had grown spiteful and condescending and Yugi would have blushed were he human. As a wolf, his head lowered as did his eyes, and a sense of shame crept over him in waves. The deity calmed himself again, shaking himself out lazily. _Now, try to bring it forth naturally and I will tell you how to embrace it fully._

The white wolf glanced at him sideways, pausing for a moment to consider it all. How had it felt when that had happened? He couldn't truly recall. It had been like a fog setting in, had it not? He remembered that much. The thought surprised him and he wondered vaguely how much of that feeling was truthful.

He flicked an ear and turned his head away, thinking harder about it. Had it been painful? No, he couldn't remember there being more than the wound Marik had inflicted. Beyond that it had been forced away and hidden beneath the mist that had crept through him.

But merely considering it seemed to make his body feel powerful, energetic, and it made him shiver with determination. He could feel it in his bones, tingling and warm, and it made his body almost tremble before he shoved it away. The sensation was lost for a split second, coming again only as the small wolf focused once more and glanced at Obelisk.

He could smell it in him. The power in his body was like a fever, harsh and terrible against the cold air. It was beautiful to behold, especially upon seeing how easily Yugi had so shunned it before. How he had turned away from such strength was something Obelisk would never understand.

 _Do you feel that_? _That is the_ true _strength of the wolf, of the lycanthrope. Power at its truest core._

Yugi breathed hard, shaking and panting as his coat twitched and every fur on his pelt shifted uneasily. His heart was beating too fast now. The wet noise of its twisting and the harsh pump of blood made his legs feel weak as his ears rang painfully. His ribs strained, feeling shattered and bruised as he tried to catch his breath. He had known the force of his adrenaline rush but twice, how much faster and stronger he seemed to become, but it had never been something he cared to think about. He had always just calmed himself and tried to smother the consequences of what had come about upon using such power.

To have it hovering beneath his skin, impressing itself upon him like this, it made him more fearful than he thought he had ever known himself to be.

 _That is the gift of the werewolf. It is the potential of immortality. Many train to control it,_ Obelisk continued, looking at him with pure excitement and something akin pride in his sharp eyes. _They wish to turn it on and off at their will._

Yugi flicked an ear. His body was shaking harder now, his breathing heavy and trembling. His eyes flickered about them and focused on Slifer more fully. _They should learn to do that,_ he snapped bitterly. _It's a weapon. I killed Bakura by accident because of it. I wouldn't have hurt him like that if not for—_

 _It was his time. Had you not done it, Yami would have,_ the she-wolf answered simply. Yugi curled his lips back, snarling low in his throat. _He was wounded but he surely would have ripped his throat out if he was capable of getting closer._

 _There is always a line that shouldn't be crossed,_ Yugi snapped spitefully, eyes furious. _Otherwise you would soon become a monster._

 _Is that what you fear_? Slifer murmured, ignoring the blatant declaration.

 _Do you want to know why so many lone wolves are likely to die so early, Yugi_? _It's because they are alone. It's because their wolf nature grows discontent and the loneliness is not a natural trait of the wolf. It's because it is_ always _the wolf that has the strength of the pack, that gives it courage and keeps their minds healthy. But it is also because they always seem to try to find the power and stop it. It is because they fear the very thing that makes them strong, that gives them life and allows them to exist. They fear that it will take them over, turn them into the_ "beast" _they believe exists there._

Yugi bristled, snapping his jaws in a moment of forgetfulness. _It's not a beast_! _It's a_ wolf. _It's an_ animal. No _animal is some kind of_ beast!

Obelisk watched him with cold eyes, sizing him up and dismissing him as nothing more than a pest in comparison to a threat. _You are correct. It is a wolf. Not a monster. Not some creature from the darkness. It is an animal, born of instinct and wilderness. But the humans paint us as creatures of destruction and bloodshed. So many werewolves foolishly try to "tame the beast". But in an attempt to muzzle it, they unintentionally_ kill _themselves without thought,_ the god continued dismissively before slowly raising his head to look towards the white canine. _Do not attempt to muzzle it, Yugi. You must learn to utilize this in battle._

He pawed at the ground, growing anxious at that brilliant power which continued through his veins. _I_ do _that. I do that every battle and every encounter I have with someone when my temper starts to snap,_ he stated immediately, a whine bubbling out of him as a brief, fleeting image of Bakura's broken body shone in his mind. And then he considered the way he and Yami had both glared at each other, snarling and breathing heavily, watching one another as their tempers frayed.

 _Yes, it is the natural defense of the werewolf. But_ it _controls_ you, _as your weakened mind allowed in the lab,_ Obelisk growled disdainfully. _And you would run from it whenever you got the chance, would you_ not? _You act as if it is the worst part of you. A rotten secret that only rears its head when you're at your most vulnerable._

 _I'm more concerned with what I_ have _done with it already._

Yugi shook his head to scatter away the gruesome images of Bakura's broken body, of the humans he had attacked in the tunnels. He shivered and that power inside of him seemed to hum as if to reassure him, but all it did was make his stomach drop and his heart ache even more. He hadn't known it was possible to hurt as much as he did at the moment, ears flattening against his skull and body shaking with the force of such grief.

But if this strength was truly so great, why was it that it had not helped him to save Yami? Why had it not been enough to allow him shatter the ice so that he could pull him free? Or simply even _find_ him? Why was it not enough to guide his way back to Yugi or him to Yami?

Why were his efforts _never_ enough?

 _Let it move with you and it will not control you, or you control it. Soon you would be the most powerful creature there is to offer. Stop fighting the very thing that gives you life and you will find the strength to win any battle._

Yugi blinked slowly, that familiar ache inside of him beginning to fester with hatred. It begged for his attention, cutting into him with jagged teeth. And it was a focus he was not so keen to give it. But what was the use of this strength if it didn't bring Yami back to him? What was the use of being able to win these battles when _none_ of them would give him what he sought?

A scornful snort escaped him, bathing the cold air in a soft white most in front of him. His ears flicked and his lips drew back slightly with disgust. An amused look was aimed his way.

 _You do not believe me_?

 _I do. I just don't understand everything you've just told me,_ he admitted quietly, a sense of shame and resentment swelling inside of him for the briefest of moments. A part of him did not care to know either and the gift they dangled before his nose was useless to him. And the longer apart from Yami the more he felt the black wolf would slip away from him entirely, killed long before he could attempt to truly save or help him.

Slifer tilted her head, watching the way his eyes darkened briefly and the shadows seemed to writhe as if in malcontent chaos. She flicked an ear, then sniffed lightly. _You will need this strength soon, Yugi,_ she warned quietly, a soft and melodious note coming to her voice and startling him from his own thoughts rather violently. _For nothing is given without a price and your debt will some to you._

He blinked. _Yami…_

Neither wolf responded but the way her eyes glinted confirmed it.

The third time Yugi was knocked off his feet was the last. The white wolf huffed, then turned his face away and rested his chin on his paws. Behind him Obelisk was laughing. In front of him Slifer was watching with that contemplative expression she seemed to so often wear. The white wolf ignored them both, though his fur continued to rise into a bristle, however, provoked by the noise of the laughter the gray wolf continued to expel. The other deity watched him a moment longer, then turned to Obelisk with a contemptuous look and flicking ears.

 _Instead of simply knocking him around for the fun of it, why don't you just go ahead and teach him how you have done it_? she huffed, as if she shared Yugi's exasperation. The white wolf glanced at her sideways, all but ashamed that she should feel such need to run interference. It cut into his thoughts like a razor blade and he felt sick as he considered. But she was not looking at him and it caused the smallest edge of his wounded pride to mend itself. _You have not taught him a single thing._

 _I've taught him not assume me his friend. His pride is bruised enough not to fall under such a misconception._

 _Ego is not what makes a warrior._ Slifer turned to him now, golden eyes almost glowing with something akin hatred. _Ego gets a warrior killed before they set foot upon a battlefield. To be humble, however, is to be destroyed as well. One must keep a clear head in war. Any change to such a mindset will bring destruction._

He could have shrugged at her for all he cared. It was not as if he thought much of himself as it was. But that was not to match much else in the case of how shattered Yami's own self-esteem had seemed at times. The thought made his belly ache again.

 _Get to your feet. I'll show you what I've been doing._

Was it worth it? The white wolf hardly considered it so. His thoughts were fragmented and scattered and he could only gather collapsed fragments of such things. So he simply considered the weight it would take to get to his paws, how much pressure he might feel to sway beneath the force of the other's will. And, finally, reluctantly, Yugi forced himself to his feet. Slifer looked almost relieved. And when he glanced at Obelisk sideways as the wolf circled him slightly, he could see something almost akin pride.

The two deities seemed surprised by his will to rise to his feet. And it both surprised and disappointed him as well. Yugi shrugged such feeling away, however.

He supposed he did complain enough to make them second guess his willingness to deal with such things.

 _Now raise yourself onto your hindquarters._ Yugi hesitated for a long moment, then slowly rose as instructed. The simplicity of the action made his skin crawl for a moment but to over think it seemed childish. Obelisk studied him for a moment, then backed up a step. _You can see the way a wolf balances themselves more prominently by the way their muscles bunch in their legs. You justify your weight on the right side. I do the same. But you have to be able to swap at a moment's notice. You do not do this. When a wolf goes for your right leg, you'll be struck down easily because of your lack of judgment. You must rectify this._

Yugi blinked but to look down would have made him fall back to all fours. And standing like this was incredibly awkward as it was. He flicked an ear and his back right leg quivered faintly. _And I would do that how_?

 _By learning to use your weight enough to block such a blow. If you can change your balance, you can find your own ability to block an attack like that._ Obelisk paused and then sprang forward. Yugi immediately flinched back but not in time to avoid the way that the gray wolf tapped his right leg with his nose. The touch was enough to make him flinch again and he toppled over onto his side, huffing in annoyance, and wished he could roll his eyes as he scrambled for his paws again. _When you shift your balance, however, doing so too soon or too late is a problem. And if you are obvious, they will know to go for that leg. Your muscles tell when you do such a thing. That is what you want to avoid._

Yugi huffed and shook himself out for a moment. The snow that fell from his coat surprised him. He could have made a whole new wolf out of it. The white canine looked at Obelisk a moment longer, then moved to take a seat.

 _Stay standing. I'm going to instruct you on exactly what it is I did._

Yugi flicked an ear, tempted to say otherwise. _All right,_ he muttered, straightening and tilting his head. He wanted to tell him to be quick about it, that it was closer to curfew now than ever. But the reality of it was he still had an hour to get home. And when he got there, he thought maybe he'd sit with his mom and grandpa, maybe watch television or just make mild conversation instead.

 _So what you are going to do is aim for the leg you see my weight balanced on. Then you're going to aim for it. If you can move fast enough, you can knock me off balance._ He considered him for a moment longer, eyes flickering for the briefest of seconds. Yugi thought the way his eyes glimmered that second time was more like a shark than anything else. _When your opponent is on their back feet and they're wounded, naturally they will try to keep their weight on their more capable leg. When you see this, you can manipulate it if you force them to balance on their wounded leg. Most often they'll buckle. When they do, even for a second, it's an opening. Go for the throat. When you knock them off balance by going for their leg, go for the throat._

Yugi flicked an ear. _I don't want to kill anyone all over again._

 _You wouldn't be killing them. It's just an easy way to warn a potential threat away, Yugi. And it keeps the fight from escalating further._

He wanted to ask why Yami had not done that instead of killing. But he doubted Obelisk would answer him and he dreaded hearing Slifer speak his name again. Every time she spoke it he felt his heart crack just the slightest bit more, with the fear that perhaps this time she would tell him he had died.

 _Wolves in the wild hardly kill one another over something as simple as rank beneath the alpha. And even then sometimes they're simply punished as the omega and free to follow the pack about regardless. It is territory disputes and abuse of the hierarchy which can cause such immense problems._

Yugi shook his head.

 _But most often they'll force another to their back and bare their teeth at their throats. That's the point of this conversation._ Obelisk sniffed at him for a moment, then turned away and looked at him more pointedly. _Go for the leg and then the throat._

The smaller wolf tilted his head, bristling in surprise when the other rose calmly to his back legs. The action made him bristle further and his stomach lurched as he considered him. He truly wanted him to practice such a move on him? Why? The thought was amazing to him but the other wolf remained as he was. And Yugi could see the strength which lay in those legs, tight and corded and taut as he stayed crouched there upon his haunches.

With the weight of the potential attack, Yugi found himself almost winded by the very idea. But a part of him was buzzing with excitement and he sprang before he could think it through. He had not judged which leg or even where he should leap. And so, Obelisk simply pivoted his weight, moved to land on all fours, and knocked Yugi flat on his belly beneath him.

The instantaneous reaction was laughter from both deities. They were shaking and roaring with the noise and Yugi found himself bristling as Obelisk rose from atop him once more. The movement made Yugi rise to his feet again, winded but unharmed beyond that. He shook himself out and glanced at them angrily.

 _You didn't think before you leaped,_ Obelisk guffawed, undeterred by Yugi's anger. He flicked his ears and sniffed loudly once or twice, trying to calm himself. _You did not even pay attention to which leg it was I had put more of my weight on._

 _How would you know_? he snapped bitterly. _I could have just gotten distracted_!

 _I have only two back legs and you aimed for the one I didn't put my weight on._

 _I was trying to use the element of surprise._

Slifer snorted, looking away again immediately when Yugi glared at her furiously. The red she-wolf ignored them and sniffed at her paws, licking at her dewclaw in order to shake their attention. Her golden eyes remained dutifully focused and Yugi huffed as he spun on Obelisk once more.

 _Okay so now what_? he spat.

 _We practice until you perfect it._

Yugi bristled. _That's not happening tonight. I have to get home by curfew. I'm spending the night with my family instead of staying out like I always do._ His head was swimming and he wondered for a moment how Yami would have responded to him making such a statement. Where Obelisk blinked and his eyes darkened, he imagined Yami would have tilted his head in consideration and then nodded slowly around agreement. _I have my mom and grandpa to worry about, not just some pack of wolves in the woods._

Slifer raised her eyes to him now, ears flicking. _Very well. Then I suggest you practice as much as you can in the meantime, yes_?

He grunted and Obelisk curled his lip back in disgust for a moment. Yugi turned his head and licked his nose, slightly chastised by his response to such a simple noise. Then he flicked an ear once more and huffed as he looked between the two deities.

 _Fine._

* * *

"Yugi."

He looked up in surprise, eyes widening slightly as he put his backpack on the floor and tilted his head towards the figure in the hallway. Sugoroku was seated in one of the chairs at the table and his mom was in the doorway, watching him with keen blue eyes. He glanced between them for a moment, then turned to face them completely.

"What's up?" he asked cautiously, tilting his head a little more when he saw that neither of them seemed even remotely relaxed. Had something happened? Yugi nearly cursed. Those stupid fucking gods. What if someone had died and he didn't—?

"Anzu's father came by. He asked to speak to you about the arson incidents."

Kasumi pressed her lips into a thin line, considering him for a long minute. Then she sighed loudly and closed her eyes. She looked as if she hadn't been sleeping and Yugi wondered abruptly if she _knew_ he was sneaking out of the house and returning at such odd hours. He was struck by such clarity that he was not the most skillful at hiding such a thing. And he wondered if she had even heard Yami's voice at some point, if that had been why she had not been daunted by his declaration that he was screwing around with a guy in his hotel room.

Yugi blinked when she did not speak again. "The arson incidents?" he repeated, curious. "What do I have to do with them?"

Now it was Sugoroku to awkwardly clear his throat and reply, looking away as if ashamed of himself. "We don't know where you were when either of them happened."

The small teen floundered for a moment, heart in his throat before his stomach churned. She knew. She absolutely _knew_ that he had not been in his room that night, that he had stayed out into the day as well. He was frozen, stomach knotted, and looked away for a long moment.

"I was with Yami."

The half-truth was comforting but it broke his heart as well. He glanced at them from beneath his lashes.

"I was with Yami when the forest was caught on fire. And I was with Yami again when the restaurant was caught on fire."

Sugoroku seemed to instantly brighten, as if the words were a silver lining to something he couldn't fathom. But it was his mom who shook her head and murmured, "And where is Yami?"

The simple question was enough to nearly knock him from his feet. His shoulders nearly fell, but somehow he managed to hold them upright and his lungs felt tight with pain.

His voice broke.

"I don't know."

Both of his family members halted at the tone of his words. He nearly cringed at the thought and his stomach churned as they faced each other. But he couldn't think to cover himself in any way and his mom's face seemed to fall from its frustration to bewilderment and mild hurt.

"You've been sneaking off to see Yami?"

Yugi bit his lip and reached up a hand to run through his hair. "He needed help," he whispered, trying not to let it show just how much he wished he could have answered that Yami was still within the house, sleeping on the couch as per their agreement. But his absence was obvious and he wondered if they had noted how defeated he seemed at times. "He needed help so I…I helped him."

"Helped with what?"

"He was…hurt. He'd cut himself by accident. He was gushing blood and he was in a panic. He knew I knew medical aid and he couldn't pay for a hospital visit so I… I snuck out and met him at the hotel." He fell quiet. She didn't know about the bloodied clothing and the towels. He'd made sure of that much at the very least. He'd cleaned and scrubbed and gotten rid of stains. He'd probably even gotten rid of every bit of fingerprints and DNA that existed in the room as it was. "I helped him bandage it and disinfect it and I stitched him up. I was at his hotel when the forest was caught on fire."

Kasumi studied him for a moment, something inside of her pleading to simply reach out and pull him closer. The maternal part of her wanted nothing more than to help him with his obvious pain. But the other part of her, more logical and quick to lose her temper, flared with indignation. Yugi truly _had_ run off that night.

She'd been hopeful. She'd wanted to believe that he had simply left for school before she'd woken up. His bag had been missing and he was long gone, after all.

But the anger quickly left her as she considered him. She had never seen such a miserable expression on his face before, not even when things had gotten to the point of bitter fights and night terrors beyond what he had suffered before. He had always had some kind of brightness in his eyes, a soft albeit forced smile upon his face. Now he looked exhausted, defeated, as if the world was consuming him bit by bit and he had no idea how to stop it.

"I went to his hotel after school the day the restaurant caught on fire. I never even had any idea about it until that news cast mentioned it. But I don't know where Yami is right now. His parents…called him late that night and he ran off. I guess they…" He shrugged and looked at the tiles with darkened eyes. "I don't know. I have no idea. He won't answer his phone and he won't email me when I try to contact him. He could be halfway across the world and I would have no idea."

"His hand looked fine when he was at dinner."

Yugi shrugged. "I'd been sanitizing and cleaning it for days before that. After we all went to the arcade, I'd usually sneak off and go to see about him. And then I'd come back."

He looked at his shoes for a moment. Maybe he should invest in better sneakers. If Mazaki truly had his eyes on him, then he'd probably need to run as fast he could when he got the chance.

A hysterical bubble of laughter almost left him. Why run as a human? He could turn into a wolf, for fuck's sake.

"You know how bad this is going to look, right?" his mother pressed, not accusatory but far from friendly either. "You realize that, when he questions you, if you're not one hundred percent certain of your answers, he's going to be able to pin this on you."

He looked up, their eyes locking, and his lips nearly pulled back into a furious snarl. "I know where I was both nights. It's not that big a deal. What I don't know is where Yami is. And I have no idea how to contact him. He's my alibi."

"What about the hotel?" Sugoroku commented, hoping to keep them from snapping at each other anymore. Yugi blinked and his eyes flickered over, something disturbed and puzzled and almost vaguely horrified crossing his gaze. Kasumi merely blinked, staring at her dad in slight bewilderment. He looked at Yugi for a moment, then cleared his throat. "There had to have been someone who saw you. The person behind the desk, the cameras…"

The smaller teen shook his head. "It was the motel near the nature preserve. They went out of business a couple of days ago, remember?"

"That doesn't mean they wouldn't remember seeing the two of you—"

"Motel?" his mom cut in, making them both fall silent. She eyed Yugi with a sharp, darkened gaze, and tilted her head with a frustrated expression. "You told us before that it was a hotel."

"Hotel, motel, whatever. It doesn't matter. Either way, he didn't have a house and his parents weren't living with him and he was paying out of his pocket for a living place. It's all basically the same."

"Motels are where people are most likely to hide when they don't want to be found," his mom snapped, glaring now. "And you went there without a care in the world."

Yugi rolled his eyes. "I'm not helpless."

"You'd also rather get hurt than have someone else end up in that state," she spat. "You're a martyr. We all know that. You'd rather suffer than have someone else go through it. You'd probably _let_ someone beat you to a pulp before you would hurt someone else, even in self-defense."

The smaller teen tilted his head, considering the words, and then glanced away. He'd killed Bakura to save Yami. He'd killed Ryota because he was a threat to Yami. He'd killed Espa's siblings in the woods, as well as the dogs that they'd brought with them. He'd punished Marik for even speaking negatively towards him. And he'd do it again if the wolf was brave enough to open his trap a second time.

But his mom didn't know that.

And Yugi had no plans to tell her otherwise.

"It wasn't dangerous. Yami is a smart guy. He wouldn't have stayed there if he wasn't sure it was safe. Besides, the weirdest person I met there was a tourist and she was perfectly harmless. She just liked to give Yami soda every now and then." He wondered at the intricacy of his own lies now, nearly rolling his eyes up in the back of his head with frustration. But if he made it seem harmless, then it was all _but_ harmless. And then if he could force her worries aside, Yugi could potentially call it a day and not worry any longer. He could at least stall. But then he'd have to refine his details until he was absolutely sure of every small instance that might be overlooked. "Anyways, they were going under and Yami mentioned it to me beforehand. That's why I thought he could stay with us for a little while. Of course… Then his parents got in contact with him and he ran off and I haven't been able to get a hold of him since, but…"

"That's just great, Yugi."

He shrugged, both careless and unperturbed. "It happened. It's over with. It's _over_ with, okay? The motel went under. Yami is gone. I have no idea what will happen beyond now. And if Anzu's dad really wants to pin it on me, I'm sure he won't find any actual evidence to support it."

They hadn't even found evidence to determine the one who had killed Shizuka. And it had happened long enough ago that it drove him wild to realize such a thing. How was it possible that they were so far behind? How was it possible that no one had spoken about her and investigated further? Jonouchi had to be going crazy. Yugi knew he still asked Anzu whether they had made any discoveries, whether her dad had told her how they'd killed her or who might have done it.

And when she would say they were still investigating, hesitant towards the idea of leaking any information, he would deflate further. And then he would grow angrier than he had been previously. Yugi had watched it happen more than once. And his pain atop Jonouchi's, his anger towards all of what was happening, was more toxic than he could possibly put into words.

"There's nothing to link me to anything. You're worrying about nothing." He snatched the bag off the floor, glancing at them for a moment longer. He wished for a single second that he had not left the wolves at this rate. But the thought deflated immediately. How much worry had he caused them previously? How much worse was it now that they were asking him about his whereabouts? How much worse had it become for them now that Anzu's father had spoken to them?

"Yugi, this is a lot more serious than—"

"I understand that, Mom. But I have to worry about other things as well." He faltered, breathing out a soft sigh, and shook his head. And all of those things were in a realm of possibilities that she would never come to accept. He wondered at the thought. He could just change in front of her, become the little white wolf he saw so often in everyone's thoughts. But the idea made his skin crawl. She didn't need to see that. Maybe one day he would be brave enough, but now wasn't it. "I have school, grades, college entrance exams. I have friends and my dad who I only ever speak to over the phone anymore. I have to find a new major since apparently animals just _loathe_ me for whatever reason now. And midterms are coming up soon too. So…"

"And your freedom is on the line. These things aren't so easily fixed. They might not find proof for now, but if they really want to pin it on you—"

"Okay, Mom, but here's the thing. They will have no reason to suspect me in the first place."

"And that's why Mazaki is already looking at you as a suspect, right?" she said dryly, staring at him with darkened eyes. She shook her head furiously when Yugi blinked lazily and raised a brow slowly. "You need to take this _seriously_ , Yugi. I don't know why you have this misconception that you're untouchable right now, but—"

"Untouchable?" he repeated quietly, shaking his head. "I don't think that. Not at all. I just think that if there's really evidence that points towards me, he's going to have to confront me with it, isn't he? And I can explain it away if I have to."

Kasumi rubbed at her temples and shook her head slowly once more. "And if you _can't_ explain it away?"

"There isn't going to be anything he's going to dig up, Mom. He's not going to find something that pins me on either of those two things. Because I had nothing to do with either of them. And if they do find something, I'll have an answer for it. It doesn't matter what it is. I'll have an answer for it."

"How can you be sure about—?"

Yugi shook his head and glanced at the wall for a moment, considering for a brief second what to say to her before tilting his head away. "I will figure it out. There's no reason for me to freak out over it right now. I can figure it out as I go along."

And, before his mom could open her mouth again, Yugi turned and wandered into his room. The resounding click of the door made her falter and Sugoroku sighed softly from his place at the table. When she glanced at him, he refused to meet her eyes, and she got the strangest feeling that he understood something that she was possibly overlooking.

* * *

The white wolf flicked an ear as his nose twitched to pick up the scent of their query. The laziness of the action struck Obelisk as amusing, but Aki found it irritable. The she-wolf bristled with displeasure at the sight, baring her teeth for the smallest of moments, and then turned away again. Her own nose worked more diligently for any hint of serow, while, beside her, Marik and Otogi worked to do the same.

It was Mai, several yards away, sniffing and shoveling some of the fresher snow aside with her nose, who caught the first hint of something. Her ears pricked, her tail wagged, and she let out a deep huff of a noise, projecting the image of a large male serow with a darker soot-colored coat.

Yugi turned his head, curious, but did not make a comment beyond, _Stick in pairs, remember that._ And, just like that, the wolves took off. The white wolf flicked his ears as the snow crunched under each of their paws and sighed softly as he loped after them with his head down. Obelisk came back to his side, flanking him as he had been instructed prior, and the two fell in line in the trails of snow the other wolves had left behind.

 _You seem troubled._

 _I have human things going on._

 _Human things_? _Such as what_?

Yugi glanced at him with bright blue-violet eyes and slowed his pace just enough to lag further behind the wolves. They stayed in his line of sight for the most part, but they did not make up the most of his attention in any sense. _My mother told me that the police are looking into me being connected with various illegal activities,_ he announced quietly, flicking his ears and wondering if perhaps somehow the wolves might hear him even with his concentration solely on Obelisk and the distance between all of them. _My best friend's father has the idea that I'm involved with the forest fire and the restaurant that was burned down when Fuwa cornered and ambushed me._

Obelisk tilted his head, considering the words, and then nodded slowly as the events played within his own mind once more. _Ah, yes, I remember now. You mean the moment that you and Yami were chased in the woods by Espa and Panik and then Fuwa and his wife at the restaurant._ He blinked a few times, then turned to him with darkened eyes. _Why trouble yourself with worries about such a thing_? _You are perfectly capable of simply killing him should it come down to it._

 _Why would I do that_? _He's like family._

 _For the sake of your own survival, you would not do that for yourself_?

 _I could, but he's… Anzu would be heartbroken if I ever did something like that._

 _And she would know it was you how exactly_?

 _I'm not the best liar the world has to offer, Obelisk._

The gray wolf snorted softly, slowing a little further. His ears flickered, turning his head to look about them, and considered him a moment or so longer. The two of them stared at one another, eyes catching for only seconds, and then he flicked an ear again. The wolves were all circling; Yugi could hear them now as well. There were soft growls and he thought he could just barely catch Aki telling them how to corner and lead the ambush on the animal in question. Yugi flicked an ear again, sniffing lightly. Let her bloody her muzzle. He couldn't care less.

 _No, Yugi is not the best liar. But Atem is._ The wolf shook his head when Yugi glanced at him more curiously now. The two of them stared at one another for a moment, though now Obelisk seemed to have a much older and profoundly wise gleam within his odd eyes. He moved forward a little faster, as if beckoned by something, and Yugi chased to follow him. _It will be taken care of._

He blinked. _Taken care of_? _What does that mean exactly_?

Obelisk did not answer him until they were within sight of the ledge that the serow was cornered on. The ungulate was backed towards the cliff wall, eyes wide and seeking an escape route. Yugi thought for a moment that it shared his worries, his panic at the face of such a danger.

 _I promise to you that it will be handled._

 _You don't plan to kill him or anything—_

 _I am a_ god, _Yugi. Trust at least a little in the things I am capable of,_ the gray wolf bit back in an amused tone, though now he slowed as they approached the pack as well. They were lithe ghosts of various shades, darker and lighter and silver like shadows. The wolves circled around where they could find room on the ledge. But the space was tighter than they could manage in more than singular units.

The snow slid beneath their paws where the stone was too icy. And the rocks would slip and fall down into the space beneath. Yugi glanced downwards, uneasy at the way the stone wall seemed to be specked with tall spears of stone that rose from the darker shadows beneath. He shivered and his paws felt too cold to move for a moment. Obelisk, on the other hand, had braved moving closer, though his steps were far too slow for him to get ground on the animal in question.

Yugi flicked an ear. He sniffed rapidly, wondering at the sight of those stone spires beneath, lingering beneath the snow like large broken teeth. His fur bristled and fell in rapid waves before he shook it away, fearful and cold for a moment. And then his eyes turned back towards the wolves in front of him. Obelisk snarled low in his throat. Aki wagged her tail. Marik watched expressionlessly. Mai backed away and pushed closer to Otogi. Otogi simply stepped nearer the wall, giving them more room to maneuver around him.

 _What now_? was passed uncertainly among the wolves. Some of them swapped looks. Yugi noticed Yusei in the far back, closest him, his royal blue eyes caught on the serow. He did not look ready to leap forward for an ambush, however, and the realization made Yugi feel better. He was not foolish enough to go running forward.

The dark gray wolf blinked towards Yugi curiously, wagged his tail only slightly, and then looked away again. The wolf glanced at the others surrounding them. Echo was further up front, behind Otogi, near where Marik was simply staring forward as if the serow might drop dead before his eyes simply by his own will of mind. The two packs were spread evenly amongst each other, as Yugi had requested upon leading them to hunt. The suggestion had been taken with confused and uncomfortable glances before they had all broken into pairs. Only Slifer had remained at the camp, and Yugi was sure that by now she had wandered back into the tunnels once more.

He wondered briefly at what had happened to Morrigan, if she was still nearby, if she might still be watching over them. He shivered and the movement made Yusei look over curiously, but he ignored his expression with keen disinterest. The two of them stared at one another for only a moment before Yusei submissively lowered his head and flattened his ears against his head. His tail wagged only slightly before he looked away again.

 _Now we leave it. The ledge is too thin and there is no room to make it safely there to attack,_ he announced in a carefully measured tone. He blinked as the wolves turned to glance at him as one. The singular unit of movement made his fur bristle with discomfort. Yugi shivered but the wind seemed to tug at his fur at the same time, a small dusting of snow coming forth as well, and it did just enough to shelter his tremble from their eyes. He pricked his ears forward when Obelisk and Aki turned to stare at them with mirroring looks of calm and disappointment. _There is no safe way to get to it. We're done here. We can find something else to eat._

Echo nodded her consent towards such a statement, though she seemed noticeably distracted. Obelisk tilted his head and flicked his ears once more. Aki growled at him in disbelief and then flattened her ears against her skull in disappointment. Marik did not so much as glance towards him, his eyes still caught on the serow. The other wolves swapped mirroring looks of something between disappointment and relief and began to turn to face Yugi as if he were to lead them off the cliff. But he didn't care enough to at the moment, instead considering the dark gray fur of the serow and the way the ungulate peered at them with beady black eyes.

He thought he saw his reflection there and his fur rose into an uneasy bristle as they looked at each other. If he were foolhardy he would have charged for it. But the smaller wolf had always prided himself in something of a realistic, safer point of view in his ideas and decisions. The sight of this small animal excited him, but it did not push him to rush forward either.

 _Remain in pairs, watch each other and make sure to move slowly._ Yugi ignored the way that they all blinked wide eyes. The wolves flicked their ears, glanced at one another curiously, and then began to slip forward. Yugi moved closer to the cliff wall, aware of how sharp the stones seemed to be where they brushed against his fur. The snow drifting in the air had become a little faster in its flurry. Many of the wolves took his word as if it were law. Without a second glance they began to follow his instruction.

Yusei passed him with another small tail wag and dip of his head. Following him was Echo's beta, Eurea, who glanced at him only slightly before raising her chin and trotting behind the younger wolf. Serena, Echo's delta, cast him a curious glance before tilting her head and dipping her chin respectfully upon walking past. Olga and Rin—he was sure that was their names; by the gods, he truly needed to spend more time with the American wolves and come to identify them as he could the wolves in the original pack—came next. They glanced at him and away again, eyes lowered, and trotted past him.

He did not bother for recognition of the others, shivering as the wind stroked his fur lightly, and then tilted his head slightly to the side. Mai and Otogi passed him and Obelisk followed a few moments later, Aki at his heels. Only Marik hesitated any longer, ears flicking, eyes on the serow for a second or two more. Then, finally, dismissive, the tan and gray wolf bristled and snapped his jaws. He turned on his heel, cast a somewhat irritable look towards Yugi, and followed the wolves further from the cliff.

Yugi glanced at the serow again. The gray ungulate stood feet away, breathing in a whistling tone that spoke of fear. But it was capable of leaping to the cliff up over their heads, too thin for the wolves themselves. It could flee upwards, could dash off the moment the ground was clear again. He thought of that ability and wished for a moment that he himself could do that.

 _When we get back further towards the trees, we can search again for something else,_ he instructed lazily, almost nodding to himself as if in agreement with his own words. He turned to them, Obelisk waiting nearest as his partner for the hunt. Yugi felt the smallest twinge of bitterness upon noting this, thinking that perhaps it should have been Yami there instead. He pricked his ears forward before he could stop himself, nearly snarling with dismay at the sting of pain that crept through him at such a thought. _We'll split into groups of eight and search that way. When one of us finds something—_

Mikiyo Naname, he realized a second too late.

The she-wolf sped past him abruptly. She was a small, lithe form of gold and light red fur with bright eyes. Yugi spun on her in confusion, at first thinking to lunge forward. But then the serow sprang overhead of them. The goat-antelope struggled for a grip on the frozen stone but caught itself. Yugi blinked and considered the shower of snow which came downwards. He was hit in seconds, startled. But the force of it was weak due to the length of the ledge it had climbed to. He blinked again, considering it, but then froze. A realization had struck him now. His head snapped towards the end of the cliff.

Was she still…?

He didn't look back at the others. His steps were quick but sure, eyes searching the snow for firm footing before he moved forward. He could see where the snow sagged, a light slant which pronounced unsteady ground. There were small pebbles buried under the snow as well, the ice crystals slightly raised from it. He could just barely see it beneath the snow and the falling flakes that nearly obscured his vision. Had he been human again, solely and surely, he did not think he would have ever seen or noticed such a thing before.

Yugi slowed himself towards the edge of the cliff. The snow was somewhat mushy there, displaced by the serow and the slant of the stone beneath. His fur bristled faintly as he crept closer. The snow was slick beneath his paws, as if it had melted and refrozen again. He moved his paws outwards, pushing away the slicker melt with the stretch of his forelimbs. His eyes flickered forward and back again.

Mikiyo was lying across one of the ledges beneath. Her head was tipped up towards him, her eyes wide and fearful. Her fur was in a bristle and she looked so tiny against the snow that Yugi felt small and weak for the briefest of moments. His fur rose and fell in a rippling bristle as he tried to think of a way to get to her.

The ledges were so thin and he could see her trembling was not doing well for her own placement in the snow. Yugi glanced about the snow and stone beneath, ears flicking uncomfortably back and forth. The white wolf could name the number of ledges further beneath, far too thin and small for him to travel. He paced back and forth in front of the lip of stone, the snow crumbling and moving forward beneath his paws. His ears flicked and his eyes scanned further along once more.

 _Can you stand_? he asked quietly, pricking his ears forward. She was not tall enough for him to be able to grab her by the scruff and he doubted he had the strength to pull her up all the way as Yami might have been capable. But he was willing to try, if nothing else. Yugi shivered again, pacing once more. She was staring up at him with fearful, blank eyes, as if she were too afraid to understand what it was he was saying to her. _Mikiyo, can you_ stand?

She blinked up at him. Her ears flicked and flattened against her skull. _I think…my leg…is broken,_ she finally answered, looking about them for a moment. She had tried to rise moments before, when Yugi was still further back. She had tried to get up and climb before and had collapsed on her back leg once more. Her focus was splintering with the pain but she tried to replay that moment to the other wolf, shivering.

Whether it translated properly to the other wolf or not was beyond her. And she did not know that she truly cared. But Atem began to pace a little faster, eyes working rapidly for an answer of some kind. His ears flicked and perked forward. His body tensed and his shoulders rolled beneath his pelt like rippling water.

 _I think I can come to you._ Her eyes widened drastically, head snapping up in shock at the idea. Yugi furrowed his brows and narrowed his gaze as he continued to look about. The ledges were too small to fully traverse. But he could possibly leap if she were to pull herself to one corner and huddle.

But that was dangerous. He had no idea if that was possible for them to do so. She might fall over the edge simply doing that should her leg truly be broken. Yugi wondered if changing back might do him well but the idea of this did not help him either. He could not do much as a human either. He did not think he was tall enough to push her over the side of the ledge. Nor did he think he could truly keep his grip on her for too long.

 _Leave her,_ a new voice commented dismissively.

Yugi blinked, at first confused by the words. Had he thought them himself? It was not the first time he had considered it, even if he had tried so hard to suppress such a thought. It was not entirely possible for him to attempt to come down there to find a solution to the problem at hand. His ears flicked now, however, as a new realization came over him.

Someone else had come forward.

The white wolf turned his head, glancing over his shoulder in confusion. A few feet away was Marik, lavender eyes burning into his. The two of them stared at each other for a moment. Yugi flicked an ear and turned back, though instinct said never to turn his back on a wolf standing so close and behind him.

 _She cannot walk on a broken limb._

He blinked. _I've walked when my leg was broken,_ he retorted, flicking an ear and shaking his head slightly. _I had to do it when I was in my human form as well. She can do it._

 _She disobeyed your direct orders. It does not matter if she can walk to begin with._

Yugi raised his head and turned to him, eyes sharpening furiously. _You're suggesting_ leaving _her here to starve or freeze to death because she didn't listen to me_? he demanded in a fierce voice. His lips curled back and he bore his teeth as his eyes glowed hatefully. _You cannot truly believe that's what needs to happen._

 _It would do well to remind the others that you are the alpha, would it not_? _Besides, not a day goes by in which at least one person in some part of the world does not die. She should have known better. Actions have consequences. She disobeyed and now she is being reminded of why the gods are considered as such._

Yugi snarled, ears pricked forward and hackles rising. _Perhaps I should throw you over the cliff and then we'll see just how well that holds up. Did I not just tell each of you to remain there_? _Or to go hunting in groups of eight_? _Is that not what I told you all to do_?

Marik flicked an ear and glanced towards the wolves gathered at the end of the ledge. His dark gray and black ears pricked forward as he turned back to Yugi with dark eyes. _None of them are going to move until they are sure that you are safe. I came here to ensure that._

 _And you plan to do that by leaving your packmate._

 _We all make sacrifices in life. She chose to do such a foolish thing on her own. It is not my fault nor yours that she did not listen to you and heed your words._ Yugi bristled and raised his tail, face wrinkling hideously with hatred. Marik tilted his head and lowered his chin slightly, flattening his ears in a more respectful position. _It is not your responsibility to ensure her life now._

Yugi snapped his teeth at him when he stepped closer, slinking towards the white wolf. _Step away from me before I throw you over the ledge as well. You can rot there in her place._

 _I never disobeyed—_

 _You disobey me now by being here._ He wagged his tail, chomping his teeth again when Marik still crawled forward a step. The gray and tan wolf finally settled onto his belly completely before him, panting to show his mounting stress. Yugi glared at him for a moment, then flicked his ears and quickly glanced towards the other wolves. _Obelisk_?

The gray wolf tilted his head, then turned his head to speak first to Aki and then to Echo. Both females raised their heads, nodded in unison, and turned back to the deity with respectful bows of their heads. Echo glanced at Yugi, sent a question of, _Hunt_? and flattened her ears against her skull.

Yugi blinked. _Yes, please, lead them for me._

She hesitated, then nodded, and turned back to the other wolves. Mai and Otogi both shot Yugi curious looks before turning to follow the black-and-tawny-coated she-wolf as she began to trot forward.

 _You're playing a rather dangerous game,_ Obelisk said as he approached, though Yugi could tell that he was speaking only to him. The gray wolf glanced at Marik disdainfully, ignoring the way the other canine continued to pant as if he'd been prodded at and was growing further stressed by it. _You cannot have the wolves believe that you value them over yourself._

Yugi pricked his ears, snarling. _Isn't that what a good leader does_?

 _A good leader is not what Atem_ is. _A good leader is_ beneath _his existence. Atem is meant to be a_ war _leader._

He shook his head. _It doesn't matter. Tell me how to get her back up here. I refuse to let her simply starve or freeze to death when there might be a way to save her,_ he demanded, ignoring the incredulous look the deity shot him in response. For a moment the gray wolf remained silent. Then, finally, reluctantly, he began to move forward to his side. From there he peered down at the she-wolf who stared up at him with a horrified expression.

 _You truly believe her to be worth such endeavors_?

 _I think any life is worth saving, yes._ He hesitated, for a moment thrown by his own words. Of course he considered that as a principle in his morals. But the realization struck him that perhaps the gods felt the same upon accepting their children into Paradise when they died. Perhaps that was why they accepted all of their souls rather than rejecting the ones he had formerly judged unworthy. He flattened his ears for a brief second, then steeled himself. _What do we have to do_?

Obelisk considered him for a long minute and a half. Then he looked to Mikiyo once more, eyes dark and glittering in the shadows. He flicked his ears, flattened them against his head, and then tilted his head as they looked at each other. He could name the way to go forward from their placement, but to get back…?

 _Yugi, even with all of your cunning, I do not expect you to be able to figure out a way to bring her up here again without either falling yourself or losing her in the process,_ he finally stated, turning back to him. _But I do not imagine that it will matter for much longer._

 _What do you mean_?

Obelisk hesitated for a moment, for the briefest of seconds galled by the very thought of the rage he knew such words would bring the white wolf. Damn Slifer for not warning him of this ahead of time. Perhaps Yugi would deal with her for him instead.

 _She has internal bleeding. If you smell her, you can scent it. And it is bad. She will not make it for more than a couple of hours._ He flicked an ear and glanced at Marik where the other wolf had claimed his feet once more and moved forward if only slightly. Obelisk turned back to Yugi, but his eyes were on Marik as well, his peripheral locked on the wolf behind them both. _I do not imagine that she would even be capable of surviving the Change, nor the strain it would take for us to move her as it is._

Yugi faltered at the idea, glancing at the she-wolf now as well. No wonder her eyes seemed so glazed. It was not only fear. He had been trying to ignore it before, but now that it had been given a name, he saw it more prominently. She was weak with strain, her consciousness on the brink of being lost. She was going to lose herself soon…

 _So what should I do_? he finally whispered, shaken by the idea. _I don't want to simply…_

The gray wolf curled his lip when Marik stepped closer. The warning was heeded immediately and the tan and gray wolf backed up with his head lowered and turned away. But his eyes were on them even then, curious and watching with something almost akin surprise. _As much as you might hate it, I think Marik is correct in his assumption that she should be left there. You cannot move her and she will not make it for long enough to see it through the night._

The white wolf glanced at Marik over his shoulder now, nearly snarling with outrage before turning back. _Take Marik and go find one of the packs. Go hunting with them. I'll stay here with her until she's gone._ He hesitated for a moment, then licked nervously at his own shoulder. There was something cold and jagged in his heart, festering and bleeding and he shivered against it. _I will join you all perhaps later. Or I might find myself doing otherwise._

Obelisk watched him for a moment, at first wondering if perhaps he might try despite his words. But there was a sense of clarity in his gaze, one that spoke of years beyond his age, and the gray wolf relaxed at the sight of it. He nodded, turning to the other wolf, and growled, _Come, we have a hunt to join._

Marik hesitated, looking between them uneasily. But he flinched away when Obelisk snapped his jaws at him and jerked his head as if he might tear a chunk from his flesh. Immediately the gray and tan wolf lowered his head and turned away from him, slinking when he began to hurriedly move away. Obelisk looked to Yugi one more time, considering and searching his eyes, and then leaned forward to lick his forehead, a gesture which shocked the white wolf. They stared at each other for only a moment longer before the gray wolf turned and hurried after Marik. Yugi watched only until the moment Obelisk nipped lightly at the other canine's fur and then hurried forward. Immediately the other wolf raced off, the two of them almost falling into a game of tag as they headed further from his sight.

Yugi turned back with a shiver, ears pricked forward. _Mikiyo_? he asked softly, wondering if she could still even respond to him any longer. Her eyes flickered to him and her ears pricked forward, her expression dismayed. Perhaps she had heard their argument. Perhaps she was sure of her impending death. Or perhaps she simply guessed at his inabilities to help her now.

 _Atem…_

He nodded a little, though his first instinct was to say otherwise. His first instinct was to say that it was not his name, that she should know him as Yugi for the last hours she was alive. But it was beyond even him to say such words and so he simply lowered himself into a laying position and put his chin on his paws.

 _I'm sorry._

He shivered. _For what_?

 _I…disobeyed._

Yugi shook his head. _It doesn't matter. You did as you thought was right at the moment._

It didn't truly justify anything, he knew, and perhaps it did nothing to ease her guilt, but it sounded sympathetic and soft all the same. He blinked and shivered. Did broken families ever come together like this at a death bed, unsure of what more to say and confused as to what they were meant to do to lessen the agony? Was the tension there just as awkward as it seemed here?

He had no words of comfort for her in truth. Because, despite himself, despite meeting her formally and knowing her features and scent and name, he had not known _her_ well enough to say more.

 _And I'm sure Slifer will say similarly when you go to_ _Paradise_ _._

She seemed to tremble, though Yugi could not tell if it was his words or the cold which caused such a reaction. The snow was picking up. He wondered if she would freeze sooner rather than later. It was a small mercy, he supposed.

An image appeared in his mind, of a she-wolf with a cinnamon coat beneath brownish strands merged with black and slight silver. Tawny legs and a soft smudge of silver along the muzzle made up a more noticeable definition of identity. Yugi nodded slightly, closing his eyes for a split second before looking at the she-wolf who peered up at him with that glazed expression still within her eyes.

He wondered if he would always remember her like this rather than what she had been like before. He'd only interacted with her a few times outside of now, but he found himself wondering now, and he hated himself for the idea.

 _Mother…_

Yugi pricked his ears, curious. That raw, decaying feeling in his chest was growing more now. His blood felt cold, icy, and something bitter clung to his insides. The white wolf shivered again, heart in his throat and that ache growing tenfold.

She'd had the chance to know her mother.

And he'd all but squandered his relationship with his own.

And Yami had never gotten the chance to know his.

Yugi closed his eyes for a moment, toes twitching and claws seeming to ache with his dismay and the growing bitterness. He shivered and opened his eyes again, watching the she-wolf with a broken expression. The fear crept over him and his fur shuddered softly as he licked his lips.

 _I didn't know her very well._ He flattened his ears against his head. _I don't even know what her name was._

He realized suddenly that he could have been speaking about both of their mothers. His in the lab was nothing more than the very faint impression of her heartbeat along with the six pups which had passed away before her. His faint memory of them was too broken to gather anything from. And he certainly had never come to know her name in any sense of the word.

 _Ann…ie…_

Yugi blinked, confused at first. Had she read his thoughts? Had she _known_ his mother? And then he remembered, abruptly, that she was thirteen. She and Patty, best friends, had been the youngest of the pack to begin with. Both girls were—or had _been_ —thirteen. He had been born three and four years their senior. They had never had the chance to know his mother or father in any fashion.

 _Her name was Annie_? he asked softly, voice low and coaxing. He could feel it. She would not be able to hold on for much longer. Yugi shivered and the cold seemed to rip beneath his fur and cut into his skin with claws that split his skin like daggers. _That's a beautiful name._

Mikiyo twitched as if she had been touched with something. He wondered if it was the cold or a single small death throe. He had seen it in dogs when they were euthanized. They would jerk or twitch. Others would exhale so loudly it sounded as if they were choking. Their diaphragm would contract violently and they would jerk as if struck by lightning. It would last only a moment, but that one heartbeat was enough to burn itself into one's memory.

He strained his hearing for her exhales. He watched her with wide eyes. But her body was still and broken before him. On the ledge she looked like a small child being buried beneath the snow. Yugi shivered, got to his feet, and shook himself out.

* * *

 _You knew that this would happen, didn't you_? he demanded without preamble, stopping in front of her with a furious expression. His fur had risen along his shoulders and his tail was raised only slightly. His ears pricked forward and his lips curled back. But he was not about to attack her, though every muscle in his body seemed poised to do so. He shook his head in a violent jerk of his neck, snarling. _Why did you not tell me about this_?

Slifer glanced at him curiously for a moment, then shook her head with something of a tired and exhausted expression. Her ears pricked forward and her sharp muzzle, though somehow still somewhat too broad for her face, wrinkled with displeasure. _Have you not been told enough times, Yugi Motou, Code Name Atem_? _We have all told you more than once that we are gods. And gods do not walk the same path as mortals. You have free will. We have laws to abide by. Each of you is capable of changing what might be a destiny of little importance for something greater. But it does not always change their fate in its fullest._

 _That has nothing to do with—_

 _Mikiyo is the victim of circumstances._ She considered him a moment longer, then turned away and got to her feet. She shook herself out as if to shed the guilt of such a statement, and looked to him with glowing golden eyes. The sight of them made Yugi shiver, his anger shed like water from his coat. _I hate it as much as you. But it is not my place to tell you how and when to prevent the death of other wolves. She did not deserve to die by any means. She was young. She was capable of a great many things. Yet she was not given the chance. Lupa and Fenrir called her to them early. And that is what is to be accepted._

Yugi blinked and looked away, undone by the grief in her tone. Perhaps it was only Ra who seemed so cold and callous. Yet she had helped him before. He knew that as well, despite how much he did not always wish to acknowledge it.

 _But her circumstances were different. It was not with simple ignorance or disobedience that she was killed._ The choice of words made Yugi falter. His eyes widened and his fur rippled along his back in a shudder. Had she just implied…?

 _"Killed"_? he finally repeated when she fell silent and merely stared at him. The golden eyes flickered away and back before burning into his eyes. _What do you mean "killed"_?

 _I mean as the word so implies, Yugi._

He blinked and shook his head slowly, eyes flickering about the tunnels for a brief moment before his lips curled back. _That one of the wolves in the pack is trying to kill off the others_? he spat. _And what purpose does that serve_?

 _You would have to find the culprit to understand their intent._ The words were said so dismissively that Yugi visibly startled, raising his eyes back to hers. The red she-wolf stared towards the entrance the white wolf had come through, shaking her head slightly. _And that is information too important to be given without a fight. You will find clarity when you make a sacrifice for it._

Yugi chomped his teeth, furious now. _You assume to imply that I have not sacrificed anything_? _I gave my identity. I gave my relationship with my family. I gave my friendships. I gave my future. I gave Yami. And none of that is a worthy enough sacrifice to garner a trade of information_? he demanded. _You mean to tell me that I have given and let you take from me so much and none of it has amounted to a damn thing in any of your eyes_?

Slifer studied him for a moment, then shook her head slowly. _You have many trials and sacrifices that you shall come to know before the time of war comes. These are minor in the face of them._ She watched him. _And one of them is to be given back. The others are already being mended._

 _Mended_? _Really now_?

 _Your friends know of your secret. They accept you even as you shun them and give them the cold shoulder. Your mother has not abandoned you to your various whims. She has not thrown you to the lions in proclaiming you a murderer or an arsonist. And your grandfather simply awaits your trust in him in order to mend your relationship with him. And you are well aware of our promise to you formerly_. She fell silent for a long time and casually cast a glance about them, towards the skeletons which lined the inside of the tunnel formation about them. The gentle trickle of water beneath her paws gave an eerie shadow upon the walls about them. Yugi shivered and glanced at the bones that were scattered about. _We shall return him to you. But it will take time and further sacrifice, further trial. You shall find him at the end of your worst. And you shall find him at the beginning of the best._

Yugi shivered. _Slifer…_

 _I have no more words for you regarding this subject,_ she bit out, turning to him now. _I have lost as much as you, if not more. I am tired. And fighting with you does nothing for me. You, as well, know that this will exhaust you more than give you any closure. You do not need to fight with me any longer. I am not the one that wishes you harm._

 _I…_ He fell silent and then shook his head. _I'm sorry about Annie and Mikiyo._

 _They are but two in a long list of wolves to pass._

Yugi looked up at her. Her golden eyes were wary now, boring into his, and she looked tense rather than grievous. She expected him to fight with her some more, he realized, and the thought stung with its truth. He looked away again, turning away towards the entrance, and then glanced at her over his shoulder again.

 _I would have brought her here if… I'm sorry I couldn't._

Slifer shook her head. _The physical body affects nothing. It is her soul that matters._

 _I know. I just…_ He shook his head. _I have to go find the pack. Make sure no one else is dead._

The comment brought an odd sparkle to her eyes, as if she were amused and disdainful at once. Her lips curled into something of a smile, or perhaps a hideous smirk, and she shook her head slowly at his words.

* * *

Echo looked up from the carcass with bloodied jaws and a face smeared slick. Her tongue swept out to lick some of the liquid away but Obelisk merely raised his head and rose to his paws. The other wolves, gorged and full, yawned and followed suit immediately. Marik was the only one to hesitate, mouth red and face covered in blood. He looked up, considered the rest of the pack, and finally rose to his feet as the others did the same.

 _Welcome back._

Echo dipped her head when Atem glanced at her, then backed away from the serow they'd caught. It was not quite as large as the other they'd been chasing. And the deer that Marik had chased and Mai had brought down had done far more to fill the others. But they'd picked the carcass dry and some of the Japanese wolves had even set about sharpening their teeth on the bones. Marik had broken the antler in half, brought it to the side, and begun gnawing on it minutes before…

 _Thanks. I feel like I was sorely missed,_ came the dry response. Atem glanced about them for a moment, looked at her, and offered a small shake of his head. She could feel it when the words came privately, to her alone, as if a dam had grown where there was once a wealthy river of information to greet her mind. _You can keep eating. I am not hungry._

The she-wolf relaxed slightly, turning back to her meal. It felt odd, realizing that she had never once seen the white wolf truly rest with them to feed. She could not name a single time and the thought was somewhat alarming as she considered it.

 _Did I miss anything_? the Pure-Blood questioned, disrupting her thoughts for a brief moment. She glanced around for a moment, a piece of meat in between her teeth now. Atem was not looking at her directly, nor did he seem to be regarding any of them in such a manner. Instead he had taken a seat and looked almost exhausted.

 _Nothing worth repetition,_ Obelisk assured him easily. The gray wolf stretched himself out lazily and moved to lie down beside him. There was a clear distance between them, inches of snow that looked almost like a chasm for a moment. It was almost like looking at two gods of different origins and timelines and it startled her how apparent it was now.

 _Worth repetition_? Atem repeated, looking at him questioningly before following his lead to lay down beside him more comfortably, as if sitting there made him feel estranged. The white wolf considered his beta for a moment longer, then stretched his chin to his paws. _Meaning what_?

 _It was a simple dispute, and easily gotten rid of._

 _Gotten rid of or resolved_?

 _It was discarded._

 _But not resolved._

Obelisk gave him a disdainful glance, nearly growling with frustration. _No, it was not resolved,_ he admitted begrudgingly, shaking his head. _There was no true way to resolve it without matters escalating._

Atem blinked. _Escalating_? he echoed, eyes somewhat blank as he peered off into the forest beyond them. _What would have escalated_?

 _It's unimportant—_

Echo could hear a terrible gnawing noise again, a scraping of teeth against keratin, and her fur bristled even as she took another bite of the serow. Her eyes flickered towards Marik and the male twisted his head just enough to chomp more forcefully upon the antler in his mouth.

 _It was disobedience that led to her death. It was her own fault._

The white wolf pricked his ears forward, eyes flickering forward to the other laying there with the antler between his paws. He watched him for a long moment, eyes dark and head raised now. There was a sense of tension in his bones now, something that showed beneath his long fur as he considered Marik with cold eyes.

 _You never know when to keep your trap shut, do you_? Obelisk spat, voice curled with hatred. Atem glanced at him sideways, more a curious look over than a serious consideration. The gray wolf curled his lips back and bore his teeth angrily. _You must always open your mouth and say things that do not require repetition._

 _He wanted to know,_ Marik argued in a voice of nonchalance, digging into the antler once more. Echo bristled and looked at him, sensing the callousness which came forward as if he were perfumed with it. The gray and tan wolf pulled his mouth away and flexed his jaws in a yawn that was carefree and almost challenging. Obelisk did not seem to rise to such bait, however, though he bristled and glared at him hatefully. _He has a_ right _to know, does he not_?

Atem flicked an ear and considered his beta for a moment with a sideways glance at Marik once more. _I recall speaking to my beta rather than you._ The words were soft-spoken, clipped and aggressive. The quiet edge of them unnerved Echo enough to back away from her food entirely. Her stomach was rolling now. Atem looked towards her now, surprised by her movements, and then turned back to Marik. His expression was frosty and his eyes were cold, glacial and freezing. _But as it appears he will not speak, why don't you_?

The tan and gray wolf did not bother to express his shame of such a reprimand. Instead he blinked and looked to Atem with a clear gaze of something almost akin smugness. _Serena believes otherwise._

Atem blinked, at first with confusion and then with disdain. _Does she now_? he questioned without much care. _She does not believe Mikiyo died as a punishment of disobedience towards me_?

The she-wolf in question bristled and lowered her head, twisting her head enough to show her neck in submission. But she did not fall to her side and show her belly with her tail between her legs. Echo watched her for a moment, then stepped forward, growling, _It was not divine proclamation such as Marik keeps arguing. There was no lightning bolt. There was no earthquake. He is trying to scare the younger wolves._

Atem looked at her, blue-violet eyes burning into hers for a moment. It was startling how distant his expression was at the moment, clearing only for a split second as they stared at each other. And then it grew almost cloudy again, eyes flickering away and to Marik once more. _Is that so_? he finally murmured, and now Echo could hear the exhaustion there, some ragged undercurrent that she had not noticed before.

 _It is not my fault that she does not believe it to be what it is._ Marik scoffed quietly and shook his head. _Serena obviously does not believe in your status as a god nor as the leader of the pack._

 _One has nothing to do with the other,_ Echo spat, cutting him off at the heels. Marik turned to her with a snarl on his face, the two of them glaring at one another. Her hackles rose and her fur began to bristle as the seconds passed. She stepped forward and he began to rise to his paws. The two of them squared off, snarling softly. _Her belief in Atem is not as clouded and faulty as your own._

Atem rose to his feet now, though he remained silent for the moment. His eyes flickered between them, his ears pricked forward. Beside him Obelisk was staring with wide eyes, curious and almost dumbstruck by their new positions.

 _You think my belief clouded_? _You have no understanding of the legends, do you_?

 _Legends_? _You think that something living and breathing is still a legend_? she spat furiously, bristling further and snapping her teeth. Marik stepped closer and she snapped at him again. _Atem is here and now and he's_ not _the beast that you seem so happy to spill blood for_!

 _Beast_? Marik repeated, stepping closer still. Atem blinked, considering them a moment longer. Now Serena had lost her submissive state and had come closer as well. She was awaiting instruction, her ears pricked forward, her shoulders squared. _Is that what you once considered him_? _Have you no understanding of what it means to be a disciple of—_?

 _Disciple_? Atem questioned softly, stepping forward now as well. His tail was up but his fur was not in a bristle. He moved to shoulder past Serena, stepping between the two of them. Immediately Echo stepped back, startled by his appearance there, and Marik snarled low in his throat as he did the same. _Is that what you consider yourself, Marik_? _You, who does not listen to begin with and argues mindlessly for attention_? _Do you_ truly _think that you speak for_ me?

 _I—_

 _Bite your tongue before I rip your throat out._

Echo flinched. Serena turned away and began to slink off. The wolves that had gathered due to the tension began to uneasily shift their weight and move away. Obelisk had risen to his paws now and had stalked closer, but he was in the fringe of the wolves, not quite close enough to interact but not far enough to be in the background either.

Atem was not looking at any of them, instead seeming to stare off into the distance even as he spoke now. _Listen to me and do so_ well, _Marik. I have warned you once and I do it a final time now. Do not overstep your boundaries. You are not Atem._ I _am. And I will kill you for stepping in my place whether it be verbal or physical._

Obelisk bristled faintly in her peripheral. But now Atem turned to her with frosted eyes.

 _How long has he been preaching like this_? he demanded coldly. She shivered and glanced at Marik and then Obelisk and lowered her eyes quickly to the snow. Her concentration was fraying at the edges now and her exhaustion was growing. _And you did not think to stop him_?

 _It is not my…responsibility._

 _No_? _Then, as an alpha, you did not consider to protect Serena from his bullshit_?

 _Enough, Atem,_ the gray deity said quietly, cutting into their argument. His head snapped around, white fur bristling as his ears pricked forward and his lips curled back. _I will explain further if you should wish it, but Echo is obviously tired and Marik is not worthy of your contempt right now._

The white wolf raised his tail for only a moment. Then his anger seemed to melt, as if the fight had been just enough to give him energy. Echo stared at him in something that she felt was almost amazement. She could not fully recognize the sensation, only vaguely name it akin to its closest emotion. And so she stared at them, stunned, as Atem shook himself out and turned to his beta with a somewhat wearied expression. They conversed—she could tell they were doing so, silent as their words were to her—and finally Atem nodded and turned away to trot a few paces back towards his original spot.

 _Find a place to rest,_ Obelisk commented, giving her a look that bordered vaguely on concern. Then he turned and trotted after his alpha, settling beside him as Atem had surely bid him do so.

Marik shot her a furious look, as if the argument had not just ceased its own existence, and then began to move away to lie down as well. He went back to that hideous gnawing he had been doing and Echo hesitated for a moment before joining Serena and Mai where they seemed to be conversing rather peacefully.

Mai looked up with gentle violet eyes and wagged her tail as she approached. The invitation was clear in the action and she let out a soft sigh as she accepted it. Very clearly the golden and silver she-wolf did not care for the politics that had just been displayed. She was one of the few of the Japanese pack that seemed so disregarding of them and it unnerved her just as it helped to give her relief.

Echo settled beside them, laying her chin on her paws and closing her eyes. Her stomach was full but her belly was still twisting with tension. And her muscles ached where she'd pushed to run too fast in order to bring the serow down, a prize that seemed far less worth the energy now as she lay there.

Mai nudged her with her cold, soft nose. She breathed gently into the strands of her fur, moving to lick at her ear a moment or two later. Echo opened an eye to glance at her but the she-wolf ignored her. Her tongue began to stroke along her ear to her forehead and then the back of her neck. The grooming was soft and easy, gentle as it went from her neck to her shoulders and eventually her leg closest the other she-wolf.

An image appeared in Echo's mind, something which stunned her. She blinked wide eyes and raised her head, startled at the appearance. It was of two wolves, one with fur darker than the night and the other of snow and starlight. The two of them were trotting together, long legs and rippling muscle. She recognized Atem there, a couple of inches shorter than the other, with brighter eyes than the red ones that the black wolf saw through.

Mai watched her for a moment, then licked at her cheek to get some of the blood from her fur. Her tail wagged slightly. _He misses Yami,_ she said simply, as if it might explain everything. And Echo supposed it did as she considered the statement. If they were mated, then the dismissal and the obvious lack of concern, it made sense. If Yami, as Mai had called him, was no longer at his side, then it would make sense for his closed off stature.

Serena tilted her head and nudged the golden and silver-furred she-wolf on the shoulder. _Yami_? she repeated in a soft, gentle voice. She had an easy, light tone to her voice whenever she spoke, and Echo was somewhat relieved to hear that she had not somehow lost it in the tension the pack produced.

 _His beta._ Mai paused, seeming to consider something, and then sighed softly. The white exhale made Echo bristle faintly for a moment. But then the Japanese she-wolf seemed to shake off whatever worry she'd gained and shook her head. _They're best friends._

 _Only best friends_? Serena asked curiously, tilting her head.

 _They have not physically mated._ Mai lay her chin on her paws and closed her eyes. _But they do seem to be emotionally bonded._

Echo wanted to ask her for further explanation. But something had caused a reaction in Atem and now the white wolf was staring at them with burning blue-violet eyes. She shivered and flattened her ears against her head and Serena mimicked her as they both looked away immediately. Only Mai did not respond when she opened her eyes again. Instead they could both hear her tail wagging in the snow behind her and Echo nearly flinched.

For a moment the white wolf simply stared. And then he got up, heading straight for them. Echo's first instinct was to get up and flee. Her second was to simply roll over and cower. Neither of them were listened to, however. She simply lowered her head further, tightening her muscles in preparation for the potential oncoming attack.

 _Hi_! Mai greeted in a chirp, friendly and warm in expression. Echo bristled and looked at her incredulously, stunned when Atem merely stopped a couple of steps away with a wag of his own tail. _Tired of Obelisk_?

 _He gets boring,_ Atem teased in a warm voice. But he seemed awkward and uncomfortable as well. Then he looked over his shoulder and back, plopping down in front of them. _I will speak to him again later._

Echo considered him, fur still in a bristle of pure tension. She remembered the way Obelisk and Slifer had followed him out of the camp and into that small clearing. He remembered the way they had hovered and he'd saved her from the sacrificial intensions the pack harbored. She shivered and Atem glanced at her from the corner of his eye but did not turn to face her.

 _I wanted to ask you something, Mai._

The she-wolf pricked her ears in a manner that encouraged him to continue.

 _This argument that Marik started,_ he began simply, raising his chin slightly. _How did it begin_?

Mai hesitated for a moment, debating between speaking and sending him the visual. In the end, as Echo had guessed she might, she projected the sequence of events to him. Before her eyes played out one of the single most disgusting moment she had ever encountered another wolf in. Obelisk had come in the lead, Marik a few steps behind him. The two wolves had trotted out of the shadows and into the pack's line of sight within minutes of leaving Atem. And, as Mai had looked up, the tan and gray wolf had bluntly stated, _He's going to stay with the dead one._

The statement had made Serena turn around with a confused look. Obelisk had shot the other wolf a warning glance, lips curling back in disdain. _Dead one_? the she-wolf had asked innocently, turning to Obelisk for clarity.

 _Mikiyo,_ the tan and gray wolf said dismissively. _She's as good as dead. Atem couldn't reach her if he tried. And she's bleeding out internally. There's no way to save her. I give it an hour before she passes._

Echo bristled. _You say that as if you do not care._

 _She did not listen._ Marik turned a cold, calculated look on her. _She did not listen and so she was punished. It was her own choice to ignore the instructions that were given her. As it was Patty's when she went after the boar on her own. If she if had listened, she would have been fine. If Mikiyo had listened, she would have survived as well. It is no thorn in my side to see them die if they cannot follow the simplest of instructions and abide by Atem's words. His word is law, after all._

 _You cannot truly believe that_! Serena said, aghast. _That's not true at all_! _Accidents happen all of the time. Hunting is not an easy thing to do, especially in terrain such as this and with heavy snow—_

 _So you do not believe in the divine_? Marik asked, ignoring her words and turning to Obelisk with something of a sly expression. _And yet you have met three gods—_

Three? Echo repeated incredulously. _Atem is not a god. He is immortal, but he is not a god by any means. He's a simple Pure-Blood—_

 _You dare to think otherwise_? _Atem_ is _a god. He is the one meant to lead us to victory and purge the world of the human betrayals and the hellhounds as well. You are a fool to think otherwise, Echo._

 _You have no right to speak my name._

The image frayed, a jump forth in her memories to preserve her focus. Mai twitched her nose and wagged her tail when Atem considered her with a tilted head. Then the projection resumed, of the bloodied ungulates and the wolves digging into their feast. Obelisk was eating from the deer, Marik licking his lips hungrily as the seconds passed. Serena had settled back to allow Aki a place to eat her fill. Mai had taken a seat a few feet back, Otogi beside her, the two of them resting after having run so much.

 _Do you think he's still with the body_?

The sudden question made Aki and Obelisk both pause in their meals. Their heads rose, drenched in blood, and their eyes focused in unison upon Marik. Both wolves swallowed their mouthfuls and flicked their ears.

 _Must you bring up such a thing now_? the gray wolf snarled, baring his teeth and glaring at him. A bristle had begun to rise along his shoulders and his body was tensed with disgust. _You cannot leave this alone_?

 _He is right,_ Aki stated dismissively, turning back to her meal. She gulped down a mouthful of meat and ignored the way Obelisk glanced at her. _Mikiyo was foolish. She leaped at the serow against command and got herself killed. It is no fault of anyone else. It was her own fault that this came to happen to her. If she had simply listened to Atem there would never have been such a risk._

 _You do not even care for Atem,_ a new voice interrupted in a sneer. Aki bristled and bore her teeth, snarling in disdain. Echo recognized Yusei there, the younger wolf glaring at her with disgust. _That is one of the first things you said to each of us_! _That your old alpha made a better leader than he ever could._

 _Believing in something and the leadership style of another is not the same,_ Marik growled, spinning on the smaller wolf. It was obvious by the way he squared his shoulders and snapped his jaws that he had expected Yusei to back down but the other merely sniffed at him in disdain. _Stay in your place, you stupid pup._

 _You do not speak to my packmate in such a manner,_ Echo snarled, chomping her teeth. _He is_ my _subordinate. And you are not to speak to him in any way that does not show respect. Do you understand me_?

 _You are not my alpha._

 _But I am your beta,_ Obelisk snarled, cutting him off when he went to sneer at Yusei once more. The smaller wolf blinked wide blue eyes and stared at him as if in shock that he might intervene. Marik flattened his ears against his head, startled. _And you do not open your mouth about such a thing when you have no understanding of any of the intricacies of what is happening, is not that true_? _Now shut your godforsaken mouth and do not speak a word more._

The image began to dissipate as Mai lost her focus. Echo blinked and studied Atem as the white wolf curled his lips back and breathed in roughly. Serena was frozen on Mai's other side, bristling with tension but clearly unnerved further by the white wolf's expression.

 _Perhaps I should teach Marik what it truly means to disobey Atem,_ the wolf snapped, though he made no move to get up and further settled with his chin on his paws. He looked tired, distanced from them once more. The thoughts swirled behind his eyes like water droplets from fresh rainstorms and he seemed disheartened by his own threat. His ears flicked back and forth and then flattened against his skull before he closed his eyes once more. _No one was hurt_?

When Mai did not answer right away, Atem looked at her with clear warning in his eyes, head tilted to the side dangerously. Echo hurried to amend the suspicions in his mind, voice strained even as she spoke the simplest of words.

 _No._

Atem looked at her in surprise, then nodded and sighed. His head was lowered to his legs again, eyes closed. _If he_ does _harm anyone, I want to be the first to know. He is_ not _to lay a claw on anyone._

Mai wagged her tail and leaned forward. Echo was amazed when she licked his forehead and Atem merely grunted an exhale. He did not snarl. He did not recoil. He simply let her do as she wished. So, as she groomed him, Echo shivered and glanced at Serena. The shock was mirrored in her eyes, as if she too were too stunned to believe that a supposed god was truly capable of allowing a mortal to groom them.

 _Don't look so shocked,_ Atem teased, startling her enough to make her focus on him again. His blue-violet eyes were sparkling with laughter. _I don't bite nearly as much as I bark._

Mai snorted and nipped at his ear. Atem wagged his tail lazily and closed his eyes again. The she-wolf settled her chin on her own paws again minutes later, when Echo realized Atem's breathing had evened out drastically. She stared at the two of them as Mai began to sync her breathing to his, and then swapped another look with Serena.

* * *

"Do you think—?" The words tumbled out of his mouth before he could stop himself. And then his stomach churned and his heart was in his throat. His throat tightened, constricting, and his hands trembled for a moment. Yugi kept the knob twisted behind him to keep himself from falling over as his legs shook. His heart was beating too fast and his lungs hurt. He looked down at the dark carpet, his mouth dry and pasty. His tongue was glued to the roof of his mouth. His eyes felt disturbingly flushed and prickled with pain. And his head felt dizzy as he tried to calm himself for a moment.

Fuck.

He couldn't believe that he'd done that.

Yugi let out a ragged breath, then released the doorknob as his legs grew steady again. He stepped forward, sighing loudly, and moved towards the bed. He had not considered it before he'd started talking. He'd been so distracted by the millions of thoughts that he'd been fussing over as he began to walk into the room.

Fuck.

Fuck.

 _Fuck_.

Yugi didn't think he could hate himself anymore than he did at that moment. How the fuck had he been so stupid? How was it that he had been so foolish as to forget himself like that? He felt sick and childish as he took a seat on the bed. The mattress exhaled as harshly as he did himself.

Of course Yami was not there to answer.

Because he was gone.

Because Yugi had been so stupid.

Yami had gotten hurt because he had been stupid.

And now he was gone.

Yugi forced himself to draw in a deep breath, then to exhale long and slow. It wouldn't do him any good to have a panic attack. So he'd surprised himself and inflicted a _lot more_ pain than he'd ever assumed a simple thought capable of. That didn't mean it was the end of the world. It was okay.

Slifer had, after all, told him only hours ago that he was going to find Yami again as it was.

He would come back.

And he would be okay after that.

Yami would be fine.

Yami would be…

Back.

With him.

He would be safe and sound.

Yugi nodded to himself as if to reinforce the thought. Then he nodded again in order to calm himself once more. He would come back soon enough—or so he hoped—and he would be okay. Slifer had promised this, Ra had promised this, Obelisk had promised this. If nothing else, he felt that the gods might hold themselves accountable to such a declaration as this.

Yami would come back and he would be okay and then they could discuss things like what he'd been wanting to ask and they'd rekindle their friendship after he apologized and—

His nose was running and his eyes stung. He reached up to wipe at his mouth with the back of his hand and the bile burned at his skin. When he looked down, the vomit was a bright liquid of neon yellow and darker orange edges. He shivered, glanced towards the bathroom, and slowly made his way to it with a heavy breath. His insides ached and his stomach rolled with discomfort and disgust. His mouth burned and the back of his throat remained on fire as he grabbed a few cleaners from beneath the sink.

When he came back to see it, his stomach tossed again. He wanted to puke again, but his skin was blistering with the pain of it. Yugi dropped the towel atop it, pressing his weight against the fibers until it absorbed the bile there beneath. Then he pulled it along the carpet for a few seconds, scrubbing it further into the fibers, and snatched it up to drop it aside a few inches. He crouched down, sprayed it, and wondered at how often he'd done this same thing for Yami.

But normally there was blood involved.

More often there seemed to be blood involved.

He'd puked up his meal when he'd hunted that day after killing Yoshimori. And he'd puked all over the mattress that day after his night terrors had scared him into nearly changing in his room.

Yugi shivered. He remembered the red-eyed teen seated in the corner of his room, staring at him when he'd enter or exit, but silent as the grave. And he recalled how often he'd wished he'd speak to him formerly, because otherwise it seemed that Yami was not there to begin with. But it was so much worse now, so much lonelier. He could feel it in every ounce of his body, in his marrow and swimming in his blood.

The loneliness was a great and terrible ache and Yugi felt it as if a hand had clenched upon his throat and was pressing on him with the intent of suffocation. The strength of it was enough to break him half, he knew, even if he tried to deny such a thing. But it was impossible to him that he try to so much as acknowledge it long enough to do it. And Yugi felt dizzy at the very consideration.

He'd never equate silence with absence again.

Yami could be as quiet as he wanted to.

Fuck, he could choose never to talk to him again if it simply meant he was okay and there again. Yugi didn't care any longer. He could puke on the floor or have his wrist wounds reopen endlessly or ruin his carpet or his mattress as many times as he wanted. He couldn't give less of a shit about that.

But, by the gods, Yugi just wanted him back there again.

If Yami was only there again, he would thank any god in existence and play the role of Atem more than ever. He didn't care. He'd give the gods what he wanted—his life, his servitude, his entire existence. He didn't care.

He'd fall into as many other roles as he saw there amongst the other wolves within that pack and even within those of Echo's as well and he'd do as all of them wanted, no matter what it took, as they had seemed to do for him.

Yugi thought of Annie, the red-furred alpha who had perhaps sacrificed herself for the sake of giving him the pack. But then he thought of Patty, who had been stomped to death by the boars. He thought of Mikiyo, lying there within the snow too scared and hurt to move. And now he considered how Miho had died at the hands of whatever werewolf had crossed paths with her. Kokurano's statement, "the shadows are bleeding", crossed through his thoughts. Tomoya's throat was torn out, so viciously dispatched that the teeth had left grooves within his bones. There was Ushio, his skull crushed and his body on his doorstep. There were the two wolves that had come after him during his first Change—the Paradox brothers as Ryou had called them. There was Bakura, whose head he'd taken off with all of the rage of an animal beyond that of true physical understanding. He saw Haga and Ryuzaki and Ryota as he and Yami both ended their lives. And he saw those pups, scattered about in the snow, still within their placenta, with their mother's body lying broken and desecrated feet away. Ryou had died as well, throat slit as he had tried to save Atem…

All of them…

All of them had played some kind of role for the gods, hadn't they?

Miho had died as a test for a changing werewolf, had she not? And Kokurano had spoken to him in a manner that he had not understood then—and still did not now—but that he recognized somewhere deep inside of him was residual of Ra herself. Ushio had been the one to nearly kill him, to bring Yami in his direction and had thus been sacrificed as a means of healing him had he been starving and unhealthy enough to need such nourishment. Tomoya had tried to save a wolf he had not recognized as Atem, but rather as Yugi, who he'd thought was worth his life in one way or another.

The Paradox brothers had attacked him that night of the festival, drugged and set upon him like trained dogs at the request of whatever person had sent them and Yami had intervened, pushed to do so by his own connection with him. Bakura had been forced to fight them, to help ambush Yugi and hold him in place until Yami came and he'd tried his hardest—outside of human manipulation and electrical torture—to save Yami regardless. Shizuka had spoken to him for the first time about Atem, about what he was and his very existence and explained to him a meaning behind a name he'd only ever known vaguely. Kaoroku had died as a warning from the trio of male wolves waiting in the woods, looking to attack and kill any person foolish enough to wander through the trees.

Haga, Ryuzaki and Ryota had all been there as some kind of tests towards him, meant to warn him of trials to come. Ryou had died in order to save him and Yami, his loyalty to them beyond even that of obvious devotion he had shown and shared with Bakura. Annie had given him the pack, the forces of which he was meant to win a war. Patty had died, an innocent casualty which had been enough to remind him that war was a game of pawns rather which knew no mercy. And Mikiyo was the death that had enlightened him to the unnatural beliefs of which this pack Annie had bestowed him was not as tightly knit as one might have formerly believed.

But Yami's removal from his side…

That was more than he could put into words.

But, mostly, he felt it boiled down to Ra's very words in his dreams before.

Atem was meant to rely upon himself.

And so the gods had taken away the one that he had learned to lean upon too much. They had removed him, but they would return him. And that was only when he proved himself to be powerful enough to stand on his own four paws and fight within a war that overwhelmed every other event which existed for the werewolves.

Yugi shivered and scrubbed the carpet with the brush he'd used formerly to help remove the blood from the dark purple fibers weeks prior. He stared at it, remembering for a moment the way that the carpet had been crusted and then swelled bright red where the cleaner had taken to removing much of the discoloration. He shivered. The squelching noise had sounded almost like stepping too deeply into a puddle of mud that threatened to swallow one's shoes.

He shook it off, wiping it clean once more with the towel, and dropped the cleaner and brush back into the plastic bucket beside his hip. He got up again, stepped into the bathroom, and pushed the container back under the sink. When he glanced at the mirror, he couldn't find it in himself to do more than reach over and flip the light switch off.

He hesitated in the dark for a long moment, then turned and wandered back towards the cracked door he'd left partially open. When he stepped back into the dimmed sunlight, his stomach tossed painfully.

Annie had given him the pack.

Patty had died during their first hunt.

Mikiyo had died the second.

He had not gotten to speak to Patty before realizing that she had been crushed to death. But Mikiyo had told him her mother's name, had given him a vital slice of reality he had not realized he'd wanted formerly.

If Annie had been their mother, then was it possible that Patty and Mikiyo were born in the same litter? Had they been born as wolves as Yami himself had been? Yugi had never truly considered before then. And, if that were the case, did that mean as well that some of the other she-wolves were the same age?

Now that he considered it, the reality of it made sense in a way he had formerly noted. Yami had claimed there were things he knew about the pack that he himself did not. Yugi had been surprised back then, but now he wondered…

Had Yami known about this?

He had mentioned that Otogi and Marik were the only two males within the pack. And he had agreed about how often the she-wolves would proposition himself when they'd assumed him to be Atem formerly. Back then Yugi had been more interested in imagining the harem aspect of it, of how Marik basically had his pick of them, of how much fun he and Jonouchi probably would have had with that concept. Now he wondered if they were so closely—so tightly—related in such a manner as to be siblings.

Slifer had given birth to Annie. And Annie had given birth to the each of them beyond what few might have slipped in from the escape from the lab. And all of these wolves were female beyond Otogi and Marik.

And Yami had hinted at them not being birthed by Annie. He'd hinted at Otogi being a Half-Blood rather than a Full-Blood and that the wolves originally within the pack were nothing short of being Full-Blood werewolves. If that were the case, then Annie was unable to birth males for whatever reason. And that she had been with the same male in order to produce the same blood hierarchy within the pack. There had been no one outside of this male, keeping them all as Full-Blood wolves rather than Half-Bloods.

But Yugi wondered at why—when Marik was clearly sleeping with them—none of them had gotten pregnant as well. Were they barren? Was it something to do with the genetics that Annie had borne?

Or perhaps it was because they were descended from Slifer…

He pushed the thought away, curling up on top of the comforter and pulling the fleece closer to him. He knotted it in his fingers and bunched himself into the fetal position. His stomach knotted but it was without sickness and rather with mounting anxiety. He had not been able to find it in himself to put away the fleece even when Yami had gone missing. But he had not been able to find it in himself to sleep beneath it directly before then either.

And, as he closed his eyes, he smelled something soft yet pungent and his heart skipped beats for a moment. He could catch the faintest, most beautiful hint of pine needles and winter frost, of fallen straw and frozen silver moonlight. The way it coiled within his lungs made his heart pound faster and his mouth was dry as his blood began to race within his veins and his marrow warm. He trembled, his stomach knotting more tightly, and his body was wracked with tremors as he clenched his eyes shut tightly.

The comforter smelled of himself, but the blanket was warm and comfortable and the scent of Yami that came from it made his eyes sting. For a moment he tried to suppress it, but his breathing was too rough and his body was too tightly wound. The tremors came faster and his lungs tightened as a ball formed in the back of his throat.

The tears were hot against his skin and the exhaustion was overwhelming.

With the exhaustion came a heaviness upon his form, his energy lost as he kept his eyes tightly shut. He shivered, his breathing still somewhat labored, but the darkness behind his lids had brightened. And, when he thought to open his eyes again finally, it was to a landscape of white.

The trees were a shimmering, misty form of some kind. The snow which flickered and swirled in the air was like fallen leaves of pale shades. The branches were bare, stripped of color, dark gray rather than brown. The cores of them were oddly silver, blue in the very center in some. And the sky above was a deep and bottomless black where single ribbons of dark blue and purple and red-violet striped the area surrounding the immense moon which glowed in the blackness. The clouds were little wisps of color, silver and white and touched with the lightest shimmer of gold like the sun.

He shivered and moved to rise, knowing instinctively that it was paws beneath him rather than feet. He stepped forward, eyes searching the blankness of the darkened silver and gray shadows and the strange illumination of bright blue and cobalt. His ears flattened against his skull and the snow beneath his paws crunched heavily as he continued. He sniffed lightly in the dark, catching almost nothing before him.

But he could sense him.

He could sense several beings there, in fact.

But there was only one close to him.

And he felt that the others—he could sense at least four of them, though he was sure somehow that there were more there—would not come closer. They would hide away, beneath the shadows, like wraiths in the dark. And Yugi did not care to find them rather than the presence he could truly sense there.

He hesitated, licking his lips, and glanced about himself only once. The darkness seemed dead of noise, as if the very volume of it had been siphoned away beyond his own steps. And so Yugi turned away again, pacing forward as quickly as he could find it in himself to.

The trees seemed to open further than the few feet between each other. It was as if they had begun to part before him, shifting away in the dark to give him room. The snow fell in heavy flakes, drifting with such white and silver and blue shadows and glittering refractions that it almost blinded him. His footsteps were too loud, painful in his ears, and his breathing was a rasping as he managed to breach what looked to be a large clearing. But the river cut through the center of it and the length of it was so immense that it startled him for a moment to even consider crossing. The stones were large and bulky within the heavy current, however, the water laden with various ribbons of color cast from the sky overhead. He shivered, stomach knotted, and moved further forward. The water that splashed upon the stones unnerved him as he got to the bank and he wondered at the sensation of grains of sand beneath his paws despite the cold snow he'd tread upon moments before.

He hesitated, glanced about himself again.

Then, turning away once more, facing what looked to be a shimmering forest of white and silver mist and trees of skeletal shapes, he considered the water again. He didn't want to tread it. Something in his gut told him not to.

Was it possible to die in a dream?

Or perhaps it wasn't to be considered as such.

After all, despite his state of unconsciousness, this was Paradise. He knew the forest of frost surrounding him well enough. It was something that not once had he considered it to be miserable in any sense. But now he wondered at such a thought, unnerved by this river and the length of it, the roar it possessed.

He'd thought of it as a dream before, but now he wondered if death were really stalking his paws in a more literal sense. How often had he crossed paths with this forest? How many times had he come upon the shadows of these woods and the moonlight that drizzled through the branches? How many times had he looked upon the snow and heard the river in the distance? How many times had he conversed with Ra here?

And what of the wolf that had once been in the cage with Yami there within the lab?

How many times had he come to see him without knowing?

Yugi shivered.

Perhaps death stalked his paws because Slifer meant to claim him soon.

Perhaps his time was coming and the war would be the end of him.

When his purpose was fulfilled, his war won, would they simply kill him?

Surely if they had given him life, they could bestow upon him death as well?

Yet, where it should have upset him, now he simply looked about the trees again. If that were to happen, then fine. So be it. He could deal with this. He could figure it out. Let death stalk his paws. He didn't care any longer.

He froze as the thought finalized itself.

For a moment he felt doubt trickle through him, and then he experienced a sense of relief flush through his blood in a hideous flame. His head snapped up and to the right and his eyes widened as he searched the shadows and the moonlight where the beams were soft and easy and mute unlike the sunbeams the day had offered. And he felt his tail rise as he opened his mouth slightly, heart pounding in his chest as he finally took to his form there.

The red eyes peered at him in the darkness, glittering faintly in the center of his pupils. His shape was oddly healthy, full and unlike what he had seemed formerly when Yugi had seen him last. He did not look starved and half-dead, as if he were being eaten alive before his eyes. Yami looked as he had the first time he'd seen him in the woods and behind Burger World. He was larger than he'd thought possible of a wolf, inches taller than he knew the standard to be, with legs longer than he thought the wolfhounds had possessed when they'd chased them to the greenhouse. His jaw was immense, his skull narrow in slope, his eyes large and almond-shaped, his ears soft and pricked forward, his cheeks full and wide and fluffy. His coat was shiny, slick and weighted only slightly with pristine white snow. His paws were the size of one of his palms flattened as far as it would go. And his nose was moist, wiggling as he breathed in and out with a laziness that Yugi did not recognize fully.

 _Yami,_ he called, both delighted and fearful. He crept forward a step, wondering if the other might recognize him seeing as he had not the last time. The black wolf tilted his head in something between recognition and puzzlement, but did not approach him. Yugi felt a harsh rush of fear and embitterment coil inside of him and his head snapped towards the trees that rested behind him.

 _Why do you keep doing this to me_? he demanded angrily. _You keep bringing me here and he doesn't know who I am anymore_! _Why do you keep making us both suffer like this_?

There was no answer but for Yami's breathing. It was not labored as it had been before, but its quickened pace made Yugi immediately turn back. His fur bristled in alarm, horrified by the very idea, but then relaxed only slightly as he realized that the other wolf was simply sniffing in the snow. But his red eyes were on him now, rather than downwards as they had been before. And Yugi could see the faintest spark of something like recognition or perhaps discontentment lingering there within his gaze.

Slowly the black wolf took a step forward, eyeing him as if he might lunge at him. Yugi wagged his tail and held it parallel to his back, keeping his head up and trying to make himself seem friendlier. He lowered his eyes just enough to look beneath Yami's own but the other wolf seemed hardly to care for such posturing. The black canine crept forward, began to step from the shadows and come toward him.

It was eerie the stance and speed he took to approach. But he did not seem even slightly to notice Yugi's friendly stature. He simply blinked, coming to a stop in front of him. His nose worked faster, his breaths angry white puffs against the dark, the cores of them glittering like dewdrops beneath direct sunlight. The colors bounced endlessly and the blue-violet-eyed wolf shivered with delight for a moment.

He was so close.

And he looked so healthy.

And Yugi could feel his heart breaking as they looked at one another.

 _Yami…_

The wolf blinked at him almost lazily. For the smallest of moments Yugi almost thought that he seemed very clearly to understand his name and why Yugi said it in such a way. But then he yawned and his teeth flashed and it looked almost as if he were more stressed than tired and the sight made Yugi's fur bristle faintly. He could see it now, discomfort and frustration, in those darkened red eyes.

The smaller wolf began to lower himself to the snow again. He dropped his tail and flattened his ears against his head, putting his chin on his paws. His blue-violet eyes flickered across the other's face and he shivered as the snow fell from his fur. He could see Yami's breath coming in even little exhales now. The black canine sniffed at him again, but he did not yawn nor pant as he might have had he been further stressed.

 _Yami,_ he whispered, lifting his head just enough to watch him over his shoulder as Yami continued forward another step and flicked an ear towards him. The darker wolf sniffed again, circled him once, stopped in front of him, and considered. _Do you remember me_?

He blinked at him, red eyes glittering in the moonlight. Then, very slowly, he raised his head slightly and looked more closely. He considered him, studying, and then looked away again to sniff more pointedly at the snow. They could both scent it now, blood and something colder and yet somehow warm all the same as if they could smell the healing itself.

Yami poked at his flank with his nose and Yugi stiffened, startled by the sudden touch. The wolf did not seem to recognize his discomfort, but it was not forceful as he prodded once more. The two of them blinked at one another and Yugi thought to roll over onto his side. But it seemed to pass, the black wolf moving aside again to sniff at the snow with his nose inches from the powdery ice. The two of them watched one another for a moment and Yami slowed as he began to pace about, sniffing faster.

 _Are you okay_? _Are you hurt anywhere_?

The red eyes flickered about his own. And then he blinked and flicked his ears. The black wolf shivered, shook his coat out, and then looked at Yugi closely for a moment. He seemed for a moment to try to perhaps speak to him. But then it fell away again and he licked his lips in an almost anxious manner.

But Yugi could see it now.

The wolf was losing his concentration and his eyes were becoming somewhat glazed. He could see the pain coming in little waves, staggering but not enough to make him lose himself altogether. The mist from the snow about them was sizzling as the wounds began to open slightly. Yugi sprang forward to run his tongue upon his skin beneath the fur where the blood had begun to drop into the snow beneath him.

Yami snarled and snapped his jaws but his eyes were glazing over quickly. Yugi could see the exhaustion more than he could anything else. And he realized, abruptly, that something was pushing Yami to awaken prematurely. Something was shoving upon him to force him to awareness again. Something was…

Forcing him awake.

Yugi nearly snarled with hatred at the very idea.

But his tongue worked relentlessly at the wounds that were rapidly appearing. And his stomach knotted as his heart quickened in his chest. His paws were trembling, his legs threatening to give out beneath him. His breathing was heavy and hideous and pitiful and Yugi trembled.

 _You'll be okay. I promise._ He faltered and licked more persistently, but part of him was too mentally shaken to truly take to the task of focus. He tried to stem the blood along a wound that looked heavily infected at the base of his neck and stretching downwards as if his throat had been slit. But the muscles had healed and mended themselves there, inches beneath the first layer of skin but stemmed of bloodshed any longer.

He hesitated and Yami shuddered, a harsh twitch of his body that almost caused Yugi to flinch backwards from the impact of his shiver. The white wolf snapped his teeth and panted as he tried harder to clean the wound there beneath his dark fur.

 _I'm sorry. I'm so sorry for getting you into this mess._

Maybe if he had never said that he was Atem…

Maybe if he had never told Yami to stay as long as he found necessary…

Maybe if he had pushed for Yami to stay with the pack instead…

 _I'll find you, okay_? _And when I do, you'll be okay again._

If he had ever been okay since they'd met.

 _Had_ he?

Yugi wanted to puke, because all of the sudden he could not recall if he ever had.

And now he wondered if Yami had ever been safe with him begin with.

The black wolf twitched and shuddered again. His eyes nearly rolled up in the back of his head. His body shook. His tongue lolled from his mouth. His teeth glittered with red, bloody foam beginning to rise from the back of his throat. Bile surged forward, stinking of rot and organ meat. He shook again, shuddered, and then choked and gagged and sputtered. Spittle sprayed across the snow.

 _I promise I'll help you and…and then you'll be okay again._ He licked at a wound that had developed on his abdomen, where his gut seemed almost to be expelled with each cough and gasp he released. His legs were wounded, cut along the insides in layers of muscles and sinews. The tendons were split in certain areas, bleeding furiously, and the snow was steaming with the heat of it. A bone was showing along his left hock and his tail was cut and bleeding and the fur was patchy in several areas. _I promise I'll fix this. I'm so sorry. But I'll fix this. I promise I will._

For a moment Yami simply shook and sputtered again. Then he spat a mouthful of bloodied foam and his teeth flashed against the snow. He shuddered, breathing furiously, his flanks shaking with the ferocity of his exhales. Then, slowly, his eyes seemed to roll forward again. He snarled and spat and spittle flecked forward again. His abdomen heaved. His body shook. His tongue bled where his teeth clipped it. Bile spread forward in a pool of deep crimson. The smell of rot came in hideous waves.

 _Yugi._

He licked harder at the wound on his side. The ribs were showing there, where the blood was smeared and the skin pulled too taut. He shivered and snapped and heaved and the foaming saliva slid from his gaping jaws once more.

 _Yugi._

Now he recognized his name. He halted, his eyes snapping forward, his head rising slightly. He blinked, horrified, and turned to face Yami more directly. The darker canine shook, his eyes flickering and falling on him. The red of his irises was wild, splattered and dizzy like blood being spilled. He heaved and panted again, gasping. His sides shook, his body trembled. His eyes were glazed. His pupils were vibrating within his sockets.

 _Yami, I—_

 _F—_ He choked and forcefully expelled bile so thick it clumped into a frozen heap. He shuddered and spat and his entire body twitched once more. His eyes were glazed, unfocused now. The wild light in them began to press outwards, to encompass his gaze completely. His irises seemed almost to bleed forth, the veins prominent now. The whites of his eyes were almost drowned away by rivers of red. He choked again, sides heaving. His paws flexed, claws scrabbling at dead, cold air. His toes spread outwards. His legs grew taut with tension. He couldn't move for a single second. Then he exhaled and fell into a heap again, all but boneless and limp.

 _H-hold on. I can—_

 _F—fu—_ He couldn't breathe long enough to focus. Yugi could see it in his eyes. He couldn't get the words out. He couldn't think straight. The white wolf trembled and licked furiously at the wound on his ribs.

 _Please, Yami, hold on. I can fix this—I can…_

But he knew he couldn't and the way Yami sputtered and choked and shook like a leaf told him the same. The white wolf wanted to puke again, shaking as he continued to try to mend such a gaping hole in his side. But it did nothing more than apply pressure Yami could not handle. The scream was a gurgling mess of a whimper and his eyes nearly popped out of his head as he puked once more.

And then Yugi could feel him fading again, a shadow of black turning dark gray and then an unholy silver shade. His very existence seemed wiped away into nothingness now, swept away by the agony Yugi knew Yami to be in. The white wolf stared at the snow, at the remnants of blood and bile and fur that had been shed.

The chasm of pain that split through him was enough to knock the breath from him. He shuddered and trembled, panting pathetically. The rotting smell burned his nose. His eyes watered. He nearly screamed. Yet, some part of him recoiled at the thought. And he could find nothing in him but the gaping hole of emptiness that had greeted him the first time he had seen Yami fade from before his very eyes.

Yugi looked forward, towards the shadows in the trees, then glanced over his shoulder. In the dark, a pair of sea-green eyes rimmed with emerald and teal gazed back at him. The sight of them made him tremble. The wolves stared at one another blankly and then the white wolf stepped forward hesitantly.

 _Why do you all keep bringing me here_? he whispered in dismay, watching as the gray wolf flicked bright red-brown ears and flattened them against his skull. The brown splashed upon his muzzle wrinkled faintly as his lips pulled back into a grimace of pure despair.

 _He wished for you to be present,_ the wolf answered quietly, looking away almost submissively. He shook himself out and closed his eyes tightly, the snow shed from his long coat. _Yami wished for you to be here. And when a wolf is dying, many times their dearest are forced to be there amongst the wolves to receive them._

 _But he's not dead._ Yugi bristled and snapped his jaws. _He's hurt, but he's not dead._

The gray wolf flicked an ear again, then glanced over his shoulder and back. _He is wounded to such a point that death is more likely than survival. But he heals because of your persistence._ His eyes were agonized for a moment.

The white canine hesitated, then stepped forward again, a sense of desperation coming over him. _Do you know where he is_? he asked softly, shivering. _I-if you do, you can tell me. I-I can find him and I can—_

 _I am unable to tell you such a thing,_ the wolf answered with a small shake of his head. His eyes flickered to the snow where Yami had once been lying and his ears flattened further. He shivered, shaking the snow away where it was rapidly clumping upon his fur once more. Yugi wondered at the realization of his solidness within this place, how he did not seem spiritual rather than physical as they stood before each other. _I would give anything to be able to tell you, but I do not know._

Yugi shivered and then looked back over his shoulder as well, eyes locked on the wolf in his peripheral as he licked his lips and turned back with a harsh pant. _Why are you here_? _If he wanted me here…_

The wolf stepped forward, this time more arrogant than he had been before. His fur rose along his spine. His shoulders were squared. His ears were pricked forward. His eyes were full of challenge. His tail rose faintly. His lips curled back slightly. His eyes flashed with hatred. His brows furrowed.

 _Despite what you may think, Yugi_ —Atem, _whatever you may damn well so prefer—he has more people in his heart than just you,_ the wolf snarled angrily, disdain coloring his infuriated voice. _You are not the only one who knows him, despite what you might think. I knew him before you ever came into his life. The bond we share might not be the same as which you two possess, but it is there and I will kill you before I let you discount it._

Yugi flinched and backed up a step, startled. And then his ears flicked and his eyes lowered to the snow. _I'm sorry, I didn't mean to…_ He faltered and shook his head slowly, looking up again to see that the gray wolf was still glaring at him with clear hatred in his gaze. _I don't want to be the only one in Yami's heart. I never did. I just…I was surprised and…_

The wolf stared at him coldly for a moment longer, then dropped his tail though his body remained tense. For a few heartbeats they stared at one another, then Yugi looked away and the gray canine sighed softly as he hung his head. _I do not wish to squabble with you._

The statement made Yugi look up, startled. And, abruptly, he remembered arguments with Yami, where the other wolf had looked away and spoken similar words. Or when he had told him he was too uncomfortable to speak any longer. And he wondered if he had picked up such phrasing and submissive habits from this wolf before him. Or if, somehow, perhaps this wolf had learned them from Yami himself.

 _Did…did he spend a lot of time with you in the labs_?

The wolf blinked, turning to him, but his ears were flicking furiously now and his eyes widened as he looked over his shoulder. When he turned back, he looked startled rather than angry or dismayed, and then shook his head. _I cannot tell you,_ he stated softly, shaking his head more pointedly now. _I am forbidden to broach such topics. Please do not ask me about those times._

He bristled. _Ra_?

The glance away told him all he needed to know. The wolf flicked an ear, glanced over his shoulder again, and then turned back with a look of something almost kind in his eyes now. _You cannot remain here any longer. When you awaken, you might feel sick, young one,_ he stated softly, stepping forward and moving towards him. Yugi blinked at him, surprised by the change in his demeanor, and realized abruptly now that he again seemed much alike Yami in this aspect. Were they that close? Had they rubbed off on each other so easily?

Had they been so truly bonded?

Had they…?

Yugi stared at him blankly, startled by the very line of thought and so shaken that he could not truly find it in himself to complete it. He opened and shut his mouth once, his teeth clicking from the force of it, and it was such a human gesture that he almost wondered if he had changed once again.

 _Take care, young one. I will see you again._

The touch to his nose was of fire and ice. He collapsed immediately, yelping and shaking. He sputtered and jerked, backwards from the wolf, but upwards from the bed as his eyes snapped open again. In the dark his head felt light and fuzzy and his stomach twisted and churned for a moment. But it was not enough to make him puke. Yugi blinked lazily, shivering, and looked about the small room for a moment.

He almost expected the wolf to have followed him somehow.

And he was oddly disappointed and crushed that he hadn't.

Yugi rubbed at his eyes, closing them tightly and shaking his head. He wondered at the slight sickness to wrap itself around his belly, but it did not hurt enough to make him head for the bathroom. And it began to settle again beyond slight churning after a few minutes or so. The small teen reached up and ran his hands through his hair, preparing to settle for some more sleep.

But his alarm croaked suddenly, startling him. He spat and turned, snarling, and his body shook for a moment with shock. He gaped at it, startled. The little digital clock shook where it vibrated and crowed on his nightstand. He huffed and pressed the power button to turn the alarm off. Then he got to his feet and wandered about the room.

Yugi slowed his steps, startled, and his eyes flickered about his friends' faces. Each of them looked confused, all but unnerved, and he considered them as he stepped closer. It was not as if he knew Marik's human form well, but it was not as if it were not distinctive in and of itself as it was. He slowed his steps, looked around again, and then approached them with one hand on his backpack strap and the other in his jacket pocket. He thought briefly of the pistol he'd once hidden in it, of silver bullets and the sound of gunshots. And he wondered if Marik had ever known that fear, that possibility of being struck down.

Somehow, some part of him seriously doubted that he ever had.

"Hey guys, what's up?" he asked quietly, watching his friends first. When none of them seemed particularly distressed, Yugi turned to Marik with darkened eyes. Jonouchi and Honda swapped looks, clearly unnerved by the expression on his face. And Yugi wondered how long it was that Marik had been there to begin with.

"Just waiting on you so we could get to school," Anzu finally commented, breaking the tension just enough to make Yugi glance over at her in surprise. His eyes flickered quickly back to the blond werewolf, gaze sharpening further before looking towards his friends again. The brunette shivered at the frost in his eyes.

 _He knows where I go to school,_ Yugi realized abruptly, feeling sick to his stomach. _He knows who my friends are._

"Is there something going on?"

It was nicer than demanding to know what he was doing there. He was trying harder than ever not to display how easily he wanted to snarl at him to back off. But the way the blond looked at him with wide eyes, as if startled by the question, made him wonder if perhaps he had simply wandered there…

"I was just exploring some of Domino." Marik shrugged casually, but he seemed slightly hurt by the way Yugi was scrutinizing him and the small teen wondered how badly he was coming across to him. He wondered if his friends were shocked by his words or his apparent frustration. "I've never been here before, especially not human. I mean, the mountains are the only place I've ever been so I figured I should explore at some point. I just happened to cross paths with them and I smelled you on them and I got curious."

Yugi blinked. Anzu flushed faintly. Jonouchi and Honda both pressed their lips into thin lines and grimaced at each other. Their eyes flickered about for a moment. And then they stared at Yugi with unnerved expressions.

"You got curious?" he echoed, muttering the words. But a more prominent part of him was alarmed by the fact that he'd so easily said he was in the mountains. And that he had never come to the city in his human form. The fact that he had said it so simply made him want to snarl in frustration. How could he compromise himself and the pack so easily?

"I just wanted to know where you were from."

Yugi cut him off now, shutting him down before he might let something else out that he shouldn't. He'd be damned before he let him call him Atem in front of his friends. By the gods, he had no words to explain such a thing to them.

"That's nice but you could have just asked me."

"But you're obviously busy with your human life and I didn't want to encroach."

Anzu shivered and rubbed at her arm. If he hadn't wanted to encroach, then why had he stopped and started talking to them like he had? Why would he have bothered to do that instead of simply waiting for them near the school or something like that? All of it was creepy in reality, but the blond could have waited instead for Yugi to come out of the house or something. She couldn't understand the reason he'd chosen to find Yugi in the first place.

And his comment about being able to smell him on them was unnerving.

At least Yami had been discreet about being a werewolf.

This boy seemed just to flaunt it, as if he were simply gay and looking for attention rather than a creature that shouldn't exist altogether.

Her cheeks burned at the thought, scratching her arm again a little harder than before. Oh gods, what if that was it? What if this boy was just gay for her friend and that was why he was there hovering like this?

Surely he understood how awkward this entire situation was?

"I can give you a tour some other time if you want." Yugi was curt in his words and Anzu remembered, blushing even more, that he had already made a rather bold claim upon Yami as it was. He'd said that he wasn't sure how long either of them would last, that they were on borrowed time and there was some kind of war, but her lack of understanding made the reality of it fuzzy. And so she had not thought much of it before now. She wondered if perhaps the two of them were at war in the sense of mating.

But then she recalled as well that wolves did not fight for mating privileges like common dogs did. They had a hierarchy and only the alphas had pups.

Was that the same thing for werewolves?

If it was, Yugi was clearly with the wrong gender.

Or perhaps the lower-ranking males all tended to bond together sexually because of the hierarchy? Wouldn't that be something?

A small blush colored her cheeks and she shook the thought off. It was probably not the best thing to think about when it came to a former potential boyfriend. And the thought of Yugi and Yami still made her heart hurt a little so she definitely did not consider that a wise choice of thoughts at the moment.

"Really?"

He narrowed his bright blue-violet eyes. "Yeah," he said quietly, studying him with a flustered expression. He looked almost as unnerved as Jonouchi and Honda beside her. The two other teens looked flustered and confused, but extremely nervous now, as if they thought a fight might break out between the two wolves at any moment. "If you want, I'll take you around Domino some other time. But right now I have school and my friends and I are going to be busy with that for the next few hours."

Marik nodded slightly, something glinting in his eyes. Yugi couldn't tell if it was amusement or some kind of cunning and it unnerved him for the smallest of seconds. But it was gone in a flash and he wondered at the sight of it, if it was even there or he was projecting his frustrations and trying to give himself a reason to snap at the other boy.

"Okay. That sounds great, Yugi!"

His stomach tossed.

Had he ever told him his name…?

He blinked.

Did it matter though?

Marik officially knew what school he went to. He knew who his friends were. He had probably had enough time to memorize every aspect of them and the school that they attended if he'd been so bold as to follow his scent trail there. If he had been brave enough, he would have been able to track Yugi to his own home as well…

"Thank you so much."

The smaller teen blinked again, nodding slightly. "You're welcome. Just ask me when you want to do it and we'll make plans."

Jonouchi wasn't sure he liked how dismissive and anxious Yugi sounded at the moment. And there was something in his eyes that made the smaller teen seem almost frantic for a split second. The blond nodded, flashed them a smile, said something about it being nice to meet them, and then wandered off quickly in the opposite direction. He was moving further into the city rather than towards the trees as he would have expected.

Yugi watched him go, then turned to them. "How long had he been here?" he asked in a rather demanding tone, something sharp and cold in his voice.

The taller blond frowned and considered him for a moment. "Only a few minutes before you got here," he finally answered, raising a brow. The smaller teen looked thoughtful now, though it wasn't friendly in any manner. The blue-violet eyes flickered towards where Marik had disappeared again and then he turned back with a slight frown. "He just said he was a friend of yours and introduced himself."

Yugi quirked an eyebrow. "You guys seemed kind of nervous."

"He sniffed me," Honda muttered, rolling his eyes dismissively. Jonouchi had initially cracked up, teasing him that he must have smelled like sewage. But Marik had disagreed, saying instead that he smelled like a dog of some kind and all three of them had stared at him quietly in shock. How they had missed the fact that he was a werewolf was beyond him now. Yami had projected a certain kind of aura, of power and stature and cunning of an animalistic trait. But Marik had seemed wild, perhaps not as strong, but definitely with some touch of wilderness that shook him to the core the longer they'd been near each other. "And then we kind of realized after that that he was a werewolf and yeah…"

The smaller teen nodded slightly. "Okay."

But Honda noticed he hardly looked satisfied with that answer.


	49. Training

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day**

 **Chapter Warnings: Mentions of Death, Bloodshed, Hunting/BAD Hunting, Training, Mentions of Unrequited Love, Vague Mentions of Torture/Experiments**

 **All right so! Hi again guys! The month of September honestly seemed to fly by for the most part and thankfully I got most everything I set out to accomplish done (sorry for the hiatus, but it was completely necessary to get back on track). Part four is just missing its last chapter. The next two chapters are set up to be posted on time, edited and set up on both sites for easy posting. _Sky Dance's_ sequel is a few edits away from posting (so I don't know if I'll be posting it before next year), the wolf packs are still being somewhat situated and figured out. Just going to say, a goal of 6000 words a night on work days isn't as terrible as I thought it would be~!**

 **Anyways, so, that aside! The pace picks up a bit more in this part of the story. You'll learn a little more about the gods, about some of the lore that the wolves have, some about their origins. There's not too much past that I'm going to be able to tell without ruining a few plot twists and major events though. New characters all around—I think there are two new packs that come into the picture in this part alone?**

 **Okay, so, my only issue is that I'm NOT going to have time to groom and polish the chapters as much as I normally would before I post them (most of them get at least three proofreads unless I'm on a tight schedule). So, as far as that goes, I might have a lot more mistakes in this part than I did in the other two. The reason I can't go back and edit more than once or twice is because I have to fix a couple of events in the next handful of chapters because of the fact that I didn't have the files I originally did for the packs and the various members. So I'm going back and fixing that. Anyways! So yeah, if it's a huge mistake (like characters appearing where they shouldn't or names that come out completely UNlike their actual names or something crazy like that), please go ahead and tell me. If it's something that isn't too major then just feel free to ignore it and enjoy the chapter~!**

Part IV

Chapter XLIX: Training

 _Work Log Entry XLV: January, 2005_

 _January 1_

 _Again, nothing has come about from monitoring the Pure-Blood._

 _Due to his age, he does not respond to the she-wolves in heat but they do not seem to care much for him either. However, the boss is eager to mate him and I think he expects to create a creature more powerful than even that of the Pure-Blood._

 _But I do not believe there is one._

 _Here, come with me._

Yugi huffed out a deep breath, winded, and then sighed as he rose to his paws. He panted and shook the snow from his fur as he flicked his ears with an exhausted expression. He watched Obelisk as the dark gray wolf turned and began to trot forward. The smaller canine huffed again, then moved to pick up speed and keep pace with him. It was exhausting to deal with him, physically draining as he pricked his ears further forward and sighed. The snow crunched beneath his paws and he wondered when the weather would let up. Would he still be alive by the time it happened?

With the rate of things that had progressed so far, he doubted it more than he was hopeful.

They traveled for a handful of miles, Yugi measuring the time by the position in the sky. He could feel the small residual pulse of energy which came with nighttime. He knew well enough how to understand this new draw of his senses, something that he had not noticed prior to Yami's disappearance. The wolf had told him similar words and he'd been dismissive of such a thing before then.

But now he felt it and he understood. It crept through his veins with gossamer fingers and made his nerves light with fire, comfortable and cunning. And it was subtle enough that it made him shiver with desire at times while he remained in his room doing homework and picking at equations and worksheets he had not finished at school.

His physical exhaustion began to wane beneath the touch of the night's approach now. He shivered and flicked an ear as he shook his fur out once more. The snow had been falling in sheets for a while now, an almost white icy wall forming before his nose even as they'd practiced a couple more fighting moves. He had not considered how hard it might be to see in his human form but the wolf perceived it easily. The seconds that passed as his mind and eyes processed this information and sight before him did well to even given him a chance to count the ice crystals as they fell in front of him.

Yugi flicked an ear again. _Where are we headed_?

 _The tunnels._

He tilted his head in consideration, looking around slowly for a moment. _Why_?

 _I have a specific task that I want you to accomplish in the tunnels. We both think that it will help you a lot to learn the truth of your potential stamina and speed._ Obelisk did not look back at him but Yugi could almost hear the smirk in his voice as he huffed behind him and pressed his ears against his skull in frustration. _We have much to teach you. In about two weeks' time something will happen that will require you to know your body's physical limits and understand your abilities. We do not have enough time to make you into the Atem from legend, but we have enough to make sure that_ Yugi _is able to survive this ordeal._

He shivered, slowing slightly and letting out a deep breath. His stomach knotted at the phrasing and his heart seemed to clench as he considered the words more thoughtfully. If Obelisk were calling it an ordeal, then surely it was the equivalent of what Slifer had mentioned as a trial, yes? But then, what qualified as an ordeal or a trial for a god? What made up the definition of such words for them?

Yugi could not help but wonder if perhaps this definition lingered in the same capacity as Slifer's own comment, that he would come to find Yami at the end of them. Did that hint towards such a thing as this ordeal being such a bridging point? He shivered but the idea made his fur roll upon his skin with excitement.

It was possible, wasn't it?

Surely the gods did not lie…

Yugi sped up a step despite his tired state, and the two of them continued along the length of the base of the mountain's slope towards the entrance of the tunnels there. The snow was lightening only faintly as the two of them passed through the entrance. The white wolf nearly growled under his breath, distressed by the very idea of the last time he had been within this small mouth of an opening. He'd passed through it last after coming out of the labs, furious and annoyed and utterly defeated.

 _Do not dwell on such trivial things._ Yugi blinked and raised his head, startled by the comment, but Obelisk did not so much as glance back as they began to trek faster into the tunnels. The smooth stone made the crashing of the water that much heavier in their ears and the white wolf nearly bristled with disbelief at such racket. The strength of it was immense and terrible and he shivered as he thought of the spray landing upon the stones and his own paws. _You will find little answers in doing so and it will be a great waste of time to do something with such little productivity._

He flicked an ear. _It's still fresh in my mind._

 _And it will remain in such a state for a long time to come._ Obelisk trailed the ledge until the gorge was a wide stone of wall which put the water a few feet beneath them. The gray wolf quickened his pace only slightly, then leaped across the river without a second glance. The easy motion was so fast and fluid that Yugi shivered at the sight of it. He remembered slightly, somewhere in the back of his mind, just how powerful that tiger had been in the warehouse. He pictured, for the briefest of moments, the way she'd sprang so elegantly and the muscles had rippled like cool droplets beneath her pelt. He'd known this even within his state of pain and fear and despite Aileen's terrible sneers. And now he shivered and pricked his ears forward and tilted his head as his fur bristled faintly along his shoulders. _But you will learn to suppress such memories about things so mediocre and needless as time goes on._

Yugi curled his lip faintly, the water roaring beneath him as he shivered and shook himself out. Then he pressed forward a step, sped up only a few more paces, and sprang as well. He landed far less elegantly than Obelisk had. His legs slipped beneath him and he collapsed into a heap for a moment. In a rare moment of wonder and laughter, the gray wolf turned to him with bright eyes, but the expression was gone again within mere seconds. His ears flicked and he snorted almost scornfully as he turned away again.

The stone was slippery beneath his feet when Yugi struggled to his paws. He fell and scrabbled several times, his claws making a terrible clicking and scraping noise which made him flinch. It was too terribly loud in the darkness; the water crashing against the rock was smothered beneath it as well.

 _You should not have slipped like that._

Yugi would have raised a brow had he been human. Instead he sneered, _Well, thanks for that wonderful newsflash, Obelisk. I'll be sure to keep that in mind the next time I try to leap over a river and might miss._

The gray wolf snarled low in his throat, a distasteful noise rather than angry as one might have assumed. _You do not utilize your strengths as a wolf,_ he answered dismissively. _Your stumble is a direct link to such weaknesses. You must correct this._

 _Correct this_?

 _You must learn to use your true form in a more productive manner sooner rather than later._ They passed through a low-sloping tunnel entrance, away from the water, the roaring noise reducing itself almost to a trickle as they continued forward in the dark. Obelisk was but a dark gray mass before him, his eyes reducing him to a blur of color as the walls became similarly granite and brown in shade. He remembered briefly that moment of finding Annie's body within the den with Yami there, the blood and his dark eyes the most prominent beneath the blanket of darkness. _Slifer and I have decided there are a few various tasks that we shall put you through in order to help with such utilization._

He flicked an ear. _Tasks_? he echoed softly. _You want me to perform a few tasks for you_?

 _It is not for us. It is for you and your survival later in this war._ The gray wolf stepped further into the tunnel, his steps rapid but easy as Yugi followed immediately behind him. The white wolf bristled faintly, his eyes adjusting rapidly in the deeper darkness, and he realized rather abruptly, the tunnel had widened and opened into an immense cavern formation. To the right was another massive gaping maw of a tunnel, to the center one more, and to the left there was a fork of which he could not see the ends. The gray wolf did not look back at him but rather headed quickly for the forked formation. _If you should wish to survive and ensure the life of your friends and family, you might desire to heed such advice and try harder._

He curled his lips back in disgust for a moment, then flattened his ears against his skull as a whimper nearly tore from his throat. His friends and family? _Will it truly make a difference, Obelisk_? he asked quietly. _Because there is always predestination, isn't there_?

 _Hmm…perhaps,_ he drawled in an almost sarcastic tone, though part of it was underlined with curiosity. He trotted forward another step, then took the fork to the right and drew in a deep breath. Yugi hesitated behind him, doing the same. But he could scent nothing and the effort seemed incredibly wasted. _But predestination is simply the end point of a series of events and trials in one's life. Should they be able to overstep and overcome such problems to block their life, then they shall find that their predetermined path will alter accordingly. Lives can be saved in such a way, if only for a limited amount of time._

Yugi shivered. He could help them stay alive for a little while longer than they might have otherwise. And that was certainly worth it. He could not argue that in any way. But it still made him wonder and his fur did shudder with a faint twitch of dismay at the very idea. Obelisk had hinted at a reality that he himself had feared for a while now.

This life as a wolf would leak into those of his friends and family and it would destroy them from the inside out.

It was with no uncertainty that Yugi thought this.

And it hurt more than he could ever think to put into words.

So he bowed his head and continued to follow him in a lazy stride as the deity ignored his reluctant state and wandered forth into another cavernous area. Yugi wondered how many miles these tunnels stretched, how far they were from the entrance of the labs once more. His fur shuddered once more and he let out a deep breath as he shivered faintly.

 _Welcome back,_ Slifer's quiet voice greeted them in an almost dismissive fashion. Yugi blinked and raised his head, looking about them for a moment. And then he caught the tiniest flash of russet in his eyes, the faintest touch of which he could mark out beneath all the darkness. He could not see her golden gaze, but he could feel its focus on his fur. She was studying him, perhaps marking his ability to find her now, and it made him bristle a bit more. _I should have known better than to assume you would not find your way back here sooner rather than later._

Obelisk snorted. _You don't need to give him grief for now,_ he said, but his voice sounded beyond amused now. _Rather, I have brought him here for his lessons. We have to get him in shape, do we not_?

Yugi flicked an ear and bristled faintly. _So, if you all can predict the future—_

 _The future_? Slifer inquired calmly, flicking an ear in the dark. _We cannot acquire the future or knowledge thereof upon such a subject regardless of how much we might wish. We know of the past and all of which happen within the present. But we cannot predict the future in even the slightest beyond our own theories and suggestions._

He blinked. _So then you are worthless when it comes to predictions_? he commented scornfully. _Then how am I even supposed to believe you about what you say I'll need to know and what I'll have to do_?

 _Does this boil down once more to Yami_? the she-wolf questioned simply. _I know your lifespans, regardless of how much you might wish otherwise. I know when a wolf will die and when they will survive a terrible ordeal. For now Yami's rests in a rather weak, withered state, like a rope which has been chewed upon. And yours is very simply a line of which there is no special mark or any determining quality. But the fact comes down to this. We can_ return Yami to you _but you cannot accept such a gift if there is not effort to be put into such reward. The problem comes in the power he wields over you. And it shall destroy you if you do not try now._

 _Truly_? he muttered, voice soft as his ears flicked about in the dark. The two deities blinked at him, a flicker of light in the dark, one without definition or color, and he shook himself out rather lazily. But neither of them was denying what he was asking, though they beat around the subject and he knew better than to inquire directly. _Then I suppose I'll have to work to better myself, huh_?

Both of them swapped looks as if they could not believe in such easy agreement, then shrugged it off as if they had not been surprised to begin with. Instead, blinking, they both turned to him in almost perfect unison.

 _Then your first task is to run from this cavern to the gorge and up to the opening of the tunnel where the water reaches the surface. Come back after that is done. You will build your stamina and muscle memory in doing this._ Slifer sniffed and flicked her tongue along her muzzle as her eyes focused on the other deity for a moment. Yugi could not see the focus fall on the other god, but he could feel the tension lessened by her dismissal of attention towards him. _Run when you return. Rest when you reach the lip of the tunnel and the water's opening. But do not travel back slowly. We have much to do._

Yugi flicked his ears, then glanced over his shoulder and towards the opening of the tunnel which had led him to them. _And I'll come back here to find you both when I'm done_? he asked quietly.

 _Yes._

He huffed and turned away. If this was one of the things that got Yami back, he'd do it gladly. With such resolve set, he began first to trot and then to sprint upon Obelisk chastising him for his slow speed. The constant click of his claws against the stone was the most consistent noise to exist within the darkness. But the river was harsh and terrible and roaring and his stomach tossed as he continued to run.

He found himself out of breath a mere couple of miles into the trek. The stones were close to his side as he continued but he had begun panting before he had even gotten close to the gorge's edge. He was forced to slow, exhausted, and his paws felt heavy as he looked about the darkness. More than anything his hearing was the guide for his movement, as the water seemed nothing more than a shadow of silver and gray ripples. He blinked and shivered as he shook himself out and began to move forward again.

It took him what felt a lifetime. It was an eternity to reach the mouth of the underground river to begin with. His paws ached and he swore they were blistered or perhaps bleeding by then. His mouth was dry and his stomach hurt. He lowered himself to his belly, panting and gasping for breath. And, by the time he thought to resume such a trek, it was impossible for him to make himself climb to his paws and move forward again.

His breaths came in white puffs and the sunlight coming through his cavern made him shiver. The opening was slight, beaten through purely by the water which had broken through the wall of the stone. He could see the smallest bit of the opening, curved upwards and beautifully arched in an almost perfect circular formation. But the stone was ragged where it dipped inwards and hung overhead. And it gave an almost jagged, lopsided appearance there.

Yugi remained there, catching his breath. The water must have been more powerful at some point to create the vastness of the tunnels he was traversing. It must have been far stronger and much more abundant at some point in the past. Because the tunnels were not unnatural. There was not a perfect smoothness as paved stone came to harbor. It did not feel like marble beneath his paws either. And no animal could have dug such a cavernous shape in the darkness. No migration patterns over thousands and millions of years would have formed such passages.

He shivered and looked at the river there. Perhaps during spring and summer, when the ice melted away and the water swelled more abundantly, the water would break the stone and weather it away into such broad formation. The high levels of water and cold temperatures and the mixture of pale heat and frosty shadows must have made such tunnels possible.

But where had the water come from? He blinked again and wondered at the idea for only a moment. The dam, he remembered, had caused a lot more issues than they had been prepared for. The waterfalls had splintered and part of the gorge had been broken when the water had swollen too much. The dam had malfunctioned on numerous occasions. The water being blocked as it was had forced much of the water underground, or so many had hypothesized. And the underground river formation had branched outwards and inwards and torn through the mountains until they had all but made the map of which the sewers within Domino would eventually follow. Yes, he remembered that now.

And the underground river from directly beneath the dam flushed outwards several hundred miles through the mountain cliffs and into the waterfall that made the camp's main den formation upon which they huddled during the worst of storms or when one was sick. Had that not been what Yami had explained to him that day?

He could not remember word for word, but the general gist had been that, right? He was too tired to care for such true recollection. His paws still stung faintly and his panting was rapid and heavy. He moved just close enough to the water to begin lapping at the cool stream. He flexed his paws, his toes and claws scraping upon the stone as he quickly gulped down mouthfuls.

It was only after doing so that he thought of the possibilities of germs or bacteria of any kind. But his immediate thought was also to scoff at such an idea. The lycanthropy was too powerful for him to be overcome by something so small and simple. He would not get sick from such a thing. It would be easy for him to recover even if he was somehow to have swallowed harmful bacteria. No trace of illness would do him much more than a perhaps wind him for a day if even that.

He had learned that too well throughout the various times he'd been wounded upon being infected. It was so easy. It was so simple in its way and manner of healing.

Yugi shivered and turned back around, drawing his lungs full of air. He tilted his head and listened to the water for a moment. Then he began to trot his way down the path the way he had first come. He felt his legs rebelling against him, his paws tingling with pain as he shivered and forced himself to keep moving.

 _You'd been gone for a while,_ Obelisk chuckled, ears pricked towards him lazily as he entered the small cavernous formation. Yugi panted harder, nearly collapsing from his exhaustion, and shot him a furious look. Slifer considered the two of them for a long moment, then turned away again slowly. _We almost assumed you to have quit and run home._

 _I don't quit._

Slifer snorted softly this time, turning back to him, her stare invisible to him in the dark but burning a hole through his pelt and into his skin. _You do not quit_? _Then tell me why I have many recollections of such things happening formerly_?

He bristled. _I have never quit when it was important. When it's counted, I have never bothered to just step back and let things happen._

Obelisk flicked an ear. _I_ do _believe that statement. It sounds rather truthful._

The she-wolf hummed softly. _Yes, but to say you do not quit at anything in your life is simply not true. Rather, you have always been powerful enough to step up whenever it was necessary upon the stakes being raised for you. Especially when it should involve your friends._

Yugi flicked an ear and looked away. _You're right. I care for my friends a lot more than almost anything else in the world,_ he admitted. _And I'll be damned before I let you or Ra or anyone else tell me otherwise._

The gray wolf blinked wide eyes, a swift flash of amber within the dark shadows. His ears flicked, a dark steel color moving about. He blinked, turned his head, and looked more pointedly at the white wolf standing those few feet away. He could still see Yugi struggling for his breath despite his obvious frustration and distaste towards her attempts to belittle him. _It is not that any of us disagree with such views, Yugi. It is simply that you will have to draw a line and understand where they cannot be crossed upon more important matters coming forth within your life._

 _And all three of you need to come to realize that no one can survive in pure isolation as Ra suggested before. I am not a creature that can be completely put aside from wolves or humans altogether._

 _If Ra implied such a thing, it was not to make you so upset. It was simply a case of the wrong phrasing. She is very…opinionated on what Atem is meant to be. You are, after all, basically her creation—_

 _No, I was created in labs by humans. And she gave me life. It does not go further than that._

 _Such arguments will get us nowhere,_ Slifer objected in a calm tone. _The matter of this conversation remains. Yugi, we have many tasks for you to complete and none of them are to be slacked upon. You will understand later what each of them is meant to represent and do for you, but for now you must trust that Obelisk and I_ do _have your best interests in mind upon requesting you do such things._

Yugi blinked and flattened his ears against his skull for a moment before looking between the two of them uncomfortably. _Fine, okay._ He huffed and finally took a seat. His legs were too shaky and his stomach ached as he struggled to catch his breath. He flicked an ear. Maybe he should try to work on his cardio at this rate.

 _You must use your true form more often. You need to build your endurance and speed and balance altogether._ Yugi glanced up from where he'd bowed his head, surprised to see Slifer approaching him slowly. _You will grow to understand your physical limitations upon doing such things._

 _Things such as what_? _What is it that you have planned for me_? Yugi flicked an ear. _As long as it does not drift into the line of murder…_

 _Hunting, yes. Murder, no._ Slifer ignored his startled look. _We have very specific animals in mind that you are to hunt down. Several of them will teach you to jump higher. Some will teach you restraint. Others will teach you how to defend himself. You will understand as you hunt these animals._

The white wolf pulled the far corners of his mouth back and downwards into a canine grimace. They couldn't just tell him what it was that they wanted done first? He huffed.

 _Informing you will do nothing for you in the long run. We cannot supply you the realization of your lessons when you have not thought to put in the effort to learn them._ Slifer watched him with steady eyes. _But we will tell you what animals you are to hunt and allow you to go from there, yes_?

Yugi flicked an ear. _Sure,_ he agreed quietly. And why not? In truth, he did not care about the trials themselves or what the gods assumed he needed to know. Again, much of his desire to know and understand came simply from the need to have Yami returned to him.

 _You might even think to begin eating the natural diet of your true form,_ Obelisk stated, voice full of condescension and making Yugi bristle faintly with annoyance. His ears flicked again and he looked at the dark gray wolf with a near sneer on his canine face. _You should truly think to do so. It comes to the fact that, as you know, human food and its various chemicals are not well within the digestive system of a wolf. You would find yourself stronger, faster, with a better control of your heightened senses and things of that nature. You would have far better an idea of what threats are posed to you if you should pay more attention to your wolf form._

He was just thankful that Obelisk had not called it his true form again. He shivered. It sounded almost like some kind of terrible anime line. He was not just a wolf, however. He was human as well. He only _remembered_ being a _human_. Having been bitten to trigger the lycanthropy from its dormant stage did not change that in the slightest. He was and always would be human in his own thoughts when that was considered. And he felt sick as he considered their words.

But perhaps it might be a good idea to heed their advice with such a thing.

After all, he had sensed the disconnection towards Fuwa, but he had not understood why. And he had not known beyond suspicion why it was that Yoshimori had struck such fear into his body. And he still could not tell his classmates apart as far as who might be wolves and who might not. And, gods forbid he ran into a hellhound because he surely did not know how to tell them apart either.

He barely could register that Valon's scent was that of poison ivy and slight sweetened decay, of dirt and worn autumn leaves. He could detect it at times, but when he would attempt to focus on it, he would lose his concentration. He could not keep his mind on such a task as his thoughts too often split between things. And his senses seemed so simply to disobey him when such things came to mind.

 _You might consider supplementing yourself with human meals, as it would do well to help you in the way of filling your belly. But you need to understand that living solely on such a food does well to_ dull _your senses. It will ruin your strength as a wolf. It must change or you will not last long within this world._

 _This world_ …

The phrasing could not have been more accurate to the small teen at that moment.

* * *

Obelisk trotted forward, legs almost a blur of movement as he looked towards the smaller Pure-Blood. His ears flicked, his eyes glittering in the dimming light. The snowstorm was coming again, faster than before. Yugi shivered and glanced at the sky, abruptly aware of just how little time they would have in order to travel in pursuit of the serow the gray wolf had come upon. At six o'clock, he was sure his mom would check on him.

He knew well that she had done so the last couple of days. He had come into the house minutes late and he would see her, eyes wide and relieved when he came up the stairs. He wouldn't comment on her obvious emotional state. But he would offer her a strained smile, look away, and ask if she needed help with dinner.

Whether she accepted or not determined if he spent more time with her than it took to eat dinner. He was not ready to speak to her more about the issue of the fire and the thought that he was involved in the arson. And he still wondered if it was possible that he had left some kind of discernible evidence that he had been in either area. He had no idea what his DNA looked like now that he was infected.

If the disease mutated its host so much as to give it the ability to change shapes, to hear and smell and see better, was it possible that it made the DNA untraceable to its original state? Or was he being too optimistic in that idea? Clearly if Anzu's father had his eyes set on him, then it was more or less because he had a lead of some kind…

 _Focus,_ Obelisk snapped, his voice making Yugi jump, surprise and startled. He had not noticed the wolf had stopped and was standing mere inches from him, snarling furiously. The white wolf flattened his ears against his skull as he tilted his head and stared at him with bright blue-violet eyes. _Do not waste my time in failing to pay attention. I have something to show you and little time to ensure it is done. You have a curfew, yes_?

He flicked an ear. _All of Hokkaido has a curfew right now. We're all expected to be home by six o'clock at the latest,_ he said disdainfully, staring at the other wolf with narrowed eyes. _What's your point_? _We have about an hour before I have to get back to my house. So go ahead and let's get this done._

 _You are an ungrateful brat, aren't you_?

 _You're treating me like I'm an idiot. Do you not expect me to be upset about it_?

Obelisk peeled his lips back and chomped his teeth. _You think that I am treating you as if you are stupid_ now? _Are you truly so foolish_? _I am trying to show you things you will need in the future and you think that I should waste my time with someone I feel is an idiot_? _You do not assume my time to be so useless as to be unnecessarily wasted in such a fashion, surely_?

 _I don't know how valuable your time is. I don't even know how valuable mine is. But it has nothing to do with you, Obelisk. You said you have something to teach me and that's not happening right now. So we need to get a move on before my curfew is up, right_?

 _Would your family even notice_? he sneered. _I do not recall ever seeing the police involved in your life beyond Ushio's death._

Yugi bore his teeth. _My mom is far more worried about it now than before. Especially now that I'm the one under suspicion of being the arsonist to set the forest on fire and then the damn restaurant days later._

Obelisk considered him, shadows drifting through his brilliant eyes for a moment before he shook his head and turned away again. He began to trot quickly and Yugi hurried to follow him, shivering slightly. He felt somewhat dizzy, almost somehow distractedly so. He furrowed his brows and flicked his ears before moving a pace faster.

 _I told you that I would get that taken care of—_

 _And_? _In the meantime I'm trying to reassure my mother that I'm_ not _somehow in a gang or running around wreaking havoc in the city because I'm being a rebellious teenager. I'm sorry that I tend to care for what's going on with my family and friends. You might not care that I have a human life, but I do. And I value it, even if you and Slifer and Ra apparently think it unnecessary._

 _But we are not the only ones that think it unnecessary, are we_? _Does Yami not share similar views_? Obelisk sneered softly, glancing at him sideways before stopping to scent the air. He slowed his pace again, drawing in deep breaths and exhaling slowly. He stopped completely, flicking his ears and bristling with anticipation as he considered the dim light that came from the sky overhead. _Come, the serow is up ahead._

Yugi was grateful for the distraction. The debate—of which he knew the answer very clearly—about whether Yami thought his human half of life was unnecessary made his heart feel weak as it stuttered in his chest. He flicked his ears and ignored the instinct to turn away and trot aside as the two of them began to weave their way through lengthening silver and gray shadows. He shivered and shook himself out as a small flurry of snow began to fall again.

It had been on and off all day, a somewhat surprising occurrence now that he considered it. Yugi shook it off and tilted his head. The snow seemed to disappear again as the wind breezed faintly through the trees. He blinked and looked about them for a moment and Obelisk in front of him began to move faster.

 _He's towards the clearing, eating a few stray patches of grass. Watch me while I hunt him. You will need to take care to witness the direction I go and how much power is put into the attack._

 _I've watched nature documentaries. I know how wolves hunt._

 _And yet you have not done it for yourself, have you_?

Yugi flicked an ear. Eating as a wolf seemed disgusting in all respects. How Yami even managed to do it was beyond him. How any of the wolves in the pack thought it was a good thing was so far beyond his grasp of understanding that he could not fathom it fully.

He shivered but slowed at the place where the trees were beginning to thin out. Obelisk did not sprint forward as he'd expected, rather slowing and pricking his ears forward. Both of them could hear the animal breathing, a sound that was slightly labored and tired. It was shoveling the snow with its large muzzle, trying to get at what little bit of grass remained alive beneath. Truthfully the small wolf wondered how it was that they were even surviving in such a harsh winter. The snow was almost nonstop beyond patches of sunlight which only slightly melted the ice away. The temperatures were plummeted beyond what was usual for Hokkaido. There was a wolf pack in the mountains that was clearly picking the ungulates off as he suspected they had the boars formerly.

He wondered if there were any of the wolves in Honshu as well. If there were, had they lowered the threat of boars and serows as these wolves seemed to have? The last couple of years there had been far less frequent attacks from the boars. And the deer were more frequently spotted than the serows for the moment. He wondered when that would change, if it would even. But how long had they been within the forest like this? How long had they been alive within the mountains as it was?

He truthfully could not remember the last time a boar attack had been too terrible in Hokkaido. Most often they happened in Honshu, where the boars seemed to be far more aggressive. He supposed it could have been the wolves which held them at bay. Perhaps the ones in Honshu had no predators to scare them from attacking the people or chasing kids from the schools. Or perhaps the wolves were being hunted as well and had gone about chasing them _towards_ the people as a way of protecting themselves.

Obelisk moved forward now. Yugi pricked his ears. The snow flew into the air as Obelisk ran. The serow blinked and looked over. Its head rose. A harsh whistling noise came from its nose. Yugi shivered. The serow moved to spring away. Obelisk charged it. The goat-antelope moved a few paces away. The gray wolf snarled and snapped his jaws. He caught up with the back leg. And, as Yugi watched, Obelisk's jaws opened.

It was almost like a dog tackling a practice dummy for security training. Obelisk was swifter than Yugi knew how to watch. He snapped his jaws. And his teeth caught the back leg closest him. He heard the cracking rather than saw it. But the serow cried out, a low bellowing noise. Obelisk kept his grip. The two of them were caught in place there.

The serow spun on him, as if it had larger horns. It aimed its forehead at him. Then it tried to step away. Obelisk kept his grip, not moving in the slightest. The two of them looked at each other. Yugi stepped closer, surprised. It reminded him, oddly, of the documentary he'd watched when he was twelve. The wolf had attacked a bison. And the two of them had been stuck in a stalemate.

That wolf then had caught the back leg.

And the bison had been brought to a complete stop.

Because the wolf weighed enough to bring it to a halt.

And so they had stood within the snow, breathing hard and tired.

But Yugi did not remember how that event ended. He had no idea whether the wolf had simply released it or if the pack had come forth. He could not remember. But he supposed it did not matter.

The serow was hardly as big as the bison had been.

And Obelisk was bigger than the wolf he'd seen in that video.

The gray wolf proved this in a matter of seconds.

Obelisk released just long enough to snap his jaws again. His mouth closed in on the ungulate's nose. The sound was that of bone breaking. The wolf snarled. Yugi bristled with anticipation. He could smell blood and it made his body feel somehow warmer than usual. He flicked his ears. The ungulate snorted and tried to keep its footing.

Obelisk shook his throat out. The movement jostled the animal. And then he released and went for the throat. Yugi could hear the impact more than see it. And it made his fur bristle once more as he began to take a step forward. The snow crunched under his feet. The serow stared at him with glassy eyes.

He could hear the harsh whistling. Obelisk was trying to get through the thick fur and to the jugular. The serow pawed at the snow, tried to get its footing again. The gray wolf moved a little closer, placing a paw beyond its shoulder. In doing so, he seemed almost to straddle the ungulate. The sight was bewildering to Yugi, who shivered as he stepped forward. He'd never seen a wolf do that in a natural environment. And it struck him as odd just to witness it.

But, as he got closer, he felt sick. The blood was coloring the snow. There were small bits of steam rising into the air against the ice. But the blood was freezing rapidly. And the serow was growing extremely still now. The breathing was labored and heavy. The eyes were becoming too glazed to see through. Yugi could _see_ the life draining from those black and brown eyes.

Obelisk released it only when the animal had grown still for a full minute. Then he moved to jump over it. When he turned back, his muzzle was splashed bright red. Yugi shivered and his fur rippled with a bristle. He shook himself out, the snow clumping upon his body now. He moved forward a step again, stomach churning as he came to the other side of the animal. The snow was a bright flash of white, moving in immense clumps before his eyes.

 _Shaking them out is a good way to daze your prey._

Yugi shivered. Obelisk sounded so fucking _delighted_ about it.

 _Come, take a bite,_ the gray wolf instructed, tilting his head and watching his face. Yugi blinked, staring at that stain of red across his long muzzle. And none of it made him feel even remotely inclined towards moving forward. He shivered when the deity narrowed his eyes, brows knotting together in a slight snarl as he lowered his head. _Well_?

Yugi forced himself to move forward. He was a predator in this form, he reminded himself. That was why the blood smelled so sweet and the saliva in his mouth doubled with desire. The white wolf slowed his step and came to a stop before him. He looked downwards toward the animal before his paws. He blinked and flicked an ear.

But no part of him—despite the obvious desire his body produced—truly wanted to taste this prey. His stomach knotted further. He stared down at the blood across the snow. He lowered his mouth.

He'd had dreams of eating deer.

Why should this have been any different?

He wished he could have convinced himself of such a thing. But then he stepped forward again, claws touching long wooly fur. And his stomach dropped as he tried to think straight. He wished he could have lowered his mouth to the snow and licked at the blood at the very least. It seemed a failure to have followed Obelisk this far and then stopped himself from at least taking a taste of the animal they had been hunting.

 _I'm not going to eat that._

Obelisk blinked and curled his lip. _You will not eat it_?

The white wolf felt as if he had just been caught with his hand in a cookie jar. The shock of the idea made his stomach drop as he stared at him for a moment. Then he flattened his ears against his head and stepped back. _No._

 _Why not_?

Yugi flicked an ear and looked away, nearly snarling with his growing unease. _Because I'm just not,_ he snapped, shaking his head. _I don't want to and I'm not going to, okay_? _Leave it alone._

 _This is why you will die._

The white wolf raised his head, startled, and his wide eyes fell on the other canine. But the deity ignored him now, opening his jaws wide and snapping them shut in the wooly coat of the serow in front of him. He tugged a mouthful of it away, stripping it to the source of pale white skin almost as pure as the snow beneath.

Yugi hesitated for a long moment. He considered turning away and trotting off. Then he thought to ask him for an explanation, to demand he tell him the meaning of such a statement. But then exhaustion came over him and he simply sniffed. The air was so cold and the snow looked like a sheet of pale blood lying across the surface of the earth. And he felt _sick_ as he finally looked towards the trees over his shoulder. They were so thin and rose so little, like broken pillars, and so he found mild comfort in them because of this. With a shiver, not the least bit amused, he began to move towards them instead.

Obelisk was watching him, he knew, but it was not enough to make him look back. With a simple determination, Yugi began to head for the camp once more. He had buried his bag inside of the alpha's den to keep it sheltered from the snow he had known was coming. And he would change in the camp and head home again before curfew came.

He would have to check his phone when he was human again.

Because he'd turned it off since the moment he'd left school, doing so in order to prevent his mom tracking his location there. But he wondered if the cold air would have destroyed it by now. It was so frigid that it had frozen much of that blood the serow had expelled. It would not have been shocking to him to see that the phone had not made it in the meantime.

Yugi spotted movement in the snow a few miles into the trek. The dust of white was shifting, an animal moving about the ice crystals. The white wolf blinked and shivered, stomach dropping. His head turned about to consider the area surrounding him. His exhales were crystalline. The trees were bare and stripped and spread about in handfuls, with what seemed to be miles between them. The cliffs were far beyond them, miles away from where he stood.

He watched something white plodding in the snow.

And his fur bristled as a sense of excitement came over him.

He stepped forward. His stomach churned. He licked his lips. He sniffed as he caught the slightest flash of pink. And now he recognized the animal. It had taken a particular movement, a sloping kind of jump, to realize it was a rabbit he was staring at. The ears were too tucked towards the body to recognize at first glance. And the nose kept twitching but it was so white as well that he could not see it at first.

Yugi tilted his head, eyes caught and trained there. A part of him was desperate to dig into such a piece of prey. The animal looked somehow rather plump, perhaps even pregnant. But he couldn't tell beyond that. The rabbit was slow, hopping as if it had not ever known a predator's presence before. He wondered if it was a house pet or if it were wild. It was so plump he could hardly think to call it a wild animal.

But, by the gods, did his stomach growl. And his mouth had begun to water again. He wondered at this hunger, dismissive of it for a moment. And then he took a step closer. His body fell into a natural instinct he had never considered before.

He lowered his nose slightly to the snow, breathing in deeply. The scent was soft and earthen, mild where his own probably would have been harsh and unnatural. But he knew it did not matter to begin with. The white wolf continued to breathe in, drawing in as many details as he possibly could.

He paused when the rabbit turned its head to look about them both. It seemed more interested in simply glancing around rather than looking for possible threats. Yugi shrugged it off, took a step forward, and waited until it settled again after reacting to the snow's crunching beneath his feet. For a moment neither of them moved. Then the rabbit, fixated on a sight other than him, began to look for food once more.

Yugi tilted his head, tensing his muscles, and then sprang forward.

It was odd how naturally he moved. His muscles seemed to simply speed forward with anticipation and instinct. It was strange to witness and behold such a sensation. It seemed like something he would have heard about rather than done himself. And he could almost feel the gliding of his pelt over his skin as he came forward.

The rabbit's head didn't turn. It simply sprinted. Yugi remembered only a moment later that it could see him very clearly. He pushed a little faster. The rabbit sprinted as if it were a snow hare. He had never seen or known such swiftness before. The small animal was several yards ahead of him in mere seconds. Yugi huffed and snarled low under his breath. The action was somewhat distracting.

But it did not tamper him in any manner. The white wolf moved faster. His paws barely seemed to touch the ground anymore. The rabbit was like a small blur of movement, rapid as it led him through the trees. When it began to tense its muscles, moving in a way that he knew instinctively meant preparation for a zigzagging motion, Yugi went the opposite direction. Somehow his body had known these signs, had studied them in that split second.

He turned opposite, sped faster. The rabbit didn't have time to change direction. It skidded in the snow, white powder flying everywhere. Yugi opened his jaws wide and leaped.

The rabbit screamed when his teeth closed. Blood specked across his tongue. The animal thrashed. Its body shook and its claws cut through the air. The falling snow seemed to come faster. The animal screamed again. He tightened his jaws and shook his head. The rabbit went limp almost instantly. Its eyes seemed to vibrate with pain. The paws trembled. The blood gushed in his mouth.

And then Yugi dropped it.

A small sense of shame came over him as he looked at it now.

The white rabbit lay on its side. The throat was almost crushed. The paws were spread out. The body looked as if it had been wrung out. The fur was splotched where he'd cut through it. And the plumpness of its form made him shiver.

His mouth watered again, the blood a beautiful taste. But it did nothing to wash away the sense of despair that gripped him.

If it was so simple for _him_ to kill another animal, why was it that he had assumed himself capable of surviving? Yugi shook his head and looked away, flattening his ears against his skull. He shouldn't have done that. He shouldn't have killed the poor damn thing.

But he was hungry.

And his first instinct from the moment he had _seen_ it, had been to chase.

Perhaps he should have simply done that.

But he was still so _hungry_.

Yugi looked at the rabbit again.

He had caught it.

Why shouldn't he eat it?

His stomach knotted and he opened his mouth in an attempt to force himself to take a bite. He licked his lips, pressed closer, and moved to snatch the rabbit forth. The canine halted millimeters from it, his breath pushing upon its fur. It sorted it apart, skin pale and white and almost bluish with death and frigid air.

He pulled away again, ears flattened once more.

He shouldn't have done this.

Yugi glanced around uncomfortably. His stomach dropped again. He looked back at the rabbit, then towards the direction of the camp. Finally, reluctantly, a sense of dread crawling through him once more, Yugi looked to the small prey animal.

He would bury it.

And then…maybe…when he was truly capable of finding his taste for such a barbaric action, he might attempt to eat it.

* * *

Yugi glanced up at the bird. The immense brown eagle was seated several branches overhead. The animal was roosted there, staring at him as if he were a piece of prey. The lycanthrope hesitated, watching it with darkened eyes, and shivered as he glanced over his shoulder. Slifer and Obelisk had both stated that the bird was there, near the tunnel entrances. But it was also wounded and so had not moved for migration. It could not fly for long periods of time, but it was not likely to go down without a fight. And Yugi felt sick as he looked back at it again.

The head was turned towards him, the deep golden beak aimed at his face as it watched him. The bird was dark brown and speckled, the underbelly an almost tan color. The wings were huge, he could see, and the crest of its skull was faintly striped with black splotches. The feathers there stuck upwards in a frilled kind of design, rather than simply smooth like many other raptors. But its eyes were dark and glinting and he swore there was a scar that lined one as if a claw had hooked it and torn upwards at some point.

Yugi shivered. If he did catch this thing…

He was sure he was going to lose at least a finger or two.

Maybe it would even take his eye…

He drew in a deep breath, praying that his healing would do well to defend against that. But some part of him doubted it and another part requested he stop and reconsider. If the animal was strong enough, it could easily cause permanent damage.

Or, at least it could have…had he still been human.

Yugi shook it off.

It was now or never, he supposed.

But how was he to get the animal to come down? Climbing up there was a mistake that he did not think he was foolish enough to make to begin with. It was a stupid idea to consider it, especially when he was all but blind to the attack should it dive him. And if it dove at him, he was going to end up being knocked out of the tree and into the snow. And why would it leave it at that?

Yugi shook his head and paced about the tree. Either it remained up there because it was hurt. Or it did so now because it was studying him as much as he was it. The small wolf considered, pulling on the sleeve of the hoodie he had thrown on before leaving the house. Then he paced again. The snow wasn't falling anymore and so he was mildly hopeful that perhaps his clothes would not become soaked.

He had no plans to change, after all…

But Yugi was not sure he would be able to catch it another way. He was not the same powerful wolf that Yami was. He didn't know how to throw himself very high into the air and he doubted even his instincts could teach him such a thing.

It did not take long for the bird to come to him.

The small teen was still considering a means of attack. He was staring, eyes flickering about, but the bird came forward. Abruptly, in a hushed whisper of noise, the raptor shot forward. Yugi nearly screamed. The bird's talons were aimed for his face. He ducked and nearly threw himself into the snow.

The bird missed him by only an inch. Yugi could feel the force of the dive it had taken in a flash of wind beating upon his clothing. He hissed and turned towards the animal with wide eyes. The bird wheeled around, silent but for the gentle rustle of feathers through the air. Then it dove for him again and Yugi flinched once more.

The claws were aimed for his face.

He ducked backwards, throwing himself into the tree trunk with the force of his movement. The bird missed him again. The feathers were inches from his face. He breathed out roughly. The bird landed in the snow this time, slow and cautious now. And then it turned around. The eyes glittered. The beak opened slightly. The feet flexed. The wings ruffled slightly.

Yugi stared at it, frozen in place. His stomach dropped. He breathed in roughly. The bird stared at him with that same furious expression all raptors seemed to wear. Its eyes were almost black with hatred. The wolf would have backed up further had the trunk not been behind him. He breathed in again, trembled, and stared.

Birds were great and furious. They were forces to be reckoned with.

But he was as well, wasn't he?

He was a _werewolf_ , for fuck's sake.

Yugi shook his head. The bird raised a leg, then flapped its wings. When it lifted into the air, he dove aside. He landed in the snow, rolled over, and got up again. The bird wheeled once more, dove for him. He dodged aside, then tore off for the trees.

The bird settled into the snow where Yugi had been moments before. It stared out towards the pale shadows, the gleam from the snow hard to find the boy against. The shade was a sliver of bright silver and the trees were pale and almost glistening with white frost.

The juvenile human did not return.

But a great white dog did.

It barreled straight towards the bird. And the eagle launched itself into the air. The canine snapped its jaws and circled beneath it. The lips were drawn back. The teeth were bared. The brows were furrowed. The ears were pricked. The shoulders squared and the canine circled beneath it.

For a moment the bird remained wheeling.

Then, as Yugi had anticipated, it dove.

He sprang aside. The bird flew past him. The wolf flicked his ears. Then he snarled again. He bristled, spinning around. The raptor dove again. The talons hooked on his shoulders. Yugi turned his head and snapped his jaws. The eagle nestled there, nearly falling sideways from his back.

The white wolf snapped his jaws again. He spun around. The eagle held fast, wings half-opened, talons deep in his muscles. He could feel the blood more than anything. Yugi chomped his teeth. His eyes flashed furiously. He stepped and circled rapidly, trying to push it off by way of dizziness or perhaps dislodging the claws.

He was not sure what he was attempting to do anymore.

But he wanted the bird off his shoulders.

And he wanted to lick at the wounds he could feel bleeding so heavily.

His fur was slicked with it along his shoulders. He could feel it. And it enraged him.

Yugi considered the bird. Then he glanced at the tree. His eyes flickered and glinted. His ears pricked forward. His teeth were bared. The snarl rising from his throat was harsh and hideous. He snapped his jaws, then glanced at the tree again. The trunk was wide enough. The bird was hooked into his skin…

He threw himself at it.

The bird's wings flapped. It let out a startled noise. The wolf spun sideways, slamming his flank into the trunk. The movement jostled the bird, threw it into the stripped bark. The raptor tried to release him. Yugi snarled and snapped his teeth. Then he did it again. The bird hit the trunk, cried out again.

The wolf snarled. The talons were ripping through solid flesh and soft fur. He could feel it. But it was something he was grateful for now.

It meant the bird was losing its grip.

He slammed his flank a last time. The bird flapped its wings, struggling. Its claws ripped through his flesh, tore what seemed to be a gaping hole into his skin and fur. The wolf threw himself sideways once more, fell against the bark. Doing so dislodged the bird entirely.

But its talons were nearest his underbelly. And Yugi opened his jaws wide as the bird tried to recover from its dazed status. The raptor opened its wings, trying to move away. And then Yugi stretched his neck out. His jaws, opened wide in his growing fury, slammed shut. The throat was caught in his teeth. The bird screeched, flailing, and Yugi tightened his grip.

Within seconds the bird began to grow limp, bones crunching beneath his teeth. Yugi could taste only feathers and hollow bone, skin that seemed more like smooth plastic than true cells and pores. The wolf stared, his prey falling completely still. Then he dropped it away and moved for his paws.

His shoulders were screaming protest. The bark left on the trunk had fractured further and scraped against the wound, burrowing into the tender muscle. The white wolf turned to look at it, surprised that it did not look terrible. The fur was soaked and the skin was exposed, bright red beneath the strands. But it was not hideously so.

He ran his tongue over it, surprised that the feathers did not coat the muscle. His own blood was harsh and metallic and tasted almost like what he imagined an old penny might. He shivered, staring, and his stomach dropped as the seconds passed. The wound would heal easily enough. But now he would have to take the bird to Obelisk and Slifer down in the tunnels.

He flattened his ears against his skull, huffed, snarled under his breath, and opened his jaws just enough to grab the bird's skull. He'd carry it as he would have a pup, just to keep from having to deal with feathers stuck to the roof of his mouth for the rest of the day.

* * *

Yugi screamed. The gray wolf stared at him with a horrified expression that quickly became amused. His eyes glittered with laughter and his head tilted. His ears flicked and then pricked forward again. His jaws opened and he panted, the sound in Yugi's head that of laughter. But the small teen was too horrified to even look towards him for more than a split second. In his hands, the feathers were glued to his fingers by a pasty substance he did not want to give a name.

His breathing was shallow and his eyes were wide with horror. He was drenched by it, bright hideous red and pink and narrow white bone. The feathers were glued there, caught in his skin from it. And his hands were soaked and frozen there.

"Oh my gods…"

 _This is exactly why restraint is a good thing for a wolf to know._

He nearly sneered at him. But he could not think to say anything. So he merely released it. The sound as it fell from his hands was that of a harsh thump. He gagged, at first thinking to raise his hands to his mouth, and then to scream again.

 _You should not have lost your temper._

He blinked. Then his eyes flickered over, his face pale and ashen. He stared at him blankly, his hands shaking. The feathers made a strange rustling noise with each movement.

"You piece of shit."

 _I told you to listen and you did not. You cannot blame this on me._

"You knew something like this would happen!"

 _You did as well. You have seen what happens when a bird is run over._

He gagged and squeezed his eyes shut. Oh gods…

 _It is not my fault that you did not heed caution when I instructed you to do so. A lack of restraint causes many similar issues within a pack and you did not think to apply that to this hunting request as well,_ Obelisk said simply. Yugi had opened his eyes again and was staring at the mess in his hands. When he moved away, the gray wolf considered following him but stopped instead. The lycanthrope was crouched in the snow now, wiping the blood and guts from his hands. The feathers were flecked with red and gray which he thought to be intestines there. _You should perhaps pay more mind to the warnings you are given, yes_?

"You didn't warn me of anything. You said—very simply, mind you—that we were going to see about hunting birds. And then all of the sudden you mentioned I would do this without changing."

 _You changed in order to hunt the eagle. And these birds are not the same, and the Change was not necessary._

"This is _disgusting_ , Obelisk." He shook his head and cast him a small glare of frustration. "I can't believe I ever followed you in the first place."

 _It is not my fault that you do not listen._

"There was nothing to listen to," he spat. "You never said anything!"

 _You know very well that there is a lesson to be learned and that you are the one meant to discover it. Should I tell you everything, life becomes nothing more than a game of going through motions. You know that it is not my fault that the bird exploded in your hands. You applied too much pressure when you caught them._

"I didn't know they would—"

 _You did not think that applying too much pressure would have a consequence_?

"Knock it off," he snapped. "That's not what I meant and you know it."

 _Why should I know that when you do not know that holding a bird too tightly might have consequences_?

"You're a piece of shit." He continued wiping his hands in the snow until his skin was cold and the pores looked stripped of the blood that had lay upon them before. Now he stepped around with a glance at the dead body which lay scattered in what seemed to be broken pieces. He shivered and glanced at his hands before crossing his arms. "Now what?"

 _Now_? _We do this until you can catch a bird without crushing it._

Yugi shot him a horrified, stunned look. "You can't be serious."

 _I am._

"You're just torturing me."

 _Well, I must admit that I did enjoy the way you let out that shrill, girly noise of a scream moments ago. And your frustration is very fun to behold. It's very amusing. Now, let us get a move on. We have only until six before your curfew comes into place once more._

Yugi shuddered and looked down the trail of the hill they were on, feeling sick to his stomach with disgust. He couldn't believe they'd wandered this far just to find a bird in the first place, nor that they had even gone so far as to wander out of Domino and nearer Oniro in order to find one of the greenhouses for the rice farms. The quails were still plump and happy for the most part, though he was sure that would change soon enough.

The second time he cried out it was because the bird was still _moving_. He'd grabbed it too hard, as he had the first. But, unlike then, he'd caught it in a somewhat lighter grip. It was just enough that the bird was still alive. But it had not done him well to avoid the hideous crunching of bone or the way that Obelisk howled with laughter. The action had caused him to drop the poor animal. And now it was in the snow, right wing broken, its left leg crushed. It kept trying to find its balance and falling over, circling and collapsing.

He couldn't breathe.

 _Well_? _Why are you simply standing there_?

"I don't know how to take care of a bird." He exhaled loudly and gulped in a breath, then looked towards Obelisk with shining blue-violet eyes that looked pale panicked. "My mom would do the surgeries for them and I…I only ever helped with their aftercare…"

Obelisk blinked and tilted his head. _You think I mean for you to_ save _the bird_? he questioned in a bewildered tone. _No, I mean for you to put it out of its misery, Yugi._

"I…H-huh? N-no, I'm not going to…" He'd killed too much already as it was. He'd killed the rabbit. He'd killed the eagle. He'd killed the first quail he'd laid hands on while it was eating some stolen seeds. He'd killed people and other wolves. He was not going to bloody his hands further. "I…I can't…"

The gray wolf flicked an ear. _Humans have such strange senses of morals,_ he announced, rising to his feet. Yugi blinked and looked over, stomach knotted, heart in his throat. And the wolf did not so much as glance at him as it closed in on the small bird once more. His jaws opened and spread, then snapped shut hard on the animal's neck, nearly severing its head from the body. The corpse moved somehow still, however, wing flailing, leg kicking.

Yugi could not breathe.

He stared at the limbs until they finally stopped moving.

And then he puked violently.

Part of him was desperate to run from the idea of these lessons altogether. He did not want to see the bird's dead body or think for even a moment longer about such an issue. His stomach knotted further. His eyes closed tightly. He wondered if one of the other wolves would come to eat the corpse and the bile threatened to crawl up the back of his throat once more.

 _Oh gods…_

There was a simple crunching in the snow behind him. Yugi reacted instinctively, spinning around with wide eyes. The wolf to come forward was red-furred and slim and he relaxed as Slifer took a seat a few feet away and stared at the corpse with a somewhat dismissive look. _The more you come to run in this form, the more power you are able to put into your hind legs when you change as well. But we must find birds that are not grounded. The birds resting in the marshlands should be our next targets. They can fly. They will give you reason to leap into the air. And that will strengthen your legs much more. You will be able to run faster and leap farther as a wolf when you change again. And is that not a good thing to know_?

"How long is this going to take?"

 _You shun your wolf body too often,_ Slifer admonished him quietly, turning to him now with glowing golden eyes. _We must rectify this problem and fix it as necessary. You will learn these skills only as you practice and I cannot tell you how long it might take for you to understand such abilities._

He stared at her blankly for what felt like hours. And then he turned away again.

* * *

Yugi raced as quickly through the trees as he could, paws moving almost too fast to touch the ground. He'd almost forgotten curfew around their teachings and so he had about twenty minutes to get home before his mom would truly panic. She knew that he was turning his phone off and no doubt it seemed far too suspicious to her now that she'd told him about the fact that Anzu's dad wanted to speak to him. But he had waved it off as simply wanting to speak to Mazaki in person rather than over the phone. And he didn't want to have her call him saying that he was there and needed to talk to him when he was still out of the house.

So he'd settled for running the moment he'd realized that the energy in his body hadn't been excitement—and how could he have ever confused them when he hated having to kill those animals in the first place?—but rather nighttime's steady approach. And so now he was hungry from wasting his energy hunting that damn eagle and then those stupid quails—and, oh gods, the very thought of them made him sick—and changing to take off as he had. Because, as Slifer had pointed out, he could have run faster if he were used to such speeds in his wolf form.

His belly grumbled as he slowed his pace slightly, heading down the hill and through scattered trees. His ears flicked and a passing thought came through his mind, that of the rabbit and its broken body spread about the snow. The thought made him slow further and the grumble of his belly grew a thousand times louder, it seemed.

He slowed once more. His belly tossed and growled. His breathing grew a little heavier. And he licked his lips as he looked towards the tree he knew to have buried the prey animal. He hurried towards it, mouth watering with desire for something—anything, truly—to fill his stomach as the ache pulsated desperately for attention.

Yugi considered this, glanced over his shoulders, and then turned back to the mound of snow. He had to place his clothes aside, knowing that the fabrics would become soaked as they remained there, and considered the choice of eating as Slifer and Obelisk had instructed him to. If he ate as a wolf, that meant very well that he was going to lose something of himself, didn't it? It made him far more wolf than it did human, did it not?

And it scared him to know such a thing.

Because, should he give into his hunger and do this, it was clear that there was a line he was crossing that could not be padded back over. He could not turn back and cross it once more, hide away in the shadows where the line wasn't visible.

But, oh gods, was he hungry.

And he could hear Valon telling him to eat, that he needed to stop starving himself. He remembered the statement that a starving wolf was a murderer. And, if he starved himself more, he would end up killing.

Of course, he did not think he was in that same place as he had once been when Valon had been forced to give him a cup of coffee with blood in it. But he was still cautious and that warning lingered in his mind much more of the time than he dared to admit.

Yugi raised a paw, hesitating, and then lightly shoved the snow aside just deep enough to cover his toes and claws. But he did not know what it was he truly wanted to do. Could he cross that line and not worry? Or was doing so something that might kill him?

And then he wondered.

What would Yami think of him if he did this?

Would he think it a good thing?

Or would it alienate him from him?

Would he think that Yugi had changed too much to recognize?

What if Yami hated him when he came back?

Yugi shoveled another paw of snow out, eyes focused on this small clump of snow he had dug and covered the day before. And now his stomach tossed but the hunger made his mouth water more. He was starving and the rabbit smelled good, despite the frigidness of the air and the icy frost that edged the line of the prey animal's scent.

He hoped to the gods that it did not make Yami see him as someone or something else entirely. If he saw that he was wolf-like rather than human, would he even feel as comfortable with him any longer?

It was true that Yami was more wolf-like than he himself was, and that the red-eyed teen _preferred_ wolves to humans, but he had to wonder. And it terrified him to think that perhaps this change in his appetite—if he could truly call it such a thing—might break their bond altogether.

If that bond still existed, that was.

He had no idea if it did any longer.

Yami had, after all, seemed incapable of recognizing him before now in all of those dreams. Or at least he had until the last one. That was when Yami had called him by name, had tried to speak to him about whatever it was. And Yugi hated himself for not being able to recognize that he'd been trying to speak before then, that he'd been running over whatever words Yami had been trying to get out.

But perhaps he had simply meant to say "Fuck you" for all Yugi knew. He had gotten only the first half of the word finished. So perhaps it was simply something to say that he hated him, that he wanted him to stop.

But the wolf from Paradise, the one who had shared cages with Yami…

He had said that Yami had requested him there.

Yugi flicked and flattened his ears against his head, staring now at the large rabbit he'd killed and buried there. The thought made his mouth water but his stomach still churned faintly. Could he do this?

He wanted to believe he could.

But the idea of alienating half of himself for the sake of what others had thought was necessary of him made him hesitant. So Obelisk and Slifer assumed him to need this. But did he really? Was there no other way?

His belly growled.

Yugi lowered his mouth. At first he thought to open his mouth and simply grab it, try to tear it open and force himself to eat. But then he nuzzled the fur. And the softness of it shook him. He shivered and breathed out roughly, the fur separating where his exhale stirred it. His first instinct was to recoil. His second was to repeat the action.

A puff of smell had come forth. And it was soft and sweet, like clover and spring growth buried beneath the heaviness of snow and winter. He licked his lips and where his tongue pressed lightly against the fur, there was the slightest taste of blood. And the liquid, clumped and frozen within the thin strands, tasted almost _divine_.

His mouth watered immediately and he blinked as he considered the rabbit in front of him. The hunger tore through him and his mouth opened again before he could consider it. The bite he took out of it was almost large enough to completely eviscerate the animal. The meat was stringy from being frozen but the taste was good regardless. And the way his stomach rejoiced at the sensation of being fed made him eat faster.

He had swallowed the rabbit in a matter of minutes, licking his lips and sniffing around to look for leftovers. His stomach knotted only after he had finished, bile threatening to trail up the back of his throat. But his belly felt so much fuller than it had in weeks and the sensation was almost satisfying enough to make him forget curfew and simply lie down in the snow, stretched out for rest.

Yugi took a moment to really consider this, then licked his lips a last time before slowly getting to his feet again. He looked at his clothing, wondering if somehow the blood had still smeared upon his muzzle despite the frozen state of his meal. And so he lowered his jaw into the snow and began rubbing against it to clear whatever red might have been there. He did not truly see anything, but the reality of the situation was that he needed to get a move on.

It did not truly matter if he was a little bloodied. He could always lie and say he had bit his tongue or truthfully bite his lip until it bled and looked a little swollen. He could cover for such things. It was not impossible for him to do such a thing. It was hardly a problem in all reality. He simply needed to get home.

* * *

The hallway was deserted except for a few stragglers that were still standing at their lockers. Yugi had picked his open, lazily grabbing one of his notebooks in order to make it to class on time. But it was a smooth, laminated item that he had come in contact with first and so he had stopped trying to grab his spiral to look over. And, in his fingers, as he slid it out, was a sheet of paper with various prices and pictures and titles and summaries of things which he had not noticed before.

His heart lurched and leaped into his throat. His eyes grew wide as he looked it over. He slipped it quickly back between two of his binders, horrified as bile swelled in the back of his throat. The sight of it had caused the blood to drain from his face and his fingers felt numb as he stared at it.

When he drew in a shaky breath, all he could smell was smoke. It curled in his nose and burned in his lungs. He froze, horrified. But the smell seemed to drift as soon as it had come. He thought of flesh and hair. And then he imagined fur and claws. And there were teeth, white and yet somehow charred with black as well. He pictured a screaming body alight in flames and the sound of people yelling. And for some reason he thought of nets with blood soaking the metal fibers.

He shook his head rapidly to clear the thought. His hand was trembling as he reached over to grab the edge of the locker door and draw it to a close. When it clicked he swore he saw flames dancing in front of his eyes. And he heard Aileen whispering in his ears for the smallest of seconds. But it passed again almost immediately as Yugi shook his head and looked back at the books in his hand.

He hadn't grabbed the notebook he'd meant to get.

Fuck it. He'd take a detention before he opened his damn locker again.

Yugi felt sick as he headed to class. The teacher was standing behind the desk, answering a question of some kind that another classmate was asking. The small teen took a seat nearest the door, a complete opposite of the place he usually sat. Normally he took a spot close to the inside of the class, near the middle or the opposing windows.

So it was not surprising to see the expression that marred several faces as they wandered by. Particularly Valon glanced at him with a raised brow, hovering for a split second before seemingly shrugging off his concern. He turned and wandered back towards where Yugi normally sat rather than cause disruption. His friends hesitated when they saw him, then very awkwardly began to take seats near him.

"What's up, Yug?" Jonouchi asked, trying his hardest not to let the sudden disruption of seating arrangement get any more awkward than it already was. He twisted around in his seat to face the smaller teen and almost wished he hadn't. Yugi looked slightly ill from where he had been drumming his fingers on the desk with a distant expression to his eyes. The small teen blinked, sat up a little bit, and then looked quickly down at his books again as if they might have some kind of answer.

"I think Fuwa is alive."

The admission caused all three of them to falter, frozen in place by the words. Honda blinked and glanced at Anzu whose eyes had grown wide and horrified by the very suggestion. Yugi did not raise his head, instead narrowing his eyes and folding both arms across his desk. Jonouchi edged a little closer, lowering his voice to match Yugi's.

"Dude, there's no way," the blond hissed. "You saw what happened. He caught himself on fire."

Yugi blinked and glanced at him from beneath his lashes. " _I_ caught him on fire," he corrected quietly, voice calmer and almost deadly. Honda blinked in shock at the change in his demeanor but the small teen looked away again, almost as if he were ashamed of such an admission. "But no one knows if his body was ever recovered. And there's every chance that maybe _somehow_ someone managed to grab him and drag him out before the police got there. There's never been any real report about what happened…"

"You're forgetting that Aileen chick that attacked us at the warehouse. She said you'd killed her husband, didn't she?" Honda muttered, though when Yugi glanced up he had to look away rather quickly to avoid losing his nerve. Something was extremely wrong in his blue-violet eyes. Something was beyond what he knew how to handle. And the way the small teen spoke and looked at them now was almost painful to truly witness. "So, if he'd survived, why wouldn't he have tried to contact her before Yami wound up killing her?"

 _Before Yami wound up killing her…_

He hated the phrasing of that. Yugi almost snapped at him angrily, but shoved the idea way, instead sitting up a little and forcing himself to raise his head to look at them. Anzu wouldn't meet his eyes and Jonouchi almost flinched when he glanced at him. Honda was busy pretending that he was interested in looking at the skirt of a girl who was leaning too far over her desk a few rows down.

"Yeah, she did say that. But I don't think he was…conscious when she did that. I don't know. I kind of have this feeling that maybe he was saved. But at the time that she attacked me, he was probably still recovering."

Jonouchi turned back now, raising a brow in confusion. "Do you mean like what happened with your hand that day?" he asked quietly, studying his face now.

"No. I mean…I mean that I think someone saved him, managed to rehabilitate him and now he's after me again." Yugi opened and closed his mouth, aware now of just how crazy he might have sounded. He faltered, then shifted to bunch his shoulders up and exhale loudly with a shake of his head. _I sound like an idiot,_ he thought miserably, but he kept talking regardless, forcing the words out of his mouth in order to speak the fearful statement that had lodged itself in his throat. "I think he's alive. I think he's recovered. And I think he's after me again."

"Why was he after you in the first place?" Anzu finally asked, shaking her head. "You haven't done anything to him."

Yugi blinked, eyes widening in surprise at the statement. She hadn't hesitated. And she didn't sound even slightly unsure. His chest felt warm that she still believed in him despite how much had changed between them. He drew in a deep breath, then exhaled quietly and shook his head.

"I don't know. I think he just wants to hunt wolves. I don't know beyond that. I had never even realized he was a hunter before he showed up here and then I was worried that he…" He shook his head again and turned away. "It doesn't matter why he's doing it, just that he is."

 _And that Yami is no longer here to help me…_

 _I'm on my own…_

 _And my alpha is completely gone…_

He swallowed the despairing thoughts away. "And, I guess when he decides to announce himself again, I'm going to have to put an end to it this time."

The statement was said so simply that all three of his friends stared at him in shock. But Yugi didn't blink, instead glancing at them, and then finally turned away as the teacher began to announce their new subject of study for the day. As they turned back to the front, the small teen let out a shaky breath, noticing that his formerly injured hand was trembling and his other was gripping the edge of the desk so tightly that his knuckles had turned bright white.

* * *

Yugi was still thinking about Fuwa when he trotted into the camp. His fur was slicked with water which had begun to crystallize from the cold, and his nose twitched where he could feel frost forming along the tip. He didn't bother to consider it, however. The wolves had all taken note of his appearance. The Japanese wolves had begun to bow down before him, wagging their tails. The American wolves were looking at him, dipping their heads, but would not meet his eyes as he wandered forward.

Only Yusei wagged his tail around dipping his head, but his royal blue eyes would not meet his either. Yugi considered him for a moment, thought about speaking, but then merely wagged his tail in response and continued walking.

He looked towards the den he'd been headed in the direction of, then paused. His head turned slightly and then his eyes grew wide as he considered the alpha in front of him. Echo was licking her paws, laying a few feet away. Her eyes were on him but lowered so as not to make direct contact with him. The white wolf flicked an ear and the she-wolf sniffed lightly as if to scent him for a moment.

 _Echo._

She blinked and now her ears pricked forward and her head tilted in bewilderment. The darker-furred wolf got to her feet when he jerked his muzzle in a beckoning motion and then began to trot once more. She glanced at Yusei who tilted his head in surprise but wagged his tail in response before turning away to head back over to Serena. Echo looked back to Atem, faltered, and then finally sighed and took off after him.

The white wolf paused near the entrance of a small cavern, an outcropping of an upright stone which was lurched forward in an almost standing position. The she-wolf hesitated as the other considered the entrance, then turned around and took a seat.

 _I just wanted to talk to you about something._

She flicked an ear and her gray eyes drifted towards the snow. _Does it have to do with the pack hunt_? she asked in a rather cold tone, something flustered and tired in her tone. Yugi would have raised a brow had he been human, but now he simply sniffed and shook his head. _I do not care to speak about Marik any longer._

The white wolf tilted his head. _If I wanted to talk about Marik, I'm sure he would tell me enough to make me never ask again,_ he retorted. _His ego is large enough to overshadow all of Japan. No, that's not at all what I wanted to speak to you about._

She flicked an ear and now her eyes flickered to his, curious and questioning.

Yugi supposed that was as relaxed as she would be with him for the moment. It didn't matter, however. He hardly cared, after all. _You said that your beta was sent here to meet me after the rumors got out that I was born, yes_?

Echo blinked and her lip curled faintly. _Yes. He came here of his own accord._

 _You didn't send him_?

 _He was never one to be controlled so simply._

Yugi blinked, eyes widening and then ears flicking. A small sense of warmth surged through him for the smallest of moments. He remembered Ra saying that he was perhaps the most trustworthy wolf within Paradise. And he recalled all of the devotion that Yami had for this single wolf, the way he'd cracked upon even thinking of him and broken down before him like a pup. He remembered his helping him that first night of his change.

The words were spoken so affectionately that he felt as if he had known the wolf before he'd died, as if they'd perhaps crossed paths as well.

 _What was his name_?

The question had a strange effect on her. She halted, her eyes growing sharp and glittering as they met his for the first time. _Did you never get to meet him_?

Yugi blinked and flicked an ear, dread filling his gut as a stunning realization came through him. Yami was not the only one that this wolf had touched so brilliantly. He'd had a similar effect on Echo and Yugi did not want to be the one to tell her that he was long dead. But to say he had and then explain to her that he did not know where he was or why he was not with him did him no good.

 _I never met anyone who looked like that, no._

 _What about a gray wolf with long white legs and dark blue eyes_? _Or a ginger one with black legs and a tawny undercoat and golden-brown eyes_?

He blinked again, startled. She sounded so insistent now, as if she could see through him. As if she _knew_. His stomach churned and he slowly shook his head.

 _I don't recall ever meeting either of them._

 _His brothers came to help him when we got a phone call from Hokkaido saying that he was sure he was on track with finding you._ She looked infuriated and vicious rather than sad now. _I had assumed they would have found you. His brothers were some of the best trackers within my pack._

Yugi flicked an ear. _I did not meet them._

But now he wondered.

Had they been there that first night?

He remembered three wolves, with eyes of teal and dark blue almost as royal as Yusei's, and a third of brown so light and brilliant it could have been amber in all reality.

They had reminded him of Jonouchi's when he had remembered them more noticeably the following week. But he'd forgotten much of that dream as the days had passed. And he'd drowned out much of what had happened before…

And he supposed he still had not properly met the two brothers. After all, neither of them had come forth to let him see them. And none had spoken to him directly aside from that night when they'd teased him lightly…

 _I'm sorry. I never met them._

Echo looked away now, staring at the trees over Yugi's shoulders and growling softly with discontent. _I suppose all three of them were captured by the humans running the experiments then,_ she answered dryly. She shook her head roughly. _My beta, my gamma and my delta. Perfect._

Yugi felt his eyes stretch wide in shock. _When they went missing, when did you go ahead and replace their ranks_?

The dark-furred she-wolf turned her head and stared at him coldly. _I never_ replaced _any of them. Or at least not actively. He will remain beta until he's released from the labs and after that, when he's back with me, he'll be fine._

The white wolf blinked and his heart hurt as he stared at her. She was in denial. Because she knew just as well as him that this wolf was dead. She knew it. She suspected it, even if she wouldn't admit it. And the pain had done a startlingly powerful job in preventing her speaking their names.

And, abruptly, Yugi wondered rather sickeningly if perhaps she had felt similarly for this green-eyed wolf as he himself did Yami. He wondered if his rejection had been as obvious, as painful and miserably. He wondered if he had been as close to her as Yami had been him. He wondered if they had been closer than usual for an alpha and beta, if they were the best of friends with a bond that could have only survived without the unrequited feelings.

Perhaps…

If he hadn't been born…

Yugi shivered and shook his head. It didn't matter. He needed to stop the thought before it became any worse. He drew in a deep breath, then exhaled loudly and looked at her with darkened eyes.

 _I'm sorry that happened._

 _All for a wolf who doesn't know how to help himself, let alone his own pack_. The words were spat at him as if with venom and Yugi blinked, stunned by the obvious hatred in her gray eyes. Her fur rose along her shoulders, bristling with disgust and frustration. _You cannot lead your pack, let alone yourself. And three of the best wolves in my pack—three of my best friends—were destroyed for the purpose of what_? _Of meeting you_? _Of wasting their time to find a wolf that is meant to bring only_ destruction? _And you think it was worth it_?

Yugi stared at her, shocked and horrified.

And then he wondered, watching her face and seeing that intense hatred which burned in her eyes.

 _Was_ it worth it?

Was _he_ worth it?


	50. Dynamics

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day**

 **Chapter Warnings: Consumption of Blood, Slight Squabbling, MILD Bloodshed, Mention of Medicine, Mentions of Physical Abuse, Mentions of Bloodshed, Mentions of Medical History, Mentions of Drug Use, Mentions/Hints of Depression**

 **So I just realized that I'm pretty sure I've got the timeline for the story kind of screwed up. Like, the actual time of the year and all that, not the story's timeline or anything like that. Kind of upsetting but it's whatever. I think I'll have to come back after I finish and work it out when that's done. I don't want to take anymore time out of editing and posting and fixing things to try to figure out what I might have messed up and obscured in it so far.**

 **But Yugi says he's known Yami "two or three months" which should be right? I think that's actually pretty accurate for the story's timeframe? I could totally be wrong though. Not that it matters. It doesn't truly affect the story that much. The holidays might be mentioned but there's really no outright celebration of them and all that so eh.**

Chapter L: Dynamics

 _Work Log Entry XLVI: February, 2005_

 _February 11_

 _The Pure-Blood has yet to do anything more than exist. He fails to do anything but comply with our demands and eat and drink and sleep. We have ceased experimentation on him as directed by the boss. There are thoughts that perhaps the Pure-Blood is so unresponsive due to constant testing and so the boss is giving him just enough time to breathe again._

 _February 20_

 _No one has managed to make that wolf speak._

 _We have begun to fear that perhaps the experiments have mutated his vocals to the point that they are all but nonexistent._

 _February 28_

 _He spoke! He finally spoke again!_

 _It surprised all of us as we were hardly expecting it._

 _…But his voice has changed from when he used to ask for food. Now it is terribly high-pitched and awkward and it grates on the ears. It is quite distinctive, especially for a nine-year-old._

 _We estimate that there is damage due to his disuse of his vocals and the experiments we have performed on him._

Yugi huffed, teeth bared and body heaving with effort. His face was inches from Obelisk's, his body braced above his. The gray wolf panted and huffed in response, then grunted and angled his muzzle away to show his throat. The white canine blinked a few times, agonizingly slow in the task of realizing his victory, and stepped back. His tail rose and wagged and he trotted a few paces away.

He kneaded at the ground a couple of steps away, body quivering with excitement. Then he turned around as Obelisk got up, the gray wolf shaking himself out.

 _Congratulations,_ the deity murmured and, for once, Yugi thought his voice sounded full of pride. His eyes were glinting, focused on the smaller canine as he lifted his tail to parallel to his spine and wagged it slightly. _You truly managed to pin me._

Yugi wagged his tail faster, a part of him reveling in such a fact. But another part wondered and yet a third was curious.

Could he truly learn to utilize such strength and ability for any fight he encountered? Could he really learn to simply take this ability and apply it as necessary? He'd be one of the most powerful people to exist in the world.

The thought was stunning.

The thought was amazing.

The thought was exhilarating.

The thought was _horrifying_.

If he could not learn to utilize it, it was a hindrance of which he did not know how to combat. How often had he feared having an adrenaline rush and losing his sense of mind just for the sake of survival?

He felt sick as he considered it, stomach dropping. His tail fell after a moment and he tilted his head, staring blankly at Obelisk. He remembered the first time he'd experienced it, how easy it had been to justify how he'd taken Bakura's head from his body. But if he could control it now…

But it felt again as if he were attempting to play god, as if it were a mere game of whether he had the guts to do such a thing. And the thought made him feel sick as he considered. If it was nothing more than a game of such dire proportions, what did that mean of the winner? If he were to win, did that make him something worse than the gods that so often seem to turn their backs from him? Or did it make him their equal?

And if he were to begin to use such strength…

He flicked an ear. He was already considered a god by the wolves within the pack. If that were true of their visions and ideals of him, then why should he fail to prove them correct?

Yami could use the ability, couldn't he?

He remembered the way Yami would launch himself into a fight. He'd kill within moments if he got the chance. If that were the truth of such a reality, then why shouldn't he come to know the same strength? It would do him well to, wouldn't it? He shivered and stared at the larger, darker wolf. If he were to be so vicious as to kill, did that make a true difference?

If it meant survival, did it really matter?

Yugi nearly snarled with frustration. In truth, perhaps it did not matter in the slightest. If it was something the wolf was gifted with, then he had to trust that perhaps it was meant to be harnessed and utilized and known well enough to call upon. And, as long as he remained alive, why would it matter that he changed some? Everyone had to change at some point.

Whether they truly embraced it or not was another thing to be considered. But for himself, change could not be more negative than the very things he had brought upon himself formerly. And so he looked at Obelisk and he wondered at how much different this wolf was than when he had been in the darkness of the Ice Age.

Had _he_ changed?

Or was he as he had always been?

Was a god capable of such a thing?

He did not know for sure. It was possible that they were set in their ways due to their immortality. Yugi had never heard otherwise of gods within mythology. He did not know of a single instance of such a thing happening. And, if they did not happen in other religions, why should it happen now simply because of a werewolf being a deity?

 _Is Slifer back with the pack_? he asked abruptly, forcing the thought away and considering the gray wolf before him. Obelisk shook himself out again to scatter the heavy snow which had begun to cling to his back in a dense shroud.

 _I should assume so. She must be hunting with them again,_ he said dismissively, untroubled by the idea of it. Yugi had seen them both on separate instances rather than together any longer. Slifer would take time to wrestle and hunt with the pack, as if embracing kin that had once been dismissed. And Obelisk would go about helping him to learn battle techniques. Between the two of them, the pack was constantly monitored and guided while Yugi remained the elusive reality of his home life and regularity of school.

He wondered if the gods had come to hate him for such responsibilities. But neither seemed to be angry with him and so he did not bother to speak of the matter. If they should be angry later he would wait to see their wrath. It did not truthfully matter to him.

Yugi flicked an ear. _It's nice to see how easily they've accepted you both into the pack,_ he said, voice slightly distracted with the thought that they should have done the same for Yami and yet hadn't. He bristled slightly at the thought, remembering immediately on the heels of this thought that they had initially, but for the wrong reasons. Their assumption that he was Atem had not done them well… _Perhaps they know she's related to them_?

Obelisk snorted. _It is not that reason which makes them accept us both. It is their views of meaning within their lives. It does not matter what their familial connection with us should mean._

 _Us_? Yugi commented, head snapping up and eyes catching his in surprise. Obelisk did not blink, nor did he speak again before turning away and sniffing at the snow. _You and Slifer…_?

 _You did not truly think that Slifer should have mated with a wolf of lesser blood._ It was stated as a fact but the look he shot him was one of amusement towards his shock. _But where we should have produced another Pure-Blood, of course that was not possible. And then Annie began to breed as well, as Slifer so instructed her. And her bloodline became impure but she was able to keep the pack here and alive. She stopped after Pattie, as she was eventually instructed._

Yugi flicked an ear and then tilted his head, watching him with wide eyes. _Did Annie ever tell them that Slifer is related to them_?

 _I'm sure she mentioned they were blessed by a god, but I doubt they would have known her by name or familial bond._

 _Did they know she was near_?

Obelisk considered him for a moment, thinking the question over, and then looked away with something of a simple roll of his shoulders. _I do not know. Perhaps they suspected. But they did not ever search for the source of their suspicions and you are here and have brought the gods to them. I do not think they care much for their origins beyond such simplistic knowledge._

 _Why you and Slifer_? _Why not Ra_?

The gray wolf raised his head. _Why not Ra_? he repeated in a voice soft and bewildered. _Ra did have a single pup with a human, after the war._

His eyes stretched wide, stunned.

 _And she allowed them to be raised by the human father with human children he bore with another. She let them grow within the human community, within the world of man. And they produced children until, finally, at the end of a long lineage Atem was born. You are the only one in over a century to be able to change. You are the only one capable of doing so, as Code Name Atem was destined._

 _Why with a human_?

 _Because we all knew there would be something later in need of correction and so we put into motion necessary actions to help stem such disaster as might be produced._ Obelisk flicked an ear and considered him for a moment. The wolf tilted his head and watched him with dark eyes. _We may be unable to see the future, but it is not without foreknowledge that we make decisions. We knew something would come to eventually happen and so we set things in motion to counteract them._

Yugi tilted his head, narrowing his eyes. _So what is it that you all prepared for_? he asked softly, staring at him with a hardened expression.

The gray wolf didn't blink. _You know well enough._

 _War, yes. But with what_? _I still have yet to meet this hellhound I'm meant to fight to the death or whatever. And the humans are running experiments on the wolves as it is. So are they all my enemies_? Yugi spat. _Because I have far too many enemies to count and now all I know is that for whatever reason I'm expected to die or let Yami die in my place. So tell me, which is the force I am meant to face_? _Because there seem to be a bunch more than I am capable of fighting._

Obelisk stared at him for what felt a lifetime, then turned away. _You have war to wage with several. Do you attempt to tell me you do not sense the traitor amongst the pack as of yet_? _Or that you cannot predict the consequences of what might come to pass should your human side tamper with your abilities as a leader and a wolf_? _Tell me you are not so foolish, child. Surely you are not so mistaken._

 _I wouldn't say I'm foolish, no._

The gray wolf smirked in amusement, eyes cold. _But you do not know who I speak of. Nor do you have any remote idea of such reality, do you_? _And you are lost to the meaning of your own purpose concerning the strength of which you possess. Tell me again, Atem, who are your friends and who are your enemies_?

Yugi flicked an ear. _The gods are not my friends,_ he answered in a mild tone. Obelisk blinked, startled by the certainty within his voice. _And you are my ally only until the fight begins, are you not_? _That is why you teach me and distance yourself from the pack even as their acting beta, yes_? _And then, despite the best efforts I have to offer, I don't know who is my friend or ally or enemy. The most I know is that someone in the pack is playing a game of sacrificing the others for power. Another is attempting to become my best friend and replace my beta. Others refuse my direction unless directly spoken to. And I am being told of the hellhounds and the humans and their purposes upon crossing paths with me._

 _So what is it that you do not understand_? he reprimanded softly, eyes sharp and burning into his. _Why should you question it when you can clearly name your own threats_?

 _Because the alpha told me the humans. Another tells me the hellhounds. And how am I_ as one wolf _meant to fight both forces on my own_? His voice grew frosty, an octave higher with hate. _Have none of you gods ever considered that no one person can take such pressure and fail to crumble_?

 _Crumble_? _Yet somehow you stand on your paws and look strong enough to remain there. Are you truly to say you cannot handle such responsibilities when clearly it has not bothered you before_? _You cannot truly tell me otherwise for any reason, child._

Yugi snarled low in his throat, eyes flashing. _You don't care what happens, do you_? _We all go to war. We all die. And you and Slifer and Ra remain. And for_ what? _What purpose do you all serve when we all die_? _Who will follow you then_?

 _Who will follow us_? Obelisk echoed, voice soft and wistful before he shook his head and turned away. _Do you truly believe us to need one to follow us_? _You foolish boy. It is unnecessary that any of you believe in us. We are, and always have existed. We will continue to exist even when your time has come and gone._

 _Do you believe that, Obelisk_? he growled, eyes sharp and glittering. _Do you truly think so_? _That you will surpass the existence of others_? _You forget that you all have been asleep for years now—_

 _Asleep_? the gray wolf snarled. _I have not slept since that war. Nor has Slifer. You mistake us for Lupa and Fenrir themselves._ They _have slumbered. We have not._

Yugi shook his head, flashing his teeth towards his face and then backing up a step as he squared his shoulders furiously.

 _I suggest you lower your haunches,_ a new voice commented, interrupting them effectively and making their heads turn in surprise. The red she-wolf had come forward from the shadows, an ember of russet against dark gray and silver. She stopped before them, breath wreathing her nose, and opened her mouth just slightly to show her incisors. _It is unsightly to witness such aggression._

Yugi growled softly and flicked his ears disdainful, turning away with a huff of frustration. _Is it late_? he asked, glancing towards a sky blanketed in white, a new surge of snow coming forth once more. He flicked an ear, shaking his coat out, and turned back with darkened eyes. _I hadn't realized…_

 _It is still early for your departure,_ she dismissed him, shaking herself out in a mimicry of him. She took a seat and looked towards Obelisk. Yugi tilted his head and glanced at her curiously for a moment, drawing his attention away from the pristine sky. He flicked an ear as the she-wolf turned to face him once more. _But that is not why I have come here to see you both._

Yugi flicked an ear. _Both of us, huh_? he commented almost wryly. He glanced towards Obelisk but the gray male ignored him as he studied the she-wolf with his head tilted. The white canine huffed and sniffed lightly at the air as he considered how odd it had been to truly pin him there. It was amazing to him how almost _simple_ it had been despite how hard it would have been formerly. The realization made him wonder and he considered for a moment whether he could truly consider himself a wolf or not.

Was he still more human than canine or had the opposite happened despite his will?

The white wolf tilted his head. If such a thing had happened, it was odd to acknowledge that not only had he failed to notice, but he was almost comfortable with it despite the realization. And he considered how comfortable Yami had always seemed, how easily he went from his human form to his wolf and how not even seconds seemed to pass in his mind. He could stay in one moment for as long as was possible in order to recollect, able to hide about in the shadows of his own thoughts.

 _Yes, both of you. I mean to speak to you both about the dynamics within this pack._

Yugi flicked an ear in near dismissal of the idea. She wanted to talk about the pack dynamics? What kind of dynamics were there truly? There was himself with Obelisk and Slifer—the three of them considered to be gods—and then there were the rest of them, who played the part of worshippers. And he had no idea how he was meant to categorize them otherwise. It was shocking, disgusting almost, and he could not think straight beyond the idea of this.

 _I think the line is very clearly drawn between the two packs, even where they have managed to merge together enough to live amongst each other. It is surprising, I believe, to see the way that some of their bickering still continues to escalate._ She ignored Yugi's surprised glance. _Many of their differences come very simply from their cultures._

The white wolf pressed his ears against his skull and fought the urge to curl his lip back in annoyance. The blue-violet eyes flickered with annoyance, darkening, and he recalled the various times he'd seen Marik picking on Yusei or Echo on Isis. They all began to bite at each other furiously, taking jabs at one another until they would eventually lose their tempers. Their fighting would become nearly physical, until one of the three of them would come to separate it. Oftentimes he would do so, stopping them in their tracks before the first bite could be inflicted. But it was harder to keep on top of them than he cared to admit.

Because he would get distracted.

And he would hardly find it in himself to care any longer.

So Yugi would stop them, linger a moment or two longer than necessary, and then wander off. And, should the fighting break out again, Obelisk or Slifer would come to solve the problem. Because Yugi would not care enough to get to his feet. And so the seconds would pass and none would care to do further.

He had hoped the fighting would not have erupted today at the very least. After all, Slifer had taken to treating them all as a singular pack unit rather than by diversity in the way they seemed to naturally separate. He had been extremely earnest of the idea in and of itself. The deity had been doing this for days now, from basically sun up to sun down in order to keep them closely knit rather than divided as they had formerly seemed.

And, yet, somehow it did not seem to be working well.

 _Well, that's just great of them, picking fights among their own allies. That's just fucking great,_ Yugi commented dryly, ignoring the way both deities blinked at him in surprise towards the more vulgar curse. The white wolf moved to take a seat as well, shaking himself out and looking away towards the trees over Slifer's shoulder. _So, if they kill themselves before the war starts, can we prevent the war altogether_?

Obelisk snorted in amusement. _I do not believe that is how it might work out._

 _Do not worry. There is much strife all about,_ Slifer stated with an almost human shrug as she turned away. _The lycanthropes are not the only shadows that are bleeding._

Yugi stopped short, the words stunning him. His head snapped back to face her, his eyes locking immediately on hers. _What_? he hissed. _How do you even…_? _Was it you who…_?

 _It was not by my influence that he spoke those words._ The goddess pricked her ears forward. _Ra did so, rather. She needed to speak to you and your lycanthropy was far too dormant for her to communicate with you. So she picked another infected with lycanthropy and her possession of his body caused his internal organs and muscles and sinews to rot and disintegrate. The possession of a god can cause such things with ease._

Yugi stared at her blankly. _She killed someone to speak to me._

 _She killed a wolf that was already beginning to run rampant._ She sniffed disdainfully. _Kokurano deserved nothing less than such destruction by a god's will. You were not his friend so why should you be offended on his behalf_?

 _No one deserves to be killed like that. Why—_?

 _It may upset you to learn that sometimes one life truly_ does _mean more than another's. We have done much to ensure you will survive—_

 _But not the same for Yami,_ he snapped. _You haven't done that to—_

 _Yami is alive and we have done much to guide him as well. He could have ceased existence any moment we thought fit, but he still remains, does he not_?

 _You can't kill him. He's a Pure-Blood—_

 _The color of one's coat means nothing._

 _I've watched him come back to—_

 _Dreams of his death and resurrection mean nothing, Yugi. You are a fool to believe otherwise. Yami lives on the brink of life and death every moment his lungs fail to give out. He recovers in Paradise, but it means nothing as for his identity or definition of blood._

 _You do not understand that circumstance such as this does not mean for even a moment that you should suspect more of what you are given,_ Obelisk drawled, flicking an ear and wrinkling his nose faintly. _It does not matter that you witnessed his healing in dreams regarding Paradise. It does not warrant your insistence he be a Pure-Blood. Many Half-Bloods have had the ability to survive what was deemed formerly impossible to them. It is a matter of how they might flex their free will and their desire to live which sometimes comes to dictate such dire circumstance._

Yugi flicked an ear, hate stirring in his chest. He bore his teeth and breathed out roughly. A tremble stirred beneath his fur and he shook his head roughly. _You told me that I had a secret, Slifer. And that I was meant to protect it with all I had._

 _Yes. And that still stands, child._

 _But then you must realize that a secret is only worthy of being kept so closely guarded when it is truthful._

Slifer flicked an ear. _Yes._

 _So then what the hell do you even mean—_?

 _I mean that both of you are subject to our whims. Should we see it fit, there might very well be a day that Yami does not come forth from Paradise healed again. I mean that there is always the chance that Morrigan or Valon should sink their teeth in and destroy much of the DNA and RNA required for such ability to heal._

Yugi remembered vaguely Yami warning him of such a thing, a comment of which he'd cautioned him towards the fact that hellhound saliva was poisonous to the lycanthrope and lycanthrope saliva was then poisonous to the hellhound in turn. And he wondered at the use of such a thing. Was it a torture technique? Could the gods have ever considered it as such before? When they were at war during the Ice Age, had they done similar things as was being suggested? Or had they simply killed each other violently?

But what hellhound would be a threat to him in all actuality? Despite the fact that Slifer had just relayed such information to him, Yugi could not understand these words?

The few hellhounds to have crossed his path had not been too terribly vicious. Valon was mild and clear minded. He was very simplistic and clearly did not care to beat around the bush now that Yugi had announced himself as Atem. And his mother had saved him from the hunter in the woods when he had attempted to look for Yami once more…

She had been sweeter, gentler than he had ever imagined capable of a creature bearing such an unholy name. He remembered only vaguely what her name might translate to, either greatness or terror. And he wondered how her name wrapped rather well to encompass the height of the very identity of the species she existed as the goddess among.

Yami had mentioned that they were relatively unstable. He had said that hellhounds were more than likely to abuse their stance as werewolves, that they were naturally more likely to be unpredictable. Had that meant more along the lines of betrayal or just a generalization of behavior he had seen prior to being released?

He shivered and shook himself out to cover the anxiety that stroked upon his insides now. He barely resisted the instinct to exhale in a loud yawn, the flexing of his jaws just enough to slightly take the pressure from the tumultuous tangle of his thoughts. His ears flicked and his tail bristled faintly before he shook it off once more.

He didn't know what else there was to say about hellhounds. But he did know that Morrigan and Valon had not done anything yet to adhere to the statements Yami had made about them. And so he wondered what it was that they might do, what kind of threat it was they truly posed…

But infection was something he was well-rehearsed in healing by now. He had had quite enough experience in healing Yami's wounds as well as his own. Between the two of them, Yugi was not worried as far as that went.

But then…

Was Slifer being _truthful_?

Was it possible for their saliva to mutate Yami's genetic makeup enough to destroy his immortality as a Pure-Blood altogether?

Or was she merely bluffing?

Yugi could not tell.

And he was not willing to risk it.

Should something happen, he was gambling with Yami's life rather than his own. And all because he'd claimed the identity of Code Name Atem…

He shook himself again. He would not risk either of their lives simply because of his own outrage towards such an idea. The very thought of Morrigan or Valon biting through the skin of his alpha made him furious and he nearly shook his head furiously. Instead he stared at the two gods, eyes sharp with mounting hatred.

* * *

"Valon."

The hellhound responded instinctively to his name, but the fact that he turned around was due to only to the realization that he identified the source of the voice calling it. He blinked, golden eyes flickering, and turned with a confused look towards the other boy. He tilted his head and slowed his pace until he was no longer moving at all.

But Yugi still seemed to hesitate for a moment. He did not approach him for what felt an hour. His blue-violet eyes were hardened, sharper than usual, and he blinked slowly as he stepped forward. The realization made Valon shake his head slowly as the lycanthrope finally came within a few feet of him.

"I do tend to have a class to get to during school hours," he drawled softly, raising a brow at the smaller wolf who blinked but oddly did not apologize. The realization made the hellhound bristle and stiffen further before he shrugged it away. "Listen, speak fast—"

"I'm trying to find a way to phrase it."

Valon arched his raised brow even further, curious and almost bewildered. Then he sniffed loudly, shaking it off in a show of scenting the air rather than testing for Yugi's emotional state. The smell which greeted him, thankfully, was not of rotting organs or dying flesh. It was a sharp, bitter twinge of something, with a sweeter and saltier undertone to drift beneath it.

So Yugi was both scared and bewildered and incredibly angry and hateful at the moment. The realization did not bode well with Valon in the slightest. The thought caused his fingers to twitch as he suppressed the urge to snarl under his breath. He could not tell where the emotions were directed.

It was impossible to tell if they were outwardly projected or inwardly. The emotions were too strong to be read easily in such a sense. Normally one could smell it in a far more concentrated sensation like that of a fever should it be self-desecration. Outward projections tended to be sharper, like being stung by the smell as it grew stronger and eventually slowly tapered off on its own.

Beyond that, emotional states could not be measured and read properly.

"Yami told me a while back…"

Valon blinked and looked over in surprise. Yugi could say his name now? Formerly he had choked and looked visibly winded should his name even be spoken. He would seem ill from the very concept of his identity. Sometimes he trembled. Sometimes he simply looked ill. Even when the word was spoken and had no contextual tie to the lycanthrope in question, the smaller boy would cringe in some manner.

He had heard many times of such things happening. Wolves who bonded in some sense with their mate—be it physical or emotional, platonic or romantic—would suffer such things should they be rejected, ignored, abused, or separated for long periods of time. It was a shame that the werewolves felt so terribly powerfully.

Because the ones that found their mates in humans instead of forcing their bond with another wolf often had such issues. Because humans did not feel to the extent that the wolves did. They did not know that lack of attention spent them sometimes caused them to second guess or panic in some manner. They did not realize that fights which they might soon forget were constantly groomed over and meticulously picked apart hours or days or _years_ later. They did not understand that when the wolf devoted themselves to them, they did not plan to lose that affection any time afterward regardless of the time that passed. And they were not _capable_ of the realization that a wolf gave their _all_ and when that failed, their mental state would begin to break.

And the human would be lucky to get out of alive.

Yugi had exhibited some of the primary signs. He had stopped eating. He had begun avoiding his human life. He had rejected his friends. He had turned his back on his grades. He had forgotten himself in the misery. And he'd let himself begin to waste. He'd let the anger consume him…

Something had obviously changed. Valon had not been paying him the attention necessary to know what it was. But he understood it very clearly. Something had changed in some manner…

"Yami told me a while back that hellhound saliva is toxic to lycanthropes." Yugi was watching him with a sideways glance, eyes sharp and shaded. But he was not asking a question in any manner and Valon wondered at the stare he was being given. "And he even told me at one point that most of you are mentally unstable."

"Yes."

Yugi didn't blink. "What I want to know is what is going on with the hellhounds. The pack is convinced I'm to go to war with you if you ask half of them. The other is convinced it is the humans. Now I know that both of them are potentially an enemy to me. The humans are running the experiments. The hellhounds are no doubt angry about it."

Valon shook his head, no longer walking as he turned to face him completely. "You want to know what is going on with the hellhounds? Yugi, why would you assume that _I_ have those connections necessary for such information? I have no idea what's going on with the other hellhounds. I'm not the most popular with them. And I don't care to play at making friends with any of them either."

"So you have no idea then?" the lycanthrope pressed, looking irate and flustered by the very concept. "None at all? Valon, I need to know if you do. I honestly have no idea what I'm doing anymore!"

"And that's what the journey of life is all about," the hellhound drawled sarcastically with a shake of his head. "Yugi, I do not know. I am not a sociable creature. You know that very well. I am very much a solitary creature by nature. Being a sociopath does not make me keen upon making friends. If you were confused about that, try to list how many friends I have even within this building."

Yugi shook his head with a sigh. "I was hopeful, I guess. I just… I really wanted to know if someone had some kind of clue."

Valon would have apologized had he been more human than wolfdog. As it was, however, the exhaustion in Yugi's voice almost made him grin. It almost made him want to laugh, reach out and claw at him. He wanted that tone of his voice to be more vibrant, for his body to be more heavily waited with his tiredness. Physical fatigue meant he was weak.

If Atem was weak—

He shook it off.

He'd need to drink more blood at some point. These thoughts were far too dog-like. They weren't wolf enough. And they weren't human enough either. He'd have to settle his bloodlust just enough to relax for a little while.

"I don't know more than you about the subject," he said simply, shrugging and glancing at the smaller lycanthrope sideways. And just how easy would it be to devastate him further by saying that he knew Yami was dead to smother whatever sense of hope Yugi might have possessed to the contrary?

Yugi sighed and glanced over his shoulder. "Does your mother know?" he asked calmly, stopping and turning to him completely now. "Does Morrigan have any idea?"

"I assure you if she does, she is not telling me. She never has told me more than directly concerns me." Valon sniffed and his eyes glittered as Yugi watched him with that same unnaturally cold expression upon his face. "But that does not mean something is not happening. It would be wise to ensure that you are in fact prepared for whatever it might be to come."

The smaller teen watched him for only a few moments longer. Then he turned and began to make his way in the opposite direction. Valon watched him as the bell rang to announce tardiness and considered the task of going home instead. _  
_It was smarter for him to get control of his bloodlust long before he had to worry about killing someone when he couldn't. He glanced around, turning on his heel to follow Yugi towards the end of the hall. The lycanthrope had stopped, stiffening at the sound of his approach, and turned his head just enough to look at him over his shoulder. Valon ignored this, going straight towards him and stepping aside him at the last second in order to get to his locker.

"You look a little ill."

Valon paused, the door half opened, and then drummed his nails against the metal. Why had Yugi not left yet?

"I try."

Yugi had not moved in his spot at all, those few feet away. Realization came over the brunet a moment later. His back stiffened and his fingers clenched around the metal of his locker door. He hesitated, breathing in a little harder, and then finally turned to look at him pointedly.

Yugi sensed his mounting distress.

And he was caught in it, part of him at war with the idea of attack in order to try to get more answers Valon did not have.

Part of him desired nothing more than to lash out and attack.

And the other was trying its hardest to simply hold himself together and watch him rather than act impulsively…

The fight that could have come about would have been devastating if either of them were truly willing to change. But just biting each other would be deadly. Valon sniffed at the thought, then narrowed his golden eyes into slits and drew himself to his tallest height as his back straightened fully and he stared at him cautiously.

"Did you need something?"

"What do you plan to do?"

Valon blinked. "I'm going back to my adoptive mother's café and I'm going to drink some human blood," he stated simply, running his nails upon the metal until it almost screeched beneath his touch. He wondered how easily he could have lashed out. The metal didn't bleed but Yugi would.

The smaller teen nodded, blue-violet eyes sharpening as he considered him a little more fully. His head tilted and the hellhound might have considered it a predatory action had he not known Yugi's weakness of inexperience.

"Do you have any animal blood left?"

The question made Valon stiffen in surprise. His eyes flickered with shock and then his brows furrowed as he stared at him. Yugi wanted animal blood? Just like he'd given him last time?

"You got money?"

"If you've got the blood."

They stayed quiet for a long moment. Valon blinked, turning away, and finally moved to drop his books back into his locker to grab his backpack. "Let's go then, shall we?" he mumbled, locking the door back and trotting out the building before Yugi could think to answer.

Valon led him to the café without even the slightest hint of conversation. The two of them walked in almost lazy steps, eyes on the street ahead or the scattered trees and deeper forest hidden beyond many of the buildings. The hellhound wondered vaguely if that did well to highlight their differences in species as well. It was almost amazing how estranged it was simply to see that difference in direction of their eyes.

He had never truly considered how much more powerful their draws to separate environments actually was. The lycanthrope wanted the forest, saw it as a beautiful home and shelter and a place of which he could hide end recover. And the hellhound could shelter within the walls of the city, lazy and dangerous and as unstable as desired. They could melt into the shadows and disappear before anyone thought to truly look for them. In the city they could hide away without a second thought, driven to disappear before any might have assumed their existence there.

Yugi slipped into the café right behind him. His eyes were darkened and his stomach was churning. In front of him, the sense of distress from the other wolf had faded. But he looked tired and full of alarm and strength regardless.

"Does this happen to you a lot?" he asked quietly as Valon moved around the counter towards the coffee maker. Yugi had not noticed the small patronage that was gathered around the edges of the small café until he noticed that some of them had tipped their heads up and were considering them at the moment.

"Valon?" a female voice commented in confusion, making Yugi's head snap around once more with a slightly bewildered look. The woman approaching them paused, startled by the sight of him, and then looked back towards the hellhound with a curious and slightly alarmed expression.

"Yes?" he asked dismissively, moving towards the coffee maker again and ducking down to look into one of the cabinets beneath the small machine.

"Um… What are you doing home? School isn't over yet…"

"And your point would be what?" the hellhound drawled in an annoyed voice. He dug through the contents of the cabinet for a moment, rearranged them back to where they had formerly sat, and then closed it and went to the next. His golden eyes flashed as he turned back to glance at her with a slightly dismissive expression. "I'm smart enough to skip a day."

"I know that, but…" Yugi saw her cast an anxious glance around the small building and his stomach twisted faintly as he considered. There were about twenty people in there, most of them paired together rather than singular. "I wasn't expecting you to come back behind the counters…"

Valon had to swallow away the hatred that swelled from beneath his skin. He narrowed his eyes and curled his lip slightly. Then he shook his head and got to his feet, straightening to his full height and looking at her with barely-restrained frustration.

She shouldn't have expected him there to begin with.

He shook his head and shrugged. "I wanted coffee and so did Yugi," he said dismissively, ignoring her expression. "And I don't want to pay for it but he will."

The brunette's cheeks were dusted with a blush, eyes widening as she glanced towards Yugi uncomfortably. "If you're a friend of Valon, you don't have to pay," she mumbled, her sense of manners fighting for the dominant portion of her thoughts rather than the sheer shock she still felt seeing her adopted son at the cafe. He had never had a history of going there. He had only ever come there a few weeks before…

"No, no, that's fine," Yugi rushed to say, trying his hardest not to cringe when Valon looked back at him with dark golden eyes. "It's not a problem. I don't mind paying at all."

"But—"

"It's fine," he insisted, casting her a smile that he hoped was as friendly as he could possibly portray. "It's absolutely fine."

But she looked almost horrified, as if his impromptu appearance there had done more than simply rattle her and he remembered briefly the first time he had seen her. She had been frazzled and stunned by Valon's appearance there, as if she had never seen him so clearly before in her life. He remembered then how Valon had told him that he wished to kill his parents, how should he have ever done something of that magnitude, someone would clearly point their fingers at him. And he wondered at whether she knew of her adopted son's bitterness and hatred.

No doubt she had noticed.

But no doubt she had also tried her hardest to pretend that as long as he did not act out on these impulses that he was capable of suppressing them for much longer. He suppressed a shiver, biting the inside of his cheek until he felt blood soaking his tongue as his stomach tossed violently. Yugi shook the thought off entirely and turned to her as his smile became somewhat more strained with the seconds passing.

"I promise you, it's fine. I would never want to impose on your business that way," he offered a bit more pointedly. His eyes flickered towards Valon, whose eyes had darkened further as he watched the two of them with something almost like suspicion in his gaze. Then the hellhound seemed to shake it off, moving aside to the other end of the counter to dig through another cabinet. "It's not a problem in any way Seiko."

That was her name. He remembered it now, after it seemed too long to have recalled in a proper timely manner. He felt almost sick for the slow pace of his memory, his stomach knotting and his skin almost feverish with disdain towards his own inability. Then he shrugged it off again, rolling his shoulders as he tried to shake away the way that the patrons glanced at them with confused looks.

"How did you…?" The brunette stared at him with something a confused and mildly stunned expression. Yugi flashed her more of a pointed smile and she searched his face, studying the tension around his eyes where he seemed to be struggling with the task of remaining friendly. But his eyes were such a strange, unnatural color. They were not quite as unnerving as Valon's own were but it was there and it made her throat feel a little tighter to regard them. They couldn't be so vibrant naturally, could they? And the very colors of his gaze seemed so estranged…

"I was here before, remember? When Valon came here for the first time." He faltered and looked at the hellhound who had straightened and was grabbing two paper cups for their coffee. He poured the liquid into both and scooted one closer to Yugi. The lycanthrope hesitated, then very cautiously took the cup from him, though, unlike Valon, he glanced about and nibbled his bottom lip almost nervously. "Do you guys have the sleeves back there? For coffee on the go?"

Seiko felt her cheeks heat, a sense of shame coming through her as she swallowed hard. She could not tell if Yugi felt so estranged that he had to leave—it could have been her staring, it could have been the way she and Valon spoke to each other, or her insistence he not pay—or if he had always planned to do so. And the small teen did well not to so much as let it be clear what might have caused his need for departure from the small café.

Valon raised a brow, snorted, and then reached beneath the counter and snatched one. The brown paper was easily fitted as Yugi dug into his pockets for a moment. He pulled out a sleek card that he offered to the hellhound who stared at it almost blankly. Then the brunet raised a brow further and studied him. "We can't process cards," he drawled in a bored tone.

Yugi blinked, startled by the statement, and then nearly cringed. Of course they couldn't. Most smaller businesses and restaurants and cafés did not allow the use of cards. Most of them ran on cash and he'd forgotten all about that kind of thing. But, thankfully, he had some on him, as he'd been planning to meet the others at the arcade and would have surely given Jonouchi his bills to be exchanged for coins.

He dug into his other pocket and counted it out, handing him what he'd requested earlier before they'd made it to the school. Then he nodded at him in farewell, turning to Seiko with a small smile.

"You guys have the best coffee," he announced, although some part of him was unsure Valon had put the blood in it or not. He felt slightly sick at the very idea, but it was easier than convincing himself to hunt and kill again, to actually eat what formerly been a cute animal in the forest… "See you next time, Seiko."

She was still amazed that he knew her name. Her eyes were stretched wide with shock, her face slightly paled with amazement. And then she glanced at Valon, who was watching the smaller teen depart with an expression of someone who had never seen another person before in their life. Seiko shivered and lowered her eyes when those brilliant golden orbs blinked and flickered to her face.

"I need to talk to you about something," she said, voice low and stressed.

"If it's about my copious lovers and caring for my sister," he drawled sarcastically, snickering when she scowled at him fiercely, and then shook his head and downed his cup of coffee. He dropped the paper cup in the trash, almost missing the can on first try before ensuring its placement a second later by tipping the can forward to make sure. Then he turned and trotted off for the door that would lead for the small stock room behind them.

She followed him uneasily, swallowing hard as she glanced out the window again. The blue-violet-eyed boy had stopped outside and was on the phone, taking small sips of his coffee and talking. But he was not looking towards the windows and seemed to make a pointed effort in order to do so. He would not so much as glance over his shoulder and whenever he turned as if he might, he quickly seemed to reverse this position.

"You wanted to speak?" Valon coaxed, ignoring her expression of confusion towards his invitation. He had never done that, he knew for a fact. Whenever she'd spoken to him about wanting to have a conversation with him, Valon would scoff and then look at her impatiently, waiting. Now he leaned against the wall, the racks behind him full of spices for creamers and unique coffee blends.

"I made another appointment for you." She said it in a low voice, unsure of another way to phrase such a statement. She licked her lips and watched as he considered her words. Then he snorted, smirking as he tilted his head and considered her. "It's in a couple of weeks."

"I wasn't aware he'd come back to Domino," he stated in a low, almost sultry tone. The way his eyes had grown brighter with something mocking but darkened with hate made her almost queasy. "I was under the impression he was still in the states."

"He's returning early…"

"Did you request he do that?"

"No, I actually didn't," she snapped, bristling at the sneer in his eyes. Seiko straightened her shoulders and gave him a small glare, ignoring the way she almost wished to throw up upon realizing his dismissive stance as well. "He's headed back for some other reason, from what I understand. Something about a colleague recently passing?"

Valon raised a brow. "Right, a colleague's passing would certainly be a reason to do so." Then he smirked and Seiko swore she was facing a wild animal rather than a seventeen-year-old boy. His eyes looked unholy and more unnatural than she had ever suspected them capable of before. And his lips were pulled too far back, it almost seemed, as if to stretch across the entirety of his face. "Good. I look forward to seeing him again."

* * *

 _A good leader is one which strives for just ruling rather than going by the expectations of others,_ Slifer said as he shook himself out and took a seat amongst them once more. Obelisk glanced at him in near dismissal before turning back to her as she continued. _Whether or not he adheres to their idea of who Atem is, as long as he is accepting of his role, he should be capable of winning their loyalty regardless._

 _He should not have to win it. He should have it regardless of whether he has earned it in their eyes or not._

 _You know as well as I that it does not always work in that way._

 _Yes, well, if he were as they had predicted from their lore and beliefs, they would not be so divided as a whole. They would have perhaps even accepted the American pack in with little difficulty, simply because he decreed it so._

 _You cannot truly think to blame the entirety of this problem upon him. The blame is equally his as it was Annie's as it is_ ours, the she-wolf snorted in dismissal. _We did not properly prepare them for such a union. And it is not as if we spend time equally with the American wolves as well. And they were not raised to believe that they would need outside help within this war._

 _Then they were foolish to assume that they would be enough to stem the flow of battle such as this._

 _When we instructed Annie to teach them those things, not once did_ either _of us consider reminding her that wolves beyond her own pups would come to his aid. It is our fault as well, Obelisk._

Yugi flicked an ear. _Why are you both even arguing_? he asked with a twitch as a snowflake landed near his eye and momentarily blurred his peripheral where it clung to the fur near it. _I thought the situation was more or less under control._

Obelisk scoffed and turned to him with a furious expression, skeptical and embittered. _You assume that it is under control_? _You foolish boy. You know very well that it is not. Do not even assume to say otherwise. You know that the wolves do not follow you completely. Aki alone will rid the wolves of their will to follow you. She is powerful and can lead where you seem too ashamed to do so yourself. And what of Marik_? _He is fully capable of turning their thoughts aside from you as well._

 _I doubt he would, considering how much he's been stuck to my side these last few days,_ he said disdainfully. Slifer let out a long breath and the gray wolf shook his head as Yugi continued. _He's been following me, fighting the other wolves whenever one doesn't immediately approve of my ideas. He's even begun trying to talk to me over the others._

 _Yes, and what if he merely does this in order to decide if you are_ worthy _of their worship_? Slifer drawled with a sneer. _You do not carry the best judge of character in your company. You expect him to be a friend of yours_? _After all the fighting that you both have done and all of the squabbling, you are willing to let your guard down so simply_?

 _He's not fighting me anymore. I consider it one small step in the right direction._ Yugi did not try to justify himself further, instead looking at her closely. _And I'm sure if Marik is coming around, then I can eventually convince Aki to do the same. And then I can gain their trust as a whole, yes_?

 _It is not so simply done,_ Obelisk observed with a dismissive note. _As you do not reflect what their beliefs have taught them of you as a figure among them. They expect you to be more powerful, to be less forgiving and to fight when necessary. They expect you to be far more wolf than simply a human attempting to blend in amongst them. You are very forgiving and rather selfless in manner. It is not something they were taught you to possess._

Yugi flicked an ear. _Then I'll teach them a new way._

The proclamation made both gods blink at him, both startled and partially stunned. Their eyes flickered towards one another, locking for only a split second. Then they both looked back at him, unblinking but still visibly surprised.

 _It's not my fault that you kept them in the dark about everything. Or that you told them that Atem could only ever be one way rather than another. That wasn't fair to them or to me when they learned those things and I do not match that description._

 _You possess such_ insolence, Obelisk hissed. _You should stop yourself now, before things should rise beyond your understanding once more. It is not hard for your human brain to become lost in the midst of change or instinct._

Yugi pricked his ears forward and eyed him coldly for a moment before shaking his head and turning away. _It doesn't matter. I'll teach them a new way. They can figure out who I am as I spend time with them. It doesn't truly matter. What they know of me will_ never _actually matter to begin with._ He shook his head. _They don't even know who it was that they worshipped for so long to begin with. If you ask them, none of them know beyond what they are told. And none of them have any idea what I'm meant to truly do_

Slifer flicked an ear. _You are not entirely wrong in such a statement. Your purpose is obscured to them._

 _And to me,_ the white wolf answered with a shake of his head as he ignored the sense of frustration that came over him. _It does not matter. I'm sure all of us will come to figure it out on our own as time passes._

The gray wolf went to respond, but the other canine blinked and his head turned, ears pricking forward as he looked across the clearing of the camp. Some of the wolves had drifted a little closer and Yugi recognized each of them easily. Aki, Marik, Yusei and Serena were moving about restlessly. The four of them were divided between their cultural stances, Yusei and Serena and then Marik and Aki, in which Yusei paced unhappily and Serena was seated with her head lowered and her lips curling angrily as her ears flicked. Marik was circling them as if they were pieces of prey and he meant to lunge out and snap them up in his jaws. And Aki stood there, snarling softly and staring at Serena with a clearly territorial, aggressive expression.

 _What the hell is going on with those four_? Yugi muttered, eyes sharpening. He was on his feet immediately, heading towards them swiftly. Marik was snapping his jaws now and Yusei was bristling as he glared at him. Aki was stepping closer and Serena's shoulders had risen, growing squared as she continued to snarl. She was seconds from attacking, he knew, as her eyes were no longer lowered and had focused entirely on the other she-wolf.

 _What do you think you're doing right now_? he demanded furiously, coming to a stop in front of them. Marik faltered in his step. Yusei lost his bristle, flattening his ears against his skull. Serena straightened, aggression lost. Aki curled her lip back and stepped away several paces with an annoyed expression. Her ears flicked towards him and then flattened as well and she snapped her jaws when he came closer.

Marik spun on her, snarling and snapping his teeth in response. Immediately the two Japanese wolves locked eyes, growling and glaring at one another. Yusei and Serena both moved out of their way without a second glance. And the two of them stepped closer, bristling and snarling as their tails slowly began to rise.

 _Serena,_ Yugi demanded, head snapping towards her even as his eyes remained on the other two wolves. _What the hell is going on right now_?

The she-wolf shuffled her feet awkwardly, then whined low in her throat as she answered, _Yusei and I were talking about how their mannerisms of hunting and bringing much of the meat back here is strange because we were human more than wolf._ She drew in a deep breath, fur bristling with frustration as she struggled to project the words again. No doubt she had been trying to warn Aki off long before he'd asked the question and now she was having a much harder time. _Aki overheard. And then Marik overheard._

Her voice tapered off completely and Yugi doubted she could give him the visual sequence of events. She looked visibly shaken and all but exhausted. And he supposed it did not matter. The explanation was, in all reality, adequate. He did not see that it needed further detail. He'd known well enough that Aki and Marik liked to play the role of bullies.

And now they were even picking at each other. They had not truly snapped at each other as of yet. They had not lunged at each other yet. They had not even lashed out visibly beyond chomping their jaws.

 _Marik, Aki,_ he snarled, stalking forward. Both wolves glared at each other and then glanced at him as if in unison. Aki looked back at him disdainfully but Marik peered at him with something he could not quite recognize. He'd never seen such a thing on another's face before, never in their eyes, and the way the gray and tan wolf looked made him almost tremble. Yugi hesitated a step, then hurried forward again. _What's going on right now_?

Aki snarled quietly, then turned away again. _Nothing to concern you,_ she snapped. _Atem does not need to be involved with such a mediocre thing as we're arguing over._

 _Well, you've just endangered two other pack mates. I think it becomes my problem the moment others become involved,_ he snarled in response, glaring at her when she flattened her ears against her skull in annoyance. _You may either answer me now and explain yourself or I will force you to._

The declaration startled all three of them and even the gods blinked in near amazement at the words. Obelisk and Slifer swapped looks, getting to their feet to move closer, shadowing him. Yusei whined low in his throat and moved to prostate himself before Atem, laying on his belly and pressing his chin to the snow. No doubt he would have thrown himself onto his back with his tail tucked if he'd been more fearful or if Yugi had so much as glanced at him from more than his peripheral. Serena, on the other hand, had turned away with her head lowered and her body slightly tucked towards the ground. She did not seem as if she might roll over and expose her throat, but it was clear she was visibly uncomfortable.

It was only Marik and Aki who did not show immediate submission. Marik instead raised his head, his tail wagging slightly as his head snapped towards his former beta. Aki stared at Yugi with furious eyes, considering him and curling her lips back fiercely.

Yugi went to step closer, tail raised and fur beginning to rise into a bristle.

But it was not his action to make her respond otherwise.

It was Marik's.

The wolf threw himself forward. Aki did not have the chance to react. He barreled into her side. The impact made her spin, snapping her teeth. But the wolf sailed past her. His lips were slightly tinged red. Aki snarled and bore her teeth at him. Yugi blinked. Marik lunged at her heel. Aki snarled and spun to face him. Her teeth nearly snapped upon his muzzle. The gray wolf caught her ear.

Then Marik circled her again.

Yugi stared blankly. His ears flicked. He stepped forward. _Enough,_ he spat, though the gray and tan wolf ignored him. Aki prepared herself for the third attack. Marik slammed into her hip and bit her adjacent heel. Aki yelped and backed up a step before facing him more completely. The fourth hit came for the flank as the first had.

The white wolf snarled, chomping his teeth. _Marik, enough_! he snarled. _Leave her alone—_

Aki stepped back. Then she lunged. Marik screeched with pain. He scrambled from her grip. Her teeth were coated red. Her eyes were blazing. The gray wolf shook his head out. The blood fell upon his eye and across his brow. His cheek was caked red and smeared.

Yugi pressed forward, throwing himself between them as she prepared herself for another attack. She had grown past warning nips. She'd gone straight for a punishing wound. And Marik was bleeding badly along his right eye. Yugi flicked his ears and glanced between them. Impulse made him look towards the wounded wolf first. But he could already see the blood clotting. Marik may have still felt pain, but it was clearly leaving.

He turned to Aki. The she-wolf glared at him, breathing heavily. But he could tell instinctively that she would not harm him. She would not turn her teeth on him. He was off limits to her wrath.

 _Aki, I want an answer,_ he instructed quietly. He could see Slifer and Obelisk swapping looks now. Yusei was on his back, tail tucked and paws folded upon the slope of his ribcage. Serena had trotted several steps away, pacing about with her tail between her legs. She was visibly panting, eyes wide and the whites showing. She stalked from one spot to the next, a perfectly straight line of tension.

 _It was over pack rulings,_ she answered bitterly, though her eyes were on Marik again and her fur was bristling once more. She pressed forward a step. The gray wolf snarled and wagged his tail angrily. Yugi moved to stand between them, facing Aki calmly. She focused on him now, infuriated but willing to pay him enough respect to answer. _Yusei and Serena think our methods strange. I said that it was only strange because they lived sheltered human lives. And then Marik escalated it._

Yugi didn't blink, flicking an ear. If Marik pressed any closer, he would turn on him himself. _This has to stop. I am not going to have you all feuding over pack differences. Get over it. You were here first, but they are here_ now. _We are_ all _going to work together, regardless of how much you may all dislike each other._

Aki pricked her ears forward, eyes on Marik again. Yugi stepped closer, until they were almost nose-to-nose. Then he snarled low in his throat, voice harsh and cold. _Do we understand one another_? he demanded.

She stepped back from him, immediately turning her head away. _Yes,_ she answered coolly. _I understand your words, Atem. And I apologize for any inconvenience._

He shook himself out. _We shall not have any fighting amongst ourselves any longer—any of us. If_ either _of you_ —he spun on Marik now, chomping his teeth— _think to consider otherwise, I will personally show you why you should heed my commands. And, should I see_ you _in another packmate's face once more, I will punish you as I see fit. Do_ you _understand me_?

The gray and tan wolf paused for a moment, blinking, and then flattened his ears. His eyes sharpened but he nodded all the same, looking quickly away as he mumbled a dejected, _Yes, Atem._

The white wolf almost shivered as he glanced at Yusei and Serena. The she-wolf had stilled her pacing but her panting had grown more hectic. She was shivering where she stood, trembling from fear rather than fear. And Yusei very slowly began to roll over onto his side as Yugi nodded at him. The gray-black yearling got to his feet, glanced at his former beta and then Aki and Marik again.

 _Are you both all right_? he asked quietly, focused more on Yusei than the former beta. The yearling wagged his tail but would not meet his eyes, royal blue gaze glued to the snow. Serena nodded at him respectfully when he raised his head to her once more. _Good._

* * *

Yugi could not help the apprehension that filled his belly as he approached the doorstep. There was a harsh, melted smell which met his nose. The scent made him falter a step, eyes widening. The air was too cold and crisp itself for the hint of burned flesh and hair to be overlooked. But he could not see anything at the moment. There was nothing visible to show him that something had happened. There was no obvious jarring visual sign in front of him. There was only this tiny hint of a smell, something that he recognized all too well and hated more than anything.

He glanced about himself once, then back again. There was no hint of where the scent had been left, nor where it had properly come from. The snow had covered much of any footprints he would have found formerly. There were small grooves in the snow but none of them were definitive anymore. He could not gather a full profile of them any longer. It had been too long since they had walked near the door or the house or the clinic in general.

Perhaps it wasn't human flesh…

But he could smell it still, a lingering touch of a scent, but it was not enough to make him wonder too much more proficiently. And he could feel it wavering. He did not know if it was Fuwa or not as it was. Perhaps it had been a dog or a person who had accidentally gotten hurt cooking or something of that manner.

Yugi didn't truthfully know.

But it was strange to him, how that burned scent seemed to swell and encompass rather than dissipate. He wondered how it was possible that someone could retain that scent. Was it because of how soon it had been? Was it because of the damage retained by the cells? Was there any other way the scent lingered? Was there something else that caused it to remain?

He considered but, seeing as he had no suspect beyond Fuwa, he did not know.

And now he berated himself.

Because he should have taken the time to memorize Fuwa's scent. He should have taken the time to do so, in order to protect himself properly. Had Fuwa not taken to trying to kill them all at that restaurant, he could have easily found his way to Yugi himself without outside help. And, had that happened, what was Yugi meant to do then? If he had done that, Yugi would have been leading him straight to Yami as well, wouldn't he have?

And if he could not tell Fuwa apart from someone else, then he could have mistaken it for _anyone_. He could have simply overlooked it every single time, gotten trapped so easily, and then been killed even before Yami ever came to know what had happened. He shivered at the thought.

He should have done it.

He should have paid attention.

He should have tried to memorize his scent.

He should have tried his hardest to protect himself and the others.

Yugi reached forward, grabbing the doorknob and twisting it open to step inside. He wondered, bewildered, how it was that Fuwa would have found his home. But then, as he stepped inside, he found himself bristling.

His use of the term "king of games" had said he'd always known. His ability to infiltrate the school he attended had been a test of pushing his buttons to say he knew where Yugi was in Domino. His testing him with the scent of blood was enough to remind him that he knew what he was.

There was no doubt in his mind that Fuwa had researched him and done so _well._ There was no hinting or playing at the idea. He had had to have done more than just the mild idea of testing him and speaking around. He had not known his friends and how to bond with them or that he had been attracted to Anzu without having dug further and further into his background and history.

How _much_ had he known?

Had he known about his hallucinations?

Had he known about his night terrors?

Had he known about his medication?

Had he known how often he had to go to the hospital for adjustments to the dosages?

Had he known about his mother being a vet?

How much _could_ he have known?

If he had not dug into personal files somehow, he would have had an extremely limited understanding. They would have been things found from what was common knowledge of others who knew _of_ him. He did not have many friends, after all. He had not bothered often to reach out to others when he was afraid of their reactions to begin with.

Tomoya had known a couple of things that Jonouchi had not. The few times he'd come to Yugi's house, he'd seen the medicine once or twice. He'd seen them labeled for him. He'd seen the side effects that were expected of them. He'd seen what they were used for. He'd seen the doses. He'd known how bad it had been.

He must have…

But then, Tomoya had been dead before Fuwa had set foot in Domino.

So it was no matter that the blond had known back there. All that mattered now was that he couldn't have revealed such a thing to them. And, as far as he knew, the rest of that information would have been hard to scrape across on websites.

Fuwa would have had to find his school files or his hospital record. Otherwise there was no way he would have _known_ he was a werewolf, was there? Yugi wished he knew if there was some way to recognize his infliction of lycanthropy or not. But he had not considered too much of what he did too far out of the realm of normal teenage behavior.

He didn't do drugs. He didn't hook up with random people. He didn't bother with getting drunk. He didn't even break out into fights. He played video games for a hobby. He hung out with his friends outside of school.

He shivered.

Then again, he _did_ sneak out of the house using the roof. And he _did_ sneak back in through the window. His neighbors had caught him returning back from the woods—or it was more likely they had seen Yami. They had seen Yami returning from various hunts at odd hours. And they had told his mom simply that they had seen him in the woods. They had not mentioned that he climbed in through the window. And he wondered if they had even come to know about that. Yugi's room being adjacent to the streetlamp put it at an odd angle for them to fully view him and Yami doing such a thing.

Or perhaps they _had_ seen it and had not spoken about it because they were truly worried that he was doing something illegal. Perhaps they were scared that telling his mom that he was crawling in and out of the house by way of the roof would get them in some kind of trouble. Yugi wondered at the idea.

Then he glanced at that house, wondering. He'd never truly seen someone in that side of the house more than a couple of times. He suspected it was the writing room and that they really only looked out the window a few times at the most. Perhaps they had only seen Yami returning and simply assumed that he was Yugi; that meant that he would walk back inside without an issue of any kind.

And they had not mentioned anything about what hours they had been doing so. So it meant they had only seen it those few handful of times that Yami had returned before Yugi had gotten home from school or directly after. So they most likely had never even bothered to verify the time or whether it was truly him, just that he was coming from the direction of the woods.

They didn't have kids either, he remembered. So odds were that they did not even know what hours he was there and when he got out again. Odds were they had no idea when it was he was supposed to be home or not. And that would have helped to cover much of Yami's travels from the woods and back.

It explained why his mom had not said anything more than that she did not want him to go into the woods so often anymore. It explained why she had not called up the school and asked if he had skipped classes and why it was she had not been notified. It explained a lot of what she had avoided in that conversation with him…

"Mom? Grandpa?" he called loudly, closing the door behind him. A technician looked up from behind the counter, her eyes shining where the computer screen reflected on it. He blinked, then glanced beyond her and through the window on the door that would lead further into the examination rooms. Then he turned back to her with a confused look. "Are my mom and grandpa here or…?"

"They're both upstairs, sweetie."

He blinked, bristling with alarm now. "They're _upstairs_?" he repeated slowly, watching her with darkened eyes. If they were both upstairs and had left a tech out to run the computer system for the time being, then something had definitely happened. He glanced towards the door. "Why?"

"She didn't tell me. She just said that something important had come up and she needed to deal with it. Your grandfather followed her up there."

Yugi hated her for her disinterest, straining his ears for any sound upstairs. But his call of their names must have made them both go quiet. He looked over his shoulder and back before drawing in a deep breath. "Thanks," he mumbled, because at least he didn't have to admit to her that the entire thing made him uncomfortable. The blue-violet-eyed teen opened the downstairs door, locked it behind him, and headed up into the upper level of the house.

He listened at the door, then grabbed the knob and slowly twisted it open once more. When he could only hear a couple of dishes moving about, he hesitated. Then he pushed the door open and shut it behind him, twisting the lock.

"Mom?" he called, voice nearly cracking with tension. "Grandpa?"

What was he to do if it was some kind of trap? What if the technician downstairs wasn't even a technician? What if she was someone looking to fetch money from his pelt when the hunter skinned him? What if he didn't heal and didn't come back? What if—?

"Kitchen."

The simple word sent a wave of relief through him. But it also made him hesitate. His mom did not sound happy. And his grandpa still had not spoken up yet. He hesitated, glancing around for a moment. Then he stepped forward and turned towards his room to put his bag down before making his way into the kitchen.

The moment he entered it his stomach somersaulted.

"Yugi."

His mouth threatened to pull into a grimace. Then he forced his lips to twitch up slightly into a strained smile. "Hello, Officer Mazaki," he greeted cautiously, staring at him as his stomach tossed more violently.

The man was taller, with pale creamy skin and short brown hair. His dark green eyes were a little narrower, his nose a little sharper. His mouth had a constant frown, stress having made a permanent line along the edges of his lips. And Yugi could see more of Anzu in him than he truly cared to admit. He sat straight in the chair Yami had sat in so uncomfortably during their family dinner, and the police uniform looked pristine.

"You're a very busy person," he commented, a dryness entering his eyes at the comment. Yugi raised a brow, wondering where his car must have been parked. He had not put it near the driveway of the house. Perhaps it was further down the street…

"I'm trying to be a more productive person by joining clubs at school," he answered sarcastically. Then he glanced at his mom, wondering what it was she might have told him beforehand. Very quickly he turned back to him, considering. "We all like to spend time at the arcade after school, remember?"

"Anzu's said that you've been busy with personal things for a while now."

The reprimand was more annoyed than anything. Yugi blinked and ignored the way his grandpa awkwardly shuffled his weight in the seat across the table from him. The small teen tilted his head.

"I know. I told her that."

"Did you get those _personal things_ figured out?"

Yugi blinked. "You wanted to ask me about where I was the night of the two fires, isn't that it?" he answered in a somewhat sharper tone, too tired to give enough of a shit to continue with the small talk. He stalked over to the table, plopping down in the seat across from him and watching him.

"It seems odd to me that my daughter, Katsuya and Hiroto were at this restaurant during the time of the arson and you were nowhere to be found." The small teen blinked again, but the realization did not strike him as anything for him to worry about for the time being. If that was all he wanted to know about, then that was hardly something he needed to worry about. "All three of them were questioned and they _insisted_ that you weren't there. But I have to verify. Because, around that time of night, it was said by your neighbors that you had not been spotted coming inside the house that entire day."

He shook his head. "They don't always watch the window. We all know that. And it's not lie they have any reason to actually watch me like that," he commented with a shake of his head. "But, either way, no I wasn't at the restaurant. And they're right. I didn't come home until late that night."

Kasumi dropped the plate she was cleaning. The resulting noise made all three males flinch and look up. But the veterinarian ignored them, rinsing the dish once more and checking it for any cracks before putting it away into the dishwasher.

"So, you truly were _not_ at home that night?"

Yugi shook his head as he turned back to him, though his eyes remained focused on his mom for a moment longer. "No, a friend needed my help with something. He'd gotten himself hurt and he needed me to stitch a wound because he didn't know how to do it by himself. So I met him at his motel room and I helped him clean and stitch it. And he convinced me to stay the night because it was safer than coming back."

"A motel room?" Anzu's father muttered, eyes widening as he sat up a little straighter. "You went to a motel room with another boy?"

"I went to a motel room to help my friend with a wound when he'd accidentally hurt himself, yes," Yugi answered in a somewhat frosty tone, not the least bit amused by his startled deer-in-headlights expression. "He messaged me in one of the school chat-rooms. So I asked him for his address and I went and helped him. By the time I got there it was around eight at night and after I had finished helping him with his wound care, it was almost ten."

"It took two hours for you to help him with his wound?" he asked incredulously, raising a brow now and shaking his head. That was an amazingly long stretch of time just for one wound to be cleaned. That made no sense whatsoever, either.

"No, it took me two hours to help him stifle the bleeding, because he was anemic, to clean it properly when he was drowsy from blood loss, to stitch the wound after having to find someone else in the stupid place that might have some orange juice to help keep him from passing out, and then to make sure that the wound really wasn't going to start bleeding out again."

"What kind of wound was it?"

Yugi had to stop himself from saying it was a head wound. It would have been impossible to do so without having to shave his head. And his mom and grandpa had seen him and he'd had perfectly long hair, none of it shaved or cut in any manner. "He wasn't paying attention to the way the knife was pointed when he was making dinner. He tripped and it cut his side pretty deeply."

Mazaki studied him for a long moment, then nodded slowly as if he could not find the fault in his logic. But Yugi could have pointed it out with glaringly obvious results. "Okay, so you helped him with his side. And you didn't come home for the night." He glanced at Sugoroku and then Kasumi, eyes sharpening. "And neither of you noticed that he was missing?"

"I stayed at the nature preserve to help with a wounded fox," his mother answered in a somewhat irate tone. "And my father goes to bed around seven to seven-thirty. He would have most likely been asleep by the time Yugi left and I was responsible for helping with the broken leg this fox had."

Sugoroku and Yugi both blinked, looking towards her with slightly startled expressions. She was taking up for him? She was actually willing to lie to a police officer like that? Mazaki had been a high school friend of hers, with an unrequited interest in her that had been crushed rather drastically when she'd married Yugi's father. But, when at first she had been pregnant and had not told his dad yet, Mazaki had offered to marry her regardless of Yugi not being his. His father had stepped in the moment she'd told him, however. And the two of them had gotten married a couple of months afterwards, when they'd had more time together and a few more dates around her trying to complete her college work.

And when Yugi had announced one day that he thought Anzu was the girl of his dreams, there had been that awkward moment when his mom had choked on her tea, ducked over the sink, and tried her hardest to regain her composure. He wondered if she would think that history had all but repeated itself in their potential relationship having been destroyed by an outside source.

Yugi turned to Mazaki again. "I don't know the name of the motel anymore. And I don't think the chat-rooms would have kept the message with the address. Too many people frequent it for help with homework and things like that. There's so many messaging cycling through there that I don't think you'd even be able to find a trace of it." He shrugged after a moment. "But, either way, that's the time the restaurant burned down."

"And the forest fire?" he questioned, though a part of him was so stunned by this turn of events that it threw him off slightly. Mazaki watched the small teen blink before shaking his head and sighing quietly.

"I was at the motel room with him again."

He faltered. "Again?"

Yugi nodded and looked away, sighing a little louder and glancing at the pattern on the table. "I helped him with another wound he'd gotten."

"Him? You keep calling him by pronouns instead of by name."

The smaller teen turned to him with sharpened eyes, something disturbingly dark and yet bright in them all the same. He tilted his head, watching him for a moment, then said quietly, "He was here with someone else for vacation. I don't think it was his family, but rather more like an abusive partner. I think he had an altercation with them and he got pretty hurt from it. He had a concussion for days after and he had a broken arm. I don't think it's right to give you his name when you might turn around and try to find him and he's obviously in hiding. Besides that, I think he left Japan recently. I haven't seen him since the night of the restaurant fire. And I haven't heard from him since then either. I think his partner might have found him again and he fled."

Kasumi nearly spat a curse, barely catching the silverware that had threatened to slip from her fingers again. She hesitated, breathing a little hard to calm herself, then turned on the water again to rinse the soap from the utensils. Annoyance coated her insides.

Yugi had just dug himself further into the hole.

"And you were not reported missing that night either—"

"I left my phone at home. My mom checks my GPS on it a lot. So I left it at home. Just like I did the night he messaged me to help him with that knife wound." Yugi paused. "Which, now that I think about it, that probably wasn't accidental at all. His partner probably meant to leave him for dead."

Kasumi shook her head and began to load the dishwasher, trying her hardest to keep moving so that if Mazaki turned around he would not see the rage that was causing her to shake.

"So you think he was on the run from a lover who abused him regularly and that he fled again after being found?" he repeated slowly. "You truly think that?"

"I do. I don't think there's any other reason he would have dropped off the face of the earth like he has." Yugi shook his head and looked down at the tablecloth. "I think after he was found the first time and I spent the night there, he probably took everything and cleaned it down and ran for his life again. I don't think I'll ever see or hear from him again."

That last part was said so certainly that it shook Mazaki to see the clarity in the small teen's eyes. It was horrifying to look into them and know that Yugi believed every word he was saying. And the realization made him feel almost sick as he considered him. There was something haunted in his expression as well, something that perhaps could have been similar to trauma if the story were truthful.

"And his name?"

"I didn't know his surname. I just knew his first name and I don't think you'll find him under that name. I don't think that was his actual name to begin with. He wasn't enrolled in high school either. He was homeschooling himself until the next semester. But he came into our school for a tour and to learn more about Domino High. But after that, he never showed his face again."

"So that's how you both met then?"

"Yeah. He met all four of us that day. But then he never came back after that so I don't even know if they'll remember him." Yugi shook his head and shrugged after a moment. "Either way, though, I met him during his tour of the school. Then I was on the chat when someone asked for help with a wound. Everyone kind of pointed their fingers towards me because of my mom being a vet. And then I got his address and I went to help him."

"No one else offered help?"

"Why embarrass themselves when they had no idea what was going on?" He shrugged again. "But, even with that, I don't think any of them knew what to say or do about it and got kind of nervous because they didn't recognize what was happening with it."

"They didn't recognize a call for help?"

"I think it was more that they were worried it was a prank."

"Then why did you answer and risk that?"

Yugi looked at him. "Because, on the off chance it _wasn't_ then I had to do everything I could to help them." He turned away again, ignoring the way his mom breathed harder at the words, frustration making her exhale far too loud within his ears. "And because I thought I recognized the way he typed the message. He had a really…professional, kind of polite way of talking."

"And he didn't tell you what you suppose was his real name even when you helped him?"

"No, because it was Japanese and I don't think he was Japanese."

Mazaki sat up with something like growing interest. "Really?"

"I don't think he was Japanese at all. But he could speak it fluently. And he was able to understand it in writing. So I didn't question that either."

"You trusted this person blindly?" he spat incredulously, shaking his head. "You _know_ how dangerous that could be!"

Yugi nodded. "I do and I still did it. But it's over and done with. He's gone. I have no idea where he is." He shrugged and pushed his seat back to stand up. "I'm going to bed now. I don't sleep nearly enough anymore so…I guess if you want to verify with my mom and grandpa, you're free to. But I've said everything I plan to."

He was almost surprised that Mazaki did not follow him out of the kitchen. And, when he snatched up his backpack and kicked his shoes off, he was all but amazed. He wasn't sure what he had expected, in truth, but such an easy victory and retreat had not been it. But he wasn't willing to glance back and when the dishwasher finally closed and was locked, Yugi had taken a seat on the bed. He was on the mattress's very edge, curious as he considered the silence from within the kitchen.

But there was still no answer regardless. The small teen strained his ears, keeping his head tilted towards the room outside, but there was no noise for the longest time. Yugi got to his feet, pacing, and wondered at the odds of how badly he had just played this game. If he had faltered where Yami was concerned, it could be buried and rather quickly. As long as his mom and grandpa did not tell Mazaki a name, it was going to be easy for him to all but ignore the fact that he'd ever existed in this story. As far as the motel went, he could always fall back on the fact that he had no idea where it was due to the address being lost from the chat-room. And, if Mazaki were to ask any of his schoolmates, more likely than not they'd say they couldn't remember or that they tried to use the chat-room for other means. It was a lost cause to try to find out through them. And if he wanted to dig through the interface for info, he wouldn't find much due to how often people got onto it in order to find out answers for homework or to all but have cyber sex. And, as far as the blood went, all he would have to say was that Yami had gone over the room with bleach and cleaners in order to keep anyone from calling the police after seeing the bloodbath. And, odds were, if they ever _did_ look into the motels in the area, they would find at least _one_ room with blood that had been stripped clean somehow. He would not have been surprised in the least.

Yugi let out a deep breath, licking his lips and pacing a little faster. He glanced over his shoulder, towards the kitchen again, listening, and finally found himself rewarded with the smallest bit of conversation.

"And you both never met this friend of his?"

"Yugi doesn't bring all of his friends to the house, no," Kasumi stated in a somewhat annoyed tone. "He has friends at school that I've never heard of, I'm sure. And I'm not worried about it if he said that this boy was his friend and needed help. You know Yugi just as well as I do. He was asked for help and he went to do it."

"That's _dangerous_ , Kasumi—"

"It's also over and done with." Yugi blinked, stunned by the ferocity in her tone. He could imagine her giving Mazaki a glare that said she'd likely hit him if he kept admonishing the way her son was or how she had raised him. "You know Yugi would never have tried his hand at arson to begin with."

"I know that he normally would never have considered it. But I also know that he's changed a lot recently. Anzu has told me as much. And the fact that he wasn't with them when they found the restaurant on fire is troublesome, don't you think?"

"I think it sounds like he's gotten busy with other things and you're making it bigger than what it actually is," she snapped, nearing a snarl. The sound he heard next was of Sugoroku's sharp exhale and the way Mazaki sat up in surprise at the tone. "I think it's being blown out of proportion and that Yugi is as he always _has_ been. He's fine. He's okay. He doesn't need to have someone micromanaging every single thing he's ever done—"

"Really? And that's why he nearly overdosed on his medicine that night, right?"

Yugi stopped short, entire body seizing movement. How…?

" _What_?"

Mazaki sounded oddly pleased, as if he had pulled the rug out from under her and was immensely satisfied with the results. For one _horrifying_ moment, Yugi thought perhaps he had realized he was no longer pacing. And he almost expected that he would draw his gun and aim it and—

And then he remembered that Mazaki was _not_ a hunter. He was just a police officer, a detective for the case…

"You don't really think that I didn't go back and research to find out if there were any oddities in his behavior right now, did you?" the detective asked in a smug tone. "I went as far back as I could with his medical history, his grades and their recent fluctuations, and his behavior as described by his teachers. Are you aware that he recently skipped the second half of the school day with a boy named Takahashi Valon?"

There was a moment of silence. Yugi squeezed his eyes shut tightly.

"In fact, it was just yesterday that this happened."

"And? Did another building catch on fire?" Kasumi sneered in a vicious tone. "Because I don't remember being told of anything of that nature. I don't remember watching any programs with that mentioned either. Am I wrong? Because unless a building caught on fire, his skipping school for the day is hardly a felon."

Yugi nearly trembled with relief, then almost sputtered with laughter. But part of him was so exhausted that all he could do was reach up to run a hand through his hair and take a seat on the edge of the mattress once more. He shook his head, drawing in a deep breath, and nearly panted with relief.

"No, it's not a felon." Mazaki fell quiet for a moment, then said in a more authoritative voice, "But, as I was saying, your son nearly overdosed on his medicine one night when he was twelve, did he not? And then for the next four years he's been asking you to have his medication raised in doses. You've been carting him around asking them to almost prescribe illegally strong medicine for someone his age, stuff that _veterans returned from war_ would take."

"It was his decision to ask for help. And it's not my problem that none of it worked. Obviously some medicines don't work well with him."

"Kasumi—"

"I wouldn't have been asking for them to raise the doses if they were effective to begin with." Yugi bit his lip, beginning to pace again as his mother snapped, "And, oh, gods forbid I try to make sure my son _doesn't_ nearly overdose again, you asshole."

Sugoroku's breathing had escalated, somewhere between excitement and shock.

"Kasumi—"

"Shut up, Mazaki. If it was Anzu in his place, you would have done the same—"

"But thankfully my daughter _doesn't_ have so many health issues—"

"They're night terrors, not some kind of fucking disease—"

"Really? Because your son sure has been acting otherwise."

Yugi blinked. Sugoroku seemed to grow still. His mom's nails were tapping against the dishwasher handle. The lycanthrope stiffened, then got to his feet again, tempted almost to go back and try to diffuse the situation. But then…what was it he was meant to say? His reappearance would hardly do them any well to begin with…

"He skips school now—he went for a whole week and a half without going. Then he reappeared, looking sick and underweight. He was aggressive towards several people. He puked in the middle of class and the teacher said it was worse than anything he'd ever smelled before. Yugi doesn't spend time with his friends anymore on top of it. He's constantly spending more time with someone like _Takahashi_ than he is with anyone else. When the Fuwa boy came, he was overly aggressive towards him and acted extremely possessive when he tried to make friends with Jonouchi and Honda and Anzu. He's spent nights at a motel with a _stranger_ who he only met _once_ before. He allows his grades to go up and down constantly. He's clearly no longer focused on getting into a university or anything of that nature. His grade point average has dropped significantly. He's obsessed with video games. He was the one to find Ushio's body on your front doorstep. The day the Kokurano boy was found dead in the library, Yugi was said to have been paying them unusual attention. Then that same night Tomoya was found dead, his neck torn out—"

"Okay, but that's not—"

"Do you truly think for even a moment that any of that is _normal_? Kasumi, you are _not_ a stupid woman—"

"You're right. And I'll tell you exactly what the hell you're doing right now," she spat, interrupting him icily. Yugi blinked wide eyes, stunned by the frosty edge to her voice. "You're trying to save your ass right now because all of your conclusions are pointing towards the impossible. A canine can't support a jaw pressure of over three thousand pounds per square inch and that's all you've found, evidence that points towards that very thing. So, now that your daughter is upset because Yugi found someone _else_ , you're pointing the finger at him. Because he wasn't with Anzu and Jonouchi and Honda that night that the damn restaurant burned down even though they claimed to be walking nearby and saw the smoke—"

"They—"

"I don't care." The statement was vicious enough to make Mazaki fall immediately silent once more. Kasumi didn't pause, speaking again without pause. "Now, Yugi found someone else and Anzu is having a little fit because we all _know_ she's the jealous type, just like her mother is. Regardless, you're trying to give her the benefit of the doubt. That's understandable. I still don't care for it but that's your business. So, you are being told that my son has been acting out by several people. I am well aware that he does not always do what he needs to. I know about his grades. I know that he skipped the second half of the day. I _know_ that he skipped that week and a half of school. I know that he's been struggling with maintaining his weight right now. And I'm _well aware_ of the fact that he leaves the house at times without explanation. What he does when he's not here is something I don't know nor do I care for as long as he comes home at the end of the day. One of the _many_ side effects for the various medications he takes for his night terrors _is_ , in fact, _depression_."

Yugi blinked, stunned, head snapping up and mouth nearly falling open as he continued listening. Was she really going to…?

"In case _you_ aren't aware, my family has a _history_ of depression on my mother's side, Mazaki. I am _well_ acquainted with it. Drugs tend to trigger it more often than not and those night terror medications make Yugi much worse than they do better where that's concerned. There are days where he cannot _physically force himself to eat_ due to it. He struggles with his weight because of it. Then he tends to space out in school and his grades will drop. He has a history of this, which you would know if you had done _half_ as much digging as you've claimed. He's got a habit of skipping school when he's depressed. Because the fresh air makes him feel better, is what he's told me numerous times. He's also got a habit of playing video games for hours on end in the middle of the night and sometimes wandering off into the woods. So your report of that is nonsense as well, because our dear neighbors don't even talk to us or know a damn thing _about_ us or Yugi in general. The fact that you even listened to them is pathetic in and of itself."

The small teen gaped now, eyes wide. He'd never heard his mom speak so nastily to someone before outside of arguments with his grandfather over his medicine and raising the doses or taking him for a checkup one too many times.

"As for his involvement with Kokurano, as I said, Yugi doesn't pay much attention when he starts to become depressed. He probably spaced out and was staring at Kokurano by accident. _That_ in and of itself is not substantial evidence towards anything, especially drug involvement with a dead boy." Yugi flinched at the words, remembering vaguely that Slifer had said Kokurano deserved nothing less than to have his insides incinerated as they were when Ra had taken control of him… "And, as for Ushio, I don't know why he wound up here. I have no idea. But you're a fool if you think for even a _moment_ that Yugi could ever have been involved in that. You've known him almost his whole life, you bastard. You know damn well that he wouldn't lay a hand on someone else, let alone a classmate. And his involvement with Takahashi Valon? You didn't do enough digging, Mazaki, because, should you have, you would have _realized_ that Yugi has met Valon at the hospital before. Valon went for a meeting with a psychiatrist when his adoptive parents thought he was depressed. Yugi and Valon may not have spent much time together at school considering how they met that day, but Valon is _hardly_ the worst person for him to spend time with. He's just a depressed seventeen-year-old who tends to have a smart mouth and doesn't care much for public opinion."

Sugoroku was breathing a little faster, barely suppressing his laughter now, Yugi knew. The small teen grinned a little, amused by his grandfather's antics, and then shook his head.

"So, is there anything _else_ you would like to have clarified before you get the fuck out of my house?" she asked in a deadly calm voice, the ice gone from her tone. He could imagine her giving him a wide, sardonic smile and a furious glare and it made Yugi nearly shiver. The amazement that came through him was harsh and warm in his blood. "No? Then feel free to leave now."

There was a single moment of hesitation. Yugi wondered if he would try to argue again. But Mazaki did not even attempt to defend his inquiries. Nor did he try his hand at justifying his suspicions of Yugi or his daughter's concern. He did not even try to take up for the slander Kasumi had thrown at his wife.

There was only the scraping of the chair legs as the piece of furniture was moved back and he got to his feet. Then his footsteps were soft and hesitant for a moment, as if he might try to argue, but there were no words spoken again. Yugi hesitated, shivering, shifting his weight back and forth uncomfortably. And then, abruptly, he disappeared from the house, the door shut softly behind him.

Yugi was trembling, he found, but he could not tell if it was with amazement or laughter or shock. He sat there, trying to analyze his emotions, when the door was knocked on slightly and he looked up with a puzzled glance. He hadn't heard anyone approaching when he'd been sitting there.

"Yeah?" he called out, hoping that he would not be shaking by the time the door opened. When the knob twisted and his mom poked her head in, he nearly shivered all over again. She looked flustered and exhausted, but not the least bit antagonistic towards him.

"Did you hear any of that?" she asked quietly, eyes flickering about his room for a moment. She glanced at the window and back to him, wondering for a moment if the snow had covered the footprints he must have formerly left those nights he'd been out in the woods rather than in the house. Because she knew he was smart enough to leave his phone there. And he had admitted to as much before…

Yugi paused for a moment, the thoughts flickering about behind his eyes. And then he nodded, perhaps the first truthful thing he'd done in months. Kasumi sighed loudly and came into the room, shutting and locking it behind her. No doubt her father would try to follow her in there if he didn't just put his ear to the door instead.

"Then I don't have to explain to you that Mazaki is probably going to target you more persistently now."

Yugi shook his head. "I kind of think my rejection of Anzu was one of the reasons he did it to begin with," he admitted quietly, tilting his head and looking at her with a slightly uncomfortable expression. "But no, I kind of figured he would come after me with more later…"

Kasumi nodded, exhaustion tugging at her insides. "And I don't have to tell you your cover story either, then," she prompted quietly.

"It's not a…" He fell quiet for a moment, then turned to face her more completely as she took a seat on the edge of the mattress, mimicking him in posture. "Look, Mom, I know that I haven't been entirely truthful these last couple of months, but it's not… I didn't commit arson. And I'm not into drugs. You weren't entirely wrong about the depression thing. I…"

Kasumi shook her head and reached over to pull on one of his bangs lightly, wrapping it around her finger thoughtfully. "No, I recognized the symptoms." She frowned at him, almost puzzled for a moment as she considered him for a long moment. "I recognized them the moment you told me Yami had apparently gone to meet his parents again…"

Her son stared at her for a moment, something in his eyes looking briefly broken before it began to rally itself and pull itself into a more unified front. But there was a brief moment in which his breathing hitched at the other boy's name, confirming a suspicion which she had been trying her hardest to ignore formerly.

"Yeah," he murmured, looking away and narrowing his eyes. "Well…it was kind of sudden…"

She almost rolled her eyes, shaking her head, but suppressed the urge with a long sigh that seemed to fold her in half in her mounting exhaustion. "Yes, it was, and I'm sorry it happened," she said with another small shake of her head. "But the problem is that you've let it impact a lot more than I thought you would."

"I…" He closed his mouth again, chewing the inside of his cheek before nodding slightly and looking away from her again. Something in his eyes was raw and fresh and tired as he shook his head as if to scatter his thoughts. "You're right. And I'm sorry."

"So what do you plan to do about it?"

Yugi didn't look at her again. "What would you do if Yami came back?"

Kasumi blinked, then narrowed her eyes. "Is that a possibility at this point? You said that you haven't seen or heard from him since he ran off that night," she reminded him in a somewhat cold tone. "So why would you think that's going to happen?"

"I just…I have a feeling it will." He blinked, staring at the wall blankly. "But what would you do if Yami came back?"

"I don't know. Why does it…? Why do you assume that I would do something about it?"

Yugi shook his head and looked at her now, blue-specked eyes tired. "I just… Can he stay here again if he comes back?" he asked quietly instead, pleading more than anything. "Is he allowed to?"

Kasumi stayed quiet for a moment, then looked at him for a long minute, staring and searching his face and wondering if perhaps she should never have let it go on for so long… "He was here before I met him, wasn't he?" Yugi blinked wide eyes, a stunned expression crossing his face. "He was…wasn't he?"

Her son opened and closed his mouth, then seemed to bristle for a split second before slowly looking away again. "I…" He ran a hand through his hair, then huffed and shook his head. "No, Mom, he wasn't. I didn't…"

The disappointment that came through her was almost crushing. "You're really going to sit there and lie to me right now?" she muttered, almost amazed by how steady her voice came out despite her exhaustion. "You just…"

Yugi shivered, then turned back to her with wide eyes before opening and closing his mouth once more. The seconds passed, then his eyes dropped away from her again. "How, um…? Did you hear us talking at some point or…?" He opened and closed his mouth again, then shook his head. "How long have you known that he was here?"

Kasumi blinked, stunned. Usually Yugi would stick by his lies if he was brave enough to tell them, just as he had when he'd faced Mazaki minutes ago. She sighed and looked away. "I didn't know for sure," she admitted. "But I had my suspicion. You ordered so much food from that restaurant. And you started spending so much more time at the house in your room instead of with your grandfather, watching movies or playing games. You don't drift out into the living room as often as you used to. You don't spend as much time with him as you used to and it's…I just supposed you had to have had him here to begin with. And then that day you came out of your room saying that you needed a new mattress and you…"

He cringed. "Yami ended up getting really sick that morning. I…he was puking everywhere and I was really freaked out and he had been trying to wake me up but he…" He shrugged. "It seemed simpler to just get a new one than try to clean it and I wasn't going to throw hum under the bus so I just…I said I puked on it."

She glanced at him again. "The way you two looked at each other…" She hesitated. "I just…I knew he had to have been in your life a lot longer than you'd said…"

Yugi shook his head. "It's only been two or three months. I honestly haven't known him for very long. I…" He shrugged unhappily and looked at the ground. "It's insane how quickly I… He's not a terrible person, Mom, and I…I didn't lie about how I met him. He needed help with some wounds. He was bleeding everywhere and I…I brought him into the house without really knowing him at all."

She shook her head, tired but furious. "You brought a _stranger_ into our house without even knowing if he's a serial killer or anything?" she snapped. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

The smaller teen watched her for a long minute. "I…I thought it was the best thing to do at the time. He needed help so I gave him help." He paused. "I don't know what happened to get him hurt as badly as he was, but he was passing through and I decided I needed to help him."

"And his parents?"

Yugi stared at her for a long time, then chuckled humorlessly and shook his head. "They're dead. I think he's been alone and taking care of himself for a long time now, Mom. But he got himself hurt pretty badly and he asked for help so I…" He turned away again. "He looked harmless, okay? And I couldn't get a malicious vibe off of him at any rate. I didn't get even the slightest hint of it…"

"So you thought that was okay to do?"

"It's over and done with," he spat, turning on her angrily now. "It's _over and done with_ , okay? He was here, I helped him recover. He was fine for a while, and then he started puking that day and I asked for a new mattress. And now he's gone. I don't know what happened that night. He wandered off. I guess maybe he felt that he had overstepped in staying here or he'd overstayed his welcome. I don't care what it was that caused him to leave. But if he comes back, I'm _going_ to let him stay here again."

She blinked, stunned by the fury in his eyes. The raw determination and power residing there made her nearly gape.

"And, if you say otherwise, I'll go with him this time. I don't care." He shook his head, the anger raw and furious and pulsating. But she could see the panic there as well, something which pushed outwardly in hideous aches. "I don't…I don't care what I have to do, okay? I'm not letting him slip away a second time. Fuck, I shouldn't have let it happen a first time."

She stared at him for a moment, for a split second wishing she could summon up enough anger to snarl at him again. But then it ebbed, fading almost entirely, and she could not afford to do much more than sigh and shake her head. It came to her right then, looking at him as he nearly trembled with adrenaline and stood his ground despite the fear, that to say otherwise would cost her much more than she could bear.

In truth, she was not the most maternal parent. She knew that. She'd often been criticized for it by other women. And she had never cared in the least for all of those judgments. She'd known that Yugi was safe at the end of the day, and most often that had truthfully been just enough to quell her fears. She'd always cared, always loved him despite his mistakes and the various times he'd lost his temper or snarled and screamed.

She was not worried about Yugi's perception of her when it came down to it. Yugi had always known she had not really wanted a kid to begin with. But she'd taken responsibility for him immediately, had decided to go through with the pregnancy to delivery. And she had, oddly, fallen in love with him the moment he was born despite her disdain towards children altogether. But, she had not been a doting mother. And she had not desired another child afterwards.

As Yugi had grown up, she'd paid him rapt attention due to his night terrors and things of that nature. But she'd stepped back as he'd requested, more in line with the idea of allowing him to remain free to do as he'd wanted rather than smother him. Her own parents had had an equal mix between the two ideals of raising her, her own mother somewhat suffocating and her father allowing her to make her own terrible mistakes and recover from them. He'd been the one to tell her stories about things long beyond what she was capable of experiencing, her mother the one to ground her while allowing her to imagine such things as much as she'd desired.

She'd been unable to find it in herself to smother him, however. She could not find it in herself to stay constantly overhead of him, heavy-handed in watching his grades and monitoring his medicine intake. She'd tried her hardest not to nag him about his medicine, to give him room to listen to her parents' stories and gather what he would from them, to let him ask for help with issues rather than thrust herself into the midst of them. She'd tried her hardest to let him grow at his own pace, while giving him something of a direction in life that she'd been sorely without growing up.

And now she stared at him, a boy who she'd raised with gossamer touches rather than an all-consuming force. And she wondered if she'd done the right thing. Kasumi looked at him and she couldn't tell for a moment if she was still looking at the same boy she'd given birth to. And yet she wondered if perhaps she'd given him just enough room to grow into this person before her, this boy who could hold his own despite how often he hid away from the difficulties. And now she considered him as what she'd never truly known him to be beforehand, someone who _could_ and _would_ hold his own for what he wanted and believed in versus what she had always assumed he would consider.

Yugi had grown into someone she didn't recognize.

Because, while she'd tried, she hadn't been there all the time to watch him.

And perhaps much of the growth she saw now, she owed more than ever to this strange red-eyed boy who'd vanished without a trace.

That handful of months Yugi was describing, he'd grown more under his influence than she'd ever thought she'd seen in him formerly.

And, as she looked at him, she knew one truth that she'd never considered before.

Yugi would not take no for an answer now.

When he'd asked her formerly what she would do, it had been to test the waters.

Because he cared, but he would not let her truly influence his decision in any manner.

If he was forced to choice, it wouldn't be her.

Kasumi knew this, because, at one point she'd been very much the same in her stance.

Yugi stared at her a moment longer, then got to his feet and headed for the door. He hesitated, then grabbed the knob, turned the lock, opened the door, and looked at the ground as he mumbled, "You can think on that. But I'm going to tell you this is the only time I'm going to say it. If he comes back and he's not welcome here, then you're never going to see me again when I follow him."

* * *

The harsh scent of copper burned in his nose. He writhed, pain surging through his side. There was something terrible and great oozing there, a wound that festered and bled. He shivered, then attempted to roll over. But the pain was excruciating. He opened his jaws, gasping for air. The pain ricocheted brilliantly from one muscle to the next. His insides writhed and burned. He gasped and his sides heaved heavily. He writhed again, then choked. For a moment there was only this ache in his side. And then he could feel it spreading. There was something almost _poisonous_ there within his blood.

He tried for his feet. His paws scrabbled. The wound flared. He struggled and his paws slipped. There was something bloody under his feet. It took him a moment to realize the existence of the sharp pain. He panted and choked once more. Then he scrambled for his paws once more. His claws were chipped, broken in half. The blood there was crusted and his toes almost swollen.

His paws were oozing, the pain sharp and terrible. He thought of glass, of broken shards in his skin. He panted again. Then he drew his head up. There was that harsh coppery smell more than ever now. His eyes were drooping, half-closed. The air before him was stuffy and cold. And the harsh scent made his stomach twist.

There was a shuffling noise.

And there was a metallic sound.

He flicked an ear.

His lips curled.

The snarl that left him was strained and exhausted.

He quivered.

His paws nearly slipped.

He gasped and choked again.

Then he shook his head.

His eyes couldn't open further, but they burned where they were exposed to the air.

And then the metallic noise seemed to sound once more. It was loud and screeching. He opened and closed his jaws. He snapped his teeth. He snarled. He quivered again. He paced a step back. He pricked his ears forward. The screeching grew louder. That shuffling became immense.

It sounded almost like footsteps.

And then it became a blinding flash of movement and noise. The pain was vicious and sharp. The scream that left him was aching and booming. The sound bounced off the walls. The wolf lost his footing. He snapped his teeth, struggling for his teeth. Pain came through his throat. It came from his ear. It came from his hips. It came from his sides.

Blood soaked his teeth. He bit and ravaged.

 _He_ was bitten and ravaged.

The screaming grew louder, then tapered off.

The pain was immense.

The answering noises were almost squeals of delight and anger.

Blood dripped to the floor.

Blood filled his throat.

His teeth ached.

His tongue was soaked.

He gasped and bit again.

Something sharp and bristling stuck to the roof of his mouth.

His paws collapsed from beneath him.

A sharp hit to the side threw him.

He scrambled, snarling and spitting.

The pain came along his exposed flank.

He kicked.

He flailed.

He screamed again.

"I'm amazed he's still alive this time."

He snapped and snarled.

Jaws closed on something bristling.

There was a hot gust of air and a squeal.

He didn't release.

He was tossed back and forth, shaken violently.

Teeth dug into his side.

He snarled, keeping his grip.

But his vision was growing black around the edges.

His eyes were threatening to roll up in the back of his head.

He couldn't breathe.

The pain was too acute.

And then he writhed. His entire body thrashed and kicked. His mouth spread open wide. He let out a noise crossed between a whimper and a scream. And then he fell as if he'd been dropped. The impact winded him and his eyes snapped open. His first instinct was to kick and lash out. But there was no shuffling. The squeals were fading from his ears. His eyes were opened completely. He could see beyond the space immediately before him. He drew in a long, deep, gulping breath.

Then he trembled and scrambled to get up again.

" _Fuck_."

Yugi shook his head and gasped for air. He managed to settle back on his haunches, choking as he reached for his lamp. The adrenaline was still crashing through him. The pain pulsed through his body. His blood ached. His marrow bled. He closed his eyes tightly.

What the fuck was that?

He shivered, then glanced at his aching side. Beneath his pajamas, a shallow scratch had formed, beaded with bright red. Along his palms were scrapes like carpet burns. There were little cuts on his throat when he looked in the mirror a few minutes later. His nails had become chipped and flattened in certain parts. And there was a residual sting each time he moved his fingers.

Yugi eyed the marks on his skin for a moment. Then he looked away again, turning the light off once more. It was still so late. He could feel it in his bones. It was only about three in the morning, perhaps a little later. The small teen looked out the window for a moment. A run wouldn't be a bad idea. If he changed, he could lose some of his worries. He could…

He could outrun them.

The blue-violet-eyed teen dressed himself, then grabbed his backpack and dumped its contents on the floor. Quickly he moved over the window sill, got out on the snow caking the roof, shut the window almost completely, and then stepped forward and jumped off the edge. He wondered if his neighbors noticed him now, but it was not enough to make him stop. Yugi hurried for the woods, barely keeping his hold on the bag in his hand.

When he was into the trees and could no longer see either house, he forced the Change once more. The action caused his stomach to empty itself of bright yellow and orange bile. And his belly ached and sloshed painfully as he shook himself out. He opened and closed his jaws, breathing in deeply, and then turned and trotted forward deeper into the trees. The light was almost blinding where it touched the snow and the shadows were deep black like open chasms or a fractured gaping abyss.

Yugi hurried forward, about to look for perhaps something to chase when a noise made him spin around. He snapped his jaws, bristling, and then faltered in shock. _Marik_? he muttered, eyes wide and bewildered. He blinked and looked around, wondering if perhaps there were others with him. But the gray and tan wolf seemed to be alone as usual. He flicked an ear, turning back when the other remained silent for the moment. _What are you doing here_?

The other wolf wagged his tail, nearly touching his chin to the snow with how far he lowered his head. _I was going to go hunting but then I heard you in the woods and so I came to ask if you wanted to come with,_ he explained.

The white wolf blinked, startled. Then he glanced over his shoulder and around again. Why would Marik hunt on his own like that? Hadn't he told _each_ of them that they were not allowed to do so without at least one other wolf to join them? They were supposed to have a buddy system, to ensure that no one wound up worse off than Miyiko or Pattie had…

 _You're alone_?

 _Not anymore_.

Yugi blinked, annoyed at the response. Then he glanced about them again with a flick of his ear. _What were you looking to hunt_? he asked quietly instead of spitting at him in frustration as had been his first instinct.

 _Anything I can find. I'm hungry._

The white wolf thought to tell him otherwise. It was not his first impulse to hunt. He had wanted simply to run rather than kill. The thought made his fur shudder for a split second. Then he shook it off, flicking an ear again. Maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to take the time to do so…

 _All right, let's go._

It did not take long for Yugi to scent a rabbit in which Marik gave chase gleefully across the snow. The white wolf trotted instead of sprinting, not caring in the least if it should be caught or not. Lazily he paced about, ears flicking, eyes moving about the shadows of the forest. Marik was all but gone from his sight before Yugi even bothered to look for him again. There was a small, sharp cry of a rabbit being killed. He didn't slow himself, nor did he speed up.

Marik looked up as he approached, mouth bloodied and eyes full of satisfaction. _Do you want any_? he asked curiously, watching him with those same proud eyes. Yugi shook his head as he got closer, then took a seat and flicked his ears. _Are you sure_? _Rabbit is_ so _good_.

The white wolf remembered the sweet taste in his mouth and almost salivated before shaking his head again. He thought briefly of how much Yami had loved them, how often he had eaten them over others. He thought of the way the black wolf had pinned them that night, just caught them and released them and then allowed them to run free again. He thought of it and his stomach coiled as he turned to Marik.

 _I do not want any._ He watched him more closely. _What did you have against Yami_?

The gray and tan wolf paused from taking a large bite of his prey, then turned to him with darkened eyes. The very mention of the black wolf's name had made him all but snarl, Yugi noted. _Aside from his status as a traitor_? he spat. He bristled slightly, then turned away and began to dig into his meal. _He was weak._

Yugi considered him for a moment. _Why do you say that_?

 _He has no idea how to lead an army. Nor does he have any consideration for others as a pack. He used us and then he ran when our alpha realized he was not who he pretended to be._ Marik lay down, ravenously tucking further into his meal. He did not so much as glance at Yugi as he spoke. The white wolf thought momentarily of the way he had formerly spoken to him, threatening his life should he say something derogatory about Yami once more. _And I do not believe he could have played the role of the beta very well for any length of time. Obelisk is a much better fit. He knows what war means. And he has the best interests of the pack at heart, does he not_? _Not only that, but he also cares enough to pay us more attention than the traitor ever did._

Yugi flicked an ear. _And what are your grounds for calling him a traitor_? he questioned quietly. _Just because he pretended to be me_?

 _That and his behavior towards you and us as well. He treats us all as inferior._

 _He's never treated me in such a way._

 _He looks at you as if you are unworthy of his presence._

 _He's never told me any such thing._

 _He does not have to speak the words. It is very clear when you look at his face._

He flicked an ear. Then Yami must have had two faces, because his mom and Anzu had both claimed he looked at him in a way that spoke more words than even his voice could. And Yugi was not in the least inclined to believe otherwise.

 _Well, then I am sorry he gives you that impression._ Yugi watched him for a moment, eyes cold in the moonlight, and Marik paused to look at him with something almost nervous within his eyes. _But you're wrong. And I think it's pitiful of you to pass judgment on him when you know nothing of him to begin with. I did not bite a wolf too arrogant to know his place within a hierarchy._

Marik blinked wide eyes, then flattened his ears against his skull angrily, growling, _I know nothing about him_? _I saw him amongst the pack and he was a lazy, condescending creature that greedily accepted our pack and its offerings and did nothing to aid any of us. And yet I know nothing of him_? _Perhaps you are under the illusion of his friendship and loyalty, but I saw him and I knew him before now. Perhaps he changed in order to make you think he was worthy of remaining alive and within your graces, but—_

Yugi snapped his jaws, nearly catching his throat. _Enough, Marik. Leave it alone. He is my beta. And when he returns, I shall have Obelisk step back once more and he will take his place as my second-in-command as he was always meant to._

The gray wolf shook his head, voice bitter and angry. If _he should come back, then I'm sure he'll be as useless now as he was then,_ he snapped, eating the last bite of his rabbit and ignoring Yugi's aggressive expression.

The white wolf blinked. _It is not a matter of if, but_ when.

Marik snorted and looked up at him now, locking eyes with him in his state of anger. _And where do you suppose he is right now, Yugi_? _Do you think he's helping to further you and get more help for the war_? _Or do you think he is simply in hiding among others_? _He could be with the hellhounds for all we know, telling them secrets and revealing your identity. And then what shall we do_?

The lighter wolf blinked again, then snorted loudly. _Yami would never betray me, Marik. And I will not allow you to continue to insinuate such things,_ he growled, facing him with hardened eyes. _Speak of such things to another wolf within my pack and I will rip your throat out, do you understand me_?

The other wolf stared at him, eyes furious and burning. For a long minute and a half, their gazes locked and his stomach growling, Marik glared at him before lowering his eyes and facing the snow. He was breathing harder than he had been before, his sides quivering with his anger, and then finally he nodded, snapping, _I understand._


	51. Rearrangements

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day**

 **Chapter Warnings: Wound Cleaning, Mentions of Physical Abuse, Mentions of Alcohol, Mentions of Homosexuality, Dead Animal, Attempted Murder, Near Drowning, Hints of Hypothermia**

 **Guys, just going to throw this out there. If there is EVER a time when you have to sterilize something in preparation of using it to remove something from your flesh, PLEASE clean it more than what Yugi does in this chapter.**

 **Hot water from the tap does NOT help sterilize things like that.**

 **Also, what happens at the end of the chapter gets explained later. You'll see what I mean when it gets to around chapter 60 or so I think? It might be later than that so don't quote me.**

Chapter LI: Rearrangements

 _Work Log Entry XLVII: March, 2005_

 _March 11_

 _He rarely speaks but he does sometimes put in an effort. He only says things that he knows will not get him in trouble. He is far smarter than anyone gives him credit for._

 _March 22_

 _He will not speak in front of the boss. I am unsure of whether to consider this an intelligent decision or the stupidest one he could ever hope to make._

 _March 28_

 _The boss is losing patience with the wolf's games._

Yugi blinked at the sound of the door being knocked on. He startled, leaning against the dresser he'd been rearranging. He was tired physically but his mind would not stop racing and so he could not fall asleep. It was so late that he'd felt sick doing this very thing at such an hour, but his heart was in his throat and he'd feared changing from the pure stress of the situation. And so he'd begun rearranging his room. But now he paused, shivering.

The noise was soft when it repeated itself. Yugi blinked, hissing under his breath, then shifted the dresser back towards its original spot. He wondered if this unexpected guest was a wolf and it made his mouth water with disbelief and confusion. If they had known where he was, where he lived, why had they never come to all but whisk him away? Yami had warned him that they might potentially reach out to attack and kill his family to manipulate him into the belief that the pack was all he needed.

Yugi glanced towards his window, then shrugged such a thought off. If they were truly a wolf, he would kill them where they stood if they considered for even a moment that he might allow them near his family.

He trotted down the stairs with such speed that he nearly snarled as he reached the last step. The tiles were cold where his socked feet touched them and he wondered at the realization he had not thought to grab his shoes. He should have done so long before he'd come all this way. But he shook this shock off and approached the door.

The window was only slightly obscured by a shadow, but the floor was warped with the shape of it. He considered that for a moment, eyes narrowing, and then shook his head as he approached. He recognized it somewhere vaguely in the back of his mind. His stomach knotted and his eyes widened for a moment as clarity struck him.

He unlocked and opened the door, bewildered. "Jonouchi, what…?" Yugi immediately fell silent when he saw the way his friend was slouched, the cut on his forehead bright red and still bleeding. He considered it for only a moment, then stepped aside to allow him room to come in.

Yugi felt sick as he locked the door behind the blond. "My mom and grandpa are asleep, so you can just sleep in my bed with me instead of having to grab the mat," he muttered, furrowing his brows in consideration. It was abruptly clear to him how foolish changing the layout of his room was now. Had he not done so, he would have had enough room for Jonouchi to sleep on the mat instead. The small teen sighed and shook his head. "I've got a couple of first aid kits in my room, so I'll just…disinfect and then we can talk or just go to sleep if you want."

The small teen hesitated for a moment, then shrugged it off. He bolted the door, chain sliding into place a second later. Then he led the way up the staircase as Jonouchi closed the bottom door behind them and followed quickly. They were almost as quiet as ghosts as the blond kicked his shoes off and put them beside Yugi's.

"Here, come on," he commented softly, holding open the door to his room for Jonouchi to follow. The blond didn't raise his head, acting as ashamed as he had the first time he had done this very thing. Yugi licked his lips and moved to the bed, crouching down to dig for the kit beneath.

"You changed up your room…"

Yugi felt his knuckles straining as he clutched the kit tightly in his hands. He held it close to his chest, a somewhat defensive gesture he always displayed when he was unnerved or bordering a precipice towards depression. This time he drummed his fingers, because thoughts of Yami had pushed forward towards his subconscious and he was terribly aware of just how much Jonouchi looked like him at that moment, helpless and bleeding and hesitant.

"Yeah. I figured I needed a change." He searched bright brown eyes and offered him a weak smile. "I got pretty tired of my old layout."

"Um…" Jonouchi opened his mouth, then shut it again. Something unspoken passed between them, a warning clear in the smaller teen's brilliant eyes when they met his own. He would not ask about Yami and his obvious disappearance and Yugi would not ask for the specifics of what seemed an unusually harsh physical attack from his father. "Well, it looks a lot smaller like this than it did before."

"Yeah, I realized that after I did it." He blinked and then looked the kit over. When he gestured vaguely with a jerk of his head, the blond quickly obeyed and took a seat there to allow him the ability to scrutinize the wound more thoroughly for the sake of clarity of its depth. The small teen watched him for a moment, eyes flickering about his, then snapped the kit open to look through the contents. "I don't know if you'll need stitches or not."

Jonouchi shrugged haphazardly. "It wouldn't be the first time," he dismissed, as Yugi knew he would. "But I don't think it's that bad."

Yugi didn't bother to respond to that. Instead he grabbed a couple thinner piece of gauze and some disinfectant. It was mindless as he peeled it out of the small kit and looked it over, a small sense of needless dread coloring his insides. He pulled lightly on the edges of the gauze, instinctively wondering at the possibility of infection before he forced such thought away again. He had to remind himself yet again that it was _not_ Yami whose wounds he was cleaning.

"What made you, uh…do your room like this?" Jonouchi asked, struggling to find some common ground. Yugi blinked, then raised his head and considered him for a moment. He glanced around the room, more than slightly flustered as he considered. He'd haphazardly all but thrown his furniture around. The nightstand was the only thing still in place beside the bed. But the desk was only inches from the window, in front of it like some kind of metal trap before the sill. The small television had been deposited closer to the bed. The dresser had been moved back towards the entrance of the closet where it had originally been. The chest of drawers was near the wall adjacent the door. They were terrible placements, but Yugi had simply wanted to move rather than truly rearrange things. But Jonouchi was not wrong; the room looked incredibly small and claustrophobic now, as if to mirror the raw pain beneath his skin.

"I was restless," he said dismissively. But there was an edge to his voice now that made Jonouchi stiffen mildly. The small teen shrugged it off and came over to his side. "Anyways, hold still, okay?"

Jonouchi nodded as Yugi pressed closer still, then reached out to turn his chin. The blond watched him with wide eyes, startled by the way the small teen seemed mildly distracted in front of him. For a moment he looked ready to reach out and touch him, then paused.

"Shit, hold on a minute," he mumbled, moving past him altogether and heading for the bathroom. Jonouchi heard the water turn on as he washed his hands and glanced about the room again.

Yugi had said he had gotten restless? This looked more like he'd lost his temper and decided to simply lash out in a way that wouldn't hurt anyone. He glanced around again, wondering at the way the room seemed so incredibly small and empty now. He half-expected, however, to look another direction and find Yami standing there.

The way Yugi had spoken about him had made it rather obvious that Yami had been living within his home with him. The thought was only mildly startling.

Yugi had a heart of gold. If there was any reason to help someone in a manner like that, he would do it without a second thought. He had housed Jonouchi for a few days, after all. He'd argued with his mom and grandpa and persuaded his grandpa to his side before his mom grew too exasperated to fight any longer. He could easily see Yugi doing the same with Yami…

And if he had kept him in the house before, did that mean Yami was possibly still there? Did that mean he was hiding somewhere?

"Yami?" he mumbled under his breath, not sure whether he expected an answer or for the wolf to simply appear or what. But he jumped several feet when Yugi came to his side again.

"I wasn't lying when I said he left," the small teen commented in a voice that was meant to be casual but sounded incredibly dead and lacking. But the phrasing itself made Jonouchi pause, head turning with wide eyes. Yugi was watching him with an exhausted expression, as if the life had been drained from his being at the mention of his name. "I haven't seen him since he…ran off."

The blond blinked and searched his face, watching his expression and taking note for the first time of the darker bags along the bottom of his eyes and the disheveled state of his hair. Yugi looked as if he had not slept properly in days, something he'd noticed at school before but had not pointed out nor focused on entirely.

"I'm, uh, sorry," the blond muttered, unsure of what else to say. He felt stupid even trying to offer condolences like this, but Yugi mere blinked at him. In an instant the smaller teen shook his head and offered him a smile that was pained around the edges.

"It had to happen some day," he said somewhat dismissively. The tone startled the taller teen who blinked in surprise at the casual statement. "Besides, I'm sure he'll be back at some point."

"Did you guys fight or…?"

Yugi was quiet for a moment, as statuesque as Jonouchi had ever seen him. Then his eyes flickered and glinted and he shook his head slowly, mumbling, "You can say that, in a way." He shrugged. "It doesn't matter. Yami will come back eventually."

"How can you be so sure of that?"

The smaller teen glanced at him around picking at the gauze again. "Why wouldn't I be?" he asked instead, though there was a slight bite to his words now. "He, um, contacted me recently to say he'll be coming back soon."

Jonouchi blinked. Yugi looked as if he were struggling just to think straight for a moment there. He shook his head. "Oh, that's good, right?"

"If the circumstances were better, it'd be a lot more reassuring, I guess," he dismissed again. Yugi shook his head and looked at one of the spray bottles, searching the label before nodding and turning back to him. "Keep your head up like this. I'm going to spray the wound with some water and then clean it."

"Okay, sure."

What else was there really to say?

Jonouchi tried to hold still but the cold water startled him and when he flinched, Yugi caught his chin with his hand and held it there. The tired expression had cleared considerably, replaced with concern as he looked the blond over. "It just surprised me," he muttered, feeling small and stupider than ever. But his friend merely blinked, smiling mildly in relief, and sprayed a second time.

"I would have you run your head under the faucet but I don't think it'd fit in my bathroom sink," he commented playfully. Jonouchi rolled his eyes and laughed sardonically as Yugi snickered and wiped at the cut. He flinched, hissing, and almost reached out to push him away. "Sorry, I didn't mean to press too hard."

"You didn't. It's just super sensitive."

Yugi paused in wiping at the wound to look it over for a moment. His movements stilled entirely, however, and he searched Jonouchi's face for a few seconds before shaking his head slowly. The wound was so sensitive because it was incredibly inflamed and smelled of alcohol.

"I didn't notice the glass," the small teen answered in a quiet voice. He shook his head slightly, frowning noticeably, and then considered for a moment using his nails. He wished the lighting wasn't so dim where his lamp cast mild illumination, and he'd blown out the yellow bulb to replace it with a weaker white one. He'd need to invest in better ones… "I need to go get some tweezers."

Jonouchi cringed. "It's that bad?"

Yugi blinked, watching him for a moment before stopping and shaking his head. "I don't think it'd be smart to do it out here," he mumbled. "We'll do this in the bathroom."

The blond followed him faithfully but his stomach was knotted uncomfortably. The smaller teen led him into the smaller room, flipped the light switch, dropped the lid of the toilet, and gestured for him to take a seat there. Jonouchi swallowed hard, glancing at himself in the mirror, and felt mildly sick at the sight to greet him there. He'd have to ask Anzu for makeup to cover the bruises…

Yugi dug through some drawers to pull out another first aid kit, then a pair of tweezers that he set on the counter. "The lighting out there was really bad," he commented quietly.

"I thought you guys could like…see in the dark and all that?"

His friend grinned wryly. "We can, but I'm not willing to use my eyes to substitute for bad lighting and possibly end up making it worse." He paused, searching Jonouchi's face for a few moments. "I didn't even notice the glass before I touched it."

"Well, that's because it looks like it's pretty deep in there."

Yugi nodded and twisted the hot water on, grabbing the tweezers from beside the kit. "It is, but I still should have noticed it beforehand." He shrugged mildly as the water began to heat. "Besides, I guess I wasn't…paying as much attention as I should have."

Jonouchi watched his face for a moment. He looked upset, but not to the point of stopping what he'd planned to do in the first place. And Yugi was not one to be incredibly intimidated, though at times he would become too flustered to continue.

"It's okay."

Yugi blinked, turning to him as the water began to steam. The bite of heat against his fingertips was mildly soothing even as it made his nerves dance with pain. He turned the knob again, then looked back at his tweezers. "Usually I'd clean these better, but I don't want the glass to stay there longer than necessary…"

Jonouchi nodded. He went to reach up for his hair, to run his fingers through the long strands, but stopped himself at the last moment. The blond looked towards Yugi again, clenching his fingers upon his thighs and swallowing hard. "It's fine, don't worry about it."

He turned his head and considered him for a moment. Then he grabbed another piece of gauze and came over to him. "Hold still, okay?" Yugi wasn't worried about the idea of having to hold Jonouchi's face in place. The blond was a lot tougher than most were really willing to admit. But the smaller teen had grown used to such little recoil or refusal from Yami that it was somehow unnerving to face Jonouchi now and attempt to help clean such a wound.

"Sure thing."

Yugi shook the tweezers out to dry them somewhat and looked the wound over. When he reached up with the gauze pad, he pulled his thumb and forefinger apart to allow him room to see more of the glass. It was clear and glittering and the small teen picked at the shards closest to the gauze. The blood was instant as he pulled the first piece away, dropping it away into the waste-bin beside Jonouchi. The smaller teen pressed the gauze lightly into the wound.

The glass was smaller than he'd initially feared, none of it longer than his fingernails. He relaxed as he realized this. The first time Jonouchi had come to his house late at night like this, hurt due to his dad's abusive drinking, he'd had a piece in his arm the length of his own finger. Yugi had been forced to suture it, clean it twice weekly, and redo it for months. The scar was still visible on the inside of his arm, nearest his elbow.

"That wasn't as bad as I thought it would be." He hesitated. "But this is definitely going to need stitches…"

"Yeah, I kind of figured."

Yugi nodded slightly and searched his face for a moment. Then he leaned forward and applied a bit more pressure to the gauze in his hand. "Are you all right? Dizzy or anything?" he inquired.

Jonouchi rolled his eyes and grinned wryly. "I lost more blood getting into fights in middle school."

The smaller teen nodded and tilted his head slightly to the side. "Good," he commented softly. He put the tweezers aside and lifted the gauze to look the wound over. It was not bleeding aside from a few pinpricks of red against the gouge of bright pink. "Stay still again."

Jonouchi hummed dismissively as the small teen picked through his kit for suture material. He thought he could hear him mumbling about the sizes but his voice was so low that the blond could not be entirely sure.

Then Yugi began humming quietly, threading and knotting some suture along the needle he'd need. The small teen pulled it taut, then looked the needle over more pointedly. Easily he turned back to the blond even as his other hand moved for another pad of gauze.

It was odd how easily Yugi went to work this time as the small teen was usually at least mildly self-conscious of such things. When he worked with sutures he usually got somewhat nervous, if only because he feared hurting his patient. And so the way Yugi simply hummed again and began to pull the skin together above his eyebrow made Jonouchi blink in surprise.

"Uncomfortable?"

"Should I be?"

"I don't think I've ever had to stitch so close to your eye before," the smaller boy explained, narrowing his eyes slightly with concentration. Then he punctured his skin lightly with the sutures. He pulled the needle taut, stitching along his skin. Jonouchi cringed and flinched only where his hands were involved. He clenched his hands on his thighs and hissed loudly as Yugi continued. "And you're sure you're okay?"

"Okay? Yeah, I'm fine." He resisted the urge to flinch bodily. "It kind of burns though."

Yugi nodded. "I know. I'm sorry." He snipped the suture and knotted the end once more. "But it's over now."

Jonouchi didn't bother to look at himself in the mirror and Yugi ignored this. He dabbed at the former gaping cut with the fresh sheet of gauze and applied the smallest amount of pressure to stifle what little bleeding remained.

"You should be all set for the night." He narrowed his eyes faintly and shook his head before sighing loudly and dropping the gauze and snipped suture away into the trash. Then he ran the tweezers under the hot water again, shaking them out again a moment later and dropping them aside on the counter. Easily he closed the kit and washed his hands once more. "Come on."

Jonouchi got to his feet after a moment, then followed him back to the bed. "Are you sure you don't want to grab the mat—?"

"You plan to molest me in your sleep?" Yugi asked wryly, turning to him with a brow raised. The blond gave him an annoyed, flustered look. "No? Good. Then come on. I'm not worried about it."

* * *

"How's your temple?"

Jonouchi blinked wide eyes and rolled over to face the other teen. But Yugi was on his phone, sitting up with his back to him. It reminded him almost of movies that had that morning after scene and it made his stomach roll mildly. But he was relieved to remember that Yugi hardly had feelings for him like that, despite the fact that Jonouchi suspected the he had fallen for Yami. The fact that he was gay did not make Jonouchi nervous, but the idea of being the object of someone's affection when they _were_ kind of unnerved him. It boiled down to the fact that he did not know how to deal with the idea of telling someone else that he didn't like them in turn.

"Uh, I think it's fine. It doesn't hurt." Jonouchi reached up to touch it and hissed, but the pain was mild where it'd been rather excruciating the night before. Yugi turned around at the sound, studying him pointedly, and then relaxed when he saw that it was self-inflicted rather than anything else. "Thanks."

"That's what friends are for," he answered easily. He searched his face and studied his expression for a moment. Then he smiled faintly and turned away again. His phone was slipped into his jeans pocket and he stretched his arms over his head with a yawn. "Think you'll be okay at school?"

"You're not coming?"

Yugi looked at him curiously. "I had something I was planning to do," he admitted quietly, and something about the way his eyes darkened made Jonouchi wonder if it had to do with Yami. "But I can always come in late, I guess."

"If you want." Jonouchi shrugged slightly and Yugi stretched his arms out again lazily. His eyes flickered across the blond's face. "But dude, can I ask you something?"

The small teen blinked, clearly startled by the hesitant question. "Of course. What's up?"

The taller boy opened and closed his mouth twice, then fell immediately quiet once more. He narrowed his eyes faintly, struggling with the task of finding the words necessary to ask, and then shook his head. He reached up and scratched at the nape of his neck as anxiety clawed at his insides.

"It's about Yami."

Yugi was watching him more keenly now. His eyes had grown sharper and his expression was mildly darker than usual. "Go ahead," he urged, curious but somewhat alarmed as well. "What did you want to ask?"

"I just wanted to know something about the whole…" The blond struggled for a moment, then he looked up and his eyes were uncomfortable and confused and curious. "You used to be really into Anzu."

Yugi blinked at the mention of the brunette's name. Then he considered the words Jonouchi couldn't figure out how to say and then narrowed his eyes slightly.

"I'm attracted to him as a person, not because he's a guy," he finally answered, the words odd and sticky in his throat. He drew in a deep breath, then shook his head. "I'm not sure you can call me gay if that's what you were wondering. He's really the only guy that I like. Just like I liked Anzu for her personality instead of because she has big boobs or wider hips. I was caught on her for years, remember? Even when you told me to think about other girls instead. And it's pretty…similar to how I feel about Yami."

Jonouchi tilted his head curiously. "You know, it'd be a lot easier to understand if you just said you liked dick instead."

Yugi burst out laughing. "It would be, wouldn't it?" he snorted, grinning at him with that usual friendly warmth in his eyes. "But it's not that easy. It's a little bit more complicated than that."

"Let me just say I'm really glad I'm not you as far as that goes."

The small teen rolled his eyes. "You should also be glad you're not a werewolf," he answered dismissively. "It's not as much fun as they say it is in books and movies."

The blond snickered. "I'm really kind of glad about that too." He paused and started to get up, stretching as well. He could already tell his pants had cast red marks across his skin where he'd slept on them so heavily. "But seriously, Yugi, I just wanted to say if Yami makes you happy then…"

The small teen blinked. "I didn't truly think it would do much to bother you," he answered with a shrug. "I know it's kind of awkward that I suddenly have feelings for another guy, but I didn't see it being enough of an issue to really upset you."

"No, not at all." The blond paused. "And I'm sure Anzu will eventually move past it too. And Honda will recover from his shock at some point."

Yugi burst out laughing, grinning at him with bright eyes. "Yeah he was pretty nervous at first," he laughed in delight. "But he didn't make a big deal of it or anything. And I think he's been more concerned about if he needs to help support Anzu."

"Well they _have_ always gotten along for the most part." Jonouchi shrugged. "I wouldn't be surprised if they wound up boning at some point."

Yugi was laughing but the thought shocked him and he wondered at the possibility for a moment. He'd never considered it before. But if that was what they wanted to do, he'd support them a hundred percent.

"I'd never thought of that."

"Yeah, it's kind of gross to think about, isn't it?"

"Oh please," Yugi snorted in amusement, "you're going to go home and jerk off to that thought."

Jonouchi have him a harsh glowering look. "Seriously, Yugi? You little shit."

The small teen grinned at him happily. "It's not my fault that I know your habits so well. You shouldn't have broadcasted them all the time, Jonouchi!"

"You and Honda, I swear."

"You know, normally when two people call you out on your shit, it might mean that you have a problem." He flashed him a cheeky grin, winking, and then turned to face him more completely. "Come by later tonight so I can look at that again. I want to make sure nothing happens to it in the meantime."

* * *

Yugi truly wished that the river's thick ice might break away beneath him now as he stood atop it. But, as it had before, it held firm beneath him now. And, just as then, he could not figure out how the ice had ever come to break beneath his and Yami's weight as it had. And Yugi was desperate for a moment, staring down at the snow-laden surface he balanced upon, for it to crack and sweep him away. It was a whimsical idea, but he was hopeful that at some point it might carry him to the same spot Yami had been swept to.

It was exhausting to him how much he could hear the water beneath this large layer of ice under his sneakers. Yet it did not have the slightest weakness beneath his weight and it almost winded him to think such a thing. Because it was that damn bullet that had truly broken the ice, wasn't it? _That_ had been the thing to sweep them both beneath the water. And Yugi had not once truly considered that before.

He wondered if perhaps he should try again to follow the way of the river and see if he could find something—anything—that might truly lead him to understand where Yami might have wound up. The thought of traversing the banks once more was exhausting, however. It was miles upon miles of movement and he was tired to simply consider it altogether.

Yugi shook his head to dispel the thought, then looked turedly towards the trees. He had thought he'd heard a noise of some kind… They had sounded close by, whatever it was that had produced the sound…

He searched the trees directly near him. Some of the wolves had to be nearby, he knew, but he had not considered the idea that some of them might be so close. It seemed foolish, in retrospect, that he had not thought to consider such a thing before. And he knew that they could sense him whenever he was nearby. He knew that they recognized him above anyone else within the woods.

It was bewildering to him that this could be a reality of any kind. But he understood the primary principle. Just as he could potentially know them by their scents, they knew him by whatever sense it was they used to identify him. He had not truthfully tried to learn more about this technique. It made him more nervous than he cared to admit, after all.

And so he'd shunned it for the most part.

But now he wondered and reconsidered. Because perhaps it would be a good idea to know and understand…

But the longer he looked the less likely he seemed to find the source. And, though he was not sure why, something fearful came through him. He shivered, stomach knotting, and turned to make his way from the woods.

He doubted it would be a good idea to remain there, but he would not possibly lead them to his home either. So, without a second thought, he began to backtrack and turn another direction, heading towards where the festival had been held that year. It was a rather safe distance of which he did not have to further backtrack and hide his trail any longer.

He headed out more comfortably knowing this, relieved to have put distance between himself and the house if someone were to be following him. Briefly he thought of burned flesh and it made his skin crawl to consider the vague idea that perhaps Fuwa might still be alive. But he pushed this thought away, stepping around the small cavern he'd once hidden in with the idea that he might perhaps change days prior to the festival.

He shivered.

Yami had been there that day, within the woods and just as startled by him to see the other boy. The thought unnerved him mildly but he shook it off again quickly. Yami had been just as shocked as he was to see another person within the woods. But Yami had fled and Yugi had not seen him again until the night of the festival and then when he'd taken that seat on his doorstep.

He had not known then that he'd been the one there. But he'd come to realize it recently. The truth of it had mildly shocked him, but he had not bothered to speak to Yami about it before…

He was near the arcade before he spun around, realizing now that he recognized the sound of the steps behind him. For the briefest of moments he almost hoped he was wrong, that the person behind him was someone else entirely.

But his instincts had not deceived him. Behind him, appearing almost startled by his sudden reaction, was a familiar platinum blond with lavender purple eyes. Yugi blinked twice, then narrowed his eyes into slits as he considered the other male for a moment.

"And should I ask why you just followed me?"

"Well, you did offer a tour of the city," the other commented in a quiet tone, his eyes slightly wide as he looked Yugi over. He looked somewhat abashed and sheepish as he reached up to scratch at the back of his head. "And I just wanted to ask you if you would give me the tour today or…sometime this week."

"You just followed me through the woods to ask me for a tour of Domino?" he muttered before narrowing his eyes and sighing loudly. There was no harm in doing that. Jonouchi would be meeting up at his house only after he spent time with the others. Then he'd check the sutures and perhaps convince the blond to stay the night. After all, the gods only knew how it was that his dad might react…

"You looked as if you were in a hurry so I… I just didn't want to scare you or anything. I figured when we got here, I would ask." He paused. "But it's fine if you don't want to. I won't hold it against you. You can always give me the tour another time."

Yugi wondered if maybe being wolves so often made the pack so awkward at times. Maybe that was why Marik seemed so incredibly estranged. Yami had been awkward at times as well, so perhaps it was not a faulty conclusion to fall upon.

"No, no, it's fine, Marik," he answered with a shrug. "It doesn't matter. I was just surprised, that's all. But yeah, you're right. I did promise you a tour. And now really wouldn't be a bad time to do it."

"Are you sure? I really don't want you to feel obligated to—"

"I'm sure. It's fine. I don't have anything else to do right now anyways since I decided to skip school today." Yugi shrugged and turned away, glancing around a couple of times and narrowing his eyes. "Where did you want to go first? Anywhere in particular?"

"I'd be honored to go wherever you would like to."

Yugi paused visibly, startled by the statement, and then realization came to him. He turned his head, looking at Marik once more. It had not occurred to him that he might treat him as Atem even in the city rather than the woods…

"Yeah, uh, about that… Don't phrase anything like that in front of other people. I don't go around advertising myself here."

Marik nodded immediately. "Right. I'm sorry."

"No harm no foul." Yugi wondered where they saying came from, but he supposed it didn't truly matter to begin with. The fact remained that as long as Marik understood and didn't say anything to allude to who he really was, it was fine. But he needed to make sure that the other wolf truly wouldn't say anything too foolish to recover from.

"You haven't been anywhere in Domino? I mean, besides that day that you saw us at the school?" he prompted, stuffing his hands into his pockets. His phone was smooth against his fingers. "That's the furthest you've ever ventured?"

"We try not to come out of the mountains for fear of being seen."

"You still came though?"

"The few times I have come it was in relation to you." Marik paused, watching as the small teen continued looking around them. "It was necessary for my appearance here. If not for that I would never have even considered it."

"Right, your mom wouldn't have wanted that."

"My mom?" The way he repeated the phrase made it sound as if it were a sin to suggest even the slightest of a maternal figure in his life. He sounded almost _disgusted_. "I didn't know my mom."

"I meant the alpha, Annie." Yugi didn't bother to look at him now. Something about the way the blond had reacted was enough to put him on edge. "Sorry. I forgot that she isn't related to everyone in the pack."

"Not for lack of trying, I'm sure."

The small teen ignored the bitter response, starting to walk again. "I don't think I want to go inside anywhere right now. But I'll show you and give you highlights of the buildings. How about that?"

"Whatever you feel is acceptable."

Yugi rolled his eyes. "Okay, so come on then."

Marik blinked and immediately followed. The path they walked was rather straightforward, Yugi never quite veering away from what was readily there to see. He would point at the buildings, explaining in mild detail what each was and what purpose they served. He spoke about the arcade with more fondness than he did the others but he got a bitter note in his tone when he explained the library. Then he continued on about the park, where Marik was surprised to find that the entire field of snow smelled more of hellhounds than anything else.

It was only as Yugi mentioned a café and Marik truly caught the scent of hellhound in more abundance that the small teen seemed to grow somewhat distant from him. For the first time he sounded distracted even as he explained what the café was, how they served most drinks and a few small desserts and snacks. Then he fell silent for a moment, voice drifting after the mention of a drink called hot chocolate.

Marik watched him with more interest now as Yugi tried to recover from whatever emotions he'd been formerly swamped beneath. The reaction was odd for the small teen. Or so he supposed it was. Because Yugi seemed oddly ashamed of the way he was unable to continue his words.

"You know what? I think I need to go home," Yugi said abruptly. His voice was tight, strained, and he looked visibly exhausted when he narrowed his eyes into slits. "I'm getting a headache and I don't want to be out here with that."

"Do you get bad headaches?"

"Crippling." But he was definitely more distracted than he was in physical pain. "Listen, Marik, I'll take you on the rest of the tour another time if that's what you want."

"Oh, yeah, that would be great, Atem."

He didn't respond to the name, instead nodding in dismissal. "I will see you another time." He ignored Marik's wide eyes as he glanced at him and then began to trot quickly along the sidewalk. When he got home he would take some medicine and curl up on his side.

He did not believe he would find another chance for sleep outside of medication at the moment. He did not believe for even a moment that he could rest peacefully without outside influence, either. He was exhausted but he would not let that go much further than it already had.

Marik could come up with his own reasons for why Yugi had left earlier than he might have otherwise. He could figure out what he wanted to tell himself he was so upset about on his own time. Yugi had no patience for explanation as it was.

But walking by that café Valon's adoptive parents owned and thinking about hot chocolate had made him want to be sick. And he'd been utterly exhausted the moment he had come to think for even a split second about the stupid drink at Domino Café. It was frustrating to realize that even the damn drink and its name was able to cripple him due to such memories.

But the pain had been immense and acute, surging in great and terrible waves. And it had nearly winded him as he'd stood there and waited for those few moments for his voice to cease explanation. And then he'd grown bitter, that vicious thought of _if I hadn't done that_ which led nowhere for him.

Because he had the feeling that if they had not crossed that river that night it would have only been a matter of time. He was suspicious now that the gods had dictated the occurrence of the event. And should that be correct, it would have only been a matter of time before something else came to happen.

And what if their second resort had been much worse than even the initial one? Yugi had no idea what to say or do where that was concerned. The thought itself was sickening, enough to make him dizzy as he swallowed down a couple of the pills. Lying on his side with the comforter pulled over his shoulders minutes later made him feel somehow mildly safer.

He felt almost childish at the thought, reminding himself now that the fact was he could no longer hide under blankets and stop the worst things in his life by way of ignorance. He couldn't ignore this as he had thunderstorms by way of pillow forts when he was younger. There was no waiting for the noise to die away or the rain to pass.

His entire life had become the storm. And the only way to watch it pass was by way of surrendering it to another. And that would mean he'd have to find the second Pure-Blood meant to play as Atem should he fail…

Yugi clenched his eyes shut to suppress a wave of vomit in the back of his throat. And when he shivered he wondered if it was a convulsion rather than a simple tremor. But the seconds passed and the darkness seemed to grow deeper, until it had drawn him in entirely and swallowed every sense of outward awareness he possessed.

Yugi pulled himself out of such a state only when the waxing moon was at its zenith. The small teen was alerted to the smell of something harsh and coppery and the faintest touch of cold air against his skin. Tiredly he sat up to rub at his eyes, knowing instinctively that the window was wide open. The thought made him bristle but he shrugged it off as he shook his head and tried to focus.

His eyes fell instantly on the window this time when he blinked. The snow was hideously disturbed and the blood was soft in its smears. He could barely see it against the white surface and it made him bristle further as he got to his feet. Even as he yawned, the small lycanthrope got to his feet and narrowed his eyes as he shuffled forward. The sound outside was that of the usual cars passing by further down the street. It did not sound even slightly as if someone were close, however.

Yugi strained his hearing further, listening for as long as he could before curiosity clawed at his insides. He came to the window, hesitated only a moment, and then thrust his head out and looked about himself.

In the dark the snow was a bright shade of cobalt and gentle yellow where the streetlamp's light graced it. The small shadows beneath were pocketed with black and dark gray and the occasional speck of silver. But the blood was dark like oil stains where it had come across the slope of his roof. The small teen considered it and then the ground below. The snow was visibly disturbed there in the yard, but it was also a thousand times more noticeable for the red across its surface.

Someone had tried to climb in through the window. Or they had set this up to look incredibly like such a thing were the initial purpose of this sight before him. Yugi lowered his head, crouching and putting his hands on the window sill. He sniffed loudly, trying his hardest to catch any trace of the blood scent.

But his mind could not trace back the source of it by any means. He had never known that smell before. He had never encountered it even once. And now it made his stomach churn as he looked about the roof again. The snow was incredibly crushed up. And when he glanced over his shoulder he realized easily that no one had been brave enough to truly come inside.

Yugi blinked and narrowed eyes. Perhaps it was a prank? Perhaps it had been a hellhound looking to scare him. Or maybe it had been Valon, thinking to make him reconsider any idea of further contacting him. Or maybe it was one of the wolves. Had they gotten brave and then too scared to continue?

His stomach knotted.

It could have been Fuwa for all he knew.

The redhead had had no qualms with trying to kill him, after all. Being in front of Honda and Jonouchi and Anzu had done nothing to slow him either. He'd been prepared to simply lash out and kill him. He'd stabbed him through the hand with silver and tried to poison them with wolfsbane…

Yugi froze, his stomach coiling and rolling painfully. Jonouchi hadn't gotten to the house… The small teen hurried to grab his phone from his nightstand, surprised that he'd even had the forethought to plug it in before he'd fallen asleep. The screen flashed with a single text that Jonouchi was running a little late from the arcade but he'd be there in about thirty minutes.

That had been over eight hours ago.

Yugi shook his head and quickly hit the phone icon to dial the blond. But the ringing continued for a minute or two, then dropped away to the voicemail message of "You've reached Jonouchi Katsuya. Not who you're looking for? Call elsewhere."

He had always been good about answering his phone. Yugi shook his head and searched through his apps again. He'd registered his own and Jonouchi's phones for a GPS app for tracking. He'd done it in case Jonouchi ever got lost or anything of that nature happened. But it'd been more work getting Jonouchi to agree than it ever had Honda or Anzu, the four of them all registered to track each other should something happen.

He had a location for the three of them in seconds. Honda was at his house. Anzu was at hers. And Jonouchi was…

Jonouchi was in the middle of the woods.

Yugi stared at the GPS signal for a moment, the green pin and the picture of his friend's face. Then he looked at the top of the app's screen where the time was displayed.

It was current.

And that meant Jonouchi was at a standstill in the woods…

Yugi zoomed in, enlarging the picture frantically, and felt his stomach drop as realization came through him. His stomach churned as he recognized the spot, and he hurried to grab his shoes and escape through the window before he could think twice about it. He slid unceremoniously down the slope of the roof, through the blood on the snow, and landed with a thump in the ice crystals. He got up immediately again, dusting himself off, and hurried to move again.

He thought too late about the idea of seeing which direction the prints were pointed in the snow beneath him. But he realized only after that he was running almost exactly within the prints. But they were larger than his own sneakers and the patterns were wrong where he could only mildly decipher them.

These shoes were probably a size larger, maybe even two. But snow didn't make the best cast for prints as it was. The crushed up snow would come up with his steps and further twist and obscure them. The reality of it was well known to him, but he still wished for a moment that he could read those prints fully.

Yugi was all but shoveling through the snow where he reached the trees. The road had been easy to navigate due to the original salting done and the faint tracks left by cars that had moved through them beforehand. But the snow here was so dense that it came to his knees when he stepped too quickly forward. In an instant he'd collapsed forward, winded and shocked by the impact. The ice had rushed up so much more than he'd originally thought to consider. And he nearly fell from the force of it.

Then he looked at the way the branches above his head were so tightly locked together and his stomach ached as he again considered the snow further along the path. He did not know why he'd thought to drift so close to the trees to begin with, but he knew that he would have to make for the smaller clearings between the trunks. The sun would have touched more towards the paths between the trees rather than the shadows even the bare trunks cast. Even those faint spots of darkness had done well to allow the snow resistance to melting.

Yugi glanced up at the moon, the clouds that were gathering. Then he turned and hurried for the snow that he could tell instantly was hardened and crunchier due to freezing again. He hurried a little faster, struggling, but could not move much quicker than he'd originally assumed himself able to begin with.

He jumped a fallen log, then skid across the snow for a moment and barreled head over heels. The impact made his head spin as he landed hard. He was panting, winded, and his legs ached as he scrambled for his feet once more. The movement made him stumble a second time. Something was attached to his jeans, tugging on them.

Yugi blinked, lowering his eyes. And then he froze, stomach knotting. Caught in the fabric of his jeans was a sight he had not expected to find. Long, flat claws that hooked towards the end had caught themselves there. And from there was a large flat paw and legs that were too long and thick to be canine. His head was spinning as he looked at it, at first unable to recognize it.

But the body was mangled so hideously mangled he was amazed he could identify it at all. The face was torn, the head concaved on one side. Blood was in a huge pool across the snow, oily and black like sludge. The fur hung in tatters. The ears were laying feet away. The shoulders were split through. Clumps of meat and flesh and grizzle lay scattered about the snow. And the puddles of blood were immense and terrible where the shadows lightly touched them.

 _Son of a bitch,_ he thought, amazed and feeling sick. His head spun again, his throat burning with bile which tore through his system. His eyes were glued to the sight. But his mind was racing with panic.

The muzzle had been crushed and broken, the entire bottom of it dislocated and sloppily held in place. Yugi trembled, but another part of him whispered frantically that he was wasting time. The longer he gaped, the longer a window for something to happen to Jonouchi…

But there was something about the way the bear rested there. It was so utterly broken, but there was something…

Yugi looked towards the gaping, broken maw. Then he glanced at the paw that was hooked to his pants. And finally he snarled in dismay as he recognized it.

Several of those immense teeth had been pulled out. The top right canine had been shattered and broken in half. And in it was a filling of what looked to be metal, silver no doubt. But it was not even this which caused him to tremble.

The bear had a large plastic sheet lying beneath the bulk of its broken body. And Yugi recognized the characters and the coloring and the small pixelated pictures there. It was a menu.

It was a menu from Bonnokazi.

The small teen stared at it in the dark for a moment. And it occurred to him that games were the bulk of the posturing Fuwa had been to play and taunt him endlessly. The extent of it had been to use Anzu as a toy for territorial gain between them. And the further reaches had been that of teasing at him and prodding at the knowledge that had escaped him.

And so Yugi wondered now, if perhaps Fuwa had been there all along. Was it possible that he might have been following him relentlessly since the moment he'd come to hope he'd died in that fire? It was logical. The restaurant menus showing up… And the way this bear had been killed seemed, in the gaping hole which hollowed out the shoulders, almost akin the death of the tigress in the abandoned factory. And the thought made his skin crawl now.

Fuwa had to have been alive. He had to have known that Aileen was planning such a thing. And he must have been waiting, watching, listening and planning. But he did wonder why it was that he would not have tried to help Aileen…

Then again, he had been burned terribly. He had to have been. After he'd had his crotch caught on fire and had screamed and writhed like that…

He shook it off. The memory was too bold and vibrant behind closed eyes. Yugi stumbled to his feet after a moment or two. He needed to find Jonouchi. The GPS signal had said he was close to here. But he'd recognized it more fully because of the bright blue pool that had marked the lake. And he remembered more than ever having to lead those dogs there when Espa and Panik had tried to catch Yami that night. He remembered the way the ice had broken, how those dogs had drowned.

By the gods, he'd never considered that he'd find Jonouchi anywhere near it. And he felt winded to realize such a thing now. The blond should never have been anywhere near…

But by way of deduction towards the blood he'd seen about his yard, he had the feeling that either Fuwa had abducted Jonouchi there and Yugi had not recognized his blood as he had Yami's, or he'd killed the bear there. But then…for Fuwa to have done that… No, Yugi had the abrupt and clear idea that it was a wolf that had helped him to do such a thing. The wolf had killed the bear and Fuwa had taken them elsewhere to plant for him to stumble upon.

Yugi glanced at the dead animal, then hurried forward again. The snow remained hard and crunchy under his feet, slippery at times. He didn't bother to try to scent the air, but each lung did carry with it a much warmer, fresher scent. And he knew the metallic edges which so viciously pressed upon his insides.

He came over the small incline, sliding across the slope of the hardened snow, and nearly tumbled. Then he caught himself, instinctively crouching and splaying his legs just enough to right his sense of balance. He slid into a fluffier layer of snow beneath, shivering at the contact before his body temperature rose and leveled out more comfortably.

"Jonouchi?" he whispered, looking around. If he spoke louder, Fuwa or his pet might be around to ambush him. And that was not a thought he planned to deal with for even a moment. The small teen climbed to his feet again. The loose snow was powdery and soft when he came forward, but the ground beneath him seemed to quake. Yugi teetered, crouching, and realization came over him now.

The window had not been open long.

The bear had been placed recently.

The ice had _just_ been struck to its breaking point.

Yugi looked around himself for a moment, remaining crouched. He reached down to touch the surface of the ice, the hardened and smooth surface grainy towards the bank. And he realized now, looking about the shadows, that they were not nearby. For whatever reason they'd left, assuming to know that he would come here. But what had they put in the lake?

The small teen looked frantically toward where the ice bobbed slightly. Then he turned his head and listened. But he could not hear anything but the water moving slightly, the ice sometimes moving together to chip against itself in its large sheets. Yugi shivered and inched closer only a step or so. The water ate hungrily at the sheet where it dipped so heavily beneath his addition of weight and so Yugi stepped back once more.

"Jonouchi?" he called quietly again. He glanced over his shoulder and back. He straightened his weight only when he was close enough to the bank that the ice did not seem to fall apart beneath him. And then he strained his vision. The ice was shattered towards the center. And the water came up in loud bubbling noises, hisses of which pronounced the weight of the ice around it.

Yugi shivered, then tilted his head. There were small twin smears of blood across the ice. He had not noticed them formerly only because of the direction he himself had come. Now he narrowed his eyes and followed the trail of it, shaking his head slowly as he considered.

The break of the ice in the lake, towards the center of the snow-laden terrain, was covered in smaller trails of blood. And Yugi felt immense fear coming through him.

Those smaller trails were fingers…

The person they'd dumped in the water had tried to claw their way up from the ice and pull themselves out.

And that person…

Yugi was moving before he even truly realized such action was being taken. Immediately he dropped his shirt aside, kicking his sneakers and jeans off seconds later. Then, with only a mild second to consider a more analytical plan, Yugi launched himself forward. The ice was cold and swallowed him when it ducked. The water swelled immediately to cover him and he paddled furiously forward to propel himself through the water.

The small teen felt his organs tightening and rearranging themselves before he'd even considered it. And then he could only mildly hear the sound of bones snapping and fracturing and rearranging themselves beneath the roar of the water around him. He thrust his way upward, head snapping through the sheet of ice that had formed in litters of dusted crystals, and drew in a large breath. His nose worked frantically for a moment, his eyes narrowing with a sense of panic.

Then he heard a new voice in his ears, concerned and puzzled. _Yugi_? it called, soft and delicate as the wolf dove back beneath the water. He was not sure how he held his breath there. It amazed him that it did not leave him entirely. And he was further amazed that his eyes were working down here as they would have in immense shadows.

 _Yugi_? the voice called again, but the wolf ignored it, searching the blackness frantically. There was a sound like ice chipping and slapping water. The touch made his ears ring but the white canine forced himself to dismiss this as well. He could only see shadows of color that didn't quite have names within his struggling mind.

And then he caught sight of something moving. His head snapped towards it. There were several different movements now. The first, he recognized more so, was that of a shirt folding and rising under the water. The second, he realized a moment later was a bubble of breath. And the third he knew only after struggling to maneuver himself to swim that way was a hand.

Jonouchi was sinking, all of the air lost from his lungs. And he would sink to the bottom, decompose, and float to the top. But the top so covered in ice and thick enough to keep him beneath its surface was enough to hide his body altogether.

Yugi opened his jaws wide, snapping them shut on icy water that threatened to force itself entirely down his throat. He struggled, the breath leaving his lungs entirely as he scrambled for balance again. He shook, thrashing, for only a moment, then forced himself to focus once more.

 _Yugi_? _Yugi, what are you doing_?

Yugi thought the voice almost sounded like Slifer. The thought made his head spin and the edges of his vision seemed to explode with pressure. He forced himself to ignore it once more, snapping his jaws open further. He pushed forward, then shut them hard enough to expel a bubble forward with the impact of his teeth.

The white wolf caught him around the shirt where it was billowing up. Then he hurried to paddle towards the surface. But the water seemed to cut through him. And his body ached with the force. The lack of air made his entire frame tremble. Yugi forced himself not to think such a thing.

He breached the surface a minute or so later. Then he shook pathetically as he tried to gulp in air. The white wolf tugged his head up desperately, scrambling for the ice. Where he tried to grasp the surface, the sheet swayed beneath him. The weight pressing upon his teeth threatened to rip the enamel from his very gums.

 _Yugi_! The voice came with far more clarity now. And so the white wolf found his head turning now, confused and stunned. The two forms on the banks hurried forward, one of gold and silver and the other of black. A few more shadows breached his vision for a moment and then a smaller wolf sprang forward, dark gray with glowing blue eyes. Steps behind him was a black she-wolf with a tawny and chocolate undercoat, picking her way recklessly towards the ice.

 _Mai, Echo,_ he called desperately. _Otogi, Yusei—help me_!

The four of them came as quickly as they could. But Yugi could feel the weight dragging him down. And he could sense the weariness upon his limbs. And now he did not think Jonouchi could survive the harsh temperatures, not when he himself had only found him after he'd already begun to give up.

 _Grab him,_ Yugi spat outward to Mai as the she-wolf managed to come close. She was on one of the largest pieces of ice that was still together. And she was inches from him now. The she-wolf looked at him with darkened eyes, confused before she noticed the clothing he'd been struggling to keep in his mouth.

Otogi came from his side, dipping his head under the water. He snapped his jaws and caught hold just as Mai was able to drift closer. The she-wolf was more deliberately balanced to retain her weight there so that she would not fall forward into the water. The two of them worked in unison, as if they were hunting fish rather than dragging a body out. Yugi only released when Mai had pulled Jonouchi's shirt hard enough to allow his head to tip upwards out of the water.

Echo stood a few inches from Yugi's side, eyes wide and locked on the blond's half-dead form. The white wolf panted, tired and exhausted as he glanced at his friend. He'd need to change bsck…

Yusei was shaking, blue eyes wide as he considered the human form and then Yugi who was scrambling now for a grip on the ice in front of him. Echo blinked, looking towards him with an expression that Yugi could not quite read, and then grasped his scruff. Yusei followed her lead, the two of them hauling him from the water.

The white wolf didn't bother to shake himself out. He was shaking and exhausted as he stumbled to his feet more completely. He trembled and gasped for air before stumbling a few steps forward and flattening his ears to his skull.

 _Is he alive_? Yusei managed to project. Yugi nearly snarled, but did not bother to turn on someone who seemed so much younger than him. The gray wolf glanced at his former alpha, then at Yugi and back. _What do we do_?

Echo shook her head, a warning clear in her eyes. They did not know the story and so she would not assume to speak for Yugi as it was. Yet, as she did this, the white wolf managed to drag himself forward. Their new alpha opened his jaws wide, as far as they could possibly go, and then bit straight into the human's throat. In the meantime his paws pressed heavily on the frame's chest with enough force to nearly cause the body to fold altogether.

 _Mai, change back. I need someone to breathe into his mouth,_ Yugi instructed frantically. He was pressing on his chest again but the touch hardly seemed to do more. And so he nearly snarled with despair.


	52. Connections

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day**

 **Chapter Warnings: Mentions of Hypothermia, Nudity, Boys Being Pervs, Mentions of Forced Breeding, COPIOUS Amounts of Blood, Torture/Being Eaten Alive, Night Terrors**

 **I've never done CPR before so I didn't want to try to do more than the chest compressions and resuscitation by way of breathing into the victim's mouth.**

 **I also just realized that I need to probably put up a warning for this. For a few chapters the dream/night terror sequences (and hallucinations) will fall back into other scenes without much warning. Case in point the last scene of this chapter where Yugi wakes up from his night terror and there's no prior warning of it. But it should be more obvious when this is happening later (if I remember right...). Anyways, so yeah, there you go. Enjoy the chapter~!**

Chapter LII: Connections

 _Work Log Entry XLVIII: April, 2005_

 _April 2_

 _Everyone worries that Atem will not survive the tests that we are to perform on him._

 _We will pit him first again one of the newer wolves, then an elder, and finally the boss has a plan to put him inside of a cage with a live lynx. Atem has not shown any signs of undergoing the Change once more and so everyone worries for him._

 _Especially since all of the hard work put into bringing him into existence shall be wasted._

 _April 3_

 _Atem has shown that his mind works at almost three times the rate of that of a normal lycanthrope. He has managed to beat off both of the werewolves and the lynx was slain when he managed to use his teeth to cut the vein in its neck._

 _We are now attempting to determine if the Pure-Blood's teeth will grow while in battle._

 _April 15_

 _We keep him separated from the rest of the wolves, but it is causing backlash among some of them. They have grown jealous of the attention he is being fed. I don't understand why._

 _Not when all it does is lead to more tests._

Yugi was shaking as Mai followed his instructions for the fifteenth time. She breathed into his mouth, pumped on his chest, and the white wolf bit once more into his skin along his shoulder. Wolves went for the throat when they had rabies. Rabies could travel almost immediately to the brain afterwards. And so he felt dizzy as he looked towards the throat he'd already bitten into twice. The blood was already frozen but it was a sign, was it not? If he was bleeding the cells had to be moving again, right? They had to be circulating from the heart and outwardly…

 _Perhaps bite_ while _she is breathing into his mouth,_ Yusei suggested, his voice oddly crystalline and sure in its tone. He looked at Yugi closely, royal blue eyes sharp as they bore into his. _It might help_?

Yugi was not sure he could do much more than what he already was. But any little bit of advice would help him now, he felt. Because he did not think he could find a better answer than what he was trying to offer now.

The white wolf, still drenched and shivering every once in a while, nodded and turned back. Mai drew in a deep breath then leaned forward to try again. She pressed on his chest, breathed into his mouth, and Yugi bit Jonouchi once more.

The effort continued for another few minutes. Yugi was shaking now, anxious and fearful, and Mai was trying her hardest not to show him a pitying look. Yusei had begun pacing, pausing and digging. Otogi was watching with his head tilted and Echo was studying each of them with something of shock in her eyes.

Yugi was almost ready to give up. Jonouchi was not responding in the slightest. He could not hear even the smallest noise coming from him. And his lips were blue, his fingers almost purple, his body all but frozen.

And then there was a stuttering noise. The white wolf pricked his ears forward. His eyes widened drastically. And his head snapped downwards. Jonouchi twitched. Mai jerked back with wide eyes. Yusei and Echo stared with gazes as round as the sun. Only Otogi seemed to more or less appear okay with it all.

Yugi whined softly, then looked to Mai. _Roll him onto his side so he doesn't choke,_ he pleaded, trembling. The blonde blinked dark violet eyes, then did as instructed. In an instant Jonouchi began to cough and shake, sputtering. Water came out in a rush, his entire body trembling furiously. And it was only then that the white wolf realized that perhaps he should have told her to strip Jonouchi as well…

 _We have to get him back to the camp. I have to get him somewhere drier and warmer._ Yugi faltered. The cavern behind the waterfall was where they would have to take him. He'd have to hide him there. And then he could… _We're putting him in the camp. And I want you four, Obelisk and Slifer to watch him. I don't need any of the other wolves to pay him any mind. And I want only you six to be anywhere near him when I am not there._

 _Understood,_ Otogi stated with a simple nod. He looked between his alpha and the human boy who was just barely regaining his consciousness in front of them.

Yugi flicked an ear and tipped his head upward. He could sense the oncoming snow now as well and his heart skipped a beat at the realization. The white wolf turned to them quickly. _I'll lay with him for a few hours. But I'm going to have to get back. When I leave, Mai, take my spot. Someone had to stay with him throughout the night and probably until tomorrow afternoon as well._

Mai considered him for a moment. "Okay," she muttered, holding Jonouchi's shoulder to keep him from rolling into the puke he'd just expelled. She glanced at Otogi, a mirroring expression of shock crossing the wolf's face as well.

Yugi moved away just long enough to shake himself out and not soak Jonouchi in the meantime. Crystals had formed in his fur, tugging them into clumps. The white wolf turned back to them now. He flattened his ears against his skull and tilted his head. How was he meant to move him now?

 _Mai, do you think you can carry him_? Yugi narrowed his eyes slightly. _I'll change back if you can't. We just have to get him to the camp before the snow starts._

"No, I can definitely carry him on my own."

The wolf nodded and glanced at the small group of four. _I'll catch up with you at the camp. I need to do something before then, however…_

There were several things he needed to do, not at the least check to make sure that Jonouchi's phone was working. Then he needed to scout the area around them…

Yugi watched them go, then rushed forward to check amongst the snow for the slim cellular device. It was feet away from the bank, the screen broken and shattered. Puncture marks littered the top half of the case where the wolf had clamped their teeth down. The realization startled him to come upon, but as he tried to catch a scent there was none. But when he looked at the blood there and the crushed snow, he did not believe he could find even the smallest hint of pawprints anywhere. In fact… The most he could find was human footprints there. There was no hint of wolf prints anywhere but where the group of four had come to find him.

If that were true, that meant this werewolf had been human even as they'd tried to destroy his phone. Most likely they'd grabbed it only because he'd called it. And Yugi was suddenly very aware of the words Slifer had spoken before, of one of the pack being a traitor and aiming to potentially usurp him.

But the pack had already had over twenty wolves within it. And then there was the addition of the American wolves and their pack. Yugi could not remember their exact numbers now, though he was not sure he could have ever boasted otherwise to begin with.

But the reality was as Slifer had told him. There truly was a wolf who considered themselves to be greater than him. And they were willing to kill those they deemed unworthy in order to weaken his support amongst them. And then what would Yugi do? The wolves knew well enough that he would not lash out at them in turn. And this realization made it abundantly clear to him that it would be easy to lay blame on his lack of discipline should things grow further unraveled.

But Yugi could not truly name a wolf that he suspected of doing so. It seemed incredibly strange to even consider them to begin with.

The wolf grabbed the broken phone delicately, then headed towards the banks again. He put the device down, then catalogued the location of his clothes before grabbing them to bring up the small slope as well. He put the two of them beside each other, phone covered by the clothes. The incoming snow hopefully wouldn't destroy the cell…

It didn't matter. He'd buy Jonouchi a new one if it was destroyed.

Yugi hurried to race for the camp, following quickly after the small patrol. It was surprising to him to find the wolves gathered within that small cave system. When he stepped into the cavern, drenched and tired, Mai looked up with wide eyes. Jonouchi had been stripped of his clothes, Otogi laying on one side and Mai draped across the unconscious blond. Echo had gone above to the camp itself, no doubt to find Slifer or Obelisk to explain to them in that begrudging manner of hers, and Yusei lay close by with his eyes on the trio.

"I hope he doesn't mind?" Mai commented without much shame, though she did seem mildly uncomfortable as she tilted her head and raised a brow.

Yugi shook his head and wagged his tail. _It will probably be his_ best _memory when he recovers,_ he answered easily. _You've probably just singlehandedly made his entire life with this one decision._

Otogi snorted and covered his face with his paw, shaking his head. Yusei wagged his tail in amusement and Mai laughed out loud at the statement. Yugi wagged his tail again and looked back at his best friend with a feeling of dread coating his insides.

 _I want to know the moment he wakes. I don't care if I'm at school or my house or what. I want to be told. I don't even care if it's only for a few seconds. Someone will be expected to tell me, understood_?

"Of course," the blonde stated simply, nodding. "We'll alert you immediately."

Yugi almost wished she would have argued with him just for the sake of having a reason to lash out and let loose some of the tension in his body. But now he settled for flicking an ear and listening as Echo approached once more.

Slifer was behind her, red fur glistening with a soft layer of snow. Her golden eyes were darkened for a moment as she considered the human boy in front of her. Then her head turned to Yugi and her eyes glittered. _You wished for Obelisk and myself to take care of him in the meantime while you are not here within the pack_? she verified. _A human you've bitten and will be leaving within this cavern for the night_?

 _I cannot bring him home with me just yet._ Yugi did not bother with further explanation. _But yes, I want the six of you to watch him whenever I am not around._

 _What of Ishizu_? the goddess asked with a tilt of her head. Her eyes had darkened now as they considered one another.

Yugi flicked an ear. _What about her_?

 _She is capable of helping to take care of him._ She tilted her head further and Yugi thought she looked mildly fox-like for a moment. Or perhaps she looked like a maned wolf, stealthy and curious. _She was used as a veterinarian for the wolves within the labs before she was infected as well._

Yugi blinked. _She was in the labs_?

 _She was. And she might know some about the human side of the equation that the rest of us might lack._

The thought made Yugi bristle faintly. _I know about the human side of things_! he snapped. _I'm not stupid, Slifer._

 _No, but you've also forgotten that perhaps her knowledge might offer more than you can by yourself. You forget that she would have seen more than you when it came to the experiments. They were done to you but she helped to heal others from them._

 _I thought Ryou was the sole vet at that place._

 _No. Not until you_ r…benefactor chose to use her for breeding and forced Ryou into that position. Slifer flicked an ear. _It was simply an inquiry, Atem. You can allow her to help with him or tell her no. It does not truly matter to me one way or another._

* * *

"Oh _shit_ ," Jonouchi sputtered, startled as the white wolf burst through the curtain of water. He looked visibly exhausted and the drenched state did not change as Yugi came rushing forward.

 _Are you all right_? _Mai told me you'd woken up_! he demanded without pausing to shake himself out. His ears were flat against his skull and he looked half-drowned and pathetic as he looked at his friend with wide eyes. _I told them to tell me the moment you woke up so I came running as soon as she'd told me. Well_? _Are you okay or not_?

The blond stared at him with wide, horrified eyes. "Wait, wait, you're talking _into_ my head," he managed to sputter, eyes wide. "How the fuck are you doing that?"

Yugi visibly faltered, then blinked and awkwardly looked away. _I, um, you were half-dead when I pulled you out of the lake. I didn't know what else to do so I, uh…I bit you._

Jonouchi stared at him, struggling to process his statement. "You… _bit_ me?" he echoed him, brown eyes widening further. His friend had bitten him? He was going to turn into a fluff ball once a month? Shit, with a tail and fangs and everything?

 _You would have died otherwise._ Yugi wouldn't meet his eyes now. He flexed his toes and scraped a claw across the stone as he took a seat. _And I didn't want you to… I'm sorry. I wouldn't have done it otherwise._

"It's… I need a minute."

Yugi nodded and took a seat. The water dripping from his pelt was inaudible beneath the roar of the fall. The white wolf thought to lick himself dry but he did not think he truly cared to do so. He was exhausted now that he'd gotten here. It had been hours of which he had hidden in his own house and avoided coming. But he'd spotted Mai in the trees and he'd gone racing to get an update from her as to what had happened with the blond.

"You know, I could be upset about it, but honestly, I just got to lay next to the _hottest_ chick alive, dude. I can't really be that upset when I think about it like that. That wouldn't have happened if you hadn't bitten me."

Yugi snorted loudly and turned his head, eyes bright. _And I didn't even have to_ pay _her to do it_! he commented with a loud laugh.

Jonouchi felt the grin slide off his face. "You stupid ass," he grumbled with a roll of his eyes. "You and Honda are such comedians."

 _Well, if it makes you feel better, Mai really likes to take a guy's virtue, so…_

"Fuck you and everything you hold dear, Yugi."

The small wolf wagged his tail happily, eyes brighter than ever. _And she does it for_ free! he teased again. And, as Jonouchi looked at him, he could see his best friend despite the white fur and the almond shape of his eyes or the black nose and long muzzle. He was as excitable now as he ever was as a human. _I've heard she can rock a few worlds too._

"Oh yeah?" He raised a brow. "She did some cradle-robbing with you?"

The wolf flattened his ears against his skull immediately, eyes annoyed. _She's not in my league._ He looked away slyly when Jonouchi kicked a shoe at him and glared. _What_? _You can put that in any context you want_!

"You're an ass, Yugi."

 _No, I'm considered lupine in species._

"Oh dear god," the blond muttered, rolling his eyes once more. He sat up after a moment, leaning forward and running a hand through his bangs. When he looked up again, Yugi was watching him with dark, curious eyes. "How did you find me?"

Yugi pricked his ears forward. _That GPS app on your phone. I used it to track you._ He narrowed his eyes. _What do you remember happening_?

"Honestly, I don't think I remember much of anything. It was…late and I was taking a shortcut to your house and I don't remember past that. It's all basically one big blur after that." He studied the distress that had appeared on Yugi's face. "Sorry, man."

Yugi shook his head. _I was more worried about if you were okay. Beyond that I just wanted to ask. I…_ The wolf repeated the gesture, then slowly got to his feet once more. _But you're okay beyond that_? _No one has made you feel unwelcome or anything_?

"Not that I know of?"

The wolf nodded again, turning away. _Good. I, um… I was going to go hunting for a little while. I'll come back and see you in a little while, okay_? he paused. _If there's any issue, feel free to send one of them to find me. Slifer, Obelisk, Mai, Otogi, Yusei, Echo—I don't care who. Just do it._

"Wait, so is it true then? About you being in charge?"

The wolf flattened his ears against his head again. _Unfortunately._ He didn't leave any room for Jonouchi to ask why he'd said that before turning and heading for the back wall of the spacious cavern to pull himself atop a narrow ledge and towards what appeared to be an almost inconspicuous hole in the roof. He glanced at Jonouchi before he hooked his paws on the ledge overhead and pulled himself out of the cavern altogether.

 _Obelisk,_ he called loudly as he spotted the gray wolf and watched him with wide eyes as he began to approach. _Can you keep watch for me_? _I'm going to go hunting._

The wolf flicked an ear, considering him for a long minute and a half. Then, slowly, the god of war nodded slightly and began to move past him. _Shall I alert you to any thing he might want or need_?

Yugi paused and pricked his ears forward. _Yes, if you would, please._ Then he hurried forward. A glance to the side said that the wolves were watching him curiously. He ignored the tilted heads and pricked ears and the way their eyes focused so entirely upon him.

The white wolf slipped out of the camp and towards the trees. He was tired and hungry, but another part of him was more anxious than even remotely eager for food. The canine slipped into the shadows and ignored the way that his belly growled softly with hunger.

The first animal he came upon was the rabbit that was hiding amongst the snow. It had him surprised to find it so easily, not only swift in its appearance but almost perfectly white as well. Yugi sprang at it without an intent to kill, hungry but part of him dismayed at the very idea in and of itself. The small wolf raced forward and launched himself into the snow. The powder flew upwards into his face and across some of the trunk of the tree he was nearest.

The rabbit tried immediately to rush away, but caught instead Yugi's paw on its shoulders. The wolf knocked it off its feet, sending it rolling for a moment, then pounced again. Its heartbeat was terrible and pounding, sounding almost like rain water hitting a pane of glass.

Yugi watched it for a moment, studying for as long as he could, before finally he released it. The rabbit ran again, faster than the wolf would have originally considered it possible. Then he sprang again, launching himself as if he were born with wings. The canine landed inches from the small animal, opening his jaws. He caught it easily around the midsection, his grip light and soft. Then he deposited it again even as it kicked desperately.

He let the rabbit run again.

He thought vaguely of the night Yugi had told Yami about having crossed paths with the pack. The wolf had not reacted well to such news. He'd turned and played this game of catch and release with the same animals, distracted and frustrated by Yugi's admittance.

Now he knocked the rabbit aside again. The animal rolled, landing hard and squealing now. But Yugi simply placed a paw on its belly. The rabbit's heart was so immensely loud that it made his skin crawl and the white canine ignored the urge to sink his teeth in instead.

Yami had been so upset that night. And he'd been clearly frustrated and unhappy and so terribly concerned about him regardless. And he wondered again if perhaps the black wolf might somehow be dead despite it all. The reality of it made his skin crawl and he shivered at the idea. But they'd promised him, hadn't they? Slifer and Ra and Obelisk had all pledged oath that he would come back…

But he wondered more now if it was Fuwa he should be more worried about. It was, after all, the hunter who played the biggest role now. He was the one that seemed to be coming nearer. Yugi had not dreamed about Yami in days now, and the separation seemed far more acute than he was willing to admit.

But Fuwa had left a dead body and whoever had come to work with him now had turned their strength on his best friend. There was no coincidence in such a thing. There couldn't be. There was far too much on the line to simply ignore or wave off.

And it was not circumstantial.

Yugi was not sure he could have hidden it all away in the manner of shielding himself from recognition. But he did think he'd done a rather good job of preventing it for the most part. Perhaps it was foolish to assume such a thing. But he had _tried_. And he didn't understand how someone might have noticed him and he not realize. Wasn't that what the paranoia helped to prevent in the first place?

He let the rabbit up again, dread making his fur ripple. Somehow someone had come to connect Yugi to Jonouchi. And so they'd come to target the blond. They'd found him. They'd cornered him. And they'd dragged him out to the lake…

They'd truly planned to kill him and leave the body for Yugi to find later. The realization was not surprising, he knew, but it still made his stomach ache to consider. Jonouchi was innocent in this entire situation. And it was disgusting that he was considered otherwise by mere acquaintance with him.

It was disgusting.

An image appeared in his mind. Yugi pricked and flicked his ears, then turned with wide eyes towards the source of it. The camp was full, he realized, but there was a question buzzing in all of their heads. The image was of Yugi biting the tall blond, confused and bewildered in the idea that Code Name Atem had two betas now.

But more pointedly was the image of a faceless, undefined wolf being guided about the camp for a tour. At first there was his own face there, his white fur and defined features cast about this faceless scepter. And then it changed, something that confused and bewildered him at first.

The white wolf became streaked with gray and tan and tawny.

His head snapped around and his fur rose into a bristle as he hurried back towards the camp. The wolves nearest the entrance looked up with shocked, confused expressions. Immediately Yugi shot them dismissive glances, though he realized only moments later that his tail had come up.

The white wolf nearly tumbled through the entrance of the cavern, the thicket covered in snow nearly winding him as he was snagged in the thorns. He shook himself, weaseled his way beneath it, and hurried to land on his paws in front of them.

Jonouchi looked up with wide eyes, nearly jumping backwards at the sudden appearance. Yugi looked at him only minutely. Then he hurried forward with dark eyes.

 _No, Marik,_ I _will be the one to give him a tour of the camp and the territory after,_ he snapped, growling viciously and baring his teeth. He kept his tail up and Mai, Otogi, Slifer and Obelisk blinked at him in surprise. _He is_ my _beta._

The words were almost startling for the small group. Marik blinked and immediately lowered his head with his ears flattened against his skull. _Yes, Atem._

Jonouchi raised a brow and gave him a confused look. He mouthed the name at him but Yugi ignored him pointedly. He would explain later.

 _Why are you even in here_?

 _My sister mentioned it to me that he was here and I thought I would come and see him. I mean, I've already met him so…_

 _He's never met you as a wolf_! he snarled in response. _All of you can leave me with him. Slifer, Obelisk, don't go far._

Yugi watched the four of them begin to move out. And for a moment he thought to tell Mai to remain, but part of him was too exhausted to even remotely fathom doing such a thing. So he simply turned to Jonouchi, somewhat undone by the very idea. His fur fell flat, his tail dropped from its raised position. He flicked his ears and tilted his head.

 _I'm sorry if we're all crowding you._

"Not going to lie, it's kind of claustrophobic when there're more than just a couple of wolves in here. Almost feels like volunteering at a dog kennel."

Yugi pulled his lips back into something of a grimace. _You're so funny,_ he scoffed. But his eyes softened again as he considered him with his head tilted curiously. _But it does get kind of overwhelming. If you decide to stay around here more often, though, it gets easier as you learn more about who they all are._

"How long have you…?"

 _I've known about them since a little while after I was infected. I ran across them at one point and now I'm their alpha… Of course that's not something I'm going to tell you without explaining later. But it might be a little while…_ Jonouchi blinked wide eyes at the statement but Yugi ignored it. _It doesn't matter. I have a lot to tell you about this pack and everything else…_

"Right," he answered easily. "But I'm sure it'll be more fun when you explain it to me and I call you fucking nuts cause I'm kind of thinking you are, honestly."

 _You probably wouldn't be wrong in saying that. I'm wondering right now what I'm doing with myself at this rate._ Yugi fell silent for a moment, considering the idea of how much harder it seemed to say such a thing to him rather than it had been to Yami. He missed the black wolf again, a sense of frustration coming through him now. _But it doesn't matter, I guess. Anyways, I'll explain everything when you're actually able to walk and move around again._

Jonouchi raised a brow. "Any particular reason?"

Yugi gave him a look somewhere between laughter and hatred. It was odd on his face and the cross of the two emotions altogether shocked him. _I hate their habits of eavesdropping._ He pricked his ears. _I'll tell you when you come back to my house for a few days._

The blond blinked wide eyes. "Your…?"

Yugi stared at him, unblinking and intense. _Why would you think otherwise_? _Your dad was getting abusive again and I don't know what happened the other night, but I'm not going to have it be repeated. You're going to stay with me for a few days at the least. And then we'll figure things out again later._

Jonouchi nodded, a small spark of warmth coming through him. It was good to know that, despite the changes, Yugi had _not_ become unrecognizable in such a sense. The white wolf in front of him really _was_ just his best friend in a different form…

 _So, now, here's what we're going to do. We're going to wait and then I'm going to tell you everything as far as the pack goes and why he called me "Atem". Then I'll give you a tour of the camp and eventually of the territory when you're better and can walk without stumbling._

"Okay."

Yugi searched his face for a moment. Then he sighed and looked away. _Just stay calm and don't worry about anything. I'll get it figured out eventually. But don't be afraid to ask Slifer or Obelisk or any of them to clear the room for you. If they argue, tell them Atem gave you the privilege. They will fall into line after that._

"You're starting to sound like a mob boss."

The white wolf blinked at him but didn't answer. Instead he got to his feet and called out, _Obelisk, Slifer, you're free to come back in here. Stay with him through the night. I'm going home._

Jonouchi opened his mouth to object but the white wolf was out of the cavern and gone before he could even draw a breath.

* * *

He did not think he'd ever known the taste of such blood in his throat. For surely it went further than his tongue. And the darkness threatened to swallow him as he tried to inhale. There was so much blood. It was everywhere. It was inside and outside of him. It was great and terrible and it burned him. It exhausted him.

When he tried to breathe the air seemed too tight. He swallowed and choked. And then he tried to cough and the blood sputtered through his throat. It was _everywhere_. How did one exist with so much shed?

He blinked.

In the dark the shadows measured upon his pupils. He could see the finest specks of dust before him. They drifted aimlessly. The light was so nonexistent he was shocked to see. The metal creaked and groaned. The earth seemed to teeter sideways.

He opened his mouth. His tongue fell forward. His eyes burned. He choked on a breath. The air burned. His lungs ached. His vision danced. He blinked. His eyes strained themselves to see through the shadows. His tongue was flat upon concrete. Stones lodged themselves there. He struggled to focus.

Then he tried to move again. As had happened formerly, he could not find a grip. Nor could he manage to breathe properly for more than a moment. His claws twitched. His toes flexed. Pain spliced through his paw.

For it had to be a paw.

It was clawed. There was fur. The toes were short. The flesh was hard, calloused. It had to be a paw. There was nothing else…

He was rasping. The noise was loud and anxious. His lungs stretched. They collapsed. He blinked. He tried to pull his tongue back. Blood was slick upon his teeth. The metallic touch of it was plastered to his taste buds. He blinked again.

"Looks like he's awake again."

"He doesn't look anything like he used to."

"Well, he _is_ dehydrated, he's just woken again, and he hasn't been allowed to eat for weeks now. How his body regenerates still is beyond me but he should be dead permanently by now."

"Pure-Bloods don't die."

"No, not permanently, it would seem."

"It is dangerous to play with a feral wolf. You would do better to simply try to kill him more permanently while he's coming back."

"He's a weapon. I'm not going to dispose of him. I have plans. I have plans for him, so many of them. It would be stupid of me to ignore the fact that I have uses for him."

"He's only a weapon while he's feral." The voice paused. He blinked again, then flexed his claws again. Blood dribbled from paws. Blood dribbled from his tongue. Blood, blood, _blood_ … "And there's a way to make it permanent."

"Is there now?"

"If you make him hate himself, he will lose that half of his brain that rationalizes his rebirth and state of being." There was another pause, then soft laughter. "It's like truly infecting one of us with rabies. It'll destroy any sense of reality he might possess. And it is brilliant how a wolf reacts."

"From what I know of you and your file, you were tortured similarly, were you not?" The voice sounded cruel and amused now. "You were rendered rabid for months on end, isn't that right?"

"I wasn't aware you thought we were friends to that degree. You weren't supposed to go through my file."

"I like to know what kind of wolves I'm dealing with."

"I almost believe you."

"Hey, look, he's playing dead!" There was a small bout of laughter. Then it trailed off and he could hear metal gears. The noise was almost exhausting to hear. But he recognized it and so he struggled for his paws once more. "Ah, and now he's awake."

"It won't do him much. He'll probably wish he was asleep again."

"He can wish that after he recovers again. But for now I'm going to watch him get picked apart again."

He was on his paws again slowly. The effort put into such action was overwhelming. He did not think he could breathe. His bones cracked as he braced his weight. And he panted harshly for breath. But it seemed simply to press upon his ribs and the touch was agonizing.

He'd gotten more time recovering now than he had for a while. But it still did not prepare him. Exhaustion clawed at his belly. Hunger clung to his throat. He could smell only blood again. And he seemed only able to _see_ it as well now.

"So I'm guessing the idea that all the wolves flock for the Pure-Bloods is a lie, huh?"

"Not at all. But they don't know who the Pure-Blood is. There have been far too many pretending to be—"

"Don't start with that fucking fairytale again."

"Atem is a very real creature."

"Oh yeah? And you know this because you're a wolf?" the first voice sneered. There was a shuffling noise. The wolf snarled low in his throat but it was so strained it sounded as if he were choking. "It's all crap. There is no _holier than thou_ wolf meant to save a race as pathetic as yours. Not when I already plan to destroy it."

"Believe what you want then."

The metal clicked and groaned. The wolf flattened his ears against his head. The sound was harsh and terrible. Feet moves against the concrete. The heavy stampeding noise made his ears quiver. His body almost dropped from sheer exhaustion. He opened his jaws, snarling.

But his lungs quaked in his chest. And his legs seemed to tremble. He was exhausted. And his teeth were bared furiously. And already he could feel the pain. It had not even begun yet…

Yet the first strike came head on. As he'd known it would. The wolf snapped his jaws immediately. He caught flesh. There was a loud squeal. A toss of a head brought teeth into his side. He clamped his jaw harder. The second toss came from the beast before him.

His paws left the ground.

He felt his body growing tired again.

The head tossed.

He dangled.

A blow landed upon his side.

His ribs cracked.

Blood came up his throat again.

Blood dripped to the floor.

Blood splattered through the air.

He dangled and shook.

The next hit came to his back leg.

He heard the skin split before he felt it.

Another toss made him flail.

And then the last sent him flying.

He careened into the metal wall.

It shook.

His vision grew darker around the edges.

He gasped and sputtered.

His legs wouldn't hold his weight when he tried to stand. The wound on his side was bleeding. His back leg was soaked. He blinked. He tried for his paws again. Exhaustion tore at his muscles. Weariness snapped at his heels.

He managed to raise his head.

And teeth dug immediately into his shoulder. Fur was tugged out. Muscle and gristle hit the floor. He spun on them. His teeth aimed blindly. Something crunched and popped under his jaws. The roaring became a scream.

Blood gushed down from his teeth.

Blood soaked his tongue.

Blood drenched the concrete.

The animal screamed.

"Well, if that isn't a new development."

"I'm surprised he managed it." The second voice was scornful and annoyed. "I wasn't expecting him to do that."

The blood trailed down his tongue and into his throat. And then it settled into his belly. He could feel it like hot fire. And it made him thirsty for more. His jaws opened further and snapped shut. Bone crunched now. The animal squealed and tossed its head. But the wolf used the leverage to get to his pass. And then he stumbled a step and a second.

"He's adapting. That's a bad sign."

"No, it's a great one." The first voice began laughing now. "That's a _great_ sign. It means he can still work to entertain me. And that means maybe he's unpredictable to deal with my little…pest."

There was silence for a moment. The animal before the wolf was breathing hard. But the tossing had stopped and it was slowing. And the beast looked ready to simply lay upon the floor and—

The second animal came for his face. He opened his jaws wide and turned his head. The angle was just right. When he snapped his teeth shut again, the blood filled his mouth instantly. And he felt twice more something burst and pop within his teeth. Bones fractured and split, breaking beneath the pressure.

"What do you plan to do with the bodies?"

"Let him feed on them. I'll let him fill up. And then he can rest for a day or two. What he doesn't eat I'll feed to the others."

"You have more wolves?"

"Just one. But I meant the pigs."

There was a moment of quiet between the two voices. The animals screamed and thrashed. Some of them surged forward. The wolf was backed up into a corner. Blood coated his mouth and almost to his eyes. He snarled and snapped and pressed back further.

They collided viciously. The wolf snapped at another of the animals. And it screamed as it charged him. The wolf pushed one back. Another came closer. Teeth snapped in warning. A restless surge of noise came from the pigs.

And then there was a wet tearing noise.

One of them had torn through another's hide. Blood was dripping…

He could not maintain his footing when one slammed into his shoulder. He twisted, hitting the floor on his side. And teeth came instantly for his soft underbelly. His back legs kicked desperately. And he tried for his paws again.

But the initial bite made him scream.

The pigs came in a rush now.

The wolf snapped his jaws and struggled.

But the energy it took to do so was exhausting.

And the pigs didn't slow—

There was a loud shout overhead.

The pigs screamed in annoyance.

The wolf blinked sluggish eyes.

Something sharp and splintering crackled in the air.

The screaming escalated. Then the pigs turned tail. The wolf shuddered, surprised by the slow encroachment of shadows in his vision. Usually it was faster. The pain was vibrant and overwhelming. The wolf blinked again. Then closed his eyes tightly. The pain ricocheted from one bone to the next.

He flexed a paw. Then he snarled low in his throat. The metal was rattling. He could hear it…

"Get up."

The wolf ignored his words.

"Get up."

The canine didn't blink.

"Get up, you stupid mutt." There was a loud, concentrated crackling. The noise was underlined by wheezing and hissing. The wolf opened his eyes into slits but it was too much to try to turn his head or tilt his head to look towards them. " _Get up._ "

He snarled when the human approached. The smell of metal and electricity touched his sense. The wolf wished he could open his jaws. But the pain was too acute. And his body was laden with exhaustion. The canine closed his eyes again.

The sharp prod to his side made him scream. The wolf jerked viciously. The canine threw his head back. His body thrashed. The wolf's tongue fell forward. Blood drizzled from the wounds. The body convulsed again. Another sharp prod caused the body to thrash. A third made only the muscle and fur quiver.

The prodding became a harsh, continuous sting. There was a smell of burning fur and charring meat. The scent was suffocating. His lungs were singed with each breath. And then the wolf gasped and sputtered. Blood came in a gurgling noise.

And then the pain lanced through him furiously. He thrashed. His legs ached. His blood gurgled again. He choked. He thrashed again. Then he snarled and snapped his teeth.

And the crackling resounded. The touch was enough to make him scream.

Yugi went over the edge of the bed again. His head slammed into the leg of the nightstand. The air was heavy in his lungs. It pressed on him furiously. And the lycanthrope reached up to rub at his itching throat. He folded his nails and clawed at the soft skin. In an instant his skin grew hot, cut beneath the keratin. The blood was hot and sticky and slick like oil.

"Yugi?" The voice was alarmed on the other side of the door. The small teen's head snapped towards the board of wood. His eyes were wide, dilated. The panic made him shake. " _Yugi_!"

He blinked, confused, as the door opened and his mom stepped into the room. She took one look at him, gaped, and hurried forward. The small teen blinked again, shaking, as she crouched at his side.

"What the hell happened?" she sputtered, eyes wide with shock. The boy blinked at her again, something misplaced and confused lingering in his eyes. He looked stunned. He looked…like he didn't truly recognize her. "Yugi?"

She could see the thoughts racing behind his irises. They turned dark and tumultuous. And he peered at her with something blind and confused. The blue-violet eyes searched her face for a long moment. The small teen moved his hands slowly, and at first she thought he might lash out. But instead he lowered his head and his hands wiped against his pajama legs.

Was that _blood_?

The small teen drummed his fingers along his thighs for a moment. "It was just a night terror," he stated quietly. "It was just a really bad night terror."

She considered him for a moment. He sounded utterly defeated and exhausted. "Raise your head," she instructed after a moment. Yugi slowly did as she said, turning to her with a somewhat defiant look despite his visible exhaustion. The skin on his neck was smeared red, the paler flesh around it turned bright pink from his clawing. "Jesus."

The small teen looked away again. "They're shallow." He wouldn't look at her again. "And I just panicked. It's fine. I'm okay."

"You're still shaking."

Yugi blinked, staring at the carpet. "It'll go away in a few minutes," he muttered dismissively. But he didn't stop shaking and his eyes still looked visibly disturbed, dilated drastically. "I promise it's fine, Mom."

Kasumi stared at him as he raised his head and turned to her again. There was a gleam of bewilderment and then a look as if she had never seen him before in her life. She seemed visibly shaken as they looked at one another and Yugi wished more than ever that he could have said he was the same boy she'd raised. But the longer he looked at her, the more apparent it became that such a statement wasn't true in the slightest. And the reality made his skin crawl even as he considered her patiently.

They stared at one another, until finally Yugi shifted his weight and moved to stand up. He dusted himself off and hoped to the gods that his skin did not heal itself entirely until she left the room. He'd bandage it just to make it seem as if he'd had to take care of it, however. And then he would take the gauze off and dispose of it as he normally did. She would never be the wiser…

But in a game of wits Yugi wondered how much stronger she was than him. She was a lot smarter than she bothered to show and Yugi had inherited a lot of her intelligence. But he was not sure he could match her toe for toe if they were to go head to head. She was older, she had more experience, and she was so much more suspicious by nature as it was…

"I'm going to take a shower and then I'll come out and eat," Yugi muttered, looking away again. He could feel the shaking coming in waves along his fingers. He wondered if Yami had been under the lull of similar distress when he had come to hide beneath the bed that night. He wondered if that was what had made him lash out before hiding as he had. Had he been so alarmed as to have to hide to keep from attacking him?

Because he knew Yami was not afraid of him. He was too strong to be afraid of Yugi of all things. It did not matter in the least if he was wounded. He did not fear Yugi in the slightest from what he knew. There was no reason for him to worry about _Yugi_ as a threat in any manner.

He left her there with a small, strained smile. Then he went and headed for the bathroom before she could object any further. The small teen shut the door, locking it behind him, and leaned against the wood. More than anything he wanted to simply lie down on his side and curl up into a ball of some kind. He was tired and the reality of it was almost overwhelming.

His first instinct had been to lash out. He'd thought first to cower and then to snarl and snap and try to push her aside. And now he was so tired that he could barely feel the pain that laced through his nerves. Yugi shuddered and his side twitched where he could already feel the blood clinging to his shirt. Thank the gods it was layered mildly, the fibers thicker than the usual pajama shirt. His mom would have seen it otherwise.

But he could feel blood in his mouth, coating his tongue. It caked the muscle to the roof of his mouth and pasted it there. And his fingers could not stop shaking for the tremors that rested there. And, as he opened his eyes again, the room was strained and blurred around the edges. The shadows seemed to multiply and he shook a little harder as he clenched his eyes shut a few moments later.

Spots had formed behind his eyes. And his breathing was a little harder, shallow. In moments he'd drawn in a rough breath to hold in his lungs. Yugi reached up to run his fingers through his hair and the strands were tugged where they tangled. The small teen suppressed the urge to simply sob around the labor if keeping breath in his lungs.

Yugi could feel his shirt slicking, sticking hideously to his skin. All of his side was hot and clammy with the blood that pasted the material to his flesh.

His stomach seemed to clench and burn and his mouth felt dry but for the blood that still clung to his tongue. In an instant he shook his head, annoyed and exhausted. Then he clenched his eyes more tightly. But he swore his skin was still shaking and shuddering beneath all of the blood on his flank. He swore it still danced and tossed beneath the soft weight.

Because he could still feel that terrible shock of electricity cutting through his nerves. They danced and spiraled outwards and tore upon his senses altogether. And so he swallowed thickly and drew in a deep breath, slowly reaching down to pull at his pajama shirt.

Despite the stray hair that clung to the blood there, the wolf could see the fresh wound. It was torn in a strange way, as if he'd been bitten and flayed there. But the wound was not incredibly large, nor was it terrible.

And now he noticed as well the way the edges seemed charred. When he looked at his hands, the centers were raw and chapped red. And the nail beds were broken and splintered where the keratin was a white half-moon. He shivered, watching the shaking of his fingers, and then tipped his head back and tried not to sob out loud.


	53. Changes

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day**

 **Chapter Warnings: Innuendos, Mentions of Death/Dead Body, Yugi Kind of Loses his Shit with Someone, Character Deaths, COPIOUS Amounts of Bloodshed**

 **The mirror thing will be explained later when Yugi gets the chance to ask about it. But the way that the werewolf brain works is that it constantly jumps between two spectrums—the human and the wolf. But in a state of anxiety they tend to drift further into the wolf mentality (that's why, when Yugi is in distress, he tends to notice more and more about his surroundings or even forget them altogether).**

 **Now, due to this, in such an emotional state, they often forget human concepts.**

 **So it looks to Yugi more as if he's being stared at by a thousand other wolves watching him and waiting for the opportunity to lash out and attack.**

Chapter LIII: Changes

 _Work Log Entry XLIX: May, 2005_

 _May 20_

 _He does not always respond to his "code name". On occasion he will react slowly and with a glazed look to his eyes. He seems confused. Because once in a blue moon he does not realize that we mean to call him by such a name._

 _May 26_

 _Atem has spiraled suddenly into dementia. His mind seems to constantly reject things and his memory has become unstable as has his temperament._

 _He has mauled several guards to death and others have been shot in order to prevent the spread of the Pure-Blood's genes._

 _The boss says that it is too unstable and new to consider allowing someone the gift of becoming a Pure-Blood._

 _May 27_

 _I have learned that Pure-Bloods, while in existence long ago, were considered the Hounds of Heaven._

 _But A.T.E.M. has turned into a hellhound._

Jonouchi looked up with wide eyes at the sound of paws outside of the water. Since he'd been bitten, despite the roar of the fall cascading a couple of yards away, he'd found himself able to hear beyond it. He'd found himself capable of listening to the sound of paws from the outside of which the wolves seemed to come from constantly. Overhead the tangle of thorns seemed to be consistently padded around. And beyond the water he'd only ever heard much of a scuffle of noise between two wolves bickering. The fighting had lasted only a moment and then he'd seen two females come stepping in without a second glance. They merely looked at him sideways, then quickly away again as they noticed Slifer and Obelisk there as well.

 _Have you slept well_? The blond jerked, startled out of his reverie, and his head snapped immediately towards the entrance. Feet away, soaked and looking much like a drowned rat, was Yugi. The white wolf watched him with deep blue-violet eyes that burned into his. _The full moon is tonight, so I decided to go ahead and skip school to come talk to you instead. You need to be better prepared for it when it comes._

 _He will have a more strenuous time than you have had as of recently,_ Slifer commented. But she did not raise her head from her paws. Nor did she bother to open her eyes and glance at him. She barely seemed to even breathe any longer. _But I do not think that he will bleed out as you were in danger of doing when Yami crossed paths with you._

Yugi blinked, watching her for only a moment before turning back to his friend. _Right. But isn't this early for him_? Of course, on the off chance that it wasn't, the white wolf had come to help regardless. He had not been sure of which day Jonouchi would be forced to change so he had come now rather than waiting and potentially leaving him to sink or swim with the other wolves. _I mean, I would have thought he'd have had a month before…_

 _You are a Pure-Blood and you infected him. He is a Full-Blood wolf now, Yugi. His draw to the moon is almost as powerful as yours. For the first two or so months he shall be forced to change during the full moon. But his DNA and RNA are fully mutated in preparation of such metamorphosis._

Yugi flicked an ear, then wrinkled his nose faintly with distaste. His eyes remained entirely on Jonouchi as he commented, _We'll go with Mai and Otogi and see how we can make it easier for you since this is your first time…_

Slifer snorted softly but still did not move beyond soft breathing. Jonouchi snickered quietly in amusement when he saw the white wolf's startled expression. His friend spun on him again with wide eyes, undone by the sudden noise. Then he curled his lip slightly to show his right canine, his mouth pulling back into a mild grimace.

 _Uh, anyways, so the four of us will find a spot to do this._ Yugi hesitated, glancing at Slifer with an unsure expression. But he was aware that she would not speak out against him nor object when he spoke and so he moved to take a seat. The dripping water that fell from his fur seemed to pool beneath him furiously and he fought the urge to shake himself dry. He would soak both of them should he do so, he was sure. And that was not something he cared to consider beforehand. _We need to talk before I even think of inviting them though._

Jonouchi blinked and glanced at Slifer. Then he raised his head and looked at the barrier of thorns overhead blocking the exit of the cavern. "Do you really want to do that now? I mean… You can talk into my head but I'm talking out loud over here."

Yugi blinked. _Right,_ he admitted reluctantly. The white wolf pricked his ears forward for a moment. His blue-violet eyes narrowed and considered his face for a long moment or two before he shifted his weight slightly. _In which case… Fuck, yeah, I guess it'll have to wait until you're moved back into my house._

"How soon do you think that's going to be?"

Yugi didn't blink, instead turning to him abruptly with dark eyes. _I am bringing you to the house tonight, after you've changed back. It'll heal you all but completely so…_ He hesitated and then shivered as he glanced at Slifer slightly. _I need to grab you more food before we go into the woods. Where is Yusei_?

Had Jonouchi never seen the way Yugi had looked at Yami those few times he'd witnessed them together, he almost thought he would have assumed Yugi to have fallen for Yusei. The dark-blue-eyed gray-black wolf had become one of the most-spoken names Yugi uttered, he'd found. In the two days he'd been with the pack and Yugi had brought food for him to snack on, Yusei had been the most sought after. Yugi requested his attention almost more than he did the two supposed gods he'd set up to guard him.

The two of them would go off together with the very simple plan of Yugi running to the market, getting the food, coming back to the fall, and Yusei going to retrieve it. For whatever reason Yusei had taken precedence over Mai and Otogi at times. He would be the one to play retriever in going to get the food and leap through with the bags in his mouth.

Yugi would come through a few minutes after, in wolf fur and looking exhausted. The blond would find all of his favorite foods spread out before him, snacks and meals and all of the things that he did not honestly know how he ate all at once. All of his favorite meals at once had seemed like food fit for an army and yet Jonouchi would find himself finishing them off within the hour. The small teen would watch him eat and dismiss the others as they all swapped looks and then hurried off.

 _He is lying with Echo and Serena. They are all asleep together for the moment. You are free to go and get the food and_ I _might bring them back for the boy._

Yugi flicked an ear. _If you'd like, Slifer,_ he finally answered, tilting his head at her curiously. _I would appreciate it a lot._

The she-wolf still did not raise her head. _Then I shall do so._ She moved just enough to yawn and stretch her long legs. But she did not care to respond further. _Simply tell me when._

The white canine watched her for a moment, then turned quickly to his beta with wide eyes. _So, then we'll have to talk about the serious things tonight. But I do want to ask how you're doing. Feeling okay_? _Nauseous_? _Anything_?

"More energized and kind of restless. But my legs are still kind of numb so I'm not even going to try to move right about now." He watched his friend as his ears flicked quickly back and forth and those blue-violet eyes burned into his. "Besides that, it's fine."

 _Hungry yet_?

"Starving."

 _As always._ The wolf wagged his tail and the movement made the water fall rapidly from his long fur. He shifted closer only a few millimeters, as if he were an excited puppy. But he looked so incredibly relieved that Jonouchi had to wonder at the sight. Was the Change truly so bad? Or had his near-death experience scared Yugi beyond measure? _I'll get some food in a few minutes. Uh, I also need to get a couple of other things before you come back with me. Your dad has been calling me, by the way._

He was silent for a long minute. "What did he say?"

The wolf flicked an ear. _Just that he hadn't seen you for a day or two and was wondering if I had known where you were…_ He shifted his weight, tilted his head, and then shook his head slowly. _I told him that you were staying with me for a few days. He wanted to speak to you and I told him no. He was pretty pissed, especially since I haven't done anything with your phone. So I…told him you would contact him again sometime later._

"What did he say after that?"

 _That he'd call the police if he didn't hear from you by the end of the week._ Yugi didn't seem even mildly concerned. _He thinks I'm afraid of that and I told him that you would contact him when you felt like it. We argued and he threatened to call them again so I told him I knew about the illegal drugs he takes sometimes. He hung up on me after that._

"Shit, Yugi…" The blond ran his hand through his hair and sighed loudly. "You really shouldn't have mentioned that part."

 _Whatever would get him off my back is what I threatened him with, Katsuya. And it is not as if he'll do anything to_ me _anyways. And if he lays a hand on you, you're free to fight him off or run back to my house._ He hesitated. _In a way, that really hasn't changed_.

"The one thing that really _should_ have been changed, and it's not."

Yugi flicked an ear, thinking to say something like "Lycanthropy doesn't really ensure miracles" but then he considered his multiple brushes with death and it made his skin crawl. If anything, he was perhaps the proof that lycanthropy _could_ procure a miracle in some way. And, when he glanced towards Jonouchi, he wondered for a moment if the blond realized exactly how much of one the disease was for him as well.

He could have been dead. He could have been floating beneath the ice, frozen and decaying. Yugi shivered and turned away.

 _Well, if you'd like, you can always knock him around now. You_ are _a wolf, after all._ He flicked an ear. _I haven't really ever tested the idea of how strong we are or anything but I'm sure it's not human._

Slifer snorted and blinked a lazy golden eye open, watching him now. _Sound advice._

Yugi shot her an irate glance. _I'm trying._

Jonouchi rolled his eyes. "You two squabble like little kids. I'm pretty sure I'm the most mature around here right now."

The two lycanthropes glanced at him in unison. Yugi looked slightly flustered even in his wolf form, ears flicked to the sides, eyes narrowed in annoyance. He had drawn his blackened lips back and was giving him a look of clear frustration and disbelief. Slifer had simply raised her head and tilted it now as well, brows slightly furrowed and lip curled to show a canine.

 _You're the one having dreams about boning Mai,_ Yugi scoffed. He ignored the dirty look Jonouchi shot him.

 _And whining about food in your sleep._

"What can I say? I'm a growing boy and I'm hungry."

 _I'm pretty sure you hit your maximum height a year ago, but nice try._

"Then I guess if I did, you did too, huh? You're just going to be a midget for the rest of your life, right?"

Yugi shot him an annoyed look, ears against his skull. _I am_ not _a midget_! _I'm taller than a midget_! And _I'm probably going to be bigger than you as a wolf, so take that and shove it_!

Slifer was shaking with laughter now, though she stretched and yawned as she got to her feet. _I had nearly forgotten how interesting mortals could be,_ the goddess commented in amusement. She shook herself out and ignored the way Jonouchi considered her with a perplexed expression.

 _See_? _Coming into the pack did you well_!

The she-wolf settled back on her haunches again. _Perhaps,_ she answered mildly, but she hardly seemed to care. Instead her eyes flickered to Jonouchi again. _You will have to teach him the lore._

Yugi curled his lips in annoyance, all but snarling when he snapped, _I don't even know most of it. How am I supposed to teach him_?

 _Perhaps Yami can then._

"Yami?" the blond said immediately. His brown eyes shot to Yugi for an explanation. "Yami is here?"

The white wolf bristled faintly, then tossed his head violently back and forth. _No, he is not. He's not here. He's not here at all. But he's…going to come back. And when he does, I guess he can explain the lore to_ both of us.

"Lore? What lore?" Jonouchi shook his head and stared at his friend as if he had just grown three heads. "I'm going to turn into a big fluffy wolf, right? What lore do I need to know past that? Full moons and silver are what I need to watch out for, right?"

Yugi flicked an ear and then tried his hardest not to snicker as he turned away. _There's, um, a lot more to it than that._

Slifer did not glance at him when the blond turned to her inquisitively. _It will not be too much longer before Yami returns, as I understand it. So perhaps it will not be too terrible to allow him to wait to learn. It is not as if I or Obelisk will take up such a task. That is meant to go from alpha to beta._

"Alpha to beta?"

 _It's the ranking system for wolves that have been bitten and the one that bit them. The one that bites is the alpha. The one that was bitten is the beta._ Yugi turned to Slifer immediately again, eyes sharpening with annoyance. _I'm going to go get his food and I'll be back in a little while._

Jonouchi opened his mouth to answer but the white wolf had trotted and leaped out through the waterfall before he'd even drawn in a complete breath. So the blond swallowed his question and then glanced at the she-wolf beside him again. She was small, leaner than Yugi seemed physically, with striking red fur that was odd to place the shade of. He shivered when she glanced at him, her golden eyes sharp and dagger-like upon his skin.

 _Did you require something of me_?

"Uh…" The teen felt his cheeks heating as she continued staring. He thought for sure he saw laughter in her deep eyes. He looked away again quickly, ignoring the way she remained staring at him. "I don't think so?"

Her laughter was soft, almost rasping, and he shivered at the way it rolled about in his head. Jonouchi made a point not to look at her again even as the she-wolf commented, _Surely you have questions_?

"I'd rather ask Yugi when we're at his place."

The she-wolf was unrelenting in her stare. _Truly_? she asked curiously. _Very well. Then I shall not tell you of the things he does not have answers for._

He glanced at her sideways, curious. Did Yami know them or was she simply teasing him? Was there something wrong? Or was there something else entirely? He didn't think Yugi knew much of being a werewolf; it wasn't hard to imagine that he had been trying his hardest to ignore it for the most part. It amazed him to consider, but it was not hard to believe. Yugi was often dismissive and unrelenting in that way when it came to such a thing.

He could see him and Yami fighting over such things, as he knew full well that the red-eyed wolf was exactly that. He _was_ and always _would_ be lupine rather than human. Every mannerism he'd displayed when he'd seen the lycanthrope had been entirely canine. He'd witnessed the way he'd fallen so instinctively into the rear of their little line when they'd walked to the park. He'd seen the way his eyes had regarded everything around them. He'd noticed his head tilt and the way his fingers drummed on the side of his cup. He'd barely _blinked_. Jonouchi had counted it happening all of about five times in the minutes they'd been around each other.

But Slifer looked entirely too wolf-like. She had something unnaturally keen and disgustingly canine about her. There was a glaring lack of humanity in her eyes. And Jonouchi was abruptly aware of this as he considered her. Even Yami, whose red eyes had been so unnatural and utterly unnerving, had seemed to hold more strength and wilderness than Jonouchi had seen before, seemed more natural. He'd been more wolf, but there had been something in his eyes to show him the clear definition of reality.

There had been an animalistic quality, but it had been tempered by patience. It was something of a human trait, a patience which had made his eyes less like gleaming shards of garnet and pools of blood and more like deep wells of red ink. His eyes had a shine that was falsely human in characteristic and beguiling to anyone to notice it.

Yugi had the opposite quality within his own eyes. The animalistic intelligence was there and instinct shown in the sapphire specks of his purple eyes. But the base color showed more human qualities, simple and easy to understand where the lupine aspect made things seem muddled and confusing. The sight of them was unnerving when one had time to consider them fully.

But Jonouchi had to wonder now.

Was it possible that one day soon his own eyes might look more akin Yami's?

Was that a true possibility?

Or would Yami's eyes one day look like Slifer's, entirely estranged and too animalistic to ever be considered otherwise?

He couldn't imagine his friend with eyes like that. The small teen was so sweet and easygoing and simple. Was it possible that his friend might become so estranged to him? Jonouchi felt sick at the very thought.

"Yeah, I think I'll wait until we get back to his place." He felt like his lungs had tightened too much to breathe properly and Slifer was staring at him almost senselessly. "And whatever he doesn't know, I'm sure someone else can tell me."

The she-wolf did not blink. _I am sure,_ she answered in something of a curt manner. But she did not think to respond further, shaking herself out again as she got to her feet. Her eyes were on the water of the fall, her ears pricked forward and her golden gaze watching the flecks of liquid which sprayed towards them. The wolf turned to him after a moment, considering him curiously. _Yugi had not spoken of you very much before you came here. But I do know his history in regards to you and the two humans._

Jonouchi nearly shivered at the statement. "Okay," he commented, unsure of what more to say. The blond teen watched her with a confused expression.

 _I simply find it interesting that he has such attachment to humans of all species. I could understand such behavior towards a dog or even a feline. But a human_?

"You're a werewolf too, aren't you?" the blond grumbled, slightly frustrated and annoyed as he shook his head. "So you can turn human, can't you?"

The she-wolf bared her teeth, turning on him with a bristle. _I despise your idea of such simplicity, Jonouchi Katsuya. You disgust me with this mediocre_ _concept. You are a fool, if nothing else. How dare you waste my time with such a thought. Humans are disgusting. I have not once ever donned a human skin instead of my wolf coat._

The blond shook his head in annoyance. "Okay, so you're attached to all of the wolves. So then why couldn't you understand if—?"

 _The wolves are not despicable creatures that_ — She fell silent immediately now, turning her head towards the water again. _You are a mere mortal before the goddess of death and you assume to speak to me in such a way…_

Jonouchi fell silent, eyes wide and horrified. _A goddess_? She was a fucking _goddess_? There was no way, right? There was absolutely no way that she was truly a goddess, was there? He'd heard rumors that there were two "gods" in the camp but none of them had truly explained or even thought to mention who they were by name. And he'd seen the way some of the lower-ranking wolves greeted Yugi; all of them tended to dip their heads. The fact that they had done so around Slifer was nothing that he'd thought out of the ordinary as more than the idea that perhaps they were lower in rank.

Slifer tilted her head and turned to the blond now. _Yugi has returned. I am to retrieve your food now,_ she commented dismissively. She flicked an ear and looked to him with glittering eyes full of malice and laughter. _Remain here._

"Oh har har."

The wolf wagged her tail, her animosity forgotten instantly. Then she turned and ran forward, springing through the water without a second glance. Jonouchi shivered and looked at the thistle overhead, eyes wide and curious for a moment. He could hear the wolves moving around but he did not think any were headed towards the cavern. The idea made him shiver, stomach knotting painfully for a moment.

Slifer came with Yugi moments behind her. But the teen was human now, soaking wet and dripping everywhere. When Jonouchi glanced at him, he looked as if he had gotten thrown into a pool of water without warning and his clothes clung to his frame as if he were nothing but a skeleton.

"Okay, so, there's…" He frowned as Slifer placed the plastic bags down on the rocky floor. She shook herself out, the droplets all but soaking Jonouchi and Yugi should the small teen have been dry enough to absorb anymore. The small teen instead reached up to run his hands through his hair, flicking some of the water away. The action made it all but jump back into place, shiny with water but not weighed down to destroy its defiance of gravity.

Jonouchi was happy enough to simply snatch one of the bags off the ground. In an instant he opened the first two handles to find the other bags inside knotted and layered in plastic. Yugi had taken the time to reinforce them so that the water would not leak inside.

"I can't even see what's in there," he complained in frustration. "You layered the bags too much."

Yugi rolled his eyes. "Would you like water-logged food instead?" he scoffed. But he moved to his side regardless, taking a seat next to him and reaching for the bag in front of Jonouchi. Where the blond had struggled to untie the bags, nails too broken and chipped to properly grip, the small teen simply hooked his fingers and cut through it like butter. The blue-violet-eyed boy shifted the items aside to him once more.

 _Water is good for you._

Yugi snickered and looked at Slifer with a raised before. "Yes, water is definitely good for you. But it makes food soggy and that's gross."

 _So humans do not like things with more texture than dry_?

Jonouchi laughed out loud, digging into his bag of goodies. Yugi had, as before, gotten him the junkiest food items he could manage. He'd gotten greasy, sugary, fatty chips. He'd grabbed granola bars with chocolate chips and high sugar contents. He'd gotten American snacks full of grease. There were a few restaurant takeout meals, some chicken and others beef. He'd gotten wantons and sushi and fried rice.

"You guys really do sound like a bickering old couple." He snatched a bag of chips and tried to pull it open but his hands were shaking too hard. He hadn't truly recovered the dexterity in his hands and fingers. And he couldn't quite grasp everything as he'd needed to. So he put part of the bag in his mouth and pulled with his other hand. "If I didn't know any better—"

"You're disgusting," Yugi grumbled with a roll of his eyes. He grinned lazily at the she-wolf. "Maybe you should bite him."

 _You have teeth. You are perfectly capable._

"That's disgusting to do when you're human."

 _Then change and then bite him._

"You can't just do it for me instead?" he asked with a laugh. "You're already a wolf! You could totally do it! It wouldn't even make you pause!"

 _I do not like the taste of human blood in my mouth._

Yugi snorted. "Oh, I'm calling bullshit on that one."

The she-wolf flicked an ear. _You must have me confused with my sister, dear child._ She stretched herself out onto her belly and closed her eyes as her chin lay on her paws. _Surely we do not look so much alike, however_?

The small teen rolled his eyes and shook his head. "No, I can tell the difference, thanks." He looked at Jonouchi. "The chicken tenders are mine."

"You know, when you go for a food run for _someone else_ normally you don't end up getting yourself food too."

"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize you actually wanted to starve."

Jonouchi snorted with amusement and dug into the bag of chips in front of him again. He licked his lips and shoveled another fistful of chips into his mouth without a second thought. "Shut up.'

Yugi watched him for a moment, then settled back more comfortably against the stone behind him. His head was tipped back and he yawned softly as his friend continued his ravenous antics. He could hear Slifer's breathing, soft and steady, and he wondered for a moment if she slept in any manner. He was not sure he'd truly seen her do so.

Was it possible that the gods did not rest?

Yugi puzzled over this for a few minutes longer, but the thoughts became slow and sluggish. Then they stalled entirely and the small teen found himself slipping away into the darkness altogether. He stirred again only when he was prodded by something cold and wet, pressing persistently into his cheek.

He thought at first to swat at the source. Then he realized, eyes opening, that it was one of the wolves. Yugi reached up to rub at his eyes, mumbling, "What? What did I miss?"

An image appeared in his head, of Jonouchi and himself on their hands and knees, of Mai and Otogi nearby, all of them changing rapidly into wolves. Yugi blinked, shaking his head, and reached up to run his fingers through his hair. He yawned and stretched his arms out, nodding slightly, before moving to draw his legs up. Yusei nodded and wagged his tail slightly, if only mildly, and then turned away to look towards where Otogi, Mai and Jonouchi were standing at the other end of the cavern.

"Thanks," he muttered, shaking his head again and yawning once more. He leaned forward to ruffle the fur between his ears, pausing only for a moment to look into brilliant royal blue eyes. He looked so much like Ra in the color of his gaze that it made his stomach coil faintly. Then he straightened and dusted himself off, not surprised in the least to find much of his clothing still damp. He turned to the three humans on the other end of the cavern, eyes sparkling for a moment in the mild darkness. "Are we ready then? Did we pick a spot out in the woods or what?"

Jonouchi blinked and glanced at Mai. The blonde was stretching her arms in front of her, violet eyes sparkling with amusement. Otogi was all but statuesque beside her, arms crossed and eyes on them both. His brow was raised, his head tipped slightly to the side, and he smirked in amusement at Jonouchi after a moment.

"All taken care of," he answered simply. His teal eyes were burning into Yugi's now. "There's a little cavern kind of spot towards the bottom of the mountain, near the heart of the woods. It seems the safest."

Yugi thought abruptly of that little spot he'd hidden, expecting himself to change and never quite doing so. The reality of it struck him as odd that the pack might know of it. And then he shook it off, nodding slightly. Perhaps that was why Yami was in the woods that day…

"Okay," he answered simply. Then he looked towards Jonouchi with a raised brow. "You think you're ready for this?"

The blond snorted. "I doubt it. Are you kidding? I'm going to turn into a furry canine."

"It's a lot more fun than you'd think," Mai answered with a smirk. She raised a brow when he glanced at her with wide, startled eyes. "You'll love it once you get used to it."

"I kind of doubt that." But the statement sounded more forced than disdainful and Yugi could already feel the laughter bubbling inside of him. Jonouchi was definitely going to try his hardest to get in her pants. The reality of it made him snicker and he looked away when they both glanced at him. Amused, the small teen turned to Yusei, smirking a little wider at the way the younger male was staring so blankly at the others. "But, hey, I'm willing to try anything once."

Yugi snorted so loudly the Yusei jumped and turned to him with a startled expression, blue eyes huge and ears flattened against his head. He blinked up at the alpha and Yugi shook his head with a grin. "Don't worry, Yusei. I'm just detecting some _bullshit_."

Jonouchi rolled his eyes. " _Really_ , Yugi?"

The smaller teen flashed him a vibrant grin and the blond was abruptly aware of how much whiter they seemed at the moment. He thought, even with the lengthened and darkened shadows, that somehow his friend's teeth seemed almost… _straighter_. That was not to say Yugi had ever had _bad_ , horribly crooked teeth, but they had not quite been perfect before.

"I'm sorry. Was I supposed to pretend otherwise?"

The blond scoffed and shook his head. "Whatever, Yugi." He glanced sideways at Mai, nearly blushing when he realized she was watching him with a raised brow and a small smirk of amusement. He turned away again quickly, looking towards the smaller teen more urgently.

But his best friend was having the time of his life watching him struggle. His eyes were bright with amusement and sparkling. The small teen turned away after a long moment, looking to Otogi now.

"Okay, so Mai and I will help Jonouchi hobble along. You'll lead us to the place, okay?" he asked with a more direct tone to his voice. But his insides felt somewhat twisted, knotted, and he almost wondered if he should offer for a moment to simply let Mai teach him…

No doubt she was strong enough to support him there on her own. And there was no way she would not be able to deal with it all by herself. She would most likely make a better mentor than him as well. Yugi was not unsure of that in the slightest.

"As you wish."

Yugi was the rear of their line of four. He came only after Mai had helped Jonouchi out, Otogi watching them. The small teen watched them with darkened eyes. But the rest of the pack merely cast small glances, nodded respectfully, and then turned and moved about to pace away. The alpha did not so much as glance at them.

* * *

"Comfortable?" Yugi asked curiously, but a part of him was dismissive as well. It didn't matter if he was comfortable or not. The moon would spur the Change regardless. Whether Jonouchi felt okay with it was a rather moot point in all actuality. Yugi shook his head and turned away again slightly, eyes narrowing mildly as he glanced sideways towards the two blondes. Mai was next to him, standing a couple of feet away. And Otogi was pacing somewhat restlessly. He considered them for only a moment longer, then turned away again. "Okay, so are we ready then?"

"I would think so," Otogi said mildly. But his teal eyes flickered towards Jonouchi and back restlessly and Yugi had the sudden realization that he was more than slightly alarmed. Jonouchi was, after all, another Full-Blood like Mai. If things were to blow out of proportion, it was Yugi who would be forced to deal with it. Otogi would not be strong enough against him to manage a fight. "There shouldn't be an issue from here on."

Yugi nodded slightly. "All right." He turned to Jonouchi and felt almost weak with the memories that clawed at his thoughts. His stomach twisted as he considered it, the way Yami had sat nearby and instructed him. It had seemed so simple for him then. The black wolf had coaxed him through it all with little difficulty. And now Yugi wondered at the idea. He did not think he could emulate the ease with which Yami had confronted the task so simply. And the idea almost made him sick to consider.

"Okay, so, I guess the first thing would be to undress…" He tried his hardest not to think of the insinuations of that statement but his cheeks were already turning bright red and he nearly groaned with despair. Mai burst out laughing and shook her head, grinning at him happily. "Oh, shut up, Mai."

"It's not my fault that you're so adorably innocent."

"It's because of cougars like you that I'm going to remain a virgin for a while," he stated with a shrug and scowl. Jonouchi snorted loudly, muttering under his breath about how if he'd stayed interested in Anzu he probably wouldn't be anymore. The statement made his head snap around, mouth open and eyes wide in shock. "What?"

"Wow," the blonde commented awkwardly, scratching the back of her head and glancing at Otogi. "That was, uh, kind of a fucked up statement."

"Well, I mean, she would have had sex with him by now!" Jonouchi responded with a slightly horrified look, eyes wide as he refused to look at Yugi now. It was clear that he had not realized that they would hear him and so was mortified by the idea. "I mean…"

"Nothing wrong with being a little promiscuous," Mai finally said, winking playfully at Yugi as the small teen tried not to snap in frustration. "I mean, if she wants to play hanky panky with you, why stop her?"

The question made Yugi snicker before shaking his head in annoyance. "And I'm sure we could all take lessons from you, right, Mai?" he teased. "After all, you did offer me and Yami some."

"And that offer us still very much on the table if the two of you ever want to take me up on it." She shrugged, unashamed, and winked again. "And I'm sure Otogi would still _love_ to help out with that too."

The smaller teen snorted and rolled his eyes. "Uh, yeah, I think I'll just wing it and do it on my own when the time comes. I really don't want to be in competition with two other people, thanks."

Jonouchi gaped at him for a moment, then flushed furiously. "Whoa, whoa, what? You guys were discussing a foursome before?" he demanded with wide eyes. Yugi wrinkled his nose at his horrified expression and both Mai and Otogi raised a brow. "When did that happen?"

"A couple of months ago, I guess?" Yugi answered dismissively, trying to take the heat off the blond for a moment. "When I first met them."

" _What_? Seriously?"

"As much fun as this trip down memory lane actually _is_ ," Otogi cut in, voice effectively silencing them as they all glanced at him in surprise, "we really _should_ try to get him to change before the moon rises. Otherwise he's going to be forced through it and it's not going to be pretty."

Yugi snorted loudly. "None of the Changes are pretty," he scoffed, but he ignored the way his mind reeled for a moment. "Anyways, you're right though. We should go ahead and get this done."

Mai nodded. "Okay, Jonouchi, so what you're going to do, is completely strip out of your clothes."

" _Why_ though?"

"Because, either you're going to end up completely shredding through them or you're going to end up cutting circulation off somewhere in the body. And I don't think you really want that to happen either, do you?"

Yugi considered the statement for a moment, wondering at the idea. He'd never really thought about the odds of cutting off circulation. He'd assumed the body would simply tear through the clothing completely. But then he glanced at the belts around his waist and the jacket on his shoulders and he thought about layers and how one might break but the next might hold.

With the body going through such a stressful, strenuous event as it was, he did not think that there was much way to prevent potentially choking oneself or completely ruining an arm or anything of that kind… He shivered.

"So there's an actual reason? It's not just because you want to see me naked?" Jonouchi sounded almost as if he were whining.

"I don't think your package is going to be that impressive," Otogi snorted. But he was smirking in amusement and Yugi couldn't help the smallest snicker, though he looked away quickly when Jonouchi shot him a dirty look. "Especially not with how cold it is. You're going to shrivel up like a dried worm."

Yugi couldn't help but laugh out loud. He covered his mouth with his hands and shook, guffawing behind his fingers. "Oh, _shit_."

"You've barely got a hook for the worm to get on," Jonouchi snapped, spinning on Yugi with reddened cheeks. "You're definitely not one to laugh right about now."

"As much as I like the idea of you two whipping them out for a contest, you both need to calm down," Mai announced, cutting off the snarl that Yugi had begun to form. The smaller teen glanced at her sideways and Otogi rolled his eyes with a shake of his head. Jonouchi looked quickly down again. "The point _is_ we're all stripping. We're all changing. Who knows? Maybe doggy style will be more fun anyways."

Yugi grunted. Jonouchi gaped at her. Otogi burst out laughing. Mai winked at them both and began to pull the sleeves of her jacket to slip over her hands and off her arm. She quickly followed with the second arm and dropped it aside. With her lead, Otogi began to do the same and Yugi hesitated for only a moment. Jonouchi awkwardly scratched at his wrists, then finally pulled the green jacket off as well.

"I guess everyone gets to meet Jack Mehoff now," Yugi commented, shrugging as he began to kick off his sneakers.

Mai looked over. "Did you really just call him that?"

"Sure, why not? He likes heavy petting and a firm hand."

Otogi burst out laughing. Yugi shrugged again, grinning, and undid the belts on his waist. Mai had dropped her jacket and shirt and the small teen was trying hard not to stare now as he considered. This was the first time he'd ever seen a woman naked up close. The thought was horrifying, especially as, immediately on the tail of this, he realized this was probably going to be the only manner in which he ever truly saw such a thing either. It would be when the females were stripping to change. Because, as had been proven when he'd puked after almost kissing Anzu, the concept of disloyalty towards Yami made him sick.

"So we have Jack Mehoff and the Big Dog," Mai commented, laughing as she dropped her skirt. Yugi flushed bright red and turned immediately away again. Oh gods, he didn't think he'd ever forget the sight… "Then we've got the garden where the dogs bury their bones and yours would be…?"

Yugi sputtered out a laugh, turning to her. "The garden? Really?"

"That's the _Garden_ to you, thank you very much." Mai winked at him playfully and the small teen tried his hardest not to look down. Even if he didn't act on it, this entire thing was still kind of exciting. "And yours would be what, Jonouchi?"

"He doesn't have a name."

"Bullshit," Otogi barked, smirking. "There's no way that he doesn't."

"Probably God," Yugi answered, trying to lighten some of the attention Jonouchi had gotten from them. "It's probably something like that."

"Is that why he's a lonely fella?"

The small teen couldn't help the laugh that left him. Fucking Mai; of course she would say something like that.

"He's not lonely! He's had tons of experience! Plenty of chicks have been with the great Katsuya Jonouchi!" the blond bit out, scowling at her in annoyance. "Yugi is the one without any experience."

"That's because he was waiting for his special someone," Mai said with a wave of her hand. "That doesn't count at all. He was just holding out."

The defense startled the smaller teen. He blinked, surprised, as Jonouchi flushed bright red again and Mai merely grinned at him. He cast a quick glance towards Otogi who was watching the blond with a scrutinizing expression.

"You know, it's actually kind of rude that you keep trying to undermine him when all he's doing is trying to keep the pressure off you," Mai said abruptly. She'd lost that little smile in her eyes and looked almost annoyed herself now. "But whatever. Let's focus on getting through your first change and then Yugi can take you home and you two can kiss and make up."

"Wow, someone sounds a little bitter," the raven-haired teen commented, laughing when she slugged him on the shoulder. "Ow, stop being so abusive."

"Oh please, you love it and you know it."

"I think this is a conversation for when we children go off to bed," Yugi announced.

"It's not my fault he loves it when I make him call me ma'am."

The smallest teen choked. "You two are ridiculous."

"I also love the salutes and yes sirs," Otogi answered immediately. He saluted her and she visibly relaxed, rolling her eyes. "And eating out."

Yugi flushed bright red. "Okay, okay, stop now— _please_!" he cried out, waving his hands in front of his face as if to ward them off. "We can just call it quits now."

"What do you know, I think you might be a little bigger than Jonouchi over there."

Otogi snorted and rolled his eyes. "Neither of them have taken off their boxers yet."

"A girl can tell when there's a large penis around." She raised a brow, shooting him a sideways glance. "Why do you think I took you over Marik?"

"Wait, huh?" Jonouchi sputtered, shocked. "Marik has a mini-dick?"

"No, but Otogi's is bigger." Mai shrugged. "What can I say? I like a bigger piece."

"Oh for the love of the gods," Yugi cursed under his breath. He shook his head and dropped his boxers, rushing to take position on his hands and knees. He made sure to carefully position his arms and legs to cover himself, if only slightly. "Let's just get this over with, okay? _Before_ the moon rises."

Otogi snickered and dropped his own boxers, following his lead. Yugi growled playfully when he saw him squinting at him. Mai snickered and rolled her eyes and knelt as well. But Jonouchi hesitated a few moments longer, cursing under his breath, and finally did the same.

But Yugi had the sudden, startling clarity that he did not know how to instruct Jonouchi now. Yami had asked him to recall the pain and the feeling of the Change in order to do so for himself in the woods. And he'd been able to do that on numerous occasions, even speeding up the sensation to force it to go faster as he had to save Yami from Espa and Panik that night. But now he had no idea how to do it…

"Here's what you're going to do, Jonouchi," Otogi commented, cutting into Yugi's initial sense of fear. He glanced up to find the raven-haired teen watching his friend. But Jonouchi was studying him with a somewhat unsure expression. He offered him a blank, encouraging smile, as Otogi continued. "This is going to be the only time you're going to do it like this, by the way. The rest of the time it's going to be by remembering and conjuring up the feelings of the Change now."

Jonouchi looked over. "Okay…"

"What you're going to do now is basically imagine what you think you'll look like as a wolf, then think of all the movies you've seen the characters phase in. You're going to have to focus on them completely, because if you don't, you're either going to reverse the Change altogether or get stuck. And it's going to fucking _hurt_ if you don't pay attention."

The blond gave him an annoyed yet somewhat anxious look. "You can get _stuck_? Are you fucking kidding me right now?"

Yugi shivered. That was just another thing he'd never considered before. But he'd never thought about it because Yami had coaxed him through it. And he'd had the reason of running with him to keep him from backing out of such a thing. His focuses had always been on them, pivotal and drawn there, and that had caused him to follow through each time.

"You can, but it's not going to last for more than a few hours. Depending on if you're more human or wolf, the lycanthropy will _force_ the Change to save you." Otogi considered him a moment. "An immobile wolf is a dead one, Jonouchi. Remember that."

Yugi shivered again. Then he shook his head. "What if he imagines his wolf self wrong? Does it do anything?"

"No, it's still going to trigger it."

He nodded. "Okay, good." He didn't look up when all three of them gave him inquisitive glances. Instead he stared at the snow beneath him, wondering at the sight of it and just how pristine it seemed.

He didn't need to explain to them that he'd been half-dead and bleeding out when his own body had triggered the Change. After Para or Dox had ripped through his throat like that, his body had started to do so. And Yami and that wolf from Paradise—Echo's beta—had been the only reasons he had not died.

"He'll just change into one that didn't exactly match his idea." Otogi shrugged and turned to Jonouchi once more. "Okay, so you're going to start us off. It's more important that you change before us."

It took over forty long minutes before the first telltale sign of the Change occurred. There was a crunching noise, long and sharp and popping. Then came Jonouchi sputtering for breath. Seconds later he choked and puked. Then he contorted rapidly, body twisting and shaking as his head bowed and his back arched. His skin bulged and shivered. He shook. He vomited again.

Yugi watched him mindlessly. A part of him was horrified to watch a friend go through this. But another was almost slightly amused. The small teen watched him, unable to look away. His friend thrashed, puking violently again. The pores in his skin opened. Small tendrils of hair began to push outwards. They receded, tucked into his skin once more, then pushed further.

His breathing was ragged. His teeth were bared. Steam came from his skin where sweat clung to his face. He puked again. His back arched higher. The knobs became defined. His legs snapped end broke. His hands began to fold and his fingers break. The hair began to spread along his face. He flashed his teeth as he sputtered.

Yugi tried to ignore the red coloring to his skin. And he tried his hardest not to notice the way his mouth opened into a silent scream. His teeth were elongating, however. And his tongue seemed to flatten grotesquely. Jonouchi trembled and shook and then fell over.

And then, writhing on the ground, his fingers folded and his nails blackened. The palms of his hands had turned black and the skin was calloused and forced into a paw pad. The fur began to come in larger strands, almost like shuddering waves. And then Jonouchi puked again, writhed harder, and finally grew still.

Yugi initially thought to hurry over. But then a harsh heat gripped his skin. He hissed at its touch and snarled in dismay. At first his body seemed to oppose him. His legs shook, his stomach clenched. Wave after wave of nausea came over him. Bile burned a clear path up the back of his throat. He hissed and snarled. And then he realized, abruptly, the warning Otogi had given.

The moon was forcing the Change.

Yugi spat and tossed his head, stunned by the realization. And then he blinked and clenched his eyes shut tightly. If the moon could force the Change like this, then surely he could influence it to completion, right?

He swallowed thickly, breathing in a long and deep inhale. Then, focusing, he brought forth the memory of the pain that usually came with his own voluntary Changes. He closed his eyes, drew in a deeper breath, and felt that hideous flash of heat encompassing him more fully. His skin shuddered. His jaw locked into place. He snarled and spat. And then his back arched and he tossed his head once more. Instantly a wave of pain came over him, but the nausea lessened. And the ache began to split against his skin.

He felt it more than ever as his jaw lengthened and his hands became paws. The crackling popping noise of bones breaking was almost like a roar. He staggered, then collapsed. His chin hit the snow, his teeth aching from the force of his bite. And then he folded his forelimbs beneath him and got to his feet again.

He shook himself out, flicking his ears, and turned to Jonouchi. _You okay_? he demanded. But he was not sure the other wolf could focus on him to begin with. And so he wondered if his question fell on deaf ears.

Mai had wandered over and was sniffing at the prone wolf's face. The sight made him want to laugh but then he considered the damage his first Change had done him and immediately lost such humor. He hurried over as well, limping slightly from a stiffness in his joints that had come from his stumble.

Yugi stepped closer, then towards Mai. _Is he okay_? he asked rather sharply. The white wolf narrowed his eyes and searched her face.

 _He's fine. He just hasn't gotten up yet._ Mai wagged her tail at him. Her white, silver and gold face was amused more than anything.

Yugi relaxed visibly upon seeing her face. The calm reassurance in her eyes made his fear fall away entirely. The white wolf turned away to look at his friend. Jonouchi had become a leaner dirty blond wolf with hair a similar shade to that of Ra's. But along his dorsal cape was gray and black, dispersed rather evenly throughout the long stands. He was a mostly solid color but for a softer beige along his undercoat and white to color his belly and much of his tail. And his muzzle was black, up to the stops of his eyes.

 _He looks like a golden retriever with pricked ears and a different colored muzzle,_ the she-wolf commented cheerfully. Her ears flicked towards him and Yugi licked his lips. _Don't you think so_?

The white wolf wagged his tail. _He really does_! he laughed. _He really_ does _look like a dog instead_!

 _Screw you,_ Jonouchi grumbled, exhausted as he rolled over onto his belly. He flicked an ear and tried to get to his feet, but stumbled and fell back. He shot Yugi an annoyed look. _I don't look like a dog_!

The white wolf wagged his tail a little more. _You have the golden retriever fur in the front and then a chow chow face_!

 _Shut up,_ Jonouchi snapped, frustrated. _I look like a wolf. And a damn good looking one at that_! _I'm a stud. Leave me alone._

Yugi snorted. _Okay, stud, but you're still pretty dog-like instead._

Jonouchi glared at him and shook his head. But when he went to respond, Mai chimed in instead. _You look so much like a dog. I almost didn't recognize that you were a wolf._

Otogi burst out laughing. Yugi wagged his tail happily. Mai licked Jonouchi's cheek then nipped his ear and began to trot away. Immediately Otogi took off after her and the two sprinted off into trees. Yugi turned to his friend, wagged his tail, and waited for Jonouchi to get to his feet and follow him.

* * *

The lights were off.

The air was stiff.

It was cold.

He was hungry.

He licked his lips.

Blood soaked his tongue.

He yawned.

Pain bloomed in his gums.

In front of him the air wavered.

Shuddering noises came forward.  
He climbed to his feet.

His head tilted.

A snarl rumbled.

The air shivered again.

He bore his teeth.

There was a flash of white.

There was red.

He blinked.

He snarled.

Air quivered.

Sound rippled.

There was movement.

There was pain.

There was blood.

The shuddering came again.

Scraping sounded.

He snarled louder.

Then his mouth opened.

The world was dark.

The pain was terrible.

His eyes burned.

His blood splattered on the concrete.

The quivering grew more intense.

There was—

— _Blood_.

So.

Much.

Blood.

He snarled.

There was—

— _Movement_.

His teeth snapped.

Blood gushed.

So.

Much.

Blood.

And then there was a scream.

It echoed.

It ricocheted.

It escalated.

It died.

He licked his lips.

Blood.

Blood.

 _Blood_.

Something hit the ground.

Something _rolled_.

He spun upon it.

His jaws snapped.

He tasted blood again.

Something shivered again.

He snapped at it.

His jaws hit something smooth.

His teeth clicked.

He backed up.

Then he lunged.

There was sound again.

Blood dripped.

He licked his mouth.

His tongue was cut.

He blinked.

Pain erupted in his side.

He spun on it.

He snarled.

Something else dug into his side.

He snapped his teeth.

He lunged.

Blood flew into the air.

Something rolled again.

The wolf blinked.

Pain spread through him.

He blinked.

There was blood—

— _everywhere_.

* * *

Yugi landed rather hard. He rolled and the rabbit cried out beneath him. But it was thrown into the snow. And the impact all but buried it. The white wolf turned on it immediately. He snapped his teeth and blood filled his mouth. He felt it grow limp, then dropped it between his paws and took a large bite. He wagged his tail and licked his lips.

Jonouchi wrinkled his nose. _That's disgusting._

 _And a lot healthier,_ Yugi dismissed. He took another huge bite and swallowed it almost whole but for some mild chewing with his back teeth.

 _I'm watching you do it and I still can't believe it._

The white wolf ignored him now. He chomped on the last of the rabbit and bones crunched loudly beneath his teeth. He got to his feet again a few moments later, licking his lips once more and flicking an ear.

He wasn't sure he wanted to explain to Jonouchi how similarly he viewed the act of eating them. But the fact was that he did not know how to even put such a thing into words. What it came down to, similarly, was that Yugi was still new to the entire concept. But he could not help himself that half of him rejoiced in being fed something of that magnitude when the other was repulsed. He could not find it in himself, either, to attempt to explain such a situation to the blond.

Did it count for nothing that he was at least _trying_? He was trying for the wolves and pretending to be what they had come to expect of their faux god Atem. And he was trying _not_ to become someone his friends could not recognize. The reality of it was that he was still fearful. It was still possible that he might lose himself. But it was also possible that he might not as well.

But Yugi had no words to explain.

And he was scared and tired of being so at war with such a concept as it was.

And he wondered, not for the first time, if Yami had ever suffered such a feeling. But now, with that thought, came a more primal fear. He wondered if, wherever Yami was, he were dying or hungry in any way. And it made him quiver to wonder at such a thing. He'd never considered it before. And now he felt shaken and stupid as it occurred to him to question such a thing.

Was Yami hungry where he was?

Was he miserable or unhappy?

Was he starving?

What if he was actually happy?

What if, when he came back, he wished more than ever to return?

Because, in all reality, while Yugi wanted to think otherwise, he had no idea what it was that Yami might be feeling. Those dreams were not guaranteed to be a connection to him of all wolves. It could have been a random werewolf for all he knew. There had never been a guarantee that he was tied so completely to Yami as it was.

They might have dreamed the same at times, but it was more likely that it had come about due to Yami's close proximity and the gods drawing them both in for the sake of mild familiarity.

And, try as he might, Yugi could not truly convince himself of otherwise.

 _Are you almost ready to go back to the house_? he asked quietly. The thought occurred to him that he should perhaps wait a little longer for Jonouchi to gather his strength more so. But he was tired as he considered and it did not truly impact much, he supposed. Jonouchi had not done much more than await his lead for the most part. They'd hunted and Yugi had eaten but he'd also dismissed Mai and Otogi as well an hour prior…

 _I guess so, if you are._ Jonouchi tilted his head as he looked at him. _I'm kind of tired so that's probably a good idea actually._

Yugi nodded. _Then we'll head home and you can watch some movies or whatever. I'll get out the sleep mat when we're back there._

 _What about your mom and grandpa_?

He flicked an ear. _My mom had an emergency to take care of before I even got up for school. She left a note on the table for me. And Grandpa actually knows I'm infected so he's more interested in seeing what I'm up to than ratting me out to my mom._

Jonouchi nodded slightly, listening at first only to the statement was gone before he got up for school. And then he faltered, head snapping around and mouth falling open in a clearly human gesture. _Your grandpa_ knows? _You actually_ told _him_?

Yugi hesitated. He didn't want to lie but he also didn't want to have to explain. Not only that but he'd make his grandpa sound either like he was insane or as if he were part of the conspiracy that was allowing the wolves to be created and experimented on in the first place.

 _Yeah. I was kind of forced to. He noticed I was struggling with something beforehand and then I wasn't and I looked like I'd never been hurt._

Jonouchi shivered. _So we always heal like this_?

 _Only as long as you're healthy._ Yugi shook himself out and shivered as he looked at him. For a moment he thought of that blood which had coated his yard, of the way his window had been thrown open. He thought of the prints on the roof and blood scattered about it. He thought of that bear with the menu and the silver in its mouth. And then he remembered seeing Jonouchi's blood on the ice where it was broken and he'd struggled. _That's what hunting and eating what you catch is a good thing. Even if it's only once in a while, it helps_.

The blond wolf looked sick for a split second. _That's still really gross._

 _When you're hungry, it's actually not._

 _I can't picture doing it._

Yugi snorted. _You'd be surprised, Jonouchi._

 _Well, I never would have thought that_ you _would do it. So I guess I really shouldn't think I won't…_

The white canine flicked an ear and turned to trot aside. His mind flashed with the thought of the way Yami had eaten and he'd scrunched his nose or spoken of it in disgust. The similar situation was almost enough to make him laugh but also want to vomit.

He'd given him such shit about it.

And then he'd judged him for it—if only for a moment.

Yugi shivered and shook his head. _You'd be surprised. It feels like instinct when you do it,_ he answered mildly. _You won't even really think twice after the first time._

He supposed that could be said for a lot of the things lycanthropy brought with it. One could adapt to the Change just as easily if they were willing, though he himself had not been. One could learn to monitor their healing to the very second if they so decided. One could utilize the heightened instincts to their very desires.

He turned away from Jonouchi entirely now. _Let's go ahead and get back to my house. Grandpa will be asleep and I'll set up the mat for you. Then you can watch TV or play games or whatever until you get tired. Then tomorrow we can skip out on school and talk about some of the things you might want to know._

 _Okay._

* * *

 _Atem._

He spun around, eyes wide and startled. He blinked, then furrowed his brows. At first the shadows remained too thick to see. Then they seemed to be breached, if only slightly, by the softest touch of silver moonlight. Yugi strained his eyes for a moment, then pricked his ears forward and stepped closer.

The shadows separated further. At first he expected Ra, though the voice was not hers. Then he expected Slifer, but still that didn't fit. Yugi flicked an ear. Then he glanced about himself more fully than he originally had.

 _Morrigan,_ he realized, projecting the name outwardly. He turned his head and searched the shadows. But the river of blood seemed lost from his consciousness and so he thanked the gods for such a small mercy.

The shadows seemed to wreath for a moment, swirling before gently parting more so. And, before his eyes, the she-wolf stepped forward with a simple flick of her ear. She shook herself out as if the moonlight or the shadows clung to her pelt.

 _It's been a while, hasn't it, Atem_?

Yugi wagged his tail as he stepped forward. He almost wanted to initiate a play bow and try to engage her. But then he reconsidered, watching her as reality came in a crushing blow once more. She was a goddess, the goddess of death for the hellhounds. For her to visit him in a dream was probably not the best omen he could have asked for.

 _It has been a while,_ he acknowledged, however. The admission was exhausting but he wondered why it was that the hybrid might have come to him now. _What, uh, brings you here_?

Morrigan blinked, then shook her head. _You're an adorable little furball, aren't you_? she commented wryly. _Thinking that you should talk to me formally._

Yugi flicked an ear. _Well, we don't really…interact very often. I didn't mean to offend you or anything but…_

Morrigan snorted. _You're so sweet to think I care about how you address me,_ she replied with a simple shake of her head. Then she took a seat and turned to him curiously, eyes mildly warm. _Now, that aside, I meant to tell you something which I am rather sure you do not yet know._

He flicked an ear. _I don't know a lot of things,_ he answered somewhat dismissively. _I wouldn't even be slightly surprised at this point._

 _Nor should you be,_ she stated simply. Her red eyes flickered, a shade darker than Yami's ever had been, with a flatter sheen to them as if he were looking at a shallow pool. _My message is a very simple one, however._

Yugi tilted his head. _A god can be simple_?

 _I know. It is a contradiction in and of itself, is it not_? the hellhound teased. Then she paced closer to him. Her eyes glinted and she seemed to consider her words for a few moments longer. _I wished to tell you, quite simply, that you did well in saving your friend. I was rather surprised you got there in time._

The white wolf was quiet for a long minute. _Oh._

She considered him with eyes that abruptly reminded him of sharpened knives. _Allow me to ask you a question, Atem._

He blinked. _Sure._

 _You have a question you've been wishing to ask me for a while now, have you not_? she inquired, ears pricked towards him and head tilted. _What is it that you wished to inquire of me_?

Yugi flicked an ear, then watched her for a long moment. A million questions came to mind but they focused more fully on one now. _What is a wish hound_? _Yami mentioned them at one time but he never explained…_

Morrigan turned away, lowering her nose to the ground and sniffing loudly. _A wish hound is a hellhound which makes deals with humans. They are more the wolves you have in your lore, the ones that hunt down the human for their soul. They are able to grant one's wish if it does not pertain to life, death, health or a person other than the one speaking to them. And their price is that their souls are forfeit when they die._

 _Why their souls_? _Why would you do that_?

 _It gives them longevity. They cannot fade from existence and return to_ _Paradise_ _if they have a human's soul to devour._ Morrigan flashed him a great and terrible smile. _You are lucky, however, because they cannot see other wolves. They could not tell Fuwa where you were or how to find you. Had they been able to, he would have crossed paths with you far sooner._

Yugi bristled. _And none of you would have helped me_?

 _At the time you had your alpha. Yami could have helped you out of the situation. He has much cunning and strength. Even if he does not use it often enough._ The hybrid watched him with darkened eyes, turning away again with a simply shake of her fur. _Now, however, you have my brother and sister. Is that not enough_?

The white wolf blinked and his eyes grew wide with alarm. _Do you know where Yami is, Morrigan_? he asked with his ears flattened against his skull. _Can you tell me_?

The she-wolf stared at him for a long moment. Then she turned away with a flick of her ear. _Yami is…where he needs to be for the moment._ _It is…a place you've begun to frequent within your dreams,_ she answered, turning to him now. _You will cross paths with him soon enough. Do not fret so much._

 _But he's in pain, Morrigan—_

 _And his pain will soon be relieved._ She paused, raising her nose, and sniffed at the frigid air for a few moments. _You should wake. Your friend is getting restless._

 _Who_? _Jonouchi_? he muttered, though a part of him simply could not find it in himself to care. _That's…okay._

Morrigan blinked. _Okay_? _It's okay_?

Yugi shook his head. _I meant that I'll try to wake up. I didn't mean that it was okay that he was getting upset._

 _You certainly are such a caring little heart._

He wanted to respond, but a rushing sensation came through him. He startled, at first stunned as Morrigan disappeared so instantly from his vision, and then blinked slowly. His room was still shadowed rather than bright, the dawn weak where it touched the blue walls.

"Jonouchi."

The blond spun around from where he'd been setting up a game on the television. His eyes were wide and startled and he looked visibly exhausted, as if he had not slept at all and so seemed more distressed than ever. He looked paler than Yugi had ever seen him, and his face looked oddly clammy and ashen. His forehead was glistening and some of his bangs were plastered to his skin from the sweat there. He smelled almost feverish, the heat all but billowing through the room.

"You okay?" He rubbed his eyes tiredly, but ignored the urge to yawn and lay back down. He sat up and stretched his arms over his head. "You look kind of feverish."

"I feel like my body is on fire."

Yugi grunted and moved to get out the bed. "Give me a minute and I'll get some water and a couple of pills to break the fever." He ran his hands through his hair and ignored the way his stomach growled. "What do you want for breakfast?"

"Anything. I'm starving."

Yugi nodded dismissively and shuffled out the door. Jonouchi watched him go, then scratched at his neck and shivered as pain came through his muscles. He was exhausted as he turned back to the screen. The game started up easily and he ignored the way his head throbbed as he hit the start button.

A few minutes passed. His head was pulsing with pain and his vision was somewhat blurred around the edges. He was sweating more proficiently now and his mouth was dry as his eyes squeezed shut. He could hear Yugi moving about and the rattle of the controller in his hands where they had begun to shake. He shivered again, then trembled as a wave of nausea came over him.

The doorknob clicked when he pulled it and opened the door. Jonouchi nearly groaned, opening his eyes into slits to look over at him. "Here, some cold water, some medicine, and a couple of granola bars. I need to go shopping." He watched his face. "This is probably a stupid question, but did you want to go to school today or should I just contact Honda and Anzu and have them come over here?"

"Tell them to come here. I'm not going to make it to school." The blond exhaled loudly and closed his eyes tightly again. Yugi looked at him curiously for a moment, then put the bottle of water and the medicine beside him, placing the granola bars on the opposite side.

"Give me a minute. I'll go call them."

Jonouchi was shaking, though he managed to nod around his exhaustion. "Okay," he muttered, sounding almost strangled with how exhausted he truly was.

"You sure you don't want to wait to tell them?"

"Yeah. I should do it sooner rather than later."

Yugi watched him a moment longer. Then he nodded and turned away. "All right. Give me a minute. Call me if you need anything." He shut the door behind him, glanced down the hall to where he saw his grandpa coming out of the bathroom, and shivered. His grandpa turned to him, surprised, and mouthed "Is he okay?"

The small teen glanced at his bedroom again before shaking his head slightly. He gestured his grandpa over to his side and led the way into the kitchen. "He's feverish and looks really sick," he mumbled. "I can't tell if it's some kind of backlash from the hypothermia or if he maybe changed prematurely or what."

Sugoroku blinked wide eyes. Yugi had filled him in on the issue only the day before, explaining that he'd probably be gone for most of the night and he needed him to cover for him. He'd told him all about the way he'd found Jonouchi in that lake in the woods…

"Is that a possibility?" Yugi demanded a little sharply. "Is that a thing?"

"I would think it's a possibility but I can't be sure. I never changed, remember?"

He rolled his eyes and shook his head, turning away. "Well, either way. I need to call up Anzu and Honda to have them meet up with us over here," he said with a small shrug. But he was visibly upset with Sugoroku's lack of answers and the realization made him frown as he looked at his grandson. The small teen turned away, heading over to where he had tossed his uniform jacket onto the back of the chair nearest him. He dug into the pocket and pulled out his phone.

"I'll go and check on Jonouchi."

Yugi nodded slightly, then scrolled through his contacts until he came across Honda's number. The brunet was more likely to be awake than Anzu, if _either_ of them were up yet. He dialed, putting the phone to his ear and listening for a few minutes to the ringing.

When the voicemail came on, the small teen tilted his head and listened to Jonouchi and his grandpa. They were talking about video games and the best consoles. Yugi turned his attention back to the phone as Honda's voice chimed, "Leave me a message and I'll call you back."

"Hey, Honda, I know it's super early but Jonouchi and I want you to come to my house. There's something that we all need to talk about." He paused. "Call me back when you get this."

He left a similar message for Anzu when he went to voicemail. The small teen checked his battery, the time, and then moved to his room again, putting it on the charger.

"They're still asleep?"

"Yeah, that or they're not near their phones."

"Those slackers," Jonouchi huffed. "Don't they know better than to sleep when there are important things going on?!"

Yugi snorted and flashed him a small grin. "You can't say that! You sleep through class and tutoring sessions and—"

"Yugi, dude, I think you might need your ears cleaned. I said _important things_ , not stupid ones."

The smaller teen laughed out loud. "You're such a dick," he snickered, turning away after a moment. "School is important too."

"School is boring and stupid."

Yugi rolled his eyes. "This is why you can't pass your classes."

Sugoroku snorted and quickly looked away when the blond shot him a dirty glance. The smaller teen smirked a little, then shook his head. Jonouchi turned back to him with a pout, eyes full of annoyance and feverish light.

"You're the one who tutors me!"

"And I spend about half of my bank deposit on candy bars for you," he quipped, the other boy glaring at him now. He flashed him a grin full of almost perfectly white teeth. "What? It's true. It's the only way to motivate you. That's probably why you look like a dog when you change too."

Sugoroku nearly choked on laughter. His brow rose and he looked at Jonouchi. "You look like a dog?" he asked with a wry grin.

"He always looks like a shaggy golden retriever. But this time he's got a canine body that makes him look it even more!"

Jonouchi rolled his honey-brown eyes and huffed loudly. "You guys are just a pain in my ass." He turned back to his video game now, determined to ignore them.

"It's not my fault you're like the _definition_ of a dog on two legs. You stink. You slobber. You eat too much. You have shaggy hair. You have the big brown eyes and—"

Jonouchi turned around to punch at his leg. Yugi laughed as he jumped out of range of the blow. He grinned, eyes bright and full of laughter. The smaller teen raised a brow and smirked at him playfully.

"Yugi, shut up."

Yugi smirked and took a seat on the bed, leaning forward with his elbows against his knees. He watched as Jonouchi went back to his video game and ignored it even as his grandpa considered him curiously before leaving. It was an hour before Honda called him, somewhat breathless when Yugi answered.

"Shit, I just got your message," he muttered, sounding almost overwhelmed. Yugi furrowed his brow and glanced at the clock, then grinned slightly in amusement. Honda had woken up half an hour later than usual. No wonder he was in a panic. "Okay, what's going on? Why is Jonouchi at your house? Has he been there this entire time? Did something happen with his dad? Fuck, dude, I need details."

The small teen glanced at the blond who had paused his game and was facing him now with a somewhat surprised expression. Yugi bit his lip and tilted his head as he considered the best way to answer.

" _Yugi_?"

He blinked. "Yeah, give me a second. I'm trying to figure out how to phrase this…"

"Dude, is he okay?"

Yugi grimaced. "Define… 'okay'. We might have different definitions at this point in time." He kicked his legs like a small child might and briefly he wondered at Morrigan's words, about how he had done well to save Jonouchi. The thought still clawed at his gut for a long moment.

"Shit."

The smaller teen did not answer for a moment. It occurred to him that his phrasing had done well to all but tell him ahead of time what he'd meant to say. "Just, um…meet us over here. Jonouchi and I are going to explain everything that happened. But I need you and Anzu to meet up with us here. I don't want to take Jonouchi to school. He's still pretty sick and I was going to skip anyways and keep an eye on him."

Jonouchi gave him a surprised look. Yugi waved it away with a flick of his wrist. His eyes darkened faintly and he shook his head. Why would the blond have assumed otherwise? Of course he would stay home with him to make sure he was okay!

"Is he hurt?"

"I wouldn't say that. He's more…feverish, I think. It's kind of hard to explain over the phone. You'll have to come and see him—" He blinked as his phone vibrated again, a small noise emitting from it. He looked at the screen for a moment. "Hey, Honda, Anzu just called me. I need to tell her to meet us over here and then I'll explain everything that I know about the situation."

"Situation?" the brunet repeated but he grumbled a quick farewell immediately after and hung up. Yugi sighed softly and accepted the new call.

"Hey, so you got my message?"

"Well, yeah, and I was going to text you instead but I figured I should call… Is Jonouchi there? Is he okay?"

Yugi glanced at the blond. "Properly fed but not up on his grooming." He laughed when Jonouchi smacked his leg, the closest thing in reach. He grinned at his best friend and turned away. "He's okay. He's been hanging out over here for the last couple of days. But you need Honda need to come over here. We have something we need to talk about."

Anzu was quiet for the longest time. "Okay," she finally muttered. "I'll be there in a little while."

"Thanks."

She hung up with a quiet "Goodbye" and Yugi put his phone aside to face Jonouchi. The blond was watching him with his own darkened, slightly widened eyes. The two of them considered each other for a moment, then Yugi looked away again.

"Do you think you can take a shower?" he asked. Immediately he thought of his hand aching and burning from the silver knife which had once been embedded in it. He remembered the way Yami had sat on the toilet seat, chatting before helping him to clean his hair. Yugi looked up, wondering only mildly if he could do the same for Jonouchi now. Or if the other would even allow such a thing to happen if he could.

"I think it'll be fine," the blond answered. He got up after a moment, stretching himself out and relaxing visibly. "I'll call if I need anything."

Yugi nodded, humming slightly before turning away.

* * *

Yugi closed his eyes for a moment, then shook his head slightly. "I think it's Fuwa fucking with me. I think that's how Jonouchi wound up in that situation. And I think he's got a _friend_ that's doing the harder parts of his job. I think there's a wolf with him." He opened his eyes into slits after a deep breath, turning to Honda now. "He left me a present in the woods when I went to help Jonouchi. He'd hollowed out a bear carcass and replaced some of the teeth with silver."

"Holy shit," the brunet muttered.

"He must have seen Yami kill that tigress in the warehouse. Because the wolf did it in a very similar way, even crawled through the shoulders. I don't know how long it had been there before I found it, though. I have no idea whatsoever." He drummed his fingers on the table for a moment, eyes darkening as he considered. "I think it had to be at least an hour or so before I got there. So I… Look, guys, I bit Jonouchi and he's a wolf now, but I don't think I'm going to be able to do it a second time like that. I don't think Fuwa _or_ that wolf are going to be so keen on me doing it again. I got to Jonouchi in time but I don't think I'll be able to do it for you guys too. And it's clear that they've figured out a pretty big amount of information on me. I… You know that I would do _anything_ for you guys. But I don't know if this wolf and Fuwa will target you guys as well or not. It might have been because they saw Jonouchi and smelled me on him or something. I don't know. But it's obviously not safe anymore and I don't know how else I'm supposed to try to hide my identity like that."

Anzu shivered. "You think that they know where you go to school, where we hang out, and where you live? Or just one or two of those things?" she asked softly, looking at the small teen with wide blue eyes.

Yugi shook his head and ran a hand through his hair. "No, they definitely know where I live."

"Why do you say that?" Honda inquired. He furrowed his brows and glanced sideways towards Jonouchi who was watching Yugi with wide eyes now. "You think they followed you or they tracked your scent or what?"

"No, I think I overlooked it one day. I think they followed me when I wasn't paying enough attention to my surroundings. And I think the wolf figured out my age, found out where I went to school, and followed me from the school to here." He drummed his fingers again, shaking his head and ignoring the urge to snarl in dismay. "I think that Fuwa and this wolf only _just_ crossed paths."

 _It could be Yami for all I know._

The thought was enough to make him want to puke with mounting distress. But he forced it away in order to breathe in deeply and calm himself slightly. Yugi fought away a shiver and closed his eyes again.

"There's no way that they were working together before now. Fuwa isn't brave enough to try his hand at facing me for the moment. But I don't doubt that this wolf has _every_ intention of doing so soon. The problem is that I don't know when or where. And I have no idea _what_ wolf or _who_ it is that is coming to try to kill me. At this rate I have no idea what I'm supposed to do beyond warn you guys."

"But we'll get it figured out," Jonouchi objected, oddly enthusiastic and firm in tone as Yugi blinked and looked at him in surprise. "We can kick Fuwa and whoever else's ass!"

"Exactly," Honda agreed, but he sounded uncertain now and his eyes flickered to Jonouchi for a moment, unsure and somewhat uncomfortable. And Yugi abruptly wondered if it was because he felt helpless to offer assistance in light of the news of Jonouchi being bitten as well. Did he perhaps feel as if he were not good enough to even be around them? "I'll help out in any way I can too."

Anzu was quiet for a long time. Then she looked at the tabletop and wondered for a moment about that war Yugi had mentioned. She'd said his time was limited, that his count would soon be up. The thought made her tongue stick to the roof of her mouth for a long minute.

"I'll help out too."

Yugi thought she sounded miserable but he did not bother to ask. In an instant he turned to Honda, voice quiet but authoritative. "Then I need you all to do one thing for me."

All three of them looked up now, considering him curiously.

"I need all of you to be cautious. I need you to watch your surroundings. And I need you to tell me anything that you notice or think is suspicious. Beyond that I think our best option to potentially save ourselves from a bloodbath is to maintain our distance from each other and text or call to keep communication. Beyond that I think I would be setting you up to be picked off like cattle."

"You want us to…?" Jonouchi scrunched his face up. "You really want us to basically ignore you unless it's not something we can text or call about?"

Yugi nodded a little, feeling exhausted as he sensed the fight that the blond was about to put up. "It's the safest way to ensure that you don't wind up dead or with Fuwa gutting you like a fish." He hesitated, thinking briefly of the way Yami had ripped through that tigress. He'd not truly seen it, but he'd heard it. And he'd understood despite it all. He shivered and stopped his fingers, narrowing his eyes. "He's already proven he doesn't care whether someone is innocent or not."

"Okay but I don't think he's going to come after one of us when there's the chance we might escape and run," Honda answered with a shake of his head. "I mean, think about it. If we were to escape and run to you, you'd be told everything. And then what would he be able to do afterward?"

Yugi blinked. "I don't think for a moment that he'd let you get away to begin with. I don't think for even a second that any of us have the strategy or the mental prowess to combat him at all."

"What do you mean?" Anzu asked in bewilderment. "We survived the first time."

"And there won't be a second time," the smaller teen huffed, turning to her with dark eyes. "The problem is _this_ , Anzu. He's smarter than me. He's smarter than you. He's smarter than Honda. He's smarter than Jonouchi. He's also extremely blessed. He's lucky to the point of it being supernatural. And he, like a hunter Yami recently dispatched, seems to basically be able to do anything and everything to avoid death—"

"Yami dispatched a hunter?" Honda interrupted, holding a hand up to make all of them glance at him but fail to interrupt. "How long ago was this and _where_ is he if he's got enough experience to face off with Fuwa and win?"

The small teen bristled slightly, then shook it off. "Honda, there's no way of knowing that he would win against Fuwa to begin with. Second, he's… Fuck, I don't know where he is. The point, however, is he killed the hunter who came after me but I have no idea how he did it. The guy was supposed to be psychic and…"

His stomach knotted.

Morrigan…

Morrigan had said that the wish hounds could not see nor interfere with the living wolves. T _hat_ was what had saved him. _That_ was what had allowed Yami to sneak up on Espa. _That_ was why they had not been caught in the woods that night either, when they could have easily found them.

 _That_ was why Fuwa was enlisting help.  
Because he had made the deal for luck, the pinnacle of survival if one were to consider it. And the deal did not allow him to _see_ Yugi. So he had gotten the help of _another living wolf_ within that gods-forsaken pack to help him.

Why the wolf was doing so, however, was questionable in every sense.

Weren't they meant to be allies to him?

Weren't they meant to care for him and aid him in this war?

"And?" Honda echoed, prompting him to continue.

Yugi blinked and shook his head. "Uh, nothing." He paused and reconsidered his words before groaning under his breath. "Anyways, Yami killed him the other night—"

Anzu blinked and then frowned at him. "What's the other night exactly? Was it before or after he ran off?"

Yugi flinched. "Two or three days before." And he watched her now, eyes sharpened into daggers, as she began to sort the dates in her mind as well. Her eyes grew wide and her mouth opened and shut twice.

"Oh my god," she cursed. "W-where did he…? H-how…? I saw him next to you but I never saw…"

Jonouchi and Honda were both staring now, confused and bewildered. They swapped looks and watched Yugi more closely. The small teen was careful to ignore them as well as he answered her slowly.

"He did it before he came over to see me. He was across the street and killed Espa in the woods right there." He narrowed his eyes as she gaped at him more profusely. "We left the body. Your dad never found it?"

"Oh my fucking _god_ , Yugi!" she spat. "You guys left a dead body only a few feet from my house?!"

Yugi curled his lip slightly, entire body growing tense as his shoulders rose and he growled softly. "Yes, yes we did. I forgot about it when he and I were talking. And I don't think he remembered it either by then." He narrowed his eyes now. "But your dad never saw the body anywhere?"

"No, he didn't," she snapped. "He didn't ever find a body there. He didn't know to _look for_ them there either! Why the hell would you not _move_ it—?"

He bore his teeth. "That's not the _point_."

"Whoa, hey, _hey_ ," Honda tried, eyes wide. Yugi looked ready to lunge across the table. And Anzu looked _livid_. Jonouchi was twitching and looked more feverish than ever, somewhere between fear and excitement. And Honda wondered if the blond would leap over the table _with_ Yugi rather than attempt to prevent it happening. "Look, Anzu, don't antagonize him. He said he forgot. Leave it alone. We need to figure out what happened to the—"

"Leave it alone? They left a fucking _dead body_ only a few feet from my house, Honda!" she spat, pinning him with a glare. "They left a _body_ there! A fucking _corpse_ , Hiroto! And you want me to leave it alone?"

"I think you'd be very smart to," Yugi bit out, cutting them off entirely. His eyes were burning now, wild and furious. "I think you'd be more likely to get out of the house in one piece if you did."

"Did you just threaten me?"

"I don't think you could call it anything else," the lycanthrope sneered. He leaned forward slightly, shoulders rising, teeth bared and glittering. If he did not begin slathering at the mouth, Honda would be amazed. "Leave. It. Alone."

"Okay, holy shit, can we _not_ fight right now?" Jonouchi pleaded. His eyes were wider than usual and he looked sicker than he had even before. "We really need to just…"

Yugi glanced at him from his peripheral. "I want to know what happened to the body. If it was not discovered by Mazaki, then there is something else that happened to it. Something or _someone_ else found it. If that's the case…"

"You think it has to do with Fuwa?" Honda asked, eyes wide as the thought occurred to him. He shivered and shook his head immediately. "That's… Seriously? You think that's a possibility?"

"Yes. I don't know what else would have caused it or anyone who might have tried. It seems stupid to think otherwise as it is." Yugi closed his eyes for a moment. "Anyone actually mentally sane would have called the cops. And now the body is gone and missing…"

"What would he do with it though?"

The small teen was silent, shaking his head.

"Think he's a cannibal?" Jonouchi tried to joke, but all three of them gave him annoyed looks. The blond scratched the back of his head. "Okay, so, what if he's feeding something? Maybe that tiger wasn't the only shifter he has?"

"You think he's training something?" Yugi rasped, eyes wide and confused. "You think he's training something to _fight_ me?"

"Not to fight you."

"Right… To kill me. He's training something to kill me."

* * *

Yugi tried to ignore the way his stomach knotted at the very thought of walking this direction. Anzu and Jonouchi were the ones with him now, as they'd walked Honda home first at Anzu's insistence. Yugi had wondered briefly if he were seeing something there where there was nothing due to the conversation between himself and Jonouchi about the possibility of the two of them dating. But then he'd also considered that perhaps she had been hoping to talk to him alone, not realizing that Jonouchi was going to be with them as well.

And so he ignored the way she glanced at him occasionally or how Jonouchi would speed up a few steps then drop back to Yugi's side again. He was aware of just how much he had truly alienated himself from the others when he'd snarled at her as he had. But there was nothing to be done about it yet. And he had sensed the pettiness she sometimes portrayed, rising beneath the surface of her skin. She had been about to speak about Yami in a derogatory manner. And he would not have it.

Just as he would have stopped someone else saying something derogatory about her, he'd put an end to anything being said about Yami.

But he could sense the line he'd crossed.

And he may not have completely cared, but he knew it was there.

Maybe when he was dead and within Paradise he might find the time to care.

But for now he would simply ignore it.

"Call me if there's anything that happens, okay?" he announced as they got to her driveway. He ignored the sight of her father's police car there and sniffed as if he were searching the air for any trace of a scent. In reality, however, Yugi was simply buying himself some small seconds of time. "And just…watch for anything that might be conspicuous or something like that. I can't do anything if I don't know what's going on."

Anzu looked at him, somewhere between despair and anxiety, and then scowled after a moment. "I'm sure between my dad and myself, I can keep _myself_ safe. Thanks, Yugi."

The lycanthrope ignored the biting tone. "If you see Fuwa somehow, I want you to contact me _immediately_. He's dangerous. He'll probably kill you the second he sees you."

"Oh, I can see how much you care."

Yugi rolled his eyes. "You're being petty," he snapped now. "You're being like you were when you realized the Hecate sisters had a crush on me. You flipped out and turned on _me_ because of it."

Jonouchi felt mildly sick at the mention of the triplets. All of them had been identical and somewhat devious, though they'd seemed mostly attracted to him because of his grades. Anzu had grown _furious_ and, despite telling off the sisters in a rage, further turned on Yugi by ignoring him for weeks. When she'd finally spoken to him again, the small teen had been pissed and ignored her in turn. They'd gone back and forth with this for _days_. Anzu would say something and Yugi would respond the day after. Then Yugi would say something and Anzu would answer him the next day.

This cycle had gone on for _months_.

And then Anzu had fallen head over heels for Valon. She'd all but drooled like a dog in heat and had excitedly talked about how cute the brunet was. The effect it had had on Yugi had been devastating. The small teen had grown depressed after hearing nonstop about the blue-eyed boy.

And then Valon had seemed to change overnight. He'd wandered off in the middle of class and not come back to school for three more days. When he'd come back, his eyes were golden. His demeanor was sharper. His expression was wary. His gaze held secrets. He was more confident. He was more likely to tell someone off. And he was almost as silent as the grave for much of his time.

"And you're acting like Yami is—"

"Do _not_ bring him into this!" the small teen exploded, spinning on her with flashing eyes and bared teeth. "It has nothing to do with him! You're acting like a spoiled brat _again_! You need to grow up. It's ridiculous. You act more like I'm your dog than your friend when you get jealous."

Jonouchi cringed. "Guys, can we just… _not_?"

Yugi looked at him sideways, annoyed. "It's _not_ my fault that we're incompatible, okay? And it's not Yami's either, Anzu." He paused, turning back to her and breathing out roughly. "I'm still your friend. I'm still your _best_ friend. But you're not acting like it. You haven't in a _while_ now because you found out about my feelings for Yami. And you need to get over it."

"Yug, man, you need to calm down too," the blond muttered, unnerved as he looked towards the trees. Had that been snow crunching? Was an animal moving there? Was it a person? He drew in a tight, strained breath. "Did you hear that?"

Yugi turned immediately towards the trees, his argument with the brunette forgotten altogether. "Hear what?" he demanded a little sharply. "What was it?"

"I thought something was moving—"

The small teen was scenting the air rapidly now, head tilted slightly towards the ground. He strained his hearing and listened for a long few moments. Then he growled softly and bore his teeth as he caught only the winter silence.

"I don't hear anything."

But that did not really mean much. In truth, that simply meant whatever had come forward had since fallen silent and still due to his being there. That was all the silence meant.

Yugi sniffed deeply, holding it, but all he could catch was pine and frost and coming moonlight. "Anzu, go inside." He sniffed a little more, narrowing his eyes and glancing at Jonouchi now. "Any idea if it was a wolf or a human?"

"No. I just… I thought I heard something in the woods but I don't know for sure."

The small teen nodded somewhat. "Right," he muttered quietly, ignoring the urge to turn away again. He heard Anzu hesitating, her hand on the doorknob, no doubt looking back to see as well. "Okay, so, do you think it's human or wolf then?"

Jonouchi was quiet for a long moment. Then he considered and some small part of him seemed to insist…

"Wolf. I think it was a wolf."

Yugi blinked. Then did that mean they were spying? And if so, for who? Was it Fuwa? Or was it someone else that caused them to do so? Perhaps, hopefully, it was someone like Echo hoping to see if Yugi was truly Atem in some way…

If that were the case it would be easy to assure them.

If it were anything else the potential for problems was much greater. Yugi bit his lip and glanced around, eyes darting about the tree trunks. He tilted his head a little further. He could not hear any movement still. Perhaps they had simply been crossing and missed them altogether? Perhaps they had not even meant to arouse their notice?

He shook his head. Nothing ever seemed to be so simple any longer.

Yugi wondered briefly, feeling almost sick, if even Yami would have been able to detect them. If he could track those dogs and list how many there were by way of footsteps, why would it have been impossible for him to find them now? And yet the small teen could not find it in himself to think about this any longer, instead stepping forward and listening a little harder. There was no noise to he found, however, and it made his skin crawl with distress.

What were they doing?

Where were they _headed_?

Were they hunting him?

Were they simply stalking him?

Yugi turned to Jonouchi, though he kept his head turned enough to have his peripheral filled with the woods. "Okay, Jonouchi, I want you to head back to my house."

"No way!" the blond snapped. "You just got through telling us about—"

"And now I'm telling you that I want you to go back."

"You can't just—"

"I can and I will."

"But Yugi—"

The small teen spun on him more pointedly now. His eyes flashed brightly and he bore his teeth. When he spoke again, it was harsh and guttural and seemed to vibrate within Jonouchi's bones.

"I said go back to the house."

And, as the vibrating intensified, Jonouchi found himself quickly lowering his eyes, angling his head slightly to show his neck, and then his legs moved to carry himself the opposite direction. Yugi watched him go after a moment or two, then turned away again and looked to the trees. The air was far too stale and crisp and just _frozen_ in general for his nose to catch a scent properly. He had barely been able to smell Jonouchi as it was…

The small teen took slower, cautious steps forward. For the longest time his nose still worked, his eyes scanning the shadows rapidly. Then he narrowed his gaze and tilted his head as he struggled once more to hear any sense of movement at all. There was no rustle of fur. There was no snow crunching beneath paws. There was no frozen dead plant being crushed or snagging in fur. There were no soft breaths. He didn't hear a heartbeat…

Yugi was already halfway across the street before he realized he should have been more prepared. If he would have changed, it would have done him well, yes? But the small teen hardly cared now.

He was already in the trees by the time he considered this a second time. And, as he looked about himself, he almost wished he hadn't sent Jonouchi off like that.

There was blood, fresh and glistening and dark against the snow. He shivered, narrowing his eyes. He didn't see a source of it just yet. It didn't look as if a body might have been dragged. It seemed more as if the wounded figure had been walking, the blood dripping from their open cuts.

"Shit…"

 _Atem_? The voice was breathless and soft, but incredibly relieved. Yugi spun, trying to think of the direction, but could not visibly find them. And so, tilting his head and listening, he finally caught the noise of a step, heavy and sloppy as if they were limping.

"Marik?" he muttered after a moment. He glanced around again but the wolf was still not close enough. "What's going on right now? Why…? Are you hurt?"

 _Not as badly as the others._

"Others?"

 _It was terrible, Atem. The dogs came out of nowhere_! Yugi turned his head now, recognizing finally which direction he was approaching from. His eyes stretched wide and his jaw clenched. The gray and tan wolf was soaked in blood, his flanks heaving and his sides stripped down to bright red, raw flesh. _They just… We couldn't even hear them before they—Oh gods, they killed some of the American wolves_! _They completely mutilated them, Atem_!

"They…?" Yugi felt dizzy for a moment, heart in his throat. Was Yusei among them too? Had Yusei been killed as well? He was so young… "Who? Who's dead?"

 _I don't…I don't know._

 _Then what use_ are _you_? Yugi thought furiously. But he supposed it did not matter. If Yusei was dead, then it was over and done with. He had no way to save him. "Where are they?"

 _I don't know if the dogs are gone…_

Yugi snorted. "I can deal with dogs, Marik." He thought briefly of how he'd shoved his hand down those dogs' throats, making them puke and choke to death. If he could do it then, he could do it now. "Show me where they are."

The clearing Marik led him to was covered in blood. The wolves lay in broken heaps, throats torn open. Others had been gutted. One had been ripped apart along the flanks as Marik himself had. Another had been visibly mauled to death, muzzle torn and split behind the nose. The ears dangled from one tiny strip of cartilage each. The eyes were heavily chewed at, the skin surrounding them swollen and forced close. The forelimb nearest him was shattered. And the back legs were hamstrung…

Yet…

None of them were dark gray.

And he was relieved to see, now as he looked forward, that there was only one wolf which he truly recognized. It did nothing to stop him from feeling sick at the realization that these bodies had been wolves which he'd had the potential to know before and had shunned formerly.

The wolf's muzzle was had a small inch of color between the nose and the rest of the bridge beyond it. She was a soft red shade, her face speckled with gray and silver strands amidst it. Her brows were a bright ginger and her forehead was silver and gray and turned much darker along her cheeks above the white. But her throat was ripped viciously, colored sticky blood red and half of it seemed almost to be missing, though he saw the muscle laying upon the snow feet away. Yugi felt sick as he stared down at her, recognizing only Ray at that moment before he turned away again.

The small teen blinked and swallowed hard, stomach aching. Then he licked his lips and glanced at Marik. But the wolf was shaking, eyes wide and whites showing. Clear distress made up his features and the wolf breathed out roughly through his nose before opening his mouth wide into a yawn.

"Marik?"

The wolf managed to look at him sideways, but the trembling only increased. And then the wolf vomited, sticky yellow and orange bile, before turning tail. Yugi went to follow him but faltered. There was so much blood. And the wolves looked as if they'd been mutilated heavily…

He blinked. His eyes widened. He shook his head slowly. Yugi felt dizzy, realization coming over him now. In a flash the small teen stumbled upon a fact he had not considered before.

Marik had fled.

And the wolves' carcasses lay scattered about his feet.

When he looked further into the trees, he could not see the threat. But he sensed it. Now he could feel his spine tightening and his body aching with tension, cautions blaring within his dazed mind. Yugi narrowed his eyes and shook his head slightly. So they were nearby…

And that was why Malik had run.

That was why he had not remained…

Yugi was stripping away his clothes before he'd truly considered it. The lycanthrope did not even consider the placement of the clothing or how much blood might come to cover them. Dismissive, focused more on the idea of ending whatever threat might lurk there, the small teen changed as quickly as he could. His body felt on fire and his limbs quaked for only a moment.

He waited for the tremors to stop, then moved forward. The white wolf paced forward a few steps, then flattened his ears against his skull. He crept along the foot of the hill, down towards the crest. The trees were becoming denser, but they seemed to abruptly clear away, the land flattening. He bristled, recognizing now why the placement was familiar to him, why it seemed odd that the wolves had been so close…

It was only a few miles into the woods. And, as he paced forward, he knew again something else he had not considered. The wolves had been herded there. But he did not know by what dogs. And he had no idea from what direction or for how long they'd been chased.

He snarled low in his throat.

This was where the hunter had lured him and Yami into the greenhouse to be electrocuted. And, as he continued, he spotted the building as well. He saw it with darkened eyes and slavering jaws. He was snarling more than ever now, vicious and furious. The wolf trotted forward, expecting at first to hear dogs. But then he glanced down in his search for clues and he froze in shock.

The snow was hardened from a refreeze as much of the woods were. And now, startled, Yugi stared down at the print in the snow before him. It was far deeper than any print he'd made. And the toes were long and dense, circular and _squat_ around the sides but sharp towards the tops. Small dew claws ran along the bottom of it as well, spread out almost to make the shape of a flame with embers on the bottom. The shape was almost cloven from what Yugi could understand of it. And the sight of it made his stomach crawl.

He'd seen them in books before…

His fur rose into a bristle and he bore his teeth as he continued forward. The entrance of the greenhouse was open, the doors split wide and the heat from inside making the air steam viciously. He wondered at the sight, but it was not enough to warn him away.

The smell to greet him as he got closer was that of blood. It was harsh and fresh and so metallic that it burned him. The wolf that had shed blood here was incredibly unhealthy. He could smell the sickness as if it were a gaping wound to stare at. The heat and blisters of pain were clear. And the feverish state was underlined by fresh vomit.

The white wolf snarled, then stepped into the greenhouse. The lights turned on instantly, the doors slamming shut. He glanced back at them but did not bother with much more. It was only as he turned back that his heart hammered in his throat.

Before him, cast about in a thousand sickly shades of white and silver and black and blue and yellow were his own features. The mirrors were somewhat warped in areas. And the sight of his own anxiety upon seeing them made his reflection that much worse. His ears flattened and his eyes grew wide, confused and startled. A million copies of himself mimicked him in restless unison.

He bristled. His mouth flashed open. His tongue darted out to wet his nose. Anxiety made his limbs shake. He breathed in raggedly. Heat blistered across his fur and cut into his skin. He snarled and the noise echoed as if to mock him.

"Motou Yugi."

He curled his lips back at the sound of his voice. Then he thought to snap his jaws as the various reflections followed suit. His mind struggled with the concept. There were so many of them. And he could hear multitudes of noise now. It was not just him. It was not just the generator which caused the air to distort with heat. It was…

There was so much of it.

There were various deep and high-pitched squeals.

There were loud snarls.

There were a thousand feet moving.

There were claws clicking.

There was glass cracking.

There was heavy breathing.

There were heartbeats, hundreds of thousands where the air amplified them and the mirrors bounced them about.

Yugi turned his head, eyes wide and white where they showed in the reflections. There was so much. There was chaos _everywhere_.

 _They're mirrors… That's me. I'm the white wolf. I'm the…_ But there was so much noise and where Yugi tried to think there seemed to be a pitch black void to swallow them entirely.

He could not tell if it was panic or exhilaration which caused this. Because part of him was desperate to run. But another seemed to be scratching at the surface, desperate to fight. And he could not tell which ruled him at the moment, but he did know that Fuwa had done this with purpose.

He'd known the mirrors would cause such distraction. He'd known it would confuse him. He'd known it would make him anxious.

But, in truth, Yugi did not know _why_ he was so upset.

Was it a wolf thing? Yugi bristled and his body tightened with fear. But he did not know whether he should snap his jaws or simply quiver.

"What a stunning coat you have."

The white wolf tried to angle his head up. But the mirrors distracted him further. He wondered if perhaps the mirrors ran the height of the walls, if they would block away that walkway he had once witnessed the hunter standing on before. Mai had been the one to cut through his throat that day, Yami lying all but dead on the grate that vibrated beneath his paws. And he'd fought those dogs…

"Too bad it'll be burned away and incinerated with the rest of you."

Yugi blinked. He planned to burn him to death? There had to be far more generators there than he had initially assumed. The wolf blinked and looked around himself. The air was still distorted. The mirrors were getting slightly fogged now. He flicked his ears and snarled once more.

"I would say you have the chance to save yourself. But you honestly won't. If the heat doesn't kill you first, the carbon will. And if _that_ doesn't do the trick, there are three other surprises in this little greenhouse for you to find."

Three other surprises?

Yugi blinked and snarled a little louder. Claws clicked faster. Glass was splintering in high pitches. He could see waves of mist now, clinging to the glass now. He bristled a little more, then paced forward a step. He would have to be careful, because the glass that might explode would mostly break in a domino effect. He did not know the direction it might shatter, but he did know that it would come to happen…

"I've missed you, Yugi. It's been a while of biding my time to get you here."

Now he heard a heavy step directly overhead. Yugi's head snapped up. His eyes glittered and his teeth were bright with saliva within his jaws. The wolf snarled louder and bore his teeth more pointedly. The canine found himself almost trembling once more.

Fuwa's left eye was displaced. The skin around it was so leathery that it caused the lips to droop. The flesh was still bright red and sore in expression. Swollen arches of black scar tissue rose along the neck, dispersed about the red. The skin was sunken around his jaw along the right side. And his mouth was a swollen cave of bright red flesh along the sides, the muscles broken and sunken and smeared with black as if the soot were molded into his flesh. There was a glossy sheen there, a disgusting leathery appearance which made his visible eye wild to look towards. The missing brows and sneer on his face made Yugi think of horror movie villains but his hair was burned away and frizzy along the tops, receded almost to expose his entire scalp.

However, as Yugi looked at him, he felt only hatred swell through him. He'd threatened his friends. He'd tried to _poison_ them. He'd tried to murder them…

He chomped his teeth and raised his tail, wagging it slowly. If he could leap as high as he had to catch one of those birds, he could possibly get close to the walkway Fuwa stood upon. He could try to pull himself up and kill him from there if he were courageous enough. But if he missed his mark or Fuwa reacted quickly enough, it would most likely kill him. If he were to be kicked off and land the wrong way…

"Don't worry. I'm going to escape. But you won't."

Yugi snapped his jaws. His reflections mimicked him in the corner of his eyes. He wagged his tail furiously for a moment. He'd kill him before he managed anything further. He would—

The glass shattered.

The white wolf spun around, eyes wide and stunned. A gray and white wolf had broken through the mirror. The glass made tinkling noises as they fell and skirted across the concrete. The canine was wild-eyed, with an expression he'd never seen before. It was not panic. It was not hunger. It was not hatred.

Yugi could not move.

The wolf, snarling and stalking forward, stared back at him with an expression of absolute _madness_. Yugi blinked. Then he backed up a step. He bristled and wagged his tail again.

 _Leave_ , he snapped at the canine. The words made it pause. The wolf's ears pricked and flicked. Then its jaws opened wider. Saliva, foaming and white, dripped to the floor like drool. Yugi backed up again, then bore his teeth. _You bastard, I'm telling you to move back._

The wolf hurled itself. He backed up. His shoulder clipped a mirror. The glass shattered. Then it began to break faster. In a shower, it fell forward within its frame, then pressed outwards as the next began to follow suit. Yugi bristled and stepped back. The glass cut his paws and folded upon the calloused skin.

The two wolves snarled at one another. The gray canine had missed him by what seemed like miles. It staggered, rose to its paws. Then it snarled furiously. Then it shook itself. Bloodied from the fall, paws oozing, it came again.

Yugi snapped his teeth. He recognized this wolf. The realization startled him for a moment. This was the wolf from Burger World. He remembered the markings there. He remembered the fury in its eyes, even beyond the madness. He shivered. The wolf sprang.

Yugi backed up only a step. Then he leaped forward. He aimed precisely, as Obelisk had taught him. With a single lunge, his teeth clamped down. Blood spilled into his throat. It fell upon the ground.

The wolf screamed.

It thrashed.

Claws dug into Yugi's fur. Teeth cut through the thick strands. The wolf writhed. Blood continued to flow and drip away. And then Yugi tossed his head, releasing. The animal slammed into the broken glass. The frame of the mirror shattered. And the animal landed on a thick shard. It rose from its spot through his chest, gleaming bright red.

Yugi flicked his ears. Then he pricked them forward. The air was becoming suffocating. His lungs strained faintly. He could feel the pain racing through his mind. It was smothering. It was hideous. He shook his head and turned away, glancing upwards.

Fuwa was gone…

Yugi turned away and looked upon the shards of glass broken upon the mixture of concrete and metal beneath his paws. Blood oozed from his wounds as he continued forward. The stinging was faint but furious as he began to trot.

The glass was everywhere. He felt it digging into his paws. His toes felt as if they might shatter beneath his weight altogether. The white wolf bristled. He could hear the glass continuing to break. And the air was growing worse.

He hurled himself forward.

A screaming noise erupted. He could hear a thousand feet moving. He bristled and spun around. The noise was still echoing as if to mock him. The wolf whined low in his throat and pressed his ears flat against his head. The screaming came again. The noise was underlined by clicking and snarls. Teeth chomped. Blood dripped.

He identified these noises but he did not understand them. Yugi raced forward again. The blood was sticky and clumped upon his paws. And he could see it now as he ran. He had not realized the glass was coming up with each movement. When he landed more heavily than he had the first time, the glass would spray upwards. And it would come upwards and into his skin. His legs were lacerated with it. Thankfully his head was too high up for the shards to get into his face or his eyes.

The wolf listened to the screaming again.

It was reaching a crescendo. There was more than one now. There was squealing. There was heavy breathing. Blood dripped in rivers. The noise fell away into a gust of hot air.

Yugi skidded at the near silence. The air was too thick. The smoke was coming in puffs. He panted and the glass rattled and roared as it slammed into the wall. He stumbled. He yelped. The noise attracted the attention of something else. The clicking was soft for a moment.

Then it came faster.

Yugi scrambled for his paws. Then he tore off once more. The back exit—he could see it now. The glass was broken and shattered. He tore off through it. The shards cut upon his legs and underbelly as he leaped over a larger blade of glass. He landed in the snow on shaky limbs. And then he lay there.

The snow was soaked red in a pool around him in mere moments.

He could hear that clicking noise again. It was rapid and hurried. His head snapped around. It was a wolf, he knew. He could tell. The noise was furious. The _canine_ was infuriated as well. They were headed near him but not quite towards—

And then a very _human_ scream sounded.

Yugi faltered. His eyes widened, horrified. He spun around. His fur was bristling. His ears were pricked forward. He trembled, legs aching. He shivered and shook himself out. Blood and glass hit the snow in a shower.

The wolf flattened his ears against his head after a moment. They'd killed Fuwa. They had gotten through the maze of shattered glass. And they had killed him…

But Yugi did not know where they were now.

And he did not think that they might be in a better state than that hideous gray wolf had been formerly. The canine had tried to kill him, despite being Code Name Atem. And he'd been sloppy in his attack as well. Yugi had been able to dispatch him in mere moments.

But he hoped to the gods that the wolf did not end up being killed himself. He did not know whether the boars were still alive—as those squeals had surely been wild pig—and he did not know if the carbon might kill him altogether.

Yugi stumbled forward, facing the trees. And then he limped. He would need to move before the canine were even there to find him. If it were lose and ready to kill him, Yugi was not sure he could win. His legs felt unsteady and weak…

The white wolf got through the first of the trees. Then he turned his head. His fur rose into a bristle. The air was distorted and blackened with soot. He could smell and feel the heat even from there. And he sensed the blood and flesh being burned away within the birth of flames coming forward.

Yugi shivered and turned away again. There would be yet another fire to be reported now. Perhaps if he were the one to do it he would look more innocent to Anzu's father. But with the way the brunette had acted beforehand, he doubted that it might do him very well to try. Besides, there was nothing to tie him to the event.

And he was sure that Jonouchi would cover for him if he should truly need it. The blind would not throw him under the bus.

The white wolf limped a little faster.

Hopefully the canine in the building escaped as well…

Yugi shook himself out and wondered, shivering, if perhaps Marik was nearby. If he was, where would he have gone? If he wasn't, was he still alive?

They hadn't been dogs to attack them, however, had they? They'd been boars. _Hadn't_ they? But as Yugi turned back and began to limp his way towards the scene of the dead bodies, he realized something in surprise. Amongst the tracks were no round and squat prints, however.

In fact, all of them _were_ canine just as Marik had stated.

But Fuwa had boars, not dogs.

Most likely he'd used the pigs to attack that wolf, to infuriate the former Burger World employee and make him aim to kill Yugi. But beyond that he might have also very well used the pigs to clean up the messes he might have needed.

The wolf shivered and his fur rippled with an uncertain, uneasy bristle. His ears flicked and his eyes flickered about uncomfortably. In the shadows the blood looked once more like oil. But he wondered at the realization that the hunter had formerly used fire to cover his tracks.

And he had done the same again now.

So perhaps it had been someone else to own the pigs. Perhaps Aileen had them. Or maybe it was even the hunter with the dogs from beforehand. Maybe it was simply that he'd rounded them up and used them within that greenhouse. But he'd filled the grid with concrete for the most part, though clearly it had been only to keep the pigs from being trapped. And from having the floor truly electrocute him. He'd wanted to burn him to death as Yugi had originally left him to…

He shivered and stumbled forward again. _Marik_? he called loudly, moving past a body that he knew had to be frozen from the dropping temperatures. The sky was going to open up with a new fresh storm of snow once more soon enough…

He could sense it.

Yugi closed his eyes for a moment, ignoring the pain in his paws and legs. The cracks in his pads began to feel frozen and numb, though he could also get the faintest touch of tingling which meant his body was trying once more to heal itself.

 _Marik_? he called one last time. He flicked an ear and shivered. Then he looked about and considered the clothes he'd left there in the snow. If he changed back and went home, he could check on Jonouchi and—

 _Atem_.

The white wolf turned around with wide eyes, confused and bewildered. And then he flattened his ears against his head and tried his hardest not to allow his tail to simply droop with despair.


	54. Memories

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day**

 **Chapter Warnings: Mentions of Death, Character Deaths, Panic Attacks, Mental Breakdowns, Hallucinations, Bloodshed**

 **I might have missed some potential warnings to be listed up here. I'm sorry. I try to update them as I edit but I sometimes forget around looking for errors and then I don't remember by the time I finish the chapter and move to the next. SO if there's a warning you think should be added, please tell me.**

 **Okay, so a little note real fast.**

 **The end of the chapter may be a little confusing. You'll understand at a later point in the story why it happens as it does. It's a pretty big scene in the long scheme of things. There are a lot of things that are going to be revealed later in the story, more towards the end than anything.**

 **And I don't think I'm going to be able to answer any questions about it at all really without the risk of ruining something later on in the story.**

Chapter LIV: Memories

 _Work Log Entry L: June, 2005 (Part I)_

 _June 1_

 _A.T.E.M. has retained the temperament of the much more violent and aggressive hellhound. His nature has changed rather drastically from his usual quiet and easy temperament formerly._

 _It is bewildering to see the mentality that he has taken now._

 _June 8_

 _With his rapid spiral into dementia, A.T.E.M. has forgotten many of the feeding schedules._

 _I am almost convinced that he may have somehow caught some ancient strain of something akin to rabies that can afflict a werewolf of his magnitude. He is meant to be immortal and yet I cannot understand how he has grown so sick so often as this._

 _He has begun to foam at the mouth whenever I go to feed him now._

 _No one else will go near him._

 _June 12_

 _A.T.E.M. has yet to attempt to bite me. But he has lashed out and clawed me in the face. He nearly took my eye out in a frenzy only hours ago. But it is impossible to look at him and blame him for the disaster when he is in the body of a nine year old child. And I cannot hold him responsible when his mind has begun to deteriorate so rapidly._

 _I have not told the boss that it was him to do such a thing, however. It would lead to A.T.E.M. being drugged and perhaps even euthanized._

 _If such a thing is capable of happening to a Pure-Blood._

 _June 14_

 _Another wolf was brought in today. He…actually looks a lot like me._

Yugi watched the bloodied gray wolf with saddened eyes. Marik looked pathetic, his sides still slicked almost as if they'd been gnawed open. The white wolf flicked his ears and sighed softly as he limped a step closer. _Where did you run off to_? he asked quietly, ignoring the way that the other wolf studied him with a miserable expression.

 _I just…ran. I wasn't headed anywhere. I just…couldn't be here any longer. It was…horrifying. I was too scared to stay…_

The white wolf nodded and his legs were exhausted as he took a second step forward. _I'll get you back to the camp. You can rest after that. And then I need to hear your story tomorrow when I come back._ He shook himself out and glanced up as the first flake began to fall from the sky. It was thick and pregnant, heavy in its drifting form. And he glanced at the bodies with a sensation of sickness coming through him. What was he meant to do about the bodies?

 _I'll lead them here tomorrow. I'm sure Echo and Serena will be the most interested in retrieving them,_ Marik answered in a voice that was rather disdainful. Yugi glanced at him in surprise at his tone but did not answer him. _But I think you're right. It would be a good idea to rest, wouldn't it_?

The white wolf did not bother to respond beyond nodding slightly and turning away. He led the other towards the camp, though he still cast rather nervous glances towards the bodies. Marik seemed to ignore them altogether, however, and remained at his side almost as persistently as a thorn caught within his fur.

The two of them made it to the camp with little difficulty. Yugi led the way, limping, as they entered the clearing. Several of them looked up immediately, but it was Slifer who watched him with cold eyes and a slightly surprised expression. Obelisk was nowhere to be found. And when Yugi thought to speak to the she-wolf, it was another who approached him.

The white wolf barely had any time to look up. The dark-furred she-wolf rushed at him. Yugi blinked, then bristled and bore his teeth. She tackled him, throwing him sideways as his legs collapsed beneath him. The white wolf snapped his teeth and tried to push her away. His front and back legs kicked. Her teeth bit into his cheek. He snarled and kicked harder. His teeth snapped at her cheek in response. The she-wolf tossed her head. He yelped and kicked again. His claws tore her fur away. Then he arched his hindquarters upwards, pressing on her throat with his back legs.

She sputtered, snarling. And then she yelped as he bit harder at her face. The next kick dislodged her completely. He rolled onto his feet again, but his limbs felt too weak to hold him. Marik growled angrily at the she-wolf, vicious as he spat, _How dare you_! _You do not attack Atem like that_!

 _And he shouldn't let my pack die like this_!

Yugi faltered, breathing hard. He glanced towards the wolves that had begun to gather around them. Marik was stepping closer to her, teeth bared. Echo was glaring at him with her tail raised.

 _It wasn't—_

 _I don't want to hear excuses_! None _of them deserved that_!

Yugi saw Yusei there, at the fringes of this gathering pack, with wide royal blue eyes and flattened dark gray ears. And he watched him for a moment before he slowly turned back to the angry former alpha. He stepped forward, shouldering Marik back forcefully with the action. He pushed his way between them, leveling her with a cold stare.

 _I did not ever ask you to come here,_ he answered coldly. His ears pricked forward and his eyes bore into hers furiously. _And I certainly did not request that you bring your wolves here. I never asked you to uproot them and force them here. And I would have denied you the opportunity altogether had I known how young they truly are_.

Yusei whined low in his throat. Serena paced restlessly. Slifer pricked her ears and got to her feet, coming to Yugi;s side. Aki watched with burning eyes. Marik watched Yugi for the signal to spring. Dextra flicked her ears.

He noticed all of these things. Yet he did not care enough to address any of it. Instead he bore down further on Echo, eyes furious as he curled his lips back. You _are the one who brought them here, not me. And I'm pissed that you would ever even consider for a moment that I would wish this kind of thing. This is meaningless death and bloodshed and_ you _are the one responsible for their ruin. It is on_ you _as their alpha, not on me._

Yusei whined again. He ducked his head and raised a paw to wipe at his eye. He seemed more to be mourning than distressed but Yugi could not truly tell in all actuality. The realization made the white wolf bristle and shiver. And then he looked quickly back to Echo.

Her eyes were glinting as they bore into his hatefully. _You are Atem, are you not_? she spat, but there was a jeer in her voice and the mockery made Yugi nearly flinch. _Or are you just playing games_?

 _He is Atem_! Marik spat, turning on her once more. His teeth snapped shut furiously. Echo turned on him, eyes blazing. Behind her, Serena had begun to bristle, her pacing coming to a stop. Yusei stopped whining and looked up with wide eyes. Aki began to step forward with a clear snarl on her face.

For the first time, Ishizu, usually a she-wolf to hide and linger within the background, came forward at the tension that threatened to escalate. Yugi had never seen her even remotely interested in the prospect of a fight before. And now she came forward with flicking black ears and wide glittering silver-blue eyes.

 _I'll kill you if you open your mouth against him again—_

 _You don't threaten her like that_! Serena spat, coming up on her side.

 _Round two then_? Aki sneered, coming to Marik's side.

Yusei bristled and came forward now as well, tail raised and teeth bared. _With pleasure,_ he snapped.

 _Must we fight_? Ishizu commented in a low, melodious voice which seemed to cut through all of their violent thoughts. Immediately the wolves froze for a moment, then looked over with confused expressions. Yugi realized only then that perhaps he was not the only one to have never heard her voice before. _There was bloodshed before. Is that not the reason you're all so upset_? _Why spill more_?

Yugi glanced sideways at Slifer. Ishizu spoke in the same manner. But she did not seem to be related to her in the slightest. Ishizu was black and silver with some russet and a brown and tawny undercoat. Only her face was truly black and her underside was silver, with ringlets of dark gray which came only a couple of inches forward to her chest. Even her legs were white and silver and gray rather than black in any manner. Her belly was perfectly white like the snow and her back legs were black at the top but silver and gray towards the bottoms. And along her back were the russet and tawny undercoats, disappearing at the base of her tail where the bottom was perfectly white and the rest seemed silver more than gray or black but for the dark tip.

No, the two of them looked nothing alike. He remembered Slifer saying that Ishizu had been the veterinarian alongside Ryou. She'd been infected and thus forced to breed and had various experiments run on her due to it. But Yugi had never known her to recognize him as Atem before, so perhaps she had never been around him when he was still within the labs…

Yusei flicked his ears and moved a little away from his former alpha and beta. The realization came to him that they should not have been fighting like this. When they'd come to join this pack, he'd realized there would be issues, but he had not expected so much to interfere with potential bonds or so many problems in such frequency.

Aki and the others were somewhat more merciful with their picking on him. But he had the feeling it was only because of the fact that he had been born in Japan but had moved to the states. Because of this, they'd shown him far more favor than someone like Serena or Echo. Echo was tormented relentlessly at times. And Serena would run interference only to be drawn into the petty wars alongside her former alpha.

Yusei had tried his hardest to stay out of them. But occasionally Marik would find his way to him. And he'd refuse to back down. He would not relent. For hours the gray and tan wolf would pester and try to get a rise out of him. And the dark gray wolf would grow frustrated, almost to the point of lashing out.

But it'd become obvious to him very early into these little games that this was exactly what Marik wanted from him. Because then he could attack him under the guise of protecting himself. And Yusei was not sure that it would stop with his surrender. Marik seemed to absolutely _hate_ his pack.

And he especially seemed to dislike Yusei himself. He had the feeling that it had to do with Atem. Because Marik liked to be around Atem more than the rest of them. And Atem seemed to like Yusei from what he could understand. Atem was not hard to like, or to get along with. And the white wolf seemed to enjoy spending time with him for at least a few minutes every time he came to the camp.

He might just ask how he was, nod and then wander off. But he did come to see him. And sometimes Yusei thought he saw Marik's face contort with hatred upon seeing their interactions.

And, oftentimes, that was when the worst of his verbal abuse came out…

But the gray wolf had no understanding of why it was that Atem even bothered to pay him attention in the first place. It made no sense to begin with. The white wolf had no reason to, unless it was his younger age which made him so keen to approach him and check up on him.

But Yusei had never seen this she-wolf before. It was most likely due to his own hiding away with his pack, his contentment towards self-isolation, but he still could not ever recall her. Did she not often come to spend time with the pack? Perhaps she herself enjoyed self-imposed isolation as well?

 _Ishizu_ , Marik commented, his voice low and biting. His ears pricked towards her. _They've disrespected Atem—_

 _So you'll kill them for it_? she asked in a more pointed tone, cutting him off entirely. There was something strange and almost ethereal about her as Yusei blinked and stared at her curiously. His ears flicked again. _Atem can handle his own spats. And you would not pose much of a threat in such a state._

Marik snapped his jaws. _I'm wounded, not dead—_

 _We can reverse that at any time,_ Echo sneered.

Yugi had begun to pace now. His limbs were stiff, attempting to heal in their still state, and the tingling had steadily turned into a burn. _There is no need for death threats or a fight to begin with, Echo—_

 _No, because my pack is just a pawn for you, isn't it_? she snapped. Her eyes glittered with ice as she faced him now. _You don't care nearly as much as you did when that little runt died._

He snapped his teeth. _Her_ name _was Mikiyo,_ he spat. _And I do not care that you turn your rage on me. But you will not threaten another within this pack._

 _And yet_ he _is allowed to threaten Serena_? she demanded hotly. _He is allowed to harass Yusei_? _Or try to bite Rin_? _Or bait me_?

Yugi bristled. _No, he's not allowed to do that either. But I am not here all of the time and if he does these things, they can be resolved_ without _bloodshed._ Yet now his blue-violet eyes had grown furious and he was turning to Marik with a fierce expression. _And, should it continue, then_ I _will be the one to take action against it._

 _Oh, so now you care, when some of my wolves are already dead—_

The white wolf snapped his teeth at her. _I would have tried to prevent it had I been there—_

 _You_ were _there_!

Yusei flicked an ear and glanced sideways at his former alpha. An image was projected to her, of the patrol that had left hours ago. It had not included Atem at all, something that she had clearly overlooked. Echo startled, surprised by the sudden correction. Then her head snapped towards him in confusion, ears flicking.

Yugi looked towards the gray wolf and tilted his head. _Who said I had been there_? _I was with Jonouchi—_ He fell silent when the image was projected to him as well. The group of six had gone alone. The white wolf blinked and a realization struck him but he could not focus on it now. He turned back to the blue-eyed male and nodded slightly. _I wasn't there._

Yusei nodded at him in response. But his eyes were on the cuts and lacerations lining Yugi's legs now. His ears flicked and his head tilted but he did not ask and so the white wolf relaxed slightly as he turned back to Echo.

 _I'm sorry for your loss. And I would have tried to save them if I had been there. No one deserves to die like that._ He fell quiet as it occurred to him that she was neither apologetic towards her anger regarding him nor did she truly seem to care for his condolences. So he turned instead to Slifer. _I must speak with you before I go home._

The goddess was still watching Ishizu for the moment, something cold and distant in her gaze. But she nodded slowly and did not bother to look towards him again.

 _Very well,_ she commented in a low voice. Then she flicked her ears, sniffed loudly, and turned to him with a dismissive expression. _Let us speak then._

Yugi watched her for a moment, glanced sideways towards Ishizu, and then followed her. The she-wolf walked past him without a second look. She led him towards the edge of the trees and near the alpha's den where she sniffed curiously at the entrance but turned back again almost immediately. Yugi wondered if she missed her daughter.

 _What is it that you wish to speak to me about_?

Yugi blinked and flicked an ear once more. _What happened with the wolves in the woods_? _Something isn't adding up._

 _I am not the one you should be asking. You have your suspicions, do you not_? _Why not confront them head-on_?

 _I would probably get my ass handed to me, that's why,_ he snapped. Then he fell quiet again as the Pure-Blood sniffed softly and ignored his statement. She flicked her ears, considered him for only a moment, and then turned away again. _Slifer_ …

 _It is not my responsibility to tell you such things, Yugi Motou, Code Name Atem. It is for you to find out for yourself. You have the burden of learning and providing yourself with the information you are so desperate for. It is necessary that you gather answers on your own. You cannot be fed such answers and expect to gain much._

 _I don't want answers to every question I have, Slifer. What I want to know is whether it is how I suspect it to be._

The she-wolf gave him a smile not unlike a shark, her eyes glittering fiercely. _And that is something I am not at liberty to tell you._

And once again he was left to scrabble in the dark. Yugi sighed loudly, nodding. His eyes darkened as he murmured, _All right._

* * *

"The point _is_ , just be careful if I'm not there with you," Yugi snapped, rolling his eyes. He tossed his textbook aside and dropped away his notebook. He tossed his pencil down next to it and shook his head. "Marik is being a bitch and Echo is _livid_. The American wolves are so pissed right now it's not even funny."

Jonouchi sighed loudly. "Well, yeah, but didn't you see that coming already? Marik was pretty upset when he found out that you were constantly guarding me when I was recovering. He was pretty, uh…pissed," he finished lamely when those blue-violet eyes narrowed and shot to his. "Especially when Slifer or Obelisk would tell him to leave."

Yugi curled his lip in annoyance. "Yeah, I figured he might be. He's _…_ the jealous kind."

"Ew, Yug, tell me you didn't bone him."

The squeal of disgust made the smaller teen blink in surprise. His head snapped towards him and it took a moment for the words to process in his head. Yugi grabbed his pencil and threw it at him, the blond laughing.

"That's disgusting."

Jonouchi gave him a lopsided grin. "Well, after the way you and Anzu went at each other's throats—"

"It's not my fault she's acting like a brat," Yugi cut in with a shake of his head. He fell quiet again a moment later. "I mean, I get that she's hurt. But she really doesn't need to act like someone killed her puppy. I didn't act like this when she was constantly trying to get Valon to notice her. And she's being ridiculous. It's not like Yami and I decided to bone instead of worry about Espa's body where it was in the woods. She's acting like a brat."

The blond grimaced. "Dude, this is why girls are so hard to deal with." He raised a brow, grinning, and tilted his head. "I might just end up turning gay too."

The small teen barked out a laugh, then covered his mouth and rolled his eyes with mock annoyance. "You're such a dick, Jonouchi," he laughed, shaking his head and watching his face for a moment. He almost wanted to throw his notebook at him again, but instead leaned forward to drop his textbook and notebooks over the side of the bed. They landed haphazardly on top of each other and somehow the disarray made him feel better. "Well, I think you could get Otogi in your corner if you wanted to play that way."

He snorted. "No thanks." He paused and looked Yugi over for a moment. "Do you think that Marik has a thing for you or is he just…?"

"Honestly? I think that he's got a thing for power. And I think he's insecure and feels threatened whenever I show anyone else attention. He's always up my ass and brown-nosing so…" Yugi paused and then looked over with wide eyes. "I never did explain everything to you, did I? You were so tired after you changed and I didn't tell everything to Honda or Anzu…"

Jonouchi blinked. "Yeah, I figured you would…basically get around to it at some point." He shrugged slightly. "You don't have to tell me now if you don't want to—"

"No, it's best that I go ahead and try to get this out of the way," he answered, shrugging. "It's a pretty big mess, and really convoluted so just…sit back and relax and wait until the end to ask questions."

Jonouchi raised a brow and smirked in amusement. "Okay."

The small teen shook his head and reached up to run his hands through his hair. "All right, so let's start with the basics then!" he announced. "Since about the time my mom has been like thirteen or fourteen she's been hearing rumors about people being kidnapped. People have been saying that there were experiments being run on people and animals. I don't know all of the details but usually a dog was there when the kidnappings happened."

The blond nodded. "My mom used to make sure I got home from school okay every day until middle school when she ran off with Shizuka."

Yugi nodded. "Apparently it's been happening for a long time now. I didn't even really realize it until recently that it had been going on for so long. Anyways, they were taken underground, into the—the tunnel system in the mountains," he continued, catching himself before he said the sewers. He did not want Jonouchi to be hot-headed and lash out and try to get to the labs. It wouldn't fix anything considering his sister was dead but he could see him _trying_ regardless. "From there, they were experimented on and forced to change into wolves by injecting the lycanthropy into their blood. From what I know of it, the females were forced to stay in their wolf form until they were able to breed. And the males were drugged and they were attempt artificial insemination after that."

"Wait, isn't that when they like…milk the guys?"

Yugi curled his lip and nearly gagged. "Uh, yeah, you can look at it like that," he grumbled in disgust. "Anyways, they were trying to make this species of wolf called the Pure-Blood. The Pure-Blood is supposed to be immortal. It comes back from any death. It heals instantaneously. It has the ability to kill more efficiently than other bloodlines. It's faster, it's stronger, it's nastier. And so the people in the lab decided to try to breed it."

"Breed it? The fuck?"

"What was that about asking questions at the end?"

"Bullshit. It was bullshit."

Yugi burst out laughing and rolled his eyes. "Anyways, so, they finally managed to do it. And he was named after his project title, Atem." He held up a hand when Jonouchi's eyes nearly popped out of his head and his mouth fell open in shock. "Atem was the only one of six to survive. And he was raised underground until about six months ago when all of the wolves managed to escape. That's why Shizuka reappeared so suddenly like that. That's why Marik and Ishizu are in that pack and why the American wolves have come to the camp."

"Holy shit…"

"Atem was part of the escape six months ago. He's been on the surface since. And he's been hiding from the organization that made him. They've hired hunters to catch and kill him. They've turned on their own to ensure he gets captured. And they're willing to kill anyone and everyone around him in order to do it." Yugi was quiet for a moment. "But the wolves have this…prophecy is the wrong word, but it's the most fitting anyways. They have this prophecy regarding Atem. Atem is meant to lead them to victory in a war, either against hellhounds or the humans that are running the experiments. I don't know and no one will really explain it. I think it's gotten so muddled at this point that they are all confused and can't even tell me for certain why they believe in it."

Jonouchi shook his head slowly. His honey brown eyes were still boring into his. A million shadows had crossed them, and the emotions on his face were not hard to read. He was confused and shocked and could not think straight…

"They claim that all of the wolves will come to his aid. That's why Echo brought her pack to Japan. That's why the wolves are so closed off and bloodthirsty at times." He paused. "And the gods are supposed to come out of their slumbers to help as well."

"That's Slifer and Obelisk…right?"

He nodded and looked at his nails for a moment. They were so dark that he would be amazed if they were any different from Yami's in his human form. And he would be amazed if his teeth were not almost perfectly straight and his jaw more or less straightened from it…

"Because the origin story of the werewolf is the Lunar Ascension. It goes that Lupa and Fenrir are the gods of creation for the wolves in general, not just werewolves. And during the Ice Age they had gone into slumber. The humans had turned on the wolves and started killing them when prey got scarce. The wolves were being almost killed off entirely because of the humans and their dogs."

The blond shivered and shook his head.

"Their near extinction caused Fenrir to awaken. Fenrir came down to help the wolves. He gave the wolves the ability to fight back by making them capable of poisoning and spreading the disease, others the ability to change shape, another could turn into a ghostly form, and the others could draw energy from blood during battle. The wolves would change into dogs and kill from the inside. The others would then use their abilities as well."

"You _do_ realize how insane that sounds right?"

"Yeah, and here's where it gets crazier, Jonouchi." He shook his head with a small grin and turned away. "So, the humans and dogs were all but extinct but then Lupa woke up as well. She was enraged to see how the wolves had been picked off formerly. And she was angry so she came down to help the wolves completely kill off the humans and dogs."

"Seriously? This is seriously insane, Yugi."

"Mmhmm," he dismissed. "But Lupa found a human woman helping a wolf pup that had been orphaned. And she decided that if one person could show such mercy then the rest could do it as well. So she decided to spare them. And, in order to do that, she made the Pure-Bloods to fight the hellhounds. She made them able to heal from any kill wound and come back to life. After that the Pure-Bloods and the hellhounds began to fight and kill each other. To battle them off, Fenrir made some hellhounds that could use all three abilities."

Jonouchi was shaking his head slowly now.

"And then the war ended. Because the sun came out." He narrowed his eyes and shook his head. "And from what I understand, Lupa and Fenrir then chose three of each of the species that they made immortal, to rule over a few domains as gods. The rest either became human or wolf and lived their lives out to death. From there, the bloodlines became diluted and that's how you've got different wolves, like me and Mai and then Otogi…"

"That sounds insane. You realize that, right?"

Yugi shrugged and looked at him with darkened eyes, his expression somewhere between exasperated and frustrated. "You've met Slifer and Obelisk," he said quietly. And he watched Jonouchi for a long moment. "Slifer, Obelisk and one more wolf named Ra make up the three gods of the lycanthropes. Slifer resides over death, Obelisk over war and Ra over life. And the hellhounds have the three gods Morrigan, Haiti and Skoll."

"There's no way that—"

"Atem was born July twenty-sixth." Yugi picked at his nails and smirked faintly in wry amusement as Jonouchi all but gaped at him. "And from what I know, he's been tampered with mentally, drugged to the state of incoherence, and experimented on relentlessly. Considering no one knows what he looks like now, growing up, or how he does as a wolf, no one quite knows who he is."

Jonouchi shook his head, stunned. "So that means it's you? That you're Atem?"

"You look pretty skeptical, but here's how I'm going to explain it to you." Yugi cast him an almost exhausted smile. "I've suffered from night terrors and hallucinations _all_ of my life. The night terrors are normally things like drowning or being cut open. Occasionally there are snarls and screaming. Sometimes I even hear my name being called as Atem and considering our birthdays are the same, I'm pretty sure there's no one else who can _be_ Atem."

"But… How…? I've known you since before…"

"Right, we've been friends since middle school, haven't we?" Yugi watched him for a long moment. "I'm going to tell you a little secret about wolves, something that you'll figure out on your own. But they're willing to do anything possible to survive."

Jonouchi tilted his head. "Okay, but that doesn't make any sense…"

"It does when I tell you this too. They'll suppress memories of things, just like people who have PTSD. They'll neglect things like that. They'll manufacture memories to fix the problem. And they'll make themselves believe in things that didn't happen—"

"Okay, I get that. But what's your point? Yugi, those work for manipulating one person, but not several." Jonouchi shook his head. "So how do you plan to explain how we all knew you before Atem supposedly escaped?"

"There's no supposedly about it. I _did_ escape. That's why Fuwa and Espa and Panik and others have come after us." He shook his head slowly, watching him with frosted eyes. "But I don't think Fuwa actually knew I was Atem. I think he just had a vendetta against wolves altogether and realized I was one so he wanted to kill me."

"Yugi, this still isn't making any sense."

The wolf was quiet for a long time. "Morrigan, the goddess of death for the hellhounds, has a son who's in our school with us every day." He watched as Jonouchi furrowed his brows and studied him with a bemused expression. "And the hellhounds have to eat human flesh at one point or another in order to absorb nutrients necessary to turn incorporeal. If you take that into account, I think we would have seen him slip up at some point, don't you? I think, truthfully, that he would have slipped up by now if he wasn't being helped with divine intervention, don't you?"

"I think that's a lot of coincidence and faith placed in that idea, Yugi." He fell quiet, then shook his head slowly in frustration. "I don't know what you think I should say about that though? I mean, even if it's true, what then?"

The small teen grinned. "Then that means I'm immortal and you're one really strong mutt."

The blond blinked. Then he slugged him in the knee with a glare. "You're such a little shit."

Yugi smirked and winked at him, though he turned away again after a moment. Then his eyes flickered towards the carpet and then the small TV in the corner. "The point, though, Jonouchi, is I'm Atem. I know I am. Whether you choose to believe in it or not or if you think that divine intervention on behalf of Slifer or Obelisk or Ra is too farfetched, it's still the truth all the same."

Jonouchi stared at him as if he were a creature too estranged to fully come to name him. He looked at him as if he were beyond anything the blond had ever known before. And the small teen felt cold as they looked at one another slowly.

"So then…"

Yugi tilted his head curiously. "Hmm?"

"That means all of our friendship is…basically a fabrication then?"

The small teen watched him for a long moment, then narrowed his eyes and shook his head slowly. "No, I think some of our memories are fabricated. But I think we're still…" He shook his head again, then tilted his chin up and watched him with slightly indifferent eyes. "Look, Jonouchi, I'm still the same kid you remember. You _know_ that. You know I'm still Yugi Motou, the same one that hates violence and would do anything for his friends."

"But that still means you're not…"

"Not?"

"The same…? I don't think you're the same if you're…"

"Jonouchi, I'm still the same. I just…might have done and seen a few more things than we had originally thought was possible…" He shook his head after a moment and lowered his eyes. "What it comes down to is the fact that I'm still Yugi. I'm Atem but I'm still Yugi too. And, as far as I'm concerned, I'm more Yugi than I'll ever be Atem."

He remembered asking Yami to remind him of the fact that he was Yugi if he were to ever forget. And he remembered the way that Yami had told him he would last forever. His heart ached as his stomach clenched and his mouth grew dry. He wondered if it was a possibility, if he really was going to lose himself.

He'd been so scared to so much as learn to change on his own. Then he'd refused to eat as a wolf for a rather long time. And then he had come to do it with so little difficulty that he almost questioned why it was that he had ever feared such a thing. And then he'd tasted the rabbit and it had sated some incurable hunger in him…

Yugi wondered now if Jonouchi truly didn't know who he was anymore. Was that possible? It wouldn't have surprised him in the least to realize such a thing, he found. He _had_ changed so much he felt almost as if he did not always recognize his own reflection within the mirror.

"It's a lot to swallow," the blond finally answered. He tipped his head to the side and then flashed him a grin. "That's what she said!"

Yugi blinked, then snorted loudly. He shook his head and rolled his eyes. But he didn't have a response and so they fell into a slightly uneasy silence. As the seconds passed, the smaller teen noticed the way Jonouchi would turn his head just slightly and then watch him from the corner of his eye. The sight was frustrating to Yugi, who allowed it for a few minutes more before finally reaching out to snatch up the remote from his desk and turn on the TV.

Jonouchi shivered slightly, startled by the pointed nature of Yugi's stare at the screen. The blond was all but in shock, mind reeling, as the smaller teen turned the volume up slightly and settled against his pillow. He had originally offered to let Jonouchi sleep in the bed while he took the mat on the floor but the blond had refused and so Yugi had simply shrugged it off. But now Jonouchi almost wished he was on the bed now, because it might not have been the softest mattress, but it was probably more comfortable at the moment. The sleep mat was incredibly _new_ , just as the mattress had to have been. And so it was incredibly hard and unyielding beneath them.

It was an hour or so later, watching a couple of history documentaries—Yugi was almost amazed that Jonouchi could sit through them—that the blond finally turned around to grab the remote and change the channel. He flicked through them lazily, Yugi half-asleep with the fleece draped over himself and lightly tucked along his shoulders. But then both of them startled softly as a news reporter said, "His neck was snapped in half!"

Yugi sat up. Jonouchi stiffened.

"The body of Professor Kanekura, a sponsor of the museum in front of us and a man who tried his best to help troubled children, was found today within his office just as his colleague Professor Yoshimori's was weeks before. Professor Yoshimori's throat had been cut open, the cameras disabled and no evidence left to be found. Now, similarly, Kanekura has been discovered. His head was bent to the side until his throat snapped. And it seems the killer also knew to delete the footage from the camera. The police are working diligently to somehow recover it—"

"Wait…weren't those two friends with your grandpa?"

"Yeah…" He fell silent and refused to look at the blond when he turned around to face him with a searching expression. He looked at the picture of the man on the screen and wondered at the sight of his big grin behind that large gray mustache. Then he slowly blinked and looked away. "They were…"

Jonouchi watched him for a moment. "Did you know he was back in town?"

Yugi shook his head slowly. If he had known, he would have been more worried then as well that Kanekura was going to try to hint him as well. Clearly Yami had killed Yoshimori for a reason and his grandfather's friend had wanted to take him to the same trap Fuwa had. It would only make sense that Kanekura would come after him, right?

Yoshimori was his best friend.

They had basically grown up together.

So there was absolutely no chance that Yoshimori had been the only one to hunt wolves. He might have been the first, but Yugi was sure that Kanekura had been dragged into it as well.

"I had no idea he was back… I thought he was still in the states…" Yugi fell silent again for a few minutes longer. Then he slowly turned back to Jonouchi rather than the screen. The reporter was not saying much more than commentary on how shocking the discovery had been. "I wonder who did it…"

The blond was quiet for a long minute or two. "You don't think it was Yami, do you?" he asked quietly, biting his lip as Yugi blinked in surprise and turned his head to look at him again. "I mean, we don't really know where he is…"

The small teen shook his head in near annoyance. "No. It's not him. I would know if it was him." Yugi turned away again, lips curling back with slight frustration. "He does it in a very specific way when he kills."

Jonouchi shivered. "He has an actual _pattern_?"

"He does." It wasn't an exact lie. As, when Yami was human, he'd killed both Yoshimori and Espa in extremely similar ways. He'd slit their throats with his nails, after all… "It's very definitive."

"Is it gruesome?"

Yugi blinked. "What? No! Not at all." He paused and turned to him with a tilt of his head. "No, it's not like that. I just… He kills in a certain way and it's not by snapping their necks like that."

"So what does he do? Completely decapitate instead? I mean, we did watch him kill Aileen…." Jonouchi nearly hurled when he remembered the way he'd crawled out of the tigress's shoulder blades. He'd been soaked in blood, grizzle hanging from his fur. When he'd shaken himself out the blood and muscle had been tossed about. And then he'd dropped that shifter's heart on the ground and—

"Not when he's human." Yugi turned away and picked at his nails. Eventually the beds would be all but completely blood red soon enough. Where Jonouchi's, like every other normal person's, was pale and peach in shade, his own were darker than ever. But he did not think they were as deeply colored as Yami's or Valon's. He'd have to check at some point, he supposed.

Maybe he would do it tomorrow when he was at school. Maybe he would ask Valon to hold his hand out and he'd see the differences between their nails and he'd convince himself he was still more Yugi than Atem.

He nearly laughed at the idea.

Then he shook it off.

"I'm going to go brush my teeth and then I'm calling it a night. We'll turn the volume down and then I'm going to sleep."

Jonouchi nodded, slightly unnerved by his new demeanor. Yugi seemed incredibly tired now, almost exhausted. But he also seemed crestfallen or perhaps frustrated. And it made him appear somehow withdrawn and small. But when the teen got to his feet and pulled the blanket off his shoulders, he seemed to simply shrug the weight of it off. He didn't have a slouch to his spine and his chin wasn't slightly lowered.

He didn't look like the boy who was prone to dwelling on things for hours. He didn't look like the boy who so often got swept up in his anxieties at times. He didn't even seem like the same boy who always appeared to have a steady mind when he was in school. He did not look remotely like the teen whom was so careful and awkward when problems arose.

Yugi looked entirely unlike himself at the moment. He appeared almost to be someone Jonouchi had never seen before. The reality of it was astonishing and bewildering. He'd never assumed Yugi to be weak, but the sudden change in him almost made him appear so formerly. He almost looked as if he had adopted a greater touch of self-confidence and had come to stand straighter and with a more fulfilled purpose in life.

It made the way he had held himself formerly seem as if he were a skittish animal of some kind. Or a lost and defeated child with no bearing of any kind. Jonouchi felt almost sick as he considered the thought and the way the small teen seemed so endlessly to change before his eyes even now.

When Yugi returned, he was running his tongue over his teeth and picking at his nails again. It occurred to Jonouchi that maybe the smaller teen had never fully _noticed_ how much his physical features were changing before then.

Now he'd come to realize how much whiter his teeth were, how much sharper his canines had become. He must have even seen the darkened shade of his gums. But his nails were more curious to the tall teen as he looked at them. His nails were almond-shaped, darker than ever before, and the white keratin tips were sharper, and thicker.

His fingers were no longer than they had been before. His hands were no bigger than they had been either. But his nails were definitely longer. And his skin was a little bit richer in its pale peach tone. But it was pulled a little tightly along his knuckles and Jonouchi could see that he was somewhat, if only slightly, emaciated in this sense.

Obviously he had not recovered entirely from his initial state of depression in which he'd skipped meals and ignored his hunger. And the veins were a little more apparent where Jonouchi could see the underside of his wrist when he picked more persistently at his nails.

It was frankly a mixture between shocking and curious in reality. Jonouchi was both startled and mildly amused. But what was it that caused that? And would the same happen to him? He didn't think he would mind it too much in all reality. It would be kind of great to have such perfect nails, even as dangerous as they looked and as unnatural as well.

He couldn't wait for perfect teeth, however. That would be amazing. He'd love that. His molars were too crowded as it was. His tongue wouldn't feel constantly closed in on due to their awkward placement anymore…

Yugi finished picking his nails almost an hour or so later. Then he stretched his arms out in front of him and took his seat on the bed again. Jonouchi watched him a moment longer and then turned to the TV to lower the volume as he'd said before. The small teen yawned and got under the covers.

"Good night."

Jonouchi hesitated for a moment, startled by the words. Then he settled onto his mat again. "Good night." The blond listened to Yugi's breathing when it evened out a few minutes later. But Jonouchi was somehow sure that the small teen was not asleep. He might have slowed his breathing but he was not asleep at all. He could sense it. There was just something about the way he lay there and breathed so slowly that seemed forced…

But he realized too that the only reason Yugi might have done so was in order to ignore the potential conversation they could have been having. So perhaps the topic involving Yami had done well to destroy any possibility of conversation. And, in the dark, hours before they would have to get ready for school, perhaps it was the best idea they could have come up with in the first place.

But he did notice as well, when it was that Yugi truly fell asleep. In the dark his breathing grew slightly easier, deeper, and he relaxed whatever tension he'd possessed beforehand. The small teen had fallen into something of a dream that lingered between easy and uneasy.

The trees were spaced about, the shadows of them long and dark and deep about the snow. The air was frigid and lashed against his skin where it blistered through his fur. The moonlight came in a harsh drizzle through the tree branches, the sky cloudy in patches of white beyond the moon overhead. He could see none of the stars. And the air seemed too cold to breathe properly, his lungs aching from each touch.

He licked his lips and breathed in deeply around snarling under his breath. The puffs which outlined his exhales in front of his face were bleached against the shadows. There was blood along his tongue, but it did not seem fresh. And his whiskers felt caked along the edges, the wind cutting upon them and forcing the pores to quiver. His nose twitched and stung with pain as he breathed each time.

His paws moved slowly, painfully. The pads were broken and aching but the ice did well to numb the pain. The wolf flicked his ears as the snow crunched beneath his weight. Something moved within the darkness, against the shadows, and his head snapped towards it. Immediately his lips pulled back and his teeth shimmered with heavy strands of saliva.

The canine pressed forward quickly now. Pain lanced through him. And his shoulders ached and pulsed painfully. He could hear the bones grinding together hideously. The sound of them grating against each other almost made him think of rocks crunching beneath a car tire. The action was harsh and heavy. He was limping.

But it did not stop him gaining speed. The animal in the trees turned a second too late. The breath came in a wheeze. The wolf gathered speed Yugi had only experienced once. And then the canine slammed into its side. Teeth tore through the coat and blood swam through his jaws. The animal screamed. The wolf pulled back, snapping and lunging. Fur was tugged off. Blood sprayed through the air. The animal screamed again. The ribs broke when he bit again. Hind legs kicked and missed. The stomach fell outwards beneath the broken underbelly. And the wolf took a gulping mouthful—

The alarm screeched.

Yugi yelped and fell over the side of the bed. Jonouchi grumbled when the small teen landed on his arm. But the blue-violet-eyed boy forced himself to roll onto his hands and knees. He grunted when Jonouchi hissed in pain as Yugi's knee clipped his hip. The small teen cast him an awkward glance and climbed to his feet.

"Sorry."

"Turn it off."

Yugi rolled his eyes. "I'm trying," he grumbled, shaking himself out. Then he reached over to touch the power button and turn the alarm off. He reached up and ran his hands through his hair, but there was a lingering pain in his wrists and so he lowered them quickly. His tongue was caked and his mouth was layered in the disgusting after taste of blood. His teeth ached as if he had bitten through metal. And his fingers felt cold and somewhat numb now.

"I feel like I haven't slept at all."

Jonouchi grunted and rolled over. "Well you were kind of thrashing so…" He hesitated, tipping his head up, and looked at Yugi curiously. "Was it a night terror?"

The small teen startled at the question. His eyes widened and his head turned towards him. He had not considered that the blond might worry about that of all things. And then, for the smallest moment, he could not figure out how Jonouchi knew about it. That passed, however, and he sighed softly with a small shake of his head.

"No, it's fine. I just…was having a weird dream. It wasn't a night terror, though." He fell quiet for a moment. Then he ran his hands through his hair again and ruffled his bangs lazily. But they were soaked in sweat and he was oddly aware of how tangled his hair seemed to be. His usual coping mechanism towards such a thing must have kicked in at some point. He must not have made noise but still moved in his sleep, inaudible where he might have initially screamed or snarled furiously.

"Okay, good." Jonouchi rolled over again and faced the bed rather than the wall Yugi was standing in front of. The blond yawned and stretched unhappily. "I almost want to stay home again."

"I'm going to. You can stay here if you want. But if you do, call your dad at the very least. I'm not interested in having to talk to him again. I mean, if you want me there when you do it, I can be, but I don't want to skip anymore school than necessary. I still have _some_ plans for after high school."

Jonouchi snorted. "Why get a job when all you have to do is run away into the woods and hunt for your food and all that? You can literally live off the land and ignore anything to do with being responsible as a person…"

Yugi looked at him curiously. "Is that something you'd think about doing?" he asked quietly.

"I don't think I have any reason not to at this rate."

The small teen remained silent for a long moment. Then he looked away and glanced out the window where the sky was cloudy and just the smallest patches of blue showed between the white. Yugi blinked and then turned back with narrowed and darkened eyes.

"I don't think Shizuka would have wanted that for you, Katsuya."

The blond was quiet for a long moment. "Probably not," he admitted, but the edges of his words were bitter and resentful. "But what would I know? I barely saw her again before she got murdered."

He bristled faintly. "Yami and I had nothing to do with that."

"You sure? Because if you're really Atem and all those people were kidnapped for the sake of _you_ being bred…"

Yugi watched him, anger making his blood heat furiously for a moment. And then he curled his lip, ran his tongue along his teeth, and then narrowed his eyes. For a long time he did not respond. Then, slowly, he looked away from the blond.

"If that's what it takes for you to heal, then fine. Blame me for it." He shrugged. He could understand the feeling. He knew well enough what it was that Jonouchi felt. He had wanted someone to blame for Yami's disappearance. And, though he had not found anyone, he had been desperate to do so regardless. "I know that, in retrospect, is how someone could boil it down. She was kidnapped and experimented on and the only reason the people began to kidnap like that was because of the goal of breeding me."

The blond was silent. He blinked, staring at the leg of the bed frame with wide eyes. "I wasn't really trying to blame it on you…"

Yugi shook his head. "It doesn't matter. You can if you need to. It doesn't upset me."

Jonouchi could hear the stiffness in his tone and questioned his declaration with narrowed eyes. That had to hurt the smaller teen. There was no way he didn't feel a sting at the idea that his best friend blamed him for his sister's death. There was absolutely no way. Yugi may have been the closest thing to a saint, but even he had his limits.

"Yugi…"

The small teen didn't respond for a moment. "It's okay. But I do need to get ready for school. I'm going to take my shower and then I'll get breakfast started. You can decide if you want to stay here for the day or not. I don't mind either way."

That statement came out far more truthful than the words formerly. Jonouchi swallowed hard and shook his head slightly. He'd truly upset him. And he had no doubt he would have knocked Honda's teeth in had he said something so stupid.

But Yugi was gone before he could think to answer. He had grabbed his uniform from his desk and had headed into the bathroom. And Jonouchi was left to lay there and feel guilty for his lack of verbal restraint.

* * *

"You look…really exhausted…"

Yugi tried not to stare at her as if she had grown a second head. In his tired state, he'd found himself all but forgetting the existence of the others around him. On the walk to school, Jonouchi had been trying to talk to him and Yugi had been unable to focus even then.

Something about the small teen had changed in the time he'd taken his shower and gotten out. Something had completely become undone in his mind or perhaps his emotions were so intense he was trying to shut it out. Jonouchi didn't know. He couldn't tell.

"I didn't sleep well," he commented dismissively, trying his hardest not to sound uncaring. He tried to smile but it felt painful and he could not find much more strength to try to assert it as friendly. So he fell quiet again, looking down and then towards his locker as they approached it.

"You look kind of sick though…"

He nearly snorted. She was trying too hard now to make him pay more attention. Yugi let out a small sigh and turned the lock to put in his combination and open the door. "Just insomnia, as always," he said lazily, shrugging and pulling out a couple of notebooks and a binder. He closed it again and listened to the lock click before turning back. "It doesn't matter. It's not that bad. I'm fine."

He remembered hunting again for only a brief moment. But he did not recall what it was that he had caught in that dream. The taste of blood was still there upon his tongue but he did not know further how it was that he could identify the prey from this alone. The small teen wondered curiously more than ever now, but shrugged it off after a few moments.

"Are you sure?"

Yugi hummed, nodding almost imperceptibly. Then he offered her a small grin. "I'm sure," he answered easily. He felt a little dizzy as they wandered towards the classroom. But his feet were still moving and he felt if he remained in motion he would not have any further problems.

"So, um… What happened to Yami anyways?"

The name made him pause. At first he heard his own in its place. And then he felt sick as realization came over him. The blood seemed to leave his head in a rush, his stomach tossing as he heard the name ringing in his ears. He blinked stupidly, then felt a pressure in the core of his throat as the pain enveloped him more than ever.

He nearly dropped his books. His eyes widened drastically. An overwhelming sense of dread crept through him. It tore at his insides and hollowed out his bones. He froze, throat seeming to close for a moment. And then his breath came in a deep rasping wheeze. He snorted through his nose a second later, blinking rapidly.

His heart had picked up speed, lurching into his throat. The pounding made his head ache. His vision grew tighter, more focused yet somehow fuzzy around the edges. He blinked, trying to breathe in steadily and feeling choked with the pressure. His skin was flashing with heat. The dizziness had grown more immense. And, when he tried to swallow, his tongue felt glued to the roof of his mouth.

He was amazed he was still holding his books any longer. Pinpricks of pressure had begun to cut through his skin. He was shaking, he knew, but it was not as rapidly as it might have otherwise been.

"Yugi?" Anzu cried out in alarm. The word made him flinch. His shaking hands dropped his books. A hand reached up to tug violently on his choker. His fingers clawed at it. But his eyes were focused blankly on the wall in front of him.

"Shit," Jonouchi spat, trying to move towards his side. Yugi spun on him with a snarl, the noise sputtering harshly. The reaction made the three of them freeze. Yugi gasped and wheezed again rather pathetically. Then he turned, instinct telling him to run. He fled without a backwards glance.

Honda grabbed Jonouchi by the arm to keep him from following. Anzu stared, stunned, as Yugi slipped around the corner of the hall. The lycanthrope fled outside to the quad. His teeth clattered, the fever leaving his skin. He drew in a deep breath, reaching up to steeple his fingers behind his head. He clenched his eyes shut, arms folded forward.

He rocked back and forth now, gasping as his heart remained too fast in its palpitations. He shook his head rapidly, scraping his nails over the back of his scalp. He was hyperventilating faster, the darkness behind his eyes growing splotched. Ragged formations if dark red and then bright orange began to form there.

It was exhausting, dizzying. He wanted to rub at his chest but his nails were hot and sticky. He'd torn skin. The realization was enough to make him whimper. But the sound was swallowed away rapidly. There were gurgling noises. There were hisses. He could hear the whispers.

He could hear…

Atem…

Yugi shook his head.

The colors behind his eyes grew more intense. Sharp jagged lines had begun to form. Shapes were given definition. Black trunks rose from a red ground. Gray branches hung against the harsh orange of the sky.

He moaned softly, unable to think straight. There were roaring noises. The hissing and snarling was growing. Voices were drowning beneath each other. The wind which touched his skin was vicious. It cut in long, jagged slashes. His skin ached where the uniform cut forward.

 _Atem…_

He tossed his head. "No…"

Atem.

"Leave me alone."

 _Leave you alone_? a voice asked, nearly rasping as the air seemed to shift and twist about in the vision behind his lids. He struggled, breathing still caught in his lungs and his heart aching painfully. The small teen reached up to tug at his choker again. It pressed hard on the nape of his neck. His head spun and the place behind his eyes seemed to burn and writhe.

"Yes, leave me the fuck alone."

 _You are_ Atem.

" _No_."

 _No_? the voice sneered. _Truly_?

Yugi was shaking again. His legs were wobbling as he tugged harder on his choker. The fabric seemed to split beneath his fingers, he swore. And yet somehow it still held itself despite his pulling. He shook harder, clenching his fingers around the choker. "Leave me alone, Ra."

 _Leave you alone_? the she-wolf inquired softly, no longer sneering. The golden canine had come forward. Her dark blue eyes were glowing. And the air seemed to steam, writhing around her. She came closer on longer, thinner legs. _You are_ Atem.

"No—"

 _I do not care for even a moment if you assume to respond only to Yugi. You_ are _Atem. Whether you try to ignore this now is your own prerogative. But I will not call you by a false name._

"Atem isn't a name." He bore his teeth, his legs giving out under him. He landed on his knees, his free hand tearing at his hair. "Atem is a fucking _project_."

 _Atem is an acronym of which your reality hinges._ You _are the one so foolish as to announce yourself this way. It is no fault of mine or my siblings' to cause such problems. You may struggle, but you will not fall._

Yugi shook his head. His lungs felt too tight.

Atem… He could not pick out one voice amidst the rest. But he swore he saw Bakura and the green-eyed wolf more prominently than the rest.

Yugi squeezed his eyes shut tighter than before. He wanted to sob. The green-eyed had helped Yami in the labs. He'd shown him affection and had helped to keep him sane. He'd done a million times better than Yugi had ever even considered. He'd helped Yami beyond anything Yugi himself was capable of.

"I'm sorry…"

The green-eyed wolf tilted his head. His tail wagged slightly. Yugi could not focus upon him entirely, his vision dancing. He supposed it was a hallucination, though his eyes were closed and he was still panicked. He groaned between his teeth.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry—"

 _Yami will be okay._

The simplicity of the statement made his body lock in place.

 _Do not apologize for something that could not be avoided._ The green-eyed wolf wagged his tail once more. His gaze was soft and warm and his expression was far gentler than Yugi had ever seen on a canine's face before. _It was necessary such a thing happen. And Yami is nothing if not a survivor. You will find it impossible to truly destroy him._

Yugi shook his head. His fingers had loosened their grip slightly. "But he… I couldn't help him…" He choked on a breath and tried to swallow but could not breathe enough to draw in the air necessary. Tears were pricking the edges of his eyes. "I… He…"

 _There are more wolves than simply him suffering,_ Ra snarled, cutting off whatever response Yami's cage mate might have given him. The green-eyed wolf flicked an ear, turned his head away slightly, and curled his lip briefly. But Yugi seemed abruptly to develop tunnel vision. The darkness seemed to close down upon his peripheral and he found himself horrified as the golden she-wolf became the core of his sight. _There are many shadows bleeding that you neglect in order to protect him—_

"Because I _have_ to." Yugi's heart had slowed during her chastising, and the blood in his veins was hotter than he'd ever felt. He was shaking, but it was not with panic now. His nails curled into his choker hard and he bore his teeth furiously. "I _have_ to protect him above all others."

 _Is that what you believe_?

"That's what I _know_." He snarled softly. "You're blind to it, aren't you? You're completely blind to it."

 _I am not blind. I know well what you are referring to._

"Yami is more important to me than any of the other wolves I've come across," he admitted quietly. "But that has nothing to do with favoritism and you know that _damn well_ , Ra. I am _not_ strong enough to do this on my own. Perhaps Bakura might be. Or maybe even Yami's cage mate. But I am _not_."

 _You are weaker than even the second—_

"If I'm so much weaker, then _get_ the second to do it. Make _them_ play Atem." He bore his teeth, all but slathering with anger. "You can't, can you? Because your backup isn't reliable, is it? Things have changed too much from how you'd assumed it would be and now you cannot call upon them."

Ra bore her teeth, snarling as her ears flattened against her skull. _How is it that my descendant is so whiny_? she snapped. _Annie and her children could accept their destinies with little to no problem. I do not even think they questioned themselves or their place._

Yugi barked out a laugh. "A pack of wolves lost within the mountains—that's what you're going to compare me to? Do you not understand that isolation for a pack is more like moving to a certain community rather than being _alone_? You're an idiot, Ra."

 _You—_

 _You have done well where it matters._ Yugi stopped short of snarling at Ra to glance over in surprise. Ra's head snapped around, her teeth bore more furiously. Bakura ignored her, sniffing disdainfully as he came closer. The green-eyed wolf watched from a few feet back, flanking him in a manner, as he glanced towards Ra uncomfortably. _You do not do as they envisioned, however, and so Ra is upset with you. But you have done as is necessary. You and Yami have both done well._

"Bakura…"

 _Hold your tongue,_ Ra snapped. _This conversation has nothing to do with you whatsoever._

 _No_? _My name was mentioned,_ Bakura snarled, turning on her. His dark gray fur rose and his shoulders squared as he faced her completely. His tail wagged once in warning, his ears pricked forward and his lip curling faintly. _That makes me a part of this conversation. It is not my fault that you do not understand that. Be as upset as you want, but at the end of the night Yugi has still done a far better job than what was expected. Hell, had he not done what was necessary to save Yami, I do not know what would have happened._

Yugi stared, stunned. He'd _killed_ this gray wolf in front of him. He'd torn his head off in the woods months before. How was it that he stood in front of him now, _defending_ him?

The green-eyed wolf flicked an ear. _Bakura valued Yami and Yugi over his own life in the woods that night. And I allowed Yami to escape the labs at the cost of_ many _lives, Ra. The two of us gave many things to get them both to where they are now_. His eyes fell on Yugi, warm and soft with friendliness. _I see no such thing as failure before me now._

Ra bristled, snarling at them both. _He is_ Atem. _Atem is meant to be able to stand on his own paws and defend himself. You are neglectful of this—_

 _You say that like you_ didn't _give Atem a friend,_ Bakura snorted loudly, dismissive in the way he turned to Yugi now. _Gods have high expectations. A lot of them can't be met. Take it with the biggest grain of salt you can and ignore half the shit she says. It's not worth it._

Yugi couldn't help the laugh that escaped him, startled. Bakura wagged his tail, and for the first time the small teen realized his eyes were incredibly different. They were no longer dark coffee brown. They had become a vibrant purple, brilliant in shade and perhaps almost amethyst in color.

 _He's not wrong,_ the green-eyed lupine said with a small wag of his tail as well. He turned to Ra with brightened eyes. _And it is not Yugi's fault. He has tried. He has worked with all that he has been given and you do not have much you can say to him that does not reflect upon your abundant neglect._

 _Abundant neglect_? the she-wolf snarled, turning on him with flashing eyes. Bakura turned towards her with a somewhat surprised expression. The green-eyed canine seemed only now to bristle, his lips quivering as they threatened to curl back. _I am not here to guide his every move and decision. You are a fool to believe otherwise._

 _Slifer, Obelisk_ and _Morrigan have all stepped in to help him at one point or another. You have drawn him here multiple times to rub in his face how much he has and has not done._

 _My siblings do not care for the order of things. Had they, this would never have happened—_

 _I do not recall you ever stepping up in order to rectify things. In both the case of Yami and Yugi, you have not bothered to do more than bring him here._ Yugi looked up, stunned, as the black she-wolf stopped in front of them. Her beautiful, strangely-colored eyes glinted as she stared at the Pure-Blood goddess. _Slifer has guided him at times and answered questions. She has even played the role of his beta within the pack for those few days. Obelisk has taught him to fight and embrace certain aspects of his lycanthropy. He has even helped him to understand the way to control it. And_ I _have saved him from hunters in the woods. And what is it that you have done_?

 _I am not willing to mess with the natural order of things in order to save_ one _wolf, regardless of my kinship to him._

 _But it is not only about Yugi. Nor did it all deserved to be borne on Yami's shoulders. It is_ all _of us. You forget that Atem is prophesized._ _He is meant to save the entire species of werewolves, lycanthropes and hellhounds alike. Whether he self-destructs at first might not hold bearing on the end result. But it is not okay to place this burden on Yugi like this and expect him to understand entirely why and what it is that has caused such things. He questions things like this all of the time. Why you fail to answer the simplest of his questions or understand that he needs guidance is beyond me._

 _He should be self-reliant—_

 _It is not a trait born within a day_! _You do not pay enough attention. He was not born a wolf. He is used to having support from his friends and family. He has always had these memories to help him. And they have been fabricated due to_ you. _It is not the fault of anyone else that he is dependent upon things like this. It was_ you _to decide to do this. None of us were given a voice to speak with against you._

Ra bristled and raised her tail, eyes glittering with hatred. _Morrigan, you have stuffed your two children within a human environment as well, have you not_? she spat. _I am not sure Hati was given the opportunity to put a word in either. Is that not true_?

Yugi froze in place, eyes widening. _Hati_? Valon was…

"Two kids?"

Both goddesses blinked and turned to him with confused eyes. Then Morrigan smirked and wagged a tail that curled slightly to the right. Ra merely stared, curling her lip back and flattening her ears with disgust.

 _Valon and Kris, yes._ She paused and glanced at Ra for a moment. _But the third one is not mine._

 _They experimented on her within the labs,_ Ra snapped bitterly. _It was no choice of mine that such things would happen. The humans are foolish in their desires to conquer and possess and learn._

Morrigan ignored her now. _It is the Full-Blood they experimented on amidst creating Atem that I am more concerned about. The Harbinger is stunted. She will not have the third gift. They've experimented too terribly on her. The genes which_ could _have been triggered are long dead._

Yugi shivered. Bakura sat, ears flicking and eyes on the she-wolves. The green-eyed wolf was clearly more distraught, pacing a few steps and then turning back with a crestfallen expression.

"What Full-Blood?" he demanded. His eyes shot to Morrigan as she blinked and glanced at him. "There's a third Atem?"

 _No, there is not a_ third _Atem,_ Ra snapped. _There are two. And the third was a failed attempt by the humans. He is powerful. And he is deadly should he turn on you. But he is_ not _Atem. He will be harder to kill but not impossible. He will not recover from his death._

Yugi stared at her, thinking briefly of the way that he'd seen Yami recover from the shock he'd been delivered within the greenhouse. He thought of the way Yami had mentioned the Pure-Blood to be the only truly immortal creature. And he shivered as he remembered the way he'd spoken so ill of it as well…

But if this wolf had been experimented on to the point of almost being impossible to kill, then what was the Harbinger they'd created missing as well? The Full-Blood would not recover. But the Harbingers had three different strengths—blood drinking to recover in battle, shape-shifting and poisonous saliva. So what was it that he was meant to prepare for?

 _Yugi._ His head turned immediately. Yami's cage mate had moved closer. But none of the other wolves were paying them any mind any longer. Ra and Morrigan had begun to bicker. And Bakura was watching with bright, laughing eyes. The gray and tawny wolf came closer, ears pricked forward and gaze directly on his. _I wish to tell you that I do not place blame on you for what has happened to Yami. I do not blame you for having fallen in love with him either. I want to see him safe and happy at the end of this. And I know that you can do it. But I do not wish for you to offer yourself just to ensure his safety._

Yugi shook his head, trembling now.

 _Please, Yugi, promise me at the least that while you value him you will not sacrifice yourself in the ways you have formerly._ He peered at him for a moment longer. _You cannot do it again._

"But I—"

 _There is no exception. You cannot do it._ He hesitated. _I do not want to see happen to you what has happened to many of us._

Yugi swallowed hard. "If I die, I'll come back…"

The wolf bore his teeth. _You know what I am telling you. Do not feign otherwise._

When he went to speak again, the wolf simply pressed his nose to his forehead. The cold muscle startled him. He jerked, then fell backwards. The snow cushioned his head as he drew in a deep breath and blinked wide eyes. The sky overhead was white rather than orange. There were no trees to stretch like skeletal fingers overhead.

The green-eyed wolf must have pushed him out into the real world once more. His hallucination had ended with the abrupt touch. And he wondered if Ra and Morrigan had even noticed yet.

"Yugi…"

He turned around with wide eyes, startled. The door he'd come out of was partially open. And Anzu stood uncomfortably in the gap there, clearly uncomfortable.

"Class is about to start…"

The small teen blinked and wondered how long it was that he might need to grab all of his things off the floor… He moved to stand up again, flustered and tired as he shook his head and reached up to run his fingers through his hair. The lycanthrope shuffled uncomfortably towards the door, wiping the snow off his back and knees. He'd forgotten he'd collapsed before.

His hands were bright red as the blood hurried back to them. Yugi sighed softly and shook his head again. Maybe it would be easier to just go home instead. But he'd missed so many days already and he needed to just stay…

"We picked up your stuff, by the way…"

Yugi blinked. "Hmm? Oh, thank you." He checked himself for more snow, then ruffled his hair until it fell away. "Do I have any more snow on me?"

Anzu blinked, watching him as he turned to let her get a better look at him. "No, I think you got it all," she said after a long moment. Yugi nodded and shivered as he hurried to come back inside. "Are you…?"

He slowed. "Hmm?"

"Uh, never mind."

Yugi looked at her for a long moment, realizing only a few moments later that she meant to ask if he was okay. But she hadn't wanted to possibly trigger another reaction from him and so she was quiet now. He frowned, tilting his head. "It didn't have anything to do with you," he said quietly. "It would have happened with or without you asking about Yami."

Anzu nodded slightly and ignored the way he watched her for a moment. The brunette refused to glance at him again as she led the way into the classroom. Yugi sighed softly, ignoring this, and moved past her to take his usual seat. A few small glances were cast towards him. Valon considered him for only a moment, then turned away again entirely. The small teen ignored this as well.

But he could abruptly feel the tension.

His classmates seemed incredibly unhappy and frustrated at the moment. And his teacher seemed incredibly flustered as he glanced at Yugi and away again quickly.

The small teen ignored this pointedly.

No doubt all of them were flustered and annoyed at the thought of having _anything_ to do with him. No doubt they had come to know the situation from the hallway. He had not tried to hide. He had not scurried away. He was sure most—if not all—of them had seen him run off like that.

And he didn't doubt they were waiting for him to do it again in the middle of class.

* * *

Yugi halted in his trek, frozen in place as he heard the snap of a branch behind him. It was low to the ground rather than overhead, as the squirrels were most likely long gone by now. But then he turned his head to look over his shoulder with a horrified expression. If it was the Full-Blood that Ra and Morrigan had mentioned…

But, several feet back, standing amidst the tree trunks, was a very familiar face he was relieved to see. The russet she-wolf wagged her tail, considering him with a tilted head and gleaming incisors. _You are a very cute little human,_ she said softly. _But you should shed that skin and join me for a hunt._

He tilted his head. "A hunt? Really, Slifer?"

 _Of course. Why not_? _You will find it rather therapeutic at a time like this._

"Does it look like I need therapy?"

 _Morrigan claimed you were rather upset._

Yugi felt his tongue glued to the top of his mouth as he tried to think of something to say. Then, with a frown, the small teen scratched at the inside of his wrist. "Your sister is a bitch."

Slifer laughed softly, wagging her tail happily. _I have often thought the same. She and I tend to butt heads more often than not._ She tilted his head. _But what she has said to you is not what she means. Ra is not the easiest to understand. As Bakura told you, you must take each statement she makes with a grain of sand._

He ignored the urge to correct her and say the expression was a grain of salt. Instead he shook his head and looked at her rather pointedly. "Or she could learn to speak to people properly."

 _She is older than you imagine. And she only reacts with the living through dreams and prophecy. Obelisk and I have changed. She has not. Her self-isolation has stunted her ability to communicate effectively. She does not always know what effect her words will have._ Slifer chuckled. _But it is beyond my care to tell you such things. You have already been told this at one point regardless. Now, as I said, perhaps you should join me as a wolf so that we might hunt together._

Yugi frowned. "Will it be just us?"

 _I do not claim to know whether others are in the woods, though I am sure they are, but I have no plans to run with others._

He nodded slightly, sighing loudly. "Okay."

It was twenty minutes before he joined her, clothes buried in the roots of a tree, snow shoveled out in order to keep them somewhat dry. Slifer waited without even the slightest hint of impatience, golden eyes warm with amusement.

 _You are doing rather well to learn how to change faster than you did prior. This seemed to barely take much time for you._

Yugi flicked an ear. _Obelisk taught me._

 _Ah._ She didn't bother to do more than get to her feet again. _Come along_.

The white wolf sighed softly, coming closer and moving to her flank. _I'm not hungry. But I'll help you catch whatever it is you want._

The red she-wolf laughed softly, turning to him with glowing eyes. _Ah, sweet little Yugi. I do not need help from any wolf to acquire prey, my dear. I am much more lethal than you might assume. Do not let my smaller stature allude to anything otherwise._

Yugi shook his head. Physical stature hardly counts for anything, he commented dryly. If it had, the wolves wouldn't have been so powerful to begin with. Yami wouldn't have been able to beat that tigress. He wouldn't have been able to leap and properly bite Ushio so hard as to cause his skull to cave in. He himself would never have been able to decapitate Bakura…

 _It depends often on more than one factor. But size does not truly count in our world._ She padded past him without a second look. _How about a deer_? _They tend to be more fun. They run faster than the serows, I've found._

Yugi flicked an ear. _Sure, if that's what you want to do._

The she-wolf did not look at him. _You are rather agreeable right now. It's a nice change from our usual arguments._

The white wolf growled softly. _I tend to be when someone isn't telling me how much of a disappointment I am to them._ He paused in his trek, sighing and flattening his ears. _And, I think I'm done talking about this now._

The goddess let out a soft humming noise before turning to bank towards the right. Yugi blinked, following dutifully behind her. The speed she began to take was rapid and beyond what Yugi knew to pace. Between the two of them the white canine wondered how quickly she could go if she broke into a sprint. Could he even keep up?

 _I do not plan to leave you, if you are worried about such a thing,_ the goddess commented quietly. He gave her a startled look, one which she regarded only from the corner of her eye. _Your expression looked rather…unhappy, I suppose you could say._

Yugi flattened his ears against his head. _I was just wondering who was faster between the two of us,_ he said softly, ignoring the way the goddess glanced at him sideways. The she-wolf considered him for only a moment longer, then turned away again. _I mean, considering that you're a god, I'd assume it would be you, right_?

 _You might be surprised. I believe Yami might be faster than Obelisk and Obelisk is not as quick as me. But I would believe if you_ could _truly learn to use the speeds you can reach, you would surpass me at some point._

Yugi looked at her small frame, her incredibly slim and lean body. And he wondered at the possibility of how he himself might become faster. And he could not believe it in the slightest. In truth, now that he considered it all, she looked the perfect cross between the Arabian wolf and the maned wolf as well.

She had the longer, slenderer legs. She had the muzzle which tapered off rather sharply at her nose. The slope of her skull was clearly that of a gray wolf, however, a narrow almost undetectable one. And her muzzle was immense enough to be very akin that of the dire wolf he'd seen varying drawings of. He saw the leaner curve of her ribcage, a mixture of sloping and tucked.

But she had the cinnamon-red coat of the red wolf and the coywolf crossbreeds. She was, however, much more Arabian in appearance in her sharper features. And, had she had long black legs or had Yugi not known that the maned wolf was not truly a wolf, he might have considered her to be a cross between maned and gray rather than dire and gray.

 _Is Yami really faster than Obelisk_?

 _I would believe he could be. Perhaps he already is_. Slifer's golden eyes glittered for a moment. Abruptly she lost her momentum, her speed lessened as she paused and turned her head with pricked ears. _You have visitors._

 _Visitors_? he echoed in an unsure tone. He slowed a few steps, bristling slightly with a small sense of fear. Then he slowly began to move forward and toward where Slifer was facing. For a moment he thought at the probability of Fuwa still being alive. And he imagined the redhead coming forward to hunt him down entirely, but as his head snapped towards the red she-wolf, Yugi found himself relaxing.

She was not concerned in the slightest.

And he did not think that she would have allowed Fuwa to stumble across them both so lazily.

It seemed more likely that she would fight alongside him.

Or that she would do as Obelisk had formerly.

Obelisk had simply incapacitated the man in the mask, saving Yugi but turning on him to drag him away as well.

And both gods so far had been rather aligned on his side, hadn't they?

Obelisk had saved him in the lab.

Slifer had saved him in the woods.

He shivered.

 _Mai and Otogi,_ he acknowledged, relieved. He wagged his tail as he turned away from the goddess again. The she-wolf watched him for a moment, head tilted, and then nodded as she turned away once more. The white canine watched as both aforementioned wolves came over the slope of snow nearest them. Mai nearly tripped over a frozen log under the snow, yelping but somehow catching herself. Otogi wagged his tail happily, panting as he grinned at her sloppily.

Slifer watched them with softened eyes. _Hello, Mai, Otogi,_ she commented in a gentle tone. Both wolves looked at her and wagged their tails, but Yugi could see a sense of stiffness in both of their movements. Clearly the she-wolf unnerved them in some manner. _Were you hunting_?

 _Patrolling,_ Mai answered in her usual easy way. She flicked an ear, wagged her tail once more, and turned to Yugi after swiftly dipping her head to the goddess. _We were visited by another pack. They wish to speak to you._

Yugi blinked, startled by the comment. He flicked an ear, glancing at Slifer. _Visitors…_ He watched her for a moment or two. _Will you come with me to see them_?

The goddess did not blink, peering at him with brilliant golden eyes. _No,_ she answered softly. _There is no reason for me to join you. Obelisk will be there. He is waiting. I will see you next when you and I cross paths once more._

The white wolf stared at her, startled. _You're leaving_? _Just like that_?

 _It will not be for long, I am sure._

Yugi flattened his ears against his skull for a moment. _Okay,_ he finally relented, though a part of him was winded by this thought. She was truly going to leave him for a while then? _Um… Good luck, I guess_?

Slifer peered at him curiously for a moment. Then she seemed to smile as she shook her head. _May Lupa guide your paws._ With that statement she turned her back on him, trotting away with a speed that almost put Yugi himself to shame. The white wolf watched her disappear and bristled faintly before turning back to the other two canines.

 _That's the standard farewell for wolves,_ Mai commented simply. _And for hellhounds it is_ _"May Fenrir guide your paws" instead. Anyways, the pack is from further in Japan_? _The alpha says that they lived within Sapporo_?

Yugi blinked at her, surprised. _Sapporo_? _Really_? he demanded quietly. He bristled faintly, tension rippling through his skin. He had not expected a pack to exist so close—especially upon remembering the way Yoshimori had been so adamant about getting them to the city. He'd been planning to kill Yugi at the same restaurant that Fuwa had attempted such a task…

 _Yes. That's what they claim._

He flicked an ear. Did she have a reason to doubt them or was she simply naturally skeptical? Perhaps because it had to do with Atem she was more wary of the situation…

 _Very well._ He nodded slightly, ignoring the way she looked at him curiously with a tilt of her head. His ears flicked again. _Okay, let's go ahead and see what they want._

Otogi snorted loudly, making Yugi wag his tail. Both subordinates followed him quickly as he began to trot past them in the direction of the camp. Upon breaching the top of the hill, he found himself looking at Aki, Marik and Eurea. All three of them dipped their heads slightly, though Aki was begrudging and Marik looked more bored. Only Eurea seemed even remotely okay doing so.

 _Patrol_? he asked Mai, surprised at the sight of them. He flicked an ear. The she-wolf wagged her tail and trotted past him with a comment about racing. Otogi took off immediately and Aki snarled in annoyance. All of them took off running when Yugi did, the white wolf sprinting to catch up with them.

 _Last one there has to clean the dens for the next month,_ Mai laughed at Otogi.

 _Ew_! _I did that last time_!

 _That's because you're too slow_!

 _I think you might_ both _be too slow,_ Yugi snorted, dashing past them with a spray of snow and laughing when they both growled in frustration and tried to catch up. Yugi didn't pause to prepare himself for the jump through the waterfall, instead using the momentum to send him straight through. He landed sloppily, but climbed to his feet again quickly, shaking himself out and licking his lips as he moved towards the ledge.

 _That's not even fair_! Mai complained, landing and shaking herself out as well. She flattened her ears against her head and glared at him. _You totally distracted me_! _And Otogi beat me here_!

Yugi wagged his tail. _Don't be a sore loser._

 _That's a very stupid saying and I despise you for directing it towards me._

 _I feel so terrible now,_ he said dryly, turning away and pulling himself up onto the ledge. Aki and Marik came a moment later and then Eurea followed, dripping wet and unhappy as she flattened her ears against her head and growled low in her throat. _I do not know how I will ever alleviate the guilt._

 _Guilt_? Marik inquired, glancing at Mai and Otogi curiously. There was something else within his eyes that made Mai bristle faintly but Otogi merely wagged his tail. Yugi did not bother for an answer, pulling himself up and out of the hole in the roof.

 _Why is he so excited to meet these wolves_? Aki grumbled. She bore her teeth when she glanced at Eurea. _He would not even properly meet us until long_ after _his worthless beta went missing. Yet he was_ happy _to do it when he met your pack too._

Eurea didn't justify the comment with more than a flick of her ear. _He has strange priorities. It is nothing to do with us._

 _Don't be mean,_ Mai pleaded unhappily. _You know he has a lot going on._

 _And we don't_? she snapped, spinning on her angrily. _We were the ones raised to go into battle with him and he still has not bothered to do more than trot among us and bark orders at times. What, at the most, has he truly done for any of us_?

 _You're speaking of a wolf that has the gods on his side,_ Eurea stated simply. She moved past them all to get to the ledge as well. _I would back away from this tantrum you are about to throw. It is not worth it._

Aki bore her teeth, all but lunging at her for a moment. But something brushed against her side and she spun on it, snarling. Marik didn't blink at her, instead staring with his light purple eyes, and then brushed past her again.

Mai and Otogi were already moving past them to follow Eurea, not the least bit concerned with them now. They both watched them slip out of the small exit, then Marik quickly began to follow and Aki took the rear.

When they got to the top, Yugi was standing a few feet away from Echo, Yusei, Serena and Rin. All five of them seemed to be conversing about something or other, but Aki did not believe the white wolf capable of speaking to them and looking elsewhere. He had that disgusting human habit of looking at someone when he spoke.

 _And you are…_? the white wolf was saying. He had come a step closer and his tail rose as he approached. The other alpha came forward in a similar manner, though his tail was only raised to the same height as his spine.

 _Sakaki Yusho,_ he stated. His tail wagged slowly and Yugi peered at him curiously for a moment or two. Then he turned towards the she-wolf that had stepped forward beside him. He bristled faintly when she went to sniff him and then stepped back with a growl. Yusho snorted a laugh, wagging his tail again, and Yugi bristled further. _This is my mate, Yoko._

He snapped his teeth when she got too close again. Immediately Aki stepped forward, teeth bared. Obelisk moved past her, head turned to face her and teeth bared to keep her in place. The low rumbling snarl that left him was enough to make her legs feel weak.

The sound alarmed Yoko who stepped back with her tail up. She snarled in surprise and Yugi flicked an ear as Obelisk began to move to his side. Yusho tilted his head, at first with bewilderment and then growing shock as his eyes grew several sizes larger. But when Obelisk came closer, so did a small yearling. The canine came forward with a growl, all but launching himself at the dark gray wolf.

Yugi blinked. Obelisk snapped his teeth. The white wolf shouldered him to prevent him hitting the pup. And the two of them glared at one another for a moment. The god bore his teeth and Yugi stared at him, unblinking.

 _You can't just bite a kid,_ the white wolf snapped at him. He kept staring and Obelisk huffed loudly, eyes sharp with annoyance. _That's not okay._

 _He lunged at me first._

 _He's barely even a teenager, you asshole._

A yelp made them both look over. The yearling was on his back, paws and tail tucked. The alpha male was growling quietly but he hardly looked pissed, more stern than anything. The yearling whined and flattened his ears against his skull, but the sound did not come with verbal protests. After a moment the male allowed the yearling to get to his feet again, where he slunk a few feet away behind the female and took a seat with his head down.

 _Excuse my son._

Yugi blinked. Obelisk raised his head and looked over. _Son_? both inquired simultaneously. Their heads tilted and their eyes flickered immediately to the yearling.

 _Yuya,_ the she-wolf answered with a small glare that told Yugi not to step too close to him. The white wolf shot her an unimpressed look, however, staring into her eyes until she was forced to look away. Now he looked to the yearling again, surprised to find him staring back with keen curiosity and a slight touch of shame.

 _Yuya, huh_? he commented quietly. He flicked an ear and the yearling blinked wide eyes. _You need to watch who you show your teeth. Obelisk can eat you pretty easily._

 _He's too small and his meat would be stringy._

Yugi laughed, turning to him with a wagging tail. _You're an absolute asshole, Obelisk,_ he teased.

 _He's very protective of us._

The white wolf blinked, turning to the two wolves once more. _Oh,_ he muttered, realizing immediately the implications of the statement. _I see._

Yuya glanced at him again with wide eyes. Yusho and Yoko both watched Yugi with somewhat uneasy expressions. The wolves looked away again after a few moments. Yugi turned to Obelisk and then Mai and Otogi.

 _The three of you can help them to become accumulated to the camp, yes_? he announced loudly, turning to them with a somewhat bored expression. _Please do so. I have something else to do right now._

He turned and trotted off before any of them could speak. Obelisk, Mai and Otogi looked at one another, then moved about to encircle the small pack. Ears flicked, fur bristled for the smallest of seconds, and then they all began to relax once more.

 _Our savior is leaving_?

Yugi faltered a step. His eyes flickered as he turned his head slowly towards them. The wolves of the Sapporo pack had all bowed their heads. And Obelisk seemed dismissive of this, though many of the other wolves within the original pack were watching Yugi closely.

 _When shall you return_? Yusho asked softly, curiously. His ears flicked but he did not raise his head further than they were already lowered. The white wolf considered him for a long minute. Then he turned away again.

 _It will most likely only be a handful of days. Maybe even less._ He paused, bristling as he noticed the disgusted expression Aki wore. _I'll meet with you when I come back._

He trotted off before any of them could respond again. Rather than use the waterfall or the cavern as his exit way, Yugi went the direction he knew led further into the trees. His stomach had begun to twist rather violently, abrupt and painful, as he'd seen that yearling trying to fight Obelisk.

He was not sure what had caused it. But he'd begun to suffer a pulsing throb in his temple as well. His eyes had begun to burn and his mouth had seemed to dry out as he'd looked at them.

But the throbbing in his head had not ceased.

It was growing even stronger.

And it drove him to slow his pace.

He was limping now.

His eyes were weakened.

His paws stung.

Every part of his body took to a low, violent humming of tension and pain.

He wondered at the sensation.

There was a faint gurgling in his ears.

The river was close by, he realized.

But his head was spinning now.

His brain was pulsing with more pain than ever.

His limping grew heavier.

His vision lilted.

Yugi stumbled.

He landed with his chin swallowed by the snow.

The white seemed to stretch for miles.

And then it began to darken and turn gray or perhaps yellowish in tint.

The ice became smoothed down, slicker than he'd ever seen it.

And there was a gaping, yawning formation of a tunnel in front of him.

The darkness from within the arching shape was shattered with dull, dirty streams of yellow and white light.

And the shadows looked all the more endless for it.

Before him a rattling noise burst forth in his ears.

There were clicking noises immediately after.

Claws slid on the slick formation. The shadows stretched for miles. There was a heavy stench which burned his nose. His eyes watered, weakened briefly before regaining strength. His body shook and shivered.

The smell was sweet and sticky and harsh. There were copper edges and dense knots of fire. His head spun again. His mouth was glued together with paste. His skull felt too heavy.

The noises grew louder. There were millions of claws. There were deep rumbling cries. There were harsh purring snarls. There were screams. There were roars.

The heavier steps of human feet were thunderous. His ears rang with each fall and rise of shoes. There were sharp zapping noises. There were bursts of sound.

His eyes seemed to shake in their sockets. He sputtered for a breath. Mold and decay met his lungs. He sputtered and choked again. His ears rang. His body shook. He opened and closed his mouth. Then he shook violently once more.

There were terrible throbs of pain in his temple as before. He opened and closed his mouth. Then he shook harder than ever before. For a moment he choked on the stench again. There was mold and the smell of flesh being gnawed away at by rot.

But his vision began to slowly clear. His heart was aching and his mouth was far too dry. He could not process what was happening before him. But, the darkness had cleared away somehow. And the snow had returned in Yugi's eyes.

Yet, before him, there was also a line of rusted metal. It was stretched from high above his head, as if borne by the sky. But in front of him the metal broke into several branches. It was several feet above his head that the branches showed, a horizontal line there and the rest vertical in mirror of the core he'd been staring at.

He stumbled for his feet. A logical part of his head said, rather groggily, that it was a cage door. It was a metal cage door, holding him there as a hostage. But the snow beyond him seemed to be drenched in red whenever he blinked.

He stumbled a step, sure that the cage was not real. When he passed through it instinct said to flee. It said to go back and hide within the cage once more. But his mind struggled and Yugi could not understand why it was that he had wandered forward like this. Nor why he wished to hide back inside of it again.

 _You have to run._ Yugi turned his head. He'd moved further than he'd initially thought. He had stumbled forward several steps, body rebelling his actions with acute surges of pain. He was dizzy for a moment. But it did not stop him. He blinked and his eyes widened slightly.

Dark, murky gray-blue eyes peered up at him. There were splices of green amongst the pools of them, almost like dirty water touched with algae. Yugi felt winded as he looked at them. The wolf was almost as big as he himself was. He stood larger than many of what Yugi had seen in the labs before.

The air was denser than ever. But the wolf in front of him was kind despite the impatience he showed. In the terrible lighting—for there were flashes of yellow and white and unnatural moon and sun—the wolf was oddly stunning. His eyes were glinting and the brown mixed within his muzzle made the dark gray strands along his forehead much more apparent. Each hair was individually tussled within his handsome face and the golden undercoat was wild beneath it all.

 _Run._

He couldn't move. But there was so much noise beyond them that his head felt as if it were being beaten in. Yugi let out a shallow breath. The wolf in front of him watched with saddened eyes. Then he turned and leaped.

In front of them figures seemed to be taking form. Wolves, unidentified and shaded lifelessly with gray or silver or off-white, had begun to dash about. Their teeth were bared, their fur up in bristles. They tore off in any and every direction, it seemed.

Yugi was dizzy.

The wolf had vanished.

Screaming began to pound through his ears.

He flinched and turned.

Then he stepped forward.

He stumbled and fell.

He landed hard in the snow, teeth clicking against his tongue.

A seizure came through him.

He gasped for air and struggled for his feet.

 _Move it, kid._

Yugi blinked unsteadily. His eyes rose to peer from beneath his lashes. Above him, scowling down at him, was a familiar face. His insides coiled with pain and hate all at once, however. And his lips pulled back into a snarl.

 _Don't even growl at me. You don't have the strength or the time._ The gray wolf's dark shadowy eyes glinted at him. _But you can run._

Yugi shook his head. A gargling noise left him. Vomit threatened to spill from his jaws.

 _I am not risking my hide for a pup that cannot even speak._ The wolf swung his head down. His muzzle struck Yugi's temple. He struggled for his feet again, panting from the effort. The wolf bore glittering white teeth. _Now do as your friend told you and_ run. _Do not look back._

He tried to. He tried his hardest, in fact. Yugi took off in a limp, struggling forward and crashing in the snow. But water slapped into his face, so cold he gasped. Sputtering, more awake now than he cared to be, his senses alert with growing tension, Yugi fought for his feet again.

But there was a body lying in front of him. The wolf was disemboweled, lying on its side. And the human was decapitated beside it. They were both still locked in battle even as their corpses remained lying beside each other.

Yugi felt dizzy, winded.

His head was spinning as he looked at them. Then he heard a vicious snarl once more. He spun around again. His eyes were wide, horrified.

Behind him the blue-gray-eyed wolf was standing feet away. His teeth were bared and hateful. And, a few steps away, was the gray-eyed wolf that had just spoken to him.

 _Bakura,_ he reminded himself, struggling to remember the name altogether. His head spun for a moment. He inched forward a step, eyes still wide and horrified.

 _Do you not know how to use your limbs_? Bakura spat at him.

"Atem," a voice sang, so familiar it made him shake. He raised his head, stomach knotting hideously. On a flight of stairs high over his head, was the man he'd seen in the labs. The mask was on his face as it had been then, but the leather appearance of his lips was not so apparent.

 _Run,_ the wolf from before snapped angrily. _You have to run._

"Come up here. I want to spend time with you again." His fingers had wrapped around the banister. The digits were disgustingly thin and horrifying long. Yugi stared at them, loathsome and sickened as he looked at the man overhead. "You wouldn't leave me, would you Atem?"

He was dizzy.

 _Please,_ please, _you have to leave_! the gray and tawny wolf cried. Yugi blinked and looked at him with wide eyes. The wolf had moved closer to him, tossing him aside when he slammed into his flank. Bakura yelped when he got shocked. The collar vibrated around his throat and sent him through a violent seizure.

 _Go_!

Yugi opened and closed his mouth. His eyes shot to the human leaning over the railing. Then he turned back.

 _He does_ not _care for you_! _You know it as well as I_! _Please, little one, you have to run._ The wolf pushed at his stomach with his head. His eyes were desperate and dilated with exhaustion and loathing and such deep affection that it shook Yugi to his core. The wolf flattened his ears against his head, panting. _I love you. You have to remember that. That's why I'm freeing you. Now go._

Yugi was shoved back a step. And he turned to run again. But his footing was weak and he skidded as his sneakers lost their traction. The blood was too warm and deep in the puddle he tripped over. He yelped, falling violently from the action.

And, just as he scrambled for his footing again, his stomach knotted. The man on the staircase was moving towards the end of the steps. And the man in front of him was holding the taser aimed straight at him.

Yugi tensed himself. Then he wondered at the aspect of turning his teeth on them. If they survived…

And then the wolf from behind him launched himself. The gray and tawny and red wolf slammed forcefully into the man. Yugi watched as the human's throat was torn out and the meat and grizzle slung across the room.

Yugi scrambled to run.

He got yards away. His eyes were caught on the immediate path in front of him. His skin crawled. His body felt sick. He skidded, nearly reaching the drop of the water over the step of the stone that led to the river tunnels. He panted and looked over his shoulder.

And wished immediately that he never had.

The gray wolf had been caught by the scruff. The human in the mask had caught him as he'd killed the next man. He was yanked from his feet, bloodied muzzle and teeth glinting. He scrambled, kicking his front and back legs frantically. But the human kept his grip.

And, in a split second, Yugi saw it.

His eyes glinted and his breath came in a tired rasp.

His focus had fallen on Yugi as well.

And he could see it there now.

There was abundant acceptance.

And tired acknowledgment.

There was a wealth of affection.

But mostly Yugi saw the blood.

The knife glinted for only a moment.

And the light hit the blade in a continuous stream of yellow.

He screamed.

The wolf went through a hideous spasm.

His body rocked back and forth.

His flanks heaved.

The blood fell in rivulets.

And then the—

Yugi was gasping and choking.

But the hallucination had ended.

Somehow, even as he reeled from the sight of it, the visual had left him. As had the audio. He was no longer screaming in a human voice too broken to function properly. And there was no longer the blood falling from the wolf's shaking and writhing body.

They'd…

He puked and stumbled, limping forward. And then he collapsed.


	55. Exchange

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day**

 **Chapter Warnings: Night Terrors, Attempted Killing, Hallucination, Character Death**

 **Okay, so, I'm going to try to keep this from impacting anything like my update schedules right now. But I'm pretty upset about something that happened in my life just recently. I'm not going to bore anyone with details or anything like that.**

 **But if I miss an update, it's either because I'm dealing with that or because I got tired after work (cause the gods know I'm taking on a lot more hours than I usually would because of everything going on) and decided that I needed sleep haha**

 **Anyways, so! This chapter is a surprise~!**

Chapter LV: Exchange

 _Work Log Entry L: June, 2005 (Part II)_

 _June 20_

 _As soon as it has begun, it seems to have passed. "Atem" seems to have grown stable once more. But his memory and some of his behavioral patterns appear to be shot._

 _He seems to belatedly realize what the feeding schedule is and what is expected of him during his time alone. Sometimes he looks completely and utterly confused._

 _But other times he has a clear quality to his eyes and keen knowledge of everything around him._

 _June 22_

 _"Atem's" dig from this grave he has been hiding in is slow and rather weak in comparison to the downward spiral he took to get there. But he is making progress and I cannot question it._

 _The wolf that looks like me is vicious by nature, not by breeding or experimentation._

 _I am almost too afraid to approach it._

 _June 24_

 _A guard has asked about the wolf's similar appearance to me._

 _The boss believes that it is a way of camouflaging themselves. He says that sometimes, when puberty comes to a werewolf, it allows them to alter their appearance significantly._

 _He says that some wolves do not look like their parents in any way, shape or form._

 _He claims that the wolves do this in order to make it easier to hide away in plain sight if a hunter should come after them._

 _They do not often take on unique physical characteristics but rather random genetic alterations in order to blend in better._

 _None of their DNA is especially theirs, he claims._

 _He claims that that is why "Atem" looks nothing alike his own parents._

 _He says that the Pure-Blood will be the ultimate creature to task itself with camouflage upon reaching maturity._

 _He is certain that "Atem" shall come to look more unique and yet somehow duller than all of the wolves we have been experimenting on so far._

 _He says that all it will take is for his body to go through its last stage of metamorphosis and "Atem" will come to have a_ permanent _pigmentation to his hair and skin and eyes._

 _He says the reason he knows this is because his brother looked nothing like himself or his parents by the time he hit puberty and "Atem" looks nothing like he did as a child either._

 _I suppose this must make it an exchange of sorts._

 _The werewolves sacrifice their individuality in order to blend in with the humans alongside them. It grants them safety but makes them one of the sheep._

 _June 26_

 _I do not know whether it is possible that "Atem" will change so drastically._

 _For now, however, his skin is pale white. His eyes are pitch black and without a hint of color. His nails are bleached like paper. And the hair on his head is so white that it can put snow to shame._

The she-wolf was only about as tall as his knee. She was so young and tiny that he could not even think straight upon seeing her. It was odd to even consider that a wolf could be so small when he was so used to seeing them so much bigger, full grown or within their yearling stage. She must have changed prematurely, for she was several sizes too small for any use.

Yugi stared at her listlessly, unable to do more than simply gape. She was running, a small brown wolf beside her, shorter by only an inch. And the two of them were dashing as quickly as their small legs would allow them. But they did not make it far.

The brown wolf was blindsided by a kick to the shoulder. And the she-wolf spun on his attacker. Her teeth sank into their leg and the human kicked violently. The brown wolf had taken off without a second look.

But the crying the black female let out made him turn back. Wide blue eyes stared at him. Yugi watched for a moment as the small wolf quivered pathetically. His tail was between his legs and his eyes were wide with horror.

Yugi blinked.

The brown wolf backed up. The female screamed and struggled. Someone had snatched her up by the scruff. And another was holding a syringe. Yugi felt dizzy looking at it.

For a moment the she-wolf clawed at the air. She twisted and kicked much as the large blue-grayed-eyed male had before her. But she was too small and her paws were so far off the ground. She could gain no traction. And her thrashing seemed simply to annoy the man holding her.

The syringe was plunged into her throat. She thrashed weakly, for the first time allowing Yugi to fully see a chest smeared with gray against black. The brown wolf lunged forward. The light in its eyes was murderous and angry. But it did not make it anywhere near her. A gunshot was fired.

The brown wolf was hit so violently by it that he flew back. Those yards his body was tossed were drizzled with blood. And when he landed, he did not move again.

Yugi groaned under his breath, shivering. The fighting was fading from his vision again. And his body felt ragged as he began to recover consciousness once more. He had not expected to see more of the escape. He had not even thought for the smallest of moments that it might come to him in dreams as well.

And yet, as he tried to sit up, he noticed the stickiness.

Yugi snapped his jaws, scrambling. His legs shook and he bit at the air. The liquid drenched his limbs, tugging at him. The river was swelling. Blood was rising. The earth seemed to scream with it. And then he was tossed and tugged.

 _No_! he snapped desperately, chomping his teeth. _Stop it_! _Morrigan_! _Ra_! _Slifer_! _Obelisk_!

And yet the liquid did not leave him. He flailed. The saltiness drenched his tongue. He snarled. The blood swelled and tugged on him. Yugi paddled his paws. His head spun. His eyes felt weak and strained. He sputtered and snarled again.

And then there seemed abruptly to be silence.

Yugi felt a sharp and hideous pull on his back.

He twisted, snarling and snapping.

But all he could see was darkness.

It bunched upon him, becoming all but endless in his eyes.

Yugi kicked and squirmed. He writhed and wiggled. He wondered if this was how that she-wolf had felt, if it had been similar for the gray-eyed wolf even as he'd been killed as well. He thrashed again, snarling and snapping. The blood soaked every pore in his body, pushing through him and into his marrow.

 _Atem._

 _Enough_! he pleaded, clawing in vain at the liquid, as if it might somehow propel him upward. _Enough_! _Please_!

 _A god among mortals sent to plead among the dead,_ a voice laughed, delighted with his struggles. Yugi snarled again, frantic as he kicked and strained. He panted and snapped again. But everything was blackened rather than red and he did not think he tasted salt anymore. _What a contradiction you truly are, little Atem._

He snarled furiously. _Who are you_? he demanded. _I don't know your voice._

 _You are not meant to yet. But in time you and I will cross paths and meet, Atem._ The voice was chuckling for a moment. _Although, seeing as you so often find the gods meddling with your affairs, perhaps it will be sooner rather than later._

Yugi panted and kicked again. The darkness was far too warm, almost blistering with heat. _Gods_? he commented quietly. _Are you Skoll or Hati_?

There was only silence to meet the question. And Yugi found himself falling faster than before. He dropped and splashed into what appeared to be crystalline water beneath the most brilliant stream of moonlight. He blinked, flipping beneath the surface of it, the ripples soft and beautiful overhead of him. And then he breached the surface again, swimming to the shore.

He gasped and sputtered when he reached the sand. But his aching sides were more aflame with pain than physical ache. And so he drew in a deep breath and padded forward into the snowy terrain of Paradise.

 _Ra_? he called quietly. But he swore the trees seemed silent around him. And the darkness was heavier than he'd ever noticed in this serene place. So he fell silent after a moment, unnerved by these discoveries. He flicked an ear and flattened them against his skull as his fur lifted into an uneasy bristle. The wolves were gone. Why were the wolves gone?

He forgot the voice he'd listened to prior. He forgot the fact that he'd called for four gods to come to his rescue. He even forgot the fact that he'd been hallucinating prior to returning home hours earlier. Now he simply padded forward with his muscles tightly knit and his body aching with tension.

His head lowered and the fur along his scruff rose into a hideous bristle. He breathed out a rasp, all but panting. Then he moved faster, feeling much more the prey than he ever had the predator. He shivered, all but shaking, and felt his stomach knotting as he hurried forward.

He thought of coyotes as they slunk about with their tails between their legs and their teeth on display. A nervous coyote was not a happy one, nor was it pretty.

A nervous wolf was a threat that went unsurpassed should they be cornered.

Yet Yugi felt entirely too small and nervous.

And he was dizzy as he continued through the trees. The beams of light from the moon and stars overhead were weak and small where they broke through the trees. He shivered and shook again. Snow came in a blistering torrent, untouched even by the cloudlessness overhead.

Yugi looked about himself.

Then he looked forward again.

And, slowly, feeling sick, he wondered at the thought of turning back and fleeing. But none of this happened. Instead he continued forward.

The trees thinned out as if by some unnatural, shifting wind. The flurries picked up speed, then fell away again and came back in a small tornado of movement. But he flicked his ears and kept his eyes forward as he continued. His belly ached and his throat felt tight.

His lungs were constricted.

His paw touched something hard and slick. He pulled it back, stunned. And then he looked about himself rapidly. The shadows seemed to stretch and loom, blackening away any exit he could have taken. He had not realized formerly just how much the earth had flattened.

He had never noticed the reality of this.

Yugi flattened his ears and looked at the ground. There was a soft bubble of water beneath it all, splitting and popping almost noiselessly. He shivered and pressed a paw down again. The snow seemed to vanish beneath his touch.

And the ice seemed to crack and splinter.

He swallowed hard.

And then he screamed as it burst.

He was immediately jerked up and away. The violence of the movement made his eyes nearly pop out of his head. He thrashed, kicking and flailing. And then he blinked, an "oof" noise startling him. Quickly his eyes scanned his surroundings.

And then they lowered.

"Oh gods, I'm sorry."

Jonouchi kept rubbing at his eye, where the skin had been stripped raw from a single violent slashing motion on the smaller boy's behalf. "Jesus, Yug. Who needs fists when you can just claw someone?" he muttered.

"Yeah, you'd be surprised how many times I _haven't_ asked myself that," he quipped dryly. Then he ran his fingers through his hair and sighed softly. "You okay?"

Jonouchi rubbed at the mark again. "Am I bleeding?"

"No." Yugi huffed. "I didn't even hit you that hard, you big baby."

"You definitely could have knocked the air out of me if I hadn't been prepared."

"Yeah. You were so prepared to move out the way that you _still_ got hit." He rolled his eyes. "But you're okay though?"

"Yeah, I'm fine." The blond grinned at him cheekily. "It takes more than that to harm good old Jonouchi Katsuya!"

Yugi was quiet for a long time. Then he tilted his head and looked at him curiously. Jonouchi had always hated his first name. He'd never responded to it when Yugi had used it, aside from once or twice hitting him upside the head and telling him to knock it off. Every time Yugi had said it, the blond had argued and snapped at him relentlessly. And now he wondered if it was because his dad called him by his first name. Or if it was because Shizuka had preferred to call him by it at one point or another.

He shivered, quickly turning away again. "That's always a good thing. You can use that thick head of yours to do something more than cause arguments. It'll take the blunt of the blows."

"You're such an ass."

Yugi grinned at him in return. "And yet you sleep and eat here rent free. And I saved your life, didn't I?" he teased. "So what does that make you, the rectum or the sphincter?"

Jonouchi opened and closed his mouth once. Then he pursed his lips. "That's…actually a really good question now that I think about it."

The smaller teen smirked. "See? This is why I'm the brains." He turned away again and looked about the sky blue walls of his room. "So, did I scream or anything?"

The blond startled out of his thoughts. His head snapped up and he considered him curiously for a long minute. "No, you didn't scream. But you were thrashing. And I thought you were about to shift or something."

"Shift?" Yugi repeated in puzzlement. Then he turned his head, blinking, and shook his head. "No, I wasn't about to change."

He nodded slightly. "That's good to know then."

The smaller teen hummed in acknowledgment, turning away again. "You hungry?" he asked quietly. He thought briefly of the way Jonouchi had shown up at school with bruises throughout junior high. It had never occurred to him then that it was his dad, just that it could have been a rival gang of whatever kind that had caused them.

Back then he had never once thought that a parent would lay their hands on their kids. He had grown up with such safety from violence that the very idea had shocked him.

He wondered if it was worse knowing the one to harm you, realizing your genetic relation to them. He wondered if it was more harmful to know and understand that someone _meant_ to love and care for you wanted only to harm you instead.

Because now Yugi wondered at that wolf's words. He'd said that _he_ loved him enough to provide the distraction to run. He'd said that the man on the staircase did not care for him. And he wondered if perhaps the man there had done the great many things that he could not remember.

But he did not know if that man was related to him. The faceless, masked figure had seemed to think simply telling him to stay would be enough. And perhaps it might have been at one time. Yugi remembered the way he'd thought for a moment of simply turning tail into his cage again.

"Hell yeah, I'm starving! What's for breakfast?"

Yugi raised a brow. "I was about to ask you that."

"Ooh! I really want one of those boar sandwiches right about now!" Jonouchi rubbed his stomach and the small teen blinked at the growl it let out. "Or just a sandwich."

"So then go make one." The small teen ran his fingers through his hair. The blond gaped at him and Yugi raised a brow. "What? You know how to make a sandwich."

"But I'm the guest!" he wheedled.

"And? I'm your alpha. Now go do what I tell you."

The statement was met with a snicker. The smaller teen grinned easily and turned away again. He stretched and ran his hands through his hair again.

"I'm going to take a shower first. You hog all the hot water," he griped, yawning and moving to stand up. Jonouchi gave him an annoyed sideways glance, a pout forming. "What? Be glad I don't take you outside and hose you off like a dog."

The blond burst out laughing. "You're an ass."

"Yeah." He flashed him a wide smirk. "I'm pretty sure that's why we're such good friends."

Jonouchi wandered off a few minutes later and Yugi turned on the water as hot as it would go before adding cold water. The faucet did well to mostly drown out the noise in his head but the whispers would not cease.

His name was in every other breath, declaring him Atem, Code Name Atem, or the angel of death. He could not think straight beyond this noise. But the warm steam coming from the tub beneath his face did well to help calm his nerves. He closed his eyes for a moment but flashes of his dream came in distorted flickers.

He cringed. The screaming of his own voice was loud and panicked. Bakura was snarling. The female pup screamed. The male was shot through. The gray wolf with blue-gray eyes was eviscerated…

Yugi closed his eyes tightly and tried not to puke. They'd held him up on his hind legs. They'd…

He shook his head. The heat was blistering. Billows of white steam cut into his skin. He struggled for a moment to breathe properly. Then he shook his head again.

The sound of blood on concrete was the heaviest thing he could recall. It echoed in his ears and dimmed his thoughts and efforts to calm himself. The panic bit at his insides as vibrantly as it had within the woods as the hallucination had taken over. And the dreams made his skin crawl as he thought of them once more.

Yugi pressed his mouth into a thin line, stripping himself and looking at the steam. He turned the shower head on and ignored the way the air seemed to harden as if with lava. He shook his head stepped inside, pulling the curtain behind him.

When he got back out, Jonouchi was sitting at the table chewing on a granola bar and messing with a plate of eggs. Yugi raised a brow and sighed, shaking his head as he muttered, "You would never make it a day on your own."

"I so would! I'm just rusty cause I don't have to do everything for myself anymore."

The smaller teen snorted. "You burned eggs. Do you realize how hard it is to burn eggs? All you have to do is move the stupid things with a spatula."

The blond scoffed. "Yeah, but I like to have _good_ eggs."

"And that requires burning them then?"

"Yes. It absolutely does." Then he grinned and quirked a brow, considering him. "It makes them taste better. Not that your eggs are bad or anything. They're almost perfect."

"Yeah, that's cause they're not burned."

"The bottom needs to be crispy. If it's not, the eggs are boring."

Yugi smirked and shook his head, moving towards the fridge for a moment. His stomach was tossing with anxiety and he hardly felt the need to do more than look inside and swallow thickly to be able to ignore his dwindling appetite.

"Burned food is what leads to early cancer."

"You just pulled that out of your ass."

The smaller teen snickered. "Yeah, I might have." He closed the fridge door again, turning to him with a brief twitch of his lip in the beginning of a snarl. "The lycanthropy would destroy it altogether anyways. Especially since you were already infected before then."

"You think it cures everything?"

"I think it _kills_ everything else. I don't know that it _cures_ it." He shrugged. "I mean, I don't think if you're infected prior to getting a certain illness or disease that it will do much of anything. I think you'd no longer have it in a matter of days if that's what you're asking. But I don't know that it will reverse the effects of a disease you already had."

Jonouchi swallowed a large bite of granola and looked at him with a tilt of his head. "That's probably true." When he bit into the granola again, Yugi had the abrupt memory of a bone splintering beneath his jaws. The sound made his head spin and his stomach knot painfully. "I wonder what it could do to cancer and stuff like that."

Yugi shook his head, trying his hardest not to think more of the sound and what he immediately thought of upon hearing it. If he considered it longer than absolutely necessary, he had no idea what he might do. As it was, the exhaustion of his lack of sleep and reacting to his nightmares was enough to wind him entirely.

And thinking of blood or broken bones only made him feel worse than he already did. The smaller teen moved to take a seat across from him, thinking for a moment to grab one of the granola bars from where they rested on the table in front of them. He almost grimaced, the thought making him want to vomit.

So he sat back in his chair instead and grimaced slightly as he drummed his fingers on the table. He'd wait until school started before he did anything else. Maybe by then he would feel healthy enough to be hungry and actually want food.

* * *

If Jonouchi was concerned about his lack of appetite, he did not say anything. And he did not make a point of saying that Yugi had skipped the meal when they met up with the others. So he had to assume that Jonouchi was not too terribly worried about it. Or that he was not willing to try to tell them when he know Yugi could hear him doing so. When he did not know he was a wolf, he might have done so, but now he was quiet and seemed mildly unnerved as he waited.

So the small teen pretended that he had not noticed and ignored anything and everything to do with it. His stomach had grown more aggravated than he'd assume it would. And now he felt like he was burning. But the walls seemed to be growing closer and his fingers were shaking slightly. The air had grown heavier, enough to make his stomach knot more furiously.

"Yugi?" Honda murmured, a slight touch of alarm in his tone. He looked him over. "Are you okay? You're not looking so well right now…"

Yugi tried to nod but the muscles in his neck ached too violently to allow him to do so. So he scrunched his eyes up, muttering, "Headache" in a low voice. But the small teen felt somewhat dizzy and his stomach was still knotting. It felt as if fire were rearing through his veins, violent and hissing beneath his skin.

But he wondered how convincing he sounded and he doubted they believed him for even a moment. Exhaustion tugged at the edges of his acknowledgment, dizzying him further. His head seemed to pound, his heart leaping to his throat. He squeezed his eyes shut tighter. His lungs were too tightly constricted.

A tremor rattled through him.

His body was too tightly knotted. His stomach was burning. His blood was hot beneath his skin. His bones felt molten and iced over. He nearly collapsed, head spinning and lungs squeezed too tight. His legs were wobbly, but not quite trembling.

Yugi shook his head slightly again, opening his mouth just enough to breathe in. His teeth were cold at the inhale, as slight as it was.

"Yugi? Holy shit," Honda cursed. Anzu was gaping, unable to stop herself. She could not think of any words to say, too stunned to speak. And, as she simply shook her head and stared in horror, Jonouchi sputtered. Yugi could not understand their shock, nor the waves of terror which burst upon his skin like fire and embers cutting into his nerves. "Oh shit… Oh holy shit… What do we…?"

"His entire mouth is…"

Yugi reached up, shaking hands clasping upon his scalp. His fingers caught and knotted themselves within his long hair. He hissed and clenched his jaw now. His body was shaking now. And he could not truly comprehend the way they all stared at him. He gasped and sputtered.

His nails punctured his skin.

Blood caught upon the keratin.

Under his nails the liquid pooled dark red.

He hissed.

He snarled.

He shook.

Then he clenched his jaw further.

Hatred swirled within his body.

Despair clutched at his heart.

Pain tugged upon his insides.

Desperation swept through him.

He sputtered.

He gasped.

His eyes snapped open. His body trembled. He snarled and breathed harder. His vision was stilted and pained. The edges of his sight were burned with black like ashes. He shivered and blinked. His eyes burned for a moment. He was dizzier than ever. His heart was in his throat.

He kept his fingers pressed into his scalp. His hair tugged. His mouth opened and closed. Blood had begun to pool in his jaws. He did not know the pain of a wound however. And his friends were gaping at him. He nearly swayed and fell from his standing position.

Abruptly he remembered Yami.

He remembered the thrashing.

He remembered the blood.

He remembered the snarling.

He remembered the panic.

He remembered the way he'd opened his mouth.

He remembered the white of his gums.

He remembered the sight of his teeth falling.

He remembered the way his eyes had rolled up.

And he remembered why he had seen these things.

He had been changing.

He had been—

Yugi had grabbed him. He'd tackled him. He'd held him. He'd snapped him out of his terror. He'd calmed him, if only slightly. He'd brought him back to awareness. He'd woken him enough to allow him to regain himself. He'd slept at his side despite his reluctance, had cleaned away his puke when he'd woken him hours later…

 _I'm changing,_ he thought frantically. A tooth fell from his gums as if in affirmation. He felt dizzy and frantic. He moved a hand and the spike of enamel fell forward into his palm. The white was almost invisible amongst the red blood. And he nearly crumpled to the ground. He clutched harder at his hair with his other hand, tugging harshly on the strands. Then he caught another tooth.

Why was he…?

What had triggered…?

He grunted. A shift in his back brought a pop of his spine. He was grabbed abruptly. Something caught his arm. He trembled. Then he was jerked forward. The violent action made him nearly fall to his knees. His shaking limbs made his steps awkward. Yugi gasped and sputtered for air.

And only when he raised his eyes from his hand did he realize. Jonouchi had caught his wrist. And he was dragging him forward. He was running as quickly as he could. And Yugi was stumbling awkwardly behind him. He staggered and panted. And then he found himself falling forward.

The blond had tossed his arm.

He'd tossed the smaller boy.

And Yugi hit the ground so hard it winded him.

He curled up on his side.

He blinked stupidly up at the other boy.

"Shit, Yug, you need to stay here for a minute. Try to calm down." The blond was looking at him frantically. His head turned back and forth down the hallway. Yugi could not hear much of anything. And no one seemed to be speaking. The small teen was dizzy and anxious. "I'll check on you during break. Try not to do anything…"

Yugi could feel fire in his guts.

Jonouchi had shut the door when he'd run out of words. He couldn't find the right adjective. So he'd turned the lights off and shut the door behind him. Yugi almost panicked that perhaps it was locked. Then he remembered himself.

The door locked from the inside.

His head was swimming. Yugi found a hand moving forward. He was shaking. His shoulders were trembling. His arms were straining. He gasped and choked. Blood filled his mouth. His gums were burning. His teeth had begun to fall rapidly. And then, as he struggled forward, an eruption of pain came forward from the very pits of his mouth.

Bone snapped.

Flesh separated.

Yugi crawled forward. He reached up. His fingers struggled for the knob. He clutched desperately. Then he slipped. The lock clicked, triggered by his shaking uncoordinated fingers. He fell onto his side. His arm moved to clutch at his belly. Flames threatened to eat through his blood and marrow.

He clenched his eyes shut.

Pictures danced through his mind.

His head was swimming.

His heart was racing in his throat.

His hands were shaking again.

He sputtered for breath. His eyes snapped open again. Dust lay upon the bottom of the door. The metal was faded in the corners. The pain nearest it was tainted grayish. Yugi gasped and folded his fingers. His nails dug into the skin of his flank. He clutched at his shirt. Then he tugged and twisted his wrist.

The room was darker than he'd assumed it could be. Or perhaps it was simply that he was so close to the door. It was dark. It was shadowy. It was gloomy. It was—

Yugi couldn't focus any longer.

Pain rifled through him.

His spine snapped when he writhed.

Muscles twisted and coiled beneath his skin. He panted and nearly screamed. A gargle left his throat. He thrashed on the ground. His sneaker hit the door hard. He covered his other eye with his palm, fingers folded into his skin. The echo was deafening.

Bile burned at the back of his throat.

He saw blood.

It was so bright and red.

It was daunting to look at.

And his head was spinning even more than ever. His eyes squeezed tightly shut. He gasped. Then he coughed violently. The pain in his throat was harsh, acute. He gasped and sputtered. He shook his head. His hand fisted further in his clothes. He clenched his jaw. Canine teeth, scissored and too sharp, cut through his gums.

His tongue was coated in a metallic taste. His head was dancing. He slowly opened his eyes into slits. He looked at the gap of the door again. Then he gasped for air again.

So much blood.

There were bones scattered about in the dust. The light from the window of the door had turned bright ominous orange. The air was cast about with broken branches. Shattered twigs and scattered feathers danced in his sight. He shuddered. Then he snarled. Then he choked.

Yugi felt the earth moving beneath him. The ground shook and thrashed. His body was frozen above it. And then the wind whipped upon his skin, cutting into him. And the metallic scent made him shake harder. He choked. Teeth clicked together hard, chattering with pain.

He felt his eyes rolling nearly up into the back of his head. He sputtered. His fingers clutched harder at his own skin. Blood splashed upon his nerves, so heavy that it burned through him. His eyes snapped open again, staring ahead. He shuddered. The ground shook.

Red appeared before his eyes.

There were specks and various shades.

They bore into his sight.

They cut their way into his senses.

He trembled.

He shook.

And he recognized _further_.

He _knew_.

Abruptly.

With certainty.

It was not merely color.

It was a pair of eyes.

And they were burning into him.

He opened his mouth. The name was sputtered. The eyes flashed and glinted. He trembled harder. Then he gasped the name again. And, hideously, blood shot from his mouth. It flecked the floor. It hit the wall.

And then, as those eyes seemed to open more fully, boring down on him, Yugi felt an immense and incredible pressure. It bore upon him and Yugi opened his mouth wide.

He _screamed_.

* * *

There was an odd, intoxicating scent which smothered his nose. It burned, making him recoil, yet the edge of such pain invigorated him. He breathed in deeply. His lungs were incredibly hot, tightened to the point of stunning him. He kept his eyes shut, however, his body tightly clenched in a fetal position. He could not tell what he resting on, only that it was cold. But he had the feeling—or perhaps it was knowledge of some kind—that he was not in the same place as he had once been. But where he'd been before did nothing to clarify this.

Yugi could not remember where he'd been.

He didn't know now where he was.

"I saw your eyebrows twitch. You haven't moved since you were brought in here. So you have to be awake, right?" The voice was oddly mild and soft, easy enough that his immediate instinct was not to lash out. But then he recognized her voice and so felt sickened and small.

"How long have I been…?" He was croaking and if he had not originally known what he was trying to say, he would never have understood himself. But the formation of his lips moving to speak the words did well to tell him.

"You were screaming, locked in a computer room on the third floor," she explained softly. Yugi opened his eyes slowly, unsure whether the light might burn them. Then he drew in a deep breath as the young woman shuffled about, looking for something or other. "You were bleeding and so…traumatized…that we had to give you a sedative in order to calm you down. You kept screaming for a while before it kicked in. But we weren't expecting you to pass out like you did."

"A sedative?" he mumbled. He shifted his weight to move and attempt to sit up. The nurse gave him a grim, tight-lipped look. Yugi reached up to run a hand through his hair. It was knotted, but his scalp was no longer as sensitive as it might have been had he still been bleeding. And his tongue, he knew, was pressed against average human teeth, no longer surrounded by sharp formations of shearing enamel. "I thought we didn't have them at schools…"

"We've had them because of the stress brought on from the deaths that have happened so recently. The police have allowed us to do this, although the doses are rather low. We don't want anyone to become addicted through exposure or anything of that nature. We just want a way to help calm those in need…"

Yugi nodded slightly. He wondered what had happened to the teeth he'd had in his hand. He wondered at the ones that he surely must have lost amidst his screaming. The small teen flexed his hands for a long moment, studying his fingers. He swallowed thickly, reaching up to run the digits through his hair.

Had he swallowed them?

During the Change, the vomiting often caused them to be forced out into whatever surroundings they were within. And the high acidity of the stomach fluids probably did well to make the traces of DNA rot away. Or maybe he was just fabricating that part. He didn't know enough about the levels of acidity to say much of anything. He shook his head at the thought. He wasn't sure there was a way to test that either.

But he'd seen Yami swallow those teeth in the midst of his panicked, frenzied change that night. Yami had lost them, had swallowed them when he'd begun thrashing harder. Yugi had never truly seen his neck move or the action come to pass, but he hadn't seen any while they'd cleaned.

It was true that Yami could have found them, possibly hidden them away. But he had not noticed any hesitation or confusion in his method of cleaning as he'd felt necessary.

"Oh." Yugi ran his hands through his hair. He looked at her, wondering at whether his panicked state upon screaming until his neck was raw was what had caused the Change to reverse. He knew that strong emotions caused the Change to begin with. But he wondered if perhaps it was possible to trigger its regression as well.

"So, have you ever had prior problems?" she asked, suddenly uncomfortable as she clicked her pen and readied to write some answers on a sheet of paper. Yugi blinked, then slowly raised his eyes to look at her in bewilderment. "I looked at your recent attendance record and I was rather surprised by the results. You've been skipping rather abundantly as of late."

He blinked. "I haven't been feeling all too well."

"I understand that your classmates recently made some wild accusations about you regarding the murders."

Yugi nearly snarled. "Yes."

"You left school early due to it." She began to scribble on the paper. Her actions were not rushed in the slightest, almost lazy in all reality. "And you've been recently showing symptoms of incredible depression."

He scowled at her. "It doesn't matter." He moved to stand up but his legs felt wobbly. He was dizzy as he shook his head. "I don't need sedatives."

"I think you should go for an evaluation of some kind. It would be wise for you to see what is going on. I've never seen anyone start screaming like that out of pure anxiety."

Yugi didn't speak for a long moment. Then he shook his head and ran a hand through his hair. "It's not necessary."

She shook her head. "Yugi…"

He bristled. "No. I'm telling you it's not necessary." He glared at her furiously. "There's no reason whatsoever for me to do it."

"You had locked yourself in a room and were _screaming_ —"

"And? It doesn't matter. I already know how to deal with it." He paused. "I've been handling it even _without_ medication. As you already said, I've been skipping school and leaving early on certain days. Clearly I have it under control even without having to swallow a million pills a day."

"You can't honestly—"

"I'm not talking about anymore with you."

"You realize that if I were to contact your mother—"

"Feel free to if that's what you want to do. She won't have much to say about it."

"And what exactly does that mean?"  
"That she won't have much of an opinion about it. You're forgetting that I can deny treatment anytime I want. And I'm allowed to say no to any suggestions a doctor might have about my behavior or this predicament."

"Yugi, I understand that you're a little scared—"

" _Scared_?" he scoffed furiously. "I'm not scared of medicine. My mom is a vet—one of the best in the world. I help her with surgeries. I assist her with those kinds of things."

"Yugi—"

He shook his head, annoyed. "I'm not going on medication." He was already on so much. "And I'll deny any advice that a doctor might give me about it. So I had an anxiety attack. It happens. It's not like I'm the only one in the world with them."

"Yugi…"

He hated the way she sighed at him. Disgust burned through his veins for a moment and he shook his head in annoyance. He got off the table he was seated on and dusted himself off awkwardly. He felt sick for a moment, but he did not think it had to do with anything involving the medicine. Nor did he think it was residual nerves. He shook his head slightly and looked at her for a long minute.

"Am I allowed to go back to class?"

She frowned at him noticeably, then sighed again and shook her head. Her eyes flashed with annoyance and she snapped when she spoke next. "I'll write you an excuse for today and tomorrow."

He blinked, surprised at the statement, then bristled faintly. She assumed that he would need two days to recover from a _panic attack_? He almost snapped at her, then hesitated. Was it possible that it took others more than a day to recover from something like that? Was it possible that someone remained fearful for over a day?

He swallowed hard. "Thank you," he finally mumbled, clearing his throat. He shook his head and watched as she went back behind her desk to dig through some paper slips. After a moment or two she produced a single sheet the size of a common sticky note and wrote the date, her signature and the reason for his absence. She handed it to him with an annoyed look, then turned away and dug through her folders for a similar sheet which she wrote an almost exact replica of the note upon.

"And I'm assuming your mother will be picking you up?"

He snorted. "Yeah."

"Good." She left it at that and Yugi ignored her once more as he turned on his heel to leave the room. He did not bother to look back at her, his stomach knotting briefly. He had not noticed the little porcelain cat lying on her desk before he'd walked past it. He had not taken note of the poster of a cat on the door beneath the window.

How odd…

He had not truly realized before then that the little office had been a showroom for cat accessories. It surprised him to notice this. And, when he paused and glanced back as he shut the door, he wondered at the noise of a cat meowing. Was she watching a video on cats?

Yugi shook it off.

In the end he did not truly believe it mattered to begin with. So he shook his head and headed for his locker instead. He did not understand how it was that his memory did not recall anything to do with his backpack prior to his screaming fit. He could not remember if he'd gone there first and put his items away or not. He did not know if perhaps his friends had put them away for him.

Hesitantly he used the combo to snap the door open, swallowing hard. In front of him his bag hung from the small hanger in the center of the roof. All of his books and binders were set about in a perfect line there. And he shivered as he considered it curiously. Had his friends moved it for him? Had they hung it like that?

Or… Had someone else done it?

Yugi shook his head, closing his locker quietly. It would be a good idea to leave it for the next couple of days, right? Or was it smarter to simply take it home and then run off? He couldn't tell. Thinking about it was almost exhausting to him.

In the end the blue-violet-eyed teen left it. He took the back exit for the staircase, hurried down the stairs without a second care, and wandered into the quad. The instant the cold air touched his skin a sense of relief came through him. His lungs felt cool, losing their tightness, and he ignored it as he continued forward.

The snow was crunching heavily beneath his weight and he ignored the way it seemed to resound endlessly in his ears. He needed to get out of there. He needed to run. If he had another panic attack, at least in the woods he would be mildly safe. If someone at the school knew of him or was hunting him in any manner, he might be easily caught and killed. At least in the snow he was camouflaged, right?

Yugi doubted it. But he needed to run at the very least. He needed to get rid of all the energy that tore through him so endlessly. He felt dizzy and exhausted and the stress would be easy to outrun in his wolf coat. It was easier to race beyond the initial fears and work away the tension with physical means.

He wondered if that was why some people liked to have sex to ease their stress. The reality of it made him feel sick for a moment. He remembered Yami telling him sex with him would cure him of all his woes. And he nearly laughed, but almost puked as well.

He was past his house before he bothered to truly take a look at his surroundings. He was walking so fast he almost wondered if he was actually running. But he ignored this.

He stripped of his clothes the moment he was far enough into the trees. He trotted at a breakneck pace, anxiety crashing through him. His head felt light and his steps unbalanced. He shook himself out. He panted. Then he took off running towards the camp as if such a thing might help to ease his blooming frustration.

But his body felt warmer. And he was running faster than he'd ever truly bothered before. It was not anywhere near the speed he'd propelled himself with upon being hunted by those dogs formerly. He shivered and his tongue felt swollen and frozen for a brief moment. And then he slowed.

Movement had come through his eardrums.

A small patrol was moving about in the trees nearby. He faltered in his steps. The first face he took note of was Yusei, the blue-eyed wolf munching on a small mouse he'd caught. Beyond him was Echo, the she-wolf sniffing about the snow lazily. Near her Mai was playing with a stick, throwing it and chasing it happily. Otogi was watching her. And Marik was watching _him_ , Yugi realized.

He bristled faintly. Then he shook himself out again. _Yusei_ , he greeted, startling the other male. The gray wolf jumped several feet in the air, eyes wide and shock and bewildered. He pricked his ears forward, his prey dropping from his jaws. He blinked with wide eyes, breathing out in a loud snort of noise that made the air almost completely white in front of his face.

Yugi blinked. _Sorry._

 _I didn't think you'd be here,_ Mai commented curiously. She had grabbed the end of her stick again, tail wagging happily. Her violet eyes peered back at him with pure surprise and affectionate warmth. _I thought you'd be at school._

 _I didn't want to stay for my last handful of classes. There's nothing important going on in them,_ he dismissed. But he thought he had an acidic tone and he saw Yusei blink at him in surprise. Yugi wondered briefly if they'd pulled him out of school for this. He wondered after that if he'd even been given the liberty to go to school to begin with. His heart ached but it was instantly replaced with a pulse of disdain. _No quizzes, so it's not really worth staying._

Otogi flicked an ear, watching him. _School is stupid._

He would have laughed had he been human, because Mai immediately snorted, _No_ , you _were just too stupid to keep going._ The male gave her a glare. Yusei blinked and looked at them. The she-wolf bumped him in the shoulder, saying, _Don't listen to him. School is important. Otogi is just a stupid boy._

Yugi shook his head, snickering. _And you thought she liked you,_ he teased, moving to take a seat. Yusei wagged his tail as Otogi snorted loudly and shot his alpha an annoyed glance. Had Yugi been capable, he would have smirked and flashed him the brightest smile he could have.

 _She's fickle,_ the black-furred male defended himself. He flicked an ear as Yugi laughed louder. Then he flattened his ears against his head and pouted, lips drawn back at his cheeks to grimace at him pointedly. The white wolf wagged his tail in response.

 _From what I've seen, she's not_ too _terribly fickle,_ he commented with a flick of his ear. _She still hasn't done anything with Marik._

Mai shuddered. The male in question looked at him intently. Then he shook himself out and moved to scour the snow for any sense of prey or a toy such as the she-wolf's stick.  
 _That's disgusting._

 _I know. That's why I said it._

She shook herself out. Yusei considered them both. Then he flicked an ear. His eyes were on Yugi now and the white wolf hesitated as he was given a picture. It was of himself, his face sallow and his eyes tired. His ears seemed to droop slightly and his cheeks looked sunken with stress.

Did he look like that already? Had his anxiety done this to his expression in that short an amount of time?

The thought made him bristle and he rose to his feet after a moment. _I'm fine,_ he dismissed with a flick of his ears. The younger male lowered his head slightly, a somewhat unnerved and confused expression on his face. Yusei nodded when he stared at him rather pointedly.

 _Is something wrong_?

Yugi bristled slightly at the sound of Marik's voice, annoyed by the very thought of answering another inquiry after such a statement. And so he sighed loudly, shaking his head, and, in a firmer tone, snapped, _I am fine._

His words made Mai, Otogi and Echo pause to look at him in surprise. But the intense stare Marik cast upon him made him feel sick. They looked at one another, lavender against blue-violet, and the white wolf huffed.

 _You all worry without reason._ He felt dizzy for a moment. He felt as if he were mimicking Yami in the statement and his heart clenched. A small tremble came through him before he shook himself out to scatter his unease aside. The canine flicked his tongue to run over his nose and pricked his ears forward. _I'm going to walk…_

Yusei flicked an ear. An image appeared within his mind, of him and another wolf of unidentifiable traits. The fur flickered with color where they canine moved at his side and the white canine flicked his ears.

 _No,_ Yugi answered with a shake of his head. _I'm going alone. I don't need the buddy system right now. It's unnecessary._

The gray wolf blinked, nodding, and then dipped his head. His blue eyes fell back on the rodent he'd caught and he munched on it without a second look at him. Yugi watched him for a single moment longer. Then he turned on his heel and began to trot quickly away from them.

The anxiety was cutting through his skin more fiercely than he'd ever assumed it would. He was dizzy again. His heart was in his ears. His vision was blurred in the corners almost as if he might cry. But wolves had no tearducts and his stomach knotted as he slowed his pace.

The slope he'd come over was crystalline and pristine but he recognized it as well. He cast a small glance about, a lazy and slow caution. His belly ached and knotted further. And then he shook himself out once more.

He glanced towards the sheer drop of stone nearby, the same that Yami had been fallen over the side of the ledge. He'd landed, bleeding and soaking the snow. Yugi remembered packing the gunshot wound with ice. He remembered Yami limping, the ice breaking from the movement. He shuddered at the memory.

And, for the briefest of moments, he wished he could have burrowed back inside of the den they'd made in the snow. He wished he could have the same protection from the world as he'd given Yami from Espa and Panik that day.

But he brushed this off again. A shake of his coat made him anxious but somehow helped to calm him all at once. He lowered his head, scenting the snow beneath him, and began to move forward once more. The air seemed to bite through his thick fur. And he swore he felt teeth nipping at his skin. It was not alike the wind searing through his coat and touching upon his flesh.

And so he stiffened.

His head turned and the wind tugged gently upon his fur again. He stepped forward, pace slow and uneasy. He could sense something eerie pressing upon his insides. He felt as if his heart were being gripped by claws and a firm, cutting hand. He slowed further. His fur rose into a soft bristle.

 _Yugi._

His head snapped around. But he could not find the source of the voice. His ears pricked forward, tension making him nearly tremble. It was a female voice. And it was only mildly familiar…

Was it Morrigan?

Was it Ra?

They had sounded similar at times, though Morrigan had an icier, somewhat thicker and nearly smoky tone. And Yugi recalled it effortlessly now that he tried to dig up such memory. But it stuck in his throat, an uneasy and unsure response. He shivered and the wind cut through his fur again.

It felt like _teeth_.

Why did it feel like _teeth_?

Yugi bristled and looked about the clearing around him. The trees were skeletal and bare. The shadows were short and soft in definition. The sun was blinding where its light touched the ice. He looked about himself again.

 _Morrigan_? he called out softly, unsure of himself. But the wind seemed to whistle as it cut into his ears. And he felt small and sickly as he shuddered once more. A part of him recoiled in dismay at the very realization of such noise.

 _Is that…_?

No, he realized. He didn't believe it was her anymore than he believed the psychic preaching Kokurano had attempted to press upon his classmates formerly. When he'd been alive, he'd been annoying in this aspect. And it had frustrated him more than he'd ever cared to admit.

Now, especially, the thought infuriated him. Why was the pudgy sixteen-year-old occupying his mind? He did not need him there in the slightest. He had heard his message the first time. He'd heard it in his dreams more often than that.

So why…?

Yugi pricked his ears forward once more. No, it wasn't Morrigan. But the presence was not male and he could not identify it.

The corners of his vision seemed to tighten painfully, pulled black in the edges. The white wolf shivered and shook himself out. His head angled upwards. The sky was so pale blue and the sun was an immense, horrifying golden orb overhead. He shivered and shuddered. And then he turned away again.

He stepped forward cautiously.

No words came to him.

No voice spoke in his mind.

He shivered again. He slunk forward a step. His ears flattened against his head. And he kept forward. Perhaps it was simply the residual tension of his memories. Maybe it was as simple as the idea that Espa and Panik had once been there. He remembered jumping through those flames, his flesh burning, his pitiful screams.

Yami had been laying there, writhing and panting and snarling. And he remembered the way the black wolf had looked at him, panicked and horrified at the concept of doing such a thing. But he'd followed him. He'd rallied himself despite his terror. And he'd followed Yugi on his command as he'd asked of him.

Yugi paced forward a few steps faster. Then he trotted, passing through the flatter clearing of snow with little difficulty. It occurred to him not to head this way. Perhaps it was the memories that tugged at his fur. Maybe it was the idea that he'd come here to save Jonouchi as well.

Maybe it was simply that the eeriness was wearing upon him. He forced the thought away, then pressed forward once more. He was exhausted now. His legs felt weak and tired. He slowed his pace. And he fell once more into an unsteady, almost limping stride.

His ears flicked.

He swore he heard his name again, this time on a breeze that sheared through his coat. He slowed further, coming almost to a complete stop. His vision seemed to pulsate for a brief second, as if somehow irritated. He wondered at it, just as his heart attempted to beat faster and encompass his hearing.

He shuddered. The lake before him was oddly chaotic. It did not look as if it were something solid. It seemed almost to waver and wobble beneath his very eyes. He shivered, then bristled and flicked his ears.

Rationally the lake had to still be frozen. The snow had not gotten a good melt. And the temperature was far too cold for it to thaw. He shivered again, then took a small step forward. When he stretched a paw out to touch the surface, the ice bobbed.

He pulled back, alarmed. The bank was solid, but the snow soft under his paws. He looked around once more, sickened and bewildered. Jonouchi had been trapped beneath it before he'd gotten there. But that had been weeks. Why was it now that the ice was just as broken as it had been then?

Yugi shivered. He looked around again. Then he turned away and shifted his weight. Voices resounded in his ears. He swore his name was spoken again— _Yugi_ and not _Atem_. The urgency in its tone made him bristle. But he could find no source for his name and so he turned away again.

He'd make a run for the trees again. Then he could backtrack and move for where he'd left his clothes. If he did that he could hide away. He could wait out whatever it was that had come to lurk there, ready to spring upon him.

He was trotting before he could reconsider it. His paws were rapidly rising and falling in the snow. His eyes sought the tree line. His fur rose into a bristle. But the snow was softer here. And it seemed to break rapidly beneath his weight. He swore he sank beneath it further than he ever had before.

He shook this thought off, hurrying his pace. His paws seemed to race with his efforts, despite the snow which cushioned his speed.

He faltered, blinking, and stumbled to a halt. The snow was steaming in front of him. And, when he blinked, he saw splotches of red. For a brief moment he struggled to interpret the meaning of this strange sight in front of him. And then he blinked again.

Some part of him scrambled for answers, for it surely understood the image.

It was blood.

And it was fresh.

Yugi blinked, unable to move.

Had he been shot?

That didn't explain the angle, however.

And he hadn't heard it.

He couldn't feel any pain either.

Yugi blinked slowly. His mind scrambled. No, the angle… He turned his head slowly. His neck ached from the direction and bones popped from the tension.

He stared, blank and uncoordinated.

Had…?

The wolf next to him stood with his head raised. His jaws were smeared red. His ears were pricked. His shoulders were squared. His fur was in a bristle. His tail was held high. And his eyes leered down at him hatefully.

Yugi blinked. _Why…_? he finally managed to breathe out, confused and bewildered. The ice seemed to cut through his fur as he shivered, the wind tossing about his form. He blinked and stared, blinking again in stunned horror.

Had he truly…?

The wolf wagged his tail. His incisors held stray scraps of white fur. And blood soaked much of the enamel of his canines. Yugi blinked at him and stared at him blankly.

 _Why_? he snarled. _Did you truly just ask me_ why, _Yugi Motou_? _Or do you prefer being called PB-A 26_? _Or just Code Name Atem_? _Atem_? _Which one_? Do tell me.

He blinked again, eyes still stunned. The wind bit at him. And he could feel the soft tingling upon his neck. The wind nipped at the wound but the skin was already coming together. It'd been superficial. Yugi hadn't felt it because it had been a teasing bite more than a true attack. His fur and his own movements must have been what had stunted the wolf's ambush.

Yugi pricked his ears forward. _Atem…_ he hissed. _My name is Atem._

 _Oh, but it's_ not, _is it, Yugi_? _Not truly._ The wolf was sneering as he stepped closer. His teeth flashed brilliantly, fangs glinting like fresh peaks of ice. _You_ aren't _Atem._

 _No_? he asked in turn, moving to shift his weight. He remembered Obelisk saying to watch the distribution of balance. He remembered the way he'd told him to lunge up rather than forward if the opening was secure. He remembered the limp body of the gray wolf he'd killed in that hall of mirrors within the desolate greenhouse. _I'm not Atem_?

 _No. You're not. You're masquerading as him._ His lips peeled back entirely to show his sharp teeth. His ears pricked forward. His eyes danced and darkened, then constricted to mere pinpricks against his irises. _You've been parading around as him. But you're not. You never have been. You never will be. You're. Too._ Weak.

The last word was punctuated with a hideous bite. He sidestepped it, shielding his throat. _I'm not Atem_? he repeated.

 _Atem would never play at being a member of the single weakest most pathetic species to grace this planet._ He bore his teeth and chuckled when Yugi stepped aside once more. He circled him, giving a slow and methodical chase. _No, no, no. It's disgusting the way you've treated the very_ name _of Atem._

Yugi backed up when he moved forward. _The name_? _You preach at me about my own name_? he demanded icily. He needed to keep him distracted. He'd keep him… He'd keep him talking. And he'd look for an opening in the meantime. He could kill him if he got the chance—

 _Don't mistake me for my sister. She may preach and the pack may consider her a priestess for her visions, but I am not the same._

 _Visions_? His head was spinning. _Priestess_?

 _She sees the future._ He stalked forward. Yugi backpedaled rapidly to keep him from gaining on him. But the shock of the idea made his blood hum in his veins. How was it possible? How had he never…? No one had ever even mentioned… _She calls them hallucinations sometimes. But we all know better. She predicted when you would come, an imposter with a pelt as white as the snow._

She had hallucinations? She saw future events? She saw things like his arrival? She saw Yami joining them too? Had she been able to see that? Yugi felt sick. Could she tell him when he would come? His heart threatened to shatter in his chest.

Could she tell him when he was going to be there? Could she tell him if he was going to be in good health? Could she tell him if he would survive the war?

 _That image I showed you,_ the wolf stated softly, abruptly, coming closer with bitter estranged eyes. _Of the pup within the sewers, awaiting experimentation. It was not you._

 _No,_ Yugi agreed, a dizzy feeling coming over him once more. He recalled the fuzziness of the image, the slightest and smallest hint of a smudge across the memory. He'd projected it well enough to prevent his initial assumption, but Yugi had been sitting on that memory. And he'd wondered at the slight wobble. He'd wondered at the angle of the small pup in question. _Because it was you, wasn't it_? _It was your reflection._

He pulled his lips back so far that it looked as if they might stretch to his eyes. And the wrinkles made it look hideously as if his skin were somehow unattached to him as a whole. And so his face seemed almost to morph, a hideous shark-like smirk coming upon his features.

 _And here I assumed you stupid._ He stalked closer. His pace increased only mildly. Yugi backed up rapidly to avoid his gaping maw. Because the wolf was rushing and Yugi was struggling to maintain such distance. And, as he backed up again, his paw breached the ice.

The water swept up to meet him immediately. He growled, pressing his weight forward. Marik stood a few inches from him. His lavender eyes were unfocused, wild, a multitude of delusions crossing through them. He could see it. He could sense it.

 _You truly think you're Atem._

 _I have always_ been _Atem, Yugi. I simply bid my time. I had initially planned to kill your alpha_ —Yugi bristled, first with shock and then with hatred; how dare he threaten Yami— _when he'd masqueraded beneath my name as well. But he'd been smart enough not to leave the camp. It was almost as if he'd_ sensed _that I'd kill him the moment I got him alone._

Yugi shook his head. _Yami would have split your skull the moment you came at him,_ he spat. But a sense of wavering disbelief came through him. Marik had been biding his time within the pack, awaiting the chance to kill… _You had no chance against him._

Marik flashed him a brilliant mouth of teeth as sharp and white as polished blades. He inched closer, ears pricked forward and a maniacal gleam within his lavender eyes. _The only time that worthless worm ever did anything of power was when he'd struck out against the former alpha. And, had he been strong enough to kill her, I would have done the same to Aki and then ripped_ his _throat out as well._

 _You couldn't kill him. He's a Pure-Blood._

 _He's_ not, Marik sneered. _Someone as insignificant and pitiful as him could never be so high upon the hierarchy._

Yugi bore his teeth. _You're a fool, Marik. There are two Pure-Bloods. There are two meant to be Atem._

 _There is only me._

 _No, there is_ me. Yugi snapped his jaws when he attempted to get closer. His nose wrinkled dismissively at the white canine. And the way the shadows moved upon his eyes made Yugi nervous and disgusted. _There is Atem._

Marik flashed his tongue over his nose. _Yes. Because I am Atem_. He bore his teeth and pressed forward regardless. When Yugi snapped, he aimed for his shoulder. The white wolf stumbled but did not fall back. _Do you fear the water, little imposter_? _Do you remember drowning in those damn tanks_?

Yugi struggled not to tremble at the very memory. He bore his teeth and kept his footing. _I remember a lot, but fear isn't one of those things._

He shook his head. _Denial is always a beautifully misused weapon,_ he sneered. And then his muzzle snapped into his shoulder and he stumbled furiously back, stunned by the impact. Yugi panted briefly, then squared his shoulders once more. _But you forget something, Yugi._

He bore his teeth.

 _I am a god. I see beyond your false words. I know the depths of despair and anger and the light of affection and adoration. You will never know these things, because you have not been touched by the other deities._

 _I control two of them._

 _Slifer and Obelisk respond to anyone to proclaim themselves Atem. And they play within the roles I assign them without a second thought as they cannot match the wit of a creature made too powerful to be contained such as myself._

Yugi was thrown backwards this time, hitting and crashing through the ice. The water tossed about his fur and cut upon his skin. His breath was swallowed away even as he pushed upon his senses and struggled to breach the surface.

Marik was at his side now, he realized. The ice was solid there. And the wolf watched him callously from his perch. _I broke the ice hours ago. Ishizu had a vision. She said you would find your way here. She said there was something that had to happen here, an exchange of some kind._

 _An exchange_? he demanded, pushing to attempt to grasp at the ice nearest him. It bobbed and fell beneath the water under his weight. Yugi plummeted with it, forcing his head back up before his nose could be encompassed as well. The cold was enough to stunt his movement and Yugi swore beneath his breath. He remembered the sedatives, though he'd so easily metabolized the drugs that he could not truly blame this physical grogginess on this of all things.

 _An exchange of hierarchy._

Yugi tried again to grasp at the ice where his grip slipped. He fell back underwater for a brief moment, though his nose did not disappear under the dark liquid. He grappled at a new piece of ice. _You're delusional, Marik,_ he snarled softly. He caught his dewclaw on the frozen sheet and tried once more to tug himself out. But the ice bobbed again. And the male chuckled behind him.

 _They used to monitor our breathing. They used to see how long we could hold ourselves above the surface of the water._ Marik watched him coldly. _But you, I know, were never exposed to such a thing. You were born a human, weren't you_? _And then that hellhound bit you._

 _Hellhound_? Yugi bit out, baring his teeth. The ice seemed to cut upon his fur and tug him downward. The air was cold enough to crystallize much of the water droplets that clumped his fur together. He pawed at the ice again.

 _No lycanthrope has red eyes. Not even the experiments could have done such a thing to them._ The gray and tawny wolf peered at him dismissively. _Only hellhounds have such_ disgusting _eyes._

Yugi wished he could have caught his throat in his teeth. He'd kill him. Yami was not a hellhound. And if he knew him to be a lycanthrope, how could he _possibly_ think Yami to be a hellhound? How could he possibly not realize that one bite would have rendered the beta the same species? Surely there was no way a hellhound produced a lycanthrope or vice versa…

Yugi fell under again. His muscles felt frozen, aching with the frigid cold. He surfaced immediately again, however, and Marik huffed in annoyance. Yugi was a little stronger than he'd initially anticipated then. His ears flicked lazily forward and then back. The white wolf was shivering all over, and his ears flicked to shed some of the water there.

 _I don't know how you managed to trick us all into believing you to be a lycanthrope,_ he said abruptly, making blue-violet eyes flicker towards him in a panic. He delighted in the sight of such emotion there. _I suppose changing forms could do such a thing for the hellhound's scent. Unfortunately I don't remember the smells from the labs as well as I used to. I don't think I was exposed to the hounds as often as others were, anyways._

 _You're… That's wrong._

 _Stupid little imposter. Nothing in this world is about what's right anymore. Nothing in the pack is balanced upon such juvenile ideals_! _It is about survival. It is about destroying the hellhounds and the humans and winning. It does not matter if someone thinks it is wrong, as long we are victorious at the end of it all._

Yugi shivered violently, eyes flashing as he looked at him. His ears pricked forward. His lips curled back. He looked sickened as he stared at the gray male.

 _You are concerned about what is right and wrong. That alone is a weakness, Yugi Motou. You don't understand the vastness of it all. And that is not at all what Atem understands. You care too much for the weakest links within the pack._

Yugi hooked his claws on the ice. He struggled for a proper grip. The other male got to his feet. And then he moved towards the bank. Yugi watched him with a horrified expression.

 _Your gums are already white. And your eyes are glazing over. It won_ ' _t be long now. I don't truly need to wait to see you pass into Paradise, now do I_? Marik commented dismissively from the bank, watching him with cold lavender eyes full of laughter. _Maybe I'll retrieve your frozen body from beneath the ice one of these days._

Yugi tried to pull himself up. His hindquarters were dead weight, he realized. He couldn't feel the entire lower half of his body any longer. He ached with the cold. And his fur was soaking wet, the water crystallizing quickly upon his hair.

 _You're still trying_? Marik commented curiously. Yugi panted and kicked desperately with his back legs. They were numb but they still moved. Perhaps if he kept them moving, maybe he could get the circulation to flow back into his limbs. Maybe he could regain his feeling there and get back up…

 _Well, I suppose if you truly want to get out of the water, I'll just kill you here. It'll be more fun anyways. I always_ have _liked to taste blood in my mouth._ Marik watched him now as Yugi panted and kicked once more. But the water clutched at him too tightly and the air in his lungs was too shallow.

Yugi could feel it.

He was losing himself.

The sensation was not unlike what he'd felt several times prior. He'd experienced it his first time going through the Change. He'd felt it when the wolfsbane and silver had coursed through his veins.

His vision was tight around the edges, smothered with black.

 _Yugi._

His nose bobbed under the water. He could feel the ice filling his lungs as he panicked and drew in air at the wrong moment. Dizziness made his movements slack faintly.

 _Yugi._

His eyes strained for a point of focus. But his vision was still blackened. And he felt as if his lungs might burst with the pressure of water in them. But he resurfaced again and his legs kicked as if on autopilot. He thought briefly of the adrenaline rush. He thought momentarily of the way he'd reacted so instinctively in his action of playing dead upon being caught by Ushio.

And so his legs continued to kick desperately, his paws scrabbling for a grip. He bore his teeth and his breath rattled from his jaws. But in his eyes Marik no longer stood on the bank. Rather, facing him with dark blue eyes against bright golden fur was Ra.

 _He's won,_ he whispered at her. He couldn't move his paws any further to embrace the ice and pull himself up.

 _You have given up_? the goddess demanded harshly. _I had never assumed you to be so weak in the face of difficulty._

Yugi clenched his eyes shut. _I won't even be able to see Yami before I die,_ he thought bitterly, to himself more than to his ancestor. But he knew she heard him all the same. There was something about the silence within his ears that told him this.

 _You will not die here._ The declaration was soft and firm. _You will not die this day._

His eyes opened only slightly. She still stood there on the bank, watching him. He could see the edges of her fur cut away with white, pronouncing her spectral formation before him.

 _I don't have the strength…_

The she-wolf stepped closer to the ice. _Then I will give you mine._ The declaration was underlined with a soft and brilliant tingle throughout his limbs. He kicked, the energy lightly pressing upon him. He shivered as heat began to push through his veins. His heart had begun to race faster than ever.

Pain continued through his limbs. But the warmth seemed to hold it mildly at bay. Yugi blinked, stunned by the sensation, and then weakly pulled himself forward. His legs strained and his body threatened to fall back. Yet he retained his strength. And he managed, shockingly, to pull himself out of the water.

He collapsed there atop the ice. Water fell from his jaws when he heaved for air. Marik huffed as he began to move towards him, stepping _through_ the illusion Ra had created. The wolf snorted and bore his teeth.

 _You're a bit more resilient than I gave you credit for, Yugi._

Yugi slowly raised himself to his paws. His eyes flashed dangerously as he moved to take a step forward. The strength returned in waves now, as if Ra were filling him with more energy. He did not take a moment longer to consider such a thing.

He could muse over that later.

 _I don't know what kind of delusions you live in. I don't know why you're so desperate to pretend to be a god. I don't understand your hatred towards Yami. I don't understand your hatred towards me. I don't even know why you decided to try to kill Jonouchi._ He shook himself out just enough to lose some of the extra weight. But he could slip out of his grip more easily if he remained drenched as he was. _And I don't know why there is so much animosity in your heart. And I'm sorry you had to suffer like that in the labs. But you. Are. Not._ Atem. I _am Atem._

Marik snorted and shook his head. His teeth were bared as he came closer. _I'll rip your throat out to ensure your death this time._

Yugi raised his head. _I am Atem. I am Code Name Atem. I am PB-A 26. I am the Pure-Blood. I am the god. I am the myth. I am the lore. I am the prophecy. I am the final breath. I am the war. I am the bloodshed._ He stepped forward. Marik blinked, this time mildly surprised by his declaration. _And I am the one chosen by the gods who have since forsaken_ you, _Marik. I will show you why I am the one they chose to be their champion._

A stillness hung in the air around them. Time seemed to come to a stop. The world seemed to be smothered into silence. And Yugi thought briefly that perhaps he himself had somehow gone deaf. But he'd heard his own voice. And he could hear the sound of his heart racing within his chest.

And he could hear Marik's harsh breathing. He could see those furious trembles. He was full of hate. He was full of disdain. Yugi could feel it pulsing from him in waves. But mostly, more than even this, he could smell the smallest twinge of bitterness, underlined with sweetness and traced with slight sourness.

Marik was afraid.

It came from him beneath the other emotions.

But Yugi understood it.

It was his declaration that the gods had chosen him. Because Marik had formerly assumed that to know them meant they had come to support him. Perhaps he had seen them sometime in his dreams or maybe he had known them while beneath the earth in those damn labs.

But he must have realized it then, as Yugi stared at him silently. He must have known abruptly that the white wolf was the one they'd chosen. He was the one that they'd allowed to be born in those labs, a creature abused and endlessly reformed to their will through experiments.

He'd realized the truth of his statement.

Yugi blinked.

In that millisecond of time his eyes were shut Marik sprang. The silence seemed abruptly to shatter. Yugi heard his heart in his chest, pulsing through him violently. The blood was roaring through him. In an instant, counting the beats of his own heart, Yugi twisted away.

Marik missed, skidding on the ice. He nearly fell over the edge, then tuned to face him. _You're already half dead. You realize this, correct_? _You realize your own mortality_?

 _What's one death when I can come back again until the end of my days_? Yugi sneered. He opened his jaws wide but did not run for him.

Marik lunged at him again. Yugi ducked beneath him, counting the heartbeats. Then he angled his head and snapped his jaws. But he missed his legs and instead caught his tail. He bit harder than he had ever thought himself capable.

Marik spun on him and Yugi released, aiming for his throat. The gray wolf ducked. His jaws snapped on cold air. Marik tossed his head and caught his throat. The blow made Yugi stumble sideways. He was stunned, pain crashing through his nerves.

The gray and tan wolf tossed his head. The movement knocked Yugi off balance immediately. And then he swore his paws were thrown off the ground from the force. He nearly collapsed, a sense of limpness coming through him. He felt numb as the snow seemed to explode in his face when he rolled. Then he flailed on his back and rolled quickly to his paws again.

The other male was on him in a second. Teeth tore into his shoulder. Blood sprayed across the snow. Yugi's eyes widened, the pain enough to aggravate him. He panted, startled by the force of the blow. He felt sick to his stomach. And his legs were burning with pain now. He could feel the pain in his nerves, the way they slowly began to but surely tingle with pressure.

But the pain was unrelenting and the bite to his side nearly sent him falling. He yelped, then spun to face him. He snapped his teeth but the wolf barreled him over. Yugi grunted and kicked, infuriated. His back leg cut into Marik's eye. And, unlike any other wolf, Marik simply grunted. There was no scream or snarl. He simply wrinkled his nose again.

Yugi kicked once more. Then he twisted and rolled for his feet. He struggled to stand upright, then panted. The claws had caught Marik in the eye again. And the wolf was pawing lightly at the wound there. He had ducked his head and closed the eye. But the other was wide open, boring into his face. The fury there was of a madness Yugi had never seen before in his life.

His heart lurched. Marik stared at him as if he were nothing more than a creature he was meant to hunt and mutilate. And the thought made him bristle fearfully. He was not sure what he had been expecting. He had suspected for a while that it had been Marik to cause so many problems within the pack. Ever since he'd sneered at him about Mikiyo Yugi had had the smallest nagging suspicion. He had paid it no attention, hopeful that perhaps he was somehow wrong. But he'd also caught the wolf's scent on Jonouchi's phone, even if he had not truly recognized it before. But he'd been paying attention as well, when he'd realized that Marik himself had not gotten into line that day when he'd introduced himself properly to the pack.

He had not paid it much mind, as he'd known the wolf beforehand. But when he'd come across Jonouchi's things that night, he'd been able to catch the scent of a wolf he had not recognized. And there were truly only two wolves he had considered to be capable of lashing out at him in any manner as he'd begun—and that was Aki and Marik. But he'd known Aki's scent. And so he had crossed her name from his list.

 _You should have just remained underwater._

Yugi growled softly, hateful. He shook himself out and bristled, squaring his shoulders. His side burned in agony. And his legs were still tingling. His head was spinning now, a part of him incredibly fearful. He'd gone after Jonouchi simply for being associated with Yugi. He'd planned to use the other boy's death as a way of weakening him. Then he'd have turned on him when he'd gotten him alone. The whole time he'd been pretending to want his approval, he'd been laying the groundwork. He'd been preparing to sidle into Yami's place as his beta, so that he could weaken him further and then kill him.

But Yugi did not know why he had not waited. He did not know why it was that Marik had failed to stick to this plan. Why he had stepped out of line and so suddenly was bewildering to him. Had Fuwa given him some sense of confidence he'd lacked on his own? Or had it been his own sister to encourage this behavior? Had her declaration of an exchange done something to embolden him in that manner?

The thought was overwhelming to him for a moment. And dots and pinpricks had begun to dance within his vision. His eyes stung and he felt sickened. But he forced himself to ignore this. His muscles pulled taut.

Marik charged him. Yugi lowered his body further into the ice. His fur rose into a bristle and he bore his teeth furiously. He remembered the training he'd undergone with Obelisk and the reality of this alone kept him calm. But he'd only performed the attack once. He'd gotten fed up when he'd fumbled one too many times trying to use it again. And then he'd grown annoyed enough to simply walk home afterward.

But he'd done it that once.

And his muscles remembered it.

He waited a moment longer. The gray and tan wolf opened his jaws wide. And Yugi sprang forward. He did not aim for the neck as Marik was so clearly doing. The wolf was too fast for that, he knew. And he was aware of how dizzy he was now. He could not accurately aim as it was. So he did as he had done against the gray deity before.

He caught Marik's back paw. And he threw his weight sideways. Marik yelped as the bone popped from the force. The blood which came from the wound was enough to burn his tongue. Yugi quickly moved to weave beneath him. Marik turned on him, balance undone. He snapped his teeth at his face and missed.

Yugi tipped his head down and bit at the limb again. His teeth caught the fractured bone. He tugged hard. Marik tried to pull his paw away. He flailed, balance don three legs. And then he bit at him again. Yugi waited a moment, looking at those sharp teeth. They shut a millimeter from his eye as Yugi tugged again. He nearly had him off balance now.

The movement sent him falling backward. Yugi sprang on him immediately. His teeth clamped down hard on flesh. Blood sprayed down his throat and along his cheeks. Bones cracked and a screech tore through the other male. The gray wolf struggled for his feet. Yugi tossed his head. The pain made Marik tremble and flinch visibly. He nearly collapsed, but bit at his shoulder.

The blood loss was enough to slow him, however. And Yugi's coat was still soaked. His teeth tried for a pelt too wet to cling to. And then the gray wolf struggled. He tried to flail and nearly fell again. Then he snarled and bit once more but lost his grip just as easily as he had before. Yugi was panting where he'd caught him in the forehead. His teeth pressed down mercilessly and he bristled once more.

Yugi released him for only a moment.

Marik scrabbled to claw at the pain in his skull.

The white wolf drew in a deep breath.

Marik whined and nearly collapsed, his back leg straining beneath his weight.

Yugi waited the moment out.

He counted heartbeats.

He counted breaths.

He counted every second.

And then he shot forward.

Marik screamed and flailed as he fell over again.

Yugi kept his teeth on his throat. Blood swelled into his mouth. He shook his head again. Fur flew through the air. Blood speckled the snow. Marik screamed and snarled and kicked again. His claws cut into his shoulder and then his chest. He scrabbled furiously. And then the gray wolf clamped his jaws harder.

 _Do you still believe yourself to be Atem now_? the white canine wondered out loud, eyes flashing. He shook his head and the rip in the other's throat worsened. _You seem afraid right now. Do you think that you won't come back_? _Maybe now you've realized you're just a delusional_ Full-Blood.

Marik kicked harder. His teeth snapped at his leg. But he missed as Yugi shifted his weight back. The white canine snarled and glared at him. But those lavender eyes were wild and fearful and still somehow terribly full of resentment.

 _I'll kill you_ , Marik snarled, _and then I'll kill that blond rat like you prevented the first time. And then I'll rip Yusei's head from his body and cleanse the pack of the unworthy. I'll tear your little followers to pieces._

 _I don't think you understand that you're going to die here today_ , Yugi commented coldly, snarling. _I don't think that you understand what it means to be blessed by the gods. Because Ra gave me the strength to crawl out of the ice. And I was promised that I would not die here today. And since there's an exchange meant to happen here, I'm thinking that it involves your life for mine._

 _You think that you can kill me_?

 _I know I can_. But he still hesitated, if only because he was stunned by those furious lavender eyes. He could not understand how it was that the wolf in front of him could be so hateful and yet so terribly scared all at once. How could someone survive in that state of mind their entire life? Because this was no new development. Something inside of Marik was broken. And that was something that had shown itself in its entirety only now…

 _May Slifer guide your traitorous soul._

The statement was met with a snarl. Marik struggled harder, frantic now. And Yugi stared at him, their eyes locked where they could see each other. He could see that Marik recognized the words. And it gave him the smallest sense of satisfaction even as something old and worn inside of him seemed to fray.

And then Yugi tossed his head.

Marik went limp in his jaws. The snapping noise resounded in his ears. Yugi kept his grip for a moment longer. And then he released. His body trembled and his breathing was uneven and tense.

Had anyone heard his screaming?

Had anyone heard their squabble?

Yugi shivered. He was too exhausted to care. He was too exhausted to want to take cover. He was too fatigued to do much more than blink. He was not sure he could handle it if someone were to ask.

Who would believe him?

Fuck, would Ishizu blame him for her brother's death? Would she want revenge for it?

But she knew the future, didn't she?

She'd seen his future.

She'd seen an exchange.

And she'd spoken of it to Marik.

And the bastard had turned on him.

Yugi fell upon the task of simply drawing in air. He could not think of much more he could do at the moment. And so he simply shut his eyes and took a seat. His entire body seemed to fold upon itself. He gasped and sputtered for air.

His lungs were cold and frozen within his chest.

Yugi shivered as the wind tugged upon his fur.

And then he noticed something within its touch.

In an instant he was frozen.

He could not breathe.

Something powerful and great, terrible in its strength, had traveled with the wind. Within its cold touch was a strength he did not know how to interpret. But it rolled through his body and it left him cold and frozen and tense.

His heart pounded and his mouth grew dry. He felt dizzy and sickened. And his ears flicked and quivered. He was shaking before he could stop himself.

Another stray wind touched him.

He trembled and turned his head. He was not sure what it was. He had no name by which to call it.

But he knew it was coming closer.

And it was moving _fast_.

 **And the surprise? The traitor was exactly who you guys thought it was! Congrats! This is probably (hopefully) going to be the only thing so obvious about this story or any of its events.**

 **It's an earlier posting because I have way too much to do tomorrow to find time to post. So I figured better early than late, right?**


	56. Marik

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day**

 **Chapter Warnings: COPIOUS Amounts of Blood, Wolves Fighting, Mentions of Experimentation and Torture, Mentions of Death, Mentions of Forced Breeding, Mentions of Near-Death, Mentions of Madness/Insanity**

 **So, something I read about wolves doing at one point was that when they are threatened and need to make themselves faster they will throw up their food in order to lose weight and be able to flee as quickly as possible. I haven't honestly been able to find it since I initially read it, BUT I have heard of other animals doing it as well. From what I remember, vultures are notorious for doing that in a pinch.**

Chapter LVI: Marik

 _Work Log Entry LI: July, 2005 (Part I)_

 _July 3_

 _Atem has done something rather surprising today._

 _In the midst of what seemed to be another seizure, he managed to apologize to me for the gash that he inflicted on my face. At first I assumed he meant that it existed in general but then he looked at me in a manner that made it clear that he understood that he had done it._

 _I do not know when he came to recover the memory of such a thing._

 _July 6_

 _My wolf look-alike has had his first run-in with Atem._

 _At first I had assumed it to be okay. They did not show any signs of aggression towards one another. The wolf who looks so much like me even seemed to acknowledge that Atem was the more powerful of the two of them._

 _So it was not expected that they might fight._

 _But I looked away to measure out the proper doses of medication necessary to subdue them both for their physical exams. And when I turned back, the two of them were clawing and biting at each other ruthlessly._

 _In his delirious state Atem nearly managed to kill him. Had it not been for a seizure that came over him in the midst of the attack I do not think that the other wolf might have survived. It is a miracle, surely, that the other wolf made it out of the encounter alive._

 _But Atem cannot heal himself properly and the other wolf is covered in lacerations._

 _Extensive testing is to begin on my look-alike in order to ensure that somehow Atem has not somehow managed to poison him in any manner._

 _From what I understand, only the hellhounds can poison a lycanthrope and vice versa._

 _I wonder if the boss is fearful that his creation has turned into something else entirely._

The pressure was so immense it made him shake. Yugi was immobilized by the force of it. He couldn't think straight long enough to move. Running was an option required far too much effort to be put into practice. He had struggled to his feet but he could not find the strength to trot away. And so he was dizzy as he remained there, the pressure building. His muscles felt shaken and cold, as if there were ice spearing through his skin.

His lungs were tight and constricted again. And he struggled to think straight for a moment. But he thought he could potentially try to use the ice and snow as camouflage. He thought perhaps he could lay there and wait for the source of this influx of power to simply leave.

But he highly doubted such a thing was truly possible. He did not think that such an entity could be tricked so easily. And, as the seconds passed, it only became more apparent than ever. He shook harder than before. He could not breathe properly as his body began to quake so heavily.

And then he felt it.

It was harsh but familiar.

It was like ice upon his skin for a long amount of time.

It was like fire brandished against his nerves.

It was the blanket of nighttime and the influx of winter.

He thought of pale moonlight.

He thought of hot sunlight.

Yugi blinked and his head turned slowly. He couldn't quite sense the direction it came from. But a part of him was determined. A part of him said that it would come from the trees he faced. It said it would come from there. It said it would be there, a shape of some kind. One he would recognize and understand. And his heart was racing. He was shaking harder, but now he wondered if perhaps it was anticipation now. He did not know what would run through those trees. He did not know if it might kill him.

But some part of him was desperate to see.

It was desperate to understand.

It was desperate to embrace whatever this entity might be.

He flicked his ears, pricking them forward. And his eyes searched the forest in blind determination. He watched the ice, where the snow was blinding in shade. The shadows were so narrow he did not think he truly even saw them…

Yugi strained his eyes for movement.

And then he spotted it.

The wolf that came running forward was skinnier than he'd ever seen. Every bone was visible in its body. Its cheeks were hollowed. Its eyes were sunken. Its muzzle looked too large for its face. And its fur was ragged and unkempt. The black was in clumps, like a shedding dog. Sheets of fur, clumped and hanging from the edges of its overcoat, seemed to sway in the cold air.

And Yugi found himself nearly stumbling.

The wolf was limping but running so quickly it hardly seemed to matter. The black canine was not slowed by the snow in the slightest. And it seemed to gain speed as the seconds passed.

Yugi nearly fell over, heart leaping to his throat. _Yami_ , he sobbed loudly, shaking harder than ever. He felt his breath come in a shuddering gasp. The relief knocked his paws out from under him. He collapsed, entire body shaking. He couldn't remove his eyes from the other wolf.

And, as the black canine came moving closer, he felt his heart lurch. Panic gripped him. A harsh, sweltering wave of power and hatred came through him. He was dizzy as he blinked wide eyes. And he felt sick to his stomach as the other approached.

There was a feral quality to his eyes. There was something wild and dangerous and hateful. The red of his gaze seemed to glow with it all. Set against his sunken face, they seemed to have an eerie and terrible luminescence to them.

Yugi moved to stand again. Fear made him tremble as he rose on weak, panic-stricken limbs. He bristled faintly. And then he quaked as he backed up a step. The black wolf's eyes were on Marik at first. He seemed almost hungry rather than angry. And for a moment the wolf seemed to forget Yugi's presence there altogether.

But then his eyes flickered. And abruptly Yugi realized he was staring at him. He had not turned his head. Nor had he shown any sign of watching. His eyes were not even focused upon him. Instead he was still looking at the carcass on the ice.

But he could feel it. Yugi backed up a step, immediately lowering his head and tucking his tail. He trembled, a thought crossing his mind. If Yami did not recognize him, if he was willing to eat Marik's dead body, _could_ he read and know a submissive stance at all?

The seconds passed. Yugi quivered. He backed up another step. Yami watched him from the corner of his eye. His muzzle was lowered to the snow. His nose was twitching. He looked as he had in his dreams. But the health was not there. There was _nothing_ healthy about the wolf in front of him.

Not even his shedding was natural.

And he realized in horror that he could smell ash and smoke on his fur as well.

And Yugi nearly sobbed. His legs nearly buckled beneath him. Reality hit him so hard he almost collapsed entirely.

Yami had been there.

He had been in the greenhouse.

He had been the one to kill Fuwa.

Yugi was dizzy as he looked at him. His heart was breaking. His breathing was coming in weak puffs. He shook and shivered. And then he backed up on shaky legs.

The movement made Yami blink. And, as the wolf lowered his muzzle further, his jaws parted and opened wide. And, without a millisecond of thought, he lunged.

Yugi screamed. Teeth caught his cheek. Yami snarled and tossed his head. Immediately Yugi felt his legs buckle. The pressure and his own shakiness made it hard to keep his footing. Yugi hit the ice on his side again. And his tail touched the water. He nearly panicked. But Yami breathed heavily against his fur. And he felt the heat it produced so fiercely it made him tremble.

 _Yami_ , he tried, panic knotting his stomach. The black wolf didn't respond. His red eyes where Yugi could see them were incredibly glazed. And he looked as if he were dreaming rather than facing him. The shadows across his gaze were too thick. And his pupils were so dilated Yugi thought he was staring into an ink well. His reflection was there, fearful and despaired, but he felt he was staring into a bottomless pit of blackness. _Please, Yami…_

He didn't know what he was begging for.

He didn't know if it was so Yami would release him.

He didn't know if it was because he was scared of death.

He didn't know if it was so Yami would recognize him.

He felt dizzy again. He couldn't bring himself to fight back. Yami was so incredibly lost and tired. He could see it in him. He could tell. He could read it in every line of his body. And he shivered as he looked at him.

Yami was starved. He was angry. He was vicious. And he was likely to kill him. But Yugi could not bring himself to tear out of his grip. Nor could he find the incentive to bite back.

So he moved his legs to catch his weight. He was exhausted. And when Yami breathed against his cheek again, Yugi shivered. His eyes were focused on Yugi's. He gave no visible sign of recognition. But he appeared to be watching him regardless.

A heartbeat passed.

Yugi wondered if he was waiting for him. He wondered if he meant to see if he'd fight back. Maybe he was just waiting to see if he would be easy to kill. But then he shuddered. Yami was twitching. His cheek was shivering as Yugi looked at it. And he remembered, heart roaring in his ears, that the alpha was given phantom pains when they attacked their beta.

His heart lurched again. _Yami—aibou, let go. You have to_ — He screamed.

Yami was tossing his head. Blood was flecking the snow. And when he released, Yugi collapsed again. The other wolf was too exhausted and weak to throw him. But, had he been able to, Yugi would have gone underwater once more.

He shifted for his feet. His paws felt weak, his legs trembling. Yugi struggled to stand. And Yami lunged for his throat this time. His teeth cut through his skin easily. Yugi screamed again. The blood soaked his fur and splattered on the ice. He clutched at the ice with his claws. He couldn't go back underwater. If he went, he'd drag Yami.

And he didn't think for a second that Yami would survive such a thing.

He yelped when the other clenched his jaws again. The blood came in waves. Yugi felt dizzy but held himself firm. And he tried again, back legs feeling weak as if they might buckle.

 _Yami_ , please. _Please_ _don't_ … He couldn't force air from his lungs. His throat felt too tight to breathe. His eyes felt as if they might pop from his skull. He could feel his paws wavering. _Please, oh gods—Yami, stop_!

The more he spoke, the angrier Yami seemed to become. His teeth clamped. And he tried to toss his head. But the pain was enough to make him twitch. And he shuddered as Yugi had before. He breathed heavily, but he didn't seem to be drawing in enough air.

Abruptly he pulled away.

Blood dripped from his jaws. He panted and whined. And his paw rose to rub at his cheek. Yugi could feel a faint burn in his own, just beneath his eye. He shuddered.

 _Yami_ , he whispered, daring to move a paw forward. The black wolf stopped instantly. His lips drew back to reveal each of his teeth in an exaggerated leer. His eyes flashed and caught upon his face. His mouth wrinkled hideously, pushing upon the bottom of his eyes. He shifted his weight.

Then he lunged.

Yugi squared his shoulders, shifting his balance. The black wolf caught the bone in his teeth. He shuddered, snarling. Then he tossed his head. Yugi shifted forward but did not fall.

 _Aibou_ , please, he whispered again. _Please stop._

The black wolf nearly lost his balance. He bore down harder on the bone. There was a loud popping and grinding noise. Yugi yelped and braced his back legs. He scrabbled on the ice, but his claws held.

 _Yami_ , please! he snapped. _You'll kill yourself_!

Emaciated or not, the other wolf was still stronger than Yugi had ever anticipated. Something about the declaration made his eyes seem to dilate further. He could not see a strip of red in his irises. But he could see the whites of his eyes now. And the black wolf seemed to abruptly focus on his face. Their eyes were caught, he realized, despite himself.

And then Yami moved.

He backed up on bunched haunches. And he pulled Yugi with him. The action made the white wolf lose his footing. In an instant his legs were out from under him. He landed with a cry, eyes horrified. The darker wolf pressed closer to him, looming. And then his jaws opened, aimed for his throat once more.

But he never made contact.

Yugi had rolled onto his side, paws raised and tail tucked. And for a moment he hoped this was what had caused Yami to falter. But then he saw it.

A blur of dark gray had slammed into the black wolf. The emaciated male had braced every bone in his body. And when the other hit, Yami twisted his body to mirror their momentum. The action left his attacker's throat open. And Yami seized upon such opportunity immediately.

Yugi gaped, horrified. He scrambled for his feet, slipped on his own blood, and nearly crashed to the ground. But then he found his balance and trembled, quaking as a leaf might in gusting winds.

 _Yami_! he cried in a panic. But the black wolf ignored him. His teeth clamped. They cut through thick fur and into soft flesh. Blood came in a rush to color the lighter fur. And Yugi shook his head rapidly. _Stop it, Yami_! _You have to stop_!

 _He's feral_ , the other wolf snapped. _He doesn't recognize you. He doesn't_ know _me. He does not have_ reason _to stop._

Yugi quivered. Was that why Yami had not responded to his name even once? Was that why he showed no sign of recognition? Was that why he never even blinked as Yugi begged?

 _D-don't hurt him_! the white wolf begged, panic clenching upon his insides. _Please, Obelisk, don't hurt him._

 _I'd like to point out who's the one bleeding right now,_ the god spat. He braced his muscles, bunched his haunches, and reared up onto his back legs. Yami clung, rising as well. The gray wolf tossed his weight. Both of them fell.

Yami snarled and gasped for air. Yugi quickly scrambled to his side. Obelisk rolled to his feet. He shook himself out and blood splattered the snow. Yami breathed in rapidly. Then he spotted Yugi and his jaws opened wide. He snapped his teeth a millimeter from the white wolf's muzzle. Yugi trembled, thankful that he'd moved in time.

 _Aibou…_

Obelisk hovered a few steps away. Yami struggled for a moment to roll to his feet. Yugi thought briefly of a turtle on its back. The black wolf was much like one. He was almost shaken and disgusted by the idea. But then he shivered. And, in that millisecond of action, Yami lunged.

He and Obelisk tangled in a knot of dark fur. Both had risen to their back legs. And Obelisk was posed by the hole in the ice. The gray wolf's paw was braced by Marik's broken body as well. He could see their teeth snapping and clenching on fur. But Obelisk was not truly fighting him. And Yami seemed more angry than calculated. He would snap and snarl and miss. And then he'd repeat the action.

Yugi bristled and looked at the two of them. Yami was so thin he could see every inch of his bones. His spine was a hideous ridge of mountains beneath his fur.

 _What should I do_?

Obelisk managed to push Yami back a couple of steps. The black wolf snarled and backed up further. When he shook himself, clumps of his fur fell away. Yugi had not noticed before that the ice had small strands of his dark fur amongst its surface. He trembled.

 _Stop wasting space and help me pin him_.

But Yugi fell still. He could not think to move. The very idea of even turning his teeth on Yami was terrifying. He failed to take a step. His stomach knotted. Yami had taken another step back. His red eyes were burning. His fur had lifted into a bristle along his shoulders and back. But it was clumped in areas and smothered due to the large bunches of fur there.

The black wolf backed up once more. And then he lunged. Obelisk moved to dodge. He leaped aside and moved to bite at the other wolf. But Yami was faster than either of them had anticipated. The wolf was swift in turning. And his jaws were wide open.

Yugi thought briefly of Fenrir. He remembered the myth of such large teeth and jaws that could swallow the sun. He shivered. And then nearly yelped. Blood splattered across his cheek and muzzle. His heart raced in his chest.

Obelisk snarled and tried to dislodge him. But Yami kept his grip on the gray wolf's face. Yami had bitten just above his eye. And the angle had cut halfway across his forehead diagonally to his brow. And so the blood was spilling into the deity's eye. And he was frozen under his grip.

Moving could make Yami's teeth dig into his eye. Yugi recognized this well enough. And to do that could potentially ruin Obelisk altogether. If his eye was destroyed Yugi was not sure he could heal it.

He did not know where the limits existed as far as the reality of regeneration for the wolves. He could not guess. And he doubted Obelisk was willing to suffer such an injury for the sake of his curiosity.

 _You can help him now or I will kill him._

Yugi was frozen for a moment. He trembled. Yami continued to huff loudly, breathing heavily against his fur. His ears were pricked forward and his tail still raised high. He could not think long enough to respond. And he did not know whether he should lunge into the fight or try otherwise. He did not know whether to heed Obelisk or refuse to turn his teeth on him as he had before.

The very concept of hurting Yami made him want to scream. But the white wolf realized immediately that should Yami kill Obelisk and the god came back, the damage to come about due to this would be far worse than he could ever inflict on the darker canine. So he waited a moment, searching for an opening.

Yami kept his grip tight, but he could see the strain in his limbs. He was exhausted. He was weak. And he could hold Obelisk with his teeth. But if Obelisk tried to knock him off his feet, he'd succeed with little difficulty.

And so he made his choice.

Yugi aimed for his back leg nearest. An apology was sent to the black wolf but he did not react. The white lupine lunged forward. The impact knocked Yami to the side. But Obelisk was roaring with pain, snapping his jaws repeatedly with growing hatred.

But Yugi could not pay attention to the racket he loosed. His eyes were on Yami. The black wolf was steadily gathering his paws beneath him. His claws clicked and slid. His mouth quivered with the instinct to lash out. But he did not move for a long moment. His bones popped and ground against each other.

Yugi trembled at the sight.

And then he readied himself again.

Yami pulled himself up after a moment. His eyes were unfocused. But blood dribbled from his mouth. And Yugi could see the heavy salivation. His mouth was drenched in it along his lips. And when his jaws parted his teeth had heavy strings of saliva.

Yugi pricked his ears forward. His stomach churned. And then he waited another moment. Yami shook himself out. A clump of fur fell with the movement. His red eyes flashed. He looked at Yugi slowly. And then he lunged.

Unlike with Marik, Yami was uncoordinated. And he did not bother to attempt to shield himself. His leap was wobbly and disoriented. And he missed as Yugi had expected. And, as Yugi knew, he could not recover well enough to shield himself.

Yugi caught him around the neck the moment Yami landed. Obelisk was still snarling furiously. He was glaring furiously and his eyes were glowing hatefully. But he did not intervene and Yami yelped. He struggled, shaking his head and trembling. He thrashed; his throes were much like those of a seizure.

The black wolf yelped and snarled. He thrashed again. And then he whimpered. The noise was so pitiful Yugi almost released him. He sounded as if he were both dying and panicking at once. And Yugi wanted to collapse into a fit of sobs. But then he screamed. Yami _screamed_. His fit grew erratic. His tantrum made him fall beneath his own weight. He screamed again, pathetically calling out as if for a god he was desperate to know but had always been forsaken by.

And Yugi wanted to sob more than ever.

Obelisk was watching them with darkened eyes. But he no longer looked as furious. He looked mildly surprised and more than slightly alarmed. But Yami was still thrashing. And Yugi was despaired to know that he was so capable of holding him like this. The black wolf could not shake him in the slightest. And the more he struggled, the more blood he lost. And the more he hurt himself.

Yugi was shaking again.

But Yami was screaming even louder.

And Obelisk merely blinked at the two of them. He straightened to his full height. The blood was congealed around his eye. And he looked as if he'd been splashed with Halloween makeup on the left side of his face. He blinked again. And then he pricked his ears forward and watched Yami with a somewhat startled expression.

Was he saying something?

Yugi could not tell.

But Yami was growing too exhausted to continue his movements. And so he was growing weaker, slower. His paws slid and scrabbled. His jaws opened and snapped shut. His eyes glazed as Obelisk stared. And then his legs began to buckle. Yugi still did not let go.

And, as the dark-furred canine lost his footing, the blood came in rivers of red. He collapsed, limp and all but lifeless. His breathing was erratic and shallow. He could not move beyond this. And when he peered up at Obelisk, the gray wolf watched him almost dismissively. Yugi released him only when his mouth grew strained beneath the dead weight.

He backed up a step, shaking. Had he been human he knew he would have sobbed. Yami shifted just enough to look at him. His red eyes were darker than ever, shadows passing over them. The hollow gleam to them made his pupils look like flat black stones. And Yugi shook harder than ever at the sight of them.

O _h Yami…_

Obelisk bore his teeth. _Prepare yourself. He may be emaciated and sluggish now but he may damn well still heal quickly._ The statement made Yugi look over with a shocked expression.

 _I-I can't hurt him again_! he protested. _I-I—You can't ask me to do that_!

 _I can and I will. You shall do it or I will._ Obelisk looked at him with burning, hateful eyes. His face twisted in a sneer of disdain. _And I will not be as kind as you with my attack. If you wish to save him some agony, you will do this for him now._

Yami continued to breathe heavily, shaking. The blood continued to pool beneath him. But he did not appear to be trying to move. And the dull light in his eyes remained. He was unfocused and the pain remained enough to make him whine briefly. But he did not make a move to stand. Nor did he seem to do more than shudder when the wind pressed on him.

 _He… He'll be okay, r-right_?

 _That depends more on what you do from here on with him. You punctured his jugular. How he's still alive is beyond me._

Yugi pricked his ears towards Yami. He wanted to lower his muzzle and lick his forehead. He wanted to tell him he would be okay. But the idea made him shiver, because he knew Yami would lunge. And if he attempted to attack him he might kill himself. And Yugi was not willing to be the reason such a thing happened.

 _I need to hide him._

The declaration was met with an eerie silence. Obelisk blinked at him slowly, raising his head and considering him more pointedly. _Where would you hide him_? _How would you do something like that_?

Yugi shivered. _There's a cave…near the base of one of the mountains. It's a couple of miles from here. And I can… There's a rock inside of it that doesn't have an exact shape and looking at it every now and then changes the shape of it in your head. It's ambiguous…but…I can use it to hide him. It's almost more like a den than a little cave. And I can hide him there. I can… I can purchase a chain tie out and I can… I can tie him to the rock to keep him there._ He felt dizzy as he considered it, head spinning and thoughts lost beneath the weight of the heavy sluggishness which possessed Yami in front of him. His shuddering breaths made his heart hurt and his chest almost collapse with pain. _I'll feed him what I can catch and drug him until he falls asleep and it'll metabolize slower._

 _And then what_? _What of the time you cannot be near him_?

 _I'll skip a week of school. I'll… Honda or Anzu can be my cover. And I'll spend my time with him._ He hesitated. _I need to… I'll find a way to cover his scent. I don't want any other wolves or predators or hunting dogs to find…I can use mud… I can use_ paint. _I can… No… I can use mud and berry juice. It'll make him smell more natural. It'll…_

 _Fox dung would do just as well._

Yugi turned his head to stare at him blankly. Then he shook his head slowly and bristled faintly. _Fox dung… I could… But it won't last. None of it will last…_

 _Then continue to wash him mud every morning. Mud or the blood of whatever animal you catch for him._ Obelisk watched him for a moment. _Perhaps bear blood. If you can find a bear still awake in this winter._

Yugi shook his head and looked to Yami. He ignored the thought of the bear carcass which had been left in the woods that night. He had not found it since then… _No… I think I have a better idea. There's an entire area of abandoned factories and warehouses near the pier. The area is technically set off limits and the place is closed to the public. The pack doesn't know it exists. And I…_ Yugi watched Yami blink and draw in a steady breath, the first of a handful to follow. _I can chain him there, in one of them. The smell there is mostly fishy or full of diesel._

But if some stupid group of kids went through that area…he didn't know if they'd hurt Yami. Or if Yami would kill them in turn for entering his territory. With his feral state Yugi did not think for a second they Yami might try to hide away.

He wondered if this was why Yami said that the rabies was the closest relative to lycanthropy. Because the wolf lost its sense of prohibitions and turned vicious enough to simply kill. Because the wolf lost its natural instinct to flee in battles that they knew otherwise they would lose.

Or if it was simply the temperament with which Yami displayed his unhealthy state now.

He shivered. Yami was breathing regularly. And his eyes were not as glazed. And he looked _livid_. Yugi trembled at the sight.

 _Yami…_

The black wolf growled softly. Obelisk pricked his ears forward. Yugi trembled harder. The black wolf did not move from his position splayed upon his belly and limp legs broken beneath his slight weight. Yugi wanted to puke as he looked at him, his entire frame wracked with a sense of burning indignation on the other wolf's behalf. So the gods had returned him to his side, but he was wounded. He was incredibly wounded, half-dead, exhausted and collapsed before him. Yugi shivered and shook his head. He wished, for the smallest of moments, that he could simply lie beside him, lick him clean of the blood that still lay upon his fur.

But the reality of it was simply painful. The sight of the other wolf, once so strong and healthy and beautiful in coat, made him feel sick. Yugi was exhausted beneath the weight of the idea. But he also realized, abruptly, that the red-eyed male did not truly recognize him and so that pain in his heart lessened, if only mildly.

As long as Yami did not truly know him, he could perhaps do the same. He could pretend to not recognize him. And then he could pretend as well that Yami had not forgotten him in some way. Because, he felt, if he continued to look into those dark red eyes and saw himself amongst his pupils but saw nothing of recognition, Yugi thought he might suffer his heart breaking into pieces. He could not stand to see Yami stare at him in such a way, blinded with agony and watching him with discontentment and hateful disdain.

Obelisk's calm stare was just enough to help Yugi keep from collapsing as well. He was watching the black wolf with such easy recognition and mild annoyance that Yugi felt that he was looking at him almost as simply as he would have the white wolf during their training. The gray wolf flicked an ear easily and shook himself out, the smallest spot of blood falling upon Yugi's nose at the movement. The white wolf reached a paw up to rub it away, staring at Yami for a moment before drawing in a deep and uncomfortable, shaky breath.

 _I am going to have to purchase a tie out. The pet store near Valon's mom's café has a couple of metal ones. And I can get a chain collar for him to keep him from escaping too easily._ He was staring blankly, heart shaking in his chest at the very idea. He would never have considered before that Yami might need to be chained in any manner. The very thought hurt him to truly put into words. His breath came out in a terrible shudder in which he trembled briefly. _It'll keep him from getting loose when I'm not there at the cave._

 _Slifer can watch him in the time that you are not there to do so._

Yugi blinked and turned his head to look at him now. Yami growled a little louder, twitching in the corner of Yugi's eye and making the smaller wolf incredibly nervous. Was it possible that the other might be encouraged to attempt to lunge forward just enough to bite through his flesh? He shivered and looked at his beta pointedly, the deity lazy in the way he regarded him in turn.

Slifer could watch him in the time that Yugi was not there to do so?

He felt sick. Why would he allow the goddess of death to do that?

Was Obelisk crazy?

What if somehow being exposed to her was enough to kill Yami in some way? He breathed out shakily, turned his head as Yami flexed his paws and tried to sink his claws into the ice, and watched the black wolf. But Yami made no more moves to stand once more. Instead he simply looked up at Yugi with those burning red eyes, the gleam within his gaze intent and frustrated. He seemed more like a teenager who had been caught at the wrong party and was hateful of a scornful parent.

Yugi felt his heart racing at the thought.

Would Yami have been as wild and unkempt as so many of his classmates were had he been strictly human rather than a lycanthrope? Was that possible? Or was he simply being hopeful of such a thing? He wondered briefly if he and Yami would have ever crossed paths had this been the case. He could see himself and Jonouchi doing stupid things like sneaking out—especially considering he had already done so at one point with the blond—but drugs were not something he himself ever would have done. And Jonouchi had been living with his father for so long that he highly doubted that he would ever come to desire to so much as drink. He knew that Jonouchi hated even the idea of not having control of everything happening with or around himself so he could not see drugs helping him achieve such a task in any manner.

The paler-furred wolf shivered again, then looked back at Obelisk. But his peripheral was locked on his alpha and he could see that Yami understood this. The red-eyed wolf refused to move now, growling softly at times but ignoring the urge to do more. His ears flicked briefly back and forth, but he did nothing more. He did not flex his toes as if to sink his claws into the ice. He did not do more than blink briefly. And the low snarl was so quiet that it was almost like the background hum of a car.

 _Why would Slifer want to watch him_?

 _She has her reasons for helping you and him alike,_ Obelisk said dismissively. He flicked an ear and lowered his eyes to Yami once more, expression sharp as his lips pulled back mildly in disgust. _Besides, why should she not wish to do so_? _Is there a reason why she should not watch him_? _Do you truly have a reason beyond simply her domain_?

Yugi shivered. Had he read his mind? Or had he himself projected the question too loudly within his own skull? Perhaps Obelisk had overheard it even as it had disappeared from his thoughts. He shivered and felt slightly sick, then shook his head slowly as if with frustration.

 _You can't tell me that I shouldn't be a little suspicious of such an offer._ He faltered after a moment, shivering, and looked back down at his alpha with a sick feeling in his gut. He shook his head after a long moment, lungs constricting painfully. He couldn't simply hide away from his house altogether. Doing so would have been a bad idea. And he did need help. And he did not think he could ask Obelisk, as he knew now that he had more reason than ever to send him back to the camp. He would have him run the camp in the time that he was gone. But he was not sure beyond then how it was that he was meant to deal with Yami's presence there. Even if he tied him up in the cavern, it did not completely solve all of his problems. What would happen if Yami got sick? Or he got too hungry to do more than whimper and plea in the time that Yugi was gone?

He glanced at Obelisk sideways. _I need you to return to the camp when I've gotten Yami settled. But I don't have any ideas beyond that._ He hesitated, then raised his head and turned to the gray wolf with a more determined expression. _I'm going to go back to the pet store as quickly as I can. And I'll get the tie out and collar and then I'll make a decision about everything else._

The deity watched him silently for a long minute. Then he looked at Yami and flicked an ear. _Very well. Remember haste._

* * *

Yugi had gathered the chain collar— _correction_ collar, as the woman had insistently stressed upon his asking for one—and tie-out in a matter of twenty minutes. The blue-violet-eyed teen had bothered only at the edge of the trees to look around himself and make a mad dash into the woods. The snow slowed him down considerably and he felt breathless by the time he got to Obelisk and Yami again. Marik's body lay broken and frozen beside the black wolf and Yami was still snarling with dilated eyes that showed much of the whites. Obelisk was simply seated there, watching him pointedly as if the other might not move to attack or do anything further if he had eyes on him. The idea startled Yugi who realized, abruptly, that perhaps his alpha was not the least bit as exhausted as he pretended to be at that moment.

Was he simply biding his time? If he meant to leap at them when their guard was down, it would be devastating with the state he was in, Yugi was sure. The black wolf would hardly think twice about drawing blood and ripping through sinew and muscle. The small teen swallowed heavily as he drew in a deep breath and came over the top of the slope and towards them uneasily. Yami did not look towards him and Obelisk moved his head only enough to keep them both in his peripheral.

"Is he okay?" he demanded immediately, feeling flushed as he scrambled through the snow and nearly tripped over himself. He drew in another long, deep breath, and sighed loudly with a shake of his head. He frowned and looked towards Yami with shaking hands, the bag hanging off his wrist painfully. The weight of the stake for the tie out was considerable and he felt dizzy for a moment as he looked at the black wolf. Would Yami hate him for doing this to him later?

 _Does he look as if he has been harmed further_? Obelisk drawled in a condescending tone. _Because I have not laid a fang on him just yet. We haven't fought yet._

Yugi resisted the urge to glare at him. Instead he stared at Yami more pointedly, fearful that perhaps he was hallucinating. It would not be the first time he might have come across a longer, more detailed proceeding of image that he had interacted with. But then most of those had been silent and more akin the vision of one of his friends sneering or mouthing something that he read in a way that made his head spin. Once or twice he'd hallucinated Jonouchi mouthing at him that he was more annoying than he was worth, Anzu that she was disgusted by his affections for her, and Honda that he was a freak due to his illnesses. He'd even hallucinated his mother telling him that he was not her son once, though this one had occurred oddly as she had been speaking, his mind translating her mouth's movements but his ears hearing something else entirely. And he had been sick for hours after that, shaken by the idea that she had perhaps come to finally be too frustrated with him to care any longer and tempted to simply disown him instead.

He drew in a shaky breath, hands trembling once more. He had forgotten about it until that moment. Or, rather, he had suppressed the memory of this for as long as he was capable of. And, as he looked toward the two dark-furred canines, he felt dizzy and sickened. His stomach knotted. His heart skipped a beat. His mouth grew dry and his lungs tightened.

 _Yugi, calm yourself,_ the gray wolf snapped at him, though his head turned towards Yami when he saw movement in the corner of his eye. The red gaze glinted, the glaze long gone and replaced with something he could not quite read but knew to be immersed in cunning. A feral wolf might have been violent, but they were not stupid in the slightest. Reckless by far, but never stupid. _We have to get this done. You and I will transport him to the cavern._

Yugi shivered. "How?" he demanded after a moment, feeling shakier than ever. "I don't think he's going to let me carry him."

 _No, he will not._ Obelisk flicked an ear dismissively. _I shall subdue him again. And then you shall have to carry him._

The small teen blinked at the gray wolf slowly, eyes sharpening briefly. "You plan to bite him until he loses consciousness and then I'll be responsible for carrying him?" he snapped in annoyance, shaking his head slowly. "You can't be serious. He's already so sluggish and I don't want him hurt anymore than he already has been."

 _That's a terrible inconvenience. And I suppose it will shock you when I say I do not care._ The gray wolf sniffed loudly and turned to Yami with darkened amber-flecked eyes. _It comes down to the fact of necessity and his comfort is not one when it comes to traveling. He is going to need to be carried. I am not going to drag him for miles through the forest for the sake of his comfort and a warm fuzzy feeling in your belly. It is never going to be something I shall find myself caring for, understand_?

"But he's already hurt—"

 _And later in life he shall be hurt again. Tell me something that truly matters, Yugi. You forget that he is a wolf, just as you are. He will survive if he is given the proper means to do so. You ignore this reality for the sake of saving your own conscience, but it is something that you need to realize._ Obelisk watched Yugi with a spiteful expression from the corner of his eye. His ears pricked forward and his head tilted only slightly to the side as if in mocking sympathy for the small teen. _Remember yourself, Yugi. We have brought him back to you. It is within our power to remove him once more._

"You're disgusting," he snapped bitterly. Then his eyes snapped to Yami again, shaky as he saw the black wolf breathe roughly out of his mouth. His red eyes were darker than ever and his ears were pricked further forward. Along his neck and shoulders his fur began to rise into a minute bristle, as if he were trying to keep his anger contained. The small teen licked his lips unhappily, a melancholic twinge biting upon his insides. Then he swallowed hard and shook his head slowly. "Okay, okay, then that's what we'll do. We'll… Just don't hurt him too much. I…"

 _You are not my master, foolish boy,_ Obelisk stated dismissively. _I am a god, one which can do as he pleases however he might come to wish. You forget that I might help you but I do not give you permission to act as my alpha when it is beyond the pack. I do not care if you are concerned that I will harm him. I highly doubt that he will be harmed by me as it is._

Yugi blinked, confused by the statement. The words made no sense to him for a long moment. And then he glanced at Yami slowly and his stomach knotted. The black wolf was facing Obelisk completely now, sensing his movement. He was studying the muscles in his body, tracking them in that brilliant mind of his, as feral as it was. And, when Obelisk rose to his paws, Yami used his own to push himself forward. In an instant he'd managed to raise himself on shaky legs, lunging in a rush.

The deity sidestepped. Yami stumbled. Then he turned on him. Their mouths opened in unison. Teeth glinted brightly in the sunlight. And both of them clashed with a snarl. Yami was so enraged that he kept himself upright against the attack. They had both risen onto their back legs, balancing precariously. And Yami had taken to snapping and tearing at any part of Obelisk's face he could find. Fur was flying, but there had not been any blood drawn as of that moment.

Yugi shivered. Obelisk tilted his body into half an arch. He was snarling, shaking. Tufts of fur had been stripped from his left cheek. His eyes were glowing with anger. Yami was snapping at dead air. His back legs quivered. Their upper bodies bent again. Yami was forced to drop from his attack. He landed heavily on all fours. Obelisk did the same, backing up quickly. They stared at one another. Yugi swallowed hard. Then he trembled as they moved again.

Yami rushed forward with such speed it startled both Yugi and Obelisk. The black wolf was almost a blur in the movement. He hit Obelisk hard enough to throw him off his feet. The gray wolf yelped, paws in the air. And then Yugi saw the blood. It soaked the ice in a puddle. And it sprayed the shattered shards beyond it. But Yami had turned away from it. And he was facing Obelisk again. The gray wolf braced his legs. Yami sprang forward.

The black wolf squared bony shoulders. His tail remained lowered. And he did not bristle. But his lips were drawn entirely back. And his teeth were showing completely. His ears were pricked forward. His eyes were _glowing_. And his mouth opened into a gaping cavern of white and red. His head lowered and his teeth snapped brilliantly. Obelisk yelped again, trying to push with his paws. But the emaciated wolf held his ground somehow. His eyes were furious. His neck was wavering beneath the strain. His paws were shaky. But he kept his weight there. And he remained looming over the other.

When he released, it was not without jerking and shaking his head rapidly. Fur and blood flew now. Obelisk snarled and snapped his jaws. His teeth aimed for Yami's throat. The black wolf ducked his head, turned his jaws. Their teeth clicked together. The black wolf was breathing raggedly. But he was so furious that he did not feel the pain. And Yugi could see the vacant expression within his gaze. He did not feel pain. He did not feel exhaustion. He was livid. The adrenaline had kicked in. And his bite force was a thousand times stronger than usual.

Yugi shook his head, trembling. Yami pressed forward again. He leaned. Obelisk's head was pressed back into the ice. The black wolf tossed his head violently. The gray canine snarled, yelped, and kicked frantically. The small teen felt bile rising in his throat. His alpha jerked his head harder. The pain made the deity yelp again. His amber-flecked eyes were glowing now. And he looked furious. But he had not gotten an adrenaline rush yet. And Yugi was thankful for that brief moment.

Then he dropped the bag and moved forward. In an instant Yami ceased his movements. His eyes slid to focus on Yugi. The small teen froze. Obelisk kicked at the black wolf again. The darker canine eyed the small teen. The three of them were frozen for a moment. And then Yami slowly lowered his head further. He watched Yugi closely. His eyes tracked every movement. For a split second Yugi did not think he would move again.

And then the black wolf shook his head again.

A bone popped.

Both wolves froze for a moment. And then Yugi saw it.

Obelisk had grown slack in his grip. His mouth was still open. His face was still marred with his anger. But his eyes were glazed and lifeless, peering up. And Yami was merely holding still for the moment. Because he was trying to find the best way to ambush Yugi. He would end it. Yugi could see it in his eyes. He would rip his throat out just as he had Tomoya's so long ago. And the red eyes peered at him darkly. Then he slowly untangled himself from Obelisk. He blinked slowly, lowered his head, and began to move forward.

Yugi backed up a step. The black wolf quickened his pace. There was a sloppy, sideways stumble to his movements. He opened his mouth and flashed his teeth. His eyes glinted furiously. And then he sprang. The small teen waited a heartbeat, then spun. The black wolf shot past him. He landed so heavily on his forelimbs that he stumbled. In an instant he collapsed. Then he tried for his feet again. His legs buckled under his weight. He gasped for air. Blood dribbled from his teeth.

Yugi was horrified when Yami opened his mouth. A harsh choking noise came forward. In an instant the black wolf lurched. His mouth opened wider. His teeth flashed. His tongue rolled in his mouth. Blood splattered forward. Bile stinking of rot entered his nose. Yugi quivered. Yami must have been _starving_. But the black wolf did not pause. He puked up more bile and blood. And then, slowly, he stumbled to his paws. Yugi was abruptly confronted with a new thought.

Yami was not puking from sickness.

He was lightening the burden of his weight.

He was expelling what he felt he did not need.

And he was making himself lighter.

So that he could move faster.

So that he could kill him without as much trouble.

Yugi gasped for air at the realization.

And Yami shook himself out. When he turned to Yugi now, he stumbled. But the look in his eyes was of absolution. He _was_ going to kill him. And he would not think twice. He would not pause. He would not hesitate. His eyes were glowing again. His lips were flecked with foam. When he ran his tongue over his nose, it was in a pretense of amusement more than hunger. Yugi could see it.

And he felt himself shaking at the realization of it.

Because now he realized that this must have been what people had always feared.

This must have been the monster from the horror films that stalked about people's nightmares.

This was the icon of horror that Hollywood so worshipped.

Because, in his feral state, Yami was as wild and vicious as a well-produced hurricane. He could kill without pause if he were to run across a creature ill-prepared for his attack. He could kill an ordinary human before they blinked. He could not do the same to Yugi because the small teen was aware of his illness. He, being infected as he was, could still match him step for step.

But it was his mental state which made him so dangerous.

Yami knew no sense of allegiance in this state.

He knew no sense of loyalty or emotion like this.

He would kill without care. He would slaughter and eat whatever he found worthy of filling his belly. He might even feast on Marik if he got through Yugi first.

The black wolf tilted his head slightly. His mouth opened slightly. The blood was smeared across his teeth. His lips were slick with black. And his eyes were laughing. He stepped forward, stalking. Yugi backed up again rapidly. And then he stumbled. His sneaker seemed to go through the air for a moment. And then he felt the cold chill of the water. He cried out, startled and horrified. He felt as if his flesh were burning. He turned immediately, horrified. Reality crashed into him, his spine growing tense. Every hair on his body rose into a bristle. His throat closed up. His eyes widened in horror. And his body grew rigid.

His head snapped around. Yami's teeth flashed inches from his face.

Something slammed into his side. Yugi felt his mouth fall open, then snap shut. Multiple times he tried to regain his senses. But his brain did not seem to be working. In front of him Yami had landed a few feet away. He was on his side, breathing hard. His eyes were shut tightly. His legs were shaking. His entire body was writhing slightly. He was breathing too heavily to see his face properly, the white puffs like smoke from a campfire. Yugi trembled, then turned his head slowly.

Obelisk shook himself out, glaring at him furiously. _The bastard seriously just killed me_? he spat hatefully. _He snapped my fucking neck_! _And you just watch him while he prepares to make you his next victim_? _You stupid, stupid boy_!

Yugi could not think straight for a moment. His mouth opened and shut again. When his teeth chomped, they chattered again moments later. He blinked in shock. Then he opened and closed his mouth again, lungs constricting painfully. "H-how did he…? Obelisk, I…" He looked frantically towards the black wolf now. But Yami was not getting up for the moment. "H-he—"

 _He is_ feral, _you stupid boy_! _He'll kill anything that moves. You are a fool to think that he can understand or even remotely remember you in any fashion. You should have beaten_ _him with a stick or knocked him unconscious by now. Yet you simply stand there and watch me with that godforsaken expression of fear on your face. You stupid, stupid bastard._ Obelisk was foaming at the mouth, shaking with his anger. His eyes were on Yami, however, and he was quivering more forcefully with each second to pass. _I should have simply ripped his throat out. Obviously you do not like your gift_ —

" _Don't touch him_!" Yugi screeched before he could stop himself. Yami sputtered. His breath came in a whistle. His body shuddered. His legs twitched. He shifted to draw his legs up. And then his claws scraped. His paw closest his muzzle moved to grip at the ice. He was staring at it, red eyes wide open again. And then he snarled, exhausted but fighting for a new stance. His efforts were weak at best, his muscles jerking and trembling beneath his coat. He blinked, then shifted. His bones ground together loudly. Yugi opened and closed his mouth, frozen in place as he watched. The black canine was so emaciated and small. And yet somehow it was dangerous and heavy and—

"What do I do?"

 _You_? _What would I have you do_? Obelisk sneered spitefully. _You have shown your worth in doing nothing._

"I—I wasn't—Obelisk, fuck, _what do I do_?" he panted, shaking and gaping at the wolf. Yami was on his belly now. His eyes were livid again. But they were focused on Obelisk once more. It was as if the fact that the god moved on four legs infuriated him. And so Yami struggled for his footing. He rose on stiff, half-fractured bones. He stumbled upon grinding forelimbs. And then he staggered a step. Yugi could hear every bone within his body clicking against each other. And his lips curled back briefly. His eyes flashed bitterly. His teeth were bared. Yugi could hear his _organs shifting and stretching, flexing and sliding and—_

"What do I do?"

He was screaming, he realized. He was frantic and could not breathe properly. He was shaking harder than a leaf in heavy winds. And he could not think straight. His eyes were glazed fearfully. His head was turned towards Yami. And he could not remove his eyes from the black canine.

Was this what a hellhound looked like?

Was this what it looked like when death stalked forth from the shadows?

Yugi felt dizzy and disgusted. His legs shook beneath him. His eyes threatened to blur with tears. The cold air nipped at his skin. The water pressed on his ankle. He shook harder. Then he collapsed. The impact made Yami startle. His head snapped towards him. His red eyes widened, the whites glittering like snow. His ears pricked. His head angled slightly towards the ice. Then he very dismissively turned to Obelisk once more. His steps were uneven, imprecise. He moved slowly, ragged in his determination. But still, somehow…

 _Get to your feet,_ the gray wolf spat. _I can hold him long enough for you to grab him. From there I suggest you strangle the insolence out of him._

"You—w-what? S-strangle him?" Yugi sputtered, horrified by the very idea. He looked at that black wolf, heart yearning and full of such a hideous ache that he felt shaky even seeing him in such a state. He'd been so desperate to have him back. He'd wanted nothing more than to have him there with him again. He'd wanted so much to apologize to him. But now he… How was he supposed to hurt him like this? How was he meant to willingly harm him in such a manner? He couldn't think straight long enough to even consider.

 _Then I will simply rip his head from his body._ Obelisk stalked forward. Yami shook himself out. But his body was so weak, his bones weak, that he stumbled violently to the side. Then he staggered to stand. His entire body seemed to sag beneath the weight of movement. He could not raise his head from where it hung beneath his shoulders. His eyes were cold, nearly lifeless. _It will not take much._

"N-no, don't—don't hurt him." Yugi opened and shut his mouth pathetically. His heart was racing in his throat. His hands were shaking. His right leg was freezing. But some part of him was desperate. The better half of his brain was frantic. He needed to move. He needed to stop Obelisk from doing as he'd threatened. He needed to slow Yami down. He needed to—

He moved enough weight onto his left leg to pull his right out of the water. The limb was so heavy it nearly sent him toppling. But he knew well enough he was simply exhausted. And his mind was too frantic to realize his uneven balance for a split second. He was staring at Yami too hard to even think straight again. And, as Obelisk stepped forward, tail raised, ears pricked, shoulders squared, head raised, Yugi felt he might sob. He stumbled forward a step. Yami flicked an ear. His eyes shot to him. The strike Obelisk could have aimed then would have been perfect. But the deity did not move.

His eyes were still on Yami. But Yami was watching Yugi. And, for the briefest of seconds, the god thought he saw within his eyes a form of recognition. It was a split second glimmer, the smallest strip of vibrant red against dulled brick, but it was there. He would have sworn his immortality upon it. And he swore he thought Yugi saw it as well, because the small teen blinked wide eyes and froze in place, head raised slightly in shock.

Then Yami blinked. His eyes dulled further. His claws clicked unsteadily on the ice. His attention fell upon Obelisk once more. And the black wolf rushed him. The gray canine snarled and sprang at him. The two lupines slammed into each other. The attack should have thrown Yami onto his back. Yet, somehow, by a miracle Obelisk could not name, the black wolf braced himself. He seemed to absorb the hit. His eyes flashed violently. His body tensed perfectly. He staggered with the hit. But he did not move further than an inch or two. Then his jaws opened wide.

The gray wolf dodged back. The teeth clicked shut a millimeter from his nose.

Abruptly images sprang to his mind. There was blood everywhere. Sharp gleaming teeth were bared against him. Short, stubbly fur showed before his face. Beady dark brown eyes stared back at him. There were cries of a high-pitched magnitude. Screams were echoing about him. His mind felt dull. His eyes felt tired. His lungs were tight. His body was sluggish. Thoughts were jumbles. He knew not what he was facing. But he knew there were tons. And his body was tensed with preparation. It was routine. It was a painful, fortifying routine. He knew it. He could survive it.

He'd survived it before.

He could do it now…

The teeth caught his skull, forcing it down. Obelisk snarled and shook his head. Immediately Yami released, too weak to retain his grip without being thrown. The darker wolf backed up a step. Obelisk backed up as well, stunned. What had the other just shared with him? It was not war that the other had been through. Or, perhaps it was not a war in his mind. Was it possible that, because Yami did not define it as more than survival, he himself had never known of what he'd gone through? The time he had been missing had been a mystery to him. He had been unable to see him in any sense. He could not sense him. He could not summon his image in dreams.

It had been Slifer to warn him to run to Yugi. She had been frantic, alarmed, her golden eyes horrified. She had not understood anymore than he had, he realized. Somehow even her sight upon him had vanished during that time. When she'd told Yugi similarly, her portent had been proper. But then she'd gotten a flash. It had been abrupt and intense, so vibrant that she'd been stunned. He'd watched her entire body ripple with a bristle, mouth opening wide for a split second as her eyes flashed.

And then she'd been urging him to find Yugi. She'd been frantically telling him to run. She'd been hysterically snarling that Yugi's life was in danger. And then she'd said she needed to find Echo and the others. She'd told him she'd keep them away, as they might respond to the events to come. And then she had fled entirely. Obelisk had barely had even a moment to think to understand before rushing off in turn. And, in that split second it took him to run, he'd sensed something incredible and disorienting.

Now he knew it to be Yami.

His state, feral as he was, was enough to make his insides quiver. He had been quick in defending Yugi, but the thought of fighting him much longer was exhausting. Yami had snapped his neck despite his weakened state. _He_ was acting as a primordial force rather than Obelisk, as if touched by gods beyond them. The fact that he had been able to inflict so much pain was a sign that something was wrong with this wolf in front of him. Something was hardwired within him that had not been accounted for before.

Obelisk could sense it but he had no words for it.

Yami had _adapted_ , he realized. He had _evolved_. Whatever he had suffered in that time he could not be sensed by himself or Slifer had done something to alter him entirely. It had changed him in a way that shook the gray wolf. Because Yami was not meant to be able to do such a thing. It had been something that none of them had been prepared for, and their lack of planning had left them blind to this.

Just as it had initially left him blind to the decisions that had carved Yugi's way into Yami's life and vice versa. Code Name Atem was not meant to find a partnership so solid in Yami and Yami was not meant to be the focal point of survival for much of Yugi's existence as a werewolf like this. None of them had taken the time to factor this into a possibility. It was stunning to realize that they were so incredibly blind to such possibilities. But gods were not all knowing. Any of them could have stated this, though he supposed many would never have believed such a thing.

Obelisk bristled and backed up a step as Yami shook himself again. He stumbled. Then he stepped forward again. The step was sloppy and uneven. Yami pulled his lips back completely, showing each of his immense teeth. They flashed white against red gums. They were bleeding, he noticed. And his tongue was pale white. The muscles along his jaws must have been swollen with pooled blood, for his cheeks were puffed outwardly. He bristled and bore his teeth in response, shaking.

 _Yugi—_

The small teen was moving closer, limping on his cold foot. But he was watching Yami with clear eyes. Something inside of them was brilliant with determination. And another part of him was shaky as he wandered forward a few more steps. But Obelisk could see it in him. Whatever he'd witnessed in Yami was enough to make him want to do this. He would help Obelisk to subdue him and then he would have to carry him to the cavern. The gray wolf bristled as Yami stalked forward again.

"If you let him catch you, I can get him from there."

The statement made Obelisk stiffen. His eyes flickered to Yugi abruptly. _Allow him to grab me_? _When the last time he managed to do so, he broke my neck_? _I will not. Find another way._

"I can't. I'm going to need to have his teeth away from me. I need easy access to his nose."

 _His nose_?

"Just trust me, okay? I promise that I can get this figured out. I just need him to grab you. I need him his teeth out of the way. I can do the rest." Yugi looked at Obelisk uncertainly. "I mean, I can try to have him bite me, but I don't know if I can do it with one hand."

Obelisk looked at him angrily. _You will only_ have _one hand if you do not work quickly,_ he sneered. Yugi hurried forward as Yami lunged. Obelisk moved just enough to shield his neck. Teeth sank into his shoulder, all the way to his bone. He expected the other to try to shake his head again or perhaps try to tug him off his feet. But, instead, the wolf simply stumbled. He was too exhausted, Obelisk realized. His red eyes were glazed and he was breathing too heavily to bother with much more. So he simply stood there when he caught his balance once more. He breathed raggedly into his fur, eyes wrinkled from his immense bite.

"Okay, okay," Yugi muttered, coming over to the side that Yami stood, He crouched on the ice next to them. Yami blinked, snarling, and looked towards him. But he was too exhausted to pull his teeth from Obelisk's shoulder. And, when Yugi leaned forward, hands cupping his nose, he wheezed and whistled against his fingers. The black wolf tried to shift away from him. His body was too tired, ragged, and he blinked dull but furious eyes back at him. Yugi clenched his fingers upon the sides of his nose, then the front. Yami wheezed and whistled again, then tried to pull from Obelisk altogether. He was frantic in his movements now, shaking, and his eyes were more whites than pupils or irises. He looked sickly and desperate.

And, as the seconds passed, Yami trembled and his eyes rolled up in the back of his head. It took a few more minutes for his body to go slack. He collapsed to the ice again, body limp but teeth still in the gray wolf's flesh. It was surprising how heavy a body of mere bone and grizzle and organs was. He had fallen and nearly tugged him off his feet entirely. Obelisk looked to Yugi with a surprised expression. The small teen was working his fingers beneath Yami's muzzle, into his top jaw, and was slowly easing it upwards. Then he did the same with the bottom. And, finally, a moment later, he pulled the bloodied teeth away entirely.

"Jesus," the small teen cursed. He drew Yami's head closer to his lap, the jaw still wide open, and felt along his gums for a moment. Then he sighed and shook his head with tightly closed eyes, looking sickened. He raised shaky fingers to his hair, running through the soft strands, and then turned his attention back to Yami uncertainly. His eyes slowly flickered to Obelisk in turn. "Let's get going then."

* * *

Yugi struggled to slide Yami back into the cavern with him. He was exhausted after carrying him for so long. And Obelisk was not the least bit amused by the fact that Yugi had been forced to shift his grip on the canine's body so many times. It had taken what had seemed like hours to get there, even if it had to have only been one at the most. He swallowed hard and shook his head slowly. Then he pulled the dark-furred canine into the makeshift den with him, the stone in the center hopefully enough to potentially block Yami from the sight of anyone curious enough to try to lean forward and look inside. He hoped to the gods that Yami was as quiet now as he had been when they were in his room so often.

"Fuck," he muttered, reaching into the bag he'd kept around his wrist during the time he'd carried him. He pulled the choke collar out, shivering at the sight of it. It seemed to gleam as if mocking him as he looked at it for a moment. And then he swallowed hard, lowered his eyes, and turned to Yami as the wolf remained still but for long, even breaths. He had been unconscious for over an hour now. Yugi wanted to worry about it, but some part of him prohibited it. He was a wolf. He would survive whether Yugi was scared for him or not. So the small teen swallowed hard, shook his head, and moved to slide the collar over Yami's neck.

Raising his head made his breathing come out in a whistle, a weak wheezing noise to accompany it. Yugi shivered and shook his head again, smoothing Yami's fur out around it. Fur clung to his fingers, then slid through the guard hairs along the top of his outer coat and fell away at his touch. Yugi breathed in hard, because the fur was disgusting, unnaturally slick as if with oil, and he felt sick and dizzy for a moment. He shook his head, swallowed hard, and then turned to Obelisk after a long handful of seconds.

"I need some help digging a spot for the tie out," he commented after a moment. He swallowed hard again when the gray wolf shot him an incredulous look, but then faltered when his ears flicked and he tilted his head in surprise. The small teen gave him an annoyed glance, voice coming out a little harsher. "Obelisk, I'm serious. I need help."

 _And so someone has come to help you._

"Someone has…?" Yugi trailed off, then turned his head as well. He could hear footsteps. They were soft and rapid in the snow. He felt dizzy. "Obelisk…"

 _It is okay. She will help you._

The small teen looked over at him, unsure of what more to do or say. He felt small and weak, slightly disoriented now as he glanced at Yami and then the gray wolf again. The black wolf was still unconscious, his body all but flat against the dirt and stone surrounding him. Yugi felt sick as he turned back to the other lycanthrope with slight disgust in his belly. As the seconds passed, the gray wolf seemed to become more amused than anything, and the small teen tried his hardest to force himself to relax and calm himself further.

He could hear the footsteps more pointedly now. He could hear the soft thumping of a wet heart. But he could not recognize it whatsoever, a strange and foreign noise which burned at his thoughts as he shook his head slightly. He frowned and tipped his head towards the entrance once more, listening intently for the arrival of this other person. He heard a noise like the snow being pressed more forcefully downward and his stomach sank for a brief moment. He swallowed hard, grimacing.

Then a voice, soft and not unlike windchimes and leaves in the wind, came to his ears. _Obelisk, was I right_? it demanded in an urgent tone. _Am I correct in my assumption that Yami returned_? _I saw him coming. I saw him killing Yugi_ —

 _Much to the disappointment of your brother, no, he is not dead._ Obelisk sniffed loudly, full of disdain and dismissal. _I am sure you saw his carcass laying on the surface of the lake, yes_?

There was a moment of silence, and then, as Ishizu spoke again, Yugi felt his stomach toss. _Yes, I saw him,_ she stated in a tone that was neither sad nor mournful. Oddly, in a way that horrified Yugi rather outright, the she-wolf spoke in a calm manner that mirrored Slifer almost completely. She sounded as if she had accepted this thing to happen long before and so did not care now that it had come to pass in the first place. _I knew he would come to try to proclaim himself Atem to him at some point. I could feel it coming soon, just not as abruptly as it did. I was thinking that perhaps it would be a few more days, perhaps weeks—maybe even a couple of months. But then I foresaw Yami coming as well, and I knew now would be the time that it would happen. He was already pushing at the edges of his own sanity. He was already showing his disrespect and disdain towards him. I was the first to notice, but the others were soon to follow._

Yugi bristled. She had known that something of this magnitude would happen and she had never thought to say anything about it? He supposed it did not matter in the slightest, in all reality. The truth of it was that even if she had thought to speak of something, it would not have determined a change of events in even the slightest. Hell, Yugi might have charged him out of self-preservation or panic had he known ahead of time. He might have even gotten himself killed.

Sure, he might have come back, but the idea of it made him want to tremble. He had no desire to die in the slightest, despite the stress in which he had formerly proclaimed otherwise. Yugi shook his head slightly as he thought of the brief thoughts which had fallen in the opposite end of the spectrum. He felt small, tired, slightly sickened, and he suppressed the irritation that bit at his insides.

His eyes flickered back to Yami. The black canine still had not moved. His head was still angled slightly upward where Yugi had dragged it in order to slip the collar around his neck. His eyes were still shut. His breathing was still long and slow. He looked almost as if he were merely sleeping, peaceful and lazy in this state. He shivered as he looked at him. His fur was so greasy and dull…

 _Yugi is still very much alive, as is Yami._ Obelisk sounded far more annoyed now than anything else. Yugi could see his paws at the entrance of the cavern, his eyes trained on his glinting claws. He could just faintly see a pair of white-tipped toes towards the center, the two outer ones dark as slate. Ishizu was standing so close… _Both of them are fine, recovering but fine._

 _Yami is in a rather…chaotic state,_ Ishizu commented in a low tone, her paws shifting anxiously up and down for a moment. Or so Yugi supposed it had to be anxiety to cause her to do so. He was tired as he stared at the dark fur and sharp black claws. _He's lost somewhere in the back of his memories and thoughts. I can feel it. He'll…survive and recover well enough. But I am not sure he'll be able to shake the fears and terrors he is hiding behind now._

Fears and _terrors_? Yugi considered this, glancing at the black wolf again. His face was so sullen, so shrunken from the lack of food he'd been able to obtain for himself. The small teen wondered at the idea of whether he was capable of healing from the psychological wounds he so clearly possessed. He was so damaged, though not to the point of being unable to function in any manner. He swallowed hard. He had the impulse to reach out to touch his fur, to stroke at strands that had once been shiny and warm but now seemed dull and cold. He looked at the tufts of fur which clung to his pelt, knotted within the long guard hairs and held there by further tangles.

He thought briefly of his thrashing upon the bed that night, the way he'd cut open his wrists to the very bone. He thought of the way he'd trembled and shook. He remembered the flash of his eyes as they'd rolled up in the back of his head. He remembered the blood on his breath, the way his teeth had fallen from his gums. He thought of the way the other lycanthrope had shaken and trembled and fell beneath his panic.

 _It does not matter that Yami is in such a state,_ Obelisk said dismissively. _It comes to the fact that Yugi is going to recover, as Atem is meant to. It is necessary of him. It is a necessity that requires much of his attention. Now, as for your presence here, why do you not explain to him_? _I am sure he would rather hear from you about such a gift than from me._

Ishizu was quiet for a long time. Then Yugi saw her nose as it was lowered to the snow and then to the dip of the entrance. He stiffened for the briefest of seconds as the she-wolf moved to duck her head into the small opening. Then she blinked, flicked her ears, and came forward a few small steps. Her eyes were darkened, sharper than before, and she seemed tired as she came towards him. When she stopped a handful of inches away, Yugi felt as if they were being suffocated. The cavern was too small, too claustrophobic. The wolf behind him, still unconscious as he was, seemed to make the air heavier. Yugi felt the instinct come to him to force Ishizu back before she could possibly spot him to begin with.

 _Is it all right for me to stand here_? she asked, as if she sensed the warring thoughts in his mind. He had the impulse to both push her away and to perhaps back up to shield Yami entirely. But as the words left her, he stiffened in surprise at the idea. Then he shook it off and nodded briefly at the she-wolf. She gave him the courtesy of not lowering her eyes towards the other wolf in the den. Instead she moved to take a seat and look towards him with a darkened icy blue gaze. _Or I suppose I might have asked to seat myself before you rather. It does not matter, I am sure, but I wished to tell you a story._

Yugi blinked, his head tilted, and narrowed his eyes. "A story?" he demanded softly. His eyes narrowed further, his expression darkening briefly as he bit at the inside of his cheek nervously. "Why do I want to hear a story from you?"

The she-wolf was quiet for a long moment. Then she sighed softly and flicked her ears. _I wish to explain why it is that Marik did what he did,_ she said quietly, stressing her statement when Yugi slowly raised a brow in mild annoyance. She wondered briefly if he assumed that it could wait, as if she might be wasting his time more than anything at the moment. Then she shook it off to continue, blue eyes flashing. _Marik and I were bred within the labs, born to a she-wolf who was meant to be_ your _mother. But she was too weak and she did not take to the process of her genes degenerating as they had tried to force on her._

Yugi blinked. If she had taken to the degenerative process, would _she_ have somehow wound up being his mother instead? Was it possible that she would have then still birthed Ishizu and Marik before him? Would they have been siblings, half-siblings perhaps? It made him feel dizzy and sick for a moment to even consider it all. He could not think straight as he wondered at the idea.

 _We were separated from her soon after our birth. She was sick and died soon after giving birth. And I was taken from Marik after I seemed to catch whatever sickness she had before she had passed. Ryou was given the task of feeding me by hand every few hours and he would take only ten-minute naps for weeks straight in order to help keep track of my health and prevent my relapse into further illness._

Yugi tilted his head, a small pang entering his heart. Ryou had helped her, just as he had him. He'd saved her as he had Yami in the woods and he himself that same night. The white-haired boy had often haunted his thoughts late at night, though only for brief flickers. He had been horrified at the thought of what it might mean to have killed the vet of the underground facility which had begun to breed and experiment more pointedly now. He had often felt sick and small each time he'd come across the realization of how much he truly owed the other boy in all reality. The concept burned him at times.

And then, how much had he done to save Yami in turn before then? How much had he done to help Yami before he'd crossed paths with him again? How much had he done to perhaps even help him to escape? Surely he may have loved Atem as he might a household dog, but the way he had reacted to Yami had implied perhaps a little more than what he'd initially feared to assume.

 _Marik thrived, however. Whatever sickness I suffered, he did not in the slightest. He was healthier than any pup to be born there. And he only seemed to grow further and further powerful as the days passed. He was capable of wandering about earlier than most pups. And he was not rendered blind as many were. He was not deaf as some were from experiments._ She paused, her ears flicking for a moment with such nervous tension that Yugi wondered if perhaps she considered this a betrayal of some kind to tell him such a thing as it was. _When he became six months old, they separated him from the other pups and put me in his place. He was tested on ruthlessly. They drowned him. They cut him. They measured the force behind his bites. They measured the time between his heartbeats when he was strangled to a deathly state. They fed him copious amounts, then forced him to vomit them and tested the stomach acidity of what was on the meat. They…they did a great many things to him._

"None of this explains why he became so delusional. I don't understand how this is relevant."

The she-wolf shook her head slowly, her eyes falling to the stone beneath her paws. _It is relevant because this is how he began to think of himself as Atem. It was because he survived these things, as others had so often passed away beneath the weight of these experiments. He heard a guard mention Atem and he was so exhausted and half-dead after a series of new tests. He did not understand what they meant. But he said that they had been watching him when it had happened. He said that they had been speaking and pointing at him in that time. And, it did not help that not one of the wolves understood and truly knew the face of Atem as it was. None of them had been exposed to him. And Marik was separated from the others just as much as Atem himself was._

Yugi blinked. His head tilted. His stomach knotted. A nervous tension worked at his insides. His fingers twitched and his eyes narrowed briefly. "Your brother was an idiot to think that being Atem was a good thing to begin with."

She nodded slightly. _He was. He was a very foolish and prideful wolf. And not once should he have ever spoken such words to begin with._ Ishizu raised her eyes to him now, her ears pricked forward as they bore into his more pointedly. _He assumed that because the humans recognized him as such and the rumors within the underground was that Atem was only allowed to be seen and approached by select figures and among only the strongest of wolves that he had to be the wolf in the legend. He heard the legend the first time when he was only about seven months old. And the wolves had said it in front of his cage. He was sure that this was a sign._

Yugi nodded once more, urging her to continue even as anxiety made him want to silence her.

 _Other wolves seemed to take more a notice to him around this time. They seemed to give him more room, yet gravitate towards him as well. Marik was overcome with the belief. And, when he was introduced to a group of wolves, he was quick to assert his place amongst them, trying to make himself the myth that he believed himself to be. He attacked them ruthlessly, to the point that Ryou had to sedate him on several occasions._ She hesitated. _I was forced to do the same at times._

The small teen nodded again, but now his mind was racing as he considered her. "Slifer said something about you being the secondary veterinarian there in the labs," he commented quietly. "She said you were injected with lycanthropy or something like that?"

Ishizu shook her head slightly. _I was a wolf born to a mother who lost herself days later. But I changed prematurely. And, because of this, I was seen as unfit to be among the other wolves. But Ryou did not want to kill me without a reason, and he saw use in me. He convinced them to let him take me as an apprentice of sorts._ She hesitated. _It was only after Ryou began to seem too attached to_ you _to one of the guards that I changed back. I killed them in order to save him from being murdered or put in with a starved wolf. They would have eaten him in a second if they were to do it. And, when I changed, the guard had done enough damage to give me many issues. I could not change back and so I was useless as a vet. I went through various tortures to trigger the change once more. Yet I simply could not do so and the damage done to me by that guard was a permanent issue. I am not sure which triggered the seizures, nor the visions. But, one day, I woke from a dream of seeing Ra, of witnessing her speaking to me. And she told me you were going to be born. She told me that Atem would come to the labs in a year's time._

Yugi was frozen, stunned by the statement. "H-how old are you?"

Ishizu tilted her head. A soft sorrow colored her eyes. _I am twenty-one._ She considered him for a long time. _As was Marik. I was five years old in my human form when I killed the man. And I was five when I received my first vision. After the message from Ra, I would see things. It would be constant some times, mere flashes others. I suffered immense painful headaches and migraines violent enough to send me into a comatose state. I was rendered all but powerless and small before them and they almost euthanized me on multiple occasions. Ryou convinced them otherwise and I believe it is simply because he realized I had protected him prior. I was separated from them again. And I was given the purpose of breeding with endless males in order to perhaps procure pups._

He stiffened, feeling sick. "You…? They tried to…?"

 _Of course. If there was no other purpose for me in the world, then it would be to give birth to pups._

"Did you?"

 _No. I was born barren. The experiments had caused far too much stress in my body to allow me to reproduce. It did not stop them from attempting to do so. It did not stop them from experimenting on my eggs to see if they could find a cure to the barren state that so many of the females suffered._ She was silent for a long minute. Then her eyes flickered, a shadow passing over them for the smallest of moments. In an instant she blinked and focused more prominently on the other. _I was still the heart of these experiments when you were born. Marik was becoming more and more violent. He was ruthless and hateful. He was killing without remorse. He was slaughtering any wolf they put within the cage with him._

Yugi shuddered. "He killed others because he was a spoiled brat?" he snapped.

Ishizu offered him a bitter smile, a drawn formation of her lupine lips. Her ears flicked. Her paws shifted slightly in her position. She moved her tail to seemingly wrap around her paws. _Yes, because he was convinced he was a legend which the humans were still so desperately chasing._

"That's disgusting."

 _It got worse when he found that I could have visions. When he realized that I could see the future, he got more and more brutal than ever before. He killed relentlessly. He bit at the humans whenever they came close to him. He grew more and more infuriated as the time passed. I never told him that he was not Atem, for fear that he might kill me. I was too afraid to say that you had been born, a small splotch of gray fur on weak legs and too small to be healthy. Ra spoke to me again, saying that the runt would be the one to gain the permanence of life. She claimed it was a blessing, that your small size would make you humbler, perhaps more demure._

Yugi blinked. He wondered at the idea.

 _But it was only after you sucked the life from your very siblings._

He startled. "Excuse me?"

 _Ra did not know which of you she would allow to survive. And so, once she decided, she began to channel their life force into you. It was her way of ensuring Atem's survival. You were basically, in her words, a fragmented soul with six pieces scattered between six bodies. Due to this, she had to rectify the situation by means of killing your siblings and returning your fragments to their core._ She shook her head slowly. _I have never fully understood her meaning. And she did not answer me when I questioned her. She was not the most patient with me, not when you were born. She became rather careless in her need to save you. She did not care to save the others, but she made it clear that I was to protect you from that moment on._

"Protect me?"

 _It was not impossible._ She fell quiet for a long time. Then she slowly rose to her paws. Her eyes burned into his, endeavoring him desperately that he understand what she was saying to him. _I told Marik that he was Atem. Because I could not bear to see the day that he found you in that lab and tore you to pieces. I saw it so many nights whenever I closed my eyes. And I was so scared of that fate reaching you. I…I lied to him. I told him what he wished to hear. I lied to him as many times as it took for him to believe the rumors that you had been born to mean something else entirely._

Yugi stared at her, stomach in knots. He could do no more than blink, stunned by her words. Her face was tired, such exhaustion tugging at her expression that it made his heart hurt. He blinked, stunned, and shook his head slowly.

 _It took whispers and long nights. It took long conversations with him through the walls of our cages. It took endless pleas for him to believe lies I created in a desperate means of saving you. I told him that when they said you had been born, they meant that his true purpose had come to him. I told him that he was meant to be a war god, the one to kill and defeat any threat that came to him. I told him that he was the one with the power to protect those meant to be close to him and punish those who might betray him. I told him that the world was meant to bow before him. And I nursed his hatred. I nursed his delusions. I made him into a monster._

He could not think straight. She had done this…to save him? She had truly…?

 _And, when the time came, I told him that the wolves sought to free him from the underground prison because he was needed above ground. I told him that they were all loyal to him. I told him that you were a decoy to ensure that he made it out alive. I told him that the other wolves to escape would be slaves to him. I told him…_ She shook her head. _I did not tell him that the visions were of a scrawny boy with black eyes and pale skin. I did not tell him that the boy was going to be broken in a matter of seconds upon being freed. I did not tell him even once that he would one day be killed by this boy._

Yugi blinked, staring at her in shock. "You knew…even back then…?"

She dipped her head, ears flattening against her skull. _I loved my brother. I loved him so much. But I could not turn my back on the reality of which I faced. If he were ever to find you, he would destroy you. And I would have to bear witness to this, watching as you were killed and all but eaten alive whenever you might come back from the touch of death. I struggled for years before I came to see you with my own eyes for the first time._ She blinked, her blue eyes flickering with several shadows and light currents of which the pain swam brilliantly before him. She drew in a deep breath, exhaled loudly, and then shook her head. Ishizu drew her chin up, curled her lips back, and spat at him. _You were so fucking_ helpless! _You were a gift forsaken by the gods. You were damaged and tired. And your cage mate was so desperate to see you survive. You were mangled, bloodied and unconscious and all but dead. And you were_ facing _me. I saw your eyes when you opened them, wide and dark and full of all of the pain within the lycanthropes but so easily molded away from such misery as well._

He stiffened at the statement, heart racing in his chest.

 _And then I understood. I understood something I should never have been forced to. I came to know the reality of what lay within you, a wolf that would be marred by experience but never broken. I came to know that you could bring yourself from your most shattered point and rise to your paws and try again. I saw the determination. I understood your purpose. I realized what it was that Ra meant to tell us by allowing you to be born._ She was shaking, her entire body trembling. _I understood love and hate at that moment. I understood pain and affection. I understood a mother's devotion to her pups and the bitterness of being barren. I understood the grief of not knowing my own purpose but knowing another's. I understood and I hated you so much for it._

Yugi shook his head slowly.

 _But I also loved you for teaching me something so terribly profound._ She faltered. Her eyes darkened and dulled for a moment, dropping away. _And so I sacrificed_ everything _in pursuit of ensuring your safety. I killed my brother, I broke him into pieces and scattered him to the wind for the sake of rescuing you. And I realized then, seeing you there, watching as your cage mate watched me and grew defensive, that I was not the first nor would I be the last you would show this._

"Ishizu…" He opened and closed his mouth, stunned and too shaken to respond properly. He drew in a deep breath, tried again to find the words, and then faltered once more. "I don't know what you want me to tell you."

But he didn't feel like that person. He did not think that he had anything he was meant to show the wolves. He did not think he had a profound purpose in the world. He did not think for even a moment that he himself could cause such an impact upon another in any sense.

Ishizu shook her head. And her mouth opened wide. Her teeth were glittering. Her eyes flashed and darkened. Yugi barely had time to blink. The she-wolf launched herself forward. He moved to shift away from her. But then he realized a split second later.

She had not aimed for him.

She moved past his right shoulder.

And he immediately turned, horrified but prepared to catch her somehow before she made contact with the other wolf. But, as he turned, his eyes widened drastically. And his heart skipped beats. His mouth dried out. His stomach twisted painfully.

Yami had gotten up. And the two of them were locked in a twisting, writhing mass of limbs and dark fur. Ishizu was pinned in an instant. Her paws kicked. Her teeth bit at Yami's eye, forcing him back. The male opened his jaws wide, snapping them shut again. The she-wolf pushed at his chest. Then she bit at his muzzle. Yami snarled and opened his jaws again. He jerked out of her grip in an instant. Blood sprayed across the cavern wall. Ishizu moved to scramble for her paws.

But Yami was on her in an instant again. His teeth glinted. His eyes flashed.

And his aim was true.

He nearly caught her neck.

It was only her paw, thrust out at the last second, that barred him from her jugular.

Yami crunched through muscle and bone in an instant. The she-wolf snarled and bit at his leg. The male faltered a step. He trembled, the limb nearly quaking. Then he bit down harder on her paw. Yugi looked towards the entrance of the den. Obelisk had come at the sound of their fight. His gray fur was set in a bristle. He was staring at Yami in alarm. And the black wolf was slathering, a mixture of blood, foam and drool falling from his jaws. The gray male bristled once more, launching himself forward.

The attack sent Yami into the wall. He yelped but did not release. Ishizu screamed. In an instant Yugi heard snapping. He could hear the harsh tug of sinew snapping. He could hear the grind of bones breaking and popping out of place. He shuddered. Obelisk snarled. Yami bit down forcefully once more. Then he looked at Obelisk again. There was some vague sense of recognition behind all of the hatred. It was not as if he knew who the other wolf was, but rather that he had seen him before.

Abruptly he released Ishizu's paw. He turned on Obelisk but the deity was prepared. In an instant the two of them were locked in battle again. Yugi shook his head, trembling briefly. His stomach ached. His hands were shaking as he looked the two of them over. He could see the chain, drooping and heavy, hanging from his neck. And he hated himself for the thought that came to his mind.

But he needed to stop them. Ishizu would be crushed if they kept fighting as they were. There was barely any room for her. They would bump into her, shoving against her. She would yelp and try for her paws. Then she would collapse under her own weight. She panted and struggled. But then she dropped once more, eyes wide. Yami and Obelisk were locked in combat, shaking and snapping and snarling viciously. They would occasionally knock each other backwards. Then they would hit the ground and roll. They never released each other, however.

"Get him closer to me," Yugi said, nearly shouting to hear himself beyond the noise. It was intense and drowning and his head spun as he listened. Their cries echoed furiously back and forth across the den. Yami would snarl and it came as a roar. Obelisk would snap his jaws and it sounded like a gunshot. They both rolled and scrabbled. Claws tore at fur. Teeth ripped at skin. Blood speckled the dirt and walls. Obelisk gave no indication he might have heard. And so Yugi moved forward a step.

Ishizu was on her feet, her paw mangled and crushed. She held it high off the ground, her eyes wide and horrified. The two males continued to roll. Then, abruptly, it seemed to cease. Yami was pinned, though his teeth were caught in the deity's throat. The thick fur cushioned the blow, however. And Yugi could see the thinnest droplets of blood amongst the long strands. The small teen was shaking, but moved forward. In an instant he reached forward. His fingers slipped through the outer loop of his chain collar. The sensation of his skin brushing against his fur made Yami turn his gaze on him. His eyes were blazing and hateful. And he released Obelisk just as he pulled the chain taut.

The gray wolf was thrown by the thrashing that immediately ensued. Yami was kicking and writhing, eyes dilated. He was gargling, snarling but unable to fully create such a noise. He snapped at him desperately. The whites of his eyes turned reddish in tint. He bit at him again. Then he clawed at his arm, paw shaking. His claws cut his skin lightly, but it did not tear through muscle and vein. Yugi shivered. Yami strained his forelimb against his arm, paw shaking. His mouth opened and his tongue lolled, white before his eyes.

But, as he thought to slacken his grip, fear crawling through him, Yami shifted. It was an abrupt and unpredictable movement. His head snapped towards him. His gaping jaws aimed for his arm. And his teeth just slightly shut. They closed upon his skin hard. Yugi could feel the puncture marks. But he did not experience the prickle of pain from split flesh.

Yami was frantic. But he was also weak.

And the lack of air in his lungs winded him all the more.

His grip was slack. His tongue was slimy and twitching pitifully against his skin. And, as Yami glared at him furiously, Yugi saw his eyes begin to redden further. His body grew weaker. His eyes seemed to roll up into the back of his head. He shuddered once, then twice. A third one swept through him in quick succession. Finally, as his heartbeat slowed in Yugi's ears, his teeth fell from his skin entirely. His head collapsed back into the dirt. His paws fell to fold against his bony body. He collapsed entirely. And only then did Yugi let go.

Yami fell in a limp heap of fur and bone and organ. He lay there. He did nothing more than slowly inhale. His lungs stuttered and shook. And then he twitched once before growing still. But his heart did not stop as Yugi feared it might. Instead, in his ears, to his shock, it began to beat a little faster. And his lungs drew in large gulps through his nose. But the wolf was not conscious, he realized. His entire body was reacting, restarting itself as if with electric currents.

Slowly Yugi reached out to stretch the collar to its fullest. He glanced at Obelisk and Ishizu, then ran his hands through his hair. "Goddamn it," he muttered miserably. He felt dizzy and small for a moment. Then he looked to Ishizu uncomfortably. "I don't… Your paw looks terrible. I don't know if you can truly ever use that paw again, Ishizu. That's not…"

She shook her head. _Sacrifices are made when it is necessary._

Obelisk flicked an ear. He lowered his nose to sniff at the fur along Yami's cheek. Then he looked towards Yugi slowly and pricked his ears forward. _I will help you to dig the hole for this stake you need in order to keep him tied within this den,_ he said slowly. He looked disdainful of the task before shaking his head with a loud sigh and flattening his ears against his head unhappily. There was a brief moment in which he eyed Yami with an almost bewildered expression, something that Yugi could not quite predict.

It took over an hour for the task to finally end. Yugi had changed and helped him to dig the hole necessary. Then he had changed back, exhausted but elated upon seeing Yami was _still there_ , and planted the metal spiraling stake into the dirt. He pressed his weight into it a bit more, twisting it to screw it a little further into the ground. Then he pressed down upon the extra spears of metal surrounding it and dug them into the dirt as well. The spiraling stake held firm as he pressed against it. There was little wiggle room whatsoever. And so he relaxed slightly, shivering at the realization.

He settled back against the wall, ignoring the blood behind his shoulder, and began to work on the metal chain he'd purchased. It was not very long, a mere two feet at the most. It was enough to make him feel sick to even think that this would be a necessary solution. He hated himself for the fact that it was the only solution he could properly come up with. A part of him felt broken at the realization and he was tired as he swallowed hard and shook his head at the dismay that clawed at his belly.

He attached the chain link to the stake, then reached out and clicked the metal hook to Yami's chain as well. The wolf did not stir but for a slight shudder. He did not know if that was perhaps residual tension or something further. Instead he sighed softly, shook his head again, and got to his feet. He dusted himself off as Ishizu and Obelisk looked up at him from where they'd taken a spot a few feet away. There was not much room altogether for the four of them to exist in such a tiny space. Yugi felt incredibly smothered and smaller than ever, a sensation of disdain creeping through him for a brief second or two. Then he drew in a long breath, shook his head, and turned to Obelisk pointedly.

"You said that Slifer would remain here when I cannot?"

The gray deity blinked at him, then moved to sit up. His back popped, stiff from the pain of being thrown about the ice and stone around them as well as the time he'd spent lying beside Ishizu. He flicked an ear, lowered his eyes to Yami, and turned back once more with a small shake of his coat. _She is certainly capable of doing so, yes. And I do not believe for a moment that she would bother to harm him, considering we have returned him to you._

 _If you would permit it, I could do so instead. I do not see reason for you to bother her again. And I_ did _assist Ryou in his medical rounds,_ Ishizu said slowly. She did not look at Yami nor Yugi and even ignored Obelisk as she lowered her head to lick her paw. After a moment or so she lowered her chin to her paws and closed her eyes tightly. _It is a suggestion, but not a necessity._

Yugi was silent for a long time, considering the words. "I don't care who watches him," he answered slowly, carefully, his voice becoming a knot of frustration. "It comes down to this. It's a simple necessity, do you understand? I do not care who watches him—you, Slifer, Obelisk. At the end of the day, all of you will keep your fucking mouths _shut_ about anything to do with what you've seen here, understood?"

Usually Obelisk would have made a smart remark towards him. Instead, now, he flicked an ear, nodding, as Ishizu did the same and looked at him sideways with a nervous expression. The she-wolf anxiously licked at her muzzle and shivered, muttering, _I give my word, Code Name Atem._

He was exhausted as the words entered his head. He thought briefly of the week to follow. The nurse had given him an excuse to miss a couple of days. But he was well aware that this did not justify the time that he would follow up the excused absences with. But he would take the week off. He would find a way to make this work out. He needed to map the next handful of days out, however. If he did not plan this properly, his mother might very well suspect something was going on. And he would not have that any further aggravated than it already was. He was not in the mood to fight with her like he knew it would escalate to.

And he would not waste the time that would take when he needed to take care of Yami. There was no question as to this. He would sooner run away entirely than have his time cut from mending the other wolf.

He had the excuse for two days. He was not stupid. He could easily weasel his way through feigning sickness. He would do that in a heartbeat for Yami if it were necessary. But the realization made him feel sick as he considered again the implications that might be involved. He could feign sickness so that his mom might call him out of school. But then he realized immediately that such a thing would make her suspicious once more. And he was not willing to deal with such a thing.

That was what he needed to avoid, he reminded himself.

He had to avoid the situation altogether.

Making her suspicious was a regret that he could not afford to have.

And so he shook his head and looked at Ishizu for a long moment. "You know what, that might work," he said slowly. "You can spend the night here. Obelisk will return to the camp to role play as the alpha for me in the meantime. Then I will come tomorrow after my mom leaves for work. Slifer can watch the den tomorrow."

He paused after a long moment, drawing in a deep breath as Obelisk flicked his ears and shook his coat out. _You would have me pretend to be the alpha for a few days_? _Are you certain of such a decision_? he asked slowly, his voice somewhat condescending. _I can do such a thing, but you must realize that you will not be the most well-received after such a thing._

Yugi nodded slightly. "Yeah, I'm well aware. Thanks." But the realization made him pause and turn back to Ishizu slowly. "And how do you think the wolves will respond to you when they find Marik's body in the woods?"

 _They will offer me sympathy. And then they will speak about Marik for a few minutes or so in an effort to help me with my grieving. Then we shall all act as if nothing ever happened to begin with._ She shook her head and flattened her ears against her skull as she looked at him with shadowed blue eyes. _It will then depend on whether you tell them that Marik was a traitor. They may very well turn their teeth on me after such a thing._

Obelisk flicked an ear. _You see the future. Why do you not try to look for such a thing_?

 _I cannot see myself._ She blinked at Yugi. _I can hardly see you either. And I am blind to Yami altogether now._

Perhaps Yami was too lost to be seen any longer. Yugi forced the thought back and drew in another long breath, glancing over his shoulder at the wolf in question. But the black canine was still beyond his slow and even breathing. The frail frame twitched only slightly at times.

"I didn't plan to tell them. Let them mourn him as they remember him. It doesn't matter if I tell them anything to begin with."

* * *

Obelisk left later, when the sun was far gone beneath the horizon. Yugi had taken the time to text his mom and say that he would be home late. He told her that he was helping Jonouchi with his dad, the subject dropped immediately after. Then he watched Ishizu as she took a seat in the farthest corner of the cavern, lying down again only when she was sure that Yami would not react to her again. The black wolf was wide awake, red eyes hateful and dark in the shadows. Yugi was seated a few inches out of his range. The canine had since given up reaching him, snarling and biting at the air angrily, frothing at the mouth from the pain more than once. Then he'd settled and watched him, glaring and hateful.

"You're going to be okay," Yugi said slowly, smiling at the black wolf. The canine flicked an ear as his voice echoed slightly about the small chamber. The stone that rested in front of him, a few inches forward from his face, seemed almost to cow beneath the noise. His ears pricked forward and his lips curled faintly as if in defiance of the statement. Yugi smiled a little more. He remembered Yami's expression when he'd snapped at him in the woods when Yami had played charades with him. "Don't worry about that, okay?"

Ishizu was silent as she listened to the soft promises that spilled from her alpha's mouth. He was so quiet and gentle, as if he were speaking to a lover rather than his beta. The thought made her shiver. Briefly she remembered the various males, their teeth when they'd snapped at her face as she'd tried to move away. She thought of the weight on her back, the way their claws grasped upon her flanks. She remembered the way the room had seemed too small and claustrophobic.

She remembered the way Ryou had watched with a horrified expression. The others in the shadows had laughed and spoken in derogatory manners. But she remembered the way Ryou had shifted his weight, uncomfortable and uneasy and far from happy with the treatment towards her. He would shiver, looking sickly, deathly pale with disgust and horror.

And she remembered the vague sense of sympathy in his brown eyes.

She shook herself out, shuddering. The movement made Yugi glance at her sideways, surprised by the reality of it. Then she lowered her chin to her paws and closed her eyes again. _Do not mind me,_ she whispered in a broken tone. _I am simply tired._

"You could always go back to the camp," Yugi said after a long moment. "If you can find Slifer, she can come here and I'll go home afterwards."

The she-wolf shook her head once more. _No, no, it is fine. I promise you._ But then she blinked her eyes open and her gaze fell upon Yami as those dark red eyes burned brilliantly into hers. She could not tell the expression there, whether it be hate or loathing or rage or some kind of intense desire. Something in his eyes made him unreadable, dark and hideous beneath her gaze. And she shivered as they looked at one another more fully.


	57. Recovery

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day**

 **Chapter Warnings: Starving Wolf, Hunting, Mild Bloodshed, Self-Harm During Panic Attack**

 **Let me just say that animals (and people) can be really gross when they're starving. That's going to be your warning because Yami does three semi-disturbing things due to his starvation.**

 **So the self-harm is done by Yugi, who gets stressed out enough that he does something that he hasn't before. But he does something that Yami is prone to whenever he suffers night terrors and panics in his sleep (cutting into his wrists or trying to force the Change in order to wake himself).**

 **Yugi ends up panicked to the extent of choking himself with his choker. And, for the sake of future warnings, this WILL remain a thing for a little while. I don't want anyone caught unawares by it.** **It'll be marked as it is here with "self-harm during panic attack".**

 **I'm SO sorry about how long this has taken to get posted. Life spiraled out of control again. It's still in a spiral right now. But I found the time to get this edited and posted. My schedule is probably going to be erratic after this, just so you know. I'm going to try to get this under control as soon as possible, however, so hopefully it won't effect anything for too long.**

 **In the meantime, enjoy the chapter. Thanks for your patience and support of the story.**

Chapter LVII: Recovery

 _Work Log Entry LI: July, 2005 (Part II)_

 _July 16_

 _It would seem that a hierarchy of power does not truly exist amongst the wolves when it comes to the time of breeding. We have observed each of them as they have paired off. The females tend to pick those which look the most aesthetically pleasing to them. And then they will turn away from the rest._

 _The males, on the other hand, tend to have an odder sense of selection. The females choose by looks but the males seem to simply wait for them to take the lead in such matters. It is odd to see such a thing._

 _My look-alike has rejected and attacked several of the she-wolves whom have drifted too close to him. He seems rather spiteful of the idea of breeding altogether. I wonder if perhaps he was, at one time, an omega within his own pack._

 _It would explain his behavior, if only mildly._

 _More interesting, however, is the fact that some of the younger she-wolves who are not going through their heat cycle are attracted to Atem. They seem to be drawn in by his looks, as he is not sexually active and has shown no desire towards them in any regards._

 _Of course, this development and his constant snapping his teeth at them seems to simply irritate the boss that much more._

It was a terrible feeling of guilt to fill Yugi's stomach when he saw Yami hungrily wolf down the rabbit he'd brought him. The darker canine had not scented the drugs in the carcass, though the accusatory glance he'd given him after eating it said he'd noticed. The small teen sighed softly, relieved to see Yami resting as he was. His breathing was even, his body looked relaxed.

He couldn't feel terrible for something that was beneficial to someone else, right? He swallowed hard, forcing away the thought entirely. It didn't matter. It was over and done with. Yami was asleep in front of him. He was so fast asleep that Yugi could hear the softest of snores leaving him.

He didn't want Yami to associate drugs with his food, however. If he got that idea, did that not mean that Yami would begin to turn his nose up later? He'd become suspicious and furious, like some of the dogs at the clinic had at times. The strays were always good about picking out the food that hadn't been touched with medicine.

He felt sick as he drew his legs up to his chest, wrapping his arms around them. He'd have to consider syringes at some point. If Yami turned his nose up at the food, he'd utilize the needle in its place. He wasn't entirely sure of how he should do it, however.

He was not sure what he was meant to do in order to fix the issue of feeling someone watching him, either. It had taken forever to backtrack enough to feel comfortable to come to the cavern. And even then he'd taken such a long route there was no way they'd truly bother to follow him any longer. He'd rounded the lake, followed the river, and slowly come back to find his way there.

And Yami had greeted him with a tense, frozen, unsure expression. He'd lifted his head, tired but cautious, silent and vicious. His eyes had flashed and he'd slowly moved to get to his feet. In an instant the black wolf had come forward a few steps, ears pricked.

Yugi had been relieved to see the wolf so alert as he was. He had smiled faintly, even as Yami had sized him up as if he were simply a piece of prey. He'd watched him with those dark red eyes, considering him as if he might be a deer to chase and hamstring. And then Yugi had noticed the way he'd stood.

It had been the perfect position to avoid pulling his collar. He had been behind the point of straining and potentially choking himself. He was an inch behind that point. But the tie out had seemed wobbly, slightly tilted to the side. And Yugi _swore_ the chain seemed loose where it had once been tightly anchored into the stone. The wolf had stood there, staring at him and waiting for some action.

But he'd been clearly shocked when Yugi had tossed the rabbit over. Yami had faltered, stepping back and nearly turning tail before catching himself. Then he'd turned back, eyes narrow, looking between it and him and back again. And then, briefly, the wolf hesitated. His eyes had shot back and forth. Frantic, his claws had flexed and clicked. And then he'd rushed for it. In an instant he'd disappeared from Yugi's immediate sight and behind the stone nearest his stake. From there he'd eaten it with a loud series of crunches and swallows. When it was gone he'd looked over his shoulder, blinked, sensed the exhaustion coming through him, and _glared_.

Yugi had never felt so small in front of the wolf before that moment. It was as if Yami had all the anger the world could possibly possess, pressing it upon him painfully and glaring in an effort to expel it more forcefully.

Again he briefly thought of the implications of drugging him with the medication in the rabbit's flesh. He had been forced to cut through the thin lining of the stomach, burying them inside there. But now he wondered if perhaps he might just be better off carrying a syringe with tranquilizer within it. It might be a good idea to do so for as far as he knew. It would help as well if Yami should somehow be able to get loose. His eyes flickered briefly to the stake, the slightly lopsided state of it and the way it seemed mildly out of place. His stomach knotted, his mouth dry as he nodded minutely to himself.

Carrying a handful of tranquilizers would not be a bad idea, seeing as he could tell that Yami had already figured out much of what he had hoped he wouldn't. In his feral state, he was still intelligent enough to realize that the tie out was focused in the ground by the metal stake. If that were so, then Yami was capable of digging it up and attacking him if recognition still evaded him.

It was daunting to him to even consider such a thing as it was. The strength of the thought made his stomach knot, his heart lurching in his throat. He felt small and dizzy as he considered it. The wolf would be fast and efficient, despite his state of being now. Yugi had witnessed it. Yami was incredibly weak in body mass, but still somehow possessed enough raw muscle and prowess to first kill Obelisk and then mangle the paw of a packmate. His stomach knotted again and he looked at the wolf beside him.

Those few inches between them would hardly allow a buffer later. If Yami were persistent enough, the black wolf would pull the stake out of the ground and launch himself without a second thought. The impact would surely be the end of Yugi, as he was certain that the wolf would not stop until he was dead. Perhaps he would even do as he had upon facing Obelisk when he had come back. Perhaps he would be just as relentless and hateful then as he was now. The thought made his heart quiver in his chest, swallowing thickly at the very idea.

He looked so young, like one of the yearlings in the camp. But, unlike them, Yugi felt sick as he looked at him. He appeared so weak and thin, so incredibly emaciated, and the fur along his body was knotted so terribly… Yugi could not stop himself from slowly scooting closer. He hesitated a long moment, then reached forward. His fur was still greasy against his fingers, disgusting enough that it made him cringe. But his fingers sought to touch the soft knots of shed fur, the undercoat tangled harshly beneath. He hesitated again, watching Yami for a long moment, as if perhaps the lycanthrope might leap to his feet and attempt to bite through his flesh entirely. Yugi shivered, unsure of what more to do.

He wouldn't wake up earlier than necessary, he knew. Some small part of him realized and repeated this information to him endlessly. But he was unnerved as he tugged lightly on the fur. Yami did not react in the slightest but for a simple twitch of flesh beneath his coat. Yugi shivered, then scooted a little closer and reached out with his other hand as well.

He ran his fingers over it, then tugged lightly upon the fur there. It slid from his guard hairs like sand between his fingers. He shivered again, licked his lips, and pulled a little more. Sheets of dark black fur began to pull away in his grip. It came in ribbons of hair, thick enough that Yugi considered it to be half of his body weight. Briefly he pulled it towards him again. His fur was loose along his shoulders, his dorsal cape hideously knotted beneath his touch. He tangled his fingers within it, shifting to straddle Yami's neck. If he woke and tried to attack, he could at least try to pin him in this position. And, once he pinned him, he could jump aside the moment he gained the opportunity.

But Yami did not stir in the slightest aside from the occasional twitch when his fur was pulled too hard. He pulled again, the soft tufts of fur sliding away beneath his fingers. He tossed them away beyond the place Yami's shoulder lay so prone against the dirt. He licked his lips again, considering the task once more. Along his flanks, the fur was littered across in waves of dark black and gray, almost like he'd remembered Valon's to appear at the clinic.

Yugi was amazed to even think of this at the moment, surprised by the passing thought. Then he shook it off again and licked his lips. He pulled the fur away again, shaking his head slightly. And then he considered how much of it really remained in Yami's coat. There was so much. And his back legs looked incredibly knotted. For the briefest of seconds he thought to steal a brush from the clinic or purchase one from the pet store to run through his coat. He could groom him down, help him to lose whatever weight the coat might have possessed. But then he remembered briefly as well, how some of the fur could have matted and if it matted it could cut off his circulation where it was weighing upon the skin.

He nodded again briefly.

He'd have to find a way to get a brush. Then he could comb through the knots as necessary. He could pull away each of the tufts completely and eventually gather them into his backpack to dispose of them later. He frowned, grimacing a second later, and then sighed softly as he shook his head once more. Yami would hardly be pleased when he saw what he had done upon his waking.

* * *

The cavern was incredibly dark when Yami found himself again. The air was heavier than he remembered it being, or perhaps his lungs were simply strained beneath the pressure of providing him with breath. He flicked an ear and narrowed his eyes against the shadows. At first he could not see much more than the occasional flicker of a shadow against the darkness, various shades of gray and black shifting against one another. He blinked and strained his eyes, looking for a more comfortable vision through the darkness. And then he flicked his ears, moved to look about himself, and frowned.

The boy was gone. And the she-wolf was fast asleep in the corner opposite him. She was silent but for her steady breathing. The male closed his eyes after a long moment or two. It would take him too long to dig up the metal in the ground that held him so completely to the stone around him. But, as he stumbled to his feet after a long minute or so, he found that his body did not feel as weighted. It was an odd sensation, as if perhaps he had shed water from his coat.

He remembered the sensation of water in his fur. He did recall that. He knew it all too well. It was not something that he wished to experience anytime soon. It was disturbing, disgusting almost, and it made his lungs constrict to even so much as consider it. His fur rippled uncomfortably with a shudder. And then he shook his head slightly and glanced down upon touching something soft and almost spongy beneath his paw. He blinked, tilting his head downwards to sniff at the lump which his eyes strained to take detail of. It surprised him as he sniffed once more how much it smelled of himself.

He blinked and looked at his flanks for a moment. Had his sides not been knotted before? He turned back, his stomach aching with a ferocity that nearly made him tremble. He blinked again, shook his head, and then lowered his eyes once more to the small patch of hair in front of his nose. Yami flicked an ear, glanced at the she-wolf as she slept, and then looked down again. Hunger gnawed at his belly again. He looked at his paw and the fur and his mouth felt heavy with saliva.

He lowered his nose again, sniffing. The fur smelled so strongly of himself. But it was marred as well, with something that he did not quite recognize at the moment. The tangles of fur smelled almost of sunlight and vanilla, maybe cinnamon and growing moss. He shivered, drool falling from the corner of his canines. The hunger was a dull roar within his ears, his stomach rolling and twitching and dancing beneath his skin. He drew in another big breath, then opened his jaws further.

He'd eaten something along the lines of this before, had he not? But no, they had been harder. They had been sharper and harsher in his mouth. They had cut and ravaged his gums and tongue. He'd bled endlessly upon eating them. He remembered that. But he did not recall what it was that he had chewed on so foolishly. He could not recognize the memory in the slightest.

He shook his head again. Then he opened his jaws wider, catching a mouthful of the dark knots in his mouth. He felt it flatten against his tongue, sodden and heavy with saliva. And it tangled on the muscle as he flattened it against the roof of his mouth and tried to bunch the hair more prominently to swallow. The heavy saliva in his jaws did well to slick it but weighted it enough to make it harder to swallow it away. A sense of exhaustion caught upon his insides, desperate as it clawed at him. His hunger grew more pointedly. It roared and cut through his flesh, begging his attention.

He could feel it tangling in his teeth for a brief moment, but then it passed into his throat and he swallowed hard. It seemed to slither like a chunk of rotting meat. But he ignored this, snatching at a new patch of fur and forcing this down his throat as well. His belly ached and churned and cut through him. He shivered and shook, parts of him roaring with pain. And yet somehow his belly seemed to accept the meager offering. It seemed to coil upon it, the acid singing as if with praise. He wanted to whine, but to do so meant weakness.

And, so, unable to find anything else that could potentially help to sate his hunger, Yami swallowed the fur he could find, then licked at the stone where the blood had turned darker than his own claws.

* * *

Yugi was uncertain as he stepped inside of the den. Ishizu had reported nothing out of the ordinary regarding Yami. She said that he had woken in the night at one point, licking at his own paws as if he might eat them in his hunger. She said that she'd heard the rumble of his belly for hours on end. She said that he had seemed too exhausted after this to do more than sit around and lay upon his stomach with his chin on his paws. She said that even when he did move, it was not for long and he looked incredibly exhausted more often than not. The dark-furred wolf had closed his eyes for hours and never opened them again. His stillness had, at one point, spurred her to limp towards him. And, when she'd gotten too close, he had sprung for her throat. He had performed an ambush tactic which would have allowed him to strip her carcass clean had she not jerked back in response. And then he'd settled back down, watching her with darkened red eyes and a wagging tail that spoke of malice as his body remained tense and somewhat shaky.

But then his stomach churned and his mouth grew dry. Yami was sitting up. His neck was arched back and the bones popped as he shifted his weight. Then he shifted forward and his legs trembled slightly. His red eyes were dark and unfocused for a moment before his head turned. They watched each other for a moment and Yugi realized abruptly that he looked much as a cat might upon spotting a mouse to catch. The wolf blinked, flicked an ear, came forward a few steps, and then took a seat on the ground in front of him. His dark eyes glinted fiercely and bore into his as Yugi came further inside on shaky feet.

"Yami," he muttered, unsure of himself as the seconds passed. He frowned minutely, nibbling at the inside of his cheek for a brief moment. He licked his lips, frowned a little more, and then shook his head slightly. Yugi came forward another step, hesitated, and finally sighed softly. He could see it now. It was something that perhaps Ishizu had not noticed, but he himself saw before he could think to prevent himself. He licked his lips again, stomach clenching. "Oh, Yami…"

The wolf tilted his head. His tail slowly dragged upon the dirt, wagging in a mild manner. His eyes were sharp, still rather unfocused in a way, but they bore into him more heavily than he'd ever known them to before. He felt it in his bones at that moment, the way the black wolf pressed upon him such a resentful sensation. Yugi swallowed hard, then shook his head. The canine wagged his tail again, long and slow drags which made it more predatory than he'd ever assumed before.

He shook his head, dropping the rabbit carcass at his feet with a sensation of hopeless pride that crashed through him. It made butterflies dance briefly in his stomach, a furious strip of cautious disbelief coming through him slowly. He shifted the rabbit away, watching him sharply as the wolf glanced downward at the prey by his shoe. Then he flicked an ear, leaned closer, and watched him with a more pointed expression. He opened his jaws slightly, showing his incisors. Yugi cringed when he saw the heavy rivers of drool which came from his jaws, his canines drenched.

Yugi shivered and shook his head. He was so estranged from the teenager he had known prior. He was not the least bit alike the boy who had spent so much time in his room with him. He looked nothing like him, even with those beautiful red eyes. He looked nothing like the boy who had so often snickered or snorted at him in annoyance. It startled him to see the wolf before him and feel that way, his skin crawling at the realization. If he had never locked eyes with Yami before, had never known him as well as he did, he would have assumed him to be someone else entirely. He would have thought him to be something unnatural and unknown to him had it never crossed his mind prior.

He shivered briefly, frowning. "Yami, come on."

The black wolf blinked. His jaws opened and closed with a sloppy squelching noise. It was clear he was too hungry to focus on Yugi altogether. His eyes were on the rabbit carcass beside his foot. And the drool dripped in heavy strings from his teeth. Then the dark canine got to his feet. It was a simple movement, something that shocked Yugi. And it exposed what Yugi had initially been afraid of.

The collar was missing from his neck. Somehow Yami had gotten himself out of the collar altogether. And the tie out was almost dug up from the way he'd clawed at it and pushed until it had given way. And now he could see it. Yami came forward but the chains were bunched on the ground behind him. They were laying on the ground inches from his back paw. The black wolf looked too hungry to realize his transgression. And Yugi was dizzy and disgusted as the reality came to him once more.

He'd have to sedate him, just as he'd feared formerly. He faltered, stomach twisting, and then readied himself. The other lycanthrope did not respond for a moment. But he saw his movements slow. He saw the way his ears pricked forward. He noticed the tension which claimed his frame. And he could sense the fear which made him step forward once more. The wolf was staring at him now, from the corner of his eye. He was paying him as much attention as he could without looking away for even a second.

He was exhausted. He was starving.

He was more worried about the meal than he was truly investigating the movement Yugi had made. But he was clearly aware of the way his hand was beneath the fabric of his pocket. He was clearly aware of the way the teen was staring back at him. He was not the least bit daunted by the sight of the reaction to the emaciated wolf's movement. He was too hungry to care completely. The worry was in his bones, but his first instinct was to get at the prey that he was otherwise unable to.

"Yami," he tried quietly. He slipped his fingers around the needle syringe in his pocket, pulling it out almost effortlessly. He hesitated when the black wolf drooled even more heavily. But Yami was hardly paying him any mind anymore. In an instant, mind made up, the canine leaped forward. He landed heavily on his paws, slipped to a collapsed position, snatched the rabbit in his teeth in a rush, and struggled for his feet again. His fur rose and fell in a nervous bristle, the whites of his eyes showing now as he looked towards Yugi. He peered up at him nervously, ears falling to flatten back against his skull with wide eyes. The small teen remained still for a long minute and a half. And then he nearly cringed.

Yami was trying to swallow the rabbit whole. He had begin to crunch it desperately between his jaws. He was breathing harder than ever. He was shuddering as he tried his hardest to do this. His entire frame was shaking as he crunched bone and squished organs. He gave a heaving sloppy noise when he tried to swallow the prey animal once more. He could do no more than try to gulp it down entirely.

Yugi could do nothing but simply stare at him, shocked and horrified by the way the other tried his hardest to swallow and choke the food down. He craned his neck back, coughed and choked, and crunched the rabbit harder between his teeth. His ears flattened back against his skull more pointedly. And then he swallowed it as if he had a throat much like a snake devouring a mouse. He choked it down without a second look, gazing up at Yugi with that same panicked, hasty expression. And then he lay there, struggling to catch his breath.

His entire body was shaking from the force of his inhales. His flanks shuddered and danced beneath his fur. His eyes narrowed and darkened. And the whites were visible as he peered up at him. And then, finally, Yami began to try for his paws. Yugi hesitated for a long moment, stomach tangled and heart in his throat. He glanced briefly towards where the collar and tie out lay. Then he looked down at Yami again. The wolf did nothing more than struggle for his balance.

Yugi pulled the syringe from his pocket, the glass entirely too warm for his own comfort. It felt like blood, heated as if with his own life source. He felt sick as he slowly removed the cap from it, the clear liquid terrible as it glinted in his eyes. He swallowed hard, looked down at Yami again, and readied his fingers to be able to push the drug into Yami the moment the two of them collided.

The black wolf stared back at him with fearful red eyes. He could see rapid shadows dancing across his gaze, panic chased by horror and then by anger. He peered up at him. Then he curled his lips back as far as they could. His face wrinkled with the force of it. His teeth were showing. His eyes were darkened, hateful. He pricked his ears forward. His shoulders began to square. Fur along his dorsal cape rose, then trailed down to the midpoint of his spine. The wolf shifted his weight briefly, his claws flexing slightly. The noise was a creaking, scraping. And then he flicked his tongue to run over his nose. Yugi could see the shaky white puffs of his breaths, the way his nose was steaming as well with hot sweat. Saliva dripped down his teeth and along his jaws.

"Yami," he warned softly, readying his needle between his fingers and pressing his thumb on the syringe. He shivered and licked his lips. Yami mirrored the action, an uneasy and fearful glimmer in his eyes. He could see the panic within his eyes once more. He looked sickly, as if he might vomit in front of him at any moment should Yugi so much as speak again. The whites of his eyes were shining brilliantly, as if he were shaking with fear. They stared at one another, eyeing each other almost blankly.

Yami lunged after a split second.

Yugi shook and fell back as the wolf slammed into his chest. He tried to open his mouth to bite at him. But his legs seemed too brittle and his aim was faulty. Yami stumbled from the impact, winded more so than even Yugi. He blinked, trembled. Yugi reached out with his left hand to grab at his scruff. Yami snarled and snapped his jaws, aiming for his wrist. But he missed each time, his teeth clicking in the air. He gaped. Then he tried again, missing once more. Yugi tightened his grip and aimed the needle for his neck. He would have risked parting the fur to find a spot properly, but Yami was too erratic. He could not do so without the wolf possibly turning to bite through his face rather than simply his arm.

He twisted his wrist. The wolf sputtered for air. He snapped his jaws and glared at him. Yugi ignored him, chewing his bottom lip as he focused his aim. It took him only a moment to recognize the best place. And then he quickly plunged the needle into his skin. Yami screamed and thrashed. The needle broke from its glass base. The blood that spewed into the air smelled heavily of drugs. Yugi trembled. Then he moved to sit up again. Yami had stumbled a few feet away. His eyes were glassy. His mouth was opening and shutting rapidly. He shook pathetically. Then he collapsed again. His eyes rolled up in the back of his head once more.

"You shouldn't have gotten out like that," Yugi reprimanded him softly, feeling better for saying it but also foolish and stupid for doing so to begin with. Yami could not hear him in the slightest, yet somehow this was more comforting than it should ever have been. He drew in a deep breath, crossing his legs, and watched the other lycanthrope for a moment. The lupine lay there, breathing long and slow as if he were merely asleep. Yugi sighed softly and shook his head.

This was not going to be a fun week, he realized as he took to the task of moving and restraining his alpha again as he had before.

Unlike before, however, Yami did not remain asleep for long. Perhaps he had not drugged him well enough. Perhaps the stress had caused it to metabolize more quickly than before. Yugi did not know, nor did he truly care he supposed. What mattered was that, as he leaned forward and raised Yami's head to slip the collar beneath his head, the black wolf's eyes snapped open. He blinked, eyes harsh and terrible. And then he opened his jaws into a gaping chasm of teeth.

Yugi did not have the chance to do more than blink. The wolf snapped his teeth shut. His jaws clamped down upon his wrist. Blood came in a harsh rush of bright red. It splashed upon the floor, streaked the walls, and sprayed his face. It burned upon his skin as he shook his head in horror. Yugi blinked, stunned. Yami blinked and dug his teeth in further. The pain was so terrible it stunned him. It made him tremble and blink, horrified once more. Then he shook his head sharply.

"Yami, release," he commanded in an annoyed tone. The wolf snarled in answer, lips drawn back completely. Blood drenched his teeth from its former spray. His fur was up in a bristle. His body was shaking again. His eyes flashed furiously. His ears fell back against his skull. He glared at him. And then he chomped down harder. As with Ishizu, he refused to release. The bones ground lightly upon each other. But they did not snap away into nothingness.

The wolf tossed his head slightly. Muscle and sinews scattered beneath his teeth. The heavy sound of blood spilling and dripping to the floor made his stomach clench. Yugi shook his head and frowned. Then he laughed softly when Yami stared at him in bewilderment. The dark-furred canine peered up at him in confusion. The noise had obviously startled him pointedly as they looked at one another for a long moment. Then, slowly, Yami ground his teeth harder.

But the pain did not increase. And Yugi could already feel the tingling of his nerves as they sought to mend themselves completely beneath his grip. The small teen shook his head and sighed softly. "You really need to let go," he teased, his other hand moving to reach for the chain that was already around his neck. Yami blinked, confused and startled. The laughter had obviously unnerved him once more. And so he barely seemed to realize that Yugi had moved in the first place. Then he tightened the collar around his neck. And Yami sputtered, releasing him with a betrayed, horrified expression.

Yugi released him again almost immediately, scooting back and away from the wolf. Yami stumbled to his feet, collapsed again, shook himself out, and glowered at him. They stared at one another blankly for a moment. Then Yugi laughed softly and looked his wound over. Yami had bitten through the flesh of his wrist, to the bone, and the muscle of his hand had been torn open to show the white beneath the array of red as well. He could not see any abnormal fracture or swelling of any kind, however. It was somewhat amusing to see that Yami had not bothered to break the bones as he was so easily capable.

The realization made him relax if only slightly. It was odd to him how incredibly capable the wolf still was. It had to be the natural instinct of survival and the lycanthropy which held him so powerfully like this. He was so strong still, despite his weakened state. It was almost alarming how easily Yami seemed to fall upon the strength which the werewolf possessed. He remembered Obelisk's words, about how the wolf possessed this strength regardless of its physical state. The adrenaline was the power at its most abrupt, but the strength remained with them entirely regardless.

"I'll clean it in a little while," he commented softly, shaking his head slightly. Yami was still staring at him furiously. There was such darkness in his eyes now that Yugi felt almost sick. The wolf bore his teeth for a moment, his tongue running over his nose in a clear display of fear. He wondered what had happened to Yami in the time that they'd been apart. He wondered how terrible it was then, how it was possible that he had come to know such fear in the face of someone such as himself. He wondered how long it had taken him to withdraw so completely, to be swallowed away by the pain and forced behind the wall he could see within his eyes. He could sense the displacement between the two of them, a chasm that stretched for thousands of miles beyond what he knew to breach.

He wondered how long it had taken him to _forget him_ and it hurt to think for even a moment how terrible it truly was to consider such a thing. He swallowed hard, shaking his head slightly, and lowered his eyes with a heavy sense of discomfort crossing through him. He licked his lips, looked down at his hand and watched the tremble that caressed it as he slowly placed it in his lap and looked away.

"I'll clean it when I get home."

Yami pricked and flicked his ears. He shifted his weight. His anxiety was a curtain within the air. It pressed upon the small teen's skin and made him shiver with disgust for a split second. He could hear his lungs stretching and shrinking, a soft whistling and rasping quality embracing each breath he processed. Then Yugi heard his claws sliding upon the dirt and the way he seemed to sit up slowly. When the small teen glanced at him sideways, the wolf had begun to move towards the further corner of the cave from him. He took a seat behind the stake, eyes searching his body for a brief moment.

"Yami…"

The call of his name made his eyes widen drastically. His head snapped up from where he'd been seated staring at his own paws. A bristle overcame his entire form, making him almost twice his incredibly wounded size. He looked exhausted and scared, beyond simply fearful and perhaps terrified instead. He peered at him with dark red eyes, confused as he considered him. And Yugi ignored this as he licked his lips again and shook his head slightly. The two of them eyed each other for a long moment.

"Hey, relax, okay? You're okay. You're not going to get hurt. I won't hurt you."

The expression that the wolf wore was wary and confused and bewildered. He looked as if he might puke at any moment, scared and unnerved. The black canine flattened his ears against his skull for a moment or two. Then he blinked and flashed his tongue over his nose once more. He looked sickened rather than angry now, as if the statement were too great for him to process properly.

 _Yugi_ , a new voice called. Yugi stiffened, head turning in confusion. Yami, however, rose immediately to his feet with his fur in a fierce bristle and darkened eyes. He looked infuriated, confused and startled. His black fur shuddered briefly along his skin and he stared at the entrance of the cave with a hideous snarl on his face. Every part of his body was tense and quivering with ferocity. He snarled and snapped his teeth, glaring and peering through the entrance.

"Obelisk?" he questioned quietly, feeling dizzy for a brief moment. Then he licked his lips and moved to stand. When he put his bleeding hand on the ground, he nearly cringed. The dirt aggravated it enough to make him flinch and yelp. But he smothered the reaction as immediately as he could, shaking his head and sighing softly with a somewhat bewildered twinge beneath his skin. He frowned and swallowed hard. "What's wrong?"

 _Nothing is wrong,_ the gray wolf answered dismissively. He stepped into the den and Yami lunged. Immediately his teeth snapped at thin air. Obelisk gave him a wary look, bristling defensively. The black wolf jumped and lunged again. His teeth opened and shut again. He jumped, straining at the end of his tie out. He pricked his ears forward and snarled furiously. He leaped and lunged. He flashed his teeth. He bristled and snapped his jaws and wagged his raised tail angrily.

Yugi could not stop staring at the sight. It was bewildering how swiftly Yami had fallen into an offensive stance. He jumped and lunged, teeth snapping. He snarled and bit at the air. He strained and rose on his back legs, front paws nearly clawing at the air as he tried to pull forward. He snarled and chomped his teeth. He jumped again and bit at him furiously. "Yami…"

The wolf did not respond. And Obelisk bristled, shocked by the state of which the other wolf existed. The black canine snapped at him again. The gray wolf pricked his ears and then flattened them against his skull. He shifted his weight, moving to look to Yugi pointedly. The deity shuddered and tried his hardest to ignore the other canine but Yami continued to lunge. He continued to snap. He continued to snarl and bite at the air. He was bristling and furious.

"Obelisk, what's going on?" Yugi requested instead, speaking a little louder than usual in order to be heard over the snarling and teeth chomping. The sounds echoed around the small den and it made him feel sick as he shook his head and tried to hear himself over the noise. "Are you okay?"

 _I simply came to ask about progress towards Yami's recovery,_ he said slowly, though a cautious glance was shot towards the other wolf and Yami snarled and lunged once more. The chains pulled taut and clanked lightly with noise. He flinched and bore his teeth. Yugi glanced towards the black wolf as well, unsure of what more to say and do for a moment. _I was simply curious as to what might have developed._

"I don't think much has changed, honestly," he stated. He held up a hand for Obelisk to inspect and the gray wolf blinked widened eyes before snorting loudly. The gray wolf shook his head slightly, clearly surprised by the sight of it. "I don't think he's going to really recover anytime soon, Obelisk."

He flicked an ear. _I do not believe it will take him too terribly long,_ he answered in a dismissive tone, glancing at Yami sideways and curling his lip slightly. _You forget that you two have a very tight bond. He will sense it soon, I suppose. He will come to remember you and he will become the alpha that you knew him to be before._

"I don't care about whether he's my alpha. I care about his friendship, Obelisk."

 _Yes, and you shall regain this at some point. I do not think you will have long before he recalls at least the faintest bit of it. I am sure he will come to remember you fully soon enough._ He hesitated for a moment as Yami jumped and lunged and snarled. His teeth snapped and his ears pricked forward as he nearly stumbled on his thin, weak legs. Then Yami shook himself out again and Yugi frowned as he looked at him in turn. Obelisk bristled and flattened his ears against his skull with a snarl. _He will learn to recognize you again._

Yugi swallowed thickly, then shook his head. The idea was amazing to him and he would have given anything to have such a thing become a reality. But the thought came with a small, uncomfortable and disgusting bite upon his guts. His heart was in his throat, his lungs tight and constricted for a long moment. Then he lowered his eyes and shook his head again. He did not think that was at all what he knew would happen anytime soon. He doubted very sincerely that something of that magnitude would come to pass anytime soon.

And it hurt to consider that as he swallowed hard and shook his head again. "Do you honestly think so?" he asked slowly. The bewilderment and fear in his voice was enough to make Obelisk stare at him with dark eyes. "I mean…I just don't see it happening anytime soon…"

 _It might not be too terribly soon,_ the deity stated with a simply shake of his head as well. The wolf flicked his ears. Then he flinched as Yami snapped his teeth and snarled. The fact that the black canine was still so capable of launching himself forward as if to bite into him was shocking for the deity. He had never quite seen a wolf spurred into such a rage. And he could see the foam of his saliva as he strained at the end of his two-foot chain. The wolf bit at the air, jumped again, and wagged his long dark tail slowly but surely as a war flag might flap within the wind. _But I am sure that he will come to know you and understand the situation once more._

Yugi flinched when Yami strained again, so much more harshly than before. "Okay, let's go outside. I don't want him to hurt himself doing this any longer."

Obelisk hesitated for a long minute. Then he flicked his ears and flattened them against his skull for the briefest of seconds. Then he turned away as well, looking towards Yugi over his shoulder. Then he trotted out the den as Yugi got up to follow. The moment the gray wolf disappeared from his sight, Yami fell into a snarling fit. He did not lunge and launch himself anymore. He simply flicked his tongue over his nose and flattened his ears against his skull.

"Stay calm over here, okay?" Yugi said gently, nodding towards Yami briefly as he followed the other lycanthrope. The statement was met with a blank, unfocused stare. And then he seemed to grow incredulous, eyes darkened as if with a shadow. Then he blinked, stared some more, and turned as if he might take a seat at the other end of the small cavern again. But Yugi heard him moving again the moment he stepped out of his sight.

And then the snarling began anew. It was vicious, so loud that it made Obelisk flinch. Yugi swore the earth was shaking beneath his feet at the noise. He frowned and swallowed hard, shaking his head slightly and feeling mildly sick. Yami began to all but bay seconds later. His snarl was a booming roar of a noise. His claws clicked constantly as he paced about rapidly. The chain scraped upon the stone hideously. The noises echoed in uneven, dull roars within the den. Yugi swallowed hard as he turned to Obelisk.

"What the hell is going on down there?"

The deity blinked and angled his head to look down. Yami launched himself at the end of his chain, snarling and spitting. He strained so hard Obelisk was amazed that he did not see blood. But he grew furious, more hateful than ever, as they looked at each other. _He is very angry._

"I couldn't tell at all. Thanks so much for relaying that information," he deadpanned in annoyance.

 _I mean that it is perhaps my presence which makes him so furious. He seems only to grow more and more upset the longer he is exposed to me. He saw me look down at him and he is reacting in this way,_ he answered derisively, turning back to Yugi. Yami had lost his angry snarling and chomping his teeth. But he was furiously pacing again. And he had begun growling and whimpering, perhaps even whining in a state of despair or maybe even panic. _I should think he is afraid I will hurt you._

Yugi snorted, but a part of him felt warm and flush with the idea in and of itself. He nearly trembled with excitement at the thought. "Really?" he asked slowly, unsure of whether he should believe such a thing to begin with. It seemed so unlikely, but so much of him was desperate to do just that. Because it meant that some part of Yami was still in there; that he knew and still cared for Yugi in some way or another. But he realized how unrealistic it was and it made him ache to think of such a thing.

 _It would explain his behavior now. He tried to chase Ishizu from the den. And he is furious now that I have come here. He was angry the moment he spotted me coming into the cavern._ Obelisk paused and looked towards him, wondering briefly at the idea of what torture might have been done to the black wolf beforehand. Had something happened to make him so spiteful and hateful towards him? He still had no idea the things that Yami had been forced through in that time he had been out of their lives. And he did not know how he was meant to see this in any manner. He did not think for even a moment that even Ra knew of what might have happened to him in that time either. _I believe he is under the impression that I am going to hurt you._

"I doubt that would matter to him at this point."

Obelisk raised his eyes to Yugi's, considering him for a long moment. Then his ears flicked and he curled his lip back briefly. _What is it that the two of you were doing when I called for you_? _You did not seem to be fighting then. I had not assumed the two of you to be at war with one another._

Yugi hesitated for a moment, glancing into the den as well. Yami spotted him and snarled but it was not with as much disdain as he'd reserved for Obelisk. Instead he pricked his ears forward, snarled as if telling him to get his ass back into the cavern, and glared at him with an expression of pure annoyance as if Yugi were nothing more than a disobedient pup. The small teen frowned for a moment, then pulled away. Immediately he heard Yami pacing again, snapping his teeth in annoyance.

"I had just drugged him and was putting him back on the tie out." He hesitated, then looked his hand over and showing it off to him once more. "And he gave me that in response."

The gray wolf looked somewhat pleased by the sight, almost snickering when he snorted and flicked an ear in response. _A love bite,_ he teased before pricking his ears forward and looking at Yugi playfully. _Bites through the hand are always considered a love bite._

Yugi snorted loudly. "In _what_ world?"

 _The world of werewolves._ The wolf flashed him a sloppy smile of all teeth and a long, lolling tongue. Yugi smirked slightly at the statement and shook his head after a moment or two before rolling his eyes. _Any bite to the bone or on the hand is nothing but a little love nip. We like to show our affection by drawing blood and grinding bones._

"You're so full of shit."

He wagged his tail, eyes smirking brilliantly with amusement. _Yes, well, I try._ He paused after a long moment and turned towards the den with his ears flattened against his skull once more. It was a surprising sight to behold the way Yami strained at his collar and tried to back up against the wall to slip the chain over his head. But the angle was incorrect and he could not twist properly enough to slip away from its hold. Instead he backed further into the wall, panted pathetically, and tried to toss his head in an effort to relieve himself of the pressure of the chain around his neck. Obelisk looked sideways towards Yugi in surprise. _He is trying his hardest to remove that chain from around his neck. I have never seen an animal move in such a manner to get loose of something before._

Yugi thought briefly of videos he'd seen with wolves trapped within metal bear traps. He'd seen them writhe and roll about the floor in a panic. He saw in his mind the way that the canines would twist and roll and whine and bite at the metal in a state of disorientation. They would simply roll and flip upon their back and onto their feet and back and forth as quickly as they could. They would try to angle themselves properly, miss the opportunity, try again and then flail as if they were too afraid of another predator coming to fight them amidst the pain swallowing their senses altogether.

"I'm going back in there. I'll see if he'll calm down some."

Obelisk did not get the chance to so much as blink before Yugi disappeared from his sight and moved into the den. He lowered his head, watching, as Yugi moved to take a seat just beneath the dip of the den where Obelisk could just see him, though mostly his hair poking over the top of the stone behind him. The small teen was seated rather effortlessly there, legs crossed. But the sight of him being there made the black wolf halt in his actions of pulling his collar off.

He'd gotten himself tangled, his paw caught in the chain, but he did not react further than staring at Yugi in shock. He looked stunned for a brief moment, puzzled by the sight of the other wolf in front of him. And then he blinked, flicked his ears, and slunk closer to the small boy. But Yami did not move to the edge of his chain, nor did he strain himself to get more than a foot nearer him. He simply blinked, moved back several steps, and lay down when he found himself at a comfortable distance from the lycanthrope in question.

 _How strange._

Yugi blinked and tilted his head back. Yami snarled when he noticed Obelisk looking down at them. His fur rose into a bristle and he lunged at the edge of his chain. He snapped his teeth and pricked his ears forward and bit at the cold air angrily. Yugi immediately turned to him again and the gray wolf lifted his head away from view. In an instant the black wolf lowered himself back onto all four paws, tilted his head, and considered the entrance for a long while.

 _He seems almost to recognize you even now._

The small teen nearly scoffed. "I think he knows more that I've fed him. I don't think he remembers me at all."

 _He doesn't have to recognize you to remember you. He simply has to know that you give him a feeling of familiarity and he will soon find himself comfortable with you once more._ The gray wolf was silent for a long minute, eyes flickering as he took a seat. Yami growled but he was not lunging or snapping his teeth. Instead the other wolf simply moved to lay back down with his ears pricked forward and his lips curled briefly. A few moments passed and then his lips fell back and the tension eased from his body but for the bristle upon his bony shoulders. _He will remember later._

Yugi looked at him for a long moment. Then he sighed softly and shook his head slightly with a frustrated exhale. "How long do you think it will take?" he asked after a long handful of seconds. He frowned and shook his head again, biting his lip before lowering his eyes. "I mean, what's your best idea as far as the range of time it might take him to recover his memory?"

He was quiet in turn. Then he snorted. _I will not say more than a week at the most. I doubt that it will take longer than that._ The gray wolf hesitated for a moment. When he poked his nose down again, Yami snarled and started to rise to his paws. Obelisk pulled away again and Yami growled but settled after a long moment. Yugi looked at Yami for a long minute, then towards Obelisk and back. Was he truly upset by the idea of the other wolf being near him? Or was it simply that he saw Obelisk as a greater threat than he did himself? _I do not think his memories are as heavily buried as his nightmares are._

The small teen stiffened considerably. "His nightmares?" he repeated as a sense of anxiety crashed through his insides. He shivered and shook his head, swallowing hard and feeling slightly overwhelmed by the very idea. How many nights had Yami suffered through them alone? How many nights had he clawed his arms open in a desperate panic in order to wake himself, sickened and confused and waking to a mess of blood and cut muscle? Yugi was horrified just thinking of that.

 _His nightmares,_ Obelisk stated with little care. He was dismissive and simplistic in his tone before he slowly pricked his ears forward and looked away without a second glance. _He suffers them just as the rest of the world does._

Yugi bristled, tempted to snap at him in response.

But then the gray wolf shook the statement off, shedding the small teen's anger as if it were merely water in his pelt. He did not move beyond the task of focusing on Yugi long enough to say, _It does not matter, Yugi. The fact remains that he is here before you now and he will recover his memory soon enough. It does not matter that one day he does not remember you. It matters that one day he will and it will happen sooner rather than later. I cannot name the day it shall happen, but it shall come to pass at some point._

Yugi shivered and shook his head as he looked at Yami. The black wolf looked so tiny and thin, like a dark twig amongst the dirt. He seemed incredibly shaky and tired, as if he had been beaten senselessly by something or other. He looked as if he had been drained of energy and exhausted so forcefully that it would knock the wind from his lungs. He appeared sick and small as he lowered his chin to his paws. And, as Yugi watched with a shocked expression, the red-eyed wolf seemed to drift to sleep.

Obelisk seemed amazed as well, mystified as they looked at one another. The gray wolf shook his head, surprised, and then flicked his ears as he considered the lupine in question. The darker canine seemed incredibly small and tired, as if the world were stretched upon his shoulders and pinning him there as well.

The teen blinked, moving to cross his legs once more, tucking his feet under his thighs and tilting his head in consideration. He slowly looked over his shoulder to glance towards the gray wolf with a considerate expression.

The two of them were quiet for a long moment. Yugi wondered if talking would bring Yami to wake again. But some part of him doubted it, as the black wolf was too exhausted and hardly seemed capable of stirring at any moment.

Yugi sighed softly, closing his eyes, and then shook his head. He would wait until Yami woke up again to bother with anything else. He was sure that Obelisk could wait to tell him anymore than what he already had if he was truly desperate for a conversation of some kind. He leaned back against the stone wall behind him and sighed loudly, too tired to bother with anything more.

* * *

The teen woke again only when the sky was almost too dark to see in the small cavern. It was shocking to him, the way that he'd startled into awareness so many hours after Obelisk had seemingly left. He supposed he had to have been gone for a while, that he must have wandered off for a while longer than Yugi knew him to have. The small teen ran a hand through his hair, nearly groaning under his breath. His skin was frigid with cold, a handful of snowflakes lying upon his clothes. He glanced outwards, seeing the thick flakes which were drifting about in the darkness. He could see them bright against the dark and he frowned as he looked about what little he could see in the forest beyond him.

But then he heard a shuffling noise. It was long and scratching. And Yugi blinked in surprise with wide eyes. His head turned, blinking again, and he frowned as he swallowed hard. He shifted his weight, tired as he reached up to rub at his eyes for a brief moment, and then shook his head again slowly. He leaned forward, looking about himself, and then froze in place.

Yami was moving in the dark. Against the shadows painted gray from the strained light which came through, the wolf was a large but somehow disgustingly small void of black. He shifted and moved about with barely even brief moments of pause. Yugi strained his eyes, blinking and worrying himself to see what was going on for the dark canine in front of him. Then he heard the scraping noise again. And he noticed the way his paw rose and fell, tucking and pulling.

His heart sank.

"Yami."

The word was enough to make the wolf halt. His head lowered, his paw pressed into the dirt again, nails clicking in the silence of the small den. He blinked and his eyes flashed brilliant red when he shifted his weight and turned only slightly towards the entrance. In an instant Yugi felt dizzy upon their eyes meeting, the sense of surprise coming through him before he could even think straight.

"Hey, stop that." He hesitated, then shifted to stretch stiff limbs that popped with protest. The pain screamed through his limbs, his weight making it harder than ever. His knees ached and throbbed. His heart skipped a beat as the red eyes bore into his, measuring and anticipating. "You don't need to dig up that stake. That's a bad idea, Yami."

The wolf flicked an ear. He narrowed his gaze. Then he snorted loudly. His paw moved again. He clawed at the chain that he had been shifting about in front of him. He looked tired and angry, more than mildly frustrated with the circumstances of being caught. The dark canine bristled briefly, the fur rippling along his body, and then he lowered his eyes and began to paw at the metal again. The grating noise it made caused Yugi to shiver for a brief moment. And then the wolf pricked his ears forward, shook his head slowly, and pressed upon the metal more pointedly. It sounded incredibly as if the wolf were simply baiting him to say something more.

"You don't need to dig up the stake, okay? I promise you're okay. I'm going to let you go soon enough. I just want you to recover some before I do," Yugi said quietly, swallowing hard, and he shook his head slightly as he licked his lips. "I don't want you to end up hurting yourself again just because you got loose and managed to get out. If the pack were to find you…"

The mention of the family unit made the wolf stiffen and turn to him slowly. His eyes were monotonous in the dark, a dull gleaming red much like bricks, and Yugi was not able to read his expression in the slightest. He could not understand the look in his gaze, nor the way his face seemed to morph within the darkness. It surprised him somewhat, how easily the red-eyed wolf seemed to peer at him so coldly and without care. Yugi felt sick to his stomach as Yami slowly moved forward a step. It was clear in the way he came forward a step that his intentions were far from easy. He snarled softly, ears pricked forward, eyes glowing, lips pulled back into a silent sneer. He looked like a wild, incredible predator, far beyond what his sleek form seemed to represent.

Yugi shivered. "Yami, I'm trying to help you, okay? I want you to remember that. I don't want you to get hurt any worse than you already are. I don't want you to get hurt _at all_ , okay? I want you to heal. I don't want to see you any worse off than you… _Are_ you okay right now? Are you sick? Are you at least well enough to think this through? You don't want to get yourself hurt for nothing, right? I mean…"

He did not honestly know why the little teenager spoke to him like this. In the back of his mind, the words translated correctly into the burdensome phrases the other spoke. But he hardly cared for them. He thought the words mere pinpricks of dull noise within his ears. It hardly made sense for the boy to speak such things to him. He did not think that the statement truly made sense in regards to himself.

When he crept closer, a shadow against the gray of the stone in the den, Yami wished for a moment that he might be lighter in coloring. Had he been he could have snuck up on the boy without much trouble. Surely the human would never have been able to tell him apart from the rest of the earthen den beyond him. He would never have known to look for his eyes. And he could have bitten through his throat and swallowed chunks of flesh before the larger solid gray wolf could ever have come to know of such a thing.

The hunger clawed at his belly. He wished for a moment that there were some small stones nearby. He would kill the small human boy. But he was incapable of reaching him. And he was not able to lunge forward beyond that chain which held him at bay. And he could not dislodge the collar from his throat.

But the boy was capable of doing such a thing. But he was sure someone else might find pity in their hearts to release him should they happen to come across him at some point. And he was starving with the intensity of which his belly gargled and demanded his attention. He shifted closer, wishing more than ever that he might be able to sink his teeth into the boy's soft flesh and swallow gulps of fresh, throbbing muscle and swiftly-dancing blood. He licked his lips at the very thought.

Then he launched himself.

But, as expected, he hit the end of the chain.

This time, however, the force of it knocked him off his paws. He yelped and shook himself out, shocked by the bite in his throat. He was amazed that he could still breathe and that he could even still see. The pain was so acute in his neck. And he wondered why it was that he could not feel blood beneath his fur, nor the hairs sticking to his skin. He flexed his paws and gulped in an uneasy breath of air, so tight in his lungs and cold against his throat that it made him tremble and feel worse.

He wanted almost to sob loudly. Had he been in a human skin, he thought he might have. But now he merely shook, trembling, and panted for air as desperately and hopefully as he was able. He felt sick and dizzy for a moment. And, had he anything in his belly beyond the bile in its pit, he might have puked it up in an instant. Instead he stumbled for his paws, standing tall and too slim to be normal. But his legs shook and his paws stung. He wondered at the sensation, but there was nothing more he could do than stand there without thought or consequence.

He swallowed and gulped and lowered his eyes for a moment. There were no small stones. There were no specks of blood left to lick from the dirt. He could not find any tufts of fur. And the human boy had not brought him food in the time that he'd fallen asleep.

He could do no more than take a seat, the ache in his belly making him reckless and merciless. His ears flattened against his head, the gargling growing an octave louder. He lowered his head and his mouth felt flecked with a stinging sensation. He flicked his tongue out to run over his nose, the sweat cold and glistening but salty enough that it made him ache further. He shifted his weight and swallowed hard, then shook his head and closed his eyes.

The human shifted his weight. The wolf opened his eyes and raised his head.

"Are you hungry?"

The words translated themselves but the canine could think of no way to answer. He could find no means of which he might speak in turn. Rather he closed his eyes again and lowered his head further, snarling under his breath as he slowly pricked his ears forward. The bile was cutting through his stomach lining so harshly that it made him want to puke. But there was nothing to expel and so he simply bore his teeth and flicked his ears unhappily, every part of him hateful and resenting of the human boy in front of him.

"You wait here, okay? I'll go and catch you something."

The words were so quiet that he almost did not hear them. Then his red eyes snapped open, his head turning towards him and his attention caught upon the small teen before him. The two of them stared at each other for a moment. And then the boy moved to strip, dropping his clothing to the ground. The wolf strained to grab at them, the scent strong enough to make him want to swallow them whole as he had the rabbit formerly. He wagged a raised tail, ears pricked forward and eyes glowing in the dark. He licked his jowls and shifted his weight uncomfortably.

The boy was gone in a pelt of white fur like the core of a thousand stars. He disappeared out into the snow beyond the den and the wolf whined as he reached a paw for the clothing pile those few feet away. He strained and struggled, winding himself with the effort. Each time the collar tightened and he whimpered in distress at the sensation. The bile rolled within his belly and he whined and paced. His entire body was shaking and tired, his thin legs all but shattered beneath his slight weight. He wanted to puke, his mouth opening wide and his teeth flashing. He wanted again to reach his paw out and try for the clothing.

But another part of him was hopeful in the most sickening of ways.

He wished more than ever that the boy would come back with food. He did not care in the slightest what the prey might be that he brought back. He cared only that he might tear off chunks and swallow them whole. It was dangerous how weak and small he was at the moment. He could feel it. His bones had become brittle. And he could hear them grinding each time he moved. He could hear them ringing in his ears, the pop making his heart ache as he paced rapidly.

He was dizzy and disconcerted. Food was in such short supply. He could not rely on himself to gather any. He was too weak and the animals might hear him before he saw them to begin with. He had suffered such a thing far too many times. He was tired of it. He was exhausted and hungry and he could not find it in himself to care to do more than wallow in this grief.

But then his mind turned to the spiral in the dirt. And his fur rose and fell in a rapid shudder of a bristle. He swallowed hard, his belly rolling with pain and roaring with mounting desperation. The need he felt in that moment was enough to make him tremble. But he remembered that damn metal in the ground. And he thought briefly of how it would give way beneath his weight if he pressed upon it hard enough. He shivered as his eyes fell upon it. If he could dig it up then he could escape. But he needed to find a way to get the damn metal from his neck as well. He had to find a way to relieve himself of this entirely. And then he could run.

He could find something or someone to kill and eat. He did not care anymore what it might be.

And he'd ruined his meal of the dead wolf in his fighting with that damn gray male.

He flicked an ear and lowered his nose to the metal. The earth was still somewhat disturbed, but the cold temperature had done well to mend its broken structure. He could feel the ache in his paw as he lowered his claws to shovel for the first time. He had not dug in what felt to be ages. But he understood the pain in his belly to be more powerful than his discomfort at such a moment. He could repair his broken paw pads and shattered claws when his belly was full.

He could heal…

He could heal and he'd be all the better for it.

He dug his claws further into the dirt. Then he used his other paw, balancing himself precariously. His belly roared again. His mouth opened wide with desire. And he shifted his weight to spread his hindquarters more purposefully. He shifted his weight, then clawed desperately at the earth. The hardened dirt was lodged painfully beneath his claws. The ache was enough to wind him briefly. And he snarled in discomfort at such a sensation. But it did not stop him entirely.

And so he dug harder, faster, struggling for the ability to find the metal spiral and pull it away from the earth entirely. He could think of nothing to help him further. And when he saw blood on the dirt, he had the impulse first to lick at the sand and swallow a mouthful. Then he thought to lap at the wound itself. But the pain was miniscule and he could not find it in himself to care much longer.

The spiral of metal was halfway unearthed when the boy came back. This time he was met with a panicked growl of, _Yami, no, stop it_! and the wolf spun in a mirroring state of mind. The white wolf came towards him too quickly. He pressed back a step. But it kept coming. And so he lunged.

The two of them collided in a hard knot of fur. Black against white, the two wolves rose onto their back legs to fight. The white wolf did not retaliate, however. As the darker canine bit into his face and tore a chunk of fur, the other moved only to drop to his four paws again. And then the other had moved away from him before he could blink. The black wolf opened and closed his mouth, panting and snarling as his belly ached and rolled and his paws bled and his jaws felt sore and his ears flattened against his head despite the dull ringing.

He paced a step, then whined and snapped his teeth, desperate and starving. The white wolf stared at him for a long moment, then looked back over his shoulder. His head snapped in the direction as well, body shuddering and shaking with desire. A small mouthful of dead rabbits were clumped in the entrance, where he must have been dropped them upon seeing his stance there. The white wolf, his fur like silken moonlight, looked at him for a brief moment with eyes as brilliant as the galaxy overhead with its bright blue-specked violet gaze. Then it trotted to the entrance again and hastily gathered the carcasses in his large mouth.

He was shaking, a pathetic cry leaving his lungs as he looked towards him in something of a panic.

Would he take the food away?

Would he simply flee with the prey in his jaws?

What would he do if he did?

He did not know that he could fight with him or argue against it in the slightest.

He whined and opened and snapped his jaws shut again, pacing pathetically in his growing anxiety.

Yugi watched him, saw the way he trembled and stepped back and forth rapidly. He was all but baying, miniscule croaks and panicked cries which made his heart shake. The white wolf flattened his ears, cheeks puffed outwards and pulled with the tension of carrying the burden of rabbit carcasses. They were all pale in color but for a gray and brown one that lay on the bottom and, as Yugi inched closer, he saw the hunger so vividly in Yami's eyes that he realized abruptly that he was going to lunge.

He dropped them.

The black wolf strained forward and reached a paw out, drool dribbling from his large jaws. He opened and shut his mouth, whined pathetically, and then clawed again. Yugi shifted forward, then pressed his own paw upon the nearest rabbit. Yami responded with a hideous snarl, snapping his teeth and staring at him with eyes full of a panic that shook Yugi to his core. The white wolf hesitated for a moment, then pushed the piece of prey forward. Immediately Yami snatched at it with his paw, pulled it back to him, and snapped it up in his teeth.

Yugi felt sick as the wolf plucked it up, held it in the air, and then slammed it back down as if it might need a killing blow. But the darker canine did it all the while staring at him, a clear message that he was starving and would fight him for what little food he could get. The white wolf shook his head, lowering his chin towards the ground, tucking his tail beneath his legs, and slunk forward in a hesitant pace. He whined, tucked his nose towards the prey, and then inched it away from himself and towards the other male.

In an instant Yami snatched it up as well. But he did not make a show of beating the rabbit against the ground. This time he simply dropped it again at his paws and glared at him. Yugi repeated the gesture, moving all seven of the rabbits to him. The dark wolf launched himself at them, swept them up in his own bony mouth, and then turned and trotted to the other end of the cavern to drop them and hastily lie upon his belly and dig into his meager meal. Yugi relaxed at the sight, glad for once to hear the hideous crunching of bones against canine teeth. Then he turned and stepped towards his pile of clothes, moving to curl up with his nose beneath his tail.

Yami ate the meal in what seemed to be mere minutes. He seemed to swallow the food away almost entirely, as if the rabbits were nothing more than simply air to be gulped down. But then he whined and his ears flattened against his head. He licked at his paws and got up to sniff at the ground for what felt like a long minute and then, finally, he raised and turned his head towards Yugi with a panicked expression. He whined, an unusually haunting and despairing noise, and the white wolf blinked before he got up again.

 _Do you want more_? Obviously he did; the black canine shaking and flattening his ears against his head as he licked at his nose in a panic. The moments passed in an exaggerated manner, it seemed, and Yugi sighed softly as he shook his head and lowered his eyes. _Give me a few more minutes. I'll get something. But you can't dig up that tie out. I'm serious. If I come back and it's not in that same spot, I'm going to be_ pissed, _Yami_.

The statement made the black wolf snort loudly, but he looked more desperate than arrogant now. And so Yugi sighed softly, flicked an ear, and turned to trot back into the snow. The flurry was enough to make the trees look almost completely white, the snow so thick that it was like standing in the forefront of a blizzard. But he felt small and tired as he licked his lips and hurried into the trees. He had found the rabbits by chance. And he could not entirely find more in the span of minutes he had before. He'd come across the warren by mere accident rather than anything else.

He frowned and shook his head and trotted forward as quickly as he could. He did not know if he should scale the mountain's ledges overhead or to simply head further into the trees to find a boar rather than a serow. The serows were easier to catch. But the boars were faster to run into. He would have to scale the ledges or he would have to go into the open. Either had their downfalls. Either could lead to him getting wounded.

He wondered if perhaps he should go to find the birds. Yugi looked around briefly. He could find that stupid quail farm once more. He could hunt them, dig them out of the snow and bite through their necks and carry them back. They were there. They would be the easiest catch he could possibly find. But the time that it would take to get there and back and potentially being caught by the people there…

He shivered and shook his head. Then he bristled and trotted forward as quickly as he could. The sound of Yami moving about in the dark did nothing to deter him from scaling the mountain and its various ledges beyond the den. The white canine pressed as closely to the mountain's side as he could, holding his place there to keep himself from perhaps stumbling or falling over the side. He scented the air, swallowing in mouthfuls in order to catch even the smallest hint of a smell for the serows that might possibly exist somewhere further up the mountain.

Yugi brushed against the stone again. Small patches of snow fell upon his coat for a brief second as he came in contact with it. Then he snarled, shaking himself out, and looked about the white flakes falling in such thick flurries swirling within the air. He swallowed and shook his head, flicking his ears, and hurried to step forward and race at a more convenient speed. He needed to know if he could find anything of the manner at the cusp of the mountain's slope. He did not know if there was anything truly awaiting his efforts there. And he did not want to leave Yami there for much longer on his own. It would have been foolish for him to trek his way up there and find his efforts fruitless.

Yami could dig the stake up at any moment. He could find his way out of that cave if Yugi was not careful. He needed to find the easiest prey he could in the quickest amount of time possible. If he failed in so simple a task he did not know what it was meant to do for himself. He shivered and shook his head, pricking his ears forward. He wished he had thought to get food to begin with. He should have gathered prey before he'd fallen asleep. He should have asked Obelisk to do the same.

He shook his head and his paws crunched into the snow. He hesitated, flicking an ear, and pressed closer to the stone. He could do nothing more than lick at his jowls. He considered the frigid chill of the air, hungry as he too considered the blood that had once coated his tongue. He'd savored the taste of the rabbit for those brief moments it had remained there. And he had hurried to reassure Yami instead of the meal he had meant to gather for him. The black wolf had seemed so terribly desperate and terrified that he would take the meal away at any moment. His heart shook at the very idea.

The serow he finally ran across was on a ledge only a few feet from him. Yugi leaped forward as he spotted it, rushing but keeping his mind prominently on the end of the stone pathway. He wondered what had caused it, if it was naturally formed or perhaps from thousands of serows moving about the path before then. Had they perhaps carved the little pathway? He shrugged the thought off and launched himself forward again. The serow managed to dodge, turning around in rapid succession to face him. But the prey animal was hardly powerful enough to fight him off to begin with.

Yugi was well aware of this, as was the animal itself.

The two of them stared at one another. He wagged his tail slowly and wondered if the goat-antelope could even truly see him. He supposed it was staring upon his eyes, watching him in an effort to find an escape route. Yugi attacked head on, the element of surprise long lost. The animal dodged aside, but the wolf turned with efficiency. The snow had done well to slow him from what could have potentially thrown him over the edge.

The ungulate backed up and twisted away from him. The action allowed it to drop onto the ledge below them. But the backwards glance was all Yugi needed. It stopped the animal from escaping him altogether and so he lunged. It was a powerful blow to the throat which ceased its actions. Yugi had jumped forward again, though more upwards than outwards. And the action was just enough to allow him to snatch the neck without losing his balance. In an instant the ungulate kicked and tried to toss him away.

And Yugi simply bit down harder.

A few moments passed. Yugi shook his head violently. The ungulate twitched and kicked. Then it tried to match his movements on stiff limbs. It braced itself for a harder toss. And Yugi bit down further. If he could perhaps angle the head enough to the side…

He lost his grip. The ungulate had kicked hard enough to dislodge him. But the animal lost its footing as well. And, as Yugi looked with a shocked, dismayed expression, the serow was sent over the side of the ledge. It fell violently, tumbling, the snow rolling in the air with each movement, and Yugi hurried forward to meet it at the bottom. But, as he tried to catch up, the animal seemed to find its footing again. And, as it rose to his feet, the goat-antelope shook itself out. It whistled out a shaky warning breath, turned, and prepared to jump away.

Yugi pushed himself rapidly for the prey animal. If he did not move fast enough, it would escape. And he did not think he could allow such a thing to happen in the slightest.

But he needn't have worried.

In a flash of dark gray fur, the serow was effectively slaughtered.

Bright red coated the ice and Yugi nearly tripped over his own paws in shock.

He landed in a tumble, then rose to his feet again with a simple shake of his coat. He stumbled and frowned, ears pricked forward and breath somewhat heavy with disbelief. He blinked in the darkness, sighed softly, and then padded forward uncertainly. _That was mine,_ was the stupid statement that left his mouth. Had he been human he would have blushed and ducked his head with his hand over his face, horrified by the thought. But now he simply flattened his ears and fought the urge to duck his head and turn away.

Obelisk looked over with a bloodied muzzle, amusement in his eyes. _And you're an idiot,_ he stated simply, shaking his head. He licked the red from his jaws and shook himself of the snow falling from the heavens. Yugi shivered and looked up for a moment, finding the sky a hideous shade of gray that looked almost sickly. Then he turned back, relieved not to have to face such a thing anymore, and watched the darker wolf with a slight tilt of his head.

 _What are you doing here_?

 _I came to speak to you. But then I saw the serow and I noticed you up on the ledge. So I figured I would finish off the kill since you seemed unable to yourself._

 _I wasn't unable. I was just…not very good at it._

Obelisk snorted. _Whatever you would like to tell yourself at the end of the night, Yugi._ He fell quiet for a long moment before he flicked his ears and then pricked them forward with a shake of his head. _Now, as for the serow, is this what you plan to feed to him_?

 _Is it so obvious_?

 _You have never been so willing to hunt for yourself before. I see you in this state of mind, willing to kill and eat, only when it comes to Yami._

Yugi flicked an ear. _Eating raw meat isn't even that great,_ he huffed. But his mouth was watering and he wished he could dig his teeth into the prey animal once more. He was starving as he thought of this but his most prominent instinct was that of feeding the black wolf. The white canine flicked his ear, shook his head, and turned back to Obelisk more pointedly. _Well, anyways, the point is that I planned to drag it in there and let him eat it for a while._

The gray wolf nodded almost dismissively. _You would have to place it against the stone formation in the back, I am sure. There is not truly much room within that small den._

He nodded in response, the same nonchalance in his action as had been in the deity's. Then he sniffed, turned away, and grabbed at the ungulate's torn throat with his jaws. For the briefest of moments he had the impulse to dig his teeth into the piece of prey. He was hungry and his mouth watering. But he doubted that Yami would be very happy to find him taking a bite of food from him, no matter how small. Yugi shrugged it off, salivating heavily, and then tugged.

 _Do you truly plan to simply let him eat this the entire time_? _You have no intentions of taking a bite for yourself_?

 _If I did I would have done it by now._ He paused and tugged harder, the muscles rolling beneath his pelt and his bones seeming to almost sharpen beneath the strain. The wolf kept his grip firm, then backed up further and clenched his teeth more pointedly into the animal's neck. The canine released it a moment later, turning and moving to circle the carcass and then push at it with his nose. He would not risk hurting himself by way of stepping backwards with the serow in his jaws like that. _He needs it far more than I do anyways._

Obelisk flicked an ear. _Hmm._ He was noncommittal and lazy in his response. Yugi did not grace him with so much as a sideways glance. Then he pushed harder at the prey, shoving it headfirst into the den and hurrying to jump in after it. _They recovered Marik's body._

Yugi faltered, his momentary pride in having done such a task leaving him in a rush. He blinked, pricked his ears forward, and then turned to look over his shoulder. _And_? he asked slowly. Had they caught his scent on it? Had they rightfully assumed him to have killed the gray and tan wolf?

 _And nothing. I simply wished to tell you. Ishizu is being doted on for the moment and no one seems to suspect you in the slightest._ He paused after a moment, tilting his head and flicking an ear. _Do you have an idea for what needs to be done regarding your friend's father_?

The white wolf paused again, freezing in place in surprise. He blinked, flattened his ears against his skull, and curled his lips back. _No, I had not even considered it before. I'm rather surprised that you even remembered it._

Obelisk snorted and flicked an ear. _Why be surprised by such a simple thing_? He shook his head slowly. _You forget that I am a deity. I remember a lot of things._ _And even if I were not a god, werewolves have perfect recollection._

Yugi nearly scoffed at him, shaking his head. He turned to pad into the den. His eyes shot to the figure at the other end of the cavern and he relaxed as he saw the wolf seated there, salivating heavily and twitching with desire. He shifted his weight from one paw to the next with a slightly annoyed, impatient expression, and licked his lips rapidly.

 _I'm more curious about whether_ you _had some kind of plan for it._

 _I'm heavily tempted to simply kill him._ Obelisk fell silent again. _But I shall not need to._

Yugi paused and then turned his head, bewildered by the idea. He tilted his head and flicked an ear. Yami whined in desperation for a moment, his belly growling loudly. _What do you mean? What are you…_? _He's not going to die, is he_?

The other wolf sniffed disdainfully. _It is not the right of Atem to know where death lurks. Just know that it is in your shadow and you will find great misery in the times to come._ The deity paused for a moment, then got to his feet again where he'd taken a seat in front of the den. _I have other things to do, Yugi. I have no reason to remain here. I will see you in passing later, yes_?

The white wolf was nearly shaking for a moment. Then he licked his lips and shook his head. _Yes,_ he answered, turning back to Yami with a small wag of his tail. He hesitated for a moment, then moved to snatch the serow by the neck again once more. He dragged the ungulate forward, then nudged it with his nose to put it within range of the wolf. The black canine tried to gather it in his mouth as well, catching a foot by his teeth, but could not find the proper traction and did not have enough room to allow him such movement.

 _Hold on, Yami,_ he said softly, wagging his tail slowly. _I'll take it over there if you don't attack._

The black wolf hesitated, trying again to tug it and then whining in discontentment. He paused a moment longer, stared at Yugi curiously, and then whined as he tried to pull the carcass closer with his paw. He could not get a grip in the slightest, whined in dismay, and then finally turned and trotted to hide behind the stake as if it might give Yugi more reassurance. The white wolf nodded, wagging his tail again, and nudged the serow away again with his nose once more.

Yami was trembling in the corner of his eye. Yugi nearly snorted in amusement.

The white wolf leaned forward and stepped over the ungulate to grab at the back leg and drag it behind the stone formation as well. He dragged it back, away towards the wall, then allowed its leg to fall back into place and moved around to get to the other side of the carcass. Immediately Yami licked his lips and launched himself forward. Yugi was horrified, as he took a seat, to see that the wolf was biting and _swallowing_ the fur in his mouth as he tugged it away from the flesh.

He wished he could have told him not to, could have pleaded with him otherwise. But he could still hear his belly and the way his jaws worked so quickly to strip away the fur and try for the meat beneath. He shivered and shook his head, lowering his eyes. Yugi did not want even in the slightest to look towards Yami now, feeling mildly sick and bewildered by the very idea. He was so desperate for food, so hungry that every attempt to find a meal was enough to make him lash out as violently as he possibly could.

Yugi shivered at the thought. Then he took a seat and looked towards the other male with a flash of pain in his heart. He could not think for even a moment how terrible it was what the black wolf was going through. He had to be starving. He had to be all but robbed blind in that sense. And no wonder he was so hateful and resentful. He had no reason to be happy in the slightest when it came down to it. Yami was, for a better part of it, more or less forsaken by the gods where his hunger was concerned.

* * *

If he kept Obelisk as the beta for a while longer, it would allow him time to nurse Yami back to health. But the problem came down to the fact that perhaps Yami was not going to be fit to run as his second-in-command again. If that were the problem, what was he meant to do about it later? He had no idea what he should do or say in regards to the rank. And he doubted Yami would have much of an opinion on such a thing for a long while, if ever at all. The black wolf would go by what it was that Yugi asked of him. He knew that. It was one of the things that struck Yugi as foolish but also made him feel incredibly good about the black wolf being by his side.

His loyalty was unwavering in that way and Yugi felt immensely grateful, nearly empowered by the very idea. Yugi was struck by the idea that the wolf might hold such powerful feelings for him in that manner, willing to do anything and everything at all to ensure he was safe and or mildly happy. He did not think for a second that he would go further than comfortable for his own sake, though he remembered briefly how Yami had said that sex with him would fix all the woes in his life.

He shivered, then dusted himself off and paced forward again. Yami had gorged himself almost relentlessly on the food. He had swallowed large mouthfuls of meat in mere seconds. And he had looked incredibly hungry and shaky in that way. His face had been smeared with blood, covered, and Yugi found his teeth running over his nails. The layers of keratin split beneath his incisors. He tore at them, allowing them to drop away briefly to the stone. He shook and tilted his head, frowning, and considered the wolf asleep in the corner of the den.

The serow had been gutted, the organs swallowed away and pulverized where they remained. Yugi was surprised by the hollowed belly and the meaty paste which showed within its stretched flank. He bit harder at his nail and blood touched his tongue for a brief second. He thought briefly of what the serow so often smelled like, sweet and yet slightly sour. He was hungry for a split second, belly growling briefly. Then Yugi licked his lips, shook his head, and sighed loudly.

The wolf's ear twitched. Then his eyes cracked open, a bleary slit of dark red. The dark canine blinked, looked forward into the den, and then lifted his gaze upward to regard him curiously. Feeding him so much had done well to restore some of the ease the wolf had formerly possessed while around him. And the reality of it made him shiver as he bit harder at his nails.

"Go back to sleep," he muttered softly, shaking his head briefly. "It's not a big deal. Go ahead and go back to sleep, okay?"

Yami was silent, though Yugi doubted for even a moment that he might push words into his mind as well. The wolf stared at him for a long minute or so, his eyes sharp and silent as he considered him for that stretch of time. He finally moved to lay his chin upon his paws and close his eyes once more, shifting his weight to grow more comfortable. Then he began to breathe more evenly, though Yugi was sure in the back of his mind that the wolf was not asleep yet as of that moment.

Yugi remained quiet for as long as he possibly could, closing his eyes for a brief moment and then sighing loudly and pacing once more. He wondered if Obelisk knew the extent of which he would go through for this wolf in front of him. And he wondered not for the first time if perhaps Slifer ever wondered at what love felt like, as he felt somewhere deep in his bones that perhaps she had never known it formerly. The small teen let out a deep breath, opened and closed his mouth, and then lowered his eyes briefly to the wolf once more. The canine was watching him from narrow slits of red again.

The teen smiled faintly at the sight. A part of him was desperate to ask if perhaps Obelisk would fight for his place within the pack. It was a considerable question, an idea of which he wondered the consequences of. He ignored the way the thought made his skin crawl for a split moment. His heart was in his throat, his mouth dry as he shook his head and ignored the pain that had bloomed in his belly.

He was more than slightly lucky that the gods had taken so well to his request in the first place. And he was more than only mildly lucky to have an alpha that had helped him survive in the first place. He was grateful to see that Yami was there before him now, even if he was not entirely healthy at the moment. He could count his blessings as it was—on his fingers for the most part. He had friends, he had his family, he had Yami, he had Obelisk and Slifer, he had his infection to help him, he had good grades. It was a strange concept, three of these additions making his heart ache for a brief moment as his belly began to writhe.

He had never truly considered any of it to be a blessing before. But now he wondered at how differently he felt and it made him feel warm and soft for a brief moment. He felt incredibly good to know that his initial instinct now was to consider it a better thing rather than a hindrance as he had formerly. He was pleased to find this, more than slightly in all actuality. It had been exhausting blaming the lycanthropy for so much as he had. It had been enough to make him feel tired and annoyed more than anything. And he felt terrible for the idea of what he had formerly considered it now as he thought it over.

Yugi was relieved to think that he'd been able to think so clearly of it as a blessing, a move in a direction that made his heart skip beats with satisfaction. It was amazing to him how much such a thing could have changed in such an amount of time. He could not remember how long it had been since he'd been bitten—two months? Three? Perhaps even four?—but it had certainly changed his perspective. It had helped him to grow more, even if he so often wished to hide away behind such blindness he'd owned before then. He'd been able to turn the other cheek and ignore it all. He'd been able to pretend that he wasn't suffering more than night terrors and hallucinations and the occasional migraine and anxiety attack. He'd been able to pretend that his grandfather was not interested solely in some mythology that he'd been chasing for years prior to his birth, but that he was simply testing his hyperosmia for the fun of learning what he could and couldn't smell with such a heightened olfactory sense.

He swallowed hard and licked his lips, shaking his head as he turned to Yami briefly. The black wolf was fast asleep, sides rising and falling in a steady formation. The canine had moved to lie down on his side, his ribs visible and harsh in definition beneath his fur. The thought was rattling, but he remembered soon after the way that he had seen Yami's ribs that first handful of nights he'd been sleeping on the couch. He'd seen and felt terrible but the wolf had recovered so simply and almost at a reasonably extraordinary speed.

But he didn't know for sure how many days or weeks or _months_ it might take for Yami to recover fully. And if he did not know that, what was to say that he could ever achieve it? The thought made his mouth grow dry and he bit at his nails again, flinching when pain came in a wave and blood specked his tongue again. He shook his head, flustered and slightly annoyed by the sensation, then sighed softly and looked away. He could give Yami however much time was necessary to ensure that he was healthy at the end of the day, but he did not know how long he would be capable of spending the amount of time with him that he had so far. It seemed almost impossible now that he considered it, because when he thought about it, he did not know how long he could skip school like this. And he already did not have a pass for the rest of the week as he planned to skip through that as well.

He drew in a deep breath. Yami's ear flicked. Yugi blinked as a sound reached his ears. In the corner of his eye Yugi saw Yami raise and turn his head in unison with him. They both peered past the snow in the lip of the den. The sound of the ice crunching was enough to make Yugi slightly nervous. He still had not outgrown the feeling of someone following and watching and tailing him. The small teen had doubled back several times, leading off towards the river and then traveling atop its frozen surface for several miles before finally stepping away and hurrying off. It was mildly alarming to him, how easily swept up he'd become in the need to save Yami that he'd overlooked the possibility formerly of someone following.

And, had they had dogs, the backtracking would have worked for a limited time. It was nothing he could sustain for long, as they would have caught his scent with limited effort. It was not hard for him to consider that they would have followed them. It was hard to bury the pain that the very thought brought. He had no idea if there was any true way that he might come across the reality of such possible devastation. Yami could be killed right in front of him if he was not careful enough. And no matter whether he ran in his wolf form or he stumbled along in his sneakers, it would always be clear he had been there, because anyone could follow his tracks within the snow.

There was so much that it was impossible to miss when someone moved within it.

He could even detect when the mice and rabbits moved about in it. He could hear them. He could see the way the snow sagged only slightly as the field mice moved beneath. And he could spot a rabbit within seconds of hearing it there. It was enough to give him an idea of where to hunt. But it was horrifying as he could not stop himself in any manner. The thought made him want to puke as he focused on the noise of the other approaching. Yami was sitting up now, he realized, sniffing lightly at the air but seeming to draw at a blank towards anything coming. And so he began to get to his feet, shaking himself out, his fur moving to give a brief illusion of muscle and power before it fell slack again. And then he was merely skinny, so much so as to make Yugi throw up and his head spin.

 _Atem_?

Yugi nearly dropped with relief. "Hey Ishizu," he commented softly, breathing in deeply and then shaking his head briefly before smiling faintly. He saw Yami flick an ear, staring once more at the entrance as if he might be able to scare away whoever might have been brave enough to come there. And the small teen smiled a little wider at the idea, tilting his head as he considered the dark-furred wolf. "Relax, aibou."

In an instant those dark eyes flickered to his, ears pricked towards him in consideration.

"It's okay." He smiled a little wider, amused when the wolf snorted and sniffed again, paying more attention to the intruder than he was the teen. Yugi rolled his eyes and turned back to the entrance. Now he could make out her paws, impressively large despite her feminine build. "Is it sunset already?"

She stepped into the den, shaking herself of fresh snowfall, and Yugi shivered at the sight. She had looked like some dark ghostly figure when the white had been against her long coat. He frowned faintly at the idea, wondering briefly who might die next, and his head was spinning with the concept. Immediately he glanced towards Yami, a prickling feeling creeping through his skin for the briefest of moments. Then he turned back again as quickly as he could, relieved by the fact that Yami did not understand the title he had called him by. He swallowed hard, licked his lips, and then lowered his eyes.

 _It is time for me to relieve you of your stay here,_ Ishizu said in a voice that seemed to lean towards the idea that she herself had caught the word and was unimpressed by its many implications. But, should she have asked, Yugi would have simply said it was meant in friendship rather than affection beyond such a sense. He could have lied as simply as this, but he doubted it would have done him well. He doubted his voice would have failed to break beneath the weight of the statement. And so he simply tilted his head, watched her a moment longer, and then nodded. _I will see you in the morning, yes_?

"As soon as possible," Yugi promised without a second thought. He paused, glancing at Yami briefly as the wolf moved to circle about to the stomach of the serow and take a bite. The teen smirked in amusement, shaking his head. Yami was truly trying to stake a claim on the meal? Of course Ishizu would not bother to try to fight him for it, nor did he think for even a second that she would try to steal a bite from the black wolf.

He wondered again what visions she might have had before, how unsurprised she had been upon seeing her former beta there. He wondered if perhaps _she_ would have been the one to see him and it made him feel sickly for a brief moment.

The gods had not been able to see him.

Yet, perhaps, somehow, _Ishizu_ had.

The thought was incredibly daunting, almost enough to knock the air from his lungs altogether. He swallowed hard as he considered again. What secrets did she know? How many lies and visions were hidden within those bright blue eyes? How many things could she predict that would come with certainty? How often had she been wrong?

He bit his lip.

She had been blessed with the ability when she'd been in the labs. And she had been given it by Ra herself. He could not find it in himself to think that she would ever truly be inaccurate. She'd been touched by the gods, after all. She had to know the moment that something would happen. She had seen her brother's death, Yugi's birth. She had seen him and watched him within the labs. She had witnessed a million different things that no wolf ever should have.

And now she was perhaps doing the same thing, staring at him with eyes that seemed full of cunning rather than amusement as they normally were. He shivered, licked his lips again, and shook his head briefly as he turned away to make his way to the entrance. He hesitated, then looked over his shoulder at her again.

"Tell me if anything happens when I'm gone."

Ishizu blinked, tilted her head, and seemed to laugh when she spoke again. _Nothing will happen when you leave tonight. And nothing shall happen tomorrow when you return._

He shivered, undone by her easy statement, and hurried to remove himself from the cavern as quickly as he possibly could.

* * *

What were the odds that she might be wrong?

Yugi had not been able to do more than pace restlessly for the last handful of hours. He'd been exhausted when he'd come home, had spoken only briefly to his mother and grandfather, and had disappeared into his room without eating. His mom had knocked on his door and handed him a plate that he'd left untouched for the most part. Then he'd begun to pace, chewing nails bitten down to the quick, the beds bleeding and his fingers stinging from even the briefest movement of air against them.

He glanced at the window, thinking briefly that perhaps he could climb out and head to the den again. He could check on Yami and Ishizu, could make sure she was right in her statement. He could easily calm himself down again and try to find a sliver of sleep before the sun rose again. But the thought made him cringe, as if something would go wrong _should_ he leave the house. Was someone lurking about, waiting for the chance to follow him this time? Had they been hovering, waiting and plotting?

He ground his teeth together.

He had felt that way for a while now, but there had never been any proof. And so he wondered if perhaps it was merely his paranoia which caused him to think such a thing. He licked his lips, turned on his heel again, and drummed his fingers against his arm to help reign in the stress which ate at his insides for the moment. He wanted to puke again, head spinning and mouth dry.

But what if, on the off chance, something _did_ happen?

What if the universe decided that tonight would be the night to take Yami from him forever?

Yugi could feel it in the back of his mind. Something persistent and deadly nagged at him, sensing his weakness. He ground his teeth and shook his head. No, the gods wouldn't have given him back just to take him away again, right?

But how many days had he _waited_ for them to _return_ him?

How many days had he had him _before_ he'd lost him? How long had they been together in the first place? Yugi couldn't remember any set of days. And the more he tried, the darker his perception of time got. The nagging began to grow in his skull. And his chest was beginning to feel tighter than ever. He hissed and drew a breath through his teeth. He narrowed his eyes and tried not to snarl in desperation. There were far too many fears creeping through his mind, too many questions and never enough answers.

Briefly he thought to reach his hands up and run through his hair. But instead they found his choker. It was an odd sensation, as if something were tugging there but not him himself. It was enough to make his head spin. His fingers tightened, tugging. And his breath cut off with a sharp noise, brief and painful. He gaped at the sensation, eyes burning at its touch. He loosened his grip. But the thoughts came back full force again. It was immediate and painful.

He saw a flash of bright red eyes in his mind. And there was no small splash of despair which came through his system. He shivered and his hands knotted. He choked. His choker strained in his fingers. Yugi tried for air and failed. And then he blinked against tears. Something burned within his stomach. Something lurched in his blood. Something writhed in his senses.

He wanted to puke. He wanted to lie down. He wanted to simply sit. He wanted to _breathe_. The pain in his head was a throbbing prick of needles. And his eyes were watering heavily now. He didn't know if he was crying or not yet. But he could feel them there, ready to race down his cheeks. He clenched his fingers against his choker. And then he tugged again. It was harsh enough to make the fabric cut into his skin. He could feel the sting of the pain in his neck. He bristled at the sensation. But there was also a surprising rush of energy that came as well. And the thoughts halted for a brief moment.

He released his choker. But the pressure of doing so made him tremble. And the thought of holding himself upright was excruciating, painful enough to make his body feel frozen. His lungs were too tight again. The thoughts were racing in his head. He couldn't think straight. Yami was back. But he wasn't with him. And the fact was that while _she_ could see the future, he himself couldn't.

His hands reached up for his choker again. The fabric was pulled roughly, tightly. He tightened and bunched the leather. And it cut into his flesh harder once more. It was a sensation which made him dizzier than ever. And his head was racing as before. He could not see most of his room now. There were splashes of sky blue and dark indigo. But there was not much more. His eyes squeezed shut. His hands yanked again. How the leather did not split was beyond him.

The world seemed to spin about him. The air was too tight in his chest. His hands trembled. He pulled harder. Then he tugged until his throat felt too tight to breathe. He trembled and nearly fell. The needles and pins had grown tenfold. Tightness in his throat made his heart quicken. Adrenaline raced through him. His skin felt hot and clammy. He stumbled. Then he swayed. The pain in his lungs made him bristle.

He didn't know if perhaps he was choking himself to death or his heart might give out at any moment. He felt sick, dizzy. His heart was racing. His stomach was knotting. He felt almost as if he might vomit. But another part of him was lost in the darkness. He was gasping and sputtering, choking on the air. And then he found his other hand moving to clutch at his shirt. He was fisting the material. He was tugging it harder than ever. He was dizzy. And, he thought briefly, he swore he was going to die.


	58. Genesis

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day**

 **Chapter Warnings: COPIOUS Amounts of Blood, Mentions of Anxiety, Mentions of Self-Harm, Hallucinations, Fighting, Bloodshed, Mentions of Skin Walking, Mentions of Bestiality, Symptoms of Poisoning, Gunshots, Character Death**

 **1-1-9 is the emergency number in Japan, which is why it's written like that for the story.**

 **Also, so I've thankfully NEVER had a concussion before in my life. Or at least none that I remember. But I will say I've taken some blows to the head before as a kid lmfao Anyways, my point being, I'm not a nurse and I don't have any actual experience with concussions. So if the representation here is wrong, feel free to tell me. I did it off research basis alone and sometimes that doesn't always work out one hundred percent when you're writing a scene so yeah…**

 **The bear trap would be around 25 to 50 pounds. From what I understand of bear traps is if you apply enough pressure on both sides of the trap, where the legs are, it will eventually snap open again.**

 **When a dog ends up hypothermic, the recommended treatment is to use heated blankets, warm water bottles, and warm liquids to help raise their core body temperature to at least 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Yugi uses the water in the tub to slowly raise Yami's body temperature but I'm not sure that would really be recommended for your dog.**

 **I'm SO sorry about the late update. I'm hoping I can get this ALL figured out again by the time that Thanksgiving rolls around (which thankfully I'm off for the weekend after so YAY thank the gods I can get more writing and editing done) and I SHOULD be able to start posting regularly again. Until then, I'm going to try my HARDEST to get all of this figured out for my update schedule to go back to normal. If nothing else, I'll change the update schedule to once a week until I can get everything back on track again.**

Chapter LVIII: Genesis

 _Work Log Entry LI: July, 2005 (Part III)_

 _July 26_

 _Atem shows absolutely no signs of changing again._

 _The boss is becoming extremely furious with the wolf's inabilities._

 _But there is no amount of testing which can change this._

 _He is nine years old and his body is unable to shed his human skin in favor of that of his wolf. Even with daily shocks of two million volts, Atem will not trigger the Change. Even with constant mutilation of his skin, he shows no signs._

 _There is no way for us to coax his true form out._

 _But perhaps that is for the best in all reality._

 _None of us know if his changing will trigger some mental disorder or cause him to turn feral as some of the other wolves have._

 _None of us have any idea if he will kill us all should he change into a wolf again._

"Yugi? _Yugi_? Shit, Dad, call 1-1-9—"

He grunted and screwed his eyes as tightly shut as he could. His mouth felt pasty and his stomach was rolling with pain. The small teen ignored the pain spiraling in his head, the way it seemed to bite into his skull like teeth. He grunted again when he heard others breathing and his head seemed to burn, the sensation of needles and pins digging through his brain. He huffed a breath, snorted the exhale, and coughed when he shook his head.

Hands were touching his arms, though it quickly slipped behind his shoulders and helped to raise him up. He shivered and leaned forward, raising his own hands to press against his face. He was exhausted as he licked his lips with a dry tongue. He was amazed it didn't cut his skin, the sensation much like sandpaper passing over his flesh. He shivered and shook his head, face still cupped with his hands.

 _Fuck, what was…_? Yugi shook his head again.

"Yugi…"

They sounded so terribly hesitant. He blinked against his palms, pain flickering through his nerves at such a touch. Then he blinked again, furrowed his brows, and raised his head to look towards the source in confusion.

What had happened?

Yugi could not think straight as he faced the other two in the room. It took him a long minute to recognize the fact that he was looking at his mother and grandfather in front of him. They were both terrified, considering him with shocked expressions.

He blinked up at them, confused and bewildered as the seconds passed. "What…?" He could barely recognize his own voice; it was so scratchy and stuck to his throat as it scraped its way through his lungs. He swallowed hard, blinking, and then scrunched his eyes shut tightly again. He tried for his voice a second time, croaking pathetically. "What… What happened…?"

His mom was staring at him with a more cautious, but still terrified look on her face. She blinked at him, drew him closer to her in a fashion that almost stunned the small teen. Then he felt her fingers, shifting and sorting themselves through his long hair. He could feel the skin on his scalp pulsating with pain under each soft shift of her nails. And it made him dizzy as he shook his head slowly and peered at the carpet through his lashes.

He didn't remember when he had lowered his hands completely. But they were in his lap. He could feel the fibers of his jeans there, soft and cotton. He shivered and swallowed hard, confused by the sensation.

"Jesus," his mom hissed, a sharp noise which made his head throb as he closed his eyes again. He shook his head but the pressure on his neck made his bones ache. And so he swallowed thickly and shivered as she continued to move her fingers through his long hair. His scalp ached where she brushed against the back of his head near the nape of his neck. He cringed at the sensation, a full-bodied flinch which nearly threw him out of her arms altogether.

She had tightened her grip on him instinctively, however. And so she'd managed to bring him closer to her rather than allow him to fall altogether. And so Yugi was pressed almost entirely into her chest, his head drooping and eyes clenched shut.

"There's dried blood all over his scalp," she was saying, but Yugi couldn't think who she was talking to at the moment. It took him a few seconds to truly open his eyes, head turning slightly towards his grandpa where he stood a handful of steps away. The small teen grimaced when she prodded again, reaching a hand up to push at hers uncomfortably. "Stop moving."

He biased. "It hurts."

"That's because it was bleeding," she snapped at him. She swatted his hands away when he tried again. He squirmed with a yelp that he swore sounded like a dog before trying to move away from her entirely. His heart was in his throat and his mouth was still so terribly dry… "I can't find the wound under all the dried blood."

"Do you still want me to call 1-1-9?"

Yugi whined, but his voice came out firmer than he'd initially suspected it might. "No," he argued. "You don't need to call an ambulance. I'm okay."

But his voice was sluggish leaving his mouth and he was so tired it made him want to puke. He swallowed hard, shaking his head, but his mom tightened her grip and held him in place once more. He grimaced and reached for her wrists again, but she swatted his hands aside and frowned at him pointedly though he did not see it.

"Yes, I think we should call them."

" _No_."

"Let's at least clean the wound before we call an ambulance, okay?" Sugoroku suggested after a long moment of quiet between them all. Yugi struggled in her grip again, sluggish but quickly regaining a sense of wits as the seconds passed. It occurred to him rather abruptly that his mom could not find the wound because the cut had closed already. And his grandfather was watching him with a similar expression of awareness and shock now as well. "We can at least see if it's as bad as you think."

"Dad, _look_ at the _floor_. Do you not _see_ this? Do you not see how much fucking _blood_ there is? It's soaked! You can't honestly believe that the wound is superficial!"

"Head wounds tend to bleed a lot—"

"Are you really telling me this right now?"

Yugi scoffed at the annoyed twinge to her voice. Her fingers continued to press on the tender flesh of his head and Yugi felt sick to his stomach as he considered the truth of the statement. If she truly noticed that the wound was already shut, he was not sure what he might do. He was not sure of how much blood he might have lost and what lay on the floor. He had not had the chance to look. And Yugi did not believe for even a moment that a mild hit would have knocked him cold as he had seemed formerly.

Perhaps he could claim he'd gotten a concussion. But then he did not think he'd have to _claim_ it. It was more likely that he truly suffered from one, considering how long it had taken him to regain his sense of surroundings to begin with. There was nothing natural about that. He did not think he'd ever had such a sensation before, even amidst growing up…

"All right," his mom said quietly. "I'll wash your hair and see if I can find the wound…"

Yugi felt his breath quickening at the thought. Was there a way to cut himself there to match the potential blow? He shuddered, heart in his ears and mouth drier than he'd ever assumed it capable of becoming. He felt small and sick and incredibly weak for a split second, the world seemingly crashing down around him.

"I can do it," his grandfather stated after a few long heartbeats. Yugi felt as if he might choke as he glanced between the two of them. His mom paused and turned to look at him with sharpened blue eyes, assessing her father. "I mean it. It's not like I couldn't—"

"And why am I going to have you do it when I can instead? There's no reason for you to do it when I can." Kasumi was speaking through her teeth now, eyes sharp as she turned briefly back to Yugi. Her son was awkwardly looking between them, eyes wide and concerned about the tension he must have sensed in the air. "Besides, I have the medical experience—"

"You're just washing his hair. After that you'd be looking for the wound to find where he'd gotten hurt. You said that you had to clean his head first, right? So why don't I do it and then you can check when I'm done?"

Yugi was silent as they looked at each other, unsure of what more to do with himself than simply sit there and watch. His mother and grandfather considered each other for a long minute and a half. He felt that speaking would be a damning idea considering her attitude towards the situation. And so he kept his mouth shut as his two guardians stared at one another and seemed to speak without words. Finally, reluctantly, his mom turned to him, considering his face for a long minute or so. Then she ran her fingers over his head again, his features flinching beneath the touch, and the two of them stared at one another blankly.

"Fine," she commented after a long minute of reluctance. She sighed softly and shook her head. Then she got to her feet, giving her father an annoyed glance. "I'm going to check the moment you're done cleaning his hair."

It sounded more like a threat than a simple statement and the quick glance she cast towards Yugi cemented that idea for him. The small teen grimaced, ignoring the way his scalp seemed to twitch beneath his fingers as he looked away and ran a hand through his hair. His mom exited the room, no doubt lurking just outside the door though Yugi was too exhausted to try to listen for her there, and his grandpa moved a little closer to him, sighing softly.

"Okay, Yugi, let's do this, okay?" He said quietly, in a tone that was more flustered than frustrated by any means. Yugi had the abrupt thought that perhaps his grandpa was somewhat unnerved by the idea of what this task might entail. He wondered if perhaps he assumed he might lash out, some kind of feverish werewolf reaction that would leave him wounded. The small teen moved to stumble to his feet and, for the first time since he'd become infected, the severity of his disorientation caused him to hold an arm out to retain his balance. He stumbled, caught himself uneasily, and thought briefly towards what it was that had caused him to faint.

His grandpa frowned faintly, sighing and reaching up to rub at the back of his own head uncomfortably. "Well, this is going to be a fun thing to do for the day, huh?" he commented in an almost lazy manner. Yugi blinked at him, shook his head, and then ignored the spike of pain which came into his neck. He knew better than to show such a weakness, if only for the sake of not being subjected to more worry on his mother's behalf. He didn't want to go to the hospital. He didn't want to have to deal with finding a way to explain what he'd done.

He suppressed a shiver, biting his cheek hard to keep from thinking too hard about such a thing. But it came in a mental flash, the harsh tugging of the choker around his neck, pulling it taut until it pressed hard on the nape of his neck and then his fingers had twisted and he'd choked himself harder than ever, attempting perhaps to collapse his own windpipe. Yugi felt sick for a moment as he looked down again. There was a pretty large puddle of blood where he'd been lying formerly, which alarmed him only briefly. The werewolf gene would have allowed him to survive the blood loss even if it had been significant.

He didn't think for a moment that it was from this that had caused his dizziness. Maybe it was the asphyxiation rather than the blood loss itself. And it had to be whatever it was that he must have hit his head on that had caused him to stumble and brought such disorientation to his senses. But he figured that it was easier to deal with this than it was to truly consider the fact that somehow, in some way, his lycanthropy might have failed him in rejuvenating his broken senses.

"So…I guess now you're going to have to actually clean my hair and then Mom will check for any wound," he stated, reaching up to bite at his nails. In his state of unconsciousness, his nails had failed to heal and he nearly hissed in pain from the touch of his teeth to the bed of them. He wished for a moment that he had never been so foolish as to try to open his mouth and do such a thing to begin with. He licked his lips, glanced at the bathroom briefly, and then towards the pool of blood once more. "I don't think she's going to find anything though."

"You heal that quickly?"

He grunted, at first confused by the question. And he felt wary as he turned back to him with a grimace and considered how he was truly meant to answer him in the first place. Yugi tilted his head, then looked at Sugoroku from the corner of his eye. "It depends on how deep the wound was in the first place. But I don't think this was a big wound to begin with, so it healed a lot faster than it would have otherwise."

The elderly Motou blinked wide eyes, a sense of shock and then something akin amazement coming through his features. He smiled slightly, that combination of emotions dancing for a brief moment throughout his dark plum gaze. "That's…amazing."

"It's also a pain in the ass in a situation like this," he snorted in dismissal, slightly scornful of his brief excitement before shaking his head in near annoyance. He wanted, for the smallest of seconds, to reach up and tug on his choker in a nervous fidget. But the thought made him almost recoil and so he simply dug what remained of his broken nails into his palm and licked his lips. "Mom is going to freak out if she can't find something there."

His grandpa was silent for a long minute and a half, then awkwardly scratched at his jaw. The movements in the corner of his eye made Yugi turn his attention back before crossing his arms and facing the puddle again. His mind was racing and his grandfather remained quiet behind him for a long moment. The unspoken answer lingered between them for a handful of minutes and then Yugi glanced at him with a shake of his head.

"I don't think it'll work," he finally answered. "I think it'll heal basically right after it's done."

Sugoroku blinked wide eyes, surprised by the statement. "You think so?"

Yugi shrugged. "It would make sense for it to heal that quickly. I mean, thinking about it, what kind of healing ability would it be if it didn't defend against deep head wounds?" he snorted. He hesitated for a moment, bit his lip, and then turned away again. "It wouldn't make any sense for me to have healing capabilities if it had such weak points like that. Besides, I don't know how long it took to heal the first time."

There was a long minute of silence, then his grandfather sighed and shook his head. "You weren't answering the door when your mom knocked on it. She freaked out when you didn't answer when she called your name and so then she came in here. And she found you on the floor with the blood like that. I don't know what happened, but she'd been trying to get you to answer the door for at least ten minutes before I came to see what was going on."

He blinked. "You weren't with her when she first knocked?"

"I was still asleep before I heard her calling for you."

There was a brief moment of quiet, in which Yugi blinked and lowered his eyes to take in his grandfather's attire. He grimaced immediately after, feeling sick to his stomach. His grandpa was dressed in thermal pajamas, blue and black plaid. Yugi wondered how long he'd slept, if perhaps he had woken so soon _only_ because of what had happened. He frowned and tilted his head, then turned to look over his shoulder at the bathroom for a moment.

"I'm sorry…" He couldn't think of anything else to say, then shrugged haphazardly and fought the impulse to wrap his arms around himself and close his eyes tightly. He felt as if he were much younger, maybe less than half his own age, being scorned by a parent for taking one cookie too many or perhaps acting out in public. He frowned, nibbled his lip, and dug his fingers into his arm where it was not visible to his grandpa when he crossed them.

"What happened?"

"I think I hit my head," Yugi answered with a small shrug, feeling self-conscious and unbelievably small for a brief moment. He had to fight from digging his fingers further into his pajama sleeves and leaving bruises on his skin. Instead he chewed the inside of his cheek. "I guess I fainted or something."

" _Fainted_?" Sugoroku repeated incredulously. Yet, when he looked at Yugi, somehow he found himself believing in such a statement. His grandson refused to meet his eyes and the alarms were going off in his head as he considered him curiously now. The elderly Motou drew in a deep breath. "Why do you think you fainted?"

Yugi shrugged and gestured. "You guys found me on the ground. I had a head wound at some point. And my head still hurts. I'm going to say it was from fainting."

"Okay, so why do you think you fainted? What caused it?"

The small teen still would not look at him. He tilted his head away, frowned briefly, and refused to raise his eyes from the carpet. But Sugoroku could not tell where he was looking, at the blood stain itself or the carpet fibers.

"I don't know."

His grandfather fell silent for a long time, staring at him. "You don't know?" he echoed, his voice deliberately slow and stretched out, drawing at Yugi's nerves as he knew it would. "Why wouldn't you know? _How_ wouldn't you know?"

Yugi shot him an annoyed look from the corner of his eye. And for once, as Sugoroku looked at him, he swore he saw a stranger staring back at him. It was an intense, almost hateful expression, his eyes glinting with anger and a harsh disinterest which made them darker than he'd ever seen. But he could see as well the brightness of knowledge he should never have owned. He could see it as if it were a deep gleaming center within his darkened eyes, something that looked unnatural and ethereal and perhaps immortal as well. He was winded at the sight, instinctively forcing away a flinch.

And then the teenage boy looked away. His expression was still sour, however. His jaw was set and his eyes were narrowed faintly. He kept his eyes on the carpet and he looked more annoyed than anything else for the moment. Then he snorted, shook his head, and glanced away from the fibers and towards the door. Sugoroku could see the way the thoughts danced behind his eyes, shadows moving instinctively as the cogs turned there in the dark. Then he blinked, raised his head slightly, and faced him with a slightly flustered expression.

"Mom is trying to listen at the door now," he mumbled so softly that Sugoroku almost did not hear him. The elderly Motou instinctively turned his head to look over his shoulder. He couldn't hear his daughter moving about behind the heavy frame of wood but he did not have Yugi's keen senses either. Even in his youth Sugoroku had never known such incredible height to such a thing. He'd been able to hear more than some others were capable of catching, but at times he was deaf to their words as well.

"Well, then I guess it's time you got in the tub, huh?"

Yugi grimaced, glanced at the door again, took a small look at the blood on the floor, sighed, and then turned to make his way into his bathroom. He was exhausted by the effort, however, and when he got to the door his head felt light and heavy somehow all at once. He felt sick and small for a brief moment, shaking his head and frowning briefly. Then he turned the knob, stepped inside, and glanced about himself for a moment.

His grandpa was quiet, considering him with a puzzled expression as the teenager looked over his shoulder. "Aren't you going to get a change of clothes?" he asked quietly. He frowned, arching a brow, and Yugi blinked as the words connected in his head.

They stared at each other for a moment. Yugi swore he could count the wrinkles and lines he'd brought on his face in just this handful of minutes. He sighed loudly and shook his head in annoyance. He didn't have the energy to bother with the task of dragging himself out to the bedroom again and digging through drawers for his clothes. So he grumbled, "No, I'm just going to jump in the tub, you're going to clean my hair, and then I'll change into dry clothes afterwards."

The effort to move about was too exhausting to bother with.

And Yugi didn't want to see how his grandfather might react to his stumbling, hesitating stupidity at the moment. So he simply shook his head and moved to turn on the faucet. The knobs squeaked. Pinpricks formed behind his eyes, sharp and painful. Little splinters of light flickered across the backs of his eyelids. He hissed at such a sensation, shook his head, and adjusted the temperature once more. The heat made him feel dizzy so he made it colder. But then his fingers felt almost numb due to the touch of ice water to his skin and so he fumbled with the knobs once more.

He was flustered and annoyed by then, shaking his head in frustration. And, fed up, he finally simply plugged the drain and waited for it to fill. His grandpa had finally drifted into the room and was hesitantly standing near the edge of the sink. Yugi didn't bother to glance at him. His head was throbbing too hard to do so. He felt tired as he leaned forward, moving to take a seat in the water. When he initially touched it he nearly puked at such a sensation, the water almost frigid and yet somehow too hot against his nerves. The small teen shook it off, huffed in frustration, and ignored the way his pajamas felt far too heavy against his frame.

"You look really uncomfortable."

"I don't like wet clothes."

"So then why don't you take them off? You know I've seen it all at one point or another. I used to change your diapers every now and then when you were younger, you know."

"And?" Yugi shot him a flustered, annoyed look as his cheeks heated faintly and he scowled at him briefly with a shake of his head. "I don't want to take my clothes off. I want this over with as soon as possible. Then I'll change my clothes and it'll be done."

Sugoroku stared at him for a long moment. "Are you sure you're all right?"

Yugi didn't have the heart to snap at him that he didn't think "okay" defined how he felt at the moment. And, instinctively, he felt the impulse instead to sneer at him bitterly that he'd never claimed to be such in the first place. Rather he nodded curtly, drew in a deep breath, and sighed out his nose.

"I'm fine. I'm just…tired, I guess."

"Fine" seemed an easier term to fall upon rather than "okay". He was not sure honestly how the two terms might differ in his emotional definitions. But he did not want to bother with exploring them either. It was not worth it and he was too tired to truly care. He shook his head, flustered, and flexed his fingers where they rested under the water. They felt oddly detached from himself, as if his nerves were cut off entirely and he had no idea when or why it had ever come to happen in the first place.

"Maybe when your mother is done checking if you've got a concussion you should lay down and rest for a while," his grandpa said after a long moment. He went about moving around to find a container to grab some water and seemingly found himself at a loss. Yugi blinked, stared at him for a moment, and then shrugged slightly as he turned away.

"You can just dump the toothbrush and unscrew the top." He felt sick for a moment as he remembered instructing Yami to do the same and quickly pushed the thought away before he could dwell on the realization. If he thought too hard about it, he might spark a response again and he did not want to have to deal with the aftermath so soon. It wasn't worth it in the slightest, especially when his grandfather might see as well. He was not in the mood to have to try to dodge away from the panic he'd felt the night before. And he had no idea how he might react to it again when he had so clearly done such a drastic thing in order to end it the night before. The very thought of choking himself was horrifying, something that he had never considered or suffered through before. The realization made him feel sick and small for a brief moment and he shook his head to brush it away.

He could hold off if he was just careful enough. If he didn't focus on those thoughts, he could…

Yugi drew in a breath through his nose, counting off a handful of seconds. Then he fought off a somewhat estranged urge to nod at himself and exhaled through his mouth. He could get through this if he did not focus on anything more than a few moments at a time. And, when he was done, he could run to the woods and investigate and check on Yami again.

He turned to his grandpa as the elderly Motou began to lay his toothbrush on the rim of the sink and put aside the lid of the small plastic unit as well. The older male finally came to his side after what felt like hours, quiet but with that same familiar tiny whistle to each breath he inhaled. Yugi knew and recognized this and the steady intake of air did well to calm his nerves. The small teen could have trembled with relief at the thought before he shrugged it off again.

"Let's go ahead and get this done as soon as possible. Mom is going to get suspicious otherwise."

The hair washing took over thirty minutes. Yugi cringed and flinched each time his grandpa touched too close to the knot that was forming in the back of his head, along the bottom of his skull. It was an annoying, painful sensation, and he nearly snarled each time. And his grandfather would pause, hesitate, mumble an apology, and try again. But even the slightest touch made him flinch away and the mildest hint of pressure caused him to want to vomit.

His grandpa had done well enough to clean his scalp, even with his constant action of recoiling from his touch, and had sighed uncomfortably upon seeing very clearly that the wound had healed itself. The dried blood was long gone and the skin was healed, but the flesh was raw and red and there was a nasty bump that remained there. It was disturbing to see it and he was sure his daughter would not be thrilled to see it. He wondered briefly if she would test him for a concussion, realized immediately that she would, and frowned as he looked at his grandson.

Yugi was not paying him any attention anymore. He'd gotten changed into a different set of clothes, as if he were about to leave the house rather than stand around and listen or try to recover from a possible ailment. Instead he toweled his hair, flinched at each tug of his scalp, and hissed long and slowly from between his teeth. Then he would visibly rally himself up again, ignoring the pain any longer, and set about doing something or other that he deemed worthy of his attention.

They both knew the game he was playing, how Yugi meant to procrastinate until Sugoroku would not say anything else to him about it. He didn't want to talk about the flinching. He didn't want to have to deal with him when his mother would be the real battle he'd have to face in only a handful of minutes to begin with.

The small teen wandered out of the room after a few long minutes, dizzy and tired and on slightly shaky legs. When he stepped into the kitchen, his mom stood up from the table immediately. The speed unnerved him and his stomach knotted painfully at the realization. She truly wasn't going to give him any time to gather his bearings before she investigated for herself.

"Ow, easy," he snapped before he could stop himself. But he realized that she had barely touched him the moment her lips fell into a tight line and her eyes narrowed as they regarded his for a brief moment. They looked at each other for a handful of seconds, Yugi feeling incredibly stupid now for protesting like that. He should have just let her check and kept his mouth shut.

But he couldn't stop flinching either. And he was sure that was a red flag in her mind as well. So he kept his mouth shut, ignored the impulse to flinch away again, and pressed his tongue into the roof of his mouth. The action was forceful enough to make his head throb even harder. And he tried not to cringe and pull away again.

He could sense it, the way she was taking note of every little thing in his behavior now. It was amazing to him, terrible and horrifying, that he could tell this with such little difficulty to begin with. He felt sick for a moment, tired and somewhat anxious. He needed to leave. He had to go and see Yami—

"You head is swollen but I can't find a cut."

Yugi shrugged slightly as she sorted through his hair some more to see the wound and clear away some of the strands for a more proper sighting of it. She frowned and he anxiously resisted biting his already broken nails until they bled once more.

"That doesn't worry you at all?"

"It does, but it's already happened. I can't do anymore than that as it is." Yugi nearly shrugged again but instead closed his eyes to prevent the way the light burned his retinas and his stomach knotted furiously. His nerves seemed to be burning away beneath his skin and the way his head felt was too light to remain attached to his neck properly.

"You've got a concussion," his mom stated with no uncertainty in her voice. She sounded almost smug with this assessment and Yugi blinked in confusion before slowly turning his head and forcing his eyes open again.

"Huh?"

"You can't even keep your eyes open because the light hurts them too much. And you're exhausted and your coordination is terrible right now." Yugi blinked at her again, wishing briefly that he could deny that statement to begin with, but then Kasumi watched him with darkened blue eyes and shook her head. And he was well aware that she knew, that she was simply assessing it and announcing her findings for the sake of telling him that she knew. He frowned at her. She watched him with a cool gaze. "You have to at least stay home for a couple of hours."

Yugi blinked. "Huh?"

Kasumi sighed loudly and took a seat at the table again, not bothering to look at him now. "I already know you're going to try to run off the second you get the chance. But you need to stay here for at least two hours. I need to make sure it doesn't get any worse." She turned her head now, eyeing him from her peripheral and narrowing her gaze in annoyance. "You can't go rushing off with a concussion like that. It could kill you."

The small teen stared at him for a long minute and a half. Then he frowned and tilted his head with a somewhat dismissive expression upon his face. He grunted, conceding to her statement, and moved to take a seat across from her. Then he folded his arms on the table and closed his eyes as he put his chin down on them. There was a sharp prickle of pain in the back of his neck but it was not enough to concern him in any manner. So he ignored it and licked his lips, watching her for a long moment.

"So, do you want to tell us what happened or is that just going to be a mystery?"

He smirked slightly at her condescending tone, shaking his head briefly. "I think I got overwhelmed." That seemed the simplest way to say it, right? He didn't open his eyes, breathing easy but his body exhausted beyond the tightened strain of his lungs. "It became a panic attack and I guess I fainted during it. I don't know past that."

"A panic attack?" Her voice had grown a little sharper. "About what?"

The small teen fought off the urge to blurt out, "Yami" and instead drew in a deep breath and shook his head. "Yami came back. And we met up for a few minutes. I guess I got overwhelmed after I saw him and came home. It made me really anxious because he won't tell me where he is right now or where he went before when he left Japan. He wouldn't tell me anything so I guess it finally got to me."

Yugi nearly shivered. It wasn't that Yami _wouldn't_ tell him, but far more that he _couldn't_.

"Yami is back?" It was said slowly, in a tone that was neither happy nor friendly. Yugi opened an eye now, tension building in his shoulders at the idea of such a thing. He swallowed hard, feeling sick to his stomach at the moment. Why did she sound so upset? It was not as if Yami had caused any of his depression through his own means. He hadn't meant to make anything happen like that.

"Yeah, he came back yesterday."

"And he won't tell you where he was before?"

"No."

"And you didn't think to tell us that he was back beforehand? You honestly didn't even consider texting your grandfather or me to tell us that? You realize that Mazaki is still looking for a way to find info on what happened during the arson—"

"Yami won't talk to the police."

"What?" She narrowed her eyes at him harshly now. "Why do you say that?"

"Because I'm not going to ask him to." Yugi drew in a deep breath, a light feeling burrowing beneath his skull at the idea. He licked his lips, frowned faintly, and then narrowed his eyes briefly. "There's no way I'm going to ask him to talk to the police."

"Really, Yugi? You're not going to ask your _only_ alibi about speaking to the police in order to clear your name? Are you really telling me this right now? You realize that if you're arrested—"

"He can't make an arrest until he has evidence to prove my being there or anything of that nature." He said it firmly but there was an undertone of slight anxiety which crept beneath the words as well. He felt small and weak and sick for a moment, thinking briefly of the way that he had been in that restaurant. He had attacked Fuwa there. He had caught his crotch on fire. He had _burned_ him with candle flame and his own alcohol. And it was amazing to him that it dragged him down now as he considered such a thing. It was enough to make him dizzy and his breathing tighter than ever. "And Yami is already really freaked out about whatever was going on when he left the first time. I don't have enough details to even try to ask him in the first place. And I don't want to scare him off _again_. Mom, if he runs—"

"If he runs, then he runs again. You don't seem to understand the situation right now, Yugi! He's the only thing that's standing between you and possibly being sent to jail—"

"I understand that!"

"Then _act_ like it," she spat. Her hand had slammed into the table and Yugi grimaced at the way the impact rang in his ears for a long minute. He suppressed a shiver, undone by the sensation of the furniture trembling beneath his weight as well. Then he grimaced and shook his head, watching her. She was scowling at him, unable to do more than seethe for a brief moment. Then, hissing from behind her teeth, she snapped, "You're acting like Yami is worth more than your freedom, Yugi."

He didn't respond, heart in his throat for a brief moment. He had a sudden thought, one that drifted in and out of his head in a split second. And it was enough to leave him feeling cold and hollow, but he could not focus on it more than for that brief second or two. There was a dangerous realization that had crept through him, one that he could not face without trembling before it. And so he forced it back, away into the darkest recesses of his thoughts for the moment. Then he drew in a breath, narrowed his eyes, and shook his head.

"Mom, I won't pressure him to do that."

" _Why not_? He's a friend of yours, right? So then why _wouldn't_ he _want_ to keep you out of jail?"

The small teen kept quiet for a long time, then shook his head and closed his eyes again. The pain was sparking in his head, the devastating thought lingering there at the edges of his subconscious and trying its hardest to burrow into the forefront. He suppressed it again, feeling sickly and small.

"He would, but I think I can handle it even _without_ his help."

"Oh yeah? You really think so? You really think for even a moment that you'll be able to do that?" Kasumi sneered, hateful of his dismissive statement. His eyes were squeezed shut, his cheek pressed forcefully into his arm where they were both folded tightly atop the table. The small teen shook his head and didn't respond for a long minute and she almost wondered if perhaps he would not say anything for as long as it took for her to drop the subject.

But then, as she was tempted to snap at him once more, to truly try to get him to understand, Yugi mumbled, "I think so, yes. I think I can figure out a way to prove it without having to deal with dragging Yami into the situation. Besides, there's no proof and he can't do much of anything without it. He has no proof whatsoever that I've done anything. And, if I really need to, I'll get Yami to do it. But until I'm forced to do that, I have no plans at all to even tell him that. I don't want to make him feel pressured to do something like that for my own sake."

She frowned and tilted her head, then sighed roughly through her teeth. "Yugi," she stressed, exhausted by the weakness he seemed to display at the moment, "you don't seem to be taking this seriously at all."

"I don't want to think about it."

It had to be the most truthful thing he'd said in what felt like months. Kasumi could sense it and it shook her mildly as she stared back at him in surprise. The small teen had opened his eyes but had not lifted his cheek from his arm. He looked devastated, tired, as if he might puke altogether. He looked too young, too weak and perhaps even smaller than she'd ever seen him. She had never seen the lost expression he wore before now and it made her hesitate to even face him for more than a handful of moments.

She swallowed hard, staring at him curiously, and then shook her head and bit the inside of her cheek. It was already ravaged and sore, the skin torn drastically. And she almost flinched at the simple touch of her molars there. It was enough to make her hesitate and look briefly towards the doorway where her father was standing watching them both.

"What if Mazaki sets his sights on Yami?" she finally asked, turning to look at her son. Yugi blinked and raised his gaze to stare at her with something much stronger than he'd previously possessed a second ago. His eyes had hardened drastically, harsh enough to make her nearly shiver. "What do you plan to do if he does find Yami on his own and tries to talk to him?"

"He's not going to find Yami," he stated simply, in a tone that left no room for discussion. "Because, as far as Anzu's dad is concerned, he _doesn't exist_. I didn't tell him a name. I told him that he ran away. I told him that he was on the run from a jaded ex-partner. As far as I'm concerned, it's enough to say that he shouldn't be suspicious of any friends that I have around me that aren't Anzu, Honda or Jonouchi."

"All you have to do is have him say that he was there, with you, at the damn motel down the street. It's not a big deal, Yugi. That's _all_ you have to do in order to fix the entire situation! You won't even have to worry if you just do that—"

"That's too bad. It's not happening." He closed his eyes tightly again, ignoring her for a moment. Then he sighed loudly, shivered, and shook his head slightly. "I think I need something to drink."

"Are you going to puke?"

"No." He scrunched his eyes shut tighter. "I just want some water."

When Kasumi made no move to grab him some, Sugoroku found his stomach churning with despair. Yugi had not opened his eyes and his mother looked beyond annoyed with the request, as if she would rather he keep talking than give him a cup of water. He realized abruptly that she was considering the idea that she was trying rather stupidly to keep him from having other means of fidgeting and hiding away from answering questions.

So he moved around her and headed for the cabinets. His daughter shot him a slightly flustered look, then turned back to Yugi with a shake of her head. "How does your head feel?" she inquired after a long moment, cutting through the silence that was pounding within the teen's skull. She frowned, tilting her head, and watched as his lip twitched as if to snarl like a dog might.

"Here."

Yugi grunted when he shifted his position to sit up, the action slow and prolonged for the briefest of moments. Then he reached for the cup his grandfather had provided him and took a small sip. He looked exhausted more than anything, as if he were dying of thirst and frustration as well. It was amazing to Kasumi how sickly he looked now when he had not quite achieved that feat formerly.

Had speaking about Yami done that to him?

Was that truly a possibility?

Did Yami truly have such a grip on him like that?

Did he truly have such a hold of him?

The thought was terrifying to her.

When had Yugi become so dependent upon someone else like that? She'd raised him to know when to depend on someone else _and_ work well on his own beyond that. It horrified her to think that perhaps all of this had gone down the drain in the time he'd spent with Yami.

Or perhaps he had feigned being independent before then in order to keep her from noticing a potential problem he'd never tried to acknowledge. It was a startling clarity that had struck her—that perhaps Yugi had simply hidden away his codependent nature before. Had he been able to hide it behind his friendship with Anzu? Had that been what had hidden it from her sight before now?

Because, surely, one person was not capable of changing such a thing in her son, right? Surely that was not enough to completely alter his personality. Surely that couldn't have been enough to make him dodge away and hide as he seemed to now. Because that made no sense to her otherwise. One couldn't become so attached to a single person and change so completely— _right_?

Kasumi nearly sobbed with growing dismay, but forced herself to suppress it in an effort to pay more attention to the way Yugi cradled the cup in his hands and looked too exhausted to do more than stare. "Does your head still hurt?"

"My head is throbbing," Yugi admitted, raising his eyes briefly with a shake of his head before licking his lips and taking another sip of water. He glanced at his grandfather and then back to her again, sighing quietly so that his breath misted against the clear glass. "I kind of want to sleep."

"You can sleep after the two hours are up. Until then, you have to stay awake." She narrowed her eyes. "I need to know if it's something that you need to go to the hospital for. If you're not okay to stand and move around after the next couple of hours, you're going to have to go."

Yugi nodded slightly and his eyes became hooded with exhaustion. "Yeah, yeah, I know," he grumbled. He'd never had a concussion before. But, once, a few days after he'd been in school and they'd spoken about concussions and head trauma, he'd panicked upon hitting his head. He'd thought of brain bleed and grown nearly hysterical, then read up quickly about concussions and things like it. He still remembered the smallest details—two hours to observe, throbbing pain, nausea, momentary memory loss and things of that nature. It made him somewhat dizzy to consider as he drew in a deep breath and then exhaled loudly. "I'm well aware."

"At least you seem to understand _something_."

Sugoroku snorted at the snide remark. Yugi rolled his eyes spitefully.

* * *

Yugi found that his head was throbbing again as he padded through the snow. He'd taken a quick hour-long nap after the two hours had passed. His mom had checked on him before he'd left and the pain from the initial bump had faded. But his headache was still there, though he'd managed to suppress the reaction of closing his eyes tightly and pressing his palms into his face to hide behind the shadows of his own skin. Yugi had been forced to breathe through the thinnest slit of an opening between his lips. He was exhausted and tired and his belly ached as he continued forward.

He could not pick up speed for the sake of his limbs aching and his head throbbing harder. He hissed between his incisors and flicked his ears as he tried to think straight for a moment. His movements were sloppy. He could feel himself stumbling each time he paced forward. He could feel it every time he nearly collapsed after another step. And, at times, he moved so far sideways in his limp that he nearly zigzagged in a new direction. Yugi pricked his ears forward, flicked them back, and lowered his head. He breathed out roughly, closed his eyes for a moment, and then stumbled forward once more.

He shivered, dizzy, and for a brief second he wondered at the direction he was headed. His head was throbbing so hard and his paws felt incredibly heavy as he panted. He wondered if he was going the right direction, if he was truly headed towards the mountain and its cavern. He could not hear Yami moving about nor did he detect even the slightest hint of Ishizu nearby. So he wondered if perhaps he had gone the wrong way entirely.

He caught the vaguest sense of movement from the corner of his eye. Immediately he turned towards it. It had looked black from his peripheral. And, as he sought its source, he found almost nothing. Yugi pricked and flicked his ears, then tilted his head and curled his lips briefly. What the hell was that noise? He heard it vaguely, an intense and harsh sound like water being forced to sizzle within a skillet on the stove. He bristled at the sound, narrowed his eyes, and sought to listen once more for it.

A sense of fear crept through him, harsh and vibrant, and it cut through him as he shivered. His fur rose into a higher bristle, his ears pricking forward once more. He shivered, his shoulders rising and squaring themselves. His lips curled back. He stumbled forward a step, claws braced in the snow for a brief second or two. Then he snarled softly, flattening his ears back against his skull.

Then he wondered if perhaps he knew the sound in the snow. He wondered if perhaps he knew the source of the sizzling noise and it made him bristle further. Had he ever heard it before? He did not recall it in the slightest, he knew, but it still made him wonder. Was it possible that some part of him knew it? Or was it an impossibility that he was simply curious about it? Yugi bristled further, nearly snarled, and then forced himself to pick up his pace slightly.

The stumbling was almost enough to make him trip over himself. He felt his chin touch the snow with the way his legs collapsed beneath him for a brief moment. Yugi pricked his ears forward again. Then he pressed himself lower into the ice. The sizzling noise had picked up speed. He could hear it hissing like steam rising from a pot and it made his skin crawl for a brief moment. He looked around himself, alarmed and unable to stop himself from quivering. He shook himself out after a long minute of silence. Whatever had been causing the snow to heat up as it had had stopped its movements altogether.

Yugi bristled, flicked his ears, and then tried again for his feet. A brief feeling of fear became a heavy rush through his blood. His throbbing head was pricked with painful and insistence spears of aching urgency. He bristled further, squared his shoulders even as he dashed forward on stumbling legs, and then shook himself out again.

He thought vaguely of rushing home again. It would not be too much a stretch. But he had the harsh realization that they would simply follow him there. He bristled again, as he knew that his family would be gone, but he did not know that he could defend himself properly in the first place. Being at the house might give him the home advantage, but he doubted that it truly counted for anything. It came down to the fact that with his head as it was, he did not think for even a moment that he would manage to keep himself from falling over and getting hurt rather drastically.

Yugi faltered, stumbling once more. Then he struggled to his feet and ran as quickly as he could on wobbling paws and sloppy balance. He fell over himself on the edge of an incline, dropping head over paws. He rolled and rolled for a few minutes, then landed harshly on his belly. He stumbled to his feet, brought himself slowly to his fully height, and limped forward a few steps.

And, as he realized the instinct which burned beneath his skin was a drastic flaring burst of panic, Yugi felt his head snap around. His lips curled back drastically, his face hideously disfigured as he showed off each of his long sharp teeth. He bristled furiously, feeling his shoulders square and his tail tucking itself beneath his legs. He did not know that he could fight properly and win. He did not know that he would survive if it was a wolf of any kind coming at him from the trees now.

He snarled furiously.

Bright green, aquamarine almost, glinted at him against a dark gray and black face. Yugi bristled furiously, turning more pointedly towards it. The animal was almost cat-like in the way it bounded forward. For a brief moment Yugi was stunned by the sight. It truly looked like a large black and gray cat, perhaps a mountain lion or a puma or something of that nature. It had the rounded ears. It had the shortened muzzle, a nose gleaming black. It had the huge paws, which acted much like his own in their efforts to keep the animal from sinking in the snow. A long tail trailed after huge, bunched muscles.

Yugi pricked his ears forward, deciding now more than ever that he could not make a run for it again. The reality of it had come in a brief second of truth. He had come then and there to the truth of it all—the cavern was nearby. The den was close by. And he could not allow this animal to come closer to it by any means. He bristled, opened his jaws as wide as they could go, and bore each tooth in hideous disdain. The gray and black cat—for yes, he realized, it _was_ in fact a feline of some kind—launched itself.

The coloring was completely wrong for any cat naturally born. And the way the ice sizzled beneath its paws was far from normal in any sense. He'd never seen it before in his life. But he remembered the way blood had steamed within the cold air as well. And he wondered briefly how much body heat this animal possessed. But then he thought abruptly of Morrigan, of the way she had seemingly shed her skin of another animal entirely and become born anew beneath the form of another creature altogether. He thought of the way Yami had overheated at the warehouse.

And he wondered if perhaps the hellhound could change as Morrigan could, if perhaps the wolf had shed his skin and become a cat like this. He bristled furiously for a moment, then lunged forward as well. He did not catch the animal in front of him at all. Instead they both landed heavily in a heap. He was thrown beneath the weight. The cat was huge, several times his own body mass, he felt. But his muscles had steeled themselves instinctively. And so he did not falter beneath the impact for more than a second. But he was terribly winded by the blow that was tossed upon his shoulder.

He rolled a few feet. Then he stumbled for his feet, catching his balance once more. Then he stood again. His legs felt weak for a brief moment. The pain in his head was enough to make him dizzy. He shuddered. Snow fell in clumps from his fur. He shivered and bristled furiously. Then he bore his teeth and snarled furiously, bristling. He pricked his ears forward. Then he backed up a step. He pressed his weight forward and squared his shoulders for a moment. His haunches bunched beneath him. His eyes flashed viciously.

The cat came running at him again. Yugi struck out with his teeth. His jaws snapped shut on soft flesh. The cat hit him harder on the other side. He nearly stumbled but his body held somehow. He kept his balance, kept the position. The claws tugged at his fur, pulling it out in tufts. He flinched, then dug his teeth in harder. The pain in his head was spiraling deeper. He felt as if his nerve endings might burst. Another hit to his side caused his shoulder to burn.

Yugi released, backing up several steps. He bristled and bore his teeth again, then backed up once more. The cat in front of him tilted its head, snarled, and then backed up as well. He expected it to pounce forward. Rather, to his shock, it began to steam. The entire body was shaking. The fur was sweating with steam. The entire body shook harder. Then it seemed to all but waste away. Blood splattered to the ground in harsh droplets of bright red. The fur seemed to split away, the coat breaking in shuddering heaves. The snow quivered with the addition of heat.

Then Yugi found himself horrified and staring at what seemed like a fur coat atop an unidentifiable shape. Before his eyes, the animal began to quiver again, then to move forward in shaky steps. From beneath the cat's horrendously misshapen body came a new form. It was a black and gray wolf, with gleaming green eyes. Yugi shivered, backed up, and bit at the air.

 _It's only so much fun playing as a cat when another wolf can't bother to match it,_ the wolfdog sneered, stepping forward and sniffing at the air. The ears, sharper and larger than his own, pricked forward. Yugi snarled and opened his jaws wide to show off each tooth once more. _But my human partner_ loves _to see me use my jaguar form. She's loved it since I fought it in that damn lab and ate it alive._

Yugi bristled and raised his tail, backing up a step. _Who the fuck are you_? he demanded. He thought briefly of the brown pup that had been killed, of the she-wolf that had been recaptured before his eyes. Then he thought of Bakura, his head lying disconnected from his body in the snow. He thought of the blood and all of the red against the straw and fresh ice. And then he remembered the way Yami had collapsed upon being forced away by Obelisk. He remembered the shaky limbs and the way he'd struggled to his feet and tried his hardest to find some kind of meaning behind which he could gain strength and understanding of his situation.

 _I was named Noah at birth,_ the hellhound said simply. He stalked closer, eyes glinting brilliantly. His tail wagged, curved and bushy like that of a husky's. His ears pricked forward. His teeth glinted when he lolled his tongue and panted. Then he snorted softly, raised his head a little more, and considered him with dark eyes. _But I was renamed as Project Genesis when they began to bring back the Harbingers._

Yugi stepped back again, ignoring the urge to turn tail. _Project Genesis_? he sneered. _Because you were the first_?

 _I was the first to_ survive _. And because of that, now they have a bunch of Harbingers in existence. I can change shapes and my poison might be dormant, but thanks to me, the others have had theirs triggered. Unfortunately, I know of only one who has been able to utilize more than simply_ one _ability the Ancient Ones had._ He trotted forward a step, then slowed. His lips pulled back into a predatory expression much alike a sneering person. _Project Resurrection, I think her name is. I don't know. I hardly care._

The wolf backed up again. _Are they all named that_? _Projects_?

 _The lycanthropes are considered Code Names, the hellhounds Projects._ He shrugged dismissively, a heavy toss of his sharp shoulders which rolled beneath his skin like snakes. _I don't question it. It is not worth wasting my precious time assuming to know what it is that the humans truly care to do._

 _They're going against the gods and you don't care_?

 _I have survived. I can hardly find it in myself to bother with much more concern towards such things._

 _And what would you do if you were to go face to face with Code Name Atem_?

 _Against him_? _He is a myth. The lycanthropes are such fools. They have rambled and rambled about this creature for decades._ He pricked his ears forward. _Yet not a single one of them has ever bothered to attempt to save the creature should it be alive._

 _The hellhounds don't believe in him then_?

 _I believe in Morrigan and Hati and Skoll. I believe in Fenrir. Curious tales for lycanthropes spoken by pathetic souls that will soon be killed off and allow the rise of the hellhounds_? _I could not care less. I do not chase myths._ He sneered at him, all white teeth bared like those of a shark's. _Whatever the lycanthropes fancy will save them from extinction by their sister species is beyond me. But it is time that it ended. I am ready for them to be wiped from the earth._

 _Why_? _What have they ever done to the hellhounds_?

 _You are not honestly so stupid, are you_? _You are not young enough to be so incredibly foolish. You must know the lore, how the lycanthropes hunt the hellhounds. Surely you understand why they cannot exist around each other for long periods of time. The lycanthropes are too likely to kill their siblings without reason. It is truly pathetic._

 _That makes no sense._

Hadn't Yami said that the hellhounds were unpredictable and likely to kill without reason? Hadn't he said that they had killed many times more than the lycanthropes had? Had he said so in order to make Yugi more cautious or had there truly been meaning behind those words?

 _The war wasn't simply over the humans, you stupid boy,_ the wolfdog spat at him. _The war was because the lycanthropes could not stop from trying to proclaim themselves the most powerful of the werewolves. And, the many times our species have clashed throughout history, it is has nothing to do with anything more than the lycanthropes lusting for power._

 _Lusting for power_? Yugi snapped.

 _Don't you know that the world runs upon the reality of power and raw strength and survival_? _Do you not understand how the reality of war exists_? _The strong who won wrote the history for future generations. But the truth is always buried away in the darkness. You cannot claim that the Lunar Ascension happened simply by the way of the gods wishing to stop the fighting amongst the wolves. That is a ridiculous notion altogether. There is no reason that the gods, who so often ignore the pleas of their subjects at times like now and back then as well, should listen and wish to protect them._

 _And yet Slifer and Obelisk obey me._

The words seemed to infuriate the wolfdog, making the green-eyed canine leap forward. He lunged with his teeth bared. Yugi dodged away, his head spinning with pain. His skull was full of pins and needles and throbbing, vivid pain. The sensation made his belly hurt and his lungs grow tight within his chest. The wolf pricked his ears forward and bore his teeth in a snarl before he snapped his jaws at him as well.

 _If the gods care for you so much, why aren't they here now to defend you_?

 _I don't need anyone to defend me. I can defend myself._

 _No, you clearly can't. I have never seen such an unstable wolf before in my life. I have never witnessed such shaky limbs on a healthy werewolf, yet I cannot detect sickness in you. I suppose I could change that when I rip your face off for all the others to see._ He wagged his tail. _Maybe Catherine will also take a liking to your face and wear it as a mask. She does tend to like masks. I have yet to see her truest face, after all. And gods forbid a werewolf should not be powerful enough to see through such petty illusions._

Yugi bristled. _She wears masks_?

 _She likes to wear the skin of other people._

He nearly vomited, shocked by the realization. He bristled and stumbled a step before biting at the air once more. _Other people_?

 _It's a hobby. Perhaps she's a skinwalker. Who knows_?

Then Noah lunged forward. The instant he caught Yugi's teeth in his fur, the white wolf jerked free again. He stumbled several steps back. Then he opened his jaws wide and snatched at his face as well. Dark fur was torn away and scattered about on the snow. Yugi bristled and backed away quickly. He doubted that he could keep up a full on assault with the hellhound for long. It was hard to consider it, but he doubted that he could possibly stop himself from getting knocked about and killed himself.

The two of them clashed again. Yugi struggled for his footing, head throbbing and heart in his throat. Noah tore at his scruff. He struggled not to lose his balance. He tried to keep from being thrown off his paws. But the hellhound shook his head hard. And Yugi saw stars exploding beyond his eyes. And he couldn't breathe as the air seemed to become too cold. The snow seemed to rise and then fall away. He gasped and panted. Then he hit the ground painfully.

His teeth sunk into his fur again. _You're hardly as tough as I thought you would be._

Yugi was tossed sideways when Noah released him. He rolled a few feet. Then he tried for his paws and somehow seemed to miss. He landed hard, panting. Then he tried again to roll to his paws. His heart was shaky and his ears were ringing. The lights behind his eyes were dancing furiously. He gasped and bit at the air. Then he struggled again. His legs were kicking but the ground seemed to have somehow fallen away beneath him. Or perhaps he was too dizzy to breathe. And maybe he was just sickened and unable to move. Maybe he wasn't even actually flailing like he thought.

Maybe his paws were stuck in the snow.

Who knew at this point?

He was so tired. And the throbbing in his head wouldn't cease. The pain was terrible enough to make him want to vomit. He shouldn't have changed. He should have simply stayed home. He shouldn't have risked coming out this way. He should have—

Noah had grabbed him by the throat again, was shaking him violently. His neck popped and ached. But the bones did not break. It was stress more than true pain. And Yugi flailed again. His claws dug into Noah's chest, his body growing almost slack from the impact. The wolfdog threw him and Yugi rolled once more. He landed on his belly, snow in his lungs when he gasped for air. Then he tried to regain his footing. And the darker-furred canine simply pushed upon his side with his paw.

In an instant Yugi found himself rolling again. He kept his eyes shut, the pain roaring in his ears. The pulsing ache was like pins and needles. He gasped and choked. Then he snapped his jaws. He could not open his eyes for fear of blindness. And so he tried for his feet again, struggling for air. Claws struck at his shoulder, teeth caught his scruff. When Noah tugged, he thought his neck might snap beneath the pressure.

 _You are so boring,_ the wolfdog sneered. His ears had pricked forward again. He tugged away fur along his neck. Then he stripped it further and bit upon the skin beneath. Yugi flailed, the pressure causing his eyes to snap open. The pain was blinding. The ache was terrible. His skull was resounding with his own terror. His heart was beating too quickly. His vision was splotchy with light and shadow. He opened and closed his jaws. Then he tried to think straight for a moment. But the constant pressure on his neck was too much. The pain made him tremble. His limbs shook. He could not try to find his paws.

 _You can't even truly fight me, can you_? _This was a waste. Catherine said she'd found a wolf at the high school and it turns out to be_ you? he scoffed furiously. He tugged fur away again. Blood dripped onto the snow from various holes in his skin. The white wolf snarled and struggled. His heart was in his throat. Yugi sputtered for air. Blood seemed to seep into the surface of his tongue. He shuddered and shook. And then he lay gasping for air. _She said that you were stronger than she'd initially thought, that it would be worth the time it would take to get you alone. But you're weaker than a newborn. And I can't find any strength in you at all. Not even your instincts seem to wish to save you in any manner. It's disgusting._

Yugi sputtered and choked as he shook his head and snarled furiously. _School_? he managed to spit out. _What are you talking about_? _How did she find me_?

 _She played the part of the nurse at your school. She's very good at drugging and chipping the wolves she encounters. We've been tracking you for a few days now. Initially she thought were part of a pack. But I suppose not. She hasn't seen another wolf near you in a while._

She hadn't found Yami. _Good_.

 _She hasn't seen Obelisk or Slifer yet, then_? he asked slowly. He gasped for air as Noah moved aside to allow him to stumble to his feet. The wolfdog circled about him, examining his muscular body and tilting his head. The disbelief was clear in his eyes. _Is she stupid_?

The hellhound snorted loudly. _Very. She thinks she's in control of our relationship. I kill for her and she keeps me from being punished in the lab. She's a fool. She has no idea what destruction I plan to wreak upon that place when I get my chance. If not for the constant observation of myself and Resurrection, I would have done so a long time ago. I would have killed many of their lycanthropes on top of it._

Yugi turned his head to face him, breathing hard. His head was spinning. His vision was cloudy. His ears were still ringing. His mouth felt dry. His eyes were burning. He could not think straight. He gasped and sputtered and snarled. _So you're going to kill me first_? _And then later you can do the same to those other wolves in the lab_? _Is that your plan_?

 _I have a lot of plans. If I were to explain to you the many different layers to each of them, we would be here_ all night, he teased. He pressed forward, took a swipe at him with a paw that boxed him upon the ears. Yugi stumbled pitifully, nearly collapsing. Noah wrinkled his nose back contemptuously. _By Fenrir, you're a disgusting little mess. I do not know why she thought for even a_ moment _that someone such as you were powerful._

Yugi was swatted aside, rolling with the impact once more. He landed on his side atop the hard-packed snow. Then he struggled for his feet again. And, as he moved his back leg, something snapped. He _screamed_. His limb was burning, seemingly severed in half from the pressure. Yugi tried to catch himself. He was rolling on his back, fighting to kick and struggle away. He could feel the weight of the pressure, the force of which the blood flowed from his wound. He screamed again. He kicked and struggled. He rolled. He tried to lift himself. His body flailed and struggled again.

But then he ran out of breath. He collapsed on his side, struggling for air.

A few feet away, Noah had taken to standing about and watching him dismissively. His green eyes, burning into his, were full of disdain as he came forward a single step. _Did you truly just fall for a bear trap_? _That's so pitiful. How the hell could you have ever been so terribly foolish_? he snorted. He stood a few feet away from him, lips curled back to show his brilliant teeth. _That was so much easier than it should have been. How disgusting._

Yugi nearly puked. His heart was in his throat. Blood coated his tongue. He struggled again. But he could not find his feet. And he was too tired to think straight. He gasped and sputtered. And then he tried to roll to his feet again. His shoulders were bruised, he felt, because the force of his constant movements made him topple over once more. He bore his teeth at him, hateful and despaired.

 _The nurse_? he hissed. _The nurse who has pictures of cats hanging around the office of her damn clinic…_

Noah blinked and tilted his head, flicking an ear. _Does she have pictures_? _She is a feline fanatic. She loves cats far too much. I swear, if it were legal or possible, she probably would have fucked one by now._

Yugi shivered, disgust at war with a helpless desire to try to flee somehow, despite the hopeless feeling which crept through him. _You're disgusting._

 _Are my words too much for your prude mentality_? he sneered. Then he stepped forward again, lowering his head. His lips were pulled back, his teeth shown in a smirk. He looked like a shark. Yugi trembled and snapped his jaws at him. But there was no momentum and he could do nothing more than curse as the pain came through him once more. _Are bad words too much for you_?

 _You seem to find it amusing to think of her fucking an animal._

Noah snorted loudly. _Why not_? _Many of the humans in the labs are willing to get their fix there with the wolves during late nights._ He chuckled when Yugi stared at him with a horrified expression. Then he crept closer still, opening his jaws wider. He looked much like the shark in movies just before they swallowed the camera and forced the scene to fade to black. And then he snapped them shut again a millimeter from his nose. Yugi barely resisted the urge to flinch violently. _You cannot truly think that those humans are not disgusting enough to indulge in such things. Why, I'm sure if Atem were a real creature, they would have done the same with him at some point as well._

 _You're_ disgusting. He snapped his teeth against his muzzle, clipping him. Noah blinked, then slowly raised his head and stared down at him with darkened eyes. Yugi struggled to roll over, wrenching his leg further. And then he stumbled to his paws. The pain could be ignored, he decided. If he was careful, he would be okay despite the broken bone and the blood loss. If he was fast enough, he could knock Noah aside long enough to pack ice into the wound and manage to slow the blood altogether. Maybe he could even cut it away entirely. But that burning edge to it… That was far more troublesome than anything else.

 _Does reality scare you so much, little wolf_? he sneered. _I was under the assumption that if the gods were to obey you, you would be more than a simple half-drowned rat with fur the shade of winter. I was told that you would be a challenge. I shall punish Catherine for this incredible mistake._

Yugi bore his teeth, snarling at him. _Where is she_? he demanded.

 _The ledge up above. I believe she's wearing her truest skin right now. I do not believe she has one of her victim's masks on just yet._ He looked over and upwards. Yugi raised and turned his head as well, surprised when he spotted her there as well. She had the rifle aimed for his head, but she was merely watching rather than taking her shot. When she noticed their eyes on her, she raised her fingers from the trigger and wiggled them at him. Yugi trembled and stared back at her, horrified. Her face was not the same as what he had seen at the clinic. And she did not have that bright turquoise hair either. In fact, now that he looked at her, she had strange platinum blonde hair and he could see cat ears poking above the line of her messy bangs. He shivered. Then he looked back at Noah to find the wolfdog still watching her. _I think I'll simply kill her this time. She disappoints me so damn often, after all._

Yugi bristled. _You don't think she'll shoot you first_?

Noah was silent for a moment. Then his lips drew back to show off his teeth again and he slowly turned back to Yugi. _No, I don't think so at all, little lycanthrope. She's going to die in a moment, after all. I do not think she'll manage to raise that gun and take a shot in time._

The blue-violet eyes widened and his head snapped around, heart clenching. He searched for the definitive answer that Noah had gotten. And his ears pricked forward as he heard a sloppy thumping noise. But it was not that of blood spilling. There was no hiss of heat against the ice. He bristled and stared, confused and horrified. What the hell had—?

It took only a glance a few inches towards the right.

Before his eyes, shockingly, was a wolf.

They were flattened against the snow. The ears were pressed back against their head. The shoulders were sharp and taut. The fur was dark as night. Their breaths were slow and even, steady. They simply lay there, eyes wide open and boring into her skin. Not once did they so much as breathe or move forward a step. It had crept forward along the ledges almost silently.

Or perhaps Catherine had been so excited about Yugi himself that she had failed to hear its approach. Yugi shivered, then trembled violently. He tried to think, struggling for a moment. He could not find the words he wanted. And so, in a panic, he sputtered and yelped, _No, no—Yami, no_!

Noah snorted, eyes full of delight. Catherine blinked in clear confusion. The wolf blinked and his red eyes shot to Yugi for a split second. The white wolf trembled harder. Then, in an instant, two things happened. Yugi could hardly see them in a definitive order.

Catherine turned her head. Yami turned his head.

Their eyes locked.

She moved to cock the rifle. Yami sprang.

Yugi waited for the explosion of the gunshot.

Instead she screamed. Yugi bristled. Yami slammed into her. The gun rattled, her grip on it lost. It fell across the stone cliff. And then, to Yugi's horror, it went off. Yami screamed in surprise, recoiling violently. Blood fell in a thick river from his shoulder. His head snapped towards the wound, teeth digging into his own flesh. Yugi whined pathetically, straining at the end of the trap.

But, as the woman moved, something seemed to stir in the black wolf. Yugi saw something in his eyes seem to dim. The distance made it hard to know exactly. But he swore it had been as if a switch had gone off in his head. For, abruptly, teeth bloodied, Yami turned back to her. It was a slow and methodical turn of his head. The woman was struggling for her feet. Her neck was bloodied. Her face was scratched with random tooth marks.

Catherine was cursing. Yugi could hear it if only faintly. But the black wolf was simply staring. And he hated the fact that he had not moved. Noah seemed to be watching with intense interest now as well. His head was tilted and his tail was wagging slightly in his peripheral. Yugi hated him for that more than anything…

The white wolf was shaking. _Yami,_ don't! he cried pathetically. He could not even tell if the other male heard him. He was not sure that he had spoken in the first place. His only confirmation was when Noah bit at him in reprimand, though he missed by several inches. And, as with Obelisk before, Yami simply set his sights upon her.

He could see the shakiness in the black wolf's limbs. He could see the way he strained to keep his balance. He could see the way his bones buckled for a brief second. And he could see the way his breathing had grown rougher. But the wolf ignored him entirely. Yugi might as well have ceased existence altogether at that moment. Yami simply stalked forward a step, opened his jaws wide, and sprang again.

This time they went over the edge of the cliff face. Her hands were tangled in the fur along his neck. His teeth were buried in her throat. His muzzle was soaked. His eyes were all but glowing with hatred.

Yugi saw it in slow motion when they hit the ice.

And Yami realized it a moment too late.

They hit the ground hard enough to make the ice break. And, as Yami released her, his eyes grew wide. His ears pricked up and his eyes focused on the fractures.

But the impact seemed to make time freeze. Yugi struggled to get to him. And the black wolf was frozen upon the ice. His paws were just barely steady. His eyes were wide and horrified. His fur was in a steady bristle.

For a single second he stared. And then he tried to bunch his muscles and spring.

Yugi saw this all in one heartbeat.

And the ice split immediately after. Yami had not managed to lift his paws from the snow. Instead it broke in a harsh roar and plunged downward. The red eyes shot to Yugi just before they, too, vanished beneath the water. There were fine cracks beneath the snow. The crevices seemed to tear apart further and drift, crystals falling through. And then Yugi found himself screaming.

Noah simply blinked and tilted his head. The black wolf had disappeared beneath the water. And he did not think that he would reappear. And, should he, it would be when he was frozen. The hellhound snorted. All of the exciting things always happened when he was unprepared. Had he been able to, he would have simply sat about to watch the events unfold. Now he was left with a lamed lycanthrope that was crying beside him. And the stupid creature had begun to strain as if he might somehow reach the ice through his own will.

It had begun crying louder, raising a paw and stretching it. He would try to move forward, then get pulled back by the trap. And then he would bay again, a pathetic little cry like one a puppy might release. He shook his head, spiteful, but did not bother to shut him up just yet.

There was some kind of strange scratching noise. It was coming from the water, but it was not something he recognized. Noah turned his head slowly, tilting it. He pricked his ears forward, straining them. And then he saw the rapid bob of a sheet of ice pushed upward. For a moment there was no reason for the disruption. And then he spotted the black head that followed, appearing in the place the ice had been laying. The other lycanthrope was flailing in the water.

Each movement was met with slight resistance from the ice surrounding it. But the wolf hardly seemed to notice. He pressed forward and towards the largest sheet it could find. But the ice was not enough to hold its weight. Noah snickered at the thought. The wolf hardly seemed to weigh a thing. He looked almost like a rat after he'd resurfaced from the water.

The wolf grasped at the ice with his long, sharp claws. He dug into the sheet with the deadly keratin. And then he tried to heave. But the ice flipped and slapped into formation upon the water again. The wolf was gone beneath the surface as he had been before.

Noah wagged his tail in delight. _Truly_? _Are all of you so terribly weak as this_? he crowed. He wagged his tail harder. And he nearly missed it. The white wolf had turned his sights on him. He noticed this only because of the abrupt silence he was greeted with. Noah turned his head just as Yugi turned on him. His teeth were gaping in the winter air. And when the wolf leaped now, the hellhound had no time to escape.

The white male caught him in a stranglehold. His cuts cut swiftly into his jugular. The wolfdog snarled and shook himself harshly. The wolf held on easily. He did not budge in the slightest. Noah bore his teeth and snarled low in his throat. The wolf had clamped his jaws and refused to release. He could feel the pressure of his teeth too close to his spine as well. The sideways angle had done well to give him nearly enough access to kill him in a single bite…

But he also left himself wide open.

Noah shook himself again, then lunged forward. He caught the long white limb in his mouth hard. The bone snapped. The wolf released him with a snarl. The hellhound scrambled back a few paces, snarling. And the white canine stared back at him, blue-violet eyes glazed with pure hatred. His ears were flattened against his skull almost playfully. But his tail had come up in a long, straight formation. And it was wagging slowly back and forth like that of a true predator's.

His expression was nothing short of absolute disgust. And he was wagging his tail even as he licked the blood from his muzzle. Noah snarled low in his throat again. But the white-furred male hardly seemed to care. He seemed ready to lunge forward and rip his jugular out if he was only given the chance. His mouth was smeared red. Dark gray and black fur hung from his jaws on either side. And he stared back at him with a blank, maniacal expression which was steady and hateful.

Noah backed up a step, startled and uncertain. No would had ever truly faced him in such a manner before. None of them had ever looked back at him with such blank hatred before. He had never been able to so clearly read a goal to put an end to him as he did now. And, as he stared back, he could not help it when he backed up a step.

The white tail continued to wag, long and slow. The hellhound pulled his lips back to snarl, but the noise never left his throat. Instead, as he considered leaping at him, the ice near him broke. It flipped and water droplets hit his ear. He flicked it, spinning around, but the wolf was gone again. He'd disappeared beneath the water. Noah turned his head, surprised, and the wolf resurfaced again.

He looked exhausted. His paws were flailing for a moment. And then his eyes seemed to lock on the hellhound again. Noah blinked once, backed up yet again, and then glanced at the white wolf. But the canine beside him was no longer paying him any attention, however. His eyes were on the other wolf. He was visibly distraught, trembling, and his tail had gone down. He strained at the edge of the reach of the bear trap, whining loudly.

The black wolf pulled himself from the water after a moment or so. Blood and water had slicked him down to the point of looking as if he were not a wolf at all. He was so thin that he truly _did_ appear more rat-like. And Noah could see and count every ridge in his spine and every rib of his chest. He snorted at the thought, smirking in amusement. This wolf was nothing he had to fear, after all.

Now Yami drew himself to his paws again. His red eyes were glued to the snow for a moment. When he shook himself out, it was simply a light movement. He was no longer dripping wet, but he was still soaked. His fur was clumped awkwardly in various ways, knotted from the water. But it was only when he raised his eyes to the hellhound that Noah stiffened and bristled in shock. His glinting red eyes were unnatural, estranged to anything that a lycanthrope should ever have possessed. The hellhound faltered, eyes wide. His ears pricked forward. His fur rose into a mild bristle. He backed up several steps. Then he drew his lips back and bore his teeth.

 _You run with lycanthropes_?

Yami flicked his ears and then tilted his head slowly. Noah blinked back at him, then snarled low in his throat. He backed up and the emaciated canine stared boldly into his eyes in return.

 _You are a_ hellhound.

The words were enraging, it seemed. Noah barely avoided the bite aimed at his hip. When he spun on the white wolf, it was snarling and shaking. The hellhound had not realized he had been shocked into turning so completely towards Yami to begin with. But he'd just barely reacted in time to avoid the white wolf's teeth. His ears pricked forward. His fur rose into a mild bristle. He backed up several steps. Then he drew his lips back further to show his teeth.

The white wolf snapped his teeth at him, wagging his tail again. _He's a lycanthrope, you fucking idiot_ , he sneered. His eyes were sharp and glittering, blue-specked and violet.

 _No lycanthrope has eyes like that_.

 _You sound like Yoshimori did when I killed him,_ came a calm baritone voice, one which startled Yugi. The white wolf lost his aggressive stance, head snapping around and eyes wide with shock. The black wolf ignored him, however. When he moved, his attention was focused solely on Noah. _He told me that no lycanthropes could ever have eyes like mine. I think others have said that to me before. A great many others…_

Yugi stiffened, unsure of that distant and bewildering note in his voice. Noah, however, snorted and blinked, sneering, _Oh, is that so_? _What a revelation. You have red eyes. That's so terribly amazing._

Yami shook himself out again. He took a single step forward. His ears pricked forward. His eyes glinted. His tail rose slowly, wagging. And then he lowered his head and bore his teeth. _Yes, I have heard that before_. _I remember now_. _So many different people have said that_. _I have forgotten the names and the voices. But I remember the words_ , Yami said slowly, coldly. He stalked forward another step as the hellhound paced back once more. _They always said it when they first saw me_. _And then they would not come back to see me again. They claimed I was cursed_.

 _Humans are so superstitious, wouldn't you agree_? Noah launched himself forward. He aimed for the wolf's throat. But Yami simply dodged aside and spun on him. They circled each other once. Yugi strained at the edge of his reach, shivering. He whimpered softly and flattened his ears against his skull. There was something slithering within the ice, heavy and dull, and Yugi froze.

His heart pounded in his throat for a moment.

He had not noticed that Yami still had his collar and a large segment of chain around his neck. It was rattling when he turned sharply. But it simply slithered as a snake might when he paced.

 _They believe in such stupid things, don't you think_? _Perhaps you have recessive genes and one of them is your eyes_.

Yami did nothing more than flick an ear. _Perhaps_ , he drawled, the word stretched out into a hiss. Then he lunged forward and opened his jaws. Noah dodged away, though he did not move away from the water. The black wolf wagged his tail. _I do not suppose it matters_.

 _It'll matter when you are being tortured within the labs_ , Noah sneered. His large tail wagged now as well. His eyes were glittering and he opened his jaws to show his tongue in a lolling fashion. _I am sure that it will matter when they capture you. As, once that happens, they will treat you as a hellhound rather than a lycanthrope._

The wolf shook his head slowly, advancing on him steadily. _No, they would never_.

 _No_? the hellhound snorted, eyes sharp and glinting. _Why would you believe that_?

Yami turned the opposition direction, pacing to cut Noah away from his initial circling movement. The action drove him back towards the ice. The hellhound snarled, bristling, and stepped back to regain some ground. _They know me too well,_ he finally commented quietly, tone more tired than he cared to acknowledge. _They have always known me_. _They could never come to forget me_.

 _Are you truly so special_?

The black wolf chuckled, voice a sneer as he paced to cut him off once more. _Oh yes, I am_. _I am perhaps even the most special_ … He flicked his ears. Yugi could not see any tension in his muscles, but the black wolf lunged regardless. Noah tried to dodge. But Yami had closed him into a corner. And so he went the wrong way in order to counter him. He leaped to the side, closest to the water. His paws flailed as he nearly collapsed into the lake beneath the ice.

Yami lunged again. His teeth snapped on thin air. Noah had ducked away. And now he aimed upward for Yugi's throat. The lycanthrope twisted his shoulders and turned hard. The movement allowed him to miss Noah's teeth. But he caught his elbow. And Yami pressed his weight down hard. Both of them slammed into the ice. The combined weight made the already fragile ice break beneath them. And they both disappeared beneath the water again.

Yugi panicked, snarling and pacing about himself. He spat and bit at the air. Then he bristled and shook himself out. He bit at the air again, stumbled a step, and turned towards the bear trap slowly. He looked his foot over. The blood was bright red but scarred with white snowflakes and blackened frost. He bristled, looking down at it once more.

The springing action had done well to break its cover from the snow. The metal glinted back at him furiously in the dim light. And the heavy springs on either side were almost collapsed within each other. The chain looked long and thick where it was anchored in the ground further away. It was only partially hidden now, visible enough that he could not stop staring.

And now he could see the two tabs which would serve as the release mechanism.

But he was not sure that it would open so simply…

He had only watched videos a handful of times. He knew well enough how to do it, but the human body was different from the lupine form. He was not sure he could truly…

He had to try.

His head turned back to the water. Neither Noah nor Yami had reappeared and he felt a steady wave of panic ripping through his insides. He shivered, shaking pitifully. Then he forced himself to turn back. Even if he was a wolf now, perhaps he could still…

He doubted it but he was not entirely sure. The trap itself had to be one of the smaller ones. It did not look like it could possibly weight a quarter of what he himself did. And so he bristled as he looked it over some more. It was not impossible to trigger it with his own weight, he knew that much. He had seen it in videos before. They would place both feet on the sides of it, pressing down forcefully on the springs there. They would apply as much pressure as they could until it would open.

But normally someone else was helping to pull the trap's teeth apart…

But he had no one else to help.

And he had to get it done as quickly as he could.

He moved into a seated position, then set his paws upon either side of the trap. He threw his weight as violently as he could. He leaped, then landed. The impacted only served to wind him, however. He stumbled for a brief moment, gasping for air. His head was throbbing again. The trap jiggled beneath him. It nearly flipped with the momentum, but he managed to steady himself again. He did not fall over onto his shoulders and struggle for his paws again.

Instead he tried again, panting. The pain in his head had grown tenfold. The fear made him tremble. He leaped and landed hard again. The action nearly sent him falling over again. But he saw it now. The trap was open just enough that he could have slipped his leg free. But he did not think that he could hold the steel jaws apart for long enough.

He braced himself, locking his muscles in place for a moment. Then he sprang again. It took him another three attempts. His head was throbbing violently. And it was only because of this that he misaimed and overestimated. The final leap sent him rolling, the trap snapping open forcefully, and he landed pathetically.

He landed shakily on his belly and hissed as he drew himself to his paws again. When he looked about himself, he found his heart skipping beats. He struggled for his feet and shook himself out. His back leg threatened to collapse beneath him. But he could see it now. His body had been trying to heal itself. But the silver of the trap had burned the edges as well. And, between this and the cold, his limb was so incredibly stiff that he had to wonder if it would even help him in any manner.

But the thought was fractured immediately by the sound of water spray. His head snapped up. One of the two canines had resurfaced again. But they were not facing him and they were too drenched to tell the difference between them. He could see raw muscle more than anything, moving beneath long black fur. Yugi stumbled forward a step, feeling shaken and desperate.

 _Yami_?

He got to the edge of the bank, pricking his ears forward. The wolf in front of him had disappeared again. And Yugi searched frantically for any clue as to who it might have been. He saw no hint of a chain, however. He saw no evidence of the silver links anywhere beneath the water. And his heart began to pound and ache immediately at the realization. Part of him was shaky, breaking beneath the weight of this thought. And then he trembled and shivered harder.

Another part of him flailed with hatred at the implication. He panicked, letting out a deep yelp of dismay. The despair that swept through him seconds later made him collapse for a brief second. And then he stumbled for his paws and moved forward again. The wolf had come to the edge of the ice and was trying to pull himself out. Yugi hesitated, then hurriedly limped closer.

Something inside of him broke more. And he hesitated, bristling slightly, and pricked his ears. His heart began to skip beats. Something inside of him was panicked and elated all the same.

 _Yami_ , he called again, certainty flaring in his belly. He knew it, in some way or another. It was beyond him how he came to understand this. But he did, and so he hurried forward again. The ice bobbed lightly beneath his paw when he got too close, however. He recoiled immediately, hurrying back to safer ground. The black canine gripped at the ice slowly, but surely. And his grip was harsh but did not hold well enough for the moment.

The ice flipped again. The wolf disappeared for a brief moment. Then he reappeared immediately again. This time he found firmer ice, struggling to crawl out of the water. He clambered for a new grip, found it, and panted heavily. He did not try to pull himself out yet, instead struggling for air. And then, finally, he heaved himself up and out of the water in a sloppy series of movements. When he landed, he lay there on his belly. And Yugi trembled as he ran forward to help him. The wolf was frozen in front of him, safe for the shaky rasping breaths which left him.

 _Yami_!

Yugi rushed to make his way over, but had to dodge away from various patches of soft ice and shards which crumbled beneath his paws when he tested them. He headed more for solid land, the banks where he knew them to exist. And then he hurried forward from there. The darker canine did not respond to his touch when he licked at his ears and tried to nudge him away. And he kept breathing shakily, pitiful puffs of white which left his nose.

The white wolf leaned forward to run his tongue over his forehead. The water was so frigid that it seemed to turn to frost beneath his touch. Yugi nuzzled his muzzle, then his ears and cheeks. The black wolf did not move in the slightest. _Are you okay_? _Can you feel everything_? he demanded, licking faster. But the wolf did not respond and so his heart began to shake and rattle within his chest. _Yami_? _Yami…_? _C-can you hear me_?

If he could not hear him, then it was more than slightly likely that Yami was dying. Yugi was well aware of the order in which the senses shut down. The first was sight, the last hearing. If Yami could not hear him now… But he was sure that Yami was keeping his eyes shut out of his own will. He did not think in the slightest that he could not open them. But he could also see his exhaustion and the way his breaths looked shaky and uncertain when they were expelled from his nose. And so Yugi was also aware of the fact that Yami was not simply unable to hear him. He was _ignoring_ him.

Yugi reminded himself of this more than once. But it still caused the alarms to go off in his head. And when he shifted closer to lick at his fur some more, he could see his skin in its pale and slightly blue state. Yugi shivered and hesitantly lifted his back leg from the snow to hold his weight off. The pressure was enough to make his leg strain and ache pitifully, throbbing. It was almost in time with the pulsing in his head. The panic had made it a million times worse, he knew…

Yami's skin was pulled so taut over his bones that they looked like ragged mountain peaks. And his blue-tinted flesh was almost scratchy like sand under his tongue. He shivered, nearly trembling once more, and shook his head. Then he quickly licked again, trying to find some sense of warmth that he might be able to keep supplying until Yami was able to try for his paws or anything of that nature.

Something moved in the corner of his eye. Yugi blinked and turned and raised his head, pausing stiffly. He blinked again, tilting his head, and his tongue paused mid-lick against his alpha's cheek. In an instant his eyes zeroed in on the shape in the water. He could see the black fur, a long body of dark hair. He stiffened further, pricking his ears forward, and shivered violently for a moment.

For the smallest of seconds Yugi had feared Noah might get out of the water and pursue them. He had immediately feared having to fight him again, exhausted as he was. His throbbing head would not have done him well. That had been proven to him already. And he feared that Yami would not be able to recover in the time it would take to fight him off. But then he saw that his head had not risen from the water. And there was already a heavy layer of frost developing from the water on his coat.

Yugi blinked, bristling. He looked down, withdrew his tongue, and licked at his face again. Then he nuzzled his cheek and pressed his nose into his fur. He couldn't sense much heat from him…

 _Yami_?

Now the black wolf twitched. It was when Yugi exhaled harshly against him that Yami bothered to react. The action was just enough to make the white wolf relax, if only slightly. And he could hear his steady breaths again now. Yugi nearly collapsed beneath the weight of his relief, shaking it off almost immediately after. He licked at his ears and then along his face again. If he could get Yami warm enough to go home, they would be golden…

It was exhausting to do this, knowing that all the while all he knew of Yami's health at the moment was his breathing. Yugi kept grooming him, trying to get rid of the excess water and warm him somehow. But it was during this that he found himself trembling again. He had overlooked it in the midst of his panic and the dulled pain in his head. And he had not noticed it beneath all of Yami's breathing.

But he could hear his heart now, wet and thumping and with a beat so familiar he almost sobbed with relief. He was shivering before he knew it, licking faster than he had before. He was jovial over this fact alone, beyond anything that he could have ever potentially thought before. He did not even think that his voice would have been more comforting to such a thought before.

 _Can you open your eyes for me_? Yugi requested softly after a moment. He was not sure why it was that he asked. But he wanted more than ever to see his eyes again, as if they might actually signify he was alive. There was a long minute in which he saw no hint of movement at all from the wolf in question. Yugi felt sick, wondering for a moment if doing so had upset the other male in some manner. Yet, as he blinked, the wolf slowly parted his eyelids.

They were unfocused for a long moment. And then they locked on his face, searching briefly for his eyes before lowering again. He was so exhausted that he could not keep his eyes on him for too long. And the gleam in them was annoyed, slightly flustered, but incredibly feverish as well. Yugi shivered as they faced each other, though Yami began to close his eyes again moments later. And he found it almost amusing for a moment to think that maybe Yami had not expected him to be watching him as closely as he was. And then snorted in delight at the thought, wagging his tail briefly. He should have known better.

Yami blinked after a moment, looking towards him for only a second. Then he moved to push his chin into the snow as if it might cushion some of the pain in his system. His eyes closed tightly after a long moment. His ears flattened against his head after a few minutes. Then he flexed his claws faintly. He wanted nothing more than rest now. He wanted to sleep and never bother to have to worry in the slightest. He did not want to have to worry any longer about a possible threat in any manner. He was exhausted, tired beyond what he had initially assumed to be possible. And his mind seemed more fragmented than he cared to admit.

 _Okay, good. Thank you._

Yami did not respond to his words. Instead he trembled. His paw was burning, tingling in a manner that drove him nuts. He strained his neck and folded his paw towards his nose. The water seemed to be freezing upon his skin. He felt it might crystallize into nothingness at any moment, under his claws and along his paw pads. He flicked his tongue over it once, then twice. But the energy that was spent in doing so made him feel cold and heavy. So he left his paw as it was and closed his eyes again, ignoring the tingling. Yugi had been watching him, he was sure, because now he sprang forward to lick at his paws frantically. The action left him with feather-like kisses and soft flickers of warmth beneath the long frozen strands of hair.

 _You're going to be fine, okay_? _I'll fix everything when I can get your body heat back up. And then I'll get you completely healed up again and you'll be able to run off and do whatever you want just like you were doing before. No more waiting on me to catch you rabbits or serows or anything like that. You'll be able to run around and do whatever you want to_.

Yami blinked his eyes into narrow slits, staring at the other wolf curiously for a moment. His voice was familiar but it was exhausting to try focusing on whatever it was he was saying to him. And his voice was beginning to lilt, changing at its very core. It became deeper, thunderous in his ears, much more like clouds crashing and booming rather than the simple soft tone that Yugi possessed. The black wolf blinked up at him again, then flattened his ears against his head briefly once more. He swore he saw a flash of gray and cinnamon along his muzzle, his eyes briefly flecked with green rather than blue. For a long handful of seconds, as his eyes struggled with this task of disorientation, Yami could not feel it in the slightest as Yugi continued to lick his paws.

 _You'll be okay, Yami_.

Yami shuddered. A part of his mind seemed to recoil from the words, from the soft statement altogether. Then he snorted a breath, something that sounded almost vaguely like a condescending noise. Yugi paused in his actions, hesitating for a brief moment. Then he ran his tongue over his face once more, looking distressed more than anything. Yami ignored it, suppressing the urge to shiver at the sensation of cold which crept through his skin from the very roots of his fur. He closed his eyes tightly and flicked his ears slightly from side to side and resisted the urge to lick at his own paws again.

They were so _cold_.

But he doubted that anything would truly happen should they not be completely warmed in the next handful of minutes. He was capable of healing from it, he was sure. There was no means by which the temperature or his loss of body warmth might ruin him in any way. The lycanthropy would force it away rather quickly, he was sure, and so hypothermia was not truly a concern to him in any manner. It was, instead, a thought which burned through his mind that captured his attention more than anything.

He could hear words replaying in his head, not ones that Yugi had spoken, but ones which once more rattled within his skull like pebbles falling from the ledge of a mountain overhead. It made him shudder, unable to suppress the fear which crept through him for a brief handful of minutes. The words were anxious, begging that he run… Yami found himself trembling as the words echoed within his head in such a painful manner as to make his mind spin drastically in immense spirals that made his breathing heavier.

 _You have to run,_ the voice urged frantically, yet with something calm as well, a sternness which pressed upon his senses. _You have to run and you have to live. You have to do it. You can't come back here. They'll kill you._

Yami shook, unable to keep himself from quaking uncontrollably. He wanted to puke, distress crashing upon him for a brief moment. And then he shivered and opened and closed his mouth and drew in a deep breath that almost came out in a hideous sob. He wanted to whimper and cry and lay there until his lungs gave out. The despair and sorrow which gripped him so completely now made him want to vomit. It made him want to lie there and never move again.

He wished he _could_ freeze there within the snow. He almost questioned why it was that he had ever assumed to pull himself out of the frigid water to begin with. Why hadn't he just given up as he had the first time? That first time had been painful, but he'd been blissfully unaware after a while, until that moment that he'd been dragged from the water by foreign jaws and human hands. He remembered it, the way the water had cut through his skin and pressed upon him so painfully that it would rip through him. But the darkness had been so peaceful, an oblivion that he had not bothered before then to pay attention to. And now he felt dizzy and small for a moment.

He wanted to puke.

He wanted to simply lay there until he could no longer move.

It had been so peaceful when his mind had been trapped in that dark void. When his consciousness had been lost and regained, he'd hated himself the moment he'd resurfaced from the abyss. And then he'd loathed himself even more the moment he'd found the human staring at him pitilessly, eyes sharp and dark and lazy against his own. He'd smirked and Yami had felt that crystalline sensation of fear, immobilizing him and making him incapable of escape altogether.

But he'd been so tired as well. He could never have run even if he'd not been struck by the horrifying quality in those human eyes. He'd stared into them and felt that he'd seen things he never should have. And he'd considered a million different things that shook him to his core altogether.

He wanted to vomit at the very idea of it all.

But now those words repeated themselves against Yugi's worthless little promises, whispers of which he swore Yami would find himself recovering and healing properly and he'd survive as he always had.

Yami was exhausted by the very implication.

Survival was so much work.

And he was so _tired_.

Beneath the water had been easier than above ground. He'd changed in a last ditch effort to fix himself, to somehow survive it all. He'd changed because his lycanthropy had triggered such a response in him as to find it necessary. He himself had been so lost within the cold that he had not even considered it. And, when he'd found that shallow ice, it was not _he himself_ which dug through it. It was a natural instinct borne within him somewhere, hiding beneath the surface, which allowed him to survive the ordeal. He'd crawled out of the water, by some miracle, and had moved only enough to drag his upper body out. It was only then that he'd come to hear noises, background at first but growing necessary for his attention as time passed.

He'd heard them but he had not moved. And then he'd felt the rough teeth in his scruff. He'd heard the voice of someone he knew but did not care to acknowledge. And then he'd heard the human, one with a voice he had not recognized. And, upon opening his eyes, he'd found instant hatred for the creature in front of him.

Yugi shivered. Flashes of ice and tangles of tree roots and shallow puddles against smooth stones and dark sand had come across his mind. Then he saw tan and gray fur, lavender eyes which peered at him disdainfully. And, in a flash, a redhead with eyes that seemed toxic as they bored into his own. Yugi felt sick as he recognized both these figures, these brief images making him feel sick.

 _Yami_?

The wolf did not respond beyond opening his eyes into slits and peering at him briefly. The red gaze was glassy for a heartbeat, then glazed over as he continued to think. Yugi could see the shadows writhing behind his eyes, the way his mind was racing with need to understand something that the small teen had no knowledge of. He wanted to puke for a moment before he shivered and shook his head. His tongue immediately sought to lick his face dry as he needed.

 _You'll be okay. Once you're outside of here. When you're no longer in the labs, you'll be okay. You'll know and understand everything you'll need to._ Green eyes bore into his, desperate to make him understand. The skin tone was soft, paler than his own, but with an almost olive tint as well. Long spiky, glossy dark gray hair tipped with silver and streaked dark brown fell in a sloppy formation across his forehead, windswept to the right… _I promise you, when you're out there, you'll be okay and happy. You'll learn to live as you need to, okay_? _You'll find all the answers you'll need._

Yami blinked and closed his eyes tightly again. _Answers_ , he repeated softly, so quietly that Yugi could only hear when he strained his ears and moved closer to his face, licking again more persistently. _I haven't…_

 _Haven't what, Yami_? He moved to lick along his shoulders now, and Yami assumed that much of his face must have been dry. _What answers_?

The wolf did not respond to him. He flexed his claws, shivered, flattened his ears against his skull. He kept his eyes tightly shut, shuddering harder. Then he moved to draw his paws closer to his jaw and lay his chin upon them more comfortably.

 _What answers, Yami_?

He did not care to answer him. It wasn't as if it mattered. Yugi wouldn't understand. Yugi would never know the pain of that thought alone, or the many regrets he possessed. And so he shook his head and pressed his chin more pointedly into his paws as he shivered harder. He could feel the persistent licks along his shoulders and between the blades of bone, then along his spine. And then he nearly stumbled to his feet. What was that soft pressure along his back?

Yami raised his head after a moment, then turned his head slowly in inquiry. Yugi had moved to step over him, stretching himself across his back and lowering himself there. He lay there, though not completely in order to allow him room to pull away. But Yami was too tired to do such a thing and Yugi _was_ incredibly warm as he lowered more fully. The dark wolf lowered his head and laid his chin upon his paws again.

They remained there for what felt like hours. Yami was not sure the time that passed. All he knew was that Yugi would not let him sleep. Whenever he would come close, Yugi would nip his ears and coax him into awareness again, almost spiteful in the dedication he showed this task. Yami snarled in annoyance more than once, but settled again as the time had passed. Yugi licked his ear and shoulders, then finally got to his feet after what felt like an eternity.

 _Are you okay to walk_? _I mean, if you can walk, I can lead us back home and I'll take care of you and help you heat up some more._

Yami was silent for a long minute. Then, finally, reluctantly, he rose to his feet. He remembered the vaguest sense of pride in another voice entirely unlike his or Yugi's own, saying softly, _That's it, you can do it. Get up and keep moving, okay_? _We have to make sure you're okay._ The memory made him bristle faintly but he ignored it as he stumbled forward a step and shook himself out. Yugi ignored the way a few droplets landed on his nose and relaxed as the seconds passed as Yami moved forward a few sloppy steps. _I know you want to sleep, but you can't do that just yet, okay_?

His ears pricked forward at the soft, sympathetic reprimand. He had been so sure to keep him awake, to try to help him regain himself after one of the more horrid experiments. He'd been coaxed forward and back within his cage. The wolf had peered at him with soft, beautiful green eyes, telling him that he needed to remain moving for longer. If he didn't remain moving he might unconsciously hurt himself.

 _What do you think_? _Can you walk back to my house_? Yugi flattened his ears against his head. _Do you remember how to get there_? _I don't think it'll be too terrible but I…I don't know. I'm worried, I guess. Do you think it's too much to get that far_?

Yami ignored him as he had when he'd spoken his name before upon his dragging himself out of the water. The dark wolf shook himself out again, the cold air seeming to bite through what remained of his coat. And then he stumbled forward again. He padded in a limping stride, feeling almost sick as he continued to make his way through the trees. He flicked his ears, ignoring the answer that Yugi sought from him. He looked about them for a few long moments, lowered his head towards the snow, and continued in the same slow pace. He could not move faster, as his back legs were too stiff and the wound on his shoulder prevented him from much more than flinching as he continued moving forward.

Yugi hesitated as he went to his side, flashing his tongue over his lips.

* * *

Yami had settled uncomfortably within the tub as Yugi had directed. The water was lukewarm, ready for him to step in. The air around was only a few degrees warmer than the area outside. And he was relieved to see that Yami was so easily led to do such a thing. He had expected far more than that to happen as it was. And, as Yugi reached out to turn the knob again to add some more warm water, the black wolf merely glanced at him. The dark canine did nothing more than raise his head over the edge of the bathtub. The water was low enough to just touch his paws for the moment. Yugi had wanted to simply focus on them first, then to raise the temperature of the water as had been directed online.

He licked his lips and shivered as the wolf still refused to flinch or cringe away from him as he had initially thought. The canine kept his eyes open, ignoring the urge to close them and sleep instead. The instinctive response was to rest rather than have to deal with the weight of remaining awake in any sense. He wanted nothing more than to simply sleep for as long as possible. He wanted to rest and not worry about anything else. And he would rather dry himself off and ignore everything else.

"Stay here, okay?" Yugi said gently. He reached over to run his hand over his forehead, along his ears, scratching behind one and making Yami look over without turning his head. "I'm going to get a few warm water bottles and some towels. And then when your body temperature is up from laying in the water here, I'll set you up to lay down and rest on top of the bed."

Yami blinked at him. Then he closed his eyes and shifted his weight uncomfortably. He hated the way the porcelain was so slick beneath his claws. He wished he could have gripped it forcefully, held himself higher than what he was able to. _Thank you,_ he muttered, exhausted as he shifted his weight again.

Yugi stared at him for a long moment or two. Then he got to his feet. He wondered briefly if Yami even truly recognized him now, as he had seemed to only do so beforehand. He wondered if perhaps the other male simply knew and understood that he was there and speaking to him. Maybe he really only knew that Yugi was offering to help strengthen him up again. Or maybe he simply did not care for the moment, exhausted and beyond himself with the stress of raising his body temperature once more.

"Hey, Yami?" The wolf did not respond verbally but he heard the softest click of his nails, the gentlest slosh of water within the tub. The small teen hesitated for a moment, then turned his head and looked over his shoulder to face his alpha. The red eyes were peering at him from narrow slits. "How did you kill Noah? The hellhound at the lake, I mean…"

He blinked and then closed his eyes again. _I tore his throat out._

"What happened to the collar and chain?"

 _He pulled me back under the ice with him by use of it. And so when I tried to get away from him, he lunged for my throat and got the chain instead. I pulled backwards until he wound up pulling it over my head. Then I ripped his throat out and swam back up._ Yami fell silent for a long time. Then he snorted and huffed a breath out. _Does it truly matter_?

"No. I just wanted to know."

Yami did not respond again beyond blinking up at him and then shifting his weight. Yugi was happy he'd turned the water off again before he'd left. He would have been far more concerned that it was burning him had the faucet still been going. But for now he did not have to worry about such a thing. He did not have to concern himself with whether the wolf would be hurt from his negligence. It felt like a first, something that utterly shocked him for a brief moment and made him feel almost happy. But it was gone again in an instant and he paused in the doorway to look back over his shoulder.

Yami did not raise his head or blink at him in any fashion. But the small teen knew that Yami felt his eyes on him and so he relaxed. He smiled faintly, relieved upon seeing the way his nose wiggled with each inhale. He was exuberant upon seeing such a thing, licking his lips before he turned on his heel and headed out of the bathroom again. The black wolf would be fine, he told himself again, relief biting at his insides. Yami would be okay. He would be fine. He would get stronger and then he would be as powerful as he had been the moment that they had met during the festival.

Yugi brought back a handful of water bottles that he'd filled with warm water, some towels that he'd wrapped around them, and a heating pad that he'd used at times when he was younger and had pulled a muscle. Half the time he did not remember how he had done it. More often than not, the lycanthrope _now_ considered the idea that perhaps he'd reacted to night terrors and hallucinations violently enough to cause such incidents. He swallowed hard at the thought, pausing in the doorway, and then moved to the side of the tub again. He twisted the knob to add a little more water, warmer than it was last. Yami did not respond but for a simple turn of his head in the direction opposing him.

The black wolf blinked his eyes open into miniscule slits, looking towards him for a brief moment. He considered him as the small teen kept his eyes on the faucet. The water was stopped after a moment, the knob squeaking as it was turned to cut off the supply. He flicked an ear as the pipes seemed to rattle for a few moments and then settle once more. He wondered briefly at the idea, the way that the metal seemed to slide and click into place and then disappear beneath the crashing water once more as it was peeled away. He pricked his ears forward, watching the small teen with a somewhat cautious expression for the smallest of moments.

He seemed so odd in front of him. He was vulnerable, his neck exposed as he leaned forward. His shoulders were slack with a stunning lack of tension. His eyes were focused on the water. His hand was still posed to turn the knob. And he was not paying him the slightest bit of attention. When Yami shifted his weight minutely, he did not see the smallest change in the other male's expression or anything of the matter.

Yugi licked his lips after a moment. His head turned, at first with a slight grimace and then with open shock. His eyes grew enormous. His mouth opened and closed once. Then he blinked thrice, tilted his head, and offered him a small smile which was strained with confusion. "What is it, Yami?" he asked in a calm, quiet voice. But he seemed nervous more than anything and it made the wolf blink at him once more. The canine searched his face, then lowered his eyes and shifted his jaw to close his eyes.

 _It is nothing._

"Are you sure?"

 _Yes, I am sure._

They were both silent again for a long series of minutes. Then Yugi sighed softly, looked away, and finally turned back with a tilted head once more. "If you say so," he conceded after a moment, but Yami could sense a spiraling touch of disappointment and perhaps a small hint of bewilderment. The wolf cracked an eye and looked towards him once more, curious about the emotions he sensed from him. "Do you think you'll be able to change back tonight? I mean, you don't have to, really, but it might be a better situation than you sleeping on my bed as a huge canine like this."

Yami blinked and then closed his eyes tightly after a moment. _I will do so when I am warm again._

The small teen hummed, but he sounded miserable, as if the answer had destroyed him in a sense. "Okay," he finally mumbled a moment later. The wolf remained silent after he said these words, thinking rather than answering now. He wondered at the slight melancholy and nervousness which came from the small teen. It was bewildering to experience such things again, as not once in the time he'd been away had he sensed such a thing. It was strange to him how it could he could sense his emotional stance again when he had not been able to try such a thing for so much time prior.

Yami was able to change back only a couple of hours later, when his core body temperature rose to a more stable state. Yugi gave him some clothes to get dressed in and hated himself when he nearly cringed upon seeing the exhaustion that still plagued his alpha's features. He looked as if he would rather vomit than come even slightly close to him, stomach twisted and knotted. He looked pale, ashen almost, his eyes a dull brick shade, his skin slightly glossy with a small sheen of sweat. And, by the gods, if he didn't look so small and frail that Yugi wished he could hide him away altogether. He wished he could shelter him from any threat to come later and it made him feel sick for a moment.

He looked like a small, fragile lost soul which made his features appear even more sunken than ever before. His cheeks were paler than ever, his ashen skin taut and his eyes almost too large for his face for a brief moment. The small teen wanted to cringe away for the briefest of seconds, but then relaxed as Yami ignored his stare and wandered off to curl up on top of the comforter. He threw the fleece all the way over his head, curled up as if he could force himself into a ball as a wolf could, and seemed almost to forget about his presence there altogether.

And then Yugi moved to lay down under the sheets and comforter beside him, relieved when Yami did not disappear as if made of smoke. He was fearful of the way that the wolf remained facing the other direction, unnerved by the lack of attention or worry there. He was dizzy with relief that he was there beside him, but he was unable to do more than stare at the boy where he was hidden beneath the blanket. Only his red-tipped hair rose beyond the fleece blanket lying over his skin. The sight was almost like that of a pet or something of that nature which tried to hide away from their owner's attention.

"Are you okay?"

Yami was silent for a long time. It took a few minutes for him to reply, voice muffled and almost dead as he murmured, "Yes". He sounded so tired, or perhaps as if he was unable to speak more than such a simplistic response. Yugi was reminded of the first few weeks that they had been together, how Yami had been silent for the longest time. And when he had finally spoken again he would become exhausted almost immediately. And then he would recover later. He would lose his voice almost instantly when he would speak. Yugi thought of this, but Yami's mind was far from this same subject.

His ears were still ringing. There were words within his skull, dancing about the cavity and slamming into the bones before darting about again. He could feel them as pinpricks, harsh and thick against his skin. He felt as if his temples were throbbing and his thoughts punctured with the words, scattered away by the sheer force of it. He curled up tighter, bunching his limbs up until he thought his legs might fold into his belly entirely and his elbows follow soon after.

He wished he could fold into himself. He wished he could hide away beneath his own skin. He wished the shadows might swallow him altogether. But he could do nothing more than swallow hard and try as he might to hide away from the memories that came with the voices in his head.

He did not want to think of the many things he had suppressed so hard in that time in the confines of his own mind. He'd hidden himself away back there, far from the memories and recognition, beyond that part of him that might understand the things going on around him. He had wanted only to eat then. He had wanted then only to survive to see a new day, to eat and rest and make himself strong enough to run when he might need to.

Being back here was not a terrible fate, but it was not the best choice he could think to make either. It was terrible and sinful to think such a thing, he realized. Yugi was a loyal soul and beautiful to do such a thing as well. And Yami was grateful. There was no one that could claim otherwise. And he would gladly argue with anyone who might consider him opposing towards such a thing. But he felt sick being here all the same. It was horrifying to feel such a way. He had never thought himself capable of such a thing before. He had never considered before that perhaps he could be so unhappy with something offered him in such a manner. He had truly always believed that Yugi, in the least, would do well to make him happier.

"Are you still warm enough?" Yugi asked, concern bleeding into his tone.

Yami did not raise his head, nor did he truly wish to answer. Some part of him was miserable with the idea of using his voice again. But another part was loyal to the idea of putting Yugi's distress to rest. It was powerful and possessive, drastic in its need to reassure him.

"Yes." He said it in a curt tone, exhausted and frustrated by the mere thought of answering any further questions. He swallowed hard, heart in his throat for a moment as he tried to think straight. If Yugi asked him to answer him once more, he felt that he might grow too distressed to remain near him any longer. He did not want to speak again in the slightest. The very thought of his own voice was enough to make him feel ill.

"Okay." He fell quiet again for a long moment. "Well…if anything changes, you can tell me, okay? Or—or just wake me up, okay? Just nudge me awake if you have to. I won't mind."

Yami blinked against the dark red of the fleece blanket, narrowing his gaze into slits before tightly scrunching them shut. He nodded against the blanket as Yugi remained quiet in turn. He did not want to admit how the thought further unnerved him, his stomach twisting viciously inside of him. He felt dizzy and sick for a moment as he fought away the shudders which threatened to wrack his frame. He kept his eyes shut as tightly as he could, his lids so forcefully clenched that the pressure made small patches of light and color form there. His head was spinning again, the force behind it enough to make him want to vomit.

 _If you were ever my friend, you will run. You will run and hide and shelter yourself and_ survive. _There is no other option, young one. You have to make it out there. You have to run. You have to hide._ You _must survive._

The whisper was cold and cruel in his ears now, but back then it had been warm. It had been soft and warm and friendly, desperate for him to listen and loving him all the more when he nodded. The gentle nip to his wrist and the soft kiss of his tongue to his forehead… Yami remembered it all very well, just as he did the rest of the days that had followed his declaration.

* * *

Yugi woke in the middle of the night to a stunning lack of weight upon the mattress but for his own. The furniture seemed to have clumped and rolled beneath his weight but it had not been touched otherwise. He shivered and felt sick as he rolled over. Unconsciously his arm moved to touch upon the cold surface of the comforter. At first Yugi understood nothing in the meaning of wondering why it was that he did so.

He felt around for a long moment, mind still dazed and swallowed away by the darkness that held his eyes shut. He thought briefly of his dream, the way it clung to the edges of his thoughts like frost within the cold air. He shivered at the droplets of blood, the way the earth had seemed to swallow it away as if it were nothing more than mere water. The thought made him feel dizzy as he swallowed hard.

His hand grasped tightly upon the comforter for a moment. He ran his nails over it, listening to the scratching noise that came with such a thing. Then he blinked his eyes open against the darkness. His eyes stung immediately, head nearly spinning painfully with the sudden addition of color. Then he blinked again. He narrowed his gaze to mere slits, peering at a wall that looked far too dark due to the lack of light from the window. He wondered briefly how late it was, whether dawn was in the air.

Some part of him denied it, an instinct inside of him which said otherwise and relayed to him that it was still late in the night and dawn was hours beyond his grasp. He shivered and opened his eyes further. The air seemed incredibly cool against his skin, making him feel sick for a brief moment. He blinked and looked about the small room for a handful of seconds. And then he stiffened considerably, heart in his throat as he realized something that his subconscious had noted and he had not fully known.

He turned his head, horrified, and sat up rapidly. All he could see was a blanket pulled slightly over the edge of the bed, pooling on the floor beyond his eyesight. He stiffened, breathing hard as his heart hammered away rapidly.

Yami.

Yami was missing.

He tried his hardest not to spit out a horrified, strangled noise. He felt dizzy and horrified, sitting up further than ever. His eyes were wide, terrified, and his mouth tasted of blood as he struggled to focus. There was a noise somewhere further in the house. His grandpa was moving about in the kitchen, he realized, his footsteps ingrained in his thoughts. His stomach jerked and sloshed. He could hear his mom in her room, fast asleep as her breathing indicated.

But he could not sense the fourth person in the house. He could not sense in the slightest a lycanthrope with red eyes and uneven breaths. He could not tell if he was still there. He could not understand where he might have run off had he ever been able to sense him in the first place. In a sense of dire shock, Yugi clutched at his shirt by the collar. He tugged on it lightly, though forceful enough to knot the fibers together. He felt sick as he stared towards the bathroom, then at the window with a sinking feeling in his gut.

Oh no…

Oh no…

Oh… _no_ …

He nearly vomited upon thinking of it. Had Yami snuck out? Had he opened the window and taken off when he'd gotten the chance? Had he dashed away into the woods again, ready to see himself away from Yugi altogether? Had he—?

Would he have left him like that?

He remembered the way Yami had said he would tell him if he had ever wanted or needed to leave on his own. He remembered that. He did. He _remembered_ it. He recalled it perfectly. Yami had promised not to abandon him. He had not thought to even suggest otherwise at that time.

He swallowed hard and dizziness made his head spin. His mouth was dry but for the metallic taste of blood. He did not know the source of it, however. He wondered at whether it was from a bite to his cheek or the sides of his tongue. Maybe he had bitten the muscle in half and swallowed it for all he knew. He swallowed hard at the thought, wondering how it was that his tongue did not disappear down his throat. He was shaking, he realized, as a new thought occurred to him.

Yami was gone.

Yami wasn't there.

Because…

Because maybe he had never been there.

Because perhaps Yugi had hallucinated it all.

Because, maybe, just maybe, somehow, despite all his effort, Yugi had failed to save him.

And maybe Noah had ripped his throat out instead.

And maybe Yugi had been unable to process it.

Maybe he was so incredibly broken that he was unable to think.

*And so maybe then he had processed and fabricated something entirely opposing the truth of it all.

Because, perhaps, he was just far too broken to deal with it all.

Yugi grasped tighter at his shirt, twisting the fabric in his fist and swallowing hard enough that it made him feel as if he might vomit.


	59. Ranks

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Every other day**

 **Chapter Warnings: Near Panic Attack, Improper Use of Medication, Mention of Night Terrors, Mentions of Bloodshed**

 **So, the information that Yugi thinks about regarding alpha and omega wolves is a very true thing. Wolf biologists have noticed that more often than not the alpha wolf is determined by their strength of character rather than their physical capabilities. Whereas before they were considered only alphas when they were strong enough to beat the rest of the pack into submission. Wolves follow the one they feel has the strongest personality that might lead them to survival rather than the one that might be the physically strongest.**

 **SO SORRY for the late posting. I got distracted by real life and then I got swept up in the madness that is my excitement for Kingdom Hearts III coming out next year~! And then I got caught up in KHUx on my phone and eventually Duel Links after that. Can I just say I'm a sucker for video games right now? I'm SO excited for this game finally coming out, I can't even properly put it into words.**

 **ANYWAYS! BACK TO THE POINT! I didn't get nearly as much editing done as I thought I would (and chapter sixty definitely needs it) but I'm STILL going to try to get back on schedule with updates. If not, the next update I do will have the update schedule changed to once a week because I don't think I'm going to have much time to get things up otherwise now that the holiday season is here.**

 **Thank you all for being so patient with me, by the way! It truly means a lot. Enjoy the chapter~!**

 **Ploy: Thank you! I'm glad you liked it! I always get kind of nervous when I post updates to any of my stories lmfao Poor Grandpa and Yugi's mom. The two of them are just kind of stuck in this tailspin as bystanders for the most part. As for where Yami went...you'll see~**

Chapter LIX: Ranks

 _Work Log Entry LII: August, 2005_

 _August 1_

 _Atem has begun to act strangely. He has begun staring blankly when his cage is approached. But he will also move away from the door when we are to push his meal through his feeding flap. He has not made any aggressive movements nor has he so much as acknowledged us for the most part._

 _He has not spoken in over a month now. He will often stare at us when we have to bring him out for testing. And he's even begun to move aside to keep from scaring anyone._

 _I cannot tell if this is some form of trauma or if he is perhaps simply showing something of his true nature. None of us have any idea how he might have turned out if he was not here. So none of us can accurately gauge this new development._

 _But he does not seem as if he might attack._

Yugi was dizzy as he sought answers through the darkness. It was causing his head to spin, his focus caught upon it. It made him want to vomit as he stared.

He wanted to blink.

He wanted to cough and gasp.

He tightened his fist on the shirt material. Then he closed his eyes tightly and felt sick as he shook his head slowly. He could feel his hands shaking harder than before. He was sitting up, heart in his throat and stomach full of painful twists. He felt as if the air were too tight in his lungs, the openings to his organs too narrow.

Oh gods.

Oh gods…

How could he have fallen for such a thing—?

And then, abruptly, his head snapped up. In horror, eyes wide and stretched to thrice their size, Yugi watched a small pale light bathe the room. He wondered abruptly in some corner of his mind if this was how death came. He felt dizzy and sick and small. He swallowed hard and choked and sputtered. Then he bunched his limbs up and felt his stomach knot further. He could feel bile crawling in a painful ache towards his mouth. It made his head spin faster. He licked his lips, the sensation making him feel worse.

And then the light faded as there was a gentle click.

Someone was in his room?

Someone had been in his _bathroom_?

Yugi tried to process this. His hands tightened along his clothes. He swallowed hard and pulled upon his shirt. He licked his lips rapidly. His mouth felt hot, sticky, as if he were about to puke again. He swallowed harder than before. He tried to clench his jaw. Then he frowned and tugged lightly on his pajama shirt once more.

There was a long moment of silence. He could see them against the light of his bathroom door. It made him feel sick and estranged, odd as he looked forward and towards them in the dark. There was a faint glow in the room, one of dark maroon so deep it seemed almost to bleed into the shadows of the room surrounding them.

Yugi blinked again. Then he swallowed hard and his fingers tugged again. His arms were shaking. His shirt was scraping against his throat. He blinked again, rapid in his need to clear vision which seemed to be rapidly leaving him.

"Yugi?"

He blinked. The name was estranged to him, bizarre in every manner. But then he blinked again. Realization was a sharp shard in his side. His head snapped up again. His eyes grew wider than before. His heart skipped and raced within his chest. His mouth was dry, bloodied with his anxious biting. Pain struck both sides of his mouth where his teeth brushed his cheeks.

"Are you all right?" He was so quiet Yugi almost could not hear him. And his voice was cracked and raspy, broken in such a way that his words were uneven and nearly swallowed within the frigid air. But he recognized it, as he had before upon hearing his words formerly. He remembered those words which Yami had spoken in a similarly damaged tone. He remembered the way he had spoken then, voice failing him and dying away into nothingness as the seconds passed.

Yugi opened and closed his mouth. He blinked with disbelief. And then, to Yami's surprise, the small teen abruptly reached his hand out. His fingers were tightly knotted for a moment, then spread out. His arm was shaking, his other hand clenched upon his shirt still. He stared at him with those same wide, alarmed eyes.

And Yami hesitated briefly, thoughts flickering behind his eyes as he considered. He had the impulse to shake his head and move to the other side of the bed altogether. Then he frowned, swallowing hard, and felt sick to his stomach for a moment.

Finally, relenting, unable to think straight for longer than those few seconds, Yami moved forward. He hesitated within reach of the other teen. And Yugi stared back at him with eyes that were _vibrating_ with fear within their sockets. He blinked at him, frowning at the state of distress the small teen had fallen into. He wondered at the reasoning behind it, curious as to how he might have come across such a state. His frown deepened as he tilted his head, and considered him for what felt a long moment.

They stared at one another for what felt a lifetime. Then Yami shifted his weight and reached his own hand out. He touched his palm with his fingertips, tickling himself and Yugi in the process. Then he searched his face as the seconds passed. The distress that grew in the taller teen was impossible to ignore. It smothered him, his heartbeats tearing through his rather lacking thoughts.

Then Yugi moved forward, ignoring his protesting grunt, and drew him into his arms. It was a startling sensation to feel his arms around him, the embrace light and soft and gentle. It was all the things Yami had initially ignored after so many nights alone. The very embodiment of everything he'd formerly lost now encompassed him and he felt sick with this realization.

He did not move away, however. For, Yugi might have been capable of offering such simple comfort but he himself knew better than to ever assume such a thing. He knew well that he was not able to do the same for the small teen. It was nothing that he knew how to receive, let alone to offer. The fact came from years of things he'd suppressed. But he'd always known. He'd always understood this. And so he had never thought to offer such a thing in any manner.

Because he knew.

He understood.

And he had never been willing to harm another in the manner of faking such a thing.

Even when he had hugged Ryou that night in the woods, it had not been to offer him comfort. It had not been to offer him a sense of relief. He had hugged him for the fact that he wished he could _take_ those things from him. He had wanted Ryou to provide those things for him at the time. He'd been desperate and scared. And he'd wanted nothing more than for someone to offer him comfort in some way.

So he'd tried to take it…

But some part of him truly wished he _could_ comfort Yugi in some manner.

Despite his hideous exhaustion and the way his heart ached and his stomach hurt, Yami wished for nothing more. He wished with everything he had that he could do such a thing. He had been hopeful and despaired. But he knew better. And he was not foolish enough to think better of such a thing. He felt sick and dizzy and tired. And the act of trying so hard to embrace the emotion offered him and attempting the mimicry of such feeling was nothing he had ever mastered.

So he simply breathed through tight lungs. He did not want to move within or out of his grip. It was hard to think for even a moment what damage he could cause to the smaller teen. Yugi was more impressionable than he truly liked to admit, as he wished he could believe in the idea of Yugi being too strong emotionally to be manipulated in any way. But he'd seen the way he sometimes seemed to break beneath the pressure. And he had seen the emotional distress he'd fallen into upon his disappearance from the bed. He'd woken only a minute after he'd taken to using the bathroom.

And Yami had not truthfully expected for even a second that the small teen might show such a sense of distress upon doing so.

"Sorry," Yugi mumbled, but he did not release him and he seemed almost to grasp at his shirt in response. Yami was abruptly aware of the way that his bones must have felt like ragged peaks beneath the fabric, the skin pulled too tight to offer any cushion. He had lost what little remained of his muscles in the Change. His body had not been properly prepared and what little fat he'd stored had gone in an instant due to this. It would take him a few more days to get any sense of weight back on his body again, even with the drugs that Yugi could supply to help him do so.

"I just…" Yugi was still talking, but he was speaking so softly that Yami almost could not hear him at the moment. "I was really freaked out. I thought maybe I'd hallucinated it all or something. I…I guess I really shouldn't have reacted like… But I couldn't hear your…"

The alpha remained silent for what felt like an eternity. Then, quietly, voice exhausted and nearly swallowed away by the darkness, he whispered, "I had to pee." He frowned and shook his head when Yugi did not release him nor pull away in any manner. The seconds passed, until finally the smaller teen settled back a few inches and looked him over. His wide eyes flickered across his, then studied his face and the rest of his body before he sighed in contentment and settled back further. He did not release him, however, as his hands hovered upon his shoulder and upper arm.

"I just couldn't hear you moving around," he admitted in a weak tone, looking away from him entirely and towards the carpet for a brief moment. He licked his lips and kept his hands on him, as if the physical presence assured him of everything he truly needed. "I thought maybe you were gone. I never know anymore… My hallucinations have gotten worse and…"

Yami watched him shrug lazily. Then he frowned and tilted his head as Yugi looked over again. His cheeks were faintly dusted with pink, as he could see in the dark from the differentiating shadows there amongst his pale skin. They stared at each other for a long handful of minutes, until finally Yami shifted his weight and reached a hand down to grasp upon the comforter with long fingers. He frowned faintly, tilting his head further, and then considered him more pointedly for a brief moment.

"You seem very distressed."

The four words were enough to make Yugi falter, stiffening for a handful of seconds before he blinked and lowered his gaze again. Dread seemed to make up his expression now, head tilted slightly downward and mouth pulled into a tight line. He opened his mouth to say something along the lines of "It was hard when you left" but something stopped him, a small voice which argued this thought entirely. It said he needed to remember instead that there were things more important than his wallowing. And he had no space to say such a thing when it had been outside of Yami's control in the first place.

"I was just worried," he said instead, offering him a small and slightly overwhelmed smile that was too thin to be anything more than flustered. He licked his lips, searched Yami's face, and then tilted his head and smiled a little more with a mild flicker of amazement upon his features. Yugi felt so incredibly relieved and yet uncomfortable all at once. It seemed so odd that the tall teen could be seated in front of him like this, a bewildering reality that he could be there in the first place.

It had seemed so impossible not too long ago. And now he was there before him comfortably, seated and within his grip in the most literal of ways as he touched his shoulder and arm. He shivered and watched his face for a long minute.

Yami nodded after a deep breath. Then he turned his head away, nodding again. There was a sense of displacement in his features, more exhaustion than anything else. He seemed incredibly undone with this emotion, as if he were too weighed beneath it to bother with the effort of maintaining an illusion of feeling otherwise. And Yugi felt overwhelmed to see this upon his face, as Yami had seemed so alive despite his distance formerly. Now he seemed merely distant, beyond the touch of passion or life or anything to be pressed upon in any way.

"Okay."

The simplicity of his answer made Yugi falter in surprise. His eyes widened and he tilted his head up slightly more, stomach churning with discomfort at the thought. He fought back a frown, swallowed hard, and tilted his head as he and Yami stared at one another. And then Yami shifted his weight, tipping his body slightly closer, and Yugi instinctively squeezed lightly where he was holding him. His skin felt bruised from the gentle force, his bones harsh and noticeable beneath the pulled flesh.

They watched each other for another handful of moments.

Then Yami turned away and lowered his eyes to the carpet as if facing Yugi any longer might burn him somehow. There was another long handful of seconds, Yugi lightly touching and squeezing upon his skin once more. Then he licked his lips and tilted his head, watching his face before murmuring, "You got up for another reason as well."

The taller wolf did not respond but for a simple nod. Then, slowly, he lifted his hand and gestured vaguely towards the bedroom door. Yugi turned as well, at first expecting to find someone there. He bristled immediately at the thought, a snarl threatening to creep through his throat. Then he paused, hesitant, and glanced at Yami sideways with a frown and tilt of his head once more. He sighed softly, blinked, and then shook his head slowly. At first he did not understand in the least what it was that Yami might have desired from outside of the room. But then reality struck at his senses and his mouth dried out briefly before he swallowed hard.

"You're hungry," he realized quietly, frowning as he considered. He strained his hearing for a moment, realizing that his grandpa was still within the kitchen, and turned back to Yami with a momentary frown. Some part of him was desperate not to leave him, to keep him within his sights at all times, but another was steadfast in the need to help him. If Yami was hungry, then he could provide him with some food. It was as simple as that, Yugi knew. "Okay, stay here. I'll go and grab some leftovers from the other night."

Yami blinked at him, nodding in that same somewhat dismayed manner. He seemed more demure than anything, although Yugi had the brief thought that perhaps Yami was uncomfortable now that he had admitted to such a necessity. The small teen frowned, then moved to stand up. He wondered if his neck was red from pulling on his shirt as he had. Then he wondered if it was smarter to put his choker back on, as he'd removed it when he'd seen Yami looking at it with a somewhat suspicious expression, as if he still did not know or understand why he wore it.

Yugi wondered if he had ever explained why.

He realized abruptly that he could not remember ever doing so. And he wondered if Yami had ever thought about it for more than a handful of seconds. He frowned and licked his lips. He would have to explain it to him at some point, he knew. He would have to tell him all about it at some point.

"Give me a minute. I'll grab some of the salmon." He hesitated, then looked at him with a small smile that made Yami blink. "I'll be right back, okay?"

And yet something about the way he said these words made Yami feel almost as if the opposite might happen. But he also realized it was more paranoia than Yugi's tone which made this so stark in his mind. It was bewildering to him, how easily and abruptly he found himself capable of disbelieving his words.

Yami frowned faintly, tilting his head and watching him for a long moment. Then he nodded and lowered his eyes again, not wanting to argue with him or allow Yugi to see the weakness which seemed to weigh him down so powerfully.

"Do you want anything else? I mean, we've got a few fillets as far as the salmon is concerned, and then I can make us pancakes in the morning again." He breathed in, then exhaled rather shakily with an expression that was disbelieving and fearful more than anything else. Yami blinked up at him, confused and startled by the very idea. Then he lowered his eyes again with a small shake of his head. "No? No to something else or no to the pancakes?"

He held up a single finger. The memory it brought back was enough to wind Yugi. The small teen felt as if the air had been knocked painfully from his lungs and his throat was tight and much like a noose in the way it began to ache and burn beneath a pressure that Yugi could not name. He licked his lips and frowned, shaking his head to scatter away the thought, and got to his feet. He only realized then that he had not removed his hands at all and so he hesitated for a brief handful of moments. Then he looked him over thrice and finally nodded as he slowly pulled away.

"Okay, I'll get you some salmon and then you can eat as much as you want." He hesitated. "Do you want any medication when I get back? Or no?"

Yami blinked and raised his eyes to look up from beneath his lashes. He grimaced faintly, tilting his head, and then nodded again. He looked tired and more than a little ashamed, as if something inside of him threatened to fray at the very idea of asking Yugi to do something for him once more. The thought made the small teen hesitate, his mouth dry but for the taste of blood where his cheeks still ached. Then he frowned and looked Yami over once more.

"I'll get you some of them again. You can pick out which ones you want to take, okay?"

The nod was as demure as the last had been. But he did not bother to tilt his head or look over again. And the small teen felt winded once more as he rose to his feet and wandered towards the door. When he got there he hesitated, turning back immediately to see the other boy. Yami was staring at him, watching his departure with a slightly confused, almost bewildered expression. It struck Yugi that perhaps Yami had not truly thought for even a moment that he might do as he'd initially asked.

They considered each other.

Yugi had the impulse to simply go back to his side, to reach out and touch his arm and shoulder and perhaps take a seat and not get up again. It would be so easy to rest and relax rather than worry about it all over again. Yugi pushed such a thought away again, however, instinct telling him rather that he needed to help his packmate, that his alpha was relying on him for food as he once had before. And so he turned away again and headed for the kitchen.

The moment he shut the door behind him and made his way into the kitchen, he spotted the elderly Motou in front of the fridge. He had opened it, the pale light bathing his features in gold and his plum eyes sleepy rather than entirely too tired to see straight. Yugi blinked and then stepped closer to the other Motou, frowning faintly as he licked his lips and watched him for a long moment. His bare feet felt sticky against the tile for a long moment and he swore his footsteps sounded as if he were pulling something from the floor beneath his weight. He blinked and looked over his shoulder, listening briefly for the sound of his alpha within his room.

But the small teen could catch nothing.

 _He's still there,_ he fought to remind himself before he said or did anything foolish. He did not want to give the impression that he was there. He did not want his grandpa to realize and ask about how or why or what had happened to bring him back. So he swallowed hard and looked towards his grandpa curiously for a moment.

"What are you doing up right now?"

Yugi blinked and turned back, repeating to himself that Yami was in his room and would remain there until he got back to give him some food. He would stay there, waiting and listening and patient with hunger. "I'm starving," he said simply, fighting the impulse to shrug stupidly as if it might offer some relief to his frustration. "I'm seriously starving."

Sugoroku blinked at him, mind still groggy with dreams that tried to cling to his mind. "Your mom put the leftovers on the bottom shelf," he commented dismissively, still too tired to truly look for the lie that lingered in his tone. He looked Yugi over for a moment and gestured vaguely. "There's enough for a couple of midnight meals and then some."

The small teen nearly grunted with discontent at the statement. He felt sick to his stomach for a brief moment, remembering that his mom had become upset with him and her lack of work that day had resulted in her cooking more than necessary. She'd made almost enough for the three of them to live off the leftovers for handful of days, should it not perish prematurely. He frowned at the thought, looking over the large amount of containers that she had stored them all in. He licked his lips and let out a small sigh.

"Yeah, I know," he mumbled.

Yugi swore that this was one of the many times he wished that the floor might open beneath him and swallow him entirely. He frowned, ignoring the way his grandpa watched him from the corner of his eye, and stared at the containers for a moment longer. Then he reached in, grabbing a couple of them, checked both to make sure that they had only salmon in them, and quickly turned to retreat into his room.

"Don't you want a fork for those?"

He stopped short immediately, swallowing, and then looked over his shoulder curiously. His grandpa had moved to open the drawer for him, eyes curious and amused. He handed him the fork with ease and Yugi plucked it from his palm without a second glance. He did not so much as blink at him before turning away and heading for his room again. Immediately he took to reclaiming a seat near the other wolf in which Yami blinked at him from beneath his long lashes and raised his head curiously. Yugi hesitated, feeling almost overwhelmed by the mere thought of Yami's eyes on him again.

He swallowed hard, blinking, and then put the two containers down in between them, unnerved and feeling incredibly small. He felt, for the smallest of moments, miniscule before the other wolf, as if he were once again a plankton before a mighty kraken. "Okay, so, I just grabbed the first two containers I could find," he admitted after a moment, feeling flushed as Yami peered back at him in the darkness for a brief handful of seconds. "They've both got two fillets in them, so…"

Yami blinked at him, lowered his eyes, and then reached for one of the containers. But he did not open it, nor did he bother to reach for a fork. Instead he drew it into his lap, the cold plastic doing well to calm some of the heat in his blood. He blinked a few times, ran his fingers over the lid, and fidgeted as if he might pull it open before securing it again. He frowned, studying Yugi for a moment, and then repeated the gesture.

It took Yugi a long minute to remember the night he'd brought him salmon before, how he had made him eat first before he'd bothered to take a bite for himself. The thought of the taller boy repeating such behavior once more made him feel to his stomach.

"You can eat. I'm not hungry."

The look Yami shot him spoke of annoyance more than anything else, although something akin frustration made his eyes sharper than before. He seemed visibly undone by the comment, as if he had been hopeful Yugi would not draw attention to it in any way. They stared at one another for a long minute or so and then the small teen looked away to fidget with the remaining container. A handful of seconds passed and then the small teen awkwardly thumbed the plastic off, poked the fork into the fish, shoveled a bite into his mouth, and handed both to the other.

"There, I'm full."

Yami blinked at him. His eyes fell on the fork he'd tried to push into his hand. Then he looked at the open container for a brief moment. The fish was so pretty, a gorgeous fleshy pink color. Yami wished for a moment that he could have caught it in the wild, without having to rely so foolishly on the other male like he did. He felt his mouth watering at the thought, the concept of fresh salmon something that made his stomach gurgle with desire. Then he took the fork, licked his lips, and began to spear away small chunks of fish.

Yugi was relieved when the other teen began to eat, all but swallowing away the entirety of the first container in a few bites. He let out a small breath, ignoring the way Yami blinked and raised his eyes towards him from where he'd initially been staring at his meal, and moved to sit back on his arms to support himself. He watched him, closing his eyes after a few long moments.

When the sound of Yami's meal faded away, Yugi felt almost sick, anxiety clawing at his stomach for a brief second. Should he feed him more? Should he try to get more food for him? Was there anything else that the other boy would want? Would hunting a random piece of prey do him better? Would that be healthier for him? Would that allow him to heal faster?

Yugi felt dizzy for a moment, the thought making him want to reach up and pull at his choker. But he remembered himself at the last second, that he was not wearing it and that Yami would most likely be upset should he witness the reaction. He swallowed hard, clenching his fingers upon the comforter and narrowing his eyes.

"Yugi?" he said softly, voice broken into shards and tone almost lost entirely.

The small teen blinked, spine popping with the force he put behind lowering his chin slightly towards his collarbone, and looked back at him with wide eyes. He searched his face, panicked for a moment, and then relaxed when he saw nothing more than clear concern on the other's countenance. Yugi let out a small sigh, clenched his fingers once more, and offered him a fleeting smile.

"Sorry."

Yami stared at him for a long handful of moments. Then he tilted his head and considered him. They studied each other. And, finally, the taller teen relented and looked away. He tapped his long nails against the container in his lap. The fork rattled against the plastic for a moment. Then he shook his head slightly and frowned at him with a sideways glance.

"For?"

It would have been condescending in any other voice, but Yami sounded merely confused and tired. He seemed more exasperated with his own exhaustion than he did even the slightest hint towards Yugi himself. Yugi blinked and watched him with his head tilted and his eyes slightly widened. The other boy did nothing more than stare back at him from the corner of his eye, from beneath those long black lashes.

"I just… I thought maybe you were…" He hesitated for a long moment. Then he blinked and swallowed hard. "Never mind. I'm just really tired."

Yami stared at him with an expression that was full of disbelief. But he did not speak again, instead turning away with narrowed eyes and a slight grimace on his face. Yugi frowned and bit his lip, leaning forward again to look at him curiously. He licked his lips after a long second, drawing his hands forward and into his lap as he considered Yami for what felt like a lifetime. The action made the taller boy turn his attention to him once more. And so they both stared at each other again.

"Are you okay?"

Yami was quiet for a moment. Then he shook his head slowly. His eyes flickered away and fell to the carpet.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

He shook his head again, that same slow pace.

"Okay."

The red eyes flickered and caught on his. They stared at each other another handful of minutes, then the other boy turned away and stretched his legs. Yugi watched the way his jeans wrinkled beneath the stretch of the material when he bunched them again. The taller boy narrowed his eyes and moved to cross his legs after a heartbeat.

"Are you still hungry? I can go and grab more food—"

"No." Yami shook his head, eyes narrowing further into slits. His expression was guarded and disturbed as he nearly grimaced with disgust. No, he did not want more food. He did not want to make Yugi feel that he was obligated to find him more food. He did not want him to consider the idea that Yugi might feel such a need to provide him with more like this. He had not considered this beforehand. And he found himself annoyed and hateful that he had overlooked such a thing as that. He should have known. He should have understood that the small teen would come to such a sense of obligation just as he had formerly. "I am fine."

Yugi shook his head, frowning. "Are you sure? I mean, I promise it's not too much to…" He trailed off, then swallowed hard and grimaced. "I forgot your medication. I need to go get some for you."

The taller teen blinked, nodding slightly when Yugi got to his feet. But the medicine was hardly anywhere near his focus and the forefront of his mind was swallowed away by a great many other things far beyond such a thing as drugging himself for the sake of gaining weight once more. He narrowed his eyes and shook his head briefly, ignoring the way that the small teen had wandered off to grab some of the medication.

It didn't matter, truthfully, whether he brought him back medicine or not. Yami was not even sure that it might work on him in the first place. He had no idea whether it would do him good or harm at the moment.

It could have been more harmful than good for him at the moment, as it was. He did not truly know, nor could he say otherwise how it might come to affect him. In all reality he did not know for sure. He was too incredibly unstable at the moment to try to come up with answers. The medicine could stop his heart for all he knew, should he be too exhausted when he took it at an inopportune time. And he had no idea how it was that he might judge the difference now.

Yugi returned with a bottle of cold water and the pills. He put them on the comforter beside him and the small teen seemed nervous when he took a seat again. Yami blinked, then looked the medicine over in the dark, not quite reading the label with the dull yellow of the streetlamp feet away. He did not bother to try to interpret it in the slightest, but rather considered the way the light danced upon its shiny orange surface.

"Do you still have night terrors?"

The words startled them both. For a moment Yami did not recognize who had said them. He blinked, raised his head as if he might answer, and then faltered. Yugi was staring at him, startled and undone, and abruptly the taller teen was incredibly aware of just how powerful such a simple question was. The way Yugi stared at him was as if he had struck him.

The two of them watched one another for a few heartbeats.

Then the smaller teen lowered his eyes, looking at the container as well before grimacing.

His mouth worked for a brief moment, as if he were trying to find the words and the way to move his lips in order to speak them. Then he blinked, swallowed hard, licked his lips, and turned to Yami with a more determined glint in his eyes.

"Yeah, a lot more recently than I usually do," he said in a voice that was soft and vulnerable but somehow powerful all the same. The opposing forces in his tone made Yami tilt his head but the way he looked back at him said that he felt no weakness in telling him such a thing. He seemed more determined, in fact, to have him understand something that he was not willing to consider otherwise.

"I'm sorry."

"You apologize for really stupid things sometimes." Yugi shifted closer to him, almost as if he was attempting to brush against him, but he simply reached forward to place the medicine in his hand where he'd unconsciously opened his palm. The two of them were silent for a moment before Yami rattled the pills as if it might push away the many fears and conflicting thoughts that crossed between both of their minds in unison. Then the taller boy blinked again, clutched the medicine tightly, and tried his hardest not to look back when Yugi stared at him intently. "You shouldn't apologize for things that have nothing to do with you."

But didn't they? Yami had bitten him. He had brought him into this situation. He had made him say he was Atem. He had made him think that things were beyond what they truly were. He had exposed him to the many shapes of nightmares which he should never have known the truth of.

These thoughts alone were enough to wind the taller teen. He swallowed hard, grasped at the bottle even tighter than before, and listened to the soft creak of the plastic as it threatened briefly to cave in. But there was something touching him, warm and soft, and it coaxed the bottle from his grasp in a gentle manner that made him hesitate to look.

Yugi had taken the bottle from him. He was watching him with softened eyes, but there was a sense of knowledge there as well which made him look older than ever, perhaps even ancient. Yami blinked, then closed his eyes tightly and tilted his head to the side.

"Are you warm enough, by the way?" The change of topic made Yami blink and look to him in confusion. Yugi had popped the cap off the bottle and was shaking two of them into his palm. "I mean, I can always turn up the temperature if it ever gets too cold. You just have to tell me."

"I am comfortable."

"Yeah?"

Yami nodded. Yugi held the pills out for him and the other teen blinked as he looked back at him for a long moment. Then he lowered his eyes again, took the pills from him and grabbed at the water bottle without a second glance. He reached up to twist the cap off, turned away, placed the elongated tablets on his tongue, and took a long swallow. He was looking at a point beyond his shoulder, maybe even past his head and somewhere upon the wall.

"Good." The small teen sighed softly and leaned back on his arms again as he watched him. He seemed to be admiring him more than watching him simply for the need of confirmation. His eyes were intent and yet soft all the same, his lips curled into a slight smile of affectionate warmth. Yami wondered briefly if he himself had ever known to create such an expression upon his face before. He wondered if he had ever shown another that same unique softness. And yet he could not, for even the smallest of moments, imagine that look to his own eyes or such a quirk to his lips in any fashion. There was just no way he himself had ever been capable of showing such a thing. "Just tell me if that changes."

He nodded again. It was more in an effort to make him shut up now than it was anything else. He was too tired to want to do more than simply watch him for a moment and then lower his eyes. He frowned and looked back to his bottle, twisting the cap on and narrowing his gaze briefly.

"Do you ever wonder if the two of us are going to make it?"

There were a lot more implications to this question than Yami cared to cast attention towards. He hesitated, raised his eyes towards Yugi for a moment, and then looked away again.

"Frequently." He cleared his throat as a dull throbbing filled it and then curled his fingers tightly. His nails punctured the thin plastic of the bottle in his hand. Water splashed immediately onto his skin but he ignored it as he narrowed his eyes and fought away a grimace of annoyance. "I do worry about such a thing."

Yugi smiled a little more, tilting his head and watching him curiously. "Who do you think is more likely to survive?" he asked quietly, but it was full of something pained and raw and the two of them watched each other for a moment. "I mean…do you ever think about that?"

Yami looked away. He did not have the strength to answer him at the moment. It hurt to even consider the many things that were coming through his mind. He did not have the power to fully explain and consider and try his hardest to further expose the thoughts to him. The lycanthrope blinked and lowered his eyes after a heartbeat, shaking his head.

"I don't know."

"Sorry. I know this is a really depressing…" He faltered. "Or I guess…it's more grim than depressing. I mean, life and death are going to happen either way, right? So I mean, it makes sense that it would be more grim than—"

Yami shook his head. "I do not want to focus on this," he said in a stressed tone, trying his hardest to incorporate the tension that was mounting inside of his belly. "I do not want to think of such depressing things or consider something that upsets me so much."

Yugi was startled by the long string of words, surprised by the way he managed to breathe them out. But Yami seemed far too exhausted to continue any further. Yugi felt by far more than slightly undone by the weight of hearing his voice again. And the fact that it died then and there would not have surprised him in the least had that been what had happened.

But then he frowned.

Because Yami was tired and his voice was raw.

But it was not dead.

And the taller teen seemed incredibly tense and unnerved now.

The realization made Yugi slightly nervous in turn.

"Can I talk to you about something else?" he ventured, licking his lips and frowning faintly. Yami blinked at him curiously, then nodded briefly as they looked at one another. The red-eyed teen peered at him for what felt like hours. Then Yugi tilted his head and considered him more pointedly, watching him and studying and wondering. "When you were…g-gone…"

Yami ignored the stutter, because if he didn't he might have tried to reach out to reassure him. He might have tried to talk again, but his voice was too tired and his throat was too sore for him to wish for such a thing. So he kept his mouth shut and he held his hands in his lap, ignoring the way he felt like a small child that had come to disappoint his parents and was awaiting punishment for his misbehavior.

"I asked Slifer to take your spot as my beta. She did it for a little while, and then I ran into Obelisk." He opened and closed his mouth. Yami blinked at him, remembering the gray wolf as his amber eyes had flashed in the sunlight. He remembered the way his fur had seemed almost to glow for the smallest of seconds, ethereal as the deity he was meant to be. He recalled the way that the gray wolf had fought to save Yugi despite his spiral of madness, how the deity had hidden away his beta. "When I ran into him, I realized that he would be a better beta than she might. I mean, Slifer wasn't very happy with the position to begin with so it was great that he had come around and agreed to it. I, uh… I just… I mean, he's…"

Yami blinked at him, a blank expression crossing his features as they peered at one another.

"I'm just saying that I asked him to take your position in the pack. I wouldn't have if it wasn't for the way the pack was growing so…discontent, I guess would be the best word." He was rambling now, eyes on the comforter rather than the other boy. "I figured that if I could keep the pack together at any rate, it might help keep everything from falling apart as far as they went."

The red-eyed teen nodded. "It was a good choice." He paused. "You would have suffered otherwise."

Yugi wanted to say that his voice was a nice thing to hear regardless of the raw edge it possessed. He swallowed hard and shook his head, looking away again. "I was really worried that you'd hate me for doing that," he admitted in a shaky voice. He laughed awkwardly and reached up to rub at the back of his head uncomfortably. "And I'll make you beta again anytime you want to take the position back…"

Yami shook his head. "It will not be soon." He fell quiet again for a moment, frowning briefly before tilting his head. "You made a good choice in making Obelisk my replacement. Slifer as well. She was a good choice."

Yugi shivered, somewhat undone by the calm note in his voice, the simplistic understanding that he possessed. The small teen bit his lip and tilted his head as he peered at him almost curiously for a split second. Then he tried not to swallow too hard, somewhat dizzy as if he might feel sick by the very idea of what Yami had said. "I was really worried that you wouldn't be too approving of it," he muttered, but now he wondered if maybe he was simply trying to make him speak again rather than listening to his own words. He licked his lips. Yami looked back at him almost expressionlessly. "I was really kind of…I mean, I didn't…I didn't want you to think that I had replaced you or anything."

The words felt as if they held a lot more implications than Yugi wanted to admit to. His cheeks had grown heated, eyes widening drastically in the dark. Yami blinked and stared at him, that same seemingly blank expression covering his features. Then he turned away again, playing with the containers in his lap for a long moment before drumming his fingers as if it might help him to gather his wits.

"The pack is more important."

The statement made Yugi bristle. He had the impulse to snap at him, to lean forward and spit that that was not true in the _slightest_ but then he fell silent as he realized that the other teen was no longer paying him attention. Something had crossed his gaze and he looked incredibly haunted, his long lashes making his red eyes seem almost black for a split second.

Then Yami narrowed his eyes, blinked, and his fingers curled. The nails lightly tapped and punctured the plastic in his grip, but not enough to truly leave holes as Yugi had initially feared. Instead he'd scratched the surface in fine crescent-shaped scars and he looked too tired and angry to care for much else.

"Why?"

"Hmm?"

"Why is the pack more important?"

The wolf blinked and raised his eyes from beneath his lashes, peering up at him in near annoyance before he grimaced. "You know why," he said simply. The words were harsh and brittle, more with disdain than anything else. His red eyes flashed and flickered away to the carpet again.

"I don't believe that at all." The argument was weak, softly spoken, and Yami nearly ignored it as he folded his fingers against the smooth surface of plastic again. It was warm now, a disappointment as the former chill had done well to help him think more clearly. "I don't believe that in the slightest, Yami. I don't care if the pack thinks otherwise. I…"

Yami blinked and peered at him from beneath his lashes once more, tilting his head and considering him for a long moment. Then he looked away almost lazily, eyes dulled with a million different thoughts.

Yugi wondered if their conversations before then had been this excruciatingly hard to maintain. It made him want to puke as he watched him. Was it possible that Yami had changed so much? Or was it somehow that Yugi no longer knew him to begin with?

But then, with this thought came another, one that Yugi truly hated to think about—had Yugi _ever_ known Yami to begin with?

"You're too sentimental." The words were harsh and cold. Yugi startled at the ferocity in them, eyes wide in shock at the statement. He blinked and swallowed hard as the other still refused to look towards him. "You are still too childish. If you do not learn to separate yourself from such things, you'll find it impossible to lead the pack properly."

"You're saying that like I haven't learned anything in the time you were gone."

"Have you?" He didn't sound glacial anymore, but rather tired and uncertain now. "I would not know. I do not know much of what happened in that time."

"Not to me, right? But do you remember what happened to _you_?"

Yami was silent for a long minute. Then, abruptly, he snapped, "I am not going to relive that now."

Yugi blinked wide eyes, startled, and then cleared his throat. "No, I…I don't want you to, Yami. I just…I was worried. And I didn't want you to feel like…" He shrugged awkwardly after a long handful of moments. Then he turned his head away and frowned. "You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to. You know that."

The red-eyed boy considered him, gaze cold and face firmly set in a sneer. Then he blinked, turned away again, and pushed the containers away as he tilted his head and closed his eyes tightly. "I know," he said quietly, bristling at the idea. "I am aware."

But the words felt hollow and the taste they left in his mouth was bitter and disgusting. He wanted to puke again, shaking his head slightly, and tried not to focus on the various images that instantly replayed behind his eyes. He was haunted by the scent of something harsh and thick in nature, of hair and blood and a musky smell strong enough to make him want to snarl furiously.

"Good." Yugi had no words he could say to help him feel better. So he simply lowered his eyes again and narrowed his gaze slightly. "I didn't want you to forget that."

He nearly grunted, but instead ignored the impulse. He narrowed his eyes again, then looked at him more fully than he had for what felt like a lifetime. "I didn't forget that," he stated simply. He moved to sit up straighter, but Yugi noticed that he did not raise his chin nor did he fully straighten his spine, as if he might be fearful of challenging him in any fashion. "Thank you."

The small teen smiled a little, sitting up and nodding at him. "Are you still hungry?" he asked after a moment. "I mean, I know that you probably don't want to stay awake for too much longer. The medicine will probably kick in sooner rather than later, right? So it would probably be a good thing for you to relax instead…"

Yami shook his head. "I don't think I will be resting."

Yugi blinked, startled by the declaration. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that I am not tired as of yet and I do not think that the medicine will do much to lull me to sleep," he admitted in a rather blunt tone. He grimaced after a moment, narrowed his eyes, and furrowed his brows with a shake of his head. "I do not think that it will have much effect altogether."

"What?" The small teen looked puzzled and incredibly fearful for a moment. He swallowed hard, searching his face rapidly. "Why not? Why wouldn't it work? It worked before, when you first came here. And when you were in the den—"

Yami turned away. "You can't always drug a wolf. It will or it won't work. There's never any guarantee of any kind when it comes to the lycanthropy. I might remain awake entirely or I may pass out at some point later. But for now I am wide awake and I do not think that I shall fall asleep very soon."

He furrowed his brows. "What do you mean it's not a guarantee? You fell asleep both times before."

"And now I am not groggy even after taking medicine. You did not drug me when I was in this state before. Even as a wolf, I was not this thin or this exhausted. I do not know that the drugs will help me in the slightest." _Nor do I know if this will kill me or something of that matter. I cannot say. And I am well aware that telling you this will only worry you more. So I shall not do that either._ "We shall have to wait for the time to pass to see if I will fall asleep or not."

Yugi hesitated for a long moment, then licked his lips. If the medicine was truly so worthless, what was he going to do? "Do you think it will at least slow down your metabolism?" he asked quietly.

His alpha considered him for a moment, then shook his head. "I do not know." He paused. "I suppose it will. I do not know for sure. I don't remember if they ever starved and drugged the wolves in the labs in a situation like this. I don't have the ability to answer that."

"You're supposed to know all about the wolves."

The other werewolf snorted and smirked in amusement with a shake of his head. "I don't think even the gods have all the facts on what happens with our disease. I don't honestly know of any wolf that might know of everything."

"Lupa and Fenrir?"

Yami smirked a little wider, leaning forward. "You say that almost as if you believe in them."

The smaller teen faltered for a moment, then frowned and bit his lip. "Well, I've already met four of them. I figure believing in two more won't really change anything." He paused and sighed loudly, frown deepening when Yami blinked at him in surprise. "I mean, let's be honest about this, okay? In truth, I don't even believe in most religious figures. I think they're interesting, but I'm not about to worship any of them because they don't seem… _real_ to me, you know? But then, I've been smacked in the face with lycanthropy, even shown the three gods that rule over the lycanthropes on top of it. I'm willing to agree to believe in them since I've been exposed to them already."

The other male slowly nodded, eyes considerate as he peered at him for a long moment or so before turning away again. "Yes, I suppose that would make sense."

"What do you think that they're going to do with me when the war is over?"

The abrupt question made Yami turn back, eyes wide and confused.

"I mean, whether I win or lose… I can't imagine that Obelisk and Slifer and Ra would _want_ me to keep existing, right? I don't think they'd actually want me to stay alive after I've already done what I was meant to, right?"

"You mean to ask me if I believe they will kill you."

Yugi nodded even if it wasn't a question, licking his lips. "Yeah, I want to know what you think is going to happen when the war has ended and they don't need me around anymore."

Yami narrowed his eyes again, tilting his head and furrowing his brows with a mockingly thoughtful expression. But they could both sense the disdain that came through his body and the way he peered back at Yugi with a somewhat frustrated look in his eyes. "I do not know what they will plan to do afterwards. They might very well decide to do away with you altogether. Perhaps, however, they might like you enough to allow you to exist a while longer as well. I cannot tell you the future."

The smaller teen watched him for a moment, then sighed softly. "Yeah, that's kind of what I figured too," he admitted quietly with a shake of his head. "But I thought maybe you would be able to tell me. I was just hopeful, I guess. It seemed like a good idea before I actually asked it."

The other boy snorted in amusement before shaking his head. "I am not a god," he stated simply. "I wouldn't know what goes through their minds or why they might lean towards the answers they will gravitate towards eventually."

Yugi grimaced and tilted his head, watching the red-eyed boy curiously for a moment. "Did you have any idea about Marik?" he asked after a long moment, moving to place his hands in his lap and studying him. Yami tilted his head in silent questioning and Yugi felt his grimace grow. "Did you think that he was going to betray me like that?"

"Betray you?"

"He…" The small teen did not know how to explain the many lies that had been implanted in the other boy's brain, the way that even his own sister had told him so many times that he was Code Name Atem. He did not know how to explain that she had chosen to do this in order to save him. And the very thought of trying to explain such a thing to Yami seemed more to destroy its significance than anything. And so he simply shook his head and lowered his eyes to the comforter. "He said that _he_ was the _real_ Atem and he wouldn't let me run around pretending to be him any longer. He was going to kill me because he was so sure of that."

Yami blinked and curled his lip. "I am not surprised." He hesitated, then drew in a long breath that seemed to wheeze within his lungs. When he exhaled again, Yugi was amazed that his voice did not die away entirely as he spoke. "He was very…self-absorbed."

The smaller teen tilted his head again curiously. "You think that's all it was?"

"No, but I do believe that it is one of the many reasons he might have snapped." The red-eyed wolf was silent for a long minute. Then he closed his eyes and leaned back in his spot, his arms propping himself up as he shook his head once more. "I always assumed he thought himself greater than the rest. Or that he might turn his teeth on some of the other wolves. I was never surprised when he began fights amongst them."

Yugi was quiet for a moment. "You didn't warn me."

"Was I meant to?" Yami narrowed his eyes, curling his lip back to show a single sharp canine in the dim light. "You do not truly wish to pretend that you might have listened to me, yes? Because I have seen you interact with those wolves. And I saw the way you tried to give them a clean slate more often than not. And, if that is the truth of such a thing, then why is it that you would have listened to me should I have spoken against him?"

The small teen opened and closed his mouth. Then he lowered his eyes with a grimace. He'd always believed in giving others a second chance, allowing them the opportunity to make a better impression the time after. He felt sick, however, looking at the carpet now. Yami was right. He probably would not have listened to him, if only because of his own naive optimism in others and the thought that anyone could prove themselves better than the initial impression given.

"Sorry."

Yami shrugged and turned away. "It does not matter."

"No, I guess it doesn't." He looked at him sideways. "He had planned to try to kill you at one point."

The red-eyed teen nodded. "I was well aware. He did not often try to hide his thoughts from me. And I saw him watching me at times, with the expression of a hunter scoping out their prey. He often looked at me as if I were nothing more than a peon that he needed to destroy." He shrugged and closed his eyes again. He wished that the darkness behind his lids might grow stronger, deeper than ever, allowing him to regain his strength and slumber as deeply as possible. "But to kill him would have made the pack turn on me entirely."

"They would have killed you for it, wouldn't they?"

"They had become irate with my silence and the way I would simply watch them. So the alpha turned her sights on punishing me for misleading them. And that was when Marik had begun to grow bold. It would have turned into a slaughter had I remained long enough to kill him in turn." He hesitated. "So I attacked the alpha instead, wounded her badly enough that the others stumbled in their pursuit, and outran them without stopping even once."

"That's…horrifying." He paused, biting his lip hard enough to draw blood, and then turned away with a shake of his head once more. "I can't believe that they were stupid enough to do that in the first place. I don't understand how any of them ever even thought that it was a smart idea to just roll over and let another wolf they didn't even know just become their leader like that."

Yami shrugged. "I am surprised she gave you the pack."

"Huh?"

"You are far more childish than I. You are much more naive and innocent. It is a surprise to me that she might have ever thought to allow you to take her place like that. She had planned to do so with me but my silence infuriated her." He fell silent for a long handful of minutes before shaking his head and clenching his fingers on the comforter to draw the fabric more pointedly within his palm. "The fact that you had a voice was reassuring to her, I suppose."

"I don't sound like someone with a strong voice."

"You don't need a strong voice. You need a strong personality. Alphas are born by character, not by voice or strength."

Yugi tilted his head. He remembered vaguely that he'd read something similar in a book about the canines. They had said that the thought of alpha and omega wolves was outdated by far, had been incredibly disproved, and that the alpha was chosen by their character rather than anything to do with physical strength. The words had barely made sense to him before and so he'd simply blown them off. Now it made him feel almost sick for a brief moment.

Of course he had forgotten the information beforehand, but now the words were circling in his brain and it made his mouth feel somewhat dry. He sighed softly and shook his head as if it might help him to scatter the words from his mind entirely.

"So you think that's why she believed me when I said I was Atem?"

"I think she would have followed anyone to say it, had someone else been so foolish as to do so." Yami was scornful now, eyes flashing with something akin hatred. "I do not think for even the smallest of seconds that she was capable of doing otherwise. She was very…easily influenced, I suppose. I think it had to do with the constant knowledge of what her…destiny was meant to be."

Yugi blinked. "You think that's what it was? That she was so willing to believe in that because of her being told about what she was meant to do for years after Slifer raised her?" he asked quietly, licking his lips and feeling his mouth grow dry. "You think that's what made her so warped?"

Yami shrugged, no longer willing to answer him as he turned away and scratched lightly at the fabric of the comforter. Perhaps he should simply curl up again with his eyes shut and try his hardest to allow the darkness to swallow him whole. He wondered if that would do him well in the slightest, exhausted as he considered. But he did not think for a moment that slumber would overtake him at any rate. The shadows might wrap themselves around his mind, but he was too awake to fall asleep now. He doubted rest would come to his aid anytime soon.

"Are you tired?"

He wanted to scoff, but instead shrugged. "No, not yet."

Yugi wondered briefly how long it might take the taller teen to truly fall asleep should he keep his eyes shut like that. "Do you want to lay back down? I'll go ahead and put the containers in the sink and wash them out later when I get up." He got to his feet, stretching enough to make his back pop, and then grabbed the plastic off the mattress. He watched Yami's face for a moment, however, pretending to do otherwise as he licked his lips and considered the planes that made up the other's features.

It was amazing to him that he did not see the immense pain of scars that he had been sure would plague his countenance upon remembering the images that had haunted his nightmares formerly. And Yami might have looked stressed, but he did not seem pained in the least nor slightly marred with risen skin or scratched flesh. His skin was that same brilliant golden-bronze shade, soft and much like warm sand beneath sunlight, his brows sharp and thin, his lashes long and spidery, his cheeks high, his jaw firm and angular in shape.

"I'll be right back, okay?"

Yami nodded without opening his eyes. But Yugi saw the muscles twitch in his lids for a moment. And he considered the other boy for a moment before heading for the door. Yami responded only when the door closed behind him. His head turned, eyes sharp and curious as he considered the barrier Yugi had disappeared behind.

Had the small teen even noticed the way that he'd gotten so close?

Had he realized just how near him he'd gotten?

It did not matter, however, he supposed. He had just been curious at the idea. But then he remembered Yugi tended to like to be closer to others, whereas he himself was wary of such a thing. He did not know the affection and warmth that Yugi so clearly did. Close proximity was nothing he was too keen upon, unlike the small teen who so easily embraced such a thing as if it might save him. He wondered if Yugi had always been so codependent or if perhaps somehow triggering his lycanthropy had caused such a thing.

It was not uncommon for a wolf to suffer such symptoms due to their social natures. If they did not embrace such a thing, it was almost overwhelming at times. He himself knew as he had continuously dodged away from such things before. How he had become so close and tightly intertwined with the smaller teen was something that he could not think to explain.

Yugi came back into the room after a long handful of heartbeats. The small teen was quiet and almost hesitant, perhaps hovering by the door as if he expected nothing more than to find that Yami was no longer there. A few seconds passed, until the taller boy blinked darkened eyes open and turned his head to consider him in turn. They peered at one another. Then Yugi offered him a strained smile and shut the door behind him, thumbing the lock upon the knob as if he might hide them within the room and away from prying eyes altogether. Yami wondered what things might have been playing in the other's mind, abruptly feeling unnerved and smaller than ever.

"I'll make pancakes when we get up again, okay?" He paused. "A smoothie wouldn't be a bad idea for you too, right?"

Yami looked back at him for a long minute. Then he furrowed his brows and narrowed his eyes into mere slits for a moment. He tipped his head to the side, grimaced, and finally blinked. "You do not need to do that."

"No? You think you can heal without them?"

The taller teen was suddenly acutely aware of the fact that Yugi would not allow him to run off on his own and hunt as he might have beforehand. He was clearly unwilling to let him out of his sight for the time being and the realization made him want to snarl but also scared him all the same. What did Yugi truly have planned? Would he stop him should he try to leave on his own to hunt? And what did he think might happen then? Did he think that someone might be lurking about ready to hunt and kill him?

"I think that I can figure out my own way to regain my strength." He said this cautiously, nervous and growing anxious with the way that Yugi peered back at him almost blankly, as if his words were something that the boy could not understand in the slightest. His blue-violet eyes flashed, then narrowed, and Yami felt his mouth growing dry with tension as he sat up straighter and faced him more defiantly. "I think that I'm more than capable of taking care of myself at a time like this."

 _Because you did so well with that before, right_? Yugi thought spitefully. But he held his tongue, swallowing hard and shaking his head in annoyance. "Yami, I'd really prefer that you didn't leave the house for a little while. I don't want you to get hurt again. You just recovered from that hypothermia scare a few hours ago. And going outside again so soon…"

Yami snorted. "You do not want me to leave the house because then you cannot keep an eye on me."

"Is that such a wrong thing?" Yugi spat before he could stop himself, nearly shouting the words. The other wolf startled visibly, eyes wide and horrified by the snarl in his tone. The smaller teen had punched his hand through the wall, breathing raggedly for a brief moment as he shook his head angrily. "Is it really such a bad thing to want to be able to see you and make sure that you're okay? Please, tell me what's so wrong about doing this, Yami, because I'm at a loss."

The other boy blinked at him, unsure and bewildered and visibly shaken by his anger. Then he lowered his eyes swiftly, alarmed and bristling as his shoulders rose and then fell with a shuddering breath. He could smell shattered plaster, _swore_ he could feel the smallest dusty shards of sky blue paint within his lungs, and the intense metallic tinge in the air made him feel sick and dizzy. He blinked, closed his eyes tightly, and shook his head slowly.

They were both breathing heavily now, the tension making them both freeze in place. Yugi felt a tremor run through him, from head to toe, harsh enough that it nearly made him collapse to his knees. He wanted for a moment to simply sob out loud. But another part of him was desperate to listen beyond himself, to make sure that his voice had not spread past the room they were encased in. Yami himself was simply trying to wait out the growing panic that had nestled itself in his stomach. If they were to go to blows, he was not sure he could stop himself from harming Yugi drastically should things go too far.

He did not know if he could stop himself from ripping his throat out in a state of panic.

But the seconds passed.

Yugi gulped in a loud breath, strangled within his collapsed lungs.

Yami cringed at the noise but drew in a deep breath.

Then they both settled for a few moments longer and finally Yugi found himself looking swiftly away and towards the ground. He drew in a deep, shattered breath again, and whispered, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to…to snap at you like… A-are you okay?"

The other wolf remained silent for what felt like eternity. Then, quietly, in a tone that was more exhausted than unsteady, Yami hissed, "I am fine." He did not sound happy in the least, nor the slightest bit friendly either. He did not want anything more than to snarl at the other in dismay, despair cutting through his veins for a long moment. Then he closed his eyes tightly, reaching up and running his hands through his hair rapidly, and shook his head in annoyance. "I will not leave then."

The smaller teen shook for a brief second, gulping again for air. "I didn't… I'm sorry. I just… Just until you're better, I don't want…" He opened and closed his mouth, then lowered his chin to tuck into his collarbone as he pulled his hand away from the wall. The air stung it but there was already a rapid tingling to surround such a sensation as well and he relaxed visibly for a moment. Some part of him recognized that Yami had backed down to keep from hurting him, but the other was in a panic at the thought that he'd perhaps scared him. But the more prominent part of him reminded him that, no, the fact remained instead, that he could not tell Yami what to do nor expect him to follow every little thing he asked of him. "I'm sorry, Yami. I'm so sorry."

The other boy shook his head again, red eyes on the carpet. "It does not matter. I will not leave."

"But I…" He was trembling again. "I didn't mean…"

Yami shook his head more persistently now, rapid in the action as if he might somehow shed the frustration from within his bones. He bore his teeth and tossed his head as he drew in a deep breath and snarled low in his throat. "It does not matter. I told you that I will not leave." He let out a rough breath from behind his teeth. "Take me at my word now. I will not repeat myself again."

"Yami…"

The other got to his feet after a moment, refusing to look at him. He dusted himself off as if he might somehow have gathered debris in those few minutes sitting there, and then bore his teeth once more. His breath came in an uneven burst of annoyance, a snarl that did not quite sound itself. Then he spat softly under his breath, for the first time looking far more vulnerable than Yugi was prepared to acknowledge.

Because, now, as he stood in front of him, the small teen was hideously aware. He was _sure_ of the many things that showed upon his features.

He was aware of the taut skin, the exhaustion that plagued him, how skeletal his body truly was beneath clothes that seemed several sizes too large. He was amazed that his pants did not slip from his waist or his arms tremble with the burden of the cotton shirt upon his skin. He was shocked that the other managed to even hold himself upright, for he looked so thin that a single gust of wind might knock him off his feet in an instant.

"I'm going to try to rest now." The words were spat, frustration making them waver in their dying edges. Yami hissed, his shoulders rising as if to protect his neck, and then turned and strode towards the other side of the bed. Yugi watched him as he climbed up, pulled the fleece blanket over his head, and curled up on his side once more as he had formerly. "Do not disturb me."

The small teen swallowed hard, ignoring the urge to apologize and whisper pathetically that he had not meant to upset him or make him feel so incredibly threatened as he had.

* * *

It was around the time that his alarm would have normally gone off that Yugi finally moved to crawl out of his bed. His palms reached up immediately to rub at his eyes, lights springing and dancing behind his lids. He yawned softly, shook his head, and huffed under his breath. But, beside him, he could hear the lightest wheezing whistling curl of breath within a pair of tired lungs and the realization was enough to make him relax if only slightly. He licked his lips, pulled his hands away, and looked over.

Yami was still covered entirely but for his long strands of hair. The red tips were like fire against the harsh yellow of his comforter, then against the mild blue of his pillow inches away. Yugi smiled faintly, amused by the sight of the slight twitch in his sleep. The fleece would pull minutely against his shoulders, tugging slightly, and his breaths would become soft and small with each second that passed. It remained even and easy, as much as Yugi had ever known it to be.

Yugi wondered again if anyone had heard his brief lapse of temper that night, if perhaps his mother or grandfather had witnessed it but had not disturbed him. The thought would not have surprised him in the least. Perhaps when he had not continued, they had both assumed it to be a night terror he'd spoken against and woken immediately after. He frowned and nibbled his lip. He would have to hope that it was something as mundane as that which had kept them from investigating. Otherwise it meant that one of them was incredibly suspicious of it all and he was not willing to consider what such a thing might truly entail.

His mom would investigate, though if they were to argue, he would fight her tooth and claw until she backed off the entire subject. Yami was not going to leave and he refused to even further entertain the thought. So he shook his head at the very idea, snorted softly, and resisted the impulse to reach forward and touch the long strands that barely peaked over the edge of the fleece throw resting on his shoulders.

Yugi got up after a few seconds, ignoring the fact that he knew Yami would waken from the shift of the mattress beneath him. As predicted, the red-eyed teen lost his easy breathing pattern and seemed to blink in the darkness of his blanket's shadow. The small teen blinked and looked over his shoulder at the other lycanthrope but Yami did not respond further. He yawned softly, his teeth clicked together loudly, and then he burrowed more tightly beneath his fleece throw again.

He almost said he'd go and make pancakes, then grab a smoothie for him as well. But the thought of the possible argument that might come about between them was enough to exhaust him. And so he simply sighed and lowered his eyes, shaking his head and making his way for the bathroom. The moment the door clicked, Yami moved to sit up, rubbing at his own eyes and feeling as if his tongue were plastered and glued upon the roof of his mouth. It made his stomach curl and churn and he grimaced faintly as he shook his head. His fingers ran through his hair, strands greasy and slick beneath his touch. He'd need a shower when Yugi's family members were gone for the day.

Or at least he hoped they might leave for the rest of the day.

He couldn't know.

There were days when he thought they might depart and they seemed hardly to move at all.

There were many days that he'd thought to venture out of the room for a cup of water but had been forced to crouch and wait for them to leave. And when they had not, he'd simply bid his time until Yugi had come back, asking him when the other had settled into his role as the teenage son hiding away in his room again. Then the small teen would wander out, grab a cup for him and bring it back for him to down within a handful of seconds. He wondered where the rest of the water bottle was. He'd only drunk a quarter of it when he'd taken those two pills, he knew. But he'd also punctured the plastic, he remembered. He'd spilled water all over his fingers and palm and then grimaced in the dull light.

But he could not remember what he had done with the bottle. Yugi had taken it from him, had he not? And, when Yami had begun fidgeting instead with the containers rather than the bottle again, had he moved it? Yami sought to find it, eyes flickering rapidly about the room in search of the plastic bottle. He was thirsty enough that he might have followed the other into the bathroom and turned on the faucet to stick his head under and lap at the tap. But the taste which lingered in it was enough to make him nearly cringe away as his heart thundered his chest at the mere thought.

But, by the gods, he was thirsty. He glanced at the window, the thought crossing his mind to perhaps open the glass and grab a mouthful of snow. It would not be any different, surely. He almost moved to stand, then froze as the bathroom door opened and Yugi stepped out again. The small teen still looked considerably tired but he was unwilling to say anything about the expression on his face for the moment being.

Was he still upset about their earlier argument?

What were the odds?

Yet, Yami could almost sense it. It was a lingering tension between them, something that charged the air almost as brilliantly as electricity. But he chose to ignore it as he yawned and looked at him with a tilt of his head.

"Where did you put the water bottle?"

"Huh?" Yugi blinked, startled by the question. Then he blinked, frowned, and shook his head. "It's on the nightstand, near the lamp. I put it there when I realized you'd punctured it. I'll get you a new bottle in a minute, don't worry."

Yami ignored him, turning around and crawling on his hands and knees to reach for the bottle. It crackled lightly in his grip, the thin plastic weak and sputtering with a soft touch of water from its depths. He unscrewed the cap, unhappy when he noticed that the quarter of water missing from the bottle had doubled during the night. He huffed, tossing his head back and drinking ever last drop he could manage. Yet his mouth was still dry and his tongue felt glued to his palate once more.

"Give me a minute."

Yami almost argued that he did not need to. But then he felt the need to drink more, something which made his belly ache and his stomach curl. Yugi was already out of the room, hurrying off for the fridge he was sure. The taller wolf huffed, frowning, and shook his head in frustration. Why was it that Yugi always felt the need to do such things for him when he himself was perfectly capable? It seemed so foolish, as he knew very well that Yami was capable of doing such things for himself.

He could hunt for his own food.

He could scavenge for his own water.

He could hide if he had need to.

He could survive if hiding did not protect and save him.

He could kill anyone foolish enough to challenge him.

He was capable of murdering and staining the earth red where it was necessary.

Yami did not think for even a moment to say such a thing, however, as he knew that doing so would further upset Yugi. It was nothing he was too terribly proud of, either, and the small teen was not wrong when he said that he was too tired and weak at the moment. Yugi was right, something that Yami did not want to admit in the slightest. Weakness was not something to be boasted but for in a strategic battle. If he were to trick another wolf into thinking that perhaps he was too weak to move when he was ready to spring up and kill them in turn, it was nothing he worried about. It was a play in which he caught the enemy off guard. Now was not one of those times.

Now was one of those few times he felt incredibly weak and incapable of protecting himself altogether. And, should Yugi have been in the equation, Yami was sure he would lose him within seconds as well. He grimaced at the thought, then blinked and raised his head as Yugi brought the water bottle back within the room. He looked slightly uncomfortable, but not so much as to be unable to face him any longer.

"Here you go." Yami took it from him, nearly melting with relief at the way the water was so icy against his warm skin. "I got you two but I figured I'd put this one over here for the moment."

He didn't do more than hum, a noncommittal noise by all means. Then he twisted the cap off, tipped the bottle back, and downed it within a few seconds. Yugi stared at him in surprise, at first startled and then with a small frown. He outstretched his hand again and the taller teen took the second bottle from him, unscrewing the cap and downing the water again.

"Thank you." Yami licked his lips, putting both empty bottles aside, and looked back at him curiously for a moment. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"I don't think I've ever seen you that thirsty before."

"No. I think it is a reaction to the medication more than anything else," the taller teen dismissed with a shake of his head and a slight flick of his wrist. Then he got to his feet, feigned the action of dusting himself off just as he had before he'd come to lay back down again the night before, and faced Yugi almost completely once more. "Are you still planning to make pancakes and a smoothie later?"

Yugi hesitated for a moment, shifting his weight. "Yeah," he answered, dismissing immediately the initial idea of saying that he was considering going to school. It had been the briefest thing, a way of hiding from the other boy and his seemingly irate mood. But then he shook his head again and sighed. "I'll make them both in a little while. My mom is going to leave for the main clinic in an hour. And Grandpa will probably go back to sleep or he'll follow her to the clinic."

"Why would he follow her? Is there a reason?"

"Sometimes he helps out on surgeries. Other times he just plays the role of the receptionist while the techs help out or shadow my mom on surgeries." Yugi shrugged dismissively and offered him a small smile that was almost shy around the edges. "Grandpa retired comfortably a while back. So he's not required to do anything with his day anymore. If we could have pets, he'd probably have a dog that would keep him company in his room every day all day unless someone came to visit him. He's not the most exciting person. But he gets bored at home watching nature documentaries and things like that. So he tries to get out of the house as often as possible."

Yami tilted his head. "I see," he mumbled. "That makes sense."

"Yeah, he doesn't have to work anymore and being at home is boring to him." He shrugged and wrapped his arms around himself, swallowing words that threatened to escape him for the moment. "So he tries to help out at the main clinic with my mom and then he comes home and watches a couple of documentaries and goes to sleep again."

"I can understand his need to leave the house at times."

The simplicity of the statement made Yugi want to smile, but the undertone and the unspoken implications of the words made him bristle for a brief second. He drew in a deep, annoyed breath, then shook his head in momentary frustration and then an abundance of guilt. "Yeah," he commented without commitment. "He's probably bored enough to start working again if he had the option."

Yami considered him. "Doesn't he?"

"Not really. He's too old. No one would really want to bring him back on when he's eighty-six years old. I don't think anyone would want to employ him at his age now. If he was younger, yeah, he definitely wouldn't have to worry about it at all. But as he is now? I doubt anyone would even _consider_ hiring him."

"Because of his age," Yami drawled, shaking his head and narrowing his eyes. He wished for a moment that he could have said similarly about himself. He wished that he could have said that his own age made him incapable of doing something or other, or prevented the desire of others to do things of which he'd always ignored. He remembered the way the technicians in the lab had been so keen upon trying to breed them all, though he himself was kept away from them rather exclusively. He was not allowed near the females, though he'd never quite minded this either.

None of the wolves had been too keen upon caring for mating. They had mostly done it out of fear. A female would have been bred with by several different males, the thought of hierarchy or passing genes or true pair bonds completely forgotten in the need to simply please the humans and hide away from their scorn. He himself had simply turned his nose up at it, ignoring it all. He'd been too young then. But, should he have been captured now, dragged into the tunnels once more, he'd have been pitted with them as well. They would try to make him breed.

But Yami was abruptly certain of his inability to breed to begin with.

He was sterile.

He knew that very well. It was not in the testing that they had done. Nor was it in any means because he'd tried to produce young either. It was simply in his bones. It was a deep set knowledge of himself, something that pressed upon him and begged his attention at times. He was incapable of producing young.

The experiments had done well to kill whatever chance he might have had formerly.

But he also felt that he had been born this way. He had never felt the need to look at females. Nor had he even consider procreation for more than a few mere seconds when it was mentioned by the humans that had passed by his cage. He had never thought about it more than a heartbeat or two. And then he had been acutely aware once more of things that had never truly been addressed in his time down there.

He was incapable of breeding, and so he would be considered useless should he have been any other wolf within that lab.

But he was horrifyingly aware that they knew him. They knew him very well, no matter how much he wished to deny such a thing. Yami was excruciatingly aware of his connections there. And he knew that they were as well. The thought was a terrifying one by all means. But the truth was something that he had been hidden away from and failed to defend himself against beforehand. This had caused far too much trouble for him recently.

So now he simply considered it and felt sick again.

If he was too young for breeding, it was easier than admitting that he was not sexually active nor even remotely drawn to such a thing due to the fact that he was unable to produce offspring. And the thought of sex altogether made him want to vomit, as he could not push away those images in his head. And more often than not he'd cower away from those little cries the females had let out, somewhere between pained and pleasured and disgruntled.

Yami shook the thought off, breathing a little harder. Yugi was staring at him with an alarmed expression, blue-violet eyes wide and confused. They blinked at each other and Yami realized abruptly now that Yugi had asked him a question, that he'd tried to ask him something and his lack of response must have scared him to the point of nearly gaping at him as if he were nothing more than a fish out of water.

"What?"

"I asked if you were okay."

Yami blinked. "Yes."

"You sound breathless."

"I was thinking about something I should never have considered."

They looked at each other for a long series of seconds. Then Yugi leaned forward with a sense of despair stirring in his gut. "Oh." He licked his lips and awkwardly scratched at the inside of his wrist with a frown. "Well, I… Are you still thirsty? I can go and grab a couple more bottles."

The taller teen was not unaware of the anxious edge in the other's voice. He shook his head. "No, I am all right." He ignored the way that Yugi seemed to deflate slightly at the response. It was almost as if he were desperate to give him something, anything, to help him ease his ache. But the taller teen could not stop himself from wishing more or less that he had another answer for him in some fashion.

But the truth of it was that he was no longer parched and so he did not care for more water to drown his thirst. Some part of him feared the idea of saying no, however, as he remembered the way that the blood had tasted on the stone walls of the cavern, how the red liquid had been so terribly salty and the aftertaste grainy. He wanted to puke at the mere idea of such a situation repeating itself, the reality of it harsh enough in his gut to make him almost dizzy and sick.

"Are you sure?"

Yami ignored the desperation in his tone and nodded. "Yes. But thank you."

But part of him still remembered the salty metal taste, the grainy texture, the way his belly lurched and ached and rolled with pain and hunger. He nearly grimaced at the way the thought crossed his mind, then swallowed hard. He didn't want to have to explain should Yugi ask him what was wrong, and the mere idea of having to speak about it made him want to vomit all over again. He nearly shuddered, unconsciously recalling the way he'd swallowed his own fur in such a desperate bid to fill his belly in some way. It had not been nutritious in any way, but it had beaten licking up small pebbles and swallowing them whole as well.

And his stomach acid had dissolved it, high enough to rot his own organs had he left it unattended. Hunger took on multiple definitions for a starving werewolf, though Yami had been hopeful to never experience them in such a way. The taller teen narrowed his eyes into slits for a brief moment, nearly grimacing at the very idea. The pain had been so terribly acute. And the way it had gurgled before…

But now he knew that the water had done well to settle it as well. It had been just enough to cover the ache in his belly with a soft chill. And he remembered, before running across Yugi and Marik's carcass, that he'd eaten huge gaping mouthfuls of snow in order to help himself. He'd wished for food but had gotten ice instead. And he supposed it was better than nothing when he considered the pain that had come from it a mere month before.

"All right, well, I'm going to start on the pancakes in a little while, okay?" Yami blinked, startled out of his reverie, and raised his head as he saw Yugi fidgeting. The small teen was tugging on his pajama shirt sleeve, watching him with a somewhat frantic expression. His blue-violet eyes darted about his own for a long moment before he turned away again. "I'm just going to…"

He gestured around vaguely and Yami blinked at him again, confused and bewildered. Had they always been so awkward? Perhaps they had simply danced around the matter at hand? Perhaps he had never noticed because he had tried his hardest to ignore it in any way he possibly could. Perhaps he had been too embarrassed to even simply confront the idea, for the fear that Yugi might react in a way that would damage them both. Perhaps their relationship had always been so tentative and he had just simply turned a blind eye towards it.

Yugi was quiet for a long moment. Then he bit his lip, watching the tall teen with darkened eyes for a brief moment before nodding slightly. "Um, I just… Did you want to take a shower or anything?" he commented quietly, reaching down to scratch at his hand awkwardly. He cleared his throat and quickly ran a hand through his hair moments later, flushed with embarrassment. "Not that you smell or look gross or anything. I just…I figured that maybe you would want to take a shower? I mean, I just… Unless you don't want to. If you don't want to, that's fine too…"

Yami blinked at him, surprised and bewildered for a moment before tilting his head and considering him curiously. "Yes, I would like to take a shower," he muttered in a slightly puzzled tone. "But I had planned to wait until they had left before I—"

"You can go ahead and do it now," Yugi interrupted, eyes brightening as if he had just found some kind of relief in his agreement from moments before. "I don't plan to go to school to begin with and I have the dry shampoo bottle under the sink. I can just use that to make my hair look fresher. Although, my hair was—I washed my hair just before I went to see you yesterday. So it shouldn't look too bad even without a little refresher."

The other wolf blinked at him in surprise and then looked away. He was aware of the implications of his statement, that he would not go to school in order to watch over him for a little while longer. He wanted to puke after a moment, stomach curling as he swallowed hard and grimaced. It had not occurred to him that perhaps Yugi would skip school once more. He remembered him doing so formerly, when they'd first met, but he had not thought that he might do so again. It was a shock to him, something that he had not even considered formerly, and now it made him want the floor to open up beneath him and swallow him whole.

"You don't have to stay and watch me. I can…"

Yugi snorted. "I'm going to stay home to keep an eye on you, but I also have a couple of other things that I need to do too. I have some homework and study guides to catch up on. I've been neglecting schoolwork before now, so I…" He shrugged. "It doesn't matter, Yami. I'll go back to school on Monday."

The other teen blinked and raised his head slowly, startled by the idea of the day it might have been. He grimaced and tipped his head towards him, confused as he muttered, "What is today?"

"Friday."

Yami nodded slightly, blinking. "Oh." He hesitated and licked his lips. "What month is it?"

Yugi blinked and furrowed his brows. "December," he said quietly. "Christmas is in two weeks, I think?"

The other wolf nodded again and Yugi was abruptly aware of the fact that Yami had not been able to keep time formerly. He had lost track of it, had stopped trying to count the minutes or seconds or days he'd been gone. He had simply shut it away, probably in order to survive whatever it was that he had been forced to do in that time he had been gone. He looked away, fidgeting and then running his nails over his wrist with an overpowering feeling of sickness in his gut.

"Okay."

He hesitated, voice quiet and uncertain. "Did you, uh…want anything for Christmas, by the way?"

Yami looked over at him, confused and startled. "Christmas?" he repeated. There was something in his eyes that made Yugi feel even further sickened, heart clenching as he considered him for a moment. "No, that is unnecessary. I do not need anything for Christmas."

The small teen nodded and turned away, unsure of what more he should say or do at the moment. He licked his lips and turned away with a shake of his head. "Okay," he agreed reluctantly, uncertain and growing uncomfortable once more. Then he licked his lips, sighed softly, and reached up to awkwardly rub at the back of his head. "If you change your mind, you can go ahead and tell me."

"Yes."

They were quiet for a moment. Then Yugi nodded slightly, turning around and reaching for the doorknob, twisting the lock so that it clicked softly. Yami blinked and looked at him with his head tilted to the side, curious and bewildered for a brief second.

"Go ahead and take a shower, okay? I'll start on my homework. And then, when you get out, I'll wait a little while before I go out there to make breakfast." He didn't wait for Yami to acknowledge the idea any further, taking a seat on the bed and ruffling around underneath for a split second. He pulled his backpack from beneath the furniture and unzipped it, opening and pulling out a couple of binders and textbooks.

Yami frowned and looked at him with slightly bewildered eyes. "I, uh… You didn't bring the bag whenever you were at the den…" He furrowed his brows. "Did you just leave it under the bed or something until now?"

Yugi shook his head and considered him for a long moment. "I had gotten a sick pass from the nurse at my school because I had a panic attack before homeroom so I decided to stay home. I spent the week at home instead of bothering to go and then I started to visit you instead. But I left my bag at school for a while, before Jonouchi contacted me about the new set of study guides that we'd have to do for extra credit for some of our midterms. So I gave him my locker combination and he went ahead and got everything for me."

He wondered briefly if that had been around the time that the nurse, Catherine, had begun to follow him more pointedly. He wondered if she had truly _had_ bugged him as Noah had implied before. The thought made his belly ache for a moment before he shook it off and licked his lips. In an instant he dismissed it, because he'd had the chance to search his clothes and even check his skin for any sense of a pinprick or discoloration in the time that it had taken to fall asleep after Yami had already succumbed to his exhaustion.

Yami was silent for a long moment. "The woman on the ledge," he prompted, studying him with dark eyes. "That was her, the nurse who took care of you that day?"

Yugi nodded slightly, grimacing. "Noah claimed that she had bugged me in order to track me for a while…"

The taller teen shook his head. "If that were the case, the other hunters hired by the labs would have come after you again by now." He snorted. "No, she simply tracked you around for a while. Noah might have been from the labs, but she most likely would not have been considering she came on her own. I'm sure with the fact that you and I have both escaped so often, they would be sending them in pairs or groups rather than lone hunters. I think Panik and Espa were the last two to be contracted from the labs. He was simply trying to make you fearful."

The small teen studied his face for a long time. "Well, he managed it," he grunted before sighing softly and rolling his eyes. Some part of him prickled with discomfort, wondering for only a split second what it was that had happened to those two bodies. But now was not the time for him to ask. "I checked every inch of my skin for any sign of it and I even inspected every little bit of my school uniform when you fell asleep."

"Thorough," Yami snorted with a small smile. "That is a good idea to do whenever someone should say such a thing to you, as you already know. It is always a good thing to check and perform reconnaissance should something like that be brought into discussion."

Yugi nodded, feeling slightly flushed at the compliment before offering a mirroring smile. He couldn't remember the last time the other had praised him and the way it warmed his insides made him feel almost dizzy with satisfaction. He licked his lips and nodded again. "I thought it was better to check and make sure than leave it up to chance," he answered with that same deep warmth filling within his gut. Vaguely he remembered the way that he had once snarled and nearly attacked him, saying he hoped that he would live long enough to grow up. He wondered now if Yami thought of something similarly and was relieved to think that perhaps he was doing just that. "I don't want anyone else to get hurt because of me, so it seemed smart enough to do it as soon as I could."

Yami's eyes were bright and glittering as he nodded his approval towards such a statement. "Yes, you chose well," he answered simply. Then he moved to stand, his jovial approval leaving him as he grimaced faintly and looked down at himself. "I think you're right. I should take a shower."

The smaller teen hesitated. "Okay," he muttered, the warmth in his blood long gone and left with a glacial touch which made his skin crawl. "I'll be out here, so if you need anything just call for me, okay?"

The other boy was quiet for a long minute, blinking at him curiously before nodding slowly. "Yes, I will call if there is an issue of any kind," he answered softly. He paused in the doorway for a moment, then glanced over at the other teen with a slight twitch in his fingers. Yugi considered it for a split second, curious about its meaning, and then turned away again altogether. "Um… Did you…keep the other…?"

The smaller teen blinked, confused and bewildered by the question. He stared at him, eyes wide and darkened briefly for a moment. "Your clothes? Of course!" He scrambled to his feet, cheeks slightly heated as he considered the realization that he had not thought for even a moment to provide him with a change of clothes. "Give me a second. I changed up a couple of things and…"

Yugi flushed now, embarrassed. Of course Yami could have seen that something had changed. He had seen the layout of the room and knew that things had changed and been moved away and items shoved aside in favor of others. And the red-eyed teen had taken note, even if he had not spoken about it to begin with. He most likely would never say a word, though Yugi had been incredibly particular in his need to keep open the corner in which Yami had once sat and hidden away.

Yugi thought briefly of the teal jacket and his head nearly snapped around to regard the other wolf for a split second. Then he shoved the impulse off, opening the drawer of the chest and pulling out several different pairs of clothing for him. Then he hesitated and swallowed hard, leaning against the wood for a moment. "You know, I…" He didn't look over but he could feel Yami's stare on his back as he breathed in roughly and fought away a shiver. "Never mind. I'll tell you after you get back out, okay?"

Yami was silent as he took the clothes from him and Yugi could not bring himself to raise his eyes towards him any longer. The realization made the small teen struggle to keep away a grimace, his stomach tightly coiled and his mouth dry with growing anxiety. Then he offered him a wavering smile, turned quickly away, and made his way back to his former seat on the mattress.

"Thank you."

Yami did not wait to see if Yugi might respond to the simple words, instead turning on his heel and making his way into the bathroom. He shut the door behind himself without a glance back, turning the lock and shivering as he stepped forward to look at himself in the mirror. When had his eyes become so dull and his skin so pale? He looked sickly, ashen, and even his hair had seemingly lost it color and vibrancy altogether.

He frowned and tilted his head, considering the lines of his neck where they corded and seemed to tear through his flesh with claws eager to shred his muscle. He looked at the sharp angle of his collarbones where the clothes sagged and showed the hideous indentation of them. His hair was disgustingly greasy, slick and stringy, yet somehow still upright. But his bangs were separated and clung in little clumps, a dark yellow that almost seemed like urine more than anything else.

He shivered, then moved to pull the shirt over his head. His head felt oddly too heavy, his shoulders too thin and frail. He wondered at the weight of it upon his neck and resisted the urge to simply turn away. If he did not take in the physical damage done, then he could not quite plan to heal himself properly. He could not find the way to make plans and tweaks as necessary in order to fix problems that he knew would plague him later. And so he tipped his head to the side.

The pain was instant, enough to make him nearly spit and lash out in a blind panic. He heard the pop of his neck when he repeated the action on the mirroring side. Then he shivered again and looked down at his pants. His hips were too wide for his frame like this, which would surely cause pressure the next time he changed. It would more than likely make his spine break and reform itself in order to waylay the pain and allow him to survive. And that would more than likely make his legs weaker and his ability to run, his capability to hunt and leap forward, would be put in jeopardy due to it.

Weak ankles meant his hocks would be more likely to buckle beneath his weight. But that only meant that more pressure would be applied to his pelvis to allow him to move steadily. His organs would have to rearrange hideously, bunch upon themselves drastically to truly compensate for the loss of fat and muscle tissue. They would have to curl in on themselves in order to protect themselves from the possibility of fractured bone fragments that might erupt from the pressure of it all. His heart would have to perhaps enlarge itself in order to get the blood through his veins properly. His bones would all have to break and shorten themselves and then regroup and recover in order to prevent rupturing skin and flesh and muscle altogether.

Yami glanced at his ribcage now.

He swore he could almost see his lungs beneath his skin whenever he breathed. It made his skin shudder along his muscle and he felt sick for a moment as he stared at his reflection in the mirror before him. The bones were thin, fractured, too small to be natural, twice as many as should have been—twenty-four on either side. His body was trying to stretch itself too thin, to make it shield further down and encompass more.

But the defense was far weaker than it ever should have been. In the human form, they stretched almost to his hips in the way they fanned downwards, and mirrored what would have been for the wolf form instead. He should have had twelve on either side as a human, thirteen as a wolf, but his body was overcompensating. The bones had broken into thinner layers, stretching beneath his skin to envelope more organs than ever.

Forty-eight ribs was not something he was happy to see.

The metamorphosis was nothing that he had ever desired.

Yami shook his head slowly, closing his eyes tightly, and then turned towards the tub once more. He reached forward to the curtain and pulled it to the opposing side of where it lay formerly. He took a seat on the toilet lid, putting the clothes behind him as he sat there and slowly reached for the knobs. The wolf hesitated for a long minute, feeling sick for a moment as he heard his stomach gurgle and that despairing ache pulsed through him.

The hunger could easily be sated here in the house, he reminded himself before he could become too anxious regarding its presence. He frowned and swallowed hard, eyes narrowing faintly before shaking his head slightly and nearly grimacing seconds later. There was a sense of distress in his marrow, growing and swelling within his bones. He felt sick and dizzy, his stomach rolling and curling as the seconds passed. The acid was burning upon his stomach lining. He could sense this, understanding it as something more akin the simplistic need to satisfy himself at one point or another. He needed more energy. He needed more strength than he could possibly offer himself without outside aid.

Yami turned the knob, the metal grating and screeching beneath his grip. He shivered and narrowed his eyes further into a pair of slits. He grimaced, shaking his head, and leaned forward as steam began to billow forward. He shivered and swallowed hard as the seconds passed. The sound of the water rushing downward made the tub seemingly rattle and dance beneath the constant onslaught of the faucet. It made his mouth twist and pull downward as the pipes groaned softly beneath the weight of the cascade of water. He shivered and shook his head, annoyed, as the heat continued to billow upward into his skin.

He shook his head again and narrowed his eyes further in annoyance. The cold water knob was turned a second later, the two temperatures merging into a more comfortable mixture. He grimaced and almost curled his lip as the humidity within the small room made the mirror fog up as he finally got to his feet and twisted the middle knob to turn on the shower head. The water was heavy with its heat as the teen pulled the curtain shut behind him and stepped into the water.

He remained beneath the spray for over an hour, the water colder than the outside air by the time he finally moved to take a step outside of the tub. He huffed softly, the remaining humidity doing well to make his entire body feel looser, as if the tension of the weight of his own skin was softer and lessened due to this. Yami stepped onto the bath mat, looking towards the floor for a long moment before reaching towards the closest towel upon the rack near him. He pulled the dark blue fibers closer to him, frowning as he wrapped the towel around himself.

He felt almost cautious upon doing so. It was enough to make his stomach knot and his eyes narrow into slits once more. He did not glance at the mirror again, sure of the disapproval he would feel as he had already done moments before. When he got dressed again and moved forward and stepped outside of the bathroom, Yugi blinked and looked up with wide eyes. He looked happy to see him, something that was almost shocking to him, and Yami quickly ignored the way that his stomach curled and threatened to gurgle once more.

"I'm going to make the pancakes in half an hour, okay? That gives me enough time to say that my hair dried before I go out there again," he explained, though Yami could hear the slight discomfort in his tone. The small teen looked away again and grimaced, shaking his head slightly and turning back to the textbook in his lap. He'd moved his legs to hang over the edge of the bed, his textbook across his thighs even as he moved to cross his right leg so that his ankle rested across his knee. He did not speak anymore after that, chewing his cheek and flipping the next page to write down another answer on his study guide. He seemed almost slightly distressed as Yami studied him for a moment longer.

Then the red eyes lowered towards the edge of the footboard, ignoring the urge he had to ask him if he was okay. It did not truly matter, Yami supposed, as he knew that Yugi would not give him much room to say something else. The blue-violet-eyed teen did not move nor say anything else as he frowned and shook his head uncomfortably.

His eyes fell upon the surface of the comforter there, eyes wide and horrified. His mouth opened and closed once, his hands shaking as he spotted it resting there. His heart was in his throat in an instant and his mouth was too dry to allow him to swallow. He blinked, heartbeat racing drastically within his ears. He swallowed, nearly choking, and then narrowed his eyes as he considered the sight there before him. His mouth was too dry to speak again and his head hurt.

The jacket was folded there, resting neatly. It lay with the arms folded, the zipper pulled tight and the collar of it fluffed upwards. The wolf blinked again, stomach knotting at the very idea of coming any closer to it. Then he swallowed hard, tilting his head, and glanced sideways at the small teen for a brief moment. Then his eyes flickered back to it and his mouth opened and closed, the words swallowed within collapsed lungs. He could not think straight long enough to say something or even hint towards such an action. It was bewildering to him, how incapable he was at the moment.

"I…" Yami fell silent again, unable to force more out of his mouth after what seemed to be an entire lifetime of which he could no longer speak. He frowned and tilted his head again, glancing at the boy sideways to find that Yugi was studying him in a similar manner, though his expression was nothing more than curious rather than expectant or anything more. The taller teen swallowed hard, studying his face for a moment longer. Then he lowered his eyes to the jacket again. "Thank you."

Yugi nodded when he looked back at him again. He didn't speak to him for a few long minutes, the seconds passing in a hideous drag of time which made him feel as if the world were too dense and the air far too suffocating to breathe any longer. He licked his lips after a long handful of seconds. Then he turned back to the small teen with a tilt of his head.

"It…means a lot to me."

The other boy blinked, turning his head with widened eyes. He glanced at the jacket and back to him with a small smile, understanding blooming across his face after a long second of confusion. He forced the math equation out of his head as he considered him with bright eyes. "I know," he said in a simplistic tone, watching him and nodding. He didn't want to shorten the moment with anything further, as saying he was welcome seemed more condescending than reassuring. So instead he turned away again, looking over at his homework as warmth filled his gut.

Yami was quiet for a long minute and a half, his stomach feeling emptier than ever as his lips twitched and stretched into a thin line. He licked his lips, then lowered his eyes, and moved forward to gently touch the soft fabric of the jacket in front of him. He looked at the collar, the sharp angle of it, the way the shoulders had been smoothed out with careful patience, the lines of the jacket itself almost ironed to perfection by someone who had no attachment to it but for the boy he shared his room with. He looked at it for a long moment, then pressed his palm into the soft fabric. The smooth texture made his heart feel lodged within his throat, blood on his tongue for the smallest of moments.

"He gave this to me before I escaped the labs," Yami muttered quietly, his voice so soft that Yugi blinked and turned his head in confusion, for a split second believing that the noise had been nothing more than a simple split second whisper of the air conditioner rattling or something of that nature. The small teen blinked at him again, sitting up a little taller, and Yami ignored the idea of looking at him sideways, holding the green jacket within his fingers and shaking his head slightly. "My cage mate, I mean. It made his eyes a million times more beautiful."

Yugi nearly flinched at the description, stomach aching with the thought that perhaps Yami had felt something that was not strictly platonic for the other male. Maybe it had been an easy, instant click for the two of them. Perhaps it would have been the issue more towards the reality that the two of them were both meant to be experimented on so endlessly that had made them so inclined to do more than he and Yami could now. He felt sick for a moment as the two of them stared at one another briefly. Then he blinked and frowned and tilted his head, because Yami looked more distraught than he'd seen him recently.

And the red-eyed teen seemed almost sickly for a brief moment, staring back at him with something akin distress and perhaps a mixture of self-hatred as well. The two of them peered at one another, until Yugi could no longer keep his eyes on him any longer. He lowered his gaze quickly towards the jacket once more, unsure of what more to say to him at the moment.

"He gave it to me because I told him that I really liked it."

Yugi blinked and turned to him again. Yami was staring at him with something blank rather than emotional now. He seemed to narrow his eyes, then to blink and tilt his head curiously. They stared at one another for a few seconds. Then the taller teen shook his head and chewed the inside of his left cheek.

"You remind me a lot of him," Yami finally said quietly, though now his voice had grown scornful as he continued in a sneer. "You were both too willing to give me things and not to take care of yourself."

The words were a punch to the gut for him, startling the smaller teen. His eyes grew wide, horrified, and his mouth opened and closed in shock, but the other boy was staring at the ground now. His red eyes were focused entirely upon the carpet as if the world might be more focused there than it was when he raised his head. For a split second neither of them moved. Then Yugi drew in a deep breath and exhaled softly.

"He must have cared for you a lot."

Yami blinked. His head turned and his jaw set. "Too much."

Yugi studied his face for a moment, realization crawling through his belly as he leaned forward. "Breathe, okay? You're not breathing," he coaxed softly, searching his face and feeling sick to his stomach as the other stared back at him almost blankly. "And I don't want you to end up puking again, okay?"

The taller boy narrowed his eyes into slits and curled his lips back to show off his canine. "I'm not going to puke," he snapped, but Yugi saw a flash of white along his gums and frowned as he studied his face uncomfortably.

"Yami," he stated quietly, his other hand reaching out to touch him. Yami nearly flinched away from his fingers before his mouth opened and closed and his tongue felt plastered to the palate of his mouth. "Please don't stress yourself out so much. I promise it's okay. You don't have to tell me anything else about it. I don't want you to stress yourself out."

Yami curled his lip further back again. "Don't talk to me like I'm a pup."

The statement would have startled him had he not been aware of how shaken Yami looked at the moment. Yugi would have paused and reconsidered, flustered by the reaction, speaking to him in a softer tone or perhaps snapping at him that he was speaking to him like a _human_ instead. But then he frowned and shook and tilted his head. The small teen blinked and searched his face for a moment, then shook his head again.

"Yami, I promise I don't want you to say anything more, okay? I don't want more details if you don't think you want to tell me." He opened his mouth to say something further, but the red-eyed teen abruptly faltered, head snapping around and body jerking back a step. Yugi faltered, head snapping towards the door as well before he remembered the lock in place and his eyes wide with surprise. The small teen raised a finger to his lips when Yami seemed to grow further tense, and Yugi reached out gently to touch the black hoodie he was wearing, tugging softly on the fabric there.

There was a soft knock on the door and he cleared his throat as he murmured, "Yeah?"

Yami looked at him for a moment, using the ease on his face to allow him enough comfort to calm down once more. He was too tense, and if he made even one wrong move there was a very clear indication of doing something vicious and stupid. The two wolves looked back at each other for a split second, watching one another closely.

Yugi searched his face as his mom spoke on the other side of the door, asking him if he was okay. "Yeah, I'm fine," he answered in an easy tone, pausing for only a moment longer. "Why? What's wrong?"

"I thought I heard you talking."

"I just finished talking to Jonouchi," he answered simply, ignoring the way that the other teen stared at him for another long minute. Yami stared back at him for a minute, eyes searching his face for what felt like hours. Then he lowered his gaze again and pressed his lips together tightly. "He was asking me what I got for a certain math problem."

His mom was silent for a long moment. "So, considering the time, I'm guessing you're _not_ going to school _again_ today?" she asked in a sharper tone.

Yugi didn't blink. "No." His eyes shot to Yami's again and the other teen peered at him rather pointedly. "I'm staying home. I don't feel all that great."

"Yeah… _okay_."

The sarcasm was enough to make Yugi roll his eyes. Yami blinked and tilted his head and searched his face curiously. His eyes flickered across his face for a moment longer, his red gaze dark and curious as they stared at each other. The wolf faced him curiously for a long handful of minutes. Then he turned away again, the tension making them both bristle as the seconds passed. The red-eyed teen frowned and looked towards Yugi and narrowed his gaze.

The two wolves were silent for a few minutes longer, until Yugi realized that the tension between them had nothing to do with his mother any longer. The red-eyed teen was staring at him, their eyes locked and their faces mirroring expressions of discomfort. They considered each other for a moment, until Yugi laughed softly and leaned against the bed, lowering and shaking his head with an awkward chuckle. He narrowed his eyes into slits for a split second, huffing, and then shook his head slowly once more.

"Wow, okay," he muttered. "This…is going to take a little while to get used to again, huh?"

Yami didn't answer, as now he seemed far more exhausted than anything else. He wanted for a moment to simply pull away from him entirely and perhaps use the window as a means of escape. But then he fell silent and the most he could do was simply stare at the other teen again. He looked away after a few seconds and Yugi released him, getting up and looking at his textbook for a few moments longer.

"I'm going to go ahead and get started on the pancakes now."

The thirty minutes had passed, Yami realized, but the tension that had existed between them moments before was enough to scare them both into silence and so they had refused to speak again. And, when Yami finally noted the absence of both Yugi's family members, he followed the small teen into the kitchen. Yugi had already finished one of the plates of pancakes and had steadily begun to layer the second. The two wolves hesitated, looking at one another briefly for a split second, and then they considered each other a heartbeat longer.

They didn't speak aside from Yugi offering him the plate and then commenting on making him a smoothie later. The smaller teen went back to his own meal, making the rest of his pancakes and shrugging off the way that Yami stared back at him so blankly. Then the taller wolf seemed to inhale his food altogether, finished by the time that Yugi got to the table as well. The small teen blinked wide eyes, shocked by the sight of his mouth so incredibly full and syrup stuck to his cheek.

He wanted to hand him a napkin but the other ignored him and got to his feet again. Yugi thought for a moment that perhaps the wolf was too frustrated to want to remain near him. But then he saw him stumble a step, cringing when Yami caught himself. It took him only a moment to realize that the wolf was headed as quickly as he could for the couch. Yugi hurried to eat his food as well, feeling almost sick with anxiety as he finished his own plate and went to check on the other lycanthrope.

Yami was curled up on his side, facing the backrest of the couch. He was fast asleep before Yugi could even think straight. His eyes grew wide, his mouth opening and closing before he smiled faintly at the sight. The taller teen did not seem even remotely disturbed as he wandered into his room to grab his books and make his way back to the lounge chair adjacent to the other male. He took the spot as he normally would have otherwise, then began to write a new answer in his study guide.

He sat there for what seemed like hours. And, only when Yami woke again, did the smaller teen bother to look over again and consider him for more than a few brief seconds. The taller boy moved to sit up, blinking groggy eyes, and reached up to rub at them tiredly for a long few minutes. Yugi studied him, then stretched his legs and licked his lips.

"Are you okay?"

Yami looked back at him, groggy as he muttered, "I think…I think the drugs kicked in." He opened and closed his mouth and ran his hands through his long, shiny hair. He'd washed his hair so thoroughly with the shampoo that the strands had actually _squeaked_ from the force of his scrubbing. He'd wanted so much to get rid of the dirt and the feeling of disgust within his own bones. He shook his head and looked back at the other teen with a deep breath. "I wasn't… I hadn't expected it to actually work at any rate. I figured it had metabolized before…"

Yugi studied his face, almost disbelieving before nodding and smiling at him briefly. "You think so?" he asked as he stretched his arms in front of him and searched his expression once more. "Maybe it was that whole slow digestion thing that canines have going for them."

Yami blinked at him, about to ask before he remembered what he was referring to and ran a hand through his hair once more. Yes, he remembered that. Wolves could store meat in their belly for days, slowing their own digestion in order to make it stretch for as long as possible before they might have to hunt again. It was always possible that somehow his body had not responded to the medication properly, keeping him awake for longer than necessary and then it had run out of steam during his meal.

Yugi searched his face for a long minute, tilting his head and studying him for a brief moment or two with a small smile. "You should go rest in my room," he said softly, getting to his feet. The pain in his knees was sharp, the stiffness causing his entire body to feel as if he were being stuck with pins and needles as he watched the taller teen once more. "You can sleep in my bed or on the floor or wherever you'd like, Yami. But I think that would be a better idea for you for the moment. I'm going to go see about the pack for a little while."

Yami did not move for a long moment. His red eyes caught and studied his for a moment. Then he rose to his feet and brushed himself off. He considered the smaller teen, lowering his eyes, and turned away with a shake of his head. "Why are you going to disturb them?"

"I have to talk to Obelisk about something."

The deity's name made his eyes flicker, darkening drastically and turning to him immediately. They caught his once more, burning there briefly. Then he snorted loudly, a scornful noise, and turned to make his way to Yugi's room again.

"I'll see you when you get back."

Yugi hesitated, surprised by the sharp answer. "Okay. I'll see you then."

* * *

 _Obelisk,_ he called immediately, huffing under his breath. He pricked his ears forward and slowed his steps, searching the camp rapidly for the other wolf. There was a long moment of silence as the other canines all looked up curiously but did not say anything to greet him. There was a sense of tension within the camp but he ignored the entirety of it and raced forward once more. _Obelisk_!

The deity came from his side, a dark shadow trotting across the snow. Yugi blinked and stopped immediately there in front of the other wolf. His head turned and his tail wagged as the gray canine paused there, ears flicking and eyes searching his for a moment. _Yes_?

 _I need to talk to you about something._

Obelisk considered him silently for a moment. _Are you thinking to speak to me about the rank of which Yami will fall upon now that he is healthy enough to remember_? he asked slowly, a curt response that sounded rather distracted as well. Yugi blinked at him, eyes wide and ears flicking about for a moment. The other wolves within the camp did not so much as blink or raise their heads to look towards him.

Many of them were actually pacing about or growling softly. Yugi spotted Echo staring off towards something further within the area, Yusei pacing and bristling faintly before trotting back and forth rapidly. Serena had begun to bristle but was not doing much else. Eurea had her eyes locked on Echo, ready to leap to her paws should something come to happen.

The sight made him turn quickly back to the gray wolf. _What's going on_? he demanded.

 _A pack came forth to see you,_ the deity answered with a simple shrug. His eyes flickered across his own for a moment, his ears flicked about once more. And then he narrowed his gaze briefly and tilted his head more pointedly towards the other canine. _The leader is requesting to see you. Echo and Aki have been growing distressed because of how they've been asking to meet you._

He blinked. _Oh,_ he muttered, bewildered by the very concept. Then he huffed again. _Right._

Yugi did not pause now to keep from rushing forward. He trotted rapidly, without a single glance back, and headed the direction of which he saw the other wolves looking. Obelisk was at his side in an instance, voice quiet for a moment as he murmured, _Do you not want to know more about them_?

The white canine glanced at him sideways. _Not really._

 _How brave of you to simply rush into such a thing, no_?

 _I'm not too worried about it._ And he wouldn't have called it brave. He would have called it reckless.

They glanced at one another for a moment or two. Then Obelisk snorted and shook his head with a dismissive expression. The deity moved in front of him, almost as if he meant to cut him off. Obelisk stared at him for a moment, his body squared in a way that made him falter in his step. It occurred to him only then that the other meant to impress caution upon him. He wondered at the idea of it, bristling faintly at the thought that perhaps a pack of wolves that had come to aid him might have enough violence to make even Obelisk more cautious. He flicked an ear and then slowed his steps as well.

 _What took you so long to respond to me anyways_? Yugi asked in an effort to make the situation less tense than it was. He flicked his ears again, running his tongue over his nose briefly. Then he tilted his head and glanced at Obelisk sideways for a moment. The gray wolf blinked at him in response, then snorted softly and moved to match his pace. _I was almost worried that you weren't here._

 _I was teaching some battle techniques with a couple of the other wolves. Otogi and Yusei need a lot of practice._

Yugi blinked. _Otogi is a lover, not a fighter, huh_?

Obelisk snorted and glanced at him sideways again, chuckling, _Is that a human expression_? _There's no such thing as a lover versus a fighter. You have to fight for your affections; otherwise you would give up when the first sign of resistance is shown._

He flicked an ear. _It's an expression about someone being more willing to be peaceful than violent when things become stressful,_ he said simply. _It means that they're more likely to find a diplomatic means of solutions rather than fight with someone else like you or Yami would._

 _I don't think that's a fair assessment. I am sure Yami would be more likely to listen if he found reason to._

Yugi snorted. _No defense for yourself_?

 _Not at all. If I am threatened, I will kill my opposition._

The two of them glanced at each other sideways for a brief moment. Then they blinked and hurried forward again. Obelisk slowed after a few minutes and Yugi did the same. It was only then that he noticed that they were further into the woods rather than near the base of the camp. The pack must have forced the wolves to remain hidden there in order to keep them from discovering their stronghold. The wolf was quiet for a long moment, the two of them silent for a few minutes.

 _So you guys forced the wolves to stay back here…_ why?

The wolf blinked at him in surprise. _He insisted. It had nothing to do with me or the others in the slightest._ He seemed to shrug after a moment, then slowed drastically once more. The deity glanced at the white wolf as the other blinked at him again. _You would be surprised how easily they settled for remaining here rather than going to the camp. They felt that it was more important to meet you before they were ever to enter the camp._

Yugi flicked an ear and nearly flattened them against his skull uncomfortably. _That's…kind of odd,_ he admitted, but part of him could understand this as well. He knew well enough that wolves were extremely territorial. And he remembered the way that the wolves had turned on Echo and proclaimed that she would be a sacrifice in order to strengthen him. The thought made him want to vomit but he shook it off as he wandered forward slowly.

It was a lot smarter for them to remain where they were. There were two packs all merged into one within the camp as it was, with over thirty wolves to be recognized and fought against should they have turned on him. It was enough to make any alpha with common sense simply pause and back away from the thought of potentially angering them. But then there was the third pack as well, wasn't there? There was the Sapporo pack, the one with the two alphas Yoko and Yusho—though he truly mostly only remembered Yuya more than them. But he had done nothing with them either, avoiding them for as much as he was worth in all reality. He would have to change that soon as well…

The wolf that stood in front of the pack was immense, with a broad head and huge shoulders. His coat was a dark burgundy which soon faded into dark brown like chocolate and the sight of it made Yugi feel almost nervous. The white canine flicked his ears, glancing sideways towards Obelisk as he murmured, _He's huge._

 _He is muscular, yes, but he is still an inch smaller than you._ His gray ears flicked. _Far more muscular than you yourself seem to be._ That _is what a true wolf looks like when they fight and hunt and know their abilities as well as they should._ He _is the example of a lycanthrope that knows himself well enough and has utilized training to realize every possibility that his body might possess._

Yugi tilted his head, looking at him sideways. _Yeah, thanks for that, you jackass,_ he sneered. _I am well aware of the standard that you and Yami and Slifer have all set. Thanks for reminding me even more._

Obelisk snorted. _You are welcome._ He allowed Yugi to pass him as they got closer and the white wolf halted a foot away from this large male. Was Obelisk even right in saying that he was smaller than him? The wolf looked so big it was ridiculous to even attempt to measure himself against it.

 _So…_ The white canine flicked his ears back and forth. Many of the other wolves were lean or large just as the alpha himself was. It was bewildering to him to see such a thing. They were not as varied in shape as the American, Domino _or_ Sapporo pack. They all tended to have extremely similar shapes and sizes and it amazed him at the moment.

 _It is a pleasure to meet you, Code Name Atem._ The wolf bowed before him so deeply that his chin touched the snow and his back seemed to pop from the formation, as if he were simply stretching in front of him. His eyes were sparkling, a deep gray color which showed blue only around his enlarged pupils. The wolf only rose a moment or so later when Yugi glanced away towards Obelisk again. The realization came to him that this alpha had been awaiting his approval to stand up again.

Yugi watched him for a moment, then pricked his ears forward. _Uh…yes, a pleasure,_ he muttered, unsure of what more he should or could possibly say. Then he tilted his head and stared at him with darkened eyes. _But why are you here_?

The deity beside him snorted out a breath so roughly that it almost startled him. But it was the large wolf in front of him which surprised him more. Its head tilted and then laughter boomed through his head, startling him. Yugi bristled faintly, unnerved by the idea, and he nearly snarled in dismay for a brief moment. Then he shook it off and peered at him uncomfortably.

It took a few long minutes for the wolf to stop guffawing at him. And then, as if he'd been struck, the red-and-brown-furred wolf blinked and slowly tilted his head. The gray eyes became startled and bewildered as they looked at each other. And then he pricked his ears forward and stared at him pointedly. For a few seconds the canine peered at him blankly. And then, finally, he flattened his ears and glanced over his shoulder at the other wolves. They all were watching with similarly baffled expressions.

 _You're…joking,_ right?

Yugi flicked an ear uncomfortably, uncertain as to what he might say for the moment. Then he looked at the snow for a split second and turned back. _Does it seem like I'm joking_? he asked rather harshly before he could stop himself. _Why are you all coming now anyways_?

Obelisk moved forward a step, a slight snarl on his face. _Relax,_ the deity growled at him. _He is not even angered that you asked him such a foolish question. You should stop before he shows you what he's capable of as far as his physical strength goes._

The white wolf hesitated for a long time. Then he flicked his ears and tilted his head. Finally he turned away with what he could only guess would be a grimace or perhaps a scowl across his face. Then he shrugged it off and turned to the alpha again. _I am sorry. I should not have snapped at you like that. Regardless, you know my name and I do not know yours._

It was an easy enough prompting to get the other to give his name, the red and brown wolf blinking wide gray eyes and then wagging his tail slightly. _My apologies, Atem. I am Nistro,_ he announced, and for the first time Yugi noticed the smallest nick in his right ear. It looked almost as if it had been cut slightly by a cat's claw rather than a wolf's teeth. But he seemed more unnerved as he stared at the white wolf for a long moment.

Yugi nodded slightly. _Well then, welcome to_ _Hokkaido_ _,_ _Japan_ _._

 _Thank you._ He hesitated a moment longer, then tilted his head and pricked his ears forward more pointedly. _But you must realize that we came as per required of the lycanthropes' pledge to Atem, yes_?

The white wolf blinked, long and slow, and then tilted his head slowly and snorted loudly. _Pledge_? he demanded almost icily, the thought making him nearly snarl. _What_ pledge?

Nistro stared at him as if he could not fathom how it was that Yugi even existed at the moment. He looked at him as if he did not understand how he might be standing in front of him, as if his stupidity were the most amazing aspect about him. The white wolf felt abruptly small and childish as he took in that sharp look in his dark eyes. _Surely you remember that all lycanthropes are sworn by blood to come to the aid of Code Name Atem, no matter what the cost_? He paused. _We are willing to lay our lives down for the sake of your survival the moment it might become necessary._

Yugi stared at him for a moment. Then he glanced at Obelisk sideways for a split second. The two of them considered each other until the white wolf turned away with a flick of his ears. He should have known. He should have _known_ that was what he meant. It was a wonder that he'd forgotten considering all of what had been proclaimed before. Mai and Otogi had told him as much before. Hell, he was almost certain that even _Yami_ had told him such a thing beforehand.

* * *

"The alpha said that they would always come to help Code Name Atem, no matter the circumstances or anything like that," Yugi commented quietly, feeling sick as he looked at him now. He frowned and licked his lips, searching his face and peering at him uncomfortably. "He said it's because of who I am that they'll always do that. They'll come to my every beck and call."

Yami blinked and tilted his head, looking over at him from his position on the floor watching the small television without any true sense of curiosity. Then he blinked again, furrowing his brows, processed his words once more. His eyes narrowed after a moment, he snorted and turned away, and his voice was scratchy when he muttered, "I told you that once before."

Yugi hesitated for a moment, thinking back for a split second before sighing softly. "Okay, but I want to know more about what makes them think this is worth it, Yami," he answered quietly. "Because, I'm not going to lie. I haven't honestly done much for any of them to make them think that I'm worth following like that. I'm not even sure that I should be able to call myself Atem at this rate."

The wolf blinked at the screen. They were saying something about how Domino City's economy was suffering, though not too terribly. Then Yami blinked again, turning his head and looking over his shoulder with a raised brow and a shrug of his shoulder. "Why do you think such a thing? You could not have done so terribly in the time I was gone."

"Do you honestly think that if you hadn't bitten me that I would be worth your time right now?"

Yami blinked and slowly sat up, turning around with darkened eyes. "I considered you a friend before you asked me that," he said in a calm tone, staring at him with an annoyed expression. "You do understand that I would never have crossed paths with you in any other way, yes? Had you not been bitten when I went into that alley, you would not have survived nor would I have ever cared to befriend you in the slightest."

"But if you found out that my name was Atem?"

He stared at him silently for a few heartbeats. Then he blinked and turned away to stare at the television again. "I do not think for even a second that I would have attempted to cross paths with you, regardless of hearing that you might be Code Name Atem. Atem is nothing that I would want to cross paths with," he stated simply. "Had I not met you by chance that night in the alley, I would never have cared to cross paths with you, regardless of what name you took on later."

Yugi stared at him blankly for a long minute, then found himself moving to Yami's side. He stood there, unable to say anything more, staring back at the red-eyed teen. The other boy refused to look back at him for a long minute. Then, almost as if he were ashamed, he lowered his eyes towards Yugi's sneakers, and finally slowly raised them up to peer at him from beneath his lashes. They stared at one another for a long moment. And then Yugi sighed softly with a shake of his head.

"You wouldn't even be interested at all?"

Yami snorted spitefully and tipped his head up, glaring at him with darkened eyes. "Why would I ever be interested in finding death before it finds me?" he answered in a cold voice. He shifted to sit up and stared at him for a long handful of minutes. "Yugi, I care for you…a lot. But if I had not known you, I would not care for even a moment to find out who Atem is."

Yugi searched his face for a long moment. Then he drew in a deep breath and closed his eyes. His blue-violet eyes flickered about his for a moment when he opened them again before, finally, he tilted his head and smiled faintly. "That's…" He paused for a few heartbeats. Then he smiled a little more and shook his head. "That's good."

Yami stared back at him, considering the simple statement. Then he snorted and shook his head. "You believe that to be good?" he asked slowly. "Do you truly?"

"It means that you're not going to run off and get yourself killed anytime soon. So, yeah, I think that's a good thing. Honestly, I think that's amazing." Yugi hesitated for a moment, then licked his lips and bit the inside of his cheek and scratched uncomfortably at his wrist. "It's not at all like all of the wolves in the pack. And I'm happy that you don't have that same mentality."

The other boy stared back at him for a long handful of minutes. Then he shifted to sit up straight and looked back at him with darkened eyes. "I am not weak-minded," he said simply, turning away to look at the television once more. "And I am not one to follow the rest of the sheep when the herd of them tries to do the same."

"Good." Yugi fell silent again, then sighed softly and shook his head after a breath. "But I want to know something, Yami."

"Hmm?"

"I just wanted to know if you ever…? I mean, if you think about it, what do _you_ think happened to make the gods even agree to create Atem in the first place?"

Yami stayed quiet for a moment, then narrowed his eyes into slits and considered him for a few seconds longer. His heartbeat seemed to slow in his chest. He tilted his head, watching him with darkened eyes, and muttered, "I think it happened around the time of the Werewolf Witch Trials. I believe that's around the time that the lycanthropes were almost entirely decimated due to such terrible paranoia. And that caused the gods to come back to tell them that there would always be someone to protect and guide them in some way, even when they were not there for them to see."

"That's not too long ago."

Yami shook his head slowly. "That might have been more when the wolves began to pray for his birth. But maybe I'm wrong. I don't think I truly know. I think that it's more the fact that he was first told to them during around the time of the war that happened during the Ice Age. But I might not be correct in that either. I am not old enough to know when he was first mentioned. All I know is that he has been passed down for generations in story, told to be a beacon of faith or something like that. I'm not sure beyond that."

Yugi looked at the television for a moment. The low volume made him tilt his head slightly. They were talking about the geography now, though it no longer revolved around just Domino. "Sorry. I didn't mean to upset you or anything."

"No, it does not upset me in the slightest."

"No?"

"Not at all."

They fell silent for a moment. The documentary went on, until Yami abruptly reached out and clicked the power button to turn the small screen off, turning to him with darkened eyes. "No, it does not upset me in the slightest. But I want to know something from you now, Yugi."

"Yeah?" he asked, turning to him with a surprised expression.

"Do your mom and grandpa know that I am here?" he asked slowly. "Because I have a feeling that she might be suspicious of that and your grandfather seems to linger a little too long behind that door at times. And I want to know now if that's the case."

Yugi blinked wide eyes, mouth opening and closing before shaking his head rapidly and furrowing his brows. "No, I don't think so. I haven't told either of them that you're back. I mean, I mentioned it to my mom that yeah, you came back and I've seen you. I said that we'd spoken. But I never said that you were back in the house or anything like that."

Yami considered him for a moment. Then he narrowed his eyes and furrowed his brows, considering the idea. His head tilted, his gaze darkened further, and then he nodded slowly. "Okay. So then they must have heard us at some point. Perhaps she is suspicious because she's heard you speaking to me at some point or another. Like earlier today."

Yugi cringed. "Yeah, she definitely didn't believe me at all when I lied to her before."

The red-eyed teen shook his head as well. "No, she did not."

The smaller boy opened his mouth to speak again, then hesitated. For a brief moment he went to try again. Then he shut his mouth once more. A second passed. He shook his head after a moment, opening and closing his mouth before he shut his eyes. "Do you want to—?"

Yami turned his head but stopped short as his eyes flickered away to the door. He scrambled for his feet and covered Yugi's mouth with his hand before his question could be spoken completely. The smaller teen froze beneath his touch, eyes wide and horrified as the two of them stared at one another. The taller wolf shook his head and jerked his chin towards the door where now Yugi could hear the sound of another heartbeat. Yugi blinked wide eyes, feeling sick to his stomach for a split second.

"Yugi?"

He hesitated for a moment as Yami withdrew his hand and turned his head towards the door once more. "Yeah, Mom, what's up?" he called, ignoring the way that the red-eyed wolf was staring at the slab of wood and its doorknob. If she simply turned the knob, she would be able to come in. And Yami would have to drop and hide as quickly as he could. But part of him doubted that he could move fast enough. And another part of him was spiteful in its sneer that he could perhaps simply turn sideways and become invisible to her, he was so thin and skeletal.

He felt sick at the thought. In an instant he backed away from the other boy, shaking his head when Yugi looked at him in alarm. They stared at one another for a long minute, the two of them seemingly in mirroring states of breathlessness. The wolf blinked at him, red eyes flickering away to the door again, listening for a moment for any words he might have missed.

"I need some help with this."

Yugi blinked and furrowed his brows. "With what?" he asked quietly, confused. "What do you need help with exactly?"

Yami moved back a few more steps, then lowered himself onto the floor again. He backed up to press his shoulder into the mattress and peer up at Yugi with slightly widened eyes. They looked at each other for a few moments, then the small teen blinked and licked his lips. Yami turned away again as quickly as he could, crossing his legs and lowering his eyes to the carpet. His nails scraped through the rough fibers for a few long moments and Yugi looked him over for a heartbeat.

"Just come downstairs. We don't have that much time."

Yugi felt sick, realization creeping over him. She had a surgery. She wanted him to help her with it. He looked to Yami, lowering his voice to a mere whisper. "I'll be back in a couple of hours, okay?" The wolf blinked up at him, confused but not without a sense of knowledge towards the realization. Yugi nodded at him and turned away quickly to make his way out the room without a second glance. When he got out to the hallway, he heard the second door of the staircase closing and he hurried after her.

Kasumi was in the back by the time he got there as well. He changed quickly into the scrubs, huffing under his breath to expel some of the tension in his muscles, and followed her into the surgery room. He swallowed hard as he saw the large dog and his stomach knotted as he looked at her for a split second. It looked like off-white, almost like a solid silver malamute. He considered it, eyes searching the canine's jagged body. The dog had to have been in a rather bad dog fight. The wounds looked like immense bites to the sides and shoulders rather than an injury from a collision with a car. He wondered at the sight, whether perhaps another wolf had grown as hungry as Yami had when he'd hunted the black-and-white dog and cornered it beneath the Burger World dumpster.

He remembered yelling at him for wanting to eat the dog. He remembered and hated himself fleetingly for ever having done so. And he felt sick to his stomach as he looked at the wounds uncomfortably. Then he moved to help his mother with the anesthetics and the tools, mechanical in his actions rather than giving more care towards the situation altogether. He felt worse than ever now, as he monitored the heart rate and listening to his mother performing the necessary sutures.

"Hey, Mom?"

She hummed in response, not bothering to speak. He watched her continue to snip and stitch the wound, ignoring him in order to keep up with the action. The lycanthrope stared at the dog for a moment, not looking back towards the monitor.

"Uh, I…I wanted to tell you that I…I invited—"

There was a loud beeping noise. His head snapped around. His mom cursed viciously. "You were supposed to be _watching_ him!" she snarled at him, nearly spitting angrily. Yugi startled and looked at the animal and back towards the monitor in a swift toss of his head. He opened and closed his mouth once, then blinked in alarm and grimaced. His mouth opened and closed quickly and he hesitated for a long moment as his stomach curled and gargled with pain.

"Oh gods…"

"Damn it, Yugi," Kasumi snapped, but she had moved fast enough to stabilize him again. The small teen could not have told anyone how she had managed the feat. It seemed almost impossible to him. But he supposed she had to have lowered the anesthesia to help it regain its heart rate. He considered it, then shook his head slowly in open bewilderment. "What the hell?"

She was glaring at him now. Yugi flinched when he spotted the fury in her glare, his mouth drying out as they looked at one another for a split second. Yugi turned away quickly and drew in a deep breath.

" _Well_?" she spat. "What happened? Why weren't you paying attention like I asked you to?"

Yugi cringed once more, drawing in a deep breath and looking away quickly. "I just…" He shrugged after a moment and refused to look up. "I wanted to talk to you about something that—"

" _You_ want to _talk_?" she snapped angrily. "You really want to talk, Yugi? How about we go with this then? You're never home. I hardly see you anymore. I don't know what the hell is going on, but I'm getting really tired of it. I'm beyond done with waiting for you to show up in the middle of the night when you think that I'm asleep and waiting around for you to speak up when I know that you _never_ will. I've been trying to let you do whatever you want within reason. And now I don't see you. I don't _talk_ to you. And I don't even have any influence on whether you skip school or not any longer because you _refuse_ to listen to me to begin with."

Yugi blinked, startled by the subject of conversation. Then he bristled faintly, thrown off balance with the idea of the words. He opened and closed his mouth once, then twice, and found his tongue all but glued to the roof of his mouth as he blinked stupidly at his mother. When had she begun to feel like this?

He realized after this thought that she had mentioned something similar only a week or so prior. Had she not told him that she thought she did not know him anymore? Had she not told him that when he'd come in late that night? And what of the concern she showed towards the possibility of his arrest that he himself did not care for?

"Mom—"

She had gone back to stitching the canine's side, her movements expert and fast enough to keep the momentum but slow enough that it would not cause additional pain to the dog later. "You skip school. You don't seem to care about your future anymore. You don't even seem to care about your friends any longer. I haven't heard about them or seen them around in a while now. And what is it all over? Some boy that you have a crush on? Are you _serious_ right now?"

He flinched. "That's not—"

"That's not true?" she spat. "Really? Because you must be confused if you think for even a second that you've shown me anything else recently. Because you clearly do _not_ care. You clearly have no understanding of what is up against you in the first place. You don't listen. Your grades are clearly going downhill. I've gotten numerous calls about the fact that you've been skipping and missing out on school. Good job, by the way, self-sabotaging your own future like that. You sure know how to make a parent proud, huh?"

He recoiled as if she'd struck him, eyes wide with shock at the words. Then he bristled and scowled at her, shaking his head angrily. "That's not…" He shook his head. "I'm not doing this right now."

"So you _don't_ actually want to talk. I didn't think you did. Now make yourself useful and hand me the scissors."

Yugi shook his head slowly, watching her with darkened eyes. But he did reach over and grab the scissors, handing them to her and bristling as they looked at one another for a moment. He huffed and narrowed his eyes but did nothing more as he turned away with a glare. "No, I guess I don't want to talk then," he finally relented. "But don't get pissed at me later when you find out about what's going on for yourself."

"Whatever."

He nearly laughed at the response, startled. She had not truly said that to him before, not without acting out the way she would have said it in high school. It reminded him abruptly of just how young she actually was, of how little distance there truly was in their age. It made him grimace and he fought away the impulse to apologize and try to bury himself in her arms. It hurt to consider how much he had ignored in the last few years that he'd tried his hardest to regain his own sense of self and independence. There had been so many times he'd tried to shield himself and regain what little he could to fight back against the constant need to hide behind his own medication and various night terrors and impulses. He had tried his hardest to find ways around the anxiety, the terrors, the panics, the various hallucinations and problems that had continued to arise.

"I'm sorry, Mom."

She scowled at him when she looked up again. Then she snorted, shaking her head with an expression that was full of bitterness, and turned away. She eventually put the cone around the dog's neck, removing the tube from its throat. And then she looked at him again, snapping, "Why are you still here? You can leave and go upstairs again now."

The small teen opened and closed his mouth. Then he glanced at the dog, her, and nodded and turned away to make his way up the stairs again. Yugi got back to his room with a sinking feeling in his stomach, his heart in his throat and his mouth dried out. He knew he would need to stay home for the next few days; he was sure of it, in fact. There would be no sneaking off to the camp. There would be no more he could do than tell someone within the pack that he was going to be remaining away for that amount of time. With the new pack on top of it, he did not believe that the wolves would be too receptive of the idea in the slightest, either. They would not be happy with him at all. And he doubted that the wolves would be too incredibly enthusiastic to remain under his leadership after that.

He stepped into his room with a feeling of sickness in his stomach, but he did not bother to do more than pull his phone out and dial the number he knew would provide him with the best solution. The other teen answered a few rings later, the smaller boy running a hand through his hair happily at the realization that he might have some kind of connection which he could fall upon.

"Hey, Jonouchi, I need to ask you to do a favor for me," he said, cutting through the friendly salutations in order to get his attention. He hoped to the gods that perhaps this would allow the blond to understand that it was not something to be taken lightly. If he could understand immediately that it had to do with the wolves in this way, then it would help to keep him from having to explain too much.

There was a single second of hesitation. Then the blond nodded and muttered, "Yeah, what's up?"

"I'm staying home for a few days," he announced simply. "So I'm not going to be doing more than going to school and coming back to the house."

It took only a moment for the other to catch his meaning, and he imagined his honey-brown eyes widening and his mouth opening for a brief second into an almost perfect "o" formation. He imagined him nodding slightly as he murmured, "I'll go ahead and tell them then. That's…what you wanted, right?"

"Exactly. Thanks." He hesitated for a moment. "It'll only be a few days, so nothing to worry about."

"Right, okay. I'll tell them." He paused for a long moment. "I'm about to go to bed in a minute, so I'll see you at school tomorrow, okay?"

"No, I'm taking tomorrow off again. I'll see you on Monday instead."

There was a long moment of silence.

"Okay. I guess that works then. I'll see you on Monday then, okay?"

"Yeah, thanks again. I'll talk to you later. Bye."

"Bye."

Yugi tossed his phone onto the bed. Maybe his curt way of speaking to him had alienated them a little. But it couldn't have been too terrible a thing. It sucked, but at the same time he needed someone to relay the message. He did not have much time to do elsewhere with the statement in question. It was not something that he had considered being more than brief about. It was necessary. And he supposed he would have to apologize to him later.

But Obelisk could handle the rest. If the wolves became discontent, he was sure his beta could handle it. He frowned at the thought, then tilted his head as he looked around the room. He furrowed his brows, a sense of shock and loneliness creeping through him.

 _Fuck_.

"Yami?"

Just as he'd suspected, the wolf was long gone from within his room. The red-eyed teen had vanished almost without a trace. But he looked towards the window and his stomach clenched as he stared at the sight in front of him. The locks had been turned to undo themselves, the window at some point opened. He grimaced and swallowed hard. The snow was visibly disturbed, the clear footprints lying there in front of him. He looked at the shingles there, his eyes on the gray slate design, and narrowed his eyes as he shook his head and swallowed hard again.

Yami had wandered off on his own. He had left the room and was long gone, within the forest or quite possibly hiding away near where the pack remained. Despite having agreed not to just earlier that day, he'd left…and Yugi had no idea where he might have gone.

Had he gone back to the camp? The small teen blinked and furrowed his brows, wondering at the idea, considering why it was that the black wolf might have gone about heading there. He felt sick for a moment, thinking perhaps that the other lycanthrope might have gone for the sake of food. He'd meant to ask him if—

His phone was vibrating. He blinked, pulling it from his pocket and furrowing his brows. When he answered, his voice was puzzled, half-breathless as he muttered, "Jonouchi? What's…what's up?"

"Well, I told Obelisk about what happened. He said it was fine. But the others are pretty confused about what's going on."

Yugi blinked and shook his head. "Wait…you're _there_?"

"Yeah, I'm spending the night here."

"What? Why would you…?" He faltered, blinking, and bit the inside of his cheek as he shook his head. _Mai_. He had to have been staying there for the sake of spending time with Mai. It had to be the fact that the she-wolf was going to seduce him or perhaps it was simply because she wanted him to stay there at the camp as a wolf. He wondered if his dad knew that this was happening. "Do I need to cover for you?"

"Huh? Uh, no, no you don't have to. He didn't come home anyways."

Yugi was quiet for a long moment. "He didn't…?" He blinked and narrowed his eyes further. He hadn't come home? Had something happened? He nearly bristled, then felt his stomach knotting with a sense of panic in his gut. "Any idea why not?"

"He probably found someone to sleep with, I don't know." He sounded rather scornful, perhaps even slightly bitter, and Yugi had the idea that perhaps he was hiding out at the camp for an entirely different reason. Had his dad hurt him again? Was that why he was hiding away there for the night? He swallowed hard and shook his head, running a hand through his hair uncomfortably. "It doesn't really matter."

The small teen blinked. "What? Why would you say that? Of course it matters…"

"Not really. I don't think I really care what he does anymore."

Yugi was silent for a moment. So then something _had_ happened. "Are you okay? If you need to come over, I can bandage you up or anything like that." He wondered if it was truly necessary now that he was a lycanthrope. Jonouchi was not a weak person, so it should have been easy for him to heal and—

"Nah, dude, it's fine. It's healed already. Besides, even if it hadn't, it would be good again within a couple of days. So it would kind of be a waste of time to come up here like that."

The small teen tilted his head and frowned. "Okay," he agreed. He didn't want to fight with him, his mind already turning another direction and racing with the idea that perhaps he needed to see whether he could find some clue as to where Yami had gone. "Well, go ahead and tell me if anything happens tonight, okay? Text me or call me if you need to."

"I'll do that, man. Don't worry."

"Okay, good. I'll talk to you later, okay? Bye."

"Talk to you later. Bye."

He didn't look when he hung up, instead peering out the window again. There were clear indentations there to show the footsteps within the snow. He saw the spot that he had landed. He saw where the wolf had begun to move aside and walk along. Yugi hesitated for a moment, feeling almost sick for a split second. The lycanthrope swore he could map his movements throughout the darkness. He must have been in the forest by then, changed and hunting rather than doing anything else.

But he had to wonder if perhaps that had changed. Had Obelisk found him? Had Yami found Obelisk? Had they challenged each other?

Had they fought?

Was Yami wounded?

Was Obelisk wounded?

Were they both lying around in the snow, bleeding and panting for air?

Were they winded and trying to stand up?

Were they fighting and killing each other?

Yugi stared out at the snow, at the footsteps. He shook his head, feeling sick, and swallowed hard. And then he wondered if perhaps the other teen had wounded himself further. Had he hurt himself with that jump? Had he hurt himself during the Change at some point? Had he further hurt himself in challenging Obelisk?

What if he was bleeding there in the snow, Obelisk having left him there to die?


	60. Challenges

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: UNKNOWN; GOING ON A NECESSARY TEMPORARY HIATUS**

 **Chapter Warnings: Mentions of Mental Instability, Mentions of Death, Mentions of Starvation, Reference to Past Character Death, SLIGHT Homophobia, MILD Bloodshed**

 **Okay, so, Honda is slightly homophobic in this story. It's not to the point that he'd abandon Yugi or get upset with him about it or anything like that. He's just nervous about the subject. And he's got extremely limited understanding towards it, which makes him even more nervous when he thinks about the idea of another guy liking him. But I can't picture him as a character that would freak out and say something derogatory about it or anything like that instead of becoming just slightly nervous about it and perhaps more likely to ignore it (pointedly) if he were ever to see it face to face.**

 **Also, there is a brief mention of Yugi's sexuality. He's not actually bi. He's not even homo or hetero either. He's actually pan in this story. Or as close a representation of pan as I can give seeing as I'm not pan *shrugs* But he's more what I imagine pansexuals are like from my research, which is they are willing to love whoever it is more for their personality than their gender or anything superficial like that. He's actually the milder archetype of the wolves' sexuality as a whole, by the way. They're attracted to whoever they want, no matter the gender or looks or possibility of reproduction. I just wanted to say that because it explains a little more why he started falling for Yami when he was clearly head over heels for Anzu before him (cause I'm not entirely sure I portrayed that as well as I could have? But eh live and learn).**

 **Ploy: I can't answer that without ruining a huge part of the story lmfao But I will say it probably won't be a happy ordeal. Yami is a flight risk, what more can I say? Yugi is a worrywart when it comes to Yami, although now he definitely has more of a reason to be one. Thank you~! I'm glad you think so!**

Chapter LX: Challenges

 _Work Log Entry LIII: September, 2005_

 _September 15_

 _His strange behavior has continued._

 _Atem has begun to simply wait for the door to open and for the guards to move for him._

 _Then he will lead_ them _to the room he is required to go._

 _He has not used his voice in over two months._

 _All of us are confused and concerned about the way he is responding at the moment._

 _The boss has suggested that perhaps he is simply broken in spirit._

 _But whenever I see him when he is alone with me for blood tests, he seems more cunning than worried. His stare is intense and powerful and he often simply sits and waits for me to perform the tests requested of him. I do not believe for even a second that we have broken him._

 _His eyes are dull, yes, but there is always something in his aura which suggests otherwise._

 _It is more that he is biding his time._

 _But I do not know what he plans to do when he finally stops._

Yugi was exhausted when Yami finally showed up again. It was almost midnight when the red-eyed teen appeared in his window. He slipped into the room as if he had never been unhealthy in the first place, a fluid action that Yugi watched with wide eyes. He looked almost as graceful as he had when he'd been stronger and at an ideal weight. He was not nearly as fast now as he was then, but Yugi could see the way the red-eyed teen was watching more where he stepped than anything else in the room. His sneakers were soaked, the bottoms capped with a huge cushion of ice elongated at both sides, inches beyond the width of the rubber there. He shivered and licked his lips as Yami slipped his sneakers off and leaned out the window to dust it away with his fingers.

"You don't have to do that," Yugi said quietly, watching his face for a single moment before reaching up and running a hand through his hair when Yami glanced at him in something akin surprise. Had he really not expected him to wait up? "I mean, we can just put them in the tub instead if you want? It'll do better to drain properly and then the air vent is right above it so we can turn up the air and it might help dry them sooner…"

The other teen blinked bright red eyes, surprised by the consideration, and then he shook his head slightly and tilted his head in surprise. "I suppose that might be a good idea," he finally commented. His voice was still scratchy, but now it seemed incredibly strained, abused and raw and inflamed rather than merely exhausted. He frowned and swallowed hard, watching the other boy closely for a moment or two longer. Then he lowered his eyes and grabbed the other shoe in his hand. "I'll go ahead and put them in the tub then."

It was a somewhat dismissive action as Yugi considered the other boy again. And he could sense the way Yami seemed almost bashful for a split second, as if he were distressed rather than relaxed any longer. He wondered if his own state of panic had caused this reaction. But then he found himself feeling sick to his stomach as another thought occurred to him.

Had he left the house when his mom had begun to fight with him?

How much had he heard?

Had he heard something like when she had mentioned his crush on him?

Had that been what had caused him to run so quickly and without warning?

Yugi hesitated for a moment, swallowing hard and ducking his head to look towards the floor uncomfortably when the other wolf returned to the room. The taller teen was almost silent in his movements but for the softest brush of the carpet beneath his feet as the fibers collapsed under his weight and sprang forth again. Yugi shivered and swallowed hard, trying his hardest not to think anymore on such a subject. He reached up to run his hands through his hair and then down to the nape of his neck to scratch gently at the soft skin.

"Are you okay?"

Yugi blinked and raised his head, flushed for a brief moment as Yami stared back at him with darkened eyes. The taller teen was considerate and curious, red gaze growing the smallest bit concerned as well. Then the small teen rubbed the back of his head again, feeling more flushed than ever as he kicked his legs with a lick of his lips. "Yeah, I'm fine. I guess I'm just a little…surprised right now…" he said with a small shrug. He offered him an awkward smile and licked his lips again. "I guess I thought maybe you might have gotten hurt or something while you were out and about like that?"

Yami looked away, something flashing in his darkened eyes. He looked abruptly pained or perhaps laden with enough guilt that it was making his breath tight. "I know I said I would not leave the house but I got hungry and I did not want to have to bother you for food," he admitted, reaching down first to scratch at the inside of his left wrist and then to run his fingers through his hair. He frowned and chewed the inside of his cheek, the muscles bunching and dancing beneath his skin with a strength that belied his thinner frame. "And it did not seem safe to grab food when your grandfather was still in the living room. I did not want to risk exposure if he _did_ turn around and see me. So I thought it best to simply try to hunt instead."

Yugi nodded slightly and his shoulders sagged as he looked at him. He looked so thin and worn out, as if he might collapse at any moment. He had the urge to go to his side, to help him back to the bed. Instead he grimaced, swallowing hard and resisting the urge to knot a handful of his shirt in his fingers. "You look tired. Did the Change do that to you?"

The other wolf blinked in surprise before shaking his head slowly. "I did not change. I did not have to. Slifer found me when I was about to and offered me a rabbit instead. She said that I had business with Obelisk and that it would be best for me to eat before I went to see him. And so I went about doing that. She spent some more time with me and caught a couple of other things for me. And then Obelisk came to find me. He said that you had just asked Jonouchi to relay a message to him. And then we went for a walk."

The smaller teen tilted his head in silent prompting, searching his face. There was no blood left on his skin anywhere. His face was completely cleaned of it all. He wondered if he had wiped it away on a handful of snow or if he had used his hoodie sleeves. He did not know, but he realized that he could smell no hint of blood on the other lycanthrope either. And he wondered at the thought, but shrugged it off entirely as he looked at him more closely.

"Obelisk wished to speak to me about my rank within the pack."

Yugi nearly cursed out loud, flustered by the very concept. He hadn't wanted the deity to say anything about it, as he'd planned to have a conversation about it first. He felt dizzy thinking that the other might have taken it upon himself to do such a thing as that. Then he forced it away, frowning and swallowing hard and feeling almost sick again as he shook his head slightly. Yami was studying him, no doubt wondering at the expression he wore on his face now.

"He told me that he would rather me take my rank back as soon as possible. He said that it was always destined that I be your beta rather than him or Slifer, though they were both willing to do so again should anything else happen."

Yugi snorted somewhere between cynical and extremely relieved. Yami was standing in front of him. And he was okay… "Yeah, let's not give them a reason for that to happen, okay?"

Yami smirked at him, but it seemed tired and its teasing edge was lost beneath the weight of his weariness. "Right. Anyways, so he asked me to take my place as beta again. He wanted to know if I had any issues with doing so. When I agreed with him that I did not have an issue, he said that the announcement would be something that you would have to make at some point."

The smaller teen nodded, grimacing slightly. "Right…"

"He said that I would likely have some issues healing myself later, as I already knew was going to happen. He caught a couple of rabbits for me like Slifer had and then he said that he wanted me to know that the pack has basically tripled in size. He mentioned that you have neglected to truly meet the other wolves within the second and third packs to join." He tilted his head. "I am under the impression that you then learned the names and appearances of the other wolves from the original pack then?"

"Yeah, I did. I think I could try again to learn their names and everything better, but for the moment I've got it well enough to figure it out just enough," he answered with a small shrug and shake of his head. "I mean, I think I can name all of them if they're in front of me, but as far as their scents go, I don't remember them at all for the most part. And I'm pretty much at a loss as far as everything else goes."

Yami nodded. "That is understandable. I suppose now we can both take the chance to identify the other two packs. I've heard that one is American and the other is from Sapporo?"

"Yeah, and then this new one is European."

The wolf nodded again, frowning faintly now. "Three packs," he muttered, nodding slightly once more. "Right, but I suppose I have four rather than those mere three, hmm? I do not imagine that it will be too easy a task to take care of."

"Four? But I thought that you had known the pack members from the original one, right?" Yugi said awkwardly, swallowing hard and feeling sick for a moment. He frowned and tilted his head. "I mean, I figured that maybe you would have known them…?"

"The wolves of the original pack? I did not wish to meet them. Their mannerisms made me sick. So I was never willing to meet them in a proper manner. Names were swapped. But I did not care long enough to do more than that."

Yugi nodded. So it was similar to his own treatment towards them then…

"Obelisk mentioned that you'd attacked Marik because he spoke ill of me?"

The smaller teen blinked, eyes widening, and then tilted his head and considered the other boy for a long moment. Yami seemed more amused than anything else, but there was something unreadable further in the darker red around his pupils. Yugi swallowed hard, looking away again quickly and reaching up to rub at the back of his neck nervously. "He said that you deserved to die and I got pissed." He awkwardly swallowed again and fought the urge to grab at and knot his shirt again. Then he tilted his head, narrowed his eyes slightly, and slowly rocked back and forth on his heels. "I lost my temper on him and just flipped out. And then I told him and all of the other wolves in the pack that if anyone were ever to speak badly of you that I would beat them into submission."

Yami nodded slowly, considering him for a moment before smirking and shaking his head slightly. "It's rather surprising to hear such a thing," he admitted softly before raising a brow at him when he glanced over from his peripheral. "It hardly seems like something I would expect to hear about you of all people. I guess I had assumed that your pacifistic nature would not have allowed you to have such a reaction."

Yugi blinked and scanned his face for a long handful of minutes before lowering his eyes and looking at the carpet again. He ruffled the nape of his neck and pursed his lips with a shake of his head. "I didn't want anyone to believe any of what he was saying about you. It was disgusting and I hated him for it."

The red-eyed wolf considered him with a tilt of his head and narrowed eyes. "You hated him for it?"

"I was extremely unhappy and hateful, yes. He infuriated me because of the way he was saying things like that. And I was so upset that you were hurt and I didn't know where you were so I…I just lost my temper and outright attacked him." The small teen shrugged after a few long moments, grimacing and looking away with a small flicker of his eyes. Yami looked so incredibly surprised and bewildered that it made his lungs feel tight in his chest. "And then I told all of them that if they were stupid enough to say anything about you that I would kill them just like I might with Marik."

"That's still surprising to me," the other boy commented with a raised brow. "You are so pacifistic and the idea that you might have done this is incredibly strange to me. Did you never worry that they might have challenged you for such a thing?"

Yugi tilted his head and swallowed hard as he pulled his fingers through his hair and licked his lips. "No," he admitted quietly. "But if they had, I probably _would_ have tried to kill them at that point. It was just enough to make them all freak out instead. I guess I just assumed that they would take me at my word and hide away from opening their mouths about you again."

"And that worked?"

"Aside from Mai occasionally mentioning you to explain my attitude to some of the other wolves, yeah," the small teen stated simply with a shake of his head. He frowned and ran his fingers through his hair again, searching his face for a moment before closing his eyes. "My attitude was pretty foul when you weren't there."

"Obelisk said something to that effect, yes."

Yugi shrugged slightly and narrowed his eyes. He wished Obelisk wouldn't have said anything about it, truthfully. "Yeah, it wasn't a very good thing. I don't think I've ever been so angry with and violent towards anyone else before. And I was ready to attack and kill all of them if they had been brave enough to open their mouth." He shook his head. "I was planning to kill any of them that spoke about you like that again. I was honestly just going to do it regardless of any reason that they brought you up again, Yami."

"You truly think that you might have killed them?"

"Oh, I _know_ I would have done it. Marik threw me over the edge with my hatred and I knew if any of them had been stupid enough to press on it anymore than he had, I would have torn their throat out." He paused and shrugged, shaking his head and crossing his arms. "It hurt too much to let them just open their mouths and say whatever they wanted. It was ridiculous to let them do that when I knew you well enough to object to all of the things that they had to say."

The wolf narrowed his eyes and tilted his head slightly. "You have changed."

Yugi let out a deep breath, staring at him pointedly. His voice came out slightly sharp as he licked his lips and raised his chin the smallest degree. "Did you think that I wouldn't?" he asked softly, frowning at him with darkened eyes. Yami stared at him unblinkingly, their eyes locked as he scrutinized him. The usual sense of challenge did not well up in the smaller teen, though he continued in the same somewhat frustrated tone. "Did you honestly think that I never would have changed? You left for a while and I had to deal with the aftermath of what had happened. I was distraught and so I forced myself to adapt and work with what I had in order to recover and keep my head on straight long enough to deal with it all."

The red-eyed teen blinked, tilting his head and narrowing his eyes faintly. "I never said that it was a bad thing, nor did I mean to allude to it. I mean merely that it is a surprise." He was quiet for a moment, then lowered his voice further, nearly exhaling the words as they stared at one another. "I am not sure whether it is a good thing or a bad one. And I suppose my opinion on the matter of it does not truly matter. The fact remains that I am simply curious as to the fact that you had changed and adapted like this."

"I…I'm sorry." He grimaced and lowered his eyes to the ground as he ran a hand through his hair. "I didn't mean to snap at you or anything. I just…I'm not very proud of all of it. And I'm not the happiest with the result. It makes me feel like I'm estranged to myself at times. And I don't like to think of things like that. I feel like I'm completely different sometimes and it's upsetting."

"Growth and change can do that at times." Yami was silent for a long moment. Then he moved to take a seat on the bed beside him, narrowing his eyes and putting his elbows on his knees. He leaned forward and grimaced, shaking his head slightly. "It's a strange cycle of destruction at times. My cage mate had done me well to ground much of my change, to prevent me growing into something I would have regretted later. He kept me from turning in on myself and reverting to a more feral state than I could ever hope to recover from."

"A feral state?"

"Yes. I wavered between life and death more often than I care to admit. And I was pressured to do more than I was capable of. Between my own personal disappointment and the various stresses which were pushed upon me, I had become rather violent and disdainful. My cage mate was put in the metal and glass cubicle about a month or two before we were able to run." He narrowed his eyes and shook his head sharply, gaze darkening further. He leaned forward again, chin in his palms and cheeks oddly cold against his fingertips. "The experiments were scrambling my brain to the point of being incapable of thinking properly more often than not. I attacked several of the guards and they were killed soon after, because my erratic health scared them to the point of destroying any who could have been infected by me. I was considered violent and unnaturally vicious and so they kept constant tabs on me."

"So then…why would they put him in there with you?"

Yami looked over at him slowly, red eyes glazed. "Because they thought I would kill him."

The small teen stiffened, blinking as he stood a little taller and moved to take a seat on the bed as well. His mouth was dry and his stomach was curling as he stared back at the other with wide eyes. "They thought…?" Yugi drew in a deep breath, searching his face and wondering at the idea. Yami was by far gentler in nature, even if he was vicious and rather hateful at times. He killed by necessity, could draw the line between threats and a petty desire for bloodshed.

It was amazing to him that they would have ever considered that Yami would be the one to kill another wolf like that. Even if he was erratic and feral then or within the woods… Yugi shook his head. Yami had perceived himself and everything around him as a threat. He knew that. And he'd launched himself at anything that breathed or moved. He'd killed Obelisk that day out of fear and hunger rather than the fun of doing such a thing.

Yugi had the smallest impulse now, to reach out and maybe touch his face. He wanted, for only the tiniest fraction of a heartbeat, to perhaps run his fingers along his cheek and draw him into his arms. There was something inside of him that almost demanded he do it, but he forced it away. Yami would hide away from him again if he did that.

"He had apparently killed someone upon being captured. And he was incredibly erratic in his behavior. They were worried that he would be uncontrollable. And they thought that if I killed him, I would eat him since I was starving prior. So they threw him into the cage with me." Yami fell silent for a moment, grimacing and turning away again. He peered out the window, thinking that perhaps he should rise to his feet and try to close the window and flip the locks shut. The impulse to do so was almost enough to make him feel sick. "So, when they put the two of us in there together, they monitored for hours on end. They wanted to see if I would kill him. And they were frantic to see the bloodshed."

"You didn't kill him though."

Yami shook his head slowly. "No, oddly enough, his presence there and his weakened state made something else in me react to him. I guess I was struck with the social need that all lycanthropes and natural born wolves possess." He shrugged slowly, not bothering to look over. "So I wound up drawing the poison out of his blood when he was still writhing on the floor. And he bit me in a panic. I guess he reacted to my blood or something of that nature. Because he recovered a few hours later, with just a series of seizures and a terrible fever."

"He…reacted to your blood…?"

"I am not as powerful as you, I am sure, but my blood must be almost as pure as yours. And, I suppose, my blood slowed some of the effects of the poison in his system. The wolfsbane and silver was sweated out and puked up and when he bled, it always seemed like it came in clumps instead of natural liquid and beading. So I…believe that maybe it helped him. I don't know for sure. But I get the feeling that his exposure to my blood when he was laying there almost dying in front of me did well to isolate the poison and heal him." Yami shrugged after a small moment, shaking his head and reaching up to run his fingers through his hair reluctantly. "I think that he healed due to this and the fact that I checked on him as often as I could around experiments. I was… I honestly expected that one day they might drag him out when I was unconscious and kill him. I was prepared for it, I suppose. And I was constantly horrified by the idea. But I tried to just keep him happy in the time that he was still alive there."

Yugi swallowed hard and lowered his eyes. "You must have cared for him a lot."

Yami blinked. "More than anything at the time, yes," he admitted with a cold gleam to his eyes. "I cared more for him than I ever had anyone else, I admit."

The small teen nodded slightly and swallowed hard again, frowning and searching his face after a moment. He licked his lips and leaned back on his arms uncomfortably, tilting his head after a few seconds. "Did they ever take him from you after he healed? I mean, when it became obvious to them that you would not kill him, did they ever…?"

The other boy shook his head slowly. "I do not think that they had accounted for the fact that he might heal me as well. My emotional state leveled out. My colder temperament began to melt away. He was able to get me to speak again, to open up at times when I did not want to. They saw it as a sense of therapy, I suppose. They watched the two of us more than ever, and Ryou would constantly check on us. He seemed to have the idea that something was happening between us that was never acted upon." Yami glanced at him sideways now, curious as he considered his face. "He seemed to believe in something that I did not care to consider."

Yugi felt his heart race for a moment, mouth drying further than ever as his eyes widened drastically and his tongue seemed to become soaked with bright red blood. It was harsh and metallic but the sense of relief which crashed through him made his entire body almost tremble with shock.

"It came to the fact later that they believed that perhaps he would trigger the lycanthropy in me again and cause me to react as they wanted." He fell silent for a moment, then shook his head and bore his teeth as he looked at the smaller teen pointedly. His gums were speckled with white, the stress apparent but his emotional state more or less stabilized on the brink of overwhelming anxiety. "And perhaps it would have happened otherwise. But then the escape happened. Someone sent out an alarm and the wolves began to attack the humans. And he managed to help me escape before he got killed as well. I fled and hid away. And then I changed due to the full moon and did not once change back until I ran across you."

Yugi blinked. "Me?"

"I came across your friend and you alone in that alley. And I ripped his throat out when he was trying to stop you from bleeding out. At the time I thought he was trying to finish his work in killing you. So I attacked him. And I tore his throat out. And then I realized that you were still alive. I could just barely hear your heart and the gurgling every time you breathed." Yami narrowed his eyes into slits, tilting his head and considering his own words. He saw a light tan-blond wolf with wide brown eyes and a face slicked with blood. He saw the way the canine was pressing his paws, bright red and slicked entirely down to the flesh, into his chest. He saw the frantic way he stared down at him with those terrified eyes. And then he remembered the pure terror that had crossed his eyes when he had turned to Yami. "And I almost left you there."

The smaller teen startled at the statement, eyes widening drastically. He had almost…?

"But, as I was looking at you and you struggled to breathe, I realized that you were not dead yet. And, despite my hatred for humans because of the experiments, I saw this little spark in you. I saw this…this tiny little light in you that I realized had the potential to grow. And I realized that you were not unlike the wolf I'd saved beforehand in the labs." Yami stared at him now, eyes blank of expression but somehow hollow and shallow and carved away of any emotion or sense of passion to have once existed there. He looked as if he were staring into something he could not fathom, an abyss with no end which swallowed him whole and scared him more than he cared to consider. "I looked at you and I thought of what you _could_ become. And I realized what could be lost if you were to die there. So I bit you."

Yugi blinked, swallowing hard and staring back at him with wide eyes.

"And I wandered away when I got you home. I dragged you there but when you began to wake up, I panicked. I didn't want to see your reaction when you realized that I'd murdered your friend. So I turned and ran before you could see me. And then you went inside and I didn't bother to try to find you again. But I hunted Ushio down. And I crushed his skull because I was hateful and I found him as a human and I wanted nothing more than to destroy him. So I bit through his head and crushed the bones and pressed upon his brain and ruptured the organ. And then I left him there on your doorstep, because I had no idea if you knew how to find food properly or if you were starving. I did not know enough to make a judgment. So I left him there."

The small teen nodded slightly, feeling sick to his stomach. He remembered the state that Ushio had been, the way his face had been so heavily mutilated and his body broken in such a terrible way. He shivered and licked his lips as the other stared back at him with those same dull brick-like red eyes.

"I did not change into a human again until the time that I realized the full moon was coming again. I knew that you would have to change soon. And I knew that you had never been a wolf before so I…I changed back. But after I'd done so, after stealing clothes from a human of similar size to me, I ran across you in the woods that day. You found me first." Yami shrugged, uncomfortable as he shook his head and opened and closed his mouth with a disdainful expression. "You found me a few hours after I initially changed. And then I fled because I couldn't find it in myself to speak to you. But I…I watched you, sitting up in a tree and keeping guard to make sure that you were okay. I was worried that maybe something had happened prematurely to make you change ahead of time. I didn't know if that was possible, but I had never been very stable genetically so I thought that I would keep watch just in case."

"What would you have done if it had been triggered prematurely or something like that?"

Yami shook his head. "I don't know. Maybe I would have bitten you again or I would have tried to help you through it. I didn't truly think it through more than being curious. And I didn't want to think about it more than necessary. It made me too uneasy to remain if I thought about it for longer than…" He shrugged again, letting out a deep breath. "It does not matter what I would have done then. What matters is the fact that you were okay at the end of the day. And when I went back to follow you to the festival, I realized that my voice was too damaged to be able to speak to you so I changed back. But then I'd forgotten what my own voice sounded like and I didn't know how to speak as a wolf any longer. So I projected images when you were in the midst of the Change."

"Right," Yugi said softly, licking his lips. "I remember that."

"I suppose it does not matter much," Yami answered with another small shrug and shake of his head. He looked exhausted again now. His hands rose to tug lightly upon his hair as he narrowed his gaze. His red eyes were blank again, staring at the carpet as he tilted his head slightly and his lips curled back briefly. "It is not something that you truly need to worry about."

Yugi blinked and swallowed hard, eyes widening before he let out a small breath and reached up to run a hand through his hair once more. "Are you disappointed in me?" he asked after a long moment, scratching at his wrist until it felt the skin might break and the blood would soak into his fingers.

"Disappointed…in…you…?"

He wondered at the pause in his words. Because, when he looked over again, Yami had not done more than blink. But now his eyes had shifted and they were locked on his face again, studying and cold and distant like mountain peaks. His lids were lowered the smallest fraction, so minute in detail that Yugi was amazed he noticed it in the first place.

"That I changed…l-like this?"

Yami blinked and shifted to sit up straighter. But the effort seemed to exhaust him, so he simply slumped back into his position, narrowing his eyes and closing them again moments later. He tilted his head and kept his chin within his palms. "No," he answered slowly. "I am not disappointed in you."

Yugi swallowed hard, the truth of the words making his heart almost race with desperation. He wished there was a way to link them into something more powerful, more passionate. But with the dull tone and the way he stared back at him so blankly, the wolf felt sick to his stomach for a moment. He licked his lips again, reaching up to run his fingers through his hair once more.

"I am not disappointed in you," Yami repeated himself, pausing for only a moment longer. Then he narrowed his eyes into slits and closed them a second later, his head tipping slowly and minutely to the side. "I am rather proud of you, as you're doing as I had initially thought you would. You're growing up. You're trying for your potential. I do not believe for an instant that you've reached it entirely, but you're going to one day realize it, I know."

Yugi blinked, startled by the words. His mouth opened and closed twice before he swallowed hard and his mouth grew dry once more. "You think so?"

"I would never have said so had I felt uncertainty towards it," he stated simply. But his expression had grown somewhat darker and Yugi had the startling thought that perhaps his questioning him had been enough to upset the taller teen. "I would not say such a thing if I considered it to be anything less than truthful."

The small teen shivered, swallowing hard.

Yami moved to sit up again after a long minute. He rose to his feet, stretched his arms in front of himself, dusted his jeans off as if it might get rid of the water which weighed them down, and turned to him with a more considerate expression than he had previously worn. "I will tell you something that most people do not wish to say as they cannot always understand."

Yugi blinked, sitting up a little taller, eyes widening at the very suggestion.

The other wolf was silent for a moment before he considered him more pointedly. "Change is necessary, Yugi. You cannot survive in a world that constantly adapts around you if you are not willing to match it step for step," he said slowly. But then he narrowed his eyes and his lips pulled back into a grimace as he shook his head. "Anyone will tell you that. But what they will not say is that oftentimes, as you do this, you find that you cannot always recognize yourself by the end of it. Sometimes you change so much that you cannot feel comfortable in your own skin. And it makes you think you are no longer who you used to be."

The small teen blinked again, heart in his throat at the words.

"But you need to remember that, while it may feel like this, the truth of it is that you remain the same at your very core. You have not changed so much as to be unrecognizable when it is all said and done."

Yugi tilted his head, watching him for a moment. "You sound…almost bitter."

Yami flashed him a smile that looked almost as if he were in too much pain to truly want to answer him. But then he snorted and turned away, voice low and cold as he muttered, "I do not like the person I am."

The words made Yugi's heart freeze in his chest.

* * *

Yugi passed the plate over to the other teen. Yami blinked and raised his head, confused for a split second before he lowered his eyes to the pancakes once more. He took the plate hesitantly, then reached for the fork that he offered him seconds later. The two of them glanced at each other for only a moment as the smaller teen drew in a deep breath and looked away again. He remembered briefly the way that the small teen had considered the wolf's declaration from the night before.

He did not like the person he was.

He did not like the person he had been before.

He did not like himself now.

He grimaced and narrowed his eyes, shaking his head slightly and working to grab another plate to flip a new pancake atop it. "I have to ask you something," he announced after a moment, drawing in another deep breath which made his stomach knot and his mouth ache.

"What is it?"

He noticed that Yami had not taken even a small bite of his food when he glanced over his shoulder. The other teen was not looking at him either, however. His eyes were on the tablecloth and his expression seemed colder and displaced more than anything else. Yugi drew in a deep breath once more, reaching up to tug lightly on his choker, swallowing hard and searching the other's expression.

"I don't want to have to ask you to do this."

Yami slowly raised his head and eyes, peering at him blankly with a darkened gaze. "But you need to."

"Yes."

They were quiet for the longest minute of his life, Yugi swore. He tugged harder at the choker and Yami's eyes fell upon his fingers, narrowing briefly before flickering up to his again. The way he looked at him now told Yugi that he had noticed his indiscreet actions, that he understood them and did not like it in the slightest.

"I want to know if you could possibly go back to the camp for a few days," he said slowly. His fingers twisted and knotted the fabric within reach, but the grip was not enough to make his breath falter and snap beneath the pressure. "I'm not going to be able to go back there until the end of next week, on Saturday. And I…I can't protect you here as well as the pack might be able to at the camp. I know that if my mom and grandpa find out that you're here before I can figure out a way to tell them, things are going to basically explode. And I don't want that to happen. I'd rather you were safe with the others and you had enough food when they caught something…"

Yami blinked and stared up at him, considering him for a long moment. "I can do that, yes," he said slowly. "It is not a terrible idea. They can catch more food than you might be able to provide me at times. And I am aware that I can regain more health there than I could here. You are correct in that assessment. But this is a good idea for the rest of the pack as well, I'm sure."

Yugi bit the inside of his cheek. He didn't care that much about the damn pack. He cared about the wolf in front of him. The rest of them, he could not find the need to feel concern for them in any manner. He shook and tilted his head after a long moment, eyes narrowing as he looked at the other teen.

The red-eyed teen peered at him curiously for a long moment. His gaze had sharpened briefly, his expression mild and cold, before he looked back at his plate of food and poked at it halfheartedly with the utensil in his hand. "The wolves will do well to have an active beta again. I suppose it will do me well to make my stance as second-in-command. They have grown restless. I suppose they sense the change in the air, that you have drifted from your original role, if only slightly."

"You think that they need you there?" Yugi murmured in a low voice, swallowing hard. "You really think that the pack needs you there? I mean, you don't worry that Obelisk is going to fight you for the rank? I mean, from what you said last night, I highly doubt it. But I'm still kind of worried about it. I mean, you _did_ break his neck and… Just… Are you sure you'll be all right if you go there? That they won't hurt you in any way?"

Yami shook his head, narrowing his red eyes. "No," he said slowly. "I do not think for even a moment that they will fight with me. Not when Obelisk steps down. I am sure there will be challenges down the road, but not for now. And I don't believe that they will be stupid enough to try until much later. Not only that, but I have the feeling that the pack is divided enough with the fact that there are four of them amongst themselves now. I am not worried at all that this will happen."

"You think that everything will be okay then?"

"Yes." The wolf poked at his pancakes again. "I think I can recover faster there as well."

Yugi nodded, heart clenching in his chest and his throat almost closing up beneath the weight of the pressure that threatened to swallow him there. He licked his lips and narrowed his eyes, lowering his gaze to the ground for a split second. Then he turned quickly away again to pour another pancake into the skillet and worry at it with the spatula in his hand.

"I need to cut the potential challenges in half now," Yami said abruptly, eyes sharpening as he looked towards Yugi again. But the small teen was still working on his pancakes rather than willing to turn and glance over his shoulder at him at the moment. The taller boy narrowed his eyes and shook his head with a small grimace. "If they wish to fight me for rank later, I might be able to dissuade them from doing so now. It is not something that I care to have happen. It is not a good thing to allow them time to think of ways to do so. It would be a foolish idea for me to ignore the possibility of a fight."

Yugi stiffened and flipped his pancake, the sizzling noise making him tilt his head and draw in a deep breath. "You don't think you'll get hurt if you fight them now?" he asked slowly. "I mean, if you had to actually fight them over your rank…"

"Rank battles are not to the death. Most often they can be ended the moment you knock the other off their feet. And I do not believe any of the wolves in the pack are as malicious as Marik was before. I do not think that they will fight me in any manner that might cause true damage."

The small teen put the pancake on his plate and looked over at the metal bowl with a dry mouth and his stomach curled painfully. "I don't want you to get hurt."

"I don't even think that any of us will draw blood."

Yugi shivered. "And if you do? What if you get hurt?"

"Then I will deal with it as is necessary. But I do not think that it will come to that."

"But _what if_?" he pressed in a tightened, more infuriated tone. "I want to know what would happen if you get hurt."

Yami was quiet for a long minute. The truth of the matter was that weakness during a battle for rank was dangerous. It was more dangerous than he truly wanted to admit. If the wolves sensed weakness from one of the combatants and chose to take advantage, any one of them could challenge him in an instant. They might come in a rush. They might hold off in a singular unit of battle to hide potential weakness from the other wolves as well. He had no idea what might happen. Obelisk or Slifer might intervene if he was lucky and it came to that. Perhaps even Jonouchi might come to his aid. He did not know.

But he had the sharp clarity to understand that the wolves would not kill.

Rank battles would not be something that they would kill each other over.

It was territory that caused wolves to rip the throat out of another.

It was war that would cause them to murder one another.

He shook the thought off.

" _If_ I am to be wounded, I will have Jonouchi contact you," he answered in a quiet exhale. He looked back at his plate and poked at the pancake on top of the pile again. Then he swallowed hard, lowering his eyes, and began to cut small bites away from the breakfast pastries. But his stomach was curling and churning and he did not know that he could truly eat it at the moment. "I will have him tell you what has happened."

Yugi was quiet again. "What about healing yourself?"

"It would take longer than I would like, but it will happen all the same."

That wasn't what he wanted to hear in the slightest. His mouth curled downward, his stomach churning harshly once more. He narrowed his eyes and shook his head after a moment. Then he bore his teeth around placing another pancake down once more. "If it becomes too bad, you'll need to come here so that I can clean the wounds and everything necessary," he said softly, frowning and narrowing his eyes. "I want you to come back and I can clean and bandage them and then you and Jonouchi can…leave again if you want."

Yami nodded. "Yes, and I will come to you should anything else happen as well." He paused. "You are worrying for no reason."

"I don't want you to get hurt."

He sighed. "I do not want to get hurt either."

Yugi swallowed hard and looked down at the carpet for a moment, his stomach in knots and mouth too dry as his tongue was glued to the roof of his mouth. "Just…be careful, okay?" he finally muttered. "I know you're not really making progress right now here eating like this and I haven't quite gotten everything under control again, but…I just don't want to find that I've finally gotten you back into my life just to have you disappear from my life all over again, you know?"

The wolf was quiet for a moment. "I understand, yes. And I swear to you that I will not allow any harm to come to myself or any of the others." He narrowed his eyes again, shaking his head slightly. "I will protect myself."

Yugi nodded and licked his lips. "Good."

Yami stayed silent for a long minute or two before shaking his head slightly and frowning. He tilted his head and put his elbow on the table, laying his chin in his palm and closing his eyes. "When would you like me to go to the camp?" he asked after a moment, opening his eyes again. He put a forkful of pancake into his mouth and began to chew thoughtfully as he considered the smaller teen slowly. The other boy blinked and turned his head, considering the wolf curiously for a moment as the words connected in his head. Then Yugi's eyes grew wide, startled, and he turned around completely with a shocked expression.

"When would I like you to…?" He narrowed his eyes. "I'd really rather you didn't have to altogether."

"I know, but what time would be best?"

 _Never_ , Yugi wanted to snap before he shook his head again and huffed with his eyes closed tightly. "If you really plan to go to the camp, I think you should…go as soon as possible, I guess. I mean, there's no reason for you to wait unnecessarily, right?"

Yami was silent for a moment, then began to swallow a few more bites of his food. He tilted his head and looked towards the other wolf slowly with a frown, considering. Yugi was staring at him blankly, eyes wide and lips twitching faintly with what looked to be frustration. He licked his lips and shook his head as the smaller teen lowered his eyes to the tile flooring and reached up to rub at the back of his head.

"I suppose you are right," he said quietly. "I will go in a couple of hours then."

Yugi nodded, swallowing hard and running a hand through his hair again.

* * *

 _Is he still okay_?

Yugi narrowed his eyes and paced, shaking his head as he looked back at the homework he'd ditched to lay on the mattress. Yami had left the day before and he'd been texting Jonouchi since, asking him first to tell him when he got to the camp, then to record who it was that challenged him. Then he demanded to know if he was concerned in any way, hurt or tired or too exhausted to stay powerful as necessary.

 _He's fine so far. Not much has changed. He's still just munching on the rabbit that Obelisk got him._

Yugi relaxed at the idea, nodding and feeling his cheeks heat faintly as he ran a hand through his hair. Jonouchi had said that the gray deity had come to give him a rabbit a few minutes before, that Yami had accepted it and taken a spot near the center of the camp to eat. Other wolves were watching him. Others were hiding away from his sight altogether. Some of them looked extremely nervous and confused. Others were bristling with alarm, unsure of what to say or do with him.

 _Okay, good._

 _I'll tell you if anything changes_.

Yugi huffed and moved to the bed again, hesitating before he took a seat and settled for a second on the mattress. He pulled his textbook and spiral into his lap, reading through some of the information he'd copied down before he quickly looked back at the text for a moment. The words were nothing short of nonsensical, he realized, flustered, as he glanced at his own writing. His stomach knotted as he stared at the words he'd written there.

He rolled his eyes at himself, shook his head, and put his pencil's eraser to the paper. He grimaced after a moment, then rewrote the information there. His eyes narrowed faintly, his eyes widening, and looked briefly to the textbook and back to the paper again.

It was thirty minutes before he got a new text, one which made him immediately bristle.

 _Yami just beat the_ shit _out of Aki, holy crap_!

Aki _would_ challenge him, wouldn't she? Yugi hadn't even considered her for the smallest of seconds when he'd sent Yami there again. It had not occurred to him in the _slightest_ that such a thing might happen. And he hated himself for not having thought of such a thing to begin with. He should have known that she might turn on Yami in such a fashion. She was bitter, after all, even if she did not outwardly express it at all times. He had known it the moment that they had crossed paths after the events of the first two disastrous hunts. She was not happy with him in the slightest.

And he could see her wanting to attack him simply for the fact that Yugi had chosen him over her prior. He would never be surprised by the idea of her retaliation in such a petty fashion. She would harm Yami for the sake of knowing that it would anger Yugi in turn.

 _Obelisk and Slifer are not happy with her right now._

 _And_? _Is Yami okay_?

 _Yami's fine, Yug. But he looks pretty tired—and worse for wear. Why didn't you mention he was going to look so bad_?

Yugi bristled. _Just because he's skinnier than usual doesn't mean anything._

 _Skinnier than usual_? _Yugi, he's basically a toothpick with four legs_!

His teeth ground together as he shook his head angrily. _Is he okay though_?

 _He's_ fine, _Yug. He's literally just eating again. I think the others are kind of freaked out that he's here though. They look kind of nervous right now._ There was a soft vibration in his hand a second later, making him startle for a brief second. _That dark gray one with the blue eyes is talking to him now._

Yugi blinked, eyes widening. _Yusei_? he sent back immediately, swallowing hard. He wondered if the younger teen was curious about the darker-furred wolf or if he was simply inquiring about what the other canine was thinking in coming there in such a state. Was it possible that he was trying to find out why it was that Yami had come there to begin with? Or had he perhaps grown concerned that the black wolf was a threat or something of that nature?

 _Yeah, I think that's him. Yami doesn't seem too worried about him._

The smaller teen ran a hand through his hair, relieved as he licked his lips. He could not imagine what might have happened had Yami turned on the yearling as he could have. Had he turned his teeth on him in any fashion, he was sure that the gray wolf would have been unable to keep from being hurt. He doubted that Yami would have done much to him, but blood would surely have been drawn…

 _He's not bleeding or anything, right_?

 _Who_? _Yami or Yusei_?

 _Yami._ He nearly spat the response before rolling his eyes. If he were brave enough to call him, he might have at any moment. But he did not care enough to speak as it was. And he did not want to risk the pack hearing him either. And so he bypassed the thought altogether and turned to make his way towards the bed again. He had the idea to close his notes and textbook and put them both into his backpack. He shivered and zipped it shut again. School was in a couple of hours. But he'd been awake for a while.

For whatever reason the pack had bypassed challenging Yami the day before. But now they seemed to be doing so with a vengeance. He bristled as he paced about himself for a moment. Then he narrowed his gaze and reconsidered the text as the phone failed to vibrate again.

When it finally vibrated, he looked the message over briefly, eyes widening slightly.

A small video, a handful of seconds long, startled him. The thumbnail for it was that of Yami getting to his feet. He looked bone-thin and tiny, but his fur fluffed outwards with a bristle and the strands gave him the illusion of health. He squared his shoulders, raised his head, peeled his lips back, pricked his ears forward, and snapped his teeth. Yugi did not see the other wolf until the last second, but froze as he noticed the American she-wolf. Eurea had drifted closer, bristling herself, but she did not seem to be snarling. She was sniffing, curious rather than angry, he assumed.

The video stopped there.

 _What's she doing_?

 _Just sniffing him. He's pretty pissed, though. Not sure why._

Yugi nearly grunted. He'd probably be pissed too if everyone wouldn't stop sniffing him. He snorted and reached up to rub at his arm lazily. He shook his head and turned away to look back towards the door. It was going to kill him to wait for school to start and then to make it back to the house again. It was frustrating to even consider that he would have to find his way back to the house after school. The thought was annoying in every sense as he paced again.

This was going to be a long day, he realized with an annoyed feeling in his gut.

Today was going to be longer than he cared to even consider, he was sure.

 _He chased her off. She's pretty freaked out._

Yugi rolled his eyes. _Good._

There was a long minute and a half that nothing had happened. The small teen pulled his sneakers on after a few seconds. He'd been awake, had taken his shower hours before. Yugi sighed softly and shook his head. It was frustrating to wait it all out. He'd been desperate to take on the task of getting back to school so that he could get back to the house. He'd been desperate to go to the camp during the middle of the night to see the wolves again.

He was breathless at the idea.

He had wanted to see if Yami was okay. He had wanted to make sure that the wolves took to his reappearance well. He wanted to make sure that the red-eyed wolf was accepted again. He wanted to be there to protect him should anything more serious erupt. He wanted to be able to help him should he become wounded. He wanted to be there. He wanted to see him. He wanted to make sure he was okay. He wanted to check on him and make _sure_ that he was not hiding any wound that he might have had.

He wanted to simply know that he was okay. It was all Yugi cared to know. It was all that he _wanted_ to know, as it was all that had haunted his thoughts for hours. He had been exhausted upon the realization that he was not going to get any sleep anytime soon. It was ridiculous the level of power that the very thought had held over him all throughout the night. He felt sick and tired as he paced the room again.

 _I don't think any of the others are brave enough to fight with him again._

Yugi grimaced. _Good. They don't need to challenge him anymore._

 _It's fine though, Yugi. He's not going to get hurt. All of them are handling him with kid gloves._

The smaller teen rolled his eyes and shook his head. _Jonouchi, just because they're doing that now doesn't mean they'll keep going with it later. It's not something that you want to see if they turn on him, trust me. It's going to be ridiculous if that happens._

He didn't get another answer until he was on the way to the school. He'd noticed Honda and Anzu at the end of the street ahead of him. Both of them were chatting quietly, standing closer together than he'd ever noticed before. But the thought was second to anything else when his phone vibrated once more. Yugi turned immediately to it, unlocking it and staring at the text that read, _Aki challenged him again. She got her ass kicked. But she managed to get Yami's leg pretty bad._

He stopped walking as the last few words connected. A picture was loading on the screen in front of him now, his heart in his throat. His mouth was dry as he looked at the image that showed there. The black fur was slicked along his right forelimb, the paw held slightly off the ground. The skin was stripped white and flecked with bright red, large amounts of which made his limb look incredibly bruised and gangly.

 _What happened exactly_?

His two friends blinked at him curiously as they looked up and spotted him. Yugi hadn't realized he was trembling until the screen seemed to blur in front of him. His blood was hot in his veins, his jaw clenched and aching from the pressure. He bore his teeth, narrowed his eyes, and shook his head angrily for a brief moment.

"Yugi?" Anzu asked hesitantly, startling him enough to make his head snap up. But his phone vibrated immediately after and so he turned back to it instantly.

 _It looks a lot worse than it actually is, I guess. He's using it again._

 _Or he's just not showing how much it hurts._

"You okay, dude? You look pretty pissed. What's going on?" Honda tried, cutting into the crisp air between them that caused the smaller teen to blink and glance upwards again. The brunet frowned and tilted his head slightly to the side as the two of them considered each other.

"Yami went back to the camp," he answered without thinking it through. He faltered only after the words had left his mouth, then felt his mouth grow dry for a single second before he forced himself to continue. "Jonouchi just sent me a picture of what's going on over there. Apparently he's already gotten into a fight with one of the other wolves."

Honda furrowed his brows. "The camp?"

"What fight?" the brunette asked in confusion. "Did he get hurt?"

 _I don't think he's actually hurt. He's not limping or anything._

 _That's because he's a lot smarter and able than he looks,_ Yugi thought furiously. Then he drew in a deep breath and shook his head with a grimace. He turned away again before rolling his eyes after a moment. Then he looked up, blushing faintly as he saw the concern so clearly on his friends' faces now. "The camp is in the mountains. The pack kind of…lives there. Yami came back a couple of days ago and I was helping him take care of himself again. He's extremely emaciated and tired most of the time. And I was checking on him to make sure he was okay because he hasn't been around the pack for a while now. But Jonouchi just sent me a picture of his leg."

"Because he got hurt?" Honda guessed, raising a brow curiously for a moment. "I mean, is it bad?"

"He's bleeding, but he says he's not sure how bad it is. Apparently he's walking normally."

"That's good, right?" Anzu tried, clearing her throat awkwardly and searching his face. When had Yami come back? Why had Yugi failed to tell any of them? How long had he been there before Yugi had said anything to anyone? "I mean, that means it can't actually be too bad, right?"

Yugi shook his head. "No," he answered with a huff. "Yami is good at pretending that he's not in pain. Even if his leg is broken, he might be able to force himself to use it and pretend that it works properly. He's smarter than you'd think."

"That's not really a smart thing to do," Honda commented with a frown. The smaller male blinked and turned to him with a raised brow and a withering glint to his eyes. His hands had tightened around his phone, his eyes narrowed slightly. He looked flustered more than upset, however, and the other boy tilted his head. "I mean, if you think about it, he's going to be damaging it a lot more if he keeps that up."

The smaller male grimaced. "Yeah, but at the moment that might be a lot smarter for him than showing that his leg hurts." Yugi ran a hand through his hair. It had only occurred to him then that he might manipulate such a situation in order to show simplistic physical strength to save himself from further abuse. He had not considered it before, and now he felt sick as he thought about it. Because he should have simply made him stay home with him. He should have asked him to remain at the house. Because then he could remain healthy and safe rather than being harmed as he might have been formerly. "If he does that now, they won't gang up on him because they'll think he's weaker than he is at the moment."

"Right…" Honda had the sudden thought that perhaps the wolves acted like a pack of regular dogs. When they sensed weakness, most of them would turn on each other. He knew that kind of thing happened at times. He knew that dogs were incredibly likely to do such a thing at times such as those. He knew that sometimes, even when they had grown up together all their lives, dogs still turned on each other. They still might turn and sink their teeth in the moment that they sensed a weakness of any kind.

He remembered hearing once from his uncle that his elderly dogs had turned on each other when one had gotten hurt and had a seizure. He had found them half-dead from the mauling but screaming and trying to fight back around the various spasms. He had been put down a week or so later when the seizures worsened, but it had become harder to keep them maintained after the attack.

"Do you think that he's going to be okay?"

Yugi glanced at her almost dismissively, thoughts forming behind his eyes. Honda watched the way his blue-violet gaze seemed to darken faintly for a brief moment. "He'll be fine when things calm down a little at the camp," he said quietly. "I'm sure once they calm down again, Yami will be okay."

"You think they're going to just keep harassing him for a while?"

"Definitely. He's going to be the biggest thing for them to pay attention to for a little while." Yugi sighed and Honda was abruptly aware of just how exhausted and worn out he looked. His shoulders were sagging, as if a huge weight had been introduced to them at the mere thought of the fights and potential bloodshed. "He's just going to have to find a way to hold them off for a little while longer."

"You could always leave school early if you really think you need to…"

"No," Yugi said quietly, shaking his head slowly and narrowing his eyes. "No, I have to stay here until the day is over. And then I'll go ahead and go home again and wait for some more news. My mom knows that I've been skipping and she's not happy with me about it."

Honda grimaced. "Yeah, I probably wouldn't be happy with my son doing that either," he commented wryly, ignoring the way the smaller boy snorted and rolled his eyes with a purse of his lips. "You didn't do well in hiding your absences either, Yugi."

He shrugged. "I know. I haven't bothered trying to hide it." Yugi sighed and shook his head. "I was more worried about Yami than I cared about hiding my absences with school. I didn't even try at all. It was just kind of stupid to think that it was worth it to try while trying to help Yami at the same time. I would have been spreading myself a little thin trying to juggle both those things."

The brunet eyed him for a moment, and they both knew the thoughts that were flickering behind his eyes. Yugi saw the shadows there and almost smirked. Honda felt the gears racing, twisting and writhing and clanking together before dropping away into nothingness. For a split second he tried to remind himself that Yugi would have done this for any of his friends.

But there was something different within his eyes that made his intentions clear.

And it shocked him to see such clear devotion and passion there.

Yami was not just a friend.

He might not have had any of the details, but he understood that much at least.

Nothing in the way Yugi spoke of the other boy or the gleam in his eyes spoke of mere _friendship_.

Honda stared at him awkwardly, the realization something almost embarrassing at the moment.

He hadn't even considered it.

He had seen them in the warehouse like that, the way that the two wolves had paid such attention to each other. He had seen the way Yugi had worried so much about him and failed to care any longer than that. He had noticed the way they had stood so close together. He had noticed it when Yami had responded to Yugi when he'd been angry enough to snap at Jonouchi seconds before.

Honda shivered, feeling almost sick and disgruntled for a brief second.

He had never considered it before, for what it truly was. And, though he would support Yugi doing whatever it was he wanted to, it was enough to make him feel disdainful towards himself. How could he have missed it to begin with? How could he have _possibly_ overlooked it like that? It made no sense to him that he had not noticed and had missed such obvious signs.

Yugi was still watching him, the challenge clear in his eyes. Honda stared back at him, unable to do more than look away after a moment. Anzu shifted her weight awkwardly and the brunet had the abrupt clarity of understanding. That night that they had tried for the last time to have a proper date…

She had known since then, hadn't she?

And Honda knew immediately then and there that Yami had been what had caused them to fall apart.

That was an odd thought to consider. She had known for a long time what had happened. She had known for a while that Yami was the obstacle between them. And, for whatever reason, Yugi had not glanced at her in that manner since the moment that he'd come clean with her on the subject. He wondered at the idea, remembering briefly the way that he and Jonouchi had once sat around laughing about the two of them weeks prior to the failed date.

They had been laughing and making jokes about Yugi and Anzu, more so sexualities than anything. Jonouchi had said that maybe Yugi was bisexual. Honda himself had argued that he was definitely straight. Then the blond had pointed his finger at Anzu being more like a guy which Honda had slugged him in the arm for. There had been an odd exchange afterwards that maybe Yugi was already having sex with someone else. They had laughed and made little jokes about who it could have been—from him and Anzu having somehow hooked up ahead of time and hiding it from them and then even Rebecca Hawkins.

When Jonouchi had suggested that it was maybe even Honda who had hooked up with Yugi the brunet had sputtered and grown annoyed with his friend. And he'd hesitantly wondered if the blond knew something that he did not, if perhaps that Yugi _did_ have a crush on him somehow.

He had wondered with slight worry and hideous bewilderment that the blue-violet-eyed teen might have some kind of awkward affection towards him. It made him want to vomit to think now. Because he could not imagine for even a second that he could be with another guy. And the idea that Yugi could feel that way about another guy without seemingly even a hint of hesitation scared him.

How was Yugi able to simply feel so warm and affectionate towards Yami of all people when he'd formerly been all _but_ in love with Anzu? The idea that he could turn his feelings toward the red-eyed teen so abruptly was dizzying.

How was it that he could love someone so simply?

How was it that he could simply fall for someone on the opposite spectrum like that?

How was it that he could even turn his affections from one person to the next so easily like that?

Honda felt dizzy looking at him now.

 _Was_ Yugi in love with Yami?

Was that even possible?

He knew that a lot of gay guys hid behind the girlfriends they'd had formerly. They tended to simply shield themselves entirely behind the fact that they'd slept with and dated girls long before they ever had anyone else. And then, eventually, they might slowly point towards the idea that they were gay only when they felt safe enough to do so. They might come out in high school, or later in their adulthood.

In Japan it was frowned upon, though most were smart enough to hide it away behind closed doors. They knew to duck away and never speak to others about these things. They would not speak about their relationships as others might have in other parts of the world. He knew in the states that a lot of them were relatively accepted. There were still hate crimes, he knew, but they tended to be rather isolated from what he understood. And it was much unlike Japan in the manner that they also showed public displays of affection there as well.

If the smaller male had fallen in love with another boy, Honda was not sure what to say about the idea. He was not sure there was anything he could say or do. And he doubted that anything he said or did at the moment would make a difference for the smaller teen. Yugi was a free spirit through and through, he knew. Even if he said he was worried for him, the smaller boy would simply smile at him and wave it off and do as he wished. But Honda _had_ to wonder…

Was it possible that Yugi was simply attracted to him because of the lycanthropy? Was there a possibility that this was what had caused the entire thing? Was it something to do with that?

Or was Yugi simply bisexual as Jonouchi had suggested before?

Was that possible?

Honda supposed it had to be. It was always a possibility, was it not? _So many_ people were in the closet about their true sexuality, hiding away behind regular relationships in order to keep away from the scrutiny of others. Perhaps it was possible that Yugi had always felt this way about other guys.

Honda swallowed hard, wondering again if it was perhaps possible that Yugi had had a crush on him formerly. But then he knew that Jonouchi liked to say things to make him flinch and squirm at times. He liked to get back at him for some of his jokes. He liked to laugh and push at his buttons. He liked to snicker and smirk and tease him relentlessly. Their friendship had always been like that. And, truthfully, Jonouchi would say just about anything to get a reaction out of Honda at times.

"What's the camp like?" Anzu asked quietly, trying to ease some of the tension that seemed to be flaring between the two of them at the moment. Honda hesitated, glancing at her sideways, and then quickly turned back to the lycanthrope in question. Yugi blinked and looked between them for a moment, then lowered his eyes to the phone in his hand as it vibrated.

"It's a kind of clearing, I guess. It's on the side of the mountain, near a waterfall close to the nature preserve. It's like a clearing with a single den for the alpha to sleep in. Beyond that, I don't really know how else to describe it."

Because he couldn't say that the entrance was to jump through a waterfall. It was not as if they would ever jump through the water and crawl through the tunnel and into the camp itself. He knew that would never happen to begin with. But he wondered and considered and it made him nervous to even talk about it further than this brief description. Yugi licked his lips and glanced at them from beneath his lashes.

"It's not that great, I promise. It was just kind of weird, I guess. You wouldn't be too impressed with it. Maybe I'll take a picture or two and show it to you guys some time."

Honda nodded and glanced over his shoulder. A couple of other students were walking nearby, laughing about something or other that he did not care to wonder about. When he turned back, Yugi was looking in their direction as well, listening for a long moment. His wide blue-violet eyes had darkened faintly. His long lashes made his eyes seem almost black with his enlarged pupils, his expression somewhat clouded and dazed as he looked beyond them to the schoolyard.

"I guess we should go ahead and get to class now, huh?"

* * *

Yugi picked at his choker for a moment, running his fingers over the buckle. It was odd to him how eerily cold it felt beneath his touch. But he did not care to think any longer than for the simplicity of such a sensation. The small teen glanced over his shoulder towards Jonouchi a seat diagonal of him. He'd assumed that the blond would stay at the camp with Mai, but the tall teen had showed up after third period. When Yugi had managed to corner him for an explanation, the other boy had said that Yami had dismissed him to go to school and that Obelisk and Slifer had turned their attention to lying with him. He'd said that the two of them had made a show of doing it to make the others less likely to challenge him again.

Yugi still was not sure that he could count the efforts for much. But he'd been unable to argue about anything else. So the teen had not bothered for much more than to hope that the day would pass quickly and he could get ready to see Yami again. He felt sick for a moment, guilt lacing its way through his blood, then reached up to run a hand through his hair and put his elbow on the desk as the clock ticked quietly. He would need to get out of the classroom as quickly as possible.

His mom could be upset with him all she'd like. He needed to know if anything else had happened in the time he'd been gone. He would never be able to forgive himself if Yami were to be hurt irreparably or possibly even killed while he was simply taking notes at school. His stomach lurched at the thought, but he forced himself to stay in his seat. The day would be over soon enough…

When the bell rang for the end of the day, Yugi leaped to his feet before anyone could say a word. His friends startled, scrambling to catch up with him as he hurried into the hallway and towards his locker. The small teen was struggling to think of a way to perhaps ask Jonouchi to go back to the camp again, to check on the black wolf's health once more. Maybe he could get him to update him once an hour or something—anything that he could possibly convince him of Yami's health and wellbeing in that pack at this rate…

Because he didn't _want_ to see the disappointment in his mother's eyes again. He didn't want to hear her voice become hash and cold again. He didn't want to deal with it all as he had before.

"Wait, Yug, where are you going?"

Yugi didn't glance back, shouldering his bag before slowing his steps only as he made his way out of the school building into the quad. He frowned and looked back only when he heard the door close once more, eyes widening drastically as he spotted the blond rushing after him. Honda and Anzu were a step behind him, their eyes wide and bewildered. He hesitated, swallowing hard, and then looked over his shoulder.

"Be careful, guys," he muttered softly, tilting his head. The small teen blinked and frowned as he turned away again, searching the quad for a moment. His eyes narrowed and his lips pulled downward into a grimace as he stepped forward again. The blue-violet-eyed male frowned and looked over his shoulder again, then back towards the other end of the quad. "I don't know…"

Jonouchi blinked and looked around as well. He was tense and stiff in front of Honda and Anzu now as well. The two wolves were glancing about the quad in alternating sweeps, confused by the wave of tension in their bones. It was a collective feeling, something that made them both cautious as they began to slowly move forward. Yugi hesitated a couple of steps ahead of him, then paused and turned around again. For a brief moment he seemed to consider his trio of friends, then he looked away over his shoulder again and frowned.

Had he been able to concentrate, he might have tried to hear how many heartbeats he sensed at the moment. But he could not do more than blink and narrow his eyes in confusion. The wolf blinked and reached down to scratch at the inside of his wrist nervously. He could sense someone there—well, multiple people, he realized—towards the end of the quad. But he could not see them and, as others began to pour out of the building and happily make their way towards their houses or the arcade, Yugi found himself further unable to _properly_ detect or spot them. He frowned and tilted his head, then looked over his shoulder.

"Anzu, Honda, I think it's best that the two of you use the crowd to get out of here, okay? I don't know what's going on, but I'm pretty sure there are a bunch of wolves nearby." He drew in a deep breath, glancing over his shoulder once more and narrowing his eyes. "You can use them to get out of the quad and then walk home. I don't think it's safe to go to the arcade or anything like that today."

"You think you'll be okay in the meantime?" Honda asked quietly, frowning. "I mean…"

"We'll be fine," he dismissed them, making it clear that Jonouchi was meant to stay there with him. The blond nodded when he glanced at him sideways and the other two mimicked him and began to make their way past them using a handful of people to get out of the quad altogether. Yugi watched them for as long as he was able, then turned away again completely to turn back to the other wolf. "I don't know how many there are, so be careful, okay?"

"Got it."

Yugi nearly snorted at the thought but then shrugged it off, shaking his head. He shivered and reached down to scratch at his wrist again. He frowned as they looked at one another, curious and bewildered. The small teen started forward a few steps, allowing Jonouchi to follow at a rather brisk pace. They slowed when Yugi paused minutely, his head snapping around. His nose was working now, the blond noticed, startled by the way that he drew in ragged breaths and exhaled rapidly. He searched the quad again, then bristled faintly as he looked around for a moment longer.

"They're at the gate, near the little frozen garden creek," he announced, bristling. "I can't tell how many there are, but I can tell that they're there."

"So, what do we do now…?"

"I guess we'll approach them. I think they're here for me, after all." Yugi blinked and looked at him for a split second, swallowing hard and shaking his head slowly. "I have no idea if they're going to be violent or not. I don't know how I'm supposed to deal with this."

Jonouchi snorted. It was somewhere between scornful and amused. Yugi blinked and furrowed his brows before glancing immediately towards the blond but the taller teen was no longer paying him any attention. Both of them stopped short now, heads snapping around and stiffening as they looked forward. The two of them could see the frozen man-made creek towards the edge of the quad, slowing their paces and stopping short entirely.

They were standing on the other side of the little spot, wolves of different genders and heights. They stared back at them blankly and Yugi bristled as he stepped forward. The blond blinked at him, glanced at him sideways, and then turned away again towards these new lycanthropes. The sight of them was both exciting and alarming for the tall blond. He'd never considered that a large group of them might come to the school like this and he was surprised by how well they'd actually taken to camouflaging themselves. They were dressed in the neighboring city's school uniform. And they stood there in almost exact replicas of their clothing had it not been for the missing emblems in the corners of each of the collars.

There were twelve of them, Yugi noted wryly. There were twelve wolves, all of varying ages, but definitively older than the members within Echo's pack. And he bristled as he considered them for a moment. He looked about them for a moment, then sighed quietly in order to draw himself together again, and turned back to them once more. "And the alpha would be…?"

The wolf in question began to open his mouth, but was interrupted immediately. Yugi found his head snapping around, the disdainful words shocking him as another male spat, "You're not Atem. That's bullshit."

The statement was met with a few small snickers from the others amongst their group. Yugi blinked. Jonouchi felt his eyes grow twice their usual size, flickering immediately to his smaller friend. The alpha blinked, narrowed his gaze, stared for a moment, and then snorted, "Is that so?"

"You're too small and weak to be a god. You're not strong enough to be Atem at all."

"You don't realize that you're facing a wolf that's killed quite a few times," Yugi snapped, bristling now. Jonouchi shifted his weight beside him, glancing around nervously as he noticed that a few other students had stopped a little down the street and were watching them with interest. No doubt someone had seen their outfits and was curious about what was going on with what looked to be the neighboring school's students. "I don't mind adding someone else to that count."

The blond stiffened, surprised by the thought. He'd never been able to picture Yugi as a violent person. And when the small teen had punched him in the face so hard outside the hospital like that, he'd almost thought it was simply a fluke. The realization that he could do this now and threaten such a thing was amazing to him. He shivered and looked at the other pack curiously.

The boy in front of him was almost as tall as him, perhaps shorter by an inch or two, with mildly spiky hair with fell in a jagged formation across his face. His hair was a singular shade of brown and his bangs were long and thick there along the left side. Yugi blinked and looked at him, then towards Jonouchi and back again. The boy looked hotheaded, he realized, though the words that had come out of his mouth were implication enough. The small teen suppressed a shiver, then turned to him with darkened eyes again.

"You're not the alpha. Why are you talking to me?" he challenged slowly, narrowing his gaze and making his voice low and calm in order to stop himself from snarling. Yugi turned back to the male that had begun to open his mouth. "You came here looking for—"

"Why are you even addressing my alpha?" Yugi turned his head again, startled by the sneering tone. He bristled again as the other wolf glared at him spitefully. "You aren't Atem and you're wasting our time pretending to be him."

The small teen felt his shoulders rising, hatred swelling in his stomach. "Are you an idiot?" he snapped. "I _am_ Atem. I have always _been_ Atem. Now leave it alone. You have nothing further to say to me, understand? I didn't come here to speak to you."

"Then you understand why it's not you who should be talking to us," the newcomer stated furiously, stepping forward. He seemed almost to loom over Yugi for a split second. But the small teen thought of dark black fur the shade of the night sky, with red eyes the color of hellfire and Christmas lights and fresh blood and crushed rubies. He thought of the way the wolf had loomed up so viciously when he'd attacked him upon fighting Ryota and Haga and Ryuzaki. He remembered it and it made him feel incredibly small and surprised and almost weak just as it had before. Now this wolf's efforts to intimidate him did nothing more than frustrate him. "You shouldn't be here talking to us. We're here to see Atem, not some stupid impersonator."

Yugi wondered briefly if, had this boy seen Marik standing before him instead of the small teen, he might have considered the lavender-eyed male to be Atem. Would he have believed him to be the wolf in question? Or would it have been someone else entirely that he would believe in? Would it have been believed in even the slightest?

He felt sick for a moment at the idea.

Then he brushed it off.

"Do you honestly want to fight with me right now?" Yugi asked slowly, coldly. His eyes had grown sharper and he was abruptly aware of the eyes that were on him from down the street. He bristled further, then glanced over his shoulder. It was only then that he noticed that Jonouchi had left his side at some point and had wandered off on his own. The realization infuriated him but he did not say anything to draw attention to such a fact.

"We need to move this conversation away from here," he announced instead, turning back to face the other boy and baring his teeth in disdain. "I'm not too keen about having a bunch of people listen in on my private conversations."

"Why should I care if someone else sees us?"

"Because then your ass will get caught by a hunter and I certainly won't save you worth shit," Yugi answered in a tone that was disgustingly sweet before he turned on his heel and started moving along the edge of the creek's steep step. He ignored the way the pack followed him in a quick formation. There was a small snarl in the group, one he was sure regarded hierarchy more than anything, and he crossed the small raised bridge of the platform to the other side without a second glance. Yugi moved forward quickly and without a backwards glance, hurrying forward and ignoring the way that the rest of the pack fell into a single file line. He would need to get them to the mountains and find a little bit more of a secluded spot before anything else happened…

When he brought them to the clearing near the lake, Yugi found himself slowing instinctively. He had made sure that the others from his school had not followed, taking a detour around the city and then leading them back into the woods. The wolf blinked a couple of times, then quickly made his way into the center of the clearing. Some part of him momentarily mourned the loss of Jonouchi's presence at his side. If he had been there now instead of running off as he had, it would have looked somewhat more intimidating, he was sure. He shivered and ignored the urge to look over his shoulder.

"Are we finally far enough into the woods for you?" the newcomer sneered, making Yugi blink towards him briefly before his eyes narrowed into slits. "I suppose you're too afraid of people noticing to bother with bravery, right?"

"Bravery? Is that what you consider having potential hunters find you?" Yugi snorted scornfully. "You seriously think that's what that's called? You're an idiot."

The other wolf stepped forward. The instant reaction made Yugi bristle, moving forward to match him now as well. The anger in his gut was harsh and powerful. They stared at one another, hateful and disgusted with the other, and Yugi straightened further. He could see the small flinch of shock in the other's eyes, the way he blinked and startled as if the space between them might protect him somehow.

"Chazz—"

"Is that your name?" a new voice interrupted.

Yugi blinked, eyes widening and a sense of warmth filling his gut before his head snapped around. Jonouchi had come from the tree line, jogging, and Yami was a few steps behind him with his eyes locked on the troublesome wolf. He did not glance at Yugi but he did incline his head subtly, a respectful little nod, as he came forward to stop in front of him.

"Is there a reason why you're speaking to my alpha when you clearly do not possess the same rank as the wolf in question?"

Yugi blinked in surprise, then smirked in amusement and turned his head with brightened eyes. Jonouchi stopped a foot or two away from him, eyes bright with anticipation, entire body tightened with a new thrum of energy. He looked more excited than Yugi had ever truly seen him, something that startled the small teen as he blinked and turned away again, confused.

"Who the hell are you?" the other demanded, eyes sharpening as he considered him. Then he smirked, momentary unease lost. "You look like a skeleton."

Yami rolled his shoulders and the way the bones popped was intimidating enough to make most of the other onlookers flinch in surprise. Yugi barely restrained from mirroring such an action as he turned his head and looked at him with wide eyes for the smallest of moments. The small teen found himself frozen in place when he saw that Yami's red eyes were locked on him from his peripheral, staring at him curiously even as he kept his focus on Chazz as well.

"I don't think you know what a threat is when it's standing before your face." He tilted his head to the side and watched him with a darkened expression to his gaze. He watched him for a moment, cold and dark and disdainful. But he did not seem hateful nor did he appear to want to truly fight, though Yugi could see the tension in his body and knew it to remain there beneath his skin waiting for an opportunity to release itself. "You should reassess the situation you've walked into."

Yugi bristled faintly, then nearly smirked. Chazz, on the other hand, sniffed as if Yami were not worth his time, turning to Yugi now. The small teen paused, eyes sharpening and becoming darker than ever. The two of them sized each other up for a long moment, searching the other's countenance.

"So, you have a guard dog to fight your battles for you then? Is that truly what Atem—?"

The impact made the newcomer yelp. Yugi did not even fully see the movement. His mind translated it rapidly for him to understand. His eyes were wide, horrified, startled. He blinked, turning rapidly towards the source of the collision. Yami had already lowered his hand again, however. And he was simply staring at him, unimpressed as his eyes became hooded and his lips drew into a thin line, his brows relaxed.

Chazz spun on him, startled.

"Speak to those within your own rank."

The words were simplistic and easy.

Yugi blinked.

Jonouchi gaped, eyes wide and full of shock.

Yami stared back at the newcomer.

And Chazz peeled his lips back to show off his teeth. "Mind your own damn business," he spat. "Before I teach you why you should."

The smaller teen tilted his head, red eyes flashing briefly. His lips tugged upwards into a smile. "My business is anything regarding a pup who steps out of line addressing my alpha," he stated simply. "You are a beta, are you not? Then speak to _me_."

The boy snorted loudly, eyes flickering to Yugi's. The small teen went to open his mouth, to sneer at him perhaps, but then Chazz snarled and yelped. Yami had caught him hard across the side of his head again. But the second blow came more forceful than the first, nearly knocking the brunet over. Now the red-eyed lycanthrope crossed his arms, nails showing brilliantly on his fingers as he examined them dismissively.

"I will not repeat myself. You speak within your own rank or you do not speak at all."

Jonouchi was trembling with excitement now. He'd seen Yami take Aki down in a few bites, eyes flashing hatefully and jaws opening wide enough to all but swallow the she-wolf's face entirely. He nearly trembled with the thought, amused out of his mind at the very idea. But then part of him shook harder and he nearly grinned in amusement as the two of them blinked and studied one another.

"Yami…"

"Hmm?" His red eyes fell on him now, curious. "Yes?"

Yugi blinked, unsure of what more to say. Then he opened and closed his mouth, felt a smile begin to form on his lips before he could stop it, and went at first to tell him to relax but then to thank him as well. He found himself caught between the two impulses and instead shook his head after a long moment. When his eyes shot back to Chazz, the teen was glaring at Yami with enough disdain to make him falter.

"Back. _Off_."

The red eyes fell on him again. "Are you going to prove yourself capable of understanding the hierarchy or shall I beat it into your skull?" he answered slowly. He did not uncross his arms, nor did he so much as blink. When he smiled, it was predatory and put a shark's gaping jaws to shame. His teeth looked incredibly sharp, as if he'd filed them to points, and Yugi shivered at the thought. Would that happen to his own teeth at some point as well? "You do not confront anyone above your own rank."

Yugi was silent for a long time, considering the two of them for a moment as Yami merely stared at the other wolf. His eyes had grown rather unimpressed, his expression cold as he stared back at the other wolf in an almost lazy manner. "I would stay down," he muttered after a second or two, staring back at this newcomer of a wolf, Chazz glaring at him with darkened and hateful eyes. Yami did not look over but the younger wolf gave the small alpha a sharp glance. Immediately he was hit upon the head again, nearly throwing him to the snow as he huffed for a breath and turned furiously towards Yami once more. "It would be smart to just stay there. Yami _will_ beat you down if you keep getting up."

Yami didn't look over. Jonouchi was trembling with excitement once more. Yugi watched Chazz shoot him a furious glance. His beta knocked him across the head again. Chazz spun on him. Yugi detected only the smallest hint of tension in Yami's body. When Chazz lunged, Yami dodged aside from him in an instant. But, whereas Chazz looked enraged, Yami seemed indifferent. His eyes were still cold and blank in their stare.

The two of them studied each other.

Chazz moved to the left.

Yami moved to the right.

The tension was still relaxed enough to be all but nonexistent in Yami. But Chazz was balancing his weight on the balls of his feet. When he lunged, it was a surprise to no one. And Yami danced out of his reach without a second look. They faced each other, the younger wolf snarling. But Yugi found himself shivering. Yami was staring as indifferently as he had before.

Chazz was not a threat to him…

Yet the thought did nothing to stop Yugi from growing nervous. Chazz wasn't wrong. Yami was a skeleton. His skin was pulled too taut along his bones. He looked tired and ragged. His fingers were like five long claws, thin and lanky.

He swallowed hard, reaching up to finger at his choker. He narrowed his eyes, clicking his nail against the buckle there. The small teen lightly scratched, picking at the leather. Then he narrowed his eyes further. Had he been imagining it or had Yami's eyes flickered towards him for a split second? He shrugged the thought away, replacing it with a new one.

If there was even a _second_ in which he thought that Yami was about to get hurt, he would launch himself into the midst of this fight. He told himself this repeatedly. Because, if he didn't, he would have simply attacked Chazz otherwise.

There was something small and ill inside of him. And it was desperately clawing for his attention. He wanted nothing more than to stop this fight here and now. But there was no need to. Yami was holding his own without any difficulty. And Chazz was getting infuriated but Yami still did not seem to think that he was much of a threat to him at that point. He was still watching blankly, did not seem tense in the slightest…

And, besides that, Yugi had no idea what the repercussions for stepping in might be. Would they turn on him? Would they see Yami as weak and turn on him? Would they maul them both to death? If Chazz already didn't believe that he could be Atem, then who else might have felt similarly?

They circled each other again.

Then Yami moved forward. It was not a true lunge. It was just enough movement to make it seem as if he might launch himself forward. But it made Chazz duck and weave to the side. When Yami tilted his head, the younger male lunged. Yami dodged again. But this time he stayed within reach. And, as Chazz overstepped, Yami's knee came up. The momentum of Chazz's own lunge sent him straight into the blow.

Yami lowered it again a second later. And Chazz landed on his face in the snow. It was clear he was winded. His face had been red, his mouth open and slack, when he'd gotten hit. Yami blinked and tilted his head. His eyes flickered briefly towards Yugi, then the new alpha. But the tall male hardly seemed to care in the slightest that his beta was being knocked around. If anything, he looked amused.

Yami pulled his leg back as Chazz started for his feet. The toe of his sneaker hit him hard in the hip. The boy yelped, rolling onto his back from the force. He flailed for a split second. Yami blinked and furrowed his brows. Then he dodged back as snow was sent through the air. He shook his head, puzzled, and then blinked again. The tactic had been useless but for one thing.

The younger wolf was on his feet again. He was glaring at him, eyes furious. His mouth was set into a snarl. His teeth were showing. His hands were shaking where they'd formed fists at his sides. Had Yami not been paying attention, he might have missed it. But he'd never been one to look away from his opponent in a fight. So he noticed it.

The dark gray eyes flickered slightly to the side. And then Chazz shifted his shoulders the same direction. His entire stance, tense and battle-ready, grew pointedly more so. His pupils, as they regarded each other, began to almost vibrate.

Yami blinked and dodged away again when he lunged. The action was effortless and fluid. And he swore his lungs didn't take on their usual pain as they should have. He stared again, eyes cold and sharp. And then he tilted his head.

There was a single loud popping noise. Yami tipped his chin up. In the corner of his eye Yugi was frozen in place. His fingers were around his choker. His eyes were wide and startled. His breathing was slightly shallow. He looked tense, as if he might jump in the middle of their little squabble at any moment. And Yami almost wanted to look at him and assure him otherwise.

But he would not take his eyes off of Chazz. The boy was hardly a threat to him in all reality. Even as weak as he was, the younger wolf hardly posed an opponent for him. In all reality it was mere instinct that kept him from looking away. But he was not willing to rely on his instincts alone for the moment either. He was too tired for that. And a misstep could cost more than he was willing to pay at the moment. So he kept his eyes glued to him, head angled slightly downward to ensure the sight of his shoulders.

Chazz might have been vicious and had most likely fought his way tot his position.

But he lacked knowledge.

He lacked experience.

And it was clear to Yami in an instant that Chazz had no idea how clearly he displayed his next move. He had no idea that he showed his opponents so many clues as to what he was going to do next. Had he not been so young and inexperienced, perhaps Yami might have been more inclined to take this as seriously as Yugi seemed to be. But the wolf was a pup when it came to battle. He had most likely won his rank by way of brutalizing his opponent rather than managing skill or cunning. Because Yami doubted any truly experienced lycanthrope would have been unable to pick up on the physical signs…

Chazz led with his shoulders and head. His body followed moments later. But he did it in a fashion that was far too obvious. Yami did not think even the blind could miss this clear display.

Yami blinked, red eyes glittering curiously. His lips twitched slightly, the left side pulling upwards into the beginnings of a smirk. Chazz did not have as much experience with an accelerated Change as he did either. He watched the other boy's spine pop and grind, shoulders hunching. But it was coming faster than Yami would have expected given another wolf. Chazz was attempting to hurry it, though it was clear he had no true idea how he was meant to go about it.

The red-eyed teen wanted to laugh for a moment. His eyes flickered and shot briefly to Yugi. The smaller teen was staring, standing stiff as if he might have turned to stone, and his eyes were glued predictably to Yami himself. The alpha smirked a little wider at him, a teasing quirk of his lips. And his beta blinked at him in surprise, startled from his shock. For a moment he still looked scared, but a second later he relaxed visibly. He smiled faintly in turn as Yami glanced back at Chazz.

The boy in front of him was shaking the clothes from his furred body now. Yami cast a single small glance back at Yugi in his peripheral. The smaller teen blinked again, drawing his eyes from Chazz, and looked to him again. When their eyes locked, Yugi nodded slightly, and Yami turned away swiftly.

It was not a permission he truly needed nor cared for. But it was an encouragement that made him feel slightly less alone at the moment. It was odd feeling like this in the middle of a fight…

Chazz stood on long white limbs, a massive body of dark gray and black. It answered another question of how he had managed to secure his rank. He had the raw strength to make up for the lack of experience. Raw strength in a werewolf body would go farther than most gave credit.

The wolf finally blinked. Then he drew his lips back to show off swollen, bleeding gums and new canine teeth. Yami did not blink in the slightest. His eyes narrowed and he stared blankly. Then he tilted his head slightly to the side the smallest degree. In the corner of his eye Yugi was staring at Chazz with an expression that was nothing short of murderous.

Chazz opened his jaws wide. Then he lunged. Yami blinked and looked down at him. His lips curled back. His eyes sharpened as he moved aside. The canine snapped his jaws shut on dead air. Then he turned again, bristling and furious. His mouth opened wide again. His eyes grew black with his hatred. He lunged.

Yami dodged aside again. His red gaze narrowed. Then his mouth twitched and his lips drew back into a sneer. He lashed out with a swift kick.

The impact was enough to make Chazz grunt. His eyes nearly popped out of his head. The wolf stumbled visibly. Yami aimed a second one, just as fast but harder than the first. A bone popped this time, clearly fracturing from the force. The red-eyed teen backed up a step, watching. Chazz was panting from the pain alone, eyes glazed and caught on him angrily.

Yugi was staring at him, Yami knew. The small teen was watching him with concern and surprise. He knew that much just from the way his face had twisted minutely. His eyes were glazed slightly and his mouth was open the smallest degree. There was the smallest tremor in his shoulders, something that almost made Yami look over. But he kept this impulse at bay.

Then his beta began to bristle. And Yami glanced at him sideways. Chazz leaped at him immediately. Yami turned back instantly, jumping. The momentum was enough to send him over the wolf as he landed a foot away from him. The canine turned quickly, teeth showing in his anger. Yami shook his head as he turned back to him. When he peeled his lips back, his gums were tingling and burning.

He expected Chazz to be readying himself for another leap. But the canine was stuck, standing a few feet away staring at him. He was snarling, but he was also struggling for air. It was clear that the kick to his ribs had done Yami more than he'd initially thought it would. He backed up a few steps, putting just enough distance between them. His gums were bleeding more heavily. His tongue was coated in it. His eyes sharpened, his sight stronger than ever as it honed in on everything the wolf in front of him was doing at the moment.

Chazz crouched down and bore his teeth again. His muscles readied and he prepared himself. Yami braced himself, stepping back only once. Then the wolf launched himself. They collided in a tangle of fur and pale limbs. Yugi almost moved forward to intervene. Jonouchi stood up on his tiptoes, excited as he tried to see more.

Steam was rising in the air. The two of them rolled now. And then Chazz yelped and reeled back. He was bleeding across his cheek. And Yami was shaking himself out. His ears flicked. And, to Yugi's relief, the canine did not seem harmed in any manner. When Chazz ran at him again, the two rolling in the snow once more, it took only seconds later for them to disengage.

Chazz yelped again. Yami moved away from him for a few paces. The canine in front of him was struggling for his paws. Yugi stared at Yami in open shock. The black wolf glanced at him. His tail wagged in the most minute fashion. Then he looked to his challenger again. The gray wolf was bleeding hideously. His flank was torn. His throat was slicked with blood. Much of his white fur was laden with red. His ear was split and caked with blood. His muzzle was covered in red and brown. His eyes were wide, startled. But he looked infuriated more than anything. Yami raised and wagged his tail slowly.

There was a long minute of stillness.

The two of them stared at one another, stiff and frozen in the snow.

Yugi had the impression that, for the briefest of moments, the two of them were like large plush figures more than anything else. He could see the way they both sized each other up, however. Their eyes were mirroring in expression. They looked hateful of each other. The wolves blinked at each other. Yami appeared more or less amused. Chazz was clearly infuriated.

When the gray wolf lunged forward, Yami stiffened. His muscles locked beneath his dense fur. His dark muzzle was lowered towards the snow. His lips pulled back to show brilliant white teeth. His ears pricked forward. Blood made his whiskers cake to his cheeks. His dorsal cape rose with ferocity. He stood on long, thin legs. His shoulders became squared. And his haunches became bunched in preparation to leap as well.

Chazz collided with him in a full frontal assault. The impact knocked him a couple of inches back. But he had failed to throw him from his paws. Even where they skid through the snow, he did not falter. And, as Yami looked back at him, he wished he was capable of smiling as keenly as a wolf as he was capable a human. Instead he pricked his ears forward and watched him for a moment, perfectly still even as Chazz snapped at his cheek.

Yami was used to this deathly calm that claimed his senses, however. It was not a question of where it came from or what it was. He had always known this emotion, in all reality. Even when his mother had turned her teeth on him at a young age, so soon upon his eyes opening, he had known it. Even when he'd been initially attacked and viciously picked at by the boars while Fuwa and Marik watched, he'd known it in some way.

And he saw the clear alarm in Chazz now as he noticed it too. Fear was not something that came to Yami naturally in a fight. He had always strived—and succeeded more often than not—to keep his head clear. If he was calm, he had better control and no one got hurt too terribly. But he could see the growing fear in the other wolf in front of him. He understood that as well. Most wolves were fearful in fights—or perhaps more vicious than usual.

But Yami saw his own reflection in Chazz's enlarged pupils. His red gaze was clear, calmer than ever. His ears were pricked forward. He was statuesque in his reflection. And, as Yami studied it for a moment, a new thought occurred to him. Chazz was _aware_ that Yami could kill him. That was _why_ he was so scared and lashing out as he was…

The black wolf shoved this thought away. He would not kill him. He would not even truly cripple him…

He was just a young wolf that had come across something much more capable than he himself was. He was standing before an opponent at a caliber that he might never meet. As such, Yami would teach him a lesson that would not break him entirely.

Yami turned his head. His mouth opened wide. His jaws parted in a scissoring formation of bright enamel. And, as Chazz panicked and attempted to bite upon his scruff, the black wolf ducked his head. It was a rather dirty technique, he supposed, though he could not quite find it within himself to care too much about it.

Yami snapped his jaw shut. Chazz screamed. Bones popped.

The gray wolf released him. Yami shook his head, dragging him off balance by the shoulder. Then he released, allowing him to stumble forward and fall into the snow. The black wolf stared back at him. And then he shook himself out, stepped forward, and slammed his muzzle into his shoulder. Chazz teetered sideways, then fell into a heap of weak limbs with a piercing yelp.

Yami shook himself out again. Blood was a deep scar across his features. His cheeks were slicked with it. He could feel it caking his mouth. But Yami could not find it within himself to care as much as he might have otherwise. He licked his lips, stepped forward, and watched glass blackened eyes stare back at him in alarm. His pupils were vibrating, but Yami could see his reflection without problem. His eyes were still blank, boring into Chazz's effortlessly and without relief of any kind.

Chazz scrambled for his paws in a panic. His eyes were huge, his ears flattened against his skull. Blood drizzled from his shoulder and left leg where Yami had crushed it. He was holding it off the ground slightly, as if he could not bear to put weight upon it. It was a sign of weakness that another would have taken advantage of. However, the black wolf simply flicked his ears.

There was a stubborn ferocity in Chazz's eyes, however. As Yami watched, his eyes became colder and more aggressive than ever. The wolf stared unblinkingly and the gray wolf lunged for his throat. Yami might have commended his courage had he not been shaking so visibly. Instead the black wolf opened his jaws, narrowing his eyes. He blinked, wagged his tail once, and curled his lips back to show his teeth. Against the gray wolf's pupils, Yami's incisors and canines were like brilliant white swords.

They collided in a mass of dark gray and black and white fur.

Snow rose into and flew through the air in a rush.

They rolled for a long minute or so.

Then they snarled and spat at each other.

Blood flew through the air. A tuft of black fur fell to the snow. Yami felt a bitter sting in his cheek. But it was Yugi who reacted. The small teen had stiffened. His head was tipped up a fraction. His eyes had darkened. His fingers twitched. And then he shifted his weight as if he might come forward before pressing himself back. He steeled himself as if he might be unable to do more. And then another tuft of fur came through the air. A wide spray of blood soaked the snow. And then they separated again.

His cheek was stripped of fur behind his muzzle, Yugi noted. But Yami looked incredibly unharmed otherwise. The blood across his muzzle was not his own, he knew. And the way his red eyes glinted so emotionlessly was bewildering to Yugi for a brief second. But then the wolf shook himself out. The cut on his leg made the limb almost fold beneath him for a split second. And then he raised his head.

Chazz lunged.

Yami jumped over him.

Then the black wolf spun on him. He aimed for the shoulder as he might have before. Chazz was knocked off balance, falling into the thick snow. He rolled to his feet. And Yami lowered his head towards his throat. His eyes were locked on the younger wolf's. His lips were pulled back. His ears were pricked forward. He did not raise his tail. He did not blink.

Not a word passed his lips. Yet Chazz was frozen, terrified.

Neither of them moved but to breathe. Then Yami's eyes narrowed a fraction further. And, finally, he flicked his tongue over his nose almost aggressively. Chazz stared back defiantly, moving to growl low in his throat now. Yugi could barely hear the noise. His heart was too loud in his chest. And he stiffened when Yami peeled his lips back further.

"Yami," Yugi muttered.

The world turned to him before he had even managed to form his lips into the second syllable of his name. his head turned and his tail wagged parallel to his spine in clear friendship. He trotted over to him without a second glance at Chazz. The display was enough to make several of the other wolves look up with wide eyes. Yami ignored this, however. They were clearly confused and startled, stunned by the singular speed he had shown in his reaction. Simply the way that he had turned so swiftly upon hearing his voice had made it clear his loyalty existed solely in the manner of aiding the other male.

Yugi gestured him closer. Yami hesitated a few inches from him, then flicked and flattened his ears to his skull. Then he lowered his head and moved forward. He hesitated a moment, huffed loudly, and came to a stop a couple of inches from the lycanthrope in question. The small teen crouched down to part his fur to show his skin, digging through the long strands. He found the shallowest cut along his leg, near his large paw. The wolf allowed him to lightly prod upon his wound. The skin was just barely split, the blood soft and caked there.

The small teen nearly sighed with relief, instead looking the wolf over again for a moment. He seemed tired, the way the red-eyed teen blinked towards him. His ears pricked forward, then flicked back and forth for a moment. The wolf stared up at him curiously, wagged his tail again, and then searched his face with that same scrutinizing manner he always looked at him with.

Yugi smiled slightly, reaching out to ruffle the hair between his ears. He wondered vaguely if the others were shocked, if perhaps they might grow upset due to Yami's victory. And he prepared himself to leap forward should anything happen to make them inclined towards fighting him.

"Chazz, enough," the other alpha snapped. It was enough to make Yami's head snap around and his ears prick forward. He turned away from Yugi entirely, though Yugi kept his hands on his shoulders and ruffled his fur lightly as he straightened again. The gray wolf was struggling for his feet, bristling and upset. The clear disdain in his eyes made Yugi bristle, for a moment ready to lunge forward and attack him in retaliation.

But then the seconds passed. And the wolf seemed to look at Yami for a long enough time that he slowly lost his anger. He flattened his ears against his head, snarling, and took a seat with a pointed stare upon the snow bathed red around him.

Yugi was bewildered as he looked at his alpha again. Yami was not paying his challenger any attention, nor was he looking towards Yugi either. He had turned his head away entirely, sniffing at the air in the general direction of the pack. Then he snorted loudly and looked away to rub his muzzle against the snow. Yugi wondered if it was meant to be an intimidation tactic of some kind. It was a curious one if it was, though he considered the message was incredibly clear—Yami was not threatened by them. If they thought to fight him again, he'd do it with just as much ease now as he had Chazz.

He was so caught up in this idea that he missed the first handful of words when Yami turned back to him. When Yugi blinked at him, staring stupidly and unable to think straight for a moment, the black wolf tipped his head to the side. _I think that they will request to see the camp soon, yes_? He flicked his ear curiously after a moment.

"That's fine." Yugi was dismissive and somewhat curt when he said that. But then his head turned to Jonouchi, a slightly annoyed glare coming through his eyes. He watched him for a moment or so, then turned back to his alpha. "But you and I have to have a talk, you know. We have a lot that we need to discuss before we go back there."

Yami flicked an ear and tilted his head curiously. _Is it bad_? The black wolf hesitated, wondering if he heard the better translation of his true question— _Did I do something wrong_? The thought of having done something was bewildering to him. He did not know what it was that he could have done that was not required of him. He flattened his ears against his head when Yugi did not answer him.

"Jonouchi, go ahead and lead them back to the camp, all right? Get Chazz checked up on and—"

The blond shook his head with narrowed eyes. "But I—"

 _Your alpha just gave you an order,_ Yami spat at him, startling the two wolves enough to make them look at him with mirroring expressions of pure shock. _You will do as he says and take them to the camp as directed, understood_?

Yugi blinked, something in his mind clawing briefly at the surface. His insides felt cold, all but hollow, and he turned his head slowly towards his best friend with narrowed eyes. The blond had immediately cringed and nodded, turning quickly to the pack in question. The smaller teen glanced at his alpha, mildly bewildered, but Yami was glaring at the blond as if he might further argue and give him reason to bite his head off.

Yugi swallowed hard, stunned by the way Yami glared so openly. And then he shrugged it off. Sympathy came to him first, then avid frustration that made his blood hot in his veins. Jonouchi would have ignored him had Yami not spoken up. The realization made him want to snarl. Jonouchi was listened to _Yami_ rather than him.

"Have Ishizu take a look at his cuts," Yugi said slowly, voice low with growing anger. "And make sure that no one does anything stupid. Tell Obelisk and Slifer that should anything happen, the two of them shall isolate it before it gets any further than a squabble. I do not care if it's nothing more than an argument. Have them put an end to it immediately."

Yami flicked his ears and turned to Yugi curiously. He craned his neck back and peered up at his face, tilting his head. But Yugi ignored him and the black wolf wondered if he had truly done something that he should not have. It seemed odd to him, however, that the small teen might be so upset with him and not explain himself…

Jonouchi scowled at him when Yami glanced between them. Then he nodded brusquely and turned on his heel to lead them away. In an instant Yugi turned back to him and Yami hesitated before considering him from the corner of his eye. Yugi looked frustrated, not angry enough to lash out or truly start a fight that might end terribly…

Yami tipped his muzzle up further and ran his tongue over Yugi's chin before backing away. A part of him was both anxious and flustered. But the other was calm even as he took a seat several paces away from the small teen. He only hoped that neither of them said anything that might lead to an altercation of any kind. But, as Yami looked at him, he had to wonder, because Yugi's eyes were growing further angry rather than calming in the slightest…

"Why the _hell_ did he go to get you?" he demanded frostily, cutting through whatever friendly atmosphere might have been able to develop between them again. Yami flattened his ears and lowered his head slightly, hoping that the submissive stance might do well to help calm Yugi's anger. He did not think that they would be okay at the end of this conversation if Yugi did not calm somewhat. And, perhaps, if he were the one to take on a submissive role, Yugi would relax. "I could have handled Chazz on my own. So why did he go all the way back to the camp to find you like that?"

Yami did not like the way that he stared at him so angrily. It made a part of him rear up in retaliation, upset by his anger towards him. But another part of him was quivering with growing distress. He forced himself to relax, pricking his ears forward as he tilted his head. _I do not think that he believed that you would be able to deal with them if something should have happened_ , he answered reluctantly after a long moment had passed. The frustration in Yugi's eyes seemed to simply grow. _I think that he believed that you would have succumbed beneath the pressure should it have escalated any further._

"Wow, that's _great_ ," Yugi said wryly, annoyed as he shook his head and narrowed his eyes. "So even Jonouchi thinks I'm weak then. That's awesome."

Yami stayed silent for a moment. Then he blinked and narrowed his eyes in turn. _Many of the wolves are upset with your absence_ , he said slowly, reluctance biting at his insides. Yugi was most likely going to lose his temper with him before anything was resolved. He flattened his ears against his skull again, resisting the urge to whimper pleadingly. _I think that they believe that you are not going to return to the camp anytime soon. Aki is furious with you for sending Jonouchi to relay that message and none of them are quite happy to see me instead of you. A couple of the others have begun to question whether you are truly Atem when they believe you simply hide away more often than not. And more than one has grown suspicious that maybe you are simply lying but Obelisk and Slifer have argued with them due to it. They have stood by you in regards of this argument. But I must say that my return has done you little justice. A lot of them are more interested in the fact that I have fought them in order to retain my rank among them. They are not interested in following you or anything that you might have to say…_

"So, then _basically_ , they're more likely to believe in _you_ than they are me?" Yugi spat softly, eyes blazing. His head tilted towards him with darkened eyes, glaring at him after a moment. His expression was far more frustrated than Yami had ever truly seen it before, something that unnerved him more than he wished to admit. "So Jonouchi ran off to find you because he doesn't think that I can handle anything, huh?"

 _I did not say that._

"No, but you might as well have! Are you seriously going to tell me that that's not what you mean? Are you seriously going to tell me that you don't believe that that's why he went and got you like that?"

Yami flicked an ear. _I do not know why you are angry with me._

Yugi faltered, head snapping towards him with his mouth opened for a brief second. Then he snapped it shut, reached up to grab at his hair unhappily, and shook his head with a flustered expression on his face. He turned away quickly, chin tucked into his own collarbone for a moment as he drew in a deep breath. "I'm not upset with _you_ ," he answered slowly. "I'm upset _in general_ , because I didn't even _think_ about how the pack might react to you or anything like that."

The black wolf flattened his ears after a moment and then pricked them forward again before curling his lips back uncomfortably. _I am sorry,_ he said after a deep breath. He looked away and glanced over his shoulders and back with a somewhat mournful expression as if he were too uncomfortable to understand. _I did not mean to upset you, Yugi. I was just answering your questions._

"I know. And I'm sorry, Yami. I didn't mean to snap at you. But I'm still pissed. I can't believe I overlooked it the entire time." He ran a hand through his hair and huffed out a deep breath. Then he shook his head and narrowed his eyes into slits. The lycanthrope reached up to scratch lightly at the column of his throat, eyes sharpening for a brief moment once more. "I didn't even think that they would start to doubt me if I was gone for a while. I…"

Yami did nothing more than shake his head. _It doesn't matter. It will be sorted out again. It is easy to regain their trust. You will simply have to try again and reassure them that you are Code Name Atem now. You will have to make them understand and reassert your ability to lead them when the time comes. But for now there isn't a window to do such,_ he answered softly. He flicked an ear and then turned away again with his eyes on the snow once more. It was hard to face him when he looked so dejected now. _I think that you will have the opportunity sooner rather than later. But I do not think that it will be today or tomorrow either._

"He shouldn't have dragged you out here though," Yugi said quietly, shaking his head and narrowing his eyes angrily. "You shouldn't have been bothered about the stupid thing to begin with. He should have let me handle it—"

 _But you are the alpha, not the beta,_ Yami interrupted, turning to him now with dark eyes. He flicked his ears, pricked them forward as he stared up at him, and then tilted his head slightly to the side with growing amusement. _You do not know the politics within wolf packs, nor the implications that come with them, but the situation was handled as it truly should have been, Yugi. In the case of a beta challenging the alpha of another pack, it is mandatory that the beta go through the ranks in order to challenge them. If they do not do this, it is considered a type of treason that they are likely to be killed for in retaliation. It is something that could have potentially led to a lot more in the subject of punishment. Had any of the others within the pack been there, they could have easily simply attacked and killed him._

Yugi stared at him, then reached up to run a hand through his hair again. He shook his head and swallowed hard as they looked at one another. "So, if Jonouchi hadn't potentially singled you out to deal with it and the others found out later, they would have killed him?"

Yami nodded slightly, narrowing his eyes. _Yes. He could easily have had his throat ripped out in penalty._

"Then why didn't his alpha stop him from doing it?"

 _Probably because Chazz is in the same strain as Marik himself was. It would not surprise me in the least to find that the alpha has grown exasperated with him for some reason that might leave him inclined to allow him to be punished by another pack of wolves. Perhaps he would not have let him die, but would have at least allowed him to be hurt and punished in turn. I do not imagine that he truly would have left him to die, however._

The smaller teen hesitated for a long moment, staring at the wolf in front of him. Then he faltered, mouth opening and closing once before he grimaced. Yami blinked up at him and narrowed his eyes unhappily.

"You think that that's what Annie did when I was fighting Marik that day in the woods?"

Yami blinked and flicked his ears lazily for a moment. _I would believe so,_ he answered slowly, though then he tilted his head and shifted his weight uncomfortably. Yugi noticed him raise his wounded paw slightly from the ground. _If I should know who Annie is_?

The teen looked over in surprise, tilting his head and furrowing his brows. "Oh, you don't…" He ran a hand through his hair and watched his face for a moment. "Annie was the leader of the pack, the one who killed herself…for me."

The black wolf nodded slowly. _I see._

Yugi tilted his head, watching him closely before he stepped closer. He moved to crouch in front of him, searching his face and studying him briefly. He reached his hands out to run his fingers through his fur, despite the way it seemed slick and stringy in certain spots and yet short and crusted in others. "Are you okay? You're holding your paw up."

Yami looked at it curiously for a moment. Then he flexed his toes to show his long claws and lowered the appendage to the snow again. He paused, shifted his weight again, and then slowly lifted it once more as he raised his head to look towards him curiously. _I am fine. It stings a little, but it does not truly hurt beyond that. I am not worried about it. I will clean it later when I have returned to the camp._

Yugi shook his head slowly, flustered for a brief moment. "No, no, let me check it out. I can stop the bleeding right now," he muttered softly, searching the wolf's face for a split second and swallowing hard. "I can go ahead and pack it with ice. That might help it heal a little faster too, right?"

Yami was quiet for a long moment before shifting his weight and moving slightly forward. His red eyes flickered across Yugi's face and then lowered to the snow. _If you would like to do so, then I will not object,_ he said slowly, staring at the ice crystals around them as he shifted his weight again.

When he lifted his paw as Yugi reached for it, the small teen looked him over for a moment. He had the sudden urge to pull the large canine closer, to wrap his arms around him comfortably and snuggle into his fur despite its coarse state. He didn't care for even a second about the thin bone structure beneath his taut skin or the way that he could feel every little part of his skeleton there. He licked his lips and took his paw gingerly into his hand, resting it within his palm comfortably for a moment.

"Do you mind if I touch it?"

In another situation he might have blushed and sputtered and been embarrassed that the words have ever left his mouth to begin with. In this one he simply felt stupid for his phrasing but did not care to say anything else. So, as Yami nodded and did not look over again, Yugi lowered his fingers to prod at the skin along his paw. He touched each toe, pulled and pressed upon them to make them flex, and then looked over the shiny keratin nails which glittered in his eye. He shook his head slightly, stretching his paw further before slowly sorting through the soft fur to find the source of the cut altogether.

"Any pain?"

 _No._

"Good."

* * *

Yugi flipped the page of his notebook and began to write a new note on the white surface. He frowned slightly and shook his head as he flipped his pencil back and forth in his fingers. He considered it and tilted his head, erasing the newest statement to rewrite the words there as well. He lay his notebook across his thighs and flipped his pencil again as he tilted his head and narrowed his eyes with a frown. The lycanthrope shifted his weight and reread the phrase he'd been copying down again. He began to write another note, grimacing slightly as he shook his head.

It didn't matter. The worksheet he'd been looking at before was hardly anything he cared for. The truth of the matter was that he did not have even the slightest care in the world for his homework. He had made it a point to do as much of his make-up work as he possibly could. He had gotten every single assignment and quiz that he could get from his teachers in the meantime. He had set about getting to work on it the moment that he'd come home.

He'd been late getting back to the house, because he'd examined Yami's paw instead of even considering coming back earlier than absolutely necessary. He'd searched every little inch of it, had studied it pointedly. And then he'd settled back and wandered home again. And when Yugi had come inside, his mom had looked up from checking on that dog in the kennel behind the desk. They'd looked at one another for only a second, but it was enough to imprint her disappointment in him. And he had quickly fled up the stairs in a panic to take a seat on his bed and work on recovering his schoolwork.

Now he had finished his first study guide but not the latter handful of assignments. He felt sick for a moment as he sat there, eyes locked on the white paper in front of him. He reached up to run his hands through his hair and narrowed his gaze. Then he flipped his pencil in his fingers and happily caught it again. His mouth was dry as he looked the worksheet over. The teacher had mentioned that he was not to write on the paper, that he would have to write the questions down on a separate sheet and then answer them beneath.

So Yugi had done just that, shaking his head in annoyance at the very idea. He frowned and flipped through his biology study guide once more. He did not care in the slightest to actually get it all done. It was hardly something he wondered about in the first place. The lycanthrope flipped his pencil again, quickly writing the next question in the notebook.

"So why were you late?"

Yugi blinked and looked up in confusion, head tipping upwards at the door. He froze in place, eyes wide and mouth half-open in shock at the sight. He had not even noticed for the smallest of seconds that she had come up from the clinic as it was. He was frozen for a brief moment, swallowing hard and staring at his mother with wide eyes.

"I…I was busy with something," he finally answered. He hadn't taken that long to get there in the first place. He had had to deal with Chazz's challenge. And then he'd checked on Yami and they'd spoken for a while longer. But it was not too long that it had taken him to return to the house. He frowned and tilted his head as he looked up at her. "Why?"

"I thought you were going to be trying to come home on time for a few days. I'm pretty sure I heard something like that when you'd spoken to Jonouchi on the phone before, right?" Kasumi stated in a somewhat cold, almost bitter tone. "Or did I just hear that wrong?"

Yugi was quiet for a long moment. "No, you heard right. I just wasn't expecting anything to have happened and something did."

She snorted and shook her head at him with darkened eyes. "Oh, so something came up then? Do you want to tell me what it is that happened?"

The small teen hesitated, then reached up and ran a hand through his hair after a long moment. He grimaced and tilted his head slightly as they stared at each other. "I had to help Yami do something," he answered simply, watching her and frowning. "He needed my help with a few things and I went to do that."

Kasumi was frozen in place for a long second. Then she narrowed her eyes and watched him with her head tilted and her mouth set in a firm clench. She shook her head and frowned at him with a shake of her head once more. "Help with what?" she demanded rather sharply. "I mean, why would you help him when he's already caused you so much pain as it is?"

Yugi blinked and shook his head. "He hasn't ever hurt me," he answered slowly. But he hesitated after a long second and then grimaced. He thought of the red-eyed wolf as he'd sat in front of him there, his expression patient and ears pricked forward as he'd tilted his head and watched him curiously. "And I would do a lot for him if he needed me to. If he needs help, I'll provide it. It's not a hard thing to understand, Mom. You would do the same for Dad."

She startled, blinking and then narrowing her eyes as she processed the statement. Then she drew in a deep breath, shaking her head slightly. "What do you actually know about Yami, Yugi?" she said quietly. "Because I don't think you know nearly enough to want to show him loyalty like that."

The small teen blinked, then tilted his head. "I know enough to know that I will _always_ offer him help if he needs it." He paused and then snorted softly with a roll of his eyes and shake of his head. "You can't tell me that you know better than I do where he's concerned. And I don't care what you have to say about him if it's not something better than that."

His mother scowled at him, shaking her head more persistently. "You can't really believe that for even a second," she snapped quietly. "I don't understand how you could feel something for someone you barely know."

"You didn't exactly know Dad very well when you got pregnant. If I remember right, it was almost a one night-stand and the only reason it _wasn't_ is because _he_ followed _you_ when you ran." He paused after a moment, opening and closing his mouth and then shaking his head slowly. "Look, Mom, you can say whatever you want. I'll even let you give me whatever advice you want, but I'm not going to listen to it. You don't know the half of what's going on."

Kasumi sighed loudly, reaching up to rub at the bridge of her nose. "You're being stupid about this, Yugi."

"Then I guess I'm an idiot. But it doesn't matter. I'm going to help him regardless of anything you say."

 **I am so sorry for this, guys. But things have changed yet again. This time, however, it is a lot more stressful and more involved than I would like to admit. Regardless, it impacts a lot more than just this story and its updates. A problem has arisen in my workplace and circumstances HAVE pushed me to focus more on this matter than anything else. So, because of this, I have NO IDEA when I will be able to post again. This story will especially be on hiatus, considering its longer and more complicated plot and various twists. I do not believe that I will even be able to post after the start of the new year. I may be able to get something up before or after that time frame, but I honestly HIGHLY doubt it. The hiatus absolutely WILL be temporary, but for now I can't make any plans on when to update or give definitive dates. Again, I'm super sorry about this.**

 **Feel free to reach out to me via PM on or through comments on AO3 if you have any questions. I can't always promise to answer immediately, but I WILL try to do so as quickly as possible.**


	61. Traitor

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Hopefully biweekly**

 **Chapter Warnings: Mentions of Torture, MILD Bloodshed, Hunting**

 **So, venison is a "warm" meat. Basically, it's one of the meats that metabolizes quickly and IF your pet is allergic to it, it can cause a VERY fast reaction after eating. It causes the body to heat up very quickly which is how the allergic reactions come faster. So, for Yami, venison is the best food he can get his paws on in order to help slow down his own decline in health.**

 **Now, as for updates! Here's what I'm HOPING to be able to get accomplished. Things have ONCE AGAIN changed in my workplace. In a more direct note, it means more hours there and less for writing. That means I truthfully have NO idea how it is that I'm going to make this all work. So, I'm thinking the updates for this story will be cut to biweekly. And, if I get to the point where my days off are actually set in stone, I'll be using that as my way of getting more than one update up a week. Until then, though, thinking biweekly is my best bet.**

 **As for other stories, I DO have plans to get _Sky Dance_ 's sequel up soon enough. I need to get some of the rewrite of a segment of it figured out but after that, I'll be trying for that. I REALLY wanted to say that I'd be able to get it posted sometime this month. But I doubt it, so realistically I'm going to aim for February instead. And since it's a shorter project it shouldn't take much time away from this.**

 **Guest: The romance/slow burn between them is not the most important part of the story. It's a subplot, not the main focus. So it's going to remain slower than molasses and rather one-sided. It's why I didn't list the story as romance.**

Chapter LXI: Traitor

 _Work Log Entry LIV: October, 2005_

 _October 10_

 _The boss has told me to take Atem outside for a couple of hours. He is concerned that perhaps the Pure-Blood is suffering from the lack of sunlight and things of that nature. But I do not think that it will help him much._

 _I am to do this within the week._

 _October 16_

 _I have taken Atem out into the woods for the day. But Atem does not seem happy in the slightest. He seems more overwhelmed than anything else._

 _It is not hard to realize why._

 _He has only been outside a handful of times at any point in his life._

 _I do not know if he is going to gain any good from this venture now._

 _October 31_

 _I have gotten the opportunity to speak to my look alike. The wolf is very vicious and sharp-tongued. He is not happy at all._

 _I asked him about the theory of camouflage that the boss has regarding the wolves. He scoffed at me and smirked the entire time, then called me too stupid to function._

It was always a surprise to Yugi how easily he could find solace in the act of changing forms and taking off into woods as he did now. The argument with his mother had ended with a rather horrified expression on her face, something caught between shock and heartbreak. And Yugi had been so stricken by it he had been unable to continue to look at her any longer. So he had eventually listened to her walk away into her room, closing and locking the door behind her as if she were concerned he might follow when she clearly needed some kind of distance.

So Yugi had waited around finishing one of his study guides, the hour slowly dragging by until she fell asleep as his grandfather had thirty minutes earlier. And then he had taken off into the woods as he had felt the trees and the fresh air might be the only thing to do him well in order to help settle his frayed nerves and relax him if only slightly. He supposed that had to be a lot more of the wolf than he cared to admit, though it did not trouble him as much as it might have formerly.

Yugi was exhausted as he trotted forward in the snow, paws spread out to absorb the impact of the movements and keep him from sinking too terribly beneath the ice crystals. He was happy he did not fall further than necessary, much unlike what he would have suffered had he been human. The wolf blinked and looked around, white fur tugged lightly by a stray breeze within the trees.

He tilted his head as he continued moving forward. The air was cold, his exhales highlighted in bright white puffs against the weak shadows stretched across the snow. But he could not sense any reason to be alarmed in any manner and so he simply sniffed about himself as he looked through the trees. There was no sense of urgency to be found, he knew, and he wondered at the tranquility the darkness offered him at the moment. He was not truthfully used to a sensation as simple and easy as this.

But he knew that this could change in a second.

Yugi wanted nothing more than to simply avoid the wolves that might be in the trees. He did not want to have to interact with even one of them. If he were to keep to himself, he would not have to explain himself or his presence there altogether. And if he could just keep that from having to happen, Yugi truly thought life might somehow be easier for a moment.

Any sense of socialization he might have felt formerly was gone in an instant then.

So now he simply trotted forward as he would have regardless of his troubled thoughts, the shadows stretching across his pale muzzle like blue and gray and silver fingers where they spread about the terrain before him. The trees were thin and gangly, skeletal segments within the snow that rose to heights far beyond his head and seemed to fade into the darkness of the night sky, as gray as it was overhead.

Yugi flicked his ears and shook himself out, feeling somehow self-conscious now as he continued. There was something odd in the air now, like a low thrum of energy more than anything else. It was not powerful, though something warned him that it could damn well become much more so should there be reason to. His eyes darted about, darkening as he took in his surroundings with a more cautious feeling in his bones. He was stiff when he began to slow down, ears pricked forward and the fur along his neck slowly starting to rise into the air.

There was a brief noise, like the snow being pushed down upon. He thought of paws pressing into its surface, the crystals crunching away beneath their weight. And then he stiffened as his eyes shot across the shadows again. For the smallest of moments Yugi almost wished that one of the patrols was there in the trees, if only to explain the unease which made itself so abruptly apparent now. He stiffened and shook himself out again. Then he reconsidered and thought to head back for the house. It might be the easiest and simplest solution to the whole problem as it was.

But then he heard another crunching noise. It sounded heavier now, like something had dropped. Yugi's head snapped around. Then he jumped, snarling and snapping his teeth in a state of panic as every fur along his back began to bristle almost fearfully.

The wolf in front of him had enormous jaws, with large cheeks stretched full of prey and cushioned by thick black fur the shade of shiny obsidian. The ears were longer than Yugi's own, sharper at the top, wider at the bases. The tufts of fur surrounding them were slightly stretched, almost as if they had been tugged partially away from its skin in a manner that almost made him think of scar tissue. His fur was longer, glossier, with darker patches that appeared as smooth and gorgeous as velvet much akin a shade similar to Yami's, and the way the canine peered back at him made him think of a shepherd more than a wolf. But then bright golden eyes locked with his and Yugi relaxed again, flustered as he released an immense breath through his nose and stared back at him with his muzzle pointed slightly towards the snow.

 _My gods, you're a fucking asshole_ , Yugi commented wryly, shaking his head. His heart was still racing in his chest as he scowled back at the darker-furred canine. The other werewolf wagged his tail in a lazy fashion, the appendage long and flowing with a kink in the bone which caused the end to turn to the right. The wolfdog did nothing more than open his mouth and lean forward. From his jaws dropped two rather plump red squirrels as the wolfdog shook himself out and looked at him with an expression that was unreadable. Yugi stared down at them, shivering at the sight of their fur slicked down so hideously that their large bodies were shown off in a manner that did not match the time of year nor Yugi's expectations of them. _What…_?

 _I was hungry_ , the other dismissed him, taking a seat and moving the rodents between his paws without much care. He shook his head back and forth for a moment, ears flicking about, and then lowered his mouth to his paws again. He opened his jaws, gnawing on the head of the small prey animal and biting through the skull in a single motion that crushed bone. Yugi nearly flinched at the noise, though part of him was aching with hunger upon hearing it. But the wolfdog paid him no attention, eagerly chewing away at his meal and keeping his head tilted sideways for easier access to his back molars.

Yugi relaxed when he realized that the other hardly seemed to care in the slightest for his presence there. It was comforting, even if the hellhound hardly knew that he had done him such a great favor in ignoring him. He tilted his head. _I thought they would have gone into hibernation by now._

 _They did. But if you know where to find them, they are not hard to dig out._

Yugi shuddered at the thought, something inside of him feeling cold for a moment. _Do you ever just…drag them out as a human and torture them to death_? he asked quietly, wishing immediately that he had not spoken so stupidly and without a filter like that. He nearly huffed, then shook his head slightly at his own words. The sheer stupidity of it was enough to make him feel small. The white wolf flattened his ears against his head, trying to force himself not to think so keenly on this. _I didn't mean to…_

Valon flicked an ear, biting through another part of the squirrel's neck. Its head snapped entirely away and twisted as if it had been broken during a violent death struggle. The wolfdog gnawed away again once more without a second glance, his sharp teeth making quick work of it all. _That is a nice thought in theory, but no, I do not tend to do that very often at all. I tend to like my victims alive and awake before I catch them._ He licked his lips and Yugi shivered as he considered the other canine with widened, curious eyes. _Pinning them to the ground by their intestines using a pencil would not be as much fun if the animal is all but asleep during the time that I do it, Yugi_.

Yugi flicked his ears back and forth a brief second, stomach aching violently now. He truly wished he had never opened his mouth. _That's_ … _incredibly disturbing,_ he said after a long moment, struggling to find any words that he might be able to say. A part of him wanted almost to run while another simply recalled his simplistic claim of being a sociopath. He pricked his ears forward and looked away towards the snow, the trunks of trees that rested a few feet from them. _What's the difference though_? _They're both alive, one of them just isn't awake._

 _What is the fun if they do not fight back immediately_?

Had he been human, Yugi was sure his brows would have risen far beyond his hairline and he would be staring at the wolf in front of him in pure shock, gaping stupidly at him. Now, as a wolf, the most he could was tilt his head and widen his eyes as he drew his lips back into a visible grimace. He was sure there was enough horror in his eyes to make it clear that Valon had managed to make him all but ill. _So that's what makes you so happy to do that then, huh_? he asked quietly, nearly shuddering with open disgust now. _The fact that they squirm and try to fight back_?

Valon wagged his tail lazily in response, tilting his head slowly. _It would be far more boring if it were ever to happen otherwise,_ he drawled, swallowing another large chunk of his squirrel. He licked his jaws, lowering his mouth to the headless stump in between his paws. Yugi could not stop staring at the furry decapitated body, a part of his brain rebelling against the sight, and another part of him wondering if perhaps Valon might leave it there to simply mock him. But then the black wolf tilted his head again to bite into the rest of his meal without moving more than necessary. And Yugi paused as he saw the bright glint of his long claws where the dewclaw sank through the fur and into pale flesh beneath.

 _So…you must be pretty hungry, huh_?

 _I did not want to have to chase a few stray dogs through the city while dodging around people while they're screaming at me to stop and trying to catch me when they see what I am up to,_ Valon stated coldly, dismissively. He licked his lips and flashed his tongue over his nose with a single blink at him. He continued to chomp through bone and lean muscle immediately after, ignoring Yugi's startled expression. His eyes, however, remained locked entirely upon the lycanthrope. _It is burdensome having to outsmart humans that would chase me and then chasing the dog itself and keeping it from getting away from me as well_? _It would be stupid to do such a thing when I have other means of catching prey._

 _I guess that's true,_ Yugi relented with a small shake of his head. His ears flicked about again after a long moment. He drew in a deep breath, struggling not to look away. Had Valon's eyes always seemed so sharp and condescending like that? _And you look pretty happy just eating that right now._

Valon snorted loudly enough that Yugi nearly jumped. _I am hungry enough that I probably look that way,_ he agreed even as he chomped through the central vertebrae of the squirrel's spine. He did not blink, however, and it gave the other wolf the chills to watch him as his intense eyes bore into his. _It does not truly matter, though, does it, Yugi_? _I don't think that I need to remind you of the fact that I am still unable to feel any stretch of emotion beyond anger, yes_?

Yugi would have rolled his eyes if he had been human. But as a wolf he could only snort loudly and tip his head away with a curl of his lip. _How could I possibly forget when you make it so hard to_? he quipped. _And I'm not all that worried all about it, honestly._

 _No_? _Sociopaths do not scare you_?

The wolf tilted his head, considering him in his peripheral for a long series of minutes. Then he finally looked over. _Not the only one that I know,_ he answered before pausing. But the truth of it was that he should have been more fearful of him due to his heritage. He was son of _two deities_. He was a _Harbinger_. He was a creature that could kill him if he were to try, could probably decimate his entire pack if he put his mind to it. And this thought alone was enough to make his stomach curl for a moment as he looked at Valon again. They had grown up together for the most part, always sharing a class a year even if they'd never quite spent time together and Valon was still technically a year above him. _Not to ask a really stupid question or look the part either, but, um...how is it that you can hear me and I can hear you_?

The wolfdog blinked and considered him almost curiously for a moment. _We are wolves, Yugi. Language barriers do not exist between us,_ he stated simply, though Yugi knew this was the mocking answer that he had aroused in saying that he didn't want to ask a stupid question. The white wolf drew his lips back to show off a tooth and tilted his head, unimpressed. Valon wagged his tail again. _It was not a terrible question. It_ is _quite unusual that a hellhound and lycanthrope should be able to converse so easily. Normally it requires us to form a bond in order to allow such a thing._

Yugi flicked an ear. A bond? But he shook away this question, instead looking at Valon more pointedly and pricking his ears forward. Some part of him felt sick as they looked at each other. _Is it because of the fact that you are a Harbinger and I am Atem_?

 _I cannot think of any other reason._

Yugi bristled slightly, shifting his weight and licking at his shoulder uncomfortably. For once he hated the fact that Valon was staring at him like he was, unblinking and with such keen golden eyes. _Do you think that I'd be able to understand other hellhounds then_?

 _Maybe, but I doubt that they would understand you in turn. Or perhaps they would be unable to understand any_ other _lycanthropes you would have with you._ Valon did not elaborate, instead stretching his neck out and snatching at the squirrel in front of him. He pulled it into a similar position, but did not settle to eat it. Instead he sat up a little straighter, pricking and flicking his ears a few times. After a moment he rose to his paws and looked over his shoulder, the squirrel hanging from his jaws by its long, fluffy tail. Yugi could not stop staring at the blank eyes that peered back at him from its small skull. _And I hear some wolves coming my way. So I think it might be best that I go ahead and make a run for it now. I will see you later then, Yugi._

Yugi nodded, though he was incredibly puzzled as he got to his feet. _I wouldn't let them attack you—if that's what you're worried about,_ he commented, hoping to sound reassuring for the moment as he tilted his head. He flattened his ears against his head when Valon turned back to him with something of a mocking expression upon his face. _I mean, you really shouldn't worry about—_

 _You should be far more concerned about what_ I _might do to them,_ the hellhound snorted icily. He shook his dark head and flicked an ear, then turned and trotted past Yugi without a second glance. When the white wolf managed to look over his shoulder again, the black canine had long since disappeared at a full sprint. He was nothing but a track of paw prints in the snow.

Yugi blinked, considering the idea. He knew that Valon by his very nature and existence was incredibly powerful and entirely capable of killing. It was not something that he had ever questioned. But he still wondered. Valon had not shown _him_ even the smallest instance of violence. He had said he drank human or animal blood in order to keep his temper under control at times. But he had not acted out in front of him, nor had he ever turned his teeth on him in any manner but to snap. And so now he wondered at what it was the hellhound might have done to the approaching patrol.

He remembered only for a moment that Yami had mentioned the two subspecies' saliva could cause various infections and painful reactions when exposed to the bloodstream or muscle. He felt sick for a moment as he considered this, the way Yami had so pointedly warned him about such a thing. The reasoning behind it had been far from anything Yugi himself would have ever considered, but the concern had been genuine. Yami had been worried about him exposing himself to that kind of danger.

But he doubted that the saliva was truly what he would have been up against had Valon fought the patrol. He had a feeling that the hellhound was entirely too aware of himself to make a fatal mistake of some kind. And he knew abruptly that, had Valon found himself the center of their scrutiny and come to feel that he was cornered, he would _not_ have simply stopped at nips and easy warning bites. He would have attacked them violently and all but killed had he felt the need.

His leaving now was not just a courtesy. It was a warning.

Because now Yugi realized that had he not greeted Valon in that calm and easy friendly manner that he had, the hellhound could have damn well turned his ferocity on him as well. He could have easily killed him had he felt threatened in any manner at that time. He was not safe from Valon's temper had he have irked him at that moment. It was impossible for him to think otherwise. The threat of it was something that Yugi had never quite considered before. But Valon _was_ dangerous. He _was_ volatile. He may have had control, but it was not always _permanent_. And he was _not_ Yugi's friend.

He was a bystander in the war, a neutral force by all means.

And he might have offered guidance for him at times or even given him help at times. But he was not someone that lay his life down for the sake of ensuring Yugi survived. He was not a lycanthrope that owed him loyalty. Valon's loyalty stretched as far as himself and his sister. And beyond that, he knew, the hellhound would gladly watch the world burn.

It was more than likely that Morrigan had coaxed him to help Yugi to begin with.

He flicked an ear and turned back, searching the trees for a long moment. It took only a heartbeat for the wolves in the patrol to appear within the shadows. From the gray trunks came Mai, Otogi, Eurea, Yuya and Yusei. The five of them came in a single wave of pelts rather than a line formation as they might have had it been a hunt they were engaging in. He realized abruptly that they must have caught Valon's scent and recognized only that he was a hellhound that they might have to fight.

But, as they caught sight of him, each of them paused. And Mai and Otogi began to sniff about the area curiously, noses pointed downward towards the disturbed snow in front of them. Yugi flicked his ear and Yusei looked over at him with a hesitant wag of his tail as he tilted his head slightly. Yugi blinked, looking at him in turn, and wagged his tail as well. He wanted, for a brief second, to ask how the blue-eyed wolf was. But the idea of collectively ignoring the others made him feel sick so he turned to Mai and Otogi first.

He had wished to avoid them to begin with…

And that feeling had not changed—even if he _had_ enjoyed the discussion with Valon.

 _Are you guys a hunting patrol or something_? Yugi asked curiously, considering the she-wolf as she blinked and turned away from him. She shook herself out after a moment, sniffling and pacing forward. She was clearly looking at the tracks that Valon had left, her fur rising into a mild bristle. But Yugi swore there was some glint within her eyes, something that he did not quite know nor recognize and so ignored. He instead glanced at Yusei and then Otogi when she did not respond. _Or are you guys just wandering the territory_?

 _Hunting,_ the dark-furred male provided, his white-tipped ears flicking back and forth for a moment. But his voice was strained with weariness, as if he were too tired to think straight. The other lycanthrope tilted his head and lowered his nose towards the tracks as well. An image had appeared in his head, of a dark black wolf that looked much more like a husky than a wolf, but the eyes were far more wolf-like than any common dog could hope to own. They were a glinting gold that turned red and then slowly to aquamarine. And Yugi was startled by the fact that Otogi had caught even _that_ much about Valon to begin with, the body shape much akin the hellhound's with raw muscle and a glossy black coat and large paws and enlarged cheeks.

But now Yugi noticed that Otogi was staring at him, teal eyes pointedly boring into his.

The white wolf bristled faintly. _I chased him out. Don't worry about it,_ he said awkwardly, flicking an ear. He could not think of a better way to phrase the words, nor could he find a firmer voice to say the words with. He did not want to know what they might try to do should they chase him. And he could not even _imagine_ what it was that Valon might turn around and truly do to them should something happen. So he refused to look over his shoulder and instead turned to Mai. He lowered his head slightly to make her eyes fall on him now instead of the trail and pricked his ears in a slightly aggressive, cautionary manner. _So what were you guys looking to catch today_?

The she-wolf looked up at him with something of a deep-rooted curiosity and perhaps even the faintest hint of desire and bewilderment. But it was gone when she blinked, though now she turned away from him without answering and simply glanced at Otogi as if to share something with him that she did not chance speaking aloud.

Yusei stepped forward hesitantly after a moment.

Yugi turned immediately towards him, startled. Yuya and Eurea both looked at the gray yearling, curious as they considered him. The gray wolf pressed his ears against his head and tipped his muzzle down, peering up at the white wolf with royal blue eyes. Yugi was again reminded of Ra, the way her own eyes always seemed to bore through him like knives and burn him with fire.

But, instantly, a new image began to form in his head, fractured around the edges where the focus seemed to have blurred. A black wolf stood, head lowered and muzzle turned back towards something Yugi could not quite see at the moment. Their lips were drawn back to show deep pink gums, red eyes flashing brightly with aggression. The wolf opened his jaws, then snapped them shut again loudly enough that the collision seemed to make the air quiver like gunshot. The second wolf was a deep gray much like Yusei, but his fur was in a small bristle and his head was lowered slightly towards the snow. It was submissive in nature, he knew, but the canine looked startled as well. And, when the dark wolf would turn away, the gray would sneak forward again. The black wolf snarled and lowered his muzzle to the snow, then snapped at them again.

 _Who are they and why are they harassing my beta_? Yugi demanded sharply, turning to Yusei with his lips peeled back to show his teeth. The gray yearling immediately ducked his head, spine arched slightly, his tail tucked firmly against his underbelly. Yugi blinked, surprised by the submissive gesture. And it took Yugi a moment to realize that he had even raised his tail so high and had begun to bristle so fiercely. He had not even recognized that he had stepped so close that he was looming over the younger male. The reality of it was enough to make his blood run cold for a split second.

Then he shook himself out and forced himself to back up several steps. He turned immediately back to Mai for an explanation, but the she-wolf was still staring at that trail of tracks with a curious expression. He bore his teeth, growling low in his throat, Well?

 _New pack,_ Eurea supplied in a soft tone that surprised him enough to make him turn his head and blink in open bewilderment. He turned back to her with pricked ears after a moment, sure that it would have been Chazz to harass the dark-furred male once more. But it was not even the same pack and that was enough to rattle him as he blinked and stared at her. She peered at him, blinking slowly, and raised her head slightly as she continued. _They have just arrived from the states._

Yugi tilted his head.

 _Another one_? He nearly snarled with dismay at the very thought, bristling faintly. He had not expected any of them to come so quickly. A shiver threatened to wrack his frame after a long moment and he suppressed the urge to simply vomit and lay in the snow with a defeated feeling.

 _When_ had they all begun to come in _waves_ like this?

He could not help but wonder what it was that had possessed them to come all at once like this. It was such a small stretch of time, much unlike the last few times. He shook his head and looked past her towards the direction of the camp. Then he turned back to them with pricked ears, the bristle by far more pronounced than ever.

 _How long have they been there_?

How long they had been harassing Yami was the actual question. And some part of him told him that Yusei understood that, because the gray wolf seemed to cringe for a brief second. Then he flicked his ears and shuffled his weight.

 _Yesterday,_ he supplied after a long moment.

Another image appeared then, of Yami blindsided as the wolf from before came closer to him. The red-eyed male blinked widened eyes, then spun on them, snarling and snapping his jaws. The wolf would then flinch, submitting, and the moment Yami turned away they would come to his side again. There was sniffing as if they were trying to memorize his scent, but their noses were pointed more towards his hips. And Yami would turn on them more violently than before.

And the image simply played in a loop, Yami stalking forward and then pausing when a nose came too close to his fur. He would then turn with those wide, gaping jaws. His teeth would snap shut with thundering force. He would bristle and snarl. And then he would turn away again. The wolf harassing him would flinch from the potential bite, back away, and then hurry forward.

 _They've been there since yesterday,_ he said slowly, nodding. And then the white wolf bristled again and shook himself out. The gray wolf searched his face, muzzle lowered towards the snow and head tilted away to show his neck.

 _Why are they annoying him?_

 _They insist that he must be Atem._ Mai had finally turned to him, her voice distant with distraction. Her ears were pricked forward. Her violet eyes were boring into his. The silver and gold she-wolf peered back at him almost curiously for a moment, but there was also slight amusement and for a split second Yugi wished he could beat it out of her. _They think that he is our alpha._

Yugi blinked. This was the same thing as Chazz insisting that Yugi was _not_ the moment that they'd met. But this pack had come to simply assume that Yami was the alpha regardless of the fact that he had most likely told them more than once otherwise. But had they come to assume him to be Atem because of the fact that he was there where Yugi himself was not?

Or was it _something else_?

 _Well then, I guess I might as well go ahead and see to our new guests for myself, huh?_

Yugi did not give them the chance to respond to his inquiry, taking off without a second glance. In an instant he was moving again, rushing through trees that seemed too tall and shadowed within his periphery. He was almost snarling as his paws moved quickly and efficiently through the snow. When he reached the edge of the cliff which faced the waterfall, he hardly noticed it all. In only a few minutes the white wolf had hurled himself through the water and was crawling out of the thistle patch.

He hurried forward and out into the clearing.

He was bristling again, furious, his tail raised and a snarl crossing upon his face.

The wolves within the camp began to look up in clear alarm. Others sprang to their paws at the sight of the possible threat. Echo, he noticed, bristled and climbed to her feet. Chazz was peeking up from where he was laying down a few feet away. A few of the other younger wolves were sitting up with huge eyes. And each of them had pricked their ears and watched with terrified expressions. There was a small, pale-furred wolf with startling gray eyes which pressed itself lower into the snow.

Yugi noticed all of these things but did not stop in his movements.

Some of the other wolves got up and hurried forward. They were wagging their tails in a predatory manner. Others were pacing away but watching with anxious glances.

Yugi ignored them as he continued forward at a breakneck speed.

The only wolf he paid attention to was staring at him with a startled expression. His ears were pricked. His red eyes were huge. His head was tilted. His nose was wriggling rapidly. He looked incredibly puzzled and more than slightly unnerved. He began bristling when Yugi got closer, backing up several steps and blinking his widened eyes. His head hesitantly lowered and his muzzle was tipped towards the snow. His ears flattened against his skull again. His left leg threatened to buckle beneath his weight as he began to lower himself towards the snow. He wagged his tail slowly after a moment. The hesitant actions were enough to jar Yugi briefly.

Yugi slowed a few inches from him. At first he looked Yami over, peering down at him with a slightly concerned expression. And, as the black wolf tried to lower himself further, his leg threatened to fold. He shivered, the snow having made the limb too stiff to fold. He ducked his head and angled his chin towards him, moving to lick at his jowls submissively. But the white wolf merely sniffed at him, then turned abruptly with flashing teeth.

Yami startled at the sight. It was enough to shake the submissive from him altogether. He straightened abruptly, ears pricking forward. He blinked wide eyes, startled, and tilted his head. Others had come forward, curious and bewildered. Some were delighted by the thought of a fight. Aki was noticeably wagging her tail and trembling, lips peeled back into something of a sneer. Chazz was staring with flattened ears and wide eyes as if he expected them to turn on him at any moment…

Yugi's eyes were wild, dilated and furious. His lips were pulled back so far it wrinkled his eyes. His nose was hideously pulled up. His gums were showing brilliantly. His shoulders were squared. His legs were braced. His tail was held high. His fur had risen in a jagged bristle. His teeth glinted violently.

The other alpha was frozen in place, eyes wide and startled. He was bristling faintly as well, blinking at him in shock. And Yugi merely stared back, trembling finely. His entire body was so stiff that he was shaking with his rage. Yami blinked and looked between them briefly. Then he slowly stepped forward and flattened his ears against his head slowly.

 _Atem_? he said cautiously.

But the name hardly seemed to connect with Yugi. The white wolf did not so much as blink. He did not seem to even recognize that Yami had spoken. The black wolf flicked his ears. He blinked, raising his eyes after a moment longer. Jonouchi and Slifer were closest now, the goddess curious and amused and Jonouchi excited though puzzled. Echo was pacing, bristling faintly. Aki was pawing at the ground, clearly anxious to leap in. Obelisk was seated a few feet back, head tilted and expression unreadable. Ishizu was staring with darkened icy blue eyes, peering at them as if she saw something that Yami himself did not.

 _Atem_.

Yugi did nothing more than glare at the newcomer. The other alpha bristled faintly. Yugi stalked forward a step. Every hair along his spine was raised. Every part of his body was braced for battle. His ears were pricked forward again. His eyes had grown more furious than ever. And, as he stalked a step forward, the other wolf let out a low snarl.

 _Enough_ , Yami tried again, spitting the word. The American wolf ignored him, snarling louder. But his tone was just sharp enough to rattle Yugi. The white wolf's blue-violet eyes flickered slowly to his face. The black wolf hesitated, startled by the troubled expression in his usually clear eyes. Then he stepped forward slowly, eyes cautious. They bore into Yugi's, studying even as his stomach clenched. It was a direct challenge. All it took was for Yugi to lose his temper and things would grow out of proportion… _What is wrong_? _Why are you so upset_?

Yugi quivered almost as if he were too furious to respond. He turned on the other alpha immediately. His eyes glinted viciously. His lips pulled further back. _You have been harassing my beta,_ he snarled. He bit at the air hard enough to make many of their onlookers flinch. _And you do not expect me to be angry_? _Are you truly so incompetent_?

Yami blinked and tilted his head after a long moment. _You are upset with him…over that_? he asked in bewilderment. His eyes stretched wide as he turned to his beta with a confused expression. Then he flicked his ears. Yugi was not listening to him. And the newcomer was too focused on the white wolf to care. He stared at his beta blankly for a long moment. Then he pricked his ears forward and glanced over his shoulder. So many wolves had come to gather about to witness this spat. It was almost disgusting. He turned back to Yugi with a disdainful huff. _Do you truly mean to tell me that you two mean to fight over me_?

Yugi blinked. For a split second his eyes seemed to clear. He seemed puzzled and bewildered. And Yami was abruptly aware of how badly he had phrased his inquiry. Yugi tilted his head at him, then flicked an ear. After another heartbeat he slowly turned his head towards him. His head tilted, a shocked expression crossing his features. He looked as if he could not believe that Yami had said that.

Yami felt abruptly sheepish and foolish in front of him. He had just implied that they were fighting over him. He had just implied that they were coming to blows over _him_ of all things. It was something that two squabbling wolves might do should they be attracted to the same mate. It was far from what was happening now, however. Yugi had come there to end the harassment, he knew. But he had not come to blows with the wolf for the moment. And it was no more or less a spat with this as the regards. The thought was enough to make him lower his eyes.

And he instantly regretted it.

The loss of eye contact seemed to infuriate Yugi further.

For the canine spun on the new alpha with a snarl. _You do not harass my beta like this,_ he snarled. His ears were pricked forward. His shoulders were squared. His lips were pulled back. He was bristling. His tail was raised. His eyes were fiery. He glared at the other male with hatred in his stance. His teeth were bared, enamel bright white and his gums incredibly pink. His blue-violet gaze was darker than ever.

Yami blinked and flicked an ear as he looked up again. _This is not necessary,_ he mumbled, but his voice was too small and tired. And he knew instinctively that it had not reached Yugi to begin with. He felt too small at the moment to try again, however. But he regretted more than ever that he had thought to look away from his beta. Had he not, Yugi might have been too stunned to turn back to this…

 _Harassing Atem_? the alpha snorted scornfully. His voice was a sneer, his head raised and ears pricked forward. He pulled his lips back in response. The initial shock had clearly worn away. And he looked vicious, hateful even, as he stepped forward. _You think_ that _is what I was doing_?

 _I don't have to think it,_ Yugi replied in a snarl. _I know damn well that you were. I watched you do so just moments before._

 _How I choose to approach Atem is none of your concern,_ pup. The scornful remark was enough to jar Yami slightly. He bristled, lips peeling back in surprise. But the alpha was paying him no mind. Instead he'd raised his tail, wagging it, and many of his pack had risen to their paws as if to fight alongside him. Their eyes were sharpened, darker than ever, and they seemed excited and angry as well. _You are_ not _of a higher status than me nor in the same rank as I. And I should teach you your place for interfering in the politics of an alpha._

 _And just who is it that you think you're talking to right now_? Yugi spat, stalking forward a step. Aki was snarling nearby, eyes dancing with delight. Jonouchi was quivering but had taken a similar stance as many of the other pack. Echo was bristling and had taken to Aki's side. Slifer and Obelisk were both studying with darkened eyes. Ishizu had moved away. Chazz was stumbling for his feet. Another wolf was pressing him down again. And yet another, darker gray with a black streak of fur along his forehead, had trotted forward with dark eyes. _Do you have any idea who I actually_ am?

 _Atem_ , Yami tried again, more urgently now. Something feverish had awoken in him, but his blood felt icy in his veins. He shivered when the wind seemed to cut through him and he stepped forward once. He steeled himself for the teeth he was sure would strike at him. But the newcomer made no movement but to stare. And Yugi was still focused entirely on the other wolf. Yami felt sick, a sense of discontent crossing through him as his senses seemed to heighten and Yugi's heartbeat became a hideous roar in his ears. _Atem, enough. It is not a big deal._

 _"Not a big deal"_? Now Yugi spun on him, the words slow as they dragged themselves from his lungs. His eyes were not wild any longer. But he looked dissatisfied and slightly concerned as well. Had he sensed weakness in him? Yami could not imagine it was hard to. He felt dizzy and small and much like a pup rather than the beta of such an immense pack. He wondered if it was the many eyes on him. Or if something in him was simply snapping… _You don't think that it's a "big deal", Yami_? _You don't think that his constant pressuring you means something_? _You don't think that I should punish him for pestering my beta_?

 _I think that it would be foolhardy,_ Yami stated in a dying voice. He hated himself for it more than ever, but his lungs were tighter than he'd experienced in his life. Something inside of him seemed to be seething. He struggled to push it away, his senses focused on that one solid noise in his ears. Yugi's heart was so loud, so thunderous, that it made him nearly tremble in time with its beats.

He flattened his ears against his skull and wrinkled his lips back to show his teeth. He imagined his gums were white. They had to be. They must have been bleached the color by now. He wondered if there _was_ a way to divert attention from this growing fight. He wondered if there was some way to calm himself. But mostly he wondered when the bloodshed would start. The thought was more prominent than he cared to admit in the slightest.

 _I do not believe that you should feel so inclined to fight another alpha like this._

 _And why not exactly_? _He seems to want to fight._

 _But what purpose is there to this_? Yami argued in a quieter tone. He flicked his ears and flattened them against his head again immediately. If he kept them folded, the noise was duller than before. He growled softly, hoping to drown it away entirely. But he could tell that the noise had rattled his beta, for Yugi blinked and turned to him with something horrified in his eyes. _You do not need to fight him like this. He's clearly not as strong as you and you could easily put him in the ground if you so tried—_

The alpha in question had begun to bristle now. Yami noticed this in the corner of his eye. And he turned his head slightly with a snarl, bracing himself. The wolf was furious, eyes darkened with resentment. He turned on Yami with a sneer on his face. But their eyes locked. And Yami squared his shoulders, stiffening in place. Then he narrowed his gaze, opening his jaws wide in threat.

But it was neither himself nor the alpha to move.

Yugi sprang.

The white wolf slammed into the alpha. The alpha spun and snarled. Their jaws were wide open. Their teeth glinted white. Yugi backed up a step and lowered his muzzle, snarling fiercely. It was defensive stance more than anything. But it was one that gave him more room to allow him to maneuver should he lunge at Yami instead. Yami recognized this stance. He had witnessed his cage mate use it. He had seen him do it when he had saved him from—

He forced the thought away. Now was not the time to think about it.

Yugi opened his jaws wider. The other alpha slammed into his side. But he was too stiff-bodied to be forced down. He could not budge him in the slightest. The alpha went for his throat. Yugi had begun to drool now. His anger was so concentrated, he was shaking faintly. He was staring, his eyes glazed with hatred.

The wolf lunged forward.

And collided with another wolf entirely.

Yugi startled, head snapping up.

The gray wolf was screaming. He had been knocked onto his back. He had his jaws wide open. His eyes were horrified. His mouth snapped shut and then opened again. His ears flattened against his head. His paws were braced against black fur. And they seemed almost to disappear into the lackluster fibers there. They were glaring in each other furiously. A small whimper escaped the gray canine.

And Yugi found himself too shocked to move.

Yami lowered and snapped his jaws shut. Blood sprayed the snow. The black wolf drew his lips back further. The white teeth were slicked a red similar to his eyes. His ears were pricked forward. His body was quivering with his deep snarl. His teeth glittered as the blood began to drip downward. They stared at one another for a long moment. And then he stepped back again.

There was something displaced and wild in his eyes. But there was also tempered rage and a strange calmness as well. Yugi could not tell if the other alpha or anyone else saw it. He wondered if it was perhaps something that only he noticed.

But the thought passed immediately again.

 _Do not touch him,_ Yami snarled, looming over the wolf. His eyes were wild again, that calmness lost. _You do not touch him or I will kill each and every one of you._

Yugi blinked, stunned by the very idea. His head snapped up, eyes wide and horrified. His mouth opened and closed once. Then he flattened his ears against his head. The alpha beneath Yami was clearly stunned and horrified as well. He was staring up at Yami as if he could not comprehend the words that had left him. But Yami was glaring down at him, hateful as his fur rose higher. The white wolf tilted his head, still shaken by the abrupt change of demeanor, and looked at his beta for a long moment.

 _You would harm your followers, Atem_?

He sounded breathless. Yami hated that quality in his voice. He hated it more than he could ever put into words. It made him snarl low in his throat. The blood on his tongue was hot and harsh, saltier than he cared for. But it was enough to make some of the ache in his head stop. He shivered and moved to back up again, though not enough to allow him to get to his paws.

And then Yugi blinked and looked down at the alpha, peeling his lips back to show each tooth. _I have no qualms with doing so,_ he said slowly. Yami glanced at him in his peripheral. The white wolf looked angry beyond anything he had ever witnessed from him before. His blue-violet eyes were dark, vicious and shadowed, and Yami thought they looked as if they were engulfed with flames and smoke. _I have absolutely no qualms harming anyone and everyone to interfere with me or my beta in any manner._

Yami blinked slowly, trying to draw his senses back to a manageable level. But his ears were throbbing with multiple heartbeats now. And his mouth tasted only blood and his tongue was pressed hard against the back of his teeth so that they felt like immense pillars against its surface. His sight was caught on every little hair on Yugi's face. And he could smell the cold drench of anxiety that much of the pack felt at the moment. All of them were worried about numbers. All of them were concerned about the possible bloodshed that could potentially worsen at any moment.

But he could not find it within himself to move. Yugi's body heat was pleasant against his skin, pulsating on his right side. It was almost comforting. But it was also jarring. Yami hated it. He loved it. When his eyes flickered up, much of the wolves behind their alpha were frozen. All but one had taken to staring with horrified and shocked expressions. The one that had not was simply staring at him curiously. Yami turned his head, opening his jaws wide and then chomping them shut. The pack flinched collectively.

As long as the threat was received, he supposed it did not matter he spoke again. He finally turned away once more, cold with tension. He felt as if the ice had claimed his blood and bones now. Should they try to get to Yugi, he'd kill the next to oppose him. He did not care. He would rip their head from their body should he have to…

 _You_? the alpha beneath him asked in shock. He was startled. But he also appeared livid. Yami did not look at him again. He could feel a fresh rush of heat from the body. He knew it was his growing anger. It did not take him much more to know that he might have to beat him into submission. The thought of bloodshed was exhilarating and loathsome as well. He abhorred it, but part of him rejoiced in it.

Yami could see the wolf look between himself and Yugi. His eyes were huge but his muzzle wrinkled with aggression. He moved to wriggle away from Yami entirely. And his right limb almost touched Yugi's chest. The white wolf snarled and snapped at it, but missed. He could not tell if he had planned to miss or if he simply had bad coordination in this state of mind. Yami backed up again and Yugi immediately looked at him. Their eyes locked for only a moment before Yami turned to the snow. His ears flicked about, his body stiff and cold again.

You _are pretending to be Atem_?

 _Pretending_? Yugi scoffed, turning on him with pricked ears. _I do not pretend to be Atem. I_ am _Atem_.

Yami flicked an ear. Some part of him wondered at this statement. Did this alpha really think that Yugi was attempting to pull the wool over the others' eyes? Did he honestly believe that _he_ was Atem instead? Yami refused to raise his eyes, pricking his ears forward as if to dispel the thought. But they continued, something that made him want to tremble. Marik had been the only one to believe that before.

And Marik had been dealt with.

He had been killed, was probably frozen where he had been buried in the earth.

Yugi had killed him when he had attempted to murder him.

He had been the only one stupid enough to assume him to be a fake and he had paid for it…

But Marik had been mad as well. Any wolf with common sense would have been able to tell this. They would have known and understood it all. They would have known that it was madness which made him say such a thing. This wolf was lucid, however. There was not a trace of anything within his eyes that was not natural. And so Yami found it almost impossible to believe that he might say such a thing so easily.

How did he not flinch or feel guilty?

How could he honestly believe such a thing to begin with?

Yami slowly turned his head and lowered his gaze towards this other wolf for a moment. Then he turned away again. The pack beyond him was pacing about with eyes locked on his face. Some of them seemed to be studying him, searching for a weakness within his broad shoulders and bright teeth. They watched with glowing eyes and ears flattened against their heads. They wove about like shadows, nervous but protective as well. They were readying themselves to come forward should it escalate further.

Yugi and the alpha were staring at each other, however. Their glares were hideous, furious.

You _believe yourself to be Atem_?

 _I do not_ believe _anything. I_ know _that I am Atem. I am Code Name Atem, the Pure-Blood meant to win this war. And I will kill anyone who might think otherwise._ Yami blinked and looked at him now. The statement was said so harshly that Yami almost flinched. The white wolf did not respond to him for a long moment, however. And then his eyes flickered to his as well.

Immediately Yami looked away again.

 _You would kill your followers_?

 _As easily as I would an enemy._

But the words sounded flat to Yami's ears. He could sense the dismissal now in this statement. But he also understood that he knew these things _only_ because he knew the wolf in question. To someone else the wolf might have sounded furious instead. But he knew Yugi as well as he might have his own self had he ever been so comfortable to try to befriend the stranger he often found in his reflection.

He shrugged this thought away and narrowed his eyes, flicking his tongue over his nose. The salty taste of sweat was enough to calm him down. Yugi was tired and stressed. But Yami did not think for even a moment that the other wolves recognized this.

 _But the black-furred one—_

 _His name is_ Yami. _And if you think for even a moment that you will harass him a second longer—_

 _You do not need to fight them like this, Atem,_ Yami said quietly, voice calm and pleading. He was desperate for the tension to stop. He was becoming tired now. And there was a dull ache beginning in his right forelimb. _There is no reason to be so angry with them. He is young and foolish. I doubt he means any harm—_

 _He might not mean any at the moment, but he is dancing on my_ last nerve _and I am tired of it all. I will kill him should he say anything further. His stupidity could be his undoing at this moment._ Yugi pricked his ears forward. His lips were drawn back again. He narrowed his eyes, tilted his head a degree, and finally looked over again. Yami stared at him blankly, frustrated but unable to speak for a moment. _I don't want to have to hear about him harassing you again or deal with anything to do with it._

Yami flicked an ear and stared at him with a tilted head. He was bewildered by the protective stance Yugi had acquired now. When had he become so terribly aggressive towards any other wolf that might have turned their sights on him? It was not a problem that the wolf had assumed him to be Atem but for the way the rest of the pack had remained quiet. Had they suspected the same? Or had they simply not cared to correct them out of anger towards Yugi?

He forced the thought away. _You do not need to make such threats, Yugi,_ he finally commented quietly. He tried his hardest not to make full eye contact with him now. There was too much anger in his own veins to risk such a thing happening for him. But there was a part of him, which argued with his instincts, that he should look him in the eye. He did not know if it was meant to reassure Yugi to the fact that he truly _was_ unscathed and would remain so for the moment or if a part of him was truly so riled up that the potential fight might be worth it. _It is okay. I am fine. You don't need to threaten them like this._

The white wolf trembled harshly. The movement made Yami blink and look up. And, abruptly, Yugi turned back to him. Their eyes locked immediately. The white wolf stiffened visibly. They stared at one another for a moment. Then Yami blinked, uncertain of himself. Should he lower his eyes or try for a more active role of submission? Should he lick at his chin? Should he whine and wag his tail? Should he perhaps lie down? He hardly wanted to fight Yugi.

The very idea made his stomach curl now.

And the other wolf stared at him with eyes that had quickly begun to soften. Yami searched his face, studying his warming gaze. Then he turned away as he backed up a few paces. The alpha beneath him immediately got to his feet. He shook himself out and glanced between Yugi and Yami. The black wolf blinked, turning back to Yugi again with brightened eyes. He hoped the relief showed in his gaze, but he doubted it as well. They considered each other. Then Yugi flicked his ears away. And finally he turned his attention back to the other alpha.

 _Right,_ the white wolf finally commented. His eyes had flickered away again. His ears were pointed towards many of the others gathered about them. Yami forced the tension away from his limbs and looked about them as well. Obelisk and Slifer were still nearby. Yusei and Mai had forced their ways closer. Chazz was at the yearling's side, eyes wide with surprise. Yami shrugged it away and looked towards Yugi briefly. The white wolf turned back to him after a moment.

There was a flicker of surprise and then calm which graced his senses. Yami could almost see the thoughts coming through his mind now. He could see the reality of it crossing his mind now. He was searching Yami's face, studying everything about him. And he understood now. Yugi was trying to reassure himself that he truly _was_ okay.

 _You're all right._

 _I am,_ Yami reassured him, though part of him wondered at this. _I'm perfectly fine._

No, it was not perfectly fine that he should have described himself as. He was still far too skinny and the stress of changing again would likely all but ruin what little muscle and fat he had managed to regain in that small timeframe. He would need to try to find a deer or something more within that nature of species. He would need something with lean meat that he could metabolize as quickly as possible.

If he could do that, it would do him well to gorge as much as he possibly could. Doing so would help him be capable of filling himself out, if only slightly, before the next time he changed.

It would be easy enough to do this if he had the proper planning. If he remained consistent with it, his needs would be met if only for a portion of the weight gain, some muscle growth and rebuilding of his wounded and rotting organs. His body heat would spike and his temperature would be unnatural. And he would feel sick for what would be anywhere from hours to days.

The heat would likely cause any sense of pain to flare up within him tenfold. It would cause more damage in his organs where they were already wounded. But it would also allow his blood to circulate faster than ever. It would allow it to cleanse itself. It would let his organs regenerate what they could due to the new oxygen levels in his cells.

The black wolf nearly shuddered at the very thought. It was something that was distressful to consider for more than a handful of seconds. Once he started, if he were to slip up in his routine, it could become catastrophic. But it would be even more of a battle when it came to Yugi. He knew that the small teen would become horrified if he should come to realize how strenuous a task it would be in order to regain his health in even the slightest.

He could simply imagine the various ways that Yugi might respond. He would find it horrifying and frustrating. He knew Yugi would. His beta would not find it easy or comforting, though he would try everything in his power to help him. But Yami did not want him to know or suffer through this with him.

It would be all too devastating to the smaller teen to realize that there was truly nothing he could do to help him.

It was not as if Yugi surplus killing the deer would do him any good.

Yami could only eat as much as his gut could hold. It would need to digest before he could even consider the idea of eating more than that one initial time. It would cause more pain than anything else. It made him want to feel sick to even consider the height of this realization.

Yugi would surely struggle with this idea the entire time that Yami might suffer and muddle through this. It was exhausting to even consider such a possibility. He did not want to hurt his beta in that manner as well.

 _Perfectly fine,_ Yugi repeated as if he were in a daze. The words made Yami startle out of his thoughts, blinking at him curiously. There was something weary and sad within his eyes which made Yami wonder if he had perhaps projected the thought. He did not truly consider this for more than a second, however, as he realized abruptly that the small teen would not have been so calm now had he heard him.

Yugi would have reacted badly, without a thought, as he knew he was prone to. It was almost bewildering how quickly the other wolf might respond to him in that manner. But now Yugi simply blinked at him, clearly too tired to care for more than the task of watching him for that moment. Yami tilted his head, curious at the sight.

 _Right…_

Yami would have responded, had it not been for the alpha speaking before him. He pricked his ears, startled by the new voice as it muttered, _Are you really Atem_?

Yugi blinked and slowly turned his head, his expression still muddled. Yami looked at him and back a couple of times, ears pricked forward with his own bewilderment. Yugi had been so angry as to charge the alpha when he had seen him so close to him. And then he had been ready to launch himself at any other wolf close to the black canine.

He had been ready.

He'd been prepared for it.

But now he was standing beside Yami. And his expression was still confused and bewildered. And he seemed unsure of himself as he stared at the other alpha. And the wolf that stood those few feet in front of him was studying him with a somewhat bewildered, unsure expression on his face in turn.

 _Do I look as if I am not_?

Yami blinked at the words as the white wolf snapped the words. Yugi did not so much as blink as they looked at one another. The two alphas stared blankly, as if they were simply considering things rather than recovering from what had potentially been a fight moments before.

 _But the other one_ —Yami blinked in surprise when the gray wolf glanced at him curiously and pricked his ears but Yugi looked annoyed, almost as if he were offended that the other did not remember Yami's name— _seemed to know so much and he is clearly still very strong regardless of his weak frame._

Yami flicked his ears unhappily. But Yugi looked as if he might lunge at the other alpha for saying such a thing. The black wolf looked away from him, unnerved. The white wolf seemed to be focused on him, however. He could see the way his exhales were timed perfectly with his own heartbeat. He felt so sick that he could feel his heartbeat so powerfully that it was almost enough to make him tremble. And, in the corner of his eye, each time it pumped, Yugi exhaled.

 _He's a lot stronger than most give him credit for,_ Yugi acknowledged finally. He exhaled loudly. Yami flicked an ear again, uncomfortable. He did not want Yugi to look over at him. And he thanked the gods each time the white wolf failed to. But it was for the wrong reason that Yugi did not look at him. The white wolf was staring at the other alpha. He did not look as if he might lunge or anything. But he was still somewhat stiff. _Yami tends to surprise you when you underestimate him. It's one of the biggest mistakes you can make about him._

The black wolf stiffened. He stared at the snow more pointedly. Yugi blinked but did not look as if he might turn to stare at Yami in turn. The alpha opposing Yugi glanced at Yami curiously. But then he turned back to Yugi almost immediately.

 _But he is not Atem,_ Yugi continued after a moment. He drew in a deeper breath, the icy air cutting through his mouth like a set of razor blades. He pricked his ears forward, then flattened them against his skull a moment later. The white wolf hesitated for a long handful of seconds. I _am and always_ have _been Code Name Atem. Yami has nothing to do with it._

 _Then why is he so powerful_? His eyes were locked on Yami now. Yugi bristled, nearly snarling furiously. He pressed a step forward to get his attention and the alpha blinked as he turned back. The white wolf resisted the urge to snarl and pull his lips back entirely. He wanted nothing more than to raise his tail and step between them. Yami was clearly unhappy, noticeably frustrated. _He is very strong and it is not normal._

 _I bit him._ The statement made many of the wolves within this foreign pack turn to him with shocked, almost horrified expressions. Some of them stared at Yugi with eyes so wide they might fall from their sockets. Others stared at Yami as if he might be an entirely new species of some kind. Yami blinked at them, surprised, and Yugi cast an uneasy glance at his alpha. A small part of him was nervous enough that it made him bristle. They were all staring at Yami as if he were something they couldn't understand… _I bit him. And now he is the most powerful Full-Blood wolf I know of. You would almost think he's a Pure-Blood with how strong he is._

Yami blinked and looked at him sideways. His eyes were curious, darkened with the emotion, but he turned away again almost immediately. The white wolf refused to look at him now, turning instead to Slifer and Obelisk behind him. Both deities stood only a few feet back, eyes on him and Yami. And Yugi was abruptly reminded of the slim odds of survival. He did not think for a moment they would live after the war ended. He could not find it within himself to believe that they would allow him to live. He could not find it within himself to fall for such a facade as life _after_.

 _But that's why._ Yugi fell silent as he turned back. The other wolves behind their alpha were now looking at him again. He bristled with unease, then shook it off forcefully and looked at Yami from the corner of his eye. _And_? _Do you have anymore questions about him_? _I'm sure Yami would be fine to answer you if he felt like it. Otherwise I'm sure he'll ignore you while you babble to him._

Yami glanced at him again. His expression was somewhere between surprised and flustered. But then he shook himself out as if there were newly fallen snow upon his coat. After a moment or two he turned away again. His nose was lowered to the snow and his eyes glued to Yugi. The white wolf thought immediately of the fact that he had taken a similar stance in order to gain Yami's attention while in Paradise. He thought of how much attention Yami had been paying him that night within that dream. Yami had seemed so at ease with himself at that moment. He looked so eerily calm, never as though he might lunge forward and snap his teeth through his skin. He had seemed more observant than angry or vicious.

And the smaller wolf had the feeling Yami did this on purpose. He felt that Yami had taken this stance in order to allow the wolves to lower their guards. Should something happen when they assumed he was no longer paying attention, Yami would have the upper hand. It was not hard for him to imagine that the black wolf might kill should something happen. Should any of them step out of line he was sure that Yami would get in the middle. He would not even be surprised in the slightest should Yami bare his teeth at him at some point as well.

But Yugi was also aware that Yami was more likely to wander off as well. If a skirmish did not break out, odds were he would look over and find the snow instead of his alpha. Yami was not one to flee a fight, however. He knew that. But he also was not a fool and Yugi was sure that the black wolf knew what battles were worth fighting and which were not. He had been surprised when Yami had stepped in when the alpha had tried to attack him as it was. It had truthfully had little to nothing to do with him in the slightest as it was.

But now he had the feeling that the darker-furred canine would not so much as blink should the conversation escalate into an argument. He would likely sniff at the ground disdainfully, cast a glance towards Yugi that said he was not surprised, and then wander off on his own.

 _It would change nothing to know more about him,_ the other alpha said slowly. His eyes were locked on Yami. The darker wolf did not seem to notice nor care for his attention in the slightest. The canine flicked his ears and tilted his head. Then he sniffed loudly, turning away. _He is not Atem, so he does not matter as much as you._

Yugi bristled furiously at the comment, hatred coursing through him. His head snapped around, a glare forming on his face. He wrinkled his lips back to show his teeth but did not open nor snap them at him. He tilted his head, eyes sharp and cold. And he did nothing more than stare at the gray canine. Then his head turned back towards Yami and the wolf blinked at him curiously. They considered each other for a long moment before Yami looked at the snow again. Yugi reluctantly forced himself to face the other male in front of them.

 _That's utterly disgusting,_ the smaller wolf stated disdainfully. He almost raised his tail but instead curled his lip again. _Every wolf matters. I do not care who says otherwise._

Yami blinked at him, then turned away again almost dismissively. _It is not a big deal, Yugi,_ he assured him quietly. The black wolf flicked his ears. _I am not offended._

 _But_ I _am._ Yugi glanced at him sideways. He hated the dismissive stance that the other wore like this. It was infuriating. He wanted nothing more than to nip him for his disregard. How could he not care? _And I am not having someone underestimate your value like that. And not only that, but the other wolves are treated as mere pawns as well. And I do not believe in any of it for even a second._

The black wolf flicked his ear and stared at him for a long moment. Their eyes were locked, his red gaze curious. _You are taking it far too offensively. It is hardly worth such a thing, Yugi. You should relax and allow them to say as they wish. It harms nothing. None of these wolves have ever shown much care towards anything said regarding them formerly. And I do not believe that they will ever care later either._

 _It's not_ right!

 _Perhaps not, but it is as it is meant to be._ Yami turned away now. He sniffed at the snow again, finally moving as if he might remove himself from those few inches between them. Yugi almost panicked at the thought. Had he scared him? Had he possibly _triggered_ something? Was Yami having trouble standing there with him? Was he hurt? Had he missed it when he'd _gotten_ hurt? Yugi would kill the alpha if he'd so much as _nicked_ his skin. Yami was staring at him silently for a moment before shaking himself out. _You forget yourself as you are not a god meant to change things in their minds. You are meant to change the course of the war and help the lycanthropes to survive._

 _Is that what_ you _believe_? _That I'm only supposed to win this war_? Yugi asked, a sliver of hurt creeping into his voice. Yami blinked, startled, and stared at him in surprise. Yugi fought away a bristle at the expression. Had he expected him _not_ to be hurt by that comment? _Do you really think that's all I'm good for_?

Yami tilted his head. _Why would you ever ask me such a thing_? he spat, curling his lips back to show off bright white teeth. He stared at him with furious red eyes. His ears pricked forward. The fur along his dorsal cape began to rise into a bristle. _You do not truly believe that is what I think of you. Surely you are not so foolish as to think that, Motou Yugi._

Yugi bristled upon hearing the entirety of his name. It was almost offensive to hear it, especially with the tone which Yami spoke it. He had never heard him use his full name in this manner. He curled his lips back in a state of frustration, licking at his jowls in an effort to lose the anger in his frame. The action was enough to loose the tension in his frame. In an instant his fur fell flat once more and he allowed his lips to cover his teeth again. He drew a deep breath into tightened lungs. _I would like to think otherwise,_ he stated after a long moment, feeling cold at the way his own voice seemed to have grown exhausted beyond his frustration. _But I have to wonder sometimes, Yami._

 _You have to wonder sometimes_? Yami narrowed his eyes faintly, much alike he would have had he been human. He would have most likely snarled low in his throat and glared at him furiously. Now he was only able to look at him with sharpened eyes and his ears pricked forward. His fur rose along his shoulders and his throat was twice its size in the reflection he saw within Yugi's eyes. But to snarl and lash out as he desired at the moment would have been a deadly decision. He was before two packs and the action was punishable with death should he have done so. He did not care to tempt such fate in the slightest. Yami shook his head, locking eyes with Yugi pointedly, and growled, _So is it my loyalty that you are questioning right now_?

 _No, just more your faith in me,_ Yugi said quietly, but now he lowered his eyes as he turned away to face the alpha. The gray wolf was looking between them with increasing interest, clearly sensing the anger rising in Yami himself. But Yugi was staring blankly at Yami from the corner of his gaze now. And both of them could see that the gray wolf had no idea what it was he should say or do at the moment. Yami refused to lessen his stare, bristling somewhat further, but Yugi matched this by turning his attention fully to the new alpha in their camp. _Well, I suppose introductions are in order, yes_?

Yami glanced up at the sky as well when the white wolf finally moved to do the same. For a moment he expected that Yugi might begin talking to him again. But the seconds passed and Yami found himself staring at a grayish-black sky laden with heavy clouds and shadows that looked like oil. He did not wait to hear the introductions, instead frustrated enough to move along without a second look. In an instant Yami turned away entirely and began to trot towards the back of the camp.

He did not think that Yugi noticed his departure in any manner. And so he slipped away from without a second look. But he noticed, in surprise, that Obelisk and Slifer had turned their heads to watch him with dark ethereal eyes. Even Yusei had turned his head, following his departure with curious dark blue eyes and a tilted head. But it was Ishizu who truly stared at him, her ice blue eyes burning into his face and then his gaze seconds later as he turned to her. They considered each other for only a moment before he turned away again to trot faster.

He did not think for even a moment to pause again. The very idea was something that only managed to irritate him further. His red eyes flickered about in the dark. And the shadows were long and dark and gray rather than silver or gold anywhere as they had formerly. They looked like darkened craters and fractures about the snow rather than the light bruises that he had known them to be before. And the limbs looked incredibly, bewildering fragile, almost like his own ribcage in its overdone formation.

He thought of a mouse, if only for a brief moment, as he looked upon the very tips of each branch. The twigs were barely the length of a rat's claw, he felt. It was something that made his stomach growl to consider. He lowered his head towards the snow again, impulsive in his need to sate his growing hunger. It took him only a few minutes to catch a true prey scent, but the idea of boar made his belly ache with a more manageable desire.

But Yami was not foolhardy, nor was he so young that he overlooked his inabilities now. To do such a thing at the moment was something that could damn well get him killed. He stared down at the tracks in the snow, picking his way slowly, but did not for even a second move further than a yard. Then he pricked his ears forward, tilted his head, and lowered his eyes to the ground once more. He considered the prints beside his own tracks, something he had not paid attention to much before then.

They were all incredibly clear and sharp, contrasted brilliantly against the snow before him.

A second passed and Yami yawned, the exhale coming in a large gusting white cloud before his face. He felt as if his tongue were frozen as he looked about himself for a few moments longer. His ears flicked back and forth and he lowered his nose to the snow once more. It was exhausting to consider for even a second that he might pursue his prey for longer than a few seconds at the most.

It was overwhelming to even consider in the slightest.

But then Yami found his ears flicking back and forth again. He angled them downwards, the sound catching his attention more pointedly now. It was something he could not stop himself from considering. And it was strange and bewildering to him to notice for more than a second. It was a soft crunching, shifting noise that made him wonder if the ice were shifting beneath the surface. The black wolf tilted his head, angling his head towards the source of the sound. His ears pricked forward further. His eyes fell on the snow pointedly. A small bristle came over him. Then he leaned forward and tipped his nose downward. His exhale was soft and warm, gusting.

Yami pounced when he pinpointed the noise. His paws were tucked against his chest for a moment, his body tipped forward. He landed heavily on his front limbs, buried partially within the snow from the force of it. And his jaws crunched heavily on the animal he found beneath his nose. He raised his head and shook himself out, the mouse in his jaws. He tossed it up into the air by the tail, opening his jaws wide.

In an instant he caught it on his tongue. The small paws scrabbled for purchase. He could taste ice and body heat. And then he could _feel its heartbeat_ against the pink muscle. It lasted only a second, however, tilting his head to the side and snapping his jaws shut again. The action caused the bones to pop and the animal stilled from where it had momentarily attempted to flee.

Yami tilted his head and licked his lips as he swallowed the rodent. There was the faintest smudge on blood on his lips but nothing more. The disappearance of this taste was upsetting to him. His belly ached more fiercely, stirring with hunger. It made him shiver for a brief moment, considering what little weight the animal had. Then he shook himself out again and took a few small steps forward.

It was exhausting when he began to pick his way through the snow again. The gurgling within his belly grew louder, far more insistent. He wondered what happened when a werewolf was truly on its last legs. If it starved to the point of being unable to recover, did one waste away like a normal animal might? Or did the lycanthropy take on a disease more similar to that of its closest cousin, rabies?

Would it make them deteriorate more pointedly?

Did it make them drop dead and waste away in that kind of manner?

He wondered if they had ever done this experiment within the labs.

He almost wished he knew.

Yami shrugged the thought away. Disgust crossed through him for a heartbeat, and he despised himself for that single moment it took for this idea to be shed. The snow crunched softly beneath his weight and he felt sick for a long handful of minutes, tilting his head and looking them over. The dark wolf did not pause as he breached a new small clearing. The trees were much thinner here, scraggly instead of thick and heavy in formation. He looked up at the broken branches overhead where the winds had snapped them from their bases much like twigs. His stomach knotted at the thought, of how skeletal they truly appeared, and thought briefly of his own bones once more.

His ribs were no thicker than them, he was sure. They had to be as thin as his fingers, curved much like his long claws were.

He flicked an ear and shivered. Did he hear the sound behind him or was it nearer to his shoulder? Yami did not want to consider this longer than necessary, however. And he doubted that any wolf that might have followed him would have been foolish enough to let him catch them trailing him. He pricked his ears forward, eyes sharp and darkened drastically.

Where would be the best place to find deer?

The herd would have scattered long ago, would it not?

They would have to be closer to the reserve, he knew. The marshlands were frozen but they would also have some kind of plant life that survived year round. Not only that, but the closer to the center of the park, the more likely they were to find plants that were unmarred by human touch and could easily be picked apart. They would have to be much closer there. The vegetation would be more abundant there…

He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. But there would also likely have moved somewhere nearer to the old vegetable farms, right? There were some farms scattered about and there were those stupid quail farmers as well. The deer were not so incredibly displaced that they would not notice, right? He shook his head.

It was a possibility, wasn't it?

Yami wondered at this. If they were closer to the humans, it was a threat that he did not think he could come up against at the moment. If they were smart, they would be watching for the boars as well. If that were the case, there was no doubt that he would be facing a human with a gun at some point. There was no way that they would have allowed the boars to trample their vegetation and run about as they did in Honshu when they had such terrible and violent temperaments.

He pricked his ears forward, then flicked them about. And finally he tilted his head slightly to the side again. He slowed his steps, then moved forward uncertainly. His belly twisted and writhed, churning so heavily that it seemed that it would burn and cut through him entirely. He felt as if he were made entirely of stone. His stomach sloshed again. His legs seemed to tremble beneath his weight. He sighed softly. Then he lowered his head once more. He shook himself out again, unconcerned.

He was alone, he realized.

And it made him nervous to consider this. If he was truly so alone at the moment, then who was to say that he was safe to begin with? It was dangerous to be about like this on his own. It was awkward and disturbing. And it was enough to frustrate him. Without some of the other wolves about to help, _should_ he somehow come to cross paths with boars…

He shrugged it off.

No.

Most likely he was alone entirely.

Other predators would have gone into hiding upon sensing him.

Prey would have fled the moment they came to realize he was in the area.

But he could sense the boars, truthfully. And it made his fur rise into a furious, cautious bristle. He could sense them nearby. They were perhaps yards into the trees. They had not run away, but they were certainly huddling together and preparing themselves for the possibility of an attack. He angled his ears and focused entirely on them. Their breathing was heavy, harsh in the winter air, and their hearts were thudding frantically. Each had different rhythms, more varied beats, and it made him want to snarl for only a split second.

There was a small piglet. And there were three females surrounding it.

Yami snorted at the thought of taking them on. He could win, yes, but it was unlikely to be easy. It would be far too great a struggle for him to find the strength to face them a second time when they attacked as he knew they would. So he simply padded further into the trees, turning south of them. If he was not close enough to go after them, he was less likely to give into his more primal urge to simply forego his common sense and rush them regardless.

 _Yami_!

He stopped short, turning and raising his head slowly in confusion. It sounded almost like a whisper within his own thoughts, as if perhaps he were trying his name out for himself as he had so long ago upon choosing it for himself so long ago. He wondered if he had misheard the word, if perhaps it was something else entirely. Had his mind distorted it to form his name? But he could not figure out why he might have done such a thing. So he paused, reconsidering himself and this very thought. Then he blinked and slowly turned his head to look over his shoulder.

For a long moment he caught nothing. Then he searched the area more pointedly. But he could not find much of anything about himself. And he was bewildered as he nearly turned back. Then he blinked, stiffened, as he spotted the white wolf running through the trees and straight towards him. He was racing as if he were frantic to get to his side, his body a machine of well-polished muscle that looked almost liquid beneath his pelt.

Yugi only slowed a few feet away from him, breaths coming out in heavy pants and eyes sharp.

 _Yami._

The black wolf flicked an ear and tilted his head. His red eyes flickered about once more, then darted back to his face though he did not lock gazes with him as he had before. _Yes_? he inquired softly.

Yugi wagged his tail as he came closer to him, pausing only a step or so away from him. His nose was wriggling and cold, but the sweat from its calloused formation was streaming before his eyes. Yami blinked at him. He was curious as to his being there, clearly, and so Yugi pressed a step or so closer. He was amazed that Yami did not jerk away at the close proximity. And he was more amazed that he let him do as he wanted at the moment.

Their noses bumped softly, wriggling against each other for a split second. Yami raised his eyes now to peer into his for a moment. Then they dropped again and he blinked as his ears flicked about. His breathing had grown a small degree sharper, faster, and he seemed flummoxed and out of his comfort zone. Yugi relaxed when he saw that Yami did not seem inclined to pull away as he had assumed he would, comforted by this realization.

 _Where were you off to_? he asked after a moment. He pulled away from him only when he saw the discomfort crossing those red eyes, a glazed formation within the depths that made them look muddled and faraway. But Yami hardly seemed aggravated or aggrieved or even remotely angered. This realization was enough to make him relax as he stared back at him.

Yugi exhaled softly. Yami smelled as he always had, of pine and moonlight and fresh snow. It was beautiful in his senses. And there was the smallest hint of sweat upon his olfactory glands as well. He loved the combination, though the latter made him somewhat nervous.

 _I am hungry and I had assumed to think that perhaps it would be a good idea to hunt,_ Yami answered almost dismissively. But he sounded notably tired, weary as if he might lay down more than try to keep moving in pursuit of prey. Yugi noticed the way he blinked lazily and looked about for only a moment. Then the black wolf turned his head to look at him again, and he realized only then that Yami had begun to move and so he had started to follow him rapidly. _I was looking for deer._

 _You want deer in particular_? Yugi muttered, considering him for a moment. Amongst the shadows, he looked incredibly like the core of the night sky. He was a shadow too deep to wade within. He was much alike an ink well and a bottomless abyss which swallowed it whole. And it surprised him for a moment to see such a thing. He had never truly noticed this before, though now his lackluster coat made it infinitely worse. The moonlight normally made his fur sparkle and shiny, as silky as the surface of water when he moved, and Yugi was almost dizzy with this reminder. He drew in a deep, sharp breath and Yami's ear seemed to twitch as if to catalogue the soft noise. _Why would you want a deer_? _I think the serow would be easier, wouldn't they_?

Yami let out a scornful noise, almost akin a sneer. _I enjoy a challenge._

Yugi shook his head and flicked his ears. When he stepped forward again, Yami bristled slightly as if with anxiety towards being caught. _No, really, why do you want a deer, Yami_? he asked quizzically, tilting his head. He moved to wag his tail and relaxed when Yami blinked at him. _I think it'd be easier to find a serow or even a boar instead._

 _There were boar tracks back there,_ Yami said. He began to move about now, trotting forward. His ears pricked forward and then fell back again before he quickened his pace only a moment later. The white wolf slowed his own steps again, sniffing softly at the dark air. He remembered those little tracks in the snow, the way they reminded him once more of little flame-like shapes against the ice. _And there were even some serows back there as well._

 _I noticed,_ he answered, slightly flustered by the darker wolf's dismissive response. He hurried forward a step, getting to his side and slowing his pace to match him step for step. Yami blinked and turned his head only slightly to look at him curiously, as if he could not believe that Yugi was still following him. Then he flicked his ears, flattening them against his head for a brief second, and turned away again. _Are you just craving deer or something_?

Yami's ears began to flick about, and Yugi wondered at this idea as well. He had never known Yami to simply _crave_ something like that. _I do not know yet,_ he lied simply. He pricked his ears forward and lowered his nose to the snow to pick at any scent he might catch. He did not look at Yugi as the white wolf stopped beside him. _I suppose I do have a craving._

 _Do you mind if I tag along_?

 _Certainly not._ The black wolf drew in a deep breath, turning away from him, and Yugi watched the white puff of air that left his calloused nose. He tilted his head and looked about for a single moment longer. _But I do not plan to share if that is what you wanted out of this trip._

Yugi bristled faintly, offended. _I can hunt on my own just fine, thanks,_ he drawled, flustered.

Yami flicked his ears and looked at him with curious red eyes. _You did not used to eat as a wolf._

 _I didn't exactly hunt as one either,_ Yugi reminded him dryly, shaking his head.

 _So what has changed then_?

 _I found that it was much more productive for me to do that than anything else._ He found himself looking away from Yami swiftly. He felt small and shaky under his gaze, bewildered. He drew in a deep breath, then exhaled loudly from behind his parted teeth. His ears flicked about uncomfortably again, wrinkling his nose briefly with a shake of his head. _Obelisk and Slifer taught me after a while. And then I decided that I could do that better than just simply sit around and sulk and it seemed to help with some of the stress, I guess._

Yami was staring at him now. Yugi could feel it, just as he could see Yami blinking and tilting his head in the corner of his eye. _Ah, so that is how you wound up hunting for me while I was still within that den, huh_? he asked slowly. He did not bother to say more, however, as Yugi continued to peer into the trees. _Thank you for that…by the way. It means a lot._

Yugi blinked. _Of course_! He thought he sounded far too eager and foolish. He felt almost flushed and pathetic for a moment. He slowed a step, wondering if the other had taken any notice of the desperation in his tone. He had never known himself to want to please another person so much before and it was almost despairing to consider that. How had Yami managed to revert him so much into the shyer boy he'd been growing up, the one that had often hidden behind Anzu as if she might protect him from those curious about him? _I would do it again if I had to._

The black wolf was staring at him in the corner of his eye now. _Yes. Because you have a very kind soul,_ he said after a moment, simply, voice calm and quiet. Yugi looked over at him, sensing the tired weight which seemed to come through his tone. Yami stared back at him, ears against his head and eyes unblinking with something miserable and perhaps lost about them.

As they looked at one another, Yami could not help but feel overwhelmed. If there were ever one who could not hope to hold a flame to Yugi, it was he himself. He knew that. Kindness was not something that came to him in abundance. It was nothing which he possessed in spades. And it was something that was shown to him but he could not mimic in the slightest. Most things boiled down to survival and fighting and bloodshed and the scarcest shred of mercy. It was bewildering to him that he might find himself biting a human with such kindness, a soul so altruistic as to combat his so solely.

By some miracle Yami had truly bitten what was perhaps the kindest soul that the world might have to offer. Regardless of his being Atem or not, Yugi was too gentle and soft and should never have been the one that Yami had bitten like that.

It was incredibly heartbreaking to him that he had done such a thing for him in the first place. It was bewildering to even think for the smallest of moments that the wolf beside him was the blue-violet-eyed, soft-spoken boy he had saved before. He seemed so different. He was not unrecognizable, but he was undeniably different.

It was amazing to him how easily the other boy had taken to a more survivalist expectation within his life.

And it was almost horrifying, as well, to consider that Yugi himself had changed so much in order to make it to this point in life. He hated that his innocence had been marred so hideously this way. The very idea of the wolf beside him changing any further than he had in order to protect himself or Yami was not something he was willing to consider for more than a mere moment.

Yami lowered his nose to the snow again. It was only for the sake of keeping up the appearance of looking for a scent now, however. His head was reeling too terribly and he was so tired. His heart was aching in his chest and his lungs felt incredibly tight. Yami closed his eyes for a moment, then shook the thought off. The snow seemed to shift beneath his heavy sigh, seeming almost to mock him. He stepped forward on lazy paws, entire body a sharp contrast to the ice around them.

Yugi was watching him. His ears flicked about several times. Then he tilted his head and stared at him more pointedly.

Yami glanced at him from the corner of his eye and turned his muzzle towards him. The black wolf wondered briefly what it was that Yugi might desire from him. Did he want him to speak? Yami did not think he had anything he truly could say that would turn out well…

 _So…is it because deer is nicer to eat or something_?

 _It digests faster,_ the black wolf answered listlessly. He was unconcerned by the way those blue-violet eyes stretched wide in surprise at his words. He flicked his ears again, listening for the briefest moment to another rodent beneath the snow. He thought for a moment to leap at it again, hungry, but then shook it away. Hunting them was not worth the energy that it would take to do so. They were hardly filling and the amount of energy it would take simply to leap into the snow as it was could be considered far too burdensome for such small gain.

The nutritional value in them was lacking, something that he hated to consider but knew more than ever at the moment. They could not fill him. Had he been healthy, however, he might have considered them otherwise. But for now they were simply useless to him.

 _Deer will help me gain weight faster than serow or boar._

Yugi tilted his head and looked at him curiously for a long moment. A small sigh escaped him but he did not speak for the moment and instead wrinkled his nose back briefly. _Deer can help you gain weight faster_? he echoed softly, almost demanding the statement from him. He nodded slightly, narrowing his eyes as he turned to face Yami again and the black wolf had to wonder at the determination in his keen blue-violet eyes. _Then I guess we need to find some deer, huh_?

Yami watched him for a long moment, peering at him sideways. Once again he found himself too weary to truly care for the fact that Yugi was peering at him so pointedly like this. There was such exhaustion in his body that he was not sure he could possibly think more about something as seemingly small as Yugi's reaction. It was not that he did not care to have his help in doing so. It was simply that he had to wonder if perhaps there was a part of Yugi which judged him even now. Just because he had changed enough to hunt and eat as a wolf before now, it did not mean at all that Yugi would not give him slightly horrified looks or appear disgusted whenever he saw him eating.

But his belly was aching and rolling inside of him and the pain was intense enough that it made him want to stop and lay in the snow motionlessly. He would remain that way for as long as he possibly could, never once caring enough to raise himself to his feet or attempt to find food.

Perhaps a lack of movement might even help him to keep from growing so hungry again. But he also realized immediately that the choice not to eat the day before or even before then was far from a good idea. He should have made a snack of something. He should have done more than eat that small field mouse he'd just caught. It had thrown his hunger off kilter altogether. It was growing harder than ever now to so much as stay on his paws.

Yugi flicked his ears and shook his head after a moment. He was watching him with something that Yami hated to see on his face. Why was he always so concerned about him? Did he look so terrible at the moment? But then the white wolf flattened his ears against his head and flicked his tongue over his nose, considering him as he tilted his head. _Are you okay? You look kind of upset… Maybe a little sick_?

The black wolf flicked an ear in response, the words circling about in his head for a moment. Then he turned to look at him, knowing that perhaps the truth were brutal but he could not expect Yugi to help him if he was hiding such a thing from him. _I feel sick from being so hungry,_ he finally said rather slowly. It was exhausting to him to think for more than a second that the wolf beside him might sense such a weakness in him as it was. Then he blinked and lowered his eyes to the ground once more, as if he might find something there that he had not before. _I should have eaten yesterday and earlier, before this new pack arrived._

The statement made Yugi bristle, voice alarmed. _You haven't eaten since you left my house_?

 _Not anything of true substance. I ate a mouse when I was in the camp but I haven't tried to eat anything else._ Yami paused and raised his head towards the trees again, pricking his ears forward. He wondered briefly if perhaps Yugi might have taken the statement for something more. The consideration made his guts churn again, guilt and dismay coursing through him. He flattened his ears against his head and forced himself to continue forward. _It was a bad idea for me to do something so foolish. But I am not comfortable with these wolves here. They tend to watch every little move I make. They always have and I assume this will continue as long as I am here within the camp with them. It is not something that I wish to suffer through more than necessary._

The white wolf peeled his lips back into something of a mixture of a snarl and a grimace. His eyes flickered to the sky as Yami watched him in his peripheral. And then he turned to the black wolf again, ears pricked forward. _Are you okay here beyond that_? _I mean, besides being so uncomfortable with them, are you okay out here…like this_? he asked softly, slowly, in a tone that made Yami bristle with unease as he realized Yugi was fighting desperation from his voice. _Are you okay to stay here_? _Or do you think that it's worse here than it might have been had you just stayed home_?

Yami looked over at him now, uncomfortable with the thought. Yugi had called it _home_. But _home_ was something that Yami was not sure he had ever truly known in life. The labs were hardly fit to be named such a thing. And, was one not meant to feel safe when they were at _home_? The trees might have offered some shelter, but it was not safe enough that he did not check behind him or look over his shoulder constantly. It was not enough to make him think that he would survive to see the next day should something happen.

Yami flicked an ear. _I am not uncomfortable being here,_ he finally mumbled, unable to think of a better way to phrase the statement he wished to make, _but it is not where I wish to be._

It was a far simpler way to state his feelings rather than truly telling him his exact thoughts on the arrangement. The pack was exhausting to be around, as keeping rank was not something that troubled him but clearly appeared to upset them regardless. He did not care to expand on the thought any further, however, and so he turned to Yugi with a tilt of his head. _Why do you ask_?

Yugi had stopped walking and Yami had gone right past him, something that startled the black wolf. He came to a stop a few steps away, turning around with wide eyes and pricked ears. Had something happened? Had he overstepped in telling him that? Was Yugi upset with him now? He felt sick with the idea.

But the white wolf did not seem to be distressed or upset in any manner. His head was lowered and his eyes were on the snow. But he also would not look up at him and Yami felt sick as he considered him again. Was there something wrong? Had he overlooked something in saying this to him?

 _I…miss you._

The words were almost lost amidst the tumultuous thoughts that Yami was sorted through. But then he recognized them, ears pricking up and eyes growing wider than ever. He blinked, tilting his head, and peered at him almost blankly for a long moment. He was not sure how he was meant to feel, nor what he should truly say. And then he repeated the words thoughtfully, considering them and the depth of them for a moment longer.

Yami did not know how he was meant to respond to him, however. It was strange, simplistic and odd, how easily crushed he felt at the moment. He did not understand the sickness and bewilderment that crashed through him now. And so it made him mildly nervous.

He tilted his head again, watching Yugi for a long moment. Then he looked away, blinking and facing the snow. What was he meant to say to him in turn? Did "I miss you too" amount to much in a time like this? Or was it seen as a mockery of the other boy's feelings? But he had missed him, even if he had not truly planned to tell him at any time soon. He felt sick for a moment, shivering.

How much would the words mean to Yugi, however? He could not know if Yugi would even care to hear such sentiment from him as it was. Surely Yugi grew just as weary of him as he did himself. If Yami could hardly stand himself, what was to say that Yugi truly could either? Maybe he was just so used to being around others and having them in his life that he did not know any better but to somehow miss him.

Yami pricked his ears forward. He shouldn't have been discounting his friend like that. But he could not fathom how Yugi could possibly feel that way towards him. How could someone miss _him_? Regardless, he did not doubt Yugi in the slightest. He had said he missed him. And if he said it, then Yami was sure that it was true, if only because he knew that Yugi was not a liar. He wasn't someone to say such a thing so falsely…

 _I see._ Yami blinked. He sounded terrible, as if he had lost his voice and had no idea how to regain it. He shivered, then looked at Yugi again. The other boy was staring at the ground more pointedly. He did not look happy in the slightest. He seemed—shockingly—as if he had deflated beneath the weight of Yami's silence. He had seemingly lowered his nose closer to the snow, as if he were checking a scent of some kind rather than staring at the ground with such a despondent expression. He would not raise his eyes either, something that crushed Yami more than he cared to admit. _I…I do not know what to say…_

 _You don't…have to say anything, honestly. I just…_

Yami flicked an ear, sensing that the words had caused more devastation that he had ever considered them capable of. He frowned and tilted his head, studying him more pointedly for a moment. Then he flattened his ears and grimaced, unsure of what more to do. Yugi would not look at him still. And, when he could not find anything to say, Yami finally moved forward to press his nose gently into Yugi's forehead.

The white wolf quivered beneath his touch, eyes shooting up to look at him in surprised bewilderment. Yami had the impulse to lick from his nose to his forehead for a moment. Then he suppressed it and straightened, considering him. _I miss you as well,_ he finally said. It was the best he could say, the strongest phrasing he could offer. But it was strange on his tongue, though not as terribly so as he had feared formerly.

He wanted to say something more, perhaps to tell him that he had not known how to respond. And it would have been truthful. He didn't know how it was he was meant to answer him. But he could not help but feel further words would lessen the strength his message had hopefully conveyed.

He felt his stomach tossing again. And he wondered briefly if he had ever told Yugi something so truthful before in his time around him. He had never considered it before, how horribly he lied and just how often he did so. He shivered, his body aching with tension that he did not know how to dispel. And he realized that Yugi noticed it as well. The white wolf was keenly aware of it, staring at him with something of confusion and alarm.

But then the white wolf moved forward. Yami initially thought to back away. It was something that he had not considered doing before. But now it was the most prominent thought in his mind. And, to his shock, Yugi simply ducked his head and pressed his forehead against his chest, as if trying to hear his heartbeat closer than ever before. When he breathed, it was a loud and rough exhale that let go of the tension in his paler body.

 _Do you want to come back to the house_?

Yami did not want to admit to him just how much those words threatened to destroy him. It was overwhelming that Yugi offered him such a thing, or even that he had ever considered doing so. It was shocking, with enough force to knock the wind from his lungs entirely and leave him shaking. And he could not stop staring at the other wolf, looking at bright white fur that was no different from the snow around them. The two shades were all but the same, though the ice glinted palely beneath the moonlight and his fur seemed to darken as if touched by silver.

 _I…would like that a lot._ The admission was enough to make his stomach twist and churn and perhaps even fold in on itself. The black wolf jerked away, the sensation enough to make his legs quiver. He had felt more powerful being unable to see Yugi's face moments before, but now it was overwhelming not studying his eyes. He felt dizzy as his limbs quivered. And Yugi was at attention instantly in front of him.

His nose was working for any sign of weakness. His eyes were sharp and cutting, measuring him and taking note of any wounds. He was studying him feverishly, eyes burning into his for a brief moment. And then he blinked. The single second it took for him to do this, Yami turned away from him to stare at the snow again. The sigh which escaped him was an exhausted one, not borne of relief or comfort. And he wondered if Yugi ever felt the same when it came to interactions with him…

He paced forward a step, uncomfortable and unsure of himself. His hunger made him lightheaded as he pricked his ears forward again. There was no sound in the snow yet. There was no ice crunching beneath his weight or anything of that kind…

 _Then, how about after you eat, we go back to my house, okay_?

Yami could not find words. His mind was too scrambled and he was too tired. The hunger was like teeth gnawing at him from the inside. He could not think straight. And so he made a noise which he knew could only be described as noncommittal.

He heard Yugi falter behind him a step, as if startled. But then he hurried to his side again. He was at his flank, their fur brushing, and his ears were pricked forward as well. But he had lowered his head a fraction and seemed to be watching him with sidelong glances. And so Yami glanced at him, surprised when those blue-violet eyes bore into his curiously, and continued walking. Their pace only quickened into a trot, though Yugi kept his attention focused entirely on Yami now.

 _As long as it's a deer,_ Yami muttered, deciding to take the lead in conversation if only to make Yugi relax somewhat, _then I'm sure we can make it back to your house sooner rather than later. I don't think it will take long to find one. I can hunt and eat and then we can get back to your home before your alarm goes off for school._

Yugi blinked, pausing, and then huffed out a deep breath as if he were offended by the very thought. He shook his head, blue-violet eyes intense with something that Yugi could not quite read. _I can just turn it off. And then I guess I'll just tell my mom and grandpa that you're back and they can deal with…_ He hesitated, pausing and looking Yami over as if he were unsure of when it had truthfully happened. He tilted his head, studying him for a moment, and then shook his head. His voice came out soft and bewildered for a brief heartbeat. _But I don't think that they need to see you. I mean, not with how thin you are right now. I don't think that would be a good thing for them to see. I mean…I don't want you to feel uncomfortable when you see them again or anything like that. I mean, I don't know if you would or not, but it's better safe than sorry, right_? _I—I mean, I'm honestly willing to do anything you want to. If you want to wait instead of seeing them again now_ …

Yami startled. Yugi was rambling, something he had not noticed him do much of before that moment. It was enough to make him tilt his head in surprise and consider him with wide eyes. _I am not entirely sure I would wish to see them at the moment,_ he finally admitted, voice soft and thoughtful. But then he paused, tilting his head cautiously as he considered the possibilities further. _But to hide in your room is hardly an option worth considering for long. Keeping them in the dark can only work for so long, Yugi, and it hardly seemed to be possible the last time…_

 _I know, and I'm sorry. I just… I don't want you to feel pressured into the idea of…meeting them again unless you're actually comfortable doing it, Yami. If you don't want to do that, then please just tell me. And I'll just… I'll try to make sure that nothing happens so that any of you cross paths prematurely_.

 _You cannot dictate such things._

 _No, but I can at least_ try _to do something like that. I can try to make sure that you guys don't end up crossing paths too soon. It shouldn't be too terribly hard…_ Yugi drew in a deep breath and flattened his ears against his head, looking over at him with a tilted head and nearly averted eyes. Yami watched him as he exhaled in a big gusting white blanket of mist before his nose. _I mean, I've kept you guys from running into each other before._

 _I was also healthier then,_ Yami argued softly, keeping his voice gentle so as not to upset the other boy. Something about the way Yugi stared at the snow with such frustration was enough to make him feel wary… _My senses were more powerful and I could tell when they were closer before they might find one of us in your room like that_.

 _But I can tell when they're nearby too_!

 _You did not pay as much attention back then as I did. And you are more used to their footsteps and things of that nature. Familiarity tends to cause us to overlook the various things that we might have otherwise noticed. It happens often, Yugi. I might have done the same with you at some point as well._ He did not think that was a possibility anymore, however. Nothing about the situation felt familiar and he was not sure that he could even say his skin felt like his own any longer... _If we were around each other often enough, I would have grown used to your footsteps so that I would come to simply recognize you and not think twice about it. You would have become background noise to me and it would make me suspicious should I hear something out of the normality of everyday life within the house. That is what wolves do. We familiarize ourselves with the sounds of normal life and then respond only to the things that do not match up in that average day in our lives._

Yugi blinked and looked at him now as well, peering at him with a stare that underlined just how upset he was with this statement. But he did not seem to be angry with him. He appeared more startled and perhaps exhausted. _But I could…_ He hesitated, seemingly uncertain and unsure of himself. He seemed to be considering what Yami had said and trying to weigh the possibilities as well. _You're right about…_

Yami nodded at him with something dismissive in his eyes. He did not look at him again. And his ears began to flick rapidly to take in the various small noises that came from the woods around them. And now Yugi found himself wondering what it was that deer sounded like in the snow. Did they make a lot of noise? Or was it smaller? Yami seemed intent on listening to whatever it was that had caught his attention at the moment. Did that mean he had caught the sound of one of them?

As he watched, his alpha began to looked flustered, perhaps even mildly frustrated as well. He had his head tilted towards the ground as if the angle might amplify the noise within the snow. Then he paced forward a step, bristling, and licked his lips as if he were struggling not to simply race off on his own. When he turned around to face Yugi again, his red eyes were hungry more than anything.

 _So what do you think I should do then_? _Do you want to stay hidden in my room again_? _We can always do that. I…_

Yugi felt as if they were going backwards. Had it always been so difficult? He felt as if there was something missing, as if he had somehow forgotten everything he was meant to do in order to help ease his friend into his company again. And it made him wonder again how often he had perhaps somehow overlooked the ferocity that he might have provoked from Yami to begin with.

But then, he noticed, Yami was not even fully paying him any attention now. His red eyes were studying something beyond his shoulder. The thought was comforting but also exhausting for him. Did Yami even truly care about the conversation or was he pretending?

 _I can just keep you there and make pancakes and stuff like that until you're well again. We can order some food again like we did last time so you can pack on calories. We can do that until you're fully healed up and everything else. Then maybe we can see about basically…meeting them again, is the best way to put it. I guess it won't really be a meeting, but it's probably the closest description that matches up, right_? _Anyways, I…I don't think my mom will be all too happy to see you're back. I…_ He shook his head. Yami was staring at him now, though he had not seemed too alarmed by the idea of his mother being upset with his reappearance in his life. He had simply turned to him, somewhere between curiosity and confusion. _I don't think that Grandpa will have too much to say about it, though. I mean…_

 _Perhaps…_

* * *

Yugi was incredibly nervous. His hands were shaking and his fingers felt numb as he looked to the other wolf in front of him. He was tired as he looked at the table in front of him for a moment. It was oddly cold beneath his touch and his tongue felt dry and glued to the roof of his mouth. He shivered, glancing over his shoulder and into the living room for a single second. In his peripheral Yami was leaning against the counter, soda in one hand the other braced against one of the drawers next to his hip.

His head was down, lowered so that he could stare at the rim of the cup he was drinking from. His bangs shadowed his face drastically and his shoulders looked incredibly thin and sharp beneath his clothing. His hoodie looked bunched and loose over his shoulders. And the end of it seemed to drape too far down the top of his jeans. He looked as if he were wearing the clothes of someone several sizes larger than himself, as if he were a kid dressing in his father's outfits for the fun of it.

"Are you okay?"

Yugi was surprised by how slow and uncertain and utterly concerned his voice was. He sat up a little straighter, stomach knotting furiously as he swallowed hard. He wished he could clear his voice but he was exhausted by the effort of doing so to begin with.

Yami did not look up for what felt like a lifetime. And, when he did, the red-eyed teen slowly raised his chin and turned his head towards him, blinking. His expression was unreadable, but there was something in his eyes that set alarms off in Yugi's head. He shivered, straightening a little further, and Yami watched him for a moment longer. Then he tilted his head, shaking it after a moment, and his gaze cleared.

"I'm tired," he stated after a moment. He offered him something of a small, tired smile that was meant to reassure and did nothing of the kind. Yugi stared at him, unsure of what more he should do or say but unable to look away as the surprise bit at his insides. Yami was staring at him, but he looked unsure of himself now as well, and the blue-violet-eyed teen had to wonder at his expression. "But I will be fine."

"Are you sure?" Yugi asked uncomfortably. He tilted his head, licking his lips, and his hands shook when he dropped them into his lap again. He did not like the way that Yami began to shuffle his weight in a somewhat nervous manner and ran his fingers through his hair. He felt sick for a moment, unsure and colder than ever. "I mean, I swear you'll be okay after we get through this. I…"

Yami snorted and looked away. He smiled faintly, shaking his head slightly and taking a sip of the cherry soda Yugi had gotten for him. He'd asked for something sugary and Yugi had grabbed it immediately for him when the red-eyed teen had said that he thought his blood sugar was far too low, tired and dizzy. And he had looked as if he might sway on his feet at any second. But upon drinking some of the soda he'd seemed to perk up, if only slightly…

Yugi wondered if he regretted the fact that he had insisted that they forego the effort of hiding him away as they had discussed during their hunt earlier. He had eaten his fill as Yugi stood aside and licked the sweet blood off of his white muzzle. And then he'd sat aside as Yami had stripped the carcass clean and eaten so quickly Yugi had been amazed he did not choke on the large chunks. Then he had broken bone and gobbled down the marrow inside, settling aside in the snow to lick himself clean and relax.

And, to his amazement, when they had changed back, Yugi had found that the other teen did not look nearly as exhausted as he might have before then. He did not vomit the meal up even as the smaller teen had heard the hideous sliding and twisting of his organs beneath his skin. Yami had looked queasy but not so much that he'd vomited up his meal. Instead he'd taken a seat in the snow and waited for Yugi to bring him back some clothes to change into.

Yami was still as skinny as he had been before. But his eyes did not seem as dull and appeared brighter than they had before. And somehow the way he held himself seemed a thousand times stronger, a million times more confident. He looked tired still, but not the least bit as terribly unhealthy as he clearly was. He was still skeletal in frame, his shoulders too sharp and jutting harshly beneath his clothing. His fingers were too long, the skin pulled taut upon his bones. But his long nails were dark and thin and the tips of them were brilliant white, firm in their shape as if he were prepared to cut through various mediums of flesh and bone.

"You don't need to be so worried about me, Yugi," the red-eyed teen commented with a small smirk of amusement. Yugi blinked and tilted his head, confused. "I swear to you that it isn't a problem that you should be so concerned about."

Yugi huffed. "You haven't seen my mom when she's upset, Yami."

"Think she'll bring out the ladle on me?"

"I think it could definitely be brought out," Yugi teased, though his voice was slightly strained with the mildest sense of tension. He drew in a deep breath and laughed softly, unable to help himself. He was nervous as he pressed his nails into his thighs and watched him pointedly for a moment. The fact was that his mother and grandfather were not awake yet, but he was still nervous and unsure of himself as the seconds passed. It was unnerving to be in the kitchen like this, Yami behind him sipping a soda—something that he had never seen him do before and found himself suspicious of his reasoning behind explaining its necessity—and watching him. Yugi drew in a deep breath as he turned back to him with narrowed eyes. "I don't plan to let her use it on you, but I think there's a good possibility that she might."

The red-eyed wolf looked considerably unconcerned, shaking his head and sipping at his soda again. The bright red liquid reminded Yugi more and more of blood and pools of it in the snow. And he thought of the taste of it on his tongue made the muscle seem almost glued to the roof of his mouth for a moment. And then he realized that Yami was staring at him so closely, studying and wondering and clearly taking notes on each of his smallest twitches and uncomfortable glances which were cast away.

Yugi steeled himself after a moment, drawing in a deep breath. He was so uncomfortable that he could not be sure in the slightest that he could hold his breath as he was trying to. So he exhaled loudly as he ran a hand through his hair again, uncomfortable and unsure of himself. He watched Yami who continued studying him, clearly searching for something Yugi was not sure he could provide him.

"I don't think she would ever actually use it on you," he commented in a mild tone, hoping to lighten the mood if only slightly. But the words felt forced and his tongue was incredibly thick in his mouth. He drew in a deep breath and pressed his nails further into his jeans. Then he exhaled loudly and looked at the tiled flooring uncomfortably, licking his lips. He shifted his foot to scuffle his shoe on the linoleum and his belly ached even more than it had before. "But I'm kind of worried about it anyways."

"I'm well aware that you are so incredibly concerned with various things that do not matter in the grand scheme of things, Yugi." The red-eyed boy sipped at his soda again, then looked towards the hallway for a long handful of moments. He looked through the shadows that lay there, draped across the darkness of the doors that rested feet away. And it made him fight away a grimace as he considered that perhaps they might step out of their room at any moment. He did not trust his senses to warn him ahead of time should he not be looking that direction.

Unless they made a good amount of noise upon waking, he did not think that it was safe to assume that he might be able to do so. He drew in a deep breath to mirror Yugi before releasing a sharp exhale through his nose. It sounded almost like a wheeze around the edges, definitively harsh in the soft near-silence of the house surrounding them. Had it not been for Yugi's heartbeat in his ears, he thought the house would have sounded like nothing more than a hideous graveyard. The stillness but for the hum of the heater coming on was enough to make him all but snarl as he reached up to run his fingers through his hair again. He tangled them in his bangs, shifting the soft strands beneath his touch. He had not considered how clean they had remained in the time he'd been with the pack. Wolf hair often held a steady amount of grease and oils that did not make them look unhealthy and soak them as a human's did.

"You _really_ don't think that I should be concerned about it? Cause I think it's a lot scarier than you're giving this credit for," Yugi said quietly, softly. He leaned forward to put his elbows on his knees and reached up to cup his chin in his palms. Yami could see his fingers still shaking finely and he could scent the smallest hint of bitter dismay coming from the other teen. "My mom is a lot meaner than you might think, Yami."

"I am sure that it will be fine." Yami tilted and shook his head after a moment, licking his lips as he turned away to look into the hallway again. But then he hesitated, considering the other boy in the corner of his eye, and finally felt the way his stomach knotted and twisted and coiled in on itself. Yami did not think about it for more than a mere moment, though the feeling swept through him and made it hard to think for longer than a heartbeat at the most. His red eyes narrowed as he considered. "I do not think that your mother would manage to hit me regardless. I am still fast, if not as powerful as I once was. I could always dodge away before she could even swing the ladle."

The smaller teen grimaced faintly and shook his head. "You think that you would be fast enough to do that?" he asked slowly, wondering. Yami frowned as he considered him for a moment, knowing that Yugi was backtracking and searching his memories for examples. He realized that he had not displayed much speed in the time that he had been recovering before or now either.

He had displayed anger and vicious retaliation more than he had anything else. He had moved fast in order to attack Chazz before, he knew. And he also realized that he had not done so for very long either. So he could see why Yugi might doubt his words as it was. He had only done so whenever it was that the gray wolf might lunge at him. But he'd also turned them immediately into attacks as well.

Yami remembered this well.

He had put distance between them.

And then he had attacked him in turn.

"I am not worried about it." Yami took a sip of his soda again, studying him once more. Yugi was looking at him in clear puzzlement more than anything else. "I am sure that I could manage it."

The small teen nodded slowly, though now his eyes seemed troubled. When he looked away again, his lips were pulled into a faint grimace. "I would really rather it did not come to that at all."

"I do not believe that she sleeps with the ladle in her room."

The words startled him enough that Yugi's head snapped around with furrowed brows and a shake of his head. "What?" he asked, confused and bewildered as he considered the other boy.

"Well, if it is not within her room with her, then she will have to walk near and past me to get her weapon, yes?" Yami prompted. He gestured to the drawer nearest his hip with a single shift of his weight, the sharp bone of his pelvis tapping the bottom of the wood there. He raised a brow in a teasing manner at Yugi but the small teen was still stunned by the strange direction of their conversation now. "I am sure I could grab it first and run in the time that it might be used."

Yugi raised a brow and smiled faintly, shaking his head. "You think so?"

"I am faster than I might look. You would be surprised, Yugi."

"Very much so," the smaller boy agreed. He hesitated for a moment. Then he pressed his fingers harshly into his cheeks. The slight pain was comforting, almost as if reassuring him that he was truly awake and Yami was standing before him again. He narrowed his eyes and licked his lips, then let out a deep breath as he shook his head slowly. "And you are sure you actually want to do this, Yami? It's not too late to back out of it. We can just hide in my room again and…"

And then what?

It would not last too long, he was sure. He was not sure that he could truly protect Yami for too terribly long should something of that nature happen as he had assumed. He barely suppressed a shiver, searching his face several times. He wondered if Yami understood his hesitation at the moment as well.

"Why are you so concerned? I am the one they might be upset with but you act as if they might be so cruel as to disown you," Yami said slowly. He was studying him, as if he were bewildered by the worry that Yugi was displaying. The small teen wanted to find the words to explain but he couldn't do so, and so he simply watched him. "And, should they be too upset, I will simply return to the camp."

Yugi went to answer him. But then he cringed. There was a low, harsh grating noise. He flinched and shivered. Yami was no longer paying him any mind. His eyes were glazed over. And his nails were scraping hideously over the glass cup. The screech was enough to make Yugi dizzy for a split second. But that distant look did not remove itself from Yami's expression, his eyes locked on the hallway. Yugi quickly looked there as well, straining his ears to catch any other sound that he might have missed beforehand. But he did not see anything and he failed to catch any sound which made him nearly squirm with dismay.

But, abruptly, those red eyes fell upon his face again, locking with his.

"You don't have to, though. And I don't want you to stay there when you're uncomfortable. I don't want you to feel like you have to go back there when you're clearly unhappy with the arrangements, Yami." Yugi hesitated, drawing in a deep breath as the red-eyed teen tilted his head curiously. He pressed his nails a little further into the soft skin of his cheeks. It was frustrating, something which made him feel flustered and exhausted. "And it doesn't make any sense for me to ask you to do that. It wouldn't be right to do that to you to begin with. I am sorry that I even bothered to ask you in the first place."

"It was not a bad idea to have me try to stay there. The idea of food in a more consistent flow and more natural to my diet was something that I was willing to look into as well. It was not a bad thing to ask that of me. I just… I had forgotten how much I despise those wolves at the time. I had forgotten how much I hated some of their stupidity as to whether or not I am truly a traitor meant to turn the pack against you."

"That was Marik, wasn't it?"

Yami blinked darkened red eyes, clearly startled and curious more than anything else. It took him a long handful of seconds to understand his question and then twice as much to recall the reason behind this inquiry. Marik had been scheming to kill Yami while he was within the pack, when the alpha had assumed him to be Code Name Atem. He had not been brave enough to act on this then, but he _had_ been foolish enough to attempt to kill Yugi that day.

It had never occurred to him until that moment to consider that maybe the pack in question truly _had_ predicted such a thing. He remembered one time that Atem had been mentioned in a Verse, that he was the product of a prophecy, of portents that the gods themselves had spoken and passed to the wolves within their realm of influence. And he thought briefly of the way the wolves had embraced this reality, despite its smothered meaning and reality which the gods themselves seemed to have distorted in their telling.

And then he stared at Yugi for a moment. This blue-violet-eyed boy, with silky spiky hair and teeth which had been forced to slowly but surely straighten beneath the pressure of the various Changes, was Code Name Atem. This small teen, of such a shorter stature than most male wolves, was the god meant to live among the mortals and lead them beyond themselves to some immense victory that no one was capable of agreeing on.

 _Yugi_ was the one who was supposed to either eradicate the humans or the hellhounds or perhaps creatures beyond even this. And it scared him to consider it as they looked at each other for a long moment.

Because, should Atem truly be as powerful as the lore said, then should Yugi not be more malicious? Should he not be more vicious? Should he not be _merciless_?

Yami hated himself for this thought. He truly did. It was despicable. He hated the idea that Yugi could ever be a creature like the lore mentioned. He was not that person and Yami absolutely _loathed_ the very idea of the fact that this boy he'd saved could change into this faceless figure which the wolves worshipped.

Marik, however, had fit much of that description. He had been a merciless bastard, sneering and spiteful and full of hate that Yami did not fully understand. And he knew from various conversations with Mai over the past few days that he had even set his eyes upon Yusei on several occasions. She had pointed out that she was not sure why it was that he had felt threatened by the yearling of all wolves, but Yami had understood it.

Yugi had taken a liking to the blue-eyed male. And so, out of spite, Marik had turned on him. He had been ready to find him on his own, had been prepared to rip him to pieces before Yugi's eyes should he have truly considered it necessary. And he would have been ready to kill anyone who questioned the purpose that Atem was meant to fulfill.

In all reality, the truth of it _was_ that perhaps Marik had been the most alike the creature that they all had been preparing for. And Yugi was the antithesis of that mythical wolf, was he not? He was gentle. He did not like unnecessary bloodshed. He was kind and giving. He wanted to protect the pack rather than use them as a means to an end as Atem was meant to. He was not willing to allow everything to hang on the thread of status and rank as many of the other wolves did.

Yami lowered his eyes and glanced towards the hallway again. The thoughts were getting jumbled in his head, locking in place and tumbling about violently. He shook his head. "It depends on whether you might think prophecy is inevitable and unavoidable. If you believe it to be as cut and dry as many others do, then perhaps you are right. If not, then there is room for interpretation. And, should there be room for such a thing, then it comes to the fact that you will believe what you wish."

He tilted his head as he looked at Yugi again, a sideways glance which he cast his way. He studied him as the blue-violet eyes bore into his face in turn. He wondered at it all. The small teen was not the creature that the prophecy had spoken of. Or at least…he was not then. He could potentially turn into him, he supposed. But he hoped to the gods that no such thing ever came to light.

"It could be Marik. It could be me. It could be Yusei. Hell, it could even be Jonouchi for all we know. It could be anyone, truthfully, Yugi. It might not even be a person, should you truly consider it. It is possible that the gods meant it metaphorically rather than anything else."

"You think that's possible?" Yugi asked, raising a brow and frowning in puzzlement. He opened his mouth to continue, then faltered as Yami snorted loudly and was smirking at him widely, shaking his head as he muttered, "No, Yugi, I do not think for even a second that it is a metaphorical statement."

They stared at each other for a long moment. Yami was still smirking but Yugi found himself moving his fingers along his jaw and to his throat. His nails shakily clicked against the metal buckle there upon his choker. His nervous fingers were shaking harder and he tugged lightly on the leather there, his eyes narrowing for a brief second. He shook his head slowly and looked Yami over anxiously for a single heartbeat.

He was dizzy for a moment, as if the world were spinning about him and his stomach was tossing violently. He glanced sideways towards the tabletop, drawing in a long and deep breath. And then he shook his head and exhaled softly, running his fingers through his hair.

"You don't believe that it could be a metaphor at all? You think it's a physical person then?"

Yami considered him for a moment. His eyes were locked on his choker, where his fingers were curled and his nails balanced precariously on the edges of the softened leather there. Then he shook his head slowly and closed his eyes. He looked as if he might lean back into the counter, but then he seemed to remember the cup in his hand. And so he simply straightened the smallest bit and kept the glass in his hand rather than putting it down. Yugi frowned at the thought and shook his head after a moment.

"I do not think that it is that easily figured out," Yami finally commented, eyes still closed. "And I think that you are best off interpreting it for yourself, Yugi."

Yugi tugged lightly on his choker again. He could feel his mouth twisting, forming a firm grimace upon his face. He hesitated, pulling lightly on the leather once more. He swallowed hard and stared at him, uncomfortable and almost exhausted as they looked at each other.

"You really think that? You really think that it's something that I'll have to decide for myself?"

"If you don't want to go crazy with misinterpretations and second-guessing yourself, I would think so." Yami opened his eyes into slits now, staring at him from beneath his long lashes. His lips seemed to twitch, somewhere between genuine laughter and sardonic amusement. "Many people who try to interpret such things are often driven into madness. There are a million different ways one might interpret what a god has said. It is impossible to know for sure. And the gods themselves will surely never tell."

The smaller teen felt that grimace grow on his face. "I just… I feel like it would be easier if I actually _knew_ what I'm supposed to be doing in the first place, you know?"

"I don't know the Verse, or else I would tell it to you," Yami said quietly, dismissing Yugi's startled expression with a shake of his head. He closed his eyes again and let out a deep breath. "But I have never heard it and I do not believe that anyone living might tell it to me without bias and their own interpretation of the things. People become far too cloudy mentally when it comes to such things as this. The wolves are not unlikely to change the words in any manner in order to make it seem far more influential on their behalf. They are not unbiased and the gods are likely to twist their own words for their amusement."

"You honestly think that they'd tell me something just to mislead me?"

Yami tilted his head and looked over at him slowly, considering him with a stare that said he knew far more than he should have. And the expression made Yugi feel cold, his marrow frozen and the blood in his veins icy with tension. "You know that they have done so before. You know that very well. Just as well as you know that I stretch the truth and twist it at times when I find the need to do so."

He looked away after a moment, narrowing his eyes and shaking his head slowly. He glanced at the hallway and tightened his grip on the cup in his hand. It was not to the point of breaking the glass, nor did he even remotely fracture it. But it did steady his thoughts for a brief moment. If he could grasp the cup so tightly between his fingers, then it was enough to keep him somewhat grounded.

It meant _something_ still remained tangible.

"Your mother and grandfather are awake."

Yugi blinked and stiffened, jumping to his feet after a moment. He tugged harshly on his choker, twisting the leather around his fingers and his heart racing in his chest. He drew in a deep breath, then exhaled slowly as he tried to calm his stampeding thoughts.

"I think they might have heard me."

He stiffened further. "You think that they heard…?" Yugi fell silent again, then swallowed hard as his mouth dried out. His heart was thumping rapidly in his throat now. He swore he tasted blood. Then he looked towards the hallway again. Had they heard Yami's voice? It was so broken and raspy, fractured in so many places. Was it possible that they had heard it in one of those rare moments that it was deeper and whole?

"Yes." Yami looked over at him with a sense of certainty in his eyes now. "They have definitely heard me."

Yugi blinked and pulled on his choker again, unnerved by the very idea. "Do they…?"

He shrugged. "I don't think they recognize me, no."

The small teen felt as if his blood were roaring within his ears. He swore he could hear nothing more than the hideous pounding there, enough to make his head hurt and his skull threaten to split in half. He shuddered and licked his lips.

"Are they…?"

Yami blinked and turned his head to consider him more pointedly now. He had looked back at the doors a moment before but now he was focused entirely upon the smaller teen. His red eyes were sharper than ever. "I do not believe that they are coming out for the time being."

A new fear struck him.

"What did they hear?" he asked, lowering his voice drastically. When had they begun talking so loudly to begin with? Yugi felt dizzy for a long moment, then swallowed hard and licked his lips. "Do you think they heard anything about the whole prophecy thing?"

"It is more likely that they heard me say that I tend to lie and stretch the truth."

Yugi was frozen in place now, stiff and shaken by the very idea. He swallowed hard, shivering, and then looked over at the other teen for a moment. "Oh gods," he muttered, imagining the various arguments his mother might soon come up with in order to combat his relationship with him in any manner she could.

" _Goddamn_ it. I never even thought about that."

Yami licked his lips and lowered his eyes to the floor as the door opened to Kasumi's room a moment or two later. Yugi got quickly to his feet, then moved to his side. The small teen hesitated when he locked eyes with his startled mother but the brunette did not so much as look at him for more than a second. Her gaze shot immediately to the other male's dark red eyes. And then she narrowed her eyes and her lips twisted into something of a grimace caught between anger and perhaps sorrow.

The wolf beside him did nothing more than tilt his head as they looked at each other. Kasumi stared back at Yugi with annoyance, enough so that the small teen looked away again. Yami looked away after a moment, eyes lowered to the cup of soda in his hand. The red liquid was softer than his eyes, he was sure, the color far less threatening to look upon than his own gaze. The soft bubbles which rose and popped atop the surface of soda made his belly churn for a moment. He wondered what he looked like at the moment. His reflection looked somewhere between bashful and maybe mocking, but he did not know for sure. He often misread his own expressions…

"Mom," Yugi muttered softly. Yami saw him lick his lips and glance sideways at Yami. Kasumi looked at her son for the longest time, her breath sharp and cut and hardened. Her eyes bore into Yugi's rather emotionlessly, almost to the point of being incredibly blank and hollowed out. Then she tipped her chin up as Yami shifted his weight, her eyes flickering immediately to his face and then away again as she shook her head.

"I'm going back to bed."

The five words were enough to startle Yami from his thoughts. The many ideas that had formed in his mind—would it have been better to flee? Should he have held off?—came to an abrupt stop. His eyes stretched wide, his stare blank as he peered at her. He knew his bewilderment had to show on his face. He knew that without thought. And then, to his surprise, Yugi looked at him as if he had grown a second head and he was unsure how to deal with that. But, as the seconds passed, he abruptly relaxed after looking from Yami to his mother and back. Something about the way they peered at each other had calmed him for whatever reason.

Yami had expected Yugi to speak. Or perhaps he had assumed instead that Kasumi might.

But then she had turned on her heel and was going back into the hallway and to her room without a second glance.

"I don't think that this was too great a decision," the red-eyed teen said quietly, slowly, tilting his head towards Yugi and drawing in a deep breath before exhaling loudly. Then his gaze flicked to Yugi's and his mouth set for a moment as he glanced towards the door which had begun to open at the other end of the hall. Yugi looked as well, both of them still for the most part as Sugoroku came forward into the shadows and looked between them. They stared at him and the red-eyed teen was frozen for a long second. His heart was in his throat and his mouth was dry.

Yugi's grandfather stared at the two of them for what felt like a lifetime. Then he offered Yami an awkward smile and tilted his head. With sleepy eyes, the elderly Motou murmured, "How about you and I play that game of chess you promised me, hmm, Yami?"

And, despite himself, reluctant and tired as he was quickly becoming, the taller werewolf blinked and nodded, offering him a bashful smile that seemed strained at the edges. "Sure," he said slowly. His eyes shot briefly to Yugi and he drew in a deep breath before turning back. "I'd like that."


	62. Equal

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Hopefully biweekly**

 **Chapter Warnings: SLIGHT Blood, SLIGHT Self-Loathing, Mentions of Hallucinations and Torture**

 **Okay, so I'm going to clear this up. The Werewolf-Witch Trials is technically another name for the Witch Trials. It's called this because there were declarations of being and hunts of werewolves going on at that time as well. Most witches were considered to have clothes that turned them into wolves and werewolves were considered witches because they had that ability as well (if I remember right).**

 **For the werewolves, though, it was a huge event in their history. They consider it basically a mass genocide of their species. Yami knows about it only because he was told about it by his cage mate. He doesn't have enough details to go into conversation about it. But he knows what it was even if he can't name the wolves that got killed in it.**

 **Anyways, so that's why it's referenced.**

 **Yami also brings up a bit more about the creation myth for the werewolves. It's mostly the same. But he brings up something that he didn't tell Yugi when he originally told him the story. So there's some slight altering to the story of the Lunar Ascension.**

 **If there's anything else you feel I should tag with a warning, feel free to point it out. I'm still editing basically throughout the week so I forget some of things I might need to tag.**

Chapter LXII: Equal

 _Work Log Entry LV: November, 2005_

 _November 8_

 _My look alike refuses to respond to his code name but he does answer when he is forced to pay attention. He is going to be assigned to the senior partner of the resurrection program, Maximillion Pegasus. The boss is proud of his choosing the human to keep the wolf in line._

 _I am somewhat worried about the effectiveness of this choice._

 _Surely for a wolf to find ease in his being here, he should not be with a human who is so incredibly hotheaded, right?_

 _I suppose it does not matter, however._

 _Whatever happens is not on my shoulders._

 _It is no burden of mine._

Yugi was all but silent as he wandered after the other teen. Yami had shaken the fresh snow from his hair for the third or fourth time as they had continued walking. His eyes were on the forest floor surrounding them, the ice glittering in the mild streams of sunlight which came through the dense clouds overhead. He raised his head and looked about them for a moment. And, as the smaller teen considered him, the other boy seemed almost shaken by the idea of his coming any closer. He seemed not to have slept well the night before, lying beside him wide awake despite his initial lack of speaking. Yugi himself had not bothered to try to speak either, but he had wondered at the idea of the red-eyed being awake and uncomfortable.

"Are you okay?"

The words were initially met with silence. Then the taller boy blinked and looked at him sideways, glancing over his slim shoulder and then lowering his eyes towards the snow. He frowned as if in puzzlement, then slowly turned away again and narrowed his bright gaze.

"Yes, I am fine," he answered, but there was clear discomfort in his voice and he seemed too tired to care for much more. The smaller teen doubted there was any sense of truth within his words and the red-eyed teen did not look at him for longer than a moment or two. Then he turned away again and reached up to run his fingers through his hair despite the way that it was slicked slightly with the melt of snow. "Why do you ask?"

"Because you seem a little…unhappy right now."

Yami blinked, pausing in his step. Then he glanced over his shoulder to look at him once more. The smaller teen moved a little faster to reach his side, unnerved by the idea that the other might move away from him entirely. He swallowed hard; their eyes remaining locked as Yami peered at him and very slowly turned away again with a shake of his head.

"I am not unhappy. I am simply…not sure that I wish to truly go back to the camp right now." He drew in a deep breath, then exhaled. Yugi was mesmerized by the way his breath seemed to glitter and dance in that white mist before his lips. "It seems odd to think that I might need to be with them again. I did not consider how uncomfortable I might feel the moment that we would come here."

"You know that I'm not going to let anything happen, right?"

Yami blinked and looked at him pointedly now. "I do not require your protection, Yugi," he answered in an almost annoyed tone. "I am well aware of what I can do and how I might deter them from violence should I need to."

He shook his head. "I know that. But I don't want any of them to think for even a moment that it's going to happen to begin with. I don't want them to even get the idea." Yugi hesitated, then reached up to scratch at the nape of his neck with a sigh and shake of his head. "It's not okay for them to think that they're going to be able to fight with you like that. And if you're going to stay human…"

The red-eyed teen shook his head slowly. He had not _wanted_ to stay human to come here. He _had_ wanted to change but the stress of such an action would do nothing well for him. It would all but kill him should he not have the strength to maintain it for more than a few moments longer. He did not truly think to care to try his hand at such pressure. He did not want to tempt fate in any manner. It unnerved him more than ever to even consider how such a thing might happen.

And so Yami had fallen silent and simply shrugged as if it were simple and easy for him to come to such a conclusion. When Yugi had announced that he was going to the camp, the red-eyed teen had not been adverse to the idea. He had not even bothered to do more than blink and look at him. He did not even consider this more than a moment. And so he had simply followed the other boy out into the woods with a simple comment along the lines of "I'll come with you".

But now he wondered why he had not thought first to try to eat instead of simply following him like he did. His belly did not ache as fiercely as he had formerly assumed it might. He was simply hungry, a moderate sensation that he knew from former days of health. And he was desperate to attempt to fill his belly now. He wished he might have scented the air and tried for a deer once more. He wished more than ever that he could have tried to catch the ungulate without a second thought. He was hungry as his fingers worked lightly at the fibers of his shirt and lightly clicked his nails against the zipper of the hoodie.

"I know that you will not allow it to happen. I am simply…considering it. I would not be surprised should something of that magnitude come to happen." Yami shook his head and narrowed his eyes with a frown. His eyes flickered about for a moment before his lips pulled further back as if to drag into a deep grimace as well. "You have to understand that they might very well be upset that I left as I did. I did not tell them that I would be returning with you. I simply wandered off."

Yugi would have flinched had Yami not been staring back at him so pointedly. Their eyes were locked again and the small teen hated the expression that the other wore on his face. He did not like the grimace or the way he peered at him almost blankly. And so he licked his lips and stared at each other for a few moments. "Okay, but you came with me. And I'll tell all of them if they ask about it."

The other wolf shook his head again, turning away now. "It does not matter if they believe me or not. It changes nothing. I'll still win should any of them be stupid enough to challenge me. It comes down to the simple fact that I'm a lot more powerful than any of them are willing to consider. I can beat them into submission the moment I want to."

The small teen stared at him for a long moment, then looked away with a shake of his head once more. He drew in a deep breath, tired and far too exhausted as he closed his eyes tightly. "You don't honestly think that they would really try to hurt you or anything like that, right?" But part of him was snide as it bit at his question, furious that he would even ask such a thing to begin with. The question was stupid—foolish—he knew, and it surprised him how much it made his stomach ache. "I mean, they wouldn't try to hurt you enough to kill you…right?"

Yami considered him for a moment. "No," he said slowly, caught somewhere between a truth and a lie. He watched the other wolf for a heartbeat, then shook and tilted his head slowly in curious inquiry. "No, I do not think that they would be so stupid as to try such a thing. I do not think that they would be that foolish. I think they're more likely to bicker and argue than do anything else like that."

Yugi shivered, wondering at the words he'd spoken at the moment. "Do you think that we should hunt afterwards? I mean, I only thought about coming here to keep from having to think about going back to school tomorrow," he said slowly, narrowing his eyes and furrowing his brows. "So it wouldn't be too bad an idea for you to go ahead and catch another deer, right? Then you can eat as much as possible before we get home."

The taller wolf was staring past him and into the trees with a somewhat tired, almost dismissive expression. "That wouldn't be a bad idea at all," he said simply, shrugging slightly and nodding. "I think that it would be a mistake should I not do so. It would be a good idea to go ahead and hunt a deer if we can find one."

The other blinked and wrinkled his nose. "You know we can. We can find one if we look hard enough."

"You are very optimistic about this."

Yugi nodded after a moment, licking his lips slowly. "Yeah, I think that we'll be able to find it if we just try hard enough. I don't think for even a second that there will be any problem doing it," he said quietly. The small teen reached up to run his hands through his hair almost nervously, a sense of anxiety threatening to bite at his senses slowly but surely. "I just think that we might have to leave the camp earlier than planned and I can do the hunting while you wait."

Yami tilted his head. "You believe that I should stay back and allow you to hunt for me instead?"

"I think that we shouldn't have you change and potentially make anything worse." Yami stiffened slightly at the words, a miniscule amount of movement that made him appear almost to shiver and twitch. He blinked back at the other wolf with bright red eyes and Yugi almost smirked as he counted the small triumph. So he had been right in believing that Yami had not changed due to the possibility of hurting himself somehow further. "So I think that it'd be smarter for me to track and hunt it down and then you can eat and we can go back home again."

The taller teen peered at him with a look of near amusement. "You want me to eat it as a human."

Yugi nearly trembled, disgusted by the very idea, but shrugged it off again immediately. "If it means that you'll be healthy at the end of it, yeah," he said simply. He nodded and searched Yami's face for a moment. "Yeah, I'll sit around and you can eat for as long as you want. You can eat as much as you want on top of it. I don't mind just watching and making sure that you're feeling better."

Yami stared at him for a long moment, eyes narrowing into near slits as he tilted his head slightly to the side. He nearly grimaced but then shook it off again moments later, licking his lips and watching Yugi with darkened eyes. "We can discuss this further after we leave the camp later," he said almost curtly, shaking his head and turning away. Yugi nodded slightly, following him as well now as the other teen began to move forward. "It is not important now to make definitive plans. It would be wiser to wait until later to do so."

"Is someone coming?"

The red eyes flickered towards him. "No, but we are close to the waterfall. And I do not believe we should bring this conversation into the camp. It would be rather unwise to do so. I do not think for a moment that any of them might stop from fighting with us in turn."

Yugi fell silent after a moment, then shook his head slowly and drew in a deep breath. "Okay," he relented. But his mind was reeling as he considered the idea. He tilted his head and watched the other wolf for a few moments. "That's fine."

The small teen licked his lips again and reached up to run his fingers through his hair. Then he narrowed his eyes and reconsidered the other boy for a few moments. His eyes flickered about them before he exhaled loudly and made a move towards the edge of the ledge of stone which he knew would allow him to leap forward and through the waterfall curtain. He glanced over at Yami sideways, over his shoulder, with a somewhat tired expression. Then he drew in a deep breath and closed his eyes after a moment.

"I can go first if you'd rather," the red-eyed teen commented, startling him enough to make him look over with a gaze that was thrice its usual size. Yugi stared blankly at him for a moment, unsure of what more to say before blinking and slowly tilting his head. He seemed to think of the statement for a long minute before he finally nodded and lowered his eyes.

"That might be a good idea."

It would not do much to allow him to help Yami if something might happen. He might not have been able to catch him if the water was rushing fast enough. But the sight of him getting through the waterfall would do well to relax him, he was sure. Because he was abruptly fearful of the idea that perhaps the red-eyed teen might be swept away by the water all the same. And it was horrifying to think of such a thing. It was stunning and bewildering to him in this sense. And it made him feel sick for a moment.

Yami nodded after a moment. He did not look at Yugi for longer than a heartbeat more, then sighed softly as he stepped towards the end of the small cliff. He looked over his shoulder, eyes flickering about the small area. Then he turned back and blinked. The snow had lightened drastically in the time that they had been traveling through the trees to find the waterfall. And it was clear that it would be all but gone by the time that they were meant to head home. He knew this because the pressure in the air had lightened drastically. When it was more ionized he knew that the sky overhead would burst open with a more intense shower of ice.

So the threat of blindness in the time it took them to hunt or to make their way out of the camp would not be too great an issue. He drew in a deep breath, relieved by this observation. And then he moved to the edge of the cliff, backed up several yards, and ran forward. When he leaped, Yugi was surprised by how strangely he held his arms behind himself in order to keep his balance in this action. The small teen had never expected him to do such a thing. He had never even considered that the other might ever do this to begin with. But then the wolf disappeared from his vision and Yugi bristled faintly as he began to pace slowly back and forth on the ledge beneath his sneakers.

He drew in a deep breath and narrowed his eyes. He licked his lips and grimaced after a long moment. Then he shook his head slightly and moved to mimic Yami as closely as he could. He backed up, ran forward, leaped off the ledge and through the water. The impact was enough to wind him and he rolled a few feet against the stone. He huffed as he landed on his back, arms tucking around his torso and his legs curling up to brace there. His insides, he swore, were killing him. He thought for certain that the force alone was enough to destroy him.

He had never done this as a human more than a few times. It was incredibly painful to try such a thing. The upright stature of the human body made the action far more dangerous. It was easier to be knocked and swallowed away beneath the curtain of water. It was the longer, four-legged formation of the wolf's body shape that allowed them to leap forward almost effortlessly. His body would lock in place from the frigid touch and the leap itself would push him forward. The human form did the exact opposite, locking in a manner that could easily throw him downward and beneath the crash of the cascading falls.

"Jesus, that hurts." He was moaning as he opened his eyes into slits and looked over. Yami was standing a few feet away, drenched as he ran his fingers through his hair. When he tossed his head back and forth rapidly, the water splashed harshly against the stone cavern about them. Yugi moved to roll over to his hands and knees, surprised when he found a hand stretched towards his face. He blinked, moving to sit up a little taller, and then slowly reached up to grasp it. His palm was icy, as if made from the snow itself, as Yami helped him to his feet. "I wasn't expecting to get hit that hard _again_."

Yami blinked at him. "I was not aware that you had come here as a human before."

Yugi reached up to run his hands through his hair, surprised by how slick and slimy and cold the strands felt beneath his fingers. He looked at the other teen for a long moment, then offered him a weak smile as he muttered, "Yeah, I…I came back here as a human when I announced Slifer was taking your place as my beta. They're familiar with me this way."

The other teen stared at him, a sense of cold inquiry forming within his eyes. Then he nodded and turned away again. He looked like a rat in the clothing, as if he were too thin to do much more than shiver and stare back at him. He felt sick for a moment, seeing the harsh lines of the various bones beneath the water-logged stature of his clothing. He did not know what it was that he was meant to say at the moment, nor what he should do either. He did not want to make Yami feel alienated by making any comments that might cause the other to bristle in any way. He did not want to offend him. He did not want to harm him in anyway emotionally or mentally.

Yugi licked his lips and tilted his head slightly. His mouth was dry as he looked at the other wolf slowly. And then he sighed softly and reached down to wring some of the water from his clothes. The action made his clothes seem even colder than before. But it made his body warm further and he could feel the fever which burned beneath his skin, just below the surface as it threatened to break forth from his veins. And then he slowly shrugged it off and reached up to run his fingers through his hair once more.

"All right," Yami said quietly. "Let's go ahead and meet up with them, shall we?"

The smaller boy nodded and huffed as he looked around slowly. "It's a good idea for defense tactics, but holy shit it's cold now. And I hate getting so wet."

The other teen smirked at him in near amusement with a raised brow. "You think so? I couldn't tell that it was so cold. Thanks for making a note about it. I was not sure what kind of temperature this actually was."

Yugi rolled his eyes and came forward. "Jackass," he muttered, coming forward and moving to the ledge that would lead the way to the small gap in the stone ceiling. He reached upward and grasped at the stones there. He stretched his hands out further beneath the layers of snow, then out as far as they might go. His fingers curled downward and his nails sunk into the dirt surrounding the stone barrier. He hefted himself up and out of the hole, scraping his belly in the action, then folded his knees to brace himself on the rock. He shifted his weight and moved to straighten his back, dusting himself off.

Yami came a moment later behind him. He had waited until he was sure that Yugi could not hear his movements any longer. But then he too was straightening himself out and dusting away some snow and dirt which had been caught upon his jeans. He licked his lips and looked sideways towards the smaller teen, unnerved to find that Yugi was staring back at him. Then his blue-violet eyes lowered slightly and his lips pulled back into a mild smile.

He turned away again after a moment, then allowed himself to grin a little wider. Yami looked tired but not defeated as he followed him a few feet into the camp. It was odd to find that some of the wolves had changed back into their human forms as well. Many of them were wolves instead, but a small handful had taken to changing back and dressing themselves in jeans and fleece hoodies. The small teen paused with wide eyes, surprised by the sight, but Yami did not so much as wrinkle his nose in that moment. There was not a hint of bewilderment or surprise there. He seemed almost disdainful instead.

And, as Yugi thought to greet them, he understood why.

The voice was familiar, loud and boastful, and he halted curiously. Yami stopped beside him for the sole sake of looking back at him. The alpha blinked and glanced at his beta once more, nearly grimacing before shaking the thought off. He turned away again, narrowing his eyes slightly, and found himself startled by the words being spoken.

"There's no way, you moron!" the louder, boastful voice proclaimed. Yugi blinked and turned his head with a tilt of his head. He grimaced slightly, Yami doing the same as he turned his attention back as well. The words were just startling enough to make them both reconsider the thought of ignoring it. "The war isn't about werewolves versus humans!"

"Then what _is_ it about?" a calmer voice asked, one that sounded almost bored with the declaration from the other male. Yugi blinked and stepped forward, surprised and bewildered by the sound of the words there. He tilted his head, the voice incredibly familiar as it caressed his ears again. Then the smaller teen glanced at Yami and back, turning to make his way there forward.

"The lycanthropes and the hellhounds. We're going to slaughter them like they deserve."

"Why would they deserve that?"

"Are you stupid? Maybe because they're half-bred mongrels?"

"You can't just say that and expect me to believe you," the other commented dismissively. Yugi paused at the edge of a small dip of snow and earth, the tiniest indentation of the earth like a yard-long hole. He did not have to look over his shoulder to see Yami was there a few feet away from him. His eyes were on the smaller boy, he knew, but he was well aware that Yugi had no intentions of simply wandering off again. The wolf speaking in front of them raised his chin and looked towards them both with a somewhat curious expression amidst a rather calm demeanor. "That's a stupid statement."

"Who the fuck do you think you are, you stupid runt?" the other snapped viciously, turning on the other with a furious expression. "You aren't even the same _rank_ as me. You don't get to talk to me like you're the same status as I am."

Yami snorted loudly and shook his head. "Rank did not seem to matter to you much when I beat you into submission," he stated softly. The low tone of his voice, the way that the quiet statement was not boastful or aggressive in any manner, made the wolves in their group look up with widened eyes. Yami did not so much as blink. And his voice remained low and soft, capable then of the ability to stay level and even. "You do not need to be so resentful towards a lower-ranking wolf."

The boy's entire face had turned bright red, making his hardened brown eyes appear almost black as he scowled. Yami peered back at him lazily, red eyes scanning his countenance with little care. But the black-haired boy jumped to his feet, snapping, "You got lucky!"

"Lucky?" Yami repeated softly, lips threatening to pull up into a smirk. When he shifted forward, Yugi noticed with satisfaction that the color drained entirely from the other boy's face. He felt a smirk tugging at the edges of his lips as well now and Yami did nothing more than tilt his head at the other male. "Shall we see if my luck still stands now?"

The boy seated nearest the enraged teen smirked and reached up simply to grip at the edge of his hoodie with long, thin fingers. He tugged lightly, pulling the fabric just enough to make Chazz glance down with a puzzled expression. "Leave him alone," the other chuckled, shaking his head and glancing to Yami and Yugi again almost immediately. "I'm pretty sure he was taking it easy on you the first time. He might just kill you this time."

Chazz's face drained of color immediately. Then he scowled and narrowed his eyes, turning on Yami furiously. "Come at me, bro," he snapped. "The Chazz will kick your ass!"

Yami snorted so loudly that Yugi startled, turning to him with surprised eyes. The taller teen blinked and tilted his head, narrowing his gaze and smirking at the antagonistic male. "Did you just call yourself _the_ Chazz?" he snickered. His voice somehow retained its strength, something that made Yugi nearly sob with relief. "Did you _really_ just call yourself that?"

Yugi snorted, unable to help himself. "Leave him alone, Yami. He's just a kid."

The statement made his red eyes flicker towards him for a moment. All of the wolves in front of them paused, startled by the way they locked gazes for those few seconds. Then Yami huffed and turned away, lips pursed and brows furrowed in an almost bored expression. But his eyes had darkened considerably and there seemed to have been a million words that had passed between them, for Yugi looked just as tired as the other male now. And he looked far more than a little exhausted by the entire event, as if it had been far more than what they had just witnessed.

"Yusei," Yugi commented, turning to the other boy next to Chazz. The wolf blinked and raised his head, royal blue eyes stretching wide in surprise at the acknowledgment of his presence there. Yami looked over now as well, studying the male in front of them with curious eyes. Yusei felt as if he were being dissected as the red gaze peered at him so pointedly, boring into his flesh like claws and teeth that threatened to rip through each and every sinew and muscle. "What's with you guys being in your human forms?"

Yami looked away only when Yusei glanced at him sheepishly, feeling pinned by the way the red eyes continued to peer so intently at him. The pressure lightened immediately from the flicker of his gaze towards Chazz again. And so Yusei relaxed and drew in a deep breath, muttering, "I just got tired of being in my wolf form like that. It gets kind of…stressful, I guess? I mean, trying to remember that you're a werewolf instead of a real wolf sometimes makes it a little…unpleasant."

Yugi blinked, startled by the words. "Really?" He glanced at Yami, wondering if the reverse could be said for him. The red-eyed teen was so animalistic, much more a canine than a human even when he was in this golden-bronze skin tone with those long black lashes and the warmth of his glittering gaze. Did he feel incredibly stressed and alienated when he was in this form for too long? Did it make him anxious to become a wolf again, desperate to think in a more simplistic manner than the human body demanded of him?

"I just did it because my alpha was being annoying," Chazz commented cynically, sniffing loudly as he took a seat again. Yusei had long since released him, moving to put his elbows on his knees and lean forward. But his blue eyes had fallen on the other male curiously now. "He was just being a dick over everything from before so I got tired of it and changed back."

"You shouldn't have challenged above your rank," someone else snorted loudly. Yugi blinked and turned his head. The new voice was a boy with dark green and crimson hair that pointed downward in jagged spikes all around but for a short upwards pointing one of green. The sight of him was startling for the blue-violet-eyed alpha, surprised by the way he noticed the oddly translucent red eyes that looked almost pale like wine in the sunlight. He was ignoring the way that Chazz was glaring at him, face in his right palm and elbow braced against his thigh. "That was stupid of you."

Yami was considering him now. And, abruptly, as he looked at him, Yugi realized that the red eyes were tracking something that the smaller wolf himself had overlooked before then. Abruptly the other male tilted his head and narrowed his eyes, murmuring, "But, should I remind you that _you_ are the one to attempt to attack Atem in front of the packs?"

Yugi felt dizzy, almost winded with the thought that Yami might know of such a thing. He had not told him about that, he knew, and he wondered who might have told him this story. He wondered if they had been truthful in their description of it, or if they had hideously exaggerated it all for the sake of drama. He wondered briefly if Yami might hold a grudge for such a thing, though he could not assume to know why he would even consider it. Yami was not a petty person in the slightest and it bewildered him to even consider it to begin with. But something in him was alert, alarmed by the very idea that Yami might know.

He'd had no intentions to tell him before, nor did he want to even consider it now.

The wolf blinked wide pale red eyes at him, the shock in them making them almost pink. The edges of his irises appeared almost silver to him, as if he were staring into the veins of his eyes and watching them dance under his scrutiny. The thought made Yami almost snicker in amusement, realization granting him a sense of humor; the boy was not albino but the gene existed within his eyes. Either the boy had been sick when he was born and bitten later in life when there was no further choice or he had been albino formerly and the lycanthropy had altered his body genes enough to change his features in such a manner.

"Uh, I…" He blinked and frowned, then ran a hand awkwardly through his hair. "H-how did you know about that? I didn't think anyone had really…"

Yami did not so much as blink. "Obelisk mentioned it in passing," he said lazily, waving it off nonchalantly and shrugging slightly in amusement. "He said that you charged him."

Yugi swore he was going to kick Obelisk in the balls one day. All he had to do was change into his human form once. Yugi would be ready.

"I, uh…" His eyes flickered rather frantically towards Yugi and back again, eyes wide and cheeks turning bright pink with shock. He had clearly never assumed that the topic would be brought up again and so he looked clearly horrified by the idea altogether. Then he glanced at Yusei and Chazz who were both considering him with surprised expressions, as if stunned by the very idea that he might even think of doing such a thing to the white wolf. He gulped and looked back to Yami from beneath his lashes, terror making his body seize in place.

"It's over and done with," the beta muttered, shrugging. "I was simply curious."

Yugi released a breath that he had not realized he'd been holding. Then he reached up and ran a hand through his hair. He was relieved when he looked to his alpha and saw that Yami had not done more than blink at the wolf in question before him. Then he snorted and turned away again.

"You look like you're about to piss yourself," Chazz taunted, smirking in amusement and raising a brow. The pale red eyes widened and his cheeks heated further. His mouth opened and closed once before he scowled at the black-haired boy in annoyance. "What would you have done if he decided to fight you? Take it like a bitch?"

"Hey, knock it off!" a higher-pitched voice snapped. Yugi and Yami both blinked in unison, then turned their heads immediately towards the other wolf nearest the boy in question. Her hair was dark green with a layer of lighter neon to trace her bangs. It was done into two rather short pigtails, the part of her hair far on the left side of her head, a bright bow wrapped around her hair-band there. She was glaring at Chazz with hard orange-flecked hazel eyes, scowling as she shook her head. "You're not exactly the brightest crayon in the box, are you? You picked a fight with a beta who kicked your _dumb, scrawny ass_!"

Yugi snorted and reached up to press his hand into his face, snickering. Yami stared at his beta for a moment, smirked in amusement, and then turned back with a shake of his head. Surely the other boy had not been expecting her to use such an insult. The red-eyed teen shook his head slowly and looked to the group for a moment. Yusei and Chazz seemed to be the oldest, though not by much, he realized. He was shocked, eyes widening, as he looked about them for a moment. All of them were far younger than he'd been prepared to address.

"By Lupa," he cursed under his breath, but Yusei and Chazz both blinked and looked up. And Yugi immediately pulled his hand away and turned wide eyes on him, startled by the statement. Yami nearly snarled in dismay as he considered the group of wolves in front of him. Not a single wolf in front of him was older than fifteen at the most—and he felt that that might even be stretching it a little too far. He felt that that might have been far too optimistic for him to feasibly measure.

Yusei tilted his head, then furrowed his brows as he looked at Yami. The beta was bristling visibly, eyes sharp and disdainful of something that he himself doubted he would ever fully understand. There was a shadow within his eyes that seemed to transcend them entirely, burrowing further into the reality of a series of things that he had never witnessed or understood before in his life. And, as he looked at him and then Yugi slowly, he realized with startling clarity that not even the smaller lycanthrope knew just _what_ lay in the recesses of his thoughts and the darkness which clouded his gaze.

"So, uh, Yuya," Yugi muttered, abruptly turning away and towards the boy with wine-colored eyes. The smaller boy turned to him with wide eyes, confused and bewildered. There was a sense of tension within the small clearing that he had not expected to find and now Yami refused to even so much as look at them, as if they were something too devastating to see. "That's your name, right?"

He nodded. "Yep!" he said with a grin and two raised thumbs. Chazz snorted something under his breath about not being important enough to remember. Yuya scowled, the girl who had leaped to his defense bristled and opened her mouth. But it was from in front of them that a noise finally came that startled Chazz to a shocked silence.

Much of the group was too stunned to move, however. Realization had crept through each of them. And Yugi was even shocked by the aggressive display. Yami had turned on Chazz, rounded violently on the other male. His eyes were furious, his irises vibrating with his tension. His teeth had clicked so loudly that it had sounded like a clap of thunder. His lips were drawn back to show off bright white enamel. And his gums were dark red like his glowing eyes. The beta was frozen there, glaring at the other boy until finally Chazz lowered his chin and turned his head, exposing his neck fully.

Yusei was frozen beside him. Yuya couldn't stop gaping. Yugi was staring at his beta with wide, bemused eyes. And then he turned away with a small sigh, so soft that it was nearly inaudible. After a moment he turned back to them.

"Stop picking on Yuya," the blue-violet-eyed teen demanded in a monotonous tone, trying his hardest to keep his voice steady. Yami finally relaxed a few moments after the declaration was made. It was only when Yugi turned back to him and tilted his head, brows furrowed, that the beta turned away from him entirely once more. And then the smaller teen huffed and turned back to them. His eyes were softer now, as if he were studying them for the first time now. "You know, I think those are the only three names I know out of you guys. I know Yuya, Yusei and Chazz."

The statement made the others within the group perk up. In an instant the girl with green hair pointed to herself with a thumb and a huge smile, saying, "I'm Mizuki Koroti." Yugi nodded slightly, amused when she winked bright eyes at him a moment later. He raised a brow and beside him, Yami was watching her with a somewhat curious expression.

"Kamishiro Rio," the girl beside her introduced herself in a calmer manner. Her eyes were icy as she considered the two higher ranking wolves and she froze in place when she saw the way Yami peered back at her in turn. Her eyes were a dark pink, almost fuchsia near her pupils where they were oddly lighter, her skin paler than even Yugi's own, and her hair was blue with a much brighter shade to pronounce her bangs. She was seated in a crisscrossed position, and the longer she stared at Yami, the more she seemed almost to quiver. But as she grew more nervous, the boy beside her grew more annoyed.

His dark blue eyes flashed, a shade or two shy of the royal color Yusei possessed, his skin tone the same as the girl beside him. His hair fell down along to the length of his shoulders, the ends curling upwards, and the base of his hairline was light blue like the girl's bangs. It did not take him more than a moment to realize the familial resemblance. "Kamishiro," he growled, looking straight at Yami with a furious expression. The beta blinked, long and slow, unimpressed by his anger, and tilted his head only a fraction. The predatory response was enough to make his eyes quickly lower away again, though he shot him an annoyed look from the corner of his gaze. "Ryoga."

"We call him 'Shark' though," Koroti said suddenly, interrupting the glares the male kept shooting the red-eyed teen. Yami blinked and looked at her curiously for a moment, then turned back with a small smirk. "Because he's an asshole sometimes."

Yuya snickered and quickly looked away when Ryoga shot him a glare. Koroti narrowed her eyes at the blue-haired boy and Yugi reached up to rub at the back of his head uncomfortably. He glanced sideways towards his alpha but Yami was watching them with interest now. And Yusei and Chazz were both staring past them and into the woods with mirroring looks of boredom.

"Okay, well that's…" Yugi snorted. "A good way to introduce someone, I guess."

"I'll say," Yami muttered. "I'd love to hear what she has to say about her friends."

The smaller teen snickered and nudged him gently with his elbow. Then he turned away and looked back at the other wolves in front of him. "Okay, so, now I know Chazz, Yusei, Yuya, Koroti, Rio and Ryoga. And you guys would be…?"

The girl nearest him blinked and tipped her head up, her eyes locking on his for only a moment. He blinked, stiffening, the sight of emerald green eyes peering at him so plainly making his stomach knot. He had not considered that she would be human as well. It had hardly even been a concept for him to think about before. The wolves within the pack had hardly seemed likely to change forms and become human at any point. His disbelief of it had made him all but forget that they might be able to. And, staring at her now, he felt as if dread were burning its way up the back of his throat with a trail of bile.

Her hair was bright red like orange flames, copper before his eyes. Her wide gaze was framed by long lashes which made him bristle. Her expression was calm, but there was something sharp and probing within her eyes as well. And he hated her for it, intensity making his body tense as if he were preparing himself to be struck. He could feel his muscles bracing themselves despite the effort it took him just to remain staring at her. He hardly wanted to think of what she might say.

But then he glanced at the other two girls there with him and his stomach felt slick with pain. He recognized them by their eyes as well, feeling almost queasy as they looked up at him as well. He knew the three of them—Mieru, Zuzu and Ruri. He could not recognize their scents but he did not know exactly who they were. So he offered them a small, somewhat strained smile, muttered something about knowing them, and turned back towards a head of light blue hair that looked almost baby in shade.

"Yeah, I definitely don't think I've ever met you," he commented quietly. He raised a brow and wide gray eyes peered back at him. Yami was looking at him curiously now, head tilted slightly and brows furrowed in question. Yugi ignored this pointedly, staring at this other boy and wondering at the sight. These wolves didn't even know each other for the most part, did they? His eyes flickered toward Yusei and Chazz who were watching him with wide gazes, then towards the three members of the original pack, to the pair of blue-haired kids he thought must have been twins. Then he hesitated and frowned and bit at the inside of his cheek.

They hadn't met prior, he realized. They had all taken the time to change back and sit around and talk to each other; it was far more effort than he'd even put into meeting them all properly as he should have. He felt almost flushed at the idea, stomach curling forcefully.

"Uh, I'm Syrus…" The boy blinked up at him and Yugi's head snapped back towards him. The action made a bone pop in his neck. The blue-haired wolf flinched as if he might strike him. Yugi blinked stupidly, lost in his own thoughts for a moment. Then he nodded with a slight sigh and glanced at Yami sideways as he felt the impulse to see him there again. It felt more real if he could just spot him there, in the corner of his eye or face him fully. And the way Yami stared back at him, suspicious more than curious now, was still enough to reassure him and make the anxiety fade somewhat.

The red-eyed wolf abruptly turned away to face Yusei and Yuya and Chazz. "So, what did we interrupt anyways?" he asked, voice light and almost teasing. But his eyes were sharper than ever and Yusei had the feeling that he was paying far more attention to them than he might have been before. "You were saying something about the hellhounds and humans?"

Chazz snorted and leaned forward immediately, smirking. "The war that Atem is going to win," he said without pause. Then he looked at Yusei with a grunt. "And then we were going to talk about the Lunar Ascension a little bit. He insisted that we do that."

"Yeah, cause we all know that there are little details that get changed within the stories. They don't always stay the same when it comes to oral stories," the blue-eyed wolf responded quietly. His eyes flickered briefly to Yugi, searching his face before he looked away again rather quickly. "And I figured it might be fun to hear them. I mean, why not? It's not like there's anything else to do."

Yami was struck with the oddest sense of thought that perhaps Yusei was not _quite_ the oldest in the group of them right there. It was an almost dizzying thought. Because, as he looked at Chazz, he wondered at his ability to become the beta of a pack over twenty large, just as the other handful he knew of had been. And it was enough to make his head spin for a brief moment. The two of them stared at each other for a moment as he considered the other two males in front of him.

Chazz was older, he knew abruptly, staring at the black-haired male. And Yusei, despite his clear calmness and his ability to look on with such simplicity and not worry in the slightest, was younger than him. He was younger than Yami and he was younger than Yugi. And he was younger than Chazz. But he was not as young as Yuya. He was not as young as Koroti. But he was perhaps not as old as Rio or her twin seated beside her, the one that was nicknamed "Shark".

But he did not have the heart to ask. All he could think to do was watch them a moment longer. And the thought of words regarding that situation did nothing to calm him in even the slightest. Yami glanced at Yugi sideways. He'd wondered before how terribly young he might have been before then. He might have been thirteen for all he'd known, fourteen at the most. All he had known was that he had been desperate to save the little teen he'd seen that night, broken against the wall and bleeding so sluggishly that it was clear he'd die within moments had he not acted quickly.

And so Yami forced it away.

He didn't know anything about these wolves. They might have hit puberty earlier than usual. Or perhaps they had simply changed due to exposure to the others within the pack. It didn't truly matter, did it? It was not something that truly had any effect on what had already happened. The wolves in front of him were capable of changing as if they were seasoned warriors. They could change and hunt and run around and they knew how to do these things almost without effort.

"That sounds like fun," he said after a long moment, trying to fight away the urge to snarl low in his throat with growing tension. He had not considered that they might be bringing up such a topic to begin with. He had never assumed such a thing to be on any of their minds. And he was not sure that the sharing of that story was the best of ideas. The wolves outside of their small group might grow frantic or annoyed. And he could see it happening with little to no effort. So he hesitated for a moment, then narrowed his eyes as he considered it. "I think I'll sit in on this."

Yugi looked at him as if he had grown three extra heads and they were speaking ancient languages at him. He squinted, stared at him for a moment, tilted his head, huffed in frustration when Yami did not pay him any further mind, and then moved to take a seat beside him when he did so. Yami shifted just enough to give him more room and the small teen was satisfied in the fact that his body heat seemed to merge with his own. The other wolves were staring at them curiously for a moment, then Chazz awkwardly cleared his throat and Yusei reached up to run his hands through his hair slowly. After a moment he settled again, stretching his legs out and leaning back on his hands.

"Uh," Chazz started awkwardly, clearing his throat again and then sitting up when no one else spoke. But Yugi saw Rio snort and her brother was staring at him with darkened eyes, watching as if he were no older than them themselves, sitting and listening to this story as if it were something incredibly important. Chazz shifted his position, then straightened his back. His voice came out loud again, demanding their attention as he tipped his chin up slightly and began to talk once more. "It was three million years ago."

Yugi smiled slightly, lips tugging up at the edges with amusement. His eyes flickered to Yami who glanced at him sideways in turn. There was laughter in his gaze as well though he kept his mouth in its neutral state, refusing to budge in his reaction. The smaller teen turned away again after a moment, tipping his head up slightly as the other wolf began talking once more.

"The world was _covered_ in ice. It stretched up so high that it blocked out the sun," the younger wolf continued with brightened brown eyes, the darker glint of them making them appear muddy where they had been almost black before. "So the ice wouldn't melt and the world was basically one big sheet of white. The oceans were all but frozen and there were bridges that stretched from continent to continent. A few of the animals were smart enough to use the ice to get back and forth as they wanted. And that included the _wolves_."

Yami fought away a smirk of amusement now. Yugi bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing.

"They came from Eurasia to North America. And from there they began to populate the _entire_ continent." Yami raised a brow and looked at Yugi sideways. The smaller teen furrowed his brows and scrunched his nose up. Then they both glanced at each other and the blue-violet eyes lit up as the other smirked and shook his head slightly. They swapped knowing looks of amusement and turned away again to listen once more. "They shared the continent with dire wolves and humans and their dogs later. They were so close to territories with the dire wolves that sometimes they would even breed and merge packs. The wolves were still great hunters but prey was becoming scarce because of how many there were. The prey was moving and migrating so the wolves were following them."

"And the humans were following the wolves."

Chazz shot Kotori an annoyed look to silence her but the girl merely smirked at him. Yuya reached up to rub at the back of his head and glanced at Yusei. Yusei didn't blink but he snorted softly. Beside Yugi, Syrus looked like he was trying not to laugh.

" _Anyways_!" the black-haired beta snapped, turning away again and clearing his throat pointedly. He shot her another warning look and the girl snickered. Then he turned away again and raised his chin once more. "So, the wolves began to follow the horses and the mammoths and some of the rabbits. And the humans began to follow them because they were capable of hunting better than them. They couldn't find more than bare bones from the carcasses and they began to grow pissed. The humans turned their sights on hunting the wolves."

Yami tilted his head. His eyes had lowered to the ground now, staring at the snow. Yugi wondered what it was going through his mind at the moment.

"Humans are despicable," Rio commented quietly. Her sudden comment made both alpha and beta turn to her with surprised expressions. Her dark pink eyes bore into theirs in turn but there was some intense expression of disinterest within her gaze that made Yugi almost nervous for a split second. But it was Yami beside him who stared back relentlessly, until the she-wolf turned away and raised her jaw slightly as if with a sense of boredom upon her face. "I hate them."

Yugi blinked and his stomach turned. He looked at Yami, wondering at the way the other might have felt the same. He remembered that day in their room, when he was still more of an enigma in his head, living in his room with only the intention of healing his wrists. And it made his stomach churn faster.

"They were the wrong kind of people," Yami had told him, that day that Yugi had learned he'd been _raised_ by people. But then, between the three various stories that Yami had told him to hide away his past, Yugi was not entirely sure of what he should believe of the statements. He had told him more than once that he had been witnessed his parents dying. But hadn't he said something about his mother trying to kill him? He could have sworn he had…

"So the wolves turned on the humans. But the dogs attacked them too. They'd been trained to stay at the humans' sides and treat them as their masters. So the dogs forgot _where they came from_ and began to kill the wolves with the aid of their people." He had grown scornful now, Yami noted, though he did nothing more than tilt his head slightly and shift his weight to stretch his legs in front of him. "Because of this the wolves began to deplete. They would be killed with weapons and packs of dogs and they would retaliate and they couldn't keep doing so for long. The humans outdid them at times. And the humans and dogs kept breeding too quickly."

Yugi reached up to run a hand through his hair. Wolves only mated during the colder seasons, then gave birth in the spring after something along the lines of a sixty-day gestation period. Dogs mated twice a year, if he remembered correctly, and humans could reproduce all but year round. Of course, wolves had litters of anywhere from three to six to the very rare ten, and dogs had litters of anywhere from three to six on average. And people usually only gave birth to one or two kids at a time…

He remembered the way Slifer had told him about her family, how her mother had been killed a month or so after her birth. Then, soon after, her aunt to aid her in her survival was killed as well. And now he wondered at the thought of whether any of the others knew that. He wondered if they'd known that Lupa herself had selected the three of them, that she had woken sooner than Yami had told in that original storytelling he'd given him.

"So, as the wolves were being killed, they prayed to the gods Lupa and Fenrir."

The names made Yami shift his position mildly. Something in his eyes had turned darker. And he seemed to lean forward as if the words had beckoned such a reaction. But then he blinked and the tension in his body seemed to fall away once more.

"Eventually the bloodshed and the body count allowed them to wake Fenrir. Fenrir came from the heavens to speak to the wolves there." Yugi blinked and tilted his head. His eyes flickered briefly towards Yami and away again as he considered. Chazz was looking between them curiously for a moment and then tipped his chin up once more in a pointed manner meant to gather everyone's attention. "And he told them that he would give a gift to each of them. For the wolves with dark fur, he allowed them to change into different animals if they could eat the heart of it. Then the gray wolves were able to drink blood and heal from any wounds that they had. And then the white wolves were able to change into ghosts. When he came to the dire wolves he allowed them to spread the disease and change the humans into wolves with them."

Yugi blinked and glanced at Yami. He wondered briefly at the idea of what Fenrir might look like. Was he an immense huge monster of dark fur and glowing eyes? Or was he a wolf of the same size as himself and Yami beside him? Could he change into a human? Was it impossible for him to do such a thing? Was he or Obelisk or Slifer or Ra or any of the others able to change? It seemed almost overwhelming to think that in any sense.

"They turned the war back on its head. The humans and the dogs were all but completely killed. And Fenrir was _going_ to let us completely eradicate them."

The small teen tilted his head slightly towards his alpha. Yami was staring in front of him, watching Chazz with slightly cold eyes. And then he blinked and slowly glanced at Yugi as well. Their eyes locking made the smaller teen somewhat nervous. He was well aware of the fact that Yusei was watching them with keen, bemused eyes.

"Are you okay?" Yami said in a breath that was barely there, leaning closer so that his mouth nearly brushed Yugi's ear. The small teen nearly trembled with pleasure with the touch of his exhale there. And he drew in a deep breath and then turned to him with a small nod, blinking wide blue-violet eyes. They watched each other for a moment before slowly Yugi lowered his eyes and turned away again.

"But then Lupa woke up because of the wolves being so angry and killing so much. She sensed that a few wolf pups were left defenseless in their den and so she went to check on them. But when she did, she found a human woman there with the pups. She was feeding the wolves what little meat she could bring them and they were healthy enough that they would survive that day at least. So Lupa realized that if this woman could do this for the pups, she would acknowledge that perhaps the other humans knew how to help them too." Chazz blinked and tilted his head and narrowed his eyes after a moment. "She told Fenrir that they didn't need to kill all of the humans and their dogs after this. But Fenrir hated the humans for what they had done so he refused to stop the hellhounds he'd created."

Yugi blinked. Yami narrowed his eyes faintly. Yusei was watching them more than he was listening now. Something about the way that Yami had shifted his weight and Yugi was biting his lip made him feel almost as if he were missing something.

"So Lupa decided that if Fenrir wouldn't stop the bloodshed then she would. She went and found the pups from a pair of gray and dire wolves. There were only six of them and she decided that they would be perfect to do what they needed. But she knew what the hellhounds were capable of, so she told them that she would make them immortal. She gave them the ability to heal rapidly, to infect the humans and give them a chance to fight back, and to change forms."

"Lupa was stupid for that," Ryoga commented, sharply enough to make Yugi look over with wide eyes. Yami blinked and turned his head as well, confused and bewildered by the idea. He could not fathom for even a moment that another wolf might consider that of their goddess. It was shocking to him. But the way the boy stared at him reminded him _significantly_ of the oceanic predator the girl near him had introduced him as. "She should have just killed them all anyways."

"You're a fool if you believe that," Yami said slowly, narrowing his eyes into slits of gleaming red. "Should the humans not exist, we would not exist either. What would be the purpose of allowing us to change forms if there were no longer humans for us to be forced to camouflage amongst? You do not actually think that just because we are all wolves that we would not cause incidents amongst ourselves and perhaps even kill each other? We could be as plentiful as the humans themselves _or_ kill ourselves simply because of different ideas or anything of that nature."

"You're just as stupid as Lupa was if you think that," Rio sneered beside her twin. Yami didn't blink at her, instead slowly tilting his head to the side as he stared back at her with an unwavering look. "The humans are useless. And getting rid of them entirely would do us better than anything else."

His lips quirked up slowly as he looked at her, then he shifted his weight and leaned forward slightly. "Then I suppose you've all forgotten that the species came from the void in _pairs_." The statement made Syrus sit up with wide eyes, head snapping towards him with his mouth opening and shutting rapidly twice. Yugi furrowed his brows and stared at his alpha with a curious expression, unsure of what he should say or do in response. "Wolf and man, Lupa and Fenrir and Adam and Eve."

Yusei blinked and furrowed his brows. "Huh?"

Yami turned to him with a calm expression, but Syrus had jumped to his feet, hands in fists and entire body quivering for a moment as he looked at the beta in excitement. "He means from the void, Ginnungagap in Norse mythology or Chaos in others like Greek or Native American! First came the elements, fire and ice, and where the two met in the void it allowed life to be born. And then came souls that were made into physical beings, coming in groups of two with brother species whose survival relies on the existence of the other's! Lupa came with Eve and Fenrir came with Adam! That means that the wolves and humans would die together if one or the other went extinct!"

Yugi blinked wide eyes, then slowly turned her head back towards Yami with a stunned expression. Why had he never told him that? Why had he never mentioned that the first time that he had told him about the Lunar Ascension? And then he wondered at the thought. Adam and Eve had come with Fenrir and Lupa? If that were the truth, it could explain why the wolves were so demonized at times. It would explain why wolves had to be the only animals so tightly intertwined with human mythology and conceptions and were even proclaimed the origins of many races and groups of people. The Romans said Lupa had suckled Romulus and Remus and the same happened in the Turkish lore, though he did not recall the names… And Fenrir was meant to kill the gods within Norse mythology and his sons Hati and Skoll would eat the moon and the sun.

"But that's…" Yusei grimaced and ran a hand through his hair, frowning and looking at Yami with wide eyes. "I forgot all about that myth. But that's not…"

"It's just as important as the Lunar Ascension," Yami cut in rather scathingly. He was getting to his feet now, rubbing snow off his clothing, and he narrowed his eyes into near slits. He finished dusting himself off and rolled his shoulders. "The fact is that many of us don't care to remember that part of the lore because humans aren't exactly very brotherly towards us, are they? They don't care for the natural wolves and they don't care for us either. Because they've forgotten the lore and they've twisted it around as much as they want. And they choose to neglect those things for the sake of their own stupidity."

Syrus blinked at him, eyes still wide and boring into his. Yami didn't bother to look at him at all. And Yugi did not glance over, instead staring at his alpha with that same bewildered expression he'd initially worn moments before. Yugi got to his feet after a moment as well, still rattled by the very idea, dusting himself off a moment or so later as well. He glanced at Yusei, who still looked rather startled by the idea to begin with.

"Is that a real thing?" Chazz asked slowly, unsure of himself as he glanced at Yusei as if the other boy might know the answers. He looked as if he might be sick at the very mention. "I mean… I thought that was just a story to make us not attack them after the whole Werewolf Witch Trials thing…"

Yusei blinked and shook his head. "No, it's always been a story that we should have all known. I forgot about it. But a lot of us just don't want to think about to begin with. There's way too much that happens between us and humans and hellhounds and all of it just kind of tends to make you not want to think about stories like that anymore."

"But remembering them is important," Yuya muttered, frowning and ignoring the way Yugi and Yami both glanced at him. "We need to remember them before we do anything stupid that might cause a lot of repercussions, you know?"

"It's not even that big a deal," Ryoga sneered after a moment. All of them turned to him with surprised expressions. It was only Yami who blinked and narrowed his eyes and tilted his head almost hatefully. "Do any of you realize how much the humans outnumber us anyways? It'd be impossible for us to kill over two billion of them before they'd kill us too."

Yami shook his head. "You forget that a lot of them are likely wolves as well, secluded and hiding away or not. They might seem more abundant but you never know. And don't discount shape-shifters. They breed like rabbits," he muttered, pulling a foot up from the snow and dusting his sneaker off for a moment before moving forward in a leisurely pace. "You don't have to worry. It is not as if the war will decimate either side, I'm sure."

"Either side? There are three of them."

The red-eyed teen paused at the statement. Then he looked over at Chazz with a shake of his head. "I'm sure the humans in question will not be as involved as you might think. They like to kill and maim and torture and run experiments. And I would bet that many of them are probably infected by now due to greed. But I do not doubt that they will simply be bystanders to watch the wolves try to kill each other."

Yugi blinked. Something about the words made the hairs on the back of his neck stand in a bristle. It had not occurred to him before, and he was too afraid then to ask. But the realization seemed to wind him and his mouth was dry as he took to following the other male forward. They didn't glance back at the small group of wolves but he had the feeling that they were all staring after them, eyes wide and horrified. No doubt some of them would be far too scared to even think straight afterwards.

"That's crap, you know?"

Yugi blinked. Yami stopped a couple of steps in front of him. When he turned back, his eyes were full of disinterest and his head was tilted slightly to the side as if the words were nothing more than a hiss of breath from their lungs. Yugi turned back as well, finding himself surprised to see Ryoga and Rio standing and glaring at them as if they were a unified front.

"The whole point of this war is to get ourselves back to the top of the food chain. _We're_ the ultimate predators in the world. We're the apex predators when the humans think they are instead. And that's why Atem was created—to prove what an apex predator truly _is_."

"You think that wars are that black and white?" Yami asked quietly. "You think that a war comes around because of the fact that a species needs a lesson? You think that the gods are bothering to waken and come here now for the sake of telling us we're right in creating a mass genocide? Are you fucking _stupid_? Are you fucking ignorant? Should I beat the stupidity from you both now or shall I do it later?"

Yugi stiffened, stunned as the red-eyed teen stepped forward, lips pulled back and teeth bared. His eyes were flashing and his shoulders had risen slightly. "How you've survived so long to see my face is a mystery to me. But I'll rectify that situation now if you'd like." He shrugged Yugi off when the smaller teen reached for his jacket sleeve to stop him for a moment. "Wars are never so cut and dry, not when it involves multiple species. And what gods would send their creations to die for the sake of proving themselves superior? This battle has nothing to do with whether the wolves beat the humans or kill each other. It has to do with arrogance like yours. We'll be killed before we even learn to camouflage properly—"

"Yami, enough, okay?" Yugi muttered, feeling flushed. Syrus looked as if he might flee at any moment, he was quivering so hard. Yusei was stiff in his spot on the ground, horrified and gripping at the snow as if it might ground him. Chazz was frozen beside him, eyes nearly bugging out of his skull. Koroti had sprung to her feet and backed up several feet. And Yuya was shaking, head tilted to show his throat and body angled to drop to the snow at any moment should their eyes fall on him. Rori, Zuzu and Murei were gaping at them, eyes wide with shock; they had moved incredibly close to each other so that their shoulders were pressing together, as if they might possibly shield each other at a second's notice. "Leave it alone. You've gotten your point across."

"Really?" Yami asked, eyes darkening further and voice becoming guttural. "Because I don't think I have. Considering the way they're both staring at me like this, I don't think they understand just what I'm telling them—"

" _Enough_ ," the smaller teen hissed, moving to grab at his arm and hold him in place there. He was trying to suppress the urge to breathe harder and all but gape at the other wolf with the horrified expression he knew was fighting for his attention. He drew in a deep breath as Yami forced himself to relax beneath his touch and slowly tilted his head and looked at the ground. The submissive stance was lost entirely on Yugi, who was trying his hardest not to sputter a horrified thanks, but the others seemed to recover from their shock at the sight of it.

Yuya straightened, though he wouldn't look up. Yusei forced himself to relax. Chazz ran his hands over his face. Syrus paced a few steps and turned back with those same wide eyes. Rori jumped up. Zuzu got to her feet and dusted herself off. Murei stared at them with a blank, unblinking expression. And Koroti had moved to Yuya's side as if she were to protect him should Yami so much as look in their direction. Rio and Ryoga were staring at them with somewhat rattled expressions, clearly shocked that Yami might respond that way to begin with.

"Okay, so, uh, you and me are going to go hunting. You guys get back to doing whatever you…want to, honestly," Yugi huffed, gently pulling Yami back a step. The other male huffed, spun on his heel, and started to walk again. He gave them all awkward smiles, turned to Yusei with a slightly hesitant expression, and muttered, "Just stay out of trouble, okay?"

"Don't worry! You've got a beta right here! The Chazz can handle everything!"

Yusei snorted and smirked in amusement. Yugi flashed the black-haired boy a small smile that was a mixture of strained and grateful and then ran off to catch up with Yami. The small teen immediately wished he had changed before then, huffing as he hurried through the snow to catch up with him. And, when he did, he was simply relieved to see that the other had not changed or taken off on his own. He'd gotten to the edge of the camp and turned around to wait for him impatiently.

"You okay?"

"I threaten to kill two kids and you ask me if I'm all right."

"Well, yeah. That was…kind of out of character for you, I guess," Yugi said slowly, hesitating for a moment. He had the impulse to reach out, to try to draw him closer. He wanted to see that he was okay, to put to rest whatever had stressed him out to such a point. But he knew instinctively that no such thing would come to him. And he had no answers for the other wolf as it was. And so he felt that it was useless to try to do such a thing. Because Yami would not accept physical comfort in any sense, he realized. He was still angry. And his temper was lost. He was not amused. He did not want to have Yugi so much as get too close to him. So the smaller teen stopped a couple of feet away and busied himself with the task of putting his hands in his pockets. "So are you okay?"

Yami narrowed his eyes and tilted his head. "Why would you think that's out of character for me? You don't know me well enough to say something like that," he said quietly, searching his face. "I am not that person that you might think that I am, Yugi. You don't honestly think for even a moment that you know me so well, do you?"

The smaller teen stared at him for a moment. The impulse to reach out for him again was almost overwhelming. He was not sure where he would touch him—his cheek, his shoulder, his arm—but the thought of doing so made his fingers clench in his pockets. "I don't know everything about you, Yami," he answered softly. "But I _do_ know who you are right now just like I did when you were living in my room all that time. Are you going to tell me otherwise?"

"I would have thought that the conversation we'd had just hours before would make you rethink that," the other commented coldly, eyes sharpening as he looked away and began to step towards the trees again. Yugi could just barely see the smallest of shivers making his shoulders twitch beneath his clothes. He was shaking his head as he continued forward and Yugi followed a few steps behind. The distance between them made the small teen feel as if a chasm had opened between, fractured and broken.

"I think I know you enough to say that I care about you," Yugi muttered so quietly that the taller teen hesitated in surprise upon hearing those words. He blinked, then slowly turned his head and looked over at him curiously with wide eyes and an expression which neared absolute puzzlement. The smaller teen would not look up from the snow but he could feel Yami's dark red eyes staring back at him. "And I think I know you enough to say that I trust you. If you want to tell me half-truths and hide things at times, I'm not going to ask you to explain and I'm not going to demand to know those things. You don't _have_ to tell me each and every thing."

Yami stared at him for the longest time, head tilted and expression bewildered. He frowned in puzzlement and searched his face as Yugi glanced up slowly from beneath his lashes. As their eyes locked and they peered at each other, the two of them were unable to do more than stare in silence. Finally, after a moment, they looked away and the taller teen narrowed his eyes, muttering, "You are very kind to say something like that."

The smaller teen couldn't stop looking at him now. "I don't know if that's really what it is."

He snorted. "You truly don't think that?"

"I think it's a little odd that you think that I'm such a good person because I respect your privacy," Yugi answered softly, reaching up now to rub at the back of his head. Yami had stopped and was facing him now, red eyes burning into his. "I think you have every right to occasionally hide things that upset you, Yami. I don't think for even a moment that anyone has any right to demand to know every little secret that another person has in their life. It's not logical."

Yami considered him for a moment, then turned away slowly. "If you believe that," he murmured with a small shrug. But then his head turned back around so that he could face him for a moment. "Are you still…? I don't mean to say that you have too, but I…"

Yugi blinked. "Am I still what?" He tilted his head, then tipped his head up slightly and searched his face for a long handful of moments. Then he blinked again, pulled the left side of his mouth up into a crooked smirk, and teased, "Do you honestly think that I'd turn back on helping you catch some food?"

The other boy shook his head after a moment of hesitation, considering him before turning away again and exhaling softly. "No, but I…I do not want you to feel obligated to help me in that manner," he said quietly. "I did not know if you would still want to help me or not."

"And why wouldn't I, Yami?"

Yami snorted. "Perhaps because of the fact that I just threatened to kill two kids? Or what about how I just told you that you don't know me nearly as well as you might think?" he said softly. "I have other things I might list that have happened in just the last few days, but I will leave it at this for now."

The small teen opened his mouth, then closed it again. His heart had begun to ache in his chest as he looked away and glanced at the ground. "Oh, aibou," he muttered under his breath. But the words reached Yami who froze in front of him, so abruptly in his movements that Yugi stepped into his back and jerked away in surprise. He looked like a startled cat for a moment, eyes wide as his mouth opened and closed. And then Yami blinked and slowly turned his head to stare at him curiously for a long moment.

"Did you just call me your aibou?"

Yugi felt his entire face burning as he opened and shut his mouth twice. Then he grimaced and reached up to rub at the back of his head for a long moment. "Uh…y-yeah?" he managed, flustered.

Yami stared at him, a long and intense expression of red boring into his eyes before he shook his head slowly and considered him for a handful of moments. "You think that I am your aibou?" he said slowly, the words incredulous and his eyes narrowing briefly.

The smaller teen furrowed his brows slightly, then tilted his head. "I…uh…"

The other boy shook his head slowly. "I am _not_ your partner."

Yugi blinked and his heart felt fractured in his chest, but there was something in the firm tone which made him curious for a brief moment. There was something within his voice, soft and different, and somehow it made him feel relieved. It was not as powerful a statement as it should have been, despite the firmness in his words. And the small teen was winded for only a moment. "You're my pal," he stated evenly, " _and_ you're my beta. You _are_ my partner."

They stared at each other for a long handful of moments. Then Yami looked away and tilt his head and narrowed his eyes. "You should find better people to spend your time with," he replied in a darker tone. "You do not need to waste your time with people so beneath you."

The smaller teen flinched violently as the words met his ears. He opened and closed his mouth, stunned by the very idea, and then shook his head slowly. His eyes grew wider than before, his mouth drying out and his heart catching in his throat for a moment. The realization of such broken self-confidence made him feel sickened and his bones felt cold beneath his skin and the marrow had to be frozen under those many layers of muscles and sinews. He felt as if his knees might buckle beneath his weight for a moment. And then he forced himself to walk forward again, as he realized that Yami would not stop to allow him time to catch up. Had he needed to, the red-eyed teen would simply consider that Yugi had gone home instead of helping him to hunt and then he would catch his own deer. And Yugi doubted that Yami would then find his way to the house again. Most likely he would simply hide out in the camp with the others.

And so Yugi trudged after him. His hands were shaking, he realized. And his mouth was dry and his heart hurt. He felt as if he had been punched in the gut or perhaps slapped in the face. And he could not think for even a moment what he should do beyond that.

"I'll, uh, change in a minute, okay?"

Yami paused in front of him, turning around in confusion. He furrowed his brows and tilted his head for a brief second. Then he nodded slowly and exhaled softly, muttering, "Okay."

It took another ten minutes of walking before Yugi finally decided it would be best to do so. He shivered, mumbling that he would do so then. Yami had turned around, surprised by the declaration; the expression on his face was incredibly bemused at first before realization made him nod and look away. He had seemed as if he'd forgotten their agreement, thrown off by the very idea of their former conversation.

Yugi changed after a few minutes more, unsure of what more to say or do. And Yami had dutifully faced away from him to give him privacy. But something inside of the smaller teen almost wished he might make him turn around, exhausted by the way the other had turned his back on him. He sighed softly and shook his head after a moment, then drew in a deep breath and ran a hand through his hair.

 _All right, so where do you think the deer are going to be hiding at a time like this_? Yugi asked, turning to him with a small wag of his tail. The white wolf searched his face, then padded forward a few steps. Yami licked his lips and turned away from him after a few moments. _If I were a deer, where would I be_?

Yami looked over at him, at first with a curious glance, and then with a small frown. He had shifted his weight and his hands had lowered slightly, his left wrist flipped to show the inside. He scratched lightly at his skin there for a moment, then hesitantly, he cleared his throat. The noise made Yugi stiffen in confusion, eyes widening and peering at him with his ears pricked and his tail dropping. "I…I realized that what I said was a lot harsher than I meant it to be," he said softly after a moment, looking him over for a split second. "I simply meant that I…I do not consider myself your equal."

The statement made Yugi blink and falter, eyes wide and startled by the declaration. It was said somewhat easily but the realization made his heart hurt more. _You don't think that you're my equal_? he asked in a melancholy tone. _You honestly think that I'm above you_?

The other was silent for a moment. "If you knew half of the things I've done, Yugi..."

The wolf shook his head slightly. _I would still consider you just as great as I do now, Yami,_ he said firmly. But he did not try harder to convince him, as a part of him knew that Yami would not respond well to such a thing. And so he blinked and pricked his ears, looking away slowly. _I think that you don't see yourself properly, Yami._

"I think the same could be said for you. I think that the statement applies for both of us, honestly," the taller teen stated quietly, searching his face for a long moment. Then he shook his head slowly and closed his eyes, reaching up to rub at his right temple after a second heartbeat. "You do not ever seem to know yourself very well either."

Yugi wondered at the statement, unsure of what more to do or say. But he remembered the many times Yami had told him that he was kind, when the small teen seemed more curious than anything else. And then he thought of the way that the wolves seemed to believe that Yami himself was more powerful and likely to be Code Name Atem. And so Yugi felt tired as he turned away slowly and flicked his ears.

 _I think that we both have a few things to learn from each other, huh_? he murmured with a much more abundant wag of his tail. Yami blinked at him, surprised, and they looked at one another almost curiously. _I think that we can both discover it later._

Yami blinked again, considering his face. Then he nodded and smiled, slightly amused but clearly troubled as well. The red-eyed teen reached out to run his hands briefly over Yugi's head, around his ears and down his face to cup his cheeks. Yugi wagged his tail a little more, opening his mouth slightly to show off his bright incisors. Then the wolf jumped slightly, standing for a moment on his back legs, to stretch his neck forward and lick at his nose. Yami snorted loudly and shoved him away with a hand to his forehead, and the white wolf wagged his tail a little faster.

* * *

 _Can I ask you something_?

Yami looked up from where he had taken a seat in front of him and was lounging with his weight on his arms. He had been somewhere between dozing and watching the snow for a brief moment. Then he stared at the bright-eyed wolf in front of him with a tilt of his head. He did not have to speak to let the other know that he had no issues with his possible inquiries.

 _I wanted to know if you still remember what happened the night that you_ … But then he fell quiet, almost as if he could not find the words to continue speaking. Yami frowned and considered him, but the wolf kept staring at him with a somewhat anxious expression. And soon his ears flattened against his head. _The night you…_

Yami leaned back again, rolling his neck. Then he fell back into the snow. Yugi immediately leaped to his feet and came to his side. It was odd to see that the teen was lying there so comfortably. He'd almost worried that he might have fainted for all he'd known. But the red eyes were wide open and staring up at the dull gray sky overhead.

"Pure-Bloods have to be in a calm surrounding," he muttered softly, voice low and tense with fractures as he refused to look towards him, "when they…are reborn from healing from a bad enough wound."

The white wolf stiffened at the declaration, then pricked his ears forward more pointedly. _You truly think that the Pure-Bloods come back to life after they've been hurt to the point of being killed_? he asked slowly. But he remembered the way Obelisk's throat had snapped in the snow beneath Yami's attack. And he remembered the way that he'd gotten back to his feet again. He even remembered the way that the gray wolf had snarled at him that he'd just killed him and he'd do the same to Yami if Yugi had not helped him to subdue his alpha in the first place. _I mean…all of them_?

Yami blinked. "All of them?" he echoed, turning his head. But the snow was feet deep and he swore the white beyond his face seemed to stretch for miles. And Yugi's fur was just as pristine as the other leaned a little closer to look down at him more pointedly. His bright blue-violet eyes were hypnotizing against the black almond shapes of their lids. "You don't think that you would survive a killing strike?"

Yugi watched him silently for a long while. Then he shifted his weight and took a seat, peering down at him for a few moments. _I don't know. The idea that I'm immortal doesn't seem possible,_ he answered quietly, almost nervously. _I think that the_ gods _might be powerful enough to do that, but I don't know that I could myself. It doesn't seem like it's_ … _I just_ … _It still seems kind of like a fairytale or something that I can even turn into a wolf in the first place, you know_?

The red eyes peered back at him for a long moment. Then he smiled slightly and shook his head. "I don't believe for even a moment that the gods would have come to help you so often if you _weren't_ able to do it. I think they're scared of the consequences of what might happen if you _did_ have to be reborn."

 _Consequences_? Yugi pricked his ears forward pointedly. _You mean like me attacking or killing someone else by accident_?

"I think that if you had to come back to life during a fight, it would be far more dangerous than one of the gods themselves having to do such a thing," he replied softly, looking at him again now. He could see the smallest bead of sweat at the tip of his nose, the calloused muscle soaked from his task of hunting minutes before. "They might know themselves and their circumstances and they might be able to very easily reclaim their knowledge of what was happening. If that should ever happen to you, I do not believe that it would be so easy for you. I think that it would cause you to fall into a more violent state, as is said of what happened with Pure-Bloods altogether."

 _What do you mean_?

"Do you remember the day that that hunter managed to herd us into the greenhouse?" Yami closed his eyes and did not bother for even a moment to try to raise his fracturing voice. "When I was electrocuted…"

Yugi blinked and tilted his head curiously for a moment. _Yes, I remember that._ He nearly shuddered. Yami had been lying there, so incredibly still and exhausted before he'd finally breathed in again. And he'd looked ready to attack, just as Mai had warned him against, before, finally, the black wolf had relaxed upon seeing Yugi there. But he'd still glared at Mai and Otogi and he'd rested there watching them before he'd limped off to change back into a human. _Mai had said that you'd be feral when you came back._

"Normally what happens is, if the circumstances are not peaceful and calm around you, a Pure-Blood becomes vicious and feral. The pain will still be very clear in their senses and it tends to cause a lot of issues for the wolves in question. It causes them to think that they are still under attack. And, if there are any others around them, they tend to lash out against them in a panic. And that usually triggers the adrenaline rush and that makes them more likely to kill them." Yami fell quiet for a moment, then sighed loudly and shook his head. "Should the area around them be peaceful and easy, they tend to be able to regain themselves and get up without too much of an issue. They tend to be able to understand the things that had happened beforehand and relax long enough to heal more properly than if they are under the impression of being in the center of a fight of any kind."

Yugi watched him with a simple tilt of his head and a prick of his ears. _I understand. It makes sense._

"They lose any sense of identity or allegiance. They don't know or understand what is happening before they lash out again. It's as simple as that. You do _not_ want to be around a Pure-Blood when they are revived in that way."

 _Have you ever been around one before_?

"Me? You are the Pure-Blood I am around most often. And I do not recall you dying."

That was only because Yami so often helped him in the first place. It was only because he had tried his hardest to help him as it was. And it was only his guidance which had so often helped him to avoid such consequences. It was daunting, almost horrifying, to consider it. Because he knew very well that the other teen was the only reason that he was even still alive. It was not even just that he had bitten him and saved him then. It was the various times that he had come about to his rescue afterwards, powerful and knowledgeable beyond anything Yugi might have known before.

But, as he looked down at the lycanthrope in front of him, a new thought occurred to him and the relief that came with it was overwhelming. His heart had begun to pound in his chest and the noise made Yami tilt his head slightly in the snow, visibly bemused by the new pace. _I just… You're healing nicely,_ he said quietly, flicking his ears and shifting slightly closer. _You're not suffering any night terrors and you seem to be gaining at least a little weight. I just_ … _I'm excited_! _This is great._

Yami snorted, then chuckled and shook his head. "You _would_ think of that when I'm telling you about Pure-Bloods coming back from the dead," he commented softly with a smirk. He reached up to swat at his muzzle when Yugi wrinkled his nose back and showed his teeth in a mixture of a sneer and a smile. His fingers touched his nose where the warm sweat quickly chilled upon encountering his skin.

 _I was thinking more about how happy I am that you don't have any health issues,_ Yugi said as he leaned forward a little further and tilted his head. He shifted a fraction closer still, then peered at him as if he might leap at him at any moment. His tail was wagging slightly, his eyes bright as they stared at one another again. _That's pretty amazing. I mean, it's not that drastic a change. You haven't completely gained any weight back or anything, but you don't look as skinny as you were before. And your clothes kind of fit better, I guess_?

The other teen didn't respond to this, instead looking up at the sky again and muttering, "Did you realize how close we are to the river?"

Yugi froze in place for a moment. Then he stiffened, bristling, and shifted somewhat closer. The movement made the snow at Yami's hip fall inward to cover his jeans. The taller teen glanced at for a moment, then turned away again. And the wolf flicked his ears briefly before sitting more comfortably as he tilted his head and they looked back at another. _I didn't really think about it,_ he admitted, turning his head to glance over his shoulder and towards the snowy expanse. Where the trees thinned out properly and seemed yards apart, he knew the river lay beneath all the snowflakes, the ice thick and perhaps reaching deep enough to freeze most of the water there.

"I broke through the shallower ice on the banks before I would have frozen to death," he commented quietly, almost listlessly, the tone of it disinterested and mild. The words made Yugi look immediately over at him again, heart pounding a little faster. Was he truly talking about this right now? He had imagined that Yami wouldn't want to take the invitation to tell him such a thing when he'd asked. He had not thought for even a second that he would consider it for more than a brief heartbeat. "The ice was shallower around the end where it would have gotten to the pier. And I suppose that's where he found me."

Yugi stiffened, bristling. Fuwa had found him then? Or had it taken him longer? Had it taken him a little while to find Yami? He had been so hopeful that perhaps Yami had been safe enough for a short amount of time that he would not have been found and harmed immediately…

Of course he'd always known otherwise but he'd just wished…

"I think I was out of the water for a few hours. I think the ice had been broken there and I'd gotten caught there. Because I was hallucinating for a long time. I was…" He fell silent for a long while, staring blankly up at the sky where the clouds were silver and white and incredibly crowded. He could not see the sun in any manner overhead and it surprised him for a moment. "It doesn't matter what I was hallucinating about. It was…traumatic enough without speaking about it. I meant to say that the person to find me drugged me soon after."

Yugi blinked and bristled further, feeling his lips pull back furiously. He was shaking, trembling, with his growing rage. The blue-violet eyes had turned darker, full of resentment and disbelief, and his heart was racing faster than ever in his chest. He pricked his ears forward, narrowed his eyes, and fought the urge to snarl out loud.

Yami stared at him for a moment, then reached out to touch his muzzle. It startled Yugi enough to make him jump, eyes wide and startled as he stood a few inches from him. It took only a handful of heartbeats before the white canine finally moved forward to sit close enough to take the spot at his hip. The two of them considered each other for a long moment. The red-eyed teen blinked and watched him with his head tilted and his ears pricked further forward than before.

"You can relax, Yugi, it's over and done with."

 _But I never wanted it to happen to you to begin with._

The teen shook his head. Yugi could see the smallest smear of blood at the corner of his mouth, bright red and smudged. He remembered the way the red-eyed teen had dug into the deer without much more of a thought. He had rubbed his sleeves against his mouth in order to clean his lips and had done a rather sufficient job for the most part. But now he noticed that slight smear and his first thought was, admittedly, to lean forward and lick it away. He had never considered it before that moment, but the sweet smell made his mouth water and he had not eaten any of the deer for the sake of allowing Yami to eat his fill…

"It would have happened to someone else if it was not me." He paused. "Well, truthfully, it _did_ happen to another wolf. I don't remember what happened to them after I'd broken their shoulder. I just remember that he moved them away after I shattered the bone there."

Yugi tilted his head, remembering the wolf that he'd killed in that maze of mirrors in the greenhouse. He remembered the way he'd initially met that wolf in the alleyway. The Burger World employee had attacked him in that alley in front of his friends. He remembered that very clearly.

"Fuwa found me with a little extra help," he continued, moving to sit up now. Yugi licked his lips and watched the red-eyed teen in front of him. The boy got to his feet after a moment, dusting himself off. The white wolf looked at his imprint in the snow and for a heartbeat or two why it was that he had not told him to make an angel there. But the moment was broken already as he turned back to the teen who stood with his eyes fixed on the carcass a few feet away. He did not look hungry, however, Yugi noticed, but he thought that Yami looked slightly stressed, perhaps annoyed at the moment. "When he originally found me, his plan was to shoot me. I wasn't the one he wanted, was the way he phrased it. So I assumed that meant he was after you."

Yugi shivered and looked at him with widened eyes.

"He had planned to just shoot me in the head with a silver bullet, from what I understand of it. But I think he was convinced to keep me and cage me in one of the factories in order to run tests on me and see about my endurance levels." He reached a hand up to press the heel of his palm into his temple for a moment, breathing in deeply as if doing so might help to clear his mind. "Or maybe we were always in that damn greenhouse. I don't honestly remember. I can't recall much of that time due to the various black spots in my memory. Regardless, he ran tests and he tortured me for a while…"

 _You don't have to tell me if you don't want to._

He shook his head, continuing in a quieter tone. "When he drugged me, I woke up there, wherever he decided to drag me. And it was a trap—or maybe an arena or something of that nature. I'm not entirely sure. I don't remember. I was so tired and in so much pain that it eludes me. But he _did_ have me set up to play with a series of traps that led me to…various _new_ traps." He looked into the trees for a long moment, at the soft shadows that were cast about the snow due to their presence there. He narrowed his eyes and looked sideways towards the bones that were poking out beneath a light pelt of bright red and brown fur. "I would end up going too close to a wall and the metal netting would snap and the boars would come out."

The boars?

The _boars_?

Yugi was salivating now, drooling heavily as his lips pulled back furiously. Each tooth glittered in the low light and his breathing was harsh as he fought away a snarl. He couldn't think straight for a moment, the idea infuriating him. He was shaking furiously now, his eyes glowing. His ears were pricked forward and his nose was sweating harder. He could see the mist leaving his mouth in ragged gasps. And he hated it when his chest vibrated with a snarl that he could not suppress.

The noise made Yami look over his shoulder. The sight of white gums against white teeth, of saliva dripping from his long canines and sharp incisors, of snowy fur risen in jagged spikes and the shaking that the other wolf possessed made him frown. And then he sighed softly and shook his head slowly, reaching up to run his fingers through his hair in frustration.

"You _do_ remember that he's _dead_ , right?" the teen said slowly, narrowing his eyes. Yugi was shaking and his tongue came out to run over his nose. He blinked at him but he could not stop snarling and breathing hard. And his entire frame was stiff with the forceful shudders that ran through him. His fur was in a ragged bristle, his blue-violet eyes full of hate and bitter despair. "You remember that, right? Cause I'm _pretty_ sure tearing his throat out and eating some of those boars gave me the runs."

Yugi blinked. His tongue flicked forward to run over his nose again. He could not think straight for a moment. He could not stop himself from snarling a little louder. The entire noise was so guttural that it made his head spin and his heart race where it rested in his throat. He flattened his ears against his head and tried to stop himself but the drool falling from his jaws was heavy and came in thick rivulets of clear saliva. He stared back at Yami pointedly for a moment, unsure of what more to do than quiver as he blinked at him.

The red-eyed teen tilted his head and considered him for a long handful of seconds. "You need to relax, Yugi. I promise you, he's very much dead. I ripped his throat out and I'm almost a thousand percent sure even biting him like that caused me to get the runs later." He paused and sighed, shaking his head as he turned away again and glanced at the deer carcass once more. His mouth was watering for a moment but not enough to make him truly want to eat. His belly was too full, his stomach heavy with the task of digestion. So he simply turned back around after a moment and considered him. "The point being, the trap was basically like a maze where if I moved too close to the netting, it would trigger a mechanism to raise it. And then the boars would come out. They would stampede me and rip into my flesh as much as they could possibly desire."

The words made Yugi shudder but then he sputtered a noise. It was like a cough and a bark, or perhaps a cackling, and Yami startled as he looked at him with wide eyes. His mouth opened wider than before, his jaws parting and showing bright white teeth and gums. The wolf blinked and spat the same noise out a second time, a sputtering laugh which made the other startle and stare in shock. Yugi stared back at him, his mouth a hideous gaping formation of a sneering grin that showed all forty-two of his immense teeth.

 _I just… Oh my fucking gods, Yami. It's insane,_ he managed to croak out, his voice uneven and unsure as he looked at him with wide eyes. _He wasted so much time and energy to capture and torture and kill two_ sixteen-year-old _boys. Do you understand how_ absolutely ridiculous _that is_? _We're sixteen and he wasted all that time just to…_

Yami tried to return the smile, but it was exhausting to do so and he could feel it straining at the edges, as if he had forgotten how to do so. His amusement was limited as he stared back at the wolf. And Yugi seemed to lose his laughter the longer he looked at him. The wolf fell silent after a moment or so, then moved to his feet and slowly stepped towards him. Another time, perhaps Yami might have moved away from him. But now he was simply tired and so he let the blue-violet-eyed wolf come closer. His muzzle was lowered, pressing his forehead into his hip gently. It was a tired motion, one that mirrored the exhaustion that Yami could feel biting through his senses altogether.

 _Let's go home, okay_?

* * *

Yugi had gotten Yami settled in the bed next to him. The red-eyed teen had fallen fast asleep beside him, curled up facing the opposite wall. He had drawn the sheets up to cover him to his shoulders and had taken the spot next to him. They were so close that Yugi could have reached over and settled comfortably in a spooning position had he truly wanted to. But instead he moved to lay with his back against his. He could feel each soft breath the other wolf possessed, the way that his spine lightly moved and flexed to brush against his own with each action. It was somewhat surprising to the smaller teen to feel such a thing. But it was not uncomfortable and so he did not bother to think twice about it.

The smaller teen was staring at the wall as he tried to think to find some rest as well. It was odd how warm the other wolf was, how much heat he seemed to exude in the cold room. It was almost amazing to him how comfortable the sensation was. Yami's even breathing against his back, the way he gave off so much heat, the way the air conditioning clicked on minutes later as if to combat it. It was curious to him at the moment, the way the air seemed to swell and almost expand as if to blanket them as well.

But the moment passed. And Yugi felt himself growing comfortable as the air became the smallest degree warmer. He listened to Yami's breathing intently for a moment, the pattern soft and beautiful in his ears. And the way his heart sounded in his ears was mesmerizing, drumming there within his senses. Yugi loved the warmth of it in his ears, the way it calmed him and heated the marrow in his bones. It was enough to put some of his worries to rest, if not all of them. But he still wondered at the idea of his place beside him.

In truth Yugi almost wondered what it was that kept him there. It was not just that he offered him a sense of protection in allowing him to live in the house with him. He knew that well enough. Yami was not so selfish as to simply remain there for that reason. He was attached to him in a manner, though Yugi was not sure what that truly entailed for either of them. And the thought made him mildly anxious at the moment.

The sky blue wall in front of him looked incredibly warm, soft and almost silken. He remembered that now would have perhaps been the time that he would get home from school. Now would be the time that he would try to make a smoothie for him to help him, get him to take some medication and rest. He wondered now what it was that had changed in that time he was gone from his side.

Was it truly possible that Yami's body had been unable to metabolize the pills he'd offered him before? Had he truly been so starved at that point that he didn't know that his body could metabolize them in any way? Was that…? He wondered if that was possible. It was not that he did not believe Yami and his explanation for what had happened. It was simply that he had not anticipated it in any way.

He was exhausted as he looked over his shoulder at the red-eyed teen. The other teen was still fast asleep. And his breathing was soft and even and easy. And the sight of the way his sides rose and fell so easily was a relief. He wanted almost to sob with happiness, but the other half of him was tired and he found himself yawning when he turned away again.

He blinked once, then twice, and finally a third time before he shifted and comfortably pressed his face into the pillow beneath his head. The small teen yawned again, closing his eyes and feeling comforted in the way that the darkness seemed to embrace him with such open arms. He was exhausted as soon as he did so, small multitudes of colors and images appearing behind his lids.

The pictures trailed into a steady sequence, leading him to dreams that ensnared him entirely. He was comfortable and relaxed beneath their embrace, soft and warm and beautiful. And then, as the hours began to pass, Yugi found himself slowly but surely startled awake. He was still groggy when he realized there was a lack of support behind his back. It was a startling reality, something that struck him as utterly odd. And it seemed to drag him down for a moment, the thought pressing upon him until he felt that his head was spinning.

He blinked dreary blue-violet eyes towards a sky blue wall that looked ribbed with yellow as weak sunlight stretched about to touch the room. He shifted to sit up slightly, then to glance over his shoulder. There was a touch of fear in his gut as he did so, heart in his throat for a moment. He shivered and his mouth grew dry as he looked towards the door, tilting his head and considering it with wide eyes.

Yami was not in the bed with him anymore. But the door wasn't open either. He glanced swiftly towards the window but the pane of glass was tightly locked and the snow outside swirling downwards from the clouds was not getting into the room. He blinked and ran a hand over his eyes, dragging it across his face for a moment. Then he looked back towards his bedroom door and then the bathroom. He did not remember the door being closed before.

In fact, more often than not he kept it open for easy access in the middle of the night should he wake up with the need to pee. The realization struck him that Yami must have wandered inside and it allowed him to relax as he drew in a deep breath and reached up to run another hand through his hair. He licked his lips and shook his head slowly. A yawn escaped his mouth before he could think it through. And then he dragged his fingers backwards to trail down the length of his forehead and down his cheeks again.

He shook his head and palmed his eyes for a moment.

There was a soft clicking noise which made his head turn in surprise.

And he relaxed visibly once more upon seeing Yami closing the door behind him. He was yawning as well. His eyes were squinting, his lashes clumped together in parts. And his brows were furrowed incredibly, his forehead wrinkled as if with contemplation. The red-eyed teen shuffled with weak, baby steps, and initially Yugi almost thought he was hurt. He was shocked, bewildered, and he wondered if he had somehow developed a wound that Yugi himself had never noticed in the first place. He did not know what he was supposed to do if he had pulled a muscle in any way. Was he meant to simply ice it for a few days, use Epsom salts?

He drew in a deep breath, about to ask, when Yami grunted and ran his hands through his hair. Then he yawned again and snorted softly. "Fuck, my feet are still asleep," he muttered. The smaller teen blinked, considering him, then blinked, snorted, and let out a small laugh. Yami cast him a quick grin and then turned to shuffle back into the bed beside him. It was surprising when Yami faced him as he pulled the blankets over his shoulders once more. And, as Yugi himself moved to face him as well, it was oddly amazing to him that the other still did not turn away.


	63. Toxins

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Hopefully biweekly**

 **Chapter Warnings: Night Terror, SLIGHT/MILD Anxiety Attack, SLIGHT/MILD Self-Harm During Panic Attack, Reference to Porn, Mild Cursing, Mentions of Abuse, Hints of Depression, Mentions of Death, Fighting, COPIOUS Bloodshed, GRAPHIC Descriptions of Seizures**

 **The DNA thing will be brought up again later. There's a very specific reason behind it. But for now it's not explained. Yami will point it out later when Yugi asks, but until then, feel free to speculate. Honestly I'm thinking you guys can figure it out without too much trouble~**

 **Okay, so, the answer to a question a lot of readers have been asking me will come up towards the end of this chapter. You'll see because things get very crazy towards the end. You'll see what I mean~ Enjoy the craziness of this chapter.**

 **Ploy: So, nope, the arson situation hasn't been resolved. You'll see what happens with it. It's mentioned in this chapter. And then it's mentioned later on as well. It's a recurring thing.**

Chapter LXIII: Toxins

 _Work Log Entry LVI: December, 2005_

 _December 11_

 _Atem still exhibits his new pattern of action._

 _He does not fight us to leave the cage, though I suppose he never truly has._

 _He has not fallen ill again._

 _None of his vital signatures or things of that nature have changed in any manner._

 _He is not going to change anytime soon._

 _Nothing about the Pure-Blood has changed in the slightest._

 _December 18_

 _Atem and my look alike met up once more._

 _My look alike attacked him but Atem did not fight back until there was blood drawn._

 _Then the two of them beat each other almost to the point that the blood loss should have killed them both._

 _I cannot figure out what is triggering my look alike to attack him like this._

 _I was tasked with patching him up again._

 _December 26_

 _My look alike is finally to be released from the surgery kennels today. He is not pleased at all. And he has snapped at me and tried to bite my hand off more than once. Pegasus is_ delighted _to beat him into submission._

 _He truly believes that he will be able to break this wolf's spirit._

 _I think he's delusional._

The pain was enough to wind him. Yugi was stunned by the way his skin screamed and his nerves seemed to dance beneath the slight, soft pressure. He was exhausted, dizzy, blood in his mouth as he felt another excruciating touch upon his flesh. It was enough to make him yelp, his voice strangled and gargled. He felt a fiery trail racing up the back of his throat and his head spun. He could not see straight. The bricks in front of him began to shift from side to side, dancing back and forth. They were brown and dirty, slicked with water and mud and perhaps rust as well. He did not know. It was simply stunning.

The pressure on his back made him yelp again.

Blood made his lungs heavy and sloshed.

Yugi gasped and stretched and flexed his fingers. Or, perhaps, it was more likely that he tried. He _tried_ to flex his fingers. But what moved was a bleeding mass of exposed muscles. It dripped and fell and hit the ground with hideous splattering noises. It made his head spin as his mouth seemed to drown with salty, metallic liquid. Bile made his tongue burn.

"Starvation makes the wolf's healing capabilities much slower. Deeper wounds require far more time to heal. And his organs seem rather unstable at the moment." There was a pause, a loll in the voice, then another flash of pain that made him yelp. Blood coated his tongue now, and his throat felt hot as bile sputtered forth. "There is definitive rot in the muscles. Blood exposed to air is darker than average. The skin along the incisions is dying as we speak."

"His heart rate is picking up." The second voice was slightly more unnerved, but far more familiar than the first. Yet, something about the first one made Yugi feel queasy and knowledgeable, some memory bleeding in the forefront of his mind that he could not truly acknowledge.

"Blood pressure has risen," the first continued slowly, not the least bit concerned by the other's slight fear. "He has developed a fever in his body's attempts to heal itself. The unintentional rise in temperature has caused the muscle to rot faster."

"He's going to overheat and kill himself," the second voice protested. Yugi clawed at the air, back screaming with pain. The fever laced through him violently enough to make him snarl once more. "If he comes back in a state like this—"

Yugi yelped as he felt the ground rushing up to meet him. The carpet scratched his chin and he rubbed at the burn that existed there. He grunted and slowly moved to pick himself up. But there was a steady pain in his back and he hissed at its touch as he drew in a deep breath. When he caught his weight more pointedly on his hands and knees, he forced himself to remain there for a moment.

And then he heard a soft creaking noise.

He turned before he thought it through. The pain was enough to make him cringe but he did not yelp. It had not occurred to him to reconsider doing such a thing. And now, as he looked up, he felt almost flushed with surprise and embarrassment.

Yami peered at him from atop the bed. His head was tilted. His eyes were considerate. But there was a slight puzzlement and even a glimmer of guilt there as well. The taller teen shifted a little closer, peering down at him with a slight grimace to his face. "Sorry, but you were thrashing," he muttered. "And I did not know if you would want to have your mother and grandfather walk in on you in the midst of a night terror."

Yugi blinked up at him, confused at first. And then he frowned, pursing his lips a moment later, and finally moved to brace himself back on his haunches. For a moment he was silent. And then he sighed softly and began to cross his legs. The phantom pains were quickly abandoning him now. "You just pushed me off the bed?" he asked incredulously, eyes wide with shock. "Holy shit. You _seriously_ just pushed me off the bed."

The other boy raised a brow and tilted his head. "I explained why," he commented dryly, knowing well enough that Yugi hardly cared and was simply stunned by it. He offered him a small, sideways grin, and the smaller teen huffed at his expression. "But if you'd like, I'll pretend I didn't and when you thrash in your sleep again, I'll just throw you off the bed like I did before."

Yugi burst out laughing, shaking his head. "That's so considerate of you, thanks."

The taller wolf shrugged and put his chin in his palm as he propped his arm up on the bed. "I try," he drawled. His red eyes were sparkling with humor now as he stared down at Yugi with a brightened gaze. _I just don't always succeed._ The words slunk from one side of his focus to the other before he could think straight and push such impulse away. It seemed to swallow him away entirely for a moment, though he suppressed it once more and pushed away the nerves that bit at his insides now. "I'm sorry for pushing you off the bed like that."

The smaller teen seemed almost startled to hear the words, though he shook the surprise away almost immediately and offered him what seemed a slight smile. "That's okay, Yami," he said with a small shrug. "It's not like it matters. I'm not hurt or anything."

The words were enough to make Yami bristle for a moment. His eyes had sharpened and he looked incredibly frustrated now. For a split second he peered at Yugi almost as if he did not entirely recognize him. And then, slowly, he blinked and drew in what seemed to be a rather deep breath. "What do you dream about?" he asked softly.

Yugi tilted his head, puzzled, and offered a somewhat bemused smile. "Don't you mean what _did_ I dream about?" he questioned, furrowing his brows when Yami merely stared at him as if the words made no sense to him. And, as they looked at each other, the taller boy slowly shook his head.

"No, I meant what I said."

The smaller teen blinked, startled, and moved to sit up straighter. His blue-violet eyes bore into Yami's as they peered at each other. He drew in a deep breath after a moment, then shook his head slowly and exhaled with something that was almost a painful wince. "Experiments mostly," he said after a long moment, unsure of what more to say. Because he didn't want to say that he dreamed of Yami at times as well, whether it be a more painful experience or something that bordered closer to the side of lewd. He did not want to admit to him that oftentimes he dreamed of something he feared more than he cared to consider. He didn't want to tell him that sometimes Yugi dreamed of those many wolves that had died to save him or that he sometimes wished that he had never opened his mouth and he wanted nothing more than to pretend that he was still some clueless boy with his head in the clouds about a girl who probably wouldn't have remained with him for long…

"Experiments." Yami drew this word out for what felt like hours. His voice seemed to die as he finished it and his head tilted slowly to the side as if in thought. But Yugi knew from that expression on his face that he was not in the dark as to what he meant in the slightest. And the thought made him all but bristle with dissatisfaction towards the idea. He wished more than anything that Yami could know the bliss of ignorance, that for once he was not entirely too knowledgeable what it was that Yugi was talking about.

And, for the first time in what the small teen felt was years, he found himself truly hesitating and staring up at him with wide, almost horrified eyes. "Do you ever…wonder about…what in all they did?" he asked softly, slowly, hoping with everything inside of him that it would not cause Yami to withdraw from him entirely. He did not think he could survive if the red-eyed teen were to do such a thing.

He would feel sick and small should such a thing happen and he did not think he could survive it another time. When the taller wolf seemed to simply stare through him, he nearly flinched away from the entire idea of such conversation. But it occurred to him, abruptly, that Yami was not denying him the chance of inquiry. And he did not seem truly _upset_ with him in any manner. So he drew in a deep breath and searched his face as he continued.

"Like… Do you think that they would have killed me to test and make sure I was immortal?"

Yami was silent for what felt like a lifetime. Then, slowly, he blinked and lowered his eyes back to Yugi's, studying his expression for a long moment. He shifted his weight and pulled himself to his haunches, peering down at him with dark eyes. "No doubt that they did," he answered in a quiet, almost breathless tone. But his head tilted slightly as he looked down at him, as if he were unsure of what more to do or say as they stared at one another. "I am surprised that you would even have to ask such a thing. I would think that it would simply be something to assume and know the truth of."

Yugi blinked and slowly shook his head. "No, I know that. I just… After what you said before, I was just wondering what I might have done when I was in that state," he said with a frown, tilting his head curiously to the side. "I mean, just imagine it for a second. Don't you think that would be pretty devastating to them if I was to attack and kill any of them?"

Yami grunted, his expression something between a sneer and absolute surprise. "Not quite, I would imagine. You don't honestly think that any of them are free from disposal, surely? The truth of it is that any of them were expendable. Just as you learned with Ryou."

The name was said in a flat tone, monotonous as the rest of his words. It surprised the small teen still to hear such a statement come from him and no influx of emotion to show even the smallest hint of care towards the other boy. Yugi stared up at him, surprised and only mildly bewildered; he knew it was a survival tactic.

He understood that. But some part of him wondered at the possibility that, should it have been _him_ , Yami might have done the same. Would he have simply considered it to be a loss and then ceased to care any longer?

Because, despite himself, Yugi felt that he could not see or hear or even _find_ the smallest thread of a hint towards any emotion that Yami might have possessed at that moment. There was not the slightest touch of _anything_ in the tone or the words he used. He didn't sound at all like a distressed, crushed lover as Yugi had expected that day in the woods. And Yugi could not remember now if he had ever heard much sorrow in the direction of his death before then as it was…

He looked back at the other boy, studying him silently. There was an instinct in him that demanded he move closer, to perhaps draw him into his side or to somehow embrace him in some manner. But it did not stop him in the slightest from wanting to back away as well. The two feelings were at war with each other as they considered one another. And he felt tired, dizzy, at the thought of it all to begin with. There was so much damage in Yami to begin with, something that he could not properly put into words nor truly manage to heal no matter how many years they had in each other's company.

He knew that.

He understood that.

And yet, it still winded him.

It still made him wonder and despair and somehow hope against it all as well.

Yugi drew in a deep breath, then tilted his head away and reached up to run his hands through his hair. Yami did not cease staring at him, almost as if he expected a challenge of some kind. It was shocking to him how little the other seemed to care for his mounting distress. But then he remembered the reason he was seated on the ground, the fact that Yami was staring down at him with such studious eyes. He remembered then why it was that Yami had pushed him off the bed as it was. He could tell now, as they stared at each other, that perhaps the tall teen was watching him so closely for the sake of helping him should something go wrong.

But he could not imagine what it was that the taller teen might be able to do from his perch atop the bed. It seemed almost ridiculous to even consider it. But he saw the smallest sense of tension within his muscles, the way he sat up so pointedly and watched him with such keen eyes. And Yugi knew for a fact that the other wolf was watching him for a reason beyond simply being curious as to their conversation. It was not, in the least, a mild sense of interest or curiosity that held him there.

"Do you ever wonder what might have happened if I hadn't escaped?"

Yugi blinked.

And Yami stared.

Something dark flickered across his eyes.

He stiffened.

Then his lips drew back.

His eyes glittered fiercely.

His head tilted slightly.

The muscles in his body grew taut.

His teeth glittered, his gums white as the enamel there.

And then he raised his shoulders so that they might shield his neck.

He was shaking finely now as well.

And the tremors made his entire body seem to nearly _vibrate_.

"Fuck," Yugi muttered under his breath. The sound of his voice elicited a snarl from the other wolf. Yami's head tilted down towards him once more. And his eyes were glittering more ferociously than ever. His lips drew back to show off his teeth more purposefully. His shoulders shuddered as his fingers folded atop the comforter. The strands seemed to scratch and fray beneath his nails, cutting into the fibers rather forcefully. He snarled softly and bristled once more. Yugi immediately drew in a new breath, licking his lips. "Yami, hey…hey…relax, okay? It's okay. You need to relax. It was just a question, aibou."

The last word, spoken in a more earnest tone, made Yami flinch as if he'd just been struck. In an instant the anger had faded from his face. And he looked more than slightly distressed as they stared at one another. The two of them considered each other for a long handful of minutes. Yugi drew in a deep breath, rattled by the expression that the other wore at the moment, and then they simply looked away from one another. The smaller teen licked his lips and turned away to look at the carpet fibers and Yami reached up to press the heel of his right palm into his temple for a brief moment.

A few heartbeats passed. Yugi waited until the tension seemed to fade from its choking pressure. Then he slowly turned and raised his head, eyes flickering across the other boy's face. Because, as it turned out, Yami had begun watching him again. He had turned just as Yugi had, and the two of them had locked eyes immediately upon Yugi focusing on him again. It was distressing for a moment to see the red eyes boring into his.

But there was something else that bothered him more than anything else. And, as he looked back at Yami, he wondered at it.

The last time that Yami had been in such a state, he'd fallen into a panic attack. He'd shaken and breathed hard and gone almost comatose until he'd synchronized his breathing with Yugi's own. Before that, Yami had gotten extremely rattled and fearful upon Yugi asking him about something he'd said to him amidst their conversation about Fuwa. And it shook him to his core to consider the reality that, at that time, Yami had been so fearful that he'd had white gums and puked in his distress.

Now, however, he had stared at Yugi with almost cold eyes. And he was angry, almost hateful, rather than even slightly distressed. He was by far more aggressive than anything else. The reality of it was stunning to Yugi as he realized, abruptly, that the red-eyed teen did not seem even remotely shaky or bewildered in that manner. He was angry. He was infuriated. But he was not distressed in the slightest, in truth.

And Yugi worried what _else_ it might have been then that the red-eyed teen had gone through in that time of their separation. It was surprising to him to consider that the taller teen might have been forced to such a state as to react in that manner. He had never even thought of how he might respond beforehand. And the fact that he had flinched so violently upon being called his partner gave Yugi the impression that the other boy was _well_ aware of anything and everything that was happening around him. He was clearly aware of the word that had come out of his mouth, that it was directed towards him.

And Yugi wondered now whether it was _somehow_ possible that perhaps Yami had learned to adapt in the fashion of protecting himself in a combination of withdrawing mentally _and_ retaining his awareness. It seemed almost impossible to him for a moment, but it also startled him to realize that perhaps it was the most truthful assumption he might have ever come across. The realization made him swallow hard and he felt almost sick for the briefest of seconds as he stared back at him.

"Look, I'm sorry. We can just stop talking about this." Yugi moved to stand and Yami stared at him almost blankly for a moment. The way they peered at one another made the smaller teen want almost to squirm and hide away from his darkened gaze. He stretched his arms out and stared at him for a long moment, then cleared his throat and looked away towards the ground. Yami did not cease his stare, instead tilting his head and watching him with somewhat curious eyes. "How about we go and get breakfast and then I'll go to school and you can do whatever you want while I'm out of the house?"

Yami blinked and tilted his head. "You say that almost as if I might end up playing with your tapes," he commented with a small smirk. A raise of his brow made Yugi flush in shock before the small teen scowled at him and rolled his eyes. "Don't worry about me, Yugi. I will most likely simply spend time playing video games or—"

Yugi faltered, his mouth clicking shut as he went to respond to the other wolf's words. The two of them froze for a moment, listening closely as they tried their hardest to focus on what had disrupted them Yami turned around with wide, darkened eyes. Yugi himself moved towards the window, stunned by the sight in front of him. Almost completely out of his line of sight, along the edge of the yard, a police car had pulled up. The small teen struggled with shaking hands to flip the latches to the window, then pulled the pane up and leaned outward to peer down at it more pointedly.

"Who is…?"

"Anzu's dad," Yugi muttered softly, grimacing and shaking his head slightly. He swallowed hard and then turned to him slowly, eyes widening. "Oh, _fuck_."

Yami blinked and searched his face, the alarm clear in his eyes but his expression remaining more or less calm. "What?" he asked simply, moving to sit up and look as well. But he did not leave the bed and so he peered out the window with a somewhat disgruntled expression as the position did not allow him much of a clear line of sight beyond the snow in the yard. He furrowed his brows when Yugi failed to answer him for a moment and then turned to the smaller teen with a tilt of his head. "What is it that you are so worried about right now?"

The small teen looked as if he might puke as he stared at him. His face had grown ashen, his eyes dilated fearfully. He stared at him as if he might lose him should he so much as look away. And the way his breath quickened made Yami wonder at the sight.

"I—I… Oh gods."

"What is it? What are you so afraid of?"

He could hear the cop knocking at the door. He felt dizzy, his legs nearly giving out from beneath him. Instinct told him to stand and fight, something that stunned him as he tried to catch his breath for even the smallest of moments. The realization of it was that he could not think straight long enough to consider that perhaps things were incredibly estranged to the taller teen now. Yugi drew in a deep breath, then slowly shook his head and reached up to run his hands through his hair.

"Look, Yami, he's been investigating me for the arson events—the woods and the restaurant. He has this idea that because I wasn't with Anzu that night at the station when they reported it I had something to do with it." He hesitated for a moment, then opened and closed his mouth. His heart was in his throat for a moment as his eyes searched Yami's frantically. The red-eyed boy looked confused, somewhere between desperation and bewilderment and Yugi knew that he was trying to find out what he was searching for from him. But Yugi himself didn't quite know and if he didn't know then Yami surely didn't and it could not be offered to him.

So the taller boy stayed silent and Yugi continued to study his face, for a moment hoping against everything to somehow memorize even the finest details of it all. Then he drew in a deep and purposeful breath. He closed his eyes and shook his head. "He's got it in his head that I had to do with it and I don't know what I'm supposed to do about it. I don't think Anzu knows what's going on yet—"

Yami tilted his head and turned his head towards the door. "No?" he asked softly. "Then that is not her voice I hear calling for you as we speak?"

Yugi blinked, startled, head tilting towards the ground. He strained his hearing for only a moment, dread filling his gut as he realized that Yami was right. " _Fuck_ ," he hissed, but abruptly his eyes shot to the red-eyed teen again. "Listen, Yami. I told him that both nights I was with someone who needed my help. I told him that I met them over a classroom chatroom after they went for a tour at my school. I said that they asked for help and gave an address and I went and met them at a motel. I said that I thought they were running from an abusive partner and had fled Japan altogether."

Yami blinked, his red eyes growing huge with his rising shock. He leaned forward, then moved to stand, startled by the way Yugi stared at him so plaintively. The taller teen considered him for a long handful of minutes, then looked towards the hallway with wide eyes. He could hear Yugi's mother answering the door. She sounded disgruntled and annoyed at the moment, clearly having just woken and gotten dressed. And Yugi was shaking now, fingers digging into his scalp and breaths coming out uneven.

The taller teen hesitated for a moment. It took only a heartbeat for him to shake the trepidation away, however, and he moved forward. In an instant he had caught Yugi's wrists, pulling them away and putting them at his sides. The moment he did so, the smaller teen blinked wide, startled eyes at him. His eyes flickered about the taller boy's for a moment, bewildered and confused and fearful. And Yami wondered at the sight before slowly shaking his head.

"Focus for a moment, Yugi," he hissed, voice soft and oddly powerful as it encompassed his senses. His eyes were brighter than before, more vibrant than ever, and his head tilted the smallest fraction. The action keened in on a sense that Yugi had not known he possessed, making his entire body seize in place as he considered him intently. "You have only to say that you are not sure what happened to your friend. It comes down to something as simple as that."

Yugi bit his lip. "I told my mom and grandpa that you were the one I went to see. My mom thinks that you should be the one to tell them that you were there and that I went to help you. She said that you're my alibi and I—I'm so sorry, Yami! I didn't mean to do this. I thought… I don't know what I thought. I guess I figured that he wouldn't pursue it past that and then… Look, you can hide if you—"

"Hide?" the red-eyed teen murmured in a quiet, distasteful tone. "Fine. If you wish for me to be your alibi—"

"No," he snapped, voice coming out slightly loud before he stopped himself and drew in a deep breath. He listened for a moment; thankfully his mom was still at the door with them downstairs. Anzu was asking if he was okay, if she could talk to him really fast. Her dad was saying something about how the arson investigation was still focused on several suspects and one of them was _still_ admittedly Yugi. And the small teen was _abruptly_ aware of the fact that the brunette was _well_ acquainted with the charges that he might be facing. He turned back to Yami and lowered his voice drastically, licking his lips as he tried to buy himself time to find the words to speak. "I told them that we were at a motel together at one point, that you had a room there that I had spent time in. I told them that it was the motel that just recently closed down near the nature preserve. If they tried to take your blood or fingertips—"

Yami shook his head slowly, watching him with darkened eyes. "They will not find anything." He blinked. "They _cannot_ find anything."

"I know, because you weren't there."

"No, Yugi," the other snarled, lowering his voice drastically and allowing the words to rumble within his chest. "It is because my DNA is not traceable."

He blinked. Then he tilted his head, confused and startled by the declaration. His brows slowly drew together. Then he stepped back, shaking his head and staring at him for a long moment. "What?" he asked slowly, voice nearly croaking. And, for the smallest, _briefest_ of seconds he felt as if he might vomit. He wondered, mind spiraling for a sense of reality that he might understand, if perhaps somehow Yami was nothing more than a figment of his imagination.

It was possible.

He had laced together memories in the wake of forcing himself to suppress his experiences underground. It was _entirely_ possible that he might somehow have snapped and brought Yami on as some kind of mental figment that was meant to guide him and help him in some manner. That would explain his ability to find his way back to him, wouldn't it? It would explain how it was that he always seemed to be there in the nick of time—

"I have the DNA of a wolf," Yami said slowly, cautiously. His eyes glinted with something Yugi could not interpret, stomach churning and heart racing in his chest. "There is not a single part of my DNA which is human. If you were to bleed me now and look at it beneath a microscope, you would find that of a wolf species that _doesn't exist_. They could not link me to anything because I do not have human blood."

Yugi stared at him for what felt like hours. Then he slowly shook his head and his mouth seemed to dry out as he tried his hardest to think straight. "What the fuck does…?" He drew in a tight breath, then shook his head harder. "What does that…? Yami, that doesn't…"

"It makes perfect sense." Yami had moved, his hands landing on his shoulders and resting there. But his nails had curled inwards and they pressed upon a twin bundle of nerves which caused Yugi to focus on him once more. His lips peeled back to show bright white teeth in a small snarl that quickly faded as he realized Yugi was entirely focused on him again. "You—"

"Yugi? Are you awake yet?"

Yugi jerked as if he'd been hit, the words Yami had spoken burning in his ears. He wished he could have lashed out and hit him, knocked him aside for even speaking them. But the thought of harming him made him want to vomit and he stared back at the other male for a long moment. Then he reached out for him, unconsciously seeking some kind of physical contact that he had more control of. Despite himself, he found his arms wrapping around his thin frame, then jerking him into his embrace. The taller boy grunted in surprise, the displacement of breath making his eyes nearly pop out of his head. But he did not hug back and the smaller teen found himself gripping tightly at his shirt, pulling at the fibers anxiously.

"Yugi?"

He exhaled long and slow. Then he pressed a nail into Yami's shoulder as if to test that the other were truly there. Yami let out a sharp breath, a low rumbling beginning to make his body quake softly against his. And then Yugi released him, searching his face for a moment. "Listen to me for a second, okay? I don't want you to get involved in this. There's a reason for that," he explained, shaking as he heard his mom grab and turn the doorknob and then knock a third time, repeating his name once more. "And I don't have time to explain it to you right now. But I'm going to tell you later, when this is somewhat cleared up, okay?"

The red-eyed teen peered at him for what felt like hours, as if he had no understanding of who he was in any sense. He stared at him, eyes somewhat cold and expression slightly darkened. They stared at each other for a long handful of minutes. Then Yugi turned away and gestured vaguely towards the window and then the closet in a silent bid that Yami go to one of them. The taller teen stared at him, red eyes sharp and shadowed for a moment before he moved towards the closet. Then he hesitated, glancing towards the bed, near the door, and then at the window.

Yugi drew in a deep breath, watching him as he finally moved to take to hiding within the closet. The blue-violet-eyed boy felt incredibly small and almost ridiculous now, a thought occurring to him that had not crossed his mind before that moment. There might have been someone else in that car with Anzu's father, someone who had driven there with them. He would not have been surprised in the slightest…

"Yeah, Mom, what's going on?" he called, glancing back to see that Yami had locked the metal unit behind him. He could hear the faintest grinding as the metal slid into place and the lock held itself in place once more. He drew in a deep breath and turned back to unlock the door and open it. He ran his fingers through his hair and looked at the three of them with feigned curiosity. But his heart was racing in his chest and he could not help but strain his ears for any sense that Yami might need him. "Hello, Mister Mazaki, Anzu."

He would have given them a bow but the small teen could not find it in himself to care so much. He could not help but stare at the two visitors, some part of him cold with familiarity and the other flighty with fear. His best friend offered him a strained smile, blue eyes sad as she looked around the room for a moment. Then she drew in a deep breath and asked, "Can we talk for a minute?"

Yugi blinked and glanced at her dad and then at his mother, curious as they both awkwardly looked away. He wondered for a moment if something had happened downstairs that he might have missed, then turned to his friend with a small grin. "Sure, Anzu," he agreed, but he hesitated when he glanced at them again and neither seemed to change their positions. The brunette walked past him with her head high, striding into the room as if it was hers rather than his and the thought unnerved him for a brief moment. Then she glanced over her shoulder at their parents, murmuring, "Go ahead and shut the door, Yugi. They already know what I'm about to talk to you about."

He blinked and looked at his mom, desperate now for some sense of reassurance. It seemed strange to him to even consider that she might allow this to happen. She had always been so keen that he not ever be alone with a girl, even within their own home and with their parents there. It was odd to him as he slowly closed the door behind him and turned around to face her again. His blue-violet eyes took a quick inventory of the room, unnerved as she hesitantly made a move towards the corner Yami had once sat in for so many days straight. It was enough to make him nervous for a brief second before he drew in a deep breath and shook it off.

"What's going on?" he hissed, demanding her attention from where she'd been surveying the room formerly. And then she turned to him with a slight frown marring her expression. But she did not seem upset with him or his question, looking at him almost as if he had never spoken to begin with and she had simply turned around to see who was behind her.

"Jonouchi is planning to tell my dad that he started the fire," she muttered, her voice incredibly quiet now, though the small teen faltered briefly in listening and then gaped at her in horror.

" _What_?" he snapped, eyes wide. "He can't do that!"

"Shh, not so loud," she hissed at him in response, putting a finger to her lips and casting a sharp look towards the door. He blinked and looked over his shoulder, flustered at the idea that he had forgotten in his shock. Then he turned quickly back to her, heart in his throat. He had the abrupt urge to look towards the closet, to perhaps coax Yami out to speak with him as well. But then he faltered and turned back to her as quickly as he could, fearful that she might have noticed his hesitation. "My dad obviously doesn't have any idea about it. I told him that we were going to talk about the kid they found dead in the quad today."

"What?" Yugi cut in, furrowing his brows. "They found a body in the quad?"

"Left in almost the exact same place as Miho's was," she answered uncertainly, glancing towards the door and then back to him and lowering her voice once more. She drew in a deep breath, licked her lips, and continued in a firmer tone. "Yugi, listen, though, that's not the point. The point is that Jonouchi has this idea in his head that he's going to take the blame for the arson to get my dad off your back."

"He realizes that he could be arrested for that, right? _Especially_ if they find out he was lying later on down the road. Or just for confessing in the first place," he huffed. "Fuck knows his dad won't help him get out of that if he ends up being arrested and all that. He'd probably be happy to have him taken off his hands."

Anzu shook her head, brown hair glinting slightly in the sunlight from the window. "That doesn't really matter. His dad doesn't really have a say on anything as it is. The apartment is technically in his _mom_ 's name. The lease was signed by her," she commented, making Yugi stiffen in surprise, blue-violet eyes widening drastically. "So he has no say whatsoever if something happens as far as that goes. He can't claim he's the legal adult over Jonouchi because he's living under his _mom's_ roof, not his. And no one knows where she is. After Shizuka was found…"

He grimaced, the image of her freshly decapitated body forming in his mind again. He remembered all of the blood, the way he'd stepped into the room and spotted it like a fountain, how it had seemed to stretch further than the confines of the room around them and into the building itself. He shook it off and looked at her more pointedly.

"The bigger point is that he has the idea that he needs to cover for you. And I don't know where he came up with that idea but he doesn't need to turn himself in for arson when it could mean he'd be behind bars for the better part of his life, Yugi."

The smaller teen shook his head, feeling oddly flustered now. "I understand that, Anzu," he answered in a more annoyed tone. "And I get it. I'm not saying that it isn't true. I'm just… I don't get where he got the idea that he needs to do that. I don't understand why he thinks that I need him to do _that_ of all things. I can handle your dad and this whole thing on my own."

It was said for the benefit of the wolf hiding in the closet more than it was for the brunette. But his best friend looked incredibly relieved and Yugi was almost winded at the sight. He wondered how much it was that she had feared the opposite and his stomach clenched at the thought. How long had she been puzzling over the best way to tell him about it all? How long had she known about the fact that her dad had turned his sights on him or that Jonouchi was planning to tell the police otherwise? How was it that she had managed to keep it a secret like that as it was?

He drew in a deep breath, then exhaled through his lips and reached up to run his fingers through his hair, a sense of clarity coming over him. "He wouldn't go to the police station," he realized quietly, looking over at her with widened eyes. "Jonouchi wouldn't go to the police station to tell them that he's the one who set the building on fire, or that he set the woods on fire either. He'd write a letter or send it in a text or something like that. Jonouchi isn't that stupid."

"Yeah, but Yugi, that's not logical. You realize that if he gets caught—"

Yugi shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair again. "I think that's the _point_ , Anzu," he hissed at her. Now his eyes did flicker towards the closet, because he swore he heard Yami moving in there, perhaps simply shifting his weight or settling into a comfortable position on the floor. He quickly looked away again, facing her completely and hoping to the gods that she had noticed his momentary distraction. "He wouldn't get caught. Because he has an escape now."

She blinked at him, confused as she tilted her head and considered him for a moment. She searched his face for a hint of what he could possibly mean, bewildered and unsure of herself. Then she glanced at the door beyond his shoulder and back to him slowly. There was no sense of recognition in her eyes until he tilted his head slowly and moved his lips enough to mouth, "Wolf".

Saying the word felt dirty to him for some reason. Maybe it was simply because of how removed she truly was from the situation. She did not have to run around on four legs in a dog's pelt once every month. She didn't have to worry about balancing out her wolf instincts with her human ones. She didn't have to worry about such a thing in the slightest.

Her blue eyes widened and she grimaced as she looked at him. "You honestly think he would run into the woods after he did that?" she asked quietly. "They'd be searching for him for a while if that was the case…"

Yugi nodded slightly. "I think it's the perfect excuse for him to do it." He paused and shook his head, looking away. "He doesn't like being a person, Anzu. I've seen him sometimes. He hates going to school and he hates having to deal with people. He hates keeping it a secret. He hates not being able to flaunt it. He… He's a _lot_ happier as a wolf than he ever was a person."

"You really think that?"

"If you'd seen him as a wolf, you'd feel that same way, Anzu. You'd see it and you'd wonder why it is that he was _ever_ miserable enough to join a gang in middle school or why he has such trouble giving a crap about school. You'd be _amazed_ by how different he is when he's a wolf. He's… He spends more time with the pack than he ever does at school or anything like that anymore. He loves it there at the camp. He loves being able to run around so freely."

 _He loves the control. And he loves the fact that, just for once, no one looks down on him for being the only child left in a self-destructing family relationship where the abuse is obvious and the pain is always on his face._ Yugi drew in a deep breath, shaking his head and looking briefly at the closet again. He wondered if Yami felt similar, if that was why he ran so often as a wolf rather than a person. He wondered if that was why the other male was so ready to wear his pelt instead of his human skin.

"I think, honestly, it's one of the best things for him." He hesitated when he saw the way her eyes sharpened and narrowed at him. For a moment he could not read the frost in her eyes, then he sighed and shook his head. "I don't mean for even a second that he should pretend that he committed arson to protect me. But I do think that if he ran away, it would do him a lot better than any living situation he has with that bastard dad of his."

Yami was moving again, he realized. And his head snapped immediately towards the source of it now, listening. The action was so instinctual that he forgot her presence there and took a step towards it. But the other wolf had long since stilled and Yugi furrowed his brows as he considered the silence there now. He frowned and tilted his head, listening for a moment longer. But Yami did not move and he seemed almost not to be there any longer but for the softest sound of a heartbeat behind the metal. He realized slowly, feeling almost cold, that the other wolf was almost completely silent to him beyond this small trace of sound.

"Yugi?" Anzu whispered, voice growing somewhat alarmed and distressed. The smaller teen blinked, head snapping towards her again. She was staring at him in such acute horror and bewilderment that he glanced over his shoulder at the door, truly expecting to see that their parents had opened it and were staring at them pointedly. He expected them to be listening in and waiting for a moment to leap into the conversation to tell him he'd been caught. But there was nothing there and, as he turned back, his heart leaped into his throat.

 _Oh_ fuck.

"I, uh…" He hesitated for a moment, then reached up to rub at his scalp with his nails uncomfortably. He drew in a deep breath, then exhaled sharply. "Yami is hiding in the closet."

She blinked. Then she blinked again. Her eyes grew thrice their regular size. Then her head snapped towards the metal unit. Yugi scratched angrily at his scalp, the force enough to draw tears into his eyes. And the sensation was almost enough to exhaust him. He frowned and drew in a deep breath, shaking his head slightly and swallowing hard. "Yami is…?" she repeated, unsure of what more to do or say. "W-why is he…? W-when did he…?"

Yugi nearly groaned. He'd only mentioned Yami to them in passing, saying that he was at the camp and would be staying there… "He's…staying here with me again for a while." He hesitated, then glanced over his shoulder. He listened for noise but could not catch anything beyond his door and so drew in a deep breath as he turned back. "And I didn't want your dad to see him so he's…hiding in the closet."

She blinked at him in surprise again, then looked at the metal for a long moment. She wished for a brief second that she could see anything in there. But there was not even the slightest of movements or the smallest sign that he was truly in there. She wondered briefly—hopefully, if she were honest with herself—if Yugi were just joking and the other was not truly there.

"That's… Oh…"

Yugi looked at the carpet and rubbed at the back of his head again, letting out a deep sigh. "Yeah, I wasn't expecting to tell you about him being here to begin with." He turned to the closet door but he apparently could not see where the other male was either. "And I figured he'd be happier hiding in there anyways. It's more secluded and all that."

Anzu blinked but did not look over. And, as she stared at the shadows in the closet, she nearly screamed. In an instant something had shifted. And suddenly she was looking at two brightly glowing crimson orbs. She sprang like a cat, reaching up and biting at the back of her wrist anxiously. The movement made Yugi bristle, his head snapping in that direction. But he relaxed again when he saw the two eyes peering back at them. His entire body lost whatever tension it had possessed and he nearly slumped over in relief.

"Don't do that," he muttered, voice a gentle reprimand but the other wolf merely snorted as he turned away again entirely. Yugi was shaken by the absence of the glowing red eyes but then he heard him moving about to settle and wondered if his night terror had woken him… He turned back to the brunette, surprised by the way her other hand was pressed into her chest and she still looked so terribly horrified. "Relax, Anzu. He won't bite."

She snorted, turning on him with a furious expression. "You should have warned me," she spat, though she stopped short of her anger when she remembered the reason the door was shut behind the smaller teen as it was. She drew in a long, deep breath and shook her head sharply, flustered and annoyed. "Jesus, Yugi, I wasn't expecting that."

"I wasn't either," he admitted awkwardly. "I thought he would have stayed hidden while you were here instead of coming to the door like that. Uh…"

He wondered when he had started talking about Yami as if he were a dog and not a human. But then he remembered he _wasn't_ human but for the time that he wasn't a _wolf_ and the thought made him feel flustered. Yugi ran a hand through his hair, feeling stupid for his thoughts and sighing under his breath as he turned his head briefly towards the closet. He was more than a wolf or a human, however, seeing as he was able to change between forms with such ease. And so he shrugged it off and ignored the way he felt sick to his stomach at the thought that he could not define him as either and yet both at once.

Yugi had not considered it in a long time, he realized. He had not referred to Yami as more than a wolf or a teenage boy in so long that it was almost shocking to think about it now. So he drew in a deep breath, ran his hands through his hair, and frowned pointedly.

"Anyways, my point is, I wouldn't be surprised if Jonouchi planned to tell them that he did it and then ran off into the woods to live with the pack." He glanced at the closet. If Yami were to have DNA samples taken, most likely they'd considered that it was somehow contaminated or that the DNA had been swapped at some point. It would be the second time that it happened that someone might become suspicious. Though he doubted anyone might come up with the conclusion of his being a werewolf.

It seemed ridiculous that anyone would ever think that…

"It would make sense." She paused. "Especially if he's half as happy as you said he is when he's there with them."

Yugi shook his head. "I can't even _describe_ how happy he is when he's there in the camp, Anzu. It's insane. You wouldn't even think he's the same guy," he muttered. But his eyes flickered to the closet briefly. "Yami has seen it too. And Jonouchi seems to really like being around him too so…"

The brunette blinked in surprise. That was different. The last time they had discussed Yami when Yugi wasn't around, the blond had said he'd punch his lights out for hurting Yugi like he had. But then, he was always full of hot air when it came to things like that. And Anzu would never have been surprised if he had changed his mind at a second's notice due to being too shocked or possibly even intimidated by the other's appearance in front of him again. Jonouchi may have been reckless at times, but she had the feeling that being bitten had given him a better idea of what fights he could and couldn't pick if he wanted to survive to see another day.

In front of her, Yugi blinked and tilted his head. She couldn't tell if he was listening for something, but if he was she guessed it had to do with Yami moving around in the closet. But then his eyes shot back to hers as he mumbled, "Did they find out who it was that was killed at school?"

She blinked, confused, and then shook her head. "No. The body is so badly damaged they don't even know if it's male or female." She paused, looking at the door of the closet again. She had the sudden impulse to pull the handle and open it, to see if Yami really _was_ there, just because the shock of the thought made her almost shaky with incredulity. "But they do know that the heart and the brain are missing. They found that out immediately. Everything else actually seems to be left there…"

Yugi looked as if he might puke at any moment. "Great," he muttered. "Then that's another dead body that they'll probably take a couple of days to identify. And then maybe your dad will hear about how everyone else thought I was killing my classmates and he'll try to arrest me on charge of word to mouth."

The brunette shook her head. "He already knows about that."

"Oh _great_. That's even better."

"He doesn't plan to do anything to you, Yugi. He just wants to know who committed the arson so that we can put it to rest. As far as jail time and all that… Well that's really inevitable, but…" She trailed off and shook her head. "Look, all of us know that you didn't do it. And it was Fuwa who set that restaurant on fire. But you can't exactly go around saying, 'Oh, hey, yeah, a famous Honshu celebrity came to meet me because I'm a werewolf, then tried to kill me so me and my friends killed him instead'."

He blinked at her. Abruptly his head snapped towards the closet again. _Yami_ had killed him. _Yami_ had ripped his throat out. And Yugi was afraid to ask if he had done more with the body than that. Considering his starvation, he would not have thought twice about it should he have been forced to eat Fuwa's broken body as well. But then, surely he had known the boars to be more nutritious. And that would have made him eat them before he ever would have turned his sights on the other male, right? That was a truth for hungry canines, wasn't it?

His heart was shaking in his chest.

Gods, he hoped that was true.

Yugi turned back to her after a moment. "No, and I can't exactly explain what he was doing in Domino City either, or why he decided to hang out with us. Plenty of people could place us with him should anyone ever decide to _really_ investigate what happened to him." But he had no idea if anyone had found that charred up body—for, if Yami had not eaten it, the explosion should have done well to mutilate it beyond recognition—and he did remember the searches that had happened for all of a few days. But the cold weather and the snow had put those to an end before they had ever truly begun in the first place.

Yugi had never been so thankful for erratic and harsh weather patterns before in his entire life.

"Not to mention his wife," Anzu muttered. "I'm amazed no one has found the body…"

He cringed, thinking briefly of the way Yami had decapitated her, of the way she'd shocked him even as he'd done so. He was dizzy with the thought, feeling almost sick with the thought. And then he turned his head and looked over his shoulder towards the door and back. How many people were dead that they _hadn't_ found? There was Ryota, Haga and Ryuzaki, Fuwa and Aileen… No one had reported finding the nurse's frozen body in the lake yet…

He drew in a deep breath. "Yeah, that's a stroke of luck I don't think we'll have again anytime soon," he commented reluctantly. What _had_ happened to their bodies? He imagined the first three had to be frozen in the snow. But had Fuwa been eaten by another starving predator of any kind? And Aileen and that tigress's body…

He shuddered.

"What did you tell my dad about the arson incident anyways, Yugi?"

He blinked and looked at her again, almost startled to hear the question. Then his eyes flickered towards the closet door and back slowly. His eyes darkened briefly as he muttered, "I said that I was helping someone out at a motel both days, that they'd gotten hurt and I went to help them. I said that I thought that they were most likely getting hurt by some abusive ex-lover that had followed them to Japan." He narrowed his eyes. "I didn't tell him any names because I said that he didn't want to give me a name to begin with and it was probably just an alias of some kind."

She nodded and sighed, hesitantly glancing at the closet now as well. "You know, my dad wanted me to wear a wire when I talked to you about the body," she said quietly, flinching when he looked at her with wide, horrified eyes. "I refused, obviously, but I just wanted you to be aware that he's pretty serious about looking into you as being he arsonist."

Yugi blinked and tilted his head with a slight frown. What was it that he was supposed to say to her? What he wanted to say was that he hated her father for even considering it. What the fuck was wrong with him to believe that something had changed so drastically in his eyes? Yugi had been a good kid growing up, so why was it that he had the assumption that he should be the one to do such a thing? It was ridiculous to think such a thing about the kid who his daughter had all but fallen in love with.

He furrowed his brows and glanced towards the closet again. Yami was not moving around anymore and he swore he must have been sleeping by then. It was almost bewildering to him that something could have changed so drastically that he might turn his eyes on him in a more malicious manner. It was frustrating to consider, but he also realized that he himself had not done too well to make himself look better.

Mazaki had not been wrong in the various things he'd said to his mom the last time they'd been together. He _had_ changed a lot of his behavior. He _was_ skipping school at times. He _was_ no longer hanging out with his friends as often. He _had_ overdosed on medication when he was younger. He _had_ gone to the hospital multiple times asking his mom to raise the dosage or allowing her to simply do so for him.

He supposed it was plenty of reason to simply point the finger at him. And, when he glanced at the closet again, he knew for a fact that he himself would have jumped at the chance of pulling him into the station should he have found that he was hiding someone in his own closet. He wondered if his mother would let it slip that his friend had come back, that Yami was sharing his room and sleeping with him at times. He wondered, feeling sick, what might happen if she should tell him. If Mazaki heard that there was someone there who he had claimed to be his alibi…

"You don't think he's trying to pin more on me than that?" he asked slowly, turning back to her with hardened eyes. He felt sick but he could feel it. And she flinched when their eyes locked for that brief second. "I have the feeling that he wants to pin a _lot_ more on me than just that."

She swallowed hard and shook her head, crossing her arms and looking at the ground. "Yeah," she said quietly, eyes melancholic as she looked back at him from beneath her lashes. "I do. I think he wants to get a lot of pressure off his back and he's looking at you because of the way some of our classmates have been saying that you were involved with killing some of those people like that."

Yugi shook his head and reached up to scratch at his scalp unhappily. "I don't think for even a moment that your dad isn't looking at it as a way to get them off his back. I understand that well enough. I just… It's weird that he thinks it would be me to do it."

Her face seemed to collapse and his head turned towards her more pointedly now. She was still staring at the ground with a grimace, shaking her head unhappily. "I…" She drew in a deep breath, then exhaled loudly and shook her head even more pointedly. "He's homophobic, Yugi."

The statement made no sense to him at first. He had never considered himself homosexual at any rate, though the words made him blink and slowly tilt his chin up with widened eyes. His eyes shot to the closet again and his voice grew furious as he lowered it and curled his lip back slowly. "You told him about that?" he asked quietly, looking back at her with darkened eyes. He couldn't bring himself to put the situation into words in any manner and it made him feel sick and dizzy for a moment. "And then the fact that I said that I think it was my friend's 'partner' to attack him…"

Anzu nodded. "I think he's disgusted and it's enough to make him willing to pin it on you, Yugi." She hesitated. "Although, I think that you're not doing yourself any favors right now. He's pretty adamant and you've been acting out as far as school and things like that go. He's not impressed with it and he's pretty sure that makes it likely that you could be a suspect for the things going on. It seems more like something that would happen with someone who was acting out and starting to do things like killing and stuff."

"That's profiling with stereotypes," Yugi answered with a roll of his eyes. "And I don't think you could actually say that with certainty for every serial killer or rapist or anything like that. And besides that, he _knows_ me. He _knows_ better than to think that. He just wants someone to put the guilt on so that he can look good in media again."

Anzu scowled at him. "I get that my dad isn't perfect, okay? But that doesn't mean that you have to be so hostile about it," she snapped. "It's not like there's any proof about you being there in the first place and I don't think that there's anything to put you at the scene as it is. The restaurant is so charred there's literally _no_ evidence there to be found. It's just because you weren't _there_ with us at the station when we reported it that he even considers you as a suspect to begin with. So…"

He shook his head at her, eyes flashing. "I understand that, Anzu. My problem is the fact that he apparently has his sights set on me because of the fact that you and I aren't dating," he hissed. "So he's actually trying to pin this on me because of the fact that you and I aren't going to give him grandkids. Do you not get how _fucked up_ that is?"

"I agree that it's fucked up, Yugi. I know it is. And I don't agree with him at all. But you _are_ acting strange, okay? He's not wrong about that. You don't get it. You're cutting classes, the bodies are all classmates, two days that you're _not_ with us and someone catches trees and then a restaurant on fire later. It's _suspicious_."

"I _know_ that. Don't talk to me like I'm stupid. I understand that—"

"Then why are you acting like such an ass?"

"I don't know if you realize what would happen if he _did_ somehow find a way to pin this whole thing on me. I go to jail, I get locked up in a prison, and every _full moon_ I change into a _wolf_ , Anzu. How many of them do you think are going to survive if that happens?"

The brunette froze in place in front of him, the hissed question enough to make her startle. Then her eyes shot to the closet and back to him, her mouth dry as she whispered, "You don't think that Yami would be your alibi if you asked him?"

Yugi shook his head, voice firm as he answered, "No, I'm not going to ask him. He doesn't need to be involved in this."

"But that's who you were saying was the one at the motel, right? You were saying that Yami was the one who needed help, right? And I don't think that you should have to go through this alone if he's willing to be your alibi as it is, Yugi. I don't think that he would mind doing that or—"

The smaller teen snarled low under his breath. "He's not going to do it. I'm not going to ask him to."

"Why not? Why wouldn't you—?"

"How is he supposed to explain the lack of paperwork that says that he exists? Anzu, he's a fucking _werewolf_ whose basically been living out in the mountains for _years_. I don't think he's ever actually been around people for more than a few minutes at the most. You aren't thinking about this in a logical way. He has no birth certificate, he has no history to be tracked by, _no one_ has ever actually seen him before because of the fact that he's never been around them before."

But, in reality, Yugi was suddenly struck with fear. He realized, feeling sick, that it was more than the idea that Yami would be noticed as nonexistent. It was the fact that he had _no idea_ whether or not one of the police might be involved in the labs underground. And, even if they were not, if Yami were put on camera or in the newspaper as being an unknown identity of any kind, they would have a picture of him. And that would make it easier for the people underground in that lab to discover him, to plan to find and attack him and kidnap him all over again. That would make it easier for them to simply find a former victim to be returned to their clutches. They would not think twice, he was sure, in the fact that they would be able to secure him in any manner. And, as Yami had said formerly, none of them would have ever forgotten him because they had all known him…

Yugi did not like the implications in any manner and he would not dwell on them now, but it was enough to make him want to puke regardless. He tipped his chin up, speaking in a lower tone. "I'm not risking it. Yami might agree with you but I'm not going to risk it. Yami isn't technically a _person_ as far as anyone knows. And he's not healthy enough to deal with anything that might happen later."

Anzu stared at him for a long time, then drew in a deep breath and sighed softly. Her eyes were on the closet door again. She wondered briefly if that was why he did not come out now. Yugi had told her that he was in there; so why would he have not bothered to come out again? But she also remembered that their parents were behind that door, that his mom and her father were most likely trying to find a way to listen in. And, should they have been brave enough to open the door and come inside, they would spot the red-eyed teen.

And then what were they meant to do?

"So what are you going to do then?"

Yugi shook his head slowly. "I don't know. But I know that I'm not going to ask Yami to be my alibi. And I need to convince Jonouchi not to do something as stupid as admitting to that and running off as a wolf to live in the woods. I don't think he's fully aware of all the implications that doing that would mean for him."

The brunette was still staring at the closet door. She was trying to find even the smallest hint of movement behind the metal and not a single noise was to be found. She swallowed hard and looked down again, sighing softly and shaking her head. "Do you honestly think that he would just do that without thinking it through?" she asked quietly, but they both knew the answer to that question. Jonouchi was as loyal as they came, and he sometimes did things impulsively without considering the backlash that would come to him. "I mean…"

The small teen shook his head and ran his hands through his hair. "He'd do it. We both know that. And I don't want him to do that. If your dad really thinks it's me to begin with, I don't know if he'd believe it when Jonouchi told them that. Besides, he was at the police station that night with you guys when you were talking about the restaurant."

"It wouldn't take much for him to change his story and make it seem like he lied the first time." She hesitated. "Especially because I'm pretty sure Honda would back him up if that was what was necessary for him. I wouldn't be surprised if he did that."

Yugi blinked and stared at her, stunned by the very idea before tilting his head and nodding slowly with a small grimace. His eyes flickered to the closet and back and he reached up to run his fingers through his hair. His gaze had grown increasingly sharp and he was not amused in the slightest by the way that the idea struck him. It was perhaps the most honest thing that she'd said the entire time, because he knew without a doubt that Honda would back Jonouchi up if that was what he truly wanted.

He drew in a deep breath and glanced at the carpet with a grimace. "No, I could see him doing that. It wouldn't surprise me at all." He sighed and shook his head, closing his eyes. "It's not even really a question at this rate. He'd do it and then they'd both be in trouble…"

"Yeah…" And Honda didn't have a reason to want to simply live in the woods like Jonouchi might have. His parents _adored_ their only child and they would do anything and everything for him. If he were to say that, they would then try their hardest to get him off the hook. There was no way that they would allow him to go to jail or anything of that manner. Although, most likely, for the time being he would be sent to juvenile detention and then released early. Being an accomplice was hardly as terrible as being the one to actually commit the crime…

And yet, Yugi had to wonder what it was that Obelisk might have been hinting at before. He'd told him to trust in his ability to help him. He had told him that he would be able to change things, to save Yugi from such a verdict of being guilty. He had not had much faith in what the deity had said, but now he had to be curious. It was bewildering to him to think otherwise should that be the case. He had no idea what it was that was meant to help him that the other wolf could possibly do. It seemed odd to even place the slightest sliver of belief in him. It was bewildering to even consider that to begin with.

And he wondered if his original idea that perhaps Obelisk would simply kill Anzu's father had not been too far off. But he'd told him to believe in his ability as a god and it was not something that he could entirely stop himself. It was odd and sickening, almost disturbing in the way that his heart felt as if it might burst within his chest. He licked his lips and shook his head, closing his eyes tightly and wondering at the thought of what the deity could possibly do.

At least Morrigan could change forms and—

His eyes snapped open, his mouth dry with horror. The body at the school no longer had a heart or a brain. And he remembered that Yami had told him that the hellhound was capable of changing shapes as long as they were able to devour the heart and brain of the victim in question. That was how it was that Morrigan was capable of changing shapes, was it not? He drew in a deep breath, nearly sickened by the thought, and he wanted to vomit as he considered it.

Had _she_ been the one to do this? Had _she_ killed them in order to take that form on? And then what? Would there be evidence planted elsewhere? Would she turn their eyes on someone else entirely? He had no idea what he was meant to expect should that be the case of what had come to happen.

* * *

Yugi drew in a deep breath, unsure of what more to do or say at the moment. Anzu and her father had finally left him and Yami was seated with him on the bed again, watching the TV as it droned on about the killing and the body they'd recovered. But they still could not find a way to properly identify them, as the damage was so extensive that it was almost overwhelming. The police had made the official statement that the body had been burned violently and so trace DNA was all but lost to them now. He drew in a deep breath, wondering at the thought, and then turned to the other boy beside him.

"Obelisk told me that I should trust him to get rid of the problem when it came down to what was going on with Mazaki," he said quietly, without preamble. Yami blinked and slowly turned his head to regard him curiously now. "And you said that the hellhounds can change form as long as they eat the heart and brain of a certain animal or person."

The taller teen shook his head slowly. "No, that is not what I told you," he answered calmly. "What I told you before was that the _Harbingers_ can do such a thing when they are healthy and stable enough and have eaten the heart and brain of the subject in question. Not all hellhounds can do such a thing. It would cause far too much mayhem if they were _all_ capable of it."

Yugi grimaced. "You don't really seem to have much of a positive opinion about the hellhounds as it is, you know?"

Yami blinked and narrowed his eyes, then reached up to run his fingers through his hair unhappily.

Yugi drew in a deep breath, then exhaled uncomfortably as they looked at one another. "Okay, so I got that detail wrong. But you _did_ say that they could change forms if they had eaten the brain and heart of whatever they wanted to change into, right?" he reminded him, shaking his head slightly and swallowing hard. "Yami, I need to know what you think the odds are that Obelisk and Morrigan are working to actually get rid of this issue."

He blinked, brows rising drastically, and then tilted his head slowly and frowned at him visibly. "You don't honestly think that Morrigan has eaten this child in order to take on their form and help to deter the attention from you?" he said slowly, voice cloaked in confusion for a long moment before he lowered his eyes and considered the comforter. He blinked again, red eyes growing distant for a brief second before he looked back at Yugi with a curious expression on his face. "You think that it's possible they might have done that?"

Yugi bristled, first with indignation and then with slight trickles of growing fear. "I think, considering the fact that they've both helped me in the time that you were gone…" He fell silent for a moment, feeling almost choked by the very concept, and then swallowed hard and looked away with a deep breath. "I think that it's entirely possible that they might have done that. And that's why I'm scared, Yami. Because, what if that _is_ what they decided to do?"

The taller teen was quiet for a long handful of moments, thinking hard about the concept of which Yugi was truly speaking about. If that was truly possible then the gods themselves were all working to help Atem despite differing subspecies…

"I do not know." Yami stared at the screen as a series of words began to ribbon across the bottom there, scrolling slowly but surely. He frowned and tilted his head, but the words seemed almost impossible to understand, his heart in his throat for a moment. If that were possible… He growled low in his throat and shook his head firmly. "I cannot say that it is impossible to consider. They _are_ siblings, after all. I am sure that they might have all been able to do such a thing in order to save you or whatever course within the future they might be considering now."

Yugi swallowed hard. "Do you think that the Harbinger I'll have to fight…?"

The other teen was silent for a long minute and a half, then turned his head and considered him pointedly. "I think that, as you are immortal and capable of coming back to life and have the ability to heal so rapidly as well and can bite and infect someone else, they will have all three strengths that the gods themselves possess as well," he stated softly. His eyes had grown darker than ever now, pointedly so, and he seemed almost to want nothing more than to lean forward and bite the smaller teen. It was bewildering to see such an expression of such open anger upon the other boy's face like this. "I believe that, since you can do what Ra or Slifer or Obelisk are capable of, the Harbinger in question will be able to do the same as Morrigan or Skoll or Hati."

"And that would be what?" he said slowly, swallowing hard. "Shape-shifting and healing from drinking blood and spreading the disease when they bite someone, right?"

Yami nodded slightly, shortly. "Noah could only perform one. I could sense the power in him and it was not so immense as what you would feel upon coming across Morrigan, even in those dreams. She could have cloaked him in her aura and broken him in half." He was silent for a moment. "Most of the Harbingers of today are only capable of one instead of all three. It is because you have been born and live now that _any_ of them are capable of such a thing."

"So you think that they'll be able to do all three things then…?"

His red eyes flashed. "Seeing as Valon is Morrigan's son, I don't doubt that he is capable of all three abilities should he so desire. I don't think that he would be incapable of doing any of them, truthfully."

Yugi shivered. "His dad is Hati."

Yami blinked and slowly turned his head, staring at him with burning eyes. "Excuse me? Both of his parents are gods?" he demanded in a sharp, curt tone. He was infuriated as they looked at one another, his face twisting up into a hideous scowl. "The two of them created him? Two _gods_ created a Harbinger that could potentially wreak havoc if he should ever feel truly triggered and he's borne of _both of them_?"

The smaller teen flinched, startled by his ferocity. "I—y-yeah? I'm pretty sure that's what Morrigan said before. I thought…" He hesitated, unsure of himself now. She had said that before, hadn't she? That Valon and Kris were the results of their copulation? "Why are you so worried about it? You know that I can handle it…"

His red eyes flickered across his and then he tilted his head and snorted loudly. "I do not think that anyone would truly know how to handle a wolf born because of the union of two _gods_ , Yugi. I don't even think that Slifer or Obelisk would understand what to do with this situation if they were in your place."

Yugi shook his head, flustered as he looked him over. Then he drew in a deep breath, clearing his throat and feeling sick for a long moment. "You think that I'm not going to be able to handle it by myself?" he asked quietly, growing more and more uncertain of himself as they stared at each other. Yami blinked and narrowed his gaze, seemingly almost stunned by the weight of such a question.

"I think that it will be a lot harder than you're willing to acknowledge right now."

The small teen stared at him pointedly, for what felt like hours in truth, and then narrowed his eyes into slits as they looked at one another. They considered each other, then he tilted his head and looked at the screen where the messages remained scrolling across the bottom with rather urgent alerts. The curfew was going to be tightened, brought on an hour earlier than it had been before.

"Did you know that there are two Pure-Bloods?" he replied abruptly, cutting him off before he could bother to open his mouth again. Then he blinked and shook his head, frowning as he saw Yami blink in puzzlement at the statement. "And there are two Harbingers?"

The taller teen blinked again and tilted his head slowly, bewildered by the question. Then he furrowed his brows, tilted his head further, and then narrowed his eyes and moved to sit up straighter. "There are two of them?" he asked softly, then tilted his chin up slightly as he looked at the other male slowly. "Any idea who the second Atem is then?"

Yugi gave him a grin which seemed to underline his mild dissatisfaction. He leaned a little closer, his breath all but tickling his lips when murmured, "I have an idea, but I don't know entirely. And I don't think it would be smart for me to say that I think it's them if it turns out that I'm wrong, understand?"

Yami was silent, red eyes boring into his, and then he smirked slightly and showed him his bright white canines, the sharp teeth brilliant where they pressed softly against his lips. "I wouldn't know that kind of feeling. I just know that _you_ are Code Name Atem," he stated simply. "And I do not have any ideas as to who the other two might be in this game of chess the gods are playing."

The small teen bit his lip and forced himself to pull away, not in the least surprised to see the smallest hint of relief within the other's dark eyes. "I think Morrigan said that his sister was born from her and Hati too. But she's a lot younger than him so I don't know for sure if she would really be the second Harbinger…"

Yami shook his head. "It is rather unlikely," he stated with a shrug. And then his eyes flickered away to the television screen again. "And, should she _not_ be the Harbinger you're meant to fight, who do you suppose it will be?"

Yugi was quiet for a long time, then lowered his eyes and drew in a deep breath. "I think they're probably a lot more reckless than Valon or his sister Kris." He glanced at Yami sideways now. "But I don't know who it might be besides them. And I don't think the gods would just let another one be born just for the sake of the war happening, right?"

The taller teen blinked, staring at the screen pointedly. "I do not believe so, no. But you would be surprised what the gods have done to allow themselves to rectify the many issues they once caused." He was quiet now, staring as his eyes narrowed and his brows furrowed and his jaw clenched tightly. When he spoke again, it was through his teeth. "But then, I do not know that I trust them to begin with. Ra has all but abandoned you. Slifer and Obelisk are waiting for me to become properly acquainted with the pack again. I do not think that they will remain within the camp for long after I do such a thing. I think once they begin to believe in and follow me as their beta, both of them will neglect to help much more."

The smaller boy bristled, unnerved by the idea. But it made sense and he did not know why it was that he had never considered that. He had thought of the many times that the deities might end up coming together to kill him and yet he had not thought that maybe they would step back and let him self-destruct without further influence on their behalf? He drew in a deep breath, then looked down at the floor again.

"You think they'll just leave like that?"

Yami blinked. "Yes. Why would they remain?"

"I don't know…I guess I was just hopeful that maybe they wouldn't just…throw me in the lions' den like that or something…" He exhaled loudly and reached up to run his hands through his hair. He had the smallest urge to reach down and run his fingers over his choker but he realized as well that he would not stop there. He would pull on it and tug until he all but crushed his own windpipe. He was well aware of that problem. And so he turned back to Yami, a new thought forming in his head as he blinked and tilted his head. "You used to have a collar."

Yami turned back to him with a bemused expression.

"It had a metal plate or something on it. You only had it the first couple of times I saw you, but I remember it was there. What was…?"

The taller boy blinked, startled, and thought for a moment or two on what he might mean. Then he grimaced and looked away, turning immediately back to the television screen in front of him with a snarl bubbling its way up his throat. "It was my cage mate's," he said reluctantly. "I took it when he died."

Yugi blinked wide, horrified eyes, then looked away again with a heat burning under his cheeks. His neck felt entirely too hot and his mouth was dry as he tried his hardest not to think too hard about such an implication. And it made him feel dizzy as he swallowed hard and reconsidered the words that had left his mouth. He drew in a deep breath, then exhaled again with a small shake of his head.

"Okay." He wondered again what it might have been that existed between them. Was it strictly platonic? Yami had said he'd had a mate at some point and yet… "I'm sorry."

"For what? Asking a question?" he scoffed. "It's not as if it's a bad thing to do so."

Yugi stared pointedly at the screen in front of him. "No, but I made you think about it and I didn't want to hurt you like that. So I apologize, Yami. I never should have…" He shrugged after a moment, when he could no longer find any words. Then he let out a soft sigh and tilted his head with a grimace. "I shouldn't have asked you about it."

"You were curious. I cannot fault you for that."

But Yugi wished he would have told him to simply shut up and left it like that. It hurt to even consider the way that things might have grown so upsetting to begin with. He had not considered the fact that perhaps Yami might be too aggrieved to even think to tell him such a thing as it was. He had never even thought about how it might affect the other boy to think back on such a thing, how it might rile his temper or pick raw a wound that clearly had failed to heal.

So he waited for another thirty minutes, the sound of the TV the most diligent to be heard for the moment. And then he drew in a deep breath, narrowed his eyes, and waited until the moment that the movie went to a commercial break. Yami had not spoken in that time, either, seemingly all but lifeless in his spot beside him. It had made him fearful to so much as glance in his direction for a long while.

"I think…" He got to his feet after a long moment, feeling almost sick to his stomach for a brief second. "I think that I need to burn off some energy."

Yami blinked and turned his head, tipping it up towards him in surprise before he frowned and narrowed his eyes. He grimaced after a moment when Yugi didn't look at him, getting to his feet and dusting himself off as if he expected something to be on him. In the corner of his eye, Yugi saw him draw in a deep breath, licking his lips, and frown uncertainly for a moment. "A run?" he asked softly.

Yugi hesitated, for a moment all but bewildered, and then slowly looked at him. The hesitance in his expression seemed to all but destroy him as Yami stared up at him unblinkingly. He offered him a strained smile, clearing his throat. "Yeah, I think it would be a good idea for me to take a run." He opened and closed his mouth after a moment, clearing his throat again. "Did you, uh…want to come with me…?"

The taller teen blinked, unsure of whether to take this invitation for anything truthful or to simply decline. But he was restless as the other boy was, feeling almost sick as he looked at him. And there was a part of him that spoke urgently of the need to stay at his side. There was a small part of him that was desperate to make him pay attention, to have him understand that it was imperative that Yugi not go on his own. The thought was bewildering to him, something that nearly burned him as they looked at one another. It was shocking to him just how easily he accepted this thought. He had never quite been one to think that the smaller teen might _require_ his presence in any way.

Yugi was doing well enough to have survived on his own like this. So why was it that he had such a feeling now? It made no sense to him. But the urging refused to quiet and so he nodded and got to his feet. "I would like to, yes," he answered quietly, some part of him unsure of what more there was that could be said or done. Then he watched as Yugi studied him, smiled slightly, and made his way to the window.

* * *

 _How about we play a game_?

The black wolf paused in his trek at his side, curious and puzzled as he raised his lowered head to regard him curiously. _A game_? he repeated softly, tilting his head. _What kind of game_?

 _A hunting game,_ Yugi announced, turning to him with what should have been a bright grin of amusement but with eyes that he knew had to have seemed disheartened. He flicked his tongue over his nose and turned away again. Yami seemed more or less upset about something or other. And he could not help but wonder if it had to do with his own question from earlier. It would not have surprised him in the slightest to realize such a thing. And it broke his heart to think that it would remain with the other wolf even as they moved about in the forest like this. Yami should have been happier now that he was there amongst the trees… _We'll see who can catch the most prey in the hour. How about that_?

Yami flicked his ears back and forth for a moment, as if he were buying himself time to answer. Then he looked about them almost awkwardly. A long minute passed before he drew his lips back slightly to show his teeth and finally he turned away again. _That might be nice. A hunt sounds like a good idea,_ he said quietly, almost as if he were relenting to Yugi's will rather than truly excited by the thought. _Where is the rendezvous point_?

Yugi blinked and paused, startled by the question. Then he blinked, flicking his ears, and offered him what would have been a small smile had he been human. He wagged his tail instead and studied his face for a moment. _It'll be the cavern I kept you in when you were still feral, okay_? _Unless you want to meet somewhere else_?

The larger wolf did not so much as blink, instead nodding and turning with his ears pricked forward. _Very well. I will take prey to the west and you take them within this area. Agreed_? he asked, though he did not wait for a response. He turned away from him entirely, taking off in a brisk trot that put Yugi's own fast walk to shame. The black wolf was gone in a handful of minutes, far from his sight before he could even think straight. He did not once glance back at him, and Yugi wondered if perhaps he was still upset with him in some manner. It was the only thing he could think of that would cause such a curt and despondent attitude in the other male.

Yugi was lazy in his stride when he began to move about the trees again. The shadows were soft where they fell across the snow in front of him and the small teen was happy to see the way the gray and light blue came in strips along his muzzle. He flicked his ears a few times and padded forward several paces with his tail all but wagging. He blinked and lowered his nose to the snow, sniffing for a moment. He had not considered how far they had gone into the forest, how close they still were to the city itself, but he could hear a car rather loudly and it made him falter. He shook himself out and wandered forward again, eyes glinting as he looked about the trees for a moment.

He tilted his head and considered the area around him, glancing back only towards the trees that parted over his shoulder a mile or so further and showed the smallest strip of asphalt resting there before the houses in question. He shivered and turned away, unnerved, and moved further into the trees as if they might shelter him beneath their bare haven. He flicked his ears and shook his head slowly, his eyes moving about the trees for a moment before he flattened them against his skull.

Something eerie had begun to crawl beneath his fur, along the top of his flesh. He felt as if he were being stroked by a ghostly hand, as if the wind might be pressing upon him entirely. His heart had begun to beat a little heavily in his chest but his ears were pricked forward and his mouth was watering with momentary hunger. He wondered about the idea of what it was that he might possibly be able to hunt within the trees now. It made his mouth water further and his ears flicked back and forth for a brief moment.

Then he paced forward again, eyes darkening. His fur shuddered along his back for a moment. Something was strange and terrible, as if it meant to tear through him. He thought of sharp teeth and great claws. And he considered the way the forest seemed entirely too cold and still around him. He felt that the world seemed too frozen, as if it were being swallowed away by the ice. The thought made him shiver and he hesitated as that intense feeling of discomfort and eeriness came to him once more. His fur rose into a bristle now. And his ears pricked and flicked about himself for a moment.

Then he caught a sound much like paws in the snow. It made him pause, startled. His ears pricked forward again and he blinked as he looked over his shoulder curiously. It was strange to him just how much louder it seemed than anything else ever had. And so he faltered in his steps. His ears flicked immediately to the left. And his head snapped in the same direction, his heart hammering in his chest now. It took him only a moment to realize that it was not Yami. And then his head rose and a snarl formed on his lips.

He knew that he did not recognize much of the pack's footsteps any longer. He had only ever truly taken the time to know Mai and Otogi's and perhaps he'd even become accustomed to Marik's as well. But now he hesitated, listening. And his stomach knotted as he tried to think of a way to sidestep whatever potential confrontation he might run across. It made no sense to him for a moment that there might be dogs or other wolves there beyond the pack.

But, as he looked up, he spotted a form coming through the trees.

It was an off-white, silver color, much like the shadows that were spread across the forest floor. His heart leaped into his throat and his fur rose into a bristle. That eerie air became suppressing, surging forward and biting into his flesh beneath his long coat. But the shape was large and sleek in build, with ears that were oddly floppy rather than erect. The thought made him bristle further and he considered the animal charging him for a long moment.

It took only a second to recognize the long legs as lupine in design. They propelled themselves in a rapid bid to gain ground. And Yugi flicked his tongue over his nose in warning. His tail rose and his fur began to bristle. He bore his teeth but could not find the air necessary in his lungs to snarl as fiercely as he might have formerly. Instead he drew his lips back as far as they might go, bore his teeth more pointedly, and raced forward to face the threat head on.

When the darker canine came towards him, it was a mottled silver shade. The canine ran forward and Yugi bristled as he himself mimicked the action. He was across the snow in an instant. And, as they both collided, the impact sent them rocketing. They were on their back legs, halfway in the air, teeth gaping. Their bodies were twisted to face each other, the newcomer far on his back legs and Yugi with his limbs stretched to absorb impact with the snow. The other dog landed heavily and Yugi spun more pointedly in an instant.

When he turned to face it, the other backed up, snarling and with a wagging tail. The fur along its spine had risen. Floppy ears turned forward and pointed at him. Yugi blinked and wagged his long, fluffy tail. He lunged forward and they both slammed into each other now.

The impact winded him. But he snapped his teeth shut furiously. His mouth caught upon fur and muscle. Blood slipped into his mouth. He allowed it to coat his tongue, a burning and feverish sensation. He snarled and tossed his head. And the dog in front of him was thrown off balance. The adrenaline rush that came through him was immediate. He could sense the strength so brilliantly that it made his legs quake. As he tossed his head again, the dog was forced to scrabble.

Its back legs clawed within the air, feet off the ground. It twisted its body to try to catch itself. And then it landed heavily on its right hip. Yugi didn't doubt that the snow cushioned the blow, however. And so he shook his head more vigorously. The canine struggled to gather its feet beneath itself. And then it tried to twist its hips. But Yugi shook it again.

The effort proved useless beneath the onslaught of movement. It screamed, tossed through the air with another hideous jerk of Yugi's powerful neck. The weight of the hybrid in his jaws was enough to make him all but stagger. But he kept his grip, furious and snarling. And another toss finally allowed the wolfdog to break free of his grip. But it simply rolled in the snow, the ice colored red from the impact. It struggled for its feet. Then it panted and stared at him in shock. Bright, brilliant red eyes, much like wine rather than multiple shades, blinked back at him.

Yugi was on it again in an instant. Some kind of hideous reality had sprung forth in his thoughts. This hellhound was not alone. And the sooner he could kill it, the faster he could try to find Yami and run. Lesser numbers meant that the two of them held a better chance of escape or fighting to the death. It was not as simple as killing them and fleeing, however. He knew this, somewhere deep within his gut. And it horrified him to know this truth.

There was something strange in the way the hybrid had gone about attacking him. And Yugi felt sick, dizzy, as he stepped away and bore his teeth again. He could hear more of them, lurking in the trees and running forward. But they did not come to save the dog in front of him. And so he hesitated for a brief moment before turning on them again. He leaped forward and the hybrid snarled. It strained to keep its balance as Yugi tossed his head again, throat in his jaws. The fur and blood flew through the air once more, coating the ice in deep rivulets.

The white wolf tossed his head again. And the bone snapped. He heard it so powerfully that it startled him. He released it, jerking back a step and staring. But the animal in front of him was still, breathless. Wine red eyes peered up at him lifelessly. And Yugi nearly panicked at the thought of such a death. He had not meant to do such a thing. He had thought to simply fight it off. He had meant to try his hardest to catch his footing again. He'd wanted to run. He felt sick to his stomach for a moment. And then he drew in a deep breath.

He had wanted to speak to it, to try to find out what it was that was going on. It made sense to do so, did it not? He drew in a deep breath once more, bristling furiously. His tail lowered slightly. He squared his shoulders. But there was a rapid and burning pain within his muscles. His blood felt as if it were on fire. And his bones seemed almost to melt beneath the touch of his veins.

The second dog came at him from an angle. As it raced forward, Yugi spotted it in his very peripheral. And he spun to face it just quickly enough. His teeth were exposed. His mouth was wide open. And it clamped shut again immediately. The wolfdog snarled, biting at the air. But Yugi simply rose to his back legs. The other followed immediately, almost slack within his grip from the pure force of his bite. The difference in weight was amazing to him.

The dog had to be more emaciated than even Yami had before it.

And, as Yugi braced himself more pointedly, haunches readied and claws digging within the snow, he tossed his head. The force was enough to make the other canine quiver. And he kept his shoulders squared, his body ready. But it was as Yugi threw his own body to the side in a simple movement that the other took a much more violent topple. The blood was rushing in his ears as Yugi tossed his head again.

The wolfdog was thrown off his feet. And Yugi kept his muzzle pointed firmly towards the snow. Black and gray legs flew through the air, kicking and flailing drastically. Snow was thrown forward into the air. Claws missed Yugi's shoulder by an inch. Yet the dog's body had folded into an upside down formation much like a cat's as it flipped in the air for balance.

The hindquarters kicked and stirred at the snow crystals. And Yugi fell back onto all fours. His head tossed the opposing direction. The hybrid's body curved inward. Its back legs tucked towards its belly. Its claws were outstretched and aimed for his face but missed. And its head was almost flipped to show the underside of its throat. This time the hybrid flexed its back legs in a panic.

Its hindquarters slammed into the snow once more. The forelimbs clawed feebly at air. Its head was still pointed downward. And the heavy impact made the air white with a surge of ice crystals. The wolfdog scrabbled, catching at the snow and flexing its paws. The toss threw Yugi off his feet for the most part. His eyes were wide, hateful. His front legs fell beneath his weight, spread outwards on either side of the hybrid's form. His hindquarters were raised in the air, braced in a mirroring position. He was amazed he was still upright.

But he caught himself and rose to his feet once more. His legs held him impossibly, startling himself. He tossed his head to shake the dog. And it tried desperately to follow him to its paws. He held it tight, breaths puffing his cheeks outward. It was hard to breathe. And his head was spinning. He could hardly see the dog in front of him. The canine was snarling and spitting. But it seemed to have realized its mistake. And it looked extremely exhausted as it stared back at him almost frantically.

 _Who are you and what do you want_? he demanded, shaking the dog violently again. He huffed for breath and braced his shoulders. But he knew there were others. It was an ambush attack. And he needed to better prepare himself for it. He could sense them coming. For now they hovered, however. And they clearly did not care to save this hybrid either. He pricked his ears forward and listened intently to their footsteps. They were a few yards back, drifting in and out of the trees. They were watching them, were judging the ability to get to him. But they were not coming as of that moment. And so he snarled softly under his breath.

 _Well_?

But he remembered then, what Valon had said. He remembered the way that the Harbinger had said that perhaps it was possible he might understand the other wolf and they him as well, but that the others might be unable to. And he wondered now if it was possible that some of his packmates were nearby, unable to know what was going on but hearing the pleas of a canine that was not strictly wolf. He bristled and clamped his jaws tighter upon his throat.

 _Tell me_!

The hybrid screamed and flailed. Snow flew into the air. Aquamarine eyes stared back at him almost blindly. He snarled and he hoped the hatred showed on his face. If this dog did not open its mouth, he'd simply kill it. He was not going to give them a chance to find the others. And he would have to get rid of them altogether. He could not let run across Yami. Because he was _closer_ , Yugi realized. He could feel Yami's nearness as the seconds passed. The smothering aura that the hybrids possessed was being cut through with pure strength, a power too wild to be completely contained and hidden away.

And so he resolved to himself to end this as quickly as he possibly could.

There was no possibility at all that he might be able to do so if he did not strike them down, however. He knew this. He recognized this problem, just as he had when he realized that Yami was correct in his need to kill Haga and Ryuzaki so mercilessly. He felt sick. The blood in his body burned more violently than ever. He drew in a deep breath. But it was hard to breathe. His lungs were straining. He drew his lips back further and tossed his head. He wondered if perhaps he could snap his neck as he had the other hellhound's.

But he could not find the opportunity for such a thing.

But, as he thought to do this and wondered at the odds, another hellhound came running forward. Yugi blinked and turned his head. But he did not release. The hybrid snarled and tried to keep its footing. It strained desperately beneath the immensity of his bite. This wolfdog came straight for him. But then it weaved away at the last second. The nip to his flank was enough to tear hair. But it did not harm him. And he snarled as he blinked and turned on the animal in question. But the action of turning his head to follow its movements left him vulnerable. And he did not think that perhaps they were using an ambush tactic he knew incredibly well from video footage of wolves and dogs in the wild.

The white wolf yelped as teeth snapped into his shoulder. The bone scraped and ground together. And Yugi's eyes nearly popped out of his head as he turned on it. But a nip to his side made him startle. He released the wolfdog he'd been holding in such a vice grip. The dog fell to the snow, bleeding heavily. But it did not move from its heaped position. And, to Yugi's horror, another hellhound came forward. The one that had bitten into his shoulder held him in place. And the one on his other side growled and wagged its curly tail. But he could not take his eyes off the sight in front of him.

A female of dark glossy black fur with a streak of deep gray like steel across her chest had come forward. Her ears were perfectly soft in their triangular shape, much like those of a wolf's. And a pair of mismatched eyes peered down at the fallen canine. Golden and green eyes glinted for a moment. The female lowered her muzzle to the other dog. The canine bristled and spun on her. But, as he looked at her, she snarled and drew back her lips to expose large gaping teeth.

Yugi thought she would brandish them against him. He was ready for that moment. And he stiffened in preparation. Yugi lowered his head, snarling. He ignored the pain in his shoulder and the way that several of the other hybrids had begun to pace about him. And then, to his amazement, horror swelling up in his belly, the female opened and snapped her jaws.

Blood flew through the air, flecking his nose and cheek. His eyes grew wide, the snarl falling from his features. The wolfdog was screaming beneath her vicious bite. And she simply pulled back, paced a step, then turned on it more violently. Blood and fur were flying into the air now. The female wagged a long tail, one much straighter than those of the other wolfdogs in front of him. And then she grabbed the animal by the throat, snapped her jaws forcefully, and severed the head from the body in an impossibly powerful bite.

Yugi could do nothing more than gape. He remembered her—the she-wolf that had sat in the cage when Obelisk had knocked him about. He remembered the way her eyes had peered at him so coolly, how little his defeat had seemed to affect her in the slightest. And, just as then, she did nothing more than raise her head. Her eyes found his and she wagged her tail slowly as she looked at the other hybrids seconds later. It took only a moment for her to turn on her heel and trot away, tail up and a snarl forming on her jaws. She turned back to them, let out a loud bark that sounded almost like thunder, and turned away again.

Some part of him was hopeful that this meant a command for retreat.

But then he saw the way her eyes sparkled and his heart nearly shattered in his chest. His mouth opened. His breath came in a shuddering rasp. His eyes bore into hers. But hers were almost like a void. There was only amusement and cold-blooded laughter. And he found himself almost quaking.

The moment she turned away again, the hybrids sprang upon him again.

Yugi turned on the wolf at his side, the one holding his shoulder. The bone was shattered. He could feel it. Or perhaps it was simply pulled out of place. It felt disconnected from the rest of him. But somehow he had not fallen over. And so he assumed it had to be the latter. But then, he did not know what it was that he was meant to do should it be the prior.

Hell, he did not know what he was meant to do now should it be the latter either.

He nearly choked on the thought. The headless body in front of him was a hideous mixture of red and pink. The neck bone showed brilliantly beneath all of the blood and muscle. Veins were split and bleeding somehow still. A few inches away the head peered back at him, aquamarine eyes set against dark fur. But his head was spinning. And for a split second those eyes turned red. And the hatred made his body quiver.

He spun on the dog in front of him. But he did not account for the one behind him.

Teeth snapped shut into his flesh, inches from his spine. He recoiled at the sensation. Hot blood had begun to soak his entire body; he could feel that much. And nips to his flank felt numb. Fur was being stripped and skin split. Yugi could feel blood there as well. And he flicked his ears as another lunged for him. But he focused again. His ears were ringing with his heartbeat. He was frantic with the need to defend himself. He was sent in a panic at the very thought. He did not have a defensive measure. And the attack was too structured to fully fight against…

But to fight against it still would only last a small amount of time…

And so he let the adrenaline sweep through him.

His senses became heightened. He could hear each breath. He could feel every small touch to his fur. He could smell the blood and rot in their veins. He could taste copper and ivy and nightshade. And he could see every fine grain of which the snowflakes possessed.

The hellhound slammed into his side as Yugi went for its throat. He tried to retain his balance, twisting his body in an effort to keep himself upright. But the impact of teeth had fallen forcefully into his spine. His back legs quaked beneath the pain. His fangs clamped shut within the fur of the wolfdog's throat. Blood spilled upon his throat. He scrambled, but his own attack was enough to knock him off balance and he fell. The hybrid fell with him, dragged into the snow in an instant.

Another caught his throat in turn. Yugi was winded. His teeth remained clamped shut. But his eyes grew wide, horrified, as the hybrid tossed its head. He was shaken with the action. It threw him further off balance. He could not find his paws beneath his weight. His heart was hammering in his chest. His lungs felt tight and constricted. He panicked and tried again.

He got his footing by some miracle and tried his hardest to rise to his full height. But the hellhound caught him on the flank. He was pulled off balance immediately. He fell on his side as it released. The next dog came to bite his forelimb. And then they tugged fiercely, relentless in their efforts. Yugi snarled, dizzy and sickened.

This was not what Atem was meant to do.

This was not how he was meant to die…

Both hellhounds shook their heads. And a third came to grab at his scruff. It dragged at his fur and pulled him back in the snow. The two of them snarled, tails wagging and eyes bright as they bore into his. Yugi could do no more than stare at them, stunned. He had never considered that maybe he wouldn't even make it to the face of the war. He had never thought that perhaps the hellhounds would kill him ahead of time. He had never even imagined it possible.

Yugi felt these thoughts like teeth in his belly. And he scrabbled once more, horror making him all but panic. He snarled and snapped his teeth. Then he twisted and writhed and kicked. One of his claws cut through the fur and skin of a hybrid's throat. And his teeth connected with another's muzzle, clamping down. When they jerked backwards, they tugged him out of the grip of the one holding his scruff. He used the momentum of their retreat to rise and brace his back limbs and find his balance again.

He landed heavily, his limbs quaking. But he held himself there. And, as the next came for his throat, he spun on it. His teeth caught its skull with a harsh popping and grinding noise. And the second hybrid to join them backed up with a startled expression. Bright red eyes peered back at him, almost stunned by his actions. But the white wolf ignored them. And he tossed his jaws. The wolf stumbled and fell away, thrown off its feet. It rolled into another and they both fell in a heap of gray and black fur. Yugi panted, panicked, as he realized that there were more than only four of them now. They had doubled—no, they had _tripled_ in numbers. There were _twelve_ of them standing before him, snarling and wagging their long tails.

But, as three of them surged forward, teeth and jaws and bright red bleeding gums, one of them screamed. Yugi jerked, head snapping around. And he gaped, horrified. The dogs halted in their tracks as well. The hybrid nearest him had hit the ground. It was screaming and choking. Blood spilled from its gaping jaws. The neck crunched and broke beneath pressure. And then it collapsed, plucked from whatever had grabbed it in the first place. The dog hit the ground, golden eyes pale and stunned and growing lifeless as the seconds passed.

Yugi turned his head slightly. And his legs quaked as fire raced through him. But he could do no more than stare. His heart was racing and his thoughts were that of fleeing rather than greeting. But the wolf in front of him merely shifted his weight, raised his head, and bore bright gleaming teeth colored red. But the gums were stark white, Yugi realized, and he felt horror pooling in his heart. He knew that feral quality in Yami's eyes was not borne of power, but rather of mounting fear.

Three dogs lunged forward. And Yami dealt with them in a swift manner. The three of them fell lifelessly to the ground in a handful of seconds. But Yugi could see that the effort caused immense strain in the other wolf. He was clearly exhausted and he could not continue these efforts for long. Yugi lunged at the hybrid closest to him in order to stall the ranks. But it was fruitless. The hybrids raced forward and collided with his alpha. The one he'd caught by the shoulder turned on him with brilliant teeth.

Those fangs snapped shut furiously. Teeth clipped his skull. He yelped at the impact. And the skin tore upon his face as the teeth ripped through soft fur. He was thrown backwards, body jerked to the ground. Blood sprayed the air. Yugi was not able to focus long enough to attack, however. And the hellhound released him abruptly. It turned to face Yami with the others.

And Yugi found himself panicking. His heart was in his throat. His body felt as if it were full of rot. His skin was heated. His muscles were burning away, he felt. And his limbs were broken beneath him. He tried to breathe but his lungs felt strangled. He had begun to shake before he could stop himself, horrified.

He was useless, he realized.

Because, as he tried for his feet, that fire raced through him and the heat burned away what little strength he had assumed himself to have formerly. And so Yugi remained there, unable to do more than stare. He hoped that Yami could find a way to overpower them, but his weakened state did not seem to give him an advantage of any kind. Yugi found himself all but sobbing with his growing horror and pain, heart breaking within his chest as he took in the fight in front of him.

When Yami moved back a step, his teeth were bared and his ears were pricked forward. The dogs blinked at each other. Then they raced forward in a group of three or four. Yugi turned to run, the snow flying beneath his paws when one leaped at him. His teeth were bared, mouth open and eyes burning furiously. He spun on the dog chasing him. The hybrid was on its back legs. Yami dodged a snap of its teeth with a simple twist of his body. The action effectively removed his broad shoulders from its attack range.

Another dog came from the side, a few feet of distance between them though he quickly closed the gap. Yami waited for the other canine to lunge at him. Then he dodged aside and ran a circle around it. The three of them lunged forward, giving chase immediately. Yugi could see a third one. The spots developing in his eyes, bright red and gushing outwards, were clear just long enough…

He blinked. His vision was fuzzy. But the spots were dissipating.

Yami slowed himself, spinning on them again. His ears were forward, his shoulders squared. His teeth were showing, his lips pulled completely back. His fur was in a rigid bristle. His hindquarters tucked slightly as he braced his weight upon his back legs. The dogs raced towards him. He snapped his teeth at the first one. The attack grazed their cheek. Then he spun on the second. The third jerked to a stop. It skidded in the snow, tail wagging and muzzle pointed downward. Its eyes were burning into his, vibrant green like emeralds.

Yami sprang back as the hybrids closed in on him. The fourth one came running faster. A fifth and sixth had turned as well now, curious. And Yami backed up a step, crouching lower to the ground. It was not a good defensive measure by any means. And it almost made Yugi think of surrender rather than offense. But then he saw the power in the position. Yami was braced entirely on his four legs. His muscles were readied to lunge.

When he backed up again, he straightened and his tail came up, a dark flag. His eyes flashed, full of hate and disgust. The four hellhounds directly in front of him snarled and began to back away. Tails wagged. Eyes glittered. They moved in a singular unit to back up several small steps.

The one furthest to his left backed up farthest, tail wagging slowly. Yami lowered his head slightly, teeth showing brilliantly. He stepped forward, stiff-legged and aggressive. The other three hybrids moved as if to dance around him. One stepped away a few feet, eyes glittering more than ever. In an instant the one to his furthest left came forward. And the one to the farthest right did the same. The middle dog hesitated for a moment, then lunged forward.

Teeth snapped into his flanks. Yami spun on them in turn, biting at them. But they retreated before he could make contact. And then the one directly in front of him crouched for a moment. He spun on the wolf to his right as it came forward. But it was a bite to the left that hit him. The black wolf spun on it once more. Teeth dug firmly into his back.

It was right to the side of his spine. It was a miracle that the bastard dog had missed. But the one to his right came for his other flank. The one in the middle came for his throat. And four more hellhounds were racing forward now. He could see them against the snow, all of them snarling and cackling with laughter.

The hybrid attempted to toss him off his paws. He snarled and backed up a step. Teeth caught in his throat. His ears flicked forward. He spun on the animal. But there were two more closing in on his right flank now. He managed to tear out of the other werewolf's grip. He spun on it, teeth clicking shut upon bone. The hellhound screamed in pain. The others bayed with laughter.

Yami backed up again. Then he turned on the next wolf to rush him. Fresh pain surged through his skin, ripping muscle. His back ached for a moment. But he did not pause. And the second wolf came for his throat again, furthest to his right. He breathed in deeply through his nose, bore his teeth furiously. And then he tossed his head downward. The hybrid in Yami's jaws screamed again. The other to come for his throat caught his scruff. In an instant he was nearly unbalanced.

The others were coming in a wave, he realized. Yugi struggled to try to draw himself to his paws. He was bleeding, aching. His head was spinning. Blood seemed to soak his tongue. There were six of them facing Yami now. Three had caught a grip on him. Three were standing aside, a few inches back, with wagging tails and lolling tongues.

The force of the bite to his throat was crushing. His red eyes grew wide. And his jaws snapped opened. The hybrid pressed hard upon his neck. Yami jerked, knocked back a few inches by the hit to his shoulder. The dog bore down on him harder. The hellhound whose skull he'd almost crushed had retreated. Blood was flying with the rapid shake of its head.

Yami was cornered in an instant, forced back again. The dogs snarled and laughed, sneering wordlessly. A new bite came to his side. He spun on them. He pulled free of the other's grip. Fur and blood came through the air. Yugi could see it dripping from his side. He knew his neck was sticky, slicked and laden with blood. Teeth bit inches from his former wound. He snarled and backed up again.

But he turned, twisting fiercely. In an instant his bright white teeth showed. He lunged for the face of the next canine. His teeth clicked into soft flesh, blood flooding his jaws. In their enthusiasm, the dogs had clustered about. One had jumped so happily forward that it had landed hard on the other's back. They rolled, snapping and snarling at each other. Yami took the distraction to draw in a long breath and seemingly gauge the pain in his body.

The black wolf backed up a few steps, bristling furiously. He drew in a greedy breath. But the pain was surging through his blood. It felt as if his veins were on fire. He thought the blood was lava beneath his skin. His muscles felt as if they were swelling and breaking beneath the pressure. His fur felt as if it were falling away in clumps.

He snarled and snapped his jaws. The dogs backed up, all but scurrying to move out of range of his teeth. One backed up and turned tail for a moment. Another simply snuck closer, slowly and with flattened ears.

Yami snarled and positioned his muzzle closer. He snarled, jaws foaming with saliva. His teeth glinted. The hybrid backed up a step, but did not slink away. And the one to his furthest right had come closer again. It was watching with dark, glittering golden eyes. When it crept closer, he could not stop himself. Yami turned his head immediately.

And the instant his eyes were away, the one on his left lunged forward.

He screamed as teeth bit into his throat. The soft flesh gave way with little resistance. The attack threw him off balance for a split second. Yami did not fall, but he stumbled. His paws worked to regain his footing. His legs were quivering beneath the pressure and additional weight. And then he twisted his head as if tilting it. And his jaws snapped open wider than before. He shut them viciously on a thin forelimb. But it did nothing.

The hybrid moved forward. Yami rose onto his back legs to try to catch himself. He braced his back legs and pressed his right forelimb to the ground desperately. His left rose to retain some sense of balance. But as he tried to bite again, this time aiming higher, the others had come again. Yami landed hard, skidding in the snow. The flakes surged up in a rush. He yelped and the dog released only when he bit at its face. But his right flank was open again.

And teeth dug quickly into his flesh there.

And then it caught in his throat again.

And he was sent into a flail as he was nearly thrown off balance once more. The black wolf spun to face him. His teeth were raised, eyes sharp and wild. His mouth was vicious and gaping. And his teeth were covered in drool.

Yami had to scrabble to regain his balance. He braced his hind limbs. And he jerked backwards frantically. The other dog came for his back right leg once more. They latched themselves into the sensitive skin there, pulling taut. And Yami struggled to shake the dog from his throat. But another had come to the same side. And they were rushing forward with bright gleaming white teeth. The black wolf twisted and nearly lost his balance once more.

And then teeth pulled at his flesh and tugged his braced legs. He faltered but did not fall. And his forelimbs braced themselves frantically to regain his footing properly. Teeth dug more pointedly into his shoulder. And Yami could see yet another hellhound, sneaking up from the side further off. It was coming to grab at another spot on his left side. He nearly screamed with panic.

There were five of them attached to him. The werewolf on his right side faltered when he twisted and tossed his body in retaliation. Yami snarled and bit at the wolf closest him. And the one attached to his shoulder tugged violently. The one on his neck rushed forward to knock him a bit off balance. But the two opposing forces seemed only to give him momentum to stay afoot. And the fifth simply clamped his teeth into the former wound that had covered his back, mere inches from his spine.

Now Yami tried frantically for his back feet. He rose. The hellhound on his throat was forced to bend back. And the other attached to his shoulder was tossed off balance. The momentum forced it to release him. The one on his back right leg clamped down harder. And the others began to run forward more happily. Yami could see them, laughing and trotting and wagging dark tails.

He writhed just hard enough to shake another. The one on his throat released. But the others kept their grips. Yami panted and one behind the wolf he'd shaken lunged forward. It was on him in an instant as he spun around. The canine gripping his back was digging in harder. He snarled and snapped teeth shut close to its eye. But he missed as another caught his scruff.

The blood was roaring in his veins. He was panting and trembling. The hybrids surged upon him once more. And he twisted and writhed again, hard enough to shake another. But the momentum sent him stumbling. And the wolf on his back right leg tugged, nearly making him fall. The teeth were still attached to his back, however. And he remained upright from this alone. He spun and rose to his back feet, then leaped forward. The dogs met him in a rush. He had shaken only the one off his right hind leg. But the one to his left, biting through his flesh, remained there. And Yami was forced to shove another wolfdog backwards harshly. It stumbled and landed hard, limping a step aside him.

But it was not shoved far enough. It lunged forward. And its teeth caught his right shoulder. Yami could not shake the other on his left flank now. And more teeth had caught his hind legs. He screamed, snarling a second later. And, as he snapped at one in front of him, the hellhound holding his flank tugged. He was pulled away just enough to spare the bloodshed that might have come from his attack. And he skidded beneath the pressure, snow spraying in the air. He snarled and trembled. His body felt weak and tremulous. He was not sure what more he could do.

But there were nine of them now, and three a few feet back watching with glowing eyes. He snarled, preparing to spin on the wolf holding his side. But those teeth in his hind leg burned and he nearly screamed again. Another set came there, hitting his flank now. He screamed and spun to the right, jaws opened wide. The hybrid attached to his left flank tugged. But he did not go down.

Yami was amazed by this realization.

When Yami writhed again, twisting painfully and fitfully, the hybrid on his flank fell. Another had lunged forward. And it landed in a heap atop it as well. The hellhound let go and spun on it. And they bit at each other furiously, screaming and snarling and sneering at one another. Yami panted and snapped his teeth. He drew blood but could not understand where from.

The teeth jerked on his back again. Yami was pulled nearly off his feet. His back legs almost rose from the ground. And then he spun back on another that came for his neck. It was too slick and he could feel the sticky, hot blood there. It was too immense and terrible. He could not bring himself to stop from reacting. As he spun for it, raising his left forepaw, another hybrid came forward. And it slammed into his ribs. Teeth caught his shoulder a second later. But the blow winded him. And Yami felt himself almost _wobble_.

And then the other on the opposite side lurched forward.

And Yami sent a frantic look towards Yugi.

Because the white wolf had stumbled to his feet.

And his eyes were wide, horrified.

And they were staring at each other for that split second.

Yami screamed as he fell back.

The hellhounds were on him in a second.

Blood and fur were ripped and shed about the air. It sprayed upward and away into the snow. And Yami screamed louder. The dogs barked and danced about, circling him. And Yugi could do nothing more than shake, horrified and unable to move in any manner.

They had…

They'd managed it…

They'd knocked him off his feet and…

 _Yami_! he screamed before he could stop himself. But he could do nothing more than gape. His body was on fire. He could not move his limbs. They trembled beneath his weight. They felt swollen as he tried to move. There was nothing in him that seemed to respond to his bidding. And the screaming was so terribly _loud_. It was hideous and furious and terrible. Yugi felt his heart shattering in his chest.

No, no, _no_! This couldn't be happening. The gods wouldn't have done this to him!

They wouldn't play such a cruel joke on him as to bring Yami back and then to steal him away just as quickly. Surely they were not so vicious and hateful of him—

Yugi could just see Yami's teeth attached to a dog's throat. But he was on his back. And the hybrids behind him had grabbed at his back limbs. And they were tossing their heads, pulling him violently back and forth in the snow. Yami was swallowed away from his sight again in almost an instant. The dogs moved in circles again. They bayed as if it were some exciting sport rather than murder. Yugi thought briefly of the sacrifices that had been performed in his name. He shook and trembled and bore his teeth in a frantic snarl at the realization.

They were using Yami for _fun_.

They were going to _kill_ him for their own _excitement_.

Not a single one of them cared beyond this.

They just wanted to watch something bleed to death in front of them.

Yugi was frantic as he tried to force his legs to move. It took him what felt a lifetime. The screaming was becoming a gurgle. The dogs were baying and snapping at each other. Their tails wagged and their bodies brushed against each other. And Yugi managed to step forward. It was a stumbling movement. It nearly sent him into the snow. But he caught himself. Then he dragged his back limbs forward a step within the snow. It was horrifying to him. They were seemingly numb and incapable of movement.

He moved, in a desperate bid, to leap forward.

But he could not find his balance.

And he hit the snow with a sob. He landed with his limbs stretched in front of him. His chin sank into the snow beneath his weight. And he was blind for only a split second towards what was happening. But the gurgling was dying away now as well. And the dogs were howling and wagging their tails. They were dancing about the fallen wolf and laughing.

Yugi struggled for his paws. But his shoulders felt broken. And his legs refused to hold him.

He nearly sobbed, a pitiful whine leaving him.

And then, as one, the hybrids turned on him.

Ears pricked.

Noses wriggled.

Eyes burned and focused on him.

He drew his lips back to mirror them.

And then he saw them begin to leave Yami—who he saw now was so incredibly still, there was no way he had survived between the blood loss and trauma and the ferocity of the attack—as they turned to him. They began to trot forward. But they did not make it to him.

There was a sharp, startling flash of red. It came in a single streaking movement. And then the white wolf saw muscle and grizzle and broken bone. Blood splattered through the air and sank into the snow.

The dogs halted, stunned and horrified.

Yugi struggled to raise his head. His eyes were burning, panic making his vision spin. But then he gaped and he was amazed by how able he was now to see it all.

The she-wolf was standing a few feet away. Blood had made her muzzle a brilliant red. But her golden eyes were focused and blazing. And every fur on her body was raised in jagged peaks. The red wolf stepped forward, a ginger coat of wiry muscle and hateful power. And the dogs faltered as she sprang forward again, tail up and shoulders braced. They seemed to share a single second of hesitation. One of them leaped at her. And it was in an instant that its head rolled from its body as the other's had.

 _Slifer_ , he whispered pathetically. He was shaking. His wounds were _oozing_. He could feel it as they shed red tears and his fur became slick and caked with blood. He struggled for his feet again, stumbling. He could see the hybrids swapping looks and retreating now. They ran with their tails between their legs. And Yugi could do no more than stumble forward again and nearly collapse within the snow.

But his eyes flickered away and towards the darker wolf lying in the snow. He was twisted halfway, almost like a pretzel. His neck was clearly injured. Blood dripped from each wound. His body was sprawled beneath him. His eyes were glazed, weeping with freshly fallen snowflakes. He looked as if he had been caught in the formation of twisting around to snap his teeth at an opponent. But his chin lay on his shoulder where the wound was hideous and open and gaping at him.

Yugi shuddered and struggled forward again, limping. He panted heavily, ignoring the rapid sting and burn under his skin. He stumbled and fell and then forced himself up again. And then he dragged himself, legs nearly failing himself, forward to Yami's side. But those red eyes peered up at him, glazed over. And then a violent twitch ran through him. His head rocked from side to side for a moment. His sides rose and fell in a heavy shudder.

His legs kicked and flailed. His back arched. His shoulders seemed to snap. His head turned and his chin fell in the snow. His eyes were wild, glazed and panicked. His body was wracked fitfully with pain. His back legs kicked upwards. His claws cut through the air violently. His head jerked and tossed, his lips twitching and burning. His legs kicked frantically. His back arched again. And then he seemed to twist and roll backwards. A noise, strangled and pitiful, escaped him. His legs kicked again. His head arched and folded back as if he might howl. And then he _thrashed_.

The she-wolf did not speak to them, failing to acknowledge them in the slightest. Then she moved forward, approaching Yami as Yugi himself fell to the snow. He was breathing harder than ever, ears ringing as realization struck him. Yami was shaking and writhing, kicking snow and folding in on himself. He looked much like a dark-furred kangaroo as he thrashed upon the ground and tightly folded his hindquarters upward as if to assume a fetal position as a wolf.

He was _seizing_.

Bile and blood had begun to spill from open jaws. Foam colored red and bright yellow came across white teeth and black lips. The wolf thrashed again. The snow was smeared brilliantly with the colors. And then he kicked and flailed his legs. He twisted his hindquarters and nearly flipped himself to the other side. And his eyes grew hideous with that glazed expression they currently wore.

Yugi could not think straight as he drew in a panicked, trembling breath. He was panting, lungs burning with the pressure of inhaling and holding his breath altogether. He was panicked as he tilted his head and gasped for air. He was shaking as he watched the other wolf. And he wanted to scream and sob and throw himself at the mercy of the goddess in front of him. He wished that perhaps she might bite through his throat and end the misery that came of seeing his alpha in such a state.

 _You would do well to remove him from this location,_ the she-wolf said slowly, turning to him with darkened golden eyes. She seemed to stare through him as their eyes locked and Yugi nearly trembled at the expression he saw there. It was unreadable but he saw the faintest flashes of power and strength and perhaps even a touch of something akin brutality and bewilderment. It was survival and instinct and absolute cunning, all of which paled before his own seemingly infinite helplessness. _He shall need you to heal his wounds and help to guide him to a healthier state. He cannot find it on his own, I assure you. And his lack of health is pivotal now, Yugi. He cannot push out the toxins in his bloodstream on his own as he is_.

Yugi blinked, eyes widening. His head snapped back to Yami and he struggled for his feet. His legs quaked beneath his weight and the black wolf thrashed once more, folding so forcefully backwards that it seemed his spine might break. The breath that came from him was a heavy gargling. And the bloodied bile foam that coated his lips had grown even more rampant as it spread from his mouth. His tongue was lolling now, pressing harshly against the snow. The bright pink of the muscle was rolled onto its side, flattened, and his teeth seemed to clip and tear through it as he struggled to breathe.

 _Toxins_?

They had been Harbingers? Was that the pain within his own blood and what caused his body to burn so viciously? Was that what had stunted his ability to heal as he should have been able to? He knew that the dislocated shoulder would have rectified itself only upon being forced through the Change once more. But he was well aware that the wounds should have sewn themselves back together and healed completely.

 _If he is to die from his wounds a second time, I cannot promise you that he will heal properly,_ Slifer said slowly, tilting her head as her eyes burned into his pointedly. _You know as well as I that it is not assured that he will come back able-bodied and ready to move again. You would be a fool to think for even a moment that the Change or immortality will come to his aid._

Yugi stared at her with a horrified expression, though his eyes quickly returned to Yami again. The thrashing had grown faster, more violent. There were mere seconds between fits now. He was kicking his legs and choking on vomit and the white wolf did not know what it was that he might be able to do. But this form was useless in terms of aid now. He realized, all but pathetically, that he could not find safety in helping him in this form now. He would have to change back and carry him to the house…

 _Our three siblings were struck down by Disease Wolves during the war,_ Slifer commented quietly, making him focus for a brief second on her once more. Her ears flicked and her lips drew back after a heartbeat of silence. _They went through fits of violent seizures and they came back in a feral state that made them too volatile to know which side they were meant to be on. They turned on each other immediately and then on us as well_ …

 _You fought other Pure-Bloods_? Yugi whispered. But his eyes fell on Yami again and he tried to focus on the pain that came with the Change. But the thrashing was so violent that it threatened to make bile rise from his belly and he almost screamed with dismay. How was he supposed to help him when he could do no more than simply stare at him as if he might drop dead at any moment?

 _Yes. The disease the hellhounds carry is not like our own. It is a fast-acting venom and it leeches the body of its stronger and healthier cells and replaces them with diseased organisms that attack and change the host at a base level._ Her eyes glinted furiously. _And so it will kill the logical thought process within the brain of a wolf and turn it in on itself. In this way it will cause them to cease to understand what might be happening around them and only allow them to sense things in a magnitude that drives them further into madness._

Yugi blinked and looked at her now. She was a familiar face, one which denoted death before it could ever bring about happiness or pleasure in any sense. But he still knew of Yami's suffering feet away, even if he could simply focus on her for the moment that he might need in order to bring his mind to a focus. He struggled with the task, as his thought was to immediately turn back to Yami. He needed to keep his eyes on him, but it would not help him in the slightest and that realization made the white wolf want to scream again.

But he had to Change. He needed to become human again. It was the only way he'd be capable of bringing Yami back to the house. And when they got to the house, he'd have to beg his mother for help. He'd have to find a way to stitch the wounds together and have her help him to do so. The realization was nothing he wanted to consider. But he knew that he could not do it on his own. He was neither too arrogant nor optimistic enough to think otherwise.

He knew his own skill level. He knew how much he could do on his own in regards to the other wolf and how much he simply had no ability to perform as well.

 _I do not think that they meant to kill him entirely,_ she said slowly, golden eyes boring into his now. He wondered if she knew that he was staring at her for the sake of finding strength and guidance just long enough to change back. But some part of him doubted it and yet the other wondered at the idea of her deity status, if she understood and so now offered him something of a similar solution in some manner.

 _You don't think so_? His back was arching now. He could feel the way his muscles were clenching and pulling taut beneath his skin. He felt his shoulders strain beneath the pressure. His legs buckled and he hit the ground on his belly. Bile rose and surged from his mouth in a spray. He sputtered and choked and snarled furiously for a moment. Then he shook as tremors wracked his frame and his heart raced at what seemed a million times greater its original rate.

 _No_. She said it with certainty now, tilting her head as she considered the younger wolf with a wisdom in her gaze that made Yugi nervous to behold. She flicked her ears but did not turn away from him to look at Yami as a hideous gurgling came up and reached a whining crescendo. It fell away after a moment, then rose brilliantly. Yugi used Slifer as his anchor to avoid looking, heart in his throat but blood and bile mixing as his back arched once more and he struggled to find his grip on a newer thought. _I think that they were sent to force him into submission. I think that it would have done more to poison him in small doses and then drag him down to the labs._

 _Excuse me_? Yugi snarled. _The labs_?

 _You did not think that this was mere coincidence, did you_? _You two just so happen to be in the woods alone. A she-wolf from the labs that you ran into happens to be here to lead them. Yami is attacked more vigorously than you were. And you are both spared of your jugulars torn out or bones being broken along the spine._ She narrowed her eyes, laughter making her voice sound like a pair of windchimes within the touch of a breeze. She shook her head and curled her lips back. _You know better, you stupid child. You know damn well that this is not a game of any kind nor an accident or mistake or coincidence. You are a fool to think otherwise. They were sent to find you. And they came to kill you long enough for you to be dragged to the labs._

Yugi could not think straight for a moment. Was that the truth of it? Had that been what he had sensed that entire time it had taken them to hunt him as they were meant to? Was that the reality of the ambush? They had acted so strangely in the time it had taken them to all but force him off his feet. They'd bitten him near vital veins as well, he realized. They'd failed to break his spine for the sake of keeping him able. Perhaps they had planned to _force_ him to run towards the tunnels or maybe he was to be _chased_ to the area where they might be captured and drugged and subsequently stolen to the underground.

He was shaking as he thought of this, puke spraying from his jaws.


	64. Yami

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Hopefully biweekly**

 **Chapter Warnings: GRAPHIC Description of Seizures, Blood, Gore, Death, Slight Anxiety Attack**

 **Pentobarbital is the chemical that is used to put an animal to sleep. Ketamine is used as a tranquilizer which can be dosed individually for pets (dogs, cats, horses, etc). Gabapentin is used to suppress seizures in people and dosing can be adjusted for dogs, but it's also a tranquilizer-like drug as well.**

 **Okay, so the ice pack to the base of the spine? It's a really cool trick that totally works. I think it's because it slows down the transmitters in the nervous system and helps stops the seizures? I'm not entirely sure. But I had a friend text me one night in a panic when her senior dog was having a seizure and I told her to use ice to the base of the spine. It took a few minutes but it eventually stopped the seizure and the dog was fine afterwards.**

 **Okay, so, Yugi uses just regular water to slightly tenderize the meat he feeds Yami as well as helping get it to room temperature. I've been reading around and all I can find is the method of salt brine (soaking the meat with sea salt and water) and using hot water to make meat defrost. Either way, for the story, Yugi doesn't use sea salt, just regular warm water, and the meat doesn't soak long. The salt brine isn't necessary because Yami isn't getting cooked food and the hot water isn't necessary because Yugi is just trying to warm the meat slightly. So that's why he only uses water at room temp.**

 **Powdered goats milk is a very common thing for pets in Japan. Yugi uses it for Yami's immune system because it's full of pro and prebiotics.**

 **Anyways, enjoy the final chapter of Part IV~**

Chapter LXIV: Yami

 _Work Log Entry LVII: January, 2006_

 _January 1_

 _Atem's behavior has grown erratic._

 _He not only backs away from us when we come into the cage._

 _He starts wheezing and sometimes glares._

 _Only once has he snapped at a guard._

 _January 16_

 _Atem has begun to fall beneath his strain of dementia again._

 _An attempt was made to feed him today and he attacked the guard so violently he wound up snapping his head off._

 _The boss has decided that we shall not feed him for fear of his killing anyone else._

 _He has proposed the idea that perhaps starving him will keep him from further sickness._

"Mom!" Yugi shouted frantically, shaking. His arms were soaked to the elbow. And Yami was thrashing harder than ever. He'd been forced to gather him up by his belly, folding his arms in front of his back legs and behind his elbows. He'd been carrying him like this despite the constant spasms. Yami had screamed and bled further and yelped and struggled and clawed and flailed. He'd let out frothy globs of bile mixed with blood and he'd stared listlessly from glazed, burning red eyes. He had grown more erratic as the seconds had passed. And Yugi had _barely_ managed to carry him for those twenty minutes it had taken to get him back. " _Mom_!"

There was movement upstairs but he couldn't tell if it was her or his grandfather. And he was hoarse as he screamed again. Tears were beginning to form in his eyes once more. The wolf shook and sputtered. An immense wave of bile painted red and yellow and sloppily laced with black wasted muscle fell from his open jaws. The spasm made his back arch and threaten to fold. His back legs kicked and his front shook as if he'd struck with electricity. His breathing gargled and his blood dripped in a hideous wave. His jaw ticked and his head snapped back and forth in a rapid shake.

"Mom, I need help," he choked out, unable to stop himself. He was sobbing, screaming again, when the door opened. His mom was dressed in casual clothes, in a pair of jeans and a button-up shirt. And his heart leaped into his throat as he noticed his grandfather staring at Yami with a horrified expression on his face. His plum gaze had grown thrice as large as usual and Yugi sobbed harder. Yami was thrashing again, paws flailing and claws cutting through the air. "Mom—M-mom, _please_ —I need… H-he was… I can't…"

Yami arched and vomited again. His eyes grew duller than before. His head tossed back and forth. Yugi nearly lost his grip, tightening his fingers and sinking his nails into the wolf's skin to keep him from writhing out of his hands. He was puking and arching his back. He was gargling for air. His eyes were glazed and darkened and dancing. And his mouth opened wider as he shuddered and spat and his back arched furiously like a pulled bow. Yami screamed and his front legs flailed again. Claws cut at cold air and his back nails caught in Yugi's arm. The boy hissed and nearly dropped him, surprised by the sudden onslaught. Blood wept from the deep grooves the wolf's struggles left on his elbow.

He stared at her, unsure of what more he could say. How was he meant to explain? And his grandfather's stunned, horrified face made him want to vomit. But his mother was staring at him as if she could not recognize him. And then her eyes flickered to the wolf. Yugi could see the thoughts churning behind her eyes but he doubted she had come to the proper conclusion in the least. She would not believe that he was a werewolf and Yugi himself knew that Yami's irises were no longer visible. His pupils had become blown too great, so immensely that Yugi could not even think to see beyond the blackness…

His mother was staring, however. And something in her eyes and the way her face grew pale made him want to sob. She knew. She _knew_. She recognized that Yami was not a dog. She knew that the huge black canine in his arms was not a common dog of any kind. She could see it. And he knew she would recognize the fact that his muscle mass and his straight tail and the immensity of his paws were not that of a domesticated pet's.

"H-how…?" Kasumi breathed, too stunned to even consider more than the whisper that left her mouth. She could no longer look at her blood-soaked son. Yugi was smeared with it, covered with bright red and his clothing stained in it. He was shaking in time with the huge lupine resting in his arms, as if he were sharing such tremors. She blinked. Those black eyes peered at her as the canine sputtered and choked and vomited another large mouthful of what looked like dead cells. The foam that flecked its jaws was hideous, crusting as the seconds passed. But then a new wave came and Yugi nearly dropped him, clutching him tighter to himself and waiting out the most terrible of the tremors.

"Mom, _please_ ," Yugi begged in a pathetic voice. His words had broken at the edges, desperation and despair and utter melancholic hope making them hoarse. He was almost shaking on his own now, his eyes spilling tears and his mouth opening and closing once before he gulped and sobbed loudly. "He got torn up when he went to protect me…"

"Protect…?" She repeated the word so softly that all of them strained their ears to catch it.

"There was this pack of dogs that came after me down the street and he—he jumped out and attacked them. He tried to protect me and then they started to tear him to pieces and—and—and—he's—he's hurt because of me, okay? I need—oh gods, Mom, _please_ help me! I need to stitch his wounds up! I need to—He can't survive like… Mom, I need your help. I—I can't do this on my own. I… My hands… I…"

She looked at him for only a single second. But they fell only on his hands, the way they shook so visibly against the dark black fur that seemed so caked with blood that was still oozing in fresh waves of red. She felt sick looking at them, squeezing her eyes shut with a shake of her head. Bile rose in the back of her throat, her heart burning in her chest. Then she took a deep breath, opened her eyes again, and looked back at the wolf that peered at her so listlessly.

She doubted it would survive.

There was absolutely no way that such a thing should be possible…

But… If it had truly saved her son, the least she owed it was to _try_ , right?

And so she took another deep breath, let out a sharp sigh, and turned immediately to lead the way into the surgical room. Yugi stared at her as if she were a creature he couldn't identify as she held the door open for him, as if he didn't know what to do more than sob as he hurried past her. The noises he choked down came second only to the heavy wheezing and violent jerks and expulsions of vomit that the wolf brought to the air.

"Set him down and go…go get some gauze and tape—some…sterile water, syringes…sutures, needles…"

Yugi nodded and set the wolf down slowly. The animal screamed again, blood rushing from wounds that were blackened at the edges and swollen as if the very air were somehow irritating them. It scrabbled and a tongue bleached white lolled, landing on the metal as it choked and sputtered. Vomit and foam fell from its teeth, coating its dark lips. The eyes were half-closed now, ears flicking frantically back and forth in several sweeps. His muzzle jerked back and forth. Fur shuddered and rippled along his back and neck. His legs flailed and folded and seemed almost to break beneath the touch of the metal to them.

Its head rolled and tipped to the side. Its cheek pressed to the metal. The mouth opened and shut frantically. The eyes opened wide again. The body jerked and shook and the spasm made the table vibrate fitfully. It shook and choked and every muscle in its form began to shake and tremble and simply _rock_ beneath his fur and his skin. The animal did not cease its movements, eyes locked on her even as Yugi left them to gather what she'd requested of him from inside the equipment room where they'd been sterilized and put away again. He came back a minute later, with every tool she had instructed him to gather. She felt dizzy and sick as she looked at the wolf and then at her son again.

She hesitated as the wolf's sides rose and fell for a moment. Then its jaws opened again and another bout of vomit came forward onto the metal. Kasumi swallowed hard and choked as it thrashed again, body jerking and rolling as the head snapped back and forth viciously. The wounds were hopelessly infected; she could see it already. The blood was still soaking through each split of skin and the edges were hideously swollen beneath the dark fur. Yugi trembled and Kasumi simply stared for a moment. Where was she to begin with this?

Yugi was shaking too hard, his hands so completely plagued by his tremors that he could not so much as hold the equipment properly for more than a second. And she thanked the million times she had gone about operating on wounded animals for the fact that the fear did not swallow her away and her hands held steady upon the tools she had grabbed.

Yugi was looking at her when he noticed the glint of the stethoscope in her hand and he looked quickly at Yami again, heart in his throat for a moment. "He's still alive," he muttered softly, somewhere between his own shock and bewilderment and the mounting horror of the situation. He drew in a deep breath, shaking, and reached up to run his hands through his hair. When he could not hold back, watching his mother's face contort briefly with a grimace as she listened to his heart, he grabbed at his choker with his right hand and bit into the knuckles of his left. He was dizzy and panic-stricken as she looked him over more pointedly and began to lightly touch at the wounds facing her. He didn't have the heart to tell her that what she could see was not the worst of it. It was his stomach and the inside of his thighs, torn and split, that had the worst of the wounds.

The small teen watched his mother put away the stethoscope after a moment, instead reaching for another tool altogether. He had the impulse to simply leave the room. And he had another instinct to remain there no matter what might happen. But he was caught between the need to collapse to his knees and sob his heart out and the desire to try to help her to stitch him up. But he knew he was useless and to so much as offer seemed like an insult at the moment. So he sucked in a breath, held it in his lungs as he counted slowly to four, and exhaled in the same amount of seconds.

It took only a minute for the black wolf to pass out beneath the medication, though he choked and sputtered as she inserted the breathing tube. Immediately she administered the IV line and checked him over once more, grateful that he had already rolled onto his side amidst one of his seizures. The canine was so large that he nearly hung off the edge of the table, though his legs were draped downward and the forepaws folded to hang there. His long tail draped entirely off the metal as well and the wolf's muzzle was barely kept from falling away entirely, as his frame was large enough that he seemed to collapse away from the edges. She had never seen such a huge canine before; the thought was astounding to her.

She ignored her curiosity for the moment, quickly connecting him to the heart monitor and taking his temperature. Yugi did not make his usual quip and apologize to him, instead staring almost lifelessly as she began to look the wolf over again.

All of the fur was shaved away along his sides and back within minutes. And she froze as she realized that more of the wounds were scattered about the limbs as well. She faltered, seeing inches of fur which had cushioned much of his blood loss. But some of it was caked so furiously that she was not sure she could shave it without cutting through his skin and giving him a new gash. But one look at Yugi told her that her son recognized this necessity as well and so she turned back to do so.

"Oh _gods_ ," Yugi whispered when the wolf was shaved down to bright white skin. It was bruised hideously along his ribs and hips and puncture wounds littered almost every inch of his flesh along his flanks and legs. With the left side of his body shaved so cleanly, Kasumi felt sick upon looking at it. The wolf did nothing more but shudder occasionally, though the drugs kept the seizures at bay as his unconscious mind was unable to force any intense movement.

His mom froze after a moment, startled. Something had changed. She sensed it, long before even Yugi did. Blood was oozing from his side and she was pressing gauze frantically into the skin, trying to stifle it before she attempted to clean it and shave away the dead blackened tissues along his wounds' openings. The smell of decay was overwhelming to her for a moment. But it was second to what seemed like tension in the air. And she shifted as she glanced up at Yugi.

The small teen had moved forward a step, quaking but staring at the wolf intently. When he got close enough, he crouched down at the edge of the table. His head was tilted to the side and his eyes were glued to whatever point it was that he was staring at. And so Kasumi blinked and risked a moment of inaction to see what it was that the other was staring at.

Then she froze, horrified, unable to move as she surveyed the animal in front of her. There was not much of a change, she knew, and it was so small she was almost amazed that Yugi had noticed it. Then she drew in a deep breath, shaky, as she trembled in shock.

The eyes were half-open. They were burning, staring, into what looked like dead space. But when she came into its peripheral, the gaze slid over. And her heart hammered as her mouth grew dry with horror. They were not golden eyes or gray or even green. They were _red_.

And there were a million different shades which rested in them.

She nearly vomited.

Yami.

This was _Yami_.

"How is he…?"

Yugi didn't answer her. He didn't even glance in her direction. Kasumi noticed this with a sense of horror as the wolf stared back at her so blankly. But there was a startling clarity in his eyes as well, something cunning and vicious and incredibly strong. It was powerful and stifling as he regarded her. And she saw the way that the wolf's gaze had begun to sparkle.

That animalistic intelligence she had once noted upon seeing the other's eyes before then was brilliant as his gaze bore into hers. She had never expected to see such immense power and intelligence within those dark eyes. And the glassy exterior of his gaze made it almost somehow immortal in a way, the power there enough to make Kasumi's knees incredibly weak. And, as she continued to look, her son reached out to touch the thick muscular neck there. The red eyes flickered and slid over uncertainly towards Yugi's face, incredibly shaken in the way his fingers slowly slipped into the long strands of fur.

Those dark eyes were zeroed in on his features, facing him as if he had never known him before. Or, perhaps, as Kasumi looked at the two males, the reality of it was that Yami did not seem to recognize and know the truth of acknowledgment towards his presence.

"Hey," Yugi said in a soft enough voice that it made Yami tip his head up slightly in surprise. He blinked, long and slow, and the way his ears pricked forward seemed almost to make his entire body strain. The small teen swallowed hard, moving his fingers to run along his cheek. The skin twitched furiously beneath his touch, clearly aggrieved with some intense pain that made him pant and struggle for a brief moment. His eyes bore into Yugi's as the other male ran his fingers up and behind his ears, perhaps the only place he had not seen him physically harmed during that fight. "You should be asleep, you know?"

Yami began to open his mouth as if he might speak in such a way, as if he were desperately attempting to do so now. His jaw slid slowly across the table, the pool of his own blood making his cheek burn and ache. He blinked, his tongue feeling swollen and perhaps glued to the metal beneath his head. And, as he blinked at him, he wondered at the way the human seemed to crouch rather than stand. His eyes opened halfway now, unable to part completely, and his lids felt crushed in the corners as if he'd been weeping and fallen asleep to sand there.

But the boy's voice sounded so incredibly light and soft, as if he were too scared to breathe as properly as he might need to. And then Yami blinked again, the blood on his tongue burning but tasteless as the muscle remained numb from the pain. But Yami wondered if he could even find a way to speak to him, to try to attempt to explain to him that he was okay. He wanted to tell him that he would be okay at the end of it, that he was used to pulling himself out of such predicaments.

But he was exhausted.

And so he could do nothing more than blink stupidly.

His fingers trailed over his ear more pointedly, softly, with such a light and gentle touch that the wolf almost quivered. They stared at each other for a moment. Yami could not stop himself from staring at the small teen. And Kasumi, watching them now, felt sick to her stomach as they continued to look at one another. Yugi was stroking the soft cartilage of his ear as if it were something precious. The affection in this one simple movement was so possessive that it stunned her.

No friend would have done such a thing in any manner. It was far too personal and warm, as if he were trying to put all of his adoration for the wolf into such an action. And she felt sick as she looked between them again.

"See? I told you I would get you back here."

The muscles within his neck corded and pulled taut, then rolled as if with a pained swallow. Blood welled out of his jaws after a moment and his tongue twitched. But he blinked, exhausted, and stared at Yugi as if he almost did not recognize him in the slightest any longer. He glanced at Kasumi and his eyes seemed to immediately roll up in the back of his head as if he were about to go through yet another immense seizure. His mouth moved again, as if to close, then opened wider. The bile swelled and surged forward, flecked red and black as it left the barrier of his sharp teeth.

Yugi had the impulse to simply move his hand along his cheeks and to the sides of his muzzle and along the top of it towards the end of his nose. But instead he simply rubbed at his ears again, a million different words begging to come from his mouth as he stared at the other lycanthrope.

But he could not tell him the things that he wanted.

The words would not come out.

And he knew better than to speak them as it was.

He knew that it was a foolish thought to even consider doing so.

But the touch, he decided, offered the reassurance that he knew he could not give him vocally. He allowed this to give him the comfort he was so desperate to show him. And he almost sobbed as Yami's eyes began to flicker and flutter, threatening to shut again under the onslaught of the drugs he was still breathing in. How he had even woken at the moment was beyond Yugi.

But he watched his consciousness slip away, unsure of when it was that his mother had gone back to stitching his side once more. He removed his hand only when he was sure that Yami would not open his eyes again, and straightened with a grimace. The small teen stared at the wolf on the table for a long moment, then looked back to his mom. She studiously ignored him, working frantically on his side and his legs where the elbows were cleared of fur and the flesh was already exposed. Along his shoulders the wounds were hideous and his neck was _littered_ with immense pocketing wounds like craters, as if the skin were the surface of the moon rather than smooth flesh.

Then Yugi stepped forward to help her to roll the wolf onto his other side. And his mom went to shaving Yami down again, then to suturing his flank and neck and everywhere else she saw immediate damage. But then she glanced down at his back legs and lifted them as well, making a low noise that was horrified as they stared at the wolf in front of them. His legs were all but bloodied stumps of red. And she grimaced as she went about securing these wounds as well.

When she got to his face, she hesitated.

"Is he really asleep?"

Yugi blinked, startled by the breathless question. He didn't look over at her, shaken by the idea of turning away from Yami in any fashion as he chewed on his nails. "Yeah, he's asleep," he answered uncomfortably. He licked his lips and tilted his head, watching her as she moved to Yami's face. But she still remained staring at the animal in front of her, considering the huge canine with a somewhat suspicious expression. He watched her as she turned on the razor once more. It hummed loudly, furiously, and Yugi shivered as he stared at it. She was shaking slightly but she had enough focus to steel her resolve and keep herself going.

Yami was shaved entirely along the neck and cheeks, almost to the point of removing every hair on his body but for his ears. And then she began to sew away wounds that Yugi had not even considered might have existed formerly, for his dark fur had covered them completely. The wolf was covered in craters of bloody wounds, his entire face littered with bites and split skin.

When she'd finished, she had laid the tools aside on the counter and was staring at Yami pointedly. She was not sure what it was that she had expected from him. But the wolf did not move in the slightest. And his entire body was almost hairless but for his muzzle and the very tops of his large paws and those two soft ears and long bushy tail. Yugi was frozen now as well, staring.

But his heart was not beating at regular intervals. And he still sounded as if he might be crashing. How he had not simply slipped away was beyond Kasumi now. He'd been stabilized for the most part but for his heart rate and the way his fever remained prominent. She had felt it in every inch of his skin when she'd gone to stitch it. After scraping away the dead flesh, the new muscle and blood was too hot to be of an average temperature. She almost thought it was the heat necessary to boil water.

She stared at the wolf.

And Yugi felt sick to his stomach as he stared as well.

When nothing changed, the small teen cursed under his breath and moved away from the wolf entirely. He had begun digging through the drawers, was preparing a syringe of something that she blinked at in bewilderment towards. She did not think there were any drugs that she had in this clinic that might help to reduce a fever of such heights. And so she stared, faltering, as Yugi grabbed a single bottle of dark black and gray plastic. And then she stiffened.

"What the fuck are you doing?"

Yugi blinked, startling. He had clearly forgotten her presence there. But then his eyes flickered and he looked at her from beneath his lashes. His mouth pulled downward into a visible grimace. And then he looked back to the needle syringe in his hands. "I'm going to restart his system."

"You're going to _what_?"

"I'm going to restart his system. I'm going to make his heart restart and his organs begin again," he answered in that same deadly calm tone. She shook her head slowly, eyes wide, and her mouth opened and closed twice. He flicked the needle to make sure that there was no air within its sharp surface. And then he moved to circle around Yami again. He reached down, removing the tube gently from his mouth. Blood and bile and that rotten flesh that he'd vomited sloshed with the movement. When the monitor blared furiously as it was disconnected as well, Yugi simply pressed the power button on it and turned back to Yami.

"Yugi, you can't do that."

The small teen glanced at her sideways as she moved closer to him. "I know what I'm doing."

"No, you _don't_. That's the pentobarbital!"

He didn't blink. "I know. That's why I grabbed it."

"You're going to _kill_ him."

Yugi nodded. "And then his organs will restart themselves and—"

"Are you _insane_? You're going to _murder_ him!"

The boy was silent for a moment, as if he were struck by that second to last word. He blinked at her, stunned for a single moment, and then narrowed his eyes into a glare of pure aggression and growing distress. "Mom, I know what I'm doing. I know a lot more about this than you do, even if you might think otherwise. And I'm going to do exactly what I need to."

"Say this _doesn't_ work, Yugi. What are you going to do after that? What are you going to do if it just kills him and his organs don't…restart like you're claiming they will?" she demanded in a heated tone, eyes wide and cheeks slightly flushed. When had Yugi become so reckless? How had she missed the signs before then? How was it that she had not recognized that he was so…utterly estranged to her? He wasn't that same boy she'd raised, though he wore his face.

She felt sick as they looked at each other now. She could not believe how much she'd missed. She could not believe that she'd overlooked it at some point or another, hopeful perhaps that he would change back and she would not have to worry as much as she did now. She drew in a deep breath.

"What would you do if he _doesn't_ wake up again?"

Yugi stared at her as if he could not comprehend the thought in and of itself. Then he opened and closed his mouth, glancing at Yami slowly. His voice was hoarse when he answered, "Then I guess there will be hell to pay for a certain person who told me otherwise." Then he shook it off, eyes sharpening, and turned away to face Yami again. But she noticed the smallest tremor in his fingers now, the point of her question making it across to him now.

But it did not stop him in the slightest. She did not have so much as the chance to blink before Yugi plunged the needle into the IV line that she'd been running for him. In an instant he'd emptied the syringe into the black wolf's blood. And Kasumi found herself nearly puking. It was a sense of bewilderment and the smallest hint of hatred that came over her then. Had she just wasted those two hours it had taken to meticulously shave him down and clean and sterilize and stitch those various wounds? If Yugi had planned to simply do this, it was a wonder to her that she had bothered now to do such a thing as it was.

He swallowed thickly as the seconds passed.

Seconds changed to minutes. Minutes seemed to stretch into hours.

Yami did not stir in the slightest.

Yugi let out a violent curse, heart shattering in his chest.

He'd gambled wrong, he realized. Slifer had been lying when she'd said he was a Pure-Blood. And Yami had been telling the truth formerly when he'd said he was a Full-Blood with a strong bloodline. There was no other explanation.

But the realization was devastating.

His knees gave out beneath him and he crumpled onto the floor into a ball of limbs and clothing. His stomach was burning with pain and his heart was in his throat again. There was not a breath that came through his lungs that failed to be strangled. His throat was tight and his stomach was writhing within him.

He let out a lone sobbing noise which sounded much like he was choking on his own breaths.

"Fuck, fuck, _fuck_ —Yugi—oh my gods, _grab him_!"

The scream fell on deaf ears at first. And then the words rattled in his head, ricocheting violently in his skull. He blinked and jerked himself upright immediately, confused. The tears that were burning his eyes were unshed, his lashes clumped with them. And for a moment he could not understand her screaming. But then he saw that she was trying to grab at the black wolf.

Because the canine was thrashing again. He was not breathing but he was thrashing. His entire body was shaking and throwing itself. The examination table vibrated and crunched beneath the immense pressure. His body rolled and his back arched. His paws shook and claws scrabbled at metal. And then he rolled and his legs kicked at the air as Yugi sprang forward in a panic. His heart was in his throat again, mouth opening and closing. But he could not think to speak.

And the wolf in his arms shook so fitfully it threw them both to the ground.

Yugi couldn't hold him for long. Yami seized up so forcefully that he threw Yugi backwards. Where they had landed in a heap, now the small teen was thrown onto his back. And the wolf took only a moment to open his jaws wide and spit forth black sludgy vomit and bloody foam. The animal collapsed into a sprawled formation, eyes wide and staring blindly. His mouth opened further and another fit of vomit sprayed forth. Yugi was shaking as he noticed the black rot of decayed cells and blood that was too shiny and slick. When the wolf tried again for his paws, a new tremor wracked him.

He flailed and his claws caught Yugi in the cheek. He rolled and his back arched and snapped and popped. And then he landed heavily on his side, screaming. The noise was so agonized that Yugi nearly sobbed in despair. But the seconds passed and he narrowed his eyes. The wolf lay there, gasping and gargling and sputtering moments later. And then, finally, as the small teen thought to shift forward and try to crawl towards him, the grief struck him full force.

A panicked sob left him again. And Yami's body contorted, spine popping up and outward as if it might burst from his skin. His claws scrabbled and clicked. His head snapped back and his mouth opened wider. And the small teen forced himself to struggle forward. His heart was in his throat and he was shaking. But he forced himself to crawl to his side, panicked.

The wolf jerked and sputtered and screamed again. Then he thrashed harder when Yugi reached out. His fingers had barely touched his shoulder when the canine seemed to fold his body as if he were a fish that was stranded outside of the water and wanted desperately to go back. He jerked and spat and vomit sprayed from his jaws just as it had formerly. Yugi managed to grab him behind the elbow, pulling him back. The blood made him slicker than before. And he could feel the fresh waves of it as it began to seep through the sutures and onto his skin, soaking him.

Yugi let out a strangled noise, unsure of what more to do. He could not think of another way to express the pure panic and hideous terror which gripped him at the moment. And so he tried to pull Yami closer, to bring him almost into his lap should he have been capable of doing such a thing to begin with. His mouth was far too dry for him to think straight for a moment and he closed his eyes tightly.

"Jesus," the small teen cursed before he could stop himself, holding the trembling frame closer to him. But the wolf did not move beyond this and Yugi felt sick. He shot a desperate look at his mom, mouth dry and heart in his throat. She was still standing a few feet away, eyes wide and horrified as they regarded the two of them. "Mom—f-fuck, what do we have to stop this?"

There was a long moment of silence as they stared at each other for the smallest of seconds. Then Kasumi looked quickly away. "Ketamine, gabapentin… I don't know any others off the top of my head," she hissed. "And if he's just been given pentobarbital I don't know how effective they'll be."

"Then what do I do?"

She looked at the wolf and then to Yugi and back. And then she hurried out of the room before Yugi could ask her again, but she heard the frantic noise of protest that he let out. He sounded much like a dog, one that had been stolen from as if a bone had been withdrawn from its grasp. And so she simply ignored it to get up the stairs and into the kitchen.

Yugi could track her movements had it not been for Yami's baying. The wolf was shaking and seizing harder than ever. He had begun to thrash every second, head rocking back and forth. His legs jerked. His eyes stared blindly ahead. He let out harshly gargling cries of agony and seemed to all but die within his arms again. And then the wolf panted and the smell of death and decay that made up his breath was enough to cause Yugi to flinch in a panic. He wasn't going to heal properly, was he?

He wasn't going to be able to do that, was he?

Because Yami was bleeding all but to death in his arms and he doubted for even a moment that the black wolf could cease such pain and recover to the fullest. And, should he be capable of such a thing, Yugi felt that it would be with months or perhaps even _years_. And he did not know if they truly had those to count on at any rate.

There was no way that the war would take so long.

He could feel it in his bones.

His days were numbered.

His days were so slim in quantity that it was truly amazing to him to behold such a thing to begin with.

When his mom returned, Yugi had lost his grip on Yami. The wolf was thrashing too hard to contain any longer. And every time he moved, the blood would trip him so that he skidded slightly. But with the blood that he continued to spill it was amazing to him that the wolf was not dead. The room was all but bathed in it, the floor was smeared in it. The air was harsh with its scent.

"Here." He blinked and turned almost lifeless eyes towards her. She ignored the haunted expression he wore in order to instruct him with a quiet, "Put it on the base of his back and hold it until the seizures stop."

The small teen did not have to be told twice. He snatched the bundle of ice wrapped within the kitchen towel she'd carried to him and moved to the black wolf again. Yami lay there simply, panting now. He gargled out a deep breath, whimpered in that high-pitched scream he knew he would emit, and then lay there again. When his legs folded and stretched, then snapped straight outwards again, the tremors were fine enough that Yugi felt he might puke upon seeing them. But then he shook it off again.

He moved the bundle of ice to the wolf's back, a few inches from his tail. And then he pressed down on it, forcing himself to hold the struggling canine down on his belly. The reaction was an instant cry of pain and panic from the wolf. But then the thrashing intensified along his head and his muzzle snapped to and fro in a hideous formation. Yugi swallowed hard and kept the ice there.

It seemed to take forever for the effects to fully come over Yami. It was exhausting to see the way that the wolf kept shaking. And he had almost given up any sense of hope that this remedy might work. But then, as he thought to sob and simply collapse, the wolf stopped. His shaking began to melt away. His ears flicked and his head slowly lifted and turned. The screaming failed to leave his lungs. His eyes blinked blearily at Yugi and then at Kasumi. Then his head lowered and his eyes shut tightly. There was a single shiver that went through him. And then the wolf failed to stir again.

When Yami's breathing seemed to even out for the moment, Yugi slowly looked over his shoulder. His face was smeared with blood. His clothing was soaked in it. Black sludge stuck to his fingers when he pulled away from the wolf entirely. His hands were shaking. His eyes were nearly vibrating with tension. Then he blinked, staring up at her. And the way he smiled broke her heart.

"Thank you."

* * *

Yugi had not changed his clothes and he did not seem inclined to get up from the floor. He'd been leaning against the kennel behind him for the last two hours that Yami had been inside of it. His eyes were only half-open and his head was tipped back to rest against it more pointedly. He looked as if he might be sick at any moment, yet there was still that small grin on his face that said he was amazed and so terribly happy that he could not do more than simply tremble. Whenever she looked at him, he had his head craned all the way back to rest more comfortably and he seemed as if he might simply fall asleep at any moment.

But it was as she looked at Yami one final time and tried to make her escape up the stairs that her son finally spoke again. He had not done so since the moment that he'd thanked her for helping Yami. And when he did now she almost did not hear him because his voice was hoarse and he seemed exhausted. "I, uh…" He cleared his throat and did not look up at her when she paused and turned her head to glance at him over her shoulder at the staircase door. "I wasn't with Anzu that night that I didn't come home from school—before the festival, the day before Tomoya's body was found. I had stayed after school to make up for some of the classes I'd missed when you told me to stay home after Miho's body was found. When that happened, I thought that someone was following me and I found out that there really _was_ someone doing just that."

She blinked, then released her grip on the doorknob, stunned by the words that were leaving his mouth now. Was he truly going to explain it all to her now? Did he value Yami so much that he was willing to tell her everything as she saw necessary? But she wondered how truthful he might be now.

"Ushio had followed me when I ran from the library and tried to make it home. He found me and cornered me when I ran off. And then he and Tomoya… They were fighting and I was in a panic so I tried to run. But Ushio attacked me and nearly killed me and I…" He trailed off. "I'm not entirely sure when Yami found his way there or how soon he bit me. But I do know that he did and I got infected. It didn't really cause me to change until a month later, that night at the festival—w-when Anzu covered for me again."

Kasumi stared at him blankly, eyes darkening considerably.

"Yami found me when I ran off from the festival but I didn't meet him until the next day. And he wouldn't…talk at the time. He was…basically mute. He wouldn't talk and he played charades with me to make fun of me when I got mad at him. But it doesn't really matter about that…" He hesitated and looked at her from beneath his lashes now, drawing in a deep breath. "What matters is that Yami saved me that night in the alleyway and he's saved me after that a few more times. He's taught me everything I needed to know about this entire situation until recently."

Recently?

She narrowed her eyes. There was something in the way he told her about these events that made her stomach churn. Something in his presentation of it was so direct and simplistic that it almost made her wonder if he was perhaps lying to her in turn. But the way he looked at her with such tired eyes told her otherwise and her stomach burned as they watched each other.

He was gauging her reaction, she knew. Because he would turn tail the moment that she grew angry enough. He wasn't one for a direct confrontation with her. He tended to be far more self-conscious than that when it came to potential fights between the two of them.

"There's…a war…" He hesitated again, tilting his head and frowning at her rather pointedly. She was not talking, which clearly unnerved him, but she could think of nothing to say to him for the moment. "That's going on with the werewolves. It's lycanthropes—the classic werewolves—against hellhounds. We're going to war soon and Yami and I are basically at the forefront of it."

"And that would be because of _what_ exactly?" Kasumi snapped. "What puts _you_ at the forefront of it?"

Yugi blinked and stared at her for a single moment. He would not tell her that he was Atem, because now that he considered it, the truth of that statement seemed far too bleak. He did not want to explain to her that she'd most likely never given birth to him in the first place and what memories she had of him as a child had been created for the sole purpose of breeding attachment in her in order to ensure his survival by way of implanting false images and thoughts regarding him. He did not have the heart to tell her that his childhood had been dreamed up by the gods, implanted in her head as it had each of his friends and family members and all of those he had interacted with prior.

The very thought of speaking those words in the first place made him want to sob.

He shook his head instead. "I volunteered," he answered after a long moment. "I did it because I thought that there was something important enough for me to try to protect."

She blinked and shook her head slightly. "And that's that, huh?"

Yugi shook his head in response. "No. It's not that simple."

"Then what else is there to say about it?"

"Please don't be so upset with me," he pleaded pathetically. "I was scared and I didn't know how to tell you. I didn't want to have to… I'm sorry."

"Didn't want to have to _what_ , Yugi?"

"To change in front of you just to make you believe me."

"To make me… _believe_ _you_ , huh?"

"You would have thought I was crazy and called for a psych evaluation if I just randomly told you that, now wouldn't you have? You would have had me taken to the hospital before I even finished telling you about it! That's always your first reaction! You never just _listen_ to me about something like this!"

"I wasn't aware that I was such a terrible mother, Yugi. Why don't you tell me again?"

"That's not it and you know that," he spat, trembling with anger. "You know that just as well as I do! I don't mean that the way that you've decided to take it. If you would just listen to me for a minute you'd even admit that you wouldn't have reacted very well to the news! And what was I supposed to say anyways? 'Oh, yeah, hey Mom, so guess what? A werewolf bit me the other night and now I'm _pretty_ sure I'm changing into one too?' I can just see how nicely that would go down."

She was bristling now. "So help me…"

On another day, in a different situation, her anger might have made him flinch and look away. Now he simply stared back at her, furious. "The point is, I volunteered to lead the pack because I knew that I could do it and it meant a lot to. There are a lot of things riding on the success of me doing this. And I don't care what you have to say about it. This isn't why I'm telling you this. I'm telling you because you helped me with Yami just now and I thought you deserved an explanation."

"I think I deserved that a long time ago."

"Yeah? Well, you're getting one now instead." He glanced over his shoulder when Yami shifted slightly in his sleep. He turned all the way around after a moment of silence and then leaned against the metal cage pointedly for a handful of seconds. When he turned back he looked slightly unsure of himself before he locked eyes with her again. The emotion drained from his face then and he snorted softly as if she were a mere annoyance. "Anyways, the point is, the hellhounds have a couple of tricks that make it hard for us to keep up—like how apparently their saliva is extremely poisonous. That's why Yami is hurt like this. He got poisoned and now he's going to have to…wait it out until he can get healed, I guess."

"Their saliva…is extremely poisonous…" She shook her head slowly, expression one of sheer disbelief. Then she turned away with a scowl. "So you've been running off like that for no other reason than to parade around as a fucking _dog_."

Yugi flinched. "No, I…" He fell quiet again. Then he drew his lips back to show off his teeth. "Fine, you know what? If that's what you want to think, then _sure_. Why not?"

"Great. I almost wish I didn't know." She rolled her eyes and turned away. "I'm going to bed."

The small teen hesitated. Then his eyes flickered to Yami again, his resolve strengthening before he turned back. "Mom?" She paused, hand turning the knob halfway, and turned to him again with that same scowl on her face. He wished she wouldn't stare at him like that but it was not worth the potential argument that might come out of it to comment on it. Instead he licked his lips and steadied himself mentally. "Will you help me take him upstairs? I don't want him to wake up like this in a cage."

She stared at him as if perhaps she had never seen him before in her life. Then she narrowed her eyes and turned away with a more furious expression than before. "Right… Because I'm sure he'll care so much." But she had started towards him and Yugi felt dizzy with relief at the realization. He didn't have to explain that he was asking for his safety, that he was scared Yami might panic and hurt himself by opening his stitches and bleeding out.

It took ten minutes to get Yami all the way up the stairs, as he was forced to walk backwards and his mom had to support Yami's immense head and shoulders at an odd angle. It was not like moving furniture, where the structure remained consistent enough that they did not have to worry about what way they carried him. She was far more worried about the odds of his head falling out of her arms and hitting the wall. She didn't know enough about Yami's health now to know if he might concuss from the simple action or if his neck might somehow potentially snap or something of that nature. And so she moved as slowly as possible to keep him from any sudden jolt or mild action that might perhaps cause him some kind of harm.

"Okay, okay," Yugi muttered under his breath, a constant mantra from the end of the staircase to the top now. She ignored it and shook her head slightly but the small teen did not seem to notice. And she remained focused on the head in her hands, the way that Yami's mouth was slightly parted and his breath came in small huffs and puffs of air. He smelled as if he was decaying from the inside out and it was horrifying to take note of such a thing as it was. "Okay…okay…"

"I should have asked Dad to grab a blanket or something to lay down for him."

Yugi blinked and looked up at her. "Once we get to the living room I'll make a little spot for him with some blankets and a pillow."

"You're missing the point, Yugi."

He paused and then reached back behind him with an awkward fumbling grip for the doorknob. When he grasped it, it took him a moment to fully twist it and start to walk back again. The wolf in his arms did not stir in the slightest, he noticed, which only mildly surprised him. "You're saying that because of the potential blood stains on the carpet. I get it. And I'll clean them out when he's up and moving around and I can find a time to do it."

She narrowed her eyes and shot him an annoyed look. "Great," she hissed at him. "Then I suppose you do that quickly so that we can get something figured out for him. I'm assuming that you don't want him to eat out of a dog bowl or drink water out of one either so I'm hoping you have some kind of idea as to what you plan to do with him after that, yeah?"

Yugi blinked. "No, he's going to be eating and drinking out of regular dog bowls. He's hurt so I don't think he could make a trip down to the river or anything like that. And he's obviously not going to be hunting anytime soon considering." He hesitated and shouldered the door open, then helped her to lead the way back to the living room without a second glance. "Plus, fuck, he's going to need to grow his fur out before I'll even think of taking him outside. I don't want him to freeze or something crazy like that."

Kasumi shot him a furious look. "You're not going to _walk_ him?"

"He can't walk in the first place!"

"So what do you plan to do is he uses the bathroom in the house?"

"Obviously I'll clean it up." He paused; he couldn't remember if Yami had been so starved before that he hadn't been able to eat enough to excrete or if his body had truly been so malnourished that it had digested _everything_ and left nothing to waste. But he could not remember him using the bathroom at all in the cavern. And those few times Yami had gotten up while in his room, it had been to pee rather than to poop. The realization made his skin crawl. "I don't think he'll have enough muscle mass to have to worry about it, though."

"What? What the hell does that mean?"

Yugi blinked at her. "It means that Yami is so unhealthy right now—especially after being poisoned—that he probably won't have any waste to put out. The last time I saw a wolf this bad off, they hadn't used the bathroom at all for days because they were so malnourished that their body took all of the food they'd eaten and _forced_ it to become something useful."

" _Forced_ it to become something useful?" his mother echoed incredulously. "How the hell would that work?"

"I don't know, honestly. I think I'd have to look into researching it before I could try to explain it."

She snorted loudly. "I don't think I care that much."

Yugi ignored her for a moment, finally finding the corner furthest from the television, nearest the couch, to be the best place to put Yami for the night. So he crouched down and slowly lowered his hindquarters, scared for a split second that perhaps doing so in any other manner might cause the wolf to go through another violent seizure. The very thought was enough to make him nearly sob and he forced it away after a long handful of moments, mouth dry and heart in his throat.

"Okay, so then I guess you don't need to ask questions about it." He dusted off a few stray black hairs that had clung to the blood that had crusted his clothes up. He looked himself over, feeling as if he had been part of a butcher shop rather than anything else. He almost thought he looked as if he were part of a horror movie on top of it. He would have been the first to die most likely.

Or, actually, perhaps he would be the last.

The virgins never tended to die.

And there was almost _always_ a male lead who survived to the end.

He'd pretend that would be him to survive. It wasn't too terrible an idea to hope for. Even if it was inconsequential, if he could survive in a movie of all things, he felt his odds of living through the war might be raised rather drastically. And so he licked his lips and shook his head slightly as he turned away again and thought briefly of the concept that perhaps he should wait to consider anything so close to death when he was hoping for the opposite for the wolf in front of him.

"I'm going to bed now." She gestured to him almost dismissively. "Change your clothes and do whatever you want after that. But you need to get out of those and get into something else. He's not likely to take kindly to you wearing clothes that are covered in blood."

He nodded slightly. It would seem far more threatening to Yami than ever if he were to smell his own blood on Yugi's clothes. Because the small teen was certain that Yami would not remember what had happened. He'd seen the defeated, horrified glint in his red eyes when he'd glanced at him and his mother before he'd fallen unconscious. He had seen it and known it well. Because he knew that Yami must have come to a conclusion that consisted of his capture within the underground labs.

Because he'd realized that Yami had not recognized him then.

And he highly doubted that he might wake up later and realize himself again.

There had been _nothing_ of Yami in his eyes. There had been only raw instinct, pure and panicked, with a desire for survival which made it impossible for him to even reconsider. Yugi closed his eyes tightly for a moment, reaching up to pinch at the bridge of his nose.

"Right, I'll do that in a minute." He said it mostly to make her feel that it was safe to walk away again. But there was a part of him that was relieved to be able to speak in the first place and he swallowed hard as he shook his head slightly. It was exhausting to think about this now. It was so late in the night, almost midnight, and he was sure that she would not be happy to see him in the morning. Of course, that was only an option if she did not immediately flee to the main clinic instead. "I'll go and get him blankets and everything and get him settled into them and then I'll change my clothes after that."

She didn't respond to him, but he hadn't expected her to.

* * *

He found red eyes staring at him a few hours later. He'd turned on the TV to be able to cast light across the room without one of the lamps. And he'd been seated at the edge of the couch, waiting impatiently with the hope that perhaps Yami might wake up at some point. Now he realized that the wolf was staring at him, gaze wide and horrified and bewildered. But when the wolf would try to gather his limbs beneath him, they would shake and he could not even so much as lift himself a couple of inches from the nest of blankets he'd made for him.

"It's okay, aibou," he whispered in a soothing tone. The wolf blinked, pricking his ears towards him. He wished he was covered in fur again, because his naked body at the moment, in its hideously malnourished form—as the hours had passed, Yami had begun to further _waste away_ —was not a fun sight. He wanted to reach out and run his hands over his fur or to ruffle his scruff. But there was nothing but for along his muzzle and very bottom of his legs on his paws and that long tail which was bundled so tightly around his back limb. "I'm not going to hurt you. And you don't need to move."

The red eyes blinked at him, confused and glazed over. There was something primal within them, vicious and uncertain and estranged to Yugi himself. The small teen grimaced and shifted a little closer. The movement made Yami's head jerk back, muzzle pointed away and eyes glued to his face. It was clear in his expression that he did not want him to so much as think to reach over. He could see the whites of his eyes, brilliant against the dark lining of them and his dulled irises. When Yugi shuffled the smallest bit closer, the wolf tilted his head further away.

And, when he reached forward regardless, the wolf gave him one look.

It was a warning, full of trepidation and bewilderment, and it took only a second for it to pass completely from his face. In an instant he turned on Yugi, that outstretched hand his prime target. His teeth snapped shut a millimeter from his fingers when he jerked the limb back. The noise was so sharp that it made Yugi's head ring for a split second.

It had sounded like a gunshot, it was so powerful.

The wolf glared at him, ears flattening against his head. And he did not do so with hatred, but rather with clear defiance. Yugi smiled faintly, amused by the way he retained his ferocity even in his wounded state. It was amazing to him, how much the wolf relied on such an instinct and show of power so naturally. The small teen shifted away again, then leaned back against the couch. He glanced at the wolf from the corner of his eye as Yami watched him for a few minutes, then slowly took to examining his surroundings. He looked first, then risked the task of immersing himself in his olfactory sensory.

For a long minute he remained doing this. Then, finally, as the seconds passed, he exhaled and flattened his ears against his skull. He tilted his head, watching Yugi again, and peeled his lips back furiously to show his teeth. His gums were a healthy pink color, with stray veins of black which he knew existed simply for the color of his lips.

Yugi drew in a deep breath, offering him an awkward smile. "You don't need to worry so much," he snorted, smiling in amusement. "I'm not going to hurt you. None of us are going to hurt you, okay? I swear that's not going to happen."

The wolf pricked his ears forward and then flicked away again. Then he curled his lips back further to show off each of his large teeth. His canines were oddly straight and powerful, his nose pulled away with the power of his snarl. But then he relaxed again, his growl cutting away with a pained noise. He was clearly unable to remember the area he was within and it made the smaller teen almost sick as he watched him for a moment. But the red-eyed wolf did not do more than watch him in turn with a sharp stare.

"Is he awake?"

Yugi jumped slightly when he heard her voice, spinning around with wide eyes. "Yeah," he squeaked out, still startled. Then he cleared his throat awkwardly when he realized that she was staring at him with a raised brow. "He's awake right now. I was about to feed him and then see if I could get him to walk or anything like that."

Kasumi stared at him as if she could not recognize him. And then her blue eyes shot to Yami and the wolf who watched them both with such extreme caution. His red gaze was glittering with unease and she could tell that he had no sign of recognition within him at all. The realization was startling to her. What was Yugi going to do if he never recovered enough to remember him? Would he be able to move on in time? Or would he simply wallow in it?

"What are you planning to feed him?"

"I've got to mix some of the goat's milk up and then I think we have a steak in the fridge, right? I could soak it in water until it becomes soft enough for him to eat it." He paused, staring at her. She didn't know if he was searching her for something or perhaps if he was simply curious as to what she thought of his plans. But Kasumi could not find it in herself to give him any bit of advice. It was stunning to her that her son still even thought it was a good idea to deal with this entire situation as it was. Why was he so involved with this stupid boy in the first place? When had he _changed so damn much_? "And then I guess I'll see if I can get him to take his medicine."

"Do you have a plan to give him his medication or not?"

"Not really. I think that he's…going to fight me any way he can."

Kasumi rolled her eyes, looking to Yami again. The black wolf was staring at them, face seeming sunken and small as they looked at one another. "Clearly," she bit out. "And what do you plan to do about it? Do you not have any idea how you're supposed to actually _get him to take it_?"

Yugi frowned at her and then looked back at Yami. His voice was quiet and soft when he spoke again. "I was going to crush it up in his food and hope that he eats it. If he won't, then I'll mix it into the milk and hope he goes for it. If _that_ doesn't work, then I guess I'll try to get an IV hooked up and mix it into a saline solution or something. I don't know. But I'm going to make it happen one way or another. I don't care how I have to do it."

His mother snorted loudly. "Yeah, good luck with _that_ ," she scoffed softly, shaking her head. Her eyes would not pull away from Yami, however, and some part of her felt as if she were staring at a creature that could kill her at any second. The reality of it was enough to make her nearly snarl. Her mouth felt dry and she could not stop staring as the red eyes bore into hers relentlessly. "So, you've actually known about this since the moment that you met him, huh?"

Yugi blinked and turned to her with a confused expression. "That he was a werewolf?" he asked. "Well, yeah, considering he bit me and I survived, I think it definitely kind of made me suspicious that he might have infected me. I mean, I saw Ushio and Tomoya change that night so I was kind of certain of it, yeah."

The blue-eyed woman shook her head slowly. "And what if he doesn't recover?"

"He will. I'm going to make sure that he does."

"How?"

"By taking care of him like I originally planned to do." He was bristling now. "Especially now that he's awake and pretty pissed and tired. I mean, he doesn't seem to know half of what's going on right now so it'd be pretty dumb of me to leave you and Grandpa to do anything with him. He'd probably try harder to bite one of you than he already has me."

She scoffed. "So he's dangerous then, good to know."

Yugi hesitated, head snapping towards Yami and then back again. "He's a _werewolf_ ," he commented slowly, as if she were missing a rather crucial point. "Of course he's _dangerous_. He can bite through flesh like it's paper and he can break bones with his teeth. You want to hear about a wolf with a bite which goes beyond three thousand pounds of pressure, you look at him."

Kasumi's head turned immediately back to the wolf that was lying behind Yugi. The red eyes were still expressionless, boring into her face as if in direct challenge. She looked slowly back to her son and then to Yami once more. " _He_ has that bite pressure?" she asked slowly. " _He's_ the one who's been killing like that?"

Her son shook his head immediately. "No," he answered rather harshly. "It wasn't him to do it. But he has that jaw power. Both of us do, actually, if you'd like to measure it at some point. Besides, Yami was already living here by the time that you and Mazaki had that conversation about the incidents and the new theories for what was going on."

"He was already…living here…?" She narrowed her eyes, bristling as well now. Kasumi shook her head furiously, amazed by the sheer stupidity her son seemed to possess now. "Are you _retarded_? Do you honestly think that just because he _lived here_ doesn't mean that he never left the house? He could have killed them all without a second thought if he'd so wanted to!"

Yugi shook his head. "He's not a killer," he insisted shortly. But he felt cold and tired now and he wondered at the thought. A small splash of water, cold and icy enough to stun him, seemed to cross his insides and he felt dizzy. Yami was capable of doing those things, he knew. He had, after all, witnessed his various killings. He had seen him decapitate wolves and humans alike. It was not hard to imagine that he could have done such a thing. It was the fact that he trusted him and didn't believe for even a moment that he might have done it that kept him from agreeing with her. He knew that Yami would not kill without reason and those victims had been hardly anyone his alpha might have turned on in that manner.

"He's not the one who did that."

"And you're so sure _why_ exactly?"

"Because, as much as you might want to think otherwise, Yami isn't that kind of person. He wouldn't have hurt someone like that for no reason. He wouldn't kill like that just for the fun of it. He's dangerous, yeah, but he's not a piece of crap like that."

She narrowed her eyes, looking at the wolf again. Yugi had the stunning urge to step in front of him and shield him from her sight entirely. But another part of him wanted her to take a good, long look at him, and perhaps to see what he meant in his denial. But another part of him knew better than to hope such a thing. And so he simply watched her as she stared at the canine and Yami remained watching her in turn.

"I'm pretty dangerous too, Mom." He was quiet as she blinked and looked over at him in surprise now. He drew in a deep breath, then exhaled softly and narrowed his eyes into near slits. "You forget that I'm a werewolf now too. Doesn't matter if I'm human or if I'm a wolf at the moment. I _am_ a werewolf too. And that means that I'm _just_ as capable as he is of just killing whoever I decide."

Kasumi was quiet for a long minute. Then she shook her head slowly, closing her eyes tightly. "I don't even know you anymore," she hissed, reaching up to pinch at the bridge of her nose. "And I don't even know why I'm standing here talking to you right now. You wouldn't even ask him to be your alibi against the accusations Mazaki has been throwing at you."

"I'm not going to just risk upsetting him unnecessarily," he bit out angrily. "And I'll tell that same thing to anyone stupid enough to ask me."

She shook her head. "I'm going to bed. If he makes a mess, it's your responsibility."

He sneered at her silently, feeling guilty a moment or two later, and then looked over at Yami. The black wolf had been watching her go but now he turned towards Yugi again with wide eyes, staring for a brief moment before baring his teeth at him. He did not seem even slightly upset with the small teen looking at him, though he did not appear impressed either.

"Well, I guess it's just you and me again, huh?" he muttered. He had the smallest urge to reach out and pet him. But then he remembered that he'd probably need his hands at a later date and so instead turned and headed into the kitchen. "Let's see what we can get you to eat, okay?"

He made a bowl of goat's milk, mixing the powder until it was a smooth consistency that he could see Yami truly drinking. Then he put the steak he pulled out of the fridge into a metal bowl with warm water, put some pain and nausea medicine into the small pockets he created with some shallow cuts to the meat, and wondered about the idea of getting something like marrow bones. He could give it to him to make sure that when he was awake he was kept busy. He would only have to worry after that what to do with them. Because he was sure Yami might splinter and eat them instead. Then again, from what he knew, bones and marrow were extremely beneficial to wild animals. It kept their own bones healthy and free of deficiencies.

Yugi put both bowls down after a minute of hesitation. His initial thought was similar to his mother's in that the wolf would refuse and turn his nose up at the food. But, either Yami was truly starving and could not fathom missing out on a potential meal, or he was drawn to the smell of the raw meat and the sour tang of the milk itself. Because he leaped at the food, struggling to crawl forward slightly and stretch his neck out. He drank the milk down first, licking his lips hungrily afterwards before turning to the meat itself.

He wrinkled his nose slightly in disgust as the black wolf dug into the steak. It was amazing to him when he saw him swallow away the medicine as well, licking the metal bowl clean. He whined when his paw tipped it over completely onto its side and it remained empty. Yugi watched him for a long moment before slowly reaching for the bowl. He pulled it away from him when Yami snarled and glared at him with burning red eyes. But he could already see some of the drowsiness coming into his gaze. It was hard not to notice as the wolf blinked and lowered his nose slightly towards the ground.

The wolf breathed out rather heavily, closing his eyes tightly and flicking his ears once or twice. Then he shivered, a rush of pain making him yelp from the action. Yugi came back from the sink immediately, startled and horrified by the sound that he'd released. The wolf blinked wide eyes, then attempted to raise himself to his feet. The smell of fresh blood was enough to make both of them falter. Yami's eyes flickered and his head turned, his nose twitching. His shoulder and side were bleeding, he realized just as Yugi himself did. The wolf whined and moved to brace himself to get to his paws.

His claws sank into the carpet and blanket and he gripped at it. Then he tried to move his hindquarters enough to shift to lie on his belly. But the effort was enough to wind him. And his eyes were struggling to stay open. He opened his jaws, yawning with stress and exhaustion. Then he attempted to move again.

Something grabbed him.

The pain was so immediate that he yelped.

Then he spun on the source of the touch.

His teeth snapped shut on soft flesh. And he snarled, panicked. The human had grabbed him. The human had _grabbed_ him. The small male was holding his hips. His grip did not slip in the slightest. The wolf glared up at him, snarling more furiously. The boy ignored him, instead helping to shift his weight. He moved his spine enough to allow him to lie on his belly. Yami screamed and snapped his jaws harder. He bit down further. His eyes blazed. His ears pricked forward.

The boy snorted at him, then helped him to move his hips to lie on the other side. The action made Yami yelp and snarl again. And then he bit at empty air when the boy pulled his arm away. It was bleeding heavily, the red leaking away and dripping to the carpet. Yami stared at it, eyes wide. Then he snarled, lowering his head. His fur was in a bristle. His tongue began to flash over his nose. His ears were pressed against his skull.

Yugi snorted. "Relax, I'm not going to hurt you," he scoffed. But he paused and watched Yami regardless. The red-eyed wolf stared up at him. His darkened gaze bore into Yugi's for a moment. And then the small teen looked at his hand again. "I need to wash this and then I'll give you some more food."

The wolf did nothing more than stare for a long time. His ears flicked about and his eyes searched the small teen's for a moment. Then he yawned and lowered his chin to his paws. He was exhausted, Yugi saw, and a small part of him felt sick with the idea of the sight. Yami was not going to be comfortable moving in the slightest. He would not be able to move himself in any way throughout the night.

Yugi shook his head and went to the sink. He turned the knob for warm water and ran his hand beneath the faucet. He sighed softly, shaking his head again, and narrowed his eyes slightly as he considered the deep wound. Yami had torn downward to his bones. The fact that he had not broken his wrist was amazing to him. But he shrugged it off and cleaned his bowls out before making another meal. He mixed the goat's milk again, then selected a packet of chicken. He soaked it in warm water again, allowing it to become room temperature when he poked it.

Then he took both bowls to the wolf again, relieved to see that Yami responded with the same vigor as he had the other meal. The smaller teen moved in order to place the food down in front of his paws. He did not want to have Yami stretch himself out again and pull his stitches further. He would need to clean them again later when Yami was passed out and he could get an IV started on his leg again.

The thought made him grimace, a sense of unease coming through him after a moment. It took him only a moment to realize that the wolf had stopped gobbling down the chicken. His head was raised and turned and his eyes were burning as they stared up at him. Yugi blinked, startled, and the moment he forgot the idea of drugging him again, Yami turned away. In an instant he had emptied his bowl again, tipping it over with his paw and moving his head just enough to poke his muzzle in completely and run his tongue over the metal pointedly.

At first Yugi wondered if he had somehow sensed his thoughts. He wondered at the possibility that perhaps Yami had known to consider that he was thinking of fixing his stitches again. But then a new realization struck him. Looking at Yami, the thought crossed his mind that he _was_ , in fact, far more _wolf_ than Yugi had ever quite known him to be formerly. It occurred to him only then that Yami was far more likely to sample his emotions than he was anything else.

He was more likely to respond to his emotional state than he was his voice or hand movements or anything of that manner. Yugi could talk to him in a sweet voice all he wanted. He could sit there next to him and promise he would not hurt him. He could do any and everything he wanted as far as speech went. But it would do nothing for Yami in any manner.

Because he was far more likely to react to his emotions than anything.

Yugi reached a hand up to run his hands through his hair and closed his eyes tightly.

This was going to be a long recovery process.


	65. Relief

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Hopefully biweekly**

 **Chapter Warnings: GRAPHIC Description of Seizures, Blood, Gore, Death, Slight Anxiety Attack**

 **Ploy: I'm glad you liked the chapter so much. Yeah, Kasumi was kind of just fed up by then. She really doesn't understand when or how Yugi became so attached to Yami like this. But then again, she also doesn't know how long Yami has been around him and living in the house. Anyways, so! Yugi was not as affected by the poison because he was healthier. Yami couldn't push the poison properly out of the body because he was not healthy enough to do it. In fact, if he'd changed in the middle of any of his seizures, he'd probably have all but destroyed himself in the meantime and gone into a much more feral state even though he'd be unable to move or even do much properly, basically reducing him into a vegetable. Technically it would ruin the plot to explain anything to do with Atem, but yes, Yugi is Atem. Yugi is still very much Atem. That's really all I can really say about that. Well! Yugi's whole reason to get his mom involved was to save Yami so, as long as Yami was saved, it means it was a success and a good choice to him! He won't regret anything as long as Yami is okay at the end of it!**

Part V

Chapter LXV: Relief

 _Work Log Entry LVIII: February, 2006_

 _February 1_

 _Being starved for two weeks has done nothing. Atem has become furious and aggressive in turn. He is not healing or showing further signs of illness in any way._

 _I have decided to give him food again despite the order not to._

 _In doing so he seemed to recover, if only slightly, by way of allowing him more room to gain mild fat and spur his healing._

 _February 18_

 _His vital signs have improved now. He seems much stronger mentally than he was before. But beyond this, Atem has not changed._

 _Yet again he seems to be sick without explanation._

 _February 28_

 _Atem is showing clear signs of recognition once more._

 _He has taken to moving out of the way for us when we come to retrieve him from his cage again. He has begun to lead us to the rooms of his experiments as necessary once more. And he seems to recognize me again._

Yugi swore to everything good in his life that he was going to lose it if Yami would not move from his little nest of blankets. The wolf would simply stare at him when he would try to tell him to go elsewhere. Yugi would gesture and tell him. He would even snap his fingers and point. Yami would simply blink at him as if he had been crazy, eyes staring blankly up at him as if he were some foreign and incredibly stupid creature. The wolf would flick his ears, then point them at him when he would snap his fingers again.

But he would not move.

And he would not so much as blink at Yugi if he attempted to startle him into moving a second time when he would snap his fingers again. The small teen would try a third or fourth time, see that it was ineffective, and finally look away again. It was impossible to make the wolf pay attention to him for longer than it took for Yami to consider him and lay his head back down again.

But at least the wolf would eat. And at least he would drink the milk when he would give it to him. He would simply swallow it down without a second look. And then he would gulp the food down and lick the metal bowl clean as he had the first couple of times Yugi had fed him. Sometimes Yami would snarl when the small teen would take the metal bowl away from him. Sometimes he would simply nudge it with his nose as if encouraging him to take it away and refill it. Other times, however, he would simply stare at him as if daring him to reach for them. He would look at him as if he might be able to see through his soul.

The wolf blinked up at him now, raising his head and licking his lips. Yugi rolled his eyes and put the two bowls down for him. In an instant dark-furred canine lunged forward to dig into his meal. He lapped up the milk before Yugi could blink and then swallowed and gulped down the pork he'd put the medication inside of. The wolf flipped them both with his paws again, looking up at Yugi with his ears pricked forward and his eyes burning.

Yugi smiled at him, then moved to grab the bowls again. The wolf tilted his head to the side and licked his lips. The small teen did not bother to do more than simply grab the bowls and put them in the sink. He rinsed them out, cleaned them again, and began to prepare a second meal for him. The canine whined from within the living room, clearly anticipating food and trying to remind him of his hunger.

"Is he still doing okay?"

Yugi blinked as he mixed the goat's milk. It was rather startling to him to realize that his grandfather had snuck up on him like this. He had been so caught up in the task of making Yami's food that he'd forgotten his mother and grandfather were even still in the house with them. He blinked and looked over his shoulder. The elderly Motou was watching him from the doorway with a curious expression.

"Yeah, he's awake and eating without any vomiting or diarrhea. So I think that's probably something to be grateful for," he muttered, but he fought the urge to say that he knew Yami would not do the latter. His body was breaking down every cell in order to heal him. He was eating as much as Yugi was willing to give him at one time. He was taking the medicine with little issue. He was going to be able to heal himself at some point. He would have his wounds pull themselves together completely and heal and then the fur would grow back.

Yugi would be happy to see that Yami was healthy again. No, he would be _ecstatic_ to see that Yami was healthy and comfortable again. He would not argue or fight or anything with him ever again. Yami would be back to what he knew him to be before this entire incident. He would be larger, muscular, with a coat the color of the night sky and shadows deep enough to be ventablack. He would have vibrant and sparkling red eyes with a million different shades scattered within them. His skin would not be pulled so taut over his skeleton.

"Good." Sugoroku sounded incredibly relieved for him. Yugi blinked and turned his head towards him again, then looked away to work on the powdered milk once more. The wolf whined from in the living room again and he could hear his grandpa moving his head to look over as well. But the small teen did not turn his attention to the canine lying there. Instead he continued working on the milk. "I'm glad to hear that, Yugi."

The smaller teen blinked. "It's pretty amazing," he muttered quietly, sighing softly and shaking his head slightly. He had the impulse to reach up and run his hands through his hair, heart in his throat. He was anxious and distressed by the very idea. And then he shrugged it off again. It was okay. Yami would be fine. He didn't need to pull on his hair because he was overwhelmed. He exhaled softly. "Let's hope he keeps doing that."

"I doubt he'll stop."

Yugi nodded dismissively. Then he pushed the goat's milk aside and emptied a new container of raw ground beef into the stainless steel water bowl. He broke the capsule and dusted the meat in the medicine, then turned on the faucet and rolled it up into something of a meatball formation. He rinsed his hands, then reached out and used his wrist to pump the soap out onto his palm.

"It'll be fine."

"How long do you think it'll take for him to grow his hair back?"

Yugi pursed his lips, exhaling loudly and shaking his head. "I have no idea."

"He looks like a huge pomeranian with a bad haircut."

The small teen snickered and shook his head again. He turned the water off and wiped his hands on his jeans with a backwards glance at him. He grinned playfully. "I don't know. Maybe I'll have him keep that cut when he's all healed up."

His grandfather laughed loudly. "I don't think you could talk him into that."

"No, probably not. But I can definitely still try."

Sugoroku snorted softly and watched him as he headed into the living room. As he'd seen prior, Yugi put the two dishes down as close as possible to Yami without encouraging the wolf to lash out. Yami began to lap up the milk, then ate the beef without a second thought. He flipped both bowls, licked them clean, and then turned to the small teen with a tilted head.

"Sorry, aibou, no more. I'll feed you in a couple of hours but I need to grab more food before I give you anymore." He smiled in amusement and grabbed both bowls, heading for the sink and washing them. Yami whined only once and Sugoroku looked towards the living room to see that the wolf was trying in vain to get up and shift his position. It took only a moment for him to settle for the reality that he could not move beyond this and simply put his chin on his paws again. He closed his dark red eyes and Sugoroku slowly glanced over at Yugi curiously.

"Aibou, huh?"

The small teen hesitated for a moment, then shook his head slowly. "I'm not going to call him Yami right now." He hesitated. "If Jonouchi or Honda come, they'll probably recognize him. But I don't want anyone else to have any idea about the situation. And I don't know if Anzu might have told her dad Yami's name at some point."

"I doubt she would have."

"I wouldn't know. I've pissed her off pretty badly recently. It doesn't really matter, though, I guess." Yugi shrugged. "I just…I think, to be on the safe side for him, I'm going to call him by a nickname instead of his actual name. I don't want to have anything stupid or ridiculous happen just because I've been calling him by his name."

"I don't think I can get behind the idea of calling him aibou, Yugi."

The small teen laughed and shook his head. "I don't care if you or Mom call him by his name. But I don't want you to call him that in front of someone else." He tilted his head and glanced towards the living room. Yami was fast asleep, though he hardly looked comfortable. Yugi wondered how long it might have taken him to regain enough strength to move on his own. He wanted to help him again, but to risk letting his mom or grandpa see the effect of his bite to his hand again… He turned back to his grandpa. "Besides, for right now, I get to pretend he's my dog."

Sugoroku snorted loudly. "I don't think many dogs change shape."

Yugi rolled his eyes. "Clearly." He paused. "Mine does though."

His grandpa left after a moment, laughing, and wandered off for his room again. It was strange watching him go, though Yugi did not say anything about it. Instead he turned back towards the living room. Yami was still passed out, as he had expected, but worry bubbled up in his gut as he faced him. It was horrifying to consider that the wolf might have harmed himself in his refusal to get to his paws and walk around as he might have needed. He knew that the muscle was atrophied, however, and it made Yugi reluctant to truly try to make him move. But it occurred to him as well that it could cause it to worsen. If Yami recovered well enough, he still might not be capable of moving as was necessary of him.

He wouldn't budge from the blanket and pillow which had been settled for the wolf to lie upon. It was strange to him that the canine would simply lay there and allow himself to become hurt further. But Yugi knew that he would have to do more. He would have to try to get Yami up and move him off the makeshift bed and out to stretch his limbs at some point. He knew that. It was necessary.

It was a couple of hours later that Yugi came back from the market and set up to bring the bowls to the black wolf again. The canine was still fast asleep at first, though he flicked his ears and opened his eye slowly to look at him. Yugi was kind of amazed by the way that the eye rolled back from behind his head slowly focused first on the spot in front of him and then on Yugi. His nose wriggled once. Then he blinked and lifted his head, turning back to him and looking to the bowls once more. He dug in after a moment and Yugi straightened to his full height. He licked his lips and watched Yami.

"Are you going to work with me for this?" he asked. Yami blinked from where he was digging into his meal. He blinked again and then tipped his head up, watching him with red eyes that looked unnaturally bewildered. Yugi tilted his head slightly. "We need to exercise you so are you going to work with me on this or no?"

The wolf blinked and then looked at his food and back. Then he snorted loudly and began to dig in again. The small teen rolled his eyes after a moment or two. Yami did not glance up at him again and the small teen dusted himself off when he straightened to his full height and turned to make his way downstairs. He would go and get the collar and leash combo and then he would try to put it on around the other lycanthrope's neck. Of course, it was far easier said than done.

As he'd gotten closer to Yami, the wolf had slowly raised and turned his head. He'd emptied both bowls and even rolled one aside with his nose to make more room to lay his chin on his paws. But now he stared up at Yugi with darkened eyes. The sight of his red gaze so narrow as they bore into his own made him slightly nervous. And he realized immediately that Yami sensed it. His eyes darkened further. His ears pricked forward. His tongue flashed to flick over his nose. Yugi recognized the ambivalence display immediately, unsure of what more to do or say for a long moment. The wolf blinked up at him, then simply _stared_.

The small teen hesitated, biting the inside of his left cheek and searching his face for a moment. Then he shook his head slightly and moved to crouch in front of him. Yami lowered his head, but did not snarl. His eyes were boring into his skin. The whites showed there. But his lips did not draw back. And it shocked him when the wolf remained perfectly still. His head was turned slightly away, muzzle facing towards the couch rather than his hands.

And so he mistook it for surrender.

He'd forgotten the warning in his eyes. He shouldn't have been able to see the whites of them when he was looking at him. The thought that Yami would not fight him was such an immense relief to him that he'd forgotten it entirely.

So when Yami spun on him he wasn't prepared.

The wolf's muzzle slammed into his left hand. Then his teeth opened and caught his right wrist. The bite was a simple warning. It was nip more than as violent as he'd displayed upon Yugi's touching him. Now he did not draw blood. But the skin grew red where his incisors had snapped shut. And his eyes were furious as they looked up at him. Yami did not snarl. He did not blink. He did not flick his tongue over his nose again. He stared up at him steadily. And he watched him as if he expected him to lash out at any moment. The realization made Yugi nearly bristle before he shook it off.

"Look, Yami, we need to see if you can walk."

When he undid the collar's clasp, the plastic buckle made the wolf blink. The canine turned his head slowly. And his eyes narrowed briefly. His ears pricked forward again. His eyes were dilated. And his mouth opened slowly. Yugi watched as his tongue, elongated and unnaturally flattened in his stress, came from between his teeth. They were staring at each other then, watching for what felt like hours.

And Yugi realized that, should he lean forward and try to clasp the collar around his neck, Yami would tear his hand open. And that might not have scared him at all. But the realization was that the stress could do far more harm than good. And so Yugi got to his feet and forced himself to step back. The wolf stared at him once more. His eyes darkened with clear suspicion. But when Yugi stepped back again, he flicked his ears and tilted his head slowly to one side.

It was almost predatory but seemed far more curious than anything else.

Yugi shrugged the thought off and moved into the kitchen to put the collar and leash on the table. He had the feeling that Yami would not do well to get up in the first place. Just hours prior he'd pulled his stitches and Yugi had been forced to redo them in the time that Yami had been knocked out from his sleep medication. The wolf had not stirred slightly after Yugi had given him an IV drip.

He wondered briefly if a blood transfusion would do the wolf any good. Would it heal him or somehow make it worse? Yugi considered the idea for a few minutes. Then he took a seat at the table and propped his elbows on the surface with his face in his hands. It seemed impossible to find an actual blood type to match Yami's. He doubted the lycanthropy would allow something so simple as that to happen. And, should it, he imagined it would be far more destructive than do any good. The realization was enough to make him feel sick as he shook his head and lowered his eyes.

It was a stupid idea to even consider otherwise. It made no sense to try to type him if it would simply cause far more problems than he already had. That was not to say that maybe further studying into the idea would not do him well later. But it was a stretch of which Yugi was not sure he wanted to truly confront. It was something that could easily backfire far worse than he could anticipate. And doing that would do him no good.

Yugi shook his head and turned to the doorway when he heard a sound coming from there. His brow rose and his head tilted in confusion as he thought for a moment of what else he might be able to do. Then he shrugged it off as he turned to the two lingering in the doorway. "You know, breathing the same air as me isn't the way to catch my lycanthropy or my stupidity," he said wryly, cocking a brow when his mother snorted and his grandfather awkwardly shuffled into the room.

"I was just thinking about whether it would disrupt Yami if I went to watch TV out in the living room," the elderly Motou explained uncomfortably. He shot a glance over his shoulder towards the wolf. Yami was fast asleep in that same position he'd been for the last handful of hours. Yugi would have to help him roll over into a more comfortable position later. He was well aware of the wolf's limitations, of how much he would need to help him in the time it took him to recover. It was stunning to him in truth, but he was not about to tell either of them that. "I mean, I didn't want to upset him by turning it on and the volume being too loud or anything like that."

"He's going to be knocked out for a while," the teen said dismissively. He waved it off almost lazily, shaking his head slightly. "The drowsiness seems to hit him pretty quickly. It's almost impossible for him to open his eyes until they metabolize completely for him. He'll be asleep for at least three or four hours before he wakes up again and then I'll feed him and you can keep watching your shows or whatever it is you wanted to do."

Sugoroku turned back to him with a somewhat curious expression. "He won't wake up in the middle of one of the programs and try to attack me or something?" He was teasing, but there was a clear bit of concern in his eyes regardless.

Yugi rolled his eyes. "He can't get up from that blanket," he admitted quietly, sighing. "And I don't think he'll risk doing it just for the sake of scaring you off. I don't even think he'll snarl at you if he wakes up at this rate. I'm pretty sure he's too exhausted to care too much about that kind of thing now."

"He's in that bad a state?" his mom asked, glancing over into the living room as well. The small teen tipped his chair back to spot the wolf more fully. Yami was fast asleep regardless of their conversation. His chin was on his paws. His breathing was steady and even. His ears did not flick in the slightest. His eyes did not open. He would occasionally twitch slightly along the muzzle as his nose would shift rather quickly. But he did not stir beyond this and that hardly seemed to truly disturb him in any manner.

"Did you manage to walk him?"

Yugi blinked, confused by the question. Then he turned back to his grandpa, brows furrowed, and glanced at the nylon on the table. His mouth opened and closed once before he shook his head slowly and turned back to him. "No," he admitted unhappily. "Yami wouldn't let me put it on him at all. He was pretty aggressive about it. He muzzle-punched me and then bit me over it. I wasn't even close enough to get it around his neck in the first place, honestly. It was kind of ridiculous."

Kasumi looked at him curiously for a long moment. Then she shook her head slowly before furrowing her brows and considering him more pointedly. "You should have tried to get it around his neck while he was eating."

"Definitely not," Yugi snorted. He knew the technique from doing so with the dogs at the kennel, but he knew better than to even consider doing so with Yami. "Wolves are way too territorial for that. You wouldn't do that with a wolfdog, you definitely wouldn't do it with a real wolf and especially _not_ a werewolf. Although, I wish I could do that. But he's also extremely scared that I'm going to take his food away right now and eats it as fast as he can. So I have zero plans to try to do that to him anytime soon."

"Then I guess he won't be taking any walks anytime soon, huh?"

"Yami probably wouldn't be able to walk very far in the first place," he admitted reluctantly. He reached up and ran a hand through his hair, then looked away again uncomfortably. "I mean, he's pretty weak and emaciated and I can't see him doing well with that at all. He's going to get hurt way before he'll likely be okay to walk in the first place."

"You're probably right," Kasumi answered quietly. She was looking at the wolf again. "What do you plan to do if he uses the bathroom in the house?"

"I'll clean it up like I would anything else." He raised a brow. "He's not going to for a while, though, Mom. He's not able to. Whatever he eats for a while is going to be _completely_ digested. He's not going to have any excess to poop or pee out. There's just no way."

"Your body can't absorb every cell into nutrients like that. He's got to excrete something."

"No, he doesn't. I've watched him when he was in a similar state to this before and he didn't once use the bathroom."

She looked over at him with a raised brow. "He could have eaten it."

The small teen scrunched his nose up, then turned away with the urge to vomit. He'd never considered that but he did not doubt for even a moment that nothing of the sort had happened. He shook his head slowly. "I was there with him a lot of the time and he didn't once look like he even needed to use the bathroom. And besides that, I have no idea how the lycanthropy works when it comes to that kind of thing, Mom. I don't think he used the bathroom at any point though."

"Then what do you think he did in the time that you weren't there?"

"Snarled at the two wolves that were watching him while I was gone," he snorted, turning back to her with a roll of his eyes. "No, he's fine. I don't think he'll use the bathroom anytime soon. And I don't think you'll have to worry about accidents for a while either. He can't even get up and I don't think for a _second_ that he's willing to ruin his bedding like that. He knows it's a limited spot he can roll around on and he doesn't have any space to do that."

"You're saying that like he's still human and can actively think as one."

"I'm saying that like he's one of the smartest animals in the world. Which he is. Because wolves are almost ten times as smart as dogs. So I don't know where you're going with this, but the point is he's fine for now. If he has an accident, though, I'll clean it up like I would any other mess and I'll take it from there."

"What do you plan to do if he's unwilling to let you put him on a leash in the first place?"

"I'll get pee pads or something. I don't know yet. But it won't be an issue. I'll figure something out."

Kasumi considered him for a long minute. Then she rolled her eyes and looked at her father. "It's the dog Yugi always wanted, I suppose." The remark was made in a scathing tone and Yugi felt his cheeks grow hot with indignation as his lips curled briefly. Then he turned away with a near snarl and ignored the urge to snap at her in response. It wasn't as if he had not considered it himself a little while back, but it still frustrated him all the same. She shouldn't have been saying anything like that about Yami to begin with. He had done nothing wrong.

So Yugi simply rolled his eyes and turned away again. "If he wakes up earlier than I come out here to feed him, call me. I'll come running," he mumbled, reaching over to finger the collar sitting in the center of the table. He flipped it over a few times, then dropped it aside and looked away. He had the smallest urge to yawn, and another to simply lay his head down and snuggle into his folded arms.

"Do you need help with him?"

Yugi blinked and glanced at her sideways. "If you'd _like_ to help me, that'd be great. But you don't need to. It's not too terrible doing it for myself. He's just tired and needs to be fed and given his medication every now and then. It's not that bad getting it done."

* * *

Yugi was tired as he looked at the red-eyed wolf that was lying on the pillow and blanket a few feet away. He was not curled up, nor did he look entirely too tense. He kept his chin on his paws and his eyes half-closed as the seconds passed. The wolf blinked up at him when he shifted his weight and the small teen grimaced as he saw Yami tilt his head slightly. He looked as if he was hungry, but the timing was off. Yugi would need to wait at least half an hour longer. He did not want to give him more food or medicine than necessary and he was unwilling to risk upsetting his stomach.

So he simply turned away and narrowed his eyes slightly. The wolf blinked at him, clearly impatient for food, but the teen did not bother to look over. He knew that the canine was hungry and he was well aware of the way those red eyes peered at him so pointedly. The small teen leaned forward, elbows propped on his knees, and put his chin in his palms.

"You know, Yami, if you weren't _hurt_ I could actually feed you without worrying about overloading you or your stomach or having to drug you," he commented wryly. The wolf's ears flicked and his head tilted further to the side. His eyes grew narrow, almost as if he were bewildered. His nose wriggled twice, then he flexed his paws, stretching his toes out before slowly clenching them again. "If you hadn't taken on those damn hellhounds you wouldn't be waiting on food right about now, you know? You'd be happy and healthy and I'd have fed you by now since I know you're already hungry."

The wolf blinked at him lazily. None of the words seemed to have even the smallest miniscule effect on the animal in front of him. His eyes were dazed and lazy and he blinked at him without much care, tilting his head and staring back at him pointedly. Yugi rolled his eyes and tapped his fingers along his cheeks.

"You should have just run, you stupid asshole."

The wolf blinked again. Then he swallowed and ran his tongue over his nose. Yugi wondered for a moment if he could understand what he was saying, the words making sense in his head. But then he shrugged it off and shook his head. No, Yami did not recognize him or any of the words he was saying as it was. He was unable to understand beyond basic concepts of food and medicine, Yugi was sure. He knew the wolf was able to smell the medicine and understood that it would be what put him to sleep. He knew that the wolf was capable of understanding the word "food" in the very least.

It was harder for him to understand the other things that came from his mouth.

"I could have dealt with them, you know. That's why my name is Atem." He said the last handful of words in a much quieter tone, stomach coiled with frustration. He watched the other male for a moment, startled when Yami's ears flicked and his eyes focused solely on Yugi for what felt like a lifetime. He looked more irate than anything and Yugi could not tell if that was because he kept talking or if it was the fact that he had said that name. Something about the way he'd reacted left him inclined to think it was the latter.

And Yugi was rather surprised by the idea that he might remember a thing of that nature. But then he wondered if the name still meant something simply for his being a lycanthrope as he was. He was not a naturally born wolf. Perhaps that was the only reason he responded to him in the first place. Yugi looked him over for a moment, then wondered if he might need to sedate him again and then redo his stitches along his sides again. They did not look too terrible but Yugi could never be entirely be sure about such things.

Yami tended not to show outwardly that he was in pain. And other animals were similarly difficult like that. You didn't get as big a warning sign as you did with people. And that seemed especially true for the wolf in front of him. The thought was mildly bewildering and Yugi was exhausted even considering it. Yami would grunt occasionally but he would not yelp any longer. He almost seemed irritable whenever he would so much as exhale too loudly. Yugi had the feeling that he did not want to even _consider_ being weaker than the others in the house. He was surely at the top of the food chain and realized that, but his predicament tended to place him towards the bottom.

Yugi shook his head slightly, flustered by the thought. But doing so wouldn't really do much for him to begin with. He might be able to sympathize a little more with the other male but it did nothing to make him calm down in the slightest. Yugi would still need to check on him later. He'd still need to see that the stitches were not loosening in any manner due to his ravenous gulping down of food. It was frustrating to him to consider that feeding him could also do him harm.

He was aware of the fact that he was most likely not feeding him small enough meals at one time. But if he broke them in half and fed him six times a day instead of three, there was no doubt that Yami would grow upset. And, if he was upset, Yugi doubted that he'd be able to so much as look at Yami without nearly being bitten in the face. The wolf would most likely take it as a punishment and try in turn to retaliate against it.

But maybe risking that was better than not…

"I should kick your ass for doing that."

Yami blinked tiredly, ignoring him now.

"It was completely under control."

He thought, had Yami been human, he might have scoffed loudly and looked at him as if he were stupid. Or perhaps he would have teased him that he was kicking ass so well that he almost believed him. The thought was only mildly amusing. They both knew he would have most likely been killed had it not been for the fact that Yami had come to intervene. And then, had it not been for Slifer, Yugi doubted he would have been capable of recovering Yami's body to begin with.

He owed the goddess for that. She was the only reason they'd managed to escape as it was. He had no problem admitting such a thing but it did upset him in the mildest of manners. Why had she not come _sooner_? Was it actually _true_ what she and Ishizu claimed about being unable to see him or Yami any longer? Was that truly a possibility? But then…how had she known to come to their aid if that was the truth of it?

It didn't make any sense.

"I had it under _control_."

He hated the fact that Yami simply blinked at him and opened his eyes halfway. He looked exhausted more than anything. And Yugi felt sick as he considered him for a moment. Was Yami ever to the point that he simply did not care to so much as open his eyes and look at him? But when he muttered again that he should have just left it to him, Yami looked at him with that same tired, unfocused expression. Yugi was sick with the thought that maybe the black wolf would have preferred to simply rest there and fail to open his eyes again.

Not for the first time, Yugi wondered if perhaps Yami simply wished he would not come back to life as it was. He wondered if maybe Yami would have liked to lay there and pass away entirely. But, selfishly, Yugi was happy that Yami was not able to do such a thing by his own desire. It was comforting to him to realize such a thing as it was. And it made him feel dizzy and happy to know that this was not an option that the black wolf was able to choose to do on his own. It was exhausting to Yugi to even consider it, as he was sure that the lupine would have chosen otherwise at this rate. He was sure of it.

There was no question, he felt. Yami had to be exhausted. He had to be in that realm of depression and exhaustion, didn't he? He had to be some sense of understanding for him that he _could_ die permanently were he not a lycanthrope. It was depressing to think that Yami did not have the proper freedom to truly give up on life as others did. He couldn't simply close his eyes and slip away as others could. He was not a dog that could be euthanized as a vet might have suggested.

He wondered if his mom would have suggested that had Yugi not been pleading with her so pathetically to help him. It was stunning to him that his mother might have turned away someone else, but had tried so hard to help Yugi as it was. It was overwhelming for a moment, considering that the wolf could have been left to suffer had it not been for him carrying Yami and begging her…

"You would be dead if you weren't a werewolf."

Yami flicked an ear. He did not seem to be upset by the statement, though he did appear to be more tired than ever. He blinked at Yugi again, almost as if he did not recognize the last word that had left his mouth. But then he closed his eyes as if annoyed and the small teen nearly snickered with amusement.

"You almost got yourself killed. You know, if my mom wasn't a vet, I don't think I ever could have helped you," he hissed, nearly spitting at the wolf in frustration. It made his head spin for a moment as the canine shifted just enough to lick at his jaws. "And if you weren't such a stubborn ass, I bet you would have died from the entire thing, wouldn't you have?"

Yami blinked at him. His ears flicked briefly back and forth for a few moments. Then he closed his eyes again and shifted his weight slightly. He drew in a deep breath, then exhaled as if he were releasing a heavy sigh. The wolf did not blink again, nor did he shift his weight a second time.

"You piece of shit," Yugi snapped before he could stop himself. He reached up to grab at his choker now, tugging lightly on the leather there and tapping his nails on the buckle there. His eyes sharpened and he wanted, for the briefest of seconds, to simply lash out at him furiously. Then his heart seemed to shatter within his chest and he shook his head angrily for a few long seconds. He closed his eyes and twisted at the material with disdain. "You shouldn't have done this. You shouldn't have fucking interfered like that. You shouldn't have done this."

The wolf blinked slowly and raised his eyes towards the small teen seated on the couch in front of him. He watched the human as his face seemed to grow harder, into a scowl. His choker was being pulled harder and when he spat, "You should have just turned and run, Yami" the wolf blinked and raised his head. His eyes grew wide, his ears pricking forward and his nose tipped towards the lycanthrope in front of him. The canine blinked and tilted his head, startled as the boy slowly opened his eyes into slits.

He did not seem to be focusing on Yami in any fashion. But he was still snarling under his breath, furious about it altogether. The wolf blinked and shifted his weight. He moved to raise his head completely and stretched his legs out slowly. He almost wanted to get to his feet, but the pain in his legs was too much to allow him the courage to brave such a thing. Instead he blinked slowly and raised his head a little more pointedly.

He wished he could have gotten to his paws and stood up. Instinct said that he do so, that he go to either his side or within his line of sight to take a seat and watch him. He tilted his head slightly and another small impulse came through him to perhaps wag his tail. But the thought of doing so made him feel exhausted. And so he simply looked at Yugi and blinked, tired and beyond himself with the feeling. He wanted for a moment to lick his lips and perhaps crane his neck. Some small part of him almost desired to lick at his fingers or the back of his hand.

But he was exhausted and the very thought of movement was enough to wind him entirely. The wolf blinked and tipped his nose towards the teenage boy in front of him again. His eyes were wide as they bore into his skin and Yugi still failed to look back at him. He could smell the bitter edge of despair that came from the small boy. He could catch beneath that the sour underlining of confusion. Under this was the current of anger, harsh and furious in the boy's raised temperature. He recognized these three, a lethal temperament of power and danger, as the very source of the shaking that seemed to ensnare the small teen now.

The wolf blinked as the teen finally pulled his hand away from his choker and reached up to run his fingers through his hair. His eyes narrowed slightly and he peeled his lips back slowly. There was such strength in which Yugi projected his emotions. It was odd, almost estranged, for him to consider this at all. It stunned him to think about and his claws twitched as he tried for a moment to shift his weight and draw himself to his feet. His tail thumped only slightly.

But the action was enough to make Yugi's head snap up. His blue-violet eyes were dilated, wild, and his vision immediately burned into his own. Yami blinked up at him. And the small teen tilted his head, brows furrowing. But the immensity of his emotional state, the spiral towards the pitfall of a panic attack, had faltered. And now Yami sensed nothing more than confusion. The puzzlement did nothing to entice him any longer. And so he snorted and turned away. His chin lowered to his paws again, eyes half-closed.

Yugi stared at him regardless of this. It was almost surprising to Yami to see him doing such a thing. It was bewildering to him as the wolf looked towards him again. His red eyes were burning into Yugi's seconds later. The teen had shifted his weight and tilted his head, leaning forward as if to study him at closer proximity. The wolf bristled slightly—or he would have had he had the fur. Instead now his lips pulled back slightly and his muscles twitched as they braced themselves beneath his skin.

The small teen stared at him for a long moment.

"Is something wrong?" Yugi finally muttered. He looked at him almost as if he were expecting him to respond. It was odd to the wolf to see that expression in his eyes. The boy had not faced him in any such manner before. It was strange to see this now, as if he had somehow sparked something in the teenage boy who stared at him so pointedly now. It was almost enough to alarm him or perhaps to make him fearful instead. Should Yugi expect something of him, doing the opposite of it was not something that he could afford, yes? The wolf flicked his ears and then slowly flattened them against his head. The way the boy continued to stare at him told him that Yugi _did_ , in fact, think such a thing.

He _did_ expect Yami to perhaps tell him what it was that might have been wrong at that moment.

Yugi felt sick to his stomach as the seconds passed. Because Yami was not reacting to him in the slightest. He was simply staring. And his eyes were wide, the whites showing in the very corners where they were set against his lids. The small teen could not bring himself to ask again, as he could feel it in his gut now. He understood it.

Yami had reacted to something he'd been thinking about before. He had expected Yugi to perhaps say or do something which might explain his emotional state. It was not that Yugi had done anything in particular, but that his emotional state had changed and so Yami had become curious. He had wanted to understand the meaning behind it.

Because Yami didn't know what else was going on.

He simply understood that Yugi was upset and so he had become curious.

But he did not know how the wolf had made that noise. And he doubted his initial thought that he'd managed to somehow get to his feet and then collapsed heavily. Instead he thought that he had done something else entirely. And, as he looked down towards him, head tilted, he could only see his tail had moved. The rest of his body seemed to be in the same place it had been before. He had not moved in the slightest. But his tail had certainly moved.

And Yugi wondered if perhaps the wolf had thumped it against the ground.

But it was bewildering to him to even consider it in the slightest.

He had honestly been fearful that perhaps Yami had no control of the appendage any longer or that perhaps—somehow—the wolf had been paralyzed from the attack. He had not truly considered how it was that the wolf might have fallen upon paralysis. But it was exhausting to him all the same. The wolf blinked up at him now, but did nothing more. He did not move beyond this and his even breathing. The relief that gripped Yugi just to know that he was not struggling to simply breathe properly was enough to make him nearly shake.

"You should have just run while you had the chance," he muttered again, voice tired and nearly breaking beneath his thoughts. He shook his head slowly and reached his hands up to run through his hair. His eyes sharpened as he looked down as the wolf again. The pale skin was a bluish shade due to the mild touches of fuzz that he could see beginning to grow there once more. The wolf stared up at him with fluffy triangular ears, curious red eyes, and a face that was riddled with stitches and shaved patches of skin. His skull was almost shaved down as well, though the fur remained just between his ears and along his eyebrows and stops. But, gods, he looked like some kind of terribly abused pomeranian given the most hideous haircut possible. His forelimbs were shaved down to his wrists and his left was shaved almost six inches further due to the IV being placed there. Every other part of him but for his long tail was simply an off-gray shade that was almost bluish due to the strands attempting to grow back.

"You. Should. Have. Just. Run."

The wolf blinked almost lazily.

Yugi got to his feet, too irate to look at her any longer. He wanted to hit him more than he cared to help him in the slightest at that moment. It was too frustrating to think straight about such a thing any longer. He hated the very idea that the wolf had gotten so hurt just to help him as it was. And it horrified him to even consider how much he owed him now. He had saved his life before. He had saved it multiple times. And now Yami was in need of his help. It was far more frustrating now than it had ever been the last few times he'd done to aid him.

It was overwhelming now to consider how much more persistent he was forced to be now in order to help him. The wolf could not simply save himself as he had done so many times before. But it was Yami who needed him now. It was overwhelming to him. The wolf was staring up at him with those same dark eyes. And, as they looked at one another, the canine seemed almost to peer through him for a brief moment.

Yugi dusted himself off, feeling small and weak. And then he turned and strode into the kitchen. He glanced at the microwave to tell the time and hurried to find his way to prepare his food once more. He was tired as he mixed the milk and he was overwhelmed as he cut the package for the boar meat and dropped it into the metal bowl once more. His heart was in his throat and tears pricked at his eyes but did not fall. He drew in a deep breath and closed his eyes tightly. Then, finally, he pulled back from the counter and made his way towards the living room once more.

"Here." He put the bowls down in front of the wolf, nudging them closer. The wolf did not so much as blink at him, digging in as he had the other few times he'd fed him. And Yugi watched him with curious eyes, saw the canine quickly gulping his food down. He'd lapped up his goat's milk a few seconds after finishing the meat. And then he tilted his head and looked back up at Yugi. For a moment he did nothing more than blink. Then his mouth opened wide and a loud noise left him, a vibrating rumbling tone. It ended in a single second of a snap. Then he closed his mouth again and his tongue ran over his long muzzle. "Nice belch."

Yami tilted his head again. And Yugi had the feeling that, had he been human, he might have smirked and looked away or apologized. He might have even snorted and shook his head before looking away. The wolf blinked at the small teen again. And then Yugi turned away with a small smirk.

He crouched down to grab the bowls. The teenager snorted and licked his lips, then straightened and started back into the kitchen.

* * *

Yami blinked up at her. Kasumi frowned and tilted her head. She'd placed the food and milk on the other side of the room. And she'd been assured that the lupine was watching her because his eyes were sharp and dark. His red eyes were caught on her hands. His ears were pricked forward. His head was tilted and his mouth was opened slightly to show his incisors. It was not a pleased expression as she knew larger, sloppier dogs such as labradors or golden retrievers to possess. It was one of a predator scenting the air and wondering at the smell which met his nose and danced on his tongue. The wolf blinked at her curiously for a moment. Then he blinked again and his nose wriggled quickly. Then, slowly, he lowered his head and put his chin upon his long legs. He opened his mouth, flicked his tongue along his nose, and then settled back again.

She blinked. The wolf simply stared back at her. The two of them considered each other. Then Kasumi furrowed her brows and tilted her head, watching him.

"Come on. Your food is over here."

The wolf did not care to look at her for more than a moment. His nose wrinkled and his teeth peeled back. He huffed out a breath and did not try for his paws again. The veterinarian considered him for a long minute. Then she sighed and looked him over. His back legs looked unsteady beneath him, his frame far too bony and thin and his muscles wasted along his hips where the skin was too tightly pulled. The wolf blinked and looked towards Kasumi with a mirroring tilt of his head.

"Well? Aren't you hungry?"

Yami simply flicked his ears and watched her with dark eyes. Then, slowly, the canine turned away and glanced towards the kitchen. She looked over in response, curious as to what might have drawn his attention away from her or the bowls. Yugi was leaning against the counter, expression one of curiosity as he glanced at the two of them.

Kasumi turned back without a second look towards Yugi. "Come on, Yami. It's over here."

The wolf looked at her as if she were nothing more than a fly in front of his face. He snorted and lowered his chin to his paws again, eyes sharp and darkened considerably. But he seemed to be more curious about Yugi at the moment as well. His gaze had fallen on the boy in the kitchen and he was staring with those same dark, curious eyes. The canine's ears had pricked forward and pointed to the boy. And he looked tenser than he had before.

"You need to get up. You're not going to get better if you just lay there and don't try to get up exercise at some point." She put her hands on her hips, cocking them slightly with a shake of her head. When the wolf still did nothing more than blink at her, she moved forward. The step made the wolf raise his head. Yami stared at her as if she had struck him. And then his muscles grew tense. His head lowered slightly and his muzzle tilted away. His ears flattened against his head. His eyes narrowed sharply. She could see the tension in his frame. He was not snarling, but he was not pleased in the slightest either.

When she moved a step closer to him, the wolf remained glaring at the floor. And it was startling to her that the canine refused to move. And then Yugi blurted out, "Shit, Mom, stop! _Stop_! Don't touch him!"

She startled and looked over her shoulder at him. "What? I'm just trying to get him to move."

"Don't touch him. He's going to bite you."

"And?" she snorted. "I'm used to dogs biting…"

And then she realized it as well. Her eyes widened and her head turned, face rapidly becoming pale with shock for a moment. Her mouth opened and closed twice and then her eyes flickered to her son and away again. The wolf had his head still tilted towards the floor and Yugi was quickly coming forward.

"He'll muzzle-punch one arm and then bite the other," he muttered. "He's not going to just nip you either. He'll bite you hard enough to break skin and you'll be infected too. And I know he's going to be even madder at you than he was at me. You put his food across the floor. I just tried to put a collar on him. He'll probably break your wrist while he's at it."

And, to her shock, the boy stopped in front of Yami and made a small motion of his fingers as if he were reaching for the wolf. In an instant the canine turned on him. His muzzle swung for one of his wrists and then his jaws snapped at the other. His eyes were burning and his body shuddered with the release of tension. His lips pulled back furiously and his ears pricked forward pointedly. The wolf glared at the teen with a hateful expression. Then he drew in a deep breath, huffed, and lowered his head again.

His ears flattened again, and his expression made it clear he was ready to bite at him a second time.

"See?" Yugi shook his head slightly and looked over at his mom. "He's willing to try to bite you. And you can already see that he's exhausted from doing it. He's not strong enough to move yet. You can't try to make him get up and move across the room like that. He's physically incapable of it. And I honestly need to check on his stitches and redo some of them. I think he's pulled them on his other side—"

"Wow, so first you're obsessed with him as a person and now you're also obsessed with him as a dog," his mom murmured in a harsh tone. "I hadn't thought that you would be so caught up in one person like that, Yugi. And considering that he _infected_ you like that—"

"He _saved my life_."

"Yeah, from another werewolf." She shook her head slowly, blue eyes sharpening. "Because they all apparently really like to try to kill you."

Yugi rolled his eyes and looked at Yami for a moment. He felt flustered as the two of them considered each other. The wolf was staring up at him with his ears pricked now. And he did not seem nearly as tense as he had before. "I'm an easy target, what can I say?" he muttered disdainfully. He drew in a deep breath, then sighed forcefully and turned to her with a slightly annoyed expression. "I don't think that getting up would do him any good anyways. It'd probably be far more damaging, don't you think?"

Kasumi blinked and tilted her head, looking at Yugi closely. "I think that you're making excuses for him. I think that you're just seeing a lot more sympathy than you need to. I think if he's _capable of recovering from being euthanized_ he can _certainly_ get up right now and cross the room to eat his food."

The small teen blinked and narrowed his eyes. "Why would I try to force him to do that when it's clearly painful for him?"

"To help _strengthen_ him," she spat. She rolled her eyes and narrowed her gaze. Her eyes darkened and she shook her head as she glared at him. "He can't get better if he can't even _walk_ later. You can't honestly think that letting him just lay there and bringing him his food back and forth without ever making him exercise is going to help him recover."

"I think that he physically needs to rest and I can help him get up and move around later when he's more _capable_ ," Yugi scoffed with a curled lip. He shook his head in annoyance and crossed his arms. "I think that it's smarter to let him try to recover this way than to try to force him prematurely to get up and risk hurting him more."

"And I think that you're worrying about nothing. He's a fucking _werewolf_. He shouldn't even _exist_. And he's recovered from his seizures and you _euthanizing_ him as if it they never even happened in the first place. So what would keep him from being okay now?"

"Are you honestly asking me that right now?" the small teen huffed. He rolled his eyes and shook his head. "You can't seriously think that he needs to get up and move across the room without food first, right? He's not going to have the energy to do it as it is. He's tired and he's not powerful enough to bother getting up as it is. He's tired, he's weak, and he doesn't look happy at all. He's miserable. He looks like he'd rather puke than do anything else."

"I think you're exaggerating now."

"And I think you're being petty because you're exasperated with me," he snapped. "I think that you're fighting with me right now because you're exasperated about how I handled the situation. And you aren't really mad at him. You're just mad at me and you want someone to take it out on and he's defenseless. I think that's it entirely, don't you?"

She paused, eyes widening and then narrowing. Her lips pulled downward as she shook her head, annoyed. "You honestly have such little faith in me," she commented coldly. "I think it's ridiculous that you're trying to convince yourself that I'm going after Yami because I'm upset with you."

Yugi snorted and smirked at her snidely. "Mom, I _know_ you. I know you too damn well to think that you're not doing exactly that. You're not sneaky when I know you so well. I'm not even going to pretend otherwise. In your place, I would be just as pissed as you are. But I don't think I would be trying to turn my frustrations on someone who's actually rather innocent in the grand scheme of things involving our anger with each other."

"So…you're mad at me, huh?"

The small teen threw his head back, exasperated. "That's not what I meant," he snapped. "You know what I meant. I mean that you're upset with me and I'm getting annoyed too. So I don't get why we're arguing right now about that of all things. At this rate it's more ridiculous and retarded than anything else."

Yami sniffed loudly and wrinkled his nose slightly. His eyes flickered back and forth between the lycanthrope and his mother. Their fight was enough to make Yugi glare and the way his body seemed to grow hot made the wolf tip his head up slightly. The movement was enough to make Yugi glance at him but it did nothing to stop him from turning to his mother with a flustered expression once more.

"You understand that this is ridiculous, right? He's wounded. He's got stitches lining almost _every part of his body_. I don't think he can physically even get up at this rate."

"He's been lying around and you've been letting him do that for the last couple of days as it is. I think it's a better idea for him to attempt to exercise in some way. It's not a good idea for him to move too much. It would be painful—"

"Really?" she interrupted him forcefully now. Her voice had risen an octave and she looked _furious_. Yugi startled at the sight, confused and alarmed by the thought of her lashing out. Had he done something? Had he started to say something? But then he saw that her eyes were not focused on him in the slightest. Her head was turned slightly away from him and her eyes were burning. Yugi blinked and slowly turned his head to look as well. And then he felt weak, his knees nearly shaking and collapsing beneath him.

Yami had gotten up. He was limping and partially dragging his back right leg, but he had gotten to the food bowls. His muzzle was buried in the boar meat. And his nose was wriggling as he scented it and began to dig into it happily. Yugi nearly collapsed, unsure of what more to do. He felt dizzy, relieved and yet overwhelmed and shaken all at once.

"He…" He blinked, then snorted out a laugh. "He's a sneaky little shit."

"Or you're just an idiot," Kasumi spat, turning on him now. "You let a _dangerous_ person into our home when you weren't even sure he wouldn't kill us all in our sleep. You've run around pretending to be someone you're _not_. You're dashing off into the woods as a _dog_. You're neglecting school. You're ditching your friends. You're leaving your grandfather and me behind. You're constantly flunking in class. You're _under suspicion_ of the police, Yugi. Do you even understand what that means at this rate?"

The small teen blinked wide eyes, startled by the attack. Then he snorted loudly, scowling at her in annoyance. "I know that it means that he needs more proof before he can say a damn thing about how I put a building or a section of the woods on fire. I know that he's being petty about the fact that I'm not dating his daughter. And I know that's being petty because he still has feelings for you, even after marrying Anzu's mom." He hesitated, then felt his cheeks heat as the words left his mouth. His mom didn't blink, well aware of the situation, and he quickly looked back towards Yami. "I just… I think that you should reconsider it. Yami isn't some terrible creature that's going to turn around and kill everyone, okay? He's not. I promise. He's…Yami."

"Do you even know what that means, Yugi? Do you even know who _Yami_ is? Does that honestly make sense to you? I don't understand why you would think just because you spent some time with him that that means you know him well enough to say that you're in—"

He cringed, eyes growing wide. " _Don't_ ," he pleaded desperately. "I haven't…I haven't told him yet."

The words were almost met with deaf ears. And then Kasumi blinked and turned away, eyes flickering towards the wolf and back. Her son looked horrified, desperate as he reached up to pull slightly on his choker. His eyes were on Yami, who seemed oblivious to the tension and happily pushing the bowls around with his nose. He did not look the least bit disturbed by them any longer. But she could see the stitches were half-tugged from his skin along his right flank. And the wolf looked tired in the way that his ears flicked and his head turned briefly towards them.

His red eyes caught hers first. And, at first, she almost thought he might come forward. Instead the canine blinked at them both, turned his head away, and looked at his own flank. There was bright red blood from some pulled skin and it trailed down his flesh in a singular path of crimson. He blinked at it once, turned his head more pointedly, and ran his tongue over the spot of red. Kasumi considered him for a moment longer, then looked at Yugi as the small teen stared at her almost expressionlessly.

"You still haven't answered my question."

Yugi blinked and raised his head. His chin was tipped up slightly and there was a steady power in his eyes that startled her for a brief moment. When he opened his mouth and spoke again, his voice was strong and quiet as he murmured, "Mom, do you honestly think I would have let him stay as long as I have if he was a threat to you or Grandpa or even me?"

* * *

Yelling did not work on the wolf in the slightest. Yugi had tried doing so for over twenty minutes now. The wolf had simply yawned at him, curled up into a ball on his blanket and pillow. And then he'd raised his head just enough to lick at his wounds and close his eyes. The small teen had tried to yell at him in order to see if it would provoke movement. He and his mother had been seconds from doing so when the wolf had finally gotten to his paws and wandered away to his food. But now Yami yawned and stared at him as if he did not know why Yugi was even there looking at him in the first place. If he had not known any better, he might have assumed that Yami did not know him as it was.

His inability to lead the other wolf and make him think to move was exhausting. Yami had not given a care in the world towards his frustration. At times Yugi even thought perhaps he was laughing at him mentally. He wondered if any small part of him was human enough to recognize such a concept and fall beneath it in that manner. He wondered if Yami was laughing at him and finding only cold amusement in the fact that Yugi was struggling so horribly with the task of trying to make him pay him even the smallest flicker of attention.

He wished that stressing his name in any manner might make him pay attention. He wished that even looking at him would make the wolf think to consider him. "You're so fucking annoying," he grumbled, infuriated with the wolf in front of him. Yami did not so much as flick an ear in acknowledgment of the statement. "I hate you."

The statement was said with such venom that it roused a response. The canine blinked and slowly raised his head. His red eyes peered at him curiously, wide and seemingly bewildered. The concept surprised the small teen who could do nothing more than feel his cheeks heat slightly with embarrassment. And yet, another part of him was overwhelmed with the truth of the statement.

He _did_ hate him.

He hated the fact that Yami was always there to help him when he was unable to help himself. He hated that he was constantly willing to jump in front of him in order to shield him from what pain might come of his own actions. He hated that he protected him from the consequences that might come. And he hated more than ever that Yami _had_ to do those things. But he also loathed the fact that Yami thought it necessary or that he even _cared so much_ to do it in the first place.

They were both selflessly destructive. Yami had saved him multiple times and Yugi was still in the act of repaying him the favor by saving him now. There were so many times that they had traded these things, ensuring the other's safety over their own. He'd done it more times than he cared to admit and he'd allowed Yami to do so thrice over, he felt.

The thought was overwhelming to him. He felt dizzy and small even considering it. His stomach knotted and his belly ached. He looked away swiftly.

"I do," he insisted, voice coated in misery and a tremble rocking his frame. "I hate you."

But it was not enough to want him to suffer. And it was not enough to make him want Yami to simply leave his life. There was no part of him that desired he get hurt or that he turn away from him entirely. But part of him was broken in the reality that they would suffer each other's wounds. Yami would do it to help him just as he knew he himself would always offer in his place.

Yugi looked down for a long moment.

It was destructive, the way that they played this balancing act. He was not sure how long a friendship of that magnitude could exist and survive. And he did not know how long it was that either of them could last beneath the pressure of such selflessness. But he wondered if perhaps it was not truly altruism. He did it to keep Yami safe, which ensured that he stayed alive and with him. And he did not doubt that Yami did it for similar reasons. And he had saved Jonouchi out of blind panic. He'd…

He'd done it because Jonouchi was his best friend. He was the blond who always teased him about stupid things and talked to him about all the wrong porn videos. He was the one who let him borrow explicit videos. He was the one who had taught him rather mild self-defense techniques. He was the one that Yugi had run to when he had issues with Anzu, the one who snorted at him and teased him that Anzu was just his fascination for the moment and he could pick up any girl he wanted. He was the one who was awkward about Yami and his attraction to him but wouldn't judge.

Jonouchi was Jonouchi.

He was as he had always been, though now he could change into a wolf that looked like a golden retriever. The thought brought a small smile to his face and his eyes flickered towards Yami. The black wolf had moved forward to take a seat in front of him, looking much like a German shepherd studying its owner. The ears were pricked forward and his muzzle was tipped towards Yugi as he watched him now. He shifted his weight and it almost seemed as if he were studying him with the need to gain approval rather than simply considering him.

The thought startled him enough to make him freeze in place, stunned for a brief moment. But then he looked away and shrugged it off. Yami was still seated there, at attention, watching him as if he might hold the key to something that Yugi himself could not name. And then Yugi found himself mildly relieved when he looked up again. The intense red eyes were still locked on him but now Yami seemed more disgruntled than anything. He no longer looked as if he might leap to his feet to encourage him in some manner. Now he looked almost disappointed with this new development.

Had saying that he hated him done something to encourage that look on his face? Had something about the tone he'd used when he'd said those words made him get up and come over to him? Had he perhaps meant to disprove the words? Had he meant to come to sit in front of him with that expression in order to remind him that he did not loathe him more than he hated the actions that he took at times?

Yugi was overwhelmed when he thought of the way the wolf had gone through those seizures right before his eyes after that attack in the woods. His breathing became tight and his hands were shaking when he looked over at the black canine. Yami had regained whatever sense of expectation he'd had formerly and now he sat rigid before him. His red eyes were bright and his body seemed to almost quiver for the smallest of moments. He was extremely excited, Yugi found now that he was looking at him.

And something about that expression broke his heart.

Because all he could think about now was that he had made that face upon Yugi saying that they should get hot chocolate. It had stunned him in that sense before. And now it shocked him to see that expression so warm and soft on Yami's face now. He was so excited that it almost made him shiver and the small teen wondered at the expression in his eyes now.

And Yugi wished he could ask him what it was that made him so happy at that moment. Because he himself was incredibly unhappy, crestfallen in that manner. And some part of him hated himself for not being able to identify the small glimmer of exuberance which graced the other's warm eyes. So now Yugi simply looked away and lowered his eyes, feeling almost sick to his stomach as he considered it all.

His heart felt as if it were being shattered and then crushed beneath the wolf's paw. And the way Yami shifted his weight as if expecting him to give him a treat for a trick well done made him want to vomit. Yugi could feel the tension in his veins more than he could even the shaking in his hands. And it made him feel dull and lightheaded to look at him now. His heart was in his throat and his mouth felt dry as he looked at the other lycanthrope for a moment longer. When he could not find it in himself to continue to face him, he looked away and exhaled harshly.

"I hate you," he mumbled, but now he didn't know who it was directed at anymore. And he did not want to face the black wolf for fear that Yami might look at him with that same expression so keen upon his face. Because he felt it might kill him and the destruction he could wreak through him was too much for him to survive. And so Yugi closed his eyes and shook his head slowly, reaching up to run his fingers through his hair and fight away the urge to simply get up and run for his room again.

And Yugi could not muster up the shield of anger he normally could. He could not find it within himself to simply block away the hurt and the growing anguish with the energy that came from sheer hatred. He clenched his eyes shut tightly, shaking his head harder and feeling almost sick.

* * *

"So what do you think I should say to her?"

Yami looked up from where he'd been lying on the floor. He'd shifted from his spot on the pillow and blanket to a colder part of the carpet. The blanket had become too warm and he was overheated, he felt. He was panting at times, exhausted, and those instances he'd nearly exhausted himself with task of regaining a cooler temperature. The air was hot and stuffy, he felt, as if the room were just too much like summer time. Had he had fur, he was sure he would have been shaking and collapsing and flailing from the throes of overheating. He flicked his tongue over his lips as Yugi approached.

The boy had the two metal bowls in his hands again. And he paused only long enough to look him over. There was a mumble about something to do with his stitches again, though Yami hardly paid it any attention. The heat was searing through him. He felt dizzy and sickly and, when he peered up at Yugi, he wished with everything in him that he might have been able to tell him such a thing. But he couldn't and Yugi hardly seemed worried about him for the moment.

In fact, startling the wolf, the boy simply put both bowls down with a comment about eating every bite, and turned away to head back into the kitchen. He could not fully understand the conversation going on from within the kitchen. The heat had made his heart skip beats and burst within his ears. And it made his head spin for a moment. So Yami simply lowered his head to take a lap at the water inside of the bowl with the meat. It was frigid cold and, as he took long drinks of it and ignored the food, his body seemed to lose some of its heat. He forced himself to relax slightly, calming himself and slowly lowering his head to continue the task.

Perhaps he should have done something to make the humans realize that he needed something much like cold water. He did not think that the meat or the milk mattered half as much at the moment. And, in his frustration upon finding only the meat at the bottom and the second bowl filled with the cold milk, he angled his nose downward. There was a little floppy tag upon the side of the bowl there. And, when he pressed his nose into the smooth metal and slowly raised his head, the bowl shifted slightly beneath the pressure. He tossed his head violently into the air as if he might howl.

The bowl flew into the air. Milk rained down in heavy droplets and waves, cascading and crashing into the carpet. Yami almost yelped from the violent crashing cold which came over him. His skin was frigid then, a satisfying feeling as he shivered for a brief moment. He looked towards the bowl as it landed. It skittered and the harsh thumping noise of it was a long rattle. He pricked his ears towards it, panting again but relieved now more than anxious.

He was coated in milk, he realized, the better half of his upper body soaked. It was comfortable to him as he looked it over. But it did sting where it graced his cuts. But it was not painful in any other way. And so Yami simply relaxed, licking his lips with satisfaction. Finally, when the heat seemed to soak through this thin layer of protection, Yami moved forward. The carpet squished beneath his weight, squelching and soothing his paw pads if only slightly.

"What the fuck?"

The black wolf looked up to see Yugi gaping at him. Behind him, the elderly Motou was staring with a similarly shocked expression. Both of them watched him with stunned eyes as Yami briefly flicked an ear and quickly moved to a new, fresher patch of soaked carpet. He was instantly relieved, though now he threw himself onto his side and rolled lightly upon it. The carpet was cold and sodden and his skin no longer burned as badly.

But the relief was so slight and he wanted nothing more than to sob with dismay.

"Jesus Christ," Yugi cursed softly, shaking his head slowly. He narrowed and closed his eyes tightly, reaching up to run a hand through his hair and then to tug on his bangs. The small teen huffed loudly and opened his eyes into thin slits. "What the hell is this craziness?"

Sugoroku was snickering. "He looks so happy with himself right now."

"That's cause he's a jackass."

Yami stirred slightly at that last word, a part of him responding to it though he did not quite remember the definition of it. He slowly raised his head and looked over at the lycanthrope for a moment. Then he turned towards the couch again. When he'd brushed against it earlier, it had been cold from the lack of use. It would be that way now as well, would it not?

The wolf ignored it when Yugi let out a startled squawk meant to tell him not to do so. He leaped straight onto the couch, the cushions sinking beneath him before he could think straight. The momentum and his clumsy footing sent him into a collapsed position, however. He landed hard on the cushions and panted from the loss of energy. But then he lowered his head, eyes widening. By the gods…

The couch was so _nice_!

The mere thought made him almost sob with approval. Yami immediately threw himself sideways to press his back and side against the cold material. The wolf closed his eyes tightly and tipped his head further back. It gave him much more room to crane his neck back and the cold material was slick and soft and he wanted to whine and whimper his approval. By the gods, the cool material was the best thing he'd ever encountered. He would take it over anything and everything at this moment.

He didn't care about food any longer. He'd happily starve if he could simply keep pressed against the cushions like that. He would love nothing more. Eating was a waste of time, anyways. Eating was stupid. His belly could eat itself for all he cared at the moment.

Yugi groaned and shook his head. "Jackass," he muttered under his breath, annoyed as he turned away and narrowed his eyes into slits. That was ridiculous. He could not even consider how foolish he felt just watching the wolf stretched out as he was. It was stunning to him how the wolf looked so incredibly happy. Why had he seemed so enthusiastic? It was so simple that he was lying on the couch and so exuberant. The very idea of that alone was enough to make the small teen tilt his head in bewilderment.

And Yami did not look at him in turn. He was so pleased with himself, with the new arrangements, that he did not so much as glance at Yugi. He did not care in the slightest that the small teen should be staring at him either. And it was almost hilarious to him that he saw this. The wolf was simply lying there, happy beyond anything else. He had not seen him so happy before, he didn't think.

Yet, as he lowered his eyes to the floor and took in the various large puddles of milk-soaked carpet, he wondered at the thought of what the wolf found so pleasing about the couch as it was. And he had seemed so incredibly happy with the carpet as well, as if he were relieved to feel the fibers squelch beneath his paws. He wondered at the thought, bewildered and curious at this thought as well. He couldn't quite find a connection between the two of them. There was no reason that he should have been so relieved…

Yugi could not find a single reason for such excitement.

"What the hell is going on?"

The small teen flinched at the loud cry of disbelief. His head snapped around, eyes wide. And his stomach knotted as he glanced sideways towards the floor and then the couch. She was gaping at the wolf as if she had never seen a four-legged creature before. And it was both comical and horrifying at the same time for him. He wanted to puke as the small teen considered the wolf a moment longer. He had not considered that his mom would be coming home sooner rather than later. He'd assumed that she would want to spend as much time away from him as was physically possible. He had thought his mother would have thought immediately to all but hide away from him entirely.

He himself probably would have done the same in her place.

"What the hell is he doing? Why did you let him on the couch?" She was shrieking, eyes wide and stunned. And then she looked at Yugi furiously. "He's going to tear his stitches and _then what_? He's going to bleed all over the couch!"

"I'll clean the couch," Yugi huffed, though he felt winded with the ferocity she portrayed and wondered at the very idea of just how exhausting it was to have to even consider it all. She was right. Yami was going to tear his stitches and it would take him at least thirty minutes to get the blood up from the floor. It was no wonder that she was screaming now. He probably would have in her place as well. He had not even considered the cushions as it was. He had not even considered that he might tear his sutures out more prominently, that he might bleed on the couch fibers. Yugi shivered and looked away, feeling dizzy. "It's not a big deal. I'll clean the couch and I'll clean the carpet too."

"The carpet?" she demanded, her tone harsh before she stiffened. The question was measured by a long harsh inhale as her son slowly reached up and began to tug at the long strands of his hair. The small teen looked exhausted and beyond miserable, as if he had been struck by her very appearance. "What the hell did he even do?"

"He flipped the milk bowl into the air. He basically soaked himself and the floor completely." Yugi shook his head, turning away and feeling almost sick to his stomach again. He opened his eyes with a soft sigh, tired. But spotting Yami enjoying himself so pointedly from his spot on the couch made him feel better in the long run. It was adorable that the wolf was so relaxed and happy there. He looked as if he were on cloud nine or perhaps rolling about in the snow as he had before when it had first fallen.

"Great." She was watching Yami as well, Yugi noticed. "That's just…great."

Yami opened his jaws into a wide gaping smile, tongue lolling across the cushions. His tail wagged after a moment, the appendage thumping forcefully against the cushions and armrest where it was draped slightly. The wolf stretched his legs and then tipped his head back and wagged his tail more enthusiastically. His mom was staring at him as if she had never seen a dog before in her life when he glanced back at her. He wanted to laugh but another part of him wanted to sob, so he quickly lowered his eyes to the floor instead. The bowl with the meat was completely drained of water but the steak of boar meat was still in its center.

The small teen startled, then froze in place with widened eyes. Reality cut into his thoughts and he felt his heart skipping beats in his chest. Then he nodded slightly as he remembered it all. His mouth opened and closed twice before he turned on his heel. "I need to get him a water bowl," he muttered quietly. "I think that's why he's doing that."

"What?"

"I think he's overheated from so much raw meat and the goat's milk being his only source of hydration." He didn't turn back to them and they both heard the door shut behind him as he headed down the stairs. Kasumi looked immediately back towards the wolf who remained rolling on the couch in front of them. The wolf blinked and licked his lips, then flicked his ears forward and his mouth closed slowly.

"You think that's really what's going on?" Sugoroku asked curiously. "I've never heard of a dog doing that before."

"I've read studies where a wolf or wolfdog in captivity will find shady spots in the area they're contained and if the water is accessible they'll try to shovel the water out onto the dirt and roll in the mud to keep themselves cooler. They will shovel the water out, soak the dirt, then shovel the dirt so that they get further down in the dirt and then keep going with that until they are able to completely cover themselves in the mud. It helps them keep from getting overheated that way." Kasumi was silent for a long minute. "Wolves are a lot smarter than most people give them credit for. A lot of people just assume that they're big dogs and dogs like labs and retrievers are not always the smartest breeds."

Sugoroku blinked at her. "Well, he's also got a human mind too, so I guess that makes sense."

His daughter rolled her eyes. "The Russians have specially bred a species of wolfdogs in order to work as their border patrol. The wolfdogs make the German shepherd dogs— _claimed to be_ the second smartest breed in the world—look like puppies. They're considered a lot smarter than other dogs according to them." She glanced at him sideways. "And, considering German shepherd dogs are considered wolfdogs, it's no wonder they're used as police dogs. You tell me that wolves aren't extremely smart animals, Dad."

"I never said that. I was trying to—"

Kasumi shook her head and glanced at Yami with curious eyes. "You know, I was trying to figure out what it was that made me so nervous about him when he was sitting next to me at the table," she commented quietly. "And now that I've finally figured it out, I'm wondering why I didn't realize before. He had that look in his eyes that wasn't human at all. He looked more like an animal than anything else and I just… He didn't even blink as often as he should have. He didn't even make direct eye contact."

"It's a challenge if you do that with a wolf," Yugi commented, coming around her with a stainless steel bowl. He put it down and moved to the fridge to grab a cold water bottle that he emptied into the bowl without a second glance at them. As he'd assumed, the wolf rolled over and jumped down on shaky legs. He quickly dug into the bowl of water, drinking as if he had never had water before in his life. Yugi looked over after a moment. "And he'd probably have snapped under the pressure because of how scared he was."

"Scared?"

"He was extremely nervous about meeting you both. And I don't think I made it any better by telling him it would be fine and there wouldn't be a problem when you didn't really…take it very well that he looks so much like me."

"How was I _supposed_ to react to that?"

Yugi shrugged slightly. "I'm not saying that you didn't react the right way. All I'm saying is that it scared him when I had told him it would be easier than it actually was for him," he said quietly. Then he looked at the wolf again. Yami was licking the bowl dry. His head slowly lifted and he looked at the small teen with a bewildered expression. "Let it settle for a minute. I'll give you more after that. I don't want to give you too much at one time."

Yami tilted his head and licked at his muzzle. His ears flicked and he slowly turned and glanced at the other two Motou family members. For a few more moments he watched them. Then he turned back to Yugi. His paw came down hard on the bowl and the metal flipped. The force under his initial kick made it skitter against the carpet, ringing with the noise. And then he glared fiercely at the boy in front of him.

Yugi snorted. "You jackass." He rolled his eyes, smiling faintly. "You still have thirty seconds to go."

Yami peeled his lips back and showed off his teeth. But it was not aggressive. He seemed to be sneering at him, eyes flashing and his ears flattened against his head. His brows pulled downwards and he wrinkled his nose back. The two of them considered each other. Yugi had the urge to reach out and try to ruffle what little fur remained along his skull between his ears. But he shrugged it off again moments later and made his way towards the fridge again. He came back with three more bottles and poured the first into the bowl.

"Here you go. Drink up."


	66. Emotions

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Hopefully biweekly**

 **SO SORRY for the late update! Kind of horrified that it's been a month now… Real life was kicking my butt and I got distracted by a lot of issues in it so I sincerely apologize.**

 **Anyways, so some conflicting info is given in this chapter. But you'll understand it later when it comes up again. It's not something that's going to be mentioned very often but Yugi and Yami will eventually discuss it. For now, though, not so much.**

 **So I'm pretty sure I didn't see anything in the chapter that needed any warnings but if you think I missed something, feel free to mention it and I'll go back and fix it.**

 **Yami's reactions to Yugi towards the end of the chapter are from what some therapy animals will do. Wolves are used with veterans from war so it seemed kind of fitting to have that. Of course, they usually go in for snuggles or pets. But, for the sake of Yami's personality (and physical state since he's still pretty hairless for the most part), I had him act a little differently. So that's why he reacts to him like that.**

Chapter LXVI: Emotions

 _Work Log Entry LIX: May, 2006_

 _May 20_

 _Atem seems to be healthy again. He has not relapsed in over two months now._

 _We are still checking his vitals daily for any sign of oncoming illness, however._

 _May 30_

 _The boss has decided that the testing done on Atem is tedious and we are to stop our monitoring._

 _I do not know what to make of this new development._

It had taken Yami about ten bottles of water to finally calm enough to lie down and settle for a few hours. He had gotten up and eaten the meat that had been in his original bowl of food and then he had settled for a nap on his pillow and blanket. The wolf had then slept for a few hours and woken with a look at Yugi that said he was clearly hungry and ready to be fed. The small teen had raised a brow at him, snorted, and turned away to flick through the channels again.

Yami had not moved from his position. He had not made a sound. But he kept _staring_. And Yugi was abundantly aware of it. He could not escape the way that Yami tracked him so silently. His eyes were the only thing that might shift at any given moment. And it made Yugi snicker whenever he glanced at him from the corner of his eye again.

"Okay, _okay_ , stop staring at me like that!" he laughed, shaking his head when Yami raised his chin and shifted his weight now to sit up and stretch his neck back uncomfortably. The teen got up and dusted himself off, rolling his eyes and heading for the kitchen. "You're just lucky you're so annoying."

But he wondered, looking around the kitchen for a few moments, if perhaps any of the captive wolves in zoos or rescue reserves ever acted in a similar manner to the wolf as well. It was odd to him to consider that the werewolf might somehow be exhibiting symptoms such as that. The wolves in captivity tended to be far more used to humans and their interactions, right? And wild wolves _loathed_ humans and any interactions with them. They were far more likely to hide away from sight than ever approach in any manner. He'd even read that on time the pack had been playing in front of a scientist, but the moment they'd realized he was there they had taken off running.

The researcher had said something about how he thought they were ashamed because they'd looked over their shoulders when they'd fled. Yugi thought it was more because they were fearful that the human might give chase. The thought occurred to him that perhaps this was the precipice of which Yami interacted with him. The black wolf knew that Yugi would not hurt him. And so now he was much braver with his actions rather than as passive as he had once been. Yami did not simply lie about and wait for food any longer. Now he sat up and stared. He made sure that Yugi was aware that he was awake and ready to be fed.

The thought made him smile in amusement as he mixed the goat's milk and looked about the selection of meat in the fridge. There was chicken and salmon and he could see some beef and ground pork. He supposed any of them would work, but the salmon was more of a risk. Salmon was known for having intestinal parasites and worms that survived in the fillets unless cooked. And Yugi was not sure that lycanthropy prevented that kind of thing. He did not know if it was possible that his stomach acid might somehow kill it upon entering the system or not.

He could not assume that the acidity was higher than the average canine's or person's for that matter. He was not sure that it was a possibility in any manner. The werewolf could have weaker stomach acid but enough bacteria in the stomach to prevent any measure of illness from raw meat for all he knew. It meant nothing in the long run. And so he turned away from the idea of allowing him to have the salmon and turned again to the beef. He hadn't given him that in a while. And then he'd give him the chicken and the pork afterwards. He'd need to run to the supermarket again soon and get something else to feed him.

"Here you go," Yugi mumbled, putting both bowls down in front of him a few minutes later. He twisted the cap off of the water bottle he'd taken out with the beef and poured it into the water bowl for him. Yami lapped up the milk first, quickly devoured the beef, and drank half of the water. Then he belched again, flicked his ears, looked at Yugi as if for approval of the noise, and wandered off to take a seat again. Yugi snorted in amusement and sat on the couch. "You know, Yami, eventually you really _are_ going to have to let me get you out on a walk. That means you're going to have to let me use a collar and leash on you."

Yami looked up at him as if he had perhaps cursed at him or tried to lay claim to his soul. His eyes were wide, his mouth partially opened. His ears fell back on his head and his lips drew back into a deep grimace. His brows furrowed and his nose wrinkled slightly. He looked like he could not believe that Yugi was even facing him and saying such words like that. It was almost amazing to him the way Yami looked up at him in such a manner.

But, as the seconds passed, as Yugi tilted his head and watched him for a moment longer, he felt almost sick. Yami's pupils had dilated slightly and he could see his own reflection amidst the darkness. It was odd, the way his hair looked shiny and pale along his bangs but darker than ever where the black base showed. And the wolf simply stared up at him rather blankly, that expression on his face no longer scandalized but rather plain and nonexistent.

The ears pricked forward. His nose wrinkled once more. His eyes narrowed faintly. His head tilted slightly to the side. He blinked once, then twice. Then the wolf slowly shifted his weight, his muscles rolling along his shoulders and jerking his skin as if he were crawling with fleas. But then he flicked his ears again and Yugi felt winded as he looked back at him.

The reflective quality in his eyes was back. Yugi had only truly seen it that night at the Burger World dumpster when he'd handed him the dog carcass. That was the only time he'd seen it up close and understood it for what it was. Yami had shown him the emotions that had come across him, into his own eyes, something that had made his skin crawl and his heart almost break with desperation. It had been far too much for him and he'd fled before he could think straight.

Now he felt small and the air was heavy. He could do nothing more than stare at the wolf in front of him. And Yami was not going anywhere. He could tell that much without a second thought. Yami was simply watching him as Yugi had done with him. He had no plans to do anything beyond this. It was clear in just the way he sat there and stared at him in such plain disregard.

Yugi felt sick as they looked at one another. The wolf blinked at him slightly and tilted his head after a long moment. The teen felt shaky and sick as he moved to stand up. He lowered his eyes immediately, swallowing hard, and looked away pointedly.

The small teen felt sick as he reached down to fist the material of the shirt that he was wearing. He felt small, almost as if Yami were a million times larger than him. He could do nothing more than stare at him, feeling sick and bewildered. Then he looked away, breathing roughly, and closed his eyes tightly. His mouth opened and closed twice and then finally he shook his head slowly and tugged tightly on his shirt again.

"I need to lie down or something," he mumbled, not wanting to open his eyes again. Yami was still watching him with those same dark eyes. He could feel it. It was like teeth pressing into his skin. And Yugi could tell that he would not move away at any moment. It was exhausting to consider and the small teen was winded at the very idea in and of itself. He was winded when he turned away, shaking his head and closing his eyes.

Yugi wandered off to his room in order to work on a couple of assignments for a few hours. And, as he finished his last, the small teen got up and stretched his arms out. He threw his notebook and textbook aside and made his way out of the door and into the hallway. He was exhausted the moment that he stepped into the kitchen. The air was heavier than ever and he felt sick as he looked towards the living room. Yami was not immediately in his sight as he glanced about and he stiffened considerably fearful that perhaps somehow the wolf might have gotten himself hurt.

"Aibou?" he called, stiffening when he saw the smallest flicker of movement from the corner of his eye. But he caught nothing beyond this and the bewilderment which came through him now made him want to vomit. He blinked and looked about the room. In an instant he began to move forward, jogging rather than walking slowly. The panic was biting at the edges of his senses, and it was ultimately quelled in a second or two. His stomach knotted and he licked his lips.

And then the smallest flash of movement caught his eye again.

The lycanthrope's head snapped in its direction.

And he froze in place, eyes widened.

Then he relaxed and rolled his eyes, shaking his head and reaching up to run his fingers through his hair. He let out a deep breath, rolled his eyes again, and offered a small chuckle of surprise. "You're an ass," he grumbled softly, blinking, and then smiled briefly as he tilted his head and raised a brow. "You couldn't have just gotten up and come out _before_ I almost started freaking out?"

The wolf blinked and wagged his tail. The appendage thumped softly against the couch's backrest. He was pressed snuggly in the spot that Yugi had formerly been seated. His chin was draped over his paws which hung a couple of inches off the side of the cushions. His eyes were brighter than usual and his ears were pricked forward. When Yugi looked away again, the wolf grew still as if his attention had given him a reason to move before. And, when Yugi blinked and turned back with a raised brow, the wolf began to wag his tail again. His ears flicked and his mouth opened slightly. His paws twitched. His body tensed.

Yugi tilted his head. The movement made Yami narrow his eyes. And the small teen wondered at the sight curiously for a moment. They considered each other for a long moment. Then he smirked in amusement. Yami flattened his ears and narrowed his eyes further. His body tensed completely. And, when Yugi craned his head, the wolf sprang to his paws in an awkward, fumbling movement that nearly sent him over the edge of the couch cushions. He stood unevenly on the couch, tail wagging slightly in a position parallel to his spine. He had his head lowered slightly and his muzzle pointed towards the floor. He was watching him from beneath his thinner lashes.

And then the wolf sprang at him. His teeth were bared and his mouth was wide open. Yugi thought for a moment that he might be going to attack him. But then the two of them collided. He hit the ground on his back, winded. And Yami ran his tongue over his face with something of a delighted expression. His face was soaked and slimy as he reached up, laughing, to push him away gently with a hand to his chest. The wolf growled a low rumbling little noise, but it was not aggressive in any manner. And Yugi could feel the canine quivering with pure elation.

"Okay, okay," Yugi snorted. He rolled his eyes and managed to push the wolf back if only slightly. The canine finally pulled away from him then, jumping aside and shaking himself out. The two of them considered each other. The lupine pricked his ears forward, tilted his head, and wagged his tail again. Then he bowed in front of him, raised a paw, and aimed at his shoulder. Yugi laughed as he rolled aside and got to his feet. He dusted himself off and reached up to wipe at his face. "That's disgusting."

Yami wagged his tail pointedly and ignored this reaction. Then he turned away and lowered his nose to sniff at the carpet. Yugi almost wondered if he might lick where he'd once spilled all that milk onto the fibers. But the wolf did nothing more than lightly scent the carpet and flick his ears lazily. He turned away again and shook himself out as if he might have gotten something on his skin. But Yugi was relieved to see that the wolf looked so energetic and happy.

He wondered at the change in him now, confused but still incredibly satisfied to see the way that the wolf continued to stare at him with such bright red eyes. But, as he considered it further, then thought briefly of the way that he should make his food, those red eyes seemed to darken with disinterest. The wagging of his tail stilled and the appendage fell to hang behind his legs. Then he sniffed lightly at the carpet again, shook himself out, and turned away from Yugi entirely. After a few moments, he moved to the makeshift bed he'd been lying on for the last three days, and lay upon it lazily. He stretched his limbs out, flicked his tongue over his nose, and closed his eyes tightly.

"You're hungry by now, right?"

Yami did not so much as blink at him. His ears flicked instead and the wolf kept his eyes closed without a single glance. The canine did not so much as blink nor raise his head or regard him in any manner. Instead of this, however, the wolf flexed his paws and his toes wriggled. And then he closed his eyes tightly and refused to do anything else.

The small teen rolled his eyes and turned away to head into the kitchen again to grab some food from the refrigerator. The canine still denied him any inkling of attention as he mixed the goat's milk and set up the meat as he'd initially planned for the wolf. He took the two bowls and put them in front of the wolf and Yami raised his head only to eat and drink and then lowered his chin to his paws again. The canine did not care for even a moment to acknowledge him.

The thought was startling and almost stunning to the small teen. He didn't understand how it was that the wolf had given him such an exuberant greeting and yet now refused to so much as glance at him. His ears did not flick. His eyes would not open. He did not wrinkle his nose or sniff in his direction. He did not stretch in the mildest sense either. The small teen felt almost sick for a moment, ignoring the way his stomach knotted before he quickly turned away and dusted himself out.

"Okay, well, now what do you think about going for a walk?"

Yami didn't acknowledge him in the slightest.

The small teen frowned and tilted his head, grimacing seconds later. Then he moved towards the wolf. He grabbed the bowls and dumped them into the sink. And then he went back to approach the animal lying in that makeshift nest. But Yami did nothing more than yawn. He stretched his jaws in a huge gaping formation and to show each of his immense teeth. His paws flexed and stretched and he settled more comfortably, refusing to so much as look at him.

"So I guess now you can let me put a collar and leash on you and we can go outside, right?"

The wolf did nothing to show that he had so much as heard him speak in the first place.

Yugi rolled his eyes and moved into the kitchen. His mom had put them aside on the bookcase that was sitting on the other side of the table. And so he moved over to grab them both and pull them off the piece of furniture. He dusted himself off and shrugged slightly in frustration. He was not sure why he felt the impulse to constantly move, fidgeting where he had not done so in what felt like forever. It was almost bewildering to him that the other male might have brought out such a reaction in him like this.

"Okay, lift your head up, aibou."

But the wolf did not so much as flick an ear. He kept his head lowered on his legs. He kept his eyes closed and his breathing even. He did nothing more than simply shift his weight and ignore the way the wolf looked at him in any manner. And, as the seconds passed and Yugi moved to crouch in front of him, he felt a small sense of apprehension come through him. He reached forward, eyes narrowed slightly, and undid the buckle of the collar.

Yami responded to the unfamiliar noise. His eyes snapped open and he turned and raised his head. But his expression was blank and unreadable as the seconds passed. The wolf did not look at him as if he knew anything about what was going on in any manner. His eyes were wide and confused and his ears pricked forward. But now he began to grow tense and, as Yugi moved his hands towards his neck, the wolf sprang at him.

There was nothing playful about it this time. And Yugi yelped loudly when he felt the teeth bite through his hand. The impact sent a hideous crunching noise through the air and the pain made him almost scream. He jerked his hand away, but the flesh and bones grated and ground beneath the pressure. The blood immediately coated his hand and dripped heavily to the floor. And Yami snarled where he kept the appendage firmly caught within his teeth. He glared at Yugi furiously, hateful and vicious. And the sight of that expression in his eyes was enough to make Yugi freeze in place.

For a long minute Yami did nothing more than glare at him. But, finally, as Yugi dropped the collar away onto the carpet, the wolf slowly pulled his jaws away from the hand. The canine blinked wide eyes, pulling away from him entirely. His eyes were focused on that hideous red that colored the entirety of his hand. And then he scooted back and moved to sit up. He seemed surprised more than angry now and Yugi blinked as he looked down at it as well.

The skin was covered in red but half of it seemed to hang off his hand entirely. And the muscle was broken and pulled apart hideously in layers of dark red and grizzle. White shone there in bare fragments, much of it crushed almost to a fine powder. Yugi blinked at it, tilting his head, and frowned as he slowly raised his eyes back to the wolf in front of him.

"Okay…so I take it that you _don't_ want to go for a walk."

Yami blinked at him, ears flicking back and forth before flattening on his skull. The wolf looked back at his hand again. And Yugi did the same, grimacing. The wolf had all but crunched the bones directly across his entire palm, from his wrist to his knuckles, crushing and fracturing them. And the torn muscle was clearly shredded away where Yugi had tried to remove his hand. And he could see where the wolf's canines had broken through the skin and tugged much of the flesh between his thumb and index finger. It was stunning to see the damage, in truth.

It looked worse than it probably was, he realized.

But the bones were definitely broken. There was a long and faint tingling that was rapidly growing stronger as the seconds passed. He knew for a fact that the wolf was simply watching him at this rate, but his hand was trying to heal itself regardless. He felt sick as he raised his other hand to cup the bloodied appendage. He wanted to wash it but the thought of moving was almost bewildering to him. He was not sure that he could possibly do such a thing at the moment. It felt stunning and dizzy for a brief second or two. His heartbeat was faster in his chest, leaping into his throat. He felt dizzy as he looked it over for a moment.

Then he shrugged it off and closed his eyes and shook his head.

"So, I guess walking you anytime soon is not a good idea, huh? No walking you around in a collar and leash anytime soon, huh?" he muttered, feeling sick and dizzy as he shook his head slowly and thought to get to his feet again. The wolf blinked at him, confused and bewildered by the way that the two of them stared at one another blankly. "Damn it, aibou, why the hell did you _have_ to do that?"

The wolf flattened his ears against his head and angled his head downward. Yugi would have assumed he was planning to lash out again had it not been for the fact that the canine had closed his eyes and his body was too relaxed for such a thing. He was not prepared to lunge at him and perhaps bite through his flesh again. Instead he was visibly shaken and Yugi swore the wolf seemed full of regret that Yugi himself was stunned by. But then he shrugged it off and sighed softly.

"It's okay," he sighed, though he did wonder now he was meant to deal with the broken bones. He did not know how to set the bones or if that were somehow necessary. He had no idea if he would have chipped fragments left under his skin when it healed itself. He had no idea how it would work as he'd never had such a wound to deal with before. It was enough to wind him as he looked over at Yami curiously for a moment. Was it possible that his hand might mend itself wrong?

Was that a thing?

Yugi hummed softly and got to his feet after a few moments, feeling sick to his stomach. He hesitated, watching the wolf for a long handful of minute. The canine blinked and tilted his head and watched him curiously and found him staring at him now in turn. Yami kept his ears flattened and he shifted his weight awkwardly. Yugi wondered if perhaps the wolf might have been anxious to know what his response would be in any manner.

He almost looked as if he might expect him to lash out and hit him at some point. And the thought made him bristle for the briefest of moments. Then he shrugged it off and forced himself to turn and make his way towards the sink. When he reached out and turned the knob, his fingers soaked it and smeared bright red. He put the water on warm and glanced over his shoulder towards the wolf in the living room.

The water burned his hand where it soaked his skin and the bones stung where he continued to rinse it away. The lycanthrope looked towards the microwave clock and turned away again, keeping his hand beneath the faucet. The water pressure was numbing for a moment or so and he watched the way the steel basin was colored bright red. The mixture was disgusting to look at the drain there. His lips pulled downward into something of a grimace. Then he ran his other hand beneath the faucet to rinse it of the blood he'd caught in his palm before. Now he simply watched the water fall rather lazily.

A bone fragment broke away and splattered into the drain as well, one of them sticking to the basin's surface. It startled him to see it. The water around that single fragment was bright red. The sight of the rim of the drain was stained slightly pink and he shook his head slowly in bewilderment. His eyes narrowed as he turned away and looked at the faucet unhappily.

When he turned off the water, the damage was more grotesque in definition than it was anything else. It surprised him how much worse it looked than it truly felt. As he prodded lightly at the skin, he found that much of the pain was fading entirely from his nerve endings. There seemed to be nothing painful in the light touches and Yugi narrowed his eyes further. His lips pulled downward into a deepened grimace. Then he shook his head and looked down at the wound once more.

The skin was loose and flapping where it had been considerably torn open. It looked almost like melted cheese like what was visible of a pizza slice fresh out of the oven. He wanted to smile at the thought but it almost made him want to vomit. So he simply shrugged it off and rolled his hand this way and that. And his stomach knotted as he did so, because the sight of it was incredibly painful to consider more than it truly felt. The pain was so artificial that it seemed almost phantom-like in a sense.

And the muscles beneath it were bright red, torn and pulled taut where his skin was trying to fix itself. Yugi grimaced and shook his head, grimacing more deeply than ever. Then he huffed and looked away again. His eyes shot to the wolf who was still seated there watching him now. He tilted his head and rolled his eyes as Yami simply stared back at him. Then he looked his hand over again and looked at the bright white of his bones. It was strange to look at the skeleton there. It was stunning, in fact, because, as he watched, the bones seemed to press upward and force itself inward and then outwards. It seemed to shed the fragments almost like a lizard might their loose skin. They fell away entirely like flakes of skin and the bone beneath it seemed to be almost brighter, more fortified in some way. The blood began to pulse from the torn muscle surrounding each exposed touch of bone.

The red overcame every speck of white, soaking it away from sight. Yugi considered it for a long moment as the red began to thicken. It no longer looked liquid, pressing into a more solid formation. When Yugi was curious enough to poke it, it made his eyes widen to thrice their usual size. His mouth opened and closed twice. Then he tilted his head further to the side. He could see various muscles knitting together, soothed once more by bright red blood where it began to harden and grow thicker, into muscle rather than liquid. And it was enough to make his mouth dry as he continued to stare.

Yugi was still watching, which was why he missed it. His head snapped up and turned only when she was already at his side. He nearly flinched and jumped away, heart in his throat. His stomach was rolling and his heart was beating too quickly. He had instinctively moved to shield his wound from her eyes but it did nothing to stop her from spotting it. He'd moved too slowly. The wound was all but imprinted in her mind now as she stared blankly at the torn muscle there. He grimaced and looked down again.

"He bit you again?" she grumbled. But she seemed more amazed by the sight in front of her rather than as angry as she might have been before. The wolf continued to stare at them both with his ears flat against his head, waiting with a somewhat bewildered expression. The lycanthrope kept his eyes on his wound and leaned slightly against the sink.

"I startled him."

"And then he mauled your hand."

"I scared him. I would have done the same if I was in his place. He did what any animal would have. A cat would have clawed my hand open if I'd startled them. It's not that big a deal." He paused and glanced at Yami sideways. "I don't think he honestly meant to anyways. And he looks pretty upset about it himself. He hasn't moved since I came over here to clean it so I think he knows that he did it by accident. It's not like I'm not healing from it, though."

Kasumi looked at him as if she didn't even know what the hell he was. Then she slowly shook her head, as if somehow the action might help him to calm down in some manner. Her blue eyes flickered to the wolf now as well. "That's nice and all, but he shouldn't have done it regardless."

Yugi huffed. "I punched Jonouchi in the face a while back when he scared me. It was an automatic reaction. I felt bad afterward. I'm not going to get upset over something as simple as that." He ran the water over his hand again, the flesh pale and slightly red where it was mended together. It was a bright pink everywhere that Yami had punctured his skin, but the torn flesh was pulled together completely and he did not feel the slightest tingle of pain from the touch. There was no residual ache from the wound. And he was relieved to see that as he closed his eyes and leaned more pointedly against the sink. The metal was cold like ice cubes and it helped him feel better to regain his balance in this conversation. He turned to his mother again. "He's just acting like he's supposed to. I honestly don't mind that he did it. But that's why you and Grandpa shouldn't get too close to him like that. He might bite you and then you'll become infected and that's not a happy thing."

But he held his tongue about how much nastier it _could_ have been.

He didn't honestly know that Yami might stop if he managed to knock one of them over. The reality of it was that Yami was wounded and he was still incredibly thin. He might not have been starving in the same manner as he had been before, but he could not discount the possibility that the wolf might very well simply lunge and kill them. He did not know for even a moment that there would be any hesitation should it come to his mind to kill them. He could not say for sure that Yami would not do it should he feel cornered enough or that they were an easy enough target. He had no idea. Yami right now was a kaleidoscope of things and half of them did not make any sense to Yugi as it was.

It was odd to him to even consider that something of that magnitude might happen. Had he thought that Yami was healthy enough, he would never have once considered so much as having to tell them to avoid him. He would have been fine to let them simply sit near him, feed and give him water and then leave him alone. But it was more dangerous than that. Yami was powerful even if he was physically weak. His jaw power was immense. His ferocity was overwhelming. His thin frame did nothing to temper his strength. He was as powerful as he could _be_ in such a state. And now that he was moving around again, it was only a matter of time before he might be able to lash out should something go wrong. If his mom or grandpa made the wrong move towards him or scared him at some point, it was fully possible that Yami might turn on them.

He was a cornered animal no matter how someone looked at it.

Yami was in a small living room. He was in an area that was not familiar to him any longer. He was reliant on the three humans in the building looking after him. He was in a territory that was _not_ alike his desired one by any means. And it did not help that Ishizu had mentioned he had been hiding behind fears and terrors before then. If he were still doing that at the moment, there was the possibility that the wolf still pictured much of the things within the house to be far more alike the labs.

Yugi nearly flinched at this realization, feeling shaken and stunned.

He had never considered that before then. He had not even thought for a moment about the fact that perhaps Yami thought the house to be far too much like the labs than anything else. It would explain his fear of the collar and leash that could further validate his overall terror of things. He would simply lie in place, would refuse to move for much of the time. He would try his hardest not to make any noise. He would ignore them and he gave them that warning blow of a muzzle-punch before he would go for the second hand with his teeth.

Yugi reached his hands up to run his fingers through his hair and shook his head. "I think he's honestly pretty scared right now." And now he realized why Yami was staring at him in such a manner as well. When his eyes flickered over to the wolf still regarding him with dark red eyes, Yugi felt sick. He was still watching as silently as ever, but when his eyes fell upon him again, the black wolf flattened his ears and lowered his head slightly. The small teen could see it now. He understood the reason he was staring at him for the moment. He was scared and expected Yugi to punish him. He was ready to cower beneath whatever physical blow Yugi would rain down on him. Yugi looked towards his mom again. "I think he's just a lot more fearful than you'd expect of him. And I think it'd be safer for you guys if you didn't go anywhere near him for a little while. I don't think he's going to attack anyone but he's kind of… _unstable_ I guess."

"Unstable?" his mom muttered. "He's lost his fucking mind, more like it. Just look at your hand!"

The small teen huffed. "It's healed already. It's not even a big deal. And it's not like him harming me does anything. I'm not going to get infected again or something like that. The lycanthropy can't get _worse_. It's not like it's going to hurt me to have him bite me if that happens. There's no reason to be upset with him to begin with. It's not a big deal."

"Are you serious, Yugi? He _tore your hand open_."

"And now it's completely healed." He held his hand up and showed it off to let her look at each and every angle of it. "There's no problem with it now. No blood, no pain. It's fine. It doesn't even look like it was ever hurt in the first place, right? See? It's fine. It doesn't matter."

"You're an idiot," his mother snarled, turning on him with furious eyes. "You're a fucking moron. I raised a fucking _moron_."

Yugi blinked wide eyes but didn't respond, knowing better than to engage in this. She would rant for a few minutes and then calm down again and she would still be _furious_ but she wouldn't say that anymore. He'd walked into such conversations between his mother and grandfather before and he was not willing to think for even a moment that it would be a good idea to begin arguing with her. He did not think either that he had the energy to fight with her as it was. It was a terrible idea to take his ragged mind and attempt such a thing to begin with.

It was disgusting to think for even a moment that he might be able to match her blow for blow should it turn into a complete verbal attack. So he simply looked over at the wolf with wide eyes. The canine in the living room was watching him with dark eyes. He still looked incredibly unnerved, as if he was expecting Yugi to cross the room and hit him upside the head or perhaps even shock him with a taser. He felt sick at the thought and shook it off as quickly as he could.

* * *

Yugi was exhausted when he slowly made his way into his mother's room. It was still as small and meticulous as it always was, cleaner than ever. The lycanthrope blinked in surprise and tilted his head, curious as he stepped a little closer to the bed. He hesitated for a moment, glancing towards the bathroom where he could hear her moving about. He heard the faucet turn on and he could hear her brushing her teeth seconds later. He took a seat after a moment and slowly kicked along the carpet uncomfortably, fidgeting now.

He'd been trying to plan on what it was that he wanted to tell her for the last two days. He had wanted to explain to her more in depth what it was that had happened, why it was that he had decided to shelter Yami in the manner he did. But he knew for a fact that it was not only the emotional attachment he had to him. But to speak out loud why it was that he was so willing to help him felt like it would lessen the degree of its importance. And so he simply shook the thought away.

But asking his grandfather had gotten him nowhere. Yami had interrupted whatever he had been about to say when he'd thrown the bowl of goat's milk through the air as he had. Yugi looked at the floor for a long moment, grimacing as he reached up to run his fingers through his hair. It was enough to drive him crazy. He felt sick to his stomach as he looked towards the doorway. She was rinsing her toothbrush again. When she hit it against the porcelain in order to shake the water away, Yugi found himself almost stiff with tension and a bristle which would not leave him.

His mouth was dry as she came out into her room again. Her eyes widened in surprise as she caught sight of him. Then she glanced slowly towards the door as if she'd expected it to be open and for Yami to be seated nearby watching them. Then her brow rose slightly as her eyes drifted back over to him. She tilted her head but Yugi simply stared at her in response.

"I wouldn't be in here if it wasn't important," the small teen stated without preamble, looking at her with a slight narrowing of his eyes. It was in the corner of his eyes, a slight crinkling which said he was trying his hardest not to fidget. She knew it from the way he'd done it when he was nervous about talking to her about something. "And I need to explain to you what's going on. Because I realize that I'm leaving you in the dark with a lot of it. And I'm sorry for that. But I don't know how else I'm supposed to deal with this."

"You should have tried asking for help before all of this started happening, don't you think?"

"I think that you wouldn't really have understood then just like you don't right now," the small teen answered quietly, shaking his head before drawing in a deep breath and slowly exhaling. He looked down at the carpet and kicked at it lightly with another rapid shake of his head. "That's not where I went wrong, Mom. I was just trying to protect someone I cared about…"

She blinked at him, about to open her mouth. But then Yugi slowly looked up from the corner of his eye and stared at her with the darkest blue-violet eyes she'd ever seen on his face before. She grimaced as her son refused to tip his head back up.

"You always taught me to value and protect people and things I care about," he mumbled. "So I did that."

Kasumi stared at him for a long moment. She almost said that he should not have used that as an excuse of such magnitude as it was. But then she fell silent, looking away with darkened eyes and a purse of her lips. It was not wrong to consider that perhaps Yugi was right in saying this. She might not have known all the details, but it had to be no different from her lashing out at Mazaki in order to keep him from turning his eyes on her son. It had to be a rather similar belief in the need to protect Yami that had guided his hand to do such a thing. And the thought nearly made her grimace as she closed her eyes and sighed softly.

"You couldn't have changed anything that happened, Mom." The words were said with absolute certainty but it was not enough to make her open her eyes. She shook her head slightly and Yugi continued in the same tone, words quiet and soft. "Even if I hadn't begun helping Yami, I would have been bitten anyways. I would have still been running off on my own every month. I might not have missed as much school until the last second, but I would have been forced to eventually. And I would never have known how to deal with the hunters that have been trailing me around all this time."

Kasumi opened and raised her eyes slowly to regard him with a single tilt of her head. She blinked at him slowly, then furrowed her brows slightly with a shake of her head. "Hunters?" she repeated quietly, exhausted now. She wanted to sit down but to do that meant that she'd want to lay down and that just seemed somehow as if it might weaken her to whatever Yugi might say. So she simply looked at him and hoped that she didn't end up having her legs buckle beneath her weight. "Like poachers?"

Yugi frowned and then shrugged, nodding. "Yeah, I guess that analogy works pretty well. They _do_ tend to skin the victims and then sell their coats, so I guess poacher is the most alike the whole thing." He hesitated. "But I don't think I could have survived at all if it wasn't for Yami. I think I would have gotten killed if it had not been for him."

"Why are they after you? Just because you're a wolf?"

The lycanthrope opened his mouth, looking at her with darkened eyes, then hesitated and closed it again. Then he looked away and pursed his lips before turning to her with a grimace. "Yeah, it's mostly because of that. I don't think that half of them know who I actually am," he finally mumbled. "But I _do_ know that they really like my fur. Apparently it's a really nice color."

Kasumi tilted her head. She wanted to ask but some part of her despised the idea of doing so. If she acknowledged that her son turned into a wolf every month she felt she might vomit with dismay. There was a part of her that wanted nothing more than to turn a blind eye to the very fact that the wolf in the living room was a boy that her son had somehow fallen in love with. And the thought of this was enough to make her mouth dry as she looked back at him.

"And a lot of them like Yami's fur too," he said quietly, watching her with those same darkened eyes. She felt sick as she looked back at him, because he spoke so calmly now that it was almost horrifying to her. How could he simply _accept_ that these people were trying to kill him for the sake of skinning him and selling his _fur_? "But there's also… If any of them actually know that I'm running around as the leader of the pack in the woods, then I'm sure they'd be trying to catch me for that too. But you mentioned a while back that there had been rumors about kidnappings and things like that when you were only eleven or a little older, right?"

Kasumi blinked in bewilderment before slowly nodding. Yes, she remembered that. She had spoken to him about that beforehand. She felt sick to her stomach for a long moment, staring at him in response. She grimaced and nearly shook her head. Her eyes were glued to the lycanthrope in front of her now. She remembered that conversation, how she had admitted to hearing about those kidnappings and things of that nature.

"I remember the conversation," she muttered. And now she could not stop thinking of the fact that they'd spoken about the proposed jaw pressure and the possibility of the killers releasing dogs on the victims when they were long-dead. She remembered telling him that there had been those rumors of someone experimenting on dogs and importing all of those illegal animals into Japan. They still had no true leads. They had no names to pin the possibility of these things to or a face to try to point their finger towards. They had experimented on the dogs, had been working to create far more powerful canines than was natural.

The rumors had died down after a long while. No one had spoken about it after the year that Yugi was born. But the kidnappings had grown a million times more frequent. Tourists were snatched up. Honshu children were stolen away. Hokkaido residents would find their neighbors or friends long gone without a trace. But it had been just as bad the few years before Yugi had come to exist. She had been horrified to hear that one or two of her own friends had been snatched away in the middle of the night. They'd lived alone, and someone had spotted them sometime late one night as they'd seemingly headed for the park.

But they'd never made it. Someone had claimed that a black car had come about and a dog had been released from the back seat. Her friends had been attacked and forced into the car. They had sped off after that. But no one had more details than that. And the descriptions of the car never seemed to match up with anything. The reality of it was enough to make her own parents tell her to be careful about anyone she crossed paths with or how they wanted to be sure she knew their phone numbers, the house number, the police number and various others in order to help to keep her safe.

But it had always been teenagers to be kidnapped, she remembered. It was truly only within the age groups of fifteen or sixteen and older. They had been stolen away as so many others had before them. Because, while _only_ teenagers were snatched from school, the tourists varied in ages. Their kidnappers had seemed not to care for the Americans or Russians or whoever might have been visiting. They would simply snatch them up, no matter the age, no matter the nationality. They would simply steal them away.

There had been ideas that some of them had gotten lost and others might have run off on their own. But the amount of tourists to disappear and the fact that only teenagers native to Japan were stolen away had proven otherwise. And she could remember more or less that every time she'd heard about the events, it was by witnesses who had seen a large dog of some kind. None of them had ever known what kind of dog it was, but now Kasumi understood.

They were not native to Japan any longer, because they'd been hunted to extinction long before.

But they were back on the islands.

They were wolves, not just common dogs.

They were _wolves_.

She still had no idea what kind of language was spoken to command the wolves to attack and force their captives back into the car. It was enough to make her skin crawl to even consider. But part of her wondered about the idea of the shock collars. Were they truly utilized to make the wolves do as they demanded of them? Or was it somehow something else entirely which caused this? What if they did it for the sake of something sadistic and disgusting between them as well?

She shook her head slightly, narrowing her eyes.

"I feel like I honestly should have known," she admitted after a long moment, somewhat reluctant as she shook her head again. Yugi blinked and tilted his head in bewilderment at the statement and she sighed as she took a seat next to him. There were a few inches of space between them, a distance there which helped to create a mild barrier. It was comforting to her, though she knew she should never have felt that way to begin with. "There were times when you were growing up that I thought you acted more like a puppy than you did a little boy."

Yugi blinked in bewilderment, head turning and eyes widening in surprise. "What?"

Kasumi shrugged, feeling almost small and uncertain as her son stared at her so pointedly. She wanted for a moment to deny ever having said the words in the first place. But another part of her sure of the words and she did not want to argue in any manner. So she simply shook her head and closed her eyes tiredly. "There were times when you would act like a little puppy," she repeated, though not as exactly and with growing exhaustion in her tone. She shook her head slowly and narrowed her eyes. "Sometimes, when you were in trouble you would sit in the corner and wait for us to yell. And sometimes, you would act as if you had not seen us in years if we came into the room after leaving you alone for a few minutes. You always heard things that the rest of us didn't. You were near-sighted when you were younger. And you tended to sniff at things before you would touch anything. Once, when Dad showed you to Yoshimori, you sniffed his fingers before you'd shake his hand."

Yugi blushed slightly, eyes widening drastically. The shadows were dancing behind his eyes, twisting and writhing with thoughts. She wondered if he remembered any of what had happened. Kasumi wondered if perhaps her son was trying to remember these things by mere suggestion. But she did not care to ask him anything to do with the subject. It was disturbing to consider it at all.

She wondered if maybe it would have been better to simply ignore it altogether now. Maybe she should have just shut her mouth after that and refused to speak again. Some small part of her wondered if perhaps that was the better idea than continuing this conversation.

"I guess it doesn't actually matter," she muttered now, shaking her head and reaching up to play with the ends of her short hair. She sighed softly and leaned back in a position as if she might lie down entirely. Then she shook her head again and looked away from him. "You're alive now because Yami bit you. You didn't get killed from whatever incident it was that happened. I don't know how I'm supposed to thank him for making you into some mythological creature. But I guess I probably should when he's healthier and ready for me to do that, huh?"

Yugi opened his mouth to answer, then faltered at the very idea before slowly shaking his head and lowering his eyes. "You don't have to thank him." He fell quiet, wondering if he at that point, in her place, would have even considered doing such a thing. He knew she was fed up with his lying and running off. He knew how much he had stepped on her toes. And he could not pretend to be unaware of just how terribly he'd snapped at her and lost his temper various times. He drew in a deep breath and reached up to scratch at his chin. "I'm sure he already knows you're grateful that I'm still here."

Did it sound as bitter and tired as he thought it did?

It must have because her eyes widened in shock at his tone before his mother shook her head slowly and looked away. "I guess so," she said reluctantly a moment or two later. She sighed and watched him from the corner of her eye. "I was thinking that you two both have to be pretty exhausted after all of that crap that's been happening to you, huh?"

He frowned, puzzled by this direction of conversation. "Yeah. He's got to be pretty over it all. And I can't say I blame him or anything if that's how he feels," he admitted, clearing his throat slightly. He wondered if the wolf was listening to them, if he understood any of the words. It made him nervous to consider for a brief moment or two. Then he shrugged it off and smiled at her. "I don't think he knows how grateful I am, though. Sometimes I think he kind of wonders if I blame him for half of the stuff that's happened."

Kasumi was quiet for a long handful of minutes. Then she tilted her head. "You don't?"

"I _did_ ," Yugi said quietly. "I really used to. I would blame a lot of things on him biting me. I always blamed bad luck on anyone besides myself. And I think that's why I didn't want to tell you in the first place. I didn't want him to know that I felt that way or to let you or Grandpa realize that. It seemed safer not to bring it up, because then I could ignore it. And that would help me pretend that life was the same at home at the very least. Of course it never was. And I should have tried harder to think of a way to keep you from feeling like you were losing me. But I…I didn't know how. And now it's far too late to try to go back and change anything."

His mother nodded slightly, looking away with darkened eyes. "You always did tend to hide when things got too rough for you." she commented dryly. "I always thought maybe it was your dad who gave you that trait. I'm beginning to realize it's one of my traits instead."

Yugi grimaced. "I don't think of it as a terrible thing. I think it helps a _lot_ in keeping me from imploding under all of the stress." He hesitated, unsure of what more to say. Then he sighed and lowered his eyes to the carpet again. He kicked his legs as if he were a small child and hated himself for the briefest of seconds for the ache which crept through him. He wished he was young enough that his feet no longer touched the floor and he could kick his legs and never feel them touch the carpet until he jumped down again. Times were so much simpler back then. Back then he would never have had to tell his mom he'd been bitten by a werewolf. Back then he would never have _dreamed_ that he'd fall in love with another guy like he had. He shook his head and turned to her again.

Despite the pain and the disdain and the overall discomfort that came from the situation in and of itself, he could not find it within himself to regret even a second of it. He would have had to turn his back on Yami in order to do such a thing. And he would have had to suppress the confidence he'd grown into or the reality that he could see the gray patches between the black and white of life again. Because, by the gods, he had never thought of how much he'd simply suppressed such a thing formerly. He'd forced himself to see things in black and white again, forced himself to simply care only when it directly affected him in some way. And now he found himself feeling almost sick with the reality that should he fall back on such thoughts, he would be destroying half of the person he was slowly but surely becoming.

He drew in a deep breath. "I know that you're planning to go spend time outside of Domino," he said quietly. His words were enough to make her raise and turn her head, eyes wide with shock at the soft declaration. He searched her eyes for only a moment, then smiled as he tilted his head. "I don't blame you for that. I know that this is a lot to take in and it's pretty overwhelming. I would probably try to take time away if I were you too. But I didn't want you to feel like I didn't appreciate everything or that I don't still love you."

She blinked, stunned by the words. Then her blue eyes widened a bit further and her lips pulled into a tight line. There was something vaguely fearful, almost horrified, within her gaze, and Yugi wished he could have alleviated the burden. But he could not find the words and his heart hurt as he considered her. Then Kasumi cleared her throat and looked away with a simple shake of her head.

"I was going to spend some time with Arthur," Kasumi finally muttered. She looked exhausted now that Yugi was truly studying her expression. The small teen nodded slightly. He trusted Mr. Hopkins. He could live with her being there. And it was not as if he would ever expect his mom to cheat, more that it was simply he'd been fearful she might choose someone less…trustworthy. Arthur, he knew, would never have anything to do with the underground lab or the wolves being tortured and experimented on. His morals were too strong, if nothing else. The fact that she had chosen to go there with him was a relief that Yugi almost trembled beneath the reality of. "It'll be a couple of days—aweek at the most. But I just need some time to get my head wrapped around this."

Yugi nodded slightly. "Uh…should probably mention that I also bit Jonouchi at one point," he muttered, clearing his throat and ignoring the shocked expression on his face. "He was almost dead so I just…bit him. Uh, beyond that, Honda and Anzu are _not_ infected!"

Kasumi rolled her eyes as the words connected in her head. Then she shook her head and smirked at him slightly. "That's…nice of you to spare two of your friends," she snickered wryly. "I wasn't honestly expecting to hear that you'd bitten him. But I guess it makes sense. He _is_ the most dog-like out of your friends."

The small teen nearly choked on his laughter. He pressed his lisp into a thin line, trying to suppress the guffaws, cleared his throat awkwardly, and then turned away with flushed cheeks. "Jesus," he muttered under his breath. "The sad part about that is he looks like a golden retriever with pointy ears when he's a wolf too."

His mother burst out laughing. "That's great," she snorted. "Did you tell him he looks like a dog no matter what?"

Yugi snickered. "I did, actually. Although, honestly, Anzu takes the lead with dog jokes about Jonouchi. And then I get to laugh at him that he looks like a big goofy dog when he's a wolf." He shook his head, falling silent after a moment. Then he looked back over at her and sighed. "Anyways, I guess I'll go ahead and feed Yami and then you can finish packing. Just be careful when you're alone or anything like that. I don't think they're kidnapping anyone older than teenagers but I don't know for sure. And you could pass for a teenager anyways, so…"

Kasumi snorted and shook her head. "Right," she muttered. "I could pass for a teenager if they were blind and too stupid to wipe their glasses."

Her son burst out laughing as he got to his feet. He had the nervous impulse to dust himself off, much as he had being around Yami before then. It made him slightly uncomfortable as he licked his lips and glanced at the door. His eyes narrowed and he shook his head. "Be careful though, okay? I don't want to find out that anything might have happened to you when you weren't here with us."

His mom was quiet for a long minute. Yugi was already halfway to the door when he heard his name again. Immediately he turned around, eyes wide and head tilted in slight puzzlement. The two of them blinked at each other. And then he swallowed thickly as his stomach knotted briefly.

"I want you to promise to be safe too. You need to stay safe, too, okay?" she said quietly. Her eyes searched his face for a long moment and then she sighed and shook her head. "You need to promise me that you're going to stay safe and not do anything reckless. I don't care if it might mean someone else gets hurt, I want you to take care of yourself first and foremost."

He remembered the conversation from a long time ago. He'd gotten hurt in middle school for protecting Honda and Jonouchi from Ushio. He'd been covered in blood and bruises, nearly concussed from the entire event. Honda and Jonouchi had actually walked him back to his house and knocked on the door before fleeing. And when Yugi had finally admitted to what had happened, denying her initial fears that he'd joined a gang himself, she had said something similar. But she'd also told him that she no longer wanted him anywhere _near_ the two of them. She had said that she would rather see him doing drugs when he was only fifteen than his being around them.

She'd settled down when she'd met them, as Honda had proven himself far from the delinquent type. And Jonouchi was rough around the edges, but she'd still managed to look past this if only for Yugi's happiness.

"I will," he answered quietly, nodding. But part of him ached and his heart felt raw where it beat in his chest. He felt sick to his stomach as he watched her. "I'll stay safe, Mom."

There was a long minute in which he thought that perhaps she might call him out on his blatant lie. He felt like she knew and understood that this was nothing he could truly promise to her. He felt that she understood that Yugi would not turn his back on Jonouchi or Honda or Anzu or Yami or anyone else that might need his help. He wouldn't have done it before, but now he especially could not find it in himself to believe for even a moment that he could keep this promise. And the way she looked back at him with something resigned and defeated told him that she truly did understand that as well.

He drew in a deep breath, thinking to say something more, then faltered and looked away. He turned on his heel, mumbling a soft apology under his breath. But he did not know what he was truly saying sorry for. He did not know if it was because of his lying to her about being able to protect himself at all costs or something else. It could have been for all of the lies before. It could have been for breaking her heart beforehand in changing so much. It could have been for cutting her off so entirely as he had. It could have been for bringing Yami there and lying to her so frequently. He did not truly know. He could not truly know. None of it made any true sense to him. His apology was emptier than he cared to admit and it hurt to know this. His belly ached as he opened the door and stepped outside the room.

In the small hallway, a few feet away, was a shape tall and lanky but closer to the ground than himself. Yugi blinked, startled, at first riddled with a sense of shock and bewilderment. And then his eyes grew wide and his mouth threatened to curl into a grin. The wolf was incredibly tall, long limbs and a thin body, with a pelt that was steadily growing regardless of his wounded state.

Perhaps he needed the fur to keep himself insulated rather than truly healing himself for the moment. Or perhaps his body was simply so messed up after the poison had gotten through his veins that it was splitting the task of healing with regenerating his fur. Yugi had a feeling it was the former, however, and that Yami was only growing his hair back so quickly because it would help to aid him later in his necessity to aid his core temperature. If he grew his hair back, he would be less likely to either overheat or grow cold.

That was a relief in and of itself, no matter how Yugi looked at it.

It might have been second to the wounds themselves in his mind, but it was happening regardless. And if Yami was stabilized in his temperature it might also do well to help him grow stronger faster. That was a possibility, was it not? Yugi was sure that it was a truth of which he had not quite considered before then. He felt that it had to have some kind of truth in some fashion. He knew it had to. There was no way that he would simply grow his hair back so much if it was without purpose.

The lycanthropy might not have been a sentient kind of disease, but he was sure that it responded on far more cluster cells and neurological means than most other species possessed. That might have explained the black patches of skin that Yugi saw along his shaved body, though now they were peppered with long guard hairs that lacked a fluffy undercoat for the moment. They were littered across his body, mostly along the surface of his major arteries, however. His jugular was coated in them, so tightly clustered it was almost as if he had never been shaved there to begin with. His wrists were covered. His back legs were darkened with them. All along his face and skull they were littered as well.

Yugi was not sure what the discoloration did. He didn't know if there was some kind of special purpose it served. But they were little black spots, raised slightly from the surrounding skin almost like the most miniscule of zits. And in their bases was the hair, where there was the smallest deflated core almost like a crater or a pock mark of some kind. It was odd, almost like a mole, he supposed.

"What are you doing over here, aibou?" he asked with a tilt of his head. His brow rose and he smiled warmly at the wolf. The canine pricked his ears forward and tilted his head in surprise. He shifted his weight and tipped his nose towards Yugi, wriggling the muscle softly as he considered him. His eyes were like dim lights within the darkness and his head tilted further to the side. There was a single wag of his tail after a long second and then his ears flattened and he opened his mouth to allow his tongue to loll. "I thought you'd stay in the living room."

"He got up and wandered over there about ten minutes ago," Sugoroku commented from behind him in the kitchen. The small teen's head snapped up, eyes widening. His grandfather was standing a few feet away behind the wolf. He was smiling slightly as Yami continued to stare up at Yugi. And the small teen blinked in bewilderment at the sight. "I think he got curious about where you had gone."

Yugi tilted his head, because somehow the words sounded dubious to him. He did not understand why it was that the wolf might have become curious regarding him. Yami had never seemed too thrilled with him beyond earlier that morning. When he had leaped at him and tackled and played with him for all of those few seconds. But then he had wandered away again and lied down and bitten him not even thirty minutes later. So he doubted that Yami had become curious about him. That just seemed rather…optimistic towards his reasoning for getting up and approaching him.

And, as he thought this, the wolf lowered his head. His nose was working at the carpet and his eyes were on the fibers now. He did not glance towards Yugi nor did he turn his head to look over towards his grandfather. In an instant he turned away and sniffed at the door that marked the staircase, as if he remembered Yugi carrying him up them at one point or another. Then he turned away entirely and his nails clicked loudly as he made his way through the kitchen and into the living room again. Yugi smiled faintly, then rolled his eyes and shook his head.

"I don't think that's what it was," he muttered with a shrug. "But it doesn't really matter, I guess. He's up and moving around on his own which is a good thing no matter how you look at it."

Sugoroku raised a brow. "Is there a reason that wouldn't have been a good thing?"

Yugi looked at him with a rather slow tilt of his head. His eyes were caught by a stray flash of the kitchen light that was on. And the sapphire blue specks within his gaze made them harsh and almost relentless in the way they bore into his for a moment. Then he blinked and, for the briefest of seconds, the elderly Motou swore to the gods that Yugi's eyes seemed to flatten and grow dull. Then the small teen shook his head slowly and muttered, "If he was still aggressive, there'd be an issue."

The unspoken threat of the situation was enough to make Sugoroku grimace. He glanced briefly towards the living room and back. And then he nearly jumped out of his skin when he realized that Yugi was almost directly in front of him. The small teen blinked at him, surprised by his shock, and then turned away and started to follow the wolf into the living room.

"If he was still aggressive, I don't think a kennel or a crate or anything of the sort would hold him," Yugi admitted quietly, stopping at the edge of the doorway. Sugoroku stared at him, stunned by the statement. When his grandson looked at him over his shoulder, his stomach knotted painfully. "I think he's a lot more likely to have broken through that in a second if he had wanted to."

It was almost impossible to imagine that the emaciated mess of pale skin and sutures would be able to do such a thing. But, as he looked past Yugi and considered the wolf, his mouth grew dry. Yami had taken his eyes off of Yugi and now his gaze was locked on Sugoroku himself. The red of his gaze was dark, like fresh blood beading on the skin, and the stare within them was almost expressionless, yet somehow penetrating enough to make him feel as if he were facing death itself. And he wondered at the sight for a moment, if perhaps the wolf was just that violent and powerful.

When he glanced towards Yugi his grandson seemed to have noticed the color drain from his face because he furrowed his brows and looked towards the wolf as well. But Yami did not take his eyes off of the elderly Motou, red gaze burning and sharp. And, as Sugoroku looked back at him, he felt as if his heart might be skipping beats. Yami made no aggressive movements. He didn't curl his lip. He didn't move to stand. He didn't bristle with the new fur growing on his skin. He didn't blink. He didn't even flick an ear. Yet, somehow, as he simply _looked back at him_ , the elderly Motou felt as if he were being hunted. And he was dizzy as the wolf stared at him unblinkingly.

* * *

Yugi shook himself out as he padded forward. His fur was slightly raised in a bristle and his lips felt drawn back as he flattened them. He pricked his ears forward and his nose twitched. The canine shook himself out once more and ignored the way his fur seemed laden with the pressure of the cold winter air. He looked about himself, flicking his ears. Without Marik lurking in the woods, without the thought of the traitor killing more wolves, there seemed almost to be a lightness to the forest. The thought that he did not have to deal with the wolf again was enough to make him feel better than ever. He was winded with the touch of relief that came over him now.

 _Well, hello,_ a voice commented. He recognized it, relaxing from his slight surprise, and then turned his head. Ishizu was seated a few feet away among the roots of a large tree. She was extremely fox-like in her position, tail around her paws, ears pricked forward and her posture perfectly straight and upright. The she-wolf was staring at him with bright blue eyes. _Are you all right, Atem_?

Yugi almost bristled for a moment, as if affronted by the very name. Then he blinked and relaxed again, flicking his ears. _I am,_ he said simply. _Yami is healing properly and he seems as if he is going to be doing a lot better soon enough. I don't think that there will be too much trouble getting him back to his full health again._

 _Good._ She nodded slightly and moved to stand. Her ears flicked and she watched him for a moment. Then she looked over her shoulder. _You came to speak to Slifer, yes_?

He bristled now, surprised and alarmed. He thought briefly of the way that Marik had called her a priestess. And he remembered the way she'd admitted to visions, that Ra had touched her and given her such privilege. It made him want to vomit as he looked back at her now. _I…I was planning to talk to her about something, yeah,_ he admitted, feeling flustered as he looked at her with wide eyes. _Uh, I wasn't expecting you to be here when I got here._

Ishizu tilted her head and her eyes were soft with a warm smile as she shook her head after a moment. _I saw you coming and I figured that I should see you before you meet with her,_ she stated. Her tail wagged slightly. _I did not mean to scare or startle you in any manner, sovereign._

Yugi blinked. _Sovereign_? he muttered softly. His ears pricked forward and he tilted his head in bewilderment. _I'm not—_

 _You are Atem. And you will be leading us into war._ The she-wolf paused for a moment, then looked over her shoulder. Yugi wondered if she could sense Slifer coming forward. _And these wolves within the pack have come from around the world to see you. They've all broken rank and come to serve you in this fight. If that is not recognition of a ruler, I do not understand what else might be._

The white wolf bristled only faintly, then flicked his ears and shook himself out and watched her with darkened eyes. _Oh_. The canine shivered and watched her more closely as he tilted his head. He settled and took a seat, pricking his ears forward again. He could not think of a single word to refute her statement. That _was_ what a ruler was, someone who had loyal people beneath them who might fight for them. He understood that and he knew better than to argue once more. _I suppose you're right then._

 _Yes._

He flicked his ears. Yes, Code Name Atem _was_ a sovereign. He was meant to be a deity among them, an absolute monarch of some kind. He was powerful. He was incredibly strong and capable of himself. The wolf shook his head slightly and bristled faintly.

 _Slifer is coming now._ She flicked an ear. _I suppose I will see you again later, yes_?

And then she turned and began to move away. She was limping more than walking and Yugi immediately thought of Yami crushing her paw between his teeth. He wanted to puke at the realization, then turned his attention away. She moved with a dignity he was not sure many others could have possessed in her place. And, as she traveled further, her limp seemed to all but completely disappear.

Yugi flicked his ears. _Yes, I'll see you later._

She did not turn towards him, nor did she respond in any way. And, when he turned his head towards the direction she had originally come, his eyes grew wide. The red she-wolf was coming through the trees in a slow trot, her golden eyes bright with humor. She shook herself out as she stopped in front of him and took a seat in front of him with her ears pricked.

 _Welcome, Atem,_ she stated softly, coming to a complete stop in front of him. Her ears were pricked forward as she considered him. Her golden eyes inched across every bit of his skin, crawling upon his form and considering him intently. _You seem rather well, perhaps a little stressed or surprised more than anything else, I suppose._

Yugi blinked and pricked his ears forward. _Yami is recovering well,_ he said simply, watching her and wagging his tail slightly with the relief that came of saying such a thing. Yami _was_ recovering well. He was doing _incredibly_ well. He was amazing. He would be healed soon enough. There would be no reason for him to be stressed in any manner later. _I don't think that he'll be hurt for too much longer._

Slifer nodded, her golden eyes flashing with something that Yugi could not read. _That is good,_ she said softly. _I am glad to hear that. I was concerned he might not heal properly._

Yugi flicked an ear and tilted his head. _No, he's doing extremely well now. I don't think it'll be too long before he's running around in the woods again and coming back to the camp to trot around, I guess._

The she-wolf nodded. _It is a good thing to hear,_ she stated simply. _But you did not come here to simply tell me that Yami is okay. I know that you did not. So why is it that you have not begun to speak to me about what it is you truly wish to know_?

The white wolf hesitated for a moment, then bristled faintly and shook his head slightly. He drew a deep breath and shook his head again as he looked away. _Yami doesn't exactly…_ listen _to me, I suppose. He doesn't truly seem to care that much to listen to me in any way. I just_ … _I wanted to know if something is going on with his attitude and demeanor right now_ …

Slifer blinked and tilted her head. Her ears flicked about for a moment before she finally moved to take a seat and wrap her tail around her paws. She looked small and delicate, with spindly legs and long fluffy ginger fur. Her golden eyes were burning softly into his. _Tell me what you truly fear or I will not give you the answers you seek._

He bristled, turning on her furiously. _Really, Slifer_? _You can't just answer the damn question and leave the rest of it alone_? he snapped. _I should have asked Obelisk for all the help that you're being._

The she-wolf laughed out loud at the statement. _If you think for even a moment that he might show you a sense of leniency in this matter, you are sorely mistaken. You are one of our children, but that does not mean that we will be helping you beyond what is necessary._ His blue-violet eyes narrowed with disdain. _We are not here to baby you in any manner. You are here to lead a war. You are meant to_ win _a war. You are to find answers for yourself rather than rely on others to give them to you. You almost did not realize in time that it was Marik who would try to kill you._

The reprimand made him bristle hatefully. _You can't say that,_ he protested furiously. _I suspected him_! _I knew it was…_

Slifer tilted her head further, then turned away from him and snorted loudly. _It does not matter. It is over and done with. You have survived the ordeal, whether or not Ra should have intervened as she did._

Yugi bristled. _You intervened in the woods when the hellhounds attacked_!

 _I am well aware._ She narrowed her eyes. _But Marik was a lycanthrope, not a hellhound. In that respect, she should not have intervened._

 _Obelisk fought Yami to save me._

Slifer shook her head. _It does not matter, I suppose. I do not care to discuss this any longer. The point is that, should you wish for answers, you should perhaps think to rephrase your inquiry and rethink how it is that you wish to ask me._

Yugi bristled for a moment longer, then he forced himself to relax. He turned his face away, shame burning its way through his insides. Then, uncomfortably, looking at her with a sidelong glance, he murmured, _Fine. I want to know if there is something wrong with me._ The she-wolf stiffened now, bristling slightly and peering at him in mild puzzlement. Yugi drew in a deeper breath, turning away and pricking his ears forward. _I know that I would never have been able to change or force the lycanthropy out of dormancy if Yami hadn't bitten me. So I have to wonder if maybe there's something wrong with me in that aspect. Because, as Atem, I understand that I should be able to get his attention far better than I can right now, yes_? _I mean, truthfully, shouldn't he be willing to listen to me even when he is sick as he is_?

The she-wolf blinked again. Then she pricked her ears and bristled faintly before shaking it off. _You think that his biting you and your bloodline being dormant has caused you to become more alike a Full-Blood than a Pure-Blood, yes_? she stated simply. She flicked her ears and considered him with colder eyes. Then she tilted her head, watching him, and bristled faintly before slowly turning away to the tree trunk. _You think that that is what is going on._

Yugi bristled and glared at her, the shame growing furiously in his guts. _Yeah_ , he finally snapped at her. _I want to know if maybe that's what's going on. I don't get it if it's not. He should be listening to me, right_? _He should be listening to me. It shouldn't be so hard just to get him to pay me some attention_!

 _You are overreacting, Yugi,_ she snorted disdainfully. _He may have your heart, but that does not mean that you hold his. If you are truly so intent upon having his attention, perhaps you should do something to truly earn it. You do not seem to understand that perhaps his dismissal of you is not meant to be hurtful but rather that he has no reason to do more than pay you attention for the benefit of food or water._

Yugi bore his teeth, snarling. But the she-wolf simply wrinkled her nose and shook her head.

 _But you are correct. You may be Atem, but that does not entirely mean that you are as a Pure-Blood is meant to be,_ she stated simply, softly. She looked away after a moment and sighed loudly before facing him again with darkened golden eyes. _Your entire bloodline has been incredibly fractured in the manner of being able to change. It is possible that, perhaps even_ with _the addition of Yami's saliva, you are, in fact, a Full-Blood despite your being a descendant of Ra._

Yugi felt his heart sink. _So, if Marik had killed me…_?

Slifer tilted her head and considered him for a long moment. Then she nodded slowly and turned away. _That would be why Ra interfered. None of us know for certain if you will come back from death should you be harmed to that extent._

He bristled and looked away, unable to face her any longer. His eyes were wide as they stared down at the snow and his fur rose in a shudder as he swallowed hard and his heart lurched in his chest. She had finally said it. _That_ was why Obelisk had come to save him in the labs. It was why Morrigan had come to help him to escape the hunter. It was why Slifer had lured them into the tunnels. It was why Ra had given him the strength to fight Marik.

The blow of his suspicions being correct made him want to sob.

 _That is not to say that we are certain your demise would be the end of you. It is that we are uncertain that you would come back that keeps us from feeling safe to leave each event to its own unfolding as it was originally decided we would. But then we also failed to consider that you had come from the humans and so your goals and priorities would be very different from those of what we all assumed. And so we had to find a way to counteract this as well. And so we came upon agreement to protect you when we felt that you could not do it yourself._

 _That honestly doesn't make me feel any better._ He hesitated and then turned to her, unnerved. _But you're not going to always be there to help me as it is. I know that. You guys aren't going to help me in this war. You might play around at keeping the pack content enough to follow me but you aren't going to fight with us. You aren't going to fight in this war. It's not yours._

Slifer shook her head slowly. _You are correct. We shall not aid either side within this war._ She was silent for a long minute or two, then pricked her ears and considered him more pointedly. When she craned her neck and ran her tongue over his forehead, he bristled in surprise at the comfort she offered. _It is not our war. Our time is not within the present, as you have pointed out before. You are the present and the future and we are the past. The truth of it is that the past and present merging now as it is will end soon enough._

 _How soon_?

The she-wolf shook her head. _I do not predict the future. And Ra and Obelisk do not know it either. Perhaps Lupa and Fenrir might. But we are lesser than them. And the future is not meant to be for our eyes, let alone for our tongues to speak of._ She fell silent again. _But I believe that you will be prepared when it comes to happen._

Yugi bristled slightly. _Will either of us make it out of there alive_?

Slifer stared at him for the longest time, a breath which never seemed to cease within his lungs. Then she turned away and tilted her head, eyes on the forest beyond his shoulders. _I do not have knowledge of this event, Yugi. I do not know enough to tell you whether you or Yami will survive. The most I can tell you now is that you should learn to protect yourself as much as you can. And perhaps that you should bond with the pack more than you have now. Their discontent is rising. They want to know why it is that you and Yami have not been within the camp or anywhere near them for days._

It made him bristle as he looked at her again. _You're the goddess of the dead. You can see our lifespans. I know you can. You have to know more than what you're saying right now._

She shook her head. _If I had any knowledge of whether you or he might survive that war, do you think that I would have intervened nearly as many times as I have_? _I would have left you to survive on your own had I any idea whether the two of you might live through these events and trials. But I must tell you that I might see lifespans, but yours and Yami's are not particularly visible to me. I can see each of the other wolves' but I cannot see either of yours._

Yugi flicked an ear, a new thought crossing his mind as he bristled faintly. Then he swallowed hard and moved to take a seat as well, feeling almost winded. If she could not see Yami's lifespan, was it because he had bitten Yugi or because she had lied to him in saying that he was not a Pure-Blood? He remembered her saying at one point before that she had been able to see every moment in his life as it had happened. The future was beyond her in that case. And perhaps she did not see the events to come, nor did any of her siblings. It was possible that none of them saw and knew the things to come to happen…

But then, as the thought left him, his stomach knotted and he turned back to her more pointedly. _How long is Yusei's lifespan_? he demanded, his voice cracking faintly as his fur rose with a bristle. He felt sick for a moment as he stared at the she-wolf. She did nothing more than tilt her head and consider him curiously. _Do you think that he'll survive the war or do you think he won't_?

The goddess blinked and shook her head slowly. _You almost seem to care for him as much as you do Yami,_ she teased, but when she was met with a cold stare, she shook her head and pricked her ears forward. _I will say that his lifespan is longer than that of many of the others around him. But I do not know what it is that might end his life nor what exact day it might come to pass._

Yugi frowned. _What good are you_? he grumbled, but it was good-natured for the most part. He shifted his weight and took a seat more comfortably before considering her pointedly. _How is the pack_?

 _Discontent and divided,_ the she-wolf said dismissively. _The fact is that they have not properly met you and it upsets many of them. The newer packs and the older ones are getting along for the most part, however. Aki is not happy with the development. She's rather upset with every decision you've made so far, especially concerning them._

 _Then she can stay upset,_ Yugi scoffed. _I don't need to run my decisions by her for any reason. She is not my beta. Yami is._

 _Yes, and you upset many of them even further with that decision._ She was quiet for a moment. _Especially now that he has shown his face again only to run a moment or two later. They are very discontent with this. Aki is not the only one who finds fault with this decision or your logic in allowing him to do these things._

Yugi would have rolled his eyes had he been human. Instead now he simply sniffed. _And you can see how concerned I am right now, right_? _Yeah_? _I don't really care all that much, honestly. It doesn't make any sense for me to be upset about this. It's stupid, Slifer._

The she-wolf shrugged as if she could not find it within herself to care as it was. _I am simply telling you what it is that has begun to happen. She is showing her discontent very clearly among the pack now and I do not know what might come about that later as it is. I simply mean to say that you should watch yourself and anything to come about from her declarations of how unworthy you and Yami both are._

Yugi snorted loudly. _Well, thanks for that. But I do not see that it will be too terrible an issue._ He hesitated, however, as he thought of just how badly it had turned out with Marik. But Marik had been rather bold in his attempts to kill him and Yugi could not picture Aki taking the same momentum in order to dispatch him. Despite her more arrogant nature, she had done well to simply step aside and allow him whatever it was that he wished to do at the moment in question. She was nasty when it came to her bark but her bite seemed to be rather lacking.

 _I would not underestimate a scorned female._

He thought for a moment of the phrase that "hell has no fury like a woman scorned" and it made him bristle before he shrugged it off. _I don't think I'm underestimating her just yet,_ he said quietly, trying to completely push away the nerves that came through him. _I think for right now she's fine and won't lash out for the moment. I think it would take a bit more for her to truly turn on me._

Slifer flicked her ear. _For your sake, I hope you are correct._

* * *

"What's the use of being Atem if I'm not even immortal?" Yugi hissed at the wolf in front of him. The canine was half-asleep, eyes closed, but the moment the words escaped the small teen's mouth, he blinked them open and raised his head. His eyes narrowed briefly before he wrinkled his lips back slightly. It was clear that he was not comfortable in the slightest. And Yugi found it almost amusing to see the surprise on his face. He looked too sleepy to be completely alert in any manner. "If I'm not immortal, I'm not coming back when I get killed. Do you get that, aibou? I don't get it. I thought between you biting me and Ra's DNA I'd be immortal. But even Slifer admits that she doesn't know."

Yami blinked up at him, then moved slowly to sit up. His back cracked when he did so and Yugi flinched at the sound, his anger immediately forgotten. The canine flicked an ear and faced him with slightly darkened eyes. He blinked up at him again, then opened his jaws into a wide yawn. His eyes flickered about as he looked over his shoulder and turned back. He seemed almost surprise that Yugi might even consider such a tone with him. Or that Yugi was even paying him such intense attention.

The small teen wondered at this possibility. He'd paid him attention like this before. He'd always paid him this much attention from what he could remember. He could not truly think of a time that he had not done so. And the thought made his skin crawl for a brief moment. Yami appeared exhausted more than anything, as if his sleep had been rather erratic than anything else.

Yugi had woken him to feed him, to give him goat's milk and then later cold water. He'd drugged him so that Yami would fall asleep again. And then he'd taken off to find out about his bloodline, about whether the gods themselves had thought to examine his weaknesses before. It exhausted him to even consider it for that brief moment. And so he forced himself not to consider it any longer. He opened his mouth to speak, but the wolf simply yawned again, moving to curl up as he had before.

"Hey, get up," Yugi muttered. The wolf blinked at him lazily from the corner of his eye. He did not seem to care for his words in the slightest. The canine watched him sharply for a long moment. The small teen dusted himself off and frowned. "I need you to get up, aibou. I'm taking you for a walk. You need to get up this time. Or I'll drag you outside by your scruff if I have to."

Yami blinked up at him, then flattened his ears against his head. Yugi flipped his hand over to show his palm and gestured for him to get up. The wolf blinked at him cautiously for a moment, ears pricking forward. They considered each other for a moment longer, then finally the canine shifted his weight and pulled himself to a sitting position once more. He shook himself out when he finally got to his feet again and then tipped his muzzle towards him.

"Good. Now stay there."

Yami did nothing more than yawn and move to stretch himself. He smacked his jaws together after a moment, flashing his tongue over his nose. Then he pricked his ears forward, flattened them against his head, and turned away from him pointedly. The small teen returned a few minutes later, the leash and collar in his hands. He clicked the buckle apart and was relieved when the canine did not seem to respond to the sound as he had before.

But, as he approached him, the wolf flicked his ears and wrinkled his lips back. But it did not seem to be aggressive by any means. As Yugi knelt in front of him and reached beneath his jaws to settle the collar against his neck, the wolf drew his lips back further. He showed bright white teeth and plum-pink gums. His nose wrinkled back slightly and Yugi thought for a moment it looked as if he were trying to smile at him. The thought made him snicker as he clicked the collar in place and tightened it a small degree. When he slipped his fingers beneath the nylon and adjusted it again, the wolf kept his lips drawn back and his eyes on the ground beyond Yugi's shoulder.

He tightened it further, then slipped his fingers beneath until he could only do so with two. When Yami grew healthier, he knew he'd have to loosen it rather drastically. The wolf hardly seemed to have half of the muscles he had before. And he was sure that when it happened, he would be too large for the collar as it was. It hadn't fit Valon either, he remembered…

He clicked the leash to the collar and stood up, admiring his handiwork. Yami's teeth were covered by his lips again in an instant. But he still did not look aggressive in any manner. He looked almost as if he were simply facing Yugi in utmost bewilderment now. "See? I wasn't going to hurt you."

The wolf blinked at him almost as if he were stupid. Then he shook himself out. The jingling of the collar and the leash was like a windchime and the small teen blinked in surprise. He had forgotten that they would make any noise when he did that. And it surprised him to see that it failed to even faze the other in any manner. Yami looked as if he were used to such a thing and had never been without it in the first place.

The thought made his stomach churn for a moment. He tilted his head and watched the canine for a long minute. Then he grimaced slightly and shook his head. Perhaps Yami remembered it from when he'd had him chained to the tie-out in that little cavern. The thought made him want to vomit, bile racing along the path of his throat for a brief moment.

Then he forced himself to shrug it away and turn back to the wolf. But Yami was not paying him attention in the slightest. He had taken a seat on the carpet and did not look as if he might get to his paws again anytime soon. The canine blinked and looked up at him again when Yugi considered him for a long moment.

"Okay, you ready to go for a walk, aibou?"

The wolf did not so much as blink at him. Instead he opened his jaws into a wide gaping yawn and did not move to get up. The small teen rolled his eyes and turned away from him to lead the way out the door. But an instant resistance met him. He blinked and turned around with wide, confused eyes. The canine did not so much as blink at him before yawning again. And Yugi was flustered as his cheeks heated.

The wolf had not even slightly budged.

He wrapped the leash around his hand and pulled. Yami stared at him. His neck jerked, craning from the force. His eyes grew narrow and his lips curled back. But he did not move in any manner. He was not forced forward by the momentum. And Yugi tugged harder. This time Yami budged. His paws hit the carpet and his shoulders and head were pulled forward from the force. The wolf snarled loudly, almost like thunder rolling or fire crackling. And then he pricked his ears forward and snapped his teeth at the air.

Yugi rolled his eyes. "Come on, get up. We need to get a move on," he snapped at him. "I'm going to take you outside. You're going to walk with me on a leash. And then we're going to spend some time having fun and ignoring each other, _okay_?"

The canine flicked his ears and drew his lips back to show his sharp teeth once more. His fur rose along his tail as he snarled again. And then he moved to stand. Yugi tugged just as the wolf ducked his head and pulled back. The instant reaction was that the wolf was forced forward. He snarled and bit at the air again. And the small teen pulled harder.

But then he lowered his head again, snarled, and thrashed his muzzle about. Yugi watched, stunned by the display. Yami looked almost as if he were tearing a chunk of meat from a carcass. His teeth were brilliant white. His eyes were flashing hideously. His mouth had chomped shut seconds before. And then he backed up a step. And the collar caught along his cheeks. It did not go further for a moment. It took only a simple step back once more.

And then the nylon slipped right over his head.

Yugi had since grown still in his desire to watch him move about as he was. But then the canine was staring at the small teen with dark red eyes. He did not seem to be angry in even the slightest. Instead he looked almost amused as he simply flicked his tongue over his nose and tilted his head. Then he took a seat comfortably and craned his neck forward to sniff at the air in front of him.

"Shit."

Yami looked back at him as if he were sneering. He seemed more amused than anything any longer. It seemed almost as if he were laughing rather than angry. And his eyes were locked on Yugi once more. He looked almost peaceful in his seated position as they peered at one another. His ears were pricked forward, his head was tipped slightly to the side, his eyes were half-closed. He looked _incredibly_ pleased with himself.

" _Seriously_?" he muttered in annoyance. The wolf flicked an ear and refused to look at him in any other manner. He opened his jaws again, yawning loudly, and then shook himself out again. The canine shifted his weight and raised and lowered his paws almost as if he were shuffling them. Then he stared at Yugi blankly once more, head tilted, and wrinkled his nose back to show his teeth where it slightly pulled upwards along his teeth. The wolf blinked again and yawned before he shook himself out again. "Come on, Yami. Let's get a walk, okay? You need to get up and come over here so that we can get you a little bit of exercise. I need to see how long you can move around before you get tired."

The wolf considered him again, yawned, and then turned away with a flick of his ears once more. He blinked and sniffed at the air, wrinkling his nose again, and shifted his weight once more. The fur along his tail rose into a bristle again. He blinked lazily and his head tilted further before he finally seemed to rise to his feet again. He looked exhausted as he shook himself out once more and came forward. But there was something odd in the way he stared back at him, eyes sharp and glowing for a brief second. He thought it looked almost as if the canine were searching for something.

Yugi could see his reflection within his eyes again and it made him nervous. But he felt sick as the canine continued forward. It was horrifying the way his eyes seemed to grow darker and darker, as if his pupils were perhaps expanding to swallow away at his irises. The small teen bristled, shoulders rising. But Yami still failed to seem upset in any way. And, when he stopped in front of him, he merely tipped his muzzle towards him in question. It was almost as if he were truly asking Yugi to pay him attention in some manner that he did not know how.

And he could see his own discomfort in his eyes, the way his gaze had grown wider and he felt almost sick. Yugi shivered and reached down to grab at his shirt, wrapping it firmly around in his palm for a moment. Then he lowered his eyes and huffed. "Stop looking at me like that," he grumbled.

But something inside of him wondered if Yami were even capable of controlling such a thing as it was. The canine blinked up at him, coming to an absolute stop a few feet away. And Yugi noticed, with a sense of bewilderment, just how high his muzzle was pointed. It was not towards his face or his torso, but it did not seem to be pointed towards his neck or shoulders either.

It was surprising to him at the moment as realization came over him. It was almost cruel to think that perhaps Yami was staring at his chest, slightly towards his left. It was clear to the small teen that he was pointed his nose towards his heart. He did not know if it was in cruel irony or if perhaps Yami were so hungry he was ready to leap at him and try to bite into his chest. He imagined that the black wolf was efficient in his attack had he decided to do such a thing. He had a feeling that the wolf could have easily eaten his way through his chest and devoured the organ if he'd like.

The heart was incredibly healthy, after all. He knew that. Any of the organs that Yami could get his teeth on would do him well. The thought made his stomach churn for a brief moment and he wondered if perhaps he should have tried to find a shop of some kind in order to get an organ. Perhaps some kidneys or a liver, the heart or the brain might do him well. Yugi could consider that the wolf might recover faster by way of eating those organs. He wondered if perhaps he should hunt and bring him out to eat at some point. He could do that late at night, bring Yami out to eat some of the carcass he'd have to drag home. The only problem with this idea was that he would have to pay attention to anyone finding out. And he'd have to keep his eyes on Yami that entire time.

But Yugi wondered at this. He did not know whether it was something that would do more good than bad at the end of the day. If he were to get caught covered in blood or anything of that nature, Yugi could easily wind up in trouble. His neighbors were as nosy as ever, waiting and watching and looking to see him mess up so that they could report it to his mother. He remembered that. Because he'd seen them peeking out of their windows in his direction more than once. He was just relieved that Mazaki had not told them about his proposal that Yugi was involved in the arson. He was sure he would never been free of their watchful, nosy eyes had they found out. But, thank the gods that Yami looked so alike him at a distance, or they might have realized there was someone else there as well.

It was shocking to him to even consider that it was pure blind luck and random genetics to keep them safe at this rate. It was frustrating to him. His neighbors were supposed to be freelance travelers rather than nosy and annoying like they were. He hated them for their curiosity as he looked over at the wolf again. He wondered what would have happened had he and Yami ever done anything. He had a feeling they would have watched them, then called his mom to make sure that she knew as well.

He rolled his eyes at the thought, both spiteful and ashamed of the idea altogether.

Then he unsnapped the buckle of the collar and moved to put it on the wolf again. Yami peeled his lips back to show his teeth again, the anxious action nearly making Yugi laugh. He truly _did_ appear to be smiling at him in some strange way. It was shocking to see it. He looked as if he were unsure of what more to do with Yugi being so close to such a vital spot on his body. But he was not snarling and he still remained calm besides his expression. There was no tension and he was not aggressive. It was a surprising thought to think that the wolf was so nervous that he could not stop himself from showing his teeth.

He snapped the buckle in place again and lifted the handle of the leash, turning to lead the way to the staircase. It was bewildering to him as the wolf followed silently beyond the clicking of his nails behind him. The canine looked tired more than anything as they made their way downstairs. And Yugi wondered if perhaps he should have carried him instead. But the wolf stopped at the end of the staircase, near where the door rested, took a seat for a moment to breathe in deeply through his nose, and finally got up again a minute or so later.

The walk was a long and slow process. Yugi had not expected as good a result as this to begin with, surprised that Yami even attempted to keep pace with him as it was. It made him feel somewhat sick to lead him along as he did. It was enough to make his stomach knot as he licked his lips and looked over his shoulder at the canine. The wolf peered back at him almost lazily, studying him for a brief moment. And then Yugi watched him as he sniffed curiously at a couple of snow-laden branches and turned away again.

"If you were healthier, I bet you'd be able to mark on it, you know?" he teased. But the wolf hardly seemed to pay him any attention. Throughout the walk, Yami had veered off in other directions, straining at the end of the leash and then panting when he could not get any further. Thankfully the canine had not so much as looked towards the street. He had simply hovered near the edges of the yard, sniffing and sometimes licking at the snow.

Yugi could not tell if this was because he smelled something particularly interesting or if it was because he was tired and his temperature too high. They had been forced to take frequent breaks, even if they had only truly taken the pathway from the front of the house to the back. The canine had been forced to stop every few paces. Every now and then he would tremble as if he were on the verge of collapsing. Other times he would pant with his eyes half-closed. Others he simply stood there, wheezing for air. Each time made Yugi nervous, his heart hammering from where it had lodged itself within his throat.

"You okay, aibou?" he whispered now, curious. The canine was standing at the edge of those bushes, sniffing again. But every now and then he'd turn his face towards the snow beneath, sniffing and then shivering. Yugi wondered if perhaps he would need to get him inside soon. He could turn the heat on again, then heat up his goat's milk and warm a bottle of water to let him lay on it when he wrapped it in a towel or blanket. Then he could watch him in the time that it would take for him to raise his body temperature again.

The wolf shook himself out after a moment, then moved forward a few steps. But this time he did not come any closer. He lowered his head and looked up at him, breathing heavily. The small teen felt sick now, watching the canine with wide eyes. Yami did not look as if he might collapse, but Yugi was dizzy as they looked at each other. He wondered if perhaps the wolf might vomit. He was shaking slightly, his tongue flicking over his muzzle a couple of times.

"Let's go back inside, okay?"

The wolf made no move to acknowledge he might have heard him. He looked too tired to so much as raise his head any longer. And so Yugi came forward and reached down to touch him. Yami still did not respond to him, shivering and panting now.

He moved to his side, then crouched and looped his arms beneath his belly. He straightened with the wolf in his arms. And Yami huffed a breath, stunned by the movement. He blinked and licked his nose again, then shivered harder within his grip.

"Stay still for me," Yugi muttered softly. And he rubbed along his shoulder and ribcage comfortably for a moment before making his way into the house again. The wolf licked at his nose again, raising his head slightly and looking at him with wide eyes. Yugi smiled slightly as he closed the door behind them. "See? You're okay. Now let's get you up the stairs and then I'll get you something warm to drink."

* * *

Yami was asleep in the living room again. He'd finished off two bowls of warm goat's milk, had let him heat a blanket and wrap it around him, and had since been passed out. The wolf was fast asleep and did not so much as twitch. He had been oddly still the entire time, a reality of which made Yugi feel almost fearful that the canine had passed away in his sleep. But he'd come to his face, putting his hand in front of it to see that he was still breathing. The canine had remained fast asleep throughout and Yugi had since retired to the kitchen to work on his homework.

The small teen moved to tip his chair back and pressed his shoes against the legs of the table, pushing back slightly. He flipped the pencil in his fingers after a long moment, then sighed and let the chair slip back into place as he leaned forward. He was exhausted as he tilted his head and flipped the pencil again. He was tired when he tilted his head and narrowed his eyes.

The lycanthrope readied his pencil to write an answer, but his thoughts were frantic and he could not keep his attention there. He wondered if perhaps the canine in the living room were still fast asleep. The last time he had checked he had been. But some part of him was unnerved. It had been a few minutes ago that he had checked on him. But he could not stop himself from thinking that perhaps something was wrong in some way, shape or form. And it made him bristle to consider such a thing.

"Fuck," he muttered under his breath, moving to get up. And then he jerked in his seat and nearly fell backwards. He barely caught himself by the edge of the table, eyes wide and mouth opening and closing as his mouth grew dry. His heart was in his throat as he turned to face the shape that had appeared in the corner of his eye. His mind was spinning for a brief moment and he shook himself off as he looked at the other in the room.

Yami was standing at the doorway. He was yawning and blinking and looked tired more than he did unsteady. And, when he slowly stepped forward, the wolf shook himself out as if to steady himself. The canine moved forward to stand a few feet away from him. His eyes were groggy but darker than usual. They looked black again, as if his pupils had swallowed away the red of his irises once more.

Yugi blinked and swallowed hard, blinking as he considered the wolf in front of him. The lupine was mere feet away, yawning as he moved to take a seat. He sat there, peering at him now. His ears flicked from one side to the other for a few moments. The canine shook himself out and watched the small teen once more. Yugi stared at him, confused and curious as the seconds passed.

"What are you doing up?" he muttered. But he had a feeling that, even if Yami _could_ have spoken, he would not have bothered to open his mouth to answer him. The red eyes peered at him rather blankly and Yugi reached up to touch at his choker for a moment. "I thought you would have been asleep longer."

He wondered if perhaps the wolf were curious as to the movements. But he did not lower his eyes and Yugi was all too aware of just how powerful the lycanthrope's eyes were. So he shrugged it off and drew in a deep breath.

The wolf tilted his head and, as Yugi got to his feet, Yami did the same. He backed up when Yugi stepped forward and the two of them stared at each other, unblinking. The tension was visible in Yugi, but it was not quite the same in Yami. The wolf seemed curious more than anything, bewildered and surprised by it all. The canine blinked and tilted his head again, and Yugi offered him a small smile.

But the expression felt gross on his mouth, as if perhaps his lips were pulled too thin. He wondered at the sensation, but forced it away after a moment. It was not as important as the many various thoughts that had been crossing his mind before then. And now the canine was watching him once more, in a far more pointed manner than Yugi truly cared to acknowledge.

And he could not help but stare back. His stomach was churning, painful and anxious. His eyes had grown wide and his mouth felt dry as he tried to think straight for a moment. Those red eyes were staring back at him, almost as if the world had been pushed away into nothingness beyond the focus of Yugi's face as it was. The sight of the wolf peering at him was enough to make him feel flustered. But it was the canine's eyes which kept him so incredibly enamored. His heart was in his throat as they looked at one another.

They were mirror-like again, and his reflection was gray and black against those dark red eyes. And, now, as he stared at the wolf, realization came through him. It was enough to crash through him, his stomach knotting frantically with the truth of it. His mouth was dry and pasty, almost to the point of sticking to his tongue like blood caking the muscle there. The canine did not blink as they stared at one another and Yugi felt dizzy as they considered each other once more. The wolf was so incredibly thin that the fact that he held his attention so fully was almost stunning to him to begin with. It was enough to make him feel almost sick to consider as it was.

It was distressing.

His pupils were so dark that Yugi almost felt that the world was one huge pool of dirty water. It was shadowed and gray and distant. And Yugi wondered if the wolf was once again reflecting his emotional state back at him. It was enough to make the small teen feel dizzy and sick to consider. It would explain why it was that he got up only a few times, why he faced him in that manner at such rather random intervals.

It made sense to him now.

It explained why it was that Yami would get up when he was stressed out.

It explained why it was that the wolf would come to his side and wander off soon after.

It was all abrupt in its clarity now.

Everything was clear to him now, something that he had not considered before then.

Yami had come to his side those various times when he had been upset, when he was struggling his hardest to try to face up to something that was far too overwhelming to consider otherwise. And now he understood something else that he had not considered before then. The truth of it was that those moments he'd become overwhelmed, Yami had come to his side. But when he'd pushed them away, the wolf had then turned his back on him and wandered off as if he had never come to see him in the first place.

In his rather feral state, Yami was not the one that Yugi could hide from. He was incapable of doing such a thing. He could not suppress all of his emotions fast enough to keep the wolf from noticing. And he realized that the wolf understood these emotions. And he would come to his side only when it was at the forefront of Yugi's mind. He could not tell if it was because Yami was attempting to offer him support to help him grow calm or if perhaps he meant to simply watch him. It was bewildering to him to consider. The wolf was unable to speak to him and so he could not tell him in any way _what_ it was that he was attempting to do.

And Yugi was not able to understand beyond this. The reality of it was exhausting to him for the moment. And he felt as if he might vomit at the realization of it all. He reached up to scratch lightly at the side of his neck, uncomfortable as he considered it.

But he knew that there was no possibility that he could ignore the wolf or trick him in any manner. The canine did not accept it when Yugi would push away his emotions. He would then leave him to do as he wanted. He would not pay him more attention than absolutely necessary from there. And Yugi knew that, should he have tried to put on a brave face in front of the canine, Yami would simply turn away from him. He was not interested in him in any manner when he did such a thing. His eyes were too keen. He knew Yugi too well. He could sense his emotional states and read him through pheromones themselves as well.

And Yami did not care to allow him to suppress these emotional states. He wanted Yugi to feel what it was that he was trying to suppress. He wanted to make him feel those emotions no matter what. He wanted him to stop hiding away like he normally did.

Yugi drew in a deep breath, feeling almost sick to his stomach. His mouth was dry as he watched the canine in front of him. The wolf was simply staring at him and his eyes were swirling with the emotions that Yugi had been trying to push aside mere minutes before. And so the small teen grimaced as he considered the canine in front of him. His eyes were burning embers and shards of gleaming rubies, something which made his heart simply ache within his chest.

Yugi turned away after a moment, pursing his lips. And turned away to make his way towards his room door again. There was a steady clicking noise behind him which made him pause. The small teen blinked and slowly turned his head and considered the canine there. The wolf was staring up at him with dark red eyes, tail wagging only slightly. It was bewildering to him for a moment, but it made him smile regardless.

It was surprising when he turned to face him completely. Yami dropped onto his front legs, bowing in front of him and wagging his tail some more. His ears twitched every which way when Yugi did not move. And slowly but surely the canine moved to stand again. His eyes narrowed faintly and his ears pricked forward. Yugi took a step forward, a few small paces in which Yami mirrored him. The canine backed up in time with him, tail lowered once more and eyes locked on his form. His nose was tipped towards Yugi more pointedly now.

Yugi smiled in amusement, shaking his head slightly and raising his brow curiously.

Yami was simply keeping time with him. He was not going to approach him nor was he going to let Yugi do the same. Perhaps he was even mildly offended by the lack of play that Yugi had initiated. But the small teen doubted it as he shook his head in amusement.

But he wondered if perhaps Yami's mentality was splintered, if it was feral enough that he was simply looking up at Yugi as if he were his alpha. He remembered briefly that the lycanthrope had formerly refused to so much as eat before him. The canine in front of him was far more wolf than he was human, far less than he had been even before then. It was easy for Yami to fall into the respective role of a beta before a wolf that was perhaps more powerful than him. It did not help that they were within what Yami would see and understand only to be Yugi's territory.

The thought was enough to fray his former frantic ideas. And so the canine blinked and turned away from him abruptly. He took off into the living room again and Yugi came around the corner in time to see him sniff at his metal bowls and then plop down on his pillow and blanket. The lupine yawned and curled up without a second look.

It was odd to watch him now.

Yami had had every opportunity in order to fight them. He could have taken advantage of each time they turned their back towards him. He could have beaten them into submission, could have killed them at any second. The wolf was capable of eating them if he only wished to do so. But Yami seemed unlikely to even consider for a moment disrupting his lazy pattern of daily life now. He did not seem interested at all in the idea of attacking or showing them true aggression.

"You know, when you actually get your fur grown out again, you'll look a lot better," Yugi teased. The wolf blinked, flicking his ears, and then huffed loudly and lay his chin on his paws. He glared at him from his dark red almond-shaped eyes. And the small teen snickered as he stepped forward and took a seat on the armrest of the lounge chair his grandfather so often sat in. He pressed back until he was against the headrest and put his hands in his lap.

"You're doing a lot better, though, right?"

The wolf pricked his ears towards him, considering him with clear puzzlement upon his features. The canine tilted his head and watched him for a moment. And then he flexed his paws and wiggled his toes slightly to show his long claws. He yawned and crossed his paws at the wrists, laying his chin on them again. His ears flicked once more and his tail twitched briefly before he closed his eyes.

"I have to get ready for school," the small teen muttered, getting up again and dusting himself off. He looked at Yami for a moment. He wanted to run his fingers over the wolf's ears and along his cheeks but he did not want the wolf to react in a negative way. And so he simply turned away and headed for his room again. He grabbed his bag and the notebooks he'd been studying. And, as he packed them away into the backpack, he found himself feeling sick to his stomach.

Yugi could not stop his racing thoughts again. He couldn't stop thinking about it. Slifer had truly said it. She'd actually admitted that none of them knew for sure if he was capable of coming back from the dead as he should have been. She had truly told him that there was a possibility he would not come back, that they had all begun to help him for fear of that very thing…

He zipped the bag up, then hesitated. Had he just heard…?

Yugi looked over his shoulder with a raised brow. The canine was there again, head tilted and eyes wide. He was staring at him with a bright red gaze which made the small teen smile faintly. But he was surprised now, seeing that the wolf was so incredibly close to him. The canine was mere feet away from him, his ears flicking back and forth. Yami's head was tipped upward, his massive jaw pointed towards his heart once more, and Yugi found himself shuddering as he faced him.

And then he wondered at something he had not considered before.

Was it possible that the werewolves were so simply at ease with each other most often because they communicated in a different manner? None of the wolves had to struggle to understand each other verbally or mentally in the manner of talking to one another. They had never once turned away from each other with the words "I don't understand what you're saying at all". He himself had been able to understand what it was that Echo and Nistro had been saying, as the other wolf had spoken to him in a thick accent that he knew was not American as the she-wolf's had been. But there was no language barrier of any kind between them all…

He wondered at the idea of how it might be that the wolves themselves in the wild chose their alphas. He had not often truly heard of wolves fighting for the rank unless it was an outsider coming to the pack with that sole purpose. But he also understood that the phrase "alpha wolf" was more archaic than anything. It did not mean much in the grand scheme of things. Most alphas were simply a male and female that had mated and thus begun to breed a family together. It was these two who had the privilege of procreation and they often were not fought for this rank, as many of the wolves would simply drift when they were old enough. There were not often chances for the wolves to begin to fight within their ranks like that. Most often it was actually character which made the pack follow an alpha as it was, rather than simply a wolf which fought and killed in order to keep its rank.

But Yugi noticed, surprised, that with Yami's head tipped like it was, his eyes and nose were focused on his heart. And his throat was exposed just enough to make it seem almost as if he were giving acknowledgment to him that he was more powerful than he was. But Yugi also noted that in that moment their hearts were actually parallel to each other now as well, that the line of them would have run right alongside each other.


	67. The River

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Hopefully biweekly**

 **Chapter Warnings: MILD Bloodshed, Hunting**

 **So the Anui people of Hokkaido DID believe that the humans came from wolves. They worshipped them as guardians and left them offerings at times before they would go to gather that year's harvest. They believed that the wolves dictated whether there would be a good harvest or anything like that. They were also considered gods and that's why their Japanese name is Ookami/Okami as Kami is Japanese for "god".**

 **Yugi makes a reference to Black Shuck this chapter. He's a ghostly black dog that's considered a hellhound. There's a lot of legends surrounding him, but his most famous is when he appeared in a church as it was being struck by lightning and killed and burned several people while howling and snarling. That was in 1577 in Bungay. He's said to appear in Suffolk and Norfolk and occasionally he can be heard dragging chains or seen just walking. His eyes can be gold, red or green.**

Chapter LXVII: The River

 _Work Log Entry LX: June, 2006_

 _June 16_

 _Atem seems to be exhausted by the exams we have performed on him today._

 _And he does not seem to be recovering now._

 _June 26_

 _The boss has decided to spend time with Atem again._

 _No one is sure what is going on._

 _But he came back from the cage with a syringe of blood._

 _I know it was Atem's because when I checked on him he had a bright red mark on his arm inside of his elbow._

 _June 29_

 _Atem does not seem ill._

 _But I cannot determine what would cause the boss to draw blood from him._

 _He does not do so with the other wolves…_

"Come on, Yami."

Yugi looked up from where he'd entered the kitchen. He put the backpack aside on the kitchen seat he'd sat in the day before. The small teen shook his head and dug through his backpack for a moment to look everything over. The words were repeated as he looked around lazily and he frowned as he turned his head to look over his shoulder and face the living room. The wolf was seated on the couch, watching his mother with pricked ears and a tilted head. He was staring at her with something of a bored expression rather than a curious one. But he was not snarling and he did not seem even remotely aggressive at the moment.

That was an improvement from his usual attitude in his mental state now.

The small teen smiled in amusement and made his way towards the living room to see the wolf as well. "Yami," he said loudly, making a hand movement for the canine to get up and come to his side. Yami flicked his ears and looked first at his mother, eyeing her as if he thought she might reach for him. He hesitated, standing on the end of the couch and considering. For a moment he didn't move. Then he jumped off the cushion and landed on the carpet with a slow, halting wag of his tail. He looked back at Kasumi for a moment, wagging his tail a little more, and then turned to Yugi again.

He turned back to his mom. "I finally got him to listen to me," he murmured, offering her a slightly strained smile. Because he knew she was about to say what he'd been dreading since their conversation the night before. He had been hopeful that perhaps his mother was going to decide against it instead. "I'm going to go ahead and take him for a walk in a few minutes."

He hoped that she would take the opening that he'd supplied her.

And he was more thankful than he could put into words when she did.

"I already contacted Arthur about going there in a couple of hours," she said softly, considering his expression for a moment. When he simply nodded, she seemed to relax. The acceptance was not something she'd been expecting, if the expression on her face was anything to go by. Yugi offered her a small smile, one that he hoped was more genuine than the one he'd given her minutes before. "I told him I'd be staying there for a few days. It might be a week, but I don't expect to be gone longer than that."

Her blue eyes fell on Yami. Yugi lowered his gaze as well. The wolf was simply sitting between them, thin and frail but with pricked ears and a muzzle pointed at the handle of a cabinet door. Yugi smiled faintly in amusement, then shrugged it off and shook his head slightly.

"Okay," he said, turning back to her. She was still looking at Yami, however, as if surprised by his presence there. It was odd to see her expression, the way she peered at him so curiously. "That's fine. Do you want me to walk you over there? Arthur can't feel comfortable driving in this weather…"

His mom blinked in surprise, then frowned slightly as she considered him. "I wasn't going to ask him to drive, no. I figured that he wouldn't want to deal with the weather at all, especially since it's going to snow again soon enough." She hesitated. "But I don't want you to feel like you need to walk me over there when you need to take care of him…"

Yugi shook his head. "He can come with us. It'll just be a…pretty slow walk," he commented uncomfortably, glancing at the wolf that was still staring at the cabinet door almost lazily. He flicked his ears and tilted his head before slowly turning to him in bewilderment. His red eyes grew wide and his ears pricked forward as he shifted his weight in an almost awkward movement. Yugi couldn't tell if he was startled to find him looking at him or if he was anxious to get out of the house. "Or I can walk him and then I'll walk with you to Arthur's."

Kasumi was looking at Yami again, clearly considering her options. When she spoke again, her voice was quiet and she seemed mildly troubled. "I don't think he'd walk there very well, Yugi. It's over a block away."

"I know, but he can keep up." He looked at the wolf again. "Maybe he can't quite keep up as far as walking all at once. But if we go slowly, he'll be fine. I just need to find one of those fleece jackets we always have for the shaved dogs."

"I don't think it'll fit him properly."

"No, but it'll cover up most of his wounds." Yugi considered Yami again for a long moment. The wolf was simply staring at him in response. He would have used the fleece the day before had it not been for the fact that they'd only been going through the yard. And even then, yesterday it had not been snowing. It had started with loose flurries a few minutes before he'd gotten home from school. This time he wasn't going to let Yami out of the house without a fleece of some kind over his skin. He'd lose his body heat too quickly… "And I don't want to have anyone paying too much attention to him."

"I don't think that anyone will really be on the streets at a time like this, Yugi."

"You'd be surprised." He paused for a moment, wondering at the idea of whether the wolf would be too weak to deal with it all. He had to wonder if it was perhaps more than slightly foolish to bring him along when he was wounded. He did not know if it was okay for him to do that when someone might notice them. And he hesitated for a long handful of minutes before he finally looked at Yami. "You think you could look less like a wolf for me, aibou?"

His mom blinked at the use of the nickname, but said nothing against it. Yami blinked up at him in response, tilted his head and flicked an ear. The flash in his eyes was something of frustration and perhaps mild indignation and Yugi almost snickered in delight at the idea. Instead he leaned forward and ran his fingers through the wolf's soft fur along his ears. His stomach was in knots as they looked at one another. Yami didn't seem troubled, but Yugi did not know how much of the conversation he actually understood. He leaned forward and squished his cheeks against his cheekbones. Yami scowled at him, then huffed and peeled his lips back slightly to growl. Yugi released him, snickering, and rubbed his ears again.

"We can just leave him here if that would make you feel better," he offered after a moment, turning back to his mom with a raised brow. "I mean, I'm sure he wouldn't mind staying home instead. It's not like he really needs to walk that far anyways. I can leave him here and walk him when I get back or something like that."

Kasumi shook her head. "You wouldn't want that."

Yugi blinked and frowned at her. "What does that have to do with anything? That's not really important."

"I'm not going to have you follow me like that if you're going to be worried about him the entire time." Then she frowned and shook her head more pointedly. "And I don't want you to walk home on your own either. I know that you're infected and all of that, but if you're being hunted…"

The small teen glanced at Yami and then back to her. "I don't think it would be smart to bring him down there in public in case someone _does_ notice. I don't want them to know that he's hurt or anything like that." He paused for a long moment, then sighed softly. "Yeah, I don't think that it would be too great for me to do that. I don't know that Yami would be safe if anyone noticed him in that state. I'm more worried about that at this rate. But I'd be okay to just walk home on my own."

Kasumi frowned, shaking her head slowly and feeling somewhat full of disbelief. The wolf blinked at them from his place on the floor. She had not noticed until then that Yami had stretched himself out to lie on his belly. The canine blinked as he looked between them. She wondered if he was curious or perhaps bewildered, if he was struggling to piece the words together to make sense in his own head.

"I don't think that anyone would really be looking for you…do you?"

Yugi shrugged slightly. "I don't know. Sometimes they just seem to be lurking around every corner. It really always seems that way," he muttered, shrugging slightly. He lowered his voice further, nearly mumbling under his breath as he continued. "Although, Fuwa Ryuichi was actually enrolled at the school. He actually managed to lure us to the restaurant to kill us. And Catherine was pretending to be the nurse at school. The other handful of them, though…"

"What?" his mom asked, raising a brow and staring at him in confusion. "What did you say?"

The small teen blinked and tipped his head towards her in bewilderment. Quickly he shook his head, giving her a strained smile. "Nothing, I was just thinking about something. It's not anything really important," he said with a small shrug. He frowned briefly before moving to tuck his hands into his school jacket pockets. "It's really not that big a deal."

Kasumi frowned at him, then lowered her head towards Yami. The wolf blinked and turned back to her with wide eyes. They considered each other for a moment and the canine slowly moved to wag his tail. He looked unsure of himself as he considered her, however, almost as if he expected her to snap at him. But instead she raised a brow and turned back to her son. "If you're going to come with me, I think you might need to actually change your clothes before you come out there. I don't think them knowing where you go to school is a smart idea."

Yugi nodded after a moment, glancing at Yami as well. "Good point. I'll be right back."

He was gone before she could respond and so she looked at the wolf. The canine watched him disappear around the corner and turned back to her. He blinked up at her, slowly moved his tail to a slight wag, and flicked his ears. She wondered how much he understood of their conversation or whether he was watching them in bewilderment for the sake of knowing what was going on. He had to think that Yugi had called him over there for a reason, she was sure. That was probably why he'd still been laying there watching them as the conversation progressed.

"Do you think you can actually walk that far?" she asked softly, frowning and crouching down to look down at him. He blinked at her, flattening his ears back and staring at her curiously. And then he flicked an ear towards where they could both hear Yugi moving around in his room for a moment. But he did not look away from Kasumi, instead peering at her curiously. "I trust you to bring him back home in one piece."

Yami tilted his head and when he parted his mouth slightly and his incisors were showing, she swore he was smiling. But it was not like a dog's sloppy grin, where the mouth was half-opened and the eyes were bright with excitement or adoration or squinted with pleasure. It was one of something almost akin cunning, as if he were laughing at a joke he'd played that she could not name. It was gone in an instant, however, as Yugi began to make his way through the hallway and towards the kitchen.

When Yugi neared, Yami simply moved to sit up and shook himself out almost as if he had gotten dust on the small growth of fuzz he had covering his skin. Then he flicked his ears and got up all the way. He looked at Yugi briefly, then away again as if he was unsure he should have gotten up in the first place. Kasumi watched her son smile briefly at the canine, moving almost as if he might touch him before turning to her instead.

"I was thinking about it and he should definitely be okay to walk that far. But he's going to get pretty tired pretty frequently so it's going to be a long walk. If he gets to the point that he's trembling and can't move or anything like that I'll go ahead and carry him back after I get him all warmed up again later. I don't want him to get too tired or anything like that."

"You think he's going to get hypothermia?"

"I think after I put a jacket on him and get him settled for a little while, he'll be fine. But I think that it would probably be a good idea for me to go ahead and get him warmed up again when we're over there. Or something like that." He shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe he won't need that this time."

"This time?"

"I walked him yesterday but he got really tired in the middle of it. We had to stop pretty frequently and then he started shaking so I brought him inside and gave him warm fluids anyways. I don't think he was actually hypothermic. I think he was actually too exhausted to move and that's how he expressed it."

Kasumi turned to Yami again, considering him for a long while. The wolf blinked up at her and then at Yugi slowly. His ears flicked and he looked between them as if he did not know which of them he was meant to listen to. It was bewildering to see the huge canine considering them as if either of them had the power to truly tell him what to do. It was enough to make Kasumi raise a brow in surprise. Yami was not nearly as dangerous in expression now as he had seemed before. But that did not mean much to her in the grand scheme of things.

He was still a werewolf. She was still certain of the raw strength he possessed and it was nothing she would ever want to go against. Even if he had been nothing but a natural-born wolf she would have been wary of him, if only because of the raw power he would have possessed. It was surprising to her just how easily the wolf deferred to her son, however. It was bewildering to see the simplicity of his expression. He looked as easygoing and gentle as Blankey had been when she'd initially met the German shepherd puppy. The realization was enough to make her skin crawl.

He looked so… _innocent_.

But there was absolutely no way that he could be. Yugi had said that they'd dealt with hunters before. That had to mean more than just simply _escaping_ them. He must have meant that Yami had killed them at least once before. And that was not secluded to him alone. Kasumi was well aware that it meant her son had done so at one point or another as well. There was truly no means by which Yami alone would have been the one to do such a thing.

It was impossible.

"Mom?"

She didn't raise her eyes from the wolf for a moment. Then she blinked and looked at her son who was staring at her with a tilted head, clearly concerned. She frowned slightly and shook her head. "It's nothing. I'm fine. Let me grab my bag and then we'll head out."

Yugi nodded after a moment, though he clearly looked unconvinced. The expression on his face was one of bewilderment as she passed him and headed for her room again. He blinked and turned to Yami before she passed into the hallway and she swore she heard him mutter, "What do you think that was about?"

* * *

Yugi stopped again. Kasumi paused at his side and turned to look over her shoulder as he did the same. Yami had come to a stop again. He was at the other end of the leash, appearing tired and more than slightly flustered. He had nearly bitten Yugi again when he'd started to put the jacket on him. And he'd been walking stiffly ever since they'd left the house. The wolf would occasionally whine and flatten his ears. And then he'd try to back out of the collar as if it might be the reason that he was dressed up as he was. But then he'd settle for walking when he had no other choice. And now the wolf was standing just as he was before, looking exhausted and flustered.

"Hey, come on, aibou," Yugi muttered softly, frowning. "You're okay."

Kasumi wondered if he knew how condescending he truly sounded at the moment. But Yugi did not seem to mind the fact too much as he simply raised his head and looked at the canine in question. Yami huffed and shivered, then shook himself out. He was not trembling as if he were too tired to move or too cold to keep going. He simply looked at them with a crestfallen expression, as if Yugi were punishing him for something he did not understand.

"It's okay. You're okay. You're not hurt."

Kasumi considered the wolf again, tilting her head and then glancing at her son. The snow crunched under her boots when she moved to face the canine completely. Yugi had been careful in putting the fleece on him, making sure that the sutures were unharmed and were not pulled in any way. Yami had protested wearing the four jackets but he had not truly bitten, though he'd mouthed Yugi angrily and glared at him the entire time around the small teen's laughter.

"Are you sure that he can keep going?"

"Positive. He'll be fine."

She frowned at him but did not bother to say otherwise. It was strange to see the way he looked at the wolf with such warm eyes and tried again to coax him forward. He even patted his thighs as if Yami might respond like a common dog. Instead the wolf opened his mouth and grabbed at the end of the leash closest to him. When he tugged, Yugi burst out laughing.

"You don't look _that_ bad!"

Kasumi snorted in amusement. "He looks like a blue marshmallow with the way you've layered him."

Yugi shot her a flustered look. "Not in front of him. He'll never move if he knows."

Yami huffed at them both, tugged one more time, and then finally sighed when neither of them moved. It was only because they stood there and simply stared that he finally made a move to step forward. The sound of the snow beneath his paws seemed to echo like gunfire in Yugi's ears for all of a moment before he continued forward. Yami's ears were pricked and his tail seemed to have puffed outwardly. He glared at them both as Yugi smiled at him and they began to walk again.

"So, I'm thinking that I'll give him twice as much food for the next couple of feedings. He always seems really hungry after he's done eating. And feeding him three times a day does nicely but he always seems like he's still starving when I put everything away for him. I don't know. I just think it might be a good idea…"

Kasumi blinked and glanced at him. "From a medical standpoint, no, that's a really bad idea. You know that. It could cause a lot of issues with digestion. Considering he's not a normal wolf though, I don't see why you shouldn't. It might help him gain weight faster. But I guess just watch and see how he takes to it before you do it more than once."

Yugi nodded. "I kind of thought so too. I think when we get back home I'll give him some warm milk and then try and see if he's hungry enough to eat a double serving of his food later tonight when it's closer to his bedtime."

"That'd probably be a smart move."

"Okay, then that's what I'll do." He glanced over his shoulder. Yami was sniffing at some snow but had not raised his head to regard them again. He wondered for a moment if the wolf might be upset with their conversation or if he was simply growing tired again. But the canine hardly seemed inclined to pay them any mind any longer and he figured it must have been the latter. So he turned back his mom again, sighing quietly. "I forgot how much dogs liked to do this. I haven't walked one in a while and now I'm doing this and he's acting just like one."

Kasumi considered the wolf and then glanced at her son as well. "I don't know, Yugi. I think he's a little too big to be a dog," she snorted. But there was something in her eyes that said she was more than slightly unnerved as the seconds passed. Then she drew in a deep breath, turning away. "I don't think anyone would mistake him for a dog."

Yugi felt as if he'd been punched in the gut, grunting in frustration. "Well, it's not like anyone is going to suspect him of being a wolf—and definitely not a _werewolf_. Wolves are extinct here." He hesitated. "And the rest are mythology. No one believes in that kind of thing."

His mom shook her head. "Some of them do."

"Grandpa doesn't count. He's always been told those stories as a kid, just like his parents were and so on and so forth. It doesn't count because he's related to me and he knew that something like this was going to happen a long time ago."

Kasumi made a show of rolling her eyes in front of him. "No, but the remaining Anui people tend to believe in those kinds of things. You remember that their origin story says that the wolves turned into humans. They literally believe that the human race comes from wolves."

Yugi grimaced. "They don't have that much influence anymore," he muttered, unsure of himself now. He glanced over his shoulder as Yami began to slowly pad forward. "And not that many people believed that to begin with. I mean… People basically hate anything to do with wolves now."

"They don't hate them. They're just afraid of them."

"There isn't much of a difference where wolves are involved."

Yami's claws were clicking against the ice. It was a surreal sound, something that made Yugi grimace as he slowly looked back again with a tilted head. The crunching of the snow was incredibly loud as well, so much so that the small teen almost thought it sounded like the rumble of a nearby car. But then the wolf looked at him and he felt the smallest sense of ease come through him, the feeling forgotten in the potential panic of another recognizing Yami to be as he truly was.

Yami was safe for the moment.

That was what mattered the most.

He was sure someone else might have argued that thought with him. And he was not the least bit concerned by the realization. He did not care in the slightest when it came down to it. The most he cared about at the moment was that Yami _was_ , in fact, perfectly fine. He was in front of him, tired but moving forward with pricked ears. His face was battered and he was still too thin, but he was growing his hair back rapidly. And his eyes were clear. They did not hold any sense of residue or anything that might have harmed him. There was nothing about him but his emaciated state to suggest sickness either.

"I'm just glad he hasn't had a seizure or anything since the surgery, you know?" Yugi commented quietly, taking the conversation into a new direction as he drew in a deep breath. He glanced at Yami again, turned back to his mom and found her staring straight ahead, and finally looked down at the snow again. It seemed odd to try to justify his own thoughts and feelings for him this way. It was odd enough that it made his stomach curl. He licked his lips, staring pointedly down at the ice now. "I honestly kind of worried I'd wake up in the middle of the night to him thrashing around again."

"You've actually slept the last couple of days?" The words were incredulous enough to make him blink in surprise. Yugi thought he heard the smallest, vaguest hint of bitterness there as well. "I thought you would have stayed awake the entire time, honestly."

He scratched at the back of his head uncomfortably. In truth, he had for the most part. It was something that he had not truly paid attention to. And he'd fallen asleep in quick, short bursts. Normally he was awake again within ten minutes, blinking and searching rapidly for Yami in the living room.

He had not slept in his own bed for days now.

He glanced over his shoulder again. Yami was trailing behind them steadily. He was breathing hard, puffing out harsh breaths, but he was doing it regardless. The wolf did not seem as if he might stop at any time soon either, and the thought was comforting. But another rode on its heels almost instantly. He wondered briefly if perhaps the wolf would do better resting within his room. If he was to move back there for the night, was it possible that Yami might follow him? Or would he simply stay out in the living room? Maybe Yugi should have chosen a better position, a pillow and a blanket, and taken to making a nest on the couch. Then perhaps he would be able to find him more immediately, feeling more comfortable about his sleeping out there.

His stomach churned as he turned away again.

He was not only anxious upon awakening simply for the fact that he sometimes did not immediately see the wolf. He was anxious because of the mere fact that he knew the wolf was _there_ , that he was wounded and in need of help. And, oftentimes, when he closed his eyes, all he could see was Yami thrashing and foaming at the mouth. He would smell the hot iron scent of blood and hear the hideous choking that had beheld Yami's vomiting and see the harsh spasms he would go through.

Yugi shook the thought off as quickly as he could.

"I don't really sleep all that much anymore in general," he said uncomfortably, reaching up with the hand holding Yami's leash. He tugged lightly on his shirt and ignored the urge to grab at his choker for a brief moment. He glanced at her sideways, swallowing hard. "It's kind of hard when you have insomnia like I do, I guess."

His mother shot him an unamused look. "You've always had insomnia." It just hadn't been too terrible, Yugi knew. The small teen offered her something of a sheepish smile, as if perhaps he had been caught in the act. Then he shook his head slightly and pursed his lips. "So it's gotten worse then."

"Ever since I first started to change."

"I always noticed the bags under your eyes. But there were a lot of times where you would show symptoms of restlessness and then seemingly recover or worsen out of nowhere just as quickly." She did not look at him again. "I figured it was just that kind of thing. I guess I should have realized otherwise when you began to look paler and thinner."

"It's not like it would have done anything, Mom. I was also extremely depressed about the whole situation with him"—he didn't have the heart to say his name and so now he simply gestured awkwardly—"and that made it hard to really hard to want to sleep or eat properly."

"I can't believe how much control he has over you."

The statement was so quiet that the words were almost inaudible. Yugi blinked in surprise, faltering in his steps. He slowed to a stop, blinking once more, and then glanced over his shoulder. Yami was considering both of them curiously now, peering at his mom first and then at him. He did not move faster, he did not wag his tail, but his eyes were on them almost expectantly now.

"It wasn't just him." He swallowed hard. "It was just… _stressful_. I had to learn a lot of things on my own and I wasn't prepared for it."

Kasumi shook her head. "You weren't prepared for it," she repeated in a wry tone. "You weren't prepared for him to up and disappear for a while?"

Yugi felt a wave of bitterness and guilt surge through him. He gritted his teeth to keep from snarling, though he did not stop the sneer from entering his voice. "He had just saved my life from another hunter and got himself hurt. The ice cracked in the river and he got swept away. That's why I was out of the house that night, why you guys woke up to me no longer in my room. I came home when you guys were preparing to call the police, right? Or, at least, I had crawled out of the tub by then." He huffed and glanced over his shoulder again, somehow amazed and perplexed and altogether fascinated that Yami was still there. The wolf had not slowed or hurried himself. And he was simply striding in one fluid motion that _almost_ could have convinced Yugi that he was not hurt in the slightest. "The hunter had taken off when Yami went underwater. I don't know what you expect from me, but of course I was going to be worried when he got hurt and went missing."

His mom stayed quiet for a long minute, then sighed loudly. "It doesn't truly matter, does it? It's in the past already. And you don't owe me an explanation."

The teen blinked at her in surprise. "You don't think I owe you an explanation? Why not?"

"Why not? Because you're my son and you're old enough to make your own decisions. And I don't think you should ever have to explain or justify your emotions in any way. You know that."

"Yes, but I still…" He still wanted to. He still always felt that he needed to. And that had nothing to do with her. It probably had more to do with his schoolmates than anything else. He knew that his mother would never ask him for an explanation. And she would allow him to feel whatever way he might about anything and everything. She was willing to let him find his own understanding emotionally. She was willing to allow him to figure it all out in his own time rather than be led by the hand. "I guess you're right then. It doesn't really matter, does it?"

They fell silent for a moment. He frowned, moving to lightly shuffle away the snow from the path in front of him. The canine behind him was moving in that same steady pace. Yugi swallowed hard and grimaced as he looked over his shoulder again. The wolf did not so much as blink. And Kasumi turned as well, considering the canine with darkened eyes. The three of them swapped awkward glances at one another.

Yugi turned away again, walking a little more pointedly now. Yami remained at his easy pace. And his mom turned slowly away from the two of them completely. Yugi awkwardly tucked his hand holding the leash into his pocket and kept his grip tight on the second bag his mother had packed. The small teen felt sick as he shook his head slowly and grimaced more pointedly. "Do you ever wonder if Arthur knew about the lycanthropy thing too? I know that Yoshimori and his business partner did. But I kind of wonder if Arthur does too."

Kasumi shook her head. "No. I don't think that Arthur knows."

"Good." But he wondered at the idea of whether it was possible that he would eventually understand and find out for himself. He considered it and for some reason, as he did so, his mind drifted towards another pale-haired male with wide eyes and glasses. His stomach knotted as he looked at the snow pointedly, mouth tugging downwards into a grimace. He had run from Hanasaki. He needed to change that. He needed to speak to him about what it was that had happened to Tomoya.

"Do you think he would tell anyone if he did know?"

"No, but it makes me nervous. The less people who know, the better."

His mother raised a brow, looking over at him. Yugi blinked and raised his head now to look at her as well. "But it being such a huge secret like that… It has to be overwhelming at times."

"I think I'd rather have it become overwhelming than risk someone getting hurt because they know who I am."

* * *

"Here you go."

He put the bowl down in front of him, watching with satisfaction as Yami climbed to his feet again and hurried forward. He was clearly still tired, but his eyes were brighter and his movements were fluid. His fur had grown enough to reach a small inch beyond his skin. The wolf lowered his head and began to drink the water surrounding the meat, ate the boar steak that Yugi had gotten him, and took a seat. Yugi watched him as he ran his lips over his whiskers a few times, looking towards the small teen with his head tilted slightly. They considered each other for a moment and an impulse came over Yugi for the briefest of seconds.

His hand reached out before he considered it more than a second. His eyes had darkened slightly. His hand looked shaky where he'd reached out. And his expression was mildly troubled. Yami blinked up at the boy in confusion. And then, his fingers got closer. The wolf blinked at them, tipped his head up just slightly to sniff him. The seconds passed before Yugi finally reached him.

Yami blinked lazily at him. Yugi's hand ran over the soft furs along his head and the back of his neck. Then it ruffled upwards and ran over his ears. The canine blinked at him with dark eyes. Yugi ruffled his ears for a moment. The wolf did not seem to flinch in any manner. He did not look as if he might pull away. And Yugi was comfortable in the realization that the cartilage was not hurt in any way. He was happy to know this, to realize that the wolf did not ache from such a simple touch.

Yugi drew in a comfortable breath and looked at him more pointedly. He began to open his mouth, then faltered. His lips tugged slightly into a smile. Yami blinked up at him again. A heartbeat passed before Yugi moved to crouch in front of him. The canine tilted his head and blinked at him curiously. When he opened his mouth again, the small teen could smell something of iron from the boar meat he'd eaten. The two of them blinked at each other again.

"I'll give you more food in a minute, okay?" He smiled a little wider. The wolf blinked at him almost lazily. Then he pricked his ears forward, considered him, and ran his tongue over his nose. They studied each other, as if perhaps somehow they might notice something they hadn't before. "Maybe you should go to sleep for a little while, huh? You look really tired, aibou."

The wolf tilted his head again, blinking bright red eyes. His ears flicked and one of them brushed the inside of Yugi's palm in a ticklish manner. His nose wiggled as he sniffed lightly at the air. He was seated comfortably in front of him, long legs and frail muscle and fragile bones. When he shifted his weight, Yugi could see the harsh pull of the sinews and grizzle beneath his skin. It was surprising to witness it. It was odd to see how incredibly powerful the muscles were and notice the resilient strength that still existed there.

Yami _did_ look extremely tired, however. He peered up at Yugi in a manner that said he was clearly physically tired. He did not look exhausted, but he was close to that point. The walk there and back, then allowing Arthur to look him over and ask Yugi about him, and Yugi warming him up with heated blankets and warm water bottles, had clearly winded the wolf.

Yugi wondered if perhaps the time there had been enough to overwhelm him in such a sense. It was clear that he was not completely recovered from the long trek. But he looked comfortable for the most part. And the small teen thought it was enough to make it clear that the red-eyed wolf was too exhausted to truly care to pay him further attention. The canine pricked his ears forward. Then he lowered his chin to his paws and closed his eyes tightly. Yugi considered him a moment longer. Then the small teen smiled and shook his head.

"You should get some sleep." He smiled a little wider and the wolf blinked lazily in front of him, sharp red eyes and flicking ears. He looked slightly amused, his tail wagging the smallest degree. Then he closed his eyes again and flexed his paws in a lazy stretch for a moment. His tail wagged again, more pointedly, before he began to seemingly doze off. But then his nose wiggled and Yugi snorted a laugh, almost delighted with the sight of it. "You're still hungry, aren't you, aibou? I'll get you some more food."

Yami wagged his tail vigorously now, head raised and mouth parted to allow his tongue to loll from behind his large teeth. He pricked his ears forward, eyes bright and vibrant with satisfaction. They stared at each other for a long moment before Yugi shook his head and turned to make his way into the kitchen.

The wolf's claws made a loud clicking noise when he followed him onto the wood and Yugi blinked as he turned his head to look over again. The canine stopped a few feet away from him, taking a seat and staring at him with wide red eyes. A long moment passed in which they simply stared at one another. And then Yugi smiled faintly with a shake of his head and turned back to the fridge. "Let's see, Yami, what would you like to eat today? We have a little bit of boar left, some beef, some deer. What about some lamb?"

The canine licked his lips when he looked over the door and glanced at him. And then the wolf wagged his tail again more pointedly, staring at him with bright eyes. The lycanthrope nodded slightly and turned away to pick at the large steak of lamb that he'd bought a couple of days before. He closed the fridge again and reached up to scratch at his shoulder lightly. Then Yugi moved to grab the metal bowls he'd been using to pour water and soak the steak inside of it.

He mixed the goat's milk with cold water and put it aside for the canine. Yami immediately ran over to it when it was placed on the ground and drank it before Yugi had even gotten back to the steak in question. He frowned as he looked at the large canine and shook his head slightly. Yami looked incredibly happy with this new development, red eyes bright, and Yugi rolled his eyes.

"Here you go."

He put the bowl down in front of him and Yami began to dig in vigorously. He did not so much as blink at Yugi, instead munching the meat away in heavy chunks. There was not a single second glance towards him and Yugi turned away after a moment. He let out a deep sigh and closed his eyes as the wolf finished his meal and began to head back into the living room.

* * *

"How did you wind up getting him to listen to you again?"

Yugi didn't look up from where he was undoing the clip on the leash connected to Yami's collar. His eyes were still glued to the canine as the dark-furred wolf began to make his way into the living room again. Sugoroku watched Yami move about the room for a moment, then plop down on his pillows and yawn with a single stretch of his large paws. He did not so much as blink beyond this, closing his eyes tightly.

"It pays to pay a lot of attention to him sometimes."

He sounded distracted more than anything. But, when he looked over, Yugi was watching him with clear eyes. He seemed more than slightly tired despite the bright gleam to his gaze. And Sugoroku nearly raised a brow, considering the words and wondering at the statement. Then he shook his head slightly and reached up to rub at the back of his head uncomfortably. His grandson blinked but did not question the behavior, instead turning away and glancing over his shoulder at the wolf again.

"Do you think he's going to be stuck like this for much longer?"

Yugi looked back to him, frowning in thought. Then, slowly, he shrugged his shoulders and stared down at the ground uncomfortably. "I think that it will have to take at least a couple of weeks before he's able to even change back to his human form." He looked back again and seemed satisfied with whatever it was that Yami was doing because he turned to him once more almost immediately. He was grinning slightly as he moved around to take a seat at the table, eyes curious. "I think he'll probably recover his memory a little sooner than that. But I don't think he'll come back around to being human again or anything like that before the end of the month."

The elderly Motou frowned at the thought. "Do you think that Yami will be okay on his own when you start back to school?"

The small teen fell silent for a long handful of minutes. Then he glanced into the living room and back. "I think he'll be fine," he answered finally. "I think you'll just have to be sure to feed him on time. He might not be too happy if you don't do that. Besides that, he should be fine enough with the whole thing. Just make sure to walk him every now and then. I don't think he'll actually _do_ anything when it comes to using the bathroom, but I think that he'll be okay past that. It's mostly just for exercise, anyways. I don't want his muscles to deteriorate because he's not exercising like he needs to."

But hopefully break would not end before Yami healed enough to be able to change back and forth and take care of himself again. He didn't mind the task himself, but he did not think that having his grandfather do more than that was a good idea. No doubt his grandpa and Yami would likely butt heads in this manner. It was frustrating to consider that the wolf would be too stubborn to follow the elderly Motou's lead. And Yugi did not think that he could truly explain to him that the only reason Yami listened to him now was because he was no longer ignoring himself or any distress he might have been suffering.

He wondered at this, curious. He was shaken slightly by the thought that perhaps the wolves at the camp were so malcontent with him because of something similar. He felt shaky and small for a brief moment before shrugging it off.

This was not something he had to focus on now. Doing so now while he was at home talking to his grandpa was not something that he wanted to deal with. He was not sure that he could deal with it all in such close proximity.

His grandpa was still watching him and Yugi felt sick as he glanced over his shoulder. Yami was still fast asleep and he did not seem as if he were upset in any manner within his slumber. Yugi shivered as he turned back and looked at his grandfather. But Sugoroku had stopped paying attention to him after he'd looked away to check on the canine once more. The loss of his focus on him made Yugi feel safer to consider the thoughts that had clawed their way through his mind then. He felt sick and dizzy for a brief moment as his stomach knotted and his eyes flickered back towards Yami again.

He understood a lot more of the wolves' behavior now. Yami had taught him well enough in that aspect. If Yugi was going to hide away from problems, the pack was not going to listen to him. That they had done so in the first place was solely because of his identity as Atem. Had he never told them such a thing, they would failed to follow him in any sense whatsoever.

He wondered if perhaps the wolves would have turned on him violently as Annie had once considered doing to Yami. The exchange would have ended a much different way, however, he was sure. He knew that the wolves would have bitten and attacked him violently, perhaps even killed him. Yami, however, had been more violent and powerful than he himself was at the time he'd been in the camp with them.

Yugi felt sick for a moment as he tilted his head to look at the black-furred wolf. The canine was still fast asleep and did not seem hurt in any way. He was still resting, though Yugi was not sure it was happily so, and grew sick to his stomach with the thought. The small teen turned away to look at the floor and then to his elderly grandpa for a moment. The plum eyes were on a book that he'd laid out on the table in front of him.

And Yugi considered him with a tilt of his head for a brief moment.

If his grandpa was a wolf, he could not see how he would have been happy with him in any way either. Yugi considered the idea for a long moment. He felt sick and tired. In truth, he could not imagine that even Sugoroku would have listened to him had he seen him in the camp. Had he been a pack wolf he could not see his grandpa truly listening to him at all.

The reality of it was that Yugi hid from his problems more than anything else. He liked to push them aside and hide away and have answers fed to him than find them himself. Because it was terrifying and frustrating to him to consider that the wolves were so incredibly ensnared by his proclamation of being Atem that they would leap at the responsibility to listen to him.

But he did not think he would have been happy to listen to himself had he been in their place. He did not think for even a second that he would have cared to even _consider_ such a thing to begin with. It was frustrating and tiring to him. The very idea of doing such a thing in the first place was bewildering and annoying. It was exhausting now that he was even thinking about it.

Yami had not paid him any attention upon being reduced to his feral state in this way. It was stunning to him that the black wolf had paid him any mind at all. He had been able to ignore him in every sense upon his initial ignorance of his distress. Now he listened purely because Yugi had gotten most of his head wrapped around it for the most part. The canine in front of him was still powerful despite being exhausted and weakened physically. He had a feeling that, should push come to shove, Yami would have been able to kill or deal with anything in this sense of threat.

* * *

The dream Yugi had been muddling through was abruptly shattered. There had been the slightest hint of outside noise, startling enough that Yugi had clung to it even in his sleep. Somehow the words were muddled and lost to him for a moment, his groggy mind struggling to understand the meaning behind them. But he heard them definitively a moment later when the words repeated themselves.

He blinked his eyes open in the darkness, at first sure that the words were spoken aloud and still remained somewhere in the air. He thought briefly of a second person in the room, thinking immediately of his mother or grandfather. The reality of it was quite different, he realized, as he sat up and looked about himself immediately.

He rubbed at his eyes, at first confused and concerned as to the source of it. And then he looked down and his eyes stretched wide. A few feet away from the bed, head tilted and eyes glowing in the dark, was an immense black shape. The rounded black ears were pricked forward. The huge jaw was angled towards the ground. The large paws were pressed against his carpet in a hard knot of muscle. Claws glinted with the soft mixture of moon and streetlamp light. Half of his face was golden and the other darker black than he'd ever expected it to be. But he could see the glint of bright red in a halo from his glowing eye and it made Yugi shiver for a brief moment.

"What are you sorry for?" he asked, yawning and reaching up to rub at his eyes again. Yami _had_ apologized, hadn't he? Yugi could have sworn that was what Yami had said, but he could not be entirely sure. He was so tired he was not sure he could properly evaluate the words the wolf had spoken to begin with. It was exhausting to look at the canine now and see him staring back with such tired eyes.

 _Everything_. The word was said simply enough that Yugi almost looked back to see if he was even serious about the statement. Then he glanced sideways towards the wolf, at the window, and then back to the canine in front of him. The word was so incredibly fractured as well, however, that Yugi almost wondered if he'd mistaken him somehow.

"Everything?" he echoed quietly. "And that would mean…?"

Yami shifted unhappily in his seat, looking incredibly crestfallen and perhaps slightly nervous as well. But he did not seem as if he were upset beyond this, more that he was unsure of what more to say or do. He looked incredibly exhausted and his eyes were clearly unfocused as he peered back at Yugi in the darkness. The way the light refracted from his irises made his fur glitter in smears of red like Christmas light glow. Yugi rubbed at his own eyes again, wondering if he was perhaps seeing things for a split second.

But then he wondered if he was really speaking to him to begin with. Yami sounded as if he could barely talk as it was. He seemed almost to be lost in the way he tried to find words. And Yugi felt almost sick as he considered the canine in front of him. It was bewildering to him in every sense, he realized. And he was keenly aware of the fact that Yami's voice would most likely drop away altogether at any moment. He was all too focused on this aspect as he knew for a fact that Yami could not hold the conversation in any capacity for too much longer. His voice was too cracked. He almost sounded inaudible as it was. Yugi felt sick with this thought, turning to the wolf again with widened eyes.

Would he lose his voice again and suffer an inability to talk for longer than he had formerly? Yugi wondered at this, bewildered and feeling almost sick as he considered. But he did not want to say more than this, instead looking briefly away again. His eyes flickered to the window and he considered the way the light around the streetlamp was somewhat fuzzy and stiff. Perhaps it would rain at some point. But with the freezing temperatures as they were, he assumed truthfully he would likely see sleet and hail more than he would anything else. Maybe there would be electricity of some kind. But perhaps not…

Yugi shook the thought off and turned back to him. "What do you mean by 'everything', aibou?"

Yami stared back at him with a confused expression, one which only grew annoyed as the seconds grew. He shook his head hard back and forth with a slight bristle to his coat. Then he curled his lips back to show off his teeth and growled low in his throat. The sound seemed to resonate from within his chest and the way it shook itself within the cavity there made Yugi shiver. He was not sure if it was with nerves or perhaps a sense of delight upon realizing that Yami was still okay enough to make such a noise. He did not know what he was truly meant to think of that.

All _of it_ , the black wolf spat out. _I am regretful of_ all _of it._

Yugi was silent for a long time. He had the abrupt urge to crawl forward atop the comforter and perhaps reach out to touch him. But Yami was shaking and he looked so upset that Yugi was sure that to do something like that would result in a bite. He was not even sure that Yami might know he was doing it, just that he might snap his jaws in response to something touching him. He was shaking harder than ever as the seconds passed, teeth bared and eyes glittering coldly in the dark.

"All of it?" he repeated quietly, hoping to coax the words out of him now. "What do you mean? Can you explain that to me or are you too upset?"

His ears flicked back and forth for a moment. Then he flattened them against his head and bore his teeth more pointedly at the floor. He bristled as the seconds passed, then whined and tossed his head rather violently. Yugi watched him, bewildered and more than slightly distressed by the clear aggression on his friend's face.

"Aibou…"

 _Enough_! Yami spat at him, but his voice was frayed at the edges and he sounded exhausted again. The black wolf turned his head away entirely and glared at the window for a moment. Yugi's heart was in his throat as he watched the other wolf for a handful of minutes. _Do not call me that._

The small teen sighed softly. He was going to argue with him about this instead of answer the question? He wondered if telling him that he should not be calling him by that name was less exhausting than giving him any other response. So he simply tilted his head and watched him for a long moment. Yami was still shaking, clearly still distressed, until he finally tipped his head up and looked back at him with tired eyes.

 _I've caused you a lot of misery._

Yugi blinked and furrowed his brows. "Misery?" he repeated quietly, tilting his head. He couldn't honestly argue that his life was exactly fun anymore. But he was not sure what he was meant to say to that kind of statement. The truth of it was that he was not miserable, but he was not exactly enthusiastic about most things in his life anymore either. Things were more painful than anything else, something that he did not care to elaborate on more often than not.

But Yami was not the reason things were rocky.

Yugi shrugged off the thoughts that were to immediately follow this. "You're not seriously blaming yourself for every little thing that's not going right in my life, right? I know you're not foolish enough to be doing that right now, right?" he asked instead, nearly hissing in annoyance. Because, abruptly, Yugi was well aware more now than ever what Yami truly meant at the moment. "I made my own choices."

 _That is not true. You would not have made them had it not been for my involvement in your life._

He rolled his eyes, long and slow, to the point of nearly making his head spin with the force of dizziness to accompany it. "What are you being such a martyr right now?" Yugi mumbled, turning back to the wolf to find him glaring at him with disdainful eyes. "You can't honestly be arguing with me right now over this of all things. It's almost four in the morning and you're doing this for the night?"

Yami shifted his weight, curled his lips back, and then flattened his ears against his head. _You cannot tell me you have not blamed me for some things at one point or another._ The effort of talking was clearly draining his focus, Yugi saw. The wolf was blinking and his voice was strained to the point of near incomprehension at the moment. The ears pricked and flicked about before flattening against his head again.

"I actually can say that for the most part. I don't normally blame other people when it comes to choices that _I_ made, Yami. I try to actually avoid doing that. It makes me feel better to know that I'm _not_ that kind of person."

The black wolf bore his teeth a bit more pointedly, snarling low in his throat. _I should not be here._

Yugi tilted his head. "No? Then where should you be?"

Yami did not answer. His head turned away and he looked at the carpet as if it were the most interesting thing in the world. His nose lowered to it to sniff lightly and he feigned interest in the fibers for a long handful of minutes. The small teen sighed softly and ran his fingers through his hair, hateful of the fact that he had no idea what he was meant to say to him now. It was exhausting to see his friend like this and not have a way to help.

The seconds passed. Yami sniffed a few more times, turned his entire body as if he had caught an interesting scent, and moved to stand up. Yugi shivered, knowing in a second or two the canine would simply flee his room again.

"You should come up here, Yami," he said, unsure of what more to do. He patted the sheets and the wolf flicked an ear and slowly turned his head back towards him. Yugi was reminded abruptly of the way he'd stared at him in the snow that day that he'd killed Ryuzaki and Haga. Yami had given him a similar stare, one of consideration and frustration that he could not possibly put into words.

 _Your mom left._

Yugi blinked. "Yeah, a couple of days ago. You walked with us, remember?"

The wolf began to claw at the carpet for a moment, as if digging, then snapped his jaws. He was a large shadow of dark black hair and glowing red eyes now. Yugi wondered if this was what hellhounds looked like in the dead of night. He remembered reading about Black Shuck and wondering at the sight and now he thought maybe he knew it. Yami was an immense dark shape before him, of sharp bones and long fur that had grown back far more rapidly than he'd thought possible.

 _Because of me._

Yugi blinked, startled. Then he shook his head slowly. "No, Yami, that wasn't because of you. She left because of _me_. She didn't know how to handle it when I told her I was a werewolf. She decided to leave because she was too rattled to know what else to do. It's as simple as that."

Yami turned bright white teeth on him, snarling. _It is not_!

"Are we really arguing about this right now?"

He snarled again, then flattened his ears against his head as he had before. _I'm sorry._

"No offense, Yami, but you apologize for really stupid stuff sometimes."

Yami flicked his ears and tilted his head, wagging his tail slightly. He looked abashed now, as if he had been startled from the soft reprimand. He turned away again after a moment, bristling slightly before forcing himself to relax.

"And, besides that, my mom _knew_ what was going on," Yugi said quietly. The words made Yami's head tilt and head snap towards him in pure confused curiosity. The small teen smiled faintly, shaking his head. "She didn't want to admit it. But she's not stupid in the slightest, Yami. She knew things were happening like this. She was well aware of it. She just never wanted to actually ask or talk about it unless it was directly thrown in front of her."

The wolf blinked at him.

"Yeah, where do you think I get my incredible avoidance skills from?"

He wagged his tail slightly, awkwardly. His ears flicked about for a moment as if he could not understand what more he should do at the moment.

Yugi fell silent for a long handful of minutes. Yami was not going to get on the bed with him, he realized. The wolf was too nervous. There was something in his instincts which prevented this. He was clearly at odds with the desire to do so and the need to ignore such a thing as well.

"You know…why don't you and I go on a hunt?"

Yami pricked his ears forward and tilted his head, curious and bewildered by the sudden idea. The wolf blinked slowly and then muttered, _Hunt_? as if the term were something almost foreign to him. Yugi smiled in amusement and nodded as Yami looked briefly towards the window and back.

"Yeah, I'll get some actual clothes on and we can go into the woods and I'll change and we can go hunt." Yami blinked at him in surprise, then looked away again as if it were too much to hope for at the moment. He seemed almost bewildered by the idea that Yugi might actually do this with him. And the small teen wondered if he remembered half of the things he'd been willing to do to help him with any unease he suffered before then. It was almost amazing to him that he might have forgotten… "Do you want to or not so much?"

Yami wagged his tail slowly, seeming slightly unsure of himself for a split second. Then he licked his lips and whined softly. _Please_ , he agreed after a long moment. He wagged his tail again and turned towards the entrance of the room before glancing out the window and back expectantly. Yugi snorted in amusement and rolled his eyes.

"Give me a second, okay?"

Ten minutes later Yami was sniffing at the snow and Yugi was shaking himself out to get used to his canine form again. It was odd how muscle memory took prominence in changing like this. He had not done so in what felt like forever and now he was standing in front of Yami again, white coat and black nose and bright blue-violet eyes that he knew only from his reflection in Yami and the other wolves' various thoughts. He shrugged the thought off and trotted forward a few steps with a somewhat dismissive glance at the other canine.

 _What are we hunting_?

Yugi flicked an ear and looked at him. He did not like the way Yami's voice was splintering and dying at the edges, but there was nothing he could do about that as they were now. _Whatever you want. What do you want to hunt_?

Yami huffed at him in response to the question, clearly annoyed by the dodging answer. And then he turned away with a flick of his ear, sniffing lightly at the snow for a moment. There was a long minute of silence before the black wolf began to move past him and further into the trees. Yugi had the abrupt and startling thought of hellhounds in the woods, whether they might be lurking about the area somewhere. He bristled, nearly snarling in dismay, and ignored the urge to simply turn tail.

He did not want to witness another fight like he'd seen the last time. He didn't want to see the way Yami had writhed in such immense pain and gone through those hideous seizures. If he could avoid seeing such a thing for the rest of his life, he would be happy.

Still, he hurried forward to chase him. If they were together and an ambush came after him, it would be easier to deal with them as two wolves than it would as one. They could at least try to hold them off in a more unified front than if they were separated, right? He shivered as his fur brushed against Yami's lightly. The other wolf glanced at him in near bewilderment before turning away again.

 _Rabbits should be somewhere around here._

Yami flicked his ear. _Maybe._

But he did not sound as happy as he had before. Now, he seemed somewhat frustrated more than anything else, annoyed rather than happy. Yugi blinked in surprise, confused by the thought, and slowed a step. Yami did not seem to notice as he continued forward.

 _Hey_ , he snapped when the wolf was a few feet ahead and nearly slipped from his sight. The power of the outburst was enough to make the black canine spin around to face him with wide eyes. He seemed startled more than anything else as Yugi snarled softly and shook himself out. _Don't go too far ahead. I need you to stay in my sight, okay_? _We don't know what's in the woods over here. There could be hellhounds or just our pack. And neither of them need to be here to see us, got it_?

Yami flicked and flattened his ears. He looked annoyed now, but nodded regardless.

 _Good_. Yugi wagged his tail and hurried to his side now. When their fur brushed this time, he almost shivered but now it was with excitement that he could not suppress. They were actually out and moving about again. Yami was healthy enough that he could keep pace with him. He wasn't limping or stopping every few minutes to catch his breath as he had only three days before. He did not seem winded in the slightest any longer either. It was comforting to realize.

They passed through the snow for a long handful of minutes. Yugi glanced at the sky every once in a while but the moon was blocked away by the heavy layer of clouds overhead. He could sense the frigid touch of the oncoming snow that would breach the air soon enough. He shivered and shook himself out, looking about them for a moment. Yami was a couple of feet ahead but he did not move out of his line of sight now. He would pause a few feet away from him and look over his shoulder so that Yugi could see him again.

Yugi hurried forward again as Yami turned away to start walking once more. The two of them continued to pace through the trees and Yugi was oddly comfortable despite their silence. It was strange that they had no words to speak to each other. But they would brush against each other lightly, comfortably, and Yugi wondered at the way they both simply settled for this quiet. Yugi was not unused to this kind of thing between himself and Honda but he was used to Jonouchi or Anzu filling in such pockets of silence. They usually started conversations with him despite the comfortable quiet and then they would all end up snickering and laughing.

Yami, however, was different to him. It was odd the way the two of them could fall into quiet and simply sit around together without saying a word. And they'd still be comfortable. Yami didn't want nor _need_ to fill the air with words. He found his entertainment in other things or would figure out the answers to questions for himself if he had something he wished to know. He was naturally quiet. He may not have been happy with his voice in the slightest, but he knew how to use it if he had to. And he would do so had he needed to. But he did not want to disrupt the silence at all now.

Yugi was so distracted by the thoughts in his head that he missed it. Yami shot away from him and sprang straight into some of the deeper snow. He pounced almost like a fox, aiming his entire upper body for the snow. But when he landed, the snow did not encompass him nearly as fully. He was too tall and large. The snow came up high enough to cover his limbs halfway but he did not do much more than pull his head up. In his jaws was a large rabbit that had clearly been trying to burrow under the snow to flee. He shook it a few times and Yugi flinched when he heard the snap of its bones. But he was satisfied to see that the wolf could still hunt despite everything.

He had not lost his experience in the slightest.

 _Good catch_!

Yami wagged his tail in response, but did not answer as he turned away and dropped the carcass aside. He plopped down in the snow with it, then put it between his paws and began to dig into his catch. He did not seem inclined to share in the slightest and Yugi was fine with this as he paced around him and began to sniff at the air. He had no idea how it was that Yami had even caught the sound or scent of the rabbit to begin with. It was bewildering to him as the black wolf got to his feet again, the rabbit swallowed away in one last gulp and his tail wagging slightly.

 _Come on, let's keep going._

He huffed a breath, then followed him steadily. Yugi wondered if he could get him to talk now, because some part of him was almost desperate to do so. He was antsy to see if perhaps Yami might say something that would make everything seem better. He did not know when the black wolf might come to speak on his own should he decide to do so. But he wished he could find that his voice was healing without any problems.

As they continued forward through the trees, Yugi found himself stiffening faintly. They were padding slowly but surely now, the pace steady rather than hurried. He flicked his ears and tilted his head and looked at him curiously for a long moment. There was an unconscious sense of acknowledgment and fear that came between them now. The wolf stiffened once more as he sank into the snow further than before and glanced over his shoulder before turning back to the river. He was shivering as his fur rose and fell back into place along his spine once more.

Yami glanced at him and then away again, not bothering to look towards the source of their discomfort. Instead he turned away entirely and curled his lips back to show his teeth briefly. Yugi looked at the banks, the frozen area before him which seemed to stretch for miles. He saw the rocks near him, the smooth and pristine surface of ice and snow which covered the water beneath. He trembled at the sight, then turned back to Yami with a feeling of sickness which came through him rapidly. His shoulders were shaking as he faced Yami for a moment, his ears falling back against his skull. He looked swiftly away to the snow again.

He didn't think he'd ever quite be able to face the river again without the thought of Yami falling through the ice as he had witnessed that night. He wanted to vomit as he considered it, heart pounding and leaping into his throat. He wanted to sit down for a moment, to lie on his belly and simply lower his chin to his paws. He wanted to rest, to lay there and simply ignore the pressure which made him so anxious.

Yami glanced at him over his shoulder as he headed further up the bank. Yugi thought maybe he was simply waiting so that Yugi would come with him again, so that he did not snap at him that he was leaving his sight. But then he saw the way his eyes glittered, not with nerves but with curiosity. And Yugi had the startling impression that Yami was watching him, knowing the things that went through Yugi's thoughts about the river and all that it encompassed, and thinking about continuing on. He wanted to see what it was that Yugi would do, the smaller wolf realized. But the thought of taking action to perhaps resolve the fear which billowed through him now was not something he even _wanted_ to consider thinking about. He was exhausted and the air was too ragged and his brain was sluggish. He swore there were a million more reasons that he could not move towards the bank or approach the ice he knew was there beyond the stones.

And, as he thought this, he found himself bristling and hurrying forward. Yami had begun to trot up the bank again, ignoring him as he had on their numerous walks. Yugi had not once considered for even a second that he might take off like that this time. He hadn't even taken into account that the wolf might do such a thing. But Yami was so inclined to do as he wished. And he had not thought for even a second that Yami would have considered running off.

Yami had dodged away from him during walks when he would suppress his thoughts. And there were times in which Yami refused to so much as look at him. He was not happy with him when he did such things. And now he did not want Yugi to so much as watch him any longer. Yami did not so much as look over his shoulder at Yugi. And Yugi was abruptly aware of the fact that he'd taken his recovery for granted. Yami was _not_ healthy enough to ignore his impulses. As the wolf, he was not healthy enough to ignore his urge to simply turn his back on Yugi and keep moving when Yugi tried to suppress his emotions.

Yugi had taken for granted that because Yami could talk again, it meant that his recovery was all but absolute. He'd made the mistake of assuming that Yami was stable again. But he should have known better. It had only been a week at the most. And Yami might have been recovering in leaps and bounds, but that did nothing to assure that he would not succumb to influence and instinct…

And now, the wolf trotted ahead without a second glance. He did not pause. He did not sniff at anything. He _kept moving ahead_ and Yugi felt as if the world were slipping beneath him when he realized that he was not going to gain ground on him at this point. The black wolf had put yards between them and he had turned to the left suddenly.

Yugi was startled, horrified, as Yami crossed the ice without a second look. He did not seem to be shaken by the presence of it. He did not seem to be fearful of it at all. He did not seem to be even mildly inclined to pause in his trek either. And, when he got to the other side of the river, Yugi found himself whining and struggling to find his way across. He could not get past the stones that he knew were beneath the snow under his paws. He paced frantically back and forth on the bank, bristling as he continued forward and then circled back and snarled softly.

Yami looked back at him from the other side of the river, then shook himself out as a flurry of flakes began to fall. The air was so frigid that, as the black wolf turned his head slightly to look over his shoulder, the bones in his neck seemed to pop loudly. It sounded like grinding bones and fireworks for a brief second. And, as they looked at each other, Yugi could see it. Yami's eyes were dark, shadowed as if vacant of his own thoughts, and the wolf was simply looking back at the source of a noise it vaguely recognized. But the moment lasted only a heartbeat and then the black wolf shook himself out again and began to turn to trot away in the opposing direction of him.

 _Yami_! Yugi shouted, voice frantic. The blank wolf paused and looked over his shoulder curiously. The white canine was shaking a few feet away, on the very edge of the bank, bristling. His pupils were dilated, his ears flattened against his skull. His tail began to lower and tuck between his legs, his spine arching nervously as he looked at the other canine on the opposing bank. His eyes were white at the edges whenever he turned his head, showing them off in his fearful state.

He flicked an ear and looked into the trees again. He could hear something moving about in the snow nearby and hunger cut through his belly. Yami turned back again just as the white wolf began to whine and paw at the snow. The hunger was enough to make his belly ache and his fur begin to rise in slight frustration. He tilted his head, flattening his ears and slowly pricking them forward once more. Yami looked to Yugi again after a moment, watching as the other began to pace harder. He was frantic and panicked and the fear was enough to make Yami pause for a moment.

He did not want to leave him alone. But he was hungry as he began to pad forward. The wolf was staring at the canine in front of him as the two of them considered each other. Yugi looked as if he might pee himself with fear. The canine blinked and pricked his ears forward as the other continued to shiver and shake before his eyes. And then he saw Yugi lower his nose to the ground, staring for a moment as he drew in long deep breaths. After a handful of minutes passed, when Yami turned to start into the trees again, he heard his name once more in a desperate snarl.

He turned again, eyes wide and curious. And then he paused as the other wolf chomped his teeth and paced again. He looked like a rabid animal, something that Yami recognized but hadn't truly thought of before then. The thought was enough to make him bristle before he snarled low in his throat. The noise snapped Yugi out of his pacing enough to make him look up with stunned eyes. And then the snow began to fall harder, blinding white sheets of flakes which fell quickly and seemed to dive forward into his face.

Yami found himself straining his eyes to find the definitive form of his beta against the snowfall. Yugi was so pure in color that the two of them seemed an extension of the other. It was odd and amazing to him, as he himself was much like cold winter darkness and Yugi had the fur of fresh snow and ice. He wanted, for the briefest of seconds, to cross the river again just to see if Yugi would become less like the snow if he was closer. The thought was amusing more than anything, because Yami was well aware of the wolf's heartbeat and he could have caught his breathing anywhere should he have tried to focus on such a thing. But he liked the idea that moving forward would reveal more to him, as if his eyes were not superior to most all other animals in the world.

He shook himself out as the snow seemed to weigh down upon his shoulders and neck. Yami tilted his head, watching him as his ears flicked back and forth and his eyes shot to the white wolf in front of him once more. The canine flicked his ears and tilted his head, then turned away again. There were deer close, he knew. He could hear the animals moving about in the snow. It was a small set of them, however, barely four or more if even that. He could not tell _exactly_ , however. His senses were getting better, but he was not quite a hundred percent capable of accessing his usual strength of them.

 _Yami_ … The black wolf turned his head again. He wondered how much of a sore sight he was for the white canine across the river from him. It was odd the way those blue-violet eyes peered into his face that made him wonder at the idea. He considered the thought of the canine staring back at him so curiously at the moment. The wolf shook himself out after a long moment, scattering the white snow from his dark fur once more. Then he turned and glanced over his shoulder again.

 _Yami_ … _wait_ … Please, _don't_ …

Yami looked over his shoulder again, ears pricked forward. His head tilted and his eyes narrowed, lips curling back slightly. He shivered again, curious, and turned back to Yugi with a tilt of his head. He would have spoken had he cared to, but his stomach was growling again and he was held fast by it. So he remained where he was, not willing to do anything beyond this.

Yugi hesitated for a moment. Then he began to move forward. It was a strange sight in front of him. The canine seemed to burst from the snow. It was almost as if he had never had an absolute physical form before, because now he raced forward quickly. Yami didn't move as the wolf burst seemingly through the snow as if just an extension of the white around him. The wolf came running from a few feet away, then pressed himself down against the rocks beneath its paws. And then he sprang forward from the rocks and over the ice of the river altogether. He landed in a spray of snow, which burst forth into the air in a huge shower of bright white. The snowfall was shaken by the wind that had begun to touch upon his fur. And then the snow he'd sprayed into the air was whipped lightly to the side as well, hitting him.

Yami shook himself out again. And Yugi rammed into his side angrily, knocking him sideways. But his body had instinctively braced itself. And so he did not fall from his paws. But Yugi bit at his shoulders and then his face, not drawing blood but punching at him with enough force to make him stagger. Yami glared at him as he bit at his ear and slammed into his side again. Yugi bit at his hip, then shoved on his flank harder. And, finally, annoyed, the dark wolf spun on him.

He snapped his teeth at him and Yugi halted his miniscule attack. The wolf faltered, startled, as if Yami had somehow burned him. Then he blinked a few times, backed up a step, and snarled low in his throat, _You fucking tried to_ leave _me_! _What the hell is wrong with you_?

Yami flicked his ear and tilted his head. Then he pricked his ears forward and sniffed softly. The wolf looked over his head towards Yugi and back with an annoyed expression. Then he scoffed and bore his teeth. The wolf shook himself out again to drop the snow away from his fur. _You were not moving any longer and I am hungry. I want to eat. We came to hunt. Here we are. I am starving._

Yugi scowled at him, shaking his head violently. _That's not an excuse. You're lying. You were not listening to me and you simply wanted to leave me back there._ He shook his head again, snarling in annoyance once more. _You left me over there to—_

 _I left you there to figure out what you needed to,_ he snarled brusquely. He peeled his lips back to show off his sharp teeth. _I left you to figure out what it was that you needed in order to get over the river. Leave it there. I am hungry. Now are we free to hunt_?

The white wolf snarled furiously, then launched himself at his alpha angrily. _You were not supposed to_ leave my side! he roared. _What the hell is wrong with you, damn it_?

Yami chomped his teeth at him and backed up a few steps. Rather than lower his head, he raised it and his tail came up slowly. His teeth were sharp and his eyes were glowing with frustration. He pricked his ears and looked back at him furiously. The wolf shook himself out again so that the snow fell away. But then he held himself more stiffly. His fur was in an immense bristle and he squared his shoulders. The wolf shook his head and leaned forward to bite at him again when Yugi twitched.

 _I. Am._ Hungry, he snapped. _I want food. Leave it alone._

Yugi faltered at the violent gleam in his red eyes. He recognized the canine's frustration. He recognized the ferocity. He knew that he would snap at him again. And this time he would not do just that. This time he might draw blood and force him to the ground. He might even leave him alone completely this time.

The truth of it was startling. He could see the shadows in his eyes again, the hunger which made him bolder. Yami was struggling, he realized. He was trying to stay focused on him, had done so long enough to let Yugi cross the river, but he was losing this fight rapidly. Instinct had made him more violent and hunger made his loyalty lessen. In this state, he was not liable to let him go if he kept interfering with his desire to eat. In this state, he truly _would_ rip a hole in his gut and then go to hunt for himself and leave him there.

But, for now, he was giving him the chance to back down. He was giving him the chance to leave him be long enough to get food in his belly. He was truly warning him more than he deserved…

So Yugi simply turned away with a flick of his ears and bore his teeth in annoyance.

 _Fine. Let's go get something to eat then._

Yami huffed and trotted past him without a second glance. Yugi blinked and turned to follow him. Their pelts brushed again. They fell into step as they had before. But Yami did not glance back as Yugi himself did. The white wolf stared back at the river for a split second. Then he turned quickly back to his alpha. Yami shook himself out again as he continued forward. The snow fell away from his shallow muscles with each movement. Yugi finally followed this need to shake the snow from his fur as well. The snow was falling in sheets. And, a few minutes later, the wolf was covered in a layer of snow inches thick. Yami shook himself again, trotted forward into the trees, and looked about them.

There, down the hill, was the small group of deer. There were only a few of them, about six altogether. There was a wounded, large buck who was limping in the snow. He was so stiff that he could hardly raise his right forelimb. Two does moved about in front of it. And a much younger buck, with a large rack of antlers, moved ahead of them. None of them had seemed to notice them. And all of them were digging into the snow looking for whatever little grass remained. Yami shook the snow from his fur. Yugi did the same and looked over at him for a moment.

 _Do you think you can truly run fast enough or long enough to catch one_? he asked softly, searching his face and feeling sick. Yami blinked and turned to him with an almost haunted expression in his eyes. He blinked at him a few seconds later. Then he pricked his ears forward and turned back to the small herd. Yami blinked once more, flicked his ears, and shook his head slowly.

 _I can catch the older one,_ he said quietly. He stepped forward only once, standing taller than before. He raised his head, then sniffed lightly at the air for a moment. Yugi tilted his head as he turned away again with pricked ears. He wondered at the sight of the deer in front of them. They were deeper in the snow than the two wolves themselves due to the slope of the hill. And they were constantly shaking themselves out. The does looked slightly unsteady but the older male was clearly struggling in the snow. He looked as if he might drop at any moment. The younger was shoveling snow away using longer, leaner legs, and moved in something of a trot rather than a walk as some of the others did.

 _Do you think that will be enough_?

Yami was silent for a long time. Then he turned his head and faced him for a moment or so. _I don't know,_ he answered dismissively. But Yugi had the feeling that he knew and did not truly believe so. And so he turned away with a frown and tilted his head. The deer were not checking their surroundings yet. The wind was blowing their sweeter scent towards him. But fthere was an odd odor of rot, much like a tooth decaying in the mouth. Yugi wondered how old the deer was, how many calves it had fathered. Then he shook the thought away as unimportant and looked to Yami.

 _Okay, so, how do you want to do this_? _I can corner the male and you can go for the neck or we can do it the other way around._ Yugi flicked his ears and looked at Yami curiously for a moment. The black wolf did not seem very troubled by the idea of simply charging the deer on his own. But the reality of it was that the wolf beside him was physically malnourished but seemed no longer too weak to hold his own.

And he realized, should Yami truly be so reckless, those antlers might damn well sheer him. If he was gutted like a fish or the deer got in a well-aimed kick, Yugi was not sure what he might be able to do to help him…

 _I can take him on myself._ Yami looked over. _I used to kill deer on my own when I was still running from the pack. I moved a little away from their mountain range and came closer to the valleys where the deer frequented the area. The growth was better down there…so I…discovered the ability to rip their throats open on my own._

 _You were also healthier then._

Yami burst into laughter, something of a barking noise. The wolf was staring at him with disbelieving eyes. _Healthy_? he spat. _I had just escaped a massacre a few months prior. I was running from a pack and having frequent nightmares and hallucinations. You think_ that _was_ healthier?

Yugi blinked, startled, and then stiffened. _Hallucinations_?

 _They drugged me when I was at the labs. I did not realize they would have withdrawal symptoms._ He ignored the horrified look on the white wolf's face. Then he shook himself out again and looked back at the deer in question. His voice remained tired and fractured and short. _You are incredibly intelligent. And yet you worry far too much. I do not understand your manner of such thoughts. You honestly bewilder me._

Yugi flinched. _I'm sorry…_

Yami looked at him with pricked ears that began flicking frantically as the deer continued to move in the little dip of earth beneath them. After a moment he shook his head in near annoyance. _I did not mean that badly._ He paused, then flattened his ears against his head and looked away again. _I did not mean it derogatorily, Yugi. I simply mean that you worry about the wrong things far too often. I…think, truly, that I am weaker bodily but I have never been as powerful mentally. I'd forgotten many of the things I used to suppress. Now they're back._

Yugi expected him to say something else. He was expecting him to say that he was seeing things more clearly. He was expecting him to say that he was more powerful than ever. He was expecting other things. But Yami was silent again. That haunted expression had crossed his face again. He was stiff and frozen in the snow. His eyes looked hollow, as if the emotions had been scraped away entirely. He did not seem coherent for a brief second. Then, before Yugi's eyes, the wolf seemed to shake himself into reality again. He scattered the snow from his fur. He shivered once. Then he blinked and his eyes filled with cunning as he watched the male buck in the rear of the group.

 _He's basically using him as a meat shield, you know_? His voice was lower than before, gruff due to the strain of which he was trying so hard to focus. Then he flicked his ears and wrinkled his nose. _The stronger male is leading. But the smarter male is in the back. It was expecting an attack from the front. It's an oversight that often gets made by herd animals._

Yugi blinked and tilted his head. Then he glanced at the deer as well. The wolf blinked and pricked his ears forward. The deer continued to move forward in the thick layer of snow in front of them. _I thought they usually moved to where the older and younger were in the middle and the healthier on the outside. That way the ones that can defend themselves are running the flanks and they're more likely to be able to kick the wolves coming at them._

And then the weak ones or the wounded would be spotted by the wolves and their efforts would be focused in on them for then on. But Yugi did not know too much about it. The sheer number of the pack wolves made it harder for the animals to even get loose from them. What it came down to was the angle and the area of which the wolves were able to corner the prey animals. If they were successful in getting them in a more open area, it was easier for them. If they were in an area such as the cliffs, they did not manage very well to so much as chase the wolves away. The huge groups of prey animals did not seem to be existent in all truth, but for the boars.

But, then again, Yugi wasn't entirely sure that serows ran in groups rather than in pairs at the most. He wondered if that was a possibility or not. Then he shrugged it off, because it did not truly matter in the grand scheme of things. Yami was looking at the older buck as his obvious prey. And he did not know when the wolf might move to kill so he had no idea when he might need to follow. And then he wondered if he was meant to overtake Yami in this run and allow him more room to corner it or what.

He may have had experience taking them down on his own but he was not sure what he was supposed to do when he came down the hill with him. And asking him seemed foolish at the moment. He had no idea what it was that Yami truly wanted from him. The events from the river still irritated him and now looking at him again made him want to snarl and snap his teeth in annoyance. He could not know what it was that was truly going on in his head right now. Yami was basically an enigma at the moment. It was bewildering to him in that manner.

And he did not know the way to bridge the growing gap between them.

So he drew in a deep breath, looked down the incline at the deer as Yami was, and readied himself to run forward at the simplest hint of movement from his alpha. Yet Yami did not seem inclined to simply race down the hill at any point. He hesitated for a long handful of seconds. He blinked, flicked his ears, moved towards Yugi enough to circle him, and then began to move forward a few more steps. He trotted slowly through the snow, taking halting steps. He shook himself out twice more, lowered his head towards the snow as he continued, and then stopped a few feet ahead of the deer themselves.

The vantage point would have been useful, Yugi supposed, but he was confused what it was that they were looking for. He could not understand what it was that the canine was staring at. In the reflection of his eyes was only the snow itself. And so Yugi could not properly tell if he was still focused on the older male at all. Had he gotten ahead of himself and planned to attack the younger male? Had he turned his eyes on the does? He could not tell in the slightest now.

And, finally, Yami opened his mouth, lowered his head, wagged his tail, bunched his muscles, and sprang forward. Yugi hurried to catch up with him, though he was unsure what he was truly meant to do at the moment. Yami shot ahead like a racecar. He did not directly cut into the path of the deer for a few long seconds. They had noticed them and were trying their hardest to run through the thick snow to flee from them. But then the youngest male spun on the black wolf and Yami ran around it, circling as if it were more a game than anything.

But the wolf did not slow himself and the buck wound up kicking violently. Yugi found himself stopping, hovering, unsure of what more to do. He glanced at the two does as they tried to scramble up the hill. The older male was standing nearby the younger. But, as the younger lowered its rack and went to charge, the elder stepped away slightly. Yami did not seem to be surprised in the slightest by this. Nor did he seem to care either. The wolf pressed forward slightly, circled a step, then moved away when the deer got a foot between them. Yugi almost expected that he might simply grab hold of one of the antlers and try to shake its head until its neck snapped.

He wondered if that was truly possible, shivering at the thought.

But then he noticed the way Yami dashed to the side. He bit at the deer's flank. The prey animal spun on him and its back legs kicked. The blow hit the older male in the chest. The elder buck staggered from the force. Yugi startled, eyes wide with surprise. The black canine came around again, circling the older male now. It turned on him, head lowered, shoveling the snow with its front right leg. The black wolf turned and ran around the younger. He snapped at its flank, missed, dodged away. The older deer turned on the younger. It aimed its antlers and thrust them at the younger.

The hit made the young buck stumble straight towards Yami who was already circling again. The buck turned around, lowering its head, but stopped when Yami returned. It backed up, huffing a breath. And the elder male moved as if to ram into the younger buck's antlers as they might have during the rutting season. Yet, before the two males could possibly perform such an act, the black wolf came again.

He ran forward a step, leaping. His teeth snapped open and shut. His jaws snapped into the buck's neck, crushing it. The sound of the windpipe breaking was a loud popping noise. Yugi blinked, stunned, as the younger buck turned tail. But the older tried to toss Yami away even as the blood began to drip from his jaws and hit the snow. The effort it took the deer to try to move its head was too much. A few seconds passed and the heavy animal began to lower its body into an almost kneeling position. He wheezed and shivered. Blood continued to drip to the snow.

Yugi shook snow from his fur. Yami kept his claws clenched upon the deer's neck. His eyes were sharp, narrowed and caught on the wolf in front of him. Yami only released the deer when it had been lying in the snow for over a minute. Then he backed up a step or two, moved to its flank, and hurriedly dug into the side of its body, tearing chunks of hide and muscle away.

Yugi took a seat nearby, looking about them. Some part of him remembered that the sun would soon be rising. But he doubted that it would do much with the snowfall that continued so heavily. He was covered in inches minutes after, shaking himself out as Yami continued to gorge himself. When he finally looked over again, Yami had dug a huge hole through what had been its belly. From what he could see of it, the organs had all been devoured already. And the bones were being polished from the inside where Yami was tugging at strands of meat and muscle.

The sight managed to make him slightly queasy and he wondered at this. Hadn't he watched Yami eat an entire rabbit half an hour before that? Hadn't he watched him do that and listened to the bones popping and thought nothing of it? Or had he been judgmental then? Yugi blinked and pricked his ears forward, then bore his teeth in frustration. No, he hadn't shied away from it then. So why was he doing it now? Was it because he was used to seeing Yami eat smaller animals? It couldn't be, however.

He'd watched Yami eat that serow he and Obelisk had caught for him. He'd feasted on it for a couple of days, swallowing huge chunks of it whole and laying around to lick the blood off his paws and face before doing it again. He'd slept next to it, sometimes whistling in his sleep rather than the heavy snores that he was used to coming from his grandpa when he fell asleep on the couch. He had watched him eat that and had not once turned his nose up at it. Was it different because he'd caught it for him then?

But that didn't quite make sense to him either. Yugi felt small and sick for a moment as he looked at his alpha. What was it that had made him wrinkle his nose this time? The white wolf shook himself out again, then looked away. Was it because of the river? Was it because Yami had begun to leave him behind like that? Was that so upsetting to him?

But then, Yami had not been caught in the nightmare that was crossing the river. He hadn't been reliving the moment that the ice had broken away beneath his shoes and the sight of Yami's eyes as he'd disappeared under the ice. He hadn't been suffered through it over and over again in his mind. And he had not been there to witness Yugi's panic upon waking from his time beneath the ice and not being able to find him. He hadn't heard his pathetic apologies or the way he'd sobbed and broken down. He hadn't been there when Yugi had struggled to comprehend the possibility that Yami was no longer there.

And he had not seen what he'd done to the pack after that. He had not borne witness to his spiraling stupidity. He had not known and seen and understood it. And the pack had resented him for it, though none of them truly said it. He remembered the way that many of them simply turned away to avoid him altogether. He knew that and hated them for it. But, in reality, they had every right to ignore him and hate him in turn. He had not cared that he was disrupting their lives in order to force them to look for a wolf that many of them did not know in the slightest. And the sore memories that Yami brought with him regarding the original pack had done nothing to slow him down in forcing them to do as he demanded.

And he _still_ had not done a damn thing to introduce himself to the other packs that had come to merge with the original one. There were no longer more females than males, he knew. And yet he had not bothered to know even one of the newer packs. He knew of Nistro and Chazz and a couple of the younger wolves at the most. And Yusei had been brave enough to introduce himself despite the way the rest of the pack had been unnerved and seemed ready to jump in at any time. They'd acted as if he was possibly aggressive, shocking Yugi for the most part. And now he understood why.

None of them had known him beyond his name.

And that did not mean much for him.

Being Code Name Atem only meant enough to say that they would follow him. It did not mean that they would be happy to do so. It simply meant that their loyalty guided their actions and so they were going to do as was necessary. That meant nothing else to them at the end of the day.

And the name Yami must have meant _far less_.

Even the rank of beta probably did not mean much to them. And when he'd replaced him with Slifer and Obelisk, he doubted that any of them might care to think much of anything regarding Yami himself. It was bewildering to him as the seconds passed, because he had not realized such a thing before. How he had missed this was amazing to him. In another situation he would have realized, would have considered it. Now he simply shrugged it off, pushed it aside, and forced them to go against their own desires for the sake of his.

He was a _terrible_ pack leader. There was no getting around that or sugarcoating it.

He was probably the worst pack leader any of them had ever known.

Yugi shivered as he turned back around. Yami was licking his lips and staring at him, his meal finished for the most part. He would settle for sitting for a few minutes, then finish off what remained, Yugi was sure. The black wolf had done this when he was in the cavern too, letting the food settle and digest some before going in for his seconds and thirds. Now he licked his lips, watched him, tilted his head, and turned back to his buck with a shake of his coat. When he took a seat, it was right where he'd been standing. It was almost as if he was expecting Yugi to challenge him for his meal or something of that manner. But the white wolf simply turned away and licked his lips again.

 _Are you ready to go back to the camp_?

Yami looked back from where he'd been licking his paws clean of some blood. His head snapped up and his eyes widened before he flicked his ears and moved to sit up again. He stretched, shook himself out again, and yawned loudly. _I do not care to but I do not intend to avoid it either._ He looked at Yugi with a tilt of his head and flicked his ears uncomfortably as the seconds passed. The snow was falling so quickly he was surprised they were not blind at the moment. But the snow would lessen in a few minutes, he knew. He could feel it.

 _How would you feel about doing it in a few minutes, after you're done with your deer_?

Yami stared at him for a moment, looked back at his meal, and then turned to him again. _I can leave it here. It will freeze in the snowfall. I'll uncover it again when I'm hungry. Or the pack will find it and do the same. It will be my cache later, I'm sure,_ he yawned, shaking himself out as he got up again. He faced Yugi with a calm, collected stare and watched him for only a moment as he wagged his tail. _Let's do this now. I think it would be more beneficial to do so now rather than later._


	68. Balance

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Hopefully biweekly**

 **Chapter Warnings: MILD Bloodshed, Mentions of Death**

 **I apologize PROFUSELY for the lateness of this chapter. I had a lot of issues at work that had to be resolved before I could update. And I wanted to make sure that some of what happened in this chapter made sense. So it took some careful planning and restructuring of the outline (for about the fifth time since I started publishing this story haha) so that everything could come full circle later.**

 **So, news for _Blood Sky_ 's sequel goes like this. For those waiting for it, I'll likely try to post it sometime around or on the sixteenth and use the same schedule as before. So, rest assured, I'm still working on it. But for right now editing is a slow process due to work and things of that nature.**

Chapter LXVIII: Balance

 _Work Log Entry LXI: July, 2006_

 _July 2_

 _Atem and my look-alike have crossed paths again. The bloodbath was immense._

 _It started out with the two of them walking near each other in the hallway._

 _The wolf had to have said something to the boy. Because Atem stopped short and turned around with huge black eyes. And Atem does not often react to others around him. When the wolf turned around, Pegasus didn't bother to stop him._

 _The wolves do not communicate out loud. And they often shield their own thoughts from others._

 _So I could not hear any of it._

 _But Atem became so upset that he outright attacked him._

 _And then there was fur and blood and skin and screaming from the guards and Pegasus was trying to zap his wolf into submission and Atem was going through a seizure from the voltage._

 _Things have only calmed after twelve hours of extensive care for him._

 _I have given him transplants, supplements, and even fluids to help him heal._

 _Atem has not outwardly expressed a change._

 _But the heart monitor has finally calmed down from when he has been sitting in the clinic with me._

 _July 6_

 _Atem did not recover._

 _He did not recover at all._

 _He simply slowed his heart rate down._

 _He would not have collapsed upon leaving the clinic had he recovered in even the slightest._

Yugi felt as if the world were too silent, the air eerie in the way it seemed to drape itself forcefully upon his form. He was small and tired beneath its touch, stomach knotting as he continued forward. His ears were pricked and he felt sick and nervous as he came closer to the entrance. The waterfall was roaring loudly within his eardrums and he wondered at the way it seemed more immense than ever. He sniffed at the air but he could not find any trace of what made his fur rise in a terrible bristle. He had no idea what it was he sensed at the moment.

There was no reason for him to feel this way…

He was not even near the camp just yet. They were not in its immediate vicinity and he could sense none of the other wolves. So the source of his alarm evaded him entirely. Yugi shuddered, shaking his head, and looked around slowly. He saw nothing out of the ordinary, but the air still felt heavier than ever. And he could not sense any of the other wolves around either. He did not even think that the fresh snowfall had left the smallest hint of their smell left for him to find, in truth.

He glanced sideways towards Yami. And, as the black wolf looked around them slowly, he wondered if he sensed it as well. But his heart was hammering in his chest now. And he had the abrupt desire to do nothing more than hide Yami away altogether. He wanted more than ever to tell the black wolf to run and hide back at the house. He swore in some part of him that he needed nothing more than that at the moment to make himself feel better. But he did not want to do more than look now, as the words were stuck in his throat and he could not find a way to push them forth.

Yugi drew in a deep breath. His ears pricked forward again. His eyes grew narrow once more. His muzzle twitched as he tried harder to draw in even a stray hint of the wolves' scent. It was possible that he could sense something, right? It was possible that he was overreacting, right? It was possible that perhaps he was simply scared and so projecting it outwards…right?

But he felt sick again. And he did not think it was possible for the fear to have claimed him so completely if it were not true something was happening. And he could not stop from looking over at Yami again. The black wolf remained staring at the falling sheet of water. He did not look inclined in the slightest to go any nearer it. But the white canine wondered at the idea. The larger wolf pricked his ears forward and his lips twitched faintly. He stared back at him for a long minute. They could not stop facing each other now, something that Yugi felt was more daunting than anything else.

The wolf blinked and flicked his tongue over his mouth after a long moment. Then he turned away and flattened his ears over his head. He felt abruptly exhausted, a new sense of realization coming through him. Yami was not going to leave him no matter whether he told him to or not. The canine would fight him tooth and nail simply for the fact that Yugi was upset. Yami was not going to leave him to face whatever it was there that made him so upset at the moment.

But Yugi had to wonder. He had to consider what it was that might have happened. He had no idea what it was that upset him so much. He had no idea what it was that caused him to feel so anxious as he continued to approach the area. He wanted to stop and simply turn around, to convince Yami that they didn't need to actually go to the camp any longer. Something about it made his skin crawl. And he didn't know why. He had no idea what it was that lurked beyond the waterfall. But he was still scared.

And he truly did not want to expose Yami to anything that wasn't benevolent.

But then he wondered, despite himself—when had the wolves within that pack _ever_ been completely benevolent?

Even before he had come there, the wolves had been killing one another. They had been fighting and attacking and sacrificing one another. Regardless of the fact that the sacrifices might have been the wolves from the experiments, asking for such mercy, Yugi could not find it in himself to consider the original pack to be anything of the softer nature. He could not imagine that they did not all bare teeth and snarl and snap and bite at each other like savages at times.

The newer packs, he could certainly see otherwise. But the former? He could not think of anything much worse than them many times. They had been violent. They had spilled blood in an effort to "summon" him. They had assumed to bring him there by way of bleeding chosen victims. It did not matter if perhaps they were right in their manner of killing for what they deemed a worthy cause.

It mattered that they had spilled blood and done so rather ruthlessly.

He flicked an ear, shaking away the initial memory of Annie's voice leading their chants to bring Atem to them. It was stunning and overall more horrifying than he cared to admit. He remembered the blood, the loud cries. He remembered the way they'd seemingly been desperate to bring him forth. And he recalled their disappointment in seeing him as well. They were not impressed with him when he was the one they'd found. They were not happy in the slightest.

 _Yami_ , Yugi muttered, turning to him now. The black wolf blinked and pricked his ears forward. His head turned and tilted slightly to the side. He looked confused and bewildered now as the two of them faced each other. The white canine wondered at the way the wolf stared back at him curiously. _I want you to stay behind me, okay_? _Don't go too far from me when we get back there. I don't want anything to happen, okay_? _Just stick by me and don't get too far ahead. I don't want you to get hurt._

Yami blinked back at him, confused. But then he flicked his ears and nodded slightly. He did not look as if he might turn away from him anymore, Yugi realized with relief. But Yami was clearly inclined to listen, it seemed. The wolf blinked and considered him for a long moment or two. Then, finally, the black wolf flicked his ears, nodded again, and tilted his head. The two of them studied each other for a moment longer.

Then Yugi turned away and began to make his way closer to the edge of the cliff. He moved about the smooth stones with dark eyes. His claws clicked against the stone as he continued. And then, bunching his muscles, the wolf sprang forward. The waterfall cascaded against his body harshly. He landed hard on the other side, nearly stumbling a few feet with the impact. He shrugged it off, struggling to stand again, and then shook himself out.

He turned back to look over his shoulder. And his body felt sickly and weak for a brief moment. He wondered if Yami was even going to follow him at first. There was a long minute and a half which passed before the black wolf came through as well. The canine hit the ground chin-first, fumbling over his own paws. Then he shuddered and pricked his ears. He struggled weakly for his paws. He was shaking for a moment, exhaustion making his eyes cloudy. Yugi could see this more clearly than perhaps he could anything else.

And, as Yami finally got to his feet and moved a step forward again, Yugi frowned and tilted his head. His ears flicked and water droplets fell away with the movement. He shook himself out again, then blinked. He licked his nose slightly, fur fluffed up from the water along his neck. And, as he looked towards Yugi, his red eyes seemed to grow a little brighter.

The pale-furred wolf moved forward to make his way towards the back wall to find the ledge. It looked sharp and scraggly. He was surprised by the hard indentation of it before him. And, as he raised his paw and pressed it upon the stone once more, he wondered at the acuteness within his eyes now. He was surprised by the power of his senses. He could hear Yami's heart like a war drum. He could hear his own lungs stretching and collapsing. He could taste the icy winter air resting upon his tongue. He could feel the smallest touch of stone beneath his paws. His claws scraped hard against the rock. The white wolf flicked an ear, then looked over his shoulder at Yami uncomfortably.

Would he be okay? Something was incredibly wrong here. And he was leading him into something that could possibly be a threat. So, at the end of it, _would_ Yami be okay?

The thought was horrifying to him. He did not want him to become hurt again. He did not want him to regress in any manner. He did not want him to be harmed. He did not want him to feel sick. He did not want to see Yami suffer in _any_ way.

Yugi looked at Yami more pointedly now. The other wolf blinked up at him, balanced fully on the ledge and leaning slightly against the stone. He blinked and flicked his ears forward pointedly. His nose was tipped upwards. The canine was staring back at him with darkened eyes. The two of them looked between each other. And then, as they considered one another, Yugi nearly trembled.

 _Stay with me, okay_? he demanded again. He was not sure if it came out as harsh to Yami as it seemed to him. It was enough to make him want to vomit. He was almost as he looked back at Yami once more. And the two canines continued to face one another curiously. The black-furred canine tilted his head. _Stay with me—as close as possible, okay_? _Stay as close to me as you can. I don't want you to get hurt. I don't want you out of my sight. If something goes down, I want you_ with _me_.

Yami blinked. His ears flicked back and forth. Then he nodded slowly, eyes narrowed. He moved forward a cautious step but did not say anything further. The two of them watched each other for a long moment. Yugi wondered if he felt the same dread in his bones as he did. But the black wolf slowly tilted his head, hesitating, and wagged his tail slightly as if to appease him. He seemed rather unhappy at the moment. He looked almost bewildered by the reasoning and his request. But he did not speak and Yugi felt winded.

He would listen to him, he knew. Yami would follow him as he'd requested of him.

The brambles seemed unusually thick and sticky now, pressing harshly upon his fur. It tugged hard on the long strands. And Yugi slipped from the harsh knots of thorns with what felt like jagged cuts to his skin. He bristled faintly as one broke in his coat. But he did not feel that it mattered for much longer than the second it took to move forward. He shook himself out just as Yami began to pad up behind him. The black wolf made it to his side, flicked his ears, and turned to him with a tilted head.

His nose was working furiously. The twitching of the dark muscle was harsh and erratic. His ears were flicking again. His mouth opened slightly as if to drink the smell in on his tongue. But then Yami turned away, stepped forward once, and bristled. Before Yugi could entirely stop him, the darker-furred canine took off in a trot. He did not move fast enough that he lost sight of him, but it was enough to make Yugi feel increasingly discouraged. In an instant the white wolf chased after him. The snow flashed upwards in long and bright jerks of white within the air. It was enough to make Yugi bristle as he hurried to his side.

 _Where are you going_? he demanded in a harsh tone. He bristled more than ever, then snapped his teeth. But the reaction he got in turn was nothing he had expected. The dark wolf glanced at him sideways, bore his teeth, and then turned and ran faster. Yugi snarled under his breath, an abrupt urge to lunge forward and knock Yami off his paws coming through him. But he fought this instinct away as they came over the small incline which led more fully into the camp and towards its center.

Yugi stumbled and fell over himself, horrified.

Yami, beside him, came to a stop and bristled, ears pricked and nose wriggling desperately. The black wolf turned to him with wide eyes and his paws moved back and forth for a moment, almost kneading in his anxiety. He was restless, Yugi knew, but it was impossible to gain his balance again. Yugi could not move, eyes wide and heart in his throat once more. He could not stop staring, feeling dizzy as his exhales left him in white puffs of air. He wanted to vomit as the seconds passed, confused and bewildered.

How was there…?

How had someone…?

Yugi looked slowly towards Yami. The darker canine had begun twitching and shifting his weight more erratically now. _Stay close,_ he finally growled, forcing himself to his paws again. He bristled, stalking forward a step. His alpha blinked, flattened his ears against his head, and ducked his muzzle towards the ground as he arched his back and looked away immediately. _I need you to do that for me, aibou._ Stay. Close.

 _Understood_ , Yami answered reluctantly, voice tired and strained. But Yugi could sense the more acute nervousness coming from him now. He wondered if Yami truly thought he might strike out against him. And, so, with a sick feeling, Yugi moved forward enough to lick his ear in a comforting manner. He watched him for a moment, then nudged him gently in the shoulder. He rested his head there for a long heartbeat, closing his eyes as he leaned into him.

 _If I can't see you, I want you to tell me exactly where you are, all right_?

He pulled away to look at him now, hoping more than ever that he had not done anything to truly upset him. He hardly wanted to have done that. So, when Yugi backed up, he considered him a moment, studying.

Yami blinked and tipped his head up just enough to run his tongue over his chin. Yugi nudged him again, then straightened as the black wolf slowly did the same. He looked tired rather than restless now, but he was clearly still crestfallen. He did not seem as if he were inclined to run from him, however, and so Yugi forced himself to relax once more.

He would have to have faith that Yami would listen to him now and not run as he felt he might moments before. He flicked his ears and wondered at the urge to vomit. Then he turned away and looked about the area, eyes narrowed into near slits. He wanted more than ever to flee right about now, feeling horrified by the mere thought of moving forward through the snow again.

The earth was soaked red in areas, splattered with harsh lines and puddles of blood. The ice was drenched in it, some of it so fresh the air was still steaming. And then he found himself stiffening, bristling, as he stepped forward again. He flexed his claws for a split second, then pressed them deeply into the snow. He pricked his ears forward and looked about the snow before him, the trees stretched in front of them like gray and brown pine trunks. The canine blinked and tilted his head in consideration as he looked around once more for a few long minutes.

The trees were littered with darker shapes amongst the snow, beneath the shadows of them. Some of their trunks were tangled and splashed red. And others were caught with tufts of dark fur. Yugi blinked and crept forward again, Yami moving slowly towards him as well. He brushed against his side lightly, almost as if he could somehow offer him a sense of strength in this manner. The touch was soft and gentle where they brushed and Yugi almost trembled with satisfaction.

Yugi nodded at him slightly, then turned away again. His fur refused to fall back into place, however. He could not shake the bristle in the slightest. The camp stunk hideously of blood, metallic and suffocating. The hints of decay which came forward amongst the trees made him want to vomit. But he continued forward, ears pricked and stomach knotted. The shapes were clearly bodies, broken and disheveled. Some were stripped bald along the throats. Others were cut so harshly that it was clear their necks had been torn open violently…

But none of them looked entirely of the wolves within the camp. Yugi glanced at Yami sideways. Many of the bodies were black and dark gray. His ears flicked and looked towards the trees again. _Hellhounds_? he muttered, confused and stunned by the very thought. Yami looked back at him without much expression, then turned away and trotted forward without a second glance. Yugi bristled at the unenthusiastic acknowledgment of his words.

They moved forward as a pair, steps almost completely in sync. Yugi flicked his ears and looked at him sideways. Then Yami lowered his head and sniffed at the air. For a moment Yugi could not tell what scent it was that came through to him. It was enough to make him bristle once more and Yami stopped after a moment. There was a single second of confusion for Yugi, who had come to a stop a few inches away from him. He was looking at one of the bodies, a mess of broken sinew and muscle and torn tendons. The blood was dark against the ice, splattered and terrible.

Yugi turned, however, when he heard the harsh noise of his paws crunching against the snow. He blinked and pricked his ears again. Then he looked in the direction it seemed to be coming. The air seemed stuffy and too crisp, falling upon his body like a harsh sheet of water. He shivered and tipped his nose up slightly, bristling furiously. Before his eyes, a wolf was coming through the trees. He startled, confused and bewildered by the sight. And Yami did not so much as blink as he did the same, head tilted and eyes on Yugi in turn.

The wolf coming towards them was mostly tawny in color, but for small splashes of gray along the muzzle, a tangle of brown along the bridge of his nose, and white to make up the shape of its large cheeks. The wolf was slender but large, with long limbs which were almost as pale as the snow itself. The canine slowed sooner rather than later, then snarled and lunged at Yami as he got closer.

Yami snapped his teeth and bristled. His tail rose like a war flag. His eyes were wild and dark. His ears were pricked. His fur was a set of jagged spikes of black. He squared his shoulders and set his muscles. He quivered, snarled, and lunged for him.

Blood was drawn in an instant. Yami had done nothing more than clip him. But the wolf backed up warily with a yelp. And Yugi faltered, stiff. He shivered and bore his teeth. Then he licked his lips and flicked his tongue over his nose.

 _Jonouchi_ , he breathed, feeling as if he might stumble and falter, _what happened here_?

The tawny-colored wolf startled. His eyes grew wide, confused, and shot to Yugi with a somewhat horrified expression. His ears flicked and his head tilted. He glanced at the wolf and then back slowly. And then he stared at Yami with a confused expression before looking to Yugi in turn. _Y-Yugi_? He sounded more confused than the white wolf could understand at the moment. And, as Yugi stepped closer, his best friend stiffened with eyes wide and full of horror and shock. He backed up a step, as if he did not quite recognize him in the slightest, ears flattening against his skull for a split second. When he looked t Yugi, he almost seemed to be squinting in order to properly identify him. _What…_?

Yugi blinked and pressed forward a step. Jonouchi flinched back, snarling. Yami flicked his ear and lost his bristle. His head turned away and his nose lowered to the snow. He sniffed lightly at the air there, the ice seeming to tremble and fall away beneath his exhales.

 _What's going on_? _What happened here_? _I don't understand how this…_

But he did. He could remember thinking before of how they had neglected to consider the open terrain which could have led to the back of the camp. He had mentioned it to Marik and the wolf had brushed him off as if it were nothing more than a simple and idealistic concept that Yugi had come up with for some indiscernible reason. Yugi wondered now if perhaps that had been the way they'd come across the camp. Surely none of them had gotten through the waterfall and through the thickets and caused such damage so easily like this…

They would have _known_ had someone entered through there…

 _Ambush_ , Jonouchi grunted. But his eyes were on Yami and they had grown narrow as he curled his lips back. _Hellhounds_.

The simplistic words made Yugi feel sick. He looked toward his alpha for a moment. But Yami was paying neither of them the slightest bit of attention. His head had risen and his ears were pricked forward. His eyes were sharpened. His nose was twitching furiously. He looked about himself for a moment, then took a few steps forward. Yugi wanted to snap at him to remain there, but he could see a strange glaze to his eyes. The black wolf was not scared, but rather perhaps resigned or even confused, and Yami did nothing more than move forward after a moment.

 _Tell me where it is that you go,_ Yugi instructed after a long moment. He felt sick with the idea of letting Yami leave his side as it was. But he could see that there was nothing that was going to stop the canine from doing as he wished. And so, as Yami looked towards him, he nodded slowly. _Remember to tell me immediately when you get there. I want to know that you're okay. If you end up running into someone else, tell me. I'll help you if it comes down to a fight. I'm not letting you get hurt any worse, understand_?

The black canine was silent for a long moment. Then he dipped his head and pressed his nose briefly into his shoulder. He turned away and trotted off before Yugi could rethink his statement. The white wolf bristled, watching him go, and then turned back to his friend with shaky resolve.

 _What happened_? _How did they find the camp_?

Jonouchi hesitated. His ears flickered back and forth. His nose twitched. His head tilted. He did not look away from where Yami was heading through the trees. He looked uneasy and exhausted and Yugi could see the blood on his flanks now. He could also see the small scratch upon his nose where Yami had struck him. It was nothing compared to the heaving wounds on his sides, however. And Yugi swore he could see nothing but red along his fur, soaked through entirely.

 _They…came along the river._ The tawny wolf began to pace forward now. He took a few steps as if to follow Yami. Then he turned shakily to his friend again. He breathed hard, shivering. Then he looked back and forth a few times. _You were gone._ Why _were you gone_?

Yugi blinked, confused. His friend's voice was frantic and breaking, high-pitched. Jonouchi stared at him with horrified bright brown eyes. The white wolf could not tell if he was scared of him or if he were shocked by what he might have witnessed. He was amazed that the canine in front of him was still here. Jonouchi was a violent scrapper in his human form. But he had not known if that had carried to his wolf shape as well. He had no idea if such instinct came forth in them both like that. So now he simply stared at his friend for a moment, cleared his mind to force himself to think, and flattened his ears against his skull.

 _Yami needed me._ He shivered at the wild look in Jonouchi's eyes. There was something disassociated there, as if he could not understand. He seemed bewildered, if nothing else, and the sight made Yugi feel incredibly nervous. He thought perhaps Marik had worn a similar expression upon realizing he was not Atem as he had initially believed for so long… _I had to help him and I came here to see how you all were…_

Jonouchi turned away from him abruptly. He was watching the place that Yami had disappeared once more. His ears flicked. His eyes shot to Yugi and then back again. He looked as if he might run after the darker-furred canine at any time. But he looked too exhausted as well.

 _The hellhounds followed the river. They came…after the patrol that had left to hunt. They killed them and then got into the camp._ Jonouchi blinked. His eyes shot to Yugi again now. His gaze was darker than ever. His expression was colder than Yugi had ever witnessed it. _And then all hell broke loose._

Yugi could not think straight. How had the hellhounds gotten to the patrol? Had no one been watching and making sure something like that wouldn't happen? When had they decided to become such an obvious force in this war to begin with? _Why_ had they decided such a thing? Had they been released from the labs with the orders to do this?

But they had been after him initially. Even Slifer had said so. So why would they have sent them after the entire pack? Was it to bring him out in some way? Had they expected to find him there? Had they been released simply in order to do this? Or had they simply had the same mentality as Noah had before them? Were they all able to poison the wolves here as the ones that attacked Yugi and Yami had been capable? Would they be bleeding and writhing and going through seizures as Yami had? Would he see more of it than he had before? With so many wolves, would there be hours of agony rather than the mere minutes he'd seen of Yami?

 _Yami looks like them._

The statement was confusing to him. He couldn't focus as they looked at one another. Jonouchi flattened his ears but did not repeat himself. And, as he looked away again, his eyes fell on the path Yami had gone once more.

 _They got a lot of us._

Yugi hated the statement. He hated the way Jonouchi sounded so cold and disassociated from it. He felt sick as the words echoed in his ears. And he wondered rather abruptly when it was that Jonouchi had begun to consider himself so much more alike them than human any longer. But he did not want to ask a question like that. And instead he grew quiet and narrowed his eyes.

 _How many_?

Jonouchi blinked and looked over. _At least ten of us. I think we took out a lot more of the hellhounds._

Yugi nodded slightly, feeling dazed. He shivered and looked over his shoulder. Then he turned away from the direction Yami had gone and hurried forward. _Come on, Jonouchi, let's go. I want to see how much damage has been done._

Jonouchi hesitated, however, looking over in the direction Yami had gone once more. He stayed staring there for a long handful of seconds. Then, slowly, he turned to follow Yugi as well. Had he been able to follow Yami as he'd wanted, he would have found the black wolf slowing to a stop a few feet away from another dark-furred wolf. The female was laying on her side, breathing hard, blood across the snow in a puddle and head arched somewhat backward. She'd sensed him coming, he knew, and she had been trying to see him before he might come too close.

 _You…_ She was wheezing as Yami approached and the male hesitated for a moment as he stopped in front of her. They were staring at each other for a moment, gray eyes against red. Yami flicked his ears and came a step closer. She looked too tired to snarl at him, but her voice was dry and hateful. _Come to watch me die_?

He considered her, tilting his head. _No_ , he answered quietly. But his voice was softer than usual, and the timbre of it came out deeper than he'd heard it before. The female in front of him responded immediately, head tipping further back. Her gray eyes grew wider than ever. Her jaw opened slightly as if with shock. And Yami knew immediately that she was seeing something that was not there. He had expected this of her, as he would have anyone else. But he also knew her desperation in the need to hear his words, to understand him as well.

Yami was silent for a moment. Then he inched forward another step.

 _You asked a question a while back,_ he said softly, lowering his head. Her eyes were glazing over, but they were not as glassy as they might have been had death come upon her any faster. The glassy touch upon her eyes was not immense, was not growing too terrible yet. But he knew she would not last longer than a few more minutes, perhaps twenty at the most. _And I was not the one to answer you._

She stared up at him, unblinking and demanding.

Yami shook his head after a moment, lowering his nose towards hers. His eyes flickered across hers for a handful of heartbeats. Then he moved to lie down before her, paws stretched out almost as if to touch her. He stared back at her, unblinking and unsure of himself. But the seconds continued to pass and he almost could not fight the instinct to simply turn away altogether.

 _So I'm going to answer it now, Echo._

He spoke quietly to her, so softly that he could almost no longer understand his own words. His heart was in his throat and blood coated his tongue. He felt dizzy with the statement which left him and his ears flattened against his head as his heart seemed to stutter and break beneath the pain. Rushes of guilt and shame came through him. Pain and hate crept through his senses. Wave upon wave of disgust lashed at his insides. Yami stared at her as he spoke. Her eyes bore into his, stunned and silent. And she did not speak out against him, as if she understood the truth in his words. And, as he fell quiet, she finally began to lose the light of attentiveness in her eyes.

And, when he finally moved to stand again, she was long dead. Her flanks had heaved a final time minutes before. And Yami had only then found the strength to rise to his paws again. Her gray eyes were closed. Her features looked relaxed now. She looked abruptly peaceful, as if she had not suffered fear or pain or panic of any kind in her life.

Yami turned his head away, lowering his nose to the snow. He wondered who had retrieved her to take her to Paradise. It was not hard to believe that perhaps many of the wolves had come to lead her back. He wondered at the thought, feeling sick and imagining the lean pickings which might come to his aid in leading him to Paradise upon his own passing. And the thought made him want to sob with disbelief.

The black wolf turned to face the inside of the camp again, moving forward uncomfortably. He came slowly, miserably, the weight of his own thoughts making his limbs feel like lead. He blinked and shook his head as he walked through the camp and approached where he knew Yugi and Jonouchi to have gone. The canine flicked his ears unhappily, miserable with sickness which clenched his belly as he came closer.

Yugi glanced up immediately, eyes brightening upon seeing him. He came to his side before he got within feet of him, moving to sniff at him. He clearly caught nothing of the smell of Echo on him, but he certainly did the blood. He knew that Yugi detected it, because he stiffened and narrowed his eyes, bristling faintly. His gaze grew somewhat cold and confused, and his ears pricked forward completely. He looked suspicious now, as if he expected to find that the blood might be that of his own rather than another's. He most likely assumed that Yami had gotten hurt with a lingering hellhound somewhere in the camp.

 _I am fine,_ he stated curtly, but he was exhausted. The weight of his words to Echo made his heart feel heavy and he could not find it in himself to even think of them again. Instead he looked away towards where Jonouchi was eyeing him with a darkened gaze that glittered with something almost like suspicion and bewilderment.

 _Are you sure_?

 _Yes_. Yami glanced at him for a moment, then took a seat in the snow. His eyes narrowed as he considered his beta, then looked back to Jonouchi as the tawny wolf came forward a step or two. He was halting in his approach and Yami was not impressed with these faltering movements. Yugi did nothing beside him but look away and face his own beta curiously, almost confused and bewildered.

Where _were_ you? a new voice exploded. Yugi blinked and his head snapped around. Yami, however, did not raise his eyes from where they had fallen on the snow. He heard her approaching quickly, however. But it did nothing to make him come any closer. _You_ let _them do this to us_! _We were almost killed and you were not even here to help us_!

Yami did not raise his head but his gaze shot to his beta now, curious as to his reaction. Yugi faltered, eyes wide and horrified at the declaration. The white wolf made no inclinations towards flight or response, however. He looked absolutely winded instead, as if he had been struck across the face in the time that she had spoken. Yami turned his eyes back towards the she-wolf that was standing before them.

She was raw muscle, a body of thick and powerful sinew. Her dark fur, a deep russet so dark as to be burgundy in color, was in a bristle. It made her body seem thrice its actual size. Her eyes were blazing, a hideous burning shade like ice. Her ears were pricked and her tail raised. Her entire body was rigid, her shoulders squared and her lips pulled back. Her teeth showed in bright spears of white.

 _You left us to die_!

Yugi was shaking, stunned. _W_ - _what_?

 _You left us to die,_ she snarled, chomping her teeth at him furiously. She pushed forward and bit at the air before him. Yami startled, bristling as his head snapped up. Jonouchi was glaring at him now, but the black wolf paid him no attention. Yugi was staring at Aki with a horrified expression. And Yami did not care to pay attention to her hateful expression. Instead he forced himself to his paws, moved forward a step with bristling fur, and bore his teeth. His eyes narrowed and his mouth opened wide to show his fangs.

 _Back away from him, Aki,_ he growled, stepping forward once more. Her eyes snapped to him, startled as if she had never noticed his presence there to begin with. They looked at one another and she faltered briefly before snapping her teeth at him.

 _You were never useful to begin with. You don't get to tell me what to do._ She sprang at him but missed when Yami sidestepped her easily, shouldering Yugi gruffly with the action. But he did not care for the jostling and instead flicked his ears briefly. Aki snarled furiously, drool falling from her long teeth in her anger. _You don't ever get the right to tell me what to do, you traitor. I know what you are. I know what you've done. I know that you brought this on us_! _And I refuse to listen to a wolf who would not even open his mouth and speak for months—_

 _You should be silent before your beta,_ Yami growled, stepping forward. The action was enough to force Yugi back again as he moved to face her more fully. The white wolf backed away a few steps, eyes locked on Yami enough to make his skin crawl with the burden of his attention. Yami ignored this, however, then squared his shoulders and bristled with dark eyes. _Listen to me, Aki. Bloodshed now will not help any of us. It will not bring back the deceased. And it will do nothing more than cause wounds amongst the rest of us. Is that what you wish for_? _I will tear your skin open should I need to._

Yugi blinked wide eyes. His ears flicked. He stiffened in the corner of Yami's eye. But the black wolf still did not pay him any attention. He was watching Aki, the way the she-wolf faced him with burning eyes. She padded forward a step, then bore her teeth.

 _A spectator like you doesn't get to tell me what to do. You were not_ here! _You didn't_ see _them die_! _You watch from the sidelines while others suffer in your place_!

Yami was silent for a moment. _Yes_ , he muttered, but it was more to himself as he stared back at her unblinkingly. _I do watch from the sidelines. I see a lot of suffering around me._

Aki bristled, as if startled by his agreement. She looked as if Yami had bitten at her, however, and he wondered at the sight. He wondered if she saw him for what he truly was, but the thought was exhausting and he knew she would never have stared with such shock had she understood. And so he simply shrugged this away and kept his eyes locked upon hers. They faced each other simply, waiting for the other to make a move that could be potentially turned on its head. But Yami did not care to lunge. And he would wait for her to make the first move in order to retaliate.

 _You're not Atem,_ she spat at him abruptly, head snapping towards Yugi now. The declaration was enough to make Yami flatten his ears in annoyance. He was so tired of hearing those words directed towards himself. He hated them. He hated them all so much when they spoke of that name. How dare they. They had no idea what Atem was, nor what he meant for any of them. They believed fairytales and stories that did not need to be worshipped in the light that they so often were. He shook it off, drawing in a deep and resentful breath. _I have no words for an impostor._

Yugi blinked and glanced at him but Yami did not pay him any mind. The immediate threat had been diffused. He lowered himself to the ground in a seated position again, no longer caring to think of the idea of another fight. Bloodshed would be avoided for the moment. Aki was an emotional creature, and she had been too scared by his agreement to continue the potential attack.

 _But I will speak to you._

Yugi blinked again. His eyes shot to Aki once more. But Yami merely raised his head and turned to her again. She was rigid before him, muscle and bone and raw strength. She had gotten wounded in various places, but the blood on her fur was already dried. And he was aware that she had healed already. She was not in pain from any former affliction. None of the cuts were fresh…

 _Because_ you _were meant to help us_! You _were meant to protect us._

Yugi was quiet for a moment. Then, softly, pleading, dismayed and exhausted, he croaked, _Aki…_

The use of her name simply enraged her more, however, and she lost her temper in the way that she sprang at him. Yami did not rise to his paws, however, knowing that the fight would go no further. The she-wolf was not so foolish as to attempt that. She knew better than to challenge Yugi and go against Yami, though he was sure that she sensed the weakness within him.

 _You have no excuses_! _You weren't here_! _You were away and you cost us lives_! _The camp is littered with dead bodies and yours should have been among them_!

Yami flicked an ear. His eyes shot to his beta's face. He should have prepared him, he realized. He should have told him that they would come to blame him for this. But the reality of it was that he had not been strong enough to consider it before he'd thought to speak to Echo. He'd wanted to tell her more than he'd cared to do anything else. And so he had not thought beyond then to do such a thing.

 _How many are—_?

 _Yami_? The voice was soft, cautious. Yami blinked and turned his head, twisting his neck almost completely backwards in order to see who had spoken to him. His ears pinpointed it from behind him and he considered curiously that perhaps they had left in a panic upon realizing that he was there. But then he noticed a small body there, standing near one of the trunks of a tree a few feet away. His softer ears were pricked forward. His dark gray steel-like fur was distinctively and his royal blue eyes were wide with surprise.

Yami rose to his paws and turned to face him entirely, stepping forward. Yugi snapped something at Aki and the she-wolf responded in a colder tone. But Yami did not look back. He came towards the gray wolf after a moment, quietly muttering, _Yusei_?

There was a long minute or two which the wolves watched each other curiously. Yusei flattened his ears against his head, murmuring, _I need help with damage control._ The words were so quiet they seemed almost eerie. Yami blinked and raised his head slightly, looked over his shoulder at Yugi, and began quickly to pad forward to follow the smaller male.

They were walking for a few minutes before Yusei turned around abruptly to face him. His blue eyes were wild and confused and his ears were against his head, fur ruffled with anxiety. Yami blinked, coming to a stop and tilting his head curiously as they considered each other for a long moment. _I—I heard what you said…to…to Echo…_ He was shaking as he looked at him and Yami flicked an ear as he attempted to see if he had any others nearby to hear the younger wolf speaking. _W-was it true_?

The black wolf was silent for a long handful of seconds. He turned his head to look over his shoulder, then the second, and finally peered through the trees over Yusei's shoulders as well. _You do not speak a word of what you heard to another wolf, do you understand me_? he snarled instead, snapping his teeth at his face. Yusei blinked, stunned, and then looked away with a horrified expression. He seemed incredibly shaken now, but there was something in his eyes that was oddly fascinated and curious and excited as well.

 _Does Yugi know_?

Yami tilted his head and then looked over his shoulder again towards where they had left Yugi with his best friend and an angry former beta. _He does,_ he said softly, turning back to him with darkened eyes. _He has always known._

He shouldered past the other wolf, lowering his head as he moved forward in a lazy pace. Yusei was silent for a long while after he had gotten to his side and kept in time with his steps. The smaller wolf flicked his ears towards Yami for a moment, then said quietly, _Okay_. There was a long pause in which Yami did not slow his pace nor did he so much as look at him. _I just wanted to know if you meant what I thought you did… I won't say anything about it to anyone else._

 _You will not say it to Yugi or myself either,_ Yami corrected him a brusque tone, turning his head with his lips peeled back. _I want you to agree to this now. Or I will pay you back tenfold for even speaking the words. Understand_?

Yusei startled, eyes wide and bewildered. He pricked his ears, then flattened them. He lowered his head to the ground and angled his jaw to tip his muzzle towards the beta's. Yami blinked at the submissive stance but did not care for it beyond the task of watching him for a moment. Clearly the younger wolf understood enough of what he was saying. He probably did not understand why he would ask such a thing of him, but he was clearly paying attention now. Yami shrugged this off and allowed the yearling to run his tongue over chin. Then the black wolf turned away with a snort, shaking himself out and padding forward.

 _Just make sure not to speak of it._

The gray wolf wagged his tail slightly. _Understood_.

Yami supposed he had to thank the other wolf for being smart enough to understand that he _would_ have done something far more drastic to protect such a secret. The two wolves glanced at one another for a brief moment and his ears flicked back and forth for a few seconds longer. Then he wrinkled his lips back and sniffed at the air. He could smell fresher blood now, not as dim as it had been before upon entering the camp before the liquid had begun to freeze. He shook himself out and moved forward to pad towards the outer expanses of the camp.

Many of them were gathered about nearby. Some of them were lying down and breathing hard. Others were licking busily at wounds along their shoulders and flanks. Chazz had his head down, breathing hard as he tried to still his tremors. He looked sick and exhausted, clouds of white leaving his muzzle with each breath. Beside him Yuya was lying in the snow and seemed to be playing the guard more than anything. He sat up the moment he spotted Yami, bristling slightly before recognizing him. Yusei slowed as a few of the other wolves looked up and collectively seemed to snarl in confusion. Some of the wolves reacted and others did not, however, and Yami shook himself out lazily as he approached.

Because it occurred to him only then that the wolves in front of him that none of them had ever met him before. Yusei had not even met him as a wolf but for once. And Chazz had seen him like this perhaps three times at the most. And though both of them seemed unnerved, Yami himself was not as he shook himself out once more and moved to look them all over.

 _Yami_ , a new voice muttered and he turned his head with a flick of his ears as the she-wolf made her way towards him. She had glossy black fur with tips of dark gray and silver and white along the bottom of her lean frame and he thought she looked incredibly ghost-like. He was almost bewildered by the sight of her approach before he tilted his head and considered her curiously.

 _Ishizu_. He ignored the bewildered and stunned expressions that some of the wolves wore. Ishizu flicked her ears and wagged her tail briefly as Yami blinked at her. When her blue eyes seemed to simply bore into his, almost as if she were challenging him to react in front of the others, he simply glanced about them. _How many were wounded_?

 _More than half of us,_ Chazz breathed out, raising his head and looking at Yami with wide eyes. He seemed stunned that the wolf was there to begin with, confused as well as his gaze darted to Yusei a heartbeat later. _I don't know the exact numbers but they're pretty bad._

Yami nodded slightly turning to face him more pointedly. _Who's hurt the worst_?

 _Yoko isn't looking too hot,_ he admitted. But his eyes flickered about them for a moment more. Then he bristled faintly, looked at his alpha a few feet away, and turned back. _And I don't think Syrus really got out of it unscathed. I think he got a pretty bad wound on the side the last time I looked. And then there was…_

He stared at him when he trailed off, turned to Yusei for elaboration the wolf did not provide, and then glanced slowly to Ishizu. _There was…_? he prompted, voice brusque. _I need the names when I go to help them._

 _Help…_? a new voice muttered. He looked over as he saw Chazz's alpha slowly raise his head. He was seated in a similar position to Chazz. But he had taken a more particular beating than his beta had. Blood dripped from his forehead, an ear was ravaged and torn away. His eyes were bright with hatred. His muzzle was cut, his cheeks bloodied. Along his neck the fur was missing, his right forelimb was shaking from his weight. His back leg was bleeding where he had it pressed against his flank. His shoulder in Yami's line of vision was colored sticky red, glued to his fur and clumped hideously there. _You…plan to_ help _…us…_?

Yami blinked and pricked his ears forward. _Is that a question_? he inquired quietly, moving to wrinkle his lips back when the alpha did nothing more than raise his head and stare at him coldly. _Am I meant to understand you question my motives or are you simply asking_?

Chazz stiffened and looked at his leader uncomfortably. He squirmed in his seat and looked towards Yami and back. Yusei lowered his head immediately when the alpha glanced at him slightly. Then he moved to lower himself into the snow rather than risk another fight. And Yami pressed forward a single step. The two of them stared at each other, frozen as if locked in combat of willpower.

 _Yami_! _Fuck_! The black wolf startled at his name, head snapping around before he could think it through. He had not heard Yugi curse so furiously in a while, and it surprised him enough to forget himself. In an instant he spotted the white wolf coming forward. And he also heard the sound of the other alpha coming forward. Yami spun around, snarling and bristling. He braced his muscles and bore his teeth. And the other male slammed into his side.

 _What the fuck_?

 _Zane, oh shit_ … Zane… Chazz looked as if he might pee himself out of anxiety. Yugi noticed this only when he got closer. Yusei had scrambled for his feet and was rapidly moving away from the fight. And, as he came closer, he aimed for the spot the gray wolf had been. But, positioning himself and getting ready to spring proved useless. The fight was over before Yugi got within a full yard of it.

Yami had knocked Zane to the ground. And the gray wolf was too wounded to continue. He'd pulled tufts of black fur away. And he'd managed to nick him on the muzzle and nose. But he had done no other damage for the most part. Yami shook himself out when Zane finally lowered his eyes and turned his muzzle away. The black wolf released him immediately and wandered a few steps aside. Yugi hurried forward to check on him, sniffing once or twice. But the blood he smelled on the black wolf was not his own. He realized only after investigating for a moment longer that it was the deer blood and Zane's that he smelled on him.

There the faintest touch of another wolf's blood on him as well. But it was not Yami's either. And so he forced himself to relax slightly as he turned to Zane with a frustrated expression. _What the hell was that_? he demanded icily, bristling and narrowing his eyes.

The dark gray wolf shot him a furious look but did not speak, instead turning cold eyes on Yami. The black male shook himself out again, eyeing him in turn. But the humiliation of being pinned in front of others was still clear in his mind and so he did not come forward again. And Yami did not care to repeat the gesture himself. So he turned away lazily and took a seat in the snow without a second glance.

Well? Yugi snarled, bristling furiously and snapping his teeth.

Yami turned his head, mumbling, _I started it. Leave him be._

The statement made Yusei, Chazz and Zane all look at him in surprise. Ears pricked, eyes widened, and looks were swapped for a brief moment. Then Yugi blinked, raised his head, and turned to his alpha with a confused expression on his face. He tilted his head, brows furrowed, and flicked his ears for a small second before focusing on him more pointedly.

 _You started it_?

 _Yes_.

 _Why would you…_? Yugi trailed off and glanced at Zane as if he might suddenly proclaim the opposite. When that did not happen he turned back to the black wolf with wide eyes. _Why would you start a fight with someone_?

 _You know I have a sharp tongue,_ the other dismissed without a second glance at the white wolf. He shook himself out again, turning to Ishizu with a tilt of his head. _Should I assume that you are helping to take care of some of the wounded wolves or is there something I'm missing in your presence here right now_?

Yugi looked between them for a moment, clearly confused, then turned his attention solely to the she-wolf. Ishizu blinked wide eyes, glancing between them for a moment. Then she flattened her ears and turned to Yami. _Yes, I am helping them with their wounds. I was going to lead you to see some of them before you started to provoke another wolf._

Yami flicked an ear. _Color me surprised that I would do such a thing._ He shouldered past her and lowered his head to the snow, starting to trot along by the scent she had left in the snow. Yugi glanced between them again, cast a single look at Zane curiously, and trotted after him as quickly as he could. Yami did not spare a glance at him and Ishizu hurried to take the lead to show them where she was keeping some of the wounded wolves. When they got towards the alpha's den Yugi was abruptly aware of just how strange it seemed to refer to it as such.

He wondered if they expected him to live in it at some point and bristled at the very thought. Then he shrugged it off in order to consider the way that the action might look to the other wolves in question. So he simply looked around them and shivered. There were a bunch of wolves lying around in the clearing, some of them bleeding profusely and others with ice packed into the biggest wounds. Others were running about and helping to pack more snow into the wounds. Some were simply cleaning the wounds to help stimulate the proper recovery. And some were running about to check on each other.

Yugi flicked his ears. It was oddly organized for them, and none of the clear distinctions between cultures seemed to be among them now. They were not considering that one was of the American pack and the Japanese. They were simply treating them as wolves in need of their help. Not one of them was turned away from except to help pack snow or to move onto the next wolf in need. Even Aki was helping to tend to one of the American wolves, a startling sight considering her initial hatred towards Echo and any of the others to have come with her.

And then he looked around at the wolves lying in the clearing, pricking his ears forward. _Where's Echo_? he asked, turning to Ishizu with wide eyes. He could not see the familiar tawny-undercoated black she-wolf. It was startling not to see her somewhere around them and it made him bristle faintly as he looked about. The realization of her absence made him bristle further and he looked around more frantically before a new thought occurred to him. She could have been fine and safe, wandering about on her own at some point.

However, when he looked at Ishizu, it seemed that she was staring at Yami with an expression that sent chills down his spine. His alpha cast her a warning glance, turned to Yugi slowly, and, in a calm and quiet tone, muttered, _War breeds casualties._

The words were calculating and soft, as if he meant to say them in a way nicer than the truth of them. But Yugi was shocked by the statement all the same, frozen in surprise when he processed their meaning. His eyes grew thrice their usual size, ears flattening against his skull. He tossed his head back and forth in shock. _W-what_? he stammered, shocked by the very idea.

How was Echo…?

But she'd been strong and reliable and…

How was she actually…? He couldn't understand how it was that she had been killed. Why would she, of all of them, be one of the first to go?

But then he blinked and wondered, briefly, if perhaps she might have done it on purpose. And, when he locked eyes with Yami, the suspicion in his heart began to grow tenfold. He stiffened, raising his head slightly, and looked towards Ishizu with a confused glance. But the seer turned away from him entirely, ignoring him as if he had never existed to begin with. She did not glance at him again, instead flicking and angling her ears forward. Yami, on the other hand, considered him for a moment longer, leaned over to lick his forehead, and turned away again.

Yugi flattened his ears for a moment, then forced himself to pay attention again. If she _had_ gotten into a fight she couldn't have gotten out of, he hoped that the green-eyed wolf was there to help her make it to Paradise. He hoped he was the first face she saw, because he knew he was the one she cared about the most. Yugi glanced sideways towards Yami, wondering if perhaps death would welcome him in the same capacity. Maybe Yami would receive him and they could remain there, safe and happy and…

His heart hurt.

 _You came back_? _How valiant of you,_ Aki sneered as she looked up from the task of helping one of the other she-wolves to heal a wound on her shoulder. She was facing Yugi rather than Yami and the black wolf had the feeling she'd managed to shock him into turning tail before they'd crossed paths again. The theory was only confirmed when Yugi flinched. Ishizu sighed as the she-wolf approached them with a snarl. _The unworthy alpha is_ just _brave enough to return to see us after he finds his little fuck buddy, huh_?

Yugi blinked, then raised his head with a snarl. He lunged at her, but the action was merely a feint. Yami flicked his ears and looked at him curiously. He was vibrating with anger now, not the least bit undone by her. He wondered if it was the phrasing or her insult towards him which made him so violent now.

 _Must we shed more blood_? Ishizu commented in an annoyed tone, turning to Aki with blazing blue eyes. _I do not think you realize the implications of striking out against your own alpha. You are not so abundantly followed now that you will survive the repercussions of such an event. Hold your tongue and keep your teeth behind your lips._

The former beta stared at her, eyes glittering with anger, and then blinked slowly. Yami saw the look which flashed between them and his fur rose slowly before falling again in a shudder. He shook it off with a single glance at Yugi, wondering briefly if they did something of that same kind at times. He knew that they'd made Yugi's friends nervous with the way they'd made eye contact and seemed to understand each other silently. Had they understood anything of wolves, they would have known better the reasons they'd responded in those ways, but he could not fault them for that. After all, only Jonouchi seemed to have been infected in his time away from Yugi.

He flicked his ears and looked around them. He wondered where the blond was anyways.

 _Are you truly so upset that you might risk your life for the sake of proving Atem wrong_? Ishizu continued in a lower tone. There was something almost tender in the statement but Yami did not care much to think of this. Instead he pricked his ears forward, considering the clearing of wolves being healed, and then shrugged it off again. He turned to Yugi after a moment, finding that the white wolf was staring at him in turn.

 _That was altruistic of you._

The small statement made him blink in bewilderment. _What_?

 _Lying about Zane,_ Yugi explained in a slightly cold tone. _I was watching the two of you before I got there. You didn't start the fight._

 _I did not want you to fight with him for my sake. It is not a big deal._

 _You protected him._

Yami stiffened, then turned to face him more fully, eyes flashing. _I protected_ you, he snapped. _Zane might have been wounded, but he was also upset. You are still new to being a lycanthrope, so I will forgive the transgression, but you misunderstand. I protected_ you _because you might wish to help me or protect me in whatever way you may wish, but to pick a fight with him_? _It would have been costly. And bloodshed is unnecessary now. The pack has been ripped up from the inside out. We have no idea the number of casualties. We have no concept the number of mortally wounded. We do not even know how many might heal properly and who might not_.

Yugi stayed silent for a long handful of minutes. _I don't think that many of us are going to even make it to see the end of this war,_ he admitted rather bluntly. The emotion in his blue-violet eyes was cold and distant, as if the thought had been haunting him for far longer than he cared to acknowledge. He shook himself out after a moment, eyeing Yami. _I don't want to hurt anyone more than what's happened here. I just want to know what our odds are when the hellhounds have clearly struck us down._

 _We're not struck down. We're wounded. And so we'll get up again and heal and rally and fight again. You cannot show such weakness here. Be depressed and helpless at home. Not here._ Yami turned away from him violently, head snapping towards the direction of movement he sensed. His fur rose into a bristle, then fell again. The gray shape heading towards them so briskly was one he knew well enough. The wolf stopped a few feet away from them, shaking himself out and blinking cold amber-flecked golden eyes.

 _About time the two of you made it here,_ he sneered but he sounded relieved as well, turning to Yugi with a pointed stare. The gray male studied him for a moment and Yugi met him with a similar stare, but his seemed shattered and hollow on the insides. And so the deity turned back to Yami, considering him. The wolf looked back at him with that familiar cunning he'd known him to possess. But now there was something different there, something that not even the god could name. It made him nervous but it was not enough to step away or back down in any manner. _You're bleeding_?

 _Zane and I had a scuffle. It is nothing serious._ Yami's ear flicked. His eyes fell on Aki and Ishizu staring at the two betas. Obelisk bristled faintly, then curled his lip. The dark red gaze flickered to his face once more, curious and alert rather than aggressive in any manner. _She seems very interested in you._

 _She makes ill choices,_ Ishizu chided angrily, turning to the burgundy-furred she-wolf with dark eyes. _She is foolish and makes bad choices of all kinds._

Aki shot her an infuriated look, then turned to Obelisk with her tail raised. _You were actually here in the fight,_ she declared. Her voice was loud enough that it made several of the other wolves raise their heads and turn away from their initial tasks at hand. _You were here to help us fight and drive the hellhounds away. Yet Atem brings one among us and fails to aid us when we should need him most. I should think such an action alone is enough to make the gods furious. I know that many of us are questioning his choices and wish to see him removed from his role as alpha._

Yami blinked in surprise. Yugi stiffened and then stared at the black wolf with wide eyes, as if asking him if that was a possibility. Yami, truthfully, was not sure if he saw excitement or cold dread in those blue-violet orbs. And so he simply blinked and turned away, regarding the she-wolf that was staring at him so coldly now.

 _I see no reason for the traitor to remain here, nor a wolf who clearly could not be Atem and thus simply pretends to be him._

 _You question the gods' choice of a champion_? Obelisk said softly, turning to her with cold eyes. The golden gaze sparked with hate and his lips peeled back to show the sharp incisors he flashed at her. When he sprang at her, she yelped and crouched low to the snow, teeth bared fearfully and eyes wide as they darted away. The gray wolf never made contact with her, but did not quite straighten from his position of looming over her, tail raised and shoulders squared. His ears were pricked forward and his eyes locked on her face. A moment passed before he turned to Yami abruptly, aggression lost in an instant. _I do not understand why you fail to knock sense into any of these wolves. You're more than capable._

Yami flicked his ear unhappily. _Bloodshed isn't always the way to solve a problem, Obelisk._ He blinked and looked over his shoulder towards where Yusei and Chazz were hovering. Both of them looked incredibly concerned and shocked. And he raised his tail just enough to wag it at them before turning back to the gray deity who was giving him an unimpressed look. _It is not my fault that you are a war deity. You jump to conclusions too quickly for your own good. We with mortality tend to try to think otherwise and find better solutions._

Obelisk eyed him for a long moment, the silence stretching uneasily like an elastic band. Yugi stiffened and looked between them, nearly bristling with disbelief. But then he shook it away, realizing how foolish it was that he had assumed Obelisk would not know such a thing. He was a god and the three of them were heavily involved in the entire thing. They all had to know by then. Not every manipulation they produced was for the sole sake of their own entertainment. He understood that where he'd formerly ignored it, though to dwell on it now was simply foolish.

 _Very true, I suppose,_ Obelisk said dismissively, turning away from him with a sniff. He did not seem inclined to continue for a moment, though he did turn to Aki and narrow his eyes slightly. _Must I explain to you that a bitter former beta does not choose the champion which the gods produce_? _You shall follow him as you were bred to or you shall find your death by his teeth and claws. It is your choice what you might do, but to so foolishly attempt to come against him is your death wish, I suppose._

Yugi blinked in confusion, though he glanced at Yami sideways. The black wolf was not paying either of them mind now, eyes set on a wolf further in the small clearing. Yugi wondered at the sight of his ears pricking forward and his nose wiggling with such intensity. But he did not care to ask and so turned away again after a moment. He looked at the war deity again, curious as to why he and Aki were still watching each other. He did not think she was brave enough to attack him. She may have been brave enough to bark at him but he doubted that she was courageous enough to turn on the deity as well.

 _You're okay_? Yami muttered seemingly out of nowhere. Yugi turned his head immediately, confused as to why he wasn't looking at him when he spoke. But then he looked at the wolf beside him was and relaxed visibly. He wondered if perhaps he might faint with relief. In front of them Mai and Otogi were heading forward with their heads lowered slightly and their paces somewhat slow. The she-wolf in front of them came towards them both, wagged her tail, flattened her ears, and tipped her muzzle to lick at their chins. Otogi came a second later, both of them submissive in their greetings.

Yami shook himself and sniffed at them both. _You both seem rather well for a fight to the death,_ he commented wryly, teasing the she-wolf with the statement. She straightened, wagging her tail, and Yugi got the smallest hint of a musky sex scent which made him startle and bristle slightly. He wrinkled his nose, then turned away with a flushed sensation creeping through his body. He was thankful that wolves didn't blush or show such embarrassment as he felt at the moment. _Glad to see you're all right._

 _Amazing what you miss when you're having a romp,_ Obelisk snorted, though he looked at them with amusement rather than anger. He shook his head slightly as the two of them wagged their tails hesitantly.

 _You were out fucking around when you should have been_ here? Aki snarled, spinning on them both. Mai flattened her ears but didn't look away from the long stare that the former beta gave her. And Otogi simply lowered himself to the snow without looking up. Yugi wondered at their positions in the pack and shook it off. It didn't matter, did it? It only truly mattered that they were both all right. _What a lucky coincidence for you, huh_? _While we could have used some extra help, the two of you are getting off on each other._

 _Enough, Aki,_ Yami snapped, turning on her with darkened eyes. _You do not get to punish them because you're angry._

 _No_? _Says the wolf who stood by and allowed us to be all but killed off, right_? she spat. _Do you honestly think that you have a say in any of this_? _You were not here_! _You do not get to say a word when it comes to what we've gone through. I'll discipline them however I feel._

Yami pricked his ears forward and turned a cold stare on her, entire body stiff. _Obelisk may have stopped before he drew blood, but I'll gladly rip your throat out,_ he answered slowly, turning to her and pacing forward a step. Instinctively Mai and Otogi backed away a few feet, then turned back with horrified expression. The deity in question backed up a few steps and took a seat, interest glowing in his eyes. Yugi, however, stared between them for a moment, then leaned forward to press into Yami's shoulder.

 _Let's not hurt anyone anymore than they already are, okay_? _We don't need to do that. It's fine. She can talk as much crap as she wants. We have to check up on the others, remember_?

Yami ignored him for a moment. He squared his shoulders, raising his tail, and leaned forward with his teeth bared. Every fur on his back was a rigid line of jagged black peaks. For a moment they stared at each other, neither wavering in eye contact. But then Yugi pressed a little harder on his side, nipping insistently now. Yami huffed, dropping his aggressive stance. Then he turned to Mai and Otogi with a flick of his ears.

 _If she turns her sights on either of you, I want to know._ They nodded at him and he trotted around them to lead the way further into the clearing. Yugi felt winded as he continued to his side. He felt sick for a moment, then forced himself to relax. Yami was acting as he was supposed to as the beta, right? He felt paranoid, he knew, that others, much like Aki, were looking to replace him with another wolf. But he doubted any of them would attempt to make Yami his replacement. As far as they were concerned, Yami was his beta. They had no idea the reverse was true. And he had no plans to tell them, after all. He shivered and shook himself out.

They would have to figure things out later. He'd have to find a way to sort this all out before things blew up any further. But first he needed to find out what the death count was. If it was too terrible he did not think that his leadership was truly going to recover…

 _Where is Jonouchi_? Yami asked after a long moment. Yugi blinked, halting in his steps, and looked around them for a moment. Behind them, Obelisk was still talking to Aki who was glaring at the ground. Yusei and Chazz were hovering a safe distance from them, but both of them were watching Yami and Yugi. And, beyond them, Zane and a couple of other wolves were speaking and checking on each other. Yugi turned away again.

 _I don't know where he went off to._

Yami flicked his ears. _I'm sure he won't be too happy when he finds out that Otogi and Mai are only alive because of their having sex in the woods wherever they were,_ he commented rather wryly. He shook his head slightly as Yugi stumbled a step at his side. He was much slower than him now, ears flattening against his head and eyes wider than ever.

 _H-how did you know about him having a thing for her_? he demanded, feeling flushed. Had he told him at some point? Yugi couldn't remember doing so. He didn't even think Jonouchi had ever come into a conversation between them before now.

 _She seems his type._

 _Huh_? _How would you know_?

Yami was quiet for a moment. _I watched one of your tapes,_ he finally grunted. _And then I realized that they didn't look like Anzu so I figured you must have been borrowing them from Jonouchi. You're into brunettes and he has a thing for blondes. Am I correct_?

Yugi nearly fell over himself. In his embarrassment, he stumbled harder than before. Yami paused and turned around, eyes wide and ears pricked. Then his eyes lit up with laughter and he turned away, trotting forward with his head held slightly higher. Yugi hurried to his side, feeling nervous as he brushed his flank as he had earlier. The thought made him nervous for a single moment before he shook his head.

 _I can't believe you just said that._

 _What can I say_? _I pay attention to the people my friend is friends with._

Yugi hesitated for a moment. Then he wagged his tail. It wasn't more than necessary but it wasn't quite what he had wanted to hear. He took it anyways, shrugging away the rest of his desire at the moment. He let out a loud sigh instead. _I hope that he isn't looking for Mai right now,_ he muttered, unnerved. If Jonouchi found out, it would hurt him a lot more than he would likely admit. Yugi bristled slightly, then shrugged it off uncomfortably. He shivered and turned to Yami. _I really hope that's not it._

 _Well, he should have an idea of it by now, yes_? _They spend the most time together._

Yugi was silent for a moment. _That doesn't mean it won't upset him some._

 _Well then he should reconsider who he becomes attracted to._ Yami turned away with a huff now, moving a little faster. The smaller wolf blinked and looked at him for a moment, surprised by the cold tone. _It is not Mai's fault that she met Otogi long before she ever came to know that Jonouchi existed. And it is not her fault either that she decided to take on a companion for the sake of sating her own loneliness. Many wolves do it. He should not think to consider that he is the first wolf to cross paths with her, nor will he ever be the last_.

The white wolf hesitated again, then quietly, he muttered, _Did you ever do that_?

 _Do…_? Yami's voice broke drastically now. He shook his head violently and tried again. _Do what_? _Take on a companion out of loneliness_?

 _You wouldn't have done that—at least not physically,_ Yugi muttered, slowing a step. But Yami continued without a glance in his direction, his pace steady and sure-footed. Yugi wondered at the sight, bristling slightly, and then forced himself to continue. _But you might emotionally._

Yami slowed now in response to the quiet words. Then he came to a complete stop, pricking his ears forward. He turned to him now, slow in the action, and faced him with cold eyes. His ears were angled sharply towards him and his breath came out in a large puff. _I have not forced myself to bond with another emotionally or physically,_ he sneered after a moment, turning away and trotting forward again. _I am so sorry to disappoint you, Yugi._

The smaller wolf flinched at the harsh words and hurried to follow him again. _I didn't…_ He was exhausted even thinking of defending himself now. _I just…I just wanted to know. I'm sorry._

The black male ignored him, turning to face one of the wolves closest him. They had had ice packed into their wound for what seemed like the umpteenth time and they were looking about themselves wearily, frustrated and tired. Yami stopped in front of them for a moment, considering before turning away again. His voice was too tired to carry a conversation. The task was too immense and his concentration was too frayed. If he forgot himself here, it would be a problem of which Yami could not judge the magnitude. So he simply continued padding along, checking them to make sure there was no infection or death among the whole of them.

Yugi followed him as silently as the grave. Yami wondered for a brief second if death could be a physical manifestation and nearly snickered at himself. But then his mind wandered immediately towards a face of leathery skin and a mask of sharp plastic and cardboard and he had to stop himself there. He staggered to a stop, breathing hard for a brief moment, and shook himself out as thoroughly as he could. But his skin felt as if something were crawling upon it and his mind felt swollen with the initial thought. The image would not entirely leave him in this way and he felt as if he might vomit and break away into nothingness within the snow here and now.

But then he forced it away again.

These thoughts were for another time, not then.

They were not for checking on the living.

They were for resting with the dead.

Yami flicked his ears, nearly snarling, and trotted a small step faster than before. Yugi kept pace behind him, trailing rather than coming to his side. He wondered if he'd answered him so harshly as to break the narrow bridge which was reforming between them. He shivered and stopped short, turning around to face him for a moment. But the words failed him when the smaller wolf turned to him with his head raised and widened eyes. They considered each other and then Yami turned away again abruptly.

 _I want you to stop coming here,_ he found himself saying before he could think it through. He was shaking and he swore he was sweating beneath his fur despite how impossible it was. He turned back to Yugi again, shivering. The other male raised his head, confused, and the concern in his eyes made him want to vomit again. _I want you to_ stop _coming here._

 _Stop coming here_? Yugi asked softly, clearly surprised by the demand. He peered at him for a long moment. Then his ears flicked back and forth for a long moment and he considered him with darkened blue-violet eyes. _What are you talking about right now, Yami_?

The suddenness of the conversation must have been what surprised him so much and Yami felt stupid now for not considering this. He had not led into this topic, had simply sprung full force into the thought. He'd said it after over thirty minutes of silence. And now the other boy was staring at him in clear concern and bewilderment. He wanted to reassure him that he was okay but more importantly he wanted Yugi to agree that he would not come back here. He wanted him to swear it. He wanted him to swear on his life or pledge his blood or just—somehow he wanted him to make an oath never to return here.

He wanted it more than he'd ever wished for another thing.

And the thought made him quiver as he faced the smaller wolf again. _To the pack,_ he elaborated, and his voice sounded frayed and broken and almost died on the last word. Because was that truly what they were to begin with? He didn't know anymore. A pack was meant to be beautiful. And this fate these wolves all shared was anything but. And his heart hurt as he looked at the other boy. Because Yugi was caught in the middle of it and he wished more than ever that he could somehow help him to escape this…

 _Yami, what—_?

 _We'll run off together,_ he blurted out, feeling exhausted. But he tried to convey his seriousness in his tone, the severity of the words that he was producing. Yugi stared back at him with a horrified expression, eyes wide and stunned. _We'll run off together and we'll…we'll_ survive. _We won't have to see this all of the time. We'll make another pack. We'll escape this entire thing. We'll…_

Yugi stared at him, surprised by the declaration. Then he flattened his ears and stared at him blankly, stunned by the very idea. The wolf in front of him was all but shaking like a leaf. He felt as if he had been punched in the gut. And the way Yami stared back at him made him want nothing more than to somehow agree to do such a thing. He wanted nothing more than to make the panic and desperation disappear from the dark red eyes. He wanted to make him stop shaking, to calm him and make him relax and feel safe again, because he was so clearly haunted by whatever was going on in his thoughts that he was unable to hide it.

The white wolf took a step forward, leaning towards him to lick at his forehead once. Then he lowered his head and pressed into his flank lightly. _Aibou, you know we can't do that._

 _We could_! he insisted. _Those wolves who fled the experiments are running around alive and well somewhere, I'll bet. Why can't we flee to somewhere like the states or the middle east_? _We could go to_ _Canada_ _or travel to_ _Russia_ _. We could escape the war, the experiments, these crazy fucking wolves willing to put their lives on the line for yours. We could_ …

Yugi blinked at him, pulling away just enough to study his face. He looked more troubled now that he was speaking out loud again and the white wolf pressed his nose into his shoulder in an effort to comfort him. He wished he could press into his skin and burrow further into him, to somehow become one and the same with him. He could protect him that way, maybe heal the hurt that he knew Yami carried around with him like scars. But the canine never showed too much of those wounds and Yugi hated that he so often shunned them as he did. He didn't know if it was possible any longer for him to suppress those memories. He thought he could see the deterioration of his composure before his eyes more than ever now, even without the outburst.

 _You could tell them you're not really Atem. You could do that and run,_ Yami continued in a low tone. He was shaking harder than before and his voice was so fractured that Yugi only understood every other word. He felt like he was being pressed against a phone on vibrate as the other wolf continued to shake so heavily. _We could take off on our own. We could just…_

 _Yami, it's going to be all right,_ he stated, looking at him with wide eyes. He shivered as a cold blank stare was turned his way and his heart threatened to leap out of his chest and into his throat. The way Yami peered back at him was as if he did not recognize him in the slightest. He looked almost upset as well, as if Yugi had offended him so powerfully that it made him want to vomit. The black wolf pricked his ears and then turned abruptly away from him, the shaking still making him all but vibrate against the smaller male. _I promise. I promise that you'll be okay._

Yami was silent for a long time. _That's impossible,_ he finally muttered. He bristled as he turned back to him. _Do not swear to me anything that you cannot follow through with. You have no idea how much a problem this truly is. You don't know at all. Don't you dare_ ever _make a promise that you cannot keep, Yugi._

Yugi was quiet for a minute. Then he lowered and shook his head. _I've done a good enough job so far, right_? he pleaded. The other wolf blinked, then turned to him with wide eyes. But Yugi couldn't find it in himself to raise his eyes now. _I mean, I've helped you, haven't I_?

The words were so broken that Yami tilted his head in bewilderment. When Yugi still did not raise his eyes, the wolf inched closer. He could not fathom speaking for a moment, and so instead moved to lick his forehead. The smaller male flinched and turned away again, muttering, _I tried, damn it. I really did. I_ tried _so fucking_ hard.

Yami was quiet for a moment longer. Then he let out a deep sigh. _I owe you much,_ he finally grunted. _But that is not what I meant._

Yugi turned to him with fiery eyes, snapping his teeth. _Yeah, well, I don't get the luxury to drown in self-pity like you seem to want to right now. I don't know what the hell is wrong with you that you're suddenly so fearful all of the time. And I'm sorry that I triggered this in you, I guess. But I…I can't have you falling apart on me right now, Yami_ , he hissed, pulling back a step and looking away again. _I already have too many reasons to do that right now. And I don't want to_ … _You can break and fall apart at home. But not…not here_. _One of us has to be strong enough for them…_

The black wolf watched him for a moment. _I hate your selflessness,_ he sneered. _I hate it more than I ever thought possible._

Yugi looked over at him. _And here I thought it was one of the reasons you saved me._

 _When I saved you, all it affected was me and you._ He felt incredibly small and sick now, as if he had been strangled or the boars were… He shook the thought off and straightened as much as he possibly could. _It was isolated back then. Your selflessness made me save you, yes, but I did not expect you to…_

 _If you knew I was selfless before, why would you ever assume that I wouldn't be afterwards as well_?

Yami fell silent and then turned away after a moment. He was right. The lycanthropy didn't change a person so much as to break their personality. It would not stop his altruistic nature. It would simply make him stronger, would only give him the instinct to be selfish as well in his need to survive. But it would not stop him being the way he was before the disease was introduced. Yami had known that. But he'd been hoping that perhaps Yugi would have grown a little from that, would have…

 _I saved you because I saw potential,_ Yami muttered quietly, turning to him. _I didn't know what the potential was for, just that I saw it and I thought that I needed to preserve it. I trusted you to be worthy of the disease and I wasn't wrong._

Yugi shook his head, surprised and then delighted as he leaned forward and butted him in the shoulder softly with his forehead. _I think we'll make it out of this alive, aibou,_ he muttered. But something inside of him was shaking and he felt sick as he pulled away to look him in the eye again. _I'll make sure of it._

Yami stared back at him blankly for a moment. _He told me that he'd make sure I made it out alive,_ he thought vaguely, a memory of familiar words crossing his mind with enough power to make him shiver. _He kept that promise. And now…here I am again…in need of someone else to help me make it out alive._

The white wolf tilted his head, confused by his silence, but did not speak any further. He was not sure he wanted to know what it was that he might say to him at his rate. Because there was something in his gaze that was sad and lost and far from where Yugi himself was. He was in that forbidden territory in his mind, where the darkness seemed to eat at his thoughts and his instincts were far more scathing than ever.

 _Oh gods, I'm so sorry,_ the black wolf thought, looking off into the trees now. He half-expected them to stretch and become transparent where the branches met the sky, an immense river roaring near him. He almost thought it would be as brilliant and easy as looking there to find the gray wolf staring back at him with those soft green eyes. But he could find nothing in the shadows there and his heart ached as he looked away again towards Yugi.

 _One of us will make it out alive,_ he stated after a moment. He pricked his ears forward and Yugi blinked, raising his head in surprise at the declaration. Yami knew he understood the meaning behind the words and turned away before he might respond. And, as he'd expected, Yugi did not speak again when he followed him. But he did shoot him a horrified look upon turning his head to glance at him again.

* * *

Yugi jumped a mile when his door swung open. The sound of it hitting the wall and springing back made him flinch again. Then he blinked and rubbed his eyes before stiffening and looking into the doorway. The shape in the doorway was large and bushy as it trotted around to grab at the door and push it shut again. Then it turned and moved across the room to leap onto the bed and curl up at the end of the piece of furniture. Yugi blinked a few times, raised a brow, then reached out and muttered, "Uh, okay? What the hell was that about?"

He growled at him in response, not forming words to answer his inquiry. But Yugi prodded him again and the wolf turned around to glare at him in resentment. He was clearly tired but had chosen that spot for its distance as well. Yugi smiled in amusement and gestured him over.

"If you're going to sleep in here, you need to get over here. I'm not having you sleep at the end of the bed. You tried that before and it's still not happening."

The wolf wrinkled his lips back as if to bare his teeth but it seemed more as if he were sneering as he got up again, shook himself out, and moved to plop down beside him on the pillows. He lay down straight across the bed, resting on his belly with his legs stretched beneath the pillow. Yugi snorted at the sight and rubbed his scruff for a moment before rolling over.

"Don't break the door down next time, by the way."

 _Grabbed the knob. Didn't want to turn._

Yugi snorted out loud. "It's not that hard to do it."

 _You try with your mouth next time, Yugi. Tell me again._

The small teen snickered and shrugged. "That might actually be true."

 _It_ is _true because I clearly had trouble with it._

He smirked in amusement, then reached back to pet him again. It was odd how warm he was, his fur still somewhat downy due to his healing. And it startled him how smooth it was despite the guard hairs that were steadily growing out of it. He wanted for a moment to roll over and see if he could mark out where it was on his coat that each hair was layered. But then he shrugged the desire off and curled his body up a little more tightly. "Good night, Yami."

 _Night_.

When he woke, it was because he had paws on his back. Yugi grunted and moved to sit up, then huffed when he realized rolling over would throw him over the bed. But when he shifted his weight to swing his legs over the edge of the bed and sit up, the canine was stirring as well. He blinked and turned his head just fast enough to find that Yami had been splayed out beside him, paws stretched straight out and his mouth wide open. He sat up immediately, however, blinking sleepy red eyes, and then gave him a curious look when Yugi glanced at the pillows and felt along them.

"Well, I guess you didn't sleep with your mouth open too much of the night," he drawled with a raised brow, "considering the bed isn't soaked."

Yami blinked, flattened his ears, and then flicked his tongue over his nose. Yugi raised a brow again and the wolf sprang forward suddenly on unsteady legs. In an instant he'd leaned forward, tongue flashing out of his mouth to slip over Yugi's cheeks. The saliva was hot and sticky and he swore under his breath as he laughed and pulled away. The wolf wagged his tail, stretched lazily, and turned to jump off the bed without a second glance at him.

"You're a jackass," he muttered, rolling his eyes.

Yami shot him a smirk over his shoulder that looked almost human even with his canine features. Yugi determined it had to be his eyes because normally he didn't consider the guy he had a thing for to look so much like a dog. He shivered and reached up to run his hands through his hair as the wolf disappeared from his room. At least whatever memories Yami had drudged up the night before during their argument were not enough to make him resentful towards him…

When he got into the kitchen Yami was sitting near the table, licking and biting at his paw without a glance at him. Yugi wondered at the sight, but the odds were that he was suffering a sense of nerve damage from the cold and his lack of health from before. Most likely he was recovering the sensation in his paws where they had most likely been shunned for the sake of his organs or other more important areas of the body.

Yugi shivered at the thought, then reached up to rub at the back of his head when Yami glanced at him curiously and tilted his head. The two of them looked at one another for a moment, the small teen feeling almost sick for a moment as he considered their conversation from the night before. Yami had been so shaken and truly struggling. He'd asked him to run away with him, even, something that Yugi had never even truly considered before. But now he wondered if maybe there was some way to make that happen. If he could, wouldn't that be amazing? Yugi drew in a deep breath, looking at the other wolf for a long moment.

But Yami had not seemed as if he might run off on his own at any rate. And Yugi supposed he had to thank the gods for that small mercy. Because he had seen the truth of his desire to do so—to take Yugi with him and simply flee. And now, looking at the wolf, he wondered if he was thinking about the same thing as him. He found it hard to believe he was, however, when Yami seemed so relaxed. He was rather sure that the thought of that coming to light again would make him both nervous and anxious. He could almost be assured of that, in fact.

Yugi looked away after a moment. "You hungry?" he finally mumbled, unsure of what else to do or say. He could get Yami's food done and then he could make breakfast for himself. It was odd how exhausting the thought was at the moment, as if he were condemning himself to something rather than simply discussing hunger. He felt sick and could not find it in himself to look up again at the other male. Perhaps he was still shaken by the events of the day before. Maybe that was why he could not even think to speak or move as it was.

 _Yes_. The word was croaked rather than spoken smoothly and Yugi found himself looking up before he could think it through. The wolf looked no worse for wear but he seemed exhausted as the seconds passed. Yugi searched his face for a handful of seconds, then relaxed again after a moment. Yami didn't look as if he were sick or upset. He simply looked tired. If that was all it was, then Yugi could understand why his voice had cracked, strained as it had been after the talks from the day before.

He wondered how much harder it was for Yami to concentrate now than it had been for him before. He wondered if Yami was resentful of the fact that he could not keep his focus long enough to speak in his usual, more powerful manner. He felt like he himself would have been frustrated beyond his own belief. He did not think he would have been consolable at a time like that, if only because of how annoying the thought of losing his voice would be for him. Yugi ignored the thought, then turned away again to head for the fridge.

"Boar or chicken?"

Yami was quiet for a moment _Boar_ , he requested n a strained voice.

Yugi had to resist the urge to turn around and stare at him. He felt as if he had somehow been forced back a few steps now. It was strange to him, hearing Yami's voice crack so terribly. It made him feel incredibly discouraged, as if he would not be able to help him again at any point. He felt almost like he had just been bitten, like he had just met Yami and was trying to help him but was also trying not to lose his mind with the nerves that so often produced themselves in his presence. He drew in a deep breath to shake away the memories of it all.

He moved to the sink to put the cut of boar into his usual metal bowl to be soaked. He glanced sideways towards the canine who remained simply watching him, ears pricked and paws twitching slightly as he shifted his weight back and forth. He did not seem surprised by his scrutiny in any way and seemed almost amused rather than frustrated in any manner.

"Here you go," he muttered, turning away to go back to the living room. Yami hurried after him, claws clicking loudly against the tile floor. When Yugi glanced at him over his shoulder, the wolf looked at him with darkened eyes and opened his mouth to show his teeth. His tongue lolled from the side of his muzzle, his steps fast and powerful as he continued forward. The wolf pricked his ears, looking at the lycanthrope with a brightened gaze as excitement made him trot and shuffle his weight from paw to paw. Yugi snorted and smiled at him, tilting his head before shaking it slightly and putting the bowl down.

"You should have told me you were that hungry."

Yami ignored him for a moment, a loud clicking noise coming from the bowl as his teeth snapped shut for a brief second. He blinked, tilting his head, and looked towards the blue-violet-eyed boy with a small wag of his tail. _I was not aware until then,_ he admitted. His ears pricked forward again before he turned away again to dig further into his meal. Yugi frowned for a moment, then moved to crouch next to him and reach out to pet along his shoulders.

When he ran his fingers through the fur, it was soft and smooth, almost like silk. He liked the way the long guard hairs were shining beneath the light from the window. His fur was beautiful in the way it laid against his hand. The wolf did not respond to him, though Yugi felt the way his muscles rolled beneath his touch and it made him nearly shiver. His shoulders were sharp, strong, and the twitch of his skin when he gulped down another mouthful was enough to send a jerk through his arm. Yami licked the bowl clean as Yugi moved to trail his hand down his spine to the base of his tail. The hair there was long, silky, smooth beneath his palm, but it was somehow rough and coarse as well, something that made him smile faintly with amusement. It was almost as much a contradiction as the wolf himself.

Yami licked his lips and turned to him after he'd finished his bowl of food. Yugi could see a small trail of water working along his chin, drizzling downward into the metal container. He watched the other lycanthrope for a long moment but did not care to seem disturbed by his soft touch. The wolf blinked at him a few times, tilting his head as Yugi kept watching him. The seconds passed before the small teen reached out to encircle his arms around Yami's neck and pull him closer. The wolf allowed him to pull him into his grip enough to lay his neck on his shoulder.

The embrace was awkward and heavier than Yugi cared to admit. But he felt sick with the need to keep physical contact with him. There was some part of him that was desperate to make sure that he was still there, within his reach, in his grip. He ran his fingers through his hair, knotting the digits in the soft undercoat. Yami flicked his ears and moved to press his nose into his side. The seconds passed in which he watched him with darkened eyes and his ears pricked forward.

Finally, after a few long heartbeats, Yugi released him. Yami shivered as if he had been touched by ice, then moved to step away from him altogether. He watched him with wide eyes, ears flicking back and forth and nose twitching. He seemed more distraught than Yugi wanted to admit and the wolf tilted his head uncomfortably.

"Do you think that running away from this would really solve anything?" he asked after a long moment, before he could stop himself and only because he had not thought it through. He stared at the wolf, biting his lip until it bled, and felt flushed as he continued in a weaker tone. "Do you honestly think that?"

 _Because I'll run with you. I'll follow you no matter where you lead._

Yugi couldn't say the words, but he wanted more than ever to be able to. He wanted for just _once_ to have enough strength to say them, mean them, and stick with them as well. But he could not find the strength and he was too afraid of the repercussions to force the words from his lungs.

But Yami seemed far more stricken and nervous than Yugi could think to attempt to understand. The black wolf peered at him with red eyes that seemed more unnerved than the small teen could ever hope to imagine or fathom. The hollow pit of his expression, his eyes seemingly almost bitten away with tension and disbelief, made Yugi feel as if he might vomit. But the wolf did not answer him, turning away and shaking himself out unhappily as if to shed the thought of the words or the implications that they held as it was.

And Yugi hated the thought that he did not answer, that he had given Yami no words to speak in that time. The wolf blinked and looked away to stare at the bowl that sat between them. He licked his lips and stared at the metal as if it might hold some kind of answers, but Yugi could see that he was studying his reflection more than anything else. His ears were flicking back and forth and he tilted his head slightly from one side to the other with something of a lazy fashion. And then, abruptly, he raised his head and watched his reflection mirror this action.

Yugi knew this only because he'd watched him do it before. He had seen him and snickered in the time that the canine had studied his expression and moved his paw to press upon the metal to tip it backwards. He had thrust his nose in, flicking his tongue out to run it over the cold surface. He had flattened his ears, pricked them forward, flicked them about himself, and settled again a few minutes later when he had grown bored of the actions. He looked at the boy in front of him with a tilt of his head now.

"Are you still hungry?"

Yami flicked his ears once, then twice. He tilted his head again, blinking, and nodded slightly. He did not speak again, however, and Yugi wondered if perhaps he was too nervous to do so. He wondered if maybe he had hurt his sense of self in touching him as he had. It was possible that Yami had been attempting to distance himself, unsure of himself and growing undone with the sensation of his touch. Yami was not comfortable with physical touch, he knew, something that Yugi had ignored for the moment. The canine was healthy, something that his touch had proven beneath the guise of physical comfort.

"Chicken this time, okay? I think I need to get more meat later today."

Yami nodded slightly, watching him for a long moment. Then he turned away and looked about them as if he had never seen the room before. Yugi had the realization that perhaps the wolf was alarmed enough to be looking for a way to hide from him altogether. The sight of his eyes darting about the room made him somewhat nervous and the black-furred canine peered at the window for a moment as if he might leap through it at any heartbeat. It made him shiver as the canine shook himself out and began to move towards the small nest of blankets he had been resting on long before.

He got up again, dusting himself off and frowning as his stomach knotted for a brief second. He shivered and looked about the room for a brief second, then let out a deep breath. "I'm sorry," he mumbled, unsure of what more to say. The words made his ears flick and his head turn, muzzle tipped upward to face him in confusion. "About touching you like that. I'm sorry for making you nervous."

Yami tilted his head. _It is okay._ He sounded as if he were too tired to argue and Yugi hated it more than ever. Yami should have been full of life, passionate and fiery despite the many secrets he held away Yugi's curious mind. He should have been watching him and speaking. He should have been teasing him or asking if he wanted to play a game of some kind or even so much as requesting a smoothie of some bizarre flavor. Instead, now, the wolf peered at him with what seemed to be blank eyes of which bore through him and made his belly ache and roll for a brief second.

"I think we should probably go hunting at some point too, huh? That might be a better idea than me constantly grabbing some meat from the market for you, right?" he asked quietly, ignoring the urge to flinch when Yami blinked and tilted his head curiously. "I mean, you don't really seem too impressed with some of it. And the wildlife would be healthier for you, right? No plastic contamination, no issue of freshness…"

Yami flicked his ears. _You would allow me to hunt again_?

Yugi blinked and raised his eyes to his, confused. "Allow you to?" he repeated. "I wouldn't tell you no if you ever bothered to truly ask me, aibou. I mean, I would tell you that it was a good idea. You know that too, though. I honestly don't even know why you're so surprised and asking me that in the first place, Yami."

The wolf blinked at him in surprise, then shook his head slowly. His ears flicked back and forth for a brief moment before he looked over his shoulder at the window again. He looked down at the blanket he was lying upon and turned to him with a tilt of his head again. _I did not think that you would want me to do so,_ he admitted with a flick of his ear as the small teen began to wander away with the metal bowl to pull the chicken out of the fridge as he had the boar before. _I assumed you would be concerned._

"Of course I'm concerned." Yugi threw the chicken breasts into the bowl and soaked them, leaning against the counter and looking at him with a raised brow now. He shot him an irritable look as the wolf blinked at him and seemed annoyed rather than flustered as he had expected him to be. "I'm going to stay concerned on top of it, Yami. But I want to see that you're okay and if hunting instead does more for that than my buying meat all of the time, I figure it has to be a good idea."

The wolf blinked at him and shook his head. _I would like to hunt again._

Yugi smiled faintly, then shook his head as well before turning back to soak the chicken and make his way towards the wolf again. The canine leaped up again but Yugi simply put it down near his paw and took a seat behind it. Yami hesitated for a moment, staring at him in surprise, before dipping his head in to take large bites out of his meal. Yugi leaned back on his hands, licking his lips and looking towards the window as well. He drew in a deep breath and closed his eyes.

"Then that's what we'll have to do at some point. We'll go ahead and do that soon enough…"

* * *

 _I don't know what to do about this,_ he admitted as he came to shake himself out and moved forward a step. The white canine looked about them for a long moment, glancing up at the sky where the sun was weak and the branches were shadowed heavily. The forest looked like a long stretch of skeletal bones, layered with snow which glistened and glowed beneath the faint touch of sun. He shivered and looked at the she-wolf again, head tilted and ears flattened against his skull. _I don't know anything about what it is I am meant to do with the pack at this rate, Slifer. I honestly have no idea what I am_ supposed to do _._

Slifer shook her head slowly, confused as she stared back at him. _Are you truly speaking to me for some kind of guidance_? _You know that I do not have such things to offer you. I am not capable of giving you such truth. You know very well that I do not have the words to grant you the answers you so obviously desire, Yugi._ She flicked her ears, glancing over her shoulder once before turning back with darkened golden eyes. _Have you forgotten that I am a goddess rather than a simple mortal_? _If I were to tell you half of the things which I know, you would lose your mind. And you would come to understand that I do not fail to answer you simply out of spite. I do it to relief you of the burden I myself possess._

Yugi blinked at her, then shook his head slowly. _I don't really care about that,_ he stated with a flick of his own ears. Some of the wolves were moving about, surely watching them in bewilderment. He wondered if she was there to retrieve the bodies or if she was simply moving about the camp in an effort to keep the wolves from losing their nerve.

 _Do you truly believe that_? _That you have no care in regards to that_?

 _You're a goddess. I figure I should take half of what you say with a grain of salt_.

Slifer tilted her head and seemed to smirk at him for a long moment. _That is a very true statement, I suppose. It would be wise of you not to believe in half of what I might say like that,_ she admitted. _It would not be wise of you to cling to any words I might offer you in any manner._

Yugi felt sick for a moment, then shook his head. _Right_ , he agreed, hoping that he did not sound as flustered as he felt. He wondered if he should find that rabbit he'd buried and go home with it. He had planned to do so later, but now he felt perhaps it would better to leave sooner. Being within the camp now, after the bloodshed he'd witnessed the day before, made him anxious. The wolves were healing well, however. All of them were moving again. None of them were still lying about in the snow any longer. They were pacing about, were trotting and walking and some of them were curiously watching them while others simply considered them. They seemed as if they wanted to hear their conversation.

But none of them were so brave or foolish enough to venture closer for the chance to do so. None of them were so drawn by their curiosity to risk his or her ire. He wondered at the idea. He wondered if they truly thought he'd turn on them. Then again, he supposed he'd threatened them enough times to make them think twice about approaching him…

 _But what was I supposed to do_? he asked after a moment. His voice sounded as desperate as he felt, as lost as he was, and he wanted to bury his face in the snow as the she-wolf blinked at him with a somewhat cold expression. Her ears flicked about and she tilted her head before eyeing him curiously. _I had to take care of Yami. And it's only been a few days since he's come back. I've managed to basically heal him and bring him back from his feral state. And, while I'm doing this, an ambush happened on the camp. I can't be in two places at once. And I'm not bringing Yami back here when there is so clearly a threat like this. So what am I supposed to do about it_?

Slifer blinked and tilted his head. _You think that I have the answers_? she snorted. _You are sorely mistaken, Yugi. It is not my responsibility to tell you of such a thing. It is the fact that death shall stalk the paws of all wolves to be exposed to your existence that this will continue no matter what happens. You do not understand that you are not expected to be in two places at once. You are simply expected to_ choose _._

 _Choose_? he echoed. _And how am I supposed to do that, Slifer_? _I'm not psychic. I don't see the future like Ishizu does. I have no idea how I'm supposed to help out with the hellhounds when I had no idea that they were going to be loose and running around in the mountains like that_!

She blinked at him, then curled her lips back into something of a sneer. _You say such a thing but you were attacked at the same time that Yami was. Both of you suffered an ambush from the hellhounds in question. And you were also there to see Noah drowned by your own alpha. Are you truly going to tell me something so foolish such as that you had no idea the hellhounds might be loose and running about_? _Are you truly so thoughtless_?

Yugi blinked and curled his lips back in response. _I didn't know that they would be loose and running around like that at any rate,_ he snapped. _The attack in the woods was extremely organized. And even_ you _said that they'd come to retrieve me_! _You didn't warn me that_ this _was a possibility._

 _This is a war, borne of blood and sacrifice and death,_ Slifer replied dismissively. _You should have known that possibilities are widespread and ruin comes from much of it. You do not honestly believe for even a moment that I shall tell you the outcomes that might come about them_? _You are being foolish again. Calm yourself. Your emotions are unwelcome at the moment, Yugi._

 _You're not—you can't be serious, Slifer. You're really trying to tell me not to care_?

 _I am telling you to care, but to do so with a rational mind. Coming at me with such anger is not the way to solve your problems or the perception of such that you might have._ Her words were cold and sure, so certain that it made him flinch as his eyes grew wide with shock. She _was_ actually saying such a thing to him. But the words made his head spin and he swore he could not think straight nor stand on his own four paws for a brief moment. _You are not listening to the necessary needs of which you harbor. You wish to know the truth, Yugi_? _Listen to me now then, yes_?

 _I'm not sure I want to._

 _It would be wise to listen to a goddess,_ a new voice snorted, and Yugi glanced over as the gray wolf came running towards them. His muscles were rippling as he came to a stop and shook himself out in front of them. He looked larger than he had before, as if he had somehow grown an inch or two in the time that it had taken him to find him now. Yugi blinked at him, shivering at the thought, and the god flicked his ears before looking at him with keen eyes. _She is, after all, more knowledgeable than you._

 _She also tends to have a habit of talking in circles and making me look stupid on top of lying._

Slifer smirked in amusement, moving to wrap her tail around her paws almost as a cat might. She shook her head and looked to her brother with brightened eyes. _He thinks that I should tell him what he's meant to do,_ she told him with a tilt of her head. It was a joke between them, Yugi knew, and the sight of their laughter made him feel exhausted enough that he nearly collapsed beneath the strain. _He tells me that he did not know that the attack would happen and what he should do now to help the wolves._

Obelisk turned to him with a flick of his ear. _Truthfully, Yugi_? _I think that you should follow Yami's advice and perhaps run away for as long as you might be able. The truth of the world and all of its despair will come to find you in time, but before that happens, you would be able to flee and live your own life for a while. He could be there at your side the entire way as well._

Yugi snorted loudly. _You both are hysterical,_ he snapped, but a part of him truly wished he could listen to that. It truly wished that he could flee with the black wolf. They could live on their own, hunt and run about and just enjoy what little time they probably had before the death and destruction truly managed to catch up to them. _I can't breathe, I'm laughing so hard._

The god snickered and moved to take a seat as well. _It doesn't matter what you might do now. What it comes down to is the fact that the pack has suffered a rather immense loss. One of the more experienced leaders has been taken from them. Some of the stronger wolves have been struck down. Some of the better hunters have been killed. You do not have as strongly knit a pack as you were once able to. Now that they have suffered losses, none of them are quite as keen upon being shown such possibility. I do not think they realized that coming to battle meant that lives might be lost._

Yugi blinked at him. _Huh_?

 _Many young wolves are arrogant and think themselves invincible. Others are conscious and paranoid of their own lack of abilities. Some do not wish to think so much about their lives or their infections by any means. They have their heads buried in the sand or the snow or the pine litter of the regions that they live in._ Slifer fell quiet for a moment. Then she tilted her head and turned to stare at him as a bird might before it dived at its prey. _I do not believe that many of them were prepared properly. I have the idea that many wolves were under the assumption that the war might be won rather easily because they grew up knowing the story of the Lunar Ascension._

He stiffened. _But it was mentioned that there was death throughout the time…_

 _It was also mentioned that the gods woke from their slumber in order to help them,_ Obelisk cut in. _Lupa and Fenrir woke then to help us to win. They will not do so now. And the burden of winning is something that cannot be passed on to them by way of myths and stories. But many of them believe that such a thing will happen. That is why they are willing to follow you as well, because you are capable of saving them in some way._

Yugi flicked his ears, wanting to vomit at the thought. _I'm not…_

 _You may or may not find yourself capable of doing such a thing later,_ the deity dismissed, flicking his ears again. _It is not as important as you might imagine. You can inspire them to lay their lives down for you or you may call upon their necessity of it due to being lycanthropes which are forced by bloodline to follow you to war and provide you the army you will need._

 _That's disgusting._

 _Yes, but it is also truthful, no_? _You do not think that we have time to simply give you answers and allow you to shadow us as if you were nothing more than a pup. I am not patient enough to do such a thing and I do not have the love in my soul to bother with such antics. The facts come down to what they are. If you should desire something else, find another god to be your guide._

Yugi shook his head slowly, staring at him in disdain. Then he turned back to Slifer in order to keep from snapping his teeth bitterly. _All I want to know right now is whether I can help them somehow, because right now, I don't see how. I'm still helping Yami and I don't_ _want him here, where the hellhounds could hurt him even more and leave him for dead like they did the rest of the pack._

Slifer blinked at him. _You are truly asking such a question_? she returned quietly, almost scornfully. When she shook her head violently, Yugi felt as if he were going to be sick. But then the she-wolf opened her eyes again, focusing on him with a darkened gaze that seemed to cut through his skin. _I do not care if you find understanding in your nature or not at this point, Yugi. But it comes to a very easy and very terrible thing. You shall have to choose what and who you will sacrifice. When it comes to war, one does not gain the ability to win all that they sought. If you seek to protect Yami, then do not worry about the pack_. _If you should wish to help the pack, you must find a way to turn away from Yami. It is necessary to give one for the sake of balance in another._

Yugi blinked, then snapped his teeth, bristling and glaring at her furiously. He squared his shoulders as if he might launch himself at her, but stopped when he remembered her power and status as the deity. He shook his head, drawing in several ragged breaths.

 _I don't want to choose._

 _Balance has to be maintained,_ Obelisk stated simply. _You cannot expect to win all of this, to keep your alpha alive and healthy and not risk the lives of the others within the pack as well. You focus too solely upon one or the other. And so far your choice has been to help Yami rather than the rest of the pack. That is fine if you are truly committed to such a thing. But it will become a problem should you not understand that it is more than necessary to commit to one and only one thing in this war_.

 _Division of your desires could cause far more devastation than you've borne witness to so far,_ Slifer stated, all but scoffing at him. She shook her head slowly as she eyed him coldly for a moment. _You cannot save the pack and Yami as well. You may save the pack or you may save Yami. Perhaps, at times, you might be able to do them both. But it shall never remain that way. You push too hard at desires that you cannot achieve. Your wishes cannot be brought to fruition if they are so unevenly spread._

So unevenly spread? Yugi blinked at her. He just wanted them all to make it out of this okay. He just wanted not to see so many wolves die so meaninglessly. But as he considered it, he found himself blinking at Obelisk. The gray male was watching him with something of clear amusement. And he knew that the gray wolf was well aware of where his mind was wandering. It made him bristle to consider that the other might know him so well. But he was aware of it and it made his heart heavy to ever think otherwise. He shivered and looked away, ears flicking back and forth for a long moment.

 _I can help them both…_

He could.

But that was only if he made another sacrifice, one which scared him too much to think for even a second to truly consider. He had been willing to do that long before, when it had come to only one possible exchange. And now he felt sick as he realized that he was still committed to only that, something that he could not even force into his mind fully. It was horrifying, terrifying in all truth, and he hated himself for it.

But he had always known and understood that, despite his fear and his initial reluctance. He knew and understood and hated himself even more for it. Yugi shook himself out after a moment, watching the two deities for a long moment. Then he slowly tipped his head up and looked to Slifer for a long handful of minutes. His heart was burning as he shook his head and lowered his eyes towards the snow again.

 _I could…_

Slifer was quiet for a moment. _You could,_ she supplied, _but_ can _you truly offer that_?

He had already done it, hadn't he? Yugi felt as if he might vomit as another shiver ravaged his form. He turned to Obelisk, wondering at the way the male in front of him simply watched. He wondered if he'd ever had to do such a thing before, if he had made sacrifices so vile and powerful as the one that he himself had already set in motion. It was the only path he knew at the end of the day, Yugi realized, because it was the one that he had dug out for himself within the snow long before.

He looked to Slifer again. _Not for that reason,_ he finally mumbled. _I can't do it for that reason._

The she-wolf flicked her ear. _Finally, you have become honest,_ she stated with a small smile. Her eyes seemed almost kind for a moment before she turned away from him with her ears pricked and her nose wriggling. _It would benefit you well to remain that way with yourself. It will do wonders for your needs in the future._

 _I thought you couldn't see the future_?

She looked over, eyes glinting. _I can't see it. But I know when death is coming for one._ She tilted her head as Yugi stiffened. Then she blinked a few times and looked away, snorting softly. _I know my domain, in other words._

Obelisk hummed thoughtfully but did not seem as he might have anything to add to the declaration, though he seemed rather bored with the conversation now. Yugi wondered at this, looking between the two of them curiously for a split second. He could not imagine that the two of them had bred for the sake of having the pack that lived here in this camp. It seemed odd and beyond the realm of reality. It just seemed impossible altogether. Obelisk and Slifer seemed far too comfortable around each other, as if they had always known each other. They acted as acquaintances rather than lovers of any kind. Yugi could not picture it being much more than a union of accommodation rather than affection.

He wondered at the thought, then flicked his ears. If it was for the sake of someone else, for the sake of another's life, he could see doing the same. He could understand taking that step if only for the sake of saving someone in need. And these two had done much more than simply save _one_ life. They were saving multiple. They were saving what could potentially be _millions_ if he were truthful with himself. After all, not all of the wolves would know that he was there in Japan. Not all of them would be brave enough to come running to his aid either.

 _Do you wish to know something, Yugi_?

The white wolf blinked, startled out of his reverie, and turned his head to face the she-wolf as well. He flicked his ears and tilted his head, confused by the question. The russet-furred female leaned forward, as if perhaps to tell him a secret, and the words she spoke made his ears prick forward in bewilderment.

 _Brooke, Ayukawa, Joy, Mayday, Gloria, Zuzu, Syrus, Mai, Jack, Yusei, Otogi, Aki._

Yugi tilted his head, confused and bewildered. Had she just listed twelve of the wolves' names? He frowned at her, flattening his ears against his head, and peered at her. There was mocking laughter in her eyes, her golden irises burning. He stared at her, then blinked as a chill ran down his spine in alarm. His head snapped around and he bristled in alarm, eyes wide as he looked towards the wolves hidden further within the camp.

Those twelve wolves…

They were going to die, weren't they?

He could sense it simply by the way she stared back at him with such laughter. Her lips were quirked upwards slightly at the edges and her gaze burned into his with pure amusement. There was something mildly hollow and dead to echo her laughter, however, and she soon looked away with her ears pricked forward. Yugi shivered, shaking himself out, and then stiffened.

Had she said Yusei? And _Syrus_ too?

He didn't know the first six wolves, he realized, and his heart ached with the realization. He knew them only from the smallest, most minute exposures to them. He knew Brooke because she had often helped keep Aki away from Yusei when she'd turned her frustrations on other wolves. She was with the yearlings the most often in the pack. Ayukawa he remembered from her introduction, where he'd thought she was broken already and he'd wished for a moment to flee from her. Joy was a name that he did not recognize, which meant that she had to be from one of the newer packs. Mayday he knew only by name as he was supposedly Brooke's mate. As for Gloria, he only knew because of the fact that he had once or twice spotted her with Aki. But he had only seen her, never spoken to her. And he knew Zuzu because of the fact that she was such a strange shade of silver and gray, much like Ishizu in appearance at times.

Yugi bristled. But he knew Yusei and Syrus. He knew Otogi and Aki. He knew Mai as well. Jack, he didn't quite recognize the name of. But he understood that he had to be among the pack already. He had heard the name more than once. Yusei had mentioned him once or twice, though he had not seemed too incredibly happy when he had done so. Yugi had the feeling the two of them had butted heads at some point.

He spun on Slifer now, snarling. _What the fuck_? _Why didn't you try to warn me when Marik was off killing all of the others like that_? _You could have stopped it_! he spat, though he lost his anger when she blinked slowly and turned to him with her ears pricked and her head tilted slightly.

 _Because, Yugi, Yami was not here to stop you from doing something drastic and stupid,_ she answered in a quiet, even voice. Now she smiled and he thought of sharks and the dull eyes of a buzzard looking to peck into dead flesh. He narrowed his eyes slightly and she stared at him with a mildly disgusted but amused expression. _Without Yami, you are rather thoughtless and hateful at times. And he is the only one capable of stopping you should you come to attempt to save the others. I trust in that much at the very least. But without Yami to balance your impulses, I cannot trust that you will not attempt foolish actions. You would have gone after Marik. It did not take you very long to put two and two together, after all. You suspected it long before it even happened. You were always wary of him. And he turned on you just as you suspected he would. Why you did not go after him when you first suspected him is beyond me, however._

Yugi flicked his ear and his heart squeezed inside of his chest. Shame crawled through his system. He shivered and looked away, shaking his head. He knew that she was right. Yami had the ability to talk sense into him even when he was persistent and determined to do otherwise. If Yami were to truly ask him to do so, Yugi knew he would buckle and back away from them without trying to save them. And it was terrifying to know that, but he could not help it.

Yami was blunt and blatant. He showed his disdain towards Yugi's selflessness without thought. And he had, more or less, taught him something of the meaning of self-preservation when he had so often ignored it. He shivered at the thought, but another came as well. And the shame that came through him now almost knocked him off his paws. He wished for a moment to run from the two deities.

He truly had suspected Marik before he had come after him. He had suspected him, but he had _known_ as well. He'd rightly assumed him to be a killer without conscience. And the tan and gray wolf had proven him right time and time again. He had known it deep within his bones that something was wrong with the other male. He had not known how to address it, or how to put a label to it, but he had _known_ regardless.

It was the fear of fighting him, of facing him alone and potentially pushing Marik over the precipice, that had held him. He'd been at a stalemate due to it, unable to confront him but sure that he was not wrong in his judgment. He had not been brave enough to turn on him. He had not been brave enough to challenge him.

Yugi was not stupid.

He had known that Mikiyo had been close to Marik that day on the cliffs. He had no doubt that the tan and gray wolf had had the discretion to prevent attacking her. And so he had instead turned and whispered in her ear. He'd likely played on her insecurities within the pack, whether it relied on rank or how she was treated there or something else. But he had persuaded her to charge ahead despite his orders not to. He had convinced her to go against him and he had gotten her killed for her recklessness.

From there, Marik had whispered into the ears of anyone who would listen. He'd instilled fear in the pack. He'd said that the gods had punished her for her disrespecting Atem's leadership. He'd forced many of them to cower at the thought of some divine punishment for the fact that they'd thought to disobey him. He'd forced them into a more submissive state, paranoid that so much as speaking against him would get them killed. He'd even attacked Aki for it…

He had not seen him with Patty, but he was sure that Marik had had a paw in her death as well. She may have been a yearling, but none of the wolves had survived through sheer stupidity. She would have known better than to charge at the boars as she had. It made no sense that she had gotten herself killed like that…

 _Perhaps, Yugi,_ the she-wolf commented quietly, startling him to attention again, making him bristle faintly as their eyes locked, _you should pay them more attention while they still have time to spend with you, yes_?


	69. Reliance

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Hopefully biweekly**

 **Chapter Warnings: Mild Hints of Self-Hatred, Hunting**

 **So, posting today because I've got to do stuff tomorrow and since I'm going to be posting _Blood Sky's_ sequel tomorrow I figured I would update this now. Since I'm not participating in Puzzle June I figured I would just try to update and post more frequently this month. *shrugs* **

Chapter LXIX: Reliance

 _Work Log Entry LXII: February, 2007_

 _February 1_

 _Atem is rather friendly and shy and quiet when he comes into contact with other wolves._

 _It is only my look alike which causes him to lash out so much._

 _The fights that have ensued between the two of them have become legendary within the lab._

 _I am constantly healing one or the other for their aggression towards one another._

 _February 6_

 _Not many of the wolves tend to like Atem's more submissive behavior towards them._

 _One of the females snapped at him, though I am amazed he did not lash out at her as well._

 _Come on, keep up, aibou,_ Yugi teased him, though he slowed for the darker male to get to his side. The canine was a black stain against the snow, like oil or blood beneath the light of the moon. He shivered at the thought, but his mind was racing as they came further into the trees. He turned his head, pricking his ears, and looked about them for a moment. Yami slowed to keep at his side as if he were trying his hardest not to have to listen to his yelling at him again. And Yugi felt bad for the very thought, as he was well aware of the fact that he'd snapped at him more often than not in an attempt to try to keep him in his sight and away from danger altogether. He shivered as the snow weighed down upon his shoulders and he shook himself out after a moment as he flicked his ears and listened for every noise he could catch.

 _Maybe we should actually…turn back,_ Yugi muttered quietly, stopping short and turning to look all around. Yami continued past him but did not go much further, instead turning to face him with sharp red eyes. He pricked his ears further forward, glancing about them for a moment before turning back to him. _I thought I heard something._

Yami stared at him for a long moment. _I did not hear anything._ The simplistic note in his voice was cold and easy. The wolf turned away from him and sniffed at the air for a few seconds. His ears pricked forward, then flicked about before he turned back and shook his head. _Let's keep going for a little while._

Yugi bristled for a brief second, then forced himself to nod and keep moving. He felt sick for a split second, but shrugged it off as he began to move forward again. The white wolf looked at him sideways, then away again. They could not hear much of anything but for the occasional drop of snow when the branches became too laden and so were forced downward harshly enough to make the ice fall away. It sounded like something heavy being dropped to the ground and it happened only once or twice every other hour. They had been out there for the night, though Yugi was not proud to admit how many times he had wanted to simply shove Yami away and make them turn back.

He had held off for the most part. But the further they got from the house the more nervous he became. He would wonder at the way the earth sounded as if it were rattling with the touch of wind and howthe snow would fall back to the ground heavily. And he could not shake the ease with which Slifer had told him those twelve names. And the weight of her words had made Yugi tremble when he'd left the camp.

And, when he had gotten to the house, Yugi had collapsed into a ball on the bed. Yami had taken to sitting next to him, watching and listening rather than looking at him directly. Yugi had felt sick, as if he might vomit at any moment. It had been stunning to him to think that she was mocking him with the reality that those twelve wolves would die. She had said the names with such little care that it _still_ managed to stun him.

He shivered and shook his head now. Yami had convinced him that they should go for a run, as he had become increasingly restless due to his state of being. And he was tired and did not want to remain there. He had all but begged him to do this, shaking for a moment as he had asked. And so Yugi had agreed and both of them had fled the house to the woods. Yugi only realized halfway through the trees that Yami was staring at him from the corner of his eye every other step, as if he were hoping that Yugi might forget what had shaken him so much.

But Yugi had to admit that, despite how horrified he'd been upon hearing those names and seeing Slifer's nonchalance, he had not assumed to abandon his thoughts before he'd accepted the invitation to run. He shrugged it off immediately again and hurried to keep pace with the black wolf once more. The two of them kept side by side, movements in time with each other. And then he stepped close enough that their flanks touched.

 _I think I hear deer moving about._

Yugi flicked his ears uncomfortably. _Maybe a rabbit would be a better idea_? he asked uncertainly. But he wondered at the sight. And he felt tired, nearly exhausted, for a brief second. Or perhaps it would have been a better idea for them to simply turn tail again. He was not sure—after the attack at the camp—that he wanted to be out there among the trees altogether. He shivered again.

 _But deer are larger._

 _And rabbits are easier to catch._

The black wolf eyed him as if he could not understand what it was that he had just said to him. He seemed almost stunned and perhaps startled by the declaration. And then he curled his lips back slightly and shook his head, turning away to trot somewhat faster. _You are being difficult._

Yugi halted, head snapping around and ears flicking rapidly. _Did you hear that_? he demanded harshly.

Yami blinked and turned to him with a curl of his lips. _I did not. Was it loud enough that I should have_?

 _I think that it was loud enough you should have, yeah. I think you just weren't paying attention to it because you'd rather argue with me about deer over rabbits._ Yugi huffed loudly and looked about them, bristling slightly before forcing himself to relax once more. _Are you sure you're okay to hunt_?

Yami sighed. _I am_ fine, _Yugi_ , he snapped. The seconds passed before he sighed again and shook his head. _Maybe the rivers underground near Slifer would have fish in them. That might be worth a venture. Fish are delicious. And far easier to catch than deer or rabbits, I'm sure._

He could not truthfully remember ever catching fish on his own before. He had lunged into the water, snapping his teeth at them, but it had been more in fun than with serious intent. He had not truly tried to catch any of the slim scaled creatures as he should have. He had never quite been hungry enough. And the effort of launching himself into the water could be exhausting when it went to war with his instincts to simply flee. It was overwhelming to have to attempt to deal with the burden of putting his muzzle beneath water as he had those few times. It had been enough to make him want to simply run for as long as he possibly could.

He had been so tempted more often than not to simply try to flee as quickly as he could. The truth of it was that he could not find it within himself to face the reality of the situation he'd witnessed that day. He could not find the strength to look at it head on and understand. And so he had simply turned and run as if he might be able to leave it all behind him. And, when that childish notion had finally ceased itself, Yami had _still_ been unable to face this. He had turned his back, had woken himself from nightmares, and had kept himself awake for days on end despite the consequences that could come about from it.

Now he looked at Yugi in frustration, a part of him seemingly withering away beneath the weight of his own thoughts. He drew in a deep breath, exhaling it in a great puff of white frost. Then he shook himself out as if it might shed the weight that lay so heavily upon his shoulders.

 _Please_?

He was not sure if he sounded as desperate as he thought he did. But then he saw Yugi blink, his blue-violet eyes stretching wide for a single second, and _knew_ he had. The enormity of this was enough to make Yami want to vomit. But the smaller wolf did not draw attention to it, turning away from him instead and shaking his head.

 _Yeah, we can do that. I don't really know if there will be any fish in the tunnels, though,_ Yugi answered in a voice that was tighter than Yami wished to acknowledge. He seemed stressed or perhaps nervous now, his white ears flicking back and forth and his eyes glued to the snow. _I guess we can always see, huh_?

The darker male tilted his head and lowered his nose a fraction towards the ice, sniffing lazily at the air. _I do not think that there will be many if there are,_ he admitted, but he turned away and flicked his ears after a moment. He was not about to have Yugi change his mind and try to lead them away again. He did not want to go back to the house. He wanted away from there.

The room that they shared so often was too terribly small, almost claustrophobic now. Yugi worried about him too much, watched him so much it was impossible to pay attention to anything else. Yami could no longer think clearly in there. And, sometimes, when Yugi might watch him from the corner of his eye, the wolf had thought of the labs—and _that alone_ had been enough to provoke something akin hatred in his gut.

And Yami did not want to feel anything of that magnitude towards the generous boy. Yugi was so terribly gentle and beautiful in that way. And he hated to think for even a moment that such a feeling could come to him regarding Yugi of all people. It hurt him to even consider. And he hated himself instantly for even thinking that Yugi might be worth his ire in such a fashion. It had been devastating to him, to the point of making his breath tight within his lungs and his heart heavy within his chest.

Yami pricked his ears forward as Yugi brushed against his side, his body heat warm and soft against his skin beneath his fur. The dark-furred wolf followed him forward, ears pricked. He was not as worried as Yugi appeared to be at the moment. The white wolf was rapidly looking about them, ears pricked and flicking about rapidly. He was staring about the trees and the various trunks that rose so high overhead. He would occasionally move to step in front of Yami by an inch or two, looking about rapidly. And Yami flattened his ears unhappily at the thought. The white wolf was clearly uncomfortable at the moment, visibly unnerved and desperate to keep from being caught unawares.

Yami had the thought to slow down and attempt to spring at the beta. But the thought was abhorrent seconds later. Yugi would likely be horrified. And Yami hated the thought of doing such a thing to him in the slightest. Yugi was too generous and easygoing to harm like this. He did not want to think for even a moment that he might do him any sense of damage. And to scare him now, when he was so concerned for him, would do nothing but.

So he simply flicked his ears and moved to the edge of the mountain's foothills. He knew immediately where the tunnel entrance was. He remembered it all too well. Yami shook himself out and moved towards the entrance. It was covered in snow, low to the ground and almost buried. The black wolf ignored the urge to look about himself, instead reaching his paw down and shoveling away the snow. He dug just enough to displace the ice. But he did nothing further than absolutely necessary. Then he lowered himself to his belly and crawled forth into the darkness.

The smell of earth and cold air was crisp and heavy. It was enough to make his lungs feel shattered and cut. But he shrugged it away again. His nails clicked furiously beneath his weight. The black wolf shook himself out and padded forward. There was a rather dull roar within the darkness. The sound seemed to dance and echo, ricocheting about the rock walls that rose so high above their heads. His ears pricked forward again as he tilted his head.

 _Wait a second, okay_? Yugi called after him. Yami startled, having assumed that he was behind him. But now, as his eyes began to adjust, he realized that he had overlooked the lack of Yugi's claws against the stone floor or the soft breaths he exhaled. He turned around, peering out the dimly lit hole behind him. It was a sharp angle in which he had to pivot his neck to see properly. But the light was excruciating as he searched about them. Yugi was digging now as well, tugging away snow and ducking his head. The white wolf came a second later, blocking away the light entirely. And then he hurried forward and found his way beneath the hardened earthen entrance. The mouth of the tunnel was blinding when Yugi came forward amidst the darkness and the tunnel opened fully once more. _Okay, so where are we headed_?

Yami flicked his ear. The canine blinked and looked at him curiously. Then he flicked his ears again. _We'll go where the river isn't too strong. Maybe near where Slifer usually waits around in that cavern,_ he answered after a moment. He pricked his ears forward after a moment, then moved to turn around and begin trotting. Yugi hurried to his side, blue-violet eyes glinting a strange indigo and plum shade as they moved about. _It might be the best spot. Or maybe near there but not quite within that area. I mean, odds are if there_ are _any fish here it wouldn't be easy for them to swim in that spot, right_?

Yugi nodded slightly and looked at him for a moment with something between curious and perhaps mildly anxious. Yami wondered if it was the water or perhaps the idea of being in the tunnels that made him so uncomfortable. It was no wonder that either of these factors might be enough to make him hesitate.

The ground dipped beneath their paws as they continued forward, in a sharper incline that was softened towards its center. Yugi stumbled beside him, his claws scraping against the dirt. A single pebble darted across the floor. The white wolf jumped. Yami flicked his ears and turned to him with bright eyes, laughter in his voice as he snickered, _Really_ , _Yugi_? _You're too jumpy_.

The other huffed. _You're forgetting the first time I knocked something over down here it was a_ fucking bone, _Yami_.

Yami flicked an ear. _Oh, no, I definitely remember that and. I_ still _find that hilarious, by the way._ He paused and looked over at him again more pointedly. The earthen smell was underlined by the softer, misty scent of the river where the spray surged forward and into the air. The roar was still dull, however, and for the moment Yami remained all but statuesque where he was standing. When he finally moved forward a few steps, his claws scraped against the dirt softly enough that the wolf almost slipped. Yugi moved immediately to grab his scruff, catching him easily as he almost teetered forward.

The black wolf bristled faintly, then forced himself to relax. _Thank you_ , he said quietly. His red eyes searched the other wolf's gaze for a brief moment before he leaned forward to lick his nose when Yugi released him. The white wolf startled from where he'd been checking to make sure he was steady enough to stand on his own. His tail wagged after a moment, clearly startled by the touch. _That could have been uncomfortable._

He doubted it would have hurt had he fallen on his face, but he still knew it would have been uncomfortable. And he hated the thought of being knocked off his feet. He hated that thought far too much to care in the slightest. It was frustrating to think of his paws slipping out from beneath him. He had taught himself to hold his ground, not to slip any longer. That was how one got killed in battle. That was how the hellhounds had gotten him off balance and managed to harm him so terribly.

His heart was pounding shakily behind his ribs now as he thought this through…

Yugi shivered as he followed him. His claws scraped as well but he stayed a couple of inches behind him, close enough that their flanks were still touching and he could easily grasp him. Yami did not trip again, though he hesitated as he picked his way about the rock. The stone was cold and hard beneath him. The earthen tunnel smelled almost bitter for a brief moment.

The black wolf shook himself out. Then he continued forward. The earth dipped again beneath him. The rocks were hard and smooth, though they rose unevenly upward. There were spare touches of scattered sand which lay beyond them. The walls were sheer where he could see them, turning his head and seeing layer upon layer of stone that rose like bricks towards the ceiling. There were slight stalagmite formations from the top, announcing the young age of the tunnels around them.

The formations reminded him of budding flowers in the way they rested so close together upon the walls. Beneath them the rock was smoothed away and much akin bricks in their formations as they pulled forward from the walls. It was an odd sight, the shadows black and the lesser layering colored mere gray and silver. The ceiling beyond that was oddly smooth, almost like the sewer tunnels, but they were far from its beginning formation and the jagged crevices looked oddly comforting. Yami found them to be almost as reassuring as he would have had Yugi been coaxing him from an anxiety attack. It was a mild reminder that scars were not something only he or the other wolves carried. Even the earth had them, something that he had not considered in a longer time than he cared to admit.

Yami moved slowly along the sand and stone, lowering his eyes to the ground. The sand was soft there beneath his toes, but the rock was like touching the blade of a knife. It was frozen beneath him and he shivered faintly as he continued forward. Yugi's body heat was enough to calm him slightly as he picked his way about. The earth was too broken apart, too cratered beneath his paws, as if the world were shattering under his weight. He shook the thought off as the river became somewhat louder. He was not close to the edge of the gorge, however. He knew that. The stone drops into the rushing water were far from his range of sight as well.

Their claws were clicking and scrabbling and his breathing was heavier than he cared to admit. He wondered if Yugi had noticed, as the white wolf had come forward and was pressed into his side almost as if he meant to physically glue them together. Yami blinked and looked about himself slowly, glancing upwards at the smooth ceiling again. Then he cast a side long look towards Yugi to find that the white wolf was staring at him. His blue-violet eyes had turned uniform in shade, a plum color which made Yami almost bristle with discomfort. He had forgotten that his eyes would be changed of color like this. And he wondered vaguely what his own looked like now.

He shrugged this off. _I wonder if perhaps Slifer might be waiting for us. How likely do you think that might be_?

Yugi flicked an ear, something passing over his eyes that Yami could not read. He shook himself out after a moment and looked away towards the ground. _I think that it's likely she's here, but I don't know that she'd be waiting for us._

Yami tilted his head. _That could be true,_ he admitted with a flick of his ears. He shivered and shook his head after a moment. Then he pricked his ears forward and continued at a slow trot. He looked about the tunnel for a long second. And then he glanced at Yugi again slowly. The white wolf blinked at him and tilted his head, his expression one of patient curiosity.

 _What is it, aibou_?

Yami resisted the urge to tell him not to call him that again. Then he shook his head. _I was simply thinking that I am grateful that you are such a good friend,_ he muttered after a long moment. But it was something that was far from his true line of thought. He had begun to wonder more about Slifer. If the she-wolf were there, would she attempt to speak to them? He hoped to the gods that she would not. He was so tired of it all. He did not want to have to even consider that the deity might be there to see them.

Yugi tilted his head. _Huh_?

Yami blinked and looked over. _What is it_?

The white wolf tilted and shook his head after a moment. His ears flattened against his head and he stared at him blankly for a long handful of seconds. _Where did that come from, Yami_? he asked softly. _I don't understand why you brought that up…_

The black wolf blinked and turned away. The fur along the back of his neck began to rise in a small bristle before he shook it off and turned back to him. He stopped moving altogether now but for his breathing, watching him with dark eyes. _I thought of it when you caught me a minute ago. I just did not say it before now._ He wondered if he sounded as lost as he felt at that moment. He had the impulse to apologize, to tell him that he was sorry for the confusion and maybe for everything else as he had before. But he could already tell that Yugi would become concerned and then upset with his words. And so he forced himself not to do so. _But I am being truthful. I am very glad that you are such a great friend._

Yugi blinked at him with an expression that was curious but incredulous as well. The white wolf shook his head after a moment, then leaned forward and licked his forehead. _You're a great friend too, even if you don't think so,_ he said after a moment, turning away again.

Yami wished he would never have said such a thing. He hated to hear those words in Yugi's voice. The other boy was so incredibly sweet and he himself was not. It was almost insulting that Yugi might consider him even remotely similar to him. He did not comment on this, however, lowering his eyes. _Perhaps_ , he finally relented, though he ignored the sharp look that Yugi shot him at his implied denial. Yami shook himself out as if to shrug off his expression altogether. But his stomach ached and he hated the fact that Yugi would ever compare him to himself. He could not put into words how much it disgusted him, how much he despised it… _I do not think there are truly any fish left here._

Yugi snorted. _Probably not,_ he agreed, casting a glance around them and then at the ground. He looked almost as if he expected the floor to fall away beneath them. Then he shook himself out and looked up at Yami in turn. _But we don't need to leave, do we_? _I mean, we haven't done anything and you didn't seem to want to go home before, so I don't see a reason why we should…_

Yami snorted in amusement. _No, I do not want to leave. I am curious and wish to keep moving about. We can map out the tunnels for a little while, or see how deep the river actually is…_

There was a flash of something across his eyes but the rest of his countenance remained expressionless. _Maybe. It might not be a bad idea to do that, I guess. Although actually trying to measure it probably isn't the smartest thing to do, honestly._

Yami snickered. _No, I mean that I would wish to see if perhaps the river is high enough up that you can see it still visible over the gorge walls._

Yugi blinked. _Ah, I see._ But Yami noted that he sounded distracted now, as if his mind were a million miles away. The white wolf turned away from him again, ears flicking in the direction the river rested. Yami tilted his head slightly as he considered him curiously. _That shouldn't be too big an issue, I guess. It's not a problem to do that. I think the water would be easy to spot if we're going to do that._

 _I suppose so._

 _We can always go back to the cavern that Slifer is usually in,_ Yugi commented after a moment. He was studying Yami now, the black wolf knew, because his nose was tipped towards him and his eyes were firmly caught upon his face. Their eyes were locked, though the emotions in Yugi's usually bright and easily-read face were blocked now by his tapetum lucidum, the colors of his irises blurred together. Yami hated that he could not see him so easily now. It felt almost as if he were being separated from him forcefully, as if the other boy were putting a wall between them. And the more frustrating part was that Yami knew better. Yugi was not doing this by his own desire. It was simply their biological design. To see at night, the tapetum lucidum had to exist and collect what little light remained there in their surroundings. And that often changed the colors of their eyes and made them more uniform.

Yugi had told him once that his eyes looked amber in this state…

And, truthfully, Yami hated that color.

 _Are you all right_?

Yami blinked in surprise, head snapping up in puzzlement. His ears pricked forward, then flicked about. He looked around immediately, bristling faintly, then halted. His head turned back towards Yugi. The white wolf was staring at him with something almost horrified, the emotion so strong that it somehow glinted back at him despite the mask of indigo coloring. Yami flattened his ears against his skull after a moment, shaking his head firmly to scatter his thoughts.

 _I am fine,_ he said quietly. He shivered and shook himself out, then moved forward a step. _I got distracted._

 _You looked like you were lost and forgot who you were…_

Yami blinked and turned to look at him. Had he? How curious. _No, I am fine. It's all right. I just forgot what I was doing; I got distracted and forgot all about what we were doing._

Yugi flicked his ears, his voice coming out concerned once more. _Yeah, but you… I've never seen you do that before. Normally you tend to get lost in your head and still manage to answer me…_

 _Did you ask me something_?

 _I wanted to know if you wanted to hunt after this if there's nothing to be found down here…_

Yami blinked, faltering in his step. Did he want to hunt regardless? The black wolf cast a small glance over his shoulder towards the tunnel entrance though it was now invisible due to the angle they stood. He shivered and bristled, then flattened his fur back again with a shake of his head. _No. I don't think so,_ he finally relented, turning back. Something about the thought of going out of the tunnel for any reason that did not lead to Yugi's home was terrible.

His stomach rolled and tossed and somersaulted violently. But he knew where the fear came from. He understood it as he might have the shape of his own shadow. It was enough to make him tremble for a brief second. And he could not shake that initial wave of doubt and terror which gripped his heart now. His lungs squeezed tightly and he wanted almost to vomit as the seconds passed. Then he forced himself to swallow it away.

The thought of being above ground without a place to hide was nothing Yami ever wanted to consider again. He'd gone too many months formerly with this burden and now it was enough to make his heart stop at the thought of enduring it again. Yugi had offered him shelter before, had said he could stay as long as he needed to…

Yami felt weak and dizzy for a split second.

He needed to stay with him. He had to stay with him as long as it took to heal. He knew that. He needed that more than anything. And he hated himself for such an obvious weakness. It was overwhelming as he considered, shivering for a moment. Then he tried again to shove it away.

 _Do you want me to try to hunt and bring it to you_?

Yami bristled. _I'm not a pup,_ he spat before he could stop himself. His head snapped towards him, eyes locking with Yugi's startled ones. He shook his head violently and bore his teeth. _I do not need you to feed me._

Yugi flicked an ear, staring at him for a long handful of minutes. _Yami…_

The black wolf flattened his ears against his head and lowered his eyes. _I apologize,_ he finally grunted, turning away entirely. _I do not like depending on you so much._

 _It's not a burden if I'm offering to do it,_ Yugi said slowly, in a voice that was soft and gentle and made Yami want to flinch violently away from him. _You don't need to feel bad about it, aibou. I offer because I care. I don't want you to be hurt. I don't want you to say no to food just because you're upset about something. I want you to heal._

Yami flicked his ears again. _I know._

The white wolf was silent for a long handful of heartbeats. Then he stopped walking and stared at him as Yami did the same and finally turned to him. When their eyes locked again, the white wolf tilted his head. He slowly wagged his tail, trying his hardest to keep Yami from growing aggressive once more. _So what do you say now_? _Do you want me to hunt and bring it to you or would you rather skip on that and I'll just feed you when we get home_?

Yami was quiet as he stared at him. _I'll eat when we get back,_ he breathed out, turning away immediately again. _I do not want food sooner than then._

Yugi let out a sigh behind him, a loud exhale that was laden with frustration. The black wolf refused to look back as the other male came forward and nudged him gently with his muzzle. _You don't have to be so upset all the time. You know that I'll help you in any way I'm able. You know that. So why do you always try to argue against it_?

Yami bristled faintly, then looked down pointedly. _I…I do not like relying on others._

 _Okay, but everyone relies on someone else at some point. You know that as well as I do_! _It's not a problem to help someone or need to ask for assistance. You know that too. Why do you always fight me_? _Do you honestly not trust me_? _Is that what it is_?

The black wolf blinked and turned his head to look at him. His ears flicked, flattened, pricked, and finally pointed firmly at Yugi. _I trust you. I trust you more than anyone else. I would not have remained with you or ever jumped through that damn fire with you. You are my friend. Why would I consider you this if I did not trust you, Yugi_?

He shook his head. _I'm just asking you to calm down, aibou. You know I'm not going to offer you false help like that. You know that I'd do anything for you if it was necessary. I've killed for you before. You know that._ Yami blinked at him, growling softly with discontent at the statement. _And you know I'll do it again if it comes down to it. Helping you get food so that you can heal hardly compares to that. So I don't understand why you would deny help there and accept it other times._

 _I do not like relying on you. I do not like relying on others._ Yami shook his head sharply. _I do not want to talk about this anymore, okay_?

Yugi was gaping at him now, he realized, something in his thoughts finally clicking. And the white wolf raised his head, ears pricked and mouth closing again as he considered him. Then he looked away and breathed out roughly. _I think you're worth it, even if you don't,_ he said quietly, turning past him and beginning to trot forward. _But I'm not going to argue with you about this if you don't want to talk about this anymore. Let's just get a move on, okay_?

Yami was silent as he turned to follow him. And, as they crossed the stone floor and towards the source of the water roaring beyond them deeper in the tunnels, the black wolf felt sick. The darker-furred canine shook himself out as they came towards the gorge. The water spray was heavy, the river a furious white against the dark gray and silver of the shadows beyond it. He shivered and shook himself out, then moved closer to the edge. The rock surrounding it was oddly inclined downward and inward, as if the river had broken it in heavy sweeps like claws digging at the stone.

 _Don't get too close_ , Yugi warned quietly. There was a note of frustration in his tone, one which made Yami immediately turn towards him. Clearly he had not gotten past the conversation they'd narrowly avoided before then. Yami flattened his ears against his head as Yugi looked back at him almost bitterly. _Just don't get too close and we won't have to go for a long swim, okay_?

Yami moved away from the gorge's edge and came closer to him. He felt sick for a brief second, eyes wide and searching his. _I did not mean to upset you,_ he finally muttered.

 _I know that,_ Yugi snapped, voice harsh and cold, _but you act that like that's not something I should be upset about. Of course I'm not happy that you dislike yourself so much that you don't think you deserve help_!

Yami flicked an ear. _I apologize… I did not even mean to bring it up. I…_

The white wolf snarled and shook his head angrily, huffing out a deep breath. _Whatever_ , he snapped, bristling and looking away. _It's fine. Give me a few minutes to get over it. We can talk about something else after that._

Yami watched him for a long moment, then turned and began to trot forward a few steps, looking at the water. It was a frustrating moment for the white wolf when the black canine turned around to face him abruptly. The color of his eyes was harsh and rustic, amber and glinting. His ears were pricked forward, his lips curled back faintly, and his fur was up in a hideous bristle.

 _You say this but_ you yourself tend to hate to have anyone offer you help as well, Yami spat at him. _You are a hypocrite. I have offered you help before and you have tried to reject it. If I had not helped you with that damn net that night, Fuwa would have caught you and tortured you instead._

Yugi blinked, startled, and then bore his teeth as he stalked forward a step. His tail rose and he snarled low in his throat. _You want to talk to me about this_? _This of_ all _things, Yami_? _I think it's best left unsaid before this becomes worse than it needs to._

 _Don't threaten me. You know I'm correct. And I'll beat you into submission if I have to._

The white wolf tossed his head, the anger making his head spin and his blood hot in his veins. He stepped forward, peeling his lips back further to show off his sharp teeth. _Knock it off, Yami._

 _But you're the one who wants to be so upset about my behavior. Why don't we discuss_ yours _for once_? The black wolf snarled and snapped his teeth, then came forward furiously. The two of them were inches from each other when he finally came to a stop and glared at him, their eyes locked fiercely. _You have just as many problems as I do. But we never focus on that. We focus on my shortcomings, but never yours._

 _I don't hate myself. You do. And I get so sick of that. How dare you hate yourself like that_!

 _How dare you try to tell me how I should feel about myself._

The thought startled Yugi enough to make him stiffen in surprise. Then he blinked, tilting his head, and bore his teeth unhappily. _You can't be serious right now._ He shivered and bristled furiously. _I don't want to tell you how to feel about yourself. I want you not to hate yourself_!

 _I am free to feel however I wish to, is that not correct_? he snapped in turn. _I was under the assumption that I am in control of my own emotions and how I am meant to feel about myself. Is that a wrong assessment_?

 _Of course not—but you're not understanding—_

 _You're speaking to me as if you wish to control me._

Yugi startled as if he had been slapped, winded by the comment. _W-what_? he sputtered, then bristled furiously and snarled low in his throat. _I am not_! _I don't want to control you at all_! _Why the hell are you saying…_?

Yami shook himself out, the aggression lost abruptly. _You already know why,_ he muttered, falling quiet immediately after and looking at him with something of a sheepish expression now. He lowered his head, turning it slightly away from him now as well. _I told you before, a long time ago…_

Yugi blinked, mind rapidly sorting itself to find a clue as to what he meant at the moment. Then he stiffened, eyes widening, and backed up as if he had been struck. He lost his aggressive stance now as well. And his stomach ached as he considered him again. His heart began to stutter in his chest, his lungs straining to fill themselves as he struggled to consider it. Had he truly…?

They had refused to give him a name in order to keep him effectively in the dark while he was stuck in the lab. He had been born there, forced to go by their whims in order to survive. And he had been refused a name, as Yami had told him before…

And now he was reminding him of them. He was reminding him of the fact that they had done those things in order to control him. Yugi trembled at the thought, horrified as he stared back at the wolf that refused to face him now. He wanted to vomit as he gaped at him for a brief moment. Then he turned away, fur rising into a bristle and heart in his throat once more.

Had he truly reminded Yami of that?

Or had he simply said this to make the conversation stop?

But some part of him doubted it. Yami was capable of ignoring him until he could no longer stand the sound of his own voice. It was impossible to imagine that Yami might use this statement simply to make him be quiet. There were a great many different ways he could have said he was uncomfortable and none of them involved memories of the abuse he'd sustained while within that hellhole underground. Yugi felt sick to his stomach as he looked at him again.

But then…maybe Yami truly had meant just to make him quiet again and leave the conversation alone by saying something like that. He stared at him, unnerved and unsure of himself, and looked away as his heart began to skip beats.

 _I never meant to make you feel that way. I'm sorry._

Yami was quiet for what felt a lifetime. Then, hesitantly, he murmured, _I should never have said that. I'm sorry. It wasn't true._

Yugi wished he could have believed him. But Yami had said it with enough feeling in his voice to negate his apology now. He was trying to make him feel better by saying this but Yugi could not trust it. So he simply looked at him and then away again after a long moment.

 _It's okay,_ Yugi finally mumbled. _Besides, I don't want you not to tell me if I make you feel that way just because you think it will save my feelings. You know I never want to make you feel that way_ …

Yami blinked and looked over at him. His eyes were wide and his ears were flattened against his head. _I didn't mean it,_ he insisted. _I said it to make you stop talking. I didn't mean it._

 _Yami, enough. It's okay. I'm sorry. It is what it is, okay_? _I made you feel like that and I don't want to think about it anymore, okay_? _Let's just call it a day on this and consider it done and over with._ He hesitated, something inside of his gut twisting and writhing at the thought. But he shook it off again. He didn't want to start to feel sorry for himself. That was not something he liked about himself and he hated when he fell into that loophole. _Now let's go find those_ possibly hibernating _fish, okay_?

The black wolf stared at him as if he had just gutted him. Then he looked away again, pricked his ears forward, shook himself out, and turned on his heel. _Let's_ , he agreed in a curt tone, something that Yugi knew was meant to tell him that this conversation was not over by a long shot.

The white wolf shook his head as he trailed after him. It was not worth the possible damage that might come of the conversation to continue it in any manner. He wondered why it was that Yami did not see that and feel the same way. _How much do you want to bet that Slifer is somewhere around here just lurking_? he asked playfully, hurrying forward to get to his side. Yugi was relieved when Yami did not pull away from him as their pelts brushed once more.

 _I'm pretty sure that's a given,_ he stated dryly, refusing to look at him. _That's an absolute given._

Yugi felt sick. Yami sounded as if he wanted nothing more than to flee from him entirely at the moment. And he could not be sure who it was that had caused this immense damage this time. Both of them had reacted rather badly…

The white wolf was dizzy with disbelief as they picked their way through the tunnels along the gorge. The river was so loud it was disgusting and the spray that came from beneath the wall of stone was enough to soak his paws. Yugi wished for a moment that he could get frostbite, if only so he could escape the awkward situation at hand. He shivered and shook his head as a small bit of foam hit his eye, then continued in the same trot as Yami did in front of him. When the black wolf had moved, Yugi was not sure. But he was in front of him rather than beside him now. And he was closer to the wall than Yugi himself was, brushing against the stone while Yugi found his paws soaked and water spray in his face.

He looked down at the sheer drop. The entirety of it was slicked and wet down for inches inward. He shivered, then turned to walk alongside it rather than in it. The less water he experienced, the better, he thought. It was a pain in the ass to deal with cold water on his paws like that. Besides, with the way that Yami was acting at the moment, he was not sure he wanted to deal with anymore setbacks and frustrations.

 _Can we just forget I ever said anything to begin with_?

The words were so abrupt and biting that it startled Yugi out of his thoughts. The white wolf looked up to see that Yami was facing away from him, still moving steadily, but he knew it was he who had spoken. There was no one else with them for the moment. He shivered. _What did you say_? he asked after a moment, flustered. _I didn't hear you._

Yami was quiet for a long moment and Yugi bristled faintly at the thought that entered his mind immediately after. He shivered.

 _I'm serious, aibou. What did you say_? _I was distracted and didn't hear you._

The black wolf risked a single glance back at him, as if he were sure he was mocking him. Then he hesitated, flicking his ears back and forth a few times, and turned away with a slight bristle to his long fur. _I wish to forget that I ever said anything._

 _Okay, we can pretend that if you want,_ Yugi mumbled, unsure of why he folded so quickly but for the fact that it was the easiest thing they could do. The edges of the wounds were still too raw to completely close away but it was enough of an effort to hide behind that they could both benefit without too much difficulty. _But I was serious._

 _As was I._

They continued along for a moment. Then Yugi padded forward and to his side again. Yami wasn't willing to slow down, though the small wolf blamed him none for that. He would not have wanted to do that either. It was distressing and frustrating to think that he would have to fall back for him like that. And Yugi was perfectly capable of coming to his side instead.

But wasn't that how it normally went as well?

Yugi was the one who initiated physical contact.

Yami was always shy about that as well. He did not want to touch someone. He did not want to embrace someone. When he had initiated it, it had been with Ryou and Yugi was not sure what that meant anymore. Yami had proven him wrong in his assumption that it was a lover's embrace when he had shown only mild remorse for the other boy's passing. He hardly seemed to care at all any longer. Half the time Yugi wondered if he even knew the other's name…

And he had implied before that he had his cage mate had not been physical. He had implied something more platonic and much alike their own relationship but for the fact that the other wolf had died for him.

Yugi really hoped that did not have to happen…

He shivered and shook himself out.

He did not want to think for a second of what might happen should that kind of thing come to pass. He did not want to imagine having to deal with the prospect of one of their deaths. It was hardly something that comforted him in the slightest.

And he had the feeling that should he bring this up to Yami as well, the other would hardly be happy with him in the slightest. So Yugi shrugged it off a final time, the lingering thought persistent but slipping away as he bristled slightly.

 _I don't think there are really any fish here at all,_ Yami said abruptly, turning to look over his shoulder towards Yugi. The black wolf pricked his ears forward, then turned away again almost immediately. He bounded forward in the stone tunnel, across a shallow pool of water that was accumulating near the bottom of the ledge beneath them. Yugi followed him as quickly as possible, dropping down beside him and ignoring the way the water splashed up against his paws.

 _You think so_? Yugi asked, springing down to his side and shaking himself out as spray from the river to their left hit his side. He shivered and looked about himself for a split second. Yami did not seem unnerved in the slightest, shaking himself out as well and looking towards Yugi with a tilted head. _So what do you want to do_?

There was a long moment of silence between them, then the black wolf sprang towards him with bright red eyes. His paw rose towards Yugi's face, his tail wagging as he pounced at him. He knocked Yugi in the flank lightly with his paw, shoving him gently but with just enough force to make him stagger a pace to the side. Yami dropped into a bow in front of him, long tail wagging.

He looked incredibly amused, as if knocking on Yugi's side had done him well for entertainment. The darker canine tilted his head and wagged his tail harder, red eyes glittering. Yugi stared at him, slightly startled and confused. Then he flicked his ears back and forth for a moment.

He launched himself at him. Yami met him head on, allowing Yugi to slam into his shoulder. He twisted enough to catch his weight, lowering his head to nip at his side. Yugi huffed at the touch, as soft as it was, and Yami shoved at his ribs with his muzzle. The smaller wolf was pushed a pace away again, eyes wide and startled. Then he huffed and nipped at his ear.

Yami did nothing more than wag his tail before nudging him once more. Yugi wagged his tail in turn, watching him with brightening eyes. The black wolf pounced on him, forelimbs draping over his shoulders. It was an easy and friendly gesture, nothing which made Yugi feel inclined to shrug him off. And Yami looked incredibly comfortable when Yugi turned his head to look at him more pointedly. The black wolf had his mouth open, his tongue lolling and his tail still wagging.

Yugi did not mind the extra weight, soft and easy against his body. Yami looked more akin a yearling than anything at the moment. But he did not seem as if he might be sick or unhealthy in any manner now. He shivered at the realization, hoping more than ever that this might be more permanent than a simple split second thing.

 _I caught myself a Yugi,_ Yami said after a moment, wagging his tail lazily as Yugi considered him. The white wolf laughed and wagged his tail, lazy and slow in his actions. _I think my hunting trip went well._

Yugi laughed again. _You're a dork,_ he teased, impulsively leaning forward to run his tongue over his cheek. He wagged his tail harder and looked away after a moment. His ears pricked as he considered their placement within the tunnels. But he could not be sure where they were. He had only traversed them a few times. It was harder to know where it was that they might have come to.

The area was too smothered with earthen smells, dirt and stone and cold water. And he could only scent the latter slightly. The crisp air made everything too hard to detect anything that might have been lurking within the tunnels. He had no idea how it was that he could possibly tell where they were in there. He wanted to assume that they were close to where Slifer usually rested in the tunnels, but he could not be sure of that either, however. The truth of it was that he was at a loss.

And the walls here were not lined with the dead, which meant that the chamber was not where they were currently. Or so he would have to assume. Was it possible that she had simply removed the bodies at some point? Yugi had no idea how it was that one was meant to judge distance in this place…

 _You okay_? _You seem troubled._

 _I'm fine. I was just…_ Yugi flicked his ears and looked over at him. Did it matter where they were? In the grand scheme of things, was it _truly_ so important? Yugi could not help but doubt this. He sighed. _Just wanted to know where we are in here._

Yami peered at him with something unreadable, then nodded slightly and pulled away from him. He shook himself out as soon as he landed on all fours again. His tail was down, his ears pricked forward, his eyes locked on Yugi noticeably. He did not seem happy nor comfortable any longer.

Yugi flattened his ears against his head. _I was just curious. It's not a big deal._

Yami stared at him blankly for a moment longer, then turned away and pricked his ears forward again. He didn't seem to be paying him the slightest bit of attention now. When he tipped his muzzle upward, Yugi followed his line of sight with this action and stiffened as well, eyes widening drastically in surprise.

Had she been there that entire time? He blinked and his fur rose and fell in a shuddering bristle. She looked as if she had to have been there forever, ancient in her appearance as she peered down at them. Yugi lowered his eyes and then looked towards Yami with something of a grimace on his face. His eyes shot back to her almost immediately, however.

 _Hello, Slifer,_ he called, flicking his ears. Yami did not look happy beside him now, head tilted and eyes sharper than ever.

 _Hello, Yugi, Yami._

Yami looked away towards Yugi after a moment. _I did not realize she was there._

 _How long do you think she's been there_?

 _Long enough,_ the black wolf answered in annoyance. Then he tipped his head towards the goddess again, hissing out a breath from between his incisors. He was more tired than he cared to admit, from their meager moment of play and that argument they'd fallen into… He hated this vulnerability more than he could put into words. He had not even noticed her before then. Normally he would have known and seen and realized… He would have scented her or heard her breathing or something. Sometimes all of his senses honed in on something and other times they did not, but he should not have been so shocked to see her. He should have known she was there one way or another. _I do not suppose it honestly matters…_

 _Most likely not,_ Yugi agreed. The white wolf was still looking up when Yami considered him curiously for a moment. But he shrugged the urge away to speak to him again, something inside of him seeming to burn with disbelief. He looked up towards Slifer again as well, ears pricked forward and eyes sharpening. _I don't think there's any reason to worry about it at all._

Yami did not respond, the comment more irritating to him than anything else. _Are you well_? he asked after a moment, watching the she-wolf seated on the ledge higher above them.

 _As well as a goddess of death is capable, I am sure._

 _I am glad to hear that._ He wondered if he sounded as bitter as he felt at the moment. The black wolf shook himself out and moved to take a seat. His eyes sharpened and his head tilted towards Yugi after a moment or so. _I would hope you and the others are doing well._

 _Deities do not often change in stature._

 _I would be far more surprised if you had said something to the contrary._

The she-wolf graced him with a look of dry humor. _I shall remember that for the next time you ask me such a question. Then I will tell you that much has changed and I will find humor in your bewildered expression, yes_?

 _You might be hoping for more than I can offer._

In fact, Yami was very sure that she was asking him for far more than he could _ever hope_ to offer. There was such a cold lump in his stomach, a sense of numbness and disbelief, that made him want to simply curl up and lay down for the rest of his life. It was hard not to desire something smaller and less useful than this of all things. He was exhausted. He did not care in the slightest if she was amused in any manner. And he did not think that he would have cared even if it had been Yugi to say such a thing.

Yami wondered at this for a moment, then puzzled over his newest thought.

Was it possible that physical affection was not the only thing he lacked the ability to show? Was he emotionally stunted now as well?

He would not have been surprised in the slightest should that have been proven true.

He wondered if Yugi would care for him half as much if he were to tell him that. He could not truly picture Yugi turning his back on him. But he could imagine that the smaller boy would be rather devastated by it. But Yami wondered how much that would really affect him in the long run.

Why should Yugi truly care if that were the case? It made no sense to him. There was no reason for Yugi to worry about his emotional capabilities as it was. He did not know why it was that he would find it necessary to care for him in such a manner as that.

In truth, Yugi shouldn't have cared in the slightest should he have ever told him such a thing. But he had a feeling the other boy would take it as something of a challenge, something that he would argue with him about as much as he could. He knew him too well to think that it would be received without argument…

Then again, Yami was not sure that this was a thing in the first place. But the thought of it would never have surprised him. He almost snickered at the thought, then shrugged it off forcefully in order to keep Yugi from noticing and perhaps worrying about his being lost in thought.

 _I think it's about time that we went back home,_ he announced, turning to Yugi abruptly. His beta blinked and his head snapped towards him, eyes wide and ears pricked. He was clearly more startled than Yami cared to acknowledge at the moment. _There's really nothing for us to remain here for, right_? _Or is there something that you wished to talk to her about_? _I can leave you to that._

Yugi blinked at him as if he had struck him. And Yami had the abrupt thought that perhaps this was much akin doing so. He was snarling at him despite not meaning to. And he did not have the friendliest look on his face, he was sure. The other wolf blinked, blue-violet eyes troubled, then looked towards Slifer and back with a shake of his head.

 _No, I don't have anything I want to talk to her about. Let's go._

* * *

Yugi was seated on the bed, Yami resting a few feet away with his paws outstretched before his broad muzzle and his eyes locked on the television. Yugi had not seen much movement from him since they had settled in his room again. The black canine would have appeared fast asleep had it not been for his ears twitching every time Yugi so much as shifted his weight. He had not once raised his head from his paws to look back at him, but he was clearly paying attention to him in some manner or another.

But Yugi hated the fact that they had come back to the house like this. The black wolf had been unhappy and angry more than anything else. And he'd remained upset like this for the entirety of the hour and a half they'd remained there. It was bewildering to him that Yami was treating him this way.

Yami had remained silent the entire time. He had refused speech of _any_ kind. He had simply answered him with the statement that he was fine when he had asked if he was okay. Beyond this Yami had not made a noise but for his heartbeat and even breathing.

But he wasn't sure there was a way to broach the subject of speaking to him without Yami growing further upset with him in some way. It was frustrating to him. He had always hated the silent treatment. It was a technique that he himself was forced to use at times, in order to avoid further angering someone or to keep from starting an argument that he knew would not cease. It was something he most often had to use with Jonouchi or Anzu, as both of them were rather hotheaded when it came to some things pertaining to him and his choices.

Yugi licked his lips and looked away towards the bed. If Yami wasn't going to talk to him, then fine. There were other things to do as it was. He still had homework to finish and some extra credit assignments to get his grades back up as he needed to. He shivered and shook his head, moving to lean over the edge of the bed. When he did so, Yami's head snapped around curiously to look at him in bewilderment. But Yugi ignored him pointedly, reaching his hand down and digging beneath the bed to grab at the bag beneath. He pulled it out just as Yami looked him over with a tilt of his head and wide eyes.

The small teen pulled the backpack into his lap, digging through to pick out the binder he was looking for. He hummed softly, ignoring the strong impulse to glance over at Yami again. But he could feel his stare on his face, curious and burning. His skin tingled with the attention, making his stomach tie in knots. But Yami was not willing to ask him what it was that was going on or what he was doing, he was not going to just tell him.

And it was not as if he were stupid. He would be able to figure it out as soon as he stopped and considered it for a moment or two longer. Between Yami's natural intelligence and the lycanthropy, he was sure that Yami would not take much longer than a heartbeat to figure out what he was doing.

Yugi flipped the binder open to dig into its pockets, picking out a large wad of stapled paper from the plastic sleeve. He flipped through to the pages he had yet to complete and settle back against the pillows. Yami was still watching, but he had not spoken yet, and he was simply staring at the papers now more than anything else…

Yugi pulled his pencil out of the plastic zipper pouch he'd stuffed them in and flipped it around in his fingers. He considered the question in front of him, staring at the black print almost blindly. For twenty minutes he began to write the answers, lazy and flustered, and picked at the phrasing. He rewrote them after a moment, stiffening as he looked them over and erased the newest answer he deemed too stupid to leave. It didn't help that he was still distracted and each answer he wrote seemed to be getting worse and worse with it all.

He became bored with this soon after fixing the next answer, sighing softly and shaking his head as he looked it over. He flipped it shut after a moment, opting away from finishing what was proving to be a pain in the ass to keep focused on. He stuffed it back in the pocket of his binder, flipping it shut moments later and settling back into his pillows again. When he zipped the backpack up and began to put it under the bed again, he found himself stiffening.

Yami had moved at some point. And now he was leaning his muzzle over the edge of the mattress, peering at the binder curiously. Now that it was within the bag, Yugi could see his nose wriggling faintly. Yugi stiffened further, eyes growing wider than ever before. Yami grabbed at the bag when Yugi wasn't looking at him, tugging it off the bed so that it thumped when it hit the ground. Yugi almost thought he was going to eat it with the way he was staring at it. It would not have surprised him in the slightest should that have happened.

"Are you all right?"

 _Perfectly fine,_ the wolf answered in something of a short tone. _Is there a reason I might not be_?

Yugi grimaced, grinding his teeth together seconds later before shaking his head and narrowing his gaze into slits. "No, I guess not," he relented after a moment. Maybe he was just being sensitive or something like that. It was possible that was the truth of it. He wasn't used to his friends ignoring him or being so quiet like this. He was not used to that in the slightest. Jonouchi and Honda were incredibly loud more often than not. And Anzu could be vicious when she was upset, though she was never quite inclined to be quiet and ignore someone instead of snap at them. But she also forgave relatively easily and Yugi had to wonder if Yami truly had that in him.

He shivered, feeling sick to his stomach. He would have lost his mind long before now had it been one of the others. He was used to Yami being so quiet. He was _not_ used to his silence when he was clearly so uncomfortable and seemed angered more than anything.

He was not used to him being so short-tempered as he seemed now.

But he supposed it didn't truly matter. It was what it was, in all reality. He would have to wait for Yami to either open up to him or snarl and snap at him as he knew he would eventually. It had always been inevitable that if he poked at him for his attention one too many times, he would eventually lose his temper entirely.

But then, he remembered now what it was that had happened formerly. He remembered calling him by his name several times before then when they had originally made arrangements for him to hide in his house like this. When they had first begun to live in the same space, Yami had done well to respond to his name without much care. He would turn to Yugi no matter how many times he said it or how often he tried to catch his attention in stupid and ridiculous ways.

And not once had he showed him an ounce of anger or frustration or impatience.

He didn't think that had been because of his silence then. He was rather sure that was more of Yami's own core nature, to be quiet and even in his demeanor, to remain calm and easier rather than violent and harsh as he sometimes was. And Yugi had the feeling that, should he do the same now and call him by his name or talk to him, Yami would simply turn around and look at him without uttering a word. He would simply study him, waiting for him to say a word of some kind before turning away again.

Yugi shook his head after a moment. Then he zipped his backpack shut again and moved to put it under the bed. It was only when he leaned over that Yugi found himself stopping short with wide eyes. Yami had reached his paw out and was leaning toward him with narrowed eyes. He had just barely touched the fabric with his claws, watching him pointedly. Yugi hesitated for a long moment, then cleared his throat and swallowed hard.

When he pushed it to him, Yami did not so much as blink, instead dropping to the ground with the bag in his mouth. He watched him push it under the bed, eyes trained on the TV for the most part, but it reminded Yugi that he often split his attention without too much difficulty.

He was capable of staring at something else entirely and still seeing whatever faint movement it was that happened nearby. His peripheral was far more attentive than Yugi could ever hope to boast, he was sure. And he was incredibly acute in the way he could watch Yugi even without a turn of his head.

"Why are you so upset?"

 _Upset_? Yami blinked, raising and turning his head with eyes full of open bewilderment. His brows furrowed and his head tilted, his eyes slightly narrowed. His ears flicked back and forth twice and he blinked at him in open confusion. _Why would I be upset, Yugi_?

"I don't know. That's what I'm asking you."

 _I'm not upset._

Yugi raised a brow slowly, skeptical of his statement, then shook his head and sighed loudly. "Whatever you say," he huffed, not the least bit amused with his denial. Yami was clearly upset about something or other. And it was not as if he could truly hide such a thing from him as it was. The wolf showed this as vibrantly as the sun lit the sky. When Yami was angry, he exuded it. Although Yugi had to wonder if it was only when he was comfortable enough to do so that he would. Because he had seen his short temper with Chazz during that fight at the school and he had not seemed too visibly upset then.

Yugi hated the thought that Yami was upset, however. He had no idea what he was meant to do in order to help him and it frustrated him more than he cared to admit at the moment.

What was it that he had done to make him so angry like this?

Was there anything that he had truly done or said to him to make him like this?

Yugi let this idea settle and disappear a few minutes later, shaking it off as he settled to finish his homework on a later—possibly _much later_ —date. He had put it far away by the time that the two of them settled for bed again. Yugi was curled up facing the wall, Yami on his side fast asleep and facing the window. Whenever Yugi moved, the wolf would growl in his sleep. And he would still, relax for a moment, and move again just to upset him. Yami would growl again, grunt when he stopped, and then growl again whenever he so much as twitched.

But he couldn't help it when he moved to sit up and look at him. Yami growled again, predictably, and blinked his eyes open to consider him for a moment. His eyes were golden around his pupils from the streetlight outside and the harsh red glow of his gaze in the dark was like dried blood. Yugi peered at him for a moment. Yami looked ruffled and tired, eyes blinking a few times. But he was no longer growling and he seemed more or less okay with the staring.

Yami stretched his jaws open in a wide yawn, blinking at him curiously. His ears flicked once, then twice, and finally he lowered his head back to tuck into his legs as he had formerly. He was not curled up as tightly as he could have, but he was in loose ball formation. Yugi wondered if his sides still hurt or if he was still aching in any way. But he did not want to ask. Yami would likely become defensive and begin growling angrily.

He didn't want to think of the fact that Yami might become so upset with him. He did not want to imagine the anger on his face or the way he would glare at him so furiously. He shivered for a moment, insides knotting for a brief second. He wanted to lean forward, to maybe rub between his ears or hug him tightly. Instead he shrugged it off and narrowed his eyes.

Yami was not weak. He was still tired and emaciated. But he was not weak by any stretch of the imagination. And Yugi wondered for a moment if perhaps there was something wrong with this thought. Yugi had the abrupt feeling that he'd done well to undermine a lot of Yami's credibility in fighting with that alpha at the camp. And now that Yami was stuck with him again at the house…

Not only had he done more harm than good there, but he had the feeling that it was simply going to continue on this route. He had done poorly in protecting him before and he did not think he was getting any better. It was exhausting and frustrating to consider. Yugi reached up to run his fingers through his hair unhappily. He had the feeling that his keeping Yami away from them earlier that day as well had failed to do him any favors. It had to be doing much worse rather than any good at this point. Yami was most likely going to be seen as more of a traitor now than he ever had.

It would seem like Yugi was hiding him away for some other reason. Would they think it was out of punishment? Or would they assume that he valued them little and Yami incredibly so? He shivered at the thought. A life was a life. He didn't want anyone to lose theirs. He would do everything he could to help them in any way possible. He was desperate to have this happen. He was desperate to ensure that all of them survived. He didn't want any of them to die.

But death was inevitable. Slifer had proven that already. Those twelve wolves were meant to die soon, and he knew that he would never be able to save them. Slifer had told him those names to mock him, to make him feel smaller than he had before. She had said it in order to make him feel weak and stupid before her power.

She had done it to prove to him that death stalked his paws, that it was inevitable and even the wolves closer to him could die. She had said to upset him, to inspire a reaction from him as if to prove that he truly cared…

Maybe it would be a good idea for him and Yami to go to the camp together at some point and change. Maybe it would do them well in order to reaffirm his rank as their alpha. Would that do either of them well? He could not tell at the moment. His mind was racing too quickly and he was dizzy with the need to clear his thoughts away.

But instead he wound up stretching his legs. Yami snarled and raised his head to glare at him, red eyes furious. Yugi smiled faintly, reaching out to ruffle his fur. The black canine was not amused, glaring at him with an annoyed expression. Yugi shook his head with a wide smile, then sighed softly as he looked him over.

"I need your opinion on this, aibou."

Yami flicked an ear. His eyes sharpened and grew a shade darker but he did not so much as blink at him. Instead he tilted his head and considered him with a small stretch of his forelimbs. _What is it_? he grumbled, clearly tired more than anything else. He flicked an ear again and blinked slowly.

"It's about the pack."

The black wolf turned his head to look at him for only a moment. Then he snorted and lowered his chin to his paws again. _Goodnight_.

Yugi laughed and nudged him. The wolf snarled and bristled, raising and turning his head with a visible glower upon his face. "No, Yami, I'm serious. I need your opinion on what I'm thinking about. And it has to do with the pack. Which is why I'm trying to see if you'll talk to me."

 _You have to tell me what it is you want my opinion on if that is what you wish to talk about._ Yami opened his jaws wide in a sleepy yawn and stretched slowly once more. _What is it_?

"I was thinking that I don't know what their perception is regarding us any more. I have no idea if they still really consider me their leader or you their beta. I want to know if there's a way to better reaffirm our ranks with them." He drew in a deep breath. "And the only thing I can think of is maybe us going to the camp and doing something like Slifer did before you came back. She would take them for hunts to strengthen their bonds together. And they haven't done that in a long time."

Yami stared at him for a long minute. Then he flicked his ears and turned away to look out the window. _It is not a bad idea. She was smart to have initiated that as a pack activity. With so many wolves originally from different packs and different cultures, it was wise to do that._ He closed his eyes and lowered his chin to his paws again. If he had not spoken again a few minutes later Yugi would have assumed he was fast asleep.

 _It would not be a bad idea for you to lead a hunt with them. I do not suppose you have a day in mind for this event to transpire_?

"Not quite. But I was…I was thinking tonight?"

 _Of course you would rather me stay awake than sleep,_ Yami huffed pointedly, voice snide but somehow teasing as well. He flattened his ears against his head and then moved to stand, stretching and then shaking himself out. _How soon do we leave_?

Yugi opened his mouth to speak, then fell quiet again. Yami was studying him with a rather pointed stare. He frowned, reconsidering his initial response, and then raised his head a small degree. "I need to make a call to Jonouchi and see if he'd like to come with us."

Yami flicked his ear. _Jonouchi_? _Why would you ask him if he would like to come_? _If the rest of the pack is required to attend, he should be held to the same standards, yes_? he drawled, craning his head back far enough that the bone snapped before he shook himself out again and took a seat on his haunches. Yugi almost thought his neck looked as if it had folded completely back against his shoulders for a split second.

"Well, I mean… He's not used to being a wolf for the most part."

Yami raised and turned his head, bewildered by the statement. _What do you mean he is not used to being a wolf_? _He seemed perfectly happy and comfortable with it when I saw him last. Why would that have changed now_?

Yugi cringed. "I haven't exactly been the best alpha to him. I haven't really…helped him out much at all."

 _You have not helped him_? _He is your best friend and your beta. Why would you not help him_?

"I was distracted by other things."

 _Do not blame your inabilities as an alpha on me. I may have distracted you but you were perfectly capable of helping him at any time before now. Why did you fail to do so_?

"Fuck you, okay? It wasn't like I would have done that if I had thought you were going to heal quickly, okay? I did it because you were in such bad condition and he's _not_. He's perfectly healthy for the most part. And he's gone through the Change at least twice now. So I don't see why you're going to be so angry with me. I _did_ help him before now. So don't try to act better than me."

Yami peered at him almost as if he did not recognize him. _You're defensive for someone so assured that they did the right thing at the time of the decision being made,_ he pointed out with a growl. _And I do not suppose you recognize that I have_ yet _to judge you for anything you have done so far in the time that I have known you. If you insist upon snarling at me, however, I will surely do so sooner rather than later._

"I'm just stressed," Yugi huffed with a roll of his eyes. He felt childish and stupid now, unsure of what more to say or do with this. He was an idiot to have said anything like that to begin with. "And I'm sorry for saying that, okay? I didn't mean to say that at all. It's fine. You're okay. I didn't even mean to say half of that. I know you haven't judged me before. I'm sorry."

Yami stared at him blankly. _Be as defensive as you might like. I do not truly care. But I will remind you that I_ did _at least_ try _to help you when I bit you. I did attempt to help you. And whether or not you did the same for Jonouchi is your own choice. And I do not care what it is that you do with your beta. Truthfully his connection to me is very shallow as your alpha. I had simply assumed that you would do more for him as he is your best friend._

Yugi huffed softly. "I'm pretty sure he's enjoying more time with Mai than he ever could have with me teaching him these things. I'm pretty sure she's taking him under her wing and will be teaching him far more than I even know."

The black wolf snorted loudly and moved to stretch again, clearly annoyed with him. _It does not matter. I suppose they will fool around at some point regardless of whether she takes the time to help him adapt to being a wolf. It matters little to me, in truth. He is_ your _responsibility rather than mine,_ he growled softly. _Now, as for what you were saying, yes. You might as well invite him to join. But I must tell you that if he does not show and he is your beta—as Mai and Otogi and Echo and Yusei all witnessed—you will be seen as much weaker for this._

Yugi stiffened for a brief second, then lowered his eyes to the ground and shook his head slightly. The small teen reached up to run his hands through his hair again as the wolf looked towards the door. "Whatever," he finally snapped, leaning over to unplug his phone from the charger. He put the password in and scrolled through his contacts for a long moment. Yami was right, of course; he would look weaker than ever if Jonouchi were to refuse to come.

Yami raised his head when Yugi began dialing. The tone of the phone ringing was enough to make him bristle faintly. The black wolf shook himself out after a moment, then turned his head to look at him more pointedly. The small teen had moved to get dressed, though he did not turn on the light as he would have formerly. He was muttering under his breath about "Come on, Jonouchi, pick up the phone" and Yami looked away again.

"Hey, Jonouchi!" Yugi chirped a minute later. Yami blinked at the change of tone and looked over his shoulder. On the other end Jonouchi sounded as if he were still too groggy to process he'd answered the phone. "Hey, I know you were asleep, but I wanted to know if you wanted to come with Yami and me to the camp. We're going to lead a hunt. And I figured since you're a member of the pack, you should come with us."

Yami flicked an ear. That was _one_ way of making it seem impossible to back out on the commitment. And it did not seem like a bad idea to phrase it this way, either, he was sure. The wolf shrugged it off after a moment and closed his eyes. He kept his ears pricked in his direction, however.

"A hunt?" Jonouchi was mumbling on the other end. The wolf would have smirked had he been human at the moment. It was always funny speaking to someone that was half-asleep—even with important matters such as this. "Why are we doing that?"

"It would be a good opportunity to learn some more about being a wolf."

"Yeah, but I don't want to learn more if I can't just sleep some more."

Yugi rolled his eyes as Yami looked over at him again. "Do you think Mai is better in your dreams or in real life where she can touch you and kiss you—?"

"That's such a cheap shot, dude."

"I _know_. But admit it, you're thinking about it."

"I'm a _guy_! Of course I'm thinking about it!"

Yugi winked at him playfully when he noticed he was watching him again, lips curled into the brightest of lopsided smiles. "I'll buddy you up with her for the hunt. Otogi and Yusei can partner up instead after that, okay? Then you guys can be as close and talk as much as you want. Hell, she might even let you—"

"I hope Yami knows you think about screwing around with Mai."

The black wolf burst out laughing as Yugi's entire face turned red and he glared at the phone. "Yeah, thanks, he's laughing at me now." He paused and shot Yami an annoyed look as the wolf snickered harder. "Shut up, Yami. Jackass."

Jonouchi was laughing on the other end of the line as well. "Okay, well, I'll meet you guys in the woods then, cause hell yeah I'll go if Mai is there!" The phone clicked off and Yami blinked as Yugi stared at the screen in surprise. The small teen shot Yami a similar look.

"He just hung up on me."

 _I love that he's such a suppressed teenager that he's willing to chase Mai like a lost puppy dog,_ Yami said, ignoring his comment. _That is honestly one of the best things ever._

Yugi rolled his eyes. "You say that like you've had sex before."

Yami wrinkled his nose back. _Sex_? _No. But I will say that I do not have nearly as many problems chasing others for their affection as I have others chase me._

"Well, we can't all be studs."

Yami flicked an ear, curious at the statement, and nearly shook his head in bewilderment. A stud? He was hardly such a thing. He blamed it on genetics, on the power that he possessed due to his bloodline. He did not think for even a second that any of them might have found themselves attracted to him had it not been for this of all things. But he would not say that to Yugi. He did not want to have to deal with his indignation on his behalf, as if he might somehow heal the raw wounds that graced his features so terribly.

 _Well, those who can't are poor children,_ he drawled instead, shaking himself out as he got to his paws and looked at him more pointedly. _It would be wise of you and Jonouchi to change together at the camp. Clearly I will be unable to do the same, but it will look stronger if you two are to do that together. It reinforces the idea that he is loyal to you and you care for your beta._

Yugi frowned at him, tilting his head. "I named _you_ my beta, remember? I said that I bit you." He shook his head after a moment. "I understand that I bit Jonouchi and all, but they're still going to recognize that you're my beta too, right?"

 _I do not think that any of them are foolish enough not to understand and support that. I think you have made it clear on several occasions just what you expect from them where I am concerned._

 _Absolutely not_.

Yugi smiled faintly, eyes glittering with laughter. "You are an absolute dork." The affection in his voice made Yami prick his ears forward, somewhere between bewilderment and amusement himself. But then he swore he caught the sound of movement in the hallway and stiffened as he glanced over his shoulder. Was Sugoroku moving through the hallway or something? Had he missed it before then? Had he been waiting around to hear Yugi speaking to him?

Yami shrugged this idea away. He would have sensed him. He had to believe that, if nothing else. Sugoroku was mortal; he was not a god. He did not have the senses and self-awareness to sneak up on him as Slifer did. So he turned back to Yugi who was peering at him curiously now. And he ignored the way his insides twisted for a moment, somewhere between regret and anxiety and perhaps the smallest hint of melancholy. _Are we to meet Jonouchi at his home or he come here_? _Or will we all meet at the camp itself_?

"The camp. I have a feeling that's where Jonouchi is going to head since I mentioned it in the phone call. So I guess we should probably head out in a few minutes or so, huh?"

The red-eyed wolf blinked at him, then looked away and towards the window. He wondered how hard it might be to navigate the sloping roof in this form. It was easy as a human. Would it be so now as a wolf?

But he hardly cared to think about that for more than a second, turning to him again immediately. _Very well._

* * *

Yugi shook himself of some of the new snowfall that coated his back and flicked his ears about. Yami was standing near him, shaking himself as well. Jonouchi was a few feet away, Mai beside him and Aki next to her. Yuya, Yusei and Syrus were standing together a few yards behind them. And he could see Zane and Otogi sniffing at the snow lazily beyond them. But the pack was too big to keep up with names at the moment and Yugi made another small mental note that he needed to make friends with these wolves, that he _had_ to figure out who was who and what their strengths and weaknesses were…

Knowing only a few select names was not going to help him in any manner down the road. He knew that damn well, no matter how much he wished differently at the moment. Maybe it would be best to introduce them all now? But the thought of doing so was enough to make him feel flustered and so he shook it off.

He would have to find a better time to do it. And it would need to be sooner rather than later. But for now he could afford to put it off. It would make no difference now if he knew their names or not. He had to lead them to hunt rather than deal with anything else. As far as their names went…

Yugi shook the thought off and turned to the others. _So, as with the last time we went on a pack hunt, we're using the buddy system. Everyone is responsible for their buddy, regardless of whether you like them or not. If there is an odd one out of the group, you'll tag along with me and Yami._ All of the wolves raised their heads at his voice, some of them curious and others frustrated. Aki looked as if she wished she might bite him in the head. _You can all pick your buddies, but I would prefer that you all attempt to mingle with the newer pack members that you might not know very well. Any questions_?

Yami flicked an ear and cast a glance away towards Mai and Jonouchi and then back. Yugi noticed that none of the wolves seemed to have noticed this glance nor did they appear curious as to his surprised expression. He realized that most of them probably already knew that he had been missing from the pack for a while, that he was merely surprised because of this new development rather than curious.

 _All right, select your buddies and let's get going then._

It took only a few minutes for them to break apart and pair up together. Yugi was surprised when he noticed Yusei with a paler, more blond male with striking purple eyes. The paler wolf appeared far more muscular, with a build that was almost akin Yami's at his healthiest. He realized he must have been from Nistro's pack, as so many of them had seemed stronger than the other wolves he had spent time with formerly. He hardly seemed as interested in Yusei as the younger appeared to be in him, ignoring the blue-eyed wolf even as he sniffed at him and wrinkled his nose several times as if disgusted by whatever smell he harbored.

Yugi looked sideways at Yami and the black wolf pricked his ears forward lazily. The seconds passed by before, finally, Yugi raised his tail and wagged it briefly. _Let's get going then, shall we_? he announced, turning immediately and beginning to trot forward. Yami took only a second to get to his side, though he remained a step behind him in what was clearly meant to be a respectful manner. Yugi hated the feeling of him being that step behind him. He was used to him brushing against his side when they were hunting together. This felt almost alien, perhaps like some kind of betrayal that he could not quite put into words.

But he realized it would also have to do. He could not afford to let Yami appear more powerful than he was. To do so would turn the pack's perspective on its head. He shivered at the thought and quickly picked his way through the snow. He sniffed at the air about themselves, looking around for any trace of deer that they might be able to find. He needed deer before he would find anything else. At least with deer Yami might be able to eat his fill and relax and maybe heal somewhat as well.

He had not considered how much energy Yami might end up wasting in doing this. He had not even thought about it. But now he wondered. If Yami showed even the slightest bit of weakness, would they turn on him and attempt to sink their teeth in at any opportunity they were given? Or would their loyalty to him hold them at bay for Yami as well? He did not think that he could trust in that at any rate. It seemed impossible to consider that in any manner.

Yugi shrugged this thought away again. It wasn't something that he needed to be worrying about like this. He truly needed, more than ever, to find out what it was that he planned to do as far as finding deer. He would need to find them, to hunt them down as he was sure would be more beneficial for Yami.

 _You seem distracted._

Yugi blinked and looked over at the black wolf as Yami scanned the forest around them. Clearly he was able to multitask while Yugi was fumbling for the moment. _I want to find some deer._

 _Why not something else_? _It is not a big deal that they eat something else that is not deer. I do not need to eat at the moment, Yugi._ Yami flicked an ear towards Yugi and the white wolf stared at the glittering hairs which protected the inside of the small triangle of cartilage. _Do not worry so much about me, Yugi. It is not necessary to do so. I will get my own prey later._

 _I don't want you to not have something to eat. We're hunting, so why wouldn't you eat with them_? Yugi huffed in turn. _There isn't a reason for you not to if you're the one helping me hunt it down as it is, right_?

 _It is not necessary and I do not want to eat at the moment. I am tired and I do not want to eat. I want to rest as soon as I am able._

 _Why didn't you say that before_?

 _Because I knew you would stop and worry about me more than your position as alpha. And, truthfully, your rank is more important at the moment. You have no idea if they might turn on you or me if they would like to do such a thing for your lack of guidance as their alpha. Do you understand what I mean_?

Yugi drew his lips back in annoyance. _Oh, of course it is. You always rank yourself beneath other things like this. Nothing that matters to me ever seems to matter as much to you._

 _I have already once told you that I do not like myself. I do not understand why it is that you do not understand this. You know well that I do not care at the moment. And I do not care to fight with you either, Yugi. I am tired and do not want to deal with it. Let us hunt with the pack and return home as swiftly as possible, yes_?

The blue-violet-eyed wolf nearly snarled, then shook such anger off at the last moment. He forced this thought away entirely and began to make himself move quickly forward. The black wolf beside him slowed minutely as they continued forward, though more so to keep the respectful distance required of them than anything else. And Yugi ignored him as he lowered his nose slightly towards the snow to pick up the scent of any prey that he might be able to find. It was somewhat tiring as he searched about, ears flicking every which way and mind searching for what might be the best route to find something.

The deer were in the lower part of what looked like a small dipping valley amongst the trees. It was a strange sight, the way that the deer were in a much larger group than he'd seen initially upon hunting with Yami formerly. The idea was enough to make him nearly bristle before shaking the thought off. The deer were moving about shoveling in the deep snow for any remaining shoots of food. He remembered in the states that often people would create yards for the deer to remain and pick at during the winter. They would feed them and simply watch out for them until spring and sometimes as late as summer. But the high number of the Sikla in Hokkaido had done well to make them more a pest than anything else. Like the boars and serows, the deer were considered a frustrating nuisance due to their overpopulation. Both Honshu and Hokkaido suffered from it.

Yugi shrugged this thought off and began to pick his way forward again. His ears remained pricked forward and he considered the height of the snow around his paws. The deer were attempting to move upwind, he realized, and they were sniffing at the air as if they might perhaps catch their scent before they could theirs. Yugi tilted his head and flicked his ears about for a moment before wagging his tail slowly. He had no doubt that sheer numbers would do enough to overpower them altogether. There was no reason for them to even look to hide themselves at this rate, not when they were fast and more adept to traveling in the snow as it was.

But, just to be on the safe side, why not give the wolves more of an instruction in order to make their way down there? He pricked his ears again, then turned to look over his shoulder at the others with dark eyes.

 _All right, guys,_ he announced with a flick of his tongue over his nose. _Here is what we are going to do. I want a group of twenty to circle back to the other side of the herd. Zane will lead them. I want another group of twelve to go on either side. Aki and Serena can lead them. And I will lead the rest._

The declaration was met with surprised glances but no argument. The lack of objection to him was oddly amazing, though he would never truly admit to such a thing to begin with. Instead he wagged his tail as the groups began to disperse and move about in the trees. When he turned back, there were only a handful of wolves left with himself and Yami—Jonouchi, Mai, Otogi, Yusei and the blond wolf. He flicked an ear and looked over his shoulder again. The wolves were moving about the darkness like ghostly shadows.

The white wolf wagged his tail as he turned to Yami. There was a deep sense of satisfaction and smugness within him that nearly made him snap at him. He was frustrated as he considered whether Yami might eat again as he'd wanted. But it was not something that he cared to argue with him about at the moment. If Yami was unhappy and did not want anything more than to lie down, then he would allow that to happen. It was whatever the other boy wanted at the moment. There was no reason for him to argue with him more and more as it was.

If Yami cared to eat, then he was free to. If he did not, then it was beyond him to argue any further.

 _All right,_ he said, turning to Yami now, _we're all set up. So are we ready_?

Yami blinked and pricked his ears, then glanced away and seemed to be studying the herd for a moment. Something glinted in his eyes, though Yugi could not quite read it. He turned to the other boy with a tilt of his head. _Yes, I believe we are ready._

 _Great. Then let's go, shall we_? he instructed, voice a smirk more than anything. And then he turned and began to make a run for the dip of the valley. Yami was after him in an instant and he saw Mai and Otogi racing past him as if they were challenging them all to a contest of who might reach the deer first.

Yugi pushed harder than ever. His muscles were all but burning from the exertion. It was a somewhat painful experience, but it was not something that might destroy him. But he could not claim to be used to it either. And he wondered at the thought. His legs were somewhat shaky, his coat rolling upon his bunched muscles. He was powerful, something that he had never truly considered before. The strength his body possessed was amazing to him, as if it were a foreign sensation which he had never truly paid attention to before. And he thought briefly of the greenhouse, how he and Yami had fled that day and he'd run so much faster…

Yugi was shivering with anticipation as the seconds passed. The other three packs began to run down the slopes of the valley. The deer had begun to run now as well, though surrounded they began to back up into each other. The buck that remained with them shoveled at the snow. The eyes were sharp and clear and Yugi found his reflection brilliant and silverish against the blown pupils and dark brown irises. The deer which faced him now lowered its head, a full rack of antlers which looked incredibly sturdy and sharp.

He would have counted the tips had he cared or been curious enough. It was the adrenaline in him which kept him from caring as much as he might have before. He was hungry as well, though he was not sure he would care to eat. He slowed to a stop in front of the deer. The other wolves were weaving about, circling the small group of deer. It was only ten at the most, which he wondered if that was a large number in contrary. Perhaps he had been associating their numbers too closely with those of the wolves'. Their pack was huge. Perhaps ten was large for a herd of deer in winter.

He tilted his head, lowering his head, and drew his lips back furiously. When he stepped forward, the deer ducked his head and aimed as if for his throat. Yugi considered this for a moment, then pricked his ears and came forward a step. The deer bucked at him, and the wolf stared back in an unflinching manner.

 _Yug_? Jonouchi muttered, sounding confused and perhaps concerned. Yugi ignored him, watching the deer with darkened eyes. The wolves were all picking apart the other deer. The blood was a sweet sickening smell in the air. And he could feel it clogging his senses for a moment as he leaned forward and began to move towards the deer. The rack of antlers was braced and pointed at him once more. Yugi ignored it, ears pricked forward and lips drawn back to show his brilliant white teeth. He stepped forward with squared shoulders and a wagging tail.

 _Leave him_ , Yami's voice cut into his thoughts. Jonouchi blinked, bristling faintly, and spun around to face the red-eyed canine. The black wolf was staring at him, ears pricked and body still but for his simple breathing. _He will kill it in a few moments. It's not unusual for a werewolf to become so excited during a hunt like this. Yugi hardly ever hunts like this so it is perhaps a late reaction for him. You don't need to worry about him, Jonouchi._

Jonouchi bristled faintly, unsure of himself. Standing those feet away, Yami looked more like an immense shadow of dark fur more than anything else. And he could see those bright eyes, a shade orange rather than the red they truly were. He remembered the sight of those red orbs when he was human, how they had seemed to bore through him and somehow peer at him all at once. And it made him more nervous now to look at him and see the way he stared back so blankly in the dark.

 _Are you sure_? He wondered if the question was offensive. Yami had been a werewolf for much longer than himself or Yugi, right? Jonouchi honestly could not imagine him as a person, more as a wolf in human skin more often than not. So his questioning him now was almost enough to make him squirm. He did not think that Yami truly knew just how vicious he appeared at times.

Even in this simple stance in front of him, standing a few feet away and just looking at him, Yami appeared vicious and violent. He almost suspected he might lunge forward and snap his jaws shut on his face at any moment. Instead the black wolf blinked at him, shook himself out, and turned away and watched him with his ears pricked forward. _He will be fine,_ he stated simply. _It happens often with wolves when they hunt. He's just enjoying watching and playing with the deer. It is as simple as that._

 _Was_ it as simple as that? Jonouchi had to wonder.

Yugi had been a werewolf for the better part of four months, hadn't he? So why was it that he might be under this compulsion as Yami was claiming? Shouldn't he have been over this kind of thing by now? He shivered and stared at him for a moment, then looked at Yugi as the white wolf dodged away from the head of antlers and then lunged forward. When they collided, Yugi had a grip on the deer's throat and was rapidly shaking his head violently back and forth. There was a loud snapping noise in the air and the deer went limp, dropping away on his long legs as if it they had broken in half.

And then Yugi looked incredibly disappointed when he stepped back. But Jonouchi felt sick as the white wolf shook himself out and moved to take a seat a few feet away. Some of the other wolves were closing in on their own catches, though all of them stopped to look at Yugi rather pointedly. When Yugi muttered a dismissal of eating, they turned to Yami.

Jonouchi noticed that some of the stares were begrudging. Others were respectful. And a small handful of them seemed to be more suspicious than anything else. Yami dismissed them as well, moving now to take a seat. He looked weary as Jonouchi watched him. The wolf hardly looked as if he had any plans to fight for food as he had seen some of the others prepare to do. Yami was hardly fit enough to do that kind of thing. He was still skin and bones for the most part, even if he was gaining weight somewhat rapidly.

He looked far better than he had the last time Jonouchi had seen him, that was for sure. The wolf was a size bigger, though not incredibly powerful as he once was. Jonouchi was both disappointed and relieved to see this. It meant that Yami was not as strong, that he would not be able to kill as he had that tigress, but it was also disappointing as it made him less capable of helping them. If Yami was truly as weak as he seemed, how was he meant to help any of them if another attack happened? Then again, he was hardly among the pack as it was, so why would he ever have to think that the black wolf would be there to help them?

Jonouchi felt something much like scorn burn through him. He could not imagine how it was that he might be able to help at all. Which made him wonder why it was that he could possibly be so important to Yugi. If Yami was useless in a fight, he was a hindrance, wasn't he? So why would Yugi want to stick his neck out for him as he had before? He may have somehow fallen in love with him, but surely Yugi was not so shortsighted, right?

Yet, even when they had come in to check on the survivors at the camp, Yugi had been so incredibly distracted by Yami. How was that possible? Why was it that Yugi had been so brainless and scattered by such a thing? It was enough to make him bristle again as he looked at the black wolf.

But, if Yami noticed his frustration, he did not pay him mind at the moment. The other wolf was simply sitting there, head somewhat lowered, eyes partially closed. He looked tired rather than upset in any way. He was breathing easily, his nose wriggling as he sniffed lightly at the air. Jonouchi could not help but keep staring at him. It was a bewildering feeling, to be unable to stop himself from looking.

Had he never seen him kill that day at the warehouse, Jonouchi might have thought him helpless and small. And maybe that was one of the reasons that Yugi was so keen upon protecting him. It was not hard to think of Yami as weak and small at the moment. He was far more fur than he was anything else. And so he wondered if it was this rather than what Yugi perceived as love which kept Yami as his first priority.

Jonouchi cast a glance towards Yugi now. The white wolf was lying down, stretched out on his side. He didn't look upset in any manner. He looked tired and bored more than anything. He did not seem stressed. He did not appear alarmed. He was not looking at Jonouchi or Yami at all. And, as Jonouchi watched, he wondered if his best friend even truly noticed that other wolves were watching him as well.

Aki was especially staring at him, though Jonouchi wondered if maybe her eyes were more fixated on Yami instead. The black wolf was not responding in any manner, but he felt that she was paying attention to him. The red-furred she-wolf was staring at him with darkened eyes, though she only lifted her gaze to look at Jonouchi. They locked eyes for a moment and he wondered at the way she seemed to peer through him. And then he remembered her voice, sneering at him before then that Yugi and Yami did not care for them in the slightest.

And he had to wonder.

Yugi had so abruptly decided to do this. And all of the time that they'd been running, he had seemed to be paying more attention to Yami as it was. Had he done this for Yami rather than him? Was that the truth of it? But why should he care about such a thing as that? He flicked an ear and looked briefly at his friend. Yugi was moving to sit up, blue-violet eyes on another wolf altogether. The blue-eyed gray wolf approaching him had his head tilted and his ears flicking about.

Jonouchi puzzled over the wolf for a moment. He couldn't remember his name. It started with a Y but he could not recall it. The wolf was always so quiet and calm and he had never truly crossed paths with him outside of his recovery in the cavern behind the waterfall. Beyond that he had no idea what it was that he was meant to do. The wolf had never truly done much to upset him in any manner, however. He seemed easygoing for the most part, though Jonouchi wondered at his relationship with his best friend as well. Yugi seemed so eager to see the blue-eyed wolf whenever he came to the camp. It was something that always made him wonder if perhaps somehow they had come to a sense of affection surpassing friendship as well.

Jonouchi had to wonder, puzzled by the idea in and of itself. He had never considered it before, but now he tilted his head and watched him. Were they something of an item as well? Or was it more that the younger wolf had been something of an emotional replacement for Yami in the time that he was missing? Was that a possibility? Yugi had been cut off from his friends at school. So he did not know what it was that had happened in the time that it had taken Yugi to find Yami. He had hidden away from them, had spent more time with the pack…

Was it possible that he had spent more time with the pack because of the blue-eyed wolf? But, as he watched him, Yugi did not seem as soft and gentle around the edges with this wolf as he did with Yami. Because, while he watched, Yugi looked over at the black wolf and his entire posture went from rigid to relaxed again. Jonouchi was bewildered, wondering at the sight. Yami was not even looking at the white wolf. He was lying on his stomach and licking at his paws. He did not seem even slightly worried about Yugi. His ears were not even pricked in his direction. It was enough to make Jonouchi wonder at the sight.

Was Yugi's attraction to him so easily one-sided? Was Yugi in love with a boy who did not feel the same way? Was _that_ why Yugi was so incredibly desperate to show his affection towards Yami? Was that what made him so protective of him? Did he think that somehow he might sway him to feel the same?

Jonouchi had never known Yugi to be manipulative, however. And he had never known him to be one to border harassment in such a manner. Yugi was not the type of person who would turn around and try his hardest to sway someone who felt another way. He did not think that would simply change because of the fact that he thought himself in love with Yami. It was something that Jonouchi could not picture him being capable of. Yugi was a kind person. He was sweeter than most people. He was friends with a girl who had made him jealous several times. He was still friends with her even when they had crashed and burned.

Yugi was _not_ that kind of person.

He never had been and he never _would_ be.

Jonouchi shivered at the thought. He wondered how it was that the lycanthropy might have changed this. Was it possible that somehow the disease could have somehow struck up a manipulative side within him? Had it somehow triggered a dormant part of his personality? Jonouchi could never imagine it, however. Yugi was _Yugi_. Yugi was the kindest boy that he had ever known, who had patience in spades despite himself and a sense of loyalty unmatched. He was friendly and quiet and _gentle_.

Jonouchi flicked his ears. Was _he_ being disloyal in thinking such things? He was considering something that should have been incredibly impossible. It was something that seemed to all but horrify him to consider in truth. He shivered and looked over at Yami again. The black wolf had lowered his chin to his paws and his eyes were closed. His ears were pricked forward, his breathing soft and easy, and he was still somewhat awake. He knew that. It was instinctive. There was something in his own instincts which said that Yami was still wide awake.

And that was further proven when he stepped forward. Immediately his red eyes opened and he blinked, ears flicking in his direction. The two of them stared at each other for a moment, though Jonouchi did so hesitantly. He wondered if the other male would be mad at him for making such direct eye contact. He wondered if he might lash out at him violently should he come too close.

 _Are you all right_?

Jonouchi startled, unsure of whether he was asking genuinely or more to be polite. He nearly bristled, surprised by his eyes being locked so pointedly on his. He shivered and shook himself out after a moment, moving forward a few more steps. _Uh, yeah, I'm okay. I guess I'm just a little tired right now._

Jonouchi shivered and shook himself out. As long as Yami wasn't looking at him, he felt better. The black wolf was unnerving in and of himself. It was not that he thought he might suddenly turn his teeth on him. It was more just his presence. It was more just…the way he held himself, perhaps. Or possibly it was something else entirely altogether.

He truly had no idea.

All he knew was that Yami made him nervous.

He wondered if Yugi felt that way at times. Was there a possibility that he suffered that same nervousness upon being exposed to him? Jonouchi felt sick and dizzy for a brief moment, ears flattening against his skull. He wondered at the idea of whether Yugi ever felt a sense of dismay or anything of that nature upon being around him…

 _Jonouchi_?

He blinked widened eyes and spun around with his ears pricked. He nearly bristled, startled and surprised by it all. Then he blinked again and tilted his head as he spotted her. Mai was standing a few feet away from him, head tilted and eyes locked on his face. She looked bewildered and confused, if only partially so.

 _Uh, hey, Mai,_ he said awkwardly, wagging his tail. It was so strange to have a tail which he could use. Instinctively he could do such a thing. Regardless, however, he could not stop himself from doing so at times. He loved the feeling of it at times, even if it was strange and bewildering. _What's up_?

 _I figured you would be hungry. Since you're…always hungry._

 _I am not. I'm just hungrier than most people._

 _You're adorable._ Her tail was wagging in turn, her violet eyes soft and warm as they burned into his. When she stretched her legs and bowed faintly in front of him, wagging her tail more pointedly, Jonouchi was struck by how slender and small she truly was. She was taller, not as muscular, with a thinner frame and longer fur. Her features were incredibly graceful, something that he had never quite noticed before. _But, come on, let's get some food, okay_?

 _Sure_!

* * *

Yugi hissed in annoyance as he felt the blankets tugged again from his body once more. The cold air was enough to make him huff as he opened his eyes into slits. He stared at the sky blue shade of his wall, making him grimace as he shook his head. Yugi blinked again, then sighed softly and moved to grab at the blanket in turn. Yami had been rolling about in his sleep all night. He had been tossing and turning violently, almost as if he were going through a nightmare of some kind. But then he had stilled several times throughout, and each time he had said he was okay whenever Yugi had asked.

Now the small teen huffed softly and shook his head unhappily. "Are you still okay?"

There was no answer now. Yugi blinked, startled, and moved to sit up immediately. The blanket next to his hip was warm and his skin was cold from the air. He turned his head to look over his shoulder. And then he froze in place, startled and horrified as he took in the sight next to him.

The red eyes were open and staring out the window. And he did not look happy in the slightest. But when he sat up, his gaze became darker than he'd known them to appear beforehand. Then he looked over at him, voice low and quiet as he pleaded, "Can we speak after we eat?"

Yugi opened his mouth to snap at him. His cheeks were red with shock, then with indignation. He should have told him that he was so close to changing. He should have tried to explain that to him. He should have…

Yugi blinked and lowered his eyes. Why had he never considered asking? Yugi felt sick for a moment, shaking his head and drawing in a deep breath.

"Yeah. All right. We'll talk after we eat." He looked at Yami for a long handful of seconds. Then he bit his lip, sure that if he remained in the room with him he might turn around and snap at him. So he got up, dusting himself off, and ignored the way he felt as if his pajamas were clinging to his skin in a cold sweat. Then, slowly, he turned back to glance at Yami. "Pancakes?"

The red-eyed teen blinked at him, lowering his eyes to the comforter as he nodded slowly. He grimaced when Yugi remained staring at him, exuding discomfort, and Yugi drew in a deep breath again as he reached up to tug at the shirt that seemed glued to his skin. He shivered and shook his head, feeling sick for a brief moment as he considered him.

"Glad to have you back."

Yugi left before Yami could respond, closing the door behind him and leaning back against it. He was winded as he looked at the floor, breathing in several times and exhaling unhappily after a few moments. Then he shook his head and scowled, flustered as he narrowed his eyes.

Yami was back.

Yami was human again.

He'd helped him heal enough to get to this point.

And yet Yugi could not help but feel somewhat bitter. How was it that Yami had not bothered to tell him? He must have suspected that this would happen soon enough, right? There was no way that he would not have realized that this was going to happen. Yami knew himself damn well. He _did_ and Yugi could not imagine for a second that he was so foolish as to ignore this. There was no way that such a thing could happen…

Yugi shivered and shook his head. And then he made his way into the kitchen.

His hands were shaking—though he was not sure if it was with tension or excitement or anger—as he reached up to grab a metal mixing bowl from the cabinet. He shook his head, caught somewhere between bewilderment and amazement and frustration. He strained his ears as he moved about, but he could catch no sound of Yami behind him in his room. And so he simply ducked his head, flustered, and began to dig into the cabinet for the pancake mix as well. He nearly snarled as he put the box down, drumming his fingers on the counter unhappily.

Yami was healthy again, but he had not told him. He had known and he had not _told_ him. He had not told Yugi at all. He had not even considered it, Yugi felt. There was no way that Yami had considered telling him. He had a feeling that doing so would have made him far too uncomfortable. And so he had sat back and waited for Yugi to find out for himself. He shook his head faintly and narrowed his eyes into thin slits.

And now what?

Yugi frowned and shook his head and narrowed his eyes again. His head tilted to the side after a moment and he sighed softly. He shouldn't have been so upset about this, should he have? Yami was healed again. He could change back and forth as he would need. He could fend for himself again. He wasn't bleeding out of his sides and he was no longer bed-ridden. There was no poison left in his bloodstream. He did not require steady cleanings of his stitches and redone sutures. He did not have to constantly worry about such a thing with him any longer.

The small teen drummed his fingers against the countertop again. Then he looked over his shoulder at the closed bedroom door. He could not hear a single sound to remind him of his existence altogether. The fact that Yami was still there at all was almost a bewildering thought. He was used to him trotting out of the room after him, nails clicking and fur rustling. Now instead he strained his ears and wondered if Yami had even bothered to get up yet.

And then he turned back to the task of making food. It took about fifteen minutes to finish both plates, turning around and nearly snarling in surprise. Yami was standing at the entrance of the kitchen, leaning against the wall. He was dressed in his usual skinny jeans and a tank top of dark gray. Upon his shoulders, however, was Yugi's uniform jacket, which startled the smaller teen enough to straighten and blink in surprise.

Yami seemed to notice his surprise as well, reaching down to pull on the blue fabric lightly. "Sorry, I couldn't find another jacket so I just grabbed this one. I'll change out of it if you want me to?" he mumbled, his voice low and hoarse and splintered with exhaustion.

Yugi frowned and shook his head. "No, that's fine. I just…I was surprised." He moved to grab the other plate and held it out. The red-eyed teen hesitated, then slowly reached out and took it from him before moving to sit down in front of him. Yugi felt sick as they sat in front of each other, peering at one another for a split second before beginning to eat.

It only took him a few minutes to finish his food. It took Yami over twenty, as the other was clearly trying to drag out the time between their words and the impending conversation that was sure to come between them. Yugi watched as he picked at his food and licked his lips and occasionally picked at the sleeves of the jacket. Sometimes he rolled them up. Sometimes he pulled them down. Sometimes he just grasped the fabric that lay on his wrist and lightly ran his fingers about it, rubbing gently and trying to use this as an exercise to focus.

And, finally, when he could no longer take it, Yami sat up, put the fork away, and looked at him. The expression was blank, his eyes flat as if he had no life behind them any longer, and he watched him almost coldly. His right hand remained on the table, his nails clicking against it for a long handful of minutes.

"If you wish to speak, then do so."

Yugi narrowed his eyes and shook his head, leaning back into his seat and staring at him. "Are you seriously going to act upset with me?" he demanded after a moment, drawing in a deep breath and shaking his head. "I mean, is there a reason you're so upset with me right now?"

Yami blinked at him, huffing out a breath. "You're pissed at me. I am just preparing myself for your anger when you decide to snap." He narrowed his eyes again, drumming his fingers once more. "But I do not understand why you are so upset with me to begin with."

"You didn't tell me you were going to change back. And I know you knew." He curled his lip back slightly. "You knew and you didn't tell me at all. So why exactly would you do that?"

Yami huffed again, then lowered his eyes. He did not lose his anger entirely but he was exhausted as it was and so his shoulders slumped as he exhaled softly and shook his head. "I didn't know if it was going to happen or not. And I figured if it did then we would speak afterwards."

"So you just decided that you wouldn't even mention that it was a possibility?"

"I didn't want to get your hopes up."

Yugi blinked, floored by the thought. Then he shook his head slowly. His hands were shaking, more with anger than anything else. "My hopes? You didn't want to get my hopes up?" he said slowly, narrowing his eyes into slits. "What are you even talking about? Why would I get my hopes up over that?"

" _Because_ ," he spat, "you tend to always get your hopes up when it comes to me. You care too much about me half of the time, and not enough about yourself and your friends. You would have been hopeful that I was going to change and then if I had not you would have been disappointed. I did not want to witness that again."

"Again?" Yugi muttered, eyes widening. "What are you even…? Yami, I'm not disappointed in—"

"No, but you have been. I have seen it on your face multiple times. It was not limited to the times in which I killed in front of you and you believed mercy would settle a dispute. You have been disappointed when I pulled my stitches. You've been disappointed when I do not take care of myself as you wish I should. And I have seen it more often than not when you and I argue. Is that not true?"

"Being disappointed because someone has to die or because you don't take care of yourself sometimes doesn't mean that I'm disappointed in _you_. It just means that I don't agree with your decisions. I'm sorry that you apparently think otherwise, Yami, but it's what that is. It doesn't mean that I'm disappointed in you."

"Disappointment looks the same regardless."

Yugi shook his head and sighed, closing his eyes. "You're so difficult. Why are you so upset with me? Just because I don't agree with your choices every now and then?" He paused and then looked at him again, shaking his head once more. "Look, Yami, my point isn't that I'm mad at you. I'm not disappointed in you either. I just…I wish you would have told me when you realized it was a possibility. I wish you would have told me and explained that it _wasn't_ a given. I wouldn't have been upset had you done that. I wouldn't have been upset with you regardless."

Yami let out a breath that was somewhere between anger and frustration. "I'm sorry for not telling you then." Yugi wondered if he even believed him at that point. The red-eyed teen was scratching at his scalp unhappily, his expression annoyed. The phrasing alone was enough to give him a sense of doubt in such a thing. Yugi could not tell if Yami believed him at all. "I should have explained to you before now."

Yugi frowned and shook his head. "I don't understand you sometimes," he finally admitted. He got up and Yami actually _flinched_. Yugi startled, freezing in place, and blinked wide eyes as he looked him over. "Are you okay? What the hell was that?"

Yami huffed and shook his head in response. He was pulling on his bangs now, eyes on the table and sharpened with frustration once more. "I am fine. I was just… You startled me. I did not expect you to move so fast."

The smaller boy stayed quiet for a long moment. Then he looked at him and sighed. "So, then, let me ask you something about last night." Yami didn't look up but he could see the smallest tilt of his head in response to his words. "Why didn't you eat?"

The red-eyed boy slowly pulled his hand away from his head and moved to shift his weight within his seat. He drew in a deep breath, then lowered his eyes back to the table as soon as he raised them for a split second towards Yugi's face. There was a single second of frustration between them, then he sat up straighter than he had before.

"I did not want to. I did not want to vomit when I changed." The declaration was met with silence and Yugi could not stop from feeling sick and lightheaded for a moment. He reached up to pull on his pajama shirt, tugging on a button uncomfortably and watching Yami with studious eyes. Had he sensed the Change so soon? Had he truly been so fearful that he might vomit up his food again?

"I wouldn't have been upset with you had you vomited on the floor. You know that. I wouldn't have cared at all." Yugi shook his head and licked his lips, then lowered his eyes again. "You're my friend. You sleep in my room—we share a bed. If you had vomited, we would have just cleaned it up. There's no reason for either of us to feel bad at any rate. Don't you understand that?"

Yami blinked and slowly looked up from beneath his lashes. He seemed almost as if he were too ashamed to speak at the moment, before drawing in a deep breath and dropping it again. He shivered and shook his head again, blinking and frowning and staring at the red-eyed teen. "I know that. But I…" But then the words seemed to become choked and caught in his throat and eventually he simply lowered his head and shook it at him. Yugi frowned and tilted his head, wondering at what it was that might have happened. "Never mind. I did not mean to upset you."

"It's fine, Yami." He halted after a moment, then smiled when Yami peeked up at him from beneath his lashes again. He leaned forward against the table and searched his face for a moment with a small grin. "You want to go ahead and go back to watch TV in my room again? Or do you want to play some games or something?"

Yami blinked and stiffened, abruptly turning and tilting his head with an ear towards the floor. He blinked again, then moved to stand up. His fingers were somewhat shaky for a moment as he turned to Yugi and murmured, "Your mother is home. And I think…I think I need some rest again."

Yugi frowned, slightly puzzled, and then nodded. "Okay, feel free to go rest then. I guess I'll just go ahead and help her unpack everything again."


	70. Bonds

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Hopefully biweekly**

 **Chapter Warnings: Self-Loathing, Mentions of Death, Thoughts of Death, Hints of Depression**

 **Black Shuck is a black dog/hellhound most well known for busting into the Holy Trinity Church during a thunderstorm and burning people and the door he scratched at. He only killed a couple of people, but the church steeple crashed through the roof. He showed up at two different churches on the same day (St. Mary in Bungay and Holy Trinity in Blythburgh) on August 4, 1577. He is still seen today. His appearance occasionally changes; he sometimes has red eyes, green eyes, or golden eyes, and sometimes only one eye instead of two. Sometimes he has chains and other times he doesn't.**

 **Wish/Wisht hounds are hellhounds that are headless and considered to be the spirits of children who died without being baptized.**

Chapter LXX: Bonds

 _Work Log Entry LXIII: March, 2008_

 _March 28_

 _The boss is becoming aggravated again._

 _The wolves are not bearing pups._

 _It could be the stress or the constant changes within the environment._

 _It could be the new experiments we've been performing on them._

 _It could simply be Atem for all any of us know._

 _But it has been determined that they are completely barren._

 _They cannot conceive, no matter the surgeries we perform in an effort to rectify this._

Yami hesitated at the entrance of the kitchen again. His tongue felt dry and swollen, caked against the roof of his mouth. He blinked and glanced over his shoulder towards the bedroom door. But he knew that Yugi was still watching TV in his room, as Yami had told him that he was hungry and wanted to grab a couple of snacks before he came back. He had made sure that the other teen had not followed him, knowing instinctively Yugi would have offered to grab him something if he had simply shown an interest. Yugi was always eager to help out, to please anyone around him. Yami did not know if it was a weakness or a strength sometimes. Mercy could make someone weak, though he felt that Yugi somehow managed to utilize it as strength regardless.

Yami licked his lips and came to the kitchen table, hesitating again. "May I take a seat?" he asked cautiously. The words were met with silence at first, then with a bewildered and startled expression as the other person looked up with wide eyes. She blinked at him, frowned minutely, and then gestured for him to sit across from her.

"What's on your mind?"

He was not used to talking. It was something that had always caused him trouble upon attempting conversation with others. He had never been entirely too graceful in his tone of voice or the choice of his words. And so often he worried about this, as he knew that perhaps this was something that caused more animosity than he could truly pinpoint. He shivered as he took his seat, moving to put his hands in his lap, and watched her with glittering red eyes.

"I wished to apologize to you." He hesitated, unsure of what more he might say at the moment but these words. He licked his lips and turned his eyes towards the tabletop again, resisting the urge to drum his fingers on the wooden surface. "I have caused much frustration and unhappiness and for that I offer apology."

She was staring at him with darkened eyes. "It's not your fault," she said, but her voice sounded sarcastic more than anything. Kasumi peered at him as if with some sense of disdain and frustration. "It's not like _you're_ the only reason he's like this. You're not the only reason this happened."

Yami almost wished he could have hated her for those words. She blamed him. She truly blamed him for all of it. And that…

It was a truth he could not ignore. She was right to blame him. He'd bitten Yugi. He'd caused him to change into a wolf. What had come about because of those things was because of him.

"It was in our family bloodline regardless," Kasumi continued, though her voice seemed bitter. He could see the anger in her eyes, the glint of frustration and perhaps even _rage_ that came with this statement. "Even if you hadn't bitten him, there was _always_ the chance that it would somehow react anyways. I guess I should have paid more attention to those stupid little myths and legends when I was growing up, huh?"

Yami faltered, startled by the words. Then he frowned and studied her blankly for a handful of seconds. He licked his lips and shook his head, lowering his eyes towards the tabletop once more. "I still apologize," he said softly, "for the inconveniences that I have caused you. I do not know if I can truly tell you how much I regret any of this happening to your family. None of you deserved—"

"You honestly think that I don't realize that this stupidity isn't just your fault? I know my son. I know how he puts everyone ahead of himself. I know that _very_ well. I know that better than you do, regardless of what you might think, Yami. And I'm not stupid. I know that there's a reason why there is so much going on in Domino _now_ of all times. If you hadn't bitten him, I'm sure someone else might have."

Tomoya, most likely. He was the only one who had seen Yugi lying prone against the wall as he had that day as well. So perhaps he might have bitten him had Yami not. But he wondered how Yugi might have healed, how long it might have taken, had that happened in such a way. Yami drew in a deep breath and shook his head, narrowing his eyes into slits.

"It's _not_ coincidence that things are suddenly escalating out of control. It doesn't make any sense that all of the sudden there are clues leading to the wolves now if they've been around for so long." She huffed. "Something is going on. And most likely Yugi is going to be selfless and stupid. And he'll get himself hurt before he can think it through. Am I right?"

Yami stared at Kasumi for what felt like an eternity. And then he slowly looked down at the tabletop again, pointedly peering at it as if it were more important than ever. He looked at it as if it were the biggest secret of the universe. He blinked, then curled his lips back and shook his head slowly.

Yugi had already hurt himself more than he could possibly recover upon entering the world he existed within. It was something that Yami could not bring himself to speak about, nor something that he could possibly put into words. It was a statement which shook him too terribly to deal with and his heart was in his throat as he stared at the table more pointedly. He did not know what he was meant to say, nor what to do. She knew.

She _knew_.

She did not even know entirely what it was that the wolves were meant to go through, or what they were going to sacrifice themselves for the sake of. Yugi was going to most likely get himself killed before the end of this war. And, regardless of the fact that he might come to life again afterwards, it was something that Yami feared more than he could deal with. It was something that he was too afraid to point out to her. Voicing such a thing made him want to vomit and to simply turn away entirely and hide as he had once pretended was possible.

"If you're truly so sorry, Yami, can you answer a question for me?" she asked him, voice soft and cold for a brief moment. Yami blinked and raised his head, turning his eyes on her and staring back blankly. He could not summon any words to give her, his affirmation a simple blink of encouragement. "Can you tell me why it is that _Yugi_ is the one that had to be brought into this? Can you tell me what purpose is served by him doing what he's doing?"

Yami was silent for a moment. And then he lowered his eyes again.

"I am a coward." He drew in a deep breath, voice cracked and sore and raw around the edges. "I am a coward and he is braver than me."

Kasumi stared at him coldly for a long moment. And then she slowly shook her head again, all but sneering at him as she got to her feet. "So, in other words, you're too weak to stop him. And he's too foolish to know when to stop."

Yami nodded mutely. There were no words he could offer. She was upset and he did not know what more to do than to agree. And the words were true. The words were absolute. He had no words to dispute her. He had no words that might comfort her either, however. And he hated himself more than ever that he could not attempt to perhaps help her with her grief.

Because he knew that this was coming to her. He knew that pain more acutely than he could ever explain to her. He had mourned his cage mate. He had mourned himself when he had first come to hate himself more than he could stand. And he knew that he could not consider himself worse now than he had before. And it made his heart flip and twist and stutter within his chest. He looked down at the tablecloth more pointedly, because he could offer no sympathy and had no idea how to deal with it all. He could not offer her more than his silence at the moment.

He had absolutely _nothing_ that he could offer her in condolences of any kind.

"Well…at least you are truthful." She turned and wandered off into the living room and Yami stood up. He felt uncomfortable, smaller than ever. And he remembered his flesh being cut into and blood taken in vials to be examined. He remembered Ryou muttering, whispering and shaking his head and sometimes offering him a confused look.

He shivered and reached up to run his fingers through his hair. Then he turned to make his way back into Yugi's room. His heart was in his throat again as he opened the door and closed it immediately behind him. Yugi blinked up at him with a tilt of his head, furrowing his brows.

"Did you eat out there then?"

Yami blinked and nodded shortly, ignoring the urge to simply snarl at him in turn. He forced himself to turn away, moving to take a seat beside him next to the bed. He crossed his legs and watched the television screen as the lights threatened to make his eyes ache. His beta looked at him sideways once, then turned away again to stare at the screen.

"What did you grab?"

"A granola bar." He wondered if there were actually any left.

"Oh, okay." Yugi looked over to him again, his eyes reflecting the light from the screen next to him, and then licked his lips and watched him for a long moment. "And you're not hungry anymore then?"

Yami shook his head after a moment. "Not enough to eat again, no." He wondered if Yugi was asking him now because he had heard him talking to his mother. Had he heard that, Yami was sure that Yugi would not believe him in the slightest. The realization made him feel sick, made him want almost to vomit if only for a second. But then, perhaps Yugi would rather argue with him than speak as it was.

"All right," he said quietly, nodding, but he sounded distracted as he looked over at the television again. "Well, as long as you're no longer hungry."

Yami hated him for a moment. He truly hated him. And it was for no other reason than the fact that he was kind and that generosity shook him to the core. How was Yugi so giving and kind? And to him, of all people?

Kasumi was not wrong.

Yugi was too foolish to know when he should stop. He was too giving and protective and somehow he had chosen to believe Yami was worth his efforts. And Yami himself was too fearful to do what he was meant to, from training Yugi to interacting with the pack to the various other problems. And this made him hateful of them both, though his self-loathing seemed simply to swell and grow tenfold. The raw edges of his wounds seemed to grow twice as painful, flayed and burning as if the air were capable of clawing them open more so than before.

But he didn't think those wounds could bleed anymore.

He didn't think he could feel more pain.

Yami shook his head after a moment and looked at the screen pointedly. There was no reason for him to answer him at any rate. Yugi could stay content with his answer or grow frustrated if he would like. As it was, he would most likely do the latter. He knew that Yugi was well aware of the fact that he was lying. He knew well enough that the other had said that last statement because he was asking him to be truthful with him. But the truth was raw and broken and exhausting.

And Yami found himself unable to care for it any longer. Let the truth be buried and left behind somewhere. He would perhaps enjoy his life more should something of that magnitude happen. But then, he could not remember such a sensation unless he was running about as a wolf, hunting and swimming and rolling around. Now that the snow was there, it was only more reason for him to roll about and rest comfortably amongst the white flakes.

And he wondered if Yugi hated him for that sometimes. He wondered if Yugi was ever angry with him over this thought of life. Yugi had never truly shown such emotion before and it made him want to vomit even more than ever now. And his heart ached at the thought. But he could not find it within himself to care longer than to address this for a single split second of acknowledgment.

Yami was watching the television with a pointed stare now, trying his hardest to ignore Yugi altogether. The smaller teen kept his eyes on him from his peripheral, Yami knew, but he was not about to comment on such a thing. The show was something to do with the controversy of pit bull dogs and breeds of similar stature and build. The voice which narrated the program was saying something of the purpose of the dogs.

They had been bred for bull and bear baiting. They were considered a breed of reputation that was almost as misdirected as that of the wolf's own. And, the more he watched, the more he felt sick.

The humans had continued to breed them to have them pitted against one another in fights that often led to nothing more than death. If that were the truth of it, then what more purpose did the lycanthropes themselves serve? All of them would likely die. All of them would most likely kill themselves…

And for what?

A boy who could not explain his own purpose to his followers? A wolf born unnaturally within labs and tortured continuously for nothing more than the humans' sick enjoyment?

What was _their_ meaning?

To cure illness?

To grant themselves immortality?

Did they search for what marked them differently from the animals?

Was it for greed?

Was it out of selflessness?

Yami did not think he could apply the latter to any human he had ever met. Yugi was a wolf and thus he could no longer judge him as such. And the closest he had seen to altruism was Ryou. But even Ryou, sweet little Ryou who had betrayed his employers and suffered death at their hands, had never acted out of something so pure.

He had done so to alleviate his own guilt.

He had known that when he was growing up.

He had known the moment he had come to understand this reality.

Ryou had done what he could for the wolves to save his conscience.

At some point he had grown to care for Atem. And from there he had struggled to hold away his disdain for the humans he'd worked with. He'd gone from calling Atem by various code names to his abbreviated title of Atem. And from there he'd gone further and further into the throes of betrayal in his aid. He had saved him to stop his guilt. He'd gone to save _Yugi_ in the woods because he'd felt it would help him even more to overcome his own self-hatred.

He'd sacrificed himself. But it had not been for Yami or Yugi in truth. And he understood that more than he'd truly wished to admit formerly.

The judgment was harsh and hideous. And he'd wished more than once that perhaps he was wrong. But he'd known that farewell, just as he'd known before then that his cage mate had done what he had out of pure love for him.

He nearly shivered.

How did anyone come to love someone such as him?

Yami felt that, had he known himself in another person, he would hate them more than anyone else he had ever come to cross paths with. There was no part of him which doubted this in the slightest. There was so much about him, so much which he possessed, that was troublesome and terrible. And he hated himself more than ever for this admission alone.

"We are made for war," Yami found himself muttering under his breath. Perhaps it was the sound of his breath leaving his lungs or the way his lips moved in his peripheral, but Yugi turned to him with a confused expression soon after. "That's what we're here for. The werewolves…altogether… We're just here to fight a war for the gods for their own entertainment."

Yugi blinked at him. "Yami?"

Yami ignored the concern in his tone, narrowing his eyes. "We won't save anything. We'll _destroy_ everything. And then we'll watch everyone and everything die away." He lowered his eyes from the screen, pain searing through his temple. "War breeds death. The gods bred the Hounds of Heaven for the sole purpose of spreading death."

"Yami?" Yugi sounded more concerned now, perhaps even slightly alarmed. "What's wrong? What are you talking about?"

Yami shook his head slowly. "It's nothing worth repeating," he answered quietly, calmly, turning to him with darkened eyes. "It's just something I've been thinking about for a little while now."

"Do you want to share?"

"Hmm? No. Not at all."

Yugi seemed to hesitate for a moment. Then he blinked at him, drew in a deep breath, and leaned towards him the smallest degree. "I can help you if that's what you need."

"Help?" the red-eyed teen echoed, smirking lopsidedly. "I don't need help, Yugi. I _once_ needed help. And it ruined everything. I don't need help anymore."

 _I need so much more than help._

Yugi stared at him, troubled. "And that means what?" he asked slowly. "You're not quite making sense."

"It means that the last time I received help, people died for it. The last time I allowed myself to need help and accepted it, the most important person to me was killed." Yami lowered his eyes when Yugi flinched slightly. "And I do not want a repeat of this to happen, Yugi. I do not want that to happen at all. I…"

"It won't happen again. I promise."

"You promise? Because you surely dictate such things. I had forgotten that Atem is all knowing and powerful and can change the world as he so wants."

"Everyone has the ability to make things change. Whether they do it or not is something else entirely, Yami. But I'm telling you that I have plans and making a change is one of them. Nothing is going to stop that."

"I'm sure when you put something to your mind it is guaranteed to be accomplished." Yami offered him a weak smile to play the peacemaker for the sake of keeping Yugi from growing so upset. But his insides seemed to burn as he spoke again and his skin itched for the briefest of moments. "I do not doubt you have enough determination."

Yugi seemed at first to try to smile, and then to falter. He frowned and considered him for a long moment or two. "I try," he finally mumbled, almost as if ashamed that he could think of nothing else to say.

Yami ignored the expression on his face, somewhere between flustered and unsure and perhaps mildly confused and concerned as well. The red-eyed teen nearly curled his lip as Yugi continued watching him. He fought the urge to squirm, then to snarl in annoyance as he shot the smaller boy a glance from the corner of his eye. By the gods, why did Yugi have to keep staring at him so pointedly like this?

He wanted to bristle, but fought it away moments later with a deep breath and a slight shake of his head. He held the air in his lungs and then finally turned to Yugi with anger in his eyes. His beta stared back at him impassively for a long moment, then seemed to grow irritable as well.

Their eyes locked as they were, Yugi found his shoulders rising slowly to shield his neck. Yami had drawn his lips back to show his teeth for a split second, but neither had begun to snarl yet. And Yami supposed he had to thank the smallest of miracles for this of all things. He drew in a deep breath, narrowing his eyes into slits.

"Are you okay?"

Yami nearly sputtered out a laugh. Even when he was pissed Yugi was trying to check on him and ease his growing discomfort. And for once the red-eyed teen truly wondered if it was possible to hate someone as sweet as Yugi himself was. He shook his head and drew in another tight breath which seemed to choke within the pressure of his constricted lungs.

"Yes," he said tightly. "I am fine."

"Then why are we upset?"

 _We_? It was an interesting choice of pronoun and one which made him smile for a brief second. And then he shrugged it away again to face him with darkened eyes, considering and studying and wondering.

"Because I'm a temperamental asshole and I'm extremely tired and it makes me volatile." Yami watched him for a moment, wondering what it was that he might say to him in turn. And then he shook his head as he realized Yugi would most likely argue against his statement altogether. "I'm sorry."

The anger seemed to dissipate from them both immediately upon the words leaving his mouth. Yugi offered him a small smile and Yami tilted his head as he considered him with somewhat warmed eyes. A few seconds passed and the two of them found themselves laughing, an awkward and unsure burst of noise. They blinked, blushing faintly, and looked away almost in unison.

"It's okay. No reason to really apologize."

"I'm just really tired."

"I know the feeling. I get that way a lot too."

Yami snorted softly. "You? I never would have imagined such a thing," he huffed in amusement. He shook his head, tilting it a second later, and smiled warmly. "Regardless, I apologize. I shouldn't have…snapped at you like that."

"You know, normally when someone says 'snapped' it means a verbal statement in a tone that no one really likes. I don't think glaring and bristling really counts for that." Yugi was fidgeting now. He licked his lips and looked down at the carpet for a split second. Then he glanced at him sideways from his peripheral. "I think that what you did was more like a standoff with me."

"That's most likely true."

Yugi smiled again, nodded, and turned back to the television. He licked his lips after a moment, commenting quietly, "But that's okay too. It's not like you attacked me or something. Being irate sometimes is perfectly fine."

Yami shook his head slowly. "I do not like snapping at you as I have, Yugi. It is nothing I want to have happen as often as it does."

Yugi shrugged but refused to look at him now. "It doesn't matter that much, Yami. It's okay. I promise I'm not upset about it. It happens. We're both going to end up snapping at each other as long as we're around each other." He paused, then slowly turned his head and peered at him with eyes that rapidly searched his. "And I'm hoping that we're _not_ going to change that. I mean, I really hope that we're going to stay around each other for a while longer."

Yami blinked, startled by the comment and then with the way that the blue-violet eyes bore so relentlessly into his. Was he truly afraid that he might want otherwise? Was he so fearful that he might turn his back on him? Was it something that Yugi suffered from the bond between them as alpha and beta? Or was it to do with the fact that Yugi simply feared being alone that caused this?

Yami had never been sure where their relationship truly stemmed. He could not truly understand and explain such a thing to himself or to Yugi in turn. How he was meant to explain the bond to another person looking in on them and their relationship was a thing that Yami could not even fathom.

How was he meant to ever tell someone else about them?

Had Yugi ever seemed so attached to Jonouchi in turn, he would have simply said it was the alpha-beta connection that existed between them. He would have done the same to his own bond with Yugi.

But the edges were blurred between them. Somehow Yugi was dependent upon him and Yami himself suffered the same with him. It was horrifying to him. But it was also relieving in a manner that he could not truly put into words. He had no way of explanation for such a thing and it was all but impossible to even so much as speak about it altogether.

And now, as he stared into his eyes, Yami found himself more lost then ever. His heart was in his throat as he considered him. There was no way he knew how to express their relationship. He had no idea what it would mean to put it into words, either…

He drew in a deep breath.

Then he exhaled.

And repeated the gesture once.

He did it again.

And finally he blinked and shook his head, licking his lips. "I do not plan to leave you behind," he answered after a moment. And he was not sure what exactly those words meant. He felt shaky as he faced Yugi so pointedly. "So I would think that we will remain around each other a long while yet."

 _Right_?

By the gods he hoped he did not sound as foolish and presumptuous as he felt at the moment. He drew in a deep breath, closed his eyes, and tried to suppress the dizziness which threatened to overtake him.

"Okay." Yugi sounded as if he were too relieved to speak much more than to say that. But then he let out something of a choked laugh, as if he were too stunned to continue. "Wow. I sure know how to make things uncomfortable, don't I?"

"If you didn't, things wouldn't be quite as much fun as they are," Yami stated with a shake of his head. He smiled a flimsy little twist of his lips and looked away soon after. It was hard to face Yugi any longer. There was too much that the smaller boy seemed to be asking of him, so much that Yami was sure he could never give him. "Things would be far too boring if we didn't have something awkward and uncomfortable happen every now and then, right?"

"Yeah, I guess so, huh?" But Yugi sounded faintly troubled and Yami knew more than ever that it concerned him. But he was not willing to look at him now. He was too afraid of the possibility of the stare that Yugi had given him moments before. And so he kept his eyes on the screen even as the lights burned his corneas and he felt as if his vision might spin out of control at any moment.

"I'm tired."

Yami blinked, startled by the sound of his own voice. He felt small and dizzy and sick for a moment. Then he reached up to run his fingers over the collar of his tank top. He pulled at the fabric a few inches beneath it, knotting it in his fist and narrowing his eyes.

It was a habit he had not displayed in quite a while.

The last he remembered doing it was when his cage mate had given his life to allow him to escape. He had been tugging on it out of anxiety, struggling to keep himself grounded in his exhaustion. He had been so desperate to simply lie back down and sleep and had been unable to. His cage mate had _begged_ him not to. He had struggled and urged him awake and he'd convinced him to remain that way. And the only way he'd managed to stay upright and keep his eyes open had been by fisting the material of the disgusting experiment slacks they'd been given.

He remembered it more vibrantly now than he had for a long time. The fabric had been itchy and the pressure of pulling it against his skin was enough to irritate him. Doing so had caused him discomfort intense enough to make him remain awake. And then he had listened to his cage mate as the other had paced about and told him repeatedly that he would have to run…

Yami reached a hand up to run through his hair. His poor cage mate… He had died to save him and seemingly done so for nothing. Yami was alive, yes, but…

There was so much that…

Yami blinked and lowered his eyes. His cage mate had loved him. He'd known that. His cage mate had cared for him more than he'd cared for even himself by the time that they'd all set the immense plan into motion for Atem's escape. In the chaos, his cage mate had convinced him to flee as well. He'd insisted even when Yami struggled to understand what he wanted of him. He'd pushed and pushed and _begged_ until Yami had folded, agreeing reluctantly to flee.

And when Yami had seen what had become of him…

His sacrifice was still in vain, however.

He was alive.

But what was a life such as his meant to provide when there was nothing he himself cared for less?

It was not true to say that he wished to die. But Yami was aware of his own limitations. And he thought that, if the opportunity were forced upon him, he would cease the battle before he would flail as desperately for his life as someone such as Yugi would.

 _Yugi_ was afraid to die.

Yami treated it as a plague which could not claim him as of the moment, but one which he knew would overcome him later. It did not matter his species or his bloodline. It mattered only that all things must die. And when that happened, Yami was not sure a struggle would do more than prolong the inevitable. And prolonging such a thing seemed almost dirty…

Why should he fight for his own when so many had been sacrificed in vain before him? Why should he struggle for such a thing when his own life probably mattered so little in the grand scheme of things?

Yami closed his eyes again rather tightly.

Perhaps he might strive to save someone else. Maybe he would give his own life for someone such as Yugi—for surely, as lost as he was, the other boy was as selfless and beautiful a soul as could ever exist—at the end of it all. Because he did not think that the others within the pack were worthy of it, regardless of the raw wounds which marred it or the pain which it might exude so often.

Yugi would surely be a cause worthy of death…

Not _Atem_. Never Atem.

But _always_ Yugi. Only ever Yugi.

Yami ran a hand through his hair and shook his head after a long moment. "I think… I think I might need to rest."

Yugi was quiet beside him for a long moment. And then he sighed softly. "Feel free to then, aibou. I'll wake you later for dinner if that's what you want."

* * *

When Yami woke again, it was darker than he'd expected. The room was bathed in startling blackness from a cloudless sky and a snowfall so dense it blocked much of the street lamp. It made him jerk awake, eyes wide as he looked about the room stiffly. His bones popped and jerked beneath his skin and he narrowed his eyes into slits. He did not know what lurked within the shadows and it made him uneasy as he glanced around once more.

"Yugi?" he asked into the quiet stillness of the room. But he heard no answer in turn and it made him stiffen as he rose further to sit straight beneath the blanket. The comforter was thick and bunched from what had to have been his tossing and turning moments before. And the fleece was knotted across his lap as he blinked again and looked to the streetlamp once more.

The snowflakes were so dense and large that they looked like a uniform sheet of white. Yami wondered at the sight, unsure of it now that he was within his human form regarding it. He had seen it so many times like this when he was a wolf. But now it startled him, leaving him feeling cold as if winter had grasped upon his skin and threatened to claw through his flesh altogether.

He shivered and moved to stand. The blessing of lycanthropy was one such as a balance that never faltered. And his faulty limbs caught him immediately, ruled by this law and begging his attention. He blinked as he approached the window.

The glass looked oddly reflective in a manner he had never quite known it to before. It was enough to make him shiver again. And he lowered his fingertips to the windowsill with nails that clicked lightly against the wood. The cold touch was enough to make him bristle and his vision seemed blinded by the white which came so steadily about the darkness before him.

Had he not been lucid, perhaps he might have assumed them at one time to be like the stars falling from the sky and to the ground. He had been told that once, when he was younger and more hopeful of something of miracles and life more brilliant than the painful one he'd been ensnared in. And his cage mate had painted the world to be a mystery of wondrous things—he'd spoken of school, of the stars and snowflakes, of mountains and trees, of a sky with a beautiful moon which lit the world in silver and white and blue. He'd reminded Yami that there _was_ more within the world than the sterile gray walls of the underground lab. He'd painted pictures with his words and told him what he knew of the experiences Yami himself was missing.

He'd told him about school. He'd told him about running in a pack. He'd told him about the love of a mother and the bond between littermates. He'd told him of howling with a pack. He'd told him of loyalty and defending one another. He'd spoken of lush green grass in the summer and the way the leaves turned colors during fall.

Yami had lived many of these memories through this wolf. He had lived them through their conversations. And he'd experienced a few of those things only by his being there.

But it had done nothing to fully prepare Yami for it all. Things outside of the lab had been harsh and bright and terrible and loud. The lab had been mostly quiet for him. He'd been secluded, though why he had not been entirely sure. Perhaps he had been sick more often than he remembered. Such a thing was possible, he was sure…

Yami leaned forward against the glass, eyes darkening. In his reflection his gaze was hideous, like blood, with the skin beneath his eyes hanging low and scrubbed dark as if with charcoal. He licked his lips and leaned forward further.

And he wished, for only a moment, that the glass might break and cut him and he might awaken back beneath the earth. Maybe then the other would be back and he would be able to pretend and—

He had not left him, however.

Yami knew this.

Whenever he healed…

Whenever he felt he might die, the wolf pleaded with him. He'd whisper about sacrifice and that now was not his time. He'd tell him to try again, to rise to his paws. He'd tell him to get up again and to defeat that which had formerly beaten him.

He was as persistent as one could ever hope to be. He was powerful. He was threatening. He was a monster that the men in those labs had not quite anticipated. And they all knew it. The green-eyed wolf, Yugi himself, Annie before him, Aki and Marik as well.

Avoidance changed nothing.

Yami tapped his nail against the glass. The sharp clacking made his ears ring. And he wondered again if somehow the world that had offered him both his cage mate and Yugi now was perhaps defective. He wondered if it worshipped as a lowly mortal might a deity and so somehow chose who it might give easy life to.

Or perhaps it was simply that Yami himself was unworthy of such a thing. In the end, however, he doubted it truly mattered. He would need simply to navigate around his portion of a life perhaps unwanted.

He blinked and clicked his nail again. He wondered if the gods thought much of the internal queries their subjects often posed. Yet he could not see Obelisk or Slifer or Ra curious in the slightest. He could not imagine that they might be listening and thinking more on the thoughts he could not stomach. Had they, he was sure he would have heard more than ever about the stupidity of his own inquiries and doubts.

Ra especially would have something to say to him in some manner. She was, after all, the one which lacked tact the most. She was the one who so often spoke without thought and cared little for the repercussions of her words. She was the one who understood the least what was right to say and show while her siblings expressed their knowledge of such more than ever.

They knew better than to say such things as what Ra often did. He looked around for a moment, eyes narrowing further before he shook his head slowly. Then he blinked, searching the darkness and the cold air beyond the window where the earth seemed terribly covered and suffocated in white.

"Yami?"

He blinked and turned his head, looking over his shoulder and tilting his head. Behind him Yugi was standing, dressed in his usual pajamas the color of light baby blue a few shades lesser than that of his walls. The small teen had hair that had been mussed from sleep, his bangs scattered about and his forelock scrunched up and knotted. His shoulders were slumped with tiredness and his eyes were huge as he blinked back at him.

"Am I awake?"

Yugi blinked at him as if he were a strange animal he did not quite know how to explain the existence of. "Do you dream about me often?" he asked instead, in a tone that Yami had never recognized him to use.

Yami watched him for a long moment. His nails clicked against the metal. And it burned with how cold it was. He tilted his head further, staring at him more pointedly. "No." He looked away after a moment, clenching his fingers and leaning his weight into his hands. "I've just been having really weird…ones lately. Nightmares, maybe."

Yugi gave him something of a startled look. "Nightmares with me in them?" he asked, furrowing his brows. "Or just weird dreams with me in them?"

Yami watched him from the reflection he cast in the window. He narrowed his eyes further and scraped his nails against the metal of the bottom of the window pane for a long handful of seconds. And then he looked over at Yugi again, neck aching as he considered him.

"The gods like to talk to me wearing your face."

Yugi blinked and then stiffened before letting out a somewhat sharp breath. "Morrigan…changed into you or altered her appearance to look like you once in order to get me to follow her away from a hunter." He looked down after a moment and then towards Yami again. "I think she knew I wouldn't have followed her otherwise."

And again Yami thought of whatever bond it was that they shared. He couldn't understand how it was that they might be so easily influenced by each other. Surely that was not as an alpha-beta connection was truly meant to be? Wolves were meant to be self-reliant and loyal and capable on their own as well as social. They were meant to be able to live on their own and care for themselves without the help of others.

"Ra knows I won't speak to her on her own."

Yugi tilted his head and frowned. "Why not?"

Yami was too exhausted to think to filter his words, drawing in a deep breath and shaking his head. "She speaks in too many portents and half-truths."

"Portents and half-truths?" Yugi echoed, eyes stretching wide in surprise. Yami could see the glittering shades of blue within his gaze even in the dim light and somehow it was comforting against the cold. Ra had always made his eyes more blue than violet. It was the reality of the god that one could not always mimic the form and mannerisms of another so entirely as necessary. And they often exuded their auras too powerfully to be able to act beneath the guise of another.

And Ra herself did not care to speak as a mortal did. Things ran in black and white for her. There was no gray. In the grand scheme of things, she was the most simplistic of the three of them. And she had no sympathy for them, nor a sense of affection to be found. She was as she was, a goddess who cared but did not show love in more than giving life.

And now she so often haunted Yami's dreams.

She wished to tell him things that he refused to consider. She wished to explain things he would rather ignore. And she wanted more than anything to make him face something he did not care to. And so Yami had often shunned her until she had chosen to wear Yugi's face for the sake of speaking to him. And while Yami had known this would come, he had often fallen for it all the same. He would be desperate to speak to Yugi in any way he could, though he knew himself to be deceived and asleep. And it made it worse to wake to Yugi oblivious and wondering at his frustration and oftentimes cold shoulder.

And Yami hated himself for such reactions. But he could never be sure and it was something that scared him more than he cared to admit.

"You know, I don't think that anyone ever tells the truth."

The comment made Yami blink. He considered Yugi a moment longer, then lowered his eyes. Right. He himself had never truly told Yugi the fullest of truths. He had told him what he could, never quite lying but unable to fully tell him the entirety of it either. And it killed him to know such a thing. He wished he was braver. He wished he was more capable. He wished that he could have been a better friend, a more qualified alpha.

But the shadows that plagued his mind…

Yami shrugged it off and exhaled shakily. "Half-truths are easier."

"I don't want you to tell me the full truth at all times, Yami," Yugi said. And Yami reacted instinctively to movement in the corner of his eye, not realizing that Yugi had ducked his head towards him for this very reason. When their eyes locked, Yugi straightened again, giving him a warm smile that made Yami feel sick for a brief moment. "Whatever you're hiding from me is your own choice. I don't mind that there are some secrets between us. There need to be, honestly. I want you to feel safe enough to be able to tell me things when you're ready, not because I make comments about half-truths like that. If you feel like you need to protect yourself that way, then do so. If you think you're comfortable enough to tell me, then do that too."

Yami searched his face for a moment. "I do not like lying to you."

Yugi raised a brow. "It's not a lie."

The red-eyed teen shook his head slowly. "It is."

"I don't consider it one so you shouldn't either." He paused, seeming to consider his next words carefully, and then leaned forward the smallest degree. Yami realized he was rocking back and forth on his feet like a small child, perhaps anxious or maybe just impatient. But his expression merely seemed puzzled and maybe more concentrated than usual. "I don't mind that you only tell me half of the truth where it concerns you, Yami. I know most of what you went through when you were younger had to have been traumatizing and I'm sorry. I wish that had never happened to you."

Yami blinked and shook his head. "It had to happen to someone."

"It never should have happened to begin with."

"It shouldn't have. But it did. Nothing changes that." He leaned more fully against the windowsill, then moved to face him a bit more. "I don't think it's wise to dwell on it all over again. It's harder to fight beneath it if you can't push it aside every now and then."

Yugi nodded slightly, looking abruptly exhausted before shaking his head. "I know the feeling. I used to get overwhelmed with the night terrors and I'd get so depressed I couldn't sleep or eat or do anything for weeks. And if I cried it would be hours before it stopped. Apparently I'm good at suppressing until I can't anymore."

Yami smirked. "I run until I'm too exhausted and you fall into depression. What a pair we are."

"It's amazing we're not trying to out-pity each other, huh?" he mumbled, smiling. He looked at the red-eyed teen with brightened eyes as he continued. "We're a little broken. But unbowed, right?"

He blinked and his lips twitched somewhere between a smile, a smirk, and a grimace. He could not tell any longer. " _Bloodied_ but unbowed."

Yugi nodded. "That's about right," he agreed almost lazily. The smile on his face dropped minutely before he recovered. "I think that's basically going to be our motto for the rest of our lives, huh?"

Yami didn't want to point out that their days were most likely numbered and rapidly declining. And it hurt more to consider such a thing for Yugi than it did himself. He shivered and ignored the surprised look that his beta shot him before pressing his weight more pointedly into the windowsill.

"I prefer remembering that to much of my other thoughts, yes," Yami agreed after a moment. He drew in a small, short breath, and shook his head with a slight frown. It was only then that he realized Yugi had come _into_ the room. He had not _been_ there formerly, when he had first woken up. "I slept several hours."

Yugi blinked at him. "Yeah."

He frowned and tilted his head. "Why?"

The smaller teen seemed startled by his question, eyes stretching wide as he tilted his head in turn. He frowned minutely, then mumbled, "Because you were tired?"

"No, why did you _let_ me sleep so long?"

Yugi furrowed his brows. "Did you want me to wake you?" he asked uncomfortably. He frowned more pointedly and then straightened a little more, eyes searching his. "I don't remember you asking me to…"

"I didn't."

"Then why wouldn't I let you sleep?"

"It's past time for dinner."

Yugi blinked and then his eyes stretched wide with understanding. "Oh. Oh right. I'm sorry. I figured I would let you sleep. You weren't tossing and turning like you usually do and you seemed comfortable and I didn't want to wake you. You don't sleep enough anymore."

Yami frowned, considering him. And then he sighed and turned around, leaning back on the cold wood. It was enough to soothe some of the ache in his bones as he watched Yugi for a long handful of seconds. "I suppose you're right." But he had to wonder. Was this truly the reason Yugi had failed to wake him?

"I'll grab you some food if you want."

"You're dressed for bed…"

Yugi blinked, then smiled at him with _something_ akin amusement. "I changed clothes a long while back. You slept through it. And I…I did it right before I decided to do homework in the kitchen."

"I would have thought with your hair that you'd slept at some point."

"I've been pulling it for the last hour."

"Oh."

"Homework is frustrating."

"I see."

"Sorry. I guess I could have stayed in here with you. But I didn't know if you'd wake up if I turned on the lamp." Yugi frowned, considering him again, and slowly shook his head after a moment. "Sorry. I guess I should have just done that instead."

"It's not really something to apologize about," Yami mumbled quietly, studying him. "I just was surprised to have slept so long."

"So why are you at the window then? Are you okay? Or were you just looking out at the snow?"

He raised a brow slowly. "I'm not trying to run off, if that's what you were truly asking." He offered him a mild smile, then shook his head. "I came to the window because it seemed darker outside than usual."

Yugi seemed flustered for a single moment. Then he recovered quickly and licked his lips. "I wasn't asking that," he mumbled, but they both knew otherwise and his brighter eyes flickered away immediately before darting back. Yami was almost curious as to whether Yugi feared if he was not looking at him he might disappear. "Although, I was kind of concerned you might need to run off and get something to eat. I mean, you missed dinner so…"

Yami could see him chewing the inside of his cheek now. He looked incredibly uncomfortable and more than slightly flustered as the seconds passed. It took him only a second to realize that Yugi was worrying about the repercussions of what he had assumed to be a good choice might now present.

"I am fine. I'm not hungry yet." He blinked and looked out at the snow again.

The earth was absolutely covered in it. And he wondered briefly if perhaps the gods had ever assumed something similar might happen with the wolves. Had they ever assumed that they would be powerful enough to take over the hierarchy among the humans and natural animals? He knew many of the wolves now assumed such a thing. He'd met plenty of wolves that claimed that, even while within the labs. His cage mate had never been one of them, but he had warned him of that kind of mentality.

Caution had taught Yami similarly. A mind could easily become warped much akin the manner Marik's own had. And, should that happen, one could never be truly and fully prepared to combat it. He thought similarly of those who lived with tunnel vision. And so many of the wolves within that pack did just that.

How they had even made it as far as they had was a question he had often asked himself when he was with them. It amazed him in every sense of the word.

"You're sure you're not hungry?"

He blinked and glanced at him, surprised. "Hmm? No. Not at all. I'm not hungry yet, Yugi." Then he wondered if perhaps he had missed it when his belly had growled or something of that nature. And that made him somewhat uncertain as he looked Yugi over again. The other boy hardly seemed too upset with the statement, however. He was sure that Yugi would have been frustrated had he heard something like that. So Yami forced himself to relax, nearly closing his eyes with contentment for that brief moment. "I'm okay."

"Yeah." Yugi stayed quiet for a moment. "I'm sorry for freaking you out though."

"It doesn't matter. You were trying to do what you thought was best for me. And I can't say that remaining awake or being woken early would have done me much good." He looked at him more pointedly, a thought forming in his head but dissipating just as quickly. Had he dreamed? He could not remember. "It did me well to get some rest."

Yugi nodded after a moment, lowering his eyes. "I guess so."

Yami was considering him as the seconds passed. The heater clicked on and the smallest hint of hot dust and hair curled through the air. He wondered if his shedding had done more than usual for that purpose. He shook his head after a moment, wondering again briefly if he had dreamed of anything. But it could not have been important if he did not remember it, yes? He had always remembered when a dream held some kind of importance…

"Are you still tired? I'm pretty tired. I'm thinking about going to sleep in a few minutes. I think I'm going to put my study guides back up and lay down."

Yami blinked, a long and slow motion, and then tilted his head as they looked at one another. Did he want to sleep? Was that what he felt at the moment? Or was it something else entirely? He could not tell anymore if it was weariness.

"You don't have to go back to sleep with me. I mean, you could stay up and read or watch TV or something if you wanted to."

He blinked again. "Maybe." It was as little commitment as he could give, but it was still a response. At least this way Yugi did not assume him to no longer be listening to him.

"I'm going to go get my homework and pack it up in my bag and we can go to bed after that." Yugi licked his lips as Yami looked back at him with a small nod. The other boy turned around to make his way out of the room and into the kitchen.

Yami was relieved to see that there was no food in his hand when he returned. It would not have surprised him in the slightest should Yugi have appeared with a plate like that. Yugi pulled the backpack to the bed, tossing it a second later, and plopped down on the mattress.

He sat back with his arms behind him and grunted out a breath, the noise startling Yami enough to blink wide eyes. He had not been expecting him to react in such a manner. He had been more inclined to believe that Yugi might quietly settle for sleep and simply rest for the night.

"Do the gods have to be so frustrating all of the time?" Yugi asked after a moment, turning his head to look at him from the corner of his eye. "I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm glad for their help where they've offered it. I just… I want to know what the hell is going on as it is."

"That's not for the living to know." Yami shrugged and leaned against the windowsill again, searching his face. Yugi did not seem too terribly upset at the moment. "I think probably the wisht hounds and the black dogs know more than we ever will as far as that goes."

"Wisht hounds or wish hounds? And, either way, what are they exactly?" Yugi rolled over to lie on his stomach and moved to sit up after a moment. The look on his face was curious and slightly flustered as they considered one another. "I mean, I know you mentioned them once but we never actually got around to discussing them. And Morrigan told me about them but…"

"Wish or wisht, it makes no difference how you pronounce it. They're still the same breed of hellhound. They're…basically hellhounds that passed a long time ago. They're considered the hellhounds in their most basic form as far as mythology for humans. They are the ones that make deals with humans in terms of giving riches or luck or whatever it is they might desire." Yami frowned and tilted his head when he saw the way that Yugi blinked and rolled his shoulders slightly. He looked curious as they stared at each other. "What happens is they devour the souls of the humans that they make a deal with and it supplements their lifespan as a wisht hound. It's why Black Shuck is so incredibly well-known and has been in existence for such a long time."

Yugi blinked and nodded. Then he lowered his chin to his arms and stared at him with growing curiosity once more. "Okay."

"Anyways, they are used most often as the bridge between humans and hellhounds and the gods. They're the ones to make deals with and have more information than most." Yami looked down at the floor for a brief moment, then shook his head and drummed his fingers on the windowsill. "And they will often be the ones that humans dream about if they have nightmares about them. They're the most popular because they don't care to hide like the living hellhound does like Valon or someone else might."

"But living hellhounds can do that too right? They can change into…ghosts or whatever… Right?"

Yami nodded after a moment, making a face before tilting his head. "Yes, they can become incorporeal when they need to. They just have to eat a few human corpses and it works out in their favor, I suppose."

"I heard that they don't have any insight on me."

He tilted his head. "Insight on you?" he echoed.

"Morrigan told me they can't see me."

"I'm not surprised. You have to consider that the hunters that have pacts with them would attempt to use them to find a way to get to you. And if that is impossible, then you are safer than you were otherwise. Perhaps the gods like you more than you originally thought, huh?"

Yugi smiled slightly but it was incredibly strained as well. "I guess so…even if they did let horrible things happen…"

Yami gave him a wry smile, wanting for a moment to laugh. Yugi didn't know the half of it as it was. He hardly knew the surface of what it was that they had done to him when he was born. His memory suppression was a beautiful mercy that the gods had given him.

What little Yugi did know was scarring but it was not as terrible as what it might have been before. He did not think Yugi would have been nearly as okay had he known the full extent of the damage done to him.

Perhaps Yugi would never _have_ to remember. And wouldn't that be a beautiful gift from the gods themselves? Yami doubted that such a thing would remain as it was. He doubted that the gods would allow such a thing to happen. The ease of it all would be far too much for them to remain behind. They were not so merciful. Yugi was stuck in the midst of it all, though they might have given him more attention than they would have anyone else. He did not know if he should be grateful for that or to assume that they saw him weaker than any other wolves and so they had to play the part of guiding him about.

But if that were the case, why had they allowed them to cross paths again? If that were the truth of it, would it not have been wiser to simply leave them separate from each other?

Yami tilted his head after a moment. "Let me ask you something, Yugi."

The smaller teen moved to sit up, eyes searching his readily for a moment. Then he nodded slightly, peering at him pointedly. "What is it?" he asked quietly, their eyes locked for the moment.

"Is it just the wish hounds which are blind to you?"

Yugi blinked and then moved to sit up completely. He remained quiet for a long handful of seconds. And then he nodded slowly and murmured, "So you're thinking what I'm thinking then."

"I have no idea what that means exactly. What are you thinking?"

"That the gods can't quite see _everything_ pertaining to me…"

Yami nodded after a long moment, eyes sharpening briefly as they looked at one another. "Yes," he said quietly, slowly, "I have my suspicion that such a thing is what might be going on. How long have you thought that?"

"Around the time that you came back. I don't think that it's Obelisk or Slifer that can see you or me. I think it's Ishizu. I think…" He fell quiet for a long handful of moment and then shook his head. "Ishizu was telling me about why she lied to Marik and made him think that he was Code Name Atem and it made me think… She told me that she had been able to watch me from the moment I was born. She said that Ra had given her that gift when she was younger. And Slifer has told me before that she can't see us clearly, though recently said she can't see us _at all_ any longer. So I…I get the feeling that maybe all three of them are blind to us but Ra gave it to Ishizu and _Ishizu_ is the one who can see everything about us. Do you think that's possible or do you think that maybe I'm overdoing it?"

Yami watched him, unblinking. And then, as the seconds passed, he slowly straightened and stood more alert before him. "I think that perhaps it is possible. But I do not think that I can say yes definitively. If she is the only one, should she die, how will the gods keep their eyes on us then? I do not believe for even a moment that Slifer and Obelisk will remain around us much longer. And I do not think that Ra does more than speak to them through their dreams. So I cannot see that any of them will pay us as much attention as necessary to keep tabs on us."

"I can see that, I guess," Yugi muttered. He shifted to sit back on his haunches and then leaned back on his hands. His eyes flickered about Yami's for a moment and he wondered at the way he stood so alertly before him. He wondered if he was alarmed or if he were upset in some way. He did not think in the slightest that he was aggressive at the moment, however. "Well, maybe there's a backup plan for that, huh?"

"There have to be multiple," Yami argued. "There have to be multiple backup plans."

* * *

When Yugi woke the next morning Yami was already awake. His eyes were on the window and his head was tilted slightly. Had he not known that he was simply watching the snow drifting across the sky he might have worried he was going to leave at any second. But then the red-eyed teen had paused and turned his head, regarding him for a brief second, and the unease inside of him seemed to settle as he licked his lips and looked away.

"So, what do you think? Pancakes for breakfast or something a little bit healthier?" Yugi asked, teasing him, but the look that Yami returned him was something almost cold and sharp. The red-eyed boy looked down after a moment, then shrugged, and mumbled something that sounded like noncommittal affirmation. "Is there something else that you would want instead? I'll make something else if that's what you want, Yami."

The other boy shook his head again. "It doesn't matter. Pancakes are fine."

Yugi hesitated for a long moment, moving to swing his legs over the side of the mattress and stand up. He dusted himself off as if there were some sense of weight and frustration which he might brush away from himself despite the fact that the red-eyed teen kept staring at him so pointedly. "If you're going to be irritable, then I'm just going to make pancakes and call it a day."

Yami huffed in response. "You act as if you are never in a bad mood."

He paused, turning to look at him over his shoulder from where he'd already made his way to the door. He grasped at the knob, considering him, and then shook his head slowly. "I don't understand why you become so irate like this all of the time, Yami. You didn't used to and now all of the sudden…"

"Things changed," Yami said somewhat sharply. He moved to stand as well now, though he did not assume an aggressive stance as Yugi had thought he would. Yugi forced himself to release the knob in his hand, his grip so tight that it was enough to make his skin burn and tingle. "You do not know what I went through before."

"No, I don't." Yugi drew in a deep breath, then exhaled slowly and shook his head. He offered him a small smile and looked down at the carpet for a brief moment. "Are you really so frustrated with me?"

"Frustrated? With you?" Yami echoed. His voice sounded uneasy, tired and somewhat flustered. "No. I am not frustrated with you. I simply…"

"It's okay. It's fine, I guess." Yugi shook his head again, smiling a bit more, and raised his eyes to his. "I'm going to just start to make pancakes again. I mean, if you think that there's a problem or you want something else, just go ahead and tell me before I start. Otherwise you're stuck with them."

Yami was quiet for a moment. They stared at one another until finally his red eyes lowered downward to the carpet and he tilted his head slightly away from him in turn. "Pancakes are fine. Thank you, Yugi," he muttered after what felt like a lifetime. Yugi considered him a moment longer, thinking for a brief second that he should stop before he might speak another word to him. Yami would become frustrated and annoyed again and that was not what he truly cared to see.

So he turned on his heel, opened the door, and padded quickly into the kitchen again. He picked out the metal bowl, the box of pancake mix, and grabbed the skillet he used so often for it. He got the pancake mix, poured in some water, stirred it together, and turned the dial for the stove. The flames were soft and bright, white and blue. And Yugi waited a moment longer before setting the skillet on it and scooping a spoonful of batter into it. The immediate hiss and sizzle was comforting for a moment as he leaned against the counter.

When he looked over his shoulder, Yami was taking a seat at the table. He did not look up at him, nor did he seem inclined to speak. He looked incredibly uncomfortable, his shoulders slightly raised as if to shield his throat again. He did not seem happy, nor comfortable in the least, and he appeared more upset than Yugi had ever quite seen him. He had isolated the distress, however. Instinctively he had smothered much of it, as if he expected Yugi to speak against him in some manner.

He licked his lips and glanced towards the red-eyed teen once more. The blue-violet-eyed boy watched him as he exhaled somewhat loudly and finally looked over his shoulder. He turned away, facing the skillet, and flipped the pancake once more. He leaned against the counter again, narrowing his eyes, and shook his head after a moment.

Yami did not have a reason to be so upset. Yugi honestly did not understand what it was that had caused him to become so frustrated. He was healthy. He was no longer hurt. He was no longer being tortured. He had no reason to argue or fight with him. Yugi couldn't list a reason why he might be so upset with him as it was. Had he said something? Had he done something?

Yugi might have called it manipulative or abusive had there been something between them beyond their friendship. And, when he glanced at Yami again, he wondered for a split second if there was ever going to be something past this.

Yami was so damaged. He knew that. He understood it. Yami feared a lot of things. And he became angry due to this. He would most likely turn on him if he was scared enough.

What had Fuwa done to him exactly?

Yami was more skittish than anything. It was odd to consider. He had always been that silent little shadow that followed him about. He had been soft-spoken. He had been calm and quiet. And he would trail him like a ghost before he did anything else. When he spoke it was soft but meaningful. Now he sounded harsher and almost as if he was too tired. He spoke as if his temper were beneath the surface of each word. He seemed perhaps more fearful than anything else, though.

And Yugi wondered what it was that the gods had been telling him. He had said that Ra visited him often in the form of his face, right? She would take his face to speak to Yami. And then she would speak to him in whatever manner it was that she chose. And Yugi had to wonder if perhaps he was so upset because of something that she had been saying to him formerly.

Had she perhaps visited him again that night?

Or was there something else entirely?

Yugi shrugged this thought off, however, and turned back to the pancake. He flipped it onto the plate and worked on the next with a shake of his head. The pastry was half-burned, he noticed. He had been thinking too long about this and not paying enough attention to the necessity of keeping his food from burning. He shook his head again and looked down, flustered and annoyed with this new development.

"Are you sure you're okay?"

Yami kept his eyes on him for only a moment longer. Then he looked immediately away again. "Yes," he grunted, but he seemed more flustered than anything else. And Yugi thought he appeared almost feverish in the way he looked back at him from beneath his lashes and picked at his food.

"Are you sure that you're okay? You promise that you're okay?"

Now the other boy raised and turned his head, surprised by the comment. He blinked, tilting his head, and then looked down at the plate again. "Yes," he mumbled almost dismissively. But then he paused after a split second. Then he drummed his fingers on the table for a moment. "I promise I am okay."

"Okay." Yugi did not push again, but that perhaps was enough to make Yami even more anxious. Because, when he looked up, Yami seemed incredibly unhappy. He looked, perhaps, even unnerved. And then Yugi spotted his red eyes narrow and his lips twitch as if he might curl them back entirely. The two of them stared at each other for a moment before Yami abruptly pushed away from the table and got to his feet. He reached up and fumbled with his t-shirt, anxious and flustered. He drew in a deep breath and then turned and wandered off.

Yugi blinked, tipping backwards in his seat, and blinked huge eyes when he saw Yami step into the hallway bathroom. He heard it click shut and then the lock was turned and he tilted his head, bewildered and slightly anxious to consider it. Had Yami assumed that he might attempt to follow him or something to that effect? Or had he simply closed and locked the door behind him in order to simply comfort himself? It was possible that he was so upset that he had gone about secluded himself in a similar thought to hide as he had the night he'd woken him from his night terror in which Yami had been attempting to wake himself by way of forcing the Change. He'd hidden under the bed then; perhaps the bathroom had felt the safest to him now.

Yugi fell quiet, feeling sick to his stomach as he looked around for a long moment. The hallway seemed exceedingly long and dark for the moment, as if his loneliness had caused such a thing to happen to him. He frowned and considered it, then looked around before leaning against the wall.

"Don't forget to rinse your mouth if you vomit." It was a neglectful kind of comment, one that made his bones feel cold as well. But he did not say anything else, instead hearing Yami's clothes rustle. He could imagine him tilting his head and turning to look over his shoulder at the door. He wondered if he felt as shocked as he felt stupid at the moment. "I mean, I'm really hoping that you don't end up vomiting though, you know?"

Yugi honestly did not know if it was possible that he could feel more pathetic at that moment than he already did. He shook his head and sighed softly, looking up towards the ceiling. The fact that it was white was probably the dullest part of the house in all truth. The rest of the rooms had a nicer color scheme. His own was sky blue, the carpet indigo. The carpet in the hallway was red-violet and the walls a similar shade. He shook his head and looked over his shoulder towards the staircase door. The walls were a pale color of orange-red, soft like the clouds against sunset. And Yugi was flustered as he trained his attention on these small details but attempted to listen closely. If Yami started vomiting, he would need to know in order to get him fluids as quickly as possible.

But the moments stretched out and he found himself unable to remain there. His stomach was twisting too violently and he was too tired to stay much longer. And so he finally shuffled away from the door, glancing over his shoulder twice more, and headed back into the kitchen. He had assumed that Yami might take this as the sign to come out again, but it took another two hours before he finally came to find him. Yugi had long since settled on the couch, homework in his lap, figuring out math equations that made his head throb.

When he saw movement in the corner of his eye, he had almost assumed he was seeing things. But when he looked up, Yami was facing him. He had tugged down the sleeve of that strange teal jacket he so rarely wore. And he looked flustered and frustrated more than anything. He seemed to debate joining him on the couch, hovering for a moment, and then Yugi watched as he began to make his way slowly to the other side of the piece of furniture. The taller teen plopped down at the end, fidgeting with his sleeves once more and staring at the television where it remained blank and untouched.

Yugi hesitated for a moment, unsure of whether he should acknowledge him or not. He had a feeling that one too many words would send Yami back into his room and away from him for the rest of the day. But he had no idea how many words were too many or too little. So he opted for silence, leaned forward for the remote sitting on the table, and tossed it in the air. Yami reacted instinctively, he knew, in moving to catch it. In fact, the other boy looked almost surprised to have it in his hand when he realized he'd caught it.

Yugi offered him a faint smile, unsure of what more to do, and then turned back to the black print on the page. None of it made sense to him any longer but he hardly cared for the moment. It didn't matter, in all reality. It was stupid and foolish of him to think for even a second longer that it might last. But he did not care to stop either so he scribbled a new answer, feeling flustered. Yami was silent behind him safe for his breathing and steady heartbeat and for once Yugi wished he could not hear the damn thing.

He flipped the page of his textbook, shifting his weight, and drew his legs up to cross beneath him. The television flickered on a moment later. And he could hear Yami awkwardly shifting back to sit more comfortably against the cushions. The sound of his weight sinking back into the material made Yugi all but bristle. But then Yami did not seem to move and the only sound came from his own breathing, his own heartbeat, and the noise of a commercial advertising a new video game and its console.

Yugi hated that Yami refused to speak. But the longer they stewed in the silence, the less tension there seemed to be between them. And, as another hour passed and Yugi finished a third homework assignment, it only occurred to him why the tension was nonexistent altogether. He turned his head and found Yami settled against the armrest. One arm was draped over the side and his chin rested on the wrist of his other. His eyes were closed, his long lashes dark and fluttering faintly as his lids twitched. He was breathing evenly, his entire body slumped forward and against the armrest.

And he looked almost innocent for a moment.

The jacket was a size too big, he realized, just long enough that it seemed to stretch a few inches past his wrists. The sleeves were baggy, the shoulders a little too ruffled. He looked almost like a child trying on his father's clothing. And it made Yugi want to perhaps cover him in a blanket, an instinct that he would have formerly recognized as human but now suspected was much more wolf-like in reality. He had never been one to overstep such boundaries as to cover someone with a blanket when they did not look cold. He was looking at Yami now, who seemed perfectly happy at the moment with the way he rested, and had somehow come to the conclusion that further covering him was a necessity.

It seemed more like a wolf attempting to help its struggling pack mate. He had read and heard on several occasions that wolves would help each other despite dire circumstances in the wild. They would bring back meat for the nursemaid, bring back food for the pups, guard the pups, use vocalizations to shield their lower numbers when one was threatened. They worked as a family unit that guarded each and every member, even the omega that was so often bullied.

Yugi tilted his head and considered Yami a moment longer. The red-eyed teen was still fast asleep and he wondered how long he had been like this. Had it been only when he had come to notice or had it been sooner than that? Yugi wondered for only a moment, then sighed and turned back to his homework. He supposed it didn't matter. Yami was asleep and that was better than him vomiting up his food and sleeping in the bathroom and ignoring him in order to protect himself from whatever small threat he perceived Yugi to be.

He drummed his fingers once. Then he glanced at the television as a small minute-long segment began about the fire that was still being examined. The restaurant had definitely been marked as arson, was the official statement. But they still did not quite have leads to tie it to anyone.

Yugi wondered what it was that Obelisk had planned. The wolf had said that he might take care of it. And if he did, what exactly did that entail? It was a nerve-wracking idea to leave it to a wolf who knew only of his pelt and sharp teeth and the violence of war. Yugi was still half-expecting to find that his friend's father was dead and that they were claiming it to be a dog attack of some kind. The thought was unsettling and he shifted his weight unhappily, drumming his fingers a bit more rapidly. The segment cut away to something else entirely, announcing a new comedy show that was expected to have high ratings due to the director and writers involved. Yugi considered this with a roll of his eyes.

News must have been extremely slow if that was what was coming on.

Abruptly, as if beckoned by his souring mood, the television turned off with an audible click. He blinked, confused, then looked around for a moment. The lights were still on in the kitchen. And the fridge had just begun to hum and rattle softly, the ice clicking together as a new cube was formed. He considered the space around him for a moment, turning around to peer into the kitchen and then back to the television. Had he accidentally sat on the remote? Had Yami put it close enough to him?

He twisted around, looking towards his hip. But there was nothing there beyond the crease of the couch cushion. He furrowed his brows, then raised his eyes and froze.

Yami was staring back at him, red eyes confused and slightly concerned. His brows were minutely furrowed. His head was tilted a small degree. And he looked troubled more than anything. He was not sitting up, keeping his slouched position beside him. His arms were still in their exact position. But he had angled his chin to where he could rest his cheek against his wrist and look at him more comfortably.

"Did I wake you? Sorry."

The red-eyed teen blinked and his brows furrowed further. "Why would you have woken me?"

"I don't know. I figured if you were awake it was because of me. You fell asleep with the TV on, after all. It wouldn't have been something to wake you." Yugi paused, frowning and watching him for a moment. Yami didn't look alarmed, but the concern was still clear on his face. He wondered if he meant to ask if he was okay and didn't know how. He shrugged after a moment, offering a strained smile that he knew probably looked more like a grimace. "So I mean, with that kind of deduction, it could only be me who woke you."

Yami shook his head slowly, though it was more as if he were tilting and bobbing his head due to the sloppy position he remained in. "Not at all. I woke on my own," he answered. "But you looked upset with whatever was on so I decided to turn it off. Do you want me to turn it back on?"

Yugi blinked. "No, that's fine." He paused for a moment, tilting his head again. "I just wasn't expecting you to be awake, I guess."

There was a small steady and uncomfortable silence creeping in between them. Yugi felt small and sick for a brief moment, considering it and wondering at its origins. It was odd that they were so uncertain around each other now. Shouldn't it have been so much easier? At least now he was more used to his silence and his steady mannerisms. And Yami should have been used to his more giving nature and slightly flustered acknowledgments when he asked his attention. That was the truth of it, wasn't it? They should have been capable of being around each other without such an issue …

"I am sorry for acting this way."

Yugi blinked and his eyes stretched wide. Yami was looking away now, at the crease of the cushions with furrowed brows. He looked exhausted, more than a little bit so, and he seemed to be curling in on himself as the shadows drifted across his darker gaze.

"I do not know what came over me. And I apologize for taking it out on you so often."

"Taking it out on…?" The smaller teen snorted loudly, then shook his head and raised a brow. "Yami, that's stupid. If you think about it, who else are you going to take it out on? I'm the only one here, after all. So I don't know who else you might take it out on. It's not like my grandpa or mom is going to stick around long enough for you to take your frustrations out on them."

Yami blinked and now his red eyes focused on him. "I should not be taking my frustrations out on _anyone_ is my point, Yugi." His voice had grown sour, perhaps bitter, and he moved to sit up. He did not assume his usual position, straight-backed and almost regal, and instead kept one arm braced on the armrest with his nails curled inward towards the fabric and his other hand on his thigh. "It's not right. I shouldn't be doing this. I didn't used to do this."

Yugi frowned at him, tilting his head. "I don't remember being troubled by it. I mean, everyone does it. If you're going to get upset, I would rather you take it out on me than keep it bottled up."

"That's not healthy."

"Neither is you keeping it suppressed, Yami."

The red-eyed boy stared at him for a long moment. Then he leaned back into the cushions and tipped his head towards him. It was a rolling action, one which exposed much of his neck before his chin tilted downward and Yami was eyeing him from beneath his long lashes with something of a skeptical and annoyed expression. "Do you do this on purpose?"

"Do what on purpose?"

"Miss the point."

"Sometimes. I have a selective tolerance for bullshit."

Yami smirked, then chuckled and smiled at him playfully. "Is that what it is?"

"I think so. I could be wrong. But I'm detecting a lot of bullshit coming from your direction."

He seemed to relax at the friendly tone, smiling at him a bit more genuinely, with warmth that seemed to surpass the amusement in his eyes. "Maybe just a little bit," he agreed, closing his eyes again. "But I truly am sorry. I don't know why I keep getting so nasty with you like this. You don't deserve it."

"I wanted to ask you something, Yami…and you're fine to veto answering if you would like."

His red eyes snapped open again, burning into his with alarm before he sat up and twisted enough to face him with his head tilted and his body half-raised into a more alert state. He was staring at him as if he might have a knife ready to gouge in his side, as if he expected him to launch himself at him and he needed to be ready to get up and flee at any opportunity. But he also looked more annoyed than anything, the amusement washed away, and his muscles locked with the nervous, uncomfortable anticipation that Yugi knew all too well.

"Ask away."

Yugi hesitated. "I'm telling you that you're free to ignore it and say you don't want to answer. You realize that, right?" he requested quietly, searching his face rapidly. "You know that, don't you? I promise I won't hold it against you if you decide not to answer. I don't want you to be upset."

Yami shook his head. "And I'm telling you to ask your question."

The smaller teen smiled a fraction, then shook his head in turn and let out a sigh. "I don't even know if I want to know the answer, honestly," he mumbled softly. He drew in another deep breath, peering at him for a long handful of seconds, and finally looked away. "I…I wanted to ask what might have happened with Fuwa. I know that he and Marik found you. What happened after that? Were you in that greenhouse the entire time? Were you somewhere else? What exactly did he _do_ to you?"

There was a long minute of silence. When Yugi turned back, unsure of himself and whether he should have asked, Yami was peering at him curiously. He did not seem to be upset more than minutely, a fraction flustered rather than aggressive. Then the red-eyed teen moved to sit up and drummed his nails against his leg, eyes flickering across Yugi's face as if searching for the strength to speak. Finally he settled for looking down at his own hands, drumming his fingers and then curling his nails inwards as if to draw blood from his palms.

"Fuwa found me after I had gained consciousness at the river. But it was Marik who was about to kill me at the time. He found me before I was even conscious. He was ready to rip my throat out. I don't quite remember all of the details of that time. It is groggy at best, but that might be because of my suppression rather than any true missing memories." He tilted his head a degree, then rolled his neck and closed his eyes. "They somehow settled on an agreement when Fuwa found me. He said that he could use a hellhound to get to you. He had assumed me to be such because of my eye color. And Marik said something similar about me while they were conversing."

Yugi was frozen for a second. "Marik and Fuwa… Was Marik human at the time or something?"'

"From what I suspect, Fuwa was able to make a deal with the wish hounds. Due to that, I would assume that they gave him the ability to understand the wolves when they spoke. I do not think for even a second that Fuwa had the disease. I think he simply got supernatural aid in learning to understand us when we spoke." He hesitated, eyes opening into slits. And then he turned to Yugi with a harder glint in his gaze. "I _know_ Marik was not human at the time. He was very much in his wolf form. I saw him several times and he snapped at me each time I moved to get up."

The smaller teen shook his head, eyes darkening. "I would have killed him so much sooner if I'd known," he muttered, voice cold. Yami blinked at him, facing him with something between surprise and wonder in his eyes. Yugi shook his head again, looking away. "Okay, so they were both there…?"

"Right, they were both there."

A long minute of silence stretched between them. Yami drew in a breath, then sighed loudly and looked at the ceiling. It reminded him briefly, with the lengthening shadows and the soft darkness that draped across it, of his cage in the labs. The walls had been concrete on three sides, with metal bars on the inside as well for reinforcement. And the front had been glass, so that he could see the guards and the wolves passing through but contained there and unable to produce the strength necessary to break through more often than not.

He blinked and shook this thought away.

"Marik clipped my throat so that I was sluggish and could not attack when Fuwa grabbed me by the scruff. He dragged me to the greenhouse from there, I believe. I cannot remember if I was moved at some point or transported from one spot to another. I am inclined to believe it was the greenhouse that I was stuck in. He had filled in the metal grates with cement. And he had put in a wall of mirrors a few weeks later. I remember more that he tied me to one corner of the building and not the other. And from the other there were squeals and grunts and snarls." Yami tilted his head and looked at Yugi slowly. "He would taunt me and then he would prod me with electricity. And it would enrage me enough to snap. And then he'd toss me out of the cage I was in and into the main area of the greenhouse. From there he'd open the other doors. And those fucking _boars_ —"

Yugi's head snapped up, his eyes wide and horrified. "Boars?" he whispered, then spat and shook his head violently. He snarled under his breath and narrowed his eyes, the blue-violet orbs growing dark with anger and disbelief. "I'd almost forgotten he _fed you alive_ to those fucking things."

Yami was quiet for a moment. "Multiple times a day if I was lucky enough." He tilted his head. "He would separate us using another of the wolves he'd captured in order to herd the boars away from me. And then he'd nurse me back just enough to heal the wounds. But in the meantime he began to put up mirrors…"

"Right… What was up with the mirrors? I don't get why he did that."

"Whenever he would revive me, I would see my reflection first upon waking. It would twist my thoughts. And it made me imagine that it was _me_ who had done that to myself. It made me aggressive towards myself. And it made me more violent than ever. I was soon so enraged by it all that I would throw myself at the glass in order to break it in half. It is a mind trick." Yami shrugged after a moment, looking away as if ashamed or perhaps too upset to pay him attention any longer. "You know that when a wolf is hurt and recovers, most often it will be in a more feral state. And, if that happens, it makes us more likely to attack the first thing we see. For me, that was my own reflection. And that made me more volatile than ever. Whenever I saw my reflection in the boars' eyes I would lose my mind. And I was ripping them to pieces before I even knew what I was doing. After that, he was putting other wolves in the cage with me—not ones that looked like me, but anything with four legs and paws and claws and teeth angered me. I would slaughter them without thought."

Yugi shivered. "You were in the greenhouse when I was locked in there. That's why the pigs were screaming."

"I also ripped Fuwa to pieces while he screamed like a banshee," Yami dismissed him lazily. "You knew this already though. I know you did."

"I…I'd almost forgotten about the boars."

"What you did not know was that I was killing wolves senselessly." He tilted his head. "Members of the mountain pack… Marik would bring them to the slaughter. I killed each and every one of them."

"But not the American wolves that I found that day when I went to the greenhouse," Yugi argued, shaking his head. "No, that one wasn't you. That was Marik. I know that much. He planned to make it look as if he had been attacked by dogs. He led me straight to the bodies and then fled as if his life depended on it. He knew that I would follow the tracks and wind up at the greenhouse. He knew that I would try to face Fuwa and he was expecting it to be the end of me."

Yami nodded slightly, turning away. "Fuwa had plans to skin you and use your pelt as a trophy. I suppose, each time you healed and came back to life, he would skin you again and again. It would be his own personal farm of white fur skins."

Yugi trembled, disgusted, but then looked at him with a horrified expression. "He… He didn't…?"

The red-eyed teen blinked and turned to him, tilting his head for a moment before slowly shaking it. "No, no, it was not done to me. He simply wanted to use me to butcher you. He wanted me in a feral state so that I could weaken you and then he could skin you after he'd managed to separate me from you. He was not stupid enough to trust that I would remain unconscious long enough for him to do that to me. I played possum too often and he nearly got his throat ripped out more than once. If it hadn't been for that damn cattle prod he would have been dead long before you even came to the greenhouse. Although, had Marik not been there either, laughing and warning him each time, I might have gotten out of there far sooner."

Yugi shivered, then shook his head pointedly. "But you're here now. And that's all that matters, right?"

But he sounded slightly defeated and Yami considered him for a long moment before tilting his head and turning away. "Yes, I suppose that is truly all that matters," he agreed slowly. He narrowed his eyes and shook his head. "I am here. You are alive. I am alive. And I'm a little more anxious and messed up than usual. But I guess I owe that to multiple things."

"I don't care that you're a little more anxious and messed up than usual. I only care that you're okay and you're not suffering any longer."

Yami nodded a few times, as if he was distracted and trying to remember what it was he was actually agreeing to. "Yes, yes," he muttered, as if he were in some kind of trance. He blinked, turned his head to look at Yugi slowly, and then lowered his eyes to the cushions again. "I'm okay, Yugi."

Yugi wished he could have believed him, but his tone was heartbreaking and the look in his eyes was one of defeat and so much exhaustion that he was amazed Yami even had the energy to breathe any longer.


	71. Paranoia

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Hopefully biweekly**

 **Chapter Warnings: Discussions of War and Death, Mentions of Suicide/Sacrifice, MILD Cult Mentality, Ambush, Violence, Bloodshed, Death, Superstition, Attempted Forced Murder/Sacrifice**

 **This chapter and the next are on the shorter side so hopefully I can get edits done and have the next one out sooner than I did this one. It's been a long month though, so my apologies for the lateness.**

Chapter LXXI: Paranoia

 _Work Log Entry LXIV (Part I): April, 2008_

 _April 14_

 _We are celebrating Atem's birthday again. It is just another random day chosen on a whim by the boss. No one knows why he is choosing days such as this. And Atem does not seem to care about the celebration in the slightest._

 _It is not as if we are giving him a birthday cake and candles and singing to him._

 _He's strapped to another machine to monitor his heartbeat and brain waves._

 _And the boss has instructed us not to call him by his code name._

 _I think the boss is attempting to see if he recognizes the inconsistencies at the point._

 _April 20_

 _Regardless of his birthday, Atem is twelve years old._

 _Yet he looks no older than eight._

 _I cannot determine if it is his lycanthropy and the ability to reproduce cells so rapidly or if it is from the neglect that we showed him when he was younger._

"Do you think we can even win this war?"

The question came out of the blue. Yugi was sitting across from him, chewing on a granola bar and staring blankly at the television screen as if it might somehow give him guidance. And Yami was studiously looking at a manga as if it might actually give him a sense of excitement to read it. Their earlier conversation had drained him entirely of any desire to talk, but this new question was enough to pique his interest and make him turn to stare at him in open bewilderment, confused and perhaps more than slightly startled by the puzzled and terrified tone he had used to ask it.

Yami blinked, long and slow, and shook his head with a curious expression. "I do not know," he answered in a measured tone. He did not want to say anything that might alarm or potentially scare Yugi more than he seemingly already was. He frowned and tilted his head, thinking for a long moment of what it was he might say or do. Then he drew in a deep breath and looked at the manga in his hands again. It was some kind of vampire story, a love triangle of sorts which made him wrinkle his nose and shake his head. It was hardly worth the read, but it was _distracting_ at the very least. "I do not know how one goes about winning a war, Yugi. I do not know how it is that anyone has ever performed such a feat. It is not with one but with a great many that it happens. And it is not the death of one that dictates the odds, but the murder of many. And I do not know how to measure death against life anymore. I lost that ability a long time ago, when I escaped the labs or perhaps even before then."

Yugi was peering at him now. He could feel his eyes on him but he did not wish to look up.

"So you don't think that Atem is the final deciding factor in this?"

"I don't know how he might be. In truth, war is bloody and messy. It cannot be calculated or measured properly. You cannot account for everything. I think the gods were foolish to think that one Pure-Blood, regardless of their heritage or their experiences, could do such a thing. The pack is right to consider that they are ready to lay their lives down as they know it is what will be necessary. But it is not possible that they will be the only solution either."

"Are you saying that there will need to be more wolves or something else entirely? You're kind of losing me right now."

Yami smiled faintly, shaking his head, and closed the manga to turn to him with a small tilt of his head. "A war cannot be controlled, Yugi. If it cannot be controlled, it cannot be measured and prepared for. If that is the truth of it, one cannot expect that this will save them no matter the accommodations that are made in an attempt to minimize deaths." He shrugged. "What I am saying is that I think more wolves are bound to get involved, victory is the short-sighted solution to it, and that death is inevitable. I do not see many lives being spared, especially with how many wolves tend to think this will be the cure-all for all troubles which ail the werewolf species as a whole."

Yugi nodded after a moment, looking sick. His cheeks had taken on a slightly pink hue and he looked almost feverish in the way his eyes bore into his for a moment. He lowered his gaze after a moment, licking his lips, and stared at the carpet blankly for a long handful of heartbeats. Then he nodded again, drew in a deep breath, and turned to him once more.

"Then what do you think the casualties will come out to be?"

Yami blinked and shook his head. "I cannot tell you that. I don't even think I could come up with a number that might encompass it in the slightest. Yugi, I know that you want to think that you can fix this and help the lycanthropes, but I don't see that being what the solution of this war will truly be."

"Well… What do you think the odds of all of this getting out of hand will be?"

The red-eyed teen stared at him for a moment. He was either missing the point or truly desperate to hear him give him some kind of numbers. So he blinked, tilted his head, and played with the idea of the latter. "A hundred percent."

Yugi nodded again, nibbling his bottom lip. There was something which flashed in his eyes and Yami wondered if perhaps things were already out of control and Yugi was just trying to convince himself that they weren't. He felt bad then that he had not played the part he'd desired of him at that moment. "I, uh, had a different question I wanted to ask you, by the way," the smaller boy continued as if this new line of conversation might correlate with this statement as well. He chewed on his bottom lip again and stared at Yami as if he might find answers in him that he could nowhere else.

And Yami wished he could tell him to search elsewhere. He wished more than ever that he was brave enough to tell him he did not have the answers he wanted and what little he could offer were of no consequence. But there was something in the way that Yugi stared at him that he knew the smaller teen _knew_ the answers resided in him. And he hated himself and Yugi for it more than he could possibly put into words.

"What do you think the odds are that half of the wolves in that pack were experimented on?"

"The pack from the mountains? The one that calls you their alpha now? Or the combined packs as a whole?" Yami asked, furrowing his brows. "Because if it is the former, I would say I doubt very much so that many of them were experimented on. They act as a family unit too easily and none of them seem to hold any mental scarring of any kind. None of them seem so incredibly paranoid as I would assume other wolves from the escape to be."

"You aren't paranoid."

"I am. I just do not show it as easily."

Yugi snorted softly, then shook his head. "If you say so, Yami." He rolled his eyes after a moment and turned away again. "Anyways, do you think that Annie was experimented on? I mean, her being the daughter of Slifer, I would think that would be a pretty big thing for them to want to harness, right?"

Yami stared at him blankly for a moment, thinking hard about the question. What were the odds of Annie being experimented on? He did not believe them to be too incredibly high. He had the feeling that she had not been the one to suffer such horrors. He thought she had suffered a great many others, but not the horrors of which the labs produced. She had seemed more warped mentally in the fact that she had wanted to give her pack to Yugi so simply. But it had not been as if she had ever proclaimed herself to be Atem as Marik had formerly. It made him bristle for a brief second before he shook this thought off rather angrily.

"I do not think that she was experimented on, no."

"Okay, so if you don't think she was experimented on, why do you think she was so eager to give me the pack like that? I mean, she had to have been a little…um…suicidal to go through with a plan like that. She even killed herself—"

"No, _she_ did not kill herself. She asked another of her pack to. And they did so in order to ensure that you gained control of the pack. She could not have killed herself. It was one of her daughters but I do not know which and I have no idea how to tell apart their scents nor do I quite remember which ones I came across in her den that day."

But something about the way that Yugi stared at him after saying such a thing made him wonder if the smaller teen might have an idea. He blinked, however, and the look passed from his blue-violet eyes in an instant. He smiled faintly, then shook his head at Yami as if he were waiting for him to catch up but did not truly care if he did. It was something inconsequential, but he still seemed to be teasing him with the bit of knowledge that Yami himself did not perhaps know.

"Right, one of her daughters did it. You're right. There's no way she could have done that in her wolf form. Her throat was cleanly torn out. I remember now. Not a hair was out of place and it didn't even look like it was violent at all. I was amazed." He nodded again, then sighed softly and shook his head. "Anyways, if she wasn't experimented on, why do you think that she or the rest of the pack was willing to just follow along like they did?"

"Because she was raised knowing that one day Atem would find his way to her. And she raised her daughters to believe the same thing. I think that Slifer told her it first and told her to step aside for him the moment that she suspected he was among them. And I think that from then on the wolves knew only that as their truth and purpose."

"You think it's as simple as that?"

"I think there truly is no other explanation for their behavior. But if Slifer were to tell them that their purpose was this and they were able to simply make this their end goal in life that, yes, this is in fact the solution that they all came across. It's basically brainwashing, I suppose."

"Yeah, it reminds me of cults on television."

"Then why might that be so surprising to you?"

Yugi shrugged and looked away. "I guess I was hoping that you might have a different idea about it than I did." He pursed his lips after a moment, then turned back and searched his eyes. Yami blinked and considered him, wondering at the notion that he might have somehow come across a different thought than him and narrowed his eyes into slits. "Speaking of, which of the three of them do you think was the first Pure-Blood? Ra, Slifer or Obelisk?"

Yami was silent for a moment, suspicion making his body cold as he shook his head and looked away. "I think that Slifer was the first Pure-Blood. I think she is the oldest and I think she is the first to be given immortality." He shook his head after a moment. "But then, I might also somehow be wrong, no? Perhaps it is as simple as Ra was born first as she is the guardian of life and so Slifer was the last."

"I kind of feel like it had to be that way, you know?"

"That Ra was first and Slifer last? Then Obelisk is the middle child?"

"I think so. I mean, you have to have life before you can have war and war breeds death."

"I suppose I see your logic there. But you forget that Lupa already existed and so did Fenrir. Fenrir is considered death incarnate for many and Lupa life."

Yugi blinked, then frowned. "That's true. I guess then that way you can at least say any of them was the first." He sighed and shook his head. "Then again, it doesn't really matter, does it? I was just curious about it. So I guess it makes sense that it could go any way with who's oldest or not."

Yami shrugged. "I suppose so, yes."

Yugi hesitated for a long moment, then he turned to face Yami completely. His eyes were searching his and Yami wondered at the sight, nearly bristling with alarm at the way he stared at him. But then Yugi seemed to relax again, instead turning away with something of a small smile.

"Do you know what upset the pack so badly that day that they'd been attacked? I mean, besides the fact that we weren't there when it happened. I mean, do you remember the way they kept looking at you and all that? I want to know what it was that upset them so much. Any idea?"

Yami blinked at him, then narrowed his eyes into slits. "Is that a trick question?"

Yugi startled, eyes snapping to his and growing profusely wide with growing confusion. "No! I mean…s-should it be?" he asked after a moment. He tilted his head and peered at him in open bewilderment. "I don't understand how it would be?"

Yami blinked again, then swallowed thickly and looked away. "It is my eye color," he finally mumbled. "It is the fact that I have red eyes. It is a hellhound trait. And it is not as if my fur is gray and speckled or multiple shades. It is entirely black, like the night sky. Because of this I look much like a hellhound, and they have no reason to believe anything different when they one time thought this formerly. Do you not remember their protests that I was the traitor? It did not only stem from the fact that I had run across them before. Annie had been watching me for a while and Aki had put it in her head when I first arrived there that I could not be Atem because I was a hellhound."

Yugi stared at him as if he had grown a second head. "You can't be serious."

"I am very serious right now, Yugi. It is the fact that I have black fur and red eyes that they assume me to be another subspecies entirely. And it is not as if they are entirely wrong. I should never have been born with such a combination as a lycanthrope. It's strange and unnatural in every way." He shrugged after a moment, staring at the manga cover and wondering if it would be easier to ignore Yugi if he pretended to flip through it again. He licked his lips, considering this, but pushed it away after a moment. It was not wise of him to do such a thing. It would only cause Yugi pain… "And they had just been attacked by hellhounds as it was."

"You can't be serious," he insisted, annoyed and shaking his head. "Yami, I've told them _several_ times that I'm the one who bit you, remember? So how would that translate into you being a hellhound when I'm a lycanthrope?"

"I don't think any of them believe that story any longer. I think they were all rather suspicious of it to begin with. I don't think that any of them came to care past that. I think all of them have had their doubts about it for a while now." He faltered after a moment, narrowing his eyes into slits and shaking his head after a long moment. "But I do not think it would be very wise of me to be among them anytime soon either. They're still scared after what happened and even with that pack hunt I do not see them being happy with me in the slightest."

Yugi blinked, staring at him again as if he had just grown a second head. His eyes stretched wide, horrified, and he stared at him in clear disbelief for a split second. Then he shook his head slowly, the shock still on his face before he abruptly snorted. "Okay, sure, so I go to the camp alone from now on, right? Is that seriously what you're telling me right now, Yami?"

"No, I am saying that it would be perhaps smarter to take Jonouchi with you rather than me from now on."

" _Jonouchi_ is not my _beta_."

"Did you just _sneer_ at me?"

Yugi flushed a bright, startled and ashamed red. Then he awkwardly cleared his throat and looked away, running a hand through his hair and shaking his head. "I didn't mean to. I just…" He huffed again. "That's so stupid. These wolves are so fucking… _clueless_."

Yami stared at him for a moment, then shook his head. "Perhaps," he answered, "but that does not mean that you need to be so worried about it. The truth of it is simple. It will happen as it is meant to. They are scared and that's fine. You are overreacting."

"Oh, so sorry I might be upset about that. My beta is being basically pushed out of the pack because they're all paranoid morons. And here he is telling me not to be upset."

"I had thought you to be more sensible than this. You are far too emotional right now. You need to remember that the pack comes first before an individual wolf."

"Since _when_?" Yugi spat, spinning on him. "That sure doesn't seem to apply whenever it comes to _me_!"

"You are Atem. I am not."

"But you're my beta. You're in charge of those wolves when I'm not there."

"And I am never there when you are not. The rank is all but unfulfilled and used in only name, Yugi. You do not heed me when I say such a thing, but I am telling you so now." He shook his head and narrowed his eyes. "You do not seem to be considering it as the others are. They survived an attack from the very beast that their beta looks so much alike."

"I don't…"

When Yugi trailed off, Yami could not help but snicker in delight, shaking his head. "You _do_ care," he stated, smiling faintly. "You can't even say you don't. That would be incredibly unfair of you, don't you think?"

He huffed. "Shut up."

* * *

Yugi pressed through the snow, nose to the ground and head tilted. His ears flicked back and forth endlessly, listening intently for movement within the trees. It had taken him only a short amount of time to find the scent he had been looking for. And he had darted out after it as quickly as he could. He had to make this fast, before Yami woke up and potentially followed him or something else happened. He did not want to be responsible for Yami's anger. They had just barely gotten back to speaking again more easily when they'd eaten. But Yami had soon passed out mid-conversation with him as he was playing video games. And when he'd looked over his shoulder, the red-eyed lycanthrope had been curled up on his side fast asleep before Yugi had even gotten the idea to ask if he was okay.

Now the white wolf flicked his ears again, keeping his nose steadily twitching as he breathed in and out. It was weird that he had caught this scent so quickly, however. He'd assumed it would take longer than it had, something that slightly unnerved him but also left him excited. The sooner he got this done, the quicker he could go back and make sure that Yami remained asleep.

No doubt he would wake soon for a pee break and then he would see that Yugi was gone and he did not know what might happen after that. He might change and come after him or he might stay in his room and possibly go back to sleep. He hoped the latter was what he did. Truthfully, now that Yami had proven he was capable of taking on his human form again, he did not want to see his wolf one for the moment. It would be more helpful for Yami to remain human for a little while. He wouldn't lose any body fat or risk harming himself if he was to remain in his human form instead of change into a wolf again.

He drew in a deep breath, then paused and looked about himself. Something was different. The scent he was following had merged with several others. And none of them were recognizable to him. He blinked, tilting his head, and tipped his ears forward. A new sound arose, of multiple paws passing through the snow. He did not recognize them either, but they did not make him bristle for the moment. So he simply turned towards them and focused for a moment.

His nose wriggled and he thought he knew the smells coming to him now to be somewhat regular to him. His mind seemed to know them for the most part, something that he had not considered before. But he knew them to be wolves within his pack, even if he could not identify them by name. He pricked his ears further forward, thinking for a moment to reconsider his plan and perhaps turn and run the other way. But there was also something simply…

 _Wrong_ at the moment…

There was something _incredibly_ wrong, actually.

And he could not pinpoint it for the moment. But he could feel it in his bones as his blood began to grow as cold as ice and his thoughts seemed to slow in his head. His fur rose into a bristle against his command and he backed up a step, ears flicking. The snow seemed to crunch too loud beneath his weight and he bristled further. His heart was in his throat abruptly and he flattened his ears against his skull for a moment.

 _Atem_? a voice called, startling him. He blinked and turned his head towards the trees, in the direction of the sound of the paw steps approaching him. And then he blinked and looked away from them, alarm making his blood rush faster. Something was incredibly wrong… He bristled further as the small patrol came closer. He recognized Aki and Mai, though the others were a stunning blank to him. He furrowed his brows and looked at them in confusion. But then he blinked.

The two of them—he knew their names. Slifer had mentioned them before. Ayukawa, staring at him with those fathomless cold and distant eyes and Brooke Walker, who he had seen get between Aki and Yusei during arguments more than once. Ayukawa sulked more than anything, but Brooke tended to the yearlings most often, playing with them and keeping them stimulated. He had seen her with Yusei more than the others, though Yuya and Syrus were quick to follow. He had never seen her with Chazz, however, but he thought that was more because of the beta's persistence in showing himself to be stronger than the rest of them.

 _What are you doing here_?

Yugi blinked and looked at Mai with a confused expression. _What's that smell_? he demanded instead, feeling breathless as he shook his head. _There's something not right over here. What the hell is that smell_?

He'd been chasing a scent and he'd known that where it led was far too close to the camp, but he had not expected it to be crossed so many times with other ones. What the hell was going on right now? He blinked and looked around, bristling and snarling low in his throat. There was something wrong. There was something _terribly wrong—_

 _Hellhounds_ , Aki snarled suddenly, spinning on the four wolves behind her. _Take a flanking form—_

But her words were cut off immediately. Something came from beneath the snow nearby. It was a dark, hideous shape, and its eyes glowed like coals. It hit Ayukawa so violently that the she-wolf flew through the air. She hit the snow in a tumble, staggering to her feet again. But there was blood falling from her throat. And she looked dizzy. Yugi gaped at her, horrified, and then looked at the darker-furred wolf a few feet away from him. It was staring at Brooke with a wagging tail, snarling low in its throat. And the golden eyes seemed to be burning.

Yugi would have expected it to be Valon had it not been for the long, whippet-like tail and sloping chest. He blinked, horrified, and then looked to Ayukawa. _Are you all right_? _Can you fight_? he demanded, though he spun quickly on the newest source of noise. There was a single shift of weight. And then he sprang back. Another wolf shot into the air, barely missing him by an inch. Teeth snapped shut where his throat had been. He snarled and lowered his head. They had taken to covering themselves in the snow? They had truly…?

He spun on the newcomer, snarling and snapping his jaws. And then he stiffened. He knew that face. He knew the expression in those eyes. The yellow of them was strange, like the headlights of a car. But they looked disturbingly flat, almost empty. And he remembered briefly how they had reminded him of fall leaves a long time ago. Yugi felt unsteady, confused.

 _Amelda_? he muttered, unsure of what more to do. He knew him. He had been introduced to him that day after the library incident with Valon. _Valon_ had been the one to perform introductions. So…then…did that mean _Valon_ was involved in this? It made no sense. Valon had made it rather clear that he wanted nothing to do with the war. He had made it rather clear that he did not want to aid nor harm Yugi in any way. He had helped him for the sake of avoiding detection for his little sister and insuring that she did not get caught in the backlash of it all.

 _Who_?

Yugi bristled, unsure of himself now. Aki was staring at him. Mai was sizing up the other hellhound. And Amelda—oh yes, it was definitely him; his eyes lit up with laughter upon seeing his face—stared back at Yugi. Ayukawa was still struggling for her footing. And Brooke was frozen in place, bristling and snarling softly. She had backed up a step and was closer to Aki and Mai. And Yugi had the startling thought that she attempting to use them for cover. She seemed more scared than anything, as if she had never fought before and had no true understanding of how to do so.

He bristled, turning back to Amelda. How many of them were there? There were only five of his wolves. So how many were in this little ambush he'd set up? And how had they been so smart as to hide under the snow first? Yugi could not breathe for a moment. Who had suggested such a thing? Had one of them known that he had done the same with Yami that night when Espa and Panik were hunting them? He could not recall seeing another wolf. He could not recall seeing another _person_. Perhaps they had realized after they'd escaped? Maybe it had gotten back to the wolves in the labs and—

But Amelda was not from the labs.

He was simply a hellhound.

And friends with Valon.

He bore his teeth and stalked forward, tail raised. Amelda met the action with a wag of his tail. He was a smaller, more slender build. He was like a large poodle in shape, with the long coat of a wolf and the tail of a pit bull. He peeled his lips further back, snarling.

 _Oh, so you're Atem_? Amelda purred at him. _I would never have thought. You were so alone and confused when we met._

 _Then allow me to change that memory some,_ Yugi snapped, lunging at him. It forced the hellhound back a step. He pricked his ears forward and stalked after him. _I don't know about you, Amelda, but I don't think it's too smart to be baiting someone stronger than you._

 _Stronger_? _Than_ me? _If you were you wouldn't have fallen for such a simple trick_.

 _You used Valon's scent to make it harder to distinguish yours. Who the hell is your bitch over there_?

 _Don't be so mean. You don't have to call her a bitch. She's actually quite sweet. Maybe when you get reborn you can fuck her a little too_.

Yugi sprang at him, missing. But now he felt the snow shift beneath him. He scrambled for his footing. His claws scraped on a loose stone. His paw wrenched sideways. But he ducked. The snow exploded over his head. And the canine shot over him. Yugi scrambled back a step, startled. This one was a light gray, almost silver shade. And it made his heart hammer in his chest. Their eyes were a hideous maroon color. And they looked too healthy to be a hellhound from the labs. He backed up, bristling again.

What the fuck was going on?

The hellhound turned on him, wagging his tail. And Amelda, he noticed, darted out of his sight and past him into the trees. Aki and Mai were snarling, teeth snapping. He risked a small sideways glance up the miniscule slope. They were struggling with the female hellhound. She had taken a chunk out of Aki's side and attempted to hamstring Mai. And so now she was simply circling them. Amelda had darted at Ayukawa who was snapping and biting at him in a sluggish manner. The blood loss had clearly become too much. And Brooke was trying to run for it…

 _You're Code Name Atem, hmm_? the new hellhound purred. He stood at Yugi's side, wagging his tail and awaiting his full acknowledgment. And, as Yugi looked over, he felt his heart plummet. The hellhound was far larger than him, with even longer legs than his own. He was bigger in build, in height, with a jaw like that of a great Dane or a mastiff. Yugi bristled further, alarmed and confused. How had he…? _Was_ he from the labs? _You look a little confused. Allow me to introduce myself._

Yugi snapped his jaws when he pressed too close.

 _I am Sartorius, beta in my pack._

 _Pack_? he sneered. _You call the three of you a_ pack?

 _The three of us_? _You stupid child, of course not. But I am the one in charge of the other two for this little expedition. And I don't think that you should be scoffing when my pack has already killed a good portion of yours, hmm_?

He backed up again, snarling low in his throat. _I would suggest that you take Amelda and your little bitch and run while you still have the chance._

 _Oh_? _And do you plan to back that threat up or are you just going to stand there and whine at me_? Sartorius pressed closer, then snapped his jaws at his face. Yugi backed up just in time to avoid the attack, then snarled lower in his throat, hateful. _Just wait until you meet my alpha. I don't think you'll be able to contain your excitement when you see her. She's got the special task of killing you._

A scream made his head snap around. Ayukawa's head was hanging limply from Amelda's jaws, neck snapped. And Brooke was being attacked violently by the female hellhound. Aki and Mai were both standing aside now, judging the situation more than anything else. Yugi stiffened, unsure of what more to do. And then he turned back to Sartorius. He was beta?

Beta was second in command.

If he killed him then the devastation might be short-lived but it would still happen.

It might be just enough to slow the hellhounds down…

 _We were actually told not to engage you. But we were told to kill any and all of your pack if they were loose in the woods._ He gave him a smile that reminded Yugi of the wolves in fairytale books. He was staring at him with violently glowing maroon eyes. And it did not help that his eyes looked unnaturally yellow beyond his irises, and because of this, it almost appeared that he had no pupils at all. _I don't see that she'll mind it should I harm you just a little._

Yugi wagged his tail. _Try me,_ he snarled. He braced himself, raising his tail higher, and squared his shoulders. He could hear the fighting over the small ledge growing far more furious. And he realized that Mai and Aki had gotten into the fray again. He could not tell who it was that was screaming now. But one of them was struggling and flailing. He thought he would have recognized them had it been either of his pack mates. It was just instinctive. But he could not be sure. So he would prepare for the worst in a moment.

Yugi snapped at him, grabbing at his neck. The hellhound backed up a step just in time. Fur flew, however, as Yugi shook his head. Sartorius had reared up on his hind legs. And Yugi settled his weight in his haunches. He lunged at him. And the hellhound sprang back again. But Yugi landed a step from him. And he launched himself forward again immediately. His teeth caught his throat this time. But the hold was weak and he was shaken off immediately.

 _Funny. Pegasus said you didn't fight._

 _Pegasus is_ dead.

 _A travesty, I assure you._

Yugi snarled and backed up a step, aiming more properly. He lunged as if for his neck again. Sartorius backed up on his haunches. And Yugi caught his muzzle. The lip was a loose one, dangling like a large dog's. He snarled, dismayed, but tossed his head regardless. Sartorius snarled, then reared up again. Yugi released him quickly and backed up.

He had the looser skin like a Saint Bernard. With the longer fur on top of that, Yugi was not sure he could get to the jugular properly. The combination was a defense mechanism he wasn't sure how to navigate. He backed up a step again. Then he pricked his ears forward further and snarled low in his throat. Sartorius wagged his tail, a long and plumy thing almost like a scarf.

Yugi narrowed his eyes. _Was_ he part Saint Bernard? Or perhaps he was mastiff? Hellhounds were part dog, after all. He didn't truly need to know the breed. He just had to know how to fight him properly. Because going for the throat was a weak attempt for the moment. And all it was doing was making the hellhound sneer and laugh at him, enjoying his confusion. He had not fought a dog or a wolf with such loose skin before.

He backed up a step, considering. And then he sprang at him. He was not sure where he was aiming, but he looked towards the shoulder. It was possible to crush the bone there and cripple him for the moment. Loose skin on the neck did not mean the same for the rest of the body.

He snarled and caught the hellhound on his scruff. The momentum was enough to knock the larger canine over. And Yugi scrambled for his footing again. He was not prepared for Sartorius to roll over. And it nearly winded him when his back legs kicked upon his belly.

He backed up a step. Then he lunged for his face. But the hellhound tossed his head backwards hard. And it was enough to make Yugi stumble. Teeth grabbed at his throat, but he jerked back. Fur went flying. But there was no sting to proclaim split skin. He backed up again. His ears flicked rapidly. He could see Amelda fighting Aki and losing terribly to the she-wolf. And Mai had gone about keeping the female hellhound at bay.

Yugi wondered if that was his best option as well. Perhaps keeping Sartorius in front of him was enough for the moment. The other wolves had to have heard them. No doubt he was going to see them come running soon. There was no way that they wouldn't. There was absolutely no way. Yet, as he faced him, he could only hear the snarling. And Sartorius was clearly not as amused as he had been before. He was snarling and he looked _livid_ now.

Yugi prepared himself, baring his teeth. When Sartorius sprang, he ducked and backed up. He readied himself to snap his teeth into his face. And he prepared himself even further to find himself trapped by that loose skin. He would have to find a way around it, however. It would have to be done. Maybe if he moved fast enough…

But he doubted speed would do him much. He needed power. And he did not have that same anger he had that night that Bakura had attacked Yami. He did not feel that need to kill. And so he faltered. Brooke and Ayukawa were dead. Slifer had told him those names because she had known they would die soon after. He, however, was not in that group. But both Mai and Aki had been. But the three of them were stronger fighters, weren't they? Aki was a vicious she-wolf in the midst of a fight. And Mai was sharp and cunning, wasn't she? He didn't want to have to admit that the two of them had died on his watch. But he would do so if it meant that he and Mai and Aki got out of this okay.

He backed up a step again. His tail wagged once. He drew his lips back further.

And Sartorius slammed into him. His teeth clamped into Yugi's shoulder. And the white wolf twisted to catch him in turn. They landed heavily on all four. And Yugi shook his head as he caught the hellhound's shoulder as well. The force of it tossed them both sideways.

And Sartorius _flipped_.

It was a stunning thing.

Yugi felt his jaws slip from his flesh. And he felt the fur and muscle tear. But he saw Sartorius hit the ground on his back. His legs flailed and Yugi opened his jaws wide as he stared down at him.

He sprang for his throat despite the disadvantage. And Sartorius used the momentum to twist onto his belly. Yugi turned and twisted his body, aligning himself to brace his weight across the other male's shoulders. But the action only slightly stunted the hellhound. He managed to rise up, to thrust his shoulders. And Yugi scrambled for his grip, spitting in fury. But his legs caught themselves, his balance saved. He landed alongside him. And, as Sartorius aimed for his throat, he dodged back. Their teeth snapped shut inches from each other. Yugi backed up a step, snarling and wagging his tail once more.

Yugi sprang at him now. And he caught his scruff. He caught and held it and the hellhound reared up. His jaws opened but they were shorter than Yugi's own. And so they missed his throat where he'd aimed. His teeth snapped shut an inch from his fur. Yugi snarled and tossed his head. And then he jerked his body sideways. Sartorius flailed, snarling, as he hit the ground on his side. Yugi released, then sprang again.

He tasted blood only minutely. And the hellhound rushed at him. His left paw rose and slashed at his shoulder. But he could not push enough weight into the attack without toppling. Yugi knew this well enough.

And so he pressed his weight into his hind legs. He pushed forward and Sartorius was forced back. The gray wolf's head was forced beneath his. He was trying to back up and pulling Yugi instead. And Yugi refused to release. It would be foolish of him to do such a thing. To release him, when he finally had a grip, would have been devastating. So he held firm as the hellhound struggled to knock him off. He shook himself and Yugi simply pressed his weight into his hindquarters. His upper body was pulled off the ground and his neck ached. But he did not lose his balance.

And Sartorius exhausted himself. He was huffing and panting when he stopped, head lowered. But then he reared up. The new change of direction brought Yugi closer to him. And the white wolf barely suppressed a harsh yelp. Teeth had dug into the muscle of his forelimb, right into his shoulder. He could not lower his right leg. And so he shifted his grip. His left leg rose and fell upon his shoulder. And his claws dug into the long fur and soft skin beneath.

Sartorius shook himself violently. And Yugi flailed. He could not keep his balance. His weight was too precarious in its distribution. And so he was flipped. He hit the ground hard enough that it winded him. But his jaws did not loosen their grip. And the hellhound shook harder. Yugi's leg wrenched and popped. But he refused to let go. But it was when Sartorius released his leg and shook himself that Yugi felt his neck pop. The pain made him release, scrambling for air. He swore his vision was dancing with stars. And his neck ached so violently he feared moving.

The hellhound was on him immediately. Yugi kicked and scrambled. And teeth caught his throat, shaking him. Yugi was thrown off his feet, flailing. He twisted his back legs and tried to brace for the ground. The snow was flying. His body ached and pulsed with pain. And then he was abruptly pulled across the snow. He yelped, flailing, and Sartorius released him violently. He flailed again, eyes snapping open and heart pounding. He scrambled for his paws, dizzy as his body screamed with pain. His eyes snapped to his savior, eyes wide.

The she-wolf was heavily wounded. Her right side was bleeding furiously. And her fur was caked there. Her eyes were wild. Her tail was up. And she was struggling with the task of holding the hellhound off. She had pushed him back and was shaking where she pressed her weight into her limbs. And, for a split second, Yugi honestly thought the hellhound would kill her. He saw him snarling, watched him as he started forward with a sneer on his face.

But he never reached her.

Yugi was shaking as reality hit him.

And Aki was so stunned she collapsed. The relief was clear in her eyes, but so was the anger as well.

Sartorius had gotten bulldozed in the side. And he'd flipped once more. He was on his back, teeth in his throat. And he was flailing, kicking desperately. His claws caught a bit of fur and his attacker backed up a step. But he was snarling, looming over him, and his tail was wagging furiously. When the hellhound scrambled for his paws, the other snarled at him. He bunched his muscles and crouched lower. Then he sprang forward. His teeth opened wide, then snapped shut. The hellhound was pulled hard off his feet. The other tossed him a few feet away, standing and wagging his tail again.

He was all raw muscle beneath his smooth pelt. And he looked furious as he peered at the hellhound. His tail wagged faster than ever. And he came forward in a trot, though he hovered a couple of feet away. The wolf hesitated a moment as the hellhound stumbled for his feet. He looked dizzy. And the gash in his throat was by far larger than Yugi had assumed it to be. Against the pale smoky silver of his coat it looked as if he had been gouged violently.

And then the black wolf came at him. The two of them collided in a splash of red and black and gray. And the hellhound screamed. The noise was enough to make Mai and the other two halt. And Yugi saw Amelda tuck his tail between his legs and flee for the trees. Mai and the female hellhound gaped. Mai was bleeding and looked exhausted. And the hellhound appeared almost to be quaking. Her leg had been hideously wounded. Yugi could see the bone poking out. It was a jagged split, one of fractured bones like a broken tree branch. He trembled, relieved, but could not keep his eyes there for long.

The snarling was like a roar. And his head snapped back. Yami had pinned Sartorius on his back. And his teeth were in his eye as he shook his head violently. He refused to let up and the hellhound kicked as he screamed and struggled. He kicked harder, bit at the air as if it might intimidate him. Yami shook him harder, stepping in the same moment. The snow rose and flew into the air. And Yami shook him as rapidly as a dog might their favorite rope toy.

Sartorius looked almost lifeless beneath him. His kicks were far too weak. And his tail kept rising and falling in the air. He was spitting and snarling, however. And he seemed to be perhaps trying to wait the lycanthrope out. But Yugi could see that Yami had gotten his eye. And he'd crushed much of the bone there surrounding it. The black wolf had aimed to kill. And he might have missed but he'd likely permanently crippled him in turn. Sartorius had begun barking. And Yami snarled and shook harder.

The barking noise was deep and quivering. And the wolf shook him again. But he did not follow this time. And Sartorius managed just barely to gain his footing. His face was hideously marred. Blood caked the entire left side of his face. And he snarled, flailing harder. He screamed again and Yami shook him harder. But the effort loosened his grip. And the hellhound slipped out of his jaws. The hellhound stumbled forward a few steps, then turned on Yami again. He charged him with open jaws—

—and missed.

He had feinted at him, then taken off running.

Yami lowered his head to the snow. And then he trembled visibly. When he collapsed, he was panting for air. And the air was rolling with steam. He was shaking and panting. And he looked exhausted. His sides seemed to collapse in upon themselves with the force of his gasping breaths. His eyes were shut tightly and his ears clamped against his head. He lay in the snow, facing away from Yugi.

The white wolf hesitated, then turned to Aki. _Are you okay_? he demanded. She had to be exhausted. She had not moved from her spot in the snow. She shot him a disdainful look, rose to her paws, and turned to trot over to where Brooke and Ayukawa lay dead. Mai was at her side in an instant. And both of them sniffed and checked on one another. Yugi blinked, then turned immediately back to Yami.

 _How about you, aibou_? _Are_ you _all right_?

The black wolf remained facing away from him. And then he slowly rose for his paws. He was still shaking. But he was standing at the least. He pricked his ears and peered at Yugi after a moment. Then he drew his lips back and showed his teeth angrily.

 _Why did you come here_?

Yugi blinked, startled. _I needed to see if I could find Valon. I was following his scent but—_

 _You should never have come out here_.

 _They would have all been killed if I hadn't_!

Yami stared at him as if he were a disgusting creature he did not know. _Yugi, you_ idiot. _It was a trap. It was a goddamned trap. Because_ one _of them knew that you knew Valon_! he roared, chomping his teeth at him. _And what would you have done if Aki had not gotten to you in time_? _You fool_!

Yugi flinched and lowered his head, flattening his ears against his skull. _Please, Yami, don't…_

Yami shook his head, sneering as his lips curled back violently. Then he looked away again and pricked his ears. His head snapped up again, sniffing at the air. He blinked, bristling, and considered the trees. He got to his feet, looking over his shoulder as if he might flee. But then he trembled again and his head lowered. _Gods damn it,_ he muttered, though Yugi still peered at him in concern. He raised and turned his head as well, then stiffened.

Oh gods, more wolves were coming.

 _Are you okay_? _Did he hurt you_? he asked after a moment, turning on Yami now. He trembled faintly, unsure of what more to do. He tilted his head again, ran his tongue over his nose, and then flattened his ears. _Aibou, I need to know if you're wounded._

 _I am fine. He clipped me on the shoulder but I'm fine. It's more of a bruise than a bite. He did not manage to even break the skin._ Yami shot him an annoyed look, then shifted his weight and peered around at Aki and Mai. _Oh…_

Yugi blinked, turning around to see what he was looking at, and then faced him again. _Yeah, Ayukawa and Brooke didn't make it,_ he said softly, shaking his head and looking at the snow. _I didn't move fast enough to prevent Amelda doing it._

 _Who_? Yami snarled, blinking. _You_ know _the hellhound who did it_?

 _I…Amelda is a friend of Valon's. And I met him only once. But I know he goes to school with me. I don't know why he was here or anything like that, though. I have no idea why he decided to do this._ He bristled faintly and shook his head slowly, turning away and shaking slightly. He flicked his tongue over his nose again, ears pricked towards him again. Then he shivered again and looked to Yami with a horrified expression. _I don't know why he did this. But I'm going to make him pay for this. This was… He's not even from the labs_! _But he's working with the hellhounds from them_!

Yami tilted his head, staring at him. _Hellhounds are drawn to chaos. You know that. I have told you such several times. You do not listen to me, is what it is._

Yugi blinked. _Yami, you're almost the only one I listen to anymore._

There was a single second of hesitation, and then the red-eyed wolf glanced away entirely. _Yes_ , he mumbled in a grudging tone. _Maybe that's the problem more than anything else._

The white wolf turned and stared at him, confused and alarmed by the defeated tone that came over Yami's voice as he finished his statement. He looked as if he wanted nothing more than to lie down and wait the situation out. But he remained seated there, ears flicking, head turning slightly as the sound of their approach grew more prominent. His red eyes flickered to Yugi after a moment and the smaller wolf flattened his ears against his head, still shaken by the way his voice had sounded mere seconds ago.

 _Are you okay_? he pressed, tone becoming slightly flustered as he shook his head. _Before they get here, I want to know that you're_ truly _okay, Yami._

The red-eyed male blinked and turned away. _I am fine._

The short response was just enough to be delivered upon hearing the steps grow more rapid. Yugi blinked and turned his head as the new patrol of wolves approached. The small group of them came over to the bodies first, sniffing at them before turning to Aki and then Mai. It took them a moment to register that Yugi was even there, or Yami. And, when they did, the she-wolf in the lead snarled and pricked her ears, bristling as she stepped closer.

 _Looks like you missed one,_ she growled softly. The other wolves behind her raised and turned their heads. But Yugi noted immediately that they shifted awkwardly and with clear distress. Syrus, Yusei, Chazz, Serena and Zane stood behind her. All of them were flicking their ears, tilting their heads, and looking at him and Yami with clearly unnerved expressions. The she-wolf came over the slight incline and jumped forward into the deeper snow. Her brown eyes were set entirely on Yami, her reddish fur lifted in a bristle. _How about I fix that for you_?

 _Fix it for me_? Yugi muttered, blinking and glancing at Yami slowly before bristling as he pricked his ears forward and towards her. _Excuse me_? _Are you insinuating that Yami is a hellhound_?

Yami flicked an ear beside him, then turned his head away and looked down at the snow as if it might somehow surge upward and swallow him altogether. He shook his head when Yugi glanced at him from the corner of his eye.

 _He's got the red eyes and black coat of one,_ the she-wolf said in a dismissive tone. _Why anyone would assume him to be a lycanthrope is beyond me, but I can rectify that situation altogether._

 _Or you can back the fuck off before I rip your throat out._

The other wolves in her patrol all flattened their ears and quickly looked away again. Yusei was digging slightly in the snow. Syrus had lowered himself to the ground and was quivering. Chazz was similar to Zane in the fact that they both pricked their ears forward and quickly looked back to the two. Serena, however, had gone about checking on the other two she-wolves' bodies. Joy, however, simply sniffed at him disdainfully and stepped closer still.

 _You plan to kill me for the sake of an enemy_?

Yami turned his head and looked at her, eyes growing cold and harsh. _If you step closer to me,_ I _will deal with you instead,_ he growled softly, pricking his ears towards her. Yugi watched him for a moment, though he remained focused on the brown-eyed she-wolf. _You will not have to worry about Atem._

She snorted and peeled her lips back, glaring at him. _Is that so_?

Yugi flicked his ears and stepped closer. Yami did not move.

 _That's so._

The she-wolf wagged her tail slowly. And when she pressed closer still, Yami was on his feet. He did not look as if he were inclined towards attacking, however. He seemed to simply be sizing her up for the moment. And Yugi felt a cold chill run through him for a split second. Would Yami back down if she attacked him?

 _I've never bought that story that you told the pack_ , the she-wolf stated, turning to Yugi now. Her eyes were full of disdain and disbelief. She came closer to him now, instead, then pricked his ears forward and stared at him with cold eyes. _I don't know how any of them came to believe for even a second that you had bitten him_.

 _Because that's the truth of it._

 _Lycanthropes don't breed hellhounds._

 _That's because he's_ not _a hellhound, you idiot._

 _Is that so_? she sneered, eyes flickering briefly towards Yami in turn now. The black male was staring blankly at the she-wolf. Yugi's blue-violet eyes widened briefly, a new thought crossing his mind. His eyes shot immediately to the other wolves who were studiously ignoring them but for Chazz and Zane. When he locked eyes with Zane, the former alpha flattened his ears and looked away. Chazz, however, tilted his head, flattened his ears after a moment or two, and began to dig at the snow in a stressed manner mirroring Yusei beside him. Yugi turned immediately back to Joy, realizing he would find no support from them.

He did not think that Chazz knew exactly how to do it. And he had the feeling Zane was inclined instead to allow others to fumble through their own problems. Yusei was not one for such confrontations. Serena was not willing to intervene. Syrus was too afraid. Aki was not paying them the slightest bit of attention. Mai was playing the part of the spectator, clearly too nervous to aid him in any manner.

He was on his own if he wanted to avoid the potential fight that might break out.

But then, he doubted that anything would allow the situation to simply dissipate its tension. She was pressing too close and his nerves were on fire, his thoughts racing. And Yami even seemed to be regarding her as something of a threat for the moment, if only because of the fact that he had made a threat that had to be kept. He had said he would rip her throat out if she got too close to him, hadn't he? He had threatened to kill her in cold blood if she were to accuse Yami once more. And that was not something that he planned to back down from.

 _You're barking up the wrong tree,_ he growled. _Yami is just as much a lycanthrope as I am. Whether you believe that or not is inconsequential. But if you step any closer to my beta, I swear to every god you know that I will rip you to pieces. Do you understand me_?

 _Those are some strong words for a wolf who often can't fight his own battles._ She looked at Yami now, tilting her head and wagging her tail with a cold sneer on her face. _If you're his beta, no wonder you show such weakness as well. He can hardly fight for himself and neither can you at this rate._

 _I wouldn't say such a thing,_ a new voice commented. Yugi blinked and flicked his ears, then looked over. Chazz was staring at Yusei as if the gray yearling had grown three heads. The blue-eyed wolf was staring at the she-wolf with a colder expression. _Yami is a lot stronger than he looks. You watched him take on Aki that day in the camp, Joy._

 _Joy_? Yami commented, pricking his ears forward. _How sad a name for a wolf who clearly does not possess much._

 _Excuse me_? the she-wolf spat, turning on him. _The fuck asked you_?

 _Why shouldn't she say such things_? Aki sneered abruptly, cutting into the snarling match that was coming of Yami and Joy's confrontation. Yugi turned his head to look at her, startled by the ferocity with which she gazed at him. Hadn't she just helped him a minute ago? Why do that if she was simply going to turn on him now? Why waste the time and put herself in harm's way if that was the end game? _He cannot fight on his own. Everyone_ else _has to save him all of the time. So why shouldn't she call him out for being so weak_?

 _I would have thought you'd be smarter than that,_ Yusei quipped, bristling as she spun on him. But he stood firm, glaring at her in turn with his ears pricked and his lips drawn back slightly. _That's Atem you're talking to. Do you not remember that_?

 _Oh, I know_ damn _well who he_ pretends _to be._

 _Unless you have proof that he is not Atem, I would recommend retracting that statement._

 _Proof_? _How about how weak he is_? Aki roared, lunging at him. But Yusei simply snarled and chomped his teeth. The two of them glared at each other furiously, tails raised as they bristled. _I just saved him from one of the damn hellhounds who attacked us as it—_

 _And they still got away,_ Joy sneered, turning on her now. _So much for the fact that you're stronger than he is._

 _You should stand down before your throat gets ripped out,_ the former beta spat, turning on the she-wolf and wagging her tail. Her eyes were full of hatred and she had wrinkled her lips back far enough that the corners of them crinkled. Her teeth were bright and glinting and Yugi swore he still saw the smallest splash of blood across one of her incisors. _He might make hollow threats, but I do not._

 _You're just as weak as he is. Clearly if you couldn't kill one of the damn hellhounds, then you do not deserve your ranking as a beta before now,_ she sneered. _I, on the other hand, have_ lots _of experience killing hellhounds. So why don't you simply_ back down?

 _Killing hellhounds_? Yugi muttered, glancing at Yami with an unsure expression. _For what reason_?

Joy turned on him with cold eyes. _I don't believe it's any of your business, now is it_?

 _I think as your alpha, it's his concern to know why one of his wolves might run around and declare a personal war on any hellhound that crosses paths with her,_ Zane sneered, turning on her now. Yugi blinked and turned his head. Yusei was looking at the former alpha now as well. And Chazz was bristling faintly, ears flicking about. _I would wish to know such a thing. I would want to know who to_ blame _for the sudden attacks on the pack._

 _You dare lay blame on me for that_? she spat.

 _You are the only one proclaiming themselves to kill hellhounds as she wants._

Joy snarled and chomped her teeth. And then her eyes flickered towards Yami slowly, as if she could not understand his remaining there. Yugi bristled when he saw the glint in her gaze, but the she-wolf made no move towards him. Instead she focused back on Zane. _Is that so_? _Because I've heard some stories about your charming beta that claim to the contrary._

The gray wolf snorted. _And when Chazz was doing that, I beat the insolence out of him. Apparently no one has bothered to do that with you._

 _I had never considered you an idiot before now._

Mai was clawing at the ground in a nervous fashion, eyes wide. _That's enough. Yami isn't a hellhound. And we didn't kill the hellhounds because that's not what we came out here to do._ She cast a hesitant glance at Yugi. _We came this way because we felt Atem nearby. We didn't realize there were hellhounds here until it was already too late._

 _And what is that_ you _were doing over here then_? Joy growled, turning on him. _I assume you had a reason to be here._

Yugi flicked his ears. And everyone turned to him as one, curious and bewildered. None of them had questioned his being there before, he realized. And now his stomach dropped and his heart ached. They'd turn on him for sure now, each and every one of them. _I came to—_

 _You recognized one of the hellhounds,_ Aki snarled, glaring at him. _You almost looked at him like you were friends_!

 _That's a wild accusation to make, and a very dire one at that,_ Yami warned, turning to her with sharp eyes. _He goes to school in the city. He knows a great many lycanthropes_ and _hellhounds in the area_.

 _Bullshit_! Aki roared. She was trembling with rage, eyes wild with ferocity. _He came here mere_ moments _before the attack by some simple coincidence_? _He was coming to plan with them_!

 _That's treason to accuse him of such a thing,_ Yusei snarled, snapping his teeth. _You disgusting bitch_!

The declaration was met with snarls and wide eyes. Chazz looked horrified, Syrus terrified, Zane surprised and Yami stunned. Mai and Serena were frozen in place, staring at him in shock. Aki and Joy had turned on him with their teeth bared and the snarls in their chests rumbling out like a roar.

 _Enough_ , Yugi snapped as Aki looked as if she might leap at the yearling. His voice was enough to make Joy glance over. But it was not at him, her eyes training themselves on Yami. Aki snarled at him, chomping her teeth and glaring. _I came here to hunt and I realized something was wrong. I didn't even realize there were hellhounds around—_

 _Then who the fuck is Valon and Amelda_?

Yugi blinked, startled, then bristled and raised his head. _I go to school with them._

 _And_? _Are they your friends or not_?

 _…I do not know Amelda._ He flicked an ear and then glanced at Yami and back quickly. _But I know Valon. He is considered something of a friend, though not a close one._

 _So you_ do _run with hellhounds, hmm_? Joy sneered, lips pulled back into a hideous smirk of laughter. Then she looked at Yami and her eyes seemed to glow with laughter. _You run with hellhounds and yet you do not expect us to question that your beta looks like one_? _Is that truly what you are asking of us at this moment, Atem_?

Yugi glanced quickly towards the other wolves. Mai was simply curious, Yusei somewhat startled, Chazz and Zane expressionless, Aki enraged, and Sryus too stunned to realize that he had locked eyes with him for a moment. He looked over at Yami for a moment, considering his cold stare and how he looked back at Joy blankly for the most part. He blinked, raised his head, and then faced her once more.

 _Yami is_ not _a hellhound._ _Whether or not you think I run with them is irrelevant. Valon and Amelda go to school with me. And I know Valon from when I escaped the labs. He and I struck up a mild friendship. I just wanted to ask him something._

 _And yet you came hunting instead_?

Yugi bristled. _You know damn well what I'm saying right now._

 _That you lied to us the first time._ She wagged her tail, laughing. _And then you assume we owe you our loyalty._

 _Bullshit_ , the white wolf snarled. _I don't assume anything. I'm telling you right now that I lied. Are you happy about that_? _Regardless, I came here looking for Valon because I thought I recognized his scent and I wanted to talk to him about something._ _And I've only ever met Amelda once but I know that I go to school with him because we've crossed paths once or twice in the hallways. It is nothing like what you are accusing me of._

 _I don't believe that for even a second._

 _Then_ don't! Yugi spat. _I don't care_! _What I care about right now is the fact that you're accusing me of things that you've fabricated in your own head and we've got two dead bodies and wounds to take care of—_

 _Funny that you seem not to have any._

The white wolf startled, blinking, but then glanced in the direction she was facing as well. Yami lifted his head a fraction, the challenge clear in his eyes. Then he pricked his ears forward once more and drew his lips back to show off his sharper teeth. They were sizing each other up, he realized. Yami would not answer her because he was done talking. He was willing to simply beat her into submission rather than deal with it all.

 _Leave him out of this._

Joy turned to him with a dismissive expression. _You say that as if I might listen to you. But you've already proven yourself to be unreliable. You're friends with hellhounds. You've brought one among us. You're even willing to protect him in front of all of us. And I would listen to you because…_?

 _Because he's Atem_!

Yugi turned his head, startled. Syrus was on his feet, bristling and glaring at the she-wolf in question.

 _He's Atem and we should be listening to him_!

 _The omega has a voice, hmm_? Joy commented, turning to him with brightened eyes full of amusement. _And you think that you can tell me anything_? _You're the lowest ranking wolf in this damn pack and you think for even a second—_

 _I'll rip your throat out,_ Zane interrupted, moving towards her. _If you_ ever _look at him like that again._

Yugi bristled faintly, unsure for a moment. Then he tilted his head and shivered, considering them. Would they go to blows? Was Joy truly that stupid? Zane looked incredibly calm and levelheaded. He looked as much a threat then as Yami had upon pinning Chazz that day…

 _You know,_ Joy said abruptly, turning to Yami with that same leering look she had sent to Syrus. Yugi bristled, the glint in her eyes making his heart pound. She looked as if she wanted to eat him alive… _There_ is _a way that we can figure out if you're a hellhound or not._

There was a long minute of silence. The wolves had begun to swap looks. Yusei seemed alarmed, Mai confused. Syrus was shaking and staring at Zane who cast him an unreadable glance. Chazz and Aki swapped bewildered looks. And then Yugi looked over at Yami and the black wolf stared at Joy with an expression of pure hatred.

And, it was only as Yugi turned back to Joy that she sent the image to him as well.

Blood streaked the snow. And black fur was cast about the ice. A body lay in the midst of it. Red eyes stared back at him blankly. The body convulsed. Blood swelled outwards and soaked the snow. And, as the wolf convulsed again, Yugi could see the huge tear upon his throat. It was harsh, open flesh, stripped of the fur entirely.

 _What the fuck is this_? he demanded, bristling and raising his head furiously. The others were frozen as well, startled and perhaps as horrified as he was. She'd projected it to all of them, he realized. She had sent it to all of them as if it might prove something to them.

 _If he comes back to life,_ she commented slyly, looking to Yami again, _then he's clearly not a hellhound, right_?

 _That's shit_! Mai burst out. _He's a Full-Blood_! _He can't come back like Atem—_

But her words were drowned out.

There was a hideous roar of noise.

And then a harsh thud of snow being crunched.

There was a loud scream.

Snarls tore through the air immediately after.

And all of them froze in place, unable to move.

Yugi had launched himself at the she-wolf. He'd thrown her onto her back and had his teeth in her throat. And he was _shaking_ her violently. She was clawing and kicking, screaming. And Yugi was not letting up in the slightest. Snow was being tossed. Blood was flying. She screamed again.

Yami could not stop staring. The she-wolf was trying desperately to kick him off. And Yugi did not care in the slightest. He was snarling and tossing her. The black wolf pricked his ears, then blinked and turned his head. The others were still frozen, though now Yami noted that they all looked more alarmed than anything. He saw the slightest hint of scorn in Zane's eyes, but beyond that they seemed collective in their shock.

Yami looked away again, then moved forward a step. _Atem_? he mumbled, trying to get his attention. But Joy was thrashing and Yugi didn't seem to hear him. And so he paused, unsure of whether to approach. If Yugi turned on him, it was fine. But if he somehow triggered a worse response in him and it made Yugi kill her…

 _Atem. Enough._ There was still complete silence where Yugi was involved. The white wolf didn't seem to hear him still. And the shaking continued. Yami heard something pop and thought it had to be something in the she-wolf's neck. There was no other explanation. But he could hear her shoulders grinding in order to take much of the impact. And it startled him only slightly. Atem, _enough_.

 _Yugi…_

The voice was extremely quiet and isolated and Yami blinked as he raised and turned his head. The gray yearling was a few feet away, though he approached slowly and cautiously. His ears were flat against his head. His nose was lowered to the snow. He kept his eyes from Yami but he could see that he was paying him attention as well.

 _Yugi, stop._

The white wolf bristled, tail quivering. Clearly he had heard Yusei. Yami blinked, wondering at the way he responded so easily to him. And then he looked at Yugi again. The white wolf had turned his head a fraction. His blue-violet eyes were dilated into black pools. And Yami hated the reflection of himself he saw there. In an instant he looked away, fur rising and falling in a hideous shudder. His mouth ached as if he had clenched his jaw too tightly. But his tongue felt swollen and his mouth was dry.

 _You don't need to hurt her so much. You've already won._

Yami pricked his ears forward, then looked over at Yusei thoughtfully. Was that how he considered his battles won? He would decide when it was no longer necessary to act upon his anger? He would decide when it was clear that the wolf he was fighting was too hurt and it no longer benefited him to fight? That was a kind of mercy that Yami had never quite implemented but for a handful of times. It was not as constant and clear cut for him as it seemed to be for Yusei at the moment.

 _No one agrees with hurting Yami. Joy is just a coward. And she thinks she knows more than the rest of us._ Yusei cast a glance at Yami and the black wolf tilted his head. His blue eyes were oddly clear, and the black wolf couldn't help but think of what the yearling had overheard before when he'd spoken to Echo in the woods that day. Abruptly Yusei was facing Yugi again. Yami had a cold feeling in his belly, confused and alarmed for a brief moment. _And Yami is fine. See_? _He's fine_.

Those black eyes were back on him. Yami lowered his head and wagged his tail a fraction. And, as Yugi peered at him, he could have sworn he saw the dilation leave his pupils. The smallest hint of color returned to his eyes, a ringlet of blue splashed against violet. Then the white wolf released her, muzzle covered in blood, and backed up a few steps.

Yusei looked relieved, though he was eyeing Yami more than watching. Yami flicked an ear and ignored the urge to stare at him until he backed down. Instead he turned to Yugi again, pricking his ears. The white wolf was looking at him, eyes scrutinizing for a moment. And then he wagged his tail lazily, as if he had merely been playing the entire time.


	72. Veins

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Hopefully biweekly**

 **Chapter Warnings: Bloodshed, Mild Fighting, Death**

 **Again, SO sorry for the late update! I had a lot of work recently and basically zero time at home. Going to try to get my writing back on track sooner rather than later, but for now I'm still trying to work everything out to get this story done and get work done as well.**

 **Hopefully the next chapter won't take as long to post and things will continue at a more normal pace again.**

 **Anyways, apologies for the lateness! Thanks for reading~!**

Chapter LXXII: Veins

 _Work Log Entry LXIV (Part II): April, 2008_

 _April 22_

 _I have attempted to see if it is his cells which are causing the slow growth rate._

 _I have performed a small scraping of the skin to see if I can find anything worthy of notice._

 _But the cells were dead the moment they shed._

 _Saliva stopped moving._

 _Blood cells ceased to fight bacteria when I exposed them to a strain of illness._

 _There was nothing._

 _April 28_

 _They age so slowly. It is something to be envious of, I'm sure. But ever since my look alike bit me, I have been able to understand them. And I have not seen a change in my appearance in the slightest. I look like I did two years ago._

 _It is as if time has no bearing any longer…_

Yusei was shivering as the air grew colder. He glanced over his shoulder and back. Aki was watching them with cold eyes. Mai seemed incredibly nervous. Zane was studying them with an unreadable expression. Chazz was staring at him with a tilted head and eyes full of puzzlement. Syrus was staring with wide eyes. Serena was watching Yami with a somewhat dismissive expression. And, when he turned back, he found Yugi licking at a wound on his side and Yami simply looking down at Joy. He shivered again and shook himself out. They'd been standing there for a while now, the new stray flurries of snow covering them in a light blanket. And none of them had spoken for a full ten minutes.

Yusei looked at Yami and then Yugi, flattening his ears. The air was too tense. He could feel the discontent arising from the others waiting around them. And so he lowered his head and moved to take a seat uncomfortably. He swore a bone popped in his back, as if he were too stiff to deal with it all and the tension had somehow aged him. He shivered, shook his head, and stretched his legs out to lay his chin upon them.

 _You didn't need to attack her._

The words were so quiet that Yusei nearly missed them. Then he blinked and raised his head. Yami was studying Yugi now. His red eyes peered at him with something unreadable and Yugi stared back at him with an annoyed expression. He was so stiff and angry that Yusei was amazed he did not lunge at him. He looked as if he wanted to do nothing more than snap his teeth into his flesh for his words.

 _Should I have just let her rip your throat out instead_? the white wolf snapped. His eyes narrowed the smallest degree and his lips curled back slightly. The fur along his shoulders rose into a terrible bristle. _I didn't realize you were in such a hurry to have that kind of thing happen to you._

The words made his red eyes darken in turn. _I didn't truly consider before just how stupid you could be,_ he snarled, peeling his lips back and baring his teeth. Yugi responded in turn, squaring his muscles and getting to his paws as well. They glared at each other furiously in turn, all but snapping their teeth. _How childish must you be all the time like this_? _You say such stupid things and do some equally so._

 _I didn't realize we were keeping tabs—_

 _I don't know why you attacked her, either, now that he says that,_ Aki cut in cruelly. Yugi blinked and his head snapped around. Yami turned his head as well. Yusei, however, lowered his chin to his paws with an incredibly heavy feeling in his gut. He nearly trembled for a moment. The anger in the she-wolf's voice was so harsh that it made his head spin for a brief heartbeat. _She was just telling us exactly how to see if Yami is a hellhound or not._

 _Yami is a Full-Blood,_ Yugi snarled. Every hair on his spine lifted into a furious bristle and his eyes glinted hatefully. _Killing him and seeing if he might come back to life is not how to measure that._

 _Well, surely, if the gods were to care so much about him that they brought him back to the camp after he went missing for so long,_ Aki sneered, staring into Yugi's eyes, _they would give him the ability to heal from a death wound now, would they not_?

Yusei shivered as Yugi growled low in his throat and bore his teeth. _I don't remember asking you for your opinion on anything, Aki,_ he snapped. His lips peeled back enough to show each of his teeth, rolling back enough to make his eyes appear wrinkled from the force of it. _In fact, if I remember correctly, I can say for certain that I have never once cared for your thoughts on any matter at_ any _time._

Yami had pricked his ears forward again, but his eyes were on Yusei; the yearling could feel it. Yusei ignored him as pointedly as he could, going so far as to close his eyes in hopes that he would cease staring at him. And he hoped to the gods that Yami might not speak to him at the moment. He truly hoped that he would not say a thing to him. He was fearful of the black-furred wolf opening his mouth.

If he were to do so, Yusei did not know how he was meant to hide away from the attention that the other wolves would grant him. It made him want to vomit for a moment. His paws were tingling with his nerves, and he was tempted to lick at them until they became raw and sore and his skin split and bled.

He had always done so when he was nervous. It was not something that he could trace back to any certain moment. And in his human form, he would scratch and scratch until they became raw and his nails would split the skin. But to do so now was hardly something that he would benefit from, he knew, and his paws were worn enough. He'd blistered them from the constant abuse and exposure to the snow along the tops of each toe when he'd spent an hour doing so fearfully due to the pack's growing malcontent. If it hit a head here, he was not sure what was going to happen.

Who was he supposed to fight? How was he meant to protect himself or anyone else? He was too rattled at the moment. As calm as he usual was, the fact that _Yugi_ had been the one to attack Joy so terribly scared him. If Yami was his breaking point at the moment, what would that mean later? What if Yami went missing again—he hoped to the gods that he didn't—or someone in the pack truly _did_ manage to kill him when Yugi was not there? Yami was rarely with the pack when the white wolf was not there, but on the off chance that he was…

Yusei was almost shaking at the thought. Yami could get seriously hurt if someone as stupid and vicious as Joy or Aki chose to lash out against him. Or, if Yami were truly healthy, he was not sure that they would make it out of the event alive themselves. And, should Yami kill them, the pack's malcontent would surely grow once more. It would twist and mutate as it had before.

And then what? Where would loyalties lie then?

He trusted Yugi and Yami, but to what extent was he meant to truly lay his life on the line? Was he meant to truly simply follow them like a loyal dog? Or was he free to make his own decisions regarding such a thing?

Yusei could not think straight.

When his parents had been alive, they'd told him that Atem was something to worship, to believe in and lay his life on the line for. When they'd been killed in the massacre in Alaska and he'd fled down to Canada and then to Washington, he'd forced himself to hold that as a pillar to keep himself moving. He had been desperate and frantic to keep his head up long enough to see to his own survival. And when he'd met Echo, joining her pack, she had been rather like his parents in her beliefs. She'd been rather scornful about Atem at times when they'd arrived in Hokkaido, but she had still held some kind of faith and hoped that Yugi might eventually meet her expectations.

Doubting things like this felt like a betrayal to and from himself. And his stomach lurched as he considered it, heart in his throat for a long moment. He shivered. And he knew that Yami was still watching him. But his gaze was no longer as fierce. And he wondered briefly if perhaps Yami sensed his unease. He wondered if _that_ was what had made him turn his head towards him to begin with.

 _That's because you are foolish and blind,_ she spat. _If you had a mind of your own, you would know that your "beta" is a hellhound who has pulled the wool over your eyes._

 _Is that so_?

Yusei opened his eyes into slits. Yami had turned to Yugi and Yugi was still staring at Aki. They watched each other for a long minute. And then Aki moved. Yusei didn't have time to react. Yugi and Yami both stood frozen in place. And Yusei yelped as he was caught by the scruff. He was pulled upward, off his paws. He felt his skin split as her teeth dug further. And he was shaken once, hard enough that his head seemed to spin. He braced himself, paws and toes spread as far as possible. His claws were readied. He attempted to center his weight. If he could do that, she would be unable to move him any further.

He was dropped abruptly. And he scrambled for his paws as quickly as possible. He was on his feet, eyes huge. Aki was snarling, blood coloring the tips of her teeth. It was surreal to see his own blood there. She had never gotten into a physical altercation with him before. He bristled, snarling softly, and backed up a step.

 _Had_ she truly just struck him? The shock of it was something that made him unsure. She had sneered at him, gotten in his face, had even snapped her teeth inches from his face. But she had never _bitten_ him before. She had always stopped seconds before it might have happened. She had never even gotten as close as _Marik_ had.

It was enough to make him nearly tremble, shocked.

 _You can't attack him like that_! Yusei barely recognized Syrus in the corner of his eye as the omega continued in a horrified tone. _He didn't do anything to you_! _He's not even the one you were talking to_!

 _Shut up before I take your head off,_ Aki spat, never removing her eyes from Yusei. She seemed to loom over him, taller than he'd ever seen her before. He had never considered that she made herself smaller until she was in a fight. But now it seemed almost as if she were twice as large. He could not tell if it was the shock or the fact that he was not presenting himself in an aggressive manner to match. Maybe it was just the fact that he was a yearling… _I can do what I want. If Atem can run with hellhounds, why can't I attack an American pest_?

Yusei backed up a step, startled by the hateful words. How long had she been looking for an excuse to attack him like this? Had it been since they'd first met? Had it been sometime after? Was it because he and Yugi got along? Was it because he did not like to meddle? Was it something else entirely? He bristled and backed up again, then drew his lips back.

If she wanted to fight him, then so be it. He could lash out just as easily as she could. And he had seen her fighting style. It would be easy to counter her attacks and defend himself. Yusei straightened and raised his head, tail rising. He bore his teeth more pointedly, snarling.

 _I was wondering where your damn backbone went,_ she sneered. She was smirking now, eyes cold and glittering and full of excitement. Yusei flicked his tongue over his teeth in warning. _I'm glad to see you've found it again._

The other wolves were staring at them.

 _Too bad I'm going to break it now._

She leaped at him and missed. She had been knocked sideways, off balance enough that she landed next to him instead of on top of him. Yusei backed up eagerly, thankful for whoever might have intervened. But when he stepped too far back, he pressed into someone. Quickly the yearling spun around. Yami was behind him, staring expressionlessly at the she-wolf. And Yugi was still statuesque beside him. The white wolf looked dazed. So Yusei turned his head, confused and bewildered.

Chazz was standing there, in front of Aki. His shoulders were braced. His ears were pricked. He was snarling. His tail was raised. He was glaring at her, eyes gleaming like sharpened daggers. The she-wolf snorted at him, then stepped forward. And he snapped his teeth so close to her nose that she visibly flinched. The two of them stared at one another furiously.

 _You don't touch him,_ Chazz snarled. _You don't touch Yusei, you don't touch Yami, you don't touch Atem. And you_ definitely _do not_ ever _threaten one of my pack members. Omega or not, Syrus is_ my _pack mate and I'll rip your throat out before I'll_ ever _let you lay a paw on him._

Yusei blinked and looked towards Zane for a moment. The larger gray male was watching Chazz with little expression, but Yusei swore he could see the faintest hint of pride there. No doubt Chazz had been one of the pack mates Zane had watched over when he was younger, long before he had taken the place of his beta. Yusei forced himself to relax slightly. When he moved, however, he brushed awkwardly against Yami who twitched as if he were trying to shake such sensation away entirely.

He licked his lips uncomfortably and looked back and forth between Yami and Yugi. But neither of them was paying him any mind. Both had focused entirely on the two betas that seemed ready to tear into each other's throats.

 _You think that I won't kill you first_?

 _Try me, bitch._

They glared at each other, then stepped closer.

 _If you touch him, Aki, you'll deal with me._ The declaration was met with turned heads and wide eyes. Yami had raised his head and was eyeing the she-wolf with a dark expression. _I don't care that you threaten me. But you don't threaten others. This is between you and me. And if you'd like to fight me again, I'll gladly beat you into the ground._

 _No, no, that's not going to happen,_ Yugi interrupted, snarling. _Because the next one to harm you or Yusei or Chazz or Mai or_ anyone else _is going to have their head taken off their body. I'm done. I let this go on for too long. And now I'll gladly put a stop to it_.

 _Bullshit_ , Aki snapped.

Try me, Yugi spat. His teeth chomped loudly and he padded forward. Yusei stopped short and Chazz moved quickly aside to let him past. The white wolf put his nose mere centimeters from hers. He was quivering with tension, beginning to salivate with anger. _I'll rip you to pieces, I swear to every god in existence. I will kill you. And I'll make an example of you to the rest of the pack as well. Because this is ridiculous. This needs to end_ now.

 _Then why not simply test and see if he comes back_? _The gods must favor him some if he's—_

 _Suggest it again,_ the white wolf warned, stepping closer. He raised his head and opened his jaws. Tendrils of saliva dripped from his canines. _Do it. I_ dare _you._

But Aki seemed to realize how far she had overstepped. And Yusei found himself startled by the fear he saw in her eyes. Chazz was standing a couple of steps back from Yugi, eyes wide. And, when Yusei glanced over his shoulder, he found Yami merely looking at the snow as if it might somehow hold answers. After a long minute and a half of silence and staring, Aki abruptly lowered and turned her head away and Yugi huffed. He backed up several steps, glaring at her, but dropped his aggressive stance beyond this.

 _So what now_? Mai asked quietly several minutes later when the tension had finally faded. Her ears were flattened against her head. And she seemed to fold beneath their attention as each of them looked towards her. She wagged her tail awkwardly where it was lowered slightly towards her underbelly. _We need to get the bodies back to the camp and I guess we need to move Joy and get her back as well_ …

 _You can leave her to rot for all I care,_ Yugi snapped at her, though he cast a glance over his shoulder at the she-wolf. Yusei had the striking urge to lick at his legs until he was bleeding and couldn't use them anymore. Had Yugi _truly_ just said that? It horrified him to hear that from Yugi of all the wolves in their group. He had expected something like that from Chazz or perhaps Zane. He might have even expected it from _Yami_. But to hear it from Yugi was something that made him want to tremble.

Yami had pricked his ears, staring at the white wolf with something of an unreadable and yet somehow pitying expression as well. _It is not necessary to show such disinterest in her. I am fine. You are overreacting,_ he said quietly, tilting his head at him and peeling his lips back into a grimace. Yugi had spun on him with a snarl and was glaring at him in annoyance. His ears were pricked and his lips were pulled back to show his sharp teeth, eyes glinting with fire the shade of sapphire. Yami backed up a step and flattened his ears, then ducked his head a small degree, somewhere between submissive and offensive as well. Chazz thought he looked as if he might be prepared to snap his teeth open and launch himself at Yugi at any moment should he show him the slightest hint of aggression.

And then the anger seemed to dissipate from Yugi entirely. The white wolf blinked, raised his head, and then turned away again. His ears flicked back and forth and Yami shook himself out in response before turning away as well.

 _I do not think that it would do us well to help to move her,_ Yami said quietly, abruptly, his words cutting through the thin air and making Yugi bristle for a split second. The white wolf turned after a moment towards the darker canine and considered him. Yami, however, did not face him. Chazz could not tell if he was nervous or if he was simply attempting to prevent any aggression on his alpha's behalf. But the tension in his body spoke clearly of defense if Yugi should turn his temper on him. His shoulders were braced, his legs spread just enough that he could easily duck down and lunge forward. _I think we should leave while there is still time to get back and avoid our absence being noted._

Yugi blinked a few times, glanced back and forth between Joy and Aki, and then awkwardly looked to the other wolves. He seemed lost for a moment as Chazz watched and then he finally huffed and tilted his head, turning to Zane with a flustered expression. _Take Ayukawa and Brooke first,_ he finally mumbled, _and then take Joy. Treat her as a rat for all I care. She's not to open her mouth in front of any of the other wolves in that damn camp, do you all understand me_? _Do not let her speak of anything that happened here. And do_ not _allow her to say anything about the hellhounds. I'll rip her throat out if I hear even a_ word _of it when I return to the camp._

Zane raised his head, then nodded slowly in a respectful motion. He turned immediately to Chazz, eyes sharp and calculating. Chazz wondered if he was considering the situation or if he was thinking more of what was happening with Atem and Yami. He wondered if he suspected they might go to blows as Chazz himself was curious to know. _You and I will take Joy and Aki back to the camp,_ Zane said slowly, eyes searching his for a moment. _We will follow Mai and Yusei and Syrus while they take the bodies back. Flank formation. If either of them steps out of line, strike as hard as you feel you must._

Chazz blinked, then nodded slowly. Aki and Joy had truly upset him if he was willing to say such a thing. Normally, even with interlopers in their original territory in the states, Zane had been rather calm and judicial towards potential prisoners that the pack took during patrols and fights. He had always been easier going than he appeared he would be. The only times he had ever decreed something similar was when Chazz himself had been caught killing hellhounds as violently as he had been and his brothers had been the most prominent to punish him for it. He had been nipped and snarled at, had been lunged at and bitten hard enough to nearly knock him over.

Zane had simply watched it happen. He had told him that he deserved nothing less for such disobedience. And Chazz had accepted the punishment with as much grace as he could muster. He'd let them nip him until he'd bled and he'd ducked away when the others in the pack had grown upset with him. He had waited until Zane had come to the conclusion that he had learned his lesson. And then he'd accepted his challenge against his beta at the time, allowing him to jump into the rank headfirst.

And from there they had been rather close, if one could call them such.

They were a well-knit team when it came to orders and strategies. They often could almost predict each other's moves at times. But it was more from a standpoint of what was best for the pack than anything else. And Chazz was not foolish enough to think that he was close to Zane in any other way than this.

Because, he knew, just as everyone else in his pack did, that the only one he was truly close to was Syrus. It was familial, the only reason that the two of them interacted at all, Chazz felt. They were on opposite sides of the spectrum. It was not only rank. It was personality. Syrus was more likely to flee from a fight than he was to participate and Zane was willing to kill before he'd stop and listen to another. And, should one _ever_ make the mistake of harming his brother, Zane would murder them in cold blood in front of the pack. He had done so several times, without so much as a blink. And he moved as fast as a snake when he came to this conclusion.

Syrus was the omega for a reason. And Zane the alpha for the opposite.

And Zane might have let the pack occasionally take their frustrations out on Syrus and the omega played his role well, but if blood were to be drawn, it was not without punishment. Zane would savagely beat another wolf into submission if he saw Syrus wounded beyond bruising and momentary limping. And no one was so foolish.

He realized now that Joy and Aki had both stepped over that fine line. They had threatened Syrus. And Zane would not stand for it in any manner. He would kill them if he got the chance. The only reason he did not do so now was simply because Yugi had said that he would do it for him instead.

Chazz cast a small glance towards Yusei. The gray wolf looked just as stunned as he was, the declaration making his royal blue eyes huge with shock. And, when he looked past him to Yami, the black male was studying him and Zane. He seemed to understand something that Chazz himself didn't because, when their eyes locked, the black wolf tilted his head and pointed his ears outwards, flattening them slightly. He turned away a few moments later and Chazz could not help but let out a breath of relief.

Then he turned to Mai and Syrus. _Well, you heard him. Let's get this done. Get Brooke and Ayukawa to the camp. Yusei shall help you, Mai. And Zane and I will escort Aki and Joy back,_ he instructed, raising his tail and giving them sharp looks. The she-wolf in question flicked an ear and turned away to glance at the bodies. Immediately her ears flattened and she moved slowly to Ayukawa's side. Syrus quickly moved to the other American wolf's side, but paused with an uncertain bristle and wide eyes.

 _What_? _What's wrong_? Yami demanded, gaze trained on the omega. _What happened_?

Syrus glanced at him, eyes wide and horrified. _I didn't know she was pregnant._

 _Pregnant_? Yugi muttered, turning around with a bewildered expression. His blue-violet eyes were dark with confusion and he tilted his head in open puzzlement. _Who was pregnant_?

Mai looked exhausted when she glanced at Brooke's body and away quickly. _By the gods,_ she hissed, _they killed her when she was pregnant._

Something seemed to flash through Yugi's eyes, violent and dark, before it swiftly passed. He flicked his ears, looked slowly to Yami, and then tilted his head slightly. He seemed to be relieved, something that made Chazz glance between them slowly in surprise. He bristled faintly, but the emotion seemed to drain quickly from the white wolf's expression as well. He seemed now to deflate, though he shook it off after a moment and looked down at the snow.

 _Get her back to the camp._ He sounded defeated. _Yami and I have to return. I will come back to the camp to figure the rest of this out tomorrow. None of you speak a word of what has happened here. If any of you speak about this beyond the deaths of your pack mates, you shall have to deal with_ me, _understand_?

And then he turned to Yami.

 _Let's go._

* * *

"Oh my god, what the hell happened to your shoulder?"

Yami spun around with huge eyes, the action making his arm jerk in a spasm. Yugi was sitting nearby and jumped to his feet, confused and alarmed. He hurried towards him, and Yami bit back a snarl of unease. Instead he jerked the jacket over the tank top as the smaller teen got to his side. He reached his other arm out, moving to block Yugi away from the wound, and thankfully the other boy took this warning and hovered at the edge of his reach. But he could feel his frustration, sharp and bitter in the air. "It's nothing."

"It's _hideously_ bruised. And the bone is probably bruised under all of that too," Kasumi argued in a sharp tone. Her blue eyes flickered from his shoulder to Yami's face and she shook her head angrily. "You're _hurt_. How did it happen?"

He grunted when his shoulder twitched. The bone had most likely dislocated in the original collision with the damn hellhound. He'd rushed him so quickly that he could not have stopped himself had he tried. And the way they'd hit each other, Yami had basically body-checked him away from Aki before he'd even sunk his teeth in. Doing such a thing had been rather foolish of him and he knew that. But he'd been unable to slow and he'd been panicked when he'd done it. And it was only because of this sheer velocity that he'd even managed to pin him.

He was sure that she was right, however. It felt as if the muscle were sprained and pulled. And he had seen it in his reflection when he'd originally gone into the bathroom to change back. It had been a hideous black and blue, with a raw purple and yellow core almost like rotting flesh. But he had known it to be a bruise. And simply touching it made him want to scream. He'd ground his teeth together and shaken it away in order to cover it with his open palm, dizzy from the ache.

And now it pulled even from tugging on his jacket. It throbbed, sending pulses of pain through him, and it made his skin shudder where it rolled beneath the fabric. He watched her a moment, flustered.

"There was a small spat. It happens sometimes. I'm fine."

"Then why is your shoulder twitching like that? That's not normal."

Yami ground his teeth together and hissed, "It got hurt. It's going to be fine, though."

"I guess that super healing thing is a myth then, huh?" Kasumi said dryly, shaking her head and turning to Yugi. "You should take a look at that thing. He looks like he got hit by a truck."

Yugi looked so alarmed that Yami almost wished he could have snarled at her. But she had turned on her heel and was heading into the kitchen without a second look. He huffed and shook his head, eyes sharpened and lips curling back faintly. But then Yami blinked, startled, as something brushed against his hand. He turned, head snapping around, and his shoulder jerked and twitched as if with a spasm once more. But he froze, startled, as he realized that Yugi was standing closer than before.

And he'd moved his hands to catch one of his own. He had encompassed it in his, the warmth of his flesh making Yami almost burn with something between satisfaction and bewilderment for a moment. And then he blinked. Yugi had not lowered his eyes and was staring into his intently. But he made no move to come any closer and instead his fingers touched at the palm of his hand. He reflexively stretched his hand out, allowing Yugi to stroke at the center of his palm there.

And he seemed to trace every little small line which rested there. He seemed absorbed in this task, almost as if it might calm them both. But his eyes never lowered from Yami's and the red-eyed teen felt almost stricken and bewildered. It was odd, how Yugi continued to do this without any sense of hesitation. But the bravery seemed to fade from him after a long minute and his eyes lowered slowly to his skin. He let out a low laugh, something between cold and cynical.

Yami listened silently as Yugi muttered, "I still don't think I'm used to seeing you like this anymore."

"Did I look differently before?"

The small teen laughed and shook his head, but he did not raise his chin from where he had lowered it almost to his collarbone as he continued stroking his palm. And he never looked up, making Yami's stomach churn with unease. "Only when you were a wolf. But I guess I could see you in there too, huh? Your eyes are always the same."

"Are they?"

"Well, no, I guess not. The shape changes. Although with how long your lashes are, you can almost pretend that your eyes are black at the edges like the wolf's are." Yugi seemed to trail off for a moment. And his finger tapped gently on the center of his palm again. It was enough to make Yami stiffen for a split second, his shoulder jerking before relaxing again. "But I guess I just know you well enough. I know the way you look at me."

"Do I look at you a certain way?"

Yugi was quiet for a long minute. Yami blinked, confused and slightly concerned as well. He had never considered before that he looked at Yugi in any manner that was not the same as he did others around him. But the thought was gone in an instant. Yugi raised his eyes, the blue-violet irises sharpening like daggers as they locked with his. "Like you'd die for me," he said coldly, releasing him after a moment. And then he shook his head sharply and headed out to the kitchen.

Yami watched him go, tilting his head. And then he snorted and turned away again.

Was Yugi going to be upset with him for a while? Were they going to argue again? He hoped not. He did not think he had the energy to do such a thing. His shoulder was throbbing too painfully. And he did not think he wanted to move it any longer. But even breathing seemed to make it hurt, as if the weight of his chest expanding and collapsing was enough to send tremors of pain through him. And the limb threatened to arch upwards as if to shield his throat in a lopsided maneuver. He hated the sensation. But he would not say something against it.

It did not matter.

The bruising would heal quickly.

He was not so unhealthy that it would fail to do so.

And his stomach was knotted for the briefest of moments as he shrugged this away as well. The thought did not truly belong in his head as it was. It did not matter. The wound would heal. In the grand scheme of things, it was nothing but a minor inconvenience. Yami had no reason to worry and he did not need to concern Yugi about it either. It was a nonsensical thing for him to be concerned.

But he did know as well that he was not in the right frame of mind to reassure him of this either. Yugi was angry with him for the fact that he had rushed into that fight as he had. He had done so knowing that it would be damaging to himself one way or another. And Yugi was well aware of that fact, he knew. Because that was the only reason he might show him such anger as he did now. To say that he thought he looked as if he might die for him was a direct implication of such a thing. And he had no words to describe just how frustrating it was to consider this as more than anything else.

Yami shook this thought away, annoyed.

It would have to wait. He was not willing to confront Yugi about this when he was sure the small teen would do so for him later. He just had to hope that it would not be in a manner which might unbalance him more than usual. He was so tired and his shoulder hurt far too much to care for such a thing. If Yugi were to turn around and bare his teeth at him or snarl and spit and snap at him, Yami was sure he would become overwhelmed and thus back off sooner rather than later.

And he did not think that such a thing would do well for him.

He was sure he would lose what little favor he still had regarding the other boy. He was sure that Yugi would turn on him, angry and annoyed more than ever before. And he did not want to have such an outcome. It was stupid of him to consider that he was unable to face the smaller teen when he was upset with him, but it was enough to exhaust him as well.

But he wondered what Kasumi might have said had she gotten the opportunity to truly look at the wound with more than a passing glance. Had he not hurried to cover it, he was sure that she would have been livid. It was likely that she might have even snapped at him had she gotten the chance to see it at its fullest. And that was not something he desired in the least. Yami tilted his head and reached up to run his hand over his shoulder. The skin flared immediately with pain but the more he rubbed, the softer the tension of the bunched and throbbing muscles became. If that was the most painful he suffered at the moment, he thought it bearable.

When he wandered out into the kitchen, Yugi was nursing a cup of something in his hands. He was leaning forward, slumped across the table, and his fingers were threaded through the handle of the mug. But when he glanced up, he looked more miserable than angry any longer. And, after a moment or two, he glanced away again.

Kasumi was in the living room, he realized. He could just faintly hear the television. The channel that was on was not to her liking, it appeared, as she did not seem inclined to turn the volume up and Yami knew that if he could hardly hear it, then she most certainly couldn't. So he hesitantly glanced at Yugi and back again, flustered by the idea of being around him or her at the moment. Perhaps he should never have left the room, he realized now. It might have been easier for him to simply stay there and lay his head down instead of muddling through this of all things.

Perhaps simply lying down and sleeping for a while longer would not be as painful as this.

But some part of him was desperate to be near the other boy. He wanted nothing more than to simply take a seat and let Yugi punish him as he saw fit if only because it meant that he was paying him attention. That was something that Yami was not quite used to, but not entirely unused to either. He had felt similarly on several occasions upon interacting with his cage mate. If he was wounded and tired, he had tried more than once to get his cage mate to pay him more attention than he would have otherwise. And the other wolf would often become confused but gently ask him what it was that he was looking for out of him at that moment in time.

They would sit and talk. And he would listen and sometimes, when he was wounded enough, his cage mate might sit next to him until he would fall asleep against his shoulder, slumped and exhausted. And he would let him stay like that throughout much of the day and sometimes into hours of the night. Other times he would wake him gently and tell him that he could not stay in that position comfortably. And during those times Yami would sit and listen to him until he couldn't anymore, overcome to the point of falling asleep while the other spoke to him about things outside of the damn cages…

He was tired and resentful as he thought of this.

His cage mate had not deserved what had come to happen to him.

 _None_ of those damn wolves had deserved such a thing.

Yami shook this thought away and crept cautiously around to the other side of the table. His stomach was in knots and his heart felt heavy as he came closer to him. He pulled the chair out awkwardly, swallowing hard, and took a seat slowly across from Yugi.

"I would have made you a cup of hot chocolate if I had thought you were going to come out here," he mumbled in place of a greeting. Yami blinked and considered him with a tilt of his head. Yugi was staring at the cup in his hand. "I mean, if you wanted, you could have the rest of this?"

Yami blinked again. "No, thank you," he finally mumbled, unsure of what else he could say or do to make this situation any better. Then he grimaced and looked down at the table again. He didn't know if Yugi would lash out if he made eye contact. And he didn't want to cause more unnecessary stress. "I appreciate the offer."

"Sure you do," Yugi muttered in something of a cynical tone. It struck Yami odd to hear him say such a thing, especially directed towards him. His tone made him almost bristle, but he shrugged this off after a moment as well, refusing to look up again for fear of snapping. It was a frustrating experience. And he hated himself for letting Yugi get so far beneath his skin with such a frustrated comment. It was not even as if he had sneered at him or anything of that nature. He had simply failed to say something in a tone that was not condescending. And somehow that was more damaging than if Yugi had told him he hated him and wanted him to fuck off. "Because you appreciate everything, right?"

Yami was quiet for a moment. "Have I seemed unappreciative before? I have never meant to come off as such," he said slowly, frowning and tilting his head. He thought of his cage mate again, of how bright his green eyes had once been. And he wondered if he could be considered grateful for all the sacrifices he'd made to save him. The thought made his stomach churn and he felt sick and winded even as he mumbled, "You have my full apologies if I have done so in the past."

Yugi grunted. Then he narrowed his eyes and shook his head, looking more annoyed than anything. Yami could only see him from the corner of his gaze but it was effective enough all the same. He swallowed hard and focused on the fabric of the table cover.

"No, no, never," Yugi said, _sneering_ at him. Yami blinked and made the mistake of raising his eyes, stunned by the sound of it. It was enough to nearly forget himself in his shock. Yugi so rarely did such a thing that it almost made him want to tremble for a brief second. "Never you. You could never be ungrateful or unappreciative, huh, Yami?"

"I'm not quite sure why you have decided to accuse me of such a thing." Yami faltered, and then he blinked, bristling, and snarled low in his throat. An image flashed through his mind, of blood spilled upon snow and of his own broken body coming back to life, the muscles healing seamlessly as his body struggled to gasp for air and his eyes peered blankly forward into the shadows. "Although, should you be referencing what I think you might, you are surely foolish to do so."

" _I'm_ foolish? What about the person in front of me who doesn't appreciate his life or anything in it most often?" Yugi snapped, bristling and glaring at him furiously. "You say that as if you have any right. But I'm the one who doesn't want to die and you're the one who apparently thinks doing so would basically be a fun exercise for him."

Yami blinked and shook his head. "I do not fear death," he stated quietly, "because it shall come regardless of anything you or I might ever come to try. Preventing it is impossible. And if you are so foolish as to think that you can reverse such a thing, I am sorry to disappoint you in not believing the same."

"I don't think that at all!"

"Then why are you always so damn upset with me?"

"Because _I_ care more about your damn life than _you_ do!" Yugi burst out. He had jumped to his feet and the chair fell backwards. It rattled as it hit the ground and Yami sprang at the noise. His red eyes grew wide as he looked past Yugi and towards its vibrating form. And his stomach knotted as he shivered and studied Yugi uncertainly a moment later. He did not realize that the hot chocolate had spilled all over the tablecloth until he noticed Yugi pull his hand towards himself to wipe the dark liquid away. He seemed flustered and he looked almost sick for a split second. Yami could not take his eyes off his hand for a moment. It was red from the heat, burned but the pain long gone, he was sure. "Surely, even to you, that can't be normal, Yami!"

The red-eyed teen blinked, confused, and then brought his attention back to the smaller boy's face. Perhaps it was not normal but what was the point in fighting with death when it was inevitable? Yami had seen so much of it as it was that he did not care to think about it. He drew in a deep breath, then lowered his eyes. If Yugi knew the majority of what he had gone through when he was younger, he might have understood; hell, if Yugi had remembered half of the torture he himself had endured…

He thanked the gods for the small mercies.

It was better that Yugi did not remember.

It was hardly worth the pain…

Yami shook his head after a moment. "Death is not something that I spend my time worrying about. I go into a fight knowing what my odds are of surviving the encounters. Whether I am harmed during them is another thing entirely. But I will say that I do not regret doing anything that might minimize casualties or save a friend or pack mate."

"Is it really so bad that I wish you would care about yourself more?" Yugi spat. "I mean, the gods gave you a life for a reason, didn't they? And you saved me because you thought I had potential. Well… I think you have potential too, but you always shun it. And you always turn your nose up at things that I wish you would pay more attention to."

Yami lowered his eyes again. And he knew the argument he was about to make was a foolish one, truly stupid, but he couldn't stop himself now. His voice was bitter and quiet and he was almost sneering now himself. "You charge recklessly into situations when you think it might help me. So why am I not expected to do the same for you?"

Yugi was snarling low under his breath when he slammed his hand on the table. Yami jolted, then reflexively reached up to grab at his shoulder as it throbbed and burned from the sudden movement. "Because you're _not_ Atem!" he snarled. But much of the anger was gone from his voice, surprise coloring it soon after. And Yami slowly raised his eyes again to consider him. The concern was clear on his face, the horror of the thought of having harmed him keen in his gaze. He looked as if he might vomit for a moment before awkwardly pulling his hand away from the table and cradling it as if it still burned. "I didn't mean to…"

"I'm fine."

"I can't believe you lost your temper enough to hit the table," Kasumi commented, raising a brow in something akin annoyed amusement. Yugi's mouth shut from where he'd opened it to respond to him, his teeth working at his cheek again. "That's impressive, Yami. I've never seen him do that before."

Yami grimaced. "I have a knack for upsetting people enough to lash out," he answered in something of a dismissive and yet anxious tone. He considered her where she was leaning against the wall with her arms crossed, eyeing them. A wave of shame crashed through him and immediately he wanted both to flee and to sneer at her in an effort to somehow defend himself. "Yugi would not be the first. Nor will he be the last."

Yugi was staring at his mom with a tilted head and narrowed eyes. He spoke through his teeth, his shoulders raised the smallest fraction. "What in all did you hear of that?"

"Not enough to warrant you glaring at me like that. Just something about you not meaning to. What happened to your hand, by the way? Is that another attack from these other wolves or is that something else?" She was eyeing him skeptically, cynical and clearly expectant of his newest lie. She gave him a tight-lipped smile and Yami bristled as he moved to stand up again. Maybe it would be best if he simply went back and lay down on the bed as he should have before. He should never have followed Yugi out there. It was a mistake, he knew, and now he regretted ever assuming otherwise. This was not helping him in the slightest. "Oh, it's a burn. You spilled the hot chocolate on your hand, huh?"

"A little bit, but it doesn't hurt anymore," Yugi answered dismissively, waving off her raised brow. "I don't think I need to do anything besides run some water over it."

Kasumi grunted, acknowledging the statement but clearly choosing not to further explore this topic. Instead her eyes became locked on Yami again. "So, is this what I have to look forward to for the rest of my life?" she asked after a long moment, looking between them and then facing Yugi. "You two running off in the middle of the night, Yugi getting pissed, arguments in my kitchen, and both of you trying to ignore the fact that I'm neither stupid nor oblivious?"

Yugi shivered. "Mom…"

"And it is not as if you have that many more secrets, Yugi." The small teen stiffened and Yami looked between them slowly, awkwardly. Something in the air had changed, Yugi considerably straight-backed with his shock, and the way it charged the room made his skin crawl violently. He felt abruptly as if he were intruding on a private conversation, even as she stared back at him so relentlessly. "I probably know more than Yami does about some of the things. And the biggest one is already out in the air. You're both werewolves. I know that already. And that's the most horrifying secret you could have. So I don't understand why the two of you even pretend to have more important ones than that."

Yugi was blushing. His eyes flickered immediately to Yami. When he saw the red eyes momentarily shoot to him as well, Yugi looked quickly away again. The small teen rubbed at the back of his head unhappily. He looked as if he were struggling not to tremble. Yami simply watched him, studying before turning away again.

"I mean, even your crush on Anzu was nothing compared to that," she continued. Yugi looked as if he might faint. Yami blinked, looking between them in bewilderment. He tilted his head and considered the smaller teen a moment longer. But, as he looked back and forth, Yugi glanced at him as well. The moment their eyes locked, however, he looked away again immediately. "I don't think it gets more alarming than someone turning into a _wolf_."

Yami hummed and Yugi glanced at him sideways. He tilted his head, his bangs shadowing his gaze just enough that Yami could not make direct eye contact with him. But as the two of them swapped that simple glance in each other's direction, they shared a similar thought.

She didn't know about the immortality.

That was the only reason she assumed that this was the most pressing secret either of them could possess.

"I'd be amazed if there was something else." Kasumi rolled her eyes at them. "I don't want to get in the middle of one of your arguments again. I'm going back to bed. Try not to burn the house down in a fit of rage, okay? Yeah? Great."

Yugi's cheeks had turned bright red. Yami did not blink. And then she had turned and wandered off and Yugi was facing him curiously now. Yami turned back to him after a moment. His brows furrowed and he tilted his head, studying him.

"You didn't exactly promise not to."

Yugi blinked, then frowned. He was troubled as he looked back at him, clearly assuming that he had missed something. Yami smirked in amusement. "Huh?" Yugi muttered, shaking his head in bewilderment.

"Not to burn the house down. You did not promise that you would see to it that it did not happen."

Yugi smiled in turn now, relaxing and rolling his eyes as he searched his face. "I try to make it a point not to make promises I can't keep," he teased, though he fell quiet immediately after and frowned pointedly as they considered each other. "Yami, I just want an answer to this, okay?"

"Hmm?" he coaxed, tilting his head. "What did you want an answer to?"

"Why do you not care about yourself as much as _I_ do?"

There was long handful of minutes that were steeped in pregnant silence. Then Yami slowly shook his head, narrowing his eyes into slits and looking away. "Why do I not care as much? Truthfully, Yugi, I have little reason to. There is no immense reasoning behind my birth as there was yours," he mumbled, shrugging and regretting it as his right shoulder ached and burned. "And I am exhausted, Yugi. It is harder to wake up and face a day at times like this."

Yugi shook his head, annoyed and flustered. "You can't honestly think that I'm worth more than you are."

He tilted his head, considering him. "Worth more?" he mumbled after a moment. Yugi watched him as Yami sat back slightly and began to tug lightly on the ends of his jacket sleeves. "Well, I don't think you want an honest answer to that inquiry then."

And Yugi honestly wished for a moment that he could have hated him. He wished he could have snapped and snarled at him and said enough things to make Yami cower and truly _mean_ them. But the very thought was exhausting and he felt the distance between them too keenly. It was too hard to think such a thing.

So now he simply shook his head with a sigh and frowned. If Yami was not going to value himself enough to remain healthy and safe on his own, then Yugi thought it would be almost impossible to change his mind on such a thing. And that was not something that he cared to consider at the moment.

"Well, then I need to do something."

Yami looked up at him, puzzled. The words made no sense to him for a moment. And Yugi stared back at him, eyes sharp with warning but soft with that usual warmth as well. They considered each other for a moment.  
"I will stay here," the red-eyed teen said after a moment. "You can go to the camp and I will not follow you."

Yugi blinked and frowned. "You swear?" he demanded, voice coming out a bit harder than he'd seemingly meant it to. His cheeks became slightly pinked and Yami tilted his head the smallest fraction as his voice came out a little softer. "I won't turn around and find you behind me? I do not want you to follow me when I am not sure I can help you if something happens, Yami. Aki and Joy both have it in their heads that this is something that would be fixed by killing you and having you come back. And I do not want one of them taking that as the only thing that can be done to prove it."

Yami shook his head slowly. "I am worried and I do not want to deal with them right now. I will cross paths with them later." He was silent for a long minute, then narrowed his eyes and tilted his head in confusion. "Listen. You may go back and forth with them but I am not going to do so. I do not desire their eyes on me, not until I am healthier. Being as tired as I was after only knocking that hellhound around a couple of times is enough of a warning for me."

The small teen looked relieved as he smiled faintly and his eyes, warm and soft, searched his for a brief moment. "Good."

Yami considered him only a moment longer. Then he looked away again slowly. "I am going to lay back down now. My shoulder hurts and I do not want to stay up much longer."

"Do you want something for it?" Yami blinked and looked over. Yugi searched his face, probably looking for a sign of weakness or pain in his eyes. He was leaning against the table as if he expected Yami to do the same. "We have some medicine for pain. I can grab some for you."

Yami shook his head. "No, thank you. I think I will simply lie down. I do not think that the pain will do much more than prickle at me for a little while," he said dismissively. He hesitated for a moment, then turned to face him fully again. He opened and closed his mouth once, then lowered his eyes again and peered at the table. "Be careful while you are there with the pack."

Yugi blinked. "Yami…"

"You cannot be sure that this disdain will be limited to me. I am sure that it will spread about the wolves to regard you as well. You will most likely be regarded once more with resentment, especially once they find out that you threatened to kill Aki and Joy like that." Yami drummed his fingers on the table for a moment, then shook his head slowly. "It will not do you well. I think it will be far more damaging now than it was then."

* * *

The blood soaked the snow for miles. Yugi was frozen for a moment as he stepped into the camp. And then he hurried to spring forward and race into the center there. He did not smell rot as he had formerly. But the metallic scent was so harsh that it made his head spin as he stumbled forward. He pricked his ears. There were wolves breathing heavily. And, as he came forward further into the trees, his heart lurched in his chest. The wolves were all spread about, bleeding and aching. Some of them were breathing heavily and others were lying in the snow rather still.

Yugi stumbled forward, then hurried to the side of the wolf nearest him. _Fuck_! he snarled, alarmed as he came to a stop in front of Chazz. The wolf looked up with huge eyes, his pupils dilated and his ears pricked forward. He had begun to snarl at first but relaxed immediately upon recognizing him. His ears flattened against his head and he lowered his muzzle, wagging his tail low to the ground in a more submissive manner. Yugi wondered for a moment if he had expected him to lash out at him.

 _What the hell is going on right now_?

Chazz panted after a moment, then moved to take a seat. His sides were slicked with blood and he was stripped of fur along his right shoulder, Yugi noticed. He had taken a rather copious beating, as had the wolf that was slinking unsteadily towards them. Yugi turned on them with a snarl and his tail in the air, warning them away before he faced Chazz again. The younger male gasped for air.

 _Joy and Aki managed to relay the story before we got the chance to stop them,_ the newcomer muttered, and Yugi blinked as he glanced over at Zane with darkened eyes. _They started a riot before we could shut them up. Then the pack turned in on itself. The fighting just stopped a few minutes ago._

Yugi flicked his ears. _What was this fight over_?

 _Joy turned a portion of the pack against you,_ a new voice commented, making him turn his head. Yusei was limping towards them. He looked ragged and roughed up, but he was not bleeding anymore on his right leg where he continued limping. _She said that if you were protecting a hellhound than it was impossible to trust you. And then we all started fighting because of how divided everyone is on the subject. A lot of wolves think that you're playing with them and could never be Atem. And now that's what the pack is fighting over._

Yugi pricked his ears forward. _Great, so even more fighting,_ he drawled, bristling faintly. He shook his head sharply, but the anger was more violent and heated in his veins. He nearly snarled, but suppressed it before he might startle the others. _I'm amazed by how divided this army of mine is._

But he couldn't truly say that without nearly rolling his eyes at himself. It was an absolute lie, he knew. In their place he would be just as divided. Hell, even as it was, as Atem himself, he was divided about it all. He could not say in the slightest that he did not understand their frustrations or confusion. And he was very keenly aware of the fact that he did not quite fit into the terms of the god that they had come to believe would be the one to lead them. And it was not as if the deaths that had accumulated had done him well in the face of their disbelief either.

Protecting Yami was probably far from helpful for him.

 _Well, considering that most of those who argued against you are dead as it is_ , Zane said, hissing in annoyance at his words and shaking himself out, _I do not suppose that it matters much._

Yugi stiffened, head snapping around to face him again. _What_? _You_ killed _them_?

 _I didn't personally kill any of them but Joy,_ the dark gray male snorted. He looked at him without much expression beyond a small sneering glint in his eyes. _But I will gladly assume responsibility for more if that is what you wanted from me._

He blinked. _How many deaths_? _How many casualties_?

Chazz looked away. _I believe a third of Yusei's pack was slaughtered. We had a couple of small casualties but they were more wounds than anything. Nistro's pack took the largest hit, I think. None of the yearlings were killed, but some of the older wolves were,_ he listed off, though now he turned to Zane. _Where is Syrus_? _Where are_ _Yuma_ _and Yuya and the others_?

 _I had Syrus take them with him when I told him to flee. They got out of the camp okay. I don't know where they headed past that,_ he answered dismissively. He turned to Yusei. _Although, I had assumed that you would run with them when I saw you helping them out._

 _I had to hold Aki off when she went after Syrus,_ the wolf said with a shake of his head. _So she tried to take my head off after that. And then Yuya attacked her when she managed to break my leg. He managed to hold her off just long enough for me to heal and get up again. And then he followed Syrus and the others after I subdued her._

 _You do not know where they were headed either_?

Yusei shook his head again. _Jack and I were fighting soon after that. I never got the chance to make sure they made it out of the camp properly. I would assume that they are fine, however. I didn't hear any screaming or yelping from that direction._

 _They wouldn't be able to scream or yelp if they were to be decapitated,_ a new voice sneered. Yugi blinked and turned his head. The pale blond wolf was sitting down near them, eyes sharp and full of hatred as he peered at Yusei. The gray yearling did not look towards him, instead facing Chazz now. The two of them seemed to be studying each other for the moment, as if they might lunge at the newcomer should he make any movements. _So not hearing them doesn't mean much, now does it, Atem_?

Yugi pricked his ears forward. _And you would be…_? he drawled. _Resentful and bitter? Got it._

Yusei looked at Yugi now. _That's Jack. He's the one who I was fighting before._

Now the white wolf raised his head and considered him curiously. He was the one that had partnered with Yusei on the hunt as well. He recognized those odd indigo eyes now. But he did not say anything further for the moment, instead turning to face Chazz. The younger wolf was watching Jack with sharp eyes, his muscles readied and a snarl threatening to form on his face. Then he shifted his weight and bristled faintly, as if he were ready to lunge forward at any moment.

 _Chazz, Yusei, Zane, I want you to make a list of who we have lost. I want an exact count. Tell me how many are lost and how many are left. If there are any wounded—be it mortally or otherwise—I want to know. Have them moved aside so that I can take care of them after I return._ He turned to Jack. _You're going to come with me to find Syrus and the others._

 _You expect me to help you find the omegas_? he snarled. _It's a waste of time and effort. Why would I do such a thing_?

 _Because, if you refuse, I'm not going to tell Chazz or Zane not to rip your throat out if it so crosses their minds,_ Yugi replied dismissively. He turned to Chazz after a moment. _When you have the total numbers, come find me, all right_?

The younger male nodded, eyes flickering briefly to Zane and then back. His alpha looked dismissive more than anything when Yugi looked at him. But neither seemed to be upset in the slightest. Yugi turned away and glanced at Jack, peeled his lips back, and then turned and trotted off further into the clearing which would lead into the forest soon enough. He didn't glance back, but he could hear the other three wolves moving to run and perform their assignments at his request. He heard them wandering through the snow in opposite directions, something that he cared little for. And then he hurried towards the trees again.

It was exhausting when he did so, as it made his skin crawl to simply do this. And he could hear Jack behind him, falling in line in the snow but failing to speak and so retaining his silence for a moment. Yugi lowered his nose to the snow, looking about at the crushed powdery crystals. There was so much blood scattered across the ice that he was flustered. The trail that should have led him immediately in the direction of the wolves in question was all but completely scattered about. He nearly snarled in annoyance, shrugging his thoughts away and scenting the air.

The metallic smell was too strong to get past, so he continued to search the snow for visible clues of their passage. He'd need to find where they were before he could do much else. He would bring them back to the camp and make sure that they were okay before anything else happened. He shrugged the thought off and ignored the way he almost felt as if Jack were Marik behind him. He had the sudden inescapable urge to look over his shoulder, to ensure that the blonde wolf had not grown larger and stronger and darker in fur color as Marik had been. He blinked, wondering at the thought of the larger wolf, the way he'd nearly killed him at the lake. And now Yugi had the urge to look back at Jack more than he did even to breathe at the moment.

Yugi shrugged the thought away. Wolves couldn't just change shapes like that. Hellhounds might have been able to, but not the lycanthropes. He reminded himself of this, repeating it to himself as if in a mantra, and finally found himself relaxing the smallest degree. He sniffed at the air again. And now he could smell something that he had not expected. He could smell Yusei there, like fresh rain mist and wet leaves and soggy straw. He tilted his head and turned his head, then bristled faintly. The snow to his left was covered in blood and indentations that spoke of a fight. He could see smears where the wolves had squabbled. And he could see where tufts of fur were lying littered about the ice in a harsh covering. The smell which came from each of them made him bristle faintly before he shrugged them away and continued forward.

Jack was growling quietly behind him. Yugi paused, then turned his head to peer at him over his shoulder. But the wolf was glaring at the ground more than anything else. He was scowling and refused to face him. And so Yugi snorted in annoyance and shook his head in turn.

He was reminded again of Marik and it made him want to turn around and snap his teeth at Jack violently. He thought of the tan and gray wolf when he had come too close, how he had so often spoken up against Yami but pretended to believe his choices as Atem. He had not been the only one to consider him incapable of leading the pack, however. But he had been the only one to think that he was Atem rather than Yugi himself. He supposed it did not matter. Things would have to be sorted out regardless…

He would have to _make_ things more stable. There was no way that he could allow things to go on as they were. It was ridiculous and he was being foolish in assuming that such a thing was possible. Yami alone was a reason for him to be more diligent about such a thing. If they were so willing to try to kill him over the fact that he _looked_ like a hellhound, then there was a lot to be considered with their stupidity.

Yugi huffed as he came around the bend of the hill and sniffed lightly at the snow. He could see the pawprints clearly now, allowing him room to run forward without much more care than to find them. He stiffened, bristling slightly, and sniffed at the air once more. And then he spotted them.

The small group of yearlings was pacing restlessly at the edge of a frozen pond that he guessed was hardly more than a few inches deep. He could not imagine it being too terribly large. The width of it alone was probably the length of his body as it was. He shook his head as he got closer. But he still remembered the lake, how Marik had attempted to drown him beneath the ice after their fighting.

 _Are you all right_? he asked immediately, hurrying forward and towards the small group. Yuya—he recognized him only from his eyes—and a she-wolf beside him sprang into the air in alarm, clearly startled. Syrus, however, stopped pacing and let out a small yip of what seemed to be immense relief. Beside him two other wolves were staring at him in bewilderment. _I heard that you had fled. I didn't know if the fighting had gotten out this far or what._

 _No, it didn't manage to get this far,_ Yuya answered in a quiet voice. He hardly looked relieved at the moment, though, and his head was tilted to the side in bewilderment. _And we're fine._

Yugi nodded slightly, though now he considered the she-wolf. He'd met her before, hadn't he? He shrugged the wayward thought off. _Well then, let's get back to the camp, shall we_? he mumbled. _We can get back and then I can check on the others who got hurt._

Yugi glanced at Jack as Yuya eyed the pale blond wolf with a glare. _You brought him with you_? he growled. _But he's the one who just attacked Yusei when he was trying to help us get out of the camp during all of the fighting._

 _I know,_ he admitted, _but it was this or let him get attacked by Chazz or Yusei or Zane. None of them were too happy with him and I don't want any unnecessary bloodshed. It would be foolish of me to let that happen when anyone can see the devastation that has already happened, wouldn't you think_?

Yuya was snarling, his fur in a bristle as he bore his teeth. _Well, if he hadn't attacked Yusei after Aki did, there wouldn't be as much blood either,_ he grunted. He looked more distressed than angry, however. And Yugi tilted his head, facing him curiously. _I mean, he…_

 _Don't worry, Yuya. If he so much as looks at you funny, I'll kick his ass_! the she-wolf beside him snarled. _He won't even be able to blink before I have him on the ground_!

Yuya's ears flattened against his head and he glanced at the she-wolf with a huff. _I don't need you to protect me, Koroti. I can handle him myself_! _I took down Aki, after all._

 _Aki had already taken a beating,_ she replied dismissively. _She doesn't count._

Syrus wagged his tail at Yugi, head lowered and ears flattened. _Are Zane and Chazz and Yusei okay_?

 _Chazz and Zane are pretty worried about you. But they're fine aside from a couple of wounds._ Yugi wondered what would have happened if he were to say something else. And he wondered if he could quite say that any of them were okay but for a couple of wounds. Yusei had that terrible limp. Chazz had been slicked on both sides and covered in blood. It was truly only Zane who had seemed to be okay for the most part. Yugi pushed the thought aside. _Both of them want you back at the camp as soon as possible._

Syrus blinked, relaxing visibly upon hearing this news. _Okay_. He took a seat and lowered his head to look at the snow with a flick of his ears. _I'm glad to hear that they're okay._

 _They're all fine,_ he reassured him, though now he turned to Yuya and Koroti. _You don't have to worry about Jack. If he so much as snarls at you, he'll be dealing with me. Let's just get a move on, all right_? _We can get back and I can check on the others in the camp._

 _Yugi_! The call was so frantic that the white wolf bristled in alarm, head snapping around and eyes wide with confusion. He blinked, then focused on Yusei as he hurried towards him. He was limping so terribly that he nearly landed on his face at one point, though he caught himself and slowed, panting heavily. _Y…_

Yugi tilted his head and padded a couple of steps closer to him. _What_? _What's wrong_?

The gray wolf struggled for a moment, blue eyes flickering with frustration. And then he blinked and raised his head. His eyes glinted. And Yugi tilted his head further, more confused than ever. And then he saw it. It was a shattered and fuzzy image. And it made him wonder at the sight for a moment, puzzled. And then it began to slowly sharpen. It was white and red and blue. And for a moment he could not understand the colors or the shape they made. And then he stiffened, alarmed and confused as he looked back at Yusei blankly.

The figure in the image was standing before another wolf. And his head was bowed slightly. Long hair stood in a star formation, black tipped with red. The jacket on his shoulders was Yugi's school uniform, the shirt beneath a gray tank top. His eyes were shadowed due to the way his bangs fell. And the expression on his face was nothing more than blank consideration. It faded almost immediately and Yugi could not see which wolf was before him. But it made him bristle, heart hammering.

 _Why is he here_? he demanded icily. _He wasn't supposed to come here_!

Yusei shook his head, still panting. He flattened his ears and lowered his eyes.

Yugi huffed and turned back to the small group. _Yusei will lead you back to the camp. I have to go ahead._ But then his head snapped towards Jack and he chomped his teeth aggressively, startling the younger male. The purple eyes focused on him, enlarged with shock. _I don't trust you not to pick a fight so you're coming with me._

Jack awkwardly ducked his head, though he hardly looked happy. And Yugi turned abruptly to make his way up the small incline and towards the entrance of the camp again. He was running before he could rethink it, racing through the snow. And the powdered ice was blinding when he moved too quickly and nearly fell over. But, as he got closer, the wolves nearest him looked over and then scattered out of the way. He pounced into a larger dune, nearly burying himself in it, and then hurried through it again.

 _Well, hello, I didn't expect you to greet me with such enthusiasm,_ a voice snickered. Yugi blinked, slowing, and fought away the urge to pant for air as he looked over. The blue-gray male was peering at him with glittering eyes. _I almost would have thought you loved me with the way you just raced so quickly here._

Yugi snorted. _Sure, Obelisk,_ he said dryly. _That's why I came running as quickly as I did. You are, surely, the light of my life in every way, shape and form._

Obelisk laughed and turned away from him. _You're adorable,_ he murmured, though now Yugi turned away to face the newcomer as well. Yami was lazily playing with the sleeves of the jacket he was wearing. _Now, as for your idea, I am relatively sure that such a thing is true. But you are asking someone that has never changed into a human form and has no desire to do so._

Yami nodded dismissively. "I can't see the veins. It should be true enough."

 _Veins_? Yugi demanded sharply, turning to him now. _What the hell are you talking about_?

 _What is he doing here_? Chazz asked, looking confused and bewildered. He had come up from near Jack's shoulder where the other was seated in the snow glaring at Yugi in annoyance. The white wolf blinked at him and then glanced back to Yami. _I thought the whole reason you left was because you didn't want him in the camp after Joy…_

 _It was. So I have no idea why he's over here either._ He looked at Yami. And his fur jerked with a violent bristle for a split second. He'd said he wouldn't come. He had told him he wasn't going to come here because of his health. So why the hell had he done so? Yugi didn't care how nasty his words came out when he snapped, _Care to explain_?

Yami was peering at him for a moment, then he turned to Obelisk. "I guess it can never hurt to try, right?" he muttered. The deity tilted his head and stared at him for a moment. Then he wagged his tail as if in affirmation and glanced to Yugi in turn. "You're no help at all, I swear Obelisk."

 _I was created to oversee wars,_ the deity said dismissively, shaking his head and pricking his gray ears forward. _That does not mean that I know everything else to do with the lycanthropes. You're oversimplifying my role in things._

"You all are furballs," he drawled in response, shaking his head and smiling in amusement. The deity tilted his head and wagged his tail slightly before flicking his ears. "That's not important regardless, I suppose. All that matters is the fact that it is something that I can try."

 _Yes, it is something that you might be able to try,_ Obelisk said with a turn of his head towards Yugi. The white wolf was staring at Yami blankly, trying to figure out what it was that they might have been talking about in the first place. He hated that he had come into this conversation in the middle rather than the beginning to hear its entirety. He had said the word "veins" and it was still ringing in his ears at this point. _I suppose it would be simple to do such a thing, yes_?

 _No_ , Yugi snapped, cutting into the lazy statement. He locked eyes with Yami and peeled his lips back to show off his teeth. _What the hell are you talking about_? _I want to know what the hell is going on before I say a damn word in agreement._

Obelisk turned to consider Yami as well. The red-eyed boy frowned, considering Yugi for a moment, then shrugged and raised his voice. "Lycanthropes have fur beneath their skin. It was one of the things that the medieval Europeans used to search for when they suspected someone of being a werewolf." He looked at Yugi closely. "You can't see veins on my arms in my human form. I would think it would only be logical that the reasoning behind it is because of fur covering them, right?"

Yugi blinked and glanced around at the other wolves for a moment. Many of them were curious and interested, though a few seemed skeptical of this statement as well. One or two considered him cautiously and Yusei and Chazz appeared almost nervous. He turned back with a flick of his ears. _So is that how you plan to prove that you're a lycanthrope_? _By cutting into your arms to show off the fur beneath your skin_?

But he could not remember ever quite looking for Yami's veins along his arms. And he could not quite recall if he had ever looked at his arms after he'd gouged them open before. He did not think that he had ever seen fur. But he did not think he had ever looked, either. The truth of it was something that he could not quite remember. He had never looked and now he could not quite recall. If Yami were to cut into his arms and there was no fur, what would happen then? Would they feel that he was truly a hellhound and go to kill him in front of the rest of the pack?

He nearly shuddered. Instead he looked around again.

 _Is that even a proven thing_? Zane asked, sounding incredibly doubtful and annoyed. _I do not think that was ever really a true thing. I thought that was more just the medieval people looking to justify killing each other in the name of purging the wolves._

 _I do not know,_ Obelisk admitted with a shrug. His carefree expression infuriated Yugi, but it seemed to make Zane bristle as his lips curled back faintly to show his teeth at the god. _I have never turned human. So I cannot say yes or no definitively._

 _So then it might not even be worth it,_ Chazz interrupted, sounding and looking flustered. _If it's not worth it, then why do it_? _If it's not going to actually prove anything to us, then why risk it_?

"What do I have to lose?" Yami inquired in turn. "There is no reason not to."

 _For the off chance that it's true,_ Yugi pointed out, though he was somewhat hopeful now. If Yami had fur under his skin, then that could blow it all away as easily as the subject had come up. It could be resolved… _But if it's not, that doesn't quite mean anything either. I don't even know if I have fur under my skin._

But he did. He remembered it. He had grown stray white hairs in his wounds when he was recovering from Ushio's ambush. He remembered that now. It made his head spin for a split second. Yes, he had grown hair in his wounds, had been horrified and terrified by it. But he'd also realized that he was infected and that would come to happen as it was…

"Yes, well, it is a chance," Yami said dismissively. "It will have to do if nothing else."

Obelisk nodded slightly. _It is an idea, even if it proves to be wrong._

"Yes." He was quiet for a moment, then he moved to slide his sleeve up into the crook of his elbow. From there he seemed to study his arms for a split second. And, finally, before each of their eyes, he moved to press his nails into his arm. It took only a quick swipe in which he tore the skin, bright red surging forward from the wounds. Yugi felt as if he might vomit, a tremble coursing through him. He didn't see any fur…

And then Yami ran his hand over it again, smearing the blood away.

It was not as if his muscles were coated in the black hair. It was only a few stray strands which showed there. He shivered, almost dizzy. And the blood did not return to push outwards from the wounds. It had faded away almost immediately and it was healing again rather rapidly.

 _I didn't realize we had fur under our skin_! Chazz said, turning to Obelisk with huge eyes. Yugi watched him for a moment as the gray yearling huffed ad looked incredibly irate with the dismissive glance the deity cast him. _No wonder we don't bleed as much as regular humans do._

 _Aside from your healing_? Obelisk muttered in turn, though he was looking over at Yugi now. _Yes, the fur would help to stunt the blood flow from a weaker point on the body. Imagine the damage he would have done to himself had that fur not been there._

Yugi grunted, unable to keep from almost shaking in disbelief. It was almost amazing to him as he turned back to the red-eyed teen. But Yami was not paying him attention in the slightest. He was licking his hand and rubbing at the smears of blood that had been there. He wiped them clean and finally pulled his sleeve down entirely and turned to Yugi.

"It cushions the veins so if someone were foolish enough to cut along them in the human form, the fur would stunt the bleeding," he said after a moment, as if he thought Yugi truly cared more than for his relief. But his eyes were somewhat warmer, as if he himself were relieved more than anything that his trick had been proven truthful. Yugi wanted to vomit for a split second. It had been a gamble, and it had paid off, but the potential repercussions could have been a thousand times worse. "But, now that this has been momentarily resolved… What the hell happened here?"

 _Fighting amongst the pack,_ Yusei supplied in a dry tone. He was sitting a few feet away, Syrus and Yuya near him sniffing at his leg. No doubt Syrus was hoping to somehow help him to heal it sooner rather than later. And Yuya was curious more than anything else. The other boy looked stunned for the most part, as if he could not believe that it had happened. Yugi frowned as he considered the small group. _Over Atem._

"Over Atem?" Yami echoed, though he did not sound surprised in the slightest. And his eyes looked flat and annoyed more than anything else. "What about him?"

 _Whether or not we should still follow him when we were unsure of whether you were a hellhound or not,_ Chazz answered in an annoyed tone. _And now some of them are dead because they decided to turn their back on Atem. It's as simple as that._

Yugi bristled faintly, but forced himself to relax again almost immediately. He did not want to get more attention from the other wolves than necessary. If they did not stare at him and await his reaction, he felt it would be far too soon. _I need to go through and see about wounds,_ he muttered in a distracted tone, the red eyes falling on him again now. _I don't know any of the numbers. Yusei…_?

The yearling lowered his head a degree, flattening his ears and shaking his head. _Fourteen dead, about twenty moderately wounded, about sixteen with deeper punctures,_ he explained, tilting his head and studying him for a moment. _I do not think that there were too many others besides scrapes and bruises._

 _Right, okay._ Yugi shook himself out and turned around to face some of the wolves that were resting a few feet away. He tilted his head and considered them, then glanced over towards Ishizu who was seated on the outside of the gathered group. Her head was tilted, her ice blue eyes boring into his for a moment, and she looked almost untouched but for a small splash of blood upon her muzzle and around her cheek beneath her left eye. _Who do you think had some of the worst_?

 _Me_? Yusei muttered, bewildered. _Zane was the one who gave me the numbers for that._

Yugi blinked and looked over his shoulder. The larger gray male was sitting, head craned back as if he were howling, the bones popping as he slowly lowered his chin again and yawned loudly. _Who do you think had some of the worst wounds then, Zane_? he requested.

 _Hmm_? the alpha hummed, turning to him slowly. _Chazz has some of the worst. How he's walking is beyond me. Aki should have bled out, but somehow she's still alive. Yuya's parents both have huge gashes on their chests and sides. Some of the yearlings from the pack that was already here have been pretty badly cut up. It depends on what you think is the most severe. Regardless, Chazz would be my number one concern._

 _And you_? _How badly are you wounded_?

 _Not as badly as he is,_ the gray wolf scoffed. But he did not rise to his feet again and he looked exhausted, though angry more so than anything. Yugi thought that perhaps he was someone who ran on anger when he was tired and it made him almost snarl in alarm. The way he peered back at him was almost enough to make him nervous. If that were true, it made Zane volatile. And how much could he trust a wolf that ran on such violent impulses and natures? Would he do something to upset the wolf and have him turn on him soon as well? And how well could he defend against that? He didn't know enough about him, nor about his fighting style, to truly go against him. _And I would think Aki is in a worse state than I am._

 _Great,_ Yugi muttered. He looked to Yami now. _Come with me. I think you having hands might be a good thing right about now._

The red-eyed teen blinked, considering him, and then followed quickly when Yugi began to trot through the snow again. It took over two hours for Yugi to examine each of them, to address which bodies had been added to the death count, and to make a second lap around the camp to ensure that everyone had gotten some kind of attention. He'd groomed wounds for a large majority of time and then asked Yami to pack snow into a cast-like formation to help stifle the bleeding of many of the wounds. And, only as the third hour began to pass, did Yugi take a seat in the snow and look around at the others. Yami was sitting down a couple of inches away, legs pulled up and weight on his arms as he leaned back.

 _Are you all right_? _Your arm isn't hurting or anything after what happened, right_?

Yami blinked and looked over at him. "I am fine," he said dismissively. "I did not even cut deeply, in case I was wrong. I was surprised that you could even see the fur with how shallow it actually was. I guess it truly is just beneath the surface, hmm?"

Yugi smiled at him, wagging his tail and peering at him with bright eyes. _What happened to make you think of it_?

Yami tilted his head, surprised by how soft and warm his tone was. He smiled faintly in turn and then shook his head, looking away. "I was asleep after you left. But then I woke up after a dream about Ra," he admitted, furrowing his brows and narrowing his eyes. "I don't remember what was said or what happened in that dream, just that I woke up with the realization that perhaps that might be the way to fix this."

Yugi stared at him for a moment. And Yami knew, even as he looked at him from the corner of his eye, that the white wolf was skeptical. He knew immediately that the white canine understood that he was lying, that he knew immediately that Yami still remembered the damn dream. And it was enough to make Yugi silent, staring at him in annoyance for a moment.

 _Okay. Well then that works, I guess._

"I suppose so." Yami shook his head and turned to him after a moment. "Fourteen wolves are dead, huh?"

 _And I have a feeling that not all of the wounded ones are going to make it through the night,_ Yugi said slowly, grimly. He shook his head and sighed softly before flattening his ears against his head. _I don't know what to do with this. I don't know how it is that I'm meant to deal with this_.

"If this is truly meant to be a war, I would assume that you would need to find a way to get more wolves brought back to the camp," the red-eyed teen said slowly. The words tasted bitter on his tongue, sounding hollow in his ears. "So, in other words, I think that you're going to have to send one of the packs back to wherever they came from in order to spread word."

Yugi was frozen for a moment, eyes wide. _Then you think that I…_ He lowered his muzzle towards the snow and tilted his head uncomfortably. _Who do you think would be the best wolves to send back_?

"I would take to one with an alpha and beta, as it would seem more like a unified approach to do it that way," he murmured in an almost dismissive tone. Yami sighed and shook his head, seeing the gears moving behind Yugi's eyes as he considered. "Chazz and Zane are your best bet. They came from the states. That gives more of an opportunity for word to be spread. I don't think that you could send anyone else at this point. Echo is dead so her pack would be rather divided without their leader to guide them. And the other packs came from Europe and Sapporo. I would think that the one from Sapporo would have limited access to any other wolves in Japan. And I do not assume to think that there are many more as it is."

Yugi thought briefly of his classmates, how a few of them had seemed to notice his status as a wolf recently. And he wondered if it would be a stupid decision to bother to ask Yami for his opinion on the matter. But the thought also occurred to him then; many of those aforementioned classmates had seemingly disappeared. Many of them, even his former bullies, had gone missing. He had no idea what had happened to them at any rate. All he knew that they were gone and perhaps captured, likely being experimented on themselves now that he considered it.

Yami was likely right in the idea of sending Chazz and Zane. They were smart enough to evade notice, they knew how to contact other packs in the states, and likely they could easily get in touch with the wolves their pack neighbored as well. He had no idea how long it would be that they would have to be gone, however, and that put a small dent in the plan in terms of protection. But he was sure that between himself and Yami and the wolves that still remained in the pack despite the deaths that he expected to happen overnight, they would be okay.

 _How long do you think it'll be before they question the fact that you have fur under your skin_?

Yami was quiet for a long handful of seconds. "I don't know. I'm amazed it even worked now." He paused and tilted his head, looking to Yugi now and narrowing his eyes with a shake of his head. "Truthfully, I think they are all just desperate in some way or another to have something to cling to that might prove more solid than their beliefs right now. I think they're desperate to have some kind of reassurance that not everything they know and believe is untrue."

Yugi tilted his head and then nodded, looking away. _I can understand that_.


	73. Lifetimes

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Hopefully biweekly**

 **Chapter Warnings: Torture, Bloodshed, Death, Experiments, Mild Puzzleshipping, Hunting**

 **So! Some of Atem's history gets revealed this chapter. It's mostly things already covered in the work log entries. But it also includes something that isn't in there. And that point will be expanded on later.**

 **On a completely different note, I'm working on editing the older chapters around editing/posting the newer ones and writing the rest. I'm going to try to get to the point that I can start updating again every other week, so about every other set of days off. That way I can try to commit to a more regular schedule again. And hopefully when I get to that point, I can start putting up the edited chapters the same day as I post the new ones. Edits shouldn't impact the rate that I post the newer chapters though, hopefully. And edits shouldn't impact the storyline whatsoever. I'm just tidying things up. I realized a few months ago that I probably should in order to get back on track with some of the other events and characters in part six. So! Yeah, that's the plan. I'm going to work to get back on that schedule. 74 might not be cooperative with that, though, because I have a ton of edits and tweaks that need to go into it.**

 **Anyways, hopefully the length of this chapter makes up for the other two shorter ones before it. Chapters after 80 are increasingly long, as part six is when EVERYTHING starts to get even crazier. So if they take a little longer to go up, that's why.**

Chapter LXXIII: Lifetimes

 _Work Log Entry LXV: July, 2008_

 _July 27_

 _The boss has decided that one more experiment is meant to be used on Atem._

 _He has come to the conclusion that it is necessary to deconstruct his mind and attempt to put it back together again. He wants to see if there are any lasting effects on a Pure-Blood put through such an experiment._

 _The other wolves all lost their minds. They became unstable and extremely unhealthy._

 _It clawed every last ounce of compassion from them and saw to what they became after that._

 _They were nothing of what they used to be, husks of creatures that didn't quite know how to survive let alone fend for themselves in any manner._

 _All fifty wolves died._

 _Atem is to be put through these experiments in a month._

 _Welcome._

Yugi bristled as he padded forward into the snow. It was soft and mushy beneath his paws but it delivered a vibrant crunch in his ears. The white wolf hesitated, glancing over his shoulder, and peered into the trees further behind him. Their bases were threaded with silver and their bark looked smooth and illuminated by golden with a woven design amidst the cracks of them almost akin the core of a spider's web.

The sky overhead harbored no clouds and the darkness seemed speckled with stars of a bright white core and golden tails like flames. The tree branches faded into nothingness here, shimmering into nonexistence where the silver of their outlines disappeared. The air was cold and crisp but, as he looked around again, no mist formed before his muzzle and Yugi considered the darkness of the cobalt shadows cast about him once more.

 _Why am I here_? he asked softly. _And why isn't Obelisk here_?

 _Obelisk did not wish to attend._ The she-wolf smiled at him, golden eyes burning with laughter. _I would not be attending either, had it not been for the fact that I chose to tell Yami of the proof he needed to convince the pack. I meddled and now Ra has demanded that I be here to answer your questions._

 _You told him_? _Yami said it was Ra._

 _He also said he did not remember the dream,_ the russet-furred wolf said dismissively. She shook her head. _Whether he chooses to admit to things or not is his own choice, I suppose. It is free will which is the gift of the mortals, after all. It only makes sense that such a thing be exercised as desired._

 _You say that as if you don't have any free will of your own._

 _I do not have it in the same way that you do,_ Slifer answered. She glanced at her sister beside her but Yugi did not do the same. He did not think he could face her at the moment. She had to be disappointed in him. She'd saved him from Marik before and now she was watching him fall back into his old patterns of relying on Yami too much. She was bearing witness to his loss of capability. And no doubt she had to wonder why she had bothered to save him. Fuck, _Yami_ had to wonder that at some point as well, he was sure. _Free will for a god is dictated by a great many things and often it might seem as if we have a will of our own, but the balance must be kept. And to do so, we have strict rules to follow._

 _Oh_?

 _You must come closer, Yugi,_ Slifer said with a flick of her ear. She gestured simply with her nose towards the river beside them. _We have something to show you._

 _Show me_? he muttered, unsure of himself. He did not think he wanted to get so close. He hesitated, uncertain as she peered back at him so calmly. He could not recall the last time he had felt such dread in his belly in this huge a lump before. But it made him anxious as he looked slowly towards Ra as well. _What are you planning to show me_?

 _Why speak about it when we can simply show you instead_? the golden she-wolf said dismissively, flicking an ear. Her voice took on a snide edge, one full of mocking laughter. _You should look at the water, Yugi. It will give you some answers. You've always wanted answers, right_?

 _Answers_? he repeated skeptically. A strange mixture of excitement and disbelief surged through him. He peered at her but she seemed more amused than anything as he considered her. Was she truly offering him answers? Or was she simply teasing him? And then, should she be truthful…

 _Answers to_ what?

Slifer was quiet for a moment. _What do you want to know about the most, Yugi_? _It is something that you asked me about formerly. Yami did not show any kindness in his response to your inquiry either._

Yugi blinked and glanced between the two of them. Slifer was clearly unhappy, though he did not think it was with what was being done, nor even with his attitude. It bewildered him why she might look at him as she was. And when he glanced over to Ra the other she-wolf was staring at him blankly. She did not seem disappointed in the slightest, something that floored Yugi more than he cared to admit.

He would have been disappointed in their place. Hell, Yugi did not even seem to have his priorities in line as he was meant to. And that was something that unnerved him considerably now as he considered it.

No wonder the wolves saw him as so weak and stupid…

What did he want to know the most? Yugi flicked his ears slowly back and forth, listening to what sounded like paws in the snow. But when he glanced back there was no wolf darting across the ice. And it made him feel small and sick and uncomfortable as he turned back. Where were the other wolves? Why were they not running about and playing as he had seen them do formerly? Why did he not see any familiar faces among the ice? There was only Ra and Slifer before him, the only hint of existence in this terrain of ice.

What was it that he had wanted to know?

What had he asked her about before?

He wracked his brain for the answer. Yami had not reacted happily when he'd asked the question? He considered this a moment. Yami wasn't often happy with anything he asked about, honestly. He liked to dodge away from any inquiries of his time in the labs—for good reason—and he tended to lie and speak in half-truths. Much of the questions Yugi asked were turned away from, in order to keep himself safe. But what was it that he had…?

Yugi blinked. _Atem,_ he realized, a trill of excitement and fear crawling down his spine. _You're talking about what happened to Atem._

Slifer nodded slowly, watching him for a moment. _Yes, we are talking about what happened with Atem,_ she said emotionlessly. For once she looked as the epitome of the domain she guarded. Slifer looked almost as if the life might have been drained from her for the moment. She looked absolutely ancient and hollow, as if she had been carved out and forced to still bear her carcass in a presentable manner before him. _But we will not_ tell _you what happened. It would be wiser for you to_ see _it_.

Yugi blinked and raised his head, confused. _See it_? he muttered softly. _I don't want to see it_.

 _But you're going to have to._

 _Why_? _Can't you just tell me_?

 _Tell you_? Ra repeated quietly. _You do not want to hear us tell you these things. It's not something that you would wish to hear. It is something that you have to see to understand._

Yugi looked between them uncertainly. _It'll stop if I ask, right_? _You won't make me watch longer than I want_? he prompted, sounding almost sickened. He felt dizzy for a split second, head spinning with horror. What if it was some kind of trick or a punishment that they wished to use against him? Had he done something so wrong that they wished to lash out at him like that? What if they trapped him there, in those memories of what had happened to him in the labs, while in the outside world the war happened? Had they somehow deemed him too dangerous? He was self-destructive, yes, but—

 _I don't know if I can do this…_

 _You'll find yourself capable of enduring more than you assumed you could. It is the way of the wolf. We adapt to survive. There is no backing away from the things that might upset us._

Yugi huffed. _Oh, yeah, thanks for that Ra._

Slifer was snickering. _Come closer to the bank, Yugi, and look into the water._

 _Can't you do like in movies and just implant it in my head or something_?

Slifer snorted loudly, wagging her tail with delight towards the question. _We can. But it would kill you. Giving a gift of memories for a minute or a day would be an easy transfer. Your mind would hardly even notice its existence there. But to give you the burden of sixteen years in one moment_? _It would destroy your mind and thus you soon after_.

Yugi frowned. _I would come back._

He did not know truly why he was fighting with them like this. He did not understand why in the world it would be better to experience an excruciating death than to simply watch. He guessed it had to do with the idea that it would be faster. They would implant it there and it would scar him mentally but he would be able to see all of it in a split second, understand it and push it away again.

This way it was slower and longer. This way he could pay more attention and see the things he did not want to. This way it would be _imprinted_ in him.

And Yugi did not know if he could survive such a thing. Yami had said the experiments had been horrid, that they had been scarring to simply think of. He had reacted badly to even being asked about them. And Yugi understood why. But he'd still needed to know. He'd still…

He hesitated, glancing between the two of them. And then he slowly made his way towards the bank of the river. It was a few feet away from them and his stomach rolled as the roar of rushing water entered his ears. He shivered and shook himself out. And then he padded closer to the bank still, leaning forward as water spray landed on his face.

The water here was as clear as the sky overhead. He could scarcely see the reflection beyond himself. And the rocks beneath glittered like gems before his eyes. He shivered, confused, and tilted his head. The water ran in a roar but the sound seemed stunted as he came closer still. He was leaning over the edge of the bank, peering into this shallow water without difficulty. And the stones, soft and rounded almost like pebbles, began to all but glow. The reflection of the water where its current slowed and sped and danced about, touching the soft sand beneath his paws and pulling back again, was shimmering as if with starlight.

And then the pebbles began to change color, the water too taking on a similar shade and hue. The formation of it became altered, shifting into something else entirely before his eyes. And Yugi felt almost dizzy as the colors grew immense and blinding and then fell away again with a duller intensity. And, for a long handful of minutes, the image that was forming shook and vibrated, darting to and fro in every direction.

Yugi could not see himself against the image that had begun to appear before it sharpened abruptly. The sound of the river itself became a distant hum, all but disappearing entirely. And, as Yugi watched, the sharpened image became clearer and finally he was staring into something that looked like a fresh video reel.

The image that came to him was unlike anything he'd ever seen before. And it was amazing to him. The boy was small and low to the ground, dressed in odd sky blue clothes, and red booties. Yugi was not sure but he thought that there was no diaper to be seen. But it wasn't the clothing which made him shiver.

The boy, two or perhaps three in this picture, a perfectly human specimen, maybe even the ideal weight for a toddler, was pale and ashen in skin tone with hair as white as snow and eyes as bottomless as an abyss. His lashes were longer, pale blond, and his cheeks were cushioned with baby fat. But it did not offer a rosy hue as some children possessed and Yugi, at first glance, would not be able to tell at all the original ancestral descent for him.

In fact, to his surprise, if one were not knowledgeable of the fact that Atem was male, the baby could have been questionably considered female. It was an odd thought, and not one that Yugi normally would have had, but the human Atem had no defining features in outward appearance to tell his gender.

He was handled with odd whispers, sometimes called a demon and others a curse. A guard, dressed in something pale and sterile white like hospital clothing, would occasionally pass the cage. And the human Atem would barely glance up from whatever toys they had given him to entertain himself with. He would sit in the back of the cage, content to stack blocks that either spelled his name, the word "wolf", or had series of characters in different languages to—Yugi assumed—do the same thing.

Atem was kept stimulated by the use of these blocks and occasionally the brave person willing to come into the cage with him.

But the whispers were constant. And one man in particular seemed to tremble when he came anywhere near the toddler. He would tremble so hard that the metal tray in his hand would rattle rapidly. He fed him regularly, until one day Yugi no longer could see him and only the vet appeared to feed and interact with him. And, when Atem seemed to have settled into a routine of simply eating and playing with the blocks more time than Yugi could measure by the image, there were tests.

The veterinarian would come in. And Yugi only knew him to be the one because he wore a stethoscope around his neck. And he was dressed in dark blue scrubs. He also seemed to be the only one not entirely afraid of Atem. He would crouch down, whispering in a low and soothing tone as if Atem might bite him, and the blank black stare he was rewarded each time probably would have given Yugi the assumption he might lash out in his place as well. But then the toddler would get up, an awkward affair because the cage was too small to do much in and so it did not allow him room to exercise, and pull his shirt up.

The stethoscope would be against his chest a second later and the vet would listen while staring at the wall. And Atem would awkwardly keep this position as long as he could before he'd drop his shirt and try to wander off. The vet would normally snicker, but other times he looked at Atem as if he could not fathom what he was capable of, nor if he might kill him then and there in that small cage.

A small syringe of blood would be drawn—Atem would hold his arm out and never so much as flinched—and the vet would document the time on a notepad. A little work log was entered as well, notes of which Yugi could not quite read because the focus was never on them and the image remained solely on Atem.

This continued for what felt like months.

And then more tests came.

Atem was hooked to a machine to measure his brain waves. He was hooked up for blood pressure monitoring. He was inspected head to toe, stripped naked so that measurements could be taken. It was only ever the vet to perform this, as if he were the only one trusted not to do further than what he was instructed. And he'd have his heart monitored while the vet would open his mouth and look at his teeth and measure each of them.

Sometimes Atem sat through these with ease. Other times he would abruptly get up from his seat and wander away. He'd find something on the floor and play with it while the vet would instruct him to go back and sit down. And they'd have a moment or so of obedience before Atem would wander again. Occasionally when the vet would take the object of his attention away, Atem would follow him on stubby legs, hurrying to keep up, arms outstretched and eyes huge with his need for it its return. Occasionally it was given back. Other times he was made to sit back down with the promise it would be returned to him after.

And then came a new set of experiments.

Shallow cuts were made on the skin and a stopwatch recorded the moment it healed. It was all but instantaneous. And then the next time the cuts were inflicted an inch, then two inches, and finally clear through to the bone. These took longer, a minute at the most when deep enough to hit bone.

And it took a shot of numbing medication and a belt wrapped around Atem's arm for the next test to take place. He looked like a heroin addict with this position, something that made Yugi want almost to vomit upon seeing. And Yugi nearly screamed, horrified, when the vet and several guards put Atem's hand into a machine with such striking power that it slammed down and produced an arm that hung limp and bent at an impossible angle.

Yugi could not be sure if it was the medicine which numbed him impossibly to the point of not feeling it or if Atem simply did not care what had happened. Because the toddler never cried. And, in about a minute, when the splint was placed, Atem was running around and using his arm again. The guards and vet were mystified, as was Yugi himself, but the toddler was using his arm without a fuss. He was even putting his hand in his mouth and chewing on wiggling fingers.

Immediately Atem was taken to a neighboring machine. The splint was removed from his arm and the skin was a hideously discolored mess. It was black at the core, with disgusting purple and red and sharp fragments of bruised yellow in other places. He was instructed to keep his hand still as the machine whirled to life and an x-ray began to show on the screen. Atem was seated there, looking all but exhausted and bored now, as if the healing had taken more out of him than he had been prepared for. And he was almost asleep by the time the vet recovered from the shock of seeing the bones mended together perfectly.

The bruising was the only thing that remained.

And it stayed that way for the month following. They continued tests, heart monitoring, checking and measuring his teeth, checking his blood cell counts and various other things. Atem remained silent throughout, watching with those same inky black eyes, a reflective quality in them showing Yugi more than ever the faces of those who were close to him.

His stomach tossed.

The next time he saw Atem, it was past what Yugi assumed to be his feeding time. Atem was sitting up, looking around unhappily, with an expression that could only be described as bewildered and confused. The toddler pushed his blocks away, waddled over to the door of his cage, looked around uncertainly, sniffed the air a few times, and drooled for a second. Then he moved to sit down, legs spread and arms between them. He sat like this for only a moment or two.

And then he reached down with his fingers curled. He clawed at the polished concrete beneath him first. And when it did not give, he got up and waddled to the far right side of the cage. For a moment he tapped at the wall with his claws, listening intently for some noise that Yugi did not recognize. And it took a full ten minutes of him doing so before he stopped short, tilted his head, and leaned forward to repeat the noise. And, finally, to Yugi's amazement, he struck out against the wall.

His nails chipped and broke from the impact. He was bleeding immediately, the quicks struck violently and split from the force. The blood was a gushing fountain of red and his fingers were stained in an instant. But his initial hit had done enough damage. The wall was cracked. And Atem didn't pay attention to the blood on his fingers when he began clawing and digging at it. The wall chipped away in small chunks of concrete and the finest grains of dirt as miniscule as dust particles.

It took another few minutes for him to claw through the wall entirely. And his hands were soaked red, his fingers stripped raw and bruised from the activity. But while they seemed swollen, as if he'd broken them during his struggles, he did not seem to care. Yugi was struck with the startling realization that his bones had healed instantly once more, and his perception of pain was rather stunted.

His heart was in his throat as the toddler crawled through the hole he had made and waddled away from the damage he'd done. He was on the other side of the small hallway and out into the corner of the little area. Another wolf was laying on its side further down the hall, near the corner of its own cage and farther back than even Atem's was. Atem got to the small room where the bars were thin and not nearly as secured as his own. And he ducked down and reached unhappily for the tray he had obviously smelled earlier.

It took him a minute to make contact with it and then he was pulling it out and to the bars. It hit it, rattled, but would not come through. Atem sat there for a moment, eyeing it. And for a moment Yugi honestly feared he might try to claw the bars apart to get to it. Instead the toddler sat down much as he had before, legs open and hands between them, and began to dig out handfuls of what looked like shredded and ground meat of some kind. It had to have been sitting there for a while, because Atem made a face when he swallowed the first mouthful but quickly overcame that in order to dig into it.

Blood smeared across his mouth from where his nails touched his face and the meat was freshly bleeding as well when Atem hit the bottom of the tray. He had continued to dig at the food until it was no longer there and now he sat looking unhappy but more or less satisfied.

It seemed to take an eternity for anyone to spot him. And it was only because he was wandering and playing with pebbles that he was noticed. He had begun tossing them at the wall, then hurrying to grab them again and repeat the gesture.

He was washed clean after getting caught, the vet inspecting him everywhere as he did so. But he had more or less healed himself and his nails were all but perfect again. The blood washed from them, the only visible disfigurement was bruising colored black and purple.

Atem was moved to another cage to be isolated while repairs were made to his wall. He was given videos to watch, a test kind of thing, which kept him busy and stimulated around playing with blocks and being fed more regularly again.

He remained there for what Yugi guessed was two days. He had to measure the time by way of how many times he was fed, as he was only fed twice a day. Four feedings passed and so Yugi assumed it to be two days.

But they slipped up again soon after. Yugi could not tell if it was on purpose or if somehow they had run late in feeding. But they kept the regular schedule for a day longer. And then they slipped up again.

Yugi watched Atem do as he had before. He sat up abruptly, forgetting entirely his game of stacking blocks. And then he got up, sniffing, waddled to the door of his cage, and looked around unhappily. He looked around uncomfortably, bewildered, and soon headed back to the wall he'd originally clawed his way through.

This time Yugi noticed that there was something like a purple paste, layered between the bricks they had placed to cement the wall again. Atem sniffed at it, considering, and looked incredibly shaken for a moment. And so he wandered away and back, pacing, but now Yugi could see his hands twitching. His mouth was salivating and he looked incredibly unhappy, so much so that he was surprised he did not whine.

Instead, abruptly, the toddler turned back to that wall. He eyed it and, had Yugi not been paying such acute attention, he would not have noticed the small gap between the concrete and the brick. It had been filled with the purple layering but they had failed to cut the concrete into a more rectangular or square shape to fill it properly. No doubt they had assumed that the mixture—and Yugi knew that deathly purple far too well—of wolfsbane would stop him from doing so again.

Or they were messing with him.

It was entirely possible that they'd done it just to see if Atem would be brave enough to break out again when he was so hungry.

And Atem was.

The toddler looked at the wall for a moment, eyeing the darkest purple spot above the layered bricks. And then he leaned forward, sniffed once more, and lifted his hand. He pressed his palm against it, hissed softly, and then punched with his long nails, chipping away at it as he had the first time. It took him longer to do it now than it had the first. And Atem had to stop frequently, fingers cut and bleeding and quicks destroyed from the abuse, to wipe at his clothing. It was interesting to see that he had enough instincts that he did not stuff his fingers into his mouth to stop the burning or heal the bleeding.

Instead he wiped and applied pressure just long enough to stifle it, and began again. He was through the wall, but only after a sickening popping noise burst through the air. Yugi was frozen, horrified, as he noticed Atem standing on the other side, hands soaked and nails nonexistent atop the digits. He was shaking and his left wrist was incredibly swollen. Atem looked as if he were about to cry even as he wiped his hands on his bright blue clothes and surveyed his swollen wrist.

After a while of this, Atem began to waddle away, heading out of the hallway that he occupied—solely his now, Yugi noted, as the other wolf seemed to have passed or healed somehow—and into another branch. He waddled a few yards and turned into another branch once more.

And then he stopped near one of the cages closest to the entrance of this hallway. Atem came to the door, sniffing slowly, and moved to take a seat. The wolf inside of the cage was frozen, startled by the sight of Atem's sudden appearance. They looked bewildered, climbing to their paws after a moment. And then they slowly made their way closer.

Yugi almost expected them to snarl or perhaps for Atem to do so. Instead the wolf took a seat near him and the door, tilting its head, and then came closer still when Atem reached for the tray and struggled pathetically to get at it. His left wrist was so swollen that he could not get it through the bars, however.

The wolf came closer, stopped next to the tray, and then nudged it forward to let Atem get easier access. The toddler plopped down, body language easy and lazy, and reached in for the meat there. But when he reached, the wolf snarled and moved to grab the tray away. Atem froze and the two eyed each other for a moment. Then the wolf came closer, sniffing, and whined softly.

Atem reached his fingers through the bar as if he'd been instructed to do so. And the wolf licked at the broken flesh of the tips of his digits and cleaned them to their satisfaction. They looked sickened afterwards, but satisfied regardless, and slowly nudged the tray forward to him again. Atem immediately dug into the food and the wolf lay on its belly with its chin on its paws.

When Atem was done, the wolf got up again and moved forward to clean his face of the blood there. And then it worked on his fingers again, looking tired and unhappy, crestfallen as if with pity for the toddler.

They found him sitting there with his fingers in the wolf's fur, Atem happily petting the canine while it slept on the other side of the metal bars. They separated them almost immediately, the wolf startled so terribly that it yelped and fled to the back of the cage. Atem was grabbed into the vet's arms and taken back to another room. The walls were littered with surgical tools and an x-ray machine which was used immediately on Atem's wrist as he was given a numbing drug for the pain that the toddler was clearly still in.

The fracture was large, almost a complete break of his entire wrist, the joint all but dispatched from the initial bones. Yugi wanted to vomit. But the vet went about making a splint and then a cast and set him down to play with some blocks again. Atem was clearly frustrated with this new bandaging, however, as he would constantly knock his blocks over and glare at it as if it offended him.

Atem was fed about four times a day for a while, Yugi noted. And his wrist was taken out of his cast about three times and x-rays redone. Each one showed the same hideous fracture. But none of them quite looked as if it had grown worse.

And so Atem was eventually allowed to leave the clinical room. He was taken, oddly, away from the direction of his cage, instead to another area entirely and Yugi was shocked to see that there were wolves in this area. It was a small room, with only about four wolves in it. But all of them seemed startled when the toddler was brought in.

The vet was nearby. And Yugi noticed, horrified, that a few of the guards stood nearby with rifles trained on the other four. He could not tell if it was with tranquilizers or true bullets with the intention of killing them. Instead, sickened, he watched as Atem approached them awkwardly and on fumbling feet.

The reaction was instant. One wolf bristled, sniffing, and then slowly relaxed. The other three whined, heads lowered, and wagged their tails. When Atem got within reach, the other three began to lick at his face and nuzzle him. The fourth awkwardly lay down after a moment and moved to sniff him. A few seconds passed before they gently grabbed at his shirt and pulled him closer, allowing him to settle on their paws.

They were treating him as a pup, Yugi realized. He knew that wolves accepted puppies immediately, that usually they were taken in and went unharmed even in territory wars. They would give him all of their attention. They would allow him to pull on their fur and snuggle into them. He even got away with biting one of their ears while the wolf pretending to be harmed, yipping and wagging its tail happily. It was lazy and easygoing.

And the vet allowed the toddler to remain there for a while. And then, finally, he took Atem up, telling him he was going to get some food when Atem tried to struggle out of his grip, and left the room. The guards followed soon after and Atem was watching the other wolves with a miserable expression.

Atem was fed. And Yugi could not measure the time that passed. But he guessed it was a few days as he was only given a couple of hours to watch videos once a day. And it took a little while for any change of things to happen.

Atem was taken again to meet with some wolves. This time the group was far bigger. There were at least twenty, perhaps more, but the focus was so fully on Atem that he could not tell.

And, as Atem was let go to meet them, the toddler hurried over to one wolf in particular. It was a soft gray color, with splashes of brown along the face and eyes of dark brown that almost looked black in the shadows. He waddled over and plopped down immediately and the brown and gray male wagged his tail lazily, leaned forward, and licked at his face happily.

The second wolf to come near him was a dark brown male with a strange tawny undercoat. The muzzle was softer brown and the bottom splashed with some white to spread along his chest and underbelly. He came cautiously, perplexed by Atem's presence, and sniffed at the toddler with a bewildered expression to his icy blue eyes. When he seemed satisfied that Atem was not a threat to him, he took a seat and wagged his tail slightly.

And, soon after, came a smaller darker gray wolf with a splash of brown across his muzzle. His ears were a bright russet color and his cheeks were a bit darker than the rest of him, black where they touched his ears. His brows and stops were bright white and his eyes were a soft gray with silver specks.

He was not as cautious as the brown wolf had been. He came hurriedly, sniffing rapidly, and then moved to butt the toddler in the belly. Atem grabbed at his scruff with clumsy fingers, looking all the more overjoyed with it all.

The three of them settled to let Atem pet them as much as he wished. And Atem cuddled them lazily, snuggling into the largest male's flank and falling asleep soon after.

After this Yugi was not sure how much time passed. But Atem had grown older, though no more developed than he had been before. He was taller and his limbs a little longer. But he was not any different from a usual four-year-old; Yugi could not be sure of the age exactly. But he assumed him to be this old. He did not seem to be any older than that, after all…

The gray and brown male had fallen ill. Yugi noticed this because Atem looked perplexed and alarmed by it. And, when another wolf wandered too close, sniffing and curious, the child would lash out. He'd struck out and drawn blood with his nails, though he never made noise and simply glared and showed his teeth. The wolves would back away with bewildered expressions, clearly unnerved and unwilling to challenge what they assumed to be a pup among them.

Yugi watched Atem fed about twelve more times and so assumed that it had been six days. And Atem was taken, on this sixth day, to the clinical room. He was swabbed on his arm with alcohol, then pricked with a needle for blood to be drawn. He was washed clean where the needle had punctured him, and Yugi could see that the wound was closed long before the vet even handed him a drink to get his blood sugar up again.

Another handful of days passed and the brown and gray wolf seemed, oddly, to have recovered. Yugi noticed now that his right leg had been shaved down and there were various needle puncture wounds that had not healed over as of that moment.

It was not the gray and brown wolf to pass away. Yugi was not sure how much time had passed. But the chocolate and white and tawny wolf had become sick and later so ill he could hardly move. Atem sat there with him much of the time, unmoving except to slash with curled fingers at any wolf to come too close.

Soon after, Yugi witnessed the darker gray male with the silver and gray eyes pass. He was lying near Atem when it happened and Yugi was surprised to realize that they had not seen Atem taken away from them to be returned to his own cage at any point. It was something that startled him, as he had been sure that Atem had always been isolated...

Again Yugi was at a loss as to how much time had passed. But when he saw Atem again, he was taller but no less pale and his black eyes were just as strange and relentlessly reflective as they had been before. But his hair was a lot more apparent, white and shaggy and overlooking his eyes like bangs.

But Atem seemed to be in a strange predicament. For whatever reason Atem seemed to be far more cautious and rather aggressive. It was strange to see the change in him, almost as if a switch had gone off in his head. His former innocence was not quite there anymore.

But it did not seem as if something of importance had happened, as he knew the gods would never have allowed him to miss anything that might have gotten away from his usual routine.

And now, he noticed, the Pure-Blood looked almost haunted or perhaps more tired and annoyed than anything else. He looked cautious as well, and perhaps more than slightly gaunt. He could not imagine that the six-year-old was meant to look like this. Because his cheeks were slightly sunken and one could see the cheekbones against his skin, the baby fat all but stripped entirely.

But he was still well groomed. His hair was shiny and silky rather than greasy in any manner. His nails were perfect, blood red and tipped with white. His fingers were shorter, almost stubby for the moment. And he was dressed in something akin scrubs, but they were immaculate and white now. And his shoes were a pair of white sneakers.

It was odd seeing this, as it made Atem almost look as if he were nothing but a ghost. And Yugi felt sick seeing this, as he appeared strange and weird and gauntly.

But Atem was not the only one to look this way. Even with the long and fluffy cheeks, the wolves that Yugi could see looked starved and weak as well. They looked tired, anxious, and there was an immense hunger which burned in their eyes.

Atem was escorted to the wolves and took a seat near the gray and brown canine as usual. The male was small and gangly now, his fur more weight than Yugi considered the rest of his body to be. Yugi shivered. And Atem looked unsure as he sat there. The two of them seemed well-acquainted for the most part, though they also looked flustered and annoyed. The hunger was clear in their eyes as well.

The starvation was not as terrible between them as it was for the other wolves, it seemed. And Yugi nearly vomited as he was proven right. The gray and brown wolf was chosen as a weak link among the pack. A she-wolf crept around from behind as Atem was messing with his sneakers. And Yugi was not sure if it was hunger which made the two of them weak in their senses. But it was enough to make them all but deaf to her approach.

Atem noticed a second too late. The male was screaming, flailing and struggling against the teeth in his throat. And the rush of wolves that came immediately after were much alike the hellhounds that had attacked them in the woods. They came in a rush. And it was amazing how violently they began to attack. Blood sprayed the air, the screaming several times louder. The gray and brown male was shaken and his limbs grabbed when he was thrown on his back. The force of the pulling the wolves partook in was almost enough to break the bones entirely. He could hear them popping.

But he also could see that Atem was not human anymore. It was a small gray wolf, thin and emaciated, but it attacked the nearest canine violently. The gray and brown wolf was dropped, lifeless but body still intact, as the wolves turned to face this new threat. Atem was hardly the size of a yearling, biting at them and snapping so violently that they backed away in a panic.

Atem caught one in the shoulder, then bit at their flank. The force behind the initial attack was enough to break the shoulder. They collapsed and struggled to attempt to rise again on their shattered limbs. But they were unable to stand and Atem was not the one to kill them.

The pack of wolves in question that had come to attack the brown and gray male had turned on it. And they were screaming as Atem backed up with a horrified expression and stared in bewilderment. The wolves tore into each other violently, blood and fur flying and teeth snapping hideously. Bones were broken and shattered. Teeth chomped almost violently enough to break.

And Atem stood there, shaking and shuddering. For a long handful of seconds, he hovered. And then he sprang at another near him when they almost stepped onto the deceased wolf behind him. He tore at their scruff and scrambled for his footing. He was shaken off but not without drawing blood and landing hard.

The fighting grew to a point that was too rapid for Yugi to keep up with. But when it stopped, Atem was standing amongst the corpses of the wolves which remained there. They were bleeding still, and the puddle which spread outwards soaked Atem's paws. He looked exhausted and more than slightly fearful. When he turned around and faced the wolf he had attempted to protect, there was a long single minute of which he stared.

And then he lowered his head, tucked his tail between his legs, and whined long and low. His ears folded back against his head and he trembled, horrified as the whites of his eyes showed. He trembled pitifully for several long minutes and then he turned tail.

He refused his food both feedings.

And then he went through a seizure which seemed to shake his entire cage with the force of it, becoming human again. He was too exhausted afterwards to move again and lay on his side, unconscious and with blood flowing from his mouth.

The vet found him, cleaned him up, dressed him, and gave him a medication Yugi assumed had to be for the shock he had gone through. Atem did not say a word to him, staring blankly at the teenager who checked on him often and eventually went about feeding him and giving him a small reprieve from his experiments.

The experiments became games instead, with guards and the vet playing at the task of teaching him to recognize visual commands. They taught him to back up the moment a hand came up, to sit down if they folded their fingers. He watched silently when they did this, doing as they had taught him and never once questioning it.

It got to the point that Atem backed away into the far wall of his cage when the guards or vet approached to feed him.

A brain scan was done on him later, though Yugi did not know what they were searching for. He himself had no experience with brain scans. But Atem did not seem to know either. Regardless, whatever it was that they were looking for, they seemed rather satisfied. The scan came out looking as healthy as Yugi would have assumed his to come out now.

When the scan was finished, blood was drawn. Skin was cut with a scalpel to measure his healing ability. He was measured and weighed and his pulse checked. He was then cut again and again, the vet recording every instance of healing, until eventually Atem was simply stared at blankly and with clear uncertainty.

Yugi was startled and bewildered when a new face approached Atem soon after this event. The man was tall, thin and emaciated. He looked like raw muscle despite this, powerful regardless of the illness Yugi swore he saw in him. His eyes were oddly dark and dull, set behind a mask of shiny black and gray and blue. It looked like a masquerade mask, but for the feathers and the way it lacked a handle to raise or lower.

Atem regarded him warily, confused and bewildered. And Yugi swore his heart skipped and his mouth dried out, his body trembling, as the man spoke in a deep and lilting voice.

"Hello, Atem."

The six-year-old blinked and tilted his head slowly to the side. They stared at one another for a long moment and then Yugi heard the click of a key turning in a lock. Seconds later a card key was pressed to a pad on the side of the door of his cage. There was a loud jolting hum before it abruptly flickered into silence. And then Atem stared blankly as the man came forward.

He came to a stop in front of him, then crouched there. He peered at Atem with the eyes of a crow, dark and beady and disgusting. Yugi shivered as the two of them considered each other.

"Do you know who I am?"

The wolf shook his head slowly, but never once did he move to open his mouth.

"I'm the one who brought you to life."

Atem tilted his head. Yugi felt sick.

"I made sure that you would be born."

He didn't so much as blink.

"Now, Atem, introductions aside, I wanted to know if maybe you would be willing to do something for me."

The wolf blinked and tilted his head in the opposite direction, bewildered and clearly confused. He did not move beyond this, though Yugi noticed that his breathing had escalated faintly.

"I want you to do something for me. We're going to go outside. Because I need to see to it that you're developing properly. I want to make sure that there is nothing wrong with you."

Atem sat up a little straighter.

"Yes, we're going to go outside. You can see what the world beyond this facility looks like, Atem," he continued with a smirk that made Yugi bristle in alarm. But Atem simply blinked and nodded slowly, though the incomprehension was clear in his eyes. "But you'll have to perform a task for me while we're out there."

Yugi watched the two of them leave the cage, Atem slowly trailing him as he spoke of the wonders of things outside. He then turned the conversation in the direction of predators, of the powers that lycanthropes in particular possessed. Yugi did not hear him for much of it and Atem was clearly not paying attention.

He was staring at the ground after a while, playing with the small pebbles he could find there on the polished concrete. He was splashing in the stream when he was coaxed into the water and then he was unhappily following the man through the river and onto the other side of the underground gorge.

When they reached the end of the tunnel and crawled through the entrance, the grass was yellow rather than green. Much of the leaves were darker and reddened and yellowed, scattered upon the forest floor. Atem looked absolutely awed to see the world around him in more than that hideous gray color.

"Here's what I want you to do for me," the man said, causing Atem's head to turn, eyes wide and startled. The man was holding a series of pictures in his hands, allowing Atem to grab them and look them over slowly. "I want you to find these animals and bring them to me."

Atem blinked and raised his head to peer at him uncertainly.

"Hunt them and bring them to me, okay?"

Atem nodded after a moment, looking down and tilting his head as he considered the pictures again. After a moment he slowly handed them back, nodding faintly and frowning.

"Don't worry. It'll be easy for you. You're a lycanthrope, Atem." The man smiled like a serpent. Yugi thought the curve of his lips had to be similar to that of the devil. "And you're a Pure-Blood. You are the most powerful force on earth. Remember that."

Whatever the hunts had entailed Yugi did not see. But he did see the buck, the hawk, and the bear cub that Atem brought back and put in front of him. He fell back and blinked in exhaustion as soon as the man watched him with a smirk on his face.

" _Perfect_."

Atem was led back to his cage a mere few minutes later. And he was shaky and tired, the exhaustion making his black eyes dull gray and his face heavily shadowed. His hands were somewhat shaky but he was not harmed, Yugi noted. He looked perfectly fine but for his tremors, as slight as they were, and the clear exhaustion that bore down on him so fully.

"You did well today, Atem." And that was all that was said as Atem took a seat on the floor and glanced back at him. The lock was clicked in place again. The card key was pressed to the keypad at the door once more.

Atem was rigorously tested soon after this. His blood was taken, cells counted, a scan done, body checked for bruises or blood clots, his teeth measured once more. He was then measured in height and weight. And this went on for a long while. Yugi watched a long handful of these procedures happen more often than not.

But whatever they had been looking for had not been found. The man who had visited him that day came back again occasionally to simply watch him. After a while he wandered away again. And, finally, after what Yugi assumed to be a while, he approached Atem again.

The man undid the locks, then gestured for Atem to approach. The seven-year-old was staring at him coldly, though he followed. Yugi could see that the man's jaws were wrinkled as if with old age, the edges of his mouth heavy and laden with the pressure of his sagging skin. He looked as if he were sickly and older than ever, something which stunned him altogether.

The man led Atem outside as he had before.

But now he produced no pictures.

Atem stared at him as he took a seat beneath one of the tree and gestured that he sit with a flick of his fingers. Atem obeyed, taking a seat with his legs crossed, a new position that Yugi found somewhat surprising as he had never seen him do such a thing before.

Yugi shivered.

"Atem, Atem, Atem."

The boy stared at him, blank and unreadable.

"I wanted to speak to you again. I do not believe I've done so enough with you. You are so quiet and so often we fear that you cannot speak. Ryou has told me he cannot detect any defects in your vocal chords. But yet you're still silent."

Yugi felt sick.

Atem simply blinked.

"And for whatever reason you cannot change." The man paused, staring at Atem with eyes that Yugi swore seemed to hunger for something. It was predatory, heavy, and rather vicious in this manner. And it made him nearly tremble with horror. There was something unnatural and shocking about him. "We need to find the reason behind this, Atem. We need to fix this. You're a Pure-Blood, Atem. You should be able to change at your own desire like the other wolves can."

Atem did not blink. Instead he tilted his head the smallest degree. But Yugi realized with startling clarity that it was not with curiosity that he did this. It was a mirroring predatory nature.

"That can wait for another day, though, hmm?"

And Yugi truly worried that the man might do something beyond that of which he had seen him before. He feared that he might reach out and do something that he did not think he could deal with it all.

"What matters now is that you and I know each other better. I want to know that you understand that I'm on your side. You are _my_ gift. And I want to know that you are happy and healthy. If you cannot change, it implies health problems. Do you understand?"

The nod Atem performed was stiff and clearly suspicious. How the man seemed to overlook this was beyond Yugi. But he smiled and the wrinkles at the edges of his mouth were enough to make Atem lower his eyes and stare at them.

"I see you've noticed it," he said with a small frown. His voice had taken a tired edge now and he sighed softly. Atem, however, simply raised his eyes again. "Atem, I am sick."

Atem nodded. It was not suspicious now. It was simply an affirmation motion.

"I am far sicker than you can even imagine, Atem. My health has been deteriorating for years now. And nothing has cured it."

Atem blinked but his expression did not change.

"And I created you. I created you as the son I could never have, because this disease has rendered me unable to have children." He watched him for a long handful of moments. And Yugi could see a change of gears in his eyes. The beady reflection seemed to grow tenfold. "You are like my son, Atem. And I wish to give you everything. I only ask that you appreciate these things you receive."

Yugi felt sick to his stomach. The seven-year-old was staring at him, eyeing him in bewilderment. But he did not look as if he might argue in the slightest, however. He simply seemed curious more than anything. But Yugi could see it in his eyes as well, the instinct to help him some way. And at seven years old, it was no problem to manipulate someone, no matter whether Atem was a werewolf.

"But I do wish for one thing in return from you."

Yugi wished he could have sobbed in his wolf form. He wished he could have cried. He wished he could have reached out into this memory and pulled Atem away. And he wished more than ever that he could tell him no, to ignore him, to simply run while he was able.

But Atem had always gone back.

He had never known that freedom was something that he could run for. He had never known to run for his life and to hide away in the forest rather than return to the damn labs.

Because they'd had to rescue him.

Yugi shook his head, heartbroken as Atem nodded innocently at the question of, "I want to heal, Atem. I want more than ever to just be healthy again. Can you help me with that, Atem?"

He shook his head again, bristling and tired. How could he ever have been so foolish? How could he have ever been so innocent and childish? How could he have never known to run away as he should have? And Yugi felt sick.

How was it that Atem had been so small and innocent? And when had he become _Yugi_? When had the gods changed his memories and put him into this new life?

Because this little child here was no one he recognized...

He was the most innocent little blank slate, a completely different person from who he knew himself to be…

"I need you to change, Atem. I need you to change so that you're at your strongest. I need you to do that for me. I need your blood." Atem was staring at him blindly, as if he could not comprehend these words in the slightest. But his eyes somehow hardened, even when his face remained unchanged. "It's the only thing that can heal me. _You_ are the only one who can heal me, Atem. I need you."

Atem was a year older when Yugi next saw him. He understood it only because Atem was taller and somewhat lanky. He looked like the average eight-year-old despite the harsh glint within his eyes. He did not possess a terrible bloodlust of any kind, but he looked as if the world were sharper than he'd imagined and he'd cut himself against it as he would a knife's blade.

Atem was taken from his cage this day. He was taken to a large room almost akin a stadium. And a tub-like basin sat in the center of the room, the water drawn and warm and steaming. Atem eyed it as he turned his head to look over at the vet who stood a few feet away, biting his fingers uncomfortably. The vet stared at him blankly, as if he might be sick.

"Please strip out of your clothes and get into the tub, Atem," the vet muttered in a soft voice. He looked as if he were going to vomit at any moment. His fingers were shaking and his cheeks were colored green at the edges. The guards that stood in the room were silent as they studied him in turn. Yugi saw that the three of them had two different tasers, two holstered guns, and one held what looked to be a restraint pole that could easily be used to hold him if he lashed out in any manner.

Atem was silent as always, pacing forward and slowly but surely removing the scrubs he was wearing. He stepped into the tub with little resistance, though once he seated himself there, he looked uncomfortable and his nose wriggled constantly as if he smelled something that Yugi himself could not. The guards approached after a moment and Atem blinked at them in confusion.

A taser was pointed downward to the water, then triggered. Atem was sent through waves of convulsion, flailing and then sinking beneath the water for a moment. Yugi was shaking, horrified, as the seconds passed. The taser was turned off after a moment. But Atem did not resurface. It took a long minute for him to come over the side of the iron basin, eyes huge and vibrating in their sockets. He was twitching uncontrollably, erratic and trembling as he opened his jaws and puked heavily onto the floor.

Atem was dried off by the vet, entire body examined for what Yugi hoped was for any lasting damage. But the wolf stared at the man as if he could not understand why he would have done this to him, as if he did not recognize the bastard in front of him. And then it passed. Atem looked away as his hair was toweled dry seconds later and his blood was drawn and his organs monitored.

Next he was exposed to silver. The metal was clasped upon his wrists in the form of handcuffs. Atem stared at them blankly, without emotion, and his skin grew into smoldering, sweltering blisters which turned blackened and burned hideously in the air. And, for a long time, he simply stared. He did not move but for the occasional blink and his steady breathing.

Then the vet removed them as well.

And the damage done made Yugi wish again that he could sob.

All along the tops of his wrists his skin was burned raw and scuffed and the flesh eaten down to the very surface of his bones.

Atem was tortured with wolfsbane next. He was injected in the jugular and he went into a seizure immediately. His mouth was flooded with foaming saliva and blood, dribbling from his jaws and down his chin and to the ground. And then he began to convulse harder than ever, puking violently and writhing on the floor as if he could somehow manage to shake the pain away. His eyes were glazed, pupils dilating to pinpricks.

He was given an IV drip and transfusions to help him regain his health after. And, soon after, he was punished for that as well.

Yugi was not certain how long he had been left alone to recover.

But Atem was soon taken into this stadium-like room again. And he was instructed to remove his shirt and stand in the center of the empty metal tub. He was subsequently followed there, the vet coming to his side, and reached outward to grab his arm. The vet looked as if he were going to vomit at any moment. But the wolf stared at him with that same expressionless look.

There was something in that stare, however, that almost broke Yugi's heart. He felt sick, his heart in his throat, and he wished again that he could sob. Something in the way Atem looked at that bastard…

Atem's arm was raised and the scalpel cut into his skin from the bottom of his palm to the very crook of his elbow. A guard standing on the other side of him did the same. And yet another simply watched them. Atem bled as if he were made of water. Yugi guessed it had to do with the fact that he was still recovering from the wolfsbane and silver that he'd endured before. He bled hideously, the liquid pooling and covering much of the tub's bottom in mere seconds.

And then, abruptly, Atem's eyes rolled up in the back of his head and he collapsed. From there the vet grabbed him, began a blood transfusion as rapidly as he could, and washed him clean with damp towels and soap. He cleaned him off, stitched his arms even as they healed in his unconscious state, took him back to his cage when he was stabilized, and brought him a much larger meal than usual.

He was not sure how much time passed. But abruptly Atem was awake. He was moving around and finding games to play in his cage. But he refused the food that was left nearby, not nearly as big as the meal he'd been given before this transition.

He fainted, however, mid-step towards what looked to be a small sleep cot. He lay there frozen and all but lifeless. And not once did he move until Yugi heard a sharp noise. Someone was coming through the hallway, their footsteps booming in the yellowed lighting.

Atem did not respond to the noise.

And, as the person got closer, Yugi could hear them cursing in horror. They called his name, frantic, and then tried their hardest to break into the cage. They put in the padlock's code and undid the lock hanging on the door that barred his way.

Atem still did not move.

The guard got the door open and it swung loudly, screeching and wailing, as it swept over Atem's head. The cursing grew louder than ever and the Pure-Blood remained absolutely motionless. The man crouched down, then reached out to grab him.

Something must have triggered his consciousness, for Atem's eyes snapped open. His pupils were constricted and wild and there was nothing in his eyes that Yugi could read in the slightest. But then a hand reached towards him, inches away. And Atem scrambled to get up and move away.

But it came into contact with him.

And Atem spun around, foaming and snarling as he lunged forward. He caught the man with his long nails. And his teeth snapped shut on his hand. Blood was flying. The man was screaming. Atem was clawing at him frantically, nails cutting at his neck and head heavily. He was foaming at the mouth around the blood which spilled so heavily from his hand.

The guard was quiet after a handful of minutes and a cattle prod hit Atem so hard in the shoulder than he yelped and recoiled. The guard was on the ground all but dead, bleeding everywhere and skin red all around his throat, his face hideously disfigured. The eight-year-old was struck again, the electricity buzzing so loudly that Atem flinched away from it alone when it came for the third time. He backed up frantically into the far wall and sat there, eyes huge.

The guard was grabbed and dragged outward, the door slammed as curses were spat in his direction. It was locked with shaking hands and Atem did not move from where he was huddled back there. His food had been overturned in the panic, but Atem looked too scared to so much as glance in its direction.

When the vet came to check on him and recover a sample of his cells, Atem refused to come from his corner but he whined and managed to breathe out a pathetic, "Food..."

The vet had looked at him with something like pure pity, then with a softness that Yugi felt might wind him. Then he nodded, saying, "Okay, Atem. Stay where you are, okay? Just stay right there and I'll bring you something to eat later, okay?"

And Yugi was amazed to see him return a little while later with a plate of what looked like _cooked_ meat. And Atem was shaking when he sniffed at it, sitting up with huge eyes and a watering mouth. The vet put the plate down in front of him, whispering, "Eat it quickly, Atem. I wasn't supposed to feed you after what happened."

He blinked and hurriedly dug into the food. And, when he finished the plate, he licked his lips and his fingers and hungrily stared at him. The vet smiled at him slightly, muttering that he was welcome, and then left with the plate and the tray of food that the guards had knocked over in their rush for their comrade.

Yugi was shivering as he watched the guard Atem had mauled pass by. He was dressed in his uniform, he was covered in bandages, and he looked healthy for the most part. But it took a moment upon which he turned his head to look at Atem as well. And for a moment they locked eyes. Atem blinked up at him. But then the guard began to shake, trembling hideously, and screamed, reaching up to claw at his throat with a panicked expression.

Atem did not move from where he'd been seated on his mat. He simply blinked and tilted his head. And the man shook and trembled and slowly began to draw blood from his own frantic actions. He foamed at the mouth, he coughed up blood, and then he collapsed dead to the floor.

Atem did nothing more than turn away to pick at his mat. He clawed at it as if with anxiety but did nothing else to acknowledge what had come to happen.

And he showed this same disinterest when he was later put into the larger room with the rest of the wolves. Atem took a seat in the corner and ignored them when they came to sniff at him. One wolf licked his face and Atem ignored them again, turning away as if he could not think of how he was meant to face them.

The next he saw Atem the boy was being fitted for a shock collar. It was tightened and had the letters PB-A engraved into it in cursive, the number 26 further to the right of it. It was a gleaming golden plate of metal and beside it was the transmitter. The collar was fitted to make the plate lay across his pulse, just as the rest of the wolves' were.

Atem looked at the vet with blind eyes, reaching up only once to touch it before turning away and returning to his mat. And Yugi wanted more then ever to sob for him, because he didn't know this little wolf in front of him. He didn't know this white-haired boy who'd been electrocuted in salt water or who had complied with these various tortures and mauled another boy in pure panic.

He didn't know this eight-year-old who had innocently nodded that he wished to help his torturer. And his heart hurt the more he tried to recognize him. He was broken more than anything but it seemed calculated and measured as well and he thought the Pure-Blood knew how bad it was but had not cared to do otherwise to prevent it.

And Yugi wanted nothing more than to sob for him...

"Twelve minutes longer than last time." Atem was falling in a tub of water, eyes closed and clothes weighing him down. He was grabbed by the collar with a long metal pole that had a sharp hook on the end, then dragged out of the water. And it took only a moment for the water to come from his lungs as he coughed and crouched there on the floor. His eyes were wild and hurt and he stared at these two men with an expression that Yugi knew neither could read.

The vet looked brokenhearted. The guard beside him looked shaken. But neither of them matched the knowledge that Atem harbored in his eyes at the moment. And Yugi knew abruptly the look of defeat and yet bitter resistance and tired resignation and he knew them all so well at that moment that he almost imagined he felt them now.

But then the seconds passed.

"Give him a soda and let him dry off. We'll repeat after his vitals are stable again."

And Yugi was abruptly aware of the fact that the vet cared far too much for this eight-year-old, that doing this killed him as much as it destroyed Atem himself.

Atem was on the bottom of the huge glass cube of water minutes later, struggling and then slowly losing strength that Yugi realized he did not truly have. His panic had lent him power and now he was exhausted and dying. He was drowning, overpowered and unable to deal with it all any longer. His eyes rolled up in the back of his head. And his body grew slack, falling and sinking and—

He was grabbed with a longer, wider restraint pole this time. His throat cut against the sharp wire of the restraint and the guard grabbed him by the back of his shirt to pull him out. He was dragged from the water once more, the vet murmuring, "That's enough for today. He's gone through this ten times already. And his lung capacity and struggle time continued to increase in intervals of twelve minutes. Record it and take him back."

Yugi was so relieved he was shaking.

But the relief did not last long.

Atem flailed so hard the next time he hardly lasted a minute. He tried to get his nails into the glass, sobbed for air as if he might somehow save himself, and then tried again to struggle his way out. But the water came over his head seconds later and he began to sink almost immediately. And it happened more than once. The time between his sinking and his entrance became mere seconds. He flailed and struggled and simply sank.

And he was dragged out finally, with the vet cursing under his breath and saying that they'd need to stop for the day. Yugi was horrified. Atem had lasted but two seconds the final time before the decision was made to cease the experiment.

But whatever reprieve he was given did not last. And Atem was taken from his cage now with the intent of an invasive surgery though Yugi did not know where. And he screamed when he saw it. Atem was drugged and put into an unconscious state, then the right side of his head shaved—

 _Enough_! _Oh gods, enough_! Yugi cried desperately, breaking away from the image and shaking harder than he ever had before. He fell to the ground and trembled until he couldn't anymore, wishing more than ever that he could cry in this form. _N-no more_!

Slifer and Ra were both silent for a while. And then the golden she-wolf moved towards him. She pressed her nose into his ear and licked his cheek before pulling away and turning to Slifer. _I am due to speak with Bakura. Watch him for me._

 _Tell Bakura hello for me,_ Slifer said dryly. But she turned back to Yugi. And the white wolf remained laying there, eyes listless with the horrors of what he'd witnessed. She came to his side and took a seat. _For someone who wished to know something formerly, I do not understand why you always react so terribly._

Yugi trembled. _He… They did that to him… And that bastard…_! He shook his head. _And Ryou… Ryou_ let _it happen_!

 _Ryou was not without faults. He was afraid of death before he met Bakura. Had it not been for Bakura he most likely would never have helped to free Atem._

Yugi shook his head violently now, snarling. _That's not an excuse_! _He watched it happen and he just stood aside and let it_! _He gave Atem false hope_! _He… He…_

 _He also died for him in those woods._ She blinked down at him. _Ryou stopped Espa taking a shot and got his throat slit soon after. It was not as if he turned his back on Atem after he let him escape. He did it knowing that things would only get worse from there. And he did it because he loved Atem as he would his own family. Whether it is appreciated or not is something else to be decided. But he did what he thought necessary and he saved Atem when he found the chance to._

Yugi huffed a breath. _He deserved to die like that. He deserved that when he bled Atem_! he snarled angrily, moving to stand up. _He deserved to have Panik and Espa flay him alive for all I care_! _He went along with it_! _He let it happen_!

 _One will do a great many atrocities for the sake of survival. Ryou was young and afraid of death when you were still in the labs. He did not know any better. He was too afraid to object to the torture. So he went along with it._ She shook her head. _Just as much of your pack is afraid of you being wrong and yet turning their back on the beliefs they were raised with makes them continue to be one of the only reasons they follow you. Do you think any of them are ready to die_? _They're afraid and they're tired. And they don't know what to do. Turning on you means destroying their own beliefs. But speaking out means that someone might punish them. And running away would only last until they got themselves hunted down and killed by those who swear their allegiance to you._

 _It's not…_ Yugi fell quiet for a moment. Then he wrinkled his lips back and scowled at her. _I never asked for this._

 _Yes, well, this is what you were given as your birthright._ Slifer eyed him for a moment, then looked away. _You could not be here had Ryou failed to grow to love you. If he had not grown to care he would never have set you free._

 _Yeah, well…_ But the anger was dissipating and Yugi felt a cold, hollow ache in his chest. Had Ryou been the reason he'd been able to escape from the cage? Had he been the one to let him and his cage mate flee like that? _I wish I could turn my back on this whole thing._

 _You could always ask the second Atem to take your place._ The words were spoken wryly and Yugi turned to her with wide eyes. _But we both know he would rather run than fight._

 _He's not a coward,_ Yugi snapped. _He's just…tired._

 _And he has been for years now. But were it not for you, he'd likely be dead by now. I can only imagine what it is that his broken heart might have led him to._ She was quiet for a moment. _No, I take it back. He would live. But it would not be for his own sake._

Nothing _is for his own sake,_ Yugi spat. _Nothing is for him. Everything is for…me…_

The she-wolf hummed and looked at him for a moment. _Be careful the choices you make, Atem. You never know the influence they hold on others._

Yugi sighed softly, nodding the smallest degree. And then he felt himself waking, a strange and uncomfortable feeling, as if he were being torn away from his own thoughts and thrust into an opposite direction. He blinked slowly to take in the light of dawn coming through the window. And, beside him, Yami was still fast asleep, fleece thrown atop his body and pulled over his shoulders. He looked peaceful for once.

And Yugi both loved and hated it.

* * *

"I'm, um…sorry for chaining you up before."

Yami turned his head with a confused look, eyes wide as he frowned in consideration. For a moment he could not find the words to answer him. The entire topic of discussion seemed simply estranged to him, as if he had no idea what it was he meant to do or say about it.

"When did you…?" he muttered, bewildered with the thought of answering him. Was there a way to _properly_ respond to something like this? He supposed there had to be but Yami could not quite find a way to understand it. So he faltered speaking any further and hesitantly pushed aside the controller he'd been holding in his hand. "I'm confused…"

Yugi's face turned a bright red, as if he were too mortified to truly stop and reevaluate the sentence that left his mouth. He hesitated, opening and closing his mouth once, and then awkwardly turned away from him entirely.

When he spoke again Yami could almost not hear him, startled by the way he refused to look in his direction. And his words came out tiny, as if he were afraid of what Yami might say in response. He didn't sound like the usual strong albeit somewhat dependent teenager Yami was so used to.

"When you were feral before, after the Fuwa thing," Yugi muttered, all but whispering. "When I had you in that cave. I…chained you up, remember?"

"Yes." Yami had to admit that his response came out shorter than he wished it to. But all he could think about when he considered his time there was how desperately hungry he'd been. "But what is it that you are saying to me right now? I don't understand why this has come up to begin with."

"I just… I was thinking about it. And I realized I never apologized for it." Yugi's voice cracked. "I mean, I… You were feral and at the time it seemed the best idea but I didn't want you to think that I… I'm sorry about it. It must have reminded you of…"

He trailed off and Yami considered him for a long minute. The red-eyed boy felt sick as the seconds passed. Yugi truly had no words for him, he realized. He was talking about things that had happened before. He was talking about things that ceased to matter to Yami. And it made him ache, a dull throbbing forming in his temple at the very thought.

"I would have done the same to you had I been in your place." Yami was quiet for a moment, studying him before sighing softly and shaking his head slowly. He didn't know how to make this better. And Yugi refused to look over at him. And that made him feel sicker than he had before and his head felt as if it were pulsing. He shivered and shook his head. "I would have chained you up as well. It was the only solution."

Yugi was quiet for a moment. And then he abruptly turned to him, eyes sharp and wider than before. He looked as if he might vomit at any moment.

"But you didn't know what was going on. And you couldn't get your own food and you were starving and I had to let you go hungry when I wasn't there."

"And?" Yami asked uncertainly, voice edged with nerves that made his tone sharper than he meant it to be. He wanted to say he was sorry, to apologize perhaps frantically. And then he felt sick and dizzy for a split second as he licked his lips and looked away. "I've gone hungry before. It is not a big deal."

"Just because you've gone through it before doesn't mean you should have had to again!" Yugi snapped, eyes narrowing. "I tied you up to help keep you safe. But I ended up hurting you instead. You didn't know what was going on and I knew you were starving and I didn't…"

"Why are you speaking of this?"

Yugi blinked and stared at him. And Yami nearly trembled, a wave of tension coming over him that left him dizzy and sick. He shook his head slowly and looked quickly away again, stomach knotting painfully as he considered the smaller boy. He could feel the tension so great in his bones that it made him almost vibrate and burn with his need to dispel it.

"Because I…" He hesitated, then stared at him blankly for a moment. And Yami could see him breathing a little harder from the corner of his eye. The realization made his head snap up and around to regard him again and the two of them stared at each other silently for a moment.

"Because it should never have happened like that."

But Yami felt that there was another message entirely that Yugi was attempting to voice. He shivered and shook his head, turning away.

"It happened regardless. It was the best course of action to be taken. I have no problem with the fact that it happened, Yugi."

The small teen was quiet for a moment. "But I hate that it did. I should have found another way or been there more often than I was." He hesitated. "I shouldn't have… I should never have left you there when there wasn't food or…"

"It happened as it needed to." Yami stared at him blankly now, unsure of what more to say. He wanted the conversation to end; he was almost willing to beg, if only he knew it would ensure Yugi would drop the subject. But something about the thought made his heart hurt more than ever. And he could hardly breathe as he considered it. "It was necessary to confine me. I would have killed Ishizu or Obelisk otherwise."

Yugi stared at him as if he could not fathom the thought. And Yami was struck with abrupt memory of the sound of the deity's neck snapping as loudly as it had. He remembered the teeth in his fur and the way he'd spun on him. And he remembered that senseless need to kill or be killed, that instinct of putting Obelisk in the ground before he could do the same to him. And he nearly trembled again at the thought. He remembered once more that hideous taste of salty blood and the grainy aftertaste it left on his tongue. And he could not shake the smell of his own fur as his stomach gurgled with need and his body screamed for some kind of satiation he could not give it. He recalled the empty feeling of his belly growling so heavily, his mind spiraling with panic to get food no matter what the cost nor who it was that he struck down to do so.

And he hated himself for the fact that he recalled it so clearly. It was enough to make him dizzy, a feeling of disgust coursing through him. He looked away, towards the sky blue wall nearest him as if it might somehow free him of these memories. His heart felt as if it were rattling in his chest.

"It was. But I could have tried something else. If I'd kept you fed instead you wouldn't have gone after them. You were starving. It made you violent." Yugi was quiet for a moment. And then Yami heard the bed squeak as the smaller teen moved. Immediately his head snapped around, eyes wide and fingers shaking for a split second. The small teen was balanced on the edge of the mattress, staring at him pointedly now. "I just wish I could have known that sooner. I just wish I could have realized and…"

Yami shook his head mutely.

Yugi did enough for him.

He didn't need to regret things that Yami had already tried to forget. He did not need to show remorse for the things Yami had put out of his mind. But the small teen was looking at him in such a way and he knew instinctively that he could not turn from this.

He was too shaken.

And Yugi was too broken.

Whatever he had dreamed about—for surely it had to have been something in his rest that had caused this as he'd been looking at Yami with a shattered expression since he'd woken—had caused more pain than Yami could reasonably ignore.

"I am okay." He said the words in a shaky tone, because he could not find enough strength to speak without nearly trembling. "I am fine. I… I'm here and I'm okay."

But Yugi looked at him as if he couldn't understand the words. And when he laughed and nodded, Yami swore he saw his eyes gleaming as if with unshed tears when he looked away. "Right…right. You're here now. And you're okay."

Yami peered at him silently, holding his hands pointedly towards his lap. His fingers were shaking pathetically and he could not think for even a moment to cease such movements. He swallowed thickly, forcing himself not to speak again, his mouth growing dry and bile threatening to force itself up the back of his throat.  
"You know…you're right. You're okay now, but I…" Yugi was silent for a long minute, but it was the first time that he had spoken in over two hours. Yugi had been playing with homework and Yami had been forcing himself to pay attention to the video games he'd selected before their earlier conversation. However, now, as he looked at the character on the screen, he found his attention shattered once more. He slowly licked his lips and turned his head, confused as he faced him for a moment.

"What is it?"

Yugi was fumbling with one of the staples in the corner of his homework sheets. He was picking at the teeth of it, where they were flattened so forcefully against the bottom of the stack. The small teen did not look happy in the slightest, though after a moment he shook his head and sighed softly. "How was it that you found me that day that Fuwa attacked us at the restaurant? How did you realize that I was there and that you needed to help me?" he asked abruptly, turning to him now. His blue-violet eyes were sharp as they stared at each other for an intense minute.

Yami blinked and straightened in his seated position. It was odd to face him now, bewildered as he considered the words. He was asking him about that far back? He wondered at the thought curiously for a moment, then slowly turned and shook his head as he twisted around to face him entirely. "It was the link between us, the alpha-beta connection. Why are you asking?"

"Okay, but _how_?"

The red-eyed teen hesitated for a moment. And then he furrowed his brows. "I do not know entirely. I got a flash of a thought that I supposed had to have come from you. And then I realized that I could feel your fear and alarm. So I realized that you must have needed me and I went to find you."

"Okay, but how did you find me exactly?" Yugi said with a slow shake of his head. "How was it that you knew where to go? Did you follow my scent or something else? Did you follow the others' scents? I don't know how you found me so quickly like that. I want to know how you managed it."

Yami blinked long and slow and then frowned, tilting his head as he considered him for a long moment. He was silent but for soft and nearly broken breathing. And then he shook his head and narrowed his eyes. "It was the connection between us, Yugi. As your alpha, when you feel intense emotions, I am able to experience a small portion of them as well." He paused. "Beyond that, I cannot explain it further. I know that some wolves are much more capable than I am at explanations towards this. But I have only ever bitten you. And I have no desire to test this connection on anyone else."

"But would you test it with me?" Yugi asked abruptly, eyes searching his rapidly, so intently that Yami bristled in surprise at the demand in his words. "I mean, you just said that there are others more capable of explaining it. So why are they more capable?"

Yami was quiet for a moment, eyeing him uncomfortably. He did not know how he was meant to explain why it was that those various others were more capable than he was. In truth, he felt that he should have known it, even if he only ever had bitten Yugi and had no plans to infect anyone else. But he would not say anything against the idea of others having multiple betas. It simply was not something that he could find within himself to care for. And he was truthfully more than slightly afraid of what repercussions would come about it for him or those he sank his teeth into.

"Some alphas and betas are able to track each other's movements completely through their connection. They bond extremely closely and they can basically sense even the smallest of problems with the other. I've been told that they can follow each other basically from one continent to the next should something have happened to make that necessary. It would be harder for them but they are capable of it." Yami shook his head. "But those are also myths. I do not even know if there is any truth to it, Yugi. I have only ever been told that it was possible, not that anyone had ever truly managed it."

"But it might be possible then?"

"From what I have been made to understand, yes."

"Do you think that we could figure out how to do that?"

Yami stared at him for a moment, a lost sensation chilling his gut. "I do not know why we would be incapable," he admitted reluctantly. "But I also do not know why you might want such a thing to happen as it is."

"I don't know about you, but I'd rather prevent anything like the Fuwa incident from happening again. So if I can figure out where you are at times when you're not with me and we don't have to worry about the people from the labs or a random hunter getting to us, I think that would be great."

Yami could not quite find it in himself to argue, but he did not want to agree either. Something about the idea in and of itself worried him. But he could not find a reason to argue, either—there was no reason to deny Yugi in all actuality. He was nervous, yes, but he doubted Yugi might do anything to abuse his trust in the situation. So he fell silent, studying him for a moment longer.

"I do not know where exactly to begin." But was that true? Yami tilted his head, wondering at the new emergence of thoughts that came through his mind. His head was spinning with the new idea, as if he were unable to think any more than about this. So he blinked, furrowed his brows, and tilted his head towards him a bit more noticeably. "I believe I was told at one time that the alpha-beta connection could work like that if you knew one's scent, their body temperature, heartbeat, and often knew their thought patterns. But I cannot quite remember if that was…"

Yugi blinked, and for a moment his eyes lit up with both surprise and astonishment. His face became as bright as the sun with his mounting excitement and he looked as if he might tremble at any moment with joy that he was unable to contain. "Okay, so then…if we do that, then it would help us utilize the alpha-beta bond?"

Yami fought away a flinch at the eager tone in his voice. "I would suppose so," he answered after a moment, though he could not commit any further to such a question. "It is my understanding that such a thing would be possible, yes. I would imagine it would take a bit of focus on the other party, but I cannot say for sure that it would not work either."

Yugi nodded, entire face lighting up even more than Yami had assumed him capable of. He wanted to smile in turn, but his stomach knotted almost fearfully with the idea that perhaps he might hurt Yugi if this somehow fell through. But he supposed it was best to try regardless. So he licked his lips and looked down at the carpet fibers, running a nail over the indigo strands.

"If you truly want to do this, we can try to learn today, I suppose? It is unlikely that we will be doing much else, right?"

He could not see them venturing into the woods on this day. Nor could he imagine that Yugi might want to see the pack. He had woken up to the small teen sitting up shakily, drenched in a cold sweat. He'd smelled of panic that Yami had been unable to understand in even the slightest. And he'd sat there wondering at the fear that Yugi wore so akin heavy cologne. It made his stomach lurch as he considered it. Yugi had been quiet for the better part of the day, nearing absolute silence for most of the time they'd been awake.

Yami did not have the heart to potentially break him down further than whatever nightmare he'd suffered. So he hoped with everything in him that this was truly an option and not just a fairytale that the wolves sometimes told each other. He truly hoped his cage mate honestly had known someone like that within his pack, capable of finding their beta no matter what…

Yami shook his head after a moment. "I will try it if you want to. But I make no promises that it will truly work. I was told it as a story. So I do not know if it is truthful in the slightest."

Yugi nodded, his eyes shining with such determination it made Yami want to vomit for a split second. How he could waste his time feeling so strongly about something such as his safety was beyond him. "Okay, so then let's do this."

Yami hesitated. "How?" he finally mumbled. "I am not sure that the house is large enough for us to try this kind of thing. It is not as simple as one of your grandfather's scent tests. It is meant to require a lot of concentration and it would be best to attempt it when there are possible distractions, yes? It would help you learn faster…"

The small teen smiled faintly. "For someone who says he doesn't know much about it, you sure seem to have a _lot_ of information on it, Yami."

The statement brought a wry smile to his lips. "You would be amazed the things that you find yourself drudging up when you are curious about certain matters. It's strange how the lycanthropy works like that." He shrugged dismissively now. "But I suppose it does not matter. We will find out if we can make this connection stronger the moment that we put our minds to it, I suppose."

Yugi flashed him a smile that Yami swore would make him blind. Then he hesitantly offered him a more genuine smile in turn and the smaller boy moved to push his notebook and homework aside. "I think I already know your heartbeat"—his cheeks were dusted a soft pink at the admission, startling Yami if only slightly—"but I don't know about body temperature or anything like that, honestly. But I _do_ know your scent really well."

He blinked. "I suppose remaining in the same room together as often as we have would do such a thing. I know your heartbeat and scent rather well too, I think." He tilted his head. He did not need to admit to Yugi that he could pick his heartbeat out of a crowd of people, however. Yugi did not need to know that. He did not need to know that he also knew his scent almost as well as he did his own. He knew it better than he had his own cage mate, and that hurt to realize… He drew in a deep breath. "Regardless, we can try and see if we can focus so much as to seek each other out actively in a few minutes…?"

"Well, as you pointed out, the house is pretty small. I think the next time we go to the woods, we should see if we can do it there. It might help a lot more to determine if it's actually…" Yugi fell quiet after a moment, then smiled at him. "Maybe I'll send you hunting and then see if I can track you that way."

"As long as there is fresh snowfall or the path has been traversed often. Otherwise you would just be able to find me by way of following my tracks."

Yugi grinned. "True."

Yami almost wished he could hate how relaxed Yugi appeared at the moment. His stomach flipped forcefully and his heart seemed to hammer where it was lodged in his throat. He licked his lips and lowered his eyes, staring at the carpet again. Yugi was so easily pleased, as if anything he offered or said or did somehow made up for the many things he lacked. Yami drew in a deep breath. It was hard to be frustrated with a boy who seemed happy to simply spend time with and be around him. And that was something that Yami could hardly understand in even the slightest. Surely Yugi had higher standards than what he displayed towards settling for Yami.

The red-eyed teen drew in a deep breath, flustered and perhaps more than slightly annoyed. It was hard to think of Yugi settling for anything. And he was not sure if that was because he hated the thought that Yugi might or if it was because Yugi seemed so lively and ready to do what others might have been too afraid to.

The silence that settled between them was somehow tense and yet comfortable all at once, almost as if a blanket had been draped over their shoulders. But it lasted for only a minute before Yugi drew in a deep breath again, facing him, and murmured, "I want to learn how to do this as soon as possible. Do you think that we could try it in a few minutes or something?"

Yami blinked at him, startled as he frowned and considered the question. His stomach churned for a moment before he got up and dusted himself off. He could hear Yugi's heart hammering in his ears, the speed most likely from embarrassment and perhaps a small mixture of excitement as well. He frowned and licked his lips, rubbing his palms against his jeans as if he were sweating. He did not think he was and he did not feel unusually warm, but it still made him somewhat anxious.

"Sure. We can start now," the red-eyed teen muttered, unsure of why his voice came out somewhat flat and yet cracked at the edges. He was not upset, so he could not truly understand why his voice might have come out in such a tone. But he supposed it did not matter, because Yugi looked relieved more than anything and that was enough to calm his slight irritation and uncertainty. "I'm going to leave the room. In about five minutes come and find me. Try focusing on my scent and heartbeat and—"

"You mentioned body temperature." Yugi was settled on his haunches much like a dog awaiting a bone of some kind. Yami hesitated, staring at him, as the small teen continued with a slight tilt of his head. "But I don't know how you would let me take your temperature. It's not like using a thermometer is really going to help me familiarize myself with it, right?"

Yami blinked again, then nodded. He lowered his eyes and tugged on his sleeves once before crossing over to the other boy's side. He leaned forward, tilting his head towards Yugi's and the blue-violet-eyed boy's breath was stuck in his lungs in an instant. His eyes were huge and confused and he looked incredibly surprised and excited. Yami did not know what for, but he could see something like hope that swelled in those blue specks against the dark violet of his irises. His stomach knotted and he angled his face downward slightly, then moved closer still.

They were so close that Yami could feel Yugi's body heat against his skin, a degree or so warmer than his own, as if he were spiked with an abrupt fever. Yami hovered there, for a moment unsure of whether to continue what he had meant to do. And then he shuffled his weight, moved to press his left knee into the mattress, and tipped his head again.

Their cheeks were millimeters apart. And the heat that Yugi possessed at the moment made him dizzy. But he could smell him more than ever now, an intense and blistering scent like freshly grown leaves and grass that was just cut, of wind that danced with the twinge of forest life and river water. And, as Yugi lost his embarrassment, his body temperature changed, becoming softer and much like the stroke of a brush against his skin. He was light like an ember, with a crackling energy which made the air almost ionized for a brief moment.

And then it passed.

Yugi began to breathe again.

Yami pulled away.

Yugi stared at him.

Yami looked at the ground.

There was a long moment of silence, awkward and heavy. And then Yugi seemed to abruptly relax again, the air changing once more with something like laughter more than anxiety. Yami nearly bristled at this sensation, pushing it away only after his head had stopped spinning. Close proximity to the other wolf had made him feel lightheaded, something that almost terrified him.

"Okay, I think I have that…in mind now," Yugi said softly, voice somewhat shaky as if he could not truly trust himself to speak without embarrassing himself. He looked pleased when Yami glanced at him from the corner of his eye, however, and the red-eyed boy wondered at this sight. His stomach rolled for only a moment, then settled in a chaotic twisted position much like knotted thread. He fumbled for a moment to think straight, then looked away again.

"Wait five minutes. Then come and find me."

Yami left without another word, hurrying to make his way out of the room. His lungs felt tight and constricted and his belly ached for a moment as he considered the small hallway. He looked towards the staircase, then to Yugi's room once more. It took only a moment to make his decision and head down the stairs and for the clinic beneath.

He remembered only then that there was a possibility of animals being there. But as he stepped into the small area, his stomach knotted. There was an almost aching absence from the lack of movement he could detect. And all he could hear was the sound of one person shuffling about towards the back of the clinic. He hesitated, then slowly picked his way to the door.

And there he hovered.

His stomach was heavily knotted again, twisting and writhing and pressing painfully upon itself. He was almost winded from the sheer stress of it, as if it were bunching up and pressing upon his lungs and threatening to squeeze them into nonexistence. He drew in a deep breath and glanced over his shoulder towards the door. He remembered vaguely the way that Yugi had had to _drag_ him forcefully back into the examination room to redo his stitches when he was still hurt.

He'd had to hold his muzzle with his hands, forcing it shut when he'd tried to snap at his fingers. And then he'd had to muzzle him when he'd managed to break free and nipped him several times. Yugi had laughed about it, but he'd also grown frustrated with him. And so they'd fallen into an impasse, Yugi insistent upon cleaning and fixing his pulled sutures and Yami refusing to allow him to do so without biting at him angrily.

But he knew that this was not a place he would likely go at any other time. And so now he hesitantly pressed upon the swinging door, leaning his weight against it for a moment. The wood was so cold that it made him dizzy but he refused to do much else but stare at it. The room in the window was rather dim and he wondered how any regular human might have seen in the shadows as they were so heavily draped across the entirety of the area. The fluorescent lights in the room directly behind the door were off. But he could see the faintest hint of illumination from further within the back recesses of the building. And it made him somewhat nervous.

The labs had always been dimly lit but for the examination rooms. The hallways and the cells themselves were illuminated only by the dim yellow bulb which rested in the center of the ceiling of their branch of tunnels. Beyond this there was no source of light but for the single room which none of them were allowed into. He'd gotten in there once to find a huge bulking machine which smelled of burning flesh and ashes and fire.

He had not understood it back then.

And he refused to acknowledge it now. So Yami spent much of his time pretending that he had not done such a thing. It made it easier to deal with consequences of things he did not care to remember.

But the lighting had been harsh in the examination rooms in order to dull their senses. And the dim lighting had been used to make it harder for their instincts to stir and tell the hours of the day. Yami had been virtually unable to tell time much of that stretch he'd been below ground. And he'd adjusted slowly but surely to it all upon coming to the surface.

Yami glanced over his shoulder and then towards the light again. He was not used to such dimness in this house. It seemed unnatural and perhaps even uncharacteristic of the little home. Even when he'd been stuck as a wolf he had not suffered from such estranged sensation. He had not seen it in the slightest. And that was something that made him nervous now. But he doubted that Yugi's mother or grandfather were out to get him. And he did not think that they were involved in the experiments.

They couldn't have been.

The gods would not have allowed Atem to wind up with them again. And he was sure they would have thrown Yugi to the labs had they been a part of it. There was no way that one might come to love Atem enough that monetary greed would prevent their return of him. The thought made him sick.

He did not want to consider Yugi's family to be greedy or malicious in any way. But it was hard not to imagine that even _they_ would come to feel such a thing should they have been involved in his creation. There were thousands of dollars put on the wolf's head—millions now, perhaps. The hunters were not as abundant as they had been, but that was not to say that they most likely had not been dealt with at some point or another by the mountain pack.

If there were any force in the world he would have trusted to dispose of them, it was the pack. They were violent and cunning and would never sit for the things that hunters would bring their way. So, likely, they had not stopped, but they'd been dealt with instead. Marik himself had probably killed some, even if it was simply because of his own delusions rather than anything else. Why he had not killed Fuwa had been simply his hatred towards Yugi. Had it not been for that, he would have done so immediately upon crossing paths with him.

Yami knew that about the wolf if nothing else.

He drew in a deep breath and pushed the door open, then wandered about the shadows. There were little paintings on the wall. And he could see some instruments laid out on the steel counters that rested on either side of the walkway. There was nothing alarming about the area at all but for that lack of lighting, which Yami brushed forcefully from his mind. His eyes had always adjusted instantly to the lighting and changes thereof. Even when he'd been younger, it had been instant no matter his state of health.

Yami shook his head and looked around for a moment. And then he looked towards the back room, slipping inside and narrowing his eyes. The person inside was hunched over something or other. And, had he not been telling himself that none of the Motou's were dangerous, he might have thought them to be playing with an unconscious patient atop the steel table. It did not matter that the room was empty but for the two of them. It was simply that his mind would have distorted it in his mounting confusion.

"Oh, hello."

Yami blinked, tilting his head. "Hello, Sugoroku," he muttered softly. His eyes shot briefly around the sterile room. The white walls looked spotless and somehow intimidating, as if looming overhead and so forceful as to press forward and into them. It made him stiffen and he felt almost sick. But he shoved it aside to look towards the medical equipment for a brief moment.

He recognized the set of things upon the walls, the kits which were plastered beneath some of the cabinets. They were emergency kits, he was sure, with tools that would be necessary for a hasty clean up should something go awry. Yami pushed the thought away, exhaling a breath. None of these items were remotely similar to what had been used at the labs and what equipment he _knew_ would have been was hidden away entirely from sight. It had likely been gathered up and put away for later use. It was not as if sharp objects needed to be visible at all moments in the room…

Yami brushed the thought off. "Did I interrupt something?"

"Like what?" Sugoroku snorted, an amused glint in his eye. "You and I both know that I wasn't doing anything."

The red-eyed teen failed to comment on the fact that he'd been huddled over the exam table as if he might have been doing something or other. Instead he attempted to look more bashful than anything, offering a somewhat stressed smile in hopes of easing the tension forming in his own bones.

"I did not meant to intrude on your alone time then," Yami muttered after a moment, a reluctant twinge in his voice. He had not considered how hard it would be to hold a conversation with someone that was _not_ Yugi. But then, he was not sure that he was doing well speaking to Yugi as it was either. In truth, he doubted that he was doing well communicating with the smaller wolf anymore. Somehow he felt he was saying all the wrong things and doing much worse by him than he ever had before. "Do you want me to leave?"

Sugoroku's moustache wiggled when he laughed. Yami tilted his head, surprised by the sight, and barely stopped himself from snorting and furrowing his brows. He did not think he had ever seen someone's moustache move like that. It was almost…bewildering. He wondered if it itched when it brushed against his nose with his snickers.

"Interrupting my alone time?" the elderly Motou repeated with a smile and shake of his head. "No such thing. I hate being alone half the time as it is. And I was not expecting to see you here at any rate. It's a…welcome surprise, I guess you could say."

Yami nearly grunted. Why would his presence there be welcome? Of all the things to say, he could not understand why he'd chosen this. But he would not argue with him, instead nodding and turning away with a forced smile. "I hope you do not assume that I am hiding away from you or your daughter. I simply do not always…like company. Too many people at one time make me anxious."

It was not entirely a lie, though the half-truth was rather stilted. He truly did not like too many people around him. But it was not as simple as it making him anxious. And anxiety was not so easily explained for a werewolf of all creatures. It was almost a joke to him for a moment before he chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment.

"I hadn't really thought much about you hiding out in Yugi's room, to be honest." Sugoroku gave him a smile that reminded him too much of leering faces and laughter and it made his stomach ache for a brief moment. He was not used to others laughing at him or smiling at him in any manner that was not more akin a sneer. Yugi was the only one he knew not to do such a thing. Seeing the expression similarly on his grandfather's face made him nervous for a moment. "I assumed you just did not want to have to deal with any backlash from your return here."

Yami frowned. "Backlash?" he echoed softly. "I was unaware that I should be wary of backlash."

"Oh." The elderly man appeared flustered now, perhaps startled by his response. "Well, all I mean, is that I just thought that you didn't want to…deal with Kasumi if she was not in a kind mood towards you."

He blinked and then nearly bristled. She didn't need to be in a kind mood towards him. It was his fault that her son had been infected with lycanthropy as it was. And he was letting Yugi run around and do things that he would regret sooner rather than later, he was sure. And he was the reason that Yugi disappeared much of the time and didn't come back until late at night. He was the reason that her son lied to her so often and why she had so many problems on her plate as it was.

He was the reason their relationship had become so strained. He was the reason Yugi and Kasumi were so distant and estranged to each other now. He was the reason Yugi had nearly gotten killed more than once, why he had to struggle so much now when he had not before.

Yami grimaced. "She's in the right to be upset. We lied to her. We've been hiding away from her. She's every right to be annoyed with us. And it is not as if she owes me an apology. She doesn't need to be nice to me."

Sugoroku snickered and shook his head. "It's strange how different you and Yugi are," he commented with a raised brow. Yami blinked and furrowed his brows in turn, confused as he considered him. But the elderly man was still laughing even as he explained and Yami wondered at the way he looked at him. "He would have said she should be nice to you instead of giving you the cold shoulder like she is. He'd be livid about it. But you're calm and cool and collected about it. It's almost odd to me."

Yami opened his mouth to answer, then stopped short. There was a small, faint touch of tension in his shoulders, almost as if he were sensing another werewolf coming close to the clinic. But it was not aggressive and he knew the feeling far too well. He hummed, ignoring the puzzled look on Sugoroku's face, and faced the door with a tilt of his head. He had to strain his eyes for the proper sighting of the small teen as the door shut. But it took only a moment for Yugi to look around and pick his way towards them. He had not quite noticed Yami's eyes on him, however. And he seemed to be entirely focused on something that Yami could not quite recognize himself.

Yugi found his way through the door, stopped in front of them, and then his entire face lit up as he looked between them happily. He turned to his grandpa immediately after, murmuring, "Hey, Grandpa. No clinic today?"

"Your mother went to the main clinic instead. She didn't want to have any animals in the house in case they got stressed out again because of you guys being here," Sugoroku explained, smiling but appearing puzzled as well. Yami imagined that Yugi's appearance there and the surprise and happiness he had worn upon entering the room with them had done well to confuse the elderly Motou. "And she didn't want to stress either of you out by having them in the kennels."

"That is…considerate of her," Yami said quietly, nodding slightly when the other two turned to him. He did not look at them for more than a moment, tilting his head and blinking. When he turned back, his eyes were locked on Sugoroku again. "Is the main clinic larger than this one?"

Yugi blinked. "It's about twice this size. And it has about five different examination and surgical rooms," he explained, smiling at him when Yami blinked and looked towards him sideways. "This one is the emergency clinic. We use it for the animals with the most dire health problems. Like when V—the wolf-dog got hit by a car. The police officer on the scene was actually about to shoot him and put him out of his misery. He stayed here for a couple of days before he…got loose."

Yami did not need more than a second to realize that he meant to say Valon. He hummed and nodded, turning away. "Makes sense," he muttered, a rather uncommitted grunt more than anything. He looked back at Yugi again, tilting his head after a moment. "We need to practice some more. I don't know if you found me so easily because of how small the house is or if you tracked my scent."

Yugi nodded, eyes still bright. He, like Yami, ignored the questioning glance Sugoroku shot them. "We'll do it again the next time we go into the woods."

* * *

 _I can't believe half of the shit that got done to…me,_ Yugi said awkwardly, frowning as he looked at Jonouchi. The tawny-furred male was laying a couple of inches from him, ears pricked and eyes locked on Yami as well. The black wolf had been chewing on an antler for an hour now. And he'd gnawed a large chunk of it so sharply that it had become a knife's edge beneath the constant pressure.

Jonouchi looked queasy as he continued to watch Yami with a somewhat horrified expression. _Well, you knew that they'd done some whack things to you,_ he said quietly, tone bordering flustered. Yugi could not tell if that was because of Yami's jaw power or if it was Yugi's words formerly. _So I don't know why you're all that surprised._

 _They cut his_ —my— _head open_!

The brown-eyed wolf blinked, then glanced over. But Yugi could see that he was still watching in his peripheral. _Why though_? he asked. _I mean, did they do lobotomies for everyone_?

Yugi huffed. _I don't think that's what they were doing, but thanks._

 _Well, you said you were sick and couldn't keep up with the experiments anymore. So doesn't that mean they were probably cutting into your head to figure out_ why _that was happening_? the other wolf asked, though now he turned away again. His ears flattened and he curled his lip slightly. Yugi looked and nearly flinched. Yami had bitten the antler in half in a clear, clean cut and looked incredibly unhappy with the new development. How much pressure did it take to break an antler? Yugi could not imagine Yami was biting anywhere less than what Obelisk had said was his minimum at three thousand pounds per square inch. He had said he bit far harder than that and Yami had even hinted that Yugi himself could do the same, that he'd been measured at such as Atem formerly. _Jesus_.

 _He's…kind of anxious._

 _Why_? Jonouchi snorted. _Did_ he _just find out he'd been experimented on as badly as you_?

Yugi had no doubt that Yami had been, though he would not put that out in the air. Instead he tilted his head and sighed softly. _He's probably reacting to me more than anything._ He shook himself out and plopped back down again. Jonouchi was looking at him curiously now. _Anyways, though, I don't know how I actually survived any of that. It was…crazy…what they did to me._

 _Does it actually matter how you survived, Yugi_? The white wolf bristled, startled by the question. He frowned at Jonouchi and nearly curled his lips back angrily in response, but the golden-furred wolf still did not look away from Yami as he spoke. _I mean, at the end of the day, you're still alive. And your memories are fuzzy and all, but you're_ still here. _So does the_ how _of it actually matter_?

Yugi fell quiet for a moment. _It does. It matters a_ lot _to me, Jonouchi._

 _Why_? _It doesn't change anything. It happened and you're still alive. I would consider that a blessing and call it a day._

He shook his head angrily, blue-violet eyes flashing. _That's not what I meant,_ he hissed in annoyance. _And, yes, it does change things. It changes_ everything.

Why _though_? _You're still Yugi. Now you just know what happened as Atem._

 _Right_. Yugi huffed. _Now I_ know.

Jonouchi shook his head and looked away. _Now you just know more of the details. But you've always known something was wrong. You've always known that they'd tortured and run experiments on you. Even Yami has told you that, I'm sure._

The white wolf drew his lips back. _But now I got to see it. And I got see him. I got to see_ myself _react to it._ He hesitated. _Jonouchi, you don't know what guilt is until you're watching a little boy being electrocuted in saltwater, bled, starved_ … _You don't know how badly you hate yourself because you_ can't stop it. _Because it's already done. But the memories make you want to shatter and it's terrible and you just…_

Jonouchi was watching him closely. _You can't change any of what happened._

 _I know._ Yugi looked away. _But I just… I wish… I wish there was something I could have done…_

He shook his head, a glint entering his eyes that told Yugi he wasn't sure what more to say and that he simply wanted the conversation to change topics. He turned away again and licked his lips, facing Yami. _I can't believe he broke that thing in half._

Yugi watched Yami with a tilted head. _He's got strong jaws,_ he said somewhat dismissively. _If he were at the clinic, my mom would be freaking out that he'd managed that. She'd probably be checking his teeth for fractures and examining his gums for bleeding. Antlers are those long lasting_ _chews that are meant to be there basically forever_. _Dogs wear away at them and eventually get them down to the point that you have to dispose of them. And they can last for_ months. _Yami just broke a full deer antler in barely ten minutes._

Jonouchi shuddered. _If he was a regular dog I'd be horrified._

 _You're_ already _horrified_.

 _Okay, well, I'd be_ more _horrified_.

Yugi laughed and shook his head. _Maybe_ , he answered. Then he moved to sit up straighter, at first with the desire to crane his neck back and stretch. But then he saw movement and froze, head snapping around.

Across the clearing was a leaner black wolf with glossy fur. His ears were tipped white and his eyes a bright teal as he approached Yami. Yugi recognized Otogi in a heartbeat now that he was focused on him, but he wondered where the wolf had been lately. He felt that he had not seen him in a while and it made him anxious to witness his presence there now. It was something which made him shiver as he blinked at the two dark-furred males.

Yami looked up with a large chunk of his antler hanging halfway out of his jaws. Yugi blinked and tilted his head curiously before leaning forward and pricking his ears. Yami's antler fell out of his mouth and Otogi wagged his tail lazily, bowing before the other male playfully.

And then the red-eyed wolf wagged his tail in turn and got up. He grabbed at the antler in his mouth and tossed it into the air. The momentum was weak but Otogi still jumped for it, catching it and wagging his tail happily. And then he tossed it and Yami leapt for it.

Yugi tilted his head curiously. They were playing catch? It was strange to think that the wolves might do something of that intent. Entertaining themselves and each other was not something that Yugi doubted them capable of. It was simply that he had not imagined that anyone would be brave enough to approach Yami with that intent.

Did Otogi know what had happened? Did he have any idea what it was that had caused the other wolves to hide away from him as they were? Yusei and Syrus were the only two brave enough to come near him beyond Mai, but Mai had been rather erratic in her behavior. She had run off on her own for a little while and then returned. And she'd approached Yami with a couple of presents from her patrol.

Yugi had been just as shocked as Jonouchi and Yami had. Because she'd come straight to his beta, trotting at a quick pace and dropping a bloodied deer haunch and a large antler. Yami had been so surprised he'd initially gotten up and backed away, confused. And Yugi had heard her say he needed it, that the deer meat would help him with his muscle regeneration and the marrow in the antler would allow him a faster recovery rate.

Yami had awkwardly accepted this, though initially he'd said someone else might need it more. Mai had sneered that she hadn't gotten it for _someone else_ , then licked his cheek and told him to eat up. And then she'd turned and trotted away.

And Yami had uncomfortably set about eating. Some of the wolves had eyed him, perhaps envious or maybe curious and others possibly upset or simply annoyed, as he'd begun to dig into the deer haunch. Aki especially had seemed angered by it, mostly jealous and perhaps hungry for the idea of healing as well. Yusei had been rather surprised and curious, as if he had not expected that Yami would eat it. Jonouchi had been more confused than anything, then flustered as he'd asked Yugi if Mai had feelings for Yami in a somewhat panicked tone. And then Yugi had seen Syrus approach Yami, low and slinking and wagging his tail for a moment. He'd whined something and Yami had picked the meat off the bones, cracked it in half, and given it to the omega. Syrus had darted off with it, tail wagging and a rather proud expression on his face, as if he had somehow taken the deer down himself. He'd taken it over to Yusei and the other yearlings. And then they'd played for a long while, dragging the bone about and letting them each bite into it to eat at the marrow.

But now Yami was playing with Otogi as if they were litter mates and had done this their entire lives. It was a strange, rather startling idea, something which made him incredibly nervous for a moment.

It caused Yugi to feel something between coldness and jealousy. It made his heart ache, feeling abruptly heavy and estranged between them. He got up now, shaking himself out, and looked at Jonouchi.

Did he ever feel similarly to that now that he saw his interactions with Yami? Did he feel as if there were some kind of gap as well? Yugi could not imagine that he didn't. But he also could not imagine how he felt knowing as well that his memories of Yugi were in fact fabricated by the gods in order to allow him to camouflage amongst the other people in Japan…

He flattened his ears. Why did any of this have to be like this? Why did any of them have to suffer like this or know such differences like this? Why did the gods let such terrible things happen?

Yugi drew in a deep breath and turned away.

 _Yugi_.

His head snapped right back around, eyes wide and ears pricked. He blinked curiously and raised his chin the smallest of fractions.

 _I'm hungry._

The two words were initially met with an extremely blank stare. Yugi considered him in absolute bewilderment, blinking again. And then he straightened a degree more and quickly stretched himself out as if it might somehow cover for his momentary confusion.

 _Okay_. He glanced at Jonouchi after a moment, feeling oddly cold for the fact that he was not paying him full attention as well. He flicked his ears and faced him with a curious expression. _Do you want to come with us_?

In the corner of his eye he swore he saw a glint. Yugi blinked and his peripheral sharpened. Yami was staring at Jonouchi in turn, an almost expressionless gleam having come to his eye. The black wolf remained those few feet away, Otogi behind him playing with the broken antler alone.

Jonouchi glanced at Yami and, when he didn't see anything worthy of his concern, he murmured, _Sure. Let's do that. I could use a run._

Yugi snorted and turned to Yami with a wag of his tail. The black wolf did not return the gesture, that glint in his eye gone but his former amusement dissipated with it. Now he simply looked at Yugi and then Jonouchi, and finally he turned and glanced at Otogi lazily.

The other black male continued tossing his small reward into the air, happily watching it land in the snow and pouncing on it seconds later. Yami wagged his tail slightly at the sight, which made Yugi nearly bristle with a flustered feeling, and finally turned back.

Yugi wagged his tail again. Yami seemed to consider him for a moment, then stretched out into something of a play bow. His rump wiggled and he wagged his tail as he stretched his forelimbs. Then he got up again, straightening himself out, and yawned. _Are we ready_? _Or are we waiting on something_? he asked immediately after.

 _No, we're heading out now. Let's go._

Yami trotted past him immediately, tail slightly raised and a fluidity in his steps that was much alike bouncing. The snow crunched softly beneath his weight and Yugi took to a pace a few steps behind, Jonouchi following at a similar length. They passed through the trees lazily, though Yugi did not find himself bothered with this.

Yami led them out towards the curve of the river, though now he slowed slightly and scented at the air. Yugi kept watching him, ears pricked and head tilted. He stood back as Yami stopped short and continued to sniff the air. He was leaning back and forth, sniffing as he turned his head every which way. It took him a moment to catch even a small hint of smell, and then he turned and trotted again.

Yugi did the same, following at the same pace he had before. Jonouchi trailed him just as lazily and Yugi watched Yami for a few minutes longer. The dark wolf padded down the incline of the hill and towards what Yugi thought to be something of a narrow valley formation. It was almost more the unsteady dipping trail of a river than anything, but Yugi knew it to be solid ground. There was no movement of water beneath the ice or anything of that nature.

Yami led them for only a few more minutes. And then he rushed forward. Yugi hurried after him, slightly alarmed as he growled softly under his breath and muttered, _Yami, where the hell are we going_?

 _Right down the bank,_ he said in turn, slowing down and sniffing at the air. And then he stopped and turned around, wagging his tail happily. _Mai had said that she had managed to catch the deer after having gone after another, younger one. She said she'd broken its leg but she didn't know where it had gone._

 _Okay_? Yugi paused. _So that's what we're here for_?

Yami wagged his tail faster. _It's the easiest catch I've_ ever _made_! he announced, jerking his muzzle towards the lower incline of the snow-laden valley of area. Yugi turned and tilted his head with a flick of his ears. And then he lifted his chin once more, surprised, and wagged his tail as well. He was satisfied to see the animal locked in the snow beneath the dip of earth.

It lay in the ice, struggling for its feet. It had sunk too deep and now its movements simply left it winded. It was clearly exhausted, neck straining as its head turned back and forth rapidly. The red-brown color was smeared with dried blood along its shoulder. And Mai had bitten it on the head as well at some point or another for its face was covered in blood on the right cheek and had slight puncture wounds.

He was sure, had it been another wolf to have crossed paths with it, it would be dead and eaten by now. He was thankful that nothing had caught it while they were at the camp.

But then, he doubted the hellhounds were stupid enough to come into their territory again so soon.

Yugi shook it off and looked over to Jonouchi. _He's right. This is absolutely the easiest kill we're ever going to make._ He wagged his tail as his head turned back towards Yami. _That's awesome._

The black wolf nodded and then turned and began down the hill. It was a slight incline but Yami paused warily at the edge of it. He crossed the snow for a few moments, traveling back and forth at a steady pace. Then he hesitantly pressed a paw into the snow in front of him and considered for a moment what might have caused the deer to get stuck. Of course, considering that they were not as adept in traversing within the snow. They sank into the snow unlike the wolves. They did not have webbing between their toes as he did. They had longer legs, stood taller, and they could jump easily through snow dunes instead.

But it still made him slightly nervous. He was not used to snow being enough to trap his prey. But Mai had also broken its leg, he remembered. So he could not imagine that it would have been able to struggle out of the snow due to it either. But this logic still made him bristle faintly as he tilted his head and looked off forward further into the snow.

The snow crunched loudly but did not sink further than it had moments before. The deer was staring at him, brown eye beady where it was turned towards him. Yami pricked his ears and tilted his head, glancing over his shoulder only when he heard the sound of Yugi approaching him in turn. He blinked and the white wolf slowed a step or two away. And, behind him, Jonouchi was awkwardly picking his way towards them, as if unsure which pocket of snow might be the one to swallow him like it had the deer.

 _Are you okay_? Yugi asked, tilting his head. _I couldn't tell if you were just nervous or if it was something else entirely._

Yami blinked and glanced back to the ungulate. _No, I am fine. I just do not know why it is stuck here,_ he admitted rather uncomfortably. _I do not know if it is because of the wounds or if it is stuck in a trap or if the snow is just that deep._

Yugi bristled and looked at the deer. _If we were to grab it by the throat, we could pull it out. And that way we could see if its leg is stuck._

Yami was quiet for a moment, then nodded slowly. _Yes, that might work._ He moved towards the side and hurried to pick his way closer to Yugi's flank. The white wolf blinked at him, wagged his tail once, and then moved to join him.

The buck aimed its antlers at Yami. But the rack of keratin failed to reach him. And Yami was not alarmed by it in the slightest, instead wagging his tail with satisfaction. The black wolf tilted his head and parted his jaws slightly in anticipation. His mouth was watering as he came forward a step.

The deer tried again and failed and Yami merely licked his lips. _I'll go towards the front. He sees me better against the snow than he does you. So you can stay at his flank for now and_ then _you can grab him by the neck. I'll grab him by the muzzle afterward and we'll pull him out that way._

Yugi nodded slightly, flicking his ears and licking his lips. _Let's do this then,_ the white wolf said immediately, wagging his tail and moving to Yami's other side. The black male hesitated for a moment, then slowly picked his way forward in the snow as he sunk into the ice crystals.

Yami licked his lips again and steadied his paws as he came closer to the deer. He could feel the earth dip rather abruptly, almost as if he were balanced upon a cliff wall. He hesitantly lifted a paw and lowered it into the snow, shifting his position and pressing his weight increasingly into the ice. He felt the snow rush up towards his elbow, a startling sensation, and he backed up again. He paced a few steps forward, then pressed his weight again into the snow. The snow crunched and came immediately upwards toward his elbow once more and he bristled faintly as he turned away and tried again.

It took him a minute to find enough room to get closer to the deer. The buck's head swung towards him again and he growled softly, wagging his tail.

 _Be careful where you step, Yugi. The incline is rather steep._

The white wolf nodded slightly, though his eyes were still focused upon the deer in front of him. He was bristling and looked almost amused as he picked his way forward towards the deer. He continued a few steps, ears pricked forward and eyes sharp as they bore into the deer's frame.

Yami blinked a few times, narrowing his eyes as he attempted to pick his way forward. He bristled slightly, then peeled his lips back to show his teeth. The deer thrust its head at him and Yugi hesitantly picked his way forward. The white wolf was careful in his footing, awkward and slow, and continued steadily through the snow.

The ice was loud but not distracting. Yami snapped his jaws and the deer let out a strange fearful call that reminded him abruptly of cats. He flicked his ears and tilted his head, listening as he considered the deer curiously. It let out another call and went unanswered but for Yugi creeping closer. The white wolf sank deeply into the snow and quickly jumped back a few more paces, picking his way more cautiously. It was not as if he would disappear beneath the surface as Yami knew deer sometimes did; wolves did not sink like that. It was simply that he didn't know how steep the incline was, nor how large the pocket. If they could not gauge this, then he'd rather not risk getting anyone hurt. Going into the situation blind was like asking for injury.

 _Damn_ , Yugi muttered. He shook himself out and looked at Yami with pricked ears, blue-violet eyes annoyed. _I'm thinking he's just stuck. I don't think it's possible he would have triggered a trap. The snow is too deep._

Yami considered him for a moment, narrowing his eyes and growing somewhat relieved but puzzled as well. _What the hell caused this_?

 _I think it might be one of those natural pits. It happens sometimes._ Yugi was moving towards the other side of the ungulate. He was awkward but somehow still precise as he picked his way there. He sank deeply into the snow, quickly recovered himself and changed his route once more. _It happens with water erosion. It's probably from the incline and the flood from the ice when it thaws during spring. I think that's most likely the reason it's like this._

Yami flicked his ears forward and bristled faintly. _Very well._ He tilted his head again, then moved slowly towards the buck. He snapped at it, a feinting action. The wolf was rewarded with the deer struggling in the snow, aiming its antlers at him once more. It bought Yugi enough time to pick his way closer. And then the white wolf lunged.

The buck saw the movement in the corner of his eye. And his head turned, lowered as its antlers struck out. Yugi yelped, stumbling, and blood came from his cheek where he was struck. He stumbled back a few steps, licking his lips and growling softly.

 _Shit_. Yami couldn't make it over to him without taking a minute or two and he didn't think the wound was too terribly deep. Yugi was not yelping any longer. But he couldn't move as he flattened his ears, peering at Yugi. The command for him to come over so he could inspect the cut lay on the tip of his tongue for a split second. _Are you all right_? _Did he actually do any damage_?

Yugi looked over, tail wagging and tongue lolling. _No. I'm okay. I'm fine. He got my cheek but it hardly hurts anymore._

Yami was quiet for a moment. Then he glanced at the buck and back. _Do you want leave him_? _We can come back here for it later. If we wait long enough, he'll be too tired to lift his head and—_

 _That could take_ days _to happen,_ Yugi objected, giving him a slightly annoyed look. _And besides that, what if he gets buried in there? That won't fix anything. We'd have to work harder to get him out than we already are. You don't need to worry about me, Yami. I'm fine._

The black wolf considered him for a moment longer. And then he turned away again. _If you are sure._

 _I am. I promise. It surprised me more than anything. He barely nicked me._

Yami still stared at the buck for a moment. Those eyes bore into his and he snarled low under his breath. _He's still potentially dangerous. We might need a new plan for this._

Yugi shook his head. _I think if he bucks at me, you could grab him by the mouth. It's not too terrible an idea, I don't think._

But the problem was that it was paying Yami so much attention. And that was not something Yami wished to deal with. Should he leap forward for its mouth and it turned on Yugi, it'd most likely get them both rather violently in the face.

He considered it. It had eight points to its antlers. Going against it head on would be extremely dangerous. He did not want to imagine the pain that might come from such a thing. Either of them could have an eye taken out if they were not careful. The antlers were weapons, after all, not toys. And Yugi could easily wind up wounded if he was not careful and decided to be self-sacrificing to avoid Yami getting hurt in turn. That made this even harder than it should have been.

But he also realized he could not ask Jonouchi to participate with them either. The other wolf was too new to his lycanthropy and Yami did not want to risk him getting harmed. And if he were involved as well, should he get harmed he was not sure how Yugi might react.

Wounded or not, the buck was still dangerous. And since it was stuck in the snow like this, it was able to lash out at them continuously and could not stumble on unsteady or cold legs.

Hypothermia would become a concern for it later, however, he knew. The right leg was broken and that was something that made Yami bristle for a moment. He was not strong enough himself to take a hit to his face or neck or chest. He'd survive it, but the impact would be painful and the recovery might be a rather long process.

He shook his head slowly and narrowed his eyes. He drew his lips back to show his teeth for a moment. Then he shivered and straightened the smallest degree. It was almost impossible to consider that he might be wounded in any manner. He shivered and bristled, unsure of which way they were meant to approach this hunt now.

He tilted his head, studying, and pricked his ears further forward. There had to be a way to distract it without either of them being harmed. It was impossible to consider that the buck was simply in the perfect position to fight them off. It was just not possible to him. It was not okay for him to consider this for more than a moment.

Otherwise it would lead him to doubt himself and Yugi.

And that would soon mean that Yugi would react badly to him in terms of the buck. He knew how volatile Yugi could be when he put to mind that he would do something. And he knew damn well that he could not stop him if he turned around and attacked the buck against his desires. Yugi was desperate to help him heal. He knew that. And he understood that Yugi would do as much as he could to fix this should Yami truly say he did not believe he was capable of killing the buck between the two of them.

But to consider it more, the only way they'd truly have a way to do it…

 _Is the snow too deep near his hip_? _You'll be mostly out of his line of sight_.

Yugi blinked and turned to eye the snow. Yami could see him picking a path to find the spot in mention. And then he bristled and shook his head. _I can get to him from here. It's not too deep. But am I gutting him_? _Is that the new idea_?

 _It's safest. He will not be able to twist so far back to fight you. And he'll still be more focused on me._ Yami looked at him for a moment. Yugi was eyeing the buck, gaze sharp and dark. _He can't see you if you're that far back. We'll have to drag him out after he's dead._

 _Okay_. The word was said without a single hesitation. Yugi turned to him with bright, almost burning eyes. _Then let's get this done. You can eat up and we'll wait until you're done. Then we'll go ahead and head back afterwards._

 _Are you not hungry_?

Yugi stated at the buck. _Jonouchi and I will eat after you're done. You're the one who needs it more than us, aibou._ When he turned to him next, his tail was up and wagging, eyes soft and warm. _It's not a big deal for us. We're not sick or anything, remember_?

Yami nodded only a fraction, ears pricked towards him and eyes darkened briefly. _Very well. I think it will be easy enough to do this and drag him out of the pit. It should not be a problem to do this._ He was quiet for a moment before turning to look towards Jonouchi as the gray and blond wolf hovered near the edge of the pit. He did not look inclined to come any closer, something which comforted Yami for the moment. _I will help you to pull him out as soon as he is dead. I'll eat after we move him._

Yugi nodded again. _All right. Let's do it._

 _Give me a moment to get his attention again. Go for his right flank, cut into his flesh near his back leg._ He crept forward a step, pricked his ears forward, bristled, and raised his tail high into the air. The buck was staring at him pointedly as he crept closer again. But the snow was too deep for him to get any nearer than he already was. The buck focused on him when he snapped his teeth, antlers aimed for his face. He jerked back, snarling.

And Yugi watched for a moment longer. Yami wagged his tail, snarled, and then feinted. And now the white wolf leaped forward again. Yami snapped his teeth. And Yugi hit the buck at full force, teeth chomping shut on flesh. Blood sank into his mouth immediately. And the buck let out a small cry before turning on him. Yugi saw the antlers close to his eyes and nearly backed up.

Until he noticed that a second set of teeth had dug into its head. And they were tugging. The snow was crunching from the force of their movements. And Yugi shivered as he pulled back and craned his neck again to bite into the buck's flesh once more. It cut through the soft skin and tore it away and Yugi hastily swallowed it away. He dug back in immediately, the sweet blood making him nearly tremble for a brief moment. And then he tugged and tore at the flesh again.

The buck tried to aim for him again. But Yami held it in a vice grip. And, when it tried to pull out of his grasp, Yami thrust the buck's head into the snow. It was as if he were attempting to drown it beneath the ice. But the buck would toss its head and could only slightly pull from his grip. It was bleeding rather heavily now. The air was saturated with it.

Yugi tugged harder, then ripped into the entrails which he could see there. He chomped at one of them, then tugged hard enough to all but disembowel it completely. Yugi could see those beady eyes on him, the deer attempting to shove Yami away but missing entirely. Its breaths came out rough and heavy, the air white with each exhale.

Yugi shook himself out and looked to Yami. The black wolf kept the buck's head smothered within the snow. And, as the seconds passed, he slowly tossed his head back and forth sharply as if to break its neck. The buck seemed to try for its feet, struggling to keep from being thrown over. But it was still lying down and Yugi was not sure whether it might be able to sink further into the snow as it was.

Yami was shaking his head heavily, so quickly that Yugi was amazed that the deer did not go flying. But the neck did snap after a few moments, the force of it so loud that it made Yugi blink huge eyes and back away. The black wolf let go of the buck and panted, tongue lolling as he looked to Yugi.

The buck laid there, eyes open and wide as they became glossed over. Yugi shook his head and licked his lips. Its blood on his mouth was enough to make him almost quiver. He'd forgotten how nice it felt to hunt and eat his own catch, the feeling of accomplishment that came with it. Prey always tasted better when he caught it himself…

He blinked and shook himself out; he wasn't there for that. _You okay_? _He didn't hit you, right_?

 _Hmm_? Yami muttered. He looked over, appearing almost distracted as Yugi himself was. _No. Not at all. I am fine. He did not touch me. Are you all right_? _Your cheek isn't hurting_?

 _No, not at all,_ he answered, wagging his tail again. _I'm fine_! _Now let's go ahead and pull him out of here._

Jonouchi was staring at them with a tilted head and his ears pricked as he muttered, _Do you guys need any help pulling him out of that ditch_? _Or are you going to eat him down there_?

 _We're bringing him up in a second,_ Yugi answered, wagging his tail slowly and licking his lips to get rid of some of the blood. The sweet taste was almost enough to make his stomach growl. _Just stay where you are, okay_? _I don't want anyone to get stuck._

 _Is it that deep_? _I thought dogs could walk in snow and not get stuck or whatever_?

Yami grunted. _Canines can walk in snow. Wolves have webbed toes for swimming and helping us keep from sinking in the snow. But we have no idea how deep it actually is. If one of us gets caught in the snow, it might take a little while to get them out._

 _But is it actually that deep_? Jonouchi asked, tilting his head. Yugi thought he looked incredibly skeptical as he eyed Yami. _It seems like it wouldn't be that deep…_

 _Why don't you come down and get caught and then we'll find out_? Yami answered wryly, annoyed now. _I mean, that's always a choice if you'd_ really _like to see why we're telling you to stay up there._

Yugi sighed, exasperated as he looked at the black wolf and flattened his ears. _Really, Yami_? _Do you have to be so mean_?

The black wolf huffed. _I'm not being mean. I am simply pointing out that he is foolish. Personally, I do not believe that I need to babysit another wolf my own age, regardless of whether he was just bitten or not_.

 _You were much nicer to me than you're being to him._

Yami turned to him with an unimpressed look. _But_ I _bit you. I did not bite Jonouchi._

Yugi tilted his head and flattened his ears further, a sensation of indignation swelling in his belly. He sighed, considering Yami for a moment, and then looked swiftly away. Yami had been a good alpha for the most part, despite his half-truths and various lies. He had been patient for the most part, even if he'd snapped at him every once in a while. But Yugi himself had been a rather lacking guide for Jonouchi. He himself had not done nearly as much for his best friend as Yami had for him.

He'd left it mostly to Mai, because Jonouchi had been head over heels the moment he'd met her. And now he could not quite find it in himself to potentially step on Mai's toes by way of saying something that might contradict what she had told him. And so Yugi had quickly found himself backing away from everything he _could_ have potentially taught him.

He flicked his ears, then glanced at Jonouchi. The tawny wolf was glaring at Yami but thankfully he had not responded verbally. The last thing he wanted was the two of them fighting. _Don't worry about us, okay_? _We'll be back up there in a minute with the deer._

Jonouchi blinked at him with something that seemed rather unimpressed…

And Yugi wondered for a moment if Jonouchi was fed up with him as it was. He would not have been surprised had that happened…

 _If you say so._

Yugi wagged his tail as if it might be a confirmation. And then he turned to Yami. _He's just super grumpy all the time, isn't that right, Yami_? he teased, diffusing the situation as best he could before Jonouchi might grow upset again. He looked back to his own beta after a moment, then turned to Yami and moved to grab at the buck's back leg. _So then let's get that up there and not worry about it anymore, okay_?

Yami grunted and moved to circle the buck for a moment, leaning forward to snatch at its neck with his sharp teeth. He grabbed it as Yugi tugged, the two of them pulling until the body began to slide slowly but surely through the snow. The resistance was little but it still made Yugi bristle faintly as he tugged it out of the snow and Yami breathed heavily as he helped to bring it over the lip of the incline. He and Yami both stepped awkwardly around Jonouchi who was staring curiously with a tilted head. Yugi released it when they were a safe distance from the incline, then moved a few feet away and took a seat. He licked the blood from his jaws and shook himself out as Yami began to dig in.

Jonouchi wisely chose to join him after a moment, though his eyes lingered longingly on the meal Yami was eating. He looked almost disappointed in the fact that he was not allowed to eat yet, but had he asked Yugi would have pointed out that hierarchy made a difference when it came to a lot of things for the wolves. And food was one of the most prominent times that this came to into effect.

 _Hungry_? Yugi asked after a moment. Jonouchi was still eyeing Yami as he dug into his meal and licked his lips rapidly to clear some of the blood that made his muzzle shiny. The brown eyes were almost dilated with desire. _Let him eat as much as he can and then you can have the rest._

His friend looked at him with a tilt of his head, confused. _You aren't going to eat_? he asked after a moment. But then he looked back at Yami and seemed to grow flustered. _Although, with how he's eating, I don't think there's really going to be any left._

Yugi snorted softly. _Of course there will be. He's not going to eat all of it, Jonouchi. That'd be all but impossible, even if he digests it faster than usual._ He shook himself out again. _He'd have to pick off it several times, not just once._

Jonouchi let out a dismayed whine. _I'm never going to get to eat_!

The white wolf would have rolled his eyes had he been human, but now he snorted again and looked at Yami. The black wolf was ignoring them pointedly, eating and licking his lips and swallowing such huge chunks Yugi was reminded of his eating the serow in the cave on the mountain's foothills. It made him nervous to remember that hunger that had possessed Yami back then.

He shivered at the thought, stomach knotting for a moment. He wanted for a split second to leap up and go over to him, to ask him if he was recovering at all as it was. Because it made him more nervous than he cared to admit.

* * *

 _Atem_.

He blinked and flicked an ear, then turned his head to peer at him curiously. He tilted his head and pricked his ears towards him. _Hi_ , he murmured softly, bewildered as the teal-eyed wolf came to his side. The gray wolf wagged his tail slightly, blinking once before moving to take a seat beside him. Yugi hesitated a moment, sure that somewhere else in the forest the gods had to have been waiting for them.

What was he doing there though? And why had none of them come to greet him yet? He reconsidered the idea, wondering if perhaps the wolf in front of him might have drawn him there for some reason. It was a curious thought and it made him wag his tail slightly as he took a seat in turn.

 _Did you call me here_?

The gray wolf blinked, then chuckled softly, peering at him with warm eyes. _Does it look as if I'm a god_? he teased. _No, I did not draw you here. But I did ask Morrigan to bring you. I wished to speak to you._

Yugi blinked, eyes stretching wide. _Morrigan brought me_? he asked softly, bewildered. _Morrigan is here_?

The wolf nodded. _She is the one who I asked to bring you here. She is somewhere watching us. She is more forgiving of me saying anything out of line than Ra is. So I asked and she said yes and now here we are._ He paused for a moment, looking him over for a moment before leaning forward to stretch himself out on his belly and lick at his paws. _Lie down; I have a story to tell you._

Yugi tilted his head, unsure. He glanced around after a moment, and then moved to stretch himself out beside him. _A story to tell me_? he muttered softly. _Am I going to like this story_?

 _Frankly_? _No. You'll hate it more than you do anything else._ the wolf replied with pricked ears and a tilted head. He wagged his tail after a moment, licking his paws again. Yugi wondered if he was fidgeting or if he was anxious or if something else entirely was happening. _But you must know it. It's important._

He nodded after a moment, considering him with a tilt of his head again. _I won't argue about learning something else,_ he said reluctantly. He watched him, searching his face and wagging his tail slightly.

 _Right_ , the wolf laughed, shaking his head. He was quiet for a moment, green eyes soft and warm before slowly sharpening. _I came to know of Code Name Atem through a legend that my parents used to tell me in order to get me to sleep. They used to tell it as a fairytale. They used to give him a happy ending. And I grew up with the idea that Atem was meant to live a life of pure happiness as a child, face a small handful of trials before maturity, and then to have a perfect ending afterwards._

Yugi nodded slightly.

 _It was when I was about twelve that I came to realize that no such thing can happen for anyone. My pack was murdered violently by a group of hunters. My mom managed to hide myself and my brothers away in order to allow us to run from it all. We made it out of the territory and traveled from_ _Alaska_ _through_ _Canada_ _and towards_ _Washington_ _._ _Washington_ _was so far away that it gave us time to recover. And it was sheltered enough that we could hide around for a while._ The wolf trailed off for a moment, watching him curiously. _After a month or so of hiding there, we decided to travel again. We moved towards_ _Wisconsin_ _, where there were rumors already of werewolf-like creatures. They call them dog-men. And they consider them the American werewolf. And that is how we came across another wolf pack._

Yugi tilted his head. _Echo's_?

The wolf smiled at him, eyes warming further. _Yes, I ran across Echo's pack. She was traveling back to_ _Washington_ _but she'd gone there with a few of her wolves to speak to the alpha there. She attacked me and I fought her off. My brothers came a second or two later, then had to stop when she said that she wasn't going to hurt us. She just wanted to see if I could fight because I was only twelve at the time._ He fell quiet after a moment, then shook his head and licked at his paws once more. _Anyways, she brought us into the pack and we prospered there for about four years. But I got a message from Slifer and she said that I was meant to head to_ _Japan_ _._

He bristled faintly. _Slifer_?

The wolf nodded. _Yes, Slifer. Slifer was the one to tell me to go there. But it was Ra who told me exactly where. And Obelisk told me what it was that I was meant to do._ He was silent for a moment. A faraway look crossed his eyes and then he shook his head and narrowed his eyes. _My mother apologized to me a month or so later, telling me that she let me believe that it would be a fairytale because she did not think that I would come to do it otherwise. She wanted me blind to the suffering that would come from interacting with you and Yami. She said that it was necessary, even though I do not know that I fully agree now that I am able to truly understand it._

Yugi tilted his head, eyes widening in surprise. _She lied to you_?

 _She did not lie, I suppose. She mostly made a sacrifice of me and my brothers._ He was quiet for a moment again. His ears pricked and that faraway look came once more. And then he shook himself out and stretched. _It was not cruelty that drove her, Yugi. And I'll admit it took me until the month I realized I would die to understand that. It was the fact that she knew if I was not as I was, I might not have been able to go so far as to help release the wolves in the labs like I did. She could not prepare me any other way…_

He nodded slightly. Yugi wasn't truly sure how to respond to that of all things. It just sounded more like cowardice to him. But then, he had hid being bitten from his friends and family. But that hadn't led to them _dying_ either, though…

 _Okay_.

 _Regardless, I came to_ _Japan_ _. And I was guided to_ _Hokkaido_ _, to a rather large home centered in a large stretch of acres of wood. Obelisk led me to the tunnels soon after and told me that I would find the reason for the many dreams I had and the stories my mother told me as a pup._ He was quiet for a moment again, then he smiled a little more. He lowered his head to his paws and his eyes grew glazed as if he was sad or perhaps mourning something that Yugi didn't know. _Before I did it, though, I called my brothers and Echo. And I told them that I knew that Atem was there and I told my brothers I needed them to stay there. Echo was freaked out that I told her not to come after me since I was her beta._

Yugi nodded again when there was a long moment of silence. The wolf glanced at him after a moment, as if he were unsure of whether he was paying attention any longer. Then he wagged his tail and looked away again.

 _I let the humans running the experiments find me. But I outwitted them and ran for it when I got too scared to let them catch me. They managed to poison me at one point, with wolfsbane and silver and an anticoagulant so that I couldn't bleed myself to get the infection out without killing myself in the process._ He flicked his ears. _A man in a mask grabbed me. And I was beaten until I was all but dead. I was brought back to the labs and dropped into a cage separated and isolated at first. And I think originally it was because the vet chose to put me there to heal me. But when I attacked one of the guards they put me in a cage with a rabid wolf._

Yugi blinked. _Yami_.

 _Yes_. He looked as if he were relieved that Yugi was saying the name, as if he had lost what tension in his body remained during the storytelling. He looked at him with brilliant green eyes, an expression of such adoration that it startled him visibly. The wolf wagged his tail once more, expression of such soft warmth that Yugi wondered how it was that he could have ever considered holding a flame to it. Abruptly he was sure that this canine had loved Yami more than he did, that somehow he'd had a completely different reason to do so and the spectrum which his affections existed on was far removed from Yugi's own and so more powerful by extension. _Yes, I was put into a cage with Yami._

The white wolf studied him. _He told me he was feral._

 _Yes, he was in a similar state as the one he was in when he killed Obelisk. He was violent and feral and he nearly killed the man who threw me in there with him. How Yami did not kill me in turn is beyond me. But he took to healing me instead._ The wolf fell silent for a moment. _He and I were both half-dead. And I bit him in a panic when he was checking on me to see if I was still alive. He let me eat most of his food, drink most of his water, and even gave me blood when he realized that it had helped me recover faster._

Yugi nodded slowly and tilted his head, studying him more pointedly now. If Yami had enough of the disease in his blood that it had healing qualities then that meant that his own had to too, right? Yami said he was a Full-Blood and his lineage extremely strong. It had been a lie, he knew, but if he was a Pure-Blood as well, then Yugi could expect the same results if he were to ever have to share his blood, right? He had to have the same qualities in his own blood, right? And his blood had to be powerful enough to help others with the worst wounds and sicknesses…

 _I healed and he seemed to stabilize afterward._

 _He said something similar._

The wolf smiled at him in amusement. _I have the feeling that you're growing impatient with this story._

Yugi felt flushed as he shook his head hurriedly. He was thankful that wolves couldn't blush, shaking himself out to hide his embarrassment as best he could. _N-no_! _Not at all. I just…_ He frowned and flattened his ears against his head. _It's not that I'm impatient with this. I just… Never mind. Please continue._

He shook his head, laughing softly. _He stabilized and slowly he began to ask me questions about things. He asked all about my life outside. He asked about the world that I was a part of that he wasn't. He was clearly miserable and malnourished and I remembered those stupid stories that my mother had told me, the little fairytales and how life was meant to be easy._ He craned his neck up, then moved to sit and stretch until his back popped, turning to him with something of a reluctant expression. _And I figured that, should I be unable to have that, I could attempt to give that kind of thing to Yami. So I decided that I would try to lessen his burdens in that damn place. I aided in his recovery from every wound they inflicted and I helped heal him when he was poisoned during experiments. I gave him extra food and water and I made sure that he didn't spiral back into a feral state. Every move he made I was watching and analyzing._

 _That almost sounds like me right now._

 _Yes._ The wolf wagged his tail lazily. _It is much like what you have begun to do with him now. But at the time I didn't have a name to call him because I refused to call him by the title of the project he was named after. And he did not respond to it very well as it was. He was so sickly half of the time and he was so young; it was terrible…_

Yugi nodded again when he trailed off, but couldn't find it in himself to speak for the sake of not scaring him away from concluding his story.

 _When he was in that cage with me, I decided that I had to do something. He was getting a lot of unusual attention. And there were rumors that things were happening with you that everyone was fearful of. My brothers were captured about a month or so after I was. And they were thrown into cages not far from mine where we could converse through the cells without drawing attention._ He trailed off. _I convinced them to help me to get who we could out of there. Of course, Atem was the top priority, but we needed more than just him to be released. We couldn't have held the guards off on our own otherwise. We planned it out for a long time. And then, that last day there—_

 _All right_ , a voice cut in, one familiar enough that it made Yugi immediately turn around with a wagging tail. The she-wolf did not pay him the slightest attention, instead facing the green-eyed wolf. _Enough. He cannot know that part. Not yet._

The gray male blinked, then moved to stand up. _My apologies, Morrigan._ He looked at Yugi and wagged his tail lazily. _Looks like our chat has to stop here, Atem. Maybe some day soon I'll finish this story for you._

Yugi frowned, eyes flickering back and forth between the two of them. _Why can't he finish_? he asked softly. He pricked his ears, frowning at her. _He's not telling me anything new that I don't already know—_

 _But he would if he continued,_ Morrigan replied, voice firm but not as sharp as Yugi would have expected it to be. Instead she looked at him, wagged her tail once, and continued. _Sweet, sweet little Atem, I cannot allow him to tell you more. You'll understand later, when all is said and done. But for now you'll have to be patient and trust that I know what it is that needs to be said and what is to remain a secret._

His blue-violet eyes narrowed faintly before he grimaced and looked at the other male. _All right, but when this is all over, I want an in-depth story—one without all of these vague phrases and pretty words. I want you to tell me_ everything _. Because I need to know more than the surface that you're scraping at._

The wolf wagged his tail, dipping his head. _Then you shall have it._ He turned away and began to trot out into the trees. Yugi watched him go before turning to the she-wolf in front of him.

 _Are you going to force me to wake up now_?

Morrigan looked at him with cunning in her eyes and a smile that was both mocking and affectionate. _Is that how Ra and Slifer wake you_? _They force you to do so_? she said softly. _Well, regardless, I have no plans to force you from_ _Paradise_ _. In fact, I know you have questions for me. So why not ask them now that you're here_?

Yugi blinked and nearly shivered. She truly _was_ the easiest to speak to at times, wasn't she? She was the one who was rather transparent for the better part of it all. She did not snarl or sneer at him more often than not. And she was more forgiving when he made a blunder. It was no wonder now, as he looked at her, that she had brought him there as the other wolf had requested.

 _I wanted to talk to you about Valon._

 _Ah, yes, my dear son._ She smirked at him after a moment. _What about him_?

 _I just wanted to know about his father._ Yugi hesitated as the she-wolf considered him curiously. _And a little about Kris. Is she the same as he is? Are they both yours and Hati's…_?

 _Kris_? _She is very much the same as Valon, simply younger and female._ Morrigan eyed him as if he were a small pigeon for a moment, somewhere between disdain and laughter. Then she turned away and began to move past him, walking slowly to allow him to get to her side. _They have the same father. And as for Hati, you shall meet him when the time comes._

Yugi pricked his ears. _Why not Skoll_? he muttered, narrowing his eyes and staring at her more pointedly. _I mean, why have children with only Hati_?

 _You ask that as if I might care enough to mate with two males instead of just one,_ she dismissed, tilting her head and staring at him with a blank expression. _For all your attitude towards the matter, I might as well have lay with Obelisk as well._

He blinked, then huffed. _No, Slifer did that. She and Obelisk mated and made Annie. And Annie bred with…whoever until she got enough litters to make up that pack,_ he answered in turn, flustered. _And I already know that hellhounds and lycanthropes can't reproduce. Yami told me that a long time ago. But that wasn't what I meant._

Morrigan laughed softly. _Ah, mortals are so cute when they come to their own conclusions about things._ She turned to him with a small smile, tilting her head. _But I will say that I am curious about why it should matter. Valon remains neutral in this fight. And Kris is_ far _too young to become involved with all of this chaos._

Yugi shook his head. _I know that. I just wanted to know if they really_ do _have the same father. I know that they're not the ones that I'm going to have to fight in this war, but I'm curious and it seems stupid not to ask._

 _Do you fear my daughter_? Morrigan teased. _She's only six_.

The white wolf sighed. _Okay, so apparently you're not going to tell me anything. Thank for that_.

 _No, I shall not. As it does not matter. There is no reason for me to tell you something like that when it has no bearing on anything. And it is not as if you are foolish enough that you cannot guess. But you shall meet both of them soon enough as it is, so I do not assume to believe that it will be of much importance for me to tell you why I chose one over the other. In fact, Hati himself will probably do that for me, I'm sure._

Yugi nodded and sighed again. _All right, fine._ He fell quiet after a moment. It wasn't as if he had a true reason to ask. It was more curiosity than anything. But he did have to wonder what exactly the three Harbingers were capable of, if they all could do the same as the next could or if they were limited… _I haven't seen Valon around in a while. Is he okay_?

 _Ra would lose her mind if she heard the genuine concern in your voice,_ the she-wolf sneered. But she was not being sarcastic or disdainful. She sounded far more amused than anything else. _He is fine. He is not harmed in any manner. He has been taking care of Kris. She has begun to change prematurely. And, as I'm sure he's told you, his foster family has no idea what he is._

Yugi tilted his head. _He said that you chose them specifically, because it was camouflage. Is that true_? he asked softly. _Did you choose his human family_?

 _I did._ Morrigan fell quiet for a moment, then snorted softly. _I chose them because of their physical similarities to him. Kris is a brunette as well, and she has the same huge blue eyes, though now they've changed. Regardless, I chose them and I altered their memories and changed their thoughts from having their own children after their son to adopting the two of them. It is amazing how easy it is to manipulate the human mind._

Yugi didn't respond for a moment. Instead he stiffened, head snapping up and fur rising into a bristle. Was that who he thought it was in the tree line? Was that _truly_ who he assumed it to be? He felt dizzy.

 _What's wrong, Atem_? _You don't like seeing people who tried to kill you before_?

He bristled more fully as the wolf continued forward. He snarled low in his throat, tail rising into the air, and struggled to keep from lunging at them. But the wolf hardly seemed malicious in any manner. And his aggression looked oddly out of place when he could see no body language to match his own. Yugi drew in a deep breath, shaky.

The wolf came to a stop a few feet away. Lavender purple eyes bore into his, then flickered to Morrigan and back. _You really do run with hellhounds, hmm_? he murmured, in a tone that was almost friendly as he considered the she-wolf. Morrigan snorted loudly, trotting past him and laughing.

 _H-how do you know about that_? Yugi snarled. _You shouldn't know about that._

 _No_? the wolf commented dismissively. _It's the biggest news in this forest._

Yugi snarled low in his throat, backing up a step. But the wolf hardly seemed malicious in any manner. In fact, he took a seat and hardly seemed to care for the anger in Yugi's expression at all. _You really should be watching your back. Did you honestly think I was the only one who wanted you dead_? Marik said quietly, shaking his head and regarding him with curious eyes. _You're forgetting that Yami is not well-liked among the wolves. And you made some mistakes in leading them. Aki is one of the few that is still held by the idea that she's meant to follow Atem no matter what. She might fight with you, but she's still loyal to the cause. It's the others you need to watch. It's the others that you have to keep your eyes on._

Yugi paused, then pricked his ears forward, shaking his head. _Why are you even telling me this_? _I tore your throat out,_ he snapped.

Marik blinked and then shrugged his large shoulders, looking relaxed and with such clarity in his eyes that Yugi was almost scared by that alone. _You did me a favor in doing that,_ he admitted. _Unlike you or Yami or his cage mate over there, I didn't have much stability. My mind was warped. And now it's clear. I am not nearly as…disfigured mentally as I was before._

Yugi shook his head again. _And you're not mad_? he asked slowly. _You're not mad that I killed you or that your sister helped me cover it up_? _What about how she lied to you every day of your life whenever you interacted with her_?

Marik blinked again. _Hatred doesn't exist here. Or maybe it does, but the burden of it doesn't exist in_ me _any longer. You can remain angry should you desire to. But I do not have that same anger that I did before. And I_ do _realize that she did it for a reason. I do realize that she did it to save the_ real _Atem_.

Yugi stared at him for a moment, then looked away towards the snow.

 _But, I do not have the same affection that the others do towards those interacting with you. And I will have to leave you with this simple word of advice again, Yugi._ Marik locked eyes with him now, the lavender irises brilliant and glowing for a moment as he peered at him. _You need to watch your back. You need to regard everyone as a possible traitor. Because things are not going to get any easier from here._


	74. Appearances

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Hopefully biweekly**

 **Chapter Warnings: Mentions/Implications of Self-Loathing, Mentions/Implications of Depression, Mild One-Sided Puzzleshipping, Mild Arguing/Skirmish, Cursing**

 **I just want to say, math was never my best subject. But I'm pretty sure I got it right for the discussion Yugi and Yami have. If I didn't, feel free to point it out to me.**

 **Yami says the territory is about 200 miles around, but technically it far exceeds that. During winter the pack expands further into the national park and the mountains and they often hunt and run about in all 800+ miles. It's just that the core territory is about 200-400 miles and they only actively mark that 200-400 mile range of space. In spring and summer they minimize their patrols and distances traveled in order to avoid catching anyone's attention.**

 **Okay, so there are a couple of introductions for a few characters. And then I've got a much larger amount of introductions happening in chapter 85. So, for now, you get this handful, and later you get the wolves that Yugi and Yami have kind of been overlooking/ignoring. You'll get to meet the rest of the wolves in the pack as a whole. (And then eventually I'll have some drawings of them for you guys to see; still trying to get used to drawing again though so it's taking a little while longer than I originally expected.)**

 **This chapter would have been posted a little sooner, but I realized during edits that I'd accidentally duplicated one of the characters and I had to go back and fix it. So it took a little longer because of that. Sorry for that. It also probably would have helped if I had backed up this chapter a while back when I did all the others.**

 **And, unfortunately, I don't think this rewrite came out as good as the original, but I can't really identify the part that I don't like that's throwing me off the most and rereading it is just frustrating me more so… Here it is.**

Chapter LXXIV: Appearances

 _Work Log Entry LXVI: August, 2008_

 _August 1_

 _Atem has shown no changes in development. His psyche seems unaffected by the experiments as of yet. He has not shown a single inclination towards behavior that he has not exhibited formerly._

 _August 12_

 _Atem still exhibits a failure in change of any kind._

 _August 29_

 _The boss has decided to end the experiments regarding behavior alterations with Atem._

 _The newest pack of wolves is to be placed in these circumstances instead._

 _August 31_

 _The second youngest wolf, a hellhound, has begun to show a change already._

 _The lycanthropes of the pack have exhibited little to no change in manner._

Yugi passed his pencil back and forth between his hands, rolling it in his palms after a few moments, and narrowed his eyes the smallest degree. He considered the other teen who sat so quietly in the corner of his room. Yami had taken the spot again for whatever reason, seated comfortably and playing with a manga that Yugi knew was just a fluffy—and admittedly _odd_ —romance. Anzu had left it at his house at one point or another and he'd put it on his bookcase and forgotten to give it back. It had been a year or two before and he was relatively sure she hadn't minded losing it.

Regardless, now he stared at Yami curiously. And the red-eyed teen carefully avoided looking up, though Yugi could tell that he knew he was watching him. His shoulders had risen the smallest degree and he looked uncomfortable and tense where he was seated there. He had his legs drawn up, the manga in his lap and one hand holding it open as he continued to read. But Yugi could also see the million different thoughts passing behind his eyes, shadows that didn't quite have a name and made him look equally flustered as he was interested.

He hummed and looked down at his textbook. The study guide was done. It had been for a couple of hours. He simply had not told Yami that. And he'd been spying on him for the last sixty or so minutes. He'd been admiring the way his lashes looked so long that they blocked his irises with his head down as it was. But he'd also been staring at him blatantly for the last couple of minutes.

And he knew Yami was not taking well to it.

"Can I ask you something?"

Yami flipped the page, ignoring him for a moment. His jaw worked briefly and then he huffed out a breath, petulant as he grumbled, "Am I going to like this question or is it going to be as unsettling as your staring?"

Yugi hesitated, then snorted and smirked at him slightly, shaking his head the smallest fraction. "You're aesthetically pleasing. Take it as a compliment and call it a day." He rolled his eyes when Yami snorted loudly and wrinkled his nose as he shook his head slowly. He did not look up from beneath his lashes, however, and Yugi barely resisted the urge to burst out laughing. Was he seriously so worried that he would keep staring at him if he did? "Anyways, no, I don't think you're going to be uncomfortable with what I'm about to ask."

"We'll see about that," Yami answered in a skeptical tone. He flipped the page and his eyes grew wide, brows furrowed as he scanned the page and turned back to look between the various scenes. His face screwed up in bewilderment and he abruptly shut the volume and tossed it a couple of inches away. "That big reveal made absolutely no sense."

Yugi burst out laughing. "Which one was it?"

"There are multiple?"

"You didn't notice?"

"They must not have been worth my acknowledgment then."

Yugi snorted. He rolled his eyes, shaking his head, and smiled at him lazily. "What am I going to do with you?" he mumbled. Yami shrugged in a distracted manner, looking towards the window after a moment. Yugi furrowed his brows, then sighed softly. So he really _was_ that nervous about what he was going to ask him about. "I just wanted to ask you something about the hellhounds."

"Lovely."

He frowned and shook his head. "The gods are named Morrigan, Skoll and Hati…right?"

"As far as I am aware, yes. I do not know them to go by any other names."

"Okay."

There was a small moment of silence before Yami slowly turned his head and looked at him in puzzlement. "Is that all you wished to know?" he asked after a moment, narrowing his eyes. "I felt this conversation would be longer."

"You don't exactly look like you want to talk right now, so why would I force you to?"

Yugi wasn't directly looking at him, but he was watching him in his peripheral from where he'd turned back to his study guide again. And he could see Yami blinking wide eyes and tilting his head in confusion. He seemed absolutely bewildered and for a moment he almost appeared to deflate visibly. Then he shook it off and sat up a little straighter.

"I don't mind talking to you."

Yugi blinked, then turned his head to look at him in surprise. "I didn't think you did, Yami," he muttered, frowning and tilting his head. "I just don't think you look like you want to talk right now."

"But I don't _mind_ talking to you."

The smaller teen's frown deepened and he shook his head slowly. "I know you don't mind talking to me. If you did you wouldn't talk to me to begin with. I can't see you doing something you don't want to, not if it's going to upset you." He paused for a long moment, then sighed and studied him. "Look, if you don't want to talk right now, that's fine. We can always talk about it later or tomorrow or something."

"I…have a lot on my mind," Yami said slowly, carefully. He looked flustered again, his red eyes almost feverish with his mounting frustration. "It does not truly have anything to do with you. I am simply… I'm sorry. I shouldn't have made it seem as if I did not wish to speak to you. I do…so…please continue, okay?"

Yugi blinked and shook his head again, frowning more pointedly before sighing. Yami wasn't going to let this go. And Yugi could not help the rush of fear that made its way through him. Yami was full of self-loathing; he didn't want to make him feel as if somehow he had made Yugi reluctant to speak to or be near him. And Yugi knew well enough from his own bouts of depression from the medication that it was increasingly easy to twist things around like that. He'd convinced himself his mother and grandfather were so exasperated with him that they were going to ship him off to boarding schools, after all. It was not hard to imagine that Yami was in a similar place, especially now when he was practically begging Yugi to keep talking to him despite his own unease.

"Okay, if you say so, but if you're uncomfortable with the topic or something, just say so. I don't want you to just keep talking if it's going to upset you."

Yami opened and closed his mouth twice, then looked away again with a shake of his head. "It's fine. Please, just… _please_ …"

Where exactly was Yami's mind at the moment? He seemed incredibly agitated and perhaps confused and overwhelmed as well. Yugi furrowed his brows and shook his head again, swallowing hard as he looked him over. Yami seemed as if he wished the floor might open up and swallow him whole or as if he simply wanted someone to pull him close and tell him that things would be okay.

Something had rattled him pretty badly.

Yugi wondered if it was the fact that he had been staring before or if it was simply something in the manga that had upset him so much. Either way, the thought scared him. He frowned again as he looked away from Yami for a moment.

"Do you know what they look like?"

Yami blinked twice, then raised his head and peered at him quizzically. "The hellhounds?" he clarified, continuing only when Yugi nodded. "Yes, Morrigan is the smallest, but she's leaner and a bit nastier in battle. Hati is as large as Obelisk, with a broader chest and stronger back legs. And Skoll is almost identical to Hati but for his coloring. I believe I remember one time being told that their builds were almost identical. If I remember right, they are from the same litter and that's why they look so much alike…"

"You've never seen them?"

The red-eyed teen frowned at him as if he could not understand the question. "Why would I have been visited by any of them? Morrigan has shown herself to you but I have yet to meet her. And Hati and Skoll should still be in their slumbers. I don't know if they're awake in the sense of wandering Paradise, but I know that physically they've been resting for a long time."

Yugi shook his head the smallest bit. "Hati is awake—or he was…pretty recently. Valon and Kris are his children, remember? Kris is six, so that means he's been awake and moving about for a little while now."

"No, it merely means that he _was_ active recently. There is no assurance that he still _remains_ awake now, Yugi." Yami fell silent for a moment or two, then sighed loudly and leaned back against the plaster of the wall. He looked relieved when his scalp made contact, eyes hooded as if he were happy to feel the cool touch of drywall behind him. Yugi had the uneasy feeling that he was so relieved to feel such a thing because of the support the wall offered him. "Regardless, why are you asking about them, of all things?"

"I had a dream a while back and I figured it had to be one of their voices. They said they were looking forward to meeting me," he murmured, dismissing the thought of further explanation immediately. Yami didn't need more details; as he'd thought he would, the red-eyed teen merely narrowed his eyes faintly and considered the statement. "Anyways, so then what does Hati look like? Do you know?"

He frowned visibly, then moved to shift his weight and sit up. Yugi saw the sudden tension in his shoulders, as if his muscles were going through a spasm. And then he drew his lips back into an acute grimace, sat up, and looked away.

"Me."

Yugi blinked. "What?"

"Me."

He shook his head. "What about you…? He looks like _you_?" he clarified, confused. The idea was enough to make him nearly bristle, his throat feeling somewhat tight with tension. He had never even considered. And he felt terrible now for not having done so; it was no wonder Yami was so unsure and uneasy. "You're saying that you and Hati look alike?"

Yami nodded without looking up from the carpet. He ran a nail over it and Yugi thought briefly of bird talons where they tore gently at the threads there. "We are almost mirror images from what I can gather."

Yugi felt sick. His stomach tossed and he swore his throat felt as if it were closing for a brief moment. All he could think about was the fact that Joy and Aki had tried to convince the rest of the patrol to kill him. All he could remember was attacking Joy in retaliation for even saying such a thing, but knowing somewhere deep inside of him that she wasn't wrong in assuming it. Yami _did_ look much more akin a hellhound than he ever could a lycanthrope. He was black with red eyes. And, had it not been for his pure lupine features, one could easily have mistaken him for a simple dog.

But no dog had a mouth as big as his. No dog had paws as huge. No dogs had such sharp almond-shaped eyes. No dog had such softly rounded ears. No dog had such a fierce stance or sharp features. No _dog_ could manage to possess half the intelligence he did.

He fought away a shiver and licked his lips. "Okay, so you guys look alike. So what?" he muttered. "That doesn't mean anything. And, besides that, who cares? You're black and have red eyes. It's not a big deal."

But they both knew it was a huge deal for the pack. And it did not help in the slightest that Yami had once pretended to be Atem, had not spoken against it when it was assumed he was. He had not corrected them, nor told the alpha to leave him be. He had simply allowed them to attempt to worship him. And then he'd lashed out and fled.

In doing so he had tainted his image to them before he'd even gotten a chance to explain it all. He had done far more damage than Yugi thought possible to rectify. His stomach lurched as he shook his head.

"Whatever. We both know you're not a hellhound. So it doesn't matter. Anyways, what does Skoll look like?"

Yami blinked, then turned to him after a moment. "He is the polar opposite in appearance. He is bright white like snow, if I remember right. But I don't remember his eyes properly. I think at one time I was told they were dark blue but another I heard they were light blue, like ice, and in the shadows, they appeared to be green almost like seaweed."

Yugi shook his head. "Seaweed is _pretty_ green."

"I'm only giving you secondhand information. It could be aquamarine for all I know. It could be teal. I do not properly know. Skoll is built exactly as his brother is, however. I know that much. They are both extremely powerful and look much more wolf than dog. I think Fenrir chose them _especially_ for their builds when he made them into gods."

Yugi tilted his head. "That's the same as Lupa picking Slifer, Obelisk and Ra."

"No, from legend, Lupa chose them for different reasons. She chose Ra because she fostered pups after losing her own, which is why she became the goddess of life. She chose Slifer because Slifer knew death before the others did. And she chose Obelisk because Obelisk had never lost a battle and could take on twenty humans and their weapons and still find the strength, determination and cunning to win."

He frowned and considered him for a moment. "Do you believe that?"

"I believe that Obelisk is powerful and I believe that Ra knows how to love. I also believe that Slifer is incredibly damaged and so her perception of things cannot often be trusted." Yami shook his head and looked away again, reaching up to run a hand through his hair. "Regardless of that, however, I do not know what else I believe of them."

Yugi grimaced. "Okay." He felt as if the air had been sucked from his lungs for a moment. And he shook his head as he turned away again and closed his eyes. "Well, if that's the case, then I guess it's good to know what they were chosen for. I'm sure it must be offensive to them whenever they hear someone say something like I did a few seconds ago."

"I would hardly assume they should care. They are gods. Mortals worry about words, not the immortal."

Yugi considered him a moment or so longer. And then he turned away, smiling faintly and shaking his head. "I guess that makes sense," he murmured dismissively. Then he turned back again. Yami was not looking up and he could see the smallest hint of despair in his eyes where he caught them from Yami's peripheral. The mention of Hati was still on his mind, Yugi realized, and he was not recovering from it well. He drew in a deep breath, then forced a smile onto his face as he looked at him. "How about we go for a run?"

Yami looked up at him with a confused expression. "A run?" he muttered. "It's late. Why would you want to go on a run at this time of night? It's…almost midnight."

"I don't think I'm ever going to get used to you never looking at a clock when you say that kind of stuff. It's eerie." He was teasing but Yami still looked at him as if he had spat at him. Yugi felt immediately ill, considering him and then wishing he could swallow his tongue for a moment. He forced himself to smile again, praying to every god in existence that Yami did not notice the strain of it, and licked his lips. "I'm kind of restless though. I mean, why else would I be awake right now if I wasn't?"

Yami looked at him, scoffing, "Because you were doing homework and staring at me. That would be why you might be awake right now."

"And why would I be staring at you if I wasn't restless?"

"Because you're a teenage boy and you have hormones." Yami snorted loudly, turning away from him. He was not scornful when he said it, but Yugi almost felt as if he'd been slapped. He shifted his weight awkwardly and nearly flinched when Yami stretched his arms out in front of him and closed his eyes. His jacket tugged unevenly from the gesture and it exposed his neck on his right side.

Yugi really wished he could have licked the skin there, though he rolled his eyes and shook his head immediately at the thought. But at least Yami was understanding towards it. He seemed to just take it in stride. Though, Yugi supposed talking about hormones was easier than saying that he wanted to bend Yami over the bed or something crazy and ridiculous like that. He really shouldn't have watched so much porn…

When Yami opened his eyes again, Yugi nearly trembled. His eyes were darkened by the shadows of his lashes and the spidery formation of them made them seem almost to glitter. He licked his lips and turned away almost immediately again. There was something about the look in his eyes that was incredibly unsettling.  
"We don't have to go too far. In fact, honestly, we could just try walking around instead." Yugi paused, then tilted his head and looked over at him. "I'm off school tomorrow. So we could actually just…you know, map the territory instead. Have you ever gone the full length of the territory before? We could both track around and meet at the middle of wherever we are and then we can go to the camp. Or we could come home. Either one."

"You want to go to the camp?"

"I just think if we're out there, we should…visit, I guess?"

Yami stared at him for a long moment. They considered each other for a long handful of seconds before Yami slowly turned away. "You think so?" he hummed in turn. He nodded after a moment, then moved to sit up straighter. His legs fell away to stretch in front of him and his fingers tapped against his thighs for a long moment. He narrowed his eyes, tilting his head, and studied him as the seconds passed. "I suppose if we are truly near it, we should do so. There is no reason not to, right?"

"Right." But Yugi could name quite a few. If he were honest, he thought there were a million and one to explain the necessity of keeping Yami _from_ the damn camp. He chewed the inside of his cheek, smiling at him when he realized that Yami was studying the action with eyes as sharp as those of a hawk's. "I don't see why not, right?"

* * *

Yami pricked his ears forward as they passed through the trees. It was not nervousness which kept him alert, but he did not know any other name for it. He could not say that he was truly unnerved, however. He did not know what it was that he was truly searching for, either, at this moment. But it was something of a struggle. He was unsure of himself, of what might be said and how he might approach the idea of explaining this to Yugi. Perhaps it was simply paranoia.

After all, there was nothing he could see when he looked around to spot anything that might be wrong. He could not see a single thing that should have alarmed him in any manner. He fought away a bristle and looked to Yugi.

 _I suggest that we part ways here,_ he announced quietly, though he could not decide if the way Yugi stared at him made him feel dread or mild excitement. The wolf was looking at him curiously or perhaps in abrupt frustration. He shook his head after a moment and Yugi tilted his head, studying him. There was something in his eyes that made them darker than Yami was used to seeing. It set him on edge. So he turned away again as quickly as he could, ears pricked towards the snow and muzzle pointed downward. _We can make a lap around the territory and meet somewhere in the middle. It's a couple hundred miles but we should be able to get through it without too much trouble._

 _A couple hundred_? _Yami, it's impossible to travel that much in a day_!

Yami snorted as he turned back to him, lowering his eyes to stare at Yugi's nose. He flicked his ears and studied him curiously for a long moment. _Well, a human is capable of traveling up to three miles per hour while walking. They can travel up to ninety-six miles a day at this rate if they were to try. That would take about twenty-four hours to accomplish, however. Now a wolf can trot anywhere from five to eight hours a mile. If one were to do the math, for up to the ninety-six miles a human can travel, a wolf can go about…one hundred and twenty at five miles, one hundred and forty-four at six, one hundred and sixty-eight at seven, or one hundred and ninety-two at eight. So, either way, we can definitely move faster and for far longer than you might expect._

Yugi huffed. _I don't know how you got those numbers, but you didn't take into account that we're not staying out here all day. So if that's the case, then how quickly do you think we could make it to the end of the territory_ without _taking all day to do it_?

Yami tilted his head. _How many hours do you think we'll be out_?

 _I want to be home by the time I would usually go to school. I don't want to worry Mom or Grandpa more than necessary by staying out longer than that. So I guess we have five and a half or six hours to do it._

Yami tilted his head and considered the statement for a few moments. Then he seemed to puzzle over it for a long minute before finally pricking his ears forward. _Let's see…in order to do that, we would have to travel…about…thirty-four miles an hour steadily._

The white wolf gaped at him, horrified. _Oh fuck no. What_? _I can barely keep up with you as it is_! _How the hell are you going to ask me to try to run that fast for up to six hours_? he groaned. _I mean, Slifer and Obelisk made me run the tunnels a few times and I built up_ some _stamina, but I don't think it's nearly enough to do_ that!

The black canine snorted in amusement, wagging his tail in delight at his beta's horrified expression. _You're adorable,_ he muttered. _I wouldn't ask you to travel that quickly. How about this_? _You can go ahead and travel at whatever speed you might so desire. But I will travel quickly enough to meet up with you. You can choose your own speed and I will double it in order to meet you sooner. Does that work for you_?

 _But… Do you think you'll be okay to do that_? _You won't hurt yourself or anything like that_? Yugi requested after a moment, studying him closely. Yami ignored the scrutiny, pricking his ears further forward as if there were some source of noise in the snow in front of them. _I mean, you won't stress yourself out or something just so that you can meet me over there, right_? _You won't push yourself more than necessary_?

 _I would have you come to me before I would bother doing such a thing._ He was not sure why the words sounded so hollow to him. But Yami did know that he found it hard to believe in them in the slightest. It was easier to simply push himself than to explain to Yugi that he was hurt or exhausted. They may have been close. He may have cared for him a lot. He may have even wished for Yugi to survive more than he did himself at times, but that did not change anything. He was not sure he could promise such a thing when he was so against the very idea of it.

 _You've lost a lot of your poker face capabilities recently. I can't tell if it's because you're upset or if you're wounded or if you simply feel guilty about things._ Yugi hesitated, but then he stepped forward and Yami nearly flinched when he felt his cold nose against his ear. _But, Yami, I'm serious about this. If you think it's going to harm you in any way to do it, then we can just try it another time. Hell, maybe I'll see if I can run that full speed and meet up with you before you would me. How about that_?

Yami flicked an ear, ignoring the peace offering Yugi was extending to him. _We need to learn the territory as quickly as possible. If the hellhounds are so brave that they're going to venture in and attack again…_

 _Are you honestly worried about that right now_? _I wouldn't have guessed it._

Yami drew his lips back into a silent snarl, looking away pointedly to prevent himself glaring. _I worry about such things often. Whether I comment on them or not is another matter entirely._

 _I wasn't trying to make you feel bad, Yami. I was just pointing it out._ Yugi nuzzled his cheek and Yami fought the urge to flinch away once more. _But I'm serious. We can do this, but if you're going to push yourself too hard, I don't want to risk it._

 _When would I know if I'm pushing too hard if I don't at least_ try?

Yugi huffed. _When you become uncertain or too frustrated to keep going, that's when you know you're pushing too hard,_ he mumbled. _You might not like to admit it, but you're likely to push yourself far more than I've_ ever _been._

Yami shot him annoyed look and shook his head. _I wasn't aware we were keeping tabs on such a thing,_ he said spitefully. He pricked his ears forward and turned away with a huff. He moved slowly at his side, eyes narrowing the smallest degree. He shook himself out after a moment, turning away and glaring at the snow once more. _If I had known, I would have kept better inventory of the many times you've done the same._

Yugi sighed loudly. _You know that's not what I meant._

The black wolf shot him an irritable look. _Is that so_? _I know that_? _Are you so sure_? he sneered. _I wasn't aware that I know so well what you mean at all times._

 _I almost regret ever opening my mouth to invite you out like this in the first place,_ Yugi snapped, flicking his tongue over his nose. Yami blinked, startled by the declaration, and slowed a step with wide eyes. Yugi shook his head and glared at the snow in front of him, ears pricked and a snarl on his face. _If I had known you were going to be so damn petulant I wouldn't have bothered._

Yami hesitated a step, then turned away. _We might as well mark the territory again,_ he said by way of ignoring him and dismissing the conversation. They'd end up at each other's throats soon enough if he let this continue. _They used to claw the tree bark apart to show claw marks as a way of doing it. That way the humans couldn't find their excrements and potentially track them down._  
 _Good to know I'm not peeing on any trees,_ Yugi said in a thankful tone. He shook himself out and smiled at him, ears pricked and eyes bright with something almost akin amusement. _That would be embarrassing, especially if anyone ever saw me doing it._

The black wolf snorted and turned away pointedly. _You're embarrassed by such bewildering things. I do not understand why you might be so upset with something as simple as that. You lift your leg and pee on something, it smells like you, and from there wolves don't normally want to cross it._ He refused to look back at Yugi. _Actually, most animals will not cross into another predator's territory for the most part. It does not matter, however, considering that it is only the wolves here that we must truly fear. The bears are hardly something we should have to worry about._

 _Okay, but I'm human. We don't_ do _that._

Yami flicked an ear and considered him for a long handful of seconds, bewildered by the way Yugi appeared so flustered by the simple thought. He tilted his head and then snorted and looked away, ears pricked forward as he mumbled, _I could see a human doing such a thing. Besides, you all posture well enough to be considered animalistic if you consider it. Sometimes the way you all do that is like pissing on a female's leg regardless. I would not be surprised in the slightest if someone pees on their partner for the sake of keeping them in their possession and making the females think they were owned._

The white wolf let out a sharp huff of a noise, shaking his head. _That's not how things work with humans. Don't even start with that. You've only ever seen posturing with humans on television,_ he growled. _You can't say anything about thinking that kind of thing when you have no idea._

 _I've seen you posture before. You did so with Anzu when Fuwa was interested in her._

Yugi blinked, his head turning with wide eyes. _Did I_? he asked in surprise. And Yami had the abrupt thought that perhaps it surprised him only because of _who_ he might have sported the behavior towards in a sense. And he was relatively sure that Yugi was well aware of the fact that he had displayed such posturing among the wolves when Yami himself was mentioned. The white wolf peeled his lips back slightly, then shook himself out again. _Okay, but that doesn't count either. I was already infected and a werewolf by then so that doesn't count. You can't tell me that's an example. Wolves are territorial. Humans aren't._

Yami faced him for a moment, then turned away abruptly, sneering, _No, of course not. Humans are too terribly perfect for such a thing to happen. They could never show any animal qualities like a wolf would. That would make them less human and more animal and that just could_ never _happen._ He scoffed. _It's not like they run experiments on innocent animals and other people at times. Or that they might kidnap and torture them. Or that they might force another to have sex with them when they are unprepared. Or that they might kill someone for the sake of their own greed or something of that manner. I don't suppose that any human has ever come about killing their own children or molesting a child or—_

 _Okay, okay_! Yugi blurted out desperately. His ears were flattened against his head again when Yami looked at him angrily once more. _I'm sorry, all right_? _I wasn't saying that to be derogatory towards wolves, okay_? _I was just saying…_

 _Yes, well, then next time you might wish to clarify better,_ he growled. He paused and turned to him abruptly, flattening his ear. His stomach was in knots and his chest felt oddly constricted. He swore his breathing had grown heavy and somehow labored from the immense pressure. _I am sorry. I shouldn't be so unkind to you. I'm just frustrated and flustered. I am not happy and I am growing restless. You have my apologies for such behavior. I should not snap at you like I have. It is not your fault that I am unhappy right now._

Yugi shook his head, eyes softening. _It's okay._

The black wolf stared at him, then sighed and turned away with his ears pricked forward once more as frustration crashed through him. Of course Yugi would say such a thing. He never seemed to be angry with him for more than a moment. _No_ , he mumbled in disgust, _it's not. But thank you for lying._

It took another long minute of them walking before Yugi finally turned back to him and nudged him with his muzzle. _Listen, aibou,_ he said quietly. Yami stopped and turned to him, surprised by the desperation in his tone. And then he blinked, tilted his head, and frowned at him in response. _I don't want you to feel bad for not being okay about certain things. Sometimes snapping at someone else is necessary. Bottling up your anger isn't a good thing to do. You'll eventually lose your mind and lash out when you don't mean to. So, I would rather you snap at me now instead of later when you feel cornered and unable to do anything else._

He stared at him for a long handful of seconds, ears pricked forward and eyes locked on him for what felt like a lifetime. And then he looked away, flattening his ears again, and shook his head. _I should have known you might say such a thing._ Yami shook himself out and turned back to him, desperate to end this conversation. _Let's go ahead and split up here. It shouldn't be too hard to find our way around and meet up at the camp._

 _We can meet up at the edge of the territory instead, not at the camp. I don't want one of us to show up before the other does. I have no idea how they might react so I don't want to tempt them to lash out or anything like that._ Yugi was searching his face for a moment, then leaned forward to lick his forehead. There was the smallest hint of concern in his eyes and Yami wondered if he was considering a patrol crossing paths with him before Yugi did. _We'll meet at the other end of the territory and then we'll go from there._

Yami nodded after a moment. _That works for me,_ he mumbled dismissively. When he turned away from him, Yugi was still watching him for a moment. They locked eyes when he glanced over his shoulder and then the black wolf turned and wandered off on his own without a second look. He could hear Yugi taking halting steps forward in the snow, as if he were constantly glancing back to make sure he was okay. Yami did not want to think about that, however. So he shrugged it away and moved towards the trees once more with a dismissive feeling in his gut.

He stopped and glanced around only once, considering the trees for a few seconds. They were tall, spindly, with a stunning lack of bark due to the harsh temperature. They looked almost completely bare for the most part, what had once been of their outer layering buried deep beneath the snow. He looked about the trees again, then approached the one closest him, sniffing once to ensure that it was not outside of the territory, and slowly moved to stand on his hind legs. He reached out with his forelegs, his paws pressed against the frozen flesh of the tree. And then he flexed his claws and dug them into the trunk, tearing downward in a sharp cutting motion. The wood folded beneath his claws as if they were knives, dropping in shreds. He wrinkled his nose and shook himself out.

When he looked back at them, they were angry, sharp exclamations across the flesh of the tree. And he thought it looked almost as if it were stringy muscle that was splintered there. Yami shook it away and turned to look across the small line of the trees he was within. He did not think that it would be wise to mark each and every one he came across. It would do badly for him to make it so obvious, he was sure. It did not look like bear markings, he knew, and so to do each tree as he had once seen them made him nervous. It was likely that it would do nothing but encourage any hunters or lab workers that had come looking for new victims to take notice of the territory as a whole. The thought made him bristle and he glanced around after another moment.

Something was there. Something _had_ to be there. He could feel it. Something was cutting into his skin like claws. Their stare made him nervous, anxious enough that he was almost winded by the weight of it. And the source was nearby. It had to be. If it could see him, he could see it. But for the moment he was blind. The snow was falling too quickly and his nose was buried in crystals within seconds. He bristled and shook himself out, straining his ears for even the slightest hint of noise he might be able to gather from the sound. He tilted his head and listened once more.

But there was no wind to carry sound to him. And he could not think straight as he tried to consider the sounds in the woods beyond the soft fall of the snow crystals around him. They sounded like thunder as he strained his ears so forcefully. And that made him snarl low in his throat for a brief moment before he turned away and looked at the snow. He wrinkled his nose and sniffed at the ground for a moment, but there was nothing there either; the snowfall did too well to cover what little scent might have remained there. So he shrugged it away and pushed further into the trees. He traced the line of the territory, a long and curvy one which almost followed the river in shape.

He clawed another tree trunk and shook himself out as he settled on all fours once more. He bristled, then relaxed again. But the feeling of being watched did not change. And he felt as if he were winded as the air grew heavier with more abundant snowfall once more. He turned to look about himself, nearly snarling, and paused for a brief moment to consider the air in front of him. He blinked against the ice that landed in his eyes, squinting for a heartbeat before narrowing his gaze further. His lashes were too short in this form, he thought with a flustered feeling. It was perhaps the only downfall to being a wolf. But it was a small one, if it was even _that_ , he thought with mild approval.

And, as he craned his head back and considered his surroundings, he swore he saw the smallest shadow against the snow, beyond his immediate sight. He tilted his head, pricking his ears, and waited a moment for the snow to lessen. When it didn't, he inched slowly towards the shape. It was off-gray, some shade between silver and black and white. And it made his lips peel back as he considered it.

It was in the branches, not too terribly high over his head. He peered upwards with narrowed eyes, curious and slightly bewildered, and then moved forward a single step more. At first he could not tell what it was, but the form was vaguely avian. He sniffed at the air but there were no clues and, as he looked at them, the animal seemed to hardly care that he might see it as well. But he knew it to be watching him. There was no way it wasn't; it was the only thing that possibly could have.

It dove at him abruptly. Yami snarled and lunged at it. Talons, small but hooked, came for his nose, and he snapped his teeth. His jaws closed on air and snow. And the bird dodged away with a cry that sounded somehow like laughter. Yami spun immediately to see it. The feathers were glossy and laden with water, slicked to the point of looking almost like a darkened stream. The wings were not too terribly large, nor too long. And the tail was rather short for the most part.

It disappeared into the snow again and for a moment Yami saw nothing else. There was only the ice that fell before him and the thinnest of branches. The snowfall worsened seconds later, as if beckoned by the bird's flight. The thought was a mildly surprising one but not enough that he cared for more than a moment. He turned away a heartbeat later, ears pricked forward and lips drawn back to show his teeth.

The bird made no move to swoop down again. In fact, if he was not wrong, it was settled on a branch nearby, watching him as it had before. He could not see it, however, and so he remained still, trying his hardest to strain his eyes and catch sight of it. When he found nothing, he looked away and pricked his ears forward once more disdainfully.

The more he watched, the more curious he became. The anger, driven by his mounting paranoia, slowly slipped away. And he breathed in deeply as if he might somehow catch the scent he needed to help him better identify the animal before him. He didn't know the species but it had been large enough that swooping down at him had startled him. He considered this for a few moments. Then he tilted his head and wondered what it was he should do if it might somehow be a threat. He did not know what he might do if it were to follow him for much longer.

He could climb the tree, but if it took flight it would lose him entirely. And it was not hard to imagine that it could fly faster than he might run. Even if he broke into a full sprint and moved as quickly as he could, he did not think he would be able to keep up entirely. It would lose him in the snow; that was already incredibly obvious to him. He could not chase it in this blinding weather, regardless of how well adapted his eyes were for such a thing. Its presence in the air would be its saving grace. And he did not think that straining his ears to catch the sound of its wings would do him any good either.

The problem was that he could not hear past the snow crunching beneath his paws or the flakes bunching up together when they landed. If he could not get past such background noise, he would never be able to focus on the bird and that would make it impossible to keep chasing. And the loss of energy was nothing he was in favor of either. To do so would be foolish to begin with.

He could not afford such a thing.

Yami shook himself out, turning back to the trees. If the bird remained following, he'd have to take another route and hope he became lost to it. He could not afford to have it follow him to the camp. Despite not knowing if it was dangerous or not, Yami could not be so stupid as to lead it to the camp or to Yugi. That was far too foolish for him to even consider. He pricked his ears forward and listened a few minutes longer. But there hardly seemed to be much of anything to listen for. And the air was so still now that it was amazing to him.

He picked his way down another row of trees, scratching the wood for a moment. He flicked an ear when he thought he heard the sound of a branch dipping, then tilted his head upwards. The bird had landed above him, had its head angled down to peer at him. Its beak was long, sharp, with a slight hook at the end that looked as if it might pierce through his chest. Yami stared straight up at it, taking in large circular eyes as deep as a well but as lifeless as a pair of buttons. The head of it was glossy, black, a dark shadow against the falling snow. It looked like an immense ink stain against the white, as if it were a smudge that could not be erased.

He wondered if he himself looked like that at times, if from far away he was nothing but a shadow. If one could not see his eyes, did they think he was but a normal dog? Or did they think he was just a shadow in the snow? Did he even have definition and shape when one could not see his features? Or was he nothing but a black hole against the ice?

Yami didn't blink. The bird let out a sharp, low cawing noise. And then it perked up and shook itself out. When the snow fell away from its feathers, it was apparent that it was not completely black. The solid color was cut through with a blazing gray across the center of the chest. He stared at it, bewildered, and thought briefly of Noah. He thought of the way his eyes had shown and he'd had a silver undercoat that had looked much like this bird's own markings.

He allowed himself to consider this but for a moment. Then he turned away again. It was not worth his time to try to figure out what the bird was doing there. And it was foolish of him to consider it for longer than necessary. He just had to be aware of where it was at all times. He did not want it to follow him to the camp. Because he knew there was something incredibly wrong with the fact that such a large raven was there before him. If he remembered correctly, they were not prone to migration, however, so it was perhaps reasonable that it was there.

But the way the raven peered down at him seemed to assure him that this bird was not a natural avian. And that was something he could not afford to overlook. If it followed him to the camp…

But the hellhounds already knew where the camp was. So what _was_ this bird following him for? Had they decided to simply trail him for whatever reason? Or was there something else entirely? Yami tilted his head, staring up at the bird for a long handful of seconds. Was it so simple as to say that it was just lost and had come to follow him? Or was it something more sinister? Was it looking to follow him to the camp? Or was it looking to follow him to _Yugi_?

How long had it been there? How long had it been following him? Had it even seen Yugi? Or had it simply noticed him when he was alone and so come to follow him? But why follow him in the first place? It was not as if he had anything of value for it to find in doing so.

Yami shrugged it off and turned away, ears pricked and eyes narrowing into near slits. He ignored the snow which fell into his eyes and covered his muzzle. His fur was laden with it and he felt as if it were pressed entirely into his skin with such pressure that it was smothering. He shook it off and trotted forward a few more steps. When he glanced over his shoulder, the raven had turned around entirely to face him. Its head was tilted, an eye focused entirely on him. There was nothing inconspicuous about the action. Instead it stared at him almost gleefully now beneath his attention.

The black wolf flicked his ears again, turning away. The snow was too heavy, he decided with a small tinge of bitterness. It was stupid of him to feel that way. He loved snow, after all, but some part of him was resentful and angry about it now. Some part of him could not truly understand the heaviness of the weather around him. And he thought briefly of what the world must have been like when it had been only ice formerly. He thought of the Lunar Ascension, of how the earth had been frozen entirely and the sun gone. He thought it must have looked much alike what it did now, with a sky of white that was tinted with silver and slight grays and rapidly falling ice crystals.

His paws were covered to the hocks. His forelimbs were coated above the wrists.

The snow was so deep that he was amazed he could keep moving in it. He had not sunk completely to the bottom, he knew, but he was weighted down and inches deep in the ice. Moving became a slow and tedious task now, as he waded through it. It was flung up and about as he trotted and he found himself panting a few minutes later. The air was so cold that his lungs were burning and his nose felt frozen for a brief moment. He considered the trees around him a moment longer, then looked away again. His ears pricked forward and he shook himself out once more. But it was hard to push forward again and he was tired as he considered it.

He glanced over his shoulder. The raven was hunched into itself, head twisted to stare at him. But it did not look as if it might follow him again anytime soon. He had the feeling that the hellhound was suffering for its avian form. Yami assumed that it could not be easy for a bird like this to sit in such dense falling snow. From what he knew ravens tended to remain in large groups during winter. He was far from an expert on the dark-feathered avian, but he felt he remembered hearing such a thing from his cage mate once when he'd asked about the outside world. The birds were smarter than most would assume, his cage mate had told him, and they remained in large groups in winter but only couples in warmer weather.

He took a seat for a few minutes. The snow came almost to the tops of his knees. And he peered into it for as long as it took him to truly catch his breath. When he'd recovered, he got to his paws and shook himself out once more. He got up, wandered forward, and began to make his way to the trees he'd been formerly marking. He clawed one, glanced back to find the raven still bunched up against the cold, and picked his way forward in the deep snow once more.

He did not pause as he continued making his way throughout the trees. It took a few more minutes for him to mark another three of them, and then he scented the air slowly. The wolf shook himself out, pricking his ears. He watched the way the air crystallized before his nose, though it faded away and was destroyed when the snow passed through it. His right eye stung as a flake landed in it and he squinted against it for a moment. But he swore somehow the shape of it looked like a wolf's face for a split second. He thought of his cage mate, then of Yugi, and then briefly he considered that perhaps it had looked more like one of the gods. Maybe it had been Obelisk, or possibly Skoll or Hati instead.

Yami shook himself out once more, then began to move away. He wrinkled his lips back slightly, showing his teeth, and flicked his tongue over his nose. His stomach knotted as he forced his way through the snow. But he felt as if he were moving through water. And the task of moving was burdensome. He closed his eyes a moment, huffing out a breath.

And, when he opened them, he swore he saw something large and pale moving about in the shadows. It was a fast, brief flicker of movement. And he pricked his ears forward, for he thought he saw the smallest flash of some odd color that lay between silver, green and blue. He could not see a trail to follow, however. And the odd misplaced color was long gone when he tried to trace the path the animal would have gone. He considered it, ears pricked, then turned away with a small grunt. That was not what he had been expecting. It had been nothing he would have thought likely to happen at any moment.

The animal had been so pale, however, that even had he followed it he did not think he would have found it. He considered that for a moment, blinking once and then twice, and finally shook himself out as he had before. Yami lowered his head, sniffing at the air. But there was nothing to be found, and so he waited a moment longer. When he saw nothing else, he pushed through the snow as he had before. He didn't glance around even once, and when he heard the sound of snow falling from a nearby tree, he flicked an ear but ignored it beyond that. He did not bother for even a moment to think about it.

The shape could have been nothing but a change of wind. And, even if Yami had not felt it, it could explain the sudden appearance. No werewolf had eyes like that, he knew, so he doubted it could be a hellhound. And he did not think that there was much reason to follow him. And what kind of foolish wolf would this one be to show as a canine rather than appear as a bird like the other had?

He shrugged it away. He had to meet up with Yugi at the other end of the territory. And, at this rate, it would take him forever to get to such a thing. He shook himself out, huffing a small breath from his nose, and pricked his ears forward. He considered himself for a long handful of seconds, looking around slowly but surely, and scanned all of the things surrounding him. The trees were so thin here, as if they might give way to fields in the spring. And maybe they did. Yami couldn't know. He had not explored the entirety of Hokkaido in the time that he had been free of the labs. It made little sense to him to worry about such a thing. Maybe, if the gods did not kill him when Yugi's purpose as Atem was over, he might come back to find out.

Now, however, he clawed another tree and continued on.

For ten minutes he did nothing else. And then he paused. Something about the air had changed. He looked immediately over his shoulder, snarling almost fearfully. But the raven had taken off in the other direction, almost as if it had been scared away. The thought made him circle around twice, head lowered and a snarl on his face. But nothing came. And so he finally raised his head again, scenting the air and pricking his ears, and turned away. His breathing came slow, even, as he shook himself out once more.

 _I'm slowing myself down for no reason,_ he thought petulantly, nearly snarling at himself in mounting disdain. He could not meet up with Yugi like this if he was going to stumble and act so foolish as he was at the moment. But he was abruptly sure that something was wrong now as well. He felt more acutely than ever that paranoia he'd experienced when the raven was there. And now he snarled, circling once more, and finally forced himself to continue. His ears were flicking every direction now and he felt oddly cold, as if he were frozen beneath a block of ice.

He thought of the lake for a moment, of how Noah had dragged him beneath the surface with him. He thought of how cold it had felt, the way the water had seemed to freeze upon touching his skin. And his heart hurt for a single second. He thought of the panic he'd seen in Yugi's face, of how devastated he'd seemed when he'd not immediately risen from the water.

Yami shook this thought away, something like grief burrowing its way through his veins, and continued forward as quickly as he could. Yugi was waiting for him. He would have to meet up with him sooner rather than later. He did not want him to worry, after all. That would only be foolish and cruel of him to do so.

He made it another few minutes without stopping. But it was not the sense of being watched or a flash of shadow against the snow that stopped him now. Yami stood before a fallen tree, covered in feet of snow, but its sides just barely apparent against the white there. There was the thinnest patch of wood to be seen, where the two piles of snow did not touch. And, beneath it, was a thin fracture of blue against the white, where the branches seemingly disappeared into nothingness. He blinked, looking at the upraised roots of the fallen trunk, where they were splayed and snapped from the cold. The slight gurgle of water alerted him to the truth of it, that he was not wrong in his assumption of knowing where he was.

The tree bridge cut over a portion of the river, leading almost into the heart of the territory. One could use it when it was warmer, but now its sides looked slick with ice crystals where they were visible. And he didn't have to think to know that it would be a disaster to attempt such a thing at the moment. Not only that, but he felt as if the trunk might bob as it once had before, as if it might threaten to dunk him underwater. It had done so before, had thrown him into the darkness underneath but for a moment. He had been panicked and frantic, falling beneath the current of the river for a split second. But his dew claws had caught onto the bark that it seemed to barely possess now and he'd been able to quickly and almost effortlessly pull himself back out again. He'd been exhausted, however, but had continued to run regardless.

The wolves had been behind him, he remembered. The entire patrol had followed him for _miles_ , after all. And they had been yards behind, but he'd still been fearful and hasty, panicked that something might come to happen, that he might slow and become their prey. He'd witnessed them moving about as they had…

The black wolf shook this thought off now, pricking his ears forward. The snow was deafening as it fell, just as it had been formerly. And now he could barely hear his own heart in his ears. The thought was almost alarming to him for a brief second. But it passed again and he shrugged it away. It did not matter, he knew, and so he shrugged it away as he considered. The trunk would not sway now. He would not be using it to cross the river. He did not have to. To do so would ruin the path he was meant to follow. And he had offered to mark the territories. He needed to do so, as he'd said he would.

Yami turned away from the tree bridge and trotted through the snow once more. It was annoying now rather than too terrible. But it was still slow and tedious and he struggled to claw again at another trunk. He fell back into the snow once more, then did so to another three past. He shook himself and pricked his ears. His eyes narrowed, his head tilted, and he glanced over his shoulder slowly. But there was nothing to be found in the slightest. The raven was long gone and he saw no shadow of off-white in the snow behind him.

Yami scratched one last tree an hour later, forcing himself into another run. He was not outright sprinting, but rather moving as quickly as he could without doing so. A trot was no good now, as he felt the time he'd wasted formerly was catching up to him. And so he rushed himself, shaking from the speed he used, and stood panting when he stopped again. His head was lowered and his shoulders were shaking finely as he closed his eyes for a moment.

The territory was too large, he decided in annoyance. He'd taken a shortcut to make his way there in time, bypassing a larger section of trees which would need marking once more. He shivered and shook harder, then gasped for air. His lungs felt swollen and inflamed for a split second, his stomach lolling. He shook himself out once again, bristling, and padded through the snow for a few minutes longer. Then he stopped. His head snapped up. His ears pricked. His lips peeled back. He spun around. His jaws opened wide. And then realization slammed into him.

Just as something else hit him in the side. It was gentle, a tap of a body against his. He stumbled and panted. He swayed for a single second. And then he shook himself out. The white wolf draped his long forelegs over his shoulders, leaning forward. He was wagging his tail happily now, gazing at him. His bright blue-violet eyes were glowing with affection. When he leaned forward, it was to lick his forehead. And his breaths were warm against his nose when he exhaled.

 _I caught me a Yami,_ he declared in a playful, childish tone. He pressed his nose into his ear for a moment. And then he lowered his chin to lie between the blades of his shoulders again. He was wagging his tail harder now. _And guess how I did it_!

 _By spotting me and circling and then coming up behind me_? Yami snorted. He wagged his tail slowly in turn now. But he was distracted as Yugi looked back at him with bright eyes. Yami's gaze shot about the branches for a moment, as if the raven might reappear at any moment. But the hellhound had apparently chosen to long since fly away and refuse to come back. Perhaps the cold had gotten to it; he had always wondered if the change of physical body impacted the hellhound in any manner. Changing forms like that could not be easy for them.

 _No_! Yugi huffed. And he seemed upset for only a second. Then he straightened and pounced away. He was wagging his tail rapidly. And he turned to him with a wide smile on his face. His jaws were hanging open, his tongue lolling. His whole body was shaking with an exuberance that Yami himself did not share. _I did it with the alpha-beta bond_!

Yami blinked. Then he tilted his head and sniffed at him. He circled him twice, sniffing at his face and eyes and then ears. He nudged at his shoulders with his nose, then stepped back and considered him. Yugi had a confused expression on his face, ears flattened against his head now and his eyes wide with momentary alarm. It took him only a moment to relax again, though he was bristling slightly against the snow.

 _What, uh, what was that_? _Are you okay_?

 _Oh, I'm fine, Yugi. I was just wondering if perhaps you were not._

 _What_? _Of course I'm okay_! _Why wouldn't I be_?

Yami tilted his head. _Well, I had to make sure that your eyes and ears and nose still worked._

 _W-well, yeah, of course they do_! _Why wouldn't they_? _Should I be worried about them not working or something_?

The black wolf looked down into the snow towards Yugi's paws for a moment. And the white wolf awkwardly raised them for him to see after a moment of his pointed staring. _I was simply wondering if perhaps your senses had somehow failed you._

 _Okay, but_ why? Yugi stressed. He shook himself out, looking fearful now. His fur rose into a jagged bristle and his tail was raised halfway in alarm. _Is that something that's going to happen_? _I don't understand why you're—_

Yami chuckled after a moment, leaning forward to lick his nose. _I do not see why you would use the alpha-beta bond to find me otherwise,_ he teased. But there was a slight warning in his tone as well, and he knew they were both aware of it. Yugi blinked and raised his head the smallest degree, though he shook his startled aggression off just as fast. When he sprang at him, Yami struggled not to fall into the snow.

 _Is it so bad that I wanted to find you like that_? _I mean, if it bothers you, you can tell me. But I want to be able to use it more often. I want to know how to use it in case something happens._

 _Right, as you have said before._ Yami let him paw at his shoulder. He nipped him on the paw and wagged his tail. The white wolf growled. Then he pawed him again. Yami snorted. He shook himself out again, pricking his ears. _I am not upset with you doing so. I simply had not thought that you might use it now. It is not something I was expecting._

 _But…does it matter_?

 _Not quite as much as I might have made you think a moment ago, I suppose. I was simply surprised. It is not something that many wolves do. So it startled me to think that you had done so just to find me here._

 _Well, I wasn't in the clearing when I did it. I was actually a few miles back. And then I thought I should check for the hell of it and so I did. And here we are._ He wagged his tail happily. His bright pink tongue was lolling again. _I mean, why not_? _It might have been unnecessary but at least that way I got to see if I could do it by will, you know_?

 _I suppose it is a good thing to know how to do._ He hesitated when Yugi wagged his tail more exuberantly. _I suppose at some point I will attempt to use it as well. I can try to find you in the woods one day like you did me._

But he wondered if he sounded as dubious to Yugi as he did to himself. There was little in the prospect which appealed to him. And one of the problems with this task was that he did not know if he could convince himself to do such a thing. It seemed as if it were encroaching on Yugi's privacy. And, while they might often be together and around one another, he did not wish to consider that it might turn another way in which he might be _forced_ to use the alpha-beta bond to trace his location. He did not want to consider it in the slightest, in truth. It seemed painful to him for a moment.

But he shrugged it off again soon after. Yugi was simply trying to assure himself that if something happened he'd be able to find him. He knew that. He even respected it. But that did not make it easier. He did not know if it was a good idea for him to attempt such a thing as Yugi might desire. The thought made his stomach loll. His heart felt sick and he shook his head, turning away again.

 _We were to return to the camp, yes_? he asked softly. He was not aggressive in any sense. But he wondered if he seemed so when Yugi stared back at him in near bewilderment. The look on his face passed, however, and he smiled at him after a moment. He butted him in the shoulder and licked his cheek before trotting past him.

 _Yeah, we need to go back to the camp for a little while. I want to speak to Ishizu, if nothing else,_ he answered. The black wolf stiffened, head snapping around. Yugi blinked at him, frowning, and looked at him in surprise when he noticed the movement from the corner of his eye. _What_? _What's wrong_? _Did you hear something_?

Yami blinked once, long and slow. _You wish to speak to Ishizu_? he asked slowly, narrowing his eyes. His ears flattened against his head and he growled low in his throat for a brief moment. _Why would you wish to do that_? _That does not make sense, Yugi._

 _Why not_? Yugi blinked at him, tilting his head with a confused expression. _Why wouldn't it make sense_? _I wanted to know more about if she's really the only reason that the gods can see anything to do with us_.

 _Yes, but…why_? He stepped closer, lowering his head the smallest degree. A part of him hurt at the very idea of Yugi getting too close to the blue-eyed girl. He did not want him to do so. Ishizu was a disaster, in truth. She was related to Marik, which to him was warning enough that he should stay away from her altogether. _Why would you want to do that_?

 _I figured it would be smart to confirm it instead of us just wondering about it, you know_? _I mean, why wouldn't you want to know_? he asked after a moment, confused and bewildered. The white wolf tilted his head further to the side, confusion making his blue-violet eyes a shade darker. _I mean, it seems smarter to do that than anything._

 _Does it_? Yami asked slowly. He huffed out a deep breath and drew his lips back into something of a snarl with a shake of his head. _I would rather we both leave it alone. The gods may be blind to us, but if she is not, what more will this visit do but upset you should she say something you do not want to hear_?

 _And what would she say to me_? _What are you so afraid of_? Yugi inquired quietly, stepping forward. He was staring at him intently now, eyes sharper than ever, and narrowed his gaze into near slits. His head tilted once more, staring at him with a bewildered expression. But the white wolf did not speak for a few long moments. And Yami could not find the words to correct him of such an assumption for what felt like a lifetime. Yugi had struck the issue right on the nose, had laid it out bleeding and raw and wounded before him.

And it lay between them like a dying animal.

Yami stared at him a moment or so longer. And then he growled softly and turned away. His fur rose and fell in a sharp bristle. And he struggled for a moment to keep from lunging. He did not know if he would strike him or if he might simply snap his teeth at him.

Regardless, it was an urge that came through him all the same.

 _I wasn't going to ask her anything about you._

 _And does that ensure she will not speak of me regardless_? _She and the gods seem to find it so funny to bring me up to you regardless of what the former subject might be. They do the same when it comes to my conversations with them._

 _Have you ever spoken to Ishizu before_?

 _Once, but not since then. It was not something that I wish to repeat._

 _What did she say to you_?

Yami ignored the question, then drew his lips back to stare at him when he crept closer. His gums were burning with the chill of the winter air against them. He snarled low in his throat for a single moment, then turned away again. _It does not matter,_ he sneered, _what she said to me. It does not matter what I told her. What she said to me does not matter in the slightest._

 _No_? _Then why are you shaking_? Yugi questioned. But his voice was gentle and soft, warm and beautiful. And, when he came closer, his tongue flicked over his nose affectionately. Yami flinched back and stared at him, feeling as if he'd been punched. _Oh, aibou, don't worry, okay_? _You know I won't listen to anything she might say that might change my opinion of you. You know nothing can do that._

Yami bristled and lowered his head, drawing his lips back further to show his teeth. He shivered finely for a single second, then turned away. He forced himself to calm, shaking himself out, and closed his eyes as he sighed softly. _No, I suppose it cannot. I cannot even make you change your opinion when I try to tell you the truth of our situation. So I know I cannot expect her words to do much in that manner either, huh_?

 _You don't see yourself clearly,_ Yugi insisted now, huffing. _So I don't believe you sometimes when you say things about yourself. I think I can do relatively well with figuring out which things you say should be taken seriously and which ones shouldn't._

 _Or perhaps you have the wrong idea about me and you should rethink who you value as your friends._

 _Or maybe who I value as my friends are worth it and you're just a negative furball who hates himself for whatever reason._ Yugi huffed and turned away from him, beginning to move through the snow. Yami hesitated, staring after him with wide eyes, and wondered immediately if perhaps he should turn away and hide altogether. Perhaps he should leave him to remain where he was and not go with him to the camp. Maybe he should turn and hunt or leave altogether and Yugi should continue to the camp without him. But, abruptly, as if he sensed these thoughts, Yugi spun around to look at him. He stopped altogether, ears pricked and eyes locked on his, and then he turned with his tail up, silently instructing him to follow.

They stayed silent for a long handful of minutes. And then Yugi turned to him abruptly again, wagging his tail. _I was thinking that we should introduce ourselves to the wolves at the pack again,_ he announced. _I don't know when, yet, but I think that we definitely need to do it. I don't think it's something that we have to do today, but it's necessary for later on._

 _You do not say,_ Yami snorted. _You know that it is necessary. I hardly know any of them now that many of the Japanese wolves are no longer there. I killed many of them, so I know that they do not remain in the camp now. But I know none of the pack members._

Yugi was quiet for a moment. _You know Yusei,_ he finally mumbled, but he sounded as pathetic as Yami thought the answer was. _And Zane, Chazz, Syrus, Yuya…_

And then Yugi fell quiet. His eyes were glazed over for a moment, his pupils dilated and his head tilted slightly. He looked sick for a moment, as if he might open his jaws and vomit forth an immense river of bile. He shook for a single second, then looked up so that their eyes locked once more. Something in him seemed incredibly frayed, almost as if something inside of him had snapped entirely. It was as if Yami were looking at a hairline fracture that was slowly but surely spreading forward. He thought of a mirror breaking before his eyes, as if the glass were shattering. And he considered him as Yugi stared back with that same weak expression.

But it cleared. He wagged his tail after a moment. His eyes softened. His stance relaxed. And he came forward to lick his forehead and his muzzle to nuzzle his ear gently. He wagged his tail more pointedly after a moment. He nuzzled him gently in the shoulder, then his flank. _You're right, though,_ he answered quietly, _you don't know many of them and neither do I. I'm not the best at this. And I'm self-centered when it comes to how much I can handle where the pack is concerned. It's not a good quality to have as a leader. But I'm going to do this. We're going to figure it out. And we're going to get this done. The pack will learn to respect us again. And we'll be fine…okay_?

Yami blinked once, then tilted his head. _Yes. I understand._ He paused. _And I agree that we need to do this. I agree that we have to make friends with them, that we need to make sure that the pack is unified and ready to work with us. We have to assert ourselves again. We have to make sure that they will continue to follow us._

But he did not think that they followed them as it was. He did not think that any of them cared for them in the slightest. And he was unsure whether or not to say such a thing. So he fell quiet for a moment, turning away and shaking his head. He shook himself out again, glancing around slowly towards the trees and back for a moment. There was nothing there, however. And he was comfortable knowing such a thing. He did not see a single thing there waiting for his attention in the falling snow. The raven was gone. There was no flash of that strange color he could not properly describe.

He did not see another wolf with them anywhere.

And somehow that was more relaxing than anything he had ever felt before.

 _Let's go then,_ he murmured. He glanced around one more time, shaking himself out, and finally turned away to follow him. Yugi hesitated for a moment, licking his forehead once, and then turned and began to lead him forward. The two of them were silent for a long minute before he finally grunted, _I will go with you to the camp, but I do not want to stay too long._

 _Huh_?

 _It's nothing bad. I want to get water. But I also want to leave as soon as possible,_ he said quietly. His eyes grew sharper for a moment as he looked at Yugi, ears pricked forward and lips drawn back entirely to show his teeth. _I do not want to interact with Ishizu. And I do not wish to interact with the others either. I do not care to spend time with any of them._

 _I know. I know you don't._ Yugi was quiet for a moment. _And I'm not going to force you to, either._

 _You couldn't even if you might have wanted to._ Yami faced him now, eyes locked with his. His tail rose minutely, his ears pricked forward, and his lips wrinkled the smallest degree. _And if you were so foolish as to try to, I would beat you into submission in order to avoid it. You have no idea how much I despise the pack…_

 _And it's okay that you do,_ Yugi said quietly, though he tilted his head and considered him a moment longer. _But we'll have to work around that. I know you know that. And maybe you won't be able to always be around them for long periods of times. And that's okay too. I don't think I want to stay around them longer than necessary either. I think it'll be fine either way, however. I think we can find some kind of balance or a way to work around it and ignore our unease with them for a while._

 _I should assume such a thing would be possible, yes. I do not think that it should be too terribly hard to do so._ Yami turned away from him now, shaking himself out and pricking his ears forward. He walked slowly beside him, brushing shoulders with him once and trotting ahead of him for a few seconds. His stomach rolled once and he thought briefly of the pack, of just how many wolves existed in it. Their numbers had to be similar to those within the labs. Although, most of the wolves underground were likely dead as it was.

They continued in silence back to the camp, though Yugi didn't know whether he should label it uneasy or tense. Yami had lost what little bit of friendliness he'd had when they were together in the woods formerly, answering his questions with one word most often if he dared to ask anything. And he'd become completely silent soon enough, as if he were possessed by the need for quiet as they began to make their way to the camp. Yugi had gotten nothing from him but the occasional glance in his direction and short answers that begged for elaboration but were granted none.

When they got to the camp, Yami followed him long enough to make it to the center where Ishizu lay near Aki, the two she-wolves seemingly conversing about something or other. Aki had stubbornly gone silent, glaring at Yugi as if he were some kind of poisonous snake meant to strike out against her. And Ishizu had simply greeted him before turning away again. Yami gave him a simple acknowledgment of, _I'm going to go get some water_ before trotting off in the opposite direction to head up the cliffs and towards the top of the waterfall. Yugi watched him go for a moment, then turned back to them.

Ishizu finally seemed to lose her patience with Aki's quiet anger, turning to him with a wag of her tail. _Hello, Atem,_ she greeted in a softer, friendlier tone. _It is rather surprising to see you here today._

 _Where is Yami off to_? Aki sneered. _I was so sure if he left, you'd stick your head up his ass and follow._

Yugi would have rolled his eyes had he been able to. Instead he scoffed and shook his head, eyeing her coldly. _Yeah, that's great. It's nice to see you again, too, Aki,_ he growled. But he turned to Ishizu immediately after, studying her face for a moment as if he might find some hint of the conversation they'd been having formerly there in her eyes. _How are things for you, Ishizu_?

The question seemed to surprise her. The she-wolf blinked, blue eyes widening briefly. She shook her head, pricking her ears, and tilted her head the smallest degree. _They have been relatively fine. Aki and I were just discussing what had happened to Marik._ Her eyes had turned cold, crystalline, as if she expected him to speak out against her brother's name. But Yugi simply blinked and she curled her lip the smallest degree in response. _But the time for the dead has long since passed, has it not_? _Shall we discuss the living now_?

Yugi bristled faintly, tilting his head in bewilderment. _Sure, if you'd like to._

 _Would you like to know who is about to cross paths with Yami_? she asked, voice growing sly with laughter. The white wolf stood slightly taller, the hairs on his shoulders rising into a furious bristle at the teasing tone. He blinked and pricked his ears forward, glaring at her as he narrowed his gaze the smallest degree. _Let's see. How many are there he might cross paths with_?

Aki turned her head to look at her as if she had lost her mind. _What the hell does that even_ mean, _Ishizu_? she growled. _That doesn't even make any sense. He went to get water. It's not like he's run off to join the hellhounds as their ranking leader._

 _For fuck's sake, would you get off that_? Yugi spat. _He's not a hellhound_!

 _And you would know this how_? _You've got your head so far up his ass I'd be amazed if you didn't breathe the same air as him,_ she snarled in turn, glaring at him furiously. _As far as I'm concerned, you're both worthless mutts meant to bring about destruction for all of us._

 _How wonderful of you to say that,_ he snapped. _But are you forgetting that Yami is the only reason you're actually alive right now_? _If he hadn't jumped in when Sartorius nearly killed you—_

 _Right, because that wasn't an ambush that was caused by your friends at school. Because that wasn't one of your friends leading them or you following the_ scent _of one and leading them_ straight to us.

 _You were there too, you idiot,_ Yugi spat. _You saw them. They hid under the snow and leaped out to kill us._

 _And that's not something that you led us to_? _You were simply there._

 _I told you all. I was following Valon's scent—_

 _Right, the hellhound you've formed allegiance with._

 _Why are you so pathetic_? _Why do you always have to pick a fight with me_? Yugi sneered, shaking his head with growing resentment. _You do this all the time. And there's no actual reason to_!

 _Aside from the fact that you are worthless and useless and pretend to be someone you're not_? _You're about as capable of being alpha as deer droppings and you expect me to waste my time simply following you like a naïve pup_?

 _It's not like you weren't raised to._

Aki sprang forward, snarling. Ishizu sighed loudly, shaking her head. Yugi stepped forward, tail raised and eyes furious.

 _I doubt the gods truly wish for the two of you to spill blood like this_ , Ishizu drawled in a dismissive tone. She did not even seem to believe her own words and Yugi almost spun on her in annoyance. She shook her head and tipped her ears towards the ground after a moment or so. _I do not understand your hatred of one another, truthfully. You both are entitled to your beliefs, regardless of whether you consider him too weak to lead or not, Aki._

 _He deserves to have his throat ripped out for the hell of it. Half my family has suffered that fate because of him, so why not show him the same_?

 _You kill a Pure-Blood and they just come back angrier than when they originally died,_ Ishizu huffed. But Yugi saw a glint in her eye and his stomach lurched as he realized that she understood that his immortality was something that was up for debate. She knew that he had not been killed and come back, that even the gods doubted his ability to return from the grave should something happen. _Regardless, he is Atem. Leave him be._

 _Is he now_? _The Atem I was raised to believe in was worthy of being followed, of being held to higher standards. He was meant to be a god among the wolves. This little brat in front of me is_ none _of those things._

 _Judgment should not be cast without reason._ Ishizu sounded bored even as she said it. She hardly seemed to believe her own words and Yugi blinked in surprise. _But what does it matter_?

 _He's an imposter, just like that stupid infuriating beta of his—_ Aki abruptly turned to him, eyes seemingly wild and hideous as her pupils dilated and she bore her teeth. _What of that time he went missing, Atem_? _What of all that time he was gone and didn't come back_? _You think it was coincidence that so many of our wolves were killed or left for dead in the woods during that time_?

Yugi struggled not to snarl that it had been Marik to do it. He pressed his tongue into the roof of his mouth and drew his lips back to show his teeth in a snarl. He wouldn't slander him, not when he was long since dead and he'd spoken to him in Paradise as it was. If he could be forgiven there, perhaps it would do him well to try now that he was awake and in the living world as well.

Besides, he'd promised Ishizu. He'd told her to form the lie to protect him, to make Marik die a hero or a casualty rather than the traitor he'd been.

So Yugi shook his anger away and glared at Aki more pointedly. _It doesn't matter where he was as far as you're concerned._ I _know where he was during that time, but it's none of your business._ He paused. _And I will gladly tell that to anyone stupid enough to ask._

 _So, is_ that _what we are to you, Atem_? she sneered. _Just a bunch of stupid insignificant wolves_?

He barely stopped himself from spitting that they were all significant in comparison to Yami. Instead he shook himself and turned to look solely at Ishizu. _You said something about him crossing paths with someone_?

 _Multiple someone's._ She looked at him, laughter in her bright icy eyes. _Perhaps a pack or two of them._

Yugi blinked. His first thought was of hellhounds. If there was a patrol of them, he'd have to make a run for it to help Yami. But the lack of tension in her form and how easily she spoke of it, the teasing in her tone, made him relax slightly.

 _Chazz and Zane are back then_? _They found some wolves_?

Aki blinked. _They managed to convince more of them to come here_? _Do they realize they'll be sacrificed like lambs_? she snorted. _How wonderful of them to choose to lay their lives on the line if that is what they've decided to do._

Yugi shot her a glare but she didn't seem to care in the slightest. He turned back to Ishizu as she looked at him with a slight smile on her jaws.

 _So then they're back_? _All went well_? he demanded, voice slightly flustered with the need to be assured. She tilted her head and he wondered if she could see things at the moment or if she had known before he'd gotten there that Yami would be crossing paths with the new packs to join them. He shivered and she simply shook herself out as she got to her paws.

 _Why don't you go ahead and ask him yourself_? _He will be here in a minute._

Yugi blinked. Did she mean Zane or Chazz? Or did she mean Yami? The latter couldn't tell him anything, so asking him was a stupid idea. But Chazz or Zane could fill him in easily if he were to bother to question them about their journey to the states and their return…

 _I guess I will then._ He turned to Aki. _I hope you remember how to behave. I don't need them picking fights the moment they enter the camp._

 _How nice of you to worry about them._

 _I'd worry about you too, but you just seem bitter and I can't do much for someone who doesn't want help._ He snorted and turned away when she snapped her teeth at him. He locked eyes with Ishizu. _How many are there_?

 _It's a surprise._

He really wished he could have rolled his eyes. _Great to hear,_ he growled. _I just love not knowing answers to questions I ask. Thanks for that. Keep up the good work._

Aki snorted at the response. Yugi almost glanced at her but thought better of it and turned to look away again. It took him only a moment to spot movement from the corner of his eye. He turned, blinking, and from the far end of the camp he could see Yami striding forward in a lazy gait.

Behind him was Zane, Yugi noted. The gray wolf had his head a centimeter lower then Yami's own, perhaps out of respect or simply because he was shorter than him; Yugi didn't honestly know. But his dark eyes were on the snow and behind him was a single file unit of wolves. Yugi could see about twenty of them, some or them lean and others seemingly packed with muscle. He shivered as the black wolf led them dutifully towards them.

Yami moved around Ishizu, though he did not pause to speak to Yugi. Instead he moved a few paces past him, turned around, and stood with his shoulder to Yugi's hindquarters. He blinked and looked at him, wondering at it, and reality slapped him in the face.

Yami had led them there as his beta. He had not done anything else, as was not his right. Yugi blinked and turned back to them, wagging his tail.

 _How were the states_? he asked Zane, nodding briefly in greeting to Chazz. The yearling dipped his head, wagged his tail, and turned to wander off to lay down a few feet away. The other wolves all stood at attention, moving into a flanking position in order to see him more properly.

 _They were like they always are,_ he grunted. He shook himself out, gray eyes sharp and cold. _I couldn't wait to leave them._

Yugi nearly snorted. Then he looked to the other wolves that had begun to scrutinize him. Some of them were respectful in the way they stared and others were blatant and cold. A male with dark gray and black fur was watching him, single eye glittering as it regarded him and then Yami in turn. A she-wolf with golden and gray fur and longer tawny legs looked away when he glanced at her. A somewhat larger but underdeveloped male with a gray and russet coat peered at him as plainly as the one-eyed wolf did.

 _Yami_ , he hissed after a moment, making sure that the others would not hear him. Yugi focused only on the black wolf as he continued. _How many packs_? _And who are the alphas_?

 _There are four packs. I do not know the alphas. I did not speak to them. I spoke to Zane. All he bothered to tell me was that they'd recruited four packs from four different states._

 _They aren't too big in numbers…_

 _One of them is split in half. I think he said he left the others in_ _Texas_ _in case you were not who you claim to be. I assume he will send for them later…_

 _Okay_. He blinked. _What should I do_? _What do you think the best way to do this is_?

 _Ask the alphas to join you for introductions. Perhaps call the betas to do the same. But it will be simpler to have a smaller group before you bother to interact with the others. They have to be tired. I would assume they would like to rest more than anything…_

 _Right_! He turned to the one-eyed wolf after a moment, though he noticed that the darker-furred canine was focused solely on Yami over his shoulder now. He nearly snarled at him, but instead shook himself out and focused on the group of wolves in front of him as a whole. He could deal with the other alpha later if it came to it. _I will meet with the alphas and the betas first. The rest of you must be exhausted so you're free to rest and we'll continue introductions afterwards. Chazz, get up and come with us._

The yearling blinked, sprang to his paws and hurriedly followed when Yugi turned to lead them further into the camp towards the alpha's den. Yami was a step behind him, he realized, and the thought comforted him against his uneasiness as he turned back to face the other wolves.

Chazz took a seat immediately after, ears pricked and muzzle slightly lowered towards the snow. Yugi could see the exhaustion in the lines of his form, how he looked as if he might fall asleep on his paws at any moment. No doubt he'd been hit with terrible jetlag, and he looked almost gaunt, as if he'd puked a few times before he'd come back to the camp. Yugi almost wished he could have dismissed him, but his rank caused him to forfeit such luxury for the moment.

 _All right,_ he announced, turning to the wolves in front of him. _You've already met Zane and Chazz. And I'm sure you were introduced to Yami. So, those three aside, I am Atem. And you would be…_?

The she-wolf was first to speak up, glancing around and then snorting when no one answered. _I'm Mana,_ she announced. She stood perhaps an inch or two smaller than Chazz or Yusei did. Her legs were a solid tawny color, her undercoat similarly shaded though it faded and became white along her underbelly. Her face was mostly golden, though her muzzle was white along the bottom, and she had a brown bridge to her eyes. Her ears were red-brown, her forehead a similar but lighter shade, and her dorsal cape was colored silver. She had black and gray along her back, the latter covering the top of her back legs and coloring her tail. _I'm the leader of the_ _Minnesota_ _pack. I'm thirteen, my pack is six strong, and this is my beta, Andre._

The other wolf huffed, raising his head. He was larger than Zane, with a gray muzzle with several stray brown hairs. His eyes were golden and piercing, though not as sharp as Valon's. Russet mixed with brown and gray crossed his features, merging beautifully beneath his eyes and along his forehead. It became a solid russet along his ears and the top of his skull, gray along his scruff, and his dorsal cape was a deep black. His undercoat was white, his legs and underbelly similarly colored. All four legs had black along the fronts of them, and his tail was a deep russet color as well. _Pleased to meet you._

 _Six strong_? Yugi repeated, more so startled by the lacking numbers than even her young age. There were only six of them? How was that possible? _Why so small_?

 _The humans were hunting us for a long time. And the territory we reside in is small, too much so for a larger pack. Many of us leave when we're old enough to stand on our own. They move into neighboring states and lose contact with us. After the massacre last year, during the hinting season, we chose to minimize numbers to ten and below in order to stop unnecessary bloodshed._

 _Last year_? Yugi mumbled and he tilted his head as they looked at one another. Andre looked unimpressed with his shock, though he noted Zane shot Mana something of a scrutinizing glance. _How long have you been leader_?

 _My parents were killed in the massacre. I'm their only child so I took over the pack._ She didn't sound malicious, but the anger was clear in her tone, as if she were offended by his question. _So here we are. We're all here._

Yugi nodded after a moment.

 _Why is it that your beta looks like a mess of skin and bone_? a voice sneered. Yugi blinked and turned to the one-eyed male with pricked ears, nearly bristling hatefully at the comment. _He looks as if he's food for the crows rather than a high-ranking wolf._

 _I'm fasting,_ Yami drawled sarcastically in response. He looked at the one-eyed wolf as if he were one of the stupidest creatures he had ever met. _I used to look fat and now I'm far too skinny. It's hard to find the right balance for my fur._

Zane snorted so loudly it made Chazz startle beside him. Yugi grimaced and shot Yami a flustered look but the black wolf ignored him altogether and shook his head. Mana tilted her head and studied Yami a moment and the one-eyed wolf scoffed loudly.

 _You might be his beta, but you're going against an alpha, boy,_ he growled. Yami blinked long and slow, clearly unimpressed. _You'd be wise to remember that._

 _And you'd be wise to back off from threatening my beta,_ Yugi sneered.

 _Yami isn't defenseless, Jim,_ Zane interrupted with a smirk. The gray wolf sat up and looked more pointedly at Yugi, his eyes bright with laughter. _He'll beat you into submission in seconds if you go against him._

Chazz shook himself out. _He's a lot faster and nastier than he looks,_ he agreed. He narrowed his eyes as he regarded the black male, then wagged his tail at the two of them. _I don't know if he can still hand you your butt on a silver platter like he usually does with everyone else, but he's still pretty dangerous._

 _I consider myself lethal, actually._

Jim burst out laughing. _Lethal_? _You_?! _You look like you'd weigh twenty pounds dripping wet_! he roared. His remaining eye was a deep glittering blue and he showed his teeth in a wide sneer as he peered at Yami. _You can't seriously think you could take me on._

 _I'm a lot stronger than I look._

 _He's a beast when he fights,_ Chazz snickered. He wagged his tail at Yugi when the white wolf glanced at him. _He'd hand you your butt if he got an opening._

 _I don't remember asking you for your opinion._

 _Watch your tone with my beta, Jim,_ Zane snarled. _I let you speak down to him once. I won't stand for it again._

 _Bring it, Truesdale. I've nearly beaten you before—_

 _Key word being_ nearly, Yami scoffed. His voice broke the two alphas of their argument and made them both turn to him. He shook himself out where he was beside Yugi and blinked lazily as Jim bore his teeth at him. _But nearly isn't a word I know too well. I win. Or I back down of my own volition. Nearly is not a word I use when it comes to fights._

Yugi looked at Yami sideways. Was he truly provoking him?

 _You think you could beat me_? Jim scoffed. _I make a living off protecting my boundaries and fighting predators in my territory. I've killed boars in a single bite and disemboweled mountain lions. You'd be stupid to challenge me,_ boy _._

 _I really wish you wouldn't call me that._

 _You sure as hell aren't a man._

 _No, certainly not. I'm only sixteen, after all._ Yami flashed his teeth in what looked like a smile, but Yugi thought it seemed more a sneer than anything. His red eyes were almost glowing with hatred. _But I'll be damned if I let you speak to me as if I am pup. I've experienced more in my short lifetime than you've likely ever known a wolf capable of._

 _Bullshit. Your bravado just makes you look weaker._

Yami nodded slowly. _Fine then. I'll even let you make the first move._ He got up and moved past Yugi to stand a couple of feet away from the Texas alpha. Jim got up as well, the two of them bristling. Yami did not wag his tail, instead watching with cold eyes and peering at him as if he were nothing but a pile of dung stuck to his paw. _You can't even touch me, I'll bet._

 _You can't possibly be that fast. Otherwise you wouldn't be starving like you are._

Yugi bristled and shifted his weight. But he made no move to stand. He turned his head, watching Yami, and the black wolf glanced at him briefly. He did not ask permission, nor did he look slightly questioning. Instead the glance was a warning, one laden with power and threat. They only locked eyes for a single second. But Yami turned away from him to face Jim with glacial red eyes. The fur along his shoulders fell and he peered at him as if he were scrutinizing a piece of prey rather than a potential enemy.

 _Do you truly think you could fight me_? Jim questioned, sneering at him. His eye glinted savagely and Yami tilted his head slowly in a predatory manner. Zane snickered and Mana looked uncomfortably between them. The third alpha simply blinked, studying them with little to no interest in the subject altogether. _I assume you must imagine yourself to be a good fighter. But I'll beat you into submission so fast your head will spin._

Chazz, who had wisely remained silent before, now scoffed loudly. _Kick hiss ass, Yami._

 _You know what I find funny_?

 _The fact that having one eye makes you blind to threats_?

 _You've got these two saying you're capable of beating me down. But your own alpha is keeping quiet and doesn't even seem slightly inclined to agree with them,_ Jim snorted. Standing as he was, Yugi could finally see the markings in his fur. He was mostly black and gray on his face, though his muzzle was a deep and dark brown. There was a single ringlet of deep black along his neck, where it came down in a small patch that looked like a star. Along his shoulders he was predominantly dark gray, though his dorsal cape was black and this color traveled the length of his front limbs halfway to his paws. His back legs were pale, and there were strips of a similar color along his neck on both sides, mixing in the darkness there. His tail was a deep black color, though the underside of it was white and tawny. _Atem doesn't even think you can do it._

Yugi almost answered, then snorted and looked away, shaking his head. Yami chuckled beside him, sneering, _I don't need a cheerleading team to say I'm capable of doing such a thing. Atem doesn't care one way or another if I deal with you. Zane and Chazz are trying to warn you away from being humiliated like you're pushing me to do. But if you will not heed their cautions, then I will show you why they feel so strongly on the matter._

 _You speak like you're a damn thesaurus._

 _Is it too much for your pea-sized brain_?

Yugi sighed when Jim lunged. Yami stepped closer to him, dodging the attack easily. But Yugi could feel his leg hard against his side. He huffed out a breath, turning his head. Yami was merely watching. Jim had landed beside him, exactly where Yami had been seconds before. The black wolf turned his head, pivoting his weight. And then he struck as quickly as a cobra. His teeth sunk into flesh. Jim yelped and struggled, trying to pull away. A sickening crunch filled the air. Blood made Yugi's breath taste of metal. For a moment or two longer Yami held him there.

And then he released. Zane burst out laughing. Chazz snickered. Yami plopped into a seated position, side pressed into Yugi's. Jim stumbled to his paws, clearly stunned. He shook himself out, glaring. And then he huffed out a deep and angry breath. The red-eyed wolf watched him with cool eyes, dismissive. Jim growled and shook himself out again, then turned to make his way back. He snapped at Chazz when the yearling laughed harder and Zane smirked as he shook his head.

 _You should have listened,_ the alpha chuckled. _I warned you. Chazz warned you._

Yami turned his head abruptly towards him and Yugi blinked and he looked at him curiously. _My apologies,_ he said softly, _I had not realized how close I was to you when I pinned him. I didn't mean to bump into you._

Yugi snorted loudly at the apology, wagging his tail and shaking his head. _You're ridiculous,_ he teased with another wag of his tail. He tilted his head and Yami grinned back, but where he could feel him relax slightly into him, he did nothing further. Yugi wished he would have relaxed further, fallen back until he was leaning into him. But even he knew better than to expect such a thing. It would have been foolish for him to do so. It would have showed too easily how close they were and Yugi was sure such a thing would not be received favorably.

So he forced himself not to feel as hurt as he wanted to, turning back. Mana was frowning as Chazz continued to laugh. Jim snapped at him again but Zane merely shook his head with a smirk. And Yugi realized that, had Jim lunged at the beta, Zane would have intercepted. The dark gray wolf looked relaxed for the most part, but the muscles were readied in his haunches, prepared to spring between them. He would have launched himself immediately had Jim so much as advanced a centimeter.

Yugi wondered if he should have had a similar stance seconds ago. But it occurred to him that Yami would have likely become resentful had he. It was not that he did not appreciate the help, Yugi knew, but that he would not need it and thus he would be frustrated by the weakness it might show to the others in turn. So he was actually glad to have remained where he was rather than bothered to move. It was not as if Yami could not handle the situation himself, after all…

He turned to look over at Yami for a second. The black male had closed his eyes halfway, his gaze entirely dismissive of the wound he'd inflicted on Jim. He'd caught the base of his muzzle with his teeth and forced him down. But he had broken skin and he was sure the popping noise had not been bone. Jim would have screamed otherwise. But he _did_ think Yami had managed to dislocate his jaw with sheer brutality. But it had healed when they'd separated. Because Jim did not seem hurt and the blood was dried, the holes in his muzzle closed and his skin a soft raw pink.

Yugi smiled faintly when he saw Chazz flicking his tongue over his nose in a goading manner. Jim bristled and snapped his teeth again, but the yearling merely wiggled his rump in his seat beside Zane. His alpha was struggling not to laugh, he noticed, and the third alpha, another yearling much like Mana, was smiling widely at the antics.

He was baiting him to move closer, knowing Zane would get between them. Yugi smiled and shook his head. Yami pricked his ears and wagged his tail again. Finally the three of them relaxed, Zane telling Chazz to stop around his laughter. Jim growled, glaring a moment or so longer, and turned away with a sneer. Yugi smiled wider and Yami snickered.

 _I'm Ute,_ the third alpha announced when they had all finally settled again. He was smaller, with a more compact shape to his body. He was leaner, with thinner legs and a somewhat longer and sharper muzzle. He had a dual-color coat, with a gray and russet combination. His ears were bright red, his muzzle streaked cinnamon, his cheeks full of dark gray. His scruff was russet, his neck to his shoulders shaded similarly. The insides of his legs were colored red, his back saddled with dark gray almost like black, his back legs to his hocks the same. His tail was streaked with black along the top, his undercoat russet. _I'm alpha of the_ _Wisconsin_ _pack. We're over twenty strong, but I only brought a few wolves. It wasn't out of disrespect, but it was such short notice that we could not uproot completely like we were asked. My apologies._

Yugi shook his head. _That's okay. Don't worry about it._

He nodded slightly, watching him a moment. _My beta, Hugo, will bring them later on in the month,_ he continued quietly. _I chose to leave him there to take care of the rest of the pack. But Moon Shadow is my gamma._

Yami blinked and raised his head, turning to the younger male with a curious look. _Moon…Shadow_? he repeated, as if the words were heavy and awkward on his tongue. Yugi admitted it was an odd name but it nearly made him howl with laughter when Yami continued to stare blankly at the other male. _Is that… a nickname or something…_?

 _I chose to call myself that,_ the gamma said with a shake of his head. He had some of the strangest and most beautiful markings Yugi had ever seen. His coat was a mottled gray, almost bluish as Obelisk's was along his cheeks. Darker gray and black streaked his ears and along his dorsal cape. His entire back side was saddled with the color, his back legs tinted with soft reddish-gray to his hocks. There was a small patch of mirroring color, twisted and swirled amongst a bright silver along his scruff over his shoulder. Each of his long legs was deep black towards the middle fronts. His shoulders were streaked silver, his chest colored bright white like the snow, his underbelly a similar color, and his toes a mirroring shade of silver to his shoulders. _I stopped using my given name._

Yugi nodded. He could see how the name might fit his physical features, even if part of him was struck with laughter at the idea of calling someone else by such a name. Yami blinked and then turned to Jim with a curious expression. _And your beta_?

 _Declan Akaba,_ the wolf stated in a somewhat cold tone. He peered at Yugi as if he were some kind of creature he did not quite recognize. And then he snorted and turned away with a shake of his head. _Beta of the_ _Texas_ _pack._

He was a standard-sized gray male. His face was mostly dark gray, though he had splashes of chocolate brown, and his eyes were circled by white. His ears were that same rich brown color and his face seemed fuller for it. His large cheeks were white about two inches beneath his eyes and it encircled only his muzzle before falling away. The underside of his neck was ribbed with dark brown against a lighter shade, and his legs were tawny along the front, white along the back, his entire undercoat beyond this a deep charcoal gray.

 _I thought you said Jim had left half the pack at_ _Texas_ _,_ Yugi said to Yami quietly. _Did you mean that Ute has left them in Wisconsin_?

 _No. Jim left half of his pack in_ _Texas_ _before he came. Ute might have done the same, but he only came with only four others besides himself and Moon Shadow._ He hesitated. _What kind of name is that_?

Yugi turned to him with a wide grin. _Yami, the name you picked for yourself translates to small forest of darkness. I don't think you really have room to crack jokes._

Yami shot him a look of pure betrayal. _How rude._

He wagged his tail. _You're adorable._

The black wolf snorted, looking almost as if he might lean forward to lick his forehead. But he seemingly changed his mind at the last moment, turning away again and pricking his ears forward. He turned to look at Ute after a moment, then tilted his head as his eyes grew narrow. _You can't be more than twelve,_ he commented in a cool tone, one that sent shivers down Yugi's spine and alarms blaring in his head, _so how is it that you are the alpha of your pack_?

Ute was silent for a long moment. His eyes flashed and he looked as if he might snap at him, tell him to shut up and mind his own business. But then his eyes flickered to Yugi, studying his expression. Whatever he found there seemed to make him reconsider his anger and he straightened from his slumped seated position and raised his chin.

 _I usurped my parents,_ he announced. His voice was cold and deadly like the snow surrounding them and Yami tilted his head the smallest degree further. Yugi, however, felt his stomach twist in knots. He had usurped his parents? Did that mean he'd killed them? Yugi didn't know enough about how the ranking structure worked for werewolves. He didn't know if that meant he'd killed them or simply fought them for dominance and won. Usually in the wild, should it happen, the parents were chased out of the territory. On the rare occasion, depending on how hard they fought back, they might be killed by their wayward children. Yugi did not know if that held the same for werewolves. Having the human instincts, he could not decide which was more likely. Some people killed, others were merely territorial. He didn't know which to expect. _They began to abuse their power as alphas and I took over after I fought them._

The vagueness of the answer did nothing to help Yugi to want to ask the question that made him so uneasy. The thought that he might truly have killed them made his skin crawl. What kind of kid did he have to be to do such a thing? And he was only twelve, if Yami was correct about his age.

 _You seem upset,_ Yami commented to him wryly. _Why is that_?

Yugi blinked and shot him a glance from his peripheral. Yami was an expert on almost everything wolf-related, wasn't he? He could ask him and Yami would likely give him a truthful answer, unless the reality of it was so horrifying that he felt the need to hide it from him, he knew. _What is more likely, Yami_? _When he says usurped, what are the odds of him having simply run his parents off rather than killing them_?

 _Killing would be rather extreme. But he obviously had help within the pack, I'm sure. None of them would have accepted the rank battle if he had not had help formerly when he took to fighting them. I do not know what he might have done. But he looks capable_. Yami got to his paws and shook himself out. And Yugi watched Ute's eyes narrow briefly and study the darker wolf with a somewhat curious expression. And then Yugi noticed something he had not before. There was a small scar on the inside of the younger wolf's leg, the smallest tuft of fur missing there and the strangest patch of gray skin as if it were perhaps charred. _He likely killed them. I would assume he was forced to. Most wolves do not accept that kind of battle's results, especially if they were abusive as he mentioned. Most wolves that become power hungry and resort to violence at their own discretion do not usually back down from such fights, even when they might lose._

Yugi shivered. _That's horrifying._

 _It is sometimes necessary,_ Yami dismissed. He turned abruptly to look at Chazz. _You look as if you might pass out on your feet. Go get some rest. You're making me tired and I'm not even jetlagged._

The yearling got up with a respectful nod, wagging his tail, turned to dip his head to Zane, and trotted away without a second glance. Yugi watched him go, surprised by the leniency Yami had shown him, and then turned back. Ute was looking at Moon Shadow and the other wolf was peering at Jim as if he thought the Texas alpha might leap at him at any moment. Yugi wondered if he truly feared such a thing or if he was simply seeing something that was not there. He shrugged it off and found himself looking towards Mana. But the she-wolf was watching Yami as if he were some kind of cobra that might strike out against her. And when he looked beside her, Andre was staring at his paws as if he were nervous. But Jim was watching Yami as well, his single blue eye glittering.

Yugi did not think he was foolish enough to come after him again, but he had to wonder. He'd been humiliated when Yami had so quickly put an end to it, had he not? Clearly he was not happy with the results. And he frowned as he considered it a moment or so longer. Yugi turned his head to look at Yami.

 _You really are extremely thin and small, aren't you_?

Yugi glanced up from his observation of Yami's features to look over. The speaker was beside Ute, head tilted and eyes sharp and glittering. He did not look as if he might lash out at any moment. But he did seem to be observing him as if he were a piece of wounded prey. Yugi nearly bristled at the sight, hateful for a brief moment. But he shrugged it away and narrowed his eyes.

 _Do you not have anything better to do than shame me for my skinniness_? Yami growled, but he sounded more amused than anything. The other wolf snorted and Yugi wondered how he had missed him sitting between Ute and Jim. Had he been so quiet that Yugi had truly overlooked him? But then, Yami _had_ said there were four alphas and he'd only been introduced to three, he realized. This had to be him, then. _I can show you why my physique doesn't slow me down or keep me from being able to mutilate you should you so desire._

 _No, that can wait for another day,_ the other commented dryly. He shook himself out. His coat was a glossy black, his undercoat one of bright silver that almost made him look as if he had stars in his fur. The wolf's legs were longer and his paws larger, his mouth slightly longer than usual. A couple of scars littered his face, the fur jagged and cut away. And his cheeks were lined with silver as if with stardust. _We can fight it out another time, but for now, I guess I'll finish the introductions. I'm Shay Obsidian, alpha of the_ _Michigan_ _pack. I'm the only one who came. My beta stayed with the pack._

Mana looked annoyed, sneering, _You should have stayed behind instead. No one would have missed your company._

Ute's ears flicked forward as he shook his head. _Introductions are done, right_? he grumbled. He looked as if he wanted to sink his teeth into Shay's throat for a split second. Then he breathed in deeply and shook his head slowly, eyes narrowed. _I would rather like to rest._

Shay flashed them both looks as if they were insignificant bugs. Then he turned to Yugi and raised his head as if to loom over him, smirking. _I had them stay behind because I need to figure out if you're worth a shit before I have them come here. I have to watch out for them, after all. A good alpha_ always _watches out for his subordinates._ Yugi blinked. Zane bristled, Yami tilted his head, Mana snarled low in her throat, Ute looked away, Moon Shadow frowned and Andre shook his head. Jim glared at the younger alpha, narrowing his eye and peeling his lips back to show his teeth. But the teenager didn't seem to care in the slightest, wagging a tail that was raised over his back and sneering, _My pack is over twenty strong. I have the most fire power in the lower forty-eight states. We're a force of nature._

 _You know what else is a force of nature_? Yami asked quietly. He and Shay locked eyes and he tilted his head minutely, peering at him icily. _My teeth when they rip through someone's throat._

 _You couldn't do shit. You're too puny._

Yugi frowned and looked at him for a moment. He cursed so much it was ridiculous. Did every other word need to be a curse for him? It was against what Yugi himself had been raised with. He cursed, but it was rare and only when he was truly afraid or so angry that he felt he was seeing red. To hear the words dropped so casually made his skin crawl. He shook his head. He didn't know enough about American culture to sum it up to differences in such things. But he had the striking idea that it was one of the main reasons this younger kid truly _was_ cursing so much and spitting at him as if he had no respect for himself or anyone else in the world.

Shay raised his nose, then turned to look at the other American leaders for a split second. He wrinkled his lips, sneered at them, and turned away. But he paused a few feet away, laughing, _I don't fight wolves that are too weak to even challenge me. If you ever get to a fighting standard,_ then _maybe I'll whoop your ass and make you_ remember _my name._

He was gone seconds later. Yami didn't so much as blink, instead watching him go and turning to Yugi. They peered at each other for a moment. And he felt sick for a second when he thought he saw laughter in the other boy's red eyes. But he couldn't read his expression, as Yami turned away again almost immediately. He sat facing the snow for a moment, ears pricked as if he were listening for something that Yugi did not know to look for.

 _What do you think we should do now_?

Yami turned to him with a confused expression. _What_?

 _What do you think we should do now_? he repeated uncertainly. _I mean, what do you think we should do with them_? _I mean, they're clearly really tired and I think they should probably get some rest sooner rather than later, right? But they look tense. And I'm kind of wondering if there's bad blood between Mana, Shay and Ute. If you've noticed, they haven't acknowledged each other even once. And I might not know the states very well, but I'm almost a hundred percent sure that_ _Wisconsin_ _,_ _Michigan_ _and_ _Minnesota_ _are next to each other._

Yami blinked. _I'll have to trust your limited knowledge of it. I do not know the states at all._ He looked at him curiously for a moment. _But bad blood between the three of them is not impossible. Perhaps Ute's decision to usurp his parents has to do with Mana's explanation of her pack being massacred the year before. Or something that Shay did triggered the events that led to these actions. It's entirely possible that whatever allowed him to take over his pack at such a young age is related to the other in some way. That might explain their cold attitudes toward each other._

 _Shit, I really hope I'm wrong. I don't want them to have drama already._

 _Mana and Ute both seem rather mature for their ages,_ he answered after a moment, though he cast a quick glance at them both again. Mana had turned to Andre and was talking quietly to her, Jim was sneering at Zane, Moon Shadow was glaring at Jim, and Ute was still watching Yami like a hawk. He blinked, catching the youngest alpha's eye and the other boy looked away immediately. He turned back to Yugi, pricking his ears forward. _Shay is another story, but I think I can handle him easily enough. He seems more like a spoiled brat that blows hot air when he speaks. I doubt that Mana or Ute will allow their former differences to get in the middle of what they need to do for you or the rest of the pack. It's as simple as that, I think._

Yugi blinked. _You think so_? _I'm not sure that's true. I'm already dealing with Aki being extremely prejudice to the American wolves in general, though Yusei is still her primary target. I'm watching Zane and Jim snarl at each other, Shay thinks he's going to make you his new punching bag, Ute and Mana and Shay might have a bad history, and Aki is convinced that you had something to do with the hellhounds attacking us in the woods. I don't know what to do with any of that._

Yami shook his head after a moment. _I can fight Aki at any time. She does not bother me. I can sink my teeth in and not have to worry about her later. It is not a big deal to me whatever she might say._

 _Until she has the other wolves rallying on her side and you get hurt for it._

 _That has not happened yet, Yugi._

 _Really_? _Because I seem to remember Joy. And I don't know if you don't remember this, but the pack turned in on itself, remember_? _They killed each other over whether you were a hellhound or not and—_

 _And your point would be_? He was bristling before he could stop himself, nose mere inches from Yugi and his lips drawn back to show his teeth. His movement made the other wolves in the group freeze, turning to stare at them collectively. Yugi, however, pricked his ears forward and stared at him with an expression that spoke volumes in his annoyance at his aggressive stance. _I can handle them should something happen. I can handle fucking Aki if it should be necessary. You underestimate my ability more often than I care to acknowledge. Do you understand how infuriating that is_? _You worry too much about me. But I can handle things myself. I am capable of doing things on my own. I do not need you to protect me as if I am some kind of wayward pup with no sense of direction who is too foolish to reconsider his choices and does not understand what is happening around him._

 _I never said any of that—_

Yami huffed and turned away, growling for a moment. He shifted his weight, forcing the muscles in his shoulders to loosen, and mumbled, _Whatever. You asked me a question before. My answer is this. I think that while you have these new packs, you will see tension rising with the ranks being stripped from them to follow you. I think your best bet would be to eventually attempt to hold them in some kind of council. You might ask them to meet and hold council in the manner of helping to make larger decisions that might impact all of us. You will have to be careful how you phrase it and how you might come off when you decide to do this. It is going to be a limited thing and sometimes you will have to make a judgment call of your own. The problem becomes then that they will still feel the loss of their titles. They are mere subordinates rather than ranking alphas or betas now._

Yugi blinked wide eyes, stunned by the sudden response. He went to answer, but the black wolf shot him a look that told him to hold his tongue. So he simply sat straighter and shifted his muzzle slightly towards the ground as if in deference for a moment.

 _You have not seen so much of a power struggle as of the moment because it has been but four alphas in one place recently. There is Nistro, Zane, and Yuya's parents. Echo is no longer here and Annie forfeited leadership to you. Because of that, you have had relatively simple success and little boundaries pushed. Zane still rules much of his pack with an iron fist, however, and that will cause issues with the packs that continue to come in. The problem becomes that his pack still defers to him as leader and that puts strain on your hold over them. They might listen to you, but you will eventually have one or two challenge you. And, for example, if someone like Jim were to watch him do such a thing, he might become angry that you do not discipline him for such double standards. At the end of the day,_ all _of them are meant to follow you. It is one of the reasons Aki pushes so hard. She used to be beta and now she has been replaced and it is her bitterness which makes her lash out now._

Yugi nodded slightly.

 _Now, one way to isolate the issue and destroy it before it truly shows its face is to give the alphas an idea that they are all equals and have input on the situations inside of the pack. But you must realize that doing so means that eventually the betas will become testy as well. That is easily rectified, however, in including them in meetings such as this. Lower subordinates will not often care for such things. They are not held so high as to make huge decisions unless something should happen to the alpha or beta to make them take temporary leadership._

Zane had gotten to his paws. He shook himself out and turned to Yugi now. _I am going to get some rest. Chazz spent the entire trip throwing up. And I spent half of it gagging when he couldn't stop vomiting._ He cast a glance at Yami, clearly curious about something that Yugi could not quite read in his expression. _I assume you wish for us to show the others where to rest as well_?

 _Uh, yeah, sure,_ he answered in a distracted tone. Yami shot him an annoyed look, and Yugi realized abruptly just how clumsy and stupid he sounded in his answer. He whispered an apology and Yami ignored him as the other wolves got to their paws, dipped their heads, and turned and started trotting away. _Wow, I'm an idiot._

 _Sometimes_ , Yami grumbled. But he still seemed relaxed enough now. _But you can still change and outgrow that habit._

Yugi nodded slightly, smiling at him and wagging his tail. _That's true. I can still always do that_!

Yami turned away from him after a moment. He got to his feet, shaking himself out, and pricked his ears forward. _As for Aki, I do not believe that it would be wise to discourage her former stance as beta,_ he said slowly. _Doing so might cause collateral. She'll simply lash out harder than she already has. And that might lead her to become more violent than she already is._

 _So you want me to leave her to abuse you and make accusations about us both being hellhounds and how you're a traitor_? he asked incredulously. He got to his paws now as well, growling when Yami started forward without a second glance. The sound made the black wolf pause and turn his head just enough to look at him from the corner of his eye. _You honestly expect me to simply sit back and let her do that_?

 _I can handle Aki on my own._

 _But you don't_! _You can_! _I know that_! _But you have yet to actually do it_!

Yami bristled, turning on him furiously now. _You think that I do not know how to handle her_? _You fool_! _I am not a trigger happy idiot. I know when to pick my battles and which are unworthy of me or my time. You seem to fail to realize that because I do not fight does not mean I am taking things lying down. You are too easily emotionally riled up. I am not so foolish that I spring into each and every fight when my temper is ruffled._

 _Okay, but if she hurts you—_

 _If she hurts me, I will hurt her tenfold. It is as simple as that._

 _But it's_ not! _I've watched you let her snap and snarl at you. And you do nothing_!

 _Because it is not worth my time or effort to discipline her for it as of yet._

 _But she's allowed to talk down to you, to snap and snarl at you, to accuse you of things, and not expect anything in repercussion_? he snapped. _You really expect me to believe and go by that_? _Yami, that's not fair to you_!

 _I do not need_ you _to tell me what is fair to me. I can choose for myself what battles I must fight and which are unnecessary for me to go headfirst into. My fights are my own, not yours._ He bristled furiously and tossed his head now, glaring at him. _If I should have to deal with her, I will do it myself_! _Why must you meddle so much when it comes to things that do not involve you_?

 _Because I care_! _I care about you,_ he spat. Yugi bristled in turn, mirroring his glare and baring his teeth. _And you don't. You never stand up for yourself. You never fight back when she provokes you. You don't even tend to react when the wolves turn on you as a whole. You know that the wrist thing was a short-lived solution and one that won't last the longer she's got the idea that she has power in the pack._

 _She_ does _have power, though, Yugi. She is the original alpha's daughter. She is sister to any of the original pack members. She has seniority over you and me in their eyes. The difference is that you are Atem and they will choose you over her. But it would be mutiny if I were to turn on her when she provoked me._

 _So I'm supposed to just let her keep doing what she does, saying what she says, and just turn a blind eye to it all_?

 _You would be wise to do so, yes. You forget that you are not even sure of pack politics—_

 _Oh, I'm_ painfully _aware_ , he spat. _You remind me of that enough times, don't you_?

 _You're going to blame this on me_? Yami sneered. _Truly_? _You wish to blame this on me_? _You are the most infuriating bastard I have ever met. You blame me for the things that you wish you could control and know you cannot. You wish to push the blame on me when things might go wrong. And then you blame me for the fact that the pack is in disarray_! _But most of these problems stem from_ you, _Yugi_.

He blinked, startled. _I never said I blamed…_

Yami stopped short, his tail abruptly falling from where it had been raised seconds before. He turned his face away, his shoulders losing their bristle, and glared at the snow for a long handful of minutes. _I did not mean that,_ he finally grumbled. _I did not mean to say that. I know you do not blame me for such things. I just… You can be so infuriating, Yugi. And I have such trouble with it. I can't…_

Yugi shook his head. _Yami, I…I don't mean to be. I don't want to upset you._

 _But you always question me when I give you an opinion. I try to keep an open mind to your objections but you always seem to throw everything back in my face. And it upsets me so much that sometimes I just want to lunge at you._ He lowered his head and sighed loudly, moving to take a seat and baring his teeth. _I have said all I will say on the matter regarding Aki. You have my decision. You have my advice. You will just have to trust that I will put her in her place when it becomes too much._

Can _I trust you do that, Yami_? he asked after a moment, the air rushing from his veins when the black wolf went oddly still and a snarl rumbled in his throat. _I'm honestly asking you. I'm not accusing you. I promise. I just… I want to know that you truly believe that I can trust you to do this._

 _Why must you always question me_? he snarled, leaping at him. He was inches away, teeth bared and breathing harder than ever. He was shaking, furious and hateful. His ears flicked back and forth rapidly and his nose wriggled as he glared. _Why must you always do this_?

Yugi stepped back once, relieved when Yami did not seem to follow him in the slightest. He shook his head. _Please don't be so upset with me,_ he finally mumbled. _I just… I want to make sure you're safe, okay_? _I want you to be okay. I don't want you hurt or unhealthy. I don't want to come back to the camp one day and see you bleeding and wounded or hear that Aki truly hurt you._

The black wolf bore his teeth. _If you would listen to me rather than question the advice which you requested from me, I would not be so harsh with you._ Yami shook his head harshly, the irritation clear on his face as he looked at him. _You do not listen to the advice you request and it frustrates me, Yugi._

He wanted to claim otherwise, that he had listened and would continue to do so. But questioning Yami in the way he was surely had to seem otherwise, and so he hesitated as he looked him over. Yami was angry, yes, but he was not going to attack him at any rate. Yugi relaxed at this realization, then shrugged it aside and shook his head a fraction.

The white wolf pricked his ears and slowly moved to wag his tail in a gentle arc. _I listen to you more than I do anyone else,_ he said softly, tilting his head. _You know that I value anything that you have to say where it concerns advice or anything regarding the pack or life in general._

Yami looked at him skeptically for a moment, but his aggression melted away. And he abruptly huffed, turning away from him entirely. _I don't quite think that's the truest thing to ever leave your mouth,_ he grunted in a dismissive tone. But he did not seem angry any longer as he began to walk forward slowly. Yugi hurried to do the same beside him, moving to keep pace with him. _Regardless, I do not think for even a moment that it will do much to allow Aki to resume her role as a lesser beta among the others that have come today or simply keep her as a regular subordinate. She will say things either way. And others will continue to back her up or argue her points in your favor._

Yugi pricked his ears. _But not yours._

 _Hmm_?

 _They'll argue in my favor, but not in yours._

Yami was silent for a long handful of moments. He peeled his lips back in a grimace, looking at him sideways and seemingly growing uncomfortable with the attention Yugi paid him. _They do not need to speak in my favor. As well you know, I have bad history with the original pack. Much of it is still ignored and none of them forgiven. It boils down to the fact that I attacked their alpha. And my lack of helping the combined pack now does not aid my status among them. It is as it was meant to be, I suppose. I have hardly granted them my attention and so none of them favor me rather than you._

Yugi shook his head. _That's not true,_ he argued immediately. _That's not true at all._

 _No_? _Obelisk and Slifer do not count among those who like me, Yugi._

The white wolf paused, startled by the words. Yami sounded incredibly scornful even as he spoke the deities' names. Yugi faltered, flattening his ears, and struggled to think straight for a brief moment. _Otogi and Mai like you—as does Yusei and…and…Ishizu likes you too._ He faltered again when Yami shot him an amused look over his shoulder. _And I like you a lot too, so…_

The black wolf turned to look at him now, laughing softly. _All of the biggest players like me, huh_? he teased, turning away and shaking his head. _You, Yusei, Otogi, Mai, Ishizu. The list is rather endless, hmm_?

Yugi flattened his ears against his head. _Jonouchi too. I forgot about Jonouchi._

Yami seemed to stumble upon hearing the name, as if he had been struck for a split second. Then he pricked his ears forward, the amusement drained from his features, and moved a little faster. _I suppose so_ , he said softly in response.

Yugi bristled, moving to step closer to him. _Why do you sound so skeptical and unhappy right now_? _Why did you hesitate like that_? he asked immediately. _Did something happen between the two of you_?

 _No. I was simply thinking about the fact that he is your beta. It seems odd to imagine that you've bitten someone,_ Yami answered in a nonchalant tone, but the words were nothing but a lie. Yugi knew that without having to think about it. The black wolf was merely trying to make him feel better about whatever it was that had potentially happened between the two of them. And that made him bristle more than he cared to admit. But the aggression Yugi felt growing inside of him must have alarmed Yami, for the other turned to him with a small tilt of his head. _I am not comfortable around him. Is that what you wished to hear_? _It is not him himself, it is simply that I do not quite know how I am meant to act around him._

Yugi blinked. _Act around him_? _You act like you always do, Yami. There's no reason for you to act any differently around him than you do me._

The larger canine tilted his head and stared at Yugi for a long moment. _I do not know him well. It makes me uncomfortable to be around him due to this. It is what has always happened when I am around people I am not familiar with._

 _But you've met him before and you guys were fine when that happened._

 _Yes, but he has changed—as have_ _I._ _Things are different, Yugi. The circumstances have changed. I am not the same as I was when we first met. And he is a wolf now. You cannot say with certainty if that has changed anything as well._ Yami tilted his head as he considered Yugi curiously. _What does it matter, however_? _The truth of it is that there is no reason for us to interact more than necessary. And so far there has not been much necessity._

Yugi grimaced. _Well, yeah, but…_

 _I do not have a problem with Jonouchi, Yugi, rest assured. It is simply that I do not know him well enough to consider him much more than an acquaintance. Beyond that I have no problems with him at all._

Yugi shook his head after a moment. _There was something else to that look on your face when I mentioned him. There was something else entirely. I saw your expression and I know that you're lying._

Yami turned to stare at him with a tilt of his head. _Is that so_? he asked softly. _I was not aware that I was lying_.

 _Look, if it's nothing that matters, then fine. I don't mind if it's something you consider stupid and unimportant. It's if it matters and you don't tell me that we're going to have a problem._

The black wolf studied him for a moment, then snorted. _Is that so_? he chuckled as he turned away and began to move forward again. _I did not think that I was meant to tell you every little thing which bothers me. Whether you think something is important and I do is subjective. You have different definitions of such a thing than I do._

Yugi huffed. _That's because you're much more adept at hiding things than I am. And I have different values, I guess._ He stayed silent for a long moment and a half. _But I guess it doesn't matter at the end of the day, right_? _I mean, as long as both of us are okay…_

He stayed quiet and then nodded slightly. At the end of it all, he supposed that was truly the most important thing. Yami could not argue such a point. Yugi cared for him enough to try to make sure that he would come out of this alive and he himself was trying to ensure the same for the smaller teen. They were perhaps too focused on the other at times. It would surely explain the pack's cold shoulder towards them both. And it would explain the way Yugi tried so hard to put him ahead of himself when he did not need to. Yugi worried too much, however, and Yami would admit that he could not stand this quality about him. But he himself had more faults than he could count on both hands.

He shook himself out after a moment, turning to him again after a moment. He went to speak but the white wolf had turned to him with something almost desperate in his eyes. Yami could not tell if it was fear-based or something of another nature. But it made him bristle slightly, the snow almost blinding him for a split second as Yugi dashed ahead of him and towards the back entrance of the camp.

 _Let's go hunting. I don't think we really need to stay behind for too much longer, right_? _I mean, the alphas have all met us and I can tell the betas about the plan some other time. So it's not really important that we stay here all day, right_? He was rambling and Yami could not help but falter, eyes wide and ears flicking in bewilderment. Had he done something to make him nervous? Had he somehow set off a reaction he had not been anticipating? Perhaps his silence had set this off. He would have been likewise unhappy had someone failed to respond when he was telling them that they cared about them. He hated himself for a moment, but Yugi was dashing past him and into the snow again, ignoring him but to continue speaking. _I'm hungry, too. So maybe we should go hunting_? _What do you think_? _Are you hungry_? _I'm pretty hungry right about now_.

Yami flattened his ears against his head, moving to chase him as quickly as he could. He slowed a few steps behind him, huffing a breath out, and hurried to get to his side after a moment. But the white wolf seemed determined to ignore him, as if he were too offended or harmed by his silence that he could not find it in himself to let Yami truly join him for even a moment. He shivered and shook himself out again, flustered by such a thought. He was lost for a moment, unsure of how to fix this problem, but it did not seem that there would be any success in such a thing…

 _What do you wish to hunt_? he asked uncertainly, slowing his steps to give Yugi more distance from him. The white wolf did not slow in the slightest, however, and he wondered if he had truly hurt him in some way by staying quiet as he had. His heart ached at the thought and he hurried forward again before he could think it through. He was at Yugi's side immediately, though this did not remain so for more than a heartbeat. Yugi took a single glance at him and began to trot faster. So Yami slowed down until he was a yard or two behind him, a sense of despair creeping through him. His tail fell and his ears flattened against his head again for a moment. It took Yugi a full minute and a half to even seem to realize that he was no longer beside him. And the reaction was instant.

The white wolf stumbled, then skidded in his swift run. He spun around, eyes wide and ears pricked. His fur was bristling with alarm. And he looked rapidly back and forth before his gaze fell on the black wolf. He blinked, tilting his head, and slowly moved to approach him. _Why are you moving so slow_?

 _Why are you running as if your ass were on fire_? Yami shot back, irritable now. He shook his head sharply, ignoring the thought that perhaps he had somehow imagined Yugi's reaction from before. But something in his gut told him otherwise. And he knew that cowardice from his own ministrations of it. He knew it damn well. No one could tell him otherwise. He shook himself out, stopping a few feet away from the white wolf. Yugi looked confused for a moment, though not as if he did not know what he was saying. He seemed more perplexed by the idea that Yami was not coming to his side. The thought made him bristle faintly before he shrugged it away.

 _I do not depend on you so fully,_ he snarled before he could stop himself; Yugi's head snapped up, eyes wide and ears pricked, _that I need your assistance to catch prey. If you would rather hunt alone, then do so. I will find my own meal without your help._

 _What_? _What the hell are you going on about_? Yugi asked, somewhere between exasperation and confusion. _I didn't say I wouldn't hunt with you._

 _No, but if you are going to act as if you did not run from me moments before—_

Now the white wolf huffed. _Can we pretend that didn't just happen_? _I don't want to think about it._

Yami snorted and moved to step around him, firm and stiff-legged in his growing irritation. _Sure, why not_? he snapped. But he recognized how childish he was being and it burned at his skin beneath his coat. And his heart felt heavy in his chest for a moment. _Now what are we going to hunt_?

The question was said so quietly that Yugi appeared to strain to hear it for a brief moment. Then he sighed and turned to follow him, his pace brisk once more as he got to his side. This time when he fell in place beside him, their legs were moving at the same pace and their eyes straight ahead on the trees surrounding them. _Anything that moves_? he suggested, though his eyes were sparkling when Yami cast him a sideways glance. _I don't know. Do you want to hunt some deer_? _We could catch one of them or something._

The black wolf flicked an ear. _I don't know if we should need to._

 _Well, if even Jim was saying that you look small and scrawny…_

Yami pricked his ears forward and huffed out a breath in annoyance. _He simply wanted to challenge me._

 _And Shay too then, I suppose_? _Because he mentioned you looked exhausted as well._

He huffed again. _Really, Yugi_? _Why don't you just come out and say that you're concerned and we need to hunt deer_? he muttered, flustered. _I do not understand why you so often beat around the bush. You know that I will eventually give in. I want to get healthy again, not remain wasted muscle like this._

 _Really_? _I would never have guessed. You always seem to ruin yourself worse than you were before,_ Yugi grunted in an annoyed tone. But then he shot him an apologetic look and Yami sighed softly with a shake of his head. _Sorry. I guess I'm just kind of rattled. I wasn't expecting them to notice that you weren't at your best and they all seemed to realize it and…and I just…_

 _You do not need to protect me from such things. And I do not require protection as it is. I can handle things for myself, Yugi. I can handle a fight between some of the wolves if they challenge me. I have done it before and in_ far _worse shape than I am in now._

Yugi growled softly, turning to him with a glare. _Yeah, but you don't_ need _to have to_! _That's not fair to anyone_!

 _But sometimes it's necessary,_ Yami argued, ignoring his look with a turn of his head to survey the trees for a moment. He scanned the branches, wondering for a heartbeat if perhaps he might see the raven there again, and it made his insides twist briefly. _Sometimes it is necessary to be challenged and to fight off others wishing to usurp you. It is not something that should be taken lightly, but it is never anything to be feared either. You worry too much about me and you forget that I survived on my own for six months before I even crossed paths with you._

Yugi bristled now. _That doesn't mean anything. You were healthier back then._

 _I was not when I immediately escaped the lab._ The black wolf looked at him for a long moment. _When I escaped, I was in worse shape than you could ever imagine. Especially after…all that had happened leading up to the events that allowed us to run. I was in much worse shape than I am now._

 _What about when you escaped the greenhouse_? _I don't think you could fall into a worse state than that._

Yami was silent for a long moment, picking his words. Yugi could not imagine the state he was in then. If he thought the feral state he had fallen into was his worst… _I suppose not,_ he finally mumbled, for he could not put into words how unstable and broken he'd been formerly. He couldn't think of that time any longer and he nearly trembled at the very idea. It was far from what he wanted to ever remember… _I was in a…_ similar _state, I would say. But not as…bad._

But Yugi heard his voice crack, shattering like ice for a brief moment. And he looked sick as he searched Yami's face for a handful of seconds. The black wolf turned away pointedly as he scrutinized him, as if burned by his eyes on him. And so Yugi forced himself to look ahead of them again. He didn't believe for a second that Yami could have been in a worse position, however. How could one be in a worse state than absolutely feral? Yugi did not think for even a second that such a thing existed.

Yami had seemed almost possessed, so hungry and scared that he'd attacked and tried to kill anything that moved around him. He could not imagine that it could be much worse. Unless he meant that he'd—

Yugi stumbled, hitting the snow as his paws crumpled beneath him. The force of the thought made his head spin, eyes wild as he considered. Then he forced himself up again, looking at Yam. The black wolf stopped a few inches in front of him, head turned and eyes curious. And, for a split second, Yugi almost wished he was human. He almost wished he could have grabbed at him and pulled him into an embrace. He wished more than ever that somehow he could have held him close. But he also realized that Yami would have recoiled from it all. He would rather flee those thoughts than recall them. And Yugi could not force him to do so without his heart potentially breaking with his as well…

So he forced the thought away, shook himself out, and offered, _I think my paws are too big._

Yami snorted so loudly that Yugi blinked in surprise. The black wolf laughed a second later, then raised a paw to push at his shoulder gently. _Or you're just a terrible runner. Such a shame, since you're perfectly built for speed._

The white wolf growled softly, playful as he glared at him. _At least I'm not incapable of functioning normally,_ he huffed. _I still consider you the most dysfunctional person I've ever met, wolf or human._

He chuckled and pressed harder into his shoulder, nearly forcing him sideways an inch. _I think it's adorable that you think I'm insulted by that. I have no qualms admitting to such a thing. I was not made to be among humans whatsoever._ But a shadow abruptly passed over his eyes and he dropped his paw into the snow again, peering at Yugi thoughtfully for a moment. Then he shook himself out again, huffing a breath, and mumbled, _Let's just find something to eat. We don't need to find deer. I'll eat a boar or serow or anything we run across._

Yugi frowned, tilting his head. _You sure_? he asked softly. _It wouldn't be hard for us to find a trace of the deer. They're overpopulated and they're normally towards the middle of the mountains when it gets so cold. It wouldn't hard to find them at all…_

 _I am aware._ Yami looked at him for a moment longer. Then he shook himself out again, pricked his ears forward, and considered him more pointedly. _But I do not think that it would be worth the task of doing so. I am fine. I will recover well enough. You don't need to worry about me so much_.

 _I want you back to full health,_ Yugi stressed, huffing and pricking his ears towards him with a shake of his head. _I want to make sure that you're completely healthy. I've lost count of how many times you've gotten hurt for_ my _sake, aibou. And I do not want you to be harmed any longer. I want you to be okay. I want you to be better than just "okay" or "well enough". I want you to be perfectly healthy again_!

The red-eyed wolf blinked at him, then looked away after a moment, as if considering what more to say and how to respond. The seconds passed, as if he were confused and unsure. He frowned and considered him for a long handful of seconds before slowly shaking his head. Then he blinked again, considerate before tilting his head after a long moment. _You worry too much._

Yugi narrowed his eyes and curled his lips back into a slight snarl. _You wouldn't do the same if it was me in your place_? _If I was the one who was unhealthy right now, you wouldn't be as worried as I am and want to see me heal_?

Yami curled his lips back to bare his teeth, leaning a small degree closer. His tail came up and his fur was ruffled along his spine and shoulders but laden too heavily with snow to truly bristle. _Of course I would._

 _Then what's the difference_?

 _You are worth the worry._

 _And you don't consider yourself to be_?

Yami blinked and pricked his ears before curling his lips back further with a small shake of his head. He wanted to lunge at him for a split second. But he did not want to truly inflict any harm. And he was not sure what he was meant to say. A part of him wished to say that he truly did not think himself worthy such a thing. Instead he shook his head and narrowed his eyes slightly. _You already know that,_ he said slowly, cautiously, feeling for a long moment that Yugi might lunge at him in turn. He looked more aggressive than Yami had truly expected but the truth of it was that he should have known. The blue-violet-eyed wolf's anger was something that always came when he said something of that magnitude. Yugi had a higher idea of his worth than Yami himself did. But he supposed the opposite could be said for them as well. Yugi was afraid of death, but Yami was not entirely sure that he believed he held much self-worth.

He shook his head after a moment and instead sighed softly. _It does not matter. I mean to say that I would be as worried about you as you are me,_ he said quietly. _But I can handle it myself, Yugi. You do not need to be worried about it as much as you are._

The white wolf shook his head, growling, and then moved to walk past him. _I know you can handle it yourself. But you often_ don't. _You have a habit of ignoring your own needs, Yami. I've seen you do it a bunch of times. And I hate that habit. You don't ask for help and you don't take care of yourself._

Yami flicked an ear. _I do not always worry as you do. It's hard to find it necessary to take such care of myself when I care more about you than I do me,_ he said reluctantly. _But I know my own physical and mental limitations and I can judge by that alone if I have to._

 _But you shouldn't have to. And I don't want you to do that when you're allowing yourself to stay unhealthy for no reason other than you can._ Yugi huffed loudly, shaking his head and glaring at him. _You should care about yourself more than you do. And I don't understand why you don't._

 _And I do not understand why you don't understand,_ Yami returned dismissively. He ignored the sideways glance Yugi cast him and shook himself out rather lazily. _You are similar in your priorities. So I do not understand how it is that you're judging me right now._

Yugi blinked. _I'm not judging. I'm…_ He bore his teeth and growled softly. _Look, Yami, you shouldn't neglect yourself just because you know your limitations. You shouldn't bank on that and ignore the fact that you need recovery at times too._

 _Are you telling me that you've never put me ahead of yourself at one point or another_? _Or that you've never put your friends ahead of yourself_? _I know for a fact that you have. I know you too well to think for even a moment that you could say otherwise._

 _I have, but it's not for prolonged periods of time._ He hesitated for a moment, then flattened his ears. _It's usually in the moment, not for days on end. And you've done it for days, Yami. It's not the same at all to say that our situations are similar._

Yami huffed. _It does not change the fact that you tend to do such a thing as well. Regardless of the time we spend doing it, the fact remains. It is something we both do. So you cannot exclude yourself from it._ He fell quiet after a moment, glancing at him sideways. _I did not imagine you to be hypocritical in such a manner, Yugi._

He grunted in turn, giving him an annoyed look. _You're right. I'm not hypocritical. But maybe we both need to stop doing it, agreed_? _Maybe it would be better for us to simply apply this to both of us…_

 _I don't honestly believe that either of us could do that. Not only is it part of our core personalities, but wolves are naturally this loyal._ Yami stayed quiet for a moment longer, then shook his head slowly and turned to consider Yugi. He shivered and looked away almost immediately again, however, heart lurching as he considered. _You are much more giving than I am, however. I do not imagine I would do such a thing for someone unless I cared for them much more than I did others. I cannot bring myself to sacrifice myself for anyone else._

Yugi pricked his ears forward, startled. _I don't want you to sacrifice yourself for me._

 _And yet it should be okay for you to do so for me_?

 _I…_ He faltered. _I…I don't want to see anyone else hurt. I would rather be the one hurt than see someone else wounded._ _I… Y-you have to feel the same if you'd do that for me, though_! _R-right_?

Yami blinked at him, surprised by the desperation in his tone. _I do. I would rather keep you from feeling any pain._ He paused. _But you are also overlooking the fact that you are Atem. Your being Atem means that I should be careful of what happens to you. You coming back to life would be a disaster._

Yugi shuddered beside him, a shadow passing over his face and making his eyes darken drastically. He flattened his ears against his head. _Have you ever seen someone come back to life_? he asked softly, searching his face for a moment. _It's one of the most painful things you can ever witness, Yami._

He looked him over, then turned away and pricked his ears forward. _I have no doubt that it's horrifying._

 _No, Yami, it's_ heartbreaking. _It's not just "horrifying". It's absolutely heartbreaking._ He shook his head, looking away. _And you're lucky that you've never seen it before, Yami. It's…devastating._

The black wolf watched him for a moment, then turned away, voice wry as he murmured, _So I guess you're aware that I lied before, hmm_? He eyed him sideways when Yugi blinked and raised his head, peering at him with a confused expression. _You didn't believe me when I said that I'd come back after the greenhouse event when that hunter trapped us. I figured it would be easier if I told you I was just a Full-Blood from then on._

Yugi blinked at him, then shook his head. _I don't care if you're a Pure-Blood or a Full-Blood or just a Half-Blood. I care about you, not what class of lycanthrope you are._ He hesitated. _I don't want to see you in unnecessary pain. And coming back from death is… It looks excruciating._

Yami was quiet for a moment. _It is. It is excruciating._ He paused. _But I would imagine seeing it would be just as painful as going through it._

Yugi was shaking when he nodded and looked away, heart pounding as he shook his head a moment later. _I don't ever want to see it happen again, Yami._ He trembled harder a moment later, flattening his ears. _It was horrifying the first time and it was devastating the second._


	75. Others

**Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh**

 **Update schedule: Hopefully biweekly**

 **Chapter Warnings: Slight Puzzleshipping, Angst, Mention of Sacrifices, Guns, Poison/Tranquilizers, Mild Violence, Death, Threats, Mentions of Self-Harm**

 **Sorry for the long wait. Clearly I'm a liar. I said I might be back on schedule and I so wasn't. Novemeber turned out to be super exhausting. And I already know December is going to be sporadic (at best) if there are any updates for the story. Work is kind of crazy again. Sorry for that. It didn't help that the chapter basically had to be rewritten which also made it a million times longer. So hopefully that makes up for the lack of updates from before.**

 **Anyways! Self-harm references Yami. Nothing graphic. I just thought I'd put a warning in.**

Chapter LXXV: Others

 _Work Log Entry LXVII: September, 2008 (Part I)_

 _September 5_

 _The pack of wolves is being recorded._

 _The information goes as follows:_

 _The youngest are a year apart, the hellhound a year older and the lycanthrope younger. The hellhound is predictably nastier than the smaller male is, but for now she seems devoted to him. Neither has changed for the moment but the boss is wondering if somehow they might have pair bonded._

 _The alphas are clearly the lycanthrope's parents. They seem to be closely bonded, more so than usual for most alphas. The boss wishes to test the limits of this bond; experiments are to be performed in a matter of days._

 _The two yearlings are to be tested for rate of healing, blood pressure, and various things of that nature. They are to be given the usual trials before they are to be considered true specimens for testing._

"Do you want to come with me?"

The question was said so hesitantly that Yami almost did not believe it was directed towards him. Had it not been for the fact that they were the only two in the room, he might have thought otherwise completely. But then he blinked, thoughts still caught on blood types and transfusions. He had been playing with the textbook sitting in front of him for over an hour now, reading about the way humans reacted to blood they were given negatively at times. So far, he had not read anything regarding the blood of canines, but the textbook was about human anatomy and so he had not truly suspected it would say anything on the matter.

Yami looked up now, still considering the blood types that canines might have. He tilted his head, confused and bewildered as he looked at him. He shut the book in his hands slowly so as not to make too much noise, and wondered if he truly should have cared as much as he did. "Go with you? Where would we be going?"

Yugi blinked, then raised a brow slowly. He frowned, tilting his head to mirror Yami's quizzical expression. "You weren't listening?" he muttered in something of a dubious tone. And Yami guessed he could understand his bewilderment at the moment, as he had hardly ever failed to listen to him before. Usually, should Yugi speak, Yami paid him absolute attention. But even now his mind was whirling. He kept wondering about blood types, if wolves might ever have similar reactions…

What if he and Yugi needed to do something of that magnitude down the road? Did they have the same blood type? Did it matter if they didn't? Yami was not even sure he'd had the same as his cage mate and he'd survived it when Yami had let him drink his blood. Perhaps drinking was not the same as a blood transplant, but in theory it should have destroyed him had it been a factor, right? They hadn't even been the same classification of werewolf. If it was something that mattered between the two of them, how was it that he had healed from it so easily? Yami sank his nails into the hardcover of the textbook, blinking up at Yugi again.

"You okay? You look really distracted."

"I'm fine. I'm kind of tired but I'm fine."

Yugi smiled at him slightly now, eyes softening. "Kind of tired, huh? Then, I guess you can stay here and I'll go on my own. Take a nap and rest a little, okay?"

Yami rolled his eyes. "Kind of tired does not imply that I need rest. It means that I'm either bored or frustrated from my inability to change my thought process. It's the latter, since I can see you are about to ask." He hesitated for a moment, studying him for all of a heartbeat before looking away. Yugi didn't seem upset with the snide remark but Yami's fingernails still sunk further into the book cover with mounting tension. "Where was it you wished to go?"

And just like that Yugi took his silent warning to ignore his curiosity and answer him instead. Yami swore to the gods that were it possible he would have given Yugi the world for this simplistic mercy. And he did not think for even a moment that Yugi understood the immensity of the relief he'd bestowed upon him.

"I wanted to go into the woods for a little while. I didn't want to hunt or anything…" Yugi seemed to be debating his words now. His eyes narrowed faintly, his lips tugging downward into a small frown as he considered his response. "Honestly, now that I'm thinking about it, I don't really think you'll want to come with me…"

Yami blinked. Then he raised his head and looked over at him in confusion. He furrowed his brows and studied him curiously, tilting his head slowly to the side and narrowing his eyes. Had he truly just said that?

"I wasn't going to change and I know you don't really like to wear layers."

"They are restricting should I need to move fast."

Yugi nodded and looked away, kicking his legs lazily over the side of the bed. He shook his head slightly and smiled minutely. "Right. But if we go where I'm thinking, we'll need to wear more clothes to properly camouflage. I don't want someone to see me wearing a shirt and pants and a light hoodie in weather that would make almost everyone else wear more clothing."

Yami blinked. " _Almost_ everyone?"

Yugi was quiet for a moment, clearly struggling to determine how he should tell him. He frowned, reaching down to scratch at his wrist, and looked at him with a considerate expression. "Jonouchi used to…not be able to afford heavier jackets so sometimes he would just wear a loose hoodie with fleece insides and a couple of shirts beneath. It made him look odd but he was always warm like that. And no one ever really questioned it. But that was mostly because they knew about his living situation."

"His living situation is poor?"

That would explain his desire to hide himself within the ranks of the pack then, Yami supposed. It made sense that he would desire to linger and hide there rather than return home. It was so much easier to escape and ignore things if they could simply abandon them when they felt it necessary. Fleeing from the things that upset you was something that Yami was admittedly all too familiar with.

"His dad is abusive," Yugi said in a much quieter tone, as if he were unsure he should explain this. He was watching Yami from the corner of his eye, however, with an expression to his face that almost seemed pleading for the briefest of moments. He wondered if he meant to warn him away from saying something to anyone else. But Yami could not tell. Surely Yugi knew he was not one to spill another's secrets.

And who might he tell them to anyways? The one person he spent time with already knew.

"It started emotionally when his sister was kidnapped and his mother got a divorce. His dad would get drunk and lash out verbally. When he was fourteen…it became physical. It was a random outburst that his dad had and the incident wasn't repeated when he saw Jonouchi badly beaten up and bleeding from a head wound. But he's gotten worse. I think he found out…about Shizuka, I mean. Because all of the sudden he's a lot worse than he has been in years."

"Why does Jonouchi put up with it? A drunk man is not hard to overpower."

"But when that man is your father, Yami?"

Yami was silent for a long moment. A memory threatened to stir in the back of his mind and he shrugged it away with a snarl. The outburst made Yugi stiffen, but Yami simply reached up to rub at his temples and ignored him for a moment. He closed his eyes, ignoring the pain that seemed to throb in them. He drew in a deep breath and shook his head slowly.

"No, I suppose it would be harder to do so when they are someone you are meant to be close to."

Yugi sat up the smallest bit, staring at him more pointedly. "Have you ever had to fight someone you love, Yami?" he asked curiously, but his voice was also gentle and quiet. "It's not easy by any stretch."

It was a tempting piece of bait. And, had Yami not been so acutely aware of it, he surely would have fallen for it. But he had been ready for that question; Yugi had asked just before if he knew what it was like to see someone die and come back. And so he could not be surprised now. He looked back at him with a tilted head, studying him in turn. "No. I have not." He ignored the way Yugi seemed to deflate at the harsh tone in his voice, clearly recognizing his choice to deflect the question entirely. He nodded slightly, frowning, and Yami closed his eyes. "I suppose I have been lucky for that."

"Yeah." Yugi sounded almost breathless. Had it not been for the fact that he cleared his throat Yami would have opened his eyes to see if he was okay. But the boy was on his feet again almost immediately after, dusting himself off when Yami turned his attention back to him. "Well, anyways, I guess I'll grab our clothes and we can get dressed. Uh…if you still want to go, that is?"

Yami nodded. "Yes, I will accompany you. I do not know why I should fail to do so. I am not so tired as to need rest," he murmured quietly. "And I have nothing better to do."

Yugi studied him with an expression that Yami could only describe as skeptical. But the moment they locked eyes, Yugi turned away again and wandered off for the chest of drawers. Yami listened to him pull the drawers out, sorting through some of the clothes inside.

"I wonder if maybe we should layer you up just to be on the safe side," he commented softly, pulling out a darker tank top and moving to put it on top of the dresser. He seemed to consider it for a moment before shaking his head slowly. "I don't think we'll have to change so I don't think it would be a problem to do it, right? I mean, wouldn't that do better to make it seem like you're healthier? If someone saw you, if your sleeves are long enough they won't notice how small your wrists are."

Yami blinked. "I do not know of many that would wish to wander through the woods like us as it is. There is a risk of snow falling on them or any number of other things. And it is cold, as you have already once said. I do not believe for even a moment that there will be someone to follow us."

But a part of him hesitated to say these words. He did not entirely know if he could believe such a thing. Was that a truthful assessment? Humans were not the most logical creatures, in truth, no matter how much they prided themselves to the contrary. The problem was that they often overestimated and did not always think things through. Should someone go into the woods and spot them…

Yami tilted his head. "Why should it be anyone else's business if I am malnourished? It should not be anyone else's focus to begin with."

"People are nosy, aibou. It's like if someone found out that, say, we were dating or something like that"—He could have sobbed when Yami peered at him steadily in response, not the least bit flustered or upset by the suggestion—"it would be all over Domino by the end of the week. Everyone at school would know by next Monday and everyone would either be in my face about it or ask about why and when I became gay."

Yami was quiet for a moment, then nodded slowly. "And are you?" he asked, narrowing his eyes and studying him. "Gay, I mean; are you?"

Yugi felt his cheeks heat up profusely, wishing for a moment that this conversation would _truly_ lead to the thoughts forming in his head. He had imagined formerly—rather stupidly, in truth—that the confession of saying he was in love with a guy would prompt Yami to ask who. He'd admit that he adored him, and Yami would reveal the same to him. But, rather than butterflies, dread came to fill his belly.

The reality of it was far from something as stupid as one of those baited revelations he'd seen so many times on TV. And Yugi could not help but think that Yami was far too depressed and emotionally broken to ever be in such a position and find it pleasing. He was damaged. And there were far too many sharp edges that the other boy possessed.

Not only sex but relationships in general seemed to make Yami cower. But now, even as Yami watched him so steadily, Yugi could feel it just beneath his own skin. It was a burrowing sense of panic, one which penetrated his blood and fractured its way through his bones. Yami was suppressing it. He was trying to hide it away, but it was still there, scenting the air in the smallest and lightest of perfumes. Yugi almost found himself bristling in response, the unfamiliar feeling burrowing its way through him.

"I don't know? I don't think so."

"But is it a possibility?"

"I don't think 'gay' is actually the term you would use for…" He trailed off, feeling more flushed than ever. Yami was silent and considerate, curious more than anything. "I, uh… I guess bi works better?"

The red-eyed teen was silent for a long moment, wrinkling his nose and studying him. "Wolves are naturally what humans call pansexual. Or…perhaps pansexual is the closest label to be applied." He did not move for what seemed a lifetime, eyes darkening as his head snapped abruptly away to peer at the carpet. "Emotional attachments are the only way a wolf connects to someone else. But it is more akin someone adores that person regardless of history or gender or anything of that nature. They could say they've changed sexes three thousand times and it wouldn't change a wolf's opinion of them."

Yugi shivered. It sounded pure. It sounded beautiful.

But it also sounded like an absolute disaster.

"So, then…gender doesn't matter?"

"No. Gender only becomes a nuisance in terms of breeding should a couple so desire. If not for that, no one cares." Yami turned to him, humming now and tilting his head a fraction. "Wolves love without prejudice. It is most likely because of our tightly-knit communities and the loyalty we all possess for each other. But it is the truth for us."

Yugi felt his breath catch for a moment, swallowing hard and feeling winded with a brief surge of hope. If he could put a label to it, then it could be explained more easily, right? "Do you think that's the same for me?" he asked finally, quietly.

"I would not know." Yami's eyes narrowed and he tilted his head at him. "But I do not know who it is that you care for. The last I knew of it, you had feelings for Anzu. You said it would not work out, but you did not say you had moved past these feelings."

Yugi opened his mouth to answer him, then stopped short. Abrupt and startling clarity came through him, crashing painfully in his veins. He felt his legs nearly buckle beneath him, eyes wide and stomach churning. The air was knocked from his lungs and he almost collapsed as the immensity of it nearly knocked him away.

Yami knew.

Yami _knew_.

The red-eyed teen was all too aware.

And he was _okay_ with it.

Yugi wanted to collapse once more.

But Yami was not going to act on it. He would not allow him a chance to, either. And he would not force Yugi to say it if he did not wish to. And, in return, he expected the courtesy that Yugi himself would not mention it. And he expected that Yugi would not probe at such a thing on his side of the equation either in this uneven spectrum they were on.

"Oh…"

Yami nodded the smallest fraction, turning away. He dusted himself off, as if to dismiss the discussion entirely. Then he shrugged and picked up the textbook to put it aside atop the dresser next to the tank top. He did not seem nervous, Yugi noted, but he did appear guarded in the way he refused to look at him again for several long heartbeats. Yugi wondered if he was trying to think of a response, if he wanted to let him down gently. But that unspoken promise not to call him out on his affections stated otherwise. And Yugi realized it was not this which upset him. It was something else entirely.

And Yugi wondered briefly if he was thinking about his cage mate again. Had the green-eyed wolf adored him so? Was that what had happened? Was _that_ the truth of it? He'd forced the mating bond, he'd said. He had loved him in a manner that Yugi himself could never touch. He could not compare it in any way to what he felt for him. And he knew that more than he could ever admit.

He knew it and understood. But it did not make him any less nervous.

Yami had said he'd had a mate.

But he'd also said they had been female.

The problem was, however, that Yugi was aware of his capacity to lie so pointedly. He gave a crumb of what Yugi desired, as if to keep him busy and distracted from the questions he truly wished answered. He tried his hardest to keep Yugi off balance. He would spin the conversation away, shove the topic aside entirely. The realization made his belly ache for a long moment.

But it was not as if the green-eyed wolf had not admitted that he'd forced the bond between them. And it was not as if he had not said Yami had been terrified afterwards, that he'd immediately recognized and known what had happened. Yugi could easily imagine Yami lying in order to keep his head above water, saying that his mate had been female instead. He could easily see him trying to suppress his memories by doing so, as well as trying to push Yugi's affections away without acknowledging them.

"So, uh, what do you think then? Should we dress you up a little more than we usually would?" he asked quietly, smiling and tilting his head. "We won't put too much on you, just enough that it looks like you're a little less emaciated than you really _are_."

Yami frowned at him, shaking his head the smallest degree. "Very well," he relented calmly, sighing and looking away. "I suppose I should be grateful for the idea of such camouflage. It would not do me well to ignore the necessity of such a thing."

"Is that so?" Yugi mumbled. He was still thinking about the green-eyed wolf and a muzzle splashed with cinnamon and deeper brown. He was thinking of a tawny undercoat and long white legs. He shook his head to dismiss the image and flicked his fingers in order to ignore the mounting distress coming over him. This was not an easy topic for him to broach, even in small handfuls of scarce thoughts. "I mean, if you agree, then I don't think you'd have to wear more than three tank tops at the most, maybe one t-shirt on top of that. And then with the jacket on top, we'll zip it halfway and it'll look like you're all good and healthy."

Yami nodded slightly. But he still seemed rather skeptical, perhaps unsure and annoyed with the thought of wearing so much. Yugi wondered if he would have been similar were he human, if he'd be against multiple layers of clothing then as well. He supposed it didn't matter, however. Yami wasn't human; he was a wolf even when he wore his human skin. "If you say so," the red-eyed teen mumbled.

"Well, I do, so suck it up, buttercup."

The red-eyed teen looked sideways towards him, clearly startled, and frowned the smallest degree as he shook his head slowly. "I have never heard you say that before," he mumbled.

"I usually don't. But Jonouchi said it to me recently at school and I kind of like saying it," Yugi said, flashing him a smirk. "It's kind of fun, honestly."

Yami stayed silent for a few long moments. He nodded slowly, narrowing his eyes, and turned away from him entirely. He looked as if he were struggling to speak or even to respond in any manner.

"I won't say it again."

" _Please_."

His voice sounded breathless, strained, as if he were struggling to keep his head up or to even draw air into his lungs. Yami looked visibly sick, Yugi noticed with surprise. The other boy shrugged it off after a moment, shaking his head, but his eyes were still dark and his face appeared slightly ashen in shade. Yugi wondered where it was his mind had gone, if he had backtracked so far into his memories that he no longer even recognized him at the moment.

"I won't say it anymore—promise."

Yami nodded slowly. He reached a hand up, rubbing at his temple, and Yugi watched him with a flustered feeling. He wondered if someone had said that in the labs, if Yami remembered it so acutely from there. He wondered if his cage mate had said it to him at some point as well. "Sorry. I just wasn't expecting you to say that and now I'm a little disoriented from it. Whatever. It doesn't matter. Three tank tops and a shirt over it… Why is that necessary if I am to wear a hoodie as well?"

Yugi opened his mouth, then closed it and rolled his eyes. "Well, it's still necessary just in case your body temperature _isn't_ up to par, either. You didn't listen when I said that it was for your health, too, did you? You and I both know you're not anywhere near your best. So…"

The red-eyed teen gave him an annoyed look. "You worry _far_ too much."

"Only when I care."

Yami turned back to look at the clothes in the drawer Yugi had pulled out. He glanced at the tank top atop the dresser and then looked back down again. He narrowed his eyes and shook his head the smallest degree. And then he sighed softly and closed his eyes. "Three tank tops and a t-shirt. Right. That works."

Yugi shivered and moved to reach in for another handful of clothes. He put them in a small pile atop the chest and pulled another open to grab a regular graphic tee. He grabbed one that he put atop the others and glanced over to Yami only to find him staring rather pointedly. His red eyes bore into his, unreadable but deep with some emotion that evaded Yugi in its entirety. For a moment longer Yami studied him, then his eyes slowly lowered back to the pile of shirts. He tilted his head and reached for the clothes reluctantly.

"I do not understand why you kept these things."

Yugi startled, eyes widening. "What?"

"These clothes. After I went missing… Is it not a common human practice to discard the items that remind them of a dead friend or family member?"

"You weren't dead!"

"And how could you have known that for sure? I'm sure the gods were not helpful in your endeavors to find me. I am rather sure they also spoke of the contrary," he continued. He narrowed his eyes faintly, looking at him from his peripheral. "So, why did you not simply toss them?"

Yugi stared at him, stomach knotting and heart in his throat. "I refused to believe it. I didn't want you to be dead, so I honestly just refused to acknowledge it and… I don't lose faith in the people I care about so easily. I…"

Yami's voice had a scathing note to it now. "Do you ever fear your codependency?"

"Codependency? No, I don't fear it. I'm not…codependent." Yugi felt as if he'd been punched in the gut for a moment. He floundered, struggling to understand and pick the words he wished to say. "I'm _not_ codependent, Yami. I'm… I just don't like being alone. And I want my friends and family to be okay. Is that…is that really so wrong?"

"It's not wrong. But it causes you more stress and frustration than necessary, yes?"

Yugi blinked. "Stress and frustration are a small price to pay if I get the satisfaction of knowing that everyone I love is okay."

Yami seemed to study him for a moment longer. Then he hummed, moving to pull a tank top over his head. Yugi watched him busy himself with the fabric, smoothing it out almost as if it were more than just a sleeveless shirt. For a moment he picked at the ends as if the threads were frayed but Yugi could see he was simply nervous and so was playing with his fingers to keep from growing further flustered.

"I suppose such a thing makes sense." Yami narrowed his eyes and tapped his fingers against the dresser. "I do not know. I do not make such connections with others anymore. It only leads to more pain."

"But _I'm_ your friend."

Yami looked at him sideways, considering him for a long moment. "Yes," he agreed quietly, without much conviction. Yugi felt his heart constrict in his chest painfully. He looked skeptical, as if he were not sure of what he was saying. "You are my friend."

"But not others."

"The 'others' are all _dead_." When he turned away, it was to pull another shirt over his head and flatten it out again. He carefully avoided looking back at him, Yugi knew, but he couldn't help but think that Yami still looked _too_ terribly thin. His arms and wrists were too lanky and his frame was tiny beneath the clothes he was dressing himself in. And Yugi once again wished more than ever that he knew how to cure it.

But Yugi could not discount the fact that Yami was recovering well in every other aspect but for the physical one. His temperament was evening out again. He did not seem as if he might lash out at any moment as he had before. He did not snarl as often as he had before. His temper was still short, frayed, but he gave nasty looks more than he did anything else. Yugi had expected him to lash out more often than he had anything else. But he seemed more comfortable in his skin again, though perhaps not nearly as regal as he'd seemed when the two of them had first gotten beyond the stage of acquaintanceship.

"It is a wonder that _you_ are still alive, in truth."

Yugi flinched but did not know how to answer him in any manner. The silence between them continued even as they made it into the woods and began to trek their way towards the cemetery. Yami only knew it from the willow tree covered in inches of snow, the trunk all but frozen with the ice there. He shivered, ignoring the way the branches seemed almost to sway for a brief moment.

"Maybe we should have just tried to come out here when the snowfall began again."

Yugi looked at him over his shoulder. "You hate clothes that much?"

"I hate _layers_ of clothing. It is not as if I am prone to running about naked and dashing through the trees like some kind of ape or something. What do you call that creature, anyways? Bigfoot, I believe?"

Yugi flushed brilliantly, imagining it for a brief second and then rubbing his face with his hands with embarrassment. He really needed to get some mental help at this point; there was nothing even remotely sexual in the way Yami had said that. "Oh, yeah…him."

Yami rolled his eyes as he came to his side again. He stepped around a small headstone where it was almost completely buried beneath the snow, looking over at him sideways. He frowned slightly and considered him for a long moment. "You're straying too close to one of the graves," he mumbled, turning away again. "You'll hit one and I'll have to hear you whining about it if you keep in that direction."

Yugi laughed in delight at the jab, then shook his head. "Thanks."

"So, who was it that came up with the idea of Bigfoot anyways?" Yami sounded dismissive but somehow interested as well, and when Yugi looked over again, he had the smallest smirk on his lips. "Was there a reason he created him or was it something else entirely?"

Yugi tilted his head. "I don't know, honestly. I think it'd probably be more boredom than anything." He grinned when Yami looked at him from his peripheral with narrowed red eyes. "From what I actually know of it, someone found huge footprints, named the creature Bigfoot, and then he became a legend and they think he might be the missing link in man's evolution or something like that? I don't even know, honestly. I think when I was younger I watched a documentary that said something like that. People say that he's like seven feet tall and his existence proves that we came from apes. But then you have the people who say that their god created everyone in their image and that evolution is a hoax and then other people turn around and say evolution is all there is and religion is a lie."

Yami snorted. "It sounds more like someone just wanted attention and made up a monster for the fun of it. Bigfoot was born and they became famous for it." He laughed and shook his head, eyes bright enough with amusement that Yugi's heart skipped a beat. "That sounds more like what might have happened. But I still cannot even imagine."

"I'm sure it didn't actually go down exactly like that," Yugi snickered. He shook his head, smiling, and walked around another grave. "Besides, Bigfoot is supposed to be around six or seven feet tall. And he's supposed to have long, wide feet."

"Yes, thank you. I needed clarification on what his name might possibly mean."

Yugi rolled his eyes. He shook his head, reaching out. His fingers gripped the other boy's wrist. Yami spun on him, halting in place. His entire body was frozen beneath his fingers. Yugi drew in a small breath. Then he drew his nails into his skin and squeezed. The other boy glared at him in response.

"You're an asshole."

"I know."

Yami rolled his eyes but didn't move. Where Yugi had pinched was already white again rather than showing red with irritation. "Regardless, Bigfoot is not something I have run across. And I do not have plans to search for him. So I do not make any judgments on whether he is real or not."

"Well, you're just slacking in knowing what supernatural creatures exist, aren't you?"

Yami shot him a surprised, confused look.

"You don't even know if _vampires_ exist." Yugi flicked his wrist at him dismissively, smiling and watching as Yami gave him an affronted glance in return. "How am I supposed to let you teach me when you cannot even tell me if our _enemies_ are real or not?"

Yami curled his lip back, staring at him before making a noise of absolute disgust. He turned away from him entirely, walking again. "Enemies? Wolves and vampires? It sounds rather stupid to me," he grumbled. But his eyes shot to his again and his lip curled into a wry sneer. "I guess I'll have to check and find out if they're real if we survive this."

Yugi rolled his eyes and smiled at him brightly. When he moved closer, he pressed gently into his shoulder and lingered a moment longer than usual. Yami stiffened for a split second. But the warmth Yugi gave off was enough to send a trill through his flesh. And then a part of him recoiled. Self-preservation struck at him with sharpened claws.

Personal comfort was not something he was meant to seek.

Physical contact led most often to pain.

And he would _not_ allow himself to be trapped in such a manner.

He drew in a deep breath, preparing to answer Yugi, but the other boy cut him off with a laugh of, "You should be. Vampires are _cool_."

"You must mean temperature wise," Yami sneered. "Because I recall every clearly that you said you were not a fan of all vampires and only of Dracula."

Yugi huffed. "Shut up. Stop remembering things."

"Blame my species. We have such _perfect_ recall."

Yugi was quiet for a long minute, pausing only long enough to look over at him. His lips drew downward and Yami could see him biting the inside of his cheek. "So, do you remember what it was that happened while you were recovering? I mean, when you were at the house? After the hellhounds attacked?"

Yami blinked. "I do not try to think back on it. Am I meant to be concerned about something or other to do with it?" he asked quietly, uncertainty creeping into his voice. He swallowed hard, confused as he tilted his head and considered him with growing alarm in his bones. His blood was burning beneath his skin for a brief second and he nearly shivered as a million different fears crossed through his mind. He shoved them away, however; Yugi would not have allowed such things to happen. He would never have done something like what he was imagining… "I would _like_ to assume that you did not proceed to poke and prod at me and run experiments."

Yugi shook his head immediately, but he was smiling at the scornful sarcasm in his tone at the moment. "No, Yami, I did not poke and prod or run any experiments. I just wanted to know more about your whole…" He fell quiet for a long handful of seconds. "I just wanted to know if you knew what had happened."

Yami tilted his head. He was smirking, but a part of him felt cold and numb. "Should I be concerned, Yugi? Did you punish me because of how many times I bit you?"

"You only did that four times at the most, I think? And, besides that, you didn't even know what you were doing. One of those was also because I was showing my mom how you were biting, too, so that hardly counts."

" _How_ I was biting?"

"You muzzle-punched one arm and then bit the other."

" _Oh_." Yami nodded slowly. "That makes sense."

Yugi flashed him a smirk. "You basically broke my wrist the third time, though," he laughed, rolling his eyes. "But it was worth it. It worked out. No one else got bit. So no one was actually hurt. And you turned out okay."

Yami remained silent, turning away. "Is that so? Then, I suppose you should remind yourself of that sooner rather than later and remember that I often recover when it is assumed I am rendered unable to."

Yugi seemed to flinch visibly in the corner of his eye but Yami refused to look towards him. "Well, I'm so fucking sorry for trying to help my friend," he said in something of a bitter and hateful tone. But then he looked over at him, face momentarily distressed. "I mean, you're free to tell me to back off at any rate. You…you know that…right?"

"Hmm? Yes, of course I do." Yami blinked and tilted his head. His eyes scanned Yugi's face for a moment, studying and finding only mounting insecurity in his features. "I am very well aware of the fact that should I so desire it, you will back off at any moment."

"Okay… Good."

Yami studied him for a long moment. Then he smiled, nodding slightly in something almost dismissive, and frowned. "I am well aware of your policy. If you recall, I have asked you honor it several times and you have always done so…" He hesitated for a moment. "Thank you for that."

The smaller teen smiled, nodding almost vigorously. "Of course! I don't want you to feel uncomfortable around me." _Or more uncomfortable than you already are, actually,_ Yugi seemed to add. Yami wondered if he was so insecure at the moment because he was feeding off his emotional stance now. He shivered and his skin crawled for a brief moment. And he wondered more than ever if he himself made Yugi uncomfortable in any manner as well.

And he knew he did not do well at times to help him feel otherwise. The problem was predominantly that he did not understand his own emotional stance as well. He could not often understand what it was that threw him off or made him uncomfortable. And he felt sick and weak for a split second.

It did not help either that at times he remembered Yugi's burning into his too intensely to be ignored or the way he could smell his arousal or his growing excitement. And it made him scornful and frustrated. And he knew that his relapse into these thoughts only highlighted further his growing inability to forgive. No doubt Yugi could sense the various great and many grudges that he harbored so close to his heart.

No wonder there were so many insecurities Yugi possessed and portrayed in front of him. No wonder he always seemed to walk on egg shells around him in order to keep from provoking his ire or startling him into an aggressive state.

"I do not feel uncomfortable with you, Yugi," Yami said with a small shake of his head. Yugi was watching him with slightly widened eyes now, as if he were unsure of what Yami was truly saying at the moment. "I enjoy your company. If I did not I would never have chosen to remain with or around you."

Yugi furrowed his brows, clearly flummoxed by the sudden admission. He tilted his head, watching him. "I know that. I just… I also know that sometimes I overstep, though. I have a tendency to do that, actually—w-where you're concerned, anyways. So, I just figured I would…" He shook his head and Yami felt the smallest sliver of panic trail up his spine for a split second. "I guess it doesn't matter, though, right? I just want you to feel as comfortable as possible. And if you ever feel otherwise, then you can tell me."

"I do not believe you have much to worry about then, do you? You can trust me to tell you something you have done has upset me in some manner."

Yugi was quiet for a moment and Yami picked his way around another gravestone. He shivered, considering them for a moment, and wondered only briefly if, when he died, he'd have one of his own. But he highly doubted it. It was not as if the gods were so willing to do such a thing for him and he did not believe for even a second that he was so tied to the human world that it might happen. He'd likely die as a wolf, if he were honest with himself. There was no reason he wouldn't.

"You think so?"

Yami startled at the sudden statement. He turned to Yugi but the small teen was staring at the snow rather than looking towards him. His eyes were narrowed, his mouth pulled into a deep frown. And he seemed almost flustered rather than upset, but his tone was frustrated more than anything. And Yami wondered with slight pain in his gut if he had spoken out loud.

"Do you honestly think you'll always tell me, Yami? You tend to stay quiet when you're upset." His eyes narrowed further and he stepped away from him to dodge another gravestone, but this time he didn't return to his side as he normally would. "You tend to try to ignore me when you're upset. You don't usually explain yourself until we're already fighting, because fighting is the only time I can get you to admit to being upset. And I can _never_ fully trust you to tell me what's actually upsetting you, because you think too hard when you give me answers. You bide your time so that you know the best way to respond to what I'm telling or asking you. And by then you've almost completely withdrawn."

Yami faltered a step, staring at him for a moment. Then he struggled, mind rushing and his thoughts crossing a territory that almost winded him. He swallowed hard, voice smothered for a brief moment, then managed to mumble, "Or I might ask you to change the subject."

Yugi nodded slightly, but his lips twisted into a grimace and he was looking at him with an expression of flustered annoyance for all of a brief moment. "You've only done that a couple of times," he pointed out slowly, clearly struggling to keep his voice from growing annoyed as well. "I'd like to _think_ I don't tend to make you uncomfortable, but—"

Yami bristled now, narrowing his eyes as his voice grew cold. "Do you think that I would remain so close to you if I did not—?"

"Yes." Yugi said it with such certainty that Yami almost tripped over himself. He froze there, eyes widening, lips threatening to peel back into a snarl, and then narrowed his gaze as they stared at each other. Yugi shook his head and sighed softly. "I think that you _would_ stay near me if it could keep you hidden. I think you know that the labs are looking for you just as much as they are me and you're scared enough that you'd stay with someone if it meant that it made you feel a little safer. If it meant that you were protected, even for such a limited amount of time, you'd definitely do it. I'm not stupid, Yami. You're scared and you're driven by self-preservation. And if it comes down to it, even if I'm your friend, you'll do what you need to save yourself before you will me. And that _includes_ using me and my family as camouflage."

Yami recoiled, heart in his throat and stomach rolling with pain for a brief moment. He opened and closed his mouth twice, struggling to find something to say to counter his statement. But Yugi was right. Despite everything that Yami wished, he couldn't argue him that. It was an insult to them both should he try to deny it. So he simply lowered his eyes and stood there for a moment, sorting through various responses he knew he couldn't make.

But nothing he was thinking was anything he could say. Even when he opened his mouth again, nothing would come and he found himself swallowing hard and narrowing his eyes once more.

"I'm not upset about it, Yami." The words were spoken so softly that had Yami not known Yugi, he would have thought he was threatening him. But the smaller boy got louder when he was upset, while Yami did the opposite. Silence was far deadlier in the grand scheme of things, and he was nastier when someone didn't know to prepare for his anger… "It's okay. I would do the same thing in your place. I mean, technically, if you think about it, I kind of already am, considering. I mean…"

A cold chill ran down his spine as he slowly looked over. They locked eyes and his mouth twitched with the beginnings of a snarl before he stopped himself. He drew in a deep breath, narrowing his eyes. "And, yet, you know why I'm hiding."

"Yes." Yugi's voice changed, becoming colder, and his eyes flashed with something Yami couldn't quite read. "I know exactly why."

Yami fell silent for a long handful of seconds. His lungs were constricting in his chest and his heart was too tightly jammed in his throat to speak. He shifted his weight, tugging on the ends of his sleeves, and finally he forced himself to mumble, "I'm sorry, Yugi." But he doubted the words did anything for him and his heart lurched again. He swallowed hard, looking away and clenching his jaw. The apology was so dry and pathetic and a sense of panic welled up inside of him. Yugi knew about that and yet he had let him stay there. How soon would that change? How long had Yugi known? And how long would it take for him to turn around and lash out to drive him away? "I did not mean to use you in such a manner. I just… I wanted to… I don't know. I don't know what it is that I used to want anymore."

Yugi opened his mouth to answer him, he noticed from the corner of his eye, but he did not speak for a long moment. Instead he turned away and continued to walk. Yami felt an abrupt sense of abandonment, one which shook him so hard to his core that he spun on him with a snarl.

Yugi startled visibly, jerking around with wide eyes. His mouth was half-open, eyes wide with confusion.

"But you _do_ believe me when I say that I care about you? That I did not fabricate our friendship?" He was snarling so low in his throat that he could barely breathe, entire frame shaking finely as he spat at him. "You know that I did not _mean_ to bring this kind of thing to you or your family or—?"

"Whoa, whoa, what? Yami—aibou, _wait a second_! Relax a moment," Yugi answered, eyes wide and stunned. He held his hands up as if to show him that he didn't have any weapons, that he meant no harm, and Yami bristled further. "I know all of that. You don't need to worry so much about that. It's _okay_. I promise. It's fine. I know that you didn't mean for any of this to happen. And I don't hold it against you that it did—"

"But _why not_?" he snarled now, despair giving way to a rage that he had not known himself to possess before. He felt his shoulders rising with his anger and his lips curled back to show each of his teeth. "It _is_ my fucking fault. Several of your classmates have been murdered and mutilated. Your _best friend_ was almost killed. The pack is fighting and murdering each other. The hunters have their eyes on _you_. Your hallucinations and night terrors are getting worse than ever. You constantly have to worry about me. You—"

"I don't _have_ to worry about you. I _choose_ to," Yugi said in a quieter, gentler voice. Yami shook harder at the declaration and Yugi tilted his head as he watched him with soft eyes. "You're my friend, Yami. I worry about you because I care. I don't have to care. But I _do_. I care about you a lot. And it's not like it's a burden to—"

"No? You don't consider it that?" Yami sneered, hands shaking hard enough that he couldn't grip at his hoodie like he'd been trying to a second ago. "You had to hide everything from your friends and family and even now you're _still_ trying to protect me—"

Yugi moved too quickly for him to respond. His hand was outstretched, pressing gently into his mouth to smother his response. His eyes had grown hard, glittering with anger, and his jaw was set. He looked _livid_ , his cheeks slightly flushed with his anger. Yami stared back at him for a moment, too startled to react, but he noticed that Yugi was not entirely paying him attention. He was glaring at him, yes, but his head was tilted slightly towards the ground as if he were listening to something. And then, abruptly, he pulled his hand away and shot him a look that said they would have to finish their conversation another time.

Yami hesitated for a moment. He awkwardly reached for his hand where it was hovering, for a split second wrapping his fingers around his wrist. But Yugi startled as if he'd been struck, eyes wide and locked on his hand, and Yami dropped it quickly to his side again. The shaking had gone away, but he swore his bones were trembling beneath his skin now.

"I think it's just Jonouchi and Otogi further in the woods," Yugi said softly, explaining rather gently why he'd grabbed him like that. But Yami hardly cared; he could hear them now too. They were chatting about something that he couldn't quite catch, but it still made him almost bristle. "That's so weird, though. I didn't think they would _want_ to be around each other at any point. Jonouchi tends to be kind of possessive and jealous and he has a _huge_ thing for Mai, so I honestly can't even imagine him wanting to spend time with the guy Mai is having sex with."

Yami was quiet for a brief moment. "Is that why he seems to avoid him so often?" he mumbled, looking in the direction he could hear them coming. They were not visible yet, but the stillness of the cold air helped their voices carry if only slightly. "But they're further back. I don't think they could have heard what we were saying."

"I don't want to risk it."

"You mean to say that you do not care to hear me say it."

"That too."

Yami shook his head after a moment. Playing at the game of avoidance might not be bad for them for the time being. In truth he did not even want to consider what he had been about to say. And he was sure that Yugi did not want to have this argument again. Whether he saw it as burdensome or not was his own choice; just as it was Yami's to see it as such. Why he constantly picked such fights with him was something that he did not wish to answer, either, if only for the fact that he would again have to admit to the pressure of the trauma that still so often came over him. He didn't want to think of his own night terrors or the various oncoming hallucinations that he could usually blink away if he tried hard enough…

"What? What's wrong?" Yugi asked suddenly beside him. Yami blinked, looking slowly away from a pile of misplaced snow to face him with a small frown. "Why do you look so upset again?"

Yami blinked and looked around again for a moment. He had not considered it before then, but now his stomach lurched and twisted and the realization settled more pointedly in his bones. He swallowed hard, then looked at the snow. It was either a trap or a hellhound had truly tried to dig up some food from this grave… "I just… I was here before, Yugi. Do you remember that day that you and I woke from that night terror? I had clawed my arms open again, you woke me, and I fled from the house for a few hours?"

Yugi took a moment to recall, then frowned at him in puzzlement. "Yes."

Yami could feel a familiar sense of exhaustion creeping through him like shadows across the snow. He closed his eyes, shook his head, and sighed softly. "That day, I ran out here. There was an empty grave in one of the plots. A hellhound was probably eating whatever corpse had been in there." He still felt no loyalty towards the other subspecies. Hellhounds were often stupid and foolish and chaotic. And he doubted one would save him should he be in similar danger. "But, regardless, we need to be careful. It would be wise not to draw attention. Someone might still be watching this area."

"The hellhound got caught?"

"Would I be telling you otherwise?"

Yugi was quiet for a moment, then shook his head. "No." Yami noticed him cast a careful glance around the snow-laden area once more. And he knew that Yugi could hear Jonouchi and Otogi coming through the trees, slowly but surely getting closer to them. They were still far away enough that they should have been deaf to their conversation, however. "Think they were after them so that they could try to reactivate the poison gene in them, too?"

"I would believe that they were doing _something_ with them beyond trying to breed them and pit them against the lycanthropes to test their strength in the labs."

"Is that what they were actually breeding them for?"

"They tried to make an army," Yami said slowly, turning to him, "for Atem to test his teeth on."

Yugi grimaced, then shivered and wiped his hands on his jeans as if it might somehow offer comfort. He shook his head the smallest degree. "That's disgusting." But he seemed to lose his ability to speak for a split second. He looked as if he were lost in his own thoughts now, eyes growing dim as he remembered or considered something that Yami himself was not.

"The experiments in general were disgusting as well."

Yugi nodded and shivered again, then looked away with a curled lip. "Well, then I guess we'll have to be as quiet and aware as possible. We don't want to have any issues with someone potentially getting caught."

"I am warning you because I do not think that Jonouchi has ever had someone try to aim a gun at him or try to capture him in general. You will have to watch for him. I am not worried about Otogi. He has been in these mountains for a while now, I am sure, so I do not believe for even a moment that he will have trouble escaping should it come down to it."

Yugi nodded again. "Right… Good call."

Yami turned away from him, looking towards the trees over his shoulder. There was nothing there to be seen, but he swore there seemed to be a shadow of some kind in the darkness. It made him bristle and he almost bore his teeth in growing annoyance. Was he seeing things? Was he so terribly paranoid? It was not uncommon for wolves to be stricken with bouts of such. It was a warning mechanism, a defense that one should be wise to never ignore in any capacity. But he could not harness this alone when he knew just as well that he was unnerved simply due to the capture of the hellhound formerly.

"Hey, Yugi!" The cheerful voice made Yami turn his head. He was bristling, eyes narrowed as a small trail of ice coursed up his spine. "What's up?"

There was an awkward moment of disconcerting bewilderment on Yugi's behalf. The small teen blinked a few times, furrowing his brows, and tilted his head a fraction. He seemed far more puzzled than he did angry, but Yami swore he could sense his growing ire and it made him nearly flinch.

"And Yami—I almost didn't see you there."

Yugi bristled visibly now but Yami simply blinked. "That's understandable, I suppose." When Yugi glanced towards him in surprise, the red-eyed teen smirked. "I've been told I'm far too skinny for my own good. If I were to turn sideways, one would never be able to see me."

Yugi snorted. "I never said that."

"I know. But unless I am so small," he said with a miniscule smirk, "then I shall never believe myself to be in such a predicament as to be too incredibly underweight."

Otogi snickered, smiling at him. "How much do you think you actually weigh?" he asked, tilting his head. But when Yami looked towards him, he dipped his head in a more respectful greeting. The red-eyed teen ignored this, however, smiling at him for a long moment.

"So very little it would be possible for you to bench press me with your pinkie." He smirked wider, shaking his head, as Yugi burst out laughing and Jonouchi stiffened with momentary surprise. "I do not suppose it truly matters. I will gain weight soon enough. It should not require too much to do so."

Otogi shook his head. "I don't think it'll take too long either. You should be able to do it pretty easily." He opened and closed his mouth after a long second, then shrugged and glanced at Yugi with something almost uncomfortable. His eyes flickered back to Yami before locking on the smaller teen once more. "What were you guys doing out here? I figured it must be important if you're both out and about like this."

Jonouchi was watching him with a curious expression. "You look kind of…odd."

" _Jonouchi_ ," Yugi hissed. His eyes were sharp and cold and his lips were curled into a small snarl. He shook his head angrily and Yami almost growled under his breath with growing distress. Yugi's tension was setting him on edge, making his skin crawl and his stomach churn. He swallowed hard, glancing between them briefly for a single moment. "What the hell?"

Jonouchi flushed bright red with momentary embarrassment. Then he rolled his eyes and shot Yugi an annoyed glance. "I was just pointing it out, okay?" But his expression was mildly sheepish when he turned to Yami again, hesitating. "I…I was just curious."

Yami tilted his head, ignoring the urge to sneer at him and making his voice lighter for a brief moment. "It could be the multiple shirts I happen to be wearing at the moment. I have four tank tops on and a shirt atop them beneath this jacket. So it could very simply be that." He fell silent after a moment. And he wished more than ever that Yugi was not glaring at his best friend with such clear anger in his eyes. He fiddled with the zipper, jingling it just loudly enough that it reached his ears. "I don't know what else could make me seem odd."

But he knew. It wasn't the clothing. Jonouchi had not even _noticed_ the multiple layers. He had simply said it, staring straight at him with an expression that only infuriated him more. He had been watching his face, studying his gaze. He had meant his eyes, the insistence from the pack that he was a hellhound, that no lycanthrope could have a gaze the shade that he did.

Yami could feel hatred so strongly in his blood that he almost reached out and smacked him hard enough that he'd see stars. It was the first instinct he felt. But then he blinked, forcing himself to calm if only slightly. He breathed out evenly, eyes cold as he watched him in turn.

He was challenging him, he realized with only the smallest touch of surprise. Jonouchi was truly attempting to fight him at the moment, if only to see if Yami might lash out at him. He wanted to see if he would lose his temper, if he would attack him. And then he could look at Yugi and call him dangerous, could say that he was a threat.

He wanted, too, to see if Yugi would defend him against him. He wanted to see who would come out on top where Yugi's loyalty was concerned. The thought made him bristle and he swallowed the snarl that threatened to bubble up. He'd _lose_. Yami was sure of it. He would _lose_ when it came to Yugi's loyalty. He was second to Jonouchi or Honda or Anzu; he had to be. He had known them first. And Yugi so often shielded any information about them from him as well as he did his from them. In truth, Yami did not think he knew much of anything about any of them and the thought was enough to make him feel small and weak.

Yugi had equally isolated his friends and Yami from each other. In the end of it all, Yami was basically Yugi's friend and alpha. But Jonouchi, Honda and Anzu were his _best friends_. There was a clear divide between them, as if Yugi were trying to hide the existence of them from each other. And the thought exhausted him for a long moment. Did Yugi even understand that he had done that? And was it to protect them from each other?

Or was it for his own ignorance and bliss? If he could keep the two divided, then that meant little mess or clean up. It meant that Yugi could pretend to be as human as he wished he was. He could pretend to be more normal.

And that was something Yami could not touch in the slightest.

It was as if Jonouchi, Honda, and Anzu served as his friends in the day and Yami at night. It was like they served as his sun but Yami was his moon. They were separated with precision and it was daunting to even consider. Yugi had worked hard to do that, Yami realized. And he felt sick now.

Who _was_ Yugi trying to protect?

Himself or Yami or his best friends?

"I do not think it matters so much that I look different today. It is meaningless."

Yugi was watching them both, eyes sharp and cold with growing tension. But he shot Yami a skeptical look, as if he sensed what Jonouchi was doing as well. "I guess so," he mumbled in turn, eyes on the blond once more.

"No, nothing is wrong," the red-eyed teen said after a moment, turning to Otogi and offering him a weak smile that was rancid with tension. He was amazed he was not grimacing at him. But he'd learned to make facial expressions when he was younger, to shield himself behind them and pretend that things were okay. Rotting on the inside did not need to be announced to onlookers. It was as simple as that. "We came out here for a walk. I was getting restless and Yugi decided to accompany me."

"So…he basically had to walk you?" Jonouchi cocked a brow, grinning slyly. He tilted his head a fraction and Yami almost bristled with annoyance. "Is that what you're saying?"

" _Seriously_ , Jonouchi?" Yugi hissed. "What the fuck?"

"I'm just trying to keep it entertaining," the blond mumbled, huffing and rolling his eyes. "And it's not like Yami actually cares, anyways. He's clearly not concerned about it at all. Why are you getting so upset? I was just joking."

"I can take a joke."

"Yeah, except that it's not funny—"

"It's fine, Yugi," he said in a sharper tone. The smaller teen turned on him with an annoyed look but Yami ignored it. "I'm not offended. And it is not as if I am the one who looks like a dog. I'm not the retriever with pointed ears, remember?"

Yugi snorted and grinned, but quickly looked away. Otogi burst out laughing, turning away when Jonouchi shot him a flustered glare. His eyes were dark with frustration when he turned to Yami, cheeks slightly reddened.

"I do _not_ look like a dog!"

"But, yeah, you _do_ ," Yugi laughed. "You look _exactly_ like a golden retriever with some white in your fur!"

Jonouchi bristled. "I do not look like a fucking dog, okay? Fuck off."

 _And I am not a hellhound_ , Yami thought dismissively, turning away from him and considering the trees again, _but you seem insistent upon believing so. And you wish to pursue a dangerous game in prodding at such a thing._ "Do not worry, Jonouchi, you're large enough that you do not need to be concerned. No one will mistake you for a full-blooded golden if you have your ears pricked. Wolves can't quite pull off the faithful dog approach too well."

Yugi snorted and cast him a small smile, eyes full of warmth. Yami studied him for a moment and—for only a split second—he was tempted to ask him if he thought he was a hellhound. Yugi defended him so often, yet there was always a small part of him that wondered. And he couldn't help but listen to the occasional wayward thought about it. But to do so now, in front of Jonouchi and Otogi, would be a mistake that he could not correct should something come of it.

"Well, if I look like a retriever, then Yugi looks like a Samoyed!"

"And Yami is a huge German shepherd," Otogi snickered. "So, that must make me a smaller one."

"I suppose so."

They fell quiet after a long moment.

"So, what are you both doing out here? Why are you not in the camp with the pack? Did anything happen?"

Yugi looked at him as if the question did not make sense to him for a split second. His eyes were huge, his brows furrowed faintly, and then he blinked. Realization came through him and he looked quickly to Otogi and Jonouchi again.

"No, nothing happened." Otogi waved their concerns off with a flick of his wrist and turned to look at Yami more pointedly. "There's nothing wrong at all. Don't worry about it. It's fine. We were just discussing a couple of things."

"So, in other words, you were walking Jonouchi?"

"Not funny," the blond snapped at him.

Yami smirked at him. "You were discussing some things? What is it that the two of you would wish to talk about?"

"It doesn't matter."

Yugi tilted his head, obviously surprised by Jonouchi's curt response. "It doesn't? Then why was it so important that you had to come out here in the middle of the woods instead of staying at the camp?"

"Because it's private."

Yami wondered if it had far more to do with Mai than it did him. It would make the most sense, unless Jonouchi were truly asking Otogi his opinion on the matter. He frowned, considering, and nearly bristled with disgust. Usually Jonouchi avoided the black-furred wolf if he could; Yami had witnessed that firsthand. If Otogi was on one side of the camp, Jonouchi was on the other. So, should they be talking about something that was so terribly _private_ to Jonouchi, it had to be the she-wolf.

"But, anyways! Since we're all here together now, why don't we just go ahead and patrol for a little while?" Jonouchi said, moving to look at Yugi more pointedly now. Yami felt a small heat fill his veins, but he could not understand whether it was with anger or discomfort. "We can see what the differences are between our senses as wolves and humans."

"Very minimal," Yami grunted in a dismissive tone. But he ignored the sharp look Jonouchi shot him, the puzzled glance Yugi gave him, and instead turned to Otogi again. "A small patrol? How far do you think we should go?"

Otogi blinked at him. He glanced briefly towards Yugi in bewilderment, then looked at Yami again. He lowered his eyes to Yami's lashes, clearly unnerved now. "We could go halfway to the camp or something. I don't know how far you'd actually want to go?"

"It does not matter to me." Yami fell quiet again for another heartbeat, shaking his head and glancing around again. The tension was growing in the base of his shoulder blades. But he still could not pinpoint whether it was simply paranoia or a reaction to Jonouchi's blatant staring. "I do not mind walking for a long amount of time, or for long distances."

And the exercise would do him well to regain some of his wasted muscle mass. It would not be immediate, but it should help eventually. And he was not doing well with such little exercise. Being cooped up in Yugi's room unless the other wolf was with him to go through the woods was not going to get him well in terms of regaining his worn stamina and physique.

"That's good." Otogi came to his side when Jonouchi took the opportunity to wrap an arm around Yugi's shoulder and pull him into his side. Otogi shot Yami an amused sideways glance that the other boy studiously ignored. If his discomfort showed on his face, he did not wish to see how amusing it was to Otogi. "I bet we could outpace them if we wanted to."

"That is not a question. Yugi is not one for longer treks. And I doubt Jonouchi will want to travel all that way without wishing to return to the camp altogether."

"Is that so?" The teal-eyed boy shook his head slightly. "I wouldn't be surprised if it did turn out he wanted to go back sooner rather than later. It wouldn't surprise me in the least."

"I did not mean it in a negative way. I simply feel that he is rather…unmotivated, I guess. I do not think he has too much drive in his life." But who would when their parent was increasingly abusive? Yami himself did not think he could have survived the situation himself. He likely would have tried to kill him by now or perhaps left him to die on his own at one point or another. There had to have been moments when the man was vulnerable, when he was too drunk to even realize what he was doing and passed out. Rolling him onto his back or smothering him with a pillow would have been simple enough… "I do not see him wanting to continue to walk around for no other reason than that we can."

"I guess that's true." Otogi shrugged after a moment or so. And Yami envied the fact that he did not seem to foster such dark thoughts as he himself did. "He doesn't seem like he's accomplished much in his life, huh?"

"I would not say that. I just think that he may be…lazier about them than some people." But Yami was more incredibly aware of just how close Jonouchi and Yugi seemed to be at that moment. The two of them were pushing at each other, laughing. They were lost in their own little world right at that moment, ignoring Yami and Otogi behind them.

A sense of growing bewilderment came through Yami at the thought. His mouth grew dry, his tongue swollen against his palate. He felt sick, almost amazed by the fact that his mouth was not overcrowded. He'd had that feeling on the rarest of occasions. And it was a wonder he did not suffer from it now. He would feel it more prominently, however, during his worst bouts of paranoia and the most intense alterations to the barometric pressure. During thunderstorms or what the people in the labs had called a tsunami…

Yami shook his head, looking at the snow and then to Otogi. "I've only met him once or twice prior to his being bitten. Yugi doesn't often talk about him, either. I don't think he's talked about any of his friends with me too often, honestly. I don't remember many conversations where they were involved in any way beyond the occasional mention. So I don't know enough about him to know if he's upset with me or not." He hesitated. "But he seems kind of frustrated whenever he sees me now."

Otogi cringed. Yami felt the smallest bit of rage growing inside of him, one which threatened to make him lash out furiously. That truly _had_ been the reason for their conversation. He had been right in his assumption then.

But he had been wrong in why Jonouchi had snarled at Yugi before.

The conversation had nothing to do with Mai.

It had everything to do with Yami.

Yami stopped short, narrowing his eyes into slits, and lowered his voice to a hiss. "So, that's what this is." Otogi had turned away from him entirely, showing his neck in submissive stance, as if Yami might lunge forward and sink his teeth into it at any moment. "He brought you out here to talk about _me_."

Otogi looked as if he might be sick. "He wanted to know my opinion on whether you're a hellhound. He's apparently suffering some kind of post traumatic stress disorder from the fight at the camp."

Yami narrowed his eyes further. "So, then the two of you have been away from the camp for _how long_?"

"Almost half an hour."

"And you have been speaking about me the entire time?"

"The majority of it, yes."

Yami scowled at him now, but made no move to come any closer to him. He wished to lash out for a split second. But it would do no good. It would only bring punishment for the wrong person. And that was hardly something he wished to partake in. If he meant to lash out, he would do so against Jonouchi himself.

And he would do it when Yugi was not there to witness it.

"And then what's _your_ opinion on the subject, Otogi? Are you under the same cloud of suspicion towards me?"

" _What_?" Otogi blurted out. His voice was an octave higher and it startled Yugi and Jonouchi ahead of them. Both of them spun around. But Yami ignored them both, watching Otogi. "No, of course not! Why would I ever think that?"

Yami was silent for a moment. He opened his mouth to answer, but movement made him swallow his response. He turned to Yugi as the small teen came running over to him. His blue-violet eyes darted across both of their faces, then burned into Yami's. But he seemed to realize that Otogi simply seemed affronted more than anything and Yami had ceased paying him attention. He relaxed visibly now, withdrawing slightly as he watched him for a long moment. Jonouchi had failed to come to his side, staring from where he had been standing when Yugi had initially heard the outburst.

"You okay?"

Yami didn't bother to answer him. His eyes stayed on Otogi, but in truth his attention was locked on Jonouchi. The blond was staring at them, standing a few feet away from them with wide eyes and a tense stance. His jaw was set, as if he were trying his hardest not to snarl in response, and his cheeks were flushed with what appeared to be embarrassment. Clearly he knew what they'd been talking about.

And Yami wondered for a split second if he might be able to antagonize him into attacking him. It was not without merit. Jonouchi had a temper that was easy to manipulate and he was sure he could swat him aside like a fly. Yami was still strong, even if he was damaged. He'd proved that to himself more than once in the time he'd been on his own.

"I'm fine. I was just asking him a question."

"You look upset."

"Mildly irritable, but it is nothing to be concerned about. Please, go back to Jonouchi. He seems to want to continue whatever conversation the two of you were having."

Yugi seemed more startled than upset by the easy dismissal. His eyes shot from Otogi to Yami again, as if unsure how to respond. For a long moment he remained incredibly still, studying. And then he stepped closer. Yami was all too aware of just how little space remained between them now. There were only inches. And he had the impulse to reach out and grab him, to put his hands on his shoulders and shove him back.

The instinct to do so was so powerful that his fingers twitched. But he caught sight of Jonouchi's eyes narrowing and his teeth ground together for a brief moment. It was not hard to imagine that the blond would lash out at him. And if Yami turned on him, what would Yugi do? He'd likely protect his best friend. He'd likely save Jonouchi from his anger, he was sure, as he doubted Yugi would want much more to do with him after he saw the immensity of his suspicions.

"Are you sure you're okay?"

"I'm fine."

If Yugi was put off by his curt response he did not show it. He was simply studying him again, as if he did not believe him but couldn't find the words to say so without openly challenging him. But he also imagined it had to be hard to read his expression from the angle Yugi stood. He was hardly looking at the other boy, his eyelids lowered so far that they must have cut off much of what Yugi could have seen of his irises. He didn't blame Yugi for being suspicious of him, however, even if Jonouchi had not spoken against him as of the moment.

"Then why are you so upset?"

"The topic of our conversation."

"Okay…" And now Yugi turned to Otogi, clearly seeing Yami as a lost cause where information was concerned. "Well, what did he ask you?"

"It was nothing important. He just…kind of startled me when he asked." Otogi looked torn, as if he were unsure of who it was he should answer to. But he was avoiding Yugi's eyes entirely, cheeks slightly flushed, and his gaze was clearly focused on Yami's bottom eyelashes. "It doesn't matter. I just overreacted."

Yami was silent for a long minute. Yugi had turned to him, staring and tilting his head as he watched him. "I promise. It's okay. No blood was spilled; we were just talking. It's all right." He glanced over Yugi's shoulder to Jonouchi now. The blond was staring at them both, brown eyes wide with confusion. But their gazes locked and his expression morphed into one of mounting suspicion. Yami turned to Yugi again, hoping to keep him from noticing. "I'm fine. We're not fighting. And I'm sure Jonouchi must be curious about what is happening. So, go ahead and join him again. There is no reason for you to remain here."

Yugi hesitated for a long moment. He eyed him, obviously dissatisfied, but the quiet became more oppressive. And he finally seemed to lose his temper with it all. He turned to look at Jonouchi after a moment as well, then he slowly turned back. Yami had the feeling he wanted more to stay beside him than leave. And for a split second Yami truly thought he might leave Jonouchi alone altogether and stay with him instead. And, in that brief moment, Yami felt the merest sense of cruel laughter bubbling up inside of him, something which sneered that he was more important than Jonouchi. But it died immediately, the words forming in his brain that he was fooling himself, that he was stupid to believe such a thing. And he found himself frozen more than anything, something in his chest tightened to the point that it almost cut off his breath entirely.

Instead Yugi sighed, shoulders sagging after a heartbeat, and shook his head. "Okay," he agreed reluctantly after a moment. He narrowed his eyes at him for a split second, and Yami _wondered_. If Jonouchi _had_ told him, what would happen between them then? What would Yugi truly choose to do? "But if there's a problem, I want to be notified. Understand?"

"There will not be a problem."

Yugi smiled at him slightly, his eyes brightening. He hesitated a moment longer, then looked him over. When he seemed satisfied with whatever it was he found there, he turned and trotted off to Jonouchi's side. Yami wished for a moment that he might even have the energy to be upset with just how easily Yugi had wandered off like that. Some part of him truly stung, aching as if with a pulsating wound.

"My apologies," Yami said immediately in a soft voice, turning to Otogi now. If he focused on something else, things would get better. That's how avoidance worked, wasn't it? If he ignored the ache, it would diminish and disappear soon enough. "I did not mean to upset you so much."

"It wouldn't have been so upsetting if you hadn't just snapped at me like that. I thought for a second you were accusing me of believing it too."

"No, I would never do that. I believe in listening before coming to another conclusion of any kind." But Yami fell quiet for a long moment, shaking his head a small fraction. His eyes narrowed and he curled his lip faintly. The smallest prick of pain seemed to crash through his temples. And he felt, for a moment, as if he should lash out as violently as he could. That instinct to cause pain to rival what he felt was as vibrant as ever. And his heart began to hurt, aching with desperation to fix itself and right this growing tangle of problems. "It doesn't matter. I just wanted to know what type of proof he might have."

"You're not going to be happy knowing."

"Yes, well, I am not entirely happy now as it is," he snapped in turn. What _was_ happiness to begin with? It was fleeting and stupid, he thought spitefully. When had he ever truly _been_ happy? He did not think he had an answer to that question. And if he could not remember such things now, was that proof that he'd never felt such a thing formerly? "I do not like that Jonouchi suspects me of being a hellhound, but it is not something I can prepare myself to go against if I do not have the proper details. Surely you are aware of such a thing. So tell me what it is that he believes he has against me."

Otogi hesitated for so long that Yami nearly spun on him to snarl and snap his teeth. But the red-eyed boy turned to look at him, tiling his head and considering him with growing anger. Otogi refused to look at him, his cheeks a slight pink shade and his mouth set into a thin line that betrayed his mounting tension.

"It's mostly just your eye color. But he also brought up the fact that you were missing and gone without a trace for a long time." The raven-haired boy shook his head slightly and frowned. "He thinks it corresponds with the time the hellhounds began to show up. Or—at least, he believes it's more the time when they started attacking."

Now Yami tilted his head. He wasn't wrong in that assessment. In truth, Yami had just barely managed to return to the camp before the poisoning incident. And they'd attacked the camp immediately after. When that had happened, Yugi and Yami arriving to assess the damage _must_ have looked that way far more than he wished to admit. And he wished more than ever that it could be simply blamed away by a misconception of some kind. But Jonouchi was not wrong.

And, had their situations been reversed, he might very well have thought the same.

"I see."

"I told you that you weren't going to be happy about it."

"None of this situation makes me happy. And I know that he cannot be the only to say it. If he were, there would not be so much tension whenever I enter the camp. Aki is still saying it, isn't she?"

"Well, she's definitely not a fan of you or Yugi. But she's also been raised pretty violently," Otogi said softly, frowning and looking at the red-eyed teen for a long moment. He grimaced and Yami nearly snorted, ready to sneer that he was well aware of just how violent the pack was, but was silenced immediately after. "She was almost used as a sacrifice at one point. Annie—her fucking mother—was convinced at one point that Aki was impure because she has a mark on her shoulder."

He stiffened, startled, and tilted his head. "A mark on her shoulder?"

"It's an odd smudge of black that looks almost like an arrow. It was extremely noticeable when she was younger, but it's kind of faded into her coat since she became around eighteen I think? But when she was…eight, maybe, Annie turned on her and tried to kill her as a sacrifice."

"For Code Name Atem?"

"Yes."

"So…then what spared her?"

Now Otogi was silent for a long moment. He seemed to be picking his words, as if he were suddenly unsure of what it was he should say to explain the words. He frowned and tilted his head, then sighed softly and looked away. "It was a…chance encounter with Morrigan, actually. Morrigan is the only reason she's still alive. She heard Aki screaming when Annie attacked her and came to help her."

Yami blinked, fingers twitching. She must have been terrified. Her own mother had turned on her, had planned to kill her for little more than a myth she'd grown up with. No wonder she was so bitter and resentful of them all. He could understand why she would hate everything to do with Atem, especially when Yugi did not meet the legend she grew up with. She must have looked on him and wondered why she would have been sacrificed for such a creature.

Yugi was nothing like what she would have wanted. And that would not be something that she could stand. Her entire life had been dedicated to this one wolf, and Yugi was not the creature she'd grown to understand would save them all…

"Annie tried to invoke Slifer to help her. But Slifer hardly cared about what she was asking of her. She was with Morrigan at the time, for whatever reason. And she said that Annie could not kill Aki for her simple superstitions. They both stopped her."

It was incredibly hypocritical of her, he considered. A small sense of laughter came through him, the faintest of amusements which burned his blood for a split second. Yami tilted his head, wondering why a hellhound might have stepped in for a lycanthrope like that. Aki was not Atem.

But perhaps Morrigan possessed more mercy than the other gods…

"Then, how was it by chance that Morrigan happened upon them?"

Otogi cringed, considering him for a long moment. Then he sighed again and awkwardly glanced around. "She was pregnant, from what I saw of it. And, honestly, I think she had been seeking Slifer for guidance. But I don't truly know. All I know is that they were there together that day."

"You think Slifer and Morrigan are so close?"

"They share the same domains. I feel like that would make you pretty close to someone."

"And why is it that you know all of this? Was she somehow feeling generous and decided to tell you all of it?"

"We used to be lovers. She told me one night when we were falling asleep. I think she thought I was already asleep when she started talking. She might not even know that I know about it, honestly." Otogi shrugged a shoulder when Yami turned to him with a stunned expression. The very idea of the two of them together in such a sense was almost enough to wind him entirely. "Mai was away on a mission to look into some of the kidnappings when they spiked again. Annie loved Mai the most, but Aki was aggressive and had the most drive to be leader when Annie passed. I guess no one ever told Aki that life just doesn't progress so easily."

"So, is that where her bitterness stems from then?"

"That and her general hatred. She has a lot of misconceptions about herself and how others look at her. Most everyone has forgotten about the mark. No one has even considered it since _way_ before you two even came into the picture, honestly. But she's still convinced sometimes that everyone looks at her and sees it and remembers. It's one of the reasons she's so aggressive like this."

Yami nodded slowly. "And you two no longer see eye to eye?"

Otogi stopped short as if he had been struck. His eyes sharpened, mild irritation crossing his features. He shook his head, then turned to him with a flustered expression. "You're mistaking our relationship for something like love or friendship," he said slowly. And there was a small hint of amusement in his eyes, though with pity as well, as if he were trying his hardest not to laugh at him. "It was just fighting and screwing. There was no affection whatsoever. We irritated each other and wound up in bed together one day. Beyond that, we never shared anything else."

Yami could not truly fathom it. It was an amazing concept to him, in truth. The problem was not so much that he had not known someone capable of doing so. It was simply that he felt sick considering it. Wolves without mates would often do that—in fact, it was encouraged for some of the younger and more promiscuous wolves, though it was not always more than fooling around—but they also tended to bond permanently to their sexual partners at one point or another. The thought that Otogi and Aki had never developed such feelings when they were not _forced_ to breed for the purpose of study and torture in the labs seemed stunning to him.

He swallowed hard and that pity in Otogi's face was clearer than ever and he knew the other boy saw this as well. He was seeing it, analyzing it, and it was somewhat amusing to him but also sad.

Perhaps he thought Yami too terribly naïve to understand…

"Where did you come from?" he demanded now, narrowing his eyes and cutting off that look of pity he was being shown. Otogi blinked in surprise, as if startled, and then frowned minutely. "You were not here when I first arrived in the camp. You were not even a name they spoke when I was there all but held captive but Aki's charming mother."

Otogi frowned. "I got sent after Mai to check on what was going on when she did not return within a week. I was gone the entire time you were there, but you were all they were talking about when I got there."

"And by then…" Yami slowed his steps, watching Yugi and Jonouchi ahead of them. Something cold and icy had begun to form in his chest and he slowed further, seeing Otogi do the same. He was confused, his teal eyes puzzled as they searched his face, but he kept pace with him in a respectful manner. "By then…were Aki and Marik screwing around?"

"How did you know about that? They were pretty discreet about it for the most part… I didn't think you would have caught onto it by then, honestly."

"It was easy to deduce." Yami could not stop watching Yugi and Jonouchi laughing in front of him. His skin crawled and his shoulders rose into a slight bristle. He was hateful, some part of him grieving in a way he could not explain. "I thought it simple to assume so when I knew how power hungry Marik truly was. Why not take to mating with the beta if you wanted to climb the ladder?"

"The worst part about it was that Aki knew he was using her and she still let him."

Yami was quiet for a long moment. "Did she wind up in love with him?"

"I don't think she's _capable_ of love, honestly—not after everything she's been through. But I think he was the closest thing she's ever had to it." Otogi shrugged again and looked at the other two as well. "I think she was lonely and desperate and she knew she was being used but she did it anyways."

"Is she so broken?"

The question was met with a peculiar look and Yami found himself once again the focus of that idiotic pitying expression. It was not as if he were so stupid that he did not understand that such things happened. He'd even offered Yugi a similar noncommittal relationship once before. He could not truly judge, nor could he deny having thought it over once or twice himself. And he almost thought it would be easier for Yugi to get over his seemingly ridiculous attraction to him if they did simply sleep together.

Surely Yugi would lose _any_ sense of attraction to him after that. There wasn't much more to see but damage he tried too hard to hide. And even Yugi could not simply ignore that in favor of his various fantasies. No teenage boy was so incredibly foolish or gullible, let alone Yugi himself.

But, more than ever, the thought simply made him want to hide away entirely. Yugi's feelings for him were something he could not bring himself to consider for more than a second. The idea of doing with him what he so often imagined, what he'd witnessed in those gods-forsaken labs, made him almost quake to consider. And his heart ached to know such terror directed towards the smaller teen.

And, for a single split second, he thought to simply run. He could make it halfway across Hokkaido before Yugi would notice his disappearance. And then what would he do? Could he hide away from there? Could he find a way onto a plane of some kind to hide away in? But with the heavy snowfall and the curfew that had been placed—and he was sure that it stretched outward of Domino now, if only because of the various disappearances of tourists—he doubted so. And then what? He could easily get rid of his own scent if he were to try. It was not hard to find something in the mall or another place entirely and simply soak himself in cologne or perhaps even perfume. Yugi would not expect that and—

"I don't know."

Yami blinked, startled away from his racing thoughts. Otogi had stopped in front of him, frowning and tilting his head as he considered the question. And Yami thought for a moment to simply dismiss it and keep walking. Maybe now was not a good time to speak of the matter to begin with. He didn't need to know so much about Aki anyways. Understanding her past would not keep her from lashing out at him in the future. It did nothing to ensure that he was okay at the end of it…

"Honestly, Yami, I have no idea. But I kind of wonder about that every now and then. I mean, it probably didn't help that when Mai and I returned from the mission we were already screwing around. I don't think she's ever forgiven me for that. And I think she hates Mai more than ever for it."

Yami blinked. "She was so attached to you?"

"It was more of a power play than anything. I was the only male at the time. And I was kind of obsessed with her for a little while there. And then Mai and I became a thing and she become bitterer than she'd ever been before. And now she's just vicious and hateful."

"Yes, you almost can't speak of her without such description." Yami cast a glance towards Jonouchi and Yugi again. And something inside of him simply _pulsed_ with a long forgotten ache. It made him almost dizzy for a brief moment and he shook his head the smallest bit. He felt sick, stomach knotting with growing anxiety. "It's rather disturbing…to realize the two of you once had a thing."

"It happens that way sometimes."

Yami tilted his head, then looked at him sideways. "I think I'm going to return back to the house," he said slowly. His mouth twisted into a brief grimace before he could rein it in. And then he shook it off and narrowed his gaze the smallest degree. Yugi looked incredibly happy next to his friend, something that Yami was sure would do well to distract him long enough. If Yami chose to simply go back to the house or to run off on his own for a few hours, he was sure Yugi would remain adequately stuck in place with the blond. Jonouchi could keep him busy. Yami could be long gone before he even began to whisper in Yugi's ear about whether he was a hellhound. "I'm tired and I do not think I'm useful enough in this state to warrant remaining here. It would not be best for me to remain here."

Otogi stared at him as if he had been struck for a split second. He seemed so surprised and unsure of himself at the moment that Yami almost bristled with disgust. Was it so hard to believe that he'd rather not waste his time there?

"Are you seriously that uncomfortable just because I told you that?"

"It has nothing to do with you or Aki. I am tired. I am not recovering well enough to stay out here for patrol like this."

"That's crap. You don't even smell weak anymore." Otogi furrowed his brows. "And you look like you're fine aside from muscle loss. Is it Jonouchi?"

"If it is anything but exhaustion, I do not know what it is." He shrugged and shook his head. He refused to look over at Yugi or Jonouchi now, in case it gave him away further. He did not want Otogi to get in the middle of the spat that might come about later. If he feigned ignorance now, he might be able to spare him retaliation later. "It does not matter. I don't wish to continue. If Yugi should ask, just tell him I was tired and returned to the house."

"You honestly think he won't notice?"

"I think it is sufficient enough to say that Jonouchi will keep him busy for a while. Unless he turns around to talk to me, I don't honestly think he will notice my absence."

Otogi was quiet for a long moment. His expression was doubtful and perhaps a little sad as he tilted his head. "And you'll be okay?"

"I will be fine. I just need rest."

He shook his head. "Okay." Yami ignored his reluctant sigh and the way he frowned with clear disbelief. "If it helps, though, many of the wolves don't actually _believe_ that you're a hellhound."

"That's nice."

But Yami had already turned around and was making his way through the snow in the opposite direction. He did not glance back even once and Otogi watched him until he could not see him any longer. The red-eyed teen disappeared into the trees and beyond his sight entirely a few moments later. And Otogi found himself amazed when he glanced over his shoulder towards the other two wolves.

Jonouchi truly _had_ kept Yugi preoccupied enough that he didn't notice Yami leaving. The thought was just alarming enough that Otogi bristled and bore his teeth for a brief second. Yugi, in truth, looked almost _mesmerized_ by whatever it was that the blond was saying to him at the moment.

He felt sick to his stomach. No wonder Yami had been so reserved and irritable enough to leave like this. The sight of the two of them together like that had to have put him on edge. He couldn't have been used to playing seconds to someone else where Yugi was concerned, but with the fact that Jonouchi was so suspicious of him as well it could not have made the scene easy in the slightest. Otogi felt his heart shiver in his chest, a moment of pure despair crossing through him.

Yami was truly afraid of what would happen when Jonouchi explained his suspicions to Yugi, he realized. He was trying to distance himself now before the blow truly came, because if he didn't now he wouldn't be prepared later. And Yami was simply trying to save himself that pain later…

And now he wondered, some part of him truly stunned by the idea, if Jonouchi was so stupid as to tell Yugi. It was not as if Yugi would listen to someone speak ill of Yami if they were in the pack, so he could not see it going any differently now than it would have then. The thought made him bristle for a moment. But it was clear they were close, even if someone only took this moment of bonding between them as evidence. Yugi was clearly relaxed and happy with him and Jonouchi seemed exuberant with him.

"I don't even think that's true," Yugi was saying as Otogi came forward to follow them. He didn't sound upset at all, and it was easy to figure out that Jonouchi hadn't told him anything about Yami being a hellhound. Yugi would never have been so good-natured had he done so. And he could only _imagine_ how destructive Yugi might become when the rumors met his ears. "I mean, think about it. Why would you want to do something like that to begin with? Who's stupid enough to believe that?"

"You really don't think saying a name three times in front of a mirror will summon a ghost?"

"I think you're more superstitious than anyone I've ever met," Yugi laughed in delight. He grinned and shook his head lazily. "That's okay, though. It's not a big deal. You're a werewolf now, Jonouchi. So maybe you'll be able to outgrow it."

Jonouchi caught him in a headlock, rubbing his knuckles into his hair. Otogi frowned, watching them closely for a few seconds. Then he glanced over his shoulder and wondered how far away Yami had gotten. He had to be near the road if he'd kept walking at that brisk pace he'd set for himself upon leaving. When he turned back, he felt almost winded. Yugi still had not noticed.

The _one_ wolf who so often followed and took care of Yami truly hadn't noticed in the slightest that he was not there. And it made no sense to him. Yugi would move heaven and hell for Yami. So why wasn't he aware of the fact that he wasn't there anymore? He seemed so careless towards him now…

"You're such a dick now that you're a wolf."

"I'm a sass master. I've finally bloomed into my role."

Yugi was laughing and struggling to get away from him. He tried to pull back but Jonouchi held tight and the laughter only grew louder as they both guffawed at each other's efforts. Yugi was halfway out of his arm, stretched with his head beneath his arm and his back arched as he tried harder to pull away. Instead he only got his jacket and shirt to ride up, his efforts thwarted and his laughter becoming louder.

"I'm going to put you in a cast if you mess up my hair!" Yugi was threatening, making Jonochi laugh, "Yeah, right! You can't even reach high enough to break my ribs _or_ my arm."

And then Otogi heard it.

It was a single crunch of snow beneath a shoe, so soft that he almost thought he'd imagined it. But he was yards back from the two laughing wolves. And they were not walking anymore. It had sounded like someone moving through the snow rather than stopping in place as they were. Otogi looked around quickly, bristling for a split second, skin crawling. His mouth opened and shut twice, eyes widening as he strained his ears. They were close by, at the very least, and that should have been enough to help him pinpoint them…

It took him a minute too long to spot them.

The hunter was crouched extremely low in the snow. He was dressed in all white, had lowered himself into the ice, and had his gun aimed for Yugi. The two of them must have caught his attention with so much noise. And Otogi was momentarily ashamed that the two of them were so loud and rambunctious. He should have known better than to let them act like that. It didn't matter if the woods were usually empty. There could have been hellhounds instead, for all they knew.

And he didn't know what the hunter was using as ammunition—

"Get down!" he called out as loudly as he dared. If there were more in the trees, they were screwed if he made too much noise. If it was just this one hunter, they might make it out of the situation alive and well.

The two of them broke apart immediately. Jonouchi spun on him with wide eyes. Yugi's head snapped in the other direction. His eyes stretched thrice their usual size. His mouth dropped open. His face turned deathly pale. And he twitched as if he thought to run for it.

Jonouchi yelped and dropped to the snow. Yugi, on the other hand, was frozen and staring like a deer in headlights. Otogi couldn't convince himself to run to help, however. Some small part of him spoke of self-preservation.

He could use them as a distraction.

He could get away in the time the hunter caught them. It was not as if he were close to either of them. He may have known Yugi more than he did Jonouchi, but they were not best friends. And he was well aware Yugi would throw him to the lions to save Yami had the situation ever arisen.

But Yami wasn't even there anymore. It was only Yugi. He was frozen. He was gaping. And when he was shot, he went down with a mirroring yelp. They both lay on the ground. And then Yugi jerked, twitching. He seemed to thrash. And Otogi shivered. He turned his head. The hunter was staring at Yugi with interest. His eyes were narrowed, his head tilted. He was aiming for a second shot—

A snarl ripped through the air. Otogi turned back. Yugi was thrashing hideously in the snow. But the needle that had been in his neck had broken. Otogi could see a trail of blood to his collarbone. The Pure-Blood was still breathing hard. He was snarling, whimpering beneath the angry noise. And he was shaking when he tried to sit up.

" _Motherfucker_ ," Otogi heard him sneer. His eyes were glazed with pain, pupils mere pinpricks. His neck was soaked in blood. His fingers were covered. The entry wound from the dart was invisible amidst the carnage. He'd torn through his own neck with his nails. And his fingers were slick, bright red against the snow.

Yugi stumbled for his feet. He was swaying, sluggish. And Otogi wondered what was in that syringe. Yugi was bleeding _profusely_. He should have clotted. And his fingers twitched sporadically. He looked shaky, as if he might fall over at any moment. His legs shook, then buckled a second later. He was on his hands and knees, back arching. His mouth opened. He retched loudly.

He puked up blood.

The hunter was cursing. Otogi blinked. His eyes shot towards him. The man had the gun trained on Yugi again. And now Otogi could smell it. The syringe had been full of wolfsbane. The poison had a thick woodsy scent to it. And it was not diluted in any manner…

Yugi puked again. Jonouchi stumbled into a seated position. His eyes were blown black, his face ashen. He was soaked in sweat. He looked as if he might vomit at any moment. But he was not twitching. And, in truth, he did not seem to be in pain. In fact, Otogi thought Jonouchi had been hit with a tranquilizer.

But that meant that the human knew what Yugi was.

Or he at least had an idea that he wanted that specific pelt—

He blinked again. The gun was aimed for Yugi's face.

Otogi couldn't make it in time to stop him.

And Yugi did not flee. He breathed hard. He spat up vomit, glaring. He struggled to get up. Something hateful shone in his eyes. He looked murderous.

But the gun never fired a third shot. And Yugi collapsed abruptly. He thrashed violently again. And all Otogi could hear was the snap of a bone—or perhaps several—breaking.

The gun went flying into the air. It landed heavily in the snow several feet away. The man, however, was screaming. And Otogi was frozen in place once more. He was breathless, ashamed but also amazed. Some small part of him almost laughed. The other nearly snarled. And, somehow, instead, he wound up groaning as if he were in pain. But the newcomer didn't look over at him.

The man was cowering. His hand covered his ribs on the right side. His eyes were glassy with unshed tears. He was panting violently, shaking. Yami, however, simply stared. His red eyes were unmoved. His breathing was even. His stance was tall, foreboding. His fingers twitched once, then twice. He looked _livid_. But he did not look as if he meant to kill him for the moment…

Instead another well-aimed kick was delivered. The man gasped for air, face red. He hit the snow a good foot away. And then he gasped and choked again. Yami wrinkled his nose and looked over. Otogi was met with a look of pure resentment. And his blood turned to ice in his veins at the realization.

Yami blamed him for it.

He blamed _him_ for the two of them being harmed…

"I…I didn't…"

Yami ignored him. He walked past him and over to Yugi. Jonouchi had dragged himself into a mostly upright position. He was breathing hard, shaking. And his hand was rubbing at his throat. Yami ignored him as well, Otogi noticed.

"Yugi…"

Yami looked as if he were struggling to find some words of comfort. He was crouched next to him. And one hand reached out for him. But it was abruptly snatched back a second later. Yugi was shaking as if to rid himself of the ache in his bones. And Yami seemed almost distracted for a single second. He did not look as if he might lash out at any rate. But he seemed flustered.

"Yugi."

"I-is he okay?" Otogi demanded, feeling himself flush when Yami spun on him. His red eyes had not lost their anger. In fact, he almost looked even more furious now that he was so close. "I—I didn't notice until it was already too late—"

By some miracle, Yami did not lunge at him. Instead he straightened and looked at him with cold, glittering eyes. "He's not badly hurt. He broke the syringe before even half of it got in his blood. And he's practically bled himself from the cut on his neck. Whatever is still in his blood should not be too terrible for him to weather."

"So, he'll be okay?"

"Why don't you waste your time trying to draw the toxin out of his blood?"

Otogi flinched, glancing at Yugi. "You don't think that's necessary?"

"No, not at all. As I said a moment before, I think it a waste of time. He will be fine. He's still healthy enough that he can shake it off without trouble."

But he still hesitated, Otogi noted with surprise. He had returned to Yugi's side again. And he was ignoring Otogi and Jonouchi entirely. He was crouched there now, fingers touching at the entry wound and along the skin Yugi had torn open with his nails. His fingers came back coated in blood, slick with purple wolfsbane as well. The blood turned black from exposure, as if it were decaying before their eyes. "But you could make yourself useful and sit with him."

Otogi nodded mutely. Yami went over to Jonouchi after a moment, hovering rather than touching him. But he considered him for a long handful of seconds, studying him more than anything. And Otogi was rather sure that he'd angled his head so that he could hear his heartbeat more clearly. Whatever it was that he heard, Yami straightened a moment later and looked over his shoulder.

"He must have been hired. He tranquilized Jonouchi, but he used wolfsbane on Yugi." Otogi couldn't help the small bit of sickness that crept through him. Yami didn't look mad. He simply seemed puzzled and confused more than anything. He was watching the hunter who was still struggling to get up. He was shaking, panting. His face was still red, his eyes glazed with pain.

Yami stepped forward.

And then froze.

Otogi opened and closed his mouth. His eyes lowered uncertainly. And his mouth grew dry for a moment. Yugi was shaking and sweating. He was on his side now, shivering. But he had reached out. And his hand was caught on Yami's jeans. His fingers were white from the grip. And he looked exhausted from the strain of his grip. But he had not released, teeth chattering forcefully together.

Whatever Yami saw in his eyes had stilled him for the moment.

"Shouldn't…he have fought it off by now?"

Yami stiffened, then spun on him with burning eyes. "What?"

"He's a Pure-Blood," Otogi said, immediately looking down at the snow and moving to expose his neck. "He shouldn't be suffering any ill effects right about now…"

"Any wolf is cowed by wolfsbane," Yami scoffed. His voice had taken on a territorial, challenging note. And he had straightened to a more intimidating posture, teeth bared. When he breathed again, it was in a low snarl. "I do not think even Slifer or Obelisk would be without pain."

"But I thought… I mean… He _is_ a god, isn't he?" he blurted out in protest. "So why isn't he—?"

Something moved in his peripheral. Otogi spun towards it. Then he went still. Yami was staring at him. His hand was raised as if to strike him. And the look on his face was enough to make him freeze in place. It was enough to warn him to back off. Yami would kill him if he said something like that again. He looked away again as quickly as he could, breathless and shaken.

"Stay. At. His. Side."

"Okay." Otogi cringed, ignoring the urge to look over. Yami was still staring at him. His jaw was set and he was speaking through his teeth. In his peripheral, Otogi could see him shaking slightly with barely restrained anger. But it was actually the sight of Yugi that terrified him. The small teen was staring at Yami with a horrified expression. His eyes were wide and glazed over. But his other hand tried to grab at his leg as well. And Yami did not seem to react. From what Otogi could see from his downward stare was that Yami shrugged Yugi off without a second glance.

Yugi let out a little noise, something like a whimper and a snarl mixed together. Otogi looked over immediately. But Yami ignored them both. He made his way over to the human. The gun was a couple of inches away from them both.

"So, am I right?" Yami said in a quiet voice. "Were you sent here?"

The man didn't respond. And Otogi saw his eyes flicker towards the gun. Yami snorted and stared. Then he crouched down, one arm around his leg, head tilted and eyes deceptively soft.

"Were you sent here?"

The only response was a grunt and wheezing breath. Otogi shivered. Yami's shoulders had risen slightly. His eyes were narrower than they had been moments before. And his lips curled slightly as he peered at him. But for a moment he made no move. And the human wheezed and seemed to focus intently on Yami's face. For a split second he looked as if he might run. And then he spat.

Yami didn't have to move away. The saliva was inches from its goal. But the werewolf still smirked slightly. And the backhand he delivered was so violent Otogi was amazed it did not snap the man's neck. Yami straightened. The hunter struggled for air, then moved to try to reach for his gun.

"I wonder…" Yami mumbled. "Do you think you could still shoot me if you don't have your eyes?"

The man shot him a terrified look. Then he lunged for the gun. Yami stared at him, raising a brow slowly. He made contact with the rifle. And Yami sniffed disdainfully. It was aimed at him. And Yami simply moved closer, then crouched in front of him again. Whatever he said now was too low for Otogi to hear, but he could see his lips moving. Whatever it was, it distracted the hunter. Although, had he truly wanted to, Otogi was sure he could have shot Yami at point blank in that moment. The red-eyed teen, however, simply reached over and grabbed the barrel of the rifle, forcing it down towards the snow. He was still talking, but Otogi could not hear in the slightest what it was. Even straining his ears did nothing for him.

And, abruptly, the man screamed. Otogi jumped. Something popped loudly. And he could see that Yami had moved slightly. The gun was on the ground, discarded. The man was writhing, screaming in agony. The left side of his face was soaked in blood from his eye socket. And Yami's right thumb and forefinger were similarly streaked in red.

Yugi struggled to sit up. He was croaking, something almost inaudible but that Otogi knew had to have been Yami's name. But the red-eyed teen did not look over. And his lips were drawn back into a snarl. He was staring at the hunter with an unreadable expression.

"Otogi," he called quietly, voice a mere mumble. His hand shot out and clamped over the man's mouth, muffling him. When he struggled, Yami lunged forward. His knee was in his chest, pressing on his broken ribs. And his face was lowered as if to rip his throat out. "Check the woods. I want every inch south of here searched for others."

Otogi was frozen, however. The man was trying to kick Yami off. And Yami was simply sitting there, resting his weight against him. He did not look annoyed in even the slightest. He actually seemed…more amused than anything.

" _Now, you fucking idiot_!"

Yami was snarling at him, glaring. Otogi made a dash for it. He watched him change rapidly, bones popping and dislocating and sliding into rearrangements, before he disappeared entirely into the trees. Yami turned back. The man had slathered all over his hand in his panic. And his teeth were digging into his palm now. Yami blinked, then tilted his head. He was no longer screaming. But he doubted that would last long.

"Maybe, if I crush your ribs badly enough, your lungs won't be able to hold enough air in them to let you keep making all that noise," he hissed. He pressed his weight more firmly into the man's chest. His teeth cut the outer layer of Yami's skin in retaliation.

"Do you have any idea _why_ wolves kill people?" he asked. The man reached out to grab him. His fingers fisted into the material of his jacket, scrabbling for purchase on the slick fabric. Yami ignored this, lowering his face closer to his. "It's because you persecute us and hunt us down endlessly. I do not know if you understand the retributions of such a thing. But I will tell you now, that I'll teach it to you before I destroy you."

Jonouchi was sitting up now. He looked sickly, shivering and pupils blown wide, but he was alive. He was breathing harder than ever, but his heart was returning to its usual rhythm—or as close to as Yami could consider it, as he did not recognize it from anyone else's. Yugi, however, was still panting. And Yami was relieved to simply find that his heart sounded clear and steady once more. The poison was wearing off…

"I think I was told once that head trauma could cause muteness in a human." Yami tilted his head and bared his teeth into a small grin. "Let's find out, shall we?"

" _Don't_."

Yami blinked. The word was hoarse, a croaking almost inaudible whisper. He hesitated a moment, hand still covering the man's mouth. He'd been about to strike at him with his other one. But a part of him felt cold, ill, and perhaps the smallest bit of shame crashed through him for a split second. Yami pressed his lips into a thin line, looking over.

"Please…Yami… _Stop_."

Yugi was staring at him with a shaky expression. He didn't look as if he were still ill, more just scared and tired. And Yami felt something inside of him shrink away, beneath all of the rage and the hatred that had been in his blood moments before. He grimaced, uncertain of how to respond to him. And then he lowered his eyes back to the human.

"Just…just put him out of his misery, okay?"

Yami moved a hand towards his neck, ignoring it when the hunter tried to kick him away. He was trying to buck and force him off. But every muscle in his body was hardened and he could do nothing more than rock Yami slightly back and forth as if he were but a wooden chair. Yami hesitated, hovering. "And if there are others?"

Yugi groaned, a pathetic noise full of frustration and exhaustion. "Otogi can tell us later," he bit out. He was shivering harder than before, his teeth clacking. Yami eyed him for a moment, growing furious once more. Yugi was trying to play alpha now? Yugi, the boy who clung to him half the time? The same one who couldn't even handle the pack? The same one who so often got himself into trouble and could not get himself out of it?

 _Yugi_ was trying to tell _him_ what to do?

Yami snarled low his throat. And for a moment his fingers itched. He could just hit the man until his head really did break from the force. It would not take long. Most likely it would take five to ten of them, just hard knocks to the skull that could make it cave in. Yami was not stupid; he knew how much force it took to do something like that. He had bitten Ushio's head in. He had known how much pressure to apply then; he was certain he could mirror it now as well…

But he didn't want to fight with Yugi. Not again. Not now.

He lowered his hand, grabbing the side of the man's head. He pressed his other harder into his mouth, until the jaw bone creaked beneath the force. The man's remaining eye nearly popped out from the force. And then he struggled, squawking in terror and thrashing harder. Yami snapped both hands violently to the side in parallel positions. The hunter went limp, head sloppy and sideways. Yami had the odd idea that he might have snapped the vertebrae in half in his neck. And the thought was actually horrifying.

"You're too merciful," he mumbled after a moment. He got to his feet, his legs cold and his hands tingling slightly. He stopped as he got to Yugi's side. He didn't know if he should try to reach out and help him up or let him struggle to get to his feet. So he hovered, debating. "It's a weakness sometimes. We could have been found if he was hired. All that screaming certainly wouldn't have—"

 _No one else seems to be around_ , came Otogi's quiet report. The white-eared wolf was panting, shaking himself out where he stood a few feet behind the trees. He was visibly exhausted, and Yami could only imagine he'd pushed himself far faster than usual in order to do as he'd instructed. Yami considered him a moment longer, but did nothing more. _And I don't know if he was hired or not. You said you thought so, but there was no one else around, so I can't say for sure._

"It would not make sense for him to simply tranquilize Jonouchi but poison Yugi instead. Had it been a random hunter, they both would have been poisoned, yes?" he snapped. "Or am I wrong? I would assume it to be foolish to consider anything else."

 _He could have been working alone. Maybe it was like some kind of breeding mentality or something_ , Otogi said hesitantly. His eyes shot from Yugi to Jonouchi and back before he looked at the snow with his ears flat against his skull. _Maybe he had seen Jonouchi as a wolf at some point and wished to breed him. Maybe he was just trying to get Yugi out of the picture… He has a unique pelt, after all. There are many hunters who would pay a pretty penny for it._

"Is that so?" Yami drawled. "And what of your hide?"

Otogi blinked and looked over at him in confusion. _Huh_?

"I _said_ , what of _your_ hide, Otogi? Yours is unique; wolves do not usually have white ears. If they should want Jonouchi's golden and white pelt, why not yours as well? Do you not think that he would have waited to try to get _both_ of you if that were his plan? For breeding purposes, you both have coats that are unique."

Yugi sat up, rubbing at his forehead. He was still shivering, but it was not as terrible as it had been before. And now he was watching Yami closely, as if he expected him to lunge at Otogi at any moment. He supposed he understood the tension in his body, if only because he could hear his voice dropping every few seconds just as well as Yugi could. And he was not wrong; his temper was already frayed from earlier stress. If Otogi were so stupid as to argue with him, Yami was sure he truly _would_ lunge and give life to Yugi's fear.

"It doesn't matter." He was rasping, but his voice grew stronger as he drew in a deep breath and rubbed at his temples. He shook his head and sighed softly. "I don't think it matters at all."

" _No_?" Yami drawled in turn. "And why not? Hunters are no longer a common occurrence. They've foregone potential human error in order to utilize the hellhounds. They _bred_ them for that very purpose. And you do not think it wish to ask _why_ they have returned to set their eyes on you?"

"Are you really going to pick a fight with me now?" Yugi grunted. He sat up, his entire body shaking, but managed to bring himself to a shaky stand. When he looked at Yami, his pupils were still pinpricks, vibrating in his sockets. "I'm _exhausted_ , okay? Why can't we just go home and _not_ fight?"

Yami opened his mouth to snap at him, but Otogi cut in, asking, _Are you all right_? _You look as if you might puke_.

Yugi didn't look away from Yami. There was a plea in his eyes, one so desperate that it almost forced his anger away entirely. He wanted to go home, to rest and sleep and not worry about what had just happened. He didn't want to stay there any longer. And some part of Yami almost folded to that will, but another coiled with frustration as well.

"I'm just a little dizzy."

 _Perhaps you should lie down then_? Otogi said uncertainly. His ears flicked back and forth as if he was searching for any type of noise and he looked hesitantly towards Yami after a moment. _I mean, if the poison was so effective as to incapacitate you…_

"I will not hear of that again," Yami spat, turning on him. "If you say it again, I will break your ribs, damn it."

"Hear what?" Yugi sneered. He had turned icy blue-violet eyes on Otogi now, lips curled back and teeth bared in a hideous snarl. "That he thinks I'm too weak to be a Pure-Blood?"

Yami felt as if he'd been struck. His legs nearly wobbled beneath him and his breath came out weak. His lungs constricted, hiccupping in their functions. Jonouchi was staring at Yugi with huge eyes. And Yami wished he could have snarled at him not to. But every part of him felt weak with realization and he shivered against the onslaught of cold.

There was an uneasy silence which came over the small group. Yami turned to the body. Yugi turned to stare at him. Otogi and Jonouchi swapped looks. Silence passed for a few long handfuls of minutes. Yami avoided Yugi carefully, ignoring the way his eyes bore into his head. Otogi had since taken a seat and was staring at the ground as his fur quivered as if in its own personal breeze. Jonouchi refused to look at either of them now.

And abruptly, Yami swore he tasted blood in his mouth. The sweetness made him almost quiver and he thought for a moment that it was hot and burning, aching as it spread from one taste bud to the next. His mouth felt laden with something stuffy and thick like cotton. He shook his head again, drawing a deep breath.

"It doesn't matter," he said slowly, teeth bared. He reached up to cover his face with his hands for a split second, eyes narrowed and jaw clenched. "It does not matter what Otogi says regarding whether you reacted like a Pure-Blood or not. The fact of the matter is that you are _Atem_. You are the gods-forsaken fucking wolf meant to lead this war and win. Whether the experiments messed with your ability to heal from wolfsbane or not is inconsequential."

" _Inconsequential_?" Yugi snarled. His voice rose an octave, then split with anger for a single second before returning to normal. "Well, I'm so glad that you seem to think so, Yami! Good to know what you _actually_ think and how you really feel about all of this. I'd love to hear about how you treated those _others_."

Yami recoiled violently. His hands dropped from his face, his eyes grew wide with horror, and he stiffened so sharply that he almost could not move. He gaped at him, lungs collapsing in on themselves for a split second. He couldn't breathe for a long minute. And his body shook with tension and shock. He blinked again. His stomach knotted. The urge to vomit came at him full force for a single second. And then the rage hit him. It came so sharply that he almost screamed. And then came the instinct to beat the insolence out of him.

"I'm sure," he said softly, turning to him again and baring his teeth, "that you can tell me later, when you join them, you _insignificant_ _spineless_ fucking bastard."

Otogi was immediately pressed into the snow. His belly was against the ice, his tail was tucked beneath his legs. He was shaking. Jonouchi was gaping, horrified. His eyes were wide, dilated with shock. Yugi was staring at him, at first with blind rage. And then he blinked, realization crashed through him, and he froze in place. His eyes grew wide, his mouth opened and closed, and he trembled as the full extent of his words hit him. Yami watched him as he shook his head violently, eyes wide and hands shaking.

"I didn't mean that."

" _Fuck you_."

Yami swore all he could see was red, blood and carnage and torn muscle and broken flesh. For a moment he shook, his entire body prepared to lash out. Every muscle in his possession begged to release its tension. And he struggled for a moment to breathe or think straight. The blood in his vision was so terrible it was enough to make him nearly snarl. He lifted his sneakers from the snow, dusting the ice off the tops where it had landed on his laces. It was comforting to do such a mundane task at the moment, and it let some of his tension slip away if only slightly.

"Go back to the camp and tell the pack to be on the lookout for humans and hellhounds. I would rather be safe than sorry. I don't know that any potential hunters or hellhounds might be so stupid as to travel alone as this one did, but—"

He spun on him with a backhand. Yugi yelped, jerking back. Yami breathed harder, shaking furiously. Yugi's entire cheek turned a bright hideous red. The imprint was disturbing, his hand perfectly shaped there. And he stared at it for a long moment. Yugi was still staring at him, frozen in place. But his mouth was no longer open and he didn't look quite as shocked as he had before. If Yami didn't know any better, he would have assumed he looked as if he felt guilty for the strike as well.

"Look, I didn't m—"

"I don't know if they'll be so stupid as to travel alone as this one did," Yami spat, turning away from him and to Otogi again. His hand stung, tingling from the force. His fingers were twitching and everything hurt. He shivered, his chest feeling as if it were caving in. "But I want all of them alert. If they so much as _sense_ something potentially amiss, there are to flee rather than engage or investigate. We cannot afford to have our numbers dwindle any further than they already have. Patrols will be twice as large to ensure that there is more likelihood of survival and less of injury. Make them buddy up with those whose battle styles might complement theirs. For now the pack can't keep splitting up in a buddy system with newer faces like it has been. If something should happen, learning another's battle strategies is tedious and could lead to serious injury where it could have been easily avoided."

"Whoa, wait. Who the _fuck_ are you exactly?" Jonouchi snarled. He was on his feet, moving towards him. Yami turned on him, waiting for him to come closer. He'd knock some fucking sense into him too—

It was Yugi who stopped him. His hand shot out, grabbing Jonouchi's shirt, and he held it so tightly his knuckles turned white from the force. When Jonouchi tried to shake him, Yugi snarled low in his throat and the blond stiffened in surprise. He didn't try to move away, but he turned back to sneer again.

"You just hit Yugi and then you're going to pretend to know what's best for—?"

"Did I ask for your input?" Yami said slowly, tilting his head and leveling him with a stare. "The day I wish to heed your advice or listen to you slaver like a dog will be the day I hand myself over to the hunters to be skinned."

Yugi kept his grip on Jonouchi when the blond snarled. He shoved him back when he moved between the two again. When Yami ignored him, Yugi straightened his back so that they stood at the same height. Their eyes locked and Yami stiffened, curling his lips back and snarling low in his throat in turn.

It took him a long moment to convince himself not to lash out. It took the reminder that Otogi saw Yugi as alpha to stop himself. If Otogi witnessed him lash out, he'd spread it around back amongst the pack. And then what might he do? They'd turn on him again. And he'd truly have to worry about every little noise in the forest from then on…

"Anyone to question the decision will be dealt with accordingly when I next return to the camp," Yami hissed, turning to Otogi again. "And if they would like to know ahead of time what I will do to them, tell them to take a good look at the human's corpse."

"What the fuck? Now you're threatening to kill them?" Jonouchi blurted out. "Are you fucking _insane_?"

"I can deal with you some other time, too," Yami promised, turning to him, "if you should like me to."

" _Enough,_ " Yugi snarled. He shoved Jonouchi back a step but never took his eyes off Yami, breathing hard and shaking his head. "Jonouchi, stand down and knock it the fuck off. Yami, stop threatening him. He's not who you should be taking it out on. The pack isn't either—"

"No? The pack isn't where I should begin fixing your mistakes? The pack, which _you_ are absolutely _incapable_ of leading?" Yami sneered, locking eyes with him again as he lowered his voice drastically. He narrowed his gaze and bore his teeth. "The one that you should never have gotten involved with, but disobeyed me in doing so? _That fucking pack, Yugi_?"

"Yug, don't take this shit from him! You're _Atem_. You could kick his ass if you wanted to!" Jonouchi growled from behind him. He was glaring at Yami but the red-eyed teen was still staring at Yugi. "Remind him whose boss."

Yami burst out laughing, teeth flashing and mouth salivating for a moment. He leaned forward, putting his face an inch from Yugi's. His cheek was still partially red and his eyes were quivering as they remained locked with his.

"What a wonderful idea, don't you think, Yugi? Do it then. Remind me _who the alpha is_."

Yugi flinched as if he'd been struck again. He backed up a step, shoved Jonouchi to put distance between the two of them, and snapped, "I said knock it off, Jonouchi. Leave him alone. Otogi, go ahead and do what he said. Don't bother with the threats, though. Yami is just pissed with me. He wouldn't actually turn on anyone there."

"Oh, but _wouldn't_ I?"

But, to Yugi's shock, the words were not aimed at him. His eyes were locked on Jonouchi and the blond was stiff behind him, he noticed when he looked back. But the blond refused to look at him, gaze averted as Yugi had instructed of him. He could see his jaw working, however, as if he were clenching his teeth. Yugi almost wondered if he would have lunged at and bitten him had he not stopped him.

He turned back.

But Yami was already gone.

* * *

Jonouchi wasn't sure why anyone seemed surprised by the announcement. In fact, if he were truthful, he wondered how it was that Yami hadn't threatened them prior to that moment. He would have assumed Yami had done so more often than not, that he didn't care enough not to. And, he knew, Yugi would have protected him had he. So there was no chance that Yami might be harmed in retaliation for such an action. This thought was enough to make him furious, his fur in a bristle as hatred swelled through him for a split second. He shook himself out, having returned with Otogi to see what had come back to the camp.

There was no sense of anger or true surprise in any of the wolves that were standing about listening to the statement. Yusei looked troubled, ears flat against his head, and Chazz tilted his head as if with interest, but no one seemed to openly question the declaration. Otogi had explained that Yami had placed this decree after what had happened in the forest, but he had not gone further into detail.

Jonouchi almost hated him for that fact. He should have told all of them about it. Yami had lashed out against Yugi, his _only_ real defense in the camp. And none of them would know what to do with him afterwards. In truth, with how furious he was about the entire thing, Jonouchi would have liked to see one of them step up and attack him at the very least. But another part of him knew better.

Yami had been pissed off. Yugi had shot his mouth off when he'd slashed out at him. Both of them had been angry enough on their own without his or anyone else's interference. It did not change the fact that he felt Yami _deserved_ to have his ass kicked. But it did remind him that he would be stupid to say such a thing at the camp. The wolves here worshipped Yugi—for whatever reason; he might have been a good guy but Jonouchi couldn't understand _worshipping_ him—and so the majority of them would protect Yami tooth and nail as well. He knew better than to assume that anything else would come of it.

Jonouchi paused in grabbing a piece of prey from the pile. They had restocked it with much more food than he'd ever seen in the camp before. There were tons of rabbits, baby serows, a couple of birds that he thought might have been quail, a few smaller pine martins… He sniffed about, picking at the one that smelled the oldest and looked the stiffest. The rest would probably be distributed among the other wolves that were still wounded from the fight days before.

He snatched a small rabbit from the pile, pulling its stiff corpse away from the others. He moved a few feet away and lay down, the piece of prey between his paws. He dug in a second later, though his eyes wandered curiously forward. Several of the yearlings were lying about nearby, appearing more confused than anything else. Some of them seemed mildly disturbed by the new rule, though not upset, and he noticed that Yusei and Chazz had begun to play fight as if Yami had never, in fact, threatened their lives to begin with. The idea threw him and he dug into his meal a bit more aggressively than he meant to, snapping the head off in his mouth and nearly choking on it.

 _You know, when people say "wolf" down their food, they don't usually mean forgetting how to chew properly,_ a familiar voice commented playfully. Jonouchi coughed it up, shaking his head, and looked over with wide eyes. The she-wolf had her head tilted, smiling at him brightly as she wagged her tail. Jonouchi frowned up at her for a single second, then wrinkled his nose and mirrored her action. _What are you doing here_? _I thought you would have gone home._

He hesitated for a moment, then grabbed at the rabbit again, turning away from her. But he was no longer hungry and his stomach rolled for a few seconds. _Yami and Yugi were in the woods while I was chatting with Otogi. After their fight, I decided to come back here._ He was quiet for a moment, then shook his head. _I didn't want to go back home after that._

She seemed to hesitate, then Mai moved to lay beside him, so close that their sides brushed. She stretched out, putting her chin on her paws. _Your mother and father don't miss you_? She seemed far away when she asked the question, but Jonouchi still turned to her, bristling slightly at the words. _You never talk about them, you realize_? _And sometimes you almost don't even seem to have parents with how often you're here_.

He turned away almost violently, huffing. _My parents are divorced and I highly doubt my dad is sober enough to miss me,_ he spat. A small tingle ran down his spine. He glanced around anxiously, wondering if anyone else might have heard him. But no one seemed to even slightly be interested in him or Mai and the wolf closest to them—Mana, who had joined in the game Yusei and Chazz were playing—never turned. He relaxed and looked at his half-eaten meal with a disheartened feeling.

If he died here and now, would any of the wolves in this damn camp even care? It was like he'd traded a worthless father for strangers that had no care for him in even the slightest.

The thought was enough to make him feel cold.

 _Oh_ , Mai said simply after a moment. She didn't raise her head or her eyes. She was staring straight forward and Jonouchi wondered what she was watching. He tried to follow her gaze but there was nothing to be seen. _Well, then. I guess that makes sense why you're here so often then. Yugi and Yami are always away._

 _Yami basically took it upon himself to abuse Yugi's hospitality and Yugi has his head too far up Yami's ass to notice it,_ Jonouchi bit out. He turned to her, angry and annoyed, but she merely blinked and looked at him with a wag of her tail once more. _I guess it doesn't matter, honestly. It is what it is._

The she-wolf shook her head slowly, narrowing her dark violet eyes and considering him more pointedly. _Yugi still values his human family,_ she commented softly, _and Yami seems to as well. I think he cares more than you might assume. But why the two of them are always together and have yet to do anything is beyond me._

Jonouchi faltered, eyes widening. _Do anything_? He blinked. _As in fucking around_?

She snorted. _If you wish to call it that, yes,_ Mai answered. She considered him again, then closed her eyes and tilted her head away slightly. _I simply don't understand why they have not acted upon their attraction to one another._

 _I don't think Yami actually swings that way._

 _Wolves don't swing any certain way,_ Mai yawned. She wriggled her nose and stretched slightly, lazily. _And it doesn't matter, I guess. I'm just always curious. They've got such nice chemistry—_

 _Really_? _Cause I don't see it. Honestly, I think Yami is a menace and Yugi could do a million times better than him._

She blinked at him, then raised her head. _Why would you say that_? _Yami is extremely loyal to him. In every interaction I've seen between the two of them, he's shown clear dedication towards him._ She shook her head. _Maybe I don't know them as well as you do, but I don't understand why you would ever say something like that about the two of them._

He went to answer her, spiteful and hateful, but fell short at the last second. His stomach growled and he shook his head slowly. _It doesn't matter,_ he finally mumbled, _and I don't even want to think about all of it again._

 _Are you talking about what happened before you came here_? _Otogi showed me—_

 _Oh,_ of course _he did,_ Jonouchi spat. _Why wouldn't he_?

Mai fell quiet for a moment, then sighed and looked around. _You almost sound as spiteful as Barbara does. If you were as crazy as to accuse Yami of being a hellhound, I might actually think you two were mirror personalities at this point,_ she commented in a quiet tone. _Do you understand that you're probably one of the_ only _reasons that some of the wolves haven't turned on Yugi or Yami at the moment_?

He stiffened, eyes wide and stunned. _What_?

 _The other wolves aren't that keen on either of them. The reason none of them are likely to lash out against either of them at the moment is because of you._ Mai turned to him with a slight grimace on her face. _Yugi is seen as an incredibly weak leader. And Yami despises the wolves with open resentment. All of us can see it. All of us know it. And he doesn't do a thing to change it. Yugi hasn't attempted to do anything about it either. But you still stand by Yugi. And Yugi still stands by his decisions regarding you. It shows a great deal of loyalty and that's likely one of the only things that's saving them both right now._

 _Yugi is Atem. Why would they—?_

 _None of them are quite sure what they believe about the entire situation. The problem is more than that for them. And, honestly, the pack is so divided on the matter—and on whether Yami is a hellhound—that they don't quite know what to say or do about it. But you have wolves like Aki who like to stir up trouble, and then you have wolves like Barbara who seems to be rallying up some of the wolves in an effort to turn against Yugi entirely._

 _Turn against him_?

 _None of them are stupid enough to do that right now. And your loyalty to him helps to make them all hesitate from it,_ she continued quietly, shaking her head. _As long as you show him loyalty, it makes them think he's still worth the effort. The problem becomes when you and Yami and Yugi all fight. That makes things harder for them to keep hold of the belief that he's worth following and laying their lives down for. Do you understand_?

 _When did I suddenly become so important_? _No one ever pays me any attention to begin with._

 _All of us have been watching you. All of us have been curious._ She hesitated a moment. _You've always been important in the long run. Yugi brought you to camp when you were half-dead. He saved you from drowning. He bit you to save you. And you're the_ only _one besides Yami that he's expressed a desire to save so effortlessly as that._

Jonouchi blinked, tilting his head. Was that true? Yugi had always been so selfless and caring before, even when Jonouchi been a total ass towards him. Had he changed so much in the time that he'd been around Yami that he'd lost that part of himself? Or had he simply been so hurt by Yami's disappearance that he'd shut himself out from all of them? Both of them seemed possible, but the latter he remembered more than he did any other occasion. Yugi had displayed an emotionless stance for a short while in the time that he'd been alone to deal with his loss.

So perhaps it was something of a reality he had never considered before and—

The warning call made everyone leap to their feet. Snarls burst through the air. A couple of wolves snapped their teeth. Some of the alphas—Shay, Ute, Mana, Zane—rushed forward, tails up and hackles raised. All of them snarled and listened, flicking their ears about. The betas—Chazz, Aki, Moonshadow, Andre—took quickly to forming a secondary defense behind them, listening and snarling as well.

And then they all abruptly dropped their stances. Each of them blinked in surprise, then relaxed and turned away. Only Chazz and Shay seemed to keep their eyes on the sight in front of them and Jonouchi turned to see as well, bristling in surprise. His mouth almost dropped open, confusion and anger at war inside of him. He shivered, shaking his head, and stared at the teen now standing a few feet away, at the entrance of the camp.

He blinked, then hurried forward a few steps. His heart was in his throat almost immediately, a sense of dread creeping over him. He'd assumed Yami would have gone home with Yugi. What the hell was he doing there?

The red-eyed teen was bleeding heavily, he realized. He could smell it like heat coming from his skin. His eyes were tired, lids drooping, his mouth pulled into a tight line. The black hoodie he was wearing was drenched with water, but there was a long line of black running from the right elbow to the end of the sleeve. Something dripped from it slowly, hitting the snow in small red droplets.

 _Yami_? He wasn't sure why he spoke. In truth, he knew better. And he thought he should have hidden away and kept from speaking to begin with. His stomach lurched and he almost shivered. Those red eyes had fallen on him, tired but full of something he couldn't read. _What are you doing here_?

There was a long minute of silence. Then, slowly, Yami turned his head. He looked away from the golden-furred wolf entirely, facing one of the wolves in front of him. "Ishizu," he mumbled, voice coming out in a low and hideous hiss of noise. "And Mieru, both of you…"

The she-wolves in question were standing behind the line of betas. Ishizu was staring at him with her head tilted to the side. But Mieru looked positively excited. Her russet fur was in a mild bristle, her black muzzle curled back into something of a smirk. Her tail rose and wagged and her ears were pricked entirely towards Yami. Her long black and brown legs reminded Jonouchi of a fox, and her cheeks were puffed out with a smile that set his nerves on edge.

 _As you wish_ , Ishizu grunted in a dismissive tone. She came forward, her ice blue eyes cold and her face almost phantom-like where the streaks of silver and gray touched her cheeks and muzzle. She picked her way around Zane without a second look, pausing only inches from Yami as Mieru did the same.

 _Yami_?

The red-eyed teen blinked, slowly looking over at him again. He didn't speak and Jonouchi felt anxious as they stared at each other for a long handful of seconds. He flattened his ears against his head and shivered, fur rising and falling in a brief bristle before it fell calmly back in place.

 _You…need to look at your wrist…_

"They're fine."

 _They're_? Jonouchi looked towards the other arm. But Yami had moved it behind his back, refusing to let any of them see it. He didn't say anything else, but the rest of the pack looked at each other anxiously for a moment. Clearly he wasn't the only one who had noticed the smell or the sound of it as it dripped to the snow. Finally, reluctantly, Jonouchi mumbled, _Yugi would kill me if you wound up hurt when I could have helped you._

Yami shook his head. His eyes flashed and he turned immediately to Ishizu and Mieru again. "Let's go. We have much to discuss."

They were gone a few minutes later, after Mieru and Ishizu spoke quietly to one another about whatever it was they decided they needed to. He watched them leave, just as the rest of the pack did, and when he went to speak to Mai again, the others seemed to huddle amongst themselves. Familiar groups were picked out—Chazz, Yusei, Syrus, Yuya with the new additions of Mana and Ute—and a couple of random stragglers had come together—Zuzu, Zane, Shay, Andre—and then he spotted Aki. The red-furred she-wolf was seated with a paler red and brown female, her eyes harsh and cold like chips of the ice around them.

They had their heads lowered, chatting quietly. But Aki seemed distracted and this she-wolf was too unfamiliar to Jonouchi to tell who she might be or what expression was on her face. But he could tell she was at least more focused on their conversation than Aki was, if only because of the way she stared at the former beta with narrowed eyes.

 _Barbara,_ Mai commented after a moment from his side, making him jolt and turn to her with wide eyes. She was staring at the red and brown she-wolf with a disdainful expression. _You've never met her before, have you_? _We all made sure she didn't have access to you when you were recovering before in the cavern. She's always been something of a…menace when it comes to newcomers. And none of us wanted to see you hurt or Yugi angry, so we all blocked her from seeing you._

 _And she never came to see me after that_?

 _She didn't care to, no. You were healed by the time you would have crossed paths. She wants her victims weak, so that it's less effort._

 _Oh…_

Mai was quiet for a moment, turning to him with brightened eyes. _Either way, Jonouchi, I'm glad neither of you met. She's a pain in the ass to me and I don't want her to scare you or anything like that._

 _Scare me_?

 _She's…good at inspiring paranoia._ Mai huffed. _And once she's in your head, there's no shaking her._

Jonouchi stared at her for a long moment. _Is she the reason everyone is suspicious about whether Yami is a hellhound or not_? He felt winded for a moment, staring at her. _I mean, she's the reason that there's so much trouble now_?

There were more reasons than that, he knew. Yami's past history with the pack was nothing good, after all. He'd messed up in allowing them to think of and worship him as Atem, and attacking the former alpha had definitely not gained him any points. His absence from the pack had done nothing good for him, either. Then there was the fact that Marik had died the same day that anyone scented him back in the woods. Aki had made sure everyone knew of that, though Ishizu had done well to divert knowledge of that and had claimed Marik had gotten killed in a fight. She'd said that the way Yami's scent had fallen over the clearing meant that he had come _afterwards_.

The fact that Yugi's blood had been spilled before and after that had been explained away as Yugi attempting to help Marik in the fight and getting badly hurt. It wasn't apparent, however, who else had been there or for what purpose. Jonouchi still didn't know if it was suspected that it was a hellhound attack or not. No one had asked the question, if only to spare Ishizu the feeling of distrust or anxiety that might have come from it.

It did not help, either, that Yami seemed so openly disdainful of them all. He did not lunge or snarl or snap unless provoked, but it was hard _not_ to see the hatred in his eyes. Yugi's constant desire to protect him often did not go over well with the pack. And when he protected him, he did not do so subtly. His aggression towards anyone who so much as mildly _upset_ Yami was enough to make the other wolves resentful.

Hell, even Jonouchi was resentful of it at times. Yugi acted as if the sun shone out of Yami's ass sometimes. And it wasn't as if he didn't know that Yugi got that way when he was in love—or as close to in love as he could be, considering; it was the fact that Yugi had gone farther now than he ever had with his feelings for Anzu. She hadn't gotten nearly as much protection. But then, maybe he had known Anzu could take care of herself and he didn't know if Yami could do the same.

But then… Who in their _right mind_ looked at Yami and considered him weak? That made no sense. Yami may have been smaller than ever, scrawny and emaciated, but he wasn't _weak_. He still had his teeth. He still had full control of his body. As long as those two things remained for him, he was lethal. Jonouchi thought he was like a centipede.

As long as the head was attached, he was able to survive…

If anything, that made him more dangerous.

 _She's one of the causes. Joy was the second one. But she's the primary now._

He stayed quiet for a minute, then turned to her and pricked his ears forward. _Mai_?

 _Hmm_? She was still watching Aki and Barbara, but she turned to him a second later. _What is it, Jonouchi_?

 _Is it true that Ishizu is psychic_?

She blinked. _She is. She's able to see certain events in the future that none of the rest of us can. I've heard rumors that she's strong enough that she's the only one who can see Atem at all. But I think Mieru can see him now too. I think the two of them can see him._ Mai fell quiet for a long moment. _I know for certain that Ishizu can see the future. I don't know if the rumors about Atem are true or not, though. My mother used to claim she was capable of it and that was why she had to stay in the camp with us, because she would know when Atem was among us._

Jonouchi shook his head slowly. _Why would she think she'd need a psychic to tell her that_? _Wouldn't you guys just_ know?

 _It's…not that simple. We were raised to believe that it was going to be a huge, immense event when Atem came to us. And, by all means, it has been. But, by technicality, Atem was meant to be more powerful and far nastier than Yugi appears to be. And, to be truthful, neither he nor Yami fit the description of what Atem was meant to be for us._

He tilted his head, frowning. _What do you mean_?

 _Neither of them is so selfish as to take and never give in turn. Atem is meant to use us as a stepping stone in order to achieve his ultimate goal and save the lycanthropes. Neither of them have the ability or temperament to do that. And Yugi is far more selfless than he is selfish, though Yami is cowardly when it comes to saving himself. If he believes it will save himself, he will sacrifice the others for himself._ She tilted her head and flicked an ear. Her eyes fell on Aki and Barbara again. _Yugi isn't brave enough to sacrifice anyone, but he's selfless in his desire to save everyone. The problem is, in war, you can't do that. Not everyone can come out unscathed. Yami, on the other hand, will sacrifice someone like they're pawns if he believes it will save him. It does not bother him to kill and get his fur soaked. The problem is that Yugi is much more of a pacifist than I thought possible. He doesn't even want to snarl at someone unless he's pushed to that point. And that's usually only when someone hurts someone he cares about, like Yami or Yusei._

Jonouchi shivered, lowering his head to his paws. _Yugi has never been very good at confrontation. Even when he wants something more than anything, it's almost impossible to get him to act on it._

Mai shook her head. _He's been perfectly capable of doing it when it comes to Yami._

 _Are you kidding_? _Even you know that he still hasn't told him about how he feels. You just asked why they weren't fucking around yet_! _If he really wanted a relationship with him, do you honestly think he'd be hiding like this_?

 _After I asked you the question, I realized the answer. Yugi isn't staying quiet because he doesn't want to be with him. It's because he understands. Now isn't really the time for them to have some kind of doomed relationship. One of them is going to die,_ she mumbled, turning to him and staring with an exhausted gleam to her eyes. _Hell, both of them might die. I certainly don't know the future. But I do know that they can't survive like this. Yami is always on edge now; he's a ticking time bomb from what I can tell of it. Hell, you saw him a few minutes ago. He did that to himself. He had no outside appearance to support an attack. And he stinks only of his own blood. You think if he had gotten into a fight with someone, he wouldn't have killed them to protect himself_? _He's turning on himself._

Jonouchi bristled, pricking his ears forward and staring at her. A shiver crawled down his spine again. _Why would he…_? _That doesn't make any sense._

 _He's scared of something or other,_ Mai responded shortly, turning away again and shaking her head. _And I'm not sure, but I think there's something extremely wrong going on in his head right now. I don't know what happened to him before, where he was when he was gone, but it's clearly messed him up. And I don't see him recovering from it very well._

Jonouchi flattened his ears. _But he's…_

 _He's what_? She turned back to him now, tilting her head.

 _I… That doesn't make any…_

 _Have you ever thought to ask Yugi about why he's so protective of him right now_? _He probably knows Yami is on a precipice at this point. If he up and snapped tomorrow, it would not surprise me in the least. Something in that kid is too damaged to be fixed. Maybe it could be if he survives, but I don't know if it could be fixed even then._ She shook her head again. _It does not help that he sees this war for what it is. He sees it as bloodshed and death and a game that has to be won for survival. Yugi is still under the impression that he can save and protect everyone. As long as he thinks that, he won't win. But Yami isn't leader material. He's a good supporter, but he's not a true leader. He doesn't have the same capacity for mercy that Yugi does._

Jonouchi tilted his head, wondering at it. Yami had not shown even the slightest inkling of it to that woman Aileen or the tigress in that attack. And he wondered now, rather abruptly, what it was that he might have done to Fuwa had he gotten to the restaurant before it had caught on fire. Had he even been human when he had arrived there? Or had he been planning to rip his throat out then and there? What was it he had planned to do with the others that had been there? Had he meant to kill them too?

He shuddered, thankful now that he hadn't seen him in action that day. The bloodbath would have been astronomical if Yami had truly been seeking to kill as Jonouchi suspected…

 _Either way, Jonouchi, neither of them is truly fit as alpha. But they work well together._ She grimaced, lips pulling back before she shook her head and looked away. _Honestly, I don't know what's going to happen to them at the end of all this. That's one thing that we were never told. I don't even think the gods have any idea what they'll do with them. They suddenly have two Pure-Blood wolves and their entire purpose is to win this war. Once they win, do they kill them or let them continue to exist_? _And what of the two Harbingers_? _No one even knows who they are just yet. We haven't run across them. And I have no idea when they'll make their appearance. They could be ready to kill us at any moment and we would never know any better._

He shivered again.

 _That's why it's honestly so easy for her to say these things and have them come off as believable. Yami is in no shape to truly deny it and without Yugi there to stand up for him, Yami doesn't have a reason to try to counter them. Yami doesn't often defend himself. When he was here before, he never did. Even when Annie finally snapped and almost killed him, Yami waited until the last second to attack her._

 _What did he do when he was here before_? _I know it wasn't a fun time, but…_

 _Honestly_? _He stayed in one spot more often than not. He watched. He listened. He never spoke… He stayed in one place so that all of us could watch him. He was too uncomfortable to move half the time. He didn't eat with them. I think he starved himself because he was too afraid of them getting close to him._ She shook her head. _From what I know of it, Aki tried a few times to get him to interact with everyone and he ignored her. I don't know what was wrong with him or why he refused to take care of himself. But when he actually attacked and almost killed Annie before he fled, everyone was amazed. No one had assumed he had the strength to do it._

Jonouchi looked away from her. He had thought Yami would have gotten himself killed when he went up against that tigress in the warehouse. The fact that he'd come out of it alive had amazed him more than anything. The fact that he'd tunneled through her stomach and torn his way through her shoulder blades had always terrified him. It had meant a lot more in terms of how dangerous he was than any of them had wanted to admit. Yugi had seemed to take it in stride, however, as if he'd seen that before…

And it only made him wonder how long Yugi had truly known him. Had it really just been at the festival that they'd met? Or had they crossed paths before that? Jonouchi had no idea. But he always wondered. The way they acted around each other, even if it was somewhat stiff at times, always made him wonder. Yami acted as his shadow at times. And, in that warehouse, they had seemed like mere extensions of each other. Yugi had seemed able to read his expression and body language without trouble and Yami had clearly trusted him. He still did, he knew. But he wondered.

There was a lot in their interactions that he did not know how to properly analyze. Yami showed aggression and it set Yugi on the edge. Yugi showed aggression and Yami seemed more amused than upset at times. Yami became distressed and Yugi became increasingly angry. Yugi became distressed and Yami became agitated. Yami was injured and Yugi became protective. Yugi was injured and Yami became destructive. He _killed_ simply because Yugi was hurt in some manner.

If they fed off each other to that degree…

Jonouchi got to his paws, shaking himself out. _Do you ever wonder how unhealthy their relationship is_?

 _That's their own business_. Mai shook her head. _And I would lose my mind if I spent all my time trying to figure them out. I wasn't meant to know everything where they're involved. Neither are you._

 _I get that, but …what if Yugi is making a huge mistake being involved with him at all_?

She blinked, then tilted her head and looked at him with a bewildered expression. _They're both Atem. Yugi is the primary and Yami is the secondary, but they're both meant to play a pretty significant role in each other's lives. Just because you're his friend and you're afraid he's making a mistake doesn't mean much to him. Yugi is almost an adult. He can make his own decisions. From what I understand, he's been doing that for a while anyways. Jonouchi, if he's making a mistake, let him figure it out for himself. If you come at him saying you think so, it's just going to upset him and make him push you away._

Jonouchi blinked, then scowled and flattened his ears against his head. _But he's…_

 _I don't think he's a stupid kid, Jonouchi._

 _I never said that_!

 _And I don't think he's so naïve that he doesn't understand that Yami is dangerous or that maybe their relationship isn't the most ideal at the moment. I think he's well aware of all of it. And I bet you he knows damn well just how easily his bond with Yami has been twisted in the pack._

 _Okay, but that's not—_

 _Promise me you won't say anything to him that might result in problems later. He has a lot on his plate and he's not the best under pressure. If you haven't noticed, he's really scared on top of it. And Yami's behavior at the moment probably isn't helping him in any way either._

 _Okay but it's not like any of us told him to—_

 _No, none of us did, but he doesn't truly have a choice either. Even if he had never announced himself, he'd still be swept into this one way or another. If Yami had never made contact with him, it likely would have taken longer, but it still would have—_

The sound of snow crunching made her head snap around. She was abruptly on her feet, tail wagging and head lowered to the snow. The submissive stance made him nearly bristle and he spun around with wide eyes in turn, confused and startled by the sudden movement. Ishizu and Mieru had returned, and Yami was a few feet behind them. His arms were no longer bleeding, but his jacket was stained black from sleeve to elbow on either arm. His steps were not as quiet as they usually seemed, as if he were weighed down by whatever it was the three of them had spoken about. And he looked exhausted, red eyes hooded and mouth pulled downward.

A few uncertain looks were shot around for a brief moment. Mai herself looked confused and bewildered, as if his sudden state unnerved her more than she could ever express verbally. It took a moment for her to seemingly recover from her shock. Her tail wagged again, more hesitantly, her ears against her head, and she stared at him in open confusion.

 _I see Ishizu didn't just put you out of your misery,_ a voice said snidely. Jonouchi turned his head, eyes wide, as Barbara glared spitefully at the teen. Her brown eyes were flat and empty, like discs of dried mud. _Loyalty certainly doesn't run very deep for the damn psychic if she isn't even smart enough to kill a monster when she sees one._

Yami merely raised a brow, a long and slow but elegant movement. Jonouchi bristled as he turned back to him with an alarmed expression. And then, with startling clarity, he realized Mai was right. Yami didn't make any move to answer her, not to defend himself or Ishizu either. He had no plans to do so. He'd rather her speak against him and Ishizu than defend either of them.

 _What a damn shame._

Yami was watching her, Jonouchi noted, a sense of dread creeping down his spine. There was something in his eyes now; something had changed drastically…

Something in him was frayed, snapped, and it was writhing in his eyes at the moment. He couldn't tell if it was hatred or impatience, absolute loathing or resentment. But it was there.

 _I would have slaughtered you when your back was turned._

"Only cowards attack from behind. I'm sure if Ishizu planned to do me any harm, she would do so where I could see her." He smiled, something crooked and leering as he considered her. His lips peeled back on one side, showing his teeth in an exaggerated manner, and his eyes sparkled. "But I don't suppose you have the bravery to match your words and do so, now do you, Barbara?"

Jonouchi bristled; the way he said her name made his skin crawl for a long moment. He wanted to run for a split second, horrified as he glanced between them uncertainly. Would he attack her? He could not imagine Yami would do so. He'd have to explain himself if he went back to Yugi's house covered in blood that wasn't his. And he could only imagine that Yugi would respond violently to the fact that one of the wolves had attacked him…

"Are you afraid because you know I'll kill you?" Yami continued quietly. "And wouldn't that be pathetic? Your mother paid her life to give Atem leadership of the pack. Do you remember that? Although, I do not assume that she should be upset with your behavior. She was as foolish as you when it came to attacking Atem's chosen beta. Perhaps she's honored that one of her daughters is just as much a cowardly _bitch_ as she was."

The reaction was instantaneous. Several of the wolves cringed away. Others laughed aloud. Zane sneered. Chazz howled. Yusei stared blankly. Jonouchi shivered. Mai trembled. Mana scoffed. Shay snickered. Barbara, however, narrowed her eyes. And Aki beside her bristled, though she hardly looked angered.

"I would watch myself, princess," Yami hissed, lowering his voice further so that it became a deep rumbling snarl. "You heard what I said about stepping out of line when Otogi relayed the message, I'm sure. If you were smart, you'd back off while you still have the chance."

Jonouchi shivered. He truly planned to kill her, didn't he? He would hold up his threat, despite what Yugi had said to the contrary. Yami was willing to kill them if they disobeyed him. Yugi had no control over the matter, even if he was his—

His stomach rolled painfully.

"Remind me _who the alpha is_."

Yami had said that in the woods earlier that day. He'd said it to Yugi when he'd said that Yugi needed to remind him who was boss. And now, staring at Yami, he had the sudden idea he knew _exactly_ which of them was the alpha between them. Yugi had lied. Yugi had lied about who had bitten him. It wasn't Tomoya; it wasn't Ushio.

He blinked wide eyes, tilting his head slowly to the side.

Yami had bitten him.

 _Yami_ had been the one to bite him.

Which meant that Yugi had also lied about when they had met.

They couldn't have met at the damn festival if Yami had been the one to bite him…

 _Goddamn it,_ he spat.

The words were so loud that the wolves around him turned to stare. Even Yami blinked and tilted his head, staring with furrowed brows. Jonouchi was shaking, hateful for a split second as resentment coursed through him.

Yugi had lied to them. Yugi had lied to _his friends_.

He'd told them that Tomoya had bitten him when he'd been attacked by Ushio. But it had been fucking _Yami_ instead. Yami had bitten him, had infected him. Yugi was defenseless against Yami should he turn on him with the intent to kill. The alpha command wouldn't save him in the slightest and he had _no control_ over Yami whatsoever. If he chose to turn on and kill him, Yugi was going to be just another count on his list of kills. Jonouchi wanted to sob for a long minute.

Yugi wouldn't fight him. Yugi would never fight him if Yami truly tried to kill him. How would he defend himself? How would he truly convince himself it was necessary? He couldn't think straight where Yami was concerned to begin with. And now…

He looked up slowly, curling his lips back furiously. But Yami didn't even blink at him. Jonouchi wondered abruptly if he was projecting outwards for the pack to hear. But the lack of horrified expressions told him otherwise. But he knew, shivering, that Yami understood what had just happened. He saw the light in his eyes that was full of laughter and mockery and the smallest sense of anger.

And Jonouchi wished he could have demanded to know why. He wished he could have lunged at him and snarled and asked him. But Yami wasn't the one he needed to question. And Yami would merely sneer at him, he was sure.

* * *

When Jonouchi woke later that night, Mai was snuggled against his side. Her face was turned away, nose tucked into her tail where it was curled over. He shivered, muscles stiff as he moved to stand. His bones popped and immediately the she-wolf spun around to look at him. She yawned, stretching, and got up to circle. He watched her for a moment, then sighed and plopped into a seated position beside her again.

 _Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you._

She shook her head, curling up again. _I would have woken up even if you weren't moving around,_ she said quietly. And then she raised and turned her head, facing him with a somewhat sorrowful expression. _What upset you so much earlier_?

He blinked, then huffed. _Yugi lied to me about something._

 _Was it a big lie_?

 _I don't know how much it changes the situation._ He blinked and turned to her after a moment again, pricking his ears. _Mai, what happens when someone bites you_?

She furrowed her brows. _You get infected._

He laughed softly, shaking his head. _No, I mean… The alpha can command their beta when they get out of control, but what about for the betas_? _What helps them_?

Mai blinked and stretched again, then rolled over to press against him. She smelled strongly of roses and morning dew and he almost shivered with satisfaction. _You mean the alpha command_? She yawned again, then rolled so that she push her paw into his chest and tipped her head back, opening her mouth so that her tongue plopped against the roof of her mouth. _Well, for the beta they have a kind of gene expression. It happens when the alpha turns on them. Something about the lycanthropy between them causes them to suffer phantom pains in response to the attack. So the alpha feels the exact pain they're inflicting. It keeps them from being able to kill the beta without killing themselves too. The pain being shared between them is enough to usually knock them out of the attack altogether…_

That was a nice thing. If Yami turned on Yugi, he'd have to stop himself truly hurting him because he'd be destroying himself as well, right?

 _What about if it's further down the line_? _Like say…one wolf bit someone else and then that wolf bit someone else. Would that still protect them from the original wolf if they turned on them_?

Mai blinked. _As in, like, Otogi bit me and I bit you and you and Otogi were fighting_? _That kind of thing_? She rolled over onto her stomach and looked at him with a bewildered expression. _I'm not sure. I don't think it would protect the third in a line. It's too…strained after that to have a pull over the last in the line, I guess. I've never heard of it working out like that before…_

 _Okay, but what about the reverse_? _Would the alpha command still work then_?

 _It would be a fractured connection and not as strong as mine would be, but I think Otogi in that case would still be able to control you somewhat. I don't know to what extent, however. Why do you ask_?

 _I was just curious._

She eyed him skeptically for a long moment, then yawned. _If you say so_.

Jonouchi stayed quiet for a few seconds. _Do you think Barbara would actually be able to hurt Yami if she went after him_?

She blinked. _What_? _I'm not… She's extremely violent. But I don't think she could, no. Yami is a lot nastier than she could ever dream of being. He moves fast when he's enraged and I think he'd easily be able to overpower and kill her if he tried to. Why do you ask_? _Is that what has you so upset right now_?

He sighed and looked around uncertainly. No one seemed to be paying them any attention. Most of the wolves were asleep, but some of them were still awake and looking around with tired but alert expressions. Chazz sat by the entrance to the camp, sitting vigil with a perfect posture of pricked ears and a wriggling nose. No doubt any wolf to so stupidly attempt to come through would get their faces torn apart if he didn't recognize them.

Jonouchi sighed as he turned back. She peered up at him, eyes soft and warm and he wished he could melt in them for a long moment. His anxiety melted away and he closed his eyes, tilting his head and listening to her steady heartbeat and slow breathing. It was comforting enough that he lost his sense of anger entirely, finally blinking his eyes open again.

 _I was just… I was thinking about how little I know about all of this werewolf stuff. And then I was just kind of wondering if the guy who bit Yugi was, you know…still alive, if that meant that Yugi would still be under his control and he'd be able to control me, you know_?

 _It's not some kind of mind control or voodoo,_ Mai laughed, staring at him and shaking her head. _But that doesn't apply to anything anyways. Yugi wasn't bitten._

Jonouchi blinked. _What_?

 _Yami was_.

He stared at her for a long moment, then tilted his head. _Wait, what_?

Mai yawned. _Yami was the one that Yugi bit. But Yugi wasn't bitten, not unless the experiments led him to a more dormant state and he had to be bitten so that it triggered a reaction out of it. Other than that, though, you'd be saying that someone bit Yugi and then Yugi bit Yami. So, anyways, as far as that goes, I don't know if they would have had any influence over you or not._ She stretched and laid her chin on her paws, then looked over at Jonouchi with sharp eyes, voice lowered and slightly cold. _Chazz is listening to us right now. As far as he knows, Yugi bit Yami. That's the story Yugi has been telling the camp. I thought he'd told you already about that._

Jonouchi flinched slightly, then glanced over. Chazz was watching them discreetly from the corner of his eye. He refused to look directly over, as if he were trying to be mild in his eavesdropping so that they would not notice. No doubt the more he'd used Yami and Yugi's name, the more interested the gray yearling had become.

He shivered and shook himself out. Had he told him that? Had he told him about the alpha command and phantom pains before, too? He couldn't remember now, too excited and anxious. _I guess he did,_ he finally mumbled when she stared at him with a somewhat concerned expression, _but I guess I forgot about it. I just… He told me that someone else completely had bitten him and it was Yami who did. I…_

 _I doubt it was intentional to hurt you or make you feel like you'd been betrayed,_ Mai continued. She shook her head slightly, watching him, and then lowered her chin to her paws and glanced around slowly. Her dark violet eyes were all but glowing where the moonlight touched her irises. _I think he did it to protect Yami. I don't think he truly considered that it would put a wedge between the two of you._

 _Protect him how exactly_?

Mai looked over her shoulder towards Chazz before turning back to Jonouchi. Her voice was quieter, softer, as if she were trying to make him feel better for the betrayal he felt. _Because of the pack's older misconceptions of him as Atem, I'm sure. Most of the wolves wished to kill him—and some still do, truthfully. So it would not surprise me in the slightest if it turned out that he decided to take the precaution of doing so. Yugi isn't stupid. And he_ has _to know Yami is perhaps his one shot at actually winning this war. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest to see him attempting to find a way to protect him in each and every way he can, no matter how small._

 _And he couldn't have just told me and Honda and Anzu_? _Why the hell not_?

 _You don't know this, but when you first changed, each one of your most important memories and thoughts came to the surface. You didn't broadcast all of them, but you didn't have control enough to stop us from seeing a vast majority of them. Thankfully there were only the three of us with you that night, so we were the only ones to hear them. But, had you known about Yami, it would have been chaotic. He was not there at the time, Yugi was actively lying to each and all of us, and you knew secrets that none of us had any right to._

Jonouchi flattened his ears. If he had known, everyone else would have as well. But did Yugi know that would have happened? Or had he simply thought to protect Yami as much as possible? He couldn't have known. And it wasn't like Yugi had planned to bite him at any point. So why would he have…?

No, it had to have just been Yugi being cautious.

Yugi was not malicious in any way, shape or form. He would not have lied to them without a reason behind it. But why try to protect Yami from _them_? It wasn't as if they knew enough about the werewolves to give anyone details of any kind. If Yugi were so fearful of everything, then why exactly had he gotten so involved with it all? It made no sense whatsoever. Why would Yugi have been so damn foolish as to do that?

Jonouchi drew in a deep breath, then exhaled softly and closed his eyes tightly. _You think he did it to protect Yami from the pack then_?

 _Most likely. Or to protect him should anything happen in which you or your friends were used as collateral damage. If you don't know something, you can't tell someone about it. Since you didn't know anything about him or that Yami bit him, then you couldn't tell anyone. It was the best way to keep you all safe without involving you in any manner._

He shivered and sighed again. _But that's…I guess it makes sense but I still don't understand why he wouldn't just have tried to explain it a little bit or something like that. I just…_

Mai shook her head and considered him curiously for a moment. _If you plan to talk to him about all of this at some point, you need to do so when you aren't likely to be heard. You can't let someone else hear something like this about Yami or Yugi. It would cause a lot more damage, especially after everything that has happened with Joy. Barbara, especially, would love to know that information. She'd use it the moment she found out. And I don't know how the pack would react to that. They might turn on each other or they might try to kill them_ both _for it._

Jonouchi glanced over his shoulder again. Chazz was now looking skyward; his ears were pricked and his face painted silver from the moonlight. When he got up and stretched, the yearling shook himself out and then plopped down again without a glance at them. Jonouchi watched him a few moments longer, wondering at the gray yearling and how strong he had to truly be in order to guard the camp alone like this. If there was an ambush of some kind, he was not sure he would have counted on just Chazz to deal with it…

He might have been vicious in a fight, stronger than usual for a yearling, but he could have been easily overpowered if there were numbers. And he still remembered Yami knocking him around as if he were nothing when he had first come to Japan. If one of the hellhounds were as fast or strong as Yami was, would Chazz even have the chance to sound an alarm?

 _I don't think Yugi is in any danger from lying like he did…as long as he is not caught. I truly don't think he meant to harm anyone in doing so. I think, honestly, if nothing else, you should probably thank him for it. He probably helped you out a lot more than you know._ She was quiet for a moment. Her voice came out slower, almost sluggish, as if she were rasping. _I don't think he makes all the best choices, but I think he tries. And I think if you're at least trying, then you deserve some kind of acknowledgment. I don't think the others agree with that, though. But he's trying…_

Jonouchi turned to answer her, startled by the comment, but fell silent again. She was fast asleep now, breathing even and soft and her heartbeat slower than before. He frowned and glanced away again, eyes on Chazz as he tilted his head. The yearling turned his head after a few minutes of staring, head tilted and ears pricked. Jonouchi debated going to speak to him, if only to ask him why he was the only one keeping vigil, but sleep tugged at him after a few moments. And so he lay down next to her again, moving to rest his chin on her neck and close his eyes.


End file.
